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Dorset
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County of England
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[
"Counties in South West England",
"Counties of England established in antiquity",
"Dorset"
] |
Dorset (/ˈdɔːrsɪt/ DOR-sit; archaically: Dorsetshire /ˈdɔːrsɪt.ʃɪər, -ʃər/ DOR-sit-sheer, -shər) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, Hampshire to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Devon to the west. The county town is Dorchester and the largest settlement is Bournemouth.
The county has an area of 2,653 km<sup>2</sup> (1,024 sq mi) and a population of 772,268. Around half of the population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation, which contains several of county's largest settlements: Bournemouth (183,491), Poole (151,500), and Christchurch (31,372). The remainder of the county is largely rural, and its principal towns are Weymouth (53,427) and Dorchester (21,366). For administrative purposes the county is governed by two unitary authorities, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council and Dorset Council. The historic county did not include Bournemouth and Christchurch, which were part of Hampshire.
Dorset has a varied landscape of chalk downs, steep limestone ridges, and low-lying clay valleys. The majority of its coastline is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site due to its geological and palaeontologic significance, and features notable landforms such as Lulworth Cove, the Isle of Portland, Chesil Beach and Durdle Door. The north of the county contains part of Cranbourne Chase, a chalk downland. The highest point in Dorset is Lewesdon Hill (279 m (915 ft)), in the southwest.
There is evidence of Neolithic, Celtic, and Roman settlement in Dorset, and during the Early Middle Ages the region was settled by the Saxons; the county developed in the 7th century. The first recorded Viking raid on the British Isles occurred in Dorset during the eighth century, and the Black Death entered England at Melcombe Regis in 1348. The county has seen much civil unrest: in the English Civil War an uprising of vigilantes was crushed by Oliver Cromwell's forces in a pitched battle near Shaftesbury; the doomed Monmouth Rebellion began at Lyme Regis; and a group of farm labourers from Tolpuddle were instrumental in the formation of the trade union movement. During the Second World War, Dorset was heavily involved in the preparations for the invasion of Normandy, and the large harbours of Portland and Poole were two of the main embarkation points. Agriculture was traditionally the major industry of Dorset, but is now in decline in favour of tourism.
## Toponymy
Dorset derives its name from the county town of Dorchester. The Romans established the settlement in the 1st century and named it Durnovaria which was a Latinised version of a Common Brittonic word possibly meaning "place with fist-sized pebbles". The Saxons named the town Dornwaraceaster (the suffix -ceaster being the Old English name for a "Roman town"; cf. Exeter and Gloucester) and Dornsæte came into use as the name for the inhabitants of the area from Dorn (a reduced form of Dornwaraceaster) and the Old English word sæte (meaning "people"). It is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in AD 845 and in the 10th century the county's archaic name, Dorseteschyre (Dorsetshire), was first recorded.
## History
### Early history
The first human visitors to Dorset were Mesolithic hunters, from around 8000. The first permanent Neolithic settlers appeared around 3000 BC and were responsible for the creation of the Dorset Cursus, a 10.5-kilometre (6.5 mi) monument for ritual or ceremonial purposes. From 2800 BC onwards Bronze Age farmers cleared Dorset's woodlands for agricultural use and Dorset's high chalk hills provided a location for numerous round barrows. During the Iron Age, the British tribe known as the Durotriges established a series of hill forts across the county—most notably Maiden Castle which is one of the largest in Europe.
The Romans arrived in Dorset during their conquest of Britain in AD 43. Maiden Castle was captured by a Roman legion under the command of Vespasian, and the Roman settlement of Durnovaria was established nearby. Bokerley Dyke, a large defensive ditch built by the county's post-Roman inhabitants near the border with modern-day Hampshire, delayed the advance of the Saxons into Dorset for almost 150 years. It appears to have been re-fortified during this period, with the former Roman Road at Ackling Dyke also being blocked by the Britons, apparently to prevent the West Saxon advance into Dorset.
However, by the end of the 7th century, Dorset had fallen under Saxon control and been incorporated into the Kingdom of Wessex. The precise details of this West Saxon conquest and how it took place are not clear, but it appears to have substantially taken place by the start of the reign of Caedwalla in 685. The Saxons established a diocese at Sherborne and Dorset was made a shire—an administrative district of Wessex and predecessor to the English county system—with borders that have changed little since. In 789 the first recorded Viking attack on the British Isles took place in Dorset on the Portland coast, and they continued to raid into the county for the next two centuries.
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, feudal rule was established in Dorset and the bulk of the land was divided between the Crown and ecclesiastical institutions. The Normans consolidated their control over the area by constructing castles at Corfe, Wareham and Dorchester in the early part of the 12th century. Over the next 200 years Dorset's population grew substantially and additional land was enclosed for farming to provide the extra food required. The wool trade, the quarrying of Purbeck Marble and the busy ports of Weymouth, Melcombe Regis, Lyme Regis and Bridport brought prosperity to the county. However, Dorset was devastated by the bubonic plague in 1348 which arrived in Melcombe Regis on a ship from Gascony. The disease, more commonly known as the Black Death, created an epidemic that spread rapidly and wiped out a third of the population of the country. Dorset came under the political influence of a number of different nobles during the Middle Ages. During the Wars of the Roses, for instance, Dorset came into the area influenced by Humphrey Stafford, earl of Devon (originally of Hooke, Dorset) whose wider influence stretched from Cornwall to Wiltshire. After 1485, one of the most influential Dorset figures was Henry VII's chamberlain Giles Daubeney.
### Modern history
The dissolution of the monasteries (1536–1541) met little resistance in Dorset and many of the county's abbeys, including Shaftesbury, Cerne and Milton, were sold to private owners. In 1642, at the commencement of the English Civil War, the Royalists took control of the entire county apart from Poole and Lyme Regis. However, within three years their gains had been almost entirely reversed by the Parliamentarians. An uprising of Clubmen—vigilantes weary of the depredations of the war—took place in Dorset in 1645. Some 2,000 of these rebels offered battle to Lord Fairfax's Parliamentary army at Hambledon Hill but they were easily routed. Sherborne Castle was taken by Fairfax that same year and in 1646 Corfe Castle, the last remaining Royalist stronghold in Dorset, was captured after an act of betrayal: both were subsequently slighted. The Duke of Monmouth's unsuccessful attempt to overthrow James II began when he landed at Lyme Regis in 1685. A series of trials known as the Bloody Assizes took place to punish the rebels. Over a five-day period in Dorchester, Judge Jeffreys presided over 312 cases: 74 of the accused were executed, 175 were transported, and nine were publicly whipped. In 1686, at Charborough Park, a meeting took place to plot the downfall of James II of England. This meeting was effectively the start of the Glorious Revolution.
During the 18th century, much smuggling took place along the Dorset coast; its coves, caves and sandy beaches provided opportunities for gangs such as the Hawkhursts to stealthily bring smuggled goods ashore. Poole became Dorset's busiest port and established prosperous trade links with the fisheries of Newfoundland which supported cloth, rope and net manufacturing industries in the surrounding towns and villages. However, the industrial revolution largely bypassed Dorset which lacked coal resources and as a consequence the county remained predominantly agricultural. Farming has always been central to the economy of Dorset and the county became the birthplace of the modern trade union movement when, in 1834, six farm labourers formed a union to protest against falling wages. The labourers, who are now known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, were subsequently arrested for administering "unlawful oaths" and sentenced to transportation but they were pardoned following massive protests by the working classes.
The Dorsetshire Regiment were the first British unit to face a gas attack during the First World War (1914–1918) and they sustained particularly heavy losses at the Battle of the Somme. In total some 4,500 Dorset servicemen died in the war and of the county's towns and villages, only one, Langton Herring, known as a Thankful Village, had no residents killed. During the Second World War (1939–1945) Dorset was heavily involved in the preparations for the invasion of Normandy: beach landing exercises were carried out at Studland and Weymouth and the village of Tyneham was requisitioned for army training. Tens of thousands of troops departed Weymouth, Portland and Poole harbours during D-Day and gliders from RAF Tarrant Rushton dropped troops near Caen to begin Operation Tonga.
Dorset experienced an increase in holiday-makers after the war. First popularised as a tourist destination by George III's frequent visits to Weymouth, the county's coastline, seaside resorts and its sparsely populated rural areas attract millions of visitors each year. With farming declining across the country, tourism has edged ahead as the primary revenue-earning sector.
## Settlements
Dorset is largely rural with many small villages, few large towns and no cities. The only major urban area is the South East Dorset conurbation, which is situated at the south-eastern end of the county and is atypical of the county as a whole. It consists of the seaside resort of Bournemouth, the historic port and borough of Poole, the towns of Christchurch and Ferndown plus many surrounding villages. Bournemouth, the most populous town in the conurbation, was established in the Georgian era when sea bathing became popular. Poole, the second largest settlement (once the largest town in the county), adjoins Bournemouth to the west and contains the suburb of Sandbanks which has some of the highest land values by area in the world.
The other two major settlements in the county are Dorchester, which has been the county town since at least 1305, and Weymouth, a major seaside resort since the 18th century. Blandford Forum, Sherborne, Gillingham, Shaftesbury and Sturminster Newton are historic market towns which serve the farms and villages of the Blackmore Vale in north Dorset. Beaminster and Bridport are situated in the west of the county; Verwood and the historic Saxon market towns of Wareham and Wimborne Minster are located to the east. Lyme Regis and Swanage are small coastal towns popular with tourists. Under construction on the western edge of Dorchester is the experimental new town of Poundbury commissioned and co-designed by Prince Charles. The suburb, which is expected to be fully completed by 2025, was designed to integrate residential and retail buildings and counter the growth of dormitory towns and car-oriented development.
## Physical geography
Dorset covers an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi) and contains considerable variety in its underlying geology, which is partly responsible for the diversity of landscape. A large percentage (66%) of the county comprises either chalk, clay or mixed sand and gravels. The remainder is less straightforward and includes Portland and Purbeck stone, other limestones, calcareous clays and shales. Portland and Purbeck stone are of national importance as a building material and for restoring some of Britain's most famous landmarks. Almost every type of rock known from the Early Jurassic to the Eocene epochs can be found in the county.
Dorset has a number of limestone ridges which are mostly covered in either arable fields or calcareous grassland supporting sheep. These limestone areas include a wide band of Cretaceous chalk which crosses the county as a range of hills from north-east to south-west, incorporating Cranborne Chase and the Dorset Downs, and a narrow band running from south-west to south-east, incorporating the Purbeck Hills. Between the chalk hills are large, wide vales and wide flood plains. These vales are dotted with small villages, farms and coppices, and include the Blackmore Vale (Stour valley) and the Frome valley. The Blackmore Vale is composed of older Jurassic deposits, largely clays interspersed with limestones, and has traditionally been a centre for dairy agriculture. South-east Dorset, including the lower Frome valley and around Poole and Bournemouth, comprises younger Eocene deposits, mainly sands and clays of poor agricultural quality. The soils created from these deposits support a heathland habitat which sustains all six native British reptile species. Most of the Dorset heathland has Site of Special Scientific Interest status, with three areas designated as internationally important Ramsar sites. In the far west of the county and along the coast there are frequent changes in rock strata, which appear in a less obviously sequential way compared to the landscapes of the chalk and the heath. In the west this results in a hilly landscape of diverse character that resembles that of neighbouring county Devon. Marshwood Vale, a valley of Lower Lias clay at the western tip of the county, lies to the south of the two highest points in Dorset: Lewesdon Hill at 279 metres (915 ft) and Pilsdon Pen at 277 metres (909 ft).
A former river valley flooded by rising sea levels 6,000 years ago, Poole Harbour is one of the largest natural harbours in the world. The harbour is very shallow in places and contains a number of islands, notably Brownsea Island, the birthplace of the Scouting movement and one of the few remaining sanctuaries for indigenous red squirrels in England. The harbour, and the chalk and limestone hills of the Isle of Purbeck to the south, lie atop Western Europe's largest onshore oil field. The field, operated by Perenco from Wytch Farm, has the world's oldest continuously pumping well at Kimmeridge which has been producing oil since the early 1960s.
Dorset's diverse geography ensures it has an assortment of rivers, although a moderate annual rainfall coupled with rolling hills, means most are typically lowland in nature. Much of the county drains into three rivers, the Frome, Piddle and Stour which all flow to the sea in a south-easterly direction. The Frome and Piddle are chalk streams but the Stour, which rises in Wiltshire to the north, has its origins in clay soil. The River Avon, which flows mainly through Wiltshire and Hampshire, enters Dorset towards the end of its journey at Christchurch Harbour. The rivers Axe and Yeo, which principally drain the counties of Devon and Somerset respectively, have their sources in the north-west of the county. In the south-west, a number of small rivers run into the sea along the Dorset coastline; most notable of these are the Char, Brit, Bride and Wey.
Most of Dorset's coastline is part of the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site, which stretches for 155 kilometres (96 mi) between Studland and Exmouth in Devon. This coast documents the entire Mesozoic era, from Triassic to Cretaceous, and is noted for its geological landforms. The Dorset section has yielded important fossils, including Jurassic trees and the first complete Ichthyosaur, discovered near Lyme Regis in 1811 by Mary Anning. The county features some notable coastal landforms, including examples of a cove (Lulworth Cove), a natural arch (Durdle Door) and chalk stacks (Old Harry Rocks). Jutting out into the English Channel at roughly the midpoint of the Dorset coastline is the Isle of Portland, a limestone island that is connected to the mainland by Chesil Beach, a 27-kilometre (17 mi) long shingle barrier beach protecting Britain's largest tidal lagoon.
The county has one of the highest proportions of conservation areas in England, and two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) cover 53% of the administrative county. It has two heritage coasts totalling 92 kilometres (57 mi), and Sites of Special Scientific Interest covering 199 km<sup>2</sup> (77 sq mi). The South West Coast Path, a National Trail, begins at South Haven Point at the entrance to Poole Harbour. There are also substantial areas of green belt surrounding the South East Dorset conurbation, filling in the area between this and the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs AONB.
### Climate
Dorset's climate of warm summers and mild winters is partly due to its position on Britain's south coast. The third most southerly county in the UK, Dorset is less affected by the more intense Atlantic winds than Cornwall and Devon. Dorset, along with the entire south-west, has higher winter temperatures, average 4.5 to 8.7 °C (40.1 to 47.7 °F), than the rest of the United Kingdom. However, Dorset maintains higher summer temperatures than Devon and Cornwall, with average highs of 19.1 to 22.2 °C (66.4 to 72.0 °F). Excluding hills such as the Dorset Downs, the average annual temperature of the county is 9.8 to 12 °C (49.6 to 53.6 °F).
The south coast counties of Dorset, Hampshire, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent enjoy more sunshine than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, receiving 1,541–1,885 hours a year. Average annual rainfall varies across the county—southern and eastern coastal areas receive 700–800 mm (28–31 in) per year; the Dorset Downs receive between 1,000 and 1,250 mm (39–49 in) per year; less than much of Devon and Cornwall to the west but more than counties to the east.
## Demography
The 2011 Census records Dorset's population as 744,041. This consisted of 412,905 for the non-metropolitan county (not including Bournemouth and Poole), 183,491 for the unitary authority of Bournemouth and 147,645 for the unitary authority of Poole. In 2013 it was estimated that the population had risen by around 1.4% to 754,460: 416,720 in the non-metropolitan county and 188,730 and 149,010 in Bournemouth and Poole respectively. More than half of the county's residents live in the Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch conurbation.
Dorset's population has a high proportion of older people and a lower than average proportion of young people: According to 2013 mid-year estimates, 23.6% are over 65 years of age, higher than the England and Wales average of 17.4%, and 18.6% are less than 17 years old, lower than the England and Wales average of 21.3%. The working age population (females and males between 16 and 64) is lower than England and Wales average, 60% compared to 64%. Data collected between 2010 and 2012 shows that average life expectancy at birth in the county is 85.3 years for females and 81.2 years for males. This compares favourably with the averages for England and Wales of 82.9 and 79.1 years respectively. Around 95.2% of Dorset's population are of white ethnicity, 60.9% of the population are Christian and 28.5% say they are not religious.
More than 33% of the county's population possess a level 4 qualification or above, such as a Higher National Diploma, Degree or a Higher Degree; while nearly 6.3% have no qualifications at all. Almost 43.7% are employed in a professional or technical capacity (Standard Occupational Classification 2010, groups 1–3), just over 10.3% are administrators or secretaries (group 4), around 12.8% have a skilled trade (group 5), over 18% are employed at a low-level in the care, leisure, sales or customer relations sector (groups 6 and 7) and 14.8% are operatives or in elementary occupations (groups 8 and 9).
## Politics
### Local government
Local government in Dorset consists of two unitary authorities (UA); Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council, which governs the major conurbation comprising the three towns, and Dorset Council which serves the more rural remainder of the county. For the BCP council, voters choose 76 councillors from 33 wards, with ten wards returning three candidates apiece and 23 wards, two. Dorset elects 82 councillors representing six three-councillor wards, 18 two-councillor wards and 28 single-councillor wards - 52 wards in total. In both authorities, elections for the entire council occur every four years.
The two authorities came into existence on 1 April 2019, when Bournemouth and Poole merged with Christchurch, one of six second-tier districts previously governed by Dorset County Council, leaving the other five districts - Weymouth and Portland, West Dorset, North Dorset, Purbeck and East Dorset - to form a second UA. Dorset County Council was first formed in 1888 by an act of government to govern the newly created administrative county of Dorset which had been based largely on the historic county borders. Dorset became a two-tier non-metropolitan county after a reorganisation of local government in 1974 and its border was extended eastwards to incorporate the former Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch. Following a review by the Local Government Commission for England, Bournemouth and Poole each became administratively independent single-tier unitary authorities in 1997.
### National representation
For representation in Parliament Dorset is divided into eight Parliamentary constituencies—five county constituencies and three borough constituencies. At the 2017 general election, the Conservative Party was dominant, taking all eight seats. The borough constituencies of Bournemouth East, Bournemouth West and Poole are traditionally Conservative safe seats and are all represented by Conservative members of parliament. The county constituencies of North Dorset and Christchurch are also represented by Conservative MPs. Between 1997 and 2019, West Dorset was represented by Conservative MP Oliver Letwin who was the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office in David Cameron's government. The seat was won by Chris Loder in the 2019 general election.
The marginal seat of South Dorset is represented by Richard Drax, who gained the seat from Labour representative, Jim Knight, in 2010. Drax retained the seat in 2015 and 2017. The Mid Dorset and North Poole constituency has been represented by the Conservative MP, Michael Tomlinson since 2015.
In the 2019 general election, the Conservatives held all eight constituencies in Dorset.
## Economy and industry
In 2003 the gross value added (GVA) for the non-metropolitan county was £4,673 million, with an additional £4,705 million for Poole and Bournemouth. The primary sector produced 2.03% of GVA, the secondary sector produced 22.44% and 75.53% came from the tertiary sector. The average GVA for the 16 regions of South West England was £4,693 million.
The principal industry in Dorset was once agriculture. It has not, however, been the largest employer since the mid 19th century as mechanisation substantially reduced the number of workers required. Agriculture has become less profitable and the industry has declined further. Within the administrative county between 1995 and 2003, GVA for primary industry (largely agriculture, fishing and quarrying) declined from £229 million to £188 million—7.1% to 4.0%. In 2007, 2,039 km<sup>2</sup> (787 sq mi) of the county was in agricultural use, up from 1,986 km<sup>2</sup> (767 sq mi) in 1989, although this was due to an increase in permanent grass, and land set aside. By contrast, in the same period, arable land decreased from 993 to 916 km<sup>2</sup> (383 to 354 sq mi). Excluding fowl, sheep are the most common animal stock in the county; between 1989 and 2006 their numbers fell from 252,189 to 193,500. Cattle and pig farming has declined similarly; during the same period the number of cattle fell from 240,413 to 170,700, and pigs from 169,636 to 72,700.
In 2009 there were 2,340 armed forces personnel stationed in Dorset including the Royal Armoured Corps at Bovington, Royal Signals at Blandford and the Royal Marines at Poole. The military presence has had a mixed effect on the local economy, bringing additional employment for civilians, but on occasion having a negative impact on the tourist trade, particularly when popular areas are closed for military manoeuvres.
Other major employers in the county include: BAE Systems, Sunseeker International, J.P. Morgan, Cobham plc and Bournemouth University. Dorset's three ports, Poole, Weymouth and Portland, and the smaller harbours of Christchurch, Swanage, Lyme Regis, Wareham and West Bay generate a substantial amount of international trade and tourism. Around 230 fishing vessels that predominantly catch crab and lobster are based in Dorset's ports. When the waters around Weymouth and Portland were chosen for the sailing events in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, the area underwent an increased investment in infrastructure and a growth in the marine leisure sector. It is expected that this will continue to have a positive effect on local businesses and tourism.
Tourism has grown in Dorset since the late 18th century and is now the predominant industry. It is estimated that 37,500 people work in Dorset's tourism sector. Some 3.2 million British and 326,000 foreign tourists visited the county in 2008, staying a total of 15.1 million nights. In addition there were 14.6 million day visitors. The combined spending of both groups was £1,458 million. Towns received 56% of Dorset's day trippers, 27% went to the coast and 17% to the countryside. A survey carried out in 1997 concluded that the primary reason tourists were drawn to Dorset was the attractiveness of the county's coast and countryside. Numbers of domestic and foreign tourists have fluctuated in recent years due to various factors including security and economic downturn, a trend reflected throughout the UK.
Manufacturing industry in Dorset provided 10.3% of employment in 2008. This was slightly above the average for Great Britain but below that of the South West region which was at 10.7% for that period. The sector is the county's fourth largest employer, but a predicted decline suggests there will be 10,200 fewer jobs in manufacturing by 2026.
## Culture
As a largely rural county, Dorset has fewer major cultural institutions than larger or more densely populated areas. Major venues for concerts and theatre include the Lighthouse arts centre in Poole; the Bournemouth International Centre, Pavilion Theatre and O2 Academy in Bournemouth; and the Pavilion theatre in Weymouth. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1893, is based in Poole.
Dorset has more than 30 general and specialist museums. The Dorset County Museum in Dorchester was founded in 1846 and contains an extensive collection of exhibits covering the county's history and environment. The Tank Museum at Bovington contains more than 300 tanks and armoured vehicles from 30 nations. The museum is the largest in Dorset and its collection has been designated of national importance. Other museums which reflect the cultural heritage of the county include The Keep Military Museum in Dorchester, the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth, the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre, Poole Museum, Portland Museum and Wareham Town Museum.
Dorset contains 190 conservation areas, more than 1,500 scheduled monuments, over 30 registered parks and gardens and 12,850 listed buildings. Grade I listed buildings include: Portland Castle, a coastal fort commissioned by Henry VIII; a castle with more than a 1,000 years of history at Corfe; a Roman ruin described by Historic England as the "only Roman town house visible in Britain"; Athelhampton, a Tudor manor house; Forde Abbey, a stately home and former Cistercian monastery; Christchurch Priory, the longest church in England; and St Edwold's church, one of the smallest.
Dorset hosts a number of annual festivals, fairs and events including the Great Dorset Steam Fair near Blandford, one of the largest events of its kind in Europe, and the Bournemouth Air Festival, a free air show that attracted 1.3 million visitors in 2009. The Spirit of the Seas is a maritime festival held in Weymouth and Portland. Launched in 2008, the festival features sporting activities, cultural events and local entertainers. The Dorset County Show, which was first held in 1841, is a celebration of Dorset's agriculture. The two-day event exhibits local produce and livestock and attracts some 55,000 people. Inside Out Dorset is an outdoor arts festival that takes place every two years in rural and urban locations across Dorset. In addition to the smaller folk festivals held in towns such as Christchurch and Wimborne, Dorset holds several larger musical events such as Camp Bestival, End of the Road and the Larmer Tree Festival.
Dorset's only professional football club is AFC Bournemouth, which plays in the Premier League—the highest division in the English football league system. Non-League semi-professional teams in the county include Southern Premier Division teams Dorchester Town F.C., Poole Town F.C. and Weymouth F.C. Dorset County Cricket Club competes in the Minor Counties Cricket Championship and is based at Dean Park Cricket Ground in Bournemouth. Poole Stadium hosts regular greyhound racing and is the home to top-flight speedway team Poole Pirates. The county's coastline, on the English Channel, is noted for its watersports (particularly sailing, gig racing, windsurfing, power boating and kayaking) which take advantage of the sheltered waters in the bays of Weymouth and Poole, and the harbours of Poole and Portland. Dorset hosted the sailing events at the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy. The venue was completed in May 2009 and was used by international sailing teams in preparation for the Games. In motorsport, Dorset hosts the Extreme E Jurassic X Prix at Bovington Camp.
Dorset is famed in literature for being the native county of author and poet Thomas Hardy, and many of the places he describes in his novels in the fictional Wessex are in Dorset, which he renamed South Wessex. The National Trust owns Thomas Hardy's Cottage, in Higher Bockhampton, east of Dorchester; and Max Gate, his former house in Dorchester. Several other writers have called Dorset home, including Douglas Adams, who wrote much of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy while he lived in Stalbridge; John le Carré, author of espionage novels, was born in Poole; Tom Sharpe of Wilt fame lived in Bridport; John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman) lived in Lyme Regis before he died in late 2005; T.F. Powys lived in Chaldon Herring for over 20 years and used it as inspiration for the fictitious village of Folly Down in his novel Mr. Weston's Good Wine; John Cowper Powys, his elder brother, also set a number of his works in Dorset, such as the novels Maiden Castle and Weymouth Sands. Children's author Enid Blyton drew inspiration for many of her works from Dorset. The 19th-century poet William Barnes was born in Bagber and wrote many poems in his native Dorset dialect. Originating from the ancient Norse and Saxon languages, the dialect was prevalent across the Blackmore Vale but has fallen into disuse.
Dorset's flag, which is known as the Dorset Cross or St Wite's Cross, was adopted in 2008 following a public competition organised by Dorset County Council. The winning design, which features a white cross with a red border on a golden background, attracted 54% of the vote. All three colours are used in Dorset County Council's coat of arms and the red and white was used in recognition of the English flag. The golden colour represents Dorset's sandy beaches and the Dorset landmarks of Golden Cap and Gold Hill. It is also a reference to the Wessex Dragon, a symbol of the Saxon Kingdom which Dorset once belonged to, and the gold wreath featured on the badge of the Dorset Regiment.
## Transport
Dorset is connected to London by two main line railways. The West of England Main Line runs through the north of the county at Gillingham and Sherborne. Running west from London Waterloo to Exeter St Davids in Devon, it provides a service for those who live in the western districts of Dorset. The South West Main Line runs through the south at Bournemouth, Poole, Dorchester and the terminus at Weymouth. Additionally, the Heart of Wessex Line runs north from Weymouth to Bristol and the Swanage Railway, a heritage steam and diesel railway, runs the 10 kilometres (6 mi) between Norden and Swanage.
Dorset is one of few English counties not well served by canals and has no motorways. The A303, A35 and A31 trunk roads run through the county. The A303, which connects the West Country to London via the M3, clips the north-west of the county. The A35 crosses the county in a west–east direction from Honiton in Devon, via Bridport, Dorchester, Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch, to Southampton in Hampshire. The A31 connects to the A35 at Bere Regis, and passes east through Wimborne and Ferndown to Hampshire, where it later becomes the M27. Other main roads in the county include the A338, A354, A37 and A350. The A338 heads north from Bournemouth to Ringwood (Hampshire) and on to Salisbury (Wiltshire) and beyond. The A354 also connects to Salisbury after travelling north-east from Weymouth in the south of the county. The A37 travels north-west from Dorchester to Yeovil in Somerset. The A350 also leads north, from Poole through Blandford and Shaftesbury, to Warminster in Wiltshire.
A passenger seaport and an international airport are situated in the county. Brittany Ferries and Condor Ferries operate out of Poole Harbour; Brittany Ferries provide access to Cherbourg in France and Condor Ferries sail a seasonal service to the Channel Islands and St Malo, France. Poole and Portland harbours are capable of taking cruise liners. Bournemouth Airport, on the edge of Hurn village 6 kilometres (4 mi) north of Bournemouth, has scheduled and charter flights.
Morebus and Damory provide a county wide bus network with frequent services linking major towns, including Bournemouth, Poole and Wimborne, and a varied service in further rural locations. The First Group operate buses in the Weymouth and Bridport area, including a regular route along the A35 from Weymouth to Axminster, which helps to compensate for the missing rail link west of Dorchester; and the Jurassic Coaster service, which runs along the county's coastline. Yellow Buses provided bus services within Bournemouth and outlying areas until they ceased operating in 2022.
## Religious sites
Unlike all of its neighbouring counties, Dorset does not have a cathedral. Over 95% of the county falls within the Church of England Diocese of Salisbury. A small section to the west comes under the Diocese of Bath and Wells and to the east Christchurch and much of Bournemouth—both historically part of Hampshire—belong to the Diocese of Winchester. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Plymouth incorporates most of Dorset with the exception of Christchurch and a portion of Bournemouth which belongs to the Diocese of Portsmouth. Few purpose-built places of worship exist in Dorset for faiths other than Christianity. In 2008 a Hindu temple was constructed in Blandford Forum for the Gurkhas based at the town's military camp. Bournemouth, which contains a higher proportion of Jewish residents than the national average, has three synagogues and an Islamic Centre and a mosque for Muslims.
Christianity was introduced to Dorset by the Romans. A 4th century Roman mosaic discovered near Hinton St Mary contains what is generally accepted to be an image of Christ. Christianity became firmly established in the county during the Saxon period although there are few surviving Saxon churches; the most complete is St. Martin's in Wareham which has features from the early 11th century. Mediaeval churches are more prevalent in Dorset; most are 15th century and are of a Perpendicular style. Sherborne Abbey, one of the county's largest, is noted for its broad fan vaulting added during an extensive 15th century rebuild. Founded in AD 705 by Aldhelm, the Abbey contained the chair of the Bishop of Sherborne and was granted cathedral status until 1075 when the diocese was transferred to Old Sarum. Wimborne Minster features a chained library and a 14th-century astronomical clock; Christchurch Priory is renowned for its miraculous beam which, according to legend, was installed by Christ; and the 15th century roof spanning the nave at St John the Baptist Church in Bere Regis is described by architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner as the "finest timber roof of Dorset". St Candida and Holy Cross at Whitchurch Canonicorum is the only church in the country, besides Westminster Abbey, to have a shrine that contains the relics of a saint.
Monastic foundations were once abundant in Dorset, but all ceased to exist at the Dissolution of the monasteries. The Reformation and the political and religious turmoil that ensued largely checked the building of new churches until the turn of the 18th century. Notable examples of Early Georgian churches include the Bastard brothers' Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Blandford Forum, and St George's Church on the Isle of Portland, which has a steeple and tower inspired by the works of Christopher Wren. From the late 18th century onwards, churches in Dorset tended towards a Gothic Revival style. A notable exception to this trend, however, is the Church of St Mary in East Lulworth—the first freestanding Roman Catholic church built in England after the Reformation. George III gave permission to erect the building on the condition that it resembled a garden mausoleum rather than a church. It was completed in 1789. Bournemouth, founded in 1810, has a wealth of 19th-century churches including St Peter's and St Stephen's. St Dunstan's (formerly St Osmund's) in Poole is one of a small number of 20th-century churches in Dorset. The final major work of Edward Schroeder Prior, it is one of the last examples of the Neo Byzantine style. The Church of St Nicholas and St Magnus in Moreton is noted for its elaborate engraved glass windows designed by Laurence Whistler. Severely damaged by a stray German bomb in 1940, the church subsequently underwent extensive renovation and Whistler had replaced every window by 1984.
## Education
Responsibility for state schools in Dorset is divided between two local education authorities: Dorset Council, which covers the majority of the county, and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council. Most of the Dorset Council area operates a two-tier comprehensive system whereby pupils attend a primary school before completing their education at secondary school but Corfe Mullen, Dorchester, Ferndown and West Moors maintain a three-tier system (first, middle and high school). Bournemouth operates a two-tier system; Poole operates two and three-tier systems. BCP is one of the few local authorities in England to maintain selective education, containing four single-sex grammar schools which select pupils on the basis of an eleven-plus examination. Some of the county's schools are academies—self-governing state schools which have become independent of their local education authority and are maintained directly by the Department for Education. In 2017, the Progress 8 score for schools in the Dorset Council area was ranked below average, and 39.6% of pupils gained at least Grade 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs matching the national average of 39.6%. Poole recorded an above average Progress 8 score and 54% of pupils achieved Grade 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs. Bournemouth was ranked as average and 47.8% of pupils achieved Grade 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs.
Dorset contains a range of privately funded independent schools. Many are boarding schools which also take day pupils, such as the co-educational Canford School which is built around a 19th-century Grade I listed manor house; and Sherborne School, a boys' school founded in the 16th century.
Four of the county's five largest towns contain a further education college: Weymouth College, Kingston Maurward College in Dorchester and Bournemouth and Poole College which is one of the largest in the UK. Dorset has two higher education establishments situated in the heart of the county's south east conurbation. Bournemouth University has facilities across Bournemouth and Poole and over 17,000 students. Previously named Bournemouth Polytechnic, it was granted university status as a result of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. The Arts University Bournemouth is situated between the border of Poole and Bournemouth. It became a higher education institute in 2001 and was given degree-awarding powers in 2008. It was granted full university status in 2012.
## See also
- Custos Rotulorum of Dorset – list of keepers of the rolls for Dorset
- Dorset – list of MPs for the abolished Dorset county constituency
- List of High Sheriffs of Dorset
- List of hills of Dorset
- Dorset Police
- Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner
- Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council
- Dorset heraldry
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446,483 |
Battle of Kunersdorf
| 1,171,165,827 |
1759 battle of the Seven Years' War
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[
"1759 in the Holy Roman Empire",
"Battles involving Austria",
"Battles involving Prussia",
"Battles involving Russia",
"Battles of Frederick the Great",
"Battles of the Seven Years' War",
"Battles of the Silesian Wars",
"Conflicts in 1759",
"History of Lubusz Voivodeship"
] |
The Battle of Kunersdorf occurred on 12 August 1759 near Kunersdorf (now Kunowice, Poland) immediately east of Frankfurt an der Oder. Part of the Third Silesian War and the wider Seven Years' War, the battle involved over 100,000 men. An Allied army commanded by Pyotr Saltykov and Ernst Gideon von Laudon that included 41,000 Russians and 18,500 Austrians defeated Frederick the Great's army of 50,900 Prussians.
The terrain complicated battle tactics for both sides, but the Russians and the Austrians, having arrived in the area first, were able to overcome many of its difficulties by strengthening a causeway between two small ponds. They had also devised a solution to Frederick's deadly modus operandi, the oblique order. Although Frederick's troops initially gained the upper hand in the battle, the sheer number of Allied troops gave the Russians and Austrians an advantage. By afternoon, when the combatants were exhausted, fresh Austrian troops thrown into the fray secured the Allied victory.
This was the only time in the Seven Years' War that the Prussian Army, under Frederick's direct command, disintegrated into an undisciplined mass. With this loss, Berlin, only 80 kilometers (50 mi) away, lay open to assault by the Russians and Austrians. However, Saltykov and Laudon did not follow up on the victory due to disagreement. Only 3,000 soldiers from Frederick's original 50,000 remained with him after the battle, although many more had simply scattered and rejoined the army within a few days. This represented the penultimate success of the Russian Empire under Elizabeth of Russia and was arguably Frederick's worst defeat.
## Seven Years' War
Although the Seven Years' War was a global conflict, it took on a specific intensity in the European theater based on the recently concluded War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). The 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, the prosperous province of Silesia as a consequence of the First and Second Silesian Wars. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the treaty to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances; she was intent upon regaining ascendancy in the Holy Roman Empire as well as reacquiring Silesia. In 1754, escalating tensions between Great Britain and France in North America offered France an opportunity to break the British dominance of Atlantic trade. Recognizing the opportunity to regain her lost territories and to limit Prussia's growing power, the Empress put aside the old rivalry with France to form a new coalition. Faced with this turn of events, Britain aligned herself with the Kingdom of Prussia; this alliance drew in not only the British king's territories held in personal union, including Hanover, but also those of his and Frederick's relatives in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. This series of political maneuvers became known as the Diplomatic Revolution.
At the outset of the war, Frederick had one of the finest armies in Europe: his troops—any company—could fire at least four volleys a minute, and some of them could fire five. By the end of 1757, the course of the war had gone well for Prussia, and poorly for Austria. Prussia had achieved spectacular victories at Rossbach and Leuthen and reconquered parts of Silesia that had fallen to Austria. The Prussians then pressed south into Austrian Moravia. In April 1758, Prussia and Britain concluded the Anglo-Prussian Convention in which the British committed an annual subsidy of £670,000. Britain also dispatched 7,000–9,000 troops to reinforce the army of Frederick's brother-in-law, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Ferdinand evicted the French from Hanover and Westphalia and re-captured the port of Emden in March 1758; he crossed the Rhine with his own forces, causing general alarm in France. Despite Ferdinand's victory over the French at the Battle of Krefeld and his brief occupation of Düsseldorf, the successful maneuvering of larger French forces required him to withdraw across the Rhine.
While Ferdinand kept the French occupied, Prussia had to contend with Sweden, Russia, and Austria, all of which wanted to carve out a piece of Prussia for themselves. Prussia could lose Silesia to Austria, Pomerania to Sweden, Magdeburg to Saxony, and East Prussia to Poland or Russia: an entirely nightmarish scenario. By 1758, Frederick was increasingly concerned by the Russian advance from the east and marched to counter it. Just east of the Oder river in Brandenburg–Neumark, at the Battle of Zorndorf, on 25 August 1758 a Prussian army of 35,000 men fought a Russian army of 43,000. Both sides suffered heavy casualties but the Russians withdrew, and Frederick claimed victory. At the Battle of Tornow a month later, a Swedish army repulsed the Prussian army, but did not move on Berlin. By late summer, fighting had resulted in a draw. None of Prussia's enemies seemed willing to take the decisive steps to pursue Frederick into Prussia's heartland. The Austrian Feldmarshalleutnant Leopold Josef Graf Daun could have ended the war in October at Hochkirch, but he failed to follow up on his victory with a determined pursuit of Frederick's retreating army. This allowed Frederick time to recruit a new army over the winter.
### Situation in 1759
By 1759, Prussia had reached a strategic defensive position; Russian and Austrian troops surrounded Prussia, although not quite at the borders of Brandenburg. Upon leaving winter quarters in April 1759, Frederick assembled his army in Lower Silesia; this forced the main Habsburg army to remain in its staging area in Bohemia. The Russians, however, shifted their forces into western Poland–Lithuania, a move that threatened the Prussian heartland, potentially Berlin itself. Frederick countered by sending Generalleutnant Friedrich August von Finck's army corps to contain the Russians. Finck's corps was defeated at the Battle of Kay on 23 July. Subsequently, Pyotr Saltykov and the Russian forces advanced 110 kilometers (68 mi) west to occupy Frankfurt an der Oder on 31 July (on Germany's border with present-day Poland). There he ordered entrenchment of their camp to the east, near Kunersdorf. To make matters worse for the Prussians, an Austrian corps commanded by Feldmarshalleutnant Ernst Gideon von Laudon joined Saltykov on 3–5 August. King Frederick rushed from Saxony, took over the remnants of Generalleutnant Carl Heinrich von Wedel's contingent at Müllrose and moved toward the Oder River. By 9 August, he had 49,000–50,000 troops, enhanced by Finck's defeated corps, and Prince Henry of Prussia's corps moving from the Lausitz region.
## Preliminaries
### Terrain
The terrain surrounding Kunersdorf suited itself better to defense than offense. Between the Frankfurt dam, a long earthen bulwark that helped to contain the Oder river, and to the north of Kunersdorf itself stretched a 3 km (2 mi) line of knolls; Judenberge (Jews Hill), Mühlberge (Mill Hill) and Walkberge (also spelled Walckberge). None was more than 30 m (98 ft) high. The hillocks were steeper on the north side than the south, but bounded by a marshy, boggy meadow called the Elsbusch, or the Alder wasteland. East of Kunersdorf and the Walkberge, the Hühner Fliess (Fliess means running water) was joined by another stream that tumbled between two more hillocks. Past the Walkberge and beyond the Hühner stood two more promontories at Trettin.
Several ravines intersected the ridge of hillocks: starting at the northeastern end, the Bäckergrund joined the Hühner Fleiss. Just east of the Walkberge a small ravine separated the Walkberge from the Mühlberge. Another narrow roadway cut through the Mühlberge ridge, then a second narrow depression, known as the Kuhgrund (cow hollow), lay west of that. Beyond the Kuhgrund, the ground rose again, then dipped into a fourth hollow in which lay a Jewish settlement known as a shtetl, and the ground rose into the Judenberge; from this point, one could overlook most of Frankfurt and its suburbs. To the southeast lay a variety of small promontories, called the Grosser- and Kleiner-Spitzberge. Like the northwest side of the ridge, this ground was covered with small ponds, streams, marshy fields, and broad meadows. Natural features—ponds, causeways, swamps—would restrict wide movements on some of the terrain. To the east and north of the entire landscape lay the Forest of Reppen. Here the ground itself was sandy and unstable. The scrub forests were threaded with streams, springs, and bogs of all kinds.
### Allied dispositions
The Russian army, which before the battle of Kay had about 40,000 men and lost 4,804 in the battle, after the battle of Kay had about 35,000 men. After the battle of Kay, it was joined by Pyotr Rumyantsev's corps of 7,000 men and the Austrian army of General Laudon. On August 4, 1759, according to the inspection, the total number of the Russian army was 41,248 people. This number included the regular army of 33,000 people and irregular—about 8,000 light cavalry of the Cossacks and Kalmyks. During the battle of Kunersdorf Saltykov left a detachment of 266 men in Frankfurt and had 41,000 for the battle. The Austrian army had on 4 August 18,523 men. These figures are reflected in the documents and are used in Russian scientific literature. There are also numerous overestimates of the Russian army, originating from German and English sources—for example 79,000, 64,000, 69,000 and even 88,000—these numbers are not based on documents. For example, the number 79,000 comes from the addition of 55,000 Russians and 24,000 Austrians, and 55,000 Russians are, in turn, the result of an army that had an initial strength of 60,000 people, lost about 5,000 at the battle of Kay. In fact, 60,000 is the total number of all Russian troops in Prussia, including garrisons in different cities, troops for the protection of communications and so on.
A portion of the Russian force remained in Frankfurt as the Allied advanced guard. Saltykov had expected the Austrian commander-in-chief's entire army to arrive; instead a mere wing under Laudon's command came to his aid. Their collaboration was complicated by their personalities. Neither Laudon nor Saltykov had great command of operational arts. Saltykov did not like foreigners; Laudon thought Saltykov was inscrutable. Neither liked conversing through translators, and both mistrusted each other's intentions.
Laudon wanted a fight, so he swallowed his differences and joined the Russians in building fortifications. Saltykov established his troops on a strong position from which to receive the Prussian attack, concentrating his force in the center, which he calculated was the best way to counter-act any attempt by Frederick to deploy his deadly oblique order. Saltykov entrenched himself in a position running from the Judenberge through the Grosser Spitzberge to the Mühlberge, creating a bristling line of fortifications, and faced his troops to the northwest; the Judenberge, most heavily fortified, fronted what he believed would be Frederick's approach. He and the Austrian troops were stretched along the ridge that ran from the outskirts of Frankfurt to just north of the village of Kunersdorf. Anticipating that Frederick would rely on his cavalry, the Russians effectively negated any successful cavalry charge by using fallen trees to break up the ground on the approaches.
Saltykov had little concern about the extreme northwestern face of the ridge, which was steep and fronted by the marshy Elsbruch, but a few of the Austrian contingents faced northwest as a precaution. He expected Frederick to attack him from the west, from Frankfurt, and from the Frankfurt outer city. The Russians constructed redans and flèche to protect all the potentially weak points of their fortifications; they built glacis to cover the most shallow of the hills, and scarps and counterscarps to protect seemingly weak points. Abatis not only littered the hillsides, but dotted flat ground. By 10 August, his scouts had told him that Frederick was at the far western edge of Frankfurt. Accordingly, Saltykov took everything he could from the city by way of sustenance, all oxen, sheep, chickens, produce, wine, beer, in a flurry of ransacking.
### Prussian plans
While Saltykov plundered the city and prepared for Frederick's assault from the west, the Prussians reached Reitwein, some 28 km (17 mi) north of Frankfurt on 10 August, and built pontoon bridges during the night. Frederick crossed the Oder in the night and the next morning, and moved southward toward Kunersdorf; the Prussians established a staging area near Göritz (also spelled Gohritz on the old maps), about 9.5 km (6 mi) north-northeast of Kunersdorf late on 11 August with about 50,000 men; of these, 2,000 were deemed unfit for service and stayed behind to guard the baggage.
Frederick conducted a perfunctory reconnaissance of his enemy's position, accompanied by a forest ranger and an officer who had previously been stationed in Frankfurt. He also consulted a peasant who, though garrulous, was uninformed about military needs: the peasant told the King that a natural obstacle between the Red Grange (a large farmstead between Kunersdorf and Frankfurt's outer city) and Kunersdorf was unpassable; what the peasant did not know was that the Russians had been there long enough to construct a causeway linking these two sections. Looking to the east through his telescope, Frederick saw some wooded hills, called the Reppen Forest, and he believed he could use them to screen an advance, much like he had done at Leuthen. He did not send scouts to reconnoiter the land or question locals about the ground in the forest. Furthermore, through his glass he could see that the Russians were facing west and north, and their fortifications were stronger on the west. He decided all the Allies were facing northwest and that the forest was readily passable.
After his perfunctory reconnaissance, Frederick returned to his camp to develop his battle plan. He planned to direct a diversionary force, commanded by Finck, to the Hühner Fliess, to demonstrate in front of what he believed to be the main Russian line. He would march with his main army to the southeast of the Allied position, circling around Kunersdorf, screened by the Reppen Forest. This way, he thought, he would surprise his enemy, forcing the Allied army to reverse fronts, which is a complicated maneuver for even the best trained troops. Frederick could then employ his much feared oblique battle order, feinting with his left flank as he did so. Ideally, this would allow him to roll up the Allied line from the Mühlberge.
### Final dispositions
Late in the afternoon on the 11th, wily Saltykov realized Frederick was not advancing on him from Frankfurt, and changed his plans. He inverted his flanks: instead of having the left wing at the shtetl and the right at Mühlberge, he reversed his flank with the right at the shtetl. Then the Russians set fire to Kunersdorf. Within hours, the only thing left was the stone church and some walls. While Frederick developed his plan to outflank Saltykov by maneuvering behind him, Saltykov outfoxed him.
## Battle
Prussian activities began at 2:00 am on 12 August. Troops were roused and, within the hour, they set off. Finck's corps had the shortest distance to travel, and the five brigades arrived at the assigned post, the high ground northeast of the Walkeberge, by dawn; Karl Friedrich von Moller established the artillery park on the highest ground at Trettin, and pointed it at the Walkberge, on the hills north of the Hühner Fleiss. Finck's infantry and cavalry demonstrated in front of the five Russian regiments as a diversion, while the remainder of Frederick's army continued in a 37 km (23 mi) semi-circle around the eastern flank of the Russian line, to approach from the village from the southeast. The grueling march took up to eight hours. Frederick intended to flank his opposition, and attack what he assumed would be its weakest side, but again, he sent no reconnaissance, not a single hussar or dragoon, to confirm his assumptions.
Mid-way in the march, Frederick finally realized he would end up facing his enemy, instead of approaching from behind. Furthermore, a row of ponds forced him to break his line into three narrow columns, exposing it to full Russian fire power. Frederick changed his dispositions; the Prussian right vanguard would concentrate east of the ponds of Kunersdorf and make an assault on the Mühlberge. Frederick calculated that he could turn the Austrian-Russian flank, and push the Russians off the Mühlberge heights. His redeployment took time, and the apparent hesitation in the assault confirmed to Saltykov what Frederick planned; he moved more troops around so the strongest line would face the Prussian onslaught.
Frederick's army became bogged down in the Reppen Forest. The day was already hot and sultry, and the men were already tired. The trees were thick and the ground was unstable and oozy in some parts, which made the movement of the heavy guns difficult. Delay after delay slowed them down. The carriages pulling the biggest guns, traveling with the bulk of the army, were too wide to cross the narrow forest bridges and the columns had to be reshuffled in the woods. The Russians could hear them, but thought they were scouting parties, albeit noisy ones; they calculated Finck's column was the primary force. Between 5:00 am. and 6:00 am., only Finck's demonstrating corps, to the north by Trettin, were visible to the Russians. Finck's right wing moved out of the hills toward the mill on Hühner Fleiss; more Prussians from Finck's left and center prepared to attack the Walkberge. Finck's artillery awaited Frederick's signal, but the bulk of Frederick's army still crashed about in the woods.
### Assault on the Mühlberge
Finally, at 8:00 am., some of Frederick's army emerged from the woods, with most of Generalleutnant Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz's cavalry and the rest of his artillery; a short time later, the rest of the Prussians emerged from the woods, and the Russians realized it was not a scouting party, but the main army. The Prussians stood ranked for battle, which now began in earnest. Finck's artillery park had been in place since dawn and, at 11:30 am, Moller initiated bombardment of the Russian position from the northern and northeastern ends of the Russian line (now the Russian left). In error, the Russian artillery had faced their batteries to the meadows beyond the Mühlberge, not the ravine, and had to be reset. For 30 minutes, the two sides bombarded each other.
At about noon, Frederick sent his first wave of soldiers toward the Russian position on the Mühlberge. Frederick favored mixed troops in such conditions, and his forward troops included grenadiers and musketeers, and some cuirassiers. The Prussian artillery batteries created an arc of fire on the Russian sector by the Walkberge and the Kleiner Spitzberge; the infantry could safely move under this arc. They advanced into the crevasse between the two hills; when they came within 34 m (112 ft) of the Russian guns on the Mühlberge, they charged at point-blank range. Some of Shuvalov's Observation Corps, stationed on the summit, took substantial losses—perhaps 10 percent—before the Prussian grenadiers overwhelmed them. Prussian losses were also high. Frederick sent 4,300 men into this assault, immediately losing 206 of Prince Henry's cuirassiers. Although Saltykov sent his own grenadiers to shore up the Russian defense, the Prussians carried the Mühlberge, capturing between 80 and 100 enemy cannons, which they immediately deployed against the Russians. For the moment, the Prussians held the position.
After capturing the cannons, the Prussians raked the retreating Russians with fire from their own pieces. The Russians were slaughtered by the score, losing most of five large regiments to injury and death. By 1:00 pm, the Russian left flank had been defeated and driven back on Kunersdorf itself, leaving behind small, disorganized groups capable of only token resistance. In panic, some of the Russians even fired on the Margrave of Baden-Baden's troops, which also wore blue coats (although of a lighter blue), mistaking them for Prussians. Saltykov fed in more units, including a force of Austrian grenadiers led by Major Joseph De Vins, and gradually the situation stabilized.
### Attack stalled
The Prussian position at Kunersdorf was not substantially better than it had been a few hours earlier, but it was, at least, defensible; the Russian position, on the other hand, was substantially worse. While Frederick's principal force had assaulted the Mühlberg, Johann Jakob von Wunsch, with 4,000 men, had retraced his steps from Reitwein to Frankfurt and had captured the city by mid-day. The Prussians had effectively blocked the Allies from moving east, west or south, and the terrain blocked them from moving north; if they tried such a foolhardy move, Moller's artillery would rake them with enfilade fire. The King's brother, Prince Henry, and several other generals encouraged Frederick to stop there. The Prussians could defend Frankfurt from their vantage point on the Mühlberg and in the city itself. To descend into the valley, cross the Kuhgrund and ascend Spitzberge against frightful fire was foolhardy, they argued. Furthermore, the weather was blisteringly hot and the troops had endured forced marches to reach the theater and the battlefield. They were exhausted and low on water. The men had not had a hot meal in several days, having bivouacked the night before without fires.
Despite those arguments, Frederick wanted to press his initial success. He had won half the battle and wanted the whole victory. He decided to continue the fight. He transferred his artillery to the Mühlberg, and ordered Finck's battalions to assault the Allied salient from the northwest, while his main strike force would cross the Kuhgrund.
To complete Frederick's battle plan, the Prussians would have to descend from the Mühlberg to the lower Kuhgrund, cross the spongy field, and then assault the well-defended higher ground. This is where Saltykov had concentrated his men, making the Grosser Spitzberg nearly impregnable. At this point in his plan, Frederick intended to have the second half of a pincer movement ready to squeeze the Russian left. The rearmost forces were supposed to have advanced straight against the Russians from the south, while the right wing did the same from the north. The right was where it was supposed to be, with the exception of one of the support formations for the right wing, which was held up by misinformation about the ground: a couple of bridges that crossed the Huhner Fliess were too narrow for the artillery teams. The left was still out of position.
Anticipating Frederick's plan, Saltykov had reinforced the salient with reserves from the west and southwest; these reserves included most of Laudon's fresh infantry. Finck made no progress at the salient and the Prussian attack at the Kuhgrund was thwarted with murderous fire along their very narrow front. Watching from the luxury of the Kleiner Spitzberg immediately east of the village, Saltykov judiciously fed in reinforcements from other sectors, and awaited results. Once, in the fierce fighting, it looked like the Prussians might break through, but gradually the Allied superiority of 423 artillery pieces could be brought to bear on the struggling Prussians. The Allied grenadiers held their lines.
The Prussian left had been held up by a variety of problems, mostly relating to the inadequately-scouted terrain. Two small ponds and several streams trisected the ground between the Prussian front and the Russians, which the Russians had also littered with abatis. Tats required the Prussian line to break into small columns that could march along narrow passages between the water and marshy ground, diminishing the legendary firepower of the Prussian line of attack. Outside the shtetl, the Prussians tried to break through the Russian line; they got as far as the Jewish cemetery at the eastern base of Judenberg, but lost two thirds of Krockow's 2nd Dragoons in the process: 484 men and 51 officers gone in minutes.
The 6th Dragoons lost another 234 men and 18 officers as well. Other regiments battling through the Russians and the terrain had comparable losses. Despite these problems, they continued to slog through the Russian positions, advancing toward the Kuhgrund outside what remained of Kunersdorf's wall.
### Cavalry attack
The battle culminated in the early evening hours with a Prussian cavalry charge, led by von Seydlitz, upon the Russian centre and artillery positions, a futile effort. The Prussian cavalry suffered heavy losses from cannon fire and retreated in complete disorder. Seydlitz himself was badly wounded and, in his absence, Generalleutnant Dubislav Friedrich von Platen assumed command. Under Frederick's orders, Platen organized a last-ditch effort. His scouts had discovered a crossing past the chain of ponds south of Kunersdorf, but it lay in full view of the artillery batteries on the Grosser Spitzberge. Seydlitz, still following the action, noted that it was foolish to charge a fortified position with cavalry. His assessment was correct, but Frederick had apparently lost his ability to think objectively.
The strength of Frederick's cavalry lay in its ability to attack at a full gallop, with riders knee to knee and horses touching at the shoulders. The units sent against the position shattered; they had to attack piecemeal because of the manner in which the ground was naturally formed. Before any further action could take place, Laudon himself led the Austrian cavalry's counterattack around the obstacles and routed Platen's cavalry. The fleeing men and horses trampled their own infantry around the base of the Mühlberge. General panic ensued.
The cavalry attack against fortified positions had failed. The Prussian infantry had been on its feet for 16 hours, half that in a forced march over muddy and uneven terrain, and the other half in slogging battle against formidable odds, in hot weather. Despite the apparent futility, the Prussian infantry repeatedly attacked the Spitzberge, each time with greater losses; the 37th Infantry lost 992 men and 16 officers, more than 90 percent of its force.
The King himself led two attacks of the 35th Infantry and lost two of his horses in the effort. He was mounting a third when the animal was shot in the neck and fell to the ground, nearly crushing the King. Two of Frederick's adjutants pulled him from under the horse as it fell. A ball smashed the gold snuff box in his coat, and this box, plus his heavy coat, probably saved his life.
### Evening action
By 5:00 pm, neither side could make any gains; the Prussians held tenaciously to the captured artillery works, too tired to even retreat: they had pushed the Russians from the Mühlberge, the village, and the Kuhgrund, but no further. The Allies were in a similar state, except they had more cavalry in reserve and some fresh Austrian infantry. This part of Laudon's forces, late arrivals to the scene and largely unused, came into action at about 7:00 pm. To the exhausted Prussians holding the Kuhgrund, the swarm of fresh Austrian reserves was the final stroke. Although such isolated groups as Hans Sigismund von Lestwitz's regiment put up a bold front, these groups lost heavily and their stubborn defense could not stop the chaos of the Prussian retreat. Soldiers threw their weapons and gear aside and ran for their lives.
The battle was lost for Frederick—it had actually been lost for the Prussians for a couple of hours—but he had not accepted this fact. Frederick rode among his melting army, snatched a regimental flag, trying to rally his men: Children, my children, come to me. Avec moi, Avec moi! They did not hear him, or if they did, they chose not to obey. Watching the chaos and seeking the coup de grâce, Saltykov threw his own Cossacks and Kalmyks (cavalry) into the fray. The Chuguevski Cossacks surrounded Frederick on a small hill, where he stood with the remnants of his body-guard—the Leib Cuirassiers—determined to either hold the line or to die trying. With a 100-strong hussar squadron, Rittmeister (cavalry captain) Joachim Bernhard von Prittwitz-Gaffron cut his way through the Cossacks and dragged the King to safety. Much of his squadron died in the effort. As the hussars escorted Frederick from the battlefield, he passed the bodies of his men, lying on their faces with their backs slashed open by Laudon's cavalry. A dry thunderstorm created a surreal effect.
## Aftermath
That evening back in Reitwein, Frederick sat in a peasant hut and wrote a despairing letter to his old tutor, Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein:
> This morning at 11 o'clock I have attacked the enemy. ... All my troops have worked wonders, but at a cost of innumerable losses. Our men got into confusion. I assembled them three times. In the end I was in danger of getting captured and had to retreat. My coat is perforated by bullets, two horses of mine have been shot dead. My misfortune is that I am still living ... Our defeat is very considerable: To me remains 3,000 men from an army of 48,000 men. At the moment in which I report all this, everyone is on the run; I am no more master of my troops. Thinking of the safety of anybody in Berlin is a good activity ... It is a cruel failure that I will not survive. The consequences of the battle will be worse than the battle itself. I do not have any more resources, and—frankly confessed—I believe that everything is lost. I will not survive the doom of my fatherland. Farewell forever!
Frederick also decided to turn over command of the army to Finck. He told this general he was sick. He named his brother as generalissimo and insisted his generals swear allegiance to his nephew, the 14-year-old Frederick William.
### Casualties
Before the battle, both armies had been reinforced by smaller units; by the time of the battle, the Allied forces had about 60,000 men, with another 5,000 holding Frankfurt, and the Prussians had almost 50,000. The Russians and Austrians lost 16,332 men (3,486 killed), some 27 percent. Russian losses were 14,031 and Austrian losses 2,301. Sources differ on Prussian losses. Duffy maintains 6,000 killed and 13,000 wounded, a casualty rate of more than 37 percent. Another source gives 18,609. Gaston Bodart represents losses at 43 percent, and that 6,100 of the 20,700 casualties were deaths. Frank Szabo places Prussian losses at 21,000. Following the battle, the victorious Cossack troops plundered corpses and slit the throats of the wounded; this no doubt contributed to the death rate.
The Prussians lost their entire horse artillery, an amalgam of cavalry and artillery in which the crews rode horses into battle, dragging their cannons behind them, one of Frederick's notable inventions. The Prussians also lost 60 percent of their cavalry, killed or wounded, animals and men. The Prussians lost 172 of their own cannons plus the 105 they had captured from the Russians in the late morning on the Mühlberge. They also lost 27 flags and two standards.
Staff losses were significant. Frederick lost eight regimental colonels. Of his senior command, Seydlitz was wounded and had to relinquish command to Platen, nowhere near his equal in energy and nerve; Wedel was wounded so badly he never fought again; Georg Ludwig von Puttkamer, commander of the Puttkamer Hussars, lay among the dead. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, later the inspector general and major general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, was wounded at the battle. Ewald Christian von Kleist, the famous poet of the Prussian army, was badly injured in the latter moments of the assault on the Walkeberge. By the time he was injured, Major Kleist was the highest-ranking officer in his regiment. Generalleutnant August Friedrich von Itzenplitz died of his wounds on 5 September, Prince Charles Anton August von Holstein-Beck on 12 September, and Finck's brigade commander, Generalmajor George Ernst von Klitzing, on 28 October in Stettin. Prussia was at its last gasp and Frederick despaired of preserving much of his remaining kingdom for his heir.
### Impact on Russo-Austro alliance
Although still wary of one another, the Russian and Austrian commanders were satisfied with the result of their cooperation. They had outfought Frederick's army in a test of nerve, courage and military skills. Elizabeth of Russia promoted Saltykov to Generalfeldmarschall and awarded a special medal to everyone involved. She also sent a sword of honor to Laudon, but the price of the rout was high: 27 percent Austrian and Russian losses would not usually qualify as a victory. The storming of field works typically resulted in a disproportionate number of killed over wounded. The conclusion of the battle in hand-to-hand struggle also increased casualties on both sides. Finally, subsequent cavalry charges and the stampeding flight of men and horses had caused many more injuries.
Regardless of the losses, Saltykov and Laudon remained on the field with intact armies, and with extant communications between one another. The Prussian defeat remained without consequences when the victors did not capitalize on the opportunity to march against Berlin, but retired to Saxony instead. If Saltykov had sought the coup de grâce in the last hour of the battle, he did not follow through with it.
Within days, Frederick's army had reconstituted itself. Approximately 26,000 men, most of the survivors, were scattered over the territory between Kunersdorf and Berlin. Four days after the battle, though, most of the men turned up at the headquarters on the Oder River or in Berlin, and Frederick's army recovered to a strength of 32,000 men and 50 artillery pieces.
Elizabeth of Russia continued her policy of providing support to Austria, considering it vital to Russian interests, but with decreasing effectiveness. Distance constrained the Russian supply lines, and despite Austrian headquarters' agreement to supply the Russian troops through their own lines, Russian troops took little part in the remaining battles of 1759 and 1760. The Russian army did not fight another major battle until they stormed Kolberg in 1761, allowing the Prussians to focus on the Austrians. In 1762, the death of Elizabeth, and the ascension of her nephew, Peter, an admirer of Frederick's, saved the Prussians when he immediately withdrew Russia from hostilities.
## Assessment
Most military historians agree that Kunersdorf was Frederick's greatest, and most catastrophic, loss. They generally attribute it to three major problems: his indifference to the Russian practices of the "art of war", his lack of information about the terrain, and his inability to realize that the Russians had surmounted the obstacles of location. Frederick complicated his fate by violating every principle of war he had espoused in his own writing.
First, Frederick had assumed he could use his trade-mark oblique order attack, but his reconnaissance had been incomplete. The Russians had been there for two weeks, had dug in to prepare for Frederick's arrival, and their fortifications bristled with abatis and guns. When he did arrive, Frederick had made limited efforts to assess the terrain and there was no operational reason for him not to have sent some of his cavalry to scout the area, except, perhaps, that his hussars, previously often used in reconnaissance, were being converted by Seydlitz into heavy cavalry. In the two weeks they had to prepare for the battle, the Russians and the Austrians had discovered, and reinforced, a causeway between the lakes and the marshland that allowed them to present Frederick with a united southeastern front. This effectively cancelled any advantage of the oblique battle order employed so successfully at Rossbach and Leuthen. Furthermore, the Russians utilized several natural defensive positions. The chain of hillocks could be enhanced by the construction of redans; the Russians were able to shape abutments from which to fire down upon the Prussians; they also constructed bastions, especially on the Spitzberge. Despite the murderous fire, Frederick's troops eventually turned the Russian left, but to little benefit. The terrain allowed the Russians and Austrians to form a compact front up to 100 men deep, shielded by the hills and marshes.
Second, Frederick's most egregious mistake was his refusal to consider the recommendations of his trusted staff. Brother Henry, a superb tactician and strategist in his own right, reasonably suggested halting the battle at mid-day, after the Prussians had secured the first height and Wunsch, the city. Wunsch could not move across the river; only one bridge remained, and Laudon's cavalry guarded it fiercely. Regardless, from these vantage points, the Prussians would be unassailable, and eventually, the Austro-Russian force would have to withdraw. Furthermore, Henry argued, the troops were exhausted from several days of marching, the weather was appallingly hot, they did not have enough water, and they had not had a good meal in several days. Instead of holding his secure position, though, Frederick forced his tired troops to descend the hill, cross the low ground, and ascend the next hill, in the face of heavy fire. The Prussian cavalry effort initially drove back the Russian and Austrian squadrons, but the fierce cannon and musketry fire from the united Allied front inflicted staggering losses on Frederick's much-vaunted horsemen. Furthermore, he committed perhaps the gravest of errors in sending his cavalry into battle piecemeal and against entrenched positions.
Third, he acted on the ground of his enemy's choosing, not of his own, and on the basis of meager information and almost no understanding of the ground, he broke all the military tactical rules of his own devising. He had thrown his infantry into the teeth of gun fire; he compounded this folly by committing his cavalry piecemeal in pointless charges across soft, spongy ground that was divided by streams, requiring them to attack in long, drawn out lines, rather than en masse; of course, he could not send his cavalry en masse because several natural features—ponds, causeways, swamps—made this impossible on some of the terrain.
The catastrophic loss was due to more than these three issues, though. Indeed, he violated his own rules of strategy and tactics because he faced an enemy he despised, and this brought out the worst of his generalship. In this way, the loss at Kunersdorf was similar to that of the Battle of Hochkirch. There, the British envoy traveling with the Prussian Army attributed Frederick's loss to the contempt in which he held the Austrians and his unwillingness to give credit to intelligence that did not agree with his imagination; certainly, this contempt for the Austrians and the Russians contributed to his loss at Kunersdorf as well. Yet, as Herbert Redman notes, "... seldom in military history has a battle been so completely lost by an organized army in such a short space of time." The loss was not only due to Frederick's unwillingness to accept that the Russians, whom he despised, and the Austrians, whom he despised only slightly less, had any military acumen. At Hochkirch, Frederick demonstrated good leadership by rallying his troops against the surprise attack; Prussian discipline and the bonds of regimental cohesion had prevailed. Importantly, the Prussian army at Kunersdorf was not the same army that had fought at Hochkirch, because it had already fought, and lost, there. Over the winter, Frederick had cobbled together a new army, but it was not as well-trained, well-disciplined, and well-drilled as his old one. He failed to accept this. Arguably Frederick's worst defeat, at Kunersdorf, his army panicked and discipline disintegrated before his eyes, especially in the last hour of the battle. The few regiments that held together, such as that of Lestwitz, were the exception. Frederick had demanded more of his men than they could bear.
|
8,730,603 |
Venture Science Fiction
| 1,079,551,202 |
Science fiction magazine
|
[
"Defunct science fiction magazines published in the United States",
"Magazines disestablished in 1958",
"Magazines disestablished in 1965",
"Magazines disestablished in 1966",
"Magazines disestablished in 1970",
"Magazines established in 1957",
"Magazines established in 1963",
"Magazines established in 1969",
"Science fiction magazines established in the 1950s",
"Science fiction magazines established in the 1960s",
"Venture Science Fiction"
] |
Venture Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, first published from 1957 to 1958, and revived for a brief run in 1969 and 1970. Ten issues were published of the 1950s version, with another six in the second run. It was founded in both instances as a companion to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Robert P. Mills edited the 1950s version, and Edward L. Ferman was editor during the second run. A British edition appeared for 28 issues between 1963 and 1965; it reprinted material from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as well as from the US edition of Venture. There was also an Australian edition, which was identical to the British version but dated two months later.
The original version was only moderately successful, although it is remembered for the first publication of Sturgeon's Law. The publisher, Joseph Ferman (father of Edward Ferman), declared that he wanted well-told stories of action and adventure; the resulting fiction contained more sex and violence than was usual for the science fiction (SF) genre in the late 1950s, and SF historian Mike Ashley has suggested that the magazine was ahead of its time. It succumbed to poor sales within less than two years. The second US version was no more successful, with less attractive cover art and little in the way of notable fiction, though it did publish Vonda McIntyre's first story. By the end of 1970, Venture had ceased publication permanently.
## First US run
In late 1949, publisher Lawrence E. Spivak launched The Magazine of Fantasy, one of many new titles in a crowded field of genre magazines. The title was changed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (usually abbreviated to F&SF) with the second issue, and the new magazine rapidly became successful and influential within the science fiction field. The editors were Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, and the managing editor was Robert P. Mills. In 1954, Joseph Ferman, a partner of Spivak's, bought the magazine from him. Ferman subsequently decided to launch a companion magazine, and gave it to Mills to edit.
The new magazine was titled Venture Science Fiction, and the first issue was dated January 1957. Mills was managing editor of F&SF throughout Venture'''s first run; he became editor of F&SF shortly after Venture ceased publishing in July 1958. The editorial philosophy was laid out by Ferman in the inaugural issue: "strong stories of action and adventure ... There will be two prime requisites for Venture stories: In the first place, each must be a well-told story, with a beginning, middle and end; in the second place, each must be a strong story—a story with pace, power and excitement." Ferman hoped to take advantage of a gap in the science fiction magazine market opened up by the demise of Planet Stories, one of the last sf pulps, which had ceased publication in late 1955. Planet Stories had focused on adventure stories, as opposed to the realistic style becoming more popular in science fiction in the 1950s, and Ferman hoped to combine the virtues of the melodramatic pulp fiction style with the literary values that were key to F&SF's success. Venture's bias towards action-oriented adventure led to stories with relatively more sex and violence than those in competing magazines, and sf historian Mike Ashley has commented that it was perhaps five or ten years ahead of its time. One story, "The Girl Had Guts", by Theodore Sturgeon, involved an alien virus that caused its victims to vomit up their intestines; Ashley records a reviewer saying that the story made him physically ill.
Ed Emshwiller supplied eight of the ten covers; he had sold several covers to F&SF by this time, so his work reinforced the sense of connection between the two magazines. Emshwiller also contributed interior illustrations in the first issue, but the main interior artist was John Giunta, with John Schoenherr contributing some of his earliest work to several of the later issues.
Some well-known writers appeared during this incarnation of Venture, including Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Silverberg, and Damon Knight. Not all the fiction was adventure oriented. For example, Sturgeon's story "The Comedian's Children" tells of a telethon host and his relationship with his sponsors, and Leigh Brackett's "All the Colors of the Rainbow" deals with racism after aliens have contacted humanity. These and other examples can be regarded as stories of character with strong themes, in keeping with Ferman's stated goals in his inaugural editorial. Venture was also the place that "Sturgeon's Law" first saw print. This adage is now usually seen in the form "90% of everything is crap". It was formulated by Sturgeon in about 1951, and a version of it appeared in the March 1958 issue of Venture, under the name "Sturgeon's Revelation".
An editorial, "Venturings," appeared in each issue of the first series; after Ferman used the first one as a platform for editorial policy, it was usually written by Mills, who occasionally turned the column over to letters from SF figures. The last editorial, in July 1958, featured a eulogy of C.M. Kornbluth by Frederik Pohl, and one of Henry Kuttner by Sturgeon. Kornbluth and Kuttner had died within two months of each other earlier that year.
Sturgeon began a book review column, "On Hand . . . Offhand", in the July 1957 issue that continued for the rest of the magazine's run. This was Sturgeon's first review column; more than a decade later he wrote a similar column for Galaxy Science Fiction. The January 1958 issue saw the first in a series of four science articles by Asimov that also continued until Venture folded. The series was transferred to F&SF, beginning with the November 1958 issue, and eventually ran to 399 consecutive articles; it is not often remembered that it began in F&SF's short-lived companion magazine.
Venture kept to a steady bimonthly schedule for ten issues, but its circulation never reached a sustainable level, and it was canceled in mid-1958. The large number of competing magazines probably hurt sales, though since many of the competitors lasted for only one or two issues, Venture can be thought of as at least a partial success. An anthology drawn from the magazine's fiction, No Limits, was published in 1964 by Ballantine Books, attributed to Joseph Ferman as editor.
## British and Australian editions
In December 1959, a British edition of F&SF appeared from Atlas Publishing and Distributing Limited, a London-based publisher. Atlas had published a British edition of Analog (formerly Astounding Science Fiction) since 1939. In 1963 the abolition of import restrictions meant that Analog could be directly imported, and since there was no longer a need for a British edition, Atlas decided to start a new sf magazine to replace it. The new Venture Science Fiction drew many of its stories from the US version, but it also reprinted from the late 1950s F&SF, since there had been no British edition of that magazine until the end of 1959. Within a year Atlas decided to abandon their edition of F&SF as well; the last issue appeared in June 1964.
The British version of Venture began in September 1963, and ran for 28 numbered issues, through December 1965; the editor was Ronald R. Wickers. The stories selected from F&SF for the UK edition of Venture did not overlap with material already reprinted in the UK edition of F&SF. The first five issues had pictorial covers, but thereafter the cover simply listed the names of the contributing authors. This unattractive presentation, and the lack of much in the way of interior artwork, probably hurt sales. Atlas's stated reason for ending the magazine was that it was "due to the expiration of available material", but there were in fact many stories available to reprint. It is more likely that the real reason was that the US edition of F&SF was by then easily available in the UK, and that circulation was falling.
Atlas also published an Australian edition, which was identical to the British edition except that it was dated two months later; the issues ran from November 1963 to February 1966.
## Second US run
A little over ten years after the first US edition ceased, a new version appeared, again as a companion to F&SF. This time the magazine was quarterly. The debut issue was dated May 1969, and it was edited by Edward L. Ferman—the son of Joseph Ferman—who was also the editor of F&SF. There was no statement of editorial intent for this version, but the policy was straightforward: a novel was presented in each issue. Although these were substantially cut, they still took up most of the magazine, with the result that the other stories tended to be very short. As in the first incarnation, the contents were of fairly good quality, with contributions from well-known writers. However, the magazine was no more successful than before, and lasted for only six quarterly issues; the last issue was August 1970.
The condensed novels that appeared in this version of Venture included Hour of the Horde, by Gordon R. Dickson; Plague Ship, by Harry Harrison; Star Treasure, by Keith Laumer; and Beastchild, by Dean R. Koontz. The short fiction included little of note, though "The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone", an early story by James Tiptree, Jr., appeared in 1969, and "Breaking Point", by Vonda McIntyre, was published in February 1970. "Breaking Point" was McIntyre's first published fiction, but, perhaps because it was published as by "V. N. McIntyre", it has been missed by several bibliographers. There was also a Reginald Bretnor Feghoot story in each issue: these were a series of very short stories, based on bad puns, that had begun in F&SF the previous year.
Ron Goulart contributed a book review column to each issue of the second incarnation, and there was an occasional film review. This version of Venture did not credit the artists, but most of the covers were signed by Bert Tanner, who was listed on the masthead as the art director. According to Nicholas De Larber, a historian of science fiction, Tanner's cover art was much less distinguished than Emshwiller's work for the first run of the magazine, and it is likely that this had a negative effect on sales: De Larbert likened Tanner's work to "pencil sketches overlaid by a single color". Tanner also contributed much, but not all, of the interior art; other artists who can by identified by their signatures include Emshwiller, Derek Carter, and Bhob Stewart, who illustrated Tiptree's story in the November 1969 issue.
## Bibliographic details
For the first incarnation, Venture was priced at 35 cents throughout, and maintained a 128-page count along with a regular bimonthly schedule, starting with January 1957 and ending with the July 1958 issue. The first volume had six numbers, and the second had four. The British edition was numbered consecutively from 1 to 28 without any volume numbers, and was priced at 2/6 (£0.12+1⁄2) until the July 1964 issue, after which the price was 3/- (£0.15). The second US version began in May 1969 with volume 3 number 1, and maintained a regular quarterly schedule until the last issue in August 1970. Each issue was priced at 60 cents, and like its predecessor had a page count of 128.
After the first US edition ceased publication, F&SF added the line "including Venture Science Fiction''" to the masthead, in order to ensure that the publisher retained the rights to the title. The line reappeared in February 1971, several months after the failure of the second US edition, and was finally dropped in February 1990.
|
1,770 |
Apollo 13
| 1,173,840,999 |
Failed Moon landing mission in the Apollo program
|
[
"Apollo 13",
"Apollo program missions",
"Articles containing video clips",
"Crewed missions to the Moon",
"Fred Haise",
"Jack Swigert",
"Jim Lovell",
"Spacecraft launched by Saturn rockets"
] |
Apollo 13 (April 11–17, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) failed two days into the mission. The crew instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17. The mission was commanded by Jim Lovell, with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as Lunar Module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella.
A routine stir of an oxygen tank ignited damaged wire insulation inside it, causing an explosion that vented the contents of both of the SM's oxygen tanks to space. Without oxygen, needed for breathing and for generating electric power, the SM's propulsion and life support systems could not operate. The CM's systems had to be shut down to conserve its remaining resources for reentry, forcing the crew to transfer to the LM as a lifeboat. With the lunar landing canceled, mission controllers worked to bring the crew home alive.
Although the LM was designed to support two men on the lunar surface for two days, Mission Control in Houston improvised new procedures so it could support three men for four days. The crew experienced great hardship, caused by limited power, a chilly and wet cabin and a shortage of potable water. There was a critical need to adapt the CM's cartridges for the carbon dioxide scrubber system to work in the LM; the crew and mission controllers were successful in improvising a solution. The astronauts' peril briefly renewed public interest in the Apollo program; tens of millions watched the splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean on television.
An investigative review board found fault with preflight testing of the oxygen tank and Teflon being placed inside it. The board recommended changes, including minimizing the use of potentially combustible items inside the tank; this was done for Apollo 14. The story of Apollo 13 has been dramatized several times, most notably in the 1995 film Apollo 13 based on Lost Moon, the 1994 memoir co-authored by Lovell – and an episode of the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.
## Background
In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy challenged his nation to land an astronaut on the Moon by the end of the decade, with a safe return to Earth. NASA worked towards this goal incrementally, sending astronauts into space during Project Mercury and Project Gemini, leading up to the Apollo program. The goal was achieved with Apollo 11, which landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface while Michael Collins orbited the Moon in Command Module Columbia. The mission returned to Earth on July 24, 1969, fulfilling Kennedy's challenge.
NASA had contracted for fifteen Saturn V rockets to achieve the goal; at the time no one knew how many missions this would require. Since success was obtained in 1969 with the sixth Saturn V on Apollo 11, nine rockets remained available for a hoped-for total of ten landings. After the excitement of Apollo 11, the general public grew apathetic towards the space program and Congress continued to cut NASA's budget; Apollo 20 was canceled. Despite the successful lunar landing, the missions were considered so risky that astronauts could not afford life insurance to provide for their families if they died in space.
Even before the first U.S. astronaut entered space in 1961, planning for a centralized facility to communicate with the spacecraft and monitor its performance had begun, for the most part the brainchild of Christopher C. Kraft Jr., who became NASA's first flight director. During John Glenn's Mercury Friendship 7 flight in February 1962 (the first crewed orbital flight by the U.S.), one of Kraft's decisions was overruled by NASA managers. He was vindicated by post-mission analysis and implemented a rule that, during the mission, the flight director's word was absolute – to overrule him, NASA would have to fire him on the spot. Flight directors during Apollo had a one-sentence job description, "The flight director may take any actions necessary for crew safety and mission success."
In 1965, Houston's Mission Control Center opened, in part designed by Kraft and now named for him. In Mission Control, each flight controller, in addition to monitoring telemetry from the spacecraft, was in communication via voice loop to specialists in a Staff Support Room (or "back room"), who focused on specific spacecraft systems.
Apollo 13 was to be the second H mission, meant to demonstrate precision lunar landings and explore specific sites on the Moon. With Kennedy's goal accomplished by Apollo 11, and Apollo 12 demonstrating that the astronauts could perform a precision landing, mission planners were able to focus on more than just landing safely and having astronauts minimally trained in geology gather lunar samples to take home to Earth. There was a greater role for science on Apollo 13, especially for geology, something emphasized by the mission's motto, Ex luna, scientia (From the Moon, knowledge).
## Astronauts and key Mission Control personnel
Apollo 13's mission commander, Jim Lovell, was 42 years old at the time of the spaceflight. He was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and had been a naval aviator and test pilot before being selected for the second group of astronauts in 1962; he flew with Frank Borman in Gemini 7 in 1965 and Buzz Aldrin in Gemini 12 the following year before flying in Apollo 8 in 1968, the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon. At the time of Apollo 13, Lovell was the NASA astronaut with the most time in space, with 572 hours over the three missions.
Jack Swigert, the command module pilot (CMP), was 38 years old and held a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. in aerospace science; he had served in the Air Force and in state Air National Guards and was an engineering test pilot before being selected for the fifth group of astronauts in 1966. Fred Haise, the lunar module pilot (LMP), was 35 years old. He held a B.S. in aeronautical engineering, had been a Marine Corps fighter pilot, and was a civilian research pilot for NASA when he was selected as a Group 5 astronaut.
According to the standard Apollo crew rotation, the prime crew for Apollo 13 would have been the backup crew for Apollo 10, with Mercury and Gemini veteran Gordon Cooper in command, Donn F. Eisele as CMP and Edgar Mitchell as LMP. Deke Slayton, NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to a prime crew assignment, as both were out of favor – Cooper for his lax attitude towards training, and Eisele for incidents aboard Apollo 7 and an extramarital affair. He assigned them to the backup crew because no other veteran astronauts were available. Slayton's original choices for Apollo 13 were Alan Shepard as commander, Stuart Roosa as CMP, and Mitchell as LMP. However, management felt Shepard needed more training time, as he had only recently resumed active status after surgery for an inner ear disorder and had not flown since 1961. Thus, Lovell's crew (himself, Haise and Ken Mattingly), having all backed up Apollo 11 and being slated for Apollo 14, was swapped with Shepard's.
Swigert was originally CMP of Apollo 13's backup crew, with John Young as commander and Charles Duke as lunar module pilot. Seven days before launch, Duke contracted rubella from a friend of his son. This exposed both the prime and backup crews, who trained together. Of the five, only Mattingly was not immune through prior exposure. Normally, if any member of the prime crew had to be grounded, the remaining crew would be replaced as well, and the backup crew substituted, but Duke's illness ruled this out, so two days before launch, Mattingly was replaced by Swigert. Mattingly never developed rubella and later flew on Apollo 16.
For Apollo, a third crew of astronauts, known as the support crew, was designated in addition to the prime and backup crews used on projects Mercury and Gemini. Slayton created the support crews because James McDivitt, who would command Apollo 9, believed that, with preparation going on in facilities across the US, meetings that needed a member of the flight crew would be missed. Support crew members were to assist as directed by the mission commander. Usually low in seniority, they assembled the mission's rules, flight plan, and checklists, and kept them updated; for Apollo 13, they were Vance D. Brand, Jack Lousma and either William Pogue or Joseph Kerwin.
For Apollo 13, flight directors were Gene Kranz, White team (the lead flight director); Glynn Lunney, Black team; Milton Windler, Maroon team and Gerry Griffin, Gold team. The CAPCOMs (the person in Mission Control, during the Apollo program an astronaut, who was responsible for voice communications with the crew) for Apollo 13 were Kerwin, Brand, Lousma, Young and Mattingly.
## Mission insignia and call signs
The Apollo 13 mission insignia depicts the Greek god of the Sun, Apollo, with three horses pulling his chariot across the face of the Moon, and the Earth seen in the distance. This is meant to symbolize the Apollo flights bringing the light of knowledge to all people. The mission motto, Ex luna, scientia ("From the Moon, knowledge"), appears. In choosing it, Lovell adapted the motto of his alma mater, the Naval Academy, Ex scientia, tridens ("From knowledge, sea power").
On the patch, the mission number appeared in Roman numerals as Apollo XIII. It did not have to be modified after Swigert replaced Mattingly, as it is one of only two Apollo mission insignia – the other being Apollo 11 – not to include the names of the crew. It was designed by artist Lumen Martin Winter, who based it on a mural he had painted for the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. The mural was later purchased by actor Tom Hanks, who portrayed Lovell in the movie Apollo 13, and is now in the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in Illinois.
The mission's motto was in Lovell's mind when he chose the call sign Aquarius for the lunar module, taken from Aquarius, the bringer of water. Some in the media erroneously reported that the call sign was taken from a song by that name from the musical Hair. The command module's call sign, Odyssey, was chosen not only for its Homeric association but to refer to the recent movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on a short story by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. In his book, Lovell indicated he chose the name Odyssey because he liked the word and its definition: a long voyage with many changes of fortune.
## Space vehicle
The Saturn V rocket used to carry Apollo 13 to the Moon was numbered SA-508, and was almost identical to those used on Apollo 8 through 12. Including the spacecraft, the rocket weighed in at 2,949,136 kilograms (6,501,733 lb). The S-IC first stage's engines were rated to generate 440,000 newtons (100,000 lbf) less total thrust than Apollo 12's, though they remained within specifications. To keep its liquid hydrogen propellent cold, the S-II second stage's cryogenic tanks were insulated; on earlier Apollo missions this came in the form of panels that were affixed, but beginning with Apollo 13, insulation was sprayed onto the exterior of the tanks. Extra propellant was carried as a test, since future J missions to the Moon would require more propellant for their heavier payloads. This made the vehicle the heaviest yet flown by NASA, and Apollo 13 was visibly slower to clear the launch tower than earlier missions.
The Apollo 13 spacecraft consisted of Command Module 109 and Service Module 109 (together CSM-109), called Odyssey, and Lunar Module 7 (LM-7), called Aquarius. Also considered part of the spacecraft was the launch escape system, which would propel the command module (CM) to safety in the event of a problem during liftoff, and the Spacecraft–LM Adapter, numbered as SLA-16, which housed the lunar module (LM) during the first hours of the mission.
The LM stages, CM and service module (SM) were received at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in June 1969; the portions of the Saturn V were received in June and July. Thereafter, testing and assembly proceeded, culminating with the rollout of the launch vehicle, with the spacecraft atop it, on December 15, 1969. Apollo 13 was originally scheduled for launch on March 12, 1970; in January of that year, NASA announced the mission would be postponed until April 11, both to allow more time for planning and to spread the Apollo missions over a longer period of time. The plan was to have two Apollo flights per year and was in response to budgetary constraints that had recently seen the cancellation of Apollo 20.
## Training and preparation
The Apollo 13 prime crew undertook over 1,000 hours of mission-specific training, more than five hours for every hour of the mission's ten-day planned duration. Each member of the prime crew spent over 400 hours in simulators of the CM and (for Lovell and Haise) of the LM at KSC and at Houston, some of which involved the flight controllers at Mission Control. Flight controllers participated in many simulations of problems with the spacecraft in flight, which taught them how to react in an emergency. Specialized simulators at other locations were also used by the crew members.
The astronauts of Apollo 11 had minimal time for geology training, with only six months between crew assignment and launch; higher priorities took much of their time. Apollo 12 saw more such training, including practice in the field, using a CAPCOM and a simulated backroom of scientists, to whom the astronauts had to describe what they saw. Scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt saw that there was limited enthusiasm for geology field trips. Believing an inspirational teacher was needed, Schmitt arranged for Lovell and Haise to meet his old professor, Caltech's Lee Silver. The two astronauts, and backups Young and Duke, went on a field trip with Silver at their own time and expense. At the end of their week together, Lovell made Silver their geology mentor, who would be extensively involved in the geology planning for Apollo 13. Farouk El-Baz oversaw the training of Mattingly and his backup, Swigert, which involved describing and photographing simulated lunar landmarks from airplanes. El-Baz had all three prime crew astronauts describe geologic features they saw during their flights between Houston and KSC; Mattingly's enthusiasm caused other astronauts, such as Apollo 14's CMP, Roosa, to seek out El-Baz as a teacher.
Concerned about how close Apollo 11's LM, Eagle, had come to running out of propellant during its lunar descent, mission planners decided that beginning with Apollo 13, the CSM would bring the LM to the low orbit from which the landing attempt would commence. This was a change from Apollo 11 and 12, on which the LM made the burn to bring it to the lower orbit. The change was part of an effort to increase the amount of hover time available to the astronauts as the missions headed into rougher terrain.
The plan was to devote the first of the two four-hour lunar surface extravehicular activities (EVAs) to setting up the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) group of scientific instruments; during the second, Lovell and Haise would investigate Cone crater, near the planned landing site. The two astronauts wore their spacesuits for some 20 walk-throughs of EVA procedures, including sample gathering and use of tools and other equipment. They flew in the "Vomit Comet" in simulated microgravity or lunar gravity, including practice in donning and doffing spacesuits. To prepare for the descent to the Moon's surface, Lovell flew the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) after receiving helicopter training. Despite the crashes of one LLTV and one similar Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) prior to Apollo 13, mission commanders considered flying them invaluable experience and so prevailed on reluctant NASA management to retain them.
## Experiments and scientific objectives
Apollo 13's designated landing site was near Fra Mauro crater; the Fra Mauro formation was believed to contain much material spattered by the impact that had filled the Imbrium basin early in the Moon's history. Dating it would provide information not only about the Moon, but about the Earth's early history. Such material was likely to be available at Cone crater, a site where an impact was believed to have drilled deep into the lunar regolith.
Apollo 11 had left a seismometer on the Moon, but the solar-powered unit did not survive its first two-week-long lunar night. The Apollo 12 astronauts also left one as part of its ALSEP, which was nuclear-powered. Apollo 13 also carried a seismometer (known as the Passive Seismic Experiment, or PSE), similar to Apollo 12's, as part of its ALSEP, to be left on the Moon by the astronauts. That seismometer was to be calibrated by the impact, after jettison, of the ascent stage of Apollo 13's LM, an object of known mass and velocity impacting at a known location.
Other ALSEP experiments on Apollo 13 included a Heat Flow Experiment (HFE), which would involve drilling two holes 3.0 metres (10 ft) deep. This was Haise's responsibility; he was also to drill a third hole of that depth for a core sample. A Charged Particle Lunar Environment Experiment (CPLEE) measured the protons and electrons of solar origin reaching the Moon. The package also included a Lunar Atmosphere Detector (LAD) and a Dust Detector, to measure the accumulation of debris. The Heat Flow Experiment and the CPLEE were flown for the first time on Apollo 13; the other experiments had been flown before.
To power the ALSEP, the SNAP-27 radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) was flown. Developed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, SNAP-27 was first flown on Apollo 12. The fuel capsule contained about 3.79 kilograms (8.36 lb) of plutonium oxide. The cask placed around the capsule for transport to the Moon was built with heat shields of graphite and of beryllium, and with structural parts of titanium and of Inconel materials. Thus, it was built to withstand the heat of reentry into the Earth's atmosphere rather than pollute the air with plutonium in the event of an aborted mission.
A United States flag was also taken, to be erected on the Moon's surface. For Apollo 11 and 12, the flag had been placed in a heat-resistant tube on the front landing leg; it was moved for Apollo 13 to the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) in the LM descent stage. The structure to fly the flag on the airless Moon was improved from Apollo 12's.
For the first time, red stripes were placed on the helmet, arms and legs of the commander's A7L spacesuit. This was done as, after Apollo 11, those reviewing the images taken had trouble distinguishing Armstrong from Aldrin, but the change was approved too late for Apollo 12. New drink bags that attached inside the helmets and were to be sipped from as the astronauts walked on the Moon were demonstrated by Haise during Apollo 13's final television broadcast before the accident.
Apollo 13's primary mission objectives were to: "Perform selenological inspection, survey, and sampling of materials in a preselected region of the Fra Mauro Formation. Deploy and activate an Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package. Develop man's capability to work in the lunar environment. Obtain photographs of candidate exploration sites." The astronauts were also to accomplish other photographic objectives, including of the Gegenschein from lunar orbit, and of the Moon itself on the journey back to Earth. Some of this photography was to be performed by Swigert as Lovell and Haise walked on the Moon. Swigert was also to take photographs of the Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon system. Apollo 13 had twelve cameras on board, including those for television and moving pictures. The crew was also to downlink bistatic radar observations of the Moon. None of these was attempted because of the accident.
## Flight of Apollo 13
### Launch and translunar injection
The mission was launched at the planned time, 2:13:00 pm EST (19:13:00 UTC) on April 11. An anomaly occurred when the second-stage, center (inboard) engine shut down about two minutes early. This was caused by severe pogo oscillations. Starting with Apollo 10, the vehicle's guidance system was designed to shut the engine down in response to chamber pressure excursions. Pogo oscillations had occurred on Titan rockets (used during the Gemini program) and on previous Apollo missions, but on Apollo 13 they were amplified by an interaction with turbopump cavitation. A fix to prevent pogo was ready for the mission, but schedule pressure did not permit the hardware's integration into the Apollo 13 vehicle. A post-flight investigation revealed the engine was one cycle away from catastrophic failure. The four outboard engines and the S-IVB third stage burned longer to compensate, and the vehicle achieved very close to the planned circular 190 kilometers (100 nmi) parking orbit, followed by a translunar injection (TLI) about two hours later, setting the mission on course for the Moon.
After TLI, Swigert performed the separation and transposition maneuvers before docking the CSM Odyssey to the LM Aquarius, and the spacecraft pulled away from the third stage. Ground controllers then sent the third stage on a course to impact the Moon in range of the Apollo 12 seismometer, which it did just over three days into the mission.
The crew settled in for the three-day trip to Fra Mauro. At 30:40:50 into the mission, with the TV camera running, the crew performed a burn to place Apollo 13 on a hybrid trajectory. The departure from a free-return trajectory meant that if no further burns were performed, Apollo 13 would miss Earth on its return trajectory, rather than intercept it, as with a free return. A free return trajectory could only reach sites near the lunar equator; a hybrid trajectory, which could be started at any point after TLI, allowed sites with higher latitudes, such as Fra Mauro, to be reached. Communications were enlivened when Swigert realized that in the last-minute rush, he had omitted to file his federal income tax return (due April 15), and amid laughter from mission controllers, asked how he could get an extension. He was found to be entitled to a 60-day extension for being out of the country at the deadline.
Entry into the LM to test its systems had been scheduled for 58:00:00; when the crew awoke on the third day of the mission, they were informed it had been moved up three hours and was later moved up again by another hour. A television broadcast was scheduled for 55:00:00; Lovell, acting as emcee, showed the audience the interiors of Odyssey and Aquarius. The audience was limited since none of the television networks were carrying the broadcast, forcing Marilyn Lovell (Jim Lovell's wife) to go to the VIP room at Mission Control if she wanted to watch her husband and his crewmates.
### Accident
Approximately six and a half minutes after the TV broadcast – approaching 56:00:00 – Apollo 13 was about 180,000 nautical miles (210,000 mi; 330,000 km) from Earth. Haise was completing the shutdown of the LM after testing its systems while Lovell stowed the TV camera. Jack Lousma, the CAPCOM, sent minor instructions to Swigert, including changing the attitude of the craft to facilitate photography of Comet Bennett.
The pressure sensor in one of the SM's oxygen tanks had earlier appeared to be malfunctioning, so Sy Liebergot (the EECOM, in charge of monitoring the CSM's electrical system) requested that the stirring fans in the tanks be activated. Normally this was done once daily; a stir would destratify the contents of the tanks, making the pressure readings more accurate. The Flight Director, Kranz, had Liebergot wait a few minutes for the crew to settle down after the telecast, then Lousma relayed the request to Swigert, who activated the switches controlling the fans, and after a few seconds turned them off again.
Ninety-five seconds after Swigert activated those switches, the astronauts heard a "pretty large bang", accompanied by fluctuations in electrical power and the firing of the attitude control thrusters. Communications and telemetry to Earth were lost for 1.8 seconds, until the system automatically corrected by switching the high-gain S-band antenna, used for translunar communications, from narrow-beam to wide-beam mode. The accident happened at 55:54:53 (03:08 UTC on April 14, 10:08 PM EST, April 13). Swigert reported 26 seconds later, "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here," echoed at 55:55:42 by Lovell, "Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B Bus undervolt." William Fenner was the guidance officer (GUIDO) who was the first to report a problem in the control room to Kranz.
Lovell's initial thought on hearing the noise was that Haise had activated the LM's cabin-repressurization valve, which also produced a bang (Haise enjoyed doing so to startle his crewmates), but Lovell could see that Haise had no idea what had happened. Swigert initially thought that a meteoroid might have struck the LM, but he and Lovell quickly realized there was no leak. The "Main Bus B undervolt" meant that there was insufficient voltage produced by the SM's three fuel cells (fueled by hydrogen and oxygen piped from their respective tanks) to the second of the SM's two electric power distribution systems. Almost everything in the CSM required power. Although the bus momentarily returned to normal status, soon both buses A and B were short on voltage. Haise checked the status of the fuel cells and found that two of them were dead. Mission rules forbade entering lunar orbit unless all fuel cells were operational.
In the minutes after the accident, there were several unusual readings, showing that tank 2 was empty and tank 1's pressure slowly falling, that the computer on the spacecraft had reset and that the high-gain antenna was not working. Liebergot initially missed the worrying signs from tank 2 following the stir, as he was focusing on tank 1, believing that its reading would be a good guide to what was present in tank 2, as did controllers supporting him in the "back room". When Kranz questioned Liebergot on this, he initially responded that there might be false readings due to an instrumentation problem; he was often teased about that in the years to come. Lovell, looking out the window, reported "a gas of some sort" venting into space, making it clear that there was a serious problem.
Since the fuel cells needed oxygen to operate, when Oxygen Tank 1 ran dry, the remaining fuel cell would shut down, meaning the CSM's only significant sources of power and oxygen would be the CM's batteries and its oxygen "surge tank". These would be needed for the final hours of the mission, but the remaining fuel cell, already starved for oxygen, was drawing from the surge tank. Kranz ordered the surge tank isolated, saving its oxygen, but this meant that the remaining fuel cell would die within two hours, as the oxygen in tank 1 was consumed or leaked away. The volume surrounding the spacecraft was filled with myriad small bits of debris from the accident, complicating any efforts to use the stars for navigation. The mission's goal became simply getting the astronauts back to Earth alive.
### Looping around the Moon
The lunar module had charged batteries and full oxygen tanks for use on the lunar surface, so Kranz directed that the astronauts power up the LM and use it as a "lifeboat" – a scenario anticipated but considered unlikely. Procedures for using the LM in this way had been developed by LM flight controllers after a training simulation for Apollo 10 in which the LM was needed for survival, but could not be powered up in time. Had Apollo 13's accident occurred on the return voyage, with the LM already jettisoned, the astronauts would have died, as they would have following an explosion in lunar orbit, including one while Lovell and Haise walked on the Moon.
A key decision was the choice of return path. A "direct abort" would use the SM's main engine (the Service Propulsion System or SPS) to return before reaching the Moon. However, the accident could have damaged the SPS, and the fuel cells would have to last at least another hour to meet its power requirements, so Kranz instead decided on a longer route: the spacecraft would swing around the Moon before heading back to Earth. Apollo 13 was on the hybrid trajectory which was to take it to Fra Mauro; it now needed to be brought back to a free return. The LM's Descent Propulsion System (DPS), although not as powerful as the SPS, could do this, but new software for Mission Control's computers needed to be written by technicians as it had never been contemplated that the CSM/LM spacecraft would have to be maneuvered from the LM. As the CM was being shut down, Lovell copied down its guidance system's orientation information and performed hand calculations to transfer it to the LM's guidance system, which had been turned off; at his request Mission Control checked his figures. At 61:29:43.49 the DPS burn of 34.23 seconds took Apollo 13 back to a free return trajectory.
The change would get Apollo 13 back to Earth in about four days' time – though with splashdown in the Indian Ocean, where NASA had few recovery forces. Jerry Bostick and other Flight Dynamics Officers (FIDOs) were anxious both to shorten the travel time and to move splashdown to the Pacific Ocean, where the main recovery forces were located. One option would shave 36 hours off the return time, but required jettisoning the SM; this would expose the CM's heat shield to space during the return journey, something for which it had not been designed. The FIDOs also proposed other solutions. After a meeting involving NASA officials and engineers, the senior individual present, Manned Spaceflight Center director Robert R. Gilruth, decided on a burn using the DPS, that would save 12 hours and land Apollo 13 in the Pacific. This "PC+2" burn would take place two hours after pericynthion, the closest approach to the Moon. At pericynthion, Apollo 13 set the record (per the Guinness Book of World Records), which still stands, for the highest absolute altitude attained by a crewed spacecraft: 400,171 kilometers (248,655 mi) from Earth at 7:21 pm EST, April 14 (00:21:00 UTC April 15).
While preparing for the burn the crew was told that the S-IVB had impacted the Moon as planned, leading Lovell to quip, "Well, at least something worked on this flight." Kranz's White team of mission controllers, who had spent most of their time supporting other teams and developing the procedures urgently needed to get the astronauts home, took their consoles for the PC+2 procedure. Normally, the accuracy of such a burn could be assured by checking the alignment Lovell had transferred to the LM's computer against the position of one of the stars astronauts used for navigation, but the light glinting off the many pieces of debris accompanying the spacecraft made that impractical. The astronauts accordingly used the one star available whose position could not be obscured – the Sun. Houston also informed them that the Moon would be centered in the commander's window of the LM as they made the burn, which was almost perfect – less than 0.3 meters (1 foot) per second off. The burn, at 79:27:38.95, lasted four minutes and 23 seconds. The crew then shut down most LM systems to conserve consumables.
### Return to Earth
The LM carried enough oxygen, but that still left the problem of removing carbon dioxide, which was absorbed by canisters of lithium hydroxide pellets. The LM's stock of canisters, meant to accommodate two astronauts for 45 hours on the Moon, was not enough to support three astronauts for the return journey to Earth. The CM had enough canisters, but they were of a different shape and size to the LM's, hence unable to be used in the LM's equipment. Engineers on the ground devised a way to bridge the gap, using plastic, covers ripped from procedure manuals, duct tape, and other items available on the spacecraft. NASA engineers referred to the improvised device as "the mailbox". The procedure for building the device was read to the crew by CAPCOM Joseph Kerwin over the course of an hour, and was built by Swigert and Haise; carbon dioxide levels began dropping immediately. Lovell later described this improvisation as "a fine example of cooperation between ground and space".
The CSM's electricity came from fuel cells that produced water as a byproduct, but the LM was powered by silver-zinc batteries which did not, so both electrical power and water (needed for equipment cooling as well as drinking) would be critical. LM power consumption was reduced to the lowest level possible; Swigert was able to fill some drinking bags with water from the CM's water tap, but even assuming rationing of personal consumption, Haise initially calculated they would run out of water for cooling about five hours before reentry. This seemed acceptable because the systems of Apollo 11's LM, once jettisoned in lunar orbit, had continued to operate for seven to eight hours even with the water cut off. In the end, Apollo 13 returned to Earth with 12.8 kilograms (28.2 lb) of water remaining. The crew's ration was 0.2 liters (6.8 fl oz) of water per person per day; the three astronauts lost a total of 14 kilograms (31 lb) among them, and Haise developed a urinary tract infection. This infection was probably caused by the reduced water intake, but microgravity and effects of cosmic radiation might have impaired his immune system's reaction to the pathogen.
Inside the darkened spacecraft, the temperature dropped as low as 3 °C (38 °F). Lovell considered having the crew don their spacesuits, but decided this would be too hot. Instead, Lovell and Haise wore their lunar EVA boots and Swigert put on an extra coverall. All three astronauts were cold, especially Swigert, who had got his feet wet while filling the water bags and had no lunar overshoes (since he had not been scheduled to walk on the Moon). As they had been told not to discharge their urine to space to avoid disturbing the trajectory, they had to store it in bags. Water condensed on the walls, though any condensation that may have been behind equipment panels caused no problems, partly because of the extensive electrical insulation improvements instituted after the Apollo 1 fire. Despite all this, the crew voiced few complaints.
Flight controller John Aaron, along with Mattingly and several engineers and designers, devised a procedure for powering up the command module from full shutdown – something never intended to be done in flight, much less under Apollo 13's severe power and time constraints. The astronauts implemented the procedure without apparent difficulty: Kranz later credited all three astronauts having been test pilots, accustomed to having to work in critical situations with their lives on the line, for their survival.
Recognizing that the cold conditions combined with insufficient rest would hinder the time critical startup of the command module prior to reentry, at 133 hours into flight Mission Control gave Lovell the okay to fully power up the LM to raise the cabin temperature, which included restarting the LM's guidance computer. Having the LM's computer running enabled Lovell to perform a navigational sighting and calibrate the LM's Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). With the lunar module's computer aware of its location and orientation, the command module's computer was later calibrated in a reverse of the normal procedures used to set up the LM, shaving steps from the restart process and increasing the accuracy of the PGNCS-controlled reentry.
### Reentry and splashdown
Despite the accuracy of the transearth injection, the spacecraft slowly drifted off course, necessitating a correction. As the LM's guidance system had been shut down following the PC+2 burn, the crew was told to use the line between night and day on the Earth to guide them, a technique used on NASA's Earth-orbit missions but never on the way back from the Moon. This DPS burn, at 105:18:42 for 14 seconds, brought the projected entry flight path angle back within safe limits. Nevertheless, yet another burn was needed at 137:40:13, using the LM's reaction control system (RCS) thrusters, for 21.5 seconds. The SM was jettisoned less than half an hour later, allowing the crew to see the damage for the first time, and photograph it. They reported that an entire panel was missing from the SM's exterior, the fuel cells above the oxygen tank shelf were tilted, that the high-gain antenna was damaged, and there was a considerable amount of debris elsewhere. Haise could see possible damage to the SM's engine bell, validating Kranz's decision not to use the SPS.
The last problem to be solved was how to separate the lunar module a safe distance away from the command module just before reentry. The normal procedure, in lunar orbit, was to release the LM and then use the service module's RCS to pull the CSM away, but by this point, the SM had already been released. Grumman, manufacturer of the LM, assigned a team of University of Toronto engineers, led by senior scientist Bernard Etkin, to solve the problem of how much air pressure to use to push the modules apart. The astronauts applied the solution, which was successful. The LM reentered Earth's atmosphere and was destroyed, the remaining pieces falling in the deep ocean. Apollo 13's final midcourse correction had addressed the concerns of the Atomic Energy Commission, which wanted the cask containing the plutonium oxide intended for the SNAP-27 RTG to land in a safe place. The impact point was over the Tonga Trench in the Pacific, one of its deepest points, and the cask sank 10 kilometers (6 mi) to the bottom. Later helicopter surveys found no radioactive leakage.
Ionization of the air around the command module during reentry would typically cause a four-minute communications blackout. Apollo 13's shallow reentry path lengthened this to six minutes, longer than had been expected; controllers feared that the CM's heat shield had failed. Odyssey regained radio contact and splashed down safely in the South Pacific Ocean, , southeast of American Samoa and 6.5 km (3.5 nmi) from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima. Although fatigued, the crew was in good condition except for Haise, who had developed a serious urinary tract infection because of insufficient water intake. The crew stayed overnight on the ship and flew to Pago Pago, American Samoa, the next day. They flew to Hawaii, where President Richard Nixon awarded them the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. They stayed overnight, and then were flown back to Houston.
En route to Honolulu, President Nixon stopped at Houston to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team. He originally planned to give the award to NASA administrator Thomas O. Paine, but Paine recommended the mission operations team.
## Public and media reaction
Worldwide interest in the Apollo program was reawakened by the incident; television coverage was seen by millions. Four Soviet ships headed toward the landing area to assist if needed, and other nations offered assistance should the craft have to splash down elsewhere. President Nixon canceled appointments, phoned the astronauts' families, and drove to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where Apollo's tracking and communications were coordinated.
The rescue received more public attention than any spaceflight to that point, other than the first Moon landing on Apollo 11. There were worldwide headlines, and people surrounded television sets to get the latest developments, offered by networks who interrupted their regular programming for bulletins. Pope Paul VI led a congregation of 10,000 people in praying for the astronauts' safe return; ten times that number offered prayers at a religious festival in India. The United States Senate on April 14 passed a resolution urging businesses to pause at 9:00 pm local time that evening to allow for employee prayer.
An estimated 40 million Americans watched Apollo 13's splashdown, carried live on all three networks, with another 30 million watching some portion of the six and one-half hour telecast. Even more outside the U.S. watched. Jack Gould of The New York Times stated that Apollo 13, "which came so close to tragic disaster, in all probability united the world in mutual concern more fully than another successful landing on the Moon would have".
## Investigation and response
### Review board
Immediately upon the crew's return, NASA Administrator Paine and Deputy Administrator George Low appointed a review board – chaired by NASA Langley Research Center Director Edgar M. Cortright and including Neil Armstrong and six others – to investigate the accident. The board's final report, sent to Paine on June 15, found that the failure began in the service module's number 2 oxygen tank. Damaged Teflon insulation on the wires to the stirring fan inside Oxygen Tank 2 allowed the wires to short circuit and ignite this insulation. The resulting fire increased the pressure inside the tank until the tank dome failed, filling the fuel cell bay (SM Sector 4) with rapidly expanding gaseous oxygen and combustion products. The pressure rise was sufficient to pop the rivets holding the aluminum exterior panel covering Sector 4 and blow it out, exposing the sector to space and snuffing out the fire. The detached panel hit the nearby high-gain antenna, disabling the narrow-beam communication mode and interrupting communication with Earth for 1.8 seconds while the system automatically switched to the backup wide-beam mode. The sectors of the SM were not airtight from each other, and had there been time for the entire SM to become as pressurized as Sector 4, the force on the CM's heat shield would have separated the two modules. The report questioned the use of Teflon and other materials shown to be flammable in supercritical oxygen, such as aluminum, within the tank. The board found no evidence pointing to any other theory of the accident.
Mechanical shock forced the oxygen valves closed on the number 1 and number 3 fuel cells, putting them out of commission. The sudden failure of Oxygen Tank 2 compromised Oxygen Tank 1, causing its contents to leak out, possibly through a damaged line or valve, over the next 130 minutes, entirely depleting the SM's oxygen supply. With both SM oxygen tanks emptying, and with other damage to the SM, the mission had to be aborted. The board praised the response to the emergency: "The imperfection in Apollo 13 constituted a near disaster, averted only by outstanding performance on the part of the crew and the ground control team which supported them."
Oxygen Tank 2 was manufactured by the Beech Aircraft Company of Boulder, Colorado, as subcontractor to North American Rockwell (NAR) of Downey, California, prime contractor for the CSM. It contained two thermostatic switches, originally designed for the command module's 28-volt DC power, but which could fail if subjected to the 65 volts used during ground testing at KSC. Under the original 1962 specifications, the switches would be rated for 28 volts, but revised specifications issued in 1965 called for 65 volts to allow for quicker tank pressurization at KSC. Nonetheless, the switches Beech used were not rated for 65 volts.
At NAR's facility, Oxygen Tank 2 had been originally installed in an oxygen shelf placed in the Apollo 10 service module, SM-106, but which was removed to fix a potential electromagnetic interference problem and another shelf substituted. During removal, the shelf was accidentally dropped at least 5 centimeters (2 in), because a retaining bolt had not been removed. The probability of damage from this was low, but it is possible that the fill line assembly was loose and made worse by the fall. After some retesting (which did not include filling the tank with liquid oxygen), in November 1968 the shelf was re-installed in SM-109, intended for Apollo 13, which was shipped to KSC in June 1969.
The Countdown Demonstration Test took place with SM-109 in its place near the top of the Saturn V and began on March 16, 1970. During the test, the cryogenic tanks were filled, but Oxygen Tank 2 could not be emptied through the normal drain line, and a report was written documenting the problem. After discussion among NASA and the contractors, attempts to empty the tank resumed on March 27. When it would not empty normally, the heaters in the tank were turned on to boil off the oxygen. The thermostatic switches were designed to prevent the heaters from raising the temperature higher than 27 °C (80 °F), but they failed under the 65-volt power supply applied. Temperatures on the heater tube within the tank may have reached 540 °C (1,000 °F), most likely damaging the Teflon insulation. The temperature gauge was not designed to read higher than 29 °C (85 °F), so the technician monitoring the procedure detected nothing unusual. This heating had been approved by Lovell and Mattingly of the prime crew, as well as by NASA managers and engineers. Replacement of the tank would have delayed the mission by at least a month. The tank was filled with liquid oxygen again before launch; once electric power was connected, it was in a hazardous condition. The board found that Swigert's activation of the Oxygen Tank 2 fan at the request of Mission Control caused an electric arc that set the tank on fire.
The board conducted a test of an oxygen tank rigged with hot-wire ignitors that caused a rapid rise in temperature within the tank, after which it failed, producing telemetry similar to that seen with the Apollo 13 Oxygen Tank 2. Tests with panels similar to the one that was seen to be missing on SM Sector 4 caused separation of the panel in the test apparatus.
### Changes in response
For Apollo 14 and subsequent missions, the oxygen tank was redesigned, the thermostats being upgraded to handle the proper voltage. The heaters were retained since they were necessary to maintain oxygen pressure. The stirring fans, with their unsealed motors, were removed, which meant the oxygen quantity gauge was no longer accurate. This required adding a third tank so that no tank would go below half full. The third tank was placed in Bay 1 of the SM, on the side opposite the other two, and was given an isolation valve that could isolate it from the fuel cells and from the other two oxygen tanks in an emergency and allow it to feed the CM's environmental system only. The quantity probe was upgraded from aluminum to stainless steel.
All electrical wiring in Bay 4 was sheathed in stainless steel. The fuel cell oxygen supply valves were redesigned to isolate the Teflon-coated wiring from the oxygen. The spacecraft and Mission Control monitoring systems were modified to give more immediate and visible warnings of anomalies. An emergency supply of 19 litres (5 US gal) of water was stored in the CM, and an emergency battery, identical to those that powered the LM's descent stage, was placed in the SM. The LM was modified to make transfer of power from the LM to the CM easier.
## Aftermath
On February 5, 1971, Apollo 14's LM, Antares, landed on the Moon with astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell aboard, near Fra Mauro, the site Apollo 13 had been intended to explore. Haise served as CAPCOM during the descent to the Moon, and during the second EVA, during which Shepard and Mitchell explored near Cone crater.
None of the Apollo 13 astronauts flew in space again. Lovell retired from NASA and the Navy in 1973, entering the private sector. Swigert was to have flown on the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (the first joint mission with the Soviet Union) but was removed as part of the fallout from the Apollo 15 postal covers incident. He took a leave of absence from NASA in 1973 and left the agency to enter politics, being elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, but died of cancer before he could be sworn in. Haise was slated to have been the commander of the canceled Apollo 19 mission, and flew the Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests before retiring from NASA in 1979.
Several experiments were completed during Apollo 13, even though the mission did not land on the Moon. One involved the launch vehicle's S-IVB (the Saturn V's third stage), which on prior missions had been sent into solar orbit once detached. The seismometer left by Apollo 12 had detected frequent impacts of small objects onto the Moon, but larger impacts would yield more information about the Moon's crust, so it was decided that, beginning with Apollo 13, the S-IVB would be crashed into the Moon. The impact occurred at 77:56:40 into the mission and produced enough energy that the gain on the seismometer, 117 kilometers (73 mi) from the impact, had to be reduced. An experiment to measure the amount of atmospheric electrical phenomena during the ascent to orbit – added after Apollo 12 was struck by lightning – returned data indicating a heightened risk during marginal weather. A series of photographs of Earth, taken to test whether cloud height could be determined from synchronous satellites, achieved the desired results.
As a joke, Grumman issued an invoice to North American Rockwell, prime contractor for the CSM, for "towing" the CSM most of the way to the Moon and back. Line items included 400001 miles at \$1 each (plus \$4 for the first mile); \$536.05 for battery charging; oxygen; and four nights at \$8 per night for an "additional guest in room" (Swigert). After a 20% "commercial discount", and a 2% discount for timely payment, the final total was \$312,421.24. North American declined payment, noting that it had ferried three previous Grumman LMs to the Moon without compensation.
The CM was disassembled for testing and parts remained in storage for years; some were used for a trainer for the Skylab Rescue Mission. That trainer was subsequently displayed at the Kentucky Science Center. Max Ary of the Cosmosphere made it a project to restore Odyssey; it is on display there, in Hutchinson, Kansas.
Apollo 13 was called a "successful failure" by Lovell. Mike Massimino, a Space Shuttle astronaut, stated that Apollo 13 "showed teamwork, camaraderie and what NASA was really made of". The response to the accident has been repeatedly called "NASA's finest hour"; it is still viewed that way. Author Colin Burgess wrote, "the life-or-death flight of Apollo 13 dramatically evinced the colossal risks inherent in manned spaceflight. Then, with the crew safely back on Earth, public apathy set in once again."
William R. Compton, in his book about the Apollo Program, said of Apollo 13, "Only a heroic effort of real-time improvisation by mission operations teams saved the crew." Rick Houston and Milt Heflin, in their history of Mission Control, stated, "Apollo 13 proved mission control could bring those space voyagers back home again when their lives were on the line." Former NASA chief historian Roger D. Launius wrote, "More than any other incident in the history of spaceflight, recovery from this accident solidified the world's belief in NASA's capabilities". Nevertheless, the accident convinced some officials, such as Manned Spaceflight Center director Gilruth, that if NASA kept sending astronauts on Apollo missions, some would inevitably be killed, and they called for as quick an end as possible to the program. Nixon's advisers recommended canceling the remaining lunar missions, saying that a disaster in space would cost him political capital. Budget cuts made such a decision easier, and during the pause after Apollo 13, two missions were canceled, meaning that the program ended with Apollo 17 in December 1972.
## Popular culture, media and 50th anniversary
The 1974 movie Houston, We've Got a Problem, while set around the Apollo 13 incident, is a fictional drama about the crises faced by ground personnel when the emergency disrupts their work schedules and places further stress on their lives. Lovell publicly complained about the movie, saying it was "fictitious and in poor taste".
"Houston ... We've Got a Problem" was the title of an episode of the BBC documentary series A Life At Stake, broadcast in March 1978. This was an accurate, if simplified, reconstruction of the events. In 1994, during the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11, PBS released a 90-minute documentary titled Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back.
Following the flight, the crew planned to write a book, but they all left NASA without starting it. After Lovell retired in 1991, he was approached by journalist Jeffrey Kluger about writing a non-fiction account of the mission. Swigert died in 1982 and Haise was no longer interested in such a project. The resultant book, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, was published in 1994.
The next year, in 1995, a film adaptation of the book, Apollo 13, was released, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks as Lovell, Bill Paxton as Haise, Kevin Bacon as Swigert, Gary Sinise as Mattingly, Ed Harris as Kranz, and Kathleen Quinlan as Marilyn Lovell. James Lovell, Kranz, and other principals have stated that this film depicted the events of the mission with reasonable accuracy, given that some dramatic license was taken. For example, the film changes the tense of Lovell's famous follow-up to Swigert's original words from, "Houston, we've had a problem" to "Houston, we have a problem". The film also invented the phrase "Failure is not an option", uttered by Harris as Kranz in the film; the phrase became so closely associated with Kranz that he used it for the title of his 2000 autobiography. The film won two of the nine Academy Awards it was nominated for, Best Film Editing and Best Sound.
In the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, co-produced by Hanks and Howard, the mission is dramatized in the episode "We Interrupt This Program". Rather than showing the incident from the crew's perspective as in the Apollo 13 feature film, it is instead presented from an Earth-bound perspective of television reporters competing for coverage of the event.
In 2020, the BBC World Service began airing 13 Minutes to the Moon, radio programs which draw on NASA audio from the mission, as well as archival and recent interviews with participants. Episodes began airing for Season 2 starting on March 8, 2020, with episode 1, "Time bomb: Apollo 13", explaining the launch and the explosion. Episode 2 details Mission Control's denial and disbelief of the accident, with other episodes covering other aspects of the mission. The seventh and final episode was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In "Delay to Episode 7", the BBC explained that the presenter of the series, medical doctor Kevin Fong, had been called into service.
In advance of the 50th anniversary of the mission in 2020, an Apollo in Real Time site for the mission went online, allowing viewers to follow along as the mission unfolds, view photographs and video, and listen to audio of conversations between Houston and the astronauts as well as between mission controllers. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA did not hold any in-person events during April 2020 for the flight's 50th anniversary, but premiered a new documentary, Apollo 13: Home Safe on April 10, 2020. A number of events were rescheduled for later in 2020.
## Gallery
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Augustinian theodicy
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Type of Christian theodicy designed in response to the evidential problem of evil
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"Augustine of Hippo",
"Augustine studies",
"Theodicy"
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The Augustinian theodicy, named for the 4th- and 5th-century theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo, is a type of Christian theodicy that developed in response to the evidential problem of evil. As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) God amid evidence of evil in the world. A number of variations of this kind of theodicy have been proposed throughout history; their similarities were first described by the 20th-century philosopher John Hick, who classified them as "Augustinian". They typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally) good, that he created the world out of nothing, and that evil is the result of humanity's original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as consequence of original sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of free will and concupiscence. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.
Augustine of Hippo was the first to develop the theodicy. He rejected the idea that evil exists in itself, instead regarding it as a corruption of goodness, caused by humanity's abuse of free will. Augustine believed in the existence of a physical Hell as a punishment for sin, but argued that those who choose to accept the salvation of Jesus Christ will go to Heaven. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas – influenced by Augustine – proposed a similar theodicy based on the view that God is goodness and that there can be no evil in him. He believed that the existence of goodness allows evil to exist, through the fault of humans. Augustine also influenced John Calvin, who supported Augustine's view that evil is the result of free will and argued that sin corrupts humans, requiring God's grace to give moral guidance.
The theodicy was criticised by Augustine's contemporary Fortunatus, a Manichaean who contended that God must still be somehow implicated in evil, and 18th-century theologian Francesco Antonio Zaccaria criticised Augustine's concept of evil for not dealing with individual human suffering. Hick regards evil as necessary for the moral and spiritual development of humans, and process theologians have argued that God is not omnipotent and so cannot be responsible for any evil. The logic of Augustine's approach has been adapted by Alvin Plantinga, among others. Plantinga's adapted Augustinian theodicy, the free will defence – which he proposed in the 1980s – attempts to answer only the logical problem of evil. Such a defence (not a "theodicy" proper) does not demonstrate the existence of God, or the probable existence of God, but attempts to prove that the existence of God and the presence of evil (or privatio boni) in the world are not logically contradictory.
## General forms
The Augustinian theodicy was first distinguished as a form of theodicy by John Hick in Evil and the God of Love, written in 1966, in which he classified Augustine's theodicy and its subsequent developments as "Augustinian". Hick distinguished between the Augustinian theodicy, which attempts to clear God of all responsibility for evil, based on human free will, and the Irenaean theodicy, which casts God as responsible for evil but justified because of its benefits for human development.
The Augustinian theodicy is a response to the evidential problem of evil, which raises the concern that if God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, there should be no evil in the world. Evidence of evil can call into question God's nature or his existence – he is either not omnipotent, not benevolent, or does not exist. Theodicy is an attempt to reconcile the existence and nature of God with evidence of evil in the world by providing valid explanations for its occurrence. The Augustinian theodicy asserts that God created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing), but maintains that God did not create evil and is not responsible for its occurrence. Evil is not attributed existence in its own right, but is described as the privation of good – the corruption of God's good creation.
The Augustinian theodicy supports the notion of original sin. All versions of this theodicy accept the theological implications of the Genesis creation narrative, including the belief that God created human beings without sin or suffering. Evil is believed to be a just punishment for the fall of man: when Adam and Eve first disobeyed God and were exiled from the Garden of Eden. The free will of humans is offered by the Augustinian theodicy as the continued reason for moral evil: people commit immoral acts when their will is evil. The evil nature of human will is attributed to original sin; Augustinian theologians argue that the sin of Adam and Eve corrupted the will of human beings, maintaining that God is blameless and good, and not himself responsible for evil.
## Development
### Augustine
Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) was a philosopher and theologian born in Roman Africa (present-day Algeria). He followed the Manichaean religion during his early life, but converted to Christianity in 386. His two major works, Confessions and City of God, develop key ideas regarding his response to suffering. In Confessions, Augustine wrote that his previous work was dominated by materialism and that reading Plato's works enabled him to consider the existence of a non-physical substance. This helped him develop a response to the problem of evil from a theological (and non-Manichean) perspective, based on his interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis and the writings of Paul the Apostle. In City of God, Augustine developed his theodicy as part of his attempt to trace human history and describe its conclusion.
Augustine proposed that evil could not exist within God, nor be created by God, and is instead a by-product of God's creativity. He rejected the notion that evil exists in itself, proposing instead that it is a privation of (or falling away from) good, and a corruption of nature. He wrote that "evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name 'evil.'" Both moral and natural evil occurs, Augustine argued, owing to an evil use of free will, which could be traced back to Adam and Eve's original sin, which to him was inexplicable given the understanding that Adam and Eve were "created with perfect natures". He believed that this evil will, present in the human soul, was a corruption of the will given to humans by God, making suffering a just punishment for the sin of humans. Because Augustine believed that all of humanity was "seminally present in the loins of Adam", he argued that all of humanity inherited Adam's sin and his just punishment. However, in spite of his belief that free will can be turned to evil, Augustine maintained that it is vital for humans to have free will, because they could not live well without it. He argued that evil could come from humans because, although humans contained no evil, they were also not perfectly good and hence could be corrupted.
Augustine believed that a physical Hell exists, but that physical punishment is secondary to the punishment of being separated from God. He proposed two reasons for this: Firstly, humans have free will, and only those who choose to follow God will be forgiven and able to avoid Hell. Secondly, he believed that Adam and Eve's choice to sin affected our free choice, and that humans are left unable to resist sin. Augustine proposed that the grace of Jesus Christ freed humans from original sin, but he maintained that humans can only be saved if they choose to receive grace, and that this choice is formed by the character of individual humans. Accepting that even those who will be saved continue to sin, Augustine proposed that those who choose God's grace will still go to Hell for a time to purge them of their sin, before going to Heaven.
### Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century scholastic philosopher and theologian heavily influenced by Augustine, proposed a form of the Augustinian theodicy in his Summa Theologica. Aquinas began by attempting to establish the existence of God, through his Five Ways, and then attested that God is good and must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil to exist. Aquinas proposed that all goodness in the world must exist perfectly in God, and that, existing perfectly, God must be perfectly good. He concluded that God is goodness, and that there is no evil in God.
Aquinas supported Augustine's view that evil is a privation of goodness, maintaining that evil has existence as a privation intrinsically found in good. The existence of this evil, Aquinas believed, can be completely explained by free will. Faced with the assertion that humans would have been better off without free will, he argued that the possibility of sin is necessary for a perfect world, and so individuals are responsible for their sin. Good is the cause of evil, but only owing to fault on the part of the agent. In his theodicy, to say something is evil is to say that it lacks goodness which means that it could not be part of God's creation, because God's creation lacked nothing. Aquinas noted that, although goodness makes evil possible, it does not necessitate evil. This means that God (who is good) is not cast as the cause of evil, because evil arises out of a defect in an agent, and God is seen to be without defect. The philosopher Eleonore Stump, considering Aquinas' commentary on the Book of Job, argues that Aquinas has a positive view of suffering: it is necessary to contrast Earth with heaven and remind humans that they still have the propensity to commit evil. Aquinas believed that evil is acceptable because of the good that comes from it, and that evil can only be justified when it is required in order for good to occur. Attempting to relieve God of responsibility for the occurrence of evil, Aquinas insisted that God merely permits evil to happen, rather than willing it. He recognised the occurrence of what seems to be evil, but did not attribute to it the same level of existence that he attributed to spirituality. Like Augustine, Aquinas asserted that humans bear responsibility for evil owing to their abuse of freedom of the will.
### John Calvin
John Calvin, a sixteenth-century French theologian and principal figure in the development of Calvinism, was influenced by Augustine's works. Unlike Augustine, Calvin was willing to accept that God is responsible for evil and suffering; however, he maintained that God cannot be indicted for it. Calvin continued the Augustinian approach that sin is the result of the fall of man, and argued that the human mind, will, and affections are corrupted by sin. He believed that only the grace of God is sufficient to provide humans with ongoing ethical guidance, arguing that reason is blinded by humans' sinful nature. Calvin proposed that humanity is predestined, divided into the elect and the reprobate: the elect are those who God has chosen to save and are the only ones who will be saved.
### Peter van Inwagen
The philosopher Peter van Inwagen put forward an original formulation of the Augustinian theodicy in his book The Problem of Evil. Here he suggests that whilst an extended formulation of Augustine's presentation of the free-will theodicy can answer the problems of global human and natural evil, it is incapable of answering what he calls local arguments from evil, which focus upon specific instances of evil that could have been removed from the world for the better without interrupting God's plan – for example, it would surely take away nothing from God's plan for the world to simply remove one woman who has been raped and murdered, as this amount would be too small in comparison to the rest of the world's evils to take away from God's purposes for evil as put forward by Augustine.
In response, van Inwagen argues that there is no non-arbitrary amount of evil necessary for God to fulfil his plan, and he does this by employing a formulation of the Sorites paradox. He argues that there is no smallest amount of evil necessary for God's plan to be fulfilled, and thus that God chose an arbitrary amount of evil for this world that would fulfil his purposes, such as showing the world that there are great amounts of evil and that these cannot be prevented. However, van Inwagen notes that even if readers disagree with him and do believe that there is a minimum amount necessary, his response can be easily reformulated to accommodate for them: theists can simply say that God did choose the minimum amount, and thus that there is no gratuitous evil, as every evil has a purpose in God's plan for the world. He notes that this response would be especially open to Molinists – indeed, many Molinists, such as William Lane Craig, have chosen to answer in this way as a result.
## Criticism
### Fortunatus
Augustine's Acts or Disputation Against Fortunatus the Manichaean, which partly touches on the problem of evil, records a public debate between Augustine and the Manichaean teacher Fortunatus. Fortunatus criticised Augustine's theodicy by proposing that if God gave free will to the human soul, then he must be implicated in human sin (a problem that Augustine had himself considered four years earlier, in Free Will). Quoting the New Testament, Fortunatus proposed that evil exists beyond the evil acts people commit, and that people commit such acts because of their own flawed nature. Augustine replied by arguing that the sin of Adam constrained human freedom, in a way similar to the formation of habits. This was not a teaching on original sin (a view that Augustine was yet to formulate), but on the limitations of human freedom caused by sin. Fortunatus proposed that Augustine was reducing the scope of evil only to what is committed by humans, though Augustine writes that Fortunatus finally conceded the debate when he admitted that he could not defend his views on the origin of evil.
### Buddhism
The scholars of religion Paul Ingram and Frederick Streng argued that the teachings of Buddhism challenge Augustine's view of good and evil, proposing a dualism in which good and evil have equal value instead of casting good over evil, as Augustine did. This is similar to the Manichean account of good and evil – that the two are equal and in conflict – though Buddhism teaches that the two will come to a final conclusion and transcend the conflict. Ingram and Streng argued that the Augustinian theodicy fails to account for the existence of evil before Adam's sin, which Genesis presents in the form of the serpent's temptation.
### Francesco Antonio Zaccaria
The Italian theologian Francesco Antonio Zaccaria criticised Augustine's concept of evil in the eighteenth century. He noted a distinction between using the term evil to imply blame (sin) and to imply lament (suffering) and argued that Augustine posited sin to have occurred before suffering. This was problematic for Zaccaria, who believed that it made Augustine seem offhand and uninterested in human suffering. For Zaccaria, Augustine's perception of evil as a privation did not satisfactorily answer the questions of modern society as to why suffering exists.
### John Hick
John Hick criticised the Augustinian theodicy when he developed his own theodicy in 1966. Hick supported the views of the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, which he classified as Irenaean, who argued that the world is perfectly suited for the moral development of humans and that this justifies the existence of evil. He insisted that, while the Augustinian theodicy attempted to justify historical occurrences of evil, the Irenaean theodicy seeks to justify God eternally. Hick saw Augustine's view that a perfect world went wrong as incoherent and contradictory, and argued that, if humans were made perfectly good, then it should have been impossible for them to have made an immoral choice. He questioned the success of the theodicy with the charge that it does not remove the blame for evil from God: Augustine presented a theology of predestination; Hick argued that, if God knew the choices that his creation would make, he must be responsible for them. Hick's theodicy rejected the idea of the inheritance of sinfulness, and he believed that an eternal hell would render "a Christian theodicy impossible". The Irenaean theodicy does not, as the Augustinian theodicy does, attempt to protect God from being responsible for evil; rather, it argues that God is responsible but justified for it because of the benefits it has for human development. Both theodicies stress the perfection of God's creation, but differ in why the world is seen as perfect. Augustine also believed, as Hick did, that bringing good out of evil is preferable to the evil not occurring in the first place.
### Process theology
In God, Power and Evil: A Process Theodicy, published in 1976, David Ray Griffin criticised Augustine's reliance on free will and argued that it is incompatible with divine omniscience and omnipotence. Griffin argued in later works that humans cannot have free will if God is omniscient. He contended that, if God is truly omniscient, then he will know infallibly what people will do, meaning that they cannot be free. Griffin argued that the human will could not oppose God's will, if God is omnipotent. He proposed that original sin as Augustine conceived it must itself be caused by God, rendering any punishment he wills unjust.
Process theology argues that God is not omnipotent: rather than coercion, he has the power of divine persuasion, but he cannot force his will. Griffin, a prominent process theologian, argues that God feels the pain of the world (both physically and emotionally) and does everything within his power to achieve good, but he can neither force beings to be good nor prevent evil because he does not play a coercive role in the world. Process theology teaches that, rather than creating the world ex nihilo (as Augustine proposed), God created it out of a pre-existent chaos.
### Alvin Plantinga
In the 1970s, Alvin Plantinga presented a version of the free will defence which, he argued, demonstrated that the existence of an omnipotent benevolent God and of evil are not inconsistent. He believed that, unless it could be shown that the two are not inconsistent, they would be necessarily contradictory. To do this, Plantinga believed that a "possible state of affairs" must be proposed which, if actual, would make God's existence and the existence of evil consistent. He argued that a third proposition – that evil is the result of the actions of free, rational, fallible human beings – allows the existence of God and evil to be consistent. Plantinga supported this argument by claiming that there are some things that an omnipotent God could not do, yet remain omnipotent – for example, if an omnipotent God has necessary existence, he could not create a world in which he does not exist. For this reason, Plantinga argued that an omnipotent God could not create any universe that he chooses, as Leibniz had proposed. He suggested that, even in a world where humans have free will, their actions may be so predictable that God could not create a world where they would do something unpredictable. Finally, he argued that if every moral agent freely makes at least one bad moral decision in any possible universe, God cannot create a universe where there is human freedom and no evil. Plantinga maintained that the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent God and the existence of evil are not inconsistent.
Plantinga's version of the defence embraces Augustine's view of free will, but not his natural theology. Rather than attempt to show the existence of God as likely in the face of evil, as a theodicy does, Plantinga's free will defence attempts to show that belief in God is still logically possible, despite the existence of evil. The theologian Alister McGrath has noted that, because Plantinga only argued that the coexistence of God and evil are logically possible, he did not present a theodicy, but a defence. Plantinga did not attempt to demonstrate that his proposition is true or plausible, just that it is logically possible.
### Compatibility with evolution
John Hick criticised Augustine's theory for being implausible in light of scientific insights on evolution, as it would make Augustine's idea of a fall from perfection inaccurate; this is reiterated by Nancey Murphy and George F. R. Ellis, who also contend that Augustine's idea of transmitting original sin from Adam to the rest of humanity requires biological explanation. The comparative religionist Arvind Sharma has argued that natural evil cannot be the result of moral evil in the way Augustine suggested: scientific consensus is that natural disasters and disease existed before humans and hence cannot be the result of human sin.
The twentieth-century philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr attempted to reinterpret the Augustinian theodicy in the light of evolutionary science by presenting its underlying argument without mythology. Niebuhr proposed that Augustine rejected the Manichean view that grants evil ontological existence and ties humans' sin to their created state. Augustine's argument continued, according to Niebuhr, by proposing that humans have a tendency to sin because of a biologically inherited nature and rejected the Pelagian view that human will could overcome sin on its own. Niebuhr believed Augustine's argument placed sin in the human will, which was corrupted by Adam's original sin. He argued that the logic behind Augustine's theodicy described sin as inevitable but unnecessary, which he believed captured the argument without relying on a literal interpretation of the fall, thus avoiding critique from scientific positions.
## See also
- Theodicy and the Bible
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Berlin-to-Kitchener name change
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1916 name change of city in Ontario, Canada
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[
"1916 in Ontario",
"1916 in international relations",
"1916 referendums",
"20th century in Kitchener",
"Anti-German sentiment in North America",
"Canadian home front during World War I",
"City name changes",
"German-Canadian culture in Ontario",
"History of Kitchener, Ontario",
"Multiple-choice referendums",
"Names of places in Canada",
"Referendums in Ontario"
] |
The city of Berlin, Ontario, changed its name to Kitchener by referendum in May and June 1916. Named in 1833 after the capital of Prussia and later the German Empire, the name Berlin became unsavoury for residents after Britain and Canada's entry into the First World War.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, most residents of Berlin and neighbouring Waterloo were of German origin. The towns and their citizens lived peacefully and enjoyed a unique blend of German and British culture. Following Britain and Canada's entry into war against Germany in August 1914, German Canadians experienced increasing anti-German sentiment. In early 1916, business and community leaders began pushing for Berlin to either seek a new name or amalgamate with Waterloo. Rising tension in the community culminated in soldiers of the local 118th Battalion ransacking German social clubs and attacking an outspoken German Lutheran preacher.
In a vote characterized by intimidation, the 19 May 1916 referendum on whether to change the city name decided "yes" by a slim margin. A vote held the following month to determine a replacement name saw lower voter turnout. The vote settled on Kitchener, named for the recently deceased British Army officer Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Kitchener prevailed in a tight race over the only serious competitor, Brock—for Isaac Brock, a British-Canadian military leader in the War of 1812. The city officially changed names on 1 September 1916.
Towns across the English-speaking world retreated from their German culture during the First World War, with similar cases seen in the United States and Australia. The Berlin–Kitchener change distinguished itself by the levels of violence and protest. The name change failed to assuage outside suspicion of the city and its German population, propelled partly by opponents unsuccessfully petitioning the Ontario Government to stop the change from proceeding as well as the election of an anti-conscription candidate in Waterloo North in the 1917 federal election. After the war, the city experienced a decline in its German culture with German Canadians being culturally assimilated into the broader Canadian identity.
## Background
### A German and British town
Originally known as Eby's Town, Ebytown, Ben Eby's or Sandhills by the first Pennsylvania Mennonites to settle in the area, an influx of European German-speaking immigrants beginning in the 1820s pushed local community leaders Benjamin Eby and Joseph Schneider to change the Upper Canadian hamlet’s name to Berlin in 1833. In the 1870s, most residents of Berlin and neighbouring Waterloo, Ontario, were of German origin, comprising 73 and 80 per cent of each population, respectively. Many Germans immigrated to Canada to escape the conflicts of Europe and were inclusive of the town's Anglo-Saxon population. Most immigrants arrived before the Völkisch movement spawned in the late 19th century, resulting in a German community less concerned with German nationalism than those who immigrated to western Canada after the 1870s. Historians John English and Kenneth McLaughlin write that the common background of both employers and employees in Berlin allowed for a softening of racial and social animosity.
Berliners displayed a simultaneous loyalty to both the British Empire and to their German heritage. Germans pointed to the relationship between the British and German royal families, such as the marriage of the English Queen Victoria to the German Prince Albert, as a source of pride. In May 1871, the towns held a joint German heritage celebration, attracting around 12,000 participants. The Friedensfest, or "Peace Festival", marked the end of the Franco-Prussian War, resulting in the unification of Germany. The strength of the British-German relationship was such that the German festival closed with "God Save the Queen". Historian Geoffrey Hayes writes that the festival – and subsequent Sängerfeste, or song festivals – served as a way for German-speaking residents to develop their German-Canadian identity in a way acceptable to other Canadians. The nine Sängerfeste held from 1874 to 1912 in Berlin and Waterloo generated positive national press coverage and large crowds of visitors.
Berlin residents often displayed both the Union Jack and the German flag next to one another. Visiting royalty and politicians – including the Governor General, the Marquis of Lorne; Princess Louise; the Duke of Connaught; and the former Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia – praised the bonds displayed between the British and German populations of Berlin and Waterloo. Based on a model by sculptor Reinhold Begas, the community leaders George Rumpel and John Motz dedicated a bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I in Victoria Park in August 1897. Residents saw the bust as symbolically representing the bond between Germany and Britain. Government support for the project was strong, Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier ensuring the bust entered Canada duty-free. By the early 20th century, few residents considered themselves wholly German, instead identifying as German-Canadian. The 1911 census listed 76 per cent of people in the community as being of German origin, most of whom had never been to Germany. Among Waterloo's residents, 90 per cent were born in Canada. Berliners avidly embraced their German heritage, with celebrations commemorating the birthdays of Otto von Bismarck and the Kaiser typical. In February 1914, while celebrating Kaiser Wilhelm II's 55th birthday, W. H. Schmalz addressed Waterloo's Concordia Club:
> We Germans, even if we are also Canadians, remember this occasion from year to year in order to demonstrate our love and respect for a monarch of whom the world may be proud. We are British subjects ... but while we proclaim this truth, I might add, to ourselves, we are also prepared to continue to cultivate our beautiful German customs.
### World War I
#### Outbreak
Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914. As a Dominion of the British Empire, Canada automatically entered the war following Britain's declaration. On 12 August, the Berliner Journal, a local German-language weekly, implored Germans in Ontario: "Don't allow yourselves to be driven to demonstrations of any kind, avoid arguments ... Be silent, bear this difficult time with dignity, and show that you are true Germans grateful to the country that accommodated you." British policy allowed Germans across the Dominion four days to leave, while the German government encouraged the German diaspora to return. The 1911 census counted 393,320 people of German origin living across Canada. Because the war was being fought in Europe, Berlin residents expected the fighting to have little direct impact on their lives. German social clubs continued to meet and found their proceedings unaffected. Ministers holding religious services in German declared their loyalty to the Canadian war effort.
Three weeks after Canada's entry into the war, vandals toppled Victoria Park's bust of Kaiser Wilhelm and threw it into the park's lake. Residents retrieved the bust and apprehended the three youths responsible. In the months following the outbreak of the war, Berlin's Board of Education voted to end the use of German in schools. Respected Berlin citizens, including businessman and politician Louis Jacob Breithaupt, held public meetings opposed to the decision. In his reply to the speech from the throne on 19 August 1914, Conservative MP Donald Sutherland expressed sympathy to the German people for "the dangers brought upon them by their ruling classes, by their oligarchic, insane, military government." The same day, Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden stated that people born in Germany and Austria-Hungary and who came to Canada "as adopted citizens of this country, whether they are naturalized or not, are entitled to the protection of the law in Canada and shall receive it", adding that an exception would be made for those aiding and abetting the enemy.
In early 1915, Waterloo North MP William George Weichel expressed in Canada's House of Commons that German-speaking Canadians could be proud of their cultural heritage while remaining loyal to the Canadian war effort. The year before, Waterloo and Berlin, measured on a per capita basis, were first and second in Canada, respectively, in individual contributions to the Canadian Patriotic Fund. Of the 60 members of Waterloo's German social club, the Acadian Club, half enlisted in Canada's armed forces. The club hosted events supporting the Canadian Red Cross and the Patriotic Fund. Local Professor F. V. Riecthdorf proclaimed, "I am a native German and former soldier ... My loyalty is to the British flag ... let our response to the Empire be immediate and sufficient!" Trying to lessen signs of disloyalty, in May 1915 the Berlin City Council asked for the appointment of a local Registrar of Enemy Aliens, though this request was denied after being deemed unnecessary.
#### Increasing anti-German sentiment
The war led to condemnation of the German tradition in Canada and rising anti-German sentiments. Actions by the German Empire contributed to anti-German feelings, including the violation of Belgium's neutrality, their use of poison gas, the execution of Edith Cavell, the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, and an apocryphal story of German troops crucifying a Canadian soldier. In a 1 March 1916 letter to the Berlin News Record, the chair of the North Waterloo recruiting committee stated: "The fact remains that Berlin was named after the capital of Prussia and is to-day the capital of the German Empire, whence have emanated the most diabolical crimes and atrocities that have marred the pages of history." A fire at Parliament Hill in February 1916 was falsely assumed to have been set by German arsonists. Although many accounts of wartime atrocities were later shown to be fabrications and British propaganda, most Canadian citizens took them to be true.
The use of the German language or the display of German flags became seen as signs of Canadian disloyalty. Young men, many of them German, were harassed in the street if they had not signed up for military service. Newspapers in Toronto like The Globe and Toronto News made frequent attacks on German-Canadians. A Globe editorial warned that Berliners should be kept under observation, warning of espionage. To guard against the perceived threat of sabotage and attacks by German-Canadians, 16,000 Canadian soldiers were stationed in Canada; between October 1915 and September 1916, 50,000 Canadian Expeditionary Force volunteers were kept home to protect against any eventualities. Beginning in 1914, those Germans deemed a threat to national security were interned; the Canadian government held discretionary power to intern any civilian they considered either an "agent" or of potential service to an enemy power. In 1916, roughly 2,000 Germans were interned across Canada, totalling 2,009 by war's end. Though none were interned or jailed in Ontario, Germans across the province experienced a curtailing of their rights and freedoms. In a February 1916 diary entry, L. J. Breithaupt lamented, "Public sentiment in Canada is very anti-German & so to some extent against anything connected with or reminding one of Germany." Canadian military leaders also espoused anti-German sentiments. In an April 1916 letter to the Berlin News Record, Sergeant-Major Granville Blood warned Berliners: "Be British. Do your duty or be despised ... Be British or be dead." In a printed address to Canada, Lieutenant Stanley Nelson Dacey wrote:
> You have creatures in your midst who say success to the Kaiser, and to hell with the King; all I can say is, round up this element into the detention camps, for they are unworthy of British citizenship and should be placed where they belong ... the showing that the physically fit young men of North Waterloo have made is so rotten that I have heard an outside businessman say to a traveller from a Berlin wholesale house, "I'll not buy another damned article manufactured in that German town. So you think I'm going to give money to support a pack of Germans? If I did, I'd be as bad as they."
In January 1916, members of the local 118th Battalion campaigned for new recruits but – like most battalions in Canada – found little success. Recruiters resorted to harassing men in the streets who had not signed up for service and forcing them into the recruiting office. Berlin's local police force found it difficult to control the battalion. When Constable Blevins, a Berlin police officer, attempted to arrest soldier Joseph Meinzinger for harassing citizens, Meinzinger broke Blevins' jaw. On 15 February, a group of Canadian soldiers from the Battalion broke into the Concordia Club, stole memorabilia and destroyed the interior. An inquiry from Camp Borden led to no charges and instead justified the raid.
In early 1916, Canada's Militia Minister, Sam Hughes, made a speech in the House of Commons attacking the Reverend C. R. Tappert, a Berlin Lutheran minister. Tappert became a controversial figure locally for several actions, including his continued use of German in religious services, telling his children to avoid saluting the Union Jack and to not sing "God Save the King", his refusal to contribute to the Patriotic Fund and his public doubting of anti-German propaganda. In an early 1915 letter to the Berlin News Record, he wrote that while he was loyal to Canada his heart remained German. Hughes accused Tappert of being a "[semi-apologist] for German atrocities and Kaiserism." Tappert ignored threats to leave the country by 1 March; on 4 or 5 March a group of 60 soldiers broke into Tappert's parsonage and seized him. A witness recalled: "Within minutes, Tappert was being dragged behind horses through the streets, his face bloodied, his body twisting as he fell into unconsciousness while the pavement scraped off his flesh." Magistrate John J. A. Weir warned the two soldiers responsible – Private Schaefer and Sergeant-Major Granville Blood – that he remembered Schaefer being connected to the throwing of the Kaiser Wilhelm bust in the Victoria Park lake in 1914 and he knew Blood had further plans to attack other citizens. Both received suspended sentences of \$100 fines () and/or six months in prison for the assault. Hughes blamed Tappert for instigating them with his anti-British sentiments. Tappert and his family left Berlin on 8 March.
## Organization of the referendum
The first suggestion of a name change appeared in a letter to the Berlin News Record on 4 February 1916. The author, identified only as "A Ratepayer", suggested the Berlin City Council adopt a resolution changing the name of the city. The initial impetus for changing the city name was borne out of monetary rather than patriotic interests. The start of war brought many contracts to the city's manufacturers, but business leaders worried the "made in Berlin" label on their products would hurt sales. On 8 February 1916, the Berlin Board of Trade proposed changing the city's name, hoping that doing so would serve to indicate the city's patriotism to the rest of the Dominion and thereby help local business. On 11 February, the Berlin City Council resolved:
> Whereas it would appear that a strong prejudice has been created throughout the British Empire against the name "Berlin" and all that the name implies,And whereas, the citizens of this City full appreciate that this prejudice is but natural, it being absolutely impossible for any loyal citizen to consider it complimentary to be longer called after the Capital of Prussia,Be it therefore and it is hereby resolved that the City Council be petitioned to take the necessary steps to have the name "Berlin" changed to some other name more in keeping with our National sentiment.
Most at the meeting endorsed the resolution with only one member voting against it. L. J. Breithaupt attended the meeting and spoke against the resolution, arguing that any name change would have no effect on British victory in the war and that any proposal of changing the city name should instead be put to a popular vote. In his diary he called the event, "an epoch making meeting". On 21 February, organizers of the resolution brought a petition with 1,080 signatures to the city council calling for the name change. City council voted in favour of petitioning Ontario's Legislative Assembly to have the city's name changed and to possibly amalgamate with Waterloo. Businessmen and community leaders wrote letters to the Berlin News Record arguing for and against the name change. Many arguments turned toward ad hominem. At an early March meeting manufacturers and businessmen pushed for the name change. Those opposing the change were threatened with boycotts. The city council offered a reward for the most suitable replacement name and received thousands of suggestions by the end of March. On 4 April, Berlin's delegation appeared before the Ontario's Legislative Assembly's Private Bills Committee. The committee voted to not report the bill to the Legislature out of fears that violence would break-out in Berlin as a result. Returning to Berlin unsuccessful, the delegation formed a British League "to promote British Sentiments in the community". On 14 April, the league passed their own resolution imploring the city council to protest their treatment at Ontario's Legislative Assembly. The council passed the resolution, including in it an amendment that allowed them to hold a referendum over the issue. During a 24 April meeting, the council voted to hold a referendum on 19 May.
Most Berliners expressed little interest in the campaign but those who did found it intense. Archivist Barbara Wilson states: "Many Berliners, including Mayor J. E. Hett, saw no real purpose in changing Berlin's name, but to oppose the change-the-name movement actively in February [1916] would have led to more charges of disloyalty and pro-Germanism." The Berlin Telegraph supported the name change while the Berlin News Record opposed. Both papers ran pieces and advertisements arguing their positions. Tensions continued to rise, culminating on 5 May when 30 soldiers entered and ransacked the Acadian Club in Waterloo. Canada's Minister of Justice, Charles Doherty, refused to reimburse the club for the damages, explaining that doing so would engender further racial disharmony. William Breithaupt, head of Berlin's library board and the president of the Waterloo Historical Society, was outspoken in his opposition to the name change. Throughout the campaign he received threatening letters and found the phone lines to his house cut.
## Voting and results
### May 1916 referendum
On 19 May 1916, the referendum was held in Berlin asking voters: "Are you in favour of changing the name of this city?" Historian Adam Crerar writes that much of the voting was characterized by intimidation. Soldiers of the 118th kept potential name change opponents away from the polls, while name change proponents challenged unnaturalized citizens. Many of those disenfranchised had voted in previous elections and had sent sons to fight for Canada in the war.
Of 3,057 votes cast, "yes" won by 81 votes. English & McLaughlin write that women and soldiers were generally "yes" voters, while the working class and residents of the especially German North Ward generally voted "no". The result of the vote prompted supporters to celebrate in the streets. A report in the Berlin News Record recounted fireworks being set off into the air and the sidewalks, ultimately injuring many celebrants. Alderman J. A. Hallman sent a telegram to King George V informing him, "The loyal citizens of Berlin Canada rejoice to inform Your Majesty that they have this day cast off forever the name of the Prussian capital." The Duke of Connaught informed Hallman on 23 May that the King had received his telegram. A regimental band and crowd walked through Berlin and gathered in front of August Lang's home, a major opponent of the name change. Lang confronted the crowd and an altercation ensued. Colonel Lochead of the 118th Battalion found no fault on the part of his soldiers. On 22 May, a week after the initial referendum, the 707 soldiers in the 118th Battalion left for London, Ontario, to continue training, alleviating much on the tension in the community.
### June 1916 name selection
A civic committee of 99 members was assembled to produce name recommendations. The committee narrowed thousands of suggestions to a shortlist of Huronto, Bercana, Dunard, Hydro City, Renoma and Agnoleo. A report in the Berlin News Record wrote that the names became "the joke of the country". On 1 June, the Berlin City Council thanked the committee and decided to assemble its own list, offering cash prizes for winning suggestions. On 5 June, Britain's Secretary of State for War, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, drowned aboard HMS Hampshire after it struck a mine while en route to Russia. News of his drowning was widely reported the following day. The Berlin News Record published a letter in its 7 June edition from local resident Elsie Master, who suggested "Kitchener" as a better alternative to "Berlin", writing it would evoke "splendid patriotism, tremendous energy, great attainments, and a sense of unswerving honour and rectitude". The city council added Kitchener to their revised shortlist of names, the name being particularly popular among local businessmen, though some felt it to be in poor taste. An editorial in Stratford, Ontario's Herald complained: "No name of a martyr of this war should be allowed to be appropriated where the motive is largely commercial."
The final choices for the vote were narrowed to Brock, Kitchener, Corona, Adanac, Keowana and Benton. Some residents suggested that Berlin be renamed Waterloo and the cities merge. A resolution pushing for this failed in Berlin's City Council on 20 June. From 24 to 28 June 1916, between 9:00 am and 9:00 pm each day, a second vote was held to determine a new city name. Turnout was low, with only 892 votes cast out of a possible 4,897. Of those, 163 spoiled their ballots, many crossing out all the options and writing in either Berlin or Waterloo. Kitchener won with 346 votes, besting Brock by eleven votes.
## Reaction and aftermath
### Immediate
Wilson writes that the reaction to the June vote result was "dead silence". Regarding the low voter turnout, the Berlin News Record commented: "The outstanding feature was the absolute indifference displayed by the ratepayers." On 4 July 1916, the Berlin City Council approved the vote, setting 1 September 1916 as when the city would officially become Kitchener. On 11 July, the city council endorsed a petition by the newly formed Citizens' League, garnering 2,068 signatures opposing the name change. A delegation took the petition on to Ontario's Legislative Assembly. The provincial government refused to stop the change seeing the vote as having been entirely orderly. On 23 August, the Ontario government passed an order recognizing the change as coming into effect on 1 September.
On 1 September 1916, Berlin officially became Kitchener. English & McLaughlin write that Berlin's name change failed to quell outside suspicions about the loyalty of the German population. Those who opposed the name change were harassed for their defiance. Letter writers continued to address their mail to Berlin, forcing the Post Office to issue memoranda, while municipalities in Ontario petitioned the government to force those who refused to reference the city as Kitchener. In the lead-up to Kitchener's 1 January 1917 municipal election, members of the British League sought to expel "aliens" off the voters' list. Every candidate elected to the city council had previously been against the name change. When the results were announced, the British League, citizens and soldiers of the 118th Battalion gathered outside the Berlin News Record office, as well as mayor-elect David Gross's home and button factory. Soldiers smashed windows and destroyed the interiors of both buildings. In an effort to defuse tensions, Gross pledged in his inaugural address that he would not try to change Kitchener's name back to Berlin.
The last major attempt to change the name of Kitchener back to Berlin came during a 2 December 1919 city council meeting. A finance committee report recommended another vote be held regarding the city's name. A crowd of 500, mostly members of the Great War Veterans' Association, made their way into the council room to show their opposition to the resolution. The council voted the resolution down but protestors assaulted two aldermen who abstained from the vote, forcing them to kiss the Union Jack and throwing one in the Victoria Park lake.
### 1917 federal election
On 24 November 1917, Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden visited Kitchener to generate support for his Military Service Act and to campaign for his Unionist Party in the upcoming federal election. Two months earlier, his government passed the Wartime Elections Act which, among other things, disenfranchised voters expected to be opposed to conscription. The disenfranchisement included Germans who received their citizenship after 31 March 1902. At the November event, a group of disgruntled citizens heckled Borden. The incident received national press coverage, with local manufacturers and businessmen urging Kitchener City Council to apologize to the prime minister to prevent further lost business. The city council refused to apologize by a vote of seven to five. Newspapers in other Ontario cities – including Kingston, Guelph and Brantford – pointed to the refusal as evidence that, though Kitchener had changed its name, the residents remained loyal to Germany over Canada. In his memoirs, Borden reflected that for the rest of Canada, "the Kitchener incident was much more effective than any speech I could have delivered." Following the refusal, the Board of Trade and the Kitchener Manufacturers' Association protested the action by organizing a factory shutdown scheduled for 3 December. On the day of the protest, city council voted to apologize to stop a prolonged shutdown.
During the election campaign, newspapers across Ontario generally sided with the Union government and their pro-conscription stance. Kitchener and Waterloo were similar, where in the final three and a half weeks of the election campaign the Berlin News Record and the Berlin Telegraph did not publish or report on any campaign material from the Liberals, forcing Liberal challenger William Daum Euler to print his own paper, the Voice of the People. Union campaign posters argued, "Who would the Kaiser vote for?" In the vote, the incumbent Unionist Weichel lost his Waterloo North seat to Euler, a major opponent of conscription. Carried by the German vote, Euler won by a twenty-point margin, the largest majority of any of Ontario's Liberals. Illustrating the divide, he took 63.1 per cent of the civilian vote but only 4.6 per cent of the soldier vote. The defeated Weichel lamented, "you cannot beat the Kaiser in North Waterloo." German animus for the Union Government and the Conservative Party persisted for generations, while Euler's win reinforced outside perceptions that the residents of Kitchener and Waterloo remained loyal to Germany despite the name change.
### Long-term
Historian David Blackbourn describes the First World War as a caesura for people of German descent in the Anglo-Saxon world, marking a general decline in German culture. "When the heavily German city of Berlin, Ontario became Kitchener, and Berlin, Iowa became Lincoln, these were instances of something repeated thousands of times across the German-speaking parts of the English speaking world. Little Germanys retreated sharply." The levels of public unrest displayed during the Berlin-Kitchener name change distinguishes it from other contemporary name change examples. Geographers Chris Post and Derek Alderman see the changing of German place names during and after the war in the US, Canada and Australia as examples of "the political semiotic process of 'toponymic cleansing'." The Canadian Government passed an Order in Council on 26 September 1918 requiring all Canadian newspapers in "languages of the enemy" to be published in either English or French. Ontario's last German-language newspaper, the Berliner Journal, ran its last German issue on 2 October and its final issue in December.
Anti-German sentiments persisted in the immediate aftermath of the war. Many German-Canadians anglicized their names – changing Braun to Brown and Schmidt to Smith, for example – and instead referred to their heritage as Dutch or Austrian. A 1919 Order in Council forbade German immigrants to enter Canada, a restriction held in place until 1923. In the decades that followed, the German population of Kitchener decreased continuously. The 1911 census listed 76 per cent of people in the community as being of German origin, dropping to 55.6 and 53 per cent in 1921 and 1931 censuses, respectively. Though the city had attracted large numbers of German immigrants in the previous century, when the restrictions on immigration were lifted in 1923 most newcomers instead settled in western Canada where resource industries were plentiful and land was inexpensive.
In the early 1930s, Kitchener and Waterloo largely rejected local fascist movements inspired by Germany's rising Nazi Party. When Canada and Britain again found themselves at war against Germany during the Second World War, community leaders were sensitive to charges of disloyalty and acted quickly to assuage outside doubts; the Concordia Club and other German social clubs shut down in August 1939. Kitchener experienced little of the anti-German sentiment seen during the First World War. During the war, seven Kitchener residents were interned as enemy aliens. This was a lower number than that of surrounding communities, a fact the Daily Record reported proudly. Historian William Campbell credits the lack of anti-German sentiment to a broadening of the Canadian identity following the First World War, extending beyond the dominant English and French cultures. English & McLaughlin point to the automobile and new forms of mass media – such as movies, the radio and magazines – as expanding culture in Kitchener and bringing it more in alignment with Canada and North America as a whole. Most scholars agree that in the decades following the war Germans in Canada were assimilated.
Through the second half of the 20th century, Greeks, Portuguese, Indian, West Indian and Chinese ethnic groups dominated immigration to the community, 25 per cent of residents considering themselves of German origin in the 2001 census. In the aftermath of the First World War, the community shifted to emphasizing the Pennsylvania Dutch and Mennonite communities that first settled in the area, illustrated in Mabel Dunham's 1924 work of historical fiction, The Trail of the Conestoga, and in the 1926 dedication of the Waterloo Pioneer Memorial Tower. Overt celebrations of the city's European German tradition returned in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the Kitchener–Waterloo Oktoberfest attracts hundreds of thousands of participants annually, making it the largest Oktoberfest celebrated in North America, though English & McLaughlin comment the event is more a celebration of drinking than of German culture. In 1992, author William Chadwick examined the name change in a work of popular history, published as The Battle for Berlin, Ontario: An Historical Drama. He produced a play from the book, The Berlin Show, staged for Waterloo audiences in the summer of 1994. In the 21st century, Horatio Herbert Kitchener's role in establishing concentration camps during the Second Boer War has made his legacy unsavoury to some Kitchener residents. In 2020, a 380-signature petition calling for another name change prompted the Kitchener City Council to respond: "While we in no way condone, diminish or forget his actions ... Kitchener has become so much more than its historic connection to a British field marshal."
## See also
- List of Australian place names changed from German names
- Swastika, Ontario
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South China Sea raid
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World War II raid by the US
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[
"1945 in Asia",
"History of the South China Sea",
"January 1945 events in Asia",
"Naval aviation operations and battles",
"Naval battles of World War II involving Japan",
"Naval battles of World War II involving the United States",
"Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II",
"Philippines in World War II",
"World War II raids"
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The South China Sea raid (designated Operation Gratitude) was an operation conducted by the United States Third Fleet between 10 and 20 January 1945 during the Pacific War of World War II. The raid was undertaken to support the liberation of Luzon in the Philippines, and targeted Japanese warships, supply convoys and aircraft in the region.
After attacking airfields and shipping at Formosa and Luzon, the Third Fleet entered the South China Sea during the night of 9–10 January. Aircraft flying from its aircraft carriers attacked Japanese shipping off French Indochina on 12 January, sinking 44 vessels. The fleet then sailed north and attacked Formosa again on 15 January. Further raids were conducted against Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan the next day. The Third Fleet departed the South China Sea on 20 January and, after making further attacks on Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands, returned to its base on 25 January.
The Third Fleet's operations in the South China Sea were highly successful. It destroyed many Japanese ships and aircraft, while losing relatively few of its own aircraft. Historians have judged the destruction of cargo vessels and oil tankers to have been the most important result of the raid, as these losses contributed to closing a supply route which was vital to the Japanese war effort. Subsequent attacks by Allied aircraft and warships forced the Japanese to cease sending ships into the South China Sea after March 1945.
## Background
During 1941 and the first months of 1942, Japan conquered or established de facto rule over almost the entire South China Sea region. Control of the sea was vital to the Japanese economy and war effort, as it was the conduit through which essential supplies of oil and other natural resources passed from occupied Malaya, Borneo and the Dutch East Indies. The situation in French Indochina was particularly complex. After a short military confrontation in September 1940 the colonial government, which was loyal to the Vichy French collaborationist regime, permitted the Japanese to use ports and airfields in northern Indochina. In July 1941 the Japanese occupied southern Indochina and established airfields as well as an important naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. The French authorities remained in place as a puppet government. After the liberation of France in 1944, the colonial government sought to make contact with the new Free French government in Paris, and began preparations to stage an uprising against the Japanese. The Japanese also developed plans in 1944 to forcibly disarm the French forces and formally take over Indochina, and their intelligence services rapidly learned of the French authorities' intentions.
As the war turned against Japan, convoys of ships passing through the South China Sea frequently came under attack from Allied submarines and – by late 1944 – aircraft. These attacks were guided by information gained from signals intelligence and long-range air patrols, supplemented by reports from coast watchers along the Chinese coast and other observers in Asian ports. The United States Army Air Forces' (USAAF) Fourteenth Air Force, which was stationed in China, regularly attacked Japanese shipping in the South China Sea area. The command also made periodic attacks on Japanese-held ports in southern China and military installations in Indochina. The Allied clandestine services undertook few activities in Indochina until the second quarter of 1945.
While losses of oil tankers and freighters were increasingly heavy, the Japanese Government continued to order ships to make the voyage through the South China Sea. In an attempt to limit losses, convoys and individual ships took routes well away from the established sea lanes, or sailed close to the shore and operated only at night.
The United States began the liberation of the Philippines on 25 October 1944, with a landing at Leyte island in the central Philippines. After a base was established at Leyte, American forces landed at Mindoro island on 13 December. This operation was conducted to secure airfields that could be used to attack Japanese shipping in the South China Sea and support the largest element of the liberation of the Philippines, a landing at Lingayen Gulf in north-western Luzon that was scheduled for 9 January 1945. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) suffered heavy losses in its attempt to attack the Allied fleet during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 which, when combined with the losses during the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, left it unable to conduct further major battles. However, it remained capable of raiding Allied positions.
During late 1944 Admiral William Halsey Jr., the commander of the United States Third Fleet, sought to conduct a raid into the South China Sea and led the development of plans for such an operation. On 21 November he asked Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the head of the United States Pacific Fleet, for permission to begin the attack but was turned down.
## Preparations
In December 1944 the United States Navy's high command became concerned that the IJN would attempt to cut the supply line to the planned beachhead at Lingayen Gulf. On 26 December a Japanese naval force operating from Cam Ranh Bay shelled the Allied beachhead at Mindoro, but inflicted no damage. One of the Japanese destroyers involved in this operation was sunk, and all of the remaining ships were damaged by Allied air and naval attacks before returning to Cam Ranh Bay.
As further Japanese raids were expected, senior US Navy officers believed that it was necessary to destroy the IJN's remaining mobile forces, which were thought to be split between Cam Ranh Bay and the Inland Sea in Japan. At this time the Inland Sea was beyond the range of the USAAF's heavy bombers, meaning that an attack into the South China Sea was the only viable option for striking the IJN. The US Navy's intelligence service believed that the Japanese force based at Cam Ranh Bay was built around the two Ise-class battleships. Halsey and Nimitz discussed the proposed South China Sea raid during a meeting held around Christmas 1944 at the US Navy anchorage which had been established at Ulithi atoll in the Caroline Islands. On 28 December Nimitz gave Halsey permission to launch the attack once his fleet was no longer needed to directly support the Lingayen Gulf landings and "if major Japanese fleet units were sighted" in the area. Halsey issued the pre-prepared plans for the operation to his subordinates the same day. Its goals were to attack the Japanese fleet and shipping. In addition, the Americans believed that the presence of a powerful force in the South China Sea would discourage any further IJN operations in the area. While the Fourteenth Air Force was directed to attack Japanese shipping and airfields at Hong Kong in support of the invasion of Luzon, it was not informed of the plans for the Third Fleet to enter the South China Sea. The Fourteenth Air Force was also not briefed on the Fleet's operations during the South China Sea raid, and no attempts were made to coordinate the two forces' activities during this period.
The plans for the raid specified that the Third Fleet would enter the South China Sea via the Luzon Strait before proceeding south-west. The fleet's aircraft carriers would attack Japanese positions on Formosa, and provide support for the landings at Lingayen Gulf on 9 January. Three submarines from the Seventh Fleet were to take up station in the South China Sea to rescue the aircrew of any American aircraft which were forced to ditch. This plan would require the Third Fleet to operate near many Japanese airfields from which attacks could be mounted against the ships. Allied intelligence estimated that about 300 aircraft were usually stationed at Formosa; around 500 were in southern China and northern Indochina, a further 170 in southern Indochina, Burma and Thailand and 280 in the Dutch East Indies. While most of these were Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF) aircraft, which were less effective against warships than IJN aircraft, there was a risk that kamikaze tactics would be employed. In addition, weather conditions were expected to be hazardous as the South China Sea is frequently affected by typhoons during January.
As of January 1945, the Third Fleet was built around the Fast Carrier Task Force, which was the main US Navy strike force in the Pacific. Control of this force alternated at regular intervals between the Third and Fifth Fleets (commanded by Halsey and Admiral Raymond A. Spruance respectively), with its designation also changing from Task Force 38 to Task Force 58. As Task Force 38 it was commanded by Vice Admiral John S. McCain Sr. In January 1945 Task Force 38 was organized into three fast carrier task groups and a night carrier group. The fast carrier groups were Task Group 38.1 with four aircraft carriers, two battleships, six cruisers and 25 destroyers; Task Group 38.2 with four carriers, three battleships, five cruisers and 24 destroyers; and Task Group 38.3, which comprised four carriers, three battleships, five cruisers and 17 destroyers. The night carrier group, Task Group 38.5, had two carriers and six destroyers, and operated with Task Group 38.2 during the day. These carrier groups embarked around 900 aircraft in total. The other major element of the fleet was a logistics force designated Task Group 30.8, which comprised a varying number of tankers and ammunition ships, several escort carriers transporting replacement aircraft for Task Force 38, and many escorting destroyers. In addition, the fleet was assigned an anti-submarine hunter-killer force designated Task Group 30.7, which comprised an escort carrier and three destroyer escorts and typically operated in support of Task Group 30.8.
Despite the American concerns, the IJN was not about to attack the Allied supply lines and Cam Ranh Bay was not a major fleet base. As of 1 January 1945, both the Ise-class battleships and the small number of other Japanese warships in the region were stationed at or near Singapore, and only escort vessels operated from Cam Ranh Bay. While large numbers of aircraft were located in Japanese-held territories bordering the South China Sea in January 1945, relatively few trained pilots were available to operate them. At this time the Imperial General Headquarters was considering a major offensive against the supply line to Lingayen Gulf, but on 20 January 1945 it decided to concentrate Japan's defensive efforts on the area around the home islands and only conduct delaying actions elsewhere. As a result, the Japanese forces in the South China Sea region at the time of the raid were focused on preparing to resist future Allied attacks. The Japanese believed that US forces could potentially land in Indochina once the liberation of the Philippines was complete, and were also concerned about possible attacks on the area by the British-led South East Asia Command. In an effort to better coordinate the Japanese forces in the South East Asia region, all Imperial Japanese Army and Navy units were placed under the overall control of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group in January 1945. This command was led by Gensui Count Hisaichi Terauchi from his headquarters in Singapore.
Despite these preparations, the Japanese remained unable to counter powerful attacks against shipping in the South China Sea. While the Navy's convoy escort forces had been expanded during 1944, they remained inadequate. The most common type of escort vessel, the Kaibōkan, was vulnerable to air attack as a result of their slow speed and weak anti-aircraft armament. The IJN also assigned few fighter aircraft to protect convoys in the South China Sea and, due to the interservice rivalry which badly hindered the Japanese war effort, rejected an offer from the Army to provide additional fighters for this purpose just before the Third Fleet's attacks on French Indochina.
## Attack
### Entry into the South China Sea
The Third Fleet sailed from Ulithi on 30 December 1944. On 3 and 4 January its aircraft carriers struck Japanese airfields on Formosa, Okinawa and nearby islands in an attempt to prevent them from being used to attack the Allied forces at Lingayen Gulf. In addition, its strike aircraft attacked Japanese shipping at Formosa, sinking at least three merchant vessels and damaging four frigates. Acting on a request from General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the South West Pacific Area, the fleet struck airfields on Luzon on 6 and 7 January. At around this time Vice-Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, the commander of the Seventh Fleet which was responsible for the Lingayen Gulf landings, asked Halsey to operate west of Luzon to provide air cover during the initial period of the invasion. Halsey believed it would be inappropriate for his force to operate in such a passive role, and instead ordered further strikes on the Japanese airfields in southern Formosa which posed the greatest threat to Kinkaid's command. These took place on 9 January. During the morning of 9 January, Nimitz released the Third Fleet from directly covering the Lingayen Gulf area, and authorized it to enter the South China Sea. Once all the strike aircraft had landed that afternoon Halsey issued orders to execute the planned attack into the South China Sea. During the fleet's operations from 3 to 9 January it destroyed more than 150 Japanese aircraft, but lost 86 of its own, including 46 in accidents.
During the night of 9–10 January the main body of the Third Fleet, including Task Group 30.7, sailed through the Bashi Channel in the northern part of the Luzon Strait. Task Group 30.8 was reduced to six fast tankers, two escort carriers and escorting warships, and reached the South China Sea via the Balintang Channel off the northern coast of Luzon. Neither force was detected by the Japanese, though night fighters operating from the light aircraft carrier USS Independence shot down three transport aircraft that were flying to Formosa from Luzon. The fleet also received a report that a large Japanese convoy of around 100 ships was sailing along the southern coast of China towards Formosa during the night of 9–10 January, but Halsey decided to not attack it as doing so would disclose that his force was in the South China Sea and possibly prompt the IJN to withdraw its battleships from the area.
While it was planned to refuel the fleet's destroyers on 10 January, this was frustrated by bad weather. Instead, the destroyers were refueled during 11 January as the fleet proceeded south-west. Once the destroyers were refueled, the Third Fleet was reorganized for combat. Two heavy cruisers and five destroyers were transferred from Task Group 38.1 to Task Group 38.2. The latter task group, under the command of Rear Admiral Gerald F. Bogan, was intended to launch air attacks against Cam Ranh Bay from its three large fleet carriers and single light carrier on the morning of 12 January. The Task Group's two battleships, accompanied by destroyers and cruisers, would then bombard the area and finish off ships which were damaged in the air attacks. The choice of targets was informed by intelligence passed on to the Allies by two networks of agents in Indochina. The Third Fleet remained undetected by Japanese forces on 10 and 11 January.
### Strikes on southern Indochina
Task Group 38.2 began its approach to Cam Ranh Bay at 2 pm on 11 January. It was followed by Task Groups 38.1 and 38.3, which launched fighter aircraft to provide a combat air patrol over the fleet. Task Group 30.8 remained in the central South China Sea. Before dawn on 12 January, Task Group 38.5 launched aircraft to search for Japanese ships in the Cam Ranh Bay area. The crews of these aircraft radioed back the location of Japanese ships, and conducted an intensive search for the two Ise-class battleships and any other capital ships. When none were located it was believed that the warships had been hidden from view by camouflage; it took several months for the US Navy to learn that they had not been in the area. By 6 am on 12 January Task Group 38.2 was within 50 miles (80 km) of Cam Ranh Bay. It and the other two task groups began launching their first strikes of the day at 07:31 am, about half an hour before sunrise. The Japanese had still not detected the Third Fleet's approach, and were unprepared for an attack.
The American airmen achieved considerable success against Japanese convoys. Two waves of aircraft from Task Group 38.3 attacked a convoy of 10 ships escorted by the seven warships of the 101st Flotilla near Qui Nhơn in central Indochina and sank four fully loaded oil tankers, three freighters, the light cruiser Kashii and three small escort vessels. Another convoy was located and struck near Cape Padaran in southern Indochina, resulting in the loss of a tanker, two destroyer escorts and a patrol boat. A convoy comprising seven vessels was also attacked near Cape St. Jacques in southern Indochina, leading to two freighters, three tankers, three destroyer escorts and a landing craft being sunk or forced to beach.
American aircraft also struck Japanese shipping in the Saigon area. Two freighters and a tanker were sunk at Saigon, and another tanker was destroyed off the coast. The disarmed French cruiser Lamotte-Picquet was mistakenly attacked and sunk at Saigon, despite flying the French flag. Many other ships were damaged in the Saigon area, including five freighters, two tankers, three landing craft, two to four destroyer escorts, a minesweeper and a patrol boat. Several of these ships were beached, and destroyed by a storm later in the month. Other Third Fleet aircraft were used to maintain a combat air patrol over the area between Tourane in central Indochina and Saigon and attack airfields, docks and oil storage facilities. The railway station at Nha Trang and a bridge on the line between Saigon and Bien Hoa were also damaged. The surface strike group, which had separated from Task Group 38.2 at 6:40 am and comprised two battleships, two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers and twelve destroyers, did not locate any Japanese ships.
The attacks on 12 January were highly successful. A total of 46 Japanese ships were sunk, including 33 merchant vessels with a combined tonnage of 142,285 tons. Twelve of these merchants were tankers. The 13 warships sunk were the light cruiser Kashii, two destroyers, seven coast defense vessels (CD-17, CD-19, CD-23, CD-35, CD-43, CD-51, Chiburi), one patrol boat (No. 103), one minesweeper (Otowa Maru), and a military transport (T-140). While few Japanese aircraft were operational, the American airmen shot down 15 aircraft and destroyed 20 floatplanes at Cam Ranh Bay and another 77 aircraft at various airfields. The Third Fleet lost 23 aircraft. The French colonial government refused to hand over the downed American airmen its forces captured to the Japanese military, and provided them with escorts to the Chinese border. Civilians also rescued American airmen and helped them to escape. As a result, almost all of the US Navy aircrew from planes shot down over Indochina eventually returned to the United States via China.
### Further strikes against Formosa
At 7:31 pm on 12 January, the Third Fleet reversed course and sailed north-east to meet up with Task Group 30.8. This course was maintained the next day in order to evade a typhoon and Japanese search aircraft. Heavy seas made fuelling difficult, though all of the destroyers were eventually refueled on 13 January. On that day, Fleet Admiral Ernest King, the Chief of Naval Operations, directed the Third Fleet to remain "in a strategic position to intercept enemy forces approaching the Lingayen Gulf area from either the north or the south". In passing this order on to Halsey, Nimitz authorized him to attack the Hong Kong area if more worthwhile targets could not be located.
On 14 January the American warships continued to refuel, despite the bad weather. All of the major warships were eventually topped up to at least 60 per cent of their fuel capacity. This consumed most of Task Group 30.8's supplies, and it later separated from the fleet to rendezvous with relief tankers near Mindoro. After fuelling was completed the Third Fleet sailed north to attack Formosa. Weather conditions continued to be bad, and at 3:00 am on 15 January McCain recommended to Halsey that the strikes be cancelled and the fleet sail south. Even so, Halsey decided to continue north and execute the attack. In addition, he ordered aircraft to be launched during 15 January to reconnoiter Amoy, Hainan island, Hong Kong, the Pescadores Islands and Swatow in search of the Ise-class battleships. The newly designated night carrier USS Enterprise flew off search aircraft at 4:00 am that morning.
Strikes were launched from the aircraft carriers beginning at 7:30 am on 15 January; at this time the Third Fleet was about 255 miles (410 km) east-south-east of Hong Kong and 170 miles (270 km) south-west of Formosa. Ten fighter sweeps were dispatched to Formosa, and a further six to airfields on the coast of mainland China. In addition, eight raids were launched against shipping in the Takao and Toshien regions of Formosa. While large numbers of ships were located, these strikes were largely frustrated by bad weather and heavy anti-aircraft fire. The destroyer Hatakaze and No.1-class landing ship T.14 were sunk at Takao City and a tanker was damaged and forced aground. Several of the strikes were diverted to Mako in the Pescadores Islands, where weather conditions were better, and these aircraft sank the destroyer Tsuga. A weather station and radio facilities on Pratas Island was also attacked by aircraft operating from Enterprise. The American pilots claimed to have shot down 16 Japanese aircraft and destroyed another 18 on the ground during the day; 12 US Navy aircraft were lost in combat and accidents. At 4:44 pm the carriers changed course to reach the position from which Hong Kong and other locations in southern China were to be attacked the next day.
### Attack on Hong Kong and southern China
The British colony of Hong Kong had been captured by Japanese forces in December 1941, and became a significant naval and logistics base. USAAF units based in China attacked the Hong Kong area from October 1942. Most of these raids involved a small number of aircraft, and typically targeted Japanese cargo ships which had been reported by Chinese guerrillas. By January 1945 the city was being regularly raided by the USAAF.
The Third Fleet's first raids for 16 January began to be launched at 7:32 am. The day's operations were focused on Hong Kong, which was struck by 138 aircraft during the morning and a further 158 in the afternoon. The raiders sunk five large tankers and an IJN oiler, and damaged several other ships. The tankers formed part of Convoy Hi 87 which had been diverted from its journey south in an attempt to avoid the Third Fleet. In addition, Kai Tak Airport was badly damaged, and all the aircraft on the ground there at the time were destroyed. Widespread damage was also inflicted on the Kowloon and Taikoo docks. Several less important targets, including the dockyard in Aberdeen and trains on the Kowloon–Canton Railway, were struck by pilots who had been authorized to engage targets of opportunity. The village of Hung Hom, which was located near the Kowloon docks, was heavily bombed and hundreds of civilians were killed or wounded. Stanley Internment Camp was also hit by a bomb that killed 14 of the Allied civilians imprisoned there. The Fourteenth Air Force's 118th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron conducted an attack on shipping at Hong Kong on 16 January which was not coordinated with the US Navy's raids. These were the largest air attacks conducted on Hong Kong during World War II.
The Japanese garrison at Hong Kong strongly resisted the raid, using particularly effective anti-aircraft tactics which the Americans had not previously encountered. A US Navy report described the gunfire the aircraft faced as having been "intense to unbelievable". The TBF Avenger torpedo bombers dispatched against Hong Kong suffered particularly heavy losses as their low-level attack runs were vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. As the Avengers' torpedoes were set to run too deep these attacks achieved little.
The Portuguese colony of Macau was also struck. While Portugal was neutral, the colony's government had been forced to accept the presence of Japanese "advisers" since 1943 and had traded weapons for food supplies. The raid's main target was a stockpile of aviation fuel at the Macau Naval Aviation Center which the Allies had learned from local agents was to be sold to the Japanese. The fort of Dona Maria II () was also attacked, possibly to destroy a radio station located within or near it, and some damage was inflicted on civilian areas and the city's harbor. Two soldiers and several civilians were killed. Macau's garrison had no effective anti-aircraft weapons, and did not fire on the American aircraft. Writing in 2016, historian Geoffrey C. Gunn stated that it was unclear why Macau was attacked given that the US Government's policy was to respect Macau's neutrality and the gains from destroying the fuel stocks were more than outweighed by the likely diplomatic repercussions. He judged that US Naval intelligence was unaware of the policy towards the colony.
Other attacks were conducted against locations in southern China during 16 January. Strikes were made on the city of Canton, and two raids and two fighter sweeps were conducted against locations in Hainan. In addition, fighter aircraft attacked airfields along the Chinese coast between the Leizhou Peninsula in the west to Swatow in the east, but encountered few Japanese aircraft.
American casualties on 16 January were 22 aircraft shot down in combat and 27 lost in accidents. The Japanese claimed to have downed 10 aircraft over Hong Kong alone. The US Navy pilots reported destroying 13 Japanese aircraft. At least four American airmen were taken prisoner after their planes were shot down near Hong Kong, and a further seven evaded capture and eventually reached Allied-held regions of China. One of the American prisoners was later murdered by a lethal injection at the Ōfuna prisoner of war camp in Japan.
### Exit from the South China Sea
After completing its strikes on 16 January, the Third Fleet turned south to refuel. Because weather conditions were particularly bad the next day, fuelling was not completed. The weather worsened on 18 January, making fuelling operations impossible. During this period Japanese propaganda radio broadcasts claimed that the fleet had been "bottled up", and would be destroyed when it tried to leave the South China Sea. As his meteorologists expected bad weather to continue into 19 January, Halsey decided to depart the South China Sea via the Surigao Strait in the central Philippines rather than sail north around Luzon. But when Nimitz learned of this he requested that the Third Fleet use the Luzon Strait, though Halsey was given discretion to make the final decision on his force's route. Nimitz's reasoning was that if the fleet sailed through the central Philippines its departure would be reported by Japanese forces on bypassed islands, possibly leading to the IJN attempting a raid against the Allied supply lines. In addition, a northerly passage would leave the Third Fleet better placed to undertake its next assignments, which included attacking Formosa again and reconnoitering the Ryukyu Islands.
Halsey chose to follow Nimitz's request. His fleet completed fuelling on 19 January, and proceeded north towards the Balintang Channel; Task Group 30.8 separated from the main body, however, and subsequently passed through the Surigao Strait. During 20 January the fleet sailed east through the Balintang Channel, with a division of destroyers patrolling well ahead of the carrier task groups. Many Japanese aircraft were detected by radar during this period, and 15 which were evacuating IJAAF personnel from Luzon were shot down. No attack was made against the American force. The Third Fleet exited the Balintang Channel at 22:00 that night.
## Aftermath
After departing the South China Sea, the Third Fleet proceeded to its next assignments. It attacked airfields and harbors on Formosa again on 21 January, with ten merchant ships being sunk at Takao. But a Japanese aircraft struck the light aircraft carrier USS Langley with two small bombs and the fleet carrier Ticonderoga was badly damaged by two kamikazes. The destroyer Maddox was also hit by a kamikaze but suffered little damage. In addition, McCain's flagship Hancock suffered considerable damage when a bomb fell from a TBF Avenger which had just landed and exploded on her flight deck. Hancock and Ticonderoga were detached from the fleet, and proceeded to Ulithi for repairs. On 22 January the remaining carriers struck the Ryukyu Islands. The main goal of this operation was to gain photographic coverage of Okinawa to help plan an invasion of the island, and airfields and shipping were also attacked. Once this task was completed, the fleet turned south for Ulithi in the evening of 22 January, and arrived there on 25 January. The next day Halsey handed command over to Spruance, and it became the Fifth Fleet.
The South China Sea raid was considered a success. During its operations in the South China Sea between 10 and 20 January, the Third Fleet sailed 3,800 miles (6,100 km) without suffering heavy casualties or a serious mishap. Nimitz later stated that "the sortie into the South China Sea was well-conceived and brilliantly executed" and praised the planning for the fleet's logistical support. He regretted that Japanese capital ships had not been located and attacked. In 1995 the historian John Prados wrote that the Japanese "convoy losses off French Indochina were the most significant outcome of Operation Gratitude". Similarly, Mark P. Parillo judged in 1993 that the destruction of 25 oil tankers during the raid "spelled doom for any long-term Japanese resistance".
The Japanese high command believed that the raid had been conducted in preparation for an invasion of south China. In response, five additional infantry divisions were assigned to the defense of this area. Three of these divisions were released for other operations in March 1945 after the American invasion of Iwo Jima was interpreted as evidence that the Hong Kong-Canton area would be bypassed rather than attacked.
The South China Sea raid also contributed to the Japanese takeover of Indochina. The commander of the Imperial Japanese Army forces in Indochina, Lieutenant General Yuitsu Tsuchihashi, believed that the raid was the precursor an Allied invasion of the area. In reality, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had decided that the US would not participate in the liberation of Indochina and there were no plans for such an operation. As part of efforts to prepare for an Allied invasion and pre-empt the French uprising, on 26 February the Japanese Government authorized the military command in Indochina to execute the takeover plans once preparations were complete. This occurred on 9 March, with the Japanese forces attacking and rapidly defeating most of the French garrisons. The Japanese subsequently installed Emperor Bao Dai to rule over the puppet Empire of Vietnam, Kingdom of Cambodia and Kingdom of Laos.
The Portuguese Government lodged a protest over the US Navy's violation of Macau's neutrality shortly after the raid on 16 January, and the US Government apologized for the incident on 20 January. An official court of inquiry was held, and in 1950 the United States provided Portugal with a \$20.3 million compensation payment for the damage caused to Macau's harbor on 16 January and other accidental raids on 11 and 25 June 1945.
Allied air and naval attacks against Japanese shipping in the South China Sea were expanded during early 1945 as additional USAAF units moved into bases in the Philippines. Land-based patrol aircraft and medium bombers operated over the sea from liberated areas of the Philippines and Dutch East Indies from February. While Allied submarines and these aircraft failed to prevent the escape of the Ise-class battleships when they sailed from Singapore to Japan during Operation Kita in mid-February, the medium bombers were sinking large numbers of Japanese merchant ships by the end of the month. Medium and heavy bombers also raided Japanese-held ports across the South China Sea area. As a result of the air and submarine attacks, the Japanese ceased sending ships through the South China Sea in April 1945.
|
37,282,846 |
Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari
| 1,141,877,306 |
1884 syair (poem) by Lie Kim Hok
|
[
"1884 books",
"19th-century poems",
"Chinese Malay literature",
"India in fiction",
"Indonesian poetry",
"Malay-language poems",
"Syairs"
] |
Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari (; Perfected spelling: Syair Cerita Siti Akbari, Malay for Poem on the Story of Siti Akbari; also known as Siti Akbari) is an 1884 Malay-language syair (poem) by Lie Kim Hok. Adapted indirectly from the Sjair Abdoel Moeloek, it tells of a woman who passes as a man to free her husband from the Sultan of Hindustan, who had captured him in an assault on their kingdom.
Written over a period of several years and influenced by European literature, Siti Akbari differs from earlier syairs in its use of suspense and emphasis on prose rather than form. It also incorporates European realist views to expand upon the genre, although it maintains several of the hallmarks of traditional syairs. Critical views have emphasised various aspects of its story, finding in the work an increased empathy for women's thoughts and feelings, a call for a unifying language in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and a polemic regarding the relation between tradition and modernity.
Siti Akbari was a commercial and critical success, seeing two reprints and a film adaptation in 1940. When Sjair Abdoel Moeloek's influence became clear in the 1920s, Lie was criticised as unoriginal. However, Siti Akbari remains one of the better known syairs written by an ethnic Chinese author. Lie was later styled as the "father of Chinese Malay literature".
## Plot
The Sultan of Hindustan, Bahar Oedin, is infuriated after his uncle Safi, a trader, dies while imprisoned in Barbari. As the Abdul Aidid, the Sultan of Barbari, has greater military power, Bahar Oedin bides his time and plans his revenge. Meanwhile, Abdul Aidid's son Abdul Moelan marries his cousin, Siti Bida Undara. Two years later, after Abdul Aidid dies, Abdul Moelan goes on an extended sea voyage, leaving his wife behind.
In the nearby kingdom of Ban, Abdul Moelan meets and falls in love with Siti Akbari, daughter of the Sultan of Ban. The two soon marry and, after six months in Ban, return to Barbari. Siti Bida Undara, at first upset at the thought of sharing her husband, soon becomes close friends with Siti Akbari. Shortly thereafter Bahar Oedin takes his revenge, capturing Abdul Moelan and Siti Bida Undara. When the sultan tries to capture Siti Akbari, he discovers a body in her room and believes it to be hers. He takes his captives back to Hindustan and imprisons them.
Unknown to him, the pregnant Siti Akbari has faked her death and escaped. After several months she finds protection under Syaikh (Sheikh) Khidmatullah, under whose protection she gives birth. He trains her in silat (traditional martial arts) so she can free her husband. Leaving her son in Khidmatullah's care, she begins her travels. When seven men accost and attempt to rape her, she kills them. Taking their clothes and cutting her hair, she disguises herself as a man and takes the name Bahara. After arriving in Barbam, she stops a war between two claimants to the region's throne. She kills the usurper, then takes his head to the rightful heir to the throne, Hamid Lauda. In thanks Hamid Lauda rewards Siti Akbari with rule over Barbam and allows the "Bahara" to take his sister, Siti Abian, in marriage.
Siti Akbari, keeping her disguise as Bahara, leaves Barbam to go to Hindustan and recover her husband. With the help of two advisors who have found the Sultan's disfavour, she is able to reconnoitre the area. She eventually captures Hindustan with her army, conquering the sultanate on her own, killing Bahar Oedin, and freeing Abdul Moelan and Siti Bida Undara. While still disguised, Siti Akbari repudiates Siti Abian and gives her to Abdul Moelan before revealing her true identity. The different kingdoms are then divided amongst the male protagonists, while Siti Akbari returns to her role as a wife.
## Background and writing
Siti Akbari was written by Lie Kim Hok, a Bogor-born peranakan Chinese who was taught by Dutch missionaries. The missionaries introduced him to European literature, including the works of Dutch writers such as Anna Louisa Geertruida Bosboom-Toussaint and Jacob van Lennep, as well as works by French authors like Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, and Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail. In his doctoral thesis, J. Francisco B. Benitez suggests that Lie may have also been influenced by Malay and Javanese oral traditions, such as the travelling bangsawan theatrical troupes or wayang puppets.
Evidence uncovered after Lie's death in 1912 suggested that Siti Akbari was heavily influenced by the earlier Sjair Abdoel Moeloek (1847), variously credited to Raja Ali Haji or Saleha. This tale was transliterated by Arnold Snackey, then later translated into Sundanese. Sources disagree on the translator. The documentarian Christiaan Hooykaas, writing in a letter to literary critic Nio Joe Lan, suggested that Lie's inspiration had come from a version of Sjair Abdoel Moeloek held in the Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences Library in Batavia. Biographer Tio Ie Soei, meanwhile, suggested that the version which inspired Lie was translated in 1873 by Lie's teacher, Sierk Coolsma. According to Tio, Coolsma had based his translation off a stage performance and written it hurriedly, such that it was nearly illegible. As he had better handwriting, Lie purportedly copied the story for Coolsma and kept the original in his own collection. The literary historian Monique Zaini-Lajoubert writes that none of these intermediary versions has been found.
Work on Siti Akbari was completed over a period of several years. Lie stated that the story had taken him three years, writing sporadically. Tio, however, reports rumours that the writing took some seven years, with Lie sometimes taking long breaks and sometimes writing in a fervor, writing from dawn until dusk.
## Style
The literary critic G. Koster writes that, when writing Siti Akbari, Lie Kim Hok was limited by the formulaic Pandji romances and syair poems common in Malay literature at the time. Koster notes basic structural similarities between Siti Akbari and the existing poetic forms. The work followed the archetype of a hero or heroine going from a lawful kingdom into exile then into a chaotic kingdom, one which Koster suggests is representative of the cycle of oral law. Such an archetype and formulas were used in contemporary works such as Syair Siti Zubaidah Perang Cina (Poem on Siti Zubaidah and the War against China). The plot device of a woman passing herself as a man to do war was likewise common in Malay and Javanese literature. Lie deviated greatly from the established traditions, mixing European and native literary influences.
The story consists of 1,594 monorhymic quatrains divided into two couplets, with each couplet consisting of two lines, and each line consisting of two half-lines separated by a caesura. Most of these lines are complete syntactic units, either clauses or sentences. Koster notes that the form is freer than in more traditional works, and as a result it becomes a sort of prose poem. An unnamed narrator tells the story from a third-person omniscient perspective; unlike most contemporary works, the narrator "assumes authority on his own account" by putting himself and his ideas forth, rather than acting as an uninvolved party.
Siti Akbari differs from contemporary works by introducing a feeling of suspense. Koster gives the identity of the Hindustani trader as an example: the man's identity as the uncle of the Sultan is not revealed until after it is convenient for the story. Koster describes the period in which a reader believes Siti Akbari to be dead, which spans several pages, as the work's most remarkable break from tradition. He notes that unlike most contemporary works, the syair begins with a quote, rather than an invocation to Allah. This quote is eventually shown as a fulfilled prophecy:
Koster sees effects of realism, especially the idealistic realism held at the time in the Netherlands, in the work. He notes that motives and causality are given more weight in the narrative than in most contemporary works. He observes that this is also reflected in the characters, who – although royalty and holy men – were given the traits of persons one could find in real-life Batavia (now Jakarta). The use of punctuation, another trait uncommon in the local literature of the time, may also have served to give a more realistic reading and reflected the work's origin as a written manuscript and not from oral literature. Tio Ie Soei described the work's rhythm as more akin to speech than song.
## Themes
Benitez writes that the market in Siti Akbari "provides possibilities for exchange and connections" between persons of all cultures and backgrounds, connecting them. He describes this a representation of the heteroglossia offered by bazaar Malay, which had originated in the markets. As Lie also wrote a grammar of bazaar Malay, Benitez suggests that Lie may have hoped for the dialect to become a lingua franca in the Dutch East Indies.
Benitez considers the poem to highlight the tensions between the "monadic and autonomous subjectivity" of European culture and the "social subjectivity" of adat, or tradition, with the character of Siti Akbari "a site of instability that makes manifest both the possibilities of social transformation, as well as the anxiety over the possibility of social reproduction gone awry". As an individual, she is able to fight her enemies and reclaim her husband. Ultimately, however, she chooses to return to her polygamous relationship with Abdul Moelan, an affirmation of tradition over modernism. In opposition to Siti Akbari, the trader Safi Oedin refuses to live in accordance with the local customs while he is in a foreign land and ultimately dies. Benitez writes that this "may be read as a warning to those who refuse to live in accordance with local adat." Koster notes that – as usual with syairs – Siti Akbari works to increase awareness of adat and traditional value systems.
Zaini-Lajoubert opines that the story promotes a treatment of women as persons with feelings and opinions, as opposed to the patriarchial view common during the period that women were unfeeling objects. She finds that the story's female characters feel grief and joy, quoting several passages, including one where Siti Akbari confesses that she felt she had waited "dozens of years" for Abdul Moelan. Zaini-Lajoubert notes that the female characters are not all of the same opinion: although Siti Akbari was willing to enter a polygamous relationship, Siti Bida Undara had to be coaxed. Ultimately, however, she finds that Siti Akbari conveys the message that women should be faithful and obedient to their husbands.
## Reception and legacy
Siti Akbari was first published in four volumes in 1884. It proved to be Lie's most popular work, and received the most reprints out of any of his publications. The first reprinting was in 1913 by Hoa Siang In Kiok, and the second was in 1922 by Kho Tjeng Bie. Both of these new printings consisted of a single volume, and, according to Tio, contained numerous inaccuracies.
The story was well received by readers, and although Lie was not the only ethnic Chinese to write in the traditionally Malay poetry form of syair, he became one of the more accomplished. Lie considered it amongst his best works. Writing in 1923, Kwee Tek Hoay – himself a proficient author – wrote that he had been fascinated by the story as a child, to the point he had "memorised more than half of its contents by heart". Kwee considered it "full of good maxims and advice" unavailable elsewhere. Nio Joe Lan described it as the "jewel of Chinese Malay poetry",[^1] of far higher quality than other Chinese-written Malay poems – both contemporary and subsequent.
The story was adapted for the stage soon after publication, when it was performed by a group named Siti Akbari under Lie's leadership. Lie also made a simplified version for a troupe of teenaged actors, whom he led in Bogor. In 1922 the Sukabumi branch of the Shiong Tih Hui published another stage adaptation under the title Pembalesan Siti Akbari (Revenge of Siti Akbari); by 1926 it was being performed by Miss Riboet's Orion, a theatrical troupe led by Tio Tek Djien. The story remained popular well into the late 1930s. It likely inspired Joshua and Othniel Wong's 1940 film Siti Akbari, starring Roekiah and Rd. Mochtar. The extent of this influence is uncertain, and the film is likely lost.
Lie continued experimenting with European-style prose. In 1886, he published Tjhit Liap Seng (Seven Stars), which Claudine Salmon of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences describes as the first Chinese Malay novel. Lie went on to publish another four novels, as well as several translations. When ethnic Chinese writers became common in the early 1900s, critics named Lie the "father of Chinese Malay literature" for his contributions, including Siti Akbari and Tjhit Liap Seng.
After the rise of the nationalist movement and the Dutch colonial government's efforts to use Balai Pustaka to publish literary works for native consumption, the work began to be marginalised. The Dutch colonial government used Court Malay as a "language of administration", a language for everyday dealings, while the Indonesian nationalists appropriated the language to help build a national culture. Chinese Malay literature, written in "low" Malay, was steadily marginalised. Benitez writes that, as a result, there has been little scholarly analysis of Siti Akbari. Despite this, sinologist Leo Suryadinata wrote in 1993 that Siti Akbari has remained one of the best-known syairs written by an ethnic Chinese.
## Criticism
Although both Sjair Abdoel Moeloek and Siti Akbari were often performed on stage, the similarities between the two were not discovered for several years. Zaini-Lajoubert writes that Tio Ie Soei uncovered these similarities while working as a journalist for the Chinese Malay newspaper Lay Po in 1923. Kwee Tek Hoay followed this article with another discussion of the work's origins in 1925. Later writers criticised Lie's other works as blatant adaptations. Tan Soey Bing and Tan Oen Tjeng, for instance, wrote that none of his works were original. Tio Ie Soei, in response, stated that Lie had changed the stories he had adapted, and thus shown originality.
In exploring the similarities between Sjair Abdoel Moeloek and Siti Akbari, Zaini-Lajoubert notes that the names of the individual kingdoms, save Barham (Barbam in Siti Akbari), are taken directly from the earlier work. Names of characters, such as Abdul Muluk (in Siti Akbari'', Abdul Moelan) and Siti Rapiah (Siti Akbari), are simply replaced, although some minor characters are present in one story and not the other. The main plot elements in both stories are the same; some elements, such as the birth and childhood of Abdul Muluk and the later adventures of Siti Rapiah's son, are present in one story and not the other – or given more detail. The two differ greatly in their styles, especially Lie's emphasis on description and realism.
[^1]: Original: "Ratna manikam dalam persadjakan Melaju-Tionghoa..."
|
369,682 |
Lost in Translation (film)
| 1,173,197,863 |
2003 film by Sofia Coppola
|
[
"2000s American films",
"2000s English-language films",
"2000s Japanese films",
"2003 films",
"2003 independent films",
"2003 romantic comedy-drama films",
"American Zoetrope films",
"American independent films",
"American romantic comedy-drama films",
"BAFTA winners (films)",
"Best Foreign Film César Award winners",
"Best Musical or Comedy Picture Golden Globe winners",
"English-language Japanese films",
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"Films about interpreting and translation",
"Films directed by Sofia Coppola",
"Films featuring a Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe winning performance",
"Films set in Japan",
"Films set in Kyoto",
"Films set in Tokyo",
"Films set in hotels",
"Films shot in Kyoto",
"Films shot in Tokyo",
"Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award",
"Films with screenplays by Sofia Coppola",
"Focus Features films",
"Independent Spirit Award for Best Film winners",
"Japan in non-Japanese culture",
"Japanese independent films",
"Japanese romantic comedy-drama films",
"Midlife crisis films",
"Race-related controversies in film"
] |
Lost in Translation is a 2003 romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Bill Murray stars as Bob Harris, a fading American movie star who is having a midlife crisis when he travels to Tokyo to promote Suntory whisky. There, he befriends another estranged American named Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a young woman and recent college graduate. Giovanni Ribisi and Anna Faris also feature. The film explores themes of alienation and disconnection against a backdrop of cultural displacement in Japan. It defies mainstream narrative conventions and is atypical in its depiction of romance.
Coppola started writing the film after spending time in Tokyo and becoming fond of the city. She began forming a story about two characters experiencing a "romantic melancholy" in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, where she stayed while promoting her first feature film, the 1999 drama The Virgin Suicides. Coppola envisioned Murray playing the role of Bob Harris from the beginning and tried to recruit him for up to a year, relentlessly sending him telephone messages and letters. While Murray eventually agreed to play the part, he did not sign a contract; Coppola spent a quarter of the film's \$4 million budget without knowing if he would actually appear for shooting. When Murray finally arrived, Coppola described feelings of significant relief.
Principal photography began on September 29, 2002, and lasted 27 days. Coppola kept a flexible schedule during filming with a small crew and minimal equipment. The screenplay was short and Coppola often allowed a significant amount of improvisation during filming. The film's director of photography, Lance Acord, used available light as often as possible, and many Japanese places of business and public areas were used as locations for shooting. After 10 weeks of editing, Coppola sold distribution rights for the United States and Canada to Focus Features, and the company promoted the film by generating positive word of mouth before its theatrical release.
Lost in Translation premiered on August 29, 2003, at the Telluride Film Festival, and was distributed to American theatres on September 12, 2003, to major critical and commercial success. Critics praised the performances of Murray and Johansson as well as the writing and direction of Coppola; minor criticism was given to the film's depiction of Japan. At the 76th Academy Awards, Lost in Translation won Coppola Best Original Screenplay, and the film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Actor (Murray). Other accolades won include three Golden Globe Awards and three British Academy Film Awards.
## Plot
Bob Harris is a fading American movie star who arrives in Tokyo to appear in lucrative advertisements for Suntory whisky. He stays at the upscale Park Hyatt Tokyo and is miserable due to problems within his 25-year marriage and a midlife crisis. Charlotte, another American staying at the hotel, is a young Yale graduate in philosophy who is accompanying her husband John while he works as a celebrity photographer. Charlotte is feeling similarly disenchanted as she questions her marriage and is anxious about her future. They both struggle additionally with bouts of jet lag and culture shock in Tokyo and pass the time loitering around the hotel.
Charlotte is repelled by a vacuous Hollywood actress named Kelly, who is also at the hotel promoting a film. She bumps into Charlotte and John, gushing over photography sessions she has previously done with him. Bob and Charlotte frequently cross paths in the hotel and eventually introduce themselves to each other in the hotel bar.
After several encounters, when John is on assignment outside Tokyo, Charlotte invites Bob into the city to meet some local friends. They bond over an evening in Tokyo, where they experience the city nightlife together. In the days that follow, Bob and Charlotte spend more time together, and their friendship strengthens. One night, while neither can sleep, the two share an intimate conversation about Charlotte's personal uncertainties and their married lives.
Bob spends the night with a jazz singer from the hotel bar on the penultimate night of his stay and Charlotte hears the woman singing in Bob's room the next morning, leading to tension between Bob and Charlotte during lunch together later that day. The pair re-encounter each other in the evening and Bob reveals that he will be leaving Tokyo the following day.
Bob and Charlotte reconcile and express how they will miss each other, making a final visit to the hotel bar. The next morning, when Bob is leaving the hotel, he and Charlotte share sincere but unsatisfactory goodbyes. On Bob's taxi ride to the airport, he sees Charlotte on a crowded street, stops the car, and walks to her. He then embraces her and whispers something in her ear. The two share a kiss and say goodbye before Bob departs.
## Cast
- Bill Murray as Bob Harris, a fading movie star
- Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte, a recent college graduate
- Giovanni Ribisi as John, Charlotte's husband, a celebrity photographer
- Anna Faris as Kelly, a Hollywood actress
- Fumihiro Hayashi as Charlie, Charlotte's friend
- Catherine Lambert as a jazz singer
## Analysis
### Themes
The film's writer-director, Sofia Coppola, has described Lost in Translation as a story about "things being disconnected and looking for moments of connection", a perspective that has been shared by critics and scholars. In a cultural sense, Bob and Charlotte are disoriented by feelings of jet lag and culture shock as a result of foreign travel to Japan. Bob is bewildered by his interactions with a Japanese commercial director whom he cannot understand, realizing that the meaning of his communication is "lost in translation" by an interpreter. Moreover, both are sleepless from a change in time zone, choosing to cope with their wakefulness by making late-night visits to the hotel bar. Such feelings provoke a sense of estrangement from their environment, but they also exacerbate deeper experiences of alienation and disconnection in their lives. Bob and Charlotte are both in troubled marriages and facing similar crises of identity; Charlotte is unsure of what to do with her life and questions what role she should embrace in the world, while Bob is invariably reminded of his fading stature as a movie star and feels disassociated from the identity by which he is already defined.
Such experiences are heightened by the characters' contact with the city environment of Tokyo. Bob feels alienated by seeing his likeness used in an advertisement while he is driven from the airport to his hotel, and the colorful cityscape is rendered as a frenetic environment by which he is overwhelmed. Charlotte feels adrift as she attempts to find meaning while wandering Tokyo, and feels isolated as she peers over the city from her hotel room window. The Park Hyatt Tokyo offers hermetic qualities that insulate the characters from the city and is the site Bob chooses to seek refuge from his ails. These shared impressions of alienation create common ground for Bob and Charlotte to cultivate a personal connection. When Charlotte invites Bob to experience the Tokyo nightlife, she reduces his sense of distance from the city and the two develop a connection based on small moments together. In the little time they have together, each realize they are not alone in seeking a sense of something deeper in their lives. Coppola, speaking about the brief nature of their encounter, remarked, "For everyone, there are those moments when you have great days with someone you wouldn't expect to. Then you have to go back to your real lives, but it makes an impression on you. It's what makes it so great and enjoyable."
Geoff King, a scholar who wrote a book about the film, comments that the experiences of the central characters are one factor that lends Lost in Translation to varied interpretations by academics. Todd McGowan reads the film from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, arguing that the film encourages the embrace of "absence" in one's life and relationships. He describes Coppola's depiction of Tokyo "as a city bubbling over with excess", which offers an empty promise of gratification. In his view, both Bob and Charlotte recognize that they cannot find meaning in Tokyo's attractions, so they bond over their shared sense of emptiness in them. Lucy Bolton offers a feminist reading, arguing that Lost in Translation evokes the thought of feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray by highlighting issues of young womanhood. She argues that the film provides a complex portrait of Charlotte's female subjectivity and an optimistic rendering of the character's pursuit for individual expression.
### Narrative
Lost in Translation has been broadly examined in terms of its narrative structure, with commentators noting that it contains few plot events as compared with films in the Hollywood mainstream. Narrative events are mostly focused on the development of Bob and Charlotte's relationship, with few "external" obstacles that impact the central characters. King notes, "More time is taken to evoke the impressions, feelings, and experiences of the central characters", which represents "a shift in the hierarchical arrangement of [film elements]" that prioritizes character experiences over plot. The literary critic Steve Vineberg argues that "the links of the story are indeed there, only they're not typical cause-and-effect connections. They're formed by the emotions that gather at the end of one episode and pour into the next". King maintains that while the plot does progress according to a basic linear causality, "If the episodic quality often seems to the fore, this is partly a matter of the pacing of individual sequences that are very often leisurely and dedicated to the establishment or development of mood and atmospherics". Coppola said she wanted the story to emphasize the qualities of an intimate moment, and she did not want to impose grandiose narrative devices on the characters such as "a war keeping them apart".
The film's opening shot has been another point of discussion among critics and scholars. The 36-second shot, which features Charlotte's backside as she lies on a bed wearing transparent pink panties, is based on the photorealist paintings of John Kacere and has often been compared to the initial appearance of Brigitte Bardot in the 1963 film Contempt. While some have described it as a foreshadowing of a romance between Bob and Charlotte, film historian Wendy Haslem argues that "Coppola's intention with this opening shot appears to be to defy taboos and to undermine expectations surrounding what might be considered the 'money shot' in more traditionally exploitative cinema." Correspondingly, the academic Maria San Filippo maintains that "[Coppola] doesn't seem to be making a statement at all beyond a sort of endorsement of beauty for beauty's sake." King notes that the image contains both "subtle" and "obvious" appeal in its combination of aesthetic and erotic qualities, which signifies Lost in Translation's position between mainstream and independent film. The film scholar Todd Kennedy interprets it in terms of feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's conception of the male gaze, arguing that the shot "lasts so long as to become awkward—forcing the audience to become aware of (and potentially even question) their participation in the gaze."
Lost in Translation has also been noted for defying the conventions of mainstream romantic films. Haslem writes that the classic romantic comedy assures the audience that the couple has a future, but Coppola defies expectations by refusing to unite the central characters. She points to elements such as Bob and Charlotte's lack of sexual consummation as one factor that obscures whether their pairing is more romantic or platonic. Writing about the concluding sequence in which the characters make their final goodbyes, Haslem argues, "Conventionally in mainstream cinema, the kiss ... signifies resolution by reinforcing the myth of romantic love. But in this new wave of contemporary anti-romance romance, the kiss signifies ambiguity." The academic Nicholas Y.B. Wong contends that the film's lack of "heart-melting connections and melodramatic (re)unions between characters" represents a postmodern portrait of love, writing that Lost in Translation is "about non-love, the predominance of affairs and the complexities of intimacy. Characters vacillate between falling in love and out of love. They are neither committed to someone nor emotionally unattached." Coppola said Bob and Charlotte's relationship is "supposed to be romantic but on the edge. ... [A] little bit more than friends but not an actual romance. ... To me, it's pretty un-sexual between them—innocent and romantic, and a friendship."
## Production
### Writing
After dropping out of college in her early twenties, Coppola often traveled to Tokyo, trying out a variety of jobs in fashion and photography. Unsure of what to do for a career, she described this period as a "kind of crisis" in which she meandered around the city contemplating her future. She came to feel fond of Tokyo, noting an otherworldly quality brought on as a foreigner grappling with feelings of jet lag in an unfamiliar setting. After many years, she settled on a career in filmmaking and returned to the city, staying at the Park Hyatt Tokyo to promote her first feature film, the 1999 drama The Virgin Suicides.
Coppola began writing Lost in Translation after returning home from this press tour. Having been influenced by her background in Tokyo, she resolved to write a screenplay set there and began forming a story about two characters experiencing a "romantic melancholy" in the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Coppola was long attracted to the neon signs of the city and envisaged Tokyo taking on a "dreamy feeling" in the film. She recruited her friend Brian Reitzell, who ultimately served as the film's music producer, to create dream pop compilation mixes that she listened to while writing to help establish this mood.
Coppola did not initially write the screenplay in traditional script form, citing the difficulty of mapping out a full plot. Instead, she opted to write "little paragraphs" largely based on disparate impressions and experiences of her life in Tokyo, which she then adapted to a script. Among the first images she included was of her friend Fumihiro Hayashi performing a karaoke rendition of the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen", which Coppola saw him perform during the time she worked in Tokyo. After writing the first 20 pages with help from her brother, Roman Coppola, she returned to Tokyo for further inspiration. There, she videotaped anything she could use as a further writing aid.
Coppola envisioned Murray playing the role of Bob from the beginning, wanting to show off "his more sensitive side" and feeling amused by the image of him dressed in a kimono. She described her mental pictures of Murray as a significant source of inspiration for the story. For the character of Charlotte, Coppola drew from her own feelings of early-twenties disorientation, citing the strain in her relationship with her then-husband Spike Jonze as an influence for the relationship between Charlotte and John. She also drew inspiration from J. D. Salinger's character Franny in Franny and Zooey, finding appeal in "the idea of a preppy girl having a breakdown".
As she developed the relationship between Bob and Charlotte, Coppola was compelled by the juxtaposition of the characters having similar internal crises at different stages of their lives. She cited the dynamic between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep as a source of inspiration for their relationship. Coppola reported doing little re-writing of the script, which took six months to complete and culminated in 75 pages, much shorter than the average feature film script. Despite worrying that the screenplay was too short and "indulgent" for including assortments of her personal experiences, she resolved to begin production of the film.
### Development
Coppola maintained that she would not have made Lost in Translation without Murray. The actor had an 800 number for prospective clients interested in casting him, but he had a reputation as a recluse who was difficult to contact. Coppola relentlessly pursued him and sent telephone messages and letters for months. She also sought people in her professional network that might help her make contact. She recruited screenwriter Mitch Glazer, who was a longtime friend of Murray's, to accept an early version of the script and try to persuade him. Glazer was impressed with the story and said he called the actor frequently, telling him, "You need to read this", but he would not provide an answer. After up to a year of cajoling, Murray finally agreed to meet with Coppola at a restaurant to discuss the film. He then accepted the role, saying "she spent a lot of time getting me to be the guy. In the end, I felt I couldn't let her down."
Despite Murray's agreement, Coppola had to take him at his word, as he did not sign a formal contract. She described this as "nerve-wracking", wondering if he would show up for filming in Tokyo. She discussed the issue with director Wes Anderson, who had previously worked with the actor and encouraged her, saying, "If he says he's going to do it, he'll show up." For Murray's co-star, Coppola liked Johansson's performance in Manny & Lo, remembering her "as a cute little girl with that husky voice". She then invited Johansson to a restaurant to discuss the role. Initially worried that the 17-year-old Johansson might be too young to play a character in her twenties, the director concluded that she appeared older and could convincingly play the part. Coppola offered Johansson the role without an audition, which she accepted.
Feeling a sense of personal investment in the project, Coppola wanted to maintain final cut privilege and feared that a distribution deal with a North American studio would threaten her influence. It was also unlikely that a studio would provide such backing, given the short length of the screenplay and Murray's lack of formal involvement. Instead, she and her agent opted to sell foreign distribution rights to an assortment of companies to fund production costs of \$4 million. She struck a deal first with Japan's Tohokushinsha Film, then with distributors in France and Italy, and finally with the international arm of Focus Features for the remaining foreign market. By piecing together the funding from multiple distributors, Coppola reduced the influence of any single financier. Still not knowing if Murray would show up in Tokyo, Coppola spent \$1 million of the budget, knowing that his absence would doom the production. When he finally arrived, days before filming, she expressed significant relief.
### Filming
Principal photography began on September 29, 2002, and lasted 27 days. With a tight schedule and a limited \$4 million budget, filming was done six days per week and was marked by a "run-and-gun" approach: Coppola was keen to stay mobile with a small crew and minimal equipment. She conducted few rehearsals and kept a flexible schedule, sometimes scrapping filming plans to shoot something she noticed on location if she thought it better served the story. Since the screenplay was sparse, missing details were often addressed during shooting, and Coppola allowed a significant amount of improvisation in dialogue, especially from Murray. One example includes the scene in which Bob is being photographed for Suntory whisky; Coppola encouraged Murray to react to the photographer spontaneously as she whispered names for the man to repeat to Murray as unrehearsed dialogue, such as "Roger Moore".
While key crew members were Americans that Coppola invited to Tokyo, most of the crew was hired locally. This proved to be challenging for the production, as most of the Japanese crew could not communicate with Coppola in English, so both sides relied on translations from a bilingual assistant director and a gaffer. The production encountered frequent delays while translations took place and suffered from occasional cultural misunderstandings; in one example, Coppola described a shoot in a restaurant that ran 10–15 minutes late, something she said was normal on an American shoot, but it prompted the restaurant owner to feel disrespected; he subsequently disconnected the crew's lights and the film's Japanese location manager resigned. Despite this, Coppola said she worked to adapt to a Japanese style of filmmaking, not wanting to impose an approach that her crew was not used to.
Coppola worked closely to visualize the film with her director of photography, Lance Acord. She showed him and other key crew members a book of photographs she created that represented the visual style she wanted to convey in the film. To evoke a sense of isolation in Bob, Coppola and Acord used stationary shots in the hotel and avoided conspicuous camera movements. They also had numerous discussions about shooting on video, but they ultimately decided that film better suited the romantic undertones of the story. Coppola remarked, "Film gives a little bit of a distance, which feels more like a memory to me. Video is more present tense". Acord believed that new film stocks would reduce the need for excessive lighting, ultimately using Kodak Vision 500T 5263 35 mm stock for night exteriors and Kodak Vision 320T 5277 stock in daylight. Most of the film was shot with an Aaton 35-III camera. For some confined locations where the Aaton would have been too noisy, a Moviecam Compact was used.
With high-speed film stocks, Acord chose to utilize available light as often as possible, only supplementing with artificial lights when necessary. He reported "never really" rigging lights for night exteriors, relying on the natural light on Tokyo's city streets. For interior sequences in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, he relied mostly on the hotel's practical lighting sources, shooting at a wide open f-stop and heavily cutting the light to eliminate reflections in the hotel window. Acord said he heard objections about lighting from some of the Japanese electricians, who were unaccustomed to relying so much on available light and were concerned that the exposure would not be sufficient. Acord, assured that the film stocks would hold up against lower lighting, ultimately shot much of the film two stops underexposed.
Many of the shooting locations were Japanese places of business and public areas at the time of filming, including New York Bar in the Park Hyatt Tokyo and Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. On public streets and subways, the production did not secure filming permits and relied on city bystanders as extras; Coppola described the shooting as "documentary-style" and was worried at times about getting stopped by police, so she kept a minimal crew. In the hotel, the production was not allowed to shoot in public areas until 1 or 2 a.m. to avoid disturbing guests. In the film's concluding sequence in which Bob and Charlotte make their final goodbyes, Coppola reported being unhappy with the dialogue she had scripted, so Murray improvised the whisper in Johansson's ear. Too quiet to be understandable, Coppola considered dubbing audio in the scene, but she ultimately decided it was better that it "stays between the two of them". After production concluded, Coppola supervised 10 weeks of editing by Sarah Flack in New York City.
## Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack was released by Emperor Norton Records on September 9, 2003. It contains 15 tracks, largely from the shoegaze and dream pop genres of indie and alternative rock. The soundtrack was supervised by Brian Reitzell and contains songs from artists and groups including Death in Vegas, Phoenix, Squarepusher, Sébastien Tellier, and Happy End. The Jesus and Mary Chain's song "Just Like Honey" and "Sometimes" by My Bloody Valentine featured, and four original tracks were written for Lost in Translation by the latter band's frontman, Kevin Shields. Other tracks produced for the film include two co-written by Reitzell and Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and one by Air. Songs featured in the film that are not in the soundtrack include karaoke performances of Elvis Costello's cover of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" and the Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket". A further performance by Murray of Roxy Music's "More Than This" is included as a bonus track.
During the screenwriting stage, Coppola spoke to Reitzell about the "moody" and "melancholic" qualities she wanted the music to convey in the film, as well as what Reitzell understood to be the "strange, floating, jet-lagged weirdness" that would define the central characters. Coppola said she wanted the soundtrack "to be less like a score" and more like the dream-pop mixes Reitzell made to assist her writing of the film. While Shields had released little music since the release of Loveless in 1991, at Reitzell's suggestion, he and Coppola enlisted him to help write original music for the film; Reitzell believed Shields "could capture that droning, swaying, beautiful kind of feeling that we wanted." He then joined Shields in London for some two months of overnight recording sessions, and they used the screenplay and dailies from production as inspiration while they worked on songs for the film. Shields commented on the challenge he felt in songwriting for a film, saying "I was barely aware of the language of music that's not essentially just for your ears. ... In the end, just the physical movement of the film, that was a delicacy. And I suppose that's why I ended up doing stuff that was so delicate."
King argues that music often plays the most significant role in setting mood and tone in the film, writing that it is substantial "in evoking the dreamy, narcotised, semi-detached impressions of jet-lag" as well as broader feelings of alienation and disconnection, "making what is probably the largest single contribution to the widespread understanding of the film as a 'mood piece'." He points to the use of "Girls" by Death in Vegas, featured in the early sequence in which Bob is driven from the airport to the hotel, arguing that it "plays a role equal to if not dominating that of the visuals ..., creating a drifting, ethereal and somewhat dreamy quality that precisely captures the impressions of temporal and spatial disjunction". He also points to the use of "cool and distant" tracks like "Tommib", used in the extended sequence featuring Charlotte observing Tokyo while seated in her hotel room window, as playing a significant role in establishing feelings of isolation and disorientation in the character. In King's view, some sequences feature combinations of music and visuals so as to function as "audio-visual set pieces", which offer distinct points of appeal in the film for its target audience.
## Release
### Marketing
Coppola did not sell distribution rights for the United States and Canada until she and Flack finished editing the film. In February 2003, the director showed the film to top executives at the domestic arm of Focus Features, the company to which it had already sold most of the foreign distribution. The prior contract proved to be significant for Focus, as it received privileged access to the film while competing buyers complained that they were restricted to the viewing of a three-minute trailer in the Focus offices at the American Film Market. Coppola initially offered the domestic distribution rights for \$5 million, but she decided to sell them to Focus for \$4 million, citing her appreciation for the international deals the company had secured for the film.
Once Focus was involved, it began promoting the film by employing a conventional "indie-style" marketing campaign. The strategy involved generating positive word of mouth for the film well before its September 2003 release. The distributor arranged advance press screenings throughout the summer of 2003 and combined this with a magazine publicity campaign. Posters and trailers emphasized the recognizable star presence of Murray, highlighting his performance in the film's comic sequences, which favored wider audience appeal. Immediately prior to its release, Focus placed Lost in Translation in film festivals and hosted "intimate media screenings" that included question-and-answer panels with Coppola and Murray. Many of these marketing tacks were designed to promote the film at minimal cost, a departure from more costly strategies often employed in the Hollywood mainstream, such as major television advertising.
### Theatrical run
Lost in Translation had its premiere on August 29, 2003, at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States. Over the next week, it appeared at film festivals in Venice and Toronto. It opened to the public in limited release on September 12, 2003, at 23 theaters in major cities in the United States. The film had already generated speculation about Oscar contention from advance screenings and was noted for opening several weeks earlier than expected for an indie vying for awards—a risk being that opening too early might cause the film to be forgotten by the time nominations were made for major prizes like the Academy Awards. Focus Features co-presidents James Schamus and David Linde commented that the company chose an early release date on the basis of factors including the film's quality and early marketing campaign, as well as a lack of competition from other films. The strategy was intended to give Lost in Translation more time to command the marketplace.
The film grossed \$925,000 in its opening weekend and was expanded the next week from 23 theaters to 183 in the top 25 markets of the country. There, it grossed more than \$2.62 million over the weekend and nearly paid off the total budget of the film. It entered wide release on October 3, its fourth weekend, peaking at a rank of seven in the box office chart; a week later, it expanded to an estimated 882 theaters, the film's highest theater count over its run. Lost in Translation grossed an estimated to-date total of \$18.5 million through October 13 and was noted by The Hollywood Reporter to have been performing well even "in smaller and medium-sized markets where audiences don't always respond to this type of upscale material". Following this performance, Lost in Translation saw a gradual decline in theater presence progressing into the new year, though it was expanded again after the film received nominations for the 76th Academy Awards. The film was widened from a late December low of 117 theaters to an estimated 632 at the end of January, ultimately ending its run in the United States and Canada on March 25 and earning \$44.6 million. Its international release earned \$74.1 million, for a worldwide total of \$118.7 million.
### Home media
The DVD of Lost in Translation was released on February 3, 2004, and includes deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes featurette, a conversation about the film featuring Murray and Coppola, and a music video for "City Girl", one of the original songs composed for the film by Kevin Shields. Wanting to capitalize on the publicity surrounding Lost in Translation's presence at the Academy Awards, Focus Features made the unusual move of releasing the film on home media while it was still screening in theaters, immediately after its Oscar nominations were announced. The strategy was seen as risky, as the industry was generally concerned that theatrical revenues could be harmed by early home video release. Lost in Translation ultimately earned nearly \$5 million from its first five days of video rentals and sold one million retail copies during its first week of release. Early returns showed it was the second-best selling DVD during this period while the film screened in 600 theaters and box office revenues dropped 19% from the previous week, which Variety described as "relatively modest". Focus credited the performance to positive word of mouth and cited the marketing for the film on both media as helpful for whichever platform consumers chose.
Lost in Translation was later released on the now-obsolete HD DVD format on May 29, 2007, and on Blu-ray on December 7, 2010.
## Reception
### Critical response
Lost in Translation received widespread critical acclaim, particularly for Murray's performance and for Coppola's direction and screenplay. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 232 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Effectively balancing humor and subtle pathos, Sofia Coppola crafts a moving, melancholy story that serves as a showcase for both Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has an average score of 91 out of 100 based on 44 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Critics widely praised Murray's performance as Bob, commending his handling of a more serious role that was combined with the comic persona for which he was already broadly known. Writing for Slate, David Edelstein argued that it was "the Bill Murray performance we've been waiting for", adding that "his two halves have never come together as they do here, in a way that connects that hilarious detachment with the deep and abiding sense of isolation that must have spawned it". Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly regarded Murray's performance as Oscar-worthy and lauded it as his "most vulnerable and unmannered" to date; she praised his treatment of a more delicate role as well as his improvisations in the film's comic sequences. The New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell had similar praise, calling Lost in Translation "Mr. Murray's movie" and remarking that the actor "supplies the kind of performance that seems so fully realized and effortless that it can easily be mistaken for not acting at all".
Coppola received a similar level of acclaim for her screenplay and direction. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times commented that Lost in Translation was "tart and sweet, unmistakably funny and exceptionally well observed—[which] marks ... Coppola as a mature talent with a distinctive sensibility and the means to express it". Much of the praise was directed specifically at her attention to qualities of subtlety and atmosphere; David Rooney of Variety praised the film as "a mood piece", adding that its "deft balance of humor and poignancy makes it both a pleasurable and melancholy experience". Likewise, Salon critic Stephanie Zacharek lauded Coppola as a "stealth dramatist" whose understated narrative style made for an artful depiction of emotion; she praised Lost in Translation as an intimate story that marks Coppola as an exceptional filmmaker.
Praise was also offered for Johansson's performance as Charlotte; Rooney commented that she "gives a smartly restrained performance as an observant, questioning woman with a rich interior life", and Turan added that Johansson "makes what could have been an overly familiar characterization come completely alive".
Lost in Translation was listed as a best film of the year by more than 235 critics and has appeared on other "best of" lists in the years after its release. Paste ranked it number seven on its list of "The 50 Best Movies of the 2000s", Entertainment Weekly ranked it number nine on its list of the decade's top ten, and the film was ranked number 22 on a 2016 list of the BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century, based on a poll of 177 critics.
### Controversy
While not a topic of most reviews, Lost in Translation received some charges of Orientalist racial stereotyping in its depiction of Japan. The filmmaker E. Koohan Paik argued that the film's comedy "is rooted entirely in the 'otherness' of the Japanese people", and that the story fails to offer balanced characterizations of the Japanese, adding that "it is ... the shirking of responsibility to depict them as full human beings, either negative or positive, which constitutes discrimination, or racism". Similarly, the artist Kiku Day charged in The Guardian that "[t]here is no scene where the Japanese are afforded a shred of dignity. The viewer is sledgehammered into laughing at these small, yellow people and their funny ways". Prior to the film's release in Japan, local distributors were reported to have concern about how it would be received there, and the film was ultimately met with criticism in some Japanese reviews; among them, critic Yoshiro Tsuchiya of Yomiuri Shimbun wrote that Coppola's representation of Japan was "outrageously biased and banal". Perceptions of stereotyping also led to a campaign against the film by an Asian-American organization that urged members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to vote against it at the 76th Academy Awards.
The film scholar Homay King argues that while the film ultimately does little to counter Orientalist stereotypes, it fails to establish the perspective from which Japanese representations are made, writing that "the film [does not] sufficiently clarify that its real subject is not Tokyo itself, but Western perceptions of Tokyo. ... When Japan appears superficial, inappropriately erotic, or unintelligible, we are never completely sure whether this vision belongs to Coppola, to her characters, or simply to a Hollywood cinematic imaginary". Moreover, Geoff King maintains that while depictions such as Charlotte's alienation from experiences like ikebana are evidence that the film abstains from the Orientalist "mythology of Japanese tradition as source of solace", the film often situates Japan as a source of "difference" for the characters by relying on crude jokes and stereotypes of Japanese people as "crazy" or "extreme". Coppola reported being surprised by such criticism, saying, "I think if everything's based on truth you can make fun, have a little laugh, but also be respectful of a culture. I just love Tokyo and I'm not mean-spirited".
### Accolades
Lost in Translation received awards and nominations in a variety of categories, particularly for Coppola's direction and screenwriting, as well as the performances of Murray and Johansson. At the 76th Academy Awards, it won Best Original Screenplay (Coppola) and the film received three further nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Coppola), and Best Actor (Murray). The film garnered three Golden Globe Awards from five nominations: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and Best Screenplay. At the 57th British Academy Film Awards, Lost in Translation won three awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Johansson), and Best Editing.
Lost in Translation also received awards from various foreign award ceremonies, film festivals, and critics' organizations. These include Best American Film at the Bodil Awards, Best Foreign Film at the César Awards, and Best Foreign Film at the Film Critics Circle of Australia, French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, and Deutscher Filmpreis, as well as the Nastro d'Argento for Best Foreign Director. The film also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film, Best Film – Comedy or Musical at the Satellite Awards, and two prizes at the Venice International Film Festival. From critics' organizations, Lost in Translation received awards in the Best Film category from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, the Toronto Film Critics Association, and the Vancouver Film Critics Circle.
|
12,298,304 |
SMS Wettin
| 1,173,766,715 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1901 ships",
"Ships built by Schichau",
"Ships built in Danzig",
"Wittelsbach-class battleships",
"World War I battleships of Germany"
] |
SMS Wettin ("His Majesty's Ship Wettin") was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Wittelsbach class of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy). She was built by Schichau Seebeckwerft in Danzig. Wettin was laid down in October 1899, and was completed October 1902. She and her sister ships—Wittelsbach, Zähringen, Schwaben and Mecklenburg—were the first capital ships built under the Navy Law of 1898. Wettin was armed with a main battery of four 24 cm (9.4 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph).
Wettin saw service in I Squadron of the German fleet for most of her career, along with her sister ships. She was occupied with extensive annual training, as well as making good-will visits to foreign countries. The training exercises provided the framework for the High Seas Fleet's operations during World War I. The ship was decommissioned in June 1911 as dreadnought battleships began to enter service but was reactivated for duty as a gunnery training ship between December 1911 and mid-1914.
After the start of World War I in August 1914, the Wittelsbach-class ships were mobilized and designated IV Battle Squadron. She saw limited duty in the Baltic Sea, but the ship played a minor role in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915, though Wettin saw no combat with Russian forces. By late 1915, crew shortages and the threat from British submarines forced the Kaiserliche Marine to withdraw older battleships like Wettin from active service. For the remainder of the war, Wettin served as a training ship for naval cadets and as a depot ship. The ship was stricken from the navy list after the war and sold for scrapping in 1921. Her bell is on display at the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden.
## Description
After the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) ordered the four Brandenburg-class battleships in 1889, a combination of budgetary constraints, opposition in the Reichstag (Imperial Diet), and a lack of a coherent fleet plan delayed the acquisition of further battleships. The Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office), Vizeadmiral (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Friedrich von Hollmann struggled throughout the early and mid-1890s to secure parliamentary approval for the first three Kaiser Friedrich III-class battleships. In June 1897, Hollmann was replaced by Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Alfred von Tirpitz, who quickly proposed and secured approval for the first Naval Law in early 1898. The law authorized the last two ships of the class, as well as the five ships of the Wittelsbach class, the first class of battleship built under Tirpitz's tenure. The Wittelsbachs were broadly similar to the Kaiser Friedrichs, carrying the same armament but with a more comprehensive armor layout.
Wettin was 126.8 m (416 ft 0 in) long overall, with a beam of 22.8 m (74 ft 10 in), and a draft of 7.95 m (26 ft 1 in) forward and 8.04 m (26 ft 5 in) aft. She displaced 11,774 t (11,588 long tons) as designed and up to 12,798 t (12,596 long tons) at full load. The ship was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple expansion engines that drove three screws. Steam was provided by six Thornycroft boilers and six cylindrical boilers, all of which burned coal. Wettin's powerplant was rated at 14,000 metric horsepower (13,808 ihp; 10,297 kW), which generated a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). The ship could steam for 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). She had a crew of 30 officers and 650 enlisted men.
Wettin's armament consisted of a main battery of four 24 cm (9.4 in) SK L/40 guns in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the central superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of eighteen 15 cm (5.9 inch) SK L/40 guns and twelve 8.8 cm (3.45 in) SK L/30 quick-firing guns, all in individual mounts in casemates in the ship's hull and superstructure. The armament suite was rounded out with six 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, all submerged in the hull; one was in the bow, another in the stern, and two on each broadside. The ship was protected with Krupp armor plate. In the central citadel that protected her magazines and propulsion machinery spaces, her armored belt was 225 millimeters (8.9 in) thick, tapering to 100 mm (3.9 in) toward the bow and stern. The deck armor was 50 mm (2 in) thick. The main battery turrets had 250 mm (9.8 in) of armor plating.
## Service history
### Construction – 1905
Wettin's keel was laid on 10 October 1899, at the Schichau-Werke in Danzig, under construction number 676. She was ordered under the contract name "D", as a new unit for the fleet. Wettin was launched on 6 June 1901. King Albert of Saxony, a member of the House of Wettin, gave a speech at the ceremony. In August 1902, a crew of 60 men took the ship to Kiel for sea trials, which were supervised by KAdm Hunold von Ahlefeld. On 10 August, while at Swinemünde during the trials, Kaiser Wilhelm II reviewed Wettin from his yacht Hohenzollern. Wettin was commissioned on 1 October 1902, the first member of her class to enter service. Further sea trials were completed by January 1903 and she joined I Squadron, replacing the battleship Weissenburg. That year, the squadron was occupied with the normal peacetime routine of individual and unit training. This included a training cruise in the Baltic Sea followed by a voyage to Spain from 7 May to 10 June. In July, she embarked on the annual cruise to Norway with the rest of the squadron. The autumn maneuvers consisted of a blockade exercise in the North Sea, a cruise of the entire fleet to Norwegian waters, and a mock attack on Kiel ending on 12 September. The year's training schedule concluded with a cruise into the eastern Baltic that started on 23 November and a cruise into the Skagerrak that began on 1 December.
Wettin and I Squadron participated in an exercise in the Skagerrak from 11 to 21 January 1904 and a further squadron exercise from 8 to 17 March. A major fleet exercise took place in the North Sea in May. In July, I Squadron and I Scouting Group visited Britain, including a stop at Plymouth on 10 July. The German ships sailed for the Netherlands on 13 July. I Squadron anchored in Vlissingen the following day, where they were visited by Queen Wilhelmina. The squadron remained in Vlissingen until 20 July, when it departed for a cruise in the northern North Sea with the rest of the fleet. The squadron stopped in Molde, Norway, on 29 July, while the other units went to other ports. The fleet reassembled on 6 August and steamed back to Kiel, where it conducted a mock attack on the harbor on 12 August. During its cruise in the North Sea, the fleet experimented with wireless telegraphy on a large scale and with searchlights for night communication and recognition signals. Immediately after returning to Kiel, the fleet began preparations for the autumn maneuvers in the Baltic, which began on 29 August. The fleet moved to the North Sea on 3 September and took part in a major landing operation. The ships then embarked IX Corps ground troops that had participated in the exercises, transporting them to Altona for a parade before Wilhelm II. On 6 September, the ships conducted their own parade for the Kaiser off the island of Helgoland. Three days later, the fleet returned to the Baltic via the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, where it participated in further landing operations with IX Corps and the Guards Corps. On 15 September, the maneuvers came to an end. I Squadron went on its winter training cruise, this time to the eastern Baltic from 22 November to 2 December.
Wettin took part in training cruises with I Squadron from 9 to 19 January and 27 February to 16 March 1905. Wettin was sent to assist her sister ship, Mecklenburg, which had run aground in the Great Belt on 3 March. Individual and squadron training followed, with an emphasis on gunnery drills. On 12 July, the fleet began a major training exercise in the North Sea. It then cruised through the Kattegat and stopped at Copenhagen and Stockholm. The summer cruise ended on 9 August. The autumn maneuvers would normally have followed shortly thereafter but were delayed by a visit from the British Channel Fleet that month. The British fleet stopped in Danzig, Swinemünde, and Flensburg, where it was greeted by units of the German Navy. Wettin and the main German fleet were anchored at Swinemünde for the occasion. The visit was strained by the Anglo-German naval arms race, and the 1905 autumn maneuvers were shortened considerably, to just a week of exercises in the North Sea in early September. The first exercise presumed a naval blockade in the German Bight; the second envisioned a hostile fleet attempting to force the defenses of the Elbe. In October, I Squadron went on a cruise in the Baltic. In early December, I and II Squadrons went on their regular winter cruise, this time to Danzig, where they arrived on 12 December. On the return trip to Kiel, the fleet conducted tactical exercises.
### 1906–1914
The fleet undertook a heavier training schedule in 1906 than in previous years. The ships were occupied with individual, division and squadron exercises throughout April. Starting on 13 May, major fleet exercises took place in the North Sea and lasted until 8 June, with a cruise around the Skagen into the Baltic. The fleet began its usual summer cruise to Norway in mid-July and was present for the birthday of Norwegian King, Haakon VII, on 3 August. The German ships departed the following day for Helgoland, to join exercises being conducted there. The fleet was back in Kiel by 15 August, where preparations for the autumn maneuvers began. Between 22 and 24 August, the fleet took part in landing exercises in Eckernförde Bay, outside Kiel. The maneuvers were paused on 31 August, when the fleet hosted vessels from Denmark and Sweden, which departed on 3 September. That same day, a Russian squadron visited in Kiel, remaining there until 9 September. The maneuvers resumed on 8 September and lasted five more days.
The ship participated in the uneventful winter cruise into the Kattegat and Skagerrak from 8 to 16 December. The first quarter of 1907 followed the previous pattern. On 16 February, the Active Battle Fleet was re-designated the High Seas Fleet. From the end of May to early June, the fleet went on its summer cruise in the North Sea, returning to the Baltic via the Kattegat. This was followed by the regular cruise to Norway from 12 July to 10 August. During the autumn maneuvers from 26 August to 6 September, the fleet conducted landing exercises in northern Schleswig with IX Corps. The winter training cruise went into the Kattegat from 22 to 30 November. In May 1908, the fleet went on a major cruise into the Atlantic instead of its normal voyage in the North Sea. Stops included Horta, in the Azores. The fleet returned to Kiel on 13 August to prepare for the autumn maneuvers lasting from 27 August to 7 September. Division exercises in the Baltic followed from 7 to 13 September. In early 1909, Wettin was rammed by the battleship Kaiser Karl der Grosse. She was not damaged in the accident and was able to continue training that year. During the annual maneuvers, Wettin won the Kaiser's Schießpreis (Shooting Prize) for the best accuracy with her main battery among I Squadron ships. The year 1910 passed uneventfully for Wettin with a similar routine of training, exercises, and cruises as in previous years.
By the time of the training exercises conducted in April, May, and June 1911, Wettin was the oldest battleship still in front-line service with the fleet. On 30 June her place in the squadron was taken by the new dreadnought battleship Thüringen. Wettin was reactivated on 1 December to replace her sister ship Schwaben, which needed a major overhaul after service as the fleet's gunnery training ship. In March and April 1912, Wettin, the armored cruiser Blücher, and the light cruisers Augsburg and Stuttgart were temporarily transferred from the artillery school to the Training Squadron. In August, Wettin was transferred from the artillery school to III Squadron where she took part in the annual fleet maneuvers.
### World War I
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Wettin was mobilized into IV Battle Squadron under the command of VAdm Ehrhard Schmidt. IV Squadron also included her four sister ships and the battleships Elsass and Braunschweig. On 26 August, the ships were sent to rescue the stranded light cruiser Magdeburg, which had run aground off the island of Odensholm in the eastern Baltic, but the cruiser was scuttled by her crew before the relief force arrived. Wettin and the rest of the squadron returned to Bornholm that day. Starting on 3 September, IV Squadron, assisted by Blücher, conducted a sweep into the Baltic. The operation lasted until 9 September but failed to bring Russian naval units to battle.
Two days later, the ships were transferred to the North Sea. They stayed there only briefly, returning to the Baltic on 20 September. From 22 to 26 September, the squadron took part in a sweep into the eastern Baltic in an unsuccessful attempt to find and destroy Russian warships. From 4 December 1914 to 2 April 1915, the ships of IV Squadron were tasked with coastal defense duties along Germany's North Sea coast, to prevent incursions by the British Royal Navy. Ships of the squadron's VII Division, which included Wettin, Wittelsbach, Schwaben, and Mecklenburg, then participated in training exercises in the western Baltic.
The German Army requested naval assistance for its campaign against Russia. Prince Heinrich, the commander of all naval forces in the Baltic, made VII Division, IV Scouting Group, and the torpedo boats of the Baltic fleet available for the operation. On 6 May, the VII Division ships were tasked with providing support for the assault on Libau. Wettin and the other ships were stationed off Gotland to intercept any Russian cruisers that might attempt to intervene in the landings, but the Russians took no such action. When cruisers from IV Scouting Group encountered Russian cruisers patrolling off Gotland, ships of VII Division deployed, mounting a third dummy funnel to disguise them as the more powerful Braunschweig-class battleship. They were joined by the cruiser Danzig. The ships advanced as far as the island of Utö on 9 May and Kopparstenarna the following day, but by then the Russian cruisers had withdrawn. Later that day, the British submarines HMS E1 and HMS E9 spotted IV Squadron but were too far away to attack.
From 27 May to 4 July, Wettin was back in the North Sea, patrolling the mouths of the Jade, Ems, and Elbe rivers. During this period, the naval high command realized that the old Wittelsbach-class ships would be useless in action against the Royal Navy, but could be effectively used against the much weaker Russian forces in the Baltic. Consequently, the ships were transferred back to the Baltic in July. They departed Kiel on 7 July, bound for Danzig. On 10 July, the ships arrived in Neufahrwassar, Danzig along with VIII Torpedo-boat Flotilla. IV Squadron ships sortied into the Baltic on 12 July to make a demonstration, returning to Danzig on 21 July without encountering Russian forces.
#### Battle of the Gulf of Riga
The following month, the naval high command began an operation in the Gulf of Riga to support the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive that the Army was waging. The Baltic naval forces were reinforced with significant elements of the High Seas Fleet, including I Battle Squadron, I Scouting Group, II Scouting Group, and II Torpedo-boat Flotilla. Prince Heinrich planned that Schmidt's ships would force their way into the Gulf and destroy the Russian warships at Riga, while the heavy units of the High Seas Fleet would patrol to the north to prevent interference by the main Russian Baltic Fleet. The Germans launched their attack on 8 August, initiating the Battle of the Gulf of Riga. Minesweepers attempted to clear a path through the Irbe Strait, covered by Braunschweig and Elsass, while Wettin and the rest of the squadron remained outside the strait. The Russian battleship Slava attacked the Germans in the strait, forcing them to withdraw.
During the action, the cruiser Thetis and the torpedo boat S144 were damaged by mines. The torpedo boats T52 and T58 were mined and sunk. Schmidt withdrew his ships to re-coal. Prince Heinrich debated making another attempt, as the German Army's advance toward Riga had stalled. Nevertheless, Prince Heinrich tried to force the channel a second time with two dreadnought battleships from I Squadron to cover the minesweepers. Wettin was left at Libau largely due to the scarcity of escorts. Increased activity by British submarines forced the Germans to employ more destroyers to protect their capital ships.
#### Subsequent activity
On 9 September 1915, Wettin and her four sisters sortied in an attempt to locate Russian warships off Gotland, but returned to port two days later without having engaged any opponents. By this point in the war, the Navy was encountering difficulties in manning more important vessels. Additionally, the threat from submarines in the Baltic convinced the German navy to withdraw the elderly Wittelsbach-class ships from active service. Wettin and most of the other IV Squadron ships left Libau on 10 November, bound for Kiel. Arriving the next day, they were designated the Reserve Division of the Baltic, commanded by Kommodore (Commodore) Walter Engelhardt. The ships were anchored off Schilksee, Kiel. On 31 January 1916, the division was dissolved, and the ships were dispersed for subsidiary duties.
Wettin was used as a training ship for naval cadets and as a depot ship for the remainder of the war. The ship was stricken from the naval register on 11 March 1920 and sold to ship breakers on 21 November 1921. Wettin was broken up for scrap the following year in Rönnebeck, a part of Bremen. Her bell is on display at the Militärhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr in Dresden.
|
38,825,214 |
Lewis and Clark Exposition gold dollar
| 1,138,522,438 |
Commemorative United States coin
|
[
"Cultural depictions of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark",
"Currencies introduced in 1904",
"Early United States commemorative coins",
"Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition",
"United States gold coins",
"World's fair commemorative coins"
] |
The Lewis and Clark Exposition Gold dollar is a commemorative coin that was struck in 1904 and 1905 as part of the United States government's participation in the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, held in the latter year in Portland, Oregon. Designed by United States Bureau of the Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber, the coin did not sell well and less than a tenth of the authorized mintage of 250,000 was issued.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, the first European-American overland exploring party to reach the Pacific Coast, was led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Between 1804 and 1806, its members journeyed from St. Louis to the Oregon coast and back, providing information and dispelling myths about the large area acquired by the United States in the Purchase. The Portland fair commemorated the centennial of that trip.
The coins were, for the most part, sold to the public by numismatic promoter Farran Zerbe, who had also vended the Louisiana Purchase Exposition dollar. As he was unable to sell much of the issue, surplus coins were melted by the Mint. The coins have continued to increase in value, and today are worth between hundreds and thousands of dollars, depending on condition. The Lewis and Clark Exposition dollar is the only American coin to be "two-headed", with a portrait of one of the expedition leaders on each side.
## Background
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 more than doubled the area of the American nation. Seeking to gain knowledge of the new possession, President Thomas Jefferson obtained an appropriation from Congress for an exploratory expedition, and appointed his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead it. A captain in the United States Army, Lewis selected William Clark, a former Army lieutenant and younger brother of American Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark, as co-leader of the expedition. Lewis and William Clark had served together, and chose about thirty men, dubbed the Corps of Discovery, to accompany them. Many of these were frontiersmen from Kentucky who were in the Army, as well as boatmen and others with necessary skills. The expedition set forth from the St. Louis area on May 14, 1804.
Journeying up the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark met Sacagawea, a woman of the Lemhi Shoshone tribe. Sacagawea had been captured by another tribe and sold as a slave to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian trapper, who made her one of his wives. Both Charbonneau and Sacagawea served as interpreters for the expedition and the presence of the Native American woman (and her infant son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau) helped convince hostile tribes that the Lewis and Clark Expedition was not a war party. A great service Sacagawea rendered the expedition was to aid in the purchase of horses, needed so the group could cross the mountains after they had to abandon the Missouri approaching the Continental Divide. One reason for her success was that the Indian chief whose aid they sought proved to be Sacagawea's brother.
The expedition spent the winter of 1804–1805 encamped near the site of Bismarck, North Dakota. They left there on April 7, 1805, and came within view of the Pacific Ocean, near Astoria, Oregon, on November 7. After overwintering and exploring the area, they departed eastward on March 23, 1806, and arrived in St. Louis six months to the day later. Only one of the expedition members died en route, most likely of appendicitis. While they did not find the mammoths or salt mountains reputed to be in the American West, "these were a small loss compared to the things that were gained". In addition to knowledge of the territories purchased by the US, these included the establishment of relations with Native Americans and increased public interest in the West once their diaries were published. Further, the exploration of the Oregon Country later aided American claims to that area. In gratitude for their service to the nation, Congress gave Lewis and Clark land grants and they were appointed to government offices in the West.
## Inception
Beginning in 1895, Oregonians proposed honoring the centennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with a fair to be held in Portland, a city located along the party's route. In 1900, a committee of Portland businessmen began to plan for the event, an issue of stock was successful in late 1901, and construction began in 1903. A long drive to gain federal government support succeeded when President Theodore Roosevelt signed an appropriations bill on April 13, 1904. This bill allocated \$500,000 to exposition authorities, and also authorized a gold dollar to commemorate the fair, with the design and inscriptions left to the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury. The organizing committee was the only entity allowed to purchase these from the government, and could do so at face value, up to a mintage limit of 250,000.
Numismatist Farran Zerbe had advocated for the passage of the authorization. Zerbe was not only a coin collector and dealer, but he promoted the hobby through his traveling exhibition, "Money of the World". Zerbe, president of the American Numismatic Association from 1908 to 1910, was involved in the sale of commemorative coins for over 20 years, beginning in 1892. The Portland exposition's authorities placed him in charge of the sale of the gold dollar.
Details of the preparation of the commemorative dollar are lost; the Mint destroyed many records in the 1960s. Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber was responsible for the designs.
## Design
Numismatic historians Don Taxay and Q. David Bowers both suggest that Barber most likely based his designs on portraits of Lewis and of Clark by American painter Charles Willson Peale found in Philadelphia's Independence Hall. Taxay deemed Barber's efforts, "commonplace". The piece is the only American coin to be "two-headed", bearing a single portrait on each side.
Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, in his volume on American coinage, pointed out that some people liked the Lewis and Clark Exposition dollar as it depicted historic figures who affected the course of American history, rather than a bust intended to be Liberty, and that Barber's coin presaged the 1909 Lincoln cent and the 1932 Washington quarter. Nevertheless, Vermeule deprecated the piece, as well as the earlier American gold commemorative, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition dollar. "The lack of spark in these coins, as in so many designs by Barber or Assistant Engraver (later Chief Engraver) Morgan, stems from the fact that the faces, hair and drapery are flat and the lettering is small, crowded, and even." According to Vermeule, when the two engravers collaborated on a design, such as the 1916 McKinley Birthplace Memorial dollar, "the results were almost oppressive".
## Production
The Philadelphia Mint produced 25,000 Lewis and Clark Exposition dollars in September 1904, plus 28 more, reserved for inspection and testing at the 1905 meeting of the United States Assay Commission. These bore the date 1904. Zerbe ordered 10,000 more in March 1905, dated 1905. The Mint struck 35,000 plus assay pieces in March and June in case Zerbe wanted to buy more, doing so in advance as the Philadelphia Mint shut down in the summer, but as he did not order more, the additional 25,000 were melted.
The Lewis and Clark Exposition dollar was the first commemorative gold coin to be struck and dated in multiple years. A total of 60,069 pieces were struck, from both years, of which 40,003 were melted. According to numismatists Jim Hunt and Jim Wells in their 2004 article on the coin, "the poor reception afforded the coin at the time of issue virtually guaranteed their rarity for future generation".
## Aftermath and collecting
The Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair opened in Portland on June 1, 1905. It was not designated as an international exposition, and did not draw much publicity even within the United States. Nevertheless, two and a half million people visited the fair between Opening Day and the close on October 14. Sixteen foreign nations accepted invitations from organizers to mount exhibits at the exposition. There was the usual broad array of concessions and midway attractions to entertain visitors. Among Americans who displayed exhibits at the fair were prominent cartoonist and animal fancier Homer Davenport and long-lived pioneer Ezra Meeker. The exposition was one of the few of its kind to make a profit, and likely contributed to a major increase in Portland's population and economy between 1905 and 1912.
Funds from the sale of the coin were designated for the completion of a statue to Sacagawea in a Portland park. There was little mention of the dollar in the numismatic press. Q. David Bowers speculates that Dr. George F. Heath, editor of The Numismatist, who opposed such commemoratives, declined to run any press releases Zerbe might have sent. Nevertheless, an article appeared in the August 1905 issue, promoting the exhibit and dollar. As it quotes Zerbe and praises his efforts, it was likely written by him. Zerbe concentrated on bulk sales to dealers, as well as casual ones at the fair at a price of \$2; he enlisted Portland coin dealer D.M. Averill & Company to make retail sales by mail. There were also some banks and other businesses that sold coins directly to the public. Averill ran advertisements in the numismatic press, and in early 1905, raised prices on the 1904 pieces, claiming that they were near exhaustion. This was a lie: in fact, the 1904-dated coins sold so badly that some 15,000 were melted at the San Francisco Mint. Zerbe had Averill sell the 1905 issue at a discounted price of ten dollars for six pieces. As he had for the Louisiana Purchase dollar, Zerbe made the coins available mounted in spoons or in jewelry. Little else is known regarding the distribution of the gold dollars.
The coins were highly unpopular in the collecting community, which had seen the Louisiana Purchase coin decrease in value since its issuance. Nevertheless, the value of the Lewis and Clark issue did not drop below issue price, but steadily increased. Despite a slightly higher number of coins recorded as extant, the 1905 issue is rarer and more valuable than the 1904; Bowers speculates that Zerbe may have held some pieces only to cash them in, or surrender them in 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt called in most gold coins. The 1905 for many years traded for less than the 1904, but by 1960 had matched the earlier version's price and in the 1980s surpassed it. The 2014 edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins (the Red Book) lists the 1904 at between \$900 and \$10,000, depending on condition, and the 1905 at between \$1,200 and \$15,000. One 1904, in near pristine MS-68 condition, sold in 2006 at auction for \$57,500.
Despite the relative failure of the coin issue, the statue of Sacagawea was duly erected in a Portland park, financed by coin sales. In 2000, Sacagawea joined Lewis and Clark in appearing on a gold-colored dollar coin, with the issuance of a circulating coin depicting her and her son.
## References and bibliography
|
206,552 |
USS Wisconsin (BB-64)
| 1,173,653,297 |
Iowa-class battleship
|
[
"1943 ships",
"Battleship museums in the United States",
"Cold War battleships of the United States",
"Downtown Norfolk, Virginia",
"Existing battleships",
"Gulf War ships of the United States",
"Iowa-class battleships",
"Korean War battleships of the United States",
"Maritime incidents in 1951",
"Maritime incidents in 1956",
"Military and war museums in Virginia",
"Museum ships in Virginia",
"Museums established in 2001",
"Museums in Norfolk, Virginia",
"National Register of Historic Places in Norfolk, Virginia",
"Naval museums in the United States",
"Ships built in Philadelphia",
"Ships on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia",
"World War II battleships of the United States",
"World War II on the National Register of Historic Places"
] |
USS Wisconsin (BB-64) is an Iowa-class battleship built for the United States Navy (USN) in the 1940s and is currently a museum ship. Completed in 1944, the ship was assigned to the Pacific Theater during World War II, where she participated in the Philippines campaign and the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The battleship shelled the Japanese home islands shortly before the end of the war in September 1945. During the Korean War, Wisconsin shelled North Korean targets in support of United Nations and South Korean ground operations, after which she was decommissioned. She was reactivated in 1986; after a modernization program, she participated in Operation Desert Storm in January – February 1991.
Wisconsin was last decommissioned in September 1991 after a total of 14 years of active service in the fleet, and having earned a total of six battle stars for service in World War II and Korea, as well as a Navy Unit Commendation for service during the January/February 1991 Gulf War. Wisconsin was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register (NVR) 17 March 2006, and was donated for permanent use as a museum ship. She currently functions as a museum ship operated by Nauticus in Norfolk, Virginia. On 15 April 2010, the City of Norfolk officially took over ownership of the ship.
## Background and description
The Iowa class of fast battleships was designed in the late 1930s in response to the US Navy's expectations for a future war with the Empire of Japan. The last battleships to be built by the United States, they were also the US Navy's largest and fastest vessels of the type. American officers preferred comparatively slow but heavily armed and armored battleships, but Navy planners determined that such a fleet would have difficulty in bringing the faster Japanese fleet to battle, particularly the Kongō-class battlecruisers and the aircraft carriers of the 1st Air Fleet. Design studies prepared during the development of the earlier North Carolina and South Dakota classes demonstrated the difficulty in resolving the desires of fleet officers with those of the planning staff within the displacement limits imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty system, which had governed capital ship construction since 1923. An escalator clause in the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936 allowed an increase from 35,000 long tons (36,000 t) to 45,000 long tons (46,000 t) in the event that any member nation refused to sign the treaty, which Japan refused to do.
Wisconsin is 887 feet 3 inches (270.4 m) long overall and is 860 feet (262.1 m) long at the waterline. The ship has a beam of 108 ft 2 in (33 m) and a draft of 37 ft 9 in (11.5 m) at her full combat load of 57,540 long tons (58,460 t). The Iowa-class ships are powered by four General Electric geared steam turbines, each driving one screw propeller using steam provided by eight oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers. Rated at 212,000 shaft horsepower (158,000 kW), the turbines were designed to give a top speed of 32.5 knots (60.2 km/h; 37.4 mph), but were built to handle a 20 percent overload. None of the Iowa's ever ran speed trials in deep water, but the Bureau of Ships estimated that they could reach a speed of about 34 knots (63 km/h; 39 mph) from 225,000 shp (168,000 kW) at a light displacement of 51,209 long tons (52,031 t). The ships had a designed cruising range of 15,000 nautical miles (28,000 km; 17,000 mi) at a speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph), although Wisconsin's half sister New Jersey's fuel consumption figures during her sea trials suggest that her range was at least 20,150 nmi (37,320 km; 23,190 mi) at that cruising speed. Their designed crew numbered 117 officers and 1,804 enlisted men which had greatly increased by the end of the war in 1945. Wisconsin's crew at that time numbered 173 officers and 2,738 sailors.
### Armament, fire control, sensors and aircraft
The main battery of the Iowa-class ships consisted of nine 16 in (406 mm)/50 caliber Mark 7 guns in three triple-gun turrets on the centerline, two of which were placed in a superfiring pair forward of the superstructure, with the third aft. Going from bow to stern, the turrets were designated I, II, and III. Their secondary battery consisted of twenty 5 in (127 mm)/38 caliber dual-purpose guns mounted in twin-gun turrets clustered amidships, five turrets on each broadside. Unlike their half sisters Iowa and New Jersey that were the first pair of ships built, Missouri and Wisconsin were completed with an anti-aircraft suite of twenty quadruple mounts for 40 mm (1.6 in) Bofors AA guns, nine mounts on each broadside and one each on the roofs of Turrets II and III. Forty-nine 20-millimeter (0.8 in) Oerlikon light AA auto-cannon in single mounts were distributed almost the length of the ships.
The primary means of controlling the main armament are two Mark 38 directors for the Mark 38 fire-control system mounted at the tops of the fore and aft fire-control towers in the superstructure. These directors were equipped with 25-foot-6-inch-long (7.8 m) rangefinders, although their primary sensor was the Mark 8 fire-control radar mounted on their roofs. A secondary Mark 40 fire-control director was installed inside the armored conning tower at the front of the superstructure that used the Mark 27 fire-control radar positioned on the top of the conning tower. Each turret is fitted with a rangefinder 46 feet (14 m) long and can act as a director for the other turrets. Four Mark 37 gunnery directors, two on the centerline at the ends of the superstructure and one on each broadside, control the five-inch guns. Each director was equipped with a 15-foot (4.6 m) rangefinder and a pair of radars on its roof. These were a Mark 12 fire-control system and a Mark 22 height-finder radar. Each 40 mm mount was remotely controlled by a Mark 51 director that incorporated a Mark 14 lead-computing gyro gunsight while the sailors that used the 20 mm gun used a Mark 14 sight to track their targets.
A SK-2 early-warning radar was fitted on the ship's foremast; above it was a SG surface-search radar. The other SG radar was mounted at the top of the mainmast positioned on the rear funnel.
The Iowas were built with two rotating aircraft catapults on their stern for floatplanes and a large crane was fitted to recover them. Initially a trio of Vought OS2U Kingfishers were carried, but these were replaced by Curtiss SC Seahawks in December 1944.
### Protection
The internal waterline armor belt of the Iowa-class ships is 12.1 in (307 mm) thick and has a height of 10 ft 6 in (3.2 m). Below it is a strake of Class B homogeneous armor plate that tapers in thickness from 12.1 inches at the top to 1.62 in (41 mm) at the bottom and is 28 ft (8.5 m) high. The two strakes of armor are inclined outwards at the top 19 degrees to improve the armor's resistance to horizontal fire. In general the vertical armor plates are made from Class A cemented armor and the horizontal armor from Class B or Special treatment steel (STS). The belt armor extends to the two transverse bulkheads fore and aft of the main-gun barbettes, forming the armored citadel. Part of the lower armor belt extends aft from the rear bulkhead to protect the ships' steering gear. Its maximum thickness ranges from 13 to 13.5 in (330 to 343 mm) at the top and the plates taper to 5 inches at the bottom. Unlike the Iowa and New Jersey, the armor plates in the forward transverse bulkhead in Missouri and Wisconsin have a maximum thickness of 14.5 in (368 mm) at the top that tapers to 11.7 in (297 mm). The aft bulkhead is a consistent 14.5 inches in thickness, but does not go below the lower belt extension.
The main-gun turrets has Class B plates 19.5 in (495 mm) thick on their faces and 9.5 in (241 mm) of Class A plates on their sides. The armor plates protecting their barbettes range in thickness from 17.3 in (439 mm) to 14.8 in (376 mm) and 11.6 in (295 mm) with the thickest plates on the sides and the thinnest ones on the front and back. The sides of the conning tower are 17.3 in (440 mm) thick. The main deck of the Iowas consists of 1.5 in (38 mm) of STS. Below this deck, the roof of the armored citadel is formed by 6 in (152 mm) of armor in two layers. Below this is a deck of 0.625-inch (16 mm) STS plates intended to stop splinters from shells that pierced the armored deck above it. The armor deck extends aft and the roof of the steering gear compartment is 6.2 in (160 mm) thick.
The underwater protection system of the Iowa-class battleships consists of three watertight compartments outboard of the lower armor belt and another behind it. The two outermost compartment are kept loaded with fuel oil or seawater to absorb the energy of the torpedo warhead's detonation and slow the resulting splinters so they can be stopped by the lower armor belt. Behind the belt is a holding bulkhead intended to protect the ships' inner spaces from any splinters that might penetrate and the subsequent flooding. For protection against naval mines, the Iowas have a double bottom that runs the full length of the ships and increases to a triple bottom except at the bow and stern.
## History
### Construction
Wisconsin was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named after the US state of Wisconsin. The ship was authorized by Congress in 1938 and ordered on 12 June 1940 with the hull number BB-64. Her keel was laid down on 25 January 1941, at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She was launched on 7 December 1943, sponsored by Mrs. Goodland, wife of Walter S. Goodland, the Governor of Wisconsin, and commissioned on 16 April 1944, with Captain Earl E. Stone in command.
Wisconsin is numerically the highest-numbered US battleship built. Although her keel was laid after Missouri's, she was commissioned before Missouri's commissioning date. Wisconsin was commissioned on 16 April 1944, while Missouri was commissioned on 11 June of the same year. Thus, Wisconsin's construction began after Missouri's, and finished earlier. Iowa and Wisconsin were finally stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 17 March 2006, making them the last battleships in service in the world.
### World War II (1944–1945)
#### Shakedown and service with 3rd Fleet, Admiral Halsey
After the ship's trials and initial training in the Chesapeake Bay, Wisconsin departed Norfolk, Virginia, on 7 July 1944, bound for the British West Indies. Following her shakedown cruise (conducted out of Trinidad), she returned to the builder's yard for alterations and repairs. On 24 September, Wisconsin sailed for the West Coast, transiting the Panama Canal, and reporting for duty with the Pacific Fleet on 2 October. The battleship later steamed to Hawaiian waters for training exercises and then headed for the Western Caroline Islands. Rear Admiral Edward Hanson, commander of Battleship Division 9, hoisted his flag aboard Wisconsin on 25 November. Shortly after reaching Ulithi, she was assigned to Task Group (TG) 38.2, part of Admiral William F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet's Fast Carrier Task Force (TF 38), on 11 December. Her primary duty was to serve as part of the anti-aircraft screen for the carriers. In addition to guarding the carriers, Wisconsin and the other battleships acted as oilers for the escorting destroyers, since the fleet's logistics train could not accompany the strike force during raids. The battleship arrived in time to participate in the Philippines campaign. As a part of that operation, the planners had envisioned landings on the southwest coast of Mindoro, south of Luzon, which would allow American forces to interdict Japanese lines of communication through the South China Sea.
The carriers had just completed three days of heavy raids against Japanese airfields, suppressing enemy aircraft during the amphibious operations against Mindoro and had withdrawn to begin refueling at sea on 17 December about 300 mi (480 km) east of Luzon in the Philippine Sea. The task force was struck by Typhoon Cobra the following day. The small but violent typhoon surprised the task force while many of the ships were attempting to refuel. Three destroyers capsized while nine other ships were seriously damaged.Wisconsin was not damaged, but reported two injured sailors as a result of the typhoon.
TF 38 attacked Japanese airfields in Formosa, Okinawa, and the Sakishima Islands with TG 38.2 tasked to cover southern Formosa and the Pescadore Islands beginning on 3 January 1945 to destroy aircraft that the Japanese had concentrated there to attack any amphibious landings on Luzon Island. The Americans caught the Japanese by surprise and claimed to have destroyed 170 aircraft that had been unable to take-off due to bad weather in two days of airstrikes. TF 38 withdrew to refuel on 5 January while the Japanese aircraft based on Luzon were attacking the ships of the 7th Fleet with some effect. The 7th Fleet was approaching Lingayen Gulf to conduct an amphibious landing of Luzon.
TF 38 was able to so thoroughly suppress the airfields on Luzon on 6–7 January that the landings were undisrupted by Japanese aircraft when they began on 9 January. The ships refueled on 8 January while moving northwards for another round of attacks on Formosa and Okinawa that began the following day with TG 38.2 this time attacking northern Formosa. This time they also attacked Japanese shipping. The task force entered the South China Sea on the night of 9/10 January to execute the next phase of Halsey's plan to interdict Japanese shipping lanes and destroy the Japanese forces defending the area, specifically including any capital ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, as naval intelligence had reported two hybrid carrier/battleships, Ise and Hyūga, at Cam Ranh Bay in occupied French Indochina.
Halsey tasked Wisconsin's carrier group with closing to 50 kilometres (31 mi) of the Indochinese coast on 12 January while the rest of TF 38 supported TG 38.2 and attacked other targets further north. Halsey also formed a surface action group from TG 38.2 with Wisconsin and New Jersey and five cruisers to bombard Cam Ranh Bay under cover of the morning's airstrikes, but night reconnaissance aircraft revealed well before dawn that the two hybrids were no longer there and their mission was canceled. They resumed their escort duties, but surprise was complete and no Japanese aircraft attacked TG 38.2. TF 38 withdrew shortly after sunset and refueled the following day in the middle of the South China Sea despite another typhoon in the area.
New orders arrived for Halsey on 13 January in which he was directed to intercept any enemy forces approaching the Lingayen Gulf area from either the north or the south. Halsey believed that he could best do so from his current location, using his carrier aircraft to destroy any Japanese force capable of threatening the Lingayen Gulf area. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, clarified that he could attack Hong Kong if no better targets were available.
Formosa was raided again on 15 January, and 21 January. Throughout January Wisconsin shielded the carriers as they conducted air raids at Hong Kong, Canton, Hainan Island, the Canton oil refineries, the Hong Kong Naval Station, and Okinawa.
#### Service with 5th Fleet, Admiral Spruance
Wisconsin was assigned to the 5th Fleet when Admiral Raymond A. Spruance relieved Admiral Halsey as commander of the fleet. She moved northward with the redesignated TF 58 as the carriers headed for the Tokyo area. On 16 February, the task force approached the Japanese coast under cover of adverse weather conditions and achieved complete tactical surprise. As a result, Wisconsin and the other ships shot down 322 enemy planes and destroyed 177 more on the ground. Japanese shipping, both naval and merchant, also suffered drastically, as did hangars and aircraft installations.
Wisconsin and the task force moved to Iwo Jima on 17 February to provide direct support for the landings slated to take place on 19 February. They revisited Tokyo on 25 February and hit the island of Hachino off the coast of Honshū the next day, resulting in heavy damage to ground facilities; additionally, American planes sank five small vessels and destroyed 158 planes.
Wisconsin's task force stood out of Ulithi on 14 March bound for Japan. The mission of that group was to eliminate airborne resistance from the Japanese homeland to American forces off Okinawa. Enemy fleet units at Kure and Kobe, on southern Honshū, reeled under the impact of the explosive blows delivered by TF 58's airmen. On 18–19 March, from a point 100 mi (160 km) southwest of Kyūshū, TF 58 hit enemy airfields on that island; unfortunately, allied antiaircraft fire on 19 March failed to stop an attack on the carrier Franklin. That afternoon, Wisconsin and the task force retired from Kyūshū, screening the blazing and battered flattop, and shooting down 48 attackers.
On 24 March, Wisconsin trained her 16 in (406 mm) guns on targets ashore on Okinawa. Together with the other battleships of the task force, she pounded Japanese positions and installations in preparation for the landings. Japanese resistance, while fierce, was doomed to failure by dwindling numbers of aircraft and trained pilots.
While TF 58's planes were dealing with Yamato and her escorts, enemy aircraft attacked the American surface units. Combat air patrol (CAP) shot down 15 enemy planes, and ships' gunfire shot down another three, but not before one kamikaze attack penetrated the CAP and screen to crash on the flight deck of the fleet carrier Hancock. On 11 April, the Japanese renewed their kamikaze attacks; and only drastic maneuvers and heavy barrages of gunfire saved the task force. CAP shot down 17 planes, and ships' gunfire shot down 12. The next day, 151 enemy aircraft attacked TF 58, but Wisconsin, together with other units of the screens for the vital carriers, kept the kamikaze pilots at bay and destroyed them before they could reach their targets. Over the days that ensued, Japanese kamikaze attacks managed to crash into three carriers—Intrepid, Bunker Hill, and Enterprise—on successive days.
By 4 June, a typhoon was swirling through the fleet. Wisconsin rode out the storm unscathed, but three cruisers, two carriers, and a destroyer suffered serious damage. Offensive operations were resumed on 8 June with a final aerial assault on Kyūshū. The Japanese aerial response was virtually nonexistent; 29 planes were located and destroyed. On that day, one of Wisconsin's floatplanes landed and rescued a downed pilot from the carrier Shangri-La.
#### Bombardment of Japan
Wisconsin ultimately put into Leyte Gulf and dropped anchor there on 13 June for repairs and replenishment. Three weeks later, on 1 July, the battleship and her escorts sailed once more for Japanese home waters for carrier air strikes on the enemy's heartland. Nine days later, carrier planes from TF 38 destroyed 72 enemy aircraft on the ground and smashed industrial sites in the Tokyo area. Wisconsin and the other ships made no attempt whatsoever to conceal the location of their armada, due in large part to a weak Japanese response to their presence.
On 16 July, Wisconsin fired her 16 in (406 mm) guns at the steel mills and oil refineries at Muroran, Hokkaido. Two days later, she wrecked industrial facilities in the Hitachi Miro area, on the coast of Honshū, northeast of Tokyo itself. During that bombardment, British battleships of the British Pacific Fleet contributed their heavy shellfire. By that point in the war, Allied warships such as Wisconsin were able to shell the Japanese homeland almost at will.
TF 38's planes subsequently blasted the Japanese naval base at Yokosuka, and put the former fleet flagship Nagato, one of the two remaining Japanese battleships, out of action. Throughout July and into August, Admiral Halsey's airmen visited destruction upon the Japanese, the last instance being against Tokyo on 13 August. Two days later, the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II.
Wisconsin, as part of the occupying force, arrived at Tokyo Bay on 5 September, three days after the formal surrender occurred on board the battleship Missouri. During Wisconsin's brief career in World War II, she had steamed 105,831 mi (170,318 km) since commissioning, shot down three enemy planes, claimed assists on four occasions, and fueled her screening destroyers on some 250 occasions.
#### Post World War II (1945–1950)
Shifting subsequently to Okinawa, the battleship embarked homeward-bound GIs on 22 September 1945, as part of Operation Magic Carpet staged to bring soldiers, sailors, and marines home from the far-flung battlefronts of the Pacific. Departing Okinawa on 23 September, Wisconsin reached Pearl Harbor on 4 October, remaining there for five days before she pushed on for the West Coast on the last leg of her state-side bound voyage. She reached San Francisco on 15 October.
Heading for the East Coast of the United States soon after the start of the new year, 1946, Wisconsin transited the Panama Canal from 11 to 13 January and reached Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 18 January. Following a cruise south to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the battleship entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for overhaul. After repairs and alterations that consumed the summer, Wisconsin sailed for South American waters.
Over the weeks that ensued, the battleship visited Valparaíso, Chile, from 1–6 November; Callao, Peru, from 9–13 November; Balboa, Canal Zone, from 16 to 20 November; and La Guaira, Venezuela, from 22 to 26 November, before returning to Norfolk on 2 December 1946.
Wisconsin spent nearly all of 1947 as a training ship, taking naval reservists on two-week cruises throughout the year. Those voyages commenced at Bayonne, New Jersey, and saw visits conducted at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Panama Canal Zone. While underway at sea, the ship would perform various drills and exercises before the cruise would end where it had started, at Bayonne. During June and July 1947, Wisconsin took United States Naval Academy midshipmen on cruises to northern European waters.
In January 1948, Wisconsin reported to the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Norfolk for inactivation. Placed out of commission, in reserve on 1 July, Wisconsin was assigned to the Norfolk group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.
### Korean War (1950–1952)
Her sojourn in "mothballs" was rather brief, due to the North Korean invasion of South Korea in late June 1950. Wisconsin was recommissioned on 3 March 1951 with Captain Thomas Burrowes in command. After shakedown training, the revitalized battleship conducted two midshipmen training cruises, taking the officers-to-be to Edinburgh, Scotland; Lisbon, Portugal; Halifax, Nova Scotia; New York City and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba before she returned to Norfolk. While leaving New York, Wisconsin was accidentally grounded on mud flats in New York Harbor, but was freed on 23 August 1951 with no damage to the ship.
Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 25 October, bound for the Pacific. She transited the Panama Canal on 29 October and reached Yokosuka, Japan on 21 November. There she relieved New Jersey as flagship for Vice Admiral H. M. Martin, Commander 7th Fleet.
On 26 November, with Vice Admiral Martin and Rear Admiral F.P. Denebrink, Commander, Service Force Pacific embarked, Wisconsin departed Yokosuka for Korean waters to support the fast carrier operations of TF 77. She left the company of the carrier force on 2 December, and screened by the destroyer Wiltsie, provided gunfire support for the Republic of Korea (ROK) Corps in the Kasong-Kosong area. After disembarking Admiral Denebrink on 3 December at Kangnung, the battleship resumed station on the Korean "bombline", providing gunfire support for the American 1st Marine Division. Wisconsin's shelling accounted for a tank, two gun emplacements, and a building. She continued her gunfire support task for the 1st Marine Division and 1st ROK Corps through 6 December, accounting for enemy bunkers, artillery positions, and troop concentrations. On one occasion during that time, the battleship received a request for call-fire support and provided three star-shells for the 1st ROK Corps, illuminating an enemy attack that was consequently repulsed with a considerable number of enemy casualties.
After being relieved on the gunline by the heavy cruiser Saint Paul on 6 December, Wisconsin briefly retired from gunfire-support duties. She resumed them in the Kasong-Kosong area on 11 December screened by the destroyer Twining. The following day, 12 December, had the helicopter embarkation on Wisconsin of Rear Admiral H. R. Thurber, Commander Battleship Division 2 (BatDiv 2), as part of his inspection trip in the Far East.
Wisconsin continued her naval gunfire-support duties on the bombline, shelling enemy bunkers, command posts, artillery positions, and trench systems through 14 December. She departed the "bombline" on that day to render special gunfire support duties in the Kojo area shelling coastal targets in support of United Nations (UN) troops ashore. That same day, Wisconsin returned to the Kasong-Kosong area. On 15 December, she disembarked Admiral Thurber by helicopter. The next day, Wisconsin departed Korean waters, heading for Sasebo to rearm.
Returning to the combat zone on 17 December, Wisconsin embarked United States Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan on 18 December. That day, the battleship supported the 11th ROK invasion with night illumination fire that enabled the ROK troops to repulse a North Korean assault with heavy enemy casualties. Departing the "bombline" on 19 December, the battleship transferred Ferguson by helicopter to the carrier Valley Forge.
On 20 December, Wisconsin participated in a coordinated air-surface bombardment of Wonsan to neutralize selected targets in its area. The ship shifted its bombardment station to the western end of Wonsan harbor, hitting boats and small craft in the inner swept channel with her 5-inch (127 mm) guns during the afternoon and helping forestall attempts to assault the friendly-held islands nearby. Wisconsin then made an antiboat sweep to the north, firing her 5-inch batteries on suspected boat concentrations. She then provided gunfire support to UN troops operating at the bombline until 22 December, when she rejoined the carrier task force.
On 28 December, Cardinal Francis Spellman, on a Korean tour over the Christmas holidays, helicoptered aboard the ship to celebrate Mass for Catholic crew members. He left as he came, off Pohang. On New Year's Eve day, Wisconsin put into Yokosuka.
Wisconsin departed that port on 8 January 1952 and returned to Korean waters. She reached Pusan the following day and entertained the president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, and his wife, on 10 January. The couple received full military honors as they came aboard, which Rhee reciprocated by awarding Vice Admiral Martin the ROK Order of the Military Merit.
Wisconsin returned to the bombline on 11 January, and over the ensuing days, delivered heavy gunfire support for the 1st Marine Division and the 1st ROK Corps. As before, her primary targets were command posts, shelters, bunkers, troop concentrations, and mortar positions. As before, she stood ready to deliver call-fire support as needed, shelling enemy troops in the open on 14 January at the request of the ROK 1st Corps.
Rearming once more at Sasebo, she shortly joined TF 77 off the coast of Korea and resumed support at the bombline on 23 January. Three days later, she shifted again to the Kojo region, to participate in a coordinated air and gun strike. That same day, the battleship returned to the bombline and shelled the command post and communications center for the 15th North Korean Division during call-fire missions for the 1st Marine Division.
Returning to Wonsan at the end of January, Wisconsin bombarded enemy guns at Hodo Pando before she was rearmed at Sasebo. The battleship rejoined TF 77 on 2 February, and the next day blasted railway buildings and marshaling yards at Hodo Pando and Kojo before rejoining TF 77. After replenishment at Yokosuka a few days later, she returned to the Kosong area and resumed gunfire support. During that time, she destroyed railway bridges and a small shipyard while conducting call-fire missions on enemy command posts, bunkers, and personnel shelters, making numerous cuts on enemy trench lines in the process.
On 26 February, Wisconsin arrived at Pusan, where Vice Admiral Shon, the ROK chief of naval operations, United States Ambassador J.J. Muccio and Rear Admiral Scott-Montcrief, Royal Navy, Commander, Task Group 95.12 (TG 95.12) visited the battleship. Departing that South Korean port the following day, Wisconsin reached Yokosuka on 2 March. A week later, she shifted to Sasebo to prepare to return to Korean waters.
Wisconsin arrived off Songjin, Korea, on 15 March and concentrated her gunfire on enemy railway transport. Early that morning, she destroyed a communist troop train trapped outside a destroyed tunnel. That afternoon, she received the first direct hit in her history, when one of four shells from a North Korean 155 mm gun battery struck the shield of a starboard 40 mm mount. Although little material damage resulted, three men were injured. Wisconsin subsequently destroyed that battery with a full 16-inch (406 mm) salvo before continuing her mission. After again supporting 1st Marine Division with her heavy rifles, the battleship returned to Japan on 19 March.
Relieved as flagship of the 7th Fleet on 1 April by sister ship Iowa, Wisconsin departed Yokosuka, bound for the United States. En route home, she touched briefly at Guam, where she took part in the successful test of the Navy's largest floating dry dock on 4–5 April, the first ever to accommodate an Iowa-class battleship. She continued her homeward-bound voyage via Pearl Harbor and arrived at Long Beach, California, on 19 April before continuing on for Norfolk.
### After the Korean War (1952–1981)
On 9 June, Wisconsin resumed her role as a training ship, taking midshipmen to Greenock, Scotland; Brest, France; and Guantánamo Bay, before returning to Norfolk. She departed Hampton Roads on 25 August and participated in the NATO exercise Operation Mainbrace, which was held out of Greenock, Scotland. After her return to Norfolk, Wisconsin underwent an overhaul in the naval shipyard there. Wisconsin remained in the Atlantic fleet throughout 1952 and into 1953, training midshipmen and conducting exercises. After a month of routine maintenance Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 9 September 1953, bound for the Far East.
Sailing via the Panama Canal to Japan, Wisconsin relieved New Jersey as 7th Fleet flagship on 12 October. During the months that followed, Wisconsin visited the Japanese ports of Kobe, Sasebo, Yokosuka, Otaru, and Nagasaki. She spent Christmas at Hong Kong and was ultimately relieved of flagship duties on 1 April 1954 and returned to the United States soon thereafter, reaching Norfolk, via Long Beach and the Panama Canal, on 4 May.
Entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 11 June, Wisconsin underwent a brief overhaul and commenced a midshipman training cruise on 12 July. After revisiting Greenock, Brest, and Guantánamo Bay, the ship returned to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for repairs. Shortly thereafter, Wisconsin participated in Atlantic Fleet exercises as flagship for the commander, Second Fleet. Departing Norfolk in January 1955, Wisconsin took part in Operation Springboard, during which she visited Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Then, upon returning to Norfolk, the battleship conducted another midshipman's cruise that summer, visiting Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Guantánamo Bay before returning to the United States.
