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League_of_Legends_World_Championship | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends_World_Championship | [
292
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends_World_Championship"
] | The League of Legends World Championship (commonly abbreviated as Worlds) is the annual professional League of Legends world championship tournament hosted by Riot Games and is the culmination of each season. Teams compete for the champion title, the 44-pound (20-kilogram) Summoner's Cup, and a multi-million-dollar championship prize. In 2018, the final was watched by 99.6 million people, breaking 2017's final's viewer record. The tournament has been praised for its ceremonial performances, while receiving attention worldwide due to its dramatic and emotional nature.
The League of Legends World Championships has gained tremendous success and popularity, making it among the world's most prestigious and watched tournaments, as well as the most watched esports event in the world.
The tournament rotates its venues across different major countries and regions each year. South Korea's T1 is the most successful team in the tournament's history, having won four world championships.
History
Season 1 (2011)
The Season 1 Championship was held in June 2011 at Dreamhack Summer 2011, and featured a US$100,000 tournament prize pool. 8 teams from Europe, North America, Southeast Asia participated in the championship. Over 1.6 million viewers watched the streaming broadcast of the event, with a peak of over 210,069 simultaneous viewers in the final. Maciej "Shushei" Ratuszniak of the winning team Fnatic was named the most valuable player (MVP) of the tournament.
Season 2 (2012)
After Season 1, Riot announced that US$5,000,000 would be paid out over Season 2. Of this $5 million, $2 million went to Riot's partners including the IGN Pro League and other major esports associations. Another $2 million went to Riot's Season 2 qualifiers and championship. The final $1 million went to other organizers who applied to Riot to host independent League of Legends tournaments.
The Season 2 World Championship was held in early October 2012 in Los Angeles, California to conclude the US$5 million season. Twelve qualifying teams from around the world participated in the championship, which boasted the largest prize pool in the history of esports tournaments at the time at US$2 million, with US$1 million going to the champions. The group stage, quarterfinal, and semifinal matches took place between 4 and 6 October. The grand final took place a week after, on 13 October in the University of Southern California's Galen Center in front of 10,000 fans, and were broadcast in 13 different languages. In the grand final, Taiwan's professional team Taipei Assassins triumphed over South Korea's Azubu Frost 3 to 1 and claimed the US$1 million in prize money.
Over 8 million viewers tuned in to the Season 2 World Championship broadcast, with a maximum of 1.1 million concurrent viewers during the grand finale, making the Season 2 World Championship the most watched esports event in history at the time.
Season 3 (2013)
The Season 3 World Championship was held in late 2013 in Los Angeles, California. 14 teams from North America, Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and one of the emerging League of Legends territories measured up at the World Playoffs after having qualified through their regional competitions. The grand final was held in the Staples Center on 4 October 2013, where Korean team SK Telecom T1 defeated the Chinese team Royal Club, granting them the title of the Season 3 world champions, the Summoner's Cup and the $1 million prize.
The Season 3 World Championship grand final broadcast on 4 October was watched by 32 million people with a peak concurrent viewership of 8.5 million. The numbers once again beat the previous records for esports viewership.
2014
The 2014 World Championship featured 16 teams competing for a $2.13 million prize pool, with 14 teams qualifying from the primary League of Legends regions (China, Europe, North America, Korea and Taiwan/SEA) and two international wildcard teams. Riot stopped numbering seasons and instead simply used the year for the 2014 and future championships.
The group stage began on 18 September in Taipei and concluded on 28 September in Singapore with eight teams advancing to the bracket stage. The bracket stage started on 3 October in Busan, South Korea, and concluded on 19 October with the grand final hosted at the 45,000-seats Seoul World Cup Stadium, where South Korean team Samsung Galaxy White beat the Chinese team Star Horn Royal Club to become the 2014 League of Legends world champions. Support player Cho "Mata" Se-hyeong was named the tournament most valuable player (MVP).
American band Imagine Dragons contributed the theme song "Warriors" for the tournament, and performed live on the grand final stage in South Korea. All games were made available for free via live streaming.
The 2014 World Championship games were streamed live by 40 broadcast partners and cast in 19 languages. The grand final was watched by 27 million people, with concurrent viewership peaking at over 11 million viewers.
2015
After the 2014 season, Riot Games introduced a number of changes to competitive League of Legends. The number of teams in the League Championship Series was increased from 8 to 10 in both the North America and Europe regions. A second Riot Games official international tournament was announced, the Mid-Season Invitational, which took place in May 2015, and featured a single team from each major region and one international wildcard. Additionally, starting from 2015, all teams are required to field a head coach in their competitive matches, who will stay on stage and speak with the team via voice-chat in the pick–ban phase of the game. This change makes the head coach an officially recognized member of the team.
The 2015 World Championship concluded the 2015 season and was held at several venues across Europe in October 2015. Like the 2014 World Championship, the 2015 World Championship was a multi-city, multi-country event. 2015 Worlds was won by SK Telecom T1, their second title, as they won the 2013 Worlds too. SKT top laner Jang "MaRin" Gyeong-hwan was named the tournament most valuable player (MVP). The final was watched by 36 million people, with a peak concurrent viewership of 14 million viewers.
2016
The various stages of the 2016 Worlds were held throughout the United States in Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, and the final in Los Angeles.
The groups of teams were decided through a live group draw show on 10 September. The games were played on the 6.18 patch of the game with Yorick disabled, and Aurelion Sol disabled for days 1–3. There were 16 teams and 4 groups that consisted of 4 teams. The group stage was Bo1 and the top two teams from each group would advance to the Knockout Stage. The Knockout Stage was Bo5 and the #1 vs #2 teams from each group would face each other in the bracket. The total prize pool was US$5,070,000 and it was spread among the teams. The first place (SK Telecom T1) took $2,028,000, the second team (Samsung Galaxy) took $760,500, and the third and fourth place (ROX Tigers and H2K) took $380,250 divided among the 2 teams. The rest of the prize pool was distributed among the 5th–16th places.
SKT won 3–2 versus Samsung Galaxy in the 2016 World Championship final, with Faker winning the MVP award. The final was watched by 43 million people, with a peak concurrent viewership of 14.7 million viewers, breaking 2015's final's viewer records.
2017
The 2017 World Championship series started in September 2017, and concluded in November 2017. It was held in 4 different locations throughout China: Wuhan (play-in and groups), Guangzhou (quarterfinals), Shanghai (semifinals), and Beijing (final). It was played on patch 7.18, with the newest champion Ornn being disabled. Patch 7.18 is slightly older than patches 7.19 and 7.20, which are the new standard for online matches during the September - November period. The most notable difference being the stronger Ardent Censer support meta with patch 7.18.
A total of 24 teams participated in the tournament: 3 teams from South Korea, China, North America, Europe and Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau; 1 team from Brazil, Latin America North, Latin America South, Japan, Oceania, Turkey, Southeast Asia and CIS/Russia; and 1 team from the Wildcard region with the highest rank finish at the 2017 Mid-Season Invitational (GPL in Southeast Asia, due to Gigabyte Marines from Vietnam prevailing there, and Vietnam received 1 more slot for VCS's second seed to participate GPL 2017 summer split).
Samsung Galaxy reversed the previous year's result and defeated SK Telecom T1 3–0 in the 2017 World Championship final. Park "Ruler" Jae-hyuk, the AD carry of Samsung, was named MVP. The final was watched by 60 million people, breaking 2016's final's viewer records. The tournament is widely praised for its high quality of plays and amazing ceremonial performances, while receiving worldwide attention for its dramatic and emotional series. It is currently the most watched tournament in League of Legends' history and is lauded as one of the best.
2018
The 2018 World Championship was held from 1 October to 3 November, 2018, in 4 cities across South Korea: Seoul (play-in), Busan (groups & quarterfinals), Gwangju (semifinals), and Incheon (final). Twenty four teams qualified for the tournament based on their placement in regional circuits such as those in North America, Europe, South Korea, and China, with twelve of those teams having to reach the group stage via a play-in round.
The 2018 World Championship was played on Patch 8.19. Notably, champions Aatrox, Alistar and Urgot were extremely prevalent in the tournament, with the three characters being picked or banned in over 90 percent of the 78 games played. The World Championship final was played between Invictus Gaming and Fnatic. Invictus Gaming won 3–0 against Fnatic, granting China and the LPL their first World Championship. Gao "Ning" Zhenning was named the MVP of the series in their victory. The final was watched by 99.6 million unique viewers, with concurrent viewership reaching a peak of 44 million viewers, breaking 2017's final's viewership record.
2019
The 2019 World Championship was held between 2 October to 10 November 2019, in three countries and cities in Europe: Berlin (play-in & groups), Madrid (quarterfinals and semifinals), and Paris (final). Twenty-four teams qualified to participate at the World Championship based on placement within their own regional leagues and previous regional results in international play.
The 2019 World Championship was played on Patch 9.19 from start to finish. The World Championship final was played on 10 November 2019 between LPL's FunPlus Phoenix and LEC's G2 Esports at AccorHotels Arena in Paris. FunPlus Phoenix won 3–0 against G2 Esports, granting China and the LPL back-to-back World Championships. Gao "Tian" Tianliang was named the MVP of the series in their victory. The final was watched by more than 100 million viewers, peaking at 44 million concurrent views.
2020
The 2020 World Championship was held from 25 September to 31 October 2020 in Shanghai, China. 22 teams qualified to participate at the World Championship based on placement within their own regional leagues and previous regional results in international play. As a result of travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the two teams that qualified from the Vietnam Championship Series were unable to attend the event.
All games leading up to the final were hosted in the Shanghai Media Tech Studio with no fans in attendance. The final was hosted in the Pudong Football Stadium as the building's inaugural event, hosting a limited number of 6,312 fans due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The final was played on 31 October 2020 between Suning, from China's League of Legends Pro League, and Damwon Gaming, from League of Legends Champions Korea, with Damwon Gaming winning the championship 3–1. During the second game, Suning's top laner Chen "Bin" Zebin achieved the first "Pentakill" in the final of a World Championship. Damwon Gaming's jungler, Kim "Canyon" Geon-bu, was named the MVP of the series. Damwon's win ended the LPL's back-to-back streak of world championship victories. The final was watched at its peak by 46.07 million viewers.
2021
The 2021 World Championship was held from 5 October to 6 November 2021 in Reykjavík, Iceland. In line with last year's iteration, 22 teams qualified to participate at the World Championship based on placement within their own regional leagues and previous regional results in international play. As a result of travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the two teams that qualified from the Vietnam Championship Series were once again unable to attend the event.
All games of the tournament were hosted in the Laugardalshöll, with no fans in attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Iceland. The final was played on 6 November 2021 between Edward Gaming, from China's League of Legends Pro League, and defending champions DWG KIA (formerly Damwon Gaming), from League of Legends Champions Korea, with Edward Gaming winning the championship 3–2, ending DWG KIA's chance to win back-to-back world championships. Edward Gaming's mid laner, Lee "Scout" Ye-chan, was named the MVP of the series. The final had an average audience of 30.6 million, peaking at 73.86 million concurrent viewers.
2022
The 2022 World Championship was held from 29 September to 5 November, 2022, with the event taking place in 4 cities across North America: Mexico City (play-in), New York City (groups & quarterfinals), Atlanta (semifinals) and San Francisco (finals). Twenty-four teams qualified to participate at the World Championship based on placement within their own regional leagues and previous regional results in international play. As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the League of Legends Continental League from the CIS region was unable to send a representative to participate in the event.
The finals was played at the Chase Center on 5 November 2022 between T1 and DRX, both from the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK). Riot Games collaborated with Lil Nas X to release STAR WALKIN' for the finals. He appeared at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California, and he was broadcast through over 20 music stations live for tens of millions of people. In the final, DRX defeated T1 3–2 in a close series, becoming the first team to win the championship after starting from the play-in stage. DRX's top laner, Hwang "Kingen" Seong-hoon, was named the MVP of the series. Their victory was considered a Cinderella and underdog success story, as they had come from the play-in stage as Korea's fourth seed representative, and had beaten some of the more favored and accomplished teams along the way, including the previous worlds champions Edward Gaming in a 3–2 reverse sweep in the quarterfinals, and defeating the LCK Summer Split champions Gen.G 3–1 in the semifinals.
2023
The 2023 World Championship was held from 10 October to 19 November 2023, with the event taking place in two cities across South Korea: Seoul and Busan. Twenty-two teams qualified to participate at the World Championship based on placement within their own regional leagues and previous regional results in international play. Albeit, one team qualified for the event through the newly inaugurated Worlds Qualifying Series between the fourth-seeded teams from the LEC and LCS.
The format for the event differed to the previous editions, with the introduction of a play-in stage, consisting of eight teams who are split into two double elimination brackets. There, three teams qualified to the second stage of the event where the qualifying teams, along with thirteen other teams, faced off in a swiss-system tournament to determine the qualifiers to the knockout stage, with the eventual champions being crowned at the conclusion of the single-elimination knockout stage.
The finals was played at the Gocheok Sky Dome on 19 November 2023 between Weibo Gaming from the League of Legends Pro League (LPL), and previous years' finalist T1 from the League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK). In the final, T1 defeated Weibo Gaming 3–0, extending their record for the most world championships won by single team with four titles. T1's top laner, Choi "Zeus" Woo-je, was named the MVP of the series, while teammate Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok became the first player to win four World Championships.
2024
The 2024 World Championship will be held from 25 September to 2 November 2024, with the event taking place in three cities across Europe: Berlin, Paris and London. Twenty-two teams will qualify to participate at the World Championship based on placement within their own regional leagues and results gained in this years' Mid-Season Invitational (MSI), with the LCK and LPL's 4th seeds in the Swiss stage reallocated to the winner and a team from the best performing region of the event.
It was revealed during the finals' broadcast of the 2023 World Championship, that the finals of this years' Worlds is set to take place in London at The O2 Arena on 2 November 2024.
2025
Details about the 2025 World Championship's location and dates are yet to be known. However, this edition of the tournament will feature 17 teams in total, with the MSI slots being kept and three teams from each of League's new competitive regions (Americas, EMEA, Korea, China and Asia-Pacific) qualifying on top. One best-of-5 play-in match will be held before the swiss stage between two teams.
Trophy
Riot Games, which owns League of Legends, commissioned the winner's trophy as the Summoner's Cup. Riot specified that it should weigh 70 pounds (about 32 kilograms), though the actual weight of the finished cup was reduced so it would not be too heavy to lift in victory. The World Championship Cups for 2012 and for 2014 were created by Thomas Lyte.
In 2022, Riot Games announced the formation of a multi-year partnership with American jewelry brand Tiffany & Co., producing a newly designed Summoner's Cup with a weight of 44 pounds (about 20 kilograms).
Results
By year
By region
By team
Italics indicates a team/organization has been disbanded, acquired or no longer participates in the regional league.
Notes
== References == |
Counter-Strike_Major_Championships | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike_Major_Championships | [
292
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike_Major_Championships"
] | Counter-Strike Major Championships, commonly known as the Majors, are Counter-Strike (CS) esports tournaments sponsored by Valve, the game's developer. The first Valve-recognized Major took place in 2013 in Jönköping, Sweden and was hosted by DreamHack with a total prize pool of US$250,000 split among 16 teams. This, along with the following 18 Majors, was played in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. As of the 2023 release of Counter-Strike 2 (CS2), Counter-Strike esports, including the Majors, are played in CS2.
Since then, the Major circuit has expanded significantly, with recent tournaments advertising a US$2,000,000 prize pool and featuring twenty-four teams from around the world. The Majors are considered to be the most important and prestigious tournaments in the Counter-Strike scene.
The current champions are Natus Vincere, who won their second Major at PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, the first to be held in Counter-Strike 2. Astralis hold the record for the most Major titles with four.
History
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. The first game in the series, Counter-Strike 1.6, was officially released in 2000 and competitive play began soon after. The first significant international tournament was the 2001 Cyberathlete Professional League Winter Championship, considered the first "Major". The CPL Summer and Winter Championships, along with the World Cyber Games, Electronic Sports World Cup and Intel Extreme Masters World Championships, were considered Majors by the community, although Valve did not sponsor or give any official designation to the tournaments.
Swedish teams, most notably SK Gaming, dominated early Majors but the Polish roster known as the Golden Five were the most successful lineup. Many teams from other parts of the world would win Majors, including Team 3D from the United States at CPL Winter 2002 and WCG 2004, NoA from Norway at CPL Winter 2004, mibr from Brazil at ESWC 2006, and WeMade FOX from South Korea at WEM 2010.
On September 16, 2013, a year after the release of Global Offensive, Valve announced a US$250,000 community-funded prize pool for the first official CS:GO Major. The money was partially community-funded through the game's Arms Deal update, which allowed players to buy in-game skins. Valve announced the tournament would take place in Sweden and would be hosted by DreamHack. The tournament took place in late November and was won by the Swedish team Fnatic who upset Ninjas in Pyjamas in the finals. After Dreamhack 2013, Valve announced they would partner with tournament organizers to host three Majors per year. These Majors are the most prestigious events in the competitive CS:GO scene, and the professional players' legacies are often judged by their performances at these tournaments.
The early Majors were dominated by Swedish teams, as Fnatic and NiP combined to win the four of the first six Majors. NiP would play in five of the first six grand finals. When Fnatic won Cologne 2015, they became the first team to win back to back Majors, and the first to win a third Major in total. Only the Danish team Astralis has since matched that total.
At the end of 2015, Valve announced that MLG would host the first Major in North America. On February 23, 2016, with MLG Columbus 2016 coming up, Valve announced a permanent increase in the prize pool from US$250,000 to US$1,000,000. However, Valve reduced the number of Majors per year from three to two. Luminosity Gaming, a Brazilian team, won the event to becomes the first non-European team to win a Major. This roster would also go on to win back to back Majors, with their second as SK Gaming at ESL One Cologne 2016.
Gambit Esports, made up primarily of players from Kazakhstan, won PGL Major Kraków 2017 to become the first Asian and CIS team to win a Major.
On December 13, 2017, the general manager of ELEAGUE, the hosts of the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, announced a revised format designed by Valve and ELEAGUE that would expand the number of teams in the Major from sixteen to twenty-four. This was also the first Major to take place in multiple cities, as the group stages took place in Atlanta at the Turner Studios. Cloud9, an American team, won the event to become the first North American team to win a Major.
After Boston 2018, the Danish team Astralis became the top team in CS:GO and one of the best teams in Counter-Strike history. With wins at London 2018, Katowice 2019, and Berlin 2019, Astralis become the first team to win three Majors in a row and four majors total. After Berlin 2019, Valve and ESL announced the following Major, ESL One Rio 2020, which was to be the first Major to be hosted in South America. Rio 2020, originally scheduled for May, was then postponed to November due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The November Major was announced with a US$2,000,000 prize pool, combining the amounts that would have been set aside for both Majors. In September 2020, the Rio Major was officially canceled due to COVID-19. In December 2020, Valve moved the 2021 Major from May to October and November, citing concerns over the pandemic. On January 14, 2021, Valve announced that the championship would be held between October 23 and November 7 in Stockholm. Over two years after the last Major, PGL Major Stockholm 2021 took place, with favourites Natus Vincere dominating the tournament and becoming the first team in CS:GO history to win a Major without dropping a single map throughout the tournament. PGL Major Stockholm 2021 surpassed the long-standing Counter-Strike viewership record 4 times; reaching 2.75 million concurrent viewers in the final.
FaZe Clan won the PGL Major Antwerp 2022, defeating Natus Vincere 2-0, and becoming the first international team in CS:GO history to win a Major.
The previously cancelled ESL One Rio 2020 Major was replaced with IEM Rio Major 2022 and was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on October 31 - November 13, 2022. Outsiders, a neutral name for esports organization Virtus.pro due to ties with the Russian government in light of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, won the tournament defeating Heroic in the grand final 2-0.
BLAST Paris Major 2023 was held in Paris on May 8 - May 21, 2023 with a prize pool of $1,250,000 USD. Shortly after the announcement of Counter-Strike 2, the official CS:GO twitter account announced that the BLAST Paris Major would be the last CS:GO Major with the next major happening in March 2024 in CS2. Team Vitality, a French organization with native star player Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut, defeated dark horse GamerLegion by 2-0 to clinch the final CS:GO Major title.
The first Counter-Strike 2 Major was announced to be the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 which was held from March 17-31 in the Royal Arena. On November 12, 2023, Perfect World, who are responsible for distributing Counter-Strike 2 in China, announced the second major following the release of Counter-Strike 2, taking place in Shanghai between December 1-15, 2024.
Format
Qualification
Starting after Dreamhack 2013, the top eight teams from each Major (those who made it to the playoff stage) earned automatic berths to the next Major. These teams are called "Legends". The other eight teams, called "Challengers", were decided by regional qualifiers, mainly from Europe and North America. A small number of teams have been directly invited or earned attendance from a last chance qualifier to fill final open spots when necessary. Beginning with the DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 qualification cycle, Valve created a single 16-team main qualifier before the Major. The bottom eight teams from the previous Major earn automatic berths to the newly formed Major qualifier, and the regional qualifiers now send teams to the main qualifier, instead of directly to the Major.
For MLG Columbus 2016 the regional qualifiers, leading into the Major qualifier, were replaced by "Minors". The Columbus Minor system involved four regional qualifiers and two "last chance" qualifiers, and results in invites going to one team from the Americas, two Asian teams, one CIS team, one European team, and three last chance qualifier spots. The system was simplified in the following Major, ESL One Cologne 2016, with the removal of the last chance qualifiers. Four Minors—Asia, CIS, Europe, Americas—were used. Two teams from each qualifier would go to the Major qualifier, joining the bottom eight teams from the previous Major. The top eight teams from the 16-team Major qualifier advance to the Major.
At ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, the Major qualifier was integrated into the full Major as the first of three phases, expanding the number of teams in each Major to 24. The Major qualifier was renamed the "Challengers Stage", the former group stage was renamed the "Legends Stage", and the playoff stage was named the "Champions Stage". This increased the number of teams getting automatic invites to Majors to 16, while retaining the Minor system to fill the remaining eight spots in phase one of the Major. The Legends—still made up of the teams who reach the playoff stage—earn an automatic invitation to the Legends Stage of the following Major, while the teams placing 9-16 earn automatic invitations to the Challengers Stage of the following Major. On August 28, 2018, shortly before the start of the FACEIT Major: London 2018, Valve announced that they were reducing the number of automatic Major invites to fourteen, starting with the London 2018 Major: the two teams that go winless in the first phase must go through the Minors to get back to the next Major.
From the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 onwards, no automatic berths have been given to any team regardless of their record in the previous Major. Instead, a Regional Major Ranking (RMR) system has been used, which at first was a yearly points circuit where each region would have three qualifying tournaments where teams can receive points towards qualifying for the Major, which included Contenders, Challengers and Legends distinctions (As well as the Legends bye) for the top teams within each region. Despite initially being used for the ESL One Rio Major 2020, the event's cancellation would mean that PGL Major Stockholm 2021 was the first Major that utilized the RMR system. The very next Major, PGL Major Antwerp 2022, would scrap the points circuit in favor of qualifying tournaments that bear the RMR name, initially (and still) 2 for Europe (which included the CIS region), 1 for the Americas and 1 for Asia-Pacific. Teams qualify for their regional RMRs via being the top teams in their region in the Valve rankings (before the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024, the teams who placed in the Legends Stage of the previous Major would qualify automatically for the RMRs) or via online qualifying made up of Open Qualifiers (if needed) and Closed Qualifiers, where the next-best ranked teams compete for the remaining RMR spots. In addition, regions can gain or lose Challengers and Legends spots in the Major based on the region's results from the previous Major, with 3 Challengers spots reserved for Europe and the Americas and 2 for Asia-Pacific. For example, after PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, the Americas region would go from 1 Legends spot and 4 Challengers spot, to 7 Challengers spots for Perfect World Shanghai, after 4 teams from the Americas qualified for the Elimination Stage, with none making the Playoff stage.
Unlike traditional sports or other esports leagues, Valve considers the players in each team to have the Major spots, rather than the organization itself. For instance, at the ELEAGUE Major 2017, Team EnVyUs placed ninth, meaning it would have an automatic berth at the next Major qualifier. However, before the next Major, three of EnVyUs's players transferred to G2 Esports, meaning Team EnVyUs lost its spot at the Major qualifier.
Tournament format
Although the playoff stage of the Majors has generally followed a standard 8-team single-elimination format, the group stages have changed multiple times. From 2013 to 2016, Majors used a four group GSL format for the group stage. In each four-team group, the two higher seeds would initially face the two lower seeds. The two winners from the first round of matches would then play to determine which team gets the top seed. The two losers would also play to eliminate one team. After this second round of matches, the remaining two teams play to determine which team takes the final playoff spot. All group stage games at the first Majors were best-of-ones. The last Major of 2015 and both Majors in 2016 featured a best-of-three decider in the final match of each group.
The group stage of ESL One Cologne 2015 worked differently. Initially, the first three matches of the group stage started out the same way as the standard GSL format, determining the group winner. However, teams were then reassigned afterwards so that the two losers played from different groups and then the decider match would also be teams from different groups.
Beginning in 2017, the group stage has featured a Swiss-system group stage. Before the tournament, teams are divided into four pots, with pot one having the four highest seeds, pot two having the next four highest seeds, and so on. A randomly selected team from pot one would face off against a randomly selected team from pot four. The same process is done with the pots two and three. After the initial seeded match, teams play five rounds against randomly drawn teams with the same record. No two teams play twice unless necessary. If a team wins three matches, then that team moves on to the next stage. If a team loses three matches, that team is eliminated. All games were best-of-one until the London 2018 Major. The Boston 2018 Major featured two Swiss group stages; the stage formerly known as the offline Major qualifier was now called the New Challengers stage and the group stage was now rebranded as the New Legends stage. The London 2018 Major used a slightly different form of the Swiss system, called the Buchholz system, in which matchups were seeded instead of random and the last round featured best-of-three sets. The next Major, Katowice 2019, featured a crowdsourced Elo system, in which participating teams ranked the 15 other teams before the Legends Stage to create a seeding system for each round of the Swiss system. The Copenhagen 2024 Major will have the names of the two Swiss stages changed, with the Challengers Stage becoming the Opening Stage and the Legends Stage becoming the Elimination Stage, while the first round match-up seeding for the Swiss stages will be tweaked.
The Playoffs, known as the New Champions stage and Champions stage beforehand, have featured eight teams at all Majors. All matches are best-of-three, single-elimination series. When the GSL format was used for group stages, group winners earned top seeds and group runner-ups earned bottom seeds. Each top seed played a bottom seed in quarterfinals. With current Swiss format seeding, the two teams that finish undefeated in the group stage earn the highest seeds. Two of the three lowest seeds from the group stage (teams that advance with two losses) are randomly selected to play against the high seeds. Two of the three middle seeds (teams that advance with one loss) are randomly selected to play each other, and the remaining two teams face each other to finalize the bracket.
Banned players
Valve has banned players from attending the Majors for violations of competitive integrity. A Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) ban is the most common way players get banned. VAC is an anti-cheat program designed by Valve to detect cheats running in various games, including Counter-Strike. If cheats are detected, the account is given a permanent lifetime ban from playing on VAC-secured servers. Other server providers, such as FACEIT and ESEA, have their own anti-cheat systems and work with Valve to detect new cheats. One of the most high-profile VAC bans was given to Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian. KQLY, along with several other professional players, was banned while playing for France's best team, Titan.
Valve has also banned players from Valve-sponsored events for match fixing. The first Valve ban for match fixing was a response to the iBUYPOWER match fixing scandal, in which esports journalist Richard Lewis revealed that one of North America's best teams, iBUYPOWER, had thrown a match for high-value skins. Valve indefinitely banned seven players who were involved in the scandal from attending any Majors. Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham was the only iBUYPOWER player not to be banned, as he did not receive any payment after the game. Valve would later make the bans permanent, causing some controversy in the Counter-Strike community. Although tournament organizers ESL and DreamHack lifted their own bans on the former iBUYPOWER players in 2017, the Major ban effectively ended the high level careers of two of North America's best in-game leaders (Sam "DaZeD" Marine and Joshua "steel" Nissan) and Braxton "swag" Pierce. Skadoodle would go on to win a Major with Cloud9. Following the iBUYPOWER ban, there have been two other match fixing bans, resulting in nine other players being barred from the Majors.
List of Major Championships
Titles by organization
Titles by players
Features
Stickers
Stickers are virtual items in the game which players can buy or get from sticker capsules. The stickers can then be applied to in-game gun skins. Valve has released a sticker design for each team attending a Major since Katowice 2014, and a sticker for each professional player's signature since Cologne 2015. These two types of stickers come in a variety of styles: paper, glitter, holographic, foil, and gold. With each sticker purchase, half of the proceeds go to the player or team and half go to Valve.
These sticker capsules are unique for each tournament and can only be purchased at the time of the tournament. Because of this forced rarity, stickers from early majors tend to become more expensive over time. After initially costing less than US$10, a "Titan" holographic sticker from Katowice 2014 sold on secondary markets for US$80,000 in 2023, making it the most expensive public sticker trade in the game's history.
Souvenir packages
Souvenir packages are virtual packages containing a gun skin that are exclusive to CS:GO Majors. These "souvenir skins" can rank among the most expensive skins in the game because of their rarity. After Cloud9 became the first ever North American CS:GO Major champion at Boston 2018, a souvenir skin with the signature of the finals MVP, Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham, sold for US$61,000.
In-game tributes
After certain significant or iconic moments in Global Offensive Majors, Valve has added in-game memorials to the location of the event, usually in the form of graffiti or signs. Thus far, there have been six moments in Majors that have been memorialized by Valve, though one graffiti was removed when Dust II was updated.
Notes
== References == |
Catwoman | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catwoman | [
293
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catwoman"
] | Catwoman is a character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, she debuted as "the Cat" in Batman #1 (spring 1940). She has become one of the superhero Batman's most prominent enemies, belonging to the collective of adversaries that make up his rogues gallery, as well as Batman's best known and most enduring love interest, with many stories depicting their complex love–hate relationship. Since 1993, Catwoman has had her own ongoing series, Catwoman.
Catwoman is the alter ego of Selina Kyle, a burglar in Gotham City who usually wears a skintight bodysuit and uses a bullwhip for a weapon. She was originally characterized as a supervillain and adversary of Batman, but has been featured in an eponymous series since the 1990s that portrays her as an antiheroine, often with a utilitarian moral philosophy. The character thrived in her earliest appearances, but she took an extended hiatus from September 1954 to November 1966 due to the developing Comics Code Authority in 1954. These issues involved the rules regarding the development and portrayal of female characters that were in violation of the Comics Code, a code which is no longer in use. In the comics, Holly Robinson and Eiko Hasigawa have both adopted the Catwoman identity, apart from Selina Kyle.
Catwoman has been adapted in various media incarnations, having been portrayed in film by Lee Meriwether in Batman (1966), Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns (1992), Halle Berry in Catwoman (2004), Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Zoë Kravitz in The Batman (2022). On television, she has been played by Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt in Batman, where the name Selina Kyle was never used; and Camren Bicondova and Lili Simmons in Gotham.
Catwoman was ranked 11th on IGN's list of the "Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time", and 51st on Wizard magazine's "100 Greatest Villains of All Time" list. Conversely, she was ranked 20th on IGN's "Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time" list.
Character and publication history
Creation
Batman co-creator Bob Kane was a great movie fan and his love for film provided the impetus for several Batman characters, among them, Catwoman. Kane's inspiration for Catwoman was drawn from multiple sources to include actresses Jean Harlow, Hedy Lamarr, and his cousin, Ruth Steele. Kane and Finger wanted to give their comic book sex appeal, as well as a character who could appeal to female readers; they thus created a "friendly foe who committed crimes but was also a romantic interest in Batman's rather sterile life." Catwoman was meant to be a love interest and to engage Batman in a chess game, with him trying to reform her. At the same time, this character was meant to be different from other Batman villains like the Joker in that she was never a killer or evil.
As for using cat imagery with the character, Kane stated that he and Finger saw cats as "kind of the antithesis of bats".
I felt that women were feline creatures and men were more like dogs. While dogs are faithful and friendly, cats are cool, detached, and unreliable. I felt much warmer with dogs around me—cats are as hard to understand as women are. Men feel more sure of themselves with a male friend than a woman. You always need to keep women at arm's length. We don't want anyone taking over our souls, and women have a habit of doing that. So there's a love-resentment thing with women. I guess women will feel that I'm being chauvinistic to speak this way, but I do feel that I've had better relationships with male friends than women. With women, once the romance is over, somehow they never remain my friends.
Fictional character biography
Golden Age
Catwoman, then called "the Cat", first appeared in Batman #1 (spring 1940) as a mysterious burglar and jewel thief, revealed at the end of the story to be a young, attractive (unnamed) woman, having disguised herself as an old woman during the story and been hired to commit a burglary. Although she does not wear her iconic cat-suit, the story establishes her core personality as a femme fatale who both antagonizes and attracts Batman. It is implied Batman may have deliberately let her get away by blocking Robin as he tried to leap after her. She next appears in Batman #2 in a story also involving the Joker but escapes Batman in the end. In Batman #3 she wears a fur mask and again succeeds in escaping Batman.