Upon completion of a major overhaul at the New York Naval Shipyard, Wisconsin headed south for refresher training in the Caribbean Sea, later taking part in another Springboard exercise. During that cruise, she again visited Port-au-Prince and added Tampico, Mexico, and Cartagena, Colombia, to her list of ports of call. She returned to Norfolk on the last day of March 1955 for local operations. On 19 October, while operating in the East River in New York Harbor, Wisconsin was accidentally grounded, but the ship was freed in about an hour without any serious damage.
Throughout April 1956 and into May, Wisconsin operated locally off the Virginia Capes. On 6 May, the battleship collided with the destroyer Eaton in a heavy fog; Wisconsin put into Norfolk with extensive damage to her bow, and one week later entered dry dock at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. A novel experiment sped her repairs and enabled the ship to carry out her scheduled midshipman training cruise that summer. A 120-ton, 68 foot (21 m) section of the bow of Wisconsin's incomplete sister ship Kentucky was transported by barge, in one section, from Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Corporation of Newport News, Virginia, across Hampton Roads to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Working around the clock, Wisconsin's ship's force and shipyard personnel completed the operation that grafted on the new bow in 16 days. On 28 June 1956, the ship was ready for sea.
Wisconsin resumed her midshipman training on 9 July 1956. That autumn, Wisconsin participated in Atlantic Fleet exercises off the coast of the Carolinas, returning to port on 8 November 1956. Entering the Norfolk Naval Shipyard a week later, the battleship underwent major repairs that were not finished until 2 January 1957.
After local operations off the Virginia capes on 3–4 January 1957 and from 9–11 January, Wisconsin departed Norfolk on 16 January, reporting to the commander, Fleet Training Group, at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay. Wisconsin served as Admiral Henry Crommelin's flagship during the ensuing shore bombardment practices and other exercises held off the isle of Culebra, Puerto Rico, from 2–4 February. Sailing for Norfolk upon completion of the training period, the battleship arrived on 7 February and resumed local operations off Norfolk. On 27 March, Wisconsin sailed for the Mediterranean Sea, reaching Gibraltar on 6 April, she pushed on that day to rendezvous with TF 60 in the Aegean Sea before reporting to Turkey for the NATO exercise Red Pivot.
Departing Xeros Bay on 14 April, she arrived at Naples four days later, and conducted exercises in the eastern Mediterranean. In the course of those operational training evolutions, she rescued a pilot and crewman who survived the crash of a plane from the aircraft carrier Forrestal. Wisconsin reached Valencia, Spain, on 10 May, and three days later, entertained prominent civilian and military officials of the city.
Departing Valencia on 17 April, Wisconsin reached Norfolk on 27 May. En route, she was called upon to sink a Boeing KC-97F-55-BO Stratofreighter, 51-0258, which had ditched in the Atlantic on 9 May, 550 km (343.8 mi) southeast of the Azores Islands following a double engine failure, and subsequently floated for 10 days.
On 27 May, Rear Admiral L.S. Parks relieved Rear Admiral Crommelin as Commander, BatDiv 2. Departing Norfolk on 19 June, the battleship, over the ensuing weeks, conducted a midshipman training cruise through the Panama Canal to South American waters, and reached Valparaiso on 3 July. Eight days later, the battleship headed back to the Panama Canal and the Atlantic.
After exercises at Guantánamo Bay and off Culebra, Wisconsin reached Norfolk on 5 August and conducted local operations that lasted into September. She then participated in NATO exercises, which took her across the North Atlantic to the British Isles.
Wisconsin's days as an active fleet unit were numbered, and she prepared to make her last cruise. On 4 November, she departed Norfolk with a large group of prominent guests on board. Reaching New York City on 6 November, the battleship disembarked her guests, and on 8 November, headed for Bayonne, New Jersey, to commence a preinactivation overhaul. She was placed out of commission at Bayonne on 8 March 1958, and joined the United States Navy reserve fleet (better known as the "mothball fleet") there, leaving the Navy without an active battleship for the first time since 1895. Subsequently, taken to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Wisconsin remained there with her sister ship Iowa into the 1980s. While berthed in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, an electrical fire damaged the ship and left her as the Iowa-class battleship in the worst material condition prior to her 1980s reactivation.
### Reactivation (1986–1990)
As part of President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John F. Lehman's effort to create a "600-ship Navy," Wisconsin was reactivated 1 August 1986, a precommissioning unit (PCU) crew established, and the ship moved under tow to the Avondale Shipyard in New Orleans, Louisiana, to commence pre-recommissioning workups. The battleship was then towed from the Avondale Shipyard and arrived at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 2 January 1987 to receive weapons system upgrades for her modernization. During the modernization, Wisconsin had all of her remaining 20 mm Oerlikon and 40 mm Bofors antiaircraft guns removed, due to their ineffectiveness against modern jet fighters and enemy antiship missiles; additionally, the two 5 in (127 mm) gun mounts located at midship and in the aft on the port and starboard sides of the battleship were removed.
Over the next several months, the ship was upgraded with the most advanced weaponry available. Among the new weapon systems installed were four MK 141 quad cell launchers for 16 RGM-84 Harpoon antiship missiles, eight armored box launcher mounts for 32 BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles, and four of the United States Navy's Phalanx Close-in weapon system 20 mm Gatling guns for defense against enemy antiship missiles and enemy aircraft. Wisconsin also received eight RQ-2 Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely controlled drones that replaced the helicopters previously used to spot for her nine 16 in (406 mm) guns. Also included in her modernization were upgrades to radar and fire control systems for her guns and missiles, and improved electronic warfare capabilities. Armed as such, Wisconsin was formally recommissioned on 22 October 1988 in Pascagoula, under the command of Captain Jerry M. Blesch, USN. Assigned to the United States Atlantic Fleet, she was subsequently homeported at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, where she became the centerpiece of her own surface action group (SAG), also referred to as a battleship battle group (BBBG).
Wisconsin spent the first part of 1989 conducting training exercises in the Atlantic Ocean and off the coast of Puerto Rico before returning to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for a post-recommissioning shakedown that lasted the rest of the year. In mid-1990, the battleship participated in a fleet exercise.
### Gulf War (January/February 1991)
On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In the middle of the month, President George H. W. Bush, in keeping with the Carter Doctrine, sent the first of several hundred thousand troops, along with a strong force of naval support, to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf area to support a multinational force in a standoff with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On 7 August, Wisconsin and her battle group were ordered to deploy in defense of Kuwait for Operation Desert Shield, and they arrived in the Persian Gulf on 23 August. On 15 January 1991, Operation Desert Storm commenced operations, and Wisconsin found herself serving alongside her sister Missouri, just as she had done in Korea 40 years previously. Both Wisconsin and Missouri launched Tomahawk missile attacks against Iraq; they were among the first ships to fire cruise missiles during the 1991 Gulf War. Wisconsin served as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) strike commander for the Persian Gulf, directing the sequence of launches that marked the opening of Operation Desert Storm and firing a total of 24 of her own TLAMs during the first two days of the campaign. Wisconsin also assumed the responsibility of the local antisurface warfare coordinator for the Northern Persian Gulf Surface Action Group.
Wisconsin, escorted by Nicholas, relieved Missouri on 6 February, then answered her first combat call for gunfire support since March 1952. The most recently recommissioned battleship sent 11 shells 19 mi (31 km) to destroy an Iraqi artillery battery in southern Kuwait during a mission called in by USMC OV-10 Bronco aircraft. Using an RQ-2 Pioneer UAV as a spotter in combat for the first time, Wisconsin pounded an Iraqi communications compound on 7 February. Her main guns lobbed 24 shells on Iraqi artillery sites, missile facilities, and electronic-warfare sites along the coast. That evening, she targeted naval sites with her 16 in (406 mm) guns, firing 50 rounds, which severely damaged or sank 15 Iraqi boats, and destroyed several piers at the Khawr al-Mufattah marina. In response to calls for fire support from US and coalition forces, Wisconsin's main battery was used again on 9 February, blasting bunkers and artillery sites, and shelling Iraqi troop positions near Khafji after the Iraqis were ousted from the city by Saudi and Qatari armor. On 21 February, one of Wisconsin's UAVs observed several trucks resupplying an Iraqi command post; in response, Wisconsin trained her 16 in (406 mm) guns on the complex, leveling or heavily damaging 10 of the buildings. Wisconsin and Missouri alternated positions on the gun line, using their 16 in (406 mm) guns to destroy enemy targets and soften defenses along the Kuwait coastline for a possible amphibious assault.
On the night of 23 February, Missouri and Wisconsin turned their big guns on Kuwait's Faylaka Island to support the US-led coalition ground offensive to free Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation forces. The two ships were to conduct a diversionary assault aimed at convincing the Iraqi forces arrayed along the shores of Faylaka Island that coalition forces were preparing to launch an amphibious invasion. As part of this attack, Missouri and Wisconsin were directed to shell known Iraqi defensive positions on the island. Shortly after Missouri completed her shelling of Faylaka Island, Wisconsin, while still over the horizon (and thus out of visual range of the Iraqi forces) launched her RQ-2 Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to spot for her 16 in (406 mm) guns. As Wisconsin's drone approached Faylaka Island, the pilot of the drone was instructed to fly the vehicle low over Iraqi positions so that the soldiers would know that they were once again being targeted by a battleship. Iraqi troops on the ground heard the Pioneer's distinctive buzzing sound, and having witnessed the effects of Missouri's artillery strike on their trench line, the Iraqi troops decided to signal their willingness to surrender by waving makeshift white flags, an action dutifully noted aboard Wisconsin. Amused at this sudden development, the men assigned to the drone's aircrew called Wisconsin's commanding officer, Captain David S. Bill III, and asked, "Sir, they want to surrender, what should I do with them?" This surrender to Wisconsin's Pioneer has since become one of the most remembered moments of the Gulf War; the incident was also the first-ever surrender of enemy troops to an unmanned aircraft controlled by a ship. Wisconsin drone also carried out a number of reconnaissance missions on occupied Kuwait before the coalition's ground offensive.
The next day, Wisconsin answered two separate call-fire support missions for coalition forces by suppressing Iraqi troops barricaded in two bunkers. After witnessing the effects of Wisconsin's strike against the Iraqi positions, an elated Saudi marine commander commented over the radio, "I wish we had a battleship in our navy."
Both Wisconsin and Missouri delivered more than 1 million pounds of ordnance on Iraqi targets by the time President George H. W. Bush ended hostilities on 28 February. With one last salvo from her big guns, Wisconsin fired the last naval gunfire-support mission of the war, and thus was the final battleship in world history to see action. Wisconsin remained in the Persian Gulf after the cease-fire took effect, and returned home on 28 March 1991. During the eight months Wisconsin spent in the Persian Gulf, she had flown 348 UAV hours, recorded 661 safe helicopter landings, steamed 46,000 nmi (53,000 mi; 85,000 km), fired 319 16 in (406 mm) rounds, 881 5-inch (127 mm) rounds, and 5,200 20 mm Phalanx CIWS rounds, and launched 24 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Since all four remaining battleships were decommissioned and stricken following the Gulf War, this was the last time that United States battleships actively participated in a war.
### Museum ship (1992–present)
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the absence of a perceived threat to the United States came drastic cuts in the defense budget. The high cost of maintaining and operating battleships as part of the United States Navy's active fleet became uneconomical; as a result, Wisconsin was decommissioned on 30 September 1991 after 14 total years of active service, and joined the Reserve Fleet at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register (NVR) on 12 January 1995, then on 15 October 1996, she was moved to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and on 12 February 1998, she was restored to the Naval Vessel Register. On 7 December 2000, the battleship was towed from Portsmouth, Virginia, and berthed adjacent to Nauticus, The National Maritime Center in Norfolk. On 16 April 2001 the battleship's weather decks were opened to the public by the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, a U.S. Navy museum charged with Wisconsin's interpretation and public visitation. The ship was still owned by the Navy and was considered part of the mothball fleet.
Wisconsin was named (along with Iowa) as one of two US Navy battleships to be maintained in the reserve fleet in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act of 1996 as shore-bombardment vessels. However, Wisconsin was then over 60 years old and would have required extensive modernization to return to the fleet since most of her technology dated back to World War II, and the missile and electronic-warfare equipment added to the battleship during her 1988–89 modernization were considered obsolete. In addition, the cost of modernizing the battleships was estimated to be around \$500 million for reactivation and \$1.5 billion for a full modernization program.
On 17 March 2006, the Secretary of the Navy exercised his authority to strike Iowa and Wisconsin from the NVR, which cleared the way for both ships to be donated for use as museums; however, the U.S. Congress remained "deeply concerned" over the loss of naval surface-gunfire support that the battleships provided, and noted, "...navy efforts to improve upon, much less replace, this capability have been highly problematic." Partially as a consequence, Congress passed , the National Defense Authorization Act 2006, requiring that the battleships be kept and maintained in a state of readiness should they ever be needed again. Congress had ordered that the following measures be implemented to ensure that Wisconsin could be returned to active duty if needed:
1. She must not be altered in any way that would impair her military utility.
2. The battleship must be preserved in her present condition through the continued use of cathodic protection, dehumidification systems, and any other preservation methods as needed.
3. Spare parts and unique equipment, such as the 16 in (406 mm) gun barrels and projectiles, must be preserved in adequate numbers to support Wisconsin, if reactivated.
4. The Navy must prepare plans for the rapid reactivation of Wisconsin should she be returned to the Navy in the event of a national emergency.
These conditions closely mirror the original three conditions that the Nation Defense Authorization Act of 1996 laid out for the maintenance of Wisconsin while she was in the mothball fleet. These conditions would be unlikely to impede a plan to turn Wisconsin into a permanent museum ship at her berth in Norfolk.
On 14 December 2009, the US Navy officially transferred Wisconsin to the city of Norfolk, ending the requirement for the ship to be preserved for possible recall to active duty. The US Navy had paid the city of Norfolk \$2.8 million between 2000 and 2009 to maintain the ship. A formal ceremony transferring the ship to the city of Norfolk took place on 16 April 2010. Wisconsin was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 28 March 2012.
## Awards
Wisconsin earned five battle stars for her World War II service, and one for the Korean War. The ship also received the Combat Action Ribbon and Navy Unit Commendation for actions in the Korean War and Operation Desert Storm in 1991. She also received over a dozen more awards for World War II, the Korean War, and Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
## See also
- List of broadsides of major World War II ships
- List of museum ships
- U.S. Navy museums (and other battleship museums)
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Angela Lansbury
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Irish-British-American actress and singer (1925–2022)
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Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE (October 16, 1925 – October 11, 2022) was an Irish-British and American actress and singer. In a career spanning eighty years, she played various roles across film, stage, and television. Although based for much of her life in the United States, her work attracted international attention.
Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in Central London, the daughter of Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. To escape the Blitz, she moved to the United States in 1940, studying acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). She appeared in 11 further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952, she began to supplement her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Lansbury was largely seen as a B-list star during this period, but her role in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is frequently ranked as one of her best performances. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), winning her first Tony Award and becoming a gay icon.
Amidst difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to Ireland's County Cork in 1970. She continued to make theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade, including leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Moving into television in 1984, she achieved worldwide fame as the sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer during its final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, contributing to animated films like Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Anastasia (1997). In the 21st century, she toured in several theatrical productions and appeared in family films such as Nanny McPhee (2005) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018).
Among her numerous accolades were six Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), six Golden Globe Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and the Academy Honorary Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, eighteen Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award.
## Early life and career beginnings
### Childhood: 1925–1942
Angela Brigid Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family on October 16, 1925. Although her birthplace has often been given as Poplar, East London, she rejected this, stating that while she had ancestral connections to Poplar, she was born in Regent's Park, Central London. Her mother was Belfast-born Irish Moyna Macgill (born Charlotte Lillian McIldowie), an actress who regularly appeared on stage in London's West End and who also appeared in several films. Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar. Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader George Lansbury, a man whom she felt "awed" by and considered "a giant in my youth". Angela had an older half-sister, Isolde, from Macgill's previous marriage to Reginald Denham. In January 1930, Macgill gave birth to twin boys, Bruce and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house in Mill Hill, North London; at weekends, they would stay at a farm in Berrick Salome, Oxfordshire.
When Lansbury was nine, her father died from stomach cancer; she retreated into playing characters as a coping mechanism. Facing financial difficulty, her mother entered a relationship with a Scottish colonel, Leckie Forbes, and moved into his house in Hampstead. Lansbury then received an education at South Hampstead High School from 1934 until 1939, where she was a contemporary of Glynis Johns. She nevertheless considered herself largely self-educated, learning from books, theatre and cinema. Lansbury became a self-professed "complete movie maniac", visiting the cinema regularly. Keen on playing the piano, she briefly studied music at the Ritman School of Dancing, and in 1940 began studying acting at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, West London, first appearing onstage as a lady-in-waiting in the school's production of Maxwell Anderson's Mary of Scotland.
That year, Lansbury's grandfather died, and with the onset of the Blitz, Macgill decided to take Angela, Bruce and Edgar to the United States; Isolde remained in Britain with her new husband, the actor Peter Ustinov. Macgill secured a job supervising 60 British children who were being evacuated to North America aboard the Duchess of Athol, arriving with them in Montreal, Canada, in August 1940. She then proceeded by train to New York City, where she was financially sponsored by a Wall Street businessman, Charles T. Smith, moving in with his family at their home at Mahopac, New York. Lansbury gained a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing to study at the Feagin School of Drama and Radio, where she appeared in performances of William Congreve's The Way of the World and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. She graduated in March 1942, by which time the family had moved to a flat in Morton Street, Greenwich Village.
### Career breakthrough: 1942–1945
Macgill secured work in a Canadian touring production of Tonight at 8:30, and was joined by her daughter. There, Lansbury gained her first theatrical job as a nightclub act at the Samovar Club, Montreal, singing songs by Noël Coward. Although 16 years old, she claimed to be 19 to secure the job. Lansbury returned to New York City in August 1942, but her mother had moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, to resurrect her cinematic career; Lansbury and her brothers followed. Moving into a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, both Lansbury and her mother obtained Christmas jobs at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles; Macgill was sacked for incompetence, leaving the family to subsist on Lansbury's wages of \$28 a week. Befriending a group of gay men, Lansbury became privy to the city's underground gay scene. With her mother, she attended lectures by the spiritual guru Jiddu Krishnamurti, at one of these meeting the writer Aldous Huxley.
At a party hosted by her mother, Lansbury met John van Druten, who had recently co-authored a script for Gaslight (1944), a mystery-thriller based on Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play, Gas Light. The film was being directed by George Cukor and starred Ingrid Bergman in the lead role of Paula Alquist, a woman in Victorian London being psychologically tormented by her husband. Druten suggested that Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, a cockney maid; she was accepted for the part, although, since she was only 17, a social worker had to accompany her on the set. Obtaining an agent, Earl Kramer, she was signed to a seven-year contract with MGM, earning \$500 a week. Gaslight received critical acclaim, and Lansbury's performance was widely praised, earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Her next film appearance was as Edwina Brown in National Velvet (1944); the film became a major commercial success and Lansbury developed a lifelong friendship with co-star Elizabeth Taylor. Lansbury next starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), a cinematic adaptation of Wilde's 1890 novel of the same name, which was again set in Victorian London. Directed by Albert Lewin, Lansbury was cast as Sybil Vane, a working class music hall singer who falls in love with the protagonist, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield). Although the film was not a financial success, Lansbury's performance once more drew praise, earning her a Golden Globe Award, and she was again nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards, losing to Anne Revere, her co-star in National Velvet.
### Later MGM films: 1945–1951
On September 27, 1945, Lansbury married Richard Cromwell, an artist and decorator whose acting career had come to a standstill. Their marriage was troubled; Cromwell was gay, and had married Lansbury in the unsuccessful hope that it would turn him heterosexual. Lansbury filed for divorce within a year, it being granted on September 11, 1946, but they remained friends until his death. In December 1946, she was introduced to fellow English expatriate Peter Pullen Shaw at a party held by former co-star Hurd Hatfield in Ojai Valley. Shaw was an aspiring actor, also signed to MGM, and had recently left a relationship with Joan Crawford. He and Lansbury became a couple, living together before she proposed marriage. They wanted a wedding in Britain, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. Instead, they wed at St. Columba's Church, a place of worship under the jurisdiction of the Church of Scotland, in Knightsbridge, London, in August 1949, followed by a honeymoon in France. Returning to the US, they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu. In 1951, the couple both became naturalized US citizens, albeit retaining their British citizenship via dual nationality.
Following the success of Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, MGM cast Lansbury in 11 further films until her contract with the company ended in 1952. Keeping her among their B-list stars, MGM used her less than their similar-aged actresses; Lansbury biographers Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg believed that the majority of these films were "mediocre", doing little to further her career. This view was echoed by Cukor, who believed Lansbury had been "consistently miscast" by MGM. She was repeatedly made to portray older women, often villainous, and as a result became increasingly dissatisfied with working for MGM, commenting that "I kept wanting to play the Jean Arthur roles, and Mr Mayer kept casting me as a series of venal bitches." The company was suffering from the post-1948 slump in cinema sales, as a result slashing film budgets and cutting their number of staff.
In 1946, Lansbury played her first American character as Em, a honky-tonk saloon singer in the Oscar-winning Wild West musical The Harvey Girls; her singing was dubbed by Virginia Reese. She appeared in The Hoodlum Saint (1946), Till the Clouds Roll By (1947), If Winter Comes (1947), Tenth Avenue Angel (1948), The Three Musketeers (1948), State of the Union (1948) and The Red Danube (1949). Lansbury was loaned by MGM first to United Artists for The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), and then to Paramount for Samson and Delilah (1949). She appeared as a villainous maidservant in Kind Lady (1951) and a French adventuress in Mutiny (1952). Turning to radio, in 1948, Lansbury appeared in an audio adaptation of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage for NBC University Theatre and the following year, she starred in their adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Moving into television, she appeared in a 1950 episode of Robert Montgomery Presents adapted from A.J. Cronin's The Citadel.
## Mid career
### The Manchurian Candidate and minor roles: 1952–1965
Unhappy with the roles she was being given by MGM, Lansbury instructed her manager, Harry Friedman of MCA Inc., to terminate her contract in 1952. That same year, she gave birth to her first child, Anthony. Soon after the birth, she joined the East Coast touring productions of two former-Broadway plays: Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Remains to be Seen and Louis Verneuil's Affairs of State. Biographer Margaret Bonanno later stated that at this point, Lansbury's career had "hit an all-time low". In April 1953, her daughter Deirdre Angela Shaw was born. Shaw had a son by a previous marriage, David, whom he brought to California to live with the family after he gained legal custody of the boy in 1953. Now with three children to care for, Lansbury moved to a larger house in San Vicente Boulevard in Santa Monica. Lansbury did not feel entirely comfortable in the Hollywood social scene, later commenting that as a result of her British roots, "in Hollywood, I always felt like a stranger in a strange land." In 1959, the family moved to Malibu, settling into a house on the Pacific Coast Highway that had been designed by Aaron Green; there, she and Peter escaped the Hollywood scene, and sent their children to public school.
Returning to cinema as a freelance actress, Lansbury found herself typecast as an older, maternal figure, appearing in this capacity in most of her films from this period. She later stated that "Hollywood made me old before my time", noting that in her twenties she was receiving fan mail from people who thought her in her forties. She obtained minor roles in such films as A Life at Stake (1954), A Lawless Street (1955) and The Purple Mask (1955), later describing the latter as "the worst movie I ever made." She played Princess Gwendolyn in the comedy film The Court Jester (1956), before taking on the role of a wife who kills her husband in Please Murder Me (1956). From there she appeared as Minnie Littlejohn in The Long Hot Summer (1958), and as Mabel Claremont in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), for which she filmed in Paris. Biographer Martin Gottfried has claimed that it was these latter two cinematic appearances which restored Lansbury's status as an "A-picture actress." Throughout this period, she continued making television appearances, starring in episodes of The Revlon Mirror Theater, Ford Theatre and The George Gobel Show, and became a regular on game show Pantomime Quiz.
In April 1957, she debuted on Broadway at the Henry Miller Theatre in Hotel Paradiso, a French burlesque directed by Peter Glenville. The play only ran for 15 weeks, although she earned good reviews for her role as Marcel Cat. She later stated that had she not appeared in the play, her "whole career would have fizzled out." Into the 1960s, she followed this with an appearance in a Broadway performance of A Taste of Honey at the Lyceum Theatre, directed by Tony Richardson and George Devine. Lansbury played Helen, the boorish, verbally abusive mother of Josephine (played by Joan Plowright, only four years Lansbury's junior), remarking that she gained "a great deal of satisfaction" from the role. During the show's run, Lansbury developed a friendship with both Plowright and Plowright's lover Laurence Olivier; it was from Lansbury's rented flat on East 97th Street that Plowright and Olivier eloped to be married.
After a well-reviewed appearance in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1959) – for which she had filmed in the Australian Outback – and a minor role in A Breath of Scandal (1960), Lansbury appeared in 1961's Blue Hawaii as the mother of a character played by Elvis Presley. Although believing that the film was of poor quality, she commented that she agreed to appear in it because she "was desperate". Her role as Mavis in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) drew critical acclaim, as did her appearance in All Fall Down (1962) as a manipulative, destructive mother. In 1962, she appeared in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate as Eleanor Iselin, cast for the role by John Frankenheimer. Although Lansbury played actor Laurence Harvey's mother in the film, she was in fact only three years older than him. She had agreed to appear in the film after reading the original novel, describing it as "one of the most exciting political books I ever read". Biographers Edelman and Kupferberg considered this role "her enduring cinematic triumph," while Gottfried stated that it was "the strongest, the most memorable and the best picture she ever made... she gives her finest film performance in it." Lansbury received her third Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for the film.
She followed this with a performance as Sybil Logan in In the Cool of the Day (1963) – a film she renounced as awful – before appearing as wealthy Isabel Boyd in The World of Henry Orient (1964) and the widow Phyllis in Dear Heart (1964). Her first appearance in a theatrical musical was the short-lived Anyone Can Whistle, written by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim. An experimental work, it opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway in April 1964, but was critically panned and closed after nine performances. Lansbury had played the role of crooked mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper, and although she loved Sondheim's score she experienced personal differences with Laurents and was glad when the show closed. She appeared in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a cinematic biopic of Jesus, but was cut almost entirely from the final edit. She followed this with appearances as Mama Jean Bello in Harlow (1965), as Lady Blystone in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), and as Gloria in Mister Buddwing (1966). Although many of her cinematic roles had been well received, "celluloid superstardom" evaded Lansbury, and she became increasingly dissatisfied with these minor roles, feeling that none allowed her to explore her potential as an actress.
### Mame and theatrical stardom: 1966–1969
In 1966, Lansbury took on the title role of Mame Dennis in the musical Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the 1955 novel Auntie Mame. The director's first choice for the role had been Rosalind Russell, who played Mame in the 1958 non-musical film adaptation, but she had declined. Lansbury actively sought the role in the hope that it would mark a change in her career. When she was chosen, it came as a surprise to theatre critics, who believed that the part would go to a better-known actress; Lansbury was 41 years old, and it was her first starring role. Mame Dennis was a glamorous character, with over 20 costume changes throughout the play, and Lansbury's role involved ten songs and dance routines for which she trained extensively. First appearing in Philadelphia and then Boston, Mame opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in May 1966. Auntie Mame was already popular among the gay community, and Mame gained Lansbury a cult gay following, something that she later attributed to the fact that Mame Dennis was "every gay person's idea of glamour... Everything about Mame coincided with every young man's idea of beauty and glory and it was lovely."
Reviews of Lansbury's performance were overwhelmingly positive. In The New York Times, Stanley Kauffmann wrote: "Miss Lansbury is a singing-dancing actress, not a singer or dancer who also acts... In this marathon role she has wit, poise, warmth and a very taking coolth." The role resulted in Lansbury receiving her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, as well as the Antoinette Perry Award. Lansbury's later biographer Margaret Bonanno claimed that Mame made Lansbury a "superstar", with the actress herself commenting on her success: "Everyone loves you, everyone loves the success, and enjoys it as much as you do. And it lasts as long as you are on that stage and as long as you keep coming out of that stage door."
Off the stage, Lansbury made further television appearances, such as on Perry Como's Thanksgiving Special in November 1966. She also engaged in high-profile charitable endeavours, for instance appearing as the guest of honour at the 1967 March of Dimes annual benefit luncheon. She was invited to star in a musical performance for the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted that year's Tony Awards with former brother-in-law Peter Ustinov. That year, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club elected her "Woman of the Year". When the film adaptation of Mame was put into production, Lansbury hoped to be offered the part, but it instead went to Lucille Ball, an established box-office success. Lansbury considered this to be "one of my bitterest disappointments". Her personal life was further complicated when she learned that both of her children had become involved with the counterculture of the 1960s and had been using recreational drugs. As a result, Anthony had become addicted to cocaine and heroin.
Lansbury followed the success of Mame with a performance as Countess Aurelia, the 75-year-old Parisian eccentric in Dear World, a musical adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot. The show opened at Broadway's Mark Hellinger Theatre in February 1969, but Lansbury found it a "pretty depressing" experience. Reviews of her performance were positive, and she was awarded her second Tony Award on the basis of it. Reviews of the show more generally were critical, however, and it ended after 132 performances. She followed this with an appearance in the title role of the musical Prettybelle, based upon Jean Arnold's Prettybelle: A Lively Tale of Rape and Resurrection. Set in the Deep South, it dealt with issues of racism, with Lansbury playing a wealthy alcoholic who seeks sexual encounters with black men. The play opened in Boston, but received poor reviews and was cancelled before it reached Broadway. Lansbury later described the play as "a complete and utter fiasco", admitting that in her opinion, her "performance was awful".
### Ireland and Gypsy: 1970–1978
In the early 1970s, Lansbury declined several cinematic roles, including the lead in The Killing of Sister George and the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, because she was not satisfied with them. Instead, she accepted the role of the Countess von Ornstein, an ageing German aristocrat who falls in love with a younger man, in Something for Everyone (1970), for which she filmed on location in Hohenschwangen, Bavaria. That same year, she appeared as the middle-aged English witch Eglantine Price in the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks; this was her first lead in a screen musical, and led to her publicizing the film on television programmes like the David Frost Show. She later noted that as a big commercial success, this film "secured an enormous audience for me".
The year 1970 was a traumatic one for the Lansbury family, as Peter underwent a hip replacement, Anthony suffered a heroin overdose and entered a coma, and the family's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. They then purchased Knockmourne Glebe, a farmhouse built in the 1820s which was located near Conna in rural County Cork, and, after Anthony quit using cocaine and heroin, took him there to recover from his drug addiction. He subsequently enrolled in the Webber-Douglas School, his mother's alma mater, and became a professional actor, before moving into television directing. Lansbury and her husband did not return to California, instead dividing their time between Cork and New York City, where they lived in a flat opposite the Lincoln Center.
In 1972, Lansbury returned to London's West End to perform in the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatrical production of Edward Albee's All Over at the Aldwych Theatre. She portrayed the mistress of a dying New England millionaire, and although the play's reviews were mixed, Lansbury's acting was widely praised. This was followed by her reluctant involvement in a revival of Mame, which was then touring the United States, after which she returned to the West End to play the character of Rose in the musical Gypsy. She had initially turned down the role, not wishing to be in the shadow of Ethel Merman, who had portrayed the character in the original Broadway production. When the show started in May 1973, Lansbury earned a standing ovation and rave reviews. Settling into a Belgravia flat, she was soon in demand among London society, having dinners held in her honour. Following the culmination of the London run, in 1974 Gypsy toured the US; in Chicago, Lansbury was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance. The show eventually reached Broadway, where it ran until January 1975. A critical success, it earned Lansbury her third Tony Award. After several months' break, Gypsy toured the country again in the summer of 1975.
Wanting to move on from musicals, Lansbury obtained the role of Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, staged at the Old Vic. Directed by Peter Hall, the production ran from December 1975 to May 1976 and received mixed reviews. Lansbury disliked the role, later commenting that she found it "very trying playing restrained roles" such as Gertrude. Her mood was worsened by her mother's death in November 1975. Her next theatrical appearance was in two one-act plays by Albee, Counting the Ways and Listening, performed side by side at the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut. Reviews of the production were mixed, although Lansbury was again singled out for praise. This was followed by another revival tour of Gypsy.
In April 1978, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances of a revival of The King and I musical staged at Broadway's Uris Theatre; Lansbury played the role of Mrs Anna, replacing Constance Towers, who was on a short break. Her first cinematic role in seven years was as novelist Salome Otterbourne in a 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, filmed in both London and Egypt. In the film, Lansbury starred alongside Ustinov and Bette Davis, who became a close friend. The role earned Lansbury the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress of 1978.
### Sweeney Todd and continued cinematic work: 1979–1984
In March 1979, Lansbury appeared as Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a Sondheim musical directed by Harold Prince. Opening at the Uris Theatre, she starred alongside Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber in 19th-century London. After being offered the role, she jumped on the opportunity due to Sondheim's involvement, commenting that she loved "the extraordinary wit and intelligence of his lyrics." She remained in the role for 14 months before being replaced by Dorothy Loudon; the musical received mixed critical reviews, although earned Lansbury her fourth Tony Award and After Dark magazine's Ruby Award for Broadway Performer of the Year. She returned to the role in October 1980 for a ten-month US tour; the production was also filmed and broadcast on the Entertainment Channel.
In 1982, Lansbury took on the role of an upper middle-class housewife who champions workers' rights in A Little Family Business, a farce set in Baltimore in which her son Anthony also starred. It debuted at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theatre before moving to Broadway's Martin Beck Theatre. It was critically panned and faced protests from California's Japanese-American community for including anti-Japanese slurs. That year, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, and the following year appeared in a Mame revival at Broadway's Gershwin Theatre. Although Lansbury was praised, the revival was a commercial failure, with Lansbury noting: "I realised that it's not a show of today. It's a period piece."
Working in cinema, in 1979 Lansbury appeared as Miss Froy in The Lady Vanishes, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film. The following year she appeared in The Mirror Crack'd, another film based on an Agatha Christie novel, this time as Miss Marple, a sleuth in 1950s Kent. Lansbury hoped to get away from the depiction of the role made famous by Margaret Rutherford, instead returning to Christie's description of the character. She was signed to appear in two sequels as Miss Marple, but these were never made. Lansbury's next film was the animated The Last Unicorn (1982), for which she provided the voice of the witch Mommy Fortuna.
Returning to musical cinema, she starred as Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance (1983), a film based on Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera of the same name, and while filming it in London sang on a recording of The Beggar's Opera. This was followed by an appearance as the grandmother in Gothic fantasy film The Company of Wolves (1984). Lansbury had also begun work for television, appearing in a 1982 television film with Bette Davis titled Little Gloria... Happy at Last. She followed this with an appearance in CBS's The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (1983), later describing it as "the most unsophisticated thing you can imagine." A BBC television film followed, A Talent for Murder (1984), in which she played a wheelchair user mystery writer; although describing it as "a rush job", she agreed to do it in order to work with co-star Laurence Olivier. Two further miniseries featuring Lansbury appeared in 1984: Lace and The First Olympics: Athens 1896.
## Global fame
### Murder, She Wrote: 1984–2003
In 1983, Lansbury was offered two main television roles, one in a sitcom and the other in a detective drama series, Murder, She Wrote. As she was unable to do both, her agents advised her to accept the former, although Lansbury chose the latter. Her decision was based on the appeal of the series' central character, Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher from the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine. As portrayed by Lansbury, Fletcher was a successful detective novelist who also solved murders encountered during her travels. Lansbury described the character as "an American Miss Marple".
Murder, She Wrote had been created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson, and William Link, who had earlier had success with Columbo, and the role of Fletcher had been first offered to Jean Stapleton, who had declined it. The pilot episode, "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes", premiered on CBS on September 30, 1984, with the rest of the first season airing on Sundays from 8 to 9 pm. Although critical reviews were mixed, it proved highly popular, with the pilot having a Nielsen rating of 18.9 and the first season being rated top in its time slot. Designed as inoffensive family viewing, despite its topic the show eschewed depicting violence or gore, following the "whodunit" format rather than those of most US crime shows of the time. Lansbury herself commented that "best of all, there's no violence. I hate violence."
Lansbury exerted creative input over Fletcher's costumes, makeup and hair, and rejected pressure from network executives to put the character in a relationship, believing that the character should remain a strong single woman. When she believed that a scriptwriter had made Fletcher do or say things that did not fit with the character's personality, Lansbury ensured that the script was changed. She saw Fletcher as a role model for older female viewers, praising her "enormous, universal appeal – that was an accomplishment I never expected in my entire life." Edelman and Kupferberg described the series as "a television landmark" in the US for having an older female character as the protagonist, paving the way for later series like The Golden Girls. Lansbury commented that "I think it's the first time a show has really been aimed at the middle aged audience", and although it was most popular among senior citizens, it gradually gained a younger audience; by 1991, a third of viewers were under fifty. It gained continually high ratings throughout most of its run, outdoing rivals in its time slot such as Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories on NBC. In 1987, a spin-off was produced, The Law & Harry McGraw, although it proved short-lived.
As Murder, She Wrote went on, Lansbury assumed a larger role behind the scenes. In 1989, her own company, Corymore Productions, began co-producing the show with Universal. Lansbury began to tire of the series, and in particular the long working hours, stating that the 1990–1991 season would be its last. She changed her mind after being appointed executive producer for the 1992–1993 season, something that she felt "made it far more interesting to me." For the seventh season, the show's primary setting moved to New York City, where Fletcher had taken a job teaching criminology at Manhattan University; the move, encouraged by Lansbury, was an attempt to attract younger viewers. Having become a "Sunday-night institution" in the US, the show's ratings improved during the early 1990s, becoming a Top Five programme.
For the show's 12th season, CBS executives moved Murder, She Wrote to Thursdays at 8 pm, opposite NBC's new sitcom, Friends. Lansbury was upset by the move, believing that it ignored the show's core audience. This would prove to be the series' final season. The final episode aired on May 19, 1996, and ended with Lansbury voicing a "Goodbye from Jessica" message. In The Washington Post, Tom Shales suggested that the series had become "partly a victim of commercial television's mad youth mania". There were "vocal protests" at its cancellation from the show's fanbase. At the time, it tied the original Hawaii Five-O as the longest-running detective drama series in history.
Lansbury initially had plans for a Murder, She Wrote television film that would be a musical with a score composed by Jerry Herman; that project did not materialize but resulted in the 1996 television film Mrs. Santa Claus, with Lansbury playing the eponymous character, which proved to be a ratings success. Murder, She Wrote continued through several made-for-television films: South By Southwest in 1997, A Story To Die For in 2000, The Last Free Man in 2001, and The Celtic Riddle in 2003. The role of Fletcher would prove the most successful and prominent of Lansbury's career, and she would later speak critically of attempts to reboot the series with a different actress in the lead.
Throughout the run of Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury had continued appearing in other television films, miniseries and cinema. In 1986, she co-hosted the New York Philharmonic's televised tribute to the centenary of the Statue of Liberty with Kirk Douglas. That same year, she appeared as the protagonist's mother in Rage of Angels: The Story Continues, and in 1988 portrayed Nan Moore – the mother of a victim of the real-life Korean Air Lines Flight 007 plane crash – in Shootdown. 1989 saw her featured in The Shell Seekers as an Englishwoman recuperating from a heart attack, and in 1990 she starred in The Love She Sought as an American school teacher who falls in love with a Catholic priest while visiting Ireland; Lansbury thought it "a marvelous woman's story." She next starred as the eponymous cockney in a television film adaptation of the novel Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris, directed by her son and executive produced by her stepson. Lansbury's highest profile cinematic role since The Manchurian Candidate was as the voice of the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the 1991 Disney animation Beauty and the Beast, as part of which she performed the film's title song. She considered the appearance to be a gift for her three grandchildren. Lansbury again lent her voice to an animated character, this time that of the Empress Dowager, for the 1997 film Anastasia.
Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote fame resulted in her being employed to appear in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company. In 1988, she released a VHS video titled Angela Lansbury's Positive Moves: My Personal Plan for Fitness and Well-Being, in which she outlined her personal exercise routine, and in 1990 published a book with the same title co-written with Mimi Avins, which she dedicated to her mother. As a result of her work, she was awarded a CBE by the British government, given to her in a ceremony by Charles, Prince of Wales, at the British consulate in Los Angeles. While living for most of the year in California, Lansbury spent the Christmas period and the summer at Corymore House, a farmhouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean near to Ballywilliam, County Cork, which she had had built as a family home in 1991.
### Final years: 2003–2022
In the years following Murder, She Wrote, Lansbury was increasingly preoccupied by her husband's deteriorating health; it was for this reason that she dropped out of being the lead role in the 2001 Kander and Ebb musical The Visit before it opened. Peter died in January 2003 of congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood home. Lansbury felt that after this she would not take on any more major acting roles, perhaps only making cameo appearances. Wanting to spend more time in New York City, in 2006 she purchased a \$2 million condominium in Manhattan.
Lansbury appeared in a season six episode of the television show Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005. She also starred in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee as Aunt Adelaide, later informing an interviewer that working on it "pulled me out of the abyss" after her husband's death. Lansbury returned to Broadway after a 23-year absence in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally that opened at the Music Box Theatre in May 2007 for an 18-week limited run. Lansbury received a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Play for her role. In March 2009, she returned to Broadway for a revival of Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theatre, where she took on the role of Madame Arcati. This appearance earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play; this was her fifth Tony Award, tying her with the previous record holder for the number of Tony Awards, Julie Harris. From December 2009 to June 2010, Lansbury then starred as Madame Armfeldt in a Broadway revival of A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The role earned her a seventh Tony Award nomination. In May 2010, she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music. She then appeared in the 2011 film Mr. Popper's Penguins, opposite Jim Carrey.
From March to July 2012, Lansbury appeared as women's rights advocate Sue-Ellen Gamadge in the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. From February 2013, she starred alongside James Earl Jones in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy, an appearance that resulted in her pulling out from a scheduled role in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. In November 2013, she received an Academy Honorary Award for her lifetime achievement at the Governors Awards. In 2014, Lansbury was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. From March 2014, Lansbury reprised her performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End, her first London stage appearance in nearly 40 years. While in London, she made an appearance at the Angela Lansbury Film Festival, a screening of some of her films in Poplar. From December 2014 to March 2015 she joined the tour of Blithe Spirit across North America. In April 2015 she received her first Olivier Award as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Arcati, and in November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
Lansbury agreed to star as Mrs St Maugham in a Broadway run of Enid Bagnold's 1955 play The Chalk Garden, although later acknowledged that she no longer had the stamina for eight performances a week. Instead, she appeared in a one-night staged reading of the play at Hunter College in 2017. Her next role was as Aunt March in the BBC miniseries Little Women, screened in December 2017. In 2018, she appeared in the family film Buttons: A Christmas Tale, as well as in the film Mary Poppins Returns; her cameo role as the Balloon Lady involved singing the song "Nowhere To Go But Up". That year also saw the release of animated film The Grinch, for which Lansbury voiced the Mayor of Whoville. In November 2019, she returned to Broadway, portraying Lady Bracknell in a one-night benefit staging of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest for Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre. Lansbury made her final film appearance, a cameo role as herself, in the 2022 film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. She died in her sleep at her Los Angeles home on October 11, 2022, at the age of 96.
## Personal life
Lansbury defined herself as being "Irish-British". She became a US citizen in 1951, while retaining her British citizenship. According to a 2014 article in the Irish Independent, she also held Irish citizenship. Although adopting an Americanized accent for roles like that of Fletcher, Lansbury retained her English accent throughout her life.
Lansbury was a profoundly private person, and disliked attempts at flattery. Gottfried characterized her as being "Meticulous. Cautious. Self-editing. Deliberate. It is what the British call reserved". In The Daily Telegraph, the theatre critic Dominic Cavendish stated that Lansbury's hallmarks were "self-composure, commitment and, yes, gentility", approaches he thought had become "in too short supply" in modern times. Gottfried also commented that she was "as concerned, as sensitive, and as sympathetic as anyone might want in a friend".
Lansbury was married twice. Her first marriage was to actor Richard Cromwell and lasted from 1945 to 1946. In 1949, Lansbury married actor and producer Peter Shaw, and they remained married until he died in 2003. They had two children together, Anthony Peter (b. 1952) and Deirdre Ann (b. 1953), and Lansbury became the stepmother of Shaw's son David from his first marriage. While Lansbury repeatedly stated that she wanted to put her children before her career, she admitted that she frequently had to leave them in California for long periods when she was working elsewhere.
Anthony became a television director and directed 68 episodes of Murder, She Wrote. Deirdre married a chef, and together they opened a restaurant in West Los Angeles. Lansbury had three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren at the time of her death in 2022. Lansbury was a cousin of the Postgate family, including the animator and activist Oliver Postgate. She was also a cousin of the academic (Rutgers University-Camden, N.J., campus) and novelist Coral Lansbury, whose son Malcolm Turnbull was Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018.
As a young actress, Lansbury was a self-professed homebody, who commented that she loved housekeeping. She preferred to spend quiet evenings with her friends inside her house because she did not like to engage in Hollywood nightlife. Her hobbies at the time included reading, riding, playing tennis, cooking, and playing the piano; she also had a keen interest in gardening. She cited F. Scott Fitzgerald as her favourite author, and Roseanne and Seinfeld among her favourite television shows. Lansbury was an avid letter writer who wrote letters by hand and made copies of all of them. At Howard Gotlieb's request, Lansbury's papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.
Lansbury brought up her children as Episcopalians, but they were not members of a congregation. She stated, "I believe that God is within all of us, that we are perfect, precious beings, and that we have to put our faith and trust in that." She supported Britain's Labour Party, to which she had family ties, and the US Democratic Party; she described herself as a "Democrat from the ground up" to quash online rumours that she endorsed the Republican Party. She also supported various charities, particularly those combating domestic abuse and rehabilitating drug users. In the 1980s, she also supported charities combating HIV/AIDS.
Lansbury was a chain smoker in early life, but quit smoking in the mid-1960s. In 1976 and 1987, she underwent cosmetic surgery on her neck to prevent it from broadening with age. During the 1990s, she began to suffer from arthritis. Lansbury underwent hip replacement surgery in May 1994, followed by knee replacement surgery in 2005.
## Honours and legacy
In the 1960s, The New York Times referred to Lansbury as the "First Lady of Musical Theatre". She described herself as an actress who also could sing, although in her early film appearances her singing was repeatedly dubbed; Sondheim stated that she had a strong voice, albeit with a limited range. In The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, Thomas Hischak related that Lansbury was "more a character actress than a leading lady" for much of her career, one who brought "a sparkling stage presence to her work". Gottfried described her as "an American icon", while the BBC characterized her as "one of Britain's favourite exports," and The Independent suggested that she could be considered Britain's most successful actress. In The Guardian, journalist Mark Lawson described her as a member of the "acting aristocracy in three countries" – Britain, Ireland, and the United States.
Gottfried noted that Lansbury's public image was "practically saintly". A 2007 interviewer for The New York Times described her as "one of the few actors it makes sense to call beloved", noting that a 1994 article in People magazine awarded her a perfect score on its "lovability index". The New Statesman commented that she "has the kind of pulling power many younger and more ubiquitous actors can only dream of." Lansbury was a gay icon. She described herself as being "very proud of the fact", attributing her popularity among gay people to her performance in Mame; an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that Murder, She Wrote had further broadened her appeal with that demographic.
Following the announcement of Lansbury's death, many figures in the entertainment industry praised her on social media. The actor Jason Alexander called her "one of the most versatile, talented, graceful, kind, witty, wise, classy ladies" he had ever met. Actor Uzo Aduba called her an "icon of the stage", while actor Josh Gad noted that it was rare that "one person can touch multiple generations, creating a breadth of work that defines decade after decade. Angela Lansbury was that artist". Screenwriter and actor Mark Gatiss praised Lansbury as "the very definition of a pro," while Douglas C. Baker, the producing director for Center Theatre Group, stated that "Angela was a titan of show business, but at the same time she was one of the most kind and approachable people you would ever meet [...] Impeccably professional, genuine and deeply hilarious." Former Walt Disney Studios CEO Robert Iger described her "a consummate professional, a talented actress, and a lovely person." Others who posted in remembrance of Lansbury included Kristin Chenoweth, Viola Davis, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Harvey Fierstein, Kathy Griffin, Jeremy O. Harris, Brent Spiner, George Takei, and Rachel Zegler.
Lansbury was recognised for her achievements in Britain on multiple occasions. In 2002, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1994 Birthday Honours, and subsequently was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to drama, charitable work, and philanthropy. On being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, Lansbury stated: "I'm joining a marvellous group of women I greatly admire like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. It's a lovely thing to be given that nod of approval by your own country and I cherish it."
Lansbury won six Golden Globe Awards and a People's Choice Awards for her television and film work. She never won an Emmy Award despite 18 nominations. As of 2009, she held the record for the most unsuccessful Emmy nominations by a performer. She was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but never won. Reflecting on this in 2007, she stated that she was at first "terribly disappointed, but subsequently very glad that [she] did not win" because she believed that she would have otherwise had a less successful career.
In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors voted to bestow upon Lansbury an Honorary Academy Award for her lifetime achievements in the industry. The actors Emma Thompson and Geoffrey Rush offered tributes at the Governors Awards where the ceremony was held, and Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies presented her with the Oscar, stating that "Angela has been adding class, talent, beauty, and intelligence to the movies" since 1944. The Oscar statue is inscribed: "To Angela Lansbury, an icon who has created some of cinema's most memorable characters inspiring generations of actors".
## Publications
## See also
- List of American film actresses
- List of American television actresses
- List of British actors
- List of people from Hampstead
- List of people from Los Angeles
- List of people from Malibu, California
- List of people from New York City
- List of people from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets
- List of women writers
- List of British Academy Award nominees and winners
- List of actors with Academy Award nominations
- List of actors with two or more Academy Award nominations in acting categories
|
42,532,276 |
2003 Sri Lanka cyclone
| 1,141,549,089 |
Tropical cyclone
|
[
"2003 North Indian Ocean cyclone season",
"2003 in Sri Lanka",
"May 2003 events in Asia",
"Tropical cyclones in 2003",
"Tropical cyclones in Myanmar",
"Tropical cyclones in Sri Lanka",
"Very severe cyclonic storms"
] |
In May 2003, a tropical cyclone officially called Very Severe Cyclonic Storm BOB 01 produced the worst flooding in Sri Lanka in 56 years. The first storm of the 2003 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, it developed over the Bay of Bengal on May 10. Favorable environmental conditions allowed the system to intensify steadily while moving northwestward. The storm reached peak maximum sustained winds of 140 km/h (85 mph) on May 13, making it a very severe cyclonic storm according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), which is the official Regional Specialized Meteorological Center for the basin. The cyclone drifted north over the central Bay of Bengal, gradually weakening due to heightened wind shear. Turning eastward, the storm deteriorated to a deep depression on May 16 before it curved northeastward and re-intensified into a cyclonic storm. It came ashore in western Myanmar and dissipated over land the following day.
In the wake of prolonged precipitation during the first half of May, the cyclone produced torrential rains across southwest Sri Lanka while stationary in the central Bay of Bengal. The storm drew extensive moisture that coalesced in the mountainous portion of the island. A station at Ratnapura recorded 366.1 mm (14.41 in) of rainfall in 18 hours on May 17, including 99.8 mm (3.93 in) in one hour. In southwestern Sri Lanka, the rainfall caused flooding and landslides that destroyed 24,750 homes and damaged 32,426 others, displacing about 800,000 people. Overall damage totaled about \$135 million (2003 USD), and there were 260 deaths. The cyclone also produced some rainfall in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India and along the country's eastern coast. The storm funneled moisture away from the mainland, which possibly contributed to a heat wave that killed 1,900 people, and dropped heavy rainfall in Myanmar.
## Meteorological history
Around May 6, the monsoon trough extended across the southern Bay of Bengal, producing a vast field of thunderstorm activity. A broad low-pressure area formed by the next day and remained nearly stationary. Over the next few days, the convection varied in intensity until becoming more organized around the nascent surface low on May 10. At 03:00 UTC on May 10, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reported the formation of a depression about 535 km (330 mi) west of Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Within nine hours, the depression further intensified into a deep depression. Around the same time, the system was classified as Tropical Cyclone 01B by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
With warm sea surface temperatures, a formidable anticyclone aloft, and low wind shear, the system continued to mature as it tracked northwestward. Early on May 11, the deep depression strengthened into a cyclonic storm – marked by maximum sustained winds of at least 65 km/h (40 mph) – and later in the day into a severe cyclonic storm. Simultaneously, the system was driven toward the north by a ridge of high pressure to the northeast. At the time, the cyclone was located about 700 km (430 mi) east of Sri Lanka. The storm continued to intensify, becoming a very severe cyclonic storm on May 12. That day, the JTWC upgraded Tropical Cyclone 01B to the equivalence of a minimal hurricane with winds of 120 km/h (75 mph). In post-season analysis, however, the agency revised the storm's maximum winds to 110 km/h (70 mph). At 06:00 UTC on May 13, the IMD estimated that the storm attained peak winds of 140 km/h (85 mph). The intensity estimate was based on a satellite-derived Dvorak number of 4.5, limited chiefly by the lack of an eye feature.
After peaking in intensity, the storm began weakening due to increasing easterly wind shear from the ridge to the north, displacing the center of circulation from the deepest convection. Early on May 14, the IMD downgraded the storm to a severe cyclonic storm. Around this time, steering currents slackened, and the cyclone meandered northward over the central Bay of Bengal. By late on May 14, convection had largely dissipated, with the exception of a small area near the center, and the system weakened to minimal cyclonic storm status. Thunderstorm activity continued to wax and wane as the storm turned to the southeastward, though persistent hostile conditions caused the storm to weaken further to a deep depression on May 16. As the nearby ridge translated eastward, the depression was able to move more steadily to the east and later to the northeast, passing northwest of the Andaman Islands on May 18. On the next day, the deep depression re-intensified into a cyclonic storm, reaching a secondary peak with winds of 85 km/h (55 mph). At about 10:00 UTC on May 19, the storm made landfall close to Kyaukpyu, Ramree Island, in western Myanmar. The storm rapidly weakened into a depression and later degenerated into a low-pressure area on May 20, and was no longer discernible on satellite imagery by the next day.
## Preparations and impact
### Sri Lanka
Due to the significant distance between Sri Lanka and the Bay of Bengal storm, no cyclone warnings were posted. The India-based National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting anticipated the flood event three days in advance. However, the Sri Lankan government did not issue the first flood warnings until May 17, the same day that the flooding began. Many residents learned about the impending floods through loudspeakers and word of mouth, although some were alerted by television or radio. About 8,000 people evacuated on May 18, utilizing schools and public buildings as emergency shelters. The precipitation occurred in the wake of an already rainy period; a station near the Kalu River reported over 600 mm (24 in) of rainfall in the first 15 days of May.
While the storm was nearly stationary in the central Bay of Bengal, the southwesterly flow drew abundant moisture over Sri Lanka to produce severe flooding. In the island's mountainous southwestern portion, the winds across the island produced heavy rainfall rates through a process known as orographic lift, mostly occurring on May 17–18. Throughout May 2003, the highest rainfall in the country was 899 mm (35.4 in) at Gonapenigala Iranganie Estate. A station at Ratnapura recorded 718 mm (28.3 in) of precipitation in the month, of which 366.1 mm (14.41 in) fell over an 18‐hour period on May 17; at the same station, there was a peak hourly rainfall total of 99.8 mm (3.93 in). These were the heaviest rains on the island since 1947. Rainfall was primarily concentrated in southwestern Sri Lanka, with a rain shadow farther inland that resulted in minimal precipitation in and Matale. After the Kalu River overflowed, floodwaters reached 3 m (9.8 ft) deep in Ratnapura City, submerging the first floors of most homes and persisting for about three days. Landslides created a temporary natural dam on the river that washed away a bridge when it broke. Along the Gin River, flood waters inundated the surrounding terrain up to 2 m (6.6 ft) deep, covered roadways, and complicated evacuations. In Hambantota District, the inundation occurred after an ongoing drought, which amplified flood-related damage. Although the flooding was severe in the southwestern portion of Sri Lanka, effects were minimal in the central and north-central regions, and there was no severe flooding in the capital city of Colombo.
Since the previously wet conditions had saturated soils, the rains related to the cyclone caused severe flooding and landslides, mostly in Ratnapura and Nuwara Eliya districts. A landslide in Batugoda killed 81 people, and at least 125 people died in Ratnapura. The floods increased river levels in Hambantota, Matara, Galle, and Kalutara districts, persisting until May 30 in Matara. Many roads were damaged, including the one that links Ratnapura to Colombo. About 100 schools were destroyed and another 200 were damaged, and some health facilities lost their equipment. Flooding from the cyclone destroyed 53,300 hectares (132,000 acres) of tea crops, representing an estimated 20–30% loss for the year in the low country. Farmers in the affected areas also lost some of their rice paddies to the high waters, although only about 3% of the rice crop in the region was damaged, so no impact on the rice harvest was expected. Many areas lost electricity and telephone service, and there were disruptions to food and water supplies.
Throughout Sri Lanka, the floods destroyed at least 24,750 homes and damaged 32,426 others, displacing about 800,000 people, many of whom lost everything they owned. Total damage was estimated at \$135 million (2003 USD), primarily to homes and roads. Across the island, floods related to the cyclone killed 260 people. Most of the deaths were along the nation's southern coast where the floods occurred, primarily along the Kalu River, and were mainly farmers. Levees helped drain floodwaters where systems were already in place.
### Elsewhere
In its formative stages, the storm produced moderate rainfall in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, totaling 70 mm (2.8 in) at Mayabunder. Later, as the storm was approaching Myanmar, it dropped 89 mm (3.5 in) of rainfall on Hut Bay. Several stations in Tamil Nadu reported light precipitation, including a total of 98 mm (3.9 in) at Adirampattinam. Along the coast of Odisha, the fringes of the cyclonic storm dropped light rainfall, reaching 53 mm (2.1 in) at Swampatna. As the storm made landfall in Myanmar, it produced heavy rainfall in Rakhine State, signalling an early start to the monsoon season.
The slow movement of the storm altered the atmospheric flow over southeastern India. It replaced the easterly maritime winds over southeast coast of India(TN and AP) and brought dry northwesterly winds from the North India which brought heatwave like conditions along North TN and South AP. Due to this, Chennai recorded 45C on May 31 breaking a record of 44.1C set in 1998. According to the IMD, the cyclone "might have caused the severe heat wave conditions prevailing over the coastal Andhra Pradesh" from May into early June, killing up to 1,400 people, and increasing air temperatures to 50 °C (122 °F).
## Aftermath
In the immediate aftermath of the flooding in Sri Lanka, the country's air force, army, and navy, as well as police forces, operated search and rescue missions. The navy and air force collected residents stranded in trees and on roofs, and were later assisted by the Indian military. However, the lack of electricity and the damaged infrastructure hampered relief work. In the hardest hit area of Ratnapura, there was a shortage of doctors, prompting officials to request help from adjacent towns. There were increased reports of diarrhea, viral flu, and typhoid in the aftermath of the floods. Mobile health crews treated over 44,000 residents, which helped reduce the spread of disease. Residents in one village went without food for three days, and in the storm's aftermath, many were also without access to clean water. By May 19, flooding had begun to recede in the worst affected areas, allowing workers to repair roads. The government released RS6 million (LKR, US\$62,500) for immediate relief, and also provided RS15,000 (LKR, US\$156) toward funeral expenses for each death. From May 22–25, the country's legislature had reduced sessions so members could return to their districts. By the end of May 2003, the government had allocated RS17.29 million (LKR, US\$180,000) for relief measures, including RS27,000 (LKR US\$280) for each family to rebuild houses. The Sri Lankan government also set up a four-person task force to manage flood relief. The local Red Cross chapter utilized emergency supplies to distribute 10,000 food packages while also deploying trained volunteers to assist in the disaster areas. The Red Cross ultimately distributed about 26,000 loaves of bread, 862 kg (1,900 lb) of sugar, and 1,775 kg (3,913 lb) of rice, among other supplies. By May 20, the Sri Lankan air force had distributed 35 tons of food, using eight helicopters to airdrop parcels. Red Cross workers cleaned hundreds of contaminated wells in the region, thereby restoring clean water access; this task was finished by August. By May 16, or nine days after the floods began, power was restored to about 95% of areas, and roads were gradually rebuilt. Road access to most villages was restored by May 26, with the exception of Matara. There, the ongoing floods prompted officials to close schools to reduce the spread of disease. After the floods largely subsided, the World Socialist Web Site criticized the Sri Lankan government for not having better disaster management in place, as well as noting that deforestation and gem mining contributed to the landslides. A Red Cross report in August 2003 noted the swift work to bring relief to the affected citizens, while also commenting that the floods displayed the country's problems with disaster mitigation.
On May 19, the Red Cross launched an appeal to the international community for assistance. A day prior, the Red Cross allocated CHF50,000 to buy relief supplies, while the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs provided a \$50,000 grant. In the days after the floods, the government of India sent a ship with inflatable dinghies and medical supplies. A total of 18 countries or local Red Crosses sent Fr.2.3 million CHF worth of cash to Sri Lanka. Sweden sent kr800,000 (2003 SEK) toward relief transport and distribution. The government of Japan sent ¥19.8 million yen worth of tents, sheets, and other supplies to the country, The Iranian Red Cross sent \$65,625 (USD) worth of blankets and tents to Sri Lanka, which helped about 240 families. Australia's government sent about \$400,000 (AUD) to UNICEF to help rebuild the damaged schools and other social services. The European Community Humanitarian Aid Office donated about €800,000 (US\$944,000) to the country. The World Food Programme distributed meals to about 10,000 families, while the World Health Organization provided water purification tablets, typhoid vaccines, and health kits to about 100,000 people. During a peace agreement amid the ongoing civil war, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka sent trucks with clothing and food to the affected areas. In July 2004, the Asian Development Bank provided \$12.5 million of the \$17.5 million needed to repair the damaged infrastructure, while the Sri Lankan government provided the remaining \$5 million.
## See also
- Cyclone Viyaru, which took a similar track in May 2013
- Geography of Sri Lanka
|
168,271 |
Seleucus VI Epiphanes
| 1,156,986,529 |
King of Syria from 96 to 94 BC
|
[
"1st-century BC Seleucid monarchs",
"2nd-century BC births",
"90s BC deaths",
"Year of birth unknown"
] |
Seleucus VI Epiphanes Nicator (Ancient Greek: Σέλευκος Ἐπιφανής Νικάτωρ, romanized: Séleukos Epiphanís Nikátor; between 124 and 109 BC – 94 BC) was a Hellenistic Seleucid monarch who ruled Syria between 96 and 94 BC. He was the son of Antiochus VIII and his Ptolemaic Egyptian wife Tryphaena. Seleucus VI lived during a period of civil war between his father and his uncle Antiochus IX, which ended in 96 BC when Antiochus VIII was assassinated. Antiochus IX then occupied the capital Antioch while Seleucus VI established his power-base in western Cilicia and himself prepared for war. In 95 BC, Antiochus IX marched against his nephew, but lost the battle and was killed. Seleucus VI became the master of the capital but had to share Syria with his brother Demetrius III, based in Damascus, and his cousin, Antiochus IX's son Antiochus X.
According to the ancient historian Appian, Seleucus VI was a violent ruler. He taxed his dominions extensively to support his wars, and resisted allowing the cities a measure of autonomy, as had been the practice of former kings. His reign did not last long; in 94 BC, he was expelled from Antioch by Antiochus X, who followed him to the Cilician city of Mopsuestia. Seleucus took shelter in the city where his attempts to raise money led to riots that eventually claimed his life in 94 BC. Ancient traditions have different versions of his death, but he was most probably burned alive by the rioters. Following his demise, his brothers Antiochus XI and Philip I destroyed Mopsuestia as an act of revenge and their armies fought those of Antiochus X.
## Name, family and early life
"Seleucus" was a dynastic name in the Seleucid dynasty, and it is the Macedonian variant of the Greek Ζάλευκος (zaleucus), meaning 'the shining white'. Antiochus VIII married the Ptolemaic Egyptian princess Tryphaena in c. 124 BC, shortly after his ascension to the throne; Seleucus VI was the couple's eldest son. From 113 BC, Antiochus VIII had to contend with his half-brother Antiochus IX for the throne. The civil war continued for more than a decade; it claimed the life of Tryphaena in 109 BC, and ended when Antiochus VIII was assassinated in 96 BC. In the aftermath of his brother's murder, Antiochus IX advanced on the capital Antioch and took it; he also married the second wife and widow of Antiochus VIII, Cleopatra Selene. According to an inscription, the city of Priene sent honors to "Seleucus son of King Antiochus son of King Demetrius"; the embassy probably took place before Seleucus VI ascended the throne as the inscription does not mention him as a king. The embassy of Priene probably met Seleucus VI in Cilicia; Antiochus VIII might have sent his son to that region as a strategos.
## Reign
Following his father's death, Seleucus VI declared himself king and took the city of Seleucia on the Calycadnus in western Cilicia as his base, while his brother Demetrius III took Damascus. The volume of coins minted by the new king in Seleucia on the Calycadnus surpassed any other mint known from the late Seleucid period, and most of the coins were produced during his preparations for war against Antiochus IX, a conflict that would end in the year 96/95 BC (217 SE (Seleucid year)). This led the numismatist Arthur Houghton to suggest an earlier death for Antiochus VIII and a longer reign for Seleucus VI beginning in 98 or 97 BC instead of 96 BC. The numismatist Oliver D. Hoover contested Houghton's hypothesis, as it was not rare for a king to double his production in a single year at times of need, and the academic consensus prefers the year 96 BC for the death of Antiochus VIII.
### Titles and royal image
Ancient Hellenistic kings did not use regnal numbers. Instead, they employed epithets to distinguish themselves from other kings with similar names; the numbering of kings is a modern practice. Seleucus VI appeared on his coins with the epithets Epiphanes (God Manifest) and Nicator (Victorious). As being the son of Antiochus VIII was the source of his legitimacy as king, Seleucus VI sought to emphasize his descent by depicting himself on the coinage with an exaggerated hawk-nose in the likeness of his father.
Another iconographic element of Seleucus VI's coinage is the short vertical stubby horns above the temple area; the meaning of this motif has been debated among scholars. It is likely an allusion to Seleucus VI's descent from his grandfather Demetrius II, who utilized the same motif. The specific meaning of the horns is not clear, but it could have been an indication that the king was a manifestation of a god; the stubby horns sported by Seleucus VI probably carried the same meaning as those of his grandfather. In the Seleucid dynasty, currency struck during campaigns against a rival (or usurper) showed the king with a beard. Seleucus VI was depicted with a beard, which was later removed from coins, indicating the fulfilment of a vengeance vow to avenge his father.
### Struggle against Antiochus IX
In Seleucia on the Calycadnus, Seleucus VI prepared for war against his uncle, whose forces probably occupied central Cilicia and confined his nephew to the western parts of the region. The king needed a harbor for Seleucia on the Calycadnus and probably founded the city of Elaiussa to serve that purpose. Seleucus VI gathered funds for his coming war from the cities of Cilicia, including Mopsuestia, which seems to have been taxed on several occasions. During his reign, it is estimated that Seleucus VI produced 1,200 talents of coins to support his war effort, enough to pay ten thousand soldiers for two years. On the reverse of bronze coins produced in a mint whose location is not known, coded uncertain mint 125, a motif depicting a chelys formed in the shape of a Macedonian shield appeared on the reverse. This motif was probably meant to rally the support of military Macedonian colonists in the region. Those coins were probably produced in Syria, in a city half the way between Tarsus in Cilicia and Antioch; therefore, they were probably minted in the course of Seleucus VI's campaign against Antiochus IX.
Antiochus IX took note of Seleucus VI's preparations; after the latter started his march on Antioch in 95 BC, Antiochus IX left the capital and moved against his nephew. Seleucus VI emerged victorious while his uncle lost his life, either by committing suicide according to the 3rd-century historian Eusebius, or by being executed according to the 1st-century historian Josephus. Soon afterwards, Seleucus VI entered the capital; Cleopatra Selene probably fled before his arrival.
### Policy and the war against Antiochus X
In 144 SE (169/168 BC), King Antiochus IV allowed nineteen cities to mint municipal bronze coinage in their own names, indicating his awareness of the mutual dependency of cities and the monarchy on each other. This movement towards greater autonomy continued as the cities sought to emancipate themselves from the central power, adding the phrase "sacred and autonomous" to their coinage. Seleucus VI did not follow the policy of his forebears. In Cilicia, as long as he reigned, autonomy was not granted; a change in the political status of Cilician cities was apparently not acceptable for Seleucus VI.
Seleucus VI controlled Cilicia and Syria Seleucis (Northern Syria). Antiochus IX had a son, Antiochus X; according to Josephus, he fled to the city of Aradus where he declared himself king. Seleucus VI attempted to kill his cousin and rival but the plot failed, and Antiochus X married Cleopatra Selene to enhance his position. The archaeologist Alfred Bellinger believed that Seleucus VI prepared for his coming war against Antiochus X in Elaiussa. In 94 BC, Antiochus X advanced on the capital Antioch and drove Seleucus VI out of northern Syria into Cilicia. According to Eusebius, the final battle took place near Mopsuestia, and ended with the defeat of Seleucus VI.
## Death and legacy
Described by the 2nd-century historian Appian as "violent and extremely tyrannical", Seleucus VI took shelter in Mopsuestia, and attempted to tax the residents again, which led to his death during riots. The year of his demise is not clear; Eusebius placed it in 216 SE (97/96 BC), which is impossible considering that a market weight of Seleucus VI from Antioch dated to 218 SE (95/94 BC) has been discovered. The 4th-century historian Jerome has 219 SE (94/93 BC) as the year of Seleucus VI's demise, which is more plausible. The year 94 BC is the academically accepted date for the death of Seleucus VI. No spouse or children were recorded for Seleucus VI. According to the 1st-century biographer Plutarch, the 1st-century BC Roman general Lucullus said that the Armenian king, Tigranes II, who conquered Syria in 83 BC, "put to death the successors of Seleucus, and [carried] off their wives and daughters into captivity". Given the fragmentary nature of ancient sources regarding the late Seleucid period, the statement of Lucullus leaves open the existence of a wife or daughter of Seleucus VI.
Ancient traditions preserve three accounts regarding Seleucus VI's death: the oldest, by Josephus, has a mob burning the king and his courtiers in the royal palace. Appian shares the burning account but has the city's gymnasium as the scene. According to Eusebius, Seleucus VI discovered the intention of the residents to burn him, and took his own life. Bellinger considered the account of Josephus to be the most probable; he noted that Eusebius presented suicide accounts for other Seleucid kings who were recorded as having been killed by other historians, such as Alexander I and Antiochus IX. Bellinger believed that the 3rd-century historian Porphyry, the source of Eusebius' stories about the Seleucids, was attempting to "tone down somewhat the horrors of the Seleucid house".
The city of Athens shared a close relation with the Seleucid kings, and statues of Syrian monarchs set up by Athenian citizens on the island of Delos testify to this; a citizen named Dionysius dedicated a statue for Seleucus VI between 96 and 94 BC. In deference to his late brother, King Antiochus XI adopted the epithet Philadelphus (brother loving). Along with his twin Philip I, Antiochus XI proceeded to avenge Seleucus VI; the brothers sacked and destroyed Mopsuestia. Antiochus XI then headed to Antioch in 93 BC and expelled Antiochus X.
## Family tree
\|- \|style="text-align: left;"\|Citations:
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## See also
- List of Syrian monarchs
- Timeline of Syrian history
|
992,238 |
Brunette Coleman
| 1,166,352,005 |
Pseudonym used by the poet and writer Philip Larkin
|
[
"20th-century pseudonymous writers",
"Philip Larkin"
] |
Brunette Coleman was a pseudonym used by the poet and writer Philip Larkin. In 1943, towards the end of his time as an undergraduate at St John's College, Oxford, he wrote several works of fiction, verse and critical commentary under that name, including homoerotic stories that parody the style of popular writers of contemporary girls' school fiction.
The Coleman oeuvre consists of a completed novella, Trouble at Willow Gables, set in a girls' boarding school; an incomplete sequel, Michaelmas Term at St Brides, set in a women's college at Oxford; seven short poems with a girls' school ambience; a fragment of pseudo-autobiography; and a critical essay purporting to be Coleman's literary apologia. The manuscripts were stored in the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, where Larkin was chief librarian between 1955 and 1985. Their existence was revealed to the public when Larkin's Selected Letters and Andrew Motion's biography were published in 1992 and 1993 respectively. The Coleman works themselves were finally published, with other Larkin drafts and oddments, in 2002.
At Oxford Larkin underwent a period of confused sexuality and limited literary output. The adoption of a female persona appeared to release his creativity, as in the three years following the Coleman phase he published under his own name two novels and his first poetry collection. Thereafter, although he gradually established his reputation as a poet, his career as a prose writer declined, and despite several attempts he completed no further fiction. Critical reaction to the publication of the Coleman material was divided between those who saw no value in these juvenilia, and those who considered that they cast useful light on the study of the mature Larkin.
## Origins
In October 1940 Philip Larkin began studying English at St John's College, Oxford. A prolific writer since childhood, his primary ambition as an undergraduate was to be a novelist rather than a poet. As well as publishing articles and poems in Cherwell and Oxford Poetry, he wrote additional unpublished material that included fragments of semi-autobiographical stories exploring homosexual relationships among groups of undergraduates. According to Larkin's biographer Andrew Motion these writings, while of no literary value, give an indication of Larkin's confused sexuality at that time, and his growing distaste for what he terms "this buggery business".
From 1942 the character of much of Larkin's private writing changed, as a result of his friendship with a fellow undergraduate from St John's, Kingsley Amis, who arrived at the university that summer. Amis, a much more confident and assertive character than Larkin, disguised his serious concerns behind a facade of jokes and comic ironies. Larkin soon adopted that style as his own, joining with Amis in composing obscene rhymes and parodies of the Romantic poets they were required to study. In time they extended their efforts to soft-porn fantasies in which, typically, "girls roll[ed] around together twanging elastic and straps". After Amis's departure for the army in early 1943, Larkin made his first attempt at writing from a specifically feminine perspective in a story called "An Incident in the English Camp", which he subtitled "A Thoroughly Unhealthy Story". Lacking any salacious content despite its subtitle, the work is written in a pastiche of sentimental women's magazine prose. It depicts an undergraduate girl's parting from her soldier lover, and ends: "She walked in exaltation through the black streets, her heart glowing like a coal with deep love".
## Writing
From his general reading, Larkin had acquired a considerable knowledge of girls' school fiction, and had formed definite views on the authors of such works: "stupid women without a grain of humour in their minds", who lacked "erotic sensibility" and treated the lesbian perspective "too casually". His intention to write in this genre is expressed in a letter to his friend Norman Iles, dated 5 June 1943, just before Larkin sat his degree Finals: "I am spending my time doing an obscene Lesbian novel in the form of a school story". The novel was Trouble at Willow Gables, a school adventure story in the manner of Dorita Fairlie Bruce or Dorothy Vicary, which Larkin completed at home while awaiting his Finals results. That was the prelude to a busy summer's writing: "Leaving Oxford was like taking a cork out of a bottle. Writing flooded out of me", Larkin later told his biographer.
Larkin's letter to Iles does not mention a female pseudonym, although the idea of using one had been in his mind for months. The previous March he had begun writing the imagined autobiography of a supposed lady novelist, "Brunette Coleman", adapting the name of a well-known contemporary female jazz musician, Blanche Coleman. Larkin tentatively titled the autobiography "Ante Meridian"; he soon abandoned it, but held on to the Coleman name. According to James Booth, who prepared the Coleman texts for publication in 2002, the adoption of a female persona was in line with the pose of "girlish narcissism" that Larkin was affecting in the summer of 1943: "I am dressed in red trousers, shirt and white pullover, and look very beautiful". In his letters to Amis, Larkin maintained a straight-faced pretence that Coleman was a real person. Thus in one letter he wrote "Brunette is very thrilled" with a poem written in her name, and in another, "Brunette can stand healthy criticism".
As he waited for offers of employment through the summer and autumn of 1943, Larkin added more works to the Coleman oeuvre. He began a sequel to Trouble at Willow Gables, set in a women's college at Oxford and entitled Michaelmas Term at St Bride's, but did not finish it: "All literary inspiration has deserted me", he informed Amis on 13 August. Nevertheless, a week later he told Amis that Brunette was helping him to write a novel, provisionally entitled Jill, about "a young man who invents an imaginary sister, and falls in love with her". With this letter Larkin sent a Coleman poem, "Bliss", the first of seven written in the girls' school idiom. As late as 19 October he reported to Amis that "Brunette is working on a little monograph about girls' school stories". This is a reference to the putative literary manifesto "What Are We Writing For", which became the final Coleman work. Thereafter, Motion records, she disappeared, "to be mentioned only fleetingly in later accounts of his university life ... She ended up as an occasional comic reminder of lost youth".
## Works
The works which Larkin attributed to Brunette Coleman comprise a short piece of supposed autobiography, a complete short novel, an incomplete second novel, a collection of poems and a literary essay.
### "Ante Meridian"
This fragment of spoof autobiography is distinct from the rest of the Coleman oeuvre in having no relation to girls' school fiction. It records Brunette's early life as the daughter of an eccentric priest, brought up in a tumbledown Cornish cliff-top house. Apart from descriptions of the house and its contents (some of which may be drawn from Larkin's own childhood home in Coventry), much of the narrative is taken up with a comical description of an attempt to launch the local lifeboat. Larkin's biographer Richard Bradford is struck by the distinctive tone in the fragment, different from anything else written under Coleman's name. The text breaks off suddenly; Motion surmises that Larkin abandoned it because he was eager to begin work on the first Coleman novel. Booth describes the prose as "a mix of Daphne du Maurier nostalgia and surreal farce".
### Novel: Trouble at Willow Gables
#### Synopsis
Marie Moore, a junior pupil at Willow Gables, receives a birthday present of £5 from an aunt. After the banknote is retained for safekeeping by the headmistress, Miss Holden, Marie slyly recovers it but is quickly found out, and is coerced by Miss Holden into giving the money to the school's gymnasium fund. When later the banknote goes missing from the fund's collection box, Marie is suspected, but protests her innocence despite a savage beating from Miss Holden with assistance from two burly school prefects. Only her friend Myfanwy believes her. Confined in the school's punishment room, Marie manages to escape with the help of a domestic servant, and runs away.
Hilary Russell, a prefect and predatory lesbian, lusts after Mary Beech, the school's cricket captain. On a night expedition in pursuit of Mary, Hilary catches Margaret Tattenham, a junior, in the act of replacing the £5 note in Miss Holden's room. Margaret says she originally took the money as a prank; Hilary agrees not to report her to Miss Holden in return for sexual favours, to which Margaret reluctantly consents. The following morning, Hilary denounces her anyway; Margaret responds by revealing Hilary's sexual harassment but is not believed, and is taken to the punishment room where Marie's absence is revealed.
Hilary is sent with a search party to find the missing girl. Meanwhile, Margaret makes a daring escape via the window, and rides off on the school horse. She finds Marie, who is miserable and frightened and wants to return to the school whatever the consequences. Margaret confesses that she borrowed the £5 to bet on a horse, and has won £100. She means to leave Willow Gables for good, and apologises to Marie for the trouble she has caused her. This conversation is overheard by Hilary's search party, and after a scuffle the truants are captured. On the way back to school they hear cries from the river; it is Myfanwy, who has got into difficulties while swimming. Margaret frees herself from her captors' clutches, dives in and saves her drowning friend.
Back at the school, Miss Holden overlooks the theft in view of Margaret's heroism, although she confiscates the £100 winnings and donates the money to a new swimming pool fund. Marie is exonerated, and her £5 is returned. Mary Beech comes forward to corroborate Margaret's accusations against Hilary, who is summarily expelled. Marie and Myfanwy enjoy an emotional reunion in the school sickroom, as life at the school returns to normal, with friendship and forgiveness all round.
#### Commentary
The typescript begins with a dedication page "To Jacinth" (Brunette Coleman's imagined secretary). There follows an untitled poem which later appears, slightly altered, as "The School in August" in Sugar and Spice, the Coleman poetry collection. In the story the surnames of the headmistress and principal girls have been altered in ink throughout the typescript; some of the original names belonged to Larkin's real-life acquaintances at Oxford. The presence of a publisher's inkstamp on the wallet containing the typescript indicates that the story may have been submitted by Larkin for publication.
Booth argues that, whatever Larkin's motive in writing it, the story follows the parameters of schoolgirl fiction with some fidelity. Its main characters all have models within the genre; Marie has much in common with Dorita Fairlie Bruce's recurrent character "Dimsie", while Hilary is likewise based on Dorothy Vicary's villainous "Una Vickers" in Niece of the Headmistress. The usual themes of friendships, rivalries and injustices are explored, and the ending in reconciliation and future hope is entirely true to type. Some scenes—the savage beating endured by Marie, the lingering descriptions of girls dressing and undressing, Hilary's smouldering sexuality—may, Booth asserts, be written with "the lusts of the male heterosexual gaze" in mind but, he continues, the reader looking for explicit pornography will be disappointed. Bradford notes three prose styles combining in the narrative: "cautious indifference, archly overwritten symbolism ... and ... its writer's involuntary feelings of sexual excitement". Motion finds the tone of the prose frivolous on the surface, yet fundamentally cold and cruel: "Once its women have been arraigned for pleasure they are dismissed; once they have been enjoyed they are treated with indifference".
### Novel: Michaelmas Term at St Bride's
#### Synopsis
In this incomplete story Mary, Marie, Margaret and Myfanwy, friends from Willow Gables, are new undergraduates at St Bride's College, Oxford. Mary is disconcerted to find that she is sharing her rooms with Hilary, her old adversary from the school. However, although Hilary still has a roving lesbian eye, she has lost most of her predatory instincts and the two become friends. Mary falls foul of Mary de Putron, the aggressive and authoritarian college games captain; in the hockey trials de Putron makes Mary play out of her normal position, so that performs badly. Hilary subsequently avenges Mary's humiliation by seducing de Putron's boyfriend, a gauche Royal Air Force officer called Clive, whom she then dumps unceremoniously.
Of Myfanwy's doings we learn relatively little. Margaret, still fascinated with horse-racing, sets up her own bookmaking business. Marie discovers psychoanalysis and tries to cure her sister Philippa's leather belt fetish. After various efforts prove unsuccessful, the sisters seek solace in alcohol. The later stages of the story introduce Larkin's real-life friend, Diana Gollancz, and recount her preparations for a fashionable party. In the final scenes the narrative becomes surreal, as on their alcoholic quest Marie and Philippa are confronted by the knowledge that they are characters in a story, while "real life" is going on in the next room. Marie takes a peep at real life, and decides she would rather stay in the story, which breaks off at this point with a few pencil notes indicating possible ways in which it might have continued.
#### Commentary
Only the first dozen pages of the manuscript are typed; the remainder is handwritten. The surnames of the characters, which were changed in Trouble at Willow Gables, are unaltered. The script carries a dedication to "Miriam and Diana": Miriam was an acquaintance with whom Larkin had discussed lesbian relationships, while Diana Gollancz ("Diana G." in the story), the daughter of the publisher Victor Gollancz, supplied him with many anecdotes from her schooldays. According to Motion, "St Bride's" is recognisably based on Somerville College, Oxford.
In his analysis of the Coleman fiction, Stephen Cooper notes that, as with Willow Gables, the narrative voice switches from character to character so that different thoughts, attitudes and perspectives can be expressed. Cooper argues that as the narrative progresses, Larkin's concerns (in his Coleman voice) move beyond sexual titillation; he is no longer interested in describing lesbian encounters in voyeuristic detail. Hilary emerges as saviour rather than seducer, as a campaigner against male oppression, and as a figure who "deviates from the cultural norms [yet] can triumph over those who adopt conventional attitudes". The scenes with sexual content or innuendo are largely confined to the earlier parts of the story. The later parts, which introduce the male characters "Clive" and Hilary's other admirer, the contemptible "Creature" are, according to Motion, overlaid with male self-disgust, a theme apparent in Larkin's two published novels and in his later poetry. Motion suggests that the loss of erotic impetus, and Larkin's apparent fading of interest, are the main reasons why the story peters out.
### Sugar and Spice: A Sheaf of Poems
The typescript of Sugar and Spice consists of six poems, which in sequence are:
1. "The False Friend"
2. "Bliss"
3. "Femmes Damnées"
4. "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis"
5. "Holidays"
6. "The School in August"
A seventh poem in pencil, "Fourth Form Loquitur", has been loosely inserted into the typescript. "Femmes Damnées", which was printed by John Fuller at the Sycamore Press, Oxford, in 1978, is the only Coleman work published in Larkin's lifetime. This poem, and "The School in August", were included in Larkin's Collected Poems published in 1988; "The School in August" was omitted from the 2003 revised edition of the collection although, according to Amis, it is the poem that best gives the flavour of the Coleman pastiche. "Bliss" was included in Larkin's Selected Letters (1992), as part of a letter to Amis.
Motion describes the Coleman poems as "a world of comfortless jealousies, breathless bike-rides and deathless crushes", mixing elements from writers and poets such as Angela Brazil, Richmal Crompton, John Betjeman and W.H. Auden. Larkin's own attitude to these poems appears equivocal. He expresses pleasure that his friend Bruce Montgomery liked them, especially "The School in August". However, to Amis he writes: "I think all wrong-thinking people ought to like them. I used to write them whenever I'd seen any particularly ripe schoolgirl ... Writing about grown women is less perverse and therefore less satisfying". Booth finds the poems the most impressive of all the Coleman works, in their evidence of Larkin's early ability to create striking and moving images from conventional school story clichés. They are an early demonstration of Larkin's talent for finding depths in ordinariness, an ability that characterised many of his later poems. Booth draws specific attention to the elegiac quality of the final lines of "The School in August": "And even swimming groups can fade / Games mistresses turn grey". In Booth's view the Coleman poems are among the best Larkin wrote in the 1940s, well beyond anything in his first published selection The North Ship (1945).
### "What Are We Writing For"
The typescript of the essay is headed by an epigraph, attributed to The Upbringing of Daughters by Catherine Durning Whethem. It reads: "The chief justification of reading books of any sort is the enlargement of experience that should accrue therefrom". The text which follows is, in Motion's words, "a homily on how and how not to write for children". It argues for the need for well-drawn heroines, and for unrepentant villainesses: "To be tenacious in evil is the duty of every villain ... Let her hate the heroine wholeheartedly, and refuse, yes, even on the last page, to take her hand in forgiveness". The story should not be about schoolgirls, but about a school with girls in it. The school must be English; foreign settings or trips abroad are disparaged. Larkin, in Coleman's voice, pleads for "the Classic Unities": Unity of Place, which is the school and its inhabitants; Unity of Time, normally the term in which the action occurs; and Unity of Action, whereby every recorded incident contributes in some way to the telling of the story. The essay is laden with quotations from many writers of the genre, among them Joy Francis, Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Elsie J. Oxenham, Elinor Brent-Dyer and Nancy Breary.
Motion argues that aside from the sometimes facetious tone, the opinions expressed by Larkin in his Coleman persona, particularly the mild xenophobia that enters the essay, foreshadow his own mature prejudices. Bradford believes that the essay reads as a serious, well-researched paper on the genre of early twentieth century boarding school literature, worthy of inclusion in F. W. Bateson's Essays and Criticism had that journal existed in 1943.
## Critical reception
Shortly before his death in 1985 Larkin instructed his companion Monica Jones to burn his diaries. His instructions did not cover other writings, therefore the Coleman material remained in the archives of the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, where Larkin had worked as chief librarian since 1955. The existence of these papers was first made public in 1992, when Larkin's Selected Letters was published. In the following year extensive extracts from the Coleman works appeared in Motion's biography of Larkin, and became the subject of literary analysis by M. W. Rowe, in his 1999 essay "Unreal Girls: Lesbian Fantasy in Early Larkin". Rowe saw Larkin's adoption of a female persona as an outlet, compensating for his sexual awkwardness and lack of success with Oxford women. The punishment scenes, in which women punish women, were a means of subduing Larkin's feelings of anger and frustration with his personal sexual failures. More significantly, according to Rowe, Larkin's invention of Coleman was the catalyst which broke the writing block that had afflicted him for most of his Oxford years. The few months of her creative life in 1943 were, Larkin later acknowledged, the prelude to "the intensest time of my life"; in the three subsequent years his poetry collection The North Ship and his novels Jill and A Girl in Winter were published.
The complete Coleman material, in a collection edited by James Booth, was finally published in 2002. Booth thought that the material would probably cause "a huge amount of confusion and smoke because the politically correct brigade will jump on it". Anticipating the publication, Emma Hartley and Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer doubted the literary value of the works, citing Motion's view that the stories were "little more than mild pornography" which the mature poet would never have wished to see published. On publication, Booth's collection provoked a particularly hostile reaction from The Guardian's critic Jenny Diski, whose review dismissed the Coleman writings as "drivel" and "sad ramblings", unworthy of publication or critical attention, and not even valid pornography: "Not a breast, not a clitoris is seen or mentioned." Unlike serious pornographers, "Larkin sketches a mere outline and then walks away with a snigger". Diski mocks Booth's reverential descriptions of the typescripts "as though they were slivers of the True Cross", and concludes: "Let this be a lesson, at least, to anyone who hasn't got around to chucking out the crap they wrote in their teens and early twenties."
Other critics were more positive. The New Statesman's Robert Potts found the stories "entertaining and intriguing for readers familiar with their background and with the genre", and for the most part charmingly innocent, "especially when compared with the reality of boarding-school life". The evocation of adolescent homoeroticism was deliberate and playful rather than pornographic. In a similar vein, Richard Canning in The Independent found the Willow Gables fiction vibrant, well-constructed and entertaining, and praised Larkin's "sly Sapphic spin". In a more recent analysis Terry Castle, writing in the journal Daedalus, disagrees profoundly with the notion expressed by Adam Kirsch in The Times Literary Supplement, that the publication of the Coleman works was damaging to Larkin's reputation. On the contrary, argues Castle, "the Brunette phase speaks volumes about the paradoxical process by which Philip Larkin became 'Larkinesque'—modern English poetry's reigning bard of erotic frustration and depressive (if verse-enabling) self-deprecation".
## Influences
The effects of Larkin's Coleman phase are clearly evident in his first novel, Jill, in which he makes copious use of Willow Gables material. The novelist's protagonist, a shy Oxford undergraduate called John Kemp, invents a schoolgirl sister called Jill, initially to impress his arrogant and dismissive room-mate, Christopher Warner. Although Warner displays little interest, the non-existent "Jill" comes to obsess Kemp. He imagines her at Willow Gables School, and writes long letters to her there. In the form of a short story he details her life at the school—now located in Derbyshire rather than Wiltshire as it had been in the Coleman works. The girls' names are different, but their speech and attitudes closely reflect those of the earlier stories. A lesbian element is introduced through Jill's fascination with the cool, detached senior girl Minerva Strachey. Kemp's fantasy is disturbed when he meets a real-life Jill, or Gillian; his attempts to match his flight of fancy to reality end in embarrassment and humiliation.
Reviewing the published Coleman material, The Independent's Richard Canning suggests that the influence of these early works is often discernible in Larkin's poetry. Likewise Stephen Cooper, in his 2004 book Philip Larkin: Subversive Writer, argues that the stylistic and thematic influences of Trouble at Willow Gables and Michaelmas Term at St Brides anticipate the poetry's recurrent concern with rebellion and conformity. Among examples, Cooper cites Marie's refusal in Willow Gables to compromise with an unjust authority as reflecting the sentiments expressed in Larkin's poem "Places, Loved Ones" (1954). The reader, says Cooper, "is invited to identify with Marie's plight in a manner that foreshadows the empathy felt for the rape victim in 'Deception'" (1950). When Marie, having escaped from the school, discovers that her freedom is an illusion, she longs to return to the familiar paths. These sentiments are present in poems such as "Poetry of Departures" (1954), "Here" (1961), and "High Windows" (1967).
The spirit though not the name of Brunette was briefly revived during 1945–46, when Larkin renewed his friendship with Amis. Among the stillborn projects planned by the pair was a story about two beautiful jazz-loving lesbian undergraduates. According to Booth, the "feeble plot [was] merely the excuse for lesbian scenes ... far indeed from the originality of Larkin's Brunette works of 1943". Jill, completed in 1944, was finally published in October 1946 by The Fortune Press, whose eccentric proprietor Reginald Caton reportedly accepted the book without reading it. Larkin was disappointed by the book's critical reception, but by this time his second novel, A Girl in Winter, had been accepted by Faber and Faber, and was duly published in February 1947. It received better reviews than Jill, and achieved moderately good sales; Booth calls it Larkin's "most original and adventurous experiment in fiction". It is written from the viewpoint of its main female character, Katherine, but otherwise is unrelated to the Coleman phase. Over the following years Larkin began but failed to finish several more novels, in the last of which, A New World Symphony, he returned once again to the device of a female protagonist-narrator. The novel was finally abandoned around 1954.
|
7,934,681 |
Galápagos tortoise
| 1,172,321,894 |
Species of reptile
|
[
"Chelonoidis",
"Endemic reptiles of the Galápagos Islands",
"Reptiles described in 1824",
"Reptiles of Ecuador",
"Taxa named by Jean René Constant Quoy",
"Taxa named by Joseph Paul Gaimard",
"Turtles of South America"
] |
The Galápagos tortoise or Galápagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger) is a species of very large tortoise in the genus Chelonoidis (which also contains three smaller species from mainland South America). The species comprises 15 subspecies (13 extant and 2 extinct). It is the largest living species of tortoise, with some modern Galápagos tortoises weighing up to 417 kg (919 lb). They are also the largest extant terrestrial ectotherms.
With lifespans in the wild of over 100 years, it is one of the longest-lived vertebrates. Captive Galapagos tortoises can live up to 177 years. For example, a captive individual, Harriet, lived for at least 175 years. Spanish explorers, who discovered the islands in the 16th century, named them after the Spanish galápago, meaning "tortoise".
Galápagos tortoises are native to seven of the Galápagos Islands. Shell size and shape vary between subspecies and populations. On islands with humid highlands, the tortoises are larger, with domed shells and short necks; on islands with dry lowlands, the tortoises are smaller, with "saddleback" shells and long necks. Charles Darwin's observations of these differences on the second voyage of the Beagle in 1835, contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.
Tortoise numbers declined from over 250,000 in the 16th century to a low of around 15,000 in the 1970s. This decline was caused by overexploitation of the subspecies for meat and oil, habitat clearance for agriculture, and introduction of non-native animals to the islands, such as rats, goats, and pigs. The extinction of most giant tortoise lineages is thought to have also been caused by predation by humans or human ancestors, as the tortoises themselves have no natural predators. Tortoise populations on at least three islands have become extinct in historical times due to human activities. Specimens of these extinct taxa exist in several museums and also are being subjected to DNA analysis. 12 subspecies of the original 14-15 survive in the wild; a 13th subspecies (C. n. abingdonii) had only a single known living individual, kept in captivity and nicknamed Lonesome George until his death in June 2012. Two other subspecies, C. n. niger (the type subspecies of Galápagos tortoise) from Floreana Island and an undescribed subspecies from Santa Fe Island are known to have gone extinct in the mid-late 19th century. Conservation efforts, beginning in the 20th century, have resulted in thousands of captive-bred juveniles being released onto their ancestral home islands, and the total number of the subspecies is estimated to have exceeded 19,000 at the start of the 21st century. Despite this rebound, all surviving subspecies are classified as Threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The Galápagos tortoises are one of two insular radiations of giant tortoises that still survive to the modern day; the other is Aldabrachelys gigantea of Aldabra and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, 700 km (430 mi) east of Tanzania. While giant tortoise radiations were common in prehistoric times, humans have wiped out the majority of them worldwide; the only other radiation of tortoises to survive to historic times, Cylindraspis of the Mascarenes, was driven to extinction by the 19th century, and other giant tortoise radiations such as a Centrochelys radiation on the Canary Islands and another Chelonoidis radiation in the Caribbean were driven to extinction prior to that.
## Taxonomy
### Early classification
The Galápagos Islands were discovered in 1535, but first appeared on the maps, of Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, around 1570. The islands were named "Insulae de los Galopegos" (Islands of the Tortoises) in reference to the giant tortoises found there.
Initially, the giant tortoises of the Indian Ocean and those from the Galápagos were thought to be the same subspecies. Naturalists thought that sailors had transported the tortoises there. In 1676, the pre-Linnaean authority Claude Perrault referred to both subspecies as Tortue des Indes. In 1783, Johann Gottlob Schneider classified all giant tortoises as Testudo indica ("Indian tortoise"). In 1812, August Friedrich Schweigger named them Testudo gigantea ("gigantic tortoise"). In 1834, André Marie Constant Duméril and Gabriel Bibron classified the Galápagos tortoises as a separate subspecies, which they named Testudo nigrita ("black tortoise").
### Recognition of subpopulations
The first systematic survey of giant tortoises was by the zoologist Albert Günther of the British Museum, in 1875. Günther identified at least five distinct populations from the Galápagos, and three from the Indian Ocean islands. He expanded the list in 1877 to six from the Galápagos, four from the Seychelles, and four from the Mascarenes. Günther hypothesized that all the giant tortoises descended from a single ancestral population which spread by sunken land bridges. This hypothesis was later disproven by the understanding that the Galápagos, the atolls of Seychelles, and the Mascarene islands are all of recent volcanic origin and have never been linked to a continent by land bridges. Galápagos tortoises are now thought to have descended from a South American ancestor, while the Indian Ocean tortoises derived from ancestral populations on Madagascar.
At the end of the 19th century, Georg Baur and Walter Rothschild recognised five more populations of Galápagos tortoise. In 1905–06, an expedition by the California Academy of Sciences, with Joseph R. Slevin in charge of reptiles, collected specimens which were studied by Academy herpetologist John Van Denburgh. He identified four additional populations, and proposed the existence of 15 subspecies. Van Denburgh's list still guides the taxonomy of the Galápagos tortoise, though now 10 populations are thought to have existed.
### Current species and genus names
The current specific designation of niger, formerly feminized to nigra ("black" – Quoy & Gaimard, 1824b) was resurrected in 1984 after it was discovered to be the senior synonym (an older taxonomic synonym taking historical precedence) for the then commonly used subspecies name of elephantopus ("elephant-footed" – Harlan, 1827). Quoy and Gaimard's Latin description explains the use of nigra: "Testudo toto corpore nigro" means "tortoise with completely black body". Quoy and Gairmard described nigra from a living specimen, but no evidence indicates they knew of its accurate provenance within the Galápagos – the locality was in fact given as California. Garman proposed the linking of nigra with the extinct Floreana subspecies. Later, Pritchard deemed it convenient to accept this designation, despite its tenuousness, for minimal disruption to the already confused nomenclature of the subspecies. The even more senior subspecies synonym of californiana ("californian" – Quoy & Gaimard, 1824a) is considered a nomen oblitum ("forgotten name").
Previously, the Galápagos tortoise was considered to belong to the genus Geochelone, known as 'typical tortoises' or 'terrestrial turtles'. In the 1990s, subgenus Chelonoidis was elevated to generic status based on phylogenetic evidence which grouped the South American members of Geochelone into an independent clade (branch of the tree of life). This nomenclature has been adopted by several authorities.
### Subspecies
Within the archipelago, 14-15 subspecies of Galápagos tortoises have been identified, although only 12 survive to this day. Five are found on separate islands; five of them on the volcanoes of Isabela Island. Several of the surviving subspecies are seriously endangered. A 13th subspecies, C. n. abingdonii from Pinta Island, is extinct since 2012. The last known specimen, named Lonesome George, died in captivity on 24 June 2012; George had been mated with female tortoises of several other subspecies, but none of the eggs from these pairings hatched. The subspecies inhabiting Floreana Island (G. niger) is thought to have been hunted to extinction by 1850, only 15 years after Charles Darwin's landmark visit of 1835, when he saw shells, but no live tortoises there. However, recent DNA testing shows that an intermixed, non-native population currently existing on the island of Isabela is of genetic resemblance to the subspecies native to Floreana, suggesting that G. niger has not gone entirely extinct. The existence of the C. n. phantastica subspecies of Fernandina Island was disputed, as it was described from a single specimen that may have been an artificial introduction to the island; however, a live female was found in 2019, likely confirming the subspecies' validity.
Prior to widespread knowledge of the differences between the populations (sometimes called races) from different islands and volcanoes, captive collections in zoos were indiscriminately mixed. Fertile offspring resulted from pairings of animals from different races. However, captive crosses between tortoises from different races have lower fertility and higher mortality than those between tortoises of the same race, and captives in mixed herds normally direct courtship only toward members of the same race.
The valid scientific names of each of the individual populations are not universally accepted, and some researchers still consider each subspecies to be distinct species. Prior to 2021, all subspecies were classified as distinct species from one another, but a 2021 study analyzing the level of divergence within the extinct West Indian Chelonoidis radiation and comparing it to the Galápagos radiation found that the level of divergence within both clades may have been significantly overestimated, and supported once again reclassifying all Galápagos tortoises as subspecies of a single species, C. niger. This was followed by the Turtle Taxonomy Working Group and the Reptile Database later that year. The taxonomic status of the various races is not fully resolved.
- Testudo californiana
Quoy & Gaimard, 1824a (nomen oblitum)
- Testudo nigra
Quoy & Gaimard, 1824b (nomen novum)
- Testudo elephantopus
Harlan, 1827 (nomen dubium)
- Testudo nigrita
Duméril and Bibron, 1834 (nomen dubium)
- Testudo planiceps
Gray, 1853 (nomen dubium)
- Testudo clivosa
Garman, 1917 (nomen dubium)
- Testudo typica
Garman, 1917 (nomen dubium)
- Testudo (Chelonoidis) elephantopus
Williams, 1952
- Geochelone (Chelonoidis) elephantopus
Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis elephantopus
Bour, 1980
C. n. nigra (nominate subspecies)
- Testudo californiana
Quoy & Gaimard, 1824a (nomen oblitum)
- Testudo nigra
Quoy & Gaimard, 1824b (nomen novum)
- Testudo galapagoensis
Baur 1889
C. n. abingdoni
- Testudo ephippium
Günther, 1875 (partim, misidentified type specimen once erroneously attributed to what is now C. n. duncanensis)
- Testudo abingdoni
Günther, 1877
C. n. becki
- Testudo becki
Rothschild, 1901
C. n. chathamensis
- Testudo wallacei
Rothschild 1902 (partim, nomen dubium)
- Testudo chathamensis
Van Denburgh, 1907
C. n. darwini
- Testudo wallacei
Rothschild 1902 (partim, nomen dubium)
- Testudo darwini
Van Denburgh, 1907
C. n. duncanensis
- Testudo ephippium
Günther, 1875 (partim, misidentified type)
- Geochelone nigra duncanensis
Garman, 1917 in Pritchard, 1996(nomen nudum)
C. n. hoodensis
- Testudo hoodensis
Van Denburgh, 1907
C. n. phantastica
- Testudo phantasticus
Van Denburgh, 1907
C. n. porteri
- Testudo nigrita
Duméril and Bibron, 1834 (nomen dubium)
- Testudo porteri
Rothschild, 1903
C. n. vicina
- Testudo microphyes
Günther, 1875
- Testudo vicina
Günther, 1875
- Testudo güntheri
Baur, 1889
- Testudo macrophyes
Garman, 1917
- Testudo vandenburghi
De Sola, R. 1930 (nomen nudum)
Chelonoidis nigra nigra
- Testudo nigra Quoy & Gaimard, 1824
- Testudo californiana Quoy & Gaimard, 1824
- Testudo galapagoensis Baur, 1889
- Testudo elephantopus galapagoensis Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Geochelone elephantopus galapagoensis Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis galapagoensis Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis nigra Bour, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus galapagoensis Obst, 1985
- Geochelone nigra Pritchard, 1986
- Geochelone nigra nigra Stubbs, 1989
- Chelonoidis nigra galapagoensis David, 1994
- Chelonoidis nigra nigra David, 1994
- Geochelone elephantopus nigra Bonin, Devaux & Dupré, 1996
- Testudo california Paull, 1998 (ex errore)
- Testudo californianana Paull, 1999 (ex errore)
Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii
- Testudo ephippium Günther, 1875
- Testudo abingdonii Günther, 1877
- Testudo abingdoni Van Denburgh, 1914 (ex errore)
- Testudo elephantopus abingdonii Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Testudo elephantopus ephippium Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Geochelone abingdonii Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus abingdoni Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus ephippium Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone ephippium Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis abingdonii Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis ephippium Bour, 1980
- Geochelone elephantopus abingdonii Groombridge, 1982
- Geochelone abingdoni Fritts, 1983
- Geochelone epphipium Fritts, 1983 (ex errore)
- Chelonoidis nigra ephippium Pritchard, 1984
- Chelonoidis elephantopus abingdoni Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus ephippium Obst, 1985
- Geochelone nigra abingdoni Stubbs, 1989
- Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii David, 1994
- Chelonoidis elephantopus abingdonii Rogner, 1996
- Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii Bonin, Devaux & Dupré, 1996
- Chelonoidis nigra abdingdonii Obst, 1996 (ex errore)
- Geochelone abdingdonii Obst, 1996
- Geochelone nigra abdingdoni Obst, 1996 (ex errore)
- Geochelone nigra ephyppium Caccone, Gibbs, Ketmaier, Suatoni & Powell, 1999 (ex errore)
- Chelonoidis nigra ahingdonii Artner, 2003 (ex errore)
- Chelonoidis abingdoni Joseph-Ouni, 2004
Chelonoidis nigra becki
- Testudo becki Rothschild, 1901
- Testudo bedsi Heller, 1903 (ex errore)
- Geochelone becki Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus becki Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis becki Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis elephantopus becki Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis nigra beckii David, 1994 (ex errore)
- Chelonoidis elephantopus beckii Rogner, 1996
- Chelonoidis nigra becki Obst, 1996
Chelonoidis nigra chathamensis
- Testudo wallacei Rothschild, 1902
- Testudo chathamensis Van Denburgh, 1907
- Testudo elephantopus chathamensis Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Testudo elephantopus wallacei Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Testudo chatamensis Slevin & Leviton, 1956 (ex errore)
- Geochelone chathamensis Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus chathamensis Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus wallacei Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone wallacei Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis chathamensis Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis elephantopus chathamensis Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus wallacei Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus chatamensis Gosławski & Hryniewicz, 1993
- Chelonoidis nigra chathamensis David, 1994
- Chelonoidis nigra wallacei Bonin, Devaux & Dupré, 1996
- Geochelone cathamensis Obst, 1996 (ex errore)
- Geochelone elephantopus chatamensis Paull, 1996
- Testudo chathamensis chathamensis Pritchard, 1998
- Cherlonoidis nigra wallacei Wilms, 1999
- Geochelone nigra chatamensis Caccone, Gibbs, Ketmaier, Suatoni & Powell, 1999
- Geochelone nigra wallacei Chambers, 2004
Chelonoidis nigra darwini
- Testudo wallacei Rothschild, 1902
- Testudo darwini Van Denburgh, 1907
- Testudo elephantopus darwini Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Testudo elephantopus wallacei Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Geochelone darwini Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus darwini Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus wallacei Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone wallacei Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis darwini Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis elephantopus darwini Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus wallacei Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis nigra darwinii David, 1994 (ex errore)
- Chelonoidis elephantopus darwinii Rogner, 1996
- Chelonoidis nigra darwini Bonin, Devaux & Dupré, 1996
- Chelonoidis nigra wallacei Bonin, Devaux & Dupré, 1996
- Cherlonoidis nigra wallacei Wilms, 1999
- Geochelone nigra darwinii Ferri, 2002
- Geochelone nigra wallacei Chambers, 2004
Chelonoidis nigra duncanensis
- Testudo duncanensis Garman, 1917 (nomen nudum)
- Geochelone nigra duncanensis Stubbs, 1989
- Geochelone nigra duncanensis Garman, 1996
- Chelonoidis nigra duncanensis Artner, 2003
- Chelonoidis duncanensis Joseph-Ouni, 2004
Chelonoidis nigra hoodensis
- Testudo hoodensis Van Denburgh, 1907
- Testudo elephantopus hoodensis Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Geochelone elephantopus hoodensis Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone hoodensis Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis hoodensis Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis elephantopus hoodensis Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis nigra hoodensis David, 1994
Chelonoidis nigra phantastica
- Testudo phantasticus Van Denburgh, 1907
- Testudo phantastica Siebenrock, 1909
- Testudo elephantopus phantastica Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Geochelone elephantopus phantastica Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone phantastica Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis phantastica Bour, 1980
- Geochelone phantasticus Crumly, 1984
- Chelonoidis elephantopus phantastica Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis nigra phantastica David, 1994
Chelonoidis nigra porteri
- Testudo nigrita Duméril & Bibron, 1835
- Testudo porteri Rothschild, 1903
- Testudo elephantopus nigrita Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Geochelone elephantopus porteri Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone nigrita Pritchard, 1967
- Chelonoidis nigrita Bour, 1980
- Geochelone elephantopus nigrita Honegger, 1980
- Geochelone porteri Fritts, 1983
- Chelonoidis elephantopus nigrita Obst, 1985
- Geochelone nigra porteri Stubbs, 1989
- Chelonoidis elephantopus porteri Gosławski & Hryniewicz, 1993
- Chelonoidis nigra nigrita David, 1994
- Geochelone nigra perteri Müller & Schmidt, 1995 (ex errore)
- Chelonoidis nigra porteri Bonin, Devaux & Dupré, 1996
Chelonoidis nigra vicina
- Testudo elephantopus Harlan, 1827
- Testudo microphyes Günther, 1875
- Testudo vicina Günther, 1875
- Testudo macrophyes Garman, 1917
- Testudo vandenburghi de Sola, 1930
- Testudo elephantopus elephantopus Mertens & Wermuth, 1955
- Geochelone elephantopus Williams, 1960
- Geochelone elephantopus elephantopus Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus guentheri Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus guntheri Pritchard, 1967 (ex errore)
- Geochelone elephantopus microphyes Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus vandenburgi Pritchard, 1967 (ex errore)
- Geochelone guntheri Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone microphyes Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone vandenburghi Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone vicina Pritchard, 1967
- Geochelone elephantopus microphys Arnold, 1979 (ex errore)
- Geochelone elephantopus vandenburghi Pritchard, 1979
- Chelonoides elephantopus Obst, 1980
- Chelonoidis elephantopus Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis guentheri Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis microphyes Bour, 1980
- Chelonoidis vandenburghi Bour, 1980
- Geochelone guentheri Fritts, 1983
- Chelonoidis elephantopus elephantopus Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus guentheri Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus microphyes Obst, 1985
- Chelonoidis elephantopus vandenburghi Obst, 1985
- Geochelone elephantopus vicina Swingland, 1989
- Geochelone elephantopus vicini Swingland, 1989 (ex errore)
- Chelonoidis elephantopus guntheri Gosławski & Hryniewicz, 1993
- Chelonoidis nigra guentheri David, 1994
- Chelonoidis nigra microphyes David, 1994
- Chelonoidis nigra vandenburghi David, 1994
- Geochelone nigra elephantopus Müller & Schmidt, 1995
- Chelonoidis elephantopus vicina Rogner, 1996
- Geochelone elephantopus vandenburghii Obst, 1996 (ex errore)
- Geochelone vandenburghii Obst, 1996
- Chelonoidis nigra microphyies Bonin, Devaux & Dupré, 1996 (ex errore)
- Geochelone elephantopus microphytes Paull, 1996 (ex errore)
- Geochelone elephantopus vandenbergi Paull, 1996 (ex errore)
- Testudo elephantopus guntheri Paull, 1999
- Chelonoidis nigra vicina Artner, 2003
- Chelonoidis vicina Joseph-Ouni, 2004
- Geochelone nigra guentheri Chambers, 2004
## Evolutionary history
All subspecies of Galápagos tortoises evolved from common ancestors that arrived from mainland South America by overwater dispersal. Genetic studies have shown that the Chaco tortoise of Argentina and Paraguay is their closest living relative. The minimal founding population was a pregnant female or a breeding pair. Survival on the 1000-km oceanic journey is accounted for because the tortoises are buoyant, can breathe by extending their necks above the water, and are able to survive months without food or fresh water. As they are poor swimmers, the journey was probably a passive one facilitated by the Humboldt Current, which diverts westwards towards the Galápagos Islands from the mainland. The ancestors of the genus Chelonoidis are believed to have similarly dispersed from Africa to South America during the Oligocene.
The closest living relative (though not a direct ancestor) of the Galápagos giant tortoise is the Chaco tortoise (Chelonoidis chilensis), a much smaller subspecies from South America. The divergence between C. chilensis and C. niger probably occurred 11.95–25 million years ago, an evolutionary event preceding the volcanic formation of the oldest modern Galápagos Islands 5 million years ago. Mitochondrial DNA analysis indicates that the oldest existing islands (Española and San Cristóbal) were colonised first, and that these populations seeded the younger islands via dispersal in a "stepping stone" fashion via local currents. Restricted gene flow between isolated islands then resulted in the independent evolution of the populations into the divergent forms observed in the modern subspecies. The evolutionary relationships between the subspecies thus echo the volcanic history of the islands.
### Subspecies
Modern DNA methods have revealed new information on the relationships between the subspecies:
Isabela Island
The five populations living on the largest island, Isabela, are the ones that are the subject of the most debate as to whether they are true subspecies or just distinct populations of a subspecies. It is widely accepted that the population living on the northernmost volcano, Volcan Wolf, is genetically independent from the four populations to the south and is therefore a separate subspecies. It is thought to be derived from a different colonization event than the others. A colonization from the island of Santiago apparently gave rise to the Volcan Wolf subspecies (C. n. becki) while the four southern populations are believed to be descended from a second colonization from the more southerly island of Santa Cruz. Tortoises from Santa Cruz are thought to have first colonized the Sierra Negra volcano, which was the first of the island's volcanoes to form. The tortoises then spread north to each newly created volcano, resulting in the populations living on Volcan Alcedo and then Volcan Darwin. Recent genetic evidence shows that these two populations are genetically distinct from each other and from the population living on Sierra Negra (C. guentheri) and therefore form the subspecies C. n. vandenburghi (Alcedo) and C. n. microphyes (Darwin). The fifth population living on the southernmost volcano (C. n. vicina) is thought to have split off from the Sierra Negra population more recently and is therefore not as genetically different as the other two. Isabela is the most recently formed island tortoises inhabit, so its populations have had less time to evolve independently than populations on other islands, but according to some researchers, they are all genetically different and should each be considered as separate subspecies.
Floreana Island
Phylogenetic analysis may help to "resurrect" the extinct subspecies of Floreana (C. n. niger) – a subspecies known only from subfossil remains. Some tortoises from Isabela were found to be a partial match for the genetic profile of Floreana specimens from museum collections, possibly indicating the presence of hybrids from a population transported by humans from Floreana to Isabela, resulting either from individuals deliberately transported between the islands, or from individuals thrown overboard from ships to lighten the load. Nine Floreana descendants have been identified in the captive population of the Fausto Llerena Breeding Center on Santa Cruz; the genetic footprint was identified in the genomes of hybrid offspring. This allows the possibility of re-establishing a reconstructed subspecies from selective breeding of the hybrid animals. Furthermore, individuals from the subspecies possibly are still extant. Genetic analysis from a sample of tortoises from Volcan Wolf found 84 first-generation C. n. niger hybrids, some less than 15 years old. The genetic diversity of these individuals is estimated to have required 38 C. n. niger parents, many of which could still be alive on Isabela Island.
Pinta Island
The Pinta Island subspecies (C. n. abingdonii, now extinct) has been found to be most closely related to the subspecies on the islands of San Cristóbal (C. n. chathamensis) and Española (C. n. hoodensis) which lie over 300 km (190 mi) away, rather than that on the neighbouring island of Isabela as previously assumed. This relationship is attributable to dispersal by the strong local current from San Cristóbal towards Pinta. This discovery informed further attempts to preserve the C. n. abingdonii lineage and the search for an appropriate mate for Lonesome George, which had been penned with females from Isabela. Hope was bolstered by the discovery of a C. n. abingdonii hybrid male in the Volcán Wolf population on northern Isabela, raising the possibility that more undiscovered living Pinta descendants exist.
Santa Cruz Island
Mitochondrial DNA studies of tortoises on Santa Cruz show up to three genetically distinct lineages found in nonoverlapping population distributions around the regions of Cerro Montura, Cerro Fatal, and La Caseta. Although traditionally grouped into a single subspecies (C. n. porteri), the lineages are all more closely related to tortoises on other islands than to each other: Cerro Montura tortoises are most closely related to C. n. duncanensis from Pinzón, Cerro Fatal to C. n. chathamensis from San Cristóbal, and La Caseta to the four southern races of Isabela as well as Floreana tortoises.
In 2015, the Cerro Fatal tortoises were described as a distinct taxon, donfaustoi. Prior to the identification of this subspecies through genetic analysis, it was noted that there existed differences in shells between the Cerro Fatal tortoises and other tortoises on Santa Cruz. By classifying the Cerro Fatal tortoises into a new taxon, greater attention can be paid to protecting its habitat, according to Adalgisa Caccone, who is a member of the team making this classification.
Pinzón Island
When it was discovered that the central, small island of Pinzón had only 100–200 very old adults and no young tortoises had survived into adulthood for perhaps more than 70 years, the resident scientists initiated what would eventually become the Giant Tortoise Breeding and Rearing Program. Over the next 50 years, this program resulted in major successes in the recovery of giant tortoise populations throughout the archipelago.
In 1965, the first tortoise eggs collected from natural nests on Pinzón Island were brought to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where they would complete the period of incubation and then hatch, becoming the first young tortoises to be reared in captivity. The introduction of black rats onto Pinzón sometime in the latter half of the 19th century had resulted in the complete eradication of all young tortoises. Black rats had been eating both tortoise eggs and hatchlings, effectively destroying the future of the tortoise population. Only the longevity of giant tortoises allowed them to survive until the Galápagos National Park, Island Conservation, Charles Darwin Foundation, the Raptor Center, and Bell Laboratories removed invasive rats in 2012. In 2013, heralding an important step in Pinzón tortoise recovery, hatchlings emerged from native Pinzón tortoise nests on the island and the Galápagos National Park successfully returned 118 hatchlings to their native island home. Partners returned to Pinzón Island in late 2014 and continued to observe hatchling tortoises (now older), indicating that natural recruitment is occurring on the island unimpeded. They also discovered a snail subspecies new to science. These exciting results highlight the conservation value of this important management action. In early 2015, after extensive monitoring, partners confirmed that Pinzón and Plaza Sur Islands are now both rodent-free.
Española Island
On the southern island of Española, only 14 adult tortoises were found, two males and 12 females. The tortoises apparently were not encountering one another, so no reproduction was occurring. Between 1963 and 1974, all 14 adult tortoises discovered on the island were brought to the tortoise center on Santa Cruz and a tortoise breeding program was initiated. In 1977, a third Española male tortoise was returned to Galapagos from the San Diego Zoo and joined the breeding group. After 40 years' work reintroducing captive animals, a detailed study of the island's ecosystem has confirmed it has a stable, breeding population. Where once 15 were known, now more than 1,000 giant tortoises inhabit the island of Española. One research team has found that more than half the tortoises released since the first reintroductions are still alive, and they are breeding well enough for the population to progress onward, unaided. In January 2020, it was widely reported that Diego, a 100-year-old male tortoise, resurrected 40% of the tortoise population on the island and is known as the "Playboy Tortoise".
Fernandina Island
The C. n. phantasticus subspecies from Fernandina was originally known from a single specimen — an old male from the voyage of 1905–06. No other tortoises or remains were found on the island for a long time after its sighting, leading to suggestions that the specimen was an artificial introduction from elsewhere. Fernandina has neither human settlements nor feral mammals, so if this subspecies ever did exist, its extinction would have been by natural means, such as volcanic activity. Nevertheless, there have occasionally been reports from Fernandina. In 2019, an elderly female specimen was finally discovered on Fernandina and transferred to a breeding center, and trace evidence found on the expedition indicates that more individuals likely exist in the wild. It has been theorized that the rarity of the subspecies may be due to the harsh habitat it survives in, such as the lava flows that are known to frequently cover the island.
#### Santa Fe Island
The extinct Santa Fe subspecies has not yet been described and thus has no binomial name, having been identified from the limited evidence of bone fragments (but no shells, the most durable part) of 14 individuals, old eggs, and old dung found on the island in 1905–06. The island has never been inhabited by man nor had any introduced predators, but reports have been made of whalers hauling tortoises off the island. Later genetic studies of the bone fragments indicate that the Santa Fe subspecies was distinct, and was most closely related to C. n. hoodensis. A population of C. n. hoodensis has since been reintroduced to and established on the island to fill in the ecological role of the Santa Fe tortoise.
Subspecies of doubtful existence
The purported Rábida Island subspecies (C. n. wallacei) was described from a single specimen collected by the California Academy of Sciences in December 1905, which has since been lost. This individual was probably an artificial introduction from another island that was originally penned on Rábida next to a good anchorage, as no contemporary whaling or sealing logs mention removing tortoises from this island.
## Description
The tortoises have a large bony shell of a dull brown or grey color. The plates of the shell are fused with the ribs in a rigid protective structure that is integral to the skeleton. Lichens can grow on the shells of these slow-moving animals. Tortoises keep a characteristic scute (shell segment) pattern on their shells throughout life, though the annual growth bands are not useful for determining age because the outer layers are worn off with time. A tortoise can withdraw its head, neck, and fore limbs into its shell for protection. The legs are large and stumpy, with dry, scaly skin and hard scales. The front legs have five claws, the back legs four.
### Gigantism
The discoverer of the Galápagos Islands, Fray Tomás de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, wrote in 1535 of "such big tortoises that each could carry a man on top of himself." Naturalist Charles Darwin remarked after his trip three centuries later in 1835, "These animals grow to an immense size ... several so large that it required six or eight men to lift them from the ground". The largest recorded individuals have reached weights of over 400 kg (880 lb) and lengths of 1.87 meters (6.1 ft). Size overlap is extensive with the Aldabra giant tortoise, however taken as a subspecies, the Galápagos tortoise seems to average slightly larger, with weights in excess of 185 kg (408 lb) being slightly more commonplace. Weights in the larger bodied subspecies range from 272 to 317 kg (600 to 699 lb) in mature males and from 136 to 181 kg (300 to 399 lb) in adult females. However, the size is variable across the islands and subspecies; those from Pinzón Island are relatively small with a maximum known weight of 76 kg (168 lb) and carapace length of approximately 61 cm (24 in) compared to 75 to 150 cm (30 to 59 in) range in tortoises from Santa Cruz Island. The tortoises' gigantism was probably a trait useful on continents that was fortuitously helpful for successful colonisation of these remote oceanic islands rather than an example of evolved insular gigantism. Large tortoises would have a greater chance of surviving the journey over water from the mainland as they can hold their heads a greater height above the water level and have a smaller surface area/volume ratio, which reduces osmotic water loss. Their significant water and fat reserves would allow the tortoises to survive long ocean crossings without food or fresh water, and to endure the drought-prone climate of the islands. A larger size allowed them to better tolerate extremes of temperature due to gigantothermy. Fossil giant tortoises from mainland South America have been described that support this hypothesis of gigantism that pre-existed the colonization of islands.
### Shell shape
Galápagos tortoises possess two main shell forms that correlate with the biogeographic history of the subspecies group. They exhibit a spectrum of carapace morphology ranging from "saddleback" (denoting upward arching of the front edge of the shell resembling a saddle) to "domed" (denoting a rounded convex surface resembling a dome). When a saddleback tortoise withdraws its head and forelimbs into its shell, a large unprotected gap remains over the neck, evidence of the lack of predation during the evolution of this structure. Larger islands with humid highlands over 800 m (2,600 ft) in elevation, such as Santa Cruz, have abundant vegetation near the ground. Tortoises native to these environments tend to have domed shells and are larger, with shorter necks and limbs. Saddleback tortoises originate from small islands less than 500 m (1,600 ft) in elevation with dry habitats (e.g. Española and Pinzón) that are more limited in food and other resources. Two lineages of Galápagos tortoises possess the Island of Santa Cruz and when observed it is concluded that despite the shared similarities of growth patterns and morphological changes observed during growth, the two lineages and two sexes can be distinguished on the basis of distinct carapace features. Lineages differ by the shape of the vertebral and pleural scutes. Females have a more elongated and wider carapace shape than males. Carapace shape changes with growth, with vertebral scutes becoming narrower and pleural scutes becoming larger during late ontogeny.
Evolutionary implications
In combination with proportionally longer necks and limbs, the unusual saddleback carapace structure is thought to be an adaptation to increase vertical reach, which enables the tortoise to browse tall vegetation such as the Opuntia (prickly pear) cactus that grows in arid environments. Saddlebacks are more territorial and smaller than domed varieties, possibly adaptations to limited resources. Alternatively, larger tortoises may be better-suited to high elevations because they can resist the cooler temperatures that occur with cloud cover or fog.
A competing hypothesis is that, rather than being principally a feeding adaptation, the distinctive saddle shape and longer extremities might have been a secondary sexual characteristic of saddleback males. Male competition over mates is settled by dominance displays on the basis of vertical neck height rather than body size (see below). This correlates with the observation that saddleback males are more aggressive than domed males. The shell distortion and elongation of the limbs and neck in saddlebacks is probably an evolutionary compromise between the need for a small body size in dry conditions and a high vertical reach for dominance displays.
The saddleback carapace probably evolved independently several times in dry habitats, since genetic similarity between populations does not correspond to carapace shape. Saddleback tortoises are, therefore, not necessarily more closely related to each other than to their domed counterparts, as shape is not determined by a similar genetic background, but by a similar ecological one.
Sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism is most pronounced in saddleback populations in which males have more angled and higher front openings, giving a more extreme saddled appearance. Males of all varieties generally have longer tails and shorter, concave plastrons with thickened knobs at the back edge to facilitate mating. Males are larger than females — adult males weigh around 272–317 kg (600–699 lb) while females are 136–181 kg (300–399 lb).
## Behavior
### Routine
The tortoises are ectothermic (cold-blooded), so they bask for 1–2 hours after dawn to absorb the sun's heat through their dark shells before actively foraging for 8–9 hours a day. They travel mostly in the early morning or late afternoon between resting and grazing areas. They have been observed to walk at a speed of 0.3 km/h (0.2 mph).
On the larger and more humid islands, the tortoises seasonally migrate between low elevations, which become grassy plains in the wet season, and meadowed areas of higher elevation (up to 2,000 ft (610 m)) in the dry season. The same routes have been used for many generations, creating well-defined paths through the undergrowth known as "tortoise highways". On these wetter islands, the domed tortoises are gregarious and often found in large herds, in contrast to the more solitary and territorial disposition of the saddleback tortoises.
Tortoises sometimes rest in mud wallows or rain-formed pools, which may be both a thermoregulatory response during cool nights, and a protection from parasites such as mosquitoes and ticks. Parasites are countered by taking dust baths in loose soil. Some tortoises have been noted to shelter at night under overhanging rocks. Others have been observed sleeping in a snug depression in the earth or brush called a "pallet". Local tortoises using the same pallet sites, such as on Volcán Alcedo, results in the formation of small, sandy pits.
### Diet
The tortoises are herbivores that consume a diet of cacti, grasses, leaves, lichens, berries, melons, oranges and milkweed. They have been documented feeding on Hippomane mancinella (poison apple), the endemic guava Psidium galapageium, the water fern Azolla microphylla, bromeliad Tillandsia insularis and the Galápagos tomato Solanum cheesmaniae. Juvenile tortoises eat an average of 16.7% of their own body weight in dry matter per day, with a digestive efficiency roughly equal to that of hindgut-fermenting herbivorous mammals such as horses and rhinos.
Tortoises acquire most of their moisture from the dew and sap in vegetation (particularly the Opuntia cactus); therefore, they can survive longer than 6 months without water. They can endure up to a year when deprived of all food and water, surviving by breaking down their body fat to produce water as a byproduct. Tortoises also have very slow metabolisms. When thirsty, they may drink large quantities of water very quickly, storing it in their bladders and the "root of the neck" (the pericardium), both of which served to make them useful water sources on ships. On arid islands, tortoises lick morning dew from boulders, and the repeated action over many generations has formed half-sphere depressions in the rock.
### Senses
Regarding their senses, Charles Darwin observed, "The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking near behind them. I was always amused, when overtaking one of these great monsters as it was quietly pacing along, to see how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a heavy sound, as if struck dead." Although they are not deaf, tortoises depend far more on vision and smell as stimuli than hearing.
### Mutualism
Tortoises share a mutualistic relationship with some subspecies of Galápagos finch and mockingbirds. The birds benefit from the food source and the tortoises get rid of irritating ectoparasites.
Small groups of finches initiate the process by hopping on the ground in an exaggerated fashion facing the tortoise. The tortoise signals it is ready by rising up and extending its neck and legs, enabling the birds to reach otherwise inaccessible spots on the tortoise's body such as the neck, rear legs, cloacal opening, and skin between plastron and carapace.
Some tortoises have been observed to exploit this mutualistic relationship to consume birds seeking to groom them. After rising and extending its limbs, the bird may go beneath the tortoise to investigate, whereupon suddenly the tortoise withdraws its limbs to drop flat and kill the bird. It then steps back to eat the bird, presumably to supplement its diet with protein.
### Mating
Mating occurs at any time of the year, although it does have seasonal peaks between February and June in the humid uplands during the rainy season. When mature males meet in the mating season, they face each other in a ritualised dominance display, rise up on their legs, and stretch up their necks with their mouths gaping open. Occasionally, head-biting occurs, but usually the shorter tortoise backs off, conceding mating rights to the victor. The behaviour is most pronounced in saddleback subspecies, which are more aggressive and have longer necks.
The prelude to mating can be very aggressive, as the male forcefully rams the female's shell with his own and nips her legs. Mounting is an awkward process and the male must stretch and tense to maintain equilibrium in a slanting position. The concave underside of the male's shell helps him to balance when straddled over the female's shell, and brings his cloacal vent (which houses the penis) closer to the female's dilated cloaca. During mating, the male vocalises with hoarse bellows and grunts, described as "rhythmic groans". This is one of the few vocalisations the tortoise makes; other noises are made during aggressive encounters, when struggling to right themselves, and hissing as they withdraw into their shells due to the forceful expulsion of air.
### Egg-laying
Females journey up to several kilometres in July to November to reach nesting areas of dry, sandy coast. Nest digging is a tiring and elaborate task which may take the female several hours a day over many days to complete. It is carried out blindly using only the hind legs to dig a 30 cm (12 in)-deep cylindrical hole, in which the tortoise then lays up to 16 spherical, hard-shelled eggs ranging from 82 to 157 grams (2.9 to 5.5 oz) in mass, and the size of a billiard ball. Some observations suggest that the average clutch size for domed populations (9.6 per clutch for C. porteri on Santa Cruz) is larger than that of saddlebacks (4.6 per clutch for C. duncanensis on Pinzón). The female makes a muddy plug for the nest hole out of soil mixed with urine, seals the nest by pressing down firmly with her plastron, and leaves them to be incubated by the sun. Females may lay one to four clutches per season. Temperature plays a role in the sex of the hatchlings, with lower-temperature nests producing more males and higher-temperature nests producing more females. This is related closely to incubation time, since clutches laid early incubate during the cool season and have longer incubation periods (producing more males), while eggs laid later incubate for a shorter period in the hot season (producing more females).
### Early life and maturation
Young animals emerge from the nest after four to eight months and may weigh only 50 g (1.8 oz) and measure 6 cm (2.4 in). When the young tortoises emerge from their shells, they must dig their way to the surface, which can take several weeks, though their yolk sac can sustain them up to seven months. In particularly dry conditions, the hatchlings may die underground if they are encased by hardened soil, while flooding of the nest area can drown them. Subspecies are initially indistinguishable as they all have domed carapaces. The young stay in warmer lowland areas for their first 10–15 years, encountering hazards such as falling into cracks, being crushed by falling rocks, or excessive heat stress. The Galápagos hawk was formerly the sole native predator of the tortoise hatchlings; Darwin wrote: "The young tortoises, as soon as they are hatched, fall prey in great numbers to the buzzard". The hawk is now much rarer, but introduced feral pigs, dogs, cats, and black rats have become predators of eggs and young tortoises. The adult tortoises have no natural predators apart from humans; Darwin noted: "The old ones seem generally to die from accidents, as from falling down precipices. At least several of the inhabitants told me, they had never found one dead without some such apparent cause".
Sexual maturity is reached at around 20–25 years in captivity, possibly 40 years in the wild. Life expectancy in the wild is thought to be over 100 years, making it one of the longest-lived subspecies in the animal kingdom. Harriet, a specimen kept in Australia Zoo, was the oldest known Galápagos tortoise, having reached an estimated age of more than 170 years before her death in 2006. Chambers notes that Harriet was probably 169 years old in 2004, although media outlets claimed the greater age of 175 at death based on a less reliable timeline.
## Darwin's development of theory of evolution
Charles Darwin visited the Galápagos for five weeks on the second voyage of HMS Beagle in 1835 and saw Galápagos tortoises on San Cristobal (Chatham) and Santiago (James) Islands. They appeared several times in his writings and journals, and played a role in the development of the theory of evolution.
Darwin wrote in his account of the voyage:
> I have not as yet noticed by far the most remarkable feature in the natural history of this archipelago; it is, that the different islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by a different set of beings. My attention was first called to this fact by the Vice-Governor, Mr. Lawson, declaring that the tortoises differed from the different islands, and that he could with certainty tell from which island any one was brought ... The inhabitants, as I have said, state that they can distinguish the tortoises from the different islands; and that they differ not only in size, but in other characters. Captain Porter has described\* those from Charles and from the nearest island to it, namely, Hood Island, as having their shells in front thick and turned up like a Spanish saddle, while the tortoises from James Island are rounder, blacker, and have a better taste when cooked.
The significance of the differences in tortoises between islands did not strike him as important until it was too late, as he continued,
> I did not for some time pay sufficient attention to this statement, and I had already partially mingled together the collections from two of the islands. I never dreamed that islands, about fifty or sixty miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been differently tenanted.
Though the Beagle departed from the Galápagos with over 30 adult tortoises on deck, these were not for scientific study, but a source of fresh meat for the Pacific crossing. Their shells and bones were thrown overboard, leaving no remains with which to test any hypotheses. It has been suggested that this oversight was made because Darwin only reported seeing tortoises on San Cristóbal (C. chathamensis) and Santiago (C. darwini), both of which have an intermediate type of shell shape and are not particularly morphologically distinct from each other. Though he did visit Floreana, the C. niger subspecies found there was already nearly extinct and he was unlikely to have seen any mature animals.
However, Darwin did have four live juvenile specimens to compare from different islands. These were pet tortoises taken by himself (from San Salvador), his captain FitzRoy (two from Española) and his servant Syms Covington (from Floreana). Unfortunately, they could not help to determine whether each island had its own variety because the specimens were not mature enough to exhibit morphological differences. Although the British Museum had a few specimens, their provenance within the Galápagos was unknown. However, conversations with the naturalist Gabriel Bibron, who had seen the mature tortoises of the Paris Natural History Museum confirmed to Darwin that distinct varieties occurred.
Darwin later compared the different tortoise forms with those of mockingbirds, in the first tentative statement linking his observations from the Galapagos with the possibility of subspecies transmuting:
> When I recollect the fact that [from] the form of the body, shape of scales and general size, the Spaniards can at once pronounce from which island any tortoise may have been brought; when I see these islands in sight of each other and possessed of but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds, but slightly differing in structure and filling the same place in nature; I must suspect they are only varieties ... If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks, the zoology of archipelagos will be well worth examining; for such facts would undermine the stability of subspecies.
His views on the mutability of subspecies were restated in his notebooks: "animals on separate islands ought to become different if kept long enough apart with slightly differing circumstances. – Now Galapagos Tortoises, Mocking birds, Falkland Fox, Chiloe fox, – Inglish and Irish Hare." These observations served as counterexamples to the prevailing contemporary view that subspecies were individually created.
Darwin also found these "antediluvian animals" to be a source of diversion: "I frequently got on their backs, and then giving a few raps on the hinder part of their shells, they would rise up and walk away;—but I found it very difficult to keep my balance".
## Conservation
Several waves of human exploitation of the tortoises as a food source caused a decline in the total wild population from around 250,000 when first discovered in the 16th century to a low of 3,060 individuals in a 1974 census. Modern conservation efforts have subsequently brought tortoise numbers up to 19,317 (estimate for 1995–2009).
The subspecies C. n. niger became extinct by human exploitation in the 19th century. Another subspecies, C. n. abingdonii, became extinct on 24 June 2012 with the death in captivity of the last remaining specimen, a male named Lonesome George, the world's "rarest living creature". All the other surviving subspecies are listed by the IUCN as at least "vulnerable" in conservation status, if not worse.
### Historical exploitation
An estimated 200,000 animals were taken before the 20th century. The relatively immobile and defenceless tortoises were collected and stored live on board ships, where they could survive for at least a year without food or water (some anecdotal reports suggest individuals surviving two years), providing valuable fresh meat, while their diluted urine and the water stored in their neck bags could be used as drinking water. The 17th-century English pirate, explorer, and naturalist William Dampier wrote, "They are so extraordinarily large and fat, and so sweet, that no pullet eats more pleasantly," while Captain James Colnett of the Royal Navy wrote of "the land tortoise which in whatever way it was dressed, was considered by all of us as the most delicious food we had ever tasted." US Navy captain David Porter declared, "after once tasting the Galapagos tortoises, every other animal food fell off greatly in our estimation ... The meat of this animal is the easiest of digestion, and a quantity of it, exceeding that of any other food, can be eaten without experiencing the slightest of inconvenience." Darwin was less enthusiastic about the meat, writing "the breast-plate roasted (as the Gauchos do "carne con cuero"), with the flesh on it, is very good; and the young tortoises make excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is indifferent."
In the 17th century, pirates started to use the Galápagos Islands as a base for resupply, restocking on food and water, and repairing vessels before attacking Spanish colonies on the South American mainland. However, the Galápagos tortoises did not struggle for survival at this point because the islands were distant from busy shipping routes and harboured few valuable natural resources. As such, they remained unclaimed by any nation, uninhabited and uncharted. In comparison, the tortoises of the islands in the Indian Ocean were already facing extinction by the late 17th century. Between the 1790s and the 1860s, whaling ships and fur sealers systematically collected tortoises in far greater numbers than the buccaneers preceding them. Some were used for food and many more were killed for high-grade "turtle oil" from the late 19th century onward for lucrative sale to continental Ecuador. A total of over 13,000 tortoises is recorded in the logs of whaling ships between 1831 and 1868, and an estimated 100,000 were taken before 1830. Since it was easiest to collect tortoises around coastal zones, females were most vulnerable to depletion during the nesting season. The collection by whalers came to a halt eventually through a combination of the scarcity of tortoises that they had created and the competition from crude oil as a cheaper energy source.
Galápagos tortoise exploitation dramatically increased with the onset of the California Gold Rush in 1849. Tortoises and sea turtles were imported into San Francisco, Sacramento and various other Gold Rush towns throughout Alta California to feed the gold mining population. Galápagos tortoise and sea turtle bones were also recovered from the Gold Rush-era archaeological site, Thompson's Cove (CA-SFR-186H), in San Francisco, California.
Population decline accelerated with the early settlement of the islands in the early 19th century, leading to unregulated hunting for meat, habitat clearance for agriculture, and the introduction of alien mammal subspecies. Feral pigs, dogs, cats, and black rats have become predators of eggs and young tortoises, whilst goats, donkeys, and cattle compete for grazing and trample nest sites. The extinction of the Floreana subspecies in the mid-19th century has been attributed to the combined pressures of hunting for the penal colony on the relatively small island, the conversion of the grazing highlands into land for farming and fruit plantations, and the introduction of feral mammals.
Scientific collection expeditions took 661 tortoises between 1888 and 1930, and more than 120 tortoises have been taken by poachers since 1990. Threats continue today with the rapid expansion of the tourist industry and increasing size of human settlements on the islands. The tortoises are down from 15 different types of subspecies when Darwin first arrived to the current 11 subspecies.
Threats
- Introduced mammals
- Poachers
- Destruction of habitat
- Characteristics that make tortoises vulnerable
- Slow growth rate
- Late sexual maturity
- Can only be found on the Galápagos Islands
- Large size and slow-moving
Collection The tortoises of the Galápagos Islands were not only hunted for the oil that they held for fuel but also, once they were becoming more and more scarce, people began to pay to have them in their collections, as well as being put into museums.
### Modern conservation
The remaining subspecies of tortoise range in IUCN classification from extinct in the wild to vulnerable. Slow growth rate, late sexual maturity, and island endemism make the tortoises particularly prone to extinction without help from conservationists. The Galápagos giant tortoise has become a flagship species for conservation efforts throughout the Galápagos.
Legal protection
The Galápagos giant tortoise is now strictly protected and is listed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered subspecies of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The listing requires that trade in the taxon and its products is subject to strict regulation by ratifying states, and international trade for primarily commercial purposes is prohibited. In 1936, the Ecuadorian government listed the giant tortoise as a protected subspecies. In 1959, it declared all uninhabited areas in the Galápagos to be a national park and established the Charles Darwin Foundation. In 1970, capturing or removing many subspecies from the islands (including tortoises and their eggs) was banned. To halt trade in the tortoises altogether, it became illegal to export the tortoises from Ecuador, captive or wild, continental, or insular in provenance. The banning of their exportation resulted in automatic prohibition of importation to the United States under Public Law 91-135 (1969). A 1971 Ecuadorian decree made it illegal to damage, remove, alter, or disturb any organism, rock, or other natural object in the national park.
#### Captive breeding
With the establishment of the Galapagos National Park and the CDF in 1959, a review of the status of the tortoise populations began. Only 11 of the 14 original populations remained and most of these were endangered if not already on the brink of extinction. The breeding and rearing program for giant tortoises began in response to the condition of the population on Pinzón, where fewer than 200 old adults were found. All of the hatchlings had been killed by introduced black rats, for perhaps more than a century. Without help, this population would eventually disappear. The only thing preserving it was the longevity of the tortoise. Its genetic resistance to the negative effects of inbreeding would be another.
Breeding and release programs began in 1965 and have successfully brought seven of the eight endangered subspecies up to less perilous population levels. Young tortoises are raised at several breeding centres across the islands to improve their survival during their vulnerable early development. Eggs are collected from threatened nesting sites, and the hatched young are given a head start by being kept in captivity for four to five years to reach a size with a much better chance of survival to adulthood, before release onto their native ranges.
The most significant population recovery was that of the Española tortoise (C. n. hoodensis), which was saved from near-certain extinction. The population had been depleted to three males and 12 females that had been so widely dispersed that no mating in the wild had occurred. Fruitless attempts to breed one of the tortoises, Lonesome George for example, is speculated to be attributed to a lack of postnatal cues, and confusion over which would be the most appropriate genetic subspecies would be the most appropriate to mate him with on the islands. The 15 remaining tortoises were brought to the Charles Darwin Research Station in 1971 for a captive breeding program and, in the following 33 years, they gave rise to over 1,200 progeny which were released onto their home island and have since begun to reproduce naturally. One of the tortoises, Diego, is one of the main drivers of a remarkable recovery of the hoodensis subspecies, having fathered between 350 and 800 progeny.
#### Island restoration
The Galápagos National Park Service systematically culls feral predators and competitors. Goat eradication on islands, including Pinta, was achieved by the technique of using "Judas goats" with radio location collars to find the herds. Marksmen then shot all the goats except the Judas, and then returned weeks later to find the "Judas" and shoot the herd to which it had relocated. Goats were removed from Pinta Island after a 30-year eradication campaign, the largest removal of an insular goat population using ground-based methods. Over 41,000 goats were removed during the initial hunting effort (1971–82). This process was repeated until only the "Judas" goat remained, which was then killed. Other measures have included dog eradication from San Cristóbal, and fencing off nests to protect them from feral pigs.
Efforts are now underway to repopulate islands formerly inhabited by tortoises to restore their ecosystems (island restoration) to their condition before humans arrived. The tortoises are a keystone species, acting as ecosystem engineers which help in plant seed dispersal and trampling down brush and thinning the understory of vegetation (allowing light to penetrate and germination to occur). Birds such as flycatchers perch on and fly around tortoises to hunt the insects they displace from the brush. In May 2010, 39 sterilised tortoises of hybrid origin were introduced to Pinta Island, the first tortoises there since the evacuation of Lonesome George 38 years before. Sterile tortoises were released so the problem of interbreeding between subspecies would be avoided if any fertile tortoises were to be released in the future. It is hoped that with the recent identification of a hybrid C. n. abingdonii tortoise, the approximate genetic constitution of the original inhabitants of Pinta may eventually be restored with the identification and relocation of appropriate specimens to this island. This approach may be used to "retortoise" Floreana in the future, since captive individuals have been found to be descended from the extinct original stock.
#### Applied science
The Galapagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Programme is a collaborative project coordinated by Dr Stephen Blake of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. Its goal is to assist the Galapagos National Park to effectively conserve giant tortoises by conducting cutting-edge applied science, and developing an inspirational tortoise-based outreach and education programme. Since 2009, the project team have been analysing the movements of giant tortoises by tracking them via satellite tags. As of November 2014, the team have tagged 83 tortoises from four subspecies on three islands. They have established that giant tortoises conduct migrations up and down volcanoes, primarily in response to seasonal changes in the availability and quality of vegetation. In 2015 they will start to track the movements of hatchling and juvenile tortoises, supported by the UK's Galapagos Conservation Trust.
## See also
- List of subspecies of Galápagos tortoise
- Galápagos wildlife
|
529,138 |
Megalodon
| 1,173,833,276 |
Extinct giant shark species from 23 to 3.6 million years ago
|
[
"Apex predators",
"Carcharocles",
"Fossil taxa described in 1835",
"Miocene first appearances",
"Miocene sharks",
"Piacenzian extinctions",
"Pisco Formation",
"Pliocene sharks",
"Symbols of North Carolina",
"Taxa named by Louis Agassiz"
] |
Megalodon (/ˈmɛɡələdɒn/ MEG-əl-ə-don; Otodus megalodon), meaning "big tooth", is an extinct species of mackerel shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago (Mya), from the Early Miocene to the Pliocene epochs. It was formerly thought to be a member of the family Lamnidae and a close relative of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), but has been reclassified into the extinct family Otodontidae, which diverged from the great white shark during the Early Cretaceous.
While regarded as one of the largest and most powerful predators to have ever lived, the megalodon is only known from fragmentary remains, and its appearance and maximum size are uncertain. Scientists differ on whether it would have more closely resembled a stockier version of the great white shark, the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) or the sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus). The most recent estimate with the least error range suggests a maximum length estimate up to 20.3 meters (67 ft), although the modal lengths are estimated at 10.5 meters (34 ft). Extrapolation from a vertebral centra with dimensions based on the great white shark suggests that a megalodon about 16 meters (52 ft) long weighs up to 48 metric tons (53 short tons), 17 meters (56 ft) long weighs up to 59 metric tons (65 short tons), and 20.3 meters (67 ft) long (the maximum length) weighs up to 103 metric tons (114 short tons). Extrapolating from a vertebral column and reconstructing a 3D model with dimensions based on all extant lamnid sharks suggests that a 16-meter-long (52 ft) individual may have been much larger than previous estimates, reaching an excess of 61.5 metric tons (67.8 short tons) in body mass; an individual of this size would have needed to consume 98,175 kcal per day. Their teeth were thick and robust, built for grabbing prey and breaking bone, and their large jaws could exert a bite force of up to 108,500 to 182,200 newtons (24,390 to 40,960 lbf).
Megalodon probably had a major impact on the structure of marine communities. The fossil record indicates that it had a cosmopolitan distribution. It probably targeted large prey, such as whales, seals and sea turtles. Juveniles inhabited warm coastal waters and fed on fish and small whales. Unlike the great white, which attacks prey from the soft underside, megalodon probably used its strong jaws to break through the chest cavity and puncture the heart and lungs of its prey.
The animal faced competition from whale-eating cetaceans, such as Livyatan and other macroraptorial sperm whales and possibly smaller ancestral killer whales. As the shark preferred warmer waters, it is thought that oceanic cooling associated with the onset of the ice ages, coupled with the lowering of sea levels and resulting loss of suitable nursery areas, may have also contributed to its decline. A reduction in the diversity of baleen whales and a shift in their distribution toward polar regions may have reduced megalodon's primary food source. The shark's extinction coincides with a gigantism trend in baleen whales.
## Classification
### Prescientific and early research history
Megalodon teeth have been excavated and used since ancient times. They were a valued artifact amongst pre-Columbian cultures in the Americas for their large sizes and serrated blades, from which they were modified into projectile points, knives, jewelry, and funeral accessories. At least some, such as the Panamanian Sitio Conte societies, seemed to have used them primarily for ceremonial purposes. Mining of megalodon teeth by the Algonquin peoples in the Chesapeake Bay and their selective trade with the Adena culture in Ohio occurred as early as 430 BC. The earliest written account of megalodon teeth was by Pliny the Elder in an AD 73 volume of Historia Naturalis, who described them as resembling petrified human tongues that Roman folklorists believed to have fallen from the sky during lunar eclipses and called them glossopetrae ("tongue stones"). The purported tongues were later thought in a 12th-century Maltese tradition to have belonged to serpents that Paul the Apostle turned to stone while shipwrecked there, and were given antivenom powers by the saint. Glossopetrae reappeared throughout Europe in late 13th to 16th century literature, ascribed with more supernatural properties that cured a wider variety of poisons. Use of megalodon teeth for this purpose became widespread among medieval and Renaissance nobility, who fashioned them into protective amulets and tableware to purportedly detoxify poisoned liquids or bodies that touched the stones. By the 16th century, teeth were directly consumed as ingredients of European-made Goa stones.
The true nature of the glossopetrae as shark's teeth was held by some since at least 1554, when cosmographer André Thevet described it as hearsay, although he did not believe it. The earliest scientific argument for this view was made by Italian naturalist Fabio Colonna, who in 1616 published an illustration of a Maltese megalodon tooth alongside a great white shark's and noted their striking similarities. He argued that the former and its likenesses were not petrified serpent's tongues but actually the teeth of similar sharks that washed up on shore. Colonna supported this thesis through an experiment of burning glossopetrae samples, from which he observed carbon residue he interpreted as proving an organic origin. However, interpretation of the stones as shark's teeth remained widely unaccepted . This was in part due the inability to explain how some of them are found far from the sea. The shark tooth argument was academically raised again during the late 17th century by English scientists Robert Hooke, John Ray, and Danish naturalist Niels Steensen (Latinized Nicholas Steno). Steensen's argument in particular is most recognized as inferred from his dissection of the head of a great white caught in 1666. His 1667 report depicted engravings of a shark's head and megalodon teeth that became especially iconic. However, the illustrated head was not actually the head that Steensen dissected, nor were the fossil teeth illustrated by him. Both engravings were originally commissioned in the 1590s by Papal physician Michele Mercati, who also had in possession the head of a great white, for his book Metallotheca. The work remained unpublished in Steensen's time due to Mercati's premature death, and the former reused the two illustrations per suggestion by Carlo Roberto Dati, who thought a depiction of the actual dissected shark was unsuitable for readers. Steensen also stood out in pioneering a stratigraphic explanation for how similar stones appeared further inland. He observed that rock layers bearing megalodon teeth contained marine sediments and hypothesized that these layers correlated to a period of flood that was later covered by terrestrial layers and uplifted by geologic activity.
Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz gave megalodon its scientific name in his seminal 1833-1843 work Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (Research on fossil fish). He named it Carcharias megalodon in an 1835 illustration of the holotype and additional teeth, congeneric with the modern sand tiger shark. The specific name is a portmanteau of the Ancient Greek words μεγάλος (megálos, meaning "big") and ὀδών (odṓn, meaning "tooth"), combined meaning "big tooth." Agassiz referenced the name as early as 1832, but because specimens were not referenced they are not taxonomically recognized uses. Formal description of the species was published in an 1843 volume, where Agassiz revised the name to Carcharodon megalodon as its teeth were far too large for the former genus and more alike to the great white shark. He also erroneously identified several megalodon teeth as belonging to additional species eventually named Carcharodon rectidens, Carcharodon subauriculatus, Carcharodon productus, and Carcharodon polygurus. Because Carcharodon megalodon appeared first in the 1835 illustration, the remaining names are considered junior synonyms under the principle of priority.
### Evolution
While the earliest megalodon remains have been reported from the Late Oligocene, around 28 million years ago (Mya), there is disagreement as to when it appeared, with dates ranging to as young as 16 mya. It has been thought that megalodon became extinct around the end of the Pliocene, about 2.6 Mya; claims of Pleistocene megalodon teeth, younger than 2.6 million years old, are considered unreliable. A 2019 assessment moves the extinction date back to earlier in the Pliocene, 3.6 Mya.
Megalodon is considered to be a member of the family Otodontidae, genus Otodus, as opposed to its previous classification into Lamnidae, genus Carcharodon. Megalodon's classification into Carcharodon was due to dental similarity with the great white shark, but most authors believe that this is due to convergent evolution. In this model, the great white shark is more closely related to the extinct broad-toothed mako (Isurus hastalis) than to megalodon, as evidenced by more similar dentition in those two sharks; megalodon teeth have much finer serrations than great white shark teeth. The great white shark is more closely related to the mako shark (Isurus spp.), with a common ancestor around 4 Mya. Proponents of the former model, wherein megalodon and the great white shark are more closely related, argue that the differences between their dentition are minute and obscure.
The genus Carcharocles contains four species: C. auriculatus, C. angustidens, C. chubutensis, and C. megalodon. The evolution of this lineage is characterized by the increase of serrations, the widening of the crown, the development of a more triangular shape, and the disappearance of the lateral cusps. The evolution in tooth morphology reflects a shift in predation tactics from a tearing-grasping bite to a cutting bite, likely reflecting a shift in prey choice from fish to cetaceans. Lateral cusplets were finally lost in a gradual process that took roughly 12 million years during the transition between C. chubutensis and C. megalodon. The genus was proposed by D. S. Jordan and H. Hannibal in 1923 to contain C. auriculatus. In the 1980s, megalodon was assigned to Carcharocles. Before this, in 1960, the genus Procarcharodon was erected by French ichthyologist Edgard Casier, which included those four sharks and was considered separate from the great white shark. It is since considered a junior synonym of Carcharocles. The genus Palaeocarcharodon was erected alongside Procarcharodon to represent the beginning of the lineage, and, in the model wherein megalodon and the great white shark are closely related, their last common ancestor. It is believed to be an evolutionary dead-end and unrelated to the Carcharocles sharks by authors who reject that model.
Another model of the evolution of this genus, also proposed by Casier in 1960, is that the direct ancestor of the Carcharocles is the shark Otodus obliquus, which lived from the Paleocene through the Miocene epochs, 60 to 13 Mya. The genus Otodus is ultimately derived from Cretolamna, a shark from the Cretaceous period. In this model, O. obliquus evolved into O. aksuaticus, which evolved into C. auriculatus, and then into C. angustidens, and then into C. chubutensis, and then finally into C. megalodon.
Another model of the evolution of Carcharocles, proposed in 2001 by paleontologist Michael Benton, is that the three other species are actually a single species of shark that gradually changed over time between the Paleocene and the Pliocene, making it a chronospecies. Some authors suggest that C. auriculatus, C. angustidens, and C. chubutensis should be classified as a single species in the genus Otodus, leaving C. megalodon the sole member of Carcharocles.
The genus Carcharocles may be invalid, and the shark may actually belong in the genus Otodus, making it Otodus megalodon. A 1974 study on Paleogene sharks by Henri Cappetta erected the subgenus Megaselachus, classifying the shark as Otodus (Megaselachus) megalodon, along with O. (M.) chubutensis. A 2006 review of Chondrichthyes elevated Megaselachus to genus, and classified the sharks as Megaselachus megalodon and M. chubutensis. The discovery of fossils assigned to the genus Megalolamna in 2016 led to a re-evaluation of Otodus, which concluded that it is paraphyletic, that is, it consists of a last common ancestor but it does not include all of its descendants. The inclusion of the Carcharocles sharks in Otodus would make it monophyletic, with the sister clade being Megalolamna.
The cladogram below represents the hypothetical relationships between megalodon and other sharks, including the great white shark. Modified from Shimada et al. (2016), Ehret et al., (2009), and the findings of Siversson et al. (2013).
## Biology
### Appearance
One interpretation on how megalodon appeared was that it was a robust-looking shark, and may have had a similar build to the great white shark. The jaws may have been blunter and wider than the great white, and the fins would have also been similar in shape, though thicker due to its size. It may have had a pig-eyed appearance, in that it had small, deep-set eyes.
Another interpretation is that megalodon bore a similarity to the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) or the basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus). The tail fin would have been crescent-shaped, the anal fin and second dorsal fin would have been small, and there would have been a caudal keel present on either side of the tail fin (on the caudal peduncle). This build is common in other large aquatic animals, such as whales, tuna, and other sharks, in order to reduce drag while swimming. The head shape can vary between species as most of the drag-reducing adaptations are toward the tail-end of the animal.
### Size
Due to fragmentary remains, there have been many contradictory size estimates for megalodon, as they can only be drawn from fossil teeth and vertebrae. The great white shark has been the basis of reconstruction and size estimation, as it is regarded as the best analogue to megalodon. Several total length estimation methods have been produced from comparing megalodon teeth and vertebrae to those of the great white. Megalodon size estimates vary depending on the method used, with maximum total length estimates ranging from 14.2–20.3 meters (47–67 ft). A 2015 study estimated the average total body length at 10.5 meters (34 ft), calculated from 544 megalodon teeth, found throughout geological time and geography, including adults and juveniles. In comparison, large great white sharks are generally around 6 meters (20 ft) in length, with a few contentious reports suggesting larger sizes. The whale shark is the largest living fish, with one large female reported with a precaudal length of 15 meters (49 ft) and an estimated total length of 18.8 meters (62 ft). It is possible that different populations of megalodon around the globe had different body sizes and behaviors due to different ecological pressures. Megalodon is thought to have been the largest macropredatory shark that ever lived.
> "A C. megalodon about 16 meters long would have weighed about 48 metric tons (53 tons). A 17-meter (56-foot) C. megalodon would have weighed about 59 metric tons (65 tons), and a 20.3-meter (67 foot) monster would have topped off at 103 metric tons (114 tons)."
In his 2015 book, The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution, Donald Prothero proposed the body mass estimates for different individuals of different length by extrapolating from a vertebral centra based on the dimensions of the great white, a methodology also used for the 2008 study which supports the maximum mass estimate.
In 2020, Cooper and his colleagues reconstructed a 2D model of megalodon based on the dimensions of all the extant lamnid sharks and suggested that a 16 meters (52 ft) long megalodon would have had a 4.65 m (15.3 ft) long head, 1.41 m (4 ft 8 in) tall gill slits, a 1.62 m (5 ft 4 in) tall dorsal fin, 3.08 m (10 ft 1 in) long pectoral fins, and a 3.85 m (12 ft 8 in) tall tail fin. In 2022, Cooper and his colleagues also reconstructed a 3D model with the same basis as the 2020 study, resulting in a body mass estimate of 61.56 metric tons (67.86 short tons) for a 16 meters (52 ft) long megalodon (higher than the previous estimates); a vertebral column specimen named IRSNB P 9893 (formerly IRSNB 3121), belonging to a 46 year old individual from Belgium, was used for extrapolation. An individual of this size would have required 98,175 kcal per day, 20 times more than what the adult great white requires.
Mature male megalodon may have had a body mass of 12.6 to 33.9 metric tons (13.9 to 37.4 short tons), and mature females may have been 27.4 to 59.4 metric tons (30.2 to 65.5 short tons), assuming that males could range in length from 10.5 to 14.3 meters (34 to 47 ft) and females 13.3 to 17 meters (44 to 56 ft).
A 2015 study linking shark size and typical swimming speed estimated that megalodon would have typically swum at 18 kilometers per hour (11 mph)–assuming that its body mass was typically 48 metric tons (53 short tons)–which is consistent with other aquatic creatures of its size, such as the fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) which typically cruises at speeds of 14.5 to 21.5 km/h (9.0 to 13.4 mph). In 2022, Cooper and his colleagues converted this calculation into relative cruising speed (body lengths per second), resulting in an mean absolute cruising speed of 5 kilometers per hour (3.1 mph) and a mean relative cruising speed of 0.09 body lengths per second for a 16 meters (52 ft) long megalodon; the authors found their mean absolute cruising speed to be faster than any extant lamnid sharks and their mean relative cruising speed to be slower, consistent with previous estimates.
Its large size may have been due to climatic factors and the abundance of large prey items, and it may have also been influenced by the evolution of regional endothermy (mesothermy) which would have increased its metabolic rate and swimming speed. The otodontid sharks have been considered to have been ectotherms, so on that basis megalodon would have been ectothermic. However, the largest contemporary ectothermic sharks, such as the whale shark, are filter feeders, while lamnids are regional endotherms, implying some metabolic correlations with a predatory lifestyle. These considerations, as well as tooth oxygen isotopic data and the need for higher burst swimming speeds in macropredators of endothermic prey than ectothermy would allow, imply that otodontids, including megalodon, were probably regional endotherms.
In 2020, Shimada and colleagues suggested large size was instead due to intrauterine cannibalism, where the larger fetus eats the smaller fetus, resulting in progressively larger and larger fetuses, requiring the mother to attain even greater size as well as caloric requirements which would have promoted endothermy. Males would have needed to keep up with female size in order to still effectively copulate (which probably involved latching onto the female with claspers, like modern cartilaginous fish).
#### Maximum estimates
The first attempt to reconstruct the jaw of megalodon was made by Bashford Dean in 1909, displayed at the American Museum of Natural History. From the dimensions of this jaw reconstruction, it was hypothesized that megalodon could have approached 30 meters (98 ft) in length. Dean had overestimated the size of the cartilage on both jaws, causing it to be too tall.
In 1973, John E. Randall, an ichthyologist, used the enamel height (the vertical distance of the blade from the base of the enamel portion of the tooth to its tip) to measure the length of the shark, yielding a maximum length of about 13 meters (43 ft). However, tooth enamel height does not necessarily increase in proportion to the animal's total length.
In 1994, marine biologists Patrick J. Schembri and Stephen Papson opined that O. megalodon may have approached a maximum of around 24 to 25 meters (79 to 82 ft) in total length.
In 1996, shark researchers Michael D. Gottfried, Leonard Compagno, and S. Curtis Bowman proposed a linear relationship between the great white shark's total length and the height of the largest upper anterior tooth. The proposed relationship is: total length in meters = − (0.096) × [UA maximum height (mm)]-(0.22). Using this tooth height regression equation, the authors estimated a total length of 15.9 meters (52 ft) based on a tooth 16.8 centimeters (6.6 in) tall, which the authors considered a conservative maximum estimate. They also compared the ratio between the tooth height and total length of large female great whites to the largest megalodon tooth. A 6-meter (20 ft) long female great white, which the authors considered the largest 'reasonably trustworthy' total length, produced an estimate of 16.8 meters (55 ft). However, based on the largest female great white reported, at 7.1 meters (23 ft), they estimated a maximum estimate of 20.2 meters (66 ft).
In 2002, shark researcher Clifford Jeremiah proposed that total length was proportional to the root width of an upper anterior tooth. He claimed that for every 1 centimeter (0.39 in) of root width, there are approximately 1.4 meters (4.6 ft) of shark length. Jeremiah pointed out that the jaw perimeter of a shark is directly proportional to its total length, with the width of the roots of the largest teeth being a tool for estimating jaw perimeter. The largest tooth in Jeremiah's possession had a root width of about 12 centimeters (4.7 in), which yielded 16.5 meters (54 ft) in total length.
In 2002, paleontologist Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University proposed a linear relationship between tooth crown height and total length after conducting anatomical analysis of several specimens, allowing any sized tooth to be used. Shimada stated that the previously proposed methods were based on a less-reliable evaluation of the dental homology between megalodon and the great white shark, and that the growth rate between the crown and root is not isometric, which he considered in his model. Using this model, the upper anterior tooth possessed by Gottfried and colleagues corresponded to a total length of 15 meters (49 ft). Among several specimens found in the Gatún Formation of Panama, one upper lateral tooth was used by other researchers to obtain a total length estimate of 17.9 meters (59 ft) using this method.
In 2019, Shimada revisited the size of megalodon and discouraged using non-anterior teeth for estimations, noting that the exact position of isolated non-anterior teeth is difficult to identify. Shimada provided maximum total length estimates using the largest anterior teeth available in museums. The tooth with the tallest crown height known to Shimada, NSM PV-19896, produced a total length estimate of 14.2 meters (47 ft). The tooth with the tallest total height, FMNH PF 11306, was reported at 16.8 centimeters (6.6 in). However, Shimada remeasured the tooth and found it actually to measure 16.2 centimeters (6.4 in). Using the total height tooth regression equation proposed by Gottfried and colleagues produced an estimate of 15.3 meters (50 ft).
In 2021, Victor J. Perez, Ronny M. Leder, and Teddy Badaut proposed a method of estimating total length of megalodon from the sum of the tooth crown widths. Using more complete megalodon dentitions, they reconstructed the dental formula and then made comparisons to living sharks. The researchers noted that the 2002 Shimada crown height equations produce wildly varying results for different teeth belonging to the same shark (range of error of ± 9 metres (30 ft)), casting doubt on some of the conclusions of previous studies using that method. Using the largest tooth available to the authors, GHC 6, with a crown width of 13.3 centimeters (5.2 in), they estimated a maximum body length of approximately 20 meters (66 ft), with a range of error of approximately ± 3.5 metres (11 ft). This maximum length estimate was also supported by Cooper and his colleagues in 2022.
There are anecdotal reports of teeth larger than those found in museum collections. Gordon Hubbell from Gainesville, Florida, possesses an upper anterior megalodon tooth whose maximum height is 18.4 centimeters (7.25 in), one of the largest known tooth specimens from the shark. In addition, a 2.7-by-3.4-meter (9 by 11 ft) megalodon jaw reconstruction developed by fossil hunter Vito Bertucci contains a tooth whose maximum height is reportedly over 18 centimeters (7 in).
### Teeth and bite force
The most common fossils of megalodon are its teeth. Diagnostic characteristics include a triangular shape, robust structure, large size, fine serrations, a lack of lateral denticles, and a visible V-shaped neck (where the root meets the crown). The tooth met the jaw at a steep angle, similar to the great white shark. The tooth was anchored by connective tissue fibers, and the roughness of the base may have added to mechanical strength. The lingual side of the tooth, the part facing the tongue, was convex; and the labial side, the other side of the tooth, was slightly convex or flat. The anterior teeth were almost perpendicular to the jaw and symmetrical, whereas the posterior teeth were slanted and asymmetrical.
Megalodon teeth can measure over 180 millimeters (7.1 in) in slant height (diagonal length) and are the largest of any known shark species, implying it was the largest of all macropredatory sharks. In 1989, a nearly complete set of megalodon teeth was discovered in Saitama, Japan. Another nearly complete associated megalodon dentition was excavated from the Yorktown Formations in the United States, and served as the basis of a jaw reconstruction of megalodon at the National Museum of Natural History (USNM). Based on these discoveries, an artificial dental formula was put together for megalodon in 1996.
The dental formula of megalodon is: . As evident from the formula, megalodon had four kinds of teeth in its jaws: anterior, intermediate, lateral, and posterior. Megalodon's intermediate tooth technically appears to be an upper anterior and is termed as "A3" because it is fairly symmetrical and does not point mesially (side of the tooth toward the midline of the jaws where the left and right jaws meet). Megalodon had a very robust dentition, and had over 250 teeth in its jaws, spanning 5 rows. It is possible that large megalodon individuals had jaws spanning roughly 2 meters (6.6 ft) across. The teeth were also serrated, which would have improved efficiency in cutting through flesh or bone. The shark may have been able to open its mouth to a 75° angle, though a reconstruction at the USNM approximates a 100° angle.
In 2008, a team of scientists led by S. Wroe conducted an experiment to determine the bite force of the great white shark, using a 2.5-meter (8.2 ft) long specimen, and then isometrically scaled the results for its maximum size and the conservative minimum and maximum body mass of megalodon. They placed the bite force of the latter between 108,514 to 182,201 newtons (24,395 to 40,960 lbf) in a posterior bite, compared to the 18,216 newtons (4,095 lbf) bite force for the largest confirmed great white shark, and 7,495 newtons (1,685 lbf) for the placoderm fish Dunkleosteus. In addition, Wroe and colleagues pointed out that sharks shake sideways while feeding, amplifying the force generated, which would probably have caused the total force experienced by prey to be higher than the estimate.
In 2021, Antonio Ballell and Humberto Ferrón used Finite Element Analysis modeling to examine the stress distribution of three types of megalodon teeth and closely related mega-toothed species when exposed to anterior and lateral forces, the latter of which would be generated when a shark shakes its head to tear through flesh. The resulting simulations identified higher levels of stress in megalodon teeth under lateral force loads compared to its precursor species such as O. obliquus and O. angusteidens when tooth size was removed as a factor. This suggests that megalodon teeth were of a different functional significance than previously expected, challenging prior interpretations that megalodon's dental morphology was primarily driven by a dietary shift towards marine mammals. Instead, the authors proposed that it was a byproduct of an increase in body size caused by heterochronic selection.
### Internal anatomy
Megalodon is represented in the fossil record by teeth, vertebral centra, and coprolites. As with all sharks, the skeleton of megalodon was formed of cartilage rather than bone; consequently most fossil specimens are poorly preserved. To support its large dentition, the jaws of megalodon would have been more massive, stouter, and more strongly developed than those of the great white, which possesses a comparatively gracile dentition. Its chondrocranium, the cartilaginous skull, would have had a blockier and more robust appearance than that of the great white. Its fins were proportional to its larger size.
Some fossil vertebrae have been found. The most notable example is a partially preserved vertebral column of a single specimen, excavated in the Antwerp Basin, Belgium, in 1926. It comprises 150 vertebral centra, with the centra ranging from 55 millimeters (2.2 in) to 155 millimeters (6 in) in diameter. The shark's vertebrae may have gotten much bigger, and scrutiny of the specimen revealed that it had a higher vertebral count than specimens of any known shark, possibly over 200 centra; only the great white approached it. Another partially preserved vertebral column of a megalodon was excavated from the Gram Formation in Denmark in 1983, which comprises 20 vertebral centra, with the centra ranging from 100 millimeters (4 in) to 230 millimeters (9 in) in diameter.
The coprolite remains of megalodon are spiral-shaped, indicating that the shark may have had a spiral valve, a corkscrew-shaped portion of the lower intestines, similar to extant lamniform sharks. Miocene coprolite remains were discovered in Beaufort County, South Carolina, with one measuring 14 cm (5.5 in).
Gottfried and colleagues reconstructed the entire skeleton of megalodon, which was later put on display at the Calvert Marine Museum in the United States and the Iziko South African Museum. This reconstruction is 11.3 meters (37 ft) long and represents a mature male, based on the ontogenetic changes a great white shark experiences over the course of its life.
## Paleobiology
### Range and habitat
Megalodon had a cosmopolitan distribution; its fossils have been excavated from many parts of the world, including Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Australia. It most commonly occurred in subtropical to temperate latitudes. It has been found at latitudes up to 55° N; its inferred tolerated temperature range was 1–24 °C (34–75 °F). It arguably had the capacity to endure such low temperatures due to mesothermy, the physiological capability of large sharks to maintain a higher body temperature than the surrounding water by conserving metabolic heat.
Megalodon inhabited a wide range of marine environments (i.e., shallow coastal waters, areas of coastal upwelling, swampy coastal lagoons, sandy littorals, and offshore deep water environments), and exhibited a transient lifestyle. Adult megalodon were not abundant in shallow water environments, and mostly inhabited offshore areas. Megalodon may have moved between coastal and oceanic waters, particularly in different stages of its life cycle.
Fossil remains show a trend for specimens to be larger on average in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern, with mean lengths of 11.6 and 9.6 meters (38 and 31 ft), respectively; and also larger in the Pacific than the Atlantic, with mean lengths of 10.9 and 9.5 meters (36 and 31 ft) respectively. They do not suggest any trend of changing body size with absolute latitude, or of change in size over time (although the Carcharocles lineage in general is thought to display a trend of increasing size over time). The overall modal length has been estimated at 10.5 meters (34 ft), with the length distribution skewed towards larger individuals, suggesting an ecological or competitive advantage for larger body size.
#### Locations of fossils
Megalodon had a global distribution and fossils of the shark have been found in many places around the world, bordering all oceans of the Neogene.
### Prey relationships
Though sharks are generally opportunistic feeders, megalodon's great size, high-speed swimming capability, and powerful jaws, coupled with an impressive feeding apparatus, made it an apex predator capable of consuming a broad spectrum of animals. Otodus megalodon was probably one of the most powerful predators to have existed. A study focusing on calcium isotopes of extinct and extant elasmobranch sharks and rays revealed that megalodon fed at a higher trophic level than the contemporaneous great white shark ("higher up" in the food chain.)
Fossil evidence indicates that megalodon preyed upon many cetacean species, such as dolphins, small whales, cetotheres, squalodontids (shark toothed dolphins), sperm whales, bowhead whales, and rorquals. In addition to this, they also targeted seals, sirenians, and sea turtles. The shark was an opportunist and piscivorous, and it would have also gone after smaller fish and other sharks. Many whale bones have been found with deep gashes most likely made by their teeth. Various excavations have revealed megalodon teeth lying close to the chewed remains of whales, and sometimes in direct association with them.
The feeding ecology of megalodon appears to have varied with age and between sites, like the modern great white shark. It is plausible that the adult megalodon population off the coast of Peru targeted primarily cetothere whales 2.5 to 7 meters (8.2 to 23 ft) in length and other prey smaller than itself, rather than large whales in the same size class as themselves. Meanwhile, juveniles likely had a diet that consisted more of fish.
### Competition
Megalodon faced a highly competitive environment. Its position at the top of the food chain probably had a significant impact on the structuring of marine communities. Fossil evidence indicates a correlation between megalodon and the emergence and diversification of cetaceans and other marine mammals. Juvenile megalodon preferred habitats where small cetaceans were abundant, and adult megalodon preferred habitats where large cetaceans were abundant. Such preferences may have developed shortly after they appeared in the Oligocene.
Megalodon were contemporaneous with whale-eating toothed whales (particularly macroraptorial sperm whales and squalodontidae), which were also probably among the era's apex predators, and provided competition. Some attained gigantic sizes, such as Livyatan, estimated between 13.5 to 17.5 meters (44 to 57 ft). Fossilized teeth of an undetermined species of such physeteroids from Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina, indicate it had a maximum body length of 8–10 m and a maximum lifespan of about 25 years. This is very different from similarly sized modern killer whales that live to 65 years, suggesting that unlike the latter, which are apex predators, these physeteroids were subject to predation from larger species such as megalodon or Livyatan. By the Late Miocene, around 11 Mya, macroraptorials experienced a significant decline in abundance and diversity. Other species may have filled this niche in the Pliocene, such as the fossil killer whale Orcinus citoniensis which may have been a pack predator and targeted prey larger than itself, but this inference is disputed, and it was probably a generalist predator rather than a marine mammal specialist.
Megalodon may have subjected contemporaneous white sharks to competitive exclusion, as the fossil records indicate that other shark species avoided regions it inhabited by mainly keeping to the colder waters of the time. In areas where their ranges seemed to have overlapped, such as in Pliocene Baja California, it is possible that megalodon and the great white shark occupied the area at different times of the year while following different migratory prey. Megalodon probably also had a tendency for cannibalism, much like contemporary sharks.
### Feeding strategies
Sharks often employ complex hunting strategies to engage large prey animals. Great white shark hunting strategies may be similar to how megalodon hunted its large prey. Megalodon bite marks on whale fossils suggest that it employed different hunting strategies against large prey than the great white shark.
One particular specimen–the remains of a 9-meter (30 ft) long undescribed Miocene baleen whale–provided the first opportunity to quantitatively analyze its attack behavior. Unlike great whites which target the underbelly of their prey, megalodon probably targeted the heart and lungs, with their thick teeth adapted for biting through tough bone, as indicated by bite marks inflicted to the rib cage and other tough bony areas on whale remains. Furthermore, attack patterns could differ for prey of different sizes. Fossil remains of some small cetaceans, for example cetotheres, suggest that they were rammed with great force from below before being killed and eaten, based on compression fractures.
There is also evidence that a possible separate hunting strategy existed for attacking raptorial sperm whales; a tooth belonging to an undetermined 4 m (13 ft) physeteroid closely resembling those of Acrophyseter discovered in the Nutrien Aurora Phosphate Mine in North Carolina suggests that a megalodon or O. chubutensis may have aimed for the head of the sperm whale in order to inflict a fatal bite, the resulting attack leaving distinctive bite marks on the tooth. While scavenging behavior cannot be ruled out as a possibility, the placement of the bite marks is more consistent with predatory attacks than feeding by scavenging, as the jaw is not a particularly nutritious area to for a shark feed or focus on. The fact that the bite marks were found on the tooth's roots further suggest that the shark broke the whale's jaw during the bite, suggesting the bite was extremely powerful. The fossil is also notable as it stands as the first known instance of an antagonistic interaction between a sperm whale and an otodontid shark recorded in the fossil record.
During the Pliocene, larger cetaceans appeared. Megalodon apparently further refined its hunting strategies to cope with these large whales. Numerous fossilized flipper bones and tail vertebrae of large whales from the Pliocene have been found with megalodon bite marks, which suggests that megalodon would immobilize a large whale before killing and feeding on it.
### Growth and reproduction
In 2010, Ehret estimated that megalodon had a fast growth rate nearly two times that of the extant great white shark. He also estimated that the slowing or cessation of somatic growth in megalodon occurred around 25 years of age, suggesting that this species had an extremely delayed sexual maturity. In 2021, Shimada and colleagues calculated the growth rate of an approximately 9.2 m (30 ft) individual based on the Belgian vertebrate column specimen that presumably contains annual growth rings on three of its vertebrae. They estimated the individual died at 46 years of age, with a growth rate of 16 cm (6.3 in) per year, and a length of 2 m (6 ft 7 in) at birth. For a 15 m (49 ft) individual – which they considered to have been the maximum size attainable – this would equate to a lifespan of 88 to 100 years. However, Cooper and his colleagues in 2022 estimated the length of this 46 year old individual at nearly 16 m (52 ft) based on the 3D reconstruction which resulted in the complete vertebral column to be 11.1 m (36 ft) long; the researchers claimed that this size estimate difference occurred due to the fact that Shimada and his colleagues extrapolated its size only based on the vertebral centra.
Megalodon, like contemporaneous sharks, made use of nursery areas to birth their young in, specifically warm-water coastal environments with large amounts of food and protection from predators. Nursery sites were identified in the Gatún Formation of Panama, the Calvert Formation of Maryland, Banco de Concepción in the Canary Islands, and the Bone Valley Formation of Florida. Given that all extant lamniform sharks give birth to live young, this is believed to have been true of megalodon also. Infant megalodons were around 3.5 meters (11 ft) at their smallest, and the pups were vulnerable to predation by other shark species, such as the great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran) and the snaggletooth shark (Hemipristis serra). Their dietary preferences display an ontogenetic shift: Young megalodon commonly preyed on fish, sea turtles, dugongs, and small cetaceans; mature megalodon moved to off-shore areas and consumed large cetaceans.
An exceptional case in the fossil record suggests that juvenile megalodon may have occasionally attacked much larger balaenopterid whales. Three tooth marks apparently from a 4-to-7-meter (13 to 23 ft) long Pliocene shark were found on a rib from an ancestral blue or humpback whale that showed evidence of subsequent healing, which is suspected to have been inflicted by a juvenile megalodon.
## Extinction
### Climate change
The Earth experienced a number of changes during the time period megalodon existed which affected marine life. A cooling trend starting in the Oligocene 35 Mya ultimately led to glaciation at the poles. Geological events changed currents and precipitation; among these were the closure of the Central American Seaway and changes in the Tethys Ocean, contributing to the cooling of the oceans. The stalling of the Gulf Stream prevented nutrient-rich water from reaching major marine ecosystems, which may have negatively affected its food sources. The largest fluctuation of sea levels in the Cenozoic era occurred in the Plio-Pleistocene, between around 5 million to 12 thousand years ago, due to the expansion of glaciers at the poles, which negatively impacted coastal environments, and may have contributed to its extinction along with those of several other marine megafaunal species. These oceanographic changes, in particular the sea level drops, may have restricted many of the suitable shallow warm-water nursery sites for megalodon, hindering reproduction. Nursery areas are pivotal for the survival of many shark species, in part because they protect juveniles from predation.
As its range did not apparently extend into colder waters, megalodon may not have been able to retain a significant amount of metabolic heat, so its range was restricted to shrinking warmer waters. Fossil evidence confirms the absence of megalodon in regions around the world where water temperatures had significantly declined during the Pliocene. However, an analysis of the distribution of megalodon over time suggests that temperature change did not play a direct role in its extinction. Its distribution during the Miocene and Pliocene did not correlate with warming and cooling trends; while abundance and distribution declined during the Pliocene, megalodon did show a capacity to inhabit colder latitudes. It was found in locations with a mean temperature ranging from 12 to 27 °C (54 to 81 °F), with a total range of 1 to 33 °C (34 to 91 °F), indicating that the global extent of suitable habitat should not have been greatly affected by the temperature changes that occurred. This is consistent with evidence that it was a mesotherm.
### Changing ecosystem
Marine mammals attained their greatest diversity during the Miocene, such as with baleen whales with over 20 recognized Miocene genera in comparison to only six extant genera. Such diversity presented an ideal setting to support a super-predator such as megalodon. By the end of the Miocene, many species of mysticetes had gone extinct; surviving species may have been faster swimmers and thus more elusive prey. Furthermore, after the closure of the Central American Seaway, tropical whales decreased in diversity and abundance. The extinction of megalodon correlates with the decline of many small mysticete lineages, and it is possible that it was quite dependent on them as a food source. Additionally, a marine megafauna extinction during the Pliocene was discovered to have eliminated 36% of all large marine species including 55% of marine mammals, 35% of seabirds, 9% of sharks, and 43% of sea turtles. The extinction was selective for endotherms and mesotherms relative to poikilotherms, implying causation by a decreased food supply and thus consistent with megalodon being mesothermic. Megalodon may have been too large to sustain itself on the declining marine food resources. The cooling of the oceans during the Pliocene might have restricted the access of megalodon to the polar regions, depriving it of the large whales which had migrated there.
Competition from large odontocetes, such as macropredatory sperm whales which appeared in the Miocene, and a member of genus Orcinus (i.e., Orcinus citoniensis) in the Pliocene, is assumed to have contributed to the decline and extinction of megalodon. But this assumption is disputed: The Orcininae emerged in Mid-Pliocene with O. citoniensis reported from the Pliocene of Italy, and similar forms reported from the Pliocene of England and South Africa, indicating the capacity of these dolphins to cope with increasingly prevalent cold water temperatures in high latitudes. These dolphins were assumed to have been macrophagous in some studies, but on closer inspection, these dolphins are not found to be macrophagous and fed on small fishes instead. On the other hand, gigantic macropredatory sperm whales such as Livyatan-like forms are last reported from Australia and South Africa circa 5 million years ago. Others, such as Hoplocetus and Scaldicetus also occupied a niche similar to that of modern killer whales but the last of these forms disappeared during the Pliocene. Members of genus Orcinus became large and macrophagous in the Pleistocene.
Paleontologist Robert Boessenecker and his colleagues rechecked the fossil record of megalodon for carbon dating errors and concluded that it disappeared circa 3.5 million years ago. Boessenecker and his colleagues further suggest that megalodon suffered range fragmentation due to climatic shifts, and competition with white sharks might have contributed to its decline and extinction. Competition with white sharks is assumed to be a factor in other studies as well, but this hypothesis warrants further testing. Multiple compounding environmental and ecological factors including climate change and thermal limitations, collapse of prey populations and resource competition with white sharks are believed to have contributed to decline and extinction of megalodon.
The extinction of megalodon set the stage for further changes in marine communities. The average body size of baleen whales increased significantly after its disappearance, although possibly due to other, climate-related, causes. Conversely the increase in baleen whale size may have contributed to the extinction of megalodon, as they may have preferred to go after smaller whales; bite marks on large whale species may have come from scavenging sharks. Megalodon may have simply become coextinct with smaller whale species, such as Piscobalaena nana. The extinction of megalodon had a positive impact on other apex predators of the time, such as the great white shark, in some cases spreading to regions where megalodon became absent.
## In popular culture
Megalodon has been portrayed in many works of fiction, including films and novels, and continues to be a popular subject for fiction involving sea monsters. Reports of supposedly fresh megalodon teeth, such as those found by HMS Challenger in 1873 which were dated in 1959 by the zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky to be around 11,000 to 24,000 years old, helped popularise claims of recent megalodon survival amongst cryptozoologists. These claims have been discredited, and are probably teeth that were well-preserved by a thick mineral-crust precipitate of manganese dioxide, and so had a lower decomposition rate and retained a white color during fossilization. Fossil megalodon teeth can vary in color from off-white to dark browns, greys, and blues, and some fossil teeth may have been redeposited into a younger stratum. The claims that megalodon could remain elusive in the depths, similar to the megamouth shark which was discovered in 1976, are unlikely as the shark lived in warm coastal waters and probably could not survive in the cold and nutrient-poor deep sea environment.
Contemporary fiction about megalodon surviving into modern times was pioneered by the 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten and its subsequent sequels. Megalodon subsequently began to feature in films, such as the 2003 direct to video Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, and later The Meg, a 2018 film based on the 1997 book which grossed over \$500 million at the box office.
Animal Planet's pseudo-documentary Mermaids: The Body Found included an encounter 1.6 mya between a pod of mermaids and a megalodon. Later, in August 2013, the Discovery Channel opened its annual Shark Week series with another film for television, Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, a controversial docufiction about the creature that presented alleged evidence in order to suggest that megalodons still lived. This program received criticism for being completely fictional and for inadequately disclosing its fictional nature; for example, all of the supposed scientists depicted were paid actors, and there was no disclosure in the documentary itself that it was fictional. In a poll by Discovery, 73% of the viewers of the documentary thought that megalodon was not extinct. In 2014, Discovery re-aired The Monster Shark Lives, along with a new one-hour program, Megalodon: The New Evidence, and an additional fictionalized program entitled Shark of Darkness: Wrath of Submarine, resulting in further backlash from media sources and the scientific community. Despite the criticism from scientists, Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives was a huge ratings success, gaining 4.8 million viewers, the most for any Shark Week episode up to that point.
Megalodon teeth are the state fossil of North Carolina.
## See also
- List of prehistoric cartilaginous fish
- Prehistoric fish
- Largest prehistoric organisms
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64,468,492 |
Lake Estancia
| 1,154,379,680 |
Prehistoric lake in New Mexico, United States
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[
"Former lakes of the United States",
"Lakes of New Mexico",
"Torrance County, New Mexico"
] |
Lake Estancia was a lake formed in the Estancia Valley, central New Mexico, which left various coastal landforms in the valley. The lake was mostly fed by creek and groundwater from the Manzano Mountains, and fluctuated between freshwater stages and saltier stages. The lake had a diverse fauna, including cutthroat trout; they may have reached it during a possible past stage where it was overflowing.
Lake Estancia appears to have formed between the Pliocene and Pleistocene, when a previous river system broke up. It reached a maximum water level ("highstand") presumably during the Illinoian glaciation and subsequently fluctuated between fuller stages and a desiccated basin. Around the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) time interval, several highstands and a low water level state occurred during the "Big Dry" climate interval. Between 16,100 and 14,500 years ago the lake reached its highest stand of the last 30,000 years before drying up again during the Bølling-Allerød climate interval. The lake briefly returned during the Younger Dryas climate interval and eventually desiccated after about 8,500 years ago during the Holocene. Wind-driven erosion has excavated depressions in the former lakebed that are in part filled with playas (dry lake beds).
The lake was one of several pluvial lakes in southwestern North America that developed during the late Pleistocene. Their formation has been variously attributed to decreased temperatures during the ice age and increased precipitation; a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation and the Laurentide Ice Sheet altered atmospheric circulation patterns and increased precipitation in the region. The lake has yielded a good paleoclimatic record.
## History and climatological implications
The Estancia Valley became a closed basin at some point during the Pliocene to middle Pleistocene. Previously, the Estancia Valley was occupied by a river that flowed through the Encino Basin into the Pecos River and eventually into the Brazos River. Fault movement was probably responsible for the breakup of this drainage system. Dissolution of the Permian Yeso Formation may have contributed to the subsidence of the basin.
The low thickness of lake sediments in the Estancia Valley suggests that the lake began to form only in the middle Pleistocene. Early Lake Estancia, most likely larger than the LGM lake, existed possibly during the Illinoian glaciation and largely dried up in the warm and dry climate of the Sangamonian interglacial. Climate changes recorded in the cave deposits in the Cavenee Caverns northwest of the Lake Estancia basin have been correlated to fluctuations of Lake Estancia; they suggest that Lake Estancia may have desiccated 134,000–121,000 years ago. Between 69,000 and 19,000 years ago, water levels were higher 41,000–38,000 years ago and lower 57,000–51,000 and 45,000–43,000 years ago, consistent with climate patterns recorded in regional cave deposits. The low water level stages correlate to the timing of maximum summer insolation and warm periods in Greenland; however, problems with dating these fluctuations make any inference about correlations to events elsewhere in North America problematic.
### Last Glacial Maximum and later
The lake sediment record indicates that shallow lakes re-formed between 45,000 and 40,000 years ago. Water levels began to rise 24,000 years ago, and at least five highstands occurred during the LGM, with two more before and after the LGM. At least ten separate oscillations in water levels took place. Radiocarbon dating has yielded ages of 24,300 years ago for the first freshwater stage and 20,040 for the gap between the second and third freshwater stage. The expansion of lakes during the LGM was triggered by the growth of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which forced the jet stream southward. A highstand around 23,000 years ago appears to coincide with Heinrich event 2, an episode in the North Atlantic where ice discharge into the ocean was increased and impeded heat transport by ocean currents.
The highstands lasted until 18,100–17,000 years ago when water levels declined, an event christened the "Big Dry" in the Lake Estancia basin. This dry interval separates the LGM highstand from the following highstands, and correlates to an episode of strong East Asian Monsoons. Evidence of the "Big Dry" has also been identified in South America, where the drying of paleolake Sajsi in the Altiplano of Bolivia may correlate to the Lake Estancia event, but not elsewhere in the Great Basin. It appears that during the "Big Dry" climate patterns in New Mexico decoupled from climate variations elsewhere on the world. Both its beginning and its end have been correlated to ice-rafting events in the North Atlantic but it is not clear how ice-rafting events could simultaneously trigger the beginning and the end of a dry episode. Possibly, the southward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone during the "Big Dry" cooled the northeastern Pacific, inducing drought despite the occurrence of a more winter-like atmospheric circulation over North America, which would be expected to increase precipitation. Later research has proposed that the end of the "Big Dry" may relate to the ice-rafting events, given chronological uncertainties.
Another highstand took place after the "Big Dry" during the late phase of the so-called Mystery Interval, when Antarctica and the European Alps were already warming despite the cooling that occurred at the time of Heinrich event 1. This highstand was the largest highstand of the last 30,000 years not only of Lake Estancia, but also in other Great Basin lakes. It appears that the end of the "Big Dry" and the transition to the Mystery Interval highstand correlates to a southward movement of the thermal equator and an abrupt weakening of the East Asian Monsoon. These events could have been triggered by an extended shutdown of the thermohaline circulation, which caused Arctic sea ice to expand and Antarctic sea ice to contract, causing a southward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The forcing by the Laurentide Ice Sheet was important for the Mystery Interval lake level changes as well. The highstand between 16,100 and 14,500 years ago has been christened the "Big Wet".
There were two more highstands 14,000–12,500 years ago, followed by desiccation 12,000 or 14,000 years ago when the lake declined over the course of a millennium. This decline of water levels was a consequence of a drier climate in the Southwestern United States, the so-called "Clovis-age drought", and relates to the Bølling-Allerød period, a time period where climate changed. The exposed lake bed was eroded by wind, producing dunes. "Lake Willard", the final highstand at about 1,860 meters (6,100 feet) elevation, has been linked to the Younger Dryas when a moister climate returned to the Southwestern United States. It took place 11,000–10,000 years ago and was short lived. Ridges on the eastern side of the Estancia Valley formed during this highstand.
Similarities have been noted between the record of Lake Estancia and that of Lake Cochise in Arizona, Lake Mojave in California and San Luis Lake in Colorado. The timing of Lake Estancia highstands is coherent with the timing of highstands in other Great Basin lakes. Water levels at other Great Basin lakes too declined with the Bølling-Allerød period and concomitant abrupt global climate change. Conversely, the water level changes at Lake Estancia are opposite to lake-level fluctuations at low latitudes. Lake level rises probably took only a few decades. Fluctuations in water levels occurred secondarily to changes in the atmospheric moisture transport.
### Short term changes
Millennial-scale oscillations are documented from lake deposits, which have been explained by streamflow pulses lasting several decades and separated by several centuries. These pulses were intense enough to increase inflow but not so long-lasting to raise water levels to overflow. Some lake level changes may have been too short to leave detectable shoreline deposits. Gypsum concentrations show strong 600 years long and weaker 350 and 250 years long cycles. The slow changes in the continental ice sheets cannot explain short-term changes in the lake, and other causal mechanisms have been sought. Solar cycles such as the Gleissberg solar cycle have been proposed as explanation for these fluctuations.
### Holocene
Beach terraces and other beach deposits were emplaced early in the Holocene; after about 8,500 years before present Lake Estancia dried up. La Niña conditions during the Holocene reduced water inflow into the lake, which owing to high evaporation rates could not be compensated by summer precipitation. After Lake Estancia dried up, two separate wind deflation events took place, the first is dated to either 4,000 or 7,000 years ago and the second to either 4,000 or 2,000 years ago. The deflation removed Quaternary sediments thus exposing their internal structure. The deflation also generated the playa basins and the "Willard soil" during the Altithermal climate phase. Dunes developed during hot and dry conditions of the middle Holocene. After the middle Holocene the climate became wetter again, reducing dune activity. The existence of a "Lake Meinzer" with a depth of 20 meters (66 feet) and an area of 520 square kilometres (200 square miles) after the Altithermal has been inferred. Presently, dry lakes occur on the bed of Lake Estancia and are fed by groundwater.
## Geography and geomorphology
Lake Estancia developed within the Estancia Valley, a closed basin in central New Mexico's Torrance County. The settlements of Estancia, Moriarty and Willard lie within the valley, which is about 70 kilometres (43 miles) southeast of Albuquerque. Interstate 40 crosses the northernmost parts of the lakebed of Lake Estancia, and New Mexico State Road 41 and U.S. Route 60 pass over the western and southern lakebed, respectively; formerly the tracks of the New Mexico Central Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway also traversed the lake bed. The lowest units of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument are located close to the shorelines of former Lake Estancia.
Estancia Valley covers an area of 5,000 square kilometres (1,900 square miles) and is flanked to the east by the Pedernal Hills, to the northwest by the Sandia Mountains, to the west by the Manzano Mountains, to the south by the Juames Mesa and Chupadera Mesa and to the southeast by the Rattlesnake Hills. The Estancia Basin is near the Rio Grande-Pecos River drainage divide.
The central points of the valley contain over sixty playas, which formed within blowouts; the largest is Laguna del Perro and others include Laguna Chica and Laguna Salina. They hold water only briefly and are not remnants of Lake Estancia. The lowermost point of the valley lies at 1,850 meters (6,070 feet) elevation.
### The lake
At its greatest extent, the lake was about 56 kilometres (35 miles) by 37 kilometres (23 miles) wide and covered the present-day locations of Estancia, McIntosh, Progresso and Willard. The lake may have resembled Lake Tahoe in California, although Lake Tahoe is deeper. Lake Estancia was the easternmost pluvial lake in Southwestern North America.
Distinct shoreline landforms in the Estancia Valley occur at various elevations, including bars, beaches, gravel deposits, ridges, scarps, spits, swales, terraces and wave-cut cliffs. A spit protruded northward into a bay on Lake Estancia's eastern shore. On the eastern side of Lake Estancia is a gypsum ridge about 3 meters (9.8 feet) high and 20 kilometres (12 miles) long, and smaller ridges are found elsewhere. These features are subdivided into an "older", less well developed shoreline at higher elevations and a "younger", better developed shoreline at lower elevations. Most shoreline deposits were formed by the accumulation of material; only in a few places did the lake actively erode pre-existing terrain.
Water levels may have reached 1,939 meters (6,362 feet) above sea level during the early Lake Estancia stage, 1,897 meters (6,224 feet) during the late Lake Estancia stage and possibly 1,870 meters (6,140 feet) during the "Lake Willard" stage, a late highstand. At maximum elevation the lake would have covered 2,340 square kilometres (900 square miles) and been 125 meters (410 feet) deep, while the Wisconsin-age lake was only 50 meters (160 feet) deep with an area of 1,170 square kilometres (450 square miles) and "Lake Willard" may have reached 20 meters (66 feet) depth and 610 square kilometres (240 square miles) surface area, although the estimated elevation is uncertain. During low water level stages shallow water or marshes covered the floor of Lake Estancia. Beach ridges from a last filling of the lake are found at the eastern edge of the lake floor.
Channels of streams reach the higher shorelines and less recognizable channels continue to lower shorelines. Some streams formed estuaries in Lake Estancia and/or were blocked off by partial or complete beach bars. On the western side of the lake, at Manzano Draw and Buffalo Draw there are deposits of deltas; Manzano Draw generated a fan delta on one of the lower shorelines. Another channel entering Lake Estancia was Torreon Creek. Debris was transported from the Manzano Mountains into the lake during highstands.
### Lake deposits and post-lake dunes
The lake deposited flint-gray clay and gypsum during its high water level stages. Deposits from lake level rises have been classified as a geological formation, the Dog Lake Formation. During low water level stages, sulfate-rich groundwater formed gypsum, which together with silt constitutes the low-stand deposits. During low water level stages playa deposits and flood sediments accumulated in the dry lake bed, forming among other things the so-called "Estancia Playa Complex".
The Estancia Dune Field is a 120 square kilometres (46 square miles) dune field in Estancia Valley. It consists of gypsum dunes, a rare type of dunes. These dunes were generated when the lake dried up and gypsum was blown away by the wind. Wind-driven excavation of the dry lakebed has produced a scarp, lunette dunes, dome-shaped landforms and crescent-shaped ridges.
### Hydrology
The lake was fed by a centripetal pattern of streams and by groundwater, with highstands being fed mainly by streams and low water level stages by groundwater. The Manzano Mountains were its main water source but there were no glaciers in its watershed. The total watershed of Lake Estancia had an area of about 5,050 square kilometres (1,950 square miles), about 22% of which were occupied by the lake during the late Wisconsin glaciation. This is a large proportion of the watershed, a consequence of the high elevation of Lake Estancia which resulted in lower temperatures and thus slower evaporation than lakes at lower elevation. The water ultimately originated from the Pacific Ocean and westerly winds transported it to Lake Estancia. Groundwater discharge buffered the lake against climatic variations.
Leakage of groundwater out of the lake may have become significant at high water levels, thus stabilizing various highstands at a similar elevation around 1,890 metres (6,200 feet) when the amount of groundwater leaking out matched that of inflowing water. In particular, water may have leaked along groundwater pathways and the Chupadera Fault southwards into the Tularosa Basin during the Wisconsin glaciation, stabilizing Lake Estancia's water levels at about 1,900 metres (6,200 feet) despite the progressive infilling of the lake basin.
The lake was at times hypersaline and at times freshwater. This was confirmed by foraminifera data that disproved an earlier hypothesis that the lake was never freshwater. During the Wisconsin glaciation, lake waters were oligotrophic and reached temperatures of 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). Strong winds and the shallow depth of the lake prevented its waters from becoming stratified and it has been inferred that Lake Estancia featured bottom currents. Silty water might have reached large distances from the shoreline, depositing its silt far into Lake Estancia. The gypsum in the lake deposits may have formed on the shoreline and was transported into Lake Estancia by winds.
### Overflow
A broad saddle at 1,932 meters (6,339 feet) elevation separates the Estancia basin from the Pinos Wells basin to the south. Initial research did not encounter shoreline landforms at the elevation of this sill and thus concluded that no overflow took place, but in the mid-20th century traces of a former shoreline were found above the sill elevation. Further late-20th century research did not find evidence of shorelines at overflow elevation or of flow at the supposed sill. The lake probably did not overflow during the Wisconsin glaciation; if there was overflow it took place over 130,000 years ago.
If Lake Estancia overflowed under maximum highstands, it would have spilled into the Pinos Wells and Encino Basins southeast of the Estancia Valley, forming a lake with the maximum elevation of 1,911 meters (6,270 feet) in the two basins. The maximum height would have been set either at the northern margin of the Encino Basin by a sill to the Pintado Canyon or by a saddle east of Encino, New Mexico at Vaughn, New Mexico. In the first case, the overflow would have reached the Pecos River via Pintada Creek; in the second case it would have eventually disappeared underground into karstic terrain. Together, the Pinos Wells, Encino and Estancia lakes would have covered an area of 2,860 square kilometres (1,100 square miles). During the Wisconsin glaciation when Lake Estancia did not overflow, each of these basins might have been occupied by separate closed lakes although evidence for the existence of such a lake in the Pinos Wells basin is scant. The sill limiting Lake Estancia's height was probably downcut if it ever carried water.
## Climate
Today, the mean temperature of the valley is about 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). Precipitation is less than 300 millimetres per year (12 inches per year) and much less than the annual evaporation rate of 1,520 millimetres per year (60 inches per year). Thus, permanent lakes cannot exist in the Estancia Valley under present-day conditions. The climate is characterized by Pacific cyclones during winter and the North American Monsoon during summer, which deliver moisture coming from the Gulf of California, Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Precipitation occurs in comparable quantities both in summer and winter but, given the high summer evaporation rates, runoff and groundwater recharge occurs mainly during winter.
Precipitation and vegetation were different in New Mexico during the ice ages, when Lake Estancia existed. From numerous proxy data (vegetation changes, rodent middens and glacier changes) it appears that during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) summers were colder than today, with less or no cooling during winter. During the LGM, precipitation may have increased around and south of the latitude of Lake Estancia, while it decreased north of it. As temperatures decreased by 10 degrees Celsius change (18 degrees Fahrenheit change) the snowline of the Manzano Mountains decreased by 1,000–1,500 meters (3,300–4,900 feet) and river flow increased. An interplay between climatic patterns such as the North American Monsoon and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, the effects of solar cycles and variations of the Laurentide Ice Sheet controlled the climate of the Southwestern United States during the Pleistocene and Holocene.
Lake Estancia is only one among several lakes in New Mexico that formed or expanded during the ice ages. During the LGM, tropical lakes had shrunk but water levels in lakes of Southwestern North America and Northern Africa rose. Rising water levels in Southwestern North America – including Lake Estancia – have been variously attributed either to increased precipitation from storm track changes induced by continental glaciation or to decreased evaporation. The exact timing of the highstands of Lake Estancia – during the LGM or during a warmer wetter period after the LGM – has also been debated.
## Biota
The fossil animal fauna at Lake Estancia is represented by Rancholabrean species. Fossils include ducks, the large horse Equus occidentalis and tiger salamander. There were mammoths at the lake, either after it dried up or during the "Lake Willard" stage. Based on pollen data, sagebrush grassland occurred around Lake Estancia, with pine-spruce woodland in the Manzano Mountains. Increased water availability probably allowed grazing animals to thrive around the lake.
Various fossils have been found in lake deposits, including algae, diatoms, foraminifera, gastropods, ostracods and pelecypods. During desiccation phases, mollusks disappeared and charophyte, ditch grass, Ruppia and stonewort grew in the wet soils and saltwater. Vegetation around the lake may have consisted of open parkland.
Fossils of cutthroat trout have been found in deposits left by Lake Estancia; it appears to be the only fish species that lived in the lake. It probably was most closely related either to cutthroat trout from the Pecos River east of the Estancia Valley or to an extinct middle Pleistocene trout from the San Luis Valley in Colorado. The fish was present in the lake during its freshwater stages, when streams running from the Sandia and Manzano Mountains into Lake Estancia formed a favorable environment for spawning. Presumably, the trout entered Lake Estancia during its overflow phases and survived its low water level phases in the lake's tributaries but were eventually wiped out during Holocene drought; no present-day reports of fish in the Estancia basin are known. According to an alternative theory, the trout could have been living in former tributaries of the Estancia Valley that headed in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains; these tributaries would have been later captured by the Rio Grande and Pecos River.
## Anthropology and scientific importance
Humans first arrived in the Estancia Basin during a period where Lake Estancia was dry, before the rebound of water levels that took place during the Younger Dryas. The last lake cycles of Lake Estancia coincide with the Folsom period of human culture in North America. Unlike the lake itself which offered no useful resources, the surrounding region and shores were likely favorable environments for human settlement; numerous points including Folsom points have been found close to the former shores and on lake terraces. The "Lucy site" and the "Martin site" are archeological sites in the Estancia Valley; both are located in spots where water was available. Long after the lake dried up, Spaniards reported that Pueblo people traded with salt from the lake basin and there were disputes between the Church and State in the 1660s about its exploitation.
### Research history and scientific significance
Evidence of the existence of former lakes in the Estancia Valley was first reported in 1903. Drill cores in lake sediments, landforms formed on the former shoreline and outcrops have yielded evidence of the basin's history, going back to the Illinoian glaciation. The paleoclimatic record of Lake Estancia is the best-studied in New Mexico, although different conclusions about precipitation and temperature during the ice age have been drawn from it. Compared to climatic records elsewhere in the Great Basin, the paleoclimate record of Lake Estancia is remarkably well preserved and has been used to infer general climate trends in the region as its large size allowed Lake Estancia to respond to regional climate changes. It also has a higher resolution and greater length than many other paleoclimate records. In contrast, little archeological research has focused on the lake's effects on human populations.
Older research published in 1989 indicates that during the early and middle Wisconsin glaciation, there was no freshwater lake in the Estancia Valley. Rather, saline and swampy environments were recorded from drill cores. Lake Estancia would have formed during the late Wisconsin as a saline lake and would have gone through three separate freshwater stages which would be part of the late Lake Estancia superstage. This third freshwater stage would have been the longest-lasting, followed by another freshwater stage, the "Lake Willard" stage, after a period of more saline conditions. The "Lake Willard" stage has yielded a date of 12,460 years; prior to this dating effort "Lake Willard" was considered to be about 8,000 years old and thus of Holocene age.
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24,893,115 |
Siege of Godesberg
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1583 siege during the Cologne War
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[
"1583 in military history",
"1583 in the Holy Roman Empire",
"Battles in North Rhine-Westphalia",
"Battles involving Bavaria",
"Conflicts in 1583",
"European wars of religion",
"Sieges involving the Holy Roman Empire"
] |
The siege of Godesberg, 18 November – 17 December 1583, was the first major siege of the Cologne War (1583–1589). Seeking to wrest control of an important fortification, Bavarian and mercenary soldiers surrounded the Godesberg, and the village then of the same name, now Bad Godesberg, located at its foot. On top of the mountain sat a formidable fortress, similarly named Godesburg, built in the early 13th century during a contest over the election of two competing archbishops.
Towering over the Rhine valley, the Godesburg's strategic position commanded the roads leading to and from Bonn, the Elector of Cologne's capital city, and Cologne, the region's economic powerhouse. Over time, the Electors strengthened its walls and heightened its towers. They added a small residence in the 14th century and the donjon (also called a Bergfried or keep) developed as a stronghold of the Electoral archives and valuables. By the mid-16th century, the Godesburg was considered nearly impregnable and had become a symbol of the dual power of the Prince-electors and Archbishops of Cologne, one of the wealthiest ecclesiastical territories in the Holy Roman Empire. The Cologne War, a feud between the Protestant Elector, Gebhard, Truchsess of Waldburg, and the Catholic Elector, Ernest of Bavaria, was yet another schismatic episode in the Electoral and archdiocesan history.
The Godesburg came under attack from Bavarian forces in November 1583. It resisted a lengthy cannonade by the attacking army; finally, sappers tunneled into the basalt core of the mountain, placed 680 kilograms (1,500 lb) of powder into the tunnel and blew up a significant part of the fortifications. The explosion killed many of the defending troops, but the resulting rubble impeded the attackers' progress, and the remaining defenders continued to offer staunch resistance. Only when some of the attackers entered the castle's inner courtyard through the latrine system were the Bavarians able to overcome their opponents. The Godesburg's commander and some surviving defenders took refuge in the keep; using prisoners held in the dungeons as hostages, the commander negotiated safe passage for himself, his wife and his lieutenant. The others who were left in the keep—men, women and children—were killed. Nearby Bonn fell to the Bavarians the following month.
## Background
The Cologne War, 1583–1589, was triggered by the 1582 conversion of the Archbishop-Prince Elector of Cologne, Gebhard, Truchsess of Waldburg, to Calvinism, and his subsequent marriage to Agnes of Mansfeld-Eisleben in 1583. When he refused to relinquish the Electorate, a faction of clerics in the Cologne Cathedral chapter elected another archbishop, Ernest of Bavaria, of the House of Wittelsbach.
Initially, troops of the competing Archbishops of Cologne fought for control of the Electorate; within a few months, the local feud between the two parties expanded to include supporters from the Electorate of the Palatinate on the Protestant side, and the Duchy of Bavaria on the Catholic side. Italian mercenaries hired with papal gold augmented the Catholic force. In 1586, the conflict expanded further, with direct involvement of the Spanish Netherlands for the Catholic side, and tertiary involvement from Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England on the Protestant side.
At its most fundamental, it was a local feud between two competing dynastic interests—the Seneschals (Truchsess) of the House of Waldburg and the dukes of the House of Wittelsbach—that acquired religious overtones. The dispute had broad implications in the political, social, and dynastic balance of the Holy Roman Empire. It tested the principle of ecclesiastical reservation established in the religious Peace of Augsburg (1555). The 1555 agreement settled religious problems in the Empire with the principle Cuius regio, eius religio: the subjects of a secular prince followed the religion of their sovereign. Ecclesiastical reservation excluded the territories of the imperial prelates (bishops, archbishops, abbots or abbesses) from cuius regio, eius religio. In an ecclesiastical territory, if the prelate changed his religion, his subjects did not have to do so. Instead, the prelate was expected to resign from his post. Problematically, the 1555 agreement did not specify this detail.
### Controversy of conversion
Agnes of Mansfeld-Eisleben was a Protestant canoness (meaning that she was a woman living in a religious community, but not bound by a perpetual vow) at a convent in Gerresheim, today a district of Düsseldorf. After 1579, she maintained a lengthy liaison with the Archbishop of Cologne, Gebhard of Waldburg-Trauchburg, Truchsess of Waldburg. In defense of her honor, two of her brothers convinced Gebhard to marry her, and Gebhard considered converting to Calvinism for her. Rumors spread throughout the Electorate of his possible conversion, and that he might refuse to relinquish his position. The Electorate had overcome similar problems. Hermann of Wied had converted to Protestantism and resigned in 1547. Salentin of Isenburg-Grenzau, Gebhard's immediate predecessor, had resigned upon his marriage. In December 1582, Gebhard announced his conversion and extended equal religious rights to Protestants in the Electorate. In February, he married Agnes. At the end of March 1583, the Pope excommunicated him. The Cathedral chapter promptly elected a new archbishop, Ernest of Bavaria.
With two competing archbishops, both claiming the see and the Electorate, the contenders and their supporters gathered the troops. In numbers, Ernest had the advantage. The Pope hired 5,000 mercenaries from the Farnese family to support the new Elector. Ernest's brother, the Duke of Bavaria, provided an army and Ernest arranged for his brother Ferdinand's army to take possession of the so-called Oberstift, the southern territory of the Electorate; his troops plundered many of its villages and towns.
With the support of Adolf von Neuenahr and the Count Solms, Gebhard secured some of the northern and eastern portions of the Electorate, where he held a geographical advantage in his proximity to the rebellious Dutch provinces. In the south, however, Ferdinand's troops hunted the soldiers Gebhard had left in possession of such Oberstift villages as Ahrweiler and Linz; Gebhard's troops were forced out of their strongholds, hunted through the countryside, and eventually captured. By the fall of 1583, most of the Oberstift had fallen to Ferdinand's army and many of Gebhard's erstwhile supporters—including his own brother—had returned home. In some cases, they honored parole agreements made after their capture. A strong supporter, Johann Casimir of Simmern, brother of the powerful Louis VI, Elector Palatine, returned to the Palatine when his brother died. Other supporters were frustrated by Gebhard's chronic inability to pay his troops, or intimidated by threats of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor. By late October 1583, most of the Oberstift had fallen, although he still held the Godesburg, located near the villages of Godesberg and Friesdorf, the formidable fortress at Bonn, and the fortified village of Poppelsdorf.
## Fortress
The Godesburg foundation stone was laid on 15 October 1210 upon the order of Dietrich of Hengebach, the Archbishop of Cologne, who was himself in disputed possession of the Electorate and fighting to keep his position. Although his competitors deposed Dietrich in 1212, his successors finished and enlarged the fortress; it featured in chronicles of the subsequent centuries as both a symbolic and physical embodiment of the power of the archbishop of Cologne in his many struggles for regional authority in secular and ecclesiastical matters. Furthermore, by the late 14th century, the fortress had become the repository of the Elector's valuables and archives. By the mid-16th century, with the inclusion of residential facilities, the castle was popularly considered the Lieblingssitz, or the favorite seat (home), of the Electors.
The fortification originally had been constructed in the medieval style. In the reign of Siegfried II of Westerburg (1275–1295), it successfully resisted a five-week siege by the Count of Cleves. Successive archbishops continued to improve the defenses with stronger walls, adding levels to the central Bergfried, which was cylindrical, not square like many medieval donjons. In addition to the construction of the small residence, these archbishops also expanded the inner works to include dungeons and a chapel; they fortified the walls with towers and crenelations, added a curtain wall, and improved the roads that led to the entrance in a series of switchbacks. By the 1580s, the Godesburg was not only the favorite residence of the Elector, but also an elaborate stone fortress. Although it retained some of its medieval character, it had been enhanced partially in the style made popular by Italian military architects. The physical location on the mountain did not permit the star-shaped trace italienne; nevertheless, the Godesburg's cordons of thick, rounded walls and massive iron-studded gates made its defenders formidable adversaries. Its height, some 120 meters (400 ft) above the Rhine on the peak of a steep hill, made artillery assault difficult. The approach road, with its hairpin turns, made battering rams impractical. The turns, overlooked by the castle wall, made foot assault dangerous and slow. Defenders could fire down on attackers from many angles.
Fortifications such as this, and the star-shaped fortresses more commonly found in the flatter lands of the Dutch Provinces, increasingly made 16th-century warfare both difficult and expensive; victory was not simply a matter of winning a battle over the enemy's army. Victory required traveling from one fortified and armed city to another and investing time and money in one of two outcomes. Ideally, a show of extraordinary force convinced city leaders to surrender. If the show of force did not intimidate a city, the alternative was an expensive siege that reduced the city to rubble and ended with storming the ruins. In the case of the former, when a city capitulated, it would have to quarter troops at its own expense, called execution, but the soldiers would not be permitted to plunder. In the case of the latter, no quarter would be given to the defenders and the victorious soldiers were released to pillage, plunder, and sack.
## Investment of the Godesburg
On 13–14 November, Ferdinand of Bavaria (Ernest's brother) and the Count of Arenberg took the Elector's castle at Poppelsdorf; on 18 November, they moved to attack the Godesburg. This fortress was considerably stronger than the one at Poppelsdorf and of supreme strategic importance for the projected attack on Bonn, the capital city of the Electorate.
The Godesburg was defended by Lieutenant Colonel Felix Buchner, Captain of the Guard Eduard Sudermann, a garrison of soldiers from the Netherlands, and a few cannons. Sudermann was a patrician from Cologne, and the son of Cologne's Bürgermeister (mayor) Dr. Heinrich Sudermann (1520–1591), a jurist and ambassador, and one of the most influential men in the imperial city and throughout the merchant capitals of the northern German states. According to contemporary sources, around 180 people lived in the facility, including peasants, the Dutch soldiers defending it, and an unknown number of women and children. The fortress was also home to several of Gebhard's prisoners. The Abbot of Heisterbach, Johann von St. Vith, had been taken prisoner in July 1583 when Sudermann's troops sacked several villages in the region and plundered the Heisterbach monastery. Other prisoners held in the Godesburg included Gebhard von Bothmer, the suffragan (auxiliary bishop) of Hildesheim, and Captain Ranucino from Florence, the captured commander of Deutz, across the Rhine from Cologne. To besiege the fortress, Ferdinand brought more than 400 Fussvolk (foot soldiers) and five squadrons of mounted soldiers, plus a half dozen heavy caliber cannons, called culverins. His soldiers, among them Spanish and Italian mercenaries, took up quarters in neighboring villages, a process accompanied by pillage, arson, murder and rape. On 18 November, the first day of the siege, Ferdinand sent a trumpeter and formally asked the fortress to surrender; the defending garrison replied that they had sworn their allegiance to Gebhard and would fight to the death for him.
### Cannonade (18–28 November 1583)
In response, Ferdinand took control of the village at the foot of the mountain and encircled the site. He surveyed the locale for two days to identify the most promising angle of attack. The customary equipage of siege warfare—the siege tower, the trebuchet, and the crossbow—would be ineffective. The distance between the curtain wall and the valley floor and the angle of the hill placed the Godesburg out of range. The besiegers had no choice but to use expensive artillery, although the angle would decrease its effectiveness. Ferdinand initially placed three cannons at the foot of the mountain, in Godesberg village. Daily, cannonballs and mortar shells smashed against the castle's walls. Nightly, the defenders repaired the damage. At the following sunrise, the assault began anew. Ferdinand's cannons were ineffective against the fortification, as were his mortars; in the course of the cannonade, return fire even managed to destroy a few of his own pieces. From his place of safety in the north, Gebhard understood well the potential of the loss of the Godesburg, yet he was relatively helpless to help his garrison. In an effort to garner financial support from the Protestant states, in November 1583 he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in London: "Verily, the Roman Antichrist moves every stone to oppress us and our churches ..."
Although financial help from the English was not forthcoming, Ferdinand could not break the defenses. On 28 November, ten days after the beginning of the siege, artillery fire had wasted several thousand pounds of powder in the ineffectual bombardment. Ferdinand moved his cannons to an elevated position in a hillside vineyard to the west of the Godesburg. The height offered a more advantageous trajectory with which to fire on the walls of the Godesburg's outer ward. Within a few hours, his cannonade had breached them. Ferdinand sent three Italian experts to examine the breach and to advise him on the next step; the Italians, having come under fire during their examination, concluded that storming the castle would incur many casualties. The defenders still had the advantage of height and would be able to shoot at attackers from multiple towers and defensive positions inside the walls. Ferdinand decided not to pursue this tactic. Unable to storm the castle, Ferdinand considered two options: abandon the siege, which he could not do, or blow up the fortress. This option of last resort usually made a fortress unusable. Furthermore, while he considered his options, the defenders repaired the breaches caused by the cannonade and reinforced the walls, making them even stronger than they had been. The defenders also removed the roof of the St. Michael's Chapel in the castle's outer ward, filled the chapel with dirt to reinforce its walls, and placed some of their artillery pieces within the walls.
### Sapping (completed 16 December 1583)
Ferdinand reluctantly ordered saps to be dug into the side of the mountain. The sapping was difficult and dangerous and the sappers worked under continuous attack from the castle's defenders, who fired on them with small arms and the castle's artillery and dropped rocks and debris on their heads. The forced labor of local peasants minimized losses among Ferdinand's own troops, but many of the peasants perished in the effort.
On 6 December, the sappers reached the south-eastern side of the fortress's outermost wall and then spent another ten days undermining the basalt on which the castle stood; they completed their work on 16 December and placed 680 kilograms (1,500 lb) of powder into the mine. Ferdinand reported on the siege's progress in a letter to his older brother, Duke Wilhelm, dated 15 December 1583: "The fortress stands on solid rock. ...[Y]esterday we had reached the outer wall of the castle, and in a day or two we hope to send the fortress into the sky."
### Destruction of the fortress (17 December 1583)
On 17 December, Ferdinand again asked the castle's defenders to surrender. They replied that they did not know the meaning of the word and would hold the Godesburg to the last man. A report dated 23 December 1583 relates that, having given Ferdinand a rude reply, the defenders went back to lunch.
Ferdinand ordered 400 men to enter the saps; these men would storm the castle once the mine had been detonated. The remainder of his cavalry and foot soldiers were to wait in the fields below. Some sources assert that the fuse was lit at around 1:00 pm, although the 19th-century local historian Heinrich Joseph Floß argued that these sources are mistaken, and that the explosion clearly occurred in the morning. All sources agree that the explosion, with a dreadful crack, propelled chunks of the towers and walls high into the air. Almost half the Godesburg collapsed instantly. According to a newspaper report dated 13 January 1584, debris raining on the valley below damaged several houses, and destroyed some of them completely.
Amidst the flames and rubble, Arenberg's and Ferdinand's troops tried to storm the castle, but found their way blocked by masses of debris created by their own explosives. Furthermore, although close to half of the garrison had perished in the explosion and subsequent collapse of the fortifications, those who remained offered staunch resistance by throwing rocks on the approaching attackers, causing a large number of casualties. In frustration, 40 or 50 of the attackers tied together two ladders and crawled through the sluice-ways of the garderobe (latrines) that emptied on the hillside, thus gaining access to the interior of the castle. There they killed around 20 of the defenders in fierce fighting; the remaining defenders, approximately 70 men, among them Buchner and Sudermann, the garrison commander and his lieutenant, sought refuge in the castle's keep. In this way, Ferdinand's infantry at last gained unopposed access to the fortress. Storming the castle had taken about two hours.
Out of options, Buchner opened negotiations, using those interned in the castle as hostages. Presenting them at the keep's door, he made clear that they would be killed unless Ferdinand promised to spare his, his wife's and Sudermann's lives. Ferdinand acceded to Buchner's demand; some sources maintain that the Abbot of Heisterbach, one of the prisoners, had been treated decently by Buchner throughout his imprisonment in the castle and himself asked for Buchner's life to be spared. The prisoners were released. With much difficulty, given the state of mind of the besiegers, Ferdinand and Arenberg brought the Buchners and Sudermann out of the castle alive. Once the Buchners, Sudermann, and the hostages were clear of the fortress, Ferdinand released his troops, who were in an ugly mood and hungry for blood and plunder. All those who remained in the keep—soldiers, men, women and children—were killed, some inside the keep, some in the courtyard below; the slaughter lasted well into the night. The castle's 178 dead were buried in two mass graves whose locations remain unknown. Among those who perished in the destruction and storming of the castle was also one of the prisoners, a vicar from Hildesheim. The Hildesheim suffragan, too, was not among the rescued prisoners; he had died during his incarceration, a short while before the castle was stormed.
Gebhard lost an important stronghold in the Oberstift and Ernest's forces had acquired a ruin. The residence was unusable, and the fortifications were mere rubble. The keep had survived the blast and various armies used it as a watch tower in the Thirty Years' War. Ernest's troops, under his brother's command, saturated the region, and the 7.3 kilometers (4.5 mi) between Godesberg and Bonn bore a greater resemblance to a military camp than to a road. Walloon riders and squadrons of Italian cavalry, paid for by the pope, galloped back and forth. Forty companies of infantry trudged toward Bonn, including Walloons and Bavarians. They looked forward to besieging Bonn, the Elector's capital city, to which they laid siege on 21 December 1583, and which they took on 28 January 1584.
## Aftermath
The siege of the Godesburg and its subsequent destruction were a mere taste of things to come. It was the first of many sieges in the Cologne War, and the castle's fall eventually led to the fall not just of Bonn, but of several other principal towns and cities in the Electorate of Cologne: Hülchrath, Neuss and Werl. Several smaller fortified towns such as Gelsenkirchen, Unkel and Brühl were also either heavily damaged or destroyed before, during and after the siege. In addition to damage to the towns and cities, Ernest's supporters managed to restrict imports and exports to and from the Electorate, not only crippling Gebhard's financial resources but resulting in economic hardship for the inhabitants.
Advances in military architecture over the previous century had led to the construction or enhancement of fortresses that could withstand the pounding of cannonballs and mortar shells. For both Gebhard and Ernest, winning the war required mobilizing enough men to encircle a seemingly endless array of enemy artillery fortresses. These could be protected with relatively small garrisons, but taking them required both expensive artillery and enough men to storm the battlements. Furthermore, the victor had to maintain and defend all his possessions as they were acquired. Even the ruin of the Godesburg required a garrison and a defensive strategy; as a strategic point on the north–south road from Bonn to Koblenz, it came under siege in 1586 and again in 1588. The Cologne War, similar to the Dutch Revolt, was not a war of assembled armies facing each other on a field, but a war of artillery sieges. It required men who could operate the machinery of war, which meant extensive economic resources for soldiers to build and operate the siege works, and a political and military will to keep the machinery of war operating.
The destruction of so prominent a fortress was also news. When Frans Hogenberg and Georg Braun compiled their Civitates Orbis Terrarum, a collection of important scenes and locales, they included Hogenberg's engraving of its destruction as not only an important sight, but an important event. Hogenberg lived in Bonn and Cologne in 1583, and likely saw the site himself. After overwhelming the Godesburg, the Bavarians found a large marble slab in the ruins: the castle's foundation stone, which had been displaced by the explosion. The stone is a block of black marble with a Latin inscription commemorating the construction of the fortress by Dietrich I von Hengebach in 1210: ANNO · D(OMI)NI · M·C·C·X · GUDENSBERG · FUNDATUM · E(ST) · A · TEODERICO · EP(ISCOP)O · I(N) · DIE · MAUROR(UM) · M(A)R(TYRUM). A gold inscription was added to the back of the stone, noting that it had been found "on the very top of the blasted wall." Ferdinand took the stone to Munich, where it was kept in a museum beside a fresco painting in an arcade commemorating the siege. Today, the foundation stone is in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn.
### Long-term consequences
Gebhard's eventual defeat changed the balance of power in the Electoral College of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1589, Ernest of Bavaria became uncontested Prince-elector of Cologne, the first Wittelsbach to hold the position. Wittelsbach authority in northwestern German territories endured until the mid-18th century, with the election of a succession of Bavarian princes to the archbishop's throne and to the Prince-Elector's seat. This gave the family two voices in the choice of imperial candidates, which had ramifications in the 18th century. In 1740, Charles Albert, Duke of Bavaria, laid claim to the imperial title; his brother Klemens August of Bavaria, then the Archbishop and Prince-elector, cast his vote for Charles and personally crowned him at Frankfurt. The shift of the emperor's orb from the House of Habsburg to the Wittelsbach family, albeit a brief event, was only resolved by the ascension of Maximilian III Joseph who, with the Treaty of Füssen, eschewed any imperial pretensions.
Gebhard's defeat also changed the religious balance in the northwestern states. Although the Peace of Augsburg (1555) had addressed earlier the problem of religious pluralism, the solution potentially converted simple, and usually local, legal disputes into dynastic and religious warfare, as the Cologne War itself demonstrated. The result of the Cologne War gave the Counter Reformation a foothold in the lower Rhine. Ernest was a product of Jesuit education. Once his position was secured, he invited Jesuits into the territory to help re-establish Catholicism, a task which the Order approached zealously. They ejected Protestant pastors from parishes, sometimes by force, and re-established catechism education and pastoral visitations. Even when communities appeared to be reconverted, the Jesuits maintained strict supervision to identify recalcitrant Protestants or backsliders. The Jesuit reintroduction of Catholicism postponed the solution of Germany's religious problems for another half century.
Finally, the German tradition of local and regional autonomy created structural and cultural differences in the Holy Roman Empire, compared to the increasingly centralized authority of such other European states as France, England, and Spain. The unabashed intervention of Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, English and Scots mercenaries in the war, as well as the influence of papal gold, changed the dynamic of internal German confessional and dynastic disputes. The great "players" of the Early Modern European political stage realized that they could enhance their own positions vis-a-vis one another by assisting, promoting or undermining local and regional competition among the German princes, as they did in the feud between Gebhard and Ernest. Conversely, German princes, dukes, and counts realized that they could acquire an edge over their competitors by promoting the interests of powerful neighbors.
The scale of involvement of such external mercenary armies as Spain's Army of Flanders set a precedent that internationalized contests of local autonomy and religious issues in the German states, a problem not settled until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Despite that settlement, German states remained vulnerable to both external intervention and religious division, as they were in the Cologne War.
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47,986,340 |
History of York City F.C. (1980–present)
| 1,164,011,555 |
History of an English football club from 1980 on
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[
"History of association football clubs in England",
"York City F.C."
] |
York City Football Club is a professional association football club based in York, North Yorkshire, England. Its history from the 1980–81 to the current season saw fluctuating fortunes in the 1980s and 1990s, and relegations from the Football League.
York made their seventh re-election bid after 1980–81, before the club won its first and only league title after finishing first in the Fourth Division in 1983–84 with 101 points. They were the first team to score this many points in a Football League season. After four seasons in the Third Division, York were relegated in 1987–88, statistically the club's worst Football League season. They beat Crewe Alexandra on penalties at Wembley Stadium in the play-off final in 1992–93, winning promotion back to the third tier of English football, now renamed as the Second Division. The following season, York competed in the play-off semi-final, when they were beaten by Stockport County. Later in the 1990s, they knocked Premier League teams Manchester United and Everton out of the League Cup in successive seasons. After six seasons, York were relegated to the Third Division in 1998–99. In the following years, the club experienced financial troubles; chairman Douglas Craig offered the club and its ground for sale in December 2001.
The club was bought by John Batchelor in March 2002, but the following December they went into administration. In March 2003, York were taken over by the Supporters' Trust, and were relegated to the Conference National in 2003–04, ending 75 years of Football League membership. The team were unsuccessful in the play-offs in the 2006–07 and 2009–10 seasons, and were beaten at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium in the 2009 FA Trophy final. In 2011–12, York defeated Newport County at Wembley Stadium in the 2012 FA Trophy final, and shortly after returned to the Football League with a win over Luton Town in the play-off final. In their second season in League Two, the club reached the play-offs but were knocked out in the semi-final by Fleetwood Town. After four years back in the Football League, York were relegated to the National League in 2015–16. They were relegated to the National League North the following season, but won the FA Trophy after beating Macclesfield Town in the 2017 final.
## 1980–1998: Fourth Division championship and first play-off success
The 1980–81 season started comfortably for York City, and the team were 14th in the table by mid January 1981. However, 3 wins from the last 18 matches saw them finish in bottom place. York's seventh application for re-election was successful with 46 votes. Poor form at home contributed to York occupying the bottom half of the table for most of 1981–82, with a club record of 12 successive home matches without a win set. Barry Lyons was dismissed as manager in December 1981, and the club dropped into the bottom four under the caretaker management of Kevin Randall. Former York player and club director Barry Swallow took over as caretaker manager in March 1982, and several convincing home wins toward the end of the season helped the team to 17th place. Denis Smith, who had played on loan from Stoke City the previous season, was appointed player-manager in May 1982, with Viv Busby as his assistant player-coach. York finished 1982–83 in seventh place; their inconsistent away form in the last half of the season led to them missing out on promotion. The club occupied one of the top two places in 1983–84 from the second week of the season onwards, and won the Fourth Division championship with 101 points. They became the first team to achieve a three-figure points total in a Football League season. The Yorkshire Evening Press billed them the "Team of the Century". York set new club records for most wins (31), most away wins (13) and most goals (91). For the first time since 1954–55, York had two players score over 20 league goals in a season; these were John Byrne and Keith Walwyn. A profit of almost £15,000 was posted and the club aspired to further progress and promotion.
Winning six of their first eight matches in 1984–85, York were top of the Third Division by early October 1984. After a run of 2 wins from 11 matches, they slipped to 11th place in mid December 1984, though they continued to occupy a top half position before finishing the season in eighth place. In January 1985, York beat First Division team Arsenal 1–0 at home in the FA Cup fourth round, courtesy of a late penalty scored by Keith Houchen. They reached the fifth round for the third time and drew 1–1 at home to European Cup holders Liverpool. They lost 7–0 in the replay at Anfield—the club's record cup defeat. York started 1985–86 well and were second in the table by late November 1985, before a poor midseason spell saw them drop into midtable. After being unbeaten in the last nine matches, they finished seventh in the table, marking the fifth consecutive season in which York's end-of-season league placing improved. They reached the FA Cup fifth round for the second consecutive season, again drawing 1–1 at home to Liverpool, before losing 3–1 after extra time at Anfield. York made a strong start to 1986–87, and in late September 1986 they were in second place. They won only 7 of their remaining 38 matches and needed a point from their last match to avoid the danger of relegation, which they achieved with a 1–1 draw against Notts County. York finished 1986–87 in 20th place.
Smith left to take over at Sunderland in May 1987, and former Blackburn Rovers manager Bobby Saxton was appointed in June. Only two players were under contract at the time of Saxton's arrival; his hastily arranged squad struggled from the start of 1987–88, and only won their first match in late October 1987. York were bottom of the table for most of the season, and were relegated after finishing in 23rd place. The season was statistically the club's worst in the Football League, with the fewest wins (8), most defeats (29) and the fewest points since the three points for a win system was introduced (33). York made a poor start to 1988–89, and Saxton resigned with the club bottom of the Fourth Division in mid September 1988. Swallow took over on a caretaker basis before the former Hartlepool United manager John Bird was appointed in October 1988. York's away form improved in the second half of the season, and in the last week they had a slim chance of reaching the play-offs. They missed out on a play-off place and finished the season in 11th place. A record loss of £190,000 was posted for the season, but the club carried no overdraft because of interest-free loans from directors and a £100,000 share issue. York started 1989–90 strongly and were in third place by mid December 1989. Successive home defeats in late December 1989 marked the start of a decline that saw them finish the season 13th in the table.
In September 1990, York player David Longhurst collapsed and died after suffering heart failure during a home match against Lincoln City. A few months later, a newly built, covered stand at the Shipton Street End of Bootham Crescent was named after him. York were the Fourth Division's second lowest scorers in 1990–91, as they finished 21st in the table. Douglas Craig, who had been on the board since 1978, succeeded Michael Sinclair as chairman in June 1991. York had won 2 of 11 matches by mid October 1991; Bird was dismissed and was replaced in November by Aston Villa assistant manager John Ward. York continued to be placed in lower midtable, and finished fourth from bottom for the second year running in 1991–92. They started 1992–93 with a club-record start of four wins, and led the table until late December 1992. Ward left for Bristol Rovers in March 1993, shortly after a midseason slump in which York won only 1 of 13 matches. Ward's assistant Alan Little took over and York finished the season in fourth place. They played Bury in the play-off semi-final, drawing the first leg 0–0 at Gigg Lane before winning the second leg 1–0 at home with a goal from Gary Swann. In the final at Wembley Stadium, York beat Crewe Alexandra 5–3 on penalties, after the score had finished 1–1 after extra time. Wayne Hall scored the decisive penalty as York won promotion to the third tier, now named the Second Division after the formation of the Premier League in 1992.
York made a good start to 1993–94, before a series of poor results saw them slip to 17th place in late November 1993. They lost only 5 of their last 30 fixtures to finish the season fifth in the Second Division table—their highest league placing since 1976. They lost to Stockport County in the play-off semi-final, being beaten 1–0 in the second leg at Edgeley Park after drawing 0–0 at home in the first leg. York were in lower midtable for the first half of 1994–95, but improving form saw them move up the table, before finishing in ninth place. They struggled through most of 1995–96, and only avoided relegation by winning their last match away to Brighton & Hove Albion; they finished in 20th place. This season saw York record a 4–3 aggregate victory over Manchester United in the League Cup second round. York defeated a strong United team including some younger players 3–0 at Old Trafford in the first leg; in the second leg, United fielded some more experienced players, and despite losing 3–1, York progressed on aggregate. United went on to win the Premier League and FA Cup double. York finished 20th in 1996–97, only securing safety in the penultimate match with an away win over Rotherham United. For the second consecutive season, they eliminated Premier League opponents from the League Cup in the second round, with a 4–3 aggregate win over Everton. After drawing the first leg 1–1 at Goodison Park, York progressed after winning the second leg 3–2 at home. In mid December 1997, York were fourth in the table, but declining form after New Year saw them finish 1997–98 in 16th place.
## 1998–2010: Financial problems and relegation from Football League
By mid October 1998, York were placed eighth in the Second Division. They slipped to the bottom third of the table after winning 1 point from a possible 21. Despite improved results over Christmas, York played 11 consecutive matches without a win. In mid March 1999, the club was just above the bottom four places, when Little was dismissed and player-coach Neil Thompson appointed caretaker manager. A flurry of transfers, including the departure of leading scorer Richard Cresswell to Premier League club Sheffield Wednesday for a club-record fee of £950,000, followed. After losing away to Manchester City on the last day of 1998–99, York dropped into the bottom four for the first time that season, and were relegated in 21st place. The club's trading loss for the season was £483,096, despite a record profit of £1,274,202 from lucrative transfers. Club historian David Batters said, "the stark reality was that the club had to sell to survive". In July 1999, the club and its real property assets, including the ground, were transferred to a holding company called Bootham Crescent Holdings (BCH) for £165,000. Thompson was dismissed in February 2000 after a run of 1 win from 12 matches during the middle of 1999–2000. Former Hull City manager Terry Dolan took over, and York finished the season in 20th place after conceding only 5 goals in the last 12 matches. Losses for the season were £667,255, and the wage bill of £1,635,736 was twice that of 1995.
By mid February 2001, York were bottom of the Third Division table, but after losing only 2 of their last 16 matches they finished 2000–01 in 17th. They reached the FA Cup third round for the second time since 1986, but were beaten 3–0 by Premier League team Leicester City at Filbert Street. Record losses of £1,261,038 were reported in November 2001, before Craig announced in December that the club and the ground had been put up for sale for £4.5 million. Craig later said Bootham Crescent would close by June 2002, and the club would resign from the Football League if a buyer was not found. The club was taken over by motor racing driver John Batchelor in March 2002. He pledged to give the Supporters' Trust (ST) two seats on the board and announced a sponsorship deal with Persimmon that would see an undisclosed amount split between the club and his racing team. By late March 2002, York were second from bottom, before a run of five wins from the last eight matches saw them finish 2001–02 in 14th place. They reached the FA Cup fourth round for the first time since 1986, losing 2–0 at home to Premier League team Fulham.
In May 2002, the club was rebranded York City Soccer Club as part of Batchelor's plan to market it in the United States. Persimmon, which had bought 10% of the shares in BCH, submitted planning applications for 93 homes on the site of Bootham Crescent, and Batchelor spoke of building York a new stadium at Clifton Moor. The club entered a creditors' voluntary agreement in November 2002, and the York Evening Press said York had been "plunged into the darkest, coldest days of its history". The club went into administration in December 2002, and was given five weeks to find a buyer or face bankruptcy. The ST donated £92,000 to give the club a temporary reprieve. The ST took control over the club in March 2003 after the Inland Revenue accepted an offer of £100,000 as payment for £160,000 owed in tax. Steve Beck became the new chairman. Batchelor had diverted almost all of the £400,000 Persimmon sponsorship money away from York to his racing team, and his promise of having ST members on the board never materialised. He left the club with a profit of £120,000 and admitted to asset stripping during his time as owner. Despite the off-field problems, York pushed for promotion in 2002–03 and were in an automatic promotion place by late March 2003. They won none of their last six matches and finished the season in 10th place.
Dolan was dismissed in May 2003, the new board citing financial reasons for his departure. At 27 years, York player Chris Brass was appointed player-manager in June 2003, which made him the youngest Football League managerial appointment since 1946. The club's lease of Bootham Crescent was extended to May 2004, and plans proceeded to develop Huntington Stadium ahead of a possible move, but problems bringing the ground to Football League standards were encountered. The board preferred to stay at Bootham Crescent, and they bought the site in February 2004 after six months of negotiations. The deal came after York were lent £2 million by The Football Stadia Improvement Fund (FSIF), with which they bought 75.89% of BCH shares and all of the 20,000 shares owned by Persimmon. Once plans for a new stadium were settled, the loan would be converted a grant to help fund the move. York equalled a club record by winning the first four matches of 2003–04, and by mid January 2004 were 10th in the table. They won none of their final 20 fixtures, garnering only five more points as they finished bottom of the Third Division. York were relegated to the Conference National after 75 years of Football League membership. Beck renounced his title of chairman in September 2004 because he favoured a more democratic approach for a fan-owned club. The board was restructured and Jason McGill became the managing director.
In November 2004, Brass was dismissed after a home defeat to Forest Green Rovers, which left York fourth from the bottom of the table. His assistant Viv Busby took over as caretaker manager before former Derby County coach Billy McEwan was appointed in February 2005. Under McEwan, York avoided relegation to the Conference North, with a 17th-place finish in 2004–05. One-third into 2005–06, York were in second place but poor midseason results saw them slide down the table. They pushed for the play-offs after six consecutive wins but finished in eighth place after faltering in the run-in. With 22 goals, Andy Bishop was the Conference National top scorer in 2005–06. Financial problems arose again; a loss of £150,000 was reported for the season, and there were problems meeting the first annual payment of £100,000 to the FSIF. McGill's company JM Packaging made a proposal to the ST to become majority shareholders, and would lend the club £650,000 to cover the current losses and meet the loan repayments for the next five years. ST members approved the proposal in June 2006, and JM Packaging became 75% shareholders, reducing the ST's previous 85% ownership to 25%. York made a good start to 2006–07, and were never out of the top five from early November 2006. They finished the season in fourth place and played Morecambe in the play-off semi-final; after drawing 0–0 at home in the first leg, they were beaten 2–1 at Christie Park in the second leg.
York started 2007–08 by losing 7 of their first 10 matches. Despite improving form, their home results remained poor, leading to McEwan's dismissal in November 2007. He was succeeded by his assistant Colin Walker, after the team won five of his six matches as caretaker manager. York finished the season in 14th place, and reached the semi-final of the FA Trophy, losing 2–1 on aggregate to Torquay United. In May 2008, City of York Council announced its commitment to build a community stadium, to be used by York and the city's rugby league club, York City Knights. An agreement with the FSIF was reached in September 2008; the club would stop making loan repayments and would repay the outstanding amount once Bootham Crescent was sold. At the start of 2008–09, York won only 5 of their 19 league matches, resulting in Walker's dismissal in November 2008. Under his replacement, former Port Vale manager Martin Foyle, the team avoided relegation in the penultimate match of the season against Weymouth, and they finished 17th in the table. York participated in the 2009 FA Trophy final at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium, where they were beaten 2–0 by Stevenage Borough. After starting 2009–10 with only one win from five matches, York won eight successive matches in a bid for promotion. They finished in fifth place and faced Luton Town in the play-off semi-final, winning each leg 1–0. However, they were beaten 3–1 by Oxford United at Wembley Stadium in the final. They reached the FA Cup third round that season, and were beaten 3–1 by Premier League team Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium. Richard Brodie was the Conference Premier joint top scorer in 2009–10, with 26 goals.
## 2010–present: Return to and relegation from Football League
After winning only 3 of their first 10 matches of 2010–11, Foyle resigned as manager in September 2010, and was replaced with Tamworth manager Gary Mills the following month. Improving form saw York challenge for the play-offs, and by mid March 2011 they were sixth in the table—one place away from a play-off spot. They won only 3 of 10 matches in the run-in and missed out on the play-offs to finish the season in eighth place. York reached the FA Cup third round for the second consecutive year, and lost 2–0 to Premier League team Bolton Wanderers at the Reebok Stadium. York won three of the opening seven matches in 2011–12 and were only once below a play-off place from early October 2011, finishing the season in fourth place. Playing a passing style of football but producing results when needed, they earned 83 points that season—the second highest in the club's history. York drew 1–1 at home to Mansfield Town in the play-off semi-final first leg and won the second leg 1–0 after extra time at Field Mill. They then beat Newport County 2–0 at Wembley Stadium in the 2012 FA Trophy final, which was the first time the club had won a national knockout competition. A week later, they returned to Wembley Stadium for the play-off final, beating Luton Town 2–1, with goals from Ashley Chambers and Matty Blair. The club was promoted to League Two, returning to the Football League after an eight-year absence. In between the two matches, City of York Council granted planning permission for a new community stadium to be built at Monks Cross.
York started 2012–13 by winning 4 of 14 matches, and were ninth in the table by late October 2012. They dropped down the table in the following months, but were still in contention for a play-off place after beating Burton Albion 3–0 in the New Year. After this match, York failed to win in 11 consecutive matches, and Mills was dismissed in March 2013 after a 2–0 home defeat to Bradford City. Under his replacement, former Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington, York avoided relegation by winning four of their last five matches. They finished their first League Two season in 17th place. York won only 4 of their first 23 matches of 2013–14, and were third from the bottom of the table by late December 2013. A number of influential signings in January 2014 helped York improve their form, and from early February they were unbeaten in 17 consecutive matches, conceding no goals from open play. York finished in seventh place and played Fleetwood Town in the play-off semi-final. After losing the first leg 1–0 at home, York drew 0–0 at Highbury Stadium in the second leg. Worthington resigned as manager in October 2014 after York won only 1 of their opening 14 matches of 2014–15. He was succeeded by former Scunthorpe United manager Russ Wilcox. York remained in the lower reaches of the table. They avoided relegation with a late-season run of four wins from five matches, finishing the season in 18th place.
With York 21st in the table after a nine-match run without a league win, Wilcox was dismissed in October 2015. He was succeeded in November 2015 by the former Dundee United manager Jackie McNamara. York won only another five matches in 2015–16, and were relegated to the National League in bottom place. This heralded the end of a four-year return in the Football League, and Dave Flett of The Press argued that McNamara would "always be held most accountable for the second-worst campaign, points wise, in the club's 94-year history". In October 2016, Gary Mills returned as manager, shortly after his dismissal by Wrexham. York were 19th in the table, after starting 2016–17 with only 3 wins from 15 matches. They spent much of the coming months in the relegation zone, before Mills' rebuilt squad went on a run of six wins from nine matches to be above the relegation zone with three fixtures remaining. However, York were relegated to the National League North for the first time on the last day of the season, after a 2–2 home draw with Forest Green Rovers. They finished in 21st place, one point from safety. However, York won the FA Trophy for the second time in 2016–17, beating Macclesfield Town 3–2 at Wembley Stadium in the 2017 final.
Following a defeat to South Shields in the FA Cup third qualifying round, Mills was dismissed as York's manager. They were seventh in the National League North, 11 points from the only automatic promotion place. His replacement was Martin Gray, transferring from York's divisional rivals Darlington. In 2021, the Minstermen moved into the York Community Stadium, playing their first match at the new ground on 16 February 2021.
In the 2021–22 season, York finished the season in 5th place, qualifying for the play-offs. The club had previously been mid-table before Steve Watson was sacked and replaced by John Askey in March 2022. The Minstermen defeated Chorley by 2–1 in the play-off quarter-final before beating Brackley Town in the semi-final. York were promoted after defeating Boston United 2–0 in the play-off final to return to the fifth tier thanks to goals by Lenell John-Lewis and Maziyar Kouhyar. The ST purchased JM Packaging's 75% share of the club in July 2022 to regain its 100% shareholding, before transferring 51% of those shares to businessman Glen Henderson, who took over as chairman of the club.
In November 2022, Askey was sacked, which was described by The Press as a shock decision with the club in 12th place in the National League. Both Henderson and Askey confirmed that there had been off-field disagreements between the pair prior to the dismissal. York would be dragged into a relegation battle following Askey's departure and only narrowly survived in 19th place, three points above the relegation zone. At the end of the season, 394 Sports Ltd (led by the Uggla family) acquired a 51% majority stake of the football club.
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20,803,077 |
Ernie Toshack with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948
| 1,130,133,052 |
Australian cricketer's role in a pivotal test match series in 1948
|
[
"The Invincibles (cricket)"
] |
Ernie Toshack was a member of Donald Bradman's famous Australian cricket team, which toured England in 1948 and was undefeated in their 34 matches. This unprecedented feat by a Test side touring England earned Bradman's men the sobriquet The Invincibles.
A left-arm medium-pace seam bowler, Toshack was a member of the first-choice team, and played in the first four Test matches before succumbing to a persistent knee injury. Toshack contained the English batsmen with leg theory in between the new ball bursts of Keith Miller and Ray Lindwall. He took 11 wickets in the Tests; his most notable performance was the 5/40 he took in the second innings of the Second Test at Lord's. However, his knee failed in the first innings of the Fourth Test when he took 1/112. He was unable to bowl in the second innings and missed the Fifth Test, marking the end of his Test career.
For the entire tour, Toshack took 50 first-class wickets at a bowling average of 21.12 with four five-wicket innings hauls, including a best of 7/81 against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane. He also took 6/51 in the first innings of the match against the Marylebone Cricket Club, who were almost entirely represented by English Test cricketers, playing a key part in an innings victory. With little batting ability, Toshack usually batted last in Australia's line-up and scored 78 runs at a batting average of 8.66, the worst first-class aggregate and average among the tourists. However, in the Tests, he was dismissed only once and averaged 51.00 with a series of tail-wagging performances, including his career best of 20 not out.
## Background
A left-arm medium-pacer, Toshack made his first-class cricket debut in the 1945–46 upon the resumption of cricket after World War II. His performances were enough to ensure his selection for the tour of New Zealand in early 1946, where Toshack made his Test debut in the one-off match against the hosts' national team. From then on, Toshack was a regular member of the national team and played in every Test over the next two summers, fitness permitting. Toshack played in eight of the 11 Tests during this period, taking 36 wickets. Towards the end of the Test series against India in 1947–48 in Australia, knee injuries began to hamper Toshack, and he was in doubt for the 1948 tour of England. He only made the trip after a 3–2 majority vote by a medical panel, despite being one of the first players chosen by the selectors on cricketing merit. Two Melbourne doctors ruled him unfit, but three specialists from his home state of New South Wales presented a more optimistic outlook; this allowed him to tour. As a member of Bradman's Invincibles, the tour was to immortalise him in cricketing history. He grew tired of signing autographs during the sea voyage to England, and entrusted a friend with the task. However, his friend was unaware of the correct spelling of his name; as a result, there are still sheets in circulation signed Toshak. The team manager Keith Johnson gave Toshack a talking to over this incident.
## Early tour matches
Australia traditionally fielded its first-choice team in the tour opener, which was customarily against Worcestershire. Toshack was included, reinforcing the new ball attack of Lindwall and Miller and the off spin and leg spin of Ian Johnson and Colin McCool respectively. Australia bowled first, and Toshack took two quick wickets to reduce the hosts to 3/158 after a 137-run second wicket partnership. Toshack ended with 2/39 as Australia dismissed Worcestershire for 233. He was not required to bat as Australia made 8/462 declared, and then took 1/40 in the second innings as the tourists started their campaign with an innings victory, setting the tone for the summer.
Toshack was then rested for the second tour match against Leicestershire, which Australia won by an innings. He then missed the next match against Yorkshire, as Australia came closest to losing a match on the tour, scraping home by four wickets on a damp wicket.
Toshack returned as the Australians travelled to London to play Surrey at The Oval, and he had his first outing with the bat on English soil, coming in last and scoring eight to help wicket-keeper Don Tallon add 33 for the final wicket before Australia were bowled out for 632. Toshack bowled without success in the first innings and took one wicket in the second innings, that of Arthur McIntyre, to end with match figures of 1/54 as Surrey were defeated by an innings. Toshack then took 2/32 in the first innings against Cambridge University, and did not bat as Australia declared at 4/414. He then took 0/9 from eight overs in the second innings, as Australia completed another innings victory. He then played in the match against Essex where Australia made 721 runs on the first day to set a new world record for the most runs scored in a day of first-class cricket. However, Toshack only contributed four runs batting at No. 11. In the first innings, Toshack took the last five wickets to fall, including the top-scorer Ray Smith for 25, ending with 5/31 from 10.5 overs as the hosts capitulated for 83, unable to cope with his swing. Australia enforced the follow on and Toshack took a further 2/50 in the second innings as Australia won by an innings and 451 runs, the largest margin of the tour. He then faced Oxford University, scoring two runs in Australia's 431. Toshack then took three lower order wickets in the first innings to end with 3/34 from 22 overs, sending down more overs than any other Australian. He took 3/37 in the second innings as Australia completed another innings victory after enforcing the follow on. The Oxford batsmen had trouble with the seam movement of Toshack.
Toshack was retained for the match against the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's. The MCC fielded seven players who would represent England in the Tests, and were basically a full strength Test team, while Australia fielded their first-choice team. It was a chance to gain a psychological advantage, with Len Hutton, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich, three of England's first four batsmen in the Tests, all playing. Toshack was the last man in and made two, accompanying Lindwall in a 20-run final wicket stand as Australia totalled 552.
After the MCC had reached 2/91, Toshack broke through the middle order. He had Compton caught behind by Don Tallon for 26, before trapping the incoming batsman Martin Donnelly—a New Zealand Test player—leg before wicket for five, and then having Hutton caught by vice-captain Lindsay Hassett for 52 a run later, leaving the hosts at 5/104. After the hosts recovered to 6/148, Toshack removed Test all rounder Ken Cranston, Test wicket-keeper Billy Griffith and spinner Jack Young to leave the MCC at 9/166. The MCC were eventually dismissed for 189, conceding a first innings lead of 363 runs. Toshack had taken 6/51 from 27 overs, and Bradman only allowed him four overs of rest. The Australian captain opted to enforce the follow on and allowed Toshack a lighter load in the second innings, bowling 15 overs and taking 1/43. He removed Edrich as the MCC fell for 205 in 60.2 overs to lose by an innings and 158 runs. Toshack had sent down the most overs by any Australian bowler in both innings. Bradman regarded Toshack's first innings performance as his best of the tour. Toshack again focused on the leg stump, which some English observers decried as being negative. However, former Australian Test batsman Jack Fingleton said that Toshack's line was close enough to leg stump that most balls had to be played.
In the next match against Lancashire, Toshack made four in Australia's 204, before claiming both openers after they had put on 48, including Test batsman Cyril Washbrook. Toshack ended with 2/40 as the match ended in a draw after the first day was washed out. It was Australia's first non-victory of the tour. After six consecutive matches in the space of 21 days, Toshack was rested for the next two matches against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge and Hampshire; the matches ended in a draw and an eight-wicket Australian win respectively.
Toshack returned for the final county match against Sussex before the First Test. He did not take a wicket but pinned down the local batsmen as Lindwall blasted them out with match figures of 11/59. Eight of Lindwall's victims had their stumps knocked over. Toshack bowled 15 overs for 23 runs in the first innings as the hosts were skittled for 86. He did not bat as Australia made 5/549 and then returned in the second innings for 17 overs that yielded only three scoring shots for a total of six runs. He finished the match with a total of 0/29 from 32 overs.
## First Test
Toshack's performance in the First Test at Trent Bridge was a quiet one, taking a single wicket in each innings. England won the toss and elected to bat. Toshack trapped the home captain Norman Yardley leg before wicket with a ball that straightened after pitching, ending with 1/28 as England were bowled out for 165. Toshack then came to the wicket at 9/476 and was involved in an aggressive final wicket partnership of 33 with Johnston, scoring 19 runs—his best at Test level to date—in just 18 minutes, batting in a carefree and freewheeling manner, before falling lbw to Alec Bedser, ending Australia's innings on 509 with a 344-run lead.
During the second innings, Bradman thought that rain might come so he utilised Toshack to bowl defensive leg theory. He did so to slow the scoring so that England would not have a lead by the time the rain came to create a sticky wicket, otherwise Australia would have been forced to chase a target on a difficult pitch with irregular bounce and pace. As the umpires were obliged to not call off play unless the light was so poor as endanger the batsman, the lack of pace of Johnson and Toshack forced proceedings to continue as they posed no injury threat to the batsmen. Early on the fourth morning, Toshack were able to make the ball deviate regularly while bowling to Hutton and Denis Compton, but Bradman opted to have Miller take the new ball in the fifth over of the day as soon as it was available, taking Toshack off. Later, Toshack was used defensively while Miller attacked from the other end. Bradman's response to a boundary being hit from Toshack was to further stack the leg side with fielders in defensive positions, and scoring was slow as Toshack bowled accurately. Toshack took the wicket of Joe Hardstaff junior for 43, who holed out to Hassett on the leg side, having supported Denis Compton in a partnership of 93. The ball looped up in the air and travelled half-way to the square leg boundary, but Hassett managed to keep track of its trajectory through the fog. Toshack ended with 1/60 from 33 overs as Australia were one bowler short after an injury to Lindwall had prevented him from bowling since the first afternoon. England were bowled out for 441 and Australia reached the target of 98 with eight wickets in hand.
Toshack was rested for the first tour match after the First Test against Northamptonshire, which Australia won by an innings. He returned against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, making four as Australia batted first and scored 249. He then recorded the best innings analysis of his first-class career, taking 7/81 from 40 consecutive overs, bemusing the Yorkshire spectators with his Australian accent and distinctive "Ow Wizz Ee" appealing. He removed both openers, including Hutton, and then bowled Yorkshire and England captain Norman Yardley to leave the hosts at 3/107. After Yorkshire reached 4/149, Toshack took four more wickets as the hosts collapsed to be all out for 206. Wicket-keeper Ron Saggers stood up to the wickets and stumped Ted Lester before Toshack removed three lower-order batsmen. Toshack did not bat or bowl again as the match petered into a draw. Bradman decided to bat until late on the third afternoon and secure a draw instead of pressing for a win; Yorkshire only batted for 27 overs in their second innings and the crowd booed Bradman for not pursuing a victory. With the match safe, Bradman elected to rely mainly on his second-choice bowlers to conserve his frontline bowlers' energy for the next Test.
## Second Test
Australia won the toss and batted first in the Second Test at Lord's. They were on the back foot at 7/258 at stumps on the first day. On the second morning, the Australian lower order counter-attacked; Toshack joined Johnston with the score at 9/320 and they put on 30 runs before Johnston was stumped. Australia regained the momentum, adding 92 runs in 66 minutes of hitting in the morning. One sequence of two overs from Edrich was taken for 28 runs, with many balls unintentionally spooned over the slips or the covers. Both players swung wildly at the ball, which often went in vastly different directions to where they had aimed their shots. Both made new Test best scores; Toshack scored 20 not out. Both Johnston and Toshack—not known for their batting ability—played without inhibitions, joyfully revelling in their luck. England were then bowled out for 215. Toshack was wicketless, but was the most economical of the bowlers, conceding only 23 runs from his 18 overs. Toshack operated after the first new ball was taken, and as England had fallen to 4/46, they played him cautiously in an attempt to rebuild the innings. Australia then declared at 7/460 in their second innings with Toshack not required to bat, leaving England a target of 596.
England progressed to 1/52 in their run-chase before a double strike by Toshack. Edrich and Washbrook fell in quick succession to leave England at 3/65. Edrich edged to Johnson low down in the slips and Tallon took a difficult catch to remove Washbrook. Edrich decided to stand his ground after the catch was taken, thinking that he may have hit a bump ball into the ground before it flew to Johnson, but the umpire ruled otherwise and gave him out. Washbrook inside edged a Toshack full toss directly downwards at Tallon's ankle. Bradman described the catch as "miraculous" because Tallon had to reach so low, so quickly, in order to complete the catch. English commentator John Arlott speculated that Edrich and Washbrook may have lost concentration after Lindwall was replaced by Toshack, lulled into a false sense of security once Australia's leading bowler was no longer operating. England then recovered to be 3/106 at stumps on the fourth day.
Yardley and Tom Dollery took the score to 4/133 on the final morning before Toshack bowled the former for 11. He then trapped Alec Coxon two balls later in the same over for a duck, leaving England at 6/133. Coxon shuffled across his stumps and missed his first delivery, which hit him in front of the stumps and prompted a loud lbw appeal, and did the same thing to the next ball, and the umpire upheld the Australians' second appeal. During this spell, Toshack conceded only seven runs from eight overs, but was taken off as Bradman wanted to take the new ball and utilise Lindwall and Johnston. The match ended when Doug Wright hit Toshack to Lindwall and England were bowled out for 186, sealing a 409-run win for Australia. Toshack ended with 5/40 from 20.1 overs with Miller unable to bowl due to injury. During the second innings performance, Toshack employed two short legs and a silly mid-off. Arlott said that while Toshack had the best figures, Lindwall was the pivotal figure, at the latter "so patently disturbed Hutton he struck a blow at the morale of the English batting that was never overcome."
A match against Surrey started the day after the Second Test ended, but Bradman nevertheless asked Toshack to bowl 20 overs as Surrey batted first. He took 2/76 including opposition captain Errol Holmes. In reply to the hosts' 221, Toshack made one in Australia's total of 389. He then removed Arthur McIntyre and Eric Bedser in the second innings and ended with 2/29 as Australia won by ten wickets. Toshack was then rested after playing 12 days of cricket in two weeks, missing the innings victory over Gloucestershire.
## Third Test
Toshack had a moderately successful Third Test, in which England elected to bat first. England lost two early wickets, and when Toshack came on, Jack Crapp repeatedly defended a sequence of deliveries to Arthur Morris at silly point. As the hosts were in trouble, they played cautiously and Toshack's first five overs were all maidens. Crapp then hit Toshack to Sid Barnes at short leg, but the catch was dropped. However, Crapp did not capitalise as Toshack conceded only eight runs in a sequence of eight overs.
Halfway through the day, England fell to 5/119, and captain Yardley came in. He hit Toshack in the air, but Barnes was unable to complete the reflex catch at short leg. However, this error did not cost many runs. Yardley lofted Toshack into the on-side and the hands of Johnson at forward square leg to fall for 22 with the score at 6/141. Toshack's defensive bowling had caused the English skipper to lose patience and his departure for 22 left the score on 141/6. Toshack bowled Dick Pollard late in the innings to finish with 2/75 from 41 overs—including 20 maidens—as England ended with 363. Toshack was unbeaten on zero and was only at the crease for one minute as Australia replied with 221. In the second innings, Toshack removed Compton for a duck, caught in the slips by Miller, and ended with 1/26 as the rain-affected match ended in a draw. He also had Washbrook dropped in the slips cordon by Johnson, one of several times that the batsman was reprieved during the innings.
After bowling 53 overs in the Third Test, Toshack was rested for the match against Middlesex. It was the only tour match before the Fourth Test, and Australia won by ten wickets.
## Fourth Test
Toshack's knee injury flared again in the Fourth Test at Headingley after England elected to bat. On the first morning, England opener Len Hutton edged Toshack through the slips and was then dropped on 25. Hutton eventually reached 81 as the opening pair put on 168. Toshack was wicketless as the hosts closed the first day at 2/268. The following morning, he was removed from the attack after night-watchman Bedser hit him for three consecutive fours. After the lunch break, Toshack bowled Jack Crapp with an inside-edged half volley for five to leave England at 5/447. Toshack ended with an ineffective 1/112 from 35 overs as England made 496. He was the most expensive and uneconomical of the frontline bowlers and it was his most uneconomical performance in the Tests. He aggravated his knee injury and was later taken to London for cartilage surgery, ending his bowling duties for the match and his Test career.
Late on the third day, Toshack was part of a rearguard Australian action that minimised England's first innings lead. He came to the crease at 9/403 to accompany Lindwall, featuring in a 55-run stand and lasting the final 50 minutes until stumps, with Johnston running for him. Australia were 9/457 at stumps, with Lindwall on 76 and Toshack on 12. Lindwall farmed the strike by trying to hit boundaries and twos during the over, but Yardley did not resort to the tactic of setting a deep field to yield a single to Lindwall to get Toshack on strike. Despite Toshack and Johnston's lack of familiarity with having and acting as a runner respectively, and the resulting disorders in running between the wickets, Lindwall was able to manipulate the strike so that he faced most of the balls. On the next morning of play, Toshack did not add to his score before Lindwall was dismissed and Australia ended at 458 in the third over of the day, leaving the tourists 38 runs in arrears on the first innings. Toshack did not bowl in the second innings as England made 8/365 and set Australia a target of 404 for victory on the last day. Australia achieved the runs with seven wickets in hand, setting a new world record for the highest successful run-chase in Tests.
After the injury at Headingley, Toshack was out of action for two weeks, missing the matches against Derbyshire, Glamorgan and Warwickshire. These fixtures ended in an innings victory, a rain-affected draw and a nine-wicket win respectively. He returned against Lancashire and scored two in Australia's 321. He then bowled seven overs in the first innings, taking 0/17. He aggravated his injury and did not bowl in the second innings and did not play again for the tour. As a result, Toshack missed the last Test and eight further tour matches, three of which were not first-class. Australia won the Fifth Test by an innings in Toshack's absence to win the series 4–0, and proceeded through the remaining tour matches undefeated.
## Role
A left-arm medium-pace seamer, Toshack was a member of Bradman's first-choice team and he played in the first four Tests before being struck down by a persistent knee injury. Toshack contained the English batsmen using leg theory in between the new ball bursts of Miller and Lindwall, usually bowling second change after Miller, Lindwall and Johnston. The English press decried Toshack's style of bowling as negative, but Jack Fingleton said that "he is generally so close to the stumps that nearly every ball has to be played".
During the Tests, Toshack took 11 wickets at 33.09; his most notable performance was his 5/40 in the second innings of the Second Test at Lord's. Of the four frontline pacemen, Toshack had the second best economy rate, although with his leg stump bowling, he also had a strike rate of 94.45, while the other three fast bowlers all had strike rates below 70. It was a similar tale in the first-class statistics, with the second best economy among the seven frontline bowlers, but the worst strike rate. For the entire tour, Toshack took 50 wickets at 21.12 with four five-wicket innings hauls, including a best of 7/81 against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane. He also took 6/51 in the first innings of the match against the Marylebone Cricket Club, which was almost entirely represented by English Test cricketers. Toshack took two catches on tour, none of them in the Tests.
An inept batsman with an average of 5.78 in his first-class career, Toshack managed a Test average of 51.00 on the 1948 tour after being dismissed only once, behind only Arthur Morris, Sid Barnes, Bradman and Neil Harvey. The unbeaten 20 he managed in the Lord's Test was his best first-class score, made in a freewheeling tenth-wicket stand with Johnston.
During the tour, Toshack had few opportunities with the bat, invariably being placed at either No. 10 and No. 11 in the order alongside Johnston, another tailender with little batting ability.<sup>N-</sup> Neither player ever passed 30 in their career, and they were the only two players who failed to make a half-century during the tour. As Australia's other specialist bowlers were Lindwall, McCool, Johnson and Doug Ring, all of whom made centuries and more than 18 fifties each during their first-class career, Toshack and Johnston were invariably rooted at the bottom of the order. As Australia often won by an innings, and declared in the first innings many times due to their batting strength, Toshack only had 12 innings in his 15 first-class fixtures, never batted in the second innings, and scored 78 runs at 8.66. Of the 78 runs, 51 came from four Test innings in Toshack's four Tests.
Due to the fragility of his knee, Toshack was used sparingly in the tour games, playing in only 11 of the 29 non-Test matches on the tour, the least of any player. Toshack was unable to play in the last nine matches of the tour, having injured himself in the second match against Lancashire.
## See also
- 1948 Ashes series
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Hurricane Hazel
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Category 4 Atlantic hurricane in 1954
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[
"1954 Atlantic hurricane season",
"1954 disasters in Canada",
"1954 in Canada",
"1954 meteorology",
"1954 natural disasters in the United States",
"Category 4 Atlantic hurricanes",
"History of British Grenada",
"History of Toronto",
"Hurricane Hazel",
"Hurricanes in Canada",
"Hurricanes in Grenada",
"Hurricanes in Haiti",
"Hurricanes in Maryland",
"Hurricanes in New York (state)",
"Hurricanes in North Carolina",
"Hurricanes in Pennsylvania",
"Hurricanes in South Carolina",
"Hurricanes in Virginia",
"Hurricanes in Washington, D.C.",
"Hurricanes in West Virginia",
"Hurricanes in the ABC Islands",
"Natural disasters in Ontario",
"Retired Atlantic hurricanes"
] |
Hurricane Hazel was the deadliest, second-costliest, and most intense hurricane of the 1954 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm killed at least 469 people in Haiti before it struck the United States near the border between North and South Carolina as a Category 4 hurricane. After causing 95 fatalities in the US, Hazel struck Canada as an extratropical storm, which raised the death toll by 81 people, mostly in Toronto. As a result of the high death toll and the damage caused by Hazel, its name was retired from use for North Atlantic hurricanes.
In Haiti, Hazel destroyed 40 percent of the coffee trees and 50 percent of the cacao crop, which affected the economy for several years. The hurricane made landfall near Calabash, North Carolina, and destroyed most waterfront dwellings. It then traveled north along the Atlantic coast. Hazel affected Virginia; Washington, D.C.; West Virginia; Maryland; Delaware; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; and New York. It brought gusts near 160 km/h (100 mph) and caused \$281 million (1954 USD) in damage. When it was over Pennsylvania, Hazel consolidated with a cold front and turned northwest towards Canada. When it hit Ontario as an extratropical storm, rivers and streams in and around Toronto overflowed their banks, which caused severe flooding. As a result, many residential areas in the local floodplains, such as the Raymore Drive area, were subsequently converted to parkland. In Canada alone, over C\$135 million (: C\$ billion) of damage was incurred.
The effects of Hazel were particularly unprecedented in Toronto because of a combination of heavy rainfall during the preceding weeks, a lack of experience in dealing with hurricanes, and the storm's unexpected retention of power despite traveling 1,100 km (680 mi) over land. The storm stalled over the Toronto area, and although it was now extratropical, it remained as powerful as a category 1 hurricane. To help with the cleanup, 800 members of the military were summoned, and a Hurricane Relief Fund was established that distributed \$5.1 million (: \$ million) in aid.
## Meteorological history
On October 5, a tropical wave with tropical-storm force winds was approaching the Lesser Antilles. Due to the potential for tropical storm formation, a Hurricane Hunters plane flew from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to investigate the system. When the plane reached the system, they observed a tropical cyclone about 30 mi (48 km) east of the island of Grenada with winds estimated at 100 mph (160 km/h). The United States Weather Bureau promptly classified the system as Hurricane Hazel. The Atlantic hurricane reanalysis later assessed that Hazel developed at 06:00 UTC on October 5 about 220 mi (350 km) east of Grenada. Although the Hurricane Hunters observed hurricane-force winds, the storm had a small eye 5 mi (8.0 km) in diameter and a central barometric pressure of 1,002 mbar (29.6 inHg). The 100 mph (160 km/h) winds were therefore revised downward to 65 mph (105 km/h) late on October 5, though it was estimated that the storm attained hurricane status at 00:00 UTC on October 6. At the same time, Hazel made landfall on Grenada with winds of 75 mph (121 km/h).
After entering the Caribbean Sea, Hazel continued to present a small eye and wind diameter. The winds gradually increased as the storm moved westward, parallel to the northern coast of Venezuela. On October 8, the tiny eye increased to a diameter of 29 mi (47 km), while the winds reached 85 mph (137 km/h), although winds were estimated as high as 125 mph (201 km/h). That day, the Hurricane Hunters encountered severe turbulence, which hospitalized one crew member and injured another. For the next five days, there were no further flights into the core of the hurricane; However, the planes continued to monitor the storm, with radar imagery indicating that the eye became open and ragged. Late on October 9, it is estimated Hazel intensified into a major hurricane with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). Originally, it was estimated that Hazel attained these winds the day prior. The intensification was confirmed on October 10, when aircraft noted a well-defined eye on radar imagery.
On October 10, Hazel slowed in the central Caribbean and turned sharply to the north-northeast toward Hispaniola, steered by an upper-level low. At 09:00 UTC on October 12, the hurricane made landfall near Chardonnières along the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti as a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. There were no strong wind readings at landfall, but based on previous radar and aircraft observations the sustained winds were officially estimated at 120 mph (190 km/h). After moving through the Gulf of Gonâve, Hazel struck northwestern Haiti near Baie-de-Henne at 00:00 UTC on October 13, as a Category 2 hurricane with winds estimated at 100 mph (160 km/h). Around that time, the hurricane curved more to the north and northwest due to an approaching trough, and the Hurricane Hunters resumed entering the center of Hazel, reporting an eye and hurricane force winds. At 14:00 UTC on October 13, Hazel struck Inagua in the Bahamas with winds of 100 mph (160 km/h).
After affecting the Bahamas, Hazel accelerated northwest toward the southeastern United States, steered between a trough and a ridge. Hurricanes are generally expected to lose power after going north of Florida due to lower water temperatures. However, Hazel restrengthened as it tracked northward over the Gulf Stream. The Hurricane Hunters were unable to observe the core of the storm until it neared land, reporting an eye 18 mi (29 km) in diameter on October 15. Later that day, a ship just off South Carolina reported a central pressure of 938 mbar (27.7 inHg), which was the lowest in association with the hurricane. At 15:30 UTC on October 15, Hazel made landfall just west of the North Carolina/South Carolina border with a 40 mi (64 km) eye, slightly northeast of Myrtle Beach in the latter state. Based on the pressure, a larger than average size, and the fast forward movement, the landfall intensity was estimated at 130 mph (210 km/h), or a Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
The eye of Hazel was tracked across several towns in North Carolina as the system continued northward. At 18:00 UTC on October 15, the hurricane became extratropical near Raleigh, and within six hours had passed near Washington, D.C. Its extratropical remnants accelerated to the north through Pennsylvania and New York along an extended cold front. Despite widespread observations across the eastern United States, there continues to be uncertainty in the track of Hazel as an extratropical storm. The Canadian weather service maintains that the original circulation dissipated over western Pennsylvania and a new one formed over western New York. In contrast, the U.S. Hurricane Research Division later assessed the circulation as becoming elongated but continuous. On October 16, the storm crossed into Ontario and over the Toronto region. Shortly thereafter, the former Hurricane Hazel dropped to gale-force winds after moving almost 1,000 km (620 mi) over land. The storm slowed and turned northward, passing over James Bay early on October 17. After turning to the northeast, into what is today known as the Kativik region of extreme northern Quebec, the remnants of Hazel were absorbed by a larger extratropical storm over Canada on October 18.
## Preparations
On October 6, small craft warnings were issued for the Dutch islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao, despite predictions that Hazel would pass to the north; these warnings were canceled a day later. After the storm had turned northward, tropical cyclone warnings were posted for Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the waters of the Mona Passage. Small craft near Jamaica were advised to head for port ahead of the storm. The U.S. Navy completed extensive preparations at its Guantanamo Bay base, ordering about 1,000 civilians into hardened, fortified Quonset huts, flying aircraft out of the storm's path, and positioning surface ships out at sea.
Then, on October 14, the United States Weather Bureau issued a warning for the Carolinas, with the caveat that the worst of the hurricane was expected to stay offshore. Instead, the storm took a sharp northwest turn and headed toward land. By evening of the same day, the storm was forecast to make landfall near the Carolinas border. Further forecasts expected Hazel to lose its power and dissipate over the Allegheny Mountains.
In her book Hurricane Hazel, Canadian journalist Betty Kennedy argued that in Canada, the impressions that Hazel was "the best-kept secret in town" and that it was a "fully documented meteorological event that should have taken nobody by surprise" both "paradoxically [...] contain a great deal of truth". Meteorologists predicted that if Hazel merged with the cold front, the storm would not lose intensity, but would instead potentially strengthen. Two Special Weather Bulletins were issued by the Dominion Weather Office, but since it was expected that the storm would pass east of Toronto, few other warnings were given and there were no evacuations, which increased the eventual property damage and loss of life. The forecast called for high winds between 65 and 80 km/h (40 and 50 mph), with only occasional showers. On lakes Erie and Ontario, ships received warnings of strong winds, and the predicted wind speeds ranged from 65 to 120 km/h (40 to 75 mph). Toronto Hydro had called in standby crews as heavy winds were forecast, although they were almost sent home at one point due to a lull in the storm.
There had been significant rainfall in the Toronto area in the two weeks prior to Hazel, so the ground was already saturated. Few people in Canada had any experience with hurricanes, since it was unheard of for them to travel as far north and inland as Toronto. Kennedy also notes that if "Toronto had been about to face a blizzard, or was threatened by a 14-inch [36-cm] snowfall, that [sic] would have been something understandable. [...] This was different. This was the unknown, the unfamiliar, the totally unexpected crisis. Hurricanes belonged in the tropics."
## Impact
### Caribbean
On October 8, two crew members on reconnaissance aircraft were injured due to turbulence while observing Hazel; one was severely enough injured to require hospitalisation. The ABC Islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, located north of Venezuela, received rough winds and rains of up to 9.8 inches (250 mm) when the intensifying cyclone passed to the north. Flash flooding in Aruba and Curaçao destroyed a bridge and several water dams and resulted in losses of \$350,000 (1954 USD). Puerto Rico suffered its worst flooding since 1899 as a result of the hurricane. Due to timely warnings, only nine people were killed (eight by drowning and one by a landslide), but infrastructure, buildings, and agricultural areas suffered serious damage, and over 11,000 people were evacuated from flooded areas.
In Haiti, Hazel brought flash floods which destroyed numerous villages, and high winds which caused considerable damage to major cities. The death toll was estimated to be as high as 1,000 people; most of the casualties drowned when the water flowed in a flood down the mountains, some of which were as high as 2,400 m (8,000 ft). The situation was exacerbated by deforestation, which lessened the ability of the soil to hold water. Haiti's South Peninsula took the brunt of the storm: the largest town, Aux Cayes, reported at least 200 casualties, while the second-largest town of Jérémie was reported to have been washed in the sea, with at least 200 more casualties. Damage in Aux Cayes was estimated to be \$500,000 (1954 USD). Estimates of people left homeless in the wake of Hazel are as high as 100,000. Hazel destroyed about 40 percent of the coffee trees and 50 percent of the cacao crop, affecting the country's economy for several years. Objects from Haiti, such as bowls, were reported to have been transported by the hurricane to the Carolinian coast.
West of Haiti, the hurricane brought hurricane-force winds to Cuba. A fisherman on the eastern tip of Cuba was killed by rough seas while trying to secure his boats. Since the hurricane passed largely east of the Bahamas, only minor damage was reported there. Hazel passed directly over Inagua, where it claimed six lives when a sailboat capsized while taking shelter from the storm.
### United States
In South Carolina, the storm produced 10–11 ft (3.0–3.4 m) tides along the coast. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, including about 80 percent of waterfront dwellings in Myrtle Beach. As a result of the high storm surge, the low-lying sandy barrier islands were completely flooded. Two piers in Myrtle Beach were damaged. In North Myrtle Beach, a three-story hotel and an 800 ft (240 m) pier were washed out to sea. At Cherry Grove Beach, 75 residences were demolished, while at Pawleys Island, 40 homes were destroyed, while numerous others were damaged. One death occurred in South Carolina. Damage in the state totaled about \$27 million.
At landfall, the hurricane brought a storm surge of over 5.5 m (18 ft) to a large area of coastline, producing severe coastal damage; the damage was greater since the hurricane coincided with the highest lunar tide of the year. Brunswick County, North Carolina, suffered the heaviest damage, where most coastal dwellings were either destroyed or severely damaged. For example, in Long Beach, North Carolina, only five of the 357 buildings were left standing. The official report from the Weather Bureau in Raleigh, North Carolina stated that as a result of Hazel, "all traces of civilization on the immediate waterfront between the state line and Cape Fear were practically annihilated." According to NOAA, "every pier in a distance of 170 miles [270 kilometres] of coastline was demolished".
At the Raleigh-Durham Airport in North Carolina, gusts of 90 mph (140 km/h) were recorded; in surrounding cities, including Kinston, Goldsboro, and Faison, wind gusts were estimated to have reached 120 mph (190 km/h). With such high winds state-wide, heavy damage was caused to forests, and to property as a result of falling trees. However, since the Carolinas, like the rest of the Southeastern United States, were suffering from a severe drought, the heavy rainfall brought by Hazel was welcome. In North Carolina, the most rain was received in the interior of the state: Robbins received 286 mm (11.3 in) of rain, and Carthage received 247 mm (9.7 in).
Nineteen people were killed in North Carolina, with several hundred more injured; 15,000 homes were destroyed and another 39,000 were damaged. The number of people left homeless by the storm was "uncounted thousands". Damages in the Carolinas amounted to \$163 million, with \$61 million incurred by beachfront property. Total damage in the United States ranged from \$281 million to \$308 million.
While Hazel caused the most damage in the Carolinas, the storm did not lose all of its intensity. Going north, Hazel turned extratropical by midday when it merged with a cold front; however, it retained hurricane-strength winds and it continued to drop heavy rainfall.
In Virginia, wind gusts of over 100 mph (160 km/h) were observed at the Weather Bureau office in Norfolk. Roofs were blown off, trees and power lines were toppled, windows were shattered, and awnings were torn. The naval station suffered mainly minor damage to its temporary installations. The tugboat Indian, carrying five barges, sank in the James River; four of the eight crew members drowned. One building was demolished and several others were damaged in Portsmouth. The ferry Princess Anne was beached into the docks at Kiptopeke. An unfinished vessel at the Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News broke from its moorings and was swept into the shore of the James River. The roof of the customs house was detached and landed on the street. In Richmond, 200 store fronts were damaged, while part of the steeple at Trinity Methodist Church was toppled. Additionally, a 150 ft (46 m) microwave tower in Warsaw was knocked over. Approximately 50 percent of residents in Virginia lost telephone and electrical service for six days. The storm damaged approximately 18,000 homes and businesses. Overall, there were 12 deaths and about \$15 million in damage.
After North Carolina, the storm went through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. In general, power was knocked out and trees were downed. Wind gusts throughout the area reached 160 km/h (99 mph). Effects of the storm was able to break the incomplete battleship USS Kentucky from its moorings when she was based in Philadelphia Naval Shipyard as a parts ship, resulting in her running aground.
Though not near the center, a gust of 182 km/h (113 mph) was recorded in Battery Park, the highest wind speed ever recorded within the municipal boundaries of New York City.
Rain amounts were heavier on the western side of the storm. In West Virginia, the average amount of rain received was 230 mm (9 in) with localized amounts of 300 mm (12 in) reported in the Appalachians. To the north in Pittsburgh, only 90 mm (3.5 in) of rain was reported.
To the east, the Washington, D.C. area was particularly affected, and considerable flooding was reported in the Virginias and Maryland. Much of the grounds of the Naval Academy in Annapolis were flooded, putting midshipmen to work the next day to clean up the debris. New Jersey escaped major flooding as the high tide was low enough, but to the south in Chesapeake Bay, the majority of crab pots were destroyed. Hazel lost a considerable amount of moisture when crossing the Allegheny Mountains, which raised rivers and streams in the Pittsburgh area significantly above the flood mark. In Pennsylvania, the winds were still high enough to unroof several homes.
In upstate New York, the storm blocked highways and railroads. The 491-foot (150 m) tower of television station WTVE in Elmira was toppled by wind gusts; the station was off the air for 19 months.