Batman #62 (December 1950) reveals that Catwoman was an amnesiac flight attendant who turned to crime after suffering a prior blow to the head during a plane crash she survived. She reveals this in the Batcave after being hit on the head by a piece of rubble while saving Batman while he was chasing her. However, in The Brave and the Bold #197 (April 1983), she later admits that she made up the amnesia story because she wanted a way out of her past life of crime. She reforms for several years, helping out Batman in Batman #65 (June 1951) and 69 (February 1952), until she decides to return to a life of crime in Detective Comics #203 (January 1954), after a newspaper publishes stories of Batman's past adventures and some crooks mock her about it. However, Catwoman prevents her thugs from murdering Batman once he is later found knocked out, but quickly claims she wants him as a hostage. Catwoman appears again as a criminal in Batman #84 (June 1954) and Detective Comics #211 (September 1954), which were her two final appearances until 1966. This was mostly due to her possible violation of the developing Comics Code Authority's rules for portrayal of female characters that started in 1954.
Silver Age
Catwoman made her first Silver Age appearance in Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #70-71 (November–December 1966); afterward, she continued to make appearances across the various Batman comics.
Several stories in the 1970s featured Catwoman committing murder, something that neither the Earth-One nor Earth-Two versions of her would ever do. This version of Catwoman was later assigned to the alternate world of Earth-B, an alternate Earth that included stories that could not be considered canonical on Earth-One or Earth-Two.
Modern Age
Tangled origins
Catwoman's origin—and, to an extent, her character—was revised in 1987 when writer Frank Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli published Batman: Year One, a revision of Batman's origin. She worked as a dominatrix for the pimp Stan to survive and also sheltered a child prostitute named Holly Robinson working for him. Selina got into a fight with a disguised Bruce after he grabbed Holly, who had stabbed him during a fight with Stan, but was knocked out.
As the story progresses, Selina decides to leave prostitution and takes Holly with her. She gets into burglary to make money and starts robbing the rich and powerful men of Gotham, donning a catsuit costume while committing her heists. While trying to rob Carmine Falcone, she gets rescued by Batman but is irked of being thought of as his sidekick by the media.
The 1989 Catwoman limited series, written by Mindy Newell and with art by J.J. Birch, expanded upon Miller's Year One origin. This storyline, known as "Her Sister's Keeper", explores Selina's early life as a dominatrix and the start of her career as Catwoman. The story culminates with Selina's former pimp, Stan, abducting and beating her sister Maggie, who, in contrast to Selina, is a nun. Selina kills Stan to save her sister, and gets away with it. Most of this is revealed in the former series, but is expanded upon in "Her Sister's Keeper".
Catwoman (vol. 2) #69 provides details about Selina's childhood and neglects Maggie's existence. Maria Kyle is a distant parent who preferred to spend her time with cats, and commits suicide when Selina is very young. Her alcoholic father, Brian, is cold to Selina for resembling her mother, whom he resents for dying, and eventually drinks himself to death. To survive, Selina takes to the streets for a time before getting caught and sent first to an orphanage, then juvenile detention center, "where Selina began to see how hard the world could really be". Maggie's fate at this point in the timeline is not alluded to. However, when Ed Brubaker reintroduces her into the comic, he implies that Maggie may have directly entered an orphanage and promptly been adopted.
When she is 13 years old, Selina discovers that the detention center's administrator has been embezzling funds, and she confronts her. In an attempt to cover up her crime, the administrator puts Selina in a bag and drops her in a river to drown (like a cat). She escapes and returns to the orphanage, where she steals documents exposing the administrator's corruption. She uses these to blackmail the administrator into erasing "Selina Kyle" from the city's records, then steals the administrator's diamond necklace and escapes from the orphanage. Selina eventually finds herself in "Alleytown – a network of cobblestone streets that form a small borough between the East End and Old Gotham." Selina is taken in by Mama Fortuna, the elderly leader of a gang of young thieves, and is taught how to steal. Fortuna treats her students like slaves, keeping their earnings for herself. Selina eventually runs away, accompanied by her friend Sylvia. However, the two have difficulty surviving on their own, and in desperation try to support themselves by working as prostitutes. The two drift apart afterward, with Sylvia coming to resent Selina for not inquiring about what had happened to her at the hands of her abusive first client.
In the Catwoman: Year One story, Selina, who is now an adult, achieves some success as a thief. Following a disastrous burglary, however, she accepts an offer to "lie low" as a dominatrix employed by a pimp named Stan. They plan to trick men into divulging information that might be used in future crimes. According to this storyline, Selina trains under the Armless Master of Gotham City, receiving education in martial arts and culture. During this time, a client gives her a cat o' nine tails, which Selina keeps as a trophy.
Batman: Dark Victory, the sequel to Batman: The Long Halloween, implies that Catwoman suspects she is the illegitimate daughter of Mafia boss Carmine Falcone, although she finds no definitive proof. Selina's connection to the Falcone crime family is further explored in the miniseries Catwoman: When in Rome. Though the story adds more circumstantial evidence to the theory of Selina's Falcone heritage, establishing that the Falcones' second-born daughter was put up for adoption in America, it also supplies no definitive proof. During Batman: The Long Halloween, Selina (out of costume) develops a relationship with Bruce Wayne, even leading her to save Bruce from Poison Ivy. However, this relationship appears to end on the Fourth of July when Bruce rejects her advances twice; once as Bruce and once as Batman. She leaves him for good and also leaves Gotham for a while in Batman: Dark Victory, after he stands her up on two holidays. When the two meet at an opera many years later, during the events of Batman: Hush, Bruce comments that the two no longer have a relationship as Bruce and Selina.
Catwoman also appears in the Batman: Knightfall saga, where she is approached by Bane's henchmen while robbing a house. Bane asks her to work for him, but she refuses, as she is repulsed by the criminal who "broke" Batman. Later in the story, she boards a plane with Bruce Wayne to fly to Santa Prisca. She next appears in the Batman: Knightquest saga, where Azrael is masquerading as Batman. She is one of the few to recognize that this Batman is an impostor, later being present when the true Batman returns to the fold as he struggles against his successor, his willingness to save even criminals confirming his true identity for Selina.
Catwoman solo series
In 1993, Catwoman was given her first ongoing comic book series. This series, written by an assortment of writers, but primarily penciled by Jim Balent, generally depicted the character as an international thief (and occasional bounty hunter) with an ambiguous moral code.
Story-lines include her adoption of teenage runaway and former sidekick, Arizona; aiding Bane, whom she later betrays to Azrael; and a stint as a reluctant government operative. The series also delves into her origin, revealing her beginnings as a young thief, her difficult period in juvenile incarceration, and her training with Ted "Wildcat" Grant.
Moving to New York City, Selina becomes corporate vice president of Randolf Industries, a Mafia-influenced company and then becomes its CEO through blackmail. She plans to use this position to run for Mayor of New York City, but her hopes are dashed when the Trickster inadvertently connects her to her criminal alter ego.
After her time in New York City, Selina returns to Gotham City, which at this time is in the midst of the "No Man's Land" storyline. As Catwoman, she assists Batman against Lex Luthor in the reconstruction of the city. After being arrested by Commissioner Gordon, she escapes from prison. Later that year, during the "Officer Down" storyline in the Batman titles, Catwoman is initially the chief suspect. Although later cleared, she displays increasingly erratic behavior throughout the story, with her series later revealing that she has developed a form of personality disorder after exposure to the Scarecrow's fear gas, causing her to act as herself and an identity that appears to be her sister Maggie pretending to be her. Soon afterward, she disappears and is believed to have been killed by the assassin Deathstroke the Terminator, ending her series at issue #94.
Catwoman then appears in a series of back-up stories in Detective Comics #759–762 (August–November 2001). In the back-up storyline "Trail of the Catwoman", by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Darwyn Cooke, private detective Slam Bradley attempts to find out what really happened to Selina Kyle. This storyline leads into the newest Catwoman series in late 2001 (written by Brubaker initially with Cooke, later joined by artist Cameron Stewart). In this series, Selina Kyle, joined by new supporting cast members Holly and Slam Bradley (a character from the early Golden Age DC Comics), becomes protector of the residents of Gotham's East End, while still carrying out an ambitious career as a cat burglar.
During the Batman: Hush storyline, Batman and Catwoman briefly work together and have a romantic relationship, during which he reveals his true identity to her. At the end, he breaks off their relationship when he suspects it has been manipulated by the Riddler and Hush. This is the second story to establish that she knows Batman's true identity. In an early 1980s storyline, Selina and Bruce develop a relationship. The concluding story features a closing panel in which she refers to Batman as "Bruce". A change in the editorial team at that point, however, brought a swift end to that storyline and, apparently, all that transpired during the story arc.
In the Justice League story arc "Crisis of Conscience", Catwoman fights alongside Batman and the Justice League against the old Secret Society of Super Villains, of which she had once briefly been a member.
Mindwiping revelations
Catwoman appears to be completely reformed, and her love for Batman is true (although brash and unpredictable). However, she has learned her reformation was the result of a mindwipe by Zatanna, a procedure known to deeply affect and, in at least one case, physically incapacitate its victims. Zatanna gives no reason for her actions, but in a flashback, it is shown that she had acted with the consent and aid of five of the seven JLA members who had helped her mindwipe Dr. Light and Batman. Catwoman's response to this revelation is unequivocal: she gags Zatanna with duct tape, rendering her powerless, and pushes her out a window. Afterward, she is seen covering her bed with past versions of her Catwoman costume.
Still unbalanced and uncertain of herself in issue #52, Selina is forced to decide whether to kill a supervillain. Black Mask, in an attempt to "improve himself", threatens the most important people in Selina's life, from Slam Bradley to Holly. The villain had also previously tortured Selina's sister Maggie by drilling out her husband's eyeballs and feeding them to Maggie, which drove her insane. Black Mask learns Selina's identity through his earlier alliance with Selina's childhood friend Sylvia, who still harbors a grudge against Selina. Still thinking that Selina adheres to a strict no-kill rule, Black Mask is caught by surprise when Selina shoots him in the head. This action continues to haunt her throughout the "One Year Later" storyline, and it is suggested that this might have been the first time she had ever directly taken a life.
As a mother
Following the events of Infinite Crisis, the DC Universe jumps forward in time. After "One Year later", Selina Kyle is no longer Catwoman, she has left the East End, and has given birth to a daughter named Helena. The father of her new daughter is initially unrevealed; however, Batman demonstrates great concern for the child and at one point asks to have Helena stay at his mansion. Selina attempts to live a safe and somewhat normal life, and gives up her more dangerous ways of living as Catwoman. Holly Robinson takes over as the new Catwoman while Selina, living under the alias Irena Dubrovna, turns her attention to caring for her daughter (Selina's alias was inspired by the name of the main character in the 1942 film Cat People).
Though she takes her role as a new mother quite seriously, Selina dons the costume for a run through the East End some days after Helena's birth. Having gained a few pounds, Selina finds that her costume is now tighter. In addition, she is easily distracted by a common criminal. Although the situation is defused through Holly's opportune arrival, the sight of two Catwomen active simultaneously in the city is caught on video. Selina returns home from her adventure to find that the mysterious movie aficionado the Film Freak has deduced her alias, teamed up with the Angle Man, and grabbed Helena. After rescuing her daughter, Selina convinces Zatanna to mindwipe the Film Freak and the Angle Man in order to preserve her secret identity. Following the procedure, the Angle Man turns himself in to the authorities; the Film Freak, however, embarks upon a murderous rampage.
A twist occurs when Wildcat informs Selina that Holly has been arrested for the murder of Black Mask. Selina infiltrates the police station and frees Holly. Finally defeating the Film Freak, Selina returns home to find that Bradley has deduced that Helena is the daughter of his son Sam Bradley, Jr., and therefore his granddaughter (although it is still strongly hinted that Bruce Wayne may be the father).
Batman asks Catwoman to infiltrate the violent tribe of the Bana Amazons during the Amazons Attack! crossover. Posing as a criminal, Selina gains the Bana's trust and thwarts a terror attack aimed at causing mass casualties in Gotham City.
Selina questions whether she should be raising a daughter when her life as Catwoman has already proven to be such a danger to the child. After enlisting Batman's help in faking the death of both herself and her daughter, Selina puts Helena up for adoption. A month after Helena is placed with a new family, Catwoman asks Zatanna to erase her memories of Helena and change her mind back to a criminal mentality. Zatanna refuses, judging that such an act would be cruel to both mother and daughter. She tells Selina that she could never reverse Selina's mindset, since she was on the path to becoming a hero on her own. Believing she can no longer function as a criminal, Selina decided to become one of Batman's Outsiders. She quickly quits, however, and is replaced by Batgirl.
Salvation Run
In Salvation Run #2, Catwoman is sent to the Prison Planet. She allies herself with Lex Luthor in an attempt to return to Earth, and mistakenly ends up on an alternate universe-Earth where Catwoman is a notorious villain. It is later revealed that this Earth is a creation of her own mind, and she has not left the Prison Planet. When accused of being a traitor by Luthor, she reveals the Martian Manhunter is posing as the Blockbuster, which would soon lead to the hero's death.
Using the trust she regained in Luthor's eyes, she earns a passage to the 'real' Earth, in a jerry-rigged teleport machine built by Luthor for letting the villains escape. On Earth, she resumes being a hero, with occasional lapses into thievery by commission, simply for the thrill of it.
Heart of Hush
Later, in Detective Comics, Selina is quite uncertain about pursuing a romantic relationship with Batman. She talks with Bruce about Jezebel Jet, his current girlfriend, and then has a quick pep talk with Zatanna, whom she believes is also courting Bruce. Zatanna confirms and admits her feelings, adding that she has since chosen to forget them, but extremely encourages Selina to open her heart to Bruce Wayne before Jet is able to "seal the deal". Hush eavesdrops on the conversation, targeting both women as a way to hurt his enemy, Bruce Wayne.
In Detective Comics #848 (November 2008), Hush attacks Selina as she is in her apartment, kidnapping her and surgically removing her heart. She is delivered anonymously to a Gotham hospital. Batman receives word of her situation, and while he goes in search of Hush, he leaves Selina in the care of Doctor Mid-Nite, who is considered the superhero community's chief doctor.
Batman recovers her heart, and Dr. Mid-Nite restores it to her body; however, the doctor also makes a prognosis on whether she can still return to her former life swinging through rooftops. While Selina is still in a coma, she encounters Zatanna, who apologizes for not warning her about Hush. She tells Selina that she was so happy about her relationship with Bruce that she ignored the other warnings in the cards. Zatanna gives her a little bottle supposedly containing aloe vera for her post-op scars. It is hinted that there is a little magic in there to help Selina with her recovery. Selina is sad that she might end up alone again. In the meantime, Bruce enters the recovery room and, believing her unconscious, launches into a soliloquy. He ends by telling Selina that he will always love her, when she opens her eyes and reveals to him that she was awake all the time and heard his confession.
Batman R.I.P.
During the events of Batman R.I.P., Selina and Bruce's romance lasts only for a night because Bruce must continue to pose as Jezebel's lover to bring down the Black Glove. While still recuperating, she pulls off one more heist and exacts her revenge on Hush. With the help of a few allies on both sides; the Oracle, Holly Robinson, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Slam Bradley, Selina taps into Hush's assets, leaving him penniless and suffering from wounds inflicted by Batman.
Battle for the Cowl
In Batman: Battle for the Cowl, Selina is seen as one of the members of Nightwing and Robin's contingency team known as "the Network", where she is seen taking down a gang of thugs before seeing Tim Drake dressed in a Batman uniform and is initially taken by surprise.
Batman: Reborn and Gotham City Sirens
In the first issue of Gotham City Sirens, Selina runs into the Bonebuster, a new villain trying to make a name for himself, and is saved by Poison Ivy. Selina, fearing the many dangers of a post-Batman Gotham, proposes that she, Ivy, and Harley Quinn team up, living together at a single base in an abandoned animal shelter. Ivy agrees under one condition: using home-grown drugs to weaken Selina's resistance, Ivy demands the identity of the true Batman. Selina flashes back three years to when Talia al Ghul requested her presence in Tibet. There, Talia made it so that Selina would not relinquish the true identity of Batman under any circumstances. After the interrogation is over, Selina sees Harley with Bruce Wayne on TV. Selina tells Ivy that she knows it is Hush in disguise.
Blackest Night
During the events of Blackest Night, Selina is attacked by Black Mask after he has been reborn as a member of the Black Lantern Corps. After he tells her that he plans on getting an emotional response before killing her, Selina steals a car and heads to the mental institution where Maggie is held, believing Black Mask is coming for her. Black Mask attacks the institution, and somehow awakens Maggie from her coma. Selina arrives in time to help her sister flee into the sewers. While on the run, Maggie angrily tells Selina that she ruined both of their lives the day she decided to become Catwoman. Devastated by her sister's statement, Selina fails to realize they have both been heading into a trap. Just as Black Mask is about to gouge Maggie's eyes out and shove them down Selina's throat, Harley and Ivy arrive and defeat the Black Lantern by trapping him in the stomach of a man-eating plant. Selina is helped to her feet by her friends, who tell her that Maggie has fled the scene. The next day, the staff members of the mental institution are shown discussing Maggie's escape, also mentioning that a nun that works at the hospital had been found beaten and stripped of her uniform. Maggie is then shown in the depths of the Gotham City sewers clad in the bloodied nun robes, muttering about her plan to kill Catwoman in order to free Selina's soul. Now calling herself Sister Zero, Maggie attempts to kill Selina, but ultimately flees after being defeated by the Sirens. She is last seen going over her options, now realizing that she cannot murder her own sister, and therefore must personally exorcise the "cat demon" from within Selina's body.
The Return of Bruce Wayne
In the build-up to The Return of Bruce Wayne, the Sirens help Zatanna put out a massive fire at a local park near their home, only for them to be ambushed by a creature made of mud. After being dragged underneath the soil by the creature, Catwoman awakens bound and gagged on the floor of a dark room, and is quickly forced into an illusion by her unseen captors. Back in reality, Talia reveals to the Sirens that just a few hours prior, an unknown benefactor had offered up a massive reward to whoever could kidnap and deliver Catwoman to him, with the hopes that he could penetrate her mind and learn Batman's secret identity. Before the knowledge can be ripped from her mind, Selina's captors (revealed to be the Shrike and a new villain named the Sempai), are eventually defeated by the other Sirens.
Once Selina is freed, Talia orders Zatanna to wipe Bruce's identity from her memory, reasoning that her kidnapping has proved that the knowledge is too dangerous for her to handle. The two women initially restrain Selina and attempt to remove the knowledge from her, but Zatanna refuses at the last moment and ends up fighting Talia in order to protect Selina. Talia tries to kill Selina before vanishing, but she survives and ultimately reunites with Bruce, who had recently returned to the present.
After stealing the contents of a safe belonging to the Falcone crime family, Selina returns home to find Kitrina, a teenaged escape artist and Carmine Falcone's long-lost daughter, breaking into her room. She attacks and subdues Kitrina, who tells Selina that she had unknowingly stolen a map that details the location of the new Black Mask's underground bunker. Realizing that she could use the map to capture Black Mask and claim the 50 million dollar bounty on his head, Selina leaves Kitrina bound in a locked room so that she can keep the map for herself. She later calls Batman to her house in order to turn the would-be thief over to the police, but discovers that Kitrina had managed to free herself and steal back the map. This impresses Selina, who mentions that she had tied up the child using an "inescapable" knot that Bruce had shown her years earlier.
Following a battle with Black Mask and his henchmen, which ends with neither woman being able to claim the bounty, Selina agrees to take on Kitrina as her new sidekick, Catgirl. Once Bruce Wayne returns from his time in the past, he establishes Batman Incorporated, a global team of Batmen. Selina accompanies Batman on a mission to break into Doctor Sivana's armory, and later travels with him to Tokyo in order to recruit a Japanese representative for Batman Inc. Catwoman teams up with Batman to stop Harley Quinn from breaking the Joker out of Arkham Asylum. After defeating Harley and the Joker, Catwoman tells Poison Ivy that they are no longer friends, this after Ivy drugged her in an attempt to uncover Batman's secret identity.
Shortly afterwards, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn have escaped and set off to pursue revenge on Catwoman for leaving them behind. The two of them found Catwoman and fought her. While they were fighting, Catwoman says that she saw good in them and only wanted to help them. Batman was about to arrest them, but Catwoman helped the two of them escape.
The New 52 / Catwoman (vol. 4)
In 2011, DC Comics relaunched its main line of superhero titles under the umbrella The New 52, which revised and updated the fictional history of its superhero characters. Catwoman's new monthly title now focused on Selina's earlier days as Catwoman, though not the identity's origins. The series begins with Selina frantically escaping from unknown masked men who are invading her apartment. After flitting from rooftop to rooftop, Selina looks back just in time to see her apartment blown apart by explosives. She turns to her informant, Lola, who often supplies Catwoman with information and various jobs. In this instance, Lola tips Selina off to an unoccupied penthouse where Selina can lie low for a few weeks, as well as a job stealing a painting from Russian mobsters. For this job, Selina infiltrates a Russian club by posing as the bartender. There, she recognizes a man who murdered a friend of hers, and she takes her revenge. Once her cover is blown, Selina dons her Catwoman outfit and fights her way out of the club. It is revealed through Selina's inner monologue that she and Batman are lovers, and the premiere issue ends with the first sex scene between the two. Her revised origin in Catwoman (vol. 4) #0 draws from Batman Returns.
Catwoman is later confronted by Steve Trevor, who offers her a spot on Amanda Waller's new Justice League of America. Selina initially refuses, but accepts the offer after Trevor promises to help her track down a woman who has apparently been posing as Selina. It is later revealed that Catwoman was chosen specifically to take down Batman should the JLA ever need to defeat the original Justice League. The teams eventually come into conflict in the publisher's "Trinity War" crossover.
In the Earth-Two continuity, Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne are married, and their daughter, Helena Wayne, is that universe's Robin. In this universe, either Selina has reformed or was never a supervillain in the first place. It is revealed in issue #0 of Worlds' Finest that this Selina was killed while trying to stop what she believed was a human trade ring.
Keeper of the Castle and Inheritance
From 2014 to 2015, science fiction writer Genevieve Valentine took over the series and penned a 10-issue story arc focused on Selina Kyle's reign as a Gotham City crime boss. Following events from Batman Eternal and preceding those in Batman #28, Selina takes over control of the Calabrese crime family, after being revealed as the daughter of Rex Calabrese. During this time she stops wearing the Catwoman costume, prompting Eiko Hasigawa, heir to the rival Hasigawa family, to replace her in the role.
The women confront each other several times, discussing Eiko's motivations to dress as Catwoman and whether Selina's plans for Gotham and the families are worth the sacrifices required. During one of their encounters, Selina and Eiko kiss, establishing their relationship as a romantic one.
DC Universe
In June 2016, the DC Rebirth event again relaunched DC Comics' entire line of superhero comic book titles with partial revisions of their characters' fictional histories. Catwoman assumes a prominent role in the third volume of Batman. In December 2017, DC Comics ended the DC Rebirth branding, opting to include everything under a larger DC Universe banner and naming, and Catwoman continues to be featured in the third volume of Batman. The series reveals Selina Kyle's origin through a series of flashbacks and letters exchanged between her and Bruce. Selina's parents died when she was young, and she hardly remembers them. She is sent to the Thomas and Martha Wayne Home For the Boys and Girls of Gotham, and even after being placed in various foster homes, Selina would escape to return to the orphanage.
Eventually, Selina takes on the Catwoman persona. During one of her heists, she is approached by the Kite Man to aide the Joker in a gang war against the Riddler, which she refuses. She later aides Batman, with whom she already has a romantic relationship, to spy on the Joker. She is shot from a window, but is unharmed. At some point in the future, her childhood orphanage is bombed by a terrorist group called the Dogs of War. Batman reluctantly arrests Catwoman after all 237 of them are killed, despite Catwoman's insistence on her guilt.
Catwoman's first appearance following the start of DC Rebirth is in Batman (vol. 3) #9, where she is revealed to be imprisoned in Arkham Asylum for the alleged murders of the Dogs of War. Batman is determined to prove her innocence, and makes a deal with Amanda Waller to get her off death row in exchange for her help on a mission to Santa Prisca. The mission to find the Psycho-Pirate is a success, and Batman and Catwoman return to Gotham City. Before Batman can return her to custody, she escapes. Batman investigates the murders of the terrorists that she has been charged with, and deduces that it was in fact Holly Robinson who committed the murders after the terrorists burned down the orphanage she and Selina were raised in. After being attacked by Holly Robinson, Batman is rescued by Catwoman.
Bruce proposes to Selina at the end of Batman (vol. 3) #24. In issue #32, Selina asks Bruce to propose to her again, to which she says, "Yes". The two leave Gotham for Khadym to where Holly Robinson has fled to in order to clear Selina's name, ultimately facing Talia al Ghul.
Batman Annual (vol. 3) #2 (January 2018) centers on a romantic storyline between Batman and Catwoman, beginning with their initial meetings and acceptance of their shared mutual attraction towards one and another. Towards the end, the story is flash-forwarded to the future, in which Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle are a married couple in their golden years. Bruce receives a terminal medical diagnosis, and Selina cares for him until his death.
On the day of their wedding, Selina decides to call off the wedding as she realises that marrying Bruce would ultimately take away what makes him Batman. This is later revealed to be due to the manipulations of Holly under the instructions of Bane as to finally break Batman of both spirit and will. Subsequently, Selina leaves Gotham and starts a new life in the city of Villa Hermosa, California (Catwoman (vol. 5) #1). She faces opposition from the power-hungry Creel family who run Villa Hermosa, specifically First Lady Raina Creel.
She reappears in the "City of Bane" storyline, reuniting with Bruce following his defeat against both Bane and his father Thomas Wayne from the Flashpoint reality. They proceed to go to Paris for Bruce to recover, before going to disrupt a shipment of Venom under the jurisdiction of Bane's lieutenant, the Magpie. During this, they reconcile and finally determine when they actually first met (Batman believed it to be on a boat when they first met under their alter-egos; whilst Catwoman believed it to be in the streets as their true identities, reminiscent of their meeting in Batman: Year One). They subsequently go back to Gotham and defeat all of Batman's enemies who had sided with Bane before taking on and defeating Bane himself, at which point the two are taken by Thomas who, in an attempt to finally break Bruce's spirit, shows him the corpse of the recently murdered Alfred. However, both Bruce and Selina then defeat Thomas utilizing both Scarface and the Psycho-Pirate.
Equipment
Weapons
During the Silver Age, Catwoman, like most Batman villains, used a variety of themed weapons, vehicles, and equipment, such as a custom cat-themed car called the "Cat-illac". This usage also appeared in the 1960s Batman television series. In her Post-Crisis appearances, Catwoman's favored weapon is a whip. She wields both a standard bullwhip and a cat o' nine tails with expert proficiency. She uses the whip because it is a weapon that the user must be trained to use, and therefore it can not be taken from her and used against her in a confrontation. She can also be seen using a pistol against people if her whip is taken from her. Catwoman uses caltrops as an anti-personnel weapon and bolas to entangle opponents at a distance.
Catwoman has also been shown to have various items to restrain her victims, such as rope for binding hands and feet, and a roll of duct tape used to gag her targets, as she has done with various victims during her robberies over the years. Often, especially in the TV series, she uses sleeping gas or knockout darts to subdue victims. Catwoman's attractiveness and feminine wiles have also allowed her to take advantage of male opponents.
Costume
Catwoman, in her first appearance, wore no costume or disguise at all. It was not until her next appearance that she donned a mask, which was a theatrically face-covering cat-mask that had the appearance of a real cat, rather than a more stylized face mask seen in her later incarnations. Later, she wore a dress with a hood that came with ears, and still later, a catsuit with attached boots and either a domino or glasses-mask.
In the 1960s, Catwoman's catsuit was green, which was typical of villains of that era. In the 1990s, she usually wore a mostly purple, skintight catsuit before switching to a black catsuit similar to Michelle Pfeiffer's costume in Batman Returns, except not haphazardly stitched together.
In recent years, artists have typically depicted Catwoman in some variation of a tight, black bodysuit. Ed Brubaker, the writer behind the 2001 revamp of the character, has stated that Selina's current costume was inspired by Emma Peel's iconic leather catsuit in The Avengers television series. It has a more high tech look, with domino-shaped infrared goggles on her cowl. Many of her costumes have incorporated retractable metal claws on the fingertips of her gloves and sometimes on the toes of her boots. On rare occasions, she has also sported a cat's tail.
On May 21, 2018, DC Comics unveiled Selina's revamped Catwoman costume designed by comic book writer and artist Joëlle Jones. The new costume is black with openings under her arms and shoulders for mobility along with reinforcement in the middle. Gone are the goggles in favor of a cowl and sleeker, more stylish gloves and boots. Jones, who had been drawing the covers and interior art for DC Rebirth's Batman was announced as the writer and artist of a new solo Catwoman series (volume 5).
Holly Robinson uses the same costume Selina used prior to Infinite Crisis.
Other versions
Earth-Two
In the 1970s comics, the Catwoman of Earth-Two (the parallel Earth that was retroactively declared as the home of DC's Golden Age characters) has the same history as her Golden Age counterpart. Selina later reformed in the 1950s (after the events of Batman #69) and had married Bruce Wayne; soon afterward, she gave birth to the couple's only child, Helena Wayne (the Huntress). The Brave and the Bold #197 (April 1983) elaborates upon the Golden Age origin of Catwoman given in Batman #62, after Selina reveals that she never suffered from amnesia. It is revealed that Selina Kyle had been in a bad marriage, and eventually decided to leave her husband. However, her husband kept her jewelry in his private vault, and she had to break into it to retrieve it. Selina enjoyed this experience so much she decided to become a professional costumed cat burglar, and thus began a career that repeatedly led to her encountering Batman.
The Earth-Two/Golden Age Selina Kyle eventually dies in the late 1970s after being blackmailed by her former underling "Silky" Cernak into going into action again as Catwoman, as shown in DC Super-Stars #17 (December 1977). She was killed when Cernak henchman's gun went off and hit her on the chest enough for her to fall from the fourth floor mezzanine. She died in Bruce's arms claiming "I did it all for you". This incident led to Helena Wayne becoming Huntress and bringing Cernak to justice.
The Dark Knight Returns
Selina Kyle appears as an aging and somewhat overweight madam in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns four times; all are brief. The first time is in a phone message to Bruce ("Selina. Bruce, I'm lonely."). Next, she is attacked by the Joker, who uses a mind control drug to convince her to send one of her prostitutes to use the same substance on a governor. The Joker then beats her, dresses her in a Wonder Woman outfit, ties her up and gags her, leaving her for Batman to find. Selina's final appearance in the book is at Bruce Wayne's funeral, where she yells at Superman, telling him that she knows who killed Bruce. She does not appear in Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller's follow-up story, although she is referred to in the prologue written for the trade paperback version, but in the book, Carrie Kelley's moniker of "Catgirl" is an homage to Catwoman.
Prose books
Two 1990s prose books feature Catwoman: The Further Adventures of Batman: Volume 3 featuring Catwoman, a short story anthology with stories written by various authors, and Catwoman: Tiger Hunt, a novel. Both books feature a Batman: Year One-influenced Catwoman who wears a gray cat costume and was once a prostitute.
Kingdom Come
Catwoman also made a small cameo in Kingdom Come, mostly accompanying the Riddler; she is predominantly seen, but not much heard in the series. She is not dressed in costume, but appears in the very dress she first wore in Batman #1 as the Cat. According to the novelization by Elliot S. Maggin, she runs a multibillion-dollar cosmetics company. An armored, metahuman successor called "Catwoman II" is also featured in the story as one of the "new heroes" who follow the new "man of tomorrow" Magog's anti-heroic, violent example.
Batman: Digital Justice
In the all-digital graphic novel Batman: Digital Justice, which is set some time in the future long after the original Batman has died, Sheila Romero, also known as the hit pop music star Gata (the Spanish female noun for "cat") and daughter of the Mayor of Gotham City, is jealous of the new Batman, James Gordon, because media coverage of his activities have been cutting into her airtime. Setting out to learn as much about Batman and his enemies as she can, Gata becomes the new Catwoman. Near the end of the story, Gata and her followers face off against Batman, but the two later fall in love, and Maria Romero, also known as Madame X, tells Sheila that she is really a clone of Maria. Maria confesses that she had planned to transplant her brain into Gata's body, but she could not bring herself to do it because she loved her "daughter" too much. Maria then dies in Sheila's arms.
Elseworlds
In the Elseworlds tale Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham, Selina Kyle is the daughter of millionaires Thomas and Martha Kyle. Walking home after seeing the film Cat People, the young Selina chases after an alley cat and watches in horror as her parents are gunned down by a robber. Selina learns that the crook has stolen a ring she found in a Cracker Jack box and had given to her mother. Years later she becomes Catwoman, the defender of Gotham City, operating out of a Catcave beneath Kyle Manor, aided by a young maid named Brooks (this universe's version of Alfred Pennyworth). Her major enemy is a psychopathic criminal named Batman, who beats her entire rogues gallery half-to-death just to get rid of the competition.
In the Elseworlds tale Batman: Nine Lives, where Batman and his supporting characters are re-invented as a pulp noir detective story, an African-American Selina Kyle is a murdered owner of the bankrupt Kit Kat Club who was blackmailing many of the city's most powerful figures. She is nicknamed "the Catwoman".
In the Elseworlds tale Batman/Tarzan: Claws of the Cat-woman, set in the 1930s, explorer and adventurer Finnegan Dent is revealed to be stealing the sacred artifacts of an African tribe. During an encounter with Batman and Tarzan, a female thief, dressed as a cat, is revealed to be the princess of the tribe, as well as the priestess of its cat-cult, trying to reclaim the artifacts.
In the Elseworlds tale JLA: The Nail, featuring a world where costumed heroes have no symbol of inspiration as Superman was never recovered by the Kents, Catwoman is diagnosed by the head warden of Arkham Asylum as not being a true "criminal", but simply enjoying playing a "cat-and-mouse" game with Batman, donning her costume simply to attract his attention. During her time in Arkham, the Joker attacks the asylum armed with Kryptonian gauntlets provided by the story's secret villain, forcing the inmates to fight each other—Catwoman being the last one standing—before Batman arrives. Although the Joker uses his gauntlets to brutally murder Robin and Batgirl while forcing Batman to watch, Catwoman distracts him long enough for Batman to escape the Joker's hold and destroy the gauntlets. He then proceeds to kill the Joker in a trauma-induced rage, taking the gauntlets and Catwoman back to the Batcave. With Selina and Alfred having broken through Batman's grief, Selina becomes Batwoman and joins Batman in rescuing the JLA from captivity. Although Batman resigns from the League after he is cleared of the Joker's murder, even Catwoman's support cannot help him past his grief until the events of JLA: Another Nail, where the two briefly travel into the afterlife to investigate recent supernatural disturbances with the aid of Deadman, with Batgirl and Robin's spirits appearing to forgive their mentor for his failure to save them before he returns to life.
In the Elseworlds tale Batman: In Darkest Knight, featuring a world if Bruce Wayne discovered the body of dying alien Abin Sur, instead of Green Lantern Hal Jordan, also features familiar Batman characters mixed with some of Green Lantern's enemies. Selina Kyle (recognized by Bruce as "that night in the East End", a reference to Batman: Year One"), along with Harvey Dent are corrupted by Sinestro, who absorbs the mind of the Waynes' killer Joe Chill and became crazed. The two known as Star Sapphire (Selina) and Binary Star (Harvey) team with Sinestro to take out Green Lantern, but are stopped.
Batman: Bloodstorm
In Batman: Bloodstorm, the first of two sequels to Batman & Dracula: Red Rain, where Batman was forced to become a vampire to save Gotham from an attack by Dracula, Selina is turned into a werecat after being bitten by one of the remaining vampires. Hunting for the monster that transformed her, Selina encounters Batman as he hunts for the remaining vampires, the two subsequently joining forces to eliminate the vampire horde. As they fight together, Batman finds that Selina's selfless love for him allows him to control his thirst for blood that had begun to consume him. She sacrifices herself to save him from the Joker, who had become the leader of the remaining vampires after Dracula's death, taking a crossbow bolt to the heart that the Joker had fired at Batman. Batman's grief and rage over her death causes him to finally lose control of his bloodlust as he drinks the Joker's blood. In the second and final sequel, Batman: Crimson Mist, the corrupted Batman reflects grimly that he can no longer understand Selina's noble sacrifice after his psyche has become increasingly corrupted by his surrender to his vampire side.
Thrillkiller
In Howard Chaykin's Thrillkiller, Selina Kyle is a stripper in a cat-themed strip club. She acts as an informant for GCPD detective Bruce Wayne.
Dark Allegiances
In Howard Chaykin's Dark Allegiances, Selina Kyle becomes a film star under the stage name of Kitty Grimalkin. Prior to becoming a star, she was an alcoholic whose actions during one of her "blackouts" were recorded into an underground porn film. The stills from the film are used to blackmail her into stealing information from Wayne Enterprises.
Batman: Shadow of the Bat
In Alan Grant's Batman: Shadow of the Bat Annual #2, Vikki Vale, a reporter for Wayne Media, is Catwoman. She is hired by Anarky to steal information, but she gets caught and is tortured by Jonathan Crane, whom she calls a "demented scarecrow".
All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder
In Frank Miller's All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, Catwoman expresses interest when the Joker's invites her to join him in "some mischief". She may be involved in sadomasochism, as she first advises the Joker — who has just murdered his latest lover—that "I've heard rumors on how you handle women — and even I don't play it that rough". Two issues later, however, Catwoman is found brutally beaten and cut, bleeding badly. She struggles to tell Batman, "Juh... Juh... It was Juh..."
Batman: Two Faces
In Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Batman: Two Faces, Selina Kyle is a madame in 19th century Gotham, who defends streetwalkers in a mask, bustier, and fishnets and occasionally works with amateur detective Bruce Wayne. The Joker attacks and paralyzes her, much like he does to Barbara Gordon in Batman: The Killing Joke.
Batman: Leatherwing
In Detective Comics Annual #7 ("Batman: Leatherwing") by Chuck Dixon, set in the 18th century Caribbean, Capitana Felina is a Spanish Contessa turned pirate, who rails against the chauvinism of her own crew. She initially teams up with the Laughing Man (the Joker) against the English freebooter Captain Leatherwing (Batman), before turning to Leatherwing's side, and eventually marrying him.
Batman Beyond
A futuristic Catwoman appears in Batman Beyond (vol. 3). Like the current Batman, Terry McGinnis, the new Catwoman sports a high-tech costume complete with advanced gadgetry. The new Hush hires her to plant a tracking device on Batman, only for Hush to begin strangling her after "paying" her with a box full of playing cards, regarding her death as a continuation of his efforts to destroy Batman's "family" by killing his rogues gallery. Bruce Wayne saves her with 'Bat-Wraith' robots. She is revealed to be the daughter of the villain Multiplex; she inherits her father's ability to self-duplicate, but can only create nine copies of herself, explaining her adoption of the Catwoman moniker. She is later revealed to be intimately involved with Dick Grayson.
Flashpoint
In the alternate timeline of the Flashpoint event, Selina Kyle becomes the Oracle, having been apparently paralyzed under unspecified circumstances.
Batman: Earth One
In the second volume of the Batman: Earth One graphic novel series, Selena Kyle appears and helps Batman tending his wounds after chasing the Riddler, pretending to be a single mother who lives in the apartment building where he was injured. Batman later discovers that she is neither the apartment's tenant or a mother, but a burglar who was robbing the building at the time.
Scooby-Doo Team-Up
During a crossover with the cast of Scooby-Doo, Catwoman poses as a ghost in order to con Harley and Ivy out of the Opal of Isis, a rare artifact. After the members of Mystery, Inc. unravel her scam, Catwoman tries to flee with the opal. She is soon found bound and gagged, with Batgirl having managed to defeat her and reclaim the opal off-screen.
Earth 2
In 2011, The New 52 revised and relaunched DC Comics superhero titles, including revisions to the alternate-universe stories and characters of "Earth-Two"—renamed "Earth-2". The Earth 2 version of Catwoman is married to Batman and is the mother of Helena Wayne. Catwoman trained her daughter in crimefighting so that she can one day aid her father, who is busy protecting the world from bigger threats. Batman found out about the outing and got angry, only for Catwoman to calm him down and kiss him. Helena later came to her father's aid and found that soldiers from another world killed Catwoman as Batman mourns her death.
Batman '89
In 2021, DC announced that it would be releasing a comic book continuation of Tim Burton's first two Batman films, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), Batman '89, written by Sam Hamm, and illustrated by Joe Quinones. The book picks following the events of Batman Returns (1992) and includes the return of Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle / Catwoman.
In other media
Catwoman made her live-action debut in the 1966 Batman television series, portrayed by Julie Newmar; she was also portrayed by Lee Meriwether in the film adaptation and Eartha Kitt in the third season. The character later appeared in Tim Burton's Batman Returns, portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer. A solo Catwoman film was released in 2004 in which she was portrayed by Halle Berry. Anne Hathaway portrayed the character in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. She was voiced by Zoë Kravitz in the 2017 animated film the Lego Batman Movie, and in 2022, she portrayed the character in Matt Reeves' live-action film The Batman. Catwoman has also appeared in the television series Gotham (2014–2019), in which she was portrayed by Camren Bicondova and Lili Simmons (adult).
Reception
Catwoman was ranked 11th on IGN's "Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time" list, and 51st on Wizard magazine's "100 Greatest Villains of All Time" list. Conversely, she was ranked 20th on IGN's "Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time" list, as well as 23rd in Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list.
Bibliography
List of Catwoman titles
Catwoman (miniseries) #1–4 (1989)
Catwoman: Defiant (1992)
Materiał From Showcase '93 #1–4 (1993)
Materiał From Showcase '95 #4 (1995)
Catwoman (vol. 2) #1–94 (1993–2001)
Catwoman (vol. 2) #0 (1994)
Catwoman #1,000,000 (1998)
Catwoman Annual #1–4 (1994–1997)
Catwoman/Vampirella: The Furies (1997)
Catwoman Plus/Scream Queen #1 (1997) (with Scream Queen)
Catwoman/Wildcat #1–4 (1998)
Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham #1–2 (1999)
Catwoman (vol. 3) #1–83 (2002–2008, 2010)
Catwoman: Secret Files and Origins #1 (2003)
Catwoman: When in Rome #1–6 (2004)
Batman/Catwoman: Trail of the Gun #1–2 (2004)
Gotham City Sirens #1–26 (2009–2011) (Catwoman co-stars in the title alongside Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn)
Catwoman (vol. 4) #1–52 (2011–2016)
Catwoman (vol. 4) #0
Catwoman: Futures End #1
Catwoman Annual (vol. 2) #1–2 (2013 and 2014)
Catwoman (vol. 5) #1–ongoing (2018–present)
Catwoman Annual (vol. 3) #1 (2019)
Catwoman: Lonely City #1–4 (2021–2022)
Novels
Catwoman: Tiger Hunt, Warner Books, September 1992, ISBN 978-0-446-36043-2
Graphic novels
Catwoman: Selina's Big Score, DC Comics, ISBN 978-1-56389-922-5 (SC, August 2003), ISBN 978-1-56389-897-6 (HC, July 2002)
Collected editions
Other collected editions
Batman: Knightfall Vol. 2: Knightquest (Catwoman (vol. 2) #6–7)
Batman: Knightfall Vol. 3: KnightsEnd (Catwoman (vol. 2) #12–13)
Batman: Contagion (Catwoman (vol. 2) #31–35)
Batman: Legacy (Catwoman (vol. 2) #35–36)
Batman/Wildcat (Catwoman/Wildcat #1-4)
Batman: Cataclysm (Catwoman (vol. 2) #56)
Batman: No Man's Land Vol. 2 (Catwoman (vol. 2) #72–74)
Batman: No Man's Land Vol. 4 (Catwoman (vol. 2) #75–77)
Batman: New Gotham Vol. 2 – Officer Down (Catwoman (vol. 2) #90)
Batman: War Games Act 1 (Catwoman (vol. 3) #34)
Batman: War Games Act 2 (Catwoman (vol. 3) #35)
Batman: War Games Act 3 (Catwoman (vol. 3) #36)
Batman: Night of the Owls (Catwoman (vol. 4) #9)
The Joker: Death of the Family (Catwoman (vol. 4) #13–14)
DC Comics: Zero Year (Catwoman (vol. 4) #25)
See also
List of Batman supporting characters
List of Batman family enemies
References
External links
Official website
Catwoman Through the Years – slideshow by Life magazine
"Catwoman (of Batman: The Animated Series) from BatmanTAS.com". Archived from the original on March 23, 2012. Retrieved 2005-11-26.
Catwoman on DC Database, a DC Comics wiki
"Girls With Gauntlets". Archived from the original on February 18, 2012. Retrieved 2006-01-07. – the influence of Catwoman upon female action heroes of the 1990s
Moore, Booth (January 24, 2011). "Catching up with the original Catwoman, Julie Newmar". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 24, 2011. |
Bill_Finger | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Finger | [
293
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Finger"
] | Milton "Bill" Finger (February 8, 1914 – c. January 18, 1974) was an American screenwriter and comic book writer who was the co-creator (with Bob Kane) of the DC Comics character Batman. Despite making major (sometimes, signature) contributions as an innovative writer, visionary mythos/world builder and illustration architect, Finger (like other creators of his era) was often relegated to ghostwriter status on many comics—including those featuring Batman, and the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott.
While Kane privately admitted in a 1980s audio interview with his autobiographer that Finger was responsible for "50–75% of all the creativity in Batman," he publicly denied Finger had been anything more than a subcontractor executing Kane's ideas for decades. As a result, Finger died in obscurity and poverty while the Batman brand, and Kane, amassed international fame and wealth. In the 2000s, Finger biographer Marc Tyler Nobleman's research uncovered previously unknown heirs. At the urging of Nobleman, the online comics fan community and others, Finger's granddaughter revived the fight to restore his lost legacy, which continued for years. In 2015, DC Comics's parent company conditionally agreed to recognize Finger's intellectual property claim as co-creator of the Batman characters and mythos, officially adding his name, going forward, to the "created by" credit line Kane had been contractually guaranteed in 1939.
Early life
Bill Finger was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1914 to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. His father, Louis Finger, was born in Austria-Hungary in 1890 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1907. Little is known about his biological mother Rosa Rosenblatt. His stepmother Tessie was born in 1892 in New York City. The family also included two daughters (or possibly nieces raised as daughters), Emily and Gilda. The family moved to The Bronx, New York City, where during the Great Depression Louis Finger was forced to close his tailor shop. Finger graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx in 1933.
Career
Comics
An aspiring writer and a part-time shoe salesman, Finger joined Bob Kane's nascent studio in 1938 after having met Kane, a fellow DeWitt Clinton alumnus, at a party. Kane later offered him a job ghost writing the strips Rusty and Clip Carson.
Batman
Early the following year, National Comics' success with the seminal superhero Superman in Action Comics prompted editors to scramble for similar heroes. In response, Kane conceived the "Bat-Man". Finger recalled Kane
... had an idea for a character called 'Batman', and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN.
Finger offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl with pointed bat-ears instead of the domino mask, a cape instead of wings, adding gloves, and changing the red sections of the costume to gray. Finger later said his suggestions to have his eyes covered by white lenses was influenced by Lee Falk's popular The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic strip character with which Kane was also familiar, and that he devised the name Bruce Wayne for the character's secret identity. Finger said, "Bruce Wayne's first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock ... then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne." Kane decades later in his autobiography described Finger as "a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning ... I made Batman a superhero-vigilante when I first created him. Bill turned him into a scientific detective." Nobleman said, "Bob [Kane] showed Bat-Man to [editor] Vin [Sullivan]—without Bill. Vin promptly wanted to run Bat-Man, and Bob negotiated a deal—without including Bill."
Finger wrote both the initial script for Batman's debut in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) and the character's second appearance in Detective Comics #28 (June 1939), while Kane provided art. Batman proved a breakout hit, and Finger went on to write many of the early Batman stories, including making major contributions to the Joker character. Batman background artist and letterer George Roussos recalled:
What was good about Bill was that whenever he wrote a plot, he did a lot of research for it. Whether the setting was a railroad station or a factory, he would find a photo reference, usually from National Geographic, and give Bob all the research to draw from. He was very orderly and methodical. His only problem was that he couldn't sustain the work ... he couldn't produce material regularly enough.
Robin was introduced as Batman's sidekick in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940). When Kane wanted Robin's origin to parallel Batman's, Finger made Robin's parents circus performers murdered while performing their trapeze act. Finger recalled:
Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Douglas Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea".
Comics historian Jim Steranko wrote in 1970 that Finger's slowness as a writer led Batman editor Whitney Ellsworth to suggest Kane replace him, a claim reflected in Joe Desris' description of Finger as "notoriously tardy". During Finger's absence, Gardner Fox contributed scripts that introduced Batman's early "Bat-" arsenal (the utility belt, the Bat-gyro/-plane and the Batarang). Upon his return, Finger is credited with providing the name "Gotham City". Finger wrote the debut issue of Batman's self-titled comic book series which introduced the Joker and the Catwoman. Among the things that made his stories distinctive were a use of giant-sized props: enlarged pennies, sewing machines, or typewriters. Finger seemed to avoid having Batman operate out of a cave in the early stories, to circumvent being too similar to the Phantom and Zorro. Instead Finger indicated that Wayne merely used "underground hangars" on the property to store vehicles. The Batcave first appeared in the 1943 Columbia serial starring Lewis Wilson and the comics followed suit thereafter. Donald Clough Cameron created the concept of Batman having a trophy section in the Batcave. One of the prevalently featured trophies in Batman's Batcave, the giant replica of a Lincoln penny, was introduced in a story written by Finger. He was one of the writers of the syndicated Batman comic strip from 1943 to 1946.
Eventually, Finger left Kane's studio to work directly for DC Comics, where he supplied scripts for characters including Batman and Superman. A part of the Superman mythos which had originated on the radio program made its way into the comic books when kryptonite was featured in a story by Finger and Al Plastino in Superman #61 (Nov. 1949). As writer of the Superboy series, Finger created Lana Lang, a love-interest for the teenage superhero. Continuing his Batman work, he and artist Sheldon Moldoff introduced Ace the Bat-Hound in Batman #92 (June 1955), Bat-Mite in Detective Comics #267 (May 1959), Clayface in Detective Comics #298 (December 1961), and Betty Kane, the original Bat-Girl in Batman #139 (April 1961). Finger wrote for other companies, including Fawcett Comics, Quality Comics and Marvel Comics' 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics. Finger created the All-Winners Squad in All Winners Comics #19 (Fall 1946) for Timely.
Batman villains
Finger provided an account on the creation of Joker in 1966, though admittedly unsure if it was Robinson or Kane who initiated the initial concept:
I got a call from Bob Kane ... He had a new villain. When I arrived he was holding a playing card. Apparently Jerry Robinson or Bob, I don't recall who, looked at the card and they had an idea for a character ... the Joker. Bob made a rough sketch of it. At first it didn't look much like the Joker. It looked more like a clown. But I remembered that Grosset & Dunlap formerly issued very cheap editions of classics by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo ... The volume I had was The Man Who Laughs — his face had been permanently operated on so that he will always have this perpetual grin. And it looked absolutely weird. I cut the picture out of the book and gave it to Bob, who drew the profile and gave it a more sinister aspect. Then he worked on the face; made him look a little clown-like, which accounted for his white face, red lips, green hair. And that was the Joker!
Finger also asserted that the creation of Penguin was fully his in the same interview, outright refuting Kane's claims:
Oh, he never came off a package of Kools...I happened to be looking at an old copy of the old Saturday Evening Post that had an article on the Emperor Penguin. It had photograghs of Emperor Penguins waddling about. To me they looked exactly like portly Englishmen on their way to their private clubs. Naturally when you think of an Englishman, you think of the perpetual umbrella. So, I decided to make a character who...well, it can't be just an umbrella. I decided to gimmick them. I gave him a tophat, make him looking like the Englishman, and gave him a thousand umbrellas, gimmicked. Alas, we have the Penguin.
Finger created the Scarecrow and it is believed that Kane penciled his first appearance. Kane created Two-Face and Finger expanded his characterization in the first script for Detective Comics #66 (Aug. 1942). The Riddler was created by Finger and designed by Dick Sprang in issue #140 (Oct. 1948). The Calendar Man was another villain created by Finger without input from Kane.
Green Lantern
Finger collaborated with artist and character creator Martin Nodell on the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, who debuted in All-American Comics #16 (July 1940). Both writer and artist received a byline on the strip, with Nodell in the earliest issues using the pseudonym "Mart Dellon".
According to Nodell, Finger was brought in to write scripts after Nodell had already conceived the character. Nodell recalled in an undated, latter-day interview:
When I sent it in, I waited into the second week before I heard the word to come in. I was ushered into Mr. [Max] Gaines' office, publisher, and after sitting a long time and flipping through the pages of my presentation, he announced, "We like it!" And then, "Get to work!" I did the first five pages of an eight-page story, and then they called in Bill Finger to help. We worked on it for seven years [through 1947].
Screenwriter
As a screenwriter, Finger wrote or co-wrote the films Death Comes to Planet Aytin, The Green Slime, and Track of the Moon Beast, and contributed scripts to the TV series' Hawaiian Eye and 77 Sunset Strip. He and Charles Sinclair wrote the two-part episode "The Clock King's Crazy Crimes / The Clock King Gets Crowned", airing October 12–13, 1966, in season two of the live-action Batman TV series. It was his first public credit for any Batman story.
Credit
Artist Bob Kane negotiated a contract with National Comics (the future DC Comics) that signed away ownership of the character in exchange for, among other compensations, a sole mandatory byline on all Batman comics (and adaptations thereof). Finger's name, in contrast, did not appear as an official credit on Batman stories or films until 2015. Finger began receiving limited acknowledgment for his writing work in the 1960s; the letters page of Batman #169 (Feb. 1965), for example, features editor Julius Schwartz naming Finger as creator of the Riddler.
Additionally, Finger did receive credit for his work for National's sister company, All-American Publications, during that time. For example, the first Wildcat story, in Sensation Comics #1 (Jan. 1942), has the byline "by Irwin Hasen and Bill Finger", and the first Green Lantern story (see above) is credited to "Mart Dellon and Bill Finger". National later absorbed All-American. National's practice in the 1950s made formal bylines rare in comics, with DC regularly granting credit only to Kane; William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, under his pseudonym of Charles Moulton; and to Sheldon Mayer.
In 1989, Kane acknowledged Finger as "a contributing force" in the character's creation, and wrote, "Now that my long-time friend and collaborator is gone, I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he deserved. He was an unsung hero ... I often tell my wife, if I could go back fifteen years, before he died, I would like to say. 'I'll put your name on it now. You deserve it.'" Comics historian Ron Goulart referred to Batman as the "creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger".
Finger's contemporary, artist and writer Jerry Robinson, who worked with Kane from the beginning, said, "[Bill] had more to do with the molding of Batman than Bob. He just did so many things at the beginning, ... creating almost all the other characters, ... the whole persona, the whole temper." Batman inker George Roussos, another contemporary, said, "Bob Kane had rough ideas, but Bill was the man behind Batman." A DC Comics press release in 2007 said, "Kane, along with writer Bill Finger, had just created Batman for DC predecessor National Comics." Likewise, DC editor Paul Levitz wrote, "The Darknight [sic] Detective debuted in [Detective] #27, the creation of Bob Kane and Bill Finger."
Writer John Broome and penciler Gil Kane created the comic-book villain William Hand, a.k.a. Black Hand, as a tribute to Finger, on whom the character's name and likeness were based.
In September 2015, DC Entertainment announced Finger would receive credit on the 2016 superhero film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the second season of Gotham, following a deal between the Finger family and DC. Finger received his first formal credit as a creator of Batman in the October 2015 comic books Batman and Robin Eternal #3 and Batman: Arkham Knight Genesis #3. The updated acknowledgement for the character appeared as "Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger".
Awards
Finger was posthumously inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999. In 1985, DC Comics named Finger as one of the honorees in the company's 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great. In his honor, Comic-Con International established in 2005 the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, which is given annually to "two recipients — one living and one deceased — who have produced a significant body of work in the comics field". Finger posthumously received an Inkpot Award in 2014.
Legacy
On December 8, 2017, the southeast corner of East 192nd Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx was named "Bill Finger Way". The corner was chosen for its proximity to Poe Park, where Finger and Kane used to meet to discuss their Batman character. Finger is the subject of the Hulu original documentary, Batman & Bill, which premiered in 2017.
Personal life
Finger married twice. He and his first wife, Portia, had a son: Frederick (nicknamed "Fred"). After their divorce, Finger married Edith "Lyn" Simmons in the late 1960s, but they were no longer married when he died in 1974.
Finger was last seen alive on January 16, 1974. His friend and longtime writing partner Charles Sinclair found Finger dead at his home on January 18 at the condominium Allen House at 340 East 51st Street in Manhattan. The cause of death was occlusive coronary atherosclerosis. His death was not widely reported at the time. Finger had suffered three heart attacks, in 1963, 1970, and 1973. Although it was long believed by Sinclair and others, that Finger was buried in an unmarked potter's field grave, his body was actually claimed by his son, Fred, who honored his wish to be cremated, and spread his ashes in the shape of a bat on a beach in Oregon. The first story of the issue Batman #259 in December 1974 would be dedicated to Finger's memory.
Fred Finger had a daughter, Athena, born two years after Bill Finger's death. Fred died of complications from AIDS on January 13, 1992. Athena and her son are his only known living heirs, and her attempts (at the prompting of Nobleman and comics fans, and aided by her attorney half-sister) to restore Bill's legacy resulted in Warner Bros.'s 2015 decision to officially recognize Finger as co-creator of Batman on film and TV projects going forward.
References
Argott, Don and Joyce, Sheena M. (co-directors) (2017). Batman & Bill (Motion picture). United States: 9.14 Pictures and Thruline Entertainment.
External links
Bill Finger at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
Bill Finger at IMDb
Bill Finger at Mike's Amazing World of Comics
Comic Book Artist #3 (Winter 1999): "The Bob Kane Letter" (September 14, 1965, open letter by Bob Kane)
Cronin, Brian (July 27, 2012). "Comic Book Legends Revealed". (Column #377), Comic Book Resources. Archived from the original on October 22, 2012. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
Bill Finger at Library of Congress, with 22 library catalog records |
Bob_Kane | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Kane | [
293
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Kane"
] | Robert Kane (né Kahn ; October 24, 1915 – November 3, 1998) was an American comic book writer, animator and artist who co-created Batman (with Bill Finger) and most early related characters for DC Comics. He was inducted into the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993 and into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996.
Early life
Robert Kahn was born in New York City, New York. His parents, Augusta and Herman Kahn, an engraver, were of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. A high school friend of fellow cartoonist and future Spirit creator Will Eisner, Robert Kahn graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and then legally changed his name to Robert Kane. He studied art at Cooper Union before joining the Max Fleischer Studio as a trainee animator in the year of 1934.
Comics
He entered the comics field two years later, in 1936, freelancing original material to editor Jerry Iger's comic book Wow, What a Magazine!, including his first pencil and ink work on the serial Hiram Hick. The following year, Kane began to work at Iger's subsequent studio, Eisner & Iger, which was one of the first comic book "packagers" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium during its late-1930s and 1940s Golden Age. Among his work there was the talking animal feature "Peter Pupp"—which belied its look with overtones of "mystery and menace"—published in the U.K. comic magazine Wags and reprinted in Fiction House's Jumbo Comics. Kane also produced work through Eisner & Iger for two of the companies that would later merge to form DC Comics, including the humor features "Ginger Snap" in More Fun Comics, "Oscar the Gumshoe" for Detective Comics, and "Professor Doolittle" for Adventure Comics. For that last title he went on to do his first adventure strip, "Rusty and his Pals".
Batman
In early 1939, DC's success with the seminal superhero Superman in Action Comics prompted editors to scramble for more such heroes. In response, Bob Kane conceived "the Bat-Man." Kane said his influences for the character included actor Douglas Fairbanks's film portrayal of the swashbuckler Zorro; Leonardo da Vinci's diagram of the ornithopter, a flying machine with huge bat-like wings; and the 1930 film The Bat Whispers, based on Mary Rinehart's mystery novel The Circular Staircase (1908).
Bill Finger joined Bob Kane's nascent studio in 1938. An aspiring writer and part-time shoe salesperson, he had met Kane at a party, and Kane later offered him a job ghost writing the strips Rusty and Clip Carson. He recalled that Kane
...had an idea for a character called 'Batman', and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN.
Finger said he offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl and scalloped cape instead of wings; adding gloves; leaving the mask's eyeholes blank to connote mystery; and removing the bright red sections of the original costume, suggesting instead a gray-and-black color scheme. Finger additionally said his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk's The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic strip character with which Kane was familiar as well. Finger, who said he also devised the character's civilian name, Bruce Wayne, wrote the first Batman story, while Kane provided art. Kane, who had already submitted the proposal for Batman at DC and held a contract, is the only person given an official company credit for Batman's creation. Comics historian Ron Goulart, in Comic Book Encyclopedia, refers to Batman as the "creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger".
According to Kane, "Bill Finger was a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning. He wrote most of the great stories and was influential in setting the style and genre other writers would emulate ... I made Batman a superhero-vigilante when I first created him. Bill turned him into a scientific detective.
The character debuted in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) and proved a breakout hit. Within a year, Kane hired art assistants Jerry Robinson (initially as an inker) and George Roussos (backgrounds artist and letterer). Though Robinson and Roussos worked out of Kane's art studio in The New York Times building, Kane himself did all his drawing at home. Shortly afterward, when DC wanted more Batman stories than Kane's studio could deliver, the company assigned Dick Sprang and other in-house pencilers as "ghost artists", drawing uncredited under Kane's supervision. Future Justice League writer Gardner Fox wrote some early scripts, including the two-part story "The Monk" that introduced some of The Batman's first "Bat-" equipment.
In 1943, Kane left the Batman comic books to focus on penciling the daily Batman newspaper comic strip. DC Comics artists ghosting the comic-book stories now included Jack Burnley and Win Mortimer, with Robinson moving up as penciler and Fred Ray contributing some covers. After the strip finished in 1946, Kane returned to the comic books but, unknown to DC, had hired his own personal ghosts, including Lew Schwartz and Sheldon Moldoff from 1953 to 1967.
Robin
Bill Finger recalled that
Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of [Douglas] Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea.
Kane, who had previously created a sidekick for Peter Pupp, proposed adding a boy named Mercury who would have worn a "super-costume". Robinson suggested a normal human, along with the name "Robin", after Robin Hood books he had read during boyhood, and noting in a 2005 interview he had been inspired by one book's N. C. Wyeth illustrations.
The impetus came from Bill's wanting to extend the parameters of the story potential and of the drama. He saw that adding a sidekick would enhance the drama. Also, it enlarged the readership identification. The younger kids could then identify with Robin, which they couldn't with Batman, and the older ones with Batman. It extended the appeal on a lot of levels. The new character, an orphaned circus performer named Dick Grayson, came to live with Bruce Wayne as his young ward in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) and would inspire many similar sidekicks throughout the Golden Age of comic books.
The Joker
Batman's nemesis the Joker was introduced near that same time, in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). Credit for that character's creation is disputed. Kane's position is that
Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt—you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. ... Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker'. Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it. But he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card.
Robinson, whose original Joker playing card was on public display in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007, and the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia from October 24, 2004 to August 28, 2005, has countered that:
Bill Finger knew of Conrad Veidt because Bill had been to a lot of the foreign films. Veidt ... had this clown makeup with the frozen smile on his face (classic). When Bill saw the first drawing of the Joker, he said, 'That reminds me of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs.' He said he would bring in some shots of that movie to show me. That's how that came about. I think in Bill's mind, he fleshed out the concept of the character.
Robinson added, however, "If you read the Batman historian [E. Nelson] Bridwell, he had one interview where he interviewed Bill Finger and he said no, the Joker was created by me—an acknowledgement. He can be credited and Bob himself, we all played a role in it. ... He wrote the script of that, so he really was co-creator, and Bob and I did the visuals, so Bob was also."
Other characters
According to comics historian Les Daniels, "nearly everyone seems to agree that Two-Face was Kane's brainchild exclusively". Catwoman, originally introduced by Kane with no costume as "the Cat", was partially inspired by his cousin, Ruth Steel. Kane, a frequent moviegoer, mentioned that Jean Harlow was a model for the design and added that "I always felt that women were feline". Kane created the Scarecrow and drew his first appearance, which was scripted by Finger. Kane also created the original incarnation of Clayface. According to Kane, he drew the Penguin after being inspired by the then advertising mascot of Kool cigarettes—a penguin with a top hat and cane. Finger, however, claimed that he created the villain as a caricature of the aristocratic type, because "stuffy English gentlemen" reminded him of emperor penguins.
Later life and career
In 1966, Kane retired from DC Comics, choosing to focus on fine art. As Kane's comic-book work tapered off in the 1960s, he parlayed his Batman status into minor celebrity. He enjoyed a post-comics career in television animation, creating the characters Courageous Cat and Cool McCool, and as a painter showed his work in art galleries, although some of these paintings were produced by ghost artists. DC Comics named Kane in 1985 as one of the honorees in the company's 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great. In 1989, Kane published the autobiography Batman and Me, with an updated edition Batman and Me: The Saga Continues, in 1996.
Kane worked as a consultant on the 1989 film Batman and its three sequels with directors Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher.
Stan Lee interviewed Kane in the documentary series The Comic Book Greats.
Personal life
Kane married his first wife, Beverly, in the 1940s, and the two divorced in 1957. They had a daughter, Deborah. Kane married his second wife, actress Elizabeth Sanders Kane, in 1987.
Death
Kane died November 3, 1998, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, at age 83. He is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, California.
Awards and honors
Kane was a recipient of the Inkpot Award in 1977, was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996. He was added to the National Comics Awards' Roll of Honour in 1999.
On October 21, 2015, for his work in motion pictures, he posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6764 Hollywood Boulevard.
Kane's work is housed in collections in New York City's Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and St. John's University.
References
Further reading
Goulart, Ron, Over 50 Years of American Comic Books (BDD Promotional Books Company, 1991), ISBN 0-7924-5450-2; ISBN 978-0-7924-5450-2
External links
Bob Kane at IMDb
Comic Book Artist #3 (Winter 1999): "The Bob Kane Letter" (September 14, 1965 open letter by Bob Kane) |
List_of_countries_by_past_life_expectancy | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_life_expectancy | [
294
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_life_expectancy"
] | This is a list of countries showing past life expectancy, ranging from 1950 to 2015 in five-year periods, as estimated by the 2017 revision of the World Population Prospects database by the United Nations Population Division. Life expectancy equals the average number of years a person born in a given country is expected to live if mortality rates at each age were to remain steady in the future. The life expectancy is shown as the average of males and females.
List of countries 1950 to 2015 (United Nations)
Asterisk (*) indicates "Health in LOCATION" links.