### Canada
After weeks of unusually high rainfall saturated the Greater Toronto Area, Hazel dropped additional rainfall, peaking at 8.4 in (214 mm) in Snelgrove, Ontario. In three hours, the city received 3.5 in (90 mm) of precipitation. Most of these rains ran off into rivers and creeks of Toronto, which raised water levels by as much as 20–26 ft (6–8 m). Not built to withstand heavy flooding, Toronto's infrastructure took a heavy hit: over 50 bridges, many parts of important highways, as well as numerous roads and railways were destroyed when the high water washed them out or carried debris and smashed them.
Floodwaters slowly rose in Holland Marsh – a bowl-shaped valley near Bradford – allowing people to escape to the town. Highway 400, which passes through the marsh, was under as much as 10 ft (3 m) of water in some places when as much 6 m (20 ft) of water backed up. Much of the crops in the area were either swept away or ruined. After the water pumps failed due to debris, better equipment allowed the Holland Marsh to be drained by November 13. The Humber River in the west end of Toronto caused the most destruction as a result of an intense flash flood after most minor rivers and creeks drained into it. A team of five volunteer firefighters were killed when their fire truck was swept away as they were responding to help a stranded motorist. Communities in the Humber floodplain were devastated. In Woodbridge, the river swelled from its usual width of 20 m (66 ft) at its narrowest point to 107 m (351 ft), and left hundreds homeless and nine dead. The Humber swept away 366 m (1,201 ft) of Raymore Drive and 14 nearby homes, killing 35 people out of the 81 Canadian fatalities. The rise of the river was unprecedented and the residents did not evacuate, which led to the high death toll. The Etobicoke Creek also overflowed its banks at the village of Long Branch, killing seven people after many dwellings were swept into Lake Ontario.
The death toll of 81 people has not since been equaled by a natural disaster in Canada. In addition to the casualties, over 4,000 families were left homeless. The Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada estimates the total cost of Hurricane Hazel for Canada, taking into account long-term effects such as economic disruption, the cost of lost property, and recovery costs, to be C\$1.03 billion.
## Aftermath
### Haiti
In the aftermath of Hazel, a three-day period of national mourning was declared in Haiti for hurricane victims. With existing infrastructure already poor, the recovery was very slow since many of the few existing roads were blocked, and communications equipment was either out, damaged, or destroyed. The Haitian Red Cross appealed for assistance to the International Red Cross, while the American Red Cross made a donation of \$25,000 (1954 USD). Pan American World Airways offered the use of its planes to assist with the delivery of aid, and the US aircraft carrier USS Saipan deployed 18 helicopters to help deliver supplies. Despite the relief effort, there was an outbreak of typhoid fever following Hazel due to a lack of clean water.
### United States
In the Carolinas, the National Guard was mobilised by the evening of October 15 to prevent looting along affected areas of the coastline. On October 17, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared a "major disaster" in the Carolinas, and offered "immediate and unlimited federal assistance." Recovery was quick, and by October 24, all but two units were demobilised. Another concern was the rebuilding of the sand dunes along waterfronts. An artificial sand dune barrier, 39 km (24 mi) long, was completed by October 30, which in the long run led to a more rapid natural build-up of larger dunes. With Myrtle Beach a popular tourist destination, the Chamber of Commerce began an information campaign to inform the public, which might have erroneously concluded from the massive media coverage that the city had been destroyed, that the city would be ready for the coming summer. The rebuilding after the partial destruction would transform Myrtle Beach from a "quaint summer colony to a high-rise resort city".
### Canada
The army sent about 800 soldiers to Toronto to assist with the cleanup, providing blankets and mattresses. Toronto residents helped out with the relief effort: the Salvation Army received so many donations of clothes, footwear, blankets, food, and money that its storage facilities were overfilled, forcing it to advise against further donations until they were needed. A Hurricane Relief Fund was established to coordinate financial donations, ultimately raising about \$5.3 million (CAD). The fund received donations from organisations, companies, and individuals including Pope Pius XII, the Ford Motor Company of Canada, the United Church of Canada, Laura Secord Candy Shops, and the British-American Oil Company. A portion of the fund was set aside as a contingency reserve in the event of unresolved claims and also toward administrative expenses.
The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority was created after the storm to manage the area's floodplains and rivers, such as building dams. The heavily flooded areas were expropriated and barred from having homes, and most of the land was later converted into an extensive park system along Toronto's rivers. A footbridge dedicated to the victims crosses the Humber River in Raymore Park, which was the former Raymore Drive.
### Retirement
As a result of the catastrophic damage and severe death tolls in the Caribbean, United States and Canada, the name Hazel was retired, and will never again be used for an Atlantic hurricane. However, since it was retired before the inception of naming lists with the modern six-year cycle, it has not been directly replaced with any particular name.
## See also
- List of North Carolina hurricanes (1950–1979)
- List of Canadian hurricanes
- Hurricane Sandy – A similar storm in 2012 with an unusual and complicated track due to baroclinic interactions.
- Hurricane Matthew – A storm which took a similar track in the Caribbean in 2016.
- Hurricane Fiona - Another Category 4 storm that majorly impacted Canada as well.
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Jim Lovell
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American astronaut (born 1928)
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James Arthur Lovell Jr. (/ˈlʌvəl/ LUV-əl; born March 25, 1928) is an American retired astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became, with Frank Borman and William Anders, one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970 which, after a critical failure en route, circled the Moon and returned safely to Earth.
A graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in the class of 1952, Lovell flew F2H Banshee night fighters. This included a Western Pacific deployment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La. In January 1958, he entered a six-month test pilot training course at the Naval Air Test Center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, with Class 20 and graduated at the top of the class. He was then assigned to Electronics Test, working with radar, and in 1960 he became the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager. The following year he became a flight instructor and safety engineering officer at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and completed Aviation Safety School at the University of Southern California.
Lovell was not selected by NASA as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts due to a temporarily high bilirubin count. He was accepted in September 1962 as one of the second group of astronauts needed for the Gemini and Apollo programs. Prior to Apollo, Lovell flew in space on two Gemini missions, Gemini 7 (with Borman) in 1965 and Gemini 12 in 1966. He was the first person to fly into space four times. One of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, Lovell was the first to fly to it twice. He is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He co-authored the 1994 book Lost Moon, on which the 1995 film Apollo 13 was based. Lovell was featured in a cameo appearance in the film.
## Early life
James Arthur Lovell Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 25, 1928, the only child of James Lovell Sr., a Toronto, Ontario, Canada-born coal furnace salesman who died in a car accident in 1933 and Blanche née Masek, who was of Czech descent. For the first two years after the death of his father, Lovell and his mother lived with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana. They then relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he went to Juneau High School. He was a member of the Boy Scouts during his childhood and eventually achieved Eagle Scout, the organization's highest rank. He became interested in rocketry and built flying models as a teenager.
After graduating from high school, Lovell attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison for two years, where he studied engineering under the United States Navy's "Flying Midshipman" program from 1946 to 1948. At Wisconsin, he played college football and pledged to the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. While Lovell was attending pre-flight training in the summer of 1948, the Navy was beginning to make cutbacks in the program, and cadets were under a great deal of pressure to transfer out. There were concerns that some or most of the students who graduated as naval aviators would not have pilot billets to fill. To avoid this prospect, Lovell decided to apply to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He secured a nomination from his local U.S. Representative, John C. Brophy, and entered Annapolis in July 1948.
During his first year, Lovell wrote a treatise on the liquid-propellant rocket engine. He graduated in the spring of 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy. On June 6, he married Marilyn Lillie Gerlach in a ceremony at St. Anne's Church in Annapolis. The two had begun dating while they were in high school. As a college student, Gerlach had transferred from Wisconsin State Teachers College to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., so she could be near him while he was at Annapolis. They had four children: Barbara, James, Susan, and Jeffrey.
## Navy career
Lovell was one of 50 members of his graduating class of 783 initially selected for naval aviation training. He went to flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola from October 1952 to February 1954. He was designated a naval aviator on February 1, 1954, upon completion of pilot training, and was assigned to VC-3 at Moffett Field near San Francisco, California. From 1954 to 1956 he flew McDonnell F2H Banshee night fighters. This included a Western Pacific deployment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La. Lovell eventually completed 107 carrier deck landings. Upon his return to shore duty, he was reassigned to provide pilot transition training for the North American FJ-4 Fury, McDonnell F3H Demon and Vought F8U Crusader.
In January 1958, Lovell entered a six-month test pilot training course at what was then the Naval Air Test Center (now the United States Naval Test Pilot School) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, with Class 20, which also included future astronauts Wally Schirra and Pete Conrad, who gave Lovell the nickname "Shaky". Lovell graduated at the top of the class. Usually the top graduate was assigned to flight test on graduation, but the head of electronics test had complained about never getting the top graduate, so Lovell was assigned to electronics test, where he worked with radar sets.
Later that year, Lovell, Conrad, and Schirra were among 110 military test pilots selected as potential astronaut candidates for Project Mercury. Schirra went on to become one of the Mercury Seven, but Lovell was not selected because of a temporarily high bilirubin count. In 1960, electronics test was merged with armaments test to become weapons test, and Lovell became the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager. During this time future astronaut John Young served under him. In 1961 Lovell received orders for VF-101 "Detachment Alpha" at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as a flight instructor and safety engineering officer, and he completed Aviation Safety School at the University of Southern California.
## NASA career
### Astronaut selection
In 1962, NASA began recruiting its second group of astronauts, intended to fly during the Gemini and Apollo programs. This time the process was a public one. Lovell found out about the selection from an advertisement that had been placed in Aviation Week & Space Technology, and decided to apply a second time. A three-person selection panel consisting of Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, and NASA test pilot Warren J. North, reduced the candidates to 32 finalists, who were sent to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio for medical examinations. The tests there were much the same as those employed to select the Mercury Seven, but this time Lovell passed. The remaining 27 then went to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, where they were individually interviewed by the selection panel.
On September 14, Slayton informed Lovell that he had been accepted. To avoid tipping off the media, all checked into the Rice Hotel in Houston under the name of Max Peck, its general manager. On September 17, the media crowded into the 1800-seat Cullen Auditorium at the University of Houston for the official announcement, but it was a low-key event compared to the unveiling of the Mercury Seven three years before. The group became known as the "Next Nine" or the "New Nine". The new astronauts moved to the Houston area in October 1962. Conrad and Lovell built houses in Timber Cove, south of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). Developers in Timber Cove offered astronauts mortgages with small down payments and low interest rates. The MSC complex was not yet complete, so NASA temporarily leased office space in Houston.
The task of supervising the Next Nine's training fell to Mercury Seven astronaut Gus Grissom. Initially, each of the astronauts was given four months of classroom instruction on subjects such as spacecraft propulsion, orbital mechanics, astronomy, computing, and space medicine. Classes were for six hours a day, two days a week, and all sixteen astronauts had to attend. There was also familiarization with the Gemini spacecraft, Titan II and Atlas boosters, and the Agena target vehicle. Jungle survival training was conducted at the United States Air Force (USAF) Tropic Survival School at Albrook Air Force Station in the Panama Canal Zone, desert survival training at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada, and water survival training on the Dilbert Dunker at the USN school at the Naval Air Station Pensacola and on Galveston Bay. Following the precedent set by the Mercury Seven, each of the Next Nine was assigned a special area in which to develop expertise that could be shared with the others, and to provide astronaut input to designers and engineers. Lovell became responsible for recovery systems.
### Gemini program
#### Gemini 7
Lovell was selected as backup pilot for Gemini 4, which was officially announced on July 29, 1964. It put him in position for his first space flight three missions later, as pilot of Gemini 7 with command pilot Frank Borman, under a rotation system devised by Slayton. Borman was a USAF officer, and Lovell had first met him during the evaluation process for astronaut selection. Their selection for the Gemini 7 mission was officially announced on July 1, 1965, along with that of Edward White and Michael Collins as their backup crew.
Like all Gemini missions, it was part of the preparations for Apollo. The flight's objective was to evaluate the effects on the crew and spacecraft from fourteen days in orbit, this being sufficiently long for any possible Moon mission, and would therefore enable doctors to evaluate the medical aspects of such a flight. Whereas the Gemini 6 mission preceding it was to demonstrate techniques for space rendezvous, likewise critical requirement of Apollo. These techniques had been worked out by Dean F. Grimm and Buzz Aldrin, who had written his doctoral thesis on the subject.
The Gemini 6 mission, which was commanded by Schirra with Tom Stafford as pilot, had a serious setback on October 15, 1965, when the Agena target vehicle that Gemini 6 was supposed to rendezvous with exploded soon after takeoff. Lovell was present at the Launch Control Center at Cape Kennedy when this occurred. Officials from McDonnell, the manufacturer of the Gemini spacecraft, then raised the possibility of a rendezvous between Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 during the two weeks while Gemini 7 was in orbit. The only change to the latter's flight plan this required was to circularize its orbit to match that intended for the Agena target vehicle. Borman rejected a proposal by Schirra that Lovell and Stafford exchange places, on the grounds that it was hazardous and likely to jeopardize the fourteen-day mission objective through loss of oxygen.
In planning the mission, it was decided that both astronauts would sleep at the same time and observe the same work periods, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Experiments were not scheduled, but fitted in when time allowed. Of the twenty experiments, eight were medical, aimed at gathering data about the effects of long-duration space flight. Of the rest, four were tests of spacecraft systems, five involved radiometry or navigation, and three involved photography and observation, To save space, the G5C space suit was designed that incorporated a soft hood instead of a helmet and zippers instead of a neck ring. It weighed a third less than the standard Gemini space suit and could be stowed more easily.
Gemini 7 lifted off on December 4, 1965, and reached its intended 300-kilometer (160 nmi) near-circular orbit. Lovell was taller than Borman and had more difficulty donning and removing his space suit. Initially one astronaut had to be suited, but this made him uncomfortably warm, and eventually mission control relented and allowed both to leave their space suits off. Gemini 6, now called Gemini 6A, lifted off on December 15, and rendezvoused with Gemini 7 on Gemini 6A's fourth orbit. The two spacecraft then flew in tandem for three orbits, the distance between them varying between 0.30 and 90 meters (1 and 300 ft). Gemini 6A returned to Earth on December 16.
In the final two days of the mission, Lovell had time to read part of Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds. As in earlier long-duration flights, malfunctions accumulated as the flight wore on. Two of the thrusters stopped working. After the flight, this was traced to the fact that they had an old type of laminate in the thrust chamber instead of the new type that had been developed to solve this problem. This proved to be only an annoyance, but there were more concern over a loss of power in the fuel cells. By day thirteen, a warning light was burning continuously and it was feared that the cells, which were only giving partial output, might fail completely, and the mission might have to be cut short; tests were carried out in St. Louis that demonstrated that the batteries could sustain it for the remainder of the flight. Gemini 7 made a successful return from orbit on December 18. The fourteen-day flight set an endurance record, making 206 orbits.
#### Gemini 12
On January 24, 1966, Lovell was named as the backup command pilot of Gemini 10, with Aldrin as the pilot. On March 21, this was changed as a result of the deaths of the Gemini 9 prime crew, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, in an air crash. The Gemini 9 backup crew of Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan became the prime crew of Gemini 9A, and Lovell and Aldrin became their backups. This positioned Lovell for his second flight and first command, of Gemini 12. Lovell and Aldrin's selection for this mission was officially announced on June 17, along with that of Gordon Cooper and Gene Cernan as their backups.
The goals of Gemini 12, the final Gemini mission, were ill-defined at first. "Essentially Gemini 12 didn't have a mission", Lovell later recalled. "It was, I guess, by default ... supposed to wind up the Gemini program and catch all those items that were not caught on previous flights." By July, its mission had become to master extravehicular activity (EVA), something that had proven problematic on earlier Gemini missions, as they had been more strenuous than expected and performing simple tasks had been more complicated. A series of innovations had been developed in response to the problems that had been encountered. It had been found that moving in space was similar to being underwater, and Aldrin made use of this new training technique. A waist restraint was provided on the space suit, and the Gemini spacecraft and the Agena target vehicle had additional handrails, handholds, and rings for tethering the waist restraint. Procedures were modified to minimize fatigue.
Gemini 12 lifted off on November 11, and quickly achieved orbit. Its first task was to rendezvous with its Agena target vehicle. This was complicated when the rendezvous radar set failed. Instead, Aldrin, who had written his PhD on the rendezvous, used a sextant to measure the angle between the spacecraft and the Agena, and then calculated the required actions using the onboard computer. Lovell then flew the spacecraft accordingly. Rendezvous was achieved, and Gemini successfully docked with the Agena, achieving the fifth space rendezvous and fourth space docking with an Agena target vehicle. Lovell then successfully undocked and docked again.
Aldrin performed three EVAs. The first was a standup EVA on November 12, in which the spacecraft door was opened and he stood up, but did not leave the spacecraft. The standup EVA mimicked some of the actions he would do during his free-flight EVA, so he could compare the effort expended between the two. It set an EVA record of two hours and twenty minutes. The next day Aldrin performed his free-flight EVA. He climbed across the newly installed hand-holds to the Agena and installed the cable needed for the gravity-gradient stabilization experiment. He performed several tasks, including installing electrical connectors and testing tools that would be needed for Apollo. The EVA concluded after two hours and six minutes. Before returning to the spacecraft, Aldrin cleaned the pilot's window with a cloth, and Lovell jokingly asked him if he could change the oil too. A third, 55-minute standup EVA was conducted on November 14, during which Aldrin took photographs, conducted experiments, and discarded some unneeded items.
Gemini 12 returned to Earth on November 15, after 59 orbits. During re-entry a pouch containing books and small pieces of equipment broke free and landed in Lovell's lap. He did not want to grab it, as he feared he might pull on the D-ring that activated the ejector seat. It did not move any further, and the landing went well. The spacecraft landed just 5.5 kilometers (3.0 nmi) from the recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. Twelve experiments had been carried out. This mission proved that people could work effectively outside the spacecraft, which was required for the Apollo missions with the goal of getting man on the Moon by the end of the decade.
### Apollo program
#### Apollo 1
On January 27, 1967, Grissom, White and Roger Chaffee were killed in the Apollo 1 fire. At the time, Lovell was in Washington, D.C., where, along with fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper and Richard Gordon, he had attended the signing of the Outer Space Treaty and the reception afterwards in the Green Room of the White House hosted by President Lyndon Johnson. Four days later, Lovell flew to West Point, New York, with Borman in a NASA T-38 for the funeral service for White at the Old Cadet Chapel. After the service, White was laid to rest in the West Point Cemetery; Lovell served as a pallbearer along with Armstrong, Borman, Conrad, Stafford and Aldrin.
The Apollo command module was redesigned after the fire, and afterwards it underwent a series of qualification tests. In April 1968, Lovell, along with fellow astronauts Stuart Roosa and Charles Duke, spent 48 hours in command module CM-007A, bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico to test the seaworthiness of the Apollo spacecraft. The NASA research vessel stood by with technicians and divers, while the astronauts assessed how quickly the spacecraft's flotation devices could right it from the "stable II" (upside down) position. The urine collection hose was used to vacuum up water that entered the cabin. Although this did not seem to bother Lovell, Duke regarded it as his worst experience as an astronaut, and Roosa became quite seasick. The NASA Roundup newspaper wrote the event up under the headline, "Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Marezine", referencing the brand name of a motion sickness drug.
#### Apollo 8
Lovell was originally chosen as command module pilot (CMP) on the backup crew for Apollo 9 along with Armstrong as commander (CDR) and Aldrin as lunar module pilot (LMP). Apollo 9 was planned as a high-apogee Earth orbital test of the Lunar Module (LM). Lovell later replaced Michael Collins as CMP on the Apollo 9 prime crew in July 1968 when Collins needed to have surgery for a bone spur on his spine. This reunited Lovell with his Gemini 7 commander Frank Borman, along with LMP William Anders. Aldrin became Lovell's backup CMP, and Fred Haise joined Armstrong's crew as LMP.
Construction delays of the first crewed LM prevented it from being ready in time to fly on Apollo 8, planned as a low Earth orbit test. It was decided to swap the Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 prime and backup crews in the flight schedule so that the crew trained for the low-orbit test could fly it as Apollo 9, when the LM would be ready. A lunar orbital flight, now Apollo 8, replaced the original Apollo 9 medium Earth orbit test mission. The crew was informed of this decision on August 10, 1968, and the training schedule was adjusted accordingly. Starting in September, the crew spent ten hours a day in the simulator rehearsing the mission.
Apollo 8 was launched on December 21, 1968, and Borman, Lovell and Anders became the first crew to ride the Saturn V rocket, as well as the first to travel to the Moon. Their Apollo craft entered lunar orbit on December 24 (Christmas Eve) and reduced speed to go into a 11-by-312-kilometer (5.9 by 168.5 nmi) orbit. The engine was then fired again to enter a 112-kilometer (60 nmi) circular orbit around the Moon.
On Christmas Eve, the crew broadcast black-and-white television pictures of the lunar surface back to Earth. Lovell took his turn with Borman and Anders in reading a passage from the Biblical creation story in the Book of Genesis. They made a total of ten orbits of the Moon in 20 hours and ten minutes, and began their return to Earth on December 25 (Christmas Day) with a rocket burn made on the Moon's far side, out of radio contact with Earth. When contact was re-established, Lovell broadcast, "Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus."
As CMP, Lovell served as the navigator, using the spacecraft's built-in sextant to determine its position by measuring star positions. This information was then used to calculate required mid-course corrections. Lovell used some otherwise idle time to do navigational sightings, maneuvering the module to view stars by using the Apollo guidance computer keyboard. Lovell accidentally erased some of the computer's memory by entering the wrong codes, which caused the inertial measurement unit (IMU) to contain data indicating that the module was in the same relative orientation it had been in before lift-off; the IMU then fired the thrusters to "correct" the module's attitude.
Once the crew realized why the computer had changed the module's attitude, they knew that they would have to reenter the correct data to tell the computer the module's actual orientation. It took Lovell ten minutes to figure out the correct values, using the thrusters to get the stars Rigel and Sirius aligned, and another 15 minutes to enter the corrected data into the computer. Sixteen months later, during the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell would have to perform a similar manual realignment under even more critical conditions after the module's IMU had been turned off to conserve energy.
A feature on the Moon's surface (Mount Marilyn) was named by Lovell in honor of his wife.
The spacecraft splashed down safely before dawn on December 27 after 147 hours of flight, 4.8 kilometers (2.6 nmi) from the recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. It was estimated that the crew had traveled 933,419 kilometers (504,006 nmi).
#### Apollo 13
Lovell was backup CDR of Apollo 11, with Anders as CMP, and Haise as LMP. In early 1969, Anders accepted a job with the National Aeronautics and Space Council effective August 1969, and announced he would retire as an astronaut at that time. Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup CMP in case Apollo 11 was delayed past its intended July launch date, at which point Anders would be unavailable.
Under the normal crew rotation in place during Apollo, Lovell, Mattingly, and Haise were scheduled to fly as the prime crew of Apollo 14, but George Mueller, the director of NASA's Office of Manned Space Flight, rejected Slayton's choice of fellow Mercury Seven astronaut Alan Shepard to command Apollo 13. Shepard had only recently returned to flight status after being grounded for several years, and Mueller thought that he needed more training time to prepare for a mission to the Moon. Slayton then asked Lovell if he was willing to switch places with Shepard's crew to give them more training time. "Sure, why not?" Lovell replied, "What could possibly be the difference between Apollo 13 and Apollo 14?"
There was one more change. Seven days before launch, a member of the Apollo 13 backup crew, Duke, contracted rubella from a friend of his son. This exposed both the prime and backup crews, who trained together. Of the five, only Mattingly was not immune through prior exposure. Normally, if any member of the prime crew had to be grounded, the remaining crew would be replaced as well, and the backup crew substituted, but Duke's illness ruled this out, so two days before launch, Mattingly was replaced by Jack Swigert from the backup crew. Mattingly never developed rubella and later flew to the Moon on Apollo 16.
Lovell lifted off aboard Apollo 13 on April 11, 1970. He and Haise were to land near the Fra Mauro crater. The Fra Mauro formation was believed to contain much material spattered by the impact that had filled the Imbrium basin early in the Moon's history, and dating it would provide information about the early history of the Earth and the Moon.
During a routine liquid oxygen tank stir in transit to the Moon, a fire started inside an oxygen tank. The most probable cause determined by NASA was damaged electrical insulation on wiring that created a spark that started the fire. A problem with draining the tank had been reported before the mission, and Lovell had approved the action taken to turn on the heaters to purge the oxygen rather than to replace the faulty tank, which would have delayed the mission by a month. Neither he nor the launch pad crew were aware that the tank contained the wrong thermostat switch. The heaters were left on for eight hours, and while this successfully purged the oxygen, it also removed teflon insulation from the copper electrical wiring. Liquid oxygen rapidly turned into a high-pressure gas, which burst the tank and caused the leak of a second oxygen tank. In just over two hours, all onboard oxygen was lost, disabling the hydrogen fuel cells that provided electrical power to the Command/Service Module Odyssey.
Apollo 13 was the second mission not to use a free-return trajectory, so that they could explore the western lunar regions. Using the Apollo Lunar Module as a "life boat" providing battery power, oxygen, and propulsion, Lovell and his crew re-established the free return trajectory that they had left, and swung around the Moon to return home. Based on the flight controllers' calculations made on Earth, Lovell had to adjust the course twice by manually controlling the Lunar Module's thrusters and engine.
Apollo 13 returned safely to Earth on April 17. "I'm afraid", Lovell said, "this is going to be the last lunar mission for a long time." His comment was rebutted by NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine, who hastened to reassure the public that NASA would be mounting more missions to the Moon. Nine months later, Apollo 14 would make the voyage to Fra Mauro, with modified fuel tanks and an extra battery for emergencies.
Apollo 13's flight trajectory gave Lovell, Haise, and Swigert the record for the farthest distance that humans have ever traveled from Earth. Lovell is one of only three men to travel to the Moon twice, but unlike the other two, John Young and Gene Cernan, he never walked on it. He accrued 715 hours and 5 minutes in space flights on his Gemini and Apollo flights, a personal record that stood until the Skylab 3 mission in 1973.
## Later life
Lovell retired from the Navy and the space program on March 1, 1973, and went to work at the Bay-Houston Towing Company in Houston, Texas, taking on the role of CEO in 1975. He became president of Fisk Telephone Systems in 1977, and later worked for Centel Corporation in Chicago, retiring as an executive vice president on January 1, 1991. Lovell was a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. He was also recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with their Silver Buffalo Award.
Lovell served on the board of directors for several organizations, including Federal Signal Corporation in Chicago from 1984 to 2003, the Astronautics Corporation of America in his hometown of Milwaukee from 1990 to 1999, and Centel from 1987 to 1991.
In 1999, the Lovell family opened a restaurant in Lake Forest, Illinois, "Lovell's of Lake Forest". The restaurant displayed memorabilia from Lovell's time with NASA and the filming of Apollo 13. The restaurant was sold to son and executive chef James ("Jay") in 2006. The restaurant was put on the market for sale in February 2014, and it closed in April 2015, the property being auctioned the same month.
Marilyn Lovell died of natural causes (at the age of 93) at her home at the Lake Forest Place retirement community in Lake Forest, Illinois on August 27, 2023.
## Awards and decorations
Lovell's awards and decorations include:
### Military, federal service, and foreign awards
- Navy Distinguished Service Medal with gold star
- Distinguished Flying Cross with gold star
- Presidential Medal of Freedom
- Congressional Space Medal of Honor
- NASA Distinguished Service Medal
- NASA Exceptional Service Medal with star
- Légion d'honneur (Chevalier)
### Other awards and accomplishments
- Alpha Phi Omega Fall Pledge Class Namesake (1967)
- American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award (1968)
- Henry H. Arnold Trophy (1969)
- Institute of Navigation Award (1969)
- National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal (1969)
- Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) De Laval Medal & Gold Space Medals (1971)
- Distinguished Eagle Scout Award (1990)
- Silver Buffalo (Boy Scouts of America) (1992)
- Space Foundation's General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award (2003)
- NASA Ambassadors of Exploration Award (2009)
- Laureate of the Order of Lincoln—the highest honor awarded by the state of Illinois (2012)
- The Honourable Company of Air Pilots Award of Honour, presented by the Duke of York in October 2013
The Gemini 6 and 7 crews were awarded the Harmon International Trophy for 1966 in a ceremony at the White House. Lovell received a second Harmon International Trophy in 1967 when he and Aldrin were selected for their Gemini 12 flight. The Apollo 8 crew won the Robert J. Collier Trophy for 1968, and President Richard Nixon awarded them the Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy in 1969, which Lovell accepted on behalf of the crew. The General Thomas D. White USAF Space Trophy is normally awarded to Air Force personnel, but an exception was made to include Lovell, and the Apollo 8 crew were awarded the 1968 trophy. Lovell was awarded a third Harmon International Trophy in 1969 for his role in the Apollo 8 mission. The Apollo 8 crew was also awarded the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Haley Astronautics Award for 1970, and were named Time Magazine Men of the Year in 1968. The Apollo 7, 8, 9, and 10 crews were awarded the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Special Trustees Award for 1969. Lovell was one of ten Gemini astronauts inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982, and, along with the other 12 Gemini astronauts, Lovell was inducted into the second U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame class in 1993. At a parade attended by 500,000 people, Lovell was conferred Chicago's medal of merit. The Apollo 13 crew was awarded the City of New York Gold Medal, but Lovell had already received it for the Apollo 8 mission. In lieu of a second medal, the mayor gifted him a crystal paperweight that he "invented for the occasion". He was also awarded the 1970 City of Houston Medal for Valor for the mission. He was awarded his second Haley Astronautics Award for his role on Apollo 13.
Lovell was featured on the cover of Time magazine on January 3, 1969, and April 27, 1970, and on the cover of Life magazine on April 24, 1970.
Lovell was a recipient of the University of Wisconsin's Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 1970. In his acceptance speech he emphasized the use of words over "rock throwing" to help attain political goals. He was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree at Western Michigan University's summer commencement exercises in 1970. He was also awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree at William Paterson College's commencement exercises in 1974.
### Tributes
A small crater on the far side of the Moon was named Lovell in his honor in 1970. Discovery World in Milwaukee was re-named The James Lovell Museum of Science, Economics and Technology. It was also once located on James Lovell St., also named for Lovell. The Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center was completed in October 2010, merging the Naval Health Clinic Great Lakes and the North Chicago Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
### Organizations
- Trustee of the National Space Institute
- Chairman of the National Eagle Scouts Association
- Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots
## In popular culture
About a month after the return to Earth of Apollo 13, Lovell and his crewmates, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, appeared on The Tonight Show with host Johnny Carson. In 1976, Lovell made a cameo appearance in the Nicolas Roeg movie The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger wrote a 1994 book about the Apollo 13 mission, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, on which the 1995 Ron Howard film Apollo 13 was based. Lovell's first impression on being approached about the film was that Kevin Costner would be a good choice to portray him, given the physical resemblance, but Tom Hanks was cast in the role. To prepare, Hanks visited James and Marilyn Lovell at their home in Texas and flew with Lovell in his private airplane. Kathleen Quinlan was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Marilyn.
In the film, Lovell has a cameo as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima. He can be seen as the naval officer shaking Hanks' hand, as Hanks speaks in voice-over, in the scene where the astronauts come aboard the Iwo Jima. The filmmakers offered to make Lovell's character an admiral aboard the ship, but Lovell said: "I retired as a captain and a captain I will be." He was cast as the ship's skipper, Captain Leland Kirkemo. Along with his wife Marilyn, who also has a cameo in the film, Lovell provided a commentary track on both the single disc and the two-disc special edition DVD.
Tim Daly portrayed Lovell in the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, and Pablo Schreiber in the 2018 film about Armstrong, First Man.
|
517,143 |
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
| 1,161,433,185 |
American poet, essayist, physician (1809–1894)
|
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"Occasional poets",
"Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.",
"People from Beacon Hill, Boston",
"Phillips Academy alumni",
"Sherlock Holmes",
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (/hoʊmz/; August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. In addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, inventor, and, although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holmes was educated at Phillips Academy and Harvard College. After graduating from Harvard in 1829, he briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. He began writing poetry at an early age; one of his most famous works, "Old Ironsides", was published in 1830 and was influential in the eventual preservation of the USS Constitution. Following training at the prestigious medical schools of Paris, Holmes was granted his Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He taught at Dartmouth Medical School before returning to teach at Harvard and, for a time, served as dean there. During his long professorship, he became an advocate for various medical reforms and notably posited the controversial idea that doctors were capable of carrying puerperal fever from patient to patient. Holmes retired from Harvard in 1882 and continued writing poetry, novels and essays until his death in 1894.
Surrounded by Boston's literary elite—which included friends such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell—Holmes made an indelible imprint on the literary world of the 19th century. Many of his works were published in The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine that he named. For his literary achievements and other accomplishments, he was awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities around the world. Holmes's writing often commemorated his native Boston area, and much of it was meant to be humorous or conversational. Some of his medical writings, notably his 1843 essay regarding the contagiousness of puerperal fever, were considered innovative for their time. He was often called upon to issue occasional poetry, or poems written specifically for an event, including many occasions at Harvard. Holmes also popularized several terms, including Boston Brahmin and anesthesia. He was the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who would become a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
## Life and education
### Early life and family
Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1809. His birthplace, a house just north of Harvard Yard, was said to have been the place where the Battle of Bunker Hill was planned. He was the first son of Abiel Holmes (1763–1837), minister of the First Congregational Church and avid historian, and Sarah Wendell, Abiel's second wife. Sarah was the daughter of a wealthy family, and Holmes was named for his maternal grandfather, a judge. The first Wendell, Evert Jansen, left the Netherlands in 1640 and settled in Albany, New York. Also through his mother, Holmes was descended from Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet and his wife, Anne Bradstreet (daughter of Thomas Dudley), the first published American poet.
From a young age, Holmes was small and had asthma, but he was known for his precociousness. When he was eight, he took his five-year-old brother, John, to witness the last hanging in Cambridge's Gallows Lot and was subsequently scolded by his parents. He also enjoyed exploring his father's library, writing later in life that "it was very largely theological, so that I was walled in by solemn folios making the shelves bend under the load of sacred learning." After being exposed to poets such as John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Oliver Goldsmith, the young Holmes began to compose and recite his own verse. His first recorded poem, which was copied down by his father, was written when he was 13.
Although a talented student, the young Holmes was often admonished by his teachers for his talkative nature and habit of reading stories during school hours. He studied under Dame Prentiss and William Bigelow before enrolling in what was called the "Port School", a select private academy in the Cambridgeport settlement. One of his schoolmates was future critic and author Margaret Fuller, whose intellect Holmes admired.
### Education
Holmes's father sent him to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, at the age of 15. Abiel chose Phillips, which was known for its orthodox Calvinist teachings, because he hoped his eldest son would follow him into the ministry. Holmes had no interest in becoming a theologian, however, and as a result he did not enjoy his single year at Andover. Although he achieved distinction as an elected member of the Social Fraternity, a literary club, he disliked the "bigoted, narrow-minded, uncivilized" attitudes of most of the school's teachers. One teacher in particular, however, noted his young student's talent for poetry, and suggested that he pursue it. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, Holmes was accepted by Harvard College.
As a member of Harvard's class of 1829, Holmes lived at home for the first few years of his college career rather than in the dormitories. Since he measured only "five feet three inches when standing in a pair of substantial boots", the young student had no interest in joining a sports team or the Harvard Washington Corps. Instead, he allied himself with the "Aristocrats" or "Puffmaniacs", a group of students who gathered in order to smoke and talk. As a town student and the son of a minister, however, he was able to move between social groups. He also became a friend of Charles Chauncy Emerson (brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson), who was a year older. During second year, Holmes was one of 20 students awarded the scholastic honor Deturs, which came with a copy of The Poems of James Graham, John Logan, and William Falconer. Despite his scholastic achievements, the young scholar admitted to a schoolmate from Andover that he did not "study as hard as I ought to'. He did, however, excel in languages and took classes in French, Italian and Spanish.
Holmes's academic interests and hobbies were divided among law, medicine, and writing. He was elected to the Hasty Pudding, where he served as Poet and Secretary, and to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. With two friends, he collaborated on a small book entitled Poetical Illustrations of the Athenaeum Gallery of Painting, which was a collection of satirical poems about the new art gallery in Boston. He was asked to provide an original work for his graduating class's commencement and wrote a "light and sarcastic" poem that met with great acclaim. Following graduation, Holmes intended to go into the legal profession, so he lived at home and studied at the Harvard Law School (named Dane School at the time). By January 1830, however, he was disenchanted with legal studies. "I am sick at heart of this place and almost everything connected to it", he wrote. "I know not what the temple of law may be to those who have entered it, but to me it seems very cold and cheerless about the threshold."
### Poetic beginnings
1830 proved to be an important year for Holmes as a poet; while disappointed by his law studies, he began writing poetry for his own amusement. Before the end of the year, he had produced over fifty poems, contributing twenty-five of them (all unsigned) to The Collegian, a short-lived publication started by friends from Harvard. Four of these poems would ultimately become among his best-known: "The Dorchester Giant", "Reflections of a Proud Pedestrian", "Evening / By a Tailor" and "The Height of the Ridiculous". Nine more of his poems were published anonymously in the 1830 pamphlet Illustrations of the Athenaeum Gallery of Paintings.
In September of that same year, Holmes read a short article in the Boston Daily Advertiser about the renowned 18th-century frigate USS Constitution, which was to be dismantled by the Navy. Holmes was moved to write "Old Ironsides" in opposition to the ship's scrapping. The patriotic poem was published in the Advertiser the very next day and was soon printed by papers in New York, Philadelphia and Washington. It not only brought the author immediate national attention, but the three-stanza poem also generated so much public sentiment that the historic ship was preserved, though plans to do so may have already been in motion.
During the rest of the year, Holmes published only five more poems. His last major poem that year was "The Last Leaf", which was inspired in part by a local man named Thomas Melvill, "the last of the cocked hats" and one of the "Indians" from the 1774 Boston Tea Party. Holmes would later write that Melvill had reminded him of "a withered leaf which has held to its stem through the storms of autumn and winter, and finds itself still clinging to its bough while the new growths of spring are bursting their buds and spreading their foliage all around it." Literary critic Edgar Allan Poe called the poem one of the finest works in the English language. Years later, Abraham Lincoln would also become a fan of the poem; William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner and biographer, wrote in 1867: "I have heard Lincoln recite it, praise it, laud it, and swear by it".
Although he experienced early literary success, Holmes did not consider turning to a literary profession. Later he would write that he had "tasted the intoxicating pleasure of authorship" but compared such contentment to a sickness, saying: "there is no form of lead-poisoning which more rapidly and thoroughly pervades the blood and bones and marrow than that which reaches the young author through mental contact with type metal".
## Medical career
### Medical training
Having given up on the study of law, Holmes switched to medicine. After leaving his childhood home in Cambridge during the autumn of 1830, he moved into a boardinghouse in Boston to attend the city's medical college. At that time, students studied only five subjects: medicine, anatomy and surgery, obstetrics, chemistry and materia medica. Holmes became a student of James Jackson, a physician and the father of a friend, and worked part-time as a chemist in the hospital dispensary. Dismayed by the "painful and repulsive aspects" of primitive medical treatment of the time—which included practices such as bloodletting and blistering—Holmes responded favorably to his mentor's teachings, which emphasized close observation of the patient and humane approaches. Despite his lack of free time, he was able to continue writing. He wrote two essays during this time which detailed life as seen from his boardinghouse's breakfast table. These essays, which would evolve into one of Holmes's most popular works, were published in November 1831 and February 1832 in The New-England Magazine under the title "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table".
In 1833, Holmes traveled to Paris to further his medical studies. Recent and radical reorganization of the city's hospital system had made medical training there highly advanced for the time. At twenty-three years old, Holmes was one of the first Americans trained in the new "clinical" method being advanced at the famed École de Médecine. Since the lectures were taught entirely in French, he engaged a private language tutor. Although far from home, he stayed connected to his family and friends through letters and visitors (such as Ralph Waldo Emerson). He quickly acclimated to his new surroundings. While writing to his father, he stated, "I love to talk French, to eat French, to drink French every now and then."
At the hospital of La Pitié, he studied under internal pathologist Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, who demonstrated the ineffectiveness of bloodletting, which had been a mainstay of medical practice since antiquity. Louis was one of the fathers of the méthode expectante, a therapeutic doctrine that states the physician's role is to do everything possible to aid nature in the process of disease recovery, and to do nothing to hinder this natural process. Upon his return to Boston, Holmes became one of the country's leading proponents of the méthode expectante. Holmes was awarded his Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard in 1836; he wrote his dissertation on acute pericarditis. His first collection of poetry was published later that year, but Holmes, ready to begin his medical career, wrote it off as a one-time event. In the book's introduction, he mused: "Already engaged in other duties, it has been with some effort that I have found time to adjust my own mantle; and I now willingly retire to more quiet labors, which, if less exciting, are more certain to be acknowledged as useful and received with gratitude".
### Medical reformer
After graduation, Holmes quickly became a fixture in the local medical scene by joining the Massachusetts Medical Society, the Boston Medical Society, and the Boston Society for Medical Improvement—an organization composed of young, Paris-trained doctors. He also gained a greater reputation after winning Harvard Medical School's prestigious Boylston Prize, for which he submitted a paper on the benefits of using the stethoscope, a device with which many American doctors were not familiar.
In 1837, Holmes was appointed to the Boston Dispensary, where he was shocked by the poor hygienic conditions. That year he competed for and won both of the Boylston essay prizes. Wishing to concentrate on research and teaching, he, along with three of his peers, established the Tremont Medical School—which would later merge with Harvard Medical School—above an apothecary shop at 35 Tremont Row in Boston. There, he lectured on pathology, taught the use of microscopes, and supervised dissections of cadavers. He often criticized traditional medical practices and once quipped that if all contemporary medicine was tossed into the sea "it would be all the better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes". For the next ten years, he maintained a small and irregular private medical practice, but spent much of his time teaching. He served on the faculty of Dartmouth Medical School from 1838 to 1840, where he was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology. For fourteen weeks each fall, during these years, he traveled to Hanover, New Hampshire, to lecture. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1838.
After Holmes resigned his professorship at Dartmouth, he composed a series of three lectures dedicated to exposing medical fallacies, or "quackeries". Adopting a more serious tone than his previous lectures, he took great pains to reveal the false reasoning and misrepresentation of evidence that marked subjects such as "Astrology and Alchemy", his first lecture, and "Medical Delusions of the Past", his second. He deemed homeopathy, the subject of his third lecture, "the pretended science" that was a "mingled mass of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, and of artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in practice". In 1842, he published the essay "Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions" in which he again denounced the practice.
In 1846, Holmes coined the word anaesthesia. In a letter to dentist William T. G. Morton, the first practitioner to publicly demonstrate the use of ether during surgery, he wrote:
> Everybody wants to have a hand in a great discovery. All I will do is to give a hint or two as to names—or the name—to be applied to the state produced and the agent. The state should, I think, be called "Anaesthesia." This signifies insensibility—more particularly ... to objects of touch.
Holmes predicted his new term "will be repeated by the tongues of every civilized race of mankind."
### Study of childbed fever
In 1842 Holmes attended a lecture by Walter Channing to the Boston Society for Medical Improvement about puerperal fever, or "childbed fever", a disease which at the time was a significant cause of mortality of women after delivering children. Becoming interested in the subject, Holmes spent a year going through case reports and other medical literature on the subject to ascertain the cause and possible prevention of the condition. In 1843, he presented his research to the society, which he then published as a paper "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever" in the short-lived publication New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery. The essay argued—contrary to popular belief at the time, which predated germ theory of disease—that the cause of puerperal fever, a deadly infection contracted by women during or shortly after childbirth, stems from patient-to-patient contact via their physicians. He believed that bed sheets, washcloths and articles of clothing were of particular concern in this regard. Holmes gathered a large collection of evidence for this theory, including stories of doctors who had become ill and died after performing autopsies on patients who had likewise been infected. In concluding his case, he insisted that a physician in whose practice even one case of puerperal fever had occurred, had a moral obligation to purify his instruments, burn the clothing he had worn while assisting in the fatal delivery, and cease obstetric practice for a period of at least six months.
Though it largely escaped notice when first published, Holmes eventually came under attack by two distinguished professors of obstetrics—Hugh L. Hodge and Charles D. Meigs—who adamantly denied his theory of contagion. In 1855, Holmes published a revised version of the essay in the form of a pamphlet under the new title Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence, and discussing additional cases. In a new introduction, in which Holmes directly addressed his opponents, he wrote: "I had rather rescue one mother from being poisoned by her attendant, than claim to have saved forty out of fifty patients to whom I had carried the disease." He added, "I beg to be heard in behalf of the women whose lives are at stake, until some stronger voice shall plead for them."
A few years later, Ignaz Semmelweis would reach similar conclusions in Vienna, where his introduction of prophylaxis (handwashing in chlorine solution before assisting at delivery) would considerably lower the puerperal mortality rate, and the then-controversial work is now considered a landmark in germ theory of disease.
### Teaching and lecturing
In 1847, Holmes was hired as Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard Medical School, where he served as dean until 1853 and taught until 1882. Soon after his appointment, Holmes was criticized by the all-male student body for considering granting admission to a woman named Harriot Kezia Hunt. Facing opposition from not only students but also university overseers and other faculty members, she was asked to withdraw her application. Harvard Medical School would not admit a woman until 1945. Holmes's training in Paris led him to teach his students the importance of anatomico-pathological basis of disease, and that "no doctrine of prayer or special providence is to be his excuse for not looking straight at secondary causes." Students were fond of Holmes, to whom they referred as "Uncle Oliver". One teaching assistant recalled:
> He enters [the classroom] and is greeted by a mighty shout and stamp of applause. Then silence, and there begins a charming hour of description, analysis, anecdote, harmless pun, which clothes the dry bones with poetic imagery, enlivens a hard and fatiguing day with humor, and brightens to the tired listener the details for difficult though interesting study.
## Marriage, family, and later life
On June 15, 1840, Holmes married Amelia Lee Jackson at King's Chapel in Boston. She was the daughter of the Hon. Charles Jackson, formerly Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and the niece of James Jackson, the physician with whom Holmes had studied. Judge Jackson gave the couple a house at 8 Montgomery Place, which would be their home for eighteen years. They had three children: Civil War officer and American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935), Amelia Jackson Holmes (1843–1889), and Edward Jackson Holmes (1846–1884).
Amelia Holmes inherited \$2,000 in 1848, and she and her husband used the money to build a summer house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Beginning in July 1849, the family spent "seven blessed summers" there. Having recently given up his private medical practice, Holmes was able to socialize with other literary figures who spent time in The Berkshires; in August 1850, for example, Holmes spent time with Evert Augustus Duyckinck, Cornelius Mathews, Herman Melville, James T. Fields and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Holmes enjoyed measuring the circumference of trees on his property and kept track of the data, writing that he had "a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had several romantic attachments to certain trees in particular". The high cost of maintaining their home in Pittsfield caused the Holmes family to sell it in May 1856.
While serving as dean in 1850, Holmes became a witness for both the defense and prosecution during the notorious Parkman–Webster murder case. Both George Parkman (the victim), a local physician and wealthy benefactor, and John Webster (the assailant) were graduates of Harvard, and Webster was professor of chemistry at the Medical School during the time of the highly publicized murder. Webster was convicted and hanged. Holmes dedicated his November 1850 introductory lecture at the Medical School to Parkman's memory.
The same year, Holmes was approached by Martin Delany, an African-American man who had worked with Frederick Douglass. The 38-year-old requested admission to Harvard after having been previously rejected by four schools despite impressive credentials. In a controversial move, Holmes admitted Delany and two other black men to the Medical School. Their admission sparked a student statement, which read: "Resolved That we have no objection to the education and evaluation of blacks but do decidedly remonstrate against their presence in College with us." Sixty students signed the resolution, although 48 students signed another resolution which noted it would be "a far greater evil, if, in the present state of public feeling, a medical college in Boston could refuse to this unfortunate class any privileges of education, which it is in the power of the profession to bestow". In response, Holmes told the black students they would not be able to continue after that semester. A faculty meeting directed Holmes to write that "the intermixing of races is distasteful to a large portion of the class, & injurious to the interests of the school". Despite his support of education for blacks, he was not an abolitionist; against what he considered the abolitionists' habit of using "every form of language calculated to inflame", he felt that the movement was going too far. This lack of support dismayed friends like James Russell Lowell, who once told Holmes he should be more outspoken against slavery. Holmes calmly responded, "Let me try to improve and please my fellowmen after my own fashion at present." Nonetheless, Holmes believed that slavery could be ended peacefully and legally.
Holmes lectured extensively from 1851 to 1856 on subjects such as "Medical Science as It Is or Has Been", "Lectures and Lecturing", and "English Poets of the Nineteenth Century". Traveling throughout New England, he received anywhere from \$40 to \$100 per lecture, but he also published a great deal during this time, and the British edition of his Poems sold well abroad. As social attitudes began to change, however, Holmes often found himself publicly at odds with those he called the "moral bullies"; because of mounting criticisms from the press regarding Holmes's vocal anti-abolitionism, as well as his dislike of the growing temperance movement, he chose to discontinue his lecturing and return home.
### Later literary success and the Civil War
In 1856, the Atlantic or Saturday Club was created to launch and support The Atlantic Monthly. This new magazine was edited by Holmes's friend James Russell Lowell, and articles were contributed by the New England literary elite such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Lothrop Motley and J. Elliot Cabot. Holmes not only provided its name, but also wrote various pieces for the journal throughout the years. For the magazine's first issue, Holmes produced a new version of two of his earlier essays, "The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table". Based upon fictionalized breakfast table talk and including poetry, stories, jokes and songs, the work was favored by readers and critics alike and it secured the initial success of The Atlantic Monthly. The essays were collected as a book of the same name in 1858 and became his most enduring work, selling ten thousand copies in three days. Its sequel, The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, was released shortly after beginning in serialized installments in January 1859.
Holmes's first novel, Elsie Venner, was published serially in the Atlantic beginning in December 1859. Originally entitled "The Professor's Story", the novel is about a neurotic young woman whose mother was bitten by a rattlesnake while pregnant, making her daughter's personality half-woman, half-snake. The novel drew a wide range of comments, including praise from John Greenleaf Whittier and condemnation from church papers, which claimed the work a product of heresy.
Also in December 1859, Holmes sent medication to the ailing writer Washington Irving after visiting him at his Sunnyside home in New York; Irving died only a few months later. The Massachusetts Historical Society posthumously awarded Irving an honorary membership at a tribute held on December 15, 1859. At the ceremony, Holmes presented an account of his meeting with Irving and a list of medical symptoms he had observed, despite the taboo of discussing health publicly.
About 1860, Holmes invented the "American stereoscope", a 19th-century entertainment in which pictures were viewed in 3-D. He later wrote an explanation for its popularity, stating: "There was not any wholly new principle involved in its construction, but, it proved so much more convenient than any hand-instrument in use, that it gradually drove them all out of the field, in great measure, at least so far as the Boston market was concerned." Rather than patenting the hand stereopticon and profiting from its success, Holmes gave the idea away.
Soon after South Carolina's secession from the Union in 1861 and the start of the Civil War, Holmes began publishing pieces—the first of which was the patriotic song "A Voice of the Loyal North"—in support of the Union cause. Although he had previously criticized the abolitionists, deeming them traitorous, his main concern was for the preservation of the Union. In September of that year, he published an article titled "Bread and Newspapers" in the Atlantic, in which he proudly identified himself as an ardent Unionist. He wrote, "War has taught us, as nothing else could, what we can be and are" and inspiring even the upper class to have "courage ... big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely about their slender figures." However, on July 4, 1863, Holmes wrote, "how idle it is to look for any other cause than slavery as having any material agency in dividing the country" and declared it as one of "its sins against a just God". Holmes also had a personal stake in the war: his oldest son, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., enlisted in the Army against his father's wishes in April 1861 and was injured three times in battle, including a gunshot wound in his chest at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in October 1861. Holmes published in The Atlantic Monthly an account of his search for his son after hearing news of his injury at the Battle of Antietam.
Amid the Civil War, Holmes's friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began translating Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Beginning in 1864, Longfellow invited several friends to help at weekly meetings held on Wednesdays. Holmes was part of that group, which became known as the "Dante Club"; among its members were Longfellow, Lowell, William Dean Howells, and Charles Eliot Norton. The final translation was published in three volumes in the spring of 1867. American novelist Matthew Pearl has fictionalized their efforts in The Dante Club (2003). The same year the Dante translation was published, Holmes's second novel, The Guardian Angel, began appearing serially in the Atlantic. It was published in book form in November, though its sales were half that of Elsie Venner.
### Later years and death
Holmes's fame continued through his later years. The Poet at the Breakfast-Table was published in 1872. Written fifteen years after The Autocrat, this work's tone was mellower and more nostalgic than its predecessor; "As people grow older," Holmes wrote, "they come at length to live so much in memory that they often think with a kind of pleasure of losing their dearest possessions. Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered". In 1876, at the age of seventy, Holmes published a biography of John Lothrop Motley, which was an extension of an earlier sketch he had written for the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings. The following year he published a collection of his medical essays and Pages from an Old Volume of Life, a collection of various essays he had previously written for The Atlantic Monthly. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1880. He retired from Harvard Medical School in 1882 after thirty-five years as a professor. After he gave his final lecture on November 28, the university made him professor emeritus.
In 1884, Holmes published a book dedicated to the life and works of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. Later biographers would use Holmes's book as an outline for their own studies, but particularly useful was the section dedicated to Emerson's poetry, into which Holmes had particular insight. Beginning in January 1885, Holmes's third and last novel, A Mortal Antipathy, was published serially in The Atlantic Monthly. Later that year, Holmes contributed \$10 to Walt Whitman, though he did not approve of his poetry, and convinced friend John Greenleaf Whittier to do the same. A friend of Whitman, a lawyer named Thomas Donaldson, had requested monetary donations from several authors to purchase a horse and buggy for Whitman who, in his old age, was becoming a shut-in.
Exhausted and mourning the sudden death of his youngest son, Holmes began postponing his writing and social engagements. In late 1884, he embarked on a visit to Europe with his daughter Amelia. In Great Britain he met with writers such as Henry James, George du Maurier and Alfred Tennyson, and was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Cambridge, a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Edinburgh, and a third honorary degree from the University of Oxford. Holmes and Amelia then visited Paris, a place that had significantly influenced him in his earlier years. He met with chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur, whose previous studies in germ theory had helped reduce the mortality rate of women who had puerperal fever. Holmes called Pasteur "one of the truest benefactors of his race". After returning to the United States, Holmes published a travelogue, Our One Hundred Days in Europe.
In June 1886, Holmes received an honorary degree from Yale University Law School. His wife of more than forty years, who had struggled with an illness that had kept her an invalid for months, died on February 6, 1888. The younger Amelia died the following year after a brief malady. Despite his weakening eyesight and a fear that he was becoming antiquated, Holmes continued to find solace in writing. He published Over the Teacups, the last of his table-talk books, in 1891.
Towards the end of his life, Holmes noted that he had outlived most of his friends, including Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. As he said, "I feel like my own survivor ... We were on deck together as we began the voyage of life ... Then the craft which held us began going to pieces." His last public appearance was at a reception for the National Education Association in Boston on February 23, 1893, where he presented the poem "To the Teachers of America". A month later, Holmes wrote to Harvard president Charles William Eliot that the university should consider adopting the honorary doctor of letters degree and offer one to Samuel Francis Smith, though one was never issued.
Holmes died quietly after falling asleep in the afternoon of Sunday, October 7, 1894. As his son Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote, "His death was as peaceful as one could wish for those one loves. He simply ceased to breathe." Holmes's memorial service was held at King's Chapel and overseen by Edward Everett Hale. Holmes was buried alongside his wife in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
## Writing
### Poetry
Holmes is one of the fireside poets, together with William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier. These poets—whose writing was characterized as family-friendly and conventional—were among the first Americans to build substantial popularity in Europe. Holmes in particular believed poetry had "the power of transfiguring the experiences and shows of life into an aspect which comes from the imagination and kindles that of others".
Due to his immense popularity during his lifetime, Holmes was often called upon to produce commemorative poetry for specific occasions, including memorials, anniversaries and birthdays. Referring to this demand for his attention, he once wrote that he was "a florist in verse, and what would people say / If I came to a banquet without my bouquet?" As critic Hyatt Waggoner noted, however, "very little ... survives the occasions that produced it". Holmes became known as a poet who expressed the benefits of loyalty and trust at serious gatherings, as well as one who showed wit at festivities and celebrations. Edwin Percy Whipple for one considered Holmes to be "a poet of sentiment and passion. Those who know him only as a comic lyricist, as the libellous laureate of chirping follow and presumptuous egotism, would be surprised at the clear sweetness and skylark thrill of his serious and sentimental compositions".
In addition to the commemorative nature of much of Holmes's poetry, some pieces were written based on his observations of the world around him. This is the case with two of Holmes's best known and critically successful poems—"Old Ironsides" and "The Last Leaf"—which were published when he was a young adult. As is seen with poems such as "The Chambered Nautilus" and " or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay", Holmes successfully concentrated his verse upon concrete objects with which he was long familiar, or had studied at length, such as the one-horse shay or a seashell. Some of his works also deal with his personal or family history; for example, the poem "Dorothy Q" is a portrait of his maternal great-grandmother. The poem combines pride, humor and tenderness in short rhyming couplets:
> > O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift that I owe to you; Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring,—
> >
> > All my tenure of heart and hand, All my title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life!
Holmes, an outspoken critic of over-sentimental Transcendentalist and Romantic poetry, often slipped into sentimentality when writing his occasional poetry, but would often balance such emotional excess with humor. Critic George Warren Arms believed Holmes's poetry to be provincial in nature, noting his "New England homeliness" and "Puritan familiarity with household detail" as proof. In his poetry, Holmes often connected the theme of nature to human relations and social teachings; poems such as "The Ploughman" and "The New Eden", which were delivered in commemoration of Pittsfield's scenic countryside, were even quoted in the 1863 edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac.
He composed several hymn texts, including Thou Gracious God, Whose Mercy Lends and Lord of All Being, Throned Afar.
### Prose
Although mainly known as a poet, Holmes wrote numerous medical treatises, essays, novels, memoirs and table-talk books. His prose works include topics that range from medicine to theology, psychology, society, democracy, sex and gender, and the natural world. Author and critic William Dean Howells argued that Holmes created a genre called dramatized (or discursive) essay, in which major themes are informed by the story's plot, but his works often use a combination of genres; excerpts of poetry, essays and conversations are often included throughout his prose. Critic William Lawrence Schroeder described Holmes's prose style as "attractive" in that it "made no great demand on the attention of the reader." He further stated that although the author's earlier works (The Autocrat and The Professor of the Breakfast-Table) are "virile and fascinating", later ones such as Our Hundred Days in Europe and Over the Teacups "have little distinction of style to recommend them."
Holmes first gained international fame with his "Breakfast-Tables" series. These three table-talk books attracted a diverse audience due to their conversational style, which made readers feel an intimate connection to the author, and resulted in a flood of letters from admirers. The series' conversational tone is not only meant to mimic the philosophical debates and pleasantries that occur around the breakfast table, but it is also used in order to facilitate an openness of thought and expression. As the Autocrat, Holmes states in the first volume:
> This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow after the operation.
The various speakers represent different facets of Holmes's life and experiences. The speaker of the first installment, for example, is understood to be a doctor who spent several years studying in Paris, while the second volume—The Professor at the Breakfast-Table—is told from the point of view of a professor of a distinguished medical school. Although the speakers discuss myriad topics, the flow of conversation always leads to supporting Holmes's Paris-taught conception of science and medicine and how they relate to morality and the mind. Autocrat in particular addresses philosophical issues such as the nature of one's self, language, life and truth.
Holmes wrote in the second preface to Elsie Venner, his first novel, that his aim in writing the work was "to test the doctrine of 'original sin' and human responsibility for the distorted violation coming under that technical denomination". He also stated his belief that "a grave scientific doctrine may be detected lying beneath some of the delineations of character" throughout all fiction. Deeming the work a "psychological romance", he employed a romantic narrative in order to describe moral theology from a scientific perspective. This means of expression is also present in his two other novels, in which Holmes uses medical or psychological dilemmas to further the story's dramatic plot.
Holmes referred to his novels as "medicated novels". Some critics believe that these works were innovative in exploring theories of Sigmund Freud and other emerging psychiatrists and psychologists. The Guardian Angel, for example, explores mental health and repressed memory, and Holmes uses the concept of the unconscious mind throughout his works. A Mortal Antipathy depicts a character whose phobias are rooted in psychic trauma, later cured by shock therapy. Holmes's novels were not critically successful during his lifetime. As psychiatrist Clarence P. Oberndorf, author of The Psychiatric Novels of Oliver Wendell Holmes, states, the three works are "poor fiction when judged by modern criteria. ... Their plots are simple, almost juvenile and, in two of them, the reader is not disappointed in the customary thwarting of the villain and the coming of true love to its own".
## Legacy and criticism
Holmes was well respected by his peers, and garnered a large, international following throughout his long life. Particularly noted for his intelligence, he was named by American theologian Henry James Sr. "intellectually the most alive man I ever knew". Critic John G. Palfrey also praised Holmes, referring to him as "a man of genius ... His manner is entirely his own, manly and unaffected; generally easy and playful, and sinking at times into 'a most humorous sadness'". On the other hand, critics S. I. Hayakawa and Howard Mumford Jones argued that Holmes was "distinctly an amateur in letters. His literary writings, on the whole, are partly the leisure-born meditations of a physician, partly a means of spreading certain items of professional propaganda, partly a distillation of his social life."
Like Samuel Johnson in 18th-century England, Holmes was noted for his conversational powers in both his life and literary output. Though he was popular at the national level, Holmes promoted Boston culture and often wrote from a Boston-centric point of view, believing the city was "the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of the planet". He is often referred to as a Boston Brahmin, a term that he created while referring to the oldest families in the Boston area. The term, as he used it, referred not only to members of a good family but also implied intellectualism. He also famously nicknamed Emerson's The American Scholar the American "intellectual Declaration of Independence".
Although his essay on puerperal fever has been deemed "the most important contribution made in America to the advancement of medicine" up to that time, Holmes is most famous as a humorist and poet. Editor and critic George Ripley, an admirer of Holmes, referred to him as "one of the wittiest and most original of modern poets". Emerson noted that, though Holmes did not renew his focus on poetry until later in his life, he quickly perfected his role "like old pear trees which have done nothing for ten years, and at last begin to grow great."
Poems by Holmes, along with those by the other fireside or schoolroom poets, were often required to be memorized by schoolchildren. Although learning by rote recitation began fading out by the 1890s, these poets nevertheless remained fixed as ideal New England poets. Literary scholar Lawrence Buell wrote of these poets: "we value [them] less than the nineteenth century did but still regard as the mainstream of nineteenth-century New England verse." Many of these poets soon became recognized only as children's poets, as noted by a 20th-century scholar who asked about Holmes's contemporary Longfellow: "Who, except wretched schoolchildren, now reads Longfellow?" Another modern scholar notes that "Holmes is a casualty of the ongoing movement to revise the literary canon. His work is the least likely of the Fireside Poets to find its way into American literature anthologies."
The school library of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where Holmes studied as a child, is named the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, or the OWHL, in his memory. Items from Holmes's personal library—including medical papers, essays, songs and poems—are held in the library's Special Collections department. In 1915, Bostonians placed a memorial seat and sundial behind Holmes's final home at 296 Beacon Street in a spot where he would have seen it from his library. King's Chapel in Boston, where Holmes worshiped, erected an inscribed memorial tablet in his honor. The tablet notes Holmes's achievements in the order he recognized them: "Teacher of Anatomy, Essayist and Poet". It ends with a quote from Horace's Ars Poetica: Miscuit Utile Dulci: "He mingled the useful with the pleasant."
## Selected list of works
Poetry
- Poems (1836)
- Songs in Many Keys (1862)
Medical and psychological studies
- Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence (1855)
- Mechanism in Thought and Morals (1871)
Table-talk books
- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858)
- The Professor at the Breakfast-Table (1860)
- The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (1872)
- Over the Teacups (1891)
Novels
- Elsie Venner (1861)
- The Guardian Angel (1867)
- A Mortal Antipathy (1885)
Articles
- "The Stereoscope and the Stereograph", The Atlantic Monthly, volume 6 (1859)
- "Sun-painting and sun-sculpture", The Atlantic Monthly, volume 8 (July 1861)
- "Doings of the sun-beam", The Atlantic Monthly, volume 12 (July 1863)
Biographies and travelogue
- John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir (1876)
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884)
- Our Hundred Days in Europe (1887)
## See also
- Epeolatry, a term coined by Holmes
- George Livermore, a childhood classmate
- Wendell, North Carolina, a town named after Holmes
|
30,246,742 |
SMS Ostfriesland
| 1,162,742,419 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1909 ships",
"Battleships sunk by aircraft as targets",
"Helgoland-class battleships",
"Maritime incidents in 1921",
"Ships built in Kiel",
"Ships sunk by US aircraft",
"Shipwrecks of the Virginia coast",
"World War I battleships of Germany"
] |
SMS Ostfriesland was the second vessel of the Helgoland class of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy. Named for the region of East Frisia, Ostfriesland's keel was laid in October 1908 at the Kaiserliche Werft dockyard in Wilhelmshaven. She was launched on 30 September 1909 and was commissioned into the fleet on 1 August 1911. The ship was equipped with twelve 30.5 cm (12 in) guns in six twin turrets, and had a top speed of 21.2 knots (39.3 km/h; 24.4 mph). Ostfriesland was assigned to the I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I.
Along with her three sister ships, Helgoland, Thüringen, and Oldenburg, Ostfriesland participated in all of the major fleet operations of World War I in the North Sea against the British Grand Fleet. This included the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, the largest naval battle of the war. The ship also saw action in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy. She was present during the unsuccessful first incursion into the Gulf of Riga in August 1915.
After the German collapse in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet was interned in Scapa Flow during the peace negotiations. The four Helgoland-class ships were allowed to remain in Germany, however, and were therefore spared the destruction of the fleet in Scapa Flow. Ostfriesland and her sisters were eventually ceded to the victorious Allied powers as war reparations; Ostfriesland was transferred to the United States Navy. She was sunk during air power trials off the Virginia Capes in July 1921.
## Design
The ship was 167.2 m (548 ft 7 in) long, had a beam of 28.5 m (93 ft 6 in) and a draft of 8.94 m (29 ft 4 in), and displaced 24,700 metric tons (24,310 long tons) at full load. She was powered by three 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines with 15 boilers; each engine drove a four-bladed screw. The ship's engines were rated at 28,000 PS (28,000 ihp; 21,000 kW) and produced a top speed of 21.2 knots (39.3 km/h; 24.4 mph). Ostfriesland stored up to 3,200 metric tons (3,100 long tons) of coal, which allowed her to steam for 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph). After 1915 the boilers were modified to spray oil on the coal; the ship could carry up to 197 metric tons (194 long tons) of fuel oil. She had a crew of 42 officers and 1,071 enlisted men.
Ostfriesland was armed with a main battery of twelve 30.5 cm (12 in) SK L/50 guns in six twin gun turrets, with one turret fore, one aft, and two on each flank of the ship. The ship's secondary battery consisted of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates in the side of the upper deck. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried fourteen 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 guns. After 1914, two of the 8.8 cm guns were removed and replaced by 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns. Ostfriesland was also armed with six 50 cm (19.7 in) submerged torpedo tubes; one was in the bow, one in the stern, and two on each broadside.
Her main armored belt was 300 mm (11.8 in) thick in the central citadel, and was composed of Krupp cemented armor (KCA). Her main battery gun turrets were protected by the same thickness of KCA on the sides and faces, as well as the barbettes that supported the turrets. Ostfriesland's deck was 63.5 mm (2.5 in) thick.
## Service history
Ostfriesland was ordered by the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) under the provisional name Ersatz Oldenburg, as a replacement for the old coastal defense ship Oldenburg. The contract for the ship was awarded to the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Dockyard) in Wilhelmshaven under construction number 31. Work began on 19 October 1908 with the laying of her keel, and the ship was launched less than a year later, on 30 September 1909. She was christened by the Princess of Innhausen and Knyphausen, a representative of the oldest East Frisian nobility. Fitting-out, including completion of the superstructure and the installation of armament, lasted until August 1911. Ostfriesland, named for the north-western coastal area of Germany, was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 1 August 1911, just under three years from when work commenced.
After commissioning, Ostfriesland conducted sea trials, which were completed by 15 September. Kapitän zur See (KzS) Walter Engelhardt served as the ship's first commanding officer. On the 22nd, the ship was formally assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. She then conducted individual ship training exercises, which were followed by I Squadron, and then fleet maneuvers in November. Ostfriesland became the new squadron flagship on 24 April 1912, replacing Westfalen. The annual summer cruise in July–August, which typically went to Norway, was interrupted by the Agadir Crisis. As a result, the cruise only went into the Baltic. Ostfriesland and the rest of the fleet then fell into a pattern of individual ship, squadron, and full fleet exercises over the next two years of peacetime. Ostfriesland won the 1912/1913 Kaiserschiesspreis—the Kaiser's artillery shooting prize—for I Squadron. Kapitänleutnant Friedrich Beesel was the ship's gunnery officer at the time and, as such, was responsible for the accuracy of the ship's shooting.
On 14 July 1914, the annual summer cruise to Norway began. During the last peacetime cruise of the Imperial Navy, the fleet conducted drills off Skagen before proceeding to the Norwegian fjords on 25 July. The following day the fleet began to steam back to Germany, as a result of Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia. On the 27th, the entire fleet assembled off Cape Skadenes before returning to port, where it remained at a heightened state of readiness. War between Austria-Hungary and Serbia broke out on the 28th, and in the span of a week all of the major European powers had joined the conflict. By 29 July Ostfriesland and the rest of I Squadron was back in Wilhelmshaven.
### World War I
The first major naval action in the North Sea, the Battle of Helgoland Bight, took place on 28 August 1914. At 04:30, Helgoland, which was stationed off the heavily fortified island of Wangerooge, received the order to join Ostfriesland and sail out of the harbor. At 05:00, the two battleships met the battered cruisers Frauenlob and Stettin. By 07:30, the ships had returned to port for the night. On the afternoon of 7 September, Ostfriesland and the rest of the High Seas Fleet conducted a training cruise to the island of Heligoland. In October, Ostfriesland was equipped with a pair of 8.8 cm flak guns for anti-air defense.
Ostfriesland was present during the first sortie by the German fleet into the North Sea, which took place on 2–3 November 1914. No British forces were encountered during the operation. A second operation followed on 15–16 December. This sortie was the initiation of a strategy adopted by Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet. Admiral Ingenohl intended to use the battlecruisers of Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Franz von Hipper's I Scouting Group to raid British coastal towns to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet where they could be destroyed by the High Seas Fleet. Early on 15 December the fleet left port to raid the towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby. That evening, the German battle fleet of some twelve dreadnoughts—including Ostfriesland and her three sisters—and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced Ingenohl that he was faced with the entire Grand Fleet. Under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid risking the fleet unnecessarily, Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battle fleet back toward Germany.
The Battle of Dogger Bank, in which Vice Admiral David Beatty's 1st and 2nd Battlecruiser Squadrons ambushed the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group, occurred on 24 January 1915. Ostfriesland and the rest of I Squadron sortied to reinforce the outnumbered German battlecruisers; I Squadron left port at 12:33 CET, along with the pre-dreadnoughts of II Squadron. They were too late, however, and failed to locate any British forces. By 19:05, the fleet had returned to the Schillig Roads outside Wilhelmshaven. In the meantime, the armored cruiser Blücher had been overwhelmed by concentrated British fire and sunk, while the battlecruiser Seydlitz was severely damaged by a fire in one of the ammunition magazines. As a result, Kaiser Wilhelm II removed Ingenohl from his post and replaced him with Admiral Hugo von Pohl on 2 February.
The eight I Squadron ships went into the Baltic on 22 February 1915 for unit training, which lasted until 13 March. Following their return to the North Sea, the ships participated in a series of uneventful fleet sorties on 29–30 March, 17–18 April, 21–22 April, 17–18 May, and 29–30 May. Ostfriesland and the rest of the fleet remained in port until 4 August, when I Squadron returned to the Baltic for another round of training maneuvers. That month, KzS Ernst-Oldwig von Natzmer replaced Engelhardt as the ship's commanding officer. From the Baltic, the squadron was attached to the naval force that attempted to sweep the Gulf of Riga of Russian naval forces in August 1915. The assault force included the eight I Squadron battleships, the battlecruisers Von der Tann, Moltke, and Seydlitz, several light cruisers, 32 destroyers and 13 minesweepers. The plan called for channels in Russian minefields to be swept so that the Russian naval presence, which included the pre-dreadnought battleship Slava, could be eliminated. The Germans would then lay minefields of their own to prevent Russian ships from returning to the Gulf. Ostfriesland and the majority of the other big ships of the High Seas Fleet remained outside the Gulf for the entirety of the operation. The dreadnoughts Nassau and Posen were detached on 16 August to escort the minesweepers and to destroy Slava, though they failed to sink the old battleship. After three days, the Russian minefields had been cleared, and the flotilla entered the Gulf on 19 August, but reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted a German withdrawal from the Gulf the following day. By 26 August, I Squadron had returned to Wilhelmshaven.
On 23–24 October, the High Seas Fleet undertook its last major offensive operation under the command of Admiral Pohl, though it ended without contact with British forces. By January 1916 hepatic cancer had weakened Pohl to the point where he was no longer able to carry out his duties, and he was replaced by Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Reinhard Scheer in January. Scheer proposed a more aggressive policy designed to force a confrontation with the British Grand Fleet; he received approval from the Kaiser in February. Scheer's first operation was a sweep into the North Sea on 5–7 March, followed by two more on 21–22 March and 25–26 March. During Scheer's next operation, Ostfriesland supported a raid on the English coast on 24 April 1916 conducted by the German battlecruiser force. The battlecruisers left the Jade Estuary at 10:55 and the rest of the High Seas Fleet followed at 13:40. The battlecruiser Seydlitz struck a mine while en route to the target, and had to withdraw. The other battlecruisers bombarded the town of Lowestoft unopposed but, during the approach to Yarmouth, encountered the British cruisers of the Harwich Force. A short gun duel ensued before the Harwich Force withdrew. Reports of British submarines in the area prompted I Scouting Group to retreat. At this point, Scheer, who had been warned of the sortie of the Grand Fleet from its base in Scapa Flow, also withdrew to safer German waters.
#### Battle of Jutland
Ostfriesland was present during the fleet operation that resulted in the battle of Jutland, which took place on 31 May and 1 June 1916. The German fleet again sought to draw out and isolate a portion of the Grand Fleet and destroy it before the main British fleet could retaliate. During the operation, Ostfriesland was the lead ship in I Squadron's I Division and the ninth ship in the line, directly astern of the fleet flagship Friedrich der Grosse and ahead of her sister Thüringen. I Squadron was the center of the German line, behind the eight König- and Kaiser-class battleships of III Squadron. The six elderly pre-dreadnoughts of III and IV Divisions—II Battle Squadron—formed the rear of the formation. Ostfriesland flew the flag of Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Erhardt Schmidt, the squadron commander during the battle and Scheer's deputy commander.
Shortly before 16:00, the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group encountered the British 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under the command of David Beatty. The opposing ships began an artillery duel that saw the destruction of Indefatigable, shortly after 17:00, and Queen Mary, less than half an hour later. By this time, the German battlecruisers were steaming south to draw the British ships toward the main body of the High Seas Fleet. At 17:30, the crew of the leading German battleship, König, spotted both I Scouting Group and the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron approaching. The German battlecruisers were steaming to starboard, while the British ships steamed to port. At 17:45, Scheer ordered a two-point turn to port to bring his ships closer to the British battlecruisers and, a minute later, the order to open fire was given.
While the leading battleships engaged the British battlecruiser squadron, Ostfriesland and ten other battleships fired on the British 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron. Ostfriesland, Kaiser, and Nassau engaged the cruiser Southampton, though only Nassau scored a hit. After about 15 minutes, Ostfriesland shifted fire to Birmingham and Nottingham, though again failed to hit her targets. Shortly after 19:15, the British dreadnought Warspite came into range; Ostfriesland opened fire at 19:25 with her main battery guns, at ranges of 10,800 to 15,000 yd (9,900 to 13,700 m). Ostfriesland claimed hits from her third and fourth salvos. Warspite was hit by a total of thirteen heavy shells during this period.
By 20:15, the German battle line had faced the entire deployed Grand Fleet a second time. Scheer ordered a 180-degree turn at 20:17, which was covered by a charge by the battlecruiser squadron and a torpedo-boat attack. In order to hasten the maneuver, Schmidt ordered Ostfriesland to turn immediately without waiting for Thüringen behind him. This move caused some difficulty for the III Squadron ships ahead, though the ships quickly returned to their stations. At around 23:30, the German fleet reorganized into the night cruising formation. Ostfriesland was the eighth ship, stationed toward the front of the 24-ship line. An hour later, the leading units of the German line encountered British light forces and a violent firefight at close range ensued. Sometime around 01:10, the armored cruiser Black Prince stumbled into the German line. Thüringen illuminated the vessel with her spotlights and poured salvos of 30.5 cm rounds into the ship. Ostfriesland fired with her 15 cm guns and Kaiser fired both 30.5 cm and 15 cm guns. In the span of less than a minute, two massive explosions tore the cruiser apart and killed the entire 857-man crew.
Despite the ferocity of the night fighting, the High Seas Fleet punched through the British destroyer forces and reached Horns Reef by 4:00 on 1 June. At 06:20, however, Ostfriesland struck a mine, previously laid by the destroyer HMS Abdiel on 4 May, on her starboard side. The ship hauled out of line, as the explosion was initially thought to have been a torpedo fired by a submarine. Ostfriesland fell behind the fleet and steamed at slow speed, screened by the destroyers V3, V5, and briefly by G11. By 10:40, the battleship had increased speed to 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph). Her anti-submarine escort was eventually reinforced by a floatplane, which spotted what it believed to be a British submarine at 12:20. Ostfriesland turned away, which caused the torpedo bulkhead, damaged slightly by the mine explosion, to tear open. More water entered the ship and caused a 4.75 degree list to starboard, forcing Ostfriesland to reduce speed again. The ship requested assistance from a pumping ship at 14:20, but by 14:45 the flooding was under control and the ship passed the Outer Jade Lightship. She was able to increase speed gradually to 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), and at 18:15 she reached port in Wilhelmshaven. The mine tore a hole that measured 40 ft × 16 ft (12.2 m × 4.9 m) and allowed 500 t (490 long tons) of water into the ship. Further flooding occurred after the torpedo bulkhead damage at 12:20, though the full damage report has not survived. Ostfriesland was drydocked in Wilhelmshaven for repairs, which lasted until 26 July. In the course of the battle, Ostfriesland fired 111 rounds from her main battery, 101 shells from her 15 cm guns, and a single 8.8 cm shell. The only damage sustained was the mine that was struck on the morning of 1 June, which killed one man and wounded ten.
#### Later operations
On 18 August 1916, Scheer attempted a repeat of the 31 May operation. The two serviceable German battlecruisers, Moltke and Von der Tann, supported by three dreadnoughts, were to bombard the coastal town of Sunderland in an attempt to draw out and destroy Beatty's battlecruisers. The rest of the fleet, including Ostfriesland, would trail behind and provide cover. On the approach to the English coast during the action of 19 August 1916, Scheer turned north after receiving a false report from a zeppelin about a British unit in the area. As a result, the bombardment was not carried out, and by 14:35, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and so turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.
On 25–26 September, Ostfriesland and the rest of I Squadron provided support for a sweep out to the Terschelling Bank conducted by the II Führer der Torpedoboote (Leader of Torpedo Boats). Scheer conducted another fleet operation on 18–20 October in the direction of the Dogger Bank. For the majority of 1917, Ostfriesland was assigned to guard duty in the German Bight. During Operation Albion, the amphibious assault on the Russian-held islands in the Gulf of Riga, Ostfriesland and her three sisters were moved to the Danish straits to block any possible British attempt to intervene. On 28 October the four ships arrived in Putzig Wiek, and from there steamed to Arensburg on the 29th. On 2 November the operation was completed and Ostfriesland and her sisters began the voyage back to the North Sea. In March 1918, Natzmer was replaced as the ship's commander by KzS Hans Herr. A final abortive fleet sortie took place on 23–24 April 1918. Ostfriesland, Thüringen, and Nassau were formed into a special unit for Operation Schlußstein, a planned occupation of St. Petersburg. The three ships reached the Baltic on 10 August, but the operation was postponed and eventually canceled. The special unit was dissolved on 21 August and the battleships were back in Wilhelmshaven on the 23rd.
### The end of the war
Ostfriesland and her three sisters were to have taken part in a final fleet action at the end of October 1918, just over 2 weeks before the Armistice was signed. The bulk of the High Seas Fleet was to have sortied from its base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet; Scheer—by now the Großadmiral (Grand Admiral) of the fleet—intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, to improve Germany's bargaining position, despite the expected casualties. But many of the war-weary sailors felt that the operation would disrupt the peace process and prolong the war. On the morning of 29 October 1918, the order was given to sail from Wilhelmshaven the following day. Starting on the night of the 29th, sailors on Thüringen and then on several other battleships mutinied. The unrest ultimately forced Hipper and Scheer to cancel the operation. Informed of the situation, the Kaiser stated "I no longer have a navy". On 16 December, Ostfriesland was decommissioned and used as a barracks ship.
Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, was interned in the British naval base in Scapa Flow. Only the most modern ships were sent for internment; the four Helgoland-class ships were left in Germany. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to scuttle his ships. In the span of a few hours, ten battleships and five battlecruisers sank in the shallow waters of Scapa Flow. KzS Karl Windmüller served as Ostfriesland's final commander, until she was stricken from the navy list on 5 November 1919. She was then surrendered to the Allies as "H" as a replacement for the ships that had been scuttled. The ship remained in Germany until 7 April 1920, when a German crew took her to Rosyth. She was ceded to the United States as war reparations, commissioned on 7 April at Rosyth as USS Ostfriesland and commanded by Captain J. F. Hellweg. On 9 April an American crew arrived to bring her to the US. Even though she needed repairs, Ostfriesland was able to sail to New York. She was later decommissioned there on 20 September 1920.
### US bombing target
In July 1921, the United States Navy and Army Air Service conducted a series of bombing tests off Cape Henry, led by General Billy Mitchell. The targets included demobilized American and former German warships, including the old battleship Iowa, the cruiser Frankfurt, and finally Ostfriesland on 20 July. At 13:30 ET, the first attack wave, armed with 230 lb (100 kg) bombs, struck the stationary ship. Eight of thirty-three bombs found their mark, after which the ship was inspected. The second wave was also armed with 230 lb bombs, and the third and fourth carried 600 lb (270 kg) bombs. Five 600 lb bombs found their mark, but little damage was done to the ship's topside. The bombs that nearly missed the ship, however, had done significant underwater damage to the hull, which allowed some flooding and created a list of five degrees to port and three additional feet of draft at the stern. The bombing schedule was interrupted by a storm in the late afternoon.
Early on the morning of 21 July, the fifth wave of bombers began their attack. At 08:52, the first Army bomber dropped a 1,000 lb (450 kg) bomb that hit the ship; four more bombers followed and scored two further hits. Inspectors again went aboard Ostfriesland following the fifth attack and noted that the hits had not seriously damaged the ship, though one had created a large hole on her starboard side that allowed further flooding. By noon, she was down five feet at the stern and one foot at the bow. At 12:19, the next attack wave, equipped with 2,000 lb (910 kg) bombs, struck. Six bombs were dropped, none of which hit, though three detonated very close to the hull. At 12:30, Ostfriesland began to sink rapidly by the stern and the list to port increased dramatically. At 12:40, the ship rolled over and sank. The results of the tests were widely publicized and Mitchell became both a national hero and the "infallible prophet of aviation".
The leadership of the US Navy, however, was outraged by Mitchell's handling of the tests; the 2,000 lb bombs had not been sanctioned by the Navy, which had set the rules for the engagement. Mitchell's bombers had also not allowed inspectors aboard the ship between bombing runs as stipulated by the Navy. The joint Army–Navy report on the tests, issued a month later and signed by General John J. Pershing, stated that "the battleship is still the backbone of the fleet." Mitchell wrote his own, contradictory account of the tests, which was then leaked to the press. The sinking of the battleship sparked great controversy in the American public sphere; Mitchell's supporters exaggerated the significance of the tests by falsely claiming Ostfriesland to be an unsinkable "super-battleship" and that "old sea dogs ... wept aloud." Senator William Borah argued that the tests had rendered battleships obsolete. Mitchell was widely supported in the press, though his increasingly combative tactics eventually resulted in a court-martial for insubordination that forced him to retire from the military.
|
46,613,571 |
Romney Literary Society
| 1,092,691,716 |
19th-century literary society
|
[
"1819 establishments in Virginia",
"1861 disestablishments in Virginia",
"1869 establishments in West Virginia",
"1886 disestablishments in West Virginia",
"Academic organizations based in the United States",
"Arts organizations established in the 1810s",
"Debating societies",
"Defunct educational institutions in the United States",
"Defunct libraries",
"Education in Hampshire County, West Virginia",
"Hampshire County, West Virginia, in the American Civil War",
"Libraries in Virginia",
"Libraries in West Virginia",
"Library-related organizations",
"Private libraries in the United States",
"Romney Literary Society",
"Scientific organizations based in the United States"
] |
The Romney Literary Society (also known as the Literary Society of Romney) existed from January 30, 1819, to February 15, 1886, in Romney, West Virginia. Established as the Polemic Society of Romney, it became the first organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States. The society was founded by nine prominent men of Romney with the objectives of advancing literature and science, purchasing and maintaining a library, and improving educational opportunities.
The society debated an extensive range of scientific and social topics, often violating its own rules which banned religious and political subjects. Even though its membership was relatively small, its debates and activities were frequently discussed throughout the Potomac Highlands region, and the organization greatly influenced trends of thought in the Romney community and surrounding areas.
The society's library began in 1819 with the acquisition of two books; by 1861, it had grown to contain approximately 3,000 volumes on subjects such as literature, science, history, and art. The organization also sought to establish an institution for "the higher education of the youth of the community." In 1820, as a result of this initiative, the teaching of the classics was introduced into the curriculum of Romney Academy, thus making the institution the first school of higher education in the Eastern Panhandle. In 1846, the society constructed a building which housed the Romney Classical Institute and its library, both of which fell under the society's supervision. The institute was administered by noted Presbyterian Reverend William Henry Foote. Following a dispute with the society, Foote founded a rival school in Romney, known as the Potomac Seminary, in 1850.
The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute continued to grow in influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861. The contents of the society's library were plundered by Union Army forces, and only 400 of the library's volumes could be recovered following the war's end in 1865. Reorganized in 1869, the society took a leading role in Romney's civil development during Reconstruction. Between 1869 and 1870, it completed construction of Literary Hall, where the society held meetings and reassembled its library. The organization used its influence to secure the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind for the town of Romney, and offered the school its former Romney Classical Institute campus. The schools opened on September 29, 1870. Interest in the society waned during its final years, and its last recorded meeting was held in 1886.
## Establishment
The Romney Literary Society was organized on January 30, 1819, by nine prominent men of Romney in the office of Dr. John Temple, a reputable physician in the community. The society was formed with the purpose "of taking into consideration the propriety of financing a Society, having for its object the advancement of Literature and Science, the purchase of a Library by and for the use of its members; and their further improvement by discussing before the Society such questions as shall be selected under its directors." With its establishment, the Romney Literary Society became the first organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States. The nine men at the society's first meeting were Thomas Blair, David Gibson, James P. Jack, Samuel Kercheval, Jr., Nathaniel Kuykendall, Charles T. Magill, James M. Stephens, John Temple, and William C. Wodrow. According to historian Hu Maxwell, these men elected Kuykendall as chairman and Magill as secretary of a committee which was charged with the drafting of a constitution for the society.
On February 4, 1819, the committee delivered its draft of the constitution and the society adopted the document, which provided that the organization should be known as the Polemic Society of Romney. The society's constitution also specified that the officers should consist of a president, secretary, and treasurer, each of whom was to be selected by a ballot vote. The constitution further stipulated that each member was to pay dues of 50 cents per month, and that the society had the authority to levy further financial contributions from its members as it deemed necessary. The funds collected were to cover the society's operating costs, and the remaining funds were to be used in purchasing books for the library. Under the constitution, the society's meetings were to be held weekly. Following each meeting's business session, a debate or other literary exercises were to be held consisting of topics of general interest of the members. No political or religious discussions were to take place during the debates unless they were of an abstract nature or in general terms. Profane language and "spirituous liquors" were also forbidden from the society's meetings, with each offense being punishable with a fine of one dollar. The society's first elected officers were Charles T. Magill as president, William C. Wodrow as secretary, and John Temple as treasurer.
## Early debates
The society's next meeting was held on February 13, 1819, in the old Hampshire County Courthouse, where the first matter for debate was "Resolved: That a representative should be governed by instructions from his constituents." Following the debate, the decision was rendered in favor of the affirmative. The second meeting, which was held on February 19 of that year at the Romney Academy, debated the question, "Is an education acquired at the public school or [is] a private tutor to be preferred?" and the society favored the public school. At this second meeting, the first money appropriated by the society was paid to the doorkeeper for a sum of 25 cents. Also at this second meeting, the treasurer was instructed to purchase a book for use by the secretary, three candlesticks, one pair of snuffers, and three pounds of candles. On February 26, the society argued the question, "Is a system of banking advantageous to a community?" The debate ended under the decision that a system of banking was advantageous. The following meeting on March 6 debated a question far more psychological in nature, which was an abstract question of religion: "Can the human mind, by its own reflection, arrive at the conclusion that the soul is immortal?" The society decided in the negative. The society also debated and decided in the negative the question, "Is a protective tariff detrimental to the interests of the country?"
One of the society's more spirited debates occurred in May 1822 over the question, "Is it to the interest of the people of Hampshire to encourage the canalling of the Potomac?" While no records of the arguments survive, the society decided that the canalling of the Potomac River would be detrimental to the interests of Hampshire County. The debate took place before the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal along the Maryland shore of the Potomac River to the north of Hampshire County. The society's consensus was that a canal on the Potomac would destroy the business of teamsters who hauled merchandise from the east along the Northwestern Turnpike. For this reason, the society and local population of Romney also objected to the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. To ensure confidentiality, the society passed a bylaw that enforced a fine of five dollars on any member who published either his own or another member's speeches delivered before the society. As a result of this bylaw, no speeches were ever published. The society adopted a new constitution in 1824.
## Growth and influence
Over the first ten years of the society's existence, the organization grew in membership and held meetings at least twice a month, and usually four times a month. The society debated an extensive range of subjects including scientific, religious, political, and social topics, often violating the constitution's rules banning religious and political subjects. The society's debates were often acrimonious and regularly spilled beyond the confines of the meetings and into the community. Between January 30, 1819, and January 22, 1830, the society's membership rolls reached 52 members; although as few as 15 members attended the bimonthly meetings, and no more than 17 members were ever present at a meeting.
Even though the Romney Literary Society's membership was relatively small, its debates and activities were frequently discussed throughout the Potomac Highlands region. For this reason, the society greatly influenced trends of thought in the Romney community and surrounding areas. No records of the society's proceedings, works, or membership enrollments spanning the period between January 22, 1830, and 1861 are extant. During this period, the society counted among its members Angus William McDonald, John Baker White, and Robert White.
## Library collection
In order to fulfill one of its primary purposes of establishing a library for its members, the Romney Literary Society gradually began to acquire volumes for such a use. The society's library began with the April 23, 1819, appropriation for the purchase of two books: Plutarch's Parallel Lives and Emer de Vattel's The Law of Nations. On July 2, 1819, the balance of available funds in the treasurer's account was two dollars and forty-six cents, but by October 23, there were sufficient funds to purchase the following volumes: Charles Rollin's Ancient History, Lewis' Roman History, and William Robertson's History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth.
No more volumes were purchased until the end of 1820, when the society acquired the works of Livy, Tacitus, and John Marshall's Life of Washington. Three months later, the society purchased a bookcase for its growing collection. In April 1821, the society further expanded its library with the acquisitions of Nathaniel Hooke's Roman History, from the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth, the works of Herodotus, Travels in Greece, Modern Europe, David Ramsay's History of the United States, and the works of Benjamin Franklin.
In 1821, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act incorporating the organization as the "Library Society of Romney." The society found the assembly's charter unsatisfactory, as it specified several changes to the organization that the society had not asked for, including the change in its name. The members regarded their society as a "literary" society and not a "library" one. The society requested that the assembly amend its charter, and after several delays and debates over the new charter, the Virginia General Assembly passed a new act on February 4, 1823, in which the organization was rebranded as "The Literary Society of Romney." The society maintained this long form name throughout the duration of its existence, although it was locally known as the "Romney Literary Society."
Within the span of ten years, the society's small library grew to contain approximately 3,000 volumes on literature, science, history, and art. These were bound in calfskin and stamped with the seal of the society. The minutes from the society's bimonthly meetings listed the books purchased and the methods by which they were acquired. According to the Federal Writers' Project in their Historic Romney 1762–1937 (1937), the book selections and their acquisition "indicate that these men possessed real literary judgment and business ability."
By resolutions of the society, the use of the library was for the society's members, and was further extended to "ministers of the gospel of all denominations gratis." Certain citizens of Romney were also granted access to the library, and enjoyed similar privileges as its members.
## Academic patronage
From the organization's foundation, the Romney Literary Society gradually began to recognize that the local subscription school systems provided only elementary and often fragmentary education and no longer satisfied the academic needs of the Romney community. The society periodically engaged in lengthy deliberations on which theories of educational advancement and popular education were preferable. Shortly after its establishment, the society commenced a movement to establish an institution for "the higher education of the youth of the community." In 1820, as a result of this initiative, the teaching of the classics was introduced into the curriculum of Romney Academy, thus making the institution the first school of higher education in the Eastern Panhandle. Under the guidance, leadership, and strict discipline of Dr. Henry Johnston, Romney Academy became widely renowned for its courses in "higher classics." His successor and society member William Henry Foote introduced courses in theology, and the school's enrollment grew to include students preparing for ministry. As the school became more renowned in the South Branch Potomac River valley, pupils came from further and further away. Thomas Mulledy and Samuel Mulledy were among the early instructors at the academy, both of whom later served as presidents of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
By 1831, Romney Academy had outgrown its facilities in the old stone school building behind the Hampshire County Courthouse. To remedy this, the society instituted a campaign to raise funds for a new school building. On January 6, 1832, the Virginia General Assembly authorized the society to raise an endowment of \$20,000 in a lottery for educational purposes. Following a ten-year lapse, the society made arrangements with James Gregory of Jersey City and Daniel McIntyre of Philadelphia to finance a lottery "for raising a sum of money not exceeding twenty thousand dollars, for the purpose of erecting a suitable building for their accommodation, the purchase of library and Philosophical apparatus." The lottery was to be conducted over a period of ten years, and sums of \$750, \$1,000, and \$1,500 were to be raised in semiannual installments. The society was successful in raising funds, and in 1845 the society solicited bids for the construction of a new building to house both the academy, the society, and the society's library. The society also used the lottery funds to pay for books for the academy.
On February 12, 1844, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act authorizing the society to denote the balance of the moneys raised by the lottery to the Romney Academy. The assembly further enacted another legislative act on December 12, 1846, authorizing the Romney Literary Society to "establish at or near the town of Romney a Seminary of Learning for the instruction of youth in various branches of science and literature; and the Society map appropriate to the same such portion of the property which it now has or may acquire, as it may deem expedient." That same year, a new brick neoclassical building was constructed east of Romney, and the society, its library, and Romney Academy relocated to the new facility. The second story of the new building was utilized by the society, with one hall for meetings and the other hall for the society's library. According to Maxwell, "few schools in the state of Virginia at that time had access to better libraries." The new institute building and grounds cost the society about \$8,000. Following its move to the new building, the academy was reorganized as the Romney Classical Institute and its activities fell under the supervision of the society. The institute was operated under the principalship of Foote from 1846 until 1849.
In 1849, the society presented a new code and system of bylaws for the government of the Romney Classical Institute, which reserved to the society the power to appoint assistant teachers, fix the amount of salaries, and provide the conditions and manners of payment and reimbursement. Foote differed with the society over these matters, and he ultimately declined to accept the new bylaws and resigned his leadership position in October 1849; in 1850, he established a rival institution known as the Potomac Seminary. Rather than falling under the patronage of the society, Foote's new institution fell under the control of the Presbyterian church. Following Foote's departure, the society selected Professor E. J. Meany to head the Romney Classical Institute. Despite the schism, the society also provided financial support from the lottery to the Potomac Seminary.
According to a "catalogue of the members and library" published on June 1, 1849, there were 20 registered members on the rolls who paid \$3 each per year to the society's library fund; there were also eight library members who were admitted under certain regulations of the society and who paid the same fees. Members who had use of the library were provided keys and were allowed access to the library at any time. The town's clergymen and the principal of the Romney Classical Institute were the only non-members who were extended privileges to the library. The 1849 "catalogue" listed Alfred P. White as the society's librarian and E. J. Meany remained the principal of the institute. After 1853, the society possessed a permanent fund of \$12,000, which yielded \$720 per year, one half of which was devoted to the support of the Romney Classical Institute.
## American Civil War and hiatus
The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute flourished and continued to grow in importance and influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861. Following the war's outbreak, many of the society's members and the institute's professors and older students joined the Confederate States Army and marched to war. During the war, the society suffered extensive losses. The Romney Classical Institute building and its library were considered legitimate plunder by Union Army forces. The society's library was emptied and three-fourths of its volumes were either scattered or destroyed. The most valuable of these volumes were never recovered following the war's end. Its records of proceedings between 1830 and 1861, the period during which the society engaged in most of its notable literary and philanthropic works, were also destroyed during the war.
Following the war's end, only 400 out of the library's nearly 3,000 volumes could be recovered, with only 200 of those books remaining on the library's shelves. Between 10 and 20 of the library's recovered volumes only contained three to four of their original books. The value of the recovered volumes was degraded, as many were damaged or broken. The society members that returned home to Romney were too war-weary to revive the society when they discovered the ruins of the Romney Classical Institute and its library, which had been an expensive endeavor to accumulate and took almost a half-century of labor to amass. The Romney Classical Institute was not restored and was in effect disestablished on account of the war.
## Revival
Following the war, the residents of Romney set about repairing public buildings and reestablishing the town's antebellum institutions, including the Romney Literary Society. The society remained on a hiatus until May 15, 1869, when a meeting was held by nine members, as only nine original members had responded to the call for reorganization. These nine members tasked with rebuilding the society were James L. Armstrong, David Entler, William Harper, John C. Heiskell, Andrew Wodrow Kercheval, Samuel R. Lupton, James Parsons, Alfred P. White, and Robert White. These men sought to collect what remained of the library's books and engaged in a campaign to recruit new members, which resulted in the enrollment of 20 younger men over a period of a few years. Many of the men who had been members in 1861 had died during the war, and the recruitment of new members was essential to the revival of the society. Among the new members elected between 1869 and 1886 were John Collins Covell, Samuel Lightfoot Flournoy, Henry Bell Gilkeson, Howard Hille Johnson, and Christian Streit White. The society, with renewed vigor, took a lead role in Romney's civil development during the Reconstruction Era.
Between 1869 and 1870, the society completed construction of a new two-story brick building on Lot 56 at the corner of West Main and North High Streets known as Literary Hall, where it could hold its meetings and reassemble the remaining volumes from its original library. Literary Hall was built upon the former location of the shuttered Bank of the South Branch of the Potomac. In addition to the 400 volumes that were initially recovered following the war, the society recovered several more volumes from its original library, and set about purchasing new books; the restored library was reopened with about 700 volumes.
## West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind
Around the time of the society's reorganization in 1869, the state of West Virginia considered the establishment of a school for the deaf and the blind. The society resolved to secure the new state institution for Romney. On April 12, 1870, the society passed a resolution by which the members agreed to deed, free of cost, the buildings and grounds of the Romney Classical Institute.
On April 20, 1870, the society sent Andrew Wodrow Kercheval and Robert White as representatives to the then-state capital Wheeling to present their formal offer of "the grounds and buildings of the Romney Classical Institute... to the Board of Regents, free of debt, and in good repair" on the condition that the proposed school be located in Romney. Clarksburg and Parkersburg also made offers of potential campuses to the state. The offer was made to the Board of Regents of the West Virginia Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, as it was then known, and the society's proposal was accepted by the regents after a brief period of deliberation. The society's offer was the only one that included a building upon the grounds.
It was discovered by the society that in order to follow through with their proposition, it was necessary to raise more than \$1,000, which was ostensibly a difficult task during the Reconstruction Era in Romney. On July 11, 1870, the Board of Regents passed a resolution necessitating the subscription of between \$1,200 and \$1,300 to facilitate the transaction. One hundred and eighteen individuals and firms responded to the board's request with a total subscription of \$1,383.60. To make good on its offer, the society also made an appropriation of \$320 on July 11 for the purpose of repairing and restoring the former Romney Classical Institute and grounds so that they were satisfactory before they were transferred to the regents. Shortly thereafter, the old institute building and 15 acres (6.1 ha) of property were formally transferred to the state of West Virginia.
On September 29, 1870, the institute, which was later known as the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind, opened its doors in the old Romney Classical Institute building with 25 deaf and five blind students. Following its disestablishment in 1916, the adjacent Potomac Academy (formerly Potomac Seminary) grounds were also incorporated into the campus of the Schools for the Deaf and Blind.
## Final years
During a period of ten years spanning from 1870 to 1880, much of Romney's intellectual life centered on Literary Hall. During this time, the society met only occasionally and there were no records of meetings between March 1872 and April 1878. The post-war period of revival was short-lived, as the death of the older members caused interest in the society to wane. The society's meetings occurred less often, and the last recorded meeting of the society was held on February 15, 1886. During the society's second existence, Literary Hall was used as a meeting space by the Freemasons and the Order of the Eastern Star, and the organizations continued to inhabit the hall following the society's disestablishment until its 1974 purchase by attorney Ralph Haines. Also a local historian, Haines restored Literary Hall and used it as his law office and museum. Literary Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 29, 1979, and, as of 2004, it is occasionally open to the public. The society's remaining records, dating as early as 1819, remain on display there.
## Legacy
In describing the efforts of the Romney Literary Society, historian Hu Maxwell, in his History of Hampshire County, West Virginia From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present (1897), stated that "the work accomplished by these few energetic citizens of Romney is astonishing." Maxwell further asserted, "No other one thing in the history of the town has had such lasting results for good." The society left many lasting impacts upon the town of Romney during its existence and beyond, which included the foundation of a library; the academic and financial support and patronage of the Romney Academy, Romney Classical Institute, and the Potomac Seminary; the civic leadership during the Reconstruction Era; and the influence and assistance in securing the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind. According to Maxwell, without the efforts of the society, the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind could not have been secured for Romney, and would have likely been located elsewhere in the state.
## See also
- Literary Hall
- Romney Academy
- West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind
|
360,300 |
The Final Cut (album)
| 1,172,923,101 | null |
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The Final Cut is the twelfth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 21 March 1983 through Harvest and Columbia Records. It comprises unused material from the band's previous studio album, The Wall (1979), alongside new material recorded throughout 1982.
The Final Cut is the last Pink Floyd album to feature founding member Roger Waters, who departed from the band in 1985. It is also the only Pink Floyd album not to feature founding member and keyboardist Richard Wright, who had left the band under pressure from Waters after the Wall sessions. The recording was plagued by conflict; the guitarist, David Gilmour, felt many of the tracks were not worthy of inclusion, but Waters accused him of failing to contribute material himself. The contributions from the drummer, Nick Mason, were limited mostly to sound effects.
Waters planned the album as a soundtrack for the 1982 film adaptation of The Wall. With the onset of the Falklands War, he rewrote it as a concept album exploring what he considered the betrayal of his father, who died serving in the Second World War. Waters provided lead vocals for all but one track, and he is credited for all songwriting. The album was accompanied by a short film released in the same year.
The Final Cut received mixed reviews, though retrospective reception has been more favourable. Though it reached number one in the UK and number six in the US, it was the lowest-selling Pink Floyd studio album worldwide since their sixth album, Meddle (1971).
## Background
The Final Cut was conceived as a soundtrack album for Pink Floyd – The Wall, the 1982 film based on Pink Floyd's previous studio album The Wall (1979). Under its working title Spare Bricks, it would have featured new music rerecorded for the film, such as "When the Tigers Broke Free". Bassist, vocalist, and primary songwriter Roger Waters also planned to record a small amount of new material, expanding The Wall'''s narrative.
As a result of the Falklands War, Waters changed direction and wrote new material. He saw British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's response to Argentina's invasion of the islands as jingoistic and unnecessary, and dedicated the new album—provisionally titled Requiem for a Post-War Dream—to his father, Eric Fletcher Waters. A second lieutenant of the 8th Royal Fusiliers, Eric Waters died during the Second World War at Aprilia in Italy, on 18 February 1944, when Roger was five months old. Waters said:
> The Final Cut was about how, with the introduction of the Welfare State, we felt we were moving forward into something resembling a liberal country where we would all look after one another ... but I'd seen all that chiselled away, and I'd seen a return to an almost Dickensian society under Margaret Thatcher. I felt then, as now, that the British government should have pursued diplomatic avenues, rather than steaming in the moment that task force arrived in the South Atlantic.
Waters had conflicting feelings about how his generation was tackling issues that greatly affected his father's generation. In an interview in 1987, he confessed:
> It says something about a sense, I suppose for me personally, a sense that I may have betrayed him. He died in the last war and I kind of feel that I personally may have betrayed him, because we haven’t managed to improve things very much. That the economic cycles still over-ride everything, with the best intentions, the cycle of economic recession followed by resurgence still governs our actions.
Guitarist David Gilmour disliked Waters' politicising, and the new creative direction prompted arguments. Five other tracks not used on The Wall ("Your Possible Pasts", "One of the Few", "The Final Cut", "The Fletcher Memorial Home", and "The Hero's Return") had been set aside for Spare Bricks, and although Pink Floyd had often reused material, Gilmour felt the songs were not good enough for a new studio album. He wanted to write new material, but Waters remained doubtful as Gilmour had lately contributed little new music. Gilmour said:
> I'm certainly guilty at times of being lazy, and moments have arrived when Roger might say, "Well, what have you got?" And I'd be like, "Well, I haven't got anything right now. I need a bit of time to put some ideas on tape." There are elements of all this stuff that, years later, you can look back on and say, "Well, he had a point there." But he wasn't right about wanting to put some duff tracks on The Final Cut. I said to Roger, "If these songs weren't good enough for The Wall, why are they good enough now?"
The title The Final Cut is a reference to William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "This was the most unkindest cut of all". "When the Tigers Broke Free" was issued as a single titled "Pink Floyd: The Wall: Music from the Film" on 26 July 1982, with the film version of "Bring the Boys Back Home" on the B-side; the single was labelled "Taken from the album The Final Cut" but was not included on that album until the 2004 CD reissue.
## Concept
The Final Cut is an anti-war concept album that explores what Waters regards as the betrayal of fallen British servicemen—such as his father—who during the Second World War sacrificed their lives in the spirit of a post-war dream. This post-war dream was that their victory would usher in a more peaceful world, whose leaders would no longer be so eager to resolve disputes by resorting to war. The album's lyrics are critical of Thatcher, whose policies and decisions Waters regarded as an example of this betrayal. She is referred to as "Maggie" throughout the album.
The opening track, "The Post War Dream", begins with a recorded announcement that the replacement for the Atlantic Conveyor, a ship lost during the Falklands campaign, will be built in Japan. Waters' lyrics refer to his dead father, the loss of Britain's shipbuilding industry to Japan, and Margaret Thatcher, before moving on to "Your Possible Pasts", a rewritten version of a song rejected for The Wall. In "One of the Few", another rejected song, the schoolteacher from The Wall features as the main character, presented as a war hero returned to civilian life. He is unable to relate his experiences to his wife, and in "The Hero's Return" is tormented by the loss of one of his aircrew. "The Gunner's Dream" discusses the post-war dream of a world free from tyranny and the threat of terrorism (a reference to the Hyde Park bombing). It is followed in "Paranoid Eyes" by the teacher's descent into alcoholism.
The second half deals with various war issues. While "Southampton Dock" is a lament to returning war heroes and other soldiers heading out to a likely death, "Not Now John" addresses society's ignorance of political and economic problems. "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert" deals with Waters' feelings about war and invasion, and "The Fletcher Memorial Home" (the title is a nod to Waters' father) reflects a fantastical application of "the final solution" on a gathering of political leaders including Leonid Brezhnev, Menachem Begin and Margaret Thatcher. The album's titular song deals with the aftermath of a man's isolation and sexual repression, as he contemplates suicide and struggles to reconnect with the world around him. The album ends with "Two Suns in the Sunset", which portrays a nuclear holocaust: the final result of a world obsessed with war and control.
## Recording
American composer Michael Kamen, who had contributed to The Wall, co-produced, oversaw the orchestral arrangements, and mediated between Waters and Gilmour. He also stood in for keyboardist Richard Wright, who had left the band under pressure from Waters during the recording of The Wall. James Guthrie was studio engineer and co-producer, while Mason's drumming was supplemented by Ray Cooper on percussion; when Mason was unable to perform the complex time changes on "Two Suns in the Sunset", he was replaced by session musician Andy Newmark. Mason also suggested the repeated reprises of "Maggie, what have we done" be rendered instrumental rather than sung. Raphael Ravenscroft was hired to play the saxophone. Recording took place in the latter half of 1982 across eight studios, including Gilmour's home studio at Hook End Manor, and Waters' Billiard Room Studios at East Sheen. The other studios were Mayfair Studios, Olympic Studios, Abbey Road Studios, Eel Pie Studios, Audio International and RAK Studios.
Tensions soon emerged, and while Waters and Gilmour initially worked together, playing the video game Donkey Kong (1981) in their spare time, they eventually chose to work separately. Engineer Andy Jackson worked with Waters on vocals; Guthrie with Gilmour on guitars. They would occasionally meet to discuss the work that had been completed; while this method was not in itself unusual, Gilmour began to feel strained, sometimes barely maintaining his composure. Kamen too felt pressured; Waters had never been a confident vocalist and, on one occasion, after repeated studio takes, Waters noticed him writing on a notepad. Losing his temper, he demanded to know what Kamen was doing, only to find that Kamen had been writing, "I Must Not Fuck Sheep" repeatedly. Waters said that "a lot of that aggravation came through in the vocal performance, which, looking back, really was quite tortured."
Like previous Pink Floyd albums, The Final Cut used sound effects combined with advances in audio recording technology. Mason's contributions were mostly limited to recording sound effects for the experimental Holophonic system, an audio processing technique used to add an enhanced three-dimensional effect to the recordings; The Final Cut is the second album ever to feature this technology. The technique is featured on "Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert", creating a sound of an explosion that surrounds the listener. Sound effects are reused from the Pink Floyd albums Meddle (1971), The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979).
After months of poor relations, and following a final confrontation, Gilmour was removed from the credit list as producer, but was still paid production royalties. Waters later said that he was also under significant pressure and that early in production believed he would never record with Gilmour or Mason again. He may have threatened to release the album as a solo record, although Pink Floyd were contracted to EMI and such a move would have been unlikely. Mason kept himself distant, dealing with marital problems. In an August 1987 interview, Waters recalled The Final Cut as an "absolute misery to make", and that the band members were "fighting like cats and dogs". He said the experience forced them to accept that they had not worked together as a band since their ninth studio album Wish You Were Here (1975).
## Packaging
Storm Thorgerson, a founder member of Hipgnosis (designers of most of Pink Floyd's previous and future artwork), was passed over for the cover design. Instead, Waters created the cover himself, using photographs taken by his brother-in-law, Willie Christie. The front cover shows a Remembrance poppy and four Second World War medal ribbons against the black fabric of the jacket or blazer on which they are worn. From left to right, the medals are the 1939–1945 Star, the Africa Star, the Defence Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The poppy is a recurring design theme. The interior gatefold featured three photographs, the first depicting an outdoor scene with an outstretched hand holding three poppies and in the distance, a soldier with his back to the camera. Two more photographs show a welder at work, his mask emblazoned with the Japanese Rising Sun Flag, and a nuclear explosion (a clear reference to "Two Suns in the Sunset"). The album's lyrics are printed on the gatefold. Side one of the vinyl disc carries an image of a poppy field, and on side two, a soldier with a knife in his back lies face down amongst the poppies, a dog beside him.
The back cover features a photograph of an officer standing upright and holding a film canister, with a knife protruding from his back: the film canister and knife may reflect Waters' tumultuous relationship with The Wall film director Alan Parker.
## Film
The Final Cut was accompanied by a short film. It features the songs "The Gunner's Dream", "The Final Cut", "The Fletcher Memorial Home" and "Not Now John". Produced and written by Waters and directed by his brother-in-law Willie Christie, it features Waters talking to a psychiatrist named A. Parker-Marshall. The character name was meant to be a dig at both Pink Floyd: The Wall director Alan Parker and Alan Marshall, the film's producer. Alex McAvoy, who played the teacher in Pink Floyd – The Wall, also appears. The film was released on Betamax and VHS in July 1983 and was one of EMI's first "video EPs".
## Release and sales
The Final Cut was released in the UK on 21 March 1983. It reached number one in the UK, surpassing The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. It was less successful in America, peaking at number six on the Billboard album charts. Issued as a single, "Not Now John" reached the UK Top 30, with its chorus of "Fuck all that" bowdlerised to "Stuff all that".
With over 1,000,000 units shipped in the United States, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified The Final Cut Platinum in May 1983. It was given double Platinum certification in 1997. However, The Final Cut was the lowest-selling Pink Floyd studio album in the United States and worldwide since Meddle. Gilmour claimed that this relative commercial failure supported his assertion that much of the material was weak. Waters responded that it was "ridiculous" to judge a record by its sales, and that he had been approached by a woman in a shop whose father had also been killed in World War II and told him The Final Cut was "the most moving record she had ever heard". In 1983, Gilmour said The Final Cut was "very good but it's not personally how I would see a Pink Floyd record going".
The Final Cut was released on CD in 1983. A remastered and repackaged CD was issued by EMI in Europe and on Capitol Records in the US in 2004; this included an extra song, the previously released "When the Tigers Broke Free". In 2007, a remastered version was released as part of the Oh, by the Way box set, packaged in a miniature replica of the original gatefold LP sleeve.
## Critical reception
The Final Cut received mixed reviews. Melody Maker deemed it "a milestone in the history of awfulness", and the NME's Richard Cook wrote: "Like the poor damned Tommies that haunt his mind, Roger Waters' writing has been blown to hell ... Waters stopped with The Wall, and The Final Cut isolates and juggles the identical themes of that elephantine concept with no fresh momentum to drive them." Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice: "it's a comfort to encounter antiwar rock that has the weight of years of self-pity behind it", and awarded the album a C+ grade.
More impressed, Rolling Stones Kurt Loder viewed it as "essentially a Roger Waters solo album ... a superlative achievement on several levels". Dan Hedges of Record also approved, writing: "On paper it sounds hackneyed and contrived – the sort of thing that was worked into the ground by everyone from P. F. Sloan to Paul Kantner. In Pink Floyd's case, it still works, partially through the understatement and ingenuity of the music and the special effects ... but mostly through the care Waters has taken in plotting out the imagery of his bleak visions."
## Aftermath and legacy
With no plans to tour in support of the album, Waters and Gilmour instead turned to solo projects. Gilmour recorded and toured his second solo studio album About Face in 1984, using it to express his feelings on a range of topics from the murder of musician John Lennon to his relationship with Waters, who also began to tour his debut solo studio album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking that same year. Mason released his second solo studio album, Profiles, in August 1985.
In 1985, faced with a potentially ruinous lawsuit from his record company and band members, Waters resigned. He believed that Pink Floyd was a "spent force". He applied to the High Court to prevent the Pink Floyd name from ever being used again. His lawyers discovered that the partnership had never been formally confirmed, and Waters returned to the High Court in an attempt to gain a veto over further use of the band's name. Gilmour's team responded by issuing a press release affirming that Pink Floyd would continue; he told a Sunday Times reporter that "Roger is a dog in the manger and I'm going to fight him".
Waters wrote to EMI and Columbia declaring his intention to leave the group, asking them to release him from his contractual obligations. With a legal case pending, he dispensed with manager Steve O'Rourke and employed Peter Rudge to manage his affairs. He later contributed to the soundtrack for When the Wind Blows (1986) and recorded a second solo studio album, Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)
Owing to the combination of Pink Floyd's partial break-up and Waters' dominance on the project, The Final Cut is sometimes viewed as a de facto Waters solo album. The personal quality assigned to the lyrics are related to Waters' struggle to reconcile his despair at the changing social face of Britain, and also the loss of his father during the Second World War. Gilmour's guitar solos on "Your Possible Pasts" and "The Fletcher Memorial Home" are, however, sometimes considered the equal of his best work on The Wall. More recent reviews of the album have weighed its importance alongside the band's break-up. Writing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said "with its anger, emphasis on lyrics, and sonic textures, it's clear that it's the album that Waters intended it to be. And it's equally clear that Pink Floyd couldn't have continued in this direction." Stylus Magazine wrote: "It's about pursuing something greater even when you have all the money that you could ever want. And either failing or succeeding brilliantly. It's up to you to decide whether this record is a success or a failure, but I'd go with the former every time." Rachel Mann of The Quietus said "flawed though it is, The Final Cut remains a tremendous album" and "still has something fresh to say". Mike Diver of Drowned in Sound was less generous: "Rays of light are few and far between, and even on paper the track titles – including 'The Gunner's Dream' and 'Paranoid Eyes' – suggest an arduous listen."
## Track listing
- All releases of the album from 2004 onwards have “When the Tigers Broke Free” added to the album between “One of the Few” and “The Hero’s Return”.
## Personnel
Numbers noted in parenthesis below are based on the original tracklist and CD track numbering.
Pink Floyd
- Roger Waters – lead vocals (all tracks), bass guitar (all tracks except 7), acoustic guitar (2-4, 6, 7, 9-12), synthesizers (3, 4, 11), twelve-string guitar (11), tape effects, production, sleeve design
- David Gilmour – lead (all tracks) and rhythm guitars (1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10-12), co-lead vocals (12), additional backing vocals
- Nick Mason – drums (1, 2, 4-5, 8, 10-11), tape effects
Additional musicians
- Michael Kamen – piano (5, 6, 8-10, 12), electric piano (2, 5), harmonium (1, 10), production
- Andy Bown – Hammond organ (2, 6, 11, 12), piano (5), electric piano (4)
- Ray Cooper – percussion (6)
- Andy Newmark – drums (12)
- Raphael Ravenscroft – tenor saxophone (5, 12)
- Doreen Chanter – backing vocals (11)
- Irene Chanter – backing vocals (11)
- National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted and arranged by Michael Kamen (1, 5-10)
Production'''
- James Guthrie – production, engineering
- Andrew Jackson – engineering
- Andy Canelle – assistant engineer
- Mike Nocito – assistant engineer
- Jules Bowen – assistant engineer
- Willie Christie – photography
- Artful Dodgers – sleeve design
- Zuccarelli Labs ltd – holophonics
- Doug Sax – mastering
- James Guthrie, Joel Plante – 2004 and 2011 remastering at das boot recording
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications and sales
|
177,840 |
Christopher Nolan
| 1,173,413,799 |
British-American filmmaker (born 1970)
|
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Christopher Edward Nolan CBE (born 30 July 1970) is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. His films have grossed \$5 billion worldwide. The recipient of many accolades, he has been nominated for five Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and six Golden Globe Awards. In 2015, he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, and in 2019, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to film.
Nolan developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age. After studying English literature at University College London, he made several short films before his feature film debut with Following (1998). Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He transitioned from independent to studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002), and found further critical and commercial success with The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010); the last of these earned Nolan two Oscar nominations—Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. This was followed by Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023). For Dunkirk, he earned two Academy Award nominations, including his first for Best Director.
Nolan's work regularly features in the listings of best films of their respective decades. Infused with a metaphysical outlook, his films thematise epistemology, existentialism, ethics, the construction of time, and the malleable nature of memory and personal identity. They feature mathematically-inspired images and concepts, unconventional narrative structures, practical special effects, experimental soundscapes, large-format film photography, and materialistic perspectives. He has co-written several of his films with his brother Jonathan, and runs the production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife, Emma Thomas.
## Early life
Christopher Edward Nolan was born on 30 July 1970, in Westminster, London. His father, Brendan, was a British advertising executive who worked as a creative director. His mother, Christina, was an American flight attendant from Evanston, Illinois; she would later work as a teacher of English. He has an elder brother, Matthew, and a younger brother, Jonathan, also a filmmaker. The three were raised Catholic in London and would spend their summers in Evanston. Nolan has both UK and US citizenship.
Growing up, Nolan was particularly influenced by the work of Ridley Scott and the science fiction films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977). He would repeatedly watch the latter film and extensively research its making. Nolan began making films at the age of seven, borrowing his father's Super 8 camera and shooting short films with his action figures. These films included a stop motion animation homage to Star Wars called Space Wars. He cast his brother Jonathan and built sets from "clay, flour, egg boxes and toilet rolls". His uncle, who had worked at NASA building guidance systems for the Apollo rockets, sent him some launch footage: "I re-filmed them off the screen and cut them in, thinking no-one would notice", Nolan later remarked. From the age of 11, he aspired to be a professional filmmaker. Between 1981 and 1983, Nolan enrolled at Barrow Hills, a Catholic prep school in Weybridge, Surrey. In his teenage years, Nolan started making films with Adrien and Roko Belic. Nolan and Roko co-directed the surreal 8 mm Tarantella (1989), which was shown on Image Union, an independent film and video showcase on the Public Broadcasting Service.
Nolan was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, an independent school in Hertford Heath, Hertfordshire, and later studied English literature at University College London (UCL). Opting out of a traditional film education, he pursued "a degree in something unrelated", which his father suggested "gives a different take on things". He chose UCL specifically for its filmmaking facilities, which comprised a Steenbeck editing suite and 16 mm film cameras. Nolan was president of the Union's Film Society, and with Emma Thomas (his girlfriend and future wife) he screened feature films in 35mm during the school year and used the money earned to produce 16 mm films over the summers.
## Career
### 1993–2003: Early career and breakthrough
After earning his bachelor's degree in English literature in 1993, Nolan worked as a script reader, camera operator and director of corporate films and industrial films. He directed, wrote and edited the short film Larceny (1996), which was filmed over a weekend in black and white with limited equipment and a small cast and crew. Funded by Nolan and shot with the UCL Union Film society's equipment, it appeared at the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996 and is considered one of UCL's best shorts. For unknown reasons, the film has since been removed from public view. Nolan filmed a third short, Doodlebug (1997), about a man seemingly chasing an insect with his shoe, only to discover that it is a miniature of himself. Nolan and Thomas first attempted to make a feature in the mid-1990s with Larry Mahoney, which they scrapped. During this period in his career, Nolan had little to no success getting his projects off the ground, facing several rejections; he added, "[T]here's a very limited pool of finance in the UK. To be honest, it's a very clubby kind of place ... Never had any support whatsoever from the British film industry."
Shortly after abandoning Larry Mahoney, Nolan conceived the idea for his first feature, Following (1998), which he wrote, directed, photographed and edited. The film depicts an unemployed young writer (Jeremy Theobald) who trails strangers through London, hoping they will provide material for his first novel, but is drawn into a criminal underworld when he fails to keep his distance. It was inspired by Nolan's experience of living in London and having his apartment burgled; he observed that the common attribute between larceny and pursuing someone through a crowd was that they both cross social boundaries. Co-produced by Nolan with Thomas and Theobald, it was made on a budget of around £3,000. Most of the cast and crew were friends of Nolan, and shooting took place on weekends over the course of a year. To conserve film stock, each scene was rehearsed extensively to ensure that the first or second take could be used in the final edit. Following won several awards during its festival run and was well received by critics who labelled Nolan a majorly talented debutant. Scott Timberg of New Times LA wrote that it "echoed Hitchcock classics", but was "leaner and meaner". Janet Maslin of The New York Times was impressed with its "spare look" and "agile hand-held camerawork", saying, "As a result, the actors convincingly carry off the before, during and after modes that the film eventually, and artfully, weaves together."
Following's success afforded Nolan the opportunity to make Memento (2000), which became his breakthrough film. His brother Jonathan pitched the idea to him, about a man with anterograde amnesia who uses notes and tattoos to hunt for his wife's murderer. Jonathan worked the idea into a short story, "Memento Mori" (2001), and Nolan developed it into a screenplay that told the story in reverse. Aaron Ryder, an executive for Newmarket Films, said it was "perhaps the most innovative script I had ever seen". The film was optioned and given a budget of \$4.5 million, with Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss in the starring roles. Newmarket also distributed the film after it was rejected by studios who feared that it would not attract a wide audience. Following a positive word of mouth and screenings in 500 theatres, it earned \$40 million. Memento premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2000 to critical acclaim. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote in his review, "I can't remember when a movie has seemed so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny at the very same time." In the book The Philosophy of Neo-Noir, Basil Smith drew a comparison with John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which argues that conscious memories constitute our identities – a theme Nolan explores in the film. Memento earned Nolan many accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, as well as two Independent Spirit Awards: Best Director and Best Screenplay. Six critics listed it as one of the best films of the 2000s. In 2001, Nolan and Emma Thomas founded the production company Syncopy Inc.
Impressed by his work on Memento, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh recommended Nolan to Warner Bros. to direct the psychological thriller Insomnia (2002), although the studio initially wanted a more seasoned director. A remake of the 1997 Norwegian thriller of the same name, the film is viewed as "the outlier of Nolan's filmography" due to its perceived lack of unconventionality he is known for. Starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank, Insomnia follows two Los Angeles detectives sent to a northern Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a local teenager. It received positive reviews from critics and earned \$113 million against a budget of \$46 million. Film critic Roger Ebert praised the film for introducing new perspectives and ideas on the issues of morality and guilt, adding, "Unlike most remakes, the Nolan Insomnia is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play." Richard Schickel of Time deemed Insomnia a "worthy successor" to Memento and "a triumph of atmosphere over a none-too-mysterious mystery".
Following, Memento and Insomnia established Nolan's image as an "auteur". After the lattermost, he wrote a screenplay for a Howard Hughes biopic. Nolan reluctantly tabled his script after learning that Martin Scorsese was already making one such film: The Aviator (2004). He was then briefly attached to direct a film adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel The Keys to the Street for Fox Searchlight Pictures but chose to direct Batman Begins instead. Nolan turned down an offer to direct the historical epic Troy (2004). In April 2003, filmmaker David O. Russell put Nolan in a headlock at a Hollywood party after learning that Jude Law, whom Russell wanted to cast, had decided to work with Nolan instead. Russell pressured Nolan to display "artistic solidarity" by relinquishing Law from his cast.
### 2003–2013: Widespread recognition
In early 2003, Nolan approached Warner Bros. with the idea of making a new Batman film, based on the character's origin story. Nolan was fascinated by the notion of grounding it in a more realistic world than a comic-book fantasy. He relied heavily on traditional stunts and miniature effects during filming, with minimal use of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Batman Begins (2005), the biggest project Nolan had undertaken to that point, was released to critical acclaim and commercial success. Starring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman—along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson—Batman Begins revived the franchise. Batman Begins was 2005's ninth-highest-grossing film and was praised for its psychological depth and contemporary relevance; it is cited as one of the most influential films of the 2000s. Film author Ian Nathan wrote that within five years of his career, Nolan "[went] from unknown to indie darling to gaining creative control over one of the biggest properties in Hollywood, and (perhaps unwittingly) fomenting the genre that would redefine the entire industry".
Nolan directed, co-wrote and produced The Prestige (2006), an adaptation of the Christopher Priest novel about two rival 19th-century magicians. The screenplay was the result of an intermittent, five-year collaboration between him and his brother Jonathan, who had begun writing it already in 2001. Nolan initially intended to make the film as early as 2003, but had postponed the project after agreeing to make Batman Begins. Starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in the lead roles of rival magicians, The Prestige received critical acclaim and received two Academy Award nominations. Roger Ebert described it as "quite a movie – atmospheric, obsessive, almost satanic", and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called it an "ambitious, unnerving melodrama". The Guardian's Philip French wrote: "In addition to the intellectual or philosophical excitement it engenders, The Prestige is gripping, suspenseful, mysterious, moving and often darkly funny." Despite a negative box-office prognosis, the film earned over \$109 million against a budget of \$40 million.
The Dark Knight (2008), the follow-up to Batman Begins, was Nolan's next venture. Initially reluctant to make a sequel, he agreed after Warner Bros. repeatedly insisted. Nolan wanted to expand on the noir quality of the first film by broadening the canvas and taking on "the dynamic of a story of the city, a large crime story ... where you're looking at the police, the justice system, the vigilante, the poor people, the rich people, the criminals". Continuing to minimalise the use of CGI, Nolan employed high-resolution IMAX cameras, making it the first major motion picture to use this technology. The Dark Knight has been ranked as one of the best films of the 2000s and one of the best superhero films ever made. Many critics declare The Dark Knight to be "the most successful comic book film ever made". Manohla Dargis of The New York Times found the film to be of higher artistic merit than many Hollywood blockbusters: "Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind." Ebert expressed a similar point of view, describing it as a "haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy". The Dark Knight set many box-office records during its theatrical run, earning over \$1 billion worldwide. At the 81st Academy Awards, the film was nominated in eight categories, winning two: Best Sound Editing for Richard King and a posthumous Best Supporting Actor award for Heath Ledger. The film's failure to garner a Best Picture nomination was criticised by the media. Beginning in 2010, the Academy increased their Best Picture nominees from five to ten, a change known as "The Dark Knight Rule". Nolan received many awards and nominations for his work on the film. In the late 2000s, Nolan was reported to direct a film adaptation of the 1960s television series The Prisoner.
The success of The Dark Knight allowed Warner Bros. to sign Nolan to write, direct and co-produce Inception (2010) – a film for which he had the idea around nine years before its release. Nolan described the film as "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind". Starring a large ensemble cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio, the film became a critical and commercial success upon its release. Film critic Mark Kermode named it the best film of 2010, stating "Inception is proof that people are not stupid, that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible for blockbusters and art to be the same thing." Philosophy professor David Kyle Johnson wrote that "Inception became a classic almost as soon as it was projected on silver screens", praising its exploration of philosophical ideas, including leap of faith and allegory of the cave. The film grossed over \$836 million worldwide. Nominated for eight Academy Awards—including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay—it won Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. Nolan was nominated for a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, among other accolades.
Around the release of The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Nolan's third and final Batman film, Joseph Bevan of the British Film Institute wrote a profile on him: "In the space of just over a decade, Christopher Nolan has shot from promising British indie director to undisputed master of a new brand of intelligent escapism." After initial hesitation, Nolan agreed to return to direct The Dark Knight Rises and worked with his brother and David S. Goyer to develop a story that he felt would end the trilogy on a high note. The film was released to positive reviews; Kenneth Turan found the film "potent, persuasive and hypnotic" and "more than an exceptional superhero movie, it is masterful filmmaking by any standard". Christy Lemire of HuffPost wrote in her review that Nolan concluded his trilogy in a "typically spectacular, ambitious fashion", but disliked the "overloaded" story and excessive grimness. The Dark Knight Rises was a box office success, becoming the thirteenth film to gross \$1 billion. During a midnight showing of the film in Aurora, Colorado, a gunman opened fire inside the theatre, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. Nolan released a statement expressing his condolences for the victims of what he described as a "senseless tragedy".
The Dark Knight trilogy inspired a trend in future superhero films seeking to replicate its gritty, realistic tone to little success. The second instalment in particular revitalised the genre at a time when recent superhero films had failed to meet expectations. Ben Child of The Guardian wrote that the three films "will remain thrilling totems of the genre for decades to come". During story discussions for The Dark Knight Rises, Goyer told Nolan of his idea about Man of Steel (2013), which the latter would produce. Impressed with Zack Snyder's work in 300 (2006) and Watchmen (2009), Nolan hired him to direct the film. Starring Henry Cavill as Clark Kent who learns that he is a powerful alien, Man of Steel received mixed reviews and grossed more than \$660 million against a budget of \$220 million.
### 2014–2019: Interstellar, Dunkirk and other activities
Nolan next directed, wrote and produced the science-fiction film Interstellar (2014). The first drafts of the script were written by Jonathan Nolan, and it was originally to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Based on the scientific theories of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole in search of a new home for humanity. In a 2014 discussion of the film's physics, Nolan expressed his admiration for scientific objectivity, wishing it were applied "in every aspect of our civilisation". Interstellar – starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain – was released to positive reviews and grossed \$773 million worldwide. Observing its "visual dazzle, thematic ambition", The New York Times's A. O. Scott wrote that Interstellar is a "sweeping, futuristic adventure driven by grief, dread and regret". Documentary filmmaker Toni Myers called the film "a real work of art" and praised it for exploring a story spanning multiple generations. Interstellar was particularly praised for its scientific accuracy, which led to the publication of two academic papers. The American Journal of Physics called for it to be shown in school science lessons. At the 87th Academy Awards, the film won Best Visual Effects and received four other nominations. Also in 2014, Nolan and Emma Thomas served as executive producers on Transcendence, the directorial debut of his longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister.
In the mid-2010s, Nolan took part in several ventures for film preservation and distribution of the work of lesser-known filmmakers. His production company, Syncopy, formed a joint venture with Zeitgeist Films to release Blu-ray editions of Zeitgeist's films. As a part of the Blu-ray release of the animation films of the Brothers Quay, Nolan directed the documentary short Quay (2015). He initiated a theatrical tour, showcasing the Quays' In Absentia, The Comb and Street of Crocodiles. IndieWire wrote that the brothers "will undoubtedly have hundreds, if not thousands more fans because of Nolan, and for that The Quay Brothers in 35mm will always be one of [the] latter's most important contributions to cinema". An advocate for the survival of the analogue medium, Nolan and visual artist Tacita Dean invited representatives from leading American film archives, laboratories and presenting institutions to participate in an informal summit entitled Reframing the Future of Film at the Getty Museum in March 2015. Subsequent events were held at Tate Modern in London, Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and Tata Theatre in Mumbai. In April 2015, Nolan joined the board of directors of The Film Foundation, a non-profitable organisation dedicated to film preservation, and was appointed, along with Martin Scorsese, by the Library of Congress to serve on the National Film Preservation Board as DGA representatives. Nolan serves on the Motion Picture & Television Fund Board of Governors.
After serving as an executive producer on Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017), Nolan returned to directing with Dunkirk (2017). Based on his own original screenplay and co-produced with Thomas, the film is set amid World War II in 1940 and the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, France. Describing the film as a survival tale with a triptych structure, Nolan wanted to make a "sensory, almost experimental movie" with minimal dialogue. He said he waited to make Dunkirk until he had earned the trust of a major studio to let him make it as a British film but with an American budget. Before filming, Nolan sought advice from Spielberg, who later said in an interview with Variety, "knowing and respecting that Chris [Nolan] is one of the world's most imaginative filmmakers, my advice to him was to leave his imagination, as I did on Ryan, in second position to the research he was doing to authentically acquit this historical drama". Starring an ensemble cast, Dunkirk was released to widespread critical acclaim and strong box office results. It grossed over \$526 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing World War II film of all time. In his review, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "It's one of the best war films ever made, distinct in its look, in its approach and in the effect it has on viewers. There are movies—they are rare—that lift you out of your present circumstances and immerse you so fully in another experience that you watch in a state of jaw-dropped awe. Dunkirk is that kind of movie." The film received many accolades, including Nolan's first Oscar nomination for Best Director.
In 2018, Nolan supervised a new 70 mm print of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), made from the original camera negative; he presented it at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. USA Today observed that festival-goers greeted Nolan "like a rock star with a standing ovation". A year later, Nolan and Thomas received executive producer credits on The Doll's Breath (2019), an animated short directed by the Quay brothers.
### 2020–present: Tenet and Oppenheimer
Nolan's next film was the science fiction film Tenet (2020), described by Tom Shone of The Sunday Times as "a globe-spinning riff on all things Nolanesque". Nolan had worked on the screenplay for more than five years after deliberating about its central ideas for over a decade. Delayed three times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was the first Hollywood tent-pole to open in theatres after the pandemic shutdown. The film tells the story of an unnamed protagonist (played by John David Washington) who travels through time to stop a world-threatening attack. It grossed \$363 million worldwide on a production budget of \$200 million, becoming Nolan's first to underperform at the box-office. Tenet was described as his most polarising film; critics praised the direction but found its story confusing. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian awarded it five out of five, calling it "a cerebral cadenza, a deadpan flourish of crazy implausibility—but supercharged with steroidal energy and imagination". Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter described it as "a chilly, cerebral film—easy to admire, especially since it's so rich in audacity and originality, but almost impossible to love, lacking as it is in a certain humanity". At the 93rd Academy Awards, the film won Best Visual Effects and was nominated for Best Production Design. Following the release of Tenet, Nolan joined the Advisory Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He served as an executive producer on Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021), a director's cut of 2017's Justice League.
Nolan's 12th film was Oppenheimer (2023), a biopic based on J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) and his role in the development of the atom bomb. It was Nolan's first R-rated film since Insomnia (2002). The film was financed and distributed by Universal Pictures, making it Nolan's first since Memento that was not made for Warner Bros. He was disillusioned with Warner Bros.' decision to simultaneously release their films in theatres and on HBO Max. Nolan secured the deal with Universal after he was promised a production budget of around \$100 million with an equal marketing budget, total creative control, 20 per cent of first-dollar gross, a 100-day theatrical window and a blackout period from the studio wherein the company would not release another film three weeks before or after Oppenheimer's release. The film received universal acclaim. Matthew Jackson of The A.V. Club wrote, "Oppenheimer deserves the title of masterpiece. It's Christopher Nolan's best film so far, a step up to a new level for one of our finest filmmakers, and a movie that burns itself into your brain." Terming it "boldly imaginative and [Nolan's] most mature work yet", BBC Culture's Caryn James added that it combined the "explosive, commercially-enticing action of The Dark Knight trilogy" with the "cerebral underpinnings" of Memento, Inception and Tenet. Oppenheimer has grossed \$778 million worldwide, making it the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2023.
## Personal life and public image
Nolan is married to Emma Thomas, whom he met at University College London when he was 19. She has worked as a producer on all of his films since 1997. The couple have four children and reside in Los Angeles.
Rarely granting promotional interviews about his films, Nolan prefers to maintain a certain level of mystery about his work. Refusing to discuss his personal life, he feels that too much biographical information about a filmmaker detracts from the experience of his audiences. "I actually don't want people to have me in mind at all when they're watching the films."
## Filmmaking style
Nolan's films are majorly centred in metaphysical themes, exploring the concepts of time, memory and personal identity. His work is characterised by mathematically-inspired ideas and images, unconventional narrative structures, materialistic perspectives, and evocative use of music and sound. Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro called Nolan "an emotional mathematician". BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz described him as "an art house auteur making intellectually ambitious blockbuster movies that can leave your pulse racing and your head spinning". Joseph Bevan wrote, "His films allow arthouse regulars to enjoy superhero flicks and multiplex crowds to engage with labyrinthine plot conceits." Nolan views himself as "an indie filmmaker working inside the studio system".
In the sixteen-essay book The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan, professional philosophers and writers analysed Nolan's work; they identified themes of self-destruction, the nature and value of the truth, and the political mindset of the hero and villain, among others. Robbie B. H. Goh, a professor of English literature, described Nolan as a "philosophical filmmaker" who includes philosophical ideas—existentialism, morality, epistemology and the distinction between appearance and reality—in films that frequently portray suspense, action and violence. Goh appreciated his ability to incorporate such themes in films that possess "elements of the Hollywood blockbuster"—which help keep the audiences engaged—but simultaneously remain "more thoughtful and self-reflexive than the typical consumerist action film". He further wrote that Nolan's body of work reflect "a heterogeneity of conditions of products" extending from low-budget films to lucrative blockbusters, "a wide range of genres and settings" and "a diversity of styles that trumpet his versatility".
David Bordwell, a film theorist, wrote that Nolan has been able to blend his "experimental impulses" with the demands of mainstream entertainment, describing his oeuvre as "experiments with cinematic time by means of techniques of subjective viewpoint and crosscutting". Nolan's use of practical, in-camera effects, miniatures and models, as well as shooting on celluloid film, has been highly influential in early 21st century cinema. IndieWire wrote in 2019 that, Nolan "kept a viable alternate model of big-budget filmmaking alive", in an era where blockbuster filmmaking has become "a largely computer-generated art form". Because of Nolan's deep involvement in the technical facet of his films, Stuart Joy described him as a "complete filmmaker", who "oversees all aspects of production while also managing cultural and industrial factors outside of the text".
## Recognition
Nolan has made some of the most influential and popular films of his time. Many of his films have been regarded by critics as among the best of their respective decades, and according to The Wall Street Journal, his "ability to combine box-office success with artistic ambition has given him an extraordinary amount of clout in the industry". His films have earned \$5 billion. Nolan's films Memento and The Dark Knight have been selected by the US Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant. These films and Inception appeared in BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century and The Hollywood Reporter's poll of best films ever made. In 2017, The Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar featured in Empire magazine's poll of "The 100 Greatest Movies". In 2018, The Hollywood Reporter listed Nolan as one of the 100 most powerful people in entertainment and described him as a "franchise unto himself". Parade ranked Nolan number eight in its 2022 list of 75 Best Movie Directors of All Time.
Nolan's work has been as "intensely embraced, analysed and debated by ordinary film fans as by critics and film academics". Calling him "a persuasively inventive storyteller", Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute named Nolan one of the few contemporary filmmakers producing highly personal films within the Hollywood mainstream. Andrew wrote that Nolan's films are "not so much [notable] for their considerable technical virtuosity and visual flair as for their brilliant narrative ingenuity and their unusually adult interest in complex philosophical questions". David Bordwell observed that Nolan is "considered one of the most accomplished living filmmakers", citing his ability to turn genre movies into both art and event films, as well as his box office numbers, critical acclaim and popularity among cinemagoers. In 2008, Philip French deemed Nolan "the first major talent to emerge this [21st] century". Mark Kermode complimented Nolan for bringing "the discipline and ethics of art-house independent moviemaking and apply[ing] them to Hollywood blockbusters. He's living proof that you don't have to appeal to the lowest common denominator to be profitable". The Observer's Ryan Gilbey described Nolan as a "skillful, stylish storyteller, capable of combining the spectacle of Spielberg with the intellectual intricacy of Nicolas Roeg or Alain Resnais". Mark Cousins applauded Nolan for embracing big ideas, "Hollywood filmmakers generally shy away from ideas—but not Christopher Nolan". Scott Foundas of Variety declared Nolan "the premier big-canvas storyteller of his generation", and Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times called him "the great proceduralist of 21st century blockbuster filmmaking, a lover of nuts-and-bolts minutiae".
Nolan has been praised by many of his contemporaries, and his work has influenced them. Kenneth Branagh called Nolan's approach to large-scale filmmaking "unique in modern cinema", adding, "regardless of how popular his movies become, he remains an artist and an auteur. I think for that reason he has become a heroic figure for both the audience and the people working behind the camera." Michael Mann complimented Nolan for his "singular vision" and credited with "invent[ing] the post-heroic superhero". Nicolas Roeg said of Nolan, "People talk about 'commercial art' and the term is usually self-negating; Nolan works in the commercial arena and yet there's something very poetic about his work." Martin Scorsese identified Nolan as a filmmaker creating "beautifully made films on a big scale".
Damien Chazelle lauded Nolan for his ability "to make the most seemingly impersonal projects—superhero epics, deep-space mind-benders—feel deeply personal". Discussing the difference between art films and big studio blockbusters, Steven Spielberg referred to Nolan's Dark Knight series as an example of both; he has described Memento and Inception as "masterworks". Denis Villeneuve was impressed by Nolan's ability "to keep his identity and create his own universe in that large scope ... To bring intellectual concepts and to bring them in that scope to the screen right now—it's very rare. Every movie that he comes out with, I have more admiration for his work." James Cameron expressed disappointment that Nolan was not nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director for Inception, calling it "the most astounding piece of film creation and direction of the year, hands down".
## Filmography
- Following (1998)
- Memento (2000)
- Insomnia (2002)
- Batman Begins (2005)
- The Prestige (2006)
- The Dark Knight (2008)
- Inception (2010)
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
- Interstellar (2014)
- Dunkirk (2017)
- Tenet (2020)
- Oppenheimer (2023)
## Awards and honours
Nolan has been nominated for five Academy Awards, five British Academy Film Awards and six Golden Globe Awards. Nolan was named an Honorary Fellow of UCL in 2006, and conferred an honorary doctorate in literature in 2017. From 2011 to 2014, he appeared in Forbes Celebrity 100 list based on his income and popularity. In 2012, he became the youngest director to receive a hand-and-footprint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. Nolan appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world in 2015. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to film.
|
27,340,231 |
Mount Cayley volcanic field
| 1,102,208,447 |
Remote volcanic zone in Canada
|
[
"Holocene North America",
"Holocene volcanism",
"Mount Cayley volcanic field",
"New Westminster Land District",
"Pleistocene North America",
"Pleistocene volcanism",
"Pliocene volcanism",
"Quaternary British Columbia",
"Sea-to-Sky Corridor",
"Volcanic fields of Canada"
] |
The Mount Cayley volcanic field (MCVF) is a remote volcanic zone on the South Coast of British Columbia, Canada, stretching 31 km (19 mi) from the Pemberton Icefield to the Squamish River. It forms a segment of the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt, the Canadian portion of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, which extends from Northern California to southwestern British Columbia. Most of the MCVF volcanoes were formed during periods of volcanism under sheets of glacial ice throughout the last glacial period. These subglacial eruptions formed steep, flat-topped volcanoes and subglacial lava domes, most of which have been entirely exposed by deglaciation. However, at least two volcanoes predate the last glacial period and both are highly eroded. The field gets its name from Mount Cayley, a volcanic peak located at the southern end of the Powder Mountain Icefield. This icefield covers much of the central portion of the volcanic field and is one of the several glacial fields in the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains.
Eruptions along the length of the MCVF began between 1.6 and 5.3 million years ago. At least 23 eruptions have occurred throughout its eruptive history. This volcanic activity ranged from effusive to explosive, with magma compositions ranging from basaltic to rhyolitic. Because the MCVF has a high elevation and consists of a cluster of mostly high altitude, non-overlapping volcanoes, subglacial activity is likely to have occurred under less than 800 m (2,600 ft) of glacial ice. The style of this glaciation promoted meltwater escape during eruptions. The steep profile of the volcanic field and its subglacial landforms support this hypothesis. As a result, volcanic features in the MCVF that interacted with glacial ice lack rocks that display evidence of abundant water during eruption, such as hyaloclastite and pillow lava.
Of the entire volcanic field, the southern portion has the most known volcanoes. Here, at least 11 of them are situated on top of a long narrow mountain ridge and in adjacent river valleys. The central portion contains at least five volcanoes situated at the Powder Mountain Icefield. To the north, two volcanoes form a sparse area of volcanism. Many of these volcanoes were formed between 0.01 and 1.6 million years ago, some of which show evidence of volcanic activity in the last 10,000 years.
## Geology
### Formation
The MCVF formed as a result of the ongoing subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate under the North American Plate at the Cascadia subduction zone along the British Columbia Coast. This is a 1,094 km (680 mi) long fault zone running 80 km (50 mi) off the Pacific Northwest from Northern California to southwestern British Columbia. The plates move at a relative rate of over 10 mm (0.39 in) per year at an oblique angle to the subduction zone. Because of the very large fault area, the Cascadia subduction zone can produce large earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater. The interface between the Juan de Fuca and North American plates remains locked for periods of roughly 500 years. During these periods, stress builds up on the interface between the plates and causes uplift of the North American margin. When the plate finally slips, the 500 years of stored energy are released in a massive earthquake.
Unlike most subduction zones worldwide, there is no deep oceanic trench along the continental margin of Cascadia. The reason is that the mouth of the Columbia River empties directly into the subduction zone and deposits silt at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, burying this large depression. Massive floods from prehistoric Glacial Lake Missoula during the Late Pleistocene also deposited large amounts of sediment into the trench. However, in common with other subduction zones, the outer margin is slowly being compressed, similar to a giant spring. When the stored energy is suddenly released by slippage across the fault at irregular intervals, the Cascadia subduction zone can create very large earthquakes, such as the magnitude 9.0 Cascadia earthquake on January 26, 1700. However, earthquakes along the Cascadia subduction zone are less common than expected and there is evidence of a decline in volcanic activity over the last few million years. The probable explanation lies in the rate of convergence between the Juan de Fuca and North American plates. These two tectonic plates currently converge 3 cm (1.2 in) to 4 cm (1.6 in) per year. This is only about half the rate of convergence from seven million years ago.
Scientists have estimated that there have been at least 13 significant earthquakes along the Cascadia subduction zone in the last 6,000 years. The most recent, the 1700 Cascadia earthquake, was recorded in the oral traditions of the First Nations people on Vancouver Island. It caused considerable tremors and a massive tsunami that traveled across the Pacific Ocean. The significant shaking associated with this earthquake demolished houses of the Cowichan Tribes on Vancouver Island and caused several landslides. Shaking due to this earthquake made it too difficult for the Cowichan people to stand, and the tremors were so lengthy that they were sickened. The tsunami created by the earthquake ultimately devastated a winter village at Pachena Bay, killing all the people that lived there. The 1700 Cascadia earthquake caused near-shore subsidence, submerging marshes and forests on the coast that were later buried under more recent debris.
### Subglacial volcanoes
Lying in the middle of the MCVF is a subglacial volcano named Slag Hill. At least two geological units compose the edifice. Slag Hill itself consists of andesite lava flows and small amounts of pyroclastic rock. Lying on the western portion of Slag Hill is a lava flow that likely erupted less than 10,000 years ago due to the lack of features indicating volcano-ice interactions. The Slag Hill flow-dominated tuya 900 m (3,000 ft) northeast of Slag Hill consists of a flat-topped, steep-sided pile of andesite. It protrudes through remnants of volcanic material erupted from Slag Hill, but it represents a separate volcanic vent due to its geographical appearance. This small subglacial volcano possibly formed between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago throughout the waning stages of the Fraser Glaciation.
Cauldron Dome, a subglacial volcano north of Mount Cayley, lies west of the Powder Mountain Icefield. Like Slag Hill, it is composed of two geological units. Upper Cauldron Dome is a flat-topped, oval-shaped pile of at least five andesite lava flows that resembles a tuya. The five andesite flows are columnar jointed and were likely extruded through glacial ice. The latest volcanic activity might have occurred between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago when this area was still influenced by glacial ice of the Fraser Glaciation. Lower Cauldron Dome, the youngest unit comprising the entire Cauldron Dome subglacial volcano, consists of a flat-topped, steep-sided pile of andesite lava flows 1,800 m (5,900 ft) long and a maximum thickness of 220 m (720 ft). These volcanic rocks were extruded about 10,000 years ago during the waning stages of the Fraser Glaciation from a vent adjacent to upper Cauldron Dome that is currently buried under glacial ice.
Ring Mountain, a flow-dominated tuya lying at the northern portion of the MCVF, consists of a pile of at least five andesite lava flows lying on a mountain ridge. Its steep-sided flanks reach heights of 500 m (1,600 ft) and are composed of volcanic rubble. This makes it impossible to measure its exact base elevation or how many lava flows constitute the edifice. With a summit elevation of 2,192 m (7,192 ft), Ring Mountain had its last volcanic activity between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago when the Fraser Glaciation was close to its maximum. Northwest of Ring Mountain lies a minor andesite lava flow. Its chemistry is somewhat unlike other andesite flows comprising Ring Mountain, but it probably erupted from a volcanic vent adjacent to or at Ring Mountain. The part of it that lies higher in elevation contains some features that indicate lava-ice interactions, while the lower-elevation portion of it does not. Therefore, this minor lava flow was likely extruded after Ring Mountain formed but when glacial ice covered a broader area than it does to this day, and that the lava flowed beyond the region in which glacial ice existed at that time.
To the north lies Little Ring Mountain, another flow-dominated tuya lying at the northern portion of the MCVF. It consists of a pile of at least three andesite lava flows lying on a mountain ridge. Its steep-sided flanks reach heights of 240 m (790 ft) and are composed of volcanic rubble. This makes it impossible to measure its exact base elevation or how many lava flows comprise the edifice. With a summit elevation of 2,147 m (7,044 ft), Little Ring Mountain had its last volcanic activity between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago when the Fraser Glaciation was close to its maximum.
Ember Ridge, a mountain ridge between Tricouni Peak and Mount Fee, consists of at least eight lava domes composed of andesite. They were likely formed between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago when lava erupted beneath glacial ice of the Fraser Glaciation. Their current structures are comparable to their original forms due to the minimal degree of erosion. As a result, the domes display the shapes and columnar joints typical of subglacial volcanoes. The random shapes of the Ember Ridge domes are the result of erupted lava taking advantage of former ice pockets, eruptions taking place on uneven surfaces, subsidence of the domes during volcanic activity to create rubble and separation of older columnar units during more recent eruptions. The northern dome, known as Ember Ridge North, covers the summit and eastern flank of the mountain ridge. It comprises at least one lava flow that reaches a thickness of 100 m (330 ft), as well as the thinnest columnar units in the MCVF. The small size of the columnar joints indicates that the erupted lava was cooled immediately and are mainly located on the dome's summit. Ember Ridge Northeast, the smallest subglacial dome of Ember Ridge, comprises one lava flow that has a thickness no more than 40 m (130 ft). Ember Ridge Northwest, the most roughly circular subglacial dome, comprises at least one lava flow. Ember Ridge Southeast is the most complex of the Ember Ridge domes, consisting of a series of lava flows with a thickness of 60 m (200 ft). It is also the only Ember Ridge dome that contains large amounts of rubble. Ember Ridge Southwest comprises at least one lava flow that reaches a thickness of 80 m (260 ft). It is the only subglacial dome of Ember Ridge that contains hyaloclastite. Ember Ridge West comprises only one lava flow that reaches a thickness of 60 m (200 ft).
Mount Brew, 18 km (11 mi) southwest of the resort town of Whistler, is a 1,757 m (5,764 ft) high lava dome composed of andesite or dacite that probably formed subglacially between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago. It contains two possible ice-marginal lava flows that have not been studied in detail. They may have formed during the same time period as the Ember Ridge subglacial domes due to their similar structures, columnar joints and compositions.
### Eroded volcanoes
Mount Cayley is the largest and most persistent eruptive centre in the MCVF. It is a highly eroded stratovolcano composed of dacite and rhyodacite lava that was deposited during three phases of volcanic activity. The first eruptive phase began roughly four million years ago with the eruption of dacite lava flows and pyroclastic rock, which resulted in the creation of Mount Cayley. Subsequent volcanism during this volcanic phase constructed a large lava dome. This acts like a volcanic plug and composes the lava spines that form pinnacles on Cayley's rugged summit. After Mount Cayley was constructed, the second phase of volcanism commenced 2.7 ± 0.7 million years ago. This eruptive phase was characterized by the eruption of dacite lava, tephra and breccia, which resulted in the creation of a craggy volcanic ridge known as the Vulcan's Thumb. After prolonged erosion destroyed much of the original stratovolcano, the third and final eruptive phase 0.3 to 0.2 million years ago produced a thick sequence of dacite lava flows. These flows issued from parasitic vents then traveled through the Turbid Creek and Shovelnose Creek valleys to near the Squamish River, resulting in the creation of two parasitic lava domes. None of the rocks comprising Mount Cayley show signs of interaction with glacial ice, which contracts with several of the smaller adjacent volcanoes.
Immediately southeast of Mount Cayley lies Mount Fee, an extensively eroded volcano. It contains a north–south trending ridge and is one of the older MCVF features. Its volcanic rocks remain undated, but its large degree of dissection, coupled with evidence of glacial ice having overridden the volcano, indicates that it formed more than 75,000 years ago before the Wisconsinan Glaciation. As a result, Mount Fee does not contain evidence of interaction with glacial ice. Three phases of volcanic activity have been identified at Mount Fee. The first eruptive phase deposited pyroclastic rocks, which have since been largely eroded away. These rocks are evidence of explosive volcanism throughout Fee's eruptive history. The second eruptive phase produced a series of lavas and breccias on the eastern flank of the main ridge. These volcanic rocks were likely deposited during the construction of a large volcano. Following extensive dissection, renewed volcanism of the third and final eruptive phase produced a series of viscous lava flows. These form the northern end of the main ridge and its narrow, flat-topped, steep-sided northern limit. This volcanic phase was also followed by a period of extensive erosion and likely one or more glacial periods, which has created the rugged north–south trending ridge that forms a prominent landmark.
Pali Dome, located north and northeast of Mount Cayley, is an eroded volcano in the central MCVF. Like Cauldron Dome, it consists of two geological units. Pail Dome East on the eastern end of the Powder Mountain Icefield consists of andesite lava flows and small amounts of pyroclastic material. Most of the lava flows form gentle topography at high elevations but terminate in finely jointed vertical cliffs at low elevations. Volcanism probably began at least 25,000 years ago but it could have initiated much earlier. The most recent eruptions produced a series of lava flows when the vent area was not covered by glacial ice. However, the flows show evidence of interaction with glacial ice in their lower units, indicating that they were erupted about 10,000 years ago during the waning stages of the Fraser Glaciation. Ice-marginal lava flows at Pail Dome East form cliffs that reach heights of up to 100 m (330 ft). Pali Dome West consists of at least three andesite lava flows and small amounts of pyroclastic material; its vent is presently buried under glacial ice. The age of the oldest lava flow is unknown but it may be at least 10,000 years old. The second lava flow was erupted when the vent area was not buried under glacial ice. However, the flow shows evidence of interaction with glacial ice at lower elevations, implying that it was erupted during the waning stages of the Fraser Glaciation. The third and most recent lava flow was largely erupted above glacial ice but was probably constrained on its northern margin by a small glacier. Unlike the second lava flow, it was not impounded by glacial ice at lower elevations. This suggests that it was produced by an eruption after the Fraser Glaciation, which ended about 10,000 years ago.
### Lava flows
At least two sequences of basaltic andesite lava flows are deposited south of Tricouni Peak. One of these sequences, known as Tricouni Southwest, creates a cliff on the eastern side of a north–south trending channel with a depth of 200 m (660 ft) adjacent to the High Falls Creek mouth. The eastern flank of the lava flow, outside the High Falls Creek channel, has a more constant structure. Several fine-scale columnar joints and the overall structure of the lava flow suggest that its western portion, along the length of the channel, ponded against glacial ice. Near its southern unit, lava oozed into cracks in the glacial ice. This has been identified by the existence of spire-like cooling formations, although many of these edifices have been destroyed by erosional processes. Other features that indicate the lava ponded against glacial ice include its unusually thick structure and its steep cliffs. Therefore, the Tricouni Southwest lava flow was erupted about 10,000 years ago when the regional Fraser Glaciation was retreating. The explanation for the western portion displaying ice-contact features while the eastern portion does not is likely because its western flank lies in a north–south trending channel, which would have been able to maintain smaller amounts of solar heat than its unsheltered eastern flank. As a result, the western portion of the lava flow records glaciation during a period when the eastern slopes were free from glacial ice.
Tricouni Southeast, another volcanic sequence south of Tricouni Peak, consists of at least four andesite or dacite lava flows that outcrop as several small cliffs and bluffs on extensively vegetated flanks. They reach thicknesses of 100 m (330 ft) and contain small amounts of hyaloclastite. The feeder of their origins has not been discovered but is likely located at the summit of the mound. These lavas form ice-marginal edifies, suggesting that every lava flow was erupted about 10,000 years ago when the vast Cordilleran Ice Sheet was retreating and remains of glacial ice were sparse.
Exposed along the Cheakamus River and its tributaries are the Cheakamus Valley basalts. Although not necessarily mapped as part of the MCVF, this sequence of basaltic lava flows is geologically similar and comparable in age to volcanic features that are part of this volcanic field. At least four basaltic flows comprise the sequence and were deposited during periods of volcanic activity from an unknown vent between 0.01 and 1.6 million years ago. Pillow lava is abundant along the bases the flows, some of which are underlain by hyaloclastite breccia. In 1958, Canadian volcanologist Bill Mathews suggested that the lava flows were erupted during periods of subglacial activity and traveled through trenches or tunnels melted in glacial ice of the Fraser Glaciation. Mathews based this on the age of the underlying till, the existence of pillow lava close to the bottom of some lavas, indicating subaqueous volcanism, the columnar jointing at the edges of the lavas, indicating rapid cooling, and the absence of apparent palaeogeography.
### Petrography
Ember Ridge andesite consists of 55% brownish-green volcanic glass with a trachytic matrix of plagioclase. About 35% of this andesite contains phenocrysts of hornblende, augite, plagioclase and orthopyroxene, which exist as isolated crystals and clots. A feature south of Ember Ridge, unofficially known as Betty's Bump, comprises andesite with phenocrysts of plagioclase, augite and olivine. Dark brown volcanic glass composes the Betty's Bump andesite as much as 20%. The relationship of Betty's Bump with Ember Ridge is unclear but it likely represents a separate volcanic feature due to its topographic isolation.
Little Ring Mountain at the northern end of the MCVF contains up to 70% brown volcanic glass with isolated phenocrysts of plagioclase. Vesicular textures are up to 5%, suggesting that the lava erupted subaerially. Possible quartz xenocrysts have been identified at the volcano, with at least one xenolith fragment having been found in loose rubble. The xenolith fragment included several quartz xenocrysts and polycrystalline quartz xenoliths in a glassy matrix with trachytic plagioclase.
Mount Fee dacite contains up to 70% brown volcanic glass and up to 15% vesicular textures. Up to 25% of the dacite contains plagioclase, hornblende, orthopyroxene and orthoclase crystals, along with rare quartz and possible potassium feldspar xenocrysts. A portion of the southwestern flank of Mount Fee displays no volcanic glass, but rather an abnormal cryptocrystalline matrix. This indicates that it may have developed as part of a subvolcanic intrusion.
Ring Mountain andesite consists of up to 70% brown volcanic glass and up to 15% vesicular textures. It contains a trachytic matrix of plagioclase. Augite, biotite, plagioclase and hornblende microphenocrysts comprise 1 to 7% of the andesite. Quartz microxenocrysts are common; potassium feldspar microxenocrysts also possibly occur.
Slag Hill andesite consists of up to 70% dark brown volcanic glass, with the plagioclase matrix displaying varied degrees of trachytic texture. Less than 5% of the andesite has vesicular textures. Plagioclase, hornblende and augite phenocrysts comprise 1 to 10% of the andesite. Potassium feldspar crystals are very rare and likely represent xenocrysts.
### Geothermal and seismic activity
At least four seismic events have occurred at Mount Cayley since 1985 and is the only volcano that has recorded seismic activity in the field. This suggests that the volcano still contains an active magma system, indicating the possibility of future eruptive activity. Although the available data does not allow a clear conclusion, this observation indicates that some volcanoes in the MCVF may be active, with significant potential hazards. This seismic activity correlates both with some of Canada's most youthful volcanoes and with long-lived volcanoes with a history of significant explosive activity, such as Mount Cayley. Recent seismic imaging from Natural Resources Canada employees supported lithoprobe studies in the region of Mount Cayley that created a large reflector interpreted to be a pool of molten rock roughly 15 km (9.3 mi) below the surface. It is estimated to be 3 km (1.9 mi) long and 1 km (0.62 mi) wide with a thickness of less than 1.6 km (0.99 mi). The reflector is understood to be a sill complex associated with the formation of Mount Cayley. However, the available data does not rule out the probability of it being a body of molten rock created by dehydrating of the subducted Juan de Fuca Plate. It is located just beneath the weak lithosphere like those found under subduction zone volcanoes in Japan.
At least five hot springs exist in valleys near Mount Cayley, providing more evidence for magmatic activity. This includes springs found at Shovelnose Creek and Turbid Creek on the southern flank of Mount Cayley and Brandywine Creek on the eastern flank of the MCVF. They are generally found in areas of volcanic activity that are geologically young. As the regional surface water percolates downward through rocks below the MCVF, it reaches areas of high temperatures surrounding an active or recently solidified magma reservoir. Here, the water is heated, becomes less dense and rises back to the surface along fissures or cracks. These features are sometimes referred to as dying volcanoes because they seem to represent the last stage of volcanic activity as the magma at depth cools and hardens.
## Human history
### Occupation
Several volcanic features in the MCVF were illustrated by volcanologist Jack Souther in 1980, including Mount Cayley, Cauldron Dome, Slag Hill, Mount Fee, Ember Ridge and Ring Mountain, which was titled Crucible Dome at the time. This resulted in the creation of a geologic map that showed the regional terrain and locations of the volcanoes. The most detailed study of Mount Cayley took place during this period. Little Ring Mountain at the northernmost end of the MCVF had not been studied at the time and was not included on Souther's 1980 map. Ember Ridge at the southern end of the MCVF was originally mapped as a cluster of five lava domes. The sixth lava dome, Ember Ridge Northeast, was discovered by Ph.D. student Melanie Kelman during a period of research in 2001.
The hot springs adjacent to Mount Cayley have made the MCVF a target for geothermal exploration. At least 16 geothermal sites have been identified in British Columbia, Mount Cayley being one of the six areas most capable for commercial development. Others include Meager Creek and Pebble Creek near Pemberton, Lakelse Hot Springs near Terrace, Mount Edziza on the Tahltan Highland and the Lillooet Fault Zone between Harrison Lake and the community of Lillooet. Temperatures of 50 °C (122 °F) to more than 100 °C (212 °F) have been measured in shallow boreholes on the southwestern flank of Mount Cayley. However, its severe terrain makes it challenging to develop a proposed 100 megawatt power station in the area.
### Early impressions
The MCVF has been the subject of myths and legends by First Nations. To the Squamish Nation, Mount Cayley is called tak'takmu'yin tl'a in7in'axa7en. In their language it means "Landing Place of the Thunderbird". The Thunderbird is a legendary creature in North American indigenous peoples' history and culture. When the bird flaps its wings, thunder is created, and lightning originates from its eyes. The rocks that make up Mount Cayley were said to have been burnt black by the Thunderbird's lightning. This mountain, like others in the area, is considered sacred because it plays an important part of their history. The Black Tusk, a pinnacle of black volcanic rock on the north shore of Garibaldi Lake to the southeast, sustains the same name. Cultural ceremonial use, hunting, trapping and plant gathering occur around the Mount Garibaldi area, but the most important resource was a lithic material called obsidian. Obsidian is a black volcanic glass used to make knives, chisels, adzes and other sharp tools in pre-contact times. Glassy rhyodacite was also collected from a number of minor outcrops on the flanks of Mount Fee, Mount Callaghan and Mount Cayley. This material appears in goat hunting sites and at the Elaho rockshelter, collectively dated from about 8,000 to 100 years old.
A number of volcanic peaks in the MCVF were named by mountaineers that explored the area in the early 20th century. Mount Fee was named in September 1928 by British mountaineer Tom Fyles after Charles Fee (1865–1927), who was a member of the British Columbia Mountaineering Club in Vancouver at the time. To the northwest, Mount Cayley was named in September 1928 by Tom Fyles after Beverley Cochrane Cayley during a climbing expedition with the Alpine Club of Canada. Cayley was a friend of those in the climbing expedition and had died in Vancouver on June 8, 1928 at the age of 29. Photographs of Mount Cayley were taken by Fyles during the 1928 expedition and were published in the 1931 Canadian Alpine Journal Vol XX.
### Protection and monitoring
At least one feature in the MCVF is protected as a provincial park. Brandywine Falls Provincial Park at the southeastern end of the field was established to protect Brandywine Falls, a 70 m (230 ft) high waterfall on Brandywine Creek. It is composed of at least four lava flows of the Cheakamus Valley basalts. They are exposed in cliffs compassing the falls with a narrow sequence of gravel lying above the oldest lava unit. These lava flows are interpreted to have been exposed by erosion during a period of catastrophic flooding and the valley these lavas are located in is significantly larger than the river within it. The massive flooding that shaped the valley has been a subject of geological studies by Catherine Hickson and Andree Blais-Stevens. It has been proposed that there could have been significant floods during the waning stages of the last glacial period as drainage in a valley further north was blocked with remnants of glacial ice. Another possible explanation is subglacial eruptions created large amounts of glacial meltwater that scoured the surface of the exposed lava flows.
Like other volcanic zones in the Garibaldi Belt, the MCVF is not monitored closely enough by the Geological Survey of Canada to ascertain its activity level. The Canadian National Seismograph Network has been established to monitor earthquakes throughout Canada, but it is too far away to provide an accurate indication of activity under the MCVF. The seismograph network may sense an increase in seismic activity if the MCVF becomes highly restless, but this may only provide a warning for a large eruption; the system might detect activity only once the MCVF has started erupting. If eruptions were to resume, mechanisms exist to orchestrate relief efforts. The Interagency Volcanic Event Notification Plan was created to outline the notification procedure of some of the main agencies that would respond to an erupting volcano in Canada, an eruption close to the Canada–United States border or any eruption that would affect Canada.
## Volcanic hazards
The MCVF is one of the largest volcanic zones in the Garibaldi Belt. Smaller zones include the Garibaldi Lake volcanic field surrounding Garibaldi Lake and the Bridge River Cones on the northern flank of the upper Bridge River. These areas are adjacent to Canada's populated southwest corner where the population of British Columbia is the greatest.
A large volcanic eruption from any volcanoes in the MCVF would have major effects on the Sea-to-Sky Highway and municipalities such as Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton and probably Vancouver. Because of these concerns, the Geological Survey of Canada is planning to create hazard maps and emergency plans for Mount Cayley, as well as for the Mount Meager massif north of the MCVF, which experienced a major volcanic eruption 2,350 years ago similar to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
### Landslides
Like many other volcanoes in the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt, Mount Cayley has been the source for several large landslides. Evans (1990) indicated that a number of landslides and debris flows at Mount Cayley in the last 10,000 years may have been caused by volcanic activity. To date, most geological studies of the MCVF have focused on landslide hazards along with geothermal potential. A major debris avalanche about 4,800 years ago deposited 8 km<sup>2</sup> (3.1 sq mi) of volcanic material in the adjacent Squamish valley, which blocked the Squamish River for a long period of time.
A number of smaller landslides have since taken place at Mount Cayley, including one 1,100 years ago and another event 500 years ago. Both landslides blocked the Squamish River and created lakes upstream that lasted for a limited amount of time. In 1968 and 1983, a series of landslides caused considerable damage to logging roads and forest stands, but did not result in any casualties. Future landslides from Mount Cayley and potential damming of the Squamish River are significant geological hazards to the general public, as well as to the economic development in the Squamish valley.
### Eruptions
Eruptive activity in the MCVF is typical of past volcanism elsewhere in the Garibaldi Belt. Earthquakes would occur under the volcanic field weeks to years in advance as molten rock intrudes through Earth's rocky lithosphere. The extent of earthquakes and the local seismographs in this region would warn the Geological Survey of Canada and possibly cause an upgrade in monitoring. While molten rock breaks through the crust, the size of the volcano vulnerable to an eruption would possibly swell and the area would rupture, creating much more hydrothermal activity at the regional hot springs and the formation of new springs or fumaroles. Small and probably large rock avalanches may result and could dam the nearby Squamish River for a short period of time, as has happened in the past without seismic activity or deformation related to magmatic activity. At some point the subsurface magma will produce phreatic eruptions and lahars. At this time Highway 99 would be out of service and the residents of Squamish would have to travel away from the eruptive zone.
As molten rock comes closer to the surface it will most likely cause more fragmentation, triggering an explosive eruption that could produce a 20 km (12 mi) high eruption column. This would endanger air traffic, which would have to take another route away from the eruptive zone. Every airport buried under pyroclastic fall would be out of service, including those in Vancouver, Victoria, Kamloops, Prince George and Seattle. The tephra would destroy power transmission lines, satellite dishes, computers and other equipment that operates on electricity. Therefore, telephones, radios and cell phones would be disconnected. Structures not built for holding heavy material would likely collapse under the weight of the tephra. Ash from the eruption column would subside above the vent area to create pyroclastic flows, which would travel east and west down the nearby Cheakamus and Squamish river valleys. These would have significant impacts on salmon in the associated rivers and would cause considerable melting of glacial ice to produce debris flows, which may extend into Daisy Lake and Squamish to cause additional damage. The eruption column would then travel eastward, interrupting air travel throughout Canada from Alberta to Newfoundland and Labrador.
Explosive eruptions may subside and be followed by the eruption of viscous lava to form a lava dome in the new crater. Precipitation would frequently trigger lahars, which would continuously create problems in the Squamish and Cheakamus river valleys. If the lava dome continues to grow, it would eventually rise above the crater rim. The cooling lava may produce landslides to create a massive zone of blocky talus in the Squamish river valley. As the lava dome continues to grow, it will frequently collapse to create large pyroclastic flows that would again travel down the adjacent Squamish and Cheakamus river valleys. Tephra swept away from the pyroclastic flows would create ash columns with elevations of at least 10 km (6.2 mi), repeatedly depositing tephra on the communities of Whistler and Pemberton and again disrupting regional air traffic. Lava of the unstable dome may occasionally create minor pyroclastic flows, explosions and eruption columns. The community of Squamish would be abandoned, Highway 99 would be out of service and destroyed, and traffic adjacent to Vancouver, Pemberton and Whistler would remain forced to travel a longer route to the east.
Eruptions would likely continue for a period of time, followed by years of decreasing secondary activity. The solidifying lava would occasionally collapse portions of the volcano to create pyroclastic flows. Rubble on the flanks of the volcano and in valleys would occasionally be released to form debris flows. Major construction would be needed to repair the community of Squamish and Highway 99.
## See also
- Callaghan Valley
- Geology of British Columbia
- Lillooet Ranges
- List of Cascade volcanoes
- List of volcanoes in Canada
- Squamish volcanic field
- Volcanism of Western Canada
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Battle of Powick Bridge
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1642 battle of the First English Civil War
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[
"1642 in England",
"17th century in Worcestershire",
"Battles of the English Civil Wars",
"Conflicts in 1642",
"History of Worcester, England",
"Military history of Worcestershire"
] |
The battle of Powick Bridge was a skirmish fought on 23 September 1642 south of Worcester, England, during the First English Civil War. It was the first engagement between elements of the principal field armies of the Royalists and Parliamentarians. Sir John Byron was escorting a Royalist convoy of valuables from Oxford to King Charles's army in Shrewsbury and, worried about the proximity of the Parliamentarians, took refuge in Worcester on 16 September to await reinforcements. The Royalists despatched a force commanded by Prince Rupert. Meanwhile, the Parliamentarians sent a detachment, under Colonel John Brown, to try to capture the convoy. Each force consisted of around 1,000 mounted troops, a mix of cavalry and dragoons.
The Parliamentarians approached the city from the south on the afternoon of 23 September. Their route took them up narrow lanes and straight into Rupert's force, which was resting in a field. The noise of the approaching Parliamentarian cavalry alerted the Royalists, who quickly formed up. The Royalist dragoons gave their cavalry time to prepare, firing at point-blank range as the Parliamentarians emerged into the field. Rupert's cavalry then charged and broke most of the Parliamentarian cavalry, although one troop stood its ground and returned fire. Ultimately, all the Parliamentarians were routed.
Brown protected his cavalry's escape by making a rearguard stand with his dragoons at Powick Bridge. Rupert gave chase as far as Powick village, but the Parliamentarian cavalry fled 15 mi (24 km) further, their flight causing panic among part of the main Parliamentarian field army. The Royalists abandoned Worcester, leaving safely with their valuable convoy. The Parliamentarian army arrived in the city the next day and remained for four weeks before shadowing the Royalist move towards London, which led to the Battle of Edgehill.
## Background
### Build-up of the First English Civil War
In 1642 the tension between the English Parliament and King Charles, which had been building throughout his reign, escalated sharply after the King had attempted to arrest five Members of Parliament, whom he accused of treason. Having failed, Charles fled London with his family; many historians believe these events made civil war probable. In anticipation of a likely conflict, both sides began preparing for war and attempting to recruit the existing militia and new men into their armies. Parliament passed the Militia Ordinance in March 1642 without Royal assent, granting themselves control of the county militias. In response Charles granted commissions of array to his commanders, a medieval device for levying soldiers which had not been used for almost a century until the King reintroduced it during the Bishops' Wars (1639–1640).
Despite the animosity between the King and Parliament, there remained an illusion that the two sides were still governing the country together. This illusion ended when Charles moved to York in mid-March, fearing that he would be captured if he remained in the south of England. The first open conflict between the two sides occurred at Kingston-upon-Hull, where a large arsenal housed arms and equipment collected for the earlier Bishops' Wars. During the first Siege of Hull in 1642 Charles was refused entrance into the city in April and again in July by the Parliamentarian governor. Charles was successful in raising men to the Royalist cause in the north of England, the East Midlands and Wales, but without control of a significant arsenal, he lacked the means to arm them. In contrast, Parliament drew troops from the south-east of England, had plentiful arms, and controlled the navy.
On 22 August Charles raised his royal standard in Nottingham, effectively declaring war on Parliament. The two sides continued to recruit; Parliament positioned its main field army, commanded by the Earl of Essex, between the King and London, in Northampton. Charles was heavily outnumbered at this stage; he fielded between a quarter and half as many men as Essex's 20,000, and those he did have were not so well equipped. Despite this, Essex did not press his advantage: possibly because his orders allowed him to present the King with a petition to peacefully submit to Parliament, as an alternative to military action. Although there had been small-scale fighting, particularly in northern and south-western England, the two field armies did not significantly manoeuvre against each other until mid-September. On 13 September Charles moved his army west through Derby and Stafford towards Shrewsbury, where he hoped to be reinforced by the Royalist regiments being raised in Wales and the north-west and south-west of England.
### Sir John Byron's convoy
Sir John Byron was a strong supporter of King Charles and raised what was probably the first Royalist cavalry regiment of the war. In August he occupied Oxford with that 160-strong regiment until it was forced to withdraw on 10 September by a larger Parliamentarian force. Byron's regiment left with a large convoy of gold and silver plate donated by Oxford University to help fund the King's war preparations. Heading towards the Royalist forces in Shrewsbury, Byron became aware of the proximity of the Parliamentarian army and chose to seek refuge. On 16 September he stopped at Worcester, a large town on the River Severn surrounded by medieval city walls in poor condition. Aware that he would not be able to hold the city, Byron awaited reinforcements.
## Prelude
The Parliamentarians did not react to the movement of the Royalist army until 19 September, as they sought intelligence on the King's destination, and then moved on a parallel path through Coventry and towards Worcester. This would again position Parliament's army between the Royalists and London, and Worcester was surrounded by agricultural land which could support Essex's army. While Essex was still some distance away, he received intelligence of the Royalist convoy. One of his cavalry colonels, John Brown, convinced him to send a detachment to the city to try to capture the valuables being transported.
Brown led a detachment of around 1,000 mounted troops, which reached Worcester on 22 September. They approached the eastern gate but found it well-defended. They withdrew to the south, where they secured a bridge across the Severn. One of the Parliamentarian officers present, Nathaniel Fiennes, either wrote a report or had it written for him. It stated that fellow officer Colonel Edwin Sandys argued they should move closer to Worcester to prevent the convoy from escaping. They went on to Powick, just south of the River Teme, around two mi (3 km) south of Worcester. There they spent the night and most of the following day guarding the route they expected Byron to attempt to escape along.
The Parliamentarians did not send out scouts nor post a lookout in the church tower and so were unaware that Byron had been reinforced earlier that day. Prince Rupert, the Royalist general of horse, had arrived, also with about a thousand mounted troops. Rupert's men were just north of the Teme, guarding the southern approach to the city. The modern historian Peter Gaunt suggests that Rupert was probably aware of the presence of the Parliamentarian detachment in the area, but allowed his men to rest in a field known as Wick Field (or Brickfield Meadow) and many removed their armour.
## Opposing forces
Two major categories of mounted troops often referred to simply as "horse", were employed during the First English Civil War. Dragoons were mounted infantry, armed with muskets, who were typically used as skirmishers or as part of advanced guards due to their mobility. They rode into battle but dismounted to fight. The cavalry remained mounted to fight, generally on larger horses than dragoons. Most were harquebusiers, who were armoured with a helmet and plate armour on their torso and carried a sword, two pistols, and a carbine. Rupert's force was split roughly evenly between dragoons and cavalry, while the proportion of each in the Parliamentarian force is unknown: records indicate only that they had ten troops of cavalry and five companies of dragoons.
The cavalry tactics of the two forces differed. The Parliamentarians used manoeuvres originated in the army of the Dutch Republic which was the pre-eminent force in the early 17th century, and with whom many English cavalry officers had first experienced battle. In both attack and defence, Parliamentarian cavalry relied on their firepower, a tactic known as caracole. When they were on the offensive, one rank at a time moved forward to fire at their opponents, while in defence the cavalry initially remained stationary and fired into the enemy charge, hoping to break their opponents and then counter-charge. In contrast, Rupert's cavalry used a modified version of tactics used by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Deploying in shallower formations than the Parliamentarians to allow a greater frontage, the Royalist cavalry attacked at the charge, using their firearms only when they were already among their opponents and often relied on their swords instead.
## Battle
At around 4 pm, Brown and Sandys ordered an advance towards the city. The historian Richard Brooks suggests they had received intelligence that Byron was preparing to leave Worcester. Sandys led a small group of troops ahead, across the narrow bridge and along a country lane that allowed no more than three riders abreast. Modern historians vary slightly in their account of the first stage of the engagement: Brooks, Chris Scott, and Alan Turton have the Royalist dragoons already prepared, lining the hedges of the lane. When the Parliamentarians advanced up the path, the dragoons opened fire on them, causing Sandys's men to panic and bolt forward into Wick Field; the musket-fire alerting the resting Royalist cavalry of their approach. Peter Gaunt and Trevor Royle describe all the Royalists as within the field; the noise of the Parliamentarian horsemen alerted Rupert to their approach, allowing him to quickly prepare his men for battle as best as he could. He lined the hedges with the dismounted dragoons while the cavalry was drawn up into open order in the meadow. When Sandys and his cavalry troop emerged into the field, they were faced with point-blank gunfire from the dragoons, giving the Royalist cavalry extra time to prepare.
The Parliamentarians attempted to regroup and return fire but were charged by Rupert's cavalry. Sandys was mortally wounded during the initial assault. Sandys's troops were routed with no support from their dragoons, which were stuck behind the cavalry in the narrow country lanes. Fiennes said that he managed to control his cavalry and hold fire until the charging Royalists were close enough "so that their horses' noses almost touched those of our first rank". Despite this, they were isolated after the retreat of Sandys's men and forced to abandon the fight. The Parliamentarian dragoons made a rearguard stand on Powick Bridge to protect the cavalry's retreat, but Rupert called off the chase at Powick.
## Aftermath
The Parliamentarian cavalry rode in alarm all the way back to Pershore, 15 mi (24 km) away, where they met Essex's Lifeguard. Their account of the battle and belief that Rupert's cavalry was still chasing them broke the Lifeguard, which was then carried away in the flight. According to Fiennes, both sides lost around 30 men dead. Other reports place the Parliamentarian losses higher; Brooks estimates that desertions, drownings, and prisoners might have increased the total to 100–150. The Royalists claimed to have lost no one of note, though many of their officers, including Prince Maurice (Rupert's younger brother) and Henry Wilmot, were wounded.
The battle established Rupert's reputation as an effective cavalry commander; soldiers from both sides told stories of the battle, according to the Royalist commentator Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon the victory "rendered the name of Prince Rupert very terrible". The historian Austin Woolrych describes Powick Bridge as having "significance ... disproportionate to its scale": it proved that the Royalists had forces capable of standing up to and beating those of Parliament, and affected the morale of both armies leading up to the Battle of Edgehill a month later.
No longer threatened by the Parliamentarians, the convoy was able to continue on its journey to the King and Rupert abandoned the indefensible Worcester and returned north to Shropshire. The next day, Essex's army arrived in Worcester, where they remained for the next four weeks. Although the city had declared its loyalty to Parliament on 13 September, many in Essex's army thought Worcester's citizens had helped the Royalists and that the city was accordingly treated poorly: it had to pay for transporting the wounded and burying the dead from the battle and much of the city was ransacked, particularly the cathedral.
After the further build-up of the respective armies, King Charles marched out of Shrewsbury on 12 October aiming towards London. It was considered that either defeating Essex's field army in battle or capturing London had the potential to finish the war quickly. In the event, the two armies met inconclusively at the Battle of Edgehill on 23 October, after which the Royalists were able to continue their slow approach towards London. The Parliamentarians took a less direct route to the capital but still arrived there first. After further battles at Brentford and Turnham Green, Charles withdrew to Oxford to establish winter quarters.
Almost nine years later, the final battle of the Third English Civil War, the Battle of Worcester, was also fought in and around Powick; Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarian New Model Army secured a decisive victory over King Charles II. The day after the Battle of Worcester, the Puritan preacher Hugh Peter gave a sermon to Cromwell's troops referring to the two battles, "when their wives and children should ask them where they had been and what news, they should say they had been at Worcester, where England's sorrows began, and where they were happily ended."
|
51,604,372 |
Herbert Maryon
| 1,155,313,302 |
English sculptor, goldsmith, archaeologist, conservator, author, and authority on ancient metalwork
|
[
"1874 births",
"1965 deaths",
"British male sculptors",
"British metalsmiths",
"British sculptors",
"Conservator-restorers",
"Employees of the British Museum",
"English goldsmiths",
"English silversmiths",
"Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London",
"Officers of the Order of the British Empire",
"Sutton Hoo"
] |
Herbert James Maryon OBE FSA FIIC (9 March 1874 – 14 July 1965) was an English sculptor, conservator, goldsmith, archaeologist and authority on ancient metalwork. Maryon practiced and taught sculpture until retiring in 1939, then worked as a conservator with the British Museum from 1944 to 1961. He is best known for his work on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, which led to his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
By the time of his mid-twenties Maryon attended three art schools, apprenticed in silversmithing with C. R. Ashbee and worked in Henry Wilson's workshop. From 1900 to 1904 he served as the director of the Keswick School of Industrial Art, where he designed numerous Arts and Crafts works. After moving to the University of Reading and then Durham University, he taught sculpture, metalwork, modelling, casting, and anatomy until 1939. He also designed the University of Reading War Memorial, among other commissions. Maryon published two books while teaching, including Metalwork and Enamelling, and many other articles. He frequently led archaeological digs, and in 1935 discovered one of the oldest gold ornaments known in Britain while excavating the Kirkhaugh cairns.
In 1944 Maryon was brought out of retirement to work in the Sutton Hoo finds. His responsibilities included restoring the shield, the drinking horns, and the iconic Sutton Hoo helmet, which proved academically and culturally influential. Maryon's work, much of which was revised in the 1970s, created credible renderings upon which subsequent research relied; likewise, one of his papers coined the term pattern welding to describe a method employed on the Sutton Hoo sword to decorate and strengthen iron and steel. The initial work ended in 1950, and Maryon turned to other matters. He proposed a widely publicised theory in 1953 on the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes, influencing Salvador Dalí and others, and restored the Roman Emesa helmet in 1955. He left the museum in 1961, a year after his official retirement, and began an around-the-world trip lecturing and researching Chinese magic mirrors.
## Early life and education
Herbert James Maryon was born in London on 9 March 1874. He was the third of six surviving children born to John Simeon Maryon, a tailor, and Louisa Maryon (née Church). He had an older brother, John Ernest, and an older sister, Louisa Edith, the latter of whom preceded him in his vocation as a sculptor. Another brother and three sisters were born after him—in order, George Christian, Flora Mabel, Mildred Jessie, and Violet Mary—although Flora Maryon, born in 1878, died in her second year. According to a pedigree compiled by John Ernest Maryon, the Maryons traced back to the de Marinis family, a branch of which left Normandy for England around the 12th century.
After receiving his general education at The Lower School of John Lyon, Herbert Maryon studied from 1896 to 1900 at the Polytechnic (Regent Street), where he received a scholarship and special extension for a third year, as well as at The Slade, Saint Martin's School of Art, and, under the tutelage of Alexander Fisher and William Lethaby, the Central School of Arts and Crafts. He also obtained first class South Kensington certificates in drawing from life, antique, light and shade, and other subjects. Under Fisher in particular, Maryon learned enamelling. Maryon further received a one-year silversmithing apprenticeship in 1898, at C. R. Ashbee's Essex House Guild of Handicrafts, and worked for a period of time in Henry Wilson's workshop. At some point, though perhaps later, Maryon also worked in the workshop of George Frampton, and was taught by Robert Catterson Smith.
## Sculpture
From 1900 until 1939, Maryon held various positions teaching sculpture, design, and metalwork. During this time, and while still in school beforehand, he created and exhibited many of his own works. At the end of 1899 he displayed a silver cup and a shield of arms with silver cloisonné at the sixth exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, an event held at the New Gallery which also included a work by his sister Edith. The exhibition was reviewed by The International Studio, with Maryon's work singled out as "agreeable".
### Keswick School of Industrial Art, 1900–1904
In March 1900 Maryon became the first director of the Keswick School of Industrial Art. The school had been opened by Edith and Hardwicke Rawnsley in 1884, amid the emergence of the Arts and Crafts movement. It offered classes in drawing, design, woodcarving, and metalwork, and melded commercial with artistic purposes; the school sold items such as trays, frames, tables, and clock-cases, and developed a reputation for quality. Already by May a reviewer for The Studio of an exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall commented that a group of silver tableware by the school was "a welcome departure towards finer craftsmanship". Two of Maryon's designs, she wrote, "were singularly good—a knocker, executed by Jeremiah Richardson, and a copper casket made by Thomas Spark and ornamented by Thomas Clark and the designer". She described the casket's lock as "enamelled in pearly blue and white", and giving "a dainty touch of colour to a form almost bare of ornament, but beautiful in its proportions and lines". At the following year's exhibition three more works by the school were singled out for praise, including a loving cup by Maryon.
Under Maryon's leadership the Keswick School expanded the breadth and range of its designs, and he executed several significant commissions. His best works, wrote a historian of the school, "drew their inspiration from the nature of the material and his deep understanding of its technical limits". They also tended to be in metal. Items like Bryony, a tray centre showing tangled growth concealed within a geometric framework, continued the school's tradition of repoussé work of naturalistic interpretations of flowers, while evoking the vine-like wallpapers of William Morris. These themes were particularly expressed in a 1901 plaque memorialising Bernard Gilpin, unveiled in St Cuthbert's Church, Kentmere; described by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as "Arts and Crafts, almost Art Nouveau", the bronze tablet on oak is framed by trees with entwined roots and influenced by a Norse and Celtic aesthetic. Three other commissions in silver—a loving cup, a processional cross, and a challenge shield—were completed towards the end of Maryon's tenure and the school and featured in The Studio and its international counterpart. The cup was commissioned by the Cumberland County Council for presentation to HMS Cumberland, and was termed a "tour de force".
Particularly in more utilitarian works, Maryon's designs at the Keswick School tended to emphasise form over design. As he would write a decade later, "[o]ver-insistence on technique, craftsmanship which proclaims 'How clever am I!' quite naturally elbows out artistic feeling. One idea must be the principal one; and if that happens to be technique, the other goes." Design should be determined by intention, he wrote: as an objet or as an object for use. Hot water jugs, tea pots, sugar bowls and other tableware that Maryon designed were frequently raised from a single sheet of metal, retaining the hammer marks and a dull lustre. Many of these were displayed at the 1902 Home Arts and Industries Exhibition, where the school won 65 awards, along with an altar cross designed by Maryon for Hexham Abbey, and were praised for showing "a remarkably good year's work in the finer kinds of craft and decoration". At the same event a year later more than £35 worth of goods were sold, including a copper jug Maryon designed which was acquired by the Manchester School of Art for its Arts and Crafts Museum. On the strength of these and other achievements, Maryon's salary, which in 1902 had amounted in his estimation to between £185 and £200, was raised to £225.
Maryon's four-year tenure at Keswick was assisted by four designers who also taught drawing: G. M. Collinson, Isobel McBean, Maude M. Ackery, and Dorothea Carpenter. Hired from leading art schools and serving for a year each, the four helped the school keep abreast of modern design. Eight full-time workers helped execute the designs when Maryon joined in 1900, rising to 15 by 1903. Maryon also had the help of his sisters: Edith Maryon designed at least one work for the school, a 1901 relief plaque of Hardwicke Rawnsley, while Mildred Maryon, who the 1901 census listed as living with her sister, worked for a time as an enameller at the school. Both Herbert and Mildred Maryon worked on an oxidised silver and enamel casket that was presented to Princess Louise upon her 1902 visit to the Keswick School; Herbert Maryon was responsible for the design and his sister for the enamelling, with the resulting work being termed "of a character highly creditable to the School" in The Magazine of Art. Strife with colleagues eventually led to Maryon's departure. In July 1901 Collinson had left due to a poor working relationship, and Maryon was often in conflict with the school's management committee, which was chaired by Edith Rawnsley and frequently made decisions without his knowledge. When in August 1904 Carpenter, in friction with Maryon, resigned, the committee decided to give Maryon three-months' notice.
Maryon left the school at the end of December 1904. He spent 1905 teaching metalwork at the Storey Institute in Lancaster. That October he published his first article, "Early Irish Metal Work" in The Art Workers' Quarterly. In 1906 Maryon, still listed as living in Keswick, again displayed works—this time a silver cup and silver chalice—for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, held at the Grafton Galleries; one Mrs. Herbert J. Maryon was listed as exhibiting a Sicilian lace tablecloth. At some point towards 1908, Maryon also gave instruction in crafts under the Westmorland County Council.
### University of Reading, 1908–1927
In January 1908, Maryon was appointed teacher of crafts are the University of Reading, effective 10 February; he took over from Julia Bowley (wife of Arthur Lyon Bowley), who resigned as teacher of woodcarving and handicraft. Until 1927, Maryon taught sculpture, including metalwork, modelling, and casting, at the school. He was also the warden of Wantage Hall from 1920 to 1922. Maryon's first book, Metalwork and Enamelling: A Practical Treatise on Gold and Silversmiths' Work and their Allied Crafts, was published in 1912. Maryon described it as eschewing "the artistic or historical point of view", in favor of an "essentially practical and technical standpoint". The book focused on individual techniques such as soldering, enamelling, and stone-setting, rather than the methods of creating works such as cups and brooches. It was well received, as a vade mecum for both students and practitioners of metalworking. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs wrote that Maryon "succeeds in every page in not only maintaining his own enthusiasm, but what is better in communicating it", and The Athenæum declared that his "critical notes on design are excellent". One such note, republished in The Jewelers' Circular in 1922, was a critique of the celebrated sixteenth-century goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini; Maryon termed him "one of the very greatest craftsmen of the sixteenth century, but ... a very poor artist", a "dispassionate appraisal" that led a one-time secretary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to label Maryon not only "the dean of ancient metalwork", but also "a discerning critic". Metalwork and Enamelling went through four further editions, in 1923, 1954, 1959, and posthumously in 1971, along with a 1998 Italian translation, and as of 2020 is still in print by Dover Publications. As late as 1993, a senior conservator at the Canadian Conservation Institute wrote that the book "has not been equalled".
During the First World War Maryon worked at Reading with another instructor, Charles Albert Sadler, to create a centre to train munition workers in machine tool work. Maryon began this work in 1915, officially as organising secretary and instructor at the Ministry of Munitions Training Centre, with no engineering school to build from. The programme targeted women in particular, given the number of men who were serving in the military. By 1918 the centre had five staff members, could accommodate 25 workers at a time, and had trained more than 400. Based on this work, Maryon was elected to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on 6 March 1918.
Maryon displayed a child's bowl with signs of the zodiac at the ninth Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society exhibition in 1910. Following the war, he—like his colleague and friend William Collingwood,—designed several memorials, including the East Knoyle War Memorial in 1920, the Mortimer War Memorial in 1921, and in 1924 the University of Reading War Memorial, a clock tower on the London Road Campus.
### Armstrong College, 1927–1939
In 1927 Maryon left the University of Reading and began teaching sculpture at Armstrong College, then part of Durham University, where he stayed until 1939. At Durham he was both master of sculpture, and lecturer in anatomy and the history of sculpture. Around 1928, Maryon travelled around Europe, from Reading to Denmark, followed by Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Danzig, Warsaw, Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg, and elsewhere, returning to lecture on the sculpture observed on the trip. In 1933 he published his second book, Modern Sculpture: Its Methods and Ideals. Maryon wrote that his aim was to discuss modern sculpture "from the point of view of the sculptors themselves", rather than from an "archaeological or biographical" perspective. The book received mixed reviews. To The Art Digest, Maryon "succeeded in trying to make sculpture intelligible to the layman". But his treatment of criticism as secondary to intent meant grouping together artworks of unequal quality. Some critics attacked his taste, with The New Statesman and Nation claiming that "[h]e can enjoy almost anything, and among his 350 odd illustrations there are certainly some camels to swallow," The Bookman that "All the bad sculptors ... will be found in Mr. Maryon's book ... Most of the good sculptors are here as well (even Henry Moore), but all are equal in Mr. Maryon's eye," and The Spectator that "[t]he few good works which have found their way into the 356 plates look lost and unhappy." Maryon responded with explanations of his purpose, saying that "I do not admire all the results, and I say so," and to one review in particular that "I believe that the sculptors of the world have a wider knowledge of what constitutes sculpture than your reviewer realizes." Other reviews praised Maryon's academic approach. The Times stated that "his book is remarkable for its extraordinary catholicity, admitting works which we should find it hard to defend ... with works of great merit," yet added that "[b]y a system of grouping, however, according to some primarily aesthetic aim ... their inclusion is justified." The Manchester Guardian praised Maryon for "a degree of natural good sense in his observations that cannot always be said to characterise current art criticism", and stated that "his critical judgments are often penetrating."
At Durham, as at Reading, Maryon was commissioned to create works of art. These included at least two plaques, memorialising George Stephenson in 1929, and Sir Charles Parsons in 1932, as well as the Statue of Industry for the 1929 North East Coast Exhibition, a world's fair held at Newcastle upon Tyne. Depicting a woman with cherubs at her feet, the statue was described by Maryon as "represent[ing] industry as we know it in the North-east—one who has passed through hard times and is now ready to face the future, strong and undismayed". The statue was the subject of "adverse criticism", reported The Manchester Guardian; on the night of 25 October "several hundred students of Armstrong College" tarred and feathered the statue, and were dispersed only with the arrival of eighty police officers.
Maryon expressed an interest in archaeology while at Armstrong. By the early 1930s he was conducting excavations, and frequently brought students to dig along Hadrian's Wall. In 1935 he published two articles on Bronze Age swords, and at the end of the year excavated the Kirkhaugh cairns, two Bronze Age graves at Kirkhaugh, Northumberland. One of the cairns was the nearly 4500-year-old grave of a metalworker, like the grave of the Amesbury Archer, and contained one of the oldest gold ornaments yet found in the United Kingdom; a matching ornament was found during a re-excavation in 2014. Maryon's account of the excavation was published in 1936, and papers on archaeology and prehistoric metalworking followed. In 1937 he published an article in Antiquity clarifying a passage by the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus on how Egyptians carved sculptures; in 1938 he wrote in both the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy and The Antiquaries Journal on metalworking during the Bronze and Iron Ages; and in 1939 he wrote articles about an ancient hand-anvil discovered in Thomastown, and gold ornaments found in Alnwick.
Maryon retired from Armstrong College—by then known as King's College—in 1939, when he was in his mid-60s. From 1939 to 1943, at the height of World War II, he was involved in munition work. In 1941 he published a two-part article in Man on archaeology and metallurgy, part I on welding and soldering, and part II on the metallurgy of gold and platinum in Pre-Columbian Ecuador.
## British Museum, 1944–1961
On 11 November 1944 Maryon was recruited out of retirement by the trustees of the British Museum to serve as a Technical Attaché. Maryon, working under Harold Plenderleith's leadership, was tasked with the conservation and reconstruction of material from the Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo ship-burial. Widely identified with King Rædwald of East Anglia, the burial had previously attracted Maryon's interest; as early as 1941, he wrote a prescient letter about the preservation of the ship impression to Thomas Downing Kendrick, the museum's Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities. Nearly four years after his letter, in the dying days of World War II and the finds removed (or about to be removed) from safekeeping in the tunnel connecting the Aldwych and Holborn tube stations, he was assigned what Rupert Bruce-Mitford, who succeeded Kendrick's post in 1954, termed "the real headaches—notably the crushed shield, helmet and drinking horns". Composed in large part of iron, wood and horn, these items had decayed in the 1,300 years since their burial and left only fragments behind; the helmet, for one, had corroded and then smashed into more than 500 pieces. Painstaking work needing keen observation and patience, these efforts occupied several years of Maryon's career. Much of his work has seen revision, but as Bruce-Mitford wrote afterwards, "by carrying out the initial cleaning, sorting, and mounting of the mass of the fragmentary and fragile material he preserved it, and in working out his reconstructions he made explicit the problems posed and laid the foundations upon which fresh appraisals and progress could be based when fuller archaeological study became possible."
Maryon's restorations were aided by his deep practical understandings of the objects he was working on, causing a senior conservator at the Canadian Conservation Institute in 1993 to label Maryon "[o]ne of the finest exemplars" of a conservator whose "wide understanding of the structure and function of museum objects ... exceeds that gained by the curator or historian in more classical studies of artefacts." Maryon was admitted as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1949, and in 1956 his Sutton Hoo work led to his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Asked by Queen Elizabeth II what he did as she awarded him the medal, Maryon responded "Well, Ma'am, I am a sort of back room boy at the British Museum." Maryon continued restoration work at the British Museum, including on Oriental antiquities and the Roman Emesa helmet, before retiring—for a second time—at the age of 87.
### Sutton Hoo helmet
From 1945 to 1946, Maryon spent six continuous months reconstructing the Sutton Hoo helmet. The helmet was only the second Anglo-Saxon example then known, the Benty Grange helmet being the first, and was the most elaborate. Yet its importance had not been realized during excavation, and no photographs of it were taken in situ. Bruce-Mitford likened Maryon's task to "a jigsaw puzzle without any sort of picture on the lid of the box", and, "as it proved, a great many of the pieces missing"; Maryon had to base his reconstruction "exclusively on the information provided by the surviving fragments, guided by archaeological knowledge of other helmets".
Maryon began the reconstruction by familiarising himself with the fragments, tracing and detailing each on a piece of card. After what he termed "a long while", he sculpted a head out of plaster and expanded it outwards to simulate the padded space between helmet and head. On this he initially affixed the fragments with plasticine, placing thicker pieces into spaces cut into the head. Finally, the fragments were permanently affixed with white plaster mixed with brown umber; more plaster was used to fill the in-between areas. The fragments of the cheek guards, neck guard, and visor were placed onto shaped, plaster-covered wire mesh, then affixed with more plaster and joined to the cap. Maryon published the finished reconstruction in a 1947 issue of Antiquity.
Maryon's work was celebrated, and both academically and culturally influential. The helmet stayed on display for over twenty years, with photographs making their way into television programmes, newspapers, and "every book on Anglo-Saxon art and archaeology"; in 1951 a young Larry Burrows was dispatched to the British Museum by Life, which published a full page photograph of the helmet alongside a photo of Maryon. Over the succeeding quarter century conservation techniques advanced, knowledge of contemporaneous helmets grew, and more helmet fragments were discovered during the 1965–69 re-excavation of Sutton Hoo; accordingly, inaccuracies in Maryon's reconstruction—notably its diminished size, gaps in afforded protection, and lack of a moveable neck guard—became apparent. In 1971 a second reconstruction was completed, following eighteen months' work by Nigel Williams. Yet "[m]uch of Maryon's work is valid," Bruce-Mitford wrote. "The general character of the helmet was made plain." "It was only because there was a first restoration that could be constructively criticized," noted the conservation scholar Chris Caple, "that there was the impetus and improved ideas available for a second restoration;" similarly, minor errors in the second reconstruction were discovered while forging the 1973 Royal Armouries replica. In executing a first reconstruction that was reversible and retained evidence by being only lightly cleaned, Maryon's true contribution to the Sutton Hoo helmet was in creating a credible first rendering that allowed for the critical examination leading to the second, current, reconstruction.
### After Sutton Hoo
Maryon finished reconstructions of significant objects from Sutton Hoo by 1946, although work on the remaining finds carried him to 1950; at this point Plenderleith decided the work had been finished to the extent possible, and that the space in the research laboratory was needed for other purposes. Maryon continued working at the museum until 1961, turning his attention to other matters. This included some travel: in April 1954 he visited Toronto, giving lectures at the Royal Ontario Museum on Sutton Hoo before a large audience, and another on "Founders and Metal Workers of the Early World"; the same year he visited Philadelphia, where he was scheduled to appear on an episode of What in the World? before the artefacts were mistakenly carted away to the dump; and in 1957 or 1958, paid a visit to the Gennadeion at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
In 1955 Maryon restored the Roman Emesa helmet for the British Museum. It had been found in the Syrian city Homs in 1936, and underwent several failed restoration attempts before it was brought to the museum—"the last resort in these things", according to Maryon. The restoration was published the following year by Plenderleith. Around that time Maryon and Plenderleith also collaborated on several other works: in 1954 they wrote a chapter on metalwork for the History of Technology series, and in 1959 they co-authored a paper on the cleaning of Westminster Abbey's bronze royal effigies.
## Publications
In addition to Metalwork and Enamelling and Modern Sculpture, Maryon authored chapters in volumes one and two of Charles Singer's "A History of Technology" series, and wrote thirty or forty archaeological and technical papers. Several of Maryon's earlier papers, in 1946 and 1947, described his restorations of the shield and helmet from the Sutton Hoo burial. In 1948 another paper introduced the term pattern welding to describe a method of strengthening and decorating iron and steel by welding into them twisted strips of metal; the method was employed on the Sutton Hoo sword among others, giving them a distinctive pattern.
During 1953 and 1954, his talk and paper on the Colossus of Rhodes received international attention for suggesting the statue was hollow, and stood aside rather than astride the harbour. Made of hammered bronze plates less than a sixteenth of an inch thick, he suggested, it would have been supported by a tripod structure comprising the two legs and a hanging piece of drapery. Although "great ideas" according to the scholar Godefroid de Callataÿ, neither fully caught on; in 1957, Denys Haynes, then the Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, suggested that Maryon's theory of hammered bronze plates relied on an errant translation of a primary source. Maryon's view was nevertheless influential, likely shaping Salvador Dalí's 1954 surrealist imagining of the statue, The Colossus of Rhodes. "Not only the pose," wrote de Callataÿ, "but even the hammered plates of Maryon's theory find [in Dalí's painting] a clear and very powerful expression."
## Later years
Maryon finally left the British Museum in 1961, a year after his official retirement. He donated a number of items to the museum, including plaster maquettes by George Frampton of Comedy and Tragedy, used for the memorial to Sir W. S. Gilbert along the Victoria Embankment. Before his departure Maryon had been planning a trip around the world, and at the end of 1961 he left for Fremantle, Australia, arriving on 1 January 1962. In Perth he visited his brother George Maryon, whom he had not seen in 60 years. From Australia Maryon departed for San Francisco, arriving on 15 February. Much of his North American tour was done with buses and cheap hotels, for, as a colleague would recall, Maryon "liked to travel the hard way—like an undergraduate—which was to be expected since, at 89, he was a young man."
Maryon devoted much of his time during the American stage of his trip to visiting museums and the study of Chinese magic mirrors, a subject he had turned to some two years before. By the time he reached Kansas City, Missouri, where he was written up in The Kansas City Times, he had listed 526 examples in his notebook. His trip included guest lectures, such as his talk "Metal Working in the Ancient World" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on 1 May 1962 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology the day after, and when he came to New York City a colleague later said that "he wore out several much younger colleagues with an unusually long stint devoted to a meticulous examination of two large collections of pre-Columbian fine metalwork, a field that was new to him." Maryon scheduled the trip to end in Toronto, where his son John Maryon, a civil engineer, lived.
## Personal life
In July 1903 Maryon married Annie Elizabeth Maryon (née Stones). They had a daughter, Kathleen Rotha Maryon. Annie Maryon died on 8 February 1908. A second marriage, to Muriel Dore Wood in September 1920, produced two children, son John and daughter Margaret. Maryon lived the majority of his life in London, and died on 14 July 1965, at a nursing home in Edinburgh, in his 92nd year. Death notices were published in papers including The Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Montreal Star, the Brandon Sun, and the Ottawa Journal. Longer obituaries followed in Studies in Conservation, and the American Journal of Archaeology,
## Works by Maryon
### Books
### Articles
- - Republication of passages from
- - Republication of
- - Abstract published as
### Other
\* Excerpt of a lecture.
|
12,174,471 |
Transandinomys bolivaris
| 1,069,922,288 |
Small rodent found from northeastern Honduras to western Ecuador
|
[
"Mammals described in 1901",
"Mammals of Colombia",
"Mammals of Ecuador",
"Rodents of Central America",
"Rodents of South America",
"Taxa named by Joel Asaph Allen",
"Taxonomy articles created by Polbot",
"Transandinomys"
] |
Transandinomys bolivaris, also known as the long-whiskered rice rat, is a rodent in the family Cricetidae. It is found in humid forest from northeastern Honduras to western Ecuador, up to 1,800 m (5,900 ft) above sea level. Since it was first described in 1901 from Ecuador, six scientific names have been introduced for it, but their common identity was not documented until 1998 and the species has long been known under the name Oryzomys bombycinus, described from Panama in 1912. The name Oryzomys bolivaris was used before it was moved to the new genus Transandinomys with Transandinomys talamancae (formerly Oryzomys talamancae) in 2006.
It is a medium-sized rice rat distinguished by its very long vibrissae (whiskers)—those above the eyes are up to 50 mm (2 in) long. The fur, which is soft and dense, is usually dark brown above and light gray below; it is darker in juveniles. The feet are long and the tail is about as long as the head and body. The skull is narrow and has a broad interorbital region (between the eyes). The species generally lives on the ground. Although it is rare, its conservation status is thought to be secure.
## Taxonomy
In 1901, Joel Asaph Allen described four new species of rice rat in the genus Oryzomys: three from Ecuador and the Peruvian Oryzomys perenensis. The three Ecuadorian species–Oryzomys bolivaris from Porvenir, Bolívar Province; Oryzomys castaneus from San Javier, Esmeraldas Province; and Oryzomys rivularis from Río Verde, Pichincha Province—were each based on a single specimen collected in 1899 or 1900. He distinguished the three on the basis of coloration, size, and relative tail length. Philip Hershkovitz listed all three among the many synonyms of "Oryzomys laticeps" (currently more narrowly defined as Hylaeamys laticeps) in a 1960 paper.
Edward Alphonso Goldman described Oryzomys bombycinus in 1912 from four specimens from Panama. He compared it to Oryzomys talamancae and placed it with the "Oryzomys laticeps group". Three years later, he described Oryzomys nitidus alleni from Costa Rica as a subspecies of Oryzomys nitidus, without mentioning bombycinus. He revised Oryzomys of North America in 1918 and recognized Oryzomys bombycinus as the only member of its own group, with alleni as a subspecies distinguished by the proportions of the skull. He also mentioned that the group occurred in Ecuador and indicated that O. bombycinus probably reached Colombia. Goldman considered the group to be similar to O. talamancae, but suggested that bombycinus and alleni might only be subspecies of O. nitidus. In 1939, Oliver Pearson added a third subspecies, O. b. orinus, from eastern Panama, and in 1966 the species was first recorded from Colombia. Ronald Pine reviewed Oryzomys bombycinus in 1971, when 59 specimens of it were known, and first recorded the species from Nicaragua and Ecuador. He kept the three described subspecies—alleni from Nicaragua to western Panama, bombycinus from central Panama, and orinus from eastern Panama to Ecuador.
Alfred Gardner and James Patton suggested in 1976 that Allen's O. rivularis may be the same species as O. bombycinus. They considered O. bolivaris as probably the same as O. nitidus and listed castaneus as a synonym of O. capito (equivalent to modern Hylaeamys megacephalus and closely related species plus Transandinomys talamancae). In 1984, Benshoof and colleagues reported the first record of Oryzomys bombycinus from Honduras. Guy Musser and Marina Williams reviewed O. talamancae in 1985 and included O. castaneus as one of its synonyms, though without having examined the holotype. In the 1993 second edition of Mammal Species of the World, Musser and Michael Carleton used the name Oryzomys bolivaris for the species previously known as O. bombycinus, and in 1998, Musser and colleagues fully documented the allocation of the names bolivaris, castaneus, rivularis, bombycinus, alleni, and orinus to the same species, Oryzomys bolivaris. They noted its similarity to O. talamancae, but did not attempt to determine phylogenetic relationships among the species they discussed. In their limited material, they found geographic variation within the species inconsequential and they recognized no subspecies.
In 2006, Marcelo Weksler published a phylogenetic analysis of Oryzomyini ("rice rats"), the tribe to which Oryzomys is allocated, using morphological and DNA sequence data. His results showed species of Oryzomys dispersed across Oryzomyini and suggested that most species in the genus should be allocated to new genera. Later in the same year, he, together with Alexandre Percequillo and Robert Voss, named ten new genera for these species, including Transandinomys, which has Oryzomys talamancae (now Transandinomys talamancae) as its type species. They also included Oryzomys bolivaris in Transandinomys, so that it is now named Transandinomys bolivaris, although it had not been included in Weksler's phylogenetic study. The two species are morphologically similar, but they could identify only one synapomorphy (shared-derived trait) for them: very long superciliary vibrissae (whiskers above the eyes). Transandinomys is one of about 30 genera in Oryzomyini, a diverse assemblage of American rodents of over a hundred species, and on higher taxonomic levels in the subfamily Sigmodontinae of family Cricetidae, along with hundreds of other species of mainly small rodents.
Various authors have used the common name "long-whiskered rice rat" for this species, but several other names have been proposed. In 1918, Goldman named O. bombycinus bombycinus the "Long-Haired Rice Rat" and O. b. alleni the "Allen Rice Rat". Musser and Carleton, writing in the 2005 third edition of Mammal Species of the World, used "Long-whiskered Oryzomys", the 2009 IUCN Red List gave "Bolivar Rice Rat", and Thomas Lee and colleagues used "Long-whiskered Trans-Andean Rice Rat" in 2010.
## Description
Transandinomys bolivaris is a medium-sized rice rat with very long superciliary vibrissae (more than 50 mm (2.0 in) long and extending well beyond the ears when laid back against the head). According to Fiona Reid's Mammals of Southeastern Mexico & Central America, it is distinguishable from any similarly sized rice rats by the length of these whiskers; T. talamancae also has long superciliary vibrissae, but not as long as in T. bolivaris. In both species, the mystacial vibrissae (above the mouth) are also long and extend beyond the ears when laid back, but they are again much longer in T. bolivaris. The vibrissae are mostly dark, but translucent at the tips. Handleyomys alfaroi, a rice rat with which young T. bolivaris are often confused, is much smaller. In T. bolivaris, the cheeks may be light gray, buff, or reddish. The ears are dark brown to black and are sparsely haired.
The fur, which is soft, dense, and thick, is dark brown to gray on the upperparts, grading to black on the midback and yellowish brown on the sides. The underparts are sharply different in color. There, the hairs are dark gray at their bases and white at the tips, so that the fur appears grayish white. The fur is shorter and darker than in T. talamancae and softer and thicker than in H. alfaroi. Young animals have darker, finer, and softer fur. Pine separated the subspecies alleni and orinus on the basis of their darker fur, but Musser and colleagues could not confirm this pattern and found paler and darker specimens within the same geographical regions.
The tail appears naked and is shorter than or about as long as the head and body; it is longer in T. talamancae. Its coloration is variable; it is dark brown above and at the sides and light brown and often white to a greater or smaller extent below, and in some specimens the tail has the same color above and below. The scales on the tail are smaller than in T. talamancae.
The forearms are dark gray. The forefeet are unpigmented and ungual tufts of white hairs surround the equally unpigmented claws. The animal has long, narrow hindfeet, longer than in T. talamancae, with usually smooth soles (lacking squamae, which are present in T. talamancae). The three middle digits are much longer than the outer two. Six pads are present on the sole. The upper surface and the sides of the hindfeet are white and appear naked, although short, white hairs are present; these hairs are longer in T. talamancae. Ungual tufts of long, white or gray hairs are present around the claws, which are short and lack pigment.
Head and body length is 100 to 140 mm (3.9 to 5.5 in), tail length 90 to 130 mm (3.5 to 5.1 in), hindfoot length 27 to 35 mm (1.1 to 1.4 in), ear length 16 to 21 mm (0.63 to 0.83 in), and body mass 39 to 75 g (1.4 to 2.6 oz). Females have four pairs of mammae, as usual in oryzomyines. Like most rice rats, T. bolivaris has twelve thoracic (chest) and seven lumbar vertebrae. A study in Costa Rica found that there are 58 chromosomes, including many that are large and have two arms, and the fundamental number of arms is 80 (2n = 58, FN = 80), a highly differentiated karyotype. The karyotype of T. talamancae is variable, but has fewer chromosomes (34 to 54) and major arms (60 to 67). H. alfaroi has more chromosomes (60 to 62) and major arms (100 to 104).
### Skull and teeth
The skull is relatively long and has a long, narrow rostrum (front region), broad interorbital region (between the eyes) and narrow braincase with almost vertically oriented walls at the sides and behind. It differs from that of T. talamancae in various proportions. Although the subspecies previously recognized in "Oryzomys bombycinus" have been separated by small differences in skull features, Pine rejected these on the basis of his much larger samples. Musser and colleagues agreed, but noted that Colombian animals appeared to have larger skulls. The zygomatic plates are broad and the zygomatic arches (cheekbones) behind them are nearly parallel to each other. The margins of the interorbital region contain prominent beads, which extend to the braincase as temporal ridges; these are usually less well-developed in T. talamancae. Unlike in T. talamancae and H. alfaroi, the parietal bone is usually limited to the roof of the braincase and does not extend to the sides.
The incisive foramina, which perforate the front part of the palate, do not extend between the molars. The palate ends beyond the third molars and is perforated by posterolateral palatal pits there. Behind it, the roof of the mesopterygoid fossa is perforated by poorly developed sphenopalatine vacuities. The auditory bullae, which house the inner ear, are large. Usually, the mastoid bone lacks openings (fenestrae), which are present in T. talamancae. The pattern of the arteries in the head is primitive, as indicated by the condition of various foramina (openings) and grooves in the skull.
The mandible (lower jaw) looks chunky and has a long condyloid process at its back; that of T. talamancae is more slender. The capsular process, a projection at the back of the jaw which houses the root of the lower incisor, is poorly developed.
The incisors are large and ungrooved. Their enamel is orange, but paler on the lowers. The orientation of the upper incisors is opisthodont, with the cutting edge oriented backwards. The molars are brachydont (low-crowned) and have two rows of main cusps separated by deep valleys and complemented by a network of crests and smaller cusps. The first upper molar is broader than in T. talamancae. As in this species, but unlike in many other rice rats, including H. alfaroi, the mesoflexus on the second upper molar, which separates the paracone (one of the main cusps) from the mesoloph (an accessory crest), is not divided in two by an enamel bridge. The hypoflexid on the second lower molar, the main valley between the cusps, is very long, extending more than halfway across the tooth; in this trait, it is similar to T. talamancae but unlike H. alfaroi. Each of the upper molars has three roots (two on the outer and one on the inner side) and each of the lowers has two (one at the front and another at the back).
## Distribution, ecology, and behavior
Transandinomys bolivaris is an uncommon species. Its known distribution extends from northeastern Honduras, on the Caribbean seaboard, through eastern Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, into coastal western Colombia and northwestern and west-central Ecuador. It has been found near sea level and the upper altitudinal records are at nearly 1,500 m (4,900 ft) in Panama and 1,800 m (5,900 ft) in Ecuador. This distribution coincides with that of the humid Transandean forest. It generally occurs in areas with mean temperatures above 16 °C (60.8 °F) and annual rainfall of 4,000 to 6,000 mm (157 to 236 in), prefers mid-elevation forests (600 to 900 m or 1,970 to 2,950 ft), and often occurs near water. The actual range of this species may be expected to extend further north and west, perhaps into Veracruz, southern Mexico, and western Venezuela, where it has not yet been recorded. Omar Linares mentioned a possible record from the Lake Maracaibo region of northwestern Venezuela in 1998. Its range is similar to that of various other rainforest animals, including the semiplumbeous hawk (Leucopternis semiplumbeus), the rice rats Sigmodontomys alfari and S. aphrastus, the spiny rats Proechimys semispinosus and Hoplomys gymnurus, and the opossum Marmosa zeledoni. T. talamancae and H. alfaroi are often found in the same localities as T. bolivaris, but also occur in other areas.
Little is known of its biology. The species mainly lives on the ground, but some young animals have been taken in vegetation, up to 1.5 m (4.9 ft) above the ground. It is usually captured "under logs, around the roots of large trees, or among rocks along streams." Two females with four embryos each have been caught in Panama in June, one with two in Nicaragua in September, and one with four in Costa Rica in December. A very young specimen was trapped in Costa Rica in March. One pregnant female was herself still in juvenile fur. Four species of mites have been found on T. bolivaris in Panama (Gigantolaelaps gilmorei, G. oudemansi, Laelaps pilifer, and Haemolaelaps glasgowi), two chiggers (Leptotrombidium panamensis and Pseudoschoengastia bulbifera), and two fleas (Polygenis roberti and Polygenis klagesi).
## Conservation status
The 2009 IUCN Red List lists T. bolivaris as "Least Concern", as it is a widely distributed species with a presumably large population that is found in numerous protected areas. However, habitat destruction by deforestation may pose a threat.
|
7,669,549 |
Great Fire of London
| 1,172,613,895 |
Major City of London fire in 1666
|
[
"1666 disasters",
"1666 in England",
"17th century in London",
"17th-century fires",
"Disasters in England",
"Disasters in London",
"Fires in England",
"Fires in London",
"Great Fire of London",
"History of the City of London"
] |
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the wall to the west. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief.
The fire started in a bakery in Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September, and spread rapidly. The use of the major firefighting technique of the time, the creation of firebreaks by means of removing structures in the fire's path, was critically delayed due to the indecisiveness of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth. By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War; these substantial immigrant groups became victims of street violence. On Tuesday, the fire spread over nearly the whole City, destroying St Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall. Coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously getting underway. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward.
The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them very radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan which still exists today.
## London in the 1660s
By the 1660s, London was by far the largest city in Britain and the third largest in the Western world, estimated at 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. John Evelyn, contrasting London to the Baroque magnificence of Paris in 1659, called it a "wooden, northern, and inartificial congestion of Houses". By "inartificial", Evelyn meant unplanned and makeshift, the result of organic growth and unregulated urban sprawl. London had been a Roman settlement for four centuries and had become progressively more crowded inside its defensive city wall. It had also pushed outwards beyond the wall into squalid extramural slums such as Shoreditch, Holborn, and Southwark, and had reached far enough to include the independent City of Westminster.
By the late 17th century, the City proper—the area bounded by the city wall and the River Thames—was only a part of London, covering some 700 acres (2.8 km<sup>2</sup>; 1.1 sq mi), and home to about 80,000 people, or one quarter of London's inhabitants. The City was surrounded by a ring of inner suburbs where most Londoners lived. The City was then, as now, the commercial heart of the capital, and was the largest market and busiest port in England, dominated by the trading and manufacturing classes. The City was traffic-clogged, polluted, and unhealthy, especially after it was hit by a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague in the Plague Year of 1665.
The relationship between the City and the Crown was often tense. The City of London had been a stronghold of republicanism during the English Civil War (1642–1651), and the wealthy and economically dynamic capital still had the potential to be a threat to Charles II, as had been demonstrated by several republican uprisings in London in the early 1660s. The City magistrates were of the generation that had fought in the Civil War, and could remember how Charles I's grab for absolute power had led to that national trauma. They were determined to thwart any similar tendencies in his son, and when the Great Fire threatened the City, they refused the offers that Charles made of soldiers and other resources. Even in such an emergency, the idea of having the unpopular royal troops ordered into the City was political dynamite. By the time that Charles took over command from the ineffectual Lord Mayor, the fire was already out of control.
### Fire hazards in the city
The city was essentially medieval in its street plan, an overcrowded warren of narrow, winding, cobbled alleys. It had experienced several major fires before 1666, the most recent in 1633. Building with wood and roofing with thatch had been prohibited for centuries, but these cheap materials continued to be used. The only major area built with brick or stone was the wealthy centre of the city, where the mansions of the merchants and brokers stood on spacious lots, surrounded by an inner ring of overcrowded poorer parishes, in which all available building space was used to accommodate the rapidly growing population.
The human habitations were crowded, and their design increased the fire risk. The typical multistory timbered London tenement houses had "jetties" (projecting upper floors). They had a narrow footprint at ground level, but maximised their use of land by "encroaching" on the street with the gradually increasing size of their upper storeys. The fire hazard was well perceived when the top jetties all but met across the narrow alleys—"as it does facilitate a conflagration, so does it also hinder the remedy", wrote one observer. In 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding overhanging windows and jetties, but this was largely ignored by the local government. Charles's next, sharper message in 1665 warned of the risk of fire from the narrowness of the streets and authorised both imprisonment of recalcitrant builders and demolition of dangerous buildings. It too had little impact.
The riverfront was important in the development of the Great Fire. The Thames offered water for firefighting and the chance of escape by boat, but the poorer districts along the riverfront had stores and cellars of combustibles which increased the fire risk. All along the wharves, the rickety wooden tenements and tar paper shacks of the poor were shoehorned amongst "old paper buildings and the most combustible matter of tarr, pitch, hemp, rosen, and flax which was all layd up thereabouts". London was also full of black powder, especially along the riverfront where ship chandlers filled wooden barrels with their stocks. Much of it was left in the homes of private citizens from the days of the English Civil War. Five to six hundred tons of powder was stored in the Tower of London.
The high Roman wall enclosing the city impeded escape from the inferno, restricting exit to eight narrow gates. During the first couple of days, few people had any notion of fleeing the burning city altogether. They would remove what they could carry of their belongings to a safer area; some moved their belongings and themselves "four and five times" in a single day. The perception of a need to get beyond the walls took root only late on the Monday, and then there were near-panic scenes at the gates as distraught refugees tried to get out with their bundles, carts, horses, and wagons.
The crucial factor which frustrated firefighting efforts was the narrowness of the streets. Even under normal circumstances, the mix of carts, wagons, and pedestrians in the undersized alleys was subject to frequent gridlock and accidents. Refugees escaping outwards, away from the centre of destruction, were blocked by soldiers trying to keep the streets clear for firefighters, causing further panic.
### 17th-century firefighting
Fires were common in the crowded wood-built city with its open fireplaces, candles, ovens, and stores of combustibles. A thousand watchmen or "bellmen" who patrolled the streets at night watched for fire as one of their duties. Self-reliant community procedures were in place for dealing with fires, and they were usually effective. "Public-spirited citizens" would be alerted to a dangerous house fire by muffled peals on the church bells, and would congregate hastily to fight the fire.
The firefighting methods relied on demolition and water. By law, every parish church had to hold equipment for these efforts: long ladders, leather buckets, axes, and "firehooks" for pulling down buildings. Sometimes buildings were levelled quickly and effectively by means of controlled gunpowder explosions. This drastic method of creating firebreaks was increasingly used towards the end of the Great Fire, and modern historians believe that this in combination with the wind dying down was what finally won the struggle. Demolishing the houses downwind of a dangerous fire was often an effective way of containing the destruction by means of firehooks or explosives. This time, however, demolition was fatally delayed for hours by the Lord Mayor's lack of leadership and failure to give the necessary orders.
The use of water to extinguish the fire was frustrated. In principle, water was available from a system of elm pipes which supplied 30,000 houses via a high water tower at Cornhill, filled from the river at high tide, and also via a reservoir of Hertfordshire spring water in Islington. It was often possible to open a pipe near a burning building and connect it to a hose to spray on a fire or fill buckets. Further, the site where the fire started was close to the river: all the lanes from the river up to the bakery and adjoining buildings should have been filled with double chains of firefighters passing buckets of water up to the fire and then back down to the river to be refilled. This did not happen, as inhabitants panicked and fled. The flames crept towards the riverfront and set alight the water wheels under London Bridge, eliminating the supply of piped water.
London possessed advanced fire-fighting technology in the form of fire engines, which had been used in earlier large-scale fires. However, unlike the useful firehooks, these large pumps had rarely proved flexible or functional enough to make much difference. Only some of them had wheels; others were mounted on wheelless sleds. They had to be brought a long way, tended to arrive too late, and had limited reach, with spouts but no delivery hoses. On this occasion, an unknown number of fire engines were either wheeled or dragged through the streets. Firefighters tried to manoeuvre the engines to the river to fill their tanks, and several of the engines fell into the Thames. The heat from the flames by then was too great for the remaining engines to get within a useful distance.
## Development of the fire
### Sunday
A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. The family was trapped upstairs but managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened to try, thus becoming the first victim. The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour, the parish constables arrived and judged that the adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned to give his permission.
When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. The more experienced firemen were clamouring for demolition, but Bloodworth refused on the grounds that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found. Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man, rather than by possessing requisite capabilities for the job. He panicked when faced with a sudden emergency and, when pressed, made the oft-quoted remark, "A woman could piss it out", and left. Jacob Field notes that although Bloodworth "is frequently held culpable by contemporaries (as well as some later historians) for not stopping the Fire in its early stages... there was little [he] could have done" given the state of firefighting expertise and the sociopolitical implications of antifire action at that time.
Samuel Pepys ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from the battlements. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down an estimated 300 houses and reached the riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning. He took a boat to inspect the destruction around Pudding Lane at close range and describes a "lamentable" fire, "everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the water-side to another." Pepys continued westward on the river to the court at Whitehall, "where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and the word was carried into the King. So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke what I saw, and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him and command him to spare no houses, but to pull down before the fire every way." Charles' brother James, Duke of York, offered the use of the Royal Life Guards to help fight the fire.
The fire spread quickly in the high wind and, by mid-morning on Sunday, people abandoned attempts at extinguishing it and fled. The moving human mass and their bundles and carts made the lanes impassable for firemen and carriages. Pepys took a coach back into the city from Whitehall, but reached only St Paul's Cathedral before he had to get out and walk. Pedestrians with handcarts and goods were still on the move away from the fire, heavily weighed down. They deposited their valuables in parish churches away from the direct threat of fire.
Pepys found Bloodworth trying to coordinate the fire-fighting efforts and near to collapse, "like a fainting woman", crying out plaintively in response to the King's message that he was pulling down houses: "But the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." Holding on to his "dignity and civic authority", he refused James's offer of soldiers and then went home to bed. King Charles II sailed down from Whitehall in the Royal barge to inspect the scene. He found that houses were still not being pulled down, in spite of Bloodworth's assurances to Pepys, and daringly overrode the authority of Bloodworth to order wholesale demolitions west of the fire zone.
By Sunday afternoon, the fire had become a raging firestorm that created its own weather. A tremendous uprush of hot air above the flames was driven by the chimney effect wherever constrictions narrowed the air current, such as the constricted space between jettied buildings, and this left a vacuum at ground level. The resulting strong inward winds fueled the flames. The fire pushed towards the city's centre "in a broad, bow-shaped arc". By Sunday evening it "was already the most damaging fire to strike London in living memory", having travelled 500 metres (1,600 ft) west along the river.
### Monday
Throughout Monday, the fire spread to the west and north. The spread to the south was mostly halted by the river, but it had torched the houses on London Bridge and was threatening to cross the bridge and endanger the borough of Southwark on the south bank of the river. London Bridge, the only physical connection between the City and the south side of the river Thames, had been noted as a deathtrap in the fire of 1633. However, Southwark was preserved by an open space between buildings on the bridge which acted as a firebreak.
The fire's spread to the north reached "the financial heart of the City". The houses of the bankers in Lombard Street began to burn on Monday afternoon, prompting a rush to rescue their stacks of gold coins before they melted. Several observers emphasise the despair and helplessness which seemed to seize Londoners on this second day, and the lack of efforts to save the wealthy, fashionable districts which were now menaced by the flames, such as the Royal Exchange—combined bourse and shopping centre—and the opulent consumer goods shops in Cheapside. The Royal Exchange caught fire in the late afternoon, and was a "smoking shell" within a few hours. John Evelyn, courtier and diarist, wrote:
> The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them.
Evelyn lived in Deptford, four miles (6 km) outside the City, and so he did not see the early stages of the disaster. He went by coach to Southwark on Monday, joining many other upper-class people, to see the view which Pepys had seen the day before of the burning City across the river. The conflagration was much larger now: "the whole City in dreadful flames near the water-side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames-street, and upwards towards Cheapside, down to the Three Cranes, were now consumed". In the evening, Evelyn reported that the river was covered with barges and boats making their escape piled with goods. He observed a great exodus of carts and pedestrians through the bottleneck City gates, making for the open fields to the north and east, "which for many miles were strewed with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle!"
Suspicion soon arose in the threatened city that the fire was no accident. The swirling winds carried sparks and burning flakes long distances to lodge on thatched roofs and in wooden gutters, causing seemingly unrelated house fires to break out far from their source and giving rise to rumours that fresh fires were being set on purpose. Foreigners were immediately suspected because of the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War. Fear and suspicion hardened into certainty on Monday, as reports circulated of imminent invasion and of foreign undercover agents seen casting "fireballs" into houses, or caught with hand grenades or matches. There was a wave of street violence.
The fears of terrorism received an extra boost from the disruption of communications and news. The General Letter Office in Threadneedle Street, through which post passed for the entire country, burned down early on Monday morning. The London Gazette just managed to put out its Monday issue before the printer's premises went up in flames. Suspicions rose to panic and collective paranoia on Monday, and both the Trained Bands and the Coldstream Guards focused less on fire fighting and more on rounding up foreigners and anyone else appearing suspicious, arresting them, rescuing them from mobs, or both.
The inhabitants, especially the upper class, were growing desperate to remove their belongings from the City. This provided a source of income for the able-bodied poor, who hired out as porters (sometimes simply making off with the goods), being especially profitable for the owners of carts and boats. Hiring a cart had cost a couple of shillings the week before the fire; on Monday, it rose to as much as £40, a fortune equivalent to roughly £133,000 in 2021. Seemingly every cart and boat owner in the area of London came to share in these opportunities, the carts jostling at the narrow gates with the panicked inhabitants trying to get out. The chaos at the gates was such that the magistrates briefly ordered the gates shut, in the hope of turning the inhabitants' attention from safeguarding their own possessions to fighting the fire: "that, no hopes of saving any things left, they might have more desperately endeavoured the quenching of the fire."
Monday marked the beginning of organised action, even as order broke down in the streets, especially at the gates, and the fire raged unchecked. Bloodworth was responsible as Lord Mayor for coordinating the firefighting, but he had apparently left the City; his name is not mentioned in any contemporaneous accounts of the Monday's events. In this state of emergency, the King put his brother James, Duke of York, in charge of operations. James set up command posts on the perimeter of the fire. Three courtiers were put in charge of each post, with authority from Charles himself to order demolitions. James and his life guards rode up and down the streets all Monday, "rescuing foreigners from the mob" and attempting to keep order. "The Duke of York hath won the hearts of the people with his continual and indefatigable pains day and night in helping to quench the Fire," wrote a witness in a letter on 8 September.
On Monday evening, hopes were dashed that the massive stone walls of Baynard's Castle, Blackfriars would stay the course of the flames, the western counterpart of the Tower of London. This historic royal palace was completely consumed, burning all night.
### Tuesday
Tuesday, 4 September was the day of greatest destruction. The Duke of York's command post at Temple Bar, where Strand meets Fleet Street, was supposed to stop the fire's westward advance towards the Palace of Whitehall. He hoped that the River Fleet would form a natural firebreak, making a stand with his firemen from the Fleet Bridge and down to the Thames. However, early on Tuesday morning, the flames jumped over the Fleet and outflanked them, driven by the unabated easterly gale, forcing them to run for it.
By mid-morning the fire had breached the wide affluent luxury shopping street of Cheapside. James's firefighters created a large firebreak to the north of the conflagration, although it was breached at multiple points. Through the day, the flames began to move eastward from the neighbourhood of Pudding Lane, straight against the prevailing east wind and towards the Tower of London with its gunpowder stores. The garrison at the Tower took matters into their own hands after waiting all day for requested help from James's official firemen, who were busy in the west. They created firebreaks by blowing up houses on a large scale in the vicinity, halting the advance of the fire.
Everybody had thought St. Paul's Cathedral a safe refuge, with its thick stone walls and natural firebreak in the form of a wide empty surrounding plaza. It had been crammed full of rescued goods and its crypt filled with the tightly packed stocks of the printers and booksellers in adjoining Paternoster Row. However, the building was covered in wooden scaffolding, undergoing piecemeal restoration by Christopher Wren. The scaffolding caught fire on Tuesday night. Within half an hour, the lead roof was melting, and the books and papers in the crypt were burning. The cathedral was quickly a ruin.
### Wednesday
The wind dropped on Tuesday evening, and the firebreaks created by the garrison finally began to take effect on Wednesday, 5 September. Pepys climbed the steeple of Barking Church, from which he viewed the destroyed City, "the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw". There were many separate fires still burning, but the Great Fire was over. It took some time until the last traces were put out: coal was still burning in cellars two months later.
In Moorfields, a large public park immediately north of the City, there was a great encampment of homeless refugees. Evelyn was horrified at the numbers of distressed people filling it, some under tents, others in makeshift shacks: "Many [were] without a rag or any necessary utensils, bed or board ... reduced to extremest misery and poverty." Most refugees camped in any nearby available unburned area to see if they could salvage anything from their homes. The mood was now so volatile that Charles feared a full-scale London rebellion against the monarchy. Food production and distribution had been disrupted to the point of non-existence; Charles announced that supplies of bread would be brought into the City every day, and markets set up round the perimeter.
Fears of foreign terrorists and of a French and Dutch invasion were as high as ever among the traumatised fire victims. There was panic on Wednesday night in the encampments at Parliament Hill, Moorfields, and Islington: a light in the sky over Fleet Street started a story that 50,000 French and Dutch immigrants had risen, and were marching towards Moorfields to murder and pillage. Surging into the streets, the frightened mob fell on any foreigners whom they happened to encounter, and were pushed back into the fields by the Trained Bands, troops of Life Guards, and members of the court. The light turned out to be a flareup east of Inner Temple, large sections of which burned despite an effort to halt the fire by blowing up Paper House.
## Deaths and destruction
Only a few deaths from the fire are officially recorded, and deaths are traditionally believed to have been few. Porter gives the figure as eight and Tinniswood as "in single figures", although he adds that some deaths must have gone unrecorded and that, besides direct deaths from burning and smoke inhalation, refugees also perished in the impromptu camps. Field argues that the number "may have been higher than the traditional figure of six, but it is likely it did not run into the hundreds": he notes that the London Gazette "did not record a single fatality" and that had there been a significant death toll it would have been reflected in polemical accounts and petitions for charity.
Hanson takes issue with the idea that there were only a few deaths, enumerating known deaths from hunger and exposure among survivors of the fire, "huddled in shacks or living among the ruins that had once been their homes" in the cold winter that followed. The dramatist James Shirley and his wife are believed to have died in this way. Hanson maintains that "it stretches credulity to believe that the only papists or foreigners being beaten to death or lynched were the ones rescued by the Duke of York", that official figures say very little about the fate of the undocumented poor, and that the heat at the heart of the firestorms was far greater than an ordinary house fire, and was enough to consume bodies fully or leave only a few skeletal fragments, producing a death toll not of eight, but of "several hundred and quite possibly several thousand."
The material destruction has been computed at 13,200–13,500 houses, 86 or 87 parish churches, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the General Letter Office, and the three western city gates—Ludgate, Newgate, and Aldersgate. The monetary value of the loss was estimated at around 9–10 million pounds (equivalent to £ in ). François Colsoni says that the lost books alone were valued at £150,000. Evelyn believed that he saw as many as "200,000 people of all ranks and stations dispersed, and lying along their heaps of what they could save" in the fields towards Islington and Highgate. The fire destroyed approximately 15 percent of the city's housing.
## Reaction
The Court of Aldermen sought to quickly begin clearing debris and re-establish food supplies. By the Saturday after the fire "the markets were operating well enough to supply the people" at Moorfields. Charles II encouraged the homeless to move away from London and settle elsewhere, immediately issuing a proclamation that "all Cities and Towns whatsoever shall without any contradiction receive the said distressed persons and permit them the free exercise of their manual trades". Royal proclamations were issued to forbid people to "disquiet themselves with rumours of tumults", and to institute a national charitable collection to support fire victims. The official account of the fire in the London Gazette concluded that the fire was an accident: "it stressed the role of God in starting the flames and of the king in helping to stem them".
Despite this, residents were inclined to put the blame for the fire on foreigners, particularly Catholics, the French, and the Dutch. Trained bands were put on guard and foreigners arrested in locations throughout England. An example of the urge to identify scapegoats for the fire is the acceptance of the confession of a simple-minded French watchmaker named Robert Hubert, who claimed that he was a member of a gang that had started the Great Fire in Westminster. He later changed his story to say that he had started the fire at the bakery in Pudding Lane. Hubert was convicted, despite some misgivings about his fitness to plead, and hanged at Tyburn on 29 October 1666. After his death, it became apparent that he had been on board a ship in the North Sea, and had not arrived in London until two days after the fire started.
A committee was established to investigate the cause of the Great Fire, chaired by Sir Robert Brooke. It received many submissions alleging a conspiracy of foreigners and Catholics to destroy London. The committee's report was presented to Parliament on 22 January 1667. Versions of the report that appeared in print concluded that Hubert was one of a number of Catholic plotters responsible for starting the fire.
Abroad in the Netherlands, the Great Fire of London was seen as a divine retribution for Holmes's Bonfire, the burning by the English of a Dutch town during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In Italy, a pamphlet circulated comparing London "to Lucifer in its proud arrogance and its spectacular fall". In Spain, the fire was seen as a "parable of Protestant wickedness".
On 5 October, Marc Antonio Giustinian, Venetian Ambassador in France, reported to the Doge of Venice and the Senate, that Louis XIV announced that he would not "have any rejoicings about it, being such a deplorable accident involving injury to so many unhappy people". Louis had made an offer to his aunt, the British Queen Henrietta Maria, to send food and whatever goods might be of aid in alleviating the plight of Londoners, yet he made no secret that he regarded "the fire of London as a stroke of good fortune for him" as it reduced the risk of French ships crossing the English Channel being taken or sunk by the English fleet. Louis tried to take advantage but an attempt by a Franco-Dutch fleet to combine with a larger Dutch fleet ended in failure on 17 September at the Battle of Dungeness when they encountered a larger English fleet led by Thomas Allin.
## Rebuilding
A special Fire Court was set up from February 1667 to December 1668, and again from 1670 to February 1676. The aim of the court, which was authorized by the Fire of London Disputes Act and the Rebuilding of London Act 1670, was to deal with disputes between tenants and landlords and decide who should rebuild, based on ability to pay. Cases were heard and a verdict usually given within a day; without the Fire Court, lengthy legal proceedings would have seriously delayed the rebuilding which was so necessary if London was to recover.
Radical rebuilding schemes poured in for the gutted City and were encouraged by Charles. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke, Valentine Knight, and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans. All were based on a grid system, which became prevalent in the American urban landscape. If it had been rebuilt under some of these plans, London would have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence. According to archaeologist John Schofield, Wren's plan "would have probably encouraged the crystallisation of the social classes into separate areas", similar to Haussmann's renovation of Paris in the mid-1800s. Wren's plan was particularly challenging to implement because of the need to redefine property titles.
The Crown and the City authorities attempted to negotiate compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left the capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the purpose.
Instead, much of the old street plan was recreated in the new City. According to Michael Hebbert, this process "accelerated the development of scientific survey and cartographic techniques", including the development of ichnographical city maps. The reconstruction saw improvements in hygiene and fire safety: wider streets, open and accessible wharves along the length of the Thames, with no houses obstructing access to the river, and, most importantly, buildings constructed of brick and stone, not wood. The Rebuilding of London Act 1666 banned wood from the exterior of buildings, regulated the cost of building materials and the wages of workers, and set out a rebuilding period of three years, after which the land could be sold. A duty was imposed on coal to support civic rebuilding costs. Most private rebuilding was complete by 1671. New public buildings were created on their predecessors' sites; perhaps the most famous is St Paul's Cathedral and its smaller cousins, Christopher Wren's 51 new churches.
English economist Nicholas Barbon illegally reshaped London with his own rebuilding schemes, which developed the Strand, St. Giles, Bloomsbury and Holborn. These were completed despite strict restrictions which stated it was illegal to build between the City of London and Westminster.
## Impact
In addition to the physical changes to London, the Great Fire had a significant demographic, social, political, economic, and cultural impact. The fire "caused the largest dislocation of London's residential structure in its history until the Blitz". Areas to the west of London received the highest number of new residents, but there was a general increase in the population density of the suburbs surrounding London. Approximately 9,000 new houses were built in the area in which over 13,000 had been destroyed, and by 1674 thousands of these remained unoccupied. Tenants who did remain in London saw a significant decrease in the costs of their lease.
The fire seriously disrupted commercial activity, as premises and stock were destroyed and victims faced heavy debts and rebuilding costs. As a result, economic recovery was slow. The City of London Corporation borrowed heavily to fund its rebuilding, defaulting on its loans in 1683; as a result, it had its privileges stripped by Charles. The commercial district of London had significant vacancies as merchants who had left the city resettled elsewhere. Charitable foundations experienced significant financial losses because of direct fire-related costs as well as loss of rental income. Despite these factors, London retained its "economic pre-eminence" because of the access to shipping routes and its continued central role in political and cultural life in England.
According to Jacob Field, "the reaction to the Fire revealed England's long-standing hostility to Catholics, which manifested itself most visibly at times of crisis". Allegations that Catholics had started the fire were exploited as powerful political propaganda by opponents of pro-Catholic Charles II's court, mostly during the Popish Plot and the exclusion crisis later in his reign. The Royalist perspective of the fire as accidental was opposed by the Whig view questioning the loyalties of Catholics in general and the Duke of York in particular.
In 1667 strict new fire regulations were imposed in London to reduce the risk of future fire and allow any fire that did occur to be more easily extinguished. The fire resulted in the emergence of the first insurance companies, starting with Nicholas Barbon's Fire Office. These companies hired private firemen and offered incentives for clients who took measures to prevent fires—for example, a cheaper rate for brick versus wooden buildings. Confusion between parish and private firefighting efforts led the insurance companies in 1832 to form a combined firefighting unit which would eventually become the London Fire Brigade. The fire led to a focus in building codes on restricting the spread of fire between units.
The Great Plague epidemic of 1665 is believed to have killed a sixth of London's inhabitants, or 80,000 people, and it is sometimes suggested that the fire saved lives in the long run by burning down so much unsanitary housing with their rats and their fleas which transmitted the plague, as plague epidemics did not recur in London after the fire. During the Bombay plague epidemic two centuries later, this belief led to the burning of tenements as an antiplague measure. The suggestion that the fire prevented further outbreaks is disputed; the Museum of London identifies this as a common myth about the fire.
On Charles' initiative, a Monument to the Great Fire of London was erected near Pudding Lane, designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, standing 61+1⁄2 metres (202 ft) tall. In 1681, accusations against the Catholics were added to the inscription on the Monument which read, in part, "Popish frenzy which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched". The inscription remained until after the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 when it was removed in 1830 following a successful campaign by City Solicitor Charles Pearson. Another monument marks the spot where the fire is said to have died out: the Golden Boy of Pye Corner in Smithfield.
Although it was never implemented, Wren's plan for the rebuilding of London has itself had a significant cultural impact. The decision not to implement the plan was criticized by later authors such as Daniel Defoe and was frequently cited by advocates for public health. It also featured heavily in textbooks for the nascent discipline of city planning and was referenced by reports on the reconstruction of London after the Second World War. Wren presenting the plan was the subject of a Royal Mail stamp issued in 2016, one of six in a set commemorating the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire.
Cultural responses to the Great Fire emerged in poetry, "one of the chief modes of media in seventeenth-century England", as well as in religious sermons. At least 23 poems were published in the year following the fire. More recent cultural works featuring the Great Fire include the 1841 novel Old St. Paul's (and the 1914 film adaptation), the 2006 novel Forged in the Fire, the 2014 television drama The Great Fire, and the musical Bumblescratch, which was performed as part of the commemorations of the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire.
## See also
- List of buildings that survived the Great Fire of London
- 1666 in England
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Death of Blair Peach
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Anti-Nazi protestor killed by the police in 1979
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"1946 births",
"1970s crimes in London",
"1979 deaths",
"1979 in London",
"April 1979 events in the United Kingdom",
"British trade unionists",
"Deaths by beating in the United Kingdom",
"Deaths by person in London",
"Deaths by violence in the United Kingdom",
"History of the London Borough of Ealing",
"Metropolitan Police operations",
"New Zealand emigrants to the United Kingdom",
"New Zealand left-wing activists",
"New Zealand people murdered abroad",
"New Zealand schoolteachers",
"New Zealand trade unionists",
"Police misconduct in England",
"Protest-related deaths",
"Socialist Workers Party (UK) members",
"Southall",
"Victoria University of Wellington alumni"
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Clement Blair Peach (25 March 1946 – 24 April 1979) was a New Zealand teacher who was killed during an anti-racism demonstration in Southall, London, England. A campaigner and activist against the far right, in April 1979 Peach took part in an Anti-Nazi League demonstration in Southall against a National Front election meeting in the town hall and was hit on the head, probably by a member of the Special Patrol Group (SPG), a specialist unit within the Metropolitan Police Service. He died in hospital that night.
An investigation by Commander John Cass of the Metropolitan Police's Complaints Investigation Bureau concluded that Peach had been killed by one of six SPG officers, and others had preserved their silence to obstruct his investigation. The report was not released to the public, but was available to John Burton, the coroner who conducted the inquest; excerpts from a leaked copy were also published in The Leveller and The Sunday Times in early 1980. In May 1980 the jury in the inquest arrived at a verdict of death by misadventure, although press and some pressure groups—notably the National Council for Civil Liberties—expressed concern that no clear answers had been provided, and at the way Burton conducted the inquest.
Celia Stubbs, Peach's partner, campaigned for the Cass report to be released and for a full public inquiry. An inquiry was rejected, but in 1989 the Metropolitan Police paid £75,000 compensation to Peach's family. In 2009 Ian Tomlinson died after he was struck from behind by a member of the Territorial Support Group, the SPG's successor organisation; the parallels in the deaths proved to be the catalyst in the release of the Cass report to the public. The Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, released the report and supporting documentation. He also offered an official apology to Peach's family.
The policing of the demonstration in Southall damaged community relations in the area. Since Peach's death the Metropolitan Police have been involved in a series of incidents and poorly conducted investigations—the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, the botched 2006 Forest Gate raid and the death of Tomlinson—all of which tarnished the image of the service. Peach's death has been remembered in the music of The Pop Group, Ralph McTell and Linton Kwesi Johnson; the National Union of Teachers set up the Blair Peach Award for work for equality and diversity issues and a school in Southall is named after him.
## Background
### Blair Peach
Clement Blair Peach was born in Napier, New Zealand, on 25 March 1946, to Clement and Janet Peach. He was one of three brothers, the others being Roy and Philip; the former was a solicitor and led the family's legal campaign after Blair's death. Blair was schooled at Colenso College, then studied education and psychology at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he co-edited the Argot literary magazine with his flatmate Dennis List and David Rutherford. During his studies Peach visited Britain and liked the country. After graduating he was employed in several temporary jobs, but was turned down for compulsory military training for having an "unsuitable character". He emigrated to Britain in 1969 and was soon employed as a teacher at the Phoenix special needs school in Bow, East London. In 1970 he entered a long-term relationship with Celia Stubbs; they had first met in New Zealand in 1963 when she was visiting the country. Peach helped raise Stubbs's two daughters from her previous relationship, and the couple regarded each other as husband and wife.
Peach was politically active and joined the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), Socialist Teachers' Association and the local branch of the National Union of Teachers. He was also a committed opponent of racism and was active in the Anti-Nazi League. He had been arrested previously when campaigning on political issues, and in 1974 he was charged with threatening behaviour after challenging a local publican's refusal to serve black customers; he was acquitted.
### Southall
As a result of the population transfers after the 1947 partition of India over ten million people were impoverished. From the late 1950s a significant number of them relocated. Many Sikhs and Hindus left the subcontinent to settle in Greater London, particularly Southall, where shortages of workers at factories, and the employment prospects at nearby Heathrow Airport meant jobs were easily obtainable. Some of the early arrivals found work at the R. Woolf and Co Rubber factory; by 1965 all the lower level workers were from Poland or the Indian subcontinent. Racial discrimination in the workplace was common; 85 per cent of those Asian workers who had been given entry into the UK on the basis of their education or training, were only employed in unskilled or semi-skilled roles. Kennetta Hammond Perry, in her history of post-war immigration, identifies the reasons as being "in part because of perceptions about their level of competence and stereotypes about their ability to speak English". Indian workers also faced discrimination from the white-dominated trade unions, and so formed their own organisation, the Indian Workers' Association (IWA).
During local elections of the 1960s anti-immigration rhetoric was used by some candidates, successfully in many cases. Smaller right-wing parties used immigration as a platform on which to stand, including in Southall. In the local elections of May 1964, the anti-immigration British National Party (BNP) polled 15 per cent of the vote in Southall; in the general election that October the BNP leader, John Bean, received 9.1 per cent in the Southall constituency. Bean won 7.4 per cent of the vote at the 1966 general election. The BNP's successor, the National Front, recorded 4.4 per cent of the vote at the 1970 general election.
In June 1976 the racist murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall—outside the offices of the IWA—led to the former chairman of the National Front, John Kingsley Read, stating "one down, a million to go". Chaggar's murder led to the formation of the Southall Youth Movement (SYM) to challenge the rise in racism and attacks from the National Front. Rioting in the area took place between police and Asian youths and members of Peoples Unite, a similar group to the SYM, but consisting of young Afro-Caribbeans.
### Special Patrol Group
The Special Patrol Group (SPG) was formed in 1961 as a specialist squad within the Metropolitan Police. It provided a mobile, centrally controlled reserve of uniformed officers which supported local areas, particularly when policing serious crime and civil disturbances. The SPG comprised police officers capable of working as disciplined teams preventing public disorder, targeting areas of serious crime, carrying out stop and searches, or providing a response to terrorist threats. In 1978 there were 1,347 SPG members in forces across the UK, 204 of them in the Metropolitan Police Service. They were divided into six units, each of which contained three sergeants and 30 constables. Each unit was commanded by an inspector.
The use of the SPG proved controversial to some. It was involved in the Red Lion Square disorders, when Kevin Gately, a student demonstrating against a National Front march, was killed from a blow to the head from a blunt instrument; the perpetrator was never identified. Accusations were made that the police were inappropriately violent towards those demonstrating. The former chief constable, Tim Brain, writes "their critics viewed them with suspicion as a force within a force"; the Metropolitan Police history observes that "their presence sometimes came to assume unwanted symbolic significance". The former chief constable Geoffrey Dear states that the SPG "might apparently solve one problem but in its wake create another of aggravated relationships between minority groups and the police in general".
The SPG was disbanded in 1986 and, replaced by District Support Units (DSU). After receiving bad press, the DSU were replaced by the Territorial Support Group in January 1987.
## 23 April 1979
In the run-up to the 1979 general election, the National Front announced that it would hold a meeting at Southall Town Hall on 23 April 1979, St George's Day. Southall was to be one of 300 parliamentary seats for which the organisation put up candidates. Prior to the Southall meeting, similar events had resulted in clashes with anti-racist protesters, including in Islington, North London, on 22 April, and in Leicester the following day. At both events, police had been injured trying to keep the two sides separate.
A petition of 10,000 residents was raised to cancel the meeting, but to no effect. Ealing Council had blocked previous meetings by the National Front, but, under the Representation of the People Act 1969, they allowed the party to use the hall. The day before the meeting a march by the IWA was planned from central Southall, past the town hall, and ending at Ealing Town Hall. Approximately 1,200 police officers were on duty along the five-mile (eight-kilometre) route; 19 people were arrested. Two counter-demonstrations for the day of the meeting were planned: a picket on the pavement opposite the hall, and a seated demonstration outside it. To deal with the potential violence, 2,876 police officers were drafted in, 94 of whom were on horseback; they arrived at 11:30 am and demonstrators began gathering at 1:00 pm in preparation for the 7:30 pm National Front meeting.
The number of demonstrators at the town hall rose, and included some whom the police considered militant elements. There were some clashes between police and protesters and a small number of arrests ensued. The police decided to establish a sterile cordon around the town hall, although they still allowed a small, contained demonstration in the High Street. Cordons were set up on Lady Margaret Road, the Broadway, High Street and South Road. Between 2:30 and 3:15 pm, at the High Street cordon, missiles were thrown at the police, who used riot shields to contain the crowd.
According to the official police report, between 5:30 and 6:30 pm the level of violence rose as the crowd at the High Street cordon again began to throw missiles and at about 6:20 pm between 500 and 2,000 protesters tried to breach the police lines. In response, mounted officers were brought in to disperse the crowd. The author Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who was present at the demonstration, thought the mood changed when the police tactics changed from containment to dispersement, which triggered the missile-throwing reaction from the crowd.
A house on Park View Road, the headquarters of Peoples Unite, was used as a first aid post. The official police report states that the residents were "a group of mainly Rastafarians" who were squatting at the premises, and that these occupants threw missiles from the house at police in the street. SPG officers entered the house and an altercation broke out in which two officers were stabbed. Those in the house—including those manning the first aid post and those receiving treatment—were beaten with truncheons, and an estimated £10,000 of damage was done to the contents of the house, including the equipment for the band Misty in Roots; the group's manager, Clarence Baker, went into a coma for five months after his skull was fractured by a police truncheon. All those inside were removed from the property, regardless of what they were doing, and there were subsequent complaints by the inhabitants of racist and sexist abuse by the police. Seventy people were arrested either at or near the address. At the trial of one of those arrested, one of the SPG officers involved reported "there was no overall direction of the police forces at this time" and the situation was "a free for all".
National Front members began arriving from 7:00 pm. At its scheduled time their meeting took place. During the assembly, one of the organisation's speakers called for "the bulldozing of Southall and its replacement by a 'peaceful English hamlet'". Four members of the public were allowed into the hall to fulfil the requirements of the Representation of the People's Act, but a journalist from The Daily Mirror was stopped from entering because the newspaper he worked for was considered to be "nigger loving". When the meeting ended at about 10:00 pm, some of the attendees gave Nazi salutes on the steps of the town hall before being escorted to safety by the police.
Once the meeting was underway, the police decided to clear the area of demonstrators and allowed them to pass along the Broadway towards the crossroads with Northcote Avenue and Beachcroft Avenue. At about 7:30 pm Peach, with four friends, decided to return to their cars and moved towards the junction. The group had been on the Broadway since they arrived in the area at 4:45 pm. At around the same time a flare or petrol bomb was thrown either at or over a police coach on the Broadway. The driver—with a policeman standing next to him—drove the coach through the crowd; no-one was injured, but eyewitnesses said that the mood of the crowd changed at that point. Two SPG vans drove westwards along the Broadway and collected two crates of bricks and bottles that the crowd left behind as they retreated. Items were thrown at the two vehicles and a police inspector on a building roof radioed to the central control unit that there was a riot in progress.
Peach and his friends turned off the Broadway down Beachcroft Avenue, thinking they were heading out of the area, but not realising the road only connected to Orchard Avenue, which led back to South Road and the heavy police cordon there. There was a group of 100 to 150 protesters on the corner of the Broadway and Beachcroft Avenue and the SPG vans of Unit 3 drove to the junction of the Broadway with Northcote Avenue and Beachcroft Avenue to face them. As the officers deployed out of the vehicles they were hit by missiles from the crowd. One officer was hit in the face by a brick which fractured his jaw in three places. The inspector leading the unit radioed "Immediate assistance required".
The official investigation into Peach's death states that the events leading up to this point, while difficult, were relatively straightforward, but that "further description of what happened" is hampered by "conflicting accounts [that] have been given by private persons and also by police". The radio call from Unit 3 was picked up by SPG Unit 1, two of whose vans drove into Beachcroft Avenue from the Broadway entrance and stopped at the corner with Orchard Avenue. They deployed while under bombardment from bricks and stones. The first person to exit the van was Inspector Alan Murray, who had charge of the first van of Unit 1 (called Unit 1-1), and was followed by constables Bint, White, Freestone, Richardson and Scottow. Murray and his men were using riot shields, had their truncheons drawn and worked to disperse the crowd. During this action Peach received a blow on the head. Fourteen witnesses stated that they saw it happen and said that it was a police officer who struck the blow. One resident told the inquest that she:
> saw blue vans coming down Beachcroft Avenue. They were coming very fast − as they came round Beachcroft Avenue, they stopped. I saw policemen with shields come out − people started running and the police tried to disperse them. I saw police hitting. I saw a white man standing there ... The police were hitting everybody. People started running, some in the alley, some in my house ... I saw Peach, I then saw the policeman with the shield attack Peach.
Peach was taken into a nearby house—71 Orchard Avenue—after one of the residents saw him being hit. He was given a glass of water, but could not hold it. His eyes were rolled up to the top of his head and he had difficulty speaking. The residents soon called an ambulance, which was logged at 8:12 pm; it arrived within ten minutes, and Peach was taken to Ealing Hospital. He was promptly operated on because of a large extradural haematoma but his condition worsened through the procedure. He died at 12:10 am on 24 April.
There were 3,000 protesters in Southall on 23 April. The police arrested 345 people. 97 police were injured, as were 39 of the prisoners. 25 members of the public were also injured, of whom Peach was one. A member of the National Front was found near Southall train station, badly beaten. He spent two days in intensive care before being released.
## Aftermath
Within a day of Peach's death, Commander John Cass of the Metropolitan Police's Complaints Investigation Bureau began an investigation of the events and statements were taken from members of the SPG that day. Sir David McNee, then the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, also undertook his own eight-day review of the demonstrations, although he did not include Peach's death as part of his analysis.
The inquest opened on 26 April 1979; John Burton, the coroner for West London, oversaw the proceedings. On the opening day he allowed Peach's family to have a second post-mortem examination undertaken by an independent pathologist; the inquest was then adjourned for a month. It reconvened on 25 May 1979 and was again adjourned after Cass appeared as a witness and said that his investigation would take between two and three months more. By that time, he and his team had interviewed 400 people. Burton said that the inquiry would reconvene after Sir Tony Hetherington, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), had been given the report.
Despite statements by the police and the incumbent government that the trouble at Southall was caused by outsiders to the area, only 2 of the 342 charged were non-residents of Southall. Instead of holding the trials locally, they were held 25 miles (40 km) away in Barnet. Lalith de Kauwe, writing for Bulletin—the publication of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers—writes that while initially 90 per cent of the defendants were found guilty, this dropped to 70 per cent once the press began to publicise the matter.
On 12 June 1979 Peach's body was laid out at the Dominion Cinema in Southall; 8,000 people filed past it. The following day he was buried at East London Cemetery, where between 5,000 and 10,000 people were in attendance. Three days after the funeral, McNee defended the actions of the SPG and told a black reporter "I understand the concern of your people. But if you keep off the streets of London and behave yourselves you won't have the SPG to worry about."
### Cass investigation
One member of SPG Unit 1-1 was questioned by Cass's team in early June 1979 after the forensic report stated that Peach was probably not killed by a police truncheon, but by a lead-filled cosh or pipe. A search of the unit's lockers found 26 weapons—including police truncheons—many of which were unauthorised, including coshes and knives, as well as sets of keys and a stolen driving licence. Cass's team raided the home of PC Grenville Bint, where weapons and Nazi memorabilia were found. Bint stated he collected the memorabilia as a hobby.
During his investigation Cass held several identification parades, including for Officer F, Officer G and Officer I. These were identified by the barrister and historian David Renton from the inquest as PCs Raymond White, James Scottow and Anthony Richardson, respectively. No witness managed to identify the man they saw hitting Peach. It later transpired that one officer present at the riots shaved off the moustache which he had that day, while Inspector Murray grew a beard and refused to take part in the identity parades. Many of the uniforms that the police wore that day had been dry-cleaned before they were inspected. Cass ran up against misleading stories from the members of Unit 1-1 and in his report he stated "The attitude and untruthfulness of some of the officers involved is a contributory factor." He continued "The action of these officers clearly obstructed the police officers carrying out their duty of investigating this serious matter." Cass decided that he had identified the individual whom he considered most likely to have hit Peach, but that there was "no evidence of a conclusive nature":
> The officers in that carrier after disembarking, who could have assaulted Clement Blair PEACH were Officer E, Officer H, Officer G, Officer I, Officer J and Officer F, and I give them in that order of possibility.
Renton identified these officers as Murray, Bint, Scottow, Richardson, Freestone and White, respectively. Cass's report was accepted by the police as being accurate, and in his 1983 autobiography McNee wrote "when all the evidence was assembled it showed that Blair Peach had died from a blow to his skull. The evidence pointed to the fact that the blow had been struck by a police officer."
### Coroner's inquest
Cass finished the investigation in February 1980; 30 investigators had worked for 31,000 man-hours during his enquiries. He finished his initial report on 12 July 1979, which was sent to the DPP, who, while praising the work he had done, stated that "there was insufficient evidence to justify a prosecution". The inquest reopened a week later. Both Burton and the lawyers representing the Metropolitan Police were given copies of Cass's report, but refused to provide copies to the lawyers representing the Peach family or those representing the Anti-Nazi League. Burton used Cass's report to determine which witnesses to call and which to ignore. Michael Dummett, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, examining the case for the National Council for Civil Liberties, observes that as only the coroner and police lawyers had copies of the report, "it was impossible for anyone ... [else] to obtain a complete picture of the evidence". The question of whether the family were allowed to view the reports was taken to a Divisional Court, who ruled that as the report was the property of the police, they had the right to withhold it.
Legal counsel for the Peach family requested that the inquest be held in front of a jury, which Burton rejected; the inquest was again adjourned. The High Court rejected a challenge to overturn Burton's decision, which then went to the Court of Appeal where Lord Denning stated that the inquest should reconvene in front of a jury.
In early 1980, sections of the Cass report were published in The Leveller (January 1980) and The Sunday Times (March 1980). Details included in both publications were the names of Murray, White, Freestone, Richardson and Scottow. The latter publication indicated that the decision by the DPP not to prosecute the policemen "left the investigating officers in the invidious position of appearing party to a cover up, should their report ever become public". In April 1980—the one-year anniversary of Peach's death—members of the group "Friends of Blair Peach Committee" picketed outside police stations holding posters that named the six members of SPG Unit 1-1 and the words "Wanted for the murder of Blair Peach".
The inquest reconvened on 28 April 1980, and was expected to last several weeks. Both pathologists—David Bowen for the coroner and Keith Mant acting for the family—came to the same conclusions: that death was from a single blow, not a police truncheon, but a "rubber 'cosh' or hosepipe filled with lead shot, or some like weapon". Both stated that Peach had a thin skull, but not, as Mant observed, "pathologically thin". He described the action that caused the injury as "a very severe, single blow".
The inquest closed on 27 May 1980 during which time 83 witnesses were called. A verdict of death by misadventure was given. The criminologists Phil Scraton and Paul Gordon consider that, given the conclusions of the Cass report, unlawful killing would have been a more appropriate verdict. In its leader the following day, The Times said that "the Peach inquest failed to provide a clear and believable explanation of the events in question"; it also stated that Peach's death should continue to be investigated.
The National Council for Civil Liberties expressed concern at the way Burton conducted the inquest. The organisation felt uneasy with a theory that he put to the jury: that Peach was killed by "some political fanatic" in order to make him a martyr against the police. During the course of the inquest, Burton wrote to ministers to say that the question of whether Peach was killed by a police officer was a "political 'fabrication'". He also wrote to the home secretary, lord chancellor and attorney general, claiming that there was a conspiracy to spread false information about Peach's death; he accused several media outlets, including the BBC, of producing what he described as "biased propaganda". In 2010 The Daily Telegraph considered that Burton had shown a "lack of sympathy ... towards Mr Peach's death".
After the inquest Burton wrote a seven-page article entitled "The Blair Peach Inquest – the Unpublished Story", which he wanted to publish in the Coroners' Society annual report. In the article he said that some civilian witnesses lied and were "totally politically committed to the Socialist Workers Party", and he thought that some of the Sikh witnesses "did not have experience of the English system" to give reliable evidence. He was persuaded not to publish the account by civil servants, who considered that the report would "discredit the impartiality of coroners in general and Dr Burton in particular".
## Subsequent events
There were several calls for a public inquiry to examine the circumstances surrounding Peach's death and the role of the police; 79 MPs supported such a hearing, but the government refused to hold such a review. The Peach family also challenged the Metropolitan Police in court for the Cass report and supporting papers to be released. In February 1986 the Court of Appeal ruled that the police should release the statements and supporting papers, but not the report itself. The family also sought to claim damages from the Metropolitan Police and in June 1988, after eight years of trying, they were awarded £75,000. The political historian Mick Ryan observes that the Peach case is an example where "compensation is ... paid in tacit admission that a wrong had been committed". In April 1999 Paul Boateng, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, was the final minister who turned down the request for a public inquiry, saying the event had happened too long ago to be beneficial.
Following correspondence with the Peach family at the time of the twentieth anniversary of Peach's death, Commander Ian Quinn of the Metropolitan Police's complaints bureau undertook a review of investigation in 1999. The family were not told of the investigation or its outcome.
On 1 April 2009, at the 2009 G20 London summit protests, a member of the Territorial Support Group, the SPG's successor organisation, struck Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor, who collapsed and died. The parallels in the deaths of the two men proved to be the catalyst in the release of the Cass report to the public. Stephenson also officially apologised to Peach's family. That June the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson announced that Cass's report and supporting documentation would be released.
### SPG Unit 1-1
After Stephenson's announcement that the Metropolitan police would publish the Cass report, Murray stated that he believed he was the officer referred to in the report as "Officer E", but said that "Under no circumstances was I involved in the death of Blair Peach. I was not involved in his death. I'm as certain as I can be." Murray considered Cass's report to be "pure fabrication to justify his failure to identify the perpetrator of this act". Angered at the handling of the initial investigation, Murray left the police and joined his brother's jewellery business in Scotland before becoming a lecturer in corporate responsibility at the University of Sheffield.
Two days after the Nazi memorabilia and unauthorised weapons were found in his possession, Bint was transferred out of the SPG. Richardson and Freestone were transferred out soon afterwards; Scottow and White voluntarily transferred. All the officers left the police force shortly after the investigation ended.
### Undercover Policing Inquiry
In 2021 evidence was provided to the Undercover Policing Inquiry that the Metropolitan Police monitored Stubbs with undercover officers for about twenty years. This included taking photographs at Peach's funeral and creating an attendee list report, and monitoring the 20th anniversary event planning in 1998.
## Impact
Following the actions of the police at Southall, the Asian community in the area felt that relations between them and the police had broken down; many saw the police as aggressors. One member of the community said "Our feeling now towards the police is one of shock. In India the police are very brutal, but none of us believed until Monday night that the police here could behave equally brutally." The journalists Mark Hughes and Cahal Milmo consider that the action of the SPG "became a symbol of police corruption".
Writing after the release of the Cass report, the leader in The Times opined that following Peach's death, "the Metropolitan Police entered a dark place from which they have been struggling to emerge ever since". In 2010 Andy Hayman, the former assistant commissioner for Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police, wrote that Peach's death brought the service and the SPG into disrepute. It led to an undermining of confidence in the police and "creat[ed] a distrust of officers that in some quarters, has proved difficult to shake off". The criminologists Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin considered Peach's death alongside the Metropolitan Police's actions in relation to the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, the death of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, the botched 2006 Forest Gate raid and the death of Ian Tomlinson; they described the "succession of institutional scandals, cover-ups and botched investigations" that had tarnished the image of the service. Writing in the light of Tomlinson's death, Philip Johnston, a journalist with The Daily Telegraph, observed that Peach was one in a number of incidents where there had been unwarranted police aggression. Johnston wrote that while at the time of Peach's death many people would have sided with the police, that is no longer the case. "Many of those from the countryside who attended the Westminster rally against the ban on fox-hunting bear the scars of a brutal confrontation with the police, which changed their view of them for ever."
## Legacy
Public reaction to Peach's death, and other underlying racial tensions including excessive police use of the sus law, ultimately led to the 1981 Brixton riot and a public inquiry by Lord Scarman.
A primary school in Southall was later named after Peach. The Blair Peach Award was set up by the National Union of Teachers in 2010 to commemorate the former union member and as recognition of exemplary work by current members in schools and Union branches for equality and diversity issues. In 1989 the poet and activist Chris Searle edited One for Blair, an anthology of poems for the young.
The injury to Clarence Baker was commemorated in The Ruts's song "Jah War". The Two-Tone album The 2 Tone Story is dedicated to Peach's memory. Several songs have been written in Peach's memory, or referring to his death, including The Pop Group's 1980 song "Justice"; the 1982 song "Water of Dreams" by Ralph McTell; and "Reggae Fi Peach" by Linton Kwesi Johnson, which contains the lyrics:
> > Blair Peach was not an English man, Him come from New Zealand, Now they kill him and him dead and gone, But his memory lingers on.
## See also
- Liddle Towers
|
1,801,191 |
Sweetheart (Rainy Davis song)
| 1,170,178,728 |
1986 single by Rainy Davis
|
[
"1986 songs",
"1998 singles",
"Columbia Records singles",
"Jermaine Dupri songs",
"Mariah Carey songs",
"Music videos directed by Hype Williams",
"Song recordings produced by Jermaine Dupri",
"Sony Music singles"
] |
"Sweetheart" is a song originally recorded by American singer Rainy Davis. It was written by Davis and Pete Warner, and produced with Dorothy Kessler. The track was released in 1986 by independent record label SuperTronics as a single from Davis's 1987 studio album Sweetheart. A freestyle, hip hop pop, and synth-funk song, "Sweetheart" appeared on R&B and dance music-based record charts in the United States.
American singer Mariah Carey recorded a cover version with American rapper Jermaine Dupri (credited as JD) for his debut album, Life in 1472 (1998), and her first greatest hits album, \#1's (1998). So So Def and Columbia Records released it as the third single from the former album on September 7, 1998. Carey was inspired to create a remake of "Sweetheart" as she liked listening to the song as a teenage girl. Critics categorized the cover as a dance, hip-hop, and R&B song, and its instrumental features synths and bass runs. The lyrics describe a woman's desire for a person with whom to share a romance.
"Sweetheart" was promoted with a music video directed by Hype Williams in Spain. Although American and British music magazines predicted it would experience success on major record charts, its performance in those countries was restricted to the US Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 and UK club charts due to the absence of a commercial release. It fared better in mainland Europe, where it charted in the top twenty on Dutch, German, and Swiss record charts. In reviewing "Sweetheart", music critics focused on Carey's vocal performance, Dupri's rapping style, and the cover's perceived sexual nature.
## Rainy Davis original
"Sweetheart" is a freestyle, hip hop pop, and synth-funk song recorded by American singer Rainy Davis from her debut album, Sweetheart (1987). Davis and Pete Warner wrote the lyrics, composed the melody, and produced it with Dorothy Kessler. It was mixed by Tony Humphries. SuperTronics, a Brooklyn-based independent record label, issued the song in early 1986. A representative from the label stated that the release was part of a strategy to expand beyond promoting songs made for dance clubs by finding and issuing ones suitable for radio airplay. The radio edit has a runtime of three minutes and forty-seven seconds, and the 12-inch vinyl single is six minutes and fifty-six seconds long.
"Sweetheart" appeared on R&B and dance music-based record charts in the United States. According to a 2020 Billboard article, it experienced minor success on the former. The song peaked at numbers twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-seven, respectively, on charts published by Cash Box, Billboard, and Radio & Records magazines. Reflecting on its commercial performance, a writer for the Hartford Advocate newspaper described it as a "huge club/dance hit". In 1986, "Sweetheart" ranked at number thirty-two on Billboard's year-end 12-inch Singles Sales chart.
Critics commented on the song's production and Davis's vocals. Upon its single release in 1986, Billboard published several reviews. The magazine as a whole described it as "rhythmically intricate", dance writer Brian Chin favored the song's "unpressured beat and nice overall polish", and R&B writer Nelson George compared Davis's vocals to those of Lisa Lisa on Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam's "I Wonder If I Take You Home". Writing for the Hartford Advocate in 1987, George Lane named it the best song on Sweetheart for its restrained production which he thought showcased her voice well.
## Jermaine Dupri and Mariah Carey version
### Background
According to Carey, after divorcing Sony Music CEO Tommy Mottola following the release of her sixth studio album Butterfly (1997), she negotiated an exit from Columbia Records. The earliest release from the multi-year deal was her greatest hits album, \#1's. As Columbia planned to release it for the 1998 Christmas shopping season, Carey did not want the album's release to come across as purely commercial. She included four new songs, one of which was a cover of "Sweetheart". Carey felt that covering a song she liked as a teenager in school would be appreciated by other young girls. She conceptualized the remake with Dupri, with whom she had collaborated on songs such as "Always Be My Baby". The duet was announced in February 1998 to be included on his debut studio album Life in 1472, which was released that July. In November, it appeared as the first song on \#1's.
### Music and lyrics
The single version of "Sweetheart" is four minutes and twenty-two seconds long. Commentators classified it as a dance, hip-hop, and R&B song. It also contains elements of electro-funk and pop music. Dana Jon Chappelle and Brian Frye recorded the cover at KrossWire Studio in Atlanta, Georgia, and The Hit Factory and Right Track Recording in New York. Trey Lorenz, Melonie Daniels, and MaryAnn Tatum provided background vocals. The song was produced by Dupri and Carey, mixed by Dupri and Phil Tan at Silent Sound Studios in Atlanta, and mastered by Bernie Grundman. In a 2018 interview regarding his production discography, Dupri named "Sweetheart" the song he most wished to redo as he "would have made it a little more ghetto".
The lyrics of the song describe a woman's desire for a person with whom to share a romance. Carey yearns, "Baby, won't you be my sweetheart / And we could share a storybook romance", to which Dupri responds through ad-libs and a rapped verse. Synths and bass runs are featured prominently throughout the song. They disappear during the bridge as Carey sings, "A full moon is waiting in the twilight". An explicit introduction in the album version of the song on Life in 1472, in which Carey talks to Dupri on the phone about "fucking", is omitted in subsequent releases.
### Release
"Sweetheart" was promoted as the third single from Life in 1472 in the United States. So So Def and Columbia Records released it to American urban contemporary radio stations on September 7, 1998, followed by rhythmic contemporary stations eight days later. A commercial release in the United States scheduled for September 29 was retracted for unspecified reasons and instead distributed for free with the purchase of \#1's. Spin reported that DreamWorks and Arista Records were concerned that the song might cannibalize sales of their impending release, Carey's duet with Whitney Houston, "When You Believe".
Dupri, Carl-So-Lowe, Lil Jon, Mark Picchiotti, and Eddie Arroyo produced remixes that appeared on several releases. In the United Kingdom, Columbia issued a promotional 12-inch vinyl of the Picchiotti mixes. Sony Music Taiwan released a commercial CD maxi single subtitled "The Story" on October 14, 1998, followed by Sony Music Japan on November 6, 1998. CD and CD maxi singles were issued in Belgium on November 2, 1998. The Lil Jon remix was later included on an enhanced CD of Carey's 1999 single "Heartbreaker". The song appears on some of Carey's subsequent compilation albums such as Greatest Hits (2001) and The Remixes (2003). In September 2020, as part of her campaign anticipating The Rarities, a digital extended play of "Sweetheart" was released.
### Critical reception
Critics commented on Carey's vocal performance and Dupri's rapping, many praising Carey's restrained singing style. Writing for the Popular Music and Society journal, Vincent Stephens thought this helped make "Sweetheart" one of her best R&B songs. According to Ron Rollins of the Dayton Daily News, it demonstrates her confidence in her vocal abilities. Other reviewers commented on how well Dupri's rapping complemented Carey's singing, and some argued that the song was more a showcase for Carey than Dupri. The Baltimore Sun's J. D. Considine said "Carey's effortless carnality makes Jermaine Dupri's sex-obsessed rap seem almost silly". In contrast, Time's Christopher John Farley felt the two complemented each other well. Andrew Unterbeger of Billboard echoed similar comments in a 2020 retrospective review. The incorporation of hip-hop elements in "Sweetheart" was also analyzed; in the view of Boston Globe writer Joan Anderman, they come across as sanitized.
The song's sensuality was another topic of commentary. Critics described Carey's vocals as sexy and likened her personality in "Sweetheart" to that of a vixen, a dirtier version of Lisa Lisa, and a submissive Barbie doll. A few argued the song was well-suited to erotic dancing, deemed "booty-bouncing" and a strip club anthem. Others gauged how explicit the song's lyrics were: Richard Harrington of The Washington Post opined it was more toned-down than other songs on Life in 1472; The Philadelphia Inquirer's Tom Moon felt was more explicit than most songs discussing sex. In The Indianapolis Star, Scott L. Miley said Carey's romantic advances were "unflattering".
### Commercial performance
Music magazines predicted "Sweetheart" would thrive on record charts. British publication Music Week described it as the song on Life in 1472 most suited to commercial success. In the United States, Billboard thought it would be the most-played song on pop and R&B radio stations in late 1998. Following its radio release, eligibility for the US Billboard Hot 100 chart was changed to include non-commercial releases and airplay data from R&B stations. In the first week of the rule change on December 5, 1998, it entered the Bubbling Under Hot 100 at number twenty-five and remained on the chart for one week. Writing for Complex in 2013, David Drake said that the song underperformed compared to Carey's 1998 standards and questioned Sony's decision to cancel the September 29 commercial release. Internationally, "Sweetheart" peaked within the top twenty of record charts in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Remixes peaked at number sixteen on the UK Record Mirror Club Chart published by Music Week.
### Music video
The song was promoted with a music video directed by Hype Williams. Like with many music videos for other songs by Carey such as "Honey" (1997), the video for "Sweetheart" features an exotic setting. It was shot at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, in August 1998. As with other media projects filmed there, the Guggenheim was chosen for its unique appearance; Williams persuaded Carey to travel there after showing her pictures of the building. Williams had often used a fisheye lens to produce perspective distortion in past music videos, but he did not use it for "Sweetheart" because the Guggenheim, an example of architecture in the deconstructivist style, is inherently distorted.
"Sweetheart" depicts Dupri dancing on top of the museum, while Carey twirls in a dress to reveal her underwear and rides on the back of a motorcycle with her lover. She wears a metal mesh outfit that matches the museum's motif. The Morning Call's Paul Willistein called the video "even hotter" than the song itself and The Advertiser felt it would not have been filmed if Carey were still married due to the "sexy, fleshy" visuals. In her book Experiencing Music Video, scholar Carol Vernallis wrote that the Guggenheim represents a departure from the typical iconography of R&B music videos. Irene Nero stated that the video contributed to the museum's perceived celebrity-like status for its many depictions in media.
### Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Life in 1472 and \#1's.