References
External links
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs – Population Division – World Population Prospects, the 2017 Revision
Our World in Data, Life expectancy
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/history-of-life-expectancy |
Steve_Jobs | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs | [
294
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs"
] | Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted shortly afterwards. He attended Reed College in 1972 before withdrawing that same year. In 1974, he traveled through India, seeking enlightenment before later studying Zen Buddhism. He and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to further develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together, the duo gained fame and wealth a year later with production and sale of the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers.
Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to the development of the unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI. The Macintosh launched the desktop publishing industry in 1985 (for example, the Aldus Pagemaker) with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics and PostScript.
In 1985, Jobs departed Apple after a long power struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO, John Sculley. That same year, Jobs took some Apple employees with him to found NeXT, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher-education and business markets, serving as its CEO. In 1986, he helped develop the visual effects industry by funding the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm that eventually spun off independently as Pixar, which produced the first 3D computer-animated feature film Toy Story (1995) and became a leading animation studio, producing 28 films since.
In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO after the company's acquisition of NeXT. He was largely responsible for reviving Apple, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. He worked closely with British designer Jony Ive to develop a line of products and services that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning with the "Think different" advertising campaign, and leading to the iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad. Jobs was also a board member at Gap Inc. from 1999 to 2002. In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. He died of tumor-related respiratory arrest in 2011; in 2022, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Since his death, he has won 141 patents; Jobs holds over 450 patents in total.
Early life
Family
Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (Arabic: عبد الفتاح الجندلي). Abdulfattah Jandali was born in a Muslim household to wealthy Syrian parents, the youngest of nine siblings. After obtaining his undergraduate degree at the American University of Beirut, Jandali pursued a PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin. There, he met Joanne Schieble, an American Catholic of Swiss-German descent whose parents owned a mink farm and real estate in Green Bay. The two fell in love but faced opposition from Schieble's father due to Jandali's Muslim faith. When Schieble became pregnant, she arranged for a closed adoption, and travelled to San Francisco to give birth.
Schieble requested that her son be adopted by college graduates. A lawyer and his wife were selected, but they withdrew after discovering that the baby was a boy, so Jobs was instead adopted by Paul Reinhold and Clara (née Hagopian) Jobs. Paul Jobs, an American of German descent, was the son of a dairy farmer from Washington County, Wisconsin. After dropping out of high school, he worked as a mechanic, then joined the US Coast Guard. When his ship was decommissioned at San Francisco, he bet he could find a wife within two weeks. He then met Clara Hagopian, an American of Armenian descent, and the two were engaged ten days later, in March 1946, and married that same year. The couple moved to Wisconsin, then Indiana, where Paul Jobs worked as a machinist and later as a car salesman. Since Clara missed San Francisco, she convinced Paul to move back. There, Paul worked as a repossession agent, and Clara became a bookkeeper. In 1955, after having an ectopic pregnancy, the couple looked to adopt a child. Since they lacked a college education, Schieble initially refused to sign the adoption papers, and went to court to request that her son be removed from the Jobs household and placed with a different family, but changed her mind after Paul and Clara promised to pay for their son's college tuition.
Infancy
In his youth, Jobs's parents took him to a Lutheran church. When Steve was in high school, Clara admitted to his girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, that she "was too frightened to love [Steve] for the first six months of his life ... I was scared they were going to take him away from me. Even after we won the case, Steve was so difficult a child that by the time he was two I felt we had made a mistake. I wanted to return him." When Chrisann shared this comment with Steve, he stated that he was already aware, and later said that he had been deeply loved and indulged by Paul and Clara. Jobs would "bristle" when Paul and Clara were referred to as his "adoptive parents", and he regarded them as his parents "1,000%". Jobs referred to his biological parents as "my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more."
Childhood
Paul Jobs worked in several jobs that included a try as a machinist, several other jobs, and then "back to work as a machinist". Paul and Clara adopted Jobs's sister Patricia in 1957, and by 1959 the family had moved to the Monta Loma neighborhood in Mountain View, California. Paul built a workbench in his garage for his son in order to "pass along his love of mechanics". Jobs, meanwhile, admired his father's craftsmanship "because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him ... I wasn't that into fixing cars ... but I was eager to hang out with my dad."
Jobs had difficulty functioning in a traditional classroom, tended to resist authority figures, frequently misbehaved, and was suspended a few times. He frequently played pranks on others at Monta Loma Elementary School in Mountain View. His father Paul (who was abused as a child) never reprimanded him, however, and instead blamed the school for not challenging his brilliant son. Jobs skipped the 5th grade and transferred to the 6th grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View, where he became a "socially awkward loner". Jobs was often "bullied" at Crittenden Middle, and in the middle of 7th grade, he gave his parents an ultimatum: either they would take him out of Crittenden or he would drop out of school.
The Jobs family was not affluent, and only by expending all their savings were they able to buy a new home in 1967, allowing Steve to change schools. The new house (a three-bedroom home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California) was in the better Cupertino School District, in Cupertino, California. The house was declared a historic site in 2013, as the first site of Apple Computer. As of 2013, it was owned by Jobs's sister, Patty, and occupied by his stepmother, Marilyn. When he was 13, in 1968, Jobs was given a summer job by Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard) after Jobs cold-called him to ask for parts for an electronics project.
Homestead High
The location of the Los Altos home meant that Jobs would be able to attend nearby Homestead High School, which had strong ties to Silicon Valley. He began his first year there in late 1968 along with Bill Fernandez, who introduced Jobs to Steve Wozniak, and would become Apple's first employee. Neither Jobs nor Fernandez (whose father was a lawyer) came from engineering households and thus decided to enroll in John McCollum's Electronics I class. Jobs had grown his hair long and become involved in the growing counterculture, and the rebellious youth eventually clashed with McCollum and lost interest in the class.
Jobs underwent a change during mid-1970. He later noted to his official biographer that "I started to listen to music a whole lot, and I started to read more outside of just science and technology — Shakespeare, Plato. I loved King Lear ... when I was a senior I had this phenomenal AP English class. The teacher was this guy who looked like Ernest Hemingway. He took a bunch of us snowshoeing in Yosemite." During his last two years at Homestead High, Jobs developed two different interests: electronics and literature. These dual interests were particularly reflected during Jobs's senior year, as his best friends were Wozniak and his first girlfriend, the artistic Homestead junior Chrisann Brennan.
In 1971, after Wozniak began attending University of California, Berkeley, Jobs would visit him there a few times a week. This experience led him to study in nearby Stanford University's student union. Instead of joining the electronics club, Jobs put on light shows with a friend for Homestead's avant-garde jazz program. He was described by a Homestead classmate as "kind of brain and kind of hippie ... but he never fit into either group. He was smart enough to be a nerd, but wasn't nerdy. And he was too intellectual for the hippies, who just wanted to get wasted all the time. He was kind of an outsider. In high school everything revolved around what group you were in, and if you weren't in a carefully defined group, you weren't anybody. He was an individual, in a world where individuality was suspect." By his senior year in late 1971, he was taking a freshman English class at Stanford and working on a Homestead underground film project with Chrisann Brennan.
Around that time, Wozniak designed a low-cost digital "blue box" to generate the necessary tones to manipulate the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls. He was inspired by an article titled "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" from the October 1971 issue of Esquire. Jobs decided then to sell them and split the profit with Wozniak. The clandestine sales of the illegal blue boxes went well and perhaps planted the seed in Jobs's mind that electronics could be both fun and profitable. In a 1994 interview, he recalled that it took six months for him and Wozniak to design the blue boxes. Jobs later reflected that had it not been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple". He states it showed them that they could take on large companies and beat them.
By his senior year of high school, Jobs began using LSD. He later recalled that on one occasion he consumed it in a wheat field outside Sunnyvale, and experienced "the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point". In mid-1972, after graduation and before leaving for Reed College, Jobs and Brennan rented a house from their other roommate, Al.
Reed College
In September 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He insisted on applying only to Reed, although it was an expensive school that Paul and Clara could ill afford. Jobs soon befriended Robert Friedland, who was Reed's student body president at that time. Brennan remained involved with Jobs while he was at Reed.
After just one semester, Jobs dropped out of Reed College without telling his parents. Jobs later explained this was because he did not want to spend his parents' money on an education that seemed meaningless to him. He continued to attend by auditing his classes, including a course on calligraphy that was taught by Robert Palladino. In a 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, Jobs stated that during this period, he slept on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returned Coke bottles for food money, and got weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. In that same speech, Jobs said: "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts".
1974–1985
Pre-Apple
In February 1974, Jobs returned to his parents' home in Los Altos and began looking for a job. He was soon hired by Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California, as a computer technician. Back in 1973, Steve Wozniak designed his own version of the classic video game Pong and gave its electronics board to Jobs. According to Wozniak, Atari only hired Jobs because he took the board down to the company, and they thought that he had built it himself. Atari's cofounder Nolan Bushnell later described him as "difficult but valuable", pointing out that "he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that".
Jobs traveled to India in mid-1974 to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi ashram with his Reed College friend and eventual Apple employee Daniel Kottke, searching for spiritual teachings. When they got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted because Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973. Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Haidakhan Babaji.
After seven months, Jobs left India and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke. Jobs had changed his appearance; his head was shaved, and he wore traditional Indian clothing. During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, later calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life". He spent a period at the All One Farm, a commune in Oregon that was owned by Robert Friedland.
During this time period, Jobs and Brennan both became practitioners of Zen Buddhism through the Zen master Kōbun Chino Otogawa. Jobs engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US. He considered taking up monastic residence at Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen, Japanese cuisine, and artists such as Hasui Kawase.
Jobs returned to Atari in early 1975, and that summer, Bushnell assigned him to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout in as few chips as possible, knowing that Jobs would recruit Wozniak for help. During his day job at HP, Wozniak drew sketches of the circuit design; at night, he joined Jobs at Atari and continued to refine the design, which Jobs implemented on a breadboard. According to Bushnell, Atari offered $100 (equivalent to about $600 in 2023) for each TTL chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, within four days Wozniak reduced the TTL count to 45, far below the usual 100, though Atari later re-engineered it to make it easier to test and add a few missing features. According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari paid them only $750 (instead of the actual $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $375. Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later but said that if Jobs had told him about it and explained that he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.
Jobs and Wozniak attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975, which was a stepping stone to the development and marketing of the first Apple computer. According to a document released by the United States Department of Defense, Jobs claimed that in 1975, he was arrested in Eugene, Oregon, after being questioned for being a minor in possession of alcohol. Jobs alleged that he "didn't have any alcohol", but police questioned him, and subsequently determined that he had an outstanding arrest warrant for an unpaid speeding ticket. Jobs claimed he then paid the $50 fine. The arrest allegedly occurred "behind a store".
Apple (1976–1985)
By March 1976, Wozniak completed the basic design of the Apple I computer and showed it to Jobs, who suggested that they sell it; Wozniak was at first skeptical of the idea but later agreed. In April of that same year, Jobs, Wozniak, and administrative overseer Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer Company (now called "Apple Inc.") as a business partnership in Jobs's parents' Crist Drive home on April 1, 1976. The operation originally started in Jobs's bedroom and later moved to the garage. Wayne stayed briefly, leaving Jobs and Wozniak as the active primary cofounders of the company.
The two decided on the name "Apple" after Jobs returned from the All One Farm commune in Oregon and told Wozniak about his time in the farm's apple orchard. Jobs originally planned to produce bare printed circuit boards of the Apple I and sell them to computer hobbyists for $50 (equivalent to about $270 in 2023) each. To fund the first batch, Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator and Jobs sold his Volkswagen van. Later that year, computer retailer Paul Terrell purchased 50 fully assembled Apple I units for $500 each. Eventually about 200 Apple I computers were produced in total.
A neighbor on Crist Drive recalled Jobs as an odd individual who would greet his clients "with his underwear hanging out, barefoot and hippie-like". Another neighbor, Larry Waterland, who had just earned his PhD in chemical engineering at Stanford, recalled dismissing Jobs's budding business compared to the established industry of giant mainframe computers with big decks of punch cards: "Steve took me over to the garage. He had a circuit board with a chip on it, a DuMont TV set, a Panasonic cassette tape deck and a keyboard. He said, 'This is an Apple computer.' I said, 'You've got to be joking.' I dismissed the whole idea." Jobs's friend from Reed College and India, Daniel Kottke, recalled that as an early Apple employee, he "was the only person who worked in the garage ... Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn't get his hands dirty in that sense." Kottke also stated that much of the early work took place in Jobs's kitchen, where he spent hours on the phone trying to find investors for the company.
They received funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product marketing manager and engineer named Mike Markkula. Scott McNealy, one of the cofounders of Sun Microsystems, said that Jobs broke a "glass age ceiling" in Silicon Valley because he'd created a very successful company at a young age. Markkula brought Apple to the attention of Arthur Rock, which, after looking at the crowded Apple booth at the Home Brew Computer Show, started with a $60,000 investment and went on the Apple board. Jobs was not pleased when Markkula recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor in February 1977 to serve as the first president and CEO of Apple.
After Brennan returned from her own journey to India, she and Jobs fell in love again, as Brennan noted changes in him that she attributes to Kobun (whom she was also still following). It was also at this time that Jobs displayed a prototype Apple II computer for Brennan and his parents in their living room. Brennan notes a shift in this time period, where the two main influences on Jobs were Apple Inc. and Kobun.
In April 1977, Jobs and Wozniak introduced the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire. It is the first consumer product to have been sold by Apple Computer. Primarily designed by Wozniak, Jobs oversaw the development of its unusual case and Rod Holt developed the unique power supply. During the design stage, Jobs argued that the Apple II should have two expansion slots, while Wozniak wanted eight. After a heated argument, Wozniak threatened that Jobs should "go get himself another computer". They later agreed on eight slots. The Apple II became one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products in the world.
As Jobs became more successful with his new company, his relationship with Brennan grew more complex. In 1977, the success of Apple was now a part of their relationship, and Brennan, Daniel Kottke, and Jobs moved into a house near the Apple office in Cupertino. Brennan eventually took a position in the shipping department at Apple. Brennan's relationship with Jobs deteriorated as his position with Apple grew, and she began to consider ending the relationship. In October 1977, Brennan was approached by Rod Holt, who asked her to take "a paid apprenticeship designing blueprints for the Apples". Both Holt and Jobs believed that it would be a good position for her, given her artistic abilities. Holt was particularly eager that she take the position and puzzled by her ambivalence toward it. Brennan's decision, however, was overshadowed by the fact that she realized she was pregnant, and that Jobs was the father. It took her a few days to tell Jobs, whose face, according to Brennan, "turned ugly" at the news. At the same time, according to Brennan, at the beginning of her third trimester, Jobs said to her: "I never wanted to ask that you get an abortion. I just didn't want to do that." He also refused to discuss the pregnancy with her.
Brennan turned down the internship and decided to leave Apple. A few weeks before she was due to give birth, Brennan was invited to deliver her baby at the All One Farm. She accepted the offer. When Jobs was 23 (the same age as his biological parents when they had him) Brennan gave birth to her baby, Lisa Brennan, on May 17, 1978. Jobs went there for the birth after he was contacted by Robert Friedland, their mutual friend and the farm owner. While distant, Jobs worked with her on a name for the baby, which they discussed while sitting in the fields on a blanket. Brennan suggested the name "Lisa" which Jobs also liked and notes that Jobs was very attached to the name "Lisa" while he "was also publicly denying paternity". She would discover later that during this time, Jobs was preparing to unveil a new kind of computer that he wanted to give a female name (his first choice was "Claire" after St. Clare). She stated that she never gave him permission to use the baby's name for a computer and he hid the plans from her. Jobs worked with his team to come up with the phrase, "Local Integrated Software Architecture" as an alternative explanation for the Apple Lisa. Decades later, however, Jobs admitted to his biographer Walter Isaacson that "obviously, it was named for my daughter".
When Jobs denied paternity, a DNA test established him as Lisa's father. It required him to pay Brennan $385 (equivalent to about $1,200 in 2023) monthly in addition to returning the welfare money she had received. Jobs paid her $500 (equivalent to about $1,500 in 2023) monthly at the time when Apple went public and made him a millionaire. Later, Brennan agreed to interview with Michael Moritz for Time magazine for its Time Person of the Year special, released on January 3, 1983, in which she discussed her relationship with Jobs. Rather than name Jobs the Person of the Year, the magazine named the generic personal computer the "Machine of the Year". In the issue, Jobs questioned the reliability of the paternity test, which stated that the "probability of paternity for Jobs, Steven... is 94.1%". He responded by arguing that "28% of the male population of the United States could be the father". Time also noted that "the baby girl and the machine on which Apple has placed so much hope for the future share the same name: Lisa".
In 1978, at age 23, Jobs was worth over $1 million (equivalent to $4.67 million in 2023). By age 25, his net worth grew to an estimated $250 million (equivalent to $838 million in 2023). He was also one of the youngest "people ever to make the Forbes list of the nation's richest people—and one of only a handful to have done it themselves, without inherited wealth". In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment on the top two floors of The San Remo, a Manhattan building with a politically progressive reputation. Although he never lived there, he spent years renovating it thanks to I. M. Pei. In 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?".
In 1984, Jobs bought the Jackling House and estate and resided there for a decade. Thereafter, he leased it out for several years until 2000 when he stopped maintaining the house, allowing weathering to degrade it. In 2004, Jobs received permission from the town of Woodside to demolish the house to build a smaller, contemporary styled one. After a few years in court, the house was finally demolished in 2011, a few months before he died.
Jobs took over development of the Macintosh in 1981, from early Apple employee Jef Raskin, who had conceived the project. Wozniak and Raskin had heavily influenced the early program, and Wozniak was on leave during this time due to an airplane crash earlier that year, making it easier for Jobs to take over the project. On January 22, 1984, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984", which ended with the words: "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." On January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience at Apple's annual shareholders meeting held in the Flint Auditorium at De Anza College. Macintosh engineer Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium". The Macintosh was inspired by the Lisa (in turn inspired by Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface), and it was widely acclaimed by the media with strong initial sales. However, its low performance and limited range of available software led to a rapid sales decline in the second half of 1984.
Sculley's and Jobs's respective visions for the company greatly differed. Sculley favored open architecture computers like the Apple II, targeting education, small business, and home markets less vulnerable to IBM. Jobs wanted the company to focus on the closed architecture Macintosh as a business alternative to the IBM PC. President and CEO Sculley had little control over chairman of the board Jobs's Macintosh division; it and the Apple II division operated like separate companies, duplicating services. Although its products provided 85% of Apple's sales in early 1985, the company's January 1985 annual meeting did not mention the Apple II division or employees. Many left, including Wozniak, who stated that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years" and sold most of his stock. Though frustrated with the company's and Jobs's dismissal of the Apple II in favor of the Macintosh, Wozniak left amicably and remained an honorary employee of Apple, maintaining a lifelong friendship with Jobs.
By early 1985, the Macintosh's failure to defeat the IBM PC became clear, and it strengthened Sculley's position in the company. In May 1985, Sculley—encouraged by Arthur Rock—decided to reorganize Apple, and proposed a plan to the board that would remove Jobs from the Macintosh group and put him in charge of "New Product Development". This move would effectively render Jobs powerless within Apple. In response, Jobs then developed a plan to get rid of Sculley and take over Apple. However, Jobs was confronted after the plan was leaked, and he said that he would leave Apple. The Board declined his resignation and asked him to reconsider. Sculley also told Jobs that he had all of the votes needed to go ahead with the reorganization. A few months later, on September 17, 1985, Jobs submitted a letter of resignation to the Apple Board. Five additional senior Apple employees also resigned and joined Jobs in his new venture, NeXT.
The Macintosh's struggle continued after Jobs left Apple. Though marketed and received in fanfare, the expensive Macintosh was hard to sell.: 308–309 In 1985, Bill Gates's then-developing company, Microsoft, threatened to stop developing Mac applications unless it was granted "a license for the Mac operating system software. Microsoft was developing its graphical user interface ... for DOS, which it was calling Windows and didn't want Apple to sue over the similarities between the Windows GUI and the Mac interface.": 321 Sculley granted Microsoft the license which later led to problems for Apple.: 321 In addition, cheap IBM PC clones that ran Microsoft software and had a graphical user interface began to appear. Although the Macintosh preceded the clones, it was far more expensive, so "through the late 1980s, the Windows user interface was getting better and better and was thus taking increasingly more share from Apple".: 322 Windows-based IBM-PC clones also led to the development of additional GUIs such as IBM's TopView or Digital Research's GEM,: 322 and thus "the graphical user interface was beginning to be taken for granted, undermining the most apparent advantage of the Mac...it seemed clear as the 1980s wound down that Apple couldn't go it alone indefinitely against the whole IBM-clone market".: 322
1985–1997
NeXT computer
Following his resignation from Apple in 1985, Jobs founded NeXT Inc. with $7 million. A year later he was running out of money, and he sought venture capital with no product on the horizon. Eventually, Jobs attracted the attention of billionaire Ross Perot, who invested heavily in the company. The NeXT computer was shown to the world in what was considered Jobs's comeback event, a lavish invitation-only gala launch event that was described as a multimedia extravaganza. The celebration was held at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, California, on Wednesday, October 12, 1988. Steve Wozniak said in a 2013 interview that while Jobs was at NeXT he was "really getting his head together".
NeXT workstations were first released in 1990 and priced at $9,999 (equivalent to about $23,000 in 2023). Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced and designed for the education sector but was largely dismissed as cost prohibitive. The NeXT workstation was known for its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the financial, scientific, and academic community, highlighting its innovative, experimental new technologies, such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port. Making use of a NeXT computer, English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990 at CERN in Switzerland.
The revised, second generation NeXTcube was released in 1990. Jobs touted it as the first "interpersonal" computer that would replace the personal computer. With its innovative NeXTMail multimedia email system, NeXTcube could share voice, image, graphics, and video in email for the first time. "Interpersonal computing is going to revolutionize human communications and groupwork", Jobs told reporters. Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case. This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel. The company reported its first yearly profit of $1.03 million in 1994. In 1996, NeXT Software, Inc. released WebObjects, a framework for Web application development. After NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store, MobileMe services, and the iTunes Store.
Pixar and Disney
In 1986, Jobs funded the spinout of The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital and $5 million of which was paid to Lucasfilm for technology rights.
The first film produced by Pixar with its Disney partnership, Toy Story (1995), with Jobs credited as executive producer, brought financial success and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released. Over the course of Jobs's life, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company produced box-office hits A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Cars 2 (2011). Brave (2012), Pixar's first film to be produced since Jobs's death, honored him with a tribute for his contributions to the studio. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, Toy Story 3, and Brave each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.
In 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in January 2004, Jobs announced that he would never deal with Disney again.
In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to mend relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. When the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately seven percent of the company's stock. Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceeded those of Eisner, who holds 1.7%, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about 1% of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner—especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar—accelerated Eisner's ousting. Upon completion of the merger, Jobs received 7% of Disney shares, and joined the board of directors as the largest individual shareholder. Upon Jobs's death his shares in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust led by Laurene Jobs.
After Jobs's death, Iger recalled in 2019 that many warned him about Jobs, "that he would bully me and everyone else". Iger wrote, "Who wouldn't want Steve Jobs to have influence over how a company is run?", and that as an active Disney board member "he rarely created trouble for me. Not never but rarely." He speculated that they would have seriously considered merging Disney and Apple had Jobs lived. Floyd Norman, of Pixar, described Jobs as a "mature, mellow individual" who never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers. In early June 2014, Pixar cofounder and Walt Disney Animation Studios President Edwin Catmull revealed that Jobs once advised him to "just explain it to them until they understand" in disagreements. Catmull released the book Creativity, Inc. in 2014, in which he recounts numerous experiences of working with Jobs. Regarding his own manner of dealing with Jobs, Catmull writes:
In all the 26 years with Steve, Steve and I never had one of these loud verbal arguments, and it's not my nature to do that. ... but we did disagree fairly frequently about things. ... I would say something to him and he would immediately shoot it down because he could think faster than I could. ... I would then wait a week ... I'd call him up, and I give my counterargument to what he had said, and he'd immediately shoot it down. So I had to wait another week, and occasionally this went on for months. But ultimately one of three things happened. About a third of the time he said, "Oh, I get it, you're right", and that was the end of it. And it was another third of the time in which [I'd] say, "Actually I think he is right". The other third of the time, where we didn't reach consensus, he just let me do it my way, never said anything more about it.
1997–2011
Return to Apple
In 1996, Jobs's former company Apple was struggling and its survival depended on completing its next operating system. After failed negotiations to purchase Be Inc., Apple eventually came to a deal with NeXT in December for $400 million; the deal was finalized in February 1997, bringing Jobs back to the company he had cofounded. Jobs became de facto chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997. He was formally named interim chief executive on September 16. In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated several projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs's summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.
With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title "iCEO".
The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29, 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene. While nurturing open-ended innovation, Jobs also reminded his employees that "real artists ship".
Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting in 1987, when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes". On October 6, 1997, at a Gartner Symposium, when Dell was asked what he would do if he ran the then-troubled Apple Computer company, he said: "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders". Then, in 2006, Jobs emailed all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. It read:
Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.
Jobs was both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and was particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences.
Jobs usually went to work wearing a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by Issey Miyake, Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers. Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson "...he came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style".
In 2001, Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30. It was alleged that the options had been backdated, and that the exercise price should have been $21.10. It was further alleged that Jobs had thereby incurred taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report, and that Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. As a result, Jobs potentially faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. The case was the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations, though an independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006, found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003.
In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the US by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's annual meeting in Cupertino in April. A few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker. The banner read "Steve, don't be a mini-player—recycle all e-waste".
In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any US customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old systems. The success of Apple's unique products and services provided several years of stable financial returns, propelling Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.
Jobs was perceived as a demanding perfectionist who always aspired to position his businesses and their products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting innovation and style trends. He summed up this self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007, by quoting ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky:
There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been". And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will.
On July 1, 2008, a $7 billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple board of directors for revenue lost because of alleged securities fraud. In a 2011 interview with biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs revealed that he had met with US President Barack Obama, complained about the nation's shortage of software engineers, and told Obama that he was "headed for a one-term presidency". Jobs proposed that any foreign student who got an engineering degree at a US university should automatically be offered a green card. After the meeting, Jobs commented, "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done ... It infuriates me".
Health problems
In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with cancer. In mid 2004, he announced to his employees that he had a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is very poor; Jobs stated that he had a rare, less aggressive type, known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor.
Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months, in favor of alternative medicine. Other doctors agree that Jobs's diet was insufficient to address his disease. However, cancer researcher and alternative medicine critic David Gorski wrote that "it's impossible to know whether and by how much he might have decreased his chances of surviving his cancer through his flirtation with woo. My best guess was that Jobs probably only modestly decreased his chances of survival, if that." Barrie R. Cassileth, the chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's integrative medicine department, on the other hand, said, "Jobs's faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life ... He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that is treatable and curable ... He essentially committed suicide."
According to biographer Walter Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined". "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He was also influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004." He underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") that appeared to remove the tumor successfully. Jobs did not receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy. During Jobs's absence, Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.
In January 2006, only Jobs's wife, his doctors, and Iger knew that his cancer had returned. Jobs told Iger privately that he hoped to live to see his own son Reed's high school graduation in 2010. In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His "thin, almost gaunt" appearance and unusually "listless" delivery, together with his choice to delegate significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and internet speculation about the state of his health. In contrast, according to an Ars Technica journal report, Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) attendees who saw Jobs in person said he "looked fine". Following the keynote, an Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust".
Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs's 2008 WWDC keynote address. Apple officials stated that Jobs was victim to a "common bug" and was taking antibiotics, while others surmised his cachectic appearance was due to the Whipple procedure. During a July conference call discussing Apple earnings, participants responded to repeated questions about Jobs's health by insisting that it was a "private matter". Others said that shareholders had a right to know more, given Jobs's hands-on approach to running his company. Based on an off-the-record phone conversation with Jobs, The New York Times reported, "While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than 'a common bug', they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer".
On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary of Jobs in its corporate news service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. News carriers customarily stockpile up-to-date obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure's death. Although the error was promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on it, intensifying rumors concerning Jobs's health. Jobs responded at Apple's September 2008 Let's Rock keynote by paraphrasing Mark Twain: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." At a subsequent media event, Jobs concluded his presentation with a slide reading "110/70", referring to his blood pressure, stating he would not address further questions about his health.
On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the company's final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions about Jobs's health. In a statement given on January 5, 2009, on Apple.com, Jobs said that he had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for several months.
On January 14, 2009, Jobs wrote in an internal Apple memo that in the previous week he had "learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought". He announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009, to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who previously acted as CEO in Jobs's 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple, with Jobs still involved with "major strategic decisions".
In 2009, Tim Cook offered a portion of his liver to Jobs, since both share a rare blood type, and the donor liver can regenerate tissue after such an operation. Jobs yelled, "I'll never let you do that. I'll never do that." In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplantation at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. Jobs's prognosis was described as "excellent".
Resignation
On January 17, 2011, a year and a half after Jobs returned to work following the liver transplant, Apple announced that he had been granted another leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees, stating his decision was made "so he could focus on his health". As it did at the time of his 2009 medical leave, Apple announced that Tim Cook would run day-to-day operations and that Jobs would continue to be involved in major strategic decisions at the company. While on leave, Jobs appeared at the iPad 2 launch event on March 2, the WWDC keynote introducing iCloud on June 6, and before the Cupertino City Council on June 7.
On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation as Apple's CEO, writing to the board, "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come." Jobs became chairman of the board and named Tim Cook as his successor as CEO. Jobs continued to work for Apple until the day before his death six weeks later.
Death
Jobs died at his home in Palo Alto, California, around 3 p.m. (PDT) on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which resulted in respiratory arrest. He had lost consciousness the day before and died with his wife, children, and sisters at his side. His sister, Mona Simpson, described his death thus: "Steve's final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve's final words were: 'Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.' " He then lost consciousness and died several hours later. A small private funeral was held on October 7, 2011, the details of which, out of respect for Jobs's family, were not made public.
Both Apple and Pixar issued announcements of his death. Apple announced on the same day that they had no plans for a public service, but were encouraging "well-wishers" to send their remembrance messages to an email address created to receive such messages. Apple and Microsoft both flew their flags at half-staff throughout their respective headquarters and campuses.
Bob Iger ordered all Disney properties, including Walt Disney World and Disneyland, to fly their flags at half-staff from October 6 to 12, 2011. For two weeks following his death, Apple displayed on its corporate Web site a simple page that showed Jobs's name and lifespan next to his portrait in grayscale. On October 19, 2011, Apple employees held a private memorial service for Jobs on the Apple campus in Cupertino. It was attended by Jobs's widow, Laurene, and by Tim Cook, Bill Campbell, Norah Jones, Al Gore, and Coldplay. Some of Apple's retail stores closed briefly so employees could attend the memorial. A video of the service was uploaded to Apple's website.
California Governor Jerry Brown declared Sunday, October 16, 2011, to be "Steve Jobs Day". On that day, an invitation-only memorial was held at Stanford University. Those in attendance included Apple and other tech company executives, members of the media, celebrities, politicians, and family and close friends of Jobs. Bono, Yo-Yo Ma, and Joan Baez performed at the service, which lasted longer than an hour. There was high security with guards at all of the university's gates, and a helicopter overhead from an area news station. Each attendee was given a small brown box as a "farewell gift" from Jobs, containing a copy of the Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) by Paramahansa Yogananda.
Childhood friend and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former owner of what would become Pixar, George Lucas, his competitor Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and President Barack Obama all made statements in response to his death. At his request, Jobs was buried in an unmarked grave at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, the only nonsectarian cemetery in Palo Alto.
Innovations and designs
Jobs's design aesthetic was influenced by philosophies of Zen and Buddhism. In India, he experienced Buddhism while on his seven-month spiritual journey, and his sense of intuition was influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied. Jobs gained insights regarding industrial designs from Richard Sapper. According to Apple co-founder Wozniak, "Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design...". Daniel Kottke, one of Apple's earliest employees and a college friend of Jobs, stated: "Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person."
He is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 346 United States patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards, and packages. His contributions to most of his patents were to "the look and feel of the product". He and his industrial design chief Jonathan Ive are named for 200 of the patents. Most of these are design patents as opposed to utility patents or inventions; they are specific product designs such as both original and lamp-style iMacs, and PowerBook G4 Titanium. He holds 43 issued US patents on inventions. The patent on the Mac OS X Dock user interface with "magnification" feature was issued the day before he died. Although Jobs had little involvement in the engineering and technical side of the original Apple computers, Jobs later used his CEO position to directly involve himself with product design.
Involved in many projects throughout his career was his long-time marketing executive and confidant Joanna Hoffman, known as one of the few employees at Apple and NeXT who could successfully stand up to Jobs while also engaging with him. Even while terminally ill in the hospital, Jobs sketched new devices that would hold the iPad in a hospital bed. He despised the oxygen monitor on his finger, and suggested ways to revise the design for simplicity.
Apple I
The Apple I was designed entirely by Wozniak, but Jobs had the idea of selling the computer, which led to the founding of Apple Computer in 1976. Jobs and Wozniak constructed several of the Apple I prototype by hand, funded by selling some of their belongings. Eventually, 200 units were produced. One of the main innovations of the Apple I was that it included video display terminal circuitry on its circuit board, allowing it to connect to a low-cost composite video monitor or television, instead of an expensive computer terminal, compared to most existing computers at the time.
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Wozniak. Jobs oversaw the development of the Apple II's unusual case and Rod Holt developed the unique power supply. It was introduced in 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire by Jobs and Wozniak as the first consumer product sold by Apple. The Apple II was first sold on June 10, 1977.
Lisa
The Lisa is a personal computer developed by Apple from 1978 and sold in the early 1980s to business users. It is the first personal computer with a graphical user interface. The Lisa sold poorly at 100,000 units, but despite being considered a commercial failure, it received technical acclaim, introducing several advanced features that reappeared on the Macintosh and eventually IBM PC compatibles. In 1982, after Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project, he took over the Macintosh project, adding inspiration from Lisa. The final Lisa 2/10 was modified and sold as the Macintosh XL.
Macintosh
Once he joined the Macintosh team, Jobs took over the project after Wozniak had experienced a traumatic airplane accident and temporarily left the company. Jobs launched the Macintosh on January 24, 1984, as the first mass-market personal computer featuring an integral graphical user interface and mouse. This first model was later renamed to Macintosh 128k among the prolific series. Since 1998, Apple has phased out the Macintosh name in favor of "Mac", though the product family has been nicknamed "Mac" or "the Mac" since inception. The Macintosh was introduced by a US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, "1984". It aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, received as a "watershed event" and a "masterpiece". Regis McKenna called the ad "more successful than the Mac itself". It uses an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by a Picasso-style picture of the computer on her white tank top) to save humanity from the conformity of IBM's domination of the computer industry. The ad alludes to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which describes a dystopian future ruled by a televised "Big Brother".
The Macintosh, however, was expensive, which hindered its ability to be competitive in a market already dominated by the Commodore 64 for consumers, and the IBM Personal Computer and its accompanying clone market for businesses. Macintosh systems still found success in education and desktop publishing and kept Apple as the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade.
NeXT Computer
After Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985, he started NeXT, a workstation computer company. The NeXT Computer was introduced in 1988 at a lavish launch event. Using the NeXT Computer, Tim Berners-Lee created the world's first web browser, the WorldWideWeb. The NeXT Computer's operating system, named NeXTSTEP, begat Darwin, which is now the foundation of most of Apple's operating systems such as Macintosh's macOS and iPhone's iOS.
iMac
Apple's iMac G3 was introduced in 1998 and its innovative design is directly the result of Jobs's return to Apple. Apple boasted "the back of our computer looks better than the front of anyone else's". Described as "cartoonlike", the first iMac, clad in Bondi Blue plastic, was unlike any personal computer that came before. In 1999, Apple introduced the Graphite gray Apple iMac and since has varied the shape, color and size considerably while maintaining the all-in-one design. Design ideas were intended to create a connection with the user such as the handle and a "breathing" light effect when the computer went to sleep. The Apple iMac sold for $1,299 at that time. The iMac's forward-thinking changes include eschewing the floppy disk drive and moving exclusively to USB for connecting peripherals. Through the iMac's success, USB was popularized among third-party peripheral makers—as evidenced by the fact that many early USB peripherals were made of translucent plastic to match the iMac design.
iTunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, online radio broadcaster, and mobile device management application developed by Apple. It is used to play, download, and organize digital audio and video on personal computers running the macOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The iTunes Store is also available on the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad.
Through the iTunes Store, users can purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, audiobooks, podcasts, movies, and movie rentals in some countries, and ringtones, available on the iPhone and iPod Touch (fourth generation onward). Application software for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch can be downloaded from the App Store.
iPod
The first generation of iPod was released October 23, 2001. The major innovation of the iPod was its small size achieved by using a 1.8" hard drive compared to the 2.5" drives common to players at that time. The capacity of the first-generation iPod ranged from 5 GB to 10 GB. The iPod sold for US$399 and more than 100,000 iPods were sold before the end of 2001. The introduction of the iPod resulted in Apple becoming a major player in the music industry. Also, the iPod's success prepared the way for the iTunes music store and the iPhone. After the first few generations of iPod, Apple released the touchscreen iPod Touch, the reduced-size iPod Mini and iPod Nano, and the screenless iPod Shuffle in the following years.
iPhone
Apple began work on the first iPhone in 2005 and the first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. The iPhone created such a sensation that a survey indicated six out of ten Americans were aware of its release. Time declared it "Invention of the Year" for 2007 and included it in the All-TIME 100 Gadgets list in 2010, in the category of Communication. The completed iPhone had multimedia capabilities and functioned as a quad-band touch screen smartphone. A year later, the iPhone 3G was released in July 2008 with three key features: support for GPS, 3G data and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA. In June 2009, the iPhone 3GS, whose improvements included voice control, a better camera, and a faster processor, was introduced by Phil Schiller. The iPhone 4 was thinner than previous models, had a five megapixel camera capable of recording video in 720p HD, and added a secondary front-facing camera for video calls. A major feature of the iPhone 4s, introduced in October 2011, was Siri, a virtual assistant capable of voice recognition.
iPad
The iPad is an iOS-based line of tablet computers designed and marketed by Apple. The first iPad was released on April 3, 2010. The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. The iPad includes built-in Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity on select models. As of April 2015, more than 250 million iPads have been sold.
Personal life
Marriage
In 1989, Jobs first met his future wife, Laurene Powell, when he gave a lecture at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was a student. Soon after the event, he stated that Laurene "was right there in the front row in the lecture hall, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her ... kept losing my train of thought, and started feeling a little giddy". After the lecture, he met her in the parking lot and invited her out to dinner. From that point forward, they were together, with a few minor exceptions, for the rest of his life.
Jobs proposed on New Year's Day 1990; they married on March 18, 1991, in a Buddhist ceremony at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Fifty people, including Jobs's father, Paul, and his sister Mona, attended. The ceremony was conducted by Jobs's guru, Kobun Chino Otogawa. The vegan wedding cake was in the shape of Yosemite's Half Dome, and the wedding ended with a hike and Laurene's brothers' snowball fight. Jobs reportedly said to Mona: "You see, Mona [...], Laurene is descended from Joe Namath, and we're descended from John Muir".
Jobs's and Powell's first child, a son named Reed, was born in 1991. Jobs's father, Paul, died a year and a half later, on March 5, 1993. Jobs's childhood home remains a tourist attraction and is currently owned by his stepmother (Paul's second wife), Marilyn Jobs. Jobs and Powell had two more children, daughters Erin (b. 1995) and Eve Jobs (b. 1998), who is a fashion model. The family lived in Palo Alto, California. Although a billionaire, Jobs made it known that, like Gates, he had stipulated that most of his monetary fortune would not be left to his children. Both men had limited their children's access, age appropriate, to social media, computer games, and the Internet.
Family
Chrisann Brennan notes that after Jobs was forced out of Apple, "he apologized many times over for his behavior" towards her and Lisa. She said Jobs "said that he never took responsibility when he should have, and that he was sorry". By this time, Jobs had developed a strong relationship with Lisa and when she was nine, Jobs had her name on her birth certificate changed from "Lisa Brennan" to "Lisa Brennan-Jobs". Jobs and Brennan developed a working relationship to co-parent Lisa, a change which Brennan credits to the influence of his newly found biological sister, Mona Simpson, who worked to repair the relationship between Lisa and Jobs. Jobs had found Mona after first finding his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, shortly after he left Apple.
Jobs did not contact his birth family during his adoptive mother Clara's lifetime, however. He would later tell his official biographer Walter Isaacson: "I never wanted [Paul and Clara] to feel like I didn't consider them my parents, because they were totally my parents [...] I loved them so much that I never wanted them to know of my search, and I even had reporters keep it quiet when any of them found out". However, in 1986, when Jobs was 31, Clara was diagnosed with lung cancer. He began to spend a great deal of time with her and learned more details about her background and his adoption, information that motivated him to find his biological mother. Jobs found on his birth certificate the name of the San Francisco doctor to whom Schieble had turned when she was pregnant. Although the doctor did not help Jobs while he was alive, he left a letter for Jobs to be opened upon his death. As he died soon afterwards, Jobs was given the letter which stated that "his mother had been an unmarried graduate student from Wisconsin named Joanne Schieble".
Jobs only contacted Schieble after Clara died in early 1986 and after he received permission from his father, Paul. In addition, out of respect for Paul, he asked the media not to report on his search. Jobs stated that he was motivated to find his birth mother out of both curiosity and a need "to see if she was okay and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have me." Schieble was emotional during their first meeting (though she wasn't familiar with the history of Apple or Jobs's role in it) and told him that she had been pressured into signing the adoption papers. She said that she regretted giving him up and repeatedly apologized to him for it. Jobs and Schieble would develop a friendly relationship throughout the rest of his life and would spend Christmas together.
During this first visit, Schieble told Jobs that he had a sister, Mona, who was not aware that she had a brother. Schieble then arranged for them to meet in New York where Mona worked. Her first impression of Jobs was that "he was totally straightforward and lovely, just a normal and sweet guy". Simpson and Jobs then went for a long walk to get to know each other. Jobs later told his biographer that "Mona was not completely thrilled at first to have me in her life and have her mother so emotionally affectionate toward me ... As we got to know each other, we became really good friends, and she is my family. I don't know what I'd do without her. I can't imagine a better sister. My adopted sister, Patty, and I were never close."
Jobs then learned his family history. Six months after he was given up for adoption, Schieble's father died, she wed Jandali, and they had a daughter, Mona. Jandali states that after finishing his PhD he returned to Syria to work, and then Schieble left him. They divorced in 1962 and he said then he lost contact with Mona for a time:
I also bear the responsibility for being away from my daughter when she was four years old, as her mother divorced me when I went to Syria, but we got back in touch after 10 years. We lost touch again when her mother moved and I didn't know where she was, but since 10 years ago we've been in constant contact, and I see her three times a year. I organized a trip for her last year to visit Syria and Lebanon and she went with a relative from Florida.
A few years later, Schieble married an ice-skating teacher, George Simpson. Mona Jandali took her stepfather's last name, as Mona Simpson. In 1970, after divorcing her second husband, Schieble took Mona to Los Angeles and raised her alone.
When Simpson found that their father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was living in Sacramento, California, Jobs had no interest in meeting him as he believed Jandali did not treat his children well and according to the San Francisco Chronicle, this was because of finding a Seattle Times article about Jandali's abandonment of his students on a trip to Egypt in 1974. Simpson went to Sacramento alone and met Jandali, who worked in a small restaurant. They spoke for several hours, and he told her that he had left teaching for the restaurant business. He said he and Schieble had given another child away for adoption but that "we'll never see that baby again. That baby's gone." He said he once managed a Mediterranean restaurant near San Jose and that "all of the successful technology people used to come there. Even Steve Jobs ... oh yeah, he used to come in, and he was a sweet guy and a big tipper". At the request of Jobs, Simpson did not reveal to Jandali that his own story meant that he had actually already met his son.
After hearing about the visit, Jobs recalled that "it was amazing ... I had been to that restaurant a few times, and I remember meeting the owner. He was Syrian. Balding. We shook hands." However, Jobs still did not want to meet Jandali because "I was a wealthy man by then, and I didn't trust him not to try to blackmail me or go to the press about it ... I asked Mona not to tell him about me". Jandali later discovered his relationship to Jobs through an online blog. He then contacted Simpson and asked, "what is this thing about Steve Jobs?". Simpson told him that it was true and later commented, "My father is thoughtful and a beautiful storyteller, but he is very, very passive ... He never contacted Steve". Because Simpson herself researched her Syrian roots and began to meet the family, she assumed that Jobs would eventually want to meet their father, but he never did. Jobs also never showed an interest in his Syrian heritage or the Middle East. Simpson fictionalized the search for their father in her 1992 novel The Lost Father. Malek Jandali is their cousin.
Philanthropy
Jobs's views and actions on philanthropy and charity are a public mystery. He maintained privacy even over what few of these actions were publicly known. He has been a key figure in public discussions about societal obligations of the wealthy and powerful. Through his career, the media investigated and criticized him and Apple as unusually and inexplicably mysterious or absent among powerful leaders and especially billionaires. His name is absent from the Million Dollar List of all large global philanthropy. Some have speculated about his possible secret role in large anonymous donations.
Mark Vermilion, former charitable leader for Joan Baez, Apple, and Jobs, attributed Jobs's lifelong minimization of direct charity to his perfectionism and limited time. Jobs, Vermilion, and supporters said over the years that corporate products were Jobs's superior contributions to culture and society instead of direct charity. In 1985, Jobs said, "You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it's humorous, all the attention to it, because it's hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that's happened to me."
Shortly after leaving Apple, he formed the charitable Steven P. Jobs Foundation, led by Mark Vermilion, hired away from Apple's community leadership. Jobs wanted a focus on nutrition and vegetarianism, but Vermilion wanted social entrepreneurship. That year, Jobs soon launched NeXT and closed the foundation with no results. Upon his 1997 return to Apple, Jobs optimized the failing company to the core, such as eliminating all philanthropic programs, never to be restored. In 2007, Stanford Social Innovation Review magazine listed Apple among "America's least philanthropic companies". A few months after another unflattering news report, Apple started a program to match employees' charitable gifts. Jobs declined to sign The Giving Pledge, launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates for fellow billionaires. He donated $50 million to Stanford hospital and contributed to efforts to cure AIDS. Bono reported "tens of millions of dollars" given by Apple while Jobs was CEO, to AIDS and HIV relief programs in Africa, which inspired other companies to join.
Honors and awards
1985: awarded National Medal of Technology (with Steve Wozniak) by US President Ronald Reagan, the country's highest honor for technological achievements
1987: Jefferson Award for Public Service
1989: Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc.
1991: Howard Vollum Award from Reed College
2004–2010: listed among the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World on five separate occasions
2007: named the most powerful person in business by Fortune magazine
2007: inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts
2012: Grammy Trustees Award, an award for those who have influenced the music industry in areas unrelated to performance
2012: posthumously honored with an Edison Achievement Award for his commitment to innovation throughout his career
2013: posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend
2017: Steve Jobs Theater opens at Apple Park
2022: posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Joe Biden, the country's highest civilian honor
In popular culture
See also
Seva Foundation
Timeline of Steve Jobs media
References
Bibliography
Brennan, Chrisann (2013). The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-250-03876-0.
Isaacson, Walter (2011). Steve Jobs (1st ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4516-4853-9.
Linzmayer, Owen W. (2004). Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company. No Starch Press. ISBN 978-1-59327-010-0.
Schlender, Brent; Tetzeli, Rick (2015). Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. Crown Business. ISBN 978-0-7710-7914-6.
Smith, Alexander (2020). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Volume 1: 1971–1982. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-138-38992-2.
External links
Steve Jobs official memorial page at Apple
Steve Jobs discography at Discogs
Steve Jobs at IMDb
Steve Jobs profile at Forbes
Steven Paul Jobs The Vault at FBI Records
Steve Jobs at Andy Hertzfeld's The Original Macintosh (folklore.org)
Steve Jobs at Steve Wozniak's woz.org
2011: "Steve Jobs: From Garage to World's Most Valuable Company." Computer History Museum
2005: Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University
1995: Steve Jobs, Founder, NeXT Computer, excerpts from an Oral History Interview at Smithsonian Institution, April 20, 1995
1994: Steve Jobs in 1994: The Rolling Stone Interview in Rolling Stone
1990: Steve Jobs Archived December 16, 2014, at the Wayback Machine – memory and imagination "What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds"
1983: The "Lost" Steve Jobs Speech from 1983; Foreshadowing Wireless Networking, the iPad, and the App Store (audio clip)
History of Steve Jobs (Full Documentary) on YouTube |
Roman_Empire | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire | [
295
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire"
] | The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27 BC. The western empire collapsed in 476 AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
By 100 BC, Rome had expanded its rule to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilized by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27 BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power (imperium) and the new title of Augustus, marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.
The first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit. 'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r. 98–117 AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r. 180–192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 50-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke from the state away and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r. 270–275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r. 284–305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r. 306–337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Eastern Roman Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.
Due to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.
History
Transition from Republic to Empire
Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an "empire" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, meaning "command" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title imperator (commander); this is the origin of the word emperor, since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.
Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title Augustus ("venerated") and made him princeps ("foremost") with proconsular imperium, thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new de facto monarch.
As Roman provinces were being established throughout the Mediterranean, Italy maintained a special status which made it domina provinciarum ("ruler of the provinces"), and – especially in relation to the first centuries of imperial stability – rectrix mundi ("governor of the world") and omnium terrarum parens ("parent of all lands").
Pax Romana
The 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the Pax Romana ("Roman Peace"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down "mercilessly and swiftly". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors—Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the "Five Good Emperors": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
Transition from classical to late antiquity
In the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.
In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (r. 270–275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the "Great Persecution".
Diocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east–west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.
Fall in the West and survival in the East
The Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.
Odoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of caesar in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by most European monarchs.
Geography and demography
The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase imperium sine fine ("empire without end") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's Aeneid, limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.
Roman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a "global map of the known world" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the Geography of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (Res Gestae) prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.
The Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r. 98–117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55–60 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire – Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch – was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.
As the historian Christopher Kelly described it:
Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine–Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean ... referred to by its conquerors as mare nostrum—'our sea'.
Trajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (fines) were marked, and the frontiers (limites) patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.
Languages
Latin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says "The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.
Latin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.
There was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, Latinitas, started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred Latinitas, to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a "rule" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.
After all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens would have lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following the collapse of the Empire's west.
The dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.
Society
The Empire was remarkably multicultural, with "astonishing cohesive capacity" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all—such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths—helped foster a sense of "Romanness".
Roman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships—patronage, friendship (amicitia), family, marriage—continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.
The blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (collegia and sodalitates): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.
Legal status
According to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman "law of persons" was that all humans were either free (liberi) or slaves (servi). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the ius Latinum, "Latin right"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were peregrini, non-Romans. In 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.
Women in Roman law
Freeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase ex duobus civibus Romanis natos ("children born of two Roman citizens"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (nomen) for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.
The archaic manus marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a "one-man woman" (univira) who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.
As part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting "family values". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (stuprum) between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the ius trium liberorum).
Slaves and the law
At the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical "slave societies" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.
Laws pertaining to slavery were "extremely intricate". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called conubium, but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (peculium) that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough peculium to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (Lex Fufia Caninia) limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.
Following the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will "for lust or gain".
Roman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives, and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).
During the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. Vernae, by contrast, were "homegrown" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his vernae faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.
Freedmen
Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (libertas), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (patronus): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play a priestly role. He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen—through political influence or wealth—is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by inscriptions throughout the Empire.
Census rank
The Latin word ordo (plural ordines) is translated variously and inexactly into English as "class, order, rank". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the ordo to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest ordines in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as curiales.
"Senator" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million sestertii. Not all men who qualified for the ordo senatorius chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the ordo senatorius, but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.
In the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193–235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (patria).
Senators were the traditional governing class who rose through the cursus honorum, the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, equites or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at Cádiz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (tres militiae) to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.
The rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher ordines brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (munera). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.
In the later Empire, the dignitas ("worth, esteem") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as vir illustris ("illustrious man"). The appellation clarissimus (Greek lamprotatos) was used to designate the dignitas of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. "Grades" of equestrian status proliferated.
Unequal justice
As the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (honestiores) and humbler folk (humiliores). In general, honestiores were the members of the three higher "orders", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative "worth" (dignitas) of the defendant: an honestior could pay a fine for a crime for which an humilior might receive a scourging.
Execution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for honestiores, while humiliores might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as honestiores, especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.
Government and military
The three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.
Communities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.
Central government
The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (auctoritas). The rite of apotheosis (also called consecratio) signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as pontifex maximus, and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.
The emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (consilium) became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the consilium. The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.
Access to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (salutatio), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (legati): generals, diplomats, and administrators.
The practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the donativum, a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.
Military
After the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by "organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.
The primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:
the garrison at Rome, comprising the Praetorian Guard, the cohortes urbanae and the vigiles, who functioned as police and firefighters;
the provincial army, comprising the Roman legions and the auxiliaries provided by the provinces (auxilia);
the navy.
Through his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (contubernia); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, "significantly smaller" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.
The auxilia were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries—thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.
The Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.
Provincial government
An annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their imperium on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (apparitores), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.
Other officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally "extra-judicial and extra-constitutional", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (res privata). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.
Law
Roman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the mos regionis ("regional tradition" or "law of the land") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying ius gentium, the "law of nations" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.
In the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Hermogenianus, to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.
The pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.
Taxation
Taxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was "bewildering" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.
The primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the portoria, customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a "freedom tax", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (aerarium militare).
Low taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the "super-rich", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.
Economy
The Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of "political capitalism" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (castrum), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.
Economic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 HS. The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.
Economic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (collegia) and corporations (corpora) provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. "There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The "vast majority" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.
Currency and banking
The early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money as a way to express prices and debts. The sestertius (English "sesterces", symbolized as HS) was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver denarius, worth four sesterces, was also used beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze as, one-tenth denarius. Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as pecunia ("money") and were used only on the frontiers. Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them—an indication that the coin was valued on its face. This tendency towards fiat money led to the debasement of Roman coinage in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.
Rome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.
Emperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the denarius, under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century—such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies—greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold solidus and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.
Mining and metallurgy
The main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining—of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining—took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.
Hydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500 tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000 t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800 AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.
Transportation and communication
The Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called "our sea" (Mare Nostrum). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.
Land transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called "viae". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the cursus publicus, the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A mansio (plural mansiones) was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the cursus publicus. The distance between mansiones was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4 mph.
Trade and commodities
Roman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, garum (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and materia medica, ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.
Labour and occupations
Inscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (collegia) are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.
Work performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (latifundia), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.
Textile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion "label". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (negotiatores or mercatores). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by vestiarii (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (fullones) and dye workers (coloratores) had their own guilds. Centonarii were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.
Architecture and engineering
The chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.
Roman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.
The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. De aquaeductu, a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120 km away along a route of more than 336 km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.
Insulated glazing (or "double glazing") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).
Daily life
City and country
The city was viewed as fostering civilization by being "properly designed, ordered, and adorned". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods (vici) administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace (Ara Pacis Augustae) was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (gnomon) of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.
City planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as oppida. Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.
The network of cities (coloniae, municipia, civitates or in Greek terms poleis) was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to "inculcate the habits of peacetime". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:
Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture—public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art—were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.
In the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (insulae) that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities—such as baths (thermae), toilets with running water (latrinae), basins or elaborate fountains (nymphea) delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat—were aimed primarily at the common people.
The public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.
Rich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (domus) and at least one luxury home (villa) outside the city. The domus was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (balneum), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The domus was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the paterfamilias (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (tabernae). In addition to a kitchen garden—windowboxes might substitute in the insulae—townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.
The villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (otium) with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design.
Augustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (latifundia) achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.
Maintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000–250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in "the fruits of conquest". The annona, public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses) as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:
The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.
Health and disease
Epidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent—a large percentage by ancient standards—lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a "demographic sink": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.
The importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.
Food and dining
Most apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (tabernae, cauponae, popinae, thermopolia). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (archimagirus) and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (collegia).
Most Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. Puls (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the annona as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.
Roman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (cena) had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (triclinium) furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the gustatio ("tasting" or "appetizer") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman "foodies" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with "gourmet".
Refined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce—cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit—were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.
Spectacles
When Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for "bread and circuses", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the circenses, events held in the entertainment venue called a circus. The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (venationes), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (ludi), primarily horse and chariot races (ludi circenses). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.
Under Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (pompa circensis) that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (naumachia) and a form of "water ballet", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (ludi scaenici) took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an odeon.
Circuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.
The chariot teams were known by the colours they wore. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (naufragia), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.
The Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as "Thracian" or "Gallic". The staged combats were considered munera, "services, offerings, benefactions", initially distinct from the festival games (ludi). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, noxii were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.
Modern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the "theatre of life and death" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, "to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter—an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers "detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.
Recreation
The singular ludus, "play, game, sport, training", had a wide range of meanings such as "word play", "theatrical performance", "board game", "primary school", and even "gladiator training school" (as in Ludus Magnus). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (astragali or "jacks"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including latrunculi ("Raiders") and XII scripta ("Twelve Marks"). A game referred to as alea (dice) or tabula (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.
After adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The "Bikini Girls" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).
Clothing
In a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.
The toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a "vast expanse" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The toga praetexta, with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (toga picta).
Ordinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (clavi) woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks and in some regions trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.
Roman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.
Arts
Greek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art—including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins—is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.
Portraiture
Portraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics.
Portraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.
Sculpture and sarcophagi
Examples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.
Elaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the "richest single source of Roman iconography", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.
Painting
Initial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.
Mosaic
Mosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces (tesserae) of materials such as stone and glass. Opus sectile is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).
Figurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.
Decorative arts
Decorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (terra sigillata) that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.
Performing arts
In Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (travesti). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.
More popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying mimus theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqué language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, mimus was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. Mimus was related to pantomimus, an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.
Although sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the tibia, a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song (carmen) was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and "brass" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the cithara, and percussion. The cornu, a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ (hydraulis) was "one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.
Like gladiators, entertainers were legally infames, technically free but little better than slaves. "Stars", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.
Literacy, books, and education
Estimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (scriba) read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records. The Babylonian Talmud declared "if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns".
Numeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.
The Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as "magic spells" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).
Books were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (volumen) by scribes. The codex—pages bound to a spine—was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the volumen. Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.
Collectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (otium) associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract "in-house" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.
Literary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (recitationes) expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to "consumer literature" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.
Literacy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.
Education
Traditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (mores maiorum). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.
Formal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended "public" schools organized by a schoolmaster (ludimagister) paid by parents. Vernae (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.
At the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by grammatici or rhetores. The grammaticus or "grammarian" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The rhetor was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (ars dicendi) was highly prized, and eloquentia ("speaking ability, eloquence") was considered the "glue" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training—"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour"—endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.
In Latin, illiteratus could mean both "unable to read and write" and "lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (paideia). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st–3rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.
Literate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.
Literature
Literature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the "Golden Age" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets—Virgil, Horace, and Ovid—belong to this period. Virgil's Aeneid was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's Metamorphoses wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.
The mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the "Silver Age" of Latin literature. The three leading writers—Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius—committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection Silvae influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic Natural History; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.
The principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.
From the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote The City of God against the Pagans, considered "a masterpiece of Western culture".
In contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the Saturnalia of Macrobius and The Marriage of Philology and Mercury of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.
Religion
The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (pietas) and good relations with the gods (pax deorum). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors", central to Roman identity.
Roman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of do ut des, "I give that you might give". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (ludi).
In the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called "emperor worship" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the Genius, the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (divus) by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.
The Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.
Mystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of "magic", conspiracy (coniuratio), and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a religio licita, "legitimate religion". The Jewish–Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).
Christianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246–251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.
From the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as "pagan". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no "pagan martyrs" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court.: 302 Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.
Christians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus was heresy. According to Peter Brown, "In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence".: 641–643 There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.
According to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout Late Antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.
Legacy
Several states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, "Roman" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.
The Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (Risorgimento) in 1861.
In the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks in Washington, D.C.. The founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.
See also
Outline of ancient Rome
List of political systems in France
List of Roman dynasties
Daqin ("Great Qin"), the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire; see also Sino-Roman relations
Imperial Italy
Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty
Gallo-Roman site of Sanxay
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
External links
BBC: What the Romans Did for Us
Roman Archaeological Sites
Roman-Empire.net, learning resources and re-enactments
The Historical Theater in the Year 400 AD, in Which Both Romans and Barbarians Resided Side by Side in the Eastern Part of the Roman Empire |
List_of_ancient_great_powers | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_great_powers | [
295
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_great_powers"
] | Recognized great powers came about first in Europe during the post-Napoleonic era. The formalization of the division between small powers and great powers came with the signing of the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814. A great power is a nation or state that, through economic, political and military strength, is able to exert power and influence over not only its own region, but beyond to others.
The historical terms "Great Nation", a distinguished aggregate of people inhabiting a particular country or territory, and "Great Empire", a considerable group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, are colloquial conversations (historical jargon).
Ancient Western Asia
Sumer and Akkad
Sumer (or Šumer) was one of the early civilizations of the Ancient Near East, located in the southern part of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) from the time of the earliest records in the mid 4th millennium BC until the rise of Babylonia in the late 3rd millennium BC. The term "Sumerian" applies to all speakers of the Sumerian language. Sumer (together with Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley civilization) is considered the first settled society in the world to have manifested all the features needed to qualify fully as a "civilization", eventually expanding into the first empire in history, the Akkadian Empire.
Hurrians
The Hurrians refer to a people who inhabited northern Mesopotamia beginning approximately 2500 BC. The Hurrian kingdoms of the Ancient Near East was in Northern Mesopotamia and its people lived in the adjacent regions during the Bronze Age. The largest and most influential Hurrian nation was the kingdom of Mitanni. The population of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia to a large part consisted of Hurrians, and there is significant Hurrian influence in Hittite mythology.
By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples, except perhaps in the kingdom of Urartu. The Hurrian peoples were not incredibly united, existing as quasi-feudal kingdoms. The kingdom of Mitanni was at its height towards the close of the 14th century BC. By the 13th century BC, the Hurrian kingdoms had been conquered by foreign powers, chiefly the Assyrians.
Babylonia
The profound political, social, and cultural influence imposed upon the Near East by the civilization known as the Ancient Babylonian Empire was the most pervasive in this historical period. The city itself, Babylon, positioned itself as a center of pivotal historical developments for centuries. There were 3 major Babylonian Dynasties: Amorite, Kassite, and Chaldean. This political entity was most predominate within the southern portion of Mesopotamia. It existed as an unremitting rival of the northern Assyrian Mesopotamians. Although it was assaulted and militarily overcome on several occasions, it did exist as a stalwart presence from the later 3rd millennium BC to the middle of the 6th century BC. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Babylonian Empire was the most powerful state in the ancient world. Its capital, Babylon, was beautifully adorned by King Nebuchadnezzar, who erected several famous buildings. Even after the Babylonian Empire had been overthrown by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 539 BC, the city itself remained an important cultural center. This period would be considered the zenith of Babylon's dominance in its two-and-a-half millennium history. Ancient Babylon was officially conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the late 6th century BC.
Assyria
In early times, the term Assyria referred to a region on the Upper Tigris river, named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur. Later, as a nation and empire that came to control all of the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and much of Anatolia, the term "Assyria proper" referred to roughly the northern half of Mesopotamia (the southern half being Babylonia), with Nineveh as its capital. The Assyrian homeland was located near a mountainous region, extending along the Tigris as far as the high Gordiaean or Carduchian mountain range of
Armenia, sometimes known as the "Mountains of Ashur". The Assyrian kings controlled a large kingdom at three different times in history. These are called the Old, Middle, and Neo-Assyrian kingdoms, or periods. The most powerful and best-known nation of these periods is the Neo-Assyrian Empire, 934–609 BC.
Shalmaneser III (858–823 BC) attacked and reduced Babylonia to vassalage, and defeated Aramea, Israel, Urartu, Phoenicia and the Neo-Hittite states, forcing all of these to pay tribute to Assyria. Shamshi-Adad V (822–811 BC) inherited an empire beset by civil war which he took most of his reign to quell. He was succeeded by Adad-nirari III who was merely a boy. The Empire was thus ruled by the famed queen Semiramis until 806 BC. In that year Adad-nirari III took the reins of power. After his premature death, Assyria failed to expand further during the reigns of Shalmaneser IV (782–773 BC), Ashur-dan III (772–755 BC) and Ashur-nirari V (754–746 BC).
Under Ashurbanipal (669–627 BC) its domination spanned from the Caucasus Mountains in the north to Nubia, Egypt and Arabia in the south, and from Cyprus and Antioch in the west to Persia in the east. Ashurbanipal destroyed Elam and smashed a rebellion led by his own brother Shamash-shum-ukim who was the Assyrian king of Babylon, exacting savage revenge on the Chaldeans, Nabateans, Arabs and Elamites who had supported him. Persia and Media were regarded as vassals of Ashurbanipal. He built vast libraries and initiated a surge in the building of temples and palaces.
Hittites
The Hittites were an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia from the 18th century BC. In the 14th century BC, the Hittite Empire was at its height, encompassing central Anatolia, northwestern Syria as far as Ugarit, and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, the empire disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until as late as the 8th century BC.
The Hittites were also famous for their skill in building and using chariots, as the Battle of Kadesh demonstrated. The Hittites were pioneers of the Iron Age, manufacturing iron artifacts from as early as the 14th century BC, making them possibly even the first to do so. The Hittites passed much knowledge and lore from the Ancient Near East to the newly arrived Greeks in Europe.
Hittite prosperity was mostly dependent on control of the trade routes and metal sources. Because of the importance of northern Syria to the vital routes linking the Cilician Gates with Mesopotamia, defense of this area was crucial, and was soon put to the test by Egyptian expansion under Pharaoh Rameses II. The outcome of the Battle of Kadesh is uncertain, though it seems that the timely arrival of Egyptian reinforcements prevented total Hittite victory. The Egyptians forced the Hittites to take refuge in the fortress of Kadesh, but their own losses prevented them from sustaining a siege. This battle took place in the fifth year of Rameses II (c. 1274 BC by the most commonly used chronology).
Phoenicia
Phoenicia was a major power over the Mediterranean between 1200 BC and 539 BC. This ancient Semitic thalassocratic civilization was situated on the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent and centered on the coastline of modern Lebanon. All major Phoenician cities were on the coastline of the Mediterranean, some colonies reaching the Western Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC. The Phoenicians used the galley, a man-powered sailing vessel, and are credited with the invention of the bireme. They were famed in Classical Greece and Rome as 'traders in purple', referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the Murex snail, used, among other things, for royal clothing, and for the spread of their alphabets, from which almost all modern phonetic alphabets are derived.