- Mariah Carey – vocals, producer
- Carl-So-Lowe – music performer
- Dana Jon Chappelle – engineering
- Melonie Daniels – background vocals
- Rainy Davis – songwriting
- Jermaine Dupri – vocals, mixing, producer
- Brian Frye – engineering
- Bernie Grundman — mastering
- Trey Lorenz – background vocals
- Phil Tan – mixing
- MaryAnn Tatum – background vocals
- Pete Warner – songwriting
### Charts
|
445,112 |
13th Airborne Division (United States)
| 1,150,933,407 |
US military unit
|
[
"Airborne divisions of the United States Army",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1946",
"Military units and formations established in 1943",
"United States Army divisions during World War II"
] |
The 13th Airborne Division was an airborne forces formation of division-size of the United States Army that was active during World War II. The division was commanded for most of its existence by Major General Elbridge G. Chapman. It was officially activated in the United States in August 1943 at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, remaining active until February 1946, however it never saw combat.
After activation the division remained in the United States to complete its training. This training was completed by September 1944, but had to be extended by a further four months when the division provided replacements for the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The division also encountered delays in mounting large-scale training exercises due to a lack of transport aircraft in the United States. This shortage was caused by the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions taking priority over the 13th in terms of equipment due to the two divisions serving in combat in Europe. As a consequence of these delays the division was not fully trained and combat-ready until January 1945, and was transferred to France and the European Theater of Operations in February.
When the division arrived in France, it came under the command of the First Allied Airborne Army, which controlled all Allied airborne formations. The division, along with two others, was selected to participate in Operation Varsity, the airborne operation to support the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group crossing the River Rhine, but was removed from the operation due to there being insufficient transport aircraft to carry all three divisions into combat. Several other operations were planned for the division after the end of Operation Varsity, but these operations were cancelled when their objectives were captured by the rapid advance of Allied ground forces and they became superfluous. After the end of the conflict in Europe, the 13th Airborne was shipped to the United States to stage there before it was to participate in the planned invasion of Japan, but the conflict in the Far East ended before it was required and it remained in the United States. The 13th Airborne Division was finally inactivated on 26 February 1946 and its combat personnel were transferred to the command of the 82nd Airborne Division.
## Formation
The 13th Airborne Division was the fifth airborne division to be formed in the United States during World War II, and was officially activated on Friday 13 August 1943 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, under the command of Major General George W. Griner Jr. Only a few months after the activation of the division, however, Major General Griner was ordered to take command of the 98th Infantry Division, and was replaced by Major General Elbridge Chapman, who would go on to command the division for the rest of the conflict. Chapman was one of the early pioneers of the American airborne concept, commanding the experimental 88th Airborne Infantry Battalion in late 1941 when he was a lieutenant colonel, before going on to take command of the 13th Airborne Division. The 88th Airborne Infantry Battalion would be renamed as the 88th Airborne Infantry Regiment, and then finally become the 88th Glider Infantry Regiment on 21 September 1942, forming the core of the 13th Airborne Division. When it was activated, the 13th Airborne Division was initially composed of the 515th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the 88th Glider Infantry Regiment and the 326th Glider Infantry Regiment.
## Shoulder sleeve insignia
The division's shoulder patch, a winged unicorn in orange on an ultramarine blue, the branch of service colours of the United States Army Air Corps, was approved on 2 June 1943. A gold on black "Airborne" tab was worn above the insignia.
> The unicorn is associated, by tradition, with qualities of virtue, courage and strength. The horn of the unicorn signifies extreme courage. All of such virtues should be cultivated in all units. It is hoped that these virtues will be conspicuous in the 13th Airborne Division. The unicorn has been winged to represent its travel in the air as "Airborne." The blue background is the color of the Infantry, which is the basic arm of the Division, and also indicates the sky, which is the distinctive medium of travel for the Division.
## Actions during World War II
### Training
Between August 1943 and February 1945, the 13th Airborne Division remained in the United States and did not serve overseas or participate in any airborne operations, as it began training to become a combat-ready formation. In comparison, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had been assigned as active combat formations to serve overseas in Europe, the 11th Airborne Division was scheduled to be deployed to the Pacific Theater of Operations, and the 17th Airborne Division had been assigned as the United States strategic reserve formation. During this period, the activities of the division primarily involved airborne training, as well as taking part in several training exercises. However, while airborne training for the first four American airborne divisions was conducted during 1943, the 13th encountered considerable difficulties when it came to its turn for training. By the last few months of 1943 the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had conducted airborne exercises and finished their training, and had then been transferred to Europe; to ensure the divisions could conduct airborne operations, a majority of the transport aircraft available in the United States had been sent with them, and even more were transferred to Europe as replacements after the American airborne landings in Normandy in June 1944. Consequently, very few transport aircraft were available for use by the 13th, and the original training exercise for the division that had been scheduled for June 1944 had to be postponed until 17 September, and then once again until 24 September.
The divisional training exercise took place around Camp Mackall, North Carolina, and suffered from a number of difficulties and problems. Poor weather delayed the beginning of the exercise until the night of 25 September, and it was only then that the aircraft carrying the first three battalions of paratroopers could take off and attempt to drop the airborne troops on three separate drop zones. A combination of poor visibility, and a lack of sufficient training for the pilots of the transport aircraft, resulted in the paratroopers being dispersed widely when dropped. Only sixty-five percent of the airborne troops and equipment dropped on the first drop zone were ready for action ninety minutes later, and in the second drop zone the airborne troops were so scattered that by 10:00 the next morning the commander of the battalion only had control over twenty percent of his men. A similar number of paratroopers missed the third drop zone, although the majority were dropped in a relatively small area where they could gather. Further problems were encountered, as a plane crash killed eight paratroopers and four aircrew, and the glider-borne elements of the division due to land were delayed by poor weather. After the initial night, the exercise continued for a further three days and included a complex supply mission designed to test whether it was possible to supply an isolated battalion of airborne troops.
Overall, observers present for the exercise reported that they had been impressed with the performance of the glider-borne elements of the division. However, several noted that the training of the aircraft pilots for night formation flying and navigation was far from satisfactory. A recommendation was made that night glider landings should be considered only when an emergency existed, and that otherwise gliders should take off during the night and land during daylight to avoid the wide dispersal of airborne troops and a decrease in efficiency. After these exercises had ended, the division continued to train, but encountered further delays. These were caused when 1,652 men were removed from the division to provide reinforcements for U.S. Airborne units in the European Theater; this drastically reduced the strength of the division and forced it to extend its training period for a further four months. After completing its training in January the division was preparing to transfer to the Pacific Theatre in early 1945. However, the rapid advances made by German forces during the Battle of the Bulge led to the division being transferred to the European Theatre of Operations to reinforce Allied divisions already in combat.
### European Theater of Operations
The division arrived in the European Theater of Operations in early February, coming under the command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Major General Chapman was informed that there was a possibility that the division would be required to conduct airborne operations during the closing stages of the Battle of the Bulge. However, the campaign in the Ardennes ended before the division could be transported there. The next chance for the 13th to participate in an airborne operation, and to actually see combat, was in March 1945 when the Allies had penetrated into Germany itself and reached the River Rhine. A few weeks before the division was to participate in a combat jump over the Rhine it was reorganized, after a conference by the War Department had decided that a more efficient composition for an airborne division was two Parachute Infantry Regiments and only a single Glider Infantry Regiment. Subsequently, the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment, a veteran unit that had served in Italy, Southern France and the Ardennes, joined the division in early March, and the 88th Glider Infantry Regiment was combined into the 326th Glider Infantry Regiment that remained as the division's sole glider-based element. The 517th had recently fought during the Ardennes campaign, and had received a Presidential Unit Citation for its actions.
The Rhine river was a formidable natural obstacle to the Allied advance, but if breached would allow the Allies access to the North German Plain and ultimately to advance on Berlin and other major cities in Northern Germany. Following the 'Broad Front Approach' laid out by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, it was decided to attempt to breach the Rhine in several areas. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commanding the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, devised a plan to allow the forces under his command to breach the Rhine, which he titled Operation Plunder, and which was subsequently authorized by Eisenhower. Plunder envisioned the British Second Army, under Lieutenant-General Miles C. Dempsey, and the U.S. Ninth Army, under Lieutenant General William Simpson, crossing the Rhine at Rees, Wesel, and an area south of the Lippe Canal. To ensure that the operation was a success, Montgomery insisted that an airborne component was inserted into the plans for the operation to support the amphibious assaults that would take place, which was code-named Operation Varsity. Three airborne divisions were initially chosen to take part in Varsity, these being the British 6th Airborne Division, the U.S. 17th Airborne Division, and finally the 13th, all of which were assigned to U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps, commanded by Major General Matthew Ridgway. However, it was discovered that there were only enough transport aircraft available in Europe to transport two airborne divisions into combat, and as such it was removed from Operation Varsity due to its lack of combat experience.
After its removal from Operation Varsity, the division remained in reserve as the Allied armies advanced even further into Germany, moving to Oise, France, on 3 April for supply and administrative tasks. The division was scheduled to participate in several other airborne operations; however, these were all cancelled before they could take place. The first of these was Operation Arena, which envisioned landing between six and ten divisions into what was termed a 'strategic airhead' in the Kassel region of Northern Germany; the planners of the operations envisioned that the operation would deny a large swathe of territory to the German defenders and give the Allied armies a staging area for further advances into Germany. The 13th was chosen to participate, along with the 17th, 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the British 6th and 1st Airborne Divisions. A preliminary date for 1 May was set for the operation once all of the required airborne and air-landed infantry divisions had been located and supplied, but it was ultimately cancelled on 26 March due to the rapid movement of Allied ground forces negating the need for the operation. Two other airborne operations were planned to include the 13th. Operation Choker II was to be an airborne landing on the east bank of the Rhine near Worms, Germany; planning for the operation got to an advanced stage, and the division was only hours from taking off from airfields in France when the operation was cancelled due to Allied ground forces overrunning the proposed landing areas. Operation Effective was designed to land the 13th south of Stuttgart, seize a nearby airfield and create an airhead for further forces to land in near the Black Forest. The operation was scheduled for 22 April, but was cancelled on 18 April due to Allied units encircling the Black Forest region and making it unnecessary.
## Composition
The division was composed of the following units:
- 88th Glider Infantry Regiment (disbanded 1 March 1945, assets merged into the 326th GIR)
- 326th Glider Infantry Regiment
- 515th Parachute Infantry Regiment
- 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment, (assigned 1 March 1945)
- 129th Airborne Engineer Battalion
- 153rd Airborne Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion
- 13th Parachute Maintenance Company (assigned 1 March 45)
- 222nd Airborne Medical Company
- 13th Airborne Division Artillery
- 458th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion (75 mm)
- 460th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion (75 mm) (assigned 1 March 1945)
- 676th Glider Field Artillery Battalion (75 mm)
- 677th Glider Field Artillery Battalion (75 mm)
- Special Troops (Headquarters activated 1 Mar 45)
- Headquarters Company, 13th Airborne Division
- 409th Airborne Quartermaster Company
- 513th Airborne Signal Company
- 713th Airborne Ordnance Company
- Reconnaissance Platoon (assigned 1 March 45)
- Military Police Platoon
- Band (assigned 1 March 45)
## Awards
During World War II members of the division were awarded the following awards:
- Medal of Honor: 1
- Private First Class Melvin E. Biddle, awarded for actions before the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment joined the 13th Airborne Division
- Legion of Merit: 6
- Bronze Star Medal: 50
## Inactivation
The conflict with Germany came to an end a few weeks after Operation Effective was cancelled, and shortly afterwards it was announced that the division would be redeployed to the Pacific to participate in the invasion of Japan after a brief stop-over in the United States. The deactivation of the 17th Airborne Division meant that the 13th acquired several combat units from that division to bolster it for its envisioned action in Japan. The division arrived in New York City on 23 August, but did not leave the United States before the surrender of Japan in September 1945. With the conflict at an end, the division was no longer required by the United States Army, and it was permanently inactivated at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on 25 February 1946, with its personnel transferred to the command of the 82nd Airborne Division.
## See also
- Precursor 13th Infantry Division unit from World War I
|
51,140,617 |
Shannen Says
| 1,165,818,577 |
2012 American reality television series
|
[
"2010s American reality television series",
"2012 American television series debuts",
"2012 American television series endings",
"English-language television shows",
"Television shows filmed in California",
"Wedding television shows"
] |
Shannen Says is an eight-episode American reality television series broadcast on WE TV from April 10 to May 13, 2012. The show focuses on the preparations for the 2011 wedding of actress Shannen Doherty and photographer Kurt Iswarienko, with help from celebrity-wedding planner David Tutera. Doherty and Iswarienko developed the show as a way to document the stress on a couple while planning their wedding.
Filmed in Malibu, California, between August 2011 and October 2011, Shannen Says was produced by RelativityReal and Doherty's production company No Apologies Productions. To prepare for filming, Doherty watched reality shows by Tori Spelling and Kim Kardashian. The series was released on the iTunes Store and Amazon Video under the title Shannen Says, Season 1, but it was not made available on DVD or Blu-ray.
Shannen Says had low viewership and ranked below most other programs when it premiered, but had some popularity among women between the ages of 25 and 54. Doherty said it was intended as a one-off, with no plans for a second season. Shannen Says and Doherty received mixed reviews.
## Production
### Concept and development
Shannen Says documents the events leading up to Shannen Doherty's wedding to Kurt Iswarienko. It was Doherty's third wedding; she previously married actor Ashley Hamilton and poker player Rick Salomon, these marriages ended in 1994 and 2003, respectively. Doherty previously worked on reality television as a host for Scare Tactics and Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty and as a contestant on the tenth season of Dancing with the Stars. Developed under the working title The Shannen Doherty Project, Shannen Says was first announced by WE TV on July 20, 2011. According to the network, the show was intended to portray Doherty from a more intimate perspective.
WE TV senior vice president John Miller identified the series as part of the network's strategy to "present stories that showcase the wild ride of modern-day life from a woman's perspective". Prior to Shannen Says, WE TV was already associated with wedding-themed shows, such as Bridezillas and My Fair Wedding with David Tutera. Variety'''s Jill Goldsmith cited it, alongside Braxton Family Values, Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?, and Mary Mary, to discuss WE TV's focus on celebrity-based reality shows.
Shannen Says was initially going to be developed by Doherty's production company, No Apologies Productions, to air on another television network. The series was instead picked up by WE TV after Doherty rejected the previous network for making the material too sensational. Miller approved the show's pitch because he believed Doherty was "unfiltered, honest and vulnerable" and said: "I would watch her go to a supermarket ... She's insanely compelling." Doherty referred to Shannen Says as her agreement with Iswarienko to "chronicle this time in our lives and let future brides and future grooms know that [it's] not just you [who] goes through the stress". Likening the show to a wedding video, she described it as a documentary rather than a reality show, and saw herself as an actor not a reality personality.
### Filming and cast
Doherty and Iswarienko were inspired by the filming and production styles in Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Deadliest Catch. Doherty questioned if a show could be "brutally honest, that completely raw, but with the quality of those two shows where you do use different cameras and you do want it to look spectacular". They purchased an expensive new camera to film the series since they wanted it to be "a cut above the rest as far as our crew and how it looks". Doherty intended for Shannen Says to provide a more authentic look into her life, in contrast to her public persona and acting roles. This idea was carried over into the show's opening ("Everyone thinks they know you"), which she wrote. She viewed the filming techniques as an important part of this goal, saying: "It had to be honest, it had to be truthful, and it had to look fantastic."
The series was produced by No Apologies Productions and RelativityReal. Episodes were filmed over a seven-week period at the couple's home in Malibu, California, and nearby locations. Production began in August 2011, and the wedding took place and was filmed on October 15, 2011. Pictures from the wedding were published in the November 2, 2011, issue of Us Weekly. Doherty and Iswarienko were executive producers for the series, along with Kathleen Iswarienko, Russell Heldt, and Tom Forman. Initially concerned about the lack of privacy during filming, Doherty felt more comfortable when the bedroom was set as off-limits for the show. To prepare for filming, Doherty watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians and former Beverly Hills, 90210 co-star Tori Spelling's reality show about her relationship with husband Dean McDermott. Despite this, she resisted comparisons to Kim Kardashian's publicized wedding to and divorce from basketball player Kris Humphries.
David Tutera, a wedding planner and host of My Fair Wedding with David Tutera, acted as Doherty's event planner. The series also featured Doherty's friends, Roxana Zal, Tim Bitici, and Roger Castillo and her mother, Rosa. Professional dancer Louis Van Amstel and real estate agent Chris Cortazzo guest-starred in one episode. Doherty said Twitter users enjoyed how her mother chose to appear more natural rather than being styled by the show's crew.
## Episodes
## Broadcast history and release
A preview was released before the show's debut, and Doherty promoted it through a Television Critics Association panel presentation at Pasadena, California. Shannen Says received additional publicity when Tori Spelling jokingly offered to plan Doherty's wedding during a 2011 interview with Entertainment Tonight Canada: "I'll do the wedding, I could probably comment on the wedding she'd want 20 years ago, but that wouldn't make any sense."
Shannen Says premiered on April 10, 2012, in the United States on WE TV at 10:00 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST). The original release date was scheduled for January 2012, and later April 3, 2012. The second episode aired the following Tuesday; after a 12-day gap, two episodes were aired every Sunday night in the same time slot until the end of the season. The show was broadcast internationally on WE TV Asia. AMC and Sundance Channel Global also acquired rights for Shannen Says, along with The Slap, Hell on Wheels, and Breaking Bad, in October 2011.
The series was commercially unsuccessful, but it was "marginally more popular" among women between the ages of 25 and 54. Doherty described Shannen Says as a one-off creation and denied interest in a second season. She rejected a suggestion for a second-season storyline about a pregnancy and child. Shannen Says ended on May 12, 2012. It was released on the iTunes Store on April 10, 2012, as Shannen Says, Season 1. All the episodes have been made available on Amazon Video since 2012, although it has not been released on Blu-ray or DVD. A writer from The Futon Critic reported that the series was canceled after being "on hiatus for longer than 12 months – without any news about its future."
## Critical reception
Shannen Says received mixed reviews from critics. A Life & Style contributor praised the show as "very entertaining". In HitFix, Geoff Berkshire wrote that it "looks great and moves swiftly from one drama to the next", and believed the episodes would satisfy fans of reality television. On the other hand, Kevin McDonough, writing for SouthCoastToday.com, criticized Shannen Says for attempting to "compensate for the lack of drama in Doherty's life with the manic production of a reality TV-sized wedding". As part of an article for The Washington Post, Emily Yahr, Caitlin Moore and Emily Chow cited Shannen Says, along with Hey Paula and Kirstie Alley's Big Life, as unsuccessful examples of the "autobiographical" reality show.
Critics had mixed reactions to Doherty. A reviewer for HuffPost said she was an ideal fit for reality television, describing her as "every bit the bad girl fans have been loving to hate to love for the past twenty-odd years". Geoff Berkshire found Doherty to be "equal doses crazy and amusing", but thought her attitude, like requesting wedding guests to wear black or be kicked out, could alienate some viewers. In MTV News, Maisy Fernandez said her personality resulted in a better reality show than Jennie Garth: A Little Bit Country, which starred her former Beverly Hills, 90210'' co-star Jennie Garth. Criticizing Doherty's choice of television network, Fernandez believed it was unlikely a casual viewer would find the series while channel surfing. McDonough questioned if audiences would be disappointed that Doherty acts as a "reformed monster who just wants to have a normal life".
|
30,496,476 |
American Arts Commemorative Series medallions
| 1,162,086,857 |
Gold bullion medallions minted 1980–1984
|
[
"1980 introductions",
"1980s establishments in the United States",
"Bullion coins of the United States",
"Cultural depictions of Frank Lloyd Wright",
"Cultural depictions of Louis Armstrong",
"Cultural depictions of Mark Twain",
"Exonumia",
"Gold bullion coins",
"Grant Wood",
"John Steinbeck",
"Robert Frost",
"United States commemorative medals",
"United States gold coins",
"Willa Cather"
] |
American Arts Commemorative Series Medallions are a series of ten gold bullion medallions that were produced by the United States Mint from 1980 to 1984. They were sold to compete with the South African Krugerrand and other bullion coins.
The series was proposed by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms after the United States Department of the Treasury began selling portions of the national stockpile of gold. Iowa Representative Jim Leach suggested that the medallions depict notable American artists. President Jimmy Carter signed the bill containing the authorizing legislation into law on November 10, 1978, despite objections from Treasury officials.
The medallions were initially sold through mail order; purchasers were required to obtain the day's price by telephone before ordering. Later, the Mint sold them through telemarketing. Mintage ceased after the ten different medallions approved by Congress were produced. All were struck at the West Point Bullion Depository. The series sold poorly, prompting critics to blame the involved process by which they were first marketed, and the fact that they were medallions rather than coins.
## Background
On April 19, 1978, the United States Treasury Department announced that a portion of the national gold stockpile was to be auctioned through the General Services Administration (GSA) beginning on May 23, 1978, in the form of 400 troy ounces (12 kg) bars. According to the Treasury, the sales were intended to "[reduce] the U.S. trade deficit, either by increasing the exports of gold or by reducing the imports of this commodity", and to "further the U.S. desire to continue progress toward the elimination of the international monetary role of gold". For reasons of bookkeeping, an entire bar was set as the minimum purchase, which placed the gold outside of the reach of most Americans. North Carolina senator Jesse Helms was critical of the plan, saying that he was "opposed to the sale of U.S. gold to foreign and international banks and gold dealers" and that medallions should be "produced in small size, suitable for sale to average citizens". On the day of the Treasury announcement, Helms introduced the Gold Medallion Act of 1978. The stated intent was to provide average consumers with affordable, small-sized gold bullion to compete with the South African Krugerrand and other world bullion coins, which were becoming increasingly popular with American investors. 1.6 million troy ounces (50,000 kg) ounces of gold had been imported into the United States in the form of Krugerrands in 1977 alone. In a hearing on August 25, 1978, before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Helms said:
> In the first year after enactment the bill would require that the first 1.5 million ounces of gold sold be made into medallions. Under the stepped-up rate of gold sales, that is only two months worth of gold. The amount is about equal to last year's importation of foreign bullion coins, mostly Krugerrands from South Africa.
Helms went on to describe the characteristics of the proposed medallions, stating:
> The one-ounce medallion would have on one side the head of the statue of Freedom atop the Capitol, and it would be marked with the words, "One ounce fine gold", and the word "freedom". The reverse of the piece would be the Great Seal of the United States and the words "United States of America", and the year in which it was produced. The half-ounce medallion would have on one side some representation of the rights of individuals and the words "Human Rights", and "One-half ounce fine gold". The reverse would be similar to the back side of the "Freedom" medallion, with the Great Seal.
Support for the medallions grew in Congress, prompting the introduction of more legislation. Iowa representative Jim Leach proposed that the series feature designs honoring American artists. During the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing, Leach outlined the reasons for his proposal. He noted that the House Subcommittee on Historic Preservation received many suggestions of individuals worthy to appear on the dollar coin that had previously been proposed. Leach felt that a dollar coin was not a suitable way to commemorate the individuals, as it was impossible to honor such a large group on a coin whose design was likely to remain unchanged for a long period of time. He also noted that all United States coinage until then had depicted individuals whose principal contributions had been in government and politics rather than the arts. Leach described the specifics of his proposal, stating:
> I am suggesting in H.R. 13567 that we honor 10 individuals who have been distinguished contributors to the arts—music, painting, writing, architecture and the theatre. Other fields might well be chosen, or other people than I have selected within the field of arts; but the point I want to emphasize is this: while our coinage is and should be devoted to honoring those who have contributed to our political heritage, medals offer us an opportunity to honor those who have contributed to our cultural development, our economic achievements, our technological expertise, and other accomplishments which reflect the wide dimensions of our democratic society.
The subjects designated were painter Grant Wood, contralto singer Marian Anderson, authors Mark Twain and Willa Cather, musician Louis Armstrong, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, poet Robert Frost, sculptor Alexander Calder, actress Helen Hayes and author John Steinbeck.
Though the program received widespread support in Congress, Treasury officials opposed it. In a letter, Treasury secretary W. Michael Blumenthal wrote, "I do not believe the U.S. Government should permit the erroneous impression to be created that it cannot or will not take the necessary steps to combat inflation and that the public therefore needs to buy gold as a hedge against inflation." Blumenthal also believed that if the government were to sanction the striking of gold medallions, the public would believe that the Treasury was actively encouraging investment in gold. Despite these objections, the bill was attached to the bank omnibus bill, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law on November 10, 1978.
## Production and sale
The Treasury lacked money to put the medallions into production, so an appropriations bill was passed giving the department the necessary funding. The GSA was tasked with determining how best to market the new issues. The GSA proposed several sales plans, including the distribution of the medallions to a network of banks for sale to the public. This was rejected in favor of requiring purchasers to make a telephone call to learn the price of the medallions on the day of purchase, after which the purchaser was to go to a post office the same day to make payment. According to the legislation, the issues were to be "sold to the general public at a competitive price equal to the free market value of the gold contained therein plus the cost of manufacture, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and overhead expenses including marketing costs".
Production began in 1980. Struck at the West Point Bullion Depository, the medallions contained 90% gold, and were issued in two sizes: one containing one troy ounce (31 g) of gold and one containing one half-ounce (16 g) of the metal. The first struck were those honoring Grant Wood on the one ounce medallion and Marian Anderson on the half-ounce piece. Both were designed by United States Mint Chief Engraver Frank Gasparro. Sales were poor, and in September 1980, the Mint announced that a private firm, commodity traders J. Aron and Company, would market the medallions. The new plan involved selling the medallions through a network of bullion dealers, banks, brokerage houses and coin dealers, a system similar to that South Africa used to distribute the Krugerrand in the US. In 1981, the second year of production, the composition of the medallions was changed; although the 90% gold purity was retained, the balance was altered to include silver, which was added to change their appearance. That year's medallions depicted Mark Twain and Willa Cather. These were designed by Matthew Poloso and Sherl Winter, respectively. These first four medallions bore no notation of their metallic content or country of origin. This was done to distinguish them from federal coinage. Beginning in 1982, this information and small, toothlike designs, known as "denticles", were added along the inner rim of the medallions, and reeding was added to the edge. That year's issues depicted Louis Armstrong, as designed by John Mercanti, and Frank Lloyd Wright, designed by Edgar Steever. The following year's medallions depicted Robert Frost and Alexander Calder. The former was designed by P. Fowler, while the latter was by Michael Iacocca. The final year of production saw the mintage of medallions with designs by John Mercanti honoring Helen Hayes and John Steinbeck. The Mint terminated the contract with J. Aron and Company in 1984, opting instead to sell the medallions through a telemarketing program. In 1985, Mint director Donna Pope announced that the medallions would be sold in another telemarketing operation in sets of five of either one each of the one ounce medallions or one each of the half-ounce pieces, beginning in September of that year and ending on December 31, or sooner if all sets sold.
## Reception
In October 1980, Luis Vigdor, assistant vice-president for bullion and numismatic operations of Manfra, Tordella & Brookes, then one of the largest coin firms in the country, compared the medallions and the efforts to market them unfavorably to the South African Krugerrand. According to Vigdor, they were difficult to market due to their lack of notation of weight, fineness and country of origin. He also criticized the marketing, asserting that people were unlikely to buy gold at the post office, and that the medallions were advertised poorly. Vigdor contrasted the medallions' marketing program with the widespread success of the Krugerrand and the vigorous attempts to market them around the world. Commenting on the poor sale of the medallions, assistant director of marketing for the Mint Francis Frere said in 1984: "it just hasn't worked. They're not selling. We've made a strong effort, but it's not working."
On February 12, 1982, following the poor sales of the medallions, the United States Gold Commission recommended the minting of a gold coin. Donald Regan, Secretary of the Treasury and chairman of the commission, later told reporters that a gold coin could be easier to sell than medallions, because the suggested coins "could be redeemable in dollars". The Mint issued gold coins for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and for the centennial of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. Both issues were successful, and the Liberty piece sold out on advance sales. As the public was receptive to the gold coins, and President Ronald Reagan had banned the importation of Krugerrands in 1985 over South Africa's apartheid policy, Congress authorized the American Gold Eagle gold bullion coin, which entered production as legal tender in 1986.
## Designs and sales figures
|
17,973,603 |
Ben Crosby
| 1,156,086,908 |
American football player and coach (1868–1892)
|
[
"1868 births",
"1892 deaths",
"19th-century players of American football",
"American football ends",
"Deaths from typhoid fever",
"Navy Midshipmen football coaches",
"New York Law School alumni",
"People from Greene County, New York",
"Yale Bulldogs football players",
"Yale Bulldogs rowers"
] |
Benjamin Lewis Crosby Jr. (March 22, 1868 – December 29, 1892) was an American college football player and coach. Born in Halcott Centre, New York, Crosby attended Yale University beginning in 1889; while there, he was a popular student and sportsman. He was a two-year starter on the football team and a backup on the crew team. During his junior year, he was replaced on the football team by freshman Frank Hinkey and never returned to a starting position. The remainder of Crosby's time at Yale was successful and he enrolled at the New York Law School after graduation.
Crosby was invited in 1892 to serve as head coach of the United States Naval Academy football program. He accepted the position, and, using unusually rigorous practicing strategies, led the team to a 5–2 record, culminating in an upset victory over rival Army in the Army–Navy Game. He received commendation for the victory, including a gift of a personalized trophy. Following the season's conclusion, Crosby returned to New York to continue his studies, but he was hospitalized after an illness he contracted while coaching worsened shortly after his arrival. He died from typhoid fever in late December, at the age of 24.
## Career
### Early life and college
Crosby was born on March 22, 1868, in Halcott Centre, New York, son of David J. Crosby. As a child, Crosby attended Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut, the second person in his family to do so; a cousin, James Parkman Crosby, had attended the institution in the early 1870s. Ben Crosby graduated from the school in 1888, and the following year, he began classes at Yale University. Crosby was popular while at Yale, and was a member of both Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the secret undergraduate society Skull and Bones. In his sophomore year, Crosby was the starting right end of the Bulldogs football team. The squad finished that season with a thirteen-and-one win–loss record; the sole loss came to the national champion Harvard. Crosby joined the university's crew team as a substitute the following year, and was described by classmates as being "quite prominent in athletics".
Early in the 1891 season, both Crosby and John A. Hartwell, the other starting end, who later followed Crosby as Navy football coach, were injured in a game. While observing a team practice, Hartwell and Crosby noticed the play of backup end Frank Hinkey. After watching Hinkey for a time, Hartwell decided to return to practicing for fear of losing his starting position; Crosby did not consider this necessary. By the next game, Hinkey had replaced Crosby as the starting end and he did not regain the position. The team finished the season with a perfect record and would be retrospectively named national champions. Crosby remained popular through his senior year at the university, and he was one of three graduates presented with a class award. Upon graduation from the school, Crosby enrolled in New York Law School and joined a law office in New York City.
### Coaching career
In October 1892, shortly after he began attending New York Law School, Crosby was invited by former Yale coach Walter Camp to live in Annapolis, Maryland to serve as the coach for the United States Naval Academy football team; the program was acting in response to the appointment of Crosby's former teammate, Henry L. Williams, as coach for the Army team. Navy had first extended the offer to Camp, who suggested Crosby would fulfil the role more effectively. Crosby accepted the invitation, and became the second head coach in Navy history and the first who was independent of the program. The previous coach, Vaulx Carter, attended the academy, and had revived the program. Crosby's strategy for practices was one of the most intensive used at the academy during its early years; after classes every day, the team played two 45 minute games against a team of 22 backup players, followed immediately by a long swimming session in a cold pool. Shortly before the season began, Crosby hired former St. John's College, Johns Hopkins, and Lehigh player Paul Dashiell to serve as his assistant coach.
The 1892 season commenced on October 12 with a 16–0 shutout loss against the Penn Quakers in Annapolis. The Quakers finished the season with a 15–1 record, losing only to national champion Yale. Crosby's team played their next game three days later, against the Princeton Tigers. Navy lost the game in another shutout, by the score of 28–0. These losses continued a losing streak dating back to November 21 of the previous year. The following week, on October 22, Crosby achieved his first coaching win when Navy defeated the Lafayette Leopards 22–4. This was followed by a victory the next week over the small Franklin & Marshall College; Navy won in a 24–0 shutout, their largest such win since the 1890 Army–Navy Game. They continued their winning streak into November with a 48–12 victory against Rutgers, the largest win for Navy since the beginning of the 1890 season. After a week's break, Crosby received his fourth win, a forty-point shutout of nearby Georgetown.
The final game of the season was the annual Army–Navy Game against Navy's biggest rivals, the unbeaten Army Cadets. Navy had unexpectedly lost to the Cadets in the previous year's game, and came into the 1892 game as an underdog. Despite this, Crosby expected a victory, even telling reporters he was "of the opinion that they [Navy] will certainly win". Crosby also caught the attention of the press with his scheduling of more frequent practices leading up to the game, including night practices on a lighted field. He closed all press and fan access to the practices, an unusual action at the time, because Navy officials claimed that Army had learned their plays the prior year by observing the practices. Crosby's actions proved effective as, on November 26 at West Point, Navy led Army for the entire game and won easily, 12–4. About a month after the game, in appreciation for his coaching Navy to the win, the team presented Crosby an eight-inch high sterling silver loving cup, produced by the Gorham Manufacturing Company, which was inscribed with the simple message: "Benjamin L. Crosby. Jr. – From the officers and cadets of the United States Naval Academy, Nov. 26, 1892".
### Death and legacy
When the season ended, Crosby returned to New York City to continue his studies at the New York Law School. He attended classes only for a brief time, because a serious illness he had contracted in Annapolis continued to worsen. On December 19, while in the classroom, he reportedly "succumbed to an attack of typhoid fever". He was taken to St. Luke's Hospital, where his condition progressively worsened over the following ten days. Crosby died on December 29, 1892, at the age of 24. Crosby's coaching position was filled by Yale teammate John A. Hartwell, who was subsequently replaced by another Yale teammate, William Wurtenburg.
In his one season as a head coach, Crosby amassed a record of 5–2 and his team outscored their opponents 146–64. The five wins are tied for the seventh-fewest of any Navy coach, but third-most of single-season coaches. Crosby also has the third-fewest losses among Navy coaches, while his .714 win percentage is tied for the tenth-highest of any Navy coach. Crosby has been largely forgotten outside of Navy football history. One event from his life that was remembered was his replacement as Yale end by Frank Hinkey, which was discussed in magazines until at least the 1920s due to Hinkey's influence on the sport. The most significant impact that Crosby had with Navy was through his hiring of Dashiell. The latter served as assistant until 1903 under the following eight Navy coaches. As head coach from 1904 to 1906, Dashiell brought Navy to national prominence and won 25 games. He later became one of the longest-serving members of the college football Rules Committee, helping to legalize the forward pass and ban the flying wedge, among other things.
## Head coaching record
|
1,215,338 |
Like a Rolling Stone
| 1,172,404,453 |
1965 single by Bob Dylan
|
[
"1965 singles",
"1965 songs",
"Bob Dylan songs",
"Cashbox number-one singles",
"Columbia Records singles",
"Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients",
"Song recordings produced by Tom Wilson (record producer)",
"Songs written by Bob Dylan",
"The Jimi Hendrix Experience songs",
"The Rolling Stones songs"
] |
"Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 20, 1965, by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England. Dylan distilled this draft into four verses and a chorus. "Like a Rolling Stone" was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited.
During a difficult two-day preproduction, Dylan struggled to find the essence of the song, which was demoed without success in time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper improvised the Hammond B2 organ riff for which the track is known. Columbia Records was unhappy with both the song's length at over six minutes and its heavy electric sound, and was hesitant to release it. It was only when, a month later, a copy was leaked to a new popular music club and heard by influential DJs that the song was put out as a single. Although radio stations were reluctant to play such a long track, "Like a Rolling Stone" reached No. 2 in the US Billboard charts (No. 1 in Cashbox) and became a worldwide hit.
Critics have described "Like a Rolling Stone" as revolutionary in its combination of musical elements, the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan's voice, and the directness of the question "How does it feel?". It completed the transformation of Dylan's image from folk singer to rock star, and is considered one of the most influential compositions in postwar popular music. Rolling Stone listed it at No. 1 on their 2004 and 2010 "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" lists. It has been covered by many artists, from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Rolling Stones to the Wailers and Green Day. At an auction in 2014, Dylan's handwritten lyrics to the song fetched \$2 million, a world record for a popular music manuscript.
## Writing
In early 1965, after returning from the tour of England documented in the film Dont Look Back, Dylan was unhappy with the public's expectations of him and the direction his career was taking, and considered quitting the music business. He said in a 1966 Playboy interview:
> Last spring, I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation ... But 'Like a Rolling Stone' changed it all. I mean it was something that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you.
The song grew out of an extended piece of verse. In 1966, Dylan described its genesis to journalist Jules Siegel:
> It was ten pages long. It wasn't called anything, just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred directed at some point that was honest. In the end it wasn't hatred, it was telling someone something they didn't know, telling them they were lucky. Revenge, that's a better word. I had never thought of it as a song, until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper it was singing, "How does it feel?" in a slow motion pace, in the utmost of slow motion following something.
During 1965, Dylan composed prose, poems, and songs by typing incessantly. Footage in Dont Look Back of Dylan in his suite at London's Savoy Hotel captures this process. However, Dylan told two interviewers that "Like a Rolling Stone" began as a long piece of "vomit" (10 pages long according to one account, 20 according to another) that later acquired musical form. Dylan has never publicly spoken of writing any other major composition in this way. In an interview with CBC Radio in Montreal, Dylan called the creation of the song a "breakthrough", explaining that it changed his perception of where he was going in his career. He said that he found himself writing
> this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long, and out of it I took 'Like a Rolling Stone' and made it as a single. And I'd never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that was what I should do ... After writing that I wasn't interested in writing a novel, or a play. I just had too much, I want to write songs.
From the extended version on paper, Dylan crafted four verses and the chorus in Woodstock, New York. In 2014, when the handwritten lyrics were put up for auction, the four-page manuscript revealed that the full refrain of the chorus does not appear until the fourth page. A rejected third line, "like a dog without a bone" gives way to "now you're unknown". Earlier, Dylan had considered working the name Al Capone into the rhyme scheme, and he attempted to construct a rhyme scheme for "how does it feel?", penciling in "it feels real", "does it feel real", "shut up and deal", "get down and kneel" and "raw deal". The song was written on an upright piano in the key of D flat and was changed to C on the guitar in the recording studio.
## Recording
Dylan invited Chicago blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield to his Woodstock home for the weekend to learn new material. Bloomfield recalled, "The first thing I heard was 'Like a Rolling Stone'. I figured he wanted blues, string bending, because that's what I do. He said, 'Hey, man, I don't want any of that B.B. King stuff'. So, OK, I really fell apart. What the heck does he want? We messed around with the song. I played the way that he dug, and he said it was groovy."
The recording sessions were produced by Tom Wilson on June 15–16, 1965, in Studio A of Columbia Records, 799 Seventh Avenue, in New York City. This would be the last song Wilson would produce for Dylan. In addition to Bloomfield, the musicians enlisted were Paul Griffin on piano, Joe Macho, Jr. on bass, Bobby Gregg on drums, and Bruce Langhorne on tambourine, all booked by Wilson. Gregg, Griffin, and Langhorne had previously worked with Dylan and Wilson on Bringing It All Back Home.
In the first session, on June 15, five takes of the song were recorded in a markedly different style ( waltz time, with Dylan on piano) from the eventual release. The lack of sheet music meant the song had to be played by ear. However, its essence was discovered in the course of the chaotic session. The musicians did not reach the first chorus until the fourth take, but after the following harmonica fill Dylan interrupted, saying, "My voice is gone, man. You wanna try it again?" The session ended shortly afterward. The take was released on the 1991 compilation The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.
When the musicians reconvened the following day, June 16, Al Kooper joined the proceedings. Kooper, at that time a 21-year-old session guitarist, was not originally supposed to play but was present in the studio as Wilson's guest. When Wilson stepped out, Kooper sat down with his guitar with the other musicians, hoping to take part in the recording session. By the time Wilson returned, Kooper, who had been intimidated by Bloomfield's guitar playing, was back in the control room. After a couple of rehearsal takes, Wilson moved Griffin from Hammond organ to piano. Kooper approached Wilson and told him he had a good part for the organ. Wilson belittled Kooper's organ skills, but did not forbid him to play. As Kooper later put it, "He just sort of scoffed at me ... He didn't say 'no'—so I went out there." Wilson was surprised to see Kooper at the organ but allowed him to play on the track. When Dylan heard a playback of the song, he insisted that the organ be turned up in the mix, despite Wilson's protestations that Kooper was "not an organ player."
There were 15 recorded takes on June 16. By now the song had evolved into its familiar form, in time with Dylan on electric guitar. After the fourth take—the master take that was released as a single—Wilson happily commented, "That sounds good to me." Despite this, Dylan and the band recorded the song 11 more times.
The complete recording sessions that produced "Like a Rolling Stone", including all 20 takes and the individual "stems" that comprise the four-track master, were released in November 2015 on the 6-disc and 18-disc versions of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966.
## Themes
Unlike conventional chart hits of the time, "Like a Rolling Stone" featured lyrics that were interpreted as expressions of resentment rather than love. Author Oliver Trager characterizes the lyrics as "Dylan's sneer at a woman who has fallen from grace and is reduced to fending for herself in a hostile, unfamiliar world." The song's subject, "Miss Lonely," previously opted for easy options in life—she attended the finest schools and enjoyed high-placed friends—but now that her situation has become difficult, it appears that she has no meaningful experiences to define her character. The opening lines of the song establish the character's former condition:
> > Once upon a time you dressed so fine Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
And the first verse ends with lines that seemingly deride her current condition:
> > Now you don't talk so loud Now you don't seem so proud About having to be scrounging your next meal
Despite the obvious vitriol, the song's narrator also seems to show compassion for Miss Lonely, and expresses joy for her in the freedom in losing everything. Jann Wenner commented: "Everything has been stripped away. You're on your own, you're free now ... You're so helpless and now you've got nothing left. And you're invisible—you've got no secrets—that's so liberating. You've nothing to fear anymore." The final verse ends with the lines:
> > When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
The refrain seems to emphasize these themes:
> > How does it feel How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone
Dylan biographer Robert Shelton gave this interpretation:
> A song that seems to hail the dropout life for those who can take it segues into compassion for those who have dropped out of bourgeois surroundings. 'Rolling Stone' is about the loss of innocence and the harshness of experience. Myths, props, and old beliefs fall away to reveal a very taxing reality.
Dylan humorously commented on the song's moral perspective at a press conference at KQED television studio on December 3, 1965. When a reporter, suggesting that the song adopted a harsh perspective on a girl, asked Dylan, "Are you hard on [people in your songs] because you want to torment them? Or to change their lives and make them know themselves?", Dylan replied while laughing, "I want to needle them."
Commentators attempted to tie the characters in the song to specific people in Dylan's personal life in 1965. In his book POPism: The Warhol '60s, Andy Warhol recalled that some people in his circle believed that "Like a Rolling Stone" contained hostile references to him; he was told, "Listen to 'Like a Rolling Stone'—I think you're the diplomat on the chrome horse, man." The reason behind Dylan's alleged hostility to Warhol was supposedly Warhol's treatment of actress and model Edie Sedgwick. It has been suggested that Sedgwick is the basis of the Miss Lonely character. Sedgwick was briefly involved with Dylan in late 1965 and early 1966, around which time there was some discussion of the two making a movie together. According to Warhol's collaborator Paul Morrissey, Sedgwick may have been in love with Dylan, and was shocked when she found out that Dylan had secretly married Sara Lownds in November 1965. However, in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Michael Gray argues that Sedgwick had no connection with "Like a Rolling Stone", but states "there's no doubt that the ghost of Edie Sedgwick hangs around Blonde on Blonde".
Greil Marcus alluded to a suggestion by art historian Thomas E. Crow that Dylan had written the song as a comment on Warhol's scene:
> I heard a lecture by Thomas Crow ... about "Like a Rolling Stone" being about Edie Sedgwick within Andy Warhol's circle, as something that Dylan saw from the outside, not being personally involved with either of them, but as something he saw and was scared by and saw disaster looming and wrote a song as a warning, and it was compelling.
Joan Baez, Marianne Faithfull and Bob Neuwirth have also been suggested as possible targets of Dylan's scorn. Dylan's biographer Howard Sounes warned against reducing the song to the biography of one person, and suggested "it is more likely that the song was aimed generally at those [Dylan] perceived as being 'phony'". Sounes adds, "There is some irony in the fact that one of the most famous songs of the folk-rock era—an era associated primarily with ideals of peace and harmony—is one of vengeance."
Mike Marqusee has written at length on the conflicts in Dylan's life during this time, with its deepening alienation from his old folk-revival audience and clear-cut leftist causes. He suggests that the song is probably self-referential: "The song only attains full poignancy when one realises it is sung, at least in part, to the singer himself: he's the one 'with no direction home.'" Dylan himself has noted that, after his motorcycle accident in 1966, he realized that "when I used words like 'he' and 'it' and 'they,' and talking about other people, I was really talking about nobody but me."
The song is also notable for the amazing characters that surround the heroine. Andy Gill recalls the strangeness contained in the lyrics: "Who, fascinated fans debated, was Miss Lonely, Napoleon in rags and—most bizarre of all—the diplomat who rode a chrome horse while balancing a Siamese cat upon his shoulder? What on earth was going on here?" The diplomat in question, in the third verse:
> > You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat Ain't it hard when you discover that He really wasn't where it's at After he took from you everything he could steal
One interpretation was formulated in Jean-Michel Buizard's 2021 essay, Like a Rolling Stone Revisited: Une relecture de Dylan [French:A Re-reading of Dylan], which sheds new light on the possible identity of Miss Lonely and company. The central idea is that in 1965, the young Dylan remained secretly haunted by the country blues, which formed the framework of his first album (Bob Dylan, 1962) and of which he would say in 2004 in his Chronicles: "it was a counterpart of myself". The song is then conceived as a half-historical half-imaginary tale in which the old blues, once sovereign in the Southern countryside, surrounded by its servants, the bluesmen, finds itself alone and abandoned in the 1940s, when these same bluesmen, following the great wave of migration of the black population, left for the cities of the North and founded there a modern blues, electrified and emptied of its roots. Miss Lonely is thus "an allegory of country blues".
Muddy Waters, author in 1950 of a well-known blues entitled "Rollin' Stone" is emblematic of this great history of the blues. He is the one we find as a "diplomat" shouldering his guitar (the "Siamese cat") on the train (the "chrome horse") that took him to Chicago in 1943, where he transformed the blues of his childhood into the city blues that made him famous ("he took from you everything he could steal"). Other legendary bluesmen appear in the song: presumably Blind Lemon Jefferson as "the mystery tramp" in the second verse and Robert Johnson, "Napoleon in rags," in the final one.
## Release
According to Shaun Considine, release coordinator for Columbia Records in 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" was first relegated to the "graveyard of canceled releases" because of concerns from the sales and marketing departments over its unprecedented six-minute length and "raucous" rock sound. In the days following the rejection, Considine took a discarded acetate of the song to the New York club Arthur—a newly opened disco popular with celebrities and the media—and asked a DJ to play it. At the crowd's insistence, the demo was played repeatedly, until finally it wore out. The next morning, a disc jockey and a programming director from the city's leading top 40 stations called Columbia and demanded copies. Shortly afterward, on July 20, 1965, "Like a Rolling Stone" was released as a single with "Gates of Eden" as its B-side.
Despite its length, the song is Dylan's most commercially successful release, remaining in the US charts for 12 weeks, where it reached number 2. The song that held it from the top spot was the Beatles' "Help!". The promotional copies released to disc jockeys on July 15 had the first two verses and two refrains on one side of the disk, and the remainder of the song on the other. DJs wishing to play the entire song would simply flip the vinyl over. While many radio stations were reluctant to play "Like a Rolling Stone" in its entirety, public demand eventually forced them to air it in full. This helped the single reach its number 2 peak, several weeks after its release. It was a Top 10 hit in other countries, including Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK.
In its contemporary review, Cash Box described "Like a Rolling Stone" as a "funky, rhythmic ode which proclaims the artist’s philosophy of rugged individualism."
## Music video
In November 2013, forty-eight years after the release of the song, Dylan's website released an official music video for "Like a Rolling Stone". Created by the digital agency Interlude, the video is interactive, allowing viewers to use their keyboards to flip through 16 channels that imitate TV formats, including game shows, shopping networks and reality series. People on each channel appear to lip-sync the song's lyrics. Video director Vania Heymann stated, "I'm using the medium of television to look back right at us – you're flipping yourself to death with switching channels [in real life]." The video contains an hour and 15 minutes' worth of content in all and features appearances from comedians Marc Maron, Carly Aquilino, Jessimae Peluso, and Nicole Byer, rapper Danny Brown, The Price Is Right host Drew Carey, SportsCenter anchor Steve Levy, TV personality Nessa, Jonathan and Drew Scott of Property Brothers, and Pawn Stars cast members Rick Harrison and Austin "Chumlee" Russell. The video was released to publicize the release of a 35-album box set, Bob Dylan: The Complete Album Collection Vol. One, containing Dylan's 35 official studio albums and 11 live albums. The Guinness Book of World Records recorded it as the longest wait for an official music video.
## Live performances
Dylan performed the song live for the first time within days of its release, when he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965, in Newport, Rhode Island. Many of the audience's folk enthusiasts objected to Dylan's use of electric guitars, looking down on rock 'n roll, as Bloomfield put it, as popular amongst "greasers, heads, dancers, people who got drunk and boogied." According to Dylan's friend, music critic Paul Nelson, "The audience [was] booing and yelling 'Get rid of the electric guitar'", while Dylan and his backing musicians gave an uncertain rendition of their new single. Al Kooper, who offers a different version of the crowd's reaction, claims that it was due to the length of the set they had just played, being only 15 minutes while other artists had done 45 minute sets.
Highway 61 Revisited was issued at the end of August 1965. When Dylan went on tour that fall he asked the future members of The Band to accompany him in performing the electric half of the concerts. "Like a Rolling Stone" took the closing slot on his setlist and held it, with rare exceptions, through the end of his 1966 "world tour." On May 17, 1966, during the last leg of the tour, Dylan and his band performed at Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. Just before they started to play the track, an audience member yelled "Judas!", apparently referring to Dylan's supposed "betrayal" of folk music. Dylan responded, "I don't believe you... You're a liar!" With that, he turned to the band, ordering them to "play it fucking loud!".
Since then, "Like a Rolling Stone" has remained a staple in Dylan's concerts, often with revised arrangements. It was included in his 1969 Isle of Wight show and in both his reunion tour with The Band in 1974 and the Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975–76. The song continued to be featured in other tours throughout the 1970s and 1980s. According to Dylan's official website, he performed the song live over 2,000 times, as of 2019.
Live performances of the song are included on Self Portrait (recorded at the Isle of Wight, August 31, 1969), Before the Flood (recorded February 13, 1974), Bob Dylan at Budokan (recorded March 1, 1978), MTV Unplugged (recorded November 18, 1994), The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (recorded in Manchester, UK, May 17, 1966; same recording also available on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack), The Band's 2001 reissue of Rock of Ages (recorded January 1, 1972), and The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981 (Deluxe Edition) (recorded June 27, 1981). In 2016, all Dylan's recorded live performances of the song from 1966 were released in the boxed set The 1966 Live Recordings, with the May 26, 1966 Royal Albert Hall performance released separately on the album The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert.
The July 1965 Newport performance of the song is included in Murray Lerner's film The Other Side of the Mirror, while a May 21, 1966, performance in Newcastle, England is featured in Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home, along with footage of the above-mentioned May 17 heckling incident.
Besides appearing on Highway 61 Revisited, the song's standard release can be found on the compilations Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Biograph, The Best of Bob Dylan (1997), The Essential Bob Dylan, The Best of Bob Dylan (2005), and Dylan. The mono version appears on The Original Mono Recordings. In addition, the early, incomplete studio recording in time appears on The Bootleg Series Vol. 2.
## Legacy
The song's sound has been described as revolutionary in its combination of electric guitar licks, organ chords, and Dylan's voice, at once young and jeeringly cynical. Critic Michael Gray described the track as "a chaotic amalgam of blues, impressionism, allegory, and an intense directness in the central chorus: 'How does it feel'". The song had an enormous impact on popular culture and rock music. Its success made Dylan a pop icon, as Paul Williams notes:
> Dylan had been famous, had been the center of attention, for a long time. But now the ante was being upped again. He'd become a pop star as well as a folk star ... and was, even more than the Beatles, a public symbol of the vast cultural, political, generational changes taking place in the United States and Europe. He was perceived as, and in many ways functioned as, a leader.
Paul Rothchild, producer of the Doors' first five albums, recalled the elation that an American musician had made a record that successfully challenged the primacy of the British Invasion groups. He said,
> What I realized when I was sitting there is that one of US—one of the so-called Village hipsters—was making music that could compete with THEM—the Beatles, and the Stones, and the Dave Clark Five—without sacrificing any of the integrity of folk music or the power of rock'n'roll.
The song had a huge impact on Bruce Springsteen, who was 15 years old when he first heard it. Springsteen described the moment during his speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and also assessed the long-term significance of "Like a Rolling Stone":
> The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind ... The way that Elvis freed your body, Dylan freed your mind, and showed us that because the music was physical did not mean it was anti-intellect. He had the vision and talent to make a pop song so that it contained the whole world. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound, broke through the limitations of what a recording could achieve, and he changed the face of rock'n'roll for ever and ever.
Dylan's contemporaries in 1965 were both startled and challenged by the single. Paul McCartney remembered going around to John Lennon's house in Weybridge to hear the song. According to McCartney, "It seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful ... He showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further." Frank Zappa had a more extreme reaction: "When I heard 'Like a Rolling Stone', I wanted to quit the music business, because I felt: 'If this wins and it does what it's supposed to do, I don't need to do anything else ...' But it didn't do anything. It sold but nobody responded to it in the way that they should have." Nearly forty years later, in 2003, Elvis Costello commented on the innovative quality of the single. "What a shocking thing to live in a world where there was Manfred Mann and the Supremes and Engelbert Humperdinck and here comes 'Like a Rolling Stone'".
Although CBS tried to make the record more "radio friendly" by cutting it in half and spreading it over both sides of the vinyl, both Dylan and fans demanded that the full duration of the recording should be placed on one side and that radio stations play the song in its entirety. The success of "Like a Rolling Stone" was influential in changing the music business convention regarding the length of singles, whereby they were restricted to durations of less than three minutes. In the words of the magazine Rolling Stone, which took its name from the song and the 1950s blues song "Rollin' Stone", "No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time." Richard Austin, of Sotheby's auction house, said: "Before the release of Like a Rolling Stone, music charts were overrun with short and sweet love songs, many clocking in at three minutes or less. By defying convention with six and a half minutes of dark, brooding poetry, Dylan rewrote the rules for pop music."
In 1966, Dylan told Ralph Gleason: "Rolling Stone's the best song I wrote." In 2004, speaking to Robert Hilburn, Dylan still felt that the song had a special place in his work: "It's like a ghost is writing a song like that, it gives you the song and it goes away. You don't know what it means. Except that the ghost picked me to write the song."
More than 50 years since its release, "Like a Rolling Stone" remains highly regarded among commentators. James Gerard, writing for AllMusic, characterized the song as "one of the most self-righteous and eloquent indictments ever committed to wax", and declared it significant for beginning a new phase in Dylan's career as a songwriter and performer. In an analysis of Dylan's vocal performance in "Like a Rolling Stone" published in Far Out, Sam Kemp highlighted the ironic quality his delivery lent the song, while also praising the ambiguity of the lyrics.
"Like a Rolling Stone" generally ranks highly in polls of the greatest songs ever written, measured by reviewers and fellow songwriters. A 2002 ranking by Uncut and a 2005 poll in Mojo both rated it as Dylan's number one song. As for his personal views on such polls, Dylan told Ed Bradley in a 2004 interview on 60 Minutes that he never pays attention to them, because they change frequently. Dylan's point was illustrated in the "100 Greatest Songs of All Time poll" by Mojo in 2000, which included two Dylan singles, but not "Like a Rolling Stone". Five years later, the magazine named it his number one song. Rolling Stone picked "Like a Rolling Stone" as the number two single of the past 25 years in 1989, and then in 2004 placed the song at number one on its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In 2010, Rolling Stone again placed "Like a Rolling Stone" at the top of their list of "500 Greatest Songs Of All Time". Rolling Stone then re-ranked it at number 4 in their 2021 "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. In 2006, Pitchfork Media placed it at number 4 on its list of "200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s". In 2020, The Guardian and GQ ranked the song number one and number two, respectively, on their lists of the 50 greatest Bob Dylan songs.
On June 24, 2014, Sotheby's sold Dylan's original hand-written lyrics of "Like a Rolling Stone" at a New York auction devoted to rock memorabilia. The lyrics were sold for \$2 million, a record price for a popular music manuscript.
## Accolades
## Personnel
- Bob Dylan – vocals, electric guitar, harmonica
- Mike Bloomfield – electric guitar
- Bruce Langhorne – tambourine
- Al Kooper – Hammond organ
- Frank Owens – tack piano
- Joe Macho, Jr. – bass guitar
- Bobby Gregg – drums
## Jimi Hendrix Experience versions
During the earlier part of his career with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, guitarist Jimi Hendrix occasionally performed "Like a Rolling Stone" in concert. Hendrix was an admirer of Bob Dylan, and especially liked "Like a Rolling Stone"; "It made me feel that I wasn't the only one who'd ever felt so low", Hendrix explained.
A live recording from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival is the best known version and was first released in 1970 on the split album with Otis Redding Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival. Music critic Greil Marcus described the atmosphere of the Hendrix recording as "Huge chords ride over the beginning of each verse like rain clouds; the tune is taken very slowly, with Hendrix's thick, street-talk drawl sounding nothing at all like Dylan's Midwestern dust storm." The Experience's performance has been re-released several times, including on Jimi Plays Monterey (1986) and Live at Monterey (2007) albums and associated DVDs.
## Chart performance
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
|
1,671,117 |
Sid Barnes
| 1,165,135,981 |
Australian cricketer (1916–1973)
|
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"1973 deaths",
"1973 suicides",
"Australia Test cricketers",
"Australian Army personnel of World War II",
"Australian Army soldiers",
"Australian cricketers",
"Barbiturates-related deaths",
"Cricketers from Sydney",
"Drug-related deaths in Australia",
"New South Wales cricketers",
"People with bipolar disorder",
"Suicides in New South Wales",
"The Invincibles (cricket)"
] |
Sidney George Barnes (5 June 1916 – 16 December 1973) was an Australian cricketer and cricket writer, who played 13 Test matches between 1938 and 1948. Able to open the innings or bat down the order, Barnes was regarded as one of Australia's finest batsmen in the period immediately following World War II. He helped create an enduring record when scoring 234 in the second Test against England at Sydney in December 1946; exactly the same score as his captain, Don Bradman, in the process setting a world-record 405-run fifth wicket partnership. Barnes averaged 63.05 over 19 innings in a career that, like those of most of his contemporaries, was interrupted by World War II.
He made his first-class debut at the end of the 1936–37 season when selected for New South Wales, and he was later included in the team for the 1938 Australian tour of England, making his Test debut in the final international of the series. On the resumption of Test cricket after the war, he was picked as the opening partner to Arthur Morris. Barnes was a member of The Invincibles, the 1948 Australian team that toured England without losing a single match. Retiring from cricket at the end of that tour, Barnes attempted a comeback to Test cricket in the 1951–52 season that was ultimately and controversially unsuccessful.
Barnes had a reputation as an eccentric and was frequently the subject of controversy. This included a celebrated libel case, following his exclusion from the national team in 1951–52 for "reasons other than cricket ability". He was later involved in an incident where, acting as twelfth man, he performed his duties on the ground in a suit and tie (rather than 'whites'), carrying a bizarre range of superfluous items. Despite this reputation, Barnes was a shrewd businessman who used the opportunities afforded by cricket to supplement his income through trading, journalism and property development. Increasing paranoia brought about by bipolar disorder saw Barnes lose many of the friends he had made through the game as he sought treatment for his depression. On 16 December 1973, he was found dead at his home in the Sydney suburb of Collaroy; he had ingested barbiturates and bromide in a probable suicide.
## Early years
Barnes was born in 1916 in Annandale, an inner suburb of Sydney. However, in his autobiography, he claims to have been born in 1918 or 1919 in Queensland, and his military service record has his date of birth as 5 June 1917. He was the third child of Alfred Percival Barnes and Hilda May Barnes (née Jeffery), both from farming families near Tamworth in northern New South Wales. After marrying, the couple left Tamworth to take up a lease on a remote sheep station near Hughenden in North Queensland. Before Sid was born, Alfred died from typhoid fever, caused by drinking contaminated water on the family property. After his death, Hilda, widowed and pregnant with her latest child, moved to Sydney with her children and stayed with her sister, where Sid was born. From her husband's estate, Hilda Barnes mother was able to purchase and renovate real estate in Stanmore and Leichhardt, New South Wales, to let or sell. Later in life, Barnes would recount how, as a child, he used to collect the rents for his mother.
### Childhood and club cricket
Barnes attended Stanmore Public School and, although not a scholar, was a keen participant in sporting activities. His introduction to cricket came via his older brother, Horrie; Horrie was a useful batsman who played in the local Western Suburbs Churches league and paid Sid sixpence to bowl to him after he finished work. Taking an interest in the game, Sid had trials for the school team and was eventually selected in the first XI. An early controversy saw Barnes suspended for three weeks for disputing an umpire's decision. Successes for both his school team and his local club team, St. Augustine, saw him acquire the nickname The Governor-General—the nickname of Australian Test player, Charlie Macartney, and he was selected for New South Wales Schoolboys to play teams from Victoria and Queensland.
In 1932–33, Barnes joined the Petersham club, and began playing in the third XI. Former Test batsman Tommy Andrews became his mentor at the club and in 1933–34, Barnes made his first-grade cricket debut as a batsman/wicket-keeper against Paddington, facing the bowling of Hunter Hendry and Alan McGilvray. He was soon successful, scoring a century against Manly in February. Even as a young and inexperienced cricketer, he showed a "brash confidence in his own ability." When praised for his batting by the great Test bowler Bill O'Reilly, Barnes responded "Thanks very much, you didn't bowl too badly yourself", leaving O'Reilly speechless.
This success led Barnes to consider cricket as a potential career. However, his mother and stepfather were concerned about the likelihood of cricket providing him with a living. In response, Barnes took a job with a garage in Mosman but after finding that the necessary travel interfered too much with playing cricket, he found alternative employment, demonstrating motorbikes in the city.
### First-class cricket
Barnes had come to the attention of the New South Wales selectors by the 1936–37 season and was included as twelfth man in the side to play the visiting English side, taking a catch on the boundary to dismiss Stan Worthington. He made his first-class debut in the final Sheffield Shield match of the season, against South Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Batting at number five, Barnes scored 31 and 44, twice being dismissed LBW by the leg spinner Frank Ward. Whilst fielding, Barnes managed to find himself in controversy again, running out Vic Richardson, the opposition captain, after the end of the over was called. The square leg umpire had not heard the call of "Over" and upheld the appeal, much to the disgust of Richardson. The New South Wales captain Stan McCabe, whom Barnes idolized, withdrew the appeal.
Barnes was selected for New South Wales for the opening match of the 1937–38 season against Queensland making 68 in a rain-affected match. Against the touring New Zealanders, Barnes fell just short of his maiden first-class century, scoring 97. He appeared to have reached the landmark when scoring 127 not out against Western Australia, but the New South Wales Cricket Association retrospectively deemed the match to be not of first-class status, angering Barnes. He finally scored his maiden first-class century (110) against Victoria in the final game of the season, completing his hundred while bleeding profusely after being struck on the jaw by a ball delivered by Ernie McCormick. As a result of his performances over the season (scoring over 800 runs, averaging 50.56), Barnes was selected as the youngest member of the Australian cricket team to tour England in 1938.
## Test cricket
### Pre-war debut
Unfortunately for Barnes, he broke his wrist while exercising on the sea voyage to England for the 1938 tour, keeping the injury secret until the tourists had departed Gibraltar, for fear of being sent home. On arrival in England, he therefore did not play an innings until the last day of June, missing exactly half of the 30 first-class matches scheduled for the tour, including the first two Tests, both of which were drawn. His first innings was 42 against Derbyshire and he shared in a fourth wicket stand of 176 with Bill Brown, who made an unbeaten 265. The third Test was a wash-out and he was not picked for the fourth, which the Australians won, although in his autobiography he claimed that he was considered as a candidate to be wicketkeeper, having deputised for Ben Barnett in that role in tour matches against Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire. In the event, his Test debut came in the final Test, played at The Oval. Barnes had to field for 16 hours as England amassed a total of 903 for seven declared, then the highest Test score. Barnes bowled 38 overs in the innings and took the seventh wicket, that of Arthur Wood, for 84 runs. With both Don Bradman and Jack Fingleton injured and unable to bat, Australia struggled – England won by an innings and 579 runs – still the largest winning margin in Test cricket history; but Barnes played innings of 41 and 33 and, according to Wisden, "well justified his choice". In all first-class matches on the tour, Barnes scored 720 runs, and reached 90 three times, though without going on to a first-class century. He scored 140 in a two-day match against Durham, which was not considered first-class.
His international career was then put on hold, as all foreign tours were suspended during World War II. He continued to play first-class cricket in Australia, before enlisting in the Second Australian Imperial Force in May 1942. Barnes's time in the military was short. A man who was proud of his appearance, he had a uniform made to measure when the one issued did not fit. He met champion golfer Norman Von Nida early into his enlistment and the two were assigned to the 1st Armoured Division in Greta. A shortage of tanks and the military regimen led to boredom and Barnes used his hitherto ignored trade background to his advantage, seeking a release to join a tank-making company, which was granted. Von Nida and Barnes remained friends and business partners for many years afterwards.
### Post-war series
After scoring 1,050 runs (including six centuries) at an average of 75.00 in the 1940–41 season, Barnes played little cricket until 1945–46, when he scored centuries in five successive matches for New South Wales. He was picked for the 1945–46 Australian tour of New Zealand and played in the representative match that was later designated as the first Test match between the two countries: he made 54 as Australia won easily. The post-war period also saw a new approach to batting on the part of Barnes. He discarded his aggressive and flamboyant shot-making and re-invented himself as a watchful, more defensive player, which made his scoring more prolific, although less crowd pleasing.
Barnes was made captain of New South Wales for the 1946–47 Australian season, though he only managed to play three matches for the state team. One of those was the match against the touring MCC team, and Barnes was approached during the match about becoming an opening batsman for the forthcoming Test series. He wrote in his autobiography: "I had never opened before and was a little dubious. I had, however, struck new balls at different periods of innings and was not afraid of that." He also liked the idea of batting ahead of Bradman in the batting order: "Much better, I thought, to get in before him than to come later, like flat beer after champagne."
Barnes was first-choice as an opener with Arthur Morris throughout the Test series, although it was not until the Third Test that they had a first-wicket partnership of any substance. Morris had broken into the team as an opener after an injury sidelined Bill Brown for the entire season.
The First Test at Brisbane was dominated by Australia, a pattern that was to be a feature of the series, although Barnes contributed only 31 to the total of 645 which brought an innings victory. Barnes displayed his liking for slightly aggressive practical jokes in this match: during a break for a particularly ferocious thunderstorm, he
> got a huge block of ice out of the tub in which our drinks were kept, staggered to the side of the dressing-room and tossed it on to the roof over the English dressing-room. It caused a noise for a start that brought all the Englishmen running and then it came over the side of the gutter, crashed on to the lawn and slithered down the grass. Those English eyes certainly did stand out.
Bradman had words with Barnes after this match about his new role as an opener. Barnes later wrote:
> He asked me how I liked it. I said it suited me. 'You batted very well in this game,' he said, 'but not quite as an opener. You were looking for runs all the time. I think what you want to watch as an opener is not getting out ... What is needed from my openers, and is most important, is patience and plenty of it.' I was completely willing to be guided by anything that Bradman wanted me to do.
Years later, Barnes wrote about the effect this had on his batting style.
> There was one angle about this change of batting position that didn't appeal to me. I am, by nature, a forcing batsman. I like to take the shine out of a bowler [sic] and I love to hear the ball rattling the pickets, or soaring over the fence ... My footwork was quick and I often caused delight by stepping back feet outside the leg stump and square-cutting ... If I were to become an Australian Test opening batsman I would have to conform to standard. I would have to put up the shutters ... And so I came to the Second Test in Sydney ready to drape myself in the gloomy colors of a Test opening batsman.
It was during the Second Test at Sydney in December 1946, that Barnes made a lasting impression on the world game. Having opened the innings, he made his top Test score of 234 and helped to set a world-record 405 run fifth wicket partnership with Don Bradman, a record that still stands today. On a rain-affected pitch Arthur Morris was out at 1/24 and Ian Johnson came out as a nightwatchman He and Barnes angered the crowd by launching into a series of bad light appeals – up to 12 were counted – before the umpires gave way and play was ended with an hour to spare. This ensured that Australia would not have to play on a sticky wicket and allowed Bradman to rest his leg until play resumed on the Monday. After the series Barnes said on radio:
> We could have played on, but it was a Test match and we just had to win. I realised something drastic had to be done or three wickets might be lost. So I appealed after every second ball. I complained of the people moving about, the light, and, in fact, anything, in an effort to get the appeal upheld. Hammond and Yardley were inspecting the wet pitch. I knew there was a chance of losing valuable wickets so I just kept on appealing until the umpires answered me.
Barnes played carefully on the still-suspect pitch the following day, and, late in the afternoon, Bradman, lower in the order than usual due to a leg injury, joined Barnes with the score at 4/159. Over six and a half hours later, Bradman was out for 234. Barnes was dismissed just four balls later, also for 234, having batted for over ten hours. In his autobiography, Barnes stated that the coincidence of scores was intended. "Lots of people have asked me whether I deliberately threw my wicket away at 234. The answer is yes." He confirmed to an interviewer many years later that "it wouldn't be right for someone to make more runs than Sir Donald Bradman". E.W. Swanton wrote that this "could well have been so for he was a man of quixotic mood and temperament". However the England bowler, Alec Bedser wrote "It was when I was bowling to Sid at Sydney that I first discovered that I could move the ball to leg by use of my wrist and fingers...I held the ball in the same manner as a leg-break bowler with the fingers across the seam...and on pitching I was surprised to see the ball go away like a leg-break. It also surprised Sid Barnes". This would make Barnes the first batsman to be dismissed by Bedser's "Special Ball" which would claim Bradman for a duck in the Fourth Test at Adelaide.
Barnes injured his hand during fielding practice before the Third Test, and although he went on to play in that game (scoring 45 and 32), he opted out of batting in a state game – according to his autobiography, this cost him the New South Wales captaincy – and he missed the fourth Test. He returned for the final Test and top-scored with 71 in Australia's first innings, adding 30 in the second.
Barnes went to England in 1947. In his autobiography, he claimed that he went as a representative for a wine and spirits company, although after the initial mention of that there is no further word and he appears also to have dealt in commodities that were in short supply because of rationing in England. Once in England, he was approached by Burnley to play as a professional in Lancashire League cricket, which he did for a while before finding it "too much of a drag" and resigning.
Barnes returned to Australia for the 1947–48 season, keen to win a place on the 1948 tour to England. He was worried that having played as a professional in the Lancashire League would damage his chance of further Test cricket, but at the same time suggested that he had offers from other Lancashire League teams to fall back on should he not be picked. There was also concern that, with his wife now living in Scotland, he would breach the Australian rule that wives were not allowed to travel with Test cricketers. In fact, lack of form and opportunity were greater threats to Barnes's continued Test career. Arriving back with several state games having already been played, he failed to make runs for New South Wales and was not picked for the first two Tests against the Indian tourists, Bill Brown taking over as opener with Morris.
The match between Victoria and New South Wales was Barnes's chance to redeem himself. Wisden reported it thus:
> Barnes needed a score to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the Test Selectors and he spent all Saturday over 131 runs while 20,000 impatient spectators barracked loudly. His dismissal on the third day evoked cheers all round the ground.
He followed that century (158 in total) with a similarly plodding 80 not out in the second innings, and was picked for the third Test, with Brown dropped after a series of low scores in the first two Tests. Barnes made only 12 and 15, jeopardising his place, but what Wisden termed "another of his dour, determined but faultless innings for top score" in the New South Wales game against South Australia ensured a second chance. In the fourth Test at Adelaide he made 112 and put on 236 with Bradman for the second wicket. With 33 in the final match of the series, his place on the 1948 tour was secure, though he had to give assurances about the amount of contact he would have with his wife, still living in Scotland, before he was confirmed.
### The Invincibles tour
The 1948 Australia team that toured England has become known as The Invincibles, because they did not lose a single game. Following their performances during the Australian season, Barnes and Morris were favoured as Australia's first-choice opening pair, while Brown batted out of position in the middle order in the first two Tests.
Before the second Test at Lord's, Barnes wagered £8 at 15/1 on himself to score a century. He made a duck in the first innings but ensured success in the second, making 141.
Barnes and Morris shared century opening partnerships at Lord's and The Oval, where their 117 run stand dwarfed the 52 all out made by the entire England team. In addition to his century at Lord's, Barnes made three other scores over 60 in the series.
When fielding, Barnes stationed himself as close to the bat as possible at either forward short-leg or point. The report of the tour in the 1949 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, stated that Barnes's fielding was as important a factor as his batting in The Invincibles''' success:
> Probably a number of batsmen were sufficiently affected by his close attendance to cause them to lose concentration on the bowler running up, but equally important was the fact that the knowledge of his presence influenced opponents to avoid strokes in that direction. The Barnes demeanour in the field illustrated the general purposefulness of the Australians.
However, he received criticism for this approach and it resulted in him missing the fourth Test at Headingley through injury. In England's first innings of the third Test, he was hit in the ribs by a full-blooded pull shot from Dick Pollard from the bowling of Ian Johnson, and had to be carried from the pitch by four policemen. The following day, he collapsed while practising in the nets, and when he went in to bat at number six, he collapsed again and had to retire hurt. After this, he was taken to hospital where he spent 10 days before rejoining the tour for the Derbyshire match that followed the fourth Test.
Barnes thus played in four of the five Tests, missing the fourth Test through injury. He scored 329 runs, averaging 82.25. During the first-class tour matches, Barnes's performance was less spectacular. In all first-class matches on the tour, he amassed 1354 runs, averaging 56.41. Barnes made 176 in 255 minutes against Surrey early in the tour, but, apart from his Test hundred, his only other century came in the final tour match, when the final 50 runs of his 151 against the H. D. G. Leveson-Gower XI at the Scarborough cricket festival came in just 25 minutes.
## Later playing career
An important concern for Barnes, when returning from the United Kingdom to Australia, was to avoid paying customs duties on the enormous amount of goods he acquired through various deals during the tour. This included good quality English cloth, in very short supply in Australia at this time. Hearing a rumour that Customs officials were waiting in Sydney for him, Barnes disembarked at Melbourne and travelled to Sydney by train. The move worked and he sold his stock at a substantial profit, conservatively estimated to be equal to his tour fee.
Barnes played in Bradman's testimonial match at the MCG in December 1948, but otherwise made himself unavailable for first-class cricket, preferring to pursue business interests. He wrote a regular column for Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, prosaically titled "Like It or Lump It", in which he often criticised the administration of the game and the amounts paid to Australia's leading cricketers. Barnes was one of a number of cricket writers of the immediate post-war era who adopted a confrontational tabloid style of journalism, in contrast to the more sedate reporting of the 1930s.
### Libel case
At the beginning of the 1951–52 season, Barnes had a change of heart and returned to the New South Wales team in a bid to play Test cricket again. He approached Aubrey Oxlade, the chairman of Australian cricket's Board of Control, to ask if there was any impediment to his return to the Australian team. Oxlade told Barnes that he would be judged solely on his batting performances.
During his absence from the Test team, the Australian selectors had been unsuccessful in their attempts to find a reliable partner for Arthur Morris to open the batting. Barnes started the season solidly and, in the last match before the team for the third Test against the West Indies was chosen, he hit 107 against Victoria. The selectors duly picked him for the match, then passed the team list to the Board of Control for ratification. The Board vetoed the inclusion of Barnes and requested the nomination of a replacement player. Unwilling to accept the blame for Barnes's omission, the selectors deliberately deferred their decision on the replacement. When the team was not announced at the scheduled time, journalists uncovered the story and Barnes became a cause célèbre for many weeks, missing all of the remaining Tests. Speculation abounded as to the nature of his supposed misdeeds. These included jumping the turnstile at a ground when he forgot his player's pass; insulting the Royal Family; theft from team-mates; drunkenness; and stealing a car.
The Board of Control had granted themselves the power to exclude a player from the national team "on grounds other than cricket ability" following the poor behaviour of some members of the 1912 team that toured England. They had a secret dossier, compiled during the season, documenting Barnes's behaviour and they doctored the minutes of the meeting at which they discussed his selection. Publicly, the Board remained silent on their policy and how it related to Barnes. On the field, Barnes responded with an innings of 128 in three hours against Queensland; off the field, he sought answers from the administrators, but was frustrated by their evasiveness. His form tapered off during the closing stages of the season and he finished with 433 first-class runs at an average of 39.36.
Just as the furore appeared to have died down, in April 1952 Sydney's Daily Mirror published a letter from a reader, Jacob Raith. Responding to a letter in support of Barnes, Raith sided with the Board and suggested that his character was to blame for the omission. Acting on legal advice, Barnes sued Raith for libel and engaged Sydney's leading barrister, Jack Shand KC, as counsel.
The case began in Sydney's District Court on 21 August 1952. Shand's examination of the various Board members appearing for the defendant revealed the Board's maladministration, pettiness and its acceptance of rumour as fact. No firm reason was put forward for the omission of Barnes and a division within the Board was evident when several of its members spoke highly of him. As Barnes began his testimony on the second day of proceedings, Raith's counsel announced settlement of the case and commented to the court, "seldom in the history of libel actions has such a plea failed so completely and utterly". Barnes was vindicated with a full public apology.
Although the court case portrayed "an awful image of the chaos and bigotry under which Australian cricket was administered", it did little to alter the Board's culture. The next major court case involving Australian cricket, the World Series Cricket challenges of 1977–78 demonstrated that the Board was still run as a "closed shop", over 25 years later. In an analysis of the Barnes libel case, Gideon Haigh wrote, "far from becoming a watershed in player-administrator relations, it may even have discouraged players contemplating defiance of the Board but lacking the wherewithal to retain a hotshot criminal barrister."
### Twelfth man incident
Resuming for New South Wales in 1952–53, Barnes scored 152 against Victoria in the last match before the beginning of the Test series against South Africa. Nevertheless, the selectors overlooked him for the first Test and in the following state match, against South Australia at the Adelaide Oval, Barnes offered to act as twelfth man to provide an opportunity for a younger player, Ray Flockton. During a drinks break on the second day of the match, he appeared on the ground in a suit and tie, (rather than 'whites') carrying superfluous items such as cigars, iced towels, a mirror and comb, a radio and a clothes brush. The crowd initially responded well to the joke, but their mood soured when the interval extended beyond its scheduled time and Barnes received criticism for delaying the game. The South Australian team, captained by future Australian selector Phil Ridings, officially complained to the New South Wales Cricket Association (NSWCA), which asked Barnes to express regret over the incident. Despite the association's support for Barnes during his problems of the previous season, he prevaricated. Eventually, the NSWCA forwarded a written apology on his behalf.
Barnes appeared just once more for New South Wales, against South Africa at New Year 1953, then made himself unavailable for selection, conceding that "his card had been marked". The Australian team toured England in 1953 and lost the Ashes after holding them for 19 years. Barnes wrote Eyes on the Ashes, a book about the tour that included trenchant criticism of the behaviour of the Australian team, which did not go down well with some of his former team-mates.
## Style and personality
Barnes gripped the bat very low on the handle and bent over so far in his stance that the knuckles of his right hand were level with his knees. He stood with his heels almost together and the toes of his left foot pointing toward extra cover, which left him open-chested when facing the bowler. A noticeable flourish in his backlift enabled him to follow the swinging delivery and play it late if necessary. His first movement was back and across the crease to cover the stumps from the view of the bowler, putting him in position to play the hook, leg glance, sweep and his favourite square cut shot.
Journalist Ray Robinson called Barnes the Artful Dodger of cricket, alluding to both his batting style and his off-field business dealings, and wrote that he "would rather steal a run like a pickpocket than hit an honest four with a straightforward stroke." Robinson summarised his safety-first approach in going so far back as the bowler delivered:
> Though this routine made his play air-tight in one way, it simplified opposing captains' field-placing to curb his scoring, it left him with a back-foot addict's liability to go leg-before-wicket or be caught behind on either side, and it allowed his attackers to bowl their most awkward length ... he could have made more runs since the war as a stroke-player, and won popular backing as a candidate for the title of world's best batsman, instead of the austere distinction of looking the hardest Australian to get out.
David Frith wrote of Bill Brown's memories of Barnes as a person, and his controversial fielding:
> 'Bagga' Barnes was also Bill's room-mate, and his affection for his late lamented pal, a lovable rogue, was obvious. He recalled the furore over Barnes's provocative field positioning, extremely close at silly mid-on, and how criticism of his foot being too close to the mown pitch prompted him to plonk his boot a couple of feet into the forbidden territory – and a couple of feet more when the English crowd roared at him.
He was a part-time leg break bowler, taking 57 wickets in first-class cricket at a useful average of 32.21. Barnes's leg break spun very little, but he had a topspinner which hurried onto the batsman and yielded him many wickets. Barnes was also a substitute wicket-keeper and a versatile fieldsman. During his career, he was noted for his disaffection for cricket administrators and umpires. On the 1948 tour of England, after an Australian appeal was turned down by umpire Alec Skelding, he grabbed a stray dog and presented it to Skelding, stating: "Now all you want is a white stick". A complex character, Barnes, "rarely forgave a slight or forgot a good turn. Stocky, with blue eyes and powerful wrists, he had a passion for physical fitness, and was an enthusiastic big-game fisherman and golfer".
## Life outside cricket
Barnes married a school teacher, Alison Margaret Edward, on 11 June 1942. Alison was the daughter of Kenneth Edward, a Scottish Professor of Theology at the University of Sydney. The couple met at a country dance, when Barnes, on his way back from an exhibition match in Katoomba, was bet the price of the meal that he could not get the young girl to dance with him. Within twelve months the pair were married.
Outside of cricket, Barnes followed his mother into property development (see above) and at various times entered into partnerships with Keith Miller and Norman Von Nida. His suspicious nature, which grew as time passed, saw these partnerships and developments end in arguments and recriminations. While Barnes was not a millionaire, he was a successful and organised businessman.
As a writer, Barnes had no claims to literary talent; his copy was ghost-written, in all likelihood by his friend Jack Tier and later by former professional rugby league footballer Peter Peters. His writing was of a provocative tone; his column in the Daily Express during the 1953 tour was called "The Aussie They Couldn't Gag". His forthright opinions certainly cost him friends and hardened the opinions of others about him. At the end of the 1953 tour, he published Eyes on the Ashes, and his autobiography, It Isn't Cricket. He also wrote The Ashes Ablaze in 1955, and turned to full-time writing, mostly for Sydney's The Daily Telegraph''. His columns were perceived as being deliberately controversial, and, as time went by, increasingly regarded as carping.
In later life, Barnes suffered from depressive illness. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a combination of medication, mainly diazepam, and electroconvulsive therapy. He spent much of his last years in and out of clinics seeking treatment for his condition. In 1973, Barnes died at his home in Collaroy, one of Sydney's northern beach suburbs, from barbiturate and bromide poisoning. Although the medications were certainly self-administered, the coroner could not "determine intent".
## Statistical analysis
Only six players with ten or more completed innings have achieved an end-of-career average in excess of 60. Barnes's 63.05 in 19 innings ranks him as number three in the history of Test cricket, behind Sir Donald Bradman (99.94, 80 innings) and Stewie Dempster (65.72, 15 innings).
Barnes's short career was dominated by his monumental double hundred, but he was a consistent performer, as the chart (left) reveals. Age did not seem to diminish his abilities; in his last eight Test innings, aged 31–32, he passed 50 five times and scored two of his three Test hundreds.
Comparing players from Test cricket is an exercise usually flawed by the different conditions, rules of the day and oppositions faced. However, a useful comparison can be made between Barnes and Bradman because they were contemporaries in the same team. Bradman is generally acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time, fully a third better (statistically) than the next best man in history (see completed career averages chart, right). Barnes and Bradman played together in three series. In those series, Barnes's averages bear comparison to Bradman's, particularly in the more combative Ashes series:
Another way of viewing a player's performance without distortion is by using the world rankings, which have been applied retrospectively to assess the careers of past players. However, the ratings employ a measure to "damp down the oscillation of points of new players". Because Barnes played only 19 Test innings, his performances are weighted to just under 85% of their full value. Consequently, even in his own day, he is rated as no better than seventh in the world, at his peak.
## Test match performance
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60,112 |
Battle of Midway
| 1,173,853,989 |
Major naval battle in World War II
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[
"1942 in Japan",
"1942 in the United States",
"Battle of Midway",
"History of Midway Atoll",
"History of cryptography",
"Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service",
"Japan–United States military relations",
"June 1942 events",
"Naval aviation operations and battles",
"Naval battles of World War II involving Japan",
"Naval battles of World War II involving the United States",
"Pacific theatre of World War II",
"United States Marine Corps in World War II",
"United States naval aviation",
"World War II aerial operations and battles of the Pacific theatre"
] |
The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place 4–7 June 1942, six months after the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank J. Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chūichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondō north of Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare", while naval historian Craig Symonds called it "one of the most consequential naval engagements in world history, ranking alongside Salamis, Trafalgar, and Tsushima Strait, as both tactically decisive and strategically influential".
In response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo, the Japanese leadership planned a "barrier" strategy to extend Japan's defensive perimeter. They hoped to lure the American aircraft carriers into a trap, clearing the seas for Japanese attacks on Midway, Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii. The plan was undermined by faulty Japanese anticipations of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions. Crucially, U.S. cryptographers were able to determine the date and location of the planned attack, enabling the forewarned United States Navy to prepare its own ambush.
Four Japanese and three American aircraft carriers participated in the battle. The Japanese fleet carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and Hiryū, part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—were sunk, as was the heavy cruiser Mikuma. The United States lost the carrier Yorktown and the destroyer Hammann, while the carriers USS Enterprise and USS Hornet survived the battle fully intact.
After Midway and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's capacity to replace its losses in materiel (particularly aircraft carriers) and men (especially well-trained pilots and maintenance crewmen) rapidly became insufficient to cope with mounting casualties, while the United States' massive industrial and training capabilities made losses far easier to replace. The Battle of Midway, along with the Guadalcanal campaign, is widely considered a turning point in the Pacific War.
## Background
After expanding the war in the Pacific to include western outposts, the Japanese Empire had attained its initial strategic goals quickly, taking British Hong Kong, the Philippines, British Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia). The Dutch East Indies, with its vital oil resources, was particularly important to Japan. Because of this, preliminary planning for the second phase of operations commenced as early as January 1942.
Because of strategic disagreements between the Imperial Army (IJA) and Imperial Navy (IJN), and infighting between the Navy's Imperial General Headquarters and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's Combined Fleet, a follow-up strategy was not formed until April 1942. Yamamoto finally won the bureaucratic struggle with a thinly veiled threat to resign, after which his plan for the Central Pacific was adopted.
Yamamoto's primary strategic goal was the elimination of America's carrier forces, which he regarded as the principal threat to the overall Pacific campaign. This concern was acutely heightened by the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942, in which 16 United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-25 Mitchell bombers launched from USS Hornet bombed targets in Tokyo and several other Japanese cities. The raid, while militarily insignificant, was a shock to the Japanese and showed the existence of a gap in the defenses around the Japanese home islands as well as the vulnerability of Japanese territory to American bombers.
This, and other successful hit-and-run raids by American carriers in the South Pacific, showed that they were still a threat, although seemingly reluctant to be drawn into an all-out battle. Yamamoto reasoned that another air attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor would induce all of the American fleet to sail out to fight, including the carriers. However, considering the increased strength of American land-based airpower on the Hawaiian Islands since the 7 December 1941 attack, he judged that it was too risky to attack Pearl Harbor directly.
Instead, Yamamoto selected Midway, a tiny atoll at the extreme northwest end of the Hawaiian Island chain, approximately 1,300 mi (1,100 nmi; 2,100 km) from Oahu. This meant that Midway was outside the effective range of almost all the American aircraft stationed on the main Hawaiian Islands. Midway was not especially important in the larger scheme of Japan's intentions, but the Japanese felt the Americans would consider Midway a vital outpost of Pearl Harbor and would therefore be compelled to defend it vigorously. The U.S. did consider Midway vital: after the battle, the establishment of a U.S. submarine base on Naval Air Facility Midway Island allowed submarines operating from Pearl Harbor to refuel and re-provision, extending their radius of operations by 1,200 mi (1,900 km). In addition to serving as a seaplane base, Midway's airstrips also served as a forward staging point for bomber attacks on Wake Island.
### Yamamoto's plan
Typical of Japanese naval planning during World War II, Yamamoto's battle plan for taking Midway (named Operation MI) was exceedingly complex. It required the careful and timely coordination of multiple battle groups over hundreds of miles of open sea. His design was also predicated on optimistic intelligence suggesting that USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, forming Task Force 16, were the only carriers available to the Pacific Fleet. During the Battle of the Coral Sea one month earlier, USS Lexington had been sunk and USS Yorktown suffered so much damage that the Japanese believed she too had been lost. However, following hasty repairs at Pearl Harbor, Yorktown sortied and ultimately played a critical role in the discovery and eventual destruction of the Japanese fleet carriers at Midway. Finally, much of Yamamoto's planning, coinciding with the general feeling among the Japanese leadership at the time, was based on a gross misjudgment of American morale, which was believed to be debilitated from the string of Japanese victories in the preceding months.
Yamamoto felt deception would be required to lure the U.S. fleet into a fatally compromised situation. To this end, he dispersed his forces so that their full extent (particularly his battleships) would be concealed from the Americans prior to battle. Critically, Yamamoto's supporting battleships and cruisers trailed Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's carrier force by several hundred miles. They were intended to come up and destroy whatever elements of the U.S. fleet might come to Midway's defense once Nagumo's carriers had weakened them sufficiently for a daylight gun battle. This tactic was doctrine in most major navies of the time.
What Yamamoto did not know was that the U.S. had broken parts of the main Japanese naval code (dubbed JN-25 by the Americans), divulging many details of his plan to the enemy. His emphasis on dispersal also meant none of his formations was in a position to support the others. For instance, despite the fact that Nagumo's carriers were expected to carry out strikes against Midway and bear the brunt of American counterattacks, the only warships in his fleet larger than the screening force of twelve destroyers were two Kongō-class fast battleships, two heavy cruisers, and one light cruiser. By contrast, Yamamoto and Kondo had between them two light carriers, five battleships, four heavy cruisers, and two light cruisers, none of which saw action at Midway.
The light carriers of the trailing forces and Yamamoto's three battleships were unable to keep pace with the carriers of the Kidō Butai and so could not have sailed in company with them. The Kidō Butai would sail into range at best speed so as to increase the chance of surprise, and would not have ships spread out across the ocean guiding the enemy toward it. If the other parts of the invasion force needed more defense, the Kidō Butai would make best speed to defend them. Hence the slower ships could not be with the Kidō Butai. The distance between Yamamoto and Kondo's forces and Nagumo's carriers had grave implications during the battle. The invaluable reconnaissance capability of the scout planes carried by the cruisers and carriers, as well as the additional anti-aircraft capability of the cruisers and the other two battleships of the Kongō-class in the trailing forces, were unavailable to Nagumo.
### Aleutian invasion
In order to obtain support from the IJA for the Midway operation, the IJN agreed to support their invasion of the United States through the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska, part of the organized incorporated Alaska Territory. The IJA occupied these islands to place the Japanese home islands out of range of U.S. land-based bombers in Alaska. Similarly, most Americans feared that the occupied islands would be used as bases for Japanese bombers to attack strategic targets and population centers along the West Coast of the United States.
The Japanese operations in the Aleutians (Operation AL) removed yet more ships that could otherwise have augmented the force striking Midway. Whereas many earlier historical accounts considered the Aleutians operation as a feint to draw American forces away, according to the original Japanese battle plan, AL was intended to be launched simultaneously with the attack on Midway. A one-day delay in the sailing of Nagumo's task force resulted in Operation AL beginning a day before the Midway attack.
## Prelude
### American reinforcements
To do battle with an enemy expected to muster four or five carriers, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, needed every available flight deck. He already had Vice Admiral William Halsey's two-carrier (Enterprise and Hornet) task force at hand, though Halsey was stricken with shingles and had to be replaced by Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, Halsey's escort commander. Nimitz also hurriedly recalled Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's task force, including the carrier Yorktown, from the South West Pacific Area.
Despite estimates that Yorktown, damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea, would require several months of repairs at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, her elevators were intact and her flight deck largely so. The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard worked around the clock, and in 72 hours she was restored to a battle-ready state, judged good enough for two or three weeks of operations, as Nimitz required. Her flight deck was patched, and whole sections of internal frames were cut out and replaced. Repairs continued even as she sortied, with work crews from the repair ship USS Vestal, herself damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier, still aboard.
Yorktown's partially depleted air group was rebuilt using whatever planes and pilots could be found. Scouting Five (VS-5) was replaced with Bombing Three (VB-3) from USS Saratoga. Torpedo Five (VT-5) was also replaced by Torpedo Three (VT-3). Fighting Three (VF-3) was reconstituted to replace VF-42 with sixteen pilots from VF-42 and eleven pilots from VF-3, with Lieutenant Commander John S. "Jimmy" Thach in command. Some of the aircrew were inexperienced, which may have contributed to an accident in which Thach's executive officer Lieutenant Commander Donald Lovelace was killed. Despite efforts to get Saratoga (which had been undergoing repairs on the American West Coast) ready, the need to resupply and assemble sufficient escorts meant she was unable to reach Midway until after the battle.
On Midway, by 4 June the U.S. Navy had stationed four squadrons of PBYs—31 aircraft in total—for long-range reconnaissance duties, and six brand-new Grumman TBF Avengers from Hornet's VT-8. The Marine Corps stationed 19 Douglas SBD Dauntless, seven F4F-3 Wildcats, 17 Vought SB2U Vindicators, and 21 Brewster F2A Buffalos. The USAAF contributed a squadron of 17 B-17 Flying Fortresses and four Martin B-26 Marauders equipped with torpedoes: in total 126 aircraft. Although the F2As and SB2Us were already obsolete, they were the only aircraft available to the Marine Corps at the time.
### Japanese shortcomings
During the Battle of the Coral Sea one month earlier, the Japanese light carrier Shōhō had been sunk, while the fleet carrier Shōkaku had been severely damaged by three bomb hits and was in drydock for months of repair. Although the fleet carrier Zuikaku escaped the battle undamaged, she had lost almost half her air group and was in port at the Kure Naval District, Hiroshima, awaiting replacement planes and pilots. That there were none immediately available is attributable to the failure of the IJN crew training program, which already showed signs of being unable to replace losses. In desperation, instructors from the Yokosuka Air Corps were relieved of their duties to serve as pilots.
Historians Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully believe that by combining the surviving aircraft and pilots from Shōkaku and Zuikaku, it is likely that Zuikaku could have been equipped with almost a full composite air group. They also note, however, that doing so would have violated Japanese carrier doctrine, which stressed that carriers and their air groups must train as a single unit. (In contrast, American air squadrons were considered interchangeable between carriers allowing for more flexibility.) In any case, the Japanese apparently made no serious attempt to get Zuikaku ready for the forthcoming battle.
Thus, Carrier Division 5, consisting of the two most advanced aircraft carriers of the Kido Butai, was not available, which meant that Vice-Admiral Nagumo had only two-thirds of the fleet carriers at his disposal: Kaga and Akagi forming Carrier Division 1 and Hiryū and Sōryū making up Carrier Division 2. This was partly due to fatigue; Japanese carriers had been constantly on operations since 7 December 1941, including raids on Darwin and Colombo. Nonetheless, the First Carrier Strike Force sailed with 248 available aircraft on the four carriers (60 on Akagi, 74 on Kaga (B5N2 squadron oversized), 57 on Hiryū and 57 on Sōryū).
The main Japanese carrier-borne strike aircraft were the Aichi D3A1 "Val" dive bomber and the Nakajima B5N2 "Kate", which was used either as a torpedo bomber or as a level bomber. The main carrier fighter was the fast and highly maneuverable Mitsubishi A6M Zero. For a variety of reasons, production of the "Val" had been drastically reduced, while that of the "Kate" had been stopped completely and, as a consequence, there were none available to replace losses. In addition, many of the aircraft being used during the June 1942 operations had been operational since late November 1941 and, although they were well-maintained, many were almost worn out and had become increasingly unreliable. These factors meant all carriers of the Kidō Butai had fewer aircraft than their normal complement, with few spare aircraft or parts stored in the carriers' hangars.
In addition, Nagumo's carrier force suffered from several defensive deficiencies which gave it, in Mark Peattie's words, a glass jaw': it could throw a punch but couldn't take one." Japanese carrier anti-aircraft guns and associated fire control systems had several design and configuration changes deficiencies which limited their effectiveness. The IJN's fleet combat air patrol (CAP) consisted of too few fighter aircraft and was hampered by an inadequate early warning system, including a lack of radar. Poor radio communications with the fighter aircraft inhibited effective command and control of the CAP. The carriers' escorting warships were deployed as visual scouts in a ring at long range, not as close anti-aircraft escorts, as they lacked training, doctrine, and sufficient anti-aircraft guns.
Japanese strategic scouting arrangements prior to the battle were also in disarray. A picket line of Japanese submarines was late getting into position (partly because of Yamamoto's haste), which let the American carriers reach their assembly point northeast of Midway (known as "Point Luck") without being detected. A second attempt at reconnaissance, using four-engine H8K "Emily" flying boats to scout Pearl Harbor prior to the battle and detect whether the American carriers were present, part of Operation K, was thwarted when Japanese submarines assigned to refuel the search aircraft discovered that the intended refueling point—a hitherto deserted bay off French Frigate Shoals—was now occupied by American warships because the Japanese had carried out an identical mission in March. Thus, Japan was deprived of any knowledge concerning the movements of the American carriers immediately before the battle.
Japanese radio intercepts did notice an increase in both American submarine activity and message traffic. This information was in Yamamoto's hands prior to the battle. Japanese plans were not changed; Yamamoto, at sea in Yamato, assumed Nagumo had received the same signal from Tokyo and did not communicate with him by radio, so as not to reveal his position. These messages were, contrary to earlier historical accounts, also received by Nagumo before the battle began. For reasons that remain unclear, Nagumo did not alter his plans or take additional precautions.
### U.S. code-breaking
Nimitz had one critical advantage: U.S. cryptanalysts had partially broken the Japanese Navy's JN-25b code. Since early 1942, the U.S. had been decoding messages stating that there would soon be an operation at objective "AF". It was initially not known where "AF" was, but Commander Joseph Rochefort and his team at Station HYPO were able to confirm that it was Midway: Captain Wilfred Holmes devised a ruse of telling the base at Midway (by secure undersea communications cable) to broadcast an uncoded radio message stating that Midway's water purification system had broken down. Within 24 hours, the code breakers picked up a Japanese message that "AF was short on water". No Japanese radio operators who intercepted the message seemed concerned that the Americans were broadcasting uncoded that a major naval installation close to the Japanese threat ring was having a water shortage, which could have tipped off Japanese intelligence officers that it was a deliberate attempt at deception. HYPO was also able to determine the date of the attack as either 4 or 5 June, and to provide Nimitz with a complete IJN order of battle.
Japan had a new codebook, but its introduction had been delayed, enabling HYPO to read messages for several crucial days; the new code, which took several days to be cracked, came into use on 24 May, but the important breaks had already been made. As a result, the Americans entered the battle with a good picture of where, when, and in what strength the Japanese would appear. Nimitz knew that the Japanese had negated their numerical advantage by dividing their ships into four separate task groups, so widely separated that they were essentially unable to support each other. This dispersal resulted in few fast ships being available to escort the Carrier Striking Force, thus reducing the number of anti-aircraft guns protecting the carriers. Nimitz calculated that the aircraft on his three carriers, plus those on Midway Island, gave the U.S. rough parity with Yamamoto's four carriers, mainly because American carrier air groups were larger than Japanese ones. The Japanese, by contrast, remained largely unaware of their opponent's true strength and dispositions even after the battle began.
## Battle
### Initial air attacks
At about 09:00 on 3 June, Ensign Jack Reid, piloting a PBY from U.S. Navy patrol squadron VP-44, spotted the Japanese Occupation Force 500 nmi (580 mi; 930 km) to the west-southwest of Midway. He mistakenly reported this group as the Main Force. Nine B-17s took off from Midway at 12:30 for the first air attack. Three hours later, they found Tanaka's transport group 570 nmi (660 mi; 1,060 km) to the west.
Harassed by heavy anti-aircraft fire, they dropped their bombs. Although their crews reported hitting four ships, none of the bombs actually hit anything and no significant damage was inflicted. Early the following morning, the Japanese oil tanker Akebono Maru sustained the first hit when a torpedo from an attacking PBY struck her around 01:00. This was the only successful air-launched torpedo attack by the U.S. during the entire battle.
At 04:30 on 4 June, Nagumo launched his initial attack on Midway, consisting of 36 D3As and 36 B5Ns, escorted by 36 Zero fighters. At the same time, he launched his seven search aircraft (2 B5Ns from Akagi and Kaga; 4 Aichi E13A "Jakes" from the heavy cruiser Tone and Chikuma; and 1 short range Nakajima E8N "Dave" from the battleship Haruna; an eighth aircraft from Tone launched 30 minutes late). Japanese reconnaissance arrangements were flimsy, with too few aircraft to adequately cover the assigned search areas, laboring under poor weather conditions to the northeast and east of the task force. As Nagumo's bombers and fighters were taking off, 11 PBYs were leaving Midway to run their search patterns. At 05:34, a PBY reported sighting two Japanese carriers and another spotted the inbound airstrike 10 minutes later.
Midway's radar picked up the enemy at a distance of several miles, and interceptors were scrambled. Unescorted bombers headed off to attack the Japanese carriers, their fighter escorts remaining behind to defend Midway. At 06:20, Japanese carrier aircraft bombed and heavily damaged the U.S. base. Midway-based Marine fighters led by Major Floyd B. Parks, which included six F4F Wildcats and 20 F2As, intercepted the Japanese and suffered heavy losses, though they managed to destroy four B5Ns and one Zero. Within the first few minutes, two F4Fs and 13 F2As were destroyed, while most of the surviving U.S. planes were damaged, with only two remaining airworthy. American anti-aircraft fire was intense and accurate, destroying three Japanese aircraft and damaging many more.
Of the 108 Japanese aircraft involved in this attack, 11 were destroyed (including three that ditched), 14 were heavily damaged, and 29 were damaged to some degree. The initial Japanese attack did not succeed in neutralizing Midway: American bombers could still use the airbase to refuel and attack the Japanese invasion force, and most of Midway's land-based defenses similarly remained intact. Japanese pilots reported to Nagumo that a second aerial attack on Midway's defenses would be necessary if troops were to go ashore by 7 June.
Having taken off prior to the Japanese attack, American bombers based on Midway made several attacks on the Japanese carrier force. These included six Grumman Avengers, detached to Midway from Hornet's VT-8 (Midway was the combat debut of both VT-8 and the Avenger); Marine Scout-Bombing Squadron 241 (VMSB-241), consisting of 11 SB2U-3s and 16 SBDs, plus four USAAF B-26s of the 18th Reconnaissance and 69th Bomb Squadrons armed with torpedoes, and 15 B-17s of the 31st, 72nd, and 431st Bomb Squadrons. The Japanese repelled these attacks and the attacking force, losing only three Zero fighters while destroying five Avengers, two SB2Us, eight SBDs, and two B-26s. Among the dead was Major Lofton R. Henderson of VMSB-241, killed while leading his inexperienced SBD squadron into action. The main airfield at Guadalcanal was named after him in August 1942.
One B-26, piloted by Lieutenant James Muri, after dropping his torpedo and searching for a safer escape route, flew directly down the length of Akagi while being fired upon by fighters and anti-aircraft fire, which had to hold their fire to avoid hitting their own flagship. As it flew down the length of the ship, the B-26 strafed Akagi, killing two men. Another B-26, piloted by Lieutenant Herbert Mayes, did not pull out of its run after being seriously damaged by anti-aircraft fire, and instead headed directly for Akagi's bridge. Either attempting a suicide ramming or out of control, the plane narrowly missed the bridge and crashed into the sea. This experience may well have contributed to Nagumo's determination to launch another attack on Midway in direct violation of Yamamoto's order to keep the reserve strike force armed for anti-ship operations.
While the air strikes from Midway were going on, the American submarine USS Nautilus (SS-168), commanded by Lieutenant Commander William Brockman, found herself near the Japanese fleet, attracting attention from the escorts. Around 08:20, she made an unsuccessful torpedo attack on a battleship and then had to dive to evade the escorts. At 09:10, she launched a torpedo at a cruiser and again had to dive to evade the escorts, with destroyer Arashi spending considerable time chasing Nautilus.
### Nagumo's dilemma
In accordance with Yamamoto's orders for Operation MI, Nagumo had kept half of his aircraft in reserve. These comprised two squadrons each of dive bombers and torpedo bombers. The dive bombers were as yet unarmed (this was doctrinal: dive bombers were to be armed on the flight deck). The torpedo bombers were armed with torpedoes should any American warships be located.
At 07:15, Nagumo ordered his reserve planes to be re-armed with contact-fused general-purpose bombs for use against land targets. This was a result of the attacks from Midway, as well as the morning flight leader's recommendation of a second strike. Re-arming had been underway for about 30 minutes when, at 07:40, the delayed scout plane from Tone signaled that it had sighted a sizable American naval force to the east, but neglected to specify its composition. Later evidence suggests Nagumo did not receive the sighting report until 08:00.
Nagumo quickly reversed his order to re-arm the bombers with general-purpose bombs and demanded that the scout plane ascertain the composition of the American force. Another 20–40 minutes elapsed before Tone's scout finally radioed the presence of a single carrier in the American force. This was one of the carriers from Task Force 16. The other carrier was not sighted.
Nagumo was now in a quandary. Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, leading Carrier Division 2 (Hiryū and Sōryū), recommended that Nagumo strike immediately with the forces at hand: 16 D3A1 dive bombers on Sōryū and 18 on Hiryū, and half the ready cover patrol aircraft. Nagumo's opportunity to hit the American ships was now limited by the imminent return of his Midway strike force. The returning strike force needed to land promptly or it would have to ditch into the sea. Because of the constant flight deck activity associated with combat air patrol operations during the preceding hour, the Japanese never had an opportunity to position ("spot") their reserve planes on the flight deck for launch.
The few aircraft on the Japanese flight decks at the time of the attack were either defensive fighters or, in the case of Sōryū, fighters being spotted to augment the combat air patrol. Spotting his flight decks and launching aircraft would have required at least 30 minutes. Furthermore, by spotting and launching immediately, Nagumo would be committing some of his reserves to battle without proper anti-ship armament, and likely without fighter escort; indeed, he had just witnessed how easily the unescorted American bombers had been shot down.
Japanese naval doctrine preferred the launching of fully constituted strikes rather than piecemeal attacks. Without confirmation of whether the American force included carriers (not received until 08:20), Nagumo's reaction was doctrinaire. In addition, the arrival of another land-based American air strike at 07:53 gave weight to the need to attack the island again. In the end, Nagumo decided to wait for his first strike force to land, and then launch the reserve, which would by then be properly armed with torpedoes.
Had Nagumo elected to launch the available aircraft around 07:45 and risked the ditching of Tomonaga's strike force, they would have formed a powerful and well-balanced strike package that had the potential to sink two American carriers. Furthermore, fueled and armed aircraft inside the ships presented a significant additional hazard in terms of damage to the carriers in an event of attack, and keeping them on the decks was much more dangerous than getting them airborne. Whatever the case, at that point there was no way to stop the American strike against him, since Fletcher's carriers had launched their planes beginning at 07:00 (with Enterprise and Hornet having completed launching by 07:55, but Yorktown not until 09:08), so the aircraft that would deliver the crushing blow were already on their way. Even if Nagumo had not strictly followed carrier doctrine, he could not have prevented the launch of the American attack.
### Attacks on the Japanese fleet
The Americans had already launched their carrier aircraft against the Japanese. Fletcher, in overall command aboard Yorktown, and benefiting from PBY sighting reports from the early morning, ordered Spruance to launch against the Japanese as soon as was practical, while initially holding Yorktown in reserve in case any other Japanese carriers were found.
Spruance judged that, though the range was extreme, a strike could succeed and gave the order to launch the attack. He then left Halsey's Chief of Staff, Captain Miles Browning, to work out the details and oversee the launch. The carriers had to launch into the wind, so the light southeasterly breeze would require them to steam away from the Japanese at high speed. Browning, therefore, suggested a launch time of 07:00, giving the carriers an hour to close on the Japanese at 25 kn (46 km/h; 29 mph). This would place them at about 155 nmi (287 km; 178 mi) from the Japanese fleet, assuming it did not change course. The first plane took off from Spruance's carriers Enterprise and Hornet a few minutes after 07:00. Fletcher, upon completing his own scouting flights, followed suit at 08:00 from Yorktown.
Fletcher, along with Yorktown's commanding officer, Captain Elliott Buckmaster, and their staffs, had acquired the first-hand experience needed in organizing and launching a full strike against an enemy force in the Coral Sea, but there was no time to pass these lessons on to Enterprise, commanded by Captain George Murray, and Hornet, commanded by Captain Marc Mitscher, which were tasked with launching the first strike. Spruance ordered the striking aircraft to proceed to target immediately rather than waste time waiting for the strike force to assemble, since neutralizing enemy carriers was the key to the survival of his own task force.
While the Japanese were able to launch 108 aircraft in just seven minutes, it took Enterprise and Hornet over an hour to launch 117. Spruance judged that the need to throw something at the enemy as soon as possible was greater than the need to coordinate the attack by aircraft of different types and speeds (fighters, bombers, and torpedo bombers). Accordingly, American squadrons were launched piecemeal and proceeded to the target in several different groups. It was accepted that the lack of coordination would diminish the impact of the American attacks and increase their casualties, but Spruance calculated that this was worthwhile, since keeping the Japanese under aerial attack impaired their ability to launch a counterstrike (Japanese tactics preferred fully constituted attacks), and he gambled that he would find Nagumo with his flight decks at their most vulnerable.
American carrier aircraft had difficulty locating the target, despite the positions they had been given. The strike from Hornet, led by Commander Stanhope C. Ring, followed an incorrect heading of 265 degrees rather than the 240 degrees indicated by the contact report. As a result, Air Group Eight's dive bombers missed the Japanese carriers. Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8, from Hornet), led by Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, broke formation from Ring and followed the correct heading. The 10 F4Fs from Hornet ran out of fuel and had to ditch.
Waldron's squadron sighted the enemy carriers and began attacking at 09:20, followed at 09:40 by VF-6 from Enterprise, whose Wildcat fighter escorts lost contact, ran low on fuel, and had to turn back. Without fighter escort, all 15 TBD Devastators of VT-8 were shot down without being able to inflict any damage. Ensign George H. Gay, Jr. was the only survivor of the 30 aircrews of VT-8. He completed his torpedo attack on the carrier Sōryū before he was shot down, but Sōryū evaded his torpedo. Meanwhile, VT-6, led by Lieutenant Commander Eugene E. Lindsey lost 9 of its 14 Devastators (one ditched later), and 10 of 12 Devastators from Yorktown's VT-3 (who attacked at 10:10) were shot down with no hits to show for their effort, thanks in part to the abysmal performance of their unimproved Mark 13 torpedoes. Midway was the last time the TBD Devastator was used in combat.
The Japanese combat air patrol, flying Zeros, made short work of the unescorted, slow, under-armed TBDs. A few TBDs managed to get within a few ship-lengths range of their targets before dropping their torpedoes—close enough to be able to strafe the enemy ships and force the Japanese carriers to make sharp evasive maneuvers—but all of their torpedoes either missed or failed to explode. The performance of American torpedoes in the early months of the war was extremely poor, as shot after shot missed by running directly under the target (deeper than intended), prematurely exploded, or hit targets (sometimes with an audible clang) and failed to explode at all. Remarkably, senior Navy and Bureau of Ordnance officers never questioned why half a dozen torpedoes, released so close to the Japanese carriers, produced no results.
Despite their failure to score any hits, the American torpedo attacks achieved three important results. First, they kept the Japanese carriers off balance and unable to prepare and launch their own counterstrike. Second, the poor control of the Japanese CAP meant they were out of position for subsequent attacks. Third, many of the Zeros ran low on ammunition and fuel. The appearance of a third torpedo plane attack from the southeast by VT-3 from Yorktown, led by Lieutenant Commander Lance Edward Massey at 10:00 very quickly drew the majority of the Japanese CAP to the southeast quadrant of the fleet. Better discipline and the employment of a greater number of Zeros for the CAP might have enabled Nagumo to prevent (or at least mitigate) the damage caused by the coming American attacks.
By chance, at the same time VT-3 was sighted by the Japanese, three squadrons of SBDs from Enterprise and Yorktown were approaching from the southwest and northeast. The Yorktown squadron (VB-3) had flown just behind VT-3 but elected to attack from a different course. The two squadrons from Enterprise (VB-6 and VS-6) were running low on fuel because of the time spent looking for the enemy. Air Group Commander C. Wade McClusky, Jr. decided to continue the search and by good fortune spotted the wake of the Japanese destroyer Arashi, steaming at full speed to rejoin Nagumo's carriers after having unsuccessfully depth-charged U.S. submarine Nautilus, which had unsuccessfully attacked the battleship Kirishima. Some bombers were lost from fuel exhaustion before the attack commenced.
McClusky's decision to continue the search and his judgment, in the opinion of Admiral Chester Nimitz, "decided the fate of our carrier task force and our forces at Midway ..." All three American dive-bomber squadrons (VB-6, VS-6, and VB-3) arrived almost simultaneously at the perfect time, locations and altitudes to attack. Most of the Japanese CAP was directing its attention to the torpedo planes of VT-3 and was out of position; meanwhile, armed Japanese strike aircraft filled the hangar decks, fuel hoses snaked across the decks as refueling operations were hastily being completed, and the repeated change of ordnance meant that bombs and torpedoes were stacked around the hangars, rather than stowed safely in the magazines, making the Japanese carriers extraordinarily vulnerable.
Beginning at 10:22, the two squadrons of Enterprise's air group split up with the intention of sending one squadron each to attack Kaga and Akagi. A miscommunication caused both of the squadrons to dive at Kaga. Recognizing the error, Lieutenant Richard Halsey Best and his two wingmen were able to pull out of their dives and, after judging that Kaga was doomed, headed north to attack Akagi. Coming under an onslaught of bombs from almost two full squadrons, Kaga sustained three to five direct hits, which caused heavy damage and started multiple fires. One of the bombs landed on or right in front of the bridge, killing Captain Jisaku Okada and most of the ship's senior officers. Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, part of McClusky's group, recalled:
> We were coming down in all directions on the port side of the carrier ... I recognized her as the Kaga; and she was enormous ... The target was utterly satisfying ... I saw a bomb hit just behind where I was aiming ... I saw the deck rippling and curling back in all directions exposing a great section of the hangar below ... I saw [my] 500 lb [230 kg] bomb hit right abreast of the [carrier's] island. The two 100 lb [45 kg] bombs struck in the forward area of the parked planes ...
Several minutes later, Best and his two wingmen dove on Akagi. Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese aviator who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor, was on Akagi when it was hit, and described the attack:
> A look-out screamed: "Hell-Divers!" I looked up to see three black enemy planes plummeting towards our ship. Some of our machineguns managed to fire a few frantic bursts at them, but it was too late. The plump silhouettes of the American Dauntless dive-bombers quickly grew larger, and then a number of black objects suddenly floated eerily from their wings.
Although Akagi sustained only one direct hit (almost certainly dropped by Lieutenant Best), it proved to be a fatal blow: the bomb struck the edge of the mid-ship deck elevator and penetrated to the upper hangar deck, where it exploded among the armed and fueled aircraft in the vicinity. Nagumo's chief of staff, Ryūnosuke Kusaka, recorded "a terrific fire ... bodies all over the place ... Planes stood tail up, belching livid flames and jet-black smoke, making it impossible to bring the fires under control." Another bomb exploded underwater very close astern; the resulting geyser bent the flight deck upward "in grotesque configurations" and caused crucial rudder damage.
Simultaneously, Yorktown's VB-3, commanded by Lieutenant Max Leslie, went for Sōryū, scoring at least three hits and causing extensive damage. Gasoline ignited, creating an inferno, while stacked bombs and ammunition detonated. VT-3 targeted Hiryū, which was hemmed in by Sōryū, Kaga, and Akagi, but achieved no hits.
Within six minutes, Sōryū and Kaga were ablaze from stem to stern, as fires spread through the ships. Akagi, having been struck by only one bomb, took longer to burn, but the resulting fires quickly expanded and proved impossible to extinguish; she too was eventually consumed by flames and had to be abandoned. The shell-shocked Nagumo was reluctant to leave the Akagi. Kusaka was able to persuade him. At 10:46, Nagumo transferred his flag to the light cruiser Nagara. All three carriers remained temporarily afloat, as none had suffered damage below the waterline, other than the rudder damage to Akagi caused by the near miss close astern. Despite initial hopes that Akagi could be saved or at least towed back to Japan, all three carriers were eventually abandoned and scuttled. While Kaga was burning, Nautilus showed up again and launched three torpedoes at her, scoring one dud hit. The Kaga was later sunk by the Japanese destroyer Hagikaze.
### Japanese counterattacks
Hiryū, the sole surviving Japanese aircraft carrier, wasted little time in counterattacking. Hiryū's first attack wave, consisting of 18 D3As and 6 Zeros, followed the retreating American aircraft and attacked the first carrier they encountered, Yorktown, hitting her with three bombs, which blew a hole in the deck, snuffed out all but one of her boilers, and destroyed one anti-aircraft mount. The damage forced Fletcher to move his command staff to the heavy cruiser Astoria. Damage control parties were able to temporarily patch the flight deck and restore power to several boilers within an hour, giving her a speed of 19 kn (35 km/h; 22 mph) and enabling her to resume air operations. Yorktown hoisted a flag signal to indicate a speed of 5 knots. Captain Buckmaster had his signalmen hoist a huge new (10 feet wide and 15 feet long) American flag from the foremast. Thirteen D3As and three Zeros were lost in this attack (two Zeros turned back early after they were damaged attacking some of Enterprise's SBDs returning from their attack on the Japanese carriers).
Approximately one hour later, Hiryū's second attack wave, consisting of ten B5Ns and six escorting Zeros, arrived over Yorktown; the repair efforts had been so effective that the Japanese pilots assumed that Yorktown must be a different, undamaged carrier. They attacked, crippling Yorktown with two torpedoes; she lost all power and developed a 23-degree list to port. Five B5Ns and two Zeros were shot down in this attack.
News of the two strikes, with the mistaken reports that each had sunk an American carrier, greatly improved Japanese morale. The few surviving aircraft were all recovered aboard Hiryū. Despite the heavy losses, the Japanese believed that they could scrape together enough aircraft for one more strike against what they believed to be the only remaining American carrier.
### American counterattack
Late in the afternoon, a Yorktown scout aircraft located Hiryū, prompting Enterprise to launch a final strike of 24 dive bombers (including six SBDs from VS-6, four SBDs from VB-6, and 14 SBDs from Yorktown's VB-3). Despite Hiryū being defended by a strong cover of more than a dozen Zero fighters, the attack by Enterprise and orphaned Yorktown aircraft launched from Enterprise was successful: four bombs (possibly five) hit Hiryū, leaving her ablaze and unable to operate aircraft. Hornet's strike, launched late because of a communications error, concentrated on the remaining escort ships but failed to score any hits. Enterprise dive bomber Dusty Kleiss struck Hiryū on the bow, essentially crippling her.
After futile attempts at controlling the blaze, most of the crew remaining on Hiryū were evacuated, and the remainder of the fleet continued sailing northeast in an attempt to intercept the American carriers. Despite a scuttling attempt by a Japanese destroyer that hit her with a torpedo and then departed quickly, Hiryū stayed afloat for several more hours. She was discovered early the next morning by an aircraft from the escort carrier Hōshō, prompting hopes she could be saved or towed back to Japan. Soon after being spotted, Hiryū sank. Yamaguchi, together with the ship's captain, Tomeo Kaku [ja], chose to go down with the ship, costing Japan perhaps its best carrier officer. One young sailor reportedly tried to go down with the ship with the officers but was denied.
As darkness fell, both sides took stock and made tentative plans for continuing the action. Fletcher, obliged to abandon the derelict Yorktown and feeling he could not adequately command from a cruiser, ceded operational command to Spruance. Spruance knew the United States had won a great victory, but he was still unsure of what Japanese forces remained and was determined to safeguard both Midway and his carriers. To aid his aviators, who had launched at extreme range, he had continued to close with Nagumo during the day and persisted as night fell.
Finally, fearing a possible night encounter with Japanese surface forces and believing Yamamoto still intended to invade (based in part on a misleading contact report from the submarine Tambor) Spruance changed course and withdrew to the east, turning back west towards the enemy at midnight. For his part, Yamamoto initially decided to continue the engagement and sent his remaining surface forces searching eastward for the American carriers. Simultaneously, he detached a cruiser raiding force to bombard the island. The Japanese surface forces failed to make contact with the Americans because Spruance had decided to briefly withdraw eastward, and Yamamoto ordered a general withdrawal to the west. It was fortunate for the U.S. that Spruance did not pursue, for had he come in contact with Yamamoto's heavy ships, including Yamato, in the dark, considering the Japanese Navy's superiority in night-attack tactics at the time, there is a very high probability his cruisers would have been overwhelmed and his carriers sunk.
Spruance failed to regain contact with Yamamoto's forces on 5 June, despite extensive searches. Towards the end of the day, he launched a search-and-destroy mission to seek out any remnants of Nagumo's carrier force. This late afternoon strike narrowly missed detecting Yamamoto's main body and failed to score hits on a straggling Japanese destroyer. The strike planes returned to the carriers after nightfall, prompting Spruance to order Enterprise and Hornet to turn on their lights to aid the landings.
At 02:15 on 5 June Commander John Murphy's Tambor, lying 90 nmi (170 km; 100 mi) west of Midway, made the second of the submarine force's two major contributions to the battle's outcome, although its impact was heavily blunted by Murphy. Sighting several ships, neither Murphy nor his executive officer, Edward Spruance (son of Admiral Spruance), could identify them. Uncertain of whether they were friendly and unwilling to approach any closer to verify their heading or type, Murphy decided to send a vague report of "four large ships" to Admiral Robert English, Commander, Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet. This report was passed on by English to Nimitz, who then sent it to Spruance. Spruance, a former submarine commander, was "understandably furious" at the vagueness of Murphy's report, as it provided him with little more than suspicion and no concrete information on which to make his preparations. Unaware of the exact location of Yamamoto's "Main Body" (a persistent problem since the time PBYs had first sighted the Japanese), Spruance was forced to assume the "four large ships" reported by Tambor represented the main invasion force and so he moved to block it, while staying 100 nmi (190 km; 120 mi) northeast of Midway.
In reality, the ships sighted by Tambor were the detachment of four cruisers and two destroyers Yamamoto had sent to bombard Midway. At 02:55 these ships received Yamamoto's order to retire and changed course to comply. At about the same time as this change of course, Tambor was sighted and during maneuvers designed to avoid a submarine attack, the heavy cruisers Mogami and Mikuma collided, inflicting serious damage on Mogami's bow. The less severely damaged Mikuma slowed to 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph) to keep pace. Only at 04:12 did the sky brighten enough for Murphy to be certain the ships were Japanese, by which time staying surfaced was hazardous and he dived to approach for an attack. The attack was unsuccessful, and around 06:00 he finally reported two westbound Mogami-class cruisers before diving again and playing no further role in the battle. Limping along on a straight course at 12 knots—roughly one-third their top speed—Mogami and Mikuma had been almost perfect targets for a submarine attack. As soon as Tambor returned to port, Spruance had Murphy relieved of duty and reassigned to a shore station, citing his confusing contact report, poor torpedo shooting during his attack run, and general lack of aggression, especially as compared to Nautilus, the oldest of the 12 boats at Midway and the only one which had successfully placed a torpedo on target (albeit a dud).
Over the next two days, several strikes were launched against the stragglers, first from Midway, then from Spruance's carriers. Mikuma was eventually sunk by Dauntlesses, while Mogami survived further severe damage to return home for repairs. The destroyers Arashio and Asashio were also bombed and strafed during the last of these attacks. Captain Richard E. Fleming, a U.S. Marine Corps aviator, was killed while executing a glide bomb run on Mikuma and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Meanwhile, salvage efforts on Yorktown were encouraging, and she was taken in tow by fleet tug USS Vireo. In the late afternoon of 6 June the Japanese submarine I-168, which had managed to slip through the cordon of destroyers (possibly because of the large amount of debris in the water), fired a salvo of torpedoes, two of which struck Yorktown. There were few casualties aboard since most of the crew had already been evacuated, but a third torpedo from this salvo struck the destroyer USS Hammann, which had been providing auxiliary power to Yorktown. Hammann broke in two and sank with the loss of 80 lives, mostly because her own depth charges exploded. With further salvage efforts deemed hopeless, the remaining repair crews were evacuated from Yorktown. Throughout the night of 6 June and into the morning of 7 June, Yorktown remained afloat; but by 05:30 on 7 June observers noted that her list was rapidly increasing to port. Shortly afterward, the ship turned onto her port side revealing the torpedo hole in her starboard bilge. At 07:01, the ship rolled upside-down and slowly sank, stern first.
### Japanese and U.S. casualties
SBD pilot Norman "Dusty" Kleiss, who scored three hits on Japanese ships during the Battle of Midway (aircraft carriers Kaga and Hiryū and heavy cruiser Mikuma), wrote: "From the experience in the Marshalls, at Wake and at Marcus, I thought our fleet learned its lessons. We could not send TBDs into action unless they had adequate smoke protection and torpedoes that exploded more than 10 percent of the time."
By the time the battle ended, 3,057 Japanese had died. Casualties aboard the four carriers were: Akagi: 267; Kaga: 811; Hiryū: 392 (including Yamaguchi who chose to go down with his ship); Soryū: 711 (including Captain Yanagimoto, who chose to remain on board); a total of 2,181. The heavy cruisers Mikuma (sunk; 700 casualties) and Mogami (badly damaged; 92) accounted for another 792 deaths.
In addition, the destroyers Arashio (bombed; 35) and Asashio (strafed by aircraft; 21) were both damaged during the air attacks which sank Mikuma and caused further damage to Mogami. Floatplanes were lost from the cruisers Chikuma (3) and Tone (2). Dead aboard the destroyers Tanikaze (11), Arashi (1), Kazagumo (1) and the fleet oiler Akebono Maru (10) made up the remaining 23 casualties.
At the end of the battle, the U.S. lost the carrier Yorktown and the destroyer Hammann. 307 Americans had been killed, including Major General Clarence L. Tinker, Commander, 7th Air Force, who personally led a bomber strike from Hawaii against the retreating Japanese forces on 7 June. He was killed when his aircraft crashed near Midway Island.
## Aftermath
After winning a clear victory, and as pursuit became too hazardous near Wake Island, American forces retired. Spruance once again withdrew to the east to refuel his destroyers and rendezvous with the carrier Saratoga, which was ferrying much-needed replacement aircraft. Fletcher transferred his flag to Saratoga on the afternoon of 8 June and resumed command of the carrier force. For the remainder of that day and then 9 June, Fletcher continued to launch search missions from the three carriers to ensure the Japanese were no longer advancing on Midway. Late on 10 June a decision was made to leave the area, and the American carriers eventually returned to Pearl Harbor.
Historian Samuel E. Morison noted in 1949 that Spruance was subjected to much criticism for not pursuing the retreating Japanese, thus allowing their surface fleet to escape. Clay Blair argued in 1975 that had Spruance pressed on, he would have been unable to launch his aircraft after nightfall, and his cruisers would have been overwhelmed by Yamamoto's powerful surface units, including Yamato. Furthermore, the American air groups had suffered considerable losses, including most of their torpedo bombers. This made it unlikely that they would be effective in an airstrike against the Japanese battleships, even if they had managed to catch them during the daytime. Also, Spruance's destroyers were critically low on fuel.
On 10 June the Imperial Japanese Navy conveyed to the military liaison conference an incomplete picture of the results of the battle. Nagumo's detailed battle report was submitted to the high command on 15 June. It was intended only for the highest echelons in the Japanese Navy and government and was guarded closely throughout the war. In it, one of the more striking revelations is the comment on Mobile Force Commander Nagumo's estimates: "The enemy is not aware of our plans (we were not discovered until early in the morning of the 5th at the earliest)." In reality, the whole operation had been compromised from the beginning by American code-breaking efforts.
The Japanese public and much of the military command structure were kept in the dark about the extent of the defeat: Japanese news announced a great victory. Only Emperor Hirohito and the highest Navy command staff were accurately informed of the carrier and personnel losses. Consequently, even the Imperial Japanese Army continued to believe, for at least a short time, that the fleet was in good condition.
On the return of the Japanese fleet to Hashirajima on 14 June the wounded were immediately transferred to naval hospitals; most were classified as "secret patients", placed in isolation wards and quarantined from other patients and their own families to keep this major defeat secret. The remaining officers and men were quickly dispersed to other units of the fleet and, without being allowed to see family or friends, were shipped to units in the South Pacific, where the majority died in battle. None of the flag officers or staff of the Combined Fleet were penalized, and Nagumo was later placed in command of the rebuilt carrier force. A possible reason Nagumo was not relieved of command was that he reported two American carriers had been sunk; not one actually sunk.
As a result of the defeat, new procedures were adopted whereby more Japanese aircraft were refueled and re-armed on the flight deck rather than in the hangars, and the practice of draining all unused fuel lines was adopted. The new carriers being built were redesigned to incorporate only two flight deck elevators and new firefighting equipment. More carrier crew members were trained in damage-control and firefighting techniques, although the losses of the Shōkaku, Hiyō, and especially Taihō later in the war suggest that there were still problems in this area.
Replacement pilots were pushed through an abbreviated training regimen in order to meet the short-term needs of the fleet. This led to a sharp decline in the quality of the aviators produced. These inexperienced pilots were fed into front-line units, while the veterans who remained after Midway and the Solomons campaign were forced to share an increased workload as conditions grew more desperate, with few being given a chance to rest in rear areas or in the home islands. As a result, Japanese naval air groups as a whole progressively deteriorated during the war while their American adversaries continued to improve.
### American prisoners
Three U.S. airmen were captured during the battle: Ensign Wesley Osmus, a pilot from Yorktown; Ensign Frank O'Flaherty, a pilot from Enterprise; and Aviation Machinist's Mate Bruno Peter Gaido, O'Flaherty's radioman-gunner. Osmus was held on Arashi; O'Flaherty and Gaido on the cruiser Nagara (or destroyer Makigumo, sources vary); O'Flaherty and Gaido were interrogated and then killed by being tied to water-filled kerosene cans and thrown overboard to drown. Osmus was slated for the same fate; however, he resisted and was murdered on the Arashi with a fire axe, and his body was thrown overboard. The report filed by Nagumo tersely states that Osmus, "... died on 6 June and was buried at sea"; O'Flaherty and Gaido's fates were not mentioned in Nagumo's report. The execution of Osmus in this manner was apparently ordered by Arashi's captain, Watanabe Yasumasa. Yasumasa died when the destroyer Numakaze sank in December 1943, but had he survived he would have likely been tried as a war criminal.
### Japanese prisoners
Two enlisted men from Mikuma were rescued from a life raft on 9 June by USS Trout and taken to Pearl Harbor. After receiving medical care, at least one of these sailors cooperated during interrogation and provided intelligence. Another 35 crewmen from Hiryū were taken from a lifeboat by USS Ballard on 19 June after being spotted by an American search plane. They were taken to Midway and then transferred to Pearl Harbor on USS Sirius.
## Impact
The Battle of Midway has often been called "the turning point of the Pacific". It was the Allies' first major naval victory against the Japanese. Had Japan won the battle as thoroughly as the U.S. did, it might have been able to conquer Midway Island. Saratoga would have been the only American carrier in the Pacific, as no new ones were completed before the end of 1942. While the U.S. would probably not have sought peace with Japan as Yamamoto hoped, his country might have revived Operation FS to invade and occupy Fiji and Samoa; attacked Australia, Alaska, and Ceylon; or even attempted to occupy Hawaii.
Although the Japanese continued to try to secure more territory, and the U.S. did not move from a state of naval parity to one of supremacy until after several more months of hard combat, Midway allowed the Allies to switch to the strategic initiative, paving the way for the landings on Guadalcanal and the prolonged attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign. Midway allowed this to occur before the first of the new Essex-class fleet carriers became available at the end of 1942. The Guadalcanal campaign is also regarded by some as a turning point in the Pacific War.
Some authors have stated that heavy losses in carriers and veteran aircrews at Midway permanently weakened the Imperial Japanese Navy. Parshall and Tully have stated that the heavy losses in veteran aircrew (110, just under 25% of the aircrew embarked on the four carriers) were not crippling to the Japanese naval air corps as a whole; the Japanese navy had 2,000 carrier-qualified aircrews at the start of the Pacific War. The loss of four large fleet carriers and over 40% of the carriers' highly trained aircraft mechanics and technicians, plus the essential flight-deck crews and armorers, and the loss of organizational knowledge embodied in such highly trained crews, were still heavy blows to the Japanese carrier fleet. A few months after Midway, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service sustained similar casualty rates in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons and Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, and it was these battles, combined with the constant attrition of veterans during the Solomons campaign, which were the catalyst for the sharp downward spiral in operational capability.
After the battle, Shōkaku and Zuikaku were the only large carriers of the original Pearl Harbor strike force still afloat. Of Japan's other carriers, Taihō, which was not commissioned until early 1944, would be the only fleet carrier worth teaming with Shōkaku and Zuikaku; Ryūjō and Zuihō were light carriers, while Jun'yō and Hiyō, although technically classified as fleet carriers, were second-rate ships of comparatively limited effectiveness. In the time it took Japan to build three carriers, the U.S. Navy commissioned more than two dozen fleet and light fleet carriers, and numerous escort carriers. By 1942 the United States was already three years into a shipbuilding program mandated by the Second Vinson Act of 1938.
Both the United States and Japan accelerated the training of aircrew, but the United States had a more effective pilot rotation system, which meant that more veterans survived and went on to training or command billets, where they were able to pass on lessons they had learned in combat to trainees, instead of remaining in combat, where errors were more likely to be fatal. By the time of the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, the Japanese had nearly rebuilt their carrier forces in terms of numbers, but their planes, many of which were obsolete, were largely flown by inexperienced and poorly trained pilots.
Midway showed the worth of pre-war naval cryptanalysis and intelligence-gathering. These efforts continued and were expanded throughout the war in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters. Successes were numerous and significant. For instance, cryptanalysis made possible the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto's airplane in 1943.
The Battle of Midway also caused the plan of Japan and Nazi Germany to meet up in the Indian subcontinent to be abandoned.
The Battle of Midway redefined the central importance of air superiority for the remainder of the war when the Japanese suddenly lost their four main aircraft carriers and were forced to return home. Without any form of air superiority, the Japanese never again launched a major offensive in the Pacific.
## Discovery of sunken vessels
Because of the extreme depth of the ocean in the area of the battle (more than 17,000 ft or 5,200 m), researching the battlefield has presented extraordinary difficulties. On 19 May 1998, Robert Ballard and a team of scientists and Midway veterans from both sides located and photographed Yorktown, which was located 16,650 ft (5,070 m) deep. The ship was remarkably intact for a vessel that had sunk in 1942; much of the original equipment and even the original paint scheme were still visible. Ballard's subsequent search for the Japanese carriers was unsuccessful.
In September 1999, a joint expedition between Nauticos Corp. and the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office searched for the Japanese aircraft carriers. Using advanced renavigation techniques in conjunction with the ship's log of the submarine USS Nautilus, the expedition located a large piece of wreckage, subsequently identified as having come from the upper hangar deck of Kaga.
The crew of the research vessel RV Petrel, in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, announced on 18 October 2019 that it had found the Japanese carrier Kaga lying 17,700 ft (5,400 m) beneath the waves. The crew of Petrel confirmed the discovery of another Japanese carrier, the Akagi, on 21 October 2019. The Akagi was found in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument resting in nearly 18,010 ft (5,490 m) of water.
## Remembrances
Chicago Municipal Airport, important to the war effort in World War II, was renamed Chicago Midway International Airport (or simply Midway Airport) in 1949 in honor of the battle. Henderson Field in Guadalcanal was named in honor of United States Marine Corps Major Lofton Henderson, who was the first Marine aviator to perish during the battle.
Escort carrier USS Midway (CVE-63) was commissioned on 17 August 1943. She was renamed St. Lo on 10 October 1944 to clear the name Midway for a large fleet aircraft carrier, USS Midway (CV-41), which was commissioned on 10 September 1945, eight days after the Japanese surrender, and is now docked in San Diego, California, as the USS Midway Museum.
On 13 September 2000 Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt designated the lands and waters of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge as the Battle of Midway National Memorial. Tinker Air Force Base outside Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is named in honor of Major General Clarence L. Tinker, Commander 7th Air Force, who personally led a bomber strike from Hawaii against the retreating Japanese forces on 7 June.
John Ford directed two films about the events: the 18-minute 1942 Movietone News documentary (released by the War Activities Committee) The Battle of Midway, which received the 1942 Academy Award for Best Documentary; and the eight-minute documentary Torpedo Squadron 8, which describes the heroism of Torpedo Squadron 8 of the USS Hornet. Ford, who was a Navy Reserve Commander at the time, was present at Midway Atoll's power plant on Sand Island during the Japanese attack and filmed it. He received combat wounds from enemy fire in his arm during the filming.
## See also
- First Bombardment of Midway, a 7 December 1941 attack on Midway by two Japanese destroyers
- Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II
- Pacific Theater aircraft carrier operations during World War II
- Midway (1976)
- Dauntless: The Battle of Midway (2019)
- Midway (2019)
|
658,095 |
Olm
| 1,172,345,848 |
Species of amphibian
|
[
"Amphibians described in 1768",
"Amphibians of Europe",
"Cave salamanders",
"Electroreceptive animals",
"Fauna of Bosnia and Herzegovina",
"Fauna of Croatia",
"Fauna of Slovenia",
"Oligotrophs",
"Postojna Cave",
"Proteidae",
"Taxa named by Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti"
] |
The olm or proteus (Proteus anguinus) is an aquatic salamander which is the only species in the genus Proteus of the family Proteidae and the only exclusively cave-dwelling chordate species found in Europe; the family's other extant genus is Necturus. In contrast to most amphibians, it is entirely aquatic, eating, sleeping, and breeding underwater. Living in caves found in the Dinaric Alps, it is endemic to the waters that flow underground through the extensive limestone bedrock of the karst of Central and Southeastern Europe in the basin of the Soča River (Italian: Isonzo) near Trieste, Italy, southwestern Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Introduced populations are found near Vicenza, Italy, and Kranj, Slovenia. It was first mentioned in 1689 by the local naturalist Valvasor in his Glory of the Duchy of Carniola, who reported that, after heavy rains, the olms were washed up from the underground waters and were believed by local people to be a cave dragon's offspring.
This cave salamander is most notable for its adaptations to a life of complete darkness in its underground habitat. The olm's eyes are undeveloped, leaving it blind, while its other senses, particularly those of smell and hearing, are acutely developed. Most populations also lack any pigmentation in their skin. The olm has three toes on its forelimbs, but only two toes on its hind feet. It exhibits neoteny, retaining larval characteristics like external gills into adulthood, like some American amphibians, the axolotl and the mudpuppies (Necturus).
## Etymology
The word olm is a German loanword that was incorporated into English in the late 19th century. The origin of the German Olm or Grottenolm 'cave olm', is unclear. It may be a variant of the word Molch 'salamander'.
### Common names
It is also called the "human fish" by locals because of its fleshy skin color (translated literally from Slovene: človeška ribica, Macedonian: човечка рипка, Croatian: čovječja ribica, Bosnian: čovječija ribica Serbian: човечја рибица), as well as "cave salamander" or "white salamander". In Slovenia, it is called močeril (from \*močerъ 'earthworm, damp creepy-crawly'; moča 'dampness').
## Description
### External appearance
The olm's body is snakelike, 20–30 cm (8–12 in) long, with some specimens reaching up to 40 centimetres (16 in), which makes them some of the largest cave-dwelling animals in the world. The average length is between 23 and 25 cm. Females grow larger than males, but otherwise the primary external difference between the sexes is in the cloaca region (shape and size) when breeding. The trunk is cylindrical, uniformly thick, and segmented with regularly spaced furrows at the myomere borders. The tail is relatively short, laterally flattened, and surrounded by a thin fin. The limbs are small and thin, with a reduced number of digits compared to other amphibians: the front legs have three digits instead of the normal four, and the rear have two digits instead of five. Its body is covered by a thin layer of skin, which contains very little of the pigment riboflavin, making it yellowish-white or pink in color.
The white skin color of the olm retains the ability to produce melanin, and will gradually turn dark when exposed to light; in some cases the larvae are also colored. One population, the black olm, is always pigmented and dark brownish to blackish when adult. The olms pear-shaped head ends with a short, dorsoventrally flattened snout. The mouth opening is small, with tiny teeth forming a sieve to keep larger particles inside the mouth. The nostrils are so small as to be imperceptible, but are placed somewhat laterally near the end of the snout. The regressed eyes are covered by a layer of skin. The olm breathes with external gills that form two branched tufts at the back of the head. They are red in color because the oxygen-rich blood shows through the non-pigmented skin. The olm also has rudimentary lungs, but their role in respiration is only accessory, except during hypoxic conditions.
### Sensory organs
Cave-dwelling animals have been prompted, among other adaptations, to develop and improve non-visual sensory systems in order to orient in and adapt to permanently dark habitats. The olm's sensory system is also adapted to life in the subterranean aquatic environment. Unable to use vision for orientation, the olm compensates with other senses, which are better developed than in amphibians living on the surface. It retains larval proportions, like a long, slender body and a large, flattened head, and is thus able to carry a larger number of sensory receptors.
#### Photoreceptors
Although blind, the olm swims away from light. The eyes are regressed, but retain sensitivity. They lie deep below the dermis of the skin and are rarely visible except in some younger adults. Larvae have normal eyes, but development soon stops and they start regressing, finally atrophying after four months of development. The pineal body also has photoreceptive cells which, though regressed, retain visual pigment like the photoreceptive cells of the regressed eye. The pineal gland in Proteus probably possesses some control over the physiological processes. Behavioral experiments revealed that the skin itself is also sensitive to light. Photosensitivity of the integument is due to the pigment melanopsin inside specialized cells called melanophores. Preliminary immunocytochemical analyses support the existence of photosensitive pigment also in the animal's integument.
#### Chemoreceptors
The olm is capable of sensing very low concentrations of organic compounds in the water. They are better at sensing both the quantity and quality of prey by smell than related amphibians. The nasal epithelium, located on the inner surface of the nasal cavity and in the Jacobson's organ, is thicker than in other amphibians. The taste buds are in the mucous epithelium of the mouth, most of them on the upper side of the tongue and on the entrance to the gill cavities. Those in the oral cavity are used for tasting food, where those near the gills probably sense chemicals in the surrounding water.
#### Mechano- and electroreceptors
The sensory epithelia of the inner ear are very specifically differentiated, enabling the olm to receive sound waves in the water, as well as vibrations from the ground. The complex functional-morphological orientation of the sensory cells enables the animal to register the sound sources. As this animal stays neotenic throughout its long life span, it is only occasionally exposed to normal adult hearing in air, which is probably also possible for Proteus as in most salamanders. Hence, it would be of adaptive value in caves, with no vision available, to profit from underwater hearing by recognizing particular sounds and eventual localization of prey or other sound sources, i.e. acoustical orientation in general. Behavioural (ethological) tests have shown that its sensitivity for detecting underwater sound waves reaches into the area of frequencies of sound waves between 10 and more than 12,000 Hz, while the greatest sensitivity is reached between 1,500 and 2,000 Hz.The ethological experiments indicate that the best hearing sensitivity of Proteus is between 10 Hz and up to 12,000 Hz. The lateral line supplements inner ear sensitivity by registering low-frequency nearby water displacements.
A new type of electroreception sensory organ has been analyzed on the head of Proteus, utilizing light and electron microscopy. These new organs have been described as ampullary organs.
Like some other lower vertebrates, the olm has the ability to register weak electric fields. Some behavioral experiments suggest that the olm may be able to use Earth's magnetic field to orient itself. In 2002, Proteus anguinus was found to align itself with natural and artificially modified magnetic fields.
## Ecology and life history
The olm lives in well-oxygenated underground waters with a typical, very stable temperature of 8–11 °C (46–52 °F), infrequently as warm as 14 °C (57 °F). The black olm may occur in surface waters that are somewhat warmer.
The olm swims by eel-like twisting of its body, assisted only slightly by its poorly developed legs. It is a predatory animal, feeding on small crustaceans (for example, Troglocaris shrimp, Niphargus, Asellus and Synurella amphipods and Oniscus asellus), snails (for example, Belgrandiella) and occasionally insects and insect larvae (for example, Trichoptera, Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Diptera). It does not chew its food, instead swallowing it whole. The olm is resistant to long-term starvation, an adaptation to its underground habitat. It can consume large amounts of food at once, and store nutrients as large deposits of lipids and glycogen in the liver. When food is scarce, it reduces its activity and metabolic rate, and can also reabsorb its own tissues in severe cases. Controlled experiments have shown that an olm can survive up to 10 years without food.
Olms are gregarious, and usually aggregate either under stones or in fissures. Sexually active males are an exception, establishing and defending territories where they attract females. The scarcity of food makes fighting energetically costly, so encounters between males usually only involve display. This is a behavioral adaptation to life underground.
### Breeding and longevity
Reproduction has only been observed in captivity so far. Sexually mature males have swollen cloacas, brighter skin color, two lines at the side of the tail, and slightly curled fins. No such changes have been observed in the females. The male can start courtship even without the presence of a female. He chases other males away from the chosen area, and may then secrete a female-attracting pheromone. When the female approaches, he starts to circle around her and fan her with his tail. Then he starts to touch the female's body with his snout, and the female touches his cloaca with her snout. At that point, he starts to move forward with a twitching motion, and the female follows. He then deposits the spermatophore, and the animals keep moving forward until the female hits it with her cloaca, after which she stops and stands still. The spermatophore sticks to her and the sperm cells swim inside her cloaca, where they attempt to fertilize her eggs. The courtship ritual can be repeated several times over a couple of hours.
The female lays up to 70 eggs, each about 12 millimetres (0.5 in) in diameter, and places them between rocks, where they remain under her protection. The average is 35 eggs and the adult female typically breeds every 12.5 years. The tadpoles are 2 centimetres (0.8 in) long when they hatch and live on yolk stored in the cells of the digestive tract for a month.
At a temperature of 10 °C (50 °F), the olm's embryonic development (time in the eggs before hatching) is 140 days, but it is somewhat slower in colder water and faster in warmer, being as little as 86 days at 15 °C (59 °F). After hatching, it takes another 14 years to reach sexual maturity if living in water that is 10 °C (50 °F). The larvae gain adult appearance after nearly four months, with the duration of development strongly correlating with water temperature. Unconfirmed historical observations of viviparity exist, but it has been shown that the females possess a gland that produces the egg casing, similar to those of fish and egg-laying amphibians. Paul Kammerer reported that female olm gave birth to live young in water at or below 13 °C (55 °F) and laid eggs at higher, but rigorous observations have not confirmed that. The olm appears to be exclusively oviparous.
Development of the olm and other troglobite amphibians is characterized by heterochrony – the animal does not undergo metamorphosis and instead retains larval features. The form of heterochrony in the olm is neoteny – delayed somatic maturity with precocious reproductive maturity, i.e. reproductive maturity is reached while retaining the larval external morphology. In other amphibians, the metamorphosis is regulated by the hormone thyroxine, secreted by the thyroid gland. The thyroid is normally developed and functioning in the olm, so the lack of metamorphosis is due to the unresponsiveness of key tissues to thyroxine.
Longevity is estimated at up to 58 years. A study published in Biology Letters estimated that they have a maximum lifespan of over 100 years and that the lifespan of an average adult is around 68.5 years. When compared to the longevity and body mass of other amphibians, olms are outliers, living longer than would be predicted from their size.
## Taxonomic history
Olms from different cave systems differ substantially in body measurements, color and some microscopic characteristics. Earlier researchers used these differences to support the division into five species, while modern herpetologists understand that external morphology is not reliable for amphibian systematics and can be extremely variable, depending on nourishment, illness, and other factors; even varying among individuals in a single population. Proteus anguinus is now considered a single species. The length of the head is the most obvious difference between the various populations – individuals from Stična, Slovenia, have shorter heads on average than those from Tržič, Slovenia, and the Istrian peninsula, for example.
### Black olm
The black olm (Proteus anguinus parkelj Sket & Arntzen, 1994) is the only other recognized subspecies of the olm. It is endemic to the underground waters near Črnomelj, Slovenia, an area smaller than 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi). It was first found in 1986 by members of the Slovenian Karst Research Institute, who were exploring the water from Dobličica karst spring in the White Carniola region.
It has several features separating it from the nominotypical subspecies (Proteus a. anguinus):
### Proteus bavaricus
The debated species Proteus bavaricus is a close relative of the olm. The species was described from a single bone, by George Brunner, and the holotype is housed in his private collection. It was found in Bavaria's Devil's Cave, in the Pleistocene layer. In his 1998 book, J. Alan Hollman described the species as a "problematic" taxon, saying that Brunner's drawing of the bone does not adequately show the differences between P. bavaricus and P. anguinus.
## Research history
The first written mention of the olm is in Johann Weikhard von Valvasor's The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola (1689) as a baby dragon. Heavy rains of Slovenia would wash the olms up from their subterranean habitat, giving rise to the folklore belief that great dragons lived beneath the Earth's crust, and the olms were the undeveloped offspring of these mythical beasts. In his book Valvasor compiled the local Slovenian folk stories and pieced together the rich mythology of the creature and documented observations of the olm as "Barely a span long, akin to a lizard, in short, a worm and vermin of which there are many hereabouts".
The first researcher to retrieve a live olm was a physician and researcher from Idrija, Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, who sent dead specimens and drawings to colleagues and collectors. Josephus Nicolaus Laurenti, though, was the first to briefly describe the olm in 1768 and give it the scientific name Proteus anguinus. It was not until the end of the century that Carl Franz Anton Ritter von Schreibers from the Naturhistorisches Museum of Vienna started to look into this animal's anatomy. The specimens were sent to him by Sigmund Zois. Schreibers presented his findings in 1801 to The Royal Society in London, and later also in Paris. Soon, the olm started to gain wide recognition and attract significant attention, resulting in thousands of animals being sent to researchers and collectors worldwide. A Dr Edwards was quoted in a book of 1839 as believing that "...the Proteus Anguinis is the first stage of an animal prevented from growing to perfection by inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola."
In 1880 Marie von Chauvin began the first long-term study of olms in captivity. She learned that they detected prey's motion, panicked when a heavy object was dropped near their habitat, and developed color if exposed to weak light for a few hours a day, but could not cause them to change to a land-dwelling adult form, as she and others had done with axolotl.
The basis of functional morphological investigations in Slovenia was set up by Lili Istenič in the 1980s. More than twenty years later, the Research Group for functional morphological Studies of the Vertebrates in the Department of Biology (Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana), is one of the leading groups studying the olm under the guidance of Boris Bulog. There are also several cave laboratories in Europe in which olms have been introduced and are being studied. These are Moulis, Ariège (France), Han-sur-Lesse (Belgium) and Aggtelek (Hungary). They were also introduced into the Hermannshöhle (Germany) and Oliero (Italy) caves, where they still live today. Additionally, there is evidence that a small number of olms were introduced to the United Kingdom in the 1940s, although it's highly likely that the animals perished shortly after being released.
The olm was used by Charles Darwin in his seminal work On the Origin of Species as an example for the reduction of structures through disuse:
> Far from feeling surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous...as is the case with blind Proteus with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the scanty inhabitants of these dark abodes will have been exposed.
An olm (Proteus) genome project is currently underway by the University of Ljubljana and BGI. With an estimated genome size roughly 15-times the size of human genome, this will likely be the largest animal genome sequenced so far.
## Conservation
The olm is extremely vulnerable to changes in its environment, due to its adaptation to the specific conditions in caves. Water resources in the karst are extremely sensitive to all kinds of pollution. The contamination of the karst underground waters is due to the large number of waste disposal sites leached by rainwater, as well as to the accidental overflow of various liquids. The reflection of such pollution in the karst underground waters depends on the type and quantity of pollutants, and on the rock structure through which the waters penetrate. Self-purification processes in the underground waters are not completely understood, but they are quite different from those in surface waters.
Among the most serious chemical pollutants are chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides, fertilizers, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are or were used in a variety of industrial processes and in the manufacture of many kinds of materials; and metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic. All of these substances persist in the environment, being slowly, if at all, degraded by natural processes. In addition, all are toxic to life if they accumulate in any appreciable quantity. The olm is nevertheless noted for its capability of surviving higer concentrations of accumulated PCBs than related aquatic organisms.
The olm was included in annexes II and IV of the 1992 EU Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC). The list of species in annex II, combined with the habitats listed in annex I, is used by individual countries to designate protected areas known as 'Special Areas of Conservation'. These areas, combined with others created by the older Birds Directive were to form the Natura 2000 network. Annex IV additionally lists "animal and plant species of community interest in need of strict protection", although this has little legal ramifications. Areas inhabited by the olm were eventually included in the Slovenian, Italian and Croatian parts of the Natura 2000 network.
The olm was first protected in Slovenia in 1922 along with all cave fauna, but the protection was not effective and a substantial black market came into existence. In 1982 it was placed on a list of rare and endangered species. This list also had the effect of prohibiting trade of the species. After joining the European Union in 2004, Slovenia had to establish mechanisms for protection of the species included in the EU Habitats Directive. The olm is included in a Slovenian Red list of endangered species, thus its capturing or killing is allowed only under specific circumstances determined by the local authorities (e.g. scientific study).
In Croatia, the olm is protected by the legislation designed to protect amphibians – collecting is possible only for research purposes by permission of the National Administration for Nature and Environment Protection. As of 2020 the Croatian population has been assessed as 'critically endangered' in Croatia. As of 1999, the environmental laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro had not yet been clarified for this species.
In the 1980s the IUCN claimed that some illegal collection of this species for the pet trade took place, but that the extent of this was unknown: this text has been copied into subsequent assessments, but by now the anecdotic claims are not considered to be indicative of a major threat. Since the 1980s until the most recent assessment in 2022 the organisation has rated the conservation status for the IUCN Red List as 'vulnerable', this because of its natural distribution being fragmented over a number of cave systems as opposed to being continuous, and what they consider a decline in extent and quality of its habitat, which they assume means that the population has been decreasing for the last 40 years.
Zagreb Zoo in Croatia houses the olm. Historically, olms were kept in several zoos in Germany, as well as in Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. At present they can only be experienced at Zagreb Zoo, Hermannshöhle in Germany and Vivarium Proteus (Proteus Vivarium) within Postojnska jama (Postojna Cave) in Slovenia. There are also captive breeding programs in France and Germany.
## Cultural significance
The olm is a symbol of Slovenian natural heritage. The enthusiasm of scientists and the broader public about this inhabitant of Slovenian caves is still strong 300 years after its discovery. Postojna Cave is one of the birthplaces of biospeleology due to the olm and other rare cave inhabitants, such as the blind cave beetle. The image of the olm contributes significantly to the fame of Postojna Cave, which Slovenia successfully utilizes for the promotion of ecotourism in Postojna and other parts of Slovenian karst. Tours of Postojna Cave also include a tour around the speleobiological station – the Proteus vivarium, showing different aspects of the cave environment.
The olm was also depicted on one of the Slovenian tolar coins. It was also the namesake of Proteus, the oldest Slovenian popular science magazine, first published in 1933.
|
4,055,812 |
Buffalo nickel
| 1,172,658,493 |
US 5-cent copper-nickel coin minted 1913–1938
|
[
"Bison",
"Bison on coins",
"Currencies introduced in 1913",
"Five-cent coins of the United States",
"Native Americans on coins",
"Works by James Earle Fraser (sculptor)"
] |
The Buffalo nickel or Indian Head nickel is a copper-nickel five-cent piece that was struck by the United States Mint from 1913 to 1938. It was designed by sculptor James Earle Fraser.
As part of a drive to beautify the coinage, five denominations of US coins had received new designs between 1907 and 1909. In 1911, Taft administration officials decided to replace Charles E. Barber's Liberty Head design for the nickel, and commissioned Fraser to do the work. They were impressed by Fraser's designs showing a Native American and an American bison. The designs were approved in 1912, but were delayed several months because of objections from the Hobbs Manufacturing Company, which made mechanisms to detect slugs in nickel-operated machines. The company was not satisfied by changes made in the coin by Fraser, and in February 1913, Treasury Secretary Franklin MacVeagh decided to issue the coins despite the objections.
Despite attempts by the Mint to adjust the design, the coins proved to strike indistinctly, and to be subject to wear—the dates were easily worn away in circulation. In 1938, after the expiration of the minimum 25-year period during which the design could not be replaced without congressional authorization, it was replaced by the Jefferson nickel, designed by Felix Schlag. Fraser's design is admired today, and has been used on commemorative coins and the gold American Buffalo series.
## Background
In 1883, the Liberty Head nickel was issued, featuring designs by Mint Engraver Charles E. Barber. After the first coins were circulated, the design was modified to add the word "CENTS" to the reverse because the similarity in size with the half eagle allowed criminals to gild the new nickels and pass them as five-dollar coins. An Act of Congress, passed into law on September 26, 1890, required that coin designs not be changed until they had been in use 25 years, unless Congress authorized the change. The act excepted the current five-cent piece and silver dollar from the twenty-five-year rule and made them eligible for immediate redesign. However, the Mint continued to strike the Liberty Head nickel in large numbers through the first decade of the 20th century.
In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt expressed his dissatisfaction with the artistic state of American coins, and hoped to hire sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to redesign all of them. Constrained by the 1890 act, the Mint hired Saint-Gaudens to redesign only the cent and the four gold pieces. Saint-Gaudens designed the eagle and double eagle, which entered circulation in the year of his death, 1907; the cent, quarter eagle, and half eagle were designed by other artists and released into circulation by 1909. By that time, the Liberty Head nickel had been in circulation for more than 25 years and was eligible for redesign. In 1909, Mint Director Frank Leach instructed Barber to make pattern coins for new nickels. Most of these coins featured the first president, George Washington. The press found out about the pieces, and speculated that they would be in circulation by the end of the year. The Mint received orders from banks in anticipation of the "Washington nickel". However, the project was discontinued when Leach left office, on November 1, 1909, to be replaced by Abram Andrew.
Andrew was dissatisfied with the Lincoln cent, which was new, and considered seeking congressional authorization to replace it with a design by sculptor James Earle Fraser. Although the change in the cent did not occur, according to numismatic historian Roger Burdette, "Fraser's enthusiasm eventually led to adoption of the Buffalo nickel in December 1912."
## Inception
### New design
On May 4, 1911, Eames MacVeagh, son of Treasury Secretary Franklin MacVeagh, wrote to his father:
> A little matter that seems to have been overlooked by all of you is the opportunity to beautify the design of the nickel or five cent piece during your administration, and it seems to me that it would be a permanent souvenir of a most attractive sort. As possibly you are aware, it is the only coin the design of which you can change during your administration, as I believe there is a law to the effect that the designs must not be changed oftener than every twenty-five years. I should think also it might be the coin of which the greatest numbers are in circulation.
Soon after the MacVeagh letter, Andrew announced that the Mint would be soliciting new designs for the nickel. Fraser, who had been an assistant to Saint-Gaudens, approached the Mint and rapidly produced concepts and designs. The new Mint director, George Roberts, who had replaced Andrew, initially favored a design featuring assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, but Fraser soon developed a design featuring a Native American on one side and a bison on the other. Andrew and Roberts recommended Fraser to MacVeagh, and in July 1911 the Secretary approved hiring Fraser to design a new nickel. Official approval was slow in coming; it was not until January 1912 that MacVeagh asked Roberts to inform Fraser that he had been commissioned. MacVeagh wrote, "Tell him that of the three sketches which he submitted we would like to use the sketch of the head of the Indian and the sketch of the buffalo." Roberts transmitted the news, then followed up with a long list of instructions to the sculptor, in which he noted, "The motto, 'In God We Trust', is not required upon this coin and I presume we are agreed that nothing should be upon it that is not required." Fraser completed the models by June 1912, and prepared coin-size electrotypes. He brought the models and electrotypes to Washington on July 10, where they met with the enthusiastic agreement of Secretary MacVeagh.
### Hobbs affair
In July 1912, word of the new design became publicly known, and coin-operated machine manufacturers sought information. Replying to the inquiries, MacVeagh wrote that there would be no change in the diameter, thickness, or weight of the nickel. This satisfied most firms. However, Clarence Hobbs of the Hobbs Manufacturing Company, of Worcester, Massachusetts requested further information. According to Hobbs, his firm was the manufacturer of a device which would detect counterfeit nickels inserted into vending machines with complete accuracy. Discussions continued for most of the rest of 1912, with Hobbs demanding various changes to the design, to which the artist was reluctant to agree. When in December 1912, the Hobbs Company submitted a modified design for the nickel, MacVeagh strongly opposed it. On December 18, Roberts officially approved Fraser's design, and the sculptor was authorized to complete and perfect the design, after which he would be paid \$2,500 (US\$ with inflation) for his work.
On January 7, 1913, Fraser's approved design was used to strike experimental pieces; the sculptor later wrote that he remembered several of the workmen commenting that the new piece struck more easily than the old. Afterwards, Roberts asked Fraser if the Hobbs Company was content with the design. The sculptor told the Mint director that the firm wanted changes made, and Fraser agreed to meet with them further. Over the following two weeks, Fraser worked with George Reith, the Hobbs Company's mechanic who had invented the anti-slug device, in an attempt to satisfy the firm's concerns. On January 20, Fraser wired the Mint from his studio in New York, announcing that he was submitting a modified design, and explained that the delay was "caused by working with inventor until he was satisfied". The next day, Philadelphia Mint Superintendent John Landis sent Roberts a sample striking of the revised design, stating, "the only change is in the border, which has been made round and true".
Despite the apparent agreement, the Hobbs Company continued to interpose objections. Engraver Barber was asked for his view; he stated that Reith, who had attended the trial striking, had been given all the time and facilities he had asked for in testing the new pieces, and the mechanic had pronounced himself satisfied. Hobbs Company agent C. U. Carpenter suggested that Reith had been intimidated by the preparations that had already gone into the issue of the modified nickel, "and, instead of pointing out clearly just what the situation demanded, agreed to adapt our device to the coin more readily that [sic] he was warranted in doing". On February 3, Hobbs sent Roberts a lengthy list of changes that he wanted in the coin, and the sculptor was required to attend a conference with Hobbs and Reith. On the fifth, following the conference, which ended with no agreement, Fraser sent MacVeagh a ten-page letter, complaining that his time was being wasted by the Hobbs Company and appealing to the Secretary to bring the situation to a close. MacVeagh agreed to hold a meeting at his office in Washington on February 14. When the Hobbs Company requested permission to bring a lawyer, Fraser announced he would be doing the same. The Hobbs Company sought letters of support from the business community, with little success; Fraser's efforts to secure support from artists for his position were more fruitful. Barber prepared patterns showing what the nickel would look like if the changes demanded by Hobbs were made. MacVeagh conducted the meeting much like a legal hearing, and issued a letter the following day.
The Secretary noted that no other firm had complained, that the Hobbs mechanism had not been widely sold, and that the changes demanded—a clear space around the rim and the flattening of the Indian's cheekbone—would affect the artistic merit of the piece.
> It is of course true that only the most serious business considerations should stand in the way of the improvement of the coinage, and this particular coin has great claims of its own, because of its special quality. If we should stop new coinage—which is always allowed every twenty-five years—for any commercial obstacles less than imperative, we should have to abandon a worthy coinage altogether. This would be a most serious handicap to the art of the Nation, for scarcely any form of art is more influential than an artistic coin, where the coin is widely circulated.
>
> You will please, therefore, proceed with the coinage of the new nickel.
After he issued his decision, MacVeagh learned that the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Company, which Hobbs claimed had enthusiastically received his device, was actually removing it from service as unsatisfactory. The Secretary's decision did not end the Hobbs Company efforts, as the firm appealed to President Taft. With only two weeks remaining in his term, the President was not minded to stop the new nickel (production of which had started on February 18) and MacVeagh wrote to Taft's secretary, Charles D. Hilles, "Certainly Hobbs got all the time and attention out of this administration that any administration could afford to give to one manufacturing corporation." Numismatic historian and coin dealer Q. David Bowers describes the Hobbs matter as "much ado about nothing from a company whose devices did not work well even with the Liberty Head nickels".
## Release and production
The first coins to be distributed were given out on February 22, 1913, when Taft presided at groundbreaking ceremonies for the National American Indian Memorial at Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, New York. The memorial, a project of department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker, was never built, and today the site is occupied by an abutment for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Forty nickels were sent by the Mint for the ceremony; most were distributed to the Native American chiefs who participated. Payment for Fraser's work was approved on March 3, 1913, the final full day of the Taft administration. In addition to the \$2,500 agreed upon, Fraser received \$666.15 (US\$ with inflation) for extra work and expenses through February 14.
The coins were officially released to circulation on March 4, 1913, and quickly gained positive comments as depicting truly American themes. However, The New York Times stated in an editorial that "The new 'nickel' is a striking example of what a coin intended for wide circulation should not be ...[it] is not pleasing to look at when new and shiny, and will be an abomination when old and dull." The Numismatist, in March and May 1913 editorials, gave the new coin a lukewarm review, suggesting that the Indian's head be reduced in size and the bison be eliminated from the reverse.
With the coin now in production, Barber monitored the rate at which dies were expended, as it was the responsibility of his Engraver's Department to supply all three mints with working dies. On March 11, 1913, he wrote to Landis that the dies were being used up three times faster than with the Liberty Head nickel. His department was straining to produce enough new dies to meet production. In addition, the date and denomination were the points on the coin most subject to wear, and Landis feared the value on the coin would be worn away. Barber made proposed revisions, which Fraser approved after being sent samples. These changes enlarged the legend "FIVE CENTS" and changed the ground on which the bison stands from a hill to flat ground. According to data compiled by numismatic historian David Lange from the National Archives, the changes to what are known as Type II nickels (with the originals Type I) actually decreased the die life. The new Treasury Secretary, William G. McAdoo, wanted further changes in the coin, but Fraser had moved on to other projects and was uninterested in revisiting the nickel. The thickness of the numerals in the date was gradually increased, making them more durable; however the problem was never addressed with complete success, and even many later-date Buffalo nickels have the date worn away.
The Buffalo nickel saw minor changes to the design in 1916. The word "LIBERTY" was given more emphasis and moved slightly; however many Denver and San Francisco issues of the 1920s exhibit weak striking of the word, the Denver issue of 1926 especially; Bowers questions whether any change was made to the portrait of the Indian, though Walter Breen in his reference work on United States coins states that Barber made the Indian's nose slightly longer. According to Breen, however, none of these modifications helped, with the coin rarely found well-struck and with the design subject to considerable wear throughout the remainder of its run. The bison's horn and tail also posed striking problems, again with the Denver and San Francisco issues of the 1920s in general, and 1926-D in particular, showing the greatest propensity for these deficiencies.
The piece was struck by the tens of millions, at all three mints (Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco), through the remainder of the 1910s. In 1921, a recession began, and no nickels at all were struck the following year. The low mintage for the series was the 1926-S, at 970,000 — the only date-mint combination with a mintage of less than 1 million. The second lowest mintage for the series came with the 1931 nickel struck at the San Francisco Mint. The 1931-S was minted in a quantity of 194,000 early in the year. There was no need for more to be struck, but Acting Mint Director Mary Margaret O'Reilly asked the San Francisco Mint to strike more so that the pieces would not be hoarded. Using materials on hand, including the melting down of worn-out nickels, San Francisco found enough metal to strike 1,000,000 more pieces. Large quantities were saved in the hope they would become valuable, and the coin is not particularly rare today despite the low mintage.
A well-known variety in the series is the 1937–D "three-legged" nickel, on which one of the buffalo's legs is missing. Breen relates that this variety was caused by a pressman, Mr. Young, at the Denver Mint, who in seeking to remove marks from a reverse die (caused by the dies making contact with each other), accidentally removed or greatly weakened one of the animal's legs. By the time Mint inspectors discovered and condemned the die, thousands of pieces had been struck and mixed with other coins.
Another variety is the 1938-D/S, caused by dies bearing an "S" mintmark being repunched with a "D" and used to strike coins at Denver. While the actual course of events is uncertain, Bowers is convinced that the variety was created because Buffalo nickel dies intended for the San Francisco mint were repunched with the "D" and sent to Denver so they would not be wasted—no San Francisco Buffalo nickels were struck in 1938, but they were produced at Denver, and it was already known that a new design would be introduced. The 1938-D/S was the first repunched mintmark of any US coin to be discovered, causing great excitement among numismatists when the variety came to light in 1962.
When the Buffalo nickel had been in circulation for the minimum 25 years, it was replaced with little discussion or protest. The problems of die life and weak striking had never been solved, and Mint officials advocated its replacement. In January 1938, the Mint announced an open competition for a new nickel design, to feature early President Thomas Jefferson on the obverse, and Jefferson's home, Monticello on the reverse. In April, Felix Schlag was announced as the winner. The last Buffalo nickels were struck in April 1938, at the Denver Mint, the only mint to strike them that year. On October 3, 1938, production of the Jefferson nickel began, and they were released into circulation on November 15.
## Design, models, and name controversy
In a 1947 radio interview, Fraser discussed his design:
> Well, when I was asked to do a nickel, I felt I wanted to do something totally American—a coin that could not be mistaken for any other country's coin. It occurred to me that the buffalo, as part of our western background, was 100% American, and that our North American Indian fitted into the picture perfectly.
The visage of the Indian which dominates Fraser's obverse design was a composite of several Native Americans. Breen noted (before the advent of the Sacagawea dollar) that Fraser's design was the second and last US coin design to feature a realistic portrait of an Indian, after Bela Pratt's 1908 design for the half eagle and quarter eagle.
The identity of the Indians whom Fraser used as models is somewhat uncertain, as Fraser told various and not always consistent stories during the forty years he lived after designing the nickel. In December 1913, he wrote to Mint Director Roberts that "[b]efore the nickel was made I had done several portraits of Indians, among them Iron Tail, Two Moons, and one or two others, and probably got characteristics from those men in the head on the coins, but my purpose was not to make a portrait but a type."
By 1931, Two Guns White Calf, son of the last Blackfoot tribal chief, was capitalizing off his claim to be the model for the coin. To try to put an end to the claim, Fraser wrote that he had used three Indians for the piece, including "Iron Tail, the best Indian head I can remember. The other one was Two Moons, the other I cannot recall." In 1938, Fraser stated that the three Indians had been "Iron Tail, a Sioux, Big Tree, a Kiowa, and Two Moons, a Cheyenne". Despite the sculptor's efforts, he (and the Mint) continued to receive inquiries about the identity of the Indian model until his 1953 death.
Nevertheless, John Big Tree, a Seneca, claimed to be a model for Fraser's coin, and made many public appearances as the "nickel Indian" until his 1967 death at the age of 90 (though he sometimes alleged he was over 100 years of age). Big Tree was identified as the model for the nickel in wire service reports about his death, and he had appeared in that capacity at the Texas Numismatic Association convention in 1966. After Big Tree's death, the Mint stated that he most likely was not one of the models for the nickel. There have been other claimants: in 1964, Montana Senator Mike Mansfield wrote to Mint Director Eva B. Adams, enquiring if Sam Resurrection, a Choctaw was a model for the nickel. Adams wrote in reply, "According to our records, the portrait is a composite. There have been many claimants for this honor, all of whom are undoubtedly sincere in the belief that theirs is the one that adorns the nickel."
According to Fraser, the animal that appears on the reverse is the American bison Black Diamond. In an interview published in the New York Herald on January 27, 1913, Fraser was quoted as saying that the animal, which he did not name, was a "typical and shaggy specimen" which he found at the Bronx Zoo. Fraser later wrote that the model "was not a plains buffalo, but none other than Black Diamond, the contrariest animal in the Bronx Zoo. I stood for hours ... He refused point blank to permit me to get side views of him, and stubbornly showed his front face most of the time." However, Black Diamond was never at the Bronx Zoo, but instead lived at the Central Park Zoo until he was sold and slaughtered in 1915. Black Diamond's mounted head is still extant and has been exhibited at coin conventions. The placement of Black Diamond's horns differs considerably from that of the animal on the nickel, leading to doubts that Black Diamond was Fraser's model. One candidate cited by Bowers is Bronx, a bison who was for many years the herd leader of the bison at the Bronx Zoo.
During an "oral history" interview with the sculptor Beniamino Bufano recorded in 1965, he stated that he "made" and "designed the buffalo" for the coin, when he was Fraser's apprentice.
From its inception, the coin was referred to as the "Buffalo nickel", reflecting the American colloquialism for the North American bison. As the piece is 75% copper and 25% nickel, prominent numismatist Stuart Mosher objected to the nomenclature in the 1940s, writing that he was "uncertain why it is called a 'Buffalo nickel' although the name is preferable to 'Bison copper'". The numismatic publication with the greatest circulation, Coin World, calls it an Indian head nickel, while R.S. Yeoman's Red Book refers to it as an "Indian Head or Buffalo type".
In 2001, the design was adopted for use on a commemorative silver dollar. Photographer Mitchell Simon, inspired by an encounter with a buffalo, launched a post card campaign. Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell in 2001 successfully sponsored a bill for the minting of 500,000 commemorative silver dollars reproducing Fraser's design. The entire mintage sold out in the span of just weeks and raised 5 million dollars to help in the building of The Smithsonian Museum of The American Indian in Washington, D.C.
In 2006, the Mint began striking American Buffalo gold bullion pieces, using a modification of Fraser's Type I design.
## See also
- United States nickel mintage figures
- The Nickel Trophy, an oversized Indian Head nickel awarded to winners of the annual football game between the North Dakota State Bison and the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux
- Hobo nickel, artistically carved nickels created during the Great Depression
- Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar, designed in 1926 by James Earle Fraser and his wife Laura Gardin Fraser
|
328,014 |
Charles Duke
| 1,170,933,077 |
American astronaut and lunar explorer (born 1935)
|
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"American flight instructors",
"American test pilots",
"Apollo 16",
"Apollo program astronauts",
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Charles Moss Duke Jr. (born October 3, 1935) is an American former astronaut, United States Air Force (USAF) officer and test pilot. As Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972, he became the 10th and youngest person to walk on the Moon, at age 36 years and 201 days.
A 1957 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Duke joined the USAF and completed advanced flight training on the F-86 Sabre at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, where he was a distinguished graduate. After completion of this training, Duke served three years as a fighter pilot with the 526th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. After graduating from the Aerospace Research Pilot School in September 1965, he stayed on as an instructor teaching control systems and flying in the F-101 Voodoo, F-104 Starfighter, and T-33 Shooting Star.
In April 1966, Duke was one of nineteen men selected for NASA's fifth astronaut group. In 1969, he was a member of the astronaut support crew for Apollo 10. He served as CAPCOM for Apollo 11, the first crewed landing on the Moon. His distinctive Southern drawl became familiar to audiences around the world, as the voice of a Mission Control made nervous by a long landing that almost expended all of the Lunar Module Eagle descent stage's propellant. Duke's first words to the Apollo 11 crew on the surface of the Moon were flustered, "Roger, Twank...Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot!"
Duke was backup lunar module pilot on Apollo 13. Shortly before the mission, he caught rubella (German measles) from a friend's child and inadvertently exposed the prime crew to the disease. As Ken Mattingly had no natural immunity to the disease, he was replaced as command module pilot by Jack Swigert. Mattingly was reassigned as command module pilot of Duke's flight, Apollo 16. On this mission, Duke and John Young landed at the Descartes Highlands, and conducted three extravehicular activities (EVAs). He served as backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 17. Duke retired from NASA on January 1, 1976.
Following his retirement from NASA, Duke entered the Air Force Reserve and served as a mobilization augmentee to the Commander, USAF Basic Military Training Center, and to the Commander, USAF Recruiting Service. He graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1978. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1979, and retired in June 1986. He has logged 4,147 hours' flying time, of which 3,632 hours were in jet aircraft, and 265 hours were in space, including 21 hours and 38 minutes of EVA.
Duke resides in New Braunfels, Texas, and was named Texan of the Year in 2020. He is currently on the board of directors for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and previously served for two years as the chairman. He is a popular motivational speaker, with NASA films and personal stories of his Apollo mission on the moon. He is a born-again Christian and he and his wife Dorothy speak to audiences regarding their faith and its effect on their marriage.
## Early life and education
Charles Moss Duke Jr. was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 3, 1935, the son of Charles Moss Duke, an insurance salesman, and his wife Willie Catherine née Waters, who worked as a buyer for Best & Co. He was followed six minutes later by his identical twin brother William Waters (Bill) Duke. His mother traced her ancestry back to Colonel Philemon Waters, who fought in the American Revolutionary War.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into World War II, his father volunteered to join the Navy, and was assigned to Naval Air Station North Island in California. The family moved to California to join him, but after a year he was shipped out to the South Pacific, and Willie took the boys to Johnston, South Carolina, where her mother lived. His father returned from the South Pacific in 1944, and was stationed at Naval Air Station Daytona Beach, so the family moved there. In 1946, after the war ended, they settled in Lancaster, South Carolina, where his father sold insurance, and his mother ran a dress shop. A sister, Elizabeth (Betsy), was born in 1949.
As a boy, Duke and his brother Bill made model aircraft. A congenital heart defect caused Bill to drop out of strenuous sports, and eventually inspired him to pursue a career in medicine, but golf was a sport that they enjoyed together. Duke was active in the Boy Scouts of America and earned its highest rank, Eagle Scout in 1946. He attended Lancaster High School. Duke decided that he would like to pursue a military career. Since his father had served in the Navy, he wanted to go to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
As a first step, Duke went to see his local congressman, James P. Richards, who lived in Lancaster. Richards said that he would be pleased to give Duke his nomination, as a local boy. Richards advised Duke that he would still need to pass the entrance examination, and recommended that he attend a military prep school. Duke and his parents accepted this advice, and chose the Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg, Florida, for his final two years of schooling. Duke sat the examination for Annapolis in the middle of his senior year, and soon after received a letter informing him that he had passed, and had been accepted into the class of 1957. The Lancaster News ran his picture on the front page along with the announcement of his acceptance. He graduated from Farragut as valedictorian and president of the senior class in 1953.
Duke entered the Naval Academy in June 1953. He was no athlete, but played golf for the academy team. During a two-month summer cruise to Europe on the escort carrier USS Siboney, he suffered from seasickness, and began questioning his decision to join the Navy. On the other hand, he greatly enjoyed a familiarization flight in an N3N seaplane, and began thinking of a career in aviation. The United States Air Force Academy had just been established and would not graduate its first class until 1959, so up to a quarter of the Annapolis class were permitted to volunteer for the United States Air Force. In fact, more than a quarter of the class of 1957 did so, and names were drawn from a hat. At his commissioning physical, Duke was shocked to find that he had a minor astigmatism in his right eye, which precluded him from becoming a naval aviator, but the Air Force said that it would still take him. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in naval sciences in June 1957, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force.
## Air Force
In July 1957, Duke, along with the other graduates of Annapolis and West Point who had chosen the Air Force, reported to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, for two weeks' orientation. He was then sent to Spence Air Force Base in Moultrie, Georgia, for primary flight training. The first three months involved classwork and training with the T-34 Mentor, while the next three were with the T-28 Trojan; both were propeller-driven aircraft. For the next phase of his training, he went to Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas, in March 1958 for training with the T-33 Shooting Star, a jet aircraft. He graduated near the top of his class, and received his wings and a certificate identifying him as a distinguished graduate, which gave him a choice of assignments. He chose to become a fighter pilot. He completed six months' advanced training on the F-86 Sabre aircraft at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, where he was also a distinguished graduate.
Once again, Duke had his choice of assignments, and chose the 526th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. This was at the height of the Cold War, and tensions ran high, especially during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Duke chose the assignment precisely because it was the front line. Four of the 526th's F-86 (and later F-102 Delta Dagger) fighter-interceptors were always on alert, ready to scramble and intercept aircraft crossing the border from East Germany.
As his three-year tour of duty in Europe came to an end, Duke considered that his best career option was to further his education, something that the USAF was encouraging. He applied to study aeronautical engineering at North Carolina State University, but this was not available. Instead, he was offered a place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in its Master of Science degree course in aeronautics and astronautics. He entered MIT in June 1962.
It was in Boston that he met Dotty Meade Claiborne, a graduate of Hollins College and the University of North Carolina, who had recently returned from a summer trip to Europe. They became engaged on Christmas Day, 1962, and were married by her uncle, Randolph Claiborne, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, in the Cathedral of Saint Philip, on June 1, 1963. They went to Jamaica for their honeymoon, but came down with food poisoning.
While he was courting Dotty, Duke's grades had slipped, and he was placed on scholastic probation, but the USAF allowed him to enroll for another term. For his dissertation, Duke teamed up with a classmate, Mike Jones, to perform statistical analysis for the Project Apollo guidance systems. As part of this work, they got to meet astronaut Charles Bassett. Their work earned them an A, bringing his average up to the required B, and he was awarded his Master of Science degree in May 1964.
For his next assignment, Duke applied for the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS), although he felt his chances of admission were slim given that he only barely met the minimum qualification. Nonetheless, orders came through for him to attend class 64-C, which commenced in August 1964 at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The commandant at the time was Chuck Yeager, and Duke's twelve-member class included Spence M. Armstrong, Al Worden, Stuart Roosa and Hank Hartsfield. Peter Hoag topped the class; Duke tied for second place. After graduating from ARPS in September 1965, Duke stayed on as an instructor teaching control systems and flying in the F-101 Voodoo, F-104 Starfighter, and T-33 Shooting Star aircraft. While he was stationed at Edwards, his first child, Charles Moss Duke III, was born at the base hospital in March 1965.
## NASA
### Selection and training
On September 10, 1965, NASA announced that it was recruiting a fifth group of astronauts. Duke spotted a front-page article in the Los Angeles Times, and realized that he met all the requirements. He went to see Yeager and the deputy commandant, Colonel Robert Buchanan, who informed him that there were two astronaut selections in progress: one for NASA, and one for the USAF's Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program. Nominations to NASA had to come through Air Force channels, so it got to pre-screen them. Buchanan told Duke that he could apply for both programs, but if he did, MOL would take him. Duke applied only to NASA, as did Roosa and Worden; Hartsfield applied for both and was taken by MOL.
Duke made the list of 44 finalists selected to undergo medical examinations at Brooks Air Force Base at San Antonio, Texas. He arrived there on January 26, 1966, along with two fellow aviators from Edwards, Joe Engle and Bill Pogue. Psychological tests included Rorschach tests; physical ones included encephalograms, and sessions on treadmills and in a human centrifuge. The eye problem that the Naval Academy had reported was not found.
The final stage of the selection process was an interview by the seven-member selection panel. This was chaired by Deke Slayton, with the other members being astronauts Alan Shepard, John Young, Michael Collins and C.C. Williams, NASA test pilot Warren North, and spacecraft designer Max Faget. These were conducted over a week at the Rice Hotel in Houston. In April 1966, a phone call from Slayton informed Duke that he had been selected. NASA officially announced the names of the 19 men selected on April 4, 1966. Young named the group the "Original Nineteen" in a parody of the original Mercury Seven astronauts.
Duke and his family moved to an apartment in League City, Texas, but when Dotty became pregnant again, they bought a vacant lot in El Lago, Texas, next door to astronaut Bill Anders. They met and befriended a young couple, Glenn and Suzanne House. Glenn was an architect, and he agreed to design them a house for \$300. Ground was broken in February 1967, but the house was not completed before a second son, Thomas, was born in May.
Astronaut training included four months of studies covering subjects such as astronomy, orbital mechanics and spacecraft systems. Some 30 hours of briefings were conducted on the Apollo command and service module, and twelve on the Apollo lunar module. An important feature was training in geology, so that astronauts on the Moon would know what rocks to look out for. This training in geology included field trips to the Grand Canyon and the Meteor Crater in Arizona, Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, Horse Lava Tube System in Bend, Oregon, and the ash flow in the Marathon Uplift in Texas, and other locations, including Alaska and Hawaii. There was also jungle survival training in Panama, and desert survival training around Reno, Nevada. Water survival training was conducted at Naval Air Station Pensacola using the Dilbert Dunker.
Once their initial training was complete, Duke and Roosa were assigned to oversee the development of the Saturn V launch vehicle, as part of the Booster Branch of the Astronaut Office, headed by Frank Borman and C.C. Williams. He was part of the Mission Control team at the Kennedy Space Center that monitored the launch of Gemini 11 on September 12, 1966, and Gemini 12 on November 11, 1966. His personal responsibility was the Titan II booster. They frequently traveled to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to confer with its director, Wernher von Braun. NASA provided T-38 Talon aircraft for the astronauts' use, and like most astronauts, Duke flew at every opportunity.
### Lunar Module specialist
The Nineteen were divided into command and service module (CSM) and Lunar Module (LM) specialists. Slayton asked each of them which specialty he preferred, but made the final decision himself. Once again, Duke received his choice, and became a lunar module specialist. He oversaw the development of the lunar module propulsion systems. A major concern was the ascent propulsion system, which was a critical component of the mission that had to work for the astronauts to survive. Testing at the White Sands Missile Range in 1966 indicated combustion instability. George Low, the Apollo Spacecraft Program manager, convened a committee to review the situation, and Duke became the Astronaut Office representative on it. Although Bell was confident that it could resolve the problems, NASA hired Rocketdyne to develop an alternative engine just in case. The committee ultimately decided to use Rocketdyne's injector system with Bell's engine.
In 1969, Duke became a member of the support crew for Apollo 10, along with Joe Engle and Jim Irwin. During Projects Mercury and Gemini, each mission had a prime and a backup crew. For Apollo, a third crew of astronauts was added, known as the support crew. The support crew maintained the flight plan, checklists and mission ground rules, and ensured the prime and backup crews were apprised of changes. They developed procedures, especially those for emergency situations, so these were ready for when the prime and backup crews came to train in the simulators, allowing them to concentrate on practicing and mastering them. The mission commander, Tom Stafford, selected Duke for his familiarity with the LM, especially its propulsion systems. For this reason, Duke served as CAPCOM for the LM orbit, activation, checkout, and rendezvous on Apollo 10.
It was unusual for someone to serve as CAPCOM on back-to-back missions, but for the same reason—familiarity with the LM—Neil Armstrong, the commander of Apollo 11, asked Duke to reprise his role on that mission, which included the first crewed landing on the Moon. Duke told Armstrong that he would be honored to do so. Duke's distinctive Southern drawl became familiar to audiences around the world, as the voice of a Mission Control made nervous by a long landing that almost expended all of the Lunar Module Eagle's fuel. Duke's first words to the Apollo 11 crew on the surface of the Moon were flustered, "Roger, Twank...Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot!"
### Apollo 13
The next rung on the ladder after serving on a support crew was to serve on a backup crew. The pace of the early Apollo missions meant that multiple crews had to be training at the same time. Slayton developed a rotation scheme whereby the backup crew for one mission would become the prime crew for one three missions later, and then the backup for the one three missions after that. If the commander (CDR) declined the offer of another mission, the command module pilot (CMP), as the next most senior astronaut, would become the commander (CDR). Thus, the Apollo 10 crew became the backup crew for Apollo 13. Tom Stafford accepted the position of acting Chief of the Astronaut Office, so the CMP, John Young, stepped up to replace him as CDR; Gene Cernan remained lunar module pilot (LMP), and Jack Swigert, a command module specialist from the Nineteen, was designated the CMP. The intention was that this crew would eventually become the prime crew for Apollo 16, but Cernan disagreed with this; he wanted to command his own mission. Slayton therefore assigned Duke, who was well known to Young from Apollo 10, in Cernan's place. After Michael Collins, the CMP of Apollo 11, declined the offer of command of the backup crew of Apollo 14, Slayton gave this command to Cernan.
Full-time training for Apollo 13 commenced in July 1969, although the selection of the Apollo 13 and 14 crews was not officially announced until August 7. The prime crew for Apollo 13 consisted of Jim Lovell (CDR), Fred Haise (LMP) and Ken Mattingly (CMP). The mission was originally scheduled to be flown in late 1969, but in view of the successful outcome of Apollo 11, it was postponed until March and then April 1970. Two or three weeks before the launch date, Duke contracted rubella (German measles) from Paul House, the son of Glenn and Suzanne House. The disease is highly contagious, so the NASA doctors checked the prime crew. It was found that Lovell and Haise were immune to the disease, but Mattingly was not. The decision was taken to remove Mattingly and replace him with Swigert.
The subsequent explosion on Apollo 13 greatly affected the backup crew, especially Mattingly, who felt that he should have been on board. Young, Mattingly and Duke worked in the simulators to develop emergency procedures for the crew, who were ultimately returned safely to Earth. Haise and Swigert teased Duke, calling him "Typhoid Mary". The measles incident resulted in procedures being changed; starting with Apollo 14, the crew would be quarantined for three weeks before the flight as well as afterward. In the event, only the Apollo 14 crew had to endure two periods of quarantine; with no signs of life on the Moon, the post-mission quarantine was discontinued in April 1971.
### Apollo 16
#### Training
Young, Mattingly and Duke were officially named as the crew of Apollo 16, the fifth lunar landing mission, on March 3, 1971. The Descartes Highlands were chosen as the landing site on June 3, 1971. This was the highest region on the near side of the Moon. It was believed to be volcanic in origin and mainly composed of basalt, based upon the tones of gray observed from Earth. It was hoped that rock samples retrieved by Apollo 16 would provide clues about the processes that formed the highlands, and perhaps even show that such processes were still active.
Training was conducted in the lunar module simulator, which used a TV camera and a scale model of the landing area. Other activities included driving a training version of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), and collecting geological samples. A final geological field trip was made to the big island of Hawaii in December 1971. On the second day of the trip, Duke caught the flu. By New Year's Day he was so ill that he was unable to get out of bed, and asked the Astronaut Office to send someone to take him to the doctor at the Kennedy Space Center. The doctor took an X-ray that revealed pneumonia in both lungs and called an ambulance to take Duke to the Patrick Air Force Base hospital.
Duke feared that he might not recover in time for the launch, which was scheduled for March 17, 1972. The spacecraft and Saturn V launch vehicle had already been rolled out to Launch Pad 39A on December 13. Luck was with Duke: Grumman engineers wanted more time to test the increased capacity of the LM's batteries; a fault was found with the explosive cords that separate the LM from the CSM that warranted their replacement; and a failure of a clamp in Duke's spacesuit during training required the modification of all three astronauts' suits. This caused the launch date to be postponed to the next launch window, on April 16. This proved fortunate when an error by launch pad technicians caused one of the CM's Teflon fuel tank bladders to rupture, and the entire space vehicle had to be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Slayton noted that "there wasn't even any discussion of replacing him; that was one of the lessons we'd learned on 13."
The astronauts went into quarantine and were allowed out only to fly T-38s for an hour a day. The day before liftoff, the Apollo Program director, Rocco Petrone saw someone he believed to be Duke around the pool at the Holiday Inn. A furious Petrone called the crew quarters demanding to know why Duke had broken quarantine. The staff's protestations that Duke was still there and had not left did not placate Petrone, and they had to track down Duke in training, who suggested that Petrone might have seen his brother Bill. When Apollo 16 was launched at 12:54 Eastern Standard Time (17:54 UTC) on April 16, 1972, Duke became the first twin to fly in space.
#### Outbound voyage
The launch was normal; the crew experienced vibration similar to that of previous crews. The first and second stages of the Saturn V performed flawlessly, and the spacecraft entered low Earth orbit just under 12 minutes after liftoff. In Earth orbit, the crew faced minor technical issues, including a potential problem with the environmental control system and the S-IVB third stage's attitude control system, but these were resolved or compensated for. After 1.5 orbits, it reignited for just over five minutes, propelling the craft towards the Moon at 35,000 km/h (22,000 mph).
In lunar orbit, the crew faced a series of problems. Duke was unable to get the S-band steerable antenna on the LM Orion to move in the yaw axis, and therefore could not align it correctly. This resulted in poor communications with the ground stations, and consequently a loss of the computer uplink. This meant that Duke had to copy down 35 five-digit numbers and enter them into the computer. Correcting any mistake was a complicated procedure. Fortunately, the astronauts could still hear Mission Control clearly, although the reverse was not the case.
When Young went to activate the reaction control system, they suffered a double failure on the pressurization system. Young described this as "the worst jam I was ever in". A long debate between the astronauts and with Mission Control followed. It was the only time during the flight that Duke could recall arguing with Young. Although they could not fix the problem, they were able to work around it by shifting propellant into the ascent storage tank. None was lost; it was just moved into another tank.
With the preparations finished, Young and Duke undocked Orion from Mattingly in the CSM Casper. Mattingly prepared to shift Casper to a circular orbit while Young and Duke prepared Orion for the descent to the lunar surface. At this point, during tests of the CSM's steerable rocket engine in preparation for the burn to modify the craft's orbit, a malfunction occurred in the engine's backup system, causing such severe oscillations that Casper seemed to be shaking itself to pieces. According to mission rules, Orion should have then re-docked with Casper in case Mission Control decided to abort the landing and use Orion's engines for the return trip to Earth. This was not done, and the two spacecraft flew on in formation. A decision to land had to be made within five orbits (about ten hours), after which the spacecraft would have drifted too far to reach the landing site.
#### Lunar surface
After four hours and three orbits, Mission Control determined that the malfunction could be worked around and told Young and Duke to proceed with the landing. As a result of the delay, powered descent to the lunar surface began about six hours behind schedule, and Young and Duke began their descent to the surface at an altitude 5,000 m (16,000 ft) higher than normal. At an altitude of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft), Young was able to view the landing site in its entirety. Orion landed on the Cayley Plains, 270 m (886 ft) northwest of the planned landing site, at 02:23:35 UTC on April 21.
Duke became the tenth person to walk upon the surface of the Moon, following Young, who became the ninth. Apollo 16 was the first scientific expedition to inspect, survey, and sample materials and surface features in the rugged lunar highlands. In a stay of 71 hours and 14 minutes, Duke and Young conducted three excursions onto the lunar surface, during which Duke logged 20 hours and 15 minutes in extravehicular activities. These included the emplacement and activation of scientific equipment and experiments, the collection of nearly 97 kilograms (213 lb) of rock and soil samples, and the evaluation and use of the LRV over the roughest surface yet encountered on the Moon.
During their final few minutes on the surface, Duke attempted to set a lunar high jump record. He jumped about 2 feet 8 inches (0.81 m), but overbalanced, and fell over backwards on his primary life support system (PLSS). It could have been a fatal accident; had his suit ruptured or PLSS broken, he might have died. "That ain't very smart", Young noted.
#### Return to Earth
On the way back to Earth, Duke assisted in a deep-space EVA that lasted 1 hour and 23 minutes, when Mattingly climbed out of the Casper spacecraft and retrieved film cassettes from the service module. After a journey during which Casper had traveled 2,238,598 kilometers (1,208,746 nmi), the Apollo 16 mission concluded with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 19:45:05 UTC on April 27, and recovery by the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga.
Duke left two items on the Moon, both of which he photographed. The most famous is a plastic-encased photo portrait of his family taken by NASA photographer Ludy Benjamin. The reverse of the photo was signed and thumb printed by Duke's family and bore this message: "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth, who landed on the Moon on the twentieth of April 1972."
The other item was a commemorative medal issued by the Air Force, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary in 1972. Duke was the only Air Force officer to visit the Moon that year. With the approval of the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General John D. Ryan, and the Secretary of the Air Force, Robert Seamans, Duke took two silver medallions commemorating the anniversary. He left one on the Moon and donated the other to the Air Force. Today it is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, along with a Moon rock from the Apollo 16 mission.
In the wake of the Apollo 15 postal covers scandal, Slayton replaced the Apollo 15 crew as the backup for the Apollo 17 mission with the Apollo 16 one. Duke became the backup LMP, Young the backup commander, and Roosa the backup CMP. They went into training again in June 1972, just two months after Duke and Young had returned from the Moon. There was only a slim chance that they would be called upon to fly the mission, and in the event were not. Duke never flew in space again. He retired from NASA on January 1, 1976. He had spent 265 hours and 51 minutes in space.
## Later life
Following his retirement from NASA, Duke left active duty in the USAF as a colonel, and entered the Air Force Reserve. He served as Mobilization Augmentee to the Commander, Air Force Basic Military Training Center and to the Commander, USAF Recruiting Service. He graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1978 and was promoted to brigadier general the following year. He retired in June 1986. He has logged 4,147 hours of flying time, of which 3,632 hours was in jet aircraft.
Duke had always been fond of Coors Beer, which was only available in Texas around Dallas and El Paso at the time. In 1975, he heard that the company was thinking of expanding into the rest of Texas. He formed a partnership with former Olympic basketball player Dick Boushka, and they drew up a business plan and put in a bid for the new Coors distributorship in Austin. Coors declined their bid, but offered the distributorship in San Antonio instead, which they accepted. The house in El Lago was sold, and Duke and his family moved to New Braunfels, a community not far from San Antonio, where, , he and wife Dotty remain. His brother Bill died in 2011.
The Coors distributorship was very successful, but Duke became bored and frustrated with it, and decided to sell in February 1978. He and Boushka realized a handsome profit from what had become a thriving business. He joined a friend, Ken Campbell, in real estate ventures. His subsequent business ventures include being president of the Orbit Corporation from 1976 to 1978; director of the Robbins Company from 1986 to 1989 and Amherst Fiber Optics in 2000; chairman of Duke Resources from 1988 to 1993 and Texcor from 1989 to 1994, and of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation from 2011 to 2012. He was also a consultant for Lockheed Martin.
In 1978, Duke became a committed born-again Christian. Duke wrote in his autobiography that his temper, ego, single-minded devotion to work, and greed had ruined his relationship with his wife and his children, and that his marriage teetered on the verge of divorce in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with Dotty suffering from depression and having considered suicide at one point. Duke stated that his marriage and his relationship with his children improved considerably after he committed his life to Jesus, and both Duke and Dotty—who became a Christian before him—credit God with making their lives much more complete and joyful, with Duke being active in Christian ministry. The Dukes are members of Christ Our King Anglican Church, an Anglican Church in North America congregation in New Braunfels.
## Awards and honors
In 1973, Duke received an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of South Carolina, an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Francis Marion University in 1990, and an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Clemson University in 2012. Other honors include the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1972, Manned Spacecraft Center Certificate of Commendation in 1970, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal with Oak leaf cluster, the Legion of Merit, Society of Experimental Test Pilots' Iven C. Kincheloe Award in 1972, American Astronautical Society Flight Achievement Award for 1972, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Haley Astronautics Award for 1973, Fédération Aéronautique Internationale V. M. Komarov Diploma in 1973, and the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 1975. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach presented the Sky is the Limit Trophy to Duke in 2018.
Duke was named South Carolina Man of the Year in 1973, inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame in 1973, and the International Space Hall of Fame in 1983. He was one of 24 Apollo astronauts who were inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997. He was inducted into the Texas Science Hall of Fame in 2000, and the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2019. His name is inscribed on The Astronaut Monument in Iceland, where they conducted some of their geological training. In December 2019, he was named Texan of the Year for 2020. Asteroid 26382 Charlieduke was named in his honor. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on May 18, 2019.
## Cultural depictions
Duke was the subject of the documentary Lunar Tribute, which premiered at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium on October 20, 2017. At a panel after the screening, Neil deGrasse Tyson noted that Duke was the youngest person to walk on the Moon. Duke responded that at age 82, he still was. He joined the Back to Space organization in 2018 as an Astronaut Consultant with the goal of inspiring through film the next generation to go to Mars. He was featured prominently in the BBC World Service Podcast, 13 Minutes to the Moon, released in 2019 to mark 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission.
In 2018, country music duo The Stryker Brothers released the song "Charlie Duke Took Country Music To The Moon", which tells the true story of how Duke brought two audio cassette tapes of country music to play during the Apollo 16 mission. Duke's friend Bill Bailey, a disc jockey at Houston-area country music radio station KIKK, had enlisted several country stars of the time to provide personalized recordings for the astronauts. The tapes were introduced by Merle Haggard, and other artists included Porter Wagoner, Dolly Parton, Buck Owens, Jerry Reed, Chet Atkins, and Floyd Cramer.
"The Stryker Brothers" was the stage name for a collaboration between Robert Earl Keen and Randy Rogers, but the two initially kept their identities secret, with promotional material claiming that the music originated from two actual brothers who had died in a prison fire. Duke appeared in an online video asserting that he got to know the brothers as children at the home of disc jockey Bailey, and that he gave them a copy of the tapes following his return from the Moon. In reality, Duke met Rogers at an event in New Braunfels, where both men live.
Duke is a character in episode 34 of the fictional youth audio adventure series Jonathan Park. The script was based on an interview conducted with Duke by the series production team.
In the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Duke was played by J. Downing.
In the 2019 alternate history web television series For All Mankind, he is played by Ben Begley.
|
3,444,797 |
Conan the Barbarian (1982 film)
| 1,172,073,460 |
1982 American fantasy movie
|
[
"1980s American films",
"1980s English-language films",
"1980s Italian films",
"1980s action adventure films",
"1980s fantasy action films",
"1980s fantasy adventure films",
"1982 films",
"20th Century Fox films",
"American action adventure films",
"American dark fantasy films",
"American epic films",
"American fantasy action films",
"American fantasy adventure films",
"American films about revenge",
"American sword and sorcery films",
"Conan the Barbarian films",
"Films about cannibalism",
"Films about cults",
"Films about religion",
"Films about witchcraft",
"Films based on works by Robert E. Howard",
"Films directed by John Milius",
"Films produced by Buzz Feitshans",
"Films produced by Raffaella De Laurentiis",
"Films scored by Basil Poledouris",
"Films shot at Shepperton Studios",
"Films shot in Almería",
"Films shot in Surrey",
"Films shot in the province of Cuenca",
"Films shot in the province of Ávila",
"Films with screenplays by John Milius",
"Films with screenplays by Oliver Stone",
"Gladiatorial combat in fiction",
"Peplum films",
"Universal Pictures films"
] |
Conan the Barbarian is a 1982 American epic sword and sorcery film directed by John Milius and written by Milius and Oliver Stone. Based on Robert E. Howard's Conan, the film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones and tells the story of a barbarian warrior named Conan (Schwarzenegger) who seeks vengeance for the death of his parents at the hands of Thulsa Doom (Jones), the leader of a snake cult.
Ideas for a Conan film were proposed as early as 1970; executive producer Edward R. Pressman and associate producer Edward Summer began a concerted effort to get the film made in 1975. It took them two years to obtain the film rights, after which they recruited Schwarzenegger for the lead role and Stone to draft a script. Pressman lacked capital for the endeavor. In 1979, after having his proposals for investments rejected by the major studios, he sold the project to Dino De Laurentiis; his daughter Raffaella produced the film. Milius was appointed as director and he rewrote Stone's script. The final screenplay integrated scenes from Howard's stories and from the Japanese films Seven Samurai (1954) and Kwaidan (1965). Filming took place in Spain over five months in the regions around Madrid and the province of Almería. The sets, designed by Ron Cobb, were based on Dark Age cultures and Frank Frazetta's paintings of Conan. Milius eschewed optical effects, preferring to realize his ideas with mechanical constructs and optical illusions. Schwarzenegger performed most of his own stunts, and two types of sword, costing \$10,000 each, were forged for his character. The editing process took over a year, and several violent scenes were cut out.
Conan the Barbarian was distributed by Universal Pictures in North America and 20th Century Fox in other territories. It premiered on March 16, 1982 in Spain and May 14, 1982 in North America. Upon release, the film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, mainly positive for its action sequences, production design, directing, visual style, and effects, but negatively received for its violent content and screenwriting, as well as some substandard performances. Despite this, the film became a commercial success for its backers, grossing between \$68.9 million and \$79.1 million at box offices around the world against its budget of only \$20 million.
The film earned Schwarzenegger worldwide recognition. Conan the Barbarian has been frequently released on home video, the sales of which had increased the film's gross to more than \$300 million by 2007. In the years following its release, it became a cult film, and its success spawned a sequel, titled Conan the Destroyer (1984). It ultimately led to the production of a 2011 reboot of the same name.
## Plot
A sword is forged by a blacksmith, who then shows it to his young son, Conan, as he tells him of the "Riddle of Steel", an aphorism on the importance of steel to their people, the Cimmerians. The Cimmerians are later massacred by a band of raiders led by Thulsa Doom; Conan's father is killed by dogs, and his sword is taken by Doom to decapitate Conan's mother, aided by Doom's entrancing gaze. The children are taken into slavery and chained to work a large mill, the Wheel of Pain. Conan survives into adulthood, becoming a massive, muscular man. His master eventually trains him to be a gladiator; after winning countless fights and receiving training and education in the East, Conan is freed, unarmed. He is soon chased by wild dogs and seeks refuge in an Atlantean warrior's tomb, where he retrieves an ancient sword. Conan wanders the world, encountering a prophetic witch in a hut and then befriends Subotai, a Hyrkanian thief and archer.
Following the witch's advice, Conan and Subotai go to the city of Zamora to seek out Doom. There, they meet Valeria, a female brigand. They raid the Tower of Serpents, stealing jewels and other valuables from a shrine, slaying a giant snake in the process. After escaping with their loot, the thieves celebrate, and Conan has sex with Valeria. The city guards capture the trio and bring them to King Osric, who requests they rescue his daughter, Princess Yasimina, now a zealot in Doom's cult, for a handsome reward. Subotai and Valeria refuse to take up the quest; Conan, however, motivated by his hatred for Doom and his desire for vengeance, sets off alone to the villain's Temple of Set.
Disguised as a priest, Conan infiltrates the temple, but he is discovered, captured, and tortured. Doom lectures him on the power of flesh, which he demonstrates by hypnotically enticing a girl to leap to her death. He then orders for Conan to be crucified on the Tree of Woe. The barbarian is on the verge of death when he is discovered by Subotai and brought to Akiro, the Wizard of the Mounds, who lives on a burial site for warriors and kings. The wizard summons spirits to heal Conan and warns that they will "extract a heavy toll", which Valeria is willing to pay. These spirits also try to abduct Conan, but he is restored to health after Valeria and Subotai fend them off.
Subotai and Valeria agree to help Conan complete Osric's quest and infiltrate the Temple of Set. As the cult indulges in a cannibalistic orgy, the thieves attack and flee with the princess, but Conan is unable to engage Doom, who has magically transformed into a large snake and slithered away. Valeria is mortally wounded by Doom after he shoots a stiffened snake at her with his bow. She dies in Conan's arms, acknowledging the price of the "toll" forewarned by the wizard in exchange for Conan's life; she is cremated at the Mounds, where Conan prepares with Subotai and the wizard to battle Doom. Conan asks Crom, the god of his people, to grant him revenge. By using booby traps and exploiting their terrain, they manage to slay Doom's warriors when they attack. Just when Rexor is about to overcome Conan, Valeria reappears for a brief moment as a Valkyrie to save him from the mortal blow. After losing his men, Doom shoots a stiffened snake at the princess. Subotai blocks the shot with his shield, and Doom flees to his temple. The battle ends with Conan killing Rexor and recovering his father's sword, it having been splintered by his Atlantean sword.
Conan sneaks back to the temple where Doom is addressing his cult members. He confronts Doom, who receives him with open arms and attempts to mesmerize him, but the barbarian resists and uses his father's broken sword to behead his nemesis. After the disillusioned cultists disperse, Conan burns down the temple and returns the princess to Osric.
## Characters
The character, Conan, and the world of the Hyborian Age were based on the creations of pulp-fiction writer Robert E. Howard from the 1930s. Published in Weird Tales, his series about the barbarian was popular with the readership; the barbarian's adventures in a savage and mystical world, replete with gore and brutal slayings, satisfied the reader's fantasies of being a "powerful giant who lives by no rules but his own". From the 1960s, Conan gained a wider audience as novels about him, written in imitation of Howard's style by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, were published. Frank Frazetta's cover art for these novels cemented Conan's image as a "virile, axe-wielding, fur-bearing, cranium-smashing barbarian". John Milius, the film's director, intended the film's Conan to be "a Northern European mythic hero". Danny Peary described Conan as "muscular, majestic, brainy, yet with ambivalent scruples". Don Herron, a scholar on Howard and his stories, disagreed, noting that the personality of Conan in the film differs greatly from that of the literature. The Conan in the books detests restrictions to his freedom and would have resisted slavery in a violent fashion, whereas the film version accepts his fate and has to be freed. Robert Garcia's review of the film in his American Fantasy magazine states, "this Conan is less powerful, less talkative, and less educated than Howard's".
The female lead, Valeria, has her roots in two strong female characters from Howard's Conan stories. Her namesake was Conan's companion in "Red Nails", while her personality and fate were based on those of Bêlit, the pirate queen in "Queen of the Black Coast". According to Kristina Passman, an assistant professor of classical languages and literature, the film's Valeria is a perfect archetype of the "good" Amazon character, a fierce but domesticated female warrior, in cinema. Rikke Schubart, a film scholar, said Valeria is a "good" Amazon because she is tamed by love and not because of any altruistic tendencies. Valeria's prowess in battle matches that of Conan, and she is also depicted as his equal in capability and status. The loyalty and love she displays for Conan makes her more than a companion to him; she represents his "possibilities of human happiness". Her sacrifice for Conan and her brief return from death act out the heroic code, illustrating that self-sacrificing heroism brings "undying fame". Valeria's name is spoken in the film only after her death.
Milius based Conan's other companion, Subotai, on Genghis Khan's main general, Subotai, rather than on any of Howard's characters. According to film critic Roger Ebert, Subotai fulfills the role of a "classic literary type—the Best Pal." He helps the barbarian to kill a giant snake and cuts him down from crucifixion; the thief also cries for his companion during Valeria's cremation, with the explanation that "(h)e is Conan, a Cimmerian. He won't cry, so I cry for him."
Conan's enemy, Thulsa Doom, is an amalgamation of two of Howard's creations. He takes his name from the villain in Howard's Kull of Atlantis series of stories, but is closer in character to Thoth-Amon, a Stygian sorcerer in "The Phoenix on the Sword". The Doom in the film reminded critics of Jim Jones, a cult leader whose hold on his followers was such that hundreds of them obeyed his orders to commit suicide. Milius said his research on the ancient orders of the Hashishim and the Thuggee was the inspiration for Doom's snake cult. In the original Howard stories, the worship of Set, though all too fearsome, is no sect; rather, it is the centuries-old formalized state religion of Stygia (which is virtually a theocracy).
## Production
### Background
From the 1970s, licensing problems had stood in the way of producing film versions of the Conan stories. Lancer Books, which had acquired the rights in 1966, went into receivership, and legal disputes existed over their disposition of the publishing rights, which ultimately led to them being frozen under injunction. Edward Summer suggested Conan as a potential project to executive producer Edward R. Pressman in 1975, and after being shown the comics and Frazetta's artwork, Pressman was convinced. Two years were needed to secure the film rights. The two main parties involved in the lawsuit, Glenn Lord and de Camp, formed Conan Properties Incorporated to handle all licensing of Conan-related material, and Pressman was awarded the film rights shortly afterwards. He spent more than US\$100,000 in legal fees to help resolve the lawsuit, and the rights cost him another \$7,500. The success of Star Wars in 1977 increased Hollywood's interest in producing films that portray "heroic adventures in supernatural lands of fables". The film industry's attention was drawn to the popularity of Conan among young male Americans, who were buying reprints of the stories with Frank Frazetta's art and adaptations by Marvel Comics.
### Development
John Milius first expressed interest in directing a film about Conan in 1978 after completing the filming of Big Wednesday, according to Buzz Feitshans, a producer who frequently worked with Milius. (Milius had long been an admirer of films like 1958's The Vikings.) Milius and Feitshans approached Pressman, but differences over several issues stopped discussions from going further.
Oliver Stone joined the Conan project after Paramount Pictures offered to fund the film's initial \$2.5 million budget if a "name screenwriter" was on the team. After securing Stone's services, Pressman approached Frank Frazetta to be a "visual consultant", but they failed to come to terms. The producer then engaged Ron Cobb, who had just completed a set design job on Alien (1979). Cobb made a series of paintings and drawings for Pressman before leaving to join Milius on another project.
The estimates to realize Stone's finished script ran to \$40 million; Pressman, Summer, and Stone could not convince a studio to finance their project. Pressman's production company was in financial difficulties and in order to keep it afloat he borrowed money from the bank. The failure to find a suitable director was also a problem for the project. Stone and Joe Alves, who was the second unit director on Jaws 2, were considered as possible co-directors, but Pressman said it "was a pretty crazy idea and [they] didn't get anywhere with it". Stone also said that he asked Ridley Scott, who had finished directing Alien, to take up the task, but was rejected.
Cobb showed Milius his work for Conan and Stone's script, which according to him, reignited Milius's interest; the director contacted Pressman, and they came to an agreement: Milius would direct the film if he were allowed to modify the script. Milius was known in the film industry for his macho screenplays for Dirty Harry (1971) and Magnum Force (1973). He was, however, contracted to direct his next film for Dino De Laurentiis, an influential producer in the fantasy film industry. Milius raised the idea of taking on Conan with De Laurentiis, and after a year of negotiations, Pressman and De Laurentiis agreed to co-produce. De Laurentiis took over the financing and production, and Pressman gave up all claims to the film's profits, though he retained approval over changes to the script, cast, and director. Dino De Laurentiis assigned the responsibility for production to his daughter, Raffaella, and Feitshans. Milius was formally appointed as director in early 1979, and Cobb was named as the production designer. De Laurentiis convinced Universal Pictures to become the film's distributor for North America. The studio also contributed to the production budget of \$17.5 million and prepared \$12 million to advertise the film.
### Casting
While they were working to secure the film rights, Pressman and Summer were also contemplating the lead role. Summer said they considered Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone, comedian and ex-rugby player Jethro and William Smith—all of whom had played tough figures, but in 1976, the two producers watched a rough cut of the bodybuilding film, Pumping Iron, and agreed that Arnold Schwarzenegger was perfect for the role of Conan due to his huge, muscular frame. According to Schwarzenegger, Pressman's "low-key" approach and "great inner strength" convinced him to join the project. Paul Sammon, writer for Cinefantastique, said that the former champion bodybuilder was practically the "living incarnation of one of Frazetta's paperback illustrations". Schwarzenegger was paid \$250,000 and placed on retainer; the terms of the contract restricted him from starring in other sword-and-sorcery films. Schwarzenegger said Conan was his biggest opportunity to establish himself in the entertainment industry.
Thanks to Pressman's firm belief in him, Schwarzenegger retained the role of Conan even after the project was effectively sold to De Laurentiis. Milius wanted a more athletic look on his lead actor, so Schwarzenegger undertook an 18-month training regimen before shooting began. Besides running and lifting weights, his routines included rope climbing, horseback riding, and swimming. He slimmed down from 240 to 210 pounds (109 to 95 kg). Aside from Conan, two other substantial roles were also played by novice actors. Subotai was Gerry Lopez, a champion surfer, whose only major acting experience was playing himself in Milius's Big Wednesday. Schwarzenegger stayed at Lopez's home for over a month before the start of filming so they could rehearse their roles and build a rapport. Sandahl Bergman, a dancer who had had bit parts in several theater productions and films, played Valeria. She was recommended to Milius by Bob Fosse, who had directed her in All That Jazz (1979), and was accepted after reading for the part.
Milius said the actors were chosen because their appearances and personae fit their roles. He wanted actors who would not have any preconceived notions to project into their roles. Although Milius had reservations when he witnessed the first few takes of the novices at work, he put faith in them improving their skills on the job and altered the script to fit their abilities. Schwarzenegger had studied for weeks in 1980 under Robert Easton, a voice coach for several Hollywood stars, to improve his speech. His first line in the film was a paraphrasing of Mongol emperor Genghis Khan's speech about the good things in life, and the actor delivered it with a heavy Austrian accent; critics later described what they heard as "to crush your enemies—see dem [them] driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of dair vimen [their women]". Subsequently, Schwarzenegger underwent intensive speech training with Milius. Each of his later longer speeches was rehearsed at least 40 times. Lopez's lines were also an issue; although Milius was satisfied with Lopez's work, the surfer's lines were redubbed by the stage actor Sab Shimono for the final cut. A source close to the production said this was done because Lopez failed to "[maintain] a certain quality to his voice."
Sean Connery and John Huston were considered for the other roles. James Earl Jones and Max von Sydow were, according to Milius, hired with the hope that they would inspire Schwarzenegger, Bergman, and Lopez. Jones was an award-winning veteran of numerous theater and cinema productions. Von Sydow was a Swedish actor of international renown. The role of Thulsa Doom was offered to Jones while he was considering applying for the role of Grendel in an upcoming feature based on John Gardner's eponymous novel; after learning it was an animation, Jones read Conan's script and accepted the part of Doom. When filming started, Jones was also starring in a Broadway play—Athol Fugard's A Lesson to Aloes. He and the film crew coordinated their schedules to allow him to join the play's remaining performances. Jones took an interest in Schwarzenegger's acting, often giving him pointers on how to deliver his lines.
The Japanese-American actor Mako Iwamatsu, known professionally as "Mako", was brought onto the project by Milius for his experience; he had played roles in many plays and films and had been nominated for Academy Awards and a Tony. In Conan, Mako played the Wizard of the Mounds and voiced the film's opening speech. William Smith, although passed over for the lead role, was hired to play the barbarian's father. Doom's two lieutenants, Thorgrim and Rexor, respectively, were played by Sven-Ole Thorsen, a Danish bodybuilder and karate master, and Ben Davidson, a former American-football player with the Oakland Raiders. Cassandra Gava played the witch. Milius hired more than 1,500 extras in Spain. Professional actors from the European film industry were also hired: Valérie Quennessen was chosen to play Osric's daughter, Jorge Sanz acted as the nine-year-old version of Conan, and Nadiuska played his mother.
### Script writing
The drafting of a story for a Conan film started in 1976; Summer conceived a script with the help of Roy Thomas, a comic-book writer and Conan expert who had been writing the character's adventures for years for Marvel Comics. Summer and Thomas's tale, in which Conan would be employed by a "dodgy priest to kill an evil wizard", was largely based on Howard's "Rogues in the House". Their script was abandoned when Oliver Stone joined the project. Stone was, at this time, going through a period of addiction to cocaine and depressants. His screenplay was written under the influence of the drugs and the result was what Milius called a "total drug fever dream", albeit an inspired one. According to Schwarzenegger, Stone completed a draft by early 1978. Taking inspiration from Howard's "Black Colossus" and "A Witch Shall be Born", Stone proposed a story, four hours long, in which the hero champions the defense of a princess's kingdom. Instead of taking place in the distant past, Stone's story was set in a post-apocalyptic future where Conan leads an army in a massive battle against a horde of 10,000 mutants.
When Milius was appointed as director, he took over the task of writing the screenplay. Although listed as a co-writer, Stone said Milius did not incorporate any of his suggestions into the final story. Milius discarded the latter half of Stone's story. He retained several scenes from the first half, such as Conan's crucifixion ordeal, which was taken straight out of "A Witch Shall be Born", and the climbing of the Tower of Serpents, which was derived from "The Tower of the Elephant". One of Milius's original changes was to extend Stone's brief exposition of Conan's youth—the raid on the Cimmerian village—into his teens with the barbarian's enslavement at the Wheel of Pain and training as a gladiator. Milius also added ideas gleaned from other films. The Japanese supernatural tale of "Hoichi the Earless", as portrayed in Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1965), inspired the painting of symbols on Conan's body and the swarm of ghosts during the barbarian's resurrection, and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) influenced Milius's vision of Conan's final battle against Doom's men. Milius also included scenes from post-Howard stories about Conan; the barbarian's discovery of a tomb during his initial wanderings and acquisition of a sword within were based on de Camp and Carter's "The Thing in the Crypt". According to Derek Elley, Variety'''s resident film critic, Milius's script, with its original ideas and references to the pulp stories, was faithful to Howard's ideals of Conan.
Milius felt, "all the basic emotions [in the script] are always accessible to audiences. All of the things that Conan does we all feel ourselves. He just acts on them with more intensity than we do. He is a character who relies on the animal. And I always believe that the animal instincts are often the worst part of them. All you do when you evolve is corrupt yourself sooner or later."
### Filming
Filming started at England's Shepperton Studios in October 1980, with Schwarzenegger, made up to look like Conan as a king in his old age, reading an excerpt from "The Nemedian Chronicles", which Howard had penned to introduce his Conan stories. This footage was initially intended to be a trailer, but Milius decided to use it as the opening sequence of the film, instead. According to Cobb, Laurentiis and Universal Pictures were concerned about Schwarzenegger's accent, so Milius compromised by moving the sequence to the end. Schwarzenegger trained with voice coach Robert Easton and with Milius in order to eliminate his accent, but their efforts proved to be unsuccessful, so the planned narration which was intended to begin with this scene was not included in the final film.
The initial location for principal photography was former Yugoslavia, but because of concerns over the country's stability after the death of its head of state, Josip Broz Tito, and the fact that the Yugoslavian film industry proved ill-equipped for large-scale film production, the producers elected to move the project to Spain, which was cheaper and where resources were more easily available. It took several months to relocate; the crew and equipment arrived in September, and filming started on January 7, 1981. The producers allocated \$11 million for production in Spain, of which about \$3 million were spent on building 49 sets. The construction workforce numbered from 50 to 200; artists from England, Italy, and Spain were also recruited.
A large warehouse 20 miles (32 km) outside Madrid served as the production's headquarters, and it also housed most of the interior sets for the Tower of Serpents and Doom's temple; a smaller warehouse was leased for other interior sets. The remaining interiors for the Tower of Serpents were constructed in an abandoned hangar at Torrejón Air Base. A full-scale, 40-foot (12 m) version of the tower was built in the hangar; this model was used to film Conan and his companions' climb up the structure.
The crew filmed several exterior scenes in the countryside near Madrid; the Cimmerian village was built in a forest near the Valsaín ski resort, south of Segovia. About one million pesetas (\$12,084) worth of marble shavings were scattered on the ground to simulate snow. The Wheel of Pain scene took place in the province of Ávila. Conan's encounter with the witch and Subotai was shot among the Ciudad Encantada rock formations in the province of Cuenca. Most outdoor scenes were shot in the province of Almería, which offered a semiarid climate, diverse terrain (deserts, beaches, mountains), and Roman and Moorish structures that could be adapted for many settings.
Conan's crucifixion was filmed in March 1981 among the sand dunes on the southeastern coast of Almería. The Tree of Woe was layers of plaster and Styrofoam applied onto a skeleton of wood and steel. It was mounted on a turntable, allowing it to be rotated to ensure the angle of the shadows remained consistent throughout three days of filming. Schwarzenegger sat on a bicycle seat mounted in the tree while fake nails were affixed to his wrists and feet. The scene in which Valeria and Subotai fought off ghosts to save Conan and the final battle with Doom's forces were filmed in the salt marshes of Almerimar. "Stonehenge-like ruins" were erected and sand piled into mounds that reached 9 m (30 ft). The changes to the landscape attracted protests from environmentalists and the producers promised to restore the site after filming was completed.
The Temple of Set was built in the mountains, about 12 km (7.5 mi) west of the city of Almería. The structure was 50 meters (160 ft) long and 22 meters (72 ft) high. It was the most expensive of the sets, costing \$350,000, and built out of various woods, lacquers, and tons of concrete. Its stairway had 120 steps. Milius and his crew also filmed at historical sites and on sets from previous films. Scenes of a bazaar were filmed at the Moorish Alcazaba of Almería, which was dressed to give it a fictional Hyborian look. Shadizar was realized at a pre-existing film set in the Almerían desert: the fort used for the filming of El Condor (1970) refurbished as an ancient city.
It was expensive to build large sets, and Milius did not want to rely on optical effects and matte paintings (painted landscapes). The crew instead adopted miniature effect techniques (playing on perspective) to achieve the illusion of size and grandeur for several scenes. Scale models of structures were constructed by Emilio Ruiz and positioned in front of the cameras so that they appeared as full-sized structures on film; using this technique, the Shadizar set was extended to appear more than double its size. Ruiz built eight major miniature models, including a 4-foot-high (1.2 m) palace and a representation of the entire city of Shadizar that spanned 120 square feet (11 m<sup>2</sup>).
Cobb's direction for the sets was to "undo history", "to invent [their] own fantasy history", and yet maintain a "realistic, historical look". Eschewing the Greco-Roman imagery used heavily in the sword-and-sandal films of the 1960s, he realized a world that was an amalgamation of Dark Age cultures, such as the Mongols and the Vikings. Several scenarios paid homage to Frazetta's paintings of Conan, such as the "half-naked slave girl chained to a pillar, with a snarling leopard at her feet", at the snake cult's orgy. David Huckvale, a lecturer at the Open University and broadcaster for BBC Radio, said the designs of the Tree of Woe and the costumes appeared very similar to those used in Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung operas at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876. Principal photography was completed in the middle of May 1981. The film crews burned down the Cimmerian village and the Temple of Set after completing filming on each set.
#### Stunts and swords
Several action scenes in Conan were filmed with a "minijib" (a remote-controlled electronic camera mounted on a motorized lightweight crane) that Nick Allder, the special effects supervisor, had devised when he worked on Dragonslayer (1981). The stunts were co-ordinated by Terry Leonard, who had worked on many films, including Milius's previous projects and Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Leonard said that Schwarzenegger, Bergman, and Lopez performed most of their own stunts, including the fights.
The three actors were given martial arts training ahead of filming. From August 1980, they were tutored by Kiyoshi Yamazaki, a karate black belt and master swordsman, who drilled them in sword-fighting styles that were meant to make them look proficient in using their weapons. They practiced each move in a fight at least 15 times before filming. Yamazaki advised Leonard on the choreography of the sword fights and had a cameo role as one of Conan's instructors.
Tim Huchthausen, the prop maker, worked with swordsmith Jody Samson to create the sturdy weapons Milius thought necessary. Particular attention was paid to two swords wielded by Conan: his father's sword ("Master's sword") and the blade he finds in a tomb ("Atlantean sword"). Both weapons were realized from Cobb's drawings. Their blades were hand ground from carbon steel and heat treated and left unsharpened. The hilts and pommels were sculpted and cast through the lost-wax process; inscriptions were added to the blades by electrical discharge machining. Samson and Huchthausen made four Master's and four Atlantean swords, at a cost of \$10,000 per weapon. Copies of the Atlantean sword were struck and given to members of the production.
Samson and Huchthausen agreed the weapons were heavy and unbalanced, thus unsuitable for actual combat; Lighter versions made of aluminum, fiberglass, and steel were struck in Madrid; these 3 lb (1.4 kg) copies were used in the fight scenes. According to Schwarzenegger, the heavy swords were used in close-up shots. The other weapons used in the film were not as elaborate; Valeria's talwar was ground out from an aluminum sheet.
The copious amounts of blood spilled in the fight scenes came from bags of fake blood strapped to the performers' bodies. Animal blood gathered from slaughterhouses was poured onto the floor to simulate puddles of human blood. Most of the times trick swords made from fiberglass were used when the scene called for a killing blow. Designed by Allder, these swords could also retract their blades, and several sprayed blood from their tips. Although the swords were intended to be safer alternatives to metal weapons, they could still be dangerous: in one of the fights, Bergman sparred with an extra who failed to follow the choreography and sliced open her finger.
Accidents also happened in stunts that did not involve weapons. A stuntman smashed his face into a camera while riding a horse at full gallop, and Schwarzenegger was attacked by one of the trained dogs. The use of live animals also raised concerns about cruelty; the American Humane Association placed the film on its "unacceptable list". The transgressions listed by the association included the kicking of a dog, the striking of a camel, and the tripping of horses.
#### Mechanical effects
Carlo De Marchis, the special make-up effects supervisor, and Colin Arthur, former Studio Head of Madame Tussaud's, were responsible for the human dummies and fake body parts used in the film. The dummies inflated crowd numbers and stood in as dead bodies, while the body parts were used in scenes showing the aftermath of fights and the cult's cannibalistic feast. In Thulsa Doom's beheading scene, Schwarzenegger hacked at a dummy and pulled a concealed chain to detach its head. The decapitation of Conan's mother was more complex: a Plexiglas shield between Jones and Nadiuska stopped his sword as he swung at her and an artificial head then dropped into the camera's view. A more elaborate head was used for the close-up shots; this prop spurted blood and the movements of its eyes, mouth, and tongue were controlled by cables hidden beneath the snow.
Allder created a \$20,000 36-foot (11 m) mechanical snake for the fight scene in the Tower of Serpents. The snake's body had a diameter of 2.5 ft (0.76 m), and its head was 2.5 ft (0.76 m) long and 2 ft (0.61 m) wide. Its skeleton was made from duralumin (an alloy used in aircraft frames) and its skin was vulcanized foam rubber. Controlled by steel cables and hydraulics, the snake could exert a force between 3.5 and 9.0 tons. Another two snakes of the same dimensions were made, one for stationary shots and one for decapitation by Schwarzenegger. The immense size of the mechanical snake meant that it did not fully fit onto the set, so only the front of it could be shown in the film. To create the scene at the Tree of Woe, the crew tethered live vultures to the branches, and created a mechanical bird for Schwarzenegger to bite. The dummy bird's feathers and wings were from a dead vulture, and its control mechanisms were routed inside the false tree.
According to Sammon, "one of the greatest special effects in the film [was] Thulsa Doom's onscreen transformation into a giant snake". It involved footage of fake body parts, live and dummy snakes, miniatures, and other camera tricks combined into a flowing sequence with lap dissolve. After Jones was filmed in position, he was replaced by a hollow framework with a rubber mask that was pushed from behind by a snake head-shaped puppet to give the illusion of Doom's facial bones changing. The head was then replaced with a 6-foot (1.8 m) mechanical snake; as it moved outwards, a crew member pressed a foot pedal to collapse the framework. For the final part of the sequence, a real snake was filmed on a miniature set.
#### Optical effects
Few optical effects were used in Conan the Barbarian. Milius professed ambivalence to fantasy elements, preferring a story that showcases accomplishments realized through one's own efforts without reliance on the supernatural. He also said that he followed the advice of Cobb and other production members on the matters of special effects. Peter Kuran's Visual Concepts Engineering (VCE) effects company was engaged in October 1981 to handle postproduction optical effects for Conan. VCE had previously worked on films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Dragonslayer. Among their tasks for Conan were adding glint and sparkle to the Eye of the Serpent and Valeria's Valkyrie armor. Not all of VCE's work made it to the final print; the flames of Valeria's funeral pyre were originally enhanced by the company, but were later restored to the original version.
For the scene in which Valeria and Subotai had to fend off ghosts to save Conan's life, the "boiling clouds" were created by George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, while VCE was given the task of creating the ghosts. Their first attempt filming strips of film emulsion suspended in a vat of a viscous solution—elicited complaints from the producers, who thought the resulting spirits looked too much like those in a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, so VCE turned to animation to complete the task. First, they drew muscular warriors in ghostly forms onto cels and printed the images onto film with an Oxberry animation stand and contact printer. The Oxberry was fitted with a used lens that introduced lens flares to the prints; VCE's intention with using the old lens was to make the resultant images of the ghosts seem as if they were of real-life objects filmed with a camera. The final composite was produced by passing the reels of film for the effects and the live-action sequences through a two-headed optical printer and capturing the results with a camera.
## Music
Milius recruited his friend, Basil Poledouris, to produce the score for Conan; they had had a successful collaboration on Big Wednesday. The film industry's usual practice was to contract a composer to start work after the main scenes had been filmed, but Milius hired Poledouris before principal photography had started. The composer was given the opportunity to compose the film's music based on the initial storyboards and to modify it throughout filming before recording the score near the end of production. Poledouris made extensive use of Musync, a music and tempo editing hardware and software system invented by Robert Randles (subsequently nominated for an Oscar for Scientific Achievement), to modify the tempo of his compositions and synchronize them with the action in the film. The system helped make his job easier and faster; it could automatically adjust tempos when the user changed the positioning of beats. In the montage where Conan grows up, for example, Poledouris had Randles prepare, over the phone, a long accelerando that landed on precise moments in the picture along the way. Poledouris would otherwise have had to conduct the orchestra and adjust his compositions on the fly. Conan is the first film to list Musync in its credits.
Milius and Poledouris exchanged ideas throughout production, working out themes and "emotional tones" for each scene. According to Poledouris, Milius envisioned Conan as an opera with little or no dialogue; Poledouris composed enough musical pieces for most of the film (around two hours' worth). This was his first large-scale orchestral score, and a characteristic of his work here was that he frequently slowed down the tempo of the last two bars (segments of beats) before switching to the next piece of music. Poledouris said the score uses a lot of fifths as its most primitive interval; thirds and sixths are introduced as the story progresses. The composer visited the film sets several times during filming to see the imagery his music would accompany. After principal photography was completed, Milius sent him two copies of the edited film: one without music, and the other with its scenes set to works by Richard Wagner, Igor Stravinsky, and Sergei Prokofiev, to illustrate the emotional overtones he wanted.
Poledouris said he started working on the score by developing the melodic line—a pattern of musical ideas supported by rhythms. The first draft was a poem sung to the strumming of a guitar, composed as if Poledouris was a bard for the barbarian. This draft became the "Riddle of Steel", a composition played with "massive brass, strings, and percussion", which also serves as Conan's personal theme. The music is first played when Conan's father explains the riddle to him. Laurence E. MacDonald, Professor of Music at Mott Community College, said the theme stirs up the appropriate emotions when it is repeated during Conan's vow to avenge his parents. The film's main musical theme, the "Anvil of Crom", which opens the film with "the brassy sound of 24 French horns in a dramatic intonation of the melody, while pounding drums add an incessantly driven rhythmic propulsion" is played again in several later scenes.
Poledouris completed the music that accompanies the attack on Conan's village at the beginning of the film in October 1981. Milius initially wanted a chorus based on Carl Orff's Carmina Burana to herald the appearance of Doom and his warriors in this sequence. After learning that Excalibur (1981) had used Orff's work, he changed his mind and asked his composer for an original creation. Poledouris's theme for Doom consists of "energetic choral passages", chanted by the villain's followers to salute their leader and their actions in his name. The lyrics were composed in English and roughly translated into Latin; Poledouris was "more concerned about the way the Latin words sounded than with the sense they actually made." He set these words to a melody adapted from the 13th-century Gregorian hymn, Dies irae, which was chosen to "communicate the tragic aspects of the cruelty wrought by Thulsa Doom."
The film's music mostly conveys a sense of power, energy, and brutality, yet tender moments occur. The sounds of oboes and string instruments accompany Conan and Valeria's intimate scenes, imbuing them with a sense of lush romance and an emotional intensity. According to MacDonald, Poledouris deviated from the practice of scoring love scenes with tunes reminiscent of Romantic period pieces; instead, Poledouris made Conan and Valeria's melancholic love theme unique through his use of "minor-key harmony". David Morgan, a film journalist, heard Eastern influences in the "lilting romantic melodies". Page Cook, audio critic for Films in Review, describes Conan the Barbarian's score as "a large canvas daubed with a colorful yet highly sensitive brush. There is innate intelligence behind Poledouris's scheme, and the pinnacles reached are often eloquent with haunting intensity."
From late November 1981, Poledouris spent three weeks recording his score in Rome. He engaged a 90-instrument orchestra and a 24-member choir from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, and conducted them personally. The pieces of music were orchestrated by Greig McRitchie, Poledouris's frequent collaborator. The chorus and orchestra were recorded separately. The 24 tracks of sound effects, music, and dialog were downmixed into a single-channel, making Conan the Barbarian the last film released by a major studio with a mono soundtrack. According to Poledouris, Raffaella De Laurentiis balked at the cost (\$30,000) of a stereo soundtrack and was worried over the lack of theaters equipped with stereo sound systems.
## Release
In 1980, the producers began advertising to publicize the film. Teaser posters were put up in theaters across the United States. The posters reused Frazetta's artwork that was commissioned for the cover of Conan the Adventurer (1966). Laurentiis wanted Conan the Barbarian to start playing in cinemas at Christmas, 1981, but Universal executives requested further editing after they previewed a preliminary version of the film in August. A Hollywood insider said the executives were concerned about the film's portrayal of violence. The premiere was delayed until the following year so changes could be made. Many scenes were excised from Thulsa Doom's attack on Conan's village, including the close-up shots on the severed head of Conan's mother; the late notice of the changes forced Poledouris quickly to adjust his score before recording music for the sequence. Other scenes of violence that were cut included Subotai's slaying of a monster at the top of the Tower of Serpents and Conan chopping off a pickpocket's arm in a bazaar. Milius intended to show a 140-minute story; the final release ran 129 minutes (trimmed to 126 minutes in the United States). According to Cobb, the total production expenses approached \$20 million by the time the film was released.
The United States' public was offered a sneak preview on February 19, 1982, in Houston, Texas. In the following month, previews were held in 30 cities across the country. In Washington, D.C., the mass of moviegoers formed long lines that spanned streets, causing traffic jams. Tickets were quickly sold out in Denver, and 1,000 people had to be turned away in Houston. The majority of those in the lines was male; a moviegoer in Los Angeles said, "The audience was mostly white, clean-cut, and high-school or college age. It was not the punk or heavy-leather crowd, but an awful lot of them had bulging muscles." On March 16, Conan the Barbarian had its worldwide premiere at Fotogramas de Plata, an annual cinema awards ceremony in Madrid, and began its general release in Spain and France in April. Twentieth Century Fox handled the foreign distribution of the film. Universal originally scheduled Conan's official release in the United States for the weekend before Memorial Day—the start of the film industry's summer season when schools close for a month-long holiday. To avoid competition with other big-budget, high-profile films, the studio advanced the release of Conan the Barbarian and on May 14, 1982, the film officially opened in 1,400 theaters across North America.
Conan the Barbarian has been released in several different versions on home video. In addition to the 126-minute theatrical print, Universal distributed the film in 115-minute and 123-minute cuts on VHS in the 1980s. A slightly extended version was created for the film's special edition DVD release in 2000; it features five minutes of additional footage for a 131-minute running time. This same version was later released on blu-ray in 2011 with a remixed soundtrack, the version on Amazon Prime however, is the 126 minute US theatrical cut.
### Critical response
The media's reactions toward Conan were polarized. Aspects of the film heavily criticized by one side were regarded in a positive light by the other; Professor Kenneth von Gunden wrote, "for every positive review the film garnered, it received two negative ones." The opinions of Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and Richard Schickel of Time illustrate their colleagues' divided views. Ebert called Conan the Barbarian "a perfect fantasy for the alienated preadolescent", whereas Schickel said, "Conan is a sort of psychopathic Star Wars, stupid and stupefying." Although reviews were mixed at the time of the film's release, modern genre critics review the film more positively. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 66% based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though Conan may take itself too seriously for some, this adventure film about a former slave seeking vengeance is full of quotable Schwarzenegger lines and gritty action." On Metacritic, the film received a score of 43 based on 10 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
At the time Conan was released, the media were inclined to condemn Hollywood's portrayals of violence; typical action films showed the hero attaining his goals by killing all who stood in his way. Conan was particularly condemned for its violent scenes, which Newsweek's Jack Kroll called "cheerless and styleless". In one of his articles for the San Francisco Chronicle, Stu Schreiberg counted 50 people killed in various scenes. Other film critics differed over the film's portrayal of violence. David Denby wrote in his review for New York magazine that the action scenes were one of the film's few positive features; however, exciting as the scenes were, those such as the decapitation of Conan's mother seemed inane. On the other hand, Vincent Canby, Carlos Clarens, and Pascal Mérigeau were unanimous in their opinion that the film's depicted violence failed to meet their expectations: the film's pacing and Howard's stories suggested more gory material. According to Paul Sammon, Milius's cuts to assuage concerns over the violence made the scenes "cartoon-like".
Comparison with the source material also produced varying reactions among the critics. Danny Peary and Schickel expected a film based on pulp stories and comic books to be light-hearted or corny, and Milius's introduction of Nietzschean themes and ideology did not sit well with them. Others were not impressed with Milius's handling of his ideas; James Wolcott called it heavy-handed and Kroll said the material lacked substance in its implementation. The themes of individualism and paganism, however, resonated with many in the audience; the concept of a warrior who relies only on his own prowess and will to conquer the obstacles in his way found favor with young males. Wolcott wrote in Texas Monthly that these themes appeal to "98-pound weaklings who want to kick sand into bullies' faces and win the panting adoration of a well-oiled beach bunny". Kroll's opinion was that the audience loved the violence and carnage but were cynical about the "philosophical bombast". While popular with audiences, the theatrical treatment of the barbarian was rejected by certain hardcore fans and scholars of Howard's stories. A particular point of contention was the film's version of Conan's origin, which is at odds with Howard's hints about the character's youth. Their point of view is supported by Kerry Brougher, but Derek Elley, Clarens, and Sammon said Milius was faithful to the ideology behind Howard's work.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance was frequently mentioned in the critiques. Clarens, Peary, Gunden and Nigel Andrews were among those who gave positive assessments of the former bodybuilder's acting: to them, he was physically convincing as the barbarian in his body movements and appearance. Andrews added that Schwarzenegger exuded a certain charm—with his accent mangling his dialog—that made the film appealing to his fans. Fanfare's Royal S. Brown disagreed and was grateful that the actor's dialog amounted to "2 pages of typescript". Schickel summed up Schwarzenegger's acting as "flat", while Knoll was more verbose, characterizing the actor's portrayal as "a dull clod with a sharp sword, a human collage of pectorals and latissimi who's got less style and wit than Lassie." While Sandahl Bergman earned acclaim for injecting grace and dynamism into the film, the film's more experienced thespians were not spared criticisms. Gunden said von Sydow showed little dedication to his role, and Clarens judged Jones's portrayal of Thulsa Doom to be worse than camp. However, Ebert praised Jones's performance, saying he brought "power and conviction to a role that seems inspired in equal parts by Hitler, Jim Jones, and Goldfinger." Brougher faulted none of the actors for their performances, laying the blame on Milius's script, instead.
### Box office and other media
According to Rentrak Theatrical, a firm of media analysts, Conan debuted at the top spot at the US box office, taking \$9,479,373 over the opening weekend. Rentrak's data on Conan covered 8 weeks after the film's release; during that period, Conan grossed \$38,513,085 at the box office in the United States. Universal Pictures received \$22.5 million after deducting the amounts due to the cinema owners. This sum—the rental—was more than the money Universal had invested in making the film, thus qualifying Conan as a commercial success; any further income from the film was pure profit for the studio. Marian Christy, interviewer for the Boston Globe, mentioned that the film was a box-office success in Europe and Japan, as well. Worldwide, Conan the Barbarian grossed between \$68.9 million and \$79.1 million in ticket sales.
David A. Cook, Professor of Film Studies at Emory University, said that Conan's North American performance fell short of the amount returned by blockbusters; the rentals of such films from their release in the continent were supposed to be least \$50 million. Conan's rental was the 13th-highest for 1982 and when combined with those for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (the most successful film in that year with a rental of \$187 million), On Golden Pond, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas—all distributed by Universal Pictures—constituted 30% of the year's total film rental. According to Arthur D. Murphy, a film-industry analyst, it was the first time that a single distributor captured such a substantial share of the film market.
The videocassette version of the film was released on October 2, 1982. Sales and rental figures of the videocassette were high; from its launch, the title was listed in Billboard's Videocassette Top 40 (Sales and Rental categories) for 23 weeks. According to Sammon, sales of the film through frequent home video releases increased the film's gross earnings to more than \$300 million by 2007. Conan the Barbarian was novelized by Lin Carter and the de Camps (L. Sprague and his wife, Catherine). It was also adapted by Marvel in comic form; scripted by Michael Fleisher and drawn by John Buscema, the comic was one of the rarest paperbacks published by the company.
### Accolades
Conan the Barbarian did not receive any film awards, but the Hollywood Foreign Press Association noted Bergman's performance as Valeria and awarded her a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year—Actress. Poledouris's score was judged by Films in Review's Page Cook as the second best sound track of the films released in 1982. The film was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Actor for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
- 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
- Conan – Nominated Hero
- 2005: AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores – Nominated
- 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10:
- Nominated Fantasy Film
## Themes
### Riddle of Steel
The central theme in Conan the Barbarian is the Riddle of Steel. At the start of the film, Conan's father tells his son to learn the secret of steel and to trust only it. Initially believing in the power of steel, Thulsa Doom raids Conan's village to steal the Master's sword. Subsequently, the story centers on Conan's quest to recover the weapon in which his father has told him to trust. Weaponry fetish is a device long established in literature; Carl James Grindley, an assistant professor of English, said ancient works such as Homer's Iliad, the Old English poem Beowulf, and the 14th-century tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight pay detailed attention to the arsenal of their heroes. Grindley further said that Conan the Barbarian, like most other contemporary action films, uses weapons as convenient plot devices rather than as symbols that mark the qualities of the hero. James Whitlark, an associate professor of English, said the Riddle of Steel makes the film's emphasis on the swords ironic; it gives the illusion that the weapons have powers of their own, but later reveals them to be useless and dependent on the strength of their wielders. In the later part of the film, Doom mocks steel, proclaiming the power of flesh to be stronger. When Conan recovers his father's sword, it is after he has broken it in the hands of Doom's lieutenant during their duel. According to Grindley, that moment—Conan's breaking of his father's sword—"[fulfills] a snickering spectrum of Oedipal conjecture" and asserts Homer's view that "the sword does not make the hero, but the hero makes the sword." The film, as Whitlark says, "offers a fantasy of human power raised beyond mortal limits." Passman and other authors agree, stating the film suggests that human will and determination are in a Nietzschean sense stronger than physical might.
### Death
Another established literary trope found in the plot of Conan the Barbarian is the concept of death, followed by a journey into the underworld, and rebirth. Donald E. Palumbo, the Language and Humanities Chair at Lorain County Community College, noted that like most other sword-and-sorcery films, Conan used the motif of underground journeys to reinforce the themes of death and rebirth. According to him, the first scene to involve all three is after Conan's liberation: his flight from wild dogs sends him tumbling into a tomb where he finds a sword that lets him cut off his chains and stand with newfound power. In the later parts of the film, Conan experiences two underground journeys where death abounds: in the bowels of the Tower of Serpents where he has to fight a giant snake and in the depths of the Temple of Set where the cultists feast on human flesh while Doom transforms himself into a large serpent. Whereas Valeria dies and comes back from the dead (albeit briefly), Conan's ordeal from his crucifixion was symbolic. Although the barbarian's crucifixion might evoke Christian imagery, associations of the film with the religion are roundly rejected. Milius stated his film is full of pagan ideas, a sentiment supported by film critics such as Elley and Jack Kroll. George Aichele, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Adrian College, suggested the filmmaker's intent with the crucifixion scene was pure marketing: to tease the audience with religious connotations. He suggested, however, that Conan's story can be viewed as an analogy of Christ's life and vice versa. Nigel Andrews, a film critic, saw any connections to Christianity related more to the making of the film. The crucifixion is also reminiscent of Odin being nailed to Yggdrasil or the Titan Prometheus chained to the mountainside of the Caucasus.
### Wagnerian Opera
Milius's concept of Conan the Barbarian as an opera was picked up by the critics; Elley and Huckvale saw connections to Wagner's operas. According to Huckvale, the film's opening sequence closely mirrors a sword forging scene in Siegfried. Conan's adventures and ordeals seem to be inspired by the trials of the opera's titular hero: witnessing his parents' deaths, growing up as a slave, and slaying a giant serpent—dragon. Furthermore, Schwarzenegger's appearance in the role of Conan evoked images of Siegfried, the role model of the "Aryan blonde beast", in the lecturer's mind. The notion of racial superiority, symbolized by this Aryan hero, was a criticism given by J. Hoberman and James Wolcott; they highlighted the film's Nietzschean epigraph and labeled its protagonist as Nietzsche's übermensch. Ebert was disturbed by the depiction of a "Nordic superman confronting a black", in which the "muscular blond" slices off the black man's head and "contemptuously [throws it] down the flight of stairs". His sentiment was shared by Adam Roberts, an Arthurian scholar, who also said Conan was an exemplar of the sword-and-sorcery films of the early 1980s that were permeated in various degrees with fascist ideology. According to Roberts, the films were following the ideas and aesthetics laid down in Leni Riefenstahl's directorial efforts for Nazi Germany. Roberts cautioned that any political readings into these sword-and-sorcery films with regards to fascism is subjective. Film critic Richard Dyer said that such associations with Conan were inaccurate and influenced by misconceptions of Nietzschean philosophies, and scholars of philosophy said that the film industry has often misinterpreted the ideas behind the übermensch.
### Individualism
Conan is also seen as a product of its time: The themes of the film reflect the political climate of the United States in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was the country's president and the ideals of individualism were promoted during his two terms in office. He emphasized the moral worth of the individual in his speeches, encouraging his fellow Americans to make the country successful and to stand up against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Dr. Dave Saunders, a film writer and lecturer at South Essex College of Further and Higher Education, linked facets of Conan the Barbarian to aspects of Reaganism—the conservative ideology that surrounded the president's policies. Saunders likened Conan's quest against Doom to the Americans' crusades, his choice of weaponry—swords—to Reagan's and Milius's fondness of resisting the Soviets with only spirit and simple weapons, and Doom's base of operations to the Kremlin. Conan, in Saunder's interpretation, is portrayed as the American hero who draws strength from his trials and tribulations to slay the evil oppressors—the Soviets—and crush their un-American ways. Douglas Kellner and his fellow academic Michael Ryan proposed another enemy for the American individual: an overly domineering federal government. The film's association with individualism was not confined to the United States; Jeffrey Richards, a cultural historian, noticed the film's popularity among the youths of the United Kingdom. Robin Wood, a film critic, suggests that in most cases, there is only a thin veneer between individualism and fascism; he also said that Conan is the only film in that era to dispense with the disguise, openly celebrating its fascist ideals in a manner that would delight Riefenstahl.
### Sex
Sexual politics were also examined in thematic studies of the film. The feminist movement experienced a backlash during the opening years of the 1980s and action films then were helping to promote the notions of masculinity. Women in these films were portrayed as whores, handmaidens, or warriors and clad in flesh-revealing outfits. Conan gave its male audience a manly hero that overcame all odds and adversity, delivering them a fantasy that offered escape from the invasion of radical "bitter feminist women" in their lives. Renato Casaro's promotional artwork for the film's release in the United States presents a sexualized portrayal of the two main characters, Conan and Valeria. Scantily clad in costumes cut in the styles of underwear, they wear long boots and sport their hair loose. While Conan strides forth in the picture with his sword held high, Valeria "squats in an impossible pose with her leather body-suit [in the shape of a teddy] forming a dark shape between her thighs". According to Schubart, critics did not accept Valeria as a strong female figure, but viewed her as a "sexual spectacle"; to them, she was the traditional male warrior buddy in a sexy female body.
## Legacy and impact
Whereas most comic book and pulp adaptations were box office failures in the 1980s, Conan the Barbarian was one of the few that made a profit. According to Sammon, it became the standard against which sword-and-sorcery films were measured until the debut of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001; several contemporary films of the same genre were judged by critics to be clones of Conan, such as The Beastmaster (1982). Conan's success inspired low-budget copycats, such as Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982) and Deathstalker (1983). Its sequel, Conan the Destroyer, was produced and released in 1984; only a few of those involved in the first film, such as Schwarzenegger, Mako, and Poledouris, returned. Later big- and small-screen adaptations of Robert E. Howard's stories were considered by Sammon to be inferior to the film that started the trend. A spinoff from Conan was a 20-minute live-action show, The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular, that ran from 1983 to 1993 at Universal Studios Hollywood. Produced at a cost of \$5 million, the show featured action scenes executed to music composed by Poledouris. The show's highlights were pyrotechnics, lasers, and an 18-foot-tall (5.5 m) animatronic dragon that breathed fire.
Several of those involved in the film reaped short-term benefits. Sandahl Bergman's Golden Globe for her role as Valeria marks her greatest achievement in the film industry; her later roles failed to gain her further recognition. Dino De Laurentiis had produced a string of box office failures since the success of King Kong in 1976; it appeared Conan the Barbarian might be a turning point in his fortunes. The sequel was also profitable, but many of De Laurentiis's later big-budget projects did not recoup their production costs and he was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1988. For John Milius, Conan the Barbarian is his "biggest directorial success" to date; his subsequent endeavors failed to equal its success and popularity.
Pressman did not receive any money from Conan's box office takings, but he sold the film rights for the Conan franchise to De Laurentiis for \$4.5 million and 10 percent of the gross of any sequel to Conan the Barbarian. The sale more than paid off his company's debts incurred from producing Old Boyfriends, saving him from financial ruin; Pressman said this deal "made [him] more money by selling out, by not making a movie, than [he] ever have made by making one." He also arranged for Mattel to obtain the rights to produce a range of toys for the film. Although the toy company abandoned the license after its executives decided Conan was "too violent" for children, Pressman convinced them to let him produce a film based on their new Masters of the Universe toy line. The eponymous film cost \$20 million to produce and grossed \$17 million at the United States box office in 1987.
Those who benefited most from the project were Basil Poledouris and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Poledouris's reputation in the film industry increased with the critical acclaim his score received; MacDonald noted Poledouris's work on Conan as "one of the most spectacular film music achievements of the decade", and Page Cook named it as the only reason to watch the film and as the second best film sound track (after E.T.'s) for 1982. After hearing Conan's music, Paul Verhoeven engaged Poledouris to score his films, Flesh and Blood (1985), RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997). The music in Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990) also bore the influence of Conan's score; its composer, Jerry Goldsmith, used Poledouris's work as the model for his compositions.
Conan brought Schwarzenegger worldwide recognition as an action star and established the model for most of his film roles: "icy, brawny, and inexpressive—yet somehow endearing." The image of him as the barbarian was an enduring one; when he campaigned for George H. W. Bush to be president, he was introduced as "Conan the Republican"—a moniker that stuck with him throughout his political career and was often repeated by the media during his term as Governor of California. Schwarzenegger was aware of the benefits the film had brought to him, acknowledging the role of Conan as "God's gift to [his] career". He embraced the image: when he was Governor of California, he displayed his copy of the Atlantean sword in his office, occasionally flourishing the weapon at visitors and letting them play with it. More than once, he spiced up his speeches with Conan's "crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women".
## Sequels
Conan the Destroyer was released in 1984, with Schwarzenegger and Mako reprising their roles. A planned third entry in the trilogy, Conan the Conqueror, was previewed at the end of Destroyer. The film had been planned for a 1987 release, with the intended director being either Guy Hamilton or John Guillermin. Arnold Schwarzenegger was committed to the film Predator, and De Laurentiis's contract with the star had expired after his obligation to Red Sonja and Raw Deal, and he was not keen to negotiate a new one. The third Conan film fell into development hell, and a derivation of the script eventually was adapted into Kull the Conqueror, released in 1997.
In October 2012, Universal Pictures announced plans for Schwarzenegger to return to the role of Conan for the film The Legend of Conan. The planned story was a direct sequel to the original film, "bypassing" Conan the Destroyer'' and the 2011 film starring Jason Momoa. In the years following the announcement, Will Beall, Andrea Berloff, and producer Chris Morgan worked on the script, and Schwarzenegger expressed enthusiasm for the project, affirming plans to star in the film. However, in April 2017, Morgan stated that Universal had dropped the project, but that there remains a possibility of a television series.
## See also
- Arnold Schwarzenegger filmography
- List of American films of 1982
|
43,795,479 |
Title (EP)
| 1,162,926,288 | null |
[
"2014 debut EPs",
"Albums produced by Kevin Kadish",
"Epic Records EPs",
"Meghan Trainor albums"
] |
Title is the debut EP by American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor. Kevin Kadish produced all of its songs and wrote them with Trainor. The two conceived the EP shortly after Trainor signed with Epic Records in 2014. The label released it on September 9, 2014, and replaced it with a pre-order for Trainor's 2015 debut major-label studio album of the same name the following month.
Musically, Title comprises songs inspired by 1950s doo wop that lie between modern R&B and melodic pop. The EP has a lyrical theme of commitment and staying true to oneself, which Trainor hoped would empower women. It includes Trainor's debut single, "All About That Bass", which was released on June 30, 2014, and reached No. 1 in 58 countries with worldwide sales of 11 million units.
Title garnered mixed reviews from critics, who thought its tracks had potential for commercial success, but considered the lyrics too repetitive and questioned Trainor's musicality. The EP debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200 and sold 171,000 copies in the United States. It also entered charts in Canada and Denmark. Trainor promoted Title by performing "All About That Bass" on various television shows and its title track at other venues. She included all tracks from the EP on the set lists of her 2015 concert tours That Bass Tour and MTrain Tour.
## Background and development
Meghan Trainor developed an early interest in music and started singing at age six. After her father encouraged her to pursue her musical interests, she independently released three albums from material she had written, recorded, performed, and produced, between the ages 15 and 17. These included Trainor's eponymous 2009 release, and her 2010 albums I'll Sing with You and Only 17. She introduced herself to former NRBQ member Al Anderson at a music conference in Nashville. Impressed by Trainor's songwriting, he referred her to his publisher Carla Wallace of music publishing firm Big Yellow Dog Music. Though Trainor had been offered a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music, she decided to pursue her songwriting career and signed with Big Yellow Dog in 2012.
American songwriter Kevin Kadish met Trainor in June 2013 at Wallace's request. He liked Trainor's voice and felt a strong songwriting affinity with her due to their mutual love of pop music from the 1950s and 1960s. Disenchanted with the electronic dance music that populated Top 40 radio, he had wished to create a "50s-sounding record of doo-wop-inspired pop" for three years, but could not find any artist that shared his interest. Trainor, who had been introduced to doo-wop by her father at a young age, found it to be "the catchiest stuff" and wanted to create something reminiscent of The Chordettes's 1958 single "Lollipop". Kadish shared his idea with Trainor after the two bonded over Jimmy Soul's 1963 song "If You Wanna Be Happy", and they decided to create an extended play (EP) with the same sound, "just for fun". They completed three songs before Kadish started producing a rock album for the rest of the year. Trainor moved to Nashville in November 2013 and they co-wrote the song "All About That Bass", pitching it to different record labels, all of which rejected it due to its doo-wop pop sound as synth-pop was more popular at the time.
L.A. Reid, the chairman of Epic Records, heard the song and encouraged Trainor to record it herself. She signed with the label in 2014 and immediately began working on more songs with Kadish as Epic wanted her to record an entire album. The label briefly suggested that Trainor work with other producers, such as Pharrell Williams or Timbaland, but she insisted on continuing with Kadish: "Kevin's my guy". Epic Records's artists and repertoire division called Kadish and said, "whatever you did on 'Bass,' do it 10 more times. Don't bring in any more writers. Don't bring in any other producers. Whoever you used on that song." Upon its release as Trainor's debut single on June 30, 2014, "All About That Bass" reached number one in 58 countries and sold 11 million units worldwide. Some critics considered it a novelty song, and questioned if Trainor would be able to release a successful follow-up or end up a one-hit wonder.
## Music and lyrics
### Music
Title comprises songs inspired by 1950s doo-wop music that "straddle the line between modern R&B and melodic pop", according to AllMusic's Matt Collar. Jon Dolan of Rolling Stone stated that the EP combines "trickle-down Beyoncé empowerment themes" and "sugary doo-wop and girl-group melodies". Kadish produced, recorded, engineered, and mixed the entire EP at the Carriage House studio in Nolensville, Tennessee. He plays the drums, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass; Trainor handled drum programming and clapping, and plays percussion and ukulele. David Baron plays the piano, baritone saxophone, and hammond organ; and Jim Hoke plays the baritone and tenor saxophone. Dave Kutch mastered Title at The Mastering Palace in New York City.
The opening track, "All About That Bass", is a bubblegum pop, doo-wop, hip hop, Italo-Latin soul, and retro-R&B pop song, influenced by 1960s genres—soul-pop, groove, Motown bounce, and girl-group pop. The song includes syncopated handclaps, bass instrumentation, and, according to Slate's Chris Molanphy, "a scatting tempo and shimmying melody". The title track is a doo-wop song with Caribbean music influences and a ska-inflected bridge, which blends the horn and ukulele folk-pop with island percussion instrumentation and a programmed beat, and also incorporates handclaps and modern sound effects. Trainor projects an assertive and retro aural tone according to Knoxville News Sentinel, and delivers a rap verse. She felt it showcased "what [her] sound really is", and considered its Caribbean drum and rapping new territory for her. "Dear Future Husband" is a doo-wop, pop, and girl-group bounce song, with influences of jazz. It opens with a stylus sound on a damaged vinyl and transitions into retro ukulele instrumentation, further incorporating brisk piano, buoyant brass, and a drum track. The final track, "Close Your Eyes", is a contemporary ballad on which Trainor gives a soulful and "nuanced, fluttery vocal performance" over an acoustic guitar and pitch-shifted background vocals.
### Lyrics
For Title, Trainor wrote lyrics about things she thought many people ignore, such as "commitment and staying true to one's self". She wanted to speak from the place of "an awkward 19-, 20-year-old, when you're pretty sure you're an adult but you're not, yet," and identified the EP's material as "too young for Kesha" and too mature for Disney. It comprises "very personal, girl power anthems" that Trainor wishes existed when she attended high school: "Like, love yourself more, respect yourself more [...] There are girl empowerment songs—like 'I love myself I'm beautiful'—but there are also 'I deserve a good man, I deserve a good boyfriend, man, you should take me out.'
Trainor and Kadish grew up as "chubby" kids, and wrote the lyrics of "All About That Bass" as a call to embrace inner beauty, and promote positive body image and self-acceptance. She calls out the fashion industry for creating unreachable beauty standards and criticizes the use of Photoshop in magazines. It includes the line "I'm bringing booty back", as a reference to Justin Timberlake's single "SexyBack" (2006). Trainor, who was ill-treated by unemployed men she dated in the past, wrote the title track and "Dear Future Husband" to correct issues with contemporary dating and hookup culture, like women basing their self worth on social media likes and whether their partner replied to their texts. On the title track, she refuses to be friends with benefits and pushes her partner to define their relationship more clearly. "Dear Future Husband" is about chivalry and dating, and lists the things a man needs to do to be Trainor's life partner, and win her adoration and dedication. These include "treat[ing her] like a lady" even when she behaves insanely, calling her pretty every night, and putting her family above his. "Close Your Eyes" encourages listeners to embrace what makes them different and show their authentic personality to the world.
## Release and promotion
MTV News premiered the title track on September 5, 2014. Epic Records released the EP through compact disc (CD) and digital download formats four days later. The label released the CD in Australia on September 12. It debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200 chart dated September 27, with first-week sales of 21,000 copies, and sold over 171,000 copies in the United States. Title peaked at number 17 on the Canadian Albums Chart and number 35 on the Danish Albums Chart. The digital release of "All About That Bass" in some European countries shared an identical track list. A pre-order of Trainor's 2015 debut major-label studio album of the same name, which included all tracks from the EP, replaced it later that month.
"All About That Bass" served as the lead single from Title. It spent eight consecutive weeks at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, the longest run for any Epic Records artist in the chart's history, and was the best-selling song by a female artist in the 2010s, with 5.8 million digital downloads. The lyrics caused controversy; some critics called the song anti-feminist and accused Trainor of shaming thin women. It was nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. "Dear Future Husband" and the title track were both considered options for release as Trainor's second single. Reid scrapped them in favor of "Lips Are Movin" (2014), which he thought "will do better". "Dear Future Husband" was eventually chosen as the third single from the album in 2015, and peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. The title track attained viral popularity on video-sharing service TikTok in 2021.
Trainor promoted Title by performing its songs on various television shows and her concert tours. She sang "All About That Bass" at an Emily West concert, Live! with Kelly and Michael, for Entertainment Tonight, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The X Factor (Australia), and 2Day FM. She reprised the title track in sessions for MTV and the National Post, and as a mashup with "All About That Bass" at the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival. Trainor included all tracks from the EP on her set list for the Jingle Ball Tour 2014, and her 2015 concert tours That Bass Tour and MTrain Tour.
## Critical reception
Title received mixed reviews from music critics. Collar rated the EP four stars out of five, and Knoxville News Sentinel and Dolan rated it three. Collar praised Trainor's vocals as "soulful, highly resonant," and catchy; he considered "Dear Future Husband" and "All About That Bass" irresistible. Others criticized the lyrical themes as repetitive on Title despite its short duration. Knoxville News Sentinel thought she showed crisp artistic vision on the EP but dubbed its tracks "sort-of sequels" of her debut single. The newspaper said it proved Trainor was a "one-trick pony" and left much to the imagination about what else she is capable of doing. Chris DeVille of Stereogum thought she could only outlast the success of "All About That Bass" if she found new topics to write about, and was disappointed that the lyrics of "Dear Future Husband" and the title track were interchangeable. He maintained that any tracks on Title could achieve chart success with ample promotion.
## Track listing
Kadish produced all songs and wrote them with Trainor.
## Credits and personnel
Credits are adapted from the EP's liner notes.
Locations
- Recorded, engineered, and mixed at The Carriage House, Nolensville, Tennessee
- Mastered at The Mastering Palace, New York City
Personnel
- Meghan Trainor – songwriter, executive producer, clapping, percussion, ukulele, drum programming
- Kevin Kadish – songwriter, producer, drum programming, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, hammond organ, vox organ, piano, bass, sound design, mixing, recording, engineering, synthesizer, background vocals, executive producer
- David Baron – piano, baritone saxophone, hammond organ
- Jim Hoke – baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone (track 3)
- Jeremy Lister – background vocals (track 4)
- Dave Kutch – mastering
- Fatima Robinson – art direction, art design
- JP Robinson – art direction, art design
- Sarah McColgan – photography
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Release history
|
6,705,854 |
Pilot (Smallville)
| 1,163,380,051 | null |
[
"2001 American television episodes",
"American television series premieres",
"Smallville episodes",
"Television episodes about adoption",
"Television episodes about alien visitations",
"Television episodes about bullying",
"Television episodes about impact events",
"Television episodes directed by David Nutter"
] |
The pilot episode of the television series Smallville premiered on The WB on October 16, 2001. It was written by series developers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and directed by David Nutter. The Smallville pilot introduces the characters of Clark Kent, an orphaned alien with superhuman abilities, and his friends and family who live in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas. It follows Clark as he first learns of his alien origins, and attempts to stop a vengeful student from killing Smallville High School students. The episode introduces many themes that were designed to run either the course of the season or the entire series, such as the triangular relationships of the main characters.
Production was set in Vancouver, Canada, used for its "middle America" landscape, with five months devoted to casting the right actors in the lead roles. Filming for the pilot officially began four days after the last actor was cast for the series. When time constraints would not allow the production crew to physically create the sets, computer-generated imagery was used to digitally insert set pieces into a scene. When the series premiere was broadcast, it broke several of The WB's viewership records. It was generally well received by critics, and was nominated for various awards, winning two.
## Plot and themes introduced
The episode begins in 1989 when a meteor shower hits Smallville; at the same time a small spacecraft, containing an alien boy, crashes in front of Jonathan and Martha Kent's (played by John Schneider and Annette O'Toole) truck. They adopt the superhumanly powerful child and name him Clark. Gough and Millar use this opening scene to establish that the three lead characters of the series, Clark, Lana and Lex, share a common bond—they are all without one or both parents: Clark is the only survivor of his homeworld; Lana's parents are killed in the meteor shower; and Lex is alienated from his father, Lionel Luthor (John Glover), after being rendered bald by the meteor blast.
The episode jumps forward twelve years to when Clark (Tom Welling) is trying to find his identity. He is unable to handle being told of his alien origins and runs away from home. Although he is attracted to Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), he cannot get close to her without falling over in pain because she wears a necklace made of meteor rock (kryptonite), which is a radioactive fragment of Clark's destroyed homeworld. This was a concept Gough and Millar devised to establish a reason for Clark's clumsiness. In other media, it is usually portrayed as an act he puts on to deceive people of his true identity. Clark and Lana do share an intimate moment at a cemetery, where Lana is visiting the grave of her parents. In such scenes, Gough and Millar created a theme of loneliness through the life stories of Clark and Lana. Lana's boyfriend, Whitney Fordman (Eric Johnson), becomes jealous of Clark and Lana's friendship and ties Clark to a scarecrow pole, using Lana's necklace, indirectly, to subdue Clark. This image of Clark, in just his underwear and a red "S" painted on his chest, stretches back to Gough and Millar's foundation for the series, which was about taking Clark down to the basic elements of the Superman character.
In the second strand of the story, Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) and Clark develop a "yin and yang" relationship. Clark first saves Lex from drowning when they get into a car accident; at the end of the episode, Lex saves Clark when he is strung up in the cornfield and immobilized by kryptonite. Jeremy Creek (Adrian McMorran)—who was mutated by the meteor rocks, gaining special powers—puts the three former jocks, who tied him to a scarecrow pole during the meteor shower, into comas. He sets out to kill everyone attending the school's dance, after witnessing Clark experience the same hazing he did, but Clark is able to arrive in time to stop him.
## Production
### Casting
Gough and Millar had five months for casting, but their primary focus was on finding an actor to play Clark Kent. They received Kristin Kreuk's audition tape for the role of Lana Lang and liked it so much that they immediately showed her to the network. Tom Welling, after twice turning down the producers' attempts to get him to audition for the role of Clark Kent, eventually accepted the opportunity to be part of the show. It was David Nutter who finally convinced Welling to read the script for the pilot, after finding Welling's picture in a photo album at the casting director's office. Welling's manager did not want him to take the role because it could hurt his feature film career, but Welling liked the script and agreed to come in for an audition. Welling's reason for turning down the role was because the producers were keeping quiet on what the show was really about, which left him with the impression the show was going to be "Superman in high school", something he did not want to do. Nutter promised to let Welling read the script if he came in and auditioned. After auditioning, Welling was given the script to read, which he thought was "amazing". For one of his auditions, he read the graveyard scene, from the pilot, with Kristin Kreuk; the network thought they had "great chemistry". No one could agree on which actors had the best audition for Lex Luthor. Michael Rosenbaum auditioned twice, and, believing he did not take his first audition seriously, outlined a two-and-a-half-page scene from the pilot. He indicated all the places to be funny, charismatic, or menacing, and performed so well that everyone agreed he was "the guy".
John Schneider was brought in to play Jonathan Kent. Schneider was already well known as Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard, and Gough believed Schneider's experience from The Dukes of Hazzard added believability to the idea that he could have grown up running a farm. Cynthia Ettinger was originally cast as Martha Kent, but during filming it was generally agreed—Ettinger included—that she was not right for the role. Annette O'Toole, who previously portrayed Lana Lang in Superman III, and who was fresh off the recent cancellation of her television series The Huntress, was cast in Ettinger's place, reshooting the scenes Ettinger had filmed.
Eric Johnson, after auditioning for the roles of Lex and Clark, was cast as Lana Lang's boyfriend Whitney Fordman. Johnson only spent one day filming his scenes for the pilot. Allison Mack toyed with the idea of auditioning for the role of Lana Lang but chose instead to audition for the role of Chloe Sullivan. The character was created just for the series and was intended to add ethnic diversity to the cast, but part of the reason Gough and Millar chose to cast Mack, against their initial intentions to give the character an ethnic background, was because they were impressed with Allison Mack's "rare ability to deliver large chunks of expositionary [sic] dialogue conversationally". Sam Jones III, who plays Pete Ross, was the last of the series regulars to be cast. Gough and Millar saw Jones four days before they began filming for the pilot. In the comics, Pete Ross is Caucasian, and the producers chose to cast Jones, who is African-American, against the mythology.
### Filming
Once Warner Bros. Television secured the rights to the show, Gough and Millar set out to write the script and find a director for the pilot. Gough and Millar were fans of director David Nutter's previous work; they considered him to be a "preeminent pilot director". David Nutter joined the project because he wanted to make a pilot that respected the audience but that was still fun and smart. Nutter also believes in creating shows that appeal to a wide variety of audiences. He wanted the final scene for the pilot, in which Clark fantasizes about dancing with Lana, to express the show's essence. According to Welling: "It brings them close—not as close as Clark would like, but at the end of [this] episode, he imagines that he's with her and can really see it happening".
Production was initially slated to take place in Australia, but Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada had more of the "middle America" feel for which the creators were looking. The area offered a site for the Kent farm, including their barn, and the city itself doubled as Metropolis. Vancouver provided a cheaper shooting location, and was in the same time zone as Los Angeles. Filming began in March 2001; Nutter spent sixteen days on main unit filming and an additional five days for second unit filming. Time constraints forced Nutter to film strictly from Adrien Van Viersen's 150–page storyboard when filming the opening meteor shower scene. Much of the look for Smallville came from Millar, who wanted the epitome of "Smalltown, USA". Construction coordinator Rob Maier explained: "It had to be cleaner than clean, nicer than nice, more beautiful than it would be in the real world. All of the people in Smallville are beautiful; all of the colors are bright and sharp". For the Kent farm, Nutter wanted to have "an old world sensibility and tone". For the pilot, the production crew only built a kitchen and dining room to represent the Kent home. All the exterior shots of the farm were taken at the Andalinis farm, owned by a local couple who also gave the crew permission to paint their forest green house yellow. Since the Vancouver farm already had a barn, the production crew only had to build a loft with stairs leading up to it.
Exterior shots of the Luthor Mansion were shot at the Hatley Castle in Victoria, two hours west of Vancouver by ferry. Time constraints forced scenes, which were shot from multiple angles, to sometimes be shot at separate locations. A scene involving Whitney (Eric Johnson) and Lana (Kristin Kreuk) sitting on her porch was shot at two different locations. Close-ups of Whitney were shot under a football stadium, while close-ups of Lana were shot in a potato-processing factory. Unable to shoot at the house being used as the Lang residence, the crew built Lana's front porch inside a sewage processing facility for the final scene of the episode where Lana walks up the stairs to her house. The local sewage treatment facility is also the site for the LuthorCorp pesticide plant, which Lex was sent to Smallville to manage. The crash site of Clark's ship was shot at the sandpits where Mission to Mars was filmed. Smallville's Main Street was filmed in both the town of Merritt, which is three hours east of Vancouver, and in the town of Cloverdale. Most of the filming took place in Cloverdale, since the town had a long stretch of vacant buildings that could double as Smallville's Main Street. When the production crew came to film the opening teaser, they had to decorate the town with ribbons and balloons, as well as paint some of the buildings to attain Millar's idea of "Smalltown, USA". Two sets were built just for the pilot. The Kent storm cellar was built as a cover set inside the farm's barn. For the cemetery scene between Clark and Lana, production designer Bernard Hides built the entire cemetery from scratch in an empty field.
### Effects
On-set computer-generated effects for the pilot were done by Thomas Special Effects. Certain scenes, because of time and money, had to be created digitally. The opening sequence showing the destruction of the water tower by a meteor was created on the computer. A persistent problem during production was the lack of cornfields. As realistic corn was a necessity for a show based in Kansas, this became a problem for the filmmakers. Over 10,000 stalks of corn were grown in a greenhouse for the pilot, but they only grew two feet high, which was not usable to the crew. The day the crew was filming the scene for Clark's landing there were no cornfields in the surrounding area. The cornfields had to be digitally added. Digital corn was a common substitute for the undersized corn that was grown, but for scenes where digital corn was not an option, six hundred stalks of fake corn were flown in from a manufacturer in Arizona. Other digital effects include the flattened cornfield where Lex was caught in a meteorite blast. Some scenes required physical effects, instead of computer imagery. When Lex drives his car off a bridge and hits Clark, the stunt performer, who doubled as Wolverine in the film X-Men, was literally hit by the car as it went over the bridge.
## Release and reception
"Pilot" premiered on The WB on October 16, 2001. 8.4 million viewers watched the pilot's debut, breaking The WB's record for highest ratings for a new series. The pilot broke The WB's ratings record for the 18–49 male demographic, with 3.9 million viewers; it became the third-highest rated debut for the overall adult 18–49 demographic, with an average 3.8 million viewers. The premiere also finished first with viewers age 12–34, leading Warner Bros. President of Entertainment Jordan Levin to credit the series with invigorating the network's Tuesday night lineup. The pilot won an Emmy Award for Sound Editing; it had also been nominated for Visual Effects but lost to UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise. The special effects team won a Leo Award for Best Visual Effects in a Dramatic Series. Casting directors Deedee Bradley, Coreen Mayrs, and Barbara Miller were nominated for an Artios Award for their work on the pilot. The pilot was nominated for two Golden Reel Awards, one for Effects & Foley Sound Editing and one for Music Sound Editing. Peter Wunstorf was also nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers Award for his work on the pilot. The pilot, along with the second episode "Metamorphosis", was released in Canada as a special pilot movie. The episodes were altered on the DVD, formatted in 1.78 widescreen, and presented with no opening segment and an alternate closing. It also contained the same special features present in the DVD box set of the first season. The DVD was released in a snap case.
The pilot received favorable reviews upon its release. Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette thought it was a "respectful addition to Superman lore" and had "all the markings of a super series". Owen noted the Christ-like imagery of the scene, stating, "is it any wonder Clark gets tied up there since Superman, too, was 'sent to save us'?" Echoing Owen, DVD Verdict noted the same symbolism:
> Superman is, in a way, the secular pop culture stand-in for Jesus Christ, a messiah figure for our generation. The series makes this theme explicit in its pilot episode, in which Clark is symbolically 'crucified' in a cornfield. That striking bit of symbolism becomes the central preoccupation of the series; Clark is the savior who sacrifices all for the greater good of humanity, and Smallville shows us how he comes to accept and embrace that role.
Elizabeth White of Media Life believed the show had potential to be a big hit for The WB but felt it needed to survive not only its time slot—Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. (EST)—but also the audience's expectations of "what Superman should be". USA Today'''s Robert Bianco was a bit more mixed in his criticism. Bianco stated: "For all its innovations, there's also something rehashed and repetitive about Smallville... shows often look more familiar at the outset than they do as they progress. There's talent and intelligence at work in Smallville. Given time, maybe they'll find a more distinctive voice". Jeremy Conrad, from IGN, swore to himself that he would never watch Smallville, because he was a "huge Superman fan" and he did not like the idea the creators would be making changes to the Superman mythology. After viewing the pilot, Conrad said: "It's a very solid start to the series, and one of the better pilot episodes I've seen in a while". In The Futon Critic's 50 best episodes of 2001 rankings, the pilot was placed 31st, with Brian Ford Sullivan stating that "Smallville opened us to a surprisingly fresh take on the Superman myth-this time showing us the humble beginnings of a young Clark Kent".
The CW re-aired the pilot on Friday, April 8, 2011 in preparation for the series finale. The episode was watched by 1.55 million viewers and achieved a 0.5 Adults 18-49 rating, despite only 92% coverage.
## See also
- Pilot (Arrow), a pilot episode of Green Arrow-based series, filmed in same location and with same director.
- Aquaman, a pilot for Aquaman, developed by the same individuals who developed Smallville''.
- List of television series based on DC Comics
|
682,752 |
Horatio Bottomley
| 1,169,625,593 |
English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament
|
[
"1860 births",
"1933 deaths",
"British politicians convicted of fraud",
"English fraudsters",
"English politicians convicted of crimes",
"Expelled members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom",
"Financial Times people",
"Hackney Members of Parliament",
"Independent members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom",
"Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies",
"People from Bethnal Green",
"UK MPs 1906–1910",
"UK MPs 1910",
"UK MPs 1910–1918",
"UK MPs 1918–1922"
] |
Horatio William Bottomley (23 March 1860 – 26 May 1933) was an English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament. He is best known for his editorship of the popular magazine John Bull, and for his nationalistic oratory during the First World War. His career came to a sudden end when, in 1922, he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.
Bottomley spent five years in an orphanage before beginning his career, aged 14, as an errand boy. Subsequent experience as a solicitor's clerk gave him a useful knowledge of English law, which he later put to effective use in his court appearances. After working as a shorthand writer and court reporter, at 24 he founded his own publishing company, which launched numerous magazines and papers, including, in 1888, the Financial Times. He overreached with an ambitious public flotation of his company, which led to his first arraignment on fraud charges in 1893. Despite evidence of malpractice, Bottomley, who defended himself, was acquitted. He subsequently amassed a fortune as a promoter of shares in gold-mining companies.
In 1906 Bottomley entered parliament as Liberal Party member for Hackney South. In the same year, he founded the popular magazine John Bull, which became a platform for Bottomley's trenchant populist views. Financial extravagance and mismanagement continued to blight his career, and in 1912 he had to resign from parliament after being declared bankrupt. The outbreak of war in 1914 revived his fortunes; as a journalist and orator, Bottomley became a leading propagandist for the war effort, addressing well over 300 public meetings. His influence was such that it was widely expected that he would enter the War Cabinet, although he received no such offer.
In 1918, having been discharged from bankruptcy, Bottomley re-entered parliament as an Independent member. In the following year, he launched his fraudulent "Victory Bonds" scheme which, when exposed, led to his conviction, imprisonment and expulsion from parliament. Released in 1927, he attempted unsuccessfully to relaunch his business career and eked out a living by lecturing and appearances in music halls. His final years before his death in 1933 were spent in poverty.
## Life
### Family background and childhood
Bottomley was born on 23 March 1860, at 16 Saint Peter's Street, Bethnal Green in London, the second child and only son of William King Bottomley, a tailor's cutter, and Elizabeth, née Holyoake. William Bottomley's background is obscure, but Elizabeth belonged to a family of well-known radical agitators—her brother George Jacob Holyoake was a founder of the Secularist movement and in later life a leading figure in the growth of Co-operative societies.
Among Holyoake's close associates was Charles Bradlaugh, who founded the National Republican League and became a controversial Member of Parliament. A longstanding friendship between Bradlaugh and Elizabeth Holyoake led to rumours that he, not William Bottomley, was Horatio's biological father—a suggestion that Bottomley, in later life, was prone to encourage. The evidence is circumstantial, mainly based on the marked facial resemblance between Bradlaugh and Bottomley.
William Bottomley died in 1864 and Elizabeth a year later. Horatio and his elder sister, Florence, were initially looked after by their uncle William Holyoake, an artist living in the London district of Marylebone. After a year they were boarded out to foster-parents, at their uncle George Jacob's expense. This arrangement lasted until 1869 when Florence was formally adopted by her foster-family. At this point Holyoake felt unable to continue supporting Horatio financially, and arranged for him to be admitted to Josiah Mason's orphanage in Erdington, Birmingham. This was Horatio's home for the following five years. Some biographers have emphasised the cruelty and humiliation of his time there; while discipline was certainly harsh, Horatio received a useful basic education, and won prizes for sporting activities. In later life he showed no resentment towards the institution, which he often visited, telling the children that "any success I have achieved in life started at this place."
In 1874, when Horatio was 14 and due to leave the orphanage, he ran away without waiting for the formalities. His aunt Caroline Praill—his mother's sister—who lived in nearby Edgbaston, gave him a home, while he worked as an errand boy in a Birmingham building firm. This arrangement lasted only a few months before Horatio, impatient to be reunited with his sister from whom he had been separated for six years, went to London where he began an apprenticeship with a wood engraver.
### Early career
#### First steps
Bottomley soon gave up his apprenticeship, and after a series of humdrum jobs found work in the offices of a City firm of solicitors. Here he picked up a working knowledge of English legal procedures and was soon carrying a workload far exceeding the normal duties of an office junior. With his uncle's encouragement he learned shorthand at Pitman's College, a skill which helped him to get a better job with a larger legal firm. He also came into closer contact with the Holyoake circle, where he acted as an unpaid assistant in the group's publishing activities. He met Bradlaugh, who encouraged the young man to read more widely and introduced him to the ideas of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and John Stuart Mill. Bottomley was strongly influenced by Bradlaugh, whom he considered his political and spiritual mentor.
As Bottomley emerged from adolescence to maturity he began to show signs of the characteristics that would be much in evidence in his later life: greed for fleshly pleasures, a thirst for fame, spontaneous generosity, combined with a charm that, according to his biographer Julian Symons, could "tempt the banknotes out of men's pockets".
In 1880 Bottomley married Eliza Norton, the daughter of a debt collector. Bottomley's biographers have tended to regard this early, unambitious marriage as a mistake on his part; she was not equipped, intellectually or socially, to help him advance in the world. They had a daughter, Florence, who married firstly American millionaire Jefferson Davis Cohn, and secondly successful South African planter Gilbert Moreland. In the year of his marriage, Bottomley left his job to become a full-time shorthand writer for Walpole's, a firm that provided recording and transcription services for the law courts. His competence impressed his employers sufficiently for them, in 1883, to offer him a partnership, and the firm became Walpole and Bottomley.
#### Publishing entrepreneur
Bottomley's association with Bradlaugh had awakened his interests in publishing and politics, and in 1884 he launched his first entrepreneurial venture, a magazine called the Hackney Hansard. This journal recorded the business of Hackney's local "parliament"—essentially a debating society that mirrored the proceedings at Westminster. Advertisements from local tradesmen kept the paper mildly profitable. Bottomley produced a sister-paper, the Battersea Hansard, covering that borough's local parliament, before merging the two into The Debater.
In 1885 he formed the Catherine Street Publishing Association and, using borrowed capital, acquired or started several magazines and papers. These included, among others, the Municipal Review, a prestigious local government publication; Youth, a boys' paper on which Alfred Harmsworth, the future press magnate Lord Northcliffe, worked as a sub-editor; and the Financial Times. The last-named was set up to rival the Financial News, London's first specialist business paper, which had been founded in 1884 by Harry Marks, a former sewing-machine salesman. In 1886 Bottomley's company acquired its own printing works through a merger with the printing firm of MacRae and Co., and after the absorption of another advertising and printing firm, became MacRae, Curtice and Company.
At the age of 26, Bottomley became the company's chairman. His advance in the business world was attracting wider notice, and in 1887 he was invited by the Liberal Party in Hornsey to be their candidate in a parliamentary by-election. He accepted, and although defeated by Henry Stephens, the ink magnate, fought a strong campaign which won him a congratulatory letter from William Gladstone. His business affairs were proceeding less serenely; he quarrelled with his partner Douglas MacRae, and the two decided to separate. Bottomley described the "Quixotic impulse" that led him to let MacRae divide the assets: "He was a printer, and I was a journalist—but he took the papers and left me the printing works".
#### Hansard Publishing Union
Undismayed by the loss of his papers, Bottomley embarked on an ambitious expansion scheme. On the basis of a lucrative contract to print the Hansard reports of debates in the Westminster parliament, at the beginning of 1889 he founded the Hansard Publishing Union Limited, floated on the London Stock Exchange with a capital of £500,000. Bottomley boosted the company's credentials by persuading several notable City figures to join the company's board of directors. These included Sir Henry Isaacs, the Lord Mayor-elect of London, Coleridge Kennard, co-founder (with Harry Marks) of the London Evening News, and Sir Roper Lethbridge, the Conservative MP for Kensington North.
This board approved the purchase by Bottomley of several printing businesses—he used intermediaries to disguise his considerable personal profits from these transactions. He also persuaded the board to give him £75,000 as a down payment for some publishing firms in Austria for which he was negotiating, although the firms were not acquired. These outgoings and other expenses absorbed the Union's capital, and with few significant revenue streams it quickly ran out of money. Nonetheless, without any statement of accounts, in July 1890 Bottomley announced a profit for the year of £40,877 and declared a dividend of eight percent.
The funds for the dividend payment were raised by a debenture of £50,000. By the end of 1890, many City figures were suspicious of the Hansard Union, and were calling it "Bottomley's swindle". Despite Bottomley's outward optimism, in December 1890 the company defaulted on the payment of debenture interest and in May 1891, amid growing rumours of insolvency, the debenture holders petitioned for the company's compulsory winding-up. In the same month Bottomley, who had taken at least £100,000 from the company, filed a petition for bankruptcy. Under examination by the Official Receiver, he could not say where the money had gone and professed total ignorance of the company's book-keeping. After further enquiries, the Board of Trade instituted prosecutions for fraud against Bottomley, Isaacs and two others.
The trial began in the High Court of Justice on 30 January 1893, before Sir Henry Hawkins; Bottomley conducted his own defence. To most observers the case against him seemed impregnable. It was established that, through his nominees, Bottomley had repeatedly bought companies for far less than the prices approved by the Hansard Union directors, and had pocketed the difference. Bottomley did not deny this, insisting that use of nominees was an accepted commercial practice and that his actual profits had been much smaller than reported; his expenses, he said, had been enormous.
He was helped in his case by the slackness with which the prosecution presented its evidence, and their failure to call key witnesses. He was further helped by the indulgence which Hawkins showed him, and by his own convincing oratory. The essence of his argument was that he was the victim of machinations by the Official Receiver and the Debenture Corporation, who had been determined to win prestige by bringing Bottomley down and wrecking his company. On 26 April, after Hawkins had summed up massively in his favour, Bottomley was acquitted, along with the other defendants.
### Company promoter, newspaper proprietor, would-be politician
The Hansard Union case, far from damaging Bottomley's reputation, had left a general impression that he was a financial genius. He avoided the stigma of bankruptcy by arranging a scheme of repayment with his creditors, and swiftly embarked on a new career promoting Western Australian gold mining shares. The discovery of gold in Kalgoorlie and adjoining areas in the early 1890s had created an easily exploitable investment boom; as Bottomley's biographer Alan Hyman observes, "A hole in the ground ... could be boosted into a very promising gold-mine, and investors only found that they had backed a loser after the mine had been floated as a public company and they had paid hard cash for their shares".
By 1897, through skilful exploitation of demand and by frequent reconstruction of failing companies, Bottomley had accumulated a considerable personal fortune. It was, the historian A.J.A. Morris asserts, "a truly amazing success story, the product of reckless audacity, astonishing energy, and extreme good fortune". Bottomley won plaudits when he announced that he would pay £250,000 to the creditors of the Hansard Union; the bulk of this payment was offered in shares in one or other of his mining promotions.
As his wealth increased, Bottomley adopted an increasingly ostentatious lifestyle. In London he lived in a luxurious apartment in Pall Mall. He took numerous mistresses, whom he visited in several discreet flats in different districts of London. He owned several racehorses, which achieved prestigious victories—the Stewards' Cup at Goodwood, and the Cesarewitch at Newmarket—but he often lost large sums through unwise bets. Quite early in his rise to wealth he bought a modest property in Upper Dicker, near Eastbourne in East Sussex. He called it "The Dicker", and over the years extended and developed it into a large country mansion, where he entertained extravagantly.
Bottomley had retained his parliamentary ambitions and in 1890, before the Hansard Union crash, had been adopted as the Liberal candidate for North Islington. According to Symons, when he resigned the candidature on the commencement of bankruptcy proceedings, he had the constituency in his pocket. By 1900 his star was again in the ascendant, and he was invited by the Hackney South Liberals to be their candidate in that year's general election. He lost by only 280 votes, after a bitterly fought campaign in which Bottomley was described in a newspaper article as a "bare-faced swindler ... [whose] ... place is at the Old Bailey, not at Westminster". He was subsequently awarded £1,000 libel damages against the writer, Henry Hess.
By the turn of the 19th–20th centuries the boom in speculative shares had abated; some of Bottomley's fellow promoters, such as Whitaker Wright, were facing charges of fraud and misrepresentation. Bottomley ceased his operations, and resumed his earlier role of newspaper proprietor. In 1902 he bought a failing London evening paper, The Sun, to which he contributed a regular column, "The World, the Flesh and the Devil". Another feature was Bottomley's employment of celebrity guest editors for special editions; among these were the comedian Dan Leno, the cricketer Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji and the labour leader Ben Tillett.
The paper was not a financial success, and Bottomley sold it in 1904. He had not given up altogether on speculative money-making schemes, and in 1905 began an association with the financier Ernest Hooley. Among their joint enterprises was the promotion of the defunct, dry Basingstoke Canal as a major inland waterway, the "London and South-Western Canal". Bottomley later made a substantial out-of-court settlement of an action brought by investors who had bought worthless shares in the canal.
### Parliament, John Bull, bankruptcy
In the general election of January 1906 Bottomley was again the Liberal candidate for Hackney South. After a vigorous campaign he defeated his Conservative opponent by more than 3,000—the largest Liberal majority in London, he informed the House of Commons in his maiden speech on 20 February 1906. According to Hyman, this speech was received in "chilling silence" by a House that was well aware of Bottomley's chequered reputation.
Over the following months and years, he overcame much of the initial hostility, partly by his self-deprecating good humour (as when he described himself as "more or less honourable") but also because his populist approach to legislation was attractive. He proposed rational reforms of the betting industry and of licensing hours and the introduction of state Old Age Pensions. Extra revenues could be raised, he suggested, by stamp duty on share transfers, taxes on foreign investment, and by appropriating dormant bank balances. He drew the government's attention to the long hours worked by domestic servants, and introduced a private bill limiting the working day to eight hours. He privately confided to the journalist Frank Harris that his ambition was to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Alongside his parliamentary duties, Bottomley was engaged in launching his biggest and boldest publishing venture, the weekly news magazine John Bull, half of the initial capital for which was provided by Hooley. From its first issue on 12 May 1906 John Bull adopted a tabloid style that, despite occasional lapses in taste, proved immensely popular. Among its regular features, Bottomley revived his "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" column from The Sun, and also adapted that paper's slogan: "If you read it in John Bull, it is so". Bottomley persuaded Julius Elias, managing director of Odhams Limited, to handle the printing, but chaotic financial management meant that Odhams were rarely paid. This situation was resolved when the entire management of the magazine, including the handling of all receipts and payments, was transferred to Elias, leaving Bottomley free to concentrate on editing and journalism. Circulation rose rapidly, and by 1910 had reached half a million copies.
In June 1906 Bottomley announced the John Bull Investment Trust, in which, for a minimum subscription of £10, investors could share "that special and exclusive information which is obtainable only as the result of extensive City experience". Bottomley's earlier City activities were coming under scrutiny, particularly the multiple reconstructions of his now-bankrupt Joint Stock Trust Company. After a long investigation, which Bottomley did all he could to frustrate, in December 1908 he was summoned to appear at the Guildhall Justice Room, before a court of aldermen. As with the Hansard prosecution, the case against Bottomley appeared overwhelming; share issues in the Joint Stock Trust had been repeatedly re-issued, perhaps as many as six times. Once again Bottomley succeeded in obscuring the details and, by the power of his courtroom oratory, persuaded the court that the summons should be dismissed.
One of the prosecuting team at the Guildhall observed that it would be a long time before anyone risked another prosecution against Bottomley: "But he might ... grow careless, and then he will fail". Despite the adverse publicity, Bottomley was returned by the electors of Hackney South at each of the two 1910 general elections; his tactics included recruiting men in boots tipped and heeled with iron, who marched outside his opponent's meetings and rendered the speeches inaudible. In June 1910 he founded the John Bull League, with a mission to promote "commonsense business methods" into government; readers of the magazine could join the League for a shilling (5p) a year. Although still nominally a Liberal, Bottomley had become a trenchant critic of his party, and often aligned himself with the Conservative opposition in attacking Asquith's government.
Bottomley's parliamentary ambitions were suddenly halted in 1912 when he was successfully sued for £49,000 by one of his Joint Stock Trust victims. Unable to pay, and with massive debts, he was bankrupted with liabilities totalling £233,000. Since bankrupts are ineligible to sit in the House of Commons, he had to resign his seat; after his departure, the future Lord Chancellor, F. E. Smith, wrote that "[h]is absence from the House of Commons has impoverished the public stock of gaiety, of cleverness, of common sense". Before his bankruptcy, Bottomley had ensured that his main assets were legally owned by relatives or nominees, and was thus able to continue his extravagant lifestyle. John Bull remained an ample source of funds, and Bottomley boasted that although nominally bankrupt, "I never had a better time in my life—plenty of money and everything else I want as well".
### Sweepstakes and lotteries
After leaving the House of Commons, Bottomley denounced Parliament in the pages of John Bull as a "musty, rusty, corrupt system" that urgently needed replacement. Through his newly formed Business League he addressed large crowds as he called for government run by businessmen not politicians. As always, Bottomley's lifestyle required fresh sources of income, and in 1912 John Bull began to organise competitions for cash prizes. Bottomley successfully sued the secretary of the Anti-Gambling League for suggesting that many of the prizewinners were John Bull nominees or employees, but received only a farthing in damages. These competitions helped to raise the magazine's circulation to 1.5 million.
In 1913 Bottomley met a Birmingham businessman, Reuben Bigland, and together they began running large-scale sweepstakes and lotteries, operated from Switzerland to circumvent English law. Again doubts arose about the genuineness of declared winners; the winner of the £25,000 sweepstake for the 1914 Derby proved on enquiry to be the sister-in-law of one of Bottomley's close associates. Bottomley insisted this was a coincidence; years later, it was revealed that all but £250 of the prize had been paid into a bank account controlled by Bottomley.
### First World War: orator and propagandist
Bottomley initially misread the international crisis that developed during the summer of 1914. After the murder of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June in Sarajevo, allegedly with Serbian complicity, John Bull described Serbia as "a hotbed of cold-blooded conspiracy and subterfuge", and called for it to be wiped from the map of Europe. When Britain declared war on the Central Powers on 4 August, Bottomley quickly reversed his position, and within a fortnight was demanding the elimination of Germany. John Bull campaigned relentlessly against the "Germhuns", and against British citizens carrying German-sounding surnames—the danger of "the enemy within" was a persistent Bottomley theme.
On 14 September 1914 he addressed a large crowd at the London Opera House, the first of many mass meetings at which he deployed his trademark phrase, "the Prince of Peace, (pointing to the Star of Bethlehem) that leads us on to God"—words which according to Symons moved many hearts. At the "Great War Rally" at the Royal Albert Hall on 14 January 1915, Bottomley was fully in tune with the national temper when he proclaimed: "We are fighting all that is worst in the world, the product of a debased civilisation".
During the war, in his self-appointed role as spokesman for the "man in the street", Bottomley addressed more than 300 public meetings, in all parts of the country. For recruitment rallies he provided his services free; for others, he took a percentage of the takings. His influence was enormous; the writer D. H. Lawrence, who detested Bottomley, thought that he represented the national spirit and that he might become prime minister.
In March 1915 Bottomley began a regular weekly column for the Sunday Pictorial. On 4 May, after the sinking of the Lusitania, he used this column to label the Germans as "unnatural freaks", and called for their extermination. Britain's war effort, he maintained, was being hampered by squeamish politicians; he reserved particular venom for the Labour Party leaders, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed the war, and demanded they be tried for high treason. Macdonald's riposte—to label Bottomley "a man of doubtful parentage who had lived all his life on the threshold of jail"—backfired when the latter published Macdonald's birth certificate which showed that the Labour leader was himself illegitimate. Bottomley also criticized the neutrality policy of the United States, arguing the USA was using the war to increase its economic power at the expense of the European powers. Bottomley launched a series of attacks on President Woodrow Wilson that lasted until the US entered the war in 1917.
Although the government was wary of Bottomley it was prepared to make use of his influence and popularity. In April 1915 the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, asked him to speak to shipworkers on the River Clyde, who were threatening industrial action. After Bottomley's intervention the strike was averted. In 1917 he visited the front in France, where, after dining with Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, he was a considerable success with the troops; his later visit to the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow was a similar success. He hoped that these morale-boosting activities would lead to a formal government position, but although from time to time there were rumours of a Cabinet post, no appointment was announced. In the later stages of the war Bottomley was a regular critic of the National War Aims Committee (NWAC), a cross-party parliamentary body formed in 1917 to revitalise Britain's commitment to victory and to underline the justice of its cause. Bottomley described the committee as "a dodge for doctoring public opinion", and in January 1918 told Lloyd George, who had become prime minister in December 1916, that NWAC had failed in its purpose and should be replaced by a Director of Propaganda—but to no avail.
### Postwar career
#### Parliament again
Although in 1912 Bottomley had expressed contempt for parliament, he privately hankered to return. When the war ended in November 1918 and a general election was announced, he knew that to be a candidate in that election he needed a discharge from his bankruptcy. A payment of £34,000 in cash and bonds, and some hasty reorganisation of outstanding debts, was sufficient for an acquiescent Official Receiver to grant the discharge just in time for Bottomley to hand in his nomination papers in Hackney South. In the general election on 14 December 1918 he stood as an Independent, under the slogan "Bottomley, Brains and Business", and achieved a massive victory, with almost 80 per cent of the votes cast. "I am now prepared to proceed to Westminster to run the show", he informed a local newspaper. He would be, he said, the "unofficial prime minister ... watching the government's every move" to ensure that it acted in the interests of "our soldiers, sailors and citizens".
The 1918 parliament was dominated by Lloyd George's Liberal–Conservative coalition, which faced a fragmented and unorganised opposition. In May 1919 Bottomley announced the formation of his "People's League", which he hoped would develop into a fully fledged political party with a programme opposing both organised labour and organised capital. No mass movement emerged, but Bottomley joined with other Independent MPs to form the Independent Parliamentary Group, with a distinct policy stance including the enforcement of war reparations, the superiority of Britain over the League of Nations, exclusion of undesirable aliens, and "the introduction of business principles into government". The group was reinforced through by-election victories of other Independents—including Charles Frederick Palmer, John Bull's deputy editor, until his premature death in October 1920.
Bottomley was, at least for a year or so, a diligent parliamentarian who spoke on a range of issues, and from time to time teased the government as when, during the Irish Troubles, he asked whether, "in view of the breakdown of British rule in Ireland, the government will approach America with a view to her accepting the mandate for the government of that country". On other occasions he helped the government, as when in January 1919, he was called upon in his role of "Soldier's Friend" to help pacify troops in Folkestone and Calais who were in a state of mutiny over delays in their demobilisation.
#### Downfall
In July 1919 Bottomley announced his "Victory Bonds Club", based on the government's latest issue of Victory Bonds. Normally, these bonds cost £5; in Bottomley's club, subscribers bought units for a minimum payment of £1, and participated in an annual draw for prizes—up to £20,000, he said—funded from accrued interest. Contrary to Bottomley's public statements, not all the money subscribed was used to buy bonds. He had ambitions to become a press baron, to rival such as the Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook.
In October 1919 he used War Bonds funds to buy two obscure newspapers, the National News and the Sunday Evening Telegram. The papers were not financially successful, and in 1921 Bottomley closed the Telegram and changed the name of the National News to Sunday Illustrated. To bolster its fortunes, he transferred his Sunday Pictorial column to the Illustrated, and mounted an expensive promotional campaign, but with little benefit. The paper languished, while Bottomley lost the large income and readership that went with the Pictorial. His fortunes declined further when, in 1920, Odhams revoked the pre-war partnership agreement and took full control of John Bull. Bottomley was made editor for life, but a year later Odhams terminated this arrangement with a final pay-off of £25,000, which ended Bottomley's connection with the paper.
Meanwhile, dogged by poor administration and inadequate accounting, the Victory Bonds Club was sliding into chaos. Public unease grew, and soon hundreds of subscribers were demanding their money back—slipshod record-keeping meant that some were repaid several times over. Bottomley's position worsened when he fell out with Bigland, after refusing to finance his former associate's scheme for turning water into petrol. The two had quarrelled during the war, when Bigland had attacked Bottomley in print. They had later reconciled, but after their second dispute Bigland turned vengeful. In September 1921 he published a leaflet describing the War Bond Club as Bottomley's "latest and greatest swindle". Against the advice of his lawyers, Bottomley sued for criminal libel, and brought other charges against Bigland of blackmail and extortion. The preliminary hearing, at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in October 1921, at which Bottomley's methods were revealed, proved disastrous to his credibility. Nevertheless, Bigland was committed for trial at the Old Bailey on the libel charge, and to Shropshire Assizes on charges of attempted extortion.
The libel trial began on 23 January 1922; to prevent further damaging disclosures in court, Bottomley's lawyers offered no evidence, and Bigland was discharged. The extortion case went ahead in Shrewsbury on 18 February 1922, at the end of which it took the jury only three minutes to find Bigland not guilty. Bottomley, himself now under police investigation, was ordered to pay the costs of the trial. A few days afterwards, he was summoned to appear at Bow Street, on charges of fraudulent conversion of Victory Bond Club funds. After a brief hearing he was committed for trial at the Old Bailey.
### Final years
Bottomley's trial began on 19 May 1922, before Mr Justice Salter. As the case was beginning, Bottomley secured the agreement of the prosecuting counsel, Travers Humphreys, to a 15-minute adjournment each day so that he, Bottomley, could drink a pint of champagne, ostensibly for medicinal purposes. He faced 24 fraud charges, involving amounts totalling £170,000. The prosecution produced evidence that he had regularly used Victory Bonds Club funds to finance business ventures, private debts and his expensive lifestyle.
Bottomley, who defended himself, claimed that his legitimate expenses in connection with the club, and repayments made to Victory Bonds Club members, exceeded total receipts by at least £50,000: "I swear I have never made a penny out of it. I swear before God that I have never fraudulently converted a penny of the Club's money". The weight of evidence suggested otherwise; Salter's summing up, described by a biographer as "masterly; lucid and concise, yet complete", went heavily against Bottomley, and the jury required only 28 minutes to convict him on all but one of the charges. He was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. Humphreys commented later: "It was not I that floored him, but Drink".
After the dismissal of his appeal in July, Bottomley was expelled from the House of Commons. The Leader of the House, Sir Austen Chamberlain, read out a letter in which Bottomley insisted that, however unorthodox his methods, he had not been guilty of conscious fraud; he accepted that his predicament was entirely his own fault. Chamberlain then moved Bottomley's expulsion, which was carried without dissent. One member expressed regret, "remembering the remarkable position which he [had] occupied in the country". Bottomley spent the first year of his sentence in Wormwood Scrubs where he sewed mailbags, and the remainder in Maidstone Prison where, although conditions were squalid, he was given lighter work. He was released on 29 July 1927, after serving just over five years, and returned to The Dicker, still his family home, owned at the time of his bankruptcy by his son-in-law, Jefferson Cohn.
Although now 67 years old and in indifferent health, Bottomley tried to resurrect his business career. He raised sufficient capital to start a new magazine, John Blunt, as a rival to John Bull, but the new venture lasted little more than a year before closing, having lost money from the start. In September 1929 he began an overseas lecture tour, which failed utterly, as did an attempt at a British tour during which he was received with indifference or hostility. By 1930 he was again bankrupt; his wife Eliza died that year, after which Bottomley's former son-in-law Jefferson Cohn (who owned it) evicted him from The Dicker. For the remaining years of his life he lived with his long-time mistress, the actress Peggy Primrose, whom Bottomley, in his years of riches, had vainly tried to promote to stardom.
Bottomley's last public venture was an engagement at the Windmill Theatre in September 1932, where he performed a monologue of reminiscences that, according to Symons, puzzled rather than amused his audience. Following a health breakdown, he lived with Primrose in quiet poverty until his final illness.
## Death
Bottomley died at the Middlesex Hospital on 26 May 1933 at the age of 73, and his body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium a few days later. A large crowd heard the Reverend Basil Bourchier express the hope that "no one here today will forget what Mr Bottomley did to revive the spirits of our men at the Front". Four years later, in accordance with Bottomley's wishes, Primrose scattered his ashes on the Sussex Downs.
## Appraisal
Bottomley's obituaries dwelt on the common theme of wasted talent: a man of brilliant natural abilities, destroyed by greed and vanity. "He had personal magnetism, eloquence, and the power to convince", wrote his Daily Mail obituarist. "He might have been a leader at the Bar, a captain of industry, a great journalist. He might have been almost anything". The Straits Times of Singapore thought that Bottomley could have rivalled Lloyd George as a national leader: "Though he deserved his fate, the news of his passing will awaken the many regrets for the good which he did when he was Bottomley the reformer and crusader and the champion of the bottom dog". A later historian, Maurice Cowling, pays tribute to Bottomley's capacity and industry, and to his forceful campaigns in support of liberty. In his sketch for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Morris delivers a different judgement: "[H]e claimed to serve the interests of others, but sought only his own gratification".
Among Bottomley's principal biographers, Hyman suggests that his financial fecklessness and disregard for consequences may have originated from his deprived background and sudden acquisition of wealth in the 1890s. "Success went to his head and he started spending money like a drunken sailor and could never break the habit." It was a wonder, says Hyman, that he stayed out of prison as long as he did. G. R. Searle speculates that Bottomley was protected from prosecution because of his knowledge of wider scandals in the government, particularly after Lloyd George's coalition assumed power in 1916. Symons acknowledges Bottomley's "wonderfully rich public personality" but suggests that there was no substance behind the presentation: throughout his adult life, Bottomley was "more a series of public attitudes than a person". Matthew Engel in The Guardian notes his ability to charm the public even while swindling them; one victim, cheated of £40,000, apparently insisted: "I am not sorry I lent him the money, and I would do it again". If London had had a mayor in those days, says Engel, Bottomley would have won in a landslide.
## Cultural depictions
- Actor Timothy West portrays Bottomley in the 1972–1973 miniseries The Edwardians.
- Actor Patrick Mower portrays Bottomley in a radio play by Allen Saddler about him called Man of the People. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1986 and in June 2022 on BBC Radio 4 Extra.
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Henry Wells (general)
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Australian Army officer (1898–1973)
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"Chairmen, Chiefs of Staff Committee (Australia)",
"Chiefs of Army (Australia)",
"Commanders of the Legion of Merit",
"Graduates of the Staff College, Camberley",
"Military personnel from Victoria (state)",
"People from Kyneton",
"Royal Military College, Duntroon graduates"
] |
Lieutenant General Sir Henry Wells, KBE, CB, DSO (22 March 1898 – 20 October 1973) was a senior officer in the Australian Army. Serving as Chief of the General Staff from 1954 to 1958, Wells' career culminated with his appointment as the first Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, a position marking him as the professional head of the Australian Military. He served in this capacity from March 1958 until March 1959, when he retired from the army.
Born in Victoria, Wells began his career in the Australian Army in 1916 when he entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon. Graduating as a lieutenant three years later, he served in a variety of staff and instructional positions before the outbreak of the Second World War. Initially posted to the 7th Division as a staff officer in 1940, Wells was promoted to lieutenant colonel and made senior liaison officer to I Corps. Serving in Greece and North Africa, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his leadership at El Alamein. Transferred to the South West Pacific theatre in 1943 as a brigadier, he served in the New Guinea Campaign with the headquarters of II Corps and later in the Borneo campaign with I Corps.
Wells was promoted to major general in 1946 and appointed Deputy Chief of the General Staff. Following promotion to lieutenant general, he was made Commander-in-Chief, British Commonwealth Forces Korea from 1953 to 1954, serving during the last days of the war. In retirement, Wells was a director of several companies. Aged 75, he died in 1973.
## Early life and career
Wells was born in the Victorian town of Kyneton on 22 March 1898, the youngest of seven children to Arthur Wells, a draper, and his wife Elizabeth (née Carter). Educated at Kyneton High School, Wells entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in February 1916, where he was a keen sportsman. Graduating from the college in December 1919, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Australian Army, and posted to England for further training.
On his return to Australia, Wells was appointed as adjutant and quartermaster of the 8th Light Horse Regiment in 1921. The following year, he was allocated to the 9th Light Horse Regiment. In February 1926, Wells was briefly appointed brigade major of the 6th Cavalry Brigade, before becoming an instructor at the Small Arms School, Sydney, during July. On 14 December that year, Wells married Lorna Irene Skippen in a ceremony at St John's Church of England, Cessnock; the couple would later have two sons.
During 1927, Wells was assigned to the Royal Military College, Duntroon as a company commander and promoted to captain that December. Returning to the Small Arms School as an instructor in 1931, he was dispatched to England and attended the Staff College, Camberley between 1935 and 1936. Arriving back in Australia, Wells was made adjutant and quartermaster of the 4th/3rd Battalion, and later brigade major of the 1st Infantry Brigade. During 1938, he was reposted to Royal Military College, Duntroon as a lecturer on tactics.
## Second World War
### Greece and North Africa
On 15 May 1940, Wells transferred to the Second Australian Imperial Force for active service during the Second World War. Promoted to major, he was posted to the headquarters of the 7th Division. Wells proceeded with the division to the Middle East, where, on arriving in December, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and posted as senior liaison officer to I Corps. During this time, the Australian 6th Division and I Corps Headquarters were diverted for service in the Greek Campaign.
Wells arrived in Greece on 7 March 1941, with an advance party of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey's I Corps staff. On 10 April, a plan was formulated to withdraw Greek and Commonwealth troops from their positions in the Verria pass of the Vermion Mountains to the River Aliakmon. To carry this out, Blamey despatched Wells to coordinate the movement of the 12th Greek Division west to its new position. The withdrawal began on 12 April, but the force's movement was hampered because of lack of vehicles and the division did not arrive until late evening the following day. During this time, Wells travelled between I Corps Headquarters and the 12th Greek Division, organising and coordinating the division's movement, despite frequent air attacks on the roads.
On 24 April 1941, Wells embarked from Greece along with the remainder of the I Corps Headquarters during the British and Commonwealth withdrawal. Commended for his "conspicuous skill, ability and energy" and fostering "mutual confidence and goodwill between the Allied forces", Wells was recommended for the Distinguished Service Order, but was subsequently appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services in Greece. The announcement of the award was published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 30 December 1941. Then Brigadier Stanley Savige later wrote of Wells during the campaign: "Tireless in his long journeys, helpful in every possible way, and courageous in all circumstances". For his "gallant and distinguished services" during this time, Wells was additionally Mentioned in Despatches.
Following Greece, the headquarters of I Corps returned to Palestine. Wells was made General Staff Officer, 2nd Grade (GSO2), the deputy chief of staff in charge of planning operations. I Corps was alerted to take part in the Syria-Lebanon Campaign, in spite of the fact that since Blamey had been promoted to Deputy Commander in Chief Middle East Command, the corps lacked a commanding officer. General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson—the British commander in Palestine and Transjordan—believed that I Corps' loss of transport and signal equipment precluded it from participating in the campaign from the outset. Instead, Wilson attempted to exercise command from the King David Hotel. This proved to be a serious error, as his staff were preoccupied with political and administrative issues, and were too remote from the battlefields to exercise the close command required. Following a series of reverses, I Corps headquarters was sent for on 18 June, and Lieutenant General John Lavarack assumed command that day. The headquarters was confronted by a difficult situation, with almost all reserves committed. Lavarack began regrouping his force, concentrating the 7th Division for a decisive thrust towards Beirut. Hard fighting was required before the campaign was brought to a successful conclusion.
Promoted to colonel, Wells became General Staff Officer, 1st Grade (GSO1), to the 9th Division in November 1941. As such, he was the 9th Division's chief of staff, responsible for the full range of staff activities. On 28 June 1942, Wells accompanied Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Morshead—Commander of the 9th Division—to Cairo, where they received orders tasking the 9th Division with the defence of Cairo. The pair spent that night and the following day organising plans for the move, before Morshead received further orders on 30 June cancelling his previous instructions and directing the division instead be dispatched to Alexandria; the move took place on 1 July. Two days later, it was decided that the 24th Infantry Brigade would be sent forward to reinforce the position at El Alamein. The brigade was lacking in equipment, and Wells spent that day arranging equipment for the unit as well as overseeing its preparation; the brigade moved forward the next day. The divisional headquarters proceeded to El Alamein on 7 July, and was posted to the northern flank of the British front line. The unit then spent the remainder of the month in action against Axis forces in the area. For his "distinguished services" during this period, Wells was Mentioned in Despatches a second time.
On 23 October 1942, the British and Commonwealth forces under Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery launched an offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein. The 9th Division took part in the battle, and was initially tasked with the seizure of a section of the Oxalic Line. Over the proceeding twelve days, the Australians heavily contributed to the assault, with Morshead and his staff coordinating the 9th Division's operations; success was claimed on 4 November. Praised for his "ability of high order", Wells was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his efforts in training and preparing the division before the battle, in addition to his labours during the engagement. The notification for the decoration was published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 11 February 1943.
In late November 1942, the members of the 9th Division returned to Palestine. In January, the unit embarked from North Africa and sailed home to Australia in preparation for service against the Japanese in the South West Pacific.
### South West Pacific
Wells arrived back in Australia during February 1943. On 15 March, Morshead was appointed to command II Corps, and Wells was transferred along with him to the unit's headquarters as Brigadier, General Staff. He was promoted to temporary brigadier in April. During this time, the combat forces of the corps undertook training in both jungle and amphibious warfare in preparation for its planned deployment to New Guinea. Wells took an active hand in organising these exercises, before he moved with the corps headquarters to New Guinea during October.
The movement of II Corps coincided with the vicious fighting around the Huon Peninsula and Finisterre Range. Wells assisted in the planning and coordination of operations over the subsequent months, which culminated in the seizure of Madang during April 1944. Wells was awarded his third Mention in Despatches during this time for his "exceptional services in the field".
In April 1944, II Corps was redesignated as I Corps and returned to Australia, where it established itself on the Atherton Tableland in Queensland. The following month, Wells proceeded to Land Command Headquarters in Sydney, where he attended a conference on staff appointments. He returned to the corps eleven days later. During this period, Wells was once again active in organising the unit's training off the Queensland coast, before he was granted a period of leave during August; he returned to duty on 26 September. On 19 July 1945, Wells was upgraded to a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his "exceptional ability and outstanding devotion to duty" in conjunction with the "valuable assistance" given throughout the New Guinea campaign to the General Officer Commanding New Guinea Force.
During March 1945, Wells acted as one of the eight pallbearers for Major General George Alan Vasey at the latter's funeral. Vasey had been killed in a plane crash just off the coast of Cairns, while en route to assume command of the 6th Division in New Guinea. That same month, it was decided that I Corps would lead an assault against the island of Borneo. As a consequence, headquarters of I Corps moved to Morotai, where it opened on 24 April. The initial Borneo landings took place on 1 May, with the Australian force in action at Tarakan. Over the proceeding engagements, Wells assisted in the organisation and implementation of the operations in Borneo. As the war drew to a close in September 1945, Wells returned to Australia and was posted to Army Headquarters in Melbourne.
## Senior command
In March 1946, Wells was briefly posted as director of military operations at Army Headquarters, before being promoted to temporary major general and appointed Deputy Chief of the General Staff. The following year, he embarked for the United Kingdom where he attended the Imperial Defence College in London. During this time, Wells attended an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, where he was presented with his Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George VI. On his return to Australia in 1949, Wells was made Commandant of the Royal Military College, Duntroon. He served in this position until February 1951, when he was appointed General Officer Commanding Southern Command with the rank of temporary lieutenant general. In June of that year, Wells acted as one of the ten pallbearers to Field Marshal Sir Thomas Blamey at his state funeral in Melbourne.
Wells was appointed Commander-in-Chief, British Commonwealth Forces Korea, in 1953. Assuming the role on 11 February, he led the Commonwealth contingent for the next twenty-one months as the Korean War was coming to an end. Like his predecessors in the position, Wells exercised administrative command only, and had no direct control over battlefield operations. Though its incumbents were considered to have performed well, the role garnered little credit for helping facilitate combat success but was a soft target for criticism when operations did not run smoothly. Wells had been sent to Korea with no instructions regarding the withdrawal of troops and—as armistice talks appeared on the verge of success—he was closely involved in liaison with the heads of Commonwealth governments regarding General Mark Clark's requests for their commitment to retain forces in the theatre for some period following the end of hostilities.
Raised to substantive lieutenant general on 12 April 1954, Wells was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the Queen's Birthday Honours that June. He was commended for his "exceptional meritorious service" in Korea, and awarded the United States' Legion of Merit in the degree of Commander. Presented with the decoration by General John E. Hull on 19 October, Wells returned to Australia three days later. In December, he was made Chief of the General Staff; the professional head of the Australian Army. Wells' appointment coincided with the commitment of Australian forces to the Malayan Emergency, and as such he presided over the deployment of soldiers to the engagement as well as the formation of the first regular brigade group. He was upgraded to a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956 New Years Honours.
On 23 March 1958, Wells was appointed the first Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC); the professional head of the Australian Military. The position had previously existed as an extension to the responsibilities of the senior service chief—either the Chief of Naval Staff, Chief of the General Staff or Chief of the Air Staff—but Wells was the first to occupy the position as a separate post. The chairmanship of COSC was created as part of the Australian government's response to a review of the Defence group of departments conducted by Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Morshead in 1957, which recommended greater centralisation of the armed forces. Although the chairman was the Government's principal military advisor and reported directly to the Minister for Defence, Wells was not promoted and remained at the same rank as the heads of the Navy, Army and Air Force. He was also hampered by being given only a small staff. The role of the Chairman, COSC was not strengthened until 1965, when Air Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger—who had been appointed to the position in 1961—was promoted to air chief marshal so that he out-ranked the service heads. Wells served in this capacity until his retirement from the Australian military on 22 March 1959.
## Retirement
In retirement, Wells was appointed as a director to several companies, including Broken Hill South Ltd, Metal Manufactures Ltd, Navcot Australia Pty Ltd and Sitmar Line (Australia) Pty Ltd. In April 1961, Wells was appointed honorary colonel of the Royal Victoria Regiment. Described as "somewhat reserved and taciturn" during his life, Wells died at Yarrawonga, Victoria, on 20 October 1973, and was survived by his wife and their two sons. His funeral service took place with full military honours at Toorak Presbyterian Church, after which he was cremated. In his will, Wells bequeathed a sizable proportion of his estate to Junior Legacy, Melbourne. Wells Road, a street in Duntroon, Australian Capital Territory, is named in his honour.
|
725,945 |
Mercury Seven
| 1,173,904,662 |
Group of American astronauts chosen in 1959
|
[
"1959 establishments in the United States",
"1959 in spaceflight",
"American astronauts",
"Mercury Seven",
"NASA Astronaut Corps",
"NASA astronauts",
"Project Mercury"
] |
The Mercury Seven were the group of seven astronauts selected to fly spacecraft for Project Mercury. They are also referred to as the Original Seven and Astronaut Group 1. Their names were publicly announced by NASA on April 9, 1959; these seven original American astronauts were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. The Mercury Seven created a new profession in the United States, and established the image of the American astronaut for decades to come.
All of the Mercury Seven eventually flew in space. They piloted the six spaceflights of the Mercury program that had an astronaut on board from May 1961 to May 1963, and members of the group flew on all of the NASA human spaceflight programs of the 20th century – Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle.
Shepard became the first American to enter space in 1961, and later walked on the Moon on Apollo 14 in 1971. Grissom flew the first crewed Gemini mission in 1965, but died in 1967 in the Apollo 1 fire; the others all survived past retirement from service. Schirra flew Apollo 7 in 1968, the first crewed Apollo mission, in Grissom's place. Slayton, grounded with an atrial fibrillation, ultimately flew on the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975. The first American in orbit in 1962, Glenn flew on the in 1998 to become, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space at the time. He was the last living member of the Mercury Seven when he died in 2016 at age 95.
## Background
The launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, started a Cold War technological and ideological competition with the United States known as the Space Race. The demonstration of American technological inferiority came as a profound shock to the American public. The Soviets followed up with Sputnik 2, which carried Laika, a Soviet space dog. American intelligence analysts assessed that the Soviets planned to put a man into orbit, which caused the United States Air Force (USAF) and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to strengthen their efforts to achieve that goal.
The USAF launched a spaceflight project called Man in Space Soonest (MISS), for which it obtained approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and requested \$133 million in funding. MISS encountered technical challenges, which in turn caused funding difficulties. This generated conflict with the two agencies that should have been supporting it, NACA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The core of the problem was the USAF's inability to articulate a clear military purpose for MISS.
Meanwhile, in response to the Sputnik crisis, the President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, decided to create a new civilian agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which would absorb NACA and be responsible for the overall direction of the American space program. In September 1958, the USAF agreed to transfer responsibility for MISS to NASA, which was established on October 1, 1958. On November 5, the Space Task Group (STG) was established at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, with Robert R. Gilruth as its director. On November 26, 1958, NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan and his deputy, Hugh Dryden, adopted a suggestion by Abe Silverstein, the director of Space Flight Development at STG, that the human spaceflight project be called Project Mercury. The name was publicly announced by Glennan on December 17, 1958, the 55th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight. The objective of Project Mercury was to launch a man into Earth orbit, return him safely to the Earth, and evaluate his capabilities in space.
## Selection criteria
The STG had to decide on a name for the people who would fly into space. A brainstorming session was held on December 1, 1958. By analogy with "aeronaut" (air traveler), someone came up with the term "astronaut", which meant "star traveler", although Project Mercury's ambitions were far more limited. They thought that they had coined a new word, but the term had been used in science fiction since the 1920s. A three-man panel consisting of Charles J. Donlan, Warren J. North and Allen O. Gamble drew up a civil service job specification for astronauts. The panel proposed that astronauts be in civil service grades 12 to 15, depending on qualifications and experience, with an annual salary of \$8,330 to \$12,770 (equivalent to \$ to \$ in ). It described the duties of an astronaut:
> Although the entire satellite operation will be possible, in the early phases, without the presence of man, the astronaut will play an important role during the flight. He will contribute by monitoring the cabin environment and by making necessary adjustments. He will have continuous displays of his position and attitude and other instrument readings, and will have the capability of operating the reaction controls, and of initiating the descent from orbit. He will contribute to the operation of the communications system. In addition, the astronaut will make research observations that cannot be made by instruments; these include physiological, astronomical and meteorological observations.
Although the panel considered that many people might possess the required skills – aircraft pilots, submariners, deep sea divers and mountain climbers were all considered likely prospects – it decided that they could be best met by military test pilots. Accepting only military test pilots would simplify the selection process, and would also satisfy security requirements, as the role would almost certainly involve the handling of classified information. The decision to restrict selection to military test pilots was taken by Glennan, Dryden and Gilruth in the last week of December 1958, but the irony of using military test pilots in a civilian program was not overlooked, and in view of the President's express preference for a space program outside the military, Glennan thought it best to run the decision past Eisenhower. A meeting was arranged with the President, who was convinced by the arguments.
The panel also drew up selection criteria. Astronauts had to be:
1. Less than 40 years old;
2. Less than 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) tall;
3. In excellent physical condition;
4. With a bachelor's degree or equivalent;
5. A graduate of test pilot school;
6. With a minimum of 1,500 hours total flying time; and
7. A qualified jet pilot.
The height limit was a function of the design of the Mercury spacecraft, which could not accommodate someone taller. It was still uncertain as to whether piloting in the conventional sense would ever be possible in a spacecraft, but from the beginning the spacecraft design provided for some degree of manual control.
## Selection process
The first step in the selection process was to obtain the service records of test pilot school graduates from the United States Department of Defense. All services agreed to cooperate fully, and handed over their records. There were 508 military test pilots in total, of whom 225 were Air Force, 225 Navy, 23 Marine Corps and 35 Army. Donlan, North, Gamble and psychologist Robert B. Voas then went through the records in January 1959, and identified 110 pilots – five Marines, 47 from the Navy, and 58 from the Air Force – who met the rest of the minimum standards. The 110 were then split into three groups, with the most promising in the first group.
Sixty-nine candidates were brought to the Pentagon in Washington, DC, in two groups. The first group of 35 assembled there on February 2, 1959. The Navy and Marine Corps officers were welcomed by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, while the Air Force officers were addressed by the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General Thomas D. White. Both pledged their support to the space program, and promised that the careers of volunteers would not be adversely affected. NASA officials then briefed the candidates on Project Mercury. The officials conceded that it would be a hazardous undertaking, but emphasized that it was of great national importance.
The candidates were given three briefings by NASA officials. The first was about NASA and Project Mercury; the second concerned the role of the pilot in the project; and the third was about the proposed astronaut training syllabus. In the afternoon candidates had short individual meetings with the NASA selection committee. It was emphasized that participation was entirely voluntary, that candidates were free to decline, and that there would be no career repercussions if they did so. Several candidates declined at this point.
The rest reported to NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, the following day for further screening. Voas gave them a series of standardized tests: the Miller Analogies Test to measure IQ; the Minnesota Engineering Analogies Test to measure engineering aptitude; and the Doppelt Mathematical Reasoning Test to measure mathematical aptitude. Donlan, North and Gamble conducted interviews in which they asked technical questions, and queried candidates about their motivations for applying to the program. Candidates were evaluated by two USAF psychiatrists, George E. Ruff and Edwin Z. Levy. A USAF flight surgeon, William S. Augerson, went over the candidates' medical records. Some were found to be over the height limit, and were eliminated at this juncture.
The process was repeated with a second group of 34 candidates a week later. Of the 69, six were found to be over the height limit, 15 were eliminated for other reasons, and 16 declined. This left NASA with 32 candidates: 15 from the Navy, 15 from the Air Force and two from the Marine Corps. Since this was more than expected, NASA decided not to bother with the remaining 41 candidates, as 32 candidates seemed a more than adequate number from which to select 12 astronauts as planned. The degree of interest also indicated that far fewer would drop out during training than anticipated, which would result in training astronauts who would not be required to fly Project Mercury missions. It was therefore decided to cut the number of astronauts selected to just six.
Then came a grueling series of physical and psychological tests at the Lovelace Clinic and the Wright Aerospace Medical Laboratory from January to March, under the direction of Albert H. Schwichtenberg, a retired USAF brigadier general. The tests included spending hours on treadmills and tilt tables, submerging their feet in ice water, three doses of castor oil, and five enemas. Only one candidate, Jim Lovell, was eliminated on medical grounds at this stage, a diagnosis that was later found to be in error; thirteen others were recommended with reservations. Gilruth found himself unable to select only six from the remaining eighteen, and ultimately seven were chosen.
Despite their rejection from the first group of astronauts, many of the 25 finalists who were passed over still had successful military careers. Three eventually became astronauts: Pete Conrad and Jim Lovell, who were selected with the next group in 1962; and Edward Givens, who was selected with the fifth group in 1966. Others achieved high rank: Lawrence Heyworth Jr. became a rear admiral, Robert B. Baldwin and William P. Lawrence became vice admirals, and Thomas B. Hayward became an admiral. He commanded the Seventh Fleet and the Pacific Fleet, and was Chief of Naval Operations. Three of the finalists later died in aircraft accidents: Halvor M. Ekeren, Jr., on April 8, 1959, Jack B. Mayo on January 11, 1961, and Hal R. Crandall on July 24, 1963. Finalist Robert G. Bell died in the May 16, 1965 explosion of multiple aircraft at Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam.
## Eligibility
The seven original American astronauts were Navy Lieutenant Scott Carpenter, Air Force Captain Gordon Cooper, Marine Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, Air Force Captain Gus Grissom, Navy Lieutenant Commander Wally Schirra, Navy Lieutenant Commander Alan Shepard, and Air Force Captain Deke Slayton.
All were male and white. Women were not yet accepted into the military test pilot schools, and the first African American to graduate from the USAF Experimental Test Pilot School, John L. Whitehead Jr., did so only in January 1958, and was not one of the finalists. Yet the Mercury Seven were similar beyond what was a simple result of the selection criteria. Four were their fathers' namesakes. All were the eldest or only sons in their families. All were born in the United States, and were raised in small towns. All were married with children, and all were Protestants.
Their ages at the time of selection ranged from 32 (Cooper) to 37 (Glenn). Shepard was the tallest, at the maximum height of 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m); Grissom, the shortest at 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m). Weight was not a firm criterion like height, as losing weight was always possible, but the Mercury spacecraft set a limit of 180 pounds (82 kg). Cooper was the lightest, at 150 pounds (68 kg), while Glenn was at the maximum weight of 180 pounds (82 kg), and Schirra was slightly overweight at 185 pounds (84 kg), and had to lose weight to be accepted. Both had to watch their weight carefully while they were in the space program. IQs ranged from 135 to 147.
All seven had attended post-secondary institutions in the 1940s. Of the five astronauts who had completed undergraduate degrees before being selected, two (Shepard and Schirra) were graduates of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1944 and 1945, respectively. Following a decade of intermittent studies, Cooper completed his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1956. Grissom earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1950, and a second bachelor's degree, in aeromechanics, from the AFIT in 1956. Slayton graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1949. Average flying hours were 3,500, of which 1,700 was in jets. Most were fighter pilots except Carpenter, who flew multi-engine patrol planes for most of his career.
Glenn and Carpenter did not meet all of their schools' degree requirements; Glenn had not completed his senior year in residence or his final proficiency exam, and Carpenter had not finished his final course in heat transfer. Both were admitted on the basis of professional equivalency, and were ultimately awarded their bachelor's degrees after their 1962 space flights—Glenn in engineering from Muskingum College and Carpenter in aeronautical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Despite the extensive physical examinations, Slayton had an undiagnosed atrial fibrillation, which resulted in his grounding two months prior to what would have been his first space flight, and the second orbital mission.
## NASA introduction
NASA introduced the astronauts in Washington, DC, on April 9, 1959. Although the agency viewed Project Mercury's purpose as an experiment to determine whether humans could survive space travel, the seven men immediately became national heroes and were compared by Time magazine to "Columbus, Magellan, Daniel Boone, and the Wright brothers." Two hundred reporters overflowed the room used for the announcement and alarmed the astronauts, who were unused to such a large audience.
Because they wore civilian clothes, the audience did not see them as military test pilots but "mature, middle-class Americans, average in height and visage, family men all." To the astronauts' surprise, the reporters asked questions about their personal lives instead of their war records or flight experience, or details about Project Mercury. After Glenn responded by speaking eloquently "on God, country, and family," the others followed his example, and were applauded by the reporters.
Test pilots accepted that their jobs were dangerous; during Glenn's three years serving as one for the Navy, 12 had died. When asked about how their families thought about their taking on such a dangerous job, most of the seven were surprised, as they had never considered this before. Glenn replied that he "didn't think that any of us could really go on with something like this if we didn't have pretty good backing at home. My wife's attitude towards this has been the same as it has been all along through my flying. If it is what I want to do, she is behind it, and the kids are too, one hundred percent." Carpenter received even more applause when he noted that he was at sea when NASA had phoned to inform him that he had been chosen, and his wife Rene had accepted on his behalf. His selection had also tested the Navy's commitment to Project Mercury when the skipper of his ship, the USS Hornet, refused to release him, and Burke had to personally intervene.
Cooper's wife Trudy had left him in January 1959 after he had an affair with another officer's wife, and had moved to San Diego. During the selection interviews, he had been asked about his domestic relationship, and had lied, saying that he and Trudy had a good, stable marriage. Aware that NASA wanted to project an image of its astronauts as loving family men, and that his story would not stand up to scrutiny, he drove down to San Diego to see Trudy at the first opportunity. Lured by the prospect of a great adventure for herself and her daughters, she agreed to go along with the charade and pretend that they were a happily married couple.
## Group members
## Influence
The Mercury spacecraft was less finished than the astronauts' previous vehicles. After watching an Atlas rocket explode during launch on May 18, 1959, they publicly joked "I'm glad they got that out of the way" – typical gallows humor that test pilots used to cope with danger – but privately calculated that one of the seven would die during Project Mercury. The astronauts participated in the project's design and planning, dividing the work between them. Carpenter had training in airborne electronics and celestial navigation, so he assumed responsibility for the spacecraft's communications and navigation systems. Grissom had a degree in mechanical engineering, so he became responsible for the attitude control systems. Glenn had experience flying many types of aircraft, so he oversaw the cockpit layout. Schirra drew responsibility for the life support systems and the pressure suits. Drawing on his experience as a Naval officer, Shepard looked after the tracking network and liaised with the Navy on recovery operations. Cooper and Slayton were Air Force officers with engineering backgrounds, so they dealt with the Redstone Arsenal and Convair, who built the Redstone and Atlas boosters used by Project Mercury. The astronauts affected the design of the Mercury spacecraft in significant ways, insisting that a window be installed, and pressing for a greater degree of astronaut autonomy in flying the spacecraft.
The astronauts remained on active duty as military officers, and were paid according to their rank. To supplement their travel, they were provided a \$9 per diem () for day trips, and a \$12 per diem () for overnight trips, which did not cover the cost of hotels and restaurant meals. As a result, astronauts avoided spending money while traveling, as they were personally responsible for costs over their allotted per diem. An important component of their income was monthly flight pay, which ranged from \$190 to \$245 (equivalent to \$ to \$ in ).
The astronauts traveled to frequent meetings around the country on commercial flights, which forced them to earn their flight pay on weekends. Grissom and Slayton regularly drove to Langley Air Force Base, and attempted to fly the required four hours a month, but had to compete for T-33 aircraft with colonels and generals. Cooper traveled to McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base in Tennessee, where a friend let him fly higher-performance F-104B jets. This came up when Cooper had lunch with William Hines, a reporter for The Washington Star, and was duly reported in the paper. Cooper then discussed the issue with Congressman James G. Fulton. The matter was taken up by the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. Within weeks the astronauts were given priority access to USAF T-33s, F-102s and F-106s at Langley. In 1962, NASA acquired a fleet of T-38s for their use.
After General Motors executive Ed Cole presented Shepard with a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette, Jim Rathmann, a race car driver who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1960 and who was a Chevrolet dealer in Melbourne, Florida, convinced Cole to turn this into an ongoing marketing campaign. Henceforth, astronauts were able to lease new Corvettes for a dollar a year. All of the Mercury Seven but Glenn took up the offer. Cooper, Grissom and Shepard were soon racing their Corvettes around Cape Canaveral, with the military and local police ignoring their exploits. From a marketing perspective, it was very successful, and helped the highly priced Corvette become established as a desirable brand.
The Mercury astronauts established the style and appearance of astronauts. "I soon learned", Gene Kranz later recalled, "if you saw someone wearing a short-sleeved Ban-Lon shirt and aviator sunglasses, you were looking at an astronaut." While busy with the intense training for their flights, they also drank and partied. Some had affairs with the female groupies that flocked around them. NASA actively sought to protect the astronauts and the agency from negative publicity and maintain an image of "clean-cut, all-American boy[s]." The seven Mercury astronauts agreed to share equally any proceeds from interviews regardless of who flew first.
They were forbidden from being compensated for radio or television appearances, or endorsing commercial products, but were allowed to sell their personal stories. In August 1959, they hired an agent, C. Leo DeOrsey, and he negotiated an exclusive contract with Life magazine on behalf of the astronauts for \$500,000 () in exchange for exclusive access to their private lives, homes, and families. The money was used as life insurance. Between August, 1959, and May 15, 1963, they each received \$71,428.71 (). Their official spokesman from 1959 to 1963 was NASA's public affairs officer, USAF Lieutenant Colonel John "Shorty" Powers, who as a result became known in the press as the "eighth astronaut".
As additional groups of astronauts were selected in the 1960s, the Mercury Seven remained in control of management decisions. The Astronaut Office, which was headed by Shepard, was one of three divisions in the Directorate of Flight Crew Operations, which was headed by Slayton. Since twenty-six of the first thirty astronauts were military personnel, the Astronaut Office had a military character, although few of the astronauts wore their uniforms even as much as once a year. There was a bi-weekly military-style pilots' meeting at which activities planned for the upcoming two weeks would be discussed. A "captain's mast" was held afterwards to adjudicate disputes.
Shepard ran the Astronaut Office on a "rank has its privileges" basis. The Mercury and 1962 astronauts had their own allocated parking spaces outside Building 4 at Johnson Space Center, while astronauts from later groups had to compete for the remaining spaces allotted to astronauts. While Shepard prohibited junior astronauts from receiving gifts and consulting or teaching part-time, he remained vice president and part owner of the Baytown National Bank in Houston, and devoted much of his time to it.
Training was always ungraded; the Mercury astronauts had nothing to gain and much to lose from being objectively compared to the newer classes, as it could threaten their privileged status, managerial control, and priority for flight assignments. The astronaut's attendance at their training events was voluntary. The character of the Astronaut Office would only change after Mercury astronauts retired in the 1970s, and control passed to George Abbey.
The Mercury Seven wrote first-hand accounts of their selection and preparation for the Mercury missions in the 1962 book We Seven. In 1979 Tom Wolfe published a less sanitized version of their story in The Right Stuff. Wolfe's book was the basis for the 1983 film of the same name directed by Philip Kaufman, and the 2020 TV series of the same name.
Together with Betty Grissom, Gus Grissom's widow, in 1984 the Mercury astronauts founded the Mercury Seven Foundation, which raises money to provide college scholarships to science and engineering students. It was renamed the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation in 1995. Shepard was elected its first president and chairman, positions which he held until October 1997, when he was succeeded by Jim Lovell.
Glenn became the first American in orbit in 1962. In 1998 (while a sitting U.S. senator) he flew on the , and became the oldest person to fly in space at the time, aged 77. He was the last living member of the Mercury Seven when he died in 2016 at the age of 95.
## Awards and honors
The Mercury 7 group won the Society of Experimental Test Pilots' Iven C. Kincheloe Award in 1963. President John F. Kennedy presented the astronaut group the 1962 Collier Trophy at the White House "for pioneering manned space flight in the United States". The Mercury 7 monument at Launch Complex 14, where the four Mercury-Atlas launches took place, was dedicated on November 10, 1964. A time capsule containing reports, photographs and a movie is buried beneath the monument, to be opened in 2464.
## See also
- Mercury 13
|
181,438 |
Eadbald of Kent
| 1,107,129,724 | null |
[
"640 deaths",
"7th-century English monarchs",
"Anglo-Saxon warriors",
"Converts to Christianity from pagan religions",
"House of Kent",
"Kentish monarchs",
"Year of birth unknown"
] |
Eadbald (Old English: Eadbald) was King of Kent from 616 until his death in 640. He was the son of King Æthelberht and his wife Bertha, a daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert. Æthelberht made Kent the dominant force in England during his reign and became the first Anglo-Saxon king to convert to Christianity from Anglo-Saxon paganism. Eadbald's accession was a significant setback for the growth of the church, since he retained his people's paganism and did not convert to Christianity for at least a year, and perhaps for as much as eight years. He was ultimately converted by either Laurentius or Justus, and separated from his first wife, who had been his stepmother, at the insistence of the church. Eadbald's second wife was Emma, who may have been a Frankish princess. They had two sons, Eormenred and Eorcenberht, and a daughter, Eanswith.
Eadbald's influence was less than his father's, but Kent was powerful enough to be omitted from the list of kingdoms dominated by Edwin of Northumbria. Edwin's marriage to Eadbald's sister, Æthelburg, established a good relationship between Kent and Northumbria which appears to have continued into Oswald's reign. When Æthelburg fled to Kent on Edwin's death in about 633, she sent her children to Francia for safety, fearing the intrigues of both Eadbald and Oswald. The Kentish royal line made several strong diplomatic marriages over the succeeding years, including the marriage of Eanflæd, Eadbald's niece, to Oswiu, and of Eorcenberht to Seaxburh, daughter of King Anna of East Anglia.
Eadbald died in 640 and was buried in the Church of St Mary, which he had built in the precincts of the monastery of St Peter and St Paul in Canterbury (a church later incorporated within the Norman edifice of St Augustine's). At that time, his relics were translated for reburial in the south transept ca. A.D. 1087.
He was succeeded by Eorcenberht. Eormenred may have been his oldest son, but if he reigned at all it was only as a junior king.
## Early Kent and early sources
Settlement of Kent by continental peoples, primarily Jutes, was complete by the end of the sixth century. Eadbald's father, Æthelberht, probably came to the throne in about 589 or 590, though the chronology of his reign is very difficult to determine accurately. Æthelberht was recorded by the early chronicler Bede as having overlordship, or imperium, over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This dominance led to wealth in the form of tribute, and Kent was a powerful kingdom at the time of Æthelberht's death in 616, with trade well-established with the European mainland.
Roman Britain had become fully Christianized, but the Anglo-Saxons retained their native faith. In 597 Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory I to England to convert them to Christianity. Augustine landed in eastern Kent, and soon managed to convert Æthelberht, who gave Augustine land in Canterbury. Two other rulers, Sæberht, king of Essex, and Rædwald, king of East Anglia, were converted through Æthelberht's influence.
An important source for this period in Kentish history is The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in 731 by Bede, a Benedictine monk from Northumbria. Bede was primarily interested in the Christianization of England, but he also provides substantial information about secular history, including the reigns of Æthelberht and Eadbald. One of Bede's correspondents was Albinus, abbot of the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul (subsequently renamed St. Augustine's) in Canterbury. A series of related texts known as the Legend of St Mildrith provides additional information about events in the lives of Eadbald's children and throws some light on Eadbald himself. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals assembled in about 890 in the kingdom of Wessex, also provides information. Other sources include papal letters, regnal lists of the kings of Kent, and early charters. Charters were documents drawn up to record grants of land by kings to their followers or to the church, and they provide some of the earliest documentary sources in England. None survive in original form from Eadbald's reign, but some later copies exist.
## Ancestry and immediate family
The ancestry of Æthelberht, Eadbald's father, is given by Bede, who states that he was descended from the legendary founder of Kent, Hengist. However, historians believe that Hengist and his brother Horsa were probably mythical figures. It is known that Æthelberht married twice as Eadbald married his step-mother after his father's death, to the consternation of the church.
Eadbald had a sister, Æthelburg, who was probably also the child of Bertha. Æthelburg married Edwin, King of Northumbria, one of the dominant Anglo-Saxon kings of the seventh century. It is possible that there was another brother, named Æthelwald: the evidence for this is a papal letter to Justus, archbishop of Canterbury from 619 to 625, in which a king named Aduluald is referred to, and who is apparently different from Audubald, which refers to Eadbald. There is no agreement among modern scholars on how to interpret this: "Aduluald" might be intended as a representation of "Æthelwald", and hence this may be an indication of another king, perhaps a subking of west Kent; or it may be merely a scribal error which should be read as referring to Eadbald.
Archbishop Laurence of Canterbury persuaded Eadbald to accept Christianity and give up his wife. He then remarried, and his second wife, according to Kentish tradition recorded in the 'Kentish Royal Legend', was a woman named Ymme of Frankish royal blood, though recently it has been suggested that she may have instead been the daughter of Erchinoald, mayor of the palace in Neustria, the western part of Francia.
## East and West Kent
The surviving regnal lists show only one king reigning at a time in Kent, but subkingdoms were common among the Anglo-Saxons and from the reign of Hlothhere, in the late seventh century, there is evidence that Kent was usually ruled by two kings, though often one is clearly dominant. It is less clear that this is the case before Hlothhere. Forged charters preserve a tradition of Eadbald ruling during his father's reign, presumably as a subking over west Kent. The papal letter that has been interpreted as indicating the existence of Æthelwald, a brother of Eadbald's, refers to Æthelwald as a king; if he existed, he would presumably have been a junior king to Eadbald.
The two kingdoms within Kent were east and west Kent. Western Kent has fewer archaeological finds from the earliest periods than east Kent, and the eastern finds are somewhat distinct in character, showing Jutish and Frankish influence. The archaeological evidence, combined with the known political division into two kingdoms, makes it likely that the origin of the subkingdoms was the conquest of the western half by the eastern, which would have been the first area settled by the invaders.
## Accession and pagan reaction
Eadbald came to the throne on the death of his father on 24 February 616, or possibly 618. Although Æthelberht had been Christian since about 600 and his wife Bertha was also Christian, Eadbald was a pagan. Bertha died some time before Eadbald's accession, and Æthelberht remarried. The name of Æthelberht's second wife is not recorded, but it seems likely that she was a pagan, since on his death she married Eadbald, her stepson: a marriage between a stepmother and stepson was forbidden by the church.
Bede records that Eadbald's repudiation of Christianity was a "severe setback" to the growth of the church. Sæberht, the king of Essex, had become a Christian under Æthelberht's influence, but on Sæberht's death, at about the same time, his sons expelled Mellitus, the bishop of London. According to Bede, Eadbald was punished for his faithlessness by "frequent fits of insanity", and possession by an "evil spirit" (perhaps referring to epileptic fits), but was eventually persuaded to abandon paganism and give up his wife. Eadbald's second wife, Ymme, was a Frank, and it is possible that Kent's strong connections with Francia were a factor in the King's conversion. The missionaries in Canterbury seem to have had Frankish support. In the 620s, Eadbald's sister Æthelburg came to Kent, but sent her children to the court of King Dagobert I in Francia; in addition to the diplomatic connections, trade with the Franks was important to Kent. It is thought likely that Frankish pressure had been influential in persuading Æthelberht to become Christian, and Eadbald's conversion and marriage to Ymme are likely to have been closely connected diplomatic decisions.
Two graves from a well-preserved sixth and seventh-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Finglesham have yielded a bronze pendant and a gilt buckle with designs that are related to each other and may be symbolic of religious activity involving the Germanic deity Woden. These objects probably date from the period of the pagan reaction.
### Bede's account
Bede's account of Eadbald's rejection of the church and subsequent conversion is quite detailed but not without some internal inconsistency. Bede's version of events is laid out as follows:
- 24 February 616: Æthelberht dies and Eadbald succeeds.
- 616: Eadbald leads a pagan reaction to Christianity. He marries his stepmother, contrary to church law, and refuses baptism. At about this time Mellitus, bishop of London, is expelled by the sons of Sæberht in Essex and goes to Kent.
- 616: Mellitus and Justus, bishop of Rochester, leave Kent for Francia.
- 616/617: Some time after Mellitus and Justus depart, Laurence, the archbishop of Canterbury, plans to leave for Francia but has a vision in which St Peter scourges him. In the morning he shows the scars to Eadbald who is converted to Christianity as a result.
- 617: Justus and Mellitus both return from Francia "the year after they left". Justus is restored to Rochester.
- c\. 619: Laurence dies, and Mellitus becomes archbishop of Canterbury.
- 619–624: Eadbald builds a church which is consecrated by Archbishop Mellitus.
- 24 April 624: Mellitus dies and Justus succeeds him as archbishop of Canterbury.
- 624: After Justus's succession, Pope Boniface writes to him to say that he has heard in letters from King Aduluald (possibly a scribal error for Eadbald) of the king's conversion to Christianity. Boniface sends the pallium with this letter, adding that it is only to be worn when celebrating "the Holy Mysteries".
- By 625 Edwin of Deira, king of Northumbria, asks for the hand in marriage of Æthelburg, Eadbald's sister. Edwin is told he must allow her to practice Christianity and must consider baptism himself.
- 21 July 625: Justus consecrates Paulinus bishop of York.
- July or later in 625: Edwin agrees to the terms and Æthelburg travels to Northumbria, accompanied by Paulinus.
- Easter 626: Æthelburg gives birth to a daughter, Eanflæd.
- 626: Edwin completes a military campaign against the West Saxons. At "about this time" Boniface writes to both Edwin and Æthelburg. The letter to Edwin urges him to accept Christianity and refers to the conversion of Eadbald. The letter to Æthelburg mentions that the pope has recently heard the news of Eadbald's conversion and encourages her to work for the conversion of her husband, Edwin.
### Alternative chronology
Although Bede's narrative is widely accepted, an alternative chronology has been proposed by D.P. Kirby. Kirby points out that Boniface's letter to Æthelburg makes it clear that the news of Eadbald's conversion is recent, and that it is unthinkable that Boniface would not have been kept up to date on the status of Eadbald's conversion. Hence Eadbald must have been converted by Justus, as is implied by Boniface's letter to Justus. The pallium accompanying that letter indicates Justus was archbishop by that time, and the duration of Mellitus's archiepiscopate means that even if Bede's dates are somewhat wrong in other particulars, Eadbald was converted no earlier than 621, and no later than April 624, since Mellitus consecrated a church for Eadbald before his death in that month. The account of Laurence's miraculous scourging by St Peter can be disregarded as a later hagiographical invention of the monastery of St Augustine.
As mentioned above, it has been suggested that King "Aduluald" in the letter to Justus is a real king Æthelwald, perhaps a junior king of west Kent. In that case it would appear that Laurence converted Eadbald, and Justus converted Æthelwald. It has also been suggested that the pallium did not indicate Justus was archbishop, since Justus is told the limited circumstances in which he may wear it; however, the same phrasing occurs in the letter conveying the pallium to Archbishop Augustine, also quoted in Bede. Another possibility is that the letter was originally two letters. In this view, Bede has conflated the letter conveying the pallium with the letter congratulating Justus on the conversion, which according to Bede's account was seven or so years earlier; however, the grammatical details on which this suggestion is based are not unique to this letter, and as a result it is usually considered to be a single composition.
The letter to Æthelburg makes it clear that she was already married at the time the news of Eadbald's conversion reached Rome. This is quite inconsistent with the earlier date Bede gives for Eadbald's acceptance of Christianity, and it has been suggested in Bede's defence that Æthelburg married Edwin substantially earlier and stayed in Kent until 625 before travelling to Rome, and that the letter was written while she was in Kent. However, it would appear from Boniface's letter that Boniface thought of Æthelburg as being at her husband's side. It also appears that the letter to Justus was written after the letters to Edwin and Æthelburg, rather than before, as Bede has it; Boniface's letter to Edwin and Æthelburg indicates he had the news from messengers, but when he wrote to Justus he had heard from the king himself.
The story of Æthelburg's marriage being dependent on Edwin allowing her to practice her faith has been questioned, since revising the chronology makes it likely, though not certain, that the marriage was arranged before Eadbald's conversion. In this view, it would have been the church that objected to the marriage, and Æthelburg would have been Christian before Eadbald's conversion. The story of Paulinus's consecration is also problematic as he was not consecrated until at least 625 and possibly later, which is after the latest possible date for Æthelburg's marriage. However, it may be that he traveled to Northumbria prior to his consecration and only later became bishop.
A revised chronology of some of these events follows, taking the above considerations into account.
- 616: Eadbald leads a pagan reaction to Christianity.
- 616: Mellitus and Justus, bishop of Rochester, leave Kent for Francia.
- c\. 619: Laurence dies, and Mellitus becomes archbishop of Canterbury.
- Early 624?: Justus converts Eadbald. Messengers go to Rome. Also at about this time Æthelburg's marriage to Edwin is arranged, perhaps before the conversion. Eadbald builds a church, and Mellitus consecrates it.
- 24 April 624: Mellitus dies and Justus succeeds him as archbishop of Canterbury.
- Mid 624: Edwin agrees to the marriage terms and Æthelburg travels to Northumbria, accompanied by Paulinus.
- Later 624: the pope receives news of Eadbald's conversion and writes to Æthelburg and Edwin.
- Still later 624: the pope hears from Eadbald of his conversion, and also hears of Mellitus's death. He writes to Justus to send him the pallium.
- 21 July 625 or 626: Justus consecrates Paulinus bishop of York.
This timeline extends the duration of the pagan reaction from less than a year, in Bede's narrative, to about eight years. This represents a more serious setback for the church.
## Relations with other English kingdoms and church affairs
Eadbald's influence over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was less than Æthelberht's. Eadbald's reduced power is apparent in his inability to restore Mellitus to the see of London: in Bede's words, his authority in Essex "was not so effective as that of his father". However, Kentish power was still sufficient to make alliance with Eadbald's relatives attractive to other kingdoms. Edwin's marriage to Eadbald's sister, Æthelburg, was probably also motivated by a desire to gain better access to communications with the continent. The relationship would have been valuable to Eadbald, too; it may have been as a result of this alliance that Edwin's overlordship of Britain did not include Kent. Another factor in Edwin's treatment of Kent may have been the location of the archbishopric in Canterbury: Edwin was well aware of the importance of Canterbury's metropolitan status, and at one time planned to make York an archbishopric too, with Paulinus as the planned first incumbent. Paulinus eventually returned to Kent, where at Eadbald's and Archbishop Honorius's request he became bishop of Rochester, and York was not made an archbishopric for another century. Within a year of Edwin's death in 633 or 634, Oswald took the throne of Northumbria, and it seems likely that his relations with Eadbald were modelled on Edwin's. Oswald's successor, Oswiu, married Eanflæd, who was Edwin's daughter and Eadbald's niece, thereby gaining both Deiran and Kentish connections.
Eadbald and Ymme had a daughter, Eanswith (who founded the very first nunnery on English soil at Folkestone, 15 miles from Canterbury), and two sons, Eorcenberht and Eormenred. Eormenred was the older of the two, and may have held the title of regulus, perhaps implying that he held the junior kingship of Kent. He appears to have died before his father, leaving Eorcenberht to inherit the throne. An additional son, Ecgfrith, is mentioned in a charter of Eadbald's, but the charter is a forgery, probably dating from the eleventh century.
Several of Eadbald's near relatives were involved in diplomatic marriages. King Anna of East Anglia married his daughter, Seaxburh, to Eorcenberht, and their daughter Eormenhild married Wulfhere of Mercia, one of the most powerful kings of his day. Eanflæd, Eadbald's niece, married Oswiu, king of Northumbria and the last of the northern Angles Bede listed as holding imperium over southern England. Eadbald's granddaughter Eafe married Merewalh, king of the Magonsæte.
## Trade and connections to the Franks
There is little documentary evidence about the nature of trade in Eadbald's reign. It is known that the kings of Kent had established royal control of trade in the late seventh century, but it is not known how early this control began. There is archaeological evidence that suggests that the royal influence predates any of the written sources, and it may have been Eadbald's father, Æthelberht, who took control of trade away from the aristocracy and made it a royal monopoly. The continental trade provided Kent access to luxury goods, which was an advantage in trading with the other Anglo-Saxon nations, and the revenue from trade was important in itself. Kent traded locally made glass and jewelry to the Franks; Kentish goods have been found as far south as the mouth of the Loire, south of Brittany. There was probably also a flourishing slave trade. The wealth this commerce brought to Kent may have been the basis of the continuing, though diminished, importance of Kent in Eadbald's reign.
Coins were probably first minted in Kent in Æthelberht's reign, though none bear his name. These early golden coins were probably the shillings (Old English: scillingas) that are mentioned in Æthelberht's laws. The coins are also known to numismatists as "thrymsas". Thrymsas are known from Eadbald's reign, but few are known that carry his name: one such was minted at London and inscribed "AVDVARLD". It has been suggested that kings did not have a monopoly on the production of coinage at that time.
Connections with Francia went beyond trade and the royal marriages Æthelberht and Eadbald made with Frankish princesses. Eadbald's granddaughter, Eorcengota, became a nun at Faremoutiers, and his great-granddaughter, Mildrith, was a nun at Chelles. When Edwin was killed in about 632, Æthelburg, escorted by Paulinus, fled by sea to Eadbald's court in Kent, but in a further sign of her family's ties across the channel she sent her children to the court of King Dagobert I of the Franks, to keep them safe from the intrigues of Eadbald and Oswald of Northumbria.
## Succession
Eadbald died in 640, and according to most versions of the Kentish Royal Legend was succeeded solely by his son Eorcenberht. However, an early text (Caligula A.xiv) refers to Eormenred as 'king', suggesting either he was a junior king under Eorcenberht, or had a shared kingship. One suggestion is that the other version of events in the 'legend', which gives him no title, may have been an attempt to discredit royal claimants from Eormenred's line.
|
3,078,437 |
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
| 1,172,893,466 |
1992 video game
|
[
"1992 video games",
"Android (operating system) games",
"Cooperative video games",
"Golden Joystick Award winners",
"IOS games",
"Nintendo 3DS games",
"Nintendo Switch Online games",
"PlayStation Network games",
"Sega Genesis games",
"Sega Technical Institute games",
"Side-scrolling platform games",
"Side-scrolling video games",
"Sonic Team games",
"Sonic the Hedgehog video games",
"Split-screen multiplayer games",
"Tiger Electronics handheld games",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games scored by Masato Nakamura",
"Video games set on fictional islands",
"Virtual Console games",
"Windows games",
"Xbox 360 Live Arcade games"
] |
is a 1992 platform game developed by Sega Technical Institute (STI) for the Sega Genesis. Players control Sonic as he attempts to stop Doctor Robotnik from stealing the Chaos Emeralds to power his space station. Like the first Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), players traverse side-scrolling levels at high speeds while collecting rings, defeating enemies, and fighting bosses. Sonic 2 introduces Sonic's sidekick Miles "Tails" Prower and features faster gameplay, larger levels, a multiplayer mode, and special stages featuring pre-rendered 3D graphics.
After Sonic the Hedgehog greatly increased the popularity of the Genesis in North America, Sega directed STI founder Mark Cerny to start Sonic 2 in November 1991. Members of the original development team—including programmer Yuji Naka and designer Hirokazu Yasuhara—moved from Japan to California to join the project. Sonic 2 was intended to be faster and more ambitious than the first game. The development suffered setbacks, including cultural differences between the Japanese and American staff, and numerous levels were cut due to time constraints and quality concerns. As with the first game, Masato Nakamura, a member of the J-pop band Dreams Come True, composed the soundtrack.
Sonic 2 was widely anticipated, and Sega backed it with an aggressive \$10 million marketing campaign. It was released in November 1992 to acclaim and received numerous year-end accolades, including two Golden Joystick Awards. Critics considered Sonic 2 an improvement over the first game and praised the visuals, level design, gameplay, and music, though the low difficulty level and similarities to its predecessor were criticized. Sonic 2 broke video game sales records and became the fastest-selling game at the time, grossing over \$450 million. With six million copies sold worldwide, it is the second-bestselling Genesis game behind the original Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sonic 2 solidified Sonic as a major franchise and helped keep Sega competitive during the console wars of the 16-bit era in the early 1990s. It continues to receive acclaim and is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles followed in 1994. Sonic 2 has been rereleased on various platforms via compilations and emulation, and a remake for iOS and Android devices, developed using the Retro Engine, was released in December 2013. A number of Sonic 2 prototypes have leaked since the release; the first, discovered in 1999, played a significant role in the development of a game datamining community.
## Gameplay
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a side-scrolling platform game. It features a story similar to the first Sonic the Hedgehog's (1991): Doctor Robotnik, a mad scientist, seeks the Chaos Emeralds to power his space station, the Death Egg, and traps the animal inhabitants of West Side Island in aggressive robots. As Sonic the Hedgehog, the player embarks on a journey to collect the Chaos Emeralds and stop Robotnik. The player character can run, jump, crouch, and attack by curling into a ball. Sonic 2 introduces the spin dash, which allows the player to curl while stationary for a speed boost, and Miles "Tails" Prower, a fox with two tails who acts as Sonic's sidekick. In the default single-player game mode, the player controls Sonic and Tails simultaneously; a second player can join in at any time and control Tails separately. The player can also choose to play as Sonic or Tails individually.
The game takes place across 11 zones with 20 levels ("acts"). The acts are larger than the first game's, and the player navigates them at high speeds while jumping between platforms, defeating robot enemies, and avoiding obstacles. Springs, slopes, bottomless pits, and vertical loops fill acts, as do hazards like water and spikes. The player passes checkpoints to save progress. The last act of each zone ends with a boss battle against Robotnik. Sonic 2 features twice as many unique level themes compared to the first game, and most zones end after two acts rather than three.
The player collects rings as a form of health: if they have at least one ring when they collide with an enemy or obstacle, they will survive, but their rings will scatter and blink before disappearing. The player starts with three lives, which they lose if they are hit without a ring, fall down a pit, get crushed, drown, or reach the 10-minute time limit; they receive a game over if they run out. Power-ups like shields and invincibility provide additional layers of protection, and lives are replenished by collecting 100 rings or a 1-up.
If the player passes a checkpoint with 50 or more rings, they can warp to a special stage for an opportunity to collect one of the seven Chaos Emeralds. The player runs through a half-pipe course, collecting rings and dodging bombs. A set number of rings must be collected to obtain the emerald. If the player collides with a bomb, they lose ten rings and are immobilized momentarily. The stages rise in difficulty and the player cannot enter any stage without passing the previous one. After finishing, the player is transported back to the star post they used to enter, with their ring count reset. When all the Chaos Emeralds have been collected, Sonic can transform into Super Sonic by collecting 50 rings. Super Sonic is nearly invincible, runs faster, and jumps farther, but loses one ring per second and reverts to normal when his rings are depleted.
Sonic 2 introduces a multiplayer game mode where two players compete against each other in a split-screen race across three levels. After one player finishes a level, the other player must finish within a minute. Players are ranked in five areas (score, time, rings held at the end of the level, total rings collected, and the number of item boxes broken). The player who excels in the most categories wins. Players can also compete to obtain the most rings in the special stages.
### Knuckles in Sonic 2
Sonic & Knuckles was released in 1994, two years after Sonic 2. The Sonic & Knuckles game cartridge features a "lock-on" adapter that allows players to insert other Sega Genesis cartridges. Attaching Sonic 2 unlocks Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a variation of Sonic 2 in which the player controls the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994) character Knuckles the Echidna. The levels are identical, but Knuckles can glide and climb walls, allowing him access to areas inaccessible to Sonic or Tails. However, he cannot jump as high, making some areas, such as certain boss fights, more difficult.
## Development
### Conception
The original Sonic the Hedgehog was published by Sega for the Sega Genesis in June 1991. It was developed by Sonic Team, led by programmer Yuji Naka, artist Naoto Ohshima, and designer Hirokazu Yasuhara. Sonic greatly increased the Genesis's popularity in North America and is credited with helping Sega gain 65% of the market share against then-industry leader Nintendo, making Sega a formidable competitor. The success meant that a sequel was inevitable, but shortly after the release, Naka quit Sega due to disagreements over his salary, dissatisfaction over the time and effort it had taken to finish Sonic, and a lack of support from management.
During the development of Sonic the Hedgehog, Mark Cerny established Sega Technical Institute (STI) in California. Sega wanted to develop more games in America, and Cerny's aim was to establish an elite studio that would combine the design philosophies of American and Japanese developers. During a trip to Japan, Cerny visited Naka's apartment, listened to the reasons why he left, and convinced him to join STI in America to fix the problems he had had with Sega in Japan. Yasuhara and other members of the Sonic development team joined Naka, but Ohshima stayed in Japan to work on Sonic CD (1993).
In September 1991, Cerny pitched Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as STI's project for the 1992 Christmas and holiday shopping season—giving the team 11 months of development—but Sega of America considered it too soon for a sequel and was still unconfident in the Sonic character. Cerny was not surprised since he believed the marketing executives who controlled game development did not understand the process. STI explored other concepts, but in November, Sega reversed course and told Cerny that it needed Sonic 2 for the 1992 holiday season. Cerny said that this did not cost STI any game ideas since they had yet to come up with one on par with Sonic, but they lost two months of development.
Now with a nine-month schedule, full-scale development started in early 1992. Sonic 2's development team was much larger than the first game's and consisted of both American and Japanese developers, although the majority of the team was Japanese. Cerny's idea was to have around a dozen of the original game's staff move to STI. Development began with only Americans because the Japanese faced immigration problems. According to Cerny, Sega had applied for O-1 expert visas, for "nationally or internationally recognized" people with "a record of extraordinary achievement", unaware that the Japanese developers did not qualify.
### Design
Sega of America marketing director Al Nilsen said that STI wanted "to go all out" to ensure Sonic 2 would be as successful as the original Sonic, since sequels were generally not well regarded. STI brainstormed various ideas to improve the first game's formula, beginning with making Sonic faster. In the first game, the developers limited Sonic with a cap that prevented players from running at his maximum possible speed; STI lifted the cap for Sonic 2. Naka conceived the spin dash to remove the need to backtrack for momentum, which he observed was a common criticism of the first game.
STI's first step was to create a game outline for the developers to flesh out with "a book-length report" detailing the characters, story, and levels. Yasuhara had ambitious plans for Sonic 2 and designed it with blue sky' ideas". Assuming STI had two years of development, he conceived a plot in which Robotnik took over the world and Sonic used time travel to stop him. The plot was scrapped, but many of Sonic 2's levels were taken from it; for example, Hill Top Zone (which features dinosaur enemies) was intended to be a past version of Green Hill Zone, while Chemical Plant and Casino Night came from the Robotnik-ruled future.
Yasuhara designed the stages thinking in the context of a 3D world to work out elements such as corkscrew loops and pipes. He was inspired to design Casino Night because he found Sonic's springs similar to the gimmicks of pinball tables, while Sky Chase—which features Sonic riding a biplane as he attempts to reach Robotnik's base—was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's anime Future Boy Conan (1978). The first game demo was playable around six or seven months after the initial outline's creation and featured a few levels without sound effects or significant detail. STI assembled focus groups to play the demo for feedback and created the alpha build afterward; by this point, 80% of programming had been finished.
Yasuhara wanted to add a second playable character so siblings could play together. Naka suggested the second character be endearing, similar to the kitsune from Urusei Yatsura, and beginner-oriented rather than Sonic's rival. An internal contest was held to determine the new character, and the winning design was lead artist Yasushi Yamaguchi's fox, which he named Miles Prower (a pun on "miles per hour"). STI wanted the character to appeal to Japanese audiences, and Yamaguchi gave him two tails—inspired by the Phantasy Star character Myau—to make the design more impactful. Sega of America felt the name "Miles Prower" would not sell and suggested "Tails" as an alternative. Nilsen developed a character backstory to convince the developers to make the change; they compromised by making Tails his nickname.
Tails was implemented using an artificial intelligence routine that allowed him to mimic Sonic's movements. He was also used in the multiplayer mode, something that Naka had attempted to implement late in development of the original Sonic. The multiplayer mode was one of Naka's primary motivations to develop Sonic 2, since he felt multiplayer games were more fun. Naka created split-screen gameplay with the Genesis' rarely used interlaced mode, since he found the standard display mode made it difficult to see the player characters. Developing the multiplayer mode took six months.
### Art direction
In addition to overseeing the level design and gameplay, Cerny acted as an art director. The initial level maps were drawn at Sega's headquarters in Tokyo. According to level artist Craig Stitt, the artists received the paper map with ideas regarding the level theme. Once the design was settled, the artist would draw the art pixel by pixel and then input the graphics in the game itself. The graphics and animations were implemented using the Digitizer, Sega's proprietary graphics system for the Genesis. The artists had to deal with palette limitations, as only 64 colors could be displayed on-screen. Rieko Kodama, who worked on the first game as an artist, helped design the levels.
Yasuhara said meshing the Americans' art with art by Yamaguchi was the development's largest hurdle. Yamaguchi had to check the teams' enemy and stage designs while producing his own. Stitt called Yamaguchi, who mostly worked alone, "a machine" who spent hours reworking other artists' levels repeatedly to ensure quality. For example, Stitt felt disappointed when Yamaguchi redid his background art for the Oil Ocean level, but did not argue because he was not satisfied with the original background and Yamaguchi's was much better. The title screen and Casino Night level art were both completely reworked shortly before release.
Tim Skelly designed the appearance of the pseudo-3D special stages, based on a tech demo created by Naka. The special stages, designed by Shinobi (1987) director Yutaka Sugano, were created from pre-rendered 3D polygons, video of which was compressed and halved vertically and horizontally to fit in the game cartridge. Cerny said the developers chose the 3D look to make the stages appear extravagant. In retrospect, he felt the stages were visually impressive but did not have as much gameplay depth as the original Sonic's special stages, which featured Sonic navigating a rotating maze.
### Conflicts and cut content
The development was complicated by the cultural and language barriers between the Japanese and American developers. The Japanese were used to crunch conditions, with Cerny noting they often worked through the night and slept in their cubicles. In contrast, the Americans locked the STI offices at night. Cerny had envisioned the Japanese acting as mentors to the Americans, but cooperation was difficult since the Americans could not speak Japanese. Stitt recalled Yasuhara as easy to work with, but Naka as "an arrogant pain in the ass" not interested in working with Americans. Skelly said that Naka would have been happier working with an all-Japanese team.
During development, Cerny left STI; he said that he left as development concluded, though Sega executive Masaharu Yoshii recalled that he departed around halfway through. Cerny left partly because of the rising tensions between the Japanese and American developers, feeling the Americans were not treated respectfully. Further complicating this was STI's involvement with the Sonic franchise and Naka's desire to oversee development personally, as well as Sega of America's initial hesitation to assist given their lack of confidence in the Sonic character. Yoshii was installed as the temporary head of STI and was credited as Sonic 2's director. He said that the situation was severe because Sega of America was "betting everything" on Sonic 2, but the STI staff did not display any stress and remained optimistic that the project would be finished.
A large amount of content was cut, mostly due to time constraints. Nilsen said Sonic 2 "probably could have been three times the size if we left in everything that was there. Naka and team... weren't afraid to say, 'I've been working on this for four months, it's not working. Let's take it out.'" One scrapped stage, Hidden Palace Zone, featured extensively in prerelease advertisements. It was planned as a secret stage accessed by collecting Chaos Emeralds; according to Naka, it would explain the origin of the Chaos Emeralds and grant Sonic his Super Sonic powers. Stitt created the Hidden Palace art and considered its foreground among his favorite work. Though Hidden Palace was one of the first levels implemented, work on it stopped in mid-1992, and it was removed shortly before completion for a lack of time and cartridge space.
Other cut levels included a forest level, which was implemented but hardly worked on, and a desert level. One scrapped level, Genocide City, was renamed Cyber City because the Japanese developers had not understood the negative connotations of the word genocide. Its level layout was used in the Metropolis Zone level. Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, product manager Madeline Schroeder, and Nilsen worked closely with STI; Nilsen said the feedback loop helped the team determine what needed to be cut. Most cuts were made to the Americans' designs, and many were furious when they learned their work had been cut. Stitt said that he may have been the only American whose art was used in the final game.
### Music
As with the first game, Sonic 2's soundtrack was composed by Masato Nakamura, a member of the J-pop band Dreams Come True. Nakamura became famous in Japan after the release of Sonic the Hedgehog and increased his asking price considerably. According to Yamaguchi, Sega of America wanted to use music composed in-house instead. After the team rejected it as "awful", Sega rehired Nakamura. Nakamura began composing early in development with only concept art for reference. He treated Sonic 2 like a film and attempted to reflect the atmosphere he felt in the concept art. Nakamura composed Sonic 2 simultaneously with the 1992 Dreams Come True album The Swinging Star. As a gift to the developers, he produced an alternate version of the Sonic 2 ending theme, "Sweet Sweet Sweet", for the album.
Since Sonic 2 was more technically advanced than its predecessor, Nakamura "wanted to create music that showed progress... It was like the Indiana Jones sequels. Same concept, but with more fun and excitement." Nakamura felt considerable pressure, as he understood that expectations were high due to the first game's success. STI let Nakamura work freely, which he felt allowed him to create melodic tunes and unusual rhythms. He composed using a Roland MC-4 Microcomposer; composing was challenging due to the Genesis' limited sound capabilities, but this encouraged him to be more inventive. Five or six people worked to convert Nakamura's music to the Genesis format.
### Completion
Sonic 2 did not become playable from start to finish until the last 48 hours of development, in September 1992. The team planned to use a 4MiB cartridge, the same cartridge size as the first game, but STI ran out of space towards the end of development. To make sure the game would be finished in time for Thanksgiving, Yoshii went to the Japanese side of Sega for help. Managing director Daizaburou Sakurai contacted Sega Enterprises president Hayao Nakayama, who allowed the team to double the ROM size to avoid a delay. In total, over 100 people worked on Sonic 2 and the main team comprised 20 developers. The development schedule was shorter than the first game's, and Yasuhara said STI worked under a lot of pressure due to Sega's competition with Nintendo.
Yoshii said that Sonic 2 would not have been ready for release without Sega of America's bug-checking process. STI videotaped testers' gameplay so the developers could easily locate bugs. Around 50 developers worked as bug checkers, and the process took two to three weeks. Yoshii felt that despite the staff conflicts, the bug-checking made developing Sonic 2 in the US worth it, as Sega of America's process was much more thorough than the one in Japan. When Sonic 2 was shipped to Japan for production, copies of the source code were sent on separate planes to ensure that the game would arrive in case of an accident. On the day the code shipped, the STI staff gathered in the warehouse and celebrated with a Sonic-themed cake.
## Release
### Marketing
Sega aggressively promoted Sonic the Hedgehog 2, spending approximately \$10 million on advertising. Promotion began in early 1992, when Sega sent mockup screenshots to magazines. An early version appeared on the Nickelodeon game show Nick Arcade several times, including in a competition between the Clarissa Explains It All (1991–1994) stars Melissa Joan Hart and Jason Zimbler. Hart struggled to play it since she was unaware of the spin dash.
As Sonic 2 was Sega's biggest game of 1992, its marketing team, as Game Informer wrote, sought to make the release "as much a celebration as it was a product launch". Sega gave away T-shirts as preorder gifts and sent stores dry-erase boards to count down the days to release. Teaser posters bore the slogan "Are You Up 2 It?". Sega of America collaborated with Emery Worldwide to produce stickers celebrating the "Great Sonic 2 Shipment", and 50 people dressed as Sonic greeted the three planes carrying copies of Sonic 2 at Heathrow Airport. Sega considered shipping the cartridges with holographic labels, but decided it was too expensive.
At the last moment, Sega canceled a tour of shopping malls across the US, deciding it would be inadequate. Instead, it made Sonic 2 available in the West in all stores on the same day. This was an unusual practice at the time; generally, international game release dates depended on the region. Sega reconfigured its distribution system and used air shipping to ensure that copies were available in all major stores. The North American and European release date, Tuesday, November 24, 1992, was marketed as "Sonic 2sday". In Japan, the game was released three days earlier, on November 21. Initial copies of Sonic 2 had several bugs; later copies used a patch developed a few days after completion. The Western cover art was illustrated by Greg Martin, while the Japanese cover art was illustrated by Akira Watanabe.
### Sales
Sonic 2 broke video game sales records and became the fastest-selling game at the time. In the US, it sold 600,000 copies within a day in addition to 400,000 preorders. In the UK, it sold 750,000 copies within a week, accounting for 48% of all UK software. It was the top-seller on Gallup's Sega charts for the UK, Japan, and the US for months. Sonic 2 grossed \$450 million in 1992 (\$million adjusted for inflation), and its release-day revenue exceeded the total revenue that the bestselling music CD of 1992, Simply Red's Stars, had earned throughout the year. Sonic 2 sold six million copies worldwide by August 2006, making it the second-bestselling Genesis game behind the original Sonic the Hedgehog.
## Reception
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 received acclaim. Numerous critics considered it better than the first Sonic. Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) wrote that it could "best be described with a lot of 2s", being twice as long and fun as its predecessor. Reviewers noted Sonic 2 was similar to Sonic the Hedgehog in appearance and gameplay. The similarities did not bother Electronic Games, which said the level variety and multiplayer made it an improvement, but Mega and GamesMaster considered them a detriment. In particular, GamesMaster felt that Sonic 2 was just more of Sonic the Hedgehog and did not improve much.
Critics commended the presentation, with EGM describing Sonic 2 as an impressive showcase of the Genesis hardware. The visuals were praised as colorful and detailed, and EGM and Mega highlighted the backgrounds for their intricacy. GamePro, Mean Machines Sega, and Mega wrote that the updated sprites were larger and animated better; Mean Machines said Sonic's new animation frames made for a smoother appearance. Several critics said the graphics were better than the first game's, though Computer and Video Games (CVG) and GamesMaster felt they were about the same. CVG said this was not a problem since Sonic's graphics were already excellent. The music was also commended, though CVG said it was not as memorable as the first game's and GamePro found it less impressive than the visuals.
Reviewers enjoyed the level design and gameplay. Critics said Sonic 2's levels were larger and featured more variety than the first game, which CVG and GamePro wrote incentivized exploration and replayability. Mean Machines and Mega said it was clear that Sega sought to address the criticisms levied against the first game regarding its length and low difficulty, though Sonic 2's easiness was still criticized. Mega and GamesMaster wrote that despite Sonic 2's larger size, it could still be completed fairly quickly, and one of GamesMaster's reviewers said they finished it in one sitting without receiving a single game over. CVG said the difficulty was Sonic 2's only major problem, but GamePro and Mega said the difficulty was remedied by the replay value that the levels' branching paths and various secrets provided. Critics considered the special stages a highlight, though Mega felt they lacked the skill curve of the first game's.
Reviewers called the multiplayer mode one of Sonic 2's best additions, though some disliked the split-screen effect. Mega said that the ability to race against a friend rather than just the in-game timer added substantial depth, and EGM said it would double the amount of fun players would have. Multiple critics praised Tails, with GamePro and Beep! Mega Drive calling him cute. Conversely, GamesMaster said Tails was briefly fun but ultimately little more than a sprite-swapped Sonic.
### Accolades
Sonic 2 received numerous year-end accolades and nominations. It received the Golden Joystick Awards for Best Original Console Game and Promotional Campaign of the Year, and was a runner-up for the Chicago Tribune's Best Game of the Year award after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991) and the console version of Street Fighter II (1992). EGM named it the best Genesis game of 1992. At Electronic Games' Electronic Gaming Awards, it won Best Electronic Game Graphics but lost the Video Game of the Year award to Street Fighter II.
## Post-release
Naka refused to develop another Sonic game if he had to work with the Americans again. When Atari veteran Roger Hector became the division's head, STI split into two teams: the Japanese developers led by Naka, and the American developers. The Japanese team started working on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in January 1993; it was conceived as an isometric game that used the Sega Virtua Processor chip, but was retooled to reuse the Sonic 2 game engine after it became apparent that the chip would not be finished in time. Many of Sonic 2's unused concepts were incorporated into Sonic 3 and the next game, Sonic & Knuckles, including the Hidden Palace level. Like their predecessors, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were critical and commercial successes when they were released in 1994.
While the Japanese worked on Sonic 3, the American team developed the spin-off Sonic Spinball (1993), a pinball game commissioned after Sega's research determined that Casino Night Zone was one of the most popular levels in Sonic 2. Following the completion of Sonic & Knuckles, Yasuhara quit, citing differences with Naka, and went on to develop games for Sega of America. Naka returned to Japan with developer Takashi Iizuka to work with Sonic Team, and was reunited with Ohshima. A concept developed during Sonic 2's production formed the basis of the Sonic Team game Nights into Dreams, released for the Sega Saturn in 1996. The American team developed Comix Zone (1995), The Ooze (1995), Die Hard Arcade (1996) with Sega AM1, and Sonic X-treme, which was canceled in 1996. STI was disbanded in late 1996 as a result of changes in management at Sega of America. Meanwhile, Cerny worked with Sony Interactive Entertainment and helped create the PlayStation franchises Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Cerny and Yasuhara remained friends and reunited to work with Naughty Dog on the Jak and Daxter series in the 2000s.
### Other media
An alternate version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was developed by Aspect Co. for Sega's 8-bit consoles, the Master System and the handheld Game Gear. The 8-bit version features different levels and music, as well as a different plot in which Sonic must rescue a kidnapped Tails. It was later included in Sonic compilations, such as Sonic Adventure DX (2003) for the GameCube and Windows and Sonic Gems Collection (2005) for the GameCube and PlayStation 2. Sega released an arcade cabinet version of Sonic 2 using its Sega Mega Play arcade system board in 1993. Another version planned for the Genesis's Sega CD accessory was replaced by Sonic CD.
In October 2011, Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog 1&2 Soundtrack, a three-disc album compiling music from Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 2, interviews with Naka and Nakamura, and concept art. The first disc contains the in-game tracks and the second contains Nakamura's demo recordings produced during development. The third disc contains "Sweet Sweet Sweet" by Dreams Come True, its English-language version "Sweet Dream", and remixes of both songs that Akon produced for Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
### Rereleases
Sonic 2 has been ported to multiple platforms. A Sega Saturn port included in the compilation Sonic Jam (1997) introduces an alternate difficulty mode that alters stage layouts and removes some levels for an easier experience. Other compilations featuring the game include Sonic Classics 3 in 1 (1995) for the Genesis; Sonic Mega Collection (2002) for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox; Sega Genesis Collection (2006) for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable; Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (2009) for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3; Sonic Classic Collection (2010) for the Nintendo DS; and Sega Genesis Classics (2018) for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Jam, Mega Collection, and Classic Collection include Knuckles in Sonic 2 as a bonus.
A remake of Sonic 2 was released for Android and iOS devices on December 12, 2013, and for Apple TV on March 24, 2016. The remake was developed by Christian "Taxman" Whitehead and Simon "Stealth" Thomley using the Retro Engine, previously used in Whitehead's 2011 Sonic CD remake. The remake adds enhancements such as widescreen support, Knuckles as a playable character, time and boss attack modes, online multiplayer, additional multiplayer stages, and Tails's flying and swimming abilities from Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It also restores Hidden Palace Zone as an optional, secret level. Whitehead redesigned Hidden Palace with input from Sonic Team, which informed him that STI had been dissatisfied with the original level design. The Android version sold more than 100,000 paid downloads on the Google Play Store by 2017, and received more than 10 million downloads by 2019 after it was made free-to-play. The remake was included in the 2022 compilation Sonic Origins for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. An updated version of Origins includes Amy Rose as a playable character.
A Nintendo 3DS port was developed by M2 and released as part of Sega's 3D Classics line in Japan on July 22, 2015, and elsewhere on October 8. The port features stereoscopic 3D visuals, the option to switch between the game's regional variants, alternate sound and visual modes, and cheats. M2 was originally hesitant to port the game, and it took the most effort of the 3D Classics line due to its large size and elaborate levels. Several technical tricks, such as the interlacing in the multiplayer mode and the pre-rendering in the special stages, had to be reprogrammed so they could be retained. M2 also developed a Nintendo Switch port for the Sega Ages line, released in February 2020. It includes most of the additions from the 3DS version, as well as the option to use Sonic's Drop Dash ability from Sonic Mania (2017), a time attack mode, and Knuckles in Sonic 2.
Emulated versions of Sonic 2 have been released on digital distribution platforms. It was released on the Wii's Virtual Console on June 11, 2007, the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade on September 12, 2007, Steam on January 26, 2011, the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network on April 19, 2011, and for Nintendo Switch Online's "Expansion Pack" subscribers on October 25, 2021. The Wii and Xbox 360 versions allow users to play Knuckles in Sonic 2 if they also own Sonic & Knuckles. An emulated version for iOS was released in April 2010, but was replaced by the remake in 2013; those who purchased the original version were offered the remake for free. The Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam versions were delisted in 2022 ahead of the release of Sonic Origins, which received criticism on video game preservation and consumer protection grounds.
## Legacy
Sonic 2 was a major factor in keeping Sega competitive during the console wars of the 16-bit era in the early 1990s, and GameSpot and IGN described it as the game that solidified Sonic as a major franchise. It boosted Genesis sales enough to nearly equalize Sega with Nintendo and cemented Sonic as a video game mascot on par with Nintendo's Mario. Further, the Sonic 2sday promotion has been credited for originating the concept of the "street date" in the video game industry, in which games are made available worldwide in all stores on the same day. The practice was uncommon before Sonic 2's release and became a widespread industry trend in the following years.
Sonic 2 introduced many elements that defined the Sonic franchise. Game Informer wrote that it "expanded the formula in myriad ways, giving Sonic new moves like the spin-dash, bigger stages to explore with more branching paths, and more inventive boss battles." USGamer said that much of the series' most-loved elements originated in Sonic 2 with the introduction of Tails, Super Sonic, and casino levels. Tails became one of the most popular Sonic characters; according to Nilsen, Sega found that Tails was as popular as Sonic because he received nothing but praise through its 800 number phone line. Tails starred in two spin-offs, Tails Adventure and Tails' Skypatrol, for the Game Gear in 1995.
### Retrospective assessments
Sonic 2 continues to receive acclaim. Writing in retrospect, critics said it refined Sonic's formula with greater level diversity and design, better graphics, and quality-of-life improvements.[^1] GameSpot said that Sonic 2 "does everything a sequel is supposed to do. It resolves many of the first game's shortcomings and incorporates a slew of minor upgrades that cumulatively amount to a fresh experience." IGN felt the emulated Wii rerelease was easy to recommend. TeamXbox, Eurogamer, and Hardcore Gamer said the level design, music, and fast gameplay still hold up exceptionally well, and GamesRadar+ called it "the most user-friendly of all the Sonic games, beautifully presented and still a challenge if you want to complete it properly."
Retrospective objects of criticism include the multiplayer mode and the implementation of Tails. Reviewers disliked the image distortion brought about by the multiplayer mode's squeezed and flickering graphics, while they considered Tails a burden due to his interference in boss battles. Additionally, Eurogamer described the visuals of the special stages as "dreadfully blocky", and IGN felt that the inclusion of Tails in the stages was "detrimental at best" since he constantly hits bombs and makes the player lose progress. GamesRadar+ said that the game "could be criticized for 'playing itself'" during sequences when Sonic careens at high speeds, but countered that it still felt as if the player retained control over him.
The 2010 iOS and DS versions received middling reviews according to aggregator Metacritic, with criticism for their quality and lack of multiplayer, but the 2013 remake was considered the definitive version. TouchArcade called it a "beautiful remaster" that would appeal to old and new fans and found it surreal to finally play the once-removed Hidden Palace in an official capacity. Critics praised the 3DS version for its implementation of the system's stereoscopic 3D and the added bonus features, with Nintendo World Report writing that the addition of cheats made difficult moments less frustrating. Nintendo Life was disappointed that the Switch version did not include the 2013 remake's features and felt that M2 should have chosen a lesser-known game to port, given the copious number of Sonic 2 rereleases. Nonetheless, Nintendo Life felt it was an excellent port and a "must-have" for first-time players.
Sonic 2 is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Listing the game at number 71 in its Top 100 Games of All Time list in 2001, Game Informer wrote that Sonic 2 was the most challenging and polished Sonic game. Sonic 2 took first place in a survey conducted by Official Nintendo Magazine to determine the fan-favorite Sonic game in 2010, and GameZone named it the second-best Sonic game (behind Sonic 3) in 2011. GamesRadar+ named Sonic 2 the best Sonic game and the second-best Genesis game of all time (behind Streets of Rage 2 (1992)) in 2017. In November 2017, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka said that he felt Sonic 2 "really is the best of the classic Sonic series. The level design is just really, really solid... All of the [Sega] staff would say it was a great game for Japanese tastes but also a great game for American tastes. Sonic 2 really captured that global sense of game design and level design."
### Influence
For Sonic's 20th anniversary in 2011, Sega released Sonic Generations, which features reimagined versions of stages from across the series' history. The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows versions contain remakes of Sonic 2's Chemical Plant Zone and Death Egg Robot boss fight, while the Nintendo 3DS version contains a remake of Casino Night. Additionally, a Casino Night-themed pinball minigame was released as downloadable content. Sonic Mania features reimagined versions of Chemical Plant and Oil Ocean, while Sonic Forces (2017) features a reimagined version of Chemical Plant. Some design elements from Sonic 2 feature in Studio Pierrot's Sonic the Hedgehog (1996) original video animation. The feature film Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) draws inspiration from Sonic 2, though it is not a direct adaptation. The Death Egg Robot and Super Sonic appear in the film, while one of its posters recreates Martin's Sonic 2 box art illustration.
In the years since Sonic 2's release, a number of prototypes have been leaked online. In 1999, a Sonic fan, Simon Wai, discovered an early prototype containing the scrapped Hidden Palace, Wood, and Genocide City levels on a Chinese website and shared it with the Western Sonic fandom. The discovery played a significant role in the development of a video game community in which players datamine games and document their prototypes to understand how they were developed. Journalist Heidi Kemps presented the prototype to Naka during a 2005 GameSpy interview and he identified it as originating from a preview cartridge that had been stolen from a 1992 New York City toy show. A Sonic fan discovered the Sonic 2 prototype featured on Nick Arcade in 2006 and raised over US\$1,500 to buy the cartridge and release the ROM image online. The Nick Arcade prototype, while primitive and unpolished, showed fans how STI built the game atop the original Sonic the Hedgehog.
A high-definition (HD) fangame remake, Sonic 2 HD, entered development for Windows and macOS in 2008. The project was canceled in 2012 after the release of a game demo that Retro Gamer described as "blighted by programming incompetence", due to high system requirements and digital rights management that inadvertently triggered antivirus software. However, the project was restarted by a new team in 2014. It is planned to feature additional levels, multiplayer modes, and the option to play as Knuckles. Sonic 2 has also been noted for its active modding scene that releases ROM hacks featuring new game mechanics and playable characters. Modders decompiled the source code of the 2013 Sonic 2'' remake in 2021, allowing it to be unofficially ported to other platforms.
[^1]: {{cite web\|last=Towell\|first=Justin\|date=April 16, 2008\|title=Sonic'''s 2D classics re-reviewed\|url= 21, 2019\|work=GamesRadar+\|archive-date=August 7, 2020\|archive-url=
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2019 Champion of Champions
| 1,148,663,311 |
Snooker tournament, held November 2019
|
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"2010s in Coventry",
"2019 in English sport",
"2019 in snooker",
"Champion of Champions (snooker)",
"November 2019 sports events in the United Kingdom",
"Sports competitions in Coventry"
] |
The 2019 Champion of Champions (also known as the 2019 ManBetX Champion of Champions for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place between 4 and 10 November 2019 at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, England. It was the ninth Champion of Champions event, the first of which was held in 1978. The tournament featured 16 participants who had won World Snooker events throughout the prior snooker season. In 2019, the Women's World Champion competed at the tournament for the first time. As an invitational event, the Champion of Champions tournament carried no world ranking points.
Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion having defeated Kyren Wilson 10–9 in the final of the 2018 event. O'Sullivan lost 5–6 to Neil Robertson in the semi-finals. Robertson defeated reigning world champion Judd Trump 10–9 in the final to win the championship, having required in the penultimate frame to avoid losing the match. There were 20 century breaks during the tournament, eight of which were made in the final. Mark Allen compiled the highest break of the tournament, a 140, in his semi-final loss to Trump. The tournament's total prize fund was £440,000, the winner receiving £150,000.
## Format
The Champion of Champions is an invitational snooker tournament, first held in 1978, and annually since 2013. As an invitational event, it does not carry any world ranking points. The 2019 Champion of Champions took place from 4 to 10 November 2019 at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, England. It featured 16 winners of events from the previous 12 months on the World Snooker Tour. The World Women's Snooker Championship and the World Seniors Championship were added to the list of eligible events for 2019, the winners of these two championships being allowed to participate in the Champion of Champions for the first and second time, respectively, (Steve Davis as reigning World Seniors Champion qualified for the 2014 Champion of Champions). The tournament was organised by Matchroom Sport, broadcast on ITV4 and sponsored by sports betting company ManbetX.
The 16 qualifiers were split into four groups of four players; each group competed on a different day, with the group finals (event quarter-finals) played on the same day as the corresponding first-round matches. The two semi-finals were played on separate days – 8 and 9 November – with the final on 10 November. The length of the matches varied throughout the competition, those in the opening round being best-of-7 , group finals and semi-finals best-of-11 frames, and the two-session final played as a best-of-19-frames match. Ronnie O'Sullivan automatically qualified for the event as reigning champion, having defeated Kyren Wilson in the 2018 Champion of Champions final 10–9.
### Prize fund
The event featured a prize fund of \|£440,000, an increase of £70,000 over the 2018 Champion of Champions tournament. The winner's prize money was increased from the previous year by £50,000, to £150,000. The breakdown of prize money for the 2019 event was:
- Winner: £150,000
- Runner-up: £60,000
- Semi-final: £30,000
- Group runner-up: £17,500
- First round loser: £12,500
- Total: £440,000
### Qualification
Qualification for the 2019 Champion of Champions event was determined by the winners of 26 tournaments over a one-year period, from the 2018 Champion of Champions to the 2019 World Open, thereby including tournaments from both the 2018–19 and 2019–20 snooker seasons. The tournaments were placed into six groups dependent on the size of the event, with the previous year's Champion of Champions and the Triple Crown events listed in the first group, and tournaments in the same group were listed chronologically. The winners of the first 16 tournaments on the list were guaranteed a place in the championship. In the event of any of these players meeting multiple qualification criteria, the winners of subsequent tournaments on the list (in the order shown below) would be offered a place in the Champion of Champions. Judd Trump qualified for the event by winning six of the first 16 tournaments, the most won by any player.
{\|class="wikitable" span = 50 style="font-size:85%;
\|- \|style="background:lightgrey": \#cfc;" width=10\| \|Player had already qualified by winning a previous event
## Summary
The event featured 16 participants, split into four groups of four players. There were eight seeded players, based on the world snooker rankings, and each of the top four seeds was placed into a separate group. As defending champion, Ronnie O'Sullivan was seeded first, world champion Judd Trump second, Mark Selby third and Neil Robertson fourth. Each group was played over the course of a single day as single-elimination, rather than a round-robin competition.
### Group stages
The championship began on 4 November 2019, with players from group four competing in the first round. The opening match was between Neil Robertson and 2019 Championship League winner Martin Gould. Robertson defeated Gould 4–0, the highest of the match being just 67. In the other group four match, 2019 China Championship winner Shaun Murphy played Reanne Evans, the 2019 World Women's Snooker champion. Speaking to the press before the match, Evans reflected that whilst it was an honour to play in the competition despite not being on the World Snooker Tour, there was still a disparity between the men's and women's games. She also commented that the prize money for appearing at the event was double that of any she had received before, despite having won the women's world championship on 12 occasions.
Murphy developed an early lead by winning the first three frames of the match, before Evans took the next three to force a . She went whilst playing a in the final frame, allowing Murphy to make a break of 130 and win the match 4–3. Murphy praised Evans afterwards, saying that he really hoped "we see more of Reanne on the main event". He also remarked later that the audience were supporting Evans and even his wife was "reluctant to wish [him] good luck today". Murphy and Robertson competed in the group four final. Murphy again took the first three frames of the match, before Robertson drew level at 3–3 after a break of 100 and two breaks of 90 plus. The two players shared the next four frames, both experiencing issues with the table , to tie the match at 5–5. Robertson took the deciding frame to win 6–5.
The group three matches were played on 5 November, three-time world champion Mark Selby defeating first-time ranking event winner Yan Bingtao 4–0. The 2018 Scottish Open winner Mark Allen defeated the 2019 Indian Open winner Matthew Selt in the other group three first-round match. In the group three final, Allen recovered from 1–2 behind to defeat Selby 6–2. The group two matches, played on 6 November, featured a first-round encounter between the reigning world champion Judd Trump and the six-red and World Cup winner Stephen Maguire. Trump won the first two frames of the match, Maguire scoring just four points. Trump also took frames three and four, making three breaks of over 50, to win the match 4–0. The 2019 Snooker Shoot Out winner Thepchaiya Un-Nooh played Kyren Wilson in the other group two first-round match. Un-Nooh won three of the first four frames, with breaks of 63, 51 and 90, before Wilson made breaks of 102 and 98 to force a deciding frame. Un-Nooh won the match 4–3 to progress to the group two final, which was a rematch of the 2019 World Open final, held the previous week, between Trump and Un-Nooh. Trump won the first four frames of the match, scoring two centuries; Un-Nooh won frame five but Trump then pulled ahead to 5–1. After Un-Nooh replied with breaks of 61 and 66, Trump took the ninth frame to win the match 6–3.
The group one matches took place on 7 November. World number three Ronnie O'Sullivan played 2019 World Seniors Championship winner Jimmy White in the first match. White took the first three frames, before O'Sullivan won the next two. During frame six, White suffered a at a crucial point where he could have won the match, allowing O'Sullivan to force a deciding frame, which he won. Two former world champions, John Higgins and Stuart Bingham, met in the other group one first-round match, which Higgins won 4–2. O'Sullivan defeated Higgins 6–3 in the group one final. O'Sullivan's during the match was just 13 seconds per shot.
### Knockout stages
The semi-finals were played as best-of-11-frames matches. The first semi-final was held on 8 November between Ronnie O'Sullivan and Neil Robertson. The pair had met in the finals of two events in the 2019 Coral Cup series—the Tour Championship and the Players Championship—with O'Sullivan winning on both occasions. The match was even throughout, with no more than one frame separating the two players. Robertson compiled a break of 108 in frame five to open up a 3–2 lead, O'Sullivan winning three of the next four frames to lead 5–4. Robertson won frame 10 with a break of 135, the highest of the tournament at that point, to force a deciding frame. O'Sullivan gained the first chance of the final frame, but whilst playing the , allowing Robertson to make a break of 90 to win the match 6–5. Robertson later commented that the match was "definitely one of the best matches [he had] been involved in".
Mark Allen and Judd Trump met in the second semi-final on 9 November. Trump won the first three frames of the match, but Allen took the next four, including the tournament's highest break of 140, to lead 4–3. Trump made a break of 86 to tie the match, and then clinched frame nine after a when potting a . With a break of 98 in frame 10, Trump won the match 6–4.
The final between Trump and Robertson was played as a best-of-19-frames match over two sessions on 10 November. The referee for the final was Desislava Bozhilova. Robertson won the first two frames of the match, including a break of 112 in the second frame, and took an early 3–1 lead. Trump then made three consecutive centuries in frames five to seven, totalling 367 points without reply, to go ahead 4–3. Breaks of 96 and 111 gave Robertson the next two frames to retake the lead at 5–4 between the two sessions.
Trump took the first frame of the second session, but Robertson replied with a break of 104. Trump won the next two frames to go ahead 7–6, and retained the lead until Robertson made a break of 135 in the 16th frame to tie the match at 8–8. Trump required foul shots from his opponent to win frame 17, and went ahead once again. Robertson needed a in frame 18 to avoid losing the match; he succeeded and forced a , which he potted to draw level at 9–9. He then made a break of 137 in the deciding frame to win the match 10–9. This was Robertson's second Champion of Champions victory, having won the event in 2015. He later commented: "I can't believe the pair of us playing a match like that. It's the best match I've ever been involved in". With a total of eight century breaks (five of which were compiled by Robertson), the final included a record number of centuries for a best-of-19-frames match. There were 784,000 viewers on ITV4 across the two sessions of the final. This was the second-highest non-terrestrial viewing figure in the United Kingdom for the day, behind a Premier League football match between Liverpool F.C. and Manchester City F.C. on Sky Sports.
## Main draw
Below is the main draw for the event. Numbers in brackets show the four seeded players. Players in bold denote match winners.
### Final
## Century breaks
A series of 20 were made during the competition. Mark Allen made the highest break of the tournament, a 140 in frame five in his semi-final match against Judd Trump.
- 140, 108, 106 – Mark Allen
- 137, 135, 135, 112, 111, 108, 104, 100 – Neil Robertson
- 130 – Shaun Murphy
- 128, 127, 121, 119, 114, 102 – Judd Trump
- 104 – Ronnie O'Sullivan
- 102 – Kyren Wilson
|
265,667 |
Pattern Recognition (novel)
| 1,149,417,674 |
2003 novel by William Gibson
|
[
"2003 American novels",
"English-language novels",
"Fiction set in 2002",
"G. P. Putnam's Sons books",
"Japan in non-Japanese culture",
"Novels by William Gibson",
"Novels set in London",
"Novels set in Moscow",
"Novels set in Tokyo",
"Techno-thriller novels"
] |
Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo, and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol and is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet.
The novel's central theme involves the examination of the human desire to detect patterns or meaning and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and commercialization. The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif representing the transition to the new century. Critics identify influences in Pattern Recognition from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story The Crying of Lot 49.
Pattern Recognition is Gibson's eighth novel and his first one to be set in the contemporary world. Like his previous work, it has been classified as a science fiction and postmodern novel, with the action unfolding along a thriller plot line. Critics approved of the writing but found the plot unoriginal and some of the language distracting. The book peaked at number four on the New York Times Best Seller list, was nominated for the 2003 British Science Fiction Association Award, and was shortlisted for the 2004 Arthur C. Clarke Award and Locus Awards.
## Background
Before writing Pattern Recognition, the author, William Gibson, published seven novels (one co-written) and numerous short stories beginning in 1977. His previous novel, All Tomorrow's Parties, was published in October 1999 as the conclusion of the Bridge trilogy. Pattern Recognition was written between 2001 and 2002 while Gibson was living in Vancouver, British Columbia and released in February 2003. Pattern Recognition was originally intended to be a stand-alone novel, but afterwards Gibson wrote Spook Country and Zero History which take place in the same universe and use some of the same characters.
Gibson traveled to Tokyo in 2001 to prepare for this new novel, which takes place in London, Moscow, and Tokyo. He did not travel to London or Moscow but used interviews with friends and internet resources for research. In September 2001 Gibson had written about 100 pages but was struggling to finish. He stopped writing after watching the September 11, 2001 attacks on television and "realized [the novel] had become a story that took place in an alternate time track, in which Sept. 11 hadn't happened". He considered abandoning the novel but a few weeks later re-wrote portions to use the attacks as a motivating factor for the distress the main character feels. In a 2003 interview he said, "There I was, in the winter of 2001, with no idea what the summer of 2002 was going to be like. ... In the original post-9/11 draft, London felt more like London is feeling right now. Cayce keeps seeing trucks full of soldiers. But I took that out, because as it got closer to the time, it wasn't actually happening."
## Plot summary
Advertising consultant Cayce Pollard, who reacts to logos and advertising as if to an allergen, arrives in London in August 2002. She is working on a contract with the marketing firm Blue Ant to judge the effectiveness of a proposed corporate logo for a shoe company. During the presentation, graphic designer Dorotea Benedetti becomes hostile towards Cayce as she rejects the first proposal. After dinner with some Blue Ant employees, the company founder Hubertus Bigend offers Cayce a new contract: to uncover who is responsible for distributing a series of anonymous, artistic film clips via the internet. Cayce had been following the film clips and participating in an online discussion forum theorizing on the clips' meaning, setting, and other aspects. Wary of corrupting the artistic process and mystery of the clips, she reluctantly accepts. Cayce is not entirely comfortable with Ivy's chat group called "Fetish:Footage:Forum" (or F:F:F), as shown by the following excerpt:
> There are perhaps twenty regular posters on F:F:F, and some much larger and uncounted number of lurkers. And right now there are three people in Chat, but there's no way of knowing exactly who until you are in there, and the chat room she finds not so comforting. It's strange even with friends, like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with people at a distance of about fifteen feet.
A friend from the discussion group, who uses the handle Parkaboy, privately emails her saying a friend of a friend has discovered an encrypted watermark on one clip. They concoct a fake persona, a young woman named Keiko, to seduce the Japanese man who knows the watermark code. Cayce, along with an American computer security specialist, Boone Chu, hired to assist her, travels to Tokyo to meet the man and retrieve the watermark code. Two men attempt to steal the code but Cayce escapes and travels back to London. Boone travels to Columbus, Ohio to investigate the company that he believes created the watermark. Meanwhile, Blue Ant hires Dorotea who reveals that she was previously employed by a Russian lawyer whose clients have been investigating Cayce. The clients wanted Cayce to refuse the job of tracking the film clips and it was Dorotea's responsibility to ensure this.
Through a completely random encounter Cayce meets Voytek Biroshak and Ngemi, the former an artist using old ZX81 microcomputers as a sculpture medium, the latter a collector of rare technology (he mentions purchasing Stephen King's word processor, for example). Another collector, and sometime 'friend' of Ngemi's, Hobbs Baranov, is a retired cryptographer and mathematician with connections in the American National Security Agency. Cayce strikes a deal with him: she buys a Curta calculator for him and he finds the email address to which the watermark code was sent. Using this email address Cayce makes contact with Stella Volkova whose sister Nora is the maker of the film clips.
Cayce flies to Moscow to meet Stella in person and watch Nora work. Nora is brain damaged from an assassination attempt and can only express herself through film. At her hotel, Cayce is intercepted and drugged by Dorotea and wakes up in a mysterious prison facility. Cayce escapes; exhausted, disoriented and lost, she nearly collapses as Parkaboy, who upon Cayce's request was flown to Moscow, retrieves her and brings her to the prison where the film is processed. There Hubertus, Stella and Nora's uncle Andrei, and the latter's security employees are waiting for her. Over dinner with Cayce, the Russians reveal that they have been spying on her since she posted to a discussion forum speculating that the clips may be controlled by the Russian Mafia. They had let her track the clips to expose any security breaches in their distribution network. The Russians surrender all the information they had collected on her father's disappearance and the book ends with Cayce coming to terms with his absence while in Paris with Parkaboy, whose real name is Peter Gilbert.
## Characters
- Cayce Pollard – A 32-year-old woman who lives in New York City. She pronounces her given name "Case" although her parents named her after Edgar Cayce. She uses her interest in marketing trends and fads, and her psychological sensitivity to logos and advertising, in her work as an advertising consultant. Her sensitivity becomes a phobia towards older corporate mascots, especially the Michelin Man. She wears only black, gray or white, usually Fruit of the Loom shrunken cotton T-shirts (all tags removed) with Levis jeans (with the trademarks filed off the buttons) or skirts, tights, boots, as well as a black Buzz Rickson MA-1 bomber jacket. (Buzz Rickson did not produce the MA-1 in black, but due to demand created by the novel, began offering a "William Gibson collection" black MA-1.)
- Hubertus Bigend – The 35-year-old founder of advertising agency Blue Ant. He was born in Belgium but educated at a British boarding school and at Harvard University.
- Dorotea Benedetti – The representative of the graphic design company. She has a background in industrial espionage and is secretly hired to encourage Cayce to leave London without accepting Bigend's offer to track the film clips.
- Bernard Stonestreet – A representative of the advertising agency Blue Ant.
- "Parkaboy"/Peter Gilbert – Cayce's friend from the online discussion forum. He lives in Chicago and describes himself as a "middle-aged white guy since 1967".
- Boone Chu – A Chinese-American living in Washington state, but raised in Oklahoma. He had a failed start-up company specializing in security. He is hired to assist Cayce in the search for the maker of the footage.
- Voytek Biroshak – A blond man born in Poland and raised in Russia. He acquires and sells antique calculators to raise funds for an exhibition on Sinclair ZX81 computers.
- Damien Pease – A 30-year-old friend of Cayce whose flat she stays at while in London. He is a video director shooting a documentary on WWII battleground excavation near Stalingrad.
- Hobbs Baranov – A former NSA cryptographer and mathematician. He collects antique calculators and sells intelligence as he squats near Poole with a Gypsy group.
- ' – Creator of website, discussion group, and chatroom Fetish:Footage:Forum that Cayce frequents. The website's intention is to discuss the anonymous film postings.
## Style and story elements
The novel uses a third-person narrative in the present tense with a somber tone reminiscent of a "low-level post-apocalypticism". Cayce's memories of the September 11, 2001 attacks, which briefly use the future tense, are told by Gibson as "a Benjaminian seed of time", as one reviewer calls it, because of the monistic and lyrical descriptions of Cayce's relationship to objects with the attacks in the background. Two neologisms appear in the novel: gender-bait and mirror-world. Gibson created the term mirror-world to acknowledge a locational-specific distinction in a manufactured object that emerged from a parallel development process, for example opposite-side driving or varied electrical outlets. Gender-bait refers to a male posing as a female online to elicit positive responses. The term coolhunter, not coined by Gibson but used in the marketing industry for several years, is used to describe Cayce's profession of identifying the roots of emerging trends.
The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif representing a break with the past with Cayce's father, who disappears during the attacks, as the personification of the 20th century. Gibson viewed the attacks as a nodal point after which "nothing is really the same". One reviewer commented that in "Gibson's view, 9-11 was the end of history; after it we are without a history, careening toward an unknown future without the benefit of a past—our lives before 9-11 are now irrelevant." Cayce's search for her father and Damien's excavation of the German bomber symbolize the historicist search for a method to interpret people's actions in the past. Coming to terms with her father's disappearance may be interpreted as a requiem for those lost to the 20th century, something that may have been influenced by Gibson coming to terms with the loss of his own father.
The film clips are a motif used to enhance the theme of the desire to find meaning or detect patterns. They are released over the internet and gain a cult following, in the same way that the lonelygirl15 videoblog gained an international following in 2006. Corporate interest in the footage is aroused by its originality and global distribution methods. The characters debate whether the anonymous clips are part of a complete narrative or a work in progress, and when or where they were shot. This enigmatic nature of the footage is said to metaphorically represent the nature of the confusing and uncertain post-9/11 future. The author Dennis Danvers has remarked that the footage being edited down to a single frame is like the world compressed into a single novel. The footage, released freely to a global audience with a lack of time or place indicators, has also been contrasted to Pattern Recognition written under contract for a large corporation and which uses liminal name-dropping that definitively sets it in London, Tokyo, and Moscow in 2002.
## Major themes
### Pattern recognition
The central theme throughout the novel involves the natural human propensity to search for meaning with the constant risk of apophenia. Followers of the seemingly random clips seek connections and meaningfulness in them but are revealed to be victims of apophenia as the clips are just edited surveillance camera footage. Likewise, Cayce's mother turns to investigating electronic voice phenomena after Cayce's father disappears. Science fiction critic Thomas Wagner underscores the desire for meaning, or pattern recognition, using a comparison between the film clips and Cayce's search for her father after the attacks:
> [T]he very randomness and ineffability of the clips flies in the face of our natural human tendency towards pattern recognition ... [T]he subculture that surrounds "following the footage" ... [is] an effective plot device for underscoring the novel's post-9/11 themes: to wit, the uncertainty of the fabric of day-to-day life people began to feel following that event ... [We] as people don't like uncertainty, don't like knowing that there's something we can't comprehend. And if we can't fit something into an existing pattern, then by golly we'll come up with one.
Within the marketing world, Cayce is portrayed not as an outside rebel, but rather a paragon of the system. Inescapably within the system, she seeks an epistemological perspective to objectively interpret patterns. The review in The Village Voice calls this search "a survival tactic within the context of no context—dowsing for meaning, and sometimes settling for the illusion of meaning".
### Memory of history
Using 20th-century relics, such as a Curta calculator, an excavated Stuka, Hobbs Baranov, and Voytek's planned ZX81 show, Gibson raises the question of how a contemporary society views past societies. Gibson portrays the past century as dominated by conflict, suspicion, and espionage. Following the disappearance of Cayce's father, a designer of embassy security systems, on September 11, 2001, Cayce is left feeling "ungrieved" until she reviews footage and records of that day tracking his movements until he vanishes.
Following this line of thought Gibson raises the question of how the future will view today's society. The novel "adopts a postmodern historicism" perspective, through the arguments presented by Bigend, Cayce, and Parkaboy. Bigend and Cayce's view of history are compared to those of philosopher Benedetto Croce in that they believe history is open for interpretation when re-written from the frame of reference of another society. Parkaboy rejects this view, believing that history can be an exact science.
### Originality and monoculture
The book explores a tension between originality and monoculture by focusing on the artist's relationship with a commercialized world and its marketing of free art and consumer products. Critic Lisa Zeidner argues that the artist's "loyalty and love" involved with creating originality counters Bigend's assertion that everything is a reflection of something else and that the creative process no longer rests with the individual. Commercialism is portrayed as a monoculture that assimilates originality. The Tommy Hilfiger brand is used as an example, "simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A dilute tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row ... There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul."
One critic points out that the marketing agency Blue Ant is named after the wasp Blue Ant: "it's a wasp with a painful sting. The female hunts for a ground-dwelling cricket. She paralyses it with a sting and lays her egg on it. The still living yet immobile cricket becomes food for the wasp's young. What a clever metaphor for the process of targeting, commodifying, and marketing cool." On the other hand, as Rudy Rucker notes, while new art is constantly threatened by commodification, it is dependent on the monoculture for its launching point and uniqueness. Gibson's product positioning language and Cayce's analysis of consumerist trends show that society is not a victim of consumerism, but rather its creator who helps shape it without ever stepping outside it. Alex Link argues that rather than a simple attack on consumerism outright, the novel outlines a complex interrelationship between art, brand design, and terrorism as varying attitudes to history, terror, and community.
### Branding, identity, and globalization
The novel's language is viewed as rife with labeling and product placements. Postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson calls it "a kind of hyped-up name-dropping ... [where] an encyclopaedic familiarity with the fashions ... [creates] class status as a matter of knowing the score rather than of having money and power". He also calls it "postmodern nominalism" in that the names express the new and fashionable. This name-dropping demonstrates how commercialism has created and named new objects and experiences and renamed (or re-created) some that already existed. This naming includes nationalities; there are eight references to nationality (or locality) in the first three pages. Zeidner wrote that the novel's "new century is unsettlingly transitional making it difficult to maintain an individual identity". One character argues that "there will soon be no national identity left ... [as] all experience [will be] reduced, by the spectral hand of marketing, to price-point variations on the same thing." This is juxtaposed against the footage that contains no hints of time period or location. Globalization is represented by characters of varying nationalities, ease of international travel, portable instant communication, and commercial monoculture recognizable across international markets. As an example, Gibson writes how one 'yes or no' decision by Cayce on the logo will impact the lives of the people in remote places who will manufacture the logos and how it will infect their dreams.
## Genre
While some reviewers regard the novel as a thriller, others see it as an example of post-millennial science fiction with stories set in the "technocultural future-present". Some reviewers note that the novel furthers the post-millennial trend in science fiction of illustrating society's inability to imagine a definitive future and the use of technologies once considered advanced or academic now commonplace within society and its vernacular. Gibson said that the only science fiction elements are "[t]he Footage and Cayce's special talents" but that he "never bought that conceit that science fiction is about the future". Dennis Danvers explained the use of science fiction as a narrative strategy:
> [s]cience fiction, in effect, has become a narrative strategy, a way of approaching story, in which not only characters must be invented, but the world and its ways as well, without resorting to magic or the supernatural, where the fantasy folks work. A realist wrestling with the woes of the middle class can leave the world out of it by and large except for an occasional swipe at the shallowness of suburbia. A science fiction writer must invent the world where the story takes place, often from the ground up, a process usually called world-building. In other words, in a science fiction novel, the world itself is a distinctive and crucial character in the plot, without whom the story could not take place, whether it's the world of Dune or Neuromancer or 1984. The world is the story as much as the story is in the world. Part of Gibson's point ... is that we live in a time of such accelerated change and layered realities, that we're all in that boat, like it or not. A novel set in the "real world" now has to answer the question, "Which one?"
These elements, and the use of the September 11, 2001 attacks as a breaking point from the past, led academics to label it a postmodern novel. The attacks mark the point where the 'modern', that is the 20th-century certainty in society's advancement towards a better future, changed to the 'postmodern', that is the 21st-century uncertainty in which future will develop. Fredric Jameson finds Gibson using culture as the determinant of change for the first time with this novel, rather than technology. Jameson focuses on the novel's "postmodern nominalism" that uses brand names to refresh old objects and experiences.
In post-structural literary theory Cayce is compared with the main character, Oedipa Maas, of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 as detectives interpreting clues but with neither the character nor the reader knowing if there actually is a pattern to be found and, if there is one, whether it is real or conspiracy. Gibson's use of name-dropping brands to create a sense of "in-group style ... of those in the know" is traced back to Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V. . Gibson's writing style is said to be similar to Raymond Chandler's detective stories and Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers that used MacGuffins (the identity of the maker of the footage, in this case) to drive the story. Gibson's social observations are influenced by the works of Naomi Klein and Malcolm Gladwell.
While markedly different from his previous writing, in that it is not set in an imaginary future with imaginary technologies, Pattern Recognition includes many of his previous elements, including impacts of technology shifts on society, Japanese computer experts and Russian mafia figures. In common with Gibson's previous work, Paul Di Filippo found the following in Pattern Recognition: "the close observation of the culture's bleeding edge; an analysis of the ways technology molds our every moment; the contrasting of boardroom with street; the impossibility and dire necessity of making art in the face of instant co-optation; the damaged loner facing the powers-that-be, for both principle and profit".
## Reception
Pattern Recognition was released on February 3, 2003, as Gibson launched a 15-city tour. The novel was featured on the January 19 cover of The New York Times Book Review. In the American market it peaked at number four on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction on February 23 and spent nine weeks on USA Today's Top 150 Best-Selling Books peaking at number 34. In the Canadian market, the novel peaked at number three on The Globe and Mail's best seller list on February 15 in the hardcover fiction category. The novel was shortlisted for the 2004 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award.
Gibson's writing was positively received by science fiction writers Dennis Danvers, Candas Jane Dorsey, and Rudy Rucker. Rucker has written: "[w]ith a poet's touch, he tiles words into wonderful mosaics" and Danvers wrote that "no sentence has a subject if it can do without one". One critic found the prose to be as "hard and compact as glacier ice" and another that it "gives us sharply observed small moments inscribed with crystalline clarity". Gibson's descriptions of interiors and of the built environments of Tokyo, Russia and London were singled out as impressive, and The Village Voices review remarked that "Gibson expertly replicates the biosphere of a discussion board: the coffee-shop intimacy, the fishbowl paranoia, the splintering factions, the inevitable flame war". Lisa Zeidner of The New York Times Book Review elaborated:
> As usual, Gibson's prose is ... corpuscular, crenelated. His sentences slide from silk to steel, and take tonal joy rides from the ironic to the earnest. But he never gets lost in the language, as he sometimes has in the past. Structurally, this may be his most confident novel. The secondary characters and their subplots are more fully developed, right down to their personal e-mail styles. Without any metafictional grandstanding, Gibson nails the texture of Internet culture: how it feels to be close to someone you know only as a voice in a chat room, or to fret about someone spying on your browser's list of sites visited.
Filled with name-dropping of businesses and products, such as MUJI, Hotmail, iBook, Netscape, and G4, the language of the novel was judged by one critic to be "awkward in its effort to appear "cool" " while other critics have found it overdone and feared it would quickly date the novel. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review commented that the "constant, unadulterated "hipster-technocrat, cyber-MTV" lingo [is] overdone and inappropriate" On the technology, Cory Doctorow found Gibson's use of watermarks and keystroke logging to be hollow and has noted that "Gibson is no technologist, he's an accomplished and insightful social critic ... and he treats these items from the real world as metaphor. But ... Gibson's metaphorical treatment of these technologies will date this very fine book".
Some critics found the plot to be a conventional "unravel-the-secret" and "woman on a quest" thriller. Toby Litt wrote that "[j]udged just as a thriller, Pattern Recognition takes too long to kickstart, gives its big secrets away before it should and never puts the heroine in believable peril". The conclusion, called "unnecessarily pat" by one critic, was compared by Litt with the "ultimate fantasy ending of 1980s movies – the heroine has lucked out without selling out, has kept her integrity but still ended up filthy rich." The review in the Library Journal called the novel a "melodrama of beset geekdom" that "may well reveal the emptiness at the core of Gibson's other fiction", but recommended it for all libraries due to the author's popularity.
## Publication history
The hardcover edition, released in February 2003, was published by the Penguin Group imprint G. P. Putnam's Sons. Berkley Books published the trade paperback one year later, on February 3, 2004, and a mass market paperback in February 2005. In the UK the paperback was published by Penguin Books a year after its Viking Press imprint published the hardcover version. In 2004 it was published in French, Danish, Japanese, German, and Spanish. In 2005 the book was published in Russia. The translation made by Nikita Krasnikov was awarded as the best translation of the year.
Tantor Media published the 10.5-hour-long, unabridged audiobook on April 1, 2004, and re-released it on January 1, 2005. Voiced by Shelly Frasier, it was criticized by John Adams of Locus as being pleasant but with distracting dialects.
## Adaptations
The digital radio station BBC 7 broadcast (now BBC Radio 4 Extra) an abridged version of the novel, voiced by Lorelei King, in five 30-minute episodes in February and October 2007. Post-punk band Sonic Youth included a track called "Pattern Recognition" on their 2004 album Sonic Nurse that opens with the lyric "I'm a cool hunter making you my way". A film adaptation was initiated in April 2004 with producer Steve Golin's production company Anonymous Content and the studio Warner Bros. Pictures hiring director Peter Weir. Screenwriters David Arata, D. B. Weiss, and Weir co-wrote the screenplay but in May 2007, Gibson commented on his personal blog that he believed Weir would not be proceeding with the project.
|
703,112 |
William Borah
| 1,169,073,122 |
American politician (1865–1940)
|
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"Candidates in the 1920 United States presidential election",
"Candidates in the 1936 United States presidential election",
"Chairmen of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations",
"Idaho Republicans",
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"Non-interventionism",
"People from Lyons, Kansas",
"People from Wayne County, Illinois",
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William Edgar Borah (June 29, 1865 – January 19, 1940) was an outspoken Republican United States Senator, one of the best-known figures in Idaho's history. A progressive who served from 1907 until his death in 1940, Borah is often considered an isolationist, because he led the Irreconcilables, senators who would not accept the Treaty of Versailles, Senate ratification of which would have made the U.S. part of the League of Nations.
Borah was born in rural Illinois to a large farming family. He studied at the University of Kansas and became a lawyer in that state before seeking greater opportunities in Idaho. He quickly rose in the law and in state politics, and after a failed run for the House of Representatives in 1896 and one for the United States Senate in 1903, was elected to the Senate in 1907. Before he took his seat in December of that year, he was involved in two prominent legal cases. One, the murder conspiracy trial of Big Bill Haywood, gained Borah fame though Haywood was found not guilty and the other, a prosecution of Borah for land fraud, made him appear a victim of political malice even before his acquittal.
In the Senate, Borah became one of the progressive insurgents who challenged President William Howard Taft's policies, though Borah refused to support former president Theodore Roosevelt's third-party bid against Taft in 1912. Borah reluctantly voted for war in 1917 and, once it concluded, he fought against the Versailles treaty, and the Senate did not ratify it. Remaining a maverick, Borah often fought with the Republican presidents in office between 1921 and 1933, though Calvin Coolidge offered to make Borah his running mate in 1924. Borah campaigned for Herbert Hoover in 1928, something he rarely did for presidential candidates and never did again.
Deprived of his post as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the Democrats took control of the Senate in 1933, Borah agreed with some of the New Deal legislation, but opposed other proposals. He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1936, but party regulars were not inclined to allow a longtime maverick to head the ticket. In his final years, he felt he might be able to settle differences in Europe by meeting with Hitler; though he did not go, this has not enhanced his historical reputation. Borah died in 1940; his statue, presented by the state of Idaho in 1947, stands in the National Statuary Hall Collection.
## Childhood and early career
William Edgar Borah was born in Jasper Township, Illinois, near Fairfield in Wayne County. His parents were farmers Elizabeth (West) and William Nathan Borah. Borah was distantly related to Katharina von Bora, the Catholic nun who left her convent in the 16th century and married reformer Martin Luther. His Borah ancestors came to America in about 1760, fought in the Revolutionary War, and moved west with the frontier. The young William E. Borah was the seventh of ten children, and the third son.
Although Borah was not a good student, at an early age he began to love oratory and the written word. Borah was educated at Tom's Prairie School, near Fairfield. When Borah exhausted its rudimentary resources, his father sent him in 1881 to Southern Illinois Academy, a Cumberland Presbyterian academy at Enfield, to train for the ministry. The 63 students there included two future U.S. senators, Borah and Wesley Jones, who would represent the state of Washington; the two often debated as schoolboys. Instead of becoming a preacher, Borah was in 1882 expelled for hitching rides on the Illinois Central to spend the night in the town of Carmi.
He ran away from home with an itinerant Shakespearean company, but his father persuaded him to return. In his late teenage years, he became interested in the law, and later stated, "I can't remember when I didn't want to be a lawyer ... there is no other profession where one can be absolutely independent".
With his father finally accepting his ambition to be a lawyer rather than a clergyman, Borah in 1883 went to live with his sister Sue in Lyons, Kansas; her husband, Ansel M. Lasley, was an attorney. Borah initially worked as a teacher, but became so engrossed in historical topics at the town library that he was ill-prepared for class; he and the school parted ways. In 1885 Borah enrolled at the University of Kansas, and rented an inexpensive room in a professor's home in Lawrence; he studied alongside students who would become prominent, such as William Allen White and Fred Funston. Borah was working his way through college, but his plans were scuttled when he contracted tuberculosis in early 1887. He had to return to Lyons, where his sister nursed him to health, and he began to read law under his brother-in-law Lasley's supervision. Borah passed the bar examination in September 1887, and went into partnership with his brother-in-law.
The mayor of Lyons appointed Borah as city attorney in 1889, but the young lawyer felt that he was destined for bigger things than a small Kansas town suffering in the hard times that persisted on the prairie in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Following the advice attributed to Horace Greeley, Borah chose to go west and grow up with the country. In October 1890, uncertain of his destination, he boarded the Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha. On the advice of a gambler on board the train, Borah decided to settle in Boise, Idaho. His biographer, Marian C. McKenna, said that Boise was "as far west as his pocketbook would take him".
## Pre-Senate career
### Idaho lawyer
Idaho had been admitted to the Union earlier in 1890, and Boise, the state capital, was a boom town, where the police and courts were not yet fully effective. Borah's first case was referred to him by the gambler who had advised him on board the train; the young attorney was asked to defend a man accused of murder for shooting a Chinese immigrant in the back. Borah gained an unasked-for dismissal when the judge decided that killing a Chinese male was at worst manslaughter. Borah prospered in Boise, both in law and in politics. In 1892 he served as chair of the Republican State Central Committee. He served as political secretary to Governor William J. McConnell. In 1895 Borah married the governor's daughter, Mary McConnell. They were married until Borah's death, but had no children together.
Idaho, a mining state, was fraught with labor tensions, and related violence was common by both employers and workers. In 1899, there was a strike, and a large group of miners dynamited facilities belonging to a mining company that refused to recognize the union. They had hijacked a train to travel to destroy the company's plant. Someone in the mob shot and killed a strikebreaker. Governor Frank Steunenberg declared martial law and had more than one thousand miners arrested. Paul Corcoran, secretary of the union, was charged with murder. Borah was engaged as a prosecutor in a trial that began at Wallace on July 8, 1899. Prosecution witnesses testified to having seen Corcoran sitting on top of the train, rifle in hand, and later leaping to the platform. The defense contended that, given the sharp curves and rough roadbed of the rail line, no one could have sat on top of the train, nor jumped from it without severe injury. Borah took the jury to the train line and demonstrated how Corcoran could have acted. He drew on his skills as a teenage rail rider to ride the top of the train, and jump from it to the platform without injury. Corcoran was convicted, but his death sentence was commuted. He was pardoned in 1901, after Steunenberg left office. Borah gained wide acclaim for his dramatic prosecution of the case.
### Senate contender
In 1896, Borah joined many Idahoans, including Senator Fred Dubois, in bolting the Republican Party to support the presidential campaign of Democrat William Jennings Bryan—free silver, which Bryan advocated, was extremely popular in Idaho. Borah thus became a Silver Republican in opposition to the campaign of the Republican presidential candidate, former Ohio governor William McKinley. Borah ran for the House of Representatives that year, but knew that with the silver vote split between himself and a Democrat-Populist fusion candidate, he had little chance of winning. He concentrated on making speeches aimed at gaining a legislature that would re-elect Dubois—until 1913, state legislatures chose senators. Bryan, Dubois, and Borah were all defeated.
In 1898, Borah supported the Spanish–American War and remained loyal to the Silver Republicans. By 1900, Borah deemed the silver issue of minimal importance due to increased gold production and national prosperity,. With other former silverites, he made an unapologetic return to the Republican Party. He made speeches for McKinley, who was re-elected. Bryan, however, took Idaho's electoral votes for a second time. Dubois, though nominally remaining a Silver Republican, gained control of the state Democratic Party, and was returned to the US Senate by the Idaho Legislature.
Borah's legal practice had made him prominent in southern Idaho, and in 1902 he sought election to the Senate. By this time, a united Republican Party was deemed likely to defeat the Democratic/Populist combine that had ruled Idaho for the past six years. The 1902 Idaho state Republican convention showed that Borah had, likely, the most support among the people, but the choice of senator was generally dictated by the caucus of the majority party in the legislature. In the 1902 election, Republicans retook control, electing a governor of their party, as well as the state's only House member and a large majority in the legislature. Three other Republicans were seeking the Senate seat, including Weldon B. Heyburn, a mining lawyer from the northern part of the state. When the legislature met in early 1903, Borah led on early caucus ballots, but then the other candidates withdrew and backed Heyburn; he was chosen by the caucus, and then by the legislature. There were many rumors of corruption in the choice of Heyburn, and Borah determined that the defeat would not end his political career. He decided to seek the seat of Senator Dubois (by then a Democrat) when it was filled by the legislature in early 1907.
At the state convention at Pocatello in 1904, Borah made a speech in support of the election of Theodore Roosevelt for a full term as president, which was widely applauded. But the Old Guard Republicans in Idaho opposed him and they were determined to defeat Borah in his second bid for the Senate. The same year, Dubois damaged his prospects for a third term by his opposition to the appointment of H. Smith Woolley, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (many Idahoans adhered to that faith), as assayer-in-charge of the United States Assay Office at Boise. Dubois had advanced politically through anti-Mormonism in the 1880s, but the issue was more or less dead in Idaho by 1904. Woolley was confirmed by the U.S. Senate despite Dubois's opposition, and Rufus G. Cook, in his article on the affair, suggested that Dubois was baited into acting by Borah and his supporters. The result was that Borah attacked Dubois for anti-Mormonism in both 1904 and 1906, which played well in the heavily Mormon counties in southeast Idaho.
Borah campaigned to end the caucus's role in selecting the Republican nominee for Senate, arguing that it should be decided by the people, in a convention. He drafted a resolution based on the one passed by the 1858 Illinois Republican convention that had endorsed Abraham Lincoln for Senate in his unsuccessful race against Stephen Douglas. He made a deal with a potential Republican rival, Governor Frank Gooding, whereby Borah would be nominated for Senate and Gooding for re-election and on August 1, 1906, both men received the state convention's endorsement by acclamation. Dubois was the Democratic choice, and Borah campaigned in support of President Roosevelt, argued that Republicans had brought the nation prosperity, and urged law and order. Voters re-elected Gooding, and selected a Republican legislature, which in January 1907 retired Dubois by electing Borah to the Senate.
### Haywood trial, lumber accusations
Borah presented his credentials at the Senate prior to the formal beginning of his first term on March 4, 1907. Until 1933, Congress's regular session began in December, allowing Borah time to participate in two major trials. One of these boosted him to national prominence for his role in the prosecution of Big Bill Haywood, and the other, with Borah as the defendant, placed him at risk of going to prison.
Haywood was tried for conspiracy in the murder of ex-governor Steunenberg, who was assassinated on December 30, 1905, by a bomb planted on the gate at his home in Caldwell. Borah, who viewed Steunenberg as a father figure, was among the prominent Idahoans who hurried to Caldwell, and who viewed Steunenberg's shattered body and the bloodstained snow. Suspicion quickly fell on a man registered at a local hotel who proved to be Harry Orchard, an explosives expert and assassin. Many labor leaders were embittered against Steunenberg for his actions while in office, and Orchard implicated four of them. The three who could be found, including Haywood, were extradited from Colorado to Idaho in February 1906. As the legal challenges wound through the courts, the case became a campaign issue both for Gooding, who had signed the extradition warrant, and for Borah, who joined the prosecution team and stated that trying the case was more important to him than being sent to the Senate.
While the Haywood defendants awaited trial, Borah and others were indicted in federal court for land fraud, having to do with the acquisition by the Barber Lumber Company (for which Borah had been counsel) of title to timber land claims. Individuals had filed for the claims, and then sold them to the Barber Company, although they had sworn that the claims were for their own use. United States Attorney for Idaho, Norman M. Ruick, had expanded the grand jury from 12 members to 22 before he could get a majority vote to indict Borah (by a 12–10 margin). The indictment was perceived to be political, with Ruick acting on behalf of Idaho Republicans who had lost state party leadership to the new senator. Roosevelt took a wait-and-see attitude, upsetting Borah, who considered resigning his Senate seat even if exonerated.
Haywood was the first tried of the three defendants; jury selection began on May 9, 1907, and proceedings in Boise continued for over two months. The courtroom, corridors, and even the lawn outside were often filled. Counsel for the prosecution included Borah and future governor James H. Hawley; famed attorney Clarence Darrow led the defense team. A highlight of the trial was Borah's cross-examination of Haywood, who denied personal animus against Steunenberg and any connection with the death. Another was Borah's final argument for the prosecution in rebuttal to Darrow on July 25 and 26.
Borah recalled the night of the ex-governor's murder:
> I saw Idaho dishonored and disgraced. I saw murder—no, not murder, a thousand times worse than murder; I saw anarchy wave its first bloody triumph in Idaho. And as I thought again I said "Thou living God, can the talents or the arts of counsel unteach the lesson of that hour?" No, no. Let us be brave, let us be faithful in this supreme test of trial and duty ... But you never had a duty imposed upon you which required more intelligence, more manhood, more courage than that which the people of Idaho assign to you this night in the final discharge of your duty.
Although Darrow won the day, gaining an acquittal for Haywood, the trial transformed Borah from an obscure freshman senator into a national figure. But Borah still had to face a jury on the land fraud charge, which he did in September 1907, a trial held then at Roosevelt's insistence—Ruick had asked for more time, but Borah wanted the matter disposed of before Congress met in December. Borah refused to challenge the indictment. At the trial, his counsel allowed Ruick free rein; the judge commented on Ruick's inability to tie Borah to any offense. The defense case consisted almost entirely of Borah's testimony, and the jury quickly acquitted him, setting off wild celebrations in Boise. Roosevelt dismissed Ruick as US Attorney in 1908.
## Senator (1907–1940)
### Progressive insurgent (1907–1913)
When Borah went to Washington for the Senate's regular session in December 1907, he was immediately a figure of note, not only for the dramatic events in Idaho but for keeping his Western habits, including wearing a ten-gallon hat. It was customary then for junior senators to wait perhaps a year before giving their maiden speech, but at Roosevelt's request, in April 1908, Borah spoke in defense of the president's dismissal of more than 200 African-American soldiers in the Brownsville Affair in Texas. The cause of their innocence had been pressed by the fiery Ohio senator, Joseph B. Foraker. The soldiers were accused of having shot up a Texas town near their military camp. Borah said that their alleged actions were as wrongful as the murder of Steunenberg. The accusations were later re-investigated. The government concluded that the soldiers had been accused because of racist officials in the town and, in 1972, long after the deaths of Roosevelt, Borah, and most of the soldiers, their dishonorable discharges from the military were reversed.
Republican leaders had heard that Borah was an attorney for corporations, who had prosecuted labor leaders; they believed him sympathetic to their Old Guard positions and assigned him to important committees. Borah believed in the rights of unions, so long as they did not commit violent acts. When Borah staked out progressive positions after his swearing-in, Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich, the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, hoped to put pressure on him through the Westerner's corporate clients, only to find that he had given up those representations before coming to Washington. Borah became one of a growing number of progressive Republicans in the Senate. Yet, Borah often opposed liberal legislation, finding fault with it or fearing it would increase the power of the federal government. Throughout his years in the Senate, in which he would serve until his death in 1940, his idiosyncratic positions would limit his effectiveness as a reformer.
After Roosevelt's hand-picked successor as president, former Secretary of War William Howard Taft, was inaugurated in March 1909, Congress battled over what became the Payne–Aldrich Tariff. At the time, tariffs were the main source of government revenue, and conflicts over them were passionate. The party platform had promised tariff reform, which progressive insurgents like Borah took to mean tariff reductions. Old Guard legislators like Senator Aldrich disagreed, and the final version actually raised rates by about one percent. The battles alienated Borah from Taft, who in a speech at Winona, Minnesota, described the new law as the best tariff the country had ever had. Borah and other progressives had proposed an income tax to be attached to the tariff bill; when this was unacceptable to Taft, who feared the Supreme Court would strike it down again, Borah repackaged it as a constitutional amendment, which passed the Senate unanimously and then the House, and to the surprise of many, passed the requisite number of state legislatures by 1913 to become the Sixteenth Amendment.
Borah also had a hand in the other constitutional amendment to be ratified in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the direct election of senators by the people. In 1909, due to Borah's influence, the Idaho Legislature passed an act for a statewide election for US senators, with legislators in theory bound to choose the winner. By 1912 over 30 states had similar laws. Borah promoted the amendment in the Senate in 1911 and 1912 until it passed Congress and, after a year, it was ratified by the states. With the power to elect senators having passed to the people, according to McKenna, the popular Borah "secured for himself a life option on a seat in the Senate".
Borah opposed Taft over a number of issues and in March 1912 announced his support of the candidacy of Roosevelt over Taft for the Republican presidential nomination. Most delegates to the 1912 Republican National Convention in Chicago selected by primary supported Roosevelt, but as most states held conventions to select delegates, Taft's control of the party machinery gave him the advantage. A number of states, especially in the South, had contested delegate seats, matters which would be initially settled by the Republican National Committee. Borah was Idaho's Republican National Committeeman and was one of those designated by the Roosevelt campaign to fight for it on the RNC. As Taft controlled the committee, Borah found few victories. Borah was among those who tried to find a compromise candidate, and was spoken of for that role, but all such efforts failed.
When it became clear Taft would be renominated, Roosevelt and his supporters bolted the party; the former president asked Borah to chair the organizational meeting of his new Progressive Party, but the Idahoan refused. Borah would not countenance leaving the Republican Party and did not support any of the presidential candidates (the Democrats nominated New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson). When Roosevelt came to Boise on a campaign swing in October, Borah felt he had to greet the former president and sit on the platform as Roosevelt spoke, though he was unwilling to endorse him. Roosevelt told in his speech of a long list of state delegate votes he said had been stolen from him, and after each, turned to Borah and asked, "Isn't that so, Senator Borah?" giving him no choice but to nod. It is not clear whether Borah voted for Roosevelt or Taft, he later stated both at different times. The main issue in Idaho was Borah's re-election, which was so popular that those disgruntled at the senator for not supporting Taft or Roosevelt kept quiet. Idahoans helped elect Wilson, but sent 80 Republican legislators out of 86 to Boise (with two of the six Democrats pledged to support Borah if necessary), who on January 14, 1913, returned William Borah for a second term.
### Wilson years
#### Prewar (1913–1917)
The Republicans both lost the presidency with Wilson's inauguration and went into the minority in the Senate. In the reshuffle of committee assignments that followed, Borah was given a seat on Foreign Relations. He would occupy it for the next quarter century, becoming one of America's leading figures on international affairs.
Borah generally approved of many of Wilson's proposals, but found reasons to vote against them. He voted against the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (believing it was a handout to the rich), after gaining a concession that no banker would initially be appointed to the Federal Reserve Board. Borah believed monopolies, public and private, should be broken up, and believed the new Federal Trade Commission would prove a means for trusts to control their regulators; he voted against the bill and stated he would not support confirmation of the first commissioners. The Clayton Antitrust Act, Borah opined, was merely a means by which Congress could appear to be dealing with the trusts without actually doing so.
In 1913 and early 1914, Borah clashed with Wilson and his Secretary of State, Bryan, over Latin American policy. Borah believed that there was an ongoing temptation for the U.S. to expand into Latin America, which the construction of the Panama Canal had made worse. If the U.S. did so, the local population would have to be subjugated or incorporated into the American political structure, neither of which he deemed possible. Believing that nations should be left unmolested by greater powers, Borah decried American interference in Latin American governments; he and Wilson clashed over policy towards Mexico, then in the throes of revolution. Wilson decided that the Mexican government, led by Victoriano Huerta, must pledge elections in which Huerta would not run before being recognized. Although Borah disliked Huerta as too close to the pre-revolutionary leadership, he felt that Mexicans should decide who ran Mexico, and argued against Wilson's plan.
After World War I began in 1914, it was Borah's view that the U.S. should keep completely out of it and he voted for legislation requested by Wilson barring armament shipments to the belligerents. Borah was disquieted when Wilson permitted credits to Great Britain and France after refusing them loans, as the credits served the same purpose, furthering the war. He was vigilant in support of the neutral rights of the United States, and was outraged both by the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania by the Germans and by infringements against Americans by British forces. Borah was spoken of as a possible candidate for president in 1916, but gained little support: the Old Guard disliked him almost as much as they did Roosevelt, while others questioned whether a man so free from the discipline of the party could lead its ranks. Borah stated he lacked the money to run. He did work behind the scenes to find a candidate that would reunite the Republicans and holdout Progressives: a member of a joint committee of the two parties' conventions to seek re-unification, Borah achieved a friendly reception when he addressed the Progressive convention. The Republicans nominated Charles Evans Hughes, and Progressive leaders reluctantly backed him, but some former Roosevelt supporters refused to support Hughes. Borah campaigned for the Republican presidential candidate (something he would do only once more, for Hoover in 1928), but Wilson narrowly won re-election.
#### World War and Versailles treaty (1917–1920)
After Germany resumed unlimited submarine warfare in early 1917, many considered U.S. entry into the war inevitable, though Borah expressed hope it might still be avoided. Nevertheless, he supported Wilson on legislation to arm merchant ships, and voted in favor when the president requested a declaration of war in April 1917. He made it clear that in his view, the U.S. was going in to defend its own rights and had no common interest with the Allies beyond the defeat of the Central Powers. He repeated this often through the war: the United States sought no territory, and had no interest in French and British desires for territory and colonies. Borah, though a strong war supporter, was possibly the most prominent wartime advocate of progressive views, opposing the draft and the Espionage Act of 1917, and pressing Wilson for statements of limited war aims. Borah's term was to expire in 1919; never a wealthy person and hard-hit by the high cost of living in wartime Washington, he considered leaving the Senate and practicing law in a major New York firm. However, he felt needed in the Senate and in Idaho, as both of the state's seats would be up for election in November 1918 due to the death of Borah's junior colleague, James H. Brady. Even President Wilson urged Borah's re-election in a letter to former senator Dubois. Borah received two-thirds of the vote in his bid for a third term, while former governor Gooding narrowly won Brady's seat. Nationally, the Republicans retook control of the Senate with a 49–47 majority.
That the war would not last long beyond the election was clear in the final days of the 1918 congressional midterm election campaign, which was fought in part to decide which party would control the postwar peace process. Wilson hoped for a treaty based on the Fourteen Points and had urged formation of a postwar organization to assure peace. Borah, well aware the U.S. would play a large role at the peace table, saw such an organization as a trap that would inevitably involve the U.S. whenever conflict developed in Europe. He decided to oppose Wilson's plan despite his personal admiration for the president. Like many Westerners, Borah held agrarian ideals, and linked them with a policy of isolationism and avoiding foreign entanglements he believed had served the nation well. Borah took pains, throughout the battle, to stress that he had opposed the principle of a league before it became a partisan issue; according to McKenna, in Borah's League fight, "of partisanship, jealousy, or personal hostility there is no trace".
Republicans felt Wilson was making a political issue of the peace, especially when the president urged a Democratic Congress prior to the 1918 election, and attended the Paris Peace Conference in person, taking no Republican members of Congress on his delegation. Wilson had felt his statement was the only chance of getting a Senate that might ratify a treaty for a postwar organization to keep the peace, and deemed conciliation pointless. In Paris, Wilson and other leaders negotiated what would become the League of Nations, an international organization that world leaders hoped that through diplomacy, and if necessary, force, would assure peace. Republican senatorial opinion ranged from the Irreconcilables like Borah, who would not support any organization, to those who strongly favored one; none wanted Wilson to go into the 1920 presidential election with credit for having sorted out Europe. Once the general terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which included the Charter of the League of Nations, were presented by Wilson in February 1919, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, the incoming Senate Majority Leader, decided on a strategy: rather than outright opposition, Republicans would offer reservations to the treaty that Wilson could not accept.
A week after Wilson presented the treaty, Borah declined an invitation to the White House extended to him and other Senate and House members on the foreign relations committees, alleging there was no chance of common ground, though he wrote to Wilson's private secretary that no insult was intended. In the following months, Borah was a leader of the Irreconcilables. An especial target was Article X of the charter, obligating all members to defend each other's independence. The Irreconcilables argued that this would commit the U.S. to war without its consent; Borah stated that the U.S. might be forced to send thousands of men if there was conflict in Armenia. Other provisions were examined; Borah proposed that the U.S. representatives in Paris be asked to press the issue of Irish independence, but the Senate took no action. Borah found the provisions of the treaty regarding Germany to be shocking in their vindictiveness, and feared they might snuff out the new Weimar Republic at birth.
The small Republican majority in the Senate made Irreconcilable votes necessary to Lodge's strategy, and he met with Borah in April 1919, persuading him to go along with the plan of delay and reservations as the most likely to succeed, as it would allow the initial popular support for Wilson's proposal to diminish. Neither senator really liked or trusted the other, but they formed a wary pact to defeat the treaty. Lodge was also chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he delayed the treaty by convening a lengthy series of hearings, presiding over a committee packed with Irreconcilables, including Borah. As these hearings continued in the summer of 1919, Wilson undertook a speaking tour by train to get the public to press the Senate for ratification, a tour that ended in his collapse. In the months that followed, an ailing Wilson refused any compromise.
Borah helped write the majority report for the committee, recommending 45 amendments and 4 reservations. In November 1919, the Senate defeated both versions of the Treaty of Versailles, with and without what were called the Lodge Reservations. Borah, delighted, proclaimed the day the greatest since the end of the Civil War. The following January, the Senate considered the treaty again and Lodge wanted to convene a bipartisan group of senators to find a compromise. Borah, threatening party schism, met with Lodge behind closed doors, and Lodge withdrew his plan. The Senate voted once more, in March 1920, on the treaty with a version of the Lodge Reservations, and it failed again. According to Robert James Maddox in his book on Borah's influence on American foreign policy, the Irreconcilables "dictated to the majority leader as though they were the majority. Borah as much as any man deserves the credit—or the blame—for the League's defeat".
### Women's suffrage
Idaho had given women the right to vote in 1896, and Borah was a firm supporter of woman's suffrage. However, he did not support a constitutional amendment to accomplish this nationwide, feeling that states should not have the requirement that women vote imposed on them. Borah voted against the proposed amendment when it came up for a vote in 1914, and it did not pass. Activists felt that as a noted progressive, and as one who would face the voters for the first time as a senator in 1918, that he could be persuaded to support the amendment, and if not, unseated. When what would become the Nineteenth Amendment passed the House, Borah announced his opposition, writing to an Idahoan, "I am aware...[my position] will lead to much criticism among friends at home [but] I would rather give up the office [than] cast a vote...I do not believe in."
Activists determined to pressure Borah with petitions from his constituents, and former president Roosevelt sent him a note urging him to change his vote. This had no effect, and when the Senate voted on the amendment in early October 1918, it failed by two votes, with Borah voting in the negative. More petitions and pressure on Borah followed, and the senator agreed to meet with suffragist leader Alice Paul. After the meeting, Paul stated that Borah had agreed to support the amendment if re-elected, but the senator said he had agreed to no such thing. Nevertheless, Paul called off the efforts to sway or defeat Borah, and the senator retained his seat by nearly a two-to-one margin.
During the lame duck session of Congress that followed the election, Borah issued no public statement as to how he would vote when the amendment was brought up again. In February 1919, the Senate voted again, and Borah voted no—the amendment failed by one vote. Several of the new senators who took office in March 1919 were pledged to support the amendment, and on June 4, the Senate voted again, with the House having previously voted to approve the amendment. It passed with a margin of two votes, and was sent to the states for ratification (which was completed in August 1920), but Borah again voted no, one of only eight Republicans to do so.
### Harding and Coolidge years
Borah was determined to see that the Republican presidential candidate in 1920 was not pro-League. He supported his fellow Irreconcilable, California Senator Hiram Johnson, who had been Roosevelt's running mate in 1912. Borah alleged bribery on the part of the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, General Leonard Wood, and was snubbed when he demanded to know the League views of Wood's main rival, Illinois Governor Frank Lowden. When the 1920 Republican National Convention met in Chicago in June, delegates faced a deadlock both as to who should head the ticket, and as to the contents of the League plank of the party platform. The League fight was decided, with Borah's endorsement, by using language proposed by former Secretary of State Elihu Root supporting a league, rather than the League. The presidential stalemate was harder to resolve. A hater both of political intrigue and of tobacco, Borah played no part in the smoke-filled room discussions as the Republicans attempted to break the deadlock. He was initially unenthusiastic about the eventual nominee, Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, his colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee, as he was disappointed at the failure of Johnson's candidacy and disliked Harding's vague stance on the League. Nevertheless, Borah strongly endorsed Harding and his running mate, Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, who were victorious. Borah later stated he would have left the Senate had Harding lost.
Borah proved as idiosyncratic as ever in his views with Harding as president. The original idea for the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22 came from a resolution he introduced in December 1920. After the new Secretary of State, Charles Hughes, took the idea, Borah became an opponent, convinced the conference would lead the United States into the League of Nations through the back door. In 1921, when Harding nominated former president Taft as chief justice, Borah was one of four senators to oppose confirmation. Borah stated that Taft, at 63, was too old and as a politician had been absent for decades from the practice of law. In 1922 and 1923, Borah spoke against passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which had passed the House. A strong supporter of state sovereignty, he believed that punishing state officials for failure to prevent lynchings was unconstitutional, and that if the states could not prevent such murders, federal legislation would do no good. The bill was defeated by filibuster in the Senate by Southern Democrats. When another bill was introduced in 1935 and 1938, Borah continued to speak against it, by that time saying that it was no longer needed, as the number of lynchings had dropped sharply.
Harding's death in August 1923 brought Calvin Coolidge to the White House. Borah had been dismayed by Harding's conservative views, and believed Coolidge had shown liberal tendencies as a governor. He met with Coolidge multiple times in late 1923, and found the new president interested in his ideas on policies foreign and domestic. Borah was encouraged when Coolidge included in his annual message to Congress a suggestion that he might open talks with the Soviet Union on trade—the Bolshevik government had not been recognized since the 1917 October Revolution and Borah had long urged relations. Under pressure from the Old Guard, Coolidge quickly walked back his proposal, depressing Borah, who concluded the president had deceived him. In early 1924, the Teapot Dome scandal broke, and although Coolidge had no involvement in the affair, some of the implicated cabinet officers, including Attorney General Harry Daugherty, remained in office, backed by the Old Guard. Coolidge sought the support of Borah in the crisis; his price was Daugherty's firing. The president stalled Borah, and when Daugherty eventually resigned under pressure, it was due more to events than Borah. When the president was nominated for election in his own right at the 1924 Republican National Convention, he offered the vice presidential nomination to Borah. By one account, when Coolidge asked Borah to join the ticket, the senator asked which position on it he was to occupy. The prospect of Borah as vice president appalled Coolidge's cabinet members and other Republican officials, and they were relieved when he refused. Borah spent less than a thousand dollars on his Senate re-election campaign that fall, and gained a fourth term with just under 80 percent of the vote. Coolidge and his vice-presidential choice, Charles G. Dawes easily won, though Borah did no campaigning for the Coolidge/Dawes ticket, alleging his re-election bid required his full attention.
Senator Lodge died in November 1924, making Borah the senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and he took its chairmanship. He could have become Judiciary Committee chairman instead, as the death of Frank Brandegee of Connecticut made Borah senior Republican on that committee as well. The Foreign Relations chairmanship greatly increased his influence, one quip was that the new Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, created policy by ringing Borah's doorbell. Borah continued to oppose American interventions in Latin America, often splitting from the Republican majority over the matter. Borah was an avid horseback rider, and Coolidge is supposed to have commented after viewing him exercising in Rock Creek Park that it "must bother the Senator to be going in the same direction as his horse".
Borah was involved through the 1920s in efforts for the outlawry of war. Chicago lawyer Salmon Levinson, who had formulated the plan to outlaw war, labored long to get the mercurial Borah on board as its spokesman. Maddox suggested that Borah was most enthusiastic about this plan when he needed it as a constructive alternative to defeat actions such as entry into the World Court, that he deemed entangling the U.S. abroad. By the time of the 1924 election, Levinson was frustrated with Borah, but Coolidge's statement after the election that outlawry was one of the issues he proposed to address, briefly resurrected Borah's enthusiasm. only to have it fall away again. It was not until 1927, when French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand proposed the U.S. and his nation enter into an agreement to "outlaw war" that Borah became interested again, though it took months of pestering by Levinson. In December 1927, Borah introduced a resolution calling for a multilateral version of Briand's proposal, and once the Kellogg–Briand Pact was negotiated and signed by various nations, secured ratification for that treaty by the Senate.
### Hoover and FDR
Borah hoped to be elected president in 1928, but his only chance was a deadlocked Republican convention. He was reluctant to support Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover for president, backing Ohio Senator Frank Willis instead, but after Willis collapsed and died at a campaign rally in late March, Borah began to find Hoover more to his liking. The Idahoan's support for Hoover became more solid as the campaign began to shape as a rural/urban divide. Borah was a strong backer of Prohibition, and the fact that Hoover was another "dry" influenced Borah in his support; the senator disliked the Democratic candidate, New York Governor Al Smith, an opponent of Prohibition, considering him a creature of Tammany Hall. Though Montana Senator Thomas J. Walsh commented on "Borah's recent conversion to Hoover", and some progressives were disheartened, Borah undertook a lengthy campaign tour, warning that he saw "the success of Tammany in national politics as nothing less than a national disaster". Hoover was elected and thanked Borah for "the enormous effect" of his support. He offered to make Borah Secretary of State, though deploring the loss to the Senate, but Borah declined.
Borah was not personally harmed by the stock market crash of October 1929, having sold any stocks and invested in government bonds. Thousands of Americans had borrowed on margin, and were ruined by the crash. Congress in June 1930 passed the Hawley–Smoot Tariff, sharply increasing rates on imports. Borah was one of 12 Republicans who joined Democrats in opposing the bill, which passed the Senate 44–42. Borah was up for election in 1930, and despite a minimal campaign effort, took over 70 percent of the vote in a bad year for Republicans. When he returned to Washington for the lame-duck session of the Senate beginning in December, Borah pressed the passage of legislation that would help business and suggested that members of Congress turn back their salary to the Treasury. The economy continued to worsen in the winter of 1931, and Borah urged relief legislation, stating that opponents argued "that for the Government to feed this woman and her sick children would destroy her self respect and make a bad citizen of her. Does anyone believe it? It is a cowardly imputation on the helpless. I resent it and I repudiate it."
When Congress reconvened in December 1931, the Republicans nominally controlled the Senate by the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Charles Curtis, but, as Hoover later wrote, there was no real majority as Borah and other progressives were against the administration. After the Bonus Army marched on Washington, Borah and Hoover agreed that no action should be taken on their demands so long as the ex-soldiers remained in the capital. Borah considered their presence intimidating to Congress, but was angered when they were forcibly dispersed.
Borah considered challenging Hoover for renomination in 1932, but concluded the president's control over the party machinery, especially in the South, could not be overcome. Borah disagreed with the platform of the 1932 Republican National Convention over Prohibition; after the party passed a vague compromise plank and renominated Hoover, Borah made a major address on June 20, gaining nationwide attention by attacking his party's platform for forty minutes. Between then and November, he rarely mentioned Hoover's name publicly, though he said late in the campaign that he would vote for the president. He made speeches discussing issues, not candidates, and did nothing to aid Hoover's doomed campaign against Franklin D. Roosevelt. When some Idahoans demanded that he support Hoover on pain of being opposed for renomination for Senate in 1936, Borah responded that he regretted if his quarter century in the Senate had left them with the impression he might be moved by such an ultimatum.
The Democratic landslide that accompanied Roosevelt's election cost Borah his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, but much of his influence was independent of party. Borah liked Roosevelt for his liberalism and his energy. Due to illness, Borah took only a limited role in Roosevelt's Hundred Days, though he did play a key part in the passage of Glass–Steagall in June 1933, helping forge a compromise that ended the opponents' filibuster. He opposed Roosevelt's calling in of gold, alleging that the government had no power to tell individuals what to do with their money. Borah opposed the National Recovery Act (NRA) and was gratified when it was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935. Borah's fifteen-year fight for the recognition of the USSR ended in 1933 when Roosevelt opened diplomatic relations.
### 1936 presidential campaign and final years
Borah ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1936, the first from Idaho to do so. His candidacy was opposed by the conservative Republican leadership. Borah praised Roosevelt for some of his policies, and deeply criticized the Republican Party. With only 25 Republicans left in the Senate, Borah saw an opportunity to recast the Republican Party along progressive lines, as he had long sought to do. He was opposed by the Republican organization, which sought to dilute his strength in the primaries by running state favorite son candidates in order to ensure a brokered convention. Despite being easily the leading primary vote-getter, Borah managed to win only a handful of delegates and took a majority of them in only one state, Wisconsin, where he had the endorsement of Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr. Borah refused to endorse the eventual candidate, Kansas Governor Alf Landon (who was nominated at the 1936 Republican National Convention), leading some to believe Borah might cross party lines and support Roosevelt. Ultimately, as he had four years earlier, he chose to endorse neither candidate. Borah was on the ballot that fall in Idaho, seeking a sixth term in the Senate. For the first time since the people had been given the right to elect senators, the Democrats ran a serious candidate against him, Governor C. Ben Ross. Although Idahoans overwhelmingly voted for Roosevelt, who won every state except Maine and Vermont, Borah still took over sixty percent of their votes in his re-election bid.
Only sixteen Republicans remained in the Senate, most progressives, when Congress met in January 1937, but Borah retained much influence as he was liked and respected by Democrats. Many of Roosevelt's New Deal policies, such as the NRA, were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court during Roosevelt's first term, but he had no opportunities to make an appointment to the court in his first four years. In 1937, Roosevelt proposed what came to be known as the court-packing scheme, that for every justice over the age of seventy, an additional one could be appointed. This would give Roosevelt six picks, but would require Congress to pass legislation, which Borah was immediately opposed, believing it would be the death of the Supreme Court as an independent institution. Although he refused to take the lead in the bipartisan opposition, Borah wrote a section of the committee report dealing with the history and independence of the court. When the matter came to the Senate floor, Borah was asked to make the opening speech, but again deferred to the Democratic majority, and Roosevelt's plan was defeated. The court crisis had also been defused by the retirement of the Senior Associate Justice, Willis Van Devanter, a Taft appointee. When Borah was asked if he had played a role in Van Devanter's retirement, he responded, "Well, guess for yourself. We live in the same apartment house."
After Hitler took control in Germany in 1933, Borah thought well of the new chancellor's repudiation of the war guilt and other clauses of the Versailles treaty, and saw much of value in his new social and economic programs. Despite the Nazi mistreatment of the Jews, Borah did not speak out against Nazi Germany, though many urged him to do so, as he felt that each nation had the right to run its own affairs. Borah opposed large-scale immigration by Jews from Germany, feeling that was "impractical with millions of Americans unemployed". By 1938, Borah was speaking out against the continued persecutions, but still felt that the European issue could be settled if Germany's former colonies were returned. After the Munich Conference in September 1938, Borah issued a statement far more critical of Britain and France for deceiving Czechoslovakia into dismemberment, than of Germany for her aggression.
Borah sought to visit Germany and see Hitler, hoping to settle the troubled international situation. He approached the German Embassy in Washington through intermediaries, and the Germans approved the trip, and even offered to pay, something Borah was unwilling to accept. Borah realized that such a journey would compromise him in foreign policy debates, and did not go; by August 1939, the U.S. was seeking to evacuate its citizens from Europe and the journey was no longer feasible. in September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, and World War II began, Borah mourned, "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler—all this might have been averted." This was said to William Kinsey Hutchinson, then International News Service's Washington Bureau Chief. Hutchinson indicated that Borah confided this "in words that ran like a prayer". McKenna noted, "It was fortuitous that the march of events prevented Borah from joining those pacifists and liberals ... who trudged up the hill to Berchtesgaden to lay before the Fuehrer their plans for world peace".
## Death
Midway through his sixth term on January 19, 1940, Borah died in his sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 74 at his home in Washington, D.C. His state funeral at the U.S. Capitol was held in the Senate chamber on Monday, January 22. A second funeral was held three days later at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise, where Borah's casket lay beneath the rotunda for six hours prior to the service. An estimated 23,000 passed by the bier or attended the funeral; Boise's population in 1940 was just over 26,100. He is buried in Morris Hill Cemetery in Boise.
The tributes to Borah on his death were many. William Gibbs McAdoo, a former Democratic senator, stated "You don't have to agree with every position taken to concede that he was an intellectual giant and one of the truly great men of our times." Ernest K. Lindley deemed Borah the "most effectively liberal voice in the Republican Party." Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' paper, Der Angriff, asserted, "American life loses a personality valued by friend or foe on account of his courage, honesty, and decent method of fighting." Borah's old classmate, Kansas editor William Allen White, called him "a righteous man who was wise and unafraid, who followed his star, never lowered his flag, and never lost his self-respect ... an honest man who dedicated his talents to his country's good." Columnist Raymond Clapper mourned, "there are no fighters on the progressive side [of the Republican Party]—no men like T.R. ... Borah was the last."
## Marriage and family
In 1895, Borah married Mary McConnell of Moscow, Idaho, daughter of Governor William J. McConnell. They first met in Moscow while he was campaigning for her father. They had no children and she lived in Washington, D.C., into the 1960s; she died in 1976 at the age of 105. Small and elegant, she was commonly known as "Little Borah".
Borah had an affair with his close friend Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the eldest child of Theodore Roosevelt. He was the biological father of her daughter, Paulina Longworth Sturm (1925–1957). One family friend said of Paulina, "everybody called her 'Aurora Borah Alice.'"
## Sites, memorials and cultural effect
In 1947, the state of Idaho presented a bronze statue of Borah to the National Statuary Hall Collection, sculpted by Bryant Baker. Idaho's highest point, Borah Peak, at 12,662 feet (3,859 m) was named for him in 1934, while he was dean of the Senate. Two public schools are named for him: Borah High School in Boise, opened in 1958, and Borah Elementary School in Coeur d'Alene. William E. Borah Apartment, Windsor Lodge, his longtime home in Washington was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1976.
Borah was the subject of a 1963 episode, "The Lion of Idaho", of the syndicated television anthology series Death Valley Days. In the episode, Borah as a young attorney (played by Steve Forrest) defends a woman in Nampa on a murder charge.
At the University of Idaho, an annual symposium on international problems and policy is held by the Borah Foundation, which operates under the university's auspices. The symposium is intended to honor Borah's memory "by considering the causes of war and the conditions necessary for peace in an international context". The inaugural edition was held in September 1931, and included Borah himself. Also affiliated with the university is the William Edgar Borah Outlawry of War Foundation, which was funded by a donation from Borah's colleague in the outlawry movement, Salmon Levinson, in 1929.
## Appraisal and legacy
Borah's biographer, McKenna, deemed him "an idealist, even a romantic. He fervently defended the idea of an innocent America, an America too much devoted to the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address, Jefferson's First Inaugural, and the Gettysburg Address to risk a compromise of its faith and a coarsening of its character by active entanglement with the Old World." John Chalmers Vinson, in his volume on Borah's involvement with the war outlawry movement, believed that the senator "spoke for a large part of the American public. He was the archetype of absolute insistence on unfettered national will that has been loosely described as isolationism. Further, he represented the struggle to preserve in full the traditions of a small republic remote from strong neighbors against the inroads of recurring crises faced by a world power." According to LeRoy Ashby in his book on Borah, he "emerged as one of the major figures in American reform politics [and] reached the peak of his prestige and influence during the Twenties". Maddox noted that "almost as suspicious of U.S. presidents as he was of foreign nations, Borah perceived threats everywhere".
Borah's effectiveness as a reformer was undercut by his tendency to abandon causes after initial enthusiasm, as Maddox put it, "although he was very skilled at speaking out, his unwillingness to do more than protest eventually earned him a reputation for futility." H. L. Mencken in 1925 deemed Borah "the Great Sham", and the one most responsible for stopping reform in its tracks. Harold L. Ickes wrote, most likely after the 1928 campaign, that progressives in the Senate, with no illusions left about Borah, called him "our spearless leader". Theodore Roosevelt described Borah as "entirely insincere", an insurgent whose chief talent was to "insurge".
Although Borah's career bridged two eras of reform, according to Ashby, "emotionally and intellectually he belonged with the older prewar [that is, pre-World War I] America. As New Deal enthusiast Edgar Kemler observed, he 'was overtaken by obsolescence at an early age'." Borah wrote in 1927, near the end of a decade of tumultuous change, "I cannot think of any views which I now have that I did not have before the war." In 1936, Time magazine noted that though Borah was the most famous senator of the century, and had long been "the great Moral Force of the Senate ... the conscience of the country has been placed in other pockets".
McKenna saw more than Borah becoming an antique in his own time, she saw damage inflicted by his positions: "time was to demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of the narrow nationalistic policy which the irreconcilables decreed and to which the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations submitted with such disastrous results." Borah's comment regretting that he could not have talked to Hitler has been repeatedly cited as evidence of naiveté in those who believe in the power of pure diplomacy. Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer referred to the statement in at least three of his columns, making an analogy to negotiating with China in 1989, with North Korea in 1994 and with Iran in 2006, and it was cited disparagingly in a 2006 speech by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Criticism of Borah meant little to the people of Idaho, who sent him to the Senate six times over thirty years in a rapidly changing America. Claudius O. Johnson, who studied Borah, explained their relationship:
> The Idaho people knew ... that he was very easy to approach, "as plain as an old shoe"; that he would listen at length to their problems, help if he could, say "No" if he must, and always show sympathetic understanding. That was his strength with the people—his simplicity, his approachability, his kindliness, his human sympathy ... In him they found release from their own verbal inhibitions; through him they felt their own strength. They were lovers of freedom, as independent as the hills and the canyons. This freedom and independence Borah proclaimed, and they understood ... He understood them, admired them, believed in them. They were his friends. In them he found inspiration and strength.
|
386,071 |
Zino's petrel
| 1,116,237,314 |
Small seabird in the gadfly petrel genus
|
[
"Birds described in 1934",
"Birds of Madeira",
"Endangered biota of Africa",
"Endemic fauna of Madeira",
"Pterodroma",
"Taxa named by Gregory Mathews"
] |
Zino's petrel (Pterodroma madeira) or the freira, is a species of small seabird in the gadfly petrel genus, endemic to the island of Madeira. This long-winged petrel has a grey back and wings, with a dark "W" marking across the wings, and a grey upper tail. The undersides of the wings are blackish apart from a triangle of white at the front edge near the body, and the belly is white with grey flanks. It is very similar in appearance to the slightly larger Fea's petrel, and separating these two Macaronesian species at sea is very challenging. It was formerly considered to be a subspecies of the soft-plumaged petrel, P. mollis, but they are not closely related, and Zino's was raised to the status of a species because of differences in morphology, calls, breeding behaviour and mitochondrial DNA. It is Europe's most endangered seabird, with breeding areas restricted to a few ledges high in the central mountains of Madeira.
Zino's petrel nests in burrows which are visited only at night, when they give their haunting calls. The single white egg is incubated by both adults, one sitting during the day while the other feeds on fish and squid at sea. Eggs, chicks and adults have been subject to predation by introduced cats and rats, and in the past have been taken for food by local shepherds. Predator control, and other measures such as the removal of grazing animals that trample the burrows, have enabled the population to recover to 65–80 breeding pairs; the species remains listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. However, conservation efforts had a major setback in August 2010 when fires killed three adults and 65 percent of the chicks. The population eventually recovered and was stable at 160 individuals by 2018.
## Taxonomy
The gadfly petrels in the genus Pterodroma are seabirds of temperate and tropical oceans. Many are little-known, and their often similar appearance have caused the taxonomy of the group to be rather fluid. The forms breeding in Macaronesia on Madeira, Bugio in the Desertas Islands, and in the Cape Verde archipelago were long considered to be subspecies of the Southern Hemisphere soft-plumaged petrel, P. mollis, but mitochondrial DNA analysis, and differences in size, vocalisations, breeding behaviour, showed that the northern birds are not closely related to P. mollis, and that the Bermuda petrel or Cahow may be the closest relative of the Macaronesian birds. Ornithologist George Sangster recommended establishing Zino's petrel on Madeira and Fea's petrel on the Desertas and Cape Verde as full species, and the species split was accepted by the Association of European Rarities Committees (AERC) in 2003.
Nunn and Zino estimated that the two Macaronesian species diverged at the end of the Early Pleistocene, 850,000 years ago. An analysis of feather lice taken from Fea's petrels, Pterodroma feae deserti, from Bugio Island, and from Zino's petrels from the Madeiran mainland showed that there were marked differences between the two seabirds in terms of the parasites they carried, suggesting that they have long been isolated since lice can normally only be transferred through physical contact in the nest. The species on Zino's petrel are most similar to those of the Bermuda petrel, whereas Fea's petrel's lice are like those of Caribbean and Pacific Pterodroma species. This suggests that despite the close physical proximity of the two species of gadfly petrel found in the Madeiran archipelago, they may have arisen from separate colonisations of mainland Madeira and, later, the Desertas Islands. Although their reproductive isolation has allowed the separate evolutionary development of the two species, genetic evidence shows the three Macaronesian petrels are each other's closest relatives.
The petrels breeding in the high central mountains of Madeira were first recorded in 1903 by German naturalist and priest Ernst Johann Schmitz, who failed to realise that they were different from the Fea's petrels he had seen in the Desertas. The species was formally described as a race of soft-plumaged petrel by Australian amateur ornithologist Gregory Mathews in 1934. Following the recognition of the Madeiran birds as a full species, they were named after the British ornithologist, Paul Alexander Zino, who was instrumental in their conservation during the latter half of the twentieth century. The genus name Pterodroma is derived from Greek πτερον, pteron, "a wing", and δρομος, dromos, "running", and refers to the bird's swift erratic flight. The specific madeira refers to the island on which it breeds. The Portuguese name Freira means "nun"; the inhabitants of Curral das Freiras (Nun's Valley) near the breeding site claimed that the nocturnal wailing of the petrels in the breeding season were the calls of the suffering souls of the nuns. The sisters had taken refuge in the valley from attacks on the island by French pirates in 1566 that lasted for 15 days.
Pterodroma petrel remains dated between 60,000 and 25,000 years BP were found in two cave sites in Gibraltar. They consist of a more abundant form similar in size to Zino's, and a larger, less common type. It is uncertain whether they represent the site of a former breeding colony, or are the result of a seabird wreck in which storms blow birds inland. They do suggest, however, that members of the genus were formerly more widespread.
## Description
This long-winged petrel is 32–34 cm (13–13 in) long with an 80–86 cm (31–34 in) , and an average weight of 290 g (10.3 in). It has a grey , grey wings with a dark "W" marking across them, and a grey upper tail. The undersides of the wings are blackish, apart from a triangle of white at the front edge near the body, and the is white with grey . The head has a mottled whitish-brown , a dark cap, and a dark spot below and behind the brown eye. The is black and the legs are flesh pink, the colour continuing onto the first third of the feet, the rest of the toes and webs being black-brown. It gives the general impression of a small Cory's or great shearwater, with a fast flight; in strong winds it shears high above the surface with angled wings. Nothing is known of the fresh juvenile or the moult sequence, and age assessment is currently not feasible.
This species is very similar in appearance to the Fea's petrel, but is smaller. The size difference and lighter flight may not be apparent at sea, especially with lone birds, but a recent study helped to clarify other useful features. Zino's has a diagnostically small, delicate, often rather long and slender bill, which may be obvious in the most slender-billed examples, which are probably mostly females, but can be difficult to determine in larger-billed, probably adult male, birds. Another useful feature is a large whitish panel on the . The wing panel is exclusive to Zino's but is only shown by 15% of the birds. Zino's has a more rounded wing tip, but P. feae deserti sometimes shows a rounded wing tip, so this feature is not diagnostic. Previously suggested criteria such as head, upper wing and flank patterns were found to be inconclusive. Off the eastern United States and the Azores, both Macaronesian petrels are easily distinguished from the larger Bermuda petrel by that species' , which are uniformly dark but for a pale grey .
This species at its breeding sites gives a long mournful call like the hooting of a tawny owl, and a much less frequent sound like the whimpering of a pup. It is silent at sea. The breeding calls are very similar to those of Fea's petrel, and Bretagnolle's analysis of the calls of the soft-plumaged petrel complex led him to suggest in 1995 only a two-way species split, with the northern forms madeira, feae and deserti all as subspecies of Fea's petrel.
### "Snowy-winged petrel"
The Hadoram Shirihai expeditions to the Madeira archipelago in 2008, 2009, and 2010 each had sightings of a Pterodroma petrel (possibly the same bird) with largely white underwings, but upper wings like Zino's or Fea's. This plumage does not correspond to any known Pterodroma species. It may have been an unusual variant of Zino's but this is unlikely since no similar bird has been seen amongst the more than 100 caught at the nest. It may alternatively be a single aberrant individual, a hybrid or an unknown taxon from Madeira or elsewhere. No conclusion is possible on current knowledge.
## Distribution and habitat
Zino's petrel is endemic to the main island of Madeira, where it breeds on inaccessible and well-vegetated ledges in the central mountains between Pico do Arieiro and Pico Ruivo. The typical ledge plants are endemic hemicryptophytes and chamaephytes, but grasses may also be present. It nests at heights above 1,650 m (5,410 ft). It was formerly more widespread, since subfossil remains have been found in a cave in eastern Madeira, and on nearby Porto Santo Island. The breeding ledges have to be inaccessible to introduced goats so that they remain rich in endemic flora. The vegetation ensures that there is sufficient earth on the ledges to allow the birds to burrow and make their nests, and trampling by grazing animals reduces the soil cover.
This petrel is only present in Madeiran waters during the breeding season. Its distribution at sea during the rest of the year is poorly known due to the rarity of the species and the difficulty of separating it from other Pterodroma petrels at sea. Birds identified as either Zino's or Fea's have been recorded from both sides of the North Atlantic, and in Ireland and Britain there has been a large increase in the number of reports, perhaps because global warming brings increasing numbers of tropical species into temperate waters. The timing of the reports, mainly in late spring and summer in the western North Atlantic, and in late summer and early autumn in the east, has suggested that birds follow a clockwise route around the North Atlantic after leaving their breeding sites. However, the few birds that have been identified with certainty have all been Fea's. Zino's petrel may have a similar strategy since preliminary results from geolocation studies indicate widespread dispersal over the North Atlantic central ridge during the breeding season and migration towards the Brazilian coast in the non-breeding period. Pterodroma petrels have been recorded in the Canary Islands and the Azores on surprisingly few occasions; a claim of possible Zino's from South Africa is now thought to be erroneous.
## Behaviour
### Breeding
Zino's petrel breed two months earlier than the Fea's petrel on Bugio, only 50 km (31 mi) away. The birds return from sea to their breeding grounds in late March or early April and courting occurs over the main breeding area during the late evening and early morning hours. The nest is a shallow burrow or old rabbit tunnel up to 140 cm (55 in) long in thick soil on vegetated ledges. The length of the burrow is related to the age of the pair that uses it, young birds making shorter tunnels, which are extended in subsequent years. The oval white egg is laid from mid-May to mid-June in a chamber at the end of the burrow and for 51–54 days, each parent alternating between sitting on the nest and feeding at sea. The young fledge about 85 days later in late September and October. This petrel is strictly nocturnal at the breeding sites to avoid predation by gulls. It stays 3–5 km (1.9–3.1 mi) offshore during the day, coming to land in darkness. It calls from about 30 minutes after nightfall until dawn, including on moonlit nights.
This species mates for life and pairs return to the same burrow year after year. The single egg is not replaced if lost. This is a long-lived species: one individual was observed to return to its burrow for ten consecutive years, and the lifespan is estimated to be about 16 years. The age of first breeding is unknown but assumed to be four or more years. Despite the proximity of their breeding sites, Zino's and Fea's petrels have never been found at each other's nesting areas, and Zino's is not known to hybridise with any other species.
### Feeding
Zino's petrel, like its relatives, feed on small squid and fish. The vomited stomach contents of one bird contained cephalopods, the bioluminiscent fish Electrona risso and small crustaceans. Like other small petrels, Zino's does not normally follow ships.
### Predators and parasites
Their nocturnal approach to the breeding sites means that Zino's petrels avoid the attentions of gulls or diurnal raptors, and the only owl on the island, the barn owl, is a rodent hunter. Other than bats, there are no native land mammals on Madeira, although there are a number of introduced species, two of which will take birds or chicks. These are brown rats and feral domestic cats. Even the high mountain nest sites of the Zino's petrel are not safe from these adaptable predators, ten adults being killed by cats in 1990. Feather lice found on Zino's petrels include Trabeculus schillingi, Saemundssonia species and an unnamed species of Halipeurus.
## Conservation status
Zino's petrel has a very restricted range on the mountaintops of a single island and is the most endangered European seabird. The birds, already confined to a limited area when discovered, were thought to be extinct by the mid-twentieth century. Two freshly fledged juveniles were found within the walls of the governor's palace in Funchal in the early 1940s, presumably attracted there by lights, but the species was not seen again until 1969. In 1969, Paul Zino played a tape of Fea's petrel from Bugio to a shepherd from Curral das Freiras; he immediately recognised the call and led the researchers to the remaining nesting area. Predation by introduced rats meant that breeding success in the small population was low, and no young at all fledged in 1985. The Freira Conservation Project was founded in 1986 with the aim of increasing the population of Zino's petrel by controlling rats and human interference; the control was extended to cats after the mass predation of 1990.
There are now 130–160 known individuals (65–80 breeding pairs) confirmed to breed on just six ledges. There may be some disturbance from visitors at night and from the construction of a NATO radar station on the summit of Mount Arieiro, and in the longer term climate change may have an adverse effect, since all nests are within 1,000 m (3,300 ft) of the top of the highest mountain in the breeding area. Formerly, shepherds collected nestlings for food, and egg collectors have raided burrows. Currently, the main threats continue to be predation of eggs and chicks by rats, and of nesting adults by feral cats, although at much reduced levels due to trapping.
Zino's petrel is protected under the EU's Wild Birds Directive, and its breeding sites lie within the Parque Natural da Madeira national park. Following the purchase of about 300 hectares (740 acres) of land around the main breeding site, all livestock has been removed from the breeding areas, allowing the vegetation to recover, although breeding still only occurs on ledges that were never accessible to grazing animals. The research and predator control by the Freira Conservation Project and the national park which started in 1986 was expanded in 2001 with additional EU funding. The increase in productivity (29 chicks fledged in 2004) meant that this species was downgraded from critically endangered to endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2004. Its population appeared to be stable or increasing slightly up to the summer of 2010.
A disaster struck the colony on 13 August 2010, when a forest fire swept through the breeding site killing three adults and 25 of the 38 chicks. The fire destroyed the vegetation and several nesting burrows. Conservation action to protect the 13 remaining chicks included removing dead birds and burnt vegetation, reinforcing the surviving nests, and setting poison bait for rats around the now exposed nest sites. The action plan also included the provision of artificial burrows, seed dispersal to help the vegetation recover, and the use of anti-erosion materials. By 2018, the colony had recovered and was stable at 160 adults.
|
192,480 |
Somerset Levels
| 1,165,542,139 |
Coastal plain and wetland area of Somerset, England
|
[
"Environment of Somerset",
"Floods in England",
"Land management in the United Kingdom",
"Landforms of Somerset",
"Levels in the United Kingdom",
"National nature reserves in Somerset",
"Natural regions of England",
"Plains of England",
"Ramsar sites in England",
"Somerset Levels",
"Special Protection Areas in England",
"Wetlands of England"
] |
The Somerset Levels are a coastal plain and wetland area of Somerset, England, running south from the Mendips to the Blackdown Hills.
The Somerset Levels have an area of about 160,000 acres (650 km<sup>2</sup>) and are bisected by the Polden Hills; the areas to the south are drained by the River Parrett, and the areas to the north by the rivers Axe and Brue. The Mendip Hills separate the Somerset Levels from the North Somerset Levels. The Somerset Levels consist of marine clay "levels" along the coast and inland peat-based "moors"; agriculturally, about 70 per cent is used as grassland and the rest is arable. Willow and teazel are grown commercially and peat is extracted.
A Palaeolithic flint tool found in West Sedgemoor is the earliest indication of human presence in the area. The Neolithic people exploited the reed swamps for their natural resources and started to construct wooden trackways, including the world's oldest known timber trackway, the Post Track, dating from about 3800 BC. The Levels were the location of the Glastonbury Lake Village as well as two Lake villages at Meare Lake. Several settlements and hill forts were built on the natural "islands" of slightly raised land, including Brent Knoll and Glastonbury. In the Roman period sea salt was extracted and a string of settlements were set up along the Polden Hills. The discovery at Shapwick of 9,238 silver Roman coins, known as the Shapwick Hoard, was the second-largest ever found from the time of the Roman Empire. A number of Saxon charters document the incorporation of areas of moor in estates. In 1685, the Battle of Sedgemoor was fought in the Bussex area of Westonzoyland at the conclusion of the Monmouth Rebellion.
As a result of the wetland nature of the Levels, the area contains a rich biodiversity of national and international importance. It supports a vast variety of plant and bird species and is an important feeding ground for birds and includes 32 Sites of Special Scientific Interest, of which 12 are also Special Protection Areas. The area has been extensively studied for its biodiversity and heritage, and has a growing tourism industry.
People have been draining the area since before Domesday Book. In the Middle Ages, the monasteries of Glastonbury, Athelney and Muchelney were responsible for much of the drainage. The artificial Huntspill River was constructed during the Second World War as a reservoir, although it also serves as a drainage channel. The Sowy River between the River Parrett and King's Sedgemoor Drain was completed in 1972; water levels are managed by the Levels internal drainage boards. During 2009 and 2010 proposals to build a series of electricity pylons by one of two routes between Hinkley Point and Avonmouth, to transmit electricity from the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, attracted local opposition. Discussions have taken place concerning the possibility of obtaining World Heritage Site status for the Somerset Levels as a "cultural landscape". It was suggested that if this bid were successful it could improve flood control, but only if wetland fens were created again; the plans were abandoned in 2010.
## Natural character area
The Somerset Levels form a natural region that has been designated as a national character area – No. 142 – by Natural England, the public body responsible for England's natural environment. Neighbouring natural regions are: the Vale of Taunton and Quantock Fringes to the west, the Blackdowns to the southwest, the Mid Somerset Hills and Yeovil Scarplands to the southeast, the Mendip Hills to the east and the Bristol, Avon Valleys and Ridges to the northeast.
## Geography
The Levels are mainly flat areas of inland plains and a coastal sand and clay barrier, east and west of the M5 motorway. There are some slightly raised parts, called "burtles", as well as higher ridges and hills. The Levels are about 20 feet (6 m) above mean sea level (O.D.). The general elevation inland is 10 to 12 feet (3 to 4 m) O.D. with peak tides of 25 to 26 feet (8 to 8 m) O.D. recorded at Bridgwater and Burnham-on-Sea. Large areas of peat were laid down in the Brue Valley during the Quaternary period after the ice sheets melted. The area's topography consists of two basins mainly surrounded by hills, the runoff from which forms rivers that originally meandered across the plain but have now been controlled by embanking and clyses (the local name for a sluice). The area is prone to winter floods of fresh water and occasional salt water inundations. The worst in recorded history was the Bristol Channel floods of 1607, which resulted in the drowning of an estimated 2,000 or more people, houses and villages swept away, an estimated 200 square miles (500 km<sup>2</sup>) of farmland inundated, and livestock killed. Another severe flood occurred in 1872–1873, when over 107 square miles (300 km<sup>2</sup>) were under water from October to March.
Although underlain by much older Triassic age formations that protrude to form what would once have been islands—such as Athelney, Brent Knoll, Burrow Mump and Glastonbury Tor—the lowland landscape was formed only during the last 10,000 years, following the end of the last ice age. Glastonbury Tor is composed of Upper Lias Sand. The Poldens and the Isle of Wedmore are composed of Blue Lias and Marl, while the Mendips are largely Carboniferous limestone. Although sea level changes since the Pliocene led to changes in sea level and the laying down of vegetation, the peak of the peat formation took place in swamp conditions around 6,000 years ago, although in some areas it continued into medieval times.
It is a mainly agricultural region, typically with open fields of permanent grass surrounded by ditches with willow trees. Access to individual areas, especially for cattle, was provided by means of "droves", i.e. green lanes, leading off the public highways. Some of the old roads, in contrast to the old hollow ways found in other areas of England, are causeways raised above the level of the surrounding land, with a drainage ditch running along each side.
### Settlements
Most of the settlements on the Levels are small villages. In the south, Aller, which has a population of 374, includes the hamlet of Beer (sometimes Bere) and the deserted medieval village of Oath on the opposite bank of the River Parrett. The area known as the Isle of Athelney was once a very low isolated island linked by a causeway to East Lyng, each end of which was protected by a semi-circular stockade and ditch. The ditch on the island is now known to date from the Iron Age, and was used by Alfred the Great as a fort before the Battle of Ethandun in May 878; in gratitude for his victory Alfred founded a monastery, Athelney Abbey, on the Isle in 888, which survived until the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII in 1539. Bawdrip is a small village which has a population of 498. Brent Knoll is a large village at the foot of 449-foot (137 m) Brent Knoll Camp that dominates the surrounding landscape; the name means Beacon Hill in Old English. Brent Knoll has been inhabited since at least the Bronze Age. Before the Somerset Levels were drained, Brent Knoll was an island known as the Isle (or Mount) of Frogs.
Glastonbury (population 8,784) and Street (11,066) lie on opposite sides of the River Brue, and provide a central point for trade and commerce. Larger centres are generally on slightly higher ground around the edges of the Levels. Bridgwater is a market town, the administrative centre of the Sedgemoor district, and a major industrial centre. With a population of 33,698, it straddles the major communication routes through South West England. Situated on the edge of the Somerset Levels, along both banks of the River Parrett and 10 miles (16 km) from its mouth, it was at one time a major port and trading centre. The hamlet of Dunball forms part of the port on the river. Burrowbridge lies on the River Parrett further inland. The name probably comes from the Old English buruh (fortified hill) and bryċġ (bridge). In the village is Burrow Mump, an ancient earthwork now owned by the National Trust. Burrow Mump is also known as St Michael's Borough or Tutteyate. It is a natural hill of Triassic sandstone capped by Keuper marl. Excavations showed evidence of a medieval masonry building on the top of the hill.
Along the coast, settlements such as Berrow are built on the line of sand dunes separating the low-lying marshes from the Bristol Channel. At the northern end Bleadon lies on the River Axe; and there was for many years a small harbour, sometimes known as Lympsham Wharf. The arrival of the Bristol and Exeter Railway in 1841, which crossed the Axe on a bridge, obstructed river traffic beyond the wharf, making it the limit of navigation for coastal vessels. An Act of 1915 authorised the drainage of the river and installation of a flood gate at Bleadon, although attempts to control the water had occurred on Bleadon Level since medieval times, including an early windmill, in 1613, to pump water into the sea from behind a sea wall. Burnham-on-Sea (population 18,401) is at the mouth of the River Parrett where it enters Bridgwater Bay. The position of the town on the edge of the Somerset Levels has resulted in a history dominated by land reclamation and sea defences since Roman times. Burnham was seriously affected by the Bristol Channel floods of 1607, and various flood defences have been installed since then. A concrete sea wall was built in 1911, and after the Second World War further additions to the defences were made, using the remains of a Mulberry harbour; the present curved concrete wall was completed in 1988. Highbridge, which neighbours Burnham, is near the mouth of the River Brue and the villages of East and West Huntspill.
### Climate
Along with the rest of South West England the Somerset Levels have a temperate climate, which is generally wetter and milder than the rest of the country. The annual mean temperature is approximately 10 °C (50.0 °F). Seasonal temperature variation is less extreme than most of the United Kingdom because of the adjacent sea. The summer months of July and August are the warmest, with mean daily maxima of approximately 21 °C (69.8 °F). In winter, mean minimum temperatures of 1 or 2 °C (33.8 or 35.6 °F) are common. The Azores high pressure area influences the southwest of England's summer weather, but convective cloud sometimes forms inland, reducing the number of hours of sunshine. Annual sunshine rates are slightly less than the regional average of 1,600 hours. In December 1998, there were 20 days without sun recorded at Yeovilton. Most rainfall in the southwest is caused by convection or Atlantic depressions, which are most active in autumn and winter, when they are the chief cause of rain. In summer, a large proportion of the rainfall is caused by the Sun heating the land, leading to convection and to showers and thunderstorms. Average rainfall is around 700 mm (28 in), and about 8–15 days of snowfall is typical. November to March have the highest mean wind speeds, and June to August have the lightest winds. The predominant wind direction is from the southwest. It was devastated by the UK storms of January–February 2014.
## Water management
The Moors and Levels, formed from a submerged and reclaimed landscape, consist of a coastal clay belt only slightly above mean sea level, with an inland peat belt at a lower level behind it.
Early attempts to control the water levels were possibly made by the Romans (although records only date from the 13th century), but were not widespread.
There was a port at Bleadney on the River Axe in the 8th century which allowed goods to be brought to within 3 miles (5 km) of Wells. In 1200, a wharf was constructed at Rackley near Axbridge. The Parrett was navigable up as far as Langport in 1600, with 15 to 20 ton barges. The Domesday Book recorded that drainage of the higher grounds was under way, although the moors at Wedmoor were said to be useless.
In the Middle Ages, the monasteries of Glastonbury, Athelney, and Muchelney were responsible for much of the drainage. In 1129, the Abbot of Glastonbury was recorded as inspecting enclosed land at Lympsham. Efforts to control flooding on the Parrett were recorded around the same date. In 1234, 722 acres (2.9 km<sup>2</sup>) were reclaimed near Westonzoyland and, from the accounts in the abbey's rent books, this had increased to 972 acres (393 ha) by 1240.
### Drains
Flooding of adjacent moor land was partially addressed during the 13th century by the construction of a number of embankment walls to contain the Parrett. They included Southlake Wall, Burrow Wall, and Lake Wall. The River Tone was also diverted by the Abbot of Athelney and other land owners into a new embanked channel, joining the Parrett upstream from its original confluence.
The main drainage outlets flowing through the Moors and Levels are the rivers Axe, Brue, Huntspill, Parrett, Tone, and Yeo, together with the King's Sedgemoor Drain, an artificial channel into which the River Cary now runs. Previously, the Cary ran into the Tone while the Brue ran through Meare Pool (now drained) and the Panborough Gap, and then into the Axe. Another accomplishment in the Middle Ages was the construction of the tidal Pillrow Cut, joining the Brue and Axe.
In 1500, there was said to be 70,000 acres (283 km<sup>2</sup>) of floodable land of which only 20,000 acres (81 km<sup>2</sup>) had been reclaimed. In 1597, 50 acres (20 ha) of land were recovered near the Parrett estuary; a few years later, 140 acres (57 ha) near Pawlett were recovered by means of embankments; and three further reclamations, totalling 110 acres (45 ha), had been undertaken downstream of Bridgwater by 1660.
In the early 17th century, during the time of King James I, abortive plans were made to drain and enclose much of Sedgemoor, which the local Lords supported but opposed by the Commoners who would have lost grazing rights. In 1632, Charles I sold the Crown's interest in the scheme, and it was taken over by a consortium that included Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, a Dutch drainage engineer. However, the work was delayed by the English Civil War and later defeated in parliament after local opposition. In 1638, it was reported that nearly 2,600 acres (11 km<sup>2</sup>) of Tealham and Tadham Moors were not reclaimed, with a total of 30,500 acres (123.43 km<sup>2</sup>) being undrained. Between 1785 and 1791, much of the lowest part of the peat moors was enclosed. In 1795, John Billingsley advocated enclosure and the digging of rhynes (a local name for drainage channels, pronounced "reens" in the east and rhyne to the west) between plots, and wrote in his Agriculture of the County of Somerset that 4,400 acres (18 km<sup>2</sup>) had been enclosed in the last 20 years in Wedmore and Meare, 350 acres (1.4 km<sup>2</sup>) at Nyland, 900 acres (3.64 km<sup>2</sup>) at Blackford, 2,000 acres (8 km<sup>2</sup>) at Mark, 100 acres (0.4 km<sup>2</sup>) in Shapwick, and 1,700 acres (7 km<sup>2</sup>) at Westhay.
At Westhay Moor in the early 19th century, it was shown how peat bogs could be successfully drained and top-dressed with silt deposited via flooding, creating a very rich soil. The character of the soil was also changed by the spreading of clay and silt from the digging of King's Sedgemoor Drain.
### Pumps
Little attempt was made during the 17th and 18th centuries to pump water, possibly because the coal-driven Newcomen steam engines would have been uneconomical. It is unclear why windmills were not employed, as they were on the Fens of East Anglia, but only two examples have been recorded on the Levels: one at Bleadon at the mouth of the River Axe, where a sea wall had been built, and the other at Common Moor north of Glastonbury, which was being drained following a private Act of Parliament in 1721. The first steam pumping station was Westonzoyland Pumping Station in 1830, followed by more effective ones from 1860. Automatic electric pumps are used today.
The human-made Huntspill River was constructed during World War II with sluices at both ends to provide a guaranteed daily supply of 4,500,000 imperial gallons (20,000,000 L; 5,400,000 US gal) of "process water". It was intended that in the summer, when water supply was lower, it would serve as a reservoir with water pumped from the moors; and in winter serve as a drainage channel, via gravity drainage. Geotechnical problems prevented it from being dug as deep as originally intended and so gravity-drainage of the moors was not possible: thus, water is pumped up into the river throughout the year.
The Sowy River between the River Parrett and King's Sedgemoor Drain was completed in 1972. The Levels and Moors are now artificially drained by a network of rhynes which are pumped up into "drains". Water levels are managed by the Levels internal drainage boards (IDBs); the Levels are not as intensively drained or farmed as the East Anglian fens, historically a similar area of low marsh. They are still liable to widespread fresh water flooding in winter. One of the approaches to reducing the risk of flooding within the catchment area of the Parrett is the planting of new woodlands.
Controversy about the management of the drainage and flood protection has previously involved the activities of IDBs. However, IDBs have been actively participating with the Parrett Catchment Partnership, a partnership of 30 organisations that aims to create a consensus on how water is to be managed, in particular, looking at new ways to achieve sustainable benefits for all local stakeholders.
During 2009 and 2010, work was undertaken to upgrade sluice gates, watercourses, and culverts to enable seasonal flooding of Southlake Moor during the winter diverting water from the Sowy River onto the moor. It has the capacity to hold 1.2 million cubic metres as part of a scheme by the Parrett Internal Drainage Board to restore ten floodplains in Somerset. In spring, the water is drained away to enable the land to be used as pasture during the summer. The scheme is also used to encourage water birds.
### Sea defences
The Levels were frequently flooded by the sea during high tides, a problem that was not resolved until the sea defences were enhanced in the early 20th century. In addition, the problems of high fresh water floods are aggravated by the unrestricted entry of the tide along the Parrett, which is the only river in the Levels and Moors that does not have a clyse on it. Discussions on whether a clyse is needed for the Parrett and whether it should be sited at Bridgwater or nearer the mouth of the river date back to 1939, at the start of World War II, and have not been resolved.
On 13 December 1981, a large storm hit the North Somerset coast. Meteorological conditions caused a large rising surge in sea level in the Bristol Channel, and wind was measured at 40 knots (74 km/h; 46 mph). Over topping of the sea defences along a 7 miles (11 km) stretch of the Somerset coast at 22 locations from Clevedon to Porlock began after 19:30. Although there was no loss of life, the resultant flooding covered 12,500 acres (5,100 ha) of land, affecting 1,072 houses and commercial properties, with £150,000 worth of livestock killed and £50,000 of feed and grain destroyed. Wessex Water Authority estimated the total cost of the damage caused at £6M. This resulted in a three-year programme of sea defence assessment, repair and improvement. With 400 properties affected in Burnham-on-Sea, after emergency repairs, Wessex Water Authority began planning new sea defences. Construction work started in 1983 on a £7M scheme, creating what was then Britain's biggest wave return wall.
The Environment Agency's current "Parrett Catchment Flood Management Plan", published in December 2009, divides the Parrett catchment area into eight sub-areas, with the Somerset Levels and Moors falling into sub-area 6 and Bridgwater falling into sub-area 7. As part of the published flood risk assessments for both these sub-areas, it is recognised that: at a future date a tidal clyse may be needed on the Parrett; this causes a funding dilemma; and, geomorphology studies of the Parrett and the Tone are needed to help address many of the uncertainties associated with a tidal exclusion project.
### Flooding
The Levels are at risk from both tidal and land-based flood waters.
During the great storm of 1703, waves came four feet (1.2 m) over the sea walls. The sea wall was again breached in 1799, filling the Axe valley with sea water. In 1872, another flood covered 7,000 acres (28 km<sup>2</sup>) and in 1919, 70,000 acres (283 km<sup>2</sup>) were inundated with sea water, poisoning the land for up to 7 years.
Since 1990, the drainage boards have been charged with watching the rhynes and keeping them clear, under the overall responsibility of the Environment Agency. With rising sea levels, the work required to maintain the sea defences is likely to become more expensive, and it has been proposed that two inland seas be created. Other studies have recommended maintaining the current defences for five years while undertaking further studies of available options.
Although the Environment Agency have made plans for the regular winter flooding, still in recent years this has resulted in a number of villages — including Muchelney and Westonzoyland — being cut off. In November 2012, during the 2012 Great Britain and Ireland floods, after six days Somerset County Council-funded BARB rescue boats reached Muchelney on 29 November, rescuing nearly 100 people.
Rescue boats were again required during the rain and storms from Cyclone Dirk in the turn of the year 2014, and subsequently during the Winter flooding of 2013–14 on the Somerset Levels. On 24 January 2014, in light of the continued flooded extent of the Somerset Moors and forecast new rainfall as part of the Winter storms of 2013–14 in the United Kingdom, both Somerset County Council and Sedgemoor District Council declared a major incident. At this time, with 17,000 acres (6,900 ha) of agricultural land having been under water for over a month, the village of Thorney had been abandoned and Muchelney had been cut off by flood waters for almost a month. Environment Minister Owen Paterson visited the area on 27 January 2014, and after meeting local MPs, the Environment Agency and various community representatives the night before in Taunton, promised at a media-only press conference at North Moor pumping station that if a local water management plan could be developed over the next six weeks, he would approve it. Such plan would likely include the dredging of the rivers Tone and Parrett, and possibly a later sluice near Bridgwater. There have been public protests about the river Parrett not being dredged in recent years. In mid-February 2014 the Environment Agency began installing giant pumps imported from the Netherlands to alleviate the continuing flooding.
## Human habitation
A Palaeolithic flint tool found in Westbury is the earliest indication of human presence in the area, dating from approximately 500,000 years ago. Later during the 7th millennium BC the sea level rose and flooded the valleys, forcing the Mesolithic people to occupy seasonal camps on the higher ground, indicated by scatters of flints. Subsequent winter flooding probably led to prehistoric man's using the Levels only in the summer, hence the county of Somerset may derive its name from Sumorsaete, meaning land of the summer people. An alternative suggestion is that the name derives from Seo-mere-saetan meaning "settlers by the sea lakes". The Neolithic people continued to exploit the reedswamps for their natural resources and started to construct wooden trackways such as the Sweet and Post Tracks. The Sweet Track, named after the peat digger who discovered it in 1970 and dating from the 3800s BC, is the world's oldest timber trackway, once thought to be the world's oldest engineered roadway. The track was built between what was in the early 4th millennium BC an island at Westhay and a ridge of high ground at Shapwick, close to the River Brue. The remains of similar tracks have been uncovered nearby, connecting settlements on the peat bog including the Honeygore, Abbotts Way, Bells, Bakers, Westhay and Nidons trackways.
The Levels contain the best-preserved prehistoric village in the UK, Glastonbury Lake Village, as well as two others at Meare Lake Village. Discovered in 1892 by Arthur Bulleid, it was inhabited by about 200 people living in 14 roundhouses, and was built on a morass on an artificial foundation of timber filled with brushwood, bracken, rubble and clay. Investigation of the Meare Pool indicates that it was formed by the encroachment of raised peat bogs, particularly during the Subatlantic climatic period (1st millennium BC), and core sampling demonstrates that it is filled with at least 2 metres (6.6 ft) of detritus mud.
The two villages within Meare Pool appear to originate from a collection of structures erected on the surface of the dried peat, such as tents, windbreaks and animal folds. Clay was later spread over the peat, providing raised stands for occupation, industry and movement, and in some areas thicker clay spreads accommodated hearths built of clay or stone.
The area continued to be inhabited during the Bronze Age, when the population supported itself largely by hunting and fishing in the surrounding marshes, living on artificial islands connected by wooden causeways on wooden piles. There have been many finds of metalwork during peat cutting, which may have been devotional offerings. Brent Knoll has been settled by people since at least the Bronze Age. It is the site of an Iron Age hillfort known as Brent Knoll Camp, with multiple ramparts (multivallate) following the contours of the hill. Several settlements and hill forts were built on the natural "islands" of slightly raised land, including Brent Knoll, Glastonbury, and the low range of the Polden Hills. According to legend Ider son of Nuth, who was one of King Arthur's knights, went to the Mount of Frogs on a quest to slay three giants who lived there. The fort has been claimed as the site of the Battle of Mons Badonicus.
Sea salt was extracted during the Roman period, and a string of settlements were set up along the Polden Hills. Some possible settlement sites are also known in the Draycott and Cheddar Moors and around Highbridge. The discovery at Shapwick of 9,238 silver Roman coins, the second largest hoard ever found from the Roman Empire included coins dated from as early as 31–30 BC up until 224 AD. The hoard also contained two rare coins which had not been discovered in Britain before, and the largest number of silver denarii ever found in Britain.
A number of Anglo-Saxon charters document the incorporation of areas of moor in estates, suggesting that the area continued to be exploited. It is easy to see why the area acquired a number of legends, particularly of King Arthur and his followers, who some believe based his court in the hill fort at South Cadbury. According to legend, Alfred the Great burnt cakes when hiding in the marshes of Athelney, after the Danish invasion in 875. After the Battle of Edington the Danish king was baptised at Aller and a peace treaty signed at Wedmore.
In 1685, the Monmouth Rebellion ended at the Battle of Sedgemoor, which was fought in the Bussex area of Westonzoyland.
## Land use
The Levels have few wooded areas, just occasional willow trees. The landscape is dominated by grassland, mostly used as pasture for dairy farming with approximately 70 per cent of the area being grassland and 30 per cent arable. From January until May, the River Parrett provides a source of European eels (Anguilla anguilla) and young elvers, which are caught by hand netting as this is the only legal means of catching them. A series of eel passes have been built on the Parrett at the King's Sedgemoor Drain to help this endangered species; cameras have shown 10,000 eels migrating upstream in a single night. The 2003 BBC Radio 4 play Glass Eels by Nell Leyshon was set on the Parrett.
The Levels, as part of the West Country, traditionally produced cider, with individual farms having orchards and their own cider, known as scrumpy. However, over 60% of Somerset's orchards have been lost in the last fifty years; and apple production occupies less than 0.4% of the land. Cider is still produced in Somerset by Thatchers Cider, Gaymer Cider Company and numerous small independent producers. Other local industries that once thrived on the Levels, such as thatching (using reeds) and basket making (using willow), have been in decline since the second half of the 20th century. Combined with the recent drop in farm incomes, this poses a potential threat to the "traditional" nature of the area as a whole. Subsidies are paid to farmers who manage their land in the traditional way.
### Electricity generation
In 2009, National Grid began public consultations over plans to build a line of electricity pylons, by one of two routes between Hinkley Point and Avonmouth. The plans attracted local opposition. The first consultation process ended in January 2010. They had proposed that each pylon would be 151 feet (46 m) high: the consultation was only in respect of preferences between two alternate routes, not the size nor the use of large pylons. The proposed line, which is due to open by September 2017, will transmit electricity at 400 kilovolts from the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. Hinkley Point C is a project to construct a 3,200 MWe nuclear power station with two EPR reactors. The site is one of eight announced by the British government in 2010, and in November 2012 a nuclear site licence was granted. On 28 July 2016 the EDF board approved the project, and on 15 September 2016 the UK government approved the project with some safeguards for the investment. In March 2017, EDF, after the Office for Nuclear Regulation gave approval to start building a network of tunnels to carry cabling and piping, started work also under way on a jetty, seawall and accommodation blocks. The concrete pour for the first reactor is planned only at earliest in 2019.
In 2010 and 2011, two proposals to build a total of 14 wind turbines, with Ecotricity to build five or four adjacent to the M5 Motorway near Brent Knoll and Électricité de France to build nine at East Huntspill, are opposed by local groups on the grounds of their effect on the local environment and potential damage to the bird population.
### Willow
Willow has been cut and used on the Levels since mankind moved into the area. Fragments of willow basket were found near the Glastonbury Lake Village, and it was used in the construction of several Iron Age causeways. The willow was harvested using traditional methods of pollarding, where a tree would be cut back to the main stem. New shoots of willow, called "withies", would grow out of the trunk and these would be cut periodically for use.
During the 1930s, over 9,000 acres (36 km<sup>2</sup>) of willow were being grown commercially on the Levels. Largely because of the replacement of baskets by plastic bags and cardboard boxes, the industry has severely declined since the 1950s. By the end of the 20th century only about 350 acres (1.4 km<sup>2</sup>) were grown commercially, near the villages of Burrowbridge, Westonzoyland, and North Curry. The Somerset Levels is now the only area in the UK where basket willow is grown commercially. For weaving, the species Salix triandra (almond willow, black maul) is grown, while Salix viminalis (common osier) is ideal for handles, bases, and the structural members in furniture and hurdles. Historically willow was used to make salmon traps or "putchers". Products including baskets, eel traps (kypes), lobster pots, and furniture were widely made from willow throughout the area in the recent past. Among the more unusual products still made are passenger baskets for hot air balloons, the frames inside the Bearskins worn by the regiments of the Grenadier Guards, and an increasing number of willow coffins.
Another use of willow has been found by the Coate family, who make artists' charcoals in Stoke St Gregory. It has become in 30 years the leading artists' charcoal manufacturer in Europe, producing most of the natural charcoals sold under different art-material brands.
The industry is celebrated in the form of the Willow Man (sometimes known as the Angel of the South), a willow sculpture, 40 feet (12.2 m) tall, produced by artist Serena de la Hey in September 2000 that can be seen from the railway and the M5 motorway to the north of Bridgwater. At Stoke St Gregory there is also a Willows and Wetlands Visitor Centre.
### Teazel growing
An unusual crop was the growing of teazels around the River Isle near Chard on the heavy clay soils around Fivehead, although this industry died out by the 1980s-90s. These are still sometimes used to provide a fine finish on worsteds and snooker table cloths, but were previously much more widely used in the processing of wool for the textiles industry.
### Peat extraction
The extraction of peat from the Moors is known to have taken place during Roman times, and has been carried out since the Levels were first drained. The introduction of plastic packaging in the 1950s allowed the peat to be packed without rotting, which led to the industrialisation of peat extraction during the 1960s as a major market in horticultural peat was developed. The resulting reduction in water levels put local ecosystems at risk; peat wastage in pasture fields was occurring at rates of 1–3 feet (0.3–0.8 m) over 100 years. Peat extraction continues today, although much reduced.
## Biodiversity and conservation
As a result of their wetland nature, the Moors and Levels contain a rich biodiversity of national and international importance. They support a vast variety of plant species, including common plants such as marsh marigold, meadowsweet, and ragged robin. The area is an important feeding ground for birds including Bewick's swan, Eurasian curlew, common redshank, Eurasian skylark, common snipe, Eurasian teal, wigeon, and Eurasian whimbrel, as well as birds of prey including the marsh harrier and peregrine falcon. A wide range of insect species is also present, including rare invertebrates, particularly beetles including the lesser silver water beetle, Bagous nodulosus, Hydrophilus piceus, Odontomyia angulata, Oulema erichsoni, and Valvata macrostoma. In addition, the area supports an important otter population. Water voles (Arvicola amphibius) are being encouraged to recolonise areas of the Levels where they have been absent for 10 years, by the capture of mink (Mustela vison).
In 2010, a project was started to reintroduce the common crane to the Levels, after an absence of 400 years. The birds' eggs were flown from Germany to the Slimbridge wetland reserve managed by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (a UK charity) at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, and reared to the age of five months before being released onto the Levels. The "Great Crane Project" aims to introduce around 20 of the birds each year until 2015. The work, which included collaboration with Pensthorpe Nature Reserve and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, was supported by a grant of £700k from Viridor Credits.
The Levels contain 32 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (12 of them also Special Protection Areas), the River Huntspill and Bridgwater Bay national nature reserves, the Somerset Levels and Moors Ramsar Site covering about 86,000 acres (348 km<sup>2</sup>), the Somerset Levels National Nature Reserve, Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve, Ham Wall National Nature Reserve and numerous Scheduled monuments. The Brue Valley Living Landscape conservation project commenced in 2009 and aims to restore, recreate and reconnect habitat. It aims to ensure that wildlife is enhanced and capable of sustaining itself in the face of climate change while guaranteeing farmers and other landowners can continue to use their land profitably. It is one of an increasing number of landscape scale conservation projects in the UK. About 72,000 acres (291 km<sup>2</sup>) of the Levels are recognised as an Environmentally Sensitive Area, and other areas are designated as Areas of High Archaeological Potential, but there is currently no single conservation designation covering the Levels and Moors.
A survey in 2005 discovered that 11 of the known wooden Bronze Age causeways on the Levels had been destroyed or vanished and others were seriously damaged, caused by the reduction in water levels and subsequent exposure of the timber to oxygen and aerobic bacteria. Part of the Sweet Track is being actively conserved. Following purchase of land by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and installation of a water pumping and distribution system along a 550-yard (500 m) section, several hundred metres of the track's length are now being actively conserved. This method of preserving wetland archaeological remains (i.e. maintaining a high water table and saturating the site) is rare. A 550-yard (500 m) section, which lies within the land owned by the Nature Conservancy Council, has been surrounded by a clay bank to prevent drainage into surrounding lower peat fields, and water levels are regularly monitored. The viability of this method is demonstrated by comparing it with the nearby Abbot's Way, which has not had similar treatment, and which in 1996 was found to have become dewatered and desiccated. Evaluation and maintenance of water levels in the Shapwick Heath Nature Reserve involves the Nature Conservancy Council, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Somerset Levels Project.
## Somerset Levels Project
In 1964, archaeologist John Coles from the University of Cambridge began a research project that resulted in the publication of an important series of papers on many aspects of the Levels. A range of archaeological projects, such as the exploration of various trackways from the 3rd and 1st millennia BC and the establishment of their economic and geographic significance, was funded by various donors including English Heritage. Possibly the project's most significant excavation was of the Sweet Track in 1970, during which a Jadeite axe was discovered. Eight radiocarbon determinations of the date of the axe place it at around 3200 BC.
The work of John Coles and the Somerset Levels Project was recognised in 1998 when they won the ICI Award for the best archaeological project offering a major contribution to knowledge, and in 2006 with the award of the European Archaeological Heritage Prize.
## Shapwick Project
This project, based on the village of Shapwick, was begun by Mick Aston of Bristol University to investigate the evolution of a typical English village. A preliminary study of the village's history was carried out using maps and documents, then surveys of the buildings were made together with botanical surveys. Field walking was carried out and key sites excavated. A report on the project, which ran from 1989 to 1999, was published in eight volumes.
## Tourism
Being largely flat, the Levels are well suited to bicycles, and a number of cycle routes exist including the Withy Way Cycle Route (22 mi or 35 km), Avalon Marshes Cycle Route (28 mi or 45 km), Peat Moors Cycle Route (24 mi or 39 km) and the Isle Valley Cycle Route (28 mi or 45 km). The River Parrett Trail (47 mi or 76 km) and Monarch's Way long-distance footpaths are also within the area.
Visitors' centres aim to convey various aspects of the Levels. The Willows and Wetlands Visitor Centre near Stoke St Gregory offers tours of the willow yards and basket workshops and explains the place of willow in the history of the Levels. The Somerset Willow Company also allows visitors into its workshops.
The Avalon Marshes Centre (formerly known as the Peat Moors Centre) between Westhay and Shapwick, is dedicated to the natural history, biodiversity, archaeology, history, and geology of the area. It also includes reconstructions of some archaeological discoveries of the area, such as a Roman Villa and a Saxon Longhall. The site offers much information on Iron Age finds, round houses, and ancient highways, the Post Track and Sweet Track. From time to time the centre offers events and courses in a number of ancient technologies in subjects including textiles, clothing and basket-making, as well as staging various open days, displays, demonstrations and guided nature excursions. The centre also contains the offices and workshops for the RSPB, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Natural England and The Hawk and Owl Trust for which all have reserves close by. In February 2009 Somerset County Council, the owner of the Peat Moors Centre, announced its intention of closing the centre and it finally shut on 31 October 2009, but it was reopened as the Avalon Marshes Centre and is in the process of being modernized and improved from the previous set of buildings.
The Tribunal in Glastonbury, a medieval merchant's house, contains possessions and works of art from the Glastonbury Lake Village, which were preserved in almost perfect condition in the peat after the village was abandoned. It also houses the tourist information centre. Also in Glastonbury, the Somerset Rural Life Museum is a museum of the social and agricultural history of Somerset, housed in buildings surrounding a 14th-century barn once belonging to Glastonbury Abbey. It was used as a tithe barn for the storage of arable produce, particularly wheat and rye, from the abbey's home farm of approximately 524 acres (2.12 km<sup>2</sup>). Threshing and winnowing would also have been carried out in the barn. The barn was built from local "shelly" limestone, with thick timbers supporting the stone tiling of the roof. It has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building, and is a Scheduled monument. The barn and courtyard contain displays of farm machinery from the Victorian and early 20th century periods. Other exhibits show local crafts, including willow coppicing, mud horse fishing on the flats of Bridgwater Bay, peat digging on the Somerset Levels and the production of milk, cheese, and cider. In reconstructed rooms detailing domestic life in the nearby village of Butleigh, the story of one farm worker, John Hodges, is told from cradle to grave. Outside, there is a beehive and rare breeds of poultry and sheep in the cider apple orchard.
The Langport & River Parrett Visitor Centre at Langport details local life, history, and wildlife. The Westonzoyland Pumping Station Museum, near the town on the River Parrett, is housed in one of the earliest steam-powered pumping stations on the Levels, dating from the 1830s; it was closed in the 1950s. Featuring several steam engines, some built locally, the museum holds a number of live steam days each year. The pump house has been Grade II\* listed, and is on English Heritage's Heritage at Risk Register.
## See also
- List of locations in the Somerset Levels
- Caldicot and Wentloog Levels
- The Fens
- Romney Marsh
- Geology of Somerset
- East Somerset Railway
|
1,513,496 |
Wonder Stories
| 1,158,797,960 |
American science fiction magazine
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"1955 disestablishments in New York (state)",
"Defunct science fiction magazines published in the United States",
"Hugo Gernsback",
"Magazines disestablished in 1955",
"Magazines established in 1929",
"Magazines published in New York City",
"Pulp magazines",
"Science fiction magazines established in the 1920s",
"Wonder Stories"
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Wonder Stories was an early American science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, when his media company Experimenter Publishing went bankrupt. Within a few months of the bankruptcy, Gernsback launched three new magazines: Air Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Quarterly.
Air Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Stories were merged in 1930 as Wonder Stories, and the quarterly was renamed Wonder Stories Quarterly. The magazines were not financially successful, and in 1936 Gernsback sold Wonder Stories to Ned Pines at Beacon Publications, where, retitled Thrilling Wonder Stories, it continued for nearly 20 years. The last issue was dated Winter 1955, and the title was then merged with Startling Stories, another of Pines' science fiction magazines. Startling itself lasted only to the end of 1955 before finally succumbing to the decline of the pulp magazine industry.
The editors under Gernsback's ownership were David Lasser, who worked hard to improve the quality of the fiction, and, from mid-1933, Charles Hornig. Both Lasser and Hornig published some well-received fiction, such as Stanley Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey", but Hornig's efforts in particular were overshadowed by the success of Astounding Stories, which had become the leading magazine in the new field of science fiction. Under its new title, Thrilling Wonder Stories was initially unable to improve its quality. For a period in the early 1940s it was aimed at younger readers, with a juvenile editorial tone and covers that depicted beautiful women in implausibly revealing spacesuits. Later editors began to improve the fiction, and by the end of the 1940s, in the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley, the magazine briefly rivaled Astounding.
## Publication history
By the end of the 19th century, stories centered on scientific inventions and set in the future, in the tradition of Jules Verne, were appearing regularly in popular fiction magazines. Magazines such as Munsey's Magazine and The Argosy, launched in 1889 and 1896 respectively, carried a few science fiction stories each year. Some upmarket "slicks" such as McClure's, which paid well and were aimed at a more literary audience, also carried scientific stories, but by the early years of the 20th century, science fiction (though it was not yet called that) was appearing more often in the pulp magazines than in the slicks. The first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, was launched in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback at the height of the pulp magazine era. It helped to form science fiction as a separately marketed genre, and by the end of the 1930s a "Golden Age of Science Fiction" had begun, inaugurated by the efforts of John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction. Wonder Stories was launched in the pulp era, not long after Amazing Stories, and lasted through the Golden Age and well into the 1950s. The publisher was Stellar Publishing company based in New York City.
### Gernsback era
Gernsback's new magazine, Amazing Stories, was successful, but Gernsback lost control of the publisher when it went bankrupt in February 1929. By April he had formed a new company, Gernsback Publications Incorporated, and created two subsidiaries: Techni-Craft Publishing Corporation and Stellar Publishing Corporation. Gernsback sent out letters advertising his plans for new magazines; the mailing lists he used almost certainly were compiled from the subscription lists of Amazing Stories. This would have been illegal, as the lists were owned by Irving Trust, the receiver of the bankruptcy. Gernsback denied using the lists under oath, but historians have generally agreed that he must have done so. The letters also asked potential subscribers to decide the name of the new magazine; they voted for "Science Wonder Stories", which became the name of one of Gernsback's new magazines.
Gernsback's recovery from the bankruptcy judgment was remarkably quick. By early June he had launched three new magazines, two of which published science fiction. The June 1929 issue of Science Wonder Stories appeared on newsstands on 5 May 1929, and was followed on 5 June by the July 1929 issue of Air Wonder Stories. Both magazines were monthly, with Gernsback as editor-in-chief and David Lasser as editor. Lasser had no prior editing experience and knew little about science fiction, but his recently acquired degree from MIT convinced Gernsback to hire him.
Gernsback claimed that science fiction was educational. He repeatedly made this assertion in Amazing Stories, and continued to do so in his editorials for the new magazines, stating, for example, that "teachers encourage the reading of this fiction because they know that it gives the pupil a fundamental knowledge of science and aviation." He also recruited a panel of "nationally known educators [who] pass upon the scientific principles of all stories". Science fiction historian Everett Bleiler describes this as "fakery, pure and simple", asserting that there is no evidence that the men on the panel—some of whom, such as Lee De Forest, were well-known scientists—had any editorial influence. However, Donald Menzel, the astrophysicist on the panel, said that Gernsback sent him manuscripts and made changes to stories as a result of Menzel's commentary.
In 1930, Gernsback decided to merge Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories into Wonder Stories. The reason for the merger is unknown, although it may have been that he needed the space in the printing schedule for his new Aviation Mechanics magazine. Bleiler has suggested that the merger was caused by poor sales and a consequent need to downsize. In addition, Air Wonder Stories was probably focused on too specialized a niche to succeed. In an editorial just before Science Wonder Stories changed its name, Gernsback commented that the word "Science" in the title "has tended to retard the progress of the magazine, because many people had the impression that it is a sort of scientific periodical rather than a fiction magazine". Ironically, the inclusion of "science" in the title was the reason that science fiction writer Isaac Asimov began reading the magazine; when he saw the August 1929 issue he obtained permission to read it from his father on the grounds that it was clearly educational. Concerns about the marketability of titles seem to have surfaced in the last two issues of Science Wonder, which had the word "Science" printed in a color that made it difficult to read. On the top of the cover appeared the words "Mystery-Adventure-Romance", the last of which was a surprising way to advertise a science fiction magazine.
The first issue of the merged magazine appeared in June 1930, still on a monthly schedule, with Lasser as editor. The volume numbering continued that of Science Wonder Stories, therefore Wonder Stories is sometimes regarded as a retitling of Science Wonder Stories. Gernsback had also produced a companion magazine for Science Wonder Stories, titled Science Wonder Quarterly, the first issue of which was published in the fall of 1929. Three issues were produced under this title, but after the merger Gernsback changed the companion magazine's title to Wonder Stories Quarterly, and produced a further eleven issues under that title.
In July 1933, Gernsback dismissed Lasser as editor. Lasser had become active in promoting workers' rights and was spending less time on his editorial duties. According to Lasser, Gernsback told him "if you like working with the unemployed so much, I suggest you go and join them". It is likely that cost-cutting was also a consideration, as Lasser was paid \$65 per week, a substantial salary in those days. Soon after Lasser was let go, Gernsback received a fanzine, The Fantasy Fan, from a reader, Charles Hornig. Gernsback called Hornig to his office to interview him for the position of editor; Hornig turned out to be only 17, but Gernsback asked him to proofread a manuscript and decided that the results were satisfactory. Hornig was hired at an initial salary of \$20 per week. That same year, Gernsback dissolved Stellar Publications and created Continental Publications as the new publisher for Wonder Stories. The schedule stuttered for the first time, missing the July and September 1933 issues; the recent bankruptcy of the company's distributor, Eastern Distributing Corporation, may have been partly responsible for this disruption. The first issue with Continental on the masthead, and the first listing Hornig as editor, was November 1933.
Wonder Stories had a circulation of about 25,000 in 1934, comparable to that of Amazing Stories, which had declined from an early peak of about 100,000. Gernsback considered issuing a reprint magazine in 1934, Wonder Stories Reprint Annual, but it never appeared. That year he experimented with other fiction magazines—Pirate Stories and High Seas Adventures—but neither was successful. Wonder Stories was also failing, and in November 1935 it started publishing bimonthly instead of monthly. Gernsback had a reputation for paying slowly and was therefore unpopular with many authors; by 1936 he was even failing to pay Laurence Manning, one of his most reliable authors. Staff were sometimes asked to delay cashing their paychecks for weeks at a time. Gernsback felt the blame lay with dealers who were returning magazine covers as unsold copies, and then selling the stripped copies at a reduced rate. To bypass the dealers, he made a plea in the March 1936 issue to his readers, asking them to subscribe, and proposing to distribute Wonder Stories solely by subscription. There was little response, and Gernsback decided to sell. He made a deal with Ned Pines of Beacon Magazines and on 21 February 1936 Wonder Stories was sold.
### Thrilling Wonder Stories
Pines' magazines included several with "Thrilling" in the title, such as Thrilling Detective and Thrilling Love Stories. These were run by Leo Margulies, who had hired Mort Weisinger (among others) as the workload increased in the early 1930s. Weisinger was already an active science fiction fan, and when Wonder Stories was acquired, Margulies involved him in the editorial work. Margulies' group worked as a team, with Margulies listed as editor-in-chief on the magazines and having final say. However, since Weisinger knew science fiction well, Weisinger was quickly given more leeway, and bibliographers generally list Weisinger as the editor for this period of the magazine's history.
The title was changed to Thrilling Wonder Stories to match the rest of the "Thrilling" line. The first issue appeared in August 1936—four months after the last Gernsback Wonder Stories appeared. Wonder Stories had been monthly until the last few Gernsback issues; Thrilling Wonder was launched on a bimonthly schedule. In February 1938 Weisinger asked for reader feedback regarding the idea of a companion magazine; the response was positive, and in January 1939 the first issue of Startling Stories appeared, alternating months with Thrilling Wonder. A year later Thrilling Wonder went monthly; this lasted fewer than eighteen months, and the bimonthly schedule resumed after April 1941. Weisinger left that summer and was replaced at both Startling and Thrilling Wonder by Oscar J. Friend, a pulp writer with more experience in Westerns than science fiction, though he had published a novel, The Kid from Mars, in Startling Stories just the year before. In mid-1943 both magazines went to a quarterly schedule, and at the end of 1944 Friend was replaced in his turn by Sam Merwin, Jr. The quarterly schedule lasted until well after World War II ended: Thrilling Wonder returned to a bimonthly schedule with the December 1946 issue and again alternated with Startling which went bimonthly in January 1947. Merwin left in 1951 in order to become a freelance editor, and was replaced by Samuel Mines, who had worked for Ned Pines since 1942.
The Thrilling Wonder logo, a winged man against the background of a glass mountain was taken from the Noel Loomis story, "The Glass Mountain."
By the summer of 1949 Street & Smith, one of the largest pulp publishers, had shut down every one of their pulps. This format was dying out, though it took several more years before the pulps completely disappeared from the newsstands. Both Thrilling Wonder and Startling went quarterly in 1954, and at the end of that year Mines left. The magazines did not survive him for long; only two more issues of Thrilling Wonder appeared, both edited by Alexander Samalman. After the beginning of 1955, Thrilling Wonder was merged with Startling, which itself ceased publication at the end of 1955.
After the demise of Thrilling Wonder Stories the old Wonder Stories title was revived for two issues, published in 1957 and 1963. These were both edited by Jim Hendryx Jr. They were numbered vol. 45, no. 1 and 2, continuing the volume numbering of Thrilling Wonder. Both were selections from past issues of Thrilling Wonder; the second one convinced Ned Pines, the publisher who had bought Wonder Stories from Gernsback in 1936 and who still owned the rights to the stories, to start a reprint magazine called Treasury of Great Science Fiction Stories in 1964; a companion, Treasury of Great Western Stories, was added the next year.
In 2007, Winston Engle published a new magazine in book format, titled Thrilling Wonder Stories, with a cover date of Summer 2007. Engle commented that it was "not a pastiche or nostalgia exercise as much as modern SF with the entertainment, inspirational value, and excitement of the golden age". A second volume appeared in 2009.
### IF —!: a picture feature
Six months after the debut of Thrilling Wonder Stories, its June 1937 issue contained a picture feature by Jack Binder entitled IF —!. Binder's earlier training as a fine artist helped him create detailed renderings of space ships, lost cities, future cities, landscapes, indigenous peoples, and even ancient Atlantins. IF —!'''s pen and ink drawings are hand-lettered and rendered in black and white. These one-to-two page studies presented readers with possible outcomes to early 20th-century scientific quandaries. These included:
- IF Another Ice Age Grips the Earth! (June 1937) – Binder's first picture feature is tucked in between "The Chessboard of Mars" by Eando Binder and J. Harvey Haggard's "Renegade: The Ways of the Ether are Strange When a Spaceman Seeks to Betray." Ice Age offered renderings of glaciated cities, infra-red ray guns, and a floating city alongside underground habitations—"the safest and most practicable retreat!" for chilly humans. It ends with the announcement: "Next Issue: If Atomic Power were Harnessed!"
- IF the Oceans Dried! (April 1938) – Sailing vessels are museum pieces enshrined in huge bubble cases since the ocean floor is now home to meandering train tracks. All manner of minerals are mined to the benefit of mankind and the lost city of Atlantis (if real) is exposed. All ocean life becomes extinct and the earth's climate undergoes dramatic, yet positive, change.
- IF Science Reached the Earth's Core (Oct. 1938) – Neutronium allows humans to penetrate to the earth's core, which is not molten, but a gravity-free haven where "vacationers enjoy the thrill of being weightless." IF —! is credited with the first use of the phrase "zero-gravity," a science fiction mainstay, where "Space Travel is solved. Starting at the zero-gravity of Earth's core, accumulative acceleration is easily built up in a four-thousand-mile tube. The ship's reach Earth's surface where gravitation !\|is strongest with an appreciable velocity that makes the take-off a simple process of continuation!"
- IF Earth's Axis Shifted (April 1940) – An astronomical telescope points towards the night sky revealing that the planets have aligned and caused the earth's axis to shift. Tidal waves sweep cities away. North America in now a tropic zone, while Siberia is balmy and Antarctica swarms with immigrants wanting to harvest the now accessible coal and metal. "Next Issue: IF the World were Ruled by Intelligent Robots!"
## Contents and reception
When Air Wonder Stories was launched in the middle of 1929 there were already pulp magazines such as Sky Birds and Flying Aces which focused on aerial adventures. Gernsback's first editorial dismissed these as being of the "purely 'Wild West'-world war adventure-sky busting type". By contrast, Gernsback said he planned to fill Air Wonder solely with "flying stories of the future, strictly along scientific-mechanical-technical lines, full of adventure, exploration and achievement." Non-fiction material on aviation was printed, including quizzes, short popular articles, and book reviews. The letters column made it clear that the readership comprised more science fiction fans than aviation fans, and Gernsback later commented that the overlap with Science Wonder readers was 90% (a figure that presumably referred only to the subscription base, not to newsstand sales).
Gernsback frequently ran reader contests, one of which, announced in the February 1930 issue of Air Wonder Stories, asked for a slogan for the magazine. John Wyndham, later to become famous as the author of The Day of the Triffids, won with "Future Flying Fiction", submitted under his real name of John Beynon Harris. Later that year a contest in Science Wonder Quarterly asked readers for an answer to the question "What I Have Done to Spread Science Fiction". The winner was Raymond Palmer who later became editor of Gernsback's original magazine, Amazing Stories. He won the contest for his role in founding a "Science Correspondence Club".
Science Wonders first issue included the first part of a serial, The Reign of the Ray, by Fletcher Pratt and Irwin Lester, and short stories by Stanton Coblentz and David H. Keller. Air Wonder began with a reprinted serial, Victor MacClure's Ark of the Covenant. Writers who first appeared in the pages of these magazines include Neil R. Jones, Ed Earl Repp, Raymond Z. Gallun and Lloyd Eshbach. The quality of published science fiction at the time was generally low, and Lasser was keen to improve it. On 11 May 1931 he wrote to his regular contributors to tell them that their science fiction stories "should deal realistically with the effect upon people, individually and in groups, of a scientific invention or discovery. ... In other words, allow yourself one fundamental assumption—that a certain machine or discovery is possible—and then show what would be its logical and dramatic consequences upon the world; also what would be the effect upon the group of characters that you pick to carry your theme."
### After the merger
Lasser provided ideas to his authors and commented on their drafts, attempting to improve both the level of scientific literacy and the quality of the writing. Some of his correspondence has survived, including an exchange with Jack Williamson, whom Lasser commissioned in early 1932 to write a story based on a plot provided by a reader—the winning entry in one of the magazine's competitions. Lasser emphasized to Williamson the importance of scientific plausibility, citing as an example a moment in the story where the earthmen have to decipher a written Martian language: "You must be sure and make it convincing how they did it; for they have absolutely no method of approach to a written language of another world." On one occasion Lasser's work with his authors extended to collaboration: "The Time Projector", a story which appeared in the July 1931 issue of Wonder Stories, was credited to David H. Keller and David Lasser. Both Lasser and, later, Hornig, were given almost complete editorial freedom by Gernsback, who reserved only the right to give final approval to the contents. This was in contrast to the more detailed control Gernsback had exerted over the content of Amazing Stories in the first years of its existence. Science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz has suggested that the reason was the poor financial state of Wonder Stories—Gernsback perhaps avoided corresponding with authors as he owed many of them money.
Lasser allowed the letter column to become a free discussion of ideas and values, and published stories dealing with topics such as the relationship between the sexes. One such story, Thomas S. Gardner's "The Last Woman", portrayed a future in which men, having evolved beyond the need for love, keep the last woman in a museum. In "The Venus Adventurer", an early story by John Wyndham, a spaceman corrupts the innocent natives of Venus. Lasser avoided printing space opera, and several stories from Wonder in the early 1930s were more realistic than most contemporary space fiction. Examples include Edmond Hamilton's "A Conquest of Two Worlds", P. Schuyler Miller's "The Forgotten Man of Space", and several stories by Frank K. Kelly, including "The Moon Tragedy".
Lasser was one of the founders of the American Rocket Society which, under its initial name of the "Interplanetary Society", announced its existence in the pages of the June 1930 Wonder Stories. Several of Wonder's writers were also members of the Interplanetary Society, and perhaps as a consequence of the relationship Wonder Stories Quarterly began to focus increasingly on fiction with interplanetary settings. A survey of the last eight issues of Wonder Stories Quarterly by Bleiler found almost two-thirds of the stories were interplanetary adventures, while only a third of the stories in the corresponding issues of Wonder Stories could be so described. Wonder Stories Quarterly added a banner reading "Interplanetary Number" to the cover of the Winter 1931 issue, and retained it, as "Interplanetary Stories", for subsequent issues. Lasser and Gernsback were also briefly involved with the fledgling Technocracy movement. Gernsback published two issues of Technocracy Review, which Lasser edited, commissioning stories based on technocratic ideas from Nat Schachner. These appeared in Wonder Stories during 1933, culminating in a novel, The Revolt of the Scientists.
Reviews of fiction and popular science books were published, and there was a science column which endeavored to answer readers' questions. These features were at first of good quality, but deteriorated after Lasser's departure, although it is not certain that Lasser wrote the content of either one. An influential non-fiction initiative was the creation of the Science Fiction League, an organization that brought together local science fiction fan clubs across the country. Gernsback took the opportunity to sell items such as buttons and insignia, and it was undoubtedly a profitable enterprise for him as well as a good source of publicity. It was ultimately more important in becoming one of the foundations of science fiction fandom.
### Hornig
When Hornig took over from Lasser at the end of 1933 he attempted to continue and expand Lasser's approach. Hornig introduced a "New Policy" in the January 1934 issue, emphasizing originality and barring stories that merely reworked well-worn ideas. He asked for stories that included good science, although "not enough to become boring to those readers who are not primarily interested in the technicalities of the science". However, Astounding was moving into the lead position in the science fiction magazine field at this time, and Hornig had difficulty in competing. His rates of payment were lower than Astounding'''s one cent per word; sometimes his writers were paid very late, or not at all. Despite these handicaps, Hornig managed to find some good material, including Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey", which appeared in the July 1934 Wonder and has been frequently reprinted.
In the December 1934 – January 1935 issue of Hornig's fanzine, Fantasy Magazine, he took the unusual step of listing several stories that he had rejected as lacking novelty, but which had subsequently appeared in print in other magazines. The list includes several by successful writers of the day, such as Raymond Z. Gallun and Miles Breuer. The most prominent story named is Triplanetary by E. E. Smith, which appeared in Amazing.
Both Lasser and Hornig printed fiction translated from French and German writers, including Otfrid von Hanstein and Otto Willi Gail. With the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s a few readers (including Donald Wollheim) wrote letters complaining about the inclusion of German stories. The editorial response was a strong defense of the translations; Gernsback argued that events in Germany were irrelevant to the business of selecting fiction.
The covers for almost every issue of Air Wonder, Science Wonder, Wonder Stories and Wonder Stories Quarterly were painted by Frank R. Paul, who had followed Gernsback from Amazing Stories. The only exception was a cover image composed of colored dots, which appeared on the November 1932 issue.
### Weisinger and Friend
When the magazine moved to Beacon Publications, as Thrilling Wonder, the fiction began to focus more on action than on ideas. The covers, often by Earle K. Bergey, typically depicted bizarre aliens and damsels in distress. In 1939, a reader, Martin Alger, coined the phrase "bug-eyed monster" to describe one such cover; the phrase subsequently entered the dictionary as a word for an alien. Several well-known writers contributed, including Ray Cummings, and John W. Campbell, whose "Brain-Stealers of Mars" series began in Thrilling Wonder in the December 1936 issue. A comic-strip began in August 1936, the first issue of the Beacon Publications version. It was illustrated and possibly written by Max Plaisted. The strip, titled Zarnak, was not a success, and was cancelled after eight issues.
Weisinger's successor, Friend, gave the magazine a significantly more juvenile feel. He used the alias "Sergeant Saturn" and was generally condescending to the readers; this may not have been his fault as Margulies, who was still the editorial director, probably wanted him to attract a younger readership. Under Friend's direction, Earle K. Bergey transformed the look of Thrilling Wonder Stories by foregrounding human figures in space, focusing on the anatomy of women in implausibly revealing spacesuits and his trademark "brass brassières".
### Merwin and Mines
Merwin, who took over with the Winter 1945 issue, adopted a more mature approach than Friend's. He obtained fiction from writers who had previously been publishing mainly in John Campbell's Astounding. The Summer 1945 issue of Thrilling Wonder included Jack Vance's first published story, "The World Thinker". Merwin also published several stories by Ray Bradbury, some of which were later included in Bradbury's collection The Martian Chronicles. Other well-known writers that Merwin was able to attract included Theodore Sturgeon, A. E. van Vogt, and Robert A. Heinlein. Thrilling Wonder often published intelligent, thoughtful stories, some of which Campbell would have been unlikely to accept at Astounding: he did not like to publish stories that showed the negative consequences of scientific advances such as nuclear power. In the opinion of science fiction historian Mike Ashley, during the late 1940s Thrilling Wonder became a serious rival to Astoundings long domination of the field. However, this is not a universal opinion, as the magazine is elsewhere described during Merwin's tenure as "evidently secondary to Startling".
Samuel Mines took over from Merwin at the end of 1951, both at Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder. He argued against restrictions in science fiction themes, and in 1952 published Philip José Farmer's "The Lovers", a ground-breaking story about inter-species sex, in Startling. He followed this in 1953 with another taboo-breaking story from Farmer, "Mother", in Thrilling Wonder, in which a spaceman makes his home in an alien womb. In the December 1952 Thrilling Wonder, Mines published Edmond Hamilton's "What's It Like Out There?", a downbeat story about the realities of space exploration that had been considered too bleak for publication when it had originally been written in the 1930s. Sherwood Springer's "No Land of Nod", in the same issue, dealt with incest between a father and his daughter in a world in which they are the only two survivors. These stories were all well received by the readership.
### Influence on the field
For a few years, Lasser was the dominant force in American science fiction. Under him, Wonder Stories was the best of the science fiction magazines of the early 1930s, and the most successful of all Gernsback's forays into the field. Lasser shaped a new generation of writers, who in many cases had no prior writing experience of any kind; Wonder Stories was part of a "forcing ground", according to Isaac Asimov, where young writers learned their trade. The magazine was less constrained by pulp convention than its competitors, and published some novels such as Eric Temple Bell's The Time Stream and Festus Pragnell's The Green Man of Graypec, which were not in the mainstream of development of the science fiction genre.
As Thrilling Wonder the magazine was much less influential. Until the mid-1940s it was focused on younger readers, and by the time Merwin and Mines introduced a more adult approach, Astounding Science Fiction had taken over as the unquestioned leader of the field. Thrilling Wonder could not compete with John Campbell and the Golden Age of science fiction that he brought into being, but it did periodically publish good stories. In the end it was unable to escape its roots in the pulp industry, and died in the carnage that swept away every remaining pulp magazine in the 1950s.
## Publication details
The editorial duties at Wonder Stories and its related magazines were not always performed by the person who bore the title of "editor" in the magazine's masthead. From the beginning until the sale to Beacon Publications, Gernsback was listed as editor-in-chief; Lasser was variously listed as "literary editor" and "managing editor", while Hornig was always listed as "managing editor". Similarly, under Beacon Publications, the nominal editor (initially Leo Margulies) was not always the one to work on the magazine. The following list shows who actually performed the editorial duties. More details are given in the publishing history section, above, which focuses on when the editors involved actually obtained control of the magazine contents, instead of when their names appeared on the masthead.
Air Wonder Stories
\* David Lasser (July 1929 – May 1930)
Science Wonder Stories
\* David Lasser (June 1929 – May 1930)
Science Wonder Quarterly
\* David Lasser (Fall 1929 – Spring 1930)
Wonder Stories
\* David Lasser (June 1930 – October 1933)
\* Charles Hornig (November 1933 – March–April 1936)
Wonder Stories Quarterly
\* David Lasser (Summer 1930 – Winter 1933)
Thrilling Wonder Stories
\* Mort Weisinger (August 1936 – April 1941)
\* Oscar Friend (August 1941 – Fall 1944)
\* Sam Merwin (Winter 1945 – October 1951)
\* Samuel Mines (December 1951 – Summer 1954)
\* Alexander Samalman (Fall 1954 – Winter 1955)
The publisher only changed once through the lifetime of the magazine, when Gernsback sold Wonder Stories in 1936. However, Gernsback changed the name of his company from Stellar Publishing Corporation to Continental Publications, Incorporated, with effect from December 1933. Thrilling Wonder's publisher went by three names: Beacon Publications initially, then Better Publications from the August 1937 issue, and finally, starting with the Fall 1943 issue, Standard Magazines.
Gernsback experimented with the price and format, looking for a profitable combination. Both Air Wonder and Science Wonder were bedsheet-sized (8.5 × 11.75 in, or 216 × 298 mm) and priced at 25 cents, as were the first issues of Wonder Stories. With the November 1930 issue Wonder Stories changed to pulp format, 6.75 × 9.9 in (171 × 251 mm). It reverted to bedsheet after a year, and then in November 1933 became a pulp magazine for good. The pulp issues all had 144 pages; the bedsheet issues generally had 96 pages, though five issues from November 1932 to March 1933 had only 64 pages. Those five issues coincided with a price cut to 15 cents, which was reversed with the April 1933 issue. Gernsback cut the price to 15 cents again from June 1935 until the sale to Beacon Publications in 1936, though this time he did not reduce the page count. The short duration of these price cuts suggests Gernsback rapidly realized that the additional circulation they gained him cost too much in lost revenue. Under Beacon Publications Thrilling Wonder remained pulp-sized throughout.
There were two British reprint editions of Thrilling Wonder. The earlier edition, from Atlas Publishing, produced three numbered issues from 1949 to 1950, and a further seven from 1952 to 1953. Another four issues appeared from Pemberton between 1953 and 1954; these were numbered from 101 to 104. There were Canadian editions in 1945–1946 and 1948–1951.
|
191,172 |
SMS Scharnhorst
| 1,172,955,148 |
Armored cruiser of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1906 ships",
"Maritime incidents in December 1914",
"Scharnhorst-class cruisers",
"Ships built in Hamburg",
"Shipwrecks of the Falkland Islands",
"Warships lost in combat with all hands",
"World War I cruisers of Germany",
"World War I shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean"
] |
SMS Scharnhorst was an armored cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. She was the lead ship of her class, which included SMS Gneisenau. Scharnhorst and her sister were enlarged versions of the preceding Roon class; they were equipped with a greater number of main guns and were capable of a higher top speed. The ship was named after the Prussian military reformer General Gerhard von Scharnhorst and commissioned into service on 24 October 1907.
Scharnhorst served briefly with the High Seas Fleet in Germany in 1908, though most of this time was spent conducting sea trials. She was assigned to the German East Asia Squadron based in Qingdao, China, in 1909. After arriving, she replaced the cruiser Fürst Bismarck as the squadron flagship, a position she would hold for the rest of her career. Over the next five years, she went on several tours of various Asian ports to show the flag for Germany. She frequently carried the squadron commanders to meet Asian heads of state and was present in Japan for the coronation of the Taishō Emperor in 1912.
After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, accompanied by three light cruisers and several colliers, sailed across the Pacific Ocean to the southern coast of South America. On 1 November 1914, Scharnhorst and the rest of the East Asia Squadron encountered and overpowered a British squadron at the Battle of Coronel. The defeat prompted the British Admiralty to dispatch two battlecruisers to hunt down and destroy the German squadron, which they accomplished at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914. The discovery of the wreck was announced in December 2019 by Mensun Bound.
## Design
The two Scharnhorst-class cruisers were ordered as part of the naval construction program laid out in the Second Naval Law of 1900, which called for a force of fourteen armored cruisers. The ships marked a significant increase in combat power over the predecessors, the Roon class, being more heavily armed and armored. These improvements were made to allow for Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to fight in the line of battle should the need arise, a capability requested by the General Department.
Scharnhorst was 144.6 meters (474 ft 5 in) long overall and had a beam of 21.6 m (70 ft 10 in) and a draft of 8.37 m (27 ft 6 in). The ship displaced 11,616 metric tons (11,433 long tons) as designed and 12,985 t (12,780 long tons) at full load. She was powered by three triple-expansion steam engines with steam provided by eighteen coal-fired water-tube boilers. Her propulsion system was rated to produce 26,000 metric horsepower (19,000 kW) for a top speed of 22.5 knots (41.7 km/h; 25.9 mph). She had a cruising radius of 4,800 nautical miles (8,900 km; 5,500 mi) at a speed of 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph). Scharnhorst's crew consisted of 52 officers and 788 enlisted men; of these, 14 officers and 62 enlisted men were assigned to the squadron commander's staff and were additional to the standard complement.
Scharnhorst's primary armament consisted of eight 21 cm (8.3 in) SK L/40 guns, four in twin gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the main superstructure on the centerline, and the remaining four mounted in single casemates. The secondary armament included six 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/40 guns, also in individual casemates that were placed a deck below the main battery casemates. Defense against torpedo boats was provided by a battery of eighteen 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/35 guns mounted in casemates. She was also equipped with four 45 cm (17.7 in) submerged torpedo tubes. One was mounted in the bow, one on each broadside, and the fourth was placed in the stern.
The ship was protected by a 15 cm belt of 15 cm (5.9 in) of Krupp armor, decreased to 8 cm (3.1 in) forward and aft of the central citadel. She had an armored deck that was 3.5 to 6 cm (1.4 to 2.4 in) thick, with the heavier armor protecting the ship's engine and boiler rooms and ammunition magazines. The centerline gun turrets had 18 cm (7.1 in) thick sides, while the wing turrets received 15 cm of armor protection. The casemate secondary battery was protected by a strake of armor that was 13 cm (5.1 in) thick.
## Service history
Named for Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General) Gerhard von Scharnhorst, a Prussian military reformer during the Napoleonic Wars, Scharnhorst was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany on 22 March 1905, with the construction number 175. She was launched on 23 March 1906, and Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Gottlieb Graf von Haeseler gave a speech and christened the ship at her launching ceremony. She was commissioned into the fleet a year and a half later on 24 October 1907. She then began sea trials; while conducting speed tests she exceeded her design speed by one knot, reaching 23.5 knots (43.5 km/h; 27.0 mph).
From 6 to 11 November, her trials were interrupted by a voyage to Vlissingen in the Netherlands and Portsmouth in Britain in company with Kaiser Wilhelm II's yacht Hohenzollern and the light cruiser Königsberg. On 14 January 1908, Scharnhorst ran aground off the Bülk Lighthouse and suffered serious underwater damage. Repairs were made at Blohm & Voss, and lasted until 22 February. She then resumed her trials, which continued until the end of April. On 1 May, she replaced Yorck as the flagship of the reconnaissance forces of the High Seas Fleet, under the command of Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) August von Heeringen. During the rest of the year, she participated in the normal peacetime routine of training exercises and fleet maneuvers.
### East Asia Squadron
#### 1909–1911
On 11 March 1909, Scharnhorst was assigned to the Ostasiengeschwader (East Asia Squadron); Yorck replaced her as the reconnaissance squadron flagship. After completing preparations for the voyage, Scharnhorst left Kiel on 1 April; aboard was Konteradmiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, who was to take command of the East Asia Squadron upon his arrival. On 29 April, Scharnhorst rendezvoused with Fürst Bismarck, the flagship of the East Asia Squadron, in Colombo. There, Scharnhorst took over the role of squadron flagship. At the time, the squadron also included the light cruisers Leipzig and Arcona and several gunboats and torpedo boats. In July and August, Scharnhorst went on a cruise in the Yellow Sea and in August surveyed ports in the area. She spent December and early January 1910 in Hong Kong for the Christmas and New Year's festivities, in company with Leipzig and the gunboat Luchs.
In January 1910 Scharnhorst, Leipzig, and Luchs went on a tour of East Asian ports, including Bangkok, Manila, and stops in Sumatra and North Borneo. By 22 March, Scharnhorst and Leipzig had returned to the German port at Qingdao. In the meantime, Arcona had left the East Asia Squadron in February; her replacement, Nürnberg, arrived on 9 April. Ingenohl, by now promoted to Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral), departed on 6 June and was replaced by Konteradmiral Erich Gühler. The new squadron commander took Scharnhorst and Nürnberg on a tour of Germany's Pacific colonies, starting on 20 June. Stops included the Mariana Islands, Truk, and Apia in German Samoa. In the last port, the cruisers met the unprotected cruisers Cormoran and Condor, the station ships for the South Seas Station. While there, the new light cruiser Emden arrived on 22 July to further strengthen the East Asia Squadron.
In 1910, Scharnhorst won the Kaiser's Schießpreis (Shooting Prize) for excellent gunnery in the East Asia Squadron. On 25 November, Scharnhorst and the rest of the squadron went on a trip to Hong Kong and Nanjing; while in Hong Kong, an outbreak of typhus struck. Among those who were infected was Gühler, who succumbed to the disease on 21 January 1911. In the meantime, unrest had broken out in Ponape, which required the presence of Emden and Nürnberg. Scharnhorst instead went on a tour of Southeast Asian ports, including Saigon, Singapore, and Batavia. She then returned to Qingdao by way of Hong Kong and Amoy, arriving on 1 March. There, Konteradmiral Günther von Krosigk was waiting to take command of the squadron. Two weeks later, the squadron was reinforced by the arrival of Scharnhorst's sister ship Gneisenau on 14 March.
From 30 March to 12 May, Scharnhorst went on a cruise in Japanese waters with Krosigk aboard. She thereafter steamed to the northern area of the German protectorate in early July; at the time tensions were high in Europe due to the Agadir Crisis. Krosigk attempted to keep the situation calm in East Asia and he took his flagship on a tour of harbors in the Yellow Sea. By 15 September, the cruiser was back in Qingdao. After arriving in Qingdao, Scharnhorst went into dock for her annual repair; Krosigk accordingly shifted his flag to Gneisenau temporarily. On 10 October, the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing Dynasty broke out, causing a great deal of tension amongst the Europeans, who recalled the attacks on foreigners during the Boxer Uprising of 1900–1901. The rest of the East Asia Squadron was placed on alert to protect German interests and additional troops were sent to protect the German consulate. But the feared attacks on Europeans did not materialize and so the East Asia Squadron was not needed.
#### 1912–1914
By late November, Scharnhorst was back in service and Krosigk returned to the ship. She cruised to Shanghai by way of Tianjin and Yantai, arriving on 12 December. From 14 to 24 January 1912, Scharnhorst toured the ports of the central China coast and returned to Qingdao on 9 March, where the rest of the squadron had assembled. On 13 April, the ships went on a month-long cruise to Japanese waters, returning to Qingdao on 13 May. From 17 July to 4 September, Scharnhorst went on another tour of Japanese ports and during this period she also visited Vladivostok in Russia and several ports in the Yellow Sea.
On 30 July, the Japanese Meiji Emperor died; Scharnhorst escorted Leipzig, which carried Prince Heinrich, Wilhelm II's brother, to the Meiji Emperor's funeral and the coronation ceremony for the Taishō Emperor. The ships remained in Japan from 5 to 26 September. After returning to Qingdao, Prince Heinrich conducted an inspection of the entire East Asia Squadron. On 4 December, Krosigk handed over command of the squadron to Konteradmiral Maximilian von Spee. On 27 December, Spee took Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on a tour of the southwest Pacific, including stops in Amoy, Singapore, and Batavia. The two cruisers reached Qingdao on 2 March 1913. From 1 April to 7 May, Scharnhorst took Spee to Japan to meet the Taishō Emperor. Starting on 22 June, Spee began a tour of Germany's Pacific colonies aboard his flagship. The ship stopped in the Marianas, the Admiralty Islands, the Hermit Islands, Rabaul in Neupommern, and Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen in German New Guinea.
While in Rabaul on 21 July, Spee received word of further unrest in China, which prompted his return to the Wusong roadstead outside Shanghai by 30 July. After the situation calmed, Spee was able to take his ships on a short cruise to Japan, which began on 11 November. Scharnhorst and the rest of the squadron returned to Shanghai on 29 November, before she departed for another trip to Southeast Asia. Spee met with Vajiravudh, the King of Siam, and also visited Sumatra, North Borneo, and Manila. Scharnhorst returned to Qingdao on 19 March 1914. In early May, Spee, by now promoted to Vizeadmiral, took Scharnhorst and the torpedo boat SMS S90 on a visit to Port Arthur and then to Tianjin; Spee continued on to Beijing, where he met with Yuan Shikai, the first President of the Republic of China. He came back aboard Scharnhorst on 11 May and the ship returned to Qingdao. Spee thereafter began preparations for a cruise to German New Guinea; Scharnhorst departed on 20 June, leaving only Emden behind in Qingdao.
Gneisenau rendezvoused with Scharnhorst in Nagasaki, Japan, where they received a full supply of coal. They then sailed south, arriving in Truk in early July where they would restock their coal supplies. While en route, they received news of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. On 17 July, the East Asia Squadron arrived in Ponape in the Caroline Islands. Spee now had access to the German radio network and he learned of the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July and the Russian mobilization against Austria-Hungary and possibly Germany on 30 July. On 31 July, word came that the German ultimatum that Russia demobilize its armies was set to expire. Spee ordered his ships be stripped for war. On 2 August, Wilhelm II ordered German mobilization against Russia and its ally, France.
### World War I
When the First World War broke out, the East Asia Squadron consisted of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Emden, Nürnberg, and Leipzig. At the time, Nürnberg was returning from the west coast of the United States, where Leipzig had just replaced her, and Emden was still in Qingdao. On 6 August 1914, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, the supply ship Titania, and the Japanese collier Fukoku Maru were still in Ponape. Spee had issued orders to recall the light cruisers, which had been dispersed on cruises around the Pacific. Nürnberg joined Spee that day, after which Spee moved his ships to Pagan Island in the Northern Mariana Islands, a German possession in the central Pacific. Spee left for Pagan in the night, without Fukoku Maru, to avoid having the Japanese crew betray his movements.
All available colliers, supply ships, and passenger liners were ordered to meet the East Asia Squadron in Pagan and Emden joined the squadron there on 12 August. The auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich joined Spee's ships there as well. The four cruisers, accompanied by Prinz Eitel Friedrich and several colliers, then departed the central Pacific, bound for Chile. On 13 August, Commodore Karl von Müller, captain of the Emden, persuaded Spee to detach his ship as a commerce raider. The four cruisers, accompanied by Prinz Eitel Friedrich and several colliers, then departed Pagan on 15 August, bound for Chile. While en route to Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands the next morning, Emden left the formation with one of the colliers. The remaining ships again coaled after their arrival in Enewetak on 20 August.
To keep the German high command informed, on 8 September Spee detached Nürnberg to Honolulu to send word through neutral countries. Nürnberg returned with news of the Allied capture of German Samoa, which had taken place on 29 August. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sailed to Apia to investigate the situation. Spee had hoped to catch a British or Australian warship by surprise, but upon his arrival on 14 September, he found no warships in the harbor. On 22 September, Scharnhorst and the rest of the East Asia Squadron arrived at the French colony of Papeete. The Germans attacked the colony, and in the ensuing Battle of Papeete, they sank the French gunboat Zélée. The ships came under fire from French shore batteries but were undamaged. Fear of mines in the harbor prevented Spee from entering the harbor to seize the coal, which the French had set on fire.
By 12 October, Scharnhorst and the rest of the squadron had reached Easter Island. There they were joined by Dresden and Leipzig, which had sailed from American waters, on 12 and 14 October, respectively. Leipzigalso brought three more colliers with her. After a week in the area, the ships departed for mainland Chile. On the evening of 26 October, Scharnhorst and the rest of the squadron steamed out of Mas a Fuera, Chile and headed eastward, arriving in Valparaíso on 30 October. On 1 November, Spee learned from Prinz Eitel Friedrich that the British light cruiser HMS Glasgow had been anchored in Coronel the previous day, so he turned towards the port to try to catch her alone.
#### Battle of Coronel
The British had scant resources to oppose the German squadron off the coast of South America. Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock commanded the armored cruisers HMS Good Hope and Monmouth, Glasgow, and the converted armed merchant cruiser Otranto. The flotilla was reinforced by the elderly pre-dreadnought battleship Canopus and the armored cruiser Defence. The latter, however, did not arrive until after the Battle of Coronel. Canopus was left behind by Cradock, who probably felt her slow speed would prevent him from bringing the German ships to battle.
The East Asia Squadron arrived off Coronel on the afternoon of 1 November; to Spee's surprise, he encountered Good Hope, Monmouth, and Otranto in addition to Glasgow. Canopus was still some 300 nmi (560 km; 350 mi) behind, with the British colliers. At 16:17, Glasgow spotted the German ships. Cradock formed a line of battle with Good Hope in the lead, followed by Monmouth, Glasgow, and Otranto in the rear. Spee decided to hold off engaging until the sun had set more, at which point the British ships would be silhouetted by the sun, while his own ships would be obscured against the coast behind them. Cradock realized the uselessness of Otranto in the line of battle and detached her.
By 18:07, the distance between the two squadrons had fallen to 13,500 m (44,300 ft) and Spee ordered his ships to open fire thirty minutes later; each ship engaged their opposite in the British line. Scharnhorst engaged Good Hope and hit her on the third salvo, striking between her forward gun turret and her conning tower and starting a major fire. Once the German gunners found the range, they began firing rapidly, with one salvo of high-explosive shells every fifteen seconds. Oberleutnant zur See (Lieutenant at Sea) Knoop, the spotting officer aboard Scharnhorst, reported that "Continual hits could be observed ... in the midships Good Hope was hit repeatedly, with much fire resulting ... the interior of this part of the ship was on fire, which could be seen through the portholes, shining brightly."
In the meantime, Glasgow began to shoot at both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, since she could no longer engage the German light cruisers. One of her 4-inch (102 mm) shells struck Scharnhorst in the forecastle but failed to explode. By 18:50, Monmouth had been badly damaged by Gneisenau and fell out of line; Gneisenau therefore joined Scharnhorst in battling Good Hope. At the same time, Nürnberg closed to point-blank range of Monmouth and poured shells into her. At 19:23, Good Hope's guns fell silent following two large explosions; the German gunners ceased fire shortly thereafter. Good Hope disappeared into the darkness. Spee ordered his light cruisers to close with his battered opponents and finish them off with torpedoes, while he took Scharnhorst and Gneisenau further south to get out of the way.
Glasgow was forced to abandon Monmouth after 19:20 when the German light cruisers approached, before fleeing south and meeting with Canopus. A squall prevented the Germans from discovering Monmouth, but she eventually capsized and sank at 20:18. More than 1,600 men were killed in the sinking of the two armored cruisers, including Cradock. German losses were negligible. However, the German ships had expended over 40 percent of their ammunition supply. Scharnhorst was hit twice during the engagement, but both shells failed to explode. The second hit passed through her third funnel and did not explode; she was struck by shell splinters that damaged her wireless antenna array. She suffered no casualties and the only German injuries were two slightly wounded men aboard Gneisenau.
#### Voyage to the Falklands
After the battle, Spee took his ships north to Valparaiso. Since Chile was neutral, only three ships could enter the port at a time; Spee took Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Nürnberg in first on the morning of 3 November, leaving Dresden and Leipzig with the colliers at Mas a Fuera. In Valparaiso, Spee's ships could take on coal while he conferred with the Admiralty Staff in Germany to determine the strength of remaining British forces in the region. The ships remained in the port for only 24 hours, in accordance with the neutrality restrictions, and arrived at Mas a Fuera on 6 November, where they took on more coal from captured British and French steamers. On 10 November, Dresden and Leipzig were detached for a stop in Valparaiso, and five days later, Spee took the rest of the squadron south to St. Quentin Bay in the Gulf of Penas. On 18 November, Dresden and Leipzig met Spee while en route and the squadron reached St. Quentin Bay three days later. There, they took on more coal, since the voyage around Cape Horn would be a long one and it was unclear when they would have another opportunity to coal.
Once word of the defeat reached London, the Royal Navy set to organizing a force to hunt down and destroy the East Asia Squadron. To this end, the powerful battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible were detached from the Grand Fleet and placed under the command of Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee. The two ships left Devonport on 10 November and while en route to the Falkland Islands, they were joined by the armored cruisers Carnarvon, Kent, and Cornwall, the light cruisers Bristol and Glasgow, and the armed merchant cruiser Macedonia. The force of eight ships reached the Falklands by 7 December, where they immediately coaled.
In the meantime, Spee's ships departed St. Quentin Bay on 26 November and rounded Cape Horn on 2 December. They captured the Canadian barque Drummuir, which had a cargo of 2,500 t (2,500 long tons) of good-quality Cardiff coal. Leipzig took the ship under tow and the following day the ships stopped off Picton Island. The crews transferred the coal from Drummuir to the squadron's colliers. On the morning of 6 December, Spee held a conference with the ship commanders aboard Scharnhorst to determine their next course of action. The Germans had received numerous fragmentary and contradictory reports of British reinforcements in the region; Spee and two other captains favored an attack on the Falklands, while three other commanders argued that it would be better to bypass the islands and attack British shipping off Argentina. Spee's opinion carried the day and the squadron departed for the Falklands at 12:00.
#### Battle of the Falkland Islands
Gneisenau and Nürnberg were delegated for the attack; they approached the Falklands the following morning (8 December), with the intention of destroying the wireless transmitter there. Observers aboard Gneisenau spotted smoke rising from Port Stanley, but assumed it was the British burning their coal stocks to prevent the Germans from seizing them. As they closed on the harbor, 30.5 cm (12 in) shells from Canopus, which had been beached as a guard ship, began to fall around the German ships, which prompted Spee to break off the attack. The Germans took a southeasterly course at 22 kn (41 km/h; 25 mph) after having reformed by 10:45. Scharnhorst was the center ship, with Gneisenau and Nürnberg ahead and Dresden and Leipzig astern. The fast battlecruisers quickly got up steam and sailed out of the harbor to pursue the slower East Asia Squadron.
By 13:20, the British ships had caught up with Scharnhorst and the other cruisers and began firing at a range of 14 km (8.7 mi). Spee realized his armored cruisers could not escape the much faster battlecruisers and ordered the three light cruisers to attempt to break away while he turned about and allowed the British battlecruisers to engage the outgunned Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Meanwhile, Sturdee detached his cruisers to pursue the German light cruisers. Invincible opened fire at Scharnhorst while Inflexible attacked Gneisenau and Spee ordered his two armored cruisers to similarly engage their opposites. Spee had taken the lee position; the wind kept his ships swept of smoke, which improved visibility for his gunners. This forced Sturdee into the windward position and its corresponding worse visibility. Scharnhorst straddled Invincible with her third salvo and quickly scored two hits on the British battlecruiser. The German flagship was not hit during this phase of the battle.
Sturdee attempted to widen the distance by turning two points to the north to prevent Spee from closing to within the range of his numerous secondary guns. Spee counteracted this maneuver by turning rapidly to the south, which forced Sturdee to turn south as well to keep within range. This allowed Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to turn back north and get close enough to engage with their secondary 15 cm guns. Their shooting was so accurate that it forced the British to haul away a second time. After resuming the battle, the British gunfire became more accurate; Scharnhorst was hit several times and fires broke out. The pace of her gunfire started to slacken, though she continued to score hits on Invincible. Sturdee then turned to port in an attempt to take the leeward position, but Spee countered the turn to retain his favorable position; the maneuvering did, however, reverse the order of the ships, so Scharnhorst now engaged Inflexible.