Carthaginian Empire
The Carthaginian Empire, also known as the Carthaginian Republic (alternatively "Carthaginian hegemony", or simply "Carthage") was the Phoenician city-state of Carthage and its sphere of influence, which included much of the coast of North Africa as well as substantial parts of coastal Iberia and the islands of the western Mediterranean from 814 to 146 BC.Tunisia
Ancient Iran
Elam
Elam was situated just to the east of Mesopotamia and was one of the oldest recorded civilizations. Elam was centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province (which takes its name from Elam), as well as a small part of southern Iraq. In the Old Elamite period (Middle Bronze Age), Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands.
Elam was part of the early cities of the Ancient Near East during the Chalcolithic (Copper Age). The emergence of written records from around 3000 BC also parallels Mesopotamian history where writing was used slightly earlier. Elamite strength was based on an ability to hold various areas together under a coordinated government that permitted the maximum interchange of the natural resources unique to each region. Traditionally, this was done through a federated governmental structure.
Elamite culture played a crucial role in the Persian Empire, especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it, when the Elamite language remained among those in official use. The Elamite language is generally treated as a language isolate. As such, the Elamite period is considered a starting point for the history of Iran.
Medes
The Median Empire was the first empire on the territory of Persia. By the 6th century BC, after having together with the Babylonians defeated the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In Greek references to "Median" people there is no clear distinction between the "Persians" and the "Medians"; in fact for a Greek to become "too closely associated with Iranian culture" was "to become medianized, not persianized". The Median kingdom was a short-lived Iranian state and the textual and archaeological sources of that period are rare and little could be known from the Median culture which nevertheless made a "profound, and lasting, contribution to the greater world of Iranian culture". The Medes were able to establish their own empire, the largest of its day, lasting for about sixty years, from the sack of Nineveh in 612 BC until 549 BC when Cyrus the Great established the Achaemenid Empire by defeating his overlord and grandfather, Astyages, king of Media.
Achaemenid Empire
550 BC–330 BC
The Achaemenid Empire was the first of the Persian Empires to become a world empire. At the height of its power, the Empire spanned over three continents, namely Europe, Asia, and Africa, and was the most powerful empire of its time. It also eventually, either quickly in its earliest days or steadily over time, incorporated the following territories: in the north and west all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), parts of the Balkan peninsula - Thrace, Macedon and Paeonia, and most of the Black Sea coastal regions or present day southern and eastern Bulgaria, northern Greece, and Macedonia; in the west and southwest the territories of modern Iraq, northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, all significant population centers of ancient Egypt and as far west as portions of Libya; in the east modern Afghanistan and beyond into central Asia, and parts of Pakistan.
Encompassing approximately 5.5 million square kilometers at its height in 500 BC, the Achaemenid Empire was territorially the largest empire of antiquity. In its time it had political power over neighboring countries, and had high cultural and economic achievements during its lengthy rule over a vast region from its picturesque capital at Persepolis.
Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon) defeated the Persian armies at Granicus (334 BC), followed by Issus (333 BC), and lastly at Gaugamela (331 BC). Afterwards, he marched on Susa and Persepolis which surrendered in early 330 BC. From Persepolis, Alexander headed north to Pasargadae where he visited the tomb of Cyrus the Great.
Armenia
Great Armenia
331 BC–428 AD
The Kingdom of Armenia was one of the first Armenian Empires. At the height of its power, the Empire spanned over many parts of countries, namely the modern-day countries of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Lebanon.
The Kingdom of Armenia has three distinct dynasties - the Orontid dynasty, the Artaxiad dynasty, and the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia. During the reign of the Orontid dynasty, Armenia became independent from the Achaemenids. During the reign of the Artaxiad dynasty, Armenia has reached the peak of its power. During the reign of the Arsacid dynasty, Armenia became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion.
In 387, the Kingdom of Armenia was split between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire. Western Armenia first became a province of the Roman Empire under the name of Armenia Minor, and later Byzantine Armenia; Eastern Armenia remained a kingdom within Persia until, in 428, the local nobility overthrew the king, and the Sassanids installed a marzban (governor) in his place, beginning the Marzpanate period over Persian Armenia.
Iran
Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire was the third Iranian Empire. At the height of its power, the empire ruled most of Greater Iran, Mesopotamia and Armenia. But unlike most other Iranian monarchies, the Parthian followed a vassal system, which they adopted from the Seleucids. The Arsacid culture was not a single coherent state, but instead made up of numerous tributary (but otherwise independent) kingdoms.
The Parthians largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and royal insignia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures. For about the first half of its existence, the Arsacid court adopted elements of Greek culture, though it eventually saw a gradual revival of Iranian traditions. The Arsacid rulers were titled the 'King of Kings', as a claim to be the heirs to the Achaemenid Empire; indeed, they accepted many local kings as vassals where the Achaemenids would have had centrally appointed, albeit largely autonomous, satraps. The court did appoint a small number of satraps, largely outside Iran, but these satrapies were smaller and less powerful than the Achaemenid potentates. With the expansion of Arsacid power, the seat of central government shifted from Nisa, Turkmenistan to Ctesiphon along the Tigris (south of modern Baghdad, Iraq), although several other sites also served as capitals. Although the Parthian Arsacids made way for a new Iranian dynasty, the Arsacid family continued to exist through the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, the Arsacid dynasty of Iberia, and the Arsacid Dynasty of Caucasian Albania; all eponymous branches of the Parthian Arsacids.
Sasanian Empire
The Sasanian Empire is the name used for the fourth Iranian dynasty, and the second Persian Empire (226–651). The empire's territory encompassed all of today's Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Afghanistan, eastern parts of Turkey, and parts of Syria, Pakistan, and large parts of Caucasia, Central Asia and Arabia. During Khosrow II's rule in 590–628 Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon were also briefly annexed to the Empire, as well as far west as western Asia Minor. The Sassanid era, encompassing the length of the Late Antiquity period, is considered to be one of the most important and influential historical periods in Iran. In many ways the Sassanid period witnessed the highest achievement of Persian civilization. The empire is furthermore known for being the arch-rival of the neighboring Roman–Byzantine Empire for a period of over 400 years. As the Parthians were replaced by the Sassanids, they carried on the already century long lasting Roman–Persian Wars, which would eventually become the longest conflict in human history.
The empire constituted the last great Iranian Empire before the Muslim conquest and adoption of Islam. The climactic Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 had drastically exhausted both the Byzantines as well as the Sassanids, laying the way open for an easy conquest. The Sassanids, heavily weakened, never mounted a truly effective resistance to the pressure applied by the initial Arab armies. Ctesiphon fell after a prolonged siege. Yazdegerd fled eastward from Ctesiphon, leaving behind him most of the Empire's vast treasury. The Arabs captured Ctesiphon shortly afterward, leaving the Sassanid government strapped for funds and acquiring a powerful financial resource for their own use. A number of Sassanid governors attempted to combine their forces to throw back the invaders, but the effort was crippled by the lack of a strong central authority, and the governors were defeated at the Battle of Nihawānd. The empire, with its military command structure non-existent, its non-noble troop levies decimated, its financial resources effectively destroyed, and the Asawaran knightly caste destroyed piecemeal, was utterly helpless in the face of the invaders. Upon hearing the defeat, Persian nobilities fled further inland to the eastern province of Khorasan.
Ancient Africa
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was one of the world's first civilizations, with its beginnings in the fertile Nile valley around 3150 BC. Ancient Egypt reached the zenith of its power during the New Kingdom (1570–1070 BC) under great pharaohs. Ancient Egypt was a great power to be contended with by both the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa. The empire expanded far south into Nubia and held wide territories across the ancient Near East. The combination of a fertile river valley, natural borders that made an invasion unfeasible, and a military able to rise to the challenge when needed, turned Egypt into a major power. It was one of the first nations to have a system of writing and large scale construction projects. However, as neighboring civilizations developed militaries capable of crossing Egypt's natural barriers, the Egyptian armies were not always able to repel them and so by 1000 BC Egyptian influence as an independent civilization waned.
Early Dynastic Period
The Archaic or Early Dynastic Period of Egypt is the era immediately following the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt c. 3100 BC. It is generally taken to include the First and Second Dynasties, lasting from the end of the Naqada III archaeological period until about 2686 BC, or the beginning of the Old Kingdom. With the First Dynasty, the capital moved from Thinis to Memphis with a unified Egypt ruled by an Egyptian god-king. Abydos remained the major holy land in the south. The hallmarks of ancient Egyptian civilization, such as art, architecture and many aspects of religion, took shape during the Early Dynastic period. During the Early Dynastic period, the pharaohs established the earliest Central Government in the world.
Old Kingdom
The Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2686–2181 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid builders of the Fourth Dynasty—King Sneferu perfected the art of pyramid-building and the pyramids of Giza were constructed under the kings Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. Egypt attained its first sustained peak of civilization—the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods (followed by the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom) which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley.
During the Old Kingdom, the pyramid building in ancient Egypt began during the Third Dynasty under the rule of king Djoser when he built the Step Pyramid of Djoser (Egypt's first Pyramid) and peaked during Fourth Dynasty during the construction of the Giza Pyramids.
During the Fifth Dynasty the pyramid building declined in Egypt. The Pyramid Texts, the oldest ritual texts from ancient Egypt first appeared in the late fifth Dynasty.
Middle Kingdom
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt (also known as "The Period of Reunification") is the period in the history of ancient Egypt following a period of political division known as the First Intermediate Period. The Middle Kingdom lasted from around 2050 BC to around 1710 BC, stretching from the reunification of Egypt under the reign of Mentuhotep II of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Twelfth Dynasty. The Eleventh Dynasty ruled from Thebes and the Twelfth Dynasty ruled from el-Lisht.
The middle kingdom reached its peak under the pharaohs Senusret III and Amenemhat III. Senusret III was a great pharaoh of the Twelfth Dynasty and is considered to be the greatest pharaoh in the middle kingdom. However, The reign of Amenemhat III was the height of Middle Kingdom economic prosperity. His reign is remarkable for the degree to which Egypt exploited its resources.
New Kingdom
Core Regions
Territorial control
The New Kingdom began around 1550 B.C when king Ahmose I became the king of Egypt, defeated the Hyksos and reunified Egypt. The pharaohs of the new kingdom established a period of unprecedented prosperity by securing their borders and strengthening diplomatic ties with their neighbors. Military campaigns waged under Tuthmosis I and his grandson Tuthmosis III extended the influence of the pharaohs to the largest empire Egypt had ever seen. Tuthmosis III is recorded to have captured 350 cities during his rule and conquered much of the Near East from the Euphrates to Nubia during seventeen known military campaigns. During the reign of Amenhotep III, Egypt entered a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, Egypt reached the peak of its artistic and international power in his reign. Amenhotep IV ascended the throne and instituted a series of radical and chaotic reforms. Changing his name to Akhenaten, he touted the god Aten as the supreme deity, suppressed the worship of other deities, and attacked the power of the priestly establishment. Moving the capital to the new city of Akhetaten, he turned a deaf ear to foreign affairs and absorbed himself in his new religion and artistic style. After his death, the religion of the Aten was quickly abandoned, and the subsequent pharaohs erased all mention of Akhenaten's Egyptian heresy, now known as the Amarna Period.
Ramesses the Great ascended the throne, and went on to build more temples, erect more statues and obelisks, and sire more children than any other pharaoh in history. One of the greatest construction projects conducted by Ramesses was the city of Pi-Ramesses. The city covered an area of 18 km2 (as big as Rome). At its peak, The city was home to a population of 160,000-300,000. This would make Pi-Ramesses 2-4 times bigger than Yinxu (Second largest city at that time). Ramesses led his army against the Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh and, after fighting to a stalemate, finally agreed to the first recorded peace treaty. Egypt's wealth, however, made it a tempting target for invasion, particularly by the Libyans and the Sea Peoples. Initially, the military was able to repel these invasions during the reign of Ramesses III, but Egypt eventually lost control of Syria and Palestine. The impact of external threats was exacerbated by internal problems such as corruption, tomb robbery and civil unrest. The high priests at the temple of Amun in Thebes accumulated vast tracts of land and wealth, and their growing power splintered the country during the Third Intermediate Period.
Third Intermediate Period
The Third Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt began with the death of Pharaoh Ramesses XI in 1070 BC, ending the New Kingdom, and was eventually followed by the Late Period. Various points are offered as the beginning for the latter era, though it is most often regarded as dating from the foundation of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty by Psamtik I in 664 BC.
The first Dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian Third Intermediate Period is the Twenty-first Dynasty. Its first ruler is king Smendes who ruled only in Lower Egypt. The most powerful pharaohs of the Twenty-first dynasty were psusennes I and Siamun who built extensively compared to the other pharaohs of the dynasty. The Pharaohs of the Twenty-first Dynasty transported all the old Ramesside temples, obelisks, stelae, statues and sphinxes from Pi-Ramesses to the new capital Tanis. The obelisks and statues, the largest weighing over 200 tons, were transported in one piece while major buildings were dismantled into sections and reassembled at Tanis.
The country was firmly reunited by the Twenty-Second Dynasty founded by Shoshenq I in 945 BC (or 943 BC), who descended from Meshwesh immigrants, originally from Ancient Libya. Upon unifying Egypt, king Shoshenq I started campaigning in the Levante . This brought stability to the country for well over a century and made Egypt a superpower again, but after the reign of Osorkon II, particularly, the country had effectively split into two states, with Shoshenq III of the Twenty-Second Dynasty controlling Lower Egypt by 818 BC while Takelot II and his son Osorkon (the future Osorkon III) ruled Middle and Upper Egypt.
Late Period
The Late Period of ancient Egypt refers to the last flowering of native Egyptian rulers after the Third Intermediate Period beginning with the 26th Saite Dynasty founded by Psamtik I. The 26th Dynasty of Egypt managed to regain Egypt's power for a short time before the Achaemenid conquest of Egypt lad by Cambyses II in 525 BC.
However, the Egyptians managed to gain independence from the Persians during a rebellion led by the rebel Pharaoh Amyrtaeus around 404 B.C who established the Twenty-eighth Dynasty of Egypt. Egypt remained independent during the Twenty-ninth Dynasty and Thirtieth Dynasty until the Persians invaded it again in 343 B.C. During that time, the Egyptians managed to repel several attacks from the Achaemenid Empire. The most famous attack of them occurred in around 351 BC, when Artaxerxes III embarked on a campaign to recover Egypt, which had revolted under his father, Artaxerxes II. Levying a vast army, Artaxerxes marched into Egypt, and engaged Nectanebo II the founder of the Thirtieth Dynasty of Egypt. After a year of fighting the Egyptian Pharaoh, Nectanebo inflicted a crushing defeat on the Persians with the support of mercenaries led by the Greek generals Diophantus and Lamius. Artaxerxes successfully reconquered Egypt in 340 or 339 B.C.
The Late period of ancient Egypt ends when Alexander the Great took Egypt from the Persians without war around 332 B.C.
Legacy
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction techniques that facilitated the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques, the first known ships, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty. Egypt left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travellers and writers for centuries. A new-found respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy, for Egypt and the world.
Kerma
The Kerma culture was an early civilization which flourished from around 2500 BC to about 1600 BC in Nubia, present day Sudan, centered at Kerma. It seems to have been one of a number of Sudanese states during the Middle Kingdom period of Ancient Egypt. In its latest phase, lasting from about 1700–1500 BC, it absorbed the Sudanese kingdom of Sai and became a sizable, populous empire rivaling Egypt. Around 1500 BC, it was absorbed into the Egyptian Empire, but rebellions continued for centuries. By the 11th century BC, the more 'Egyptianized' Kingdom of Kush emerged, apparently from Kerma, and regained the region's independence from Egypt.
Kush
The Kingdom of Kush was the earliest of the Subsaharan states in Africa as well as the first to implement iron weapons. It was heavily influenced by Egyptian colonists, but in 1070 BC it became not only independent of Egypt but a fierce rival. It successfully fought off attempts by Egypt to reconquer it, and it began to extend influence over Upper Egypt. By the end of King Kashta's reign in 752 BC, Thebes was under Kushite control.
A slew of able successors took the rest of Egypt and reigned as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt stretching Kushite control from central Sudan to modern-day Israel. The Kushites did not maintain this empire for long and were beaten back by the Assyrians in 653 BC. However, Kush remained a powerful entity in the region. It continued to meddle in Egyptian affairs and control trade resources originating in Subsaharan Africa. It waged a hard-fought campaign against the Roman Empire (27 BC - 22 BC) under the leadership of Queen Amanirenas, and achieved a more than amicable peace with the young Augustus Caesar. The two states worked as allies, with Kush lending cavalry support to Rome in its conquest of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
The kingdom of Kush maintained its status as a regional power until its conquest by the Aksumite Empire in 350.
Macrobia
The Macrobians were an ancient people and kingdom situated in the Horn of Africa (Somalia) around the 1st millennium BC. According to Herodotus, the Macrobians practiced an elaborate form of embalming. This, in turn, suggested a knowledge on their part of anatomy and, at the very least, a grasp of the basics of chemistry. The Macrobians preserved the bodies of the dead by first extracting moisture from the corpses, then overlaying the bodies with a type of plaster, and finally decorating the exterior in vivid colors in order to imitate the deceased as realistically as possible. They then placed the body in a hollow crystal pillar, which they kept in their homes for a period of about a year. Macrobia was also noted for its gold, which was so plentiful that the Macrobians shackled their prisoners in golden chains.
The Ancient city-states located in northern Somalia, had a steady trade link with the Ancient Egyptians and exported precious natural resources such as myrrh, frankincense and gum. This trade network continued all the way into the classical era. The city states of Mossylon, Malao, Mundus and Tabae in Somalia engaged in a lucrative trade network connecting Somali merchants with Phoenicia, Ptolemaic Egypt, Greece, Parthian Persia, Saba, Nabataea and the Roman Empire. Somali sailors used the ancient Somali maritime vessel known as the 'beden' to transport their cargo.
Kingdom of Aksum
The Kingdom of Aksum was an important trading nation originating from Northern Ethiopia in northeastern Africa, growing from the proto-Aksumite period ca. 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD. It was a major player in the commerce between the Roman Empire and Ancient India and the Aksumite rulers facilitated trade by minting their own currency. The state established its hegemony over the declining Kingdom of Kush and regularly entered the politics of the kingdoms on the Arabian peninsula, and would eventually extend its rule over the region with the conquest of the Himyarite Kingdom. At its peak it controlled Much of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. It was considered by historians as one of the most powerful military powers in the world.
Ancient India
Several Indian empires including Maurya Empire and Gupta Empire were able to expand across southern Asia, incorporating much of the region, as well as beyond. The subcontinent was conquered by the Mauryan Empire during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Various parts of India was ruled by numerous Middle kingdoms for the next 1,500 years, among which the Gupta Empire united India in the 4th and 5th century CE . Southern India saw the rule of the Chalukyas, Cholas, Pallavas, Pandyas and Cheras. This period, witnessing a Hindu religious and intellectual resurgence, is known as the classical or "Golden Age of India". During this period, aspects of Indian civilisation, administration, culture, and religion (Hinduism and Buddhism) spread to much of Asia, while kingdoms in Southern India had maritime business links with the Roman Empire from around 77 AD.
Maurya Empire
The Mauryan Empire was the first political entity to unite India and expand into Central Asia. Its cultural influence also extended west into Egypt and Syria, and east into Thailand, China and Burma.
The Empire was founded in 322 BC by Chandragupta Maurya. Chandragupta waged a war against the nearby Greek powers and won, forcing the Greeks to surrender large amounts of land. Under the reign of Ashoka the Great, the empire turned to spreading its soft power in the form of Buddhism.
The Empire was divided into four provinces, which one of the four, look like a giant crescents. with the imperial capital at Pataliputra. From Ashokan edicts, the names of the four provincial capitals are Tosali (in the east), Ujjain in the west, Suvarnagiri (in the south), and Taxila (in the north). The head of the provincial administration was the Kumara (royal prince), who governed the provinces as king's representative. The kumara was assisted by Mahamatyas and council of ministers. This organizational structure was reflected at the imperial level with the Emperor and his Mantriparishad (Council of Ministers).
Historians theorize that the organization of the Empire was in line with the extensive bureaucracy described by Kautilya in the Arthashastra: a sophisticated civil service governed everything from municipal hygiene to international trade. According to Megasthenes, the empire wielded a military of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 war elephants. A vast espionage system collected intelligence for both internal and external security purposes. Having renounced offensive warfare and expansionism, Ashoka nevertheless continued to maintain this large army, to protect the Empire and instill stability and peace across South Asia.
Chola Empire
The Chola dynasty ruled parts of southern India. The Indian dynasty which was one of the longest-ruling dynasties in southern India. The earliest datable references to this Indian dynasty are in inscriptions from the 3rd century BC left by Ashoka the Great, of Maurya Empire; as one of the Three Crowned Kings, the dynasty continued to govern over varying territory until the 13th century AD. By the 9th century, under Rajaraja Chola and his son Rajendra Chola, the Cholas rose as a notable power in south Asia. The Chola Empire stretched as far as Bengal. At its peak, the empire spanned almost 3,600,000 km2 (1,400,000 sq mi). Rajaraja Chola conquered all of peninsular South India and parts of the Sri Lanka. Rajendra Chola's navies went even further, occupying coasts from Burma (now Myanmar) to Vietnam, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Sumatra, Java, Malaya in South East Asia and Pegu islands. He defeated Mahipala, the king of the Bengal, and to commemorate his victory he built a new capital and named it Gangaikonda Cholapuram.
The heartland of the Cholas was the fertile valley of the Kaveri River, but they ruled a significantly larger area at the height of their power from the later half of the 9th century till the beginning of the 13th century. The whole country south of the Tungabhadra was united and held as one state for a period of two centuries and more. Under Rajaraja Chola I and his son Rajendra Chola I, the dynasty became a military, economic and cultural power in South Asia and South-east Asia. The power of the new empire was proclaimed to the eastern world by the celebrated expedition to the Ganges which Rajendra Chola I undertook and by the overthrow after an unprecedented naval war of the maritime empire of Srivijaya, as well as by the repeated embassies to China.
During the period 1010–1200, the Chola territories stretched from the islands of the Maldives in the south to as far north as the banks of the Godavari River in Andhra Pradesh. Rajaraja Chola conquered peninsular Southern India, annexed parts of what is now Sri Lanka and occupied the islands of the Maldives. Rajendra Chola sent a victorious expedition to Northern India that touched the river Ganges and defeated the Pala ruler of Pataliputra, Mahipala. He also successfully invaded kingdoms of the Malay Archipelago. The Chola dynasty went into decline at the beginning of the 13th century with the rise of the Pandyas, who ultimately caused their downfall.
The Cholas left a lasting legacy. Their patronage of Tamil literature and their zeal in building temples has resulted in some great works of Tamil literature and architecture. The Chola kings were avid builders and envisioned the temples in their kingdoms not only as places of worship but also as centres of economic activity. They pioneered a centralised form of government and established a disciplined bureaucracy.
Gupta Empire
In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Gupta Empire unified India. This period is called the Golden Age of India and was marked by extensive achievements in science, technology, engineering, art, dialectic, literature, logic, mathematics, astronomy, religion and philosophy that crystallized the elements of what is generally known as Indian culture. Chandragupta I, Samudragupta, and Chandragupta II were the most notable rulers of the Gupta dynasty.
The high points of this cultural creativity are magnificent architectures, sculptures and paintings. The Gupta period produced scholars such as Kalidasa, Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Vishnu Sharma, and Vatsyayana who made great advancements in many academic fields. Science and political administration reached new heights during the Gupta era. Strong trade ties also made the region an important cultural center and set the region up as a base that would influence nearby kingdoms and regions in Burma, Sri Lanka, Indonesian Archipelago and Indochina.
Ancient China
Shang dynasty
The Shang dynasty (Chinese: 商朝; pinyin: Shāng cháo) or Yin dynasty (Chinese: 殷代; pinyin: Yīn dài), according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the Classic of History, Bamboo Annals and Records of the Grand Historian. According to the traditional chronology based upon calculations made approximately 2,000 years ago by Liu Xin, the Shang ruled from 1766 BC to 1122 BC, but according to the chronology based upon the "current text" of Bamboo Annals, they ruled from 1556 BC to 1046 BC. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c. 1600 BC to 1046 BC. At its peak 1122 BC it covered an area of 1,250,000 km2.
Zhou dynasty
The Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 BC; Chinese: 周朝; pinyin: Zhōu Cháo; Wade–Giles: Chou1 Ch'ao2 [tʂóʊ tʂʰɑ̌ʊ]) was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. Although the Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the dynasty, surnamed Ji (Chinese: 姬), lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as the Western Zhou.
This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making. The dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that emerged during the late Warring States period.
Qin dynasty
The Qin dynasty was preceded by the feudal Zhou dynasty and followed by the Han dynasty in China. The unification of China in 221 BC under the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang marked the beginning of Imperial China, a period which lasted until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912.
In 214 BC Qin Shihuang secured his boundaries to the north with a fraction (100,000 men) of his large army, and sent the majority (500,000 men) south to seize still more land. Prior to the events leading to Qin dominance over China, they had gained possession of much of Sichuan to the southwest. The Qin army was unfamiliar with the jungle terrain, and it was defeated by the southern tribes' guerrilla warfare tactics with over 100,000 men lost. However, in the defeat Qin was successful in building a canal to the south, which they used heavily for supplying and reinforcing their troops during their second attack to the south. Building on these gains, the Qin armies conquered the coastal lands surrounding Guangzhou, and took the provinces of Fuzhou and Guilin. They struck as far south as Hanoi. After these victories in the south, Qin Shihuang moved over 100,000 prisoners and exiles to colonize the newly conquered area. In terms of extending the boundaries of his empire, the First Emperor was extremely successful in the south.
Despite its military strength, the Qin dynasty did not last long. When the first emperor died in 210 BC, his son was placed on the throne by two of the previous emperor's advisers, in an attempt to influence and control the administration of the entire country through him. The advisors squabbled among themselves, however, which resulted in both their deaths and that of the second Qin emperor. Popular revolt broke out a few years later, and the weakened empire soon fell to a Chu lieutenant, who went on to found the Han dynasty. Despite its rapid end, the Qin dynasty influenced future Chinese regimes, particularly the Han, and the European name for China is derived from it.
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220), lasting 400 years, is commonly considered within China to be one of the greatest periods in the history of China. At its height, the Han empire extended over a vast territory of 6 million km2 and housed a population of approximately 55 million. During this time period, China became a military, economic, and cultural powerhouse. The empire extended its political and cultural influence over Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Central Asia before it finally collapsed under a combination of domestic and external pressures.
The Han Empire was divided into areas directly controlled by the central government, known as commanderies, and a number of semi-autonomous kingdoms. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States. The Xiongnu, a nomadic confederation which dominated the eastern Eurasian Steppe, defeated the Han army in battle in 200 BC. Following the defeat, a political marriage alliance was negotiated in which the Han became the de facto inferior partner. When, despite the treaty, the Xiongnu continued to raid Han borders, Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141–87 BC) launched several military campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries. These campaigns expanded Han sovereignty into the Tarim Basin of Central Asia and helped establish the vast trade network known as the Silk Road, which reached as far as the Mediterranean world. Han forces managed to divide the Xiongnu into two competing nations, the Southern and Northern Xiongnu, and forced the Northern Xiongnu across the Ili River. Despite these victories, the territories north of Han's borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation.
Jin dynasty
The Jin dynasty (simplified Chinese: 晋朝; traditional Chinese: 晉朝; pinyin: Jìn Cháo; Wade–Giles: Chin⁴-ch'ao², IPA: [tɕîn tʂʰɑ̌ʊ];), was a dynasty in Chinese history, lasting between the years 265 and 420 AD. There are two main divisions in the history of the dynasty, the first being Western Jin (西晉, 265–316) and the second Eastern Jin (東晉, 317–420). Western Jin was founded by Sima Yan, with its capital at Luoyang, while Eastern Jin was begun by Sima Rui, with its capital at Jiankang. The two periods are also known as Liang Jin (兩晉; literally: two Jin) and Sima Jin (司馬晉) by scholars, to distinguish this dynasty from other dynasties that use the same Chinese character, such as the Later Jin dynasty (後晉).
Ancient Europe
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. At the center of this time period is Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC, at first under Athenian leadership successfully repelling the military threat of Persian invasion. The Athenian Golden Age ends with the defeat of Athens at the hands of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean region and Europe, for which reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western civilization.
Athens, after a tyranny in the second half of the 6th century, established ancient Europe's first democracy as a radical solution to prevent the aristocracy from regaining power. A citizens' assembly (the Ecclesia), for the discussion of city policy, had existed since the reforms of Draco; all citizens were permitted to attend after the reforms of Solon, but the poorest citizens could not address the assembly or run for office. With the establishment of the democracy, the assembly became the de jure mechanism of government; all citizens had equal privileges in the assembly. However, non-citizens, foreigners living in Athens, slaves and women had no political rights at all. After the rise of the democracy in Athens, other city-states founded democracies. However, many retained more traditional forms of government. As so often in other matters, Sparta was a notable exception to the rest of Greece, ruled through the whole period by not one, but two hereditary monarchs. This was a form of diarchy.
Athens
Ancient Athens was inhabited around 3,000 years ago. Athens has one of the longest histories of any city in Europe and in the world. It became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC. Its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of western civilization. During the Middle Ages, Athens experienced decline and then a recovery under the Byzantine Empire. Athens was relatively prosperous during the Crusades, benefiting from medieval Italian trade.
Fifth-century Athens refers to the Greek city-state Athens in the period of roughly 480 BC-404 BC. This was a period of Athenian political hegemony, economic growth and cultural flourishing known as the Golden Age of Athens or Age of Pericles. The period began in 480 BC when an Athenian-led coalition of city-states, known as the Delian League, defeated the Persians at Salamis. As the fifth century wore on, what started as an alliance of independent city-states gradually became an Athenian empire. Eventually, Athens abandoned the pretense of parity among its allies and relocated the Delian League treasury from Delos to Athens, where it funded the building of the Athenian Acropolis. With its enemies under its feet and its political fortunes guided by legendary statesman and orator Pericles, Athens as a center of literature, philosophy (see Greek philosophy) and the arts (see Greek theatre). Some of the most important figures of Western cultural and intellectual history lived in Athens during this period: the dramatists Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides and Sophocles, the philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.
Sparta
Sparta was a Dorian Greek military state, originally centered in Laconia. As a city-state devoted to military training, Sparta possessed the most formidable army in the Greek world, and after achieving notable victories over the Athenian and Persian Empires, regarded itself as the natural protector of Greece. Laconia or Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων) was the name of the wider city-state centered at the city of Sparta, though the name "Sparta" is now used for both.
Following the victories in the Messenian Wars (631 BC), Sparta's reputation as a land-fighting force was unequaled. In 480 BC a small Spartan unit under King Leonidas made a legendary last stand against a massive, invading Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae. One year later, Sparta assembled at full strength and led a Greek alliance against the Persians at Plataea. There, a decisive Greek victory put an end to the Greco-Persian War along with Persian ambition of expanding into Europe. Even though this war was won by a pan-Hellenic army, credit was given to Sparta, who, besides being the protagonist at Thermopylae and Plataea, had been the nominal leader of the entire Greek expedition.
In later Classical times, Sparta along with Athens, Thebes and Persia had been the main regional powers fighting for supremacy against each other. As a result of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta, a traditionally continental culture, became a naval power. At the peak of her power, she subdued many of the key Greek states and even managed to overpower the powerful Athenian navy. By the end of the 5th century, she stood out as a state which had defeated at war both the Persian and Athenian Empires, a period which marks the Spartan Hegemony.
Sparta was, above all, a militarist state, and emphasis on military fitness began virtually at birth.
Macedonia
Macedonia was the name of an ancient kingdom in the northernmost part of ancient Greece, bordering Epirus to the west and the ancient thracian Odrysian kingdom to the east. For a brief period it became the most powerful state in the world after Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world, including the entire Achaemenid Empire, inaugurating the Hellenistic period of Greek history.
The rise of Macedon, from a small kingdom at the periphery of Classical Greek affairs, to one which came to dominate the entire Hellenic world (and beyond), occurred in the space of just 25 years, between 359 and 336 BC. This ascendancy is largely attributable to the personality and policies of Philip II of Macedon. Philip's military skills and expansionist vision of Macedonian greatness brought him early success. He had however first to re-establish a situation which had been greatly worsened by the defeat against the Illyrians in which King Perdiccas himself had died. The Paionians and the Thracians had sacked and invaded the eastern regions of the country, while the Athenians had landed, at Methoni on the coast, a contingent under a Macedonian pretender called Argeus. Using diplomacy, Philip pushed back Paionians and Thracians promising tributes, and crushed the 3,000 Athenian hoplites (359). Momentarily free from his opponents, he concentrated on strengthening his internal position and, above all, his army. His most important innovation was doubtless the introduction of the phalanx infantry corps, armed with the famous sarissa, an exceedingly long spear, at the time the most important army corps in Macedonia.
Philip's son, Alexander the Great, managed to briefly extend Macedonian power not only over the central Greek city-states, but also to the Persian empire, including Egypt and lands as far east as the fringes of India. Alexander's adoption of the styles of government of the conquered territories was accompanied by the spread of Greek culture and learning through his vast empire. Although the empire fractured into multiple Hellenic regimes shortly after his death, his conquests left a lasting legacy, not least in the new Greek-speaking cities founded across Persia's western territories, heralding the Hellenistic period. In the partition of Alexander's empire among the Diadochi, Macedonia fell to the Antipatrid dynasty, which was overthrown by the Antigonid dynasty after only a few years.