By this stage of the battle, Scharnhorst had a slight list to port and was about a meter lower in the water. Her third funnel had been shot away. Gneisenau was briefly obscured by smoke, which led both battlecruisers to target Scharnhorst. By 16:00, Spee ordered Gneisenau to attempt to escape while he reversed course and attempted to launch torpedoes at his pursuers. The port list had increased significantly by this point and she was well down by the bow, with only 2 meters (6 ft 7 in) of freeboard. At 16:17, the ship finally capsized to port and sank; the British, their attention now focused on Gneisenau, made no attempt to rescue the crew. All 860 officers and men on board, including Spee, went down with the ship. Gneisenau, Leipzig, and Nürnberg were also sunk. Only Dresden managed to escape, but she was eventually tracked to the Juan Fernandez Islands and sunk. The complete destruction of the squadron killed about 2,200 German sailors and officers, including two of Spee's sons.
In mid-1915, a coastal steamer found the body of a German sailor off the coast of Brazil. The sailor had a watertight cartridge case from a 21 cm shell attached; inside was one of the Reichskriegsflaggen (Imperial war flags) flown aboard Scharnhorst. The sailor was buried in Brazil and the flag was eventually returned to Germany, where it was placed on display at the Museum für Meereskunde (Marine Science) in Berlin, though it was lost during World War II. In the mid-1930s, the new German navy, the Kriegsmarine, built a battleship named for Scharnhorst. At the launching of the new Scharnhorst in October 1936, the widow of the earlier ship's captain was present.
## Wreck
An expedition led by the marine archaeologist Mensun Bound searching for the ships of Spee's squadron began in 2014, but had no success. Bound returned for another attempt in 2019 with the research vessel Seabed Constructor, and on 5 December he announced he had located the wreck of Scharnhorst. The vessel lies upright at a depth of about 1,610 m (5,280 ft), some 98 nmi (181 km; 113 mi) southeast of the Falklands. Most of the superstructure has been destroyed or lies around the wreck, but the greater part of the hull is still intact.
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King Arthur
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Legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries
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"Arthurian legend",
"British male characters in television",
"Burials at Glastonbury Abbey",
"English folklore",
"English mythology",
"King Arthur's family",
"Knights of the Round Table",
"Legendary British kings",
"Male characters in animation",
"Male characters in film",
"Male characters in literature",
"Mythological swordfighters",
"People whose existence is disputed",
"Welsh folklore",
"Welsh legendary characters",
"Welsh mythology"
] |
King Arthur (Welsh: Brenin Arthur, Cornish: Arthur Gernow, Breton: Roue Arzhur, French: Roi Arthur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a leader of the post-Roman Britons in battles against Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. He first appears in two early medieval historical sources, the Annales Cambriae and the Historia Brittonum, but these date to 300 years after he is supposed to have lived, and most historians who study the period do not consider him a historical figure. His name also occurs in early Welsh poetic sources such as Y Gododdin. The character developed through Welsh mythology, appearing either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn.
The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and established a vast empire. Many elements and incidents that are now an integral part of the Arthurian story appear in Geoffrey's Historia, including Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, the magician Merlin, Arthur's wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, Arthur's conception at Tintagel, his final battle against Mordred at Camlann, and final rest in Avalon. The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story, began the genre of Arthurian romance that became a significant strand of medieval literature. In these French stories, the narrative focus often shifts from King Arthur himself to other characters, such as various Knights of the Round Table. The themes, events and characters of the Arthurian legend vary widely from text to text, and there is no one canonical version. Arthurian literature thrived during the Middle Ages but waned in the centuries that followed, until it experienced a major resurgence in the 19th century. In the 21st century, the legend continues to have prominence, not only in literature but also in adaptations for theatre, film, television, comics and other media.
## Historicity
The historical basis for King Arthur has been long debated by scholars. One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), saw Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century.
The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum.
Archaeological evidence in the Low Countries and what was to become England shows early Anglo-Saxon migration to Great Britain reversed between 500 and 550, which concurs with Frankish chronicles. John Davies notes this as consistent with the British victory at Badon Hill, attributed to Arthur by Nennius. The monks of Glastonbury are also said to have discovered the grave of Arthur in 1180.
The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon.
Problems have been identified, however, with using this source to support the Historia Brittonum's account. The latest research shows that the Annales Cambriae was based on a chronicle begun in the late 8th century in Wales. Additionally, the complex textual history of the Annales Cambriae precludes any certainty that the Arthurian annals were added to it even that early. They were more likely added at some point in the 10th century and may never have existed in any earlier set of annals. The Badon entry probably derived from the Historia Brittonum.
This lack of convincing early evidence is the reason many recent historians exclude Arthur from their accounts of sub-Roman Britain. In the view of historian Thomas Charles-Edwards, "at this stage of the enquiry, one can only say that there may well have been an historical Arthur [but ...] the historian can as yet say nothing of value about him". These modern admissions of ignorance are a relatively recent trend; earlier generations of historians were less sceptical. The historian John Morris made the putative reign of Arthur the organising principle of his history of sub-Roman Britain and Ireland, The Age of Arthur (1973). Even so, he found little to say about a historical Arthur.
Partly in reaction to such theories, another school of thought emerged which argued that Arthur had no historical existence at all. Morris's Age of Arthur prompted the archaeologist Nowell Myres to observe that "no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian's time". Gildas's 6th-century polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), written within living memory of Badon, mentions the battle but does not mention Arthur. Arthur is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or named in any surviving manuscript written between 400 and 820. He is absent from Bede's early-8th-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, another major early source for post-Roman history that mentions Badon. The historian David Dumville wrote: "I think we can dispose of him [Arthur] quite briefly. He owes his place in our history books to a 'no smoke without fire' school of thought ... The fact of the matter is that there is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books."
Some scholars argue that Arthur was originally a fictional hero of folklore—or even a half-forgotten Celtic deity—who became credited with real deeds in the distant past. They cite parallels with figures such as the Kentish Hengist and Horsa, who may be totemic horse-gods that later became historicised. Bede ascribed to these legendary figures a historical role in the 5th-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain. It is not even certain that Arthur was considered a king in the early texts. Neither the Historia nor the Annales calls him "rex": the former calls him instead "dux bellorum" (leader of wars) and "miles" (soldier).
Details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of Welsh mythology, English folklore and literary invention, and most historians of the period do not think that he was a historical figure. Because historical documents for the post-Roman period are scarce, a definitive answer to the question of Arthur's historical existence is unlikely. Sites and places have been identified as "Arthurian" since the 12th century, but archaeology can confidently reveal names only through inscriptions found in secure contexts. The so-called "Arthur stone", discovered in 1998 among the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall in securely dated 6th-century contexts, created a brief stir but proved irrelevant. Other inscriptional evidence for Arthur, including the Glastonbury cross, is tainted with the suggestion of forgery.
Andrew Breeze has recently argued that Arthur was historical, and claimed to have identified the locations of his battles as well as the place and date of his death (in the context of the extreme weather events of 535–536), but his conclusions are disputed. Other scholars have questioned his findings, which they consider are based on coincidental resemblances between place-names. Nicholas Higham comments that it is difficult to justify identifying Arthur as the leader in northern battles listed in the Historia Brittonum while rejecting the implication in the same work that they were fought against Anglo-Saxons, and that there is no textual justification for separating Badon from the other battles.
Several historical figures have been proposed as the basis for Arthur, ranging from Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman officer who served in Britain in the 2nd or 3rd century, to sub-Roman British rulers such as Riotamus, Ambrosius Aurelianus, and the Welsh kings Owain Ddantgwyn, Enniaun Girt, and Athrwys ap Meurig. However, no convincing evidence for these identifications has emerged.
## Name
The origin of the Welsh name "Arthur" remains a matter of debate. The most widely accepted etymology derives it from the Roman nomen gentile (family name) Artorius. Artorius itself is of obscure and contested etymology. Linguist Stephan Zimmer suggests Artorius possibly had a Celtic origin, being a Latinization of a hypothetical name \*Artorījos, in turn derived from an older patronym \*Arto-rīg-ios, meaning "son of the bear/warrior-king". This patronym is unattested, but the root, \*arto-rīg, "bear/warrior-king", is the source of the Old Irish personal name Artrí. Some scholars have suggested it is relevant to this debate that the legendary King Arthur's name only appears as Arthur or Arturus in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Artōrius (though Classical Latin Artōrius became Arturius in some Vulgar Latin dialects). However, this may not say anything about the origin of the name Arthur, as Artōrius would regularly become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh.
Another commonly proposed derivation of Arthur from Welsh arth "bear" + (g)wr "man" (earlier \*Arto-uiros in Brittonic) is not accepted by modern scholars for phonological and orthographic reasons. Notably, a Brittonic compound name \*Arto-uiros should produce Old Welsh \*Artgur (where u represents the short vowel /u/) and Middle/Modern Welsh \*Arthwr, rather than Arthur (where u is a long vowel /ʉː/). In Welsh poetry the name is always spelled Arthur and is exclusively rhymed with words ending in -ur—never words ending in -wr—which confirms that the second element cannot be [g]wr "man".
An alternative theory, which has gained only limited acceptance among professional scholars, derives the name Arthur from Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, near Ursa Major or the Great Bear. Classical Latin Arcturus would also have become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh, and its brightness and position in the sky led people to regard it as the "guardian of the bear" (which is the meaning of the name in Ancient Greek) and the "leader" of the other stars in Boötes.
Many other theories exist, for example that the name has Messapian or Etruscan origins.
## Medieval literary traditions
The familiar literary persona of Arthur began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-historical Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), written in the 1130s. The textual sources for Arthur are usually divided into those written before Geoffrey's Historia (known as pre-Galfridian texts, from the Latin form of Geoffrey, Galfridus) and those written afterwards, which could not avoid his influence (Galfridian, or post-Galfridian, texts).
### Pre-Galfridian traditions
The earliest literary references to Arthur come from Welsh and Breton sources. There have been few attempts to define the nature and character of Arthur in the pre-Galfridian tradition as a whole, rather than in a single text or text/story-type. A 2007 academic survey led by Caitlin Green has identified three key strands to the portrayal of Arthur in this earliest material. The first is that he was a peerless warrior who functioned as the monster-hunting protector of Britain from all internal and external threats. Some of these are human threats, such as the Saxons he fights in the Historia Brittonum, but the majority are supernatural, including giant cat-monsters, destructive divine boars, dragons, dogheads, giants, and witches. The second is that the pre-Galfridian Arthur was a figure of folklore (particularly topographic or onomastic folklore) and localised magical wonder-tales, the leader of a band of superhuman heroes who live in the wilds of the landscape. The third and final strand is that the early Welsh Arthur had a close connection with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. On the one hand, he launches assaults on Otherworldly fortresses in search of treasure and frees their prisoners. On the other, his warband in the earliest sources includes former pagan gods, and his wife and his possessions are clearly Otherworldly in origin.
One of the most famous Welsh poetic references to Arthur comes in the collection of heroic death-songs known as Y Gododdin (The Gododdin), attributed to the 6th-century poet Aneirin. One stanza praises the bravery of a warrior who slew 300 enemies, but says that despite this, "he was no Arthur" – that is, his feats cannot compare to the valour of Arthur. Y Gododdin is known only from a 13th-century manuscript, so it is impossible to determine whether this passage is original or a later interpolation, but John Koch's view that the passage dates from a 7th-century or earlier version is regarded as unproven; 9th- or 10th-century dates are often proposed for it. Several poems attributed to Taliesin, a poet said to have lived in the 6th century, also refer to Arthur, although these all probably date from between the 8th and 12th centuries. They include "Kadeir Teyrnon" ("The Chair of the Prince"), which refers to "Arthur the Blessed"; "Preiddeu Annwn" ("The Spoils of Annwn"), which recounts an expedition of Arthur to the Otherworld; and "Marwnat vthyr pen[dragon]" ("The Elegy of Uther Pen[dragon]"), which refers to Arthur's valour and is suggestive of a father-son relationship for Arthur and Uther that pre-dates Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Other early Welsh Arthurian texts include a poem found in the Black Book of Carmarthen, "Pa gur yv y porthaur?" ("What man is the gatekeeper?"). This takes the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the gatekeeper of a fortress he wishes to enter, in which Arthur recounts the names and deeds of himself and his men, notably Cei (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere). The Welsh prose tale Culhwch and Olwen (), included in the modern Mabinogion collection, has a much longer list of more than 200 of Arthur's men, though Cei and Bedwyr again take a central place. The story as a whole tells of Arthur helping his kinsman Culhwch win the hand of Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief-Giant, by completing a series of apparently impossible tasks, including the hunt for the great semi-divine boar Twrch Trwyth. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum also refers to this tale, with the boar there named Troy(n)t. Finally, Arthur is mentioned numerous times in the Welsh Triads, a collection of short summaries of Welsh tradition and legend which are classified into groups of three linked characters or episodes to assist recall. The later manuscripts of the Triads are partly derivative from Geoffrey of Monmouth and later continental traditions, but the earliest ones show no such influence and are usually agreed to refer to pre-existing Welsh traditions. Even in these, however, Arthur's court has started to embody legendary Britain as a whole, with "Arthur's Court" sometimes substituted for "The Island of Britain" in the formula "Three XXX of the Island of Britain". While it is not clear from the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae that Arthur was even considered a king, by the time Culhwch and Olwen and the Triads were written he had become Penteyrnedd yr Ynys hon, "Chief of the Lords of this Island", the overlord of Wales, Cornwall and the North.
In addition to these pre-Galfridian Welsh poems and tales, Arthur appears in some other early Latin texts besides the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae. In particular, Arthur features in a number of well-known vitae ("Lives") of post-Roman saints, none of which are now generally considered to be reliable historical sources (the earliest probably dates from the 11th century). According to the Life of Saint Gildas, written in the early 12th century by Caradoc of Llancarfan, Arthur is said to have killed Gildas's brother Hueil and to have rescued his wife Gwenhwyfar from Glastonbury. In the Life of Saint Cadoc, written around 1100 or a little before by Lifris of Llancarfan, the saint gives protection to a man who killed three of Arthur's soldiers, and Arthur demands a herd of cattle as wergeld for his men. Cadoc delivers them as demanded, but when Arthur takes possession of the animals, they turn into bundles of ferns. Similar incidents are described in the medieval biographies of Carannog, Padarn, and Eufflam, probably written around the 12th century. A less obviously legendary account of Arthur appears in the Legenda Sancti Goeznovii, which is often claimed to date from the early 11th century (although the earliest manuscript of this text dates from the 15th century and the text is now dated to the late 12th to early 13th century). Also important are the references to Arthur in William of Malmesbury's De Gestis Regum Anglorum and Herman's De Miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis, which together provide the first certain evidence for a belief that Arthur was not actually dead and would at some point return, a theme that is often revisited in post-Galfridian folklore.
### Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, completed , contains the first narrative account of Arthur's life. This work is an imaginative and fanciful account of British kings from the legendary Trojan exile Brutus to the 7th-century Welsh king Cadwallader. Geoffrey places Arthur in the same post-Roman period as do Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. According to Geoffrey's tale, Arthur was a descendant of Constantine the Great. He incorporates Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, his magician advisor Merlin, and the story of Arthur's conception, in which Uther, disguised as his enemy Gorlois by Merlin's magic, sleeps with Gorlois's wife Igerna (Igraine) at Tintagel, and she conceives Arthur. On Uther's death, the fifteen-year-old Arthur succeeds him as King of Britain and fights a series of battles, similar to those in the Historia Brittonum, culminating in the Battle of Bath. He then defeats the Picts and Scots before creating an Arthurian empire through his conquests of Ireland, Iceland and the Orkney Islands. After twelve years of peace, Arthur sets out to expand his empire once more, taking control of Norway, Denmark and Gaul. Gaul is still held by the Roman Empire when it is conquered, and Arthur's victory leads to a further confrontation with Rome. Arthur and his warriors, including Kaius (Kay), Beduerus (Bedivere) and Gualguanus (Gawain), defeat the Roman emperor Lucius Tiberius in Gaul but, as he prepares to march on Rome, Arthur hears that his nephew Modredus (Mordred)—whom he had left in charge of Britain—has married his wife Guenhuuara (Guinevere) and seized the throne. Arthur returns to Britain and defeats and kills Modredus on the river Camblam in Cornwall, but he is mortally wounded. He hands the crown to his kinsman Constantine and is taken to the isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds, never to be seen again.
How much of this narrative was Geoffrey's own invention is open to debate. He seems to have made use of the list of Arthur's twelve battles against the Saxons found in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, along with the battle of Camlann from the Annales Cambriae and the idea that Arthur was still alive. Arthur's status as the king of all Britain seems to be borrowed from pre-Galfridian tradition, being found in Culhwch and Olwen, the Welsh Triads, and the saints' lives. Finally, Geoffrey borrowed many of the names for Arthur's possessions, close family, and companions from the pre-Galfridian Welsh tradition, including Kaius (Cei), Beduerus (Bedwyr), Guenhuuara (Gwenhwyfar), Uther (Uthyr) and perhaps also Caliburnus (Caledfwlch), the latter becoming Excalibur in subsequent Arthurian tales. However, while names, key events, and titles may have been borrowed, Brynley Roberts has argued that "the Arthurian section is Geoffrey's literary creation and it owes nothing to prior narrative." Geoffrey makes the Welsh Medraut into the villainous Modredus, but there is no trace of such a negative character for this figure in Welsh sources until the 16th century. There have been relatively few modern attempts to challenge the notion that the Historia Regum Britanniae is primarily Geoffrey's own work, with scholarly opinion often echoing William of Newburgh's late-12th-century comment that Geoffrey "made up" his narrative, perhaps through an "inordinate love of lying". Geoffrey Ashe is one dissenter from this view, believing that Geoffrey's narrative is partially derived from a lost source telling of the deeds of a 5th-century British king named Riotamus, this figure being the original Arthur, although historians and Celticists have been reluctant to follow Ashe in his conclusions.
Whatever his sources may have been, the immense popularity of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae cannot be denied. Well over 200 manuscript copies of Geoffrey's Latin work are known to have survived, as well as translations into other languages. For example, 60 manuscripts are extant containing the Brut y Brenhinedd, Welsh-language versions of the Historia, the earliest of which were created in the 13th century. The old notion that some of these Welsh versions actually underlie Geoffrey's Historia, advanced by antiquarians such as the 18th-century Lewis Morris, has long since been discounted in academic circles. As a result of this popularity, Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae was enormously influential on the later medieval development of the Arthurian legend. While it was not the only creative force behind Arthurian romance, many of its elements were borrowed and developed (e.g., Merlin and the final fate of Arthur), and it provided the historical framework into which the romancers' tales of magical and wonderful adventures were inserted.
### Romance traditions
The popularity of Geoffrey's Historia and its other derivative works (such as Wace's Roman de Brut) gave rise to a significant numbers of new Arthurian works in continental Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in France. It was not, however, the only Arthurian influence on the developing "Matter of Britain". There is clear evidence that Arthur and Arthurian tales were familiar on the Continent before Geoffrey's work became widely known (see for example, the Modena Archivolt), and "Celtic" names and stories not found in Geoffrey's Historia appear in the Arthurian romances. From the perspective of Arthur, perhaps the most significant effect of this great outpouring of new Arthurian story was on the role of the king himself: much of this 12th-century and later Arthurian literature centres less on Arthur himself than on characters such as Lancelot and Guinevere, Percival, Galahad, Gawain, Ywain, and Tristan and Iseult. Whereas Arthur is very much at the centre of the pre-Galfridian material and Geoffrey's Historia itself, in the romances he is rapidly sidelined. His character also alters significantly. In both the earliest materials and Geoffrey he is a great and ferocious warrior, who laughs as he personally slaughters witches and giants and takes a leading role in all military campaigns, whereas in the continental romances he becomes the roi fainéant, the "do-nothing king", whose "inactivity and acquiescence constituted a central flaw in his otherwise ideal society". Arthur's role in these works is frequently that of a wise, dignified, even-tempered, somewhat bland, and occasionally feeble monarch. So, he simply turns pale and silent when he learns of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere in the Mort Artu, whilst in Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, he is unable to stay awake after a feast and has to retire for a nap. Nonetheless, as Norris J. Lacy has observed, whatever his faults and frailties may be in these Arthurian romances, "his prestige is never—or almost never—compromised by his personal weaknesses ... his authority and glory remain intact."
Arthur and his retinue appear in some of the Lais of Marie de France, but it was the work of another French poet, Chrétien de Troyes, that had the greatest influence with regard to the development of Arthur's character and legend. Chrétien wrote five Arthurian romances between and 1190. Erec and Enide and Cligès are tales of courtly love with Arthur's court as their backdrop, demonstrating the shift away from the heroic world of the Welsh and Galfridian Arthur, while Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, features Yvain and Gawain in a supernatural adventure, with Arthur very much on the sidelines and weakened. However, the most significant for the development of the Arthurian legend are Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, which introduces Lancelot and his adulterous relationship with Arthur's queen Guinevere, extending and popularising the recurring theme of Arthur as a cuckold, and Perceval, the Story of the Grail, which introduces the Holy Grail and the Fisher King and which again sees Arthur having a much reduced role. Chrétien was thus "instrumental both in the elaboration of the Arthurian legend and in the establishment of the ideal form for the diffusion of that legend", and much of what came after him in terms of the portrayal of Arthur and his world built upon the foundations he had laid. Perceval, although unfinished, was particularly popular: four separate continuations of the poem appeared over the next half century, with the notion of the Grail and its quest being developed by other writers such as Robert de Boron, a fact that helped accelerate the decline of Arthur in continental romance. Similarly, Lancelot and his cuckolding of Arthur with Guinevere became one of the classic motifs of the Arthurian legend, although the Lancelot of the prose Lancelot () and later texts was a combination of Chrétien's character and that of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet. Chrétien's work even appears to feed back into Welsh Arthurian literature, with the result that the romance Arthur began to replace the heroic, active Arthur in Welsh literary tradition. Particularly significant in this development were the three Welsh Arthurian romances, which are closely similar to those of Chrétien, albeit with some significant differences: Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain is related to Chrétien's Yvain; Geraint and Enid, to Erec and Enide; and Peredur son of Efrawg, to Perceval.
Up to , continental Arthurian romance was expressed primarily through poetry; after this date the tales began to be told in prose. The most significant of these 13th-century prose romances was the Vulgate Cycle (also known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle), a series of five Middle French prose works written in the first half of that century. These works were the Estoire del Saint Grail, the Estoire de Merlin, the Lancelot propre (or Prose Lancelot, which made up half the entire Vulgate Cycle on its own), the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort Artu, which combine to form the first coherent version of the entire Arthurian legend. The cycle continued the trend towards reducing the role played by Arthur in his own legend, partly through the introduction of the character of Galahad and an expansion of the role of Merlin. It also made Mordred the result of an incestuous relationship between Arthur and his sister Morgause, and established the role of Camelot, first mentioned in passing in Chrétien's Lancelot, as Arthur's primary court. This series of texts was quickly followed by the Post-Vulgate Cycle (), of which the Suite du Merlin is a part, which greatly reduced the importance of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere but continued to sideline Arthur, and to focus more on the Grail quest. As such, Arthur became even more of a relatively minor character in these French prose romances; in the Vulgate itself he only figures significantly in the Estoire de Merlin and the Mort Artu. During this period, Arthur was made one of the Nine Worthies, a group of three pagan, three Jewish and three Christian exemplars of chivalry. The Worthies were first listed in Jacques de Longuyon's Voeux du Paon in 1312, and subsequently became a common subject in literature and art.
The development of the medieval Arthurian cycle and the character of the "Arthur of romance" culminated in Le Morte d'Arthur, Thomas Malory's retelling of the entire legend in a single work in English in the late 15th century. Malory based his book—originally titled The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table—on the various previous romance versions, in particular the Vulgate Cycle, and appears to have aimed at creating a comprehensive and authoritative collection of Arthurian stories. Perhaps as a result of this, and the fact that Le Morte D'Arthur was one of the earliest printed books in England, published by William Caxton in 1485, most later Arthurian works are derivative of Malory's.
## Decline, revival, and the modern legend
### Post-medieval literature
The end of the Middle Ages brought with it a waning of interest in King Arthur. Although Malory's English version of the great French romances was popular, there were increasing attacks upon the truthfulness of the historical framework of the Arthurian romances – established since Geoffrey of Monmouth's time – and thus the legitimacy of the whole Matter of Britain. So, for example, the 16th-century humanist scholar Polydore Vergil famously rejected the claim that Arthur was the ruler of a post-Roman empire, found throughout the post-Galfridian medieval "chronicle tradition", to the horror of Welsh and English antiquarians. Social changes associated with the end of the medieval period and the Renaissance also conspired to rob the character of Arthur and his associated legend of some of their power to enthrall audiences, with the result that 1634 saw the last printing of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur for nearly 200 years. King Arthur and the Arthurian legend were not entirely abandoned, but until the early 19th century the material was taken less seriously and was often used simply as a vehicle for allegories of 17th- and 18th-century politics. Thus Richard Blackmore's epics Prince Arthur (1695) and King Arthur (1697) feature Arthur as an allegory for the struggles of William III against James II. Similarly, the most popular Arthurian tale throughout this period seems to have been that of Tom Thumb, which was told first through chapbooks and later through the political plays of Henry Fielding; although the action is clearly set in Arthurian Britain, the treatment is humorous and Arthur appears as a primarily comedic version of his romance character. John Dryden's masque King Arthur is still performed, largely thanks to Henry Purcell's music, though seldom unabridged.
### Tennyson and the revival
In the early 19th century, medievalism, Romanticism, and the Gothic Revival reawakened interest in Arthur and the medieval romances. A new code of ethics for 19th-century gentlemen was shaped around the chivalric ideals embodied in the "Arthur of romance". This renewed interest first made itself felt in 1816, when Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur was reprinted for the first time since 1634. Initially, the medieval Arthurian legends were of particular interest to poets, inspiring, for example, William Wordsworth to write "The Egyptian Maid" (1835), an allegory of the Holy Grail. Pre-eminent among these was Alfred Tennyson, whose first Arthurian poem "The Lady of Shalott" was published in 1832. Arthur himself played a minor role in some of these works, following in the medieval romance tradition. Tennyson's Arthurian work reached its peak of popularity with Idylls of the King, however, which reworked the entire narrative of Arthur's life for the Victorian era. It was first published in 1859 and sold 10,000 copies within the first week. In the Idylls, Arthur became a symbol of ideal manhood who ultimately failed, through human weakness, to establish a perfect kingdom on earth. Tennyson's works prompted a large number of imitators, generated considerable public interest in the legends of Arthur and the character himself, and brought Malory's tales to a wider audience. Indeed, the first modernisation of Malory's great compilation of Arthur's tales was published in 1862, shortly after Idylls appeared, and there were six further editions and five competitors before the century ended.
This interest in the "Arthur of romance" and his associated stories continued through the 19th century and into the 20th, and influenced poets such as William Morris and Pre-Raphaelite artists including Edward Burne-Jones. Even the humorous tale of Tom Thumb, which had been the primary manifestation of Arthur's legend in the 18th century, was rewritten after the publication of Idylls. While Tom maintained his small stature and remained a figure of comic relief, his story now included more elements from the medieval Arthurian romances and Arthur is treated more seriously and historically in these new versions. The revived Arthurian romance also proved influential in the United States, with such books as Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur (1880) reaching wide audiences and providing inspiration for Mark Twain's satire A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Although the 'Arthur of romance' was sometimes central to these new Arthurian works (as he was in Burne-Jones's "The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon", 1881–1898), on other occasions he reverted to his medieval status and is either marginalised or even missing entirely, with Wagner's Arthurian opera Parsifal providing a notable instance of the latter. Furthermore, the revival of interest in Arthur and the Arthurian tales did not continue unabated. By the end of the 19th century, it was confined mainly to Pre-Raphaelite imitators, and it could not avoid being affected by World War I, which damaged the reputation of chivalry and thus interest in its medieval manifestations and Arthur as chivalric role model. The romance tradition did, however, remain sufficiently powerful to persuade Thomas Hardy, Laurence Binyon and John Masefield to compose Arthurian plays, and T. S. Eliot alludes to the Arthur myth (but not Arthur) in his poem The Waste Land, which mentions the Fisher King.
### Modern legend
In the latter half of the 20th century, the influence of the romance tradition of Arthur continued, through novels such as T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958), Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave (1970) and its four sequels, Thomas Berger's tragicomic Arthur Rex and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982), in addition to comic strips such as Prince Valiant (from 1937 onward). Tennyson had reworked the romance tales of Arthur to suit and comment upon the issues of his day, and the same is often the case with modern treatments too. Mary Stewart's first three Arthurian novels present the wizard Merlin as the central character, rather than Arthur, and The Crystal Cave is narrated by Merlin in the first person, whereas Bradley's tale takes a feminist approach to Arthur and his legend, in contrast to the narratives of Arthur found in medieval materials. American authors often rework the story of Arthur to be more consistent with values such as equality and democracy. In John Cowper Powys's Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951), set in Wales in 499, just prior to the Saxon invasion, Arthur, the Emperor of Britain, is only a minor character, whereas Myrddin (Merlin) and Nineue, Tennyson's Vivien, are major figures. Myrddin's disappearance at the end of the novel is, "in the tradition of magical hibernation when the king or mage leaves his people for some island or cave to return either at a more propitious or more dangerous time", (see King Arthur's messianic return). Powys's earlier novel, A Glastonbury Romance (1932) is concerned with both the Holy Grail and the legend that Arthur is buried at Glastonbury.
The romance Arthur has become popular in film and theatre as well. T. H. White's novel was adapted into the Lerner and Loewe stage musical Camelot (1960) and Walt Disney's animated film The Sword in the Stone (1963); Camelot, with its focus on the love of Lancelot and Guinevere and the cuckolding of Arthur, was itself made into a film of the same name in 1967. The romance tradition of Arthur is particularly evident and in critically respected films like Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac (1974), Éric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978) and John Boorman's Excalibur (1981); it is also the main source of the material used in the Arthurian spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
Retellings and reimaginings of the romance tradition are not the only important aspect of the modern legend of King Arthur. Attempts to portray Arthur as a genuine historical figure of , stripping away the "romance", have also emerged. As Taylor and Brewer have noted, this return to the medieval "chronicle tradition" of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Historia Brittonum is a recent trend which became dominant in Arthurian literature in the years following the outbreak of the Second World War, when Arthur's legendary resistance to Germanic enemies struck a chord in Britain. Clemence Dane's series of radio plays, The Saviours (1942), used a historical Arthur to embody the spirit of heroic resistance against desperate odds, and Robert Sherriff's play The Long Sunset (1955) saw Arthur rallying Romano-British resistance against the Germanic invaders. This trend towards placing Arthur in a historical setting is also apparent in historical and fantasy novels published during this period.
Arthur has also been used as a model for modern-day behaviour. In the 1930s, the Order of the Fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table was formed in Britain to promote Christian ideals and Arthurian notions of medieval chivalry. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of boys and girls joined Arthurian youth groups, such as the Knights of King Arthur, in which Arthur and his legends were promoted as wholesome exemplars. However, Arthur's diffusion within modern culture goes beyond such obviously Arthurian endeavours, with Arthurian names being regularly attached to objects, buildings, and places. As Norris J. Lacy has observed, "The popular notion of Arthur appears to be limited, not surprisingly, to a few motifs and names, but there can be no doubt of the extent to which a legend born many centuries ago is profoundly embedded in modern culture at every level."
## See also
- Arthur's O'on
- Artus Court
- Bibliography of King Arthur
- King Arthur's family
- King Arthur's messianic return
- List of Arthurian characters
- List of legendary kings of Britain
- List of works based on Arthurian legends
|
70,411,031 |
Corp Naomh
| 1,160,321,567 |
9th or 10th century Irish bell shrine
|
[
"Bell-shrines",
"Collection of the National Museum of Ireland"
] |
The Corp Naomh (, KORP NEEV, English: Holy or Sacred Body) is an Irish bell shrine made in the 9th or 10th century to enclose a now-lost hand-bell, which probably dated to c. 600 to 900 AD and belonged to an early Irish saint. The shrine was rediscovered sometime before 1682 at Tristernagh Abbey, near Templecross, County Westmeath. The shrine is 23 cm (9.1 in) high and 12 cm (4.7 in) wide. It was heavily refurbished and added to during a second phase of embellishment in the 15th century, and now consists of cast and sheet bronze plates mounted on a wooden core decorated with silver, niello and rock crystal. It is severely damaged with extensive losses and wear across almost all of its parts, and when discovered a block of wood had been substituted for the bell itself. The remaining elements are considered of high historical and artistic value by archeologists and art historians.
Sections from its original, early Medieval phase include the cross on the reverse and the ornate semi-circular cap, which shows a bearded cleric holding a book. He is surrounded by horsemen above whom are large birds seemingly about to take flight. It was extensively refurbished in the 15th (and possibly 16th) centuries when the central bronze crucifix, the griffin and lion panel, the stamped border panels and the backing plate were added. The badly damaged crucifix and large enamel stud on the front date from at least the 15th century.
The shrine's medieval provenance is incomplete. It was probably held by hereditary keepers after the dissolution of Tristernagh Abbey in 1536 until it passed into the possession of the Anglo-Irish owners of the site. The Corp Naomh was first exhibited in 1853 by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and was transferred to the National Museum of Ireland in 1887.
## Discovery and provenance
The Corp Naomh was rediscovered sometime before 1682 on the grounds of the now ruined Tristernagh Abbey in Templecross, County Westmeath, founded c. 1200 as an Augustinian priory. It is first mentioned and described in Henry Piers' Chorographical Description of the County of Westmeath (written 1682, published 1770). Piers (1629–1691) was a MP, antiquarian and the owner of the land on which the abbey was located. Although recognising the object as a reliquary, Piers assumed it to have been a container for a small manuscript. When finally opened it was found to contain a block of wood, which is now presumed by archeologists to have been a substitute for a saint's hand-bell, and was presumably left in place to prevent the metal's inward collapse.
The shrine's cap and crest date to the 11th or 12th centuries; the crucifixion and other parts of the main face are 15th-century additions. Although its early medieval provenance is unknown, it is generally accepted that the early modern additions were completed at Tristernagh, where it was located when brought to the attention of Piers. Historians consider it probable that the priory invested in upgrading the shrine to redeem and re-establish itself after it faced charges of treason in 1468 "for joining with Irish enemies and English rebels in raiding and burning the town of Taghmon and in destroying many of the king's loyal subjects".
Little is known of its early modern provenance. It was probably held by hereditary keepers after the 1536 dissolution of the abbey. Piers received the shrine at Tristernagh from an unidentified man he described as "a certain gentleman, a great zealot of the Romish Church". Cautious not to damage the structure, he did not open the shrine (it was first opened in the late 19th century), but suspected that it contained "a bible of the smaller volume" (ie a "pocket bible" or pocket gospel book). He wrote that "whether it have anything hidden within it, is known I believe to no man living, but it ... is held to this day in great veneration by all of the Romanish persuasion that live hereabout". Piers recorded that the shrine had an on-going tradition of use for swearing oaths, and noted that it was held in reverence and was of such "peculiar solemnity" that any man who "delivered falsehoods ... is sure to be visited in some dreadful manner".
The Corp Naomh was first exhibited at the Irish Industrial Exhibition world's fair held in Cork in 1852, where it was shown alongside recently discovered Insular artworks such as the Cathach, Saint Manchan's Shrine and the Cross of Cong. It was acquired for £21 by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) from Messrs. Hodges Figgis & Co. of Grafton Street, Dublin, before it was bequeathed in 1887 to the National Museum of Ireland.
## Function
Hand-bells were primarily used in early Medieval Ireland to call monks to prayer, and over time those associated with a saint became insignia of clerical office. By 1100 the more important bells from the 600–900 period were treated as relics, having the perceived ability to heal sickness, secure oaths or grant fortune. A few were preserved in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, during a period when the enshrinement of relics by the highest-ranking metalworkers was at its height. Like Cumdachs (book-shaped reliquaries) and house-shaped shrines, bell-shrines are essentially metal containers. Most embellished bell coverings, including the Corp Naomh, follow the general shape of a tubular hand-bell and are capped with a semicircular crest outlining the shape of a handle.
The "Corp Naomh" title is modern and translates from Irish as the "sacred (or holy) body". The wording is based on the large central figure of Jesus on the cross. At 23 cm (9.1 in) high, the shrine is around the size of a pocket bible and until the mid-19th century was assumed to be a container for a manuscript. Its shape and size fall within the archeologist Cormac Bourke's "Class 1" classification of hand-bells; that is bells produced between 600 and 900 of iron coated with bronze, largely in the west-midlands of Ireland.
## Description
The shrine is 23 cm (9.1 in) high and 12 cm (4.7 in) wide. It consists of a bronze sheet and cast metal protruding mounts attached to a slim wooden core. The semi-circular cap and crest at the top and the nielloed bronze cross on the main body of the reverse date from the 9th or 10th century. The stamped side-border panels are 15th-century, and the crucifixion and oval crystal on the front are possibly 16th-century.
### Cap and crest
The semicircular cap is 12 cm (4.7 in) high. It consists of a hollow bronze casting decorated front and back with human and animal figures, with an openwork crest running along its upper border. The front side contains a bearded cleric surrounded by horsemen and birds, and the reverse shows two confronted animals and foliate coils. Although the reverse was once as decorated as the front, it is now severely damaged and has significant losses. The shape of the reverse echoes that of the front, but contains an extra border between the crest and figurative panels, composed of hatched bands. It contains a series of much thinner confronted animals with hind legs extending forwards. The crest is of bronze and decorated on both sides with three-loop running-knot interlace patterns in openwork and lined at the top with a plain-ridge upper-border.
#### Cleric
The cap is dominated by a central figure standing in full-face profile. His body reaches the full-length of the cap and the top is within the crest and the back of his head protrudes into the reverse. He is assumed to be an ecclesiastic based on his clothing, the fact he is holding a book, and that he is partially bald – a contemporary short-hand for indicating clerics or monks. Given his similarities to the figures on the 11th-century Soiscél Molaisse reliquary, several scholars have suggested that he is one of the Four Evangelists. The figure is in low relief and poor condition: his face is badly worn and his lower body contains three large puncture holes from later rivets. The remaining discernable facial features include his mouth and nose, one eye, and his beard. He wears a full-length and according to Bourke a "wing-like" tunic or cloak rendered with cross hatching on enamel and niello, and an undergarment with similar borders at the lower hem. Raised diagonal bands divide the robe into four sections, between which are decorative panels containing incised (marked with cuts) herringbone, basket-weaved hatched and chevron patterns. His shoes have pointed toes, high tongues and elaborate ankles; a triquetra knot design is placed above each foot. The pattern between his legs was probably a ring-knot, but is now punctured by a rivet hole.
His shoulders have circular ornaments and cross hatchings resembling early versions of the Orthodox cross. The 19th-century historian William Frazer described these and their "equal-rayed limbs" as an examples of the then "popular and universally worn" Patrick's Cross type, which he said were "distinctive emblems of Christian teaching ... [that were a] recognised badge of those who possessed rank in the Celtic churches". Other early works containing similar designs include figures on a stone cross from Meigle, Scotland, and the 12th-century Irish Saint Manchan's Shrine. Above the circular ornaments are triangular shapes, possibly representing Celtic brooches.
#### Horsemen and birds
The four panels surrounding the cleric show mirroring scenes of riders and their horses placed below large birds, all of whom are in profile and face towards the cleric. The riders and horses are in low relief, and designed in the so-called "Kells style" found on riding figures in earlier or contemporary illuminated manuscripts, high crosses, carved pillars and Insular metalwork. The type is named after folios 58 and 255 from the Book of Kells, and figures on the "Market" high cross at Kells abbey.
In all examples the horse is small enough to be a pony, has a long and thick mane, a downwards looking head and eyes, and a long, wide tail. The hind legs are positioned low underneath its body, with forelegs extended forwards as if about to gallop. In this tradition, the riders' hands are placed inside their cloaks, and they sit low on their horses, although their legs are thrown forward below the horse's knees rather than above its shoulders. In some instances, including the miniature in folio 255 verso of the Book of Kells, figures on late-10th-century Clonmacnoise Crucifixion Plaque, and warriors on the 11th-century shrine of the Stowe Missal, the riders have short fringes and a bald crown. Here and in most later examples their hair is longer and dramatically curls upwards at the back. Unusually, the riders in the Corp Naomh wear beards, which are unusually long and pointed for Insular art. Two oversized birds perch on the horses heads and necks. They have small curved beaks and long (but truncated by the frame) wings poised to take flight. Based on contemporary iconography, Frazer speculates that they represent the martyrdom of the cleric they are facing towards. Like the riders' cloaks, the birds' wings are marked with diagonal ribs and herringbone patterns.
### Front plate
#### Crucifixion
The bronze figure of Jesus and the silver cross were both added in the 15th century but are now badly damaged. The figure is naked except for a horizontally drawn loincloth. He is obviously dead: his eyes are closed, his head droops to the right, the body is rigid; his ribs are extended and the chest is flat. He has thick flat-topped hair formed from a cap-like moulding with vertical groves to indicate hair strands. The elements of his head and face are incised into the bronze, and are in good condition although his ears are missing. His chest is outlined by a differentiated surface, his ribs and nipples are represented by impressions, and his navel by a deep-cut incision. His legs are crossed and lined with incisions to indicate toes.
The hands were at some point lost and replaced with crudely described rods. The horizontal design above his head is badly damaged and may have once been either a crown or a band of hair. The surrounding plating is 10th-century but is mostly lost. Equally the bronze backing, also 10th-century, is severely damaged especially on the lower right-hand side.
#### Confronted animals
The embossed silver panel above Christ's left arm shows a dragon or griffin and a lion confronting each other in symmetrical poses. The panel is possibly only one of a series of similar sized, but now lost, plates fixed on either side of Christ's body. In the panel, the animals' hindlegs are extended as if they about are about to attack each other.
Griffin and lions facing off became a common motif in 15th-century Irish art, notably on the Dunvegan Cup which contains a 1493 engraving whose similarity to those on the Corp Naomh have been used to date the latter additions to the main panel. The examples from this period are so similar that some art historians suggest they were copied from or based on a single die-stamp. The art historian Susanne McNab speculates that the Corp Naomh design comes from the same stamp as the 14th-century additions to the Cathach's shrine. The remnants of other, but lost, embossed plates survive, including a strip of dotted tetrahedra (triangular pyramidal shapes) along the left margin. A badly damaged floral pattern runs along the top border.
### Reverse plate
The back plate is made from bronze and dominated by a grid of interlinked equal-sized openwork crosses. Its badly damaged upper-side panels are stepped so that the plate is narrower at the top than at the base. The crosses are positioned on a separate plate and are similar to those on the Soiscél Molaisse, the Shrine of Miosach (both 11th-century), and other contemporary Irish relic containers. The crosses date to roughly the initial 9th- or 10th-century phase, but may have been produced slightly later independently. A full-length but now incomplete cross is riveted to the openwork plate. Both its upper shaft and end of its left arm are missing, although the remaining traces indicate that they matched, in length and width, the corresponding sections of the cross on the front. Each arm is positioned within a band of interlace and the lower shaft is within fields of interlace. In turn, the interlace is lined with niello, most of which is lost; only traces of inset sliver wires remain.
### Leather case
An undated portable leather case (French: polaire) was also acquired by the RIA in 1887. It consists of three pieces edge-sewn together: rectangular front and backs ends, and an oval flap which corresponds in shape to the shrine's cap and thus the bell's handle. The flap has rows of holes larger than those for the stitches attaching the case's three main components, indicating that the case was once sewn shut, so that, according to Bourke "the Corp Naomh could be used but not seen".
The large diagonal cross on the case's front consists of two overlapping leather straps sewn onto the case. Although it cannot be dated on stylistic grounds, the case is generally assumed to be post-medieval.
|
11,430,743 |
African river martin
| 1,126,397,903 |
A migratory passerine bird of the swallow family
|
[
"Birds described in 1861",
"Birds of Africa",
"Birds of Central Africa",
"Pseudochelidon"
] |
The African river martin (Pseudochelidon eurystomina) is a passerine bird, one of two members of the river martin subfamily of the swallow family, Hirundinidae. When discovered, it was not initially recognised as a swallow, and its structural differences from most of its relatives, including its stout bill and robust legs and feet, have led to its current placement in a separate subfamily shared only with the Asian white-eyed river martin. The African river martin is a large swallow, mainly black with a blue-green gloss to the head and a greener tint to the back and wings. The under-wings are brownish, the underparts are purple-black, and the flight feathers are black. This martin has red eyes, a broad orange-red bill and a black, square tail. Young birds are similar in appearance to the adults, but have browner plumage. This species has a variety of unmusical calls, and displays both in flight and on the ground, although the purpose of the terrestrial display is unknown.
The main breeding areas are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) along the Congo River and its tributary, the Ubangi, in habitats characterised by a mixture of tropical forest types including swampy or seasonally flooded woodland. The African river martin is migratory, wintering in coastal savanna in southern Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. Breeding also occurs in these coastal areas, but it is unknown whether the migrants are raising a second brood or if there is a separate resident population. This martin feeds in flocks throughout the year, catching a variety of insects in the air, especially flying ants. It does not use perches during the breeding season, although it will often land on the ground.
The African river martin nests in burrows in river sand banks, often alongside rosy bee-eaters, but its incubation and fledging times are not known. It also digs tunnels for night-time shelter when in its wintering areas. It appears to be common within its restricted range, despite being caught in large numbers by the local population for food, and large flocks are sometimes seen. However, due to a lack of detailed information about its breeding range and population numbers, this species is classed as Data Deficient by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
## Taxonomy
When German zoologist Gustav Hartlaub first described the African river martin in 1861, it was not initially thought to be a member of the swallow and martin family, and he placed it with the rollers. Later authors either placed it in its own monotypic family, or with the woodswallows. A 1938 study of this martin's anatomy by Percy Lowe revealed that the species was closest to the swallows and martins, but sufficiently distinct from them to be placed in a separate subfamily, Pseudochelidoninae.
The only other member of the subfamily is the white-eyed river martin Pseudochelidon sirintarae, known only from one site in Thailand and possibly extinct. These two species possess a number of features which distinguish them from other swallows and martins, including their robust legs and feet, stout bills, large syrinxes (vocal organs) and different bronchial structure. Genetic studies confirmed that the two river martins form a distinct clade from the typical swallows in the subfamily Hirundininae.
The two river martins are in some ways intermediate between typical swallows and other passerine birds, and the arrangement of their leg muscles is more like that of a typical passerine than of a swallow. The extent of their differences from other swallows and the wide geographical separation of these two martins suggest that they are relict populations of a group of species that diverged from the main swallow lineage early in its evolutionary history. Like other early hirundine lineages, these martins nest in self-excavated burrows, rather than adopted nest holes or mud nests. Their physical characteristics and breeding behaviour suggest that they may be the most primitive of the swallows.
The genus name Pseudochelidon (Hartlaub, 1861) comes from the Ancient Greek language prefix ψευδο/pseudo, meaning "false", and χελιδον/chelidôn, meaning "swallow". The species name reflects the superficial similarity to the rollers of the genus Eurystomus.
The African and Asian Pseudochelidon species differ markedly in the size of their bills and eyes, suggesting that they have different feeding ecologies, with the white-eyed river martin probably able to take much larger prey. The African species has a softer, fleshier, and much less prominent gape (fleshy interior of the bill) than its Thai relative. The bill of the white-eyed river martin also averages 22.5% wider than that of the African river martin. Following a suggestion by the Thai bird's discoverer, Kitti Thonglongya, Richard Brooke proposed in 1972 that the white-eyed river martin was sufficiently different from the African species to be placed in a separate genus Eurochelidon, leaving the African river martin in a monotypic genus. This treatment was contested by other authorities, and most authors retain the two species in Pseudochelidon, BirdLife International being a notable exception.
## Description
The adult African river martin is a large swallow, 14 cm (5.5 in) long. It is mainly black, with a silky blue-green gloss to the head, becoming distinctly green on the back and wing coverts. The underparts, other than the brownish under-wings, are purple-black, and the flight feathers are black. The black square tail is 4.8 cm (1.9 in) long, and the soft feather shafts project beyond the barbed section. This feature is most pronounced in the two central feathers, which in the related white-eyed river martin are greatly elongated. The African river martin has brown legs with a 1.5 cm (0.59 in) long tarsus, red eyes, pink eye-rings, and a broad orange-red bill. The wing length averages 14 cm (5.5 in).
The sexes are similar in appearance. There are many bird species in which there is sexual dichromatism that is not apparent to the human eye, but spectroscopic analysis of this martin's head feathers suggests that the colour differences between the sexes are small even to the birds' perception. Juveniles are duller and have sooty brown heads. The moult to adult plumage takes place in the wintering areas and is largely complete by October.
The African river martin has a strong, fast flight interspersed with glides. It is a vocal species with a variety of sounds. It has a jingling song given in the aerial breeding display, and a number of contact calls, kee-r-r, chee-chee and similar short, unmusical sounds. Flocks call together, cheer-cheer-cheer, as they take to the air, and this martin is very vocal during migration, giving harsh gull-like calls.
## Distribution and habitat
The African river martin breeds along the Congo River and its tributary, the Ubangi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an area estimated at 47,000 km<sup>2</sup> (18,150 mi<sup>2</sup>). This part of Africa is poorly known, and this martin may also breed on other tributaries, such as the Kasai, or on other suitable rivers. It also breeds in southern Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. The DRC breeding population is migratory, wintering in coastal savanna in Gabon, but it is not known if the birds nesting at the coast are a separate population, or if the migrants are breeding again in the wintering area. Westwards migration from the DRC is from June to early September, with birds arriving at the coast from mid-August to mid-September. Return migration is mainly from December to March. Three or four birds were seen passing through the southern Central African Republic in 1994.
This martin's breeding requirement is forested rivers with islands that have sandy banks for nest burrows, and its habitat in the DRC is tropical forest with over 200 cm (78.5 in) of rain a year. This area is a patchwork of dry, seasonally flooded and permanently wet woodland, and seasonally flooded savanna, all of which are subject to inundation by the Congo River and its tributaries. The swamp forests contain trees such as Symphonia globulifera, raffia palms and Mitragyna species, and the riverbanks are often lined with arrowroot. This specialised habitat is shared with two other restricted-range birds, the Congo sunbird and the Congo martin. The main coastal breeding area in Gabon, around Gamba, has a similar mosaic of habitats, with mangroves, swamp forests, wet evergreen woodlands and seasonally wet savanna. There are also two large lagoons, and drier areas of grassland and forest. All the breeding areas form part of a belt of forest that stretches from southern Cameroon through Gabon to the northern parts of the Republic of Congo, and extends through most of the DRC up to its eastern mountains. Outside of the breeding season, this martin roosts in reed-beds or riverine vegetation.
## Behaviour
The African river martin has flight displays in which pairs or small groups chase each other while making jingling calls. It also displays on the ground, with the wings drooped and slightly open, and the head raised but held horizontally; the function of these terrestrial displays is uncertain. This species nests in colonies in sandbanks along forested rivers from December to April when the river is low. The colonies, sometimes shared with rosy bee-eaters in Gabon, may contain up to 800 birds, each pair excavating a 1–2 m (39–79 in) long tunnel in the sandbar. Two to four unspotted white eggs are laid onto a few twigs and leaves in the pocket at the end of the tunnel. The eggs measure 21.9 mm–26.0 mm × 16.4 mm–18.2 mm (0.86 in–1.02 in × 0.65 in–0.72 in). The incubation and fledging times are unknown, although it is believed that both parents care for the nestlings.
In the breeding areas, this martin rarely uses perches other than the ground, and once it has landed, it may walk around or cleanse itself with the sand. It feeds in flocks often far from the colony. Wintering birds use elevated perches much more readily, landing on treetops, wires and roofs, and feed in flight over rivers and forests, often far from water. The flocks feed on insects including flies, small beetles and bugs, but mainly on winged ants. Wintering birds dig tunnels in the sand in which to roost overnight.
## Status
The total population size of the African river martin is unknown. In the late 1980s, it appeared to be common, if local, and large numbers were seen on migration in Gabon. However, it is particularly poorly studied in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and it is not known if there is any relationship between the birds breeding in the DRC and those breeding in coastal areas of Gabon and Congo. Several hundred birds were seen at Conkouati-Douli National Park in Congo in 1996 and a flock of 15,000 birds was seen in Gabon in 1997. Investigations in Gabon in September 2003 extended the known range of this martin. More than 300 birds were found with hundreds of rosy bee-eaters in the Omboué area and the newly established Iguéla National Park, and a mixed flock with rosy bee-eaters at Loango National Park in Gabon was estimated at 100,000 birds in total. In January 2010, 250 martins were seen at a new location in Bakoumba, and single birds were observed in hirundine flocks near Moanda, at Mounana, and at Lekoni. Despite sightings of large flocks and a population which may exceed 100,000, the species is classed by the IUCN as Data Deficient due to the lack of detailed information on its range and numbers.
This species is protected under national laws in the DRC (Loi portant réglémentation de la chasses, 1985), and Gabon (Loi d'orientation en matière des eaux et forêts, 1982 and Loi relative à la protection et à l'amélioration de l'environnement, 1993), and by regional legislation in Nigeria, which does not have national wildlife laws. The Nigerian laws are based directly on older colonial era laws which include a number of species, such as this martin, which are not native to the country. The African river martin is not a protected species in the Republic of Congo.
In the 1950s, this martin was caught and eaten in large quantities in the DRC by the local population, and this practice could be increasing. The African river martins and the bee-eaters with which they share their colonies are dug out of the breeding burrows for food. Breeding colonies in river sandbars are liable to flooding, but thousands of birds were breeding on the grasslands east of Gamba as recently as 2005.
## Cited texts
|
24,043,800 |
Road to the Multiverse
| 1,169,366,104 | null |
[
"2009 American television episodes",
"Disney parodies",
"Family Guy (season 8) episodes",
"Road to... (Family Guy)",
"Robot Chicken",
"Television episodes about parallel universes",
"Television episodes with live action and animation"
] |
"Road to the Multiverse" is the first episode of the eighth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. Directed by Greg Colton and written by Wellesley Wild, the episode originally aired on Fox in the United States on September 27, 2009, along with the series premiere of The Cleveland Show. In "Road to the Multiverse", two of the show's main characters, baby genius Stewie and anthropomorphic dog Brian, both voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane, use an "out-of-this-world" remote control to travel through a series of various parallel universes. They eventually end up in a world where dogs rule and humans obey. Brian becomes reluctant to return to his own universe, and he ultimately ends up breaking the remote, much to the dismay of Stewie, who soon seeks a replacement. The "Road to" episodes which have aired throughout various seasons of Family Guy were inspired by the Road to ... comedy films starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour, though this episode was not originally conceived as a "Road to" show.
During the sixth season, episodes of Family Guy were delayed from regular broadcast due to the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike. MacFarlane, the series creator and executive producer, sided with the Writers Guild and participated in the strike until its conclusion. As a result, the seventh season consisted entirely of hold-overs. "Road to the Multiverse" was the first episode to be produced and aired after the strike ended. It was first announced at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con International.
Responses to the episode were highly positive; critics praised its storyline, numerous cultural references, and use of various animation styles. According to Nielsen ratings, it was watched by 10.17 million people during its original airing in the United States. The episode featured guest performances by Kei Ogawa, Kotaro Watanabe and Jamison Yang, along with several recurring guest voice actors for the series. Greg Colton won a Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Achievement in Animation, for storyboarding the episode, at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards. "Road to the Multiverse" was released on DVD along with seven other episodes from the season on June 15, 2010.
## Plot
As the Griffin family attend the county fair, Stewie announces that he has bred a winning pedigree pig for the local Quahog Clam Day. Revealing to Brian that he got the pig from a farm in a parallel universe, he shows him a remote control that teleports others across parallel universes. Each universe depicts Quahog in the same time and place but under different conditions. Deciding to test the device, they both visit a universe where Christianity never existed, so the Dark Ages never occurred and thus humanity is 1000 years more technologically advanced (despite the existence of the Sistine Chapel in that universe, albeit done by John Hinckley Jr. instead of Michelangelo). This leads a fascinated Brian to ask whether the remote can take them to other alternative realities. Stewie guides them both through several more parallel universes, about half of which have their own portrayals of the Griffin family. As time passes, Brian loses interest in the adventure and eventually comes to realize that Stewie has no idea how to return home.
Continuing their efforts, they reach a universe where humans are subservient to dogs. Stewie finally figures out how to modify the remote device so that they can return home; but Brian, overwhelmed by the thought of a world run by dogs like himself, is reluctant to leave and takes the remote. Stewie and Brian fight over the device, ultimately breaking it, which traps them in the alternative universe. In desperation, the two go to the universe's version of the Griffin family – who are all dogs except for their pet Brian, who is human – hoping to find a way home. The dog version of Stewie quickly confronts the human Stewie, revealing that he has also developed a universe-traveling device that would allow them to return to their own universe. Before Dog Stewie can fetch him his remote control, Human Stewie bites the dog version of his father, Peter, out of anger for being treated like an animal and is sent to the pound by dog Joe where he is to be euthanized later that day. The two Brians and Dog Stewie go to the human pound to free him, and both Stewie and Brian are sent back to their original universe. As they are being transported, human Brian, dreaming of a better life in a world of intelligent humans, leaps into the inter-universe portal at the last moment and successfully makes it to the original universe with the other two. Excited about his new prospects in life, human Brian begins his travels in a brand new universe but is abruptly struck by a car.
## Production and development
The episode was first announced at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con International in San Diego, California, on July 26, 2008. It was written by series regular Wellesley Wild and directed by Greg Colton shortly after the conclusion of the seventh production season, which consisted entirely of held-over episodes due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. "Road to the Multiverse" is the fifth episode of the "Road to" hallmarks of the series, which have aired in various seasons of the show, and the second to be directed by Colton. The episodes are a parody of the seven Road to... comedy films starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Though it was not originally intended to be a "Road to" episode, Greg Colton convinced series creator and executive producer Seth MacFarlane and "Spies Reminiscent of Us" director Cyndi Tang to change the episode's title from "Sliders", parodying the science fiction television series Sliders. Colton's suggestion of the new title "Road to the Multiverse" was accepted, as was altering the premise of "Spies Reminiscent of Us", the season's original "Road to" episode. Executive producer and former Star Trek: Enterprise writer David A. Goodman, a fan of science fiction and the series Sliders, played a key role in the episode's original development. The production staff of Family Guy, including Wellesley Wild, watched an episode of Sliders before writing the show. Series regulars Peter Shin and James Purdum served as supervising directors, with Andrew Goldberg and Alex Carter working as staff writers for the episode. Composer Walter Murphy, who has worked on the series since its inception, returned to compose the music for "Road to the Multiverse". Ron Jones and MacFarlane also contributed to the music and lyrics featured in the episode.
The episode features several examples of animation styles that differ greatly from the series' customary appearance. One such example involves the Disney universe, where the characters are drawn in the style of classic Walt Disney animated films. The sequence was animated entirely in Los Angeles by Main Street Productions, which were approached and recruited by series producer Kara Vallow to create the sequence, rather than in South Korea where the show is normally animated. MacFarlane described the scene as "a bit of challenge" and "kind of an experiment" since every character had to be completely redesigned based on the style of such films as "Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Another difference occurs in the dog universe, where the human characters are redrawn as dogs and Brian is redrawn as a human. MacFarlane found redesigning Brian easiest, simply giving him "a big nose and a collar." In addition to traditional animation, the episode included a parody by Sarah E. Meyer, Eileen Kohlhepp, Kelly Mazurowskiof of Robot Chicken, a stop motion series created by Family Guy cast member Seth Green for the Cartoon Network animation block Adult Swim. Green did not take part in the making of the parody; it was instead animated by the Los Angeles company Screen Novelties, which had worked on the early seasons of Robot Chicken.
"Road to the Multiverse", along with the seven other episodes from Family Guy's eighth season, was released on a three-disc DVD set in the United States on June 15, 2010. The DVDs included brief audio commentaries by Seth MacFarlane, various crew and cast members from several episodes, a collection of deleted scenes, a special mini-feature that discussed the process behind animating "Road to the Multiverse" and a mini-feature entitled Family Guy Karaoke. The set also includes a reprint of the script for the episode.
In addition to the regular cast, Japanese actors Kei Ogawa, Kotaro Watanabe and Jamison Yang guest starred in the episode as Japanese-inspired versions of the Griffin family and Glenn Quagmire. Recurring guest voice actor John G. Brennan reprised his recurring role as Mort Goldman and Adam West reprised his role as Mayor Adam West, who appears as an anthropomorphic mouse in the Disney universe. Minor appearances were made by writer and showrunner Steve Callaghan, actor Ralph Garman, writer and showrunner Mark Hentemann and writers Patrick Meighan, Danny Smith, Alec Sulkin and John Viener.
## Cultural references
The episode opens with Stewie revealing his ability to travel across parallel universes to Brian. The first universe that they decide to visit, after having questioned the origin of Stewie's pedigree pig, is said to exist in a world where Christianity is absent. In this universe, everything is seemingly years in advance of the 21st century; Quagmire is able to take a single pill and be instantly cured of the AIDS virus, and flying cars and buildings surround them. As the two travel through the universe, they come upon Stewie's older sister Meg, who has become significantly more attractive. While they watch her walk down the street, the 1984 single "Drop Dead Legs" by Van Halen plays. Playing on the nonexistence of Christianity, Brian and Stewie visit the Sistine Chapel and discover that a large collection of photos of American actress Jodie Foster has been substituted for The Creation of Adam painting by Michelangelo, who was fired and replaced by John Hinckley Jr.
Seeking to explore more alternative realities, Stewie takes Brian to a universe resembling the 1960 animated sitcom The Flintstones. Peter and his wife Lois are shown dressed in a manner similar to Fred Flintstone and Wilma Flintstone respectively. Becoming tired of this universe, the two then transport themselves to a universe where the atomic bombing of Japan never occurred, allowing Japan to conquer the United States in World War II.
Another universe references many works by Walt Disney. Meg appears as Ursula from the 1989 film The Little Mermaid and Herbert appears as the Queen from the 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The alleged conspiracy about Walt Disney being an anti-Semite is also referenced by having the universe's occupants attack the Disney version of Mort Goldman when he enters a room, brutally beating him to death off-screen. Discouraged, Brian and Stewie transport themselves to a universe resembling the Adult Swim series Robot Chicken, a show co-created by Family Guy cast member Seth Green. The sequence reveals several action figures of cartoon characters from the 1980s: He-Man from Masters of the Universe, Optimus Prime from Transformers, Lion-O from ThunderCats and Duke from G.I. Joe.
Continuing their travels, the two come across a universe where singer and performer Frank Sinatra was never born, resulting in the loss of the 1960 presidential election by President John F. Kennedy to then-Vice President Richard Nixon, which causes World War III. Brian questions whether Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy, and Stewie responds that he shot Mayor McCheese instead. A sequence similar to the Zapruder film, which shows the assassination of Kennedy, is shown, with Jacqueline Kennedy also appearing. Brian and Stewie next discover a universe completely depicted as a political cartoon. The next reference occurs in the dog universe when Stewie says, "Take your stinking paws off me you damn, dirty dog!" which is a reference to the famous quote "Take your stinking paws off me you damn, dirty ape!" from the first Planet of the Apes movie. The final reference of the episode also occurs in the dog universe when Stewie mentions, "Gosh, Brian, I sure hope this next leap, will be the leap home," a nod to the opening narration of the time travel series Quantum Leap.
## Reception
"Road to the Multiverse" was broadcast on September 27, 2009, as a part of the Animation Domination block on Fox, and was preceded by an episode of The Simpsons and the pilot episode of MacFarlane's new show The Cleveland Show. It was followed by the season premiere of MacFarlane's other show American Dad!. It was watched by 10.17 million viewers in its original airing, according to Nielsen ratings, despite being aired simultaneously with the season premiere of Desperate Housewives on ABC, the season premiere of The Amazing Race on CBS and Sunday Night Football on NBC. The episode also acquired a 5.2 rating in the 18–49 demographic, beating The Simpsons, The Cleveland Show and American Dad!, in addition to edging out all three shows in total viewership. The episode's ratings were Family Guy's highest since the airing of the season six episode "McStroke". The episode's first broadcast in Canada, on Global TV, was watched by 1.29 million viewers, making it first for its timeslot in the week it was broadcast.
"Road to the Multiverse" received critical acclaim, with one calling the storyline "right up there with the best of the early episodes we've seen on the series." In a simultaneous review of the episodes of The Simpsons and American Dad! that preceded and followed the episode respectively and The Cleveland Show pilot, The A.V. Club's Emily VanDerWerff commented that she felt "essentially predisposed to like" the episode, adding that she enjoyed the entire theme of the show, in addition the fact that it was more than just science fiction. In the conclusion of her review VanDerWerff called the episode a "solid start to the eighth season" and rated it as a B+, the best rating between The Simpsons episode "Homer the Whopper", the American Dad! episode "In Country...Club" and The Cleveland Show's series premiere. Ahsan Haque of IGN gave the episode a 9.6 out of 10, saying that the episode featured "plenty of memorable lines, some truly stunning animation ... and a relentless non-stop barrage of witty jokes." In a subsequent review in January 2010 of "Stewie and Brian's Greatest Adventures", Haque called the episode "creative, visually impressive, and features some of the best random gags we've seen on the show in a long time." In 2019, to celebrate the show's 20th anniversary, IGN published a list of the 20 best Family Guy episodes, with "Road to the Multiverse" ranked the fourth best. Television critic Alex Rocha of TV Guide also found the episode to have "great laughs," saying that the show is "definitely off to a great start" to a new season. Tom Eames of entertainment website Digital Spy placed the episode at number one on his listing of the best Family Guy episodes in order of "yukyukyuks" and described the episode as "another crazy Brian and Stewie adventure". He noted that the story did not have "the most interesting plot", but got "more and more entertaining and so much fun" with every new world they featured in. He concluded that "coupled with Brian and Stewie front and centre, it made for the best Family Guy episode ever." The director of "Road to the Multiverse", Greg Colton, was awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation, for storyboarding the episode, on August 21, 2010, at the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards's Creative Arts Awards.
In a 2012 interview, Seth MacFarlane stated: "As far as the all-around best episode, "Road to the Multiverse" would have to be up there."
## Sequel
A video game sequel called Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse was made. It is also a continuation of the season 9 episode "The Big Bang Theory".
|
25,738,381 |
Agaricus deserticola
| 1,136,327,362 |
Species of fungus in the family Agaricaceae endemic to southwestern and western North America
|
[
"Agaricus",
"Fungi described in 1873",
"Fungi of North America",
"Secotioid fungi"
] |
Agaricus deserticola, commonly known as the gasteroid agaricus, is a species of fungus in the family Agaricaceae. Found only in southwestern and western North America, A. deserticola is adapted for growth in dry or semi-arid habitats. The fruit bodies are secotioid, meaning the spores are not forcibly discharged, and the cap does not fully expand. Unlike other Agaricus species, A. deserticola does not develop true gills, but rather a convoluted and networked system of spore-producing tissue called a gleba. When the partial veil breaks or pulls away from the stem or the cap splits radially, the blackish-brown gleba is exposed, which allows the spores to be dispersed.
The fruit bodies can reach heights of 18 cm (7 in) tall with caps that are up to 7.5 cm (3 in) wide. The tough woody stems are 1–2 cm (0.4–0.8 in) wide, thickening towards the base. Fruit bodies grow singly or scattered on the ground in fields, grasslands, or arid ecosystems. Other mushrooms with which A. deserticola might be confused include the desert fungus species Podaxis pistillaris and Montagnea arenaria. The edibility of Agaricus deserticola mushrooms is not known definitively. Formerly named Longula texensis (among several other synonyms), the fungus was transferred to the genus Agaricus in 2004 after molecular analysis showed it to be closely related to species in that genus. In 2010, its specific epithet was changed to deserticola after it was discovered that the name Agaricus texensis was illegitimate, having been previously published for a different species.
## Taxonomic history
The species was first described scientifically as Secotium texense by Miles Joseph Berkeley and Moses Ashley Curtis in 1873, based on specimens sent to them from western Texas. George Edward Massee transferred it to the genus Gyrophragmium in 1891, because of its resemblance to the species Gyrophragmium delilei, and because he felt that the structure of the volva as well as the internal morphology of the gleba excluded it from Secotium. In 1916, William Murrill listed the species in Gymnopus, but did not explain the reason for the generic transfer. In a 1943 publication, Sanford Zeller compared a number of similar secotioid genera: Galeropsis, Gyrophragmium and Montagnea. He concluded that the species did not fit in the limits set for the genus Gyrophragmium and so created the new genus Longia with Longia texensis as the type species. The generic name was to honor William Henry Long, an American mycologist noted for his work in describing Gasteromycetes. Zeller also mentioned two additional synonyms: Secotium decipiens (Peck, 1895), and Podaxon strobilaceous (Copeland, 1904).
Two years later in 1945, Zeller pointed out that the use of the name Longia was untenable, as it had already been used for a genus of rusts described by Hans Sydow in 1921, so he proposed the name Longula and introduced the new combination Longula texensis in addition to L. texensis var. major. The species was known by this name for about 60 years, until a 2004 phylogenetic study revealed the taxon's close evolutionary relationship with Agaricus, a possibility insinuated by Curtis Gates Lloyd a century before. This resulted in a new name in that genus, but it soon came to light that the name Agaricus texensis had already been used, ironically enough, by Berkeley and Curtis themselves in 1853, for a taxon now treated as a synonym of Flammulina velutipes. Since this made the new Agaricus texensis an unusable homonym, Gabriel Moreno and colleagues published the new name Agaricus deserticola in 2010. The mushroom is commonly known as the gasteroid Agaricus.
## Classification and phylogeny
The classification of Agaricus deserticola has been under debate since the taxon was first described. It was thought by some mycologists to be a member of the Gasteromycetes, a grouping of fungi in the basidiomycota that do not actively discharge their spores. The Gasteromycetes are now known to be an artificial assemblage of morphologically similar fungi without any unifying evolutionary relationship. When the species was known as a Gyrophragmium, Fischer thought it to be close to Montagnites, a genus he considered a member of the family Agaricaceae. Conrad suggested a relationship with Secotium, which he believed to be close to Agaricus. Curtis Gates Lloyd said of Gyrophragmium: "[it] has no place in the Gasteromycetes. Its relations are more close to the Agarics. It is the connecting link between the two passing on one hand through Secotium to the true Gasteromycetes." Elizabeth Eaton Morse believed that Gyrophragmium and the secotioid genus Endoptychum formed a transition between the Gasteromycetes and the Hymenomycetes (the gilled fungi).
The species is now thought to have evolved from an Agaricus ancestor, and adapted for survival in dry habitats. These adaptations include: a cap that does not expand (thus conserving moisture); dark-colored gills that do not forcibly eject spores (a mechanism known to depend on turgor pressure achievable only in sufficiently hydrated environments); and a partial veil that remains on the fruit body long after it has matured. This form of growth is called secotioid development, and is typical of other desert-dwelling fungi like Battarrea phalloides, Podaxis pistillaris, and Montagnea arenaria. Molecular analysis based on the sequences of the partial large subunit of ribosomal DNA and of the internal transcribed spacers shows that A. deserticola is closely related to but distinct from A. aridicola. A separate analysis showed A. deserticola to be closely related to A. arvensis and A. abruptibulbus.
## Description
The fruit body of Agaricus deserticola can grow up to 5 to 18 cm (2 to 7 in) in height. Fresh specimens are usually white, but will age to a pale tan; dried fruit bodies are light gray or tan mixed with some yellow. The cap is 4 to 10 cm (1.5 to 4 in) in diameter, initially conic, later becoming convex to broadly convex as it matures. The cap is composed of three distinct tissue layers: an outer volval layer, a middle cuticular layer (cutis), and an inner (tramal) layer which supports the gleba. The surface of the cap is white with yellow-brown to brown-tipped raised small scales; these scales result from the breakup of the volva and the cutis.
Initially, the caps are covered by a peridium—an outer covering layer of tissue. After the fruit body matures and begins to dry out, the lower part of the peridium starts to rip, usually starting from small longitudinal slits near where the peridium attaches to the top of the stem. However, the pattern of tearing is variable; in some instances, the slits may appear higher up on the peridium, in others, the peridium rips more irregularly. The peridium may also rip in such a way that it appears as if there is a ring at the top of the stem. The torn peridium exposes the internal gleba. The gleba is divided into wavy plates or lamellae, some of which are fused together to form irregular chambers. The gleba is a drab brown to blackish-brown color, and it becomes tough and brittle as it dries out. The flesh is firm when young, white, and will stain light to bright yellow when it is bruised.
The stem is cylindrical, 4 to 15 cm (1.5 to 6 in) long and 2 to 4 cm (0.8 to 1.6 in) thick. It is shaped like a narrow club, and the base may reach widths up to 4.5 cm (1.8 in). It is typically white, staining yellow to orange-yellow or pink when bruised, and becomes woody with age. Mature specimens develop longitudinal grooves in maturity. Numerous white rhizoids are present at the base of the stem; these root-like outgrowths of fungal mycelium help the mushroom attach to its substrate. The apex of the stem extends into the gleba to form a columella that reaches the top of the cap. The internal gills are free from attachment to the stem, but are attached full-length to the inside of the cap. The partial veil is thick, white, and often sloughs off as the cap expands.
A larger variety of the mushroom has been described by Zeller, A. deserticola var. major (originally Longula texensis var. major), whose range overlaps that of the typical variety. Its caps are scalier than the typical variety, and range from 6 to 12 cm (2.4 to 4.7 in) or more in diameter, with a stem 10 to 25 cm (3.9 to 9.8 in) and up to 4.5 cm (1.8 in) thick.
### Microscopic characteristics
In deposit, such as with a spore print, the spores appear almost black, tinged with purple. The spores are spherical in shape or nearly so, smooth, thick-walled, and lack a germ pore. They are nonamyloid (not absorbing iodine when stained with Melzer's reagent), black-brown, and have dimensions of 4.5–7.5 by 5.5–6.5 μm. There is a prominent scar where the spore was once attached to the basidium (the spore-bearing cell) through the sterigma. The basidia are broadly club-shaped, and mostly four-spored, with long, slender sterigmata. Unlike other Agaricus species, the spores of A. deserticola are not shot off, but are instead dispersed when they sift out of the dried, mature fruit bodies after the peridium breaks open.
Schaeffer's chemical test is often used to help identify and differentiate Agaricus species. In this test, aniline plus nitric acid are applied to the surface of the fruit body, and if positive, a red or orange color forms. Agaricus deserticola has a positive Schaeffer's reaction, similar to species in section Arvensis in the genus Agaricus.
### Similar species
Species that resemble A. deserticola include the desert fungi Montagnea arenaria and Podaxis pistillaris. Montagnea arenaria is a whitish stalked puffball with a hollow, woody stalk and a loose sac-like volva at the base of the stem. It is topped by a thin disc-like cap with blackish gill plates suspended around the margin. Podaxis pistillaris has a cylindrical to oval white to brownish cap with a paper-thin wall atop a slender stem. When mature, the cap contains powdery, dark brown spores. Agaricus inapertus is also similar.
### Edibility
The edibility of the fruit bodies of Agaricus deserticola is not known definitively, and there are conflicting opinions in the literature, with some sources claiming that the edibility is unknown, and consumption should be avoided. However, one popular field guide to North American mushrooms suggests they are edible when they are young, and have a pleasant odor and mild taste.
## Fruit body development
In one early study of the mushroom's development, the fruit bodies appeared above the surface of the ground two or three days after rainfall or an irrigation, and required between five and eight days to mature. Slender and fragile rhizomorphs—dense masses of hyphae that form root-like structures—grow horizontally 2.5 to 5 cm (1.0 to 2.0 in) below the soil surface. Fruit bodies start as enlarged tips on the rhizomorphs, and manifest as numerous small, almost-spherical protuberances just beneath the surface of the soil. When the fruit bodies reach a diameter of about 4 to 6 mm (0.16 to 0.24 in), the stem and peridial regions begin to be distinguishable; the peridial region first appears as a small swelling at the apex of the much larger stem regions.
The fruit bodies push upward through the soil when they are about 2 cm (0.8 in) tall. As growth progresses, the stem elongates and the peridium becomes more rounded, increasing in size until maturity. At about the time the peridium reaches 1 cm (0.4 in) or slightly more in diameter, the columella exerts an upward tension on the tissue of the partial veil, and it begins to pull away from the stem. Typically, the veil tissue is weakest near the attachment to the stem, rather than to the attachment at the edge of the peridium, and the veil separates from the stem. The lower edge of the peridium is further stretched as it is pulled upward and outward. Usually, the arid environment causes the gleba to dry out rapidly. If the veil tissue at the base of the stem is stronger than that attached to the edge of the peridium, the veil can rip so it remains attached to the stem as a ring. Scales begin to appear on the surface of the peridium of some specimens at about this time.
## Habitat and distribution
Like other Agaricus species, A. deserticola is saprobic—feeding off dead or decaying organic matter. The fruit bodies are found growing singly to sometimes more numerous, at low elevations, and typically in sandy soil. The species' usual habitats include drylands, coastal sage scrub, and desert ecosystems. It also grows in lawns and fields. The range of the fungus is restricted to southwestern and western North America, where it fruits throughout the year, typically during or following cold, wet weather. Zeller gives a range that includes as its eastern border central Texas, and extends westward to San Diego County, California, and north to Josephine County, Oregon. The mushroom used to be common in the San Francisco Bay area before land development reduced its preferred habitats. A. deserticola has been collected in several states in northwestern Mexico, including Sonora, Chihuahua, and Baja California.
## See also
- List of Agaricus species
|
50,838 |
Manta ray
| 1,173,128,760 |
Genus of fishes
|
[
"Aquitanian genus first appearances",
"Articles containing video clips",
"Cosmopolitan fish",
"Extant Miocene first appearances",
"Myliobatidae",
"Taxa named by Edward Nathaniel Bancroft"
] |
Manta rays are large rays belonging to the genus Mobula (formerly its own genus Manta). The larger species, M. birostris, reaches 7 m (23 ft) in width, while the smaller, M. alfredi, reaches 5.5 m (18 ft). Both have triangular pectoral fins, horn-shaped cephalic fins and large, forward-facing mouths. They are classified among the Myliobatiformes (stingrays and relatives) and are placed in the family Myliobatidae (eagle rays). They have the largest brains and brain to body ratio of all fish, and can pass the mirror test.
Mantas are found in warm temperate, subtropical and tropical waters. Both species are pelagic; M. birostris migrates across open oceans, singly or in groups, while M. alfredi tends to be resident and coastal. They are filter feeders and eat large quantities of zooplankton, which they gather with their open mouths as they swim. However, research suggests that the majority of their diet (73%) actually comes from mesopelagic sources. Gestation lasts over a year and mantas give birth to live pups. Mantas may visit cleaning stations for the removal of parasites. Like whales, they breach for unknown reasons.
Both species are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Anthropogenic threats include pollution, entanglement in fishing nets, and direct harvesting of their gill rakers for use in Chinese medicine. Their slow reproductive rate exacerbates these threats. They are protected in international waters by the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals, but are more vulnerable closer to shore. Areas where mantas congregate are popular with tourists. Only a few public aquariums are large enough to house them.
## Etymology
The name "manta" is Portuguese and Spanish for mantle (cloak or blanket), a type of blanket-shaped trap traditionally used to catch rays. Mantas are known as "devilfish" because of their horn-shaped cephalic fins, which are imagined to give them an "evil" appearance.
## Taxonomy
Manta rays are members of the order Myliobatiformes which consists of stingrays and their relatives. The genus Manta is part of the eagle ray family Myliobatidae, where it is grouped in the subfamily Mobulinae along with the smaller Mobula devil rays. In 2018, an analysis of DNA, and to a lesser degree, morphology, found that Mobula was paraphyletic with respect to the manta rays; that is, some members of genus Mobula are closer related to the members of the genus Manta than they are to fellow Mobula, and the researchers recommended treating Manta as a junior synonym of Mobula.
Mantas evolved from bottom-dwelling stingrays, eventually developing more wing-like pectoral fins. M. birostris still has a vestigial remnant of a sting barb in the form of a caudal spine. The mouths of most rays lie on the underside of the head, while in mantas, they are right at the front. The edges of the jaws line up while in devil rays, the lower jaw shifts back when the mouth closes. Manta rays and devil rays are the only ray species that have evolved into filter feeders. Manta rays have dorsal slit-like spiracles, traits which they share with the devil fish and Chilean devil ray.
### Species
The scientific naming of mantas has had a convoluted history, during which several names were used for both the genus (Ceratoptera, Brachioptilon, Daemomanta, and Diabolicthys) and species (such as vampyrus, americana, johnii, and hamiltoni). All were eventually treated as synonyms of the single species Manta birostris. The genus name Manta was first published in 1829 by Dr Edward Nathaniel Bancroft of Jamaica. The specific name birostris is ascribed to Johann Julius Walbaum (1792) by some authorities and to Johann August Donndorff (1798) by others. The specific name alfredi was first used by Australian zoologist Gerard Krefft, who named the manta after Prince Alfred.
A 2009 study analyzed the differences in morphology, including color, meristic variation, spine, dermal denticles (tooth-like scales), and teeth of different populations. Two distinct species emerged: the smaller M. alfredi found in the Indo-Pacific and tropical East Atlantic, and the larger M. birostris found throughout tropical, subtropical and warm temperate oceans. The former is more coastal, while the latter is more ocean-going and migratory. A 2010 study on mantas around Japan confirmed the morphological and genetic differences between M. birostris and M. alfredi.
A third possible species, preliminarily called Manta sp. cf. birostris, reaches at least 6 m (20 ft) in width, and inhabits the tropical West Atlantic, including the Caribbean.
### Fossil record
While some small teeth have been found, few fossilized skeletons of manta rays have been discovered. Their cartilaginous skeletons do not preserve well, as they lack the calcification of the bony fish. Only three sedimentary beds bearing manta ray fossils are known, one from the Oligocene in South Carolina and two from the Miocene and Pliocene in North Carolina. M. hynei is a fossil species dating to Early Pliocene North America. Remains of an extinct species have been found in the Chandler Bridge Formation of South Carolina. These were originally described as Manta fragilis, but were later reclassified as Paramobula fragilis.
## Biology
### Characteristics
Manta rays have broad heads, triangular pectoral fins, and horn-shaped cephalic fins located on both sides of their mouths. They have horizontally flattened bodies with eyes on the sides of their heads behind the cephalic fins, and gill slits on their ventral surfaces. Their tails lack skeletal support and are shorter than their disc-like bodies. The dorsal fins are small and at the base of the tail. Mantas can reach 1,350 kg (2,980 lb). In both species, the width is about 2.2 times the length of the body; M. birostris reaches at least 7 m (23 ft) in width, while M. alfredi reaches about 5.5 m (18 ft). Their skin is covered in mucus. Mantas normally have a "chevron" coloration. They are typically black or dark on top with pale markings on their "shoulders". Underneath, they are usually white or pale with distinctive dark markings by which individual mantas can be recognized, as well as some shading. Individuals can also vary from mostly black (melanism) to mostly white (leucism). These color morphs appear to be products of neutral mutations and have no effects on fitness. A pink manta ray has been observed in Australia's Great Barrier Reef and scientists believe this could be due to a genetic mutation causing erythrism. The fish, spotted near Lady Elliot Island, is the world's only known pink manta ray.
The two species of manta differ in color patterns, dermal denticles, and dentition. M. birostris has more angular shoulder markings, ventral dark spots on the abdominal region, charcoal-coloured ventral outlines on the pectoral fins, and a dark colored mouth. The shoulder markings of M. alfredi are more rounded, while its ventral spots are located near the posterior end and between the gill slits, and the mouth is white or pale colored. The denticles have multiple cusps and overlap in M. birostris, while those of M. alfredi are evenly spaced and lack cusps. Both species have small, square-shaped teeth on the lower jaw, but M. birostris also has enlarged teeth on the upper jaw. Unlike M. alfredi, M. birostris has a caudal spine near its dorsal fin.
Mantas move through the water by the wing-like movements of their pectoral fins. Their large mouths are rectangular, and face forward. The spiracles typical of rays are vestigial and concealed by small flaps of skin, and mantas must keep swimming with their mouths open to keep oxygenated water passing over their gills. The cephalic fins are usually spiraled but flatten during foraging. The fish's gill arches have pallets of pinkish-brown spongy tissue that collect food particles. Mantas track down prey using visual and olfactory senses. They have one of the highest brain-to-body mass ratios and the largest brain size of all fish. Their brains have retia mirabilia which may serve to keep them warm. M. alfredi has been shown to dive to depths over 400 metres (1,300 ft), while the Chilean devil ray, which has a similar structure, dives to nearly 2,000 metres (6,600 ft).
### Lifecycle
Mating takes place at different times of the year in different parts of the manta's range. Courtship is difficult to observe in this fast-swimming fish, although mating "trains" with multiple individuals swimming closely behind each other are sometimes seen in shallow water. The mating sequence may be triggered by a full moon and seems to be initiated by a male following closely behind a female while she travels at around 10 km/h (6.2 mph). He makes repeated efforts to grasp her pectoral fin with his mouth, which may take 20 to 30 minutes. Once he has a tight grip, he turns upside-down and presses his ventral side against hers. He then inserts one of his claspers into her cloaca, where it remains for 60–90 seconds. The claspers form a tube and a siphon propels semen from the genital papilla into the oviduct. The male continues to grip the female's pectoral fin with his teeth for a further few minutes as both continue to swim, often followed by up to 20 other males. The pair then parts, the female being left with scars on her fin.
The fertilized eggs develop within the female's oviduct. At first, they are enclosed in an egg case while the developing embryos absorb the yolk. After hatching, the pups remain in the oviduct and receive additional nutrition from milky secretions. With no umbilical cord or placenta, the unborn pup relies on buccal pumping to obtain oxygen. Brood size is usually one or occasionally two. The gestation period is thought to be 12–13 months. When fully developed, the pup resembles a miniature adult and is expelled from the oviduct with no further parental care. In wild populations, an interval of two years between births may be normal, but a few individuals become pregnant in consecutive years, demonstrating an annual ovulatory cycle. The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium has had some success in breeding M. alfredi, with one female giving birth in three successive years. In one of these pregnancies, the gestation period was 372 days and at birth the pup had a width of 192 cm (76 in) and weight of 70 kg (150 lb). In Indonesia, M. birostris males appear to mature at 3.75 m (12 ft), while female mature around 4 m (13 ft). In the Maldives, males of M. alfredi mature at a width of 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in), while females mature at 3 m (9.8 ft). In Hawaii, M. alfredi matures at a width of 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) for males and 3.4 m (11 ft) for females. Female mantas appear to mature at 8–10 years. Manta rays may live as long as 50 years.
## Behavior and ecology
Swimming behavior in mantas differs across habitats: when travelling over deep water, they swim at a constant rate in a straight line, while further inshore, they usually bask or swim idly around. Mantas may travel alone or in groups up to 50. They may associate with other fish species, as well as sea birds and marine mammals. Mantas sometimes breach or leap out of the water. Individuals in a group may make aerial jumps in succession. Mantas may leap forward and re-enters head first, tail first or make somersaults. The reason for breaching is not known; possible explanations include communication, or the removal of parasites and remoras (suckerfish).
Mantas visit cleaning stations on coral reefs for the removal of external parasites. The ray adopts a near-stationary position close to the coral surface for several minutes while the cleaner fish feed. Such visits most frequently occur when the tide is high. Individual mantas may revisit the same cleaning station or feeding area repeatedly and appear to have cognitive maps of their environment. In addition, it has been confirmed that reef manta rays form a bond with a specific individual and act together.
Mantas may be preyed upon by large sharks, orcas and false killer whales. They may also harbor parasitic copepods. Mantas can remove internal parasites by sticking their intestines up to 30 cm (12 in) out of their cloaca and squeezing them out, often while defecating. Remoras adhere themselves onto mantas for transportation and use their mouths as shelter. Though they may clean them of parasites, remoras can also damage the manta's gills and skin, and increase its swimming load.
In 2016, scientists published a study in which manta rays were shown to exhibit behavior associated with self-awareness. In a modified mirror test, the individuals engaged in contingency checking and unusual self-directed behavior.
### Feeding
Manta rays are filter feeders as well as macropredators. On the surface, they consume large quantities of zooplankton in the form of shrimp, krill, and planktonic crabs. In deeper depths, mantas consume small to medium-sized fish. Foraging mantas flatten their cephalic fins to channel food into their mouths. During filter feeding, small particles are collected by the tissue between the gill arches. The standard method of feeding for a lone manta is simply swimming horizontally, turning 180 degrees to feed in the other direction. Up and down movements, sideways tilting and 360 degree somersaults are also observed.
Mantas engage in a number of group feeding behaviors. An individual may "piggy-back" on a larger, horizontally feeding individual, placing itself over its back. "Chain-feeding" involves them aligning back-to-front and swimming horizontally. Chain-feeding mantas may create a circle, with the lead individual meeting up with the stragglers. More individuals may join, creating a "cyclone" of mantas spiraling upwards. With a diameter of 15 m (49 ft), these cyclones consist of up to 150 mantas and last up to an hour. Studies have shown that around 27% of the diet of M. birostris is from the surface, while around 73% is at deeper depths. Mantas may forage on the ocean floor with the cephalic fins splayed apart.
During filter feeding, the gills may get clogged up, forcing mantas to cough and create a cloud of gill waste. The rays commonly do this above cleaning stations, providing a feast for the cleaner fish. Mantas defecate dark red fecal matter which is often mistaken for blood.
## Distribution and habitat
Mantas are found in tropical and subtropical waters in all the world's major oceans, and also venture into temperate seas. The furthest from the equator they have been recorded is North Carolina in the United States (31°N) and the North Island of New Zealand (36°S). They prefer water temperatures above 68 °F (20 °C) and M. alfredi is predominantly found in tropical areas. Both species are pelagic. M. birostris lives mostly in the open ocean, travelling with the currents and migrating to areas where upwellings of nutrient-rich water increase prey concentrations.
Fish that have been fitted with radio transmitters have traveled as far as 1,000 km (620 mi) from where they were caught, and descended to depths of at least 1,000 m (3,300 ft). M. alfredi is a more resident and coastal species. Seasonal migrations do occur, but they are shorter than those of M. birostris. Mantas are common around coasts from spring to fall, but travel further offshore during the winter. They keep close to the surface and in shallow water in daytime, while at night they swim at greater depths.
## Conservation issues
### Threats
The greatest threat to manta rays is overfishing. M. birostris is not evenly distributed over the oceans, but is concentrated in areas that provide the food resources it requires, while M. alfredi is even more localized. Their distributions are thus fragmented, with little evidence of intermingling of subpopulations. Because of their long lifespans and low reproductive rate, overfishing can severely reduce local populations with little likelihood that individuals from elsewhere will replace them.
Both commercial and artisanal fisheries have targeted mantas for their meat and products. They are typically caught with nets, trawls, and harpoons. Mantas were once captured by fisheries in California and Australia for their liver oil and skin; the latter made into abrasives. Their flesh is edible and is consumed in some countries, but is unattractive compared to other fish. Demand for their gill rakers, the cartilaginous structures protecting the gills, has recently entered Chinese medicine. To fill the growing demand in Asia for gill rakers, targeted fisheries have developed in the Philippines, Indonesia, Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and Tanzania. Each year, thousands of manta rays, primarily M. birostris, are caught and killed purely for their gill rakers. A fisheries study in Sri Lanka and India estimated that over 1000 were being sold in the country's fish markets each year. By comparison, M. birostris populations at most of the key aggregation sites around the world are estimated to have significantly fewer than 1000 individuals. Targeted fisheries for manta rays in the Gulf of California, the west coast of Mexico, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines have reduced populations in these areas dramatically.
Manta rays are subject to other human impacts. Because mantas must swim constantly to flush oxygen-rich water over their gills, they are vulnerable to entanglement and subsequent suffocation. Mantas cannot swim backwards, and because of their protruding cephalic fins, are prone to entanglement in fishing lines, nets, ghost nets, and even loose mooring lines. When snared, mantas often attempt to free themselves by somersaulting, tangling themselves further. Loose, trailing line can wrap around and cut its way into its flesh, resulting in irreversible injury. Similarly, mantas become entangled in gill nets designed for smaller fish. Some mantas are injured by collision with boats, especially in areas where they congregate and are easily observed. Other threats or factors that may affect manta numbers are climate change, tourism, pollution from oil spills, and the ingestion of microplastics.
### Status
The IUCN listed the reef manta as vulnerable in 2019 and the giant manta as endangered in 2020. In 2011, mantas became strictly protected in international waters because of their inclusion in the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals. The CMS is an international treaty organization concerned with conserving migratory species and habitats on a global scale. Although individual nations were already protecting manta rays, the fish often migrate through unregulated waters, putting them at increased risk from overfishing. The Manta Trust is a UK-based charity dedicated to research and conservation efforts for manta rays. The organization's website is also an information resource for manta conservation and biology.
In 2009, Hawaii became the first of the United States to introduce a ban on the killing or capturing of manta rays. Previously, no fishery for mantas existed in the state but migratory fish that pass the islands are now protected. In 2010, Ecuador introduced a law prohibiting all fishing for manta and other rays, their retention as bycatch and their sale.
## Relation with humans
The ancient Peruvian Moche people worshipped the sea and its animals. Their art often depicts manta rays. Historically, mantas were feared for their size and power. Sailors believed that they were dangerous to humans and could pull ships out to sea by the anchor. This attitude changed around 1976, when divers around the Gulf of California found them to be placid and were safe to interact with. Several divers photographed themselves with mantas, including Jaws author Peter Benchley.
### Aquariums
The Okinawa Ocean Expo Aquarium acquired mantas in 1981 which survived for four days. In addition, at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, a male manta ray, which started captivity in 1992 at its predecessor, the Okinawa Ocean Expo Aquarium, was recorded to have lived for approximately 23 years. The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium houses manta rays in the "Kuroshio Sea" tank, one of the largest aquarium tanks in the world. The first manta ray birth in captivity took place there in 2007. Although this pup did not survive, the aquarium has since had the birth of four more manta rays in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. However, although Manta became pregnant in 2012, she was stillborn. In 2013, she became pregnant, but her mother, manta ray, died and the pup that was taken out died.
There are currently three mantas spending time at the Georgia Aquarium. One notable individual is "Nandi", a manta ray which was accidentally caught in shark nets off Durban, South Africa, in 2007. Rehabilitated and outgrowing her aquarium at uShaka Marine World, Nandi was moved to the larger Georgia Aquarium in August 2008, where she resides in its 23,848 m<sup>3</sup> (6,300,000 US gal) "Ocean Voyager" exhibit. A second manta ray, "Tallulah", joined that aquarium's collection in September 2009 and a third was added in 2010.
The Atlantis resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas, hosted a manta named "Zeus" that was used as a research subject for three years until it was released in 2008.
### Tourism
Manta ray tourism is estimated to generate over US\$73 million per year and brings US\$140 million per year to local economies. The majority of global revenues come from ten countries: Japan, Indonesia, the Maldives, Mozambique, Thailand, Australia, Mexico, United States, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau. Divers may get a chance to watch mantas visiting cleaning stations and night dives enable viewers to see mantas feeding on plankton attracted by the lights.
Ray tourism benefits locals and visitors by raising awareness of natural resource management and educating them about the animals. It can also provide funds for research and conservation. Constant unregulated interactions with tourists can negatively affect them by disrupting ecological relationships and increasing disease transmission.
In 2014, Indonesia banned fishing and export targeting mantas, as manta ray tourism is more economically beneficial than allowing them to be killed. A dead manta is worth \$40 to \$500, while the economic impact of tourism at a popular dive site can be \$1 million per manta over its life. Indonesia has 5.8 million km<sup>2</sup> (2.2 million mi<sup>2</sup>) of ocean, and this is now the world's largest sanctuary for manta rays.
## See also
- List of threatened rays
- Manta Matcher
|
25,019,866 |
1968 Illinois earthquake
| 1,160,273,412 |
Largest recorded earthquake in Illinois, US
|
[
"1968 earthquakes",
"1968 natural disasters in the United States",
"Earthquakes in the United States",
"Natural disasters in Illinois",
"Natural disasters in Indiana",
"Natural disasters in Kentucky",
"Natural disasters in Tennessee"
] |
The 1968 Illinois earthquake (a New Madrid event) was the largest recorded earthquake in the U.S. Midwestern state of Illinois. Striking at 11:02 am on November 9, it measured 5.4 on the Richter scale. Although no fatalities occurred, the event caused considerable structural damage to buildings, including the toppling of chimneys and shaking in Chicago, the region's largest city. The earthquake was one of the most widely felt in U.S. history, largely affecting 23 states over an area of 580,000 sq mi (1,500,000 km<sup>2</sup>). In studying its cause, scientists discovered the Cottage Grove Fault in the Southern Illinois Basin.
Within the region, millions felt the rupture. Reactions to the earthquake varied; some people near the epicenter did not react to the shaking, while others panicked. A future earthquake in the region is extremely likely; in 2005, seismologists and geologists estimated a 90% chance of a magnitude 6–7 tremor before 2055, likely originating in the Wabash Valley seismic zone on the Illinois–Indiana border or the New Madrid fault zone.
## Background
The first recorded earthquake in Illinois is from 1795 when a small earthquake shook the frontier settlement of Kaskaskia, although the epicenter could not be located and may have been outside Illinois. Data from large earthquakes—in May and July 1909, and November 1968—suggest that earthquakes in the area are of moderate magnitude but can be felt over a large geographical area, largely because of the lack of fault lines. The May 1909 Aurora earthquake affected people in an area of 500,000 sq mi (1,300,000 km<sup>2</sup>); the 1968 Illinois earthquake was felt by those living in an area of about 580,000 sq mi (1,500,000 km<sup>2</sup>). Contradicting the idea that the region's earthquakes are felt over a wide area, a 1965 shock was only noticed near Tamms, though it had the same intensity level (VII) as those of 1909 and 1968. Before 1968, earthquakes had been recorded in 1838, 1857, 1876, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1887, 1891, 1903, 1905, 1912, 1917, 1922, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1953, 1955, and 1958. Since 1968, other earthquakes have occurred in the same region in 1972, 1974, 1984, and 2008.
## Geology
The quake struck on Saturday, November 9, 1968, at 11:02 am. The quake's epicenter was slightly northwest of Broughton in Hamilton County, and close to the Illinois–Indiana border, about 120 miles (190 km) east of St. Louis, Missouri. Surrounding the epicenter were several small towns built on flat glacial lake plains and low hills. Scientists described the rupture as "strong". During the quake, surface wave and body wave magnitudes were measured at 5.2 and 5.54, respectively. The magnitude of the quake reached 5.4 on the Richter scale. The earthquake occurred at a depth of 25 km (16 mi).
A fault plane solution for the earthquake confirmed two nodal planes (one is always a fault plane, the other an auxiliary plane) striking north–south and dipping about 45° to the east and to the west. This faulting suggests dip slip reverse motion and a horizontal east–west axis of confining stress. At the time of the earthquake, no faults were known in the immediate epicentral region (see below), but the motion corresponded to movement along the Wabash Valley Fault System roughly 10 mi (16 km) east of the region. The rupture also partly occurred on the New Madrid Fault, responsible for the great New Madrid earthquakes in 1812. The New Madrid tremors were the most powerful earthquakes to hit the contiguous United States.
Various theories were put forward for the cause of the rupture. Donald Roll, director of seismology at Loyola University Chicago, proposed that the quake was caused by massive amounts of silt being deposited by rivers, generating a "seesaw" effect on the plates beneath. "The weight of the silt depressed one end of the block and tipped up the other," he said. Scientists eventually realized, though, that the cause was a then-unknown fault, the Cottage Grove Fault, a small tear in the Earth's rock in the Southern Illinois Basin near the city of Harrisburg, Illinois.
The fault, which is aligned east–west, is connected to the north–south-trending Wabash Valley Fault System at its eastern end. Seismographic mapping completed by geologists revealed monoclines, anticlines, and synclines, all of which suggest deformation during the Paleozoic era, when strike-slip faulting took place nearby. The fault runs along an ancient Precambrian terrane boundary. It was active mainly in the Late Pennsylvanian and Early Permian epochs around 300 million years ago.
## Damage
The earthquake was felt in 23 states and affected a zone of 580,000 sq mi (1,500,000 km<sup>2</sup>). The shaking extended east to Pennsylvania and West Virginia, south to Mississippi and Alabama, north to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and west to Oklahoma. Isolated reports were received from Boston, Mobile, Alabama, Pensacola, Florida, southern Ontario, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri, West Virginia, Alabama, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, presumably because of shaking. The worst-affected areas were in the general area of Evansville, Indiana, St. Louis, and Chicago, but with no major damage. No deaths happened; the worst injury was a child knocked unconscious by falling debris outside his home.
Damage was confined to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and south-central Iowa, and largely consisted of fallen chimneys, foundation cracks, collapsed parapets, and overturned tombstones. In one home in Dale, Illinois, near Tuckers Corners and southwest of McLeansboro, the quake cracked interior walls, plaster, and chimneys. Using a type of victim study, the local post office surveyed residents and implemented a field inspection, which indicated the strongest shaking (MM VII) took place in the Wabash Valley, Ohio Valley, and other nearby south-central Illinois lowlands. Outside this four-state zone, oscillating objects, including cars, chimneys, and the Gateway Arch, were reported to authorities.
McLeansboro in particular experienced minor damage over an extensive area. Its local high school reported 19 broken windows in the girls' gymnasium, along with cracked plaster walls. Most of the high school's classrooms sustained fractured walls. The façade of the town's First United Methodist Church was damaged, and a brick and concrete block fell off the top. The Hamilton County Courthouse withstood several structural cracks, including one on the ceiling above the judge's seat. The town's residents also reported collapsing chimneys; three chimneys toppled at one home, leading to further damage.
Most of the buildings that experienced chimney damage were 30 to 50 years old. The City Building in Henderson, Kentucky, 50 miles (80 km) east-southeast of the epicenter, sustained considerable structural damage. Moderate damage—including broken chimneys and fractured walls—occurred in towns in south-central Illinois, southwest Indiana, and northwest Kentucky. For instance, a concrete-brick cistern caved in 6.2 miles (10.0 km) west of Dale.
In Lineville, Iowa, about 80 mi (130 km) south of Des Moines on the Missouri border, the quake was felt as a long shaking. The quake damaged the town's water tower, which began to leak 300 US gal (1,100 L) of water an hour.
Donald Roll correctly predicted the earthquake would have no aftershocks. He later said, "That was kind of a safety valve. The pressure [that] has been built up has been released." He also described the earthquake as "a very rare occurrence".
## Response
Millions in the area experienced the earthquake, the first major seismic event in decades. Following the tremor, businesses in the area emptied. Many residents did not believe that the earthquake was over magnitude 5. Others did not realize an earthquake was taking place, for example, some residents thought their furnaces had exploded, and one man thought that the shaking was caused by his son "jumping up and down". At the Suntone Factory in McLeansboro, 30 mi (48 km) from the epicenter, workers rushed out of the building, thinking a 1,100 US gal (4,200 L) water tank inside had fallen.
People's reactions varied; some described themselves as "shocked"; others admitted to being "shaky" or nervous for the rest of the day. Harold Kittinger, a worker at the Suntone Factory, said, "I do not care to tell anyone I was frightened. But I was not shaking in my shoes. My shoes were moving." One woman hypothesized that the shaking was a "bomb". Grace Standerfer suggested the earthquake was sudden, saying, "I was just scared to death. My husband and I were in the house. The Venetian shades began to shake one way, then another. When that awful blast came, he grabbed me and we ran outside. Things were falling and breaking in the house. I said to him, 'This is it.' I thought the world had come to an end. Outside, wires were moving. There was no wind. The ground was quivering under our feet. I was so scared. I did not know I was scared." People in the community of Mount Vernon, Illinois, were frightened by the shaking. However, some did not notice the earthquake; Jane Bessen said her party was "in a car ... to Evansville and didn't know about it until we got there".
## Future threats
In 2005, scientists determined that a 90% probability existed of a magnitude 6–7 earthquake occurring in the New Madrid area during the next 50 years. This could cause potentially high damage in the Chicago metropolitan area, which has a population near 10 million people. Pressure on the fault where the 1811–1812 Madrid earthquakes occurred was believed to be increasing, but a later study by Eric Calais of Purdue University and other experts concluded the land adjacent to the New Madrid fault was moving less than 0.2 mm (0.0079 in) a year, increasing the span between expected earthquakes on the fault to 500–1,000 years. Scientists anticipating a future earthquake suggest the Wabash Valley Fault as a possible source, calling it "dangerous".
Douglas Wiens, a professor of earth and planetary sciences, reported: "The strongest earthquakes in the last few years have come from the Wabash Valley Fault", and said the fault needs more scientific observation. Steven Obermeir of the United States Geological Survey is one of several scientists who have found sediments suggesting Wabash Valley Fault earthquakes around magnitude 7 on the Richter scale. Michael Wyssession, an associate professor of earth and planetary sciences, denigrated the Madrid fault zone and said, "in 20 years there have been three magnitude 5 or better earthquakes on the Wabash Valley Fault. There is evidence that sometime in the past, the Wabash Valley Fault has produced as strong as magnitude 7 earthquakes. On the other hand, the New Madrid Fault has been very quiet for a long time now. Clearly, the Wabash Valley Fault has gotten our deserved attention."
## See also
- List of earthquakes in 1968
- List of earthquakes in Illinois
|
737,123 |
Knight Lore
| 1,153,175,143 |
1984 video game
|
[
"1984 video games",
"Action-adventure games",
"Amstrad CPC games",
"BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games",
"Famicom Disk System games",
"Golden Joystick Award for Game of the Year winners",
"Jaleco games",
"MSX games",
"Platform games",
"Rare (company) games",
"Single-player video games",
"Video games developed in the United Kingdom",
"Video games set in castles",
"Video games with isometric graphics",
"Werewolf games",
"ZX Spectrum games"
] |
Knight Lore is a 1984 action-adventure game developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game, and written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper. The game is known for its use of isometric graphics, which it further popularized in video games. In Knight Lore, the player character Sabreman has forty days to collect objects throughout a castle and brew a cure to his werewolf curse. Each castle room is depicted in monochrome on its own screen and consists of blocks to climb, obstacles to avoid, and puzzles to solve.
Ultimate released Knight Lore third in the Sabreman series despite having completed it first. The Stamper brothers withheld its release for a year to position the company advantageously in anticipation of the game's effect on the market. Knight Lore's novel image masking technique, Filmation, let images appear to pass atop and behind each other without their contents colliding. This created the illusion of depth priority, which the computer did not natively support. By delaying Knight Lore's release, Ultimate protected sales of their then-upcoming Sabre Wulf and created another Filmation game before other developers could copy the style. Ultimate released the original Sabreman trilogy in quick succession in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum. Knight Lore came last, in November. Ports followed for the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, MSX, and Family Computer Disk System.
Knight Lore is regarded as a seminal work in British gaming history and has been included in multiple lists of top Spectrum games. Critics considered its technical solutions and isometric 3D style a harbinger of future game design. They praised the game's controls and atmosphere of mystery, but noted its difficult gameplay and criticised its sound and occasional graphical slowdown. Knight Lore was named the 1984 game of the year by the Golden Joystick Awards and Popular Computing Weekly readers. Though it was not the first isometric 3D video game, Knight Lore popularised the format. When the isometric, flip-screen style fell out of fashion, Knight Lore's influence persisted in computer role-playing games. Retrospective reviewers remember the game as the first to offer an exploratory "world" rather than a flat surface, but consider its controls outdated and frustrating in the thirty years since its release.
The game was later included in compilations including Rare's 2015 Xbox One retrospective compilation, Rare Replay.
## Gameplay
The player, as Sabreman, has been bitten by the Sabre Wulf and now transforms into a werewolf at nightfall. He has 40 days to collect items throughout Melkhior the Wizard's castle and brew a cure for his curse. An onscreen timer shows the progression of day into night, when Sabreman metamorphoses into a werewolf, returning to human form at sunrise. Some of the castle's monsters only attack Sabreman when he is a werewolf. The game ends if the player completes the potion or does not finish the task in forty days. The game's only directions are given through a poem included with the game's cassette tape.
The castle consists of a series of 128 rooms, each displayed on a single, non-scrolling screen. Sabreman must navigate the 3D maze of stone blocks in each room, usually to retrieve a collectible object, whilst avoiding spikes and enemies, which kill him on contact. The player starts with five lives, and loses one for each death; running out of lives ends the game. Stone blocks serve as platforms for the player to jump between; some fall under the player's weight, some move of their own accord, and some can be pushed by enemies or Sabreman. Sabreman jumps higher when in werewolf form, which helps in specific puzzles. The player often needs to move blocks to reach distant objects, which are then used as platforms to reach areas in other puzzles. To complete the game, the player must return 14 sequential objects from throughout the castle to the wizard's cauldron room. At the end of the game, the player receives a final score based on the remaining time and amount of the quest completed.
## Development
Ultimate Play the Game, represented by its co-founding brothers, Tim and Chris Stamper, was uncommonly taciturn in matters of press and marketing, though they provided some details on Knight Lore's development to Crash magazine. While Knight Lore was released as the third game in the Sabreman series, the Stamper brothers had finished it first. They withheld the game for about a year for market reasons: they thought that Knight Lore's advancements—copyrighted as the Filmation engine—would hurt sales of their then-upcoming Sabre Wulf, and used the extra time to prepare another Filmation game (Alien 8) to preempt the sales that would be lost when other publishers would try to copy the technique. Tim Stamper recalled that "we just had to sit on it because everyone else was so far behind". Sabre Wulf was released to commercial and critical success in 1984. Alien 8 and the next two Sabreman titles—Underwurlde and Knight Lore—followed in close succession before the end of the year.
Filmation and Knight Lore's graphical novelty lay in how images could render without overlapping. Filmation introduced "masked sprites" whereas earlier games used "planar sprites", which overlapped without regard for depth order. Chris Stamper's solution was to use image masking. A mask is a version of an image that defines a background from the subject matter in different colours. When combining the mask and the on-screen composite image, the mask's "background" data was ignored and a hole in the shape of the desired image sprite was added to the background. This was filled in with the sprite's details. Thus, rooms in Knight Lore were drawn one sprite at a time through this masking method. In more recent times, contemporary images render with layer priority set at the individual pixel level. Knight Lore is depicted in monochrome that changes between rooms so as to avoid attribute clash, a computing limitation wherein an object's colour interfered with those of others in close proximity.
Ultimate released Knight Lore for the ZX Spectrum in November 1984. In a press release, they announced the game as the beginning of a new class of adventure games and "the very pinnacle of software development on the 48K Spectrum". As standard for the cryptic company, Ultimate did not circulate screenshots of the game in its press materials or cover art. Knight Lore was subsequently released for the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, and MSX later in 1985. The Amstrad version upgraded the monochromatic colouring to a two-colour foreground setup. Jaleco released versions of Knight Lore for MSX and, later, the Famicom Disk System. The latter 1986 release barely resembled its namesake. Ultimate asked Shahid Ahmad, who developed the Knight Lore-inspired Chimera (1985), to develop a Knight Lore port for the Commodore 64, but this did not come to fruition. Knight Lore later appeared in the Spectrum version of the 1986 compilation They Sold a Million II and the 2015 Xbox One compilation of 30 Ultimate and Rare titles Rare Replay.
## Reception
Knight Lore entered the UK video game charts in the week up to 8 November 1984 while Underwurlde was still number 1, and went on to replace its predecessor at the top of the charts the following week. By the start of 1985 it had been succeeded by Ghostbusters.
Computer game magazines lauded Knight Lore, writing that its graphics were the first of its kind and marked a sea change from its contemporaries. Computer & Video Games (CVG) wrote that they had never seen graphics of its calibre and that it lived up to Ultimate's hype. Peter Sweasey of Home Computing Weekly was left speechless and predicted that Knight Lore would change the market. Crash said it was unlikely to be surpassed as the Spectrum's best game. Crash selected Knight Lore as a "Crash Smash" recommendation in its January 1985 issue. Popular Computing Weekly readers named Knight Lore their 1984 arcade game and overall game of the year. Knight Lore was also named CVG's game of the year at their 1985 Golden Joystick Awards event, and Ultimate was named both developer and programmer of the year.
Knight Lore's atmosphere, which Sinclair User described as a "crepuscular world of claustrophobic menace", inspired many curious questions on the part of the adventurer in contemporaneous 1985 reviews. Crash appreciated the imaginative mystery of the game as they attempted to answer why Sabreman turns into a werewolf, who they preferred to play as, and what the collectible objects throughout the castle do. Sabreman's werewolf transformation sequence, in particular, annoyed CVG and traumatised players, according to Well Played, a book of academic close readings of video games, as players empathised with the suffering Sabreman. The game design gave the impression that the castle was far grander in scale than it was in reality, and Crash wrote that the game's novel eight-way direction scheme suited the 3D space. Crash compared Knight Lore stylistically to the 1984 Avalon, but suggested that the former had bolder visuals. The magazine preferred Knight Lore to its predecessor (Underwurlde) and one critic even considered the former to be Ultimate's best game.
Crash noted how Knight Lore's masking technique addressed issues of flicker and attribute clash, and Sinclair User appreciated how Sabreman disappeared from view when passing behind blocks. In criticism, reviewers considered Knight Lore's sound to be its weakest component, though Your Spectrum and Crash also identified the sometimes cruel difficulty of its gameplay. Later rooms of the castle require pixel-perfect precision, compounded by the anxiety of the running timer, and the game's animations would slow down proportional to the degree of onscreen action.
In reviews of the Amstrad release, Amtix noted the colour additions over the monochromatic original and wrote that Knight Lore was among the Amstrad's best adventures. Their one complaint was the graphical slowdown when too many elements were moving onscreen. Amstrad Action shared this complaint but nevertheless named Knight Lore among the Amstrad's best three games—an improvement on the Spectrum release and on par with the quality of Commodore 64 titles.
## Legacy
Knight Lore is widely regarded as a seminal work in British gaming history. According to Kieron Gillen of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Knight Lore is second only to Elite (1984) as an icon of the 1980s British computer game industry. British magazine Retro Gamer described players' first impressions of Knight Lore as "unforgettable", on par with the experience of playing Space Harrier (1985), Wolfenstein 3D (1992), or Super Mario 64 (1996) for the first time. Retro Gamer recalled that Knight Lore's striking, isometric 3D visuals were both a bold advance in game graphics and a foretelling of their future. British magazine Edge described the game's graphics engine as "the single greatest advance in the history of video games", and Retro Gamer compared the engine's impact to that of the introduction of sound in film. Knight Lore was not the first to use isometric graphics—earlier examples include Zaxxon (1982), Q\*bert (1982), and Ant Attack (1983)—but its graphic style and large in-game world further popularised the technique and put Ultimate and Filmation in its epicentre.
Several video game clones were inspired by Knight Lore. When programmers at The Edge struggled to replicate the isometric style, visiting developer Bo Jangeborg devised his own solution. The result, Fairlight (1985), is regarded as another classic of the platform. The Edge's version of Filmation received its own branding as "Worldmaker". Shahid Ahmad said Firebird's Chimera (1985) was even closer to Knight Lore. Ahmad's "shock" and "admiration" from playing Knight Lore reportedly changed his life and convinced him to continue making games. He released Chimera on the Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum, customising each port for the processing limitations of its hardware. By 1986, many British video game publishers had produced Knight Lore-style isometric games; examples include Sweevo's World, Movie, Quazatron, Get Dexter, Glider Rider, Molecule Man, Spindizzy, and Bobby Bearing. Many of these titles suffered the same slowdown issues as Knight Lore due to too much on-screen activity.
Ultimate itself released four more Filmation games. Alien 8 (1985) was rushed for release before developers had an opportunity to react to Knight Lore, though Retro Gamer said that its rush was not noticeable, as Alien 8 had a larger game world than Knight Lore, with even more puzzles. Alien 8 and Knight Lore are similar in gameplay, but the former is set in outer space. With the updated Filmation II engine, Nightshade (1985) added colour and scrolling graphics (in place of flip-screen room changes); however, Retro Gamer regarded its gameplay as comparatively dull. Gunfright (1986), reported as the Stampers' last game, also used Filmation II and was more robust than its predecessor. Pentagram (1986) returned to flip-screen rooms and its action-based gameplay included shooting enemies. It sold poorly and was the last Sabreman game. Meanwhile, the Stamper brothers sought to enter the burgeoning console industry. They sold Ultimate to U.S. Gold in the mid-1980s and established Rare to develop Nintendo console games. While Ultimate's last two isometric games were of lesser quality, consumer interest in the genre endured.
The isometric, flip-screen trend continued in Britain for several years. Apart from Fairlight, Sweevo's World and Get Dexter, other isometric flip-screen games included Jon Ritman's Knight Lore-inspired Batman (1986), Head over Heels (1987), The Last Ninja (1987), La Abadía del Crimen (1987), Cadaver (1990), and console games Solstice (1990) and Landstalker (1992). As players grew tired of the genre's similar reiterations, Ritman's games, in particular, brought new ideas. Sandy White, who developed the pre-Knight Lore isometric game Ant Attack, was impressed by Ultimate's in-game "balance" and gutsy design decisions. The developer of The Great Escape, another isometric game, considered Knight Lore to be more "a rival title than an inspiration", but it still spurred him to spend nine months making Where Time Stood Still. Retro Gamer wrote that Knight Lore's influence persisted 30 years later through titles such as Populous (1989), Syndicate (1993), UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994), and Civilization II (1996). The style also spread to computer role-playing games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Diablo, and Fallout. Though GamesRadar's Matt Cundy reported in 2009 that isometric perspective was no longer as prominent a topic in game design, in 2014, Chris Scullion of Vice traced Knight Lore's isometric influence to The Sims 4 (2014) and Diablo III (2012).
Knight Lore was included in multiple lists of top Spectrum games and even top games for any platform. It inspired two fangames: a 1999 sequel and a 2010 3D remake, which was in development for four years.
Though isometric games had existed previously, in a retrospective review, Gillen (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) recalled that Knight Lore was the first game to offer a "world" with physical depth for exploration as opposed to the simple mechanics of arcade games. Jeremy Signor of USgamer agreed that Knight Lore felt more like a world than a painting and added that the game's innovative use of successive, single-screen rooms ("flip-screen") pre-dated The Legend of Zelda by years. Gillen said the game's punishing style (unforgiving gameplay, high difficulty, awkward controls) had become obsolete in the 30 years since its release and criticised Knight Lore as "enormously innovative, incredibly atmospheric, and totally unplayable", suggesting that the similar Head over Heels (1987) had aged much better. Peter Parrish (Eurogamer), too, found the game frustrating, though well-made. Dan Whitehead of the same publication appreciated that the 2015 Rare Replay compilation version of Knight Lore emulated the original's choppy animations as the ZX Spectrum's processor once struggled to render the onscreen objects.
|
1,109,483 |
Mario Power Tennis
| 1,170,414,264 |
2004 video game
|
[
"2004 video games",
"Camelot Software Planning games",
"GameCube games",
"Mario Tennis",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"New Play Control! games",
"Tennis video games",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games scored by Motoi Sakuraba",
"Wii games"
] |
Mario Power Tennis is a sports game developed by Camelot Software Planning and published by Nintendo. The game is the sequel to the Nintendo 64 title Mario Tennis, and is the fourth game in the Mario Tennis series. Power Tennis was released for the GameCube in Japan and North America in late 2004, and in PAL regions in early 2005. The game was ported for the Wii in 2009 as part of the New Play Control! series, and was also re-released as a Nintendo Selects title in 2012. A companion handheld game, Mario Tennis: Power Tour, was also released on Game Boy Advance around the same time as the original GameCube release, bearing the same title as Power Tennis in Europe.
Power Tennis incorporates multiple characters, themes, and locations from the Mario series. The game includes standard tennis matches, but contains variants that feature different scoring formats and objectives. Other variants include "Gimmick" courts, thematic areas with components and properties that directly affect gameplay. The game has 18 playable characters, each categorised by their style of play and each with a pair of unique moves known as "Power Shots". Power Tennis was developed simultaneously with Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, and the pair shared similar technology and concepts with each other during production. Such similarities include an emphasis on the Mario theme in characters and settings as well as alternative game modes such as "Ring Shot".
The GameCube version was positively received in general, attaining an aggregate score of 81 percent from GameRankings and 80 out of 100 from Metacritic. Critics praised the game's depth and variety, but criticised the Power Shot animations, which could not be skipped. The Wii version in contrast received a more mixed reaction, with praise for the graphics and multiplayer but criticism for its motion controls. In 2010, it was included as one of the games in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.
## Gameplay
Mario Power Tennis includes variations of tennis matches consisting of characters, courts, and scenarios based on the Mario series. The range of courts includes the standard three types of tennis court, but consists predominantly of those themed upon games in the Mario series, known as "Gimmick" courts. As well as adopting the style aesthetically, these feature thematic elements that influence how the match will be played on that surface, such as the ghosts in the Luigi's Mansion court, which hinder movement when the character comes into physical contact with them. Although standard tennis is available, variants of the sport can be played which adopt different rules and methods of victory. "Ring Shot" involves the player earning points by hitting the ball through rings of varying sizes, with the number of points dependent on the difficulty of the shot. The player acquires the points whenever a winning shot is made adhering to standard rules; the match is won once the predetermined number of points is equaled or surpassed. A similar mode, "Item Battle", involves the characters using items based on the Mario universe to interfere with each other's game and gain an advantage. The central mode of the game is "Tournament Mode", which comprises a set of events with accumulating difficulty. This set of events must be finished successfully to unlock playable characters. This mode can be completed either in "doubles" or "singles", and is divided into Gimmick courts and standard courts. An alternative to these are "Special Games", which involve the player trying to meet a tennis-related objective on a Gimmick court. These Special Games come in multiple forms, incorporating themes from past Nintendo games, such as "Tic-Tac-Glow", which requires the player to hit balls of water to liberate Shine Sprites trapped in dirt, a reference to Super Mario Sunshine. Power Tennis supports the option for four-player multiplayer, which can be accessed during "Exhibition Mode", the standard mode of play where the player can choose his or her opponents and the conditions of the match. Such options include the difficulty of the opponent, the court used, and the number of games and sets required to win the match.
Power Tennis features 18 playable characters, all of whom derive from the Mario franchise. Many characters, such as Wario, had already appeared in the game's predecessor and several other Mario spin-offs, while this was the first appearance for Wiggler as a playable character. All of the characters are categorised into six groups that reflect their playing style: all-around, technical, power, speed, defensive, and tricky. Inherent in each character is a set of two unique moves known as "Power Shots". These powerful moves, which are accompanied with an animation each time they are triggered, incorporate the character's specific qualities. They can only be triggered occasionally in the match, but will usually result in defending or scoring a point, depending on the type of shot chosen. Generic tennis moves, such as slices, dropshots, and lobs, can be applied at any time in the match.
## Development
Power Tennis was developed by Camelot Software Planning, with a team of approximately 30 people, headed by brothers Hiroyuki and Shugo Takahashi. The game was first unveiled in a 2002 issue of the Japanese magazine Famitsu, and was later presented at the E3 conference of 2004. Before release, the brothers discussed multiple developmental processes in an interview with Famitsu. Camelot had been working on a previous GameCube version of Mario Tennis, but discontinued the project and began again using ideas and technology from Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, which was being developed simultaneously with the game. Shugo noted that the original would have been more serious and contained deeper gameplay, but with fewer "Mario-esque" gimmicks. There was also a willingness not to update the graphics only without exploring advancements to concepts and gameplay, which Hiroyuki stated would be "unacceptable for a Mario game". Due to the success of its predecessor, the brothers felt pressure to make a game that was original and would not appear too similar to its predecessor on first sight.
Following release, IGN interviewed Hiroyuki regarding the development of the game. He revealed that Camelot had received co-operation from Nintendo in relation to voice acting and animation, which Takahashi stated as "contributing quite a bit to the improvement of the game's graphics". Takahashi proceeded to explain why the role-playing game elements that were present in Mario Tennis were excluded from Power Tennis, stating that he felt they were more suitable for the "deep single-player experience" present in portable consoles. Regarding the themed courts in the game, he explained that the concepts were conceived during long brainstorming sessions, with courts selected that would both remind gamers of older Mario games and introduce new gamers to Mario games they may not have played. When questioned regarding difficulties in developing the game, Takahashi noted the effort used in making the opening sequences, developing the Special Games, and animations, which caused problems with meeting the schedule. Although there was speculation about online capabilities before release, Takahashi refrained from making the game online-compatible due to fear of lagging problems, stating "I don't think you can play a tennis game online under the current Internet environment and feel satisfied".
Nintendo collaborated with the Lawn Tennis Association in 2005 to promote Power Tennis in the United Kingdom. The promotion featured on-site sampling and official Nintendo branding at various tennis events such as Wimbledon. The LTA's ACE Magazine advertised Power Tennis and featured competitions offering the game as a prize. Nintendo also released an online questionnaire regarding players' habits and preferences in relation to tennis as a part of their Who Are You? campaign. Nintendo announced in 2008 that they would be re-releasing the title as part of their New Play Control! selection, which feature added Wii controls. The game can be controlled using the Wii Remote and optional Nunchuk attachment, allowing the player to trigger actions such as forehands and backhands by swinging the Remote like a tennis racket. It was released on January 15, 2009, in Japan and in March 2009 in other countries. It was later re-released in North America on June 10, 2012, along with Pikmin 2 as Nintendo Selects titles.
## Reception
The GameCube version of Mario Power Tennis enjoyed a generally positive reception, with reviewers complimenting the variety of play and multiple minigames available. GameSpot named it 2004's "Best Alternative Sports Game" across all platforms. GameSpy's Raymond Padilla lauded the game's use of characters and the player categories, stating "When you put it all together, you have a broad cast of characters, each of whom offers a different feel." Despite this, the Gimmick courts were labeled by Matt Casamassina as a "distraction" and "annoyance", although he acknowledged that some courts were better than others. Additionally, Nintendo World Report'''s Michael Cole thought that most players would revert to standard courts "after being 'unfairly defeated' by ghosts, paint, or some other trap." Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell welcomed Power Tennis's style, which he said emphasised gameplay over simulation and realism. When comparing the game to its predecessor, reviewers praised Power Tennis for its incorporation of the Mario franchise in the different scenarios and courts.
The gameplay features introduced to the game received a mixed response. IGN noted that the Special Games varied in quality between different games, with Casamassina commenting that "they certainly don't make or break the experience." The game's "Power Shots" was also met with an ambivalent reaction—the shot themselves were praised for adding strategy and character, although GameSpot's Ryan Davis commented that "it would have been nice if you could just skip past the animations and keep the wild moves." In general, the game's multiplayer modes were more popular than single-player, with the "predictable and basic" artificial intelligence contributing to a low difficulty level at times. GameSpy noted how the number of options and variables enhanced the multiplayer experience, and commented that "The game is very good on its own, but it excels when you bring friends into the mix." The mechanics of the tennis gameplay were also popular, with reviewers lauding the game's accessibility as well as its depth relating to the variety of shots available and how the position of the character affects the contact with the ball.
Most critics praised Power Tennis's presentation, with reviewers noting the game's opening sequence especially. Nintendo World Report complimented the level of detail given to the themed locations and character animations, stating that it "[puts] even the Mario Kart series to shame." IGN generally shared this view, although they criticised the background animations, commenting that "The crowds in particular are a repeating blob of the same sprites over and over". On the other hand, the audio received a mediocre response, despite the comical voice acting. Power Tennis sold 139,000 copies during its first week of release in Japan, and sold 377,000 copies altogether in the country from release to December 31, 2006. Power Tennis had sold 296,893 units in North America by January 31, 2005. The game was at fifth position in the Australian GameCube sales charts from October 16 to October 29, 2005.
In spite of the mostly positive reception the GameCube version held, the reception for the Wii remake was mixed. It holds an average score of 65/100 and 68.19% at Metacritic and GameRankings respectively. While it has been praised for the original game's graphics holding up to current Wii games, many editors have found fault in the controls. IGN editor Mark Bozon criticized its motion controls, describing them as imprecise, for ruining a "great game". X-Play editor Dana Vinson similarly disliked the controls, also describing the act of releasing GameCube titles for the Wii with motion controls as being lazy. GamePro editor Dave Rudden criticized the game for adding multiple moves into Wii Remote motions, commenting that it would have to be "twice as responsive" for it to work. Eurogamer editor Oli Welsh criticized both the inaccurate controls and limited improvements, stating that Wii Sports is a superior alternative. While GameDaily editor Robert Workman criticized the motion controls, he stated that everything else works. He also describes it as being mildly enjoyable with three other friends.
In spite of the negative reception, the Wii version has had some positive reception. While Official Nintendo Magazine UK editor Tom East similarly bemoaned the motion controls, he felt that the multiplayer still held up, as it becomes balanced since the other players would have the same problems with the controls. 1UP.com editor Justin Haywald agreed, stating that while it made single player modes difficult, the game was meant to be played with friends. Game Informer editor Matt Helgeson, however, found the motion controls to be good, commenting that other developers should learn from Nintendo. In spite of this, fellow Game Informer editor Matthew Kato described the controls as being only so-so. GameShark editor Danielle Riendeau, however, described the controls as excellent, though adding that it occasionally misreads her shots. In the first four days of the Wii version's release in Japan, Mario Power Tennis'' sold 56,000 copies. By January 3, 2010, it had sold 205,070 copies in Japan.
|
78,598 |
Wilco
| 1,172,900,533 |
American alternative rock band
|
[
"Alternative rock groups from Chicago",
"American alternative country groups",
"American art rock groups",
"American experimental rock groups",
"Anti- (record label) artists",
"DBpm Records artists",
"Elektra Records artists",
"Grammy Award winners",
"Indie rock musical groups from Illinois",
"Musical groups established in 1993",
"Nonesuch Records artists",
"Reprise Records artists",
"Wilco"
] |
Wilco is an American alternative rock band based in Chicago, Illinois. The band was formed in 1994 by the remaining members of alternative country group Uncle Tupelo following singer Jay Farrar's departure. Wilco's lineup changed frequently during its first decade, with only singer Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt remaining from the original incarnation. Since early 2004, the lineup has been unchanged, consisting of Tweedy, Stirratt, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, keyboard player Mikael Jorgensen, and drummer Glenn Kotche. Wilco has released twelve studio albums, a live double album, and four collaborations: three with Billy Bragg and one with The Minus 5.
Wilco's music has been inspired by a wide variety of artists and styles, including Bill Fay, The Beatles and Television, and has in turn influenced music by a number of modern alternative rock acts. The band continued in the alternative country style of Uncle Tupelo on its debut album A.M. (1995), but has since introduced more experimental aspects to their music, including elements of alternative rock and classic pop. Wilco's musical style has evolved from a 1990s country rock sound to a current "eclectic indie rock collective that touches on many eras and genres".
Wilco garnered media attention for their fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001), and the controversy surrounding it. After the recording sessions were complete, Reprise Records rejected the album and dismissed Wilco from the label. As part of a buy-out deal, Reprise gave Wilco the rights to the album for free. After streaming Foxtrot on its website, Wilco sold the album to Nonesuch Records in 2002. Both record labels are subsidiaries of Warner Music Group, leading one critic to say the album showed "how screwed up the music business is in the early twenty-first century." The event was immortalized in the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, in which director Sam Jones followed the band as they wrote and produced the record.Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is Wilco's most successful release to date, selling over 670,000 copies. Wilco won two Grammy Awards for their fifth studio album, 2004's A Ghost Is Born, including Best Alternative Music Album. Wilco released their twelfth studio album, Cruel Country, in May 2022.
## History
### Formation
Wilco was formed following the breakup of the influential alternative country music group Uncle Tupelo. Singer Jay Farrar quit the band in 1994 because of a soured relationship with co-singer Jeff Tweedy. Both Tweedy and Farrar sought to form bands immediately after the breakup. Tweedy was able to keep the entire Uncle Tupelo lineup sans Farrar, including bassist John Stirratt, drummer Ken Coomer, and multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston. He even enlisted Uncle Tupelo guest guitarist Brian Henneman of the Bottle Rockets, who performed on many of the tracks for Wilco's debut album, A.M.. The band was tempted to keep the Uncle Tupelo name, but ultimately decided to rename the band. The group named itself "Wilco" after the military and commercial aviation radio voice abbreviation for "will comply", a choice which Tweedy has called "fairly ironic for a rock band to name themselves."
### A.M. and Being There
After collaborating with Syd Straw on a cover version of the Ernest Tubb song "The T.B. is Whipping Me" (released in September 1994 on the Red Hot + Country compilation produced by the Red Hot Organization), Wilco began recording tracks for A.M., their first studio album, at Easley studio in June 1994. A demo tape from these recordings was sent to executives at Reprise Records, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers, and the label signed Tweedy to a contract. Although Tweedy stated that he wanted a more collaborative project than Uncle Tupelo, only his name appeared on the Reprise contract. Tweedy requested songwriting submissions from other members, but only one submission—John Stirratt's "It's Just That Simple"—appeared on A.M.. It was the last song Wilco ever released that was lyrically solely written by a member besides Tweedy.
Stylistically similar to Uncle Tupelo, the music on A.M. was considered to be straightforward alternative country rock in what Tweedy later described as "trying to tread some water with a perceived audience." A.M. peaked at number twenty-seven on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, considerably lower than the debut album of Jay Farrar's new band, Son Volt. The album was met with modest reviews though it would rank thirty-fourth in the Village Voices 1995 Pazz & Jop critics poll. Critically and commercially paling in comparison to the reception of Son Volt's album, the Wilco members perceived A.M. to be a failure. Shortly after the release of the album, multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett joined the band, providing the band with a keyboardist and another guitarist.
Wilco made its live debut on November 17, 1994 to a capacity crowd at Cicero's Basement Bar in St. Louis, Missouri (the band was billed for the occasion as "Black Shampoo").
During the two hundred-date tour supporting A.M., Tweedy began to write songs for a second album. The lyrical theme of the songs reflected a relationship between musical artist and a listener; Tweedy chose this topic because he sought to eschew the alternative country fan base. Ken Coomer elaborated:
> The whole No Depression thing was funny to us because people seemed to forget that Jeff was a bigger punk-rock fan than a country fan. It led to things like us all switching instruments on "Misunderstood," where I'm playing guitar.
A number of songs were recorded with this theme, including "Sunken Treasure" and "Hotel Arizona", however, Wilco also recorded a number of songs in the style of A.M. Wilco named the album Being There after a Peter Sellers film of the same name. The band went through some personnel changes during the recording sessions. Max Johnston left the band because he felt that his role in the band had diminished in favor of Bennett; he had also been replaced by violinist Jesse Greene on one track because the band felt that Johnston was unable to play the part. Bob Egan of Freakwater briefly joined the band in the studio, playing pedal steel guitar on "Far, Far Away" and "Dreamer in My Dreams", and then became an official member in September 1996.
Unlike the A.M. recording sessions, the band had no desire to produce a hit song from their second effort. The recording sessions produced nineteen songs, too many for a single album release. Tweedy was concerned about the high retail price that a double album would be sold for (at least \$30), so he asked Reprise Records to release it as a double album at a single album price (\$17.98 or less). Reprise agreed to this on the terms that they received Wilco's share of the album royalties. It was estimated in 2003 that the band lost almost \$600,000 on the deal, but Tweedy was satisfied. Being There was well received by critics from several major media outlets, including Rolling Stone. The album reached No. 73 on the Billboard album charts, a significant improvement from A.M., and placed fourteenth on the Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1996. The album's single "Outtasite (Outta Mind)" became the group's first song to enter the Billboard charts, reaching No. 39 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and No. 22 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
### Summerteeth and the Mermaid Avenue sessions
In November 1997, Wilco entered Willie Nelson's recording studio in Spicewood, Texas to record a third studio album. The album was lyrically inspired by the marital problems of Tweedy and his wife, as well as by twentieth-century literature. Tweedy relied heavily on Bennett to provide music for the singer's "bold, but depressing" lyrics. Wilco recorded several songs, including "Via Chicago" and "She's a Jar", but began working on another project before assembling the tracks into an album.
Nora Guthrie contacted singer-songwriter Billy Bragg in spring 1995 about recording some unreleased songs by her father, folk singer Woody Guthrie. Most of the songs were written late in Guthrie's life when he was unable to record due to the motor impairments of Huntington's disease. By the 1990s, Woody Guthrie had become a "relic" to the MTV generation, and Nora sought to establish a different legacy for the musician. To Nora, Bragg was "the only singer I knew taking on the same issues as Woody." Bragg was concerned, however, that his fans would not realize that the songs were written by Guthrie when he performed them on tour, so he decided to record the album with another band.
Bragg contacted Tweedy and Bennett about co-recording the album while Wilco was on the European segment of their Being There tour. Bragg was particularly fond of Being There because their influences extended farther back than the 1950s. Although Tweedy was indifferent to the offer, Bennett was enthused about recording songs with one of his idols—Bennett's previous band Titanic Love Affair was named after a Billy Bragg lyric. A recording contract between Bragg and Wilco was signed after a show at Shepherd's Bush Empire. Bragg mostly recorded the politically charged lyrics, while Tweedy preferred to record lyrics that showcased Guthrie as a "freak weirdo." The recording of Mermaid Avenue began on December 12, 1997, and was the topic of BBC's Man in the Sand documentary film.
Tempers flared between Bragg and Wilco after the album was completed. Bennett believed that Bragg was overproducing his songs, a sharp contrast to Wilco's sparser contributions. Bennett called Bragg about the possibility of remixing Bragg's songs, to which Bragg responded "you make your record, and I'll make mine, fucker." Eventually Bragg sent copies of his recordings to Chicago for Bennett to remix, but Bragg refused to use the new mixes on the album. The two parties were unable to establish a promotional tour and quarreled over royalties and guest musician fees.
Despite these conflicts, the album was released on June 23, 1998, and sold over 277,000 copies. The album received rave reviews from Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. It also placed fourth on the Pazz & Jop critics poll for 1998. After the album was released, Bob Egan was replaced by multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach.
After the completion of the Mermaid Avenue sessions, Wilco returned to Spicewood to complete their third studio album, Summerteeth. Unlike previous Wilco and Uncle Tupelo recordings, the album featured a lot of overdubbing with Pro Tools. Stirratt and Coomer were concerned with the production, since it reduced their involvement in the music. According to Stirratt:
> The story of Summerteeth is Jay bought a Mellotron and he was going to use it, no matter what. It was lovely, but it was overdone. Once they got going on the overdubs, they didn't stop. And nobody in the band stepped up to stop the madness ... It reminds me of Heart of Darkness, where you knowingly extend the creative process for the purpose of exploration or redemption, or whatever it is you're looking for.
During 1999, Warner Brothers was looking to help repay a \$16 billion debt acquired during the recent merger of parent company Warner Communications with Time Inc. As a result, Warner's imprints were under pressure to produce musical acts that would yield hit records. The head of Reprise, Howie Klein, who had previously authorized the release of Being There as a double album, was willing to let Wilco produce Summerteeth without label input. When Klein played the album for Reprise's A&R department, however, they demanded a radio single for the album. Wilco agreed to do this "once and once only" and recorded a radio-friendly version of "Can't Stand It" at the request of David Kahne, the head of the A&R department. The single version of "Can't Stand It" failed to cross over from Triple-A radio to alternative rock stations. Consequently, the album sold only 200,000 copies, significantly less than Being There. This was despite critical acclaim; the album placed eighth on the Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1999.
After the release of Summerteeth, the band resumed the Mermaid Avenue sessions. Although they had recorded enough material for a second release in 1998, Wilco recorded a few new songs for Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. "Someday Some Morning Sometime," featuring a vibraphone filtered through a space echo, was identified by Tweedy as being the "piece to the puzzle" towards the creation of their fourth studio album. The album was released on May 30, 2000, and was the last release from the sessions. The remainder of the sessions were released in 2012 as Mermaid Avenue Vol. III, also part of Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions.
### Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Shortly after the recording sessions for Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, Wilco purchased a studio on Irving Park Road in Chicago, which they named the Wilco Loft. The band recorded some tracks in the studio in early 2000 for a fourth studio album. In May 2000, Jeff Tweedy requested to perform with Jim O'Rourke at a festival in Chicago; Tweedy was a fan of O'Rourke's Bad Timing. O'Rourke introduced Tweedy to drummer Glenn Kotche, and the trio enjoyed working together so much that they decided to record an album as a side project named Loose Fur. Wilco had recorded an entire album of music at this point, but Tweedy was unhappy with the drum parts. He enjoyed Kotche's contributions to Loose Fur so much that Tweedy brought him into the studio to re-record some demos. Some believe that Tweedy sought to make Wilco sound like Loose Fur after officially replacing Ken Coomer with Kotche in January 2001.
Although Bennett sought to act as both mixer and engineer for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tweedy was unsure of Bennett's abilities against those of O'Rourke. Tweedy and Bennett frequently argued over whether the album should be accessible to a general listener, or attempt to cover new musical ground. Unbeknownst to Bennett, Tweedy invited O'Rourke to remix "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", and the results impressed the other band members—even Bennett. Tensions grew between Bennett and O'Rourke because Bennett wanted to mix every song on the album. O'Rourke cut the contributions of other members on several of the songs; some songs, such as "Poor Places", only featured the Loose Fur trio. The album was completed in 2001, and Bennett was dismissed from the band immediately afterwards. The recording of the album was documented by Sam Jones and released in 2002 as the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco.
Time Warner, which owned Warner Bros. Records, merged with America Online in 2001, leading to more pressure on Warner's record labels to cut costs. Over 600 employees of Warner Music Group were fired, including Howie Klein, the president of Reprise Records. In absence of Klein, David Kahne became the interim head of Reprise. Kahne assigned Mio Vukovic to monitor the progress of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and to offer suggestions. Music journalist Greg Kot claims that Vukovic disliked the album and was unhappy that Wilco ignored his suggestions. He brought the album to Kahne, who felt that there was no single on the album. In June 2001, the album was rejected by Reprise and Wilco was asked to leave the label.
Wilco managed to negotiate a buy-out from Reprise. Music journalist Greg Kot claims that instead of financial compensation, the band agreed to leave the label with the master tapes of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The label was already receiving bad publicity for its treatment of the band and were willing to accommodate Wilco's request. However, Allmusic claims that Wilco "bought the finished studio tapes from Warner/Reprise Records for a reported \$50,000 and left the label altogether" after Wilco was "[u]nwilling to change the album to make it more 'commercially viable'." To curb the negative publicity, Warner Music Group began to invest more in bands such as The Flaming Lips. Lead singer Wayne Coyne once remarked:
> We are benefiting from the label's regret over Wilco. We are living in the golden age of that being such a public mistake. The people on Warners said, "we'll never have a band like Wilco feel we don't believe in them again." They'd tell me that it would never happen to us. And what a great day for me!
As the band searched for a new label to release the album, they decided to stream it on their official website to discourage illegal trading of low-quality MP3s. The band signed with Nonesuch Records, another Time Warner subsidiary, and the album was released in the spring of 2002. When it was released, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot reached number thirteen on the Billboard 200, Wilco's highest chart position to that date. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sold over 590,000 copies, and to date remains Wilco's best-selling album. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was met with wide critical acclaim: it topped 2002's Pazz & Jop critics' poll, was named one of the 100 greatest albums of all time by Q Magazine. Rolling Stone rated it at 493 of their 500 Greatest Albums of all Time, in May 2012. In the 2020 reboot of the list, its ranking was raised to \#225.
In September 2022 the band released a variety of reissues of the album, including an 11-LP "Super Deluxe" version. This reissue won the Grammy for Best Historical Album.
### Down with Wilco, A Ghost Is Born, and Kicking Television: Live in Chicago
While waiting for the commercial release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco agreed to support R.E.M. collaborator Scott McCaughey for an album release by The Minus 5. They scheduled a recording session for September 11, 2001, but were distraught about the 9/11 terrorist attacks that day. Later that day, Wilco and McCaughey agreed to "create something good in the world right now" and record some material. Influenced by Bill Fay's Time of the Last Persecution, The Minus 5's Down with Wilco was released in 2003. Keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, who had engineered Down with Wilco, joined Wilco in 2002 as they toured in support of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
In November 2003, Wilco traveled to New York City to record their fifth album. The album was produced by Jim O'Rourke, who mixed Foxtrot and was a member of Wilco side project Loose Fur. Unlike Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost Is Born featured songs that were created with Pro Tools before ever performing them live. The album featured the song "Less Than You Think", which included a fifteen-minute track of electronic noises and synthesizers, which Tweedy called "the track that everyone will hate". Tweedy justified the inclusion of the song:
> I know ninety-nine percent of our fans won't like that song, they'll say it's a ridiculous indulgence. Even I don't want to listen to it every time I play through the album. But the times I do calm myself down and pay attention to it, I think it's valuable and moving and cathartic. I wouldn't have put it on the record if I didn't think it was great ... I wanted to make an album about identity, and within that is the idea of a higher power, the idea of randomness, and that anything can happen, and that we can't control it.
Leroy Bach left the band immediately after the album's completion to join a music theatre operation in Chicago. Like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco streamed the album online before its commercial release. Instead of using their own web page, the band streamed it in MPEG-4 form on Apple's website. Wilco sought to substantially change their lineup after Bach's departure, and added Pat Sansone of The Autumn Defense, and avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline to the lineup. Just as the band was about to tour to promote the album, Tweedy checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic in Chicago for an addiction to opioids. As a result, tour plans for Europe were canceled, and the release date for the album was set back several weeks. A Ghost Is Born was released on June 22, 2004, and became Wilco's first top ten album in the U.S. The album earned Wilco Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Recording Package in 2005. It also placed thirteenth on 2004's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
In 2004, the band released The Wilco Book, a picture book detailing the creation of A Ghost Is Born. The book also contains writings and drawings from band members, as well as a CD with demos from the A Ghost Is Born recording sessions. Also that year, Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot released a biography of the band entitled Wilco: Learning How to Die. The new six-piece Wilco lineup, which has remained intact ever since, debuted on Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, a two disc live album recorded at The Vic Theater in Chicago. Released on November 15, 2005, the album received high accolades from Spin, Billboard, and Entertainment Weekly. As of 2007, it has sold over 114,000 copies.
### Sky Blue Sky
Wilco returned to their loft in Chicago to record a sixth studio album in 2006. Influenced by The Byrds and Fairport Convention, the band considered Sky Blue Sky to be less experimental than previous releases. Also unlike previous albums, the songs were created as collaborations.
Wilco streamed the album online on March 3, 2007, and offered the song "What Light" as a free MP3 download. To further publicize the album, Wilco licensed several songs from the Sky Blue Sky recording sessions for use in a Volkswagen advertising campaign. The move was criticized by both critics and fans; Wilco responded by noting that they had previously done advertising campaigns with Apple Inc. and Telefónica Móviles (Movistar). The album was released on May 15, 2007, and was a commercial success: it sold over 87,000 copies in its first week and peaked in the top five in the U.S. album charts. It also was a top forty hit in seven other countries.
Reviewer James Brubaker states that Wilco "shine[s] on a handful of the songs" on Sky Blue Sky, such as the "light, and straightforward" songs. While he calls it a "great traditional rock and folk album at times,...the rest of the record comes off at times as dull, and forced." The allaboutjazz review also had mixed comments. While praising the album as "deceptively insinuating, almost intoxicating to listen to" and noting its "impeccable sound quality," the reviewer claimed that "Sky Blue Sky becomes the first Wilco album that sounds too careful for its own good."
Pabs Hernandez, a reviewer for Lost at Sea, praised the album's "breezy atmosphere and pacing," and noted that it is not "easily judged upon first listen." Overall, Hernandez stated that it "may be no masterpiece, but at worst it's a more than worthy entry into Wilco's laudable catalogue." Reviewer Greg Locke praised the record as "one of the best albums of the year," calling it a "timeless record, full of sweet, hopeful sophistication and class" and "a lean, mean, soulful album." Like Hernandez, Locke acknowledged that the album could not be properly judged just on the first listening. The NPR review also had a positive take on the record. While the NPR reviewer stated that the recording "isn't groundbreaking," they praised its "coherent musical expression" and emphasis on "solid songcraft without pretense" which created a "satisfying and melodically sound album."
In anticipation of the 2008 US presidential election, Wilco released a downloadable version of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" that they performed with Fleet Foxes. The MP3 was available as a free download from the band's website in exchange for a promise to vote in the election. The band also made an appearance on The Colbert Report to support presidential candidate Barack Obama. Wilco released a live performance DVD, Ashes of American Flags, on April 18, 2009, to celebrate Record Store Day.
In December 2008, Jeff Tweedy, Pat Sansone, Glenn Kotche, and John Stirratt traveled to Auckland, New Zealand to participate in Neil Finn's 7 Worlds Collide sequel project, The Sun Came Out, joined by Ed O'Brien, Phil Selway, Johnny Marr, KT Tunstall, Liam Finn, and Lisa Germano. They wrote and recorded several new tracks for the Oxfam-benefiting album including "You Never Know," "What Could Have Been," "Over and Done," and "Don't Forget Me." Jeff Tweedy co-wrote "Too Blue" with Johnny Marr, and Glenn, John, and Pat play on most tracks on the album.
Having enjoyed their time in New Zealand and the vibe of Finn's own Roundhead Studios, the four members stayed in Auckland through January to record the foundation tracks for their next album. Jim Scott, who acted as engineer and mixer for the Neil Finn project, stayed on in the same capacity for the Wilco sessions. Nels Cline and Mikael Jorgensen would later add overdubs to these tracks at the band's Chicago Loft.
### Wilco (The Album)
Wilco released their seventh album, Wilco (The Album), on June 30, 2009. In March 2009, it was announced that singer-songwriter Feist would make a guest appearance on the new album, on the track "You and I". Like their previous three albums, Wilco streamed the entirety of the album on its website prior to release. The album hit the charts at a career-high No. 4 with sales of 99,000 on the Billboard Top 200 Album chart as well as the No. 2 spot on Billboard's Top Rock Albums chart. It marked Wilco's third top 10 album on the U.S. pop chart. The album's first single "You Never Know" reached the No. 1 spot on the AAA Chart, their first No. 1 in twelve years.
Beginning in April 2009, the band freely distributed a cover of Woody Guthrie's "The Jolly Banker", downloadable from their website. It was recorded at the Wilco loft in February of that year, at the suggestion of Guthrie's daughter, Nora. Downloaders were encouraged to donate to the Woody Guthrie Foundation. Feist returned to accompany on the track, playing the Garden Weasel. The track eventually became unavailable for download. In October 2011, the website began streaming the track via a plugin.
On May 25, 2009, former band member Jay Bennett died in his home in Urbana, Illinois. In a prepared statement, Jeff Tweedy remarked that he was "deeply saddened" by Bennett's death.
Feist and Wilco performed "You and I" on Late Show with David Letterman on July 14, 2009. In June during their West Coast tour, Wilco joined Beck, Feist, Jamie Lidell and James Gadson in the studio to take part in Beck's Record Club project, covering Skip Spence's Oar album. The first song "Little Hands" was posted on Beck's website on November 12, 2009.
On April 6, 2010, Wilco announced during their Boston performance that they would be headlining and curating a festival in North Adams, Massachusetts, dubbed Solid Sound Festival. The event ran at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art from August 13–15, and featured various Wilco side projects, including The Autumn Defense, Pronto, The Nels Cline Singers, and Jeff Tweedy solo. Other bands who appeared included Mavis Staples, Avi Buffalo, Outrageous Cherry, Richard Bishop, The Books, and Vetiver. It also featured non-musical media, such as the Bread and Puppet Theater and comedians Todd Barry, Kristen Schaal, John Mulaney, and Hannibal Buress as well as interactive musical installations by Cline and Kotche. In November 2016, the band also curates their own program during the tenth Anniversary Edition of Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands. This curated program includes performances by amongst others Tortoise, Bassekou Kouyaté, Lee Ranaldo, Fennesz, Steve Gunn, William Tyler and The Cairo Gang.
Wilco's contract with Nonesuch ended in 2010 and they formed their own label. Wilco announced via their web site and Twitter page on January 27, 2011 that the new label will be called dBpm Records (Decibels per Minute) and will be run out of the offices of their manager, Tony Margherita, in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
### The Whole Love
Wilco's eighth studio album, The Whole Love, was released on September 27, 2011. The first single of the album is titled "Art of Almost". The B-Side to "I Might" is a cover of Nick Lowe's 1977 song "I Love My Label". The single was shown at the Wilco's 2011 Solid Sound Festival at MassMoca and was met by positive reviews. The entire album was streamed live on Wilco's official website for 24 hours between September 3 and 4, 2011.
### Star Wars, Schmilco and "All Lives, You Say?"
Wilco's ninth studio album, Star Wars, was released on July 16, 2015, as a surprise free download. In October 2015, Wilco announced that they would embark on a US tour beginning in early 2016 in support of the album. In December 2015, Star Wars was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
On July 14, 2016, the band released a new single, titled "Locator", as a free download. Four days later, the band released another new single, titled "If I Ever Was a Child", and announced that their tenth album, Schmilco, would be released on September 9. Schmilco earned generally favourable reviews, earning a positive score of 79 on Metacritic, while reviewer Josh Modell called the album "Wilco's most musically simple and emotionally resonant record in a decade."
On Monday, August 14, 2017, Wilco released a single, "All Lives You Say" on their Bandcamp page to benefit the SPLC in memory of Tweedy's father Robert, who died on August 4. Upon sharing this news, Tweedy stated, "My dad was named after a Civil War general, and he voted for Barack Obama twice. He used to say 'If you know better, you can do better.' America - we know better, we can do better."
### Ode to Joy
Wilco took 2018 off from touring while Glenn Kotche lived in Finland after his wife Miiri received a Fulbright scholarship. The band announced an end to their performing hiatus and the release of the album Ode to Joy on July 16, 2019. The album was released on October 4, 2019 and received generally positive reviews with Will Hermes of Rolling Stone calling it their "best in years" and delivers "something like love shines through, and it winds up sounding joyful indeed, in a hard-won way." The album won the Grammy Award for best Special Limited Edition Package.
Wilco subsequently followed the release with an autumn tour, the tour later being extended into 2020. In March 2020, Wilco and Sleater-Kinney announced that over the summer they would be embarking on the co-headlining It's Time Tour. Following cancellation of the tour in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wilco and Sleater-Kinney eventually rescheduled the tour for the summer of 2021. In October 2021, Wilco was inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame for their multiple contributions to the live music series that airs on PBS.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, the band released the single "Tell Your Friends" on Bandcamp on May 20, 2020, with all proceeds benefiting World Central Kitchen. In July 2020, as a voice to the larger cultural discussion and protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd, Tweedy announced that 5% of all his writer royalties would be donated to a program that distributes the funds to organizations fighting for racial justice, stating the modern music industry is "built almost entirely on black art" and that "the wealth that rightfully belonged to black artists was stolen outright and to this day continues to grow outside their communities."
### Where are you, Jay Bennett? documentary
In 2021, a feature-length documentary on the life of Jay Bennett was released. The film focused heavily on Bennett's years with Wilco. Co-Directed by Gorman Bechard and Fred Uhter, this music documentary had its world premiere in Chicago in November 2021, then was released on Blu Ray and pay-per-view on April 19, 2022, and as part of a Record Store Day release with vinyl editions of Bennett's last two albums, Whatever Happened I Apologize and Kicking at the Perfumed Air on April 23, 2022.
"The new film does a wonderful job of capturing the quirkiness, inventiveness and brilliance of someone who never met an instrument he couldn't play. Bennett once described hearing the open spaces of the songs and holes that became his sonic landscape. They were at the core of the remarkable string of Wilco's albums Being There, Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot."
The film was originally started by Uhter, who asked the prolific Bechard to take over the project when it stalled. It takes a hard look at Bennett's treatment in the previous Wilco documentary, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, which many consider to be unfair. "Jay Bennett's reputation never quite recovered from the battering it took in Sam Jones' documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco, about the complex, lengthy gestation of 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in often painful detail, portrayed a band slowly pulling itself apart, with chief songwriters Bennett and Jeff Tweedy its twin opposing forces. The implication being that Bennett was a headstrong, intractable figure responsible for most of the discord. He was sacked as soon as the album was done. Filmmakers Gorman Bechard and Fred Uhter seek to redress the balance on Where Are You, Jay Bennett?". The film painted a much more balanced picture of the relationship between Bennett and Tweedy. "They just happened to be two egos at that point, fueled by a lot of demons. And it just wasn't working anymore," Bechard explained. "They're both incredibly talented. They both had egos. They both, I think, saw maybe different paths for the band. And ultimately it was Jeff's band, so he's going to win that, and rightfully so. There were other issues, whether it be alcohol or drugs. You know, it was a little bit of everything. Personally, I wish they had stayed together because I think they could have literally become the next Lennon and McCartney or the next Jagger/Richards."
### Cruel Country
In April 2022, the band announced their twelfth studio album, Cruel Country, which was released on May 27. The album was recorded entirely in person in live sessions at The Loft, the first album since 2007's Sky Blue Sky. Tweedy described the album as saying, "We've never been particularly comfortable with accepting [...] the idea that I was making country music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we're finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we're making country."
### Cousin
In August 2023, the band announced their thirteenth studio album, Cousin, which is scheduled to be released on September 29. It was produced by Welsh musician Cate Le Bon.
## Musical style and influence
Wilco's music is typically categorized as alternative rock and alternative country. Despite their career-long association with a major record label, they are generally associated with indie rock. Wilco draws influence from bands from a variety of musical genres, but primarily from music created between 1966 and 1974. John Cale's Paris 1919 was credited by the band as providing a musical parallel. According to Tweedy, "It was eye-opening that I wasn't the only person that felt like these worlds had a lot more in common than they'd been given credit for—that experimentation and avant-garde theory was not directly opposed to beauty, y'know?"
Other recording artists from that timespan appreciated by the band include John Lennon, Neil Young, and Brian Wilson. For his thirty-fourth birthday, Tweedy received a private guitar lesson from Richard Lloyd of Television; Tweedy was a fan of the group and was particularly fond of the guitar work, which he wanted to incorporate into his music. Uncle Tupelo was inspired by bands such as Jason & the Scorchers and the Minutemen, influencing the recording of Wilco's A.M.. Tweedy and O'Rourke enjoyed free jazz artists such as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, and Derek Bailey; they also listen to mainstream jazz by artists such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The lyrical structure of Wilco's songs was dictated by classic literature and cadavre exquis—an exercise where band members take turns writing lines on a typewriter, but are only allowed to see the previously written line. Among the books that the band has cited as being stylistically influential include William H. Gass's In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry.
Some critics have dubbed Wilco the "American Radiohead", due to their stylistically diverse catalog. A critic from the New York Times argues that Wilco has a "roots-rock ... [sound which] reached back to proven materials: the twang of country, the steady chug of 1960s rock, the undulating sheen of the Beach Boys, the honky-tonk hymns of the Band and the melodic symmetries of pop."
Rolling Stone described Wilco as "one of America's most consistently interesting bands" and "America's foremost rock impressionists." Bands that have been influenced by Wilco include Derek Webb (of Caedmon's Call), The National, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Adam Grunduciel of The War on Drugs calls Wilco his "Favorite modern day band." Other notable artists who have covered Wilco live include Norah Jones performing "Jesus, Etc." which took place at the 2008 Bridge School Benefit where they both performed, a version of which was released as a bonus track on her 2009 release The Fall, Widespread Panic, and Counting Crows and the Wallflowers performing "California Stars."
## Band members
Current members
- John Stirratt – bass, guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1994–present)
- Jeff Tweedy – lead vocals, guitars, bass, harmonica (1994–present)
- Glenn Kotche – drums, percussion (2001–present)
- Mikael Jorgensen – samples and sound manipulation, keyboards, synthesizers, effects, piano, organ (2002–present)
- Nels Cline – guitars, lap steel (2004–present)
- Pat Sansone – keyboards, guitars, backing vocals, synthesizers, maracas, tambourine (2004–present)
Former members'''
- Ken Coomer – drums, percussion (1994–2001)
- Brian Henneman – guitar (1994–1995)
- Max Johnston – dobro, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, backing vocals (1994–1996)
- Jay Bennett – keyboards, guitars, drums, percussion, bass, harmonica, lap steel, banjo, backing vocals (1995–2002; died 2009)
- Bob Egan – pedal steel, slide guitar (1995–1998)
- Leroy Bach – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1998–2004)
### Timeline
## Discography
- A.M. (1995)
- Being There (1996)
- Summerteeth (1999)
- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
- A Ghost Is Born (2004)
- Sky Blue Sky (2007)
- Wilco (The Album) (2009)
- The Whole Love (2011)
- Star Wars (2015)
- Schmilco (2016)
- Ode to Joy (2019)
- Cruel Country (2022)
- Cousin'' (2023)
## See also
|
204,517 |
Battle of Villers-Bocage
| 1,173,511,140 |
1944 battle in occupied France
|
[
"1944 in France",
"Battle for Caen",
"Battle honours of the British Army",
"Battle honours of the Rifle Brigade",
"Battles of World War II involving Germany",
"Conflicts in 1944",
"June 1944 events",
"Land battles of World War II involving the United Kingdom",
"Military history of Normandy",
"Tank battles involving Germany",
"Tank battles involving the United Kingdom",
"Tank battles of World War II"
] |
The Battle of Villers-Bocage took place during the Second World War on 13 June 1944, one week after the Normandy Landings, which had begun the Western Allies' conquest of German-occupied France. The battle was the result of a British attempt to improve their position by exploiting a gap in the German defences west of the city of Caen. After one day of fighting in and around the small town of Villers-Bocage and a second day defending a position outside the town, the British force retreated.
The Allies and the Germans regarded control of Caen as vital to the Normandy battle. In the days following the D-Day landings on 6 June, the Germans rapidly established strong defences in front of the city. On 9 June, a two-pronged British attempt to surround and capture Caen was defeated. On the right flank of the British Second Army, the 1st US Infantry Division had forced back the German 352nd Infantry Division and opened a gap in the German front line. Seizing the opportunity to bypass the German Panzer-Lehr Division blocking the direct route south in the area of Tilly-sur-Seulles, a mixed force of tanks, infantry and artillery, based on the 22nd Armoured Brigade of the 7th Armoured Division, advanced through the gap in a flanking manoeuvre towards Villers-Bocage. British commanders hoped that the appearance of a strong force in their rear would force the Panzer-Lehr Division either to withdraw or to be surrounded.
Under the command of Brigadier William "Loony" Hinde, the 22nd Armoured Brigade group reached Villers-Bocage without serious incident on the morning of 13 June. The leading elements advanced eastwards from the town on the Caen road to Point 213, where they were ambushed by Tiger I tanks of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion. In fewer than 15 minutes numerous tanks, anti-tank guns and transport vehicles were destroyed, many by SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann. The Germans then attacked the town and were repulsed, losing several Tigers and Panzer IVs. After six hours, Hinde ordered a withdrawal to a more defensible position on a knoll west of Villers-Bocage. The next day the Germans attacked the brigade box, arranged for all-round defence, in the Battle of the Island. The British inflicted a costly repulse on the Germans and then retired from the salient. The Battle for Caen continued east of Villers-Bocage, the ruins of which were captured on 4 August, after two raids by strategic bombers of the Royal Air Force.
The British conduct of the Battle of Villers-Bocage has been controversial, because their withdrawal marked the end of the post D-Day "scramble for ground" and the start of an attritional battle for Caen. Some historians have written that the British attack was a failure caused by a lack of conviction among some senior commanders, rather than the fighting power of the German army, while others judge the British force to have been insufficient for the task. The "single-handed" attack by Wittmann early on, has excited imaginations to the extent that some historians and writers conclude that it has dominated the historical record to an unwarranted degree and that while "remarkable", the role of Wittmann in the battle has been exaggerated.
## Background
### D-Day and Operation Perch
The British 3rd Infantry Division, of I Corps, came ashore on Sword Beach on 6 June 1944, with Caen—9 mi (14 km) inland—as their final objective. The vicinity of Caen was attractive to Allied planners because it contained airfields and was open, dry and conducive to swift offensive operations, for which the Allies had the advantage of numerical superiority in tanks and mobile units. The attempt to capture Caen on D-Day was ambitious and traffic jams on the beaches delayed the 27th Armoured Brigade. The advance of the 3rd Infantry Division diminished as it fought past German fortifications and was stopped short of Caen before dark, by elements of the 21st Panzer Division.
The next day, the British began Operation Perch, an advance to the south-east of Caen, according to a contingency in the invasion plan. I Corps continued the attack towards Caen, but the Germans were able to reinforce the defenders, which made it impossible to rush the city with small numbers of men and tanks. On 9 June, the Allied ground forces commander, General Bernard Montgomery, revised Operation Perch to be a bigger attack with a pincer movement to surround the city. After delays caused by the time taken to get the attacking forces into position, on 12 June, simultaneous attacks began west and east of Caen. On the east side of the Orne River, in the airborne bridgehead, two attacking brigades of the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division were held up by the 21st Panzer Division and on 13 June, the attack was called off. To the west of Caen, XXX Corps was unable to advance south of the village of Tilly-sur-Seulles against the Panzer-Lehr Division, one of the most powerful armoured formations in the German army, which had recently arrived in Normandy.
### Caumont Gap
The envelopment of Caen had been prevented by the Germans on the right flank of XXX Corps, at the junction between the British Second and United States First armies, five German battle groups, including the last reserves of LXXXIV Korps had been destroyed, leaving only the remnants of the 352nd Infantry Division defending the front from Trévières to Agy. American attacks caused the left flank of the division to collapse and on the night of 9/10 June, the division retreated to Saint-Lô, leaving a 7.5 mi (12.1 km)-gap between the Panzer-Lehr Division and the German troops near Caumont-l'Éventé, with only the 17th SS-Panzergrenadier Division reconnaissance battalion left in the area. The Germans intended to fill the gap with the 2nd Panzer Division but on 10 June, the bulk of the division was still between Amiens and Alençon and not expected to arrive in strength until 13 June. Although reluctant to commit the 2nd Panzer Division piecemeal, General der Panzertruppe Hans Freiherr von Funck, commander of the XLVII Panzer Korps, rushed the divisional reconnaissance battalion to Caumont to hold the high ground.
The Second Army commander, Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey, ordered Lieutenant-General Gerard Bucknall, the XXX Corps commander and Major-General George Erskine, the 7th Armoured Division commander, to disengage the 7th Armoured Division from Tilly-sur-Seulles, move through the gap, seize Villers-Bocage and menace the exposed left flank of the Panzer-Lehr Division. The British objective was a ridge 1.6 mi (2.6 km) to the east of Villers-Bocage. Dempsey hoped that its capture would force the Panzer-Lehr Division to withdraw or risk being surrounded. The 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and most of the infantry brigade of the 7th Armoured Division were to continue the attack against the Panzer-Lehr Division around Tilly-sur-Seulles and the 1st US and 2nd US Infantry divisions of the V US Corps would continue their advance.
The 7th Armoured Division spent the morning of 12 June attacking towards Tilly-sur-Seulles according to its original orders; at 12:00 Erskine ordered Hinde to move the 22nd Armoured Brigade immediately through the gap. Soon afterwards, the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars, the divisional reconnaissance regiment, began to reconnoitre a route for the brigade and the rest of the division left Trungy at around 16:00. Four hours later the main body was close to Livry after a 12 mi (19 km) unopposed advance, the last 6 mi (9.7 km) of which was through German-held territory. The leading Cromwell tank of the 8th Hussars was destroyed by a Panzer-Lehr Division Escort Company anti-tank gun which held out for two hours. Taylor wrote that the lead tank was destroyed and Forty wrote that a leading tank was lost. Hoping to mislead the Germans about the objective, on reaching the vicinity of la Mulotiere, north of Livry, Hinde ordered a halt for the night and the 8th King's Royal Irish and 11th (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars, the XXX Corps armoured car regiment, reconnoitred the flanks. The 11th Hussars encountered no resistance on the right flank and gained touch with the 1st US Infantry Division near Caumont. On the left flank, 3 Troop, A Squadron, 8th Hussars, located elements of the Panzer-Lehr Division less than 2 mi (3.2 km) away. The two leading tanks were knocked out by an anti-tank gun and the Troop leader, Lieutenant H. Talbot Harvey was killed along with six other members of his troop.
## Plan
It was clear that to control Villers-Bocage, the British would have to occupy the ridge rapidly. The 4th County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters) (4th CLY), with a company of the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade, was to pass through Villers-Bocage and occupy the highest point of the ridge at Point 213. The 1/7th Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) would follow up and occupy the town and the 5th Royal Tank Regiment (5th RTR) and a company of the Rifle Brigade, were to take high ground at Maisoncelles-Pelvey to the south-west of Villers-Bocage. The 260th Anti-tank Battery of the Norfolk Yeomanry would cover the gap between the 4th CLY and the 5th RTR with 17pdr SP Achilles self-propelled anti-tank guns. The 5th Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery (5th RHA), would follow the rest of the brigade group with its Sexton self-propelled guns. The 5th RHA and the brigade group tactical headquarters were established at Amayé-sur-Seulles. The two Hussar regiments were to provide flank protection against the Panzer-Lehr Division and uncover German positions either side of the line of advance. The 131st Infantry Brigade, with the 1st Royal Tank Regiment (1st RTR) and the 1/5th and 1/6th Queen's, was to hold Livry as a firm base.
The I SS-Panzer Korps commander Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich ordered his only reserve, 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion to move behind the Panzer-Lehr and 12th SS-Panzer divisions in the Villers-Bocage area, as a precaution against an attempt to advance into the Caumont Gap. 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion had arrived in Normandy on 12 June, after a five-day drive from Beauvais. The battalion had an establishment of 45 Tiger I but had been reduced to about 17 serviceable tanks by an air attack near Versailles. The 1st Company moved to a position 5.6 mi (9.0 km) north-east of Villers-Bocage; the 2nd Company to just south of Point 213 on the Villers-Bocage ridge and the 3rd remained near Falaise with one serviceable tank. The 2nd Company had twelve tanks, but through a combination of losses and mechanical failures, only six Tigers were present on 13 June. The area around Villers-Bocage came under heavy naval artillery fire during the night of 12/13 June and the 2nd Company moved three times; the company planned a mechanical overhaul for the morning.
## Battle
### Advance
During the early hours of 13 June, the 1st Rifle Brigade reconnoitred the first 0.5 mi (0.80 km) of the route. Livry was reported to be clear of Germans and the advance resumed at 05:30 with the 4th CLY leading the way. The column was met by jubilant French civilians, leading to a relaxed mood among the soldiers. Erroneous information was passed to the British that German tanks were stranded in Tracy-Bocage and rumours held that other tanks were similarly stranded at the Château de Villers-Bocage. On 11 June, German medical personnel had established a hospital at the château but had left at dawn on 13 June; a few German troops remained about the town.
As the column approached Villers-Bocage, an Sd.Kfz. 231 armoured car crew observed the British advance and escaped. At 08:30, having covered 5 mi (8.0 km), the 22nd Armoured Brigade group entered the town to be greeted by celebrating residents; two German soldiers were spotted leaving at high speed in a Volkswagen Kübelwagen. The two Hussar regiments made contact with German forces on either side of the 22nd Brigade group route and the 8th Hussars engaged Schwerer Panzerspähwagen (eight-wheeler armoured cars). The Hussars reported German tanks heading towards Villers-Bocage but Lieutenant Charles Pearce, of 4th CLY, thought that these were probably self-propelled guns.
### Morning
With Villers-Bocage occupied, A Squadron 4th CLY motored ahead to Point 213 without reconnaissance, as ordered. A Kübelwagen was destroyed and the tanks moved into hull down positions to establish a defensive perimeter. Along the road between the town and the ridge, the personnel carriers of the Rifle Brigade pulled over nose-to-tail, to allow reinforcements for Point 213 to pass. The riflemen dismounted and posted sentries but could see fewer than 250 yd (230 m) to either side of the road.
Major Wright, the commanding officer of the 1st Rifle Brigade, called a conference at Point 213 for all officers and the senior NCOs of A Company. It was realised that a shell could kill the company commanders and the half-track occupants were rapidly dispersed among several other vehicles. In Villers-Bocage Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur, Viscount Cranley, commander of the 4th CLY, expressed concern that his men were "out on a limb" but was assured by Hinde that all was well and was ordered to Point 213, to ensure his men had taken up good defensive positions. Hinde then left Villers-Bocage for his headquarters.
South of Point 213 Wittmann, the commander of the 2nd Company, 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion, was surprised by the British advance through Villers-Bocage:
> I had no time to assemble my company; instead I had to act quickly, as I had to assume that the enemy had already spotted me and would destroy me where I stood. I set off with one tank and passed the order to the others not to retreat a single step but to hold their ground.
Wittmann's Tiger was spotted at about 09:00 by Sergeant O'Connor of the Rifle Brigade, who was travelling towards Point 213 in a half-track and broke radio silence to give the only warning the British force received. The Tiger emerged from cover onto Route Nationale 175 and knocked out a Cromwell, the rearmost tank at Point 213. A Sherman Firefly was then knocked out, caught fire and blocked the road. The British at Point 213 were then engaged by the rest of the 2nd Company and lost three more tanks.
Wittmann drove on towards Villers-Bocage. Along the road, the Rifle Brigade troops attempted to reply with PIAT anti-tank weapons and a 6-pounder anti-tank gun but as the Tiger drew closer, panic set in and the riflemen looked for cover. The brigade vehicles were set on fire by machine guns and high-explosive shells but few casualties were suffered. At the east end of Villers-Bocage, Wittmann engaged and knocked out three M3 Stuart light tanks of the 4th CLY Reconnaissance Troop.
In the town, the tanks of the 4th CLY Regimental Headquarters tried to escape but their reverse speed was "painfully slow" and one tank fired two shots before being destroyed by the Tiger. Two tanks reversed off the road into gardens, the 4th CLY Adjutant, Captain Pat Dyas, parked behind a barn; the Tiger drove past a wrecked Stuart towards the centre of town, knocking out another tank but missed Dyas. Lieutenant Charles Pearce took his scout car and warned the rest of the reconnaissance troop in the town centre and Pearce continued westwards to alert B Squadron of the 4th CLY. Wittmann knocked out another Cromwell and on the main street, destroyed two artillery observation post (OP) tanks of the 5th RHA, the intelligence officer's scout car and the medical officer's half-track.
Forty and Taylor wrote that Wittmann was engaged by a Sherman Firefly and withdrew after collapsing a house that contained a German sniper. Bob Moore wrote that he forced Wittmann to retire when a shot from his tank dented the driver visor of the Tiger. Wittmann's withdrawal brought him close to Dyas who, having been bypassed, had been stalking the Tiger to fire at its thinner rear armour. The Cromwell shells had no effect and Wittmann destroyed the British tank. Pearce wrote that Wittmann engaged the Cromwell with the Tiger turret reversed. Dyas escaped the tank and was shot at by German infantry in houses along the street. Wittmann drove east to the outskirts of Villers-Bocage, before being disabled by a 6-pounder anti-tank gun at the Tilly-sur-Seulles road junction. Wittmann wrote that his tank was disabled by an anti-tank gun in the town centre. In less than 15 minutes, 13–14 tanks, two anti-tank guns and 13–15 transport vehicles had been destroyed by the 2nd Company, 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion, many by Wittmann. Wittmann and the crew made their way to the Panzer-Lehr Division headquarters at Cháteau d'Orbois, 3.7 mi (6.0 km) north of Villers-Bocage.
### Point 213
Major Werncke of the Panzer-Lehr Division conducted a reconnaissance of Point 213 later in the morning and reconnoitring on foot, discovered a column of unoccupied Cromwell tanks. The tank crews were studying a map with an officer at the front of the column and Werncke drove one off before the British could react. At the east end of Villers-Bocage, he found a scene of "burning tanks and Bren-gun carriers and dead Tommies" and drove back to the Panzer-Lehr headquarters at Château d'Orbois. After the ambush on Point 213, A Squadron, 4th CLY had nine tanks operational, including two Fireflies and a Cromwell OP tank, although some were short of crew. There was one rifle section and an equal number of officers. It was decided to hold the position on the ridge until reinforcements arrived and an all round defence was organised. At around 10:00, support and reconnaissance troops of the 4th Company, 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion arrived and began to collect prisoners between the ridge and the town. Some of the British escaped and about 30 got back to the British lines.
The 1/7th Queen's took up defensive positions in Villers-Bocage and captured an advance party of three men from the 2nd Panzer Division. A relief force was prepared to rescue the troops on the ridge but this plan was rejected by Cranley. At about 10:30, Cranley reported that the position on Point 213 was becoming untenable and withdrawal was impossible. A break-out attempt was planned and two hours later, a Cromwell crew tried to get back to Villers-Bocage by a roundabout route and was knocked out by German tank fire. The Germans shelled the trees along the road, spraying shell and wood splinters and after five minutes the troops on the ridge surrendered. The British tried to burn their tanks but German soldiers arrived quickly and took thirty of the CLY prisoner, along with some riflemen and troops of the Royal Horse Artillery. A few men escaped; Captain Christopher Milner of the Rifle Brigade spent the rest of the day on the run and crossed back into the British lines after dark.
Wittmann briefed the Panzer-Lehr Division intelligence officer and was given a Schwimmwagen to return to Point 213. Kauffmann ordered Hauptmann Helmut Ritgen to block the northern exits of the town with 15 Panzer IV, mainly from 6th Company, 2nd Battalion Panzer-Lehr Regiment 130 and ten from a workshop south of Route Nationale 175. Ritgen rendezvoused with the Panzer-Lehr Division commanding officer, Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein, at Villy-Bocage. As Ritgen's tanks moved towards Villers-Bocage they ran into a British anti-tank gun screen and lost a tank. Four Panzer IVs entered the town from the south and the first two tanks were knocked out; the others withdrew.
In Villers-Bocage, A Company of the 1/7th Queen's secured the area around the railway station and B and C companies occupied the east side of the town. German infantry had entered the town and house-to-house fighting began. Two German tanks were damaged and driven off, but the 1/7th Queen's infantry companies became mingled and were ordered to fall back to reorganise. A Company was ordered back to the railway station, C Company was assigned the north-eastern edge of the town and D Company the south-eastern edge. B Company was placed in reserve and the battalion anti-tank guns were distributed along the front line. At the town square an ambush was laid by the 4th CLY. A Sherman Firefly, several Cromwells, a 6-pounder anti-tank gun and infantry of the 1/7th Queen's with PIATs, waited for German tanks to move down the main street. To the west of the town, the Germans attacked the 1/5th Queen's near Livry and lost a tank.
### Afternoon
At around 13:00, tanks of the Panzer-Lehr Division advanced into Villers-Bocage unsupported by infantry. Four Panzer IVs tried to enter from the south near a wrecked Panzer IV and two were knocked out by anti-tank fire. Some Tigers were brought up and silenced the anti-tank position. Möbius divided the primary counter-attack down the main highway through Villers-Bocage and through the southern section of town parallel to the main road, to secure the town centre. The Tigers advanced slowly to intimidate the British into withdrawing and ran into the British ambush. The Firefly opened fire on the lead tank and missed but the anti-tank gun knocked it out. A group of three Tigers split up and drove through the back streets to flank the British; one was engaged by an anti-tank gun and destroyed, the other two were engaged with PIATs, one was knocked out and the other immobilised.
A fifth Tiger halted on the main street short of the ambush site, apparently waiting for the British to emerge from cover. The Tiger was spotted by the Firefly crew through the windows of a corner building. They reversed to shoot through the windows. The Tiger was hit on the gun mantlet and raced past the side street. A Cromwell advanced onto the main street and fired into the rear of the Tiger, knocking it out and then reversed back into cover. The Firefly knocked out a Panzer IV and during a lull, the disabled tanks were set on fire with blankets and petrol. Outside the town, the 7th Armoured Division brigade group stretched back to Amayé-sur-Seulles and was attacked from the north and south. The attacks were repulsed and at Tracey-Bocage, the 11th Hussars overwhelmed a pocket of resistance.
Under a mortar and artillery bombardment, the Germans attacked A Company 1/7th Queen's in the town and a platoon was cut off and captured. Even with the whole of the Queen's battalion in the town, the German troops found their way inside. Two grenadier battalions of the 2nd Panzer Division attacked from the south, were engaged by B Squadron 4th CLY and suffered many casualties. Both sides called for artillery support and several British mortars and a carrier were destroyed. By 18:00 the Queen's battalion headquarters was threatened and Hinde decided to withdraw before dark made the town untenable. Behind a smoke screen and bombardment by the 5th RHA and V US Corps, the infantry retreated covered by tanks of the 4th CLY. The Germans harassed the withdrawal with artillery fire and infantry from Tracy-Bocage attacked the British for 2+1⁄2 hours as they fell back. Though costly to the Germans this continued until around 22:30.
### 14 June
On 14 June, the 22nd Armoured Brigade group formed an all round defensive position, a "brigade box", in the Amayé-sur-Seulles–Tracy-Bocage–St-Germain area to overlook Villers-Bocage. Supported by the 1st Company, 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion, the Panzer-Lehr Division attacked the brigade box. The 1st US Infantry Division, on the heights around Caumont, opened observed artillery fire, which helped to defeat the first German attack. Later attacks got so close that the artillery could not fire without hitting British positions. A platoon was overrun and a counter-attack with tanks and infantry then forced the Germans back. The Germans subjected the box to harassing fire and attacked from two sides later in the day with artillery and tanks, which broke into the box and came close to the brigade headquarters before being repulsed. Although confident that the brigade box could be held, the inability of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division to come up, prompted the decision to recall the brigade group and straighten the front line.
## Aftermath
### Casualties
Contradictory sources make casualty figures difficult to establish. The 22nd Armoured Brigade group suffered around 217 men killed, wounded and missing, many of whom were taken prisoner at Point 213. This figure includes five riflemen who had been captured but were then shot by their guards, apparently for attempting to escape, when they took cover spontaneously in a ditch under American artillery fire. The British lost from 23–27 tanks, more than half of which were on Point 213, where A Squadron 4th CLY lost all 15 of its tanks. The Panzer-Lehr Division and the 2nd Panzer Division were in action elsewhere on 13 June and did not count the casualties at Villers-Bocage separately from the day's losses. The 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion was only engaged at Villers-Bocage and Taylor gave nine men killed and ten wounded in the 1st Company and one killed and three wounded in the 2nd Company.
Sources differ on the number of German tanks lost, in part because the Panzer-Lehr Division was committed piecemeal, making it impossible to be certain of the number of Panzer IVs knocked out. German tank losses are generally considered to be from 8–15, including six Tigers. Chester Wilmot states that this was a serious loss, as there were only 36 Tiger tanks in Normandy. Taylor wrote that the numbers claimed by the British included tanks that were immobilised and later recovered. Marie named at least nine French civilians who died on 13 June. Six were killed by crossfire or shrapnel during the battle and three by artillery fire just before midnight. Three of the deaths may have been war crimes. More civilians became casualties in the fighting and bombing later. Following the British withdrawal, the town was reoccupied and searched by the Germans; several shops, houses and the town hall were set on fire.
### Bombing and liberation
During the night of 14/15 June, to cover the withdrawal of the 22nd Armoured Brigade group, 337 Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers (223 Avro Lancasters, 100 Handley Page Halifax and 14 de Havilland Mosquitos from No. 4, No. 5 and No. 8 Group RAF) dropped 1,700 long tons (1,700 t) of high explosives on the town of Évrecy and on targets around Villers-Bocage, destroying one Tiger tank and damaging three more. No aircraft were lost. Just over two weeks later, at 20:30 on 30 June, Villers-Bocage was bombed again by 266 bombers (151 Lancasters, 105 Halifaxes and 10 Mosquitos from No. 3, No. 4 and No. 8 Group RAF) in support of Operation Epsom, dropping 1,100 long tons (1,100 t) of bombs. Only two aircraft were lost. The town was a vital traffic centre for German forces and though it was hoped that German troops would be caught in the bombing, only French civilians were present at the time. After being severely damaged by the fighting of 13 June and subsequent bombing raids, the town was liberated by a patrol of the 1st Battalion Dorset Regiment, 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, on 4 August 1944.
### Command changes
In early August, up to 100 men, including Bucknall, Erskine, Hinde and other senior officers were sacked and reassigned. Historians largely agree that this was a consequence of the failure at Villers-Bocage and had been planned since the battle. Daniel Taylor is of the opinion that the battle's outcome simply provided a convenient excuse and that the sackings took place to "demonstrate that the army command was doing something to counteract the poor public opinion of the conduct of the campaign".
### Battle honours and awards
In 1956 and 1957, the British and Commonwealth system of battle honours recognised participation in the Battle of Villers-Bocage by the award to 11 units of the battle honour Villers Bocage, for service in expanding the bridgehead from 8–15 June. For his actions at Villers-Bocage, Michael Wittmann was promoted to Hauptsturmführer and awarded Swords to his Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
## Analysis
### Propaganda
Both sides tried to exploit the Villers-Bocage battle for propaganda. Having escaped from their knocked-out tank, Lieutenant John Cloudsley-Thompson and his crew of the 4th CLY spent much of the day in a basement in Villers-Bocage. After dark Thompson and the crew were picked up by troops of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division. During debriefing Cloudsley-Thompson said that he "never wished to see another tank as long as [he] lived" but the British press reported this as: "The first thing the five tank men asked for was another tank". Because the British had lost contact with the forces on Point 213 and withdrawn from Villers-Bocage, they were ignorant of the losses on both sides. The German propaganda machine swiftly credited Wittmann, a household name in Germany, with all the British tanks destroyed at Villers-Bocage.
Wittmann recorded a radio message on the evening of 13 June, describing the battle and claiming that later counter-attacks had destroyed a British armoured regiment and an infantry battalion. Doctored images were produced; three joined-together photographs, published in the German armed forces magazine Signal, gave a false impression of the scale of destruction in the town. The propaganda campaign was given credence in Germany and abroad, leaving the British convinced that the Battle of Villers-Bocage had been a disaster when its results were less clear-cut. Schneider, an instructor at the German Bundeswehr tank school and an historian, wrote that the Waffen-SS did not have an "experienced tank arm", compared to the army panzer divisions. The Waffen-SS may have fought with distinction during the Battle of Kursk but could not match the army's success, hence Dietrich's attempts to manufacture a hero out of Wittmann.
### Wittmann
In 2007, Stephen Badsey wrote that Wittmann's engagement of the spearhead of the 22nd Armoured Brigade group had overshadowed the period between D-Day and 13 June in historical accounts. Carlo D'Este wrote that Wittmann's attack was "one of the most amazing engagements in the history of armoured warfare", Max Hastings called it "one of the most devastating single-handed actions of the war" and Antony Beevor wrote that it was "one of the most devastating ambushes in British military history". Hubert Meyer attributed the failure of Operation Perch to Wittmann's "courage, his tactical and technical abilities and [...] the valor, the expertise and the camaraderie of his Panzer crew". Henri Marie called the attack a "spur of the moment" decision, that showed Wittmann's quick grasp of the possibility of surprising the British but described the action as foolhardy and that other historians had got carried away by Wittmann's ambush; Wittmann lost the first Tiger knocked out in Normandy.
John Buckley attributed the hyperbole about Wittmann to the lingering influence of the German propaganda campaign and criticised D'Este and Meyer for exaggerating his role and implying that he single-handedly stopped the 7th Armoured Division. Buckley wrote that Russell A Hart's claim that Wittmann "all but annihilated" the 7th Armoured Division spearhead was wrong and that "the complete German propaganda treatment" was available from Gary Simpson. Badsey called Wittmann's attack and the attention it has received, "remarkable but massively over-written". In 2013, Buckley wrote that unquestioning regurgitation of Nazi propaganda by writers and historians was inexcusably casual, when a glance at the facts showed that the defeat of the 7th Armoured Division by one Tiger crew led by Wittmann was a myth. Wittmann made a bold attack, which helped to stop the advance of the 4th CLY but did not make a solo effort; the action at Point 213 was led by Rolf Möbius.
### Tactics
Beevor and Patrick Delaforce have written that the ambush would have been mitigated had it been detected sooner and blame "Erskine's failure to provide [a] reconnaissance screen" ahead of the British vanguard as it moved to Point 213. Marie wrote that the British vanguard out-paced the rest of the Brigade group, whose flanks were well protected and advanced with poor information and little intelligence gathering. Milner of the Rifle Brigade wrote that information was not gleaned from the town's inhabitants when it should have been and that had the battalion scout platoon been present, the result of the first engagement may have been different. Milner also wrote that the first attack could have been repulsed had the battalion officers and NCOs been with their men instead of with the O-group on the ridge. Buckley wrote that while Wittmann showed great audacity, the causes of the British defeat were broader and that the British were to blame for the failure at Villers-Bocage, not superior German tanks. Hastings wrote that although the Tiger was "incomparably" more deadly than the Cromwell, the "shambles" caused by the Tigers reflected poorly on the tactics of the British force and that the
> German achievement on 13/14 June had been that, while heavily outnumbered in the sector as a whole, they successfully kept the British everywhere feeling insecure and off-balance, while concentrating sufficient forces to dominate the decisive points. The British, in their turn, failed to bring sufficient forces to bear on these."
Marie noted that Dempsey was disappointed in the lack of tactical flair shown by Brigadier Hinde throughout the battle and that the British should have known better than to attempt an armoured advance unsupported by infantry in the bocage. The British fought an uncoordinated infantry and tank battle during the morning and the Germans did much the same throughout the day.
Schneider described the contribution of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion to the battle as "everything but awe-inspiring". The Tiger companies and the Panzer-Lehr Division averted a serious British breakthrough but there was no need for the German counter-attack to have been piecemeal. Möbius and the 1st Company was in command of the road to Caen so Wittmann had time to plan a coordinated attack. Schneider wrote that "a competent tank company commander does not accumulate so many serious mistakes". By putting the Tigers in a sunken lane overnight, with a vehicle with engine trouble at the head of the column, Wittmann risked blocking the company. Schneider called the advance by Wittmann into the town courageous but that it went "against all the rules". No intelligence was gathered beforehand and there was no "centre of gravity" or "concentration of forces" in the attack. "The bulk of the 2nd Company and Rolf Möbius' 1st Company, came up against an enemy who had gone onto the defensive".
Wittmann's "carefree" advance into British-occupied positions, was "pure folly" and "such over hastiness was uncalled for". Had Wittmann properly prepared an assault involving the rest of his company and the 1st Company, there might have been greater results. "[T]houghtlessness of this kind was to cost [Wittmann] his life [in] August ... near Gaumesnil, during an attack casually launched in open country with an exposed flank". Meyer wrote that the 2nd Company advance into the town without infantry support was "obviously inexpedient". Marie called this a serious tactical error by Möbius but that it was a justifiable risk under the circumstances. Infantry were unavailable and the British could have been expected to still be "under the devastating impression of seeing [their] vanguard totally destroyed in such a short time".
### British withdrawal
The British Official Historian, Lionel Ellis, described the 22nd Armoured Brigade group withdrawal and explained that with the unexpected arrival of the 2nd Panzer Division, the 7th Armoured Division "could hardly have achieved full success". This view was partially supported by the briefing given to 7th Armoured Division commanders prior to the retreat but has gained little support. In 1979, following the revelation of Ultra, it was revealed that intercepted German communications revealed the 2nd Panzer Division to be 35 mi (56 km) from the front line on 12 June. Ralph Bennett called Montgomery's claim that the division "suddenly appeared", disingenuous. Buckley wrote that the order to retreat was given before the 2nd Panzer division arrived in any real strength and Reynolds wrote that "2nd Panzer's tanks were nowhere near Villers-Bocage at this time". Ellis described the retirement as temporary, the 7th Armoured Division was to be reinforced with the 33rd Armoured Brigade to renew the offensive towards Évrecy.
David French wrote that the follow-up formations landing in Normandy were on average two days behind schedule and that had the 33rd Armoured Brigade, the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division and the 7th Armoured Division's infantry brigade landed on time, XXX Corps might have been able to secure Villers-Bocage, before the arrival of substantial German forces. Other historians wrote that substantial British forces remained uncommitted during the battle. Mungo Melvin wrote that although the 7th Armoured Division changed its organisation to a flexible combined arms structure, which was not done by the other British armoured divisions until after Operation Goodwood, neither the 131st Infantry Brigade nor the balanced divisional reserve of an armoured regiment and an infantry battalion were employed well.
Buckley referred to "a reduced armoured brigade, with only limited mobile infantry and artillery support" and doubted it could worry the Germans and noted that the 151st Infantry Brigade was available in Corps reserve. Hastings was critical of a British failure to concentrate force at the crucial place and time and referred to the feelings of the "men on the spot" in Villers-Bocage that "a single extra infantry brigade could have been decisive in turning the scale". D'Este supported XXX Corps commander Bucknall's claim that neither the 151st Infantry Brigade or the 49th Infantry Division could be made ready in time to influence the battle.
### Result
After the ambush by the 2nd Company, 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion and the loss of Point 213, the 22nd Armoured Brigade group had repulsed every German attack for two days,
> Erskine's troops had suffered no defeat after the first costly encounters with the single Tiger.
Students of the battle have looked to the senior commanders involved to explain the "fumbled failure" at Villers-Bocage. Dempsey remarked after the war that
> this attack by 7th Armoured Division should have succeeded. My feeling that Bucknall and Erskine would have to go started with that failure ... the whole handling of that battle was a disgrace. Their decision to withdraw [from Villers-Bocage] was done by the corps commander and Erskine.
D'Este called Dempsey "excessively harsh" and that once the town had been abandoned the Brigade group withdrawal was inevitable. Other historians suggest that Bucknall threw away the chance swiftly to capture Caen. Montgomery had been a patron of Bucknall and wrote that his protégé "could not manage a Corps once the battle became mobile". Buckley wrote that Bucknall was unprepared to support the attack once problems developed and that Erskine was not suited to the task. Wilmot agreed with Dempsey that Bucknall, not the Germans, was to blame for the 7th Armoured Division withdrawal. He further wrote that Bucknall refused to reinforce the division, because he had already decided that its lines of communication were endangered
> This great opportunity of disrupting the enemy line and expanding the Allied bridgehead was lost not so much in the woods and orchards around Villers-Bocage, as in the Corps Commander's mind.
D'Este wrote that the failure to unhinge the German front line south of Caen and outflank the I SS Panzer Corps, was "one of the costliest Allied mistakes" of the campaign. With the British withdrawal the chance of mounting a "snap airborne operation" to seize Caen or to deepen the Allied bridgehead had been lost. Wilmot wrote that after the battle, "Caen [could] be taken only by a set-piece assault". Hastings called Villers-Bocage a "debacle" and the moment which "marked, for the British, the end of the scramble for ground that had continued since D-Day". Reynolds wrote that the consequences of the battle would be felt in the coming weeks, during the costly attacks needed to drive the Germans from Caen and the surrounding area. The official 7th Armoured Division history called the battle indecisive: "... the brilliant defensive battle of Villers Bocage ... although it obliged us to withdraw some seven miles, cost the enemy casualties disproportionate to this gain". This view is shared by Taylor, who wrote that the battle ended with no clear winner.
|
18,802,137 |
Toothcomb
| 1,171,110,824 |
Dental structure found in some mammals
|
[
"Hygiene",
"Primate anatomy",
"Teeth"
] |
A toothcomb (also tooth comb or dental comb) is a dental structure found in some mammals, comprising a group of front teeth arranged in a manner that facilitates grooming, similar to a hair comb. The toothcomb occurs in lemuriform primates (which includes lemurs and lorisoids), treeshrews, colugos, hyraxes, and some African antelopes. The structures evolved independently in different types of mammals through convergent evolution and varies both in dental composition and structure. In most mammals the comb is formed by a group of teeth with fine spaces between them. The toothcombs in most mammals include incisors only, while in lemuriform primates they include incisors and canine teeth that tilt forward at the front of the lower jaw, followed by a canine-shaped first premolar. The toothcombs of colugos and hyraxes take a different form with the individual incisors being serrated, providing multiple tines per tooth.
The toothcomb is usually used for grooming. While licking the fur clean, the animal will run the toothcomb through the fur to comb it. Fine grooves or striations are usually cut into the teeth during grooming by the hair and may be seen on the sides of the teeth when viewed through a scanning electron microscope. The toothcomb is kept clean by either the tongue or, in the case of lemuriforms, the sublingua, a specialized "under-tongue". The toothcomb can have other functions, such as food procurement and bark gouging. Within lemuriforms, fork-marked lemurs and indriids have more robust toothcombs to support these secondary functions. In some lemurs, such as the aye-aye, the toothcomb has been lost completely and replaced with other specialized dentition.
In lemuriform primates, the toothcomb has been used by scientists in the interpretation of the evolution of lemurs and their kin. They are thought to have evolved from early adapiform primates around the Eocene or earlier. One popular hypothesis is that they evolved from European adapids, but the fossil record suggests that they evolved from an older lineage that migrated to Africa during the Paleocene (66 to 55 mya) and might have evolved from early cercamoniines from Asia. Fossil primates such as Djebelemur, 'Anchomomys' milleri, and Plesiopithecus may have been their closest relatives. The lack of a distinct toothcomb in the fossil record before to 40 mya has created a conflict with molecular clock studies that suggest an older divergence between lemurs and lorisoids, and the existence of a ghost lineage of lemuriform primates in Africa.
## Homologous and analogous structures
The toothcomb, a special morphological arrangement of teeth in the anterior lower jaw, is best known in extant strepsirrhine primates, which include lemurs and lorisoid primates (collectively known as lemuriforms). This homologous structure is a diagnostic character that helps define this clade (related group) of primates. An analogous trait is found in the bald uakari (Cacajao calvus), a type of New World monkey.
Toothcombs can also be found in colugos and treeshrews, both close relatives of primates; however, the structures are different and these are considered to examples of convergent evolution. Likewise, small- or medium-sized African antelopes, such as the impala (Aepyceros melampus), have a similar structure sometimes referred to as the "lateral dental grooming apparatus". Living and extinct hyraxes (hyracoids) also exhibit a toothcomb, although the number of tines in the comb vary throughout the fossil record.
Dating to the Eocene epoch over 50 mya, Chriacus and Thryptacodon—two types of arctocyonids (primitive placental mammals)—also possessed an independently evolved toothcomb.
## Anatomical structure
The toothcomb of most lemuriforms includes six finely spaced teeth, four incisors and two canine teeth that are procumbent (tilt forward) in the front of the mouth. The procumbent lower canine teeth are the same shape as the incisors located between them, but they are more robust and curve upward and inward, more so than the incisors. In the permanent dentition, the canines erupt after the incisors. The crowns of the incisors are also angled in the direction of the forward tilt, and the crowns of both the incisors and canines are elongated and compressed side-to-side. The apical ridge, following along the front edges of the toothcomb teeth, is V-shaped in most lemuriforms, tapering off from the midline. As a result of this dental reconfiguration, the upper and lower incisors do not contact one another, and often the upper incisors are reduced or lost completely.
The French anatomist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville first identified the two lateral teeth of the lemuriform toothcomb as canines in 1840. Canine teeth are normally used to pierce or grasp objects. With modified lower canine teeth, the first lower premolars following the toothcomb are usually shaped like typical canine teeth (caniniform) and assume their function. These premolars are commonly confused with canines. Normally the true canines in the lower jaw sit in front of the upper canines, and in toothcombed primates, the caniniform premolars rest behind it.
The lemuriform toothcomb is kept clean by the sublingua or "under-tongue", a specialized muscular structure that acts like a toothbrush to remove hair and other debris. The sublingua can extend below the end of the tongue and is tipped with keratinized, serrated points that rake between the front teeth.
Among lemurs, the toothcomb is variable in structure. Among indriids (Indriidae), the toothcomb is less procumbent and consists of four teeth instead of six. The indriid toothcomb is more robust and wider, with shorter incisors, wider spaces between the teeth (interdental spaces), and a broader apical ridge. It is unclear whether this four-toothed toothcomb consists of two pairs of incisors or one pair of incisors and one pair of canines. In fork-marked lemurs (Phaner) the toothcomb is more compressed, with significantly reduced interdental spaces. All six teeth are longer, straighter, and form a more continuous apical ridge. In the recently extinct monkey lemurs (Archaeolemuridae) and sloth lemurs (Palaeopropithecidae), the toothcomb was lost and the incisors and canines resumed a typical configuration in the front of the mouth. The aye-aye also lost its toothcomb, replacing it with continually growing (hypselodont) front teeth, similar to the incisors of rodents.
In colugos, the toothcomb has a completely different structure. Instead of individual incisors and canine teeth being finely spaced to act like the teeth of a comb, the biting edge of the four incisors have become serrated with as many as 15 tines each, while the canine acts more like a molar. These serrated incisors are kept clean using the front of the tongue, which is serrated to match the serrations of the incisors. Similarly, the hyracoid toothcomb consists of incisors with multiple tines, called "pectinations". In contrast to the colugos, the size and shape of the tines are more uniform.
The toothcomb of treeshrews is like the lemuriform toothcomb in that it uses interdental spaces to form the comb tines, but only two of its three pairs of lower incisors are included in the toothcomb and the canines are also excluded. The lateral two incisors in the toothcomb are generally larger. In the extinct arctocyonids, all six lower incisors were part of the toothcomb. In African antelopes, the toothcomb is strikingly similar to that of lemuriforms in that it consists of two pairs of incisors and a pair of canines.
## Functions
As a homologous structure in lemuriforms, the toothcomb serves variable biological roles, despite its superficially stereotypic shape and appearance. It is primarily used as a toiletry device or grooming comb. Additionally, some species use their toothcomb for food procurement or to gouge tree bark.
### Grooming
The primary function of the toothcomb, grooming, was first noted by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier in 1829, who pointed out that the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) had lower incisors that "sont de véritables peignes" ("are real combs"). More than 100 years later, the grooming function was questioned since it was difficult to observe and the interdental spaces were thought to be too small for fur. Observations later showed the teeth were used for that purpose and that immediately after grooming, hair may be found trapped in the teeth, but is removed by the sublingua later.
In 1981, scanning electron microscopy revealed fine grooves or striations on the teeth in lemuriform toothcombs. These grooves were only found on the sides of the teeth on the concave surfaces between the sides, as well on the back ridge of the teeth. Between 10 and 20 μm wide, these grooves indicate that hair moved repeatedly across the teeth. Inside these grooves were even finer grooves, less than 1 μm, created by abrasion with the cuticular layer of the hair.
Among non-primates, the extinct Chriacus exhibits microscopic groves on its toothcomb, but the Philippine colugo (Cynocephalus volans) does not. The toothcomb of the colugos is generally considered to function as a toothcomb, but due to the lack of striations on the teeth and no documented observations of toothcomb use during oral grooming, its use seems to be limited to food procurement.
In African antelopes, the lateral dental grooming apparatus does not appear to be used during grazing or browsing. Instead, it is used during grooming when the head sweeps upward in a distinctive motion. It is thought to comb the fur and remove ectoparasites.
### Olfaction in lemuriforms
In lemuriform primates, the toothcomb may also play a secondary role in olfaction, which may account for the size reduction of the poorly studied upper incisors. The toothcomb may provide pressure to stimulate glandular secretions which are then spread through the fur. Furthermore, the size reduction of the upper incisors may create a gap between the teeth (interincisal diastema) that connects the philtrum (a cleft in the middle of the wet nose, or rhinarium) to the vomeronasal organ in the roof of the mouth. This would allow pheromones to be more easily transferred to the vomeronasal organ.
### Food procurement and other uses
Mouse lemurs (Microcebus), sifakas (Propithecus), and the indri (Indri) use their toothcombs to scoop up fruit pulp. Other small lemuriforms, such as fork-marked lemurs (Phaner), the hairy-eared dwarf lemur (Allocebus), and galagos (particularly the genera Galago and Euoticus) use their toothcombs to tooth-scrape plant exudates, such as gum and sap. In fork-marked lemurs, the toothcomb is specially adapted to minimize food trapment since the interdental spaces are greatly reduced. The herbivorous colugos in the genus Cynocephalus may also use their toothcomb for food procurement.
Indriids such as the sifakas use their toothcombs to gouge bark or dead wood (bark-prising), which is done before scent-marking with the gland on their chest. The more robust structure of their toothcomb is thought to help it withstand the compressive forces experienced during regular bark-prising.
## Evolution in lemuriforms
The origins of the lemuriform toothcomb and the clade it characterizes have been the center of considerable debate for more than a century. In 1920, British palaeoanthropologist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark proposed that the toothcomb found in treeshrews (which he believed were primates) was an early version of the dental structure found in lemuriforms. Because he viewed the fossil lorisoids from the Miocene as not having fully developed the modern lemuriform toothcomb, he implied that lemurs and lorisoids had evolved the trait independently. This view was later overturned, and the monophyletic relationship between lemurs and lorisoids is now accepted.
The ancestral condition of the anterior dentition on the lower jaw, based on Eocene primate fossils, suggests that earliest primates had lacked a differentiated toothcomb. Most fossil strepsirrhines lacked the stereotypic lemuriform toothcomb. Collectively, early strepsirrhine primates are known as adapiforms. Adapiforms are considered to be a paraphyletic group (containing many but not all of the descendants of the last common ancestor of the group's members) because the lemuriforms are assumed to have evolved from one of several groups of adapiforms. In terms of ecology, the evolution of the toothcomb is assumed to have required a folivorous (leaf-eating) diet among the ancestral adapiform population, since that would select for reduced incisors, which would serve as an exaptation (a trait with adaptive value for something other than what it was originally selected for), which could then be used for personal or social grooming. However, the inclusion of the canines into the toothcomb must have required exceptional conditions, since large lemuriforms have secondarily modified caniniform premolars to substitute for the loss.
A popular hypothesis about the origins of the lemuriform clade is that they evolved from European adapiforms known as adapids. In some adapids, the crests of the lower incisors and canines align to form functional cropping unit, and the American paleontologist Philip D. Gingerich has suggested this foreshadowed the development of the lemuriform toothcomb. However, no lemuriform toothcomb has been found in the fossil record of the Eocene, and the European adapid lower jaws from that time did not resemble the derived state seen in lemuriforms.
Lemuriforms are currently thought to have evolved in Africa, and the earliest known strepsirrhine primates from Africa are azibiids from the early Eocene, which likely descended from a very early colonization of the Afro-Arabian land mass in the Paleocene (66 to 55 mya). Stem lemuriforms, including Djebelemur and 'Anchomomys' milleri, have been found in Africa and date from 50 to 48 mya and were very distinct from European adapiforms. However, they lack a toothcomb. These stem lemuriforms suggest an early common ancestry with cercamoniines from outside of Europe. Based on large, procumbent lower teeth, Plesiopithecus, a fossil primate found in late Eocene deposits at the Fayum Depression in Egypt, is thought to be most closely related to lemuriforms. Together, Djebelemur, ‘Anchomomys’ milleri, and Plesiopithecus are considered to be sister taxa (the closest relatives) of lemuriform primates.
### Dating inconsistencies
Although stem lemuriforms like Djebelemur may have been contemporaneous with related toothcombed primates around 50 to 48 mya, the sparse African fossil record suggests toothcomb differentiation occurred around 52 to 40 mya according to the French paleoanthropologist Marc Godinot. This would conflict with the molecular clock estimates by evolutionary anthropologist Anne Yoder and others, which predict lemur–lorisoid divergence dating between 61 and 90.8 mya.
In 2001, the discovery of Bugtilemur, a fossil primate from Pakistan dating to the Oligocene and initially thought to be a cheirogaleid lemur, further challenged the theory of lemur origins; however, it was later shown to be a type of adapiform primate and not a lemur.
The minimum paleontological estimate for the divergence of lemurs and lorisoids nearly doubled when additional discoveries were made in northern Egypt during the 2000s of a stem galagid (Saharagalago) and a stem or crown lorisoid (Karanisia) dating to 37 and 40 mya respectively. Karanisia is the oldest fossil primate to exhibit a distinct lemuriform toothcomb. This, as well as studies of other African adapiforms like ‘Anchomomys’ milleri, suggests a more ancient ghost lineage for lemuriforms in Africa.
### Original function of the lemuriform toothcomb
The selective pressure that shaped the original lemuriform toothcomb has been a topic of considerable debate since the 1970s. Evidence can be seen as supporting a grooming function, food procurement function, or both. In the early 1900s, there was less debate. Grooming was seen as the primary function since primates lack the claws needed to adequately comb the fur, although prosimian primates (strepsirrhines and tarsiers) possess at least one grooming claw on each foot to compensate. Grooming—in the form of fur-combing—is generally considered the primary function and original role of the lemuriform toothcomb, and subsequent changes in morphology across multiple lineages have altered its function and obscured its original function.
The hypothesis that the toothcomb evolved for food procurement was based on observations of recent lemuriform taxa, such as cheirogaleid lemurs (particularly fork-marked lemurs and the hairy-eared dwarf lemur) and galagos, which demonstrate tooth-scraping of plant exudates, as well as sifakas, which practice bark-prising. Each of these were considered "primitive" forms among the living strepsirrhines, suggesting the first lemuriforms exhibited similar behaviors. Also, strong selective pressure from feeding ecology placed on the anterior dentition was emphasized, based on the specialized upper anterior dentition seen in the recently extinct koala lemurs (Megaladapis). If feeding ecology could have such profound effects on the shape of the anterior dentition, then convergent evolution might explain the similarities seen between the compressed lower incisors of the lemuriform toothcomb and the exudate feeding adaptations in the genus Callithrix (a type of marmoset).
In contrast, the grooming hypothesis emphasized that all lemuriforms use their toothcombs for grooming, and long, thin teeth are poorly suited for the mechanical stress of gouging and exudate feeding. Also the interdental spaces seen in most lemuriforms favor fur combing and would also promote bacterial growth and tooth decay if used for exudate feeding. Supporting this, reduced interdental spacing is found in exudate feeding lemuriforms. Furthermore, the canine included in the toothcomb provides additional interdental spacing for fur combing. Even the behavior of young lemuriforms suggests that grooming plays a more important role in the use of the toothcomb than food procurement.
|
21,009,963 |
Meningitis
| 1,173,921,085 |
Inflammation of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord
|
[
"Acute pain",
"Disorders causing seizures",
"Medical emergencies",
"Medical triads",
"Meningitis",
"Wikipedia infectious disease articles ready to translate",
"Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate (full)"
] |
Meningitis is acute or chronic inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, collectively called the meninges. The most common symptoms are fever, headache, and neck stiffness. Other symptoms include confusion or altered consciousness, nausea, vomiting, and an inability to tolerate light or loud noises. Young children often exhibit only nonspecific symptoms, such as irritability, drowsiness, or poor feeding. A non-blanching rash (a rash that does not fade when a glass is rolled over it) may also be present.
The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, fungi or parasites. Non-infectious causes include malignancy (cancer), subarachnoid hemorrhage, chronic inflammatory disease (sarcoidosis) and certain drugs. Meningitis can be life-threatening because of the inflammation's proximity to the brain and spinal cord; therefore, the condition is classified as a medical emergency. A lumbar puncture, in which a needle is inserted into the spinal canal to collect a sample of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), can diagnose or exclude meningitis.
Some forms of meningitis are preventable by immunization with the meningococcal, mumps, pneumococcal, and Hib vaccines. Giving antibiotics to people with significant exposure to certain types of meningitis may also be useful. The first treatment in acute meningitis consists of promptly giving antibiotics and sometimes antiviral drugs. Corticosteroids can also be used to prevent complications from excessive inflammation. Meningitis can lead to serious long-term consequences such as deafness, epilepsy, hydrocephalus, or cognitive deficits, especially if not treated quickly.
In 2019, meningitis was diagnosed in about 7.7 million people worldwide, of whom 236,000 died, down from 433,000 deaths in 1990. With appropriate treatment, the risk of death in bacterial meningitis is less than 15%. Outbreaks of bacterial meningitis occur between December and June each year in an area of sub-Saharan Africa known as the meningitis belt. Smaller outbreaks may also occur in other areas of the world. The word meningitis comes from the Greek μῆνιγξ meninx, "membrane", and the medical suffix -itis, "inflammation".
## Signs and symptoms
### Clinical features
In adults, the most common symptom of meningitis is a severe headache, occurring in almost 90% of cases of bacterial meningitis, followed by neck stiffness (the inability to flex the neck forward passively due to increased neck muscle tone and stiffness). The classic triad of diagnostic signs consists of neck stiffness, sudden high fever, and altered mental status; however, all three features are present in only 44–46% of bacterial meningitis cases. If none of the three signs are present, acute meningitis is extremely unlikely. Other signs commonly associated with meningitis include photophobia (intolerance to bright light) and phonophobia (intolerance to loud noises). Small children often do not exhibit the aforementioned symptoms, and may only be irritable and look unwell. The fontanelle (the soft spot on the top of a baby's head) can bulge in infants aged up to 6 months. Other features that distinguish meningitis from less severe illnesses in young children are leg pain, cold extremities, and an abnormal skin color.
Neck stiffness occurs in 70% of bacterial meningitis in adults. Other signs include the presence of positive Kernig's sign or Brudziński sign. Kernig's sign is assessed with the person lying supine, with the hip and knee flexed to 90 degrees. In a person with a positive Kernig's sign, pain limits passive extension of the knee. A positive Brudzinski's sign occurs when flexion of the neck causes involuntary flexion of the knee and hip. Although Kernig's sign and Brudzinski's sign are both commonly used to screen for meningitis, the sensitivity of these tests is limited. They do, however, have very good specificity for meningitis: the signs rarely occur in other diseases. Another test, known as the "jolt accentuation maneuver" helps determine whether meningitis is present in those reporting fever and headache. A person is asked to rapidly rotate the head horizontally; if this does not make the headache worse, meningitis is unlikely.
Other problems can produce symptoms similar to those above, but from non-meningitic causes. This is called meningism or pseudomeningitis.
Meningitis caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis (known as "meningococcal meningitis") can be differentiated from meningitis with other causes by a rapidly spreading petechial rash, which may precede other symptoms. The rash consists of numerous small, irregular purple or red spots ("petechiae") on the trunk, lower extremities, mucous membranes, conjunctiva, and (occasionally) the palms of the hands or soles of the feet. The rash is typically non-blanching; the redness does not disappear when pressed with a finger or a glass tumbler. Although this rash is not necessarily present in meningococcal meningitis, it is relatively specific for the disease; it does, however, occasionally occur in meningitis due to other bacteria. Other clues on the cause of meningitis may be the skin signs of hand, foot and mouth disease and genital herpes, both of which are associated with various forms of viral meningitis.
### Early complications
Additional problems may occur in the early stage of the illness. These may require specific treatment, and sometimes indicate severe illness or worse prognosis. The infection may trigger sepsis, a systemic inflammatory response syndrome of falling blood pressure, fast heart rate, high or abnormally low temperature, and rapid breathing. Very low blood pressure may occur at an early stage, especially but not exclusively in meningococcal meningitis; this may lead to insufficient blood supply to other organs. Disseminated intravascular coagulation, the excessive activation of blood clotting, may obstruct blood flow to organs and paradoxically increase the bleeding risk. Gangrene of limbs can occur in meningococcal disease. Severe meningococcal and pneumococcal infections may result in hemorrhaging of the adrenal glands, leading to Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome, which is often fatal.
The brain tissue may swell, pressure inside the skull may increase and the swollen brain may herniate through the skull base. This may be noticed by a decreasing level of consciousness, loss of the pupillary light reflex, and abnormal posturing. The inflammation of the brain tissue may also obstruct the normal flow of CSF around the brain (hydrocephalus). Seizures may occur for various reasons; in children, seizures are common in the early stages of meningitis (in 30% of cases) and do not necessarily indicate an underlying cause. Seizures may result from increased pressure and from areas of inflammation in the brain tissue. Focal seizures (seizures that involve one limb or part of the body), persistent seizures, late-onset seizures and those that are difficult to control with medication indicate a poorer long-term outcome.
Inflammation of the meninges may lead to abnormalities of the cranial nerves, a group of nerves arising from the brain stem that supply the head and neck area and which control, among other functions, eye movement, facial muscles, and hearing. Visual symptoms and hearing loss may persist after an episode of meningitis. Inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) or its blood vessels (cerebral vasculitis), as well as the formation of blood clots in the veins (cerebral venous thrombosis), may all lead to weakness, loss of sensation, or abnormal movement or function of the part of the body supplied by the affected area of the brain.
## Causes
Meningitis is typically caused by an infection. Most infections are due to viruses, and others due to bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Mostly the parasites are parasitic worms, but can also rarely include parasitic amoebae. Meningitis may also result from various non-infectious causes. The term aseptic meningitis refers to cases of meningitis in which no bacterial infection can be demonstrated. This type of meningitis is usually caused by viruses, but it may be due to bacterial infection that has already been partially treated, when bacteria disappear from the meninges, or when pathogens infect a space adjacent to the meninges (such as sinusitis). Endocarditis (an infection of the heart valves which spreads small clusters of bacteria through the bloodstream) may cause aseptic meningitis. Aseptic meningitis may also result from infection with spirochetes, a group of bacteria that includes Treponema pallidum (the cause of syphilis) and Borrelia burgdorferi (known for causing Lyme disease), and may also result from cerebral malaria (malaria infecting the brain).
### Bacterial
The types of bacteria that cause bacterial meningitis vary according to the infected individual's age group.
- In premature babies and newborns up to three months old, common causes are group B streptococci (subtypes III which normally inhabit the vagina and are mainly a cause during the first week of life) and bacteria that normally inhabit the digestive tract such as Escherichia coli (carrying the K1 antigen). Listeria monocytogenes (serotype IVb) can be contracted when consuming improperly prepared food such as dairy products, produce and deli meats, and may cause meningitis in the newborn.
- Older children are more commonly affected by Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus) and Streptococcus pneumoniae (serotypes 6, 9, 14, 18 and 23) and those under five by Haemophilus influenzae type B (in countries that do not offer vaccination).
- In adults, Neisseria meningitidis and Streptococcus pneumoniae together cause 80% of bacterial meningitis cases. Risk of infection with Listeria monocytogenes is increased in people over 50 years old. The introduction of pneumococcal vaccine has lowered rates of pneumococcal meningitis in both children and adults.
A head injury potentially allows nasal cavity bacteria to enter the meningeal space. Similarly, devices in the brain and meninges, such as cerebral shunts, extraventricular drains or Ommaya reservoirs, carry an increased risk of meningitis. In these cases, people are more likely to be infected with Staphylococci, Pseudomonas, and other Gram-negative bacteria. These pathogens are also associated with meningitis in people with an impaired immune system. An infection in the head and neck area, such as otitis media or mastoiditis, can lead to meningitis in a small proportion of people. Recipients of cochlear implants for hearing loss are more at risk for pneumococcal meningitis.
Tuberculous meningitis, which is meningitis caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is more common in people from countries in which tuberculosis is endemic, but is also encountered in people with immune problems, such as AIDS.
Recurrent bacterial meningitis may be caused by persisting anatomical defects, either congenital or acquired, or by disorders of the immune system. Anatomical defects allow continuity between the external environment and the nervous system. The most common cause of recurrent meningitis is a skull fracture, particularly fractures that affect the base of the skull or extend towards the sinuses and petrous pyramids. Approximately 59% of recurrent meningitis cases are due to such anatomical abnormalities, 36% are due to immune deficiencies (such as complement deficiency, which predisposes especially to recurrent meningococcal meningitis), and 5% are due to ongoing infections in areas adjacent to the meninges.
### Viral
Viruses that cause meningitis include enteroviruses, herpes simplex virus (generally type 2, which produces most genital sores; less commonly type 1), varicella zoster virus (known for causing chickenpox and shingles), mumps virus, HIV, LCMV, Arboviruses (acquired from a mosquito or other insect), and the Influenza virus. Mollaret's meningitis is a chronic recurrent form of herpes meningitis; it is thought to be caused by herpes simplex virus type 2.
### Fungal
There are a number of risk factors for fungal meningitis, including the use of immunosuppressants (such as after organ transplantation), HIV/AIDS, and the loss of immunity associated with aging. It is uncommon in those with a normal immune system but has occurred with medication contamination. Symptom onset is typically more gradual, with headaches and fever being present for at least a couple of weeks before diagnosis. The most common fungal meningitis is cryptococcal meningitis due to Cryptococcus neoformans. In Africa, cryptococcal meningitis is now the most common cause of meningitis in multiple studies, and it accounts for 20–25% of AIDS-related deaths in Africa. Other less common pathogenic fungi which can cause meningitis include: Coccidioides immitis, Histoplasma capsulatum, Blastomyces dermatitidis, and Candida species.
### Parasitic
A parasitic worm is often assumed to be the cause of eosinophilic meningitis when there is a predominance of eosinophils (a type of white blood cell) found in the cerebrospinal fluid. The most common parasites implicated are Angiostrongylus cantonensis, Gnathostoma spinigerum, Schistosoma, as well as the conditions cysticercosis, toxocariasis, baylisascariasis, paragonimiasis, and a number of rarer infections and noninfective conditions.
Rarely, free-living parasitic amoebae can cause Naegleriasis also called amebic meningitis a type of meningoencephalitis where not only the meninges are affected but also the brain tissue.
### Non-infectious
Meningitis may occur as the result of several non-infectious causes: spread of cancer to the meninges (malignant or neoplastic meningitis) and certain drugs (mainly non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics and intravenous immunoglobulins). It may also be caused by several inflammatory conditions, such as sarcoidosis (which is then called neurosarcoidosis), connective tissue disorders such as systemic lupus erythematosus, and certain forms of vasculitis (inflammatory conditions of the blood vessel wall), such as Behçet's disease. Epidermoid cysts and dermoid cysts may cause meningitis by releasing irritant matter into the subarachnoid space. Rarely, migraine may cause meningitis, but this diagnosis is usually only made when other causes have been eliminated.
## Mechanism
The meninges comprise three membranes that, together with the cerebrospinal fluid, enclose and protect the brain and spinal cord (the central nervous system). The pia mater is a delicate impermeable membrane that firmly adheres to the surface of the brain, following all the minor contours. The arachnoid mater (so named because of its spider-web-like appearance) is a loosely fitting sac on top of the pia mater. The subarachnoid space separates the arachnoid and pia mater membranes and is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. The outermost membrane, the dura mater, is a thick durable membrane, which is attached to both the arachnoid membrane and the skull.
In bacterial meningitis, bacteria reach the meninges by one of two main routes: through the bloodstream (hematogenous spread) or through direct contact between the meninges and either the nasal cavity or the skin. In most cases, meningitis follows invasion of the bloodstream by organisms that live on mucosal surfaces such as the nasal cavity. This is often in turn preceded by viral infections, which break down the normal barrier provided by the mucosal surfaces. Once bacteria have entered the bloodstream, they enter the subarachnoid space in places where the blood–brain barrier is vulnerable – such as the choroid plexus. Meningitis occurs in 25% of newborns with bloodstream infections due to group B streptococci; this phenomenon is much less common in adults. Direct contamination of the cerebrospinal fluid may arise from indwelling devices, skull fractures, or infections of the nasopharynx or the nasal sinuses that have formed a tract with the subarachnoid space (see above); occasionally, congenital defects of the dura mater can be identified.
The large-scale inflammation that occurs in the subarachnoid space during meningitis is not a direct result of bacterial infection but can rather largely be attributed to the response of the immune system to the entry of bacteria into the central nervous system. When components of the bacterial cell membrane are identified by the immune cells of the brain (astrocytes and microglia), they respond by releasing large amounts of cytokines, hormone-like mediators that recruit other immune cells and stimulate other tissues to participate in an immune response. The blood–brain barrier becomes more permeable, leading to "vasogenic" cerebral edema (swelling of the brain due to fluid leakage from blood vessels). Large numbers of white blood cells enter the CSF, causing inflammation of the meninges and leading to "interstitial" edema (swelling due to fluid between the cells). In addition, the walls of the blood vessels themselves become inflamed (cerebral vasculitis), which leads to decreased blood flow and a third type of edema, "cytotoxic" edema. The three forms of cerebral edema all lead to increased intracranial pressure; together with the lowered blood pressure often encountered in sepsis, this means that it is harder for blood to enter the brain; consequently brain cells are deprived of oxygen and undergo apoptosis (programmed cell death).
Administration of antibiotics may initially worsen the process outlined above, by increasing the amount of bacterial cell membrane products released through the destruction of bacteria. Particular treatments, such as the use of corticosteroids, are aimed at dampening the immune system's response to this phenomenon.
## Diagnosis
Diagnosing meningitis as promptly as possible can improve outcomes. There are no specific signs or symptoms that can indicate meningitis, and a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to examine the cerebrospinal fluid is recommended for diagnosis. Lumbar puncture is contraindicated if there is a mass in the brain (tumor or abscess) or the intracranial pressure (ICP) is elevated, as it may lead to brain herniation. If someone is at risk for either a mass or raised ICP (recent head injury, a known immune system problem, localizing neurological signs, or evidence on examination of a raised ICP), a CT or MRI scan is recommended prior to the lumbar puncture. This applies in 45% of all adult cases.
There are no physical tests that can rule out or determine if a person has meningitis. The jolt accentuation test is not specific or sensitive enough to completely rule out meningitis.
If someone is suspected of having meningitis, blood tests are performed for markers of inflammation (e.g. C-reactive protein, complete blood count), as well as blood cultures. If a CT or MRI is required before LP, or if LP proves difficult, professional guidelines suggest that antibiotics should be administered first to prevent delay in treatment, especially if this may be longer than 30 minutes. Often, CT or MRI scans are performed at a later stage to assess for complications of meningitis.
In severe forms of meningitis, monitoring of blood electrolytes may be important; for example, hyponatremia is common in bacterial meningitis. The cause of hyponatremia, however, is controversial and may include dehydration, the inappropriate secretion of the antidiuretic hormone (SIADH), or overly aggressive intravenous fluid administration.
### Lumbar puncture
A lumbar puncture is done by positioning the person, usually lying on the side, applying local anesthetic, and inserting a needle into the dural sac (a sac around the spinal cord) to collect cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). When this has been achieved, the "opening pressure" of the CSF is measured using a manometer. The pressure is normally between 6 and 18 cm water (cmH<sub>2</sub>O); in bacterial meningitis the pressure is usually elevated. In cryptococcal meningitis, intracranial pressure is markedly elevated. The initial appearance of the fluid may prove an indication of the nature of the infection: cloudy CSF indicates higher levels of protein, white and red blood cells and/or bacteria, and therefore may suggest bacterial meningitis.
The CSF sample is examined for presence and types of white blood cells, red blood cells, protein content and glucose level. Gram staining of the sample may demonstrate bacteria in bacterial meningitis, but absence of bacteria does not exclude bacterial meningitis as they are only seen in 60% of cases; this figure is reduced by a further 20% if antibiotics were administered before the sample was taken. Gram staining is also less reliable in particular infections such as listeriosis. Microbiological culture of the sample is more sensitive (it identifies the organism in 70–85% of cases) but results can take up to 48 hours to become available. The type of white blood cell predominantly present (see table) indicates whether meningitis is bacterial (usually neutrophil-predominant) or viral (usually lymphocyte-predominant), although at the beginning of the disease this is not always a reliable indicator. Less commonly, eosinophils predominate, suggesting parasitic or fungal etiology, among others.
The concentration of glucose in CSF is normally above 40% of that in blood. In bacterial meningitis it is typically lower; the CSF glucose level is therefore divided by the blood glucose (CSF glucose to serum glucose ratio). A ratio ≤0.4 is indicative of bacterial meningitis; in the newborn, glucose levels in CSF are normally higher, and a ratio below 0.6 (60%) is therefore considered abnormal. High levels of lactate in CSF indicate a higher likelihood of bacterial meningitis, as does a higher white blood cell count. If lactate levels are less than 35 mg/dl and the person has not previously received antibiotics then this may rule out bacterial meningitis.
Various other specialized tests may be used to distinguish between different types of meningitis. A latex agglutination test may be positive in meningitis caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis, Haemophilus influenzae, Escherichia coli and group B streptococci; its routine use is not encouraged as it rarely leads to changes in treatment, but it may be used if other tests are not diagnostic. Similarly, the limulus lysate test may be positive in meningitis caused by Gram-negative bacteria, but it is of limited use unless other tests have been unhelpful. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a technique used to amplify small traces of bacterial DNA in order to detect the presence of bacterial or viral DNA in cerebrospinal fluid; it is a highly sensitive and specific test since only trace amounts of the infecting agent's DNA is required. It may identify bacteria in bacterial meningitis and may assist in distinguishing the various causes of viral meningitis (enterovirus, herpes simplex virus 2 and mumps in those not vaccinated for this). Serology (identification of antibodies to viruses) may be useful in viral meningitis. If tuberculous meningitis is suspected, the sample is processed for Ziehl–Neelsen stain, which has a low sensitivity, and tuberculosis culture, which takes a long time to process; PCR is being used increasingly. Diagnosis of cryptococcal meningitis can be made at low cost using an India ink stain of the CSF; however, testing for cryptococcal antigen in blood or CSF is more sensitive.
A diagnostic and therapeutic difficulty is "partially treated meningitis", where there are meningitis symptoms after receiving antibiotics (such as for presumptive sinusitis). When this happens, CSF findings may resemble those of viral meningitis, but antibiotic treatment may need to be continued until there is definitive positive evidence of a viral cause (e.g. a positive enterovirus PCR).
### Postmortem
Meningitis can be diagnosed after death has occurred. The findings from a post mortem are usually a widespread inflammation of the pia mater and arachnoid layers of the meninges. Neutrophil granulocytes tend to have migrated to the cerebrospinal fluid and the base of the brain, along with cranial nerves and the spinal cord, may be surrounded with pus – as may the meningeal vessels.
## Prevention
For some causes of meningitis, protection can be provided in the long term through vaccination, or in the short term with antibiotics. Some behavioral measures may also be effective.
### Behavioral
Bacterial and viral meningitis are contagious, but neither is as contagious as the common cold or flu. Both can be transmitted through droplets of respiratory secretions during close contact such as kissing, sneezing or coughing on someone, but bacterial meningitis cannot be spread by only breathing the air where a person with meningitis has been. Viral meningitis is typically caused by enteroviruses, and is most commonly spread through fecal contamination. The risk of infection can be decreased by changing the behavior that led to transmission.
### Vaccination
Since the 1980s, many countries have included immunization against Haemophilus influenzae type B in their routine childhood vaccination schemes. This has practically eliminated this pathogen as a cause of meningitis in young children in those countries. In the countries in which the disease burden is highest, however, the vaccine is still too expensive. Similarly, immunization against mumps has led to a sharp fall in the number of cases of mumps meningitis, which prior to vaccination occurred in 15% of all cases of mumps.
Meningococcus vaccines exist against groups A, B, C, W135 and Y. In countries where the vaccine for meningococcus group C was introduced, cases caused by this pathogen have decreased substantially. A quadrivalent vaccine now exists, which combines four vaccines with the exception of B; immunization with this ACW135Y vaccine is now a visa requirement for taking part in Hajj. Development of a vaccine against group B meningococci has proved much more difficult, as its surface proteins (which would normally be used to make a vaccine) only elicit a weak response from the immune system, or cross-react with normal human proteins. Still, some countries (New Zealand, Cuba, Norway and Chile) have developed vaccines against local strains of group B meningococci; some have shown good results and are used in local immunization schedules. Two new vaccines, both approved in 2014, are effective against a wider range of group B meningococci strains. In Africa, until recently, the approach for prevention and control of meningococcal epidemics was based on early detection of the disease and emergency reactive mass vaccination of the at-risk population with bivalent A/C or trivalent A/C/W135 polysaccharide vaccines, though the introduction of MenAfriVac (meningococcus group A vaccine) has demonstrated effectiveness in young people and has been described as a model for product development partnerships in resource-limited settings.
Routine vaccination against Streptococcus pneumoniae with the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), which is active against seven common serotypes of this pathogen, significantly reduces the incidence of pneumococcal meningitis. The pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine, which covers 23 strains, is only administered to certain groups (e.g. those who have had a splenectomy, the surgical removal of the spleen); it does not elicit a significant immune response in all recipients, e.g. small children. Childhood vaccination with Bacillus Calmette-Guérin has been reported to significantly reduce the rate of tuberculous meningitis, but its waning effectiveness in adulthood has prompted a search for a better vaccine.
### Antibiotics
Short-term antibiotic prophylaxis is another method of prevention, particularly of meningococcal meningitis. In cases of meningococcal meningitis, preventative treatment in close contacts with antibiotics (e.g. rifampicin, ciprofloxacin or ceftriaxone) can reduce their risk of contracting the condition, but does not protect against future infections. Resistance to rifampicin has been noted to increase after use, which has caused some to recommend considering other agents. While antibiotics are frequently used in an attempt to prevent meningitis in those with a basilar skull fracture there is not enough evidence to determine whether this is beneficial or harmful. This applies to those with or without a CSF leak.
## Management
Meningitis is potentially life-threatening and has a high mortality rate if untreated; delay in treatment has been associated with a poorer outcome. Thus, treatment with wide-spectrum antibiotics should not be delayed while confirmatory tests are being conducted. If meningococcal disease is suspected in primary care, guidelines recommend that benzylpenicillin be administered before transfer to hospital. Intravenous fluids should be administered if hypotension (low blood pressure) or shock are present. It is not clear whether intravenous fluid should be given routinely or whether this should be restricted. Given that meningitis can cause a number of early severe complications, regular medical review is recommended to identify these complications early and to admit the person to an intensive care unit if deemed necessary.
Mechanical ventilation may be needed if the level of consciousness is very low, or if there is evidence of respiratory failure. If there are signs of raised intracranial pressure, measures to monitor the pressure may be taken; this would allow the optimization of the cerebral perfusion pressure and various treatments to decrease the intracranial pressure with medication (e.g. mannitol). Seizures are treated with anticonvulsants. Hydrocephalus (obstructed flow of CSF) may require insertion of a temporary or long-term drainage device, such as a cerebral shunt. The osmotic therapy, glycerol, has an unclear effect on mortality but may decrease hearing problems.
### Bacterial meningitis
#### Antibiotics
Empiric antibiotics (treatment without exact diagnosis) should be started immediately, even before the results of the lumbar puncture and CSF analysis are known. The choice of initial treatment depends largely on the kind of bacteria that cause meningitis in a particular place and population. For instance, in the United Kingdom, empirical treatment consists of a third-generation cefalosporin such as cefotaxime or ceftriaxone. In the US, where resistance to cefalosporins is increasingly found in streptococci, addition of vancomycin to the initial treatment is recommended. Chloramphenicol, either alone or in combination with ampicillin, however, appears to work equally well.
Empirical therapy may be chosen on the basis of the person's age, whether the infection was preceded by a head injury, whether the person has undergone recent neurosurgery and whether or not a cerebral shunt is present. In young children and those over 50 years of age, as well as those who are immunocompromised, the addition of ampicillin is recommended to cover Listeria monocytogenes. Once the Gram stain results become available, and the broad type of bacterial cause is known, it may be possible to change the antibiotics to those likely to deal with the presumed group of pathogens. The results of the CSF culture generally take longer to become available (24–48 hours). Once they do, empiric therapy may be switched to specific antibiotic therapy targeted to the specific causative organism and its sensitivities to antibiotics. For an antibiotic to be effective in meningitis it must not only be active against the pathogenic bacterium but also reach the meninges in adequate quantities; some antibiotics have inadequate penetrance and therefore have little use in meningitis. Most of the antibiotics used in meningitis have not been tested directly on people with meningitis in clinical trials. Rather, the relevant knowledge has mostly derived from laboratory studies in rabbits. Tuberculous meningitis requires prolonged treatment with antibiotics. While tuberculosis of the lungs is typically treated for six months, those with tuberculous meningitis are typically treated for a year or longer.
#### Fluid Therapy
Fluid given intravenously are an essential part of treatment of bacterial meningitis. There is no difference in terms of mortality or acute severe neurological complications in children given a maintenance regimen over restricted-fluid regimen, but evidence is in favor of the maintenance regimen in terms of emergence of chronic severe neurological complications.
#### Steroids
Additional treatment with corticosteroids (usually dexamethasone) has shown some benefits, such as a reduction of hearing loss, and better short term neurological outcomes in adolescents and adults from high-income countries with low rates of HIV. Some research has found reduced rates of death while other research has not. They also appear to be beneficial in those with tuberculosis meningitis, at least in those who are HIV negative.
Professional guidelines therefore recommend the commencement of dexamethasone or a similar corticosteroid just before the first dose of antibiotics is given, and continued for four days. Given that most of the benefit of the treatment is confined to those with pneumococcal meningitis, some guidelines suggest that dexamethasone be discontinued if another cause for meningitis is identified. The likely mechanism is suppression of overactive inflammation.
Additional treatment with corticosteroids have a different role in children than in adults. Though the benefit of corticosteroids has been demonstrated in adults as well as in children from high-income countries, their use in children from low-income countries is not supported by the evidence; the reason for this discrepancy is not clear. Even in high-income countries, the benefit of corticosteroids is only seen when they are given prior to the first dose of antibiotics, and is greatest in cases of H. influenzae meningitis, the incidence of which has decreased dramatically since the introduction of the Hib vaccine. Thus, corticosteroids are recommended in the treatment of pediatric meningitis if the cause is H. influenzae, and only if given prior to the first dose of antibiotics; other uses are controversial.
#### Adjuvant therapies
In addition to the primary therapy of antibiotics and corticosteroids, other adjuvant therapies are under development or are sometimes used to try and improve survival from bacterial meningitis and reduce the risk of neurological problems. Examples of adjuvant therapies that have been trialed include acetaminophen, immunoglobulin therapy, heparin, pentoxifyline, and a mononucleotide mixture with succinic acid. It is not clear if any of these therapies are helpful or worsen outcomes in people with acute bacterial meningitis.
### Viral meningitis
Viral meningitis typically only requires supportive therapy; most viruses responsible for causing meningitis are not amenable to specific treatment. Viral meningitis tends to run a more benign course than bacterial meningitis. Herpes simplex virus and varicella zoster virus may respond to treatment with antiviral drugs such as aciclovir, but there are no clinical trials that have specifically addressed whether this treatment is effective. Mild cases of viral meningitis can be treated at home with conservative measures such as fluid, bedrest, and analgesics.
### Fungal meningitis
Fungal meningitis, such as cryptococcal meningitis, is treated with long courses of high dose antifungals, such as amphotericin B and flucytosine. Raised intracranial pressure is common in fungal meningitis, and frequent (ideally daily) lumbar punctures to relieve the pressure are recommended, or alternatively a lumbar drain.
## Prognosis
Untreated, bacterial meningitis is almost always fatal. According to the WHO bacterial meningitis has an overall mortality rate of 16.7% (with treatment). Viral meningitis, in contrast, tends to resolve spontaneously and is rarely fatal. With treatment, mortality (risk of death) from bacterial meningitis depends on the age of the person and the underlying cause. Of newborns, 20–30% may die from an episode of bacterial meningitis. This risk is much lower in older children, whose mortality is about 2%, but rises again to about 19–37% in adults.
Risk of death is predicted by various factors apart from age, such as the pathogen and the time it takes for the pathogen to be cleared from the cerebrospinal fluid, the severity of the generalized illness, a decreased level of consciousness or an abnormally low count of white blood cells in the CSF. Meningitis caused by H. influenzae and meningococci has a better prognosis than cases caused by group B streptococci, coliforms and S. pneumoniae. In adults, too, meningococcal meningitis has a lower mortality (3–7%) than pneumococcal disease.
In children there are several potential disabilities which may result from damage to the nervous system, including sensorineural hearing loss, epilepsy, learning and behavioral difficulties, as well as decreased intelligence. These occur in about 15% of survivors. Some of the hearing loss may be reversible. In adults, 66% of all cases emerge without disability. The main problems are deafness (in 14%) and cognitive impairment (in 10%).
Tuberculous meningitis in children continues to be associated with a significant risk of death even with treatment (19%), and a significant proportion of the surviving children have ongoing neurological problems. Just over a third of all cases survives with no problems.
## Epidemiology
Although meningitis is a notifiable disease in many countries, the exact incidence rate is unknown. In 2013 meningitis resulted in 303,000 deaths – down from 464,000 deaths in 1990. In 2010 it was estimated that meningitis resulted in 420,000 deaths, excluding cryptococcal meningitis.
Bacterial meningitis occurs in about 3 people per 100,000 annually in Western countries. Population-wide studies have shown that viral meningitis is more common, at 10.9 per 100,000, and occurs more often in the summer. In Brazil, the rate of bacterial meningitis is higher, at 45.8 per 100,000 annually. Sub-Saharan Africa has been plagued by large epidemics of meningococcal meningitis for over a century, leading to it being labeled the "meningitis belt". Epidemics typically occur in the dry season (December to June), and an epidemic wave can last two to three years, dying out during the intervening rainy seasons. Attack rates of 100–800 cases per 100,000 are encountered in this area, which is poorly served by medical care. These cases are predominantly caused by meningococci. The largest epidemic ever recorded in history swept across the entire region in 1996–1997, causing over 250,000 cases and 25,000 deaths.
Meningococcal disease occurs in epidemics in areas where many people live together for the first time, such as army barracks during mobilization, university and college campuses and the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Although the pattern of epidemic cycles in Africa is not well understood, several factors have been associated with the development of epidemics in the meningitis belt. They include: medical conditions (immunological susceptibility of the population), demographic conditions (travel and large population displacements), socioeconomic conditions (overcrowding and poor living conditions), climatic conditions (drought and dust storms), and concurrent infections (acute respiratory infections).
There are significant differences in the local distribution of causes for bacterial meningitis. For instance, while N. meningitides groups B and C cause most disease episodes in Europe, group A is found in Asia and continues to predominate in Africa, where it causes most of the major epidemics in the meningitis belt, accounting for about 80% to 85% of documented meningococcal meningitis cases.
## History
Some suggest that Hippocrates may have realized the existence of meningitis, and it seems that meningism was known to pre-Renaissance physicians such as Avicenna. The description of tuberculous meningitis, then called "dropsy in the brain", is often attributed to Edinburgh physician Sir Robert Whytt in a posthumous report that appeared in 1768, although the link with tuberculosis and its pathogen was not made until the next century.
It appears that epidemic meningitis is a relatively recent phenomenon. The first recorded major outbreak occurred in Geneva in 1805. Several other epidemics in Europe and the United States were described shortly afterward, and the first report of an epidemic in Africa appeared in 1840. African epidemics became much more common in the 20th century, starting with a major epidemic sweeping Nigeria and Ghana in 1905–1908.
The first report of bacterial infection underlying meningitis was by the Austrian bacteriologist Anton Weichselbaum, who in 1887 described the meningococcus. Mortality from meningitis was very high (over 90%) in early reports. In 1906, antiserum was produced in horses; this was developed further by the American scientist Simon Flexner and markedly decreased mortality from meningococcal disease. In 1944, penicillin was first reported to be effective in meningitis. The introduction in the late 20th century of Haemophilus vaccines led to a marked fall in cases of meningitis associated with this pathogen, and in 2002, evidence emerged that treatment with steroids could improve the prognosis of bacterial meningitis.
|
254,091 |
James Russell Lowell
| 1,164,005,836 |
American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat (1819–1891)
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"Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts"
] |
James Russell Lowell (/ˈloʊəl/; February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that rivaled the popularity of British poets. These writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside.
Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838, despite his reputation as a troublemaker, and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard Law School. He published his first collection of poetry in 1841 and married Maria White in 1844. The couple had several children, though only one survived past childhood.
He became involved in the movement to abolish slavery. Lowell used poetry to express his anti-slavery views and took a job in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the editor of an abolitionist newspaper. After moving back to Cambridge, Lowell was one of the founders of a journal called The Pioneer, which lasted only three issues. He gained notoriety in 1848 with the publication of A Fable for Critics, a book-length poem satirizing contemporary critics and poets. The same year, he published The Biglow Papers, which increased his fame. He went on to publish several other poetry collections and essay collections throughout his literary career.
Maria died in 1853, and Lowell accepted a professorship of languages at Harvard in 1854. He traveled to Europe before officially assuming his teaching duties in 1856, and married Frances Dunlap shortly thereafter in 1857. That year, Lowell also became editor of The Atlantic Monthly. He continued to teach at Harvard for twenty years.
He received his first political appointment, the ambassadorship to the Kingdom of Spain 20 years later. He was later appointed ambassador to the Court of St. James's. He spent his last years in Cambridge in the same estate where he was born, and died there in 1891.
Lowell believed that the poet played an important role as a prophet and critic of society. He used poetry for reform, particularly in abolitionism. However, his commitment to the anti-slavery cause wavered over the years, as did his opinion on African-Americans. He attempted to emulate the true Yankee accent in the dialogue of his characters, particularly in The Biglow Papers. This depiction of the dialect, as well as his many satires, was an inspiration to writers such as Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken.
## Biography
### Early life
James Russell Lowell was born February 22, 1819. He was a member of the eighth generation of the Lowell family, the descendants of Percival Lowle who settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1639. His parents were the Reverend Charles Lowell (1782–1861), a minister at a Unitarian church in Boston who had previously studied theology at Edinburgh, and Harriett Brackett Spence Lowell. By the time that James was born, the family owned a large estate in Cambridge called Elmwood. He was the youngest of six children; his siblings were Charles, Rebecca, Mary, William, and Robert. Lowell's mother built in him an appreciation for literature at an early age, especially in poetry, ballads, and tales from her native Orkney. He attended school under Sophia Dana, who later married George Ripley; he later studied at a school run by a particularly harsh disciplinarian, where one of his classmates was Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Lowell attended Harvard College beginning at age 15 in 1834, though he was not a good student and often got into trouble. In his sophomore year, he was absent from required chapel attendance 14 times and from classes 56 times. In his last year there, he wrote, "During Freshman year, I did nothing, during Sophomore year I did nothing, during Junior year I did nothing, and during Senior year I have thus far done nothing in the way of college studies." In his senior year, he became one of the editors of Harvardiana literary magazine, to which he contributed prose and poetry that he admitted was of low quality. As he said later, "I was as great an ass as ever brayed & thought it singing." During his undergraduate years, Lowell was a member of Hasty Pudding and served both as secretary and poet.
Lowell was elected the poet of the class of 1838 and, as was tradition, was asked to recite an original poem on Class Day, the day before Commencement on July 17, 1838. He was suspended, however, and not allowed to participate. Instead, his poem was printed and made available thanks to subscriptions paid by his classmates. He had composed the poem in Concord, where he had been exiled by the Harvard faculty to the care of the Rev. Barzallai Frost because of his neglect of his studies. During his stay in Concord, he became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and got to know the other Transcendentalists. His Class Day poem satirized the social movements of the day; abolitionists, Thomas Carlyle, Emerson, and the Transcendentalists were treated.
Lowell did not know what vocation to choose after graduating, and he vacillated among business, the ministry, medicine, and law. He ultimately enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1840 and was admitted to the bar two years later. While studying law, however, he contributed poems and prose articles to various magazines. During this time, he was admittedly depressed and often had suicidal thoughts. He once confided to a friend that he held a cocked pistol to his forehead and considered killing himself at the age of 20.
### Marriage and family
In late 1839, Lowell met Maria White through her brother William, a classmate at Harvard, and the two became engaged in the autumn of 1840. Maria's father Abijah White, a wealthy merchant from Watertown, insisted that their wedding be postponed until Lowell had gainful employment. They were finally married on December 26, 1844, shortly after the groom published Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, a collection of his previously published essays. A friend described their relationship as "the very picture of a True Marriage". Lowell himself believed that she was made up "half of earth and more than half of Heaven". She, too, wrote poetry, and the next twelve years of Lowell's life were deeply affected by her influence. He said that his first book of poetry A Year's Life (1841) "owes all its beauty to her", though it only sold 300 copies.
Maria's character and beliefs led her to become involved in the movements directed against intemperance and slavery. She was a member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and persuaded her husband to become an abolitionist. James had previously expressed antislavery sentiments, but Maria urged him towards more active expression and involvement. His second volume of poems Miscellaneous Poems expressed these antislavery thoughts, and its 1,500 copies sold well.
Maria was in poor health, and the couple moved to Philadelphia shortly after their marriage, thinking that her lungs could heal there. In Philadelphia, he became a contributing editor for the Pennsylvania Freeman, an abolitionist newspaper. In the spring of 1845, the Lowells returned to Cambridge to make their home at Elmwood. They had four children, though only one (Mabel, born 1847) survived past infancy. Blanche was born December 31, 1845, but lived only fifteen months; Rose, born in 1849, survived only a few months as well; their only son Walter was born in 1850 but died in 1852. Lowell was very affected by the loss of almost all of his children. His grief over the death of his first daughter in particular was expressed in his poem "The First Snowfall" (1847). He again considered suicide, writing to a friend that he thought "of my razors and my throat and that I am a fool and a coward not to end it all at once".
### Literary career
Lowell's earliest poems were published without remuneration in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1840. He was inspired to new efforts towards self-support and joined with his friend Robert Carter in founding the literary journal The Pioneer. The periodical was distinguished by the fact that most of its content was new rather than material that had been previously published elsewhere, and by the inclusion of very serious criticism, which covered not only literature but also art and music. Lowell wrote that it would "furnish the intelligent and reflecting portion of the Reading Public with a rational substitute for the enormous quantity of thrice-diluted trash, in the shape of namby-pamby love tales and sketches, which is monthly poured out to them by many of our popular Magazines." William Wetmore Story noted the journal's higher taste, writing that "it took some stand & appealled to a higher intellectual Standard than our puerile milk or watery namby-pamby Mags with which we are overrun". The first issue of the journal included the first appearance of "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. Lowell was treated for an eye disease in New York shortly after the first issue, and in his absence Carter did a poor job of managing the journal. The magazine ceased publication after three monthly numbers beginning in January 1843, leaving Lowell \$1,800 in debt. Poe mourned the journal's demise, calling it "a most severe blow to the cause—the cause of a Pure Taste".
Despite the failure of The Pioneer, Lowell continued his interest in the literary world. He wrote a series on "Anti-Slavery in the United States" for the Daily News, though his series was discontinued by the editors after four articles in May 1846. He had published these articles anonymously, believing that they would have more impact if they were not known to be the work of a committed abolitionist. In the spring of 1848, he formed a connection with the National Anti-Slavery Standard of New York, agreeing to contribute weekly either a poem or a prose article. After only one year, he was asked to contribute half as often to the Standard to make room for contributions from Edmund Quincy, another writer and reformer.
A Fable for Critics was one of Lowell's most popular works, published anonymously in 1848. It proved a popular satire, and the first 3,000 copies sold out quickly. In it, he took good-natured jabs at his contemporary poets and critics—but not all the subjects were pleased. Edgar Allan Poe was referred to as part genius and "two-fifths sheer fudge"; he reviewed the work in the Southern Literary Messenger and called it "'loose'—ill-conceived and feebly executed, as well in detail as in general ... we confess some surprise at his putting forth so unpolished a performance." Lowell offered his New York friend Charles Frederick Briggs all the profits from the book's success (which proved relatively small), despite his own financial needs.
In 1848, Lowell also published The Biglow Papers, later named by the Grolier Club as the most influential book of 1848. The first 1,500 copies sold out within a week and a second edition was soon issued—though Lowell made no profit, as he had to absorb the cost of stereotyping the book himself. The book presented three main characters, each representing different aspects of American life and using authentic American dialects in their dialogue. Under the surface, The Biglow Papers was also a denunciation of the Mexican–American War and war in general.
### First trip to Europe
In 1850, Lowell's mother died unexpectedly, as did his third daughter, Rose. Her death left Lowell depressed and reclusive for six months, despite the birth of his son Walter by the end of the year. He wrote to a friend that death "is a private tutor. We have no fellow-scholars, and must lay our lessons to heart alone." These personal troubles as well as the Compromise of 1850 inspired Lowell to accept an offer from William Wetmore Story to spend a winter in Italy. To pay for the trip, Lowell sold land around Elmwood, intending to sell off further acres of the estate over time to supplement his income, ultimately selling off 25 of the original 30 acres (120,000 m<sup>2</sup>). Walter died suddenly in Rome of cholera, and Lowell and his wife, with their daughter Mabel, returned to the United States in October 1852. Lowell published recollections of his journey in several magazines, many of which would be collected years later as Fireside Travels (1867). He also edited volumes with biographical sketches for a series on British Poets.
His wife Maria, who had been suffering from poor health for many years, became very ill in the spring of 1853 and died on October 27 of tuberculosis. Just before her burial, her coffin was opened so that her daughter Mabel could see her face while Lowell "leaned for a long while against a tree weeping", according to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife, who were in attendance. In 1855, Lowell oversaw the publication of a memorial volume of his wife's poetry, with only fifty copies for private circulation. Despite his self-described "naturally joyous" nature, life for Lowell at Elmwood was further complicated by his father becoming deaf in his old age, and the deteriorating mental state of his sister Rebecca, who sometimes went a week without speaking. He again cut himself off from others, becoming reclusive at Elmwood, and his private diaries from this time period are riddled with the initials of his wife. On March 10, 1854, for example, he wrote: "Dark without & within. M.L. M.L. M.L." Longfellow, a friend and neighbor, referred to Lowell as "lonely and desolate".
### Professorship and second marriage
At the invitation of his cousin John Amory Lowell, James Russell Lowell was asked to deliver a lecture at the prestigious Lowell Institute. Some speculated the opportunity was because of the family connection, offered as an attempt to bring him out of his depression. Lowell chose to speak on "The English Poets", telling his friend Briggs that he would take revenge on dead poets "for the injuries received by one whom the public won't allow among the living". The first of the twelve-part lecture series was to be on January 9, 1855, though by December, Lowell had only completed writing five of them, hoping for last-minute inspiration. His first lecture was on John Milton and the auditorium was oversold; Lowell had to give a repeat performance the next afternoon. Lowell, who had never spoken in public before, was praised for these lectures. Francis James Child said that Lowell, whom he deemed was typically "perverse", was able to "persist in being serious contrary to his impulses and his talents". While his series was still in progress, Lowell was offered the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages at Harvard, a post vacated by Longfellow, at an annual salary of \$1,200, though he never applied for it. The job description was changing after Longfellow; instead of teaching languages directly, Lowell would supervise the department and deliver two lecture courses per year on topics of his own choosing. Lowell accepted the appointment, with the proviso that he should have a year of study abroad. He set sail on June 4 of that year, leaving his daughter Mabel in the care of a governess named Frances Dunlap. Abroad, he visited Le Havre, Paris, and London, spending time with friends including Story, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Leigh Hunt. Primarily, however, Lowell spent his time abroad studying languages, particularly German, which he found difficult. He complained: "The confounding genders! If I die I shall have engraved on my tombstone that I died of der, die, das, not because I caught them but because I couldn't."
He returned to the United States in the summer of 1856 and began his college duties. Towards the end of his professorship, then-president of Harvard Charles William Eliot noted that Lowell seemed to have "no natural inclination" to teach; Lowell agreed, but retained his position for twenty years. He focused on teaching literature, rather than etymology, hoping that his students would learn to enjoy the sound, rhythm, and flow of poetry rather than the technique of words. He summed up his method: "True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exists, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment." Still grieving the loss of his wife, during this time Lowell avoided Elmwood and instead lived on Kirkland Street in Cambridge, an area known as Professors' Row. He stayed there, along with his daughter Mabel and her governess Frances Dunlap, until January 1861.
Lowell had intended never to remarry after the death of his wife Maria White. However, in 1857, surprising his friends, he became engaged to Frances Dunlap, whom many described as simple and unattractive. Dunlap, niece of the former governor of Maine Robert P. Dunlap, was a friend of Lowell's first wife and formerly wealthy, though she and her family had fallen into reduced circumstances. Lowell and Dunlap married on September 16, 1857, in a ceremony performed by his brother. Lowell wrote, "My second marriage was the wisest act of my life, & as long as I am sure of it, I can afford to wait till my friends agree with me."
### War years and beyond
In the autumn of 1857, The Atlantic Monthly was established, and Lowell was its first editor. With its first issue in November of that year, he at once gave the magazine the stamp of high literature and of bold speech on public affairs. In January 1861, Lowell's father died of a heart attack, inspiring Lowell to move his family back to Elmwood. As he wrote to his friend Briggs, "I am back again to the place I love best. I am sitting in my old garret, at my old desk, smoking my old pipe ... I begin to feel more like my old self than I have these ten years." Shortly thereafter, in May, he left The Atlantic Monthly when James T. Fields took over as editor; the magazine had been purchased by Ticknor and Fields for \$10,000 two years before. Lowell returned to Elmwood by January 1861 but maintained an amicable relationship with the new owners of the journal, continuing to submit his poetry and prose for the rest of his life. His prose, however, was more abundantly presented in the pages of the North American Review during the years 1862–1872. For the Review, he served as a coeditor along with Charles Eliot Norton. Lowell's reviews for the journal covered a wide variety of literary releases of the day, though he was writing fewer poems. One essay of his for the North American Review, an acerbic review of the life and work of the recently deceased Henry David Thoreau titled "Letters to Various Persons," contributed to a decades-long critical consensus of disdain for Thoreau.
As early as 1845, Lowell had predicted the debate over slavery would lead to war and, as the Civil War broke out in the 1860s, Lowell used his role at the Review to praise Abraham Lincoln and his attempts to maintain the Union. Lowell lost three nephews during the war, including Charles Russell Lowell Jr., who became a brigadier general and fell at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Lowell himself was generally a pacifist. Even so, he wrote, "If the destruction of slavery is to be a consequence of the war, shall we regret it? If it be needful to the successful prosecution of the war, shall anyone oppose it?" His interest in the Civil War inspired him to write a second series of The Biglow Papers, including one specifically dedicated to the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation called "Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line" in 1862.
Shortly after Lincoln's assassination, Lowell was asked to present a poem at Harvard in memory of graduates killed in the war. His poem, "Commemoration Ode", cost him sleep and his appetite, but was delivered on July 21, 1865, after a 48-hour writing binge. Lowell had high hopes for his performance but was overshadowed by the other notables presenting works that day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. "I did not make the hit I expected", he wrote, "and am ashamed at having been tempted again to think I could write poetry, a delusion from which I have been tolerably free these dozen years." Despite his personal assessment, friends and other poets sent many letters to Lowell congratulating him. Emerson referred to his poem's "high thought & sentiment" and James Freeman Clarke noted its "grandeur of tone". Lowell later expanded it with a strophe to Lincoln.
In the 1860s, Lowell's friend Longfellow spent several years translating Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and regularly invited others to help him on Wednesday evenings. Lowell was one of the main members of the so-called "Dante Club", along with William Dean Howells, Charles Eliot Norton and other occasional guests. Shortly after serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of friend and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis on January 24, 1867, Lowell decided to produce another collection of his poetry. Under the Willows and Other Poems was released in 1869, though Lowell originally wanted to title it The Voyage to the Vinland and Other Poems. The book, dedicated to Norton, collected poems Lowell had written within the previous twenty years and was his first poetry collection since 1848.
Lowell intended to take another trip to Europe. To finance it, he sold off more of Elmwood's acres and rented the house to Thomas Bailey Aldrich; Lowell's daughter Mabel, by this time, had moved into a new home with her husband Edward Burnett, the son of a successful businessman-farmer from Southborough, Massachusetts. Lowell and his wife set sail on July 8, 1872, after he took a leave of absence from Harvard. They visited England, Paris, Switzerland, and Italy. While overseas, he received an honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Oxford and another from Cambridge University. They returned to the United States in the summer of 1874.
### Political appointments
Lowell resigned from his Harvard professorship in 1874, though he was persuaded to continue teaching through 1877. It was in 1876 that Lowell first stepped into the field of politics. That year, he served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, speaking on behalf of presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes won the nomination and, eventually, the presidency. In May 1877, President Hayes, an admirer of The Biglow Papers, sent William Dean Howells to Lowell with a handwritten note proffering an ambassadorship to either Austria or Russia; Lowell declined, but noted his interest in Spanish literature. Lowell was then offered and accepted the role of Minister to the court of Spain at an annual salary of \$12,000. Lowell sailed from Boston on July 14, 1877, and, though he expected he would be away for a year or two, did not return to the United States until 1885, with the violinist Ole Bull renting Elmwood for a portion of that time. The Spanish media referred to him as "José Bighlow". Lowell was well-prepared for his political role, having been trained in law, as well as being able to read in multiple languages. He had trouble socializing while in Spain, however, and amused himself by sending humorous dispatches to his political bosses in the United States, many of which were later collected and published posthumously in 1899 as Impressions of Spain. Lowell's social life improved when the Spanish Academy elected him a corresponding member in late 1878, allowing him contribute to the preparation of a new dictionary.
In January 1880, Lowell was informed of his appointment as Minister to England, his nomination made without his knowledge as far back as June 1879. He was granted a salary of \$17,500 with about \$3,500 for expenses. While serving in this capacity, he addressed an importation of allegedly diseased cattle and made recommendations that predated the Pure Food and Drug Act. Queen Victoria commented that she had never seen an ambassador who "created so much interest and won so much regard as Mr. Lowell". Lowell held this role until the close of Chester A. Arthur's presidency in the spring of 1885, despite his wife's failing health. Lowell was already well known in England for his writing and, during his time there, befriended fellow author Henry James, who referred to him as "conspicuously American". Lowell also befriended Leslie Stephen many years earlier and became the godfather to his daughter, future writer Virginia Woolf. Lowell was popular enough that he was offered a professorship at Oxford after his recall by President Grover Cleveland, though the offer was declined. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1883.
His second wife, Frances, died on February 19, 1885, while still in England.
### Later years and death
He returned to the United States by June 1885, living with his daughter and her husband in Southboro, Massachusetts. He then spent time in Boston with his sister before returning to Elmwood in November 1889. By this time, most of his friends were dead, including Quincy, Longfellow, Dana, and Emerson, leaving him depressed and contemplating suicide again. Lowell spent part of the 1880s delivering various speeches, and his last published works were mostly collections of essays, including Political Essays, and a collection of his poems Heartsease and Rue in 1888. His last few years he traveled back to England periodically and when he returned to the United States in the fall of 1889, he moved back to Elmwood with Mabel, while her husband worked for clients in New York and New Jersey. That year, Lowell gave an address at the centenary of George Washington's inauguration. Also that year, the Boston Critic dedicated a special issue to Lowell on his seventieth birthday to recollections and reminiscences by his friends, including former presidents Hayes and Benjamin Harrison and British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone as well as Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Francis Parkman.
In the last few months of his life, Lowell struggled with gout, sciatica in his left leg, and chronic nausea; by the summer of 1891, doctors believed that Lowell had cancer in his kidneys, liver, and lungs. His last few months, he was administered opium for the pain and was rarely fully conscious. He died on August 12, 1891, at Elmwood. After services in the Appleton Chapel, he was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. After his death, Norton served as his literary executor and published several collections of Lowell's works and his letters.
## Writing style and literary theory
Early in his career, James Russell Lowell's writing was influenced by Swedenborgianism, a Spiritualism-infused form of Christianity founded by Emanuel Swedenborg, causing Frances Longfellow (wife of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) to mention that "he has been long in the habit of seeing spirits". He composed his poetry rapidly when inspired by an "inner light" but could not write to order. He subscribed to the common nineteenth-century belief that the poet was a prophet but went further, linking religion, nature, and poetry, as well as social reform. Evert Augustus Duyckinck and others welcomed Lowell as part of Young America, a New York-based movement. Though not officially affiliated with them, he shared some of their ideals, including the belief that writers have an inherent insight into the moral nature of humanity and have an obligation for literary action along with their aesthetic function. Unlike many of his contemporaries, including members of Young America, Lowell did not advocate for the creation of a new national literature. Instead, he called for a natural literature, regardless of country, caste, or race, and warned against provincialism which might "put farther off the hope of one great brotherhood". He agreed with his neighbor Longfellow that "whoever is most universal, is also most national". As Lowell said:
> I believe that no poet in this age can write much that is good unless he gives himself up to [the radical] tendency ... The proof of poetry is, in my mind, that it reduces to the essence of a single line the vague philosophy which is floating in all men's minds, and so render it portable and useful, and ready to the hand ... At least, no poem ever makes me respect its author which does not in some way convey a truth of philosophy.
A scholar of linguistics, Lowell was one of the founders of the American Dialect Society. He applied this passion to some of his writings, most famously in The Biglow Papers, in which he presents an early 19th-century rural Yankee dialect, complete with nonstandard local grammar and quasi-phonetic spelling—a literary method called eye dialect. In using this vernacular, Lowell intended to get closer to the common man's experience and was rebelling against more formal and, as he thought, unnatural representations of Americans in literature. As he wrote in his introduction to The Biglow Papers, "few American writers or speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and force that are common as the day in the mother country" (i.e. England). Though intentionally humorous, this precise representation of an early New England dialect was pioneering work within American literature. For example, Lowell's character Hosea Biglow says in verse:
> > Ef you take a sword an' dror it, An go stick a feller thru, Guv'ment aint to answer to it, God'll send the bill to you.
Lowell is considered one of the fireside poets, a group of writers from New England in the 1840s who all had a substantial national following and whose work was often read aloud by the family fireplace. Besides Lowell, the main figures from this group were Longfellow, Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, and William Cullen Bryant.
## Beliefs
Lowell was an abolitionist, but his opinions wavered concerning African-Americans. He advocated suffrage for blacks, yet he noted that their ability to vote could be troublesome. Even so, he wrote, "We believe the white race, by their intellectual and traditional superiority, will retain sufficient ascendancy to prevent any serious mischief from the new order of things." Freed slaves, he wrote, were "dirty, lazy & lying". Even before his marriage to abolitionist Maria White, Lowell wrote: "The abolitionists are the only ones with whom I sympathize of the present extant parties." After his marriage, Lowell at first did not share his wife's enthusiasm for the cause, but he was eventually pulled in. The couple often gave money to fugitive slaves, even when their own financial situation was not strong, especially if they were asked to free a spouse or child. Even so, he did not always fully agree with the followers of the movement. The majority of these people, he said, "treat ideas as ignorant persons do cherries. They think them unwholesome unless they are swallowed, stones and all." Lowell depicted Southerners very unfavorably in his second collection of The Biglow Papers but, by 1865, admitted that Southerners were "guilty only of weakness" and, by 1868, said that he sympathized with Southerners and their viewpoint on slavery. Enemies and friends of Lowell alike questioned his vacillating interest in the question of slavery. Abolitionist Samuel Joseph May accused him of trying to quit the movement because of his association with Harvard and the Boston Brahmin culture: "Having got into the smooth, dignified, self-complacent, and change-hating society of the college and its Boston circles, Lowell has gone over to the world, and to 'respectability'."
Lowell was also involved in other reform movements. He urged better conditions for factory workers, opposed capital punishment, and supported the temperance movement. His friend Longfellow was especially concerned about his fanaticism for temperance, worrying that Lowell would ask him to destroy his wine cellar. There are many references to Lowell's drinking during his college years, and part of his reputation in school was based on it. His friend Edward Everett Hale denied these allegations. Lowell considered joining the "Anti-Wine" club at Harvard, and he became a teetotaler during the early years of his first marriage. However, as he gained notoriety, he became popular in social circles and clubs and he drank rather heavily when away from his wife. When he drank, he had wild mood swings, ranging from euphoria to frenzy.
## Criticism and legacy
In 1849, Lowell said of himself, "I am the first poet who has endeavored to express the American Idea, and I shall be popular by and by." Poet Walt Whitman said: "Lowell was not a grower—he was a builder. He built poems: he didn't put in the seed, and water the seed, and send down his sun—letting the rest take care of itself: he measured his poems—kept them within formula." Fellow fireside poet John Greenleaf Whittier praised Lowell by writing two poems in his honor and calling him "our new Theocritus" and "one of the strongest and manliest of our writers–a republican poet who dares to speak brave words of unpopular truth". British author Thomas Hughes referred to Lowell as one of the most important writers in the United States: "Greece had her Aristophanes; Rome her Juvenal; Spain has had her Cervantes; France her Rabelais, her Molière, her Voltaire; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine; England her Swift, her Thackeray; and America has her Lowell." Lowell's satires and use of dialect were an inspiration for writers like Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, H. L. Mencken, and Ring Lardner.
Contemporary critic and editor Margaret Fuller wrote, "his verse is stereotyped; his thought sounds no depth, and posterity will not remember him." Evert Augustus Duyckinck thought Lowell was too similar to other poets like William Shakespeare and John Milton. Ralph Waldo Emerson noted that, though Lowell had significant technical skill, his poetry "rather expresses his wish, his ambition, than the uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of a new poem ... and which is felt in the pervading tone, rather than in brilliant parts or lines." Even his friend Richard Henry Dana Jr. questioned Lowell's abilities, calling him "very clever, entertaining & good humored ... but he is rather a trifler, after all." In the twentieth century, poet Richard Armour dismissed Lowell, writing: "As a Harvard graduate and an editor for the Atlantic Monthly, it must have been difficult for Lowell to write like an illiterate oaf, but he succeeded." The poet Amy Lowell featured her relative James Russell Lowell in her poem A Critical Fable (1922), the title mocking A Fable for Critics. Here, a fictional version of Lowell says he does not believe that women will ever be equal to men in the arts and "the two sexes cannot be ranked counterparts". Modern literary critic Van Wyck Brooks wrote that Lowell's poetry was forgettable: "one read them five times over and still forgot them, as if this excellent verse had been written in water." His The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848), was called "one of the worst constructed poems written in English" and "the most disorganized poem ever written". Nonetheless, in 1969 the Modern Language Association established a prize named after Lowell, awarded annually for "an outstanding literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography."
Lowell's poem "The Present Crisis", an early work that addressed the national crisis over slavery leading up to the Civil War, has had an impact in the modern civil rights movement. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People named its newsletter The Crisis after the poem, and Martin Luther King Jr. frequently quoted the poem in his speeches and sermons. The poem was also the source of the hymn "Once to Every Man and Nation".
## List of selected works
Poetry collections
- A Year's Life (1841)
- Miscellaneous Poems (1843)
- The Biglow Papers (1848)
- A Fable for Critics (1848)
- Poems (1848)
- The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)
- Under the Willows (1869)
- The Cathedral (1870)
- Heartsease and Rue (1888)
Essay collections
- Conversations on Some of the Old Poets (1844)
- Fireside Travels (1864)
- Among My Books (1870)
- My Study Windows (1871)
- Among My Books (second collection, 1876)
- Democracy and Other Addresses (1886)
- Political Essays (1888)
## See also
- Il pesceballo
- Dante Society of America
- James Russell Lowell School (Philadelphia)
- Lowell High School (San Francisco)
- The Knickerbocker
- Robert Lowell
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"Snooker competitions in England"
] |
The 2022 Masters (officially the 2022 Cazoo Masters) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place from 9 to 16 January 2022 at Alexandra Palace in London, England. It was the 48th staging of the Masters tournament, which was first held in 1975, and the second of three Triple Crown events in the 2021–22 snooker season, following the 2021 UK Championship and preceding the 2022 World Snooker Championship. Broadcast by the BBC and Eurosport in Europe, it was sponsored for the first time by car retailer Cazoo.
The participants were invited to the tournament based on the world rankings as they stood after the UK Championship. Some players took issue with the cut-off date, noting that the in-form Luca Brecel, who had entered the top 16 by winning the 2021 Scottish Open in December, did not qualify as the event took place after the UK Championship. Ding Junhui, who had made 15 consecutive Masters appearances between 2007 and 2021, fell out of the top 16 after the UK Championship and failed to qualify. Zhao Xintong, who entered the top 16 for the first time by winning the UK Championship, was the only Masters debutant. John Higgins set a new record of 28 Masters appearances, surpassing Jimmy White and Steve Davis, both of whom had competed 27 times.
Yan Bingtao was the defending champion, having defeated Higgins 10–8 in the previous year's final. However, Yan lost 4–6 to Mark Williams in the first round. Neil Robertson defeated Barry Hawkins 10–4 in the final to win his second Masters title and his sixth Triple Crown title. He became the tenth player to win the Masters more than once. There were 26 century breaks, with the highest being a 139 made by Stuart Bingham in his first-round loss to Kyren Wilson.
## Overview
The Masters is an invitational snooker tournament first held in 1975. Organised by the World Snooker Tour, the 2022 Masters was the 48th staging of the tournament. It was the second Triple Crown event of the 2021–22 snooker season, following the 2021 UK Championship and preceding the 2022 World Snooker Championship. Held between 9 and 16 January 2022, the event returned to the Alexandra Palace in London, after the 2021 event was held at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes to facilitate compliance with COVID-19 regulations. Matches were played as the best-of-11 until the final, which was the best-of-19 frames played over two . The event was sponsored for the first time by car retailer Cazoo, which replaced previous sponsor Betfred. The event's referees wore suits tailored by McCann Bespoke, as part of the London tailor's new partnership with the World Snooker Tour that is intended to restyle the appearance of referees and players.
The tournament was broadcast live in the United Kingdom by BBC Sport, as well as by Eurosport in Europe. Worldwide, the event was covered by China Central Television and Superstars Online in China and Sky Sport in New Zealand. It was simulcast in Hong Kong by Now TV with additional commentary; DAZN covered the event across Canada, Brazil and the United States. In all other territories, the event was streamed by Matchroom Sport.
### Participants
The event featured the 16 players who were placed highest in the world rankings after the UK Championship in December 2021. The defending champion was Yan Bingtao, who won the 2021 Masters with a 10–8 victory over John Higgins in the final. Yan was seeded first for the event as defending champion. The next seven players in the world rankings were seeded and allocated fixed positions in the draw, with the remaining eight participants drawn randomly against them.
Both Higgins and Ronnie O'Sullivan took issue with the cutoff date for Masters eligibility, noting that the in-form Luca Brecel did not qualify even though he had entered the top 16 one week after the UK Championship by winning the 2021 Scottish Open. Zhao Xintong, who entered the top 16 for the first time after winning the UK Championship, made his Masters debut, the only player to do so at the 2022 event. The 2011 champion Ding Junhui, who made 15 consecutive Masters appearances between 2007 and 2021, fell out of the top 16 after the UK Championship and failed to qualify for the first time since he was 18 years old in 2006. Higgins made a record 28th appearance at the event, surpassing both Jimmy White and Steve Davis, who had both played at the Masters 27 times.
### Prize money
The winner of the event won £250,000 from a total prize pool of £725,000. The breakdown of prize money for the event is shown below:
- Winner: £250,000
- Runner-up: £100,000
- Semi-finals: £60,000
- Quarter-finals: £30,000
- Last 16: £15,000
- Highest break: £15,000
- Total: £725,000
## Summary
### First round
The first round was played between 9 and 12 January 2022 as the best-of-11 frames. In the opening afternoon's match, defending champion Yan faced two-time winner Mark Williams, who had lost in the first round in five of his six previous Masters appearances. Yan led 3–1 at the midsession interval, but Williams then won four consecutive frames to lead 5–3. Although Yan made a of 122 to win the ninth frame, Williams clinched the match 6–4 with an 85 break in the tenth. During the evening session, the 2012 champion Neil Robertson, who had lost in the first round on his last two Masters appearances, played Anthony McGill. The match began with a 12-minute before the first was made. McGill played strongly at the outset, winning the first frame with a break of 78 and making a in the third frame, but Robertson capitalised on his opponent's errors to win the second and fourth and then made a break of 95 in the fifth frame to lead 3–2. Although McGill tied the scores at 3–3 with a break of 75, Robertson won the next three frames to secure a 6–3 victory.
The following afternoon, two-time champion Higgins faced debutant Zhao. After Higgins had made a century break in the first frame, Zhao responded with a 128 in the second. Higgins then won three consecutive frames to lead 4–1, aided by another century break in the fifth frame. He closed out the match with a break of 78 to win 6–2. During the match, referee Jan Verhaas mistakenly the on the . This was rectified after a member of the audience let Verhaas know. In the evening, 2015 champion Shaun Murphy faced Barry Hawkins. Murphy took a 2–1 lead but Hawkins then rallied to win five consecutive frames for a 6–2 victory. Hawkins's win meant that he had defeated Murphy in all three of their Masters encounters, even though their overall head-to-head record was 10–4 in favour of Murphy. Commentators noted that Murphy appeared to be suffering from neck, shoulder and back problems during the match, which Murphy had stated were limiting his ability to practice and compete in tournaments.
The next afternoon, seven-time champion O'Sullivan played Jack Lisowski, with O'Sullivan's friend Ronnie Wood watching from the VIP seats. After O'Sullivan won the first frame, Lisowski responded with a century break to win the second. In the third frame, Lisowski missed a thin cut on the green to a corner pocket, allowing O'Sullivan to make a frame-winning break of 86. Lisowski later identified his missed green as a turning point in the match. O'Sullivan made another break of 63 to lead 3–1 at the midsession interval, after which he made a 127 clearance and further breaks of 64 and 125 to win the match 6–1. Lisowski's defeat meant that he had won just four frames in his three Masters appearances. In the evening, reigning world champion and three-time winner Mark Selby played Stephen Maguire. Selby won the 45-minute opening frame, and the players traded frames until the midsession interval, tying the scores at 2–2. The momentum shifted after the interval, with Selby winning four of the last five frames for a 6–3 victory.
The last two first-round matches both went to a . The 2019 champion Judd Trump, who had missed the previous year's event after testing positive for COVID-19, played the 2018 champion Mark Allen. Both players scored heavily in the opening frames, with Trump making two 101 breaks and Allen a 92. The match was tied at 2–2 at the midsession interval. After play resumed, Trump took the lead with a break of 88, but Allen won the next two frames to go 4–3 in front and looked like extending his lead in frame eight, as Trump with one red remaining. However, Allen failed to escape from a snooker and went , allowing Trump to clear the table and level at 4–4. A 135 break in the ninth frame gave Trump the lead once more, but Allen won a error-filled tenth frame to force the decider. In the final frame, Allen was on a break of 23 before committing a as he bridged over the with the rest. Trump came from 25 points behind to win the match 6–5 with a break of 62.
Kyren Wilson faced the 2020 champion Stuart Bingham. Wilson won four of the first five frames to lead 4–1. In frame six, Wilson declared a foul on himself after the cue ball, allowing Bingham to win the frame. Bingham also won the seventh frame, and then leveled the scores at 4–4 with the tournament’s highest break of 139. Although Wilson won the ninth frame, Bingham responded with a 132 in the tenth to level again at 5–5. In the decider, Bingham missed a pot on the while on a break of 31, and the match was contested on a safety battle on the yellow ball. Wilson eventually potted the yellow and won the match 6–5.
### Quarter-finals
The quarter-finals took place on 13 and 14 January as the best-of-11 frames. The quarter-finalists comprised six former champions — O'Sullivan, Williams, Higgins, Robertson, Trump and Selby — and two former runners-up — Hawkins, who lost to O'Sullivan in 2016, and Wilson, who lost to Allen in 2018. In the first quarter-final, Robertson began with 202 unanswered points against O'Sullivan, including a break of 119, to go 2–0 ahead. O'Sullivan then won the third and fourth frames to level at 2–2. Robertson won the fifth frame, before a 102 break by O'Sullivan, his 80th century break at the Masters. Robertson responded with a 130 break to win the seventh frame. A 68 break from O'Sullivan in the eighth frame tied the scores at 4–4 but Robertson then won two consecutive frames with breaks of 43, 49, and 54 to complete a 6–4 victory. Robertson noted the difficulty of competing at the Masters against O'Sullivan, commenting "[O'Sullivan] gets the crowd behind him and you get 2,000 people absolutely screaming," but stated that his Masters debut against Jimmy White had taught him how to respond in such a situation.
Higgins started his match against Williams with a 126 break in the first frame, and also won the second. Williams responded with three consecutive frames, including a 116 break in the third, to lead 3–2. Higgins leveled the match at 4–4 with a 127 break. On a break of 43 in the ninth frame, Higgins looked likely to take the lead, but he accidentally potted a when playing a shot on the , allowing Williams to win the frame with a 78 break. Higgins won the tenth frame, but Williams secured a 6–5 victory with a break of 91 to reach his first Masters semi-final since the 2010 event. Williams described the break he made in the deciding frame as "one of the best of my career".
Trump won the first two frames against Wilson with breaks of 68 and 74. Although Wilson won the third frame with a 71 break, he ran out of position in the fourth while on a break of 53, allowing Trump to make a frame-winning break of 50. Trump came from 45 points behind in the fifth frame to make a 76 and go 4–1 ahead. He won the sixth frame with a break of 67, and then closed out a 6–1 victory in the seventh frame. It was Trump's fifth consecutive victory over Wilson. Trump commented that he was "devastated to miss this last year so I was determined to enjoy it this time", whilst Wilson admitted that the "better player on the day won".
The final match of the quarter-finals saw Hawkins play Selby. Hawkins opened the match with a break of 58, and went to the midsession interval 3–1 ahead. Hawkins made a break of 65 in the next to lead by three frames. Hawkins also won frame six after Selby fouled and left a free ball, and won the match 6–1. Hawkins later commented that the scoreline "flattered him". Selby's highest break during the match was 49, and he described his performance as "pathetic". After the match, Selby commented that he had been struggling with mental health issues throughout the tournament. Fellow professional Gary Wilson praised Selby for speaking up about depression within the sport.
### Semi-finals
The semi-finals were played on 15 January as the best-of-11 frames. Robertson met Williams in the first semi-final. Robertson made a century break to win the opening frame, but he trailed 1–3 at the interval. Robertson, however, made breaks of 83, 95 and 119 to win four of the next six to force a deciding frame. Helped by a , Williams led by 67 points to 26 in the decider with one red remaining on the table, meaning that Robertson required two . After the black ball covered the pocket, with the last red close to the black, Robertson was able to obtain the first of the snookers he required. When playing the yellow ball, Williams misjudged a , hitting the green ball and giving away another four foul points. Robertson then the table to win the match 6–5. After the match, Robertson called the comeback "the greatest" of his career. The World Snooker Tour ranked the match as number one on its "Top Ten Matches of 2022" list.
Hawkins played Trump in the second semi-final. Hawkins won the opening frame after a prolonged safety battle, but Trump levelled the scores with a break of 86. Trump also won frame three with a 63 break before Hawkins won the next two frames to lead 3–2. After the fifth frame, the match was halted as one of the had fallen apart. Hawkins made a 124 break in the sixth frame, his second century of the tournament, before Trump won the next two frames to tie the scores at 4–4. Trump made a break of 54 to lead for the first time in the match, but Hawkins won the tenth frame to force a decider, which he won with a break of 58. This was the twelfth meeting between the two players, with each having won six.
### Final
The final was played as the best-of-19 frames, held over two sessions on 16 January between Robertson and Hawkins. The match was officiated by Desislava Bozhilova, who took charge of her first Triple Crown final. Hawkins won the opening frame but Robertson responded with breaks of 50 and 105 to win the next two. Hawkins took the fourth, tying the scores at 2–2 at the midsession interval. A turning point came in the fifth frame when Hawkins, on a break of 60, missed the last red, which would have left Robertson requiring a snooker. Hawkins then fouled the green with his sleeve during a safety battle over the red, leaving a free ball that allowed Robertson to clear the table and win the frame. Robertson also won the sixth frame with two 54 breaks to go two frames ahead for the first time at 4–2. Hawkins won the seventh, but Robertson made a break of 73 in the eighth and final frame of the session to maintain his two-frame advantage at 5–3.
The first two frames of the evening session were shared, as Robertson won the ninth with a break of 50 and Hawkins responded with a 69 in the tenth, his highest break of the match. Robertson then won four consecutive frames to clinch a 10–4 victory and his second Masters title. He became the tenth player to win the tournament more than once, following Alex Higgins, Cliff Thorburn, Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, Paul Hunter, Williams, O'Sullivan, John Higgins, and Selby. It was Robertson's sixth Triple Crown title, following his world title in 2010, his previous Masters victory in 2012, and his three UK Championship wins in 2013, 2015, and 2020. Robertson compiled two centuries and six other breaks of 50 or more in the final, while Hawkins made just two breaks over 50. Hawkins acknowledged that his performance in the final had been substandard, saying: "I made too many mistakes today and you can't do that against someone like Neil because he's a wonderful player." Hawkins's defeat meant that he had lost all three Triple Crown finals he had reached, having previously been runner-up to O'Sullivan in the 2013 World Snooker Championship and the 2016 Masters.
## Tournament draw
Numbers given on the left show the players' seedings in the tournament draw. Players in bold denote match winners.
### Final
## Century breaks
There were 26 century breaks made during the tournament. The highest was a 139 made by Bingham in his first round loss to Wilson.
- 139, 132 – Stuart Bingham
- 135, 101, 101 – Judd Trump
- 130, 119, 119, 114, 105, 102 – Neil Robertson
- 128 – Zhao Xintong
- 127, 126, 104, 100 – John Higgins
- 127, 125, 102 – Ronnie O'Sullivan
- 124, 103 – Barry Hawkins
- 122 – Yan Bingtao
- 116, 104 – Mark Williams
- 115 – Anthony McGill
- 104 – Jack Lisowski
|
220,160 |
Thierry Henry
| 1,173,560,574 |
French footballer and manager
|
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Thierry Daniel Henry (; born 17 August 1977) is a French professional football coach, pundit, sports broadcaster and former player. He is currently the manager of the France national under-21 team. He is considered one of the greatest strikers of all time, and one of the greatest players in Premier League history. He has been named by Arsenal as the club's greatest ever player. Henry was runner-up for both the Ballon d'Or in 2003 and the FIFA World Player of the Year in 2003 and 2004. He was named the FWA Footballer of the Year a record three times, the PFA Players' Player of the Year a joint-record two times, and was named in the PFA Team of the Year six consecutive times. He was also included in the FIFA FIFPro World XI once and the UEFA Team of the Year five times. In 2004, Henry was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players.
Henry made his professional debut with Monaco in 1994 before signing for defending Serie A champions Juventus. However, limited playing time, coupled with disagreements with the club's hierarchy, led to him signing for Premier League club Arsenal for £11 million in 1999. Under long-time mentor and coach Arsène Wenger, Henry became a prolific striker and Arsenal's all-time leading scorer with 228 goals in all competitions. He won the Premier League Golden Boot a record four times, won two FA Cups and two Premier League titles with the club, including one during an unbeaten Invincible season. Henry spent his final two seasons with Arsenal as club captain, leading them to the 2006 UEFA Champions League Final. Henry transferred to Barcelona in 2007 and in the 2008–09 season, he was a key part of the club's historic treble when they won La Liga, the Copa del Rey, and the UEFA Champions League. In 2010, he joined Major League Soccer (MLS) club New York Red Bulls and returned to Arsenal on loan for two months in 2012, before retiring in 2014.
Henry had success with France, winning the 1998 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Euro 2000, and 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup. He was named French Player of the Year a record five times, named to the UEFA Euro 2000 Team of the Tournament, awarded both the 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup Golden Ball and Golden Shoe, and named to the 2006 FIFA World Cup All-Star Team. In October 2007, he became his country's record goalscorer, a record he held until December 2022. After amassing 123 appearances and 51 goals, Henry retired from international football after the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
After retiring, Henry transitioned into coaching. He began coaching Arsenal's youth teams in February 2015, in tandem with his work as a pundit for Sky Sports. In 2016, he was appointed as an assistant coach at Belgium, before assuming the role as the head coach at Monaco in 2018. He was relieved of his duties at Monaco in January 2019 and returned to MLS less than a year later to manage Montréal Impact. He led Montréal to the playoffs in the 2020 season before departing in 2021, returning to his role as an assistant coach for Belgium for a year and a half.
## Early years
Henry is of Antillean heritage: his father, Antoine, is from Guadeloupe (La Désirade island), and his mother, Maryse, is from Martinique. He was born and raised in Les Ulis suburb of Paris which, despite sometimes being seen as a tough neighbourhood, provided good footballing facilities. As a seven-year-old, Henry showed great potential, prompting Claude Chezelle to recruit him to the local club CO Les Ulis. His father pressured him to attend training, although the youngster was not particularly drawn to football. He joined US Palaiseau in 1989, but after a year his father fell out with the club, so Henry moved to ES Viry-Châtillon and played there for two years. US Palaiseau coach Jean-Marie Panza, Henry's future mentor, followed him there.
## Club career
### 1992–1999: Beginnings at Monaco and transfer to Juventus
In 1990, Monaco sent scout Arnold Catalano to watch Henry, then at the age of 13 in a match. Henry scored all six goals as his side won 6–0. Catalano asked him to join Monaco without even attending a trial first. Catalano requested that Henry complete a course at the elite INF Clairefontaine academy, and despite the director's reluctance to admit Henry due to his poor school results, he was allowed to complete the course and joined Arsène Wenger's Monaco as a youth player. Subsequently, Henry signed professional forms with Monaco, and made his professional debut on 31 August 1994, in a 2–0 loss against Nice. Although Wenger suspected that Henry should be deployed as a striker, he put Henry on the left wing because he believed that his pace, natural ball control and skill would be more effective against full backs than centre-backs.
After a tentative start to his Monaco career, Henry was named the French Young Footballer of the Year in 1996, and in the 1996–97 season, his solid performances helped the club win the Ligue 1 title. During the 1997–98 season, he was instrumental in leading his club to the UEFA Champions League semi-final, setting a French record by scoring seven goals in the competition. By his third season, he had received his first cap for the national team, and was part of the winning team in the 1998 FIFA World Cup. He continued to impress at his tenure with Monaco, and in his five seasons with the club, the young winger scored 20 league goals in 105 appearances.
Henry left Monaco in January 1999, one year before his intimate and closest teammate David Trezeguet, and moved to Italian club Juventus for £10.5 million. He played on the wing, as well as at wing back and wide midfield, but he was ineffective as a goal scorer, struggling against the defensive discipline exhibited by teams in Serie A, registering just three goals in 16 appearances. In 2019, on Jamie Carragher's podcast The Greatest Game, Henry attributed disagreements with Juve director Luciano Moggi as his rationale behind departing the club.
### 1999–2007: Move to Arsenal, breakthrough, and success
Unsettled in Italy, Henry transferred from Juventus on 3 August 1999 to Arsenal for an estimated fee of £11 million, reuniting with his former manager Arsène Wenger. It was at Arsenal that Henry made his name as a world-class footballer, and although his transfer was not without controversy, Wenger was convinced he was worth the transfer fee. Brought in as a replacement for fellow French forward Nicolas Anelka, Henry was immediately moulded into a striker by Wenger, a move that would pay rich dividends in years to come. However, doubts were raised about his ability to adapt to the quick and physical English game when he failed to score in his first eight games. After several difficult months in England, Henry even conceded that he had to "be re-taught everything about the art of striking." These doubts were dispelled when he ended his first season at Arsenal with an impressive goal tally of 26. Arsenal finished second in the Premier League behind Manchester United, and lost in the UEFA Cup Final against Galatasaray.
Coming off the back of a victorious UEFA Euro 2000 campaign with the national team, Henry was ready to make an impact in the 2000–01 season. Despite recording fewer goals and assists than his first season, Henry's second season with Arsenal proved to be a breakthrough, as he became the club's top goalscorer. His goal tally included a spectacular strike against Manchester United where he flicked the ball up (with his back turned to goal), before he swivelled and volleyed in from 20 yards out. The strike also featured a memorable goal celebration where he recreated the Budweiser "Whassup?" advertisement. Armed with one of the league's best attacks, Arsenal finished runner-up to perennial rivals Manchester United in the Premier League. The team also reached the final of the FA Cup, losing 2–1 to Liverpool. Henry remained frustrated, however, by the fact that he had yet to help the club win honours, and frequently expressed his desire to establish Arsenal as a powerhouse.
Success finally arrived during the 2001–02 season. Arsenal finished seven points above Liverpool to win the Premier League title, and defeated Chelsea 2–0 in the FA Cup Final. Henry became the league's top goalscorer and netted 32 goals in all competitions as he led Arsenal to a double and his first silverware with the club. There was much expectation that Henry would replicate his club form for France during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, but the defending champions suffered a shock exit at the group stage.
2002–03 proved to be another productive season for Henry, as he scored 32 goals in all competitions while contributing 23 assists—remarkable returns for a striker. In doing so, he led Arsenal to another FA Cup triumph (where he was man-of-the-match in the Final), although Arsenal failed to retain their Premier League title. Throughout the season, he competed with Manchester United's Ruud van Nistelrooy for the league scoring title, but the Dutchman edged Henry to the Golden Boot by a single goal. Nonetheless, Henry was named both the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year. His rising status as one of the world's best footballers was affirmed when he emerged runner-up for the 2003 FIFA World Player of the Year award. With 24 goals and 20 assists in the league, Henry set a new record for most assists in a single Premier League season, and also became the first player in history to record at least 20 goals and 20 assists in a single season in one of Europe's top–five leagues—this feat has since been matched by Lionel Messi in 2020.
Entering the 2003–04 season, Arsenal were determined to reclaim the Premier League crown. Henry was again instrumental in Arsenal's exceptionally successful campaign; together with the likes of Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira, Freddie Ljungberg and Robert Pires, Henry ensured that the Gunners became the first team in more than a century to go through the entire domestic league season unbeaten, claiming the league title in the process. Apart from being named for the second year running as the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year, Henry emerged once again as the runner-up for 2004 FIFA World Player of the Year award. With 39 goals scored in all competitions, the Frenchman led the league in goals scored and won the European Golden Boot. However, as was the case in 2002, Henry was unable to lead the national side to honours during UEFA Euro 2004.
This dip in success was compounded when Arsenal failed again to secure back-to-back league titles when they lost out to Chelsea in the 2004–05 season, although Arsenal did win the FA Cup (the Final of which Henry missed through injury). Henry maintained his reputation as one of Europe's most feared strikers as he led the league in scoring, and with 31 goals in all competitions, he was the co-recipient (with Diego Forlán) of the European Golden Boot, becoming the first player to officially win the award twice in a row (Ally McCoist had won two Golden Boots in a row, but both were deemed unofficial). The unexpected departure of Arsenal's captain Patrick Vieira in the 2005 close season led to Henry being awarded club captaincy, a role which many felt was not naturally suited for him; the captaincy is more commonly given to defenders or midfielders, who are better-placed on the pitch to read the game. Along with being chief goalscorer, he was responsible for leading a very young team which had yet to gel fully.
The 2005–06 season proved to be one of remarkable personal achievements for Henry. On 17 October 2005, Henry became the club's top goalscorer of all time; two goals against Sparta Prague in the Champions League meant he broke Ian Wright's record of 185 goals. On 1 February 2006, he scored a goal against West Ham United, bringing his league goal tally up to 151, breaking Arsenal legend Cliff Bastin's league goals record. Henry scored his 100th league goal at Highbury, a feat unparalleled in the history of the club, and a unique achievement in the Premier League. On the final day of the Premier League season, Henry scored a hat-trick against Wigan Athletic in the last match played at Highbury. He completed the season as the league's top goalscorer, was voted the FWA Footballer of the Year for the third time in his career, and was selected in the FIFA World XI.
Nevertheless, Arsenal failed to win the Premier League title again, but hopes of a trophy were revived when Arsenal reached the 2006 UEFA Champions League Final. The Gunners eventually lost 2–1 to Barcelona, with Henry assisting the team's only goal from a free kick, and Arsenal's inability to win the league title for two consecutive seasons combined with the relative inexperience of the Arsenal squad caused much speculation that Henry would leave for another club. However, he declared his love for the club and accepted a four-year contract, and said he would stay at Arsenal for life. Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein later claimed the club had turned down two bids of £50 million from Spanish clubs for Henry before the signing of the new contract. Had the transfer materialised, it would have surpassed the then-world record £47 million paid for Zinedine Zidane.
Henry's 2006–07 season was marred by injuries. Although he scored 10 goals in 17 domestic appearances for Arsenal, Henry's season was cut short in February. Having missed games due to hamstring, foot, and back problems, he was deemed fit enough to come on as a late substitute against PSV in a Champions League match, but began limping shortly after coming on. Scans the next day revealed that he would need at least three months to heal from new groin and stomach injuries, missing the rest of the 2006–07 season. Wenger attributed Henry's injuries to a protracted 2005–06 campaign, and reiterated that Henry was keen on staying with the Gunners to rebuild for the 2007–08 season.
### 2007–2010: Barcelona and a historic treble
On 25 June 2007, in an unexpected turn of events, Henry was transferred to Barcelona for €24 million. He signed a four-year deal for a reported €6.8 (£4.6) million per season. It was revealed that the contract included a release clause of €125 (£84.9) million. Henry cited the departure of Dein and continued uncertainty over Wenger's future as reasons for leaving, and maintained that "I always said that if I ever left Arsenal it would be to play for Barcelona." Despite their captain's departure, Arsenal got off to an impressive start for the 2007–08 campaign, and Henry said that his presence in the team might have been more of a hindrance than a help. He stated, "Because of my seniority, the fact that I was captain and my habit of screaming for the ball, they would sometimes give it to me even when I was not in the best position. So in that sense it was good for the team that I moved on." Henry left Arsenal as the club's leading all-time league goalscorer with 174 goals and leading all-time goalscorer in European competitions with 42 goals; in July 2008, Arsenal fans voted him as Arsenal's greatest player ever in Arsenal.com's Gunners' Greatest 50 Players poll.
At Barcelona, Henry was given the number 14 jersey, the same as he had worn at Arsenal. He scored his first goal for his new club on 19 September 2007 in a 3–0 Champions League group stage win over Lyon, and he recorded his first hat-trick for Barça in a Primera División match against Levante ten days later. But with Henry mostly deployed on the wing throughout the season, he was unable to reproduce the goal-scoring form he achieved with Arsenal. He expressed dissatisfaction with the move to Barcelona in the initial year, amidst widespread speculation of a return to the Premier League. In an interview with Garth Crooks on BBC's Football Focus, Henry described missing life "back home" and even "the English press." However, Henry concluded his debut season as the club's top scorer with 19 goals in addition to nine league assists, second behind Lionel Messi's ten.
Henry went on to surpass this tally in a more integrated 2008–09 campaign, with 26 goals and 10 assists from the left wing. He won the first trophy of his Barcelona career on 13 May 2009 when Barcelona defeated Athletic Bilbao in the Copa del Rey final. Barcelona won the Primera División and UEFA Champions League soon after, completing a treble for the Frenchman, who had combined with Messi and Samuel Eto'o to score 100 goals between them that season. The trio was also the most prolific trio in Spanish league history, scoring 72 goals and surpassing the 66 goals of Real Madrid's Ferenc Puskás, Alfredo Di Stéfano and Luis del Sol of the 1960–61 season (this was later surpassed by Real Madrid trio Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gonzalo Higuaín who scored 89 goals in 2011–12). Later in 2009, Henry helped Barcelona win an unprecedented sextuple, consisting of the aforementioned treble, the Supercopa de España, the UEFA Super Cup, and the FIFA Club World Cup.
The following season, the emergence of Pedro meant that Henry only started 15 league games. Before the La Liga season ended, and with a year still left on his contract, club president Joan Laporta stated on 5 May 2010 that Henry "may go away in the summer transfer window if that's what he wants." After Henry returned from the 2010 World Cup, Barcelona confirmed that they had agreed to the sale of Henry to an unnamed club, with the player still to agree terms with the new club.
### 2010–2014: New York Red Bulls and retirement
In July 2010, Henry signed a multi-year contract with Major League Soccer (MLS) club New York Red Bulls for the 2010 season as its second designated player. He made his full MLS debut on 31 July in a 2–2 draw against Houston Dynamo, assisting both goals to Juan Pablo Ángel. His first MLS goal came on 28 August in a 2–0 victory against San Jose Earthquakes. The Red Bulls eventually topped the MLS Eastern Conference by one point over Columbus Crew before losing 3–2 on aggregate against San Jose Earthquakes in the quarter-finals of the 2010 MLS Cup Playoffs. The next season, the Red Bulls were 10th overall in the league, and bowed out in the Conference semi-finals of the 2011 MLS Cup Playoffs.
#### Return to Arsenal (loan)
After training with Arsenal during the MLS off-season, Henry re-signed for the club on a two-month loan deal on 6 January 2012. This was to provide cover for Gervinho and Marouane Chamakh, who were unavailable due to their participation in the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. Henry was given the number 12 jersey – his old Arsenal number 14 jersey, the same number he wore at Barcelona and New York, was unavailable, with Theo Walcott inheriting it following Henry's departure from the club in 2007. Henry made his second Arsenal debut as a substitute against Leeds United in the FA Cup third round and scored the only goal. In his last league game on loan, he scored the winning goal in stoppage time in a 2–1 win against Sunderland. His final goals for the club meant he finished his Arsenal career with a record 228 goals; 175 of them came in the Premier League.
#### Return to New York Red Bulls
On 17 February 2012, Henry returned to Red Bulls to prepare for the 2012 season. His base salary of \$5 million (\$5.6 million guaranteed) made him the highest-paid player in MLS—surpassing David Beckham, who had taken a salary cut for his last year with the Los Angeles Galaxy. In 2013, Henry's base salary dropped to \$3.75 million setting him behind Robbie Keane's \$4 million base salary. With bonuses, however, Henry remained the highest-paid player with \$4.35 million compared to Keane's \$4.33 million.
On 31 March 2012, Henry scored his first MLS hat-trick in a 5–2 Red Bulls win over the Montreal Impact. He was named MLS Player of the Month that same month. On 27 October 2013, Henry scored once and provided two assists in the last game of the season against the Chicago Fire at Red Bull Arena to help his team win 5–2 and become champions of the regular season. It was the club's first major trophy in their 17-year history.
On 12 July 2014, Henry provided a goal and three assists in a 4–1 Red Bulls win over the Columbus Crew. With that effort he became the all-time assist leader for the New York Red Bulls with 37, surpassing Amado Guevara and Tab Ramos.
On 1 December 2014, it was announced that Henry had left the Red Bulls after four-and-a-half years at the club. On 16 December, he announced his retirement as a player and stated that he would begin working for Sky Sports as a pundit. After working at Sky for over three years, Henry quit his position in July 2018 to focus on his career as a coach.
## International career
Henry enjoyed a successful career with the France national team, winning the first of his 123 caps in June 1997, when his good form for Monaco was rewarded with a call-up to the Under-20 French national team, where he played in the 1997 FIFA World Youth Championship alongside future teammates William Gallas and David Trezeguet. Within four months, France head coach Aimé Jacquet called Henry up to the senior team. The 20-year-old made his senior international debut on 11 October 1997 in a 2–1 win against South Africa. Jacquet was so impressed with Henry that he took him to the 1998 FIFA World Cup. Although Henry was a largely unknown quantity at international level, he ended the tournament as France's top scorer with three goals. He was scheduled to appear as a substitute in the final, where France beat Brazil 3–0, but Marcel Desailly's sending off forced a defensive change instead. In 1998, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, France's highest decoration.
Henry was a member of France's UEFA Euro 2000 squad, again scoring three goals in the tournament, including the equaliser against Portugal in the semi-final, and finishing as the country's top scorer. France later won the game in extra time following a converted penalty kick by Zinedine Zidane. France went on to defeat Italy in extra-time in the final, earning Henry his second major international medal. During the tournament, Henry was voted man of the match in three games, including the final against Italy.
The 2002 FIFA World Cup featured a stunning early exit for both Henry and France as the defending champions were eliminated in the group stage after failing to score a goal in all three games. France lost against Senegal in their first group match and Henry was red carded for a dangerous sliding challenge in their next match against Uruguay. In that game, France played to a 0–0 draw, but Henry was forced to miss the final group match due to suspension; France lost 2–0 to Denmark.
Henry returned to form for his country at the 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup. Despite playing without team stalwarts Zidane and Patrick Vieira, France won, in large part owing to Henry's outstanding play, for which he was named Man of the Match by FIFA's Technical Study Group in three of France's five matches. In the final, he scored the golden goal in extra time to lift the title for the host country after a 1–0 victory over Cameroon. Henry was awarded both the Adidas Golden Ball as the outstanding player of the competition and the Adidas Golden Shoe as the tournament's top goalscorer with four goals.
In UEFA Euro 2004, Henry played in all of France's matches and scored two goals. France beat England in the group stage but lost to the eventual winners Greece 1–0 in the quarter-finals. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup Henry remained as one of the automatic starters in the squad. He played as a lone striker, but despite an indifferent start to the tournament, became one of the top players of the World Cup. He scored three goals, including the winning goal from Zidane's free kick against defending champions Brazil in the quarter-final. However, France subsequently lost to Italy on penalties (5–3) in the final. Henry did not take part in the penalty shoot-out, having been substituted in extra time after his legs had cramped. Henry was one of ten nominees for the Golden Ball award for Player of the Tournament, an award which was ultimately presented to his teammate, Zidane and was named a starting striker on the 2006 FIFPro World XI team.
On 13 October 2007, Henry scored his 41st goal against the Faroe Islands, joining Michel Platini as the country's top goalscorer of all time. Four days later at the Stade de la Beaujoire, he scored a late double against Lithuania, thereby setting a new record as France's top goalscorer. On 3 June 2008, Henry made his 100th appearance for the national team in a match against Colombia, becoming the sixth French player ever to reach that milestone.
Henry missed the opening game of France's short-lived UEFA Euro 2008 campaign, where they were eliminated in the group stages after being drawn in the same group as Italy, the Netherlands and Romania. He scored France's only goal in the competition in a 4–1 loss to the Netherlands.
The French team struggled during the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifiers and finished second in their group behind Serbia. During the play-offs against the Republic of Ireland, Henry was involved in a controversy in the second leg of the game at the Stade de France on 18 November 2009. With the aggregate score tied at 1–1 and the game in extra time, he used his hand twice to control the ball before delivering a cross to William Gallas who scored the winner. This sparked a barrage of criticism against the Frenchman, while national team coach Raymond Domenech and Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger defended him. The Football Association of Ireland lodged a formal complaint with FIFA, seeking a replay of the game, which FIFA declined. Henry said that he contemplated retiring from international football after the reactions to the incident, but maintained that he was not a "cheat"; hours after FIFA had ruled out a replay, he stated that "the fairest solution would be to replay the game". FIFA President Sepp Blatter described the incident as "blatant unfair play" and announced an inquiry into how such incidents could be avoided in future, and added that the incident would be investigated by the Disciplinary Committee. Blatter also said Henry told him that his family had been threatened in the aftermath of the incident. In January 2010, FIFA announced that there was no legal basis to sanction Henry.
Henry did not feature in the starting line-up for France at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. France drew in their first game against Uruguay, and lost 2–0 in their second against Mexico. The team was thrown into disarray when Nicolas Anelka was expelled from the team, and captain Patrice Evra led a team protest by refusing to train. In the final group game against host-nation South Africa in which Henry came on as a second-half substitute, France lost 2–1 and were eliminated from the tournament. He then announced his retirement from international football, having won 123 caps and scored 51 goals for Les Bleus, thus finishing his international career as France's all-time top scorer, and second most capped player after Lilian Thuram.
## Style of play
Although Henry played up front as a striker during his youth, he spent his time at Monaco and Juventus playing on the wing. When Henry joined Arsenal in 1999, Wenger immediately changed this, switching Henry to his childhood position, often pairing him with Dutch veteran Dennis Bergkamp. During the 2004–05 season, Wenger switched Arsenal's formation to 4–5–1. This change forced Henry to adapt again to fit into the Arsenal team, and he played many games as a lone striker. Still, Henry remained Arsenal's main offensive threat, on many occasions conjuring spectacular goals. Wenger said of his fellow Frenchman: "Thierry Henry could take the ball in the middle of the park and score a goal that no one else in the world could score".
One of the reasons cited for Henry's impressive play up front is his ability to calmly score from one-on-ones. According to his father Antoine, Henry learned precision shooting from watching his idol Marco van Basten. He was also influenced by Romário, Ronaldo and Liberian star George Weah, a new breed of strikers in the 1990s who would also operate outside the penalty area before running with the ball towards goal. At his physical peak from the late 1990s to the mid 2000s, Henry's ability to dribble past opponents with exceptional pace, skill and composure, meant that he could get in behind defenders regularly enough to score. In 2004, former Arsenal striker Alan Smith commented on Henry: "I have to say I haven't seen a player like him. He's an athlete with great technical ability and a tremendous desire to be the best."
When up front, Henry is occasionally known to move out wide to the left wing position, something which enables him to contribute heavily in assists: between 2002–03 and 2004–05, the striker managed almost 50 assists in total and this was attributed to his unselfish play and creativity. Ranking Henry the greatest player in Premier League history, in February 2020 FourFourTwo magazine stated, "No one assisted more in a season. No one has terrorised defenders with such a combination of bewitching grace and phenomenal power."
Coming in from the left, Henry's trademark finish saw him place the ball inside the far right corner of the goal. Henry would also drift offside to fool the defence then run back onside before the ball is played and beat the offside trap, although he never provided Arsenal a distinct aerial threat. Given his versatility in being able to operate as both a winger and a striker, the Frenchman is not a prototypical "out-and-out striker", but he has emerged consistently as one of Europe's most prolific strikers. In set pieces, Henry was the first-choice penalty and free kick taker for Arsenal, scoring regularly from those situations. Henry was also a notable exponent of a no-look pass where he would feint to pass the ball with his right foot, but would make contact with the ball using his standing foot (his left).
## Managerial career
### Arsenal youth
Henry began coaching Arsenal's youth teams in February 2015, in tandem with his work for Sky Sports. His influence on the team was praised by players such as Alex Iwobi, who dedicated a goal against Bayern Munich in the 2015–16 UEFA Youth League to his advice. Having earned a UEFA A Licence, he was offered the job of under-18 coach by Academy head Andries Jonker, but the decision was overruled by Wenger, who wanted a full-time coach for the team.
### Belgium (assistant)
In August 2016, Henry became second assistant coach of the Belgium national team, working alongside head coach Roberto Martínez and fellow assistant Graeme Jones. In an interview with NBC Sports, Belgium striker Romelu Lukaku praised Henry for his work with him, stating, "Henry is the best thing that has happened to me because since I came to England aged 18 I have had the best mentors. Thierry for me is the best. Every day whether it is positive and negative I take it in my stride because I know what is expected from the top level." At the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Belgium reached the semi-final, but lost to Henry's home nation France 1–0. Henry picked up a Bronze medal after Belgium defeated England 2–0 in the third-place play-off to secure their best ever World Cup finish.
Henry was reportedly offered the position of head coach by Bordeaux in August 2018. However, the offer was not accepted by Henry after disagreements with the club's owners. Days after turning down the Bordeaux job, and following Jones's departure from the Belgium national team, Henry, who had been the forwards coach, was promoted to Belgium assistant coach. However, his tenure in the role was short-lived, after he accepted the role as head coach at former club Monaco in October.
### Monaco
On 11 October 2018, Monaco dismissed Leonardo Jardim as club manager. Jardim's position had become untenable after struggling heavily in domestic competition, with the club 18th at the time of his departure, and disputes over the club's transfer policy. Monaco's search for a new coach coincided with the regulatory mid-season international break, allowing the club sufficient time to search for a replacement, however, they quickly decided on Henry, and he was appointed a mere two days later. He signed a three-year deal, and was unveiled as Monaco manager on 18 October. At his first press conference, he told reporters: "This club will always have a big place in my heart, so to be able to come here and start again, it is a dream come true. There is a lot of work to do, as you can imagine – but I am more than happy to be here".
Henry's arrival at Monaco was greeted with mixed reactions by some media outlets, due to his relative inexperience as a top-level coach and the task of overturning Monaco's misfortunes. Despite inheriting a squad of sub-standard quality, Henry expressed a desire of replicating the football he played under Pep Guardiola at Barcelona, as well as instilling the "professionalism" taught to him by Arsène Wenger. Henry also adopted a hands-on approach to training sessions, being regularly involved in devising schemes and instructing drills. His first match was a 2–1 away defeat against Strasbourg on 20 October. He was unable to secure a win for over a month, enduring a period which included two high-profile defeats against Club Brugge and Paris Saint-Germain, prior to defeating Caen on 1–0 on 25 November. He secured two wins in December, defeating Amiens in the league and Lorient in the Coupe de la Ligue, however, this was on the backdrop of three additional Ligue 1 defeats to close 2018 in the relegation zone.
In January 2019, Henry entered the winter transfer window, where he signed left-back Fodé Ballo-Touré, and former Arsenal teammate Cesc Fàbregas from Chelsea. He also sanctioned the loan signing of French defensive midfielder William Vainqueur on 12 January, and experienced defender Naldo. However, these signings would not turn around the club's fate, and on 24 January, Henry was dismissed at Monaco. The club were 19th at the time of his departure, and Henry left with a record of 4 wins, 5 draws, and 11 defeats, from 20 games in charge.
### Montreal Impact
On 14 November 2019, Henry became manager of Major League Soccer side Montreal Impact, signing a two-year deal until the end of the 2021 season with an option to extend it by a year until the 2022 season. In his first press conference, Henry stated he had to "confront" the relative disappointment of his short stint as manager of Monaco, before undertaking a new job.
After leading Montreal to their first playoff berth in four seasons, on 25 February 2021, prior to the 2021 season, Henry stepped down as head coach of the renamed CF Montreal to be closer to his children in London. He had not been able to see them in the 2020 season due to travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with restrictions continuing into the 2021 season, he decided to end the separation.
### Return to Belgium (assistant)
In May 2021, Henry rejoined the coaching staff of Belgium prior to the UEFA Euro 2020. He was also in the team's coaching staff for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. In February 2023, upon the appointment of Domenico Tedesco as Belgium's new head coach, Royal Belgian Football Association CEO Peter Bossaert announced that Henry would not be returning to the national team's coaching staff.
Henry was considered as being one of potential replacements for Corinne Diacre who got fired as France women's national football team head coach, but he turned down the possibility of managing them in favor of waiting for United States men's national soccer team permanent head coach position offer.
### France U21
On 21 August 2023, Henry was named as the new manager of the France national under-21 team and the France Olympic team who will lead the French during the 2024 Summer Olympics.
## Media/Broadcasting career
After leaving CF Montreal, Henry resumed his punditry career. He joined CBS Sports in their UEFA Champions League coverage as studio analyst on 27 September 2021, as well as being hired by Amazon Prime Video for their Premier League and Ligue 1 programs as consultant.
## Reception
Henry has received many plaudits and awards in his football career. He was runner-up for the 2003 and 2004 FIFA World Player of the Year awards; in those two seasons, he also won back-to-back PFA Players' Player of the Year titles. Henry is the only player ever to have won the FWA Footballer of the Year three times (2003, 2004, 2006), and the French Player of the Year on a record four occasions. Henry was voted into the Premier League Overseas Team of the Decade in the 10 Seasons Awards poll in 2003, and in 2004 he was named by football legend Pelé on the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players.
In terms of goal-scoring awards, Henry was the European Golden Boot winner in 2004 and 2005 (sharing it with Villarreal's Diego Forlán in 2005). Henry was also the top goalscorer in the Premier League for a record four seasons (2002, 2004, 2005, 2006). In 2006, he became the first player to score more than 20 goals in the league for five consecutive seasons (2002 to 2006). With 175, Henry is currently seventh in the list of all-time Premier League goalscorers, behind Alan Shearer, Wayne Rooney, Harry Kane, Andy Cole, Sergio Agüero, and Frank Lampard. He held the record for most goals in the competition for one club, until it was broken by Rooney in 2016, and held the record for most goals by a foreign player in the competition until surpassed by Agüero in 2020. France's all-time record goalscorer was, in his prime in the mid 2000s, regarded by many coaches, footballers and journalists as one of the best players in the world. In November 2007, he was ranked 33rd on the Association of Football Statisticians' compendium for "Greatest Ever Footballers".
Arsenal fans honoured their former player in 2008, declaring Henry the greatest Arsenal player. In two other 2008 surveys, Henry emerged as the favourite Premier League player of all time among 32,000 people surveyed in the Barclays 2008 Global Fan Report. Arsenal fan and The Who lead singer Roger Daltrey mentions Henry in the tribute song "Highbury Highs", which he performed at Arsenal's last game at Highbury on 7 May 2006. On 10 December 2011, Arsenal unveiled a bronze statue of Henry at the Emirates Stadium as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations. In 2017, FourFourTwo magazine ranked him first in their list of the 30 best strikers in Premier League history. Daniel Girard of The Toronto Star described Henry as "one of the best players of his generation" in 2010. Henry's former Arsenal manager, Wenger, described him as "one of the greatest players [he had] ever seen" in 2014. In 2019, The Independent ranked Henry in first place in their list of the "100 greatest Premier League players".
## Personal life
Henry married English model Nicole Merry, real name Claire, on 5 July 2003. The ceremony was held at Highclere Castle, and on 27 May 2005 the couple celebrated the birth of their first child, Téa. Henry dedicated his first goal following Téa's birth to her by holding his fingers in a "T" shape and kissing them after scoring in a match against Newcastle United. When Henry was still at Arsenal, he also purchased a home in Hampstead, North London.
However, shortly after his transfer to Barcelona, it was announced that Henry and his wife would divorce; the decree nisi was granted in September 2007, "on the basis of his behavior." Their separation concluded in December 2008 when Henry paid Merry a divorce settlement close to her requested sum of £10 million.
### Interest in basketball
As a fan of the National Basketball Association (NBA), Henry is often seen with his friend Tony Parker at games when not playing football. Henry stated in an interview that he admires basketball, as it is similar to football in pace and excitement. Having made regular trips to the NBA Finals in the past, he went to watch Parker and the San Antonio Spurs in the 2007 NBA Finals; and in the 2001 NBA Finals, he went to Philadelphia to help with French television coverage of the Finals as well as to watch Allen Iverson, whom he named as one of his favourite players.
### Appearance on screen
Henry makes a short cameo appearance in the 2015 film Entourage. Henry's part sees him walking a dog and having exchange with Ari Gold (character played by Jeremy Piven), who is an over-the-top Hollywood agent. He makes a number of cameo appearances playing himself in the Apple TV+ football comedy series Ted Lasso.
Henry makes a number of appearances in the Amazon Original sports docuseries All or Nothing: Arsenal, which documented the club by spending time with the coaching staff and players behind the scenes both on and off the field throughout their 2021–22 season.
### Social causes
Henry is a member of the UNICEF-FIFA squad, where together with other professional footballers he appeared in a series of TV spots seen by hundreds of millions of fans around the world during the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups. In these spots, the players promote football as a game that must be played on behalf of children.
Having been subjected to racism in the past, Henry is an active spokesperson against racism in football. The most prominent incident of racism against Henry was during a training session with the Spanish national team in 2004, when a Spanish TV crew caught coach Luis Aragonés referring to Henry as "black shit" to José Antonio Reyes, Henry's teammate at Arsenal. The incident caused an uproar in the British media, and there were calls for Aragonés to be sacked. Henry and Nike started the Stand Up Speak Up campaign against racism in football as a result of the incident. Subsequently, in 2007, Time featured him as one of the "Heroes & Pioneers" on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.
Along with 45 other football players, Henry took part in FIFA's "Live for Love United" in 2002. The single was released in tandem with the 2002 FIFA World Cup and its proceeds went towards AIDS research. Henry also supports the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Cystic Fibrosis Trust.
Henry has also played in charity football games for various causes. In June 2018, he reunited with his France 1998 World Cup winning teammates to play a charity game against an All-Star team which included Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, with proceeds going to the Mecenet Cardiac Charity and the Children of the World fund. In a 3–2 win for France, Henry played a trademark no-look one-two pass with Zinedine Zidane before scoring with a 20-yard curling strike.
### Commercial endorsements
In 2006, Henry was valued as the ninth-most commercially marketable footballer in the world, and throughout his career he has signed many endorsements and appeared in commercials.
#### Sportswear
At the beginning of his career, Henry signed with sportswear giant Nike. In the buildup to the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan, Henry featured in Nike's "Secret Tournament" advertisement, directed by Terry Gilliam, along with 24 superstar football players. In a 2004 advertisement, Henry pits his wits against others footballers in locations such as his bedroom and living room, which was partly inspired by Henry himself, who revealed that he always has a football nearby, even at home. In tandem with the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Henry also featured in Nike's Joga Bonito campaign, Portuguese for "beautiful game".
Henry's deal with Nike ended after the 2006 FIFA World Cup, when he signed a deal with Reebok to appear in their "I Am What I Am" campaign. As part of Reebok Entertainment's "Framed" series, Henry was the star of a half-hour episode that detailed the making of a commercial about himself directed by Spanish actress Paz Vega. In 2011, Henry switched to Puma boots.
#### Others
Henry featured in the Renault Clio advertisements in which he popularised the term va-va-voom, meaning "life" or "passion". His romantic interest in the commercial was his then-girlfriend, later his wife (now divorced), Claire Merry. "Va-va-voom" was subsequently added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
In February 2007, Henry was named as one of the three global ambassadors of Gillette's "Champions Program", which purported to feature three of the "best-known, most widely respected and successful athletes competing today" and also showcased Roger Federer and Tiger Woods in a series of television commercials. In reaction to the handball controversy following the France vs Ireland 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier, Gillette faced a boycott and accusations of doctoring French versions of their Champions poster, but subsequently released a statement backing Henry.
Henry was part of Pepsi's "Dare For More" campaign in 2005, alongside the likes of David Beckham and Ronaldinho. He starred in a 2014 advert for Beats headphones with other global football stars including Neymar and Luis Suárez, with the theme of "The Game Before the Game" and the players pre-game ritual of listening to music.
Henry featured on the front cover of the editions of EA Sports' FIFA video game series from FIFA 2001 to FIFA 2005. He was included as an icon to the Ultimate Team in FIFA 18. He was also a cover star for the Konami Pro Evolution Soccer video game series, and was featured on the covers of Pro Evolution Soccer 4 to Pro Evolution Soccer 6.
### Other interests
In August 2022, Serie B club Como announced Henry was joining them as an investor and minority stakeholder.
## Career statistics
### Club
### International
Note
### Managerial
## Honours
Monaco
- Division 1: 1996–97
Arsenal
- Premier League: 2001–02, 2003–04
- FA Cup: 2001–02, 2002–03
- FA Community Shield: 2002, 2004
- UEFA Champions League runner-up: 2005–06
- UEFA Cup runner-up: 1999–2000
Barcelona
- La Liga: 2008–09, 2009–10
- Copa del Rey: 2008–09
- Supercopa de España: 2009
- UEFA Champions League: 2008–09
- UEFA Super Cup: 2009
- FIFA Club World Cup: 2009
New York Red Bulls
- Supporters' Shield: 2013
France
- FIFA World Cup: 1998; runner-up: 2006
- UEFA European Championship: 2000
- FIFA Confederations Cup: 2003
Individual
- Ballon d'Or runner-up: 2003; third-place: 2006
- FIFA World Player of the Year – Silver Award: 2003, 2004
- European Golden Shoe: 2003–04, 2004–05
- Onze d'Or: 2003, 2006
- FIFA World Cup All-Star Team: Germany 2006
- FIFA Confederations Cup Golden Ball: France 2003
- FIFA Confederations Cup Golden Shoe: France 2003
- UNFP Division 1 Young Player of the Year: 1996–97
- PFA Players' Player of the Year: 2002–03, 2003–04
- PFA Fans' Player of the Year: 2002–03, 2003–04
- PFA Team of the Year: 2000–01 Premier League, 2001–02 Premier League, 2002–03 Premier League, 2003–04 Premier League, 2004–05 Premier League, 2005–06 Premier League
- PFA Team of the Century (1907–2007):
- Team of the Century 1997–2007
- Overall Team of the Century
- FWA Footballer of the Year: 2002–03, 2003–04, 2005–06
- Premier League Player of the Season: 2003–04, 2005–06
- Premier League Golden Boot: 2001–02, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2005–06
- Most assists in the Premier League: 2002–03
- Golden Boot Landmark Award 10: 2004–05
- Golden Boot Landmark Award 20: 2004–05
- Premier League Player of the Month: April 2000, September 2002, January 2004, April 2004
- Arsenal Player of the Season: 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005
- BBC Goal of the Season: 2002–03
- UEFA Team of the Year: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006
- MLS Best XI: 2011, 2012, 2014
- MLS Player of the Month: March 2012
- Best MLS Player ESPY Award: 2013
- MLS All-Star: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
- French Player of the Year: 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
- IFFHS World's Top Goal Scorer of the Year: 2003
- FIFA FIFPro World XI: 2006
- UEFA European Football Championship Team of the Tournament: 2000
- FIFA 100: 2004
- Time 100 Heroes & Pioneers no.16: 2007
- English Football Hall of Fame: 2008
- Premier League 10 Seasons Awards (1992–93 – 2001–02):
- Overseas Team of the Decade
- Premier League 20 Seasons Awards:
- Fantasy Team (Panel choice)
- Fantasy Team (Public choice)
- UEFA Ultimate Team of the Year (published 2015)
- UEFA Euro All-time XI (published 2016)
- Ballon d'Or Dream Team (Bronze): 2020
- Premier League Hall of Fame: 2021
Orders
- Knight of the Legion of Honour: 1998
## Records
### Arsenal
- All-time top scorer: 228 goals
- Most league goals: 175 goals
- Most European goals: 42
- Most Champions League goals: 35
- Most Premier League goals in a season: 30 (2003–04) (shared with Robin van Persie)
- Most Premier League hat-tricks: 8
- Most European appearances: 86
- Most Champions League appearances: 78
- Most Arsenal Player of the Season Awards: 4
### Continental
- Most European Golden Shoe wins while playing in England: 2 (2003–04 & 2004–05)
- One of four players to win back-to-back European Golden Shoes (shared with Ally McCoist, Lionel Messi & Cristiano Ronaldo)
### England
- Most FWA Footballer of the Year wins: 3 (2002–03, 2003–04 & 2005–06)
- Most consecutive FWA Footballer of the Year wins: 2 (2002–03 & 2003–04) (shared with Cristiano Ronaldo)
- Most consecutive PFA Players' Player of the Year wins: 2 (2002–03 & 2003–04) (shared with Cristiano Ronaldo)
- Most PFA Players' Player of the Year wins: 2 (2002–03 & 2003–04) (shared with Gareth Bale, Alan Shearer, Mark Hughes & Cristiano Ronaldo)
### France
- Only French player to win the European Golden Shoe
- Most French Player of the Year wins: 5 (2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)
- Most consecutive French Player of the Year wins: 4 (2003–2006)
- Most goals by a Frenchman playing at a foreign club: 228 goals for Arsenal
- Most world cup matches for France: 17 (shared with Fabien Barthez)
- Most appearances at World Cup final tournaments for France: 4 (1998, 2002, 2006 & 2010)
### Premier League
- Most assists in a season: 20 (2002–03) (shared with Kevin De Bruyne)
- Most goals with right foot in a 38-game season: 24 (2005–06) (shared with Alan Shearer)
- Most Player of the Season awards: 2 (2003–04 & 2005–06) (shared with Cristiano Ronaldo, Nemanja Vidić & Kevin De Bruyne)
- Most goals in London derbies: 43
- Most Golden Boot wins: 4
- Most goals on a Friday: 10
- Most consecutive 20+ goal seasons: 5 (2001–02 to 2004–05) (shared with Sergio Agüero)
- Most goals scored under one manager: 175 goals under Arsène Wenger
- Most goals at a single ground: 114 goals at Highbury
- Most direct free-kicks goals by a foreign player: 12 (shared with Gianfranco Zola)
- Most Golden Boot's won in consecutive years: 3 (shared with Alan Sherear)
- The only player to both score and assist 20+ goals in a season (2002–03)
## See also
- List of footballers with 100 or more UEFA Champions League appearances
- List of top international men's football goalscorers by country
- List of men's footballers with 100 or more international caps
- List of men's footballers with 50 or more international goals
|
712,895 |
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve
| 1,167,462,911 |
National monument in Oregon, United States
|
[
"1909 establishments in Oregon",
"Caves of Oregon",
"Civilian Conservation Corps in Oregon",
"Landforms of Josephine County, Oregon",
"Limestone caves",
"National Park Service National Monuments in Oregon",
"National Preserves of the United States",
"Protected areas established in 1909",
"Protected areas of Josephine County, Oregon",
"Show caves in the United States"
] |
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve is a protected area in the northern Siskiyou Mountains of southwestern Oregon in the United States. The 4,554-acre (1,843 ha) park, including the marble cave, is 20 miles (32 km) east of Cave Junction, on Oregon Route 46. The protected area, managed by the National Park Service (NPS), is in southwestern Josephine County, near the Oregon–California border.
Elijah Davidson, a resident of nearby Williams, discovered the cave in 1874. Over the next two decades, private investors failed in efforts to run successful tourist ventures at the publicly owned site. After passage of the Antiquities Act by the United States Congress, in 1909 President William Howard Taft established Oregon Caves National Monument, to be managed by the United States Forest Service (USFS). The growing popularity of the automobile, construction of paved highways, and promotion of tourism by boosters from Grants Pass led to large increases in cave visitation during the late 1920s and thereafter. Among the attractions at the remote monument is the Oregon Caves Chateau, a six-story hotel built in a rustic style in 1934. It is a National Historic Landmark and is part of the Oregon Caves Historic District within the monument. The NPS, which assumed control of the monument in 1933, offers tours of the cave from mid-April through early November. In 2014, the protected area was expanded by about 4,000 acres (1,600 ha) and re-designated a National Monument and Preserve. At the same time, the segment of the creek that flows through the cave was renamed for the mythological Styx and added to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
Oregon Caves is a solutional cave, with passages totaling about 15,000 feet (4,600 m), formed in marble. The parent rock was originally limestone that metamorphosed to marble during the geologic processes that created the Klamath Mountains, including the Siskiyous. Although the limestone formed about 190 million years ago, the cave itself is no older than a few million years. Valued as a tourist cave, the cavern also has scientific value; sections of the cave that are not on tour routes contain fossils of national importance.
Activities at the park include cave touring, hiking, photography, and wildlife viewing. One of the park trails leads through the forest to Big Tree, which at 13 feet (4.0 m) is the widest Douglas fir known in Oregon. Lodging and food are available at The Chateau and in Cave Junction. Camping is available in the preserve at the Cave Creek Campground, at a local USFS campground, and private sites in the area.
## Geography
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve is in the Siskiyou Mountains, a coastal range that is part of the Klamath Mountains of northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. The monument consists of 484 acres (196 ha) in the Rogue River – Siskiyou National Forest, about 6 miles (10 km) north of the Oregon–California border in Josephine County. Elevations within the monument range from 3,680 to 5,480 feet (1,120 to 1,670 m). Mount Elijah in the preserve rises to 6,390 feet (1,950 m).
In December 2014 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, the U.S. Congress enlarged the protected area that includes the cave and changed its name from Oregon Caves National Monument to Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve. The preserve covers 4,070 acres (1,650 ha), and both it and the monument, which abuts the preserve, are administered by the same staff.
By highway, Oregon Caves is 55 miles (89 km) southwest of Grants Pass, 300 miles (480 km) south of Portland and 450 miles (720 km) north of San Francisco. The caves are 20 miles (32 km) east of the small city of Cave Junction via Oregon Route 46 off U.S. Route 199. The main cave has known passages totaling about 15,000 feet (4,600 m) in length. Eight separate smaller caves have also been discovered in the monument.
Runoff from the heavily wooded monument forms small headwater streams of the Illinois River, a major tributary of the Rogue River. One of five small springs in the monument becomes Upper Cave Creek, which flows on the surface before disappearing into its bed and entering the cave. Supplemented by water entering the cave from above, the stream emerges from the main entrance as Cave Creek. Within the cave, Cave Creek is known as the River Styx, named for the river Styx of Greek mythology connecting Earth to the Underworld. In late 2014, Congress added the River Styx to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, which added a level of protection aimed at keeping the stream free-flowing in perpetuity. It is the only subterranean river in the Wild Rivers system.
## History
Archeologists believe the first humans to inhabit the Rogue River region were nomadic hunters and gatherers. Radiocarbon dating suggests that they arrived in southwestern Oregon at least 8,500 years ago. At least 1,500 years before the first contact with whites, the natives established permanent villages along streams. Even so, no evidence has been found to suggest that any of the native peoples, such as the Takelma who lived along the Rogue and Applegate rivers in the 19th century, used the cave.
Largely bypassed by the early non-native explorers, fur traders, and settlers because of its remote location, the region attracted newcomers in quantity when prospectors found gold near Jacksonville in the Rogue River valley in 1851. This led to the creation of Jackson County in 1852 and, after gold discoveries near Waldo in the Illinois River valley, the creation of Josephine County, named for the daughter of a gold miner. Even with an influx of miners and of settlers who farmed donation land claims, Josephine County's population was only 1,204 in 1870.
Elijah Jones Davidson, who discovered the cave in 1874, had emigrated from Illinois to Oregon with his parents, who eventually settled along Williams Creek in Josephine County. Williams, as the community came to be called, is about 12 miles (19 km) northeast of the cave.
Only a few people visited the cave during the next decade. Among them was Thomas Condon, professor of geology at the University of Oregon. Guided by Davidson's brother, in 1884 he and a group of students hiked from Williams to the cavern, which they inspected by candlelight. Shortly thereafter, Walter Burch, an acquaintance of the Davidson family, tried to develop the cave as a business. Burch and his partners opened what they called Limestone Caves and charged visitors \$1 each for a guided cave trip, a camping spot, pasture for horses, and cave water they described as medicinal. Although Burch and others hacked crude trails to the cave from Cave Junction and Williams, the trip was too difficult for most tourists, and Limestone Caves ceased operations in 1888.
In the early 1890s, the Oregon Caves Improvement Company, headed by Alfonso B. Smith of San Diego and two men from Kerby, Oregon, tried to raise capital for a larger tourist business at Oregon Caves. Smith made outlandish claims about the cave and its business potential, saying that it was 22 miles (35 km) long, that an ordinary horse and buggy could be driven through 10 miles (16 km) of it, that it had 600 separate chambers, and that the company planned to build something like a streetcar line from Williams to the cave. Smith succeeded in wooing The San Francisco Examiner, which twice sent reporters to the site. On the second visit, there was "an orgy of destruction" in which passages were widened, formations broken or deliberately removed, and directional arrows added to the cave walls. After Smith had spent all of the company's money and borrowed more in its name, he disappeared in 1894, and the business collapsed.
Neither Burch nor Smith had owned the cave or the land around it, which belonged to the public. Beginning in the 1890s, the Federal government began regulating the use of public lands like these. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt designated millions of acres of forest lands for protection, including what became Siskiyou National Forest, which surrounds the cave. The USFS was created in 1905 to manage these reserves. Three years later, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, which allowed the President to designate protected areas called National Monuments on public lands. In 1909, President William Howard Taft established Oregon Caves National Monument, to be managed by the USFS. A year later the USFS employed men to guard the cave and to serve as tour guides.
Isolated and difficult to reach, the monument initially attracted few visitors, by 1920 only 1,800 for the year. The situation changed markedly when large numbers of Americans began to travel by automobile on roads paid for largely with government funds. One highway connected Grants Pass with the California coast at Crescent City. Another new road, the Oregon Caves Highway, led from the Grants Pass – Crescent City highway to the cave. Campaigns to attract car-driving tourists included those of the Cavemen, a booster group from Grants Pass that dressed in animal skins, posed along tour routes, and staged annual events to promote the monument. By 1928, the number of visitors to the cave had risen to about 24,000 a year.
The visitors' need for overnight lodging led to creation of public and private campsites and rustic cabins along highways near Cave Junction and the monument. In 1923, the USFS signed a contract with the Oregon Caves Company, based in Grants Pass, to run the cave tours and improve the park accommodations. Public-private partnerships between the USFS or NPS and concessionaires continued in various forms at Oregon Caves into the 21st century. The Chalet, a building with a kitchen, dining room, gift shop, ticket sales area, and a dormitory for women on the Oregon Caves Company staff, was completed later that year. Three years later, the company added seven two-bedroom cabins for tourists and a dormitory for male employees. In 1928, an Oregon Caves bill written by the USFS and introduced by Senator Charles McNary of Oregon won Congressional approval. It provided funds for electric lights, a power plant, a system of pipes and hoses to wash mud from the cave, and an artificial exit tunnel to eliminate the crowding that occurred when two groups on round-trip tours had to pass one another. The 500-foot (150 m) tunnel was completed in 1931.
Management of the monument was transferred from the Forest Service to the NPS in 1933, and a six-story hotel, the Oregon Caves Chateau, was completed at the site in 1934. Gust Lium, a builder from Grants Pass, oversaw construction of the Chateau and some of the park's other buildings, which he designed in a rustic style. Mason Manufacturing of Los Angeles produced the Chateau's furniture in a style called Monterey, valued in the 21st century at up to \$5,000 for a single chair. During the 1930s and early 1940s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) installed water and telephone lines, improved trails, and worked on landscaping at the park. The Chalet was rebuilt in 1942 to include a third story and a larger dormitory for women.
Although the Chateau suffered \$100,000 in damage from a 1964 flood, it was repaired. By 1968, a total of one million people had visited the cave. In 1987, the Chateau was declared a National Historic Landmark, and in 1992, 60 acres (24 ha) of the monument, including the Chateau and other rustic structures, were listed as the Oregon Caves Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2001, the NPS began running the cave tours formerly offered by private contractors, and two years later all the structures at the monument became public property managed by the NPS. The Illinois Valley Community Development Organization (IVCDO), a non-profit organization based in Cave Junction, runs the monument's gift shop.
In 2014, the protected area was expanded by 4,070 acres (1,650 ha) that was transferred from the Rogue River – Siskiyou National Forest to create the National Monument and Preserve. The preserve consists of forest, subalpine meadows, mountains, and creeks formerly managed by the USFS and now by the NPS. Named features within the addition include Mount Elijah (6,390 ft or 1,950 m), Bigelow Lake, and a network of existing trails linked to the monument trails. Although hunting is allowed in the preserve but not in the monument, the new arrangement seeks to end cattle grazing in the Cave Creek – River Styx watershed.
## Geology and paleontology
Most caves created from dissolved rocks are formed in limestone or dolomite, but Oregon Caves was formed in marble. Of the more than 3,900 cave systems managed by the NPS, only those in Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve, Kings Canyon National Park, and Great Basin National Park have marble caves.
The parent rock in which the cave developed was formed about 190 million years ago as limestone that was part of a tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean. Granitic plutons intruded this part of the ocean crust, the Applegate terrane, about 160 million years ago. As the oceanic crust carrying the terrane subducted under the North American plate, the terrane accreted onto the North American Plate and the limestone was subjected to heat and pressure that metamorphosed it to marble. Further tectonic movements eventually lifted the marble to about 4,000 feet (1,200 m) above sea level. The marble block containing the cave is at least 1,080 feet (330 m) long, 490 feet (150 m) wide, and about 390 feet (120 m) high.
The cave's creation took place long after the marble formed. As groundwater seeped into cracks in the marble, it eventually dissolved enough rock to expand some of the cracks to the size of tunnels. Generally, the age of a cave cannot be determined directly because the cave itself is an empty space, but scientists can sometimes determine the age of speleothems or sediments in a cave. An early 21st-century study of speleothem development in Oregon Caves focused on the past 380,000 years. Based on the available evidence, the cave is thought to be at least a million years old and "probably not much older than a few million" years.
Marble has a more coarse-grained texture than limestone, but both are made of calcite (CaCO
<sub>3</sub>). Caves often develop when slightly acidic groundwater dissolves calcite along natural fractures in the rock. A reversal of the dissolving process can create flowstone and dripstone such as stalactites, which hang from cave ceilings like icicles, and stalagmites, cone-shaped masses that form on cave floors, usually directly below stalactites. These structures form when acidic groundwater with a high concentration of dissolved calcite drips slowly from the ceiling of an air-filled cave, becomes less acidic, and leaves some of its calcite behind as a solid precipitate. Oregon Caves includes a variety of cave formations created through precipitation of calcite. Although many of the speleothems in the public sections of the cave have been broken, discolored by human skin oils, or otherwise damaged, the narrow twisting passages of the "show cave" have been largely preserved.
The cave is not pure marble. Streams have deposited silts and gravels from the surface. Dikes of diorite, an igneous rock that was part of a pluton, and shales and sandstones, sedimentary rocks interbedded with the marble, are part of the cave.
The monument has more than 50 paleontological sites ranging in age from Late Pleistocene to Holocene. A fossil of a grizzly bear more than 50,000 years old and a jaguar fossil between 40,000 and 20,000 years old have been found in the cave. Other fossils include amphibians, and rare finds of the mountain beaver and the blue grouse. The monument's mammalian fossils, found in non-public sections of the cave, are of national significance.
## Climate
The monument is in the mountains at elevations varying from 3,680 to 5,480 feet (1,120 to 1,670 m) above sea level. The park's nearness to the ocean contributes to its relatively mild climate. Temperatures generally range between 20 and 40 °F (−7 and 4 °C) in winter and 50 and 90 °F (10 and 32 °C) in summer. Inside the cave the temperature is always about 44 °F (7 °C). Annual precipitation, arriving mostly as wet snow, averages 55 inches (1,400 mm). Moderate winds are common.
## Flora and fauna
Located within the Klamath–Siskiyou region, known for its high biodiversity, the monument supports 391 vascular plant species as well as many species of bryophyte, lichen, and macrofungi. Trees in the monument include Douglas fir, oak, white fir, and alder. Among the oldest trees is Big Tree, thought to be the widest Douglas fir in the state. It is 41 feet (12 m) in circumference near the base. Its age is estimated at 600 to 800 years, and it was described in the 1930s as 14 feet (4.3 m) in diameter. The monument contains no plants with special conservation status.
Species lists for the park include about 50 mammals, 86 birds, 11 reptiles and amphibians, 8 bats, more than 200 arthropods, 8 snails and slugs, 75 butterflies, more than 55 moths, and 8 aquatic macroinvertebrates. Of these species, 160 are found inside the cave. Outside the cave, the black-tailed deer, Steller's jay, the common raven, and Townsend's chipmunk are among animals often seen in the park. Less commonly sighted are the black bear, cougar, northern flying squirrel, and Pacific giant salamander. Springs and other wet places support flatworms, frogs, and snails.
Animal species in the park with special conservation status are the northern spotted owl, California mountain kingsnake, tailed frog, Del Norte salamander, northern goshawk, olive-sided flycatcher, little willow flycatcher, Siskiyou gazelle beetle, and Pacific fisher. Five at-risk bat species are found in the cave: Townsend's big-eared bat, and the long-eared, fringed, long-legged, and Yuma myotis.
## Recreation and lodging
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve is open year-round, although snow sometimes blocks the road to the park, and the visitor center is open when the cave is open for tours. Cave tours are usually offered from mid-April to early November, but the schedule depends in spring and fall on weather conditions. The Illinois Valley Visitor Center in Cave Junction, managed by the IVCDO under an NPS contract, also has information about the cave.
Cave-tour tickets are available online through the Recreation.gov website, and a limited number of tour tickets may sometimes be had first-come, first-served. Tours vary in length and duration. The basic ranger-guided "discovery cave tour", 90 minutes long, requires negotiating more than 500 steep and uneven stairs and passageways with as little as 45 inches (110 cm) between floor and ceiling. Not recommended by the NPS for anyone with heart, lung, or mobility problems, the tour involves a total climb of 230 feet (70 m). Children under 42 inches (110 cm) tall or who are unable to climb a set of test stairs on their own are not allowed on the full cave tour. The NPS offers a limited number of off-trail "introduction to caving" tours by reservation only.
Since the cave is only 44 °F (7 °C) inside regardless of the outdoor temperature, the NPS recommends warm clothing for its tours. Good walking shoes are needed to negotiate slippery and uneven surfaces. Not allowed on the tours are flashlights, backpacks, large purses, tripods, or pets. To protect bats from white nose syndrome, visitors must not take any clothing or equipment into Oregon Caves that have previously entered any other cave or mine.
Lodging is available in the monument at the Chateau, which has 23 rooms to rent. Several hiking trails wind through the monument and adjacent forest lands. Big Tree Trail, 3.3 miles (5.3 km) long, gains 1,100 feet (340 m) in elevation between the visitor center and Big Tree. No Name Trail, 1.3 miles (2.1 km) long, begins behind the visitor center, follows Cave Creek, crosses it, and then climbs steeply to the west side of the monument. Two short side trails lead from the main trail to waterfalls along No Name Creek. Cliff Nature Trail, passing over marble outcrops and through fir forests, winds for about 1 mile (1.6 km) from near the cave entrance past the cave exit to Big Tree Trail. Old Growth Trail, 0.8 miles (1.3 km) long, links the Chateau and visitor center to the main parking lot. Other named trails entering the park include Cave Creek, Mt. Elijah, and Limestone. In 2012, the Oregon Caves Historic District was expanded to include several segments of the trail system.
Hotels, bed and breakfasts, motels, and resorts in the vicinity offer a variety of accommodations. Although no camping is allowed in the monument, the NPS maintains the Cave Creek Campground within the preserve. Additionally, the USFS maintains a campground nearby, and there are private campgrounds and recreational vehicle parks in the vicinity. The Chateau, generally open from early May to late October, has a restaurant, coffee shop, and delicatessen, and Cave Junction has several restaurants. The monument grounds include several picnic tables.
## See also
- List of national monuments of the United States
|
427,655 |
Boletus edulis
| 1,173,409,044 |
Species of mushroom, widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere
|
[
"Boletus",
"Edible fungi",
"Fungi described in 1782",
"Fungi of Africa",
"Fungi of Asia",
"Fungi of Europe",
"Fungi of New Zealand",
"Fungi of North America",
"Fungi of Western Asia",
"Italian products with protected designation of origin",
"Taxa named by Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard"
] |
Boletus edulis (English: cep, penny bun, porcino or porcini) is a basidiomycete fungus, and the type species of the genus Boletus. Widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere across Europe, Asia, and North America, it does not occur naturally in the Southern Hemisphere, although it has been introduced to southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil. Several closely related European mushrooms formerly thought to be varieties or forms of B. edulis have been shown using molecular phylogenetic analysis to be distinct species, and others previously classed as separate species are conspecific with this species. The western North American species commonly known as the California king bolete (Boletus edulis var. grandedulis) is a large, darker-coloured variant first formally identified in 2007.
The fungus grows in deciduous and coniferous forests and tree plantations, forming symbiotic ectomycorrhizal associations with living trees by enveloping the tree's underground roots with sheaths of fungal tissue. The fungus produces spore-bearing fruit bodies above ground in summer and autumn. The fruit body has a large brown cap which on occasion can reach 30 cm (12 in), rarely 40 cm (16 in) in diameter and 3 kg (6 lb 10 oz) in weight. Like other boletes, it has tubes extending downward from the underside of the cap, rather than gills; spores escape at maturity through the tube openings, or pores. The pore surface of the B. edulis fruit body is whitish when young, but ages to a greenish-yellow. The stout stipe, or stem, is white or yellowish in colour, up to 20 cm (8 in), rarely 30 cm (12 in) tall and 10 cm (4 in) thick, and partially covered with a raised network pattern, or reticulations.
Prized as an ingredient in various culinary dishes, B. edulis is an edible mushroom held in high regard in many cuisines, and is commonly prepared and eaten in soups, pasta, or risotto. The mushroom is low in fat and digestible carbohydrates, and high in protein, vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre. Although it is sold commercially, it is very difficult to cultivate. Available fresh in autumn throughout Europe and Russia, it is most often dried, packaged, and distributed worldwide. It keeps its flavour after drying, and it is then reconstituted and used in cooking. B. edulis is one of the few fungi sold pickled.
## Taxonomy
Boletus edulis was first described in 1782 by the French botanist Pierre Bulliard and still bears its original name. The starting date of fungal taxonomy had been set as January 1, 1821, to coincide with the date of the works of the 'father of mycology', Swedish naturalist Elias Magnus Fries, which meant the name required sanction by Fries (indicated in the name by a colon) to be considered valid, as Bulliard's work preceded this date. It was thus written Boletus edulis Bull.:Fr. A 1987 revision of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature set the starting date at May 1, 1753, the date of publication of Linnaeus' work, the Species Plantarum. Hence, the name no longer requires the ratification of Fries' authority. Early alternate names include Boletus solidus by English naturalist James Sowerby in 1809, and Gray's Leccinum edule. Gray's transfer of the species to Leccinum was later determined to be inconsistent with the rules of botanical nomenclature, and he apparently was unfamiliar with the earlier works of Fries when he published his arrangement of bolete species.
Boletus edulis is the type species of the genus Boletus. In Rolf Singer's classification of the Agaricales mushrooms, it is also the type species of section Boletus, a grouping of about 30 related boletes united by several characteristics: a mild-tasting, white flesh that does not change colour when exposed to air; a smooth to distinctly raised, netted pattern over at least the uppermost portion of the stem; a yellow-brown or olive-brown spore print; white tubes that later become yellowish then greenish, which initially appear to be stuffed with cotton; and cystidia that are not strongly coloured. Molecular analysis published in 1997 established that the bolete mushrooms are all derived from a common ancestor, and established the Boletales as an order separate from the Agaricales.
The generic name is derived from the Latin term bōlētus "mushroom", which was borrowed in turn from the Ancient Greek βωλίτης, "terrestrial fungus". Ultimately, this last word derives from bōlos/βῶλος "lump", "clod", and, metaphorically, "mushroom". The βωλίτης of Galen, like the boletus of Latin writers like Martial, Seneca and Petronius, is often identified as the much prized Amanita caesarea. The specific epithet edulis in Latin means "eatable" or "edible".
### Common names
Common names for B. edulis vary by region. The standard Italian name, porcino (pl. porcini), means porcine; fungo porcino, in Italian, echoes the term suilli, literally "hog mushrooms", a term used by the Ancient Romans and still in use in southern Italian terms for this species. The derivation has been ascribed to the resemblance of young fruit bodies to piglets, or to the fondness pigs have for eating them. It is also known as "king bolete". The English penny bun refers to its rounded brownish shape. The German name Steinpilz (stone mushroom) refers to the species' firm flesh. In Austria, it is called Herrenpilz, the "noble mushroom", while in Mexico, the Spanish name is panza, meaning "belly". Another Spanish name, rodellon, means "small round boulder", while the Dutch name eekhoorntjesbrood means "squirrel's bread". Russian names are belyy grib (:ru:белый гриб; "white mushroom" as opposed to less valuable "black mushrooms") and borovik (:ru:боровик; from bor—"pine forest"). The vernacular name cep is derived from the Catalan cep or its French name cèpe, although the latter is a generic term applying to several related species. In France, it is more fully cèpe de Bordeaux, derived from the Gascon cep "trunk" for its fat stalk, ultimately from the Latin cippus "stake". Ceppatello, ceppatello buono, ceppatello bianco, giallo leonato, ghezzo, and moreccio are names from Italian dialects, and ciurenys or surenys is another term in Catalan. The French-born King Charles XIV John popularised B. edulis in Sweden after 1818, and is honoured in the local vernacular name Karljohanssvamp, as well as the Danish name Karl Johan svamp. The monarch cultivated the fungus about his residence, Rosersberg Palace. The Finnish name is herkkutatti, herkku from herkullinen, which means delicious, and tatti, describing the type of mushroom.
## Description
The cap of this mushroom is 7–30 cm (3–12 in) broad at maturity. Slightly sticky to touch, it is convex in shape when young and flattens with age. The colour is generally reddish-brown fading to white in areas near the margin, and continues to darken as it matures. The stipe, or stem, is 8–25 cm (3–10 in) in height, and up to 7 cm (3 in) thick—rather large in comparison to the cap; it is club-shaped, or bulges out in the middle. It is finely reticulate on the upper portion, but smooth or irregularly ridged on the lower part. The under surface of the cap is made of thin tubes, the site of spore production; they are 1 to 2 cm (1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in) deep, and whitish in colour when young, but mature to a greenish-yellow. The angular pores, which do not stain when bruised, are small—roughly 2 to 3 pores per millimetre. In youth, the pores are white and appear as if stuffed with cotton (which are actually mycelia); as they age, they change colour to yellow and later to brown. The spore print is olive brown. The flesh of the fruit body is white, thick and firm when young, but becomes somewhat spongy with age. When bruised or cut, it either does not change colour, or turns a very light brown or light red. Fully mature specimens can weigh about 1 kg (2 lb 3 oz); a huge specimen collected on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, in 1995 bore a cap of 42 cm (16+1⁄2 in), with a stipe 18 cm (7 in) in height and 14 cm (5+1⁄2 in) wide, and weighed 3.2 kg (7 lb 1 oz). A similarly sized specimen found in Poland in 2013 made international news.
Boletus edulis is considered one of the safest wild mushrooms to pick for the table, as few poisonous species closely resemble it, and those that do may be easily distinguished by careful examination. The most similar poisonous mushroom may be the devil's bolete (Rubroboletus satanas), which has a similar shape, but has a red stem and stains blue on bruising. It is often confused with the very bitter and unpalatable Tylopilus felleus, but can be distinguished by the reticulation on the stalk; in porcini, it is a whitish, net-like pattern on a brownish stalk, whereas it is a dark pattern on white in the latter. Porcini have whitish pores while the other has pink. If in doubt, tasting a tiny bit of flesh will yield a bitter taste. It can also resemble the "bolete-like" Gyroporus castaneus, which is generally smaller, and has a browner stem. Boletus huronensis, an uncommon mushroom of northeastern North America, is another recognized look-alike known to cause severe gastrointestinal disorders.
The spores are elliptical to spindle-shaped, with dimensions of 12–17 by 5–7 μm. The basidia, the spore-bearing cells, are produced in a layer lining the tubes, and arrange themselves so their ends are facing the center of the tube; this layer of cells is known technically as a hymenium. The basidia are thin-walled, mostly attached to four spores, and measure 25–30 by 8–10 μm. Another cell type present in the hymenium is the cystidia, larger sterile cells that protrude beyond the basidia into the lumen of the hymenium, and act as air traps, regulating humidity. B. edulis has pleurocystidia (cystidia located on the face of a pore) that are thin-walled, roughly spindle-shaped to ventricose, and measure 30–45 by 7–10 μm; the "stuffed" feature of the hymenium is caused by cheilocystidia—cells found on the edges of the pores. The hyphae of B. edulis do not have clamp connections.
### Related species
Several similar brownish-coloured species are sometimes considered subspecies or forms of this mushroom. In Europe, in addition to B. edulis (or cèpe de Bordeaux), the most popular are:
- Cèpe bronzé ("dark cep"; Boletus aereus), much rarer than B. edulis, is more highly regarded by gourmets, and consequently more expensive. Usually smaller than B. edulis, it is also distinctively darker in colour. It is especially suited to drying.
- Cèpe des pins ("pine tree cep"; Boletus pinophilus or Boletus pinicola) grows among pine trees. Rarer than B. edulis, it is less appreciated by gourmets than the two other kinds of porcini, but remains a mushroom rated above most others.
- Cèpe d'été ("summer cep"; Boletus reticulatus), also less common and found earlier.
Molecular phylogenetic analyses have proven these three are all distinctive and separate species; other taxa formerly believed to be unique species or subspecies, such as B. betulicola, B. chippewaensis, B. persoonii, B. quercicola and B. venturii, are now known to be part of a B. edulis species complex with a wide morphological, ecological and geographic range, and that the genetic variability in this complex is low. Similar molecular technology has been developed to rapidly and accurately identify B. edulis and other commercially important fungi.
Three divergent lineages found in Yunnan province in China that are commonly marketed and sold as B. edulis (and are actually more closely related to B. aereus) were described in 2013 as B. bainiugan, B. meiweiniuganjun and B. shiyong. The classification has since been updated and expanded. All lineages are still members of Boletus sect. Boletus, the sensu sticto "porcini clade" of the genus.
Western North America has several species closely related to B. edulis. The white king bolete (Boletus barrowsii), found in parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California (and possibly elsewhere), is named after its discoverer Chuck Barrows. It is lighter in colour than B. edulis, having a cream-coloured cap with pink tones; often mycorrhizal with Ponderosa pine, it tends to grow in areas where there is less rainfall. Some find its flavour as good as if not better than B. edulis. The California king bolete (Boletus edulis var. grandedulis) can reach massive proportions, and is distinguished from B. edulis by a mature pore surface that is brown to slightly reddish. The cap colour appears to be affected by the amount of light received during its development, and may range from white in young specimens grown under thick canopy, to dark-brown, red-brown or yellow brown in those specimens receiving more light. The queen bolete (Boletus regineus), formerly considered a variety of B. aereus, is also a choice edible. It is generally smaller than B. edulis, and unlike that species, is typically found in mixed forests. The spring king bolete (Boletus rex-veris), formerly considered a variety of B. edulis or B. pinophilus, is found throughout western North America. In contrast to B. edulis, B. rex-veris tends to fruit in clusters, and, as its common name suggests, appears in the spring. B. fibrillosus is edible but considered inferior in taste.
## Habitat and distribution
The fruit bodies of Boletus edulis can grow singly or in small clusters of two or three specimens. The mushroom's habitat consists of areas dominated by pine (Pinus spp.), spruce (Picea spp.), hemlock (Tsuga spp.) and fir (Abies spp.) trees, although other hosts include chestnut, chinquapin, beech, Keteleeria spp., Lithocarpus spp., and oak. In California, porcini have been collected in a variety of forests, such as coastal forests, dry interior oak forests and savannas and interior high-elevation montane mixed forests, to an altitude of 3,500 m (11,500 ft). In northwestern Spain, they are common in scrublands dominated by the rock rose species Cistus ladanifer and Halimium lasianthum. In the Midi region of south-west France, they are especially favoured and locally called cèpe de Bordeaux after the town from which they are traded to the north and abroad.
Boletus edulis has a cosmopolitan distribution, concentrated in cool-temperate to subtropical regions. It is common in Europe—from northern Scandinavia, south to the extremities of Greece and Italy—and North America, where its southern range extends as far south as Mexico. It is well known from the Borgotaro area of Parma, Italy, and has PGI status there. The European distribution extends north to Scandinavia and south to southern Italy and Morocco. In China, the mushroom can be found from the northeastern Heilongjiang to the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau and Tibet. It has been recorded growing under Pinus and Tsuga in Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal, as well as in the Indian forests of Arunachal Pradesh. In West Asia, the species has been reported from the northwest forests of Iran.
### Cultivation
Some steps have been made towards cultivating Boletus edulis, including mycorrhization of rockrose shrubs enhanced by helper bacteria.
### Non-native introductions
Boletus edulis grows in some areas where it is not believed to be indigenous. It is often found underneath oak and silver birch in Hagley Park in central Christchurch, New Zealand, where it is likely to have been introduced, probably on the roots of container-grown beech, birch, and oak in the mid-19th century—around the time exotic trees began to be planted in the Christchurch area. Similarly, it has been collected in Adelaide Hills region of Australia in association with three species of introduced trees. It has been growing plentifully in association with pine forests in the southern KwaZulu-Natal Midlands in South Africa for more than 50 years and is believed to have been introduced with the import of pine trees. It also grows in pine plantations in neighboring Zimbabwe.
## Ecology
### Fruit body production
Italian folklore holds that porcini sprout up at the time of the new moon; research studies have tried to investigate more scientifically the factors that influence the production of fruit bodies. Although fruit bodies may appear any time from summer to autumn (June to November in the UK), their growth is known to be triggered by rainfall during warm periods of weather followed by frequent autumn rain with a drop in soil temperature. Above average rainfall may result in the rapid appearance of large numbers of boletes, in what is known in some circles as a "bolete year". A 2004 field study indicated that fruit body production is enhanced by an open and sunny wood habitat, corroborating an earlier observation made in a Zimbabwean study; removal of the litter layer on the forest floor appeared to have a negative effect on fruit body production, but previous studies reported contradictory results. A Lithuanian study conducted in 2001 concluded that the maximal daily growth rate of the cap (about 21 mm or 0.8 in) occurred when the relative air humidity was the greatest, and the fruit bodies ceased growing when the air humidity dropped below 40%. Factors most likely to inhibit the appearance of fruit bodies included prolonged drought, inadequate air and soil humidity, sudden decreases of night air temperatures, and the appearance of the first frost. Plots facing north tend to produce more mushrooms compared to equivalent plots facing south.
### Mycorrhizal associations
Boletus edulis is mycorrhizal—it is in a mutualistic relationship with the roots of plants (hosts), in which the fungus exchanges nitrogen and other nutrients extracted from the environment for fixed carbon from the host. Other benefits for the plant are evident: in the case of the Chinese chestnut, the formation of mycorrhizae with B. edulis increases the ability of plant seedlings to resist water stress, and increases leaf succulence, leaf area, and water-holding ability. The fungus forms a sheath of tissue around terminal, nutrient-absorbing root tips, often inducing a high degree of branching in the tips of the host, and penetrating into the root tissue, forming, to some mycologists, the defining feature of ectomycorrhizal relationships, a hartig net. The ectomycorrhizal fungi are then able to exchange nutrients with the plant, effectively expanding the root system of the host plant to the furthest reaches of the symbiont fungi. Compatible hosts may belong to multiple families of vascular plants that are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere; according to one 1995 estimate, there are at least 30 host plant species distributed over more than 15 genera. Examples of mycorrhizal associates include Chinese red pine, Mexican weeping pine, Scots pine, Norway spruce, Coast Douglas-fir, mountain pine, and Virginia pine. The fungus has also been shown to associate with gum rockrose, a pioneer early stage shrub that is adapted for growth in degraded areas, such as burned forests. These and other rockrose species are ecologically important as fungal reservoirs, maintaining an inoculum of mycorrhizal fungi for trees that appear later in the forest regrowth cycle.
The mushroom has been noted to often co-occur with Amanita muscaria or A. rubescens, although it is unclear whether this is due to a biological association between the species, or because of similarities in growing season, habitat, and ecological requirements. An association has also been reported between B. edulis and Amanita excelsa on Pinus radiata ectomycorrhizae in New Zealand, suggesting that other fungi may influence the life cycle of porcini. A 2007 field study revealed little correlation between the abundance of fruit bodies and presence of its mycelia below ground, even when soil samples were taken from directly beneath the mushroom; the study concluded that the triggers leading to formation of mycorrhizae and production of the fruit bodies were more complex.
### Heavy-metal contamination
Boletus edulis is known to be able to tolerate and even thrive on soil that is contaminated with toxic heavy metals, such as soil that might be found near metal smelters. The mushroom's resistance to heavy-metal toxicity is conferred by a biochemical called a phytochelatin—an oligopeptide whose production is induced after exposure to metal. Phytochelatins are chelating agents, capable of forming multiple bonds with the metal; in this state, the metal cannot normally react with other elements or ions and is stored in a detoxified form in the mushroom tissue.
### Pests and predators
The fruit bodies of B. edulis can be infected by the parasitic mould-like fungus Hypomyces chrysospermus, known as the bolete eater, which manifests itself as a white, yellow, or reddish-brown cottony layer over the surface of the mushroom. Some reported cases of stomach ache following consumption of dried porcini have been attributed to the presence of this mould on the fruit bodies. The mushroom is also used as a food source by several species of mushroom flies, as well as other insects and their larvae. An unidentified species of virus was reported to have infected specimens found in the Netherlands and in Italy; fruit bodies affected by the virus had relatively thick stems and small or no caps, leading to the name "little-cap disease".
Boletus edulis is a food source for animals such as the banana slug (Ariolimax columbianus), the long-haired grass mouse, the red squirrel, and, as noted in one isolated report, the fox sparrow.
## Culinary uses
Boletus edulis, as the species epithet edulis (Latin: 'edible') directly implies, is an edible mushroom. Italian chef and restaurateur Antonio Carluccio has described it as representing "the wild mushroom par excellence", and hails it as the most rewarding of all fungi in the kitchen for its taste and versatility. Considered a choice edible, particularly in France, Germany, Poland and Italy, it was widely written about by the Roman writers Pliny the Elder and Martial, although ranked below the esteemed Amanita caesarea. When served suilli instead of boleti, the disgruntled Martial wrote:
> sunt tibi boleti; fungos ego sumo suillos (Ep. iii. 60)
> ("You eat the choice boletus, I have mushrooms that swine grub up.")
The flavour has been described as nutty and slightly meaty, with a smooth, creamy texture, and a distinctive aroma reminiscent of sourdough. Young, small porcini are most appreciated by gourmets, as the large ones often harbour maggots (insect larvae), and become slimy, soft and less tasty with age. Fruit bodies are collected by holding the stipe near the base and twisting gently. Cutting the stipe with a knife may risk the part left behind rotting and the mycelium being destroyed. Peeling and washing are not recommended. The fruit bodies are highly perishable, due largely to the high water content (around 90%), the high level of enzyme activity, and the presence of a flora of microorganisms. Caution should be exercised when collecting specimens from potentially polluted or contaminated sites, as several studies have shown that the fruit bodies can bioaccumulate toxic heavy metals like mercury, cadmium, caesium and polonium. Bioaccumulated metals or radioactive fission decay products are like chemical signatures: chemical and radiochemical analysis can be used to identify the origin of imported specimens, and for long-term radioecological monitoring of polluted areas.
Porcini are sold fresh in markets in summer and autumn in Europe and Russia, and dried or canned at other times of the year, and distributed worldwide to countries where they are not otherwise found. They are eaten and enjoyed raw, sautéed with butter, ground into pasta, in soups, and in many other dishes. In France, they are used in recipes such as cèpes à la Bordelaise, cèpe frits and cèpe aux tomates. Porcini risotto is a traditional Italian autumn dish. Porcini are a feature of many cuisines, including Provençal, and Viennese. They are used in soups and consumed blanched in salads in Thailand. Porcini can also be frozen—either raw or first cooked in butter. The colour, aroma, and taste of frozen porcini deteriorate noticeably if frozen longer than four months. Blanching or soaking and blanching as a processing step before freezing can extend the freezer life up to 12 months. They are also one of the few mushroom species pickled and sold commercially.
### Dried
Boletus edulis is well suited to drying—its flavour intensifies, it is easily reconstituted, and its resulting texture is pleasant. Reconstitution is done by soaking in hot, but not boiling, water for about twenty minutes; the water used is infused with the mushroom aroma and it too can be used in subsequent cooking. Dried porcini have more protein than most other commonly consumed vegetables apart from soybeans. Some of this content is indigestible, though digestibility is improved with cooking.
Like other boletes, porcini can be dried by being strung separately on twine and hung close to the ceiling of a kitchen. Alternatively, the mushrooms can be dried by cleaning with a brush (washing is not recommended), and then placing them in a wicker basket or bamboo steamer on top of a boiler or hot water tank. Another method is drying in an oven at 25 to 30 °C (77 to 86 °F) for two to three hours, then increasing the temperature to 50 °C (122 °F) until crisp or brittle. Once dry, they are kept in an airtight jar. Importantly for commercial production, porcini retain their flavour after industrial preparation in a pressure cooker or after canning or bottling, and are thus useful for manufacturers of soups or stews. The addition of a few pieces of dried porcino can significantly add to flavour, and they are a major ingredient of the pasta sauce known as carrettiera (carter's sauce). The drying process is known to induce the formation of various volatile substances that contribute to the mushroom's aroma. Chemical analysis has shown that the odour of the dried mushroom is a complex mixture of 53 volatile compounds.
### Commercial harvest
A 1998 estimate suggests the total annual worldwide consumption of Boletus edulis and closely related species (B. aereus, B. pinophilus, and B. reticulatus) to be between 20,000 and 100,000 tons. Approximately 2,700 tonnes (3,000 tons) were sold in France, Italy and Germany in 1988, according to official figures. The true amount consumed far exceeds this, as it does not account for informal sales or consumption by collectors. They are widely exported and sold in dried form, reaching countries where they do not occur naturally, such as Australia and New Zealand. The autonomous community of Castile and León in Spain produces 7,700 tonnes (8,500 tons) annually. In autumn, the price of porcini in the Northern Hemisphere typically ranges between \$20 and \$80 per kilogram, although in New York in 1997 the scarcity of fruit bodies elevated the wholesale price to more than \$200 per kilogram.
In the vicinity of Borgotaro in the Province of Parma of northern Italy, the four species Boletus edulis, B. aereus, B. aestivalis and B. pinophilus have been recognised for their superior taste and officially termed Fungo di Borgotaro. Here these mushrooms have been collected for centuries and exported commercially. Owing to the globalization of the mushroom trade most of the porcini commercially available in Italy or exported by Italy no longer originate there. Porcini and other mushrooms are imported into Italy from various locations, especially China and eastern European countries; these are then often re-exported under the "Italian porcini" label.
In Italy the disconnect with local production has had an adverse effect on quality; for example in the 1990s some of the dried porcino mushrooms exported to Italy from China contained species of genus Tylopilus, which are rather similar in appearance and when dried are difficult for both mushroom labourers and mycologists alike to distinguish from Boletus. Tylopilus species typically have a very bitter taste, which is imparted to the flavour of the porcini with which they are mixed.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the economic and political barriers that followed, central and eastern European countries with local mushroom harvesting traditions, such as Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, developed into exporters of porcini, concentrating primarily on the Italian market. Exported porcini and other wild fungi are also destined for France, Germany and other western European markets, where demand for them exists, but collection on a commercial scale does not. Picking B. edulis has become an annual seasonal income earner and pastime in countries like Bulgaria, especially for many Roma communities and the unemployed. A lack of control has led to heavy exploitation of the mushroom resource.
Like many other strictly mycorrhizal fungi, B. edulis has eluded cultivation attempts for years. The results of some studies suggest that unknown components of the soil microflora might be required for B. edulis to establish a mycorrhizal relationship with the host plant. Successful attempts at cultivating B. edulis have been made by Spanish scientists by mycorrhization of Cistus species, with Pseudomonas fluorescens bacteria helping the mycorrhiza.
## Nutrition
Boletus edulis mushrooms are 9% carbohydrates, 3% fat, and 7% protein (table). Fresh mushrooms consist of over 80% moisture, although reported values tend to differ somewhat as moisture content can be affected by environmental temperature and relative humidity during growth and storage. The carbohydrate component contains the monosaccharides glucose, mannitol and α,α-trehalose, the polysaccharide glycogen, and the water-insoluble structural polysaccharide chitin, which accounts for up to 80–90% of dry matter in mushroom cell walls. Chitin, hemicellulose, and pectin-like carbohydrates—all indigestible by humans—contribute to high proportion of insoluble fibre in B. edulis.
The total lipid, or crude fat, content makes up 3% of the dry matter of the mushroom. The proportion of fatty acids (expressed as a % of total fatty acids) are: palmitic acid, 10%; stearic acid, 3%; oleic acid, 36%; and linoleic acid, 42%.
A comparative study of the amino acid composition of eleven Portuguese wild edible mushroom species showed Boletus edulis to have the highest total amino acid content.
B. edulis mushrooms are rich in the dietary minerals, sodium, iron, calcium, and magnesium, with amounts varying according to the mushroom component and to soil composition in the geographic region of China where they were sampled. They also have high content of B vitamins and tocopherols. B. edulis contains appreciable amounts of selenium, a trace mineral, although the bioavailability of mushroom-derived selenium is low.
## Phytochemicals and research
Boletus edulis fruit bodies contain diverse phytochemicals, including 500 mg of ergosterol per 100 g of dried mushroom, and ergothioneine. The fruit bodies contain numerous polyphenols, especially a high content of rosmarinic acid, and organic acids (such as oxalic, citric, malic, succinic and fumaric acids), and alkaloids.
### Aroma
Aroma compounds giving B. edulis mushrooms their characteristic fragrance include some 100 components, such as esters and fatty acids. In a study of aroma compounds, 1-octen-3-one was the most prevalent chemical detected in raw mushrooms, with pyrazines having increased aroma effect and elevated content after drying.
## See also
- List of Boletus species
- List of North American boletes
|
221,377 |
Lady Gregory
| 1,165,536,718 |
Irish playwright, poet and folklorist (1852–1932)
|
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Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (; 15 March 1852 – 22 May 1932) was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, she turned against it. Her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime.
Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park in County Galway served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important as her creative writings for that theatre's development. Lady Gregory's motto was taken from Aristotle: "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people."
## Biography
### Early life and marriage
Gregory was born at Roxborough, County Galway, the youngest daughter of the Anglo-Irish gentry family Persse. Her mother, Frances Barry, was related to Viscount Guillamore, and her family home, Roxborough, was a 6,000-acre (24 km2) estate located between Gort and Loughrea, the main house of which was later burnt down during the Irish Civil War. She was educated at home, and her future career was strongly influenced by the family nurse (i.e. nanny), Mary Sheridan, a Catholic and a native Irish speaker, who introduced the young Augusta to the history and legends of the local area.
She married Sir William Henry Gregory, a widower with an estate at Coole Park, near Gort, on 4 March 1880 in St. Matthais' Church, Dublin. Sir William, who was 36 years her elder, had just retired from his position as Governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), having previously served several terms as Member of Parliament for County Galway. He was a well-educated man with many literary and artistic interests, and the house at Coole Park housed a large library and extensive art collection, both of which Lady Gregory was eager to explore. He also had a house in London, where the couple spent a considerable amount of time, holding weekly salons frequented by many leading literary and artistic figures of the day, including Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, John Everett Millais and Henry James. Their only child, Robert Gregory, was born in 1881. He was killed during the First World War while serving as a pilot, an event which inspired W. B. Yeats's poems "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" and "Shepherd and Goatherd".
### Early writings
The Gregorys travelled in Ceylon, India, Spain, Italy and Egypt. While in Egypt Lady Gregory met, and in 1882 and 1883 had an affair with, the English poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, during which she wrote a series of love poems, A Woman's Sonnets.
Her earliest work to appear under her own name was Arabi and His Household (1882), a pamphlet—originally a letter to The Times—in support of Ahmed Orabi Pasha, leader of what has come to be known as the Urabi Revolt, an 1879 Egyptian nationalist revolt against the oppressive regime of the Khedive and the European domination of Egypt. She later said of this booklet, "whatever political indignation or energy was born with me may have run its course in that Egyptian year and worn itself out". Despite this, in 1893 she published A Phantom's Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin, an anti-Nationalist pamphlet against William Ewart Gladstone's proposed second Home Rule Act. The unsigned pamphlet features Egyptian gods sitting in judgment upon Gladstone, and his phantom being shown the results of high taxes and English government. As James Pethica writes, "With its uncompromising portrayal of a country sliding into anarchy and ruin, the anonymous pamphlet drew appreciative comment from those of Gregory's London friends who knew it to be her work. 'It has been a success,' she noted in her diary[.]"
She continued to write prose during the period of her marriage, including short stories she published under the name "Angus Grey." During the winter of 1883, whilst her husband was in Ceylon, she worked on a series of memoirs of her childhood home, with a view to publishing them under the title An Emigrant's Notebook, but this plan was abandoned. "An Emigrant's Note Book" remained unpublished until it appeared in Lady Gregory's Early Irish Writings 1883-1893 (2018). She wrote a series of pamphlets in 1887 called Over the River, in which she appealed for funds for the parish of St. Stephens in Southwark, south London. She also wrote a number of short stories in the years 1890 and 1891, although these also never appeared in print. A number of unpublished poems from this period have also survived. When Sir William Gregory died in March 1892, Lady Gregory went into mourning and returned to Coole Park; there she edited her husband's autobiography, which she published in 1894. She was to write later, "If I had not married I should not have learned the quick enrichment of sentences that one gets in conversation; had I not been widowed I should not have found the detachment of mind, the leisure for observation necessary to give insight into character, to express and interpret it. Loneliness made me rich—'full', as Bacon says."
### Cultural nationalism
A trip to Inisheer in the Aran Islands in 1893 re-awoke for Lady Gregory an interest in the Irish language and in the folklore of the area in which she lived. She organised Irish lessons at the school at Coole, and began collecting tales from the area around her home, especially from the residents of Gort workhouse. One of the tutors she employed was Norma Borthwick, who would visit Coole numerous times. This activity led to the publication of a number of volumes of folk material, including A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906), The Kiltartan History Book (1909) and The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910). She also produced a number of collections of "Kiltartanese" versions of Irish myths, including Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Gods and Fighting Men (1903). ("Kiltartanese" is Lady Gregory's term for English with Gaelic syntax, based on the dialect spoken in Kiltartan.) In his introduction to Cuchulain of Muirthemne Yeats wrote "I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time". James Joyce was to parody this claim in the Scylla and Charybdis chapter of his novel Ulysses.
Towards the end of 1894, encouraged by the positive reception of the editing of her husband's autobiography, Lady Gregory turned her attention to another editorial project. She decided to prepare selections from Sir William Gregory's grandfather's correspondence for publication as Mr Gregory's Letter-Box 1813–30 (1898). This entailed her researching Irish history of the period; one outcome of this work was a shift in her political position, from the "soft" Unionism of her earlier writing on Home Rule to a definite support of Irish nationalism and Republicanism, and to what she was later to describe as "a dislike and distrust of England".
### Founding of the Abbey
Edward Martyn was a neighbour of Lady Gregory, and it was during a visit to his home, Tullira Castle, in 1896 that she first met W. B. Yeats. Discussions between the three of them, over the following year or so, led to the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899. Lady Gregory undertook fundraising, and the first programme consisted of Martyn's The Heather Field and Yeats's The Countess Cathleen.
The Irish Literary Theatre project lasted until 1901, when it collapsed owing to lack of funding. In 1904, Lady Gregory, Martyn, Yeats, John Millington Synge, Æ, Annie Horniman and William and Frank Fay came together to form the Irish National Theatre Society. The first performances staged by the society took place in a building called the Molesworth Hall. When the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties in Lower Abbey Street and an adjacent building in Marlborough Street became available, Horniman and William Fay agreed to their purchase and refitting to meet the needs of the society.
On 11 May 1904, the society formally accepted Horniman's offer of the use of the building. As Horniman was not normally resident in Ireland, the Royal Letters Patent required were paid for by her but granted in the name of Lady Gregory. One of her own plays, Spreading the News, was performed on the opening night, 27 December 1904. At the opening of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in January 1907, a significant portion of the crowd rioted, causing the remainder of the performances to be acted out in dumbshow. Lady Gregory did not think as highly of the play as Yeats did, but she defended Synge as a matter of principle. Her view of the affair is summed up in a letter to Yeats where she wrote of the riots: "It is the old battle, between those who use a toothbrush and those who don't."
### Later career
In July 1925, The Travelling Man by Lady Gregory was broadcast by the nascent British Broadcasting Company's 2LO (London) station.
She remained an active director of the theatre until ill-health led to her retirement in 1928. During this time she wrote more than 19 plays, mainly for production at the Abbey. Many of these were written in an attempted transliteration of the Hiberno-English dialect spoken around Coole Park that became widely known as Kiltartanese, from the nearby village of Kiltartan. Her plays had been among the most successful at the Abbey in the earlier years, but their popularity declined. Indeed, the Irish writer Oliver St. John Gogarty once wrote "the perpetual presentation of her plays nearly ruined the Abbey". In addition to her plays, she wrote a two-volume study of the folklore of her native area called Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland in 1920. She also played the lead role in three performances of Cathleen Ni Houlihan in 1919.
During her time on the board of the Abbey, Coole Park remained her home; she spent her time in Dublin staying in a number of hotels. For example, at the time of the 1911 national census, she was staying in a hotel at 16 South Frederick Street. In these she dined frugally, often on food she had brought with her from home. She frequently used her hotel rooms to interview would-be Abbey dramatists and to entertain the company after opening nights of new plays. She spent many of her days working on her translations in the National Library of Ireland. She gained a reputation as being a somewhat conservative figure. For example, when Denis Johnston submitted to the Abbey his first play, Shadowdance, it was rejected by Lady Gregory and returned to the author with "The Old Lady says No" written on the title page. Johnston decided to rename the play, and The Old Lady Says 'No!' was eventually staged by the Gate Theatre in 1928.
### Retirement and death
When she retired from the Abbey board, Lady Gregory returned to live in Galway, although she continued to visit Dublin regularly. The house and demesne at Coole Park had been sold to the Irish Forestry Commission in 1927, with Lady Gregory retaining life tenancy. Her Galway home had long been a focal point for the writers associated with the Irish Literary Revival, and this continued after her retirement. On a tree in what were the grounds of the house, one can still see the carved initials of Synge, Æ, Yeats and his artist brother Jack, George Moore, Seán O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Katharine Tynan and Violet Martin. Yeats wrote five poems about, or set in, the house and grounds: "The Wild Swans at Coole", "I walked among the seven woods of Coole", "In the Seven Woods", "Coole Park, 1929" and "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931".
In 1932, Lady Gregory, whom Shaw once described as "the greatest living Irishwoman", died at home aged 80 from breast cancer, and is buried in Bohermore Cemetery, Galway. The entire contents of Coole Park were auctioned three months after her death, and the house was demolished in 1941.
## Legacy
Her plays fell out of favour after her death, and are now rarely performed. Many of the diaries and journals she kept for most of her adult life have been published, providing a rich source of information on Irish literary history during the first three decades of the 20th century.
Her Cuchulain of Muirthemne is still considered a good retelling of the Ulster Cycle tales such as Deidre, Cuchulainn, and the Táin Bó Cúailnge stories. Thomas Kinsella wrote "I emerged with the conviction that Lady Gregory's Cuchul-ian of Muirthemne, though only a paraphrase, gave the best idea of the Ulster stories". However her version omitted some elements of the tale, usually assumed to avoid offending Victorian sensibilities, as well being an attempt as presenting a "respectable" nation myth for the Irish, though her paraphrase is not considered dishonest. Other critics find the bowdlerisations in her works more offensive, not only the removal of references to sex and bodily functions, but also the loss of Cuchulain's "battle frenzy" (Ríastrad); in other areas she censored less than some of her male contemporaries, such as Standish O'Grady.
In 2019, the New York Public Library announced a major exhibition on Gregory and her work, "All This Mine Alone: Lady Gregory and the Irish Literary Revival," to be co-curated by James Pethica and Colm Toíbín. The exhibition opened in March 2020 but closed do to the global pandemic; an online version remains available. In conjunction with the exhibition, The Irish Repertory Theatre of New York and the Druid Theatre of Galway offered a major revival of some of Gregory's plays. In November 2020 it was announced that Trinity College Dublin, whose library's forty busts previously represented men only was commissioning four additional busts of women and that one of them would be a bust of Lady Gregory. In 2023 Gregory was the subject of a a two-part RTÉ documentary starring Miriam Margolyes and Senator Lynn Ruane, and featuring commentary from Roy Foster, James Pethica, Judith Hill, Melissa Sihra, and other Gregory scholars.
## Published works, collaborations and translations
- Arabi and His Household (1882)
- Over the River (1888)
- A Phantom's Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin (1893) (anonymously)
- Sir William Gregory, K.C.M.G., Formerly Member of Parliament and Sometime Governor of \*Ceylon: An Autobiography (editor 1894)
- Mr. Gregory's Letter Box 1813–1830 (editor 1898)
- Casadh an t-súgáin; or, The Twisting of the Rope (translator 1902)
- Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster (Irish folk tales 1902)
- Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish by Lady Gregory (1903)
- Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danann and of the Fianna of Ireland (1904)
- Kincora: A Drama in Three Acts (1905)
- Spreading the News, The Rising of the Moon By Lady Gregory. The Poorhouse by Lady Gregory and Douglas Hyde (1906)
- The Hyacinth Galvey: A Comedy (1906)
- A Book of Saints and Wonders, Put Down Here by Lady Gregory According to the Old Writings and the Memory of the People of Ireland (1907)
- Seven Short Plays: Spreading the News. Hyacinth Halvey. The Rising of the Moon. The Jackdaw. The Workhouse Ward. The Travelling Man. The Gaol Gate (1909)
- The Kiltartan History Book (1909)
- The Kiltartan Molière: The Miser. The Doctor in Spite of Himself. The Rogueries of Scapin. Translated by Lady Gregory (1910)
- Spreading the News (1911)
- The Kiltartan Wonder Book by Lady Gregory (1911)
- Irish Folk-History Plays, 1st series. The Tragedies: Grania – Kincora—Dervorgilla (1912)
- Irish Folk-History Plays, 2nd series: The Tragic-Comedies: The Canavans – The White Cockade – The Deliverer (1912)
- New Comedies: The Bogie Men; The Full Moon; Coats; Damer's Gold; McDonough's Wife (1913)
- Damer's Gold: A Comedy in Two Acts (1913)
- Coats (1913)
- Our Irish Theatre – A Chapter of Autobiography (1913)
- The Unicorn from the Stars: And Other Plays, by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory (1915)
- Shanwalla (1915)
- The Golden Apple: A Play for Kiltartan Children (1916)
- The Kiltartan Poetry Book: Prose Translations from the Irish (1919)
- The Dragon: A Wonder Play in Three Acts (1920)
- Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland Collected and Arranged by Lady Gregory: With Two Essays and Notes by W.B. Yeats (1920)
- Hugh Lane's Life and Achievement, with Some Account of the Dublin Galleries. With Illustrations (1921)
- The Image and Other Plays (Hanranhan's Ghost; Shanwalla; The Wrens(1922)
- Three Wonder Plays: The Dragon. Aristotle's Bellows. The Jester (1922)
- Plays in Prose and Verse: Written for an Irish Theatre, and Generally with the Help of a Friend, by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory (1922)
- The Story Brought by Brigit (1924)
- Mirandolina (1924)
- On the Racecourse (1926)
- Three Last Plays: Sancho's Master. Dave. The Would-Be Gentleman (1928)
- My First Play (Colman and Guair) (1930)
- Coole (1931)
- Lady Gregory's Journals (1947)
- Seventy Years, 1852-1922, Being the Autobiography of Lady Gregory (1974)
- The Journals. Part 1. 10 October 1916 – 24 February 1925 (1978)
- The Journals. Part 2. 21 February 1925 – 9 May 1932 (1987)
- Lady Gregory's Diaries 1892-1902 (1996)
- Lady Gregory's Early Irish Writings 1883-1893 (2018)
## See also
- Cathleen Ní Houlihan
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Chinese classifier
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Measure words in Chinese
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"Parts of speech"
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The modern Chinese varieties make frequent use of what are called classifiers or measure words. One use of classifiers is when a noun is qualified by a numeral or demonstrative. In the Chinese equivalent of a phrase such as "three books" or "that person", it is normally necessary to insert an appropriate classifier between the numeral/demonstrative and the noun. For example, in Standard Mandarin, the first of these phrases would be 三书 sān shū, where sān means "three", shū means "books", and běn is the required classifier. When a noun stands alone without any determiner, no classifier is needed. There are also various other uses of classifiers: for example, when placed after a noun rather than before it, or when repeated, a classifier signifies a plural or indefinite quantity.
The terms "classifier" and "measure word" are frequently used interchangeably (as equivalent to the Chinese term 量词 (量詞) liàngcí, which literally means "measure word"). Sometimes, however, the two are distinguished, with classifier denoting a particle without any particular meaning of its own, as in the example above, and measure word denoting a word for a particular quantity or measurement of something, such as "drop", "cupful", or "liter". The latter type also includes certain words denoting lengths of time, units of currency, etc. These two types are alternatively called count-classifier and mass-classifier, since the first type can only meaningfully be used with count nouns, while the second is used particularly with mass nouns. However, the grammatical behavior of words of the two types is largely identical.
Most nouns have one or more particular classifiers associated with them, often depending on the nature of the things they denote. For example, many nouns denoting flat objects such as tables, papers, beds, and benches use the classifier 张 (張) zhāng, whereas many long and thin objects use 条 (條) tiáo. The total number of classifiers in Chinese may be put at anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred, depending on how they are counted. The classifier 个 (個), pronounced gè or ge in Mandarin, apart from being the standard classifier for many nouns, also serves as a general classifier, which may often (but not always) be used in place of other classifiers; in informal and spoken language, native speakers tend to use this classifier far more than any other, even though they know which classifier is "correct" when asked. Mass-classifiers might be used with all sorts of nouns with which they make sense: for example, 盒 hé ("box") may be used to denote boxes of objects, such as lightbulbs or books, even though those nouns would be used with their own appropriate count-classifiers if being counted as individual objects. Researchers have differing views as to how classifier–noun pairings arise: some regard them as being based on innate semantic features of the noun (for example, all nouns denoting "long" objects take a certain classifier because of their inherent longness), while others see them as motivated more by analogy to prototypical pairings (for example, "dictionary" comes to take the same classifier as the more common word "book"). There is some variation in the pairings used, with speakers of different dialects often using different classifiers for the same item. Some linguists have proposed that the use of classifier phrases may be guided less by grammar and more by stylistic or pragmatic concerns on the part of a speaker who may be trying to foreground new or important information.
Many other languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area exhibit similar classifier systems, leading to speculation about the origins of the Chinese system. Ancient classifier-like constructions, which used a repeated noun rather than a special classifier, are attested in Old Chinese as early as 1400 BCE, but true classifiers did not appear in these phrases until much later. Originally, classifiers and numbers came after the noun rather than before, and probably moved before the noun sometime after 500 BCE. The use of classifiers did not become a mandatory part of Old Chinese grammar until around 1100 CE. Some nouns became associated with specific classifiers earlier than others; the earliest probably being nouns that signified culturally valued items such as horses and poems. Many words that are classifiers today started out as full nouns; in some cases their meanings have been gradually bleached away so that they are now used only as classifiers.
## Usage
In Chinese, a numeral cannot usually quantify a noun by itself; instead, the language relies on classifiers, commonly also referred to as measure words. When a noun is preceded by a number, a demonstrative such as this or that, or certain quantifiers such as every, a classifier must normally be inserted before the noun. Thus, while English speakers say "one person" or "this person", Mandarin Chinese speakers say 一人 (yí rén, one- person) or 这人 (zhè rén, this- person), respectively. If a noun is preceded by both a demonstrative and a number, the demonstrative comes first. (This is just as in English, e.g. "these three cats".) If an adjective modifies the noun, it typically comes after the classifier and before the noun. The general structure of a classifier phrase is
The tables below give examples of common types of classifier phrases. While most English nouns do not require classifiers or measure words (in English, both “five dogs” and “five cups of coffee” are grammatically correct), nearly all Chinese nouns do; thus, in the first table, phrases that have no classifier in English have one in Chinese.
On the other hand, when a noun is not counted or introduced with a demonstrative, a classifier is not necessary: for example, there is a classifier in 三车 (sān liàng chē, three- car, "three cars") but not in 我的车 (wǒ-de chē, me-possessive car, "my car"). Furthermore, numbers and demonstratives are often not required in Chinese, so speakers may choose not to use one—and thus not to use a classifier. For example, to say "Zhangsan turned into a tree", both 张三变成了一树 (Zhāngsān biànchéng -le yì shù, Zhangsan become PAST one tree) and 张三变成了树 (Zhāngsān biànchéng -le shù, Zhangsan become PAST tree) are acceptable. The use of classifiers after demonstratives is in fact optional.
It is also possible for a classifier alone to qualify a noun, the numeral ("one") being omitted, as in 买马 mǎi mǎ "buy horse", i.e. "buy a horse".
### Specialized uses
In addition to their uses with numbers and demonstratives, classifiers have some other functions. A classifier placed after a noun expresses a plural or indefinite quantity of it. For example, 书 (shū-, book-) means "the books" (e.g. on a shelf, or in a library), whereas the standard pre-nominal construction 一书 (yī shū, one- book) means "one book".
Many classifiers may be reduplicated to mean "every". For example, 人 (- rén, - person) signifies "every person".
A classifier used along with 一 (yī, "one") and after a noun conveys a meaning close to "all of" or "the entire" or "a \_\_\_full of". The sentence 天空一云 (tiānkōng yī yún, sky one- cloud), meaning "the sky was full of clouds", uses the classifier 片 (piàn, slice), which refers to the sky, not the clouds.
Classifiers may also indicate possession. For example, the Mandarin equivalent of "my book" would often be 我的书 (wǒ de shū, me-'s book), but in Cantonese this would typically be expressed as 我书 (ngo<sup>4</sup> bun<sup>2</sup> syu<sup>1</sup>, me- book), with the classifier serving as a possessive marker roughly equivalent to English 's.
## Types
The vast majority of classifiers are those that count or classify nouns (nominal classifiers, as in all the examples given so far, as opposed to verbal classifiers). These are further subdivided into count-classifiers and mass-classifiers, described below. In everyday speech, people often use the term "measure word", or its literal Chinese equivalent 量词 liàngcí, to cover all Chinese count-classifiers and mass-classifiers, but the types of words grouped under this term are not all the same. Specifically, the various types of classifiers exhibit numerous differences in meaning, in the kinds of words they attach to, and in syntactic behavior.
Chinese has a large number of nominal classifiers; estimates of the number in Mandarin range from "several dozen" or "about 50", to over 900. The range is so large because some of these estimates include all types of classifiers while others include only count-classifiers, and because the idea of what constitutes a "classifier" has changed over time. Today, regular dictionaries include 120 to 150 classifiers; the 8822-word Syllabus of Graded Words and Characters for Chinese Proficiency (Chinese: 汉语水平词汇与汉字等级大纲; pinyin: Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Cíhuì yǔ Hànzi Děngjí Dàgāng) lists 81; and a 2009 list compiled by Gao Ming and Barbara Malt includes 126. The number of classifiers that are in everyday, informal use, however, may be lower: linguist Mary Erbaugh has claimed that about two dozen "core classifiers" account for most classifier use. As a whole, though, the classifier system is so complex that specialized classifier dictionaries have been published.
### Count-classifiers and mass-classifiers
Within the set of nominal classifiers, linguists generally draw a distinction between "count-classifiers" and "mass-classifiers". True count-classifiers are used for naming or counting a single count noun, and have no direct translation in English; for example, 一书 (yì shū, one- book) can only be translated in English as "one book" or "a book". Furthermore, count-classifiers cannot be used with mass nouns: just as an English speaker cannot ordinarily say \*"five muds", a Chinese speaker cannot say \*五泥 (wǔ nì, five- mud). For such mass nouns, one must use mass-classifiers.
Mass-classifiers (true measure words) do not pick out inherent properties of an individual noun like count-classifiers do; rather, they lump nouns into countable units. Thus, mass-classifiers can generally be used with multiple types of nouns; for example, while the mass-classifier 盒 (hé, box) can be used to count boxes of lightbulbs (一灯泡 yì dēngpào, "one of lightbulbs") or of books (一教材 yì jiàocái, "one of textbooks"), each of these nouns must use a different count-classifier when being counted by itself (一灯泡 yì dēngpào "one lightbulb"; vs. 一教材 yì jiàocái "one textbook"). While count-classifiers have no direct English translation, mass-classifiers often do: phrases with count-classifiers such as 一人 (yí rén, one- person) can only be translated as "one person" or "a person", whereas those with mass-classifiers such as 一人 (yì rén, one--person) can be translated as "a crowd of people". All languages, including English, have mass-classifiers, but count-classifiers are unique to certain "classifier languages", and are not a part of English grammar apart from a few exceptional cases such as head of livestock.
Within the range of mass-classifiers, authors have proposed subdivisions based on the manner in which a mass-classifier organizes the noun into countable units. One of these is measurement units (also called "standard measures"), which all languages must have in order to measure items; this category includes units such as kilometers, liters, or pounds (see list). Like other classifiers, these can also stand without a noun; thus, for example, 磅 (bàng, pound) may appear as both 三肉 (sān ròu, "three of meat") or just 三 (sān , "three ", never \*三 sān ). Units of currency behave similarly: for example, 十 (shí , "ten "), which is short for (for example) 十人民币 (shí rénmínbì, "ten of renminbi"). Other proposed types of mass-classifiers include "collective" mass-classifiers, such as 一人 (yì rén, "a of people"), which group things less precisely; and "container" mass-classifiers which group things by containers they come in, as in 一粥 (yì zhōu, "a of porridge") or 一糖 (yì táng, "a of sugar").
The difference between count-classifiers and mass-classifiers can be described as one of quantifying versus categorizing: in other words, mass-classifiers create a unit by which to measure something (i.e. boxes, groups, chunks, pieces, etc.), whereas count-classifiers simply name an existing item. Most words can appear with both count-classifiers and mass-classifiers; for example, pizza can be described as both 一比萨 (yì bǐsà, "one pizza", literally "one of pizza"), using a count-classifier, and as 一比萨 (yí bǐsà, "one of pizza"), using a mass-classifier. In addition to these semantic differences, there are differences in the grammatical behaviors of count-classifiers and mass-classifiers; for example, mass-classifiers may be modified by a small set of adjectives (as in 一大人 yí dà rén, "a big of people"), whereas count-classifiers usually may not (for example, \*一大人 yí dà rén is never said for "a big person"; instead the adjective must modify the noun: 一大人 yí dà rén). Another difference is that count-classifiers may often be replaced by a "general" classifier 个 (個), gè with no apparent change in meaning, whereas mass-classifiers may not. Syntacticians Lisa Cheng and Rint Sybesma propose that count-classifiers and mass-classifiers have different underlying syntactic structures, with count-classifiers forming "classifier phrases", and mass-classifiers being a sort of relative clause that only looks like a classifier phrase. The distinction between count-classifiers and mass-classifiers is often unclear, however, and other linguists have suggested that count-classifiers and mass-classifiers may not be fundamentally different. They posit that "count-classifier" and "mass-classifier" are the extremes of a continuum, with most classifiers falling somewhere in between.
### Verbal classifiers
There is a set of "verbal classifiers" used specifically for counting the number of times an action occurs, rather than counting a number of items; this set includes 次 cì, 遍/徧 biàn, 回 huí, and 下 xià, which all roughly translate to "times". For example, 我去过三北京 (wǒ qù-guo sān Běijīng, I go-PAST three- Beijing, "I have been to Beijing three "). These words can also form compound classifiers with certain nouns, as in 人次 rén cì "person-time", which can be used to count (for example) visitors to a museum in a year (where visits by the same person on different occasions are counted separately).
Another type of verbal classifier indicates the tool or implement used to perform the action. An example is found in the sentence 他踢了我一脚 tā tī le wǒ yī jiǎo "he kicked me", or more literally "he kicked me one foot". The word 脚 jiǎo, which usually serves as a simple noun meaning "foot", here functions as a verbal classifier reflecting the tool (namely the foot) used to perform the kicking action.
## Relation to nouns
Different classifiers often correspond to different particular nouns. For example, books generally take the classifier 本 běn, flat objects take 张 (張) zhāng, animals take 只 (隻) zhī, machines take 台 tái, large buildings and mountains take 座 zuò, etc. Within these categories are further subdivisions—while most animals take 只 (隻) zhī, domestic animals take 头 (頭) tóu, long and flexible animals take 条 (條) tiáo, and horses take 匹 pǐ. Likewise, while long things that are flexible (such as ropes) often take 条 (條) tiáo, long things that are rigid (such as sticks) take 根 gēn, unless they are also round (like pens or cigarettes), in which case in some dialects they take 枝 zhī. Classifiers also vary in how specific they are; some (such as 朵 duǒ for flowers and other similarly clustered items) are generally only used with one type, whereas others (such as 条 (條) tiáo for long and flexible things, one-dimensional things, or abstract items like news reports) are much less restricted. Furthermore, there is not a one-to-one relationship between nouns and classifiers: the same noun may be paired with different classifiers in different situations. The specific factors that govern which classifiers are paired with which nouns have been a subject of debate among linguists.
### Categories and prototypes
While mass-classifiers do not necessarily bear any semantic relationship to the noun with which they are used (e.g. box and book are not related in meaning, but one can still say "a box of books"), count-classifiers do. The precise nature of that relationship, however, is not certain, since there is so much variability in how objects may be organized and categorized by classifiers. Accounts of the semantic relationship may be grouped loosely into categorical theories, which propose that count-classifiers are matched to objects solely on the basis of inherent features of those objects (such as length or size), and prototypical theories, which propose that people learn to match a count-classifier to a specific prototypical object and to other objects that are like that prototype.
The categorical, "classical" view of classifiers was that each classifier represents a category with a set of conditions; for example, the classifier 条 (條) tiáo would represent a category defined as all objects that meet the conditions of being long, thin, and one-dimensional—and nouns using that classifier must fit all the conditions with which the category is associated. Some common semantic categories into which count-classifiers have been claimed to organize nouns include the categories of shape (long, flat, or round), size (large or small), consistency (soft or hard), animacy (human, animal, or object), and function (tools, vehicles, machines, etc.).
On the other hand, proponents of prototype theory propose that count-classifiers may not have innate definitions, but are associated with a noun that is prototypical of that category, and nouns that have a "family resemblance" with the prototype noun will want to use the same classifier. For example, horse in Chinese uses the classifier 匹 pǐ, as in 三马 (sān mǎ, "three horses")—in modern Chinese the word 匹 has no meaning. Nevertheless, nouns denoting animals that look like horses will often also use this same classifier, and native speakers have been found to be more likely to use the classifier 匹 the closer an animal looks to a horse. Furthermore, words that do not meet the "criteria" of a semantic category may still use that category because of their association with a prototype. For example, the classifier 颗 (顆) kē is used for small round items, as in 一子弹 (yì zǐdàn, "one bullet"); when words like 原子弹 (yuánzǐdàn, "atomic bomb") were later introduced into the language they also used this classifier, even though they are not small and round—therefore, their classifier must have been assigned because of the words' association with the word for bullet, which acted as a "prototype". This is an example of "generalization" from prototypes: Erbaugh has proposed that when children learn count-classifiers, they go through stages, first learning a classifier-noun pair only (such as 鱼 yú, -fish), then using that classifier with multiple nouns that are similar to the prototype (such as other types of fish), then finally using that set of nouns to generalize a semantic feature associated with the classifier (such as length and flexibility) so that the classifier can then be used with new words that the person encounters.
Some classifier-noun pairings are arbitrary, or at least appear to modern speakers to have no semantic motivation. For instance, the classifier 部 bù may be used for movies and novels, but also for cars and telephones. Some of this arbitrariness may be due to what linguist James Tai refers to as "fossilization", whereby a count-classifier loses its meaning through historical changes but remains paired with some nouns. For example, the classifier 匹 pǐ used for horses is meaningless today, but in Classical Chinese may have referred to a "team of two horses", a pair of horse skeletons, or the pairing between man and horse. Arbitrariness may also arise when a classifier is borrowed, along with its noun, from a dialect in which it has a clear meaning to one in which it does not. In both these cases, the use of the classifier is remembered more by association with certain "prototypical" nouns (such as horse) rather than by understanding of semantic categories, and thus arbitrariness has been used as an argument in favor of the prototype theory of classifiers. Gao and Malt propose that both the category and prototype theories are correct: in their conception, some classifiers constitute "well-defined categories", others make "prototype categories", and still others are relatively arbitrary.
### Neutralization
In addition to the numerous "specific" count-classifiers described above, Chinese has a "general" classifier 个 (個), pronounced gè in Mandarin. This classifier is used for people, some abstract concepts, and other words that do not have special classifiers (such as 汉堡包 hànbǎobāo "hamburger"), and may also be used as a replacement for a specific classifier such as 张 (張) zhāng or 条 (條) tiáo, especially in informal speech. In Mandarin Chinese, it has been noted as early as the 1940s that the use of 个 is increasing and that there is a general tendency towards replacing specific classifiers with it. Numerous studies have reported that both adults and children tend to use 个 when they do not know the appropriate count-classifier, and even when they do but are speaking quickly or informally. The replacement of a specific classifier with the general 个 is known as classifier neutralization ("量词个化" in Chinese, literally "classifier 个-ization"). This occurs especially often among children and aphasics (individuals with damage to language-relevant areas of the brain), although normal speakers also neutralize frequently. It has been reported that most speakers know the appropriate classifiers for the words they are using and believe, when asked, that those classifiers are obligatory, but nevertheless use 个 without even realizing it in actual speech. As a result, in everyday spoken Mandarin the general classifier is "hundreds of times more frequent" than the specialized ones.
Nevertheless, 个 has not completely replaced other count-classifiers, and there are still many situations in which it would be inappropriate to substitute it for the required specific classifier. There may be specific patterns behind which classifier-noun pairs may be "neutralized" to use the general classifier, and which may not. Specifically, words that are most prototypical for their categories, such as paper for the category of nouns taking the "flat/square" classifier 张 (張) zhāng, may be less likely to be said with a general classifier.
### Variation in usage
It is not the case that every noun is only associated with one classifier. Across dialects and speakers there is great variability in the way classifiers are used for the same words, and speakers often do not agree which classifier is best. For example, for cars some people use 部 bù, others use 台 tái, and still others use 辆 (輛) liàng; Cantonese uses 架 gaa3. Even within a single dialect or a single speaker, the same noun may take different measure words depending on the style in which the person is speaking, or on different nuances the person wants to convey (for instance, measure words can reflect the speaker's judgment of or opinion about the object). An example of this is the word for person, 人 rén, which uses the measure word 个 (個) gè normally, but uses the measure 口 kǒu when counting number of people in a household, 位 wèi when being particularly polite or honorific, and 名 míng in formal, written contexts; likewise, a group of people may be referred to by massifiers as 一人 (yì rén, "a of people") or 一人 (yì rén, "a of people"): the first is neutral, whereas the second implies that the people are unruly or otherwise being judged poorly.
Some count-classifiers may also be used with nouns that they are not normally related to, for metaphorical effect, as in 一烦恼 (yì fánnǎo, "a of worries/troubles"). Finally, a single word may have multiple count-classifiers that convey different meanings altogether—in fact, the choice of a classifier can even influence the meaning of a noun. By way of illustration, 三课 sān kè means "three class periods" (as in "I have three classes today"), whereas 三课 sān kè means "three courses" (as in "I signed up for three courses this semester"), even though the noun in each sentence is the same.
## Purpose
In research on classifier systems, and Chinese classifiers in particular, it has been asked why count-classifiers (as opposed to mass-classifiers) exist at all. Mass-classifiers are present in all languages since they are the only way to "count" mass nouns that are not naturally divided into units (as, for example, "three of mud" in English; \*"three muds" is ungrammatical). On the other hand, count-classifiers are not inherently mandatory, and are absent from most languages. Furthermore, count-classifiers are used with an "unexpectedly low frequency"; in many settings, speakers avoid specific classifiers by just using a bare noun (without a number or demonstrative) or using the general classifier 个 gè. Linguists and typologists such as Joseph Greenberg have suggested that specific count-classifiers are semantically "redundant", repeating information present within the noun. Count-classifiers can be used stylistically, though, and can also be used to clarify or limit a speaker's intended meaning when using a vague or ambiguous noun; for example, the noun 课 kè "class" can refer to courses in a semester or specific class periods during a day, depending on whether the classifier 门 (門) mén or 节 (節) jié is used.
One proposed explanation for the existence of count-classifiers is that they serve more of a cognitive purpose than a practical one: in other words, they provide a linguistic way for speakers to organize or categorize real objects. An alternative account is that they serve more of a discursive and pragmatic function (a communicative function when people interact) rather than an abstract function within the mind. Specifically, it has been proposed that count-classifiers might be used to mark new or unfamiliar objects within a discourse, to introduce major characters or items in a story or conversation, or to foreground important information and objects by making them bigger and more salient. In this way, count-classifiers might not serve an abstract grammatical or cognitive function, but may help in communication by making important information more noticeable and drawing attention to it.
## History
### Classifier phrases
Historical linguists have found that phrases consisting of nouns and numbers went through several structural changes in Old Chinese and Middle Chinese before classifiers appeared in them. The earliest forms may have been Number – Noun, like English (i.e. "five horses"), and the less common Noun – Number ("horses five"), both of which are attested in the oracle bone scripts of Pre-Archaic Chinese (circa 1400 BCE to 1000 BCE). The first constructions resembling classifier constructions were Noun – Number – Noun constructions, which were also extant in Pre-Archaic Chinese but less common than Number – Noun. In these constructions, sometimes the first and second nouns were identical (N1 – Number – N1, as in "horses five horses") and other times the second noun was different, but semantically related (N1 – Number – N2). According to some historical linguists, the N2 in these constructions can be considered an early form of count-classifier and has even been called an "echo classifier"; this speculation is not universally agreed on, though. Although true count-classifiers had not appeared yet, mass-classifiers were common in this time, with constructions such as "wine – six – " (the word 酉 yǒu represented a wine container) meaning "six yǒu of wine". Examples such as this suggest that mass-classifiers predate count-classifiers by several centuries, although they did not appear in the same word order as they do today.
It is from this type of structure that count-classifiers may have arisen, originally replacing the second noun (in structures where there was a noun rather than a mass-classifier) to yield Noun – Number – Classifier. That is to say, constructions like "horses five horses" may have been replaced by ones like "horses five ", possibly for stylistic reasons such as avoiding repetition. Another reason for the appearance of count-classifiers may have been to avoid confusion or ambiguity that could have arisen from counting items using only mass-classifiers—i.e. to clarify when one is referring to a single item and when one is referring to a measure of items.
Historians agree that at some point in history the order of words in this construction shifted, putting the noun at the end rather than beginning, like in the present-day construction Number – Classifier – Noun. According to historical linguist Alain Peyraube, the earliest occurrences of this construction (albeit with mass-classifiers, rather than count-classifiers) appear in the late portion of Old Chinese (500 BCE to 200 BCE). At this time, the Number – Mass-classifier portion of the Noun – Number – Mass-classifier construction was sometimes shifted in front of the noun. Peyraube speculates that this may have occurred because it was gradually reanalyzed as a modifier (like an adjective) for the head noun, as opposed to a simple repetition as it originally was. Since Chinese generally places modifiers before modified, as does English, the shift may have been prompted by this reanalysis. By the early part of the Common Era, the nouns appearing in "classifier position" were beginning to lose their meaning and become true classifiers. Estimates of when classifiers underwent the most development vary: Wang Li claims their period of major development was during the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), whereas Liu Shiru estimates that it was the Northern and Southern dynasties period (420 – 589 CE), and Peyraube chooses the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 CE). Regardless of when they developed, Wang Lianqing claims that they did not become grammatically mandatory until sometime around the 11th century.
Classifier systems in many nearby languages and language groups (such as Vietnamese and the Tai languages) are very similar to the Chinese classifier system in both grammatical structure and the parameters along which some objects are grouped together. Thus, there has been some debate over which language family first developed classifiers and which ones then borrowed them—or whether classifier systems were native to all these languages and developed more through repeated language contact throughout history.
### Classifier words
Most modern count-classifiers are derived from words that originally were free-standing nouns in older varieties of Chinese, and have since been grammaticalized to become bound morphemes. In other words, count-classifiers tend to come from words that once had specific meaning but lost it (a process known as semantic bleaching). Many, however, still have related forms that work as nouns all by themselves, such as the classifier 带 (帶) dài for long, ribbon-like objects: the modern word 带子 dàizi means "ribbon". In fact, the majority of classifiers can also be used as other parts of speech, such as nouns. Mass-classifiers, on the other hand, are more transparent in meaning than count-classifiers; while the latter have some historical meaning, the former are still full-fledged nouns. For example, 杯 (bēi, cup), is both a classifier as in 一茶 (yì chá, "a of tea") and the word for a cup as in 酒杯 (jiǔbēi, "wine glass").
It was not always the case that every noun required a count-classifier. In many historical varieties of Chinese, use of classifiers was not mandatory, and classifiers are rare in writings that have survived. Some nouns acquired classifiers earlier than others; some of the first documented uses of classifiers were for inventorying items, both in mercantile business and in storytelling. Thus, the first nouns to have count-classifiers paired with them may have been nouns that represent "culturally valued" items such as horses, scrolls, and intellectuals. The special status of such items is still apparent today: many of the classifiers that can only be paired with one or two nouns, such as 匹 pǐ for horses and 首 shǒu for songs or poems, are the classifiers for these same "valued" items. Such classifiers make up as much as one-third of the commonly used classifiers today.
Classifiers did not gain official recognition as a lexical category (part of speech) until the 20th century. The earliest modern text to discuss classifiers and their use was Ma Jianzhong's 1898 Ma's Basic Principles for Writing Clearly (马氏文通). From then until the 1940s, linguists such as Ma, Wang Li, and Li Jinxi treated classifiers as just a type of noun that "expresses a quantity". Lü Shuxiang was the first to treat them as a separate category, calling them "unit words" (单位词 dānwèicí) in his 1940s Outline of Chinese Grammar (中国文法要略) and finally "measure words" (量词 liàngcí) in Grammar Studies (语法学习). He made this separation based on the fact that classifiers were semantically bleached, and that they can be used directly with a number, whereas true nouns need to have a measure word added before they can be used with a number. After this time, other names were also proposed for classifiers: Gao Mingkai called them "noun helper words" (助名词 zhùmíngcí), Lu Wangdao "counting markers" (计标 jìbiāo), and Japanese linguist Miyawaki Kennosuke called them "accompanying words" (陪伴词 péibàncí). In the Draft Plan for a System of Teaching Chinese Grammar [zh] adopted by the People's Republic of China in 1954, Lü's "measure words" (量词 liàngcí) was adopted as the official name for classifiers in China. This remains the most common term in use today.
### General classifiers
Historically, 个 gè was not always the general classifier. Some believe it was originally a noun referring to bamboo stalks, and gradually expanded in use to become a classifier for many things with "vertical, individual, [or] upright qualit[ies]", eventually becoming a general classifier because it was used so frequently with common nouns. The classifier gè is actually associated with three different homophonous characters: 个, 個 (used today as the traditional-character equivalent of 个), and 箇. Historical linguist Lianqing Wang has argued that these characters actually originated from different words, and that only 箇 had the original meaning of "bamboo stalk". 个, he claims, was used as a general classifier early on, and may have been derived from the orthographically similar 介 jiè, one of the earliest general classifiers. 箇 later merged with 介 because they were similar in pronunciation and meaning (both used as general classifiers). Likewise, he claims that 個 was also a separate word (with a meaning having to do with "partiality" or "being a single part"), and merged with 个 for the same reasons as 箇 did; he also argues that 個 was "created", as early as the Han dynasty, to supersede 个.
Nor was 个 the only general classifier in the history of Chinese. The aforementioned 介 jiè was being used as a general classifier before the Qin dynasty (221 BCE); it was originally a noun referring to individual items out of a string of connected shells or clothes, and eventually came to be used as a classifier for "individual" objects (as opposed to pairs or groups of objects) before becoming a general classifier. Another general classifier was 枚 méi, which originally referred to small twigs. Since twigs were used for counting items, 枚 became a counter word: any items, including people, could be counted as "one 枚, two 枚", etc. 枚 was the most common classifier in use during the Northern and Southern dynasties period (420–589 CE), but today is no longer a general classifier, and is only used rarely, as a specialized classifier for items such as pins and badges. Kathleen Ahrens has claimed that 隻 (zhī in Mandarin and jia in Taiwanese), the classifier for animals in Mandarin, is another general classifier in Taiwanese and may be becoming one in the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan.
### Variety
Northern dialects tend to have fewer classifiers than southern ones. 個 ge is the only classifier found in the Dungan language. All nouns could have just one classifier in some dialects, such as Shanghainese (Wu), the Mandarin dialect of Shanxi, and Shandong dialects. Some dialects such as Northern Min, certain Xiang dialects, Hakka dialects, and some Yue dialects use 隻 for the noun referring to people, rather than 個.
## See also
- List of Chinese classifiers
- Chinese grammar
- Collective noun
- Classifiers in other languages:
- Burmese numerical classifiers
- Hokkien counter word
- Japanese counter word
- Korean counter word
- Vietnamese classifier
|
30,041 |
Technetium
| 1,171,321,834 |
Chemical element, symbol Tc & atomic number 43
|
[
"Chemical elements",
"Chemical elements predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev",
"Chemical elements with hexagonal close-packed structure",
"Synthetic elements",
"Technetium",
"Transition metals"
] |
Technetium is a chemical element with the symbol Tc and atomic number 43. It is the lightest element whose isotopes are all radioactive. All available technetium is produced as a synthetic element. Naturally occurring technetium is a spontaneous fission product in uranium ore and thorium ore, the most common source, or the product of neutron capture in molybdenum ores. This silvery gray, crystalline transition metal lies between manganese and rhenium in group 7 of the periodic table, and its chemical properties are intermediate between those of both adjacent elements. The most common naturally occurring isotope is <sup>99</sup>Tc, in traces only.
Many of technetium's properties had been predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev before it was discovered. Mendeleev noted a gap in his periodic table and gave the undiscovered element the provisional name ekamanganese (Em). In 1937, technetium (specifically the technetium-97 isotope) became the first predominantly artificial element to be produced, hence its name (from the Greek τεχνητός, technetos, from techne, as in "craft", "art" and having the meaning of "artificial", + -ium).
One short-lived gamma ray-emitting nuclear isomer, technetium-99m, is used in nuclear medicine for a wide variety of tests, such as bone cancer diagnoses. The ground state of the nuclide technetium-99 is used as a gamma-ray-free source of beta particles. Long-lived technetium isotopes produced commercially are byproducts of the fission of uranium-235 in nuclear reactors and are extracted from nuclear fuel rods. Because even the longest-lived isotope of technetium has a relatively short half-life (4.21 million years), the 1952 detection of technetium in red giants helped to prove that stars can produce heavier elements.
## History
### Search for element 43
From the 1860s through 1871, early forms of the periodic table proposed by Dmitri Mendeleev contained a gap between molybdenum (element 42) and ruthenium (element 44). In 1871, Mendeleev predicted this missing element would occupy the empty place below manganese and have similar chemical properties. Mendeleev gave it the provisional name ekamanganese (from eka-, the Sanskrit word for one) because the predicted element was one place down from the known element manganese.
### Early misidentifications
Many early researchers, both before and after the periodic table was published, were eager to be the first to discover and name the missing element. Its location in the table suggested that it should be easier to find than other undiscovered elements.
### Irreproducible results
German chemists Walter Noddack, Otto Berg, and Ida Tacke reported the discovery of element 75 and element 43 in 1925, and named element 43 masurium (after Masuria in eastern Prussia, now in Poland, the region where Walter Noddack's family originated). This name caused significant resentment in the scientific community, because it was interpreted as referring to victories of the German army over the Russian army in the Masuria region during World War I; as the Noddacks remained in their academic positions while the Nazis were in power, suspicions and hostility against their claim for discovering element 43 continued. The group bombarded columbite with a beam of electrons and deduced element 43 was present by examining X-ray emission spectrograms. The wavelength of the X-rays produced is related to the atomic number by a formula derived by Henry Moseley in 1913. The team claimed to detect a faint X-ray signal at a wavelength produced by element 43. Later experimenters could not replicate the discovery, and it was dismissed as an error. Still, in 1933, a series of articles on the discovery of elements quoted the name masurium for element 43. Some more recent attempts have been made to rehabilitate the Noddacks' claims, but they are disproved by Paul Kuroda's study on the amount of technetium that could have been present in the ores they studied: it could not have exceeded 3 × 10<sup>−11</sup> μg/kg of ore, and thus would have been undetectable by the Noddacks' methods.
### Official discovery and later history
The discovery of element 43 was finally confirmed in a 1937 experiment at the University of Palermo in Sicily by Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè. In mid-1936, Segrè visited the United States, first Columbia University in New York and then the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He persuaded cyclotron inventor Ernest Lawrence to let him take back some discarded cyclotron parts that had become radioactive. Lawrence mailed him a molybdenum foil that had been part of the deflector in the cyclotron.
Segrè enlisted his colleague Perrier to attempt to prove, through comparative chemistry, that the molybdenum activity was indeed from an element with the atomic number 43. In 1937, they succeeded in isolating the isotopes technetium-95m and technetium-97. University of Palermo officials wanted them to name their discovery "panormium", after the Latin name for Palermo, Panormus. In 1947 element 43 was named after the Greek word τεχνητός, meaning "artificial", since it was the first element to be artificially produced. Segrè returned to Berkeley and met Glenn T. Seaborg. They isolated the metastable isotope technetium-99m, which is now used in some ten million medical diagnostic procedures annually.
In 1952, the astronomer Paul W. Merrill in California detected the spectral signature of technetium (specifically wavelengths of 403.1 nm, 423.8 nm, 426.2 nm, and 429.7 nm) in light from S-type red giants. The stars were near the end of their lives but were rich in the short-lived element, which indicated that it was being produced in the stars by nuclear reactions. That evidence bolstered the hypothesis that heavier elements are the product of nucleosynthesis in stars. More recently, such observations provided evidence that elements are formed by neutron capture in the s-process.
Since that discovery, there have been many searches in terrestrial materials for natural sources of technetium. In 1962, technetium-99 was isolated and identified in pitchblende from the Belgian Congo in extremely small quantities (about 0.2 ng/kg), where it originates as a spontaneous fission product of uranium-238. The Oklo natural nuclear fission reactor contains evidence that significant amounts of technetium-99 were produced and have since decayed into ruthenium-99.
## Characteristics
### Physical properties
Technetium is a silvery-gray radioactive metal with an appearance similar to platinum, commonly obtained as a gray powder. The crystal structure of the bulk pure metal is hexagonal close-packed, and crystal structures of the nanodisperse pure metal are cubic. Nanodisperse technetium does not have a split NMR spectrum, while hexagonal bulk technetium has the Tc-99-NMR spectrum split in 9 satellites. Atomic technetium has characteristic emission lines at wavelengths of 363.3 nm, 403.1 nm, 426.2 nm, 429.7 nm, and 485.3 nm.
The metal form is slightly paramagnetic, meaning its magnetic dipoles align with external magnetic fields, but will assume random orientations once the field is removed. Pure, metallic, single-crystal technetium becomes a type-II superconductor at temperatures below 7.46 K. Below this temperature, technetium has a very high magnetic penetration depth, greater than any other element except niobium.
### Chemical properties
Technetium is located in the seventh group of the periodic table, between rhenium and manganese. As predicted by the periodic law, its chemical properties are between those two elements. Of the two, technetium more closely resembles rhenium, particularly in its chemical inertness and tendency to form covalent bonds. This is consistent with the tendency of period 5 elements to resemble their counterparts in period 6 more than period 4 due to the lanthanide contraction. Unlike manganese, technetium does not readily form cations (ions with a net positive charge). Technetium exhibits nine oxidation states from −1 to +7, with +4, +5, and +7 being the most common. Technetium dissolves in aqua regia, nitric acid, and concentrated sulfuric acid, but it is not soluble in hydrochloric acid of any concentration.
Metallic technetium slowly tarnishes in moist air and, in powder form, burns in oxygen.
Technetium can catalyse the destruction of hydrazine by nitric acid, and this property is due to its multiplicity of valencies. This caused a problem in the separation of plutonium from uranium in nuclear fuel processing, where hydrazine is used as a protective reductant to keep plutonium in the trivalent rather than the more stable tetravalent state. The problem was exacerbated by the mutually enhanced solvent extraction of technetium and zirconium at the previous stage, and required a process modification.
## Compounds
### Pertechnetate and derivatives
The most prevalent form of technetium that is easily accessible is sodium pertechnetate, Na[TcO<sub>4</sub>]. The majority of this material is produced by radioactive decay from [<sup>99</sup>MoO<sub>4</sub>]<sup>2−</sup>:
[<sup>99</sup>MoO<sub>4</sub>]<sup>2−</sup> → [<sup>99m</sup>TcO<sub>4</sub>]<sup>−</sup> + e<sup>−</sup>
Pertechnetate (tetroxidotechnetate) TcO<sup>−</sup>
<sub>4</sub> behaves analogously to perchlorate, both of which are tetrahedral. Unlike permanganate (MnO<sup>−</sup>
<sub>4</sub>), it is only a weak oxidizing agent.
Related to pertechnetate is technetium heptoxide. This pale-yellow, volatile solid is produced by oxidation of Tc metal and related precursors:
4 Tc + 7 O<sub>2</sub> → 2 Tc<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7</sub>
It is a molecular metal oxide, analogous to manganese heptoxide. It adopts a centrosymmetric structure with two types of Tc−O bonds with 167 and 184 pm bond lengths.
Technetium heptoxide hydrolyzes to pertechnetate and pertechnetic acid, depending on the pH:
Tc<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7</sub> + 2 OH<sup>−</sup> → 2 TcO<sub>4</sub><sup>−</sup> + H<sub>2</sub>O
Tc<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7</sub> + H<sub>2</sub>O → 2 HTcO<sub>4</sub>
HTcO<sub>4</sub> is a strong acid. In concentrated sulfuric acid, [TcO<sub>4</sub>]<sup>−</sup> converts to the octahedral form TcO<sub>3</sub>(OH)(H<sub>2</sub>O)<sub>2</sub>, the conjugate base of the hypothetical triaquo complex [TcO<sub>3</sub>(H<sub>2</sub>O)<sub>3</sub>]<sup>+</sup>.
### Other chalcogenide derivatives
Technetium forms a dioxide, disulfide, diselenide, and ditelluride. An ill-defined Tc<sub>2</sub>S<sub>7</sub> forms upon treating pertechnate with hydrogen sulfide. It thermally decomposes into disulfide and elemental sulfur. Similarly the dioxide can be produced by reduction of the Tc<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7</sub>.
Unlike the case for rhenium, a trioxide has not been isolated for technetium. However, TcO<sub>3</sub> has been identified in the gas phase using mass spectrometry.
### Simple hydride and halide complexes
Technetium forms the simple complex TcH<sup>2−</sup>
<sub>9</sub>. The potassium salt is isostructural with ReH<sup>2−</sup>
<sub>9</sub>.
The following binary (containing only two elements) technetium halides are known: TcF<sub>6</sub>, TcF<sub>5</sub>, TcCl<sub>4</sub>, TcBr<sub>4</sub>, TcBr<sub>3</sub>, α-TcCl<sub>3</sub>, β-TcCl<sub>3</sub>, TcI<sub>3</sub>, α-TcCl<sub>2</sub>, and β-TcCl<sub>2</sub>. The oxidation states range from Tc(VI) to Tc(II). Technetium halides exhibit different structure types, such as molecular octahedral complexes, extended chains, layered sheets, and metal clusters arranged in a three-dimensional network. These compounds are produced by combining the metal and halogen or by less direct reactions.
TcCl<sub>4</sub> is obtained by chlorination of Tc metal or Tc<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7</sub> Upon heating, TcCl<sub>4</sub> gives the corresponding Tc(III) and Tc(II) chlorides.
TcCl<sub>4</sub> → α-TcCl<sub>3</sub> + 1/2 Cl<sub>2</sub>
TcCl<sub>3</sub> → β-TcCl<sub>2</sub> + 1/2 Cl<sub>2</sub>
The structure of TcCl<sub>4</sub> is composed of infinite zigzag chains of edge-sharing TcCl<sub>6</sub> octahedra. It is isomorphous to transition metal tetrachlorides of zirconium, hafnium, and platinum.
Two polymorphs of technetium trichloride exist, α- and β-TcCl<sub>3</sub>. The α polymorph is also denoted as Tc<sub>3</sub>Cl<sub>9</sub>. It adopts a confacial bioctahedral structure. It is prepared by treating the chloro-acetate Tc<sub>2</sub>(O<sub>2</sub>CCH<sub>3</sub>)<sub>4</sub>Cl<sub>2</sub> with HCl. Like Re<sub>3</sub>Cl<sub>9</sub>, the structure of the α-polymorph consists of triangles with short M-M distances. β-TcCl<sub>3</sub> features octahedral Tc centers, which are organized in pairs, as seen also for molybdenum trichloride. TcBr<sub>3</sub> does not adopt the structure of either trichloride phase. Instead it has the structure of molybdenum tribromide, consisting of chains of confacial octahedra with alternating short and long Tc—Tc contacts. TcI<sub>3</sub> has the same structure as the high temperature phase of TiI<sub>3</sub>, featuring chains of confacial octahedra with equal Tc—Tc contacts.
Several anionic technetium halides are known. The binary tetrahalides can be converted to the hexahalides [TcX<sub>6</sub>]<sup>2−</sup> (X = F, Cl, Br, I), which adopt octahedral molecular geometry. More reduced halides form anionic clusters with Tc–Tc bonds. The situation is similar for the related elements of Mo, W, Re. These clusters have the nuclearity Tc<sub>4</sub>, Tc<sub>6</sub>, Tc<sub>8</sub>, and Tc<sub>13</sub>. The more stable Tc<sub>6</sub> and Tc<sub>8</sub> clusters have prism shapes where vertical pairs of Tc atoms are connected by triple bonds and the planar atoms by single bonds. Every technetium atom makes six bonds, and the remaining valence electrons can be saturated by one axial and two bridging ligand halogen atoms such as chlorine or bromine.
### Coordination and organometallic complexes
Technetium forms a variety of coordination complexes with organic ligands. Many have been well-investigated because of their relevance to nuclear medicine.
Technetium forms a variety of compounds with Tc–C bonds, i.e. organotechnetium complexes. Prominent members of this class are complexes with CO, arene, and cyclopentadienyl ligands. The binary carbonyl Tc<sub>2</sub>(CO)<sub>10</sub> is a white volatile solid. In this molecule, two technetium atoms are bound to each other; each atom is surrounded by octahedra of five carbonyl ligands. The bond length between technetium atoms, 303 pm, is significantly larger than the distance between two atoms in metallic technetium (272 pm). Similar carbonyls are formed by technetium's congeners, manganese and rhenium. Interest in organotechnetium compounds has also been motivated by applications in nuclear medicine. Technetium also forms aquo-carbonyl complexes, one prominent complex being [Tc(CO)<sub>3</sub>(H<sub>2</sub>O)<sub>3</sub>]<sup>+</sup>, which are unusual compared to other metal carbonyls.
## Isotopes
Technetium, with atomic number Z = 43, is the lowest-numbered element in the periodic table for which all isotopes are radioactive. The second-lightest exclusively radioactive element, promethium, has atomic number 61. Atomic nuclei with an odd number of protons are less stable than those with even numbers, even when the total number of nucleons (protons + neutrons) is even, and odd numbered elements have fewer stable isotopes.
The most stable radioactive isotopes are technetium-97 with a half-life of 4.21 million years, technetium-98 with 4.2 million years, and technetium-99 with 211,100 years. Thirty other radioisotopes have been characterized with mass numbers ranging from 85 to 118. Most of these have half-lives that are less than an hour, the exceptions being technetium-93 (2.73 hours), technetium-94 (4.88 hours), technetium-95 (20 hours), and technetium-96 (4.3 days).
The primary decay mode for isotopes lighter than technetium-98 (<sup>98</sup>Tc) is electron capture, producing molybdenum (Z = 42). For technetium-98 and heavier isotopes, the primary mode is beta emission (the emission of an electron or positron), producing ruthenium (Z = 44), with the exception that technetium-100 can decay both by beta emission and electron capture.
Technetium also has numerous nuclear isomers, which are isotopes with one or more excited nucleons. Technetium-97m (<sup>97m</sup>Tc; "m" stands for metastability) is the most stable, with a half-life of 91 days and excitation energy 0.0965 MeV. This is followed by technetium-95m (61 days, 0.03 MeV), and technetium-99m (6.01 hours, 0.142 MeV). Technetium-99m emits only gamma rays and decays to technetium-99.
Technetium-99 (<sup>99</sup>Tc) is a major product of the fission of uranium-235 (<sup>235</sup>U), making it the most common and most readily available isotope of technetium. One gram of technetium-99 produces 6.2×10<sup>8</sup> disintegrations per second (in other words, the specific activity of <sup>99</sup>Tc is 0.62 GBq/g).
## Occurrence and production
Technetium occurs naturally in the Earth's crust in minute concentrations of about 0.003 parts per trillion. Technetium is so rare because the half-lives of <sup>97</sup>Tc and <sup>98</sup>Tc are only 4.2 million years. More than a thousand of such periods have passed since the formation of the Earth, so the probability of survival of even one atom of primordial technetium is effectively zero. However, small amounts exist as spontaneous fission products in uranium ores. A kilogram of uranium contains an estimated 1 nanogram (10<sup>−9</sup> g) equivalent to ten trillion atoms of technetium. Some red giant stars with the spectral types S-, M-, and N contain a spectral absorption line indicating the presence of technetium. These red giants are known informally as technetium stars.
### Fission waste product
In contrast to the rare natural occurrence, bulk quantities of technetium-99 are produced each year from spent nuclear fuel rods, which contain various fission products. The fission of a gram of uranium-235 in nuclear reactors yields 27 mg of technetium-99, giving technetium a fission product yield of 6.1%. Other fissile isotopes produce similar yields of technetium, such as 4.9% from uranium-233 and 6.21% from plutonium-239. An estimated 49,000 TBq (78 metric tons) of technetium was produced in nuclear reactors between 1983 and 1994, by far the dominant source of terrestrial technetium. Only a fraction of the production is used commercially.
Technetium-99 is produced by the nuclear fission of both uranium-235 and plutonium-239. It is therefore present in radioactive waste and in the nuclear fallout of fission bomb explosions. Its decay, measured in becquerels per amount of spent fuel, is the dominant contributor to nuclear waste radioactivity after about 10<sup>4</sup> to 10<sup>6</sup> years after the creation of the nuclear waste. From 1945 to 1994, an estimated 160 TBq (about 250 kg) of technetium-99 was released into the environment during atmospheric nuclear tests. The amount of technetium-99 from nuclear reactors released into the environment up to 1986 is on the order of 1000 TBq (about 1600 kg), primarily by nuclear fuel reprocessing; most of this was discharged into the sea. Reprocessing methods have reduced emissions since then, but as of 2005 the primary release of technetium-99 into the environment is by the Sellafield plant, which released an estimated 550 TBq (about 900 kg) from 1995 to 1999 into the Irish Sea. From 2000 onwards the amount has been limited by regulation to 90 TBq (about 140 kg) per year. Discharge of technetium into the sea resulted in contamination of some seafood with minuscule quantities of this element. For example, European lobster and fish from west Cumbria contain about 1 Bq/kg of technetium.
### Fission product for commercial use
The metastable isotope technetium-99m is continuously produced as a fission product from the fission of uranium or plutonium in nuclear reactors:
^{238}\_{92}U -\>[\ce{sf}] ^{137}\_{53}I + ^{99}\_{39}Y + 2^{1}\_{0}n
^{99}\_{39}Y -\>[\beta^-][1.47\\,\ce{s}] ^{99}\_{40}Zr -\>[\beta^-][2.1\\,\ce{s}] ^{99}\_{41}Nb -\>[\beta^-][15.0\\,\ce{s}] ^{99}\_{42}Mo -\>[\beta^-][65.94\\,\ce{h}] ^{99}\_{43}Tc -\>[\beta^-][211,100\\,\ce{y}] ^{99}\_{44}Ru
Because used fuel is allowed to stand for several years before reprocessing, all molybdenum-99 and technetium-99m is decayed by the time that the fission products are separated from the major actinides in conventional nuclear reprocessing. The liquid left after plutonium–uranium extraction (PUREX) contains a high concentration of technetium as TcO<sup>−</sup>
<sub>4</sub> but almost all of this is technetium-99, not technetium-99m.
The vast majority of the technetium-99m used in medical work is produced by irradiating dedicated highly enriched uranium targets in a reactor, extracting molybdenum-99 from the targets in reprocessing facilities, and recovering at the diagnostic center the technetium-99m produced upon decay of molybdenum-99. Molybdenum-99 in the form of molybdate MoO<sup>2−</sup>
<sub>4</sub> is adsorbed onto acid alumina (Al
<sub>2</sub>O
<sub>3</sub>) in a shielded column chromatograph inside a technetium-99m generator ("technetium cow", also occasionally called a "molybdenum cow"). Molybdenum-99 has a half-life of 67 hours, so short-lived technetium-99m (half-life: 6 hours), which results from its decay, is being constantly produced. The soluble pertechnetate TcO<sup>−</sup>
<sub>4</sub> can then be chemically extracted by elution using a saline solution. A drawback of this process is that it requires targets containing uranium-235, which are subject to the security precautions of fissile materials.
Almost two-thirds of the world's supply comes from two reactors; the National Research Universal Reactor at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, Canada, and the High Flux Reactor at Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group in Petten, Netherlands. All major reactors that produce technetium-99m were built in the 1960s and are close to the end of life. The two new Canadian Multipurpose Applied Physics Lattice Experiment reactors planned and built to produce 200% of the demand of technetium-99m relieved all other producers from building their own reactors. With the cancellation of the already tested reactors in 2008, the future supply of technetium-99m became problematic.
### Waste disposal
The long half-life of technetium-99 and its potential to form anionic species creates a major concern for long-term disposal of radioactive waste. Many of the processes designed to remove fission products in reprocessing plants aim at cationic species such as caesium (e.g., caesium-137) and strontium (e.g., strontium-90). Hence the pertechnetate escapes through those processes. Current disposal options favor burial in continental, geologically stable rock. The primary danger with such practice is the likelihood that the waste will contact water, which could leach radioactive contamination into the environment. The anionic pertechnetate and iodide tend not to adsorb into the surfaces of minerals, and are likely to be washed away. By comparison plutonium, uranium, and caesium tend to bind to soil particles. Technetium could be immobilized by some environments, such as microbial activity in lake bottom sediments, and the environmental chemistry of technetium is an area of active research.
An alternative disposal method, transmutation, has been demonstrated at CERN for technetium-99. In this process, the technetium (technetium-99 as a metal target) is bombarded with neutrons to form the short-lived technetium-100 (half-life = 16 seconds) which decays by beta decay to stable ruthenium-100. If recovery of usable ruthenium is a goal, an extremely pure technetium target is needed; if small traces of the minor actinides such as americium and curium are present in the target, they are likely to undergo fission and form more fission products which increase the radioactivity of the irradiated target. The formation of ruthenium-106 (half-life 374 days) from the 'fresh fission' is likely to increase the activity of the final ruthenium metal, which will then require a longer cooling time after irradiation before the ruthenium can be used.
The actual separation of technetium-99 from spent nuclear fuel is a long process. During fuel reprocessing, it comes out as a component of the highly radioactive waste liquid. After sitting for several years, the radioactivity reduces to a level where extraction of the long-lived isotopes, including technetium-99, becomes feasible. A series of chemical processes yields technetium-99 metal of high purity.
### Neutron activation
Molybdenum-99, which decays to form technetium-99m, can be formed by the neutron activation of molybdenum-98. When needed, other technetium isotopes are not produced in significant quantities by fission, but are manufactured by neutron irradiation of parent isotopes (for example, technetium-97 can be made by neutron irradiation of ruthenium-96).
### Particle accelerators
The feasibility of technetium-99m production with the 22-MeV-proton bombardment of a molybdenum-100 target in medical cyclotrons following the reaction <sup>100</sup>Mo(p,2n)<sup>99m</sup>Tc was demonstrated in 1971. The recent shortages of medical technetium-99m reignited the interest in its production by proton bombardment of isotopically enriched (\>99.5%) molybdenum-100 targets. Other techniques are being investigated for obtaining molybdenum-99 from molybdenum-100 via (n,2n) or (γ,n) reactions in particle accelerators.
## Applications
### Nuclear medicine and biology
Technetium-99m ("m" indicates that this is a metastable nuclear isomer) is used in radioactive isotope medical tests. For example, Technetium-99m is a radioactive tracer that medical imaging equipment tracks in the human body. It is well suited to the role because it emits readily detectable 140 keV gamma rays, and its half-life is 6.01 hours (meaning that about 94% of it decays to technetium-99 in 24 hours). The chemistry of technetium allows it to be bound to a variety of biochemical compounds, each of which determines how it is metabolized and deposited in the body, and this single isotope can be used for a multitude of diagnostic tests. More than 50 common radiopharmaceuticals are based on technetium-99m for imaging and functional studies of the brain, heart muscle, thyroid, lungs, liver, gall bladder, kidneys, skeleton, blood, and tumors.
The longer-lived isotope, technetium-95m with a half-life of 61 days, is used as a radioactive tracer to study the movement of technetium in the environment and in plant and animal systems.
### Industrial and chemical
Technetium-99 decays almost entirely by beta decay, emitting beta particles with consistent low energies and no accompanying gamma rays. Moreover, its long half-life means that this emission decreases very slowly with time. It can also be extracted to a high chemical and isotopic purity from radioactive waste. For these reasons, it is a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standard beta emitter, and is used for equipment calibration. Technetium-99 has also been proposed for optoelectronic devices and nanoscale nuclear batteries.
Like rhenium and palladium, technetium can serve as a catalyst. In processes such as the dehydrogenation of isopropyl alcohol, it is a far more effective catalyst than either rhenium or palladium. However, its radioactivity is a major problem in safe catalytic applications.
When steel is immersed in water, adding a small concentration (55 ppm) of potassium pertechnetate(VII) to the water protects the steel from corrosion, even if the temperature is raised to 250 °C (523 K). For this reason, pertechnetate has been used as an anodic corrosion inhibitor for steel, although technetium's radioactivity poses problems that limit this application to self-contained systems. While (for example) CrO<sup>2−</sup>
<sub>4</sub> can also inhibit corrosion, it requires a concentration ten times as high. In one experiment, a specimen of carbon steel was kept in an aqueous solution of pertechnetate for 20 years and was still uncorroded. The mechanism by which pertechnetate prevents corrosion is not well understood, but seems to involve the reversible formation of a thin surface layer (passivation). One theory holds that the pertechnetate reacts with the steel surface to form a layer of technetium dioxide which prevents further corrosion; the same effect explains how iron powder can be used to remove pertechnetate from water. The effect disappears rapidly if the concentration of pertechnetate falls below the minimum concentration or if too high a concentration of other ions is added.
As noted, the radioactive nature of technetium (3 MBq/L at the concentrations required) makes this corrosion protection impractical in almost all situations. Nevertheless, corrosion protection by pertechnetate ions was proposed (but never adopted) for use in boiling water reactors.
## Precautions
Technetium plays no natural biological role and is not normally found in the human body. Technetium is produced in quantity by nuclear fission, and spreads more readily than many radionuclides. It appears to have low chemical toxicity. For example, no significant change in blood formula, body and organ weights, and food consumption could be detected for rats which ingested up to 15 μg of technetium-99 per gram of food for several weeks. In the body, technetium quickly gets converted to the stable TcO<sup>−</sup>
<sub>4</sub> ion, which is highly water-soluble and quickly excreted. The radiological toxicity of technetium (per unit of mass) is a function of compound, type of radiation for the isotope in question, and the isotope's half-life.
All isotopes of technetium must be handled carefully. The most common isotope, technetium-99, is a weak beta emitter; such radiation is stopped by the walls of laboratory glassware. The primary hazard when working with technetium is inhalation of dust; such radioactive contamination in the lungs can pose a significant cancer risk. For most work, careful handling in a fume hood is sufficient, and a glove box is not needed.
|
6,036,140 |
Bert Combs
| 1,158,372,733 |
American judge and politician (1911–1991)
|
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"20th-century American lawyers",
"20th-century American politicians",
"Deaths from hypothermia",
"Deaths in floods",
"Democratic Party governors of Kentucky",
"Judges of the Kentucky Court of Appeals",
"Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit",
"Kentucky Commonwealth's Attorneys",
"Military personnel from Kentucky",
"Natural disaster deaths in Kentucky",
"Oneida Baptist Institute alumni",
"People from Manchester, Kentucky",
"People from Prestonburg, Kentucky",
"Recipients of the Military Merit Medal (Philippines)",
"United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps",
"United States Army officers",
"United States Army personnel of World War II",
"United States court of appeals judges appointed by Lyndon B. Johnson",
"University of Kentucky College of Law alumni",
"University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty"
] |
Bertram Thomas Combs (August 13, 1911 – December 4, 1991) was an American jurist and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. After serving on the Kentucky Court of Appeals, he was elected the 50th Governor of Kentucky in 1959 on his second run for the office. Following his gubernatorial term, he was appointed to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Lyndon B. Johnson, serving from 1967 to 1970.
Combs rose from poverty in his native Clay County to earn a law degree from the University of Kentucky and open a law practice in Prestonsburg. He was decorated for prosecuting Japanese war criminals before military tribunals following World War II, then returned to Kentucky and his law practice. In 1951, Governor Lawrence Wetherby appointed him to fill a vacancy on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Later that year, he was elected to a full term on the court, defeating former governor and judge Simeon S. Willis. Kentucky's Democratic Party had split into two factions by 1955 when Earle C. Clements, the leader of one faction, chose Combs to challenge former governor and U.S. Senator A. B. "Happy" Chandler, who headed the other, in the upcoming gubernatorial primary.
Chandler, who went on to reclaim the governorship, had promised that he would not need to raise taxes to meet the state's financial obligations, but ultimately he did so. In 1959, Combs was elected governor, defeating Lieutenant Governor Harry Lee Waterfield, Chandler's choice to succeed him in office, in the primary. Early in his term, Combs secured passage of a three-percent sales tax to pay a bonus to the state's military veterans. Knowing a tax of one percent would have been sufficient, he used the excess revenue to enact a system of reforms, including expansion of the state's highway and state park systems. He also devoted much of the surplus to education.
Following his term in office, Combs was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Johnson. He served for three years before resigning and running for governor again in 1971. He lost in the Democratic primary to Wendell Ford, his former executive secretary. In 1984, Combs agreed to represent sixty-six of the state's poor school districts in a lawsuit challenging the state's system of financing public education. The suit, Rose v. Council for Better Education, resulted in the Kentucky Supreme Court declaring the state's entire system of public schools unconstitutional. In response, the Kentucky General Assembly drafted a sweeping education measure known as the Kentucky Education Reform Act in 1991. On December 3, 1991, Combs was caught in a flash flood while driving and was killed.
## Early life
The Combs family is one of the oldest European families in the United States. Archdale Combs – 1641–1684 born in Soulbury, Buckinghamshire, England, the family patriarch, arrived in Stafford County, British Colonial America circa 1662, and by circa 1778 Archdale's great-grandson John Combs began his trek westward from Frederick County, Virginia into Wilkes County, North Carolina then into Hawkins County, Tennessee before making his way into Clay County, Kentucky via the Cumberland Gap. He came with his 8 sons Mason, Willian, Nicholas, John, Henry Harrison, Biram & George. Bert descends from John, one of the eight Combs brother's son John "Jack" Combs.
Bert Combs was born in the Town Branch section of Manchester, Kentucky on August 13, 1911; he was one of seven children of Stephen Gibson and Martha (Jones) Combs. Combs's father Stephen, a part-time logger and farmer, was active in local politics, despite being a Democrat in a county where a large majority of residents were Republicans. His mother was a teacher, and she impressed upon her children the importance of a good education. Bert's first school was the two-room Beech Creek grade school. When he reached the seventh grade, his parents sent him and his sister to Oneida Baptist Institute in nearby Oneida because its school term was 8 to 9 months long, as opposed to the 5- to 6-month terms at Beech Creek. Later, Combs and his sister began riding a donkey every day to Clay County High School. Combs excelled academically and skipped some grades, graduating as valedictorian of his class in 1927 at age 15.
Unable to afford college tuition, Combs worked at a local drug store and did small jobs for various residents of his community. In 1929, his mother arranged for him to work at a coal company in Williamsburg and attend Cumberland College (then a junior college). The coal company job did not materialize, but Combs was able to afford three semesters at Cumberland by sweeping floors and firing furnaces in campus buildings. In mid-1930, he began working as a clerk for the state highway department. This was one of several patronage jobs that were usually awarded by the governor, but the Democratically controlled state legislature had stripped Republican Governor Flem D. Sampson of his statutory appointment powers, giving them instead to a three-man highway commission composed of Democratic Lieutenant Governor James Breathitt, Democratic Highway Commissioner Ben Johnson, and Dan Talbott. This allowed Combs, a Democrat, to secure the position.
Combs worked for the highway department for three years in order to earn enough money to attend the University of Kentucky College of Law in Lexington. While at the university, he was managing editor of the Kentucky Law Journal. In 1937 he graduated second in his class, earning a Bachelor of Laws degree and qualifying for the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for the top ten percent of graduating law students. He was admitted to the bar, and returned to Manchester to begin practicing law. It was also in 1937 that Combs married Mabel Hall, with whom he had two children, Lois Ann Combs and Thomas "Tommy" George Combs.
## Early legal career and service in World War II
Of his law practice in Manchester, Combs later noted: "I had too many kinfolks and friends in Manchester, and they all expected me to handle things as a favor ... Then they'd get their feelings hurt if I charged them. I was taking in a lot of cases, but not sending out many bills." In 1938, Combs accepted an offer from a law school classmate named LeRoy Combs (no relation) to join his father and uncle's law firm in Prestonsburg. Prestonsburg was closer to his wife's home in Knott County. Combs' son Tommy had a form of mental retardation, the result of an injury sustained at birth. After moving to Prestonsburg, Combs started a class for people with intellectual disability, in part so Tommy could attend the class.
On December 22, 1943, Combs enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army for service in World War II. He received his basic training at Fort Knox and participated in the Volunteer Officer Candidate Program, which would have allowed him to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS) immediately after basic training. Instead, he was briefly assigned to teach cartography at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland before completing OCS in Ann Arbor, Michigan, joining the Judge Advocate General's Corps, and attaining the rank of captain. On July 1, 1945, he was sent to the South Pacific. He served as chief of the War Crimes Investigating Department under General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippine Islands, conducting tribunals for Japanese war criminals. Upon his discharge in 1946, he was awarded the Bronze Star and the Military Merit Medal of the Philippines.
After the war, Combs returned to Prestonsburg, forming the law firm of Howard and Combs with J. Woodford Howard as his partner. He served as president of the Junior Bar Association of Kentucky in 1946 and 1947. Combs often represented coal companies in workers' compensation cases against Carl D. Perkins, later a U.S. Representative, who served as legal counsel for the mine workers.
## Political career
Combs began his political career with his election to the office of city attorney in Prestonsburg in 1950. Later that year, Governor Lawrence Wetherby appointed him to fill a vacancy in the office of Commonwealth's Attorney for Kentucky's 31st Judicial District. Combs announced, however, that he would serve only until a new election could be held. In April 1951, Governor Wetherby appointed Combs to fill a vacancy on the Kentucky Court of Appeals caused by the death of Judge Roy Helm. Later that year, he sought a full eight-year term on the court. His opponent was Simeon S. Willis, a popular former Republican governor who had previously sat on the court. Combs won the election by a vote of 73,298 to 69,379. In George Robinson's oral history, Combs attributed his victory to Willis's advanced age (68) and the fact that many of Willis' supporters assumed that their candidate would win and did not vote.
### 1955 gubernatorial race
A. B. "Happy" Chandler, who had served as Kentucky's governor from 1935 to 1939 and was a leader of a faction of the state's Democratic Party, announced his intention to seek a second term in 1955. Members of the anti-Chandler faction scrambled to find a candidate to oppose him. The most likely candidate was Emerson "Doc" Beauchamp, the sitting lieutenant governor, but Beauchamp was not a good campaigner and his ties to Logan County – where politics were dominated by sometimes-corrupt political bosses – gave the anti-Chandler faction pause. Instead, the leader of the faction, former governor and sitting U.S. Senator Earle C. Clements, selected Combs as the faction's nominee, and Combs resigned from his position on the Court of Appeals to enter the race.
In Combs' first speech of the primary campaign, he admitted that the state needed to raise \$25 million (\$ million in dollars) in new revenue and that a sales tax should be considered. Chandler, the more experienced politician, attacked Combs for this suggestion, maintaining that an experienced governor like himself would not need to raise taxes to meet the state's obligations. Combs' speech was also attacked as dry and uninspiring, partly because he read it verbatim from prepared notes. "And you said I couldn't give a speech," Doc Beauchamp later complained to Clements. Hugh Morris, chief of the Louisville Courier-Journal's Frankfort bureau, commented that "Combs opened and closed his campaign on the same night".
With little but Combs' inexperience to run against, Chandler portrayed Combs as a pawn of former governors Clements and Wetherby, whom he derisively nicknamed "Clementine" and "Wetherbine". He accused both administrations of wasteful spending, specifically attacking the construction of the Kentucky Turnpike and Freedom Hall as unnecessary expenditures. Some of Chandler's attacks were more personal in nature; he charged that when Clements was governor, he spent \$20,000 (\$ in dollars) on a new rug for his office, and that Wetherby had used African mahogany to panel his office, instead of "good, honest Kentucky wood". Though receipts later showed that carpeting for the entire first floor of the capitol had cost only \$2,700 and that Wetherby's paneling had been purchased from and installed by a Kentucky contractor, Chandler's charges remained effective at keeping the Combs campaign on the defensive.
Two weeks before the primary, Combs was endorsed by former Vice-President and native Kentuckian Alben W. Barkley, but Combs felt the endorsement came too late to be much help. Chandler defeated Combs in the primary by a vote of 259,875 to 241,754 and went on to win his second term as governor. Combs returned to Prestonsburg, set up a savings and loan company, and re-established his law practice. During the four years of Chandler's term, Combs accepted a number of speaking engagements, but otherwise remained out of the public eye. Meanwhile, the state's need for funds compelled Chandler to raise the state sales tax and other taxes, despite his campaign promises not to do so. Consequently, Chandler lost credibility and Combs gained a reputation as a courageous, forthright, and honest politician for having acknowledged the state's financial need during the campaign.
### 1959 gubernatorial race
Barred by the state constitution from seeking consecutive terms, Chandler endorsed his lieutenant governor, Harry Lee Waterfield, to succeed him. Wilson Wyatt, who had managed Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign in 1952, was the first anti-Chandler candidate to declare his intention to seek the governorship in the 1959 election, doing so on April 9, 1958. Wyatt received several endorsements from leaders in Jefferson County, which contained his home city of Louisville and was vehemently anti-Chandler. Four days after Wyatt's announcement, Combs declared that he would again seek the office, and he was endorsed by Clements a week later. For the remainder of 1958, the anti-Chandler faction's support remained split between Wyatt and Combs. In January 1959, Clements held an all-night meeting at the Standiford Airport Hotel in Louisville in which he brokered a deal whereby Combs would run for governor and Wyatt for lieutenant governor. Clements promised Wyatt his support in future political races.
In the primary campaign against Waterfield, Combs attacked the Chandler administration. He was especially critical of a rumor which held that Chandler had placed a two-percent assessment on state employees' salaries and had stored the funds in a Cuban bank so they could not be traced. According to the rumor, when Fidel Castro seized power during the Cuban Revolution, the funds Chandler had deposited in Cuba were lost. Chandler countered on Waterfield's behalf with charges that Combs was a "Clements parrot". Combs succeeded in uniting the anti-Chandler base, and defeated Waterfield by 25,000 votes; he went on to win the governorship that fall, defeating Republican nominee John M. Robsion, Jr. by 180,093 votes. The victory margin was a record for a governor's race in Kentucky, and was the second highest margin of victory for any election in the state, trailing only Franklin D. Roosevelt's 185,858-vote victory over Herbert Hoover in 1932. Combs was the first governor elected from Eastern Kentucky since Flem D. Sampson in 1927, and was the first veteran of World War II to hold the office.
### Governor of Kentucky
One of Combs' first official actions as governor was to call a special session of the legislature on December 19, 1959, to consider revising the state's constitution, which had been in effect since 1891. Calling a constitutional convention required that the General Assembly approve putting the issue of a convention on the ballot in two consecutive legislative sessions. The call then had to be approved by Kentucky voters. Despite near-universal agreement by legal scholars that the constitution was badly in need of updating, Kentucky voters had rejected calls for a constitutional convention in 1931 and 1947, and had only approved 19 amendments since 1891. Combs wanted to address the issue during his four-year term, hence the haste in calling the special legislative session. The General Assembly easily approved the call for a convention during the special legislative session and again during the subsequent regular legislative session in 1960. Combs signed the measure, and the question of a constitutional revision was put on the ballot in November 1960, when Kentucky voters defeated it by a margin of almost 18,000 votes. This was the closest Kentucky has come to replacing the 1891 constitution, which remains in effect today.
### Kentucky's first billion-dollar budget
During the campaign, Combs had advocated a progressive platform that included increased funding for education, highways, parks, industry, and airports. Soon after his election, he won approval for a three-percent sales tax to pay a bonus to military veterans, although he could have funded the bonuses with a one-percent tax. He had asked for the larger tax in order to fund his other priorities. As a result of the sales tax, Combs presided over the state's first billion-dollar budget. One study showed that Kentucky doubled its per capita expenditures between 1957 and 1962, growing its appropriations faster than any other state. Combs held large public relations events for each tax-funded project that was completed, declaring in dedication speeches that the sales tax had made the project possible.
In 1960, Kentucky had one of the highest dropout rates in the nation, and ranked second only to Arkansas in the number of one-room schools. Fewer than half of the state's high school graduates attended college. Many teachers educated in Kentucky sought higher salaries available in other states. Combs' biennial budget, passed by the General Assembly in 1960, used money from the new sales tax to increase school funds by fifty percent and establish the state community college system (now the Kentucky Community and Technical College System). It also increased funding for free textbooks by more than \$3 million and allocated another \$2 million to vocational education. It allocated over \$5 million to the state universities for new buildings and another \$10.5 million to fund completion of the Albert B. Chandler Hospital, a facility at the University of Kentucky named in honor of Combs' political foe.
The state's roads were in poor condition when Combs became governor. The Automotive Safety Foundation found that two-thirds of Kentucky's federal roads were below standards for existing traffic demands. It further found that twenty percent of the state's major city streets were inadequate, that another fifty-five percent would soon be inadequate due to increasing traffic, and that half of the state's secondary roads were unfit for modern industrial traffic. To address these problems, Combs issued \$100 million in bonds to increase funding for highways, appointing Earle Clements as state highway commissioner to oversee the correction of the road issues. One of the new roads, the Mountain Parkway, which connected Combs' native Eastern Kentucky to Central Kentucky, was later renamed the Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway in Combs' honor. Because of generous funding in Combs' budget, Kentucky finished its portions of the Interstate Highway System much sooner than surrounding states such as Virginia and Tennessee.
Combs also won approval of a \$10 million bond issue to benefit the state parks, which had poor lodging and few amenities. Combs combined the bond issue with \$10 million in revenue bonds and effected major renovations at all 26 of the state's parks. Though his dreams of seeing privately owned tourist facilities spring up around the parks did not come to fruition, out-of-state tourism to Kentucky more than doubled during his administration, accounting for about sixty percent of state park visitors and fifty-three percent of the overnight visitations to the parks. Journalist John Ed Pearce recounts that Kentucky natives began to complain that they could not get reservations in the parks during peak seasons and called for limitations on the number of out-of-state visitors or a reservation system that favored Kentuckians, although nothing was done to address these complaints.
On April 10, 1961, Combs appropriated \$50,000 from the governor's contingency fund to construct a floral clock on the lawn of the state capitol. Combs had seen a similar clock in Edinburgh, Scotland, and believed it would be a colorful addition to the capitol grounds. In a subsequent gubernatorial campaign, Happy Chandler mocked the clock, declaring "Well, they don't say it's half past 2 in Frankfort anymore. They say it's two petunias past the jimson weed." Chandler's derision became the minority view in time, however; according to John Ed Pearce, the clock became one of the most talked-about and visited tourist attractions in the state and the most visited place in Frankfort.
### Ethical reforms
Combs created a merit system for state government workers, ensuring that officials could not be hired or fired for political reasons. This provision attracted more well-qualified people to public service careers. Such careers were made even more attractive when, in 1962, the state courts declared that the salaries of state employees, the amounts of which were specified in the state constitution, could be adjusted for inflation. Combs demanded that state employees stick strictly to the rules governing their offices. In one instance, Combs ordered a state audit of Carter County school superintendent Heman McGuire, who was known to use his office for political gain. While Combs did not have the authority to remove McGuire directly, the audit showed McGuire's misappropriation of funds and abuse of power. The state school board investigated these findings and removed the county school board members from office; the replacement board members then ousted McGuire.
In 1961, a group of citizens from Newport asked Combs for help in cracking down on crime in their city. Just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Newport had gained a reputation as a haven for prostitution, gambling, and illegal alcohol. After receiving an affidavit from the citizens, Combs sent agents from the department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to the city. They cited six bars for violating laws governing liquor sales, and instructed Attorney General John B. Breckinridge to prosecute four local officials for failure to enforce the laws. When allegations of civil rights violations in a related trial surfaced, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent federal Justice Department officials to Newport, prompting the resignation of the sheriff and a circuit judge. Two other local officials were barred from office for four years.
Some of Combs' crackdowns on corruption were politically damaging, including the so-called "truck deal". In 1961, Kyle Vance, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that the state was about to purchase some dump trucks from one of Combs' former campaign officials for \$346,800, far more than they were worth, according to the report. The newspaper, long antagonistic toward Highway Commissioner Clements, painted the deal as a political payoff orchestrated by the highway commissioner. In the interest of preserving his reputation as an honest governor, Combs canceled the proposed deal. This angered Clements, who took Combs' action as a public rebuke. The incident caused a rift between him and Combs that never fully healed; Clements later resigned, ostensibly to work on the presidential campaign of his friend and former Senate colleague, Lyndon B. Johnson. Thereafter, he worked against Combs at every opportunity, even joining with Happy Chandler to ensure Wilson Wyatt's defeat in his 1962 race for the Senate, in a reversal of his previous promise to support Wyatt.
Combs also formed the state's first Human Rights Commission and ordered the desegregation of all public accommodations in Kentucky. The latter action was commended in a letter to Combs from President John F. Kennedy. In 1961, Combs was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Kentucky, and on February 17, 1962, he received an award from Keep America Beautiful for his work on cleaning up Kentucky's highways, including securing passage of a bill requiring that auto junkyards near major roadways be screened from view by fences.
Among Combs' other accomplishments as governor were requiring voting machines in state elections and passage of a law making the assessment of state employees for political campaign funds a felony. At the end of his term, Combs backed Edward T. Breathitt to succeed him as governor. Breathitt defeated Happy Chandler in the Democratic primary, then went on to defeat Republican Louie B. Nunn in the general election. It was the only time in the 20th century that a Kentucky governor's preferred successor won election.
### Later political career
Following his term as governor, Combs returned to his legal practice. He was a charter member and chairman of the Eastern Kentucky Historical Society and a trustee at Campbellsville College. In 1963, he was awarded the Joseph P. Kennedy International Award for "outstanding contributions and leadership in the field of mental retardations." He was named Kentucky's outstanding attorney in 1964, and in the spring of that year, he served as a visiting professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Massachusetts. In 1965, he was inducted into the University of Kentucky's Hall of Distinguished Alumni.
In August 1964, Combs declined a nomination to the bench of the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. During the administration of Combs' successor, Ned Breathitt, Republicans gained strength within the state behind the leadership of Louie Nunn, Marlow Cook, and William O. Cowger. The Republican rise, coupled with Democratic factionalism, prompted many prominent state Democrats to approach Combs about seeking another term as governor. Combs wavered on whether to seek the Democratic nomination until October 1966, when he publicly declared his support for Henry Ward. In a later interview with historian George W. Robinson, Combs recounted that he "would have run at that time except for a personal family situation". Ward handily defeated his primary opponents, Happy Chandler and Harry Lee Waterfield, but lost in the general election to Louie Nunn.
On January 16, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Combs to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, replacing the deceased Shackelford Miller Jr., and the Senate confirmed the nomination on April 5, 1967, and Combs received his commission the same day. Because of the rules of the federal judiciary, Combs had to liquidate his business and banking assets and severely restrict contact with many of his political acquaintances to avoid potential conflicts of interest with cases he might adjudicate on the Court of Appeals. He expressed frustration that the cases that came before the court were frequently appealed to the Supreme Court, which often gave little weight to the opinions rendered by the Court of Appeals. Consequently, he resigned from the court on June 5, 1970, and joined the Louisville law firm of Tarrant, Combs, and Bullitt (later Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs).
With the end of Governor Nunn's term approaching, a rivalry for leadership of the state Democratic party developed between Lieutenant Governor Wendell H. Ford, who had served as Combs' chief administrative assistant during his gubernatorial term, and Julian M. Carroll, speaker of the state House of Representatives. As soon as Combs resigned from the Court of Appeals, Democratic leaders began asking him to seek the party's gubernatorial nomination in 1971, uniting the party behind him rather than splintering it between Ford and Carroll. In June 1970, Carroll announced his intent to run for lieutenant governor, indicating that he would like to serve under Combs as governor. While Combs considered whether or not to seek the nomination, Ford declared his candidacy. Days later, Combs also entered the race.
Combs and Ford advocated similar platforms, but Combs encouraged the state's teachers to become more politically active, negotiating higher salaries and better benefits for themselves, while Ford was critical of educators becoming involved in politics and only advocated more spending on education if the state could afford it. In his oral history of Combs, Robinson noted that Ford, thirteen years Combs' junior, "came across better on television" and that many voters in the state felt that Combs must have had ulterior motives in leaving a judgeship that paid a salary of \$42,500 for the governorship, which paid only \$30,000 annually. Catholics were also upset that Combs had married his second wife, Helen Clark Rechtin, just forty-three days after his divorce from Mabel Hall was finalized on July 18, 1969. (Combs and Hall had been separated for five years prior to finalizing the divorce.) Despite these handicaps, many Democrats assumed that Combs, the proven candidate, would easily defeat the newcomer Ford, and fewer than one-third of registered Democrats voted in the primary. In what the Courier-Journal called a "stunning defeat", Ford defeated Combs in the Democratic primary and went on to win the governorship.
## Later life
After the 1971 primary, Combs retired from politics and resumed his law practice, maintaining an office in Frankfort. He moved to Louisville, becoming the partner of John Tarrant in Tarrant, Combs and Bullitt, and then in Wyatt, Tarrant and Combs, with Wilson Wyatt. He continued to represent large coal companies, drawing the ire of local environmentalist and author Harry M. Caudill, who asserted that Combs claimed to represent the powerless while actually representing the powerful. He was active in the formation of the Rural Housing and Development Corporation and served on the Council on Higher Education. He also served on President Jimmy Carter's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament.
Combs' second marriage ended in divorce on May 19, 1986. On December 30, 1988, he married his law assistant, Sara M. Walter.
### Rose v. Council for Better Education
On October 3, 1984, leaders of the Council for Better Education asked Combs to represent them in a legal challenge to Kentucky's school financing system, which it claimed unfairly discriminated against poorer school systems in the state. Combs felt the lawsuit would be difficult to win and could cause retaliation against his other clients by state government officials. He needed this lawsuit "about like a hog needs a side saddle", he would later claim; nevertheless, he agreed to take the case if the council could convince thirty to forty percent of the state's school boards to join it. The Council eventually persuaded 66 of the 177 school boards to join. Working pro bono, Combs assembled a legal team that included Kern Alexander, a Kentucky native and education law expert who was named president of Western Kentucky University in November 1985.
Combs first attempted to gain legislative concessions that might preclude the need for a lawsuit. Governor Martha Layne Collins proposed an education reform agenda and called the legislature into special session in mid-1985 to consider it. The legislature enacted a corporate income tax to raise \$300 million aimed at reducing class sizes, but the council was seeking more fundamental structural changes to the system and deemed the increased funds insufficient to equalize its members' standing with that of more affluent school districts. Dissatisfied with the results of the special session, Combs and the Council filed their suit, Rose v. Council for Better Education, on November 20, 1985. The governor, state superintendent, state treasurer, leaders of both houses of the state legislature, and every member of the state board of education were named as defendants in the case.
The defendants' request for summary judgment dismissing the case was not granted, and the trial began in Franklin circuit court on August 4, 1987. During the trial, a new state superintendent was elected. The new superintendent, John Brock, announced that his office would drop its defense and side with the council, a major blow to the defense. On May 31, 1988, Judge Ray Corns found in favor of the plaintiffs, declaring that the school finance system was "unconstitutional and discriminatory". Two days later, the defense announced that it would appeal the ruling to the Kentucky Supreme Court, but recently elected governor Wallace G. Wilkinson refused to join the appeal and supported Judge Corns' ruling.
Opening arguments in the appeal began December 7, 1988. The defense argued that the Council lacked standing to bring the suit; Combs rebutted this argument and cited statistics that ranked Kentucky as the most illiterate state in the nation to show how inequitable financing had adversely affected the state's students. On June 8, 1989, the court handed down a 3–2 ruling declaring Kentucky's entire public school system unconstitutional and giving the General Assembly until the end of their next legislative session, which would convene in January 1990, to create a replacement. Commenting on the ruling, Combs said "My clients asked for a thimble-full, and [instead] they got a bucket-full".
The court set out nine minimum standards. In response to the court's ruling, the General Assembly passed the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act, which radically altered Kentucky's school system, providing mechanisms to equalize funding among school districts and implementing some of the toughest accountability standards in the United States. Of the legislature's actions, Combs opined "Kentucky has now, by reason of this legislation, decided to become educated—and we have embarked on a crusade for that purpose. Don't be surprised if we should within the next decade develop a first class, world-wide educational system."
### Death and legacy
On December 3, 1991, Combs left his law office during a flash flood about 5:30 pm. He was reported missing hours later, and the following day, he was found dead of hypothermia just downstream from his car in the Red River near Rosslyn, in Powell County. He was buried in the Beech Creek Cemetery in Manchester.
In addition to the Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway, Bert T. Combs Lake, an artificial lake constructed in 1963 in Clay County, is named in Combs' honor. On April 20, 2007, two life-sized statues of Combs were dedicated—one in Stanton, near the parkway that bears his name, and another in the county courthouse in Prestonsburg. Combs' widow, Sara Walter Combs, became the first woman to serve on the Kentucky Supreme Court in 1993 and currently sits on the Kentucky Court of Appeals, where she was chief judge from 2004 to 2010, also a first for a woman. Combs' daughter, Lois (Combs) Weinberg, unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat in 2002.
|
358,124 |
Battle of Dupplin Moor
| 1,170,665,277 |
1332 battle of the Second War of Scottish Independence
|
[
"1332 in Scotland",
"Battles of the Wars of Scottish Independence",
"Conflicts in 1332",
"Inventory of Historic Battlefields in Scotland"
] |
The Battle of Dupplin Moor was fought between supporters of King David II of Scotland, the son of King Robert Bruce, and English-backed invaders supporting Edward Balliol, son of King John I of Scotland, on 11 August 1332. It took place a little to the south-west of Perth, Scotland, when a Scottish force commanded by Donald, Earl of Mar, estimated to have been stronger than 15,000 and possibly as many as 40,000 men, attacked a largely English force of 1,500 commanded by Balliol and Henry Beaumont, Earl of Buchan. This was the first major battle of the Second War of Scottish Independence.
The First War of Scottish Independence between England and Scotland ended in 1328 with the Treaty of Northampton, recognising Bruce as King of Scots, but the treaty was widely resented in England. King Edward III of England was happy to cause trouble for his northern neighbour and tacitly supported an attempt to place Balliol on the Scottish throne. Balliol and a small force landed in Fife and marched on Perth, then the Scottish capital. A Scottish army at least ten times stronger occupied a defensive position on the far side of the River Earn. The invaders crossed the river at night via an unguarded ford and took up a strong defensive position.
In the morning the Scots raced to attack the English, disorganising their own formations. Unable to break the line of English men-at-arms, the Scots became trapped in a valley with fresh forces arriving from the rear pressing them forward and giving them no room to manoeuvre, or even to use their weapons. English longbowmen shot into both Scottish flanks. Many Scots died of suffocation or were trampled underfoot. Eventually they broke and the English men-at-arms mounted and pursued the fugitives until nightfall. Perth fell, the remaining Scottish forces dispersed and Balliol was crowned King of Scots. By the end of 1332 he had lost control of most of Scotland, but regained it in 1333 with Edward III's open support. He was deposed again in 1334, restored again in 1335 and finally deposed in 1336, by those loyal to David II.
## Background
The First War of Scottish Independence between England and Scotland began in March 1296, when Edward I of England (r. 1272–1307) stormed and sacked the Scottish border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed as a prelude to his invasion of Scotland. After the 30 years of warfare which followed, the newly crowned 14-year-old King Edward III was nearly captured in the English disaster at Stanhope Park. This brought his regents, Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer, to the negotiating table. They agreed to the Treaty of Northampton with Robert Bruce (r. 1306–1329) in 1328, recognising Bruce as King of Scots. The treaty was widely resented in England and commonly known as the turpis pax, "the cowards' peace". Some Scottish nobles, refusing to swear fealty to Bruce, were disinherited and left Scotland to join forces with Edward Balliol, son of King John I of Scotland (r. 1292–1296), who had been captured by the English in 1296 and abdicated.
Robert Bruce died in 1329 and his heir was 5-year-old David II (r. 1329–1371). In 1331, under the leadership of Edward Balliol and Henry Beaumont, Earl of Buchan, the disinherited Scottish nobles gathered in Yorkshire and plotted an invasion of Scotland. Edward III was aware of the scheme and officially forbade it, in March 1332 writing to his northern officials that anyone planning an invasion of Scotland was to be arrested. The reality was different, and Edward III was happy to cause trouble for his northern neighbour. He insisted Balliol not invade Scotland overland from England but turned a blind eye to his forces sailing for Scotland from Yorkshire ports on 31 July 1332. The Scots were aware of the situation and were waiting for Balliol. David II's regent was an experienced old soldier, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, who was appointed to the role of guardian of Scotland. He had prepared for Balliol and Beaumont, but he died ten days before they sailed.
## Prelude
Balliol's force was small, only 1,500 men: 500 men-at-arms and 1,000 infantry, the latter mostly longbowmen. He anticipated being joined by many Scots once he had landed. While they were underway, the Scots selected Donald, Earl of Mar, as the new guardian of Scotland, and so also regent for the young David. Mar was an experienced campaigner and a close blood relative to the young King David. He divided the large Scottish army: Mar commanded the part north of the Firth of Forth, while Patrick, Earl of March, commanded those to the south. Balliol had been in communication with Mar and hoped he would come over to his side with many of his troops. Knowing Mar to be commanding the troops on the northern shore of the firth, Balliol landed there, at Wester Kinghorn (present day Burntisland), on 6 August 1332.
While the invaders were still disembarking they were confronted by a large Scottish force commanded by Duncan, Earl of Fife, and Robert Bruce (an illegitimate son of King Robert the Bruce). The Scots attacked the part of the English force on the beach, but were driven off after a hard-pressed assault by the volleys of the English longbowmen and by their supporting infantry before Balliol and Beaumont's men-at-arms could get ashore.
Scottish accounts of the time dismiss their losses as trivial, while one English source gives 90 Scots killed, two give 900, and a fourth 1,000. One chronicle, the Brut, reports that Fife was "full of shame" at being defeated by such a small force. There is no record of the casualties suffered by Balliol's men. Mar withdrew his main force to the capital, Perth, amalgamated the survivors of Kinghorn and sent out a general call for reinforcements. Buoyed by their victory, Balliol and Beaumont's force completed their disembarkation and marched to Dunfermline, where they foraged, looted a Scottish armoury and then headed for Perth.
## Battle
### English approach
The Scottish army under Mar took up a position on the north bank of the River Earn, 2 miles (3 km) south of Perth, and broke down the bridge. The Scots were enormously stronger than the English. Chronicles of the time give strengths of 20,000, 30,000 or – in seven cases – 50,000. The historian Clifford Rogers guesses they numbered something more than 15,000. Nearly all of the Scots were infantry. The English arrived on the south bank of the Earn on 10 August. They were in a difficult position: in enemy territory, facing an army of more than ten times their number in a good defensive position across a river and aware that the second Scottish army, under March, was moving towards them. The Scots were content to rest in their defensive positions, while planning to send a portion of their army on a wide outflanking manoeuvre the next day. Any attempt by the English to force the river would clearly have been foredoomed. The English may have been hoping Mar would desert to their cause, but he gave no indication of doing so. The two forces faced each other across the river for the rest of the day.
The Scots were so confident of victory that some started their celebrations that evening, according to a contemporary source "playing, drinking and making merry" late into the night. A guard was set by the broken bridge, but otherwise no precautions were taken against any action by the English. Realising they had no hope if they either retreated or remained where they were, the entire English force forded the river at an unguarded spot. Advancing in the dark, at about midnight they stumbled upon a Scottish camp and attacked it. Those Scots who were not killed or captured fled. The English believed they had overcome the main Scottish force, but were disabused at dawn when they saw the Scots advancing against them in two large bodies. This revelation demoralised the English, but according to the chronicles they were given heart by a stirring speech from one of their leaders.
The English arrayed themselves for battle on foot, except for 50 German mercenary knights who fought mounted. The other men-at-arms formed up in three tightly packed ranks with a fourth rank of pike-equipped ordinary infantry. The longbowmen were divided and assigned to each side of this central group. They were positioned where a valley narrowed as it entered hilly terrain. The infantry occupied the centre of this valley where it was about 600 feet (180 m) wide with the archers on higher and rougher terrain on each side. The horses of the men-at-arms were kept to the rear.
### Scottish attack
The Scots were still supremely confident and formed up in two large groups or battles – also referred to as schiltrons. These were tightly packed, deep, pike-armed formations. Mar suggested that the English be given the opportunity to surrender, so that they could have been ransomed – which would have raised a large sum. On seeing the English across the Earn, Bruce, who was in command of the leading schiltron, and who was aware, at least in part, of Mar's correspondence with Balliol, publicly claimed that this unopposed crossing was due to treachery by Mar. Mar denounced this as a lie and declared he would prove his loyalty by being the first to strike a blow against the English. Bruce claimed this honour for himself and the two Scottish schiltrons proceeded to race each other to come to grips with the English.
Bruce's schiltron, being already in the lead, won the race. But its headlong charge disorganised it and left the slower men behind. When it contacted the English only 800 men were still with Bruce, but they struck with such force that they drove the infantry in the English centre back nearly 10 yards (9 m). The English did not break, but turned their shoulders to the Scots, braced themselves and halted the Scottish onrush. The Scots in their haste had allowed themselves to be channelled by the terrain and all of them attacked the English men-at-arms in the centre, ignoring the longbowmen on the valley sides. Pushing back the English centre had the effect of exposing their flanks to these bowmen. The rest of Bruce's schiltron followed him into the valley, pressing their comrades in front of them forward against the English so strongly that the front ranks of neither force were able to use their weapons.
The Scots were either largely without helmets, or wore helmets without visors (face guards), for contemporaries noted that the English archers "blinded and wounded the faces" of those in the leading schiltron. Harassed by the longbowmen, the Scots on the flanks pressed closer to their main body, further compressing it and hampering the freedom of movement of its members. Mar's schiltron, which was also rushing towards the English, became disorganised due to its haste and was similarly channelled by the steep valley sides. They charged into the rear of Bruce's formation, causing chaos. The struggle continued from a little past dawn until after noon. In the centre of the Scottish mass the result was literally suffocating; men were pressed too tightly together to be able to breathe and any who lost their footing were trampled to death. Contemporary accounts speak of more than a thousand Scots being smothered without coming into contact with the English. One claimed that "more were slain by the Scots themselves than by the English. For ... everyone fallen there fell a second, and then a third fell, and those who were behind pressing forward and hastening to the fight, the whole army became a heap of the slain."
The English, being in a looser and less deep formation, had room to use their weapons more effectively, once they had withstood the initial onslaught. The survivors of Bruce's schiltron attempted to extricate themselves, adding to the confusion and making easy targets for the English men-at-arms. The chronicles record the English infantry having to climb over heaps of dead Scots to be able to strike at those still living. All the while, the longbowmen continued to shoot into the Scottish flanks. Eventually the Scottish resistance collapsed and they were routed. Several of the surviving Scottish nobles made their escape on horseback; the rest of the Scots fled on foot. The English men-at-arms mounted their own horses and pursued the Scots, hacking them down until sunset. The English then occupied Perth and set to work on improving its fortifications, against the anticipated arrival of March's army.
### Casualties
Precise figures for the English dead are available: they lost 35 men-at-arms: 2 knights and 33 squires. Several accounts stress that not a single English archer was killed. The losses among the Scots are less certain, but all accounts agree they were very heavy. Mar and Bruce died on the field; as did 2 other earls, 14 barons, 160 knights and many less notable men. Of the contemporary accounts which estimate the number of Scottish dead, two English chronicles give more than 15,000. Two Scottish accounts record 2,000 or 3,000 dead, while a third specifies 3,000 "nobles" and "of other men an untold number". Most accounts refer to the Scottish dead lying in great heaps, some taller than a spear's length. The only high-ranking Scottish survivor was the Earl of Fife, who was captured and changed sides.
## Aftermath
A week after the battle, March arrived outside Perth, having added the remnants of Mar's army to his own force. There was little he could do. Given that Balliol had defeated Mar in open battle, it would have been folly for March to assault him in a fortified town. Balliol had captured plentiful supplies of food in Perth and the ships which had landed his army defeated the Scottish navy, enabling food and reinforcements to be shipped in. In any event, before long the Scottish host had exhausted its own supplies, stripped the surrounding countryside of food and dispersed.
Balliol was crowned King of Scots at Scone – the traditional place of coronation for Scottish monarchs – on 24 September 1332. Within two months Balliol granted Edward III Scottish estates to a value of £2,000, which included "the town, castle and county of Berwick". Balliol's support within Scotland was limited and within six months it had collapsed. He was ambushed by supporters of David II at the Battle of Annan on 17 December. Balliol fled to England half-dressed and riding bareback. He appealed to Edward III for assistance. Edward III dropped all pretence of neutrality, recognised Balliol as King of Scots and made ready for war. After the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Halidon Hill in July 1333 by the English Balliol was reinstated on the Scottish throne. He was deposed again in 1334, restored again in 1335 and finally deposed in 1336, by those loyal to David II. The Second War of Scottish Independence which had started with Balliol's invasion finally ended in 1357. The modern historian Ranald Nicholson states that Edward III copied the tactics used at Dupplin Moor – "all the men-at-arms dismounted, while archers were posted on either flank" – in the English victories at Halidon Hill and Crécy.
## Location
Historic Environment Scotland has identified a site on Gaskmoor, which it suggests corresponds with the accounts in the chronicles. This is on the Dupplin plateau, south-east of Dupplin Loch, and 5 miles (8 km) south-west of Perth. It points out that if correct
> The sides of the valley, and the narrowing of the valley, would have pushed the wings of the schiltrons into the centre, bunching the Scots and creating the deadly crush that appears to have been the main cause of the disaster. The steep slopes would have given a great deal of protection to the [English] from any flanking moves. The width of the valley would accommodate 500 or so dismounted men-at-arms, while the western end of the valley opens out; this is where the Scots would have started, and it would not have been immediately obvious that the topography was a funnel for them.
and concludes that this choice of terrain "is evidence of the tactical brilliance of the [English], who were battle-hardened veterans." Historic Environment Scotland added the battlefield to the Inventory of Historic Battlefields in Scotland on 21 March 2011.
## Notes, citations and sources
|
14,038,359 |
Wilfred Arthur
| 1,160,402,581 |
Royal Australian Air Force fighter pilot
|
[
"1919 births",
"2000 deaths",
"Australian World War II flying aces",
"Companions of the Distinguished Service Order",
"Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom)",
"Royal Australian Air Force officers",
"Wing leaders"
] |
Wilfred Stanley Arthur, (7 December 1919 – 23 December 2000) was a fighter ace and senior officer of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) during World War II. Commonly known as "Woof", he was officially credited with ten aerial victories. As a commander, he led combat formations at squadron and wing level, becoming at twenty-four the youngest group captain in the history of the RAAF.
Born in Sydney and raised in rural Queensland, Arthur enlisted in the RAAF the day after Australia joined the war in September 1939. He first saw action the following year with No. 3 (Army Cooperation) Squadron in the Middle East, flying Gloster Gladiators initially, and later Hawker Hurricanes and P-40 Tomahawks. He achieved victories in all three types against German and Italian opponents, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for shooting down four aircraft in a single sortie in November 1941. The next month Arthur married a young woman he met in Alexandria, and organised for her to travel with him on his troopship when he was posted back to Australia in January 1942.
After a brief stint flying P-40 Kittyhawks with No. 76 Squadron in Queensland in April 1942, Arthur served as an instructor with No. 2 Operational Training Unit (OTU) in Victoria. In January 1943 he was posted to New Guinea to command another Kittyhawk unit, No. 75 Squadron. He received the Distinguished Service Order in April for continuing to lead an attack on a formation of Japanese bombers after discovering that his guns were inoperable. Appointed wing leader of No. 71 Wing, Arthur was involved in a runway collision with an RAAF Spitfire in November and suffered severe burns necessitating repatriation to Australia. After recovering, he attended a staff course before taking charge of No. 2 OTU. In December 1944 he was posted to the Dutch East Indies to command No. 81 Wing and, later, No. 78 Wing. Twice mentioned in despatches during the war, Arthur also played a leading part in—and gave name to—the "Morotai Mutiny" of April 1945, when eight RAAF officers attempted to resign their commissions in protest against apparently worthless ground-attack operations. Pursuing business interests in Australia and Vietnam following his discharge from the RAAF after the war, he settled in Darwin, Northern Territory, in 1967 and died there in 2000.
## Early life
Wilfred Stanley Arthur was the son of stock inspector Stanley Oswald Darley Arthur from Inverell, New South Wales, and his English-born wife Helena Elizabeth Chaffers-Welsh. Stanley Arthur was a veteran of World War I, serving with the Australian Army Veterinary Corps in Egypt and France; two of his brothers also saw active service.
Born in Sydney on 7 December 1919, Arthur grew up around Yelarbon, Queensland, near the New South Wales border. His early education was by correspondence, but he later attended Yelarbon State School, commuting on horseback. In 1935 he began boarding at the Scots College in Warwick, where he matriculated; he was also a member of the school cadet corps and excelled in sports such as cricket, tennis, swimming, athletics, and shooting. Known by his father's forename in youth, Arthur later gained an array of appellations including "Bandy", "Wilf", "Wolf", and "Wulf", but most commonly "Woof".
Aged nineteen and still at the Scots College, Arthur applied to join the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He enlisted on 4 September 1939, the day after Australia's entry into World War II. Training at RAAF Station Point Cook, Victoria, and RAAF Station Richmond, New South Wales, he was commissioned a pilot officer on 3 March 1940, despite being prone to airsickness early on. His initial flying duties were with No. 22 (City of Sydney) Squadron, which operated Hawker Demons and Avro Ansons.
## Combat service
### Middle East
Arthur was posted to No. 3 (Army Cooperation) Squadron on 27 March 1940. On 15 July, the squadron departed Sydney for the Middle East to support the 6th Division in the Western Desert campaign against Italian forces. Sailing via Bombay, the unit arrived in Suez, Egypt, on 23 August. Arthur was promoted to flying officer on 3 September. On 2 November, two flights of the squadron moved forward to Gerawla, near Mersa Matruh, equipped with Gloster Gladiator biplane fighters. Arthur achieved his first aerial victory by shooting down a Fiat CR.42 biplane north-west of Sofafi, Egypt, on 12 December. He was in a patrol of five Gladiators that encountered seventeen of the Italian fighters, three of which the Australians claimed destroyed without loss to themselves. The next day Arthur was shot down by a CR.42, one of eight that engaged six Gladiators while they were attacking a formation of Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers near Sollum; five of the Gladiators were forced down against three Italian aircraft destroyed. Bailing out, Arthur narrowly avoided disaster when he became entangled first with his oxygen hose and then with the Gladiator's wing-bracing wires; he was only torn loose at a height of 1,000 feet (300 m) by the force of rushing air as his stricken plane fell to earth. Arthur was credited with another CR.42 destroyed, and one damaged, north-east of Sollum Bay on 26 December, when his squadron attacked a formation of SM.79s escorted by over twenty CR.42s.
On 22 January 1941, Arthur and Flying Officer Alan Rawlinson were despatched in Gladiators to attack an Italian schooner off Tobruk; they machine-gunned the vessel, setting it on fire. No. 3 Squadron began re-equipping with Hawker Hurricane monoplane fighters on 29 January. On 10 February, the squadron advanced to RAF Station Benina to take over the air defence of Benghazi, which had been occupied by the 6th Division. German aircraft began appearing at this time, as the Afrika Korps and a Luftwaffe contingent under General Erwin Rommel arrived in North Africa to reinforce the Italians; the Germans launched an offensive in March, and Benina was evacuated on 3 April. No. 3 Squadron eventually re-located to Sidi Haneish in Egypt on 12 April, having retreated 500 miles (800 km) and operated from nine airfields in ten days. Arthur was flying a Hurricane when he shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 110 over Tobruk on 14 April.
As the Allies continued to retreat, No. 3 Squadron re-located to Lydda in Palestine and began converting from Hurricanes to P-40 Tomahawks on 14 May 1941. Arthur was among a detachment of six pilots deployed to Cyprus to patrol the coast of Turkey in Hurricanes from 25 May to 3 June. The squadron took part in the Syria–Lebanon campaign against the Vichy French in June–July. Arthur was rested from operations and posted as an instructor to No. 71 Operational Training Unit RAF in the Sudan on 14 August. No. 3 Squadron returned to Sidi Haneish on 3 September, to resume operations in the Western Desert. Arthur re-joined the squadron on 18 September. On 1 October, he was promoted to flight lieutenant and appointed a flight commander. Flying a Tomahawk, he was credited with one Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter probably destroyed, and another damaged, in the vicinity of Sheferzen, Egypt, on 12 October.
On the afternoon of 22 November 1941, during Operation Crusader, No. 3 Squadron was operating with No. 112 Squadron RAF when the Allied aircraft encountered twenty Messerschmitts south-east of El Adem. In a drawn-out battle for air superiority, during which No. 3 Squadron lost six Tomahawks against three Bf 109s destroyed, Arthur claimed four Bf 109s damaged. He became an ace on 30 November, when he achieved four victories in a single sortie. The action occurred when Nos. 3 and 112 Squadrons intercepted fifteen Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers escorted by twenty-five German and Italian fighters heading to attack New Zealand troops at Sidi Rezegh; No. 3 Squadron claimed eight aircraft destroyed and twelve damaged, bringing its tally of claims in the theatre to 106 aircraft destroyed. Arthur was credited with shooting down two Ju 87s and two Italian fighters, a Fiat G.50 and a Macchi MC.200. He destroyed the last of the four after his plane had been damaged and he was on his way back to base; he crash-landed within the Tobruk perimeter and borrowed a Hurricane to return to his squadron. His "great skill and gallantry" in this action earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), which was gazetted on 20 January 1942.
Arthur met his future wife, Lucille (Lucie) Petraki, a Greek–Egyptian national, in a shop in Alexandria. They married in an Anglican ceremony at St Mark's Church in Alexandria on 24 December 1941, and honeymooned in Palestine and Syria. The sudden romance came as a shock to Arthur's parents; he related that "the first letter I got was a fair imitation of panic I think". While on leave, he was also able to make contact with his brother Norman, who was stationed with the Australian Army in Beirut. Arthur was mentioned in despatches on 1 January 1942. Completing his tour with No. 3 Squadron, he embarked for Australia on 20 January. He managed to arrange for his new bride to travel with him on the troopship. Arthur recalled that they sailed via Bombay and Colombo, where the ship picked up many refugees following the recent fall of Singapore, before arriving in Melbourne on 28 March. The couple eventually had four children.
### South-West Pacific
As the Japanese advanced in the South West Pacific during early 1942, the RAAF hurriedly established three new fighter units for the defence of Australia and New Guinea, Nos. 75, 76 and 77 Squadrons. On 13 April, Arthur was posted to No. 76 Squadron in Townsville, Queensland, flying P-40 Kittyhawks. Ten days later he was transferred to No. 2 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Mildura, Victoria, as an instructor. Other instructors at the school included desert aces Clive Caldwell and Alan Rawlinson. In June, Arthur, Rawlinson and a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) pilot conducted comparative trials pitting the new CAC Boomerang against a Kittyhawk and a Bell Airacobra, reporting favourably on the Boomerang's handling characteristics. Arthur was promoted to squadron leader on 1 October. His brother Norman was killed in action on 9 November while serving with the 2/31st Infantry Battalion on the Kokoda Trail.
On 22 January 1943, Arthur succeeded Les Jackson as commanding officer of No. 75 Squadron, a Kittyhawk unit based at Milne Bay in New Guinea under the control of No. 9 Operational Group. Arthur developed a reputation for diligence, courtesy, and concern for the welfare of his men. Despite being, at twenty-three, the youngest officer in his new squadron, he commanded the respect of his fellows because, he believed, "they like that I work hard; they like that I am not frightened of anything (i.e. Pretends not to be) and above those, they like that I don't boast". On 10 March, Arthur was credited with the destruction of a Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" that he attacked while flying with another Kittyhawk near Fergusson Island. Battling stoppages in his guns, Arthur reported chasing the bomber 80 miles (130 km) before bringing it down.
Arthur was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his "gallantry, matchless leadership and devotion to duty" in action over Milne Bay on 14 April 1943. On this occasion, his guns jammed completely and he could not clear them. In spite of this, he led thirty-four Allied aircraft, including Kittyhawks of Nos. 75 and 77 Squadrons and P-38 Lightnings of the USAAF, in what his DSO citation described as "a determined head-on attack" to intercept 100 Japanese raiders, fourteen of which the defenders claimed as destroyed. Arthur described the situation of being in combat but unable to shoot as "sort of awkward. Fortunately nobody else would know except me." To compensate for his lack of offensive weaponry, he repeatedly made as though attempting to ram one of the Japanese aircraft, to try and force it down into the sea. His DSO was gazetted on 25 May.
On 13 June 1943, Arthur was promoted acting wing commander and the next day became wing leader of No. 71 Wing, which controlled No. 75 Squadron and three other combat units. He was credited with probably destroying a Betty over Jacquinot Bay in New Britain on 31 October. Five days later, he was involved in a runway collision at Kiriwina Airfield with a Supermarine Spitfire of No. 79 Squadron. The Spitfire pilot was killed, and Arthur received serious burns. He recalled, "I felt my hands disappear, felt my face go but the rest of my body was ... was just flames [...] And then all of a sudden the flames dropped down a bit and I got out and went like mad and I was running away from the aircraft and trying to guess how far I could go before I'd try to put the flames out..." Although his family was informed that his injuries were "of a very slight nature" and that he had been "burnt but not badly", Arthur was temporarily blinded and close to death for weeks while he was treated in Kiriwina. He was subsequently repatriated aboard a Bristol Beaufighter to Sydney, where he underwent plastic surgery.
Arthur was mentioned in despatches on 29 March 1944 for his "distinguished service" in the South West Pacific. The award was gazetted on 16 June. Having recovered from his injuries, he commenced No. 3 War Staff Course at the RAAF Staff School on 3 April, and took charge of No. 2 OTU on 3 August. He was promoted to acting group captain on 5 October. Aged twenty-four, he was the youngest group captain in the RAAF. On 16 December, Arthur assumed command of No. 81 Wing, headquartered at Noemfoor in the Dutch East Indies. Comprising three squadrons, the wing came under the control of the Australian First Tactical Air Force (No. 1 TAF), the RAAF's mobile strike force. By this time, No. 1 TAF was mainly assigned to garrison duties and harassing Japanese bases on islands bypassed by US forces advancing on the Philippines and Japan.
Flying his first mission on 22 December 1944, Arthur began to doubt the value of some targets considering the risk his pilots faced from ground fire, and cancelled three days of operations on his own authority. He also formulated a "balance sheet" of achievements as opposed to losses in October–November, finding that the wing had destroyed a dozen Japanese barges and six vehicles for the loss of eleven pilots and fifteen aircraft. According to historian Mark Johnston, "His letters at this time reveal a thoughtful and perhaps restless man, grappling with political and religious issues." Arthur presented the balance sheet to the commander of No. 1 TAF, Air Commodore Harry Cobby, who reviewed it and disseminated it to his headquarters staff, but took no further action. Frustrated, Arthur began discussing his concerns with other senior pilots of No. 1 TAF, including Group Captain Caldwell and Wing Commander Bobby Gibbes of No. 80 Wing, and Squadron Leader John Waddy of No. 80 Squadron, all fellow veterans of the North African campaign.
On 6 April 1945, Arthur took command of No. 1 TAF's No. 78 Wing, headquartered on Morotai. There he played a prominent role in an incident that became known as the "Morotai Mutiny" (a phrase originating in one of his aide memoires at the time). By this time Arthur, Caldwell, Gibbes, Waddy, and four other officers of No. 1 TAF who had become disillusioned with the way the war was being conducted had formed a group and began determining action to take. On 20 April, Arthur and the other seven officers attempted to resign their commissions to protest what they considered to be militarily unjustifiable operations. Arthur later said that his object for the "mutiny" was to "make as big a fuss as I possibly could with the object of getting the position corrected". In the end, Cobby and his senior headquarters staff were dismissed from their positions, and most of the "mutineers" continued on operations. A government inquiry into the incident exonerated the officers, finding their motives in tendering their resignations to be sincere. Retaining command of No. 78 Wing, Arthur was appointed air task force commander for the Battle of Tarakan, which commenced on 1 May. No. 81 Wing was originally slated for the operation but at the last minute No. 78 Wing, expanded from three squadrons to four, was substituted and given only ten days to prepare for deployment. Arthur handed over command of No. 78 Wing to Group Captain Alan Rawlinson on 24 May.
Arthur's official final tally of aerial victories during the war was ten enemy aircraft destroyed, though his score has also been reported as eight destroyed and two probables, as well as six damaged. Reflecting on being a fighter pilot throughout his military career, Arthur said that he was glad to have flown single-seat aircraft rather than bombers, because "I would always have felt very uncomfortable with anybody else for whom I'd be responsible".
## Later life and legacy
Arthur was discharged from the Air Force on 14 February 1946, and commissioned the following day as a temporary wing commander in the RAAF Reserve. In May he became registrar of the Koornong Free Expression School in the Melbourne suburb of Warrandyte. Subsequently working for the Repatriation Department, in 1950 he joined the Australian School of Pacific Administration, and in 1961 travelled to Vietnam to establish a dairy farm at Bến Cát under the Colombo Plan. He was captured by the Viet Cong later that year and was not released until a ransom was paid—medical and other non-military items according to one newspaper, an Olivetti typewriter according to another. Arthur was reported as saying that he was subjected to long hours of political discourse by his captors, but no physical harm or threats of harm. He continued to work in Vietnam after this incident, and by 1966 was running a business supplying duck feathers to the American military for use in life jackets. A son, Haig, served in the Vietnam War with the Royal Australian Army Service Corps. Returning to Australia, Arthur took up residence in Darwin, Northern Territory, in 1967 and became administration manager for Geopeko, the exploration unit responsible for discovering the Ranger uranium deposit at Jabiru. He died in Darwin on 23 December 2000, and was interred in the Adelaide River War Cemetery.
The Kittyhawk "Polly" that Arthur flew in his DSO-winning action of 14 April 1943 was purchased by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, in 1992 and put on display in its Aircraft Hall. In 2011, the Scots College at Warwick opened the Wilf Arthur Learning Enrichment Centre, which featured a scale model of "Polly".
|
586,156 |
Barren Island, Brooklyn
| 1,161,594,859 |
Former island in Brooklyn, New York
|
[
"Barrier islands of New York (state)",
"Former islands of New York City",
"Gateway National Recreation Area",
"Islands of Brooklyn",
"Islands of New York City",
"Neighborhoods in Brooklyn"
] |
Barren Island is a peninsula and former island on the southeast shore of Brooklyn in New York City. Located on Jamaica Bay, it was geographically part of the Outer Barrier island group on the South Shore of Long Island. The island was occupied by the Lenape Native Americans prior to the arrival of Dutch settlers in the 17th century. Its name is a corruption of Beeren Eylandt, the Dutch-language term for "Bears' Island".
Barren Island remained sparsely inhabited before the 19th century, mainly because of its relative isolation from the rest of the city. Starting in the 1850s, the island was developed as an industrial complex with fish rendering plants and other industries, and also as an ethnically diverse community of up to 1,500 residents. Between the mid-19th century and 1934, the island housed industrial plants that processed the carcasses of the city's dead horses, converting them into a variety of industrial products. This activity led to the still-extant waterbody on the island's western shore becoming nicknamed "Dead Horse Bay". A garbage incinerator, which became the subject of numerous complaints because of its odor, operated on the island from the 1890s to 1921.
The Barren Island community became known as South Flatlands during its final years. By the 1920s, most of the industrial activity had tapered off, and landfill was used to unite the island with the rest of Brooklyn. While most residents were evicted in the late 1920s for the construction of Floyd Bennett Field, some were permitted to stay until 1942, when the airfield was expanded as a wartime base of the United States Navy. No trace remains of the former island's industrial use. Since 1972, Floyd Bennett Field has been part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service.
## Geography and ecology
Barren Island was originally part of an estuary at the mouth of Jamaica Bay and acted as a barrier island for the larger Long Island, located to Barren Island's north. The bay, in turn, was created during the end of the Wisconsin glaciation. The edge of the glacier had been in the middle of Long Island, creating a series of hills across the island. The water from the melting glacier ran downhill toward a low-lying delta that adjoined the Atlantic Ocean, which later became Jamaica Bay. A body of water called Rockaway Inlet, located south of the island, connected the bay with the ocean. By the late 17th century, Barren Island had 70 acres (28 hectares) of salt meadows and 30 acres (12 ha) of uplands, as well as cedar forests. Salt, reed grasses, and hay served as food for early settlers' livestock.
Barren Island's geography was significantly altered by shifting tides and storms in the 19th century. Originally, it was part of the Outer Barrier, a series of barrier islands on Long Island's southern shore. Barren Island, the Rockaways, Pelican Beach, and Plumb Beach were separate barrier islands protecting Jamaica Bay. In an 1818 survey of Long Island, Barren Island was described as having dunes and scattered trees. By 1839, Barren Island, Plumb Beach, and Pelican Beach were a single island, separated from Coney Island to the west by Plumb Beach Inlet. By the end of the century, Gerritsen Inlet had formed, separating Barren Island from Plumb and Pelican Beaches.
The neighboring island of Rockaway Beach also had a large impact on Barren Island's geography. Originally, Rockaway was located to Barren's east, and the two islands' southern tips were aligned. From the mid-19th century, Rockaway Beach was extended more than one mile (1.6 km) to the southwest after several jetties were built to protect manmade developments there. This caused changes to Barren Island's ecology, because during the early 20th century, it had contained sand dunes on the coasts and salt marshes inland. As a result of the extension of Rockaway Beach, Barren Island was no longer a barrier island and its beach was washed away.
By the late 1920s, industrial development on Barren Island's eastern side had transformed that area, with a small patch of dunes remaining. The western side of the island, containing dunes, woods, and wetlands, was largely untouched. The southern coast contained a tidal creek stretching into the center of the island, where the tidal wetlands remained mostly intact. The wetlands were abutted by the human-made Mill Basin to the north. Tidal creeks also stretched across the island's marshes, although one of these creeks was bisected by the construction of Flatbush Avenue in 1925. In addition, the water adjoining the northern and western coasts had become heavily polluted. The entirety of the former island, covering 1,300 acres (530 hectares), was converted to a peninsula during the 1920s. It is occupied by Floyd Bennett Field, which in turn is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.
## Name
The Barren Island area was originally the homeland of the Canarsee, a group of Lenape Native Americans, who referred to the archipelago of islands near it by a name alternatively transcribed as "Equandito", "Equendito", or "Equindito", which means "Broken Lands". This name also applied to several smaller islands in the area, such as Mill Island. Throughout its existence, Barren Island has also been referred to as "Broken Lands" in English, as well as "Bearn Island", "Barn Island", and "Bear's Island". The name "Barren Island" is a corruption of the Dutch Beeren Eylandt; it does not relate to the English word describing the geography of the island.
## Settlement
A State University of New York study stated that the indigenous Canarsee likely used Barren Island to fish. In 1636, as New Netherland was expanding outward from present-day Manhattan, Dutch settlers founded the town of Achtervelt (later Amersfoort) and purchased 15,000 acres (6,100 ha) around Jamaica Bay north of Barren Island. Amersfoort was centered around the present-day intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Flatlands Avenue, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) northwest of Barren Island. In 1664, New Netherland became the English Province of New York, and Amersfoort was renamed Flatlands. The island, as well as nearby Mill Basin, was sold to John Tilton Jr. and Samuel Spicer that year.
Canarsee leaders had signed 22 land agreements with Dutch settlers by 1684, which handed ownership of much of their historic land, including Barren Island, to the Dutch. Barren Island was one of the first barrier islands to be settled because it was easily accessible. At low tide, people on mainland Brooklyn could walk across a shallow stream, while at high tide, small craft could access the northern coast and larger craft could dock on the southern coast.
Barren Island, as well as nearby Mill Island and Bergen Island, were part of the Town of Flatlands. By the 1670s, all three islands were leased by a settler named Elbert Elbertse. Records from 1679 indicate that Elbertse had complained that other settlers were going to Barren Island to let their horses graze on his land. The settler William Moore started digging sand from the island in the 1740s. Moore characterized the island as "vacant and unoccupied" in 1762, and it remained as such until the end of that century, being used mainly as a grazing field. Even during the first half of the 19th century, the island had few residents. Circa 1800, a man named Nicholas Dooley established an inn and entertainment venue for fishermen and hunters on the east side of Barren Island; the house's ownership later passed to the Johnson family. Two more residences were built on the island before 1860, for the Skidmore and Cherry families. Maps from that time do not show any other human-made structures on Barren Island.
The National Park Service states that the pirate Charles Gibbs buried Mexican silver on the island c. 1830. According to an 1839 account, some of the treasure was later recovered. A handbook from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle states that a portion of the treasure was retrieved in 1842, while the remainder was never found.
## Fish-oil and fertilizer plants
The naturally deep Rockaway Inlet, combined with the remoteness of Barren Island from the rest of the developed city, made the island suitable for industrial uses. An isolated settlement on the island was developed in the late 19th century. From 1859 to 1934, approximately 26 industries had opened facilities on Barren Island, mostly on the eastern and southern coasts. Few industrial sectors were enticed to move to Barren Island, precisely because of its isolation: there were no direct land routes to the rest of the city. Waste management was the sole industry for which Barren Island was an ideal location, and became its main industry.
The island's first main industrial use was for fish rendering plants, as well as for fertilizer plants that processed offal products. The fish rendering plants processed schools of menhaden, a type of fish that was caught off the coast of Long Island, and turned them into fish oil or scraps. Meanwhile, the fertilizer plants turned horse bones into glue, as well as fertilizer, buttons, and materials for refining gold and sugar. The plants processed almost 20,000 horse corpses annually at their peak, leading to the nickname "Dead Horse Bay" for the still-extant water body on the island's western shore, since the waste processors on the island would simply dump the processed waste into that bay. By the late 1850s, two plants had been built on the island. The plant on the eastern shore was operated by Lefferts R. Cornell and processed animal carcases; after the facility was destroyed by fire in 1859, Cornell moved his factory to Flatbush. The other corpse-processing plant, on the western shore, was operated by William B. Reynolds and ceased operations during the 1860s. These fertilizer factories were the first buildings on Barren Island for which the town of Flatlands imposed property taxes.
Ownership of part of the island passed in 1861 to Francis Swift. No new factories were developed until at least 1868, when Smith & Co. opened a 45-acre (18 ha) fish-processing factory. Steinfield and Company operated a factory from 1869 to 1873, but its purpose is unknown. A person named Simpson opened a factory on Barren Island in 1870, which closed two years later. Swift and E. P. White also created their own fertilizer factory in 1872, which operated until the 1930s. A factory belonging to the Products Manufacturing Company, located where Flatbush Avenue is now, was reportedly the world's largest carcass-processing plant. Through the 1870s, eight more factories opened on the island, of which two operated only briefly. Barren Island's factories, which were vulnerable to landslides, fires, or waves from high-tide, typically lasted for fleeting periods of time. White's factory burned down in 1878 and was soon rebuilt. By 1883, the island's oil factories hired a combined 350 men and collectively used 10 steamships.
The waste-processing factories on Barren Island supported a small but thriving community, which was clustered on the island's southeastern coast. In a census conducted by the town of Flatlands in 1870, it was noted than 24 people, all single men who had immigrated from Europe, lived in a single residence and likely worked at an oil factory on Barren Island. A subsequent census in 1880 counted six households that were entirely composed of single men, as well as 17 families, and found that 309 people resided on the island. That same year, it was recorded that the island had three fish oil factories and four fertilizer plants. The development of Barren Island continued in tandem with the population growth: in 1878, there were six large structures on the island's southern and eastern coasts, in contrast to the single hotel that had been reported in the 1852 map. By 1884, five hundred people worked on the island. The 1892 New York state census recorded four large "clusters" of laborers, from the same countries as the 1880 census, who resided in the same households on Barren Island.
The Rockaway Park Improvement Company complained in 1891 that the "offensive" smells from Barren Island were ruining the quality of life for vacationers in the Rockaways, located across the Rockaway Inlet from Barren Island. The New York State Health Board composed a report about the status of the industries on Barren Island. Subsequently, New York Governor David B. Hill declared four companies to be "public nuisances", ordering twice-weekly inspections of their factories to ensure that the companies complied with health regulations.
## Garbage processing
There had been a steep decline in the number of menhaden off Long Island by the late 1890s, which, combined with the Panic of 1893, resulted in the closure of the fish-oil plants. The carcass-dumping continued: in one five-day span in August 1896, records show that 1,256 horse carcasses had been processed. That year, the city government awarded the New York Sanitary Utilization Company a US\$1 million contract to operate on Barren Island, having unsuccessfully attempted to bury waste in Rikers Island. The company, which collected garbage from hotels around the city, operated a garbage incinerator that turned New York City's waste into fertilizer, grease, and soap. Residents of nearby Brooklyn communities opposed the construction of the incinerator, without success. By 1897, the island was home to two garbage plants and four animal-processing plants. The same year, the town of Flatlands was subsumed into the City of Greater New York, becoming part of the city's 32nd Ward.
Barren Island soon became known for its use as a garbage dump, receiving waste and animal carcasses from Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. New York City's other two boroughs, Queens and Staten Island, had their own garbage disposal sites. The Sanitary Utilization Company disposed of glass bottles and other non-processable items on the northern coast of Barren Island. Some valuable trash, such as jewelry, ended up on Barren Island. The island's residents did not mind the smell of the processed garbage, but the incinerator's scents were so noxious that residents of the rest of Brooklyn, four miles (6 km) away, could not stand the odors. In 1899, state and city lawmakers passed bills to reduce the stench, but these bills did not progress because the governor and mayor opposed these actions. The incinerator was damaged by fire in 1904, and two years later, another major fire caused US\$1.5 million in damage and burned down 16 buildings. The unstable land along the coast caused numerous landslides from 1890 to 1907, which damaged factories on the island.
By the 1900s, the island was receiving seven or eight garbage scows per day, which collectively delivered 50 to 100 short tons (45 to 89 long tons; 45 to 91 metric tons) of trash. A boat of dead horses, cats, cows, and other animals arrived daily at the island. Workers at the horse processing factories were paid more than those at the garbage incinerator. As of the 1900 census, there were 520 Barren Island residents in 103 households, and all of the large "households" of male laborers had been dispersed. Around this time, there were four main landowners: the Sanitary Utilization Company, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, the government of Brooklyn, and the Products Manufacturing Company.
Barren Island served as a residential community for the families of laborers who worked there, and at its peak in the 1910s, it was home to an estimated 1,500 people. Most of these residents were either African-American laborers or immigrants from Italy, Ireland, or Poland, since few Americans were willing to work with the garbage-related industries; however, some farmers also resided on Barren Island. Despite the racial differences, the island's residents coexisted relatively peacefully, as opposed to the high racial strife present elsewhere in the United States. The island had a public school, a church, a post office, a New York City Police Department precinct, hotels and inns, various stores and saloons, and three ferry routes to other Brooklyn neighborhoods. A "Main Street" stretched east–west across Barren Island, lined with buildings that faced south toward Rockaway Inlet. The street grid in the island's central section was built haphazardly, based possibly on sand dune patterns. A caste system divided the different types of workers on the island: "rag pickers" were at the bottom of the hierarchy, followed by metal-and-paper scavengers, then bone sorters. The island's African-American residents were considered to be part of the lowest caste. Students who lived on Barren Island were dismissed from school early so that they could help their parents scavenge. The island had no running water, sewage treatment, or New York City Fire Department stations. An 1897 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described pools of sewage around the school buildings and on the island's main street, as well as accumulations of trash scattered haphazardly across the island, and noted that "how any person manages to work on the island is a mystery".
Through the 1910s, as the odors became worse, more complaints were filed with the city government, and real estate developers in adjacent communities such as the Rockaways and Flatlands cajoled the city government to take action. Residents in nearby neighborhoods blamed their illnesses on the smells, and one group from Neponsit, Queens—located in the Rockaways—claimed that 750,000 residents in an eight-mile (13 km) radius were subject to the odors emanating from Barren Island. In 1916, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel announced that a new garbage landfill would be built on Staten Island to replace the Barren Island landfill. Because of complaints from Staten Islanders, the location of the landfill was changed several times. The city government eventually decided to build the landfill in Fresh Kills, an isolated plain on Staten Island that was far away from the vast majority of Barren Island's residents. It had overruled several injunctions and formal complaints from Staten Island residents who did not want a landfill anywhere in the borough. Politicians from the Democratic Party accused Mitchel, a member of the rival Republican Party, of corruption. Mayoral candidate John Hylan said that if he were elected in the upcoming year's mayoral election, he would relocate the landfill off Staten Island. Hylan ultimately won the election against Mitchel, and he threatened to revoke the Fresh Kills landfill operator's license. Hylan ultimately restored dumping operations at Barren Island, despite having denied rumors about the resumption of such operations. After political backlash, the city government started paying US\$1,000 per day to the Sanitary Utilization Company to dispose of the city's trash.
The city government started dumping its trash into the ocean in 1919, and the Sanitary Utilization Company closed its facility two years later. Additionally, the advent of automobile travel reduced horse-drawn travel in New York City, and resulted in fewer horse cadavers being processed on Barren Island. By 1918, the island processed 600 horse carcasses per year; it had once processed the same number of corpses in 12 days. The Thomas F. White Company closed the E. P. White fertilizer factory by around 1921 and started demolishing the Sanitary Utilization Company facility around the same time. The final horse processing plant closed in 1921. The last garbage processing plant on Barren Island, the Products Manufacturing Company, was transferred to city ownership in 1933, and operations ceased two years later.
## Seaport plans and decline of community
In 1910, developers began dredging ports within Jamaica Bay in an effort to develop a seaport district. Although the city approved the construction of several piers in 1918, only one was built. That pier, which was built to receive landfill for the other proposed piers, stretched one mile (1.6 km) northeast and was 700 feet (210 m) wide.
By the 1920s, two factories and several residents remained on the island. A municipal ferry service to the Rockaway Peninsula and an extension of Flatbush Avenue were both opened in 1925. The new modes of transportation were part of a proposal to develop Barren Island as a seaport. The creeks along Barren Island's coast were to be turned into canals, and the city had bought the western part of the island for use as parkland. The new transport options provided some short-term benefits for the remaining residents, who could go to "mainland" Brooklyn to work and shop. Residents of "mainland" Brooklyn could go to the Rockaway beaches by driving to the end of Barren Island and taking the ferry. Many of the buildings had been abandoned by 1928, though the public school and church remained. Three years later, the city took possession of 58 acres (23 ha) on the western side of the island, which comprised much of Main Street and the structures on the island's southwestern side. That plot was combined with a 110-acre (45 ha) tract owned by Kings County to create a public space called Marine Park.
During the island community's final years, a teacher named Jane F. Shaw (whom the press nicknamed the "Angel of Barren Island" and "Lady Jane") was hired at the island's public school. Shaw later became the principal and lobbied on behalf of the island, persuading Senator Robert F. Wagner to rename the island "South Flatlands" in order to integrate it with the city. After a census in 1930 neglected to count Barren Island, Shaw cajoled the United States Census Bureau into counting the island's remaining 416 residents. When New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses ordered the eviction of all residents in early 1936, Shaw persuaded him to move the eviction date to the end of June, so her students could complete their school year.
## Airport and park use
The pilot Paul Rizzo opened the privately-operated Barren Island Airport in 1927. The next year, the city's aeronautic engineer Clarence Chamberlin chose Barren Island as the site for the city's new municipal airport, which would become Floyd Bennett Field. The New York City Department of Docks was in charge of constructing the Barren Island Airport. A contract for the airport's construction, awarded in May 1928, entailed filling in or leveling 4,450,000 cubic yards (3,400,000 m<sup>3</sup>) of soil across a 350-acre (140 ha) parcel. Sand from Jamaica Bay was used to connect Barren Island and adjacent islands, as well as raise the site to 16 feet (4.9 m) above the high-tide mark. A subsequent contract involved filling in an extra 833,000 cubic yards (637,000 m<sup>3</sup>) of land. Floyd Bennett Field was formally completed in 1931, upon which about 400 people still lived on the island.
In 1935, the city acquired 1,822 acres (737 ha), including the entire island west of Flatbush Avenue, for Robert Moses's expansion of Marine Park. Early the following year, Moses attempted to evict the remaining Barren Island residents, but they simply moved to a still-occupied portion of the island. At the time, twenty-five people lived on a 90-acre (36 ha) spit at the southern end of the island. When the Marine Parkway Bridge to the Rockaways and Jacob Riis Park was completed in 1937, Flatbush Avenue was extended across Barren Island to connect with the bridge, and Barren Island was no longer isolated from the rest of the city.
Bennett Field was taken over by the United States Navy in 1941 and converted to Naval Air Station New York. The next year, the Navy expanded the airport's facilities to the southern tip of Barren Island, forcing the former island's last residents to move out. During its wartime upgrade of Bennett Field, the Navy burned and cleared all remaining structures on Barren Island, and eliminated its original landscape. No trace of the community remains, as Barren Island had been totally subsumed by Bennett Field. In 1972, Bennett Field was turned over to the National Park Service as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area's Jamaica Bay Unit.
In the 1950s, Moses expanded the former island, by then a peninsula, to the west using garbage covered by topsoil. The layer of soil later eroded, and by the 2010s, garbage could be seen on the coast during low tide. The coast contains many exposed broken glass bottles and other non-biodegradable material, and as such, the site has been used for beachcombing. In August 2020, the National Park Service announced that Dead Horse Bay would be closed indefinitely because of the presence of radiological contamination. The contamination was identified as having come from two deck markers, though the risk of radiological exposure was considered low.
## Media
Carol Zoref's novel Barren Island, about an Eastern European immigrant family's experiences on the island, was placed on the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction's "longlist" and won the Association of Writers & Writing Programs' 2015 Award Series as well as a National Jewish Book Award. In addition, in 2019, Miriam Sicherman published Brooklyn's Barren Island: A Forgotten History, which described Barren Island's history.
## See also
- List of smaller islands in New York City
|
1,172,016 |
Other Worlds, Universe Science Fiction, and Science Stories
| 1,121,167,656 |
Two related US science fiction magazines
|
[
"Defunct science fiction magazines published in the United States",
"Magazines disestablished in 1957",
"Magazines disestablished in 1976",
"Magazines established in 1949",
"Science fiction magazines established in the 1940s"
] |
Other Worlds, Universe Science Fiction, and Science Stories were three related US magazines edited by Raymond A. Palmer. Other Worlds was launched in November 1949 by Palmer's Clark Publications and lasted for four years in its first run, with well-received stories such as "Enchanted Village" by A. E. van Vogt and "Way in the Middle of the Air", one of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicle" stories. Since Palmer was both publisher and editor, he was free to follow his own editorial policy, and presented a wide array of science fiction.
Palmer entered a partnership with a Chicago businessman in 1953 to create Bell Publications, and printed Universe Science Fiction from June 1953. Palmer used the new company to abandon Other Worlds and launch Science Stories, in order to escape from Clark Publications' financial difficulties. Hence Science Stories can be considered a continuation of Other Worlds. Science Stories was visually attractive but contained no memorable fiction. Universe, on the other hand, was drab in appearance, but included some well-received stories, such as Theodore Sturgeon's "The World Well Lost", which examined homosexuality, a controversial topic for the time.
Palmer's Chicago partner lost interest, so Palmer took over both Science Stories and Universe Science Fiction under a new company. In 1955 he ceased publication of both magazines and brought back Other Worlds, numbering the issues to make the new magazine appear a continuation of both the original Other Worlds and also of Universe. In this new incarnation the magazine was less successful, but did print Marion Zimmer Bradley's first novel, Falcons of Narabedla. In 1957 Palmer changed the focus of the magazine to unidentified flying objects (UFOs), retitling it Flying Saucers from Other Worlds, and after the September 1957 issue no more fiction appeared. Palmer eventually settled on Flying Saucers, Mysteries of the Space Age as the title, and in that form it survived until June 1976.
## Publishing history
In 1945, Raymond Palmer, the editor of Amazing Stories, published "I Remember Lemuria", by Richard Shaver, in the March 1945 issue. The story, about prehistoric civilizations, explained all the disasters on Earth as the work of evil robots. Palmer presented the story as a mixture of truth and fiction, and the response from readers was strong enough that he bought more stories from Shaver, and promoted what he called the "Shaver Mystery". Circulation grew dramatically, but the publisher, Ziff-Davis, became alarmed at the ridicule the stories were drawing in the press, and ordered Palmer to tone down the material. Palmer complied, but planned to leave. He formed his own publishing company, Clark Publications, in 1947, and launched Fate in 1948. In 1949 Palmer left Ziff-Davis, and launched Other Worlds Science Stories in digest format; the editor was listed as Robert N. Webster, a pseudonym Palmer used to conceal his activities since he was still working at Ziff-Davis when the first issue appeared. Palmer had planned to distribute free copies of the first issue to fans at that year's World Science Fiction Convention in Cincinnati. Printing delays meant the magazine did not appear until late in the year. At the convention Palmer announced that "Robert N. Webster" was his pseudonym, and gave the convention organizers the original artwork for the first issue for auction. He also met, and immediately hired, Bea Mahaffey, a Cleveland fan, as his managing editor, starting with the fourth issue, dated May 1950.
Palmer planned another science fiction (sf) title, Imagination, to be launched in the fall of 1950, but in June, he suffered a serious accident and was temporarily paralyzed, and Mahaffey took over in his absence. Palmer was able to help with editing both magazines even while in the hospital, but by September he decided to sell Imagination to William Hamling, and keep Other Worlds. Despite the high cover price of 35 cents, Other Worlds did well enough for Palmer to increase the publication frequency from bimonthly to every six weeks, but faced competition from two new magazines launched at about the same time: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the first issue of which had appeared at the end of 1949, and Galaxy Science Fiction, which published its first issue in October 1950. Both were very successful, with higher budgets than Palmer was able to afford, and Other Worlds suffered as a result. The magazine was doing well enough for Palmer to move it to monthly publication at the end of 1952. It stayed on a regular schedule until the July 1953 issue, but Palmer's finances eventually worsened to the point that he was unable to pay his printer.
Palmer was contacted by a Chicago businessman interested in starting a sf magazine, and took the opportunity to resolve his financial problems by forming a new company, Bell Publications, in partnership with the businessman (whose name was never revealed), and starting two magazines: Universe Science Fiction and Science Stories. Universe's first issue appeared in June 1953, while Other Worlds was still being published. It was financed by Palmer's partner, and intended as a bimonthly, though in fact the first four issues were on a quarterly schedule. It was edited by Palmer and Mahaffey, who used the collective pseudonym "George Bell" for the first two issues. Science Stories followed in October, also edited by Palmer and Mahaffey as "George Bell", and published by Bell Publications; this was effectively the same magazine as Other Worlds Science Stories, with "Other Worlds" dropped from the title. In the second issue of Science Stories, Palmer explained the reason for the new magazine: "For a variety of reasons—and let's be honest, most of them were financial—we had to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to discontinue Other Worlds and replace it with the magazine you are now reading. We phoned the typesetter, halted work on the August OW, and lifted the editorial and stories we needed for Science Stories No. 1 from OW material on hand". Subscribers to Other Worlds were given the option to continue their subscription with whichever of the two magazines they preferred.
When the anonymous businessman lost interest in the project Palmer bought him out, financed by the sale of his half share in Clark Publications, which had published Other Worlds and Fate. He founded Palmer Publications and took over the new magazines with Universe's third issue and Science Stories' second issue, and abandoned the pseudonym. He launched Mystic Magazine, which, like Fate, published occult material, both fact and fiction. Science Stories failed to sell well, and ceased to appear after the April 1954 issue, but Universe continued, going bimonthly after the March 1954 issue. A total of ten issues appeared under the title Universe Science Fiction, and with the May 1955 issue the title Other Worlds Science Fiction reappeared. The new version of Other Worlds initially carried both Universe's numbering and the issue numbering from the original run of Other Worlds. Palmer closed the offices in Evanston, Illinois, and edited the magazine from his home in Wisconsin; Mahaffey continued to work on the magazine by mail from Cincinnati. From November 1955 the format changed to pulp size: this was against the prevailing market winds, as almost all the pulps had died out by this time. In 1956 an unexpected tax bill forced Palmer to let Mahaffey go, and he ran the magazine by himself from that point on.
The following year Palmer switched the magazine's focus to flying saucers. To try to maintain the existing readership while attracting new readers, Palmer emphasized sf and flying saucers in alternate issues: for example, the June 1957 issue was titled FLYING SAUCERS from Other Worlds, and the July issue was Flying Saucers from OTHER WORLDS. He also hoped that each issue would be kept longer on newsstands if the distributors thought they were dealing with two magazines. The experiment did not last; from the July/August 1958 issue the title was shortened to Flying Saucers, and the magazine ceased to carry fiction. Palmer retired to Amherst, Wisconsin, and took over its printing. Bibliographic sources focus on the science fiction issues, and do not index the magazine after 1958, but it continued publication until 1976 as a non-fiction magazine.
## Contents and reception
Palmer's interest in the Shaver Mystery did not abate when he left Amazing Stories, and the lead story for the first issue of Other Worlds was Shaver's "The Fall of Lemuria", still presented as truth in the guise of fiction. The cover illustration was by Malcolm Smith, a frequent artist for Amazing. Palmer declared in the first issue that he wanted to present science fiction from across the spectrum: hard-science stories of the kind that appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, and stories representative of the styles of the other leading magazines—Amazing, Planet Stories, and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Despite this many of the stories in the first issue were routine. Much of the first issue's contents were by Amazing regulars, and it initially appeared that the new magazine would not be very much different from Palmer's Amazing Stories, but within a few issues the quality improved noticeably.
Unlike almost every other sf magazine on the market, Other Worlds was edited and published by the same person, which meant there were no constraints on Palmer's editorial policy. He attempted to find new and daring material, and in the early years of the magazine, he obtained some of the better stories being published. Mike Ashley, a historian of science fiction, cites Eric Frank Russell's "Dear Devil"; "Portrait of a Narcissus" by Raymond F. Jones; "Way in the Middle of the Air", one of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" stories; and two stories by A.E. van Vogt: "Enchanted Village", one of van Vogt's best-liked stories, and "War of Nerves", part of his Voyage of the Space Beagle series. Fritz Leiber contributed "The Seven Black Priests", one of his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, and E.E. Smith, who had become famous for his space operas, switched to fantasy with "Tedric", which appeared in the March 1953 issue. Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson contributed "Heroes Are Made", the first in their Hoka series, and Palmer obtained fiction from other well-known writers such as Fredric Brown and Wilson Tucker. Partly because of competition from the newly-launched Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Palmer was unable to obtain enough material of this quality to fill the magazine, and most of the remaining stories were unremarkable space adventures. Ashley comments that the stigma of the Shaver Mystery clung to Palmer and damaged the magazine; and suggests that much of the best-quality work in Other Worlds was due to the influence of Mahaffey, who in Ashley's opinion "had excellent taste in fiction". A high point of the non-fiction pieces was a series of articles by L. Sprague de Camp, abridged from his book Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, which ran from 1952 to 1953. The covers were attractive, often with artwork on both covers, by well-known artists such as Malcolm Smith, Robert Gibson Jones, Harold McCauley, and Hannes Bok.Science Stories maintained the same high quality of artwork. The first issue, dated October 1953, was painted by Bok, who also did the interior illustration for Jack Williamson's story based on the cover. The remaining three covers were by Virgil Finlay, Albert A. Nuetzell, and Jones; Wendy Bousfield, an sf historian, considers the last one the best, and also singles out the last issue's interior illustrations, all by Finlay, for praise. The writing was not up to the standard of the artwork, with Jack Williamson and Mack Reynolds the only two authors whose reputation has lasted. A lower page count meant less non-fiction material and readers' departments (such as letters) in Science Stories than in Other Worlds, but Palmer found space for cartoons and advertisements for his own books, such as The Coming of the Saucers, written with Kenneth Arnold.
Science Stories was visually attractive but lacked memorable fiction. Universe Science Fiction took the opposite approach, with uninteresting covers and poor interior artwork, but it had some good stories in the first two issues, which sf historian E.F. Casebeer attributes to Mahaffey's influence. Murray Leinster, Mark Clifton and Mack Reynolds contributed to the early issues, with Robert Bloch, providing "Constant Reader", Theodore Sturgeon, and "The World Well Lost"; a treatment of homosexuality controversial for the 1950s. Once Palmer became more involved with the magazine again the artwork improved, with Finlay, Lawrence Stevens, and Edd Cartier contributing good interior illustrations. In Casebeer's view the Finlay and Lawrence illustrations were the best the magazine had to offer, and he considers the quality of the fiction to have gone downhill after a fairly promising start. In the last three issues the artwork was also weak, with poor quality black-and-white covers and little interior art.
The first issue of the revived Other Worlds, in May 1955, had a black-and-white cover picture; later issues returned to colour, though until 1956 these were all reprints of covers from the first incarnation of the magazine. For the cover of the November 1955 issue (the first in pulp format) Palmer reprinted artwork by J. Allen St. John from the back cover of the November 1952 issue; St. John's artwork had saved another Palmer magazine, Fantastic Adventures, from cancellation in 1939. The quality of the fiction dropped from the occasional highs of the first run of Other Worlds. Falcons of Narabedla, the first novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, appeared in 1957, and Palmer also bought her first Darkover novel, Sword of Aldones, though he never ran it and eventually returned the manuscript to Bradley. Palmer hoped to publish Tarzan on Mars, a novel by Stuart Byrne that used fictional worlds created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but he was unable to get authorization from the Burroughs estate, and had to shelve the idea.
Palmer had long been interested in UFOs, and ran an article in Other Worlds in 1951 titled "I Flew in a Flying Saucer", bylined "Captain A.V.G.", though Lester del Rey reports in his history of sf magazines that it may have been written by Palmer himself. Eventually Palmer decided to drop science fiction; from June 1957 only three issues—June, July and September—included fiction; thereafter it was a nonfiction magazine about UFOs. He wrote in the following issue that he would print news of flying saucers and rumors, and would debunk any claims he could prove fake. Over the next twenty years he included such fringe ideas such as that the earth was not spherical, and in December 1959 ran an article in Flying Saucers that claimed the earth was shaped like a donut, and that flying saucers originated from an unexplored source on the earth's surface. In 1965 Palmer published an article by Delmar H. Bryant that debunked the idea that the earth was hollow, but the following year again suggested that the earth might be donut shaped. On the June 1970 issue, the cover picture showed a donut-shaped earth from space; Palmer claimed this was evidence from a satellite photograph.
## Bibliographic details
Other Worlds was edited by Raymond Palmer and published by Clark Publications from November 1949 to July 1953, and by Palmer Publications from May 1955 until at least November 1957. Science Stories and Universe Science Fiction were initially published by Bell Publications, for one and two issues, respectively; thereafter both were published by Palmer Publications. Both magazines were edited by Palmer and Bea Mahaffey. Universe and Science Stories were in digest format for all their issues and were priced at 35 cents; Other Worlds began as a digest and switched to pulp with the November 1955 issue, and was 35 cents until at least the end of 1958. Other Worlds had 160 pages for the first run, and 128 pages when it returned in May 1955, dropping to 96 pages for the pulp issues, until at least the November 1957 issue. Both Universe and Science Stories had 128 pages throughout their runs.
After it became a non-fiction magazine, the title changed to Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest with the July/August 1958 issue. In 1961 the title changed twice more, first to Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Mysteries, and finally to Flying Saucers, Mysteries of the Space Age, which it retained until it ceased publication in 1976.
|
8,198,998 |
Clement of Dunblane
| 1,140,887,011 |
13th-century Roman Catholic bishop; Dominican friar
|
[
"1258 deaths",
"13th-century Scottish Roman Catholic bishops",
"Alumni of the University of Oxford",
"Bishops of Dunblane",
"Kingdom of Scotland expatriates in France",
"Scottish Dominicans",
"University of Paris alumni",
"Year of birth unknown"
] |
Clement (died 1258) was a 13th-century Dominican friar who was the first member of the Dominican Order in Britain and Ireland to become a bishop. In 1233, he was selected to lead the ailing diocese of Dunblane in Scotland, and faced a struggle to bring the bishopric of Dunblane (or "bishopric of Strathearn") to financial viability. This involved many negotiations with the powerful religious institutions and secular authorities which had acquired control of the revenue that would normally have been the entitlement of Clement's bishopric. The negotiations proved difficult, forcing Clement to visit the papal court in Rome. While not achieving all of his aims, Clement succeeded in saving the bishopric from relocation to Inchaffray Abbey. He also regained enough revenue to begin work on the new Dunblane Cathedral.
He faced a similar challenge with the impoverished bishopric of Argyll in the 1240s. He was given the job of restoring the viability of the diocese and installing a new bishop; this involved forming a close relationship with King Alexander II of Scotland. Clement was with the king during his campaign in Argyll in 1249 and was at his side when he died during this campaign. In 1250 Clement had been able to install a new bishop in Argyll and had become one of the Guardians appointed to govern Scotland during the minority of King Alexander III. By 1250 he had established a reputation as one of the most active Dominican reformers in Britain. Clement helped to elevate Edmund of Abingdon and Queen Margaret to sainthood. After his death, he received veneration as a saint himself, although he was never formally canonised.
## Early years and background
The Analecta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum claims that he was "a Scot by birth", and that he was admitted into the Dominican Order of Paris in 1219. The latter source, however, is often highly unreliable, and cannot be fully trusted. The historian Archie Duncan was cautious about a date as firm and early as 1221, and wrote that Clement "had entered the Dominican order by the later 1220s". Although "Clement" is neither a Scottish nor an English name, the large number of French-speakers in both Scotland and England during this period means that this consideration carries limited weight; indeed "Clement" need not even have been his birth-name. The diocese of Dunblane was entirely Gaelic-speaking in Clement's day, and in this era it was often frowned upon for a bishop to be ignorant of the language of his diocese. If this had been a consideration in Clement's later appointment, then this would strongly suggest that Clement was in fact a Scot. Clement was later noted for his skill in languages. Clement received his university education at either the University of Oxford or the University of Paris, perhaps at both of these institutions. There is a possibility that he can be identified more fully as "Clement Rocha". A "Father Clement Rocha" was the owner of a manuscript from the period now held in Edinburgh. This, however, says nothing more about his background.
The Dominican Order had its origins in the reformist ideology of Dominic de Guzmán, later Saint Dominic. By 1219, Dominic had established houses as far apart as Paris, Bologna, Madrid and Segovia; at his death in 1221, there were 21 houses. Expansion of the order continued into England as houses were established at Oxford in 1221 and London in 1224. There were five houses in England by 1230, by which time the Order was poised to enter Scotland. Later tradition had it that the Dominican Order entered Scotland in 1230, encouraged by King Alexander II and William de Malveisin, Bishop of St Andrews. However, the earliest certain date for the foundation of a Dominican house in Scotland is 1234.
These details form the context for Clement's appearance in Scotland and his selection as the new Bishop of Dunblane. Three years had passed since the death of the last bishop, Osbert. Since there was no electoral college for the diocese, Pope Gregory IX charged the bishops of St Andrews, Brechin and Dunkeld, to find and nominate a suitable replacement. There can only be informed speculation regarding the choice of Clement. Importantly, perhaps, King Alexander was later noted for "his concern for building churches for the Friars Preacher [Fratrum precipue Predicatorum]". The status of the Dominicans at the cutting edge of religious reform, together with Clement's background, may have been the decisive factors. At any rate, Clement was consecrated as bishop at Wedale on 4 September 1233, by William de Malveisin, Bishop of St Andrews. His consecration meant that he was the first Dominican in the British Isles to obtain a bishopric. This has prompted the historian Archie Duncan to comment that "the choice of the first friar-bishop ... can only be called daring".
## Bishopric of Dunblane
The bishopric of Dunblane was a small diocese, essentially confined to the earldoms of Strathearn and Menteith. Size was a problem for providing the bishopric with adequate income, a problem compounded by the fact that Gille Brígte, Mormaer of Strathearn, had established Inchaffray Priory in 1200 (promoted to Abbey in 1221). In the 1440s, Bower wrote that Gille Brígte:
> Divided his earldom into three equal portions. One he gave to the church and bishop of Dunblane, the second to St John the Evangelist and the canons of Inchaffray, the third he kept for himself and his own needs.
If this were not enough, much of the income not granted to Inchaffray had since been given to other religious institutions; some revenue was even controlled by the Bishop of Dunkeld. Dunblane had its origins in an older Gaelic monastic establishment, that is, in an institution with an abbot-bishop heading a relatively informal establishment of smaller cells with little geographical compactness. Dunblane emerged as a bishopric in 1155, probably, like bishoprics with a similar history (e.g. Brechin), having changed in little more than name. There was a community of Céli Dé at Muthill until at least the end of the 13th century, and the base for the archdeaconry of the diocese appears to have varied between there and Dunblane until the time of Bishop Clement. The bishopric itself appears to have been without a single base, although it was probably associated with both locations.
Clement visited the papal court to present his difficult situation. In spring 1237, the Pope wrote to the Bishop of Dunkeld that:
> Bishop Clement ... found the Church so desolated that there was no place in the Cathedral Church where he could lay his head; it had no college of clergy; the divine offices were celebrated in a roofless church and by a rural chaplain only; and the episcopal revenues were so slender, and had been alienated to such a degree, that they scarcely sufficed to support him for half a year.
In response to Clement's visit, moreover, the Pope had empowered the Bishops of Dunkeld, Brechin and St Andrews to take action to rescue the bishopric. He told these bishops that,
> Since the continual care of all the churches is our daily burden, we grant to the said Church [Dunblane], so far as we personally can, and authorise you, if you find the situation to be as described, to assign to the said Bishop, if it can be done without scandal, a quarter of the teinds of all the parish churches of the Diocese of Dunblane, so that under your guidance and that of upright men, he may set aside a suitable portion of them for his own maintenance, and thereafter assign revenues for a dean and canons whom we wish and authorise you to institute there.
Failing this, the Pope wrote,
> The quarter teinds of all the churches of the Diocese assigned to the Bishop, which are held by laymen, you shall transfer with the episcopal seat to the Canons Regular of St. John in the Diocese [i.e. to Inchaffray Abbey], who shall have power to elect a Bishop in any vacancy.
So the Pope's help was two-sided. It made Clement's task vis-à-vis these institutions easier, but on the other hand the possibility had emerged that Dunblane could disappear as an episcopal centre.
## Recovery and rebuilding
In the three or four years after his visit to the papacy, agreements were made with the various institutions who were drawing income from Clement's diocese – namely Coupar Angus Abbey, Lindores Abbey, Cambuskenneth Abbey, Arbroath Abbey, the nunnery of North Berwick and the Hospital of Brackley, Northamptonshire. These agreements did not constitute complete success. Clement was able to recover some revenue, but in fixed payments liable to real decline by way of inflation. Moreover, he had to concede permanent canonries to several of the abbots, concessions which would give them a role in the election of his successors. Another partial set-back took place. Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, had decided to found a monastery in his earldom and take up the income of Menteith's churches to do it; the whole of Menteith constituted nearly half of the diocese. Despite the Pope's previously helpful behaviour towards Clement's cause, he granted the earl permission to found the new monastery. The earl established Inchmahome Priory in the Lake of Menteith in 1238. Walter and Clement came to conflict over the new priory's rights, but in the same year an agreement was drawn up in a meeting of churchmen at Perth. The agreement placed most of Menteith's churches under the control of the earl; however, Clement obtained several concessions, including the right to receive episcopal dues from the new priory. Overall, Clement's successes were considerable considering the opposition which he faced, but even after his death, only 12 of the 26 parish churches in the diocese were under the bishop's direct control.
Although his successor Robert de Prebenda claimed that the income of the see was still inadequate, it was nevertheless enough for Clement to begin building a new cathedral. This was despite the virtual hostility of the earl of Menteith and what Cynthia Neville has noted as the lack of interest by the earls of Strathearn, evidenced by their reluctance to bestow patronage on the bishopric. Neville's explanation for this is that "the bishops' ambition represented a challenge to their proprietary interests". It has been suggested that Clement dismantled the small church building which had served Dunblane previously, before beginning work. The cathedral was constructed in the Gothic manner, beginning with the "Lady Chapel"; the Lady Chapel was used while the rest of the cathedral was being built. It is possible that the cathedral of Dunblane was completed during Clement's episcopate, and it is almost certain that most of it was.
## On the wider stage
Clement's position as Bishop of Dunblane provided the opportunity to participate on the larger national and international stage. In 1241, the Cistercian general chapter began postulating the Pope about the saintliness of Edmund of Abingdon, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury. In the following year, various clerics wrote pieces and compiled evidence supporting this Edmund's claim to sainthood. Clement was one of these clerics. Edmund's saintliness was endorsed by Pope Innocent IV in 1246. Clement took part in a similar campaign in 1249. He was part of the movement to canonise Queen Margaret, one of the ancestors of the contemporary Scottish kings. Clement was appointed to investigate her saintliness, and in the following year Margaret too was canonised. Meanwhile, in 1247, Pope Innocent IV gave Clement the more onerous and demanding appointment of papal tax collector. Clement was charged with collecting one twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues within the Kingdom of the Scots. The purpose was to finance a new crusade, and Clement's appointment was part of a money-raising initiative carried out throughout Western Christendom.
Perhaps Clement's most significant activities were, however, in relation to the bishopric of Argyll. In 1241, Argyll's last bishop, William, had been drowned while at sea. Argyll was the poorest bishopric in Scotland, and the area lacked strong royal authority, and hence good royal protection. In the following six years, no one had taken up the vacant bishopric. From at least 1247, then, Clement was given charge of the diocese. He was essentially being asked to do for Argyll what he had previously done for Strathearn. The sources are quite thin on this ground, but by 1249 he had brought at least one more church into the control of the bishopric. On 23 December 1248, he was also authorised by the Pope to appoint, with the agreement of the Bishop of Glasgow, a new bishop for Argyll. In January 1249, Clement was given permission to move the cathedral of Argyll, based on Lismore, to the mainland. Clement's problem seems to have been with the ruler of Argyll, Eóghan. The lack of royal authority in Argyll made it difficult for the national and international church to exercise control in the province; at the same time, establishing a strong bishopric in the area was vital to integrating the area fully into the kingdom, an aim cherished by the contemporary king, Alexander II. Thus Alexander's goal and Clement's goal were essentially one and the same. It is impossible to be more specific, but in 1249, King Alexander II launched an expedition against Eóghan. The king was attempting to force Eóghan, whose lands lay within both the overlordship of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of Norway, to renounce his allegiance to the King of Norway. Eóghan told Alexander that he was unable to do this. The contemporary historian Matthew Paris wrote that:
> The king therefore declared Eóghan unfaithful and pursued him hostilely by ship near Argyll; urged, as is said, by the vehement promptings of a certain indiscreet bishop of Strathearn, a friar to wit of the order of the Preachers.
This "indiscreet bishop ... friar" was, of course, Clement. Alexander died from ill-health on this expedition, with Clement by his side at his deathbed. Alexander's last act was to make a grant to the bishopric of Argyll. Despite the king's death, the expedition was a success for Clement. There was a new Bishop of Argyll by 27 September 1250; in the longer term, the see continued to be ruled by bishops with no long vacancies until the Reformation. Moreover, by 1255 Eóghan had given his full allegiance to the Scottish crown, albeit because of lack of favour given to him by the King of Norway.
Clement's close association with the late King Alexander II and his reputation as a successful bishop made him a key political figure during the minority of Alexander III. Clement was on the Council of Guardians, the small group of nobles and clerics who were to "govern" Scotland until the end of Alexander III's boyhood. The governing Council broke down around two rival factions, one centred on Walter Comyn and the other around Alan Durward. There is little evidence about Clement's activities in regard to the Council, but he was associated with the Comyn faction, who enjoyed the ascendency after Walter gained control of government in 1251. In 1255, the Durwards staged a coup at Roxburgh and ousted the "Comyn faction" from effective power. Unfortunately for Alan Durward, Comyn's supporter Gamelin, who had been placed in the bishopric of St Andrews and excluded from his diocese by Durward, had fled to the papal court and convinced the Pope to excommunicate Alan. The sentence was delivered by Bishop Clement and the abbots of Melrose and Jedburgh. This is Clement's last known act.
## Death and legacy
The Chronicle of Melrose reports Clement's death under the year 1258. Clement's legacy was to be remembered as the restorer of the diocese of Dunblane and the builder of its cathedral. Thus for future generations, Clement became the father-figure of the see. Clement was later commemorated as a saint, though there is no record of formal canonisation. He was commemorated on 19 March, meaning that was almost certainly believed to have been the date of his death. Clement's death was also noted by Walter Bower, a Lowland Scottish historian writing in the 1440s, who included the following obituary:
> Clement bishop of Dunblane died, that outstanding member of the Order of Preachers, a man most eloquent in translating various tongues, powerful in speech and action in the sight of God and of men. He found the cathedral church of his diocese reduced by the neglect of his predecessors to such a state of decay that the divine offices were celebrated in it scarcely three times a week, as if it were some rural chapel. He built it up to be a hallowed sanctuary, enriched it with lands and possessions, and increased its prestige by adding prebends and canonries.
Such flattering sentiments had even been expressed during Clement's lifetime. In 1250, the General Chapter of the Dominican Order met in London, and decreed that:
> we grant to Friar Clement of our Order, a bishop of Scotland, after his death, one mass throughout the Order by every friar whomsoever is a priest.
Clement was credited with being a prolific translator and writing four books (including a hagiography of St Dominic), all of which are now lost; a sermon almost certainly written by him survives.
Some historians have been ambiguous about Clement's episcopate. For instance, Cynthia Neville, despite acknowledging that "the successful reform of the see was, in fact, accomplished almost exclusively as a consequence of the efforts of Clement and his successors", nevertheless expresses some scepticism about his achievements and notices his failure to gain the patronage of the native rulers of Strathearn. Others have been more enthusiastic. The ecclesiastical historian and former minister of Dunblane Cathedral, James Hutchison Cockburn, agreed with Bower's eulogy and declared that the "title" of sainthood "would have been worthily bestowed". Archie Duncan, more recently, stated that Clement "clearly enjoyed a reputation far wider than his domestic accomplishments alone would explain" and concluded that Clement "represents the occasional triumph of the ideal of reform of church life over the careerism which generally motivated thirteenth-century clergy".
|
13,760,174 |
The Beginning of the End (Lost)
| 1,171,448,602 | null |
[
"2008 American television episodes",
"Lost (season 4) episodes",
"Television episodes directed by Jack Bender",
"Television episodes written by Damon Lindelof"
] |
"The Beginning of the End" is the fourth season premiere, and 73rd episode overall, of the American Broadcasting Company's television drama series Lost. It was aired on ABC in the United States and CTV in Canada on January 31, 2008. Co-creator/executive producer Damon Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse wrote the premiere in late July 2007, with most of the episode directed on location in Oahu, Hawaii, in August and September by executive producer Jack Bender. With this premiere, Jeff Pinkner no longer serves as an executive producer and staff writer. The episode was watched by 18 million Americans, bringing in the best ratings for Lost in 17 episodes. According to Metacritic, "The Beginning of the End" garnered "universal acclaim".
The narrative takes place over 90 days after the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, on December 23, 2004. The stranded crash survivors make contact with associates of Naomi Dorrit (played by Marsha Thomason) on a nearby freighter, but the survivors divide when they hear that those on the freighter may not be coming to rescue the survivors. Flashforwards show the post-island lives of Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox). They are lying to the public about their time on the island. In flashforwards, Hurley has visions of his deceased friend Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan); in the present, Hurley grieves over Charlie's death on the island. Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) makes his first appearance in "The Beginning of the End".
## Plot
After being knifed in the back by John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) in the third-season finale, Naomi uses her satellite phone to call George Minkowski (Fisher Stevens) on the freighter. Before she dies, she tells him that her injury was an accident and to give her love to her sister. Meanwhile, Hurley finds Jacob's cabin. He looks through the window and sees an unidentified man in a rocking chair, before someone steps up to the glass, only the left eye visible. Hurley runs away, but finds the cabin again—in a different location. He squeezes his eyes shut and when he opens them, the building is gone and Locke appears.
Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick) returns from the Looking Glass, bearing Charlie's final message that the freighter offshore is not owned by Penny Widmore (Sonya Walger). The survivors reunite at 815's cockpit. Jack knocks Locke to the ground, takes his gun and pulls the trigger, but finds that the gun is not loaded because Locke had no intention of killing Jack earlier that day. Locke tells the castaways that they are in great danger and leaves for the Barracks with Hurley, James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway), Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) and her baby Aaron, Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan) and her captive Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), Alex (Tania Raymonde) and her boyfriend Karl (Blake Bashoff), Vincent the dog (Pono) and four other survivors. Soon after, Jack and Kate see a helicopter and meet Daniel.
Flashforwards show that Hurley is famous as one of the "Oceanic Six" after his escape from the island and is keeping quiet about his time there. Hurley encounters an apparition of Charlie. Shocked, he speeds away in his Camaro and is apprehended by Los Angeles police. Hurley is interrogated by Ana Lucia Cortez's (Michelle Rodriguez) former partner Detective "Big" Mike Walton (Michael Cudlitz) and he lies that he has no knowledge of Ana Lucia. Hurley, looking at the interrogation room's mirror glass, imagines seeing Charlie swimming in water until he breaks the glass and floods the room. Hurley willingly returns to the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institution, where he is visited by Matthew Abaddon (Lance Reddick), who claims to be an attorney for Oceanic Airlines. When Abaddon fails to supply a business card, he asks if they are still alive before stealthily exiting. An apparition of Charlie appears who tells Hurley that "they" need him. Finally, Hurley is visited by Jack, who is thinking of growing a beard. Jack confirms that Hurley will not reveal the Oceanic Six's secrets. Hurley apologizes for going with Locke and insists that they return to the island, but Jack refuses (which shows that these flashforwards occur before Jack's flashforwards).
## Production
During casting, fake names, occupations and scenes were temporarily assigned to limit the leak of spoilers. Lance Reddick was told that he was auditioning for the part of "Arthur Stevens", a "ruthless corporate recruiter", instead of Matthew Abaddon. "Matthew" and "Abaddon" were revealed as season 4 clue words in the alternate reality game Find 815. The writers chose the character's surname after they read the Wikipedia article on Abaddon, which states that it means "place of destruction". The writer-producers were originally interested in having Reddick play Mr. Eko during the second season, however, he was busy starring on HBO's The Wire. Jeremy Davies was cast as Daniel because he is one of the writer-producers' favorite character actors, and they think that his "transformative quality [and] the tremendous intelligence that seems to emanate from him ... seemed perfect for [the part]", which was originally planned to be a recurring role. When Davies met costume designer Roland Sanchez, he was wearing a thin black tie. Sanchez merged this "cool, edgy look" with his idea for the character's clothes: a "nerdy" loosely woven dress shirt from J.Crew.
Several different titles were proposed for the episode. The ultimate title is a reference to a line in the previous episode when Ben warns Jack that contacting the freighter "is the beginning of the end". Filming began on August 17 and ended on or just after September 7, 2007. Garcia felt "a little pressure" because he had the lead role in the episode, but "was really excited, too [because it] was a different direction for a season premiere [that he] felt the fans would probably dig". In the mental institution, Hurley is seen painting a picture of an Inuit man and an igloo. This was painted by Garcia. When the episode was broadcast, Christian appeared in Jacob's cabin; however, the scene was shot with another Hurley inside. Additionally, when Garcia was filming his interrogation scene in an aquarium, he was unaware that Charlie would be swimming outside and breaking the glass in the finished product. Charlie's swim was filmed weeks after the rest of the episode had been shot, alongside production of "Meet Kevin Johnson" and the Lost: Missing Pieces mobisodes in late November 2007. The scene was filmed with stunt double Jake Kilfoyle at the Looking Glass set that was previously used for the third season episodes titled "Greatest Hits" and "Through the Looking Glass".
Most Lost episodes feature crossovers and "Easter eggs"—intentionally hidden clues and references to the show's mythology—and "The Beginning of the End" is no exception. Despite being dead, Christian appears for a couple of seconds in Jacob's cabin with no dialogue. Big Mike, who appears in Ana Lucia's flashbacks in the second-season episode "Collision", returns in Hurley's flashforward. Randy Nations (Billy Ray Gallion) appears in a few seconds with no dialogue, videotaping Hurley's arrest. When Hurley hallucinates that Charlie is swimming outside the interrogation room, Charlie has "they need you" written on his hand. This is what Charlie tells Hurley later in the episode.
Due to production of the fourth season being put on hold due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, the show runners wanted to hold the eight episodes that had been completed until they were able to make more of the season. ABC decided against this and announced that "The Beginning of the End" would be aired at the end of January 2008, regardless of when the strike was to end. This was the first Lost episode to be aired on Thursday at 9:00 pm ET, a competitive and prestigious timeslot normally occupied by Grey's Anatomy; previous episodes had been aired on Wednesdays. Like the previous Lost season premieres, "The Beginning of the End" was scheduled for an outdoor premiere at Sunset on the Beach in Waikiki, Honolulu, where movies are regularly shown on a 30-foot (9 m) screen free to the public, but it was cancelled due to the writers' strike. The original television broadcast of the episode was immediately preceded by a clip-show titled "Lost: Past, Present & Future".
## Reception
Don Williams of BuddyTV dubbed "The Beginning of the End" "the most anticipated season premiere of the year". It was watched by approximately 16.137 million American viewers live or within six hours with a 6.7/17 in the key adults 18–49 demographic, bringing in the best Nielsen ratings for Lost in seventeen episodes and ranking Lost eighth in the weekly charts. The episode was watched by a total of 17.766 million viewers live or recorded and watched within seven days of broadcast and this number went toward the year-end average. In Canada, "The Beginning of the End" was seen by 1.855 million viewers, making Lost the sixth most watched program of the week. It brought in an audience almost double the size of that of the previous episode and greater than any third-season episode, with the exception of the season premiere. The fourth-season premiere was successful in the United Kingdom with 1.1 million viewers. In Australia, Lost was the fifteenth most watched show of the night with 912 000 viewers, which was deemed disappointing by David Dale of The Sun-Herald.
American critics were sent screener DVDs of "The Beginning of the End" and "Confirmed Dead" on January 28, 2008. Metacritic gave the episode a Metascore—a weighted average based on the impressions of a select twelve critical reviews—of 87. Robert Bianco of USA Today wrote that "returning with a heart-stopping, perfectly pitched episode ... Lost is an oasis in a strike-parched TV desert." Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times described "The Beginning of the End" as an "emotion-churning chemical dump right in the old brain stem—horror, hysteria, regret, adrenaline and what ... will happen next?" Adam Buckman of the New York Post gave the episode four out of four stars. Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune "blissfully enjoyed every minute" and noted that "there aren't any faults". Diane Werts of Newsday raved the episode as "superb" and "insanely entertain[ing]" and concluded her review with "Lost seems to have found itself". Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle declared that it and "Confirmed Dead" "are roller coasters of fast action and revelation [that are] good to see". Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe pointed out that "Lost can still make the pulse race and the brain tingle ... [and] remains TV's most gripping serial". Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger was unsure "if Lost is ever going to give satisfying answers to its many, many remaining mysteries ... but when it's as scary and hilarious and moving and exciting as these two episodes, I'm okay with that." In less positive reviews, Rodney Ho of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called it "a satisfactory return episode with a fair share of drama and pathos ... [that] provides just enough revelations to keep fans hungry for more" and David Hinckley of the Daily News rated the episode with three stars out of a possible five.
Brian Lowry of Variety said that "Lost's return goes down like a welcome tonic as scripted TV fades to black ... providing an unusually generous array of juicy moments for the large (and, at times, neglected) cast." Mark Medley of the National Post called it "a brilliant season premiere" with multiple "jaw-dropping moments". Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly felt that the premiere was mind-blowing and featured good acting by Garcia. Frazier Moore of the Associated Press wrote that "Lost is further upping the ante, and heightening the pressure on us as the show's vast mythology continues to metastasize." Kristin Dos Santos of E! called it "so well written, produced, acted and directed it felt like a movie". Michael Ausiello of TV Guide described it as "easily one of the best hours of TV so far this season." Bruce Fretts of TV Guide responded well to Reddick's performance. Chris Carabott of IGN gave the episode 9.1/10, stating that it was "a great start to what promises to be an exciting ... season 4. The momentum and pacing is on par with last season's finale". LTG of Television Without Pity graded it as an "A−". Jon Lachonis of UGO gave the episode an "A+", calling it "a crushingly emotional, action packed introduction ... [which proves] that ... Lost's groundbreaking protean form still has plenty of blinding ways to dazzle and entertain in a way that is nonetheless unique unto itself." Oscar Dahl of BuddyTV wrote that "the episode was pretty much a masterpiece". Daniel of TMZ graded it as an "A", saying that it was perfect and set up the rest of the season well.
|
1,237,153 |
John Wark
| 1,173,354,365 |
Scottish footballer
|
[
"1957 births",
"1982 FIFA World Cup players",
"Drumchapel Amateur F.C. players",
"English Football League players",
"Footballers from Glasgow",
"Footballers from Suffolk",
"Ipswich Town F.C. players",
"Liverpool F.C. players",
"Living people",
"Men's association football midfielders",
"Middlesbrough F.C. players",
"People from Mid Suffolk District",
"Premier League players",
"Scotland men's international footballers",
"Scotland men's under-21 international footballers",
"Scottish Football Hall of Fame inductees",
"Scottish men's footballers",
"UEFA Cup winning players"
] |
John Wark (born 4 August 1957) is a Scottish former footballer who spent most of his playing time with Ipswich Town. He won a record four Player of the Year awards before becoming one of the four inaugural members of the club's Hall of Fame. Wark had long spells at the club, which bookended his career, and a third, brief interlude dividing his briefer periods at Liverpool and Middlesbrough. A versatile player, Wark played most of his professional games as a midfielder, although he sometimes played as a central defender and on occasion as a striker.
Born in Glasgow, Wark represented Scotland in international football, winning 29 caps and scoring seven goals. This included selection for Scotland in the 1982 FIFA World Cup in which he made three appearances and scored twice.
During his playing career, Wark appeared in the film Escape to Victory. Since retiring as a professional player in 1996, he has continued to work for Ipswich Town—since September 2008 in the corporate hospitality department. His autobiography, Wark On, was published in 2009.
## Early life
Wark was born on 4 August 1957, in Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital to parents Alex and Helen. The third of four children, he has an older sister Wilma, older brother Alex and younger brother Andrew. The family lived in a four-storey tenement block in Partick. The family was impoverished: Wark's parents could not afford a cot and as a small child, he slept in a drawer from a sideboard. Although christened John, Wark was soon referred to by his family as Johnny, a diminutive that stuck throughout his footballing career.
In the early 1960s, the family moved to another tenement block, this time in Scotstoun, and Wark's father secured employment at nearby Albion Motors. The new home accommodated a back yard in which Wark played football from the age of six. He said "[f]ootball seemed to occupy 99 per cent of my time as a youngster" as he tried to emulate his brother Alex, who had become a professional at St Mirren. Wark attended Scotstoun Primary School, where he became captain of the football team. On moving to secondary school, he was selected for the Glasgow Schools representative team. He also played for Drumchapel Amateurs at the under-14 level, where he was, for a period, managed by David Moyes' father, also named David.
During Wark's time at Drumchapel, he attracted the attention of Celtic. He trained with the club at their Parkhead ground, before receiving an invitation to sign schoolboy forms for the club. As a lifelong Rangers fan with whom Celtic have a notable rivalry and with interest from "several English clubs", including Bristol City, Manchester City and Ipswich Town, Wark stalled on the offer. He trialled with both Ipswich Town and Manchester City, and selected Ipswich when the latter remained non-committal. On arrival at Portman Road, Town manager Bobby Robson, later described by Wark as the person in football "who had the single biggest influence on [him]", personally welcomed him and Wark signed with the club as an apprentice.
## Domestic playing career
### First spell at Ipswich
Wark started his career at Ipswich in the youth team, initially playing at left back before moving to the centre of defence and occasionally occupying the right back position. He signed up as a professional for the club on his 17th birthday. Selected for the senior squad as a replacement for the injured Kevin Beattie, Wark made his first-team debut on 27 March 1975 in the 3–2 FA Cup 6th round (3rd replay) victory over Leeds United; the game was played at Leicester City's Filbert Street. A nervous and homesick Wark was reassured by manager Robson:
> "My debut was in the quarter-final of the FA Cup against the Leeds team of Giles and Bremner. He [Robson] said, 'I wouldn't put you in the team if I didn't think you were good enough'. He was a father figure as well because I was homesick. If it hadn't been for the boss I would have been straight back to Glasgow."
Making four more first-team appearances in place of injured regulars, Wark ended the season still on the youth team, and experienced success in the final of the FA Youth Cup, defeating West Ham United 5–1. He spent much of the 1975–76 season playing for the reserves, and was presented with the club's Young Player of the Year award, despite making just four appearances for the senior team. Moving into midfield, Wark made over 30 appearances in the 1976–77 season, scoring his first goals for the club, (10, in all) taking over penalty kicking duty; he also received his first red card.
In June 1977, Wark was selected for the Scotland squad for the first time, for a friendly match against East Germany; however, a torn hamstring sustained in pre-season training ended any chance of an international debut. The injury also kept him out of first-team football until January 1978, when he returned for a match against Cardiff City in the third round of the 1977–78 FA Cup.
Indifferent league performances that season meant that Ipswich finished just three points above the relegation zone, but the season ended in success in the FA Cup. Wark scored in a 3–1 victory over West Bromwich Albion in the semi-final, and appeared in the final at Wembley as part of a side that surprised favourites Arsenal, winning the game 1–0. Wark remarked, "We were underdogs but on the day we hammered them." Wark did not touch the ball for the first 18 minutes of the match, and as the players left the pitch at half-time, David Geddis said to Wark, "Make sure you hit it between the posts in the second-half. Avoid the white bits." In the second half of the game, Wark "ignored Geddis' advice and hit Pat Jennings' right post twice with almost identical swerving right-foot shots from outside the penalty area".
Twice in the three seasons that followed, Ipswich came close to winning the League championship, but finished as runners-up to Liverpool and Aston Villa, respectively. However, Ipswich did win the club's only European trophy when they lifted the 1980–81 UEFA Cup. Wark set a competition record by scoring 14 goals—including two, one in each leg—in the final as Ipswich overcame Dutch side AZ 67 Alkmaar 5–4 on aggregate. Wark's record equalled the long-standing scoring record in a European competition, set by José Altafini of A.C. Milan in the 1962–63 European Cup. Wark's personal triumph that year was to win a European accolade, Young Player of the Year, and gain the acclaim of his fellow professionals in England to earn the PFA Player of the Year award. He ended the 1980–81 season with 36 goals.
Wark continued to play for Ipswich, but after Robson left to become England manager in 1982, the side was gradually broken up by new manager Bobby Ferguson. Following a rejected demand for a wage increase, Wark submitted a transfer request, which was accepted. He signed for Liverpool for £450,000 on 10 March 1984. At the time, Liverpool had won the league title six times, the European Cup three times and the League Cup three times in the preceding eight seasons.
Wark's final full season at Portman Road, 1982–83, had seen him record the highest league goals tally of his career. He scored 20 goals in 42 league games, though it was not enough to prevent Ipswich from slipping to ninth place in the final table – their lowest position since finishing 18th in 1978.
### Liverpool
The medical examination for Wark's transfer somewhat surprised him:
> "I was rather taken aback when the doctor entered the Anfield boot room", Wark said. "He was small in stature and I could not help but detect the smell of alcohol on his breath as he introduced himself to me. I was even more surprised when he announced we would stay put to conduct the medical examination. "He took my blood pressure, looked at the reading and muttered 'that's fine'. Then something happened that to this day I still cannot get over. He asked me to bend down and touch my toes. "Trying not to show my surprise, I did exactly as he asked and as I lifted my head he spoke again, this time to announce 'you've passed'. That was it, my Liverpool medical."
Wark made his debut for the club on 31 March 1984 in a 2–0 league win against Watford at Vicarage Road, and scored Liverpool's opening goal in the 58th minute. Liverpool won the English league title that season, and Wark made sufficient appearances to earn himself a medal. His unusual ability as a goalscoring midfielder was on display when he finished the 1984–85 season as the club's top goalscorer, ahead of prolific striker Ian Rush, with a tally of 27 goals in 62 appearances—a goal every 2.3 games. Wark's season included three hat-tricks, one each in the League, the FA Cup and the European Cup. Liverpool qualified for the 1985 European Cup Final but the match was overshadowed by the Heysel Stadium Disaster, a tragedy Wark remembers as "a nightmare memory".
In the 1985–86 season, Wark made 18 appearances, scoring six times, but missed out on the club's run-in to their League and FA Cup "double", due to a broken ankle suffered just after the turn of 1986, followed by an Achilles tendon injury. He eventually regained his fitness but struggled to regain his place in the Liverpool team until injury to Steve McMahon allowed him back in. Wark came on as a late substitute (but according to him, never touched the ball) when Liverpool lost the 1987 League Cup Final to Arsenal. No longer a part of manager Kenny Dalglish's plans following the arrival of new midfielders including John Barnes, Wark was sold back to Ipswich on 4 January 1988 for £100,000. In spite of more financially lucrative offers from both Watford and Coventry City, he followed Bobby Robson's advice: "Money isn't everything—go where you will be happiest." Wark left the Merseyside club with a record of 42 goals in 108 appearances, a goal every 2.6 games.
### Second spell at Ipswich
Ipswich had been relegated 18 months before Wark's return to the club and were still playing in the second tier of English football. During this second spell at Ipswich, Wark was close to being an ever-present in the side: he missed just two games in two seasons. He was the club's equal top-scorer in the 1988–89 season, sharing the achievement with forwards Dalian Atkinson and Jason Dozzell.
Following three seasons of mid-table finishes, manager John Duncan was sacked and replaced by John Lyall. With his contract expiring, Wark received what he considered to be a "derisory" offer from Lyall, which he declined. Once he became a free agent, Wark signed on a free transfer for Second Division rivals Middlesbrough in August 1990. In his two additional seasons with Ipswich, Wark had scored 20 goals, and won the club's Player of the Year award in both seasons.
### Middlesbrough
Wark signed for Middlesbrough, the first club to show "a definite interest" in him, on a two-year contract, moving back to play in the centre of defence. He made regular appearances and helped the team to seventh place by the end of the season and qualification for the Second Division play-offs. Following a 1–1 draw with Notts County at Ayresome Park, Wark was informed by manager Colin Todd that he would not be selected for the second leg. Wark was outraged; Middlesbrough lost the second leg 1–0. Todd departed from the club and was replaced by Lennie Lawrence, who insisted that all players live "within an hour of Ayresome Park". Wark was still living in Ipswich at the time and following a "sensible agreement" with Lawrence, Wark's contract was terminated and he became a free agent again.