Hellenistic states
Alexander had made no special preparations for his succession in his newly founded empire and the Apocrypha of his death state that on his death-bed he willed it to those that performed actions well and powerfully. The result was the wars of the Diadochi between his generals (the Diadochi, or 'Successors'), which lasted for forty years before a more-or-less stable arrangement was established, consisting of four major domains:
The Antigonid dynasty in Macedon and central Greece;
The Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt based at Alexandria;
The Seleucid dynasty in Syria and Mesopotamia based at Antioch;
The Attalid dynasty in Anatolia based at Pergamum.
A further two kingdoms later emerged, the so-called Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdom. Hellenistic culture thrived in its preservation of the past. The states of the Hellenistic period were deeply fixated with the past and its seemingly lost glories. Athens retained its position as the most prestigious seat of higher education, especially in the domains of philosophy and rhetoric, with considerable libraries. Alexandria was a center of Greek learning and the Library of Alexandria had 700,000 volumes. The city of Pergamon became a major center of book production, possessing a library of some 200,000 volumes, second only to Alexandria's. The island of Rhodes boasted a famous finishing school for politics and diplomacy. Antioch was founded as a metropolis and center of Greek learning which retained its status into the era of Christianity. Seleucia replaced Babylon as the metropolis of the lower Tigris.
Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire
Ancient Rome is widely known as ancient Europe's largest and most powerful civilization. After the second Punic war Rome was already one of the biggest empires on the planet but its expansion continued with the invasions of Greece, Asia Minor and later Gaul. By 27 BC Rome had control over half of Europe as well as Northern Africa and large amounts of the Middle East. Rome also had a developed culture, building on the earlier Greek culture. From the time of Augustus to the Fall of the Western Empire, Rome dominated Western Eurasia, comprising the majority of its population.
Roman expansion began long before the state was transformed into a de facto monarchy and reached its zenith under emperor Trajan with the conquest of Mesopotamia and Armenia from 113 to 117. The period of the "Five Good Emperors" saw a successions of peaceful years and the Empire was prosperous. Each emperor of this period was adopted by his predecessor. The Nerva–Antonine dynasty was a dynasty of seven consecutive Roman Emperors who ruled over the Roman Empire from 96 to 192. These Emperors are Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, and Commodus.
The last two of the "Five Good Emperors" and Commodus are also called Antonines. After his accession, Nerva, who succeeded Domitian, set a new tone: he restored much confiscated property and involved the Roman Senate in his rule. Starting in 101, Trajan undertook two military campaigns against the gold rich Dacia, which he finally conquered in 106 (see Trajan's Dacian Wars). In 112, Trajan marched on Armenia and annexed it to the Roman Empire. Then he turned south into Parthia, taking several cities before declaring Mesopotamia a new province of the empire, and lamenting that he was too old to follow in the steps of Alexander the Great. During his rule, the Roman Empire expanded to its largest extent, and would never again advance so far to the east. Hadrian's reign was marked by a general lack of major military conflicts, but he decided to defend the vast territories that Trajan had acquired.
At its territorial peak in the year 117, the Roman Empire controlled approximately 5,000,000 km2 (1,900,000 sq mi) of land surface. After Trajans reign the Empire continued to grow stronger until the reign of Marcus Aurelius. After the death of Marcus Aurelius his son, Commodus would take power. The reign of Commodus marked the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire . Ancient Rome's influence upon the culture, law, technology, arts, language, religion, government, military, and architecture of Western civilization continues to this day even outside latin countries . It would fall to Odoacer in 476, but its eastern half will still be alive until it fell in 1453.
Thracian States
The Odrysian Kingdom proper was a Thracian kingdom that existed from the early 5th century BC at least until the mid-3rd century BC. It consisted mainly of present-day Bulgaria and parts of Southeastern Romania (Northern Dobruja), Northern Greece and European Turkey. Dominated by the eponymous Odrysian people, it was the largest and most powerful Thracian realm and the first larger political entity of the eastern Balkans. Before the foundation of Seuthopolis in the late 4th century it had no fixed capital.
The Odrysian kingdom was founded by king Teres I, exploiting the collapse of the Persian presence in Europe due to failed invasion of Greece in 480-79. Teres and his son Sitalces pursued a policy of expansion, making the kingdom one of the most powerful of its time. Throughout much of its early history it remained an ally of Athens and even joined the Peloponnesian War on its side. By 400 the state showed first signs of fatigue, although the skilled Cotys I initiated a brief renaissance that lasted until his murder in 360.
The Getae, a northern Thracian people located between the northeastern foothills of the Haemus range and the lower Danube and the Black Sea, had been part of the Odrysian realm since Teres I, even though it is not clear how tightly they were actually incorporated into the state. When and how the Getae became independent is not discussed in the available sources. Perhaps they became independent during the rule of Cotys I or after his death in 360. Rich funeral treasures from the second half of the 4th century, like those of Agighiol, Peretu or Borovo, attest to the increasing wealth of the Getic elite. Several artefacts seem to have originated in the Odrysian kingdom and may well have been prestige gifts.
By the middle of the 4th century there existed a Getic kingdom that was to thrive for a century. The Getic capital was Helis, which has been identified with the archaeological site of Sboryanovo, which was founded in the 330s or early 320s and housed around 10.000 inhabitants. It seems that the Getae also became active in Muntenia north of the Danube, a region that would come to constitute a part of the "Dacia" of imperial Roman historiography. The first Getic king to appear in the sources was Cothelas, who married his daughter Meda to Philip II, thus concluding an alliance between the two states. This probably happened during or shortly after Philip's conquest of the Odrysians. The kingdom survived two wars with Lysimachus and the Celtic invasion in around 280, but eventually disintegrated a few decades later. Helis/Sboryanovo was completely destroyed by an earthquake in the middle of the 3rd century.
With Alexander's absence in Asia, the Strategoi of Thrace engaged in rebellions and failed expeditions against the Getae, greatly unsettling the country in the process. At the end of the 330s or in the mid-320s (the dating is not entirely clear), a certain Seuthes, later known as Seuthes III, instigated a Thracian rebellion. He seems to have been an Odrysian and may have been associated with the royal house of Cersebleptes, although his social background must remain speculation. Seuthes' goal seems to have been the revival of an independent Odrysian state. Seuthes ruled in the interior, what is Thrace north of the Rhodopes, but not the coastal regions of the Aegean and Black Sea. Probably after the death of Alexander in 323, he founded the capital town of Seuthopolis, on the Tonzos river, near modern Kazanlak, and named after himself.
The Dacian Kingdom reached its greatest territorial extent under Burebista's rule (82BC-44BC). During his rule, he conquered territories from Central Europe to the Balkans, reaching the Aegean sea. He is well known by the Greek scholars as the "Celtic Slayer", because he defeated and killed many Celtic tribes from the Balkans (Scordisci) and the Central Europe (Boii & Taurisci). In 48BC Burebista tried to influence the Roman politics, during the Roman civil war by allying with Pompey Magnus against the victorious Julius Caesar. But Pompey was defeated and later killed in Ptolemaic Egypt. After all of that, Julius Caesar viewed Burebista's Empire as a threat and he planned to invade it along with the Parthian Empire. But he was assassinated in 44 BC. Burebista's state collapsed into various kingdoms. It will never be unified until Decebalus becomes the last King in 87AD.
The Thracian kingdom, also known as the Sapaean kingdom, was the continuation of the Thracian state from the middle of the 1st century BC to 46 AD. It was dominated by the Sapaean tribe, who ruled from their capital Bizye in what is now northwestern Turkey. Initially only of limited relevance, its power grew significantly after the battle of Actium in 31 BC, when Emperor Augustus installed a new dynasty that proved to be highly loyal and expansive. Conquering and ruling much of Thrace on Roman behalf, it lasted until 46 AD, when Emperor Claudius annexed the kingdom and made Thrace a Roman province.
Seleucid Empire
The Seleucid Empire was a Hellenistic empire, and the eastern remnant of the former Achaemenid Persian Empire following its breakup after Alexander the Great's invasion. The Seleucid Empire was centered in the near East. It was a center of Hellenistic culture which maintained the Greek customs and Greek-speaking Macedonian elite.
Seleucid expansion into Greece was abruptly halted after decisive defeats at the hands of the Roman army. Much of the eastern part of the empire was conquered by the Parthians under Mithridates I of Parthia in the mid-2nd century BC, yet the Seleucid kings continued to rule a rump state from Syria until the invasion by Armenian king Tigranes the Greatand their ultimate overthrow by the Roman general Pompey.
Ptolemaic Empire
The Ptolemaic dynasty, sometimes also known as the Lagids, was a Greek royal family which ruled the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt during the Hellenistic period.
Ptolemy, one of the seven somatophylakes (bodyguards) who served as Alexander the Great's generals and deputies, was appointed satrap of Egypt after Alexander's death in 323 BC. In 305 BC, he declared himself King Ptolemy I, later known as "Soter" (saviour). The Egyptians soon accepted the Ptolemies as the successors to the pharaohs of independent Egypt. Ptolemy's family ruled Egypt until the Roman conquest of 30 BC. All the male rulers of the dynasty took the name Ptolemy.
Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a center of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life. Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest. The Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians often caused by an unwanted regime and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome.
Ancient Eurasian Steppe
Scythia
Ancient Greeks gave the name Scythia (or Great Scythia) to all the lands north-east of Europe and the northern coast of the Black Sea. According to Oxford University authors Samuel Arrowsmith, B. Fellowes and Luke Graves Hansard in their 1832 book A Grammar of Ancient Geography, Scythia had two parts, Scythia Intra Imaum and Scythia Extra Imaum both covering a combined area of 1,129,000 mi2 or 2,924,096 km2.
The Scythians – the Greeks' name for this nomadic people – inhabited Scythia from at least the 11th century BC to the 2nd century AD. Its location and extent varied over time but usually extended farther to the west than is indicated on the map opposite.
Sarmatia
The Sarmatians (Latin: Sarmatæ or Sauromatæ, Greek: Σαρμάται, Σαυρομάται) were an Iranian people during classical antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. They spoke Scythian, an Indo-European language from the Eastern Iranian family.
Originating in Central Asia, the Sarmatians started their westward migration around the 6th century bc, coming to dominate the closely related Scythians by the 2nd century bc. The Sarmatians differed from the Scythians in their veneration of the god of fire rather than god of nature, and their women's prominent role in warfare, which possibly served as the inspiration for the Amazons. At their greatest reported extent, around the 1st century AD, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black and Caspian seas as well as the Caucasus to the south. Their territory, which was known as Sarmatia to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia (mostly modern Ukraine and Southern Russia, also to a smaller extent north eastern Balkans around Moldova). According to authors Arrowsmith, Fellowes and Graves Hansard in their book A Grammar of Ancient Geography published in 1832, Sarmatia had two parts, Sarmatia Europea and Sarmatia Asiatica covering a combined area of 503,000 sq mi or 1,302,764 km2.
Xiongnu
Xiongnu (Hsiung nu) was a nomadic empire that flourished in the central Asia. Their origin is debatable, but they probably spoke either an Iranian, Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolic, or Yeniseian language. They conquered most of modern Mongolia under their leader Toumen (220–209 BC) in the 3rd century BC. During Modu's reign (209–174 BC) they defeated both the Donghu in the east and Yuezhi in the west and they began threatening Han China.
The Great Wall of China had been constructed to protect Chinese towns from the Xiongnu attacks. While the Chinese were trying to bring the Xiongnu under control, something of high significance happened: cross-cultural encounters. A large variety of people (such as traders, ambassadors, hostages, parents in cross-cultural marriages, etc.) served as helpers that passed on ideas, values, and techniques across cultural boundary lines. These encounters helped cultures learn from other cultures. The Xiongnu Empire disintegrated into two parts during the 1st century; eventually the Xiongnu fell due to their defeat in the Han–Xiongnu War.
Huns
Huns were nomadic people who were known for their hordes of mounted archers. Their language seems to be Turkic; but Mongolic, Yeniseian, Uralic etc., are also postulated. After 370 under a certain Balamber they founded an empire in the East Europe defeating Alans and Goths. They triggered the great migration which eventually caused the collapse of the West Roman Empire.
The death of Rugila in 434 left the sons of his brother Mundzuk, Attila and Bleda, in control of the united Hun tribes. Attila the Hun ruled of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. Under his rule and leader of the Hunnic Empire, the empire stretched from Germany to the Ural River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. Hunnic khagan Atilla invaded Europe. The rise of the Huns around 370 overwhelmed the Gothic kingdoms. Many of the Goths migrated into Roman territory in the Balkans, while others remained north of the Danube under Hunnic rule.
During Attila the Hun's rule, he was one of the most fearsome enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire. He invaded the Balkans twice and marched through Gaul (modern France) as far as Orléans before being defeated at the Battle of Châlons. Although his invasion of Gaul was checked at Chalons, he appeared in North Italy in the next year. After Atilla's death in 453, the Hunnic Empire collapsed. The Huns seem to have been absorbed by other ethnic groups such as the Bulgars. Kim, however, argues that the Huns continued under Ernak, becoming the Kutrigur and Utigur Hunno-Bulgars. This conclusion is still subject to some controversy. Some scholars also argue that another group identified in ancient sources as Huns, the North Caucasian Huns, were genuine Huns. The rulers of various post-Hunnic steppe peoples are known to have claimed descent from Attila in order to legitimize their right to the power, and various steppe peoples were also called "Huns" by Western and Byzantine sources from the fourth century onward.
See also
Historic recurrence
List of medieval great powers
List of modern great powers
Great power
Middle power
Superpower
General topics
History of warfare
Political science
Power in international relations, Expansionism
General Lists
List of largest empires, List of transcontinental countries, List of former transcontinental countries
References
== Bibliography == |
Gupta_Empire | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta_Empire | [
295
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta_Empire"
] | The Gupta Empire was an ancient Indian empire on the Indian subcontinent which existed from the mid 3rd century CE to mid 6th century CE. It was the seventh ruling dynasty of Magadha. At its zenith, from approximately 319 to 467 CE, it covered much of the Indian subcontinent. This period has been considered as the Golden Age of India by historians, although this characterisation has been disputed by some other historians. The ruling dynasty of the empire was founded by Gupta and the most notable rulers of the dynasty were Chandragupta I, Samudragupta, Chandragupta II, Kumaragupta I and Skandagupta.
The high points of this period are the great cultural developments which took place primarily during the reigns of Samudragupta, Chandragupta II and Kumaragupta I. Many Hindu epics and literary sources, such as Mahabharata and Ramayana, were canonised during this period. The Gupta period produced scholars such as Kalidasa, Aryabhata, Varahamihira and Vatsyayana, who made great advancements in many academic fields. Science and political administration reached new heights during the Gupta era. The period, sometimes described as Pax Gupta, gave rise to achievements in architecture, sculpture, and painting that "set standards of form and taste [that] determined the whole subsequent course of art, not only in India but far beyond her borders". Strong trade ties also made the region an important cultural centre and established the region as a base that would influence nearby kingdoms and regions in India and Southeast Asia. The Puranas, earlier long poems on a variety of subjects, are also thought to have been committed to written texts around this period. Hinduism was followed by the rulers and the Brahmins flourished in the Gupta empire but the Guptas were tolerant towards people of other faiths as well.
The empire eventually died out because of factors such as substantial loss of territory and imperial authority caused by their own erstwhile feudatories, as well as the invasion by the Huna peoples (Kidarites and Alchon Huns) from Central Asia. After the collapse of the Gupta Empire in the 6th century, India was again ruled by numerous regional kingdoms.
Origin
The homeland of the Guptas is uncertain. According to one theory, they originated in the present-day lower-Doab region of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where most of the inscriptions and coin hoards of the early Gupta emperors have been discovered. This theory is also supported by the Purana, as argued by the proponents, that mention the territory of the early Gupta emperors as Prayaga, Saketa, and Magadha areas in the Ganges basin.
Another prominent theory locates the Gupta homeland in the present-day Bengal region in Ganges basin, based on the account of the 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk Yijing. According to Yijing, king Che-li-ki-to (identified with the dynasty's founder Shri Gupta) built a temple for Chinese pilgrims near Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no (apparently a transcription of Mriga-shikha-vana). Yijing states that this temple was located more than 40 yojanas east of Nalanda, which would mean it was situated somewhere in the modern Bengal region. Another proposal is that the early Gupta kingdom extended from Prayaga in the west to northern Bengal in the east.
The Gupta records do not mention the dynasty's varna (social class). Some historians, such as A.S. Altekar, have theorised that they were of Vaishya origin, as certain ancient Indian texts prescribe the name "Gupta" for the members of the Vaishya varna. According to historian R. S. Sharma, the Vaishyas – who were traditionally associated with trade – may have become rulers after resisting oppressive taxation by the previous rulers. Critics of the Vaishya-origin theory point out that the suffix Gupta features in the names of several non-Vaishyas before as well as during the Gupta period, and the dynastic name "Gupta" may have simply derived from the name of the dynasty's first king Gupta. Some scholars, such as S. R. Goyal, theorise that the Guptas were Brahmins, because they had matrimonial relations with Brahmins, but others reject this evidence as inconclusive. Based on the Pune and Riddhapur inscriptions of the Gupta princess Prabhavatigupta, some scholars believe that the name of her paternal gotra (clan) was "Dharana", but an alternative reading of these inscriptions suggests that Dharana was the gotra of her mother Kuberanaga.
History
Early rulers
Gupta (Gupta script: gu-pta, fl. late 3rd century CE) is the earliest known king of the dynasty: different historians variously date the beginning of his reign from mid-to-late 3rd century CE. Gupta founded the Gupta Empire c. 240-280 CE, and was succeeded by his son, Ghatotkacha, c. 280-319 CE, followed by Ghatotkacha's son, Chandragupta I, c. 319-335 CE. "Che-li-ki-to", the name of a king mentioned by the 7th century Chinese Buddhist monk Yijing, is believed to be a transcription of "Shri-Gupta" (IAST: Śrigupta), "Shri" being an honorific prefix. According to Yijing, this king built a temple for Chinese Buddhist pilgrims near "Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no" (believed to be a transcription of Mṛgaśikhāvana).
In the Allahabad Pillar inscription, Gupta and his successor Ghatotkacha are described as Maharaja ("Great King"), while the next king Chandragupta I is called a Maharajadhiraja ("King of Great Kings"). In the later period, the title Maharaja was used by feudatory rulers, which has led to suggestions that Gupta and Ghatotkacha were vassals (possibly of Kushan Empire). However, there are several instances of paramount sovereigns using the title Maharaja, in both pre-Gupta and post-Gupta periods, so this cannot be said with certainty. That said, there is no doubt that Gupta and Ghatotkacha held a lower status and were less powerful than Chandragupta I.
Chandragupta I married the Licchavi princess Kumaradevi, which may have helped him extend his political power and dominions, enabling him to adopt the prestigious title Maharajadhiraja. According to the dynasty's official records, he was succeeded by his son Samudragupta. However, the discovery of the coins issued by a Gupta emperor named Kacha have led to some debate on this topic: according to one theory, Kacha was another name for Samudragupta; another possibility is that Kacha was a rival claimant to the throne.
Samudragupta
Samudragupta succeeded his father around 335 or 350 CE, and ruled until c. 375 CE. The Allahabad Pillar inscription, composed by his courtier Harisena, credits him with extensive conquests. The inscription asserts that Samudragupta uprooted 8 kings of Āryāvarta, the northern region, including the Nagas. It further claims that he subjugated all the kings of the forest region, which was most probably located in central India. It also credits him with defeating 12 rulers of Dakshinapatha, the southern region: the exact identification of several of these kings is debated among modern scholars, but it is clear that these kings ruled areas located on the eastern coast of India. The inscription suggests that Samudragupta advanced as far as the Pallava kingdom in the south, and defeated Vishnugopa, the Pallava regent of Kanchi. During this southern campaign, Samudragupta most probably passed through the forest tract of central India, reached the eastern coast in present-day Odisha, and then marched south along the coast of the Bay of Bengal.
The Allahabad Pillar inscription mentions that rulers of several frontier kingdoms and tribal aristocracies paid Samudragupta tributes, obeyed his orders, and performed obeisance before him. The frontier kingdoms included Samatata, Davaka, Kamarupa, Nepal and Karttripura. The tribal aristocracies and kingdoms included Malavas, Arjunayanas, Yaudheyas, Madrakas, and Abhiras, among others.
Finally, the inscription mentions that several foreign kings tried to please Samudragupta by personal attendance; offered him their daughters in marriage (or according to another interpretation, gifted him maidens); and sought the use of the Garuda-depicting Gupta seal for administering their own territories. This is an exaggeration: for example, the inscription lists the King of Simhala among these kings. It is known that from Chinese sources that the Simhala king Meghavarna sent rich presents to the Gupta emperor requesting his permission to build a Buddhist monastery at Bodh Gaya: Samudragupta's panegyrist appears to have described this act of diplomacy as an act of subservience.
Samudragupta appears to have been Vaishnavite, as attested by his Eran inscription, and performed several Brahmanical ceremonies. The Gupta records credit him with making generous donations of cows and gold. He performed the Ashvamedha ritual (horse sacrifice), which was used by the ancient Indian kings and emperors to prove their imperial sovereignty, and issued gold coins (see Coinage below) to mark this performance.
The Allahabad Pillar inscription presents Samudragupta as a wise king and strict administrator, who was also compassionate enough to help the poor and the helpless. It also alludes to the king's talents as a musician and a poet, and calls him the "king of poets". Such claims are corroborated by Samudragupta's gold coins, which depict him playing a veena.
Samudragupta appears to have directly controlled a large part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain in present-day India, as well as a substantial part of central India. Besides, his empire comprised a number of monarchical and tribal tributary states of northern India, and of the south-eastern coastal region of India.
Ramagupta
Ramagupta is known from a sixth-century play, the Devichandragupta, in which he surrenders his queen to the enemy Sakas and his brother Chandragupta has to sneak into the enemy camp to rescue her and kill the Saka king. The historicity of these events is unclear, but Ramagupta's existence is confirmed by three Jain statues found at Durjanpur, with inscriptions referring to him as the Maharajadhiraja. A large number of his copper coins also have been found from the Eran-Vidisha region and classified in five distinct types, which include the Garuda, Garudadhvaja, lion and border legend types. The Brahmi legends on these coins are written in the early Gupta style.
Chandragupta II "Vikramaditya"
According to the Gupta records, among his sons, Samudragupta nominated prince Chandragupta II, born of queen Dattadevi, as his successor. Chandragupta II, Vikramaditya (Brave as the Sun), ruled from 375 until 415. He married a Kadamba princess of Kuntala and of Naga lineage (Nāgakulotpannnā), Kuberanaga. His daughter Prabhavatigupta from this Naga queen was married to Rudrasena II, the Vakataka king of Deccan. His son Kumaragupta I was married to a Kadamba princess of the Karnataka region. Chandragupta II expanded his realm westwards, defeating the Saka Western Kshatrapas of Malwa, Gujarat and Saurashtra in a campaign lasting until 409. His main opponent Rudrasimha III was defeated by 395, and he crushed the Bengal chiefdoms. This extended his control from coast to coast, established a second capital at Ujjain and was the high point of the empire. Kuntala inscriptions indicate rule of Chandragupta II in Kuntala country of Karnataka. Hunza inscription also indicate that Chandragupta was able to rule north western Indian subcontinent and proceeded to conquer Balkh, although some scholars have also disputed the identity of the Gupta emperor. Chalukya king Vikramaditya VI (r. 1076 – 1126 CE) mentions Chandragupta with his title and states: "Why should the glory of the Kings Vikramaditya and Nanda be a hindrance any longer ? He with a loud command abolished that (era), which has the name of Saka, and made that (era) which has the Chalukya counting".
Despite the creation of the empire through war, the reign is remembered for its very influential style of Hindu art, literature, culture and science, especially during the reign of Chandragupta II. Some excellent works of Hindu art such as the panels at the Dashavatara Temple in Deogarh serve to illustrate the magnificence of Gupta art. Above all, it was the synthesis of elements that gave Gupta art its distinctive flavour. During this period, the Guptas were supportive of thriving Buddhist and Jain cultures as well, and for this reason, there is also a long history of non-Hindu Gupta period art. In particular, Gupta period Buddhist art was to be influential in most of East and Southeast Asia. Many advances were recorded by the Chinese scholar and traveller Faxian in his diary and published afterwards.
The court of Chandragupta II was made even more illustrious by the fact that it was graced by the Navaratna (Nine Jewels), a group of nine who excelled in the literary arts. Among these men was Kālidāsa, whose works dwarfed the works of many other literary geniuses, not only in his own age but in the years to come. Kalidasa was mainly known for his subtle exploitation of the shringara (romantic) element in his verse.
Chandragupta II's campaigns against foreign tribes
The 4th century Sanskrit poet Kalidasa credits Chandragupta Vikramaditya with conquering about twenty-one kingdoms, both in and outside India. After finishing his campaign in East and West India, Vikramaditya (Chandragupta II) proceeded northwards, subjugated the Parasika, then the Huna and Kamboja tribes located in the west and east Oxus valleys respectively. Thereafter, the king proceeded into the Himalaya mountains to reduce the mountain tribes of the Kinnaras, Kiratas, as well as India proper. In one of his works Kalidasa also credits him with the removal of the Sakas from the country. He wrote 'Wasn't it Vikramaditya who drove the Sakas out from the lovely city of Ujjain?'.
The Brihatkathamanjari of the Kashmiri writer Kshemendra states, King Vikramaditya (Chandragupta II) had "unburdened the sacred earth of the barbarians like the Sakas, Mlecchas, Kambojas, Greeks, Tusharas, Saka-Greeks, Hunas, and others, by annihilating these sinful Mlecchas completely".
Faxian
Faxian, a Chinese Buddhist monk, was one of the pilgrims who visited India during the reign of the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II. He started his journey from China in 399 CE and reached India in 405 CE. During his stay in India up to 411 CE, he went on a pilgrimage to Mathura, Kannauj, Kapilavastu, Kushinagar, Vaishali, Pataliputra, Kashi, and Rajagriha, and made careful observations about the empire's conditions. Faxian was pleased with the mildness of administration. The penal code was mild, and offences were punished by fines only. From his accounts, the Gupta Empire was a prosperous period. His writings form one of the most important sources for the history of this period.
Faxian on reaching Mathura comments––"The snow and heat are finely tempered, and there is neither hoarfrost nor snow. The people are numerous and happy. They have not to register their households. Only those who cultivate the royal land have to pay (a portion of) the gain from it. If they want to go, they go. If they want to stay on, they stay on. The king governs without decapitation or (other) corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined according to circumstances. Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right-hand cut off. The king's bodyguards & attendants all have salaries. Throughout the whole country, the people do not kill any living creature, not drink any intoxicating liquor, nor eat onions or garlic."
Kumaragupta I
Chandragupta II was succeeded by his second son Kumaragupta I, born of Mahadevi Dhruvasvamini. Kumaragupta I assumed the title, Mahendraditya. He ruled until 455. Towards the end of his reign a tribe in the Narmada valley, the Pushyamitras, rose in power to threaten the empire. The Kidarites as well probably confronted the Gupta Empire towards the end of the rule of Kumaragupta I, as his son Skandagupta mentions in the Bhitari pillar inscription his efforts at reshaping a country in disarray, through reorganisation and military victories over the Pushyamitras and the Hunas.
He was the founder of Nalanda University which on 15 July 2016 was declared as a UNESCO world heritage site. Kumaragupta I was also a worshipper of Kartikeya.
Skandagupta
Skandagupta, son and successor of Kumaragupta I is generally considered to be the last of the great Gupta emperors. He assumed the titles of Vikramaditya and Kramaditya. He defeated the Pushyamitra threat, but then was faced with invading Kidarites (sometimes described as the Hephthalites or "White Huns", known in India as the Sweta Huna), from the northwest.
He repelled a Huna attack around 455 CE, but the expense of the wars drained the empire's resources and contributed to its decline. The Bhitari Pillar inscription of Skandagupta, the successor of Chandragupta, recalls the near annihilation of the Gupta Empire following the attacks of the Kidarites. The Kidarites seem to have retained the western part of the Gupta Empire.
Skandagupta died in 467 and was succeeded by his agnate brother Purugupta.
Decline of the empire
Following Skandagupta's death, the empire was clearly in decline, and the later Gupta coinage indicates their loss of control over much of western India after 467–469. Skandagupta was followed by Purugupta (467–473), Kumaragupta II (473–476), Budhagupta (476–495), Narasimhagupta (495–530), Kumaragupta III (530–540), Vishnugupta (540–550), two lesser known kings namely, Vainyagupta and Bhanugupta.
In the late 490's the Alchon Huns under Toramana and Mihirakula broke through the Gupta defences in the northwest, and much of the empire in the northwest was overrun by the Huns by 500. According to some scholars the empire disintegrated under the attacks of Toramana and his successor Mihirakula. It appears from inscriptions that the Guptas, although their power was much diminished, continued to resist the Huns. The Hun invader Toramana was defeated by Bhanugupta in 510. The Huns were defeated and driven out of India in 528 by King Yashodharman from Malwa, and possibly Gupta emperor Narasimhagupta.
These invasions, although only spanning a few decades, had long term effects on India, and in a sense brought an end to Classical Indian civilisation. Soon after the invasions, the Gupta Empire, already weakened by these invasions and the rise of local rulers such as Yashodharman, ended as well. Following the invasions, northern India was left in disarray, with numerous smaller Indian powers emerging after the crumbling of the Guptas. The Huna invasions are said to have seriously damaged India's trade with Europe and Central Asia. In particular, Indo-Roman trade relations, which the Gupta Empire had greatly benefited from. The Guptas had been exporting numerous luxury products such as silk, leather goods, fur, iron products, ivory, pearl, and pepper from centres such as Nasik, Paithan, Pataliputra, and Benares. The Huna invasion probably disrupted these trade relations and the tax revenues that came with them.
Furthermore, Indian urban culture was left in decline, and Buddhism, gravely weakened by the destruction of monasteries and the killing of monks by the hand of the vehemently anti-Buddhist Shaivist Huna king Mihirakula, started to collapse. Great centres of learning were destroyed, such as the city of Taxila, bringing cultural regression. During their rule of 60 years, the Alchons are said to have altered the hierarchy of ruling families and the Indian caste system. For example, the Hunas are often said to have become the precursors of the Rajputs.
The succession of the 6th-century Guptas is not entirely clear, but the tail end recognised ruler of the dynasty's main line was King Vishnugupta, reigning from 540 to 550. In addition to the Huna invasion, the factors, which contribute to the decline of the empire include competition from the Vakatakas and the rise of Yashodharman in Malwa.
The last known inscription by a Gupta emperor is from the reign of Vishnugupta (the Damudarpur copper-plate inscription), in which he makes a land grant in the area of Kotivarsha (Bangarh in West Bengal) in 542/543 CE. This follows the occupation of most of northern and central India by the Aulikara King Yashodharman c. 532 CE.
A 2019 study by archaeologist Shanker Sharma has concluded that the cause of the Gupta Empire's downfall was a devastating flood which happened around the middle of the 6th century in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Post-Gupta successor dynasties
In the heart of the former Gupta Empire, in the Gangetic region, the Guptas were succeeded by the Maukhari dynasty and the Pushyabhuti dynasty. The coinage of the Maukharis and Pushyabhutis followed the silver coin type of the Guptas, with portrait of the ruler in profile (although facing in the reverse direction compared to the Guptas, a possible symbol of antagonism) and the peacock on the reverse, the Brahmi legend being kept except for the name of the ruler.
In the western regions, they were succeeded by Gurjaradesa, the Gurjara-Pratiharas, and later the Chaulukya-Paramara dynasties, who issued so-called Indo-Sasanian coinage, on the model of the coinage of the Sasanian Empire, which had been introduced in India by the Alchon Huns.
Military organisation
In contrast to the Mauryan Empire, the Guptas introduced several military innovations to Indian warfare. Chief among these was the use of siege engines, heavy cavalry archers and heavy sword cavalry. The heavy cavalry formed the core of the Gupta Army and were supported by the traditional Indian Army elements of war elephants and light infantry.
The utilisation of horse archers in the Gupta period is evidenced on the coinage of Chandragupta II, Kumaragupta I and Prakasaditya (postulated to be Purugupta) that depicts the kings as horse-archers.
There is a paucity of contemporary sources detailing the tactical operations of the Imperial Gupta Army. The best extant information comes from the Sanskrit mahakavya (epic poem) Raghuvaṃśa written by the Classical Sanskrit writer and dramatist Kalidasa. Many modern scholars put forward the view that Kalidasa lived from the reign of Chandragupta II to the reign of Skandagupta and that the campaigns of Raghu – his protagonist in the Raghuvaṃśa – reflect those of Chandragupta II. In Canto IV of the Raghuvamsa, Kalidasa relates how the king's forces clash against the powerful, cavalry-centric, forces of the Persians and later the Yavanas (probably Huns) in the North-West. Here he makes special mention of the use horse-archers in the king's army and that the horses needed much rest after the hotly contested battles. The five arms of the Gupta military included infantry, cavalry, chariotry, elephantry and ships. Gunaighar copper plate inscription of Vainya Gupta mentions ships but not chariots. Ships had become integral part of Indian military in the 6th century CE.