### Third spell at Ipswich
Remaining without a club before the start of the 1991–92 season, Wark trained with Ipswich to keep fit, and rejected interest in his services from Leyton Orient, Colchester United and Falkirk. When Ipswich suffered a succession of injuries among their defenders, they offered him a contract, initially on a week-by-week basis, before securing a year-long deal. Wark made 43 appearances in the first season of his third spell with the club. Early results in the season were excellent; the club won seven of their first 11 matches in the league. In the FA Cup, Ipswich progressed to a fifth round encounter against Liverpool; when the tie went to a replay at Anfield, Wark received a standing ovation from both sets of fans. Ipswich lost the match 3–2 after extra time, having led 2–1 in the first period. Ipswich went on to finish strongly in their league campaign and were crowned Second Division champions and promoted into the newly formed Premier League. Wark ended the season as the club's Player of the Year for the third time.
Wark agreed to a new one-year contract for the 1992–93 season and was asked to feature in a Sky Sports advertisement to promote the inaugural Premier League competition. Ipswich were the only Premier League club to remain unbeaten after eight games (a sequence that included Wark's first Premier League goal in a 1–1 draw with Tottenham Hotspur). Ipswich went fourth in February and there was talk of finally winning that title that had eluded them more than once during Wark's first spell there, but 13 consecutive games without a win resulted a 16th-place finish in the table, just three points above the relegation zone, and only a win on the final day of the season made sure of their survival. Wark, now aged 37, secured yet another one-year contract shortly before the end of the 1993–94 season. Ipswich were saved from relegation in the last round of matches (for the second season running, another good start had given way to a late season slump), courtesy of an injury time winning goal scored by Mark Stein of Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, which ensured that Ipswich's fellow strugglers Sheffield United went down. Wark went on to be voted the club's Player of the Year for a record fourth time.
Ipswich and Wark fared worse in the 1994–95 season. The club lost 9–0 to Manchester United during a season in which Ipswich "recorded fewer victories and suffered more defeats than in any campaign in the club's history". He was sent off in the away game at Norwich, where the team lost 3–0. Wark made fewer than 20 appearances in the following season, primarily because of a persistent foot injury. Despite his appearance in three more matches in the 1996–97 season, and a testimonial against Arsenal at Portman Road, Wark played his last professional match against Tranmere Rovers on 30 November 1996 at the age of 39. By this stage, he was the club's oldest player. Of a total 826 league matches played by Wark as a professional, he made 679 appearances for Ipswich. As of 5 June 2009, he is Ipswich Town's third-highest all-time scorer, with 179 goals scored for the club, despite rarely appearing as a striker.
## International playing career
From 1979, Wark was selected to play for his country, usually as a defender, eventually winning 29 caps for Scotland and scoring seven goals. Jock Stein was the Scotland manager who gave him his debut, in a game held on 19 May 1979, a British Home Championship match against Wales at Ninian Park; Scotland lost 3–0. Wark scored his first international goal a week later on 26 May, again in a British Home Championship game, this time against England at Wembley. Wark's opening effort was not enough, as Scotland were defeated 3–1. A week later Wark played for Scotland in a friendly against Argentina at Hampden Park. However, the game is best remembered for Diego Maradona scoring his first international goal in helping Argentina to a comfortable 3–1 win.
After a 3–1 home defeat by Belgium in December 1979, Wark was not selected again for his country until February 1981 for the 1982 World Cup qualifying match away against Israel. Following a successful qualification campaign, Wark was included in the Scotland squad that went to the World Cup in Spain under Stein's leadership. Wark played three games and scored two goals, both of which were in Scotland's 5-2 opening match victory over New Zealand. Scotland were knocked out in the group stage.
Wark's final appearance for Scotland came in September 1984, under Stein; he was replaced in favour of Paul McStay at halftime in a 6–1 victory over Yugoslavia.
## Life outside football
### Personal life
Wark has married twice—first to Toula, on 1 July 1981, with whom he has a son, Andrew, born in June 1983. He married Karen at Gretna Green in April 2009.
### Film appearance
In 1981, Wark was one of several Ipswich players who appeared alongside stars including Bobby Moore and Pelé in the Second World War football film Escape to Victory, which starred Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine and Max von Sydow. Wark played a character called Arthur Hayes, but his only line of dialogue was dubbed due to his broad Glaswegian accent.
### Since retirement as a player
Following his retirement from playing football professionally, Wark continued to live in Suffolk, like many other ex-Ipswich players, including Allan Hunter, Mick Mills, Roger Osborne and Mick Lambert. Despite his retirement from the professional ranks, Wark continued playing football as an amateur, and signed for Woodbridge Town in 1999 alongside former Ipswich team-mate Paul Mason. He also played veterans football for Windsor and Eton, played with Soccer AM's Badgers team at the Millennium Stadium, and has represented the Liverpool veterans in the Sky Sports Masters series.
In 2005, Wark was voted as the BBC television programme Football Focus "all-time cult hero" by Ipswich Town fans. In 2008 Radio Suffolk announced that he would join their commentary team as a summariser, alongside former team-mates Kevin Beattie and Bryan Hamilton. Wark was working in the corporate hospitality department at Ipswich Town in September 2008. As of March 2014, he remains in that job.
### Autobiography
Wark's autobiography Wark On was published on 9 April 2009. The book contained material that gained media interest. Wark sold his [FA Cup Final] tickets for cash to a ticket tout.
## Playing style and personality
Wark played as a central defender, midfielder and, occasionally, as a striker.
Wark was not a "supremely talented" player, but, according to football journalist Jim White, one who espoused team-work and team spirit: "There is no question that the 'one-for-all, all-for-one' mentality generated in the Anfield dressing room was the engine that drove the great team. With players such as Alan Kennedy, John Wark, Sammy Lee and Craig Johnston, nobody could claim this was a collection of top-notch operators in the manner, say, of the current Real Madrid. Every week, they played as an entity greater than the sum of its parts." He has been described as "a defensive midfielder with an astonishing goalscoring record".
Over the years, Wark has become closely associated with his moustache. Owen Slot described the player as "Ipswich's immortal moustache", while Wark himself notes "... it is something of a trademark, even if people are always calling me Bruce ..."
## Honours
In 2006 Wark gained the final place in the poll 100 Players Who Shook the Kop, conducted by the liverpoolfc.tv website. The list was compiled as a result of a fan survey: "Over 110,000 supporters all nominated their own personal Top 10 players in order of impact made". In 2007, the Professional Footballers' Association polled fans of all Football League clubs, as to "their No 1 player" as part of the "centenary celebrations of the players' union"; Wark was the choice of Ipswich fans. In the same year, Wark was one of four Ipswich Town players to be inducted into the club's Hall of Fame.
Ipswich Town
- FA Cup: 1977–78
- UEFA Cup: 1980–81
- Football League Second Division: 1991–92
Liverpool
- Football League First Division: 1983–84, 1985–86
- FA Charity Shield: 1986 (shared)
Individual
- PFA Players' Player of the Year: 1980–81
- UEFA Cup Top Scorer: 1980–81
- Bravo Award: 1981
- PFA Team of the Year: 1980–81 Football League First Division
- Ipswich Town F.C. Player of the Year: 1988–89, 1989–90, 1991–92, 1993–94
- Ipswich Town Hall of Fame: Inducted 2007
## Career statistics
### Club
### International
Scores and results list Scotland's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Wark goal.
|
204,407 |
Eurasian nuthatch
| 1,171,726,488 |
Small passerine bird found in temperate Eurasia
|
[
"Articles containing video clips",
"Birds described in 1758",
"Birds of Eurasia",
"Nuthatches",
"Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus"
] |
The Eurasian nuthatch or wood nuthatch (Sitta europaea) is a small passerine bird found throughout the Palearctic and in Europe. Like other nuthatches, it is a short-tailed bird with a long bill, blue-gray upperparts and a black eye-stripe. It is a vocal bird with a repeated loud dwip call. There are more than 20 subspecies in three main groups; birds in the west of the range have orange-buff underparts and a white throat, those in Russia have whitish underparts, and those in the east have a similar appearance to European birds, but lack the white throat.
Its preferred habitat is mature deciduous or mixed woodland with large, old trees, preferably oak. Pairs hold permanent territories, and nest in tree holes, usually old woodpecker nests, but sometimes natural cavities. If the entrance to the hole is too large, the female plasters it with mud to reduce its size, and often coats the inside of the cavity too. The six to nine red-speckled white eggs are laid on a deep base of pine or other wood chips.
The Eurasian nuthatch eats mainly insects, particularly caterpillars and beetles, although in autumn and winter its diet is supplemented with nuts and seeds. The young are fed mainly on insects, with some seeds, food items mainly being found on tree trunks and large branches. The nuthatch can forage when descending trees head first, as well as when climbing. It readily visits bird tables, eating fatty man-made food items as well as seeds. It is an inveterate hoarder, storing food year-round. Its main natural predator is the Eurasian sparrowhawk.
Fragmentation of woodland can lead to local losses of breeding birds, but the species's range is still expanding. It has a large population and huge breeding area, and is therefore classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as being of least concern.
## Taxonomy
The nuthatches are a family of similar-looking birds with short tails and wings, compact bodies and longish pointed bills. They have grey or bluish upperparts, a black eyestripe and strong feet. All are in the single genus Sitta. Within the genus, the Eurasian nuthatch forms a superspecies with the chestnut-vented, Indian, chestnut-bellied and Kashmir nuthatches and has in the past been considered conspecific with all of these.
The Eurasian nuthatch was described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae under its current scientific name. Sitta is derived from the Ancient Greek name for this bird, σίττη, sittē, and the species name, europaea, is Latin for "European". "Nuthatch", first recorded in 1350, is derived from "nut" and a word probably related to "hack", since these birds hack at nuts they have wedged into crevices.
In 2014, Eric Pasquet and colleagues published a phylogeny based on examination of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of 21 nuthatch species. The group europaea is related to the two nuthatches of rocky environments, the Western rock nuthatch (S. neumayer) and the Eastern rock nuthatch (S. tephronota), and these two clades diverge from each other by thirteen million years. Within the group europaea, the white-tailed nuthatch (S. himalayensis)—and consequently the white-browed nuthatch (S. victoriae), although not included in the study—appears to be basal, and the Eurasian nuthatch is closely related to the chestnut-vented nuthatch (S. nagaensis) and the Kashmir nuthatch (S. cashmirensis). The Indian Nuthatch (S. castanea), the Beautiful nuthatch (S. cinnamoventris), the Burmese nuthatch (S. neglecta), and the Siberian nuthatch (S. arctica) are not included in the study. All the species of the group "europaea" masonry the entrance to their nests. In 2020, a new phylogeny will appear, covering the genus more exhaustively; it includes, in particular, the four species mentioned above. It uses three mitochondrial genes and two nuclear ones. The three species from the south of the Asian continent (Indian, Beautiful and Burmese nuthatches) are related to the Kashmir nuthatch, but surprisingly, the Siberian nuthatch is located on a clean branch, quite distant from the Eurasian nuthatch, from which it was nevertheless long considered a subspecies.
The study by Päckert and colleagues (2020) also includes a fairly exhaustive sampling of the Eurasian nuthatch subspecies. It highlights three large groups of subspecies, not perfectly overlapping with the traditionally distinguished groups on the basis of the coloring of their lower parts. A first group concerns the "European nuthatch", which includes all the European subspecies, whether buff-bellied or white-bellied, as well as the subspecies of the Near East. It is related to the group of the "Asian Nuthatch", including the subspecies inhabiting the northern part of the Asian continent, from Kazakhstan to Korea and Japan, all white-bellied. Finally, a third group of subspecies, the "Eastern nuthatch," includes the Asian subspecies living further south, in North and East China and in Taiwan.
The fossil record for nuthatches is sparse, and in Europe is limited to the extinct Sitta senogalliensis from the Lower Miocene in Italy and somewhat later material from France; the family appears to be of relatively recent origin.
### Subspecies
There are more than 20 subspecies, but the precise number is disputed. These taxa can be divided into three main groups; these may have been geographically isolated from each other until relatively recently. Birds of intermediate appearance occur where the group ranges overlap.
The large, white-breasted S. e. arctica of north east Siberia is distinctive in appearance and genetically, and may be another subspecies group or even a separate species.
## Description
The adult male of the nominate subspecies, S. e. europaea is 14 cm (5.5 in) long with a 22.5–27 cm (8.9–10.6 in) wingspan. It weighs 17–28 g (0.6–1 oz). It has blue-grey upperparts, a black eye-stripe and whitish throat and underparts. The flanks and lower belly are orange-red, mottled with white on the undertail. The stout bill is dark grey with a paler area on the base of the lower mandible, the iris is dark brown and the legs and feet are pale brown or greyish. Most other members of the S. e. europaea group differ only in detail from the nominate form, often with respect to the hue of the underparts, but S. e. arctica is quite distinctive. It is large, pale, has a white forehead and a reduced eye-stripe, and it has more white in the tail and wings than any other subspecies. Nuthatches move on trees with short leaps, and do not use their tails for support. In flight, they have a characteristic appearance, with a pointed head, round wings and a short, square tail. Their flight is fast, with wings closed between beats, and is usually of short duration.
S. e. caesia, the most widespread of the western subspecies, has orange-buff underparts except for a white throat and cheeks. The other western forms mainly differ in the exact shade of the underparts, although some southeastern forms also show a white forehead and supercilium. S. e. sinensis and S. e. formosana, of China and Taiwan respectively, have buff underparts like the western races, but have buff, instead of white, throats.
The female is similar in appearance to the male, but may be identified by her slightly paler upperparts, a browner eyestripe and a more washed-out tone to the flanks and lower belly. In the eastern form, S. e. asiatica, some males have buff underparts like the female, and birds with this appearance are difficult to sex in the field. Young birds resemble the female, although their plumage is duller and they have paler legs. Individuals can be reliably sexed as female from about 12 days old by their paler and buffer flanks, or, in some white-breasted subspecies, by the creamier hue of their underparts.
Adults have a complete moult after breeding which takes about 80 days, starting from late May onwards and finishing by late September. The moult period for Siberian birds is more compressed, running from June to mid-September. Fledged juveniles moult some of their wing coverts when they are about eight weeks old.
In much of its range, Eurasian is the only nuthatch present. In southeast Europe and southwest Asia, the western and eastern rock nuthatches are larger and paler than the Eurasian species. They also lack white spots in the tail and are usually found in a different, stony habitat, and Krüper's nuthatch is small and has a black cap and reddish breast patch. In southwest China, the chestnut-vented nuthatch is very similar to the European bird, but is darker above, has less white on the face and has greyer underparts.
### Similar species
In most of its range, the Eurasian nuthatch is the only nuthatch present. In Southeast Europe and Western Asia, the Eastern rock nuthatch (S. tephronota) and the Western rock nuthatch (S. neumayer) inhabit rocky environments and are larger and paler than species. Eurasian species do not have white dots on their tails. In the same area, the Krüper's nuthatch (S. krueperi) is smaller, with a dark crown and a large russet patch on the breast. In southwest China, the chestnut-vented nuthatch (S. nagaensis) is very similar to the torchepot, but has darker upperparts, less white on the face, and more greyish underparts. The Siberian nuthatch (S. arctica) was once considered a subspecies of the Eurasian nuthatch but differs quite clearly from it, being larger, pale, with a shorter and thinner eye line, a longer bill and a straighter culmen, and more white in the tail than any other subspecies.
### Voice
The Eurasian nuthatch calls frequently, usually with a loud, sharp dwip normally repeated twice, sometimes more often if excited. It has a shrill sirrrr or tsi-si-si alarm call, and a thin tsit pre-flight call. The song is a slow whistled pee-pee-pee with many variants, including a faster version, and may be intermingled with the call.
The song of the distinctive S. e. arctica is said to be noticeably different from that of its relatives, which would help to establish whether it is a full species, but there has been insufficient research into its vocalizations.
## Distribution and habitat
The Eurasian nuthatch's breeding range extends across temperate Eurasia from Great Britain (but not Ireland) to Japan. It is found between the 16–20 °C (61–68 °F) July isotherms, north to about latitude 64°N in western Russia and 69°N in Siberia. It breeds south to the Mediterranean in Europe, although it is absent from the islands, other than Sicily, and in most of Russia the southern boundary is around 54–55°N. In the east, the range includes most of China and Taiwan and much of Korea. It has occurred as a vagrant in Lebanon and the Channel Islands, and the nominate race has been recorded a few times in Finland where S. e. asiatica is the normal form.
Most populations are sedentary, apart from some post-breeding dispersal of young birds, and there is a reluctance to cross even short stretches of open water. Northern and eastern breeders are dependent on the cones of the Siberian stone pine, and if the crop fails many birds of the S. e. asiatica subspecies may move west into northern Sweden and Finland in autumn, sometimes staying to breed. Siberian S. e. arctica may make more limited movements south and east in winter, and S. e. amurensis, from southeast Russia, is regular in winter in Korea.
The preferred habitat is mature woodland with large, old trees, which provide extensive growth for foraging and nesting holes. In Europe, deciduous or mixed forest is favoured, particularly when containing oak. Parks, old orchards and other wooded habitats may be occupied as long as they have at least a 1 ha (2.5 acres) block of suitable trees. Particularly in mountains, old spruce and pine forests are used, and pine is also favoured in Taiwan. In most of Russia, conifers are used for nesting, but population densities are relatively low. Moroccan birds nest in oak, Atlas cedar and fir. Unusual habitats include dwarf juniper in Mongolia and rocky terrain in a limited part of southern Siberia.
The Eurasian nuthatch is primarily a lowland bird in the north of its range, but reaches the tree-line in Switzerland, at 1,200 m (3,900 ft) or higher, and breeds occasionally at 1,800–2,100 m (5,900–6,900 ft) in Austria. It breeds at similar levels in the mountains of Turkey, the Middle East and Central Asia. It is mainly a mountain bird in southern Japan, 760–2,100 m (2,490–6,890 ft), and Taiwan, 800–3,300 m (2,600–10,800 ft), but in southern China, the chestnut-vented nuthatch is the highland species, with the Eurasian species at lower levels.
## Behaviour
### Breeding
Nuthatches are monogamous, and a pair occupies a breeding territory in which it spends the winter as well. Territory sizes range from 2–10 ha (5–25 acres) in Europe to an average of 30.2 ha (75 acres) in the sub-optimal conifer forests of Siberia. The male sings to defend his territory and attract a mate. Both sexes have a courtship display with a floating, quivering flight, and the male will also make circular flights with a spread tail and raised head. He will also feed the female while courting her. Despite the lifelong pairing, genetic research in Germany showed that at least 10% of the young in the study area were fathered by another male, usually from an adjacent territory.
The nest is in a tree cavity, usually an old woodpecker hole, but sometimes of natural origin. Occasionally the female will enlarge an existing hole in rotten wood. The nest site is typically 2–20 m (7–66 ft) above the ground and has a deep base of pine bark or chips of other wood, rarely supplemented with dry plant material. If the entrance to the hole is too large, it is plastered with mud, clay and sometimes dung to make it smaller. A small entrance and large interior, together with the use of a deep layer of wood chips in which to bury the eggs and small young when the adults leave the nest, may be adaptations to reduce the chance of predation. Nests with small entrance holes are most successful. Locally, a small entrance may make it less likely that the nest will be taken over by common starlings. The female undertakes most of the work, and often plasters the inside of the cavity too, taking up to four weeks to complete the construction. A nest is often re-used in subsequent years.
The clutch is usually 6–9 red-speckled white eggs, although up to 13 eggs are sometimes laid. They average 19.5 mm × 14.4 mm (0.77 in × 0.57 in) and weigh 2.3 g (0.081 oz) of which 6% is shell. The female incubates the eggs for 13–18 days to hatching, and broods the altricial downy chicks until they fledge 20–26 days later. Both adults feed the chicks in the nest and continue after they fledge until they become independent in about 8–14 days. Normally only one brood is raised each year. When nest boxes are used, the clutch size and number of fledglings are greater in larger boxes. For reasons that are unclear, there is no link between cavity size and nesting outcomes for natural holes.
The sedentary nature of this species means that juveniles can only acquire a territory by finding a vacant area or replacing a dead adult. In Europe, young birds almost always move to unoccupied habitat, but in the larger territories of Siberia most live within the breeding range of an adult pair.
The adult annual survival rate across most of the range is around 51%, and a small Belgian study found a 25% local survival rate for juveniles. The typical lifespan is two years and the maximum known age for a wild bird is 12 years 11 months in the UK. There is also a Swiss longevity record of 10 years 6 months.
### Feeding
The Eurasian nuthatch eats mainly insects, particularly caterpillar and beetles. In autumn and winter, the diet is supplemented with nuts and seeds, hazel nuts and beech mast being preferred. The young are fed mainly on the insects favoured by their parents, with some seeds. Food items are found mainly on tree trunks and large branches, but smaller branches may also be investigated, and food may be taken from the ground, especially outside the breeding season. Nuthatches can forage when descending trees head first, as well as when climbing. Some prey is caught in flight, and a nuthatch will remove bark or rotten wood to reach insects, although it cannot chisel into healthy wood like a woodpecker. A pair may temporarily join a mixed-species foraging flock as it passes near their territory. The Eurasian nuthatch readily visits bird tables and bird feeders in winter, eating human-made food items such as fat, cheese, butter and bread. It has even been recorded as taking slaughterhouse offal. Sizeable hard food items like nuts or large insects are wedged into crevices in tree bark and smashed with the strong bill.
Plant food is stored year-round, but mainly in autumn. Individual seeds are hidden in cracks in bark, occasionally in walls or in the ground. The food item is usually concealed with lichen, moss or small pieces of bark. The cached food is retrieved in cold weather. Siberian birds store the seeds of the Siberian stone pine, sometimes hoarding enough to last a whole year. Cached food may sometimes include non-plant material such as pieces of bread, caterpillars and grubs, the larvae being incapacitated by battering. Hoarding is a long-term strategy, stored food items only being consumed when fresh food is hard to find, sometimes up to three months after caching. Birds with good stored food supplies are fitter than those with more limited resources. Beech mast crops vary widely from year to year. Where beech mast is an important part of the diet, adult survival rates are largely unaffected in years with a poor mast crop, but the number of juvenile birds falls in the autumn as they are lost through starvation or emigration. In areas where common hazel is the prevalent tree species, there is a similar pattern of adult survival and loss of juvenile birds in years with poor nut production.
### Predators and parasites
Across most of its European range, the most important predator of the Eurasian nuthatch is the sparrowhawk. Other species known to prey on this nuthatch include the northern goshawk, hobby, tawny owl, pygmy owl and least weasel. A Swedish study showed that 6.2% of the nuthatch nests in their study area were raided by predators. The perpetrators were not identified, but the main single predator of tit nests in the same study was the great spotted woodpecker.
Common starlings will take over Eurasian nuthatch nest holes, reducing their breeding success. This is most likely to occur if the nest is high in a tree and there is a good local breeding density of the nuthatch. Introduced ring-necked parakeets may also compete with Eurasian nuthatches for nesting holes. The parakeets tend to occur in fragmented urban woodlands, while nuthatches prefer large old oak woodlands, which reduces the level of competition. Ornithologists conducting a 2010 Belgian study suggested that the problem was not so severe as to warrant culling of the parakeets.
Mites of the genus Ptilonyssus, such as P. sittae, have been found in the Eurasian nuthatch's nasal cavities. Intestinal worms include the nematodes Tridentocapillaria parusi and Pterothominx longifilla. Small studies in Slovakia and Spain found no blood parasites, but a larger Spanish survey found some evidence of Plasmodium infection.
## Status
The European population of the Eurasian nuthatch has been estimated as 22.5–57 million birds, suggesting a global total of 45.9–228 million individuals. China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Russia each have between 10,000 and 100,000 breeding pairs. The known breeding area is about 23.3 million km<sup>2</sup> (9 million sq mi), which is a large proportion of the potential suitable habitat, and the population appears to be stable. The large numbers and huge breeding range mean that this species is classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being of least concern.
The Eurasian nuthatch is common throughout much of its range, although densities are lower in the far north and in coniferous forests. Annual numbers in Siberia fluctuate depending on the availability of pine cones from year to year. In recent decades, the nuthatch has colonised Scotland and the Netherlands, and expanded its range in Wales, northern England, Norway and the High Atlas mountain range in North Africa. S. e. asiatica breeds intermittently in Finland and northern Sweden following irruptions. Because large trees are essential, felling or fragmentation of old woodland can lead to local declines or losses.
## Cited texts
|
33,521,256 |
Yogo sapphire
| 1,169,536,647 |
Blue sapphire variety
|
[
"Aluminium minerals",
"Corundum gemstones",
"Dielectrics",
"Geology of Montana",
"Minerals in space group 167",
"Optical materials",
"Oxide minerals",
"Superhard materials",
"Transparent materials",
"Trigonal minerals"
] |
Yogo sapphires are blue sapphires, a colored variety of corundum, found in Montana, primarily in Yogo Gulch (part of the Little Belt Mountains) in Judith Basin County, Montana. Yogo sapphires are typically cornflower blue, a result of trace amounts of iron and titanium. They have high uniform clarity and maintain their brilliance under artificial light. Because Yogo sapphires occur within a vertically dipping resistive igneous dike, mining efforts have been sporadic and rarely profitable. It is estimated that at least 28 million carats (5.6 t or 5.5 long tons or 6.2 short tons) of Yogo sapphires are still in the ground. Jewelry containing Yogo sapphires was given to First Ladies Florence Harding and Bess Truman; in addition, many gems were sold in Europe, though promoters' claims that Yogo sapphires are in the crown jewels of England or the engagement ring of Princess Diana are dubious. Today, several Yogo sapphires are part of the Smithsonian Institution's gem collection.
Yogo sapphires were not initially recognized or valued. Gold was discovered at Yogo Creek in 1866, and though "blue pebbles" were noticed alongside gold in the stream alluvium by 1878, it was not until 1894 that the "blue pebbles" were recognized as sapphires. Sapphire mining began in 1895 after a local rancher named Jake Hoover sent a cigar box of gems he had collected to an assay office, which in turn sent them to Tiffany's in New York, where an appraiser pronounced them "the finest precious gemstones ever found in the United States". Hoover then purchased the original mother lode from a sheepherder, later selling it to other investors. This became the highly profitable "English Mine", which flourished from 1899 until the 1920s. A second operation, the "American Mine", was owned by a series of investors in the western section of the Yogo dike, but was less profitable and bought out by the syndicate that owned the English Mine. In 1984, a third set of claims, known as the Vortex mine, opened.
The term "Yogo sapphire" is the preferred wording for gems found in the Yogo Gulch, whereas "Montana sapphire" generally refers to gems found in other Montana locations. More gem-quality sapphires are produced in Montana than anywhere else in North America. Sapphires were first discovered in Montana in 1865, in alluvium along the Missouri River. Finds in other locations in the western half of the state occurred in 1889, 1892, and 1894. The Rock Creek location, near Phillipsburg, is the most productive site in Montana, and its gems inspired the name of the nearby Sapphire Mountains. In 1969, the sapphire was co-designated along with the agate as Montana's state gemstones.
In the early 1980s, Intergem Limited, which controlled most of the Yogo sapphire mining at the time, rocked the gem world by marketing Yogo sapphires as the world's only guaranteed "untreated" sapphire, exposing a practice of the time wherein 95 percent of all the world's sapphires were heat-treated to enhance their natural color. Although Intergem went out of business, the gems it mined appeared on the market through the 1990s because the company had paid its salesmen in sapphires during its financial demise. Citibank had obtained a large stock of Yogo sapphires as a result of Intergem's collapse, and after keeping them in a vault for nearly a decade, sold its collection in 1994 to a Montana jeweler. Mining activity today is largely confined to hobby miners in the area; the major mines are currently inactive.
## Location
Yogo sapphires are mined in Montana at Yogo Gulch (), which is in Judith Basin County, Montana, 12 miles (19 km) southwest of Utica, 45 miles (72 km) west-southwest of Lewistown, and east of Great Falls. The site was in Fergus County when Yogo sapphires were discovered, but in 1920, because of the re-designation of county boundaries, Judith Basin County was carved out from parts of western Fergus County and eastern Cascade County.
Yogo Gulch and the corresponding natural features of Yogo Peak (8,625 feet (2,629 m)), Yogo Creek, and the Yogo dike, where the gems are mined, are all in the Little Belt Mountains within Judith Basin County. The Gulch is located along the lower reaches of Yogo Creek and west of the Judith River. The west end of the Yogo dike outcrops just southwest of Yogo Creek, about 3 miles (5 km) north of Yogo Creek's confluence with the Middle Fork of the Judith River; from there it runs east-northeast and ends about 0.5 miles (800 m) from the Judith River. Yogo Creek starts just south of Yogo Peak, which is about 15 miles (24 km) west of the Judith River. From there the creek flows southeast into the Middle Fork of the Judith River. The Judith River then flows northeast from the Little Belts toward Utica. East of the Judith River is Pig-Eye Basin, where Jake Hoover, credited as the person who discovered Yogo sapphires, owned a ranch.
### Etymology
Because Yogo Gulch lies in a region historically inhabited by the Piegan Blackfeet people, promoters of Yogo sapphires claim that yogo may mean "romance" or "blue sky" in the Blackfoot language, although there is little evidence to support this claim. Other meanings for yogo have been suggested, including "Going over the hill". The meaning of the word "Yogo" had been lost by 1878, when placer gold was found in Yogo Creek. Thus, its true meaning is uncertain.
## Mineralogy and geology
Sapphires are a color variety of corundum, a crystalline form of aluminium oxide (Al
<sub>2</sub>O
<sub>3</sub>). Corundum is one of the hardest minerals, rating 9 on the Mohs scale. Corundum gems of most colors are called sapphires, except for red ones, which are called rubies. The term "Yogo sapphire" refers only to sapphires from the Yogo Gulch. The cornflower blue color of the Yogo results from trace amounts of iron and titanium. Yogo sapphires are unique in that they are free of cavities and inclusions, have high uniform clarity, lack color zoning, and do not need heat treating because their cornflower blue coloring is uniform and deep. Unlike Asian sapphires, they maintain their brilliance in artificial light. Yogo sapphires present an advantage to gemcutters: since they are found as primary constituent minerals within an igneous bedrock rather than in sedimentary alluvial deposits where most other sapphires are located, they retain a perfect or near perfect crystalline shape, making cutting much easier, as does their lack of inclusions, color zoning, or cloudiness. Yogo sapphires also exhibit a triangular pattern on the basal plane of the flattened crystals, with thin rhombohedral crystal faces, a feature absent in sapphires from other parts of Montana.
Yogo sapphires tend to be beautiful, small, and very expensive. The United States Geological Survey and many gem experts have stated that Yogo sapphires are "among the world's finest sapphires." The roughs tend to be small and flat, so cut Yogo gems heavier than 2 carats (0.40 g) are rare. Only about 10 percent of cut pieces are over 1 carat (0.20 g). The largest recorded Yogo rough, found in 1910, weighed 19 carats (3.8 g) and was cut into an 8-carat (1.6 g) gem. The largest cut Yogo is 10.2-carat (2.04 g). Because of the rarity of large rough Yogo sapphires, Yogo gem prices begin rising sharply when they are over 0.5 carats (0.10 g), and skyrocket when they are over 1 carat (0.20 g).
Montana sapphires in general come in a variety of colors, but Yogo sapphires are almost always blue. About two percent of Yogo sapphires are purple, due to trace amounts of chromium. A very small number of rubies have been found at Yogo Gulch.
Yogo sapphires were first discovered in alluvial streambed sediments during gold mining operations in Yogo Gulch downstream from the Yogo dike, but were later traced to their source within igneous bedrock. Worldwide, other than the Yogo Gulch deposit and one small site in the Kashmir region, most other corundum is mined from the sand and gravel created by the weathering of metamorphic rock. Alluvial sapphires are found in the Far East, Australia, and in three other Montana locations—the upper Missouri River, Rock Creek, and Dry Cottonwood Creek. The location of most Yogo sapphires within igneous rock rather than from alluvial placer deposits requires difficult hard rock mining. Coupled with American labor costs, this makes their extraction fairly expensive. At least 28,000,000 carats (5,600 kg) are estimated to still be in the ground. The Yogo dike is "the only known igneous rock from which sapphire is mined".
The sapphire bearing Yogo dike is a dark gray to green intrusive rock known as a lamprophyre. The lamprophyre is an unusual igneous rock that contains a low content of silica. The rock has a porphyritic texture with large crystals of orthopyroxene and phlogopite set in a fine grained matrix. The phlogopite crystals have been used to determine the age of the dike and its crystallization temperature (900 °C (1,650 °F)). The dike also contains fragments of other rock types. These xenoliths include pieces of limestone, clastic sedimentary rocks, and gneiss. In some locations, due to the abundance of xenoliths, the dike has the appearance of a limestone breccia in an igneous matrix. One gneiss fragment found as a xenolith contains corundum. The Yogo sapphires themselves are rimmed with a reaction layer of spinel and are etched, indicating that the sapphires were not in chemical equilibrium with their host, the lamprophyre magma. This suggests the sapphire crystals may have originated in an earlier rock, such as a corundum-bearing gneiss, later assimilated by the lamprophyre magma at depth. Earlier investigators had assumed that the sapphire had crystallized from the magma with the necessary high aluminium content provided by assimilation of clay rich shales of the Proterozoic Belt Supergroup sediments which are known to be present at depth in the region.
The Yogo dike is a narrow subvertical sheet-like igneous body. It varies from 2 to 26 feet (0.61 to 7.92 m) thick and extends for 5 miles (8.0 km), striking at an azimuth of 255°. The dike is broken into three offset en echelon segments, and dates to 48.6 mya using Ar dating on phlogopite. The dike intrudes Mississippian age (360 to 325 mya) limestone and other sedimentary rocks of the Madison and Big Snowy Groups.
There has been considerable debate over the years as to the depth of the Yogo dike and how many ounces of rough sapphires per ton it contains. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Delmer L. Brown, a geological engineer and gemologist, conducted the most thorough scientific exploration up to that time, concluding that the dike was at least 7,000 feet (2,100 m) deep and that the concentration of rough sapphires was not constant throughout the deposit. Brown found that the dike had intruded into a pre-existing fault that had been a conduit for groundwater circulation. The overlying shale, the Kibbey Formation, was deposited on an unconformity, an ancient Mississippian-age karst erosion surface, and was not intruded by the dike. This groundwater action produced collapsed zones which were intruded by the dike to form breccia zones. Recent erosion in the area removed the overlying shales and again exposed the limestone to groundwater action which produced collapse breccias which include fragments of the dike rock. He determined that the erosion of the dike in the current erosion cycle was minimal.
Brown also showed that the unique characteristics of the Yogo sapphires are related to their geological history. Most sapphires are formed under low pressure and temperature over geologically short periods of time, and this is why most non-Yogo sapphires have imperfections and inconsistent coloring. Yogo sapphires show crystalline formation under very high temperatures and pressures corresponding to a great depth, over geologically long periods of time. Brown also showed that distribution of gem rough through the dike was not consistent, so using an average "ounces per ton" was misleading. For example, the section which, despite several ownership and name changes over the years, is generally known as the "American Mine," was developed in an area dominated by post-dike breccia with significantly lower ounces per ton than the English Mine.
## Montana sapphires
"Yogo sapphire" is the preferred term for gems found in the Yogo Gulch, whereas "Montana sapphire" generally refers to gems found in other Montana locations. More gem-quality sapphires are produced in Montana than anywhere else in North America. Montana sapphires come in a variety of colors, though rubies are rare.
The first sapphires found in the United States were discovered on May 5, 1865, along the Missouri River, about 14 miles (23 km) east of Helena, in Lewis and Clark County, by Ed "Sapphire" Collins. Collins sent the sapphires to Tiffany's in New York City, and to Amsterdam for evaluation; however, those sapphires were of poor coloring and low overall quality, garnering little notice and giving Montana sapphires a poor reputation. Corundum was also found at Dry Cottonwood Creek near Butte in 1889, Rock Creek near Philipsburg in 1892, and Quartz Gulch near Bozeman in 1894. By 1890, the English-owned Sapphire and Ruby Mining Company had bought several thousand acres of land where Montana sapphires were found, but the venture failed after a few years because of fraudulent practices by the owners.
Sapphires from these three sites are routinely heat-treated to enhance color. While millions of carats of sapphires have been mined from the Missouri River deposits, there has been little commercial activity there since the 1990s because of the high cost of recovery and environmental concerns. Production at Dry Cottonwood Creek has been sporadic and low-yielding. The Rock Creek area, also known as Gem Mountain, continues to be the most productive site in Montana, even more so than Yogo Gulch, producing over 190,000,000 carats (38,000,000 g) of sapphires since its inception in 1906. Other than Yogo, Montana sapphire mines have been less successful because they have few blue sapphires and non-blue sapphires have low profit margins.
These gems inspired the names of features: the mountains near Rock Creek are known as the Sapphire Mountains. Garnets are also found at some Montana sapphire sites, inspiring the name of the Garnet Range, which lies to the north of the Sapphire Mountains. In 1969, the sapphire and agate were jointly declared Montana's two official state gemstones.
## History
Mining of Yogo sapphires was exceptionally difficult and remains sporadic today. Even so, Yogo sapphire mining turned out to be more valuable than several gold strikes. The Yogo area also produced small amounts of silver, copper, and iron.
Yogo Gulch lies in a region originally inhabited by the Piegan Blackfeet people. Gold was first discovered at Yogo Creek in 1866, but the small numbers of early prospectors were driven off by local Native Americans. During a Gold Rush in 1878, about a thousand miners came to Yogo Creek, which was one of the gold-bearing streams in Montana not yet actively mined. "Blue pebbles" were noted along with small quantities of gold. The mining camp at Yogo City only flourished for roughly three years, and eventually the population dwindled to only a few people.
Yogo City was briefly known as Hoover City, after Jake Hoover. Hoover was part of a partnership that had been placer mining for gold and is credited as the discoverer of Yogo Sapphires. For several years, he also owned a ranch in nearby Pig-Eye Basin. He later prospected for gold in Alaska and was a deep-sea fishing guide in Seattle before eventually returning to the Judith Basin. Western painter C.M. Russell arrived in the area in 1880 as a young cowhand and was hired by Hoover. Russell stated that he learned most of his frontier skills from Hoover, and the two men remained lifelong friends. Millie Ringold, a former slave born in 1845, settled in Fort Benton, Montana after having worked as a nurse and servant for an army general. When gold was discovered at Yogo Creek, Ringold sold her boarding house in Fort Benton and left for the Yogo gold fields, setting up a hotel, restaurant, and saloon in Yogo City where she sang and played music. Ringold later cooked for the English mine, but also worked her own gold claims, even after gold mining was on the decline. She was known as a superb cook and ultimately died in Yogo City in 1906, the last resident of the community. The nearby town of Utica was featured in Russell's 1907 painting A Quiet Day In Utica, which was originally known as Tinning a Dog. Hoover, Ringold, store owner Charles Lehman, and Russell himself are all depicted in the painting, placed between the hitching post and door of the general store.
### Discovery
In 1894, the "blue pebbles" were recognized as sapphires. One story credits a local school teacher for recognizing the blue pebbles as sapphires. A variation is that the teacher lived in Maine, but was a friend of a local miner, who had mailed her a small box with some gold and a few "blue pebbles" in it. Another story credits a miner named S.S. Hobson for surmising that the blue stones might be sapphires, and his guess was confirmed by a jeweler in Helena. Ultimately, in 1895, Jake Hoover sent a cigar box containing those he had collected while mining gold to an assay office, which in turn sent them via regular, uninsured mail to Tiffany's in New York City for appraisal by Dr. George Frederick Kunz, the leading American gemologist of the time. Impressed by their quality and color, Kunz pronounced them "the finest precious gemstones ever found in the United States". Tiffany's sent Hoover a check for \$3,750 (approximately \$ as of 2023), along with a letter that described the blue pebbles as "sapphires of unusual quality".
### Early mining
Yogo sapphires were ultimately traced from the alluvium to their source. In February 1896, a sheepherder named Jim Ettien found the sapphire mother lode: the Yogo dike. Ettien was prospecting for gold, and found sapphires after washing gravel he found in a fissure within a limestone outcrop. Ettien staked two claims. The vein turned out to be 5 miles (8 km) long and several other miners promptly staked claims along it. Ettien sold his claims to Hoover; Hoover in turn sold his interest in eight original mining stakes, known as the "New Mine Sapphire Syndicate", to his two partners for \$5,000 (approximately \$ as of 2023). This site was 5 miles (8 km) from Yogo City. In 1899, Johnson, Walker and Tolhurst, Ltd. of London purchased the New Mine Sapphire Syndicate for \$100,000 (approximately \$ million as of 2023). At that point, the operation became unofficially known as the "English Mine".
On July 4, 1896, two other Americans, John Burke and Pat Sweeney, staked six mining claims on the western portion of the Yogo dike—areas Hoover had deemed unfit for mining. These claims were collectively known as the "Fourth of July Claim", and became known as the "American Mine". In 1904, the mine was bought by the American Gem Syndicate, and it sold in 1907 to the American Sapphire Company.
One of the Englishmen who came to the area was Charles Gadsden of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. By 1902, Gadsden was promoted to resident supervisor of the English Mine, and he quickly turned its focus from gold to sapphires. Gadsden's security measures were very tight, as weight-for-weight, rough sapphires were and continue to be worth much more than gold. The English Mine flourished until the 1920s, but floods on July 26, 1923, so severely damaged the mines that they never fully recovered. Between the aftermath of flooding and hard economic times, the English Mine finally failed in 1929. It had recovered more than 16 million carats (3.2 t) of rough sapphires that produced 2.5 million carats (500 kg) of finished gems valued at \$25 million in 1929 dollars (approximately \$ million as of 2023). A series of other firms mined sapphires there, but with marginal success. For much of the 1930s and 1940s Gadsden worked the mine alone and used his own money to pay its property taxes. He remained caretaker of the mines until shortly before his death on March 11, 1954.
The American Mine operations were less profitable than those of the English Mine. While the English Mine used superior mining and management techniques on a richer lode, the American Mine suffered from insufficient space and lack of water for ore weathering. Roughs from the English Mine were shipped to London and sold in Europe, often with claims they were sapphires from the Far East, while the American Mine had difficulty marketing its gems within the United States. The American Sapphire Company, which used local gemcutters from Great Falls, went bankrupt in 1909; a new firm, the Yogo American Sapphire Company, bought the American Mine, but was bankrupt by 1913. Gadsden and his wife had convinced the New Mine Sapphire Syndicate to buy out the Yogo American Sapphire Company in 1914, and in doing so, the English syndicate gained control of all known Yogo deposits. They quickly recouped the purchase price by washing the tailings left behind by previous operators of the American Mine.
### 1940s–1970s
Montana sapphires were heavily mined during World War II for industrial abrasive and cutting purposes. As the Yogo mines were still owned by the English, the United States government could not control those operations, so the mines were little affected by the war, even though industrial sapphires were critical to the war effort. The Yogo Sapphire Mining Corporation of Billings, Montana, was the next company to try to run the English Mine. They made an initial offer in 1946, and reached a deal by 1949, but the purchase was not complete until 1956 because of legal issues. The sale was finally completed for \$65,000 cash and some stock considerations because the company's capital was exhausted, similar to previous Yogo ventures. The Yogo Sapphire Mining Corporation then changed its name to be the same as the former English firm's name: New Mine Sapphire Syndicate. It became informally known as the "American Syndicate" to distinguish it from the previous "English Syndicate". Production was poor and mining ceased in September 1959. From 1959 to 1963, the mine itself was left unattended and unsecured, resulting in hobbyists, picnickers, and rockhounds' coming from all over the US and Canada to gather loose rough sapphires. The American Syndicate took action to stop this in 1963, with fences and threats of prosecution. The American Syndicate then tried leasing the mine to several operators. One of these was Siskon, Inc. of Nevada, which lost a significant amount of money. They sued, and in May 1965 the Montana Supreme Court ruled in Siskon's favor. Siskon bought the mine at a sheriff's sale and in turn leased it to a group headed by Arnold Baron, who had a background in gemcutting and jewelry. Baron organized German and Thai gemcutters and had success in marketing Yogo sapphires in America—the first such success in 50 years. However, owing to the difficulty in mining the hard rock site, he did not exercise his option to buy the mine, and Siskon sold it in August 1968 to Herman Yaras of Oxnard, California, for \$585,000.
In 1969, Yaras' Sapphire Village, Inc. created the Sapphire Village, a nearby homesite development offering buyers limited mining rights to gather their own sapphires with hand tools. Having done no significant mining or marketing, Sapphire Village, Inc. sold in 1973 to one of its investors, Chikara Kunisaki, a celery farmer from Oxnard, California. Kunisaki renamed the business Sapphire International Corporation and attempted to create a commercial mining operation. He built a modern 3,000-foot (910 m) tunnel at the site of the old American Mine, named the "Kunisaki Tunnel". But operation costs were so high that Sapphire International Corporation shut down in late 1976. This was the last actual attempt to mine the American Mine section of the Yogo dike, and today, only the locked portal to the tunnel still exists.
In January 1977, Victor di Suvero and his firm Sapphire-Yogo Mines became the next owner to tackle the Yogo dike. Di Suvero was a native-born Italian who grew up in Tientsin, China, and had been successful with a jade mine in California. Di Suvero's expertise was in marketing: he formed a company called Sapphire Trading to cut and market the Yogo sapphires. He had novel marketing ideas but was not knowledgeable about the mining side of the business. Unable to make payments, his venture folded in late 1979.
By 1980, only four American owners had been successful at Yogo Gulch, all early in its mining history. The English syndicate had been the most profitable of any venture, and even that venture was short-lived. At least thirteen American-owned Yogo mining efforts had failed. Besides inherent difficulties with financing and the challenges of hard rock mining, the American owners generally did not understand how to effectively market the gems.
### 1980s and beyond
Kunisaki put his mine up for sale, asking \$6 million to recoup his expenses. Even though mine profits had been poor over the decades, prices of precious gems were very high at the time due to the worldwide oil crises of the 1970s and early 1980s. Four individuals or groups seriously considered Kunisaki's offer. Relying heavily upon Delmer Brown's expertise, Harry C. Bullock and J. R. Edington formed the limited partnership American Yogo Sapphire Limited, becoming the 14th American company to work the Yogo dike. Bullock and Brown had Yogo mine experience, as they had worked with di Suvero. Bullock's plan included mining, cutting, making jewelry, and marketing—the whole spectrum of the business. They paid the \$6 million asked by Kunisaki and then raised another \$7.2 million in funding by October 1981. Brown located quality gemcutters in Thailand, and set up the American Yogo Sapphire Company there. Brown also set up a thorough, computerized security system that tracked gems from the mine to the gemcutters. Bigger roughs were sent to American cutters, specialty cuts were done in Germany, a few cuts were done in Hong Kong, and the vast majority were done in Thailand. American Yogo Sapphire Limited secured a \$5 million line of credit with Citibank. Desiring a more modern name, American Yogo Sapphire Limited changed its name to Intergem Limited in early 1982. Intergem marketed the Yogo as the "Royal American Sapphire." Their first line of jewelry appeared in mid-1982, first marketed regionally in the American west and later at the national level. Intergem also developed a system of authorized dealers, and found success in its first four years, with sales over \$3 million in 1984 alone.
Intergem rocked the gem trade by marketing the Yogo as the world's only guaranteed untreated sapphire. By 1982, the practice of routinely heat treating gems had become a major issue in the industry. At the time, 95 percent of all the world's sapphires were being heated to enhance their natural color. Thai traders had even purchased large quantities of naturally colorless Sri Lankan sapphires, known as geuda, and heated them to turn them into a marketable range of blue colors. Intergem's marketing of guaranteed untreated Yogo sapphires set them against many in the gem industry. In 1985 there was a movement in Pennsylvania to require disclosure that a gem had been treated. Intergem's strategy resulted in large numbers of gem professionals visiting Yogo Gulch.
Intergem began planning to dig even deeper into the Yogo dike, which held more known reserves than all the world's other known sapphire deposits combined, albeit deep underground rather than near the surface in the manner of the other known deposits. They also set up a washing plant and maintenance sheds at the site of the former American mine. Intergem had made a \$1.5 million down payment and agreed to make semi-annual payments to Kunisaki's Sapphire International Corporation, which had been renamed to Roncor. Intergem also had loan and interest payments on the \$7.2 million loan to make to Citibank. While the company's sales were steadily increasing, their profits were still too low and in May 1985 they missed a \$250,000 payment to Roncor. Simultaneously, their collateral of gems, held by Citibank, declined because the value of their collateral was declining; as a result, Citibank called in its loan. Intergem had over \$1 million in sales lined up for the 1985 Christmas season, but could only fill a tiny portion because they did not have enough operating capital to manufacture the Yogo jewelry. In mid-1986, Roncor regained full ownership even though Intergem had sold loose gems and jewelry worth millions of dollars.
Various companies attempted to lease the mine from Roncor, but in the meantime, two local couples, Lanny and Joy Perry and Chuck and Marie Ridgeway, discovered a new site at Yogo Gulch in January 1984 by following a trail to an unused section of the dike that had previously been deemed unsuitable. They began mining the site and named it the "Vortex Mine", forming a company named Vortex Mining. The mine shaft was 280 feet (85 m) deep and contained two Yogo ore-bearing veins. The portion of the dike they had mined was an extension of the main dike. The Vortex Mine, renamed Yogo Creek Mining, was successful for years but eventually declined and closed in 2004.
In 1992, Roncor found an 11-carat (2.2 g) rough. AMAX Exploration, operating as the Yogo Sapphire Project, signed a 22-month lease with Roncor in March 1993 and had some success in the middle and eastern portions of the dike; it decided not to continue after the end of its lease due to the cost of underground mining, depletion of easily accessible Yogo sapphires, and the relatively small size of Yogo sapphires then easily accessible. During this time, additional dikes were found in the area using geophysical magnetometer surveys. Low-grade sapphire rough was found in the Eastern Flats Dike, a parallel dike some 500 feet northeast of the main dike. Pacific Cascade Sapphires, a Canadian company, had a mining lease with Roncor in 2000 and 2001 but ran out of funds and their option expired. By this time, most of the easily accessible Yogo sapphires had been mined and miners had to dig deeper, further increasing costs.
In 1995, Intergem's stock of gems began to reappear on the market because the company had paid its salesmen in sapphires during its financial demise. After Intergem collapsed, many of its salesmen continued to sell Yogo sapphires, especially after AMAX ceased operations. Citibank also had obtained a large stock of Yogo sapphires, reputedly worth \$3.5 million (approximately \$ as of 2023), as a result of Intergem's collapse: 200,000 carats (40,000 g) of rough, 22,000 carats (4,400 g) of cut gems, and 2,000 pieces of jewelry, all of which sat in the bank's vaults until 1991 when Sofus Michelsen, director of the Center for Gemstone Evaluation and creator of the Michelsen Gemstone Index, became interested. In 1992, he and Jim Adair, a Missoula, Montana, jeweler who is the world's largest retailer of Yogo sapphires, got together, and by October 1994 Adair had purchased Citibank's four sealed bags of Yogo material. However, only one of the bags was truly valuable. Adair and Michelsen designed custom cutting techniques for Yogo sapphires.
A new owner, Michael Duane Roberts, bought the Vortex Mine in 2008. Its operations were designed to be environmentally friendly, using methods such as recycling all water and not using other chemicals. Roberts died in a mining accident in 2012. As of 2011, there was also mining activity by individual hobby miners on small parcels at Sapphire Village, but the Roncor mines remained inactive. In 2017, Vortex Mines was sold to Don Baide who plans to continue operations.
## Notable specimens
Several Yogo sapphires are kept at the Smithsonian Institution. The earliest donations were noted in the museum's annual report on June 30, 1899, when the institution reported that Dr. L. T. Chamberlain gave them two cut Yogo sapphires and 21 other sapphires for their Dr. Isaac Lea gem and mineral collection. The record-setting 10.2-carat (2.04 g) cut Yogo is also held by the Smithsonian. In 2006, gemologist Robert Kane of Fine Gems International in Helena, donated 333 Montana sapphires, weighing a total of 27.07 carats (5.414 g), to the Smithsonian's Gem and Mineral Collection, along with 98.48 grams of 18K yellow gold for the creation of a piece of jewelry. A representative of the Smithsonian asked Paula Crevoshay, a jewelry designer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to create a piece of finished jewelry from these gems. Crevoshay felt that a butterfly motif would best represent America's natural beauty, honor her mother's love of butterflies, and display the wide range of colors found in Montana sapphires. Crevoshay named the brooch "Conchita" in honor of her mother; it is also referred to as the "Sapphire Butterfly Brooch", "Conchita Sapphire Butterfly", and the "Montana Butterfly Brooch". Two of the sapphires used are cabochon cut and the rest are brilliant cut. The majority are from the Rock Creek deposit. The largest one, however, is a blue Yogo used for the butterfly's head. Other sapphires used included yellow, purple, pink, and orange gems. Crevoshay completed the brooch in 2007; she and Kane presented the finished brooch to Smithsonian curator Jeffrey Post on May 7, 2007, in Washington, DC.
In the earliest years of Yogo sapphire mining, before Yogo sapphires achieved their own reputation, Oriental sapphires were sold in Montana with claims they were Yogo sapphires, while in Europe, Yogo sapphires were sold as Oriental sapphires. However, Yogo sapphires became notable in their own right. Paulding Farnham (1859–1927) used Yogo sapphires in several jewelry pieces he designed for the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where Yogo sapphires received a silver medal among all gems for color and clarity. An entry of uncut loose Yogo sapphires also won a bronze medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Farnham was the creator of the most elaborate piece of jewelry ever made with Yogo sapphires, the life-size Tiffany Iris Brooch, a brooch ornament, which contains 120 Yogo sapphires set in platinum, and sold on March 17, 1900, for \$6,906.84. In 1923, First Lady Florence Harding was given an "all Montana" ring made from a Yogo sapphire and Montana gold. In 1952, Gadsden gave cut Yogo sapphires to President Harry Truman, his wife Bess, and their daughter Margaret. Many Yogo sapphires were also sold in Europe, as some Yogo mining was conducted by British interests. Yogo sapphires may have been in the personal collections of some members of the British royal family in the 1910s, but promotional claims that Yogo sapphires are in any of the crown jewels of England cannot be conclusively proven or disproven. Claims that the gem in the engagement ring of Lady Diana Spencer and Kate Middleton is a Yogo are dubious; the gem is thought to be of Sri Lankan origin. The story that the gem is a Yogo can be traced to a 1984 Los Angeles Times article that described the ring as a 9-carat (1.8 g) sapphire, and quoted Intergem president Dennis Brown's claim that the gem may have come from a British-owned Yogo mine.
## See also
- Bismarck Sapphire Necklace
- Hall Sapphire and Diamond Necklace
- Logan sapphire
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1937 Brazilian coup d'état
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Military coup led by Getúlio Vargas
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"1930s coups d'état and coup attempts",
"1937 in Brazil",
"Conflicts in 1937",
"Military coups in Brazil",
"November 1937 events"
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The 1937 Brazilian coup d'état (Portuguese: Golpe de Estado no Brasil em 1937), also known as the Estado Novo coup, was a military coup in Brazil led by President Getúlio Vargas with the support of the Armed Forces on 10 November 1937.
Vargas had risen to power in 1930 with the backing of the military, following a revolution that ended a decades-old oligarchy. Vargas ruled as provisional president until the National Constituent Assembly election in 1934. Under a new constitution, Vargas became the constitutional president of Brazil, but following a 1935 communist insurrection, speculation grew over a potential self-coup. Candidates for the 1938 presidential election appeared as early as late 1936. Vargas could not seek re-election, but he and his allies were unwilling to abandon power. Despite loosening political repression after the communist revolt, strong sentiment for a dictatorial government remained, and increasing federal intervention in state governments would pave the way for a coup to take place.
With preparations beginning officially on 18 September 1937, senior military officers used the Cohen Plan, a fraudulent document, to provoke the National Congress into declaring a state of war. After his state's militia was incorporated into the federal forces by a state of war commission in his state, Rio Grande do Sul Governor Flores da Cunha [pt], who was opposed to Vargas, went into exile in mid-October 1937. State governors of Bahia and Pernambuco were also attacked by commissions in their states. Francisco Campos [pt] drafted a new, ambitious constitution for Vargas to become a dictator. By November, the President held most of the power in the country, and there was little to stop the plan. On the morning of 10 November 1937, the military surrounded the National Congress. The cabinet expressed approval for the new corporatist constitution, and a radio address by Vargas proclaimed the new regime, the Estado Novo (New State).
In the coup's aftermath, a semi-fascist, authoritarian state, modeled on European fascist countries, was installed in Brazil. Individual liberties and rights were stripped away, Vargas's term of office was prolonged by six years, which turned to eight, and the power of the states evaporated. A plebiscite for the new constitution was promised, but never held. Vargas ruled as dictator until another coup d'état, in 1945, reestablished democracy. Foreign reactions to the 1937 coup were mostly negative. South American countries were hostile to it. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supported the coup, but in the United States and the United Kingdom, the overall reaction was unfavorable.
## Background
### Brazil in the early 1930s
The First Brazilian Republic ended with the Revolution of 1930. The 1929 economic crisis undermined the power of an oligarchy which had dominated Brazilian politics since the 1890s and concentrated power in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. The oligarchy collapsed when President Washington Luís, from São Paulo, nominated another person from his home state, Júlio Prestes, to succeed him instead of acting within the terms of the inter-state agreement and nominating a candidate from Minas Gerais. In response, Minas Gerais formed the Liberal Alliance [pt] with the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Paraíba to counter the move, nominating Getúlio Vargas for the presidency in the upcoming 1930 general election. Prestes's narrow victory in March, along with the unrelated assassination of Vargas's running mate João Pessoa in July, prompted Vargas and his supporters to initiate an armed revolution in October that year and install a new regime within Brazil.
In the revolution's aftermath, Vargas became provisional president, dissolved the National Congress and other representative bodies, established an emergency regime, replaced almost all the state presidents with "interventors", and assumed all policy-making power. At that time, the military was in support of Vargas. The paulistas, people from São Paulo, instigated a brief civil war between 9 July to 2 October 1932—the Constitutionalist Revolution—but failed to defeat the federal government. Vargas permitted elections in May 1933 to a National Constituent Assembly, which met until 1934. In July of that year, the assembly produced a constitution and elected Vargas to a four-year term as constitutional president ending on 3 May 1938, beginning a quasi-democratic period.
### Communist insurrection (1935)
On 23 November 1935, a Brazilian Communist Party–backed attempted military coup began in Rio Grande do Norte. The movement proceeded in Recife and Rio de Janeiro, where the encounters between troops were especially bloody and several people died. A junta governed Rio Grande do Norte's capital, Natal, for a short period until the uprisings were defeated on 27 November 1935. The aftermath was harsh; historians Boris and Sergio Fausto note that "it opened the way for far-reaching repressive measures and for an escalation of authoritarianism". The executive branch ordered the repression of the Communist Party in particular, and the political left-wing in general, and directed Congress to do the same. Among the resulting new government bodies was the National Commission for the Repression of Communism and the National Security Tribunal [pt] (TSN). The former was created on 24 January 1936, acting independently as an investigatory agency with an effective director who once told Vargas that making one or more unjust arrests was preferable to allowing Brazil to experience another communist insurrection. Congress established the latter in 1936 to investigate the 1935 uprising and judge alleged treason against the Brazilian people, though it became a permanent organization, lasting until 1945.
Police invaded Congress in March 1936 and arrested five assemblymen who were supporters of the National Liberation Alliance, a leftist front. In a vote of 190 to 59, the Chamber of Deputies waived their constitutional immunity. One of them, Abel Chermont [pt], said in May 1937 that sixteen detectives forced him, his wife, and his two children to the police station, that he was beaten by a rubber hose and held prisoner, and that, after resisting, he was brought to the police garage by the throat and beaten senseless by twelve men. The four were held in solitary confinement for the first two months and were even refused fresh-air privileges. A ninety-day state of national emergency was declared by Congress on 18 December 1935, and subsequently extended five times. The 1934 constitution essentially existed only de jure as the states of emergency and police actions violated it, supported by an anti-communist climate. The first speculation that Vargas might be initiating a self-coup, and the revolt's importance, arose in the aftermath of the communist insurrection. Vargas found support from all sides, with Congress passing three constitutional amendments to bolster his power. An extraordinary number of people were jailed, Vargas himself commenting on the situation: "without due process and without proof, hundreds of prisoners who were perhaps innocent". Estimates of the number of arrests vary: Communist journals in Brazil and L'Humanité in France put the number as 20,000 and 17,000, respectively, but historian Robert M. Levine places the number as anywhere between 5,000 and 15,000 arrests. Prisoners faced neglect, exploitation, and severe overcrowding. Luís Carlos Prestes claimed responsibility for the insurrection and was sentenced to seventeen years in prison by the TSN.
### Speculation and influential factors (1935–1937)
From late 1936 to early 1937, three presidential candidates came forward to run for the January 1938 presidential election. The Constitutionalist Party of São Paulo [pt] supported Armando de Sales Oliveira; the Vargas government supported José Américo de Almeida; and the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB) supported Plínio Salgado. Vargas could not succeed himself unless he waited four years for the next election. According to historian Richard Bourne, "Although [Oliveira] was objectively an opposition candidate, he began a kind of decorous campaign, speaking to businessmen rather than the public at large and trying to minimize any offence to the Federal Government." A coalition of governors assembled by the governor of Minas Gerais, Benedito Valadares [pt], selected Almeida from Paraíba as the government candidate in May 1937. Salgado entered the race in June, declaring himself to be Jesus's injunction to the electorate. His party was fascist, nationalistic, and church-centered, essentially a hybrid between Catholicism, mysticism, and order and progress, with the ability to appeal to the masses. However, a "free and healthy atmosphere" for elections, declared in the President's 1937 New Year's Address, was facing difficulties. Across the world, war threatened Europe. At home, the states had new difficulties, the military was pressuring for intervention in them, and the far-right was becoming militant.
With the presidential elections, political debates emerged, suppressive measures were lifted, and the minister of justice Macedo Soares [pt] ordered 300 prisoners released. Congress refused a request to again prolong the state of emergency declared in 1935. Vargas and his allies were not ready to abandon power. They trusted none of the candidates, and it seemed Brazil was at risk of following the path of Spain—destroyed by civil war. In the military, there was mounting support for "a strong state, dictatorial solution for Brazil's evils". Nazi and fascist states in Europe influenced some officers; others, such as General Newton Cavalcanti [pt], were affected by Integralism. Almeida's increasing shift to the left complicated the situation with his attempts to satisfy a working-class electorate. He did not appear as if he was an official candidate, and at one point he even attacked Vargas, saying, "If Vargas wants to perpetuate himself in power, the nation will fulfill its duty, go to the polls, and vote, even if this be in the face of bullets".
Through 1937, the federal government looked to resolve regional difficulties. Vargas ordered more frequent interventions in the states, including Mato Grosso and Maranhão, the latter of which had its opposition impeach its pro-Vargas governor. The interventor and governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Flores da Cunha [pt], who had been against the President, now found Vargas trying to circumscribe his influence. The President increased the power of the federal military commander in Rio Grande do Sul in an attempt to contest Cunha's armed strength. Vargas also decreed a state of siege in April to attack the governor. The military joined in the effort, making a plethora of accusations against Cunha. Lima Cavalcanti [pt], Pernambuco's governor, whose relationship with the federal government was deteriorating, was also a target. Bahia's Governor Juracy Magalhães tried to form a secretive alliance between various states, though his plan failed. Rumors surfaced that Vargas was preparing to cancel elections, and journalist Maciel Filho described the atmosphere in mid-September, writing: "Getúlio's strength merits a golpe (coup) to end this foolishness. The navy is firm and dictatorial-minded; the army is the same. There are no more constitutional solutions for Brazil."
## Preparation
Vargas's need to remove Cunha from power paved the way for the cancellation of elections, and the nullification of the federal system, and led to the planning of a new constitution and what would become the Estado Novo (New State). The coup's organizers decided instead of potentially provoking civil war by operating primarily in the south, they would pursue intercessions in states against Vargas and isolate Cunha's Bahia and Pernambuco allies in preparation for Cunha's removal. With the accession of Pedro Aurélio de Góis Monteiro [pt] to Army Chief of Staff in July 1937 and the removal of opposing officers in command, Vargas was under increased military pressure to either act in favor of them or be deposed. The government continually moved in an authoritarian direction despite the President's assurances that he would leave office. According to one military figure, Amaral Peixoto [pt], "The Estado Novo coup would come with Getúlio, without Getúlio, or against Getúlio".
### September
The official start of the coup's planning was 18 September 1937, though it is believed that by early 1936 Vargas was already trying to extend his tenure by modifying the 1934 constitution. The President's depressed mood in July turned around after a meeting with Monteiro and Filho. Vargas and Minister of War Eurico Gaspar Dutra met, and Vargas explained his intention to launch a coup, hoping for the army's consent. Dutra assured Vargas of his support, but noted he would need to consult the rest of the military. Dutra was able to get aid from General Daltro Filho [pt], commander of the Third Military Region in Rio Grande do Sul. Nine days later (27 September), Dutra convened a meeting of senior army officers, including Monteiro. They established a consensus that the potential for another communist uprising, coupled with the lackluster laws defending the country, warranted the military's support of a presidential coup. One general added the opportunity should also be used to combat the extremism of the right. With advice from Monteiro, Francisco Campos [pt], who admired European fascism and corporatism and was anti-liberal and anti-communist, was working clandestinely on a new, corporative constitution for Vargas.
The problem was that there was no apparent reason for staging a coup. On 28 September, Monteiro asserted the coup rumors were completely groundless. On 30 September, however, Dutra, on the Hora do Brasil radio program, publicly revealed a communist document—the Cohen Plan—detailing a violent revolution with rape, massacres, pillaging, and church burnings, and called for a new state of war. Levine considers the document to have been "a blatant forgery"; the Faustos dub it a "fantasy" or fiction. The document's origins are unclear. Integralist Captain Olímpio Mourão Filho, chief of AIB propaganda, was caught at the Ministry of War creating a plan for a potential communist uprising. Monteiro would get the document via Captain Filho and pass it on to Dutra and others, purportedly seized from communist sources. Years later, the captain explained that since he was a part of the Integralist historical department, he was giving attention to a theoretical communist insurrection. This potential insurrection would then be publicized in an AIB bulletin, describing how the insurrection would go down and how the Integralists would react to it. The version of the Cohen plan publicized in newspapers and on the Hora do Brasil, he added, differed from his initial document. It ended up strengthening the government in preparation for the coup. The plan was also anti-Semitic, for the name Cohen was an obvious Jewish name and a potential variation on the name of Béla Kun, a Jewish-Hungarian communist.
### October
On 1 October 1937, the day after the document's revelation, the petrified Congress convened overnight to declare a state of war and suspend constitutional liberties and rights. Only a few hesitant states and liberals objected to the vote. Vargas and the military paid a visit to the graves of those killed in 1935 by communists, saying "Let this pilgrimage be a lesson and a warning", adding that "the armed forces are on the alert in the country's defense". Governors headed state of war commissions to suppress the opposition in almost every state. Rio Grande do Sul, where Governor Cunha was the target of the commission and Pernambuco, where Governor Cavalcanti was barred from attending the commission's meetings, were notable exceptions. Cunha was nearly impeached, but the opposition's efforts failed by one vote. When the state of war commission demanded the state militia be incorporated into federal forces, the governor had no power to object and this was done on 17 October. Archbishop Dom João Becker transmitted the news to Cunha, who went into exile in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 18 October, leaving a farewell speech to his state. The leadership of the Third Military Region declared the Military Brigade of Rio Grande do Sul federalized. Vargas's brother Benjamin wired the President to notify him things in Rio Grande do Sul were going well. At the same time, Vargas worked closely with Governor Valadares of Minas Gerais.
The military commander in Bahia, another state where the governor did not head the commission, ferociously attacked the governor. In Pernambuco, the governor's mail was censored, editors favorable to him were persecuted, and several of his staff were arrested. At the end of October, Deputy Negrão de Lima [pt] paid a visit to the states of the Northeast, to make sure the states' governors supported a coup and to observe their reactions. There was near unanimous consent for it. The anti-communism campaign was at its height: churches spoke openly about the communist threat; university students formed an opposition to the ideology in Curitiba, secondary schools were closed for an investigation into communism in Belém, and spiritist societies, a constant nuisance to the church, were terminated in Rio de Janeiro.
### November
On 1 November, there was a parade of the Integralist militia, observed by Vargas and General Cavalcanti. Though Vargas's "counters" found only 17,000 in the parade, Salgado, the Integralist candidate, repeatedly referred to it as the march of the "50,000 Green Shirts". He proclaimed that they were "taking this opportunity to affirm their solidarity with the President of the Republic and the Armed Forces in the fight against Communism and anarchical democracy, and to proclaim the principles of a new regime". Salgado said the fight was also against international capitalism. The speech signaled Salgado's departure from the presidential race, claiming that he desired "not to be President of the Republic, but simply the adviser of my country". Meanwhile, rumors circulated about a forthcoming coup, yet government business continued as usual. Levine says, "It seemed apparent the country was moving to the far right and to fascism." A week before the coup (3 November), there was a commemoration of Vargas's seventh year in power. However, Vargas was absent from the event, conversing with advisors on the price of coffee and allocating the evening to a lengthy discussion with Monteiro instead.
Dutra, Monteiro, and General Cavalcanti all agreed that the new regime would carry on provisionally until a national plebiscite, detailed in the new constitution, was held. Monteiro then made a public declaration that military leaders were not seeking a military dictatorship. In the week leading up to the coup, Vargas and Campos met and discussed the new national constitution Campos had written. A story in the Correio da Manhã (Brazil) was censored; it talked about a conspiracy in the army. The censorship system was turned over to the Federal District police from the civilian justice ministry. On 7 November, the President wrote in his diary that the planned coup, where the Congress would be closed and a new constitution imposed, could not be avoided. Levine says Vargas now held "near-absolute" control of the country. There was clear support from the army, with a three-to-one ratio of generals in favor of amendments to the 1934 constitution. Commanders of the military regions, Rio generals, and the Navy supported the plot. Intrigued after being briefed by Campos, Integralists believed the events would get them into the national government. Campos told them they would become a civic association, the "base of the New State". In reality, they would be betrayed.
The date was set for 15 November, the anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic. The opposition had mobilized only in early November. Word of Lima's visit had spread in early November, so, to deter the press, Vargas said this was an inquiry into the states' opinions for a substitute presidential candidate. Oliveira sent a manifesto to the military on 8 November, alleged to be disseminated in the barracks, urging them to stop the coup. This was a setback, and though Oliveira and Almeida, the presidential candidates, attacked the plot, coup leaders urgently met with Vargas in the Guanabara Palace, where he was working, on the evening of 9 November to move the date up to 10 November; they could not wait until the fifteenth. There were also communications between Valadares and São Paulo's interventor and Rio Grande do Sul pro-government forces. The moderate minister of justice, Macedo Soares, who had been trying to save democracy, resigned from the cabinet on 8 November, after falling on the wrong side of the anti-communists; Campos replaced him the next day. With more good news coming from the states, there was now no opposition standing in the way of the President and the coup d'état.
## Execution
On the morning of 10 November 1937, cavalry of the Federal District police force surrounded the Congress and blockaded the entrance, preventing congressmen from entering. Dutra was against using the Army in this operation. One visitor trying to get into the Monroe Palace, the former seat of the Senate, was told by a guard, "When a senator cannot enter, then how can a stranger enter?" As the congressmen were the best paid officials in the state, Vargas claimed he saved money by sending them home. The president of the Senate was informed of his body's dismissal. At 10:00 a.m., copies of the new constitution were printed and distributed amongst the cabinet; they were asked to sign it. The sole dissident, Odilón Braga, the minister of agriculture, resigned immediately and was replaced by anti-Oliveira paulista Fernando Costa [pt]. Dutra, meanwhile, praised the "lofty mission entrusted to the national armed forces". Many military personnel resigned, notably Colonel Eduardo Gomes. Almost every state retained their pre-coup interventors, notably Minas Gerais, where Valadares was the politician most involved with the coup. Interventors in Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco, however, were replaced.
In a radio broadcast, Vargas claimed the political climate "remains restricted to the simple processes of electoral seduction", that political parties lacked ideology, that legislative delay prevented the promises made in the April 1934 presidential message, including a penal code and a mining code, and that regional caudilhos (strongmen) had flourished. Instead, he presented a new program of activity, including new roads and railways into the Brazilian hinterland and the implementation of "a great steelworks" that was to provide local minerals and offer employment. He declared that the Estado Novo (New State) would restore Brazil to authority, freedom of action, and be founded on "peace, justice and work". "Let us", Vargas said, "restore the nation...letting it freely construct its history and destiny". According to Vargas, Brazil had been on the edge of a civil war. Campos also held a press conference where he made public the founding of a National Press Council "for perfect co-ordination with the government in control of news and political and doctrinal material". After having initiated the Estado Novo, Vargas left to the Argentine Embassy for a dinner he had accepted before knowing 10 November would be the day of the coup, and was surprisingly calm at the dinner.
Only six opposed it, including the congressional president, Pedro Aleixo, though this count does not include Oliveira's deputies, who were confined incommunicado at their residences. With the knowledge of a potential coup, Congress had spent their last debate arguing on whether there should be a discussion over the establishment of a national Institute of Nutrition. Virtually no protest against the new regime was apparent.
## Aftermath
### A new regime
The new government was called the Estado Novo, deriving its name from the Portuguese government headed by António de Oliveira Salazar and installed just four years earlier in 1933. The new corporatist constitution also drew ideas from the constitutions of Italy and Poland, gaining it the nickname "a polaca" by critics in reference to the contemporaneous Polish constitution. According to historian John W. F. Dulles, the 1937 constitution "would have satisfied the most ambitious dictator". The creators of the new regime yearned to change Brazil by tackling what they believed to be its root issues—a populace that believed in the parliamentary system of government, and an absence of discipline, national pride, and leadership. Civil rights were curtailed, individual liberties were nominal, and the proposed Congress never met. Vargas's term was lengthened by six years, and he was now eligible to run for re-election. Oliveira was held in Minas Gerais for six months under house arrest, later being exiled in November 1938 to live in France, New York City, Buenos Aires, and Santiago before returning to Brazil to die in May 1945. The power of states was now nonexistent. Political parties were outlawed on 2 December 1937.
Vargas saw no reason to build support using a political party or an ideological program. Levine labels the new government as authoritarian, writing "Vargas, in spite of his tough caudilho ability to deal with personalities around him, held little talent for totalitarian dictatorship in the strict sense of the word." Lillian E. Fisher describes the new state as "semi-fascist". Historian Jordan M. Young says the new constitution was "molded ... along totalitarian lines" and Brazil now became a dictatorship, and adds, "Brazil was governed from 1937 to 1945 by laws that were issued by the executive office, the government again was one man, Getúlio Vargas." Trends and developments that began during the new era remained a part of Brazilian politics for many years.
Vargas ruled as dictator. After a series of democratic openings toward the end of World War II, however, an increasingly uneasy military worried that Vargas would interrupt democracy again and stay in power via a coup similar to the 1937 one. The President was ousted in a swift move orchestrated by Dutra and Monteiro, men who had prolonged Vargas's time in power in 1937, and Gomes. His rule ended on 29 October 1945, fifteen years in power. After Dutra held power from 1946 to 1951, constitutionally elected, Vargas returned in an election against Gomes. He ruled from 1951 to 1954, troubled by political disunity and economic problems. The military turned against him again after a political crisis emerged, and Vargas killed himself on 24 August 1954. The government was overthrown again in 1964, ushering in a period of military rule.
### Foreign reaction
Brazil's foreign minister Mário de Pimentel Brandão [pt] informed United States Ambassador to Brazil Jefferson Caffery of events directly, claiming they were giving him priority over other ambassadors. According to Caffery's description of events, the presidential campaign threatened a crisis; Vargas was unable to reach an agreement with the Bahia and Pernambuco governors for another candidate (in reference to Vargas's cover story for Lima's visit to the Northeast); a plebiscite would be held for the new constitution, replacing the weak 1934 constitution; the government would adhere to a "very liberal policy with respect to foreign capital and foreigners who have legitimate interests in Brazil". He was skeptical of the "effective preservation of democratic institutions under the new constitution". His predictions would prove correct; the plebiscite was never held.
US Senator William Borah believed that the new regime had every characteristic of fascism. The New York Times affirmed that the new government in Brazil was fascist on 11 November: "The constitutional and dictatorial moves of President Getulio Vargas of Brazil appeared here today, upon the basis of incomplete reports, to have posed the problem of a Fascist government in this hemisphere". The New York Post and the Daily Worker condemned the neutrality of the United States Department of State and of Oswaldo Aranha, the Brazilian ambassador to the United States. Aranha wrote to Vargas that "Communists and American Jews" were at fault for the anti-Brazilian campaign. Aranha took the backlash poorly, but his close friend in Washington, D.C., Sumner Welles, Under Secretary of State, was an ally. On 11 November, Welles told the press the coup was an internal Brazilian matter, not to be judged by the US. Three weeks later, he praised Vargas and criticized those who condemned Brazil as doing so "before the facts were known". Aranha resigned on 13 November.
The Argentine military praised the new regime, but this was contrary to public opinion. Newspapers there attacked the new regime in an attempt to limit any move to the right by the administration of President Agustín Pedro Justo. In Chile, the response was unfavorable. Radio and press in Uruguay, favorable to Cunha, attacked the new regime even harder.
The German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels praised Vargas's political realism and the way he acted at the right moment. The German press and German-language press in the Southern Hemisphere commended the authoritarian government as a triumph against bolshevism. Italian reaction was similar. However, the Germans showed diminished enthusiasm in private, knowing of Vargas's efforts to subdue Nazism in Brazil. European fascists were the only ones expressing supportive opinions. In the United Kingdom, reaction was similar to that of the United States: commentators in both countries warned Brazil was nearing a fascist dictatorship.
## See also
- List of coups and coup attempts in Brazil
- Vargas Era
|
26,833,326 |
Northern voalavo
| 1,139,122,259 |
Rodent in the family Nesomyidae
|
[
"Endemic fauna of Madagascar",
"Mammals described in 1998",
"Mammals of Madagascar",
"Taxa named by Michael D. Carleton",
"Voalavo"
] |
The northern voalavo (Voalavo gymnocaudus), also known as the naked-tailed voalavo or simply the voalavo, is a rodent in the family Nesomyidae found in the Northern Highlands of Madagascar. Discovered in 1994 and formally described in 1998, it is the type species of the genus Voalavo; its closest relative is the eastern voalavo of the Central Highlands. DNA sequencing suggests that it may be more closely related to Grandidier's tufted-tailed rat than to other species of the closely related genus Eliurus. The northern voalavo is found at 1,250 to 1,950 m (4,100 to 6,400 ft) above sea level in montane wet and dry forests in the Marojejy and Anjanaharibe-Sud massifs. Nocturnal and solitary, it lives mainly on the ground, but it can climb and probably eats plant matter. Despite having a small range, the species is classified as being of least concern because it lacks obvious threats and much of its range is within protected areas.
The northern voalavo is a small, mouse-like rodent with soft, grey fur that is only slightly darker above than below. The ears are short and rounded. The long tail appears mostly naked and lacks a distinct tuft, which is present in Eliurus. It differs from the eastern voalavo mainly in the values of some measurements. The skull is delicate, with a long, narrow rostrum (front part), narrow interorbital region (between the eyes), and no development of ridges on the braincase. The molars are relatively high-crowned (hypsodont). It has a body mass of 17 to 25.5 g (0.60 to 0.90 oz).
## Taxonomy
The rodent fauna of the Northern Highlands of Madagascar remained almost totally unstudied until the 1990s. A 1994 survey of the Anjanaharibe-Sud Reserve partially filled this gap and led to the discovery of two new species: Grandidier's tufted-tailed rat and northern voalavo, the first known and type species of the genus Voalavo. Both species were formally described in 1998 by Michael Carleton and Steven Goodman. The generic name, Voalavo, is a general Malagasy word for rodent, and the specific name, gymnocaudus, refers to the naked tail, which distinguishes the northern voalavo from the related tufted-tailed rats (Eliurus). In 2000, the species was also recorded from the nearby Marojejy National Park.
Meanwhile, in 1999, Sharon Jansa and colleagues published a molecular phylogenetic study of the Nesomyinae, the native Malagasy rodents, using the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b. Their results suggested that the current definitions of Eliurus and Voalavo may not be correct, because they found that northern voalavo and Grandidier's tufted-tailed rat are more closely related to each other than to the remaining species of Eliurus. However, the DNA of Petter's tufted-tailed rat, a possible close relative of northern voalavo, could not be sampled, so Jansa and colleagues recommended further evaluation of the problem. According to a 2003 report, data from nuclear genes also support the relationship between northern voalavo and Grandidier's tufted-tailed rat, but Petter's tufted-tailed rat remains genetically unstudied and the taxonomic issue has not been resolved.
A second species of Voalavo, eastern voalavo, was named in 2005 from central Madagascar. Morphological differences between the two are subtle but consistent, and the cytochrome b sequences of the two species differ by about 10%. In mammals, closely related species regularly differ by less than 5% in their cytochrome b sequences, and a divergence of more than 5% within a single species suggests the presence of cryptic species.
## Description
### External morphology
The northern voalavo is a small, mouse-like rodent. It differs from the very similar eastern voalavo mainly in some measurements, such as a greater tail length. It also resembles small species of Eliurus, but the fur is darker and there is no tail tuft. The fur is soft, short, and thick, and appears dark grey on most of the upperparts, but more brownish on the sides. On the back, the cover hairs, which form the main part of the fur, are three-colored: most of the hair is grey, followed by a narrow light buff band and a black tip. The longer guard hairs are black. The fur of the underparts is not different in overall color, but the individual hairs are gray for about three quarters of their length and white at the tips, except for those at the chin, which are white throughout.
The mystacial vibrissae (whiskers on the upper lips) reach the tips of the ears when pressed against the head. The short, rounded ears themselves are naked on the inside, but covered with short brown hairs on the outer surface. Females have three pairs of mammae. The digits and metapodials are mostly covered by white hairs. Short ungual tufts of hairs surrounding the bases of the claws are present. There are five pads on the forefeet and six on the hindfeet. On the hindfeet, the fifth digit is nearly as long as the middle three and the first (the hallux) is much shorter. The tail is longer than the head and body and appears naked for most of its length, but fine hairs are visible near the tip. Although the lower side is slightly lighter, there is no clear difference in coloration between the upper and lower sides. The skin of the tail is grey, and it is covered lightly by fine hairs that are dark brown over most of the length of the tail but white near the tip.
### Skeleton
The skull is delicate and lightly built. The rostrum, the front part of the skull, is narrow and fairly long; it is shorter in eastern voalavo. The narrow zygomatic plate (a plate on the side of the skull) extends back to about the front of the first upper molar (M1). The zygomatic notch, a notch in the upper part of the zygomatic plate, is small. The zygomatic arches (cheekbones) are narrow, but as usual in nesomyines contain a relatively long jugal bone. The interorbital region (between the eyes) is narrow and short and lacks accessory shelves and ridges. The braincase also lacks such ridges.
The incisive foramina (openings in the front part of the palate) are medium in length, and do not reach the first molars. Their back margin is angular, not rounded as in eastern voalavo. The diastema (the gap between the upper incisors and molars) is shorter than in eastern voalavo. The bony palate is broad and lacks notable ridges and other features, except for a pair of foramina (openings) near the place where the first and second molars (M1 and M2) meet. The back border of the palate is at the level of the middle of the third molars (M3). In the bony roof of the mesopterygoid fossa, the opening behind the palate, wide sphenopalatine vacuities (openings) are present. A thin alisphenoid strut (a piece of bone on the lower side of the skull separating two foramina) is present in specimens from Marojejy, but not in those from Anjanaharibe-Sud. The tegmen tympani, the roof of the tympanic cavity, is reduced.
The root of the lower incisor is visible at the back of the mandible (lower jaw) as a slight protrusion; a true capsular process is absent. There are 13 thoracic (chest), 7 lumbar, 4 sacral, and 38 or 39 caudal (tail) vertebrae. The humerus (upper arm bone) lacks an entepicondylar foramen.
### Dentition
The upper incisors are orthodont (with their cutting edge perpendicular to the plane formed by the molars) and have yellow to light orange enamel. On the lower incisor, the enamel contains series of fine ridges. The toothrows are longer than in eastern voalavo. As in Eliurus, the molars are incipiently hypsodont (high-crowned) and the individual cusps have lost their identities, having merged into transverse laminae not connected longitudinally. There are three laminae on each first and second molar, two on the third lower molar, and the laminae cannot be differentiated on the third upper molar. Although the first and second molars are similar to each other in size, the third (upper and lower) molars are conspicuously smaller. There are three roots below each upper and two below each lower molar.
## Distribution and ecology
The northern voalavo has been found only in two massifs of the Northern Highlands, Anjanaharibe-Sud and Marojejy, but may range more widely. At Anjanaharibe-Sud, the species has been found in wet mountain forest at 1,950 m (6,400 ft), where it occurred with the indigenous rodents Major's tufted-tailed rat and island mouse as well as the introduced black rat (Rattus rattus), and in drier forest at about 1,300 m (4,300 ft), where it may live alongside other species of Eliurus and Voalavoanala. The Marojejy records come from similar habitats at 1,250 to 1,875 m (4,101 to 6,152 ft) above sea level. The northern voalavo probably largely lives on the ground, but is able to climb in vegetation. It likes areas with dense networks of roots, among which it moves using runways and natural tunnels. The species is nocturnal (active during the night), is solitary, probably eats fruits and seeds, and bears up to three young per litter. A variety of parasitic arthropods have been recorded on northern voalavo: mites from the families Laelapidae and Trombiculidae (both Marojejy and Anjanaharibe-Sud), the demodecid mite Demodex (Marojejy only), the atopomelid mite Listrophoroides (both Marojejy and Anjanaharibe-Sud), and unidentified sucking lice (Anjanaharibe-Sud only). In 2007, a laelapid mite found on V. gymnocaudus in Anjanaharibe-Sud was described as a new species, Andreacarus voalavo. The apicomplexan parasite Eimeria has also been recorded in Anjanaharibe-Sud.
## Conservation status
Although it has a small range and is uncommon even within that range, no major threats are known and virtually all of its distribution is within protected areas. The species is therefore classified as "Least Concern" on the IUCN Red List.
|
49,557 |
Castle
| 1,173,239,652 |
Fortified residential structure of medieval Europe
|
[
"Castles",
"Masonry",
"Medieval defences"
] |
A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars usually consider a castle to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a mansion, palace and villa, whose main purpose was exclusively for pleasance and are not primarily fortresses but may be fortified. Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th- and 20th-century homes built to resemble castles. Over the Middle Ages, when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were commonplace.
European-style castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. These nobles built castles to control the area immediately surrounding them and the castles were both offensive and defensive structures: they provided a base from which raids could be launched as well as offered protection from enemies. Although their military origins are often emphasised in castle studies, the structures also served as centres of administration and symbols of power. Urban castles were used to control the local populace and important travel routes, and rural castles were often situated near features that were integral to life in the community, such as mills, fertile land, or a water source.
Many northern European castles were originally built from earth and timber but had their defences replaced later by stone. Early castles often exploited natural defences, lacking features such as towers and arrowslits and relying on a central keep. In the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a scientific approach to castle defence emerged. This led to the proliferation of towers, with an emphasis on flanking fire. Many new castles were polygonal or relied on concentric defence – several stages of defence within each other that could all function at the same time to maximise the castle's firepower. These changes in defence have been attributed to a mixture of castle technology from the Crusades, such as concentric fortification, and inspiration from earlier defences, such as Roman forts. Not all the elements of castle architecture were military in nature, so that devices such as moats evolved from their original purpose of defence into symbols of power. Some grand castles had long winding approaches intended to impress and dominate their landscape.
Although gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 14th century, it did not significantly affect castle building until the 15th century, when artillery became powerful enough to break through stone walls. While castles continued to be built well into the 16th century, new techniques to deal with improved cannon fire made them uncomfortable and undesirable places to live. As a result, true castles went into decline and were replaced by artillery forts with no role in civil administration, and country houses that were indefensible. From the 18th century onwards, there was a renewed interest in castles with the construction of mock castles, part of a Romantic revival of Gothic architecture, but they had no military purpose.
## Definition
### Etymology
The word castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning "fortified place". The Old English castel, Occitan castel or chastel, French château, Spanish castillo, Portuguese castelo, Italian castello, and a number of words in other languages also derive from castellum. The word castle was introduced into English shortly before the Norman Conquest to denote this type of building, which was then new to England.
### Defining characteristics
In its simplest terms, the definition of a castle accepted amongst academics is "a private fortified residence". This contrasts with earlier fortifications, such as Anglo-Saxon burhs and walled cities such as Constantinople and Antioch in the Middle East; castles were not communal defences but were built and owned by the local feudal lords, either for themselves or for their monarch. Feudalism was the link between a lord and his vassal where, in return for military service and the expectation of loyalty, the lord would grant the vassal land. In the late 20th century, there was a trend to refine the definition of a castle by including the criterion of feudal ownership, thus tying castles to the medieval period; however, this does not necessarily reflect the terminology used in the medieval period. During the First Crusade (1096–1099), the Frankish armies encountered walled settlements and forts that they indiscriminately referred to as castles, but which would not be considered as such under the modern definition.
Castles served a range of purposes, the most important of which were military, administrative, and domestic. As well as defensive structures, castles were also offensive tools which could be used as a base of operations in enemy territory. Castles were established by Norman invaders of England for both defensive purposes and to pacify the country's inhabitants. As William the Conqueror advanced through England, he fortified key positions to secure the land he had taken. Between 1066 and 1087, he established 36 castles such as Warwick Castle, which he used to guard against rebellion in the English Midlands.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, castles tended to lose their military significance due to the advent of powerful cannons and permanent artillery fortifications; as a result, castles became more important as residences and statements of power. A castle could act as a stronghold and prison but was also a place where a knight or lord could entertain his peers. Over time the aesthetics of the design became more important, as the castle's appearance and size began to reflect the prestige and power of its occupant. Comfortable homes were often fashioned within their fortified walls. Although castles still provided protection from low levels of violence in later periods, eventually they were succeeded by country houses as high-status residences.
### Terminology
Castle is sometimes used as a catch-all term for all kinds of fortifications, and as a result has been misapplied in the technical sense. An example of this is Maiden Castle which, despite the name, is an Iron Age hill fort which had a very different origin and purpose.
Although castle has not become a generic term for a manor house (like château in French and Schloss in German), many manor houses contain castle in their name while having few if any of the architectural characteristics, usually as their owners liked to maintain a link to the past and felt the term castle was a masculine expression of their power. In scholarship the castle, as defined above, is generally accepted as a coherent concept, originating in Europe and later spreading to parts of the Middle East, where they were introduced by European Crusaders. This coherent group shared a common origin, dealt with a particular mode of warfare, and exchanged influences.
In different areas of the world, analogous structures shared features of fortification and other defining characteristics associated with the concept of a castle, though they originated in different periods and circumstances and experienced differing evolutions and influences. For example, shiro in Japan, described as castles by historian Stephen Turnbull, underwent "a completely different developmental history, were built in a completely different way and were designed to withstand attacks of a completely different nature". While European castles built from the late 12th and early 13th century onwards were generally stone, shiro were predominantly timber buildings into the 16th century.
By the 16th century, when Japanese and European cultures met, fortification in Europe had moved beyond castles and relied on innovations such as the Italian trace italienne and star forts. Forts in India present a similar case; when they were encountered by the British in the 17th century, castles in Europe had generally fallen out of use militarily. Like shiro, the Indian forts, durga or durg in Sanskrit, shared features with castles in Europe such as acting as a domicile for a lord as well as being fortifications. They too developed differently from the structures known as castles that had their origins in Europe.
## Common features
### Motte
A motte was an earthen mound with a flat top. It was often artificial, although sometimes it incorporated a pre-existing feature of the landscape. The excavation of earth to make the mound left a ditch around the motte, called a moat (which could be either wet or dry). Although the motte is commonly associated with the bailey to form a motte-and-bailey castle, this was not always the case and there are instances where a motte existed on its own.
"Motte" refers to the mound alone, but it was often surmounted by a fortified structure, such as a keep, and the flat top would be surrounded by a palisade. It was common for the motte to be reached over a flying bridge (a bridge over the ditch from the counterscarp of the ditch to the edge of the top of the mound), as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry's depiction of Château de Dinan. Sometimes a motte covered an older castle or hall, whose rooms became underground storage areas and prisons beneath a new keep.
### Bailey and enceinte
A bailey, also called a ward, was a fortified enclosure. It was a common feature of castles, and most had at least one. The keep on top of the motte was the domicile of the lord in charge of the castle and a bastion of last defence, while the bailey was the home of the rest of the lord's household and gave them protection. The barracks for the garrison, stables, workshops, and storage facilities were often found in the bailey. Water was supplied by a well or cistern. Over time the focus of high status accommodation shifted from the keep to the bailey; this resulted in the creation of another bailey that separated the high status buildings – such as the lord's chambers and the chapel – from the everyday structures such as the workshops and barracks.
From the late 12th century there was a trend for knights to move out of the small houses they had previously occupied within the bailey to live in fortified houses in the countryside. Although often associated with the motte-and-bailey type of castle, baileys could also be found as independent defensive structures. These simple fortifications were called ringworks. The enceinte was the castle's main defensive enclosure, and the terms "bailey" and "enceinte" are linked. A castle could have several baileys but only one enceinte. Castles with no keep, which relied on their outer defences for protection, are sometimes called enceinte castles; these were the earliest form of castles, before the keep was introduced in the 10th century.
### Keep
A keep was a great tower and usually the most strongly defended point of a castle before the introduction of concentric defence. "Keep" was not a term used in the medieval period – the term was applied from the 16th century onwards – instead "donjon" was used to refer to great towers, or turris in Latin. In motte-and-bailey castles, the keep was on top of the motte. "Dungeon" is a corrupted form of "donjon" and means a dark, unwelcoming prison. Although often the strongest part of a castle and a last place of refuge if the outer defences fell, the keep was not left empty in case of attack but was used as a residence by the lord who owned the castle, or his guests or representatives.
At first, this was usual only in England, when after the Norman Conquest of 1066 the "conquerors lived for a long time in a constant state of alert"; elsewhere the lord's wife presided over a separate residence (domus, aula or mansio in Latin) close to the keep, and the donjon was a barracks and headquarters. Gradually, the two functions merged into the same building, and the highest residential storeys had large windows; as a result for many structures, it is difficult to find an appropriate term. The massive internal spaces seen in many surviving donjons can be misleading; they would have been divided into several rooms by light partitions, as in a modern office building. Even in some large castles the great hall was separated only by a partition from the lord's chamber, his bedroom and to some extent his office.
### Curtain wall
Curtain walls were defensive walls enclosing a bailey. They had to be high enough to make scaling the walls with ladders difficult and thick enough to withstand bombardment from siege engines which, from the 15th century onwards, included gunpowder artillery. A typical wall could be 3 m (10 ft) thick and 12 m (39 ft) tall, although sizes varied greatly between castles. To protect them from undermining, curtain walls were sometimes given a stone skirt around their bases. Walkways along the tops of the curtain walls allowed defenders to rain missiles on enemies below, and battlements gave them further protection. Curtain walls were studded with towers to allow enfilading fire along the wall. Arrowslits in the walls did not become common in Europe until the 13th century, for fear that they might compromise the wall's strength.
### Gatehouse
The entrance was often the weakest part in a circuit of defences. To overcome this, the gatehouse was developed, allowing those inside the castle to control the flow of traffic. In earth and timber castles, the gateway was usually the first feature to be rebuilt in stone. The front of the gateway was a blind spot and to overcome this, projecting towers were added on each side of the gate in a style similar to that developed by the Romans. The gatehouse contained a series of defences to make a direct assault more difficult than battering down a simple gate. Typically, there were one or more portcullises – a wooden grille reinforced with metal to block a passage – and arrowslits to allow defenders to harry the enemy. The passage through the gatehouse was lengthened to increase the amount of time an assailant had to spend under fire in a confined space and unable to retaliate.
It is a popular myth that murder holes – openings in the ceiling of the gateway passage – were used to pour boiling oil or molten lead on attackers; the price of oil and lead and the distance of the gatehouse from fires meant that this was impractical. This method was, however, a common practice in the MENA region and the Mediterranean castles and fortifications where such resources were abundant. They were most likely used to drop objects on attackers, or to allow water to be poured on fires to extinguish them. Provision was made in the upper storey of the gatehouse for accommodation so the gate was never left undefended, although this arrangement later evolved to become more comfortable at the expense of defence.
During the 13th and 14th centuries the barbican was developed. This consisted of a rampart, ditch, and possibly a tower, in front of the gatehouse which could be used to further protect the entrance. The purpose of a barbican was not just to provide another line of defence but also to dictate the only approach to the gate.
### Moat
A moat was a ditch surrounding a castle – or dividing one part of a castle from another – and could be either dry or filled with water. Its purpose often had a defensive purpose, preventing siege towers from reaching walls making mining harder, but could also be ornamental. Water moats were found in low-lying areas and were usually crossed by a drawbridge, although these were often replaced by stone bridges. The site of the 13th-century Caerphilly Castle in Wales covers over 30 acres (12 ha) and the water defences, created by flooding the valley to the south of the castle, are some of the largest in Western Europe.
### Battlements
Battlements were most often found surmounting curtain walls and the tops of gatehouses, and comprised several elements: crenellations, hoardings, machicolations, and loopholes. Crenellation is the collective name for alternating crenels and merlons: gaps and solid blocks on top of a wall. Hoardings were wooden constructs that projected beyond the wall, allowing defenders to shoot at, or drop objects on, attackers at the base of the wall without having to lean perilously over the crenellations, thereby exposing themselves to retaliatory fire. Machicolations were stone projections on top of a wall with openings that allowed objects to be dropped on an enemy at the base of the wall in a similar fashion to hoardings.
### Arrowslits
Arrowslits, also commonly called loopholes, were narrow vertical openings in defensive walls which allowed arrows or crossbow bolts to be fired on attackers. The narrow slits were intended to protect the defender by providing a very small target, but the size of the opening could also impede the defender if it was too small. A smaller horizontal opening could be added to give an archer a better view for aiming. Sometimes a sally port was included; this could allow the garrison to leave the castle and engage besieging forces. It was usual for the latrines to empty down the external walls of a castle and into the surrounding ditch.
### Postern
A postern is a secondary door or gate in a concealed location, usually in a fortification such as a city wall.
### Great hall
The great hall was a large, decorated room where a lord received his guests. The hall represented the prestige, authority, and richness of the lord. Events such as feasts, banquets, social or ceremonial gatherings, meetings of the military council, and judicial trials were held in the great hall. Sometimes the great hall existed as a separate building, in that case, it was called a hall-house.
## History
### Antecedents
Historian Charles Coulson states that the accumulation of wealth and resources, such as food, led to the need for defensive structures. The earliest fortifications originated in the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, Europe, Egypt, and China where settlements were protected by large walls. In Northern Europe, hill forts were first developed in the Bronze Age, which then proliferated across Europe in the Iron Age. Hillforts in Britain typically used earthworks rather than stone as a building material.
Many earthworks survive today, along with evidence of palisades to accompany the ditches. In central and western Europe, oppida emerged in the 2nd century BC; these were densely inhabited fortified settlements, such as the oppidum of Manching. Some oppida walls were built on a massive scale, utilising stone, wood, iron and earth in their construction. The Romans encountered fortified settlements such as hill forts and oppida when expanding their territory into northern Europe. Their defences were often effective, and were only overcome by the extensive use of siege engines and other siege warfare techniques, such as at the Battle of Alesia. The Romans' own fortifications (castra) varied from simple temporary earthworks thrown up by armies on the move, to elaborate permanent stone constructions, notably the milecastles of Hadrian's Wall. Roman forts were generally rectangular with rounded corners – a "playing-card shape".
In the medieval period, castles were influenced by earlier forms of elite architecture, contributing to regional variations. Importantly, while castles had military aspects, they contained a recognisable household structure within their walls, reflecting the multi-functional use of these buildings.
### Origins (9th and 10th centuries)
The subject of the emergence of castles in Europe is a complex matter which has led to considerable debate. Discussions have typically attributed the rise of the castle to a reaction to attacks by Magyars, Muslims, and Vikings and a need for private defence. The breakdown of the Carolingian Empire led to the privatisation of government, and local lords assumed responsibility for the economy and justice. However, while castles proliferated in the 9th and 10th centuries the link between periods of insecurity and building fortifications is not always straightforward. Some high concentrations of castles occur in secure places, while some border regions had relatively few castles.
It is likely that the castle evolved from the practice of fortifying a lordly home. The greatest threat to a lord's home or hall was fire as it was usually a wooden structure. To protect against this, and keep other threats at bay, there were several courses of action available: create encircling earthworks to keep an enemy at a distance; build the hall in stone; or raise it up on an artificial mound, known as a motte, to present an obstacle to attackers. While the concept of ditches, ramparts, and stone walls as defensive measures is ancient, raising a motte is a medieval innovation.
A bank and ditch enclosure was a simple form of defence, and when found without an associated motte is called a ringwork; when the site was in use for a prolonged period, it was sometimes replaced by a more complex structure or enhanced by the addition of a stone curtain wall. Building the hall in stone did not necessarily make it immune to fire as it still had windows and a wooden door. This led to the elevation of windows to the second storey – to make it harder to throw objects in – and to move the entrance from ground level to the second storey. These features are seen in many surviving castle keeps, which were the more sophisticated version of halls. Castles were not just defensive sites but also enhanced a lord's control over his lands. They allowed the garrison to control the surrounding area, and formed a centre of administration, providing the lord with a place to hold court.
Building a castle sometimes required the permission of the king or other high authority. In 864 the King of West Francia, Charles the Bald, prohibited the construction of castella without his permission and ordered them all to be destroyed. This is perhaps the earliest reference to castles, though military historian R. Allen Brown points out that the word castella may have applied to any fortification at the time.
In some countries the monarch had little control over lords, or required the construction of new castles to aid in securing the land so was unconcerned about granting permission – as was the case in England in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest and the Holy Land during the Crusades. Switzerland is an extreme case of there being no state control over who built castles, and as a result there were 4,000 in the country. There are very few castles dated with certainty from the mid-9th century. Converted into a donjon around 950, Château de Doué-la-Fontaine in France is the oldest standing castle in Europe.
### 11th century
From 1000 onwards, references to castles in texts such as charters increased greatly. Historians have interpreted this as evidence of a sudden increase in the number of castles in Europe around this time; this has been supported by archaeological investigation which has dated the construction of castle sites through the examination of ceramics. The increase in Italy began in the 950s, with numbers of castles increasing by a factor of three to five every 50 years, whereas in other parts of Europe such as France and Spain the growth was slower. In 950, Provence was home to 12 castles; by 1000, this figure had risen to 30, and by 1030 it was over 100. Although the increase was slower in Spain, the 1020s saw a particular growth in the number of castles in the region, particularly in contested border areas between Christian and Muslim lands.
Despite the common period in which castles rose to prominence in Europe, their form and design varied from region to region. In the early 11th century, the motte and keep – an artificial mound with a palisade and tower on top – was the most common form of castle in Europe, everywhere except Scandinavia. While Britain, France, and Italy shared a tradition of timber construction that was continued in castle architecture, Spain more commonly used stone or mud-brick as the main building material.
The Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century introduced a style of building developed in North Africa reliant on tapial, pebbles in cement, where timber was in short supply. Although stone construction would later become common elsewhere, from the 11th century onwards it was the primary building material for Christian castles in Spain, while at the same time timber was still the dominant building material in north-west Europe.
Historians have interpreted the widespread presence of castles across Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries as evidence that warfare was common, and usually between local lords. Castles were introduced into England shortly before the Norman Conquest in 1066. Before the 12th century castles were as uncommon in Denmark as they had been in England before the Norman Conquest. The introduction of castles to Denmark was a reaction to attacks from Wendish pirates, and they were usually intended as coastal defences. The motte and bailey remained the dominant form of castle in England, Wales, and Ireland well into the 12th century. At the same time, castle architecture in mainland Europe became more sophisticated.
The donjon was at the centre of this change in castle architecture in the 12th century. Central towers proliferated, and typically had a square plan, with walls 3 to 4 m (9.8 to 13.1 ft) thick. Their decoration emulated Romanesque architecture, and sometimes incorporated double windows similar to those found in church bell towers. Donjons, which were the residence of the lord of the castle, evolved to become more spacious. The design emphasis of donjons changed to reflect a shift from functional to decorative requirements, imposing a symbol of lordly power upon the landscape. This sometimes led to compromising defence for the sake of display.
### Innovation and scientific design (12th century)
Until the 12th century, stone-built and earth and timber castles were contemporary, but by the late 12th century the number of castles being built went into decline. This has been partly attributed to the higher cost of stone-built fortifications, and the obsolescence of timber and earthwork sites, which meant it was preferable to build in more durable stone. Although superseded by their stone successors, timber and earthwork castles were by no means useless. This is evidenced by the continual maintenance of timber castles over long periods, sometimes several centuries; Owain Glyndŵr's 11th-century timber castle at Sycharth was still in use by the start of the 15th century, its structure having been maintained for four centuries.
At the same time there was a change in castle architecture. Until the late 12th century castles generally had few towers; a gateway with few defensive features such as arrowslits or a portcullis; a great keep or donjon, usually square and without arrowslits; and the shape would have been dictated by the lay of the land (the result was often irregular or curvilinear structures). The design of castles was not uniform, but these were features that could be found in a typical castle in the mid-12th century. By the end of the 12th century or the early 13th century, a newly constructed castle could be expected to be polygonal in shape, with towers at the corners to provide enfilading fire for the walls. The towers would have protruded from the walls and featured arrowslits on each level to allow archers to target anyone nearing or at the curtain wall.
These later castles did not always have a keep, but this may have been because the more complex design of the castle as a whole drove up costs and the keep was sacrificed to save money. The larger towers provided space for habitation to make up for the loss of the donjon. Where keeps did exist, they were no longer square but polygonal or cylindrical. Gateways were more strongly defended, with the entrance to the castle usually between two half-round towers which were connected by a passage above the gateway – although there was great variety in the styles of gateway and entrances – and one or more portcullis.
A peculiar feature of Muslim castles in the Iberian Peninsula was the use of detached towers, called Albarrana towers, around the perimeter as can be seen at the Alcazaba of Badajoz. Probably developed in the 12th century, the towers provided flanking fire. They were connected to the castle by removable wooden bridges, so if the towers were captured the rest of the castle was not accessible.
When seeking to explain this change in the complexity and style of castles, antiquarians found their answer in the Crusades. It seemed that the Crusaders had learned much about fortification from their conflicts with the Saracens and exposure to Byzantine architecture. There were legends such as that of Lalys – an architect from Palestine who reputedly went to Wales after the Crusades and greatly enhanced the castles in the south of the country – and it was assumed that great architects such as James of Saint George originated in the East. In the mid-20th century this view was cast into doubt. Legends were discredited, and in the case of James of Saint George it was proven that he came from Saint-Georges-d'Espéranche, in France. If the innovations in fortification had derived from the East, it would have been expected for their influence to be seen from 1100 onwards, immediately after the Christians were victorious in the First Crusade (1096–1099), rather than nearly 100 years later. Remains of Roman structures in Western Europe were still standing in many places, some of which had flanking round-towers and entrances between two flanking towers.
The castle builders of Western Europe were aware of and influenced by Roman design; late Roman coastal forts on the English "Saxon Shore" were reused and in Spain the wall around the city of Ávila imitated Roman architecture when it was built in 1091. Historian Smail in Crusading warfare argued that the case for the influence of Eastern fortification on the West has been overstated, and that Crusaders of the 12th century in fact learned very little about scientific design from Byzantine and Saracen defences. A well-sited castle that made use of natural defences and had strong ditches and walls had no need for a scientific design. An example of this approach is Kerak. Although there were no scientific elements to its design, it was almost impregnable, and in 1187 Saladin chose to lay siege to the castle and starve out its garrison rather than risk an assault.
During the late 11th and 12th centuries in what is now south-central Turkey the Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights and Templars established themselves in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, where they discovered an extensive network of sophisticated fortifications which had a profound impact on the architecture of Crusader castles. Most of the Armenian military sites in Cilicia are characterized by: multiple bailey walls laid with irregular plans to follow the sinuosities of the outcrops; rounded and especially horseshoe-shaped towers; finely-cut often rusticated ashlar facing stones with intricate poured cores; concealed postern gates and complex bent entrances with slot machicolations; embrasured loopholes for archers; barrel, pointed or groined vaults over undercrofts, gates and chapels; and cisterns with elaborate scarped drains. Civilian settlement are often found in the immediate proximity of these fortifications. After the First Crusade, Crusaders who did not return to their homes in Europe helped found the Crusader states of the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the County of Tripoli. The castles they founded to secure their acquisitions were designed mostly by Syrian master-masons. Their design was very similar to that of a Roman fort or Byzantine tetrapyrgia which were square in plan and had square towers at each corner that did not project much beyond the curtain wall. The keep of these Crusader castles would have had a square plan and generally be undecorated.
While castles were used to hold a site and control movement of armies, in the Holy Land some key strategic positions were left unfortified. Castle architecture in the East became more complex around the late 12th and early 13th centuries after the stalemate of the Third Crusade (1189–1192). Both Christians and Muslims created fortifications, and the character of each was different. Saphadin, the 13th-century ruler of the Saracens, created structures with large rectangular towers that influenced Muslim architecture and were copied again and again, however they had little influence on Crusader castles.
### 13th to 15th centuries
In the early 13th century, Crusader castles were mostly built by Military Orders including the Knights Hospitaller, Knights Templar, and Teutonic Knights. The orders were responsible for the foundation of sites such as Krak des Chevaliers, Margat, and Belvoir. Design varied not just between orders, but between individual castles, though it was common for those founded in this period to have concentric defences.
The concept, which originated in castles such as Krak des Chevaliers, was to remove the reliance on a central strongpoint and to emphasise the defence of the curtain walls. There would be multiple rings of defensive walls, one inside the other, with the inner ring rising above the outer so that its field of fire was not completely obscured. If assailants made it past the first line of defence they would be caught in the killing ground between the inner and outer walls and have to assault the second wall.
Concentric castles were widely copied across Europe, for instance when Edward I of England – who had himself been on Crusade – built castles in Wales in the late 13th century, four of the eight he founded had a concentric design. Not all the features of the Crusader castles from the 13th century were emulated in Europe. For instance, it was common in Crusader castles to have the main gate in the side of a tower and for there to be two turns in the passageway, lengthening the time it took for someone to reach the outer enclosure. It is rare for this bent entrance to be found in Europe.
One of the effects of the Livonian Crusade in the Baltic was the introduction of stone and brick fortifications. Although there were hundreds of wooden castles in Prussia and Livonia, the use of bricks and mortar was unknown in the region before the Crusaders. Until the 13th century and start of the 14th centuries, their design was heterogeneous, however this period saw the emergence of a standard plan in the region: a square plan, with four wings around a central courtyard. It was common for castles in the East to have arrowslits in the curtain wall at multiple levels; contemporary builders in Europe were wary of this as they believed it weakened the wall. Arrowslits did not compromise the wall's strength, but it was not until Edward I's programme of castle building that they were widely adopted in Europe.
The Crusades also led to the introduction of machicolations into Western architecture. Until the 13th century, the tops of towers had been surrounded by wooden galleries, allowing defenders to drop objects on assailants below. Although machicolations performed the same purpose as the wooden galleries, they were probably an Eastern invention rather than an evolution of the wooden form. Machicolations were used in the East long before the arrival of the Crusaders, and perhaps as early as the first half of the 8th century in Syria.
The greatest period of castle building in Spain was in the 11th to 13th centuries, and they were most commonly found in the disputed borders between Christian and Muslim lands. Conflict and interaction between the two groups led to an exchange of architectural ideas, and Spanish Christians adopted the use of detached towers. The Spanish Reconquista, driving the Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula, was complete in 1492.
Although France has been described as "the heartland of medieval architecture", the English were at the forefront of castle architecture in the 12th century. French historian François Gebelin wrote: "The great revival in military architecture was led, as one would naturally expect, by the powerful kings and princes of the time; by the sons of William the Conqueror and their descendants, the Plantagenets, when they became dukes of Normandy. These were the men who built all the most typical twelfth-century fortified castles remaining today". Despite this, by the beginning of the 15th century, the rate of castle construction in England and Wales went into decline. The new castles were generally of a lighter build than earlier structures and presented few innovations, although strong sites were still created such as that of Raglan in Wales. At the same time, French castle architecture came to the fore and led the way in the field of medieval fortifications. Across Europe – particularly the Baltic, Germany, and Scotland – castles were built well into the 16th century.
### Advent of gunpowder
Artillery powered by gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 1320s and spread quickly. Handguns, which were initially unpredictable and inaccurate weapons, were not recorded until the 1380s. Castles were adapted to allow small artillery pieces – averaging between 19.6 and 22 kg (43 and 49 lb) – to fire from towers. These guns were too heavy for a man to carry and fire, but if he supported the butt end and rested the muzzle on the edge of the gun port he could fire the weapon. The gun ports developed in this period show a unique feature, that of a horizontal timber across the opening. A hook on the end of the gun could be latched over the timber so the gunner did not have to take the full recoil of the weapon. This adaptation is found across Europe, and although the timber rarely survives, there is an intact example at Castle Doornenburg in the Netherlands. Gunports were keyhole shaped, with a circular hole at the bottom for the weapon and a narrow slit on top to allow the gunner to aim.
This form is very common in castles adapted for guns, found in Egypt, Italy, Scotland, and Spain, and elsewhere in between. Other types of port, though less common, were horizontal slits – allowing only lateral movement – and large square openings, which allowed greater movement. The use of guns for defence gave rise to artillery castles, such as that of Château de Ham in France. Defences against guns were not developed until a later stage. Ham is an example of the trend for new castles to dispense with earlier features such as machicolations, tall towers, and crenellations.
Bigger guns were developed, and in the 15th century became an alternative to siege engines such as the trebuchet. The benefits of large guns over trebuchets – the most effective siege engine of the Middle Ages before the advent of gunpowder – were those of a greater range and power. In an effort to make them more effective, guns were made ever bigger, although this hampered their ability to reach remote castles. By the 1450s guns were the preferred siege weapon, and their effectiveness was demonstrated by Mehmed II at the Fall of Constantinople.
The response towards more effective cannons was to build thicker walls and to prefer round towers, as the curving sides were more likely to deflect a shot than a flat surface. While this sufficed for new castles, pre-existing structures had to find a way to cope with being battered by cannon. An earthen bank could be piled behind a castle's curtain wall to absorb some of the shock of impact.
Often, castles constructed before the age of gunpowder were incapable of using guns as their wall-walks were too narrow. A solution to this was to pull down the top of a tower and to fill the lower part with the rubble to provide a surface for the guns to fire from. Lowering the defences in this way had the effect of making them easier to scale with ladders. A more popular alternative defence, which avoided damaging the castle, was to establish bulwarks beyond the castle's defences. These could be built from earth or stone and were used to mount weapons.
### Bastions and star forts (16th century)
Around 1500, the innovation of the angled bastion was developed in Italy. With developments such as these, Italy pioneered permanent artillery fortifications, which took over from the defensive role of castles. From this evolved star forts, also known as trace italienne. The elite responsible for castle construction had to choose between the new type that could withstand cannon fire and the earlier, more elaborate style. The first was ugly and uncomfortable and the latter was less secure, although it did offer greater aesthetic appeal and value as a status symbol. The second choice proved to be more popular as it became apparent that there was little point in trying to make the site genuinely defensible in the face of cannon. For a variety of reasons, not least of which is that many castles have no recorded history, there is no firm number of castles built in the medieval period. However, it has been estimated that between 75,000 and 100,000 were built in western Europe; of these around 1,700 were in England and Wales and around 14,000 in German-speaking areas.
Some true castles were built in the Americas by the Spanish and French colonies. The first stage of Spanish fort construction has been termed the "castle period", which lasted from 1492 until the end of the 16th century. Starting with Fortaleza Ozama, "these castles were essentially European medieval castles transposed to America". Among other defensive structures (including forts and citadels), castles were also built in New France towards the end of the 17th century. In Montreal the artillery was not as developed as on the battle-fields of Europe, some of the region's outlying forts were built like the fortified manor houses of France. Fort Longueuil, built from 1695 to 1698 by a baronial family, has been described as "the most medieval-looking fort built in Canada". The manor house and stables were within a fortified bailey, with a tall round turret in each corner. The "most substantial castle-like fort" near Montréal was Fort Senneville, built in 1692 with square towers connected by thick stone walls, as well as a fortified windmill. Stone forts such as these served as defensive residences, as well as imposing structures to prevent Iroquois incursions.
Although castle construction faded towards the end of the 16th century, castles did not necessarily all fall out of use. Some retained a role in local administration and became law courts, while others are still handed down in aristocratic families as hereditary seats. A particularly famous example of this is Windsor Castle in England which was founded in the 11th century and is home to the monarch of the United Kingdom. In other cases they still had a role in defence. Tower houses, which are closely related to castles and include pele towers, were defended towers that were permanent residences built in the 14th to 17th centuries. Especially common in Ireland and Scotland, they could be up to five storeys high and succeeded common enclosure castles and were built by a greater social range of people. While unlikely to provide as much protection as a more complex castle, they offered security against raiders and other small threats.
### Later use and revival castles
According to archaeologists Oliver Creighton and Robert Higham, "the great country houses of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries were, in a social sense, the castles of their day". Though there was a trend for the elite to move from castles into country houses in the 17th century, castles were not completely useless. In later conflicts, such as the English Civil War (1641–1651), many castles were refortified, although subsequently slighted to prevent them from being used again. Some country residences, which were not meant to be fortified, were given a castle appearance to scare away potential invaders such as adding turrets and using small windows. An example of this is the 16th century Bubaqra Castle in Bubaqra, Malta, which was modified in the 18th century.
Revival or mock castles became popular as a manifestation of a Romantic interest in the Middle Ages and chivalry, and as part of the broader Gothic Revival in architecture. Examples of these castles include Chapultepec in Mexico, Neuschwanstein in Germany, and Edwin Lutyens' Castle Drogo (1911–1930) – the last flicker of this movement in the British Isles. While churches and cathedrals in a Gothic style could faithfully imitate medieval examples, new country houses built in a "castle style" differed internally from their medieval predecessors. This was because to be faithful to medieval design would have left the houses cold and dark by contemporary standards.
Artificial ruins, built to resemble remnants of historic edifices, were also a hallmark of the period. They were usually built as centre pieces in aristocratic planned landscapes. Follies were similar, although they differed from artificial ruins in that they were not part of a planned landscape, but rather seemed to have no reason for being built. Both drew on elements of castle architecture such as castellation and towers, but served no military purpose and were solely for display. A toy castle is used as a common children attraction in playing fields and fun parks, such as the castle of the Playmobil FunPark in Ħal Far, Malta.
## Construction
Once the site of a castle had been selected – whether a strategic position or one intended to dominate the landscape as a mark of power – the building material had to be selected. An earth and timber castle was cheaper and easier to erect than one built from stone. The costs involved in construction are not well-recorded, and most surviving records relate to royal castles. A castle with earthen ramparts, a motte, timber defences and buildings could have been constructed by an unskilled workforce. The source of man-power was probably from the local lordship, and the tenants would already have the necessary skills of felling trees, digging, and working timber necessary for an earth and timber castle. Possibly coerced into working for their lord, the construction of an earth and timber castle would not have been a drain on a client's funds. In terms of time, it has been estimated that an average sized motte – 5 m (16 ft) high and 15 m (49 ft) wide at the summit – would have taken 50 people about 40 working days. An exceptionally expensive motte and bailey was that of Clones in Ireland, built in 1211 for UK£20. The high cost, relative to other castles of its type, was because labourers had to be imported.
The cost of building a castle varied according to factors such as their complexity and transport costs for material. It is certain that stone castles cost a great deal more than those built from earth and timber. Even a very small tower, such as Peveril Castle, would have cost around UK£200. In the middle were castles such as Orford, which was built in the late 12th century for UK£1,400, and at the upper end were those such as Dover, which cost about UK£7,000 between 1181 and 1191. Spending on the scale of the vast castles such as Château Gaillard (an estimated UK£15,000 to UK£20,000 between 1196 and 1198) was easily supported by The Crown, but for lords of smaller areas, castle building was a very serious and costly undertaking. It was usual for a stone castle to take the best part of a decade to finish. The cost of a large castle built over this time (anywhere from UK£1,000 to UK£10,000) would take the income from several manors, severely impacting a lord's finances. Costs in the late 13th century were of a similar order, with castles such as Beaumaris and Rhuddlan costing UK£14,500 and UK£9,000 respectively. Edward I's campaign of castle-building in Wales cost UK£80,000 between 1277 and 1304, and UK£95,000 between 1277 and 1329. Renowned designer Master James of Saint George, responsible for the construction of Beaumaris, explained the cost:
> In case you should wonder where so much money could go in a week, we would have you know that we have needed – and shall continue to need 400 masons, both cutters and layers, together with 2,000 less-skilled workmen, 100 carts, 60 wagons, and 30 boats bringing stone and sea coal; 200 quarrymen; 30 smiths; and carpenters for putting in the joists and floor boards and other necessary jobs. All this takes no account of the garrison ... nor of purchases of material. Of which there will have to be a great quantity ... The men's pay has been and still is very much in arrears, and we are having the greatest difficulty in keeping them because they have simply nothing to live on.
Not only were stone castles expensive to build in the first place, but their maintenance was a constant drain. They contained a lot of timber, which was often unseasoned and as a result needed careful upkeep. For example, it is documented that in the late 12th century repairs at castles such as Exeter and Gloucester cost between UK£20 and UK£50 annually.
Medieval machines and inventions, such as the treadwheel crane, became indispensable during construction, and techniques of building wooden scaffolding were improved upon from Antiquity. When building in stone a prominent concern of medieval builders was to have quarries close at hand. There are examples of some castles where stone was quarried on site, such as Chinon, Château de Coucy and Château Gaillard. When it was built in 992 in France the stone tower at Château de Langeais was 16 metres (52 ft) high, 17.5 metres (57 ft) wide, and 10 metres (33 ft) long with walls averaging 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in). The walls contain 1,200 cubic metres (42,000 cu ft) of stone and have a total surface (both inside and out) of 1,600 square metres (17,000 sq ft). The tower is estimated to have taken 83,000 average working days to complete, most of which was unskilled labour.
Many countries had both timber and stone castles, however Denmark had few quarries and as a result most of its castles are earth and timber affairs, or later on built from brick. Brick-built structures were not necessarily weaker than their stone-built counterparts. Brick castles are less common in England than stone or earth and timber constructions, and often it was chosen for its aesthetic appeal or because it was fashionable, encouraged by the brick architecture of the Low Countries. For example, when Tattershall Castle in England was built between 1430 and 1450, there was plenty of stone available nearby, but the owner, Lord Cromwell, chose to use brick. About 700,000 bricks were used to build the castle, which has been described as "the finest piece of medieval brick-work in England". Most Spanish castles were built from stone, whereas castles in Eastern Europe were usually of timber construction.
On the Construction of the Castle of Safed, written in the early 1260s, describes the construction of a new castle at Safed. It is "one of the fullest" medieval accounts of a castle's construction.
## Social centre
Due to the lord's presence in a castle, it was a centre of administration from where he controlled his lands. He relied on the support of those below him, as without the support of his more powerful tenants a lord could expect his power to be undermined. Successful lords regularly held court with those immediately below them on the social scale, but absentees could expect to find their influence weakened. Larger lordships could be vast, and it would be impractical for a lord to visit all his properties regularly, so deputies were appointed. This especially applied to royalty, who sometimes owned land in different countries.
To allow the lord to concentrate on his duties regarding administration, he had a household of servants to take care of chores such as providing food. The household was run by a chamberlain, while a treasurer took care of the estate's written records. Royal households took essentially the same form as baronial households, although on a much larger scale and the positions were more prestigious. An important role of the household servants was the preparation of food; the castle kitchens would have been a busy place when the castle was occupied, called on to provide large meals. Without the presence of a lord's household, usually because he was staying elsewhere, a castle would have been a quiet place with few residents, focused on maintaining the castle.
As social centres castles were important places for display. Builders took the opportunity to draw on symbolism, through the use of motifs, to evoke a sense of chivalry that was aspired to in the Middle Ages amongst the elite. Later structures of the Romantic revival would draw on elements of castle architecture such as battlements for the same purpose. Castles have been compared with cathedrals as objects of architectural pride, and some castles incorporated gardens as ornamental features. The right to crenellate, when granted by a monarch – though it was not always necessary – was important not just as it allowed a lord to defend his property but because crenellations and other accoutrements associated with castles were prestigious through their use by the elite. Licences to crenellate were also proof of a relationship with or favour from the monarch, who was the one responsible for granting permission.
Courtly love was the eroticisation of love between the nobility. Emphasis was placed on restraint between lovers. Though sometimes expressed through chivalric events such as tournaments, where knights would fight wearing a token from their lady, it could also be private and conducted in secret. The legend of Tristan and Iseult is one example of stories of courtly love told in the Middle Ages. It was an ideal of love between two people not married to each other, although the man might be married to someone else. It was not uncommon or ignoble for a lord to be adulterous – Henry I of England had over 20 bastards for instance – but for a lady to be promiscuous was seen as dishonourable.
The purpose of marriage between the medieval elites was to secure land. Girls were married in their teens, but boys did not marry until they came of age. There is a popular conception that women played a peripheral role in the medieval castle household, and that it was dominated by the lord himself. This derives from the image of the castle as a martial institution, but most castles in England, France, Ireland, and Scotland were never involved in conflicts or sieges, so the domestic life is a neglected facet. The lady was given a dower of her husband's estates – usually about a third – which was hers for life, and her husband would inherit on her death. It was her duty to administer them directly, as the lord administered his own land. Despite generally being excluded from military service, a woman could be in charge of a castle, either on behalf of her husband or if she was widowed. Because of their influence within the medieval household, women influenced construction and design, sometimes through direct patronage; historian Charles Coulson emphasises the role of women in applying "a refined aristocratic taste" to castles due to their long term residence.
## Locations and landscapes
The positioning of castles was influenced by the available terrain. Whereas hill castles such as Marksburg were common in Germany, where 66 per cent of all known medieval were highland area while 34 per cent were on low-lying land, they formed a minority of sites in England. Because of the range of functions they had to fulfil, castles were built in a variety of locations. Multiple factors were considered when choosing a site, balancing between the need for a defendable position with other considerations such as proximity to resources. For instance many castles are located near Roman roads, which remained important transport routes in the Middle Ages, or could lead to the alteration or creation of new road systems in the area. Where available it was common to exploit pre-existing defences such as building with a Roman fort or the ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort. A prominent site that overlooked the surrounding area and offered some natural defences may also have been chosen because its visibility made it a symbol of power. Urban castles were particularly important in controlling centres of population and production, especially with an invading force, for instance in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of England in the 11th century the majority of royal castles were built in or near towns.
As castles were not simply military buildings but centres of administration and symbols of power, they had a significant impact on the surrounding landscape. Placed by a frequently-used road or river, the toll castle ensured that a lord would get his due toll money from merchants. Rural castles were often associated with mills and field systems due to their role in managing the lord's estate, which gave them greater influence over resources. Others were adjacent to or in royal forests or deer parks and were important in their upkeep. Fish ponds were a luxury of the lordly elite, and many were found next to castles. Not only were they practical in that they ensured a water supply and fresh fish, but they were a status symbol as they were expensive to build and maintain.
Although sometimes the construction of a castle led to the destruction of a village, such as at Eaton Socon in England, it was more common for the villages nearby to have grown as a result of the presence of a castle. Sometimes planned towns or villages were created around a castle. The benefits of castle building on settlements was not confined to Europe. When the 13th-century Safad Castle was founded in Galilee in the Holy Land, the 260 villages benefitted from the inhabitants' newfound ability to move freely. When built, a castle could result in the restructuring of the local landscape, with roads moved for the convenience of the lord. Settlements could also grow naturally around a castle, rather than being planned, due to the benefits of proximity to an economic centre in a rural landscape and the safety given by the defences. Not all such settlements survived, as once the castle lost its importance – perhaps succeeded by a manor house as the centre of administration – the benefits of living next to a castle vanished and the settlement depopulated.
During and shortly after the Norman Conquest of England, castles were inserted into important pre-existing towns to control and subdue the populace. They were usually located near any existing town defences, such as Roman walls, although this sometimes resulted in the demolition of structures occupying the desired site. In Lincoln, 166 houses were destroyed to clear space for the castle, and in York agricultural land was flooded to create a moat for the castle. As the military importance of urban castles waned from their early origins, they became more important as centres of administration, and their financial and judicial roles. When the Normans invaded Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the 11th and 12th centuries, settlement in those countries was predominantly non-urban, and the foundation of towns was often linked with the creation of a castle.
The location of castles in relation to high status features, such as fish ponds, was a statement of power and control of resources. Also often found near a castle, sometimes within its defences, was the parish church. This signified a close relationship between feudal lords and the Church, one of the most important institutions of medieval society. Even elements of castle architecture that have usually been interpreted as military could be used for display. The water features of Kenilworth Castle in England – comprising a moat and several satellite ponds – forced anyone approaching a water castle entrance to take a very indirect route, walking around the defences before the final approach towards the gateway. Another example is that of the 14th-century Bodiam Castle, also in England; although it appears to be a state of the art, advanced castle it is in a site of little strategic importance, and the moat was shallow and more likely intended to make the site appear impressive than as a defence against mining. The approach was long and took the viewer around the castle, ensuring they got a good look before entering. Moreover, the gunports were impractical and unlikely to have been effective.
## Warfare
As a static structure, castles could often be avoided. Their immediate area of influence was about 400 metres (1,300 ft) and their weapons had a short range even early in the age of artillery. However, leaving an enemy behind would allow them to interfere with communications and make raids. Garrisons were expensive and as a result often small unless the castle was important. Cost also meant that in peacetime garrisons were smaller, and small castles were manned by perhaps a couple of watchmen and gate-guards. Even in war, garrisons were not necessarily large as too many people in a defending force would strain supplies and impair the castle's ability to withstand a long siege. In 1403, a force of 37 archers successfully defended Caernarfon Castle against two assaults by Owain Glyndŵr's allies during a long siege, demonstrating that a small force could be effective.
Early on, manning a castle was a feudal duty of vassals to their magnates, and magnates to their kings, however this was later replaced with paid forces. A garrison was usually commanded by a constable whose peacetime role would have been looking after the castle in the owner's absence. Under him would have been knights who by benefit of their military training would have acted as a type of officer class. Below them were archers and bowmen, whose role was to prevent the enemy reaching the walls as can be seen by the positioning of arrowslits.
If it was necessary to seize control of a castle an army could either launch an assault or lay siege. It was more efficient to starve the garrison out than to assault it, particularly for the most heavily defended sites. Without relief from an external source, the defenders would eventually submit. Sieges could last weeks, months, and in rare cases years if the supplies of food and water were plentiful. A long siege could slow down the army, allowing help to come or for the enemy to prepare a larger force for later. Such an approach was not confined to castles, but was also applied to the fortified towns of the day. On occasion, siege castles would be built to defend the besiegers from a sudden sally and would have been abandoned after the siege ended one way or another.
If forced to assault a castle, there were many options available to the attackers. For wooden structures, such as early motte-and-baileys, fire was a real threat and attempts would be made to set them alight as can be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry. Projectile weapons had been used since antiquity and the mangonel and petraria – from Eastern and Roman origins respectively – were the main two that were used into the Middle Ages. The trebuchet, which probably evolved from the petraria in the 13th century, was the most effective siege weapon before the development of cannons. These weapons were vulnerable to fire from the castle as they had a short range and were large machines. Conversely, weapons such as trebuchets could be fired from within the castle due to the high trajectory of its projectile, and would be protected from direct fire by the curtain walls.
Ballistas or springalds were siege engines that worked on the same principles as crossbows. With their origins in Ancient Greece, tension was used to project a bolt or javelin. Missiles fired from these engines had a lower trajectory than trebuchets or mangonels and were more accurate. They were more commonly used against the garrison rather than the buildings of a castle. Eventually cannons developed to the point where they were more powerful and had a greater range than the trebuchet, and became the main weapon in siege warfare.
Walls could be undermined by a sap. A mine leading to the wall would be dug and once the target had been reached, the wooden supports preventing the tunnel from collapsing would be burned. It would cave in and bring down the structure above. Building a castle on a rock outcrop or surrounding it with a wide, deep moat helped prevent this. A counter-mine could be dug towards the besiegers' tunnel; assuming the two converged, this would result in underground hand-to-hand combat. Mining was so effective that during the siege of Margat in 1285 when the garrison were informed a sap was being dug they surrendered. Battering rams were also used, usually in the form of a tree trunk given an iron cap. They were used to force open the castle gates, although they were sometimes used against walls with less effect.
As an alternative to the time-consuming task of creating a breach, an escalade could be attempted to capture the walls with fighting along the walkways behind the battlements. In this instance, attackers would be vulnerable to arrow fire. A safer option for those assaulting a castle was to use a siege tower, sometimes called a belfry. Once ditches around a castle were partially filled in, these wooden, movable towers could be pushed against the curtain wall. As well as offering some protection for those inside, a siege tower could overlook the interior of a castle, giving bowmen an advantageous position from which to unleash missiles.
## See also
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John Diefenbaker
| 1,173,320,682 |
Prime Minister of Canada from 1957 to 1963
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"1895 births",
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"Canadian Baptists",
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"Canadian King's Counsel",
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"Canadian Secretaries of State for External Affairs",
"Canadian diplomats",
"Canadian members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom",
"Canadian military personnel of World War I",
"Canadian monarchists",
"Canadian people of German descent",
"Canadian people of Scottish descent",
"Chancellors of the University of Saskatchewan",
"Conservative Party of Canada (1867–1942) MPs",
"Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada",
"John Diefenbaker",
"Lawyers in Saskatchewan",
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"Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Saskatchewan",
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"People from Wakaw, Saskatchewan",
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] |
John George Diefenbaker PC CH QC FRSC (/ˈdiːfənbeɪkər/ DEE-fən-bay-kər; September 18, 1895 – August 16, 1979) was the 13th prime minister of Canada, serving from 1957 to 1963. He was the only Progressive Conservative party leader between 1930 and 1979 to lead the party to an election victory, doing so three times, although only once with a majority of the seats in the House of Commons.
Diefenbaker was born in southwestern Ontario in the small town of Neustadt in 1895. In 1903, his family migrated west to the portion of the North-West Territories that would soon become the province of Saskatchewan. He grew up in the province and was interested in politics from a young age. After service in World War I, Diefenbaker became a noted criminal defence lawyer. He contested elections through the 1920s and 1930s with little success until he was finally elected to the House of Commons in 1940.
Diefenbaker was repeatedly a candidate for the party leadership. He gained that position in 1956, on his third attempt. In 1957, he led the party to its first electoral victory in 27 years; a year later he called a snap election and spearheaded them to one of their greatest triumphs. Diefenbaker appointed the first female minister in Canadian history to his cabinet (Ellen Fairclough), as well as the first Indigenous member of the Senate (James Gladstone). During his six years as prime minister, his government obtained passage of the Canadian Bill of Rights and granted the vote to the First Nations and Inuit peoples. In 1962, Diefenbaker's government eliminated racial discrimination in immigration policy. In foreign policy, his stance against apartheid helped secure the departure of South Africa from the Commonwealth of Nations, but his indecision on whether to accept Bomarc nuclear missiles from the United States led to his government's downfall. Diefenbaker is also remembered for his role in the 1959 cancellation of the Avro Arrow project.
In the 1962 federal election, the Progressive Conservatives narrowly won a minority government before losing power altogether in 1963. Diefenbaker stayed on as party leader, becoming Opposition leader, but his second loss at the polls prompted opponents within the party to force him to a leadership convention in 1967. Diefenbaker stood for re-election as party leader at the last moment, but attracted only minimal support and withdrew. He remained in parliament until his death in 1979, two months after Joe Clark became the first Progressive Conservative prime minister since Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker ranks average in rankings of prime ministers of Canada.
## Early life
Diefenbaker was born on September 18, 1895, in Neustadt, Ontario, to William Thomas Diefenbaker and Mary Florence Diefenbaker, née Bannerman. His father was the son of German immigrants from Adersbach (near Sinsheim) in Baden; Mary Diefenbaker was of Scottish descent and Diefenbaker was Baptist. The family moved to several locations in Ontario in John's early years. William Diefenbaker was a teacher, and had deep interests in history and politics, which he sought to inculcate in his students. He had remarkable success doing so; of the 28 students at his school near Toronto in 1903, four, including his son, John, served as Conservative MPs in the 19th Canadian Parliament beginning in 1940.—the others were Robert Henry McGregor, Joseph Henry Harris, and George Tustin.
The Diefenbaker family moved west in 1903, for William Diefenbaker to accept a position near Fort Carlton, then in the Northwest Territories (now in Saskatchewan). In 1906, William claimed a quarter-section, 160 acres (0.65 km<sup>2</sup>) of undeveloped land near Borden, Saskatchewan. In February 1910, the Diefenbaker family moved to Saskatoon, the site of the University of Saskatchewan. William and Mary Diefenbaker felt that John and his brother Elmer would have greater educational opportunities in Saskatoon.
John Diefenbaker had been interested in politics from an early age and told his mother at the age of eight or nine that he would some day be prime minister. She told him that it was an impossible ambition, especially for a boy living on the prairies. She would live to be proved wrong. John claimed that his first contact with politics came in 1910, when he sold a newspaper to Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in Saskatoon to lay the cornerstone for the University's first building. The present and future Prime Ministers conversed, and when giving his speech that afternoon, Sir Wilfrid commented on the newsboy who had ended their conversation by saying, "I can't waste any more time on you, Prime Minister. I must get about my work." The authenticity of the meeting was questioned in the 21st century, with an author suggesting that it was invented by Diefenbaker during an election campaign.
In a 1977 interview with the CBC, Diefenbaker recalled he saw injustice first-hand in his youth against French Canadians, Indigenous Canadians and the Métis. He said, "From my earliest days, I knew the meaning of discrimination. Many Canadians were virtually second-hand citizens because of their names and racial origin. Indeed, it seemed until the end of World War II that the only first-class Canadians were either of English or French descent. As a youth, l determined to devote myself to assuring that all Canadians, whatever their racial origin, were equal and declared myself to be a sworn enemy of discrimination."
After graduating from high school in Saskatoon, in 1912, Diefenbaker entered the University of Saskatchewan. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915, and his Master of Arts the following year.
Diefenbaker was commissioned a lieutenant into the 196th (Western Universities) Battalion, CEF in May 1916. In September, Diefenbaker was part of a contingent of 300 junior officers sent to Britain for pre-deployment training. Diefenbaker related in his memoirs that he was hit by a shovel, and the injury eventually resulted in his being invalided home. Diefenbaker's recollections do not correspond with his army medical records, which show no contemporary account of such an injury, and his biographer, Denis Smith, speculates that any injury was psychosomatic.
After leaving the military in 1917, Diefenbaker returned to Saskatchewan where he resumed his work as an articling student in law. He received his law degree in 1919, the first student to secure three degrees from the University of Saskatchewan. On June 30, 1919, he was called to the bar, and the following day, opened a small practice in the village of Wakaw, Saskatchewan.
## Barrister and candidate (1919–1940)
### Wakaw days (1919–1924)
Although Wakaw had a population of only 400, it sat at the heart of a densely populated area of rural townships and had its own district court. It was also easily accessible to Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Humboldt, places where the Court of King's Bench sat. The local people were mostly immigrants, and Diefenbaker's research found them to be particularly litigious. There was already one barrister in town, and the residents were loyal to him, initially refusing to rent office space to Diefenbaker. The new lawyer was forced to rent a vacant lot and erect a two-room wooden shack.
Diefenbaker won the local people over through his success; in his first year in practice, he tried 62 jury trials, winning approximately half of his cases. He rarely called defence witnesses, thereby avoiding the possibility of rebuttal witnesses for the Crown, and securing the last word for himself. In late 1920, he was elected to the village council to serve a three-year term.
Diefenbaker would often spend weekends with his parents in Saskatoon. While there, he began to woo Olive Freeman, daughter of the Baptist minister, but in 1921, she moved with her family to Brandon, Manitoba, and the two lost touch for more than 20 years. He then courted Beth Newell, a cashier in Saskatoon, and by 1922, the two were engaged. However, in 1923, Newell was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and Diefenbaker broke off contact with her. She died the following year. Diefenbaker was himself subject to internal bleeding, and may have feared that the disease would be transmitted to him. In late 1923, he had an operation at the Mayo Clinic for a gastric ulcer, but his health remained uncertain for several more years.
After four years in Wakaw, Diefenbaker so dominated the local legal practice that his competitor left town. On May 1, 1924, Diefenbaker moved to Prince Albert, leaving a law partner in charge of the Wakaw office.
### Aspiring politician (1924–1929)
Since 1905, when Saskatchewan entered Confederation, the province had been dominated by the Liberal Party, which practised highly effective machine politics. Diefenbaker was fond of stating, in his later years, that the only protection a Conservative had in the province was that afforded by the game laws.
Diefenbaker's father, William, was a Liberal; however, John Diefenbaker found himself attracted to the Conservative Party. Free trade was widely popular throughout Western Canada, but Diefenbaker was convinced by the Conservative position that free trade would make Canada an economic dependent of the United States. However, he did not speak publicly of his politics. Diefenbaker recalled in his memoirs that, in 1921, he had been elected as secretary of the Wakaw Liberal Association while absent in Saskatoon, and had returned to find the association's records in his office. He promptly returned them to the association president. Diefenbaker also stated that he had been told that if he became a Liberal candidate, "there was no position in the province which would not be open to him."
It was not until 1925 that Diefenbaker publicly came forward as a Conservative, a year in which both federal and Saskatchewan provincial elections were held. Journalist Peter C. Newman, in his best-selling account of the Diefenbaker years, suggested that this choice was made for practical, rather than political reasons, as Diefenbaker had little chance of defeating established politicians and securing the Liberal nomination for either the House of Commons or the Legislative Assembly. The provincial election took place in early June; Liberals would later claim that Diefenbaker had campaigned for their party in the election. On June 19, however, Diefenbaker addressed a Conservative organizing committee, and on August 6, was nominated as the party's candidate for the federal riding of Prince Albert, a district in which the party's last candidate had lost his election deposit. A nasty campaign ensued, in which Diefenbaker was called a "Hun" because of his German-derived surname. The 1925 federal election was held on October 29; he finished third behind the Liberal and Progressive Party candidates, losing his deposit.
The winning candidate, Charles McDonald, did not hold the seat long, resigning it to open a place for the Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had been defeated in his Ontario riding. The Tories ran no candidate against King in the by-election on February 15, 1926, and he won easily. Although in the 1925 federal election, the Conservatives had won the greatest number of seats, King continued as Prime Minister with the support of the Progressives. Mackenzie King held office for several months until he finally resigned when the Governor General, Lord Byng, refused a dissolution. Conservative Party leader Arthur Meighen became Prime Minister, but was quickly defeated in the House of Commons, and Byng finally granted a dissolution of Parliament. Diefenbaker, who had been confirmed as Conservative candidate, stood against King in the 1926 election, a rare direct electoral contest between two individuals who had or would become prime minister. King triumphed easily over Diefenbaker, the Liberals won the federal election, and King regained his position as prime minister.
### Perennial candidate (1929–1940)
Diefenbaker stood for the Legislative Assembly in the 1929 provincial election. He was defeated, but Saskatchewan Conservatives formed their first government, with help from smaller parties. As the defeated Conservative candidate for Prince Albert City, he was given charge of political patronage there and was created a King's Counsel. Three weeks after his electoral defeat, he married Saskatoon teacher Edna Brower.
Diefenbaker chose not to stand for the House of Commons in the 1930 federal election, citing health reasons. The Conservatives gained a majority in the election, and party leader R. B. Bennett became Prime Minister. Diefenbaker continued a high-profile legal practice, and in 1933, ran for mayor of Prince Albert. He was defeated by 48 votes in an election in which over 2,000 ballots were cast.
In 1934, when the Crown prosecutor for Prince Albert resigned to become the Conservative Party's legislative candidate, Diefenbaker took his place as prosecutor. Diefenbaker did not stand in the 1934 provincial election, in which the governing Conservatives lost every seat. Six days after the election, Diefenbaker resigned as Crown prosecutor. The federal government of Bennett was defeated the following year and Mackenzie King returned as prime minister. Judging his prospects hopeless, Diefenbaker had declined a nomination to stand again against Mackenzie King in Prince Albert. In the waning days of the Bennett government, the Saskatchewan Conservative Party president was appointed a judge, leaving Diefenbaker, who had been elected the party's vice president, as acting president of the provincial party.
Saskatchewan Conservatives eventually arranged a leadership convention for October 28, 1936. Eleven people were nominated, including Diefenbaker. The other ten candidates withdrew, and Diefenbaker won the position by default. Diefenbaker asked the federal party for \$10,000 in financial support, but the funds were refused, and the Conservatives were shut out of the legislature in the 1938 provincial elections for the second consecutive time. Diefenbaker himself was defeated in the Arm River riding by 190 votes. With the province-wide Conservative vote having fallen to 12 percent, Diefenbaker offered his resignation to a post-election party meeting in Moose Jaw, but it was refused. Diefenbaker continued to run the provincial party out of his law office and paid the party's debts from his own pocket.
Diefenbaker quietly sought the Conservative nomination for the federal riding of Lake Centre but was unwilling to risk a divisive intra-party squabble. In what Diefenbaker biographer Smith states "appears to have been an elaborate and prearranged charade", Diefenbaker attended the nominating convention as keynote speaker, but withdrew when his name was proposed, stating a local man should be selected. The winner among the six remaining candidates, riding president W. B. Kelly, declined the nomination, urging the delegates to select Diefenbaker, which they promptly did. Mackenzie King called a general election for March 25, 1940. The incumbent in Lake Centre was Liberal John Frederick Johnston. Diefenbaker campaigned aggressively in Lake Centre, holding 63 rallies and seeking to appeal to members of all parties. On election day, he defeated Johnston by 280 votes on what was otherwise a disastrous day for the Conservatives, who won only 39 seats out of the 245 in the House of Commons—their lowest total since Confederation.
## Parliamentary rise (1940–1957)
### Mackenzie King years (1940–1948)
Diefenbaker joined a shrunken and demoralized Conservative caucus in the House of Commons. The Conservative leader, Robert Manion, failed to win a place in the Commons in the election, which saw the Liberals take 181 seats. The Tories sought to be included in a wartime coalition government, but Mackenzie King refused. The House of Commons had only a slight role in the war effort; under the state of emergency, most business was accomplished through the Cabinet issuing Orders in Council.
Diefenbaker was appointed to the House Committee on the Defence of Canada Regulations, an all-party committee which examined the wartime rules which allowed arrest and detention without trial. On June 13, 1940, Diefenbaker made his maiden speech in the House of Commons, supporting the regulations, and emphatically stating that most Canadians of German descent were loyal. In his memoirs, Diefenbaker wrote he waged an unsuccessful fight against the forced relocation and internment of many Japanese-Canadians, but historians say that the fight against the internment never took place.
According to Diefenbaker's biographer, Denis Smith, the Conservative MP quietly admired Mackenzie King for his political skills. However, Diefenbaker proved a gadfly and an annoyance to Mackenzie King. Angered by the words of Diefenbaker and fellow Conservative MP Howard Green in seeking to censure the government, the Prime Minister referred to Conservative MPs as "a mob". When Diefenbaker accompanied two other Conservative leaders to a briefing by Mackenzie King on the war, the Prime Minister exploded at Diefenbaker (a constituent of his), "What business do you have to be here? You strike me to the heart every time you speak."
The Conservatives elected a floor leader, and in 1941 approached former Prime Minister Meighen, who had been appointed as a senator by Bennett, about becoming party leader again. Meighen agreed, and resigned his Senate seat, but lost a by-election for an Ontario seat in the House of Commons. He remained as leader for several months, although he could not enter the chamber of the House of Commons. Meighen sought to move the Tories to the left, in order to undercut the Liberals and to take support away from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF, the predecessor of the New Democratic Party (NDP)). To that end, he sought to draft the Liberal-Progressive premier of Manitoba, John Bracken, to lead the Conservatives. Diefenbaker objected to what he saw as an attempt to rig the party's choice of new leader and stood for the leadership himself at the party's 1942 leadership convention. Bracken was elected on the second ballot; Diefenbaker finished a distant third in both polls. At Bracken's request, the convention changed the party's name to "Progressive Conservative Party of Canada." Bracken chose not to seek entry to the House through a by-election, and when the Conservatives elected a new floor leader, Diefenbaker was defeated by one vote.
Bracken was elected to the Commons in the 1945 general election, and for the first time in five years the Tories had their party leader in the House of Commons. The Progressive Conservatives won 67 seats to the Liberals' 125, with smaller parties and independents winning 52 seats. Diefenbaker increased his majority to over 1,000 votes, and had the satisfaction of seeing Mackenzie King defeated in Prince Albert—albeit by a CCF candidate. The Prime Minister was returned in an Ontario by-election within months.
Diefenbaker staked out a position on the populist left of the PC party. Though most Canadians were content to look to Parliament for protection of civil liberties, Diefenbaker called for a Bill of Rights, calling it "the only way to stop the march on the part of the government towards arbitrary power". He objected to the great powers used by the Mackenzie King government to attempt to root out Soviet spies after the war, such as imprisonment without trial, and complained about the government's proclivity for letting its wartime powers become permanent.
### Leadership contender (1948–1956)
In early 1948, Mackenzie King, now aged 73, announced his retirement; later that year Louis St. Laurent succeeded him. Although Bracken had nearly doubled the Tory representation in the House, prominent Tories were increasingly unhappy with his leadership and pressured him to stand down. These party bosses believed that Ontario Premier George A. Drew, who had won three successive provincial elections and had even made inroads in francophone ridings, was the man to lead the Progressive Conservatives to victory. When Bracken resigned on July 17, 1948, Diefenbaker announced his candidacy. The party's backers, principally financiers headquartered on Toronto's Bay Street, preferred Drew's conservative political stances to Diefenbaker's Western populism. Tory leaders packed the 1948 leadership convention in Ottawa in favour of Drew, appointing more than 300 delegates at-large. One cynical party member commented, "Ghost delegates with ghost ballots, marked by the ghostly hidden hand of Bay Street, are going to pick George Drew, and he'll deliver a ghost-written speech that'll cheer us all up, as we march briskly into a political graveyard." Drew easily defeated Diefenbaker on the first ballot. St. Laurent called an election for June 1949, and the Tories were decimated, falling to 41 seats, only two more than the party's 1940 nadir. Despite intense efforts to make the Progressive Conservatives appeal to Quebecers, the party won only two seats in the province.
Newman argued that but for Diefenbaker's many defeats, he would never have become Prime Minister:
> If, as a neophyte lawyer, he had succeeded in winning the Prince Albert seat in the federal elections of 1925 or 1926, ... Diefenbaker would probably have been remembered only as an obscure minister in Bennett's Depression cabinet ... If he had carried his home-town mayoralty in 1933, ... he'd probably not be remembered at all ... If he had succeeded in his bid for the national leadership in 1942, he might have taken the place of John Bracken on his six-year march to oblivion as leader of a party that had not changed itself enough to follow a Prairie radical ... [If he had defeated Drew in 1948, he] would have been free to flounder before the political strength of Louis St. Laurent in the 1949 and 1953 campaigns.
The governing Liberals repeatedly attempted to deprive Diefenbaker of his parliamentary seat. In 1948, Lake Centre was redistricted to remove areas which strongly supported Diefenbaker. In spite of that, he was returned in the 1949 election, the only PC member from Saskatchewan. In 1952, a redistricting committee dominated by Liberals abolished Lake Centre entirely, dividing its voters among three other ridings. Diefenbaker stated in his memoirs that he had considered retiring from the House; with Drew only a year older than he was, the Westerner saw little prospect of advancement and had received tempting offers from Ontario law firms. However, the gerrymandering so angered him that he decided to fight for a seat. Diefenbaker's party had taken Prince Albert only once, in 1911, but he decided to stand in that riding for the 1953 election and was successful. He would hold that seat for the rest of his life. Even though Diefenbaker campaigned nationally for party candidates, the Progressive Conservatives gained little, rising to 51 seats as St. Laurent led the Liberals to a fifth successive majority. In addition to trying to secure his departure from Parliament, the government opened a home for unwed Indian mothers next door to Diefenbaker's home in Prince Albert.
Diefenbaker continued practising law. In 1951, he gained national attention by accepting the Atherton case, in which a young telegraph operator had been accused of negligently causing a train crash by omitting crucial information from a message. Twenty-one people were killed, mostly Canadian troops bound for Korea. Diefenbaker paid \$1,500 and sat a token bar examination to join the Law Society of British Columbia to take the case, and gained an acquittal, prejudicing the jury against the Crown prosecutor and pointing out a previous case in which interference had caused information to be lost in transmission.
In the mid-1940s Edna began to suffer mental illness and was placed in a private psychiatric hospital for a time. She later fell ill from leukemia and died in 1951. In 1953, Diefenbaker married Olive Palmer (formerly Olive Freeman), whom he had courted while living in Wakaw. Olive Diefenbaker became a great source of strength to her husband. There were no children born of either marriage. In 2013, claims were made that he fathered at least two sons out of wedlock, based on DNA testing showing a relationship between the two individuals, and that Diefenbaker employed both mothers.
Diefenbaker won Prince Albert in 1953, even as the Tories suffered a second consecutive disastrous defeat under Drew. Speculation arose in the press that the leader might be pressured to step aside. Drew was determined to remain, however, and Diefenbaker was careful to avoid any action that might be seen as disloyal. However, Diefenbaker was never a member of the "Five O'clock Club" of Drew intimates who met the leader in his office for a drink and gossip each day. By 1955, there was a widespread feeling among Tories that Drew was not capable of leading the party to a victory. At the same time, the Liberals were in flux as the aging St. Laurent tired of politics. Drew was able to damage the government in a weeks-long battle over the TransCanada pipeline in 1956—the so-called Pipeline Debate—in which the government, in a hurry to obtain financing for the pipeline, imposed closure before the debate even began. The Tories and the CCF combined to obstruct business in the House for weeks before the Liberals were finally able to pass the measure. Diefenbaker played a relatively minor role in the Pipeline Debate, speaking only once.
### Leader of the Opposition; 1957 election
By 1956, the Social Credit Party was becoming a potential rival to the Tories as Canada's main right-wing party. Canadian journalist and author Bruce Hutchison discussed the state of the Tories in 1956:
> When a party calling itself Conservative can think of nothing better than to outbid the Government's election promises; when it demands economy in one breath and increased spending in the next; when it proposes an immediate tax cut regardless of inflationary results ... when in short, the Conservative party no longer gives us a conservative alternative after twenty-one years ... then our political system desperately requires an opposition prepared to stand for something more than the improbable chance of quick victory.
In August 1956, Drew fell ill and many within the party urged him to step aside, feeling that the Progressive Conservatives needed vigorous leadership with an election likely within a year. He resigned in late September, and Diefenbaker immediately announced his candidacy for the leadership. A number of Progressive Conservative leaders, principally from the Ontario wing of the party, started a "Stop Diefenbaker" movement, and wooed University of Toronto president Sidney Smith as a possible candidate. When Smith declined, they could find no one of comparable stature to stand against Diefenbaker. The only serious competition to Diefenbaker came from Donald Fleming, who had finished third at the previous leadership convention, but his having repeatedly criticised Drew's leadership ensured that the critical Ontario delegates would not back Fleming, all but destroying his chances of victory. At the leadership convention in Ottawa in December 1956, Diefenbaker won on the first ballot, and the dissidents reconciled themselves to his victory. After all, they reasoned, Diefenbaker was now 61 and unlikely to lead the party for more than one general election, an election they believed would be won by the Liberals regardless of who led the Tories.
In January 1957, Diefenbaker took his place as Leader of the Official Opposition. In February, St. Laurent informed him that Parliament would be dissolved in April for an election on June 10. The Liberals submitted a budget in March; Diefenbaker attacked it for overly high taxes, failure to assist pensioners, and a lack of aid for the poorer provinces. Parliament was dissolved on April 12. St. Laurent was so confident of victory that he did not even bother to make recommendations to the Governor General to fill the 16 vacancies in the Senate.
Diefenbaker ran on a platform which concentrated on changes in domestic policies. He pledged to work with the provinces to reform the Senate. He proposed a vigorous new agricultural policy, seeking to stabilize income for farmers. He sought to reduce dependence on trade with the United States, and to seek closer ties with the United Kingdom. St. Laurent called the Tory platform "a mere cream-puff of a thing—with more air than substance". Diefenbaker and the PC party used television adroitly, whereas St. Laurent stated that he was more interested in seeing people than in talking to cameras. Though the Liberals outspent the Progressive Conservatives three to one, according to Newman, their campaign had little imagination, and was based on telling voters that their only real option was to re-elect St. Laurent.
Diefenbaker characterized the Tory program in a nationwide telecast on April 30:
> It is a program ... for a united Canada, for one Canada, for Canada first, in every aspect of our political and public life, for the welfare of the average man and woman. That is my approach to public affairs and has been throughout my life ... A Canada, united from Coast to Coast, wherein there will be freedom for the individual, freedom of enterprise and where there will be a Government which, in all its actions, will remain the servant and not the master of the people.
The final Gallup poll before the election showed the Liberals ahead, 48% to 34%. Just before the election, Maclean's magazine printed its regular weekly issue, to go on sale the morning after the vote, editorializing that democracy in Canada was still strong despite a sixth consecutive Liberal victory. On election night, the Progressive Conservative advance started early, with the gain of two seats in reliably Liberal Newfoundland. The party picked up nine seats in Nova Scotia, five in Quebec, 28 in Ontario, and at least one seat in every other province. The Progressive Conservatives took 112 seats to the Liberals' 105: a plurality, but not a majority. While the Liberals finished some 200,000 votes ahead of the Tories nationally, that margin was mostly wasted in overwhelming victories in safe Quebec seats. St. Laurent could have attempted to form a government, however, with the minor parties pledging to cooperate with the Progressive Conservatives, he would have likely faced a quick defeat at the Commons. St. Laurent instead resigned, making Diefenbaker prime minister.
## Prime Minister (1957–1963)
### Domestic events and policies
#### Minority government
When John Diefenbaker took office as Prime Minister of Canada on June 21, 1957, only one Progressive Conservative MP, Earl Rowe, had served in federal governmental office, for a brief period under Bennett in 1935. Rowe was no friend of Diefenbaker — he had briefly served as the party's acting leader in-between Drew's resignation and Diefenbaker's election, and did not definitively rule himself out of running to succeed Drew permanently until a relatively late stage, contributing to Diefenbaker's mistrust of him — and was given no place in his government. Diefenbaker appointed Ellen Fairclough as Secretary of State for Canada, the first woman to be appointed to a Cabinet post, and Michael Starr as Minister of Labour, the first Canadian of Ukrainian descent to serve in Cabinet.
As the Parliament buildings had been lent to the Universal Postal Union for its 14th congress, Diefenbaker was forced to wait until the fall to convene Parliament. However, the Cabinet approved measures that summer, including increased price supports for butter and turkeys, and raises for federal employees. Once the 23rd Canadian Parliament was opened on October 14 by Queen Elizabeth II – the first to be opened by any Canadian monarch – the government rapidly passed legislation, including tax cuts and increases in old age pensions. The Liberals were ineffective in opposition, with the party in the midst of a leadership race after St. Laurent's resignation as party leader.
With the Conservatives leading in the polls, Diefenbaker wanted a new election, hopeful that his party would gain a majority of seats. The strong Liberal presence meant that the Governor General could refuse a dissolution request early in a parliament's term and allow them to form government if Diefenbaker resigned. Diefenbaker sought a pretext for a new election.
Such an excuse presented itself when former Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester Pearson attended his first parliamentary session as Leader of the Opposition on January 20, 1958, four days after becoming the Liberal leader. In his first speech as leader, Pearson (recently returned from Oslo where he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize), moved an amendment to supply, and called, not for an election, but for the Progressive Conservatives to resign, allowing the Liberals to form a government. Pearson stated that the condition of the economy required "a Government pledged to implement Liberal policies". Government MPs laughed at Pearson, as did members of the press who were present. Pearson later recorded in his memoirs that he knew that his "first attack on the government had been a failure, indeed a fiasco". Diefenbaker spoke for two hours and three minutes, and devastated his Liberal opposition. He mocked Pearson, contrasting the party leader's address at the Liberal leadership convention with his speech to the House:
> On Thursday there was shrieking defiance, on the following Monday there is shrinking indecision ... The only reason that this motion is worded as it is[,] is that my honourable friends opposite quake when they think of what will happen if an election comes ... It is the resignation from responsibility of a great party.
Diefenbaker read from an internal report provided to the St. Laurent government in early 1957, warning that a recession was coming, and stated:
> Across the way, Mr. Speaker, sit the purveyors of gloom who would endeavour for political purposes, to panic the Canadian people ... They had a warning ... Did they tell us that? No. Mr. Speaker, why did they not reveal this? Why did they not act when the House was sitting in January, February, March, and April? They had the information ... You concealed the facts, that is what you did.
According to the Minister of Finance, Donald Fleming, "Pearson looked at first merry, then serious, then uncomfortable, then disturbed, and finally sick." Pearson recorded in his memoirs that the Prime Minister "tore me to shreds". Prominent Liberal frontbencher Paul Martin called Diefenbaker's response "one of the greatest devastating speeches" and "Diefenbaker's great hour". On February 1, Diefenbaker asked the Governor General, Vincent Massey, to dissolve Parliament, alleging that though St. Laurent had promised cooperation, Pearson had made it clear he would not follow his predecessor's lead. Massey agreed to the dissolution, and Diefenbaker set an election date of March 31, 1958.
#### 1958 election
The 1958 election campaign saw a huge outpouring of public support for the Progressive Conservatives. At the opening campaign rally in Winnipeg on February 12 voters filled the hall until the doors had to be closed for safety reasons. They were promptly broken down by the crowd outside. At the rally, Diefenbaker called for "[a] new vision. A new hope. A new soul for Canada." He pledged to open the Canadian North, to seek out its resources and make it a place for settlements. The conclusion to his speech expounded on what became known as "The Vision",
> This is the vision: One Canada. One Canada, where Canadians will have preserved to them the control of their own economic and political destiny. Sir John A. Macdonald saw a Canada from east to west: he opened the west. I see a new Canada—a Canada of the North. This is the vision!
Pierre Sévigny, who would be elected an MP in 1958, recalled the gathering, "When he had finished that speech, as he was walking to the door, I saw people kneel and kiss his coat. Not one, but many. People were in tears. People were delirious. And this happened many a time after." When Sévigny introduced Diefenbaker to a Montreal rally with the words "Levez-vous, levez-vous, saluez votre chef!" (Rise, rise, salute your chief!) according to Postmaster General William Hamilton "thousands and thousands of people, jammed into that auditorium, just tore the roof off in a frenzy." Michael Starr remembered, "That was the most fantastic election ... I went into little places. Smoky Lake, Alberta, where nobody ever saw a minister. Canora, Saskatchewan. Every meeting was jammed ... The halls would be filled with people and sitting there in the front would be the first Ukrainian immigrants with shawls and hands gnarled from work ... I would switch to Ukrainian and the tears would start to run down their faces ... I don't care who says what won the election; it was the emotional aspect that really caught on."
Pearson and his Liberals faltered badly in the campaign. The Liberal Party leader tried to make an issue of the fact that Diefenbaker had called a winter election, generally disfavoured in Canada due to travel difficulties. Pearson's objection cut little ice with voters, and served only to remind the electorate that the Liberals, at their convention, had called for an election. Pearson mocked Diefenbaker's northern plans as "igloo-to-igloo" communications, and was assailed by the Prime Minister for being condescending. The Liberal leader spoke to small, quiet crowds, which quickly left the halls when he was done. By election day, Pearson had no illusions that he might win the election, and hoped only to salvage 100 seats. The Liberals would be limited to less than half of that.
On March 31, 1958, the Tories won what is still the largest majority (in terms of percentage of seats) in Canadian federal political history, winning 208 seats to the Liberals' 48, with the CCF winning 8 and Social Credit wiped out. The Progressive Conservatives won a majority of the votes and of the seats in every province except British Columbia (49.8%) and Newfoundland. Quebec's Union Nationale political machine had given the PC party little support, but with Quebec voters minded to support Diefenbaker, Union Nationale boss Maurice Duplessis threw the machinery of his party behind the Tories.
#### Mandate (1958–1962)
An economic downturn was beginning in Canada by 1958. Because of tax cuts instituted the previous year, the budget presented by the government predicted a small deficit for 1957–58, and a large one, \$648 million, for the following year. Minister of Finance Fleming and Bank of Canada Governor James Coyne proposed that the wartime Victory Bond issue, which constituted two-thirds of the national debt and which was due to be redeemed by 1967, be refinanced to a longer term. After considerable indecision on Diefenbaker's part, a nationwide campaign took place, and 90% of the bonds were converted. However, this transaction led to an increase in the money supply, which in future years would hamper the government's efforts to respond to unemployment.
As a trial lawyer, and in opposition, Diefenbaker had long been concerned with civil liberties. On July 1, 1960, Dominion Day, he introduced the Canadian Bill of Rights in Parliament, and the bill rapidly passed and was proclaimed on August 10, fulfilling a lifetime goal of Diefenbaker's, having begun drafting it as early as 1936. The document purported to guarantee fundamental freedoms, with special attention to the rights of the accused. However, as a mere piece of federal legislation, it could be amended by any other law, and the question of civil liberties was to a large extent a provincial matter, outside of federal jurisdiction. One lawyer remarked that the document provided rights for all Canadians, "so long as they don't live in any of the provinces". Diefenbaker had appointed the first First Nations member of the Senate, James Gladstone in January 1958, and in 1960, his government extended voting rights to all native people. In 1962, Diefenbaker's government eliminated race discrimination clauses in immigration laws.
Diefenbaker pursued a "One Canada" policy, seeking equality of all Canadians. As part of that philosophy, he was unwilling to make special concessions to Quebec's francophones. Thomas Van Dusen, who served as Diefenbaker's executive assistant and wrote a book about him, characterized the leader's views on this issue:
> There must be no compromise with Canada's existence as a nation. Opting out, two flags, two pension plans, associated states, Two Nations and all the other baggage of political dualism was ushering Quebec out of Confederation on the instalment plan. He could not accept any theory of two nations, however worded, because it would make of those neither French nor English second-class citizens.
Diefenbaker's disinclination to make concessions to Quebec, along with the disintegration of the Union Nationale, the failure of the Tories to build an effective structure in Quebec, and Diefenbaker appointing few Quebecers to his Cabinet, none to senior positions, all led to an erosion of Progressive Conservative support in Quebec. Diefenbaker did recommend the appointment of the first French-Canadian governor general, Georges Vanier.
By mid-1961, differences in monetary policy led to open conflict with Bank of Canada Governor Coyne, who adhered to a tight money policy. Appointed by St. Laurent to a term expiring in December 1961, Coyne could only be dismissed before then by the passing of an Act of Parliament. Coyne defended his position by giving public speeches, to the dismay of the government. The Cabinet was also angered when it learned that Coyne and his board had passed amendments to the bank's pension scheme which greatly increased Coyne's pension, without publishing the amendments in the Canada Gazette as required by law. Negotiations between Minister of Finance Fleming and Coyne for the latter's resignation broke down, with the governor making the dispute public, and Diefenbaker sought to dismiss Coyne by legislation. Diefenbaker was able to get legislation to dismiss Coyne through the House, but the Liberal-controlled Senate invited Coyne to testify before one of its committees. After giving the governor a platform against the government, the committee then chose to take no further action, adding its view that Coyne had done nothing wrong. Once he had the opportunity to testify (denied him in the Commons), Coyne resigned, keeping his increased pension, and the government was extensively criticized in the press.
By the time Diefenbaker called an election for June 18, 1962, the party had been damaged by loss of support in Quebec and in urban areas as voters grew disillusioned with Diefenbaker and the Tories. The PC campaign was hurt when the Bank of Canada was forced to devalue the Canadian dollar to 92+1⁄2 US cents; it had previously hovered in the range from 95 cents to par with the United States dollar. Privately printed satirical "Diefenbucks" swept the country. On election day, the Progressive Conservatives lost 92 seats, but were still able to form a minority government. The New Democratic Party (the successor to the CCF) and Social Credit held the balance of power in the new Parliament.
### Foreign policy
#### Britain and the Commonwealth
Diefenbaker attended a meeting of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers in London shortly after taking office in 1957. He generated headlines by proposing that 15% of Canadian spending on US imports instead be spent on imports from the United Kingdom. Britain responded with an offer of a free trade agreement, which was rejected by the Canadians. As the Harold Macmillan government in the UK sought to enter the Common Market, Diefenbaker feared that Canadian exports to the UK would be threatened. He also believed that the mother country should place the Commonwealth first, and sought to discourage Britain's entry. The British were annoyed at Canadian interference. Britain's initial attempt to enter the Common Market was vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle.
Through 1959, the Diefenbaker government had a policy of not criticizing South Africa and its apartheid government. In this stance, Diefenbaker had the support of the Liberals but not that of CCF leader Hazen Argue. In 1960, however, the South Africans sought to maintain membership in the Commonwealth even if South African white voters chose to make the country a republic in a referendum scheduled for later that year. South Africa asked that year's Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference to allow it to remain in the Commonwealth regardless of the result of the referendum. Diefenbaker privately expressed his distaste for apartheid to South African External Affairs Minister Eric Louw and urged him to give the black and coloured people of South Africa at least the minimal representation they had originally had. Louw, attending the conference as Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd recovered from an assassination attempt, refused. The conference resolved that an advance decision would be interfering in South Africa's internal affairs.
On October 5, 1960, South Africa's white voters decided to make the country a republic. At the Prime Ministers' Conference in 1961, Verwoerd formally applied for South Africa to remain in the Commonwealth. The prime ministers were divided; Diefenbaker broke the deadlock by proposing that South Africa only be re-admitted if it joined other states in condemning apartheid in principle. Once it became clear that South Africa's membership would be rejected, Verwoerd withdrew his country's application to remain in the Commonwealth and left the group. According to Peter Newman, this was "Diefenbaker's most important contribution to international politics ... Diefenbaker flew home, a hero."
#### Policy towards the United States
##### Ike and John: the Eisenhower years
American officials were uncomfortable with Diefenbaker's initial election, believing they had heard undertones of anti-Americanism in the campaign. After years of the Liberals, one US State Department official noted, "We'll be dealing with an unknown quantity." Diefenbaker's 1958 landslide was viewed with disappointment by the US officials, who knew and liked Pearson from his years in diplomacy and who felt the Liberal Party leader would be more likely to institute pro-American policies. However, US President Dwight Eisenhower took pains to foster good relations with Diefenbaker. The two men found much in common, from Western farm backgrounds to a love of fishing, and Diefenbaker had an admiration for war leaders such as Eisenhower and Churchill. Diefenbaker wrote in his memoirs, "I might add that President Eisenhower and I were from our first meeting on an 'Ike–John' basis, and that we were as close as the nearest telephone." The Eisenhower–Diefenbaker relationship was sufficiently strong that the touchy Canadian Prime Minister was prepared to overlook slights. When Eisenhower addressed Parliament in October 1958, he downplayed trade concerns that Diefenbaker had publicly expressed. Diefenbaker said nothing and took Eisenhower fishing.
Diefenbaker had approved plans to join the United States in what became known as NORAD, an integrated air defence system, in mid-1957. Despite Liberal misgivings that Diefenbaker had committed Canada to the system before consulting either the Cabinet or Parliament, Pearson and his followers voted with the government to approve NORAD in June 1958.
In 1959, the Diefenbaker government cancelled the development and manufacture of the Avro CF-105 Arrow. The Arrow was a supersonic jet interceptor built by Avro Canada in Malton, Ontario, to defend Canada in the event of a Soviet attack. The interceptor had been under development since 1953, and had suffered from many cost overruns and complications. In 1955, the RCAF stated it would need only nine squadrons of Arrows, down from 20, as originally proposed. According to C. D. Howe, the former minister responsible for postwar reconstruction, the St. Laurent government had serious misgivings about continuing the Arrow program, and planned to discuss its termination after the 1957 election. In the run-up to the 1958 election, with three Tory-held seats at risk in the Malton area, the Diefenbaker government authorized further funding. Even though the first test flights of the Arrow were successful, the US government was unwilling to commit to a purchase of aircraft from Canada. In September 1958, Diefenbaker warned that the Arrow would come under complete review in six months. The company began seeking out other projects including a US-funded "saucer" program that became the VZ-9 Avrocar, and also mounted a public relations offensive urging that the Arrow go into full production. On February 20, 1959, the Cabinet decided to cancel the Avro Arrow, following an earlier decision to permit the United States to build two Bomarc missile bases in Canada. The company immediately dismissed its 14,000 employees, blaming Diefenbaker for the firings, though it rehired 2,500 employees to fulfil existing obligations.
Although the two leaders had a strong relationship, by 1960 US officials were becoming concerned by what they viewed as Canadian procrastination on vital issues, such as whether Canada should join the Organization of American States (OAS). Talks on these issues in June 1960 produced little in results. Diefenbaker hoped that US Vice President Richard Nixon would win the 1960 US presidential election, but when Nixon's Democratic rival, Senator John F. Kennedy won the race, he sent Senator Kennedy a note of congratulations. Kennedy did not respond until Canadian officials asked what had become of Diefenbaker's note, two weeks later. Diefenbaker, for whom such correspondence was very meaningful, was annoyed at the President-elect's slowness to respond. In January 1961, Diefenbaker visited Washington to sign the Columbia River Treaty. However, with only days remaining in the Eisenhower administration, little else could be accomplished.
##### Bilateral antipathy: the Kennedy administration
Kennedy and Diefenbaker started off well but matters soon worsened. When the two met in Washington on February 20, Diefenbaker was impressed by Kennedy, and invited him to visit Ottawa. Kennedy, however, told his aides that he never wanted "to see the boring son of a bitch again". The Ottawa visit began awkwardly. Kennedy accidentally left behind a briefing note suggesting he "push" Diefenbaker on several issues, including the decision to accept nuclear weapons on Canadian soil, which bitterly divided the Canadian Cabinet. Diefenbaker was also annoyed by Kennedy's speech to Parliament, in which he urged Canada to join the OAS (which Diefenbaker had already rejected), and by the President spending most of his time talking to Leader of the Opposition Pearson at the formal dinner. Both Kennedy and his wife Jackie were bored by Diefenbaker's Churchill anecdotes at lunch, stories that Jackie Kennedy later described as "painful".
Diefenbaker was initially inclined to go along with Kennedy's request that nuclear weapons be stationed on Canadian soil as part of NORAD. However, when an August 3, 1961, letter from Kennedy which urged this was leaked to the media, Diefenbaker was angered and withdrew his support. The Prime Minister was also influenced by a massive demonstration against nuclear weapons, which took place on Parliament Hill. Diefenbaker was handed a petition containing 142,000 names.
By 1962, the American government was becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of a commitment from Canada to take nuclear weapons. The interceptors and Bomarc missiles with which Canada was being supplied as a NORAD member were either of no use or of greatly diminished utility without nuclear devices. Canadian and American military officers launched a quiet campaign to make this known to the press, and to advocate Canadian agreement to acquire the warheads. Diefenbaker was also upset when Pearson was invited to the White House for a dinner for Nobel Prize winners in April, and met with the President privately for 40 minutes. When the Prime Minister met with retiring American Ambassador Livingston Merchant, he angrily disclosed the paper Kennedy had left behind, and hinted that he might make use of it in the upcoming election campaign. Merchant's report caused consternation in Washington, and the ambassador was sent back to see Diefenbaker again. This time, he found Diefenbaker calm, and the Prime Minister pledged not to use the memo, and to give Merchant advance word if he changed his mind. Canada appointed a new ambassador to Washington, Charles Ritchie, who on arrival received a cool reception from Kennedy and found that the squabble was affecting progress on a number of issues.
Kennedy was careful to avoid overt favouritism during the 1962 Canadian election campaign. Several times during the campaign, Diefenbaker stated that the Kennedy administration desired his defeat because he refused to "bow down to Washington". After Diefenbaker was returned with a minority, Washington continued to press for acceptance of nuclear arms, but Diefenbaker, faced with a split between Defence Minister Douglas Harkness and External Affairs Minister Howard Green on the question, continued to stall, hoping that time and events would invite consensus.
When the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted in October 1962, Kennedy chose not to consult with Diefenbaker before making decisions on what actions to take. The US President sent former Ambassador Merchant to Ottawa to inform the Prime Minister as to the content of the speech that Kennedy was to make on television. Diefenbaker was upset at both the lack of consultation and the fact that he was given less than two hours advance word. He was angered again when the US government released a statement stating that it had Canada's full support. In a statement to the Commons, Diefenbaker proposed sending representatives of neutral nations to Cuba to verify the American allegations, which Washington took to mean that he was questioning Kennedy's word. When American forces went to a heightened alert, DEFCON 3, Diefenbaker was slow to order Canadian forces to match it. Harkness and the Chiefs of Staff had Canadian forces clandestinely go to that alert status anyway, and Diefenbaker eventually authorized it. The crisis ended without war, and polls found that Kennedy's actions were widely supported by Canadians. Diefenbaker was severely criticized in the media.
### Downfall
On January 3, 1963, NATO Supreme Commander General Lauris Norstad visited Ottawa, in one of a series of visits to member nations prior to his retirement. At a news conference, Norstad stated that if Canada did not accept nuclear weapons, it would not be fulfilling its commitments to NATO. Newspapers across Canada criticized Diefenbaker, who was convinced the statement was part of a plot by Kennedy to bring down his government. Although the Liberals had been previously indecisive on the question of nuclear weapons, on January 12, Pearson made a speech stating that the government should live up to its commitments.
With the Cabinet still divided between adherents of Green and Harkness, Diefenbaker made a speech in the Commons on January 25 that Fleming (by then Minister of Justice) termed "a model of obfuscation". Harkness was initially convinced that Diefenbaker was saying that he would support nuclear warheads in Canada. After talking to the press, he realized that his view of the speech was not universally shared, and he asked Diefenbaker for clarification. Diefenbaker, however, continued to try to avoid taking a firm position. On January 30, the US State Department issued a press release suggesting that Diefenbaker had made misstatements in his Commons speech. For the first time ever, Canada recalled its ambassador to Washington as a diplomatic protest. Though all parties condemned the State Department action, the three parties outside the government demanded that Diefenbaker take a stand on the nuclear weapon issue.
The bitter divisions within the Cabinet continued, with Diefenbaker deliberating whether to call an election on the issue of American interference in Canadian politics. At least six Cabinet ministers favoured Diefenbaker's ouster. Finally, at a dramatic Cabinet meeting on Sunday, February 3, Harkness told Diefenbaker that the Prime Minister no longer had the confidence of the Canadian people, and resigned. Diefenbaker asked ministers supporting him to stand, and when only about half did, stated that he was going to see the Governor General to resign, and that Fleming would be the next Prime Minister. Green called his Cabinet colleagues a "nest of traitors", but eventually cooler heads prevailed, and the Prime Minister was urged to return and to fight the motion of non-confidence scheduled for the following day. Harkness, however, persisted in his resignation. Negotiations with the Social Credit Party, which had enough votes to save the government, failed, and the government fell, 142–111.
Two members of the government resigned the day after the government lost the vote. As the campaign opened, the Tories trailed in the polls by 15 points. To Pearson and his Liberals, the only question was how large a majority they would win. Peter Stursberg, who wrote two books about the Diefenbaker years, stated of that campaign:
> For the old Diefenbaker was in full cry. All the agony of the disintegration of his government was gone, and he seemed to be a giant revived by his contact with the people. This was Diefenbaker's finest election. He was virtually alone on the hustings. Even such loyalists as Gordon Churchill had to stick close to their own bailiwicks, where they were fighting for their political lives.
Though the White House maintained public neutrality, privately Kennedy made it clear he desired a Liberal victory. Kennedy lent Lou Harris, his pollster to work for the Liberals again. On election day, April 8, 1963, the Liberals claimed 129 seats to the Tories' 95, five seats short of an absolute majority. Diefenbaker held to power for several days, until six Quebec Social Credit MPs signed a statement that Pearson should form the government. These votes would be enough to give Pearson support of a majority of the House of Commons, and Diefenbaker resigned. The six MPs repudiated the statement within days. Nonetheless, Pearson formed a government with the support of the NDP.
## Later years (1963–1979)
### Return to opposition
Diefenbaker continued to lead the Progressive Conservatives, again as Leader of the Opposition. In November 1963, upon hearing of Kennedy's assassination, the Tory leader addressed the Commons, stating, "A beacon of freedom has gone. Whatever the disagreement, to me he stood as the embodiment of freedom, not only in his own country, but throughout the world." In the 1964 Great Canadian Flag Debate, Diefenbaker led the unsuccessful opposition to the Maple Leaf flag, which the Liberals pushed for after the rejection of Pearson's preferred design showing three maple leaves. Diefenbaker preferred the existing Canadian Red Ensign or another design showing symbols of the nation's heritage. He dismissed the adopted design, with a single red maple leaf and two red bars, as "a flag that Peruvians might salute", a reference to Peru's red-white-red tricolour. At the request of Quebec Tory Léon Balcer, who feared devastating PC losses in the province at the next election, Pearson imposed closure, and the bill passed with the majority singing "O Canada" as Diefenbaker led the dissenters in "God Save the Queen".
In 1966, the Liberals began to make an issue of the Munsinger affair—two officials of the Diefenbaker government had slept with a woman suspected of being a Soviet spy. In what Diefenbaker saw as a partisan attack, Pearson established a one-man Royal Commission, which, according to Diefenbaker biographer Smith, indulged in "three months of reckless political inquisition". By the time the commission issued its report, Diefenbaker and other former ministers had long since withdrawn their counsel from the proceedings. The report faulted Diefenbaker for not dismissing the ministers in question, but found no actual security breach.
There were calls for Diefenbaker's retirement, especially from the Bay Street wing of the party as early as 1964. Diefenbaker initially beat back attempts to remove him without trouble. When Pearson called an election in 1965 in the expectation of receiving a majority, Diefenbaker ran an aggressive campaign. The Liberals fell two seats short of a majority, and the Tories improved their position slightly at the expense of the smaller parties. After the election, some Tories, led by party president Dalton Camp, began a quiet campaign to oust Diefenbaker.
In the absence of a formal leadership review process, Camp was able to stage a de facto review by running for re-election as party president on the platform of holding a leadership convention within a year. His campaign at the Tories' 1966 convention occurred amidst allegations of vote rigging, violence, and seating arrangements designed to ensure that when Diefenbaker addressed the delegates, television viewers would see unmoved delegates in the first ten rows. Other Camp supporters tried to shout Diefenbaker down. Camp was successful in being re-elected thereby forcing a leadership convention for 1967. Diefenbaker initially made no announcement as to whether he would stand, but angered by a resolution at the party's policy conference which spoke of "deux nations" or "two founding peoples" (as opposed to Diefenbaker's "One Canada"), decided to seek to retain his leadership. Although Diefenbaker entered at the last minute to stand as a candidate for the leadership, he finished fifth on each of the first three ballots, and withdrew from the contest, which was won by Nova Scotia Premier Robert Stanfield.
Diefenbaker addressed the delegates before Stanfield spoke:
> My course has come to an end. I have fought your battles, and you have given me that loyalty that led us to victory more often than the party has ever had since the days of Sir John A. Macdonald. In my retiring, I have nothing to withdraw in my desire to see Canada, my country and your country, one nation.
### Final years and death
Diefenbaker was embittered by his loss of the party leadership. Pearson announced his retirement in December 1967, and Diefenbaker forged a wary relationship of mutual respect with Pearson's successor, Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau called a general election for June 1968; Stanfield asked Diefenbaker to join him at a rally in Saskatoon, which Diefenbaker refused, although the two appeared at hastily arranged photo opportunities. Trudeau obtained the majority against Stanfield that Pearson had never been able to obtain against Diefenbaker, as the PC party lost 25 seats, 20 of them in the West. The former Prime Minister, though stating, "The Conservative Party has suffered a calamitous disaster" in a CBC interview, could not conceal his delight at Stanfield's humiliation, and especially gloated at the defeat of Camp, who made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the Commons. Diefenbaker was easily returned for Prince Albert.
Although Stanfield worked to try to unify the party, Diefenbaker and his loyalists proved difficult to reconcile. The division in the party broke out in well-publicised dissensions, as when Diefenbaker called on Progressive Conservative MPs to break with Stanfield's position on the Official Languages bill, and nearly half the caucus voted against their leader's will or abstained. In addition to his parliamentary activities, Diefenbaker travelled extensively and began work on his memoirs, which were published in three volumes between 1975 and 1977. Pearson died of cancer in 1972, and Diefenbaker was asked if he had kind words for his old rival. Diefenbaker shook his head and said only, "He shouldn't have won the Nobel Prize."
By 1972, Diefenbaker had grown disillusioned with Trudeau, and campaigned wholeheartedly for the Tories in that year's election. Diefenbaker was re-elected comfortably in his home riding, and the Progressive Conservatives came within two seats of matching the Liberal total. Diefenbaker was relieved both that Trudeau had been humbled and that Stanfield had been denied power. Trudeau regained his majority two years later in an election that saw Diefenbaker, by then the only living former Prime Minister, have his personal majority grow to 11,000 votes.
In the 1976 New Year Honours, Diefenbaker was created a Companion of Honour, an accolade bestowed as the personal gift of the Sovereign. After a long illness, Olive Diefenbaker died on December 22, a loss which plunged Diefenbaker into despair.
Joe Clark succeeded Stanfield as party leader in 1976, but as Clark had supported the leadership review, Diefenbaker held a grudge against him. Diefenbaker had supported Claude Wagner for leader, but when Clark won, stated that Clark would make "a remarkable leader of this party". However, Diefenbaker repeatedly criticized his party leader, to such an extent that Stanfield publicly asked Diefenbaker "to stop sticking a knife into Mr. Clark"—a request Diefenbaker did not agree to. According to columnist Charles Lynch, Diefenbaker regarded Clark as an upstart and a pipsqueak.
In 1978, Diefenbaker announced that he would stand in one more election, and under the slogan "Diefenbaker—Now More Than Ever", weathered a campaign the following year during which he apparently suffered a mild stroke, although the media were told he was bedridden with influenza. In the May election Diefenbaker defeated NDP candidate Stan Hovdebo (who, after Diefenbaker's death, would win the seat in a by-election) by 4,000 votes. Clark had defeated Trudeau, though only gaining a minority government, and Diefenbaker returned to Ottawa to witness the swearing-in, still unreconciled to his old opponents among Clark's ministers. Two months later, Diefenbaker died of a heart attack in his study about a month before his 84th birthday.
Diefenbaker had extensively planned his funeral in consultation with government officials. He lay in state in the Hall of Honour in Parliament for two and a half days; 10,000 Canadians passed by his casket. The Maple Leaf Flag on the casket was partially obscured by the Red Ensign. After the service, his body was taken by train on a slow journey to its final destination, Saskatoon; along the route, many Canadians lined the tracks to watch the funeral train pass. In Winnipeg, an estimated 10,000 people waited at midnight in a one-kilometre line to file past the casket which made the trip draped in a Canadian flag and Diefenbaker's beloved Red Ensign. In Prince Albert, thousands of those he had represented filled the square in front of the railroad station to salute the only man from Saskatchewan ever to become Prime Minister. His coffin was accompanied by that of his wife Olive, disinterred from temporary burial in Ottawa. Prime Minister Clark delivered the eulogy, paying tribute to "an indomitable man, born to a minority group, raised in a minority region, leader of a minority party, who went on to change the very nature of his country, and change it forever". John and Olive Diefenbaker rest outside the Diefenbaker Centre, built to house his papers, on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan.
## Legacy
Patrick Kyba and Wendy Green-Finlay report:
> Most of those who have written about John Diefenbaker have concluded that he was a failure as a leader, or that, while he may have had some successes, he never fully lived up to his promise and, therefore, must be considered a failure.
Historian Conrad Black says that Diefenbaker:
> was not a successful prime minister; he was a jumble of attitudes but had little in the way of policy, was a disorganized administrator, and was inconsistent, indecisive, and not infrequently irrational. But he was very formidable; a deadly campaigner, an idiosyncratic but often galvanizing public speaker, a brilliant parliamentarian, and a man of many fine qualities. He was absolutely honest financially, a passionate supporter of the average and the underprivileged and disadvantaged person, a fierce opponent of any racial or religious or socioeconomic discrimination....
According to Robert Bothwell:
> By the time Diefenbaker left office, his conduct of foreign policy was reviled by an important and growing number of Canadians, while his relations with both the Americans and the British were disastrous. Canada's influence in the world was declining....Overseas, at Canada's NATO garrisons, the prime minister's portrait was used as a dartboard in military messes.
Some of Diefenbaker's policies did not survive the 16 years of Liberal government that followed his fall. By the end of 1963, the first of the Bomarc warheads entered Canada, where they remained until the last were finally phased out during John Turner's brief government in 1984. Diefenbaker's decision to have Canada remain outside the OAS was not reversed by Pearson, and it was not until 1989, under the Tory government of Brian Mulroney, that Canada joined.
But several defining features of modern Canada can be traced back to Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights remains in effect, and signalled the change in Canadian political culture that would eventually bring about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which came into force after his death.
Since his death, Diefenbaker has had several locations named in his honour, particularly in his home province of Saskatchewan, including Lake Diefenbaker, the largest lake in Southern Saskatchewan, and the Diefenbaker Bridge in Prince Albert. In 1993, Saskatoon renamed its airport the Saskatoon John G. Diefenbaker International Airport. The city of Prince Albert continues to maintain the house he resided in from 1947 to 1975 as a public museum known as Diefenbaker House; it was designated a National Historic Site in 2018.
Diefenbaker reinvigorated a moribund party system in Canada. Clark and Mulroney, two men who, as students, worked on and were inspired by his 1957 triumph, became the only other Progressive Conservatives to lead the party to election triumphs. Diefenbaker's biographer, Denis Smith, wrote of him, "In politics he had little more than two years of success in the midst of failure and frustration, but he retained a core of deeply committed loyalists to the end of his life and beyond. The federal Conservative Party that he had revived remained dominant in the prairie provinces for 25 years after he left the leadership." The Harper government, believing that Tory prime ministers have been given short shrift in the naming of Canadian places and institutions, named the former Ottawa City Hall, now a federal office building, the John G. Diefenbaker Building. It also gave Diefenbaker's name to a human rights award and an icebreaking vessel. Harper often invoked Diefenbaker's northern vision in his speeches.
Conservative Senator Marjory LeBreton worked in Diefenbaker's office during his second time as Opposition Leader, and has said of him, "He brought a lot of firsts to Canada, but a lot of it has been air-brushed from history by those who followed." Historian Michael Bliss, who published a survey of the Canadian Prime Ministers, wrote of Diefenbaker:
> From the distance of our times, Diefenbaker's role as a prairie populist who tried to revolutionize the Conservative Party begins to loom larger than his personal idiosyncrasies. The difficulties he faced in the form of significant historical dilemmas seem less easy to resolve than Liberals and hostile journalists opined at the time. If Diefenbaker defies rehabilitation, he can at least be appreciated. He stood for a fascinating and still relevant combination of individual and egalitarian values ... But his contemporaries were also right in seeing some kind of disorder near the centre of his personality and his prime-ministership. The problems of leadership, authority, power, ego, and a mad time in history overwhelmed the prairie politician with the odd name.
## Honorary degrees
Diefenbaker received several honorary degrees in recognition of his political career:
## See also
- "Dief Will Be the Chief Again"
- Diefenbunker
- List of people from Prince Albert
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Heian Palace
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Original imperial palace of Heian-kyō, the capital of Japan
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"8th-century establishments in Japan",
"Buildings and structures completed in 794",
"Buildings and structures in Kyoto",
"Former palaces in Japan",
"Historic Sites of Japan",
"Imperial residences in Japan"
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The Heian Palace (平安宮, Heian-kyū) was the original imperial palace of Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto), then the capital of Japan. Both the palace and the city were constructed in the late 700s and were patterned on Chinese models and designs. The palace served as the imperial residence and the administrative centre for most of the Heian period (794–1185).
Located in the north-central section of the city, the palace consisted of a large, walled, rectangular Greater Palace (the Daidairi), which contained several ceremonial and administrative buildings including the government ministries. Inside this enclosure was the separately walled residential compound of the emperor, or the Inner Palace (Dairi). In addition to the emperor's living quarters, the Inner Palace contained the residences of the imperial consorts and buildings more closely linked to the person of the emperor.
The original role of the palace was to manifest the centralised government model adopted by Japan from China in the 7th century – known as the ritsuryō system, where the bureaucracy under the emperor was headed by the great council of state (Daijō-kan) and its subsidiary Eight Ministries. The palace was designed to provide an appropriate setting for the emperor's residence, the conduct of great affairs of state, and the accompanying ceremonies. While the residential function of the palace continued until the 12th century, the facilities built for grand state ceremonies began to fall into disuse by the 9th century. This was due to both the abandonment of several statutory ceremonies and procedures and the transfer of several remaining ceremonies into the smaller-scale setting of the Inner Palace.
From the mid-Heian period, the palace suffered several fires and other disasters. During reconstructions, emperors and some of the office functions resided outside the palace. This, along with the general loss of political power of the court, acted to further diminish the importance of the palace as the administrative centre. In 1227 the palace burned down and was never rebuilt. The site was built over so that almost no trace of it remains. Knowledge of the palace is thus based on contemporary literary sources, surviving diagrams and paintings, and limited excavations.
## Location
The palace was located at the northern centre of the rectangular city Heian-kyō, following the Chinese model of the Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an. The model had been adopted already for the Heijō Palace in the earlier capital Heijō-kyō (in present-day Nara) and the short-lived interim capital of Nagaoka-kyō.
The main entrance to the palace was the gate Suzakumon (), which formed the northern terminus of the great Suzaku Avenue, which ran through the centre of the city from the gate Rashōmon. The palace thus faced south and presided over the symmetrical urban plan of Heian-kyō. In addition to the Suzakumon, the palace had 13 other gates located symmetrically along the side walls. A major avenue led to each of the gates, except for the three along the northern side of the palace, which was coterminous with the northern boundary of the city.
The south-eastern corner of the Greater Palace was located in the middle of the present-day Nijō Castle.
## History
### Early history
Less than ten years after a presumably politically motivated move of the capital from Heijō-kyō (平城京) (on the site of present-day Nara) to Nagaoka-kyō (長岡京) (approx. 10 kilometers to the south-west of Kyoto), Emperor Kanmu decided to move the capital again, likely due to frequent flooding of the Nagaoka-kyō site. In 794 the court moved into this new capital of Heian-kyō, where it was to stay for more than 1000 years. The palace was the first and most important structure to be erected at the new capital, but it was not completely ready by the time of the move; the Great Audience Hall (大極殿, Daigokuden) was completed in 795, and the government office in charge of its construction was disbanded in 805, though work on the place was still incomplete. Construction of the palace and imperial family residences was a major expenditure for Kanmu's administration, accounting for the majority of revenues gathered during his reign, according to a 10th-century source. The powerful immigrant Hata family may have influenced and financially supported the decision to move the capital to Heian-kyō, closer to its power base. Later sources claim that the new imperial residence occupied the site of a former Hata leader's residence.
Two of the most important official sections of the palace complex, the grand Chinese-style Official Compound (朝堂院, Chōdō-in) and Reception Compound (豊楽院, Buraku-in), started to fall into disuse quite early on. This paralleled the decline of the elaborate Chinese-inspired ritsuryō government processes and bureaucracy, many of which were gradually either abandoned or reduced to empty forms while de facto decision making moved into the hands of most powerful families (in particular the Fujiwara) and new extralegal offices (such as Chamberlain's Office (蔵人所, Kurōdodokoro), see below). Pertly as the consequence of these developments the real administrative centre of the complex moved gradually to the emperors residential Inner Palace, or Dairi.
As activity was concentrated in the Dairi, other sections of the Greater Palace began to be regarded as increasingly unsafe, especially by night. One reason may be the prevalent superstition of the period: uninhabited buildings were avoided for fear of spirits and ghosts, and even the great Buraku-in compound was thought to be haunted. In addition, the level of security maintained at the palace went into decline, and by the early 11th century only one palace gate, the Yōmeimon in the east, appears to have been guarded. Hence burglary and even violent crime became a problem within the palace by the first half of 11th century.
### Decreasing use
Fires were a constant problem as the palace compound was constructed almost entirely of wood. The Buraku-in was destroyed by a fire in 1063 and was never rebuilt. The Daigokuden was reconstructed after fires in 876, 1068 and in 1156 despite its limited use. After the major fire of 1177 destroyed much of the Greater Palace, the Daigokuden was never rebuilt.
Starting in 960, the Dairi was also repeatedly destroyed by fires, but it was always rebuilt, and it continued to be used as the official imperial residence until the late 12th century. According to historian William H. McCullough, the Dairi fires were frequent enough that arson is "generally assumed". During the periods of rebuilding, the emperors frequently had to stay at their secondary palaces (里内裏, sato-dairi) within the city. Often these secondary palaces were provided by the powerful Fujiwara family, which especially in the latter part of the Heian period exercised de facto control of politics by providing consorts to successive emperors. Thus the residences of the emperors' maternal grandparents started to usurp the residential role of the palace even before the end of the Heian period. The institution of rule by retired emperors, or the insei system (cloistered rule (院政)), from 1086 further added to the declining importance of the palace, as retired emperors exercised power from their own residential palaces inside and outside the city.
### Late history
In the aftermath of the 1156 Hōgen rebellion, Emperor Go-Shirakawa ordered the rebuilding of portions of the palace as part of an effort to reclaim more power to the emperor and restart some ceremonial practices. Go-Shirakawa soon abdicated in favor of his son, Emperor Nijo, and both were attacked and held captive in the palace during the Heiji rebellion. They escaped a few weeks later, and forces loyal to them retook the palace and ended the rebellion.
After a fire in 1177, the original palace complex was abandoned and emperors resided in smaller palaces (the former sato-dairi) within the city and villas outside it. In 1227 a fire destroyed what remained of the Dairi, and the old Greater Palace went into essentially complete disuse. In 1334 Emperor Go-Daigo issued an edict to rebuild the Greater Palace, but no resources were available to support this and the project was not completed.
Though the Heian palace fell into total disuse, Heian-kyō remained the capital until 1868, with the name Kyoto (meaning capital city) applied to it starting in the eleventh century. The present Kyoto Imperial Palace is located immediately to the west of the site of the Tsuchimikado Mansion (土御門殿, Tsuchimikadodono), the Fujiwara residence in the north-eastern corner of the city that increasingly functioned as a temporary imperial residence and eventually developed into new permanent palace. The ruined site of Jingi-kan (the government department responsible for worship of the native kami) is the longest-surviving known part of the Heian palace and apparently remained in some use until 1585.
## Primary sources
While the palace itself has been completely destroyed, a significant amount of information regarding it has been obtained from contemporary and almost contemporary sources. The Heian Palace figures as a setting in many Heian period literary texts, both fiction and non-fiction. These provide important information on the palace itself, court ceremonies and functions held there and everyday routines of the courtiers living or working there. Notable examples include the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, the so-called Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon and the chronicles Eiga Monogatari and Ōkagami. In addition, paintings in certain emakimono picture scrolls depict (sometimes fictional) scenes that took place at the palace and similar aristocratic dwellings; the Genji Monogatari Emaki, dating from about 1130, is perhaps the best-known example. There are also partially damaged maps of the palace from the 10th and 12th centuries showing the layout and function of the buildings within the Dairi. Modern archaeological study of the palace site has been hampered by the development of urban Kyoto over the palace ground ruins, but a few parts have been excavated, including the Burakuden.
## Greater Palace (Daidairi)
The Daidairi was a walled rectangular area extending approximately 1.4 kilometres (0.87 mi) from north to south between the first and second major east–west avenues Ichijō ōji (一条大路) and Nijō ōji (二条大路) and 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mi) from west to east between the Nishi Ōmiya ōji (西大宮大路) and Ōmiya ōji (大宮大路) north-south avenues. The three main structures within the Greater Palace were the Official Compound (朝堂院, Chōdō-in), the Reception Compound (豊楽院, Buraku-in) and the Inner Palace (内裏, Dairi).
### Chōdō-in
The Chōdō-in was a rectangular walled enclosure situated directly to the north of the Suzakumon gate in the centre of the southern wall of the Greater Palace. It was based on Chinese models and followed Chinese architectural styles. Archaeological evidence from earlier capital palaces shows a generally stable design from the 7th century onwards. It was also called the Court of the Eight Ministries (八省院, Hasshō-in) as the corresponding compounds of the earlier Naniwa-kyō and Nagaoka-kyō palaces, which had eight halls in the central courtyard; however, as the Heian Palace compound had 12 halls, the traditional name was somewhat misleading, and the more accurate Court of the Twelve Halls (十二堂院, Jūnidō-in) was also used.
Originally the Chōdō-in was intended as the setting where the emperor was to preside over regular early morning deliberations on major state affairs by the bureaucracy, receive monthly reports from officials, hold New Year congratulations and receive foreign ambassadors. However, the practice of the morning deliberations ceased by 810 as did the monthly reports. Foreign ambassadors were no longer received for most of the Heian period, and the New Year celebrations were abbreviated and moved into the Dairi by the end of the 10th century, leaving the Accession Audiences (where the accession of a new emperor was proclaimed to the wider officialdom) and certain Buddhist ceremonials as the only ones held in the Chōdō-in.
#### Daigokuden
The main building within the Chōdō-in was the Great Audience Hall (大極殿, Daigokuden), which faced south from the northern end of the compound. This was a large (approximately 52 m (170 ft) east to west and 20 m (65 ft) north to south) Chinese-style building with white walls, vermilion pillars and green tiled roofs, intended for most important state ceremonies and functions. The smaller southern section of the Chōdō-in consisted of waiting rooms for senior officials, while the largest middle section of the compound was occupied by a courtyard surrounded symmetrically by the Twelve Halls, where the bureaucracy assembled for court ceremonies and was seated according to strict order of precedence. The Heian Jingū shrine in Kyoto includes an apparently faithful reconstruction of the Daigokuden in somewhat reduced scale.
### Buraku-in
The Buraku-in was another large rectangular Chinese-style compound, situated to the west of the Chōdō-in. It was built for official celebrations and banquets and used also for other types of entertainment such as archery contests. Like the Chōdō-in, the Buraku-in had a hall at the central northern end of the enclosure overseeing the court. This hall, the Burakuden (豊楽殿, Hall of Abundant Pleasures), was used by the emperor and courtiers presiding over activities in the Buraku-in. The Buraku-in also fell gradually into disuse as many functions were moved to the Dairi. It was destroyed in at 1063 and not rebuilt. Unlike most of the palace, the Buraku-in site was subjected to some archaeological excavations in the twentieth century.
### Other Greater Palace buildings
Apart from the Inner Palace, the remaining area of the Greater Palace was occupied by ministries, lesser offices, workshops, storage buildings and the large open space of the Banqueting Pine Grove (宴の松原, En no Matsubara) to the west of the Dairi. The buildings of the Council of State (太政官, Daijōkan) were situated in a walled enclosure immediately to the east of the Chōdō-in, laid out in the typical symmetrical plan of buildings opening to a courtyard in the south. The Shingon-in (真言院, Shingon Chapel) was built right next to the Inner Palace and used for ceremonies held on the emperor's behalf. Apart from Tō-ji and Sai-ji, it was the only Buddhist establishment permitted within the capital. Permission to build it inside the palace, granted in 834, shows the influence of the Shingon sect during the early Heian Period.
## Inner Palace (Dairi)
The Dairi, or Inner Palace, was located to the north-east of the Chōdō-in somewhat to the east of the central north-south axis of the Greater Palace. Its central feature was the Throne Hall. The Dairi encompassed the emperor's living quarters and the pavilions of the imperial consorts and ladies-in-waiting (collectively, the Kōkyū). It was enclosed within two sets of walls. In addition to the Dairi itself, the outer walls enclosed some household offices, storage areas, and the Chūwain (中和院)—a walled area of Shinto buildings associated with the emperor's religious functions, situated to the west of the Dairi itself, at the geographic centre of the Greater Palace. The formal entrance to the larger enclosure was the gate Kenreimon (建礼門), located directly south of the Dairi.
The Dairi proper, the residential compound of the emperor, was enclosed within another set of walls to the east of the Chūwain. It measured approximately 215 m (710 ft) north to south and 170 m (560 ft) east to west. The main gate was the Shōmeimon gate (承明門) at the centre of the southern wall of the Dairi enclosure, immediately to the north of the Kenreimon gate. In contrast to the solemn, official, Chinese-style architecture of the Chōdō-in and the Buraku-in, the Dairi was built in a more intimate Japanese architectural style—though still on a grand scale. The Inner Palace represented a variant of the shinden-style architecture used in the aristocratic villas and houses of the period. The buildings, with unpainted surfaces and gabled and shingled cypress bark roofs, were raised on elevated wooden platforms and connected to each other with covered and uncovered slightly elevated passages. Between the buildings and passages were gravel yards and small gardens.
### Shishinden
The largest building of the Dairi was the Throne Hall (紫宸殿, Shishinden), a building reserved for official functions. It was a rectangular hall measuring approximately 30 m (98 ft) east to west and 25 m (82 ft) north to south. Along with its accompanying rectangular courtyard, the Shishinden was situated along the median north-south axis of the Dairi, facing the Shōmeimon gate. A tachibana orange tree and a cherry tree stood symmetrically on both sides of the front staircase of the building. The courtyard was flanked on both sides by smaller halls connected to the Shishinden, creating the same configuration of buildings (influenced by Chinese examples) that was found in the aristocratic shinden-style villas of the period.
The Shishinden was used for official functions and ceremonies that were not held at the Daigokuden of the Chōdō-in complex. It took over much of the intended use of the larger and more formal building from an early date, as the daily business of government ceased to be conducted in the presence of the emperor in the Daigokuden already at the beginning of the ninth century. Connected to this diminishing reliance on the official government procedures described in the ritsuryō code was the establishment of a personal secretariat to the emperor, the Chamberlain's Office (蔵人所, Kurōdodokoro). This office, which increasingly took over the role of coordinating the work of government organs, was set up in the Kyōshōden (校書殿), the hall to the south-west of the Shishinden.
### Residences
To the north of the Shishinden stood the Jijūden (仁寿殿), a similarly constructed hall of somewhat smaller size that was originally intended to function as the emperor's living quarters. Beginning in the ninth century, the emperors often chose to reside in other buildings of the Dairi. A third smaller hall, the Shōkyōden (承香殿) was located next to the north along the main axis of the Dairi. It faced a garden in the north and was used for flower-viewing and other banquets before becoming residential space for imperial consorts in the 10th century. It also housed the editorial team of the first imperial waka poetry collection Kokinshū.
After the Dairi was rebuilt following a fire in 960, the regular residence of the emperors moved to the smaller Seiryōden (清涼殿), an east-facing building located immediately to the north-west from Shishinden. Gradually the Seiryōden began to be used increasingly for meetings as well, with emperors spending much of their time in this part of the palace. The busiest part of the building was the Courtiers' Hall (殿上間, Tenjōnoma), where high-ranking nobles came to meet in the presence of the emperor.
### Other Inner Palace buildings
The empress and other official and unofficial imperial consorts were also housed in the Dairi, occupying buildings in the northern part of the enclosure. The most prestigious buildings, housing the empress and the official consorts, were the ones that had appropriate locations for such use according to the Chinese design principles – the Kokiden (弘徽殿), the Reikeiden (麗景殿) and the Jōneiden (常寧殿) – as well as the ones closest to the imperial residence in the Seiryōden (the Kōryōden (後涼殿) and the Fujitsubo (藤壷)). Lesser consorts and ladies-in-waiting as well as occasionally some of the crown prince's consorts occupied other buildings of the Dairi further away from the emperor's quarters, i.e., towards north-east. A famous fictional depiction of the spatial status hierarchy concerns the eponymous character's low-ranking mother in The Tale of Genji. However, such distinctions were apparently not always strict.
One of the Imperial Regalia of Japan, the emperor's replica of the sacred mirror, was housed in the Unmeiden hall (温明殿) of the Dairi. The present-day Kyoto Imperial Palace, located in what was the north-eastern corner of Heian-kyō, reproduces much of the Heian-period Dairi.
## See also
- Architecture of Japan
- Heian period
- Kyoto Imperial Palace
|
8,861,687 |
Year Zero (album)
| 1,172,965,105 | null |
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"2007 albums",
"Albums produced by Atticus Ross",
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"Nine Inch Nails albums",
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Year Zero is the fifth studio album by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released by Interscope Records on April 17, 2007. Conceived while touring in support of the band's previous album, With Teeth (2005), the album was recorded in late 2006. It was produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and was the band's first studio album since 1994's The Downward Spiral that was not co-produced by long-time collaborator Alan Moulder. It was the band's last album for Interscope, following Reznor's departure the same year due to a dispute regarding overseas pricing.
In contrast to the introspective style of songwriting featured on the band's previous work, the record is a concept album that criticizes contemporary policies of the United States government by presenting a dystopian vision of the year 2022. It was part of a larger Year Zero project, which included a remix album, an alternate reality game of the same name, as well as a conceived television or film adaptation. The game expanded upon the album's storyline, using websites, pre-recorded phone messages, murals, among other media in promotion of the project. The album was promoted by two singles: "Survivalism" and "Capital G".
Year Zero received positive reviews from critics, who complimented its concept and production, as well as the accompanying alternate reality game. The album reached number 2 in the United States, number 6 in the United Kingdom, and the top 10 in some other countries.
## Recording
In a 2005 interview with Kerrang!, Trent Reznor raised his intentions to write material for a new release while on tour promoting With Teeth. He reportedly began work on the new album by September 2006. Reznor devised much of the album's musical direction on his laptop. Reznor told Kerrang! in a later interview, "When I was on the Live: With Teeth tour, to keep myself busy I just really hunkered down and was working on music the whole time, so this kept me in a creative mode and when I finished the tour I felt like I wasn't tired and wanted to keep at it."
The limitations of devising the album's musical direction on a tour bus forced Reznor to work differently from usual. Reznor said, "I didn't have guitars around because it was too much hassle ... It was another creative limitation ... If I were in my studio, I would have done things the way I normally do them. But not having the ability to do that forced me into trying some things that were fun to do."
By the end of the tour, Reznor began work on the album's lyrical concepts, attempting to break away from his typically introspective approach. Reznor drew inspiration from his concern at the state of affairs in the United States and at what he envisioned as the country's political, spiritual, and social direction. Year Zero was mixed in January 2007, and Reznor stated on his blog that the album was finished as of February 5. The album's budget was a reported US\$2 million, but since Reznor composed most of the album himself on his laptop and in his home-studio, much of the budget instead went toward the extensive accompanying promotional campaign.
A song cut from the album included vocal work by Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme. The same year, Reznor contributed vocals to their song "Era Vulgaris", which was also cut from the album of the same name.
## Composition
The album's music features the styles of industrial rock, electro-industrial, electronic, and digital hardcore. Reznor called Year Zero a "shift in direction" in that it "doesn't sound like With Teeth". He also said that when he finishes a new album, he has to "go into battle with the people whose job it is to figure out how to sell the record. The only time that didn't happen was [for] With Teeth. This time, however, [he was] expecting an epic struggle. [Year Zero] is not a particularly friendly record and it certainly doesn't sound like anything else out there right now."
Fifteen original tracks were considered for inclusion on the album, which Reznor described as "Highly conceptual. Quite noisy. Fucking cool." Reznor also described the album as a "collage of sound type of thing", citing musical inspiration from early Public Enemy records, specifically the production techniques of The Bomb Squad. Most of Year Zero's musical elements were created by Reznor solely on his laptop, as opposed to the instrument-heavy With Teeth. AllMusic's review described the album's laptop-mixed sound: "guitars squall against glitches, beeps, pops, and blotches of blurry sonic attacks. Percussion looms large, distorted, organic, looped, screwed, spindled and broken." Many reviews of the album compared the album's electronic sound to earlier Nine Inch Nails releases such as The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, while contrasting its heavily modified sounds to the more "organic" approach of With Teeth. Many critics also commented on the album's overall tone, including descriptions such as "lots of silver and grey ambience [sic]" and reference to the album's "oblique tone". The New York Times review described the album's sound by saying "Hard beats are softened with distortion, static cushions the tantrums, sneaky bass lines float beneath the surface." The article went on to describe individual tracks: "And as usual the music is packed with details: "Meet Your Master" goes through at least three cycles of decay and rebirth; part of the fun of "The Warning" is tracking the ever-mutating timbres."
Many of the songs on the album feature an extended instrumental ending, which encompasses the entire second half of the three-minute long "The Great Destroyer". The album was co-produced by Reznor and Atticus Ross, mixed by long-time collaborator Alan Moulder, and mastered by Brian Gardner. The album features instrumental contributions by live band member Josh Freese and vocals by Saul Williams.
## Themes
Nine Inch Nails' 2006 tour merchandise designs featured overt references to the United States military, which Reznor said "reflect[ed] future directions". Reznor later described Year Zero as "the soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist". The album criticizes the American government's policies, and "could be about the end of the world". Reznor specifically cited what he labeled as the "erosion of freedoms" and "the way that we treat the rest of the world and our own citizens". Reznor had previously called the results of the 2004 US election "one step closer to the end of the world."
Even though the fictional story begins in January 2007, the timeline of the album and alternate reality game mentions historical events, such as the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War. From there, fictional events lead to worldwide chaos, including bioterrorism attacks, the United States engaging in nuclear war with Iran, and the elimination of American civil liberties at the hands of the fictional government agency The Bureau of Morality. Regardless of being fictional, a columnist of the Hartford Courant commented, "What's scary is that this doesn't seem as far-fetched as it should, given recent revelations about the FBI's abuse of the Patriot Act and the dissent-equals-disloyalty double-speak coming out of Washington in recent years."
## Artwork
All of the artwork for Year Zero was created by Rob Sheridan, art director for Nine Inch Nails, who is also credited for artwork on With Teeth, among other Nine Inch Nails releases since 2000. The album features a thermo-chrome heat-sensitive CD face which appears black when first opened, but reveals a black binary code on a white background when heat is generated from the album being played. The binary sequence translates to "exterminal.net", the address of a website involved in the alternate reality game. Reznor displayed displeasure at the extra dollars added to the CD's price in Australia for the thermo-coating.
Included with the album is a small insert that is a warning from the fictional United States Bureau of Morality (USBM), with a phone number to report people who have "engaged in subversive acts". When the number is called, a recording from the USBM is played, claiming "By calling this number, you and your family are implicitly pleading guilty to the consumption of anti-American media and have been flagged as potential militants."
It was named one of the best album covers of 2007 by Rolling Stone.
## Promotion
While work continued on the album, Reznor hinted in an interview that it was "part of a bigger picture of a number of things I'm working on". In February 2007 fans discovered that a new Nine Inch Nails tour t-shirt contained highlighted letters that spelled out the words "I am trying to believe". This phrase was registered as a website URL, and soon several related websites were also discovered in the IP range, all describing a dystopian vision of the fictional "Year 0". It was later reported that 42 Entertainment had created these websites to promote Year Zero as part of an alternate reality game.
The Year Zero story takes place in the United States in the year 2022; or "Year 0" according to the American government, being the year that America was reborn. The United States has suffered several major terrorist attacks, and in response the government has seized absolute control on the country and reverted to a Christian fundamentalist theocracy. The government maintains control of the populace through institutions such as the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano, as well as increased surveillance and the secret drugging of tap water with a mild sedative. In response to the increasing oppression of the government, several corporate, government, and subversive websites were transported back in time to the present by a group of scientists working clandestinely against the authoritarian government. The websites-from-the-future were sent to the year 2007 to warn the American people of the impending dystopian future and to prevent it from ever forming in the first place.
The Year Zero game consisted of an expansive series of websites, phone numbers, e-mails, videos, MP3s, murals, and other media that expanded upon the fictional storyline of the album. Each new piece of media contained various hints and clues to discover the next, relying on fan participation to discover each new facet of the expanding game. Rolling Stone described the fan involvement in this promotion as the "marketing team's dream". Reznor, however, argued that "marketing" was an inaccurate description of the game, and that it was "not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record – it is the art form".
Part of this promotional campaign involved USB drives that were left in concert venues for fans to find during Nine Inch Nails' 2007 European tour. During a concert in Lisbon, Portugal, a USB flash drive was found in a bathroom stall containing a high-quality MP3 of the track "My Violent Heart", a song from the then-unreleased album. Another USB drive was found at a concert in Barcelona, Spain, containing the track "Me, I'm Not". Messages found on the drives and tour clothing led to additional websites and images from the game, and the early release of several unheard songs from the album. Following the discovery of the USB drives, the high-quality audio files quickly circulated the internet. Owners of websites hosting the files soon received cease and desist orders from the Recording Industry Association of America, despite Interscope having sanctioned the viral campaign and the early release of the tracks. Reznor told The Guardian:
> The USB drive was simply a mechanism of leaking the music and data we wanted out there. The medium of the CD is outdated and irrelevant. It's really painfully obvious what people want – DRM-free music they can do what they want with. If the greedy record industry would embrace that concept I truly think people would pay for music and consume more of it.
On February 22, 2007 a teaser trailer was released through the official Year Zero website. It featured a quick glimpse of a blue road sign that said "I AM TRYING TO BELIEVE", as well as a distorted glimpse of "The Presence" from the album cover. One frame in the teaser led fans to a URL containing the complete album cover. In March, the multitrack audio files of Year Zero's first single, "Survivalism", were released in GarageBand format for fan remixing. The multitrack files for "Capital G", "My Violent Heart" and "Me, I'm Not" were released the following month, and files for "The Beginning of the End", "Vessel" and "God Given" were released on the month after that. In response to an early leak of the album, the entire album became available for streaming on Nine Inch Nails' MySpace page a week before the album's official release.
### Tour
After taking a break from touring to complete work on Year Zero, the Nine Inch Nails live band embarked on a world tour in 2007 dubbed Performance 2007. The tour included the band's first performance in China. Reznor continued to tour with the same band he concluded the previous tour with: Aaron North, Jeordie White, Josh Freese, and Alessandro Cortini. The tour spanned 91 dates across Europe, Asia, Australia, and Hawaii.
Between tour legs Nine Inch Nails gave a performance as part of the Year Zero game. A small group of fans received fictional in-game telephone-calls that invited them to a "resistance meeting" in a Los Angeles parking lot. Those who arrived were given "resistance kits", some of which contained cellphones that would later inform the participants of further details. After receiving instructions from the cellphones, fans who attended a fictional Art is Resistance meeting in Los Angeles were rewarded with an unannounced performance by Nine Inch Nails. The concert was cut short as the meeting was raided by a fictional SWAT team and the audience was rushed out of the building.
## Release
Upon its release in April 2007, Year Zero sold over 187,000 copies in its first week. The album reached number two on the Billboard 200 and peaked in the top 10 in six other countries, including Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. The album's lead single, "Survivalism" peaked at number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100, and topped the Modern Rock and Canadian singles charts. The second single, "Capital G", reached number six on the Modern Rock chart.
In a post on the official Nine Inch Nails website, Reznor condemned Universal Music Group – the parent company of Interscope Records – for its pricing and distribution plans for Year Zero. He wrote that he hated Interscope for setting the price of the album higher than usual, humorously labeling the company's retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia as "ABSURD", [sic] and concluding that "as a reward for being a 'true fan' you get ripped off." Reznor went on to say in later years the "climate" of record labels may have an increasingly ambivalent impact on consumers who buy music. Reznor's post, specifically his criticism of the recording industry at large, elicited considerable media attention. Reznor continued his attack on Universal Music Group during a September 2007 concert in Australia, where he urged fans to "steal" his music online instead of purchasing it legally. Reznor went on to encourage the crowd to "steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'." Although Universal never replied publicly to the criticism, a spokesperson for the Australian Music Retailers Association said "It is the same price in Australia as it is in the US because of the extra packaging." Due to the pricing dispute, plans to release a "Capital G" maxi-single in Europe were scrapped. The track was instead released as a limited-edition single, without a "Halo number", unlike most official Nine Inch Nails releases.
Year Zero was the last Nine Inch Nails studio album released on Interscope. Reznor announced in October 2007 that Nine Inch Nails had fulfilled its contractual commitments to Interscope and could proceed "free of any recording contract with any label", effectively ending the band's relationship with its record label.
### Related projects
A remix album, titled Year Zero Remixed, was released in November 2007. Due to the expiration of his contract with Interscope Records, the album's release, marketing, and promotion were completely in Reznor's control. The album features remixes from artists including The Faint, Ladytron, Bill Laswell, Saul Williams, Olof Dreijer of The Knife, and Sam Fogarino of Interpol. Reznor himself strongly supports fan-made remixes of songs from the album, as evidenced by his decision to upload every song in multi-track form to the then-newly launched Nine Inch Nails remix website. Instrumental versions of the songs on Year Zero are available at the site for download in multiple formats, including MP3, WAV, GarageBand, and Ableton Live formats.
A planned film adaption of Year Zero became a television project in 2007. Reznor met with various writers and pitched the idea to television networks. The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike affected the pre-production stage. Nevertheless, Reznor commented in 2008 that the project is "still churning along", and that he had begun working with American film producer Lawrence Bender. In 2010, Reznor started developing the Year Zero miniseries with HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions. Reznor and Bender collaborated with Carnivàle writer Daniel Knauf to create the science fiction epic. When asked about the miniseries during an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit on November 13, 2012, Reznor said it was "currently in a holding state" and explained, "We [Reznor and Sheridan] didn't find the right match with a writer, and really have been avoiding doing what we should have done from the beginning: write it ourselves. [...] This project means a lot to me and will see the light of day in one form or another." In 2017, during an interview promoting new Nine Inch Nails EP Add Violence, Reznor said that "They got so far as hiring a writer for it, but then it fell to shit because we never had the right writer. I should have just done it [myself]."
## Critical reception
Year Zero received generally favorable reviews from music critics, with an average rating of 76% based on 28 reviews on review aggregator Metacritic. Robert Christgau described Year Zero as Reznor's "most songful album", while Thomas Inskeep of Stylus magazine praised it as "one of the most forward-thinking 'rock' albums to come down the pike in some time". Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone called the album Reznor's "strongest, weirdest and most complex record since The Downward Spiral", and concluded that "he's got his bravado back." Rolling Stone ranked it at number 21 on its "Top 50 Albums of 2007" list.
Several reviewers also commented on the accompanying alternate reality game. Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times, praised the album and game concept as "a total marriage of the pop and gamer aesthetics that unlocks the rusty cages of the music industry and solves some key problems facing rock music as its cultural dominance dissolves into dust." In relation to the declining music industry, Joseph Jaffe of Brandweek commented that such "mysterious marketing measures [...] are what's desperately needed to gain attention in this uncertain era of distribution dilemmas and sagging sales", also commending acts such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead for being "more innovative than marketers". Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+, comparing it to The X-Files and calling it "A sci-fi concept album whose end-of-days, paranoia-drenched storyline has been disseminated via the Internet". It also stated: "Amid its carefully calibrated sonic assaults, Year Zero has a number of tracks that will stop you in yours. Sometimes, it's a matter of dropping the volume [...] Even his use of electronics has shifted to a new level [...] Is the truth in here? Dunno, but Reznor's claim that 'I got my violence in high def ultra-realism' sounds like gospel to us."
On the fictional world depicted in the album and promotional campaign, the Cleveland Free Times commented that the album's fictionalized world and characters "often seemed heavy-handed and forced", but also conceded that "its clotted claustrophobia suited its subject matter". Ann Powers added, "The songs on 'Year Zero,' each from the perspective of a character or characters already existent in the ARG, draw a connection between the music fan's passionate identification with songs and the gamer's experience of becoming someone else online." In 2008, 42 Entertainment won two Webby Awards for its work on the Year Zero game, in the categories of "Integrated Campaigns" and "Other Advertising: Branded Content".
## Track listing
## Personnel
- Trent Reznor – vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, programming, production
- William Artope – trumpet (7)
- Matt Demeritt – tenor sax (7)
- Josh Freese – drums (1, 7)
- Jeff/Geoff Gallegos – brass / winds musical arrangement, baritone sax (7)
- Brian Gardner – mastering
- Elizabeth Lea – trombone (7)
- Alan Moulder – mix engineering
- Atticus Ross – production, sound design
- Doug Trantow – recording engineering
- Alan Mason – recording engineering
- Saul Williams – backing vocals (3, 6)
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
|
71,966 |
Nine Inch Nails
| 1,173,300,113 |
American industrial rock band
|
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"Grammy Award winners",
"Industrial rock musical groups",
"Interscope Records artists",
"Kerrang! Awards winners",
"Musical groups established in 1988",
"Musical groups from Cleveland",
"Nine Inch Nails",
"Nothing Records artists",
"Obscenity controversies in music",
"One-man bands",
"Rock music duos",
"Rock music groups from Ohio",
"Rykodisc artists",
"TVT Records artists"
] |
Nine Inch Nails, commonly abbreviated as NIN and stylized as NIИ, is an American industrial rock band formed in Cleveland in 1988. Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Trent Reznor was the only permanent member of the band until his frequent collaborator, Atticus Ross, joined in 2016. The band's debut album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989), was released via TVT Records. After disagreeing with TVT about how to promote the album, the band signed with Interscope Records and released the EP Broken (1992). The following albums, The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999), were released to critical acclaim and commercial success.
Following a hiatus, Nine Inch Nails resumed touring in 2005 and released the album With Teeth (2005). Following the release of the album Year Zero (2007), the band left Interscope after a feud. Nine Inch Nails continued touring and independently released Ghosts I–IV (2008) and The Slip (2008) before a second hiatus. Their eighth album, Hesitation Marks (2013), was followed by a trilogy which consisted of the EPs Not the Actual Events (2016) and Add Violence (2017) and their ninth album Bad Witch (2018). In 2020, Nine Inch Nails simultaneously released two further installments in the Ghosts series: Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts.
When touring, Reznor typically assembles a live band to perform with him under the Nine Inch Nails name. This live band has varied over the decades, with various members leaving and returning; the most recent lineup consists of Robin Finck (who initially joined in 1994), Alessandro Cortini (who initially joined in 2005), and Ilan Rubin (who initially joined in 2009) alongside Reznor and Ross. The band's concerts are noted for their extensive use of thematic visual elements, complex special effects, and elaborate lighting. Songs are often rearranged to fit any given performance, and melodies or lyrics of songs that are not scheduled to be performed are sometimes assimilated into other songs.
Nine Inch Nails have sold over 20 million records and been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, winning for the songs "Wish" in 1992 and "Happiness in Slavery" in 1996. Time magazine named Reznor one of its most influential people in 1997, while Spin magazine has described him as "the most vital artist in music". In 2004, Rolling Stone placed Nine Inch Nails at No. 94 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. Nine Inch Nails were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, after being nominated in 2014 (their first year of eligibility) and again in 2015.
## History
### Formation (1987–1988)
While living in Cleveland in 1987, Trent Reznor played keyboards in the Exotic Birds, a synthpop band managed by John Malm Jr. Reznor became friends with Malm, who informally became his manager when he left to work on his own music. At the time, Reznor was employed as an assistant engineer and janitor at Right Track Studios. Studio owner Bart Koster granted Reznor free access to the studio between bookings to record demos, commenting that it cost him nothing more than "a little wear on [his] tape heads". Unable to find a band that could articulate the material as he desired, Reznor was inspired by Prince to play all instruments himself except drums, which he programmed electronically. He has continued to play most parts on Nine Inch Nails recordings ever since.
The first Nine Inch Nails performance took place at the Phantasy Theater in Lakewood, Ohio, on October 21, 1988. Soon after, following their live support of Skinny Puppy, Reznor aimed to release one 12-inch single on a small European label. Several labels responded favorably to the demo material and Reznor signed with TVT Records. Nine demos, recorded live in November 1988 and collectively known as Purest Feeling, were released in revised form on the first studio album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989). The overall sound on Purest Feeling is lighter than that of Pretty Hate Machine; several songs contain more live drumming and guitar, as well as a heavier use of film samples.
Reznor chose the name "Nine Inch Nails" because it "abbreviated easily" rather than for "any literal meaning". Other rumored explanations have circulated, alleging that Reznor chose to reference Jesus' crucifixion with nine-inch spikes, or Freddy Krueger's nine-inch fingernails. The Nine Inch Nails logo first appeared on the music video for their debut single, "Down in It". Reznor and Gary Talpas designed the logo, inspired by Tibor Kalman's typography on the Talking Heads album Remain in Light. The logo features the band's initials, with the second N mirrored. Talpas, a native of Cleveland, continued to design Nine Inch Nails packaging until 1997.
### Pretty Hate Machine (1988–1991)
Written, arranged, and performed by Reznor, Nine Inch Nails' first album Pretty Hate Machine debuted in 1989. It marked his first collaboration with Adrian Sherwood (who produced the lead single "Down in It" in London without meeting Reznor face-to-face) and Mark "Flood" Ellis. Reznor asked Sean Beavan to mix the demos of Pretty Hate Machine, which had received multiple offers for record deals. He mixed sound during Nine Inch Nails' live concerts for several years, eventually becoming an unofficial member of the live band and singing live backup vocals from his place at the mixing console. Flood's production would appear on each major Nine Inch Nails release until 1994, and Sherwood has made remixes for the band as recently as 2000. Reznor and his co-producers expanded upon the Right Track Studio demos by adding singles "Head Like a Hole" and "Sin". Rolling Stone's Michael Azerrad described the album as "industrial-strength noise over a pop framework" and "harrowing but catchy music"; Reznor proclaimed this combination "a sincere statement" of "what was in [his] head at the time". In fact, the song "Down in It" spent over two months on Billboard's club-play dance chart. After spending 113 weeks on the Billboard 200, Pretty Hate Machine became one of the first independently released records to attain platinum certification.
Three music videos were created in promotion of the album. MTV aired the videos for "Down in It" and "Head Like a Hole", but an explicit video for "Sin" was only released in partial form for Closure. The original version of the "Down in It" video ended with the implication that Reznor's character had fallen off a building and died in the street. This footage attracted the attention of the FBI.
In 1989, while doing promotion for the album, the band members were asked what shows they would like to appear on. They jokingly replied (possibly while intoxicated) that they would like to appear on Dance Party USA, since it was the most absurd option they could think of at the time. Much to their surprise, they were booked on the show, and made an appearance.
In 1990, Nine Inch Nails began the Pretty Hate Machine Tour Series, in which it toured North America as an opening act for alternative rock artists such as Peter Murphy and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Reznor began smashing his equipment while on stage; Rockbeat interviewer Mike Gitter attributed the live band's early success in front of rock oriented audiences to this aggressive attitude. Nine Inch Nails then embarked on a world tour that continued through the first Lollapalooza festival in 1991.
### Broken (1992–1993)
After a poor European reception opening for Guns N' Roses, the band returned to the US amid pressure from TVT to produce a follow-up to Pretty Hate Machine. After finding out they were hindering control of his project, Reznor criticized the labeling of Nine Inch Nails as a commercially oriented band and demanded his label terminate his contract, but they ignored his plea. In response, Reznor secretly began recording under various pseudonyms to avoid record company interference. Involved in a feud with TVT, he signed a record deal with Interscope Records and created Nothing Records:
> We made it very clear we were not doing another record for TVT. But they made it pretty clear they weren't ready to sell. So I felt like, well, I've finally got this thing going but it's dead. Flood and I had to record Broken under a different band name, because if TVT found out we were recording, they could confiscate all our shit and release it. Jimmy Iovine got involved with Interscope, and we kind of got slave-traded. It wasn't my doing. I didn't know anything about Interscope. And I was real pissed off at him at first because it was going from one bad situation to potentially another one. But Interscope went into it like they really wanted to know what I wanted. It was good, after I put my raving lunatic act on.
In 1992, Nine Inch Nails relocated to 10050 Cielo Drive, Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles (renamed "Le Pig" by Reznor), the site of the Tate murders, when Charles Manson's "family" murdered Sharon Tate, wife of noted film director Roman Polanski, and four of her friends. The band used it to record Broken, an extended play (EP) that was the first Nine Inch Nails release distributed by Interscope Records and reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200. In the liner notes, Reznor credited the 1991 Nine Inch Nails touring band as an influence on the EP's sound. He characterized Broken as a guitar-based "blast of destruction", and as "a lot harder ... than Pretty Hate Machine". The inspiration for the harder sound came from the way the live band played during concerts such as Lollapalooza. Songs from Broken earned Nine Inch Nails two Grammy Awards: a performance of the EP's first single "Happiness in Slavery" from Woodstock '94, and the second single "Wish". In reference to receiving the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for "Wish", Reznor joked that "Wish" became "the only song to ever win a Grammy that says 'fist fuck' in the lyrics." Against touring of the brand new material, Reznor began living and recording full-time at Le Pig, working on a follow-up free of restrictions from his record label.
Peter Christopherson of the bands Coil and Throbbing Gristle directed a performance video for "Wish", but the EP's most controversial video accompanied "Happiness in Slavery". The video was almost universally banned for its graphic depiction of performance artist Bob Flanagan disrobed and lying on a machine that pleasures, tortures, then (apparently) kills him. A third video for "Pinion", partially incorporated into MTV's Alternative Nation opening sequence, showed a toilet that apparently flushes into the mouth of a person in bondage. Reznor and Christopherson compiled the three clips along with footage for "Help Me I Am in Hell" and "Gave Up" into a longform music video titled Broken. It depicts the murder of a young man who is kidnapped and tortured while forced to watch the videos. This footage was never officially released, but instead appeared covertly among tape trading circles. A separate performance video for "Gave Up" featuring Richard Patrick and Marilyn Manson was filmed at Le Pig. A live recording of "Wish" was also filmed, and both videos appeared in Closure.
Broken was followed by the companion remix EP Fixed in late 1992. The only track that was left off the final version of the release is the remix of "Last", produced by Butch Vig (the outro of the "Last" remix is heard in "Throw This Away", which also includes Reznor's remix of "Suck"). The unedited version appeared on the internet as an 8-bit mono 11 kHz file, "NIN_LAST.AIFF", available by FTP from cyberden.com in 1993; it has been removed from the website, but can still be found on p2p networks (Reznor subsequently made it available in higher quality (256kbit/s mp3) at remix.nin.com). Vig later spoke about his remix while answering questions on a music production forum, saying "I started recording a lot of new parts, and took it in a much different direction. When it was finished, Trent thought the front part of the mix didn't fit the EP, so he just used the ending. I'm glad it's on his website. Duke and Steve worked with me on the remix, in the very early days of Garbage."
### The Downward Spiral (1993–1997)
Early ideas for The Downward Spiral arose after the Lollapalooza 1991 festival's concerts ended in September. Reznor elaborated the album's themes into lyrics. Despite initially choosing to record the album in New Orleans, Reznor searched for and moved to 10050 Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles (known as the Manson Murder House) renting it for \$11,000 per month from July 4, 1992, the start of the making of both Broken and The Downward Spiral.
Nine Inch Nails' second studio album, The Downward Spiral, entered the Billboard 200 at number two, and is the band's highest seller in the US, over four million copies, among five million worldwide. Influenced by Pink Floyd and by David Bowie of the 1970s, The Downward Spiral's diverse textures and moods depict a protagonist's mental progress. Flood co-produced several tracks, while Alan Moulder mixed most, and later found more extensive production duties on future albums. Reznor invited Sean Beavan to work on The Downward Spiral. After contributing to remixes of Nine Inch Nails songs, such as "Closer", Beavan mixed and co-produced Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar in 1996. The Downward Spiral, alike Broken, was recorded at Le Pig Studios. "March of the Pigs" and "Closer" were singles. Two other tracks, "Hurt" and "Piggy", though not singles, were issued to radio. Also in 1994, the band released the promotional single "Burn", which Reznor produced, on the soundtrack of Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers. as well as a cover of the Joy Division song "Dead Souls" on the soundtrack to the film The Crow, which went to number 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
The music video for "Closer", directed by Mark Romanek, was in MTV's frequent rotation, although the network, deeming it too graphic, heavily censored the original. The video shows events in a laboratory dealing with religion, sexuality, animal cruelty, politics, and terror; controversial imagery included a nude bald woman with a crucifix mask, a monkey tied to a cross, a pig's head spinning on some type of machine, a diagram of a vulva, Reznor wearing an S&M mask while swinging in shackles, and of him wearing a ball gag. A radio edit that partially mutes the song's explicit lyrics also received extensive airtime.
Contemporary critics generally praised The Downward Spiral, now classed among the most important albums of the 1990s. In 2005, Spin ranked it 25th among the "100 Greatest Albums, 1985–2005". In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it 200 among "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Blender named it the 80th Greatest American Album. It was ranked No. 488 in the book The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time by Martin Popoff. In 2001 Q named The Downward Spiral as one of the 50 Heaviest Albums of All Time; in 2010 the album was ranked No. 102 on their 250 Best Albums of Q's Lifetime (1986–2011) list. After The Downward Spiral's release, Reznor produced an accompanying remix album entitled Further Down the Spiral, the only non-major Nine Inch Nails release to be certified gold in the United States and among the best-selling remix albums of all time. It contained contributions from Coil with Danny Hyde, electronic musician Aphex Twin, producer Rick Rubin, and Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, among others.
After The Downward Spiral's 1994 release, the live band supported it by embarking on the Self Destruct Tour. The stage set-up featured dirty curtains, rising and lowering for visuals shown during songs such as "Hurt". The tour debuted the band's grungy, messy image as the members appeared in ragged attire slathered in corn starch. Performances were violent and chaotic, band members often injuring themselves by attacking each other, diving into the crowd, and destroying their instruments to close. The widest mainstream audience was a mud-soaked performance at Woodstock '94, and seen by Pay-Per-View in up to 24 million homes. Enjoying mainstream success thereafter, Nine Inch Nails then performed amid greater production values, adding theatrical visual elements. Supporting acts on tour included the Jim Rose Circus and Marilyn Manson. Released in 1997, the Closure video documented highlights from the tour, including full live videos of "Eraser", "Hurt" and a one-take "March of the Pigs" clip directed by Peter Christoperson. In 1997 Reznor also produced the soundtrack to the David Lynch film Lost Highway, which featured one new Nine Inch Nails song, "The Perfect Drug". Around this time, Reznor's studio perfectionism, struggles with addiction, and bouts of writer's block prolonged the production of The Fragile.
### The Fragile (1998–2002)
Five years elapsed between The Downward Spiral and Nine Inch Nails' next studio album, The Fragile, which arrived as a double album in September 1999. The Fragile was conceived by making "songwriting and arranging and production and sound design ... the same thing. A song would start with a drum loop or a visual and eventually a song would emerge out of it and that was the song." Canadian rock producer Bob Ezrin was consulted on the album's track listing; the liner notes state that he "provided final continuity and flow."
On the heels of the band's previous successes, media anticipation surrounded The Fragile more than a year before its release, when it was already described as "oft-delayed". The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 228,000 copies in its first week and receiving generally positive reviews. Spin hailed The Fragile as the "album of the year", whereas Pitchfork Media panned its "melodramatic" lyrics. Nine Inch Nails released three commercial singles from the album in different territories: "The Day the World Went Away" in North America; "We're in This Together" in the EU and Japan (on three separate discs); and "Into the Void" in Australia. Several songs from the album became regulars on alternative rock radio stations, however the album dropped to number 16 and slipped out of the Billboard Top 10 only a week after its release, resulting in the band setting a record for the biggest drop from number one, which has since been broken. Reznor funded the subsequent North American tour out of his own pocket.
Before the album's release, the song "Starfuckers, Inc." provoked media speculation about whom Reznor had intended its acerbic lyrics to satirize. Cinesexuality critic Patricia MacCormack interprets the song as a "scathing attack on the alternative music scene," particularly Reznor's former friend and protégé Marilyn Manson. The two artists put aside their differences when Manson appeared in the song's music video, retitled "Starsuckers, Inc." and performed on stage with Nine Inch Nails at Madison Square Garden in 2000.
Reznor followed The Fragile with another remix album, Things Falling Apart, released in November 2000 to poor reviews, a few months after the 2000 Fragility tour which itself was recorded and released on CD, DVD, and VHS in 2002 as And All That Could Have Been. A deluxe edition of the live CD came with the companion disc Still, containing stripped-down versions of songs from the Nine Inch Nails catalog along with several new pieces of music.
During the Fragility 2.0 tour, Reznor suffered a heroin overdose in London in June 2000, forcing a gig which was to be played that night to be cancelled. The incident pushed Reznor into entering rehab, putting Nine Inch Nails on hold while he attempted to become sober.
In 2002, Johnny Cash covered the Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" for his album, American IV: The Man Comes Around, to critical acclaim. After seeing the music video, which later won a Grammy, Reznor himself became a fan of the rendition:
> I pop the video in, and wow ... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps ... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore ... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning—different, but every bit as pure.
### With Teeth (2004–2006)
A further six years elapsed before Nine Inch Nails' fourth full-length album. With Teeth was released in May 2005, though it was leaked prior to its official release date. The album was written and recorded throughout 2004 following Reznor's battle with alcoholism and substance abuse and legal issues with his former manager, John Malm Jr. With Teeth debuted on top of the Billboard 200, Nine Inch Nails' second reign at number one with an album. The album's package lacks typical liner notes; instead it simply lists the names of songs and co-producers, and the URL for an online PDF poster with lyrics and full credits. The entire album was made available in streaming audio on the band's official MySpace page in advance of its release date.
Critical reception of the album was mostly positive: Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield described the album as "vintage Nine Inch Nails". PopMatters condemned the album, claiming Reznor "ran out of ideas."
A music video for the song "The Hand That Feeds" premiered on the Nine Inch Nails official website in March 2005. Reznor released the source files for it in GarageBand format a month later, allowing fans to remix the song. He similarly released files for the album's second single "Only" in a wider range of formats, including Pro Tools and ACID Pro. David Fincher directed a video for "Only" with primarily computer-generated imagery. The planned music video for its third single, "Every Day Is Exactly the Same", was directed by Francis Lawrence but reportedly scrapped in the post-production stage. All three singles topped the Billboard Alternative Songs chart.
Nine Inch Nails launched a North American arena tour in Autumn 2005, supported by Queens of the Stone Age, Autolux and Death from Above 1979. Another opening act on the tour, hip-hop artist Saul Williams, performed on stage with Nine Inch Nails at the Voodoo Music Experience festival during a headlining appearance in hurricane-stricken New Orleans, Reznor's former home. The Nine Inch Nails live band completed a tour of North American amphitheaters in the summer of 2006, joined by Bauhaus, TV on the Radio, and Peaches. The Beside You in Time tour documentary was released in February 2007 via three formats: DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The home video release debuted at number one on both the Billboard Top Music Videos and Billboard Comprehensive Music Videos charts in the United States.
### Year Zero (2006–2007)
Nine Inch Nails' fifth studio album, Year Zero, was released on April 17, 2007, only two years after With Teeth, a marked change in the slow pace from the release of previous albums. With lyrics written from the perspective of multiple fictitious characters, Year Zero is a concept album criticizing the United States government's policies and their impact on the world 15 years in the future. Critical response to the album was generally favorable, with an average rating of 76% on Metacritic.
The story takes place in the United States in 2022, which has been termed "Year 0", by the government, being the year America was reborn. It had suffered several major terrorist attacks, apparently by Islamic fundamentalists, including attacks on Los Angeles and Seattle, and in response, the government seized absolute control of the country. The government is a Christian fundamentalist theocracy, maintaining control of the populace through institutions like the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano. The government corporation Cedocore distributes the drug Parepin through the water supply, making Americans who drink water apathetic and carefree. There are several underground rebel groups, mainly operating online, most notably Art is Resistance and Solutions Backwards Initiative. In response to the increasing oppression of the government, several corporate, government, and subversive websites were transported back in time to the present by a group of scientists working clandestinely against the authorities. The websites-from-the-future were sent to the year 2007 to warn American people of the impending dystopian future and to prevent it from ever forming in the first place.
An alternate reality game emerged parallel to the Year Zero concept, expanding upon its storyline. Clues hidden on tour merchandise initially led fans to discover a network of fictitious, in-game websites that describe an "Orwellian picture of the United States circa the year 2022". Before Year Zero's release, unreleased songs from the album were found on USB drives hidden at Nine Inch Nails concert venues in Lisbon and Barcelona, as part of the alternate reality game. Fan participation in the alternate reality game caught the attention of media outlets such as USA Today and Billboard, who have cited fan-site The NIN Hotline, forum Echoing the Sound, fan club The Spiral, and NinWiki as sources for new discoveries.
The album's first single, "Survivalism", and other tracks from Year Zero were released as multitrack audio files for fans to remix. A remix album titled Year Zero Remixed was later released, containing remixes from Year Zero by other artists. The remix album was Nine Inch Nails' final release on a major record label for over five years, as the act had completed its contractual obligation to Interscope Records and did not renew its contract. The remix album was accompanied by an interactive remix site with multitrack downloads and the ability to post remixes.
Reznor planned a film adaption of the album and noted Year Zero as "part of a bigger picture of a number of things I'm working on. Essentially, I wrote the soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist." The project moved into the television medium because of high costs for Year Zero as a film, then Reznor found American film producer Lawrence Bender and met with writers. On August 10, 2007, Reznor announced that they would be taking the concept to television networks in an attempt to secure a deal: "We're about to pitch it to the network, so we're a couple of weeks away from meeting all of the main people, and we'll see what happens." Since first announcing his plans for a television series, progress slowed, reportedly due to the 2007–2008 Writer's Guild strike, but it nevertheless continued. In 2010, the resultant miniseries, also named Year Zero, was reported to be in development with HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions, with the screenplay and script written by Reznor and Carnivàle writer Daniel Knauf, but at the end of 2012 Reznor said that the project was "in a holding state".
### Ghosts I–IV and The Slip (2008–2012)
In February 2008, Reznor posted a news update on the Nine Inch Nails website entitled "2 weeks". On March 2, Ghosts I–IV (the first release on The Null Corporation label), a 36-track instrumental album, became available via the band's official website. Ghosts I–IV was made available in a number of different formats and forms, ranging from a free download of the first volume, to a \$300 Ultra-Deluxe limited edition package. All 2,500 copies of the \$300 package sold out in three days. The album is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike licence. The album was created improvisationally over a 10-week period and contributors included Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder, Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew, and Brian Viglione.
Similar to the announcement that ultimately led to the release of Ghosts I–IV, a post on the band's website in April 2008 read "2 weeks!" On May 5, Nine Inch Nails released The Slip via its website without any advertisement or promotion. The album was made available for download free of charge with a message from Reznor, "this one's on me," protected under the same Creative Commons licence as Ghosts, and has seen individual downloads surpassing 1.4 million. The Slip has since been released on CD as a limited edition set of 250,000.
Since the release of Ghosts I–IV and The Slip, a 25-date tour titled Lights in the Sky, was announced in several North American cities, and was later expanded to include several more North American dates as well as dates in South America. Cortini and Josh Freese returned as members from the previous tour, while Robin Finck rejoined the band and Justin Meldal-Johnsen was added on bass guitar. Freese and Cortini left the live band, but it became a quartet with the addition of Ilan Rubin on drums.
On January 7, 2009, Reznor uploaded unedited HD-quality footage from three shows as a download of over 400 GB via BitTorrent. In an immediate response, a fan organization known as This One Is On Us quickly downloaded the data and had begun to assemble the footage alongside its own video recordings to create a professional 3-part digital film, followed by a physical release created "by fans for fans". This tour documentary became collectively known as Another Version of the Truth and was released throughout late December 2009 to February 2010 via three formats: DVD, Blu-ray Disc and BitTorrent. To date, the group and the project has received significant attention from media outlets such as USA Today, Rolling Stone, Techdirt and Pitchfork TV, and holds the support of both Reznor and the fan community with theatrical screenings being held all over the world. Nine Inch Nails art director and webmaster Rob Sheridan noted on the band's official website:
> This is yet another example of a devoted fanbase and a policy of openness combining to fill in blanks left by old media barriers. The entire NIN camp is absolutely thrilled that treating our fans with respect and nurturing their creativity has led to such an overwhelming outpour of incredible content, and that we now have such a high quality souvenir from our most ambitious tour ever.
Nine Inch Nails Revenge, an iPhone/iPod Touch-exclusive rhythm game developed by Tapulous, was released on March 8, 2009 (five months after the company announced the development of the game). This installment in the Tap Tap video game franchise was themed after Nine Inch Nails, and included tracks from Ghosts I–IV and The Slip. Portions of the album Ghosts I-IV were also used in making of the soundtrack for the documentary Citizenfour. In February 2009, Reznor posted his thoughts about the future of Nine Inch Nails on his official website, stating that "I've been thinking for some time now it's time to make NIN disappear for a while." Reznor since clarified that he "isn't done creating music under the moniker, but that Nine Inch Nails is done touring for the foreseeable future." The "Wave Goodbye" tour concluded on September 10, 2009, at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. Reznor subsequently released two tracks under the Nine Inch Nails moniker: the theme song for the film Tetsuo: The Bullet Man, and a cover of U2's "Zoo Station", included in the Achtung Baby tribute album AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered.
In 2009 Reznor married Mariqueen Maandig, and formed a project with Maandig and Atticus Ross dubbed How to Destroy Angels. Its first release, a six-track self-titled EP, was made available for free download in June 2010. Reznor's next collaboration with Ross was co-writing and producing the official score for David Fincher's 2010 film, The Social Network. Reznor and Ross received two awards for the score, a 2010 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for a Motion Picture, and a 2010 Oscar for Best Original Score. Reznor and Ross again collaborated with Fincher for the official score the American adaptation of the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, released in December 2011, and then again on Fincher's 2014 film Gone Girl
In July 2012 Reznor teamed up with video game developer Treyarch to compose the theme music for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Later that year Reznor again worked with Atticus Ross along with Alessandro Cortini on a remix of the song "Destroyer" by Telepathe. Reznor also appeared in a documentary called "Sound City" directed by Dave Grohl, in addition to co-writing and performing the song "Mantra" with Grohl and Josh Homme. This led to further collaboration with Reznor and Homme on the 2013 album from Queens of the Stone Age titled ...Like Clockwork. Reznor contributed vocals and drum programing to the song "Kalopsia" and vocals on "Fairweather Friends" along with Elton John on piano and vocals. In October a project with Dr. Dre and Beats Electronics was announced that Reznor wrote was "probably not what you're expecting [from me]". The project was named "Daisy"; a digital music service was announced in January 2013. It was until January 2014 that the service was fully launched, with Reznor serving as chief creative officer.
### Hesitation Marks (2012–2014)
In an interview with BBC Radio 1, Reznor indicated that he would be writing for the majority of 2012 with Nine Inch Nails "in mind". Reznor eventually confirmed that he was working on new Nine Inch Nails material and might be performing live again. In February 2013, Reznor announced the return of Nine Inch Nails and revealed the Twenty Thirteen Tour. He also revealed that the new lineup of the band would include Eric Avery of Jane's Addiction, Adrian Belew of King Crimson, and Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv, as well as returning members Alessandro Cortini and Ilan Rubin. However, both Avery and Belew would quit the touring band before performances commenced, with former member Robin Finck returning in their place.
By May 28 a new Nine Inch Nails album was complete. Released September 3, Hesitation Marks incorporated rhythms reminiscent of earlier releases, but was more expansive and theatrical. In addition to the recently departed Adrian Belew, Reznor employed bassist Pino Palladino along with Todd Rundgren and Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham to achieve various art-rock elements.
The album produced three singles, all released prior to that of the album itself. "Came Back Haunted" was released on June 6, with an accompanying music video bearing an epileptic seizure warning. The second single, "Copy of A", was released on August 12 free of charge to US and UK Amazon.com account holders. "Everything" was the third and final single, recorded during sessions for the Nine Inch Nails greatest hits album. The sessions gave way to more songs that ended up yielding the entire album.
In July the Twenty Thirteen Tour was underway, beginning with a slew of festival appearances that included the Fuji Rock Festival, and the Pukkelpop, Hockenheim, Germany's Rock'n'Heim and the Reading and Leeds festivals in August. The Tension 2013 North American leg of the tour ran from September to November and added Palladino, Lisa Fischer and Sharlotte Gibson to the lineup with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky as opening acts. This leg of the tour was documented and released in the spring as Nine Inch Nails Tension 2013.
In 2014 the band extended its tour worldwide as a four-piece. The new lineup included previous collaborators, Ilan Rubin, Alessandro Cortini, and Robin Finck. The band was joined by Queens of the Stone Age for the Australia and New Zealand tour, during which a nightly coin toss determined who opened. The tour closed in Europe with supporting synth-pop act Cold Cave. After a month-long break, Nine Inch Nails again hit the road on a joint tour with Soundgarden. The 23-day journey extended throughout the continental US, with experimental hip-hop group Death Grips scheduled to open most of the shows. Two weeks prior to the tour, Death Grips announced its breakup and cancelled all subsequent live shows. Oneohtrix Point Never, the Dillinger Escape Plan and Cold Cave each replaced Death Grips separately for the tour.
In 2014, its first year of eligibility, Nine Inch Nails was nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with 14 other candidates. While they were not inducted that year, the band placed second in the 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees Fan Vote. In 2015, Nine Inch Nails was once again nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, they once again did not get inducted.
In June 2015, Nine Inch Nails released instrumental versions of The Fragile and With Teeth to stream exclusively on Apple Music, a service of which Reznor is chief creative director. In an interview promoting the service, Reznor mentioned he has started "messing around with some things" in regards to a new Nine Inch Nails album, stating "It's not a record I'm trying to finish in a month. It's more just feeling around in the dark and seeing what sounds interesting". In December 2015, Reznor reported that "Nine Inch Nails will return in 2016".
### The Trilogy (Not the Actual Events / Add Violence / Bad Witch) (2016–2019)
In October 2016, in response to a fan's question about the lack of new Nine Inch Nails music, Reznor responded with "2016 is not over yet". In December 2016, Reznor commented on his statement regarding Nine Inch Nails' return by the end of the year: "Those words did come out of my mouth, didn't they? ... Just wait and see what happens." Three days later, Reznor announced an EP titled Not the Actual Events, along with reissues of Broken, The Downward Spiral, and The Fragile, with subsequent reissues of With Teeth, Year Zero, and The Slip to be released later in 2017, these plans however fell through. Also announced was The Fragile: Deviations 1, which comprised 37 instrumental, alternate and unreleased tracks, many of which have never been heard before anywhere. Not the Actual Events was released on December 23, 2016, with fans who pre-ordered it receiving their download links one day earlier. Atticus Ross was also revealed to be an official full-time member of the band, the first member other than Reznor to be added to the band.
In early 2017, the band announced three headlining festival dates in North America. In January 2017, the band announced that it would be performing at the Panorama Music Festival in New York on July 30. On March 21, the band announced on their official Facebook page that it would be headlining Day 3 of FYF Fest in Los Angeles on July 23. In the same post, the band also announced their 2017 touring lineup, which included Reznor and Ross joined by the band's 2014 touring lineup, Robin Finck, Alessandro Cortini, and Ilan Rubin. The band appeared in Part 8 of the third season of Twin Peaks, performing their song, "She's Gone Away".
In June 2017, in an email that was issued out to customers waiting on delayed vinyl orders, Reznor confirmed that Not the Actual Events would actually make up the first part of a trilogy of EPs, with the second installment Add Violence being released on July 21 and the third and final EP of the trilogy to follow in 2018. The single "Less Than" was released a week prior to the second EP's release.
Also in 2017, the pair were tasked to score the upcoming Ken Burns series The Vietnam War, and provide both original music and a compilation soundtrack of popular songs. Their score, which was released on September 15, 2017, included original compositions, and it also includes reworked pieces from other Nine Inch Nails songs and their award-winning scores for The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The band released their ninth studio album, Bad Witch,[^1] on June 22, 2018. The band also announced the "Cold and Black and Infinite 2018 North America Tour", where it toured with the Jesus and Mary Chain. To prevent ticket scalping, the band took the unusual step of only selling physical tickets that had to be purchased at the venue prior to the shows. Reznor stated of the decision "The promise of a world made better by computers and online connectivity has failed us in many ways, particularly when it comes to ticketing. Everything about the process sucks and everyone loses except the reseller. We've decided to try something different that will also likely suck, but in a different way."
In October 2019, Nine Inch Nails was again nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
### Ghosts V–VI (2020–present)
On January 15, 2020, Nine Inch Nails were officially named as members of the Class of 2020 for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. However, due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the induction ceremony was postponed indefinitely. Originally, only Trent Reznor was to be inducted as the sole full-time member of the group for most of its history. After holding discussions with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Reznor announced that former live band members Chris Vrenna and Danny Lohner, as well as current members Alessandro Cortini, Ilan Rubin (the youngest person ever inducted into the Hall of Fame), longtime guitarist Robin Finck, and the only other full time member of the band, Atticus Ross, would all be inducted as members of Nine Inch Nails.
On March 26, 2020, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts, their tenth and eleventh studio albums and the sequels to their 2008 instrumental album Ghosts I–IV. The albums were released for free as a show of solidarity with the band's fans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to the pandemic, the live induction ceremony for the 2020 Hall of Fame Induction was cancelled on July 15, 2020, and simultaneously, an induction special was announced to be broadcast and available for streaming through HBO and HBO Max, respectively, on November 7, 2020. In the interim, a special display was created to represent Nine Inch Nails' presence in the Hall of Fame that celebrated their popular, muddy performance at Woodstock '94; opened on the 26th anniversary of the concert. On November 6, 2020, Trent Reznor and the other to-be-inducted members of Nine Inch Nails were interviewed by journalist David Farrier about the history of the band and their feelings on being inducted. Then on November 7, Nine Inch Nails was formally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Class of 2020, by punk icon Iggy Pop. Reznor thanked the fans, his family, and all of his many Nine Inch Nails collaborators in his acceptance speech, recorded from his home in Beverly Hills, CA.
On May 6, 2021, Nine Inch Nails released a new track, "Isn't Everyone" in collaboration with noise rock group HEALTH, who had previously been an opening act on their Lights In The Sky and Wave Goodbye tours. On May 7, they announced they would be playing two shows in Cleveland (September 21 and 23, 2021) with the Pixies to commemorate their inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which, according to the band, would be "the only NIN headline shows in 2021". Those shows were cancelled on August 19, 2021, due to rising COVID-19 cases in the United States. Also in 2021, Reznor and Ross produced Halsey's album If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power. It was later nominated for the Best Alternative Music Album award at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.
In February 2022, Nine Inch Nails announced a short tour of the United States for 2022, the group's first performances in nearly four years. A tour of the United Kingdom was announced shortly afterwards.
On September 24, 2022, Nine Inch Nails performed in their native Cleveland for the first time since 2013 after a "Nine Inch Nails Fan Day" at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the previous day. Over the course of the performance, all the other six inductees, as well as former members Richard Patrick and Charlie Clouser, joined Reznor on stage and even covered Patrick's Filter hit, "Hey Man Nice Shot". Reznor posted on his Discord after the show, “When/If we tour again, it will be different. Not like [2018′s “Cold Black Infinite” tour] era – It’s over.”
## Music and lyrics
Nine Inch Nails has been described as incorporating alternative rock, industrial rock, industrial dance, industrial, electro-industrial, industrial metal, electronic rock, and alternative metal. AllMusic's Steve Huey states that "Nine Inch Nails were the most popular industrial group ever and were largely responsible for bringing the music to a mass audience". Reznor has never referred to his own work as industrial music, but admits to borrowing techniques from such early industrial bands as Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept. Despite the disparity between those artists initially operating under the term "industrial" and Nine Inch Nails, it has become common in journalistic descriptions of Reznor's body of work to describe it as such. Reznor acknowledged in Spin magazine that "Down in It" was influenced by early Skinny Puppy, particularly the band's song "Dig It"; other songs from Pretty Hate Machine and With Teeth have been described as synth-pop. Reviewing The Fragile, critic Steve Cooper noted that the album juxtaposes widely varied genres, such as solo piano in "The Frail" and drum and bass elements in "Starfuckers, Inc." Ambient music has been featured in some of Nine Inch Nails' music, including on Ghosts I–IV (which is specifically dark ambient), Hesitation Marks, The Downward Spiral, The Slip, and The Fragile.
Songs such as "Wish" and "The Day the World Went Away" exhibit terraced dynamics. Reznor's singing follows a similar pattern, frequently moving from whispers to screams. He also has used software to alter his voice in several songs, as evident in "Starfuckers, Inc." and "Burn". The band's music also occasionally contains complex time signatures, notably in "The Collector" from With Teeth and concert favorite "March of the Pigs". Reznor uses noise and distortion in his song arrangements and incorporates dissonance with chromatic melody and/or harmony. These techniques are all used in the song "Hurt", which contains a highly dissonant tritone played on guitar during the verses, a B5#11, emphasized when Reznor sings the eleventh note on the word "I" every time the B/E# dyad is played. "Closer" concludes with a chromatic piano motif: the melody is debuted during the second verse of "Piggy" on organ, then reappears in power chords at drop D tuning throughout the chorus of "Heresy", while an inverted (ascending) version is used throughout "A Warm Place", and then recurs in its original state for the final time on "The Downward Spiral".
On The Fragile, Reznor revisits the technique of repeating a motif multiple times throughout different songs, either on a different musical instrument with a transposed harmony or in an altered tempo. Many of the songs on Year Zero contain an extended instrumental ending, which encompasses the entire second half of the three-minute long "The Great Destroyer". Allmusic's review described the album's laptop-mixed sound: "Guitars squall against glitches, beeps, pops, and blotches of blurry sonic attacks. Percussion looms large, distorted, organic, looped, screwed, spindled and broken." Lyrical themes found in Nine Inch Nails songs are largely concerned with dark explorations of the self ranging from religion, greed, fame, lust, addiction, self-deception, aging, regret, and nihilism. Occasionally, the lyrics depart from their introspective nature to deal with a topic like politics, which is the focus of Year Zero. Three Nine Inch Nails albums are concept albums: The Downward Spiral, The Fragile, and Year Zero. The album With Teeth was originally set to be a concept album about an endless dream occurring in reality, but Reznor eventually took this idea out of the record.
## Influences
Nine Inch Nails' earliest influence was the punk rock band the Clash; Reznor stated that he started out trying to directly imitate them, only to abandon that direction due to his lack of a political message. Other early influences include Ministry and Skinny Puppy, which helped shape 1989's Pretty Hate Machine. The album's liner notes also paid tribute to Public Enemy and Prince. Another large influence on the band's sound is Gary Numan, which is evident as Reznor once said that "after hearing 'Cars' I knew I wanted to make music with synthesizers". The 2005 single "Only" exemplifies the disco-style beats and synthesizers drawn from Numan's persuasion. Other artists of significance to Nine Inch Nails include acts such as Depeche Mode, Queen, King Crimson, Devo, the Cure, Joy Division, U2, Bauhaus, Adam Ant, Coil, and Soft Cell.
Reznor has toured with some of his influences, including a brief tour opening for Skinny Puppy in 1988. In 1995, Nine Inch Nails went on tour with David Bowie, who, along with Pink Floyd, had been a significant influence on The Downward Spiral. In 2006, Nine Inch Nails went on tour with Bauhaus, on their Summer Amphitheatre Tour.
## Legacy
Nine Inch Nails has influenced many newer artists, which according to Reznor range from "generic imitations" dating from his initial success to younger bands echoing his style in a "truer, less imitative way". Following the release of The Downward Spiral, mainstream artists began to take notice of Nine Inch Nails' influence: David Bowie compared Reznor's impact to that of The Velvet Underground. Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose was influenced heavily by Nine Inch Nails in changing his band's sound to an industrial style in the mid-90's. Bob Ezrin, producer for Pink Floyd, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Peter Gabriel, described Reznor in 2007 as a "true visionary" and advised aspiring artists to take note of his no-compromise attitude. Nine Inch Nails has been credited by music journalists for popularizing industrial music, despite ambivalence from Reznor.
The act has received four awards from 25 nominations, including two Grammy Awards for the songs "Wish" and "Happiness in Slavery" in 1993 and 1996 respectively. Nine Inch Nails have received two Kerrang! Awards; one of them being the Kerrang! Icon in 2006, honoring the band's overall contributions since 1988 and long-standing influence on rock music. The band has also received nine nominations from the MTV Video Music Awards for several of its videos, including two nominations for the "Closer" music video and five nominations for "The Perfect Drug" music video, including Video of the Year.
In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin described him as "the most vital artist in music". The Recording Industry Association of America certified sales for 10.5 million units of the band's albums in the United States, which accounted for roughly half of the band's reported sales worldwide at that time. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine placed The Downward Spiral at No. 200 in a 2003 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and by the following year ranked Nine Inch Nails at No. 94 in their The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time list.
In 2019, Reznor and Ross received songwriting and production credits for the number-one single "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X, which sampled their track "34 Ghosts IV" from Ghosts I–IV. "Old Town Road" broke the record for most consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. As producers for the song, Reznor and Ross won a CMA Award for the 'Musical Event of the Year', along with Lil Nas X, featured artist Billy Ray Cyrus and producer YoungKio.
In January 2020, after previous nominations in 2014 and 2015, Nine Inch Nails (Alessandro Cortini, Robin Finck, Danny Lohner, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Ilan Rubin and Chris Vrenna) were named as inductees of the 2020 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
## Corporate disputes
### TVT Records
In the early 1990s, Nine Inch Nails was involved in a much-publicized feud with TVT Records, the first record label to sign the band. Reznor objected to the label's attempted interference with his intellectual property. Ultimately, Nine Inch Nails entered into a joint venture with Interscope Records in which Reznor forfeited a portion of his publishing rights to TVT Music in exchange for the freedom of having his own Nothing Records imprint. In 2005, Reznor sued his former friend and manager John Malm, co-founder of Nothing, for fraud, breach of contract and fiduciary duty, and other claims. Their relationship was formally severed in a New York courtroom, with damages awarded to Reznor in excess of \$3 million.
At the behest of Prudential Securities bankruptcy proceedings, TVT put the rights to Reznor's recordings for the label on auction in 2005. This offer included the whole TVT catalog, including Pretty Hate Machine, and a percentage of royalties from Reznor's song publishing company, Leaving Hope Music/TVT Music. Rykodisc, which did not win the auction but was able to license the rights from Prudential, reissued the out-of-print Pretty Hate Machine CD on November 22, 2005. Ryko also reissued the "Head Like a Hole" CD and a vinyl edition of Pretty Hate Machine in 2006. The label considered releasing a deluxe edition, just as Interscope had done for The Downward Spiral. They were influenced by Reznor and liked the idea, but did not want to pay him for the album and the idea was scrapped.
### Universal Music Group
In May 2007, Reznor made a post on the official Nine Inch Nails website skeptical of Universal Music Group (parent company of Nine Inch Nails' record label, Interscope Records) for its pricing and distribution plans for Year Zero. He labeled the company's retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia as "ABSURD", concluding that "as a reward for being a 'true fan' you get ripped off". Reznor went on to say that he hated Interscope, and in later years the "climate" of record labels may have an increasingly ambivalent impact on consumers who buy music. Reznor's post, specifically his criticism of the recording industry at large, elicited considerable media attention. In September 2007, Reznor continued his attack on UMG at a concert in Australia, urging fans there to "steal" his music online instead of purchasing it legally. Reznor went on to encourage the crowd to "steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing".
Reznor announced on October 8, 2007, that Nine Inch Nails had fulfilled its contractual commitments to Interscope Records and was now free to proceed as a "totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label". Reznor also speculated that he would release the next Nine Inch Nails album online in a similar fashion to The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, which he produced. Reznor later released the first nine tracks of Ghosts I–IV and the entirety of The Slip in 2008 for free download.
In another post on his website, Reznor again openly criticized Universal Music Group for preventing him from launching an official interactive fan remix website. Universal declined to host the site just days before its scheduled launch, citing the potential "accusation", in Reznor's words, "that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing [other media companies] for". Reznor wrote in response that he was "challenged at the last second to find a way of bringing this idea to life without getting splashed by the urine as these media companies piss all over each other's feet". Despite these obstacles, the remix website was launched in November 2007.
### Other corporations
Nine Inch Nails was scheduled to perform at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, but withdrew from the show due to a disagreement with the network over the use of an unaltered image of George W. Bush as a backdrop to the band's performance of "The Hand That Feeds". Soon afterwards, Reznor wrote on his official website: "Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me." MTV replied that it respected Reznor's point of view, but was "uncomfortable" with the performance being "built around partisan political statements". A performance by Foo Fighters replaced Nine Inch Nails' time slot on the show. During the Lights in the Sky tour in 2008, some performances of "The Hand that Feeds" had the image of Bush on a video screen behind the band. At some gigs leading up to the election, the face of Bush slowly morphed during the song into the face of John McCain.
Another ceremony incident had occurred at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in 2014. The band performed "Copy of A" and "My God Is the Sun" with Queens of the Stone Age, Lindsey Buckingham, and Dave Grohl towards the end of the broadcast; however, the performance was not shown in full to the audience at home as advertisements had cut-in midway through the second song. Despite an apology from producer Kenneth Ehrlich, Reznor later heavily criticized the situation.
In 2006, after being alerted by a fan website, Reznor issued a cease and desist to Fox News Channel for using three songs from The Fragile on air without permission. The songs "La Mer", "The Great Below", and "The Mark Has Been Made" appeared in an episode of War Stories with Oliver North detailing the battle of Iwo Jima. A post appeared on Reznor's blog, which read: "Thanks for the Fox News heads-up. A cease and desist has been issued. FUCK Fox Fucking News."
As part of the alternate reality game which accompanied the release of Year Zero, three tracks from the album were intentionally "leaked" prior to their official release at a number of Nine Inch Nails concerts on USB flash drives. The high-quality audio files quickly circulated the internet, and owners of websites hosting the files soon received cease and desist orders from the Recording Industry Association of America, despite the fact that the viral campaign, and the use of USB drives, was sanctioned by Nine Inch Nails' record label. The source that broke the story was quoted as saying, "These fucking idiots are going after a campaign that the label signed off on."
The music of Nine Inch Nails has reportedly been used by the U.S. military as music torture to break down the resolve of detainees. Reznor objected to the use of his music in this way with the following message on the front page of the Nine Inch Nails website: "It's difficult for me to imagine anything more profoundly insulting, demeaning and enraging than discovering music you've put your heart and soul into creating has been used for purposes of torture. If there are any legal options that can be realistically taken they will be aggressively pursued, with any potential monetary gains donated to human rights charities. Thank GOD this country has appeared to side with reason and we can put the Bush administration's reign of power, greed, lawlessness and madness behind us."
Aside from disagreements over the usage of Nine Inch Nails material, some corporations have dismissed content due to perceived obscenity. In 2009, Apple rejected an update to Nine Inch Nails' iPhone application, NIN: Access, because it found The Downward Spiral to contain "offensive or obscene content", referring to the lyrical content. Reznor criticized their decision, citing the audio was also available through the iTunes application.
A similar incident involving digital content distribution occurred in 2013 when Nine Inch Nails re-released the original 1993 film Broken on Vimeo. Within hours of launch, the video was removed due to terms of service violation on material that "harass, incite hatred or depict excessive violence".
## Live performances
Until Atticus Ross joined in 2016, Reznor was the sole official member of Nine Inch Nails. However, Reznor typically forms a backing group of musicians to perform the songs in a live setting. This live band, also known as Nine Inch Nails, rearranges the band's studio catalog and creates a different sound than that of Reznor's studio recordings. Band members have occasionally been invited to participate in the recording process, but creative control within the studio has always been exclusively with Reznor.
The Tapeworm project was created in 1995 as a Nine Inch Nails side-project between Reznor and various live-band members as a more "democratic" creative environment. The band initially included live band members Danny Lohner and Charlie Clouser, but eventually expanded to include other frequent Nine Inch Nails contributors Josh Freese, Atticus Ross, and Alan Moulder. However, after 9 years of studio sessions, no material was ever officially released from the group, and it was confirmed to be no longer active in 2005.
The lineup of the live band had a tendency to change drastically between major tours: aside from Reznor remaining on lead vocals, keyboards and guitar, no member of the live band have remained constant since its formation. Reznor cited the long gestation period between studio albums as part of the reason for these frequent personnel changes, as well as his desire for fresh interpretations of his music.
### Tours
- Pretty Hate Machine Tour Series (1988–1991)
- Self Destruct Tour (1994–1996)
- Fragility Tour (1999–2000)
- Live: With Teeth Tour (2005–2006)
- Performance 2007 Tour (2007)
- Lights in the Sky Tour (2008)
- Wave Goodbye Tour (2009)
- Twenty Thirteen Tour (2013–2014)
- I Can't Seem To Wake Up (2017)
- Cold and Black and Infinite (2018)
- U.S. 2022 & U.K. 2022 (2022)
## Band members
### Official members
- Trent Reznor – lead and backing vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, synthesizers, saxophone, piano, programming, drums, percussion (1988–present)
- Atticus Ross – keyboards, synthesizers, programming, bass, backing vocals (2016–present)
### Additional touring line-up
- Robin Finck – guitars, synthesizers, keyboards, lap steel, violin, backing vocals (1994–1996, 1999–2000, 2008–2009, 2013–present)
- Alessandro Cortini – bass, keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, backing vocals (2005–2008, 2013–present)
- Ilan Rubin – drums, percussion, bass, guitars, cello, keyboards, backing vocals (2008–2009, 2013–present)
### Key former members
- Chris Vrenna – drums, percussion, keyboards, samplers (1988–1990, 1992–1997)
- Richard Patrick – guitars, backing vocals (1989–1993)
- Jeff Ward – drums (1990–1991; died 1993)
- James Woolley – keyboards, synthesizers, programming, backing vocals (1991–1994; died 2016)
- Danny Lohner – bass, guitars, synthesizers, backing vocals (1993–2003)
- Charlie Clouser – keyboards, synthesizers, theremin, percussion, programming, backing vocals (1994–2001)
- Jerome Dillon – drums, guitars (1999–2005)
- Jeordie White – bass, guitars, backing vocals (2005–2007)
- Aaron North – guitars, backing vocals (2005–2007)
- Josh Freese – drums, marimba (2005–2008)
- Justin Meldal-Johnsen – bass, backing vocals (2008–2009)
## Discography
- Pretty Hate Machine (1989)
- Broken – EP (1992)
- The Downward Spiral (1994)
- The Fragile (1999)
- With Teeth (2005)
- Year Zero (2007)
- Ghosts I–IV (2008)
- The Slip (2008)
- Hesitation Marks (2013)
- Not the Actual Events – EP (2016)
- Add Violence – EP (2017)
- Bad Witch (2018)
- Ghosts V: Together (2020)
- Ghosts VI: Locusts (2020)
## Awards
Nine Inch Nails has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards and has won awards on two occasions—for "Wish" in 1992 and "Happiness in Slavery" in 1995:
\|- \| 1992 \| "Wish" \| Best Metal Performance \| \|- \| 1995 \| The Downward Spiral \| Best Alternative Music Performance \| \|- \| 1995 \| "Happiness in Slavery" (from Woodstock '94 compilation) \| Best Metal Performance \| \|- \| 1996 \| "Hurt" \| Best Rock Song \| \|- \| 1997 \| "The Perfect Drug" \| Best Hard Rock Performance \| \|- \| 1999 \| The Fragile \| Best Alternative Music Album \| \|- \| 1999 \| "Starfuckers, Inc." \| Best Metal Performance \| \|- \| 2000 \| "Into the Void" \| Best Male Rock Vocal Performance \| \|- \| 2005 \| "The Hand That Feeds" \| Best Hard Rock Performance \| \|- \| 2006 \| "Every Day is Exactly the Same" \| Best Hard Rock Performance \| \|- \| 2009 \| "34 Ghosts IV" \| Best Rock Instrumental Performance \| \|- \| 2009 \| Ghosts I–IV \| Best Boxed Set or Limited Edition Package \| \|- \| 2013 \| Hesitation Marks'' \| Best Alternative Music Album \|
[^1]:
|
2,110 |
Ælfheah of Canterbury
| 1,171,002,099 |
Archbishop of Canterbury and saint (c. 953–1012)
|
[
"1012 deaths",
"11th-century Christian martyrs",
"11th-century Christian saints",
"11th-century English Roman Catholic archbishops",
"950s births",
"Anglican saints",
"Anglo-Saxon saints",
"Archbishops of Canterbury",
"Bishops of Winchester",
"Canonizations by Pope Gregory VII",
"Clergy from Bath, Somerset",
"Incorrupt saints",
"Martyred Roman Catholic priests",
"Year of birth uncertain"
] |
Ælfheah (c. 953 – 19 April 1012), more commonly known today as Alphege, was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester, later Archbishop of Canterbury. He became an anchorite before being elected abbot of Bath Abbey. His reputation for piety and sanctity led to his promotion to the episcopate and, eventually, to his becoming archbishop. Ælfheah furthered the cult of Dunstan and also encouraged learning. He was captured by Viking raiders in 1011 during the siege of Canterbury and killed by them the following year after refusing to allow himself to be ransomed. Ælfheah was canonised as a saint in 1078. Thomas Becket, a later Archbishop of Canterbury, prayed to him just before his own murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.
## Life
Ælfheah was born around 953, supposedly in Weston on the outskirts of Bath, and became a monk early in life. He first entered the monastery of Deerhurst, but then moved to Bath, where he became an anchorite. He was noted for his piety and austerity and rose to become abbot of Bath Abbey. The 12th century chronicler, William of Malmesbury recorded that Ælfheah was a monk and prior at Glastonbury Abbey, but this is not accepted by all historians. Indications are that Ælfheah became abbot at Bath by 982, perhaps as early as around 977. He perhaps shared authority with his predecessor Æscwig after 968.
Probably due to the influence of Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury (959–988), Ælfheah was elected Bishop of Winchester in 984, and was consecrated on 19 October that year. While bishop he was largely responsible for the construction of a large organ in the cathedral, audible from over a mile (1600 m) away and said to require more than 24 men to operate. He also built and enlarged the city's churches, and promoted the cult of Swithun and his own predecessor, Æthelwold of Winchester. One act promoting Æthelwold's cult was the translation of Æthelwold's body to a new tomb in the cathedral at Winchester, which Ælfheah presided over on 10 September 996.
Following a Viking raid in 994, a peace treaty was agreed with one of the raiders, Olaf Tryggvason. Besides receiving danegeld, Olaf converted to Christianity and undertook never to raid or fight the English again. Ælfheah may have played a part in the treaty negotiations, and it is certain that he confirmed Olaf in his new faith.
In 1006, Ælfheah succeeded Ælfric as Archbishop of Canterbury, taking Swithun's head with him as a relic for the new location. He went to Rome in 1007 to receive his pallium—symbol of his status as an archbishop—from Pope John XVIII, but was robbed during his journey. While at Canterbury, he promoted the cult of Dunstan, ordering the writing of the second Life of Dunstan, which Adelard of Ghent composed between 1006 and 1011. He also introduced new practices into the liturgy, and was instrumental in the Witenagemot's recognition of Wulfsige of Sherborne as a saint in about 1012.
Ælfheah sent Ælfric of Eynsham to Cerne Abbey to take charge of its monastic school. He was present at the council of May 1008 at which Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, preached his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (The Sermon of the Wolf to the English), castigating the English for their moral failings and blaming the latter for the tribulations afflicting the country.
In 1011, the Danes again raided England, and from 8–29 September they laid siege to Canterbury. Aided by the treachery of Ælfmaer, whose life Ælfheah had once saved, the raiders succeeded in sacking the city. Ælfheah was taken prisoner and held captive for seven months. Godwine (Bishop of Rochester), Leofrun (abbess of St Mildrith's), and the king's reeve, Ælfweard were captured also, but the abbot of St Augustine's Abbey, Ælfmær, managed to escape. Canterbury Cathedral was plundered and burned by the Danes following Ælfheah's capture.
## Death
Ælfheah refused to allow a ransom to be paid for his freedom, and as a result was killed on 19 April 1012 at Greenwich, reputedly on the site of St Alfege's Church. The account of Ælfheah's death appears in the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
> ... the raiding-army became much stirred up against the bishop, because he did not want to offer them any money, and forbade that anything might be granted in return for him. Also they were very drunk, because there was wine brought from the south. Then they seized the bishop, led him to their "hustings" on the Saturday in the octave of Easter, and then pelted him there with bones and the heads of cattle; and one of them struck him on the head with the butt of an axe, so that with the blow he sank down and his holy blood fell on the earth, and sent forth his holy soul to God's kingdom.
Ælfheah was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to die a violent death. A contemporary report tells that Thorkell the Tall attempted to save Ælfheah from the mob about to kill him by offering everything he owned except for his ship, in exchange for Ælfheah's life; Thorkell's presence is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, however. Some sources record that the final blow, with the back of an axe, was delivered as an act of kindness by a Christian convert known as "Thrum". Ælfheah was buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral. In 1023, his body was moved by King Cnut to Canterbury, with great ceremony. Thorkell the Tall was appalled at the brutality of his fellow raiders, and switched sides to the English king Æthelred the Unready following Ælfheah's death.
## Veneration
Pope Gregory VII canonised Ælfheah in 1078, with a feast day of 19 April. Lanfranc, the first post-Conquest archbishop, was dubious about some of the saints venerated at Canterbury. He was persuaded of Ælfheah's sanctity, but Ælfheah and Augustine of Canterbury were the only pre-conquest Anglo-Saxon archbishops kept on Canterbury's calendar of saints. Ælfheah's shrine, which had become neglected, was rebuilt and expanded in the early 12th century under Anselm of Canterbury, who was instrumental in retaining Ælfheah's name in the church calendar. After the 1174 fire in Canterbury Cathedral, Ælfheah's remains together with those of Dunstan were placed around the high altar, at which Thomas Becket is said to have commended his life into Ælfheah's care shortly before his martyrdom during the Becket controversy. The new shrine was sealed in lead, and was north of the high altar, sharing the honour with Dunstan's shrine, which was located south of the high altar. A Life of Saint Ælfheah in prose and verse was written by a Canterbury monk named Osbern, at Lanfranc's request. The prose version has survived, but the Life is very much a hagiography; many of the stories it contains have obvious Biblical parallels, making them suspect as a historical record.
In the late medieval period, Ælfheah's feast day was celebrated in Scandinavia, perhaps because of the saint's connection with Cnut. Few church dedications to him are known, with most of them occurring in Kent and one each in London and Winchester; as well as St Alfege's Church in Greenwich, a nearby hospital (1931–1968) was named after him. In Kent, there are two 12th-century parish churches dedicated to St Alphege at Seasalter and Canterbury. Reputedly his body lay in these churches overnight on his way back to Canterbury Cathedral for burial. In the town of Solihull in the West Midlands, St Alphege Church is dedicated to Ælfheah dating back to approximately 1277. In 1929, a new Roman Catholic church in Bath, the Church of Our Lady & St Alphege, was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in homage to the ancient Roman church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and dedicated to Ælfheah under the name of Alphege. St George the Martyr with St Alphege & St Jude stands in Borough in London.
Artistic representations of Ælfheah often depict him holding a pile of stones in his chasuble, in reference to his martydom.
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