Religion
The Guptas were traditionally a Hindu dynasty. They were patronizers of Brahmanism and allowed followers of Buddhism and Jainism to practice their religions. Sanchi remained an important centre of Buddhism. Kumaragupta I (455 CE) is said to have founded Nalanda. Modern genetic studies indicate that it was during the Gupta period that Indian caste groups ceased to intermarry (started practising/enforcing endogamy).
Some later rulers however seem to have especially promoted Buddhism. Narasimhagupta Baladitya (c. 495–?), according to contemporary writer Paramartha, was brought up under the influence of the Mahayanist philosopher, Vasubandhu. He built a sangharama at Nalanda and also a 300 ft (91 m) high vihara with a Buddha statue within which, according to Xuanzang, resembled the "great Vihara built under the Bodhi tree". According to the Manjushrimulakalpa (c. 800 CE), King Narasimhsagupta became a Buddhist monk, and left the world through meditation (Dhyana). The Chinese monk Xuanzang also noted that Narasimhagupta Baladitya's son, Vajra, who commissioned a sangharama as well, "possessed a heart firm in faith".: 45 : 330
Gupta administration
A study of the epigraphical records of the Gupta Empire shows that there was a hierarchy of administrative divisions from top to bottom. It was divided into 26 provinces, which were called Bhukti, Desha or Rajya. Provinces were also divided into vishayas or pradeshas (districts) and put under the control of Vishayapatis (district lords). A Vishayapati administered the Vishaya with the help of the Adhikarana (council of representatives), which comprised four representatives: Nagarasreshesthi, Sarthavaha, Prathamakulika and Prathama Kayastha. A part of the Vishaya was called Vithi. The Gupta also had trading links with the Sassanid and Byzantine Empires. The four-fold varna system was observed under the Gupta period but caste system was fluid. Brahmins followed non-Brahmanical professions as well. Kshatriyas were involved in trade and commerce. The society largely coexisted among themselves.
Urbanization
Gupta administration proved to be highly conducive for the rapid growth of urban centers. The Chinese author Faxian described Magadha as a prosperous country with rich towns and large populations. Ayodhya was regarded as the second capital. Chandragupta Vikramaditya took personal interest in the development of Ujjain as a major cultural center after its conquest.
Legacy
Mathematics
Indian mathematics flourished during the Gupta Empire. The Indian numerals which were the first positional base 10 numeral systems in the world originated from Gupta India. The Surya Siddhanta contains the Sine table. Aryabhata, wrote the Aryabhatiya, making significant contributions to mathematics including developing a Place value system, an approximation of π of 4 decimal places, trignimotric functions, and Squared triangular numbers. Varāhamihira wrote the Pancha Siddhanta developing various formulas relating sine and cosine functions. Yativṛṣabha made contributions on units of measurement. Virahanka described Fibonacci numbers.
Astronomy
Indian astronomy also saw progress in this era. The names of the seven days in a week appeared at the start of the Gupta period based on Hindu deities and planets corresponding to the Roman names. Aryabhata made several contributions such as assigning the start of each day to midnight. the earth's rotation on its axis, westward motion of the stars. Aryabhata also mentioned that reflected sunlight is the cause behind the shining of the Moon. In his book, Aryabhata, he suggested that the Earth was sphere, containing a circumference of 24,835 miles (39,967 km). Varāhamihira approximates the method for determination of the meridian direction from any three positions of the shadow using a gnomon.
Medicine
The Sushruta Samhita, which is a Sanskrit redaction text on all of the major concepts of Ayurveda medicine with innovative chapters on surgery, dates to the Gupta period.
Metallurgy and Engineering
The Iron Pillar of Delhi high resistance to corrosion . The corrosion resistance results from an even layer of crystalline iron(III) hydrogen phosphate hydrate forming on the high-phosphorus-content iron, which serves to protect it from the effects of the corrosion The earliest evidence of the cotton gin was found in the fifth century, in the form of Buddhist paintings depicting a single-roller gin in the Ajanta Caves. The gins consisted of a single roller made of iron or wood and a flat piece of stone or wood.
Education
Various Mahavihara operated throughout the Gupta Empire serving as centuries of education. Nalanda played a vital role in promoting the patronage of arts and academics during the 5th and 6th century CE.
Literature
The highest point of Sanskrit literature is also said to have belonged to this period. Harisena was an early writer of Kāvya poetry. his works include Apabramsa Dharmapariksa, Karpuraprakara (Suktavall), the medical treatise Jagatsundari-Yogamaladhikara, Yasodharacanta, Astahnikakatha and Brhatkathakosa. Amarasimha wrote various on Sanskrit grammar. Kalidasa, a playwright, wrote plays such as the Abhijnanashakuntalam and Shakuntala. Bhartṛhari published major works including the Trikāṇḍī and Śatakatraya.
Leisure
Chess is said to have developed in this period, where its early form in the 6th century was known as caturaṅga, which translates as "four divisions [of the military]" – infantry, cavalry, chariotry, and elephantry – represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, rook, and bishop respectively. Doctors also invented several medical instruments, and even performed surgical operations. The ancient Gupta text Kama Sutra by the Indian scholar Vatsyayana is widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behaviour in Sanskrit literature.
Art and architecture
The Gupta period is generally regarded as a classic peak of North Indian art for all the major religious groups. Although painting was evidently widespread, the surviving works are almost all religious sculptures. The period saw the emergence of the iconic carved stone deity in Hindu art, as well as the Buddha-figure and Jain tirthankara figures, the latter often on a very large scale. The two great centres of sculpture were Mathura and Gandhara, the latter the centre of Greco-Buddhist art. Both exported sculpture to other parts of northern India.
The most famous remaining monuments in a broadly Gupta style, the caves at Ajanta, Elephanta, and Ellora (respectively Buddhist, Hindu, and mixed including Jain) were in fact produced under later dynasties, but primarily reflect the monumentality and balance of Gupta style. Ajanta contains by far the most significant survivals of painting from this and the surrounding periods, showing a mature form which had probably had a long development, mainly in painting palaces. The Hindu Udayagiri Caves actually record connections with the dynasty and its ministers, and the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh is a major temple, one of the earliest to survive, with important sculpture.
Family tree and List of rulers
See also
Abhira-Gupta dynasty (Nepal)
Uchchhakalpa dynasty
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Media related to Gupta Empire at Wikimedia Commons
Coins of Gupta Empire |
Michael_Jackson | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson | [
296
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson"
] | Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over a four-decade career, his contributions to music, dance, and fashion, along with his publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture. Jackson influenced artists across many music genres. Through stage and video performances, he popularized street dance moves such as the moonwalk, which he named, and the robot.
He was the eighth child of the Jackson family, and made his public debut in 1964 with his older brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson 5 (later known as the Jacksons). The Jackson 5 signed with Motown in 1968 and achieved worldwide success with Michael as lead singer. Jackson began his solo career in 1971 while at Motown and recorded multiple successful singles. He became a global solo star with his 1979 album Off the Wall. His music videos, including those for "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller" from his 1982 album Thriller, are credited with breaking racial barriers and transforming the medium into an art form and promotional tool. He helped popularize MTV and continued to innovate with videos for his albums Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I (1995), and Invincible (2001). Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, while Bad was the first album to produce five US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles.
From the late 1980s, Jackson became a figure of controversy and speculation due to his changing appearance, relationships, behavior, and lifestyle. In 1993, he was accused of sexually abusing the child of a family friend. The lawsuit was settled out of civil court; Jackson was not indicted due to lack of evidence. In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of further child sexual abuse allegations and several other charges. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found no evidence of criminal conduct by Jackson. In 2009, while he was preparing for a series of comeback concerts, This Is It, Jackson died from an overdose of propofol administered by his personal physician, Conrad Murray, who was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter for his involvement in Jackson's death. His death triggered reactions around the world, creating unprecedented surges of internet traffic and a spike in sales of his music. Jackson's televised memorial service, held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, was estimated to have been viewed by more than 2.5 billion people.
Jackson is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 500 million records worldwide. He had 13 Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles (the fourth-highest of any artist in the Hot 100 era) and was the first artist to have a top-ten single on the Billboard Hot 100 in five different decades. His honors include 15 Grammy Awards, six Brit Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and 39 Guinness World Records, including the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time". Jackson's inductions include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice), the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Dance Hall of Fame (making him the only recording artist to be inducted) and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Life and career
Early life and the Jackson 5 (1958–1975)
Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, on August 29, 1958. He was the eighth of ten children in the Jackson family, a working-class African-American family living in a two-bedroom house on Jackson Street. His mother, Katherine Esther Jackson (née Scruse), played clarinet and piano, had aspired to be a country-and-western performer, and worked part-time at Sears. She was a Jehovah's Witness. His father, Joseph Walter "Joe" Jackson, a former boxer, was a crane operator at US Steel and played guitar with a local rhythm and blues band, the Falcons, to supplement the family's income. Joe's great-grandfather, July "Jack" Gale, was a US Army scout; family lore held that he was also a Native American medicine man. Michael grew up with three sisters (Rebbie, La Toya, and Janet) and five brothers (Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Randy). A sixth brother, Marlon's twin Brandon, died shortly after birth.
In 1964, Michael and Marlon joined the Jackson Brothers—a band formed by their father which included Jackie, Tito and Jermaine—as backup musicians playing congas and tambourine. Michael said his father told him he had a "fat nose", and physically and emotionally abused him during rehearsals. He recalled that Joe often sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as he and his siblings rehearsed, ready to punish any mistakes. Joe acknowledged that he regularly whipped Michael. Katherine said that although whipping came to be considered abuse, it was a common way to discipline children when Michael was growing up. Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon denied that their father was abusive and said that the whippings, which had a deeper impact on Michael because he was younger, kept them disciplined and out of trouble. Michael said that during his youth he was lonely and isolated.
Later in 1965, Michael began sharing lead vocals with Jermaine, and the group's name was changed to the Jackson 5. In 1965, the group won a talent show; Michael performed the dance to Robert Parker's 1965 song "Barefootin'" and sang the Temptations' "My Girl". From 1966 to 1968, the Jacksons 5 toured the Midwest; they frequently played at a string of black clubs known as the Chitlin' Circuit as the opening act for artists such as Sam & Dave, the O'Jays, Gladys Knight and Etta James. The Jackson 5 also performed at clubs and cocktail lounges, where striptease shows were featured, and at local auditoriums and high school dances. In August 1967, while touring the East Coast, they won a weekly amateur night concert at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
The Jackson 5 recorded several songs for a Gary record label, Steeltown Records; their first single, "Big Boy", was released in 1968. Bobby Taylor of Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers brought the Jackson 5 to Motown after they opened for Taylor at Chicago's Regal Theater in 1968. Taylor produced some of their early Motown recordings, including a version of "Who's Lovin' You". After signing with Motown, the Jackson family relocated to Los Angeles. In 1969, Motown executives decided Diana Ross should introduce the Jackson 5 to the public — partly to bolster her career in television — sending off what was considered Motown's last product of its "production line". The Jackson 5 made their first television appearance in 1969 in the Miss Black America pageant, performing a cover of "It's Your Thing". Rolling Stone later described the young Michael as "a prodigy" with "overwhelming musical gifts" who "quickly emerged as the main draw and lead singer".
In January 1970, "I Want You Back" became the first Jackson 5 song to reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100; it stayed there for four weeks. Three more singles with Motown topped the chart: "ABC", "The Love You Save", and "I'll Be There". In May 1971, the Jackson family moved into a large house at Hayvenhurst, a 2-acre (0.81 ha) estate in Encino, California. During this period, Michael developed from a child performer into a teen idol. Between 1972 and 1975, he released four solo studio albums with Motown: Got to Be There (1972), Ben (1972), Music & Me (1973) and Forever, Michael (1975). "Got to Be There" and "Ben", the title tracks from his first two solo albums, sold well as singles, as did a cover of Bobby Day's "Rockin' Robin".
Michael maintained ties to the Jackson 5. The Jackson 5 were later described as "a cutting-edge example of black crossover artists". They were frustrated by Motown's refusal to allow them creative input. Jackson's performance of their top five single "Dancing Machine" on Soul Train popularized the robot dance.
Move to Epic and Off the Wall (1975–1981)
The Jackson 5 left Motown in 1975, signing with Epic Records and renaming themselves the Jacksons. Their younger brother Randy joined the band around this time; Jermaine stayed with Motown and pursued a solo career. The Jacksons continued to tour internationally, and released six more albums between 1976 and 1984. Michael, the group's main songwriter during this time, wrote songs such as "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)" (1978), "This Place Hotel" (1980), and "Can You Feel It" (1980).
In 1977, Jackson moved to New York City to star as the Scarecrow in The Wiz, a musical film directed by Sidney Lumet, alongside Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell, and Ted Ross. The film was a box-office failure. Its score was arranged by Quincy Jones, who later produced three of Jackson's solo albums. During his time in New York, Jackson frequented the Studio 54 nightclub, where he heard early hip hop; this influenced his beatboxing on future tracks such as "Working Day and Night". In 1978, Jackson unsatisfied with his nose, decided to have a rhinoplasty. He was referred to Steven Hoefflin, who performed Jackson's operations.
Jackson's fifth solo album, Off the Wall (1979), established him as a solo performer and helped him move from the bubblegum pop of his youth to more complex sounds. It produced four top 10 entries in the US: "Off the Wall", "She's Out of My Life", and the chart-topping singles "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "Rock with You". The album reached number three on the US Billboard 200 and sold over 20 million copies worldwide. In 1980, Jackson won three American Music Awards for his solo work: Favorite Soul/R&B Album, Favorite Soul/R&B Male Artist, and Favorite Soul/R&B Single for "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough". He also won a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for 1979 with "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough". In 1981, Jackson was the American Music Awards winner for Favorite Soul/R&B Album and Favorite Soul/R&B Male Artist. Jackson felt Off the Wall should have made a bigger impact, and was determined to exceed expectations with his next release. In 1980, he secured the highest royalty rate in the music industry: 37 percent of wholesale album profit.
Thriller and Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (1982–1983)
Jackson recorded with Queen's lead singer Freddie Mercury from 1981 to 1983, recording demos of "State of Shock", "Victory" and "There Must Be More to Life Than This". The recordings were intended for an album of duets but, according to Queen's manager Jim Beach, the relationship soured when Jackson brought a llama into the recording studio, and Jackson was upset by Mercury's drug use. "There Must Be More to Life Than This" was released in 2014. Jackson went on to record "State of Shock" with Mick Jagger for the Jacksons' album Victory (1984).
In 1982, Jackson contributed "Someone in the Dark" to the audiobook for the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Jackson's sixth album, Thriller, was released in late 1982. It was the bestselling album worldwide in 1983, and became the bestselling album of all time in the US and the best-selling album of all time worldwide, selling an estimated 70 million copies. It topped the Billboard 200 chart for 37 weeks and was in the top 10 of the 200 for 80 consecutive weeks. It was the first album to produce seven Billboard Hot 100 top-10 singles, including "Billie Jean", "Beat It", and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'".
On March 25, 1983, Jackson reunited with his brothers for Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, an NBC television special. The show aired on May 16 to an estimated audience of 47 million, and featured the Jacksons and other Motown stars. Jackson's solo performance of "Billie Jean" earned him his first Emmy Award nomination. Wearing a glove decorated with rhinestones, he debuted his moonwalk dance, which Jeffrey Daniel had taught him three years earlier, and it became his signature dance in his repertoire. Jackson had originally turned down the invitation to the show, believing he had been doing too much television. But at the request of Motown founder Berry Gordy, he performed in exchange for an opportunity to do a solo performance. Rolling Stone reporter Mikal Gilmore called the performance "extraordinary". Jackson's performance drew comparisons to Elvis Presley's and the Beatles' appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times praised the perfect timing and technique involved in the dance. Gordy described being "mesmerized" by the performance.
At the 26th Annual Grammy Awards, Thriller won eight awards, and Jackson won an award for the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial storybook. Winning eight Grammys in one ceremony is a record he holds with the band Santana. Jackson and Quincy Jones won the award for Producer of the Year (Non-Classical). Thriller won Album of the Year (with Jackson as the album's artist and Jones as its co-producer), and the single won Best Pop Vocal Performance (Male) award for Jackson. "Beat It" won Record of the Year and Best Rock Vocal Performance (Male). "Billie Jean" won two Grammy awards: Best R&B Song and Best R&B Vocal Performance (Male), with Jackson as songwriter and singer respectively.
Thriller won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording (Non Classical), acknowledging Bruce Swedien for his work on the album. At the 11th Annual American Music Awards, Jackson won another eight awards and became the youngest artist to win the Award of Merit. He also won Favorite Male Artist, Favorite Soul/R&B Artist, and Favorite Pop/Rock Artist. "Beat It" won Favorite Soul/R&B Video, Favorite Pop/Rock Video and Favorite Pop/Rock Single. The album won Favorite Soul/R&B Album and Favorite Pop/Rock Album. Thriller's sales doubled after the release of an extended music video, Michael Jackson's Thriller, which sees Jackson dancing with a horde of zombies.
The success transformed Jackson into a dominant force in global pop culture. Jackson had the highest royalty rate in the music industry at that point, with about $2 for every album sold (equivalent to $6 in 2023), and was making record-breaking profits. Dolls modeled after Jackson appeared in stores in May 1984 for $12 each. In the same year, The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller, a documentary about the music video, won a Grammy for Best Music Video (Longform). Time described Jackson's influence at that point as "star of records, radio, rock video. A one-man rescue team for the music business. A songwriter who sets the beat for a decade. A dancer with the fanciest feet on the street. A singer who cuts across all boundaries of taste and style and color too." The New York Times wrote "in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else".
Pepsi incident, "We Are the World" and other commercial activities (1984–1985)
In November 1983, Jackson and his brothers partnered with PepsiCo in a $5 million promotional deal that broke records for a celebrity endorsement (equivalent to $15.3 million in 2023). The first Pepsi campaign, which ran in the US from 1983 to 1984 and launched its "New Generation" theme, included tour sponsorship, public relations events, and in-store displays. Jackson helped to create the advertisement, and suggested using his song "Billie Jean", with revised lyrics, as its jingle.
On January 27, 1984, Michael and other members of the Jacksons filmed a Pepsi commercial overseen by Phil Dusenberry, a BBDO ad agency executive, and Alan Pottasch, Pepsi's Worldwide Creative Director, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. During a simulated concert before a full house of fans, pyrotechnics accidentally set Jackson's hair on fire, causing second-degree burns to his scalp. Jackson underwent treatment to hide the scars and had his third rhinoplasty shortly thereafter.
Pepsi settled out of court, and Jackson donated the $1.5 million (equivalent to $4.4 million in 2023) settlement to the Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, California; its now-closed Michael Jackson Burn Center was named in his honor. Jackson signed a second agreement with Pepsi in the late 1980s for $10 million (equivalent to $26.8 million in 2023). The second campaign covered 20 countries and provided financial support for Jackson's Bad album and 1987–88 world tour. Jackson had endorsements and advertising deals with other companies, such as LA Gear, Suzuki, and Sony, but none were as significant as his deals with Pepsi.
The Victory Tour of 1984 headlined the Jacksons and showcased Jackson's new solo material to more than two million Americans. It was the last tour he did with his brothers. Following controversy over the concert's ticket sales, Jackson donated his share of the proceeds, an estimated $3 to 5 million, to charity. During the last concert of the Victory Tour at the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Jackson announced his split from the Jacksons during "Shake Your Body".
With Lionel Richie, Jackson co-wrote the charity single "We Are the World" (1985), which raised money for the poor in the US and Africa. It earned $63 million (equivalent to $178 million in 2023), and became one of the best-selling singles of all time, with 20 million copies sold. It won four Grammy Awards in 1985, including Song of the Year for Jackson and Richie. Jackson, Jones, and the promoter Ken Kragen received special awards for their roles in the song's creation.
Jackson collaborated with Paul McCartney in the early 1980s, and learned that McCartney was making $40 million a year from owning the rights to other artists' songs. By 1983, Jackson had begun buying publishing rights to others' songs, but he was careful with his acquisitions, only bidding on a few of the dozens that were offered to him. Jackson's early acquisitions of music catalogs and song copyrights such as the Sly Stone collection included "Everyday People" (1968), Len Barry's "1-2-3" (1965), and Dion DiMucci's "The Wanderer" (1961) and "Runaround Sue" (1961).
In 1984, Robert Holmes à Court announced he was selling the ATV Music Publishing catalog comprising the publishing rights to nearly 4,000 songs, including most of the Beatles' material. In 1981, McCartney had been offered the catalog for £20 million ($40 million) (equivalent to $134 million in 2023). Jackson submitted a bid of $46 million (equivalent to $135 million in 2023) on November 20, 1984. When Jackson and McCartney were unable to make a joint purchase, McCartney did not want to be the sole owner of the Beatles' songs, and did not pursue an offer on his own. Jackson's agents were unable to come to a deal, and in May 1985 left talks after having spent more than $1 million and four months of due diligence work on the negotiations.
In June 1985, Jackson and Branca learned that Charles Koppelman's and Marty Bandier's The Entertainment Company had made a tentative offer to buy ATV Music for $50 million; in early August, Holmes à Court contacted Jackson and talks resumed. Jackson's increased bid of $47.5 million (equivalent to $135 million in 2023) was accepted because he could close the deal more quickly, having already completed due diligence. Jackson agreed to visit Holmes à Court in Australia, where he would appear on the Channel Seven Perth Telethon. His purchase of ATV Music was finalized on August 10, 1985.
Increased tabloid speculation (1986–1987)
Jackson's skin had been medium-brown during his youth, but from the mid-1980s gradually grew paler. The change drew widespread media coverage, including speculation that he had been bleaching his skin. His dermatologist, Arnold Klein, said he observed in 1983 that Jackson had vitiligo, a condition characterized by patches of the skin losing their pigment. He also identified discoid lupus erythematosus in Jackson. He diagnosed Jackson with lupus that year, and with vitiligo in 1986. Vitiligo's drastic effects on the body can cause psychological distress. Jackson used fair-colored makeup, and possibly skin-bleaching prescription creams, to cover up the uneven blotches of color caused by the illness. The creams would depigment the blotches, and, with the application of makeup, he could appear very pale. Jackson said he had not purposely bleached his skin and could not control his vitiligo, adding, "When people make up stories that I don't want to be who I am, it hurts me." He became friends with Klein and Klein's assistant, Debbie Rowe. Rowe later became Jackson's second wife and the mother of his first two children.
In his 1988 autobiography and a 1993 interview, Jackson said he had had two rhinoplasty surgeries and a cleft chin surgery but no more than that. He said he lost weight in the early 1980s because of a change in diet to achieve a dancer's body. Witnesses reported that he was often dizzy, and speculated he was suffering from anorexia nervosa. Periods of weight loss became a recurring problem later in his life. After his death, Jackson's mother said that he first turned to cosmetic procedures to remedy his vitiligo, because he did not want to look like a "spotted cow". She said he had received more than the two cosmetic surgeries he claimed and speculated that he had become addicted to them.
In 1986, it was reported that Jackson slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to slow aging. He denied the story, although it was alleged that Jackson leaked an image of him sleeping in a glass chamber (according to Jackson, this was a promotional shot from an upcoming space opera featuring himself) to The National Enquirer. It was also reported that Jackson took female hormone shots to keep his voice high and facial hair wispy, proposed to Elizabeth Taylor and possibly had a shrine of her, and had cosmetic surgery on his eyes. Jackson's manager Frank DiLeo denied all of them, except for Jackson having a chamber. DiLeo added "I don't know if he sleeps in it. I'm not for it. But Michael thinks it's something that's probably healthy for him. He's a bit of a health fanatic."
When Jackson took his pet chimpanzee Bubbles to tour in Japan, the media portrayed Jackson as an aspiring Disney cartoon character who befriended animals. It was also reported that Jackson had offered to buy the bones of Joseph Merrick (the "Elephant Man"). In June 1987, the Chicago Tribune reported Jackson's publicist bidding $1 million for the skeleton to the London Hospital Medical College on his behalf. The college maintained the skeleton was not for sale. DiLeo said Jackson had an "absorbing interest" in Merrick, "purely based on his awareness of the ethical, medical and historical significance."
In September 1986, using the oxygen chamber story, the British tabloid The Sun branded Jackson "Wacko Jacko", a name Jackson came to despise. The Atlantic noted that the name "Jacko" has racist connotations, as it originates from Jacko Macacco, a monkey used in monkey-baiting matches at the Westminster Pit in the early 1820s, and "Jacko" was used in Cockney slang to refer to monkeys in general.
Jackson worked with George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola on the 17-minute $30 million 3D film Captain EO, which ran from 1986 at Disneyland and Epcot, and later at Tokyo Disneyland and Euro Disneyland. After having been removed in the late 1990s, it returned to the theme park for several years after Jackson's death. In 1987, Ebony reported that Jackson had disassociated himself from the Jehovah's Witnesses. Katherine Jackson said this might have been because some Witnesses strongly opposed the Thriller video, which Michael denounced in a Witness publication in 1984. In 2001, Jackson told an interviewer he was still a Jehovah's Witness.
Bad, autobiography, and Neverland (1987–1990)
Jackson's first album in five years, Bad (1987), was highly anticipated, with the industry expecting another major success. It became the first album to produce five US number-one singles: "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror", and "Dirty Diana". Another song, "Smooth Criminal", peaked at number seven. Bad won the 1988 Grammy for Best Engineered Recording – Non Classical and the 1990 Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Short Form for "Leave Me Alone". Jackson won an Award of Achievement at the American Music Awards in 1989 after Bad generated five number-one singles, became the first album to top the charts in 25 countries and the bestselling album worldwide in 1987 and 1988. By 2012, it had sold between 30 and 45 million copies worldwide.
The Bad World Tour ran from September 12, 1987, to January 27, 1989. In Japan, the tour had 14 sellouts and drew 570,000 people, nearly tripling the previous record for a single tour. The 504,000 people who attended seven sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium set a new Guinness World Record.
In 1988, Jackson released his autobiography, Moonwalk, with input from Stephen Davis and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It sold 200,000 copies, and reached the top of the New York Times bestsellers list. Jackson discussed his childhood, the Jackson 5, and the abuse from his father. He attributed his changing facial appearance to three plastic surgeries, puberty, weight loss, a strict vegetarian diet, a change in hairstyle, and stage lighting. In June, Jackson was honored with the Grand Vermeil Medal of the City of Paris by the then Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac during his stay in the city as part of the Bad World Tour. On July 20, Jackson became the first commoner in history to enter London's Guildhall through the building's Royal Entrance. In October, Jackson released a film, Moonwalker, which featured live footage and short films starring Jackson and Joe Pesci. In the US it was released direct-to-video and became the bestselling video cassette in the country. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified it as eight times Platinum in the US.
In March 1988, Jackson purchased 2,700 acres (11 km2) of land near Santa Ynez, California, to build a new home, Neverland Ranch, at a cost of $17 million (equivalent to $44 million in 2023). He installed a Ferris wheel, a carousel, a movie theater and a zoo. A security staff of 40 patrolled the grounds. Shortly afterwards, he appeared in the first Western television advertisement in the Soviet Union.
Jackson became known as the "King of Pop", a nickname that Jackson's publicists embraced. When Elizabeth Taylor presented him with the Soul Train Heritage Award in 1989, she called him "the true king of pop, rock and soul." President George H. W. Bush designated him the White House's "Artist of the Decade". At the 38th BMI Awards in 1990, Jackson was the first person to be honored with an award named after its recipient. From 1985 to 1990, Jackson donated $455,000 to the United Negro College Fund, and all profits from his single "Man in the Mirror" went to charity. His rendition of "You Were There" at Sammy Davis Jr.'s 60th birthday celebration won Jackson a second Emmy nomination. Jackson was the bestselling artist of the 1980s.
Dangerous and public social work (1991–1993)
In March 1991, Jackson renewed his contract with Sony for $65 million (equivalent to $145 million in 2023), a record-breaking deal, beating Neil Diamond's renewal contract with Columbia Records. In 1991, he released his eighth album, Dangerous, co-produced with Teddy Riley. It was certified eight times platinum in the US, and by 2018 had sold 32 million copies worldwide. In the US, the first single, "Black or White", was the album's highest-charting song; it was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks and achieved similar chart performances worldwide. The second single, "Remember the Time" peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. At the end of 1992, Dangerous was the bestselling album of the year worldwide and "Black or White" the bestselling single of the year worldwide at the Billboard Music Awards. In 1993, he performed "Remember the Time" at the Soul Train Music Awards in a chair, saying he twisted his ankle during dance rehearsals. In the UK, "Heal the World" made No. 2 on the charts in 1992.
Jackson founded the Heal the World Foundation in 1992. The charity brought underprivileged children to Jackson's ranch to use the theme park rides, and sent millions of dollars around the globe to help children threatened by war, poverty, and disease. That July, Jackson published his second book, Dancing the Dream, a collection of poetry. The Dangerous World Tour ran between June 1992 and November 1993 and grossed $100 million (equivalent to $210 million in 2023); Jackson performed for over 3.5 million people in 70 concerts, all of which were outside the US. Part of the proceeds went to Heal the World Foundation. Jackson sold the broadcast rights of the tour to HBO for $20 million, a record-breaking deal that still stands.
Following the death of HIV/AIDS spokesperson and friend Ryan White, Jackson pleaded with the Clinton administration at Bill Clinton's inaugural gala to give more money to HIV/AIDS charities and research and performed "Gone Too Soon", a song dedicated to White, and "Heal the World" at the gala. Jackson visited Africa in early 1992; on his first stop in Gabon he was greeted by more than 100,000 people, some of them carrying signs that read "Welcome Home Michael", and was awarded an Officer of the National Order of Merit from President Omar Bongo. During his trip to Ivory Coast, Jackson drew larger crowds than Pope John Paul II on his previous visits. He was crowned "King Sani" by a tribal chief in the Ivorian village of Krindjabo, where he thanked the dignitaries in French and English, signed documents formalizing his kingship, and sat on a golden throne while presiding over ceremonial dances.
In January 1993, Jackson performed at the Super Bowl XXVII halftime show in Pasadena, California. The NFL sought a big-name artist to keep ratings high during halftime following dwindling audience figures. With 133.4 million viewers, it was the first Super Bowl whose halftime show drew greater audience figures than the game. Jackson played "Jam", "Billie Jean", "Black or White", and "Heal the World". Dangerous rose 90 places in the US albums chart after the performance.
Jackson gave a 90-minute interview with Oprah Winfrey on February 10, 1993. He spoke of his childhood abuse at the hands of his father; he believed he had missed out on much of his childhood, and said that he often cried from loneliness. He denied tabloid rumors that he had bought the bones of the Elephant Man, slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, or bleached his skin, and stated for the first time that he had vitiligo. After the interview, Dangerous re-entered the US albums chart in the top 10, more than a year after its release. The interview itself became the most-watched television interview in United States history to date, with more than 90 million viewers.
In January 1993, Jackson won three American Music Awards: Favorite Pop/Rock Album (Dangerous), Favorite Soul/R&B Single ("Remember the Time"), and was the first to win the International Artist Award of Excellence. In February, he won the "Living Legend Award" at the 35th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. He attended the award ceremony with Brooke Shields. Dangerous was nominated for Best Vocal Performance (for "Black or White"), Best R&B Vocal Performance ("Jam") and Best R&B Song ("Jam"), and Bruce Swedien and Teddy Riley won the Grammy for Best Engineered – Non Classical.
First child sexual abuse accusations and first marriage (1993–1995)
In August 1993, Jackson was accused of child sexual abuse by a 13-year-old boy, Jordan Chandler, and his father, Evan Chandler. Jordan said he and Jackson had engaged in acts of kissing, masturbation and oral sex. While Jordan's mother initially told police that she did not believe Jackson had molested him, her position wavered a few days later. Evan was recorded discussing his intention to pursue charges, which Jackson used to argue that he was the victim of a jealous father trying to extort money. Jackson's older sister La Toya accused him of being a pedophile; she later retracted this, saying she had been forced into it by her abusive husband.
Police raided Jackson's home in August and found two legal large-format art books featuring young boys playing, running and swimming in various states of undress. Jackson denied knowing of the books' content and claimed if they were there someone had to send them to him and he did not open them. Jordan Chandler gave police a description of Jackson's genitals. A strip search was made, and the jurors felt the description was not a match. In January 1994, Jackson settled with the Chandlers out of court for a reported total sum of $23 million. The police never pressed criminal charges. Citing a lack of evidence without Jordan's testimony, the state closed its investigation on September 22, 1994.
Jackson had been taking painkillers for his reconstructive scalp surgeries, administered due to the Pepsi commercial accident in 1984, and became dependent on them to cope with the stress of the sexual abuse allegations. On November 12, 1993, Jackson canceled the remainder of the Dangerous World Tour due to health problems, stress from the allegations and painkiller addiction. He thanked his close friend Elizabeth Taylor for support, encouragement and counsel. The end of the tour concluded his sponsorship deal with Pepsi.
In late 1993, Jackson proposed to Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley, over the phone. They married in La Vega, Dominican Republic, in May 1994 by civil judge Hugo Francisco Álvarez Pérez. The tabloid media speculated that the wedding was a publicity stunt to deflect away from Jackson's sexual abuse allegations and jump-start Presley's career as a singer. Their marriage ended little more than a year later, and they separated in December 1995. Presley cited "irreconcilable differences" when filing for divorce the next month and only sought to reclaim her maiden name as her settlement. After the divorce, Judge Pérez said, "They lasted longer than I thought they would. I gave them a year. They lasted a year and a half." Presley later said she and Jackson had attempted to reconcile intermittently for four years following their divorce, and that she had traveled the world to be with him.
Jackson composed music for the Sega Genesis video game Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994), but left the project around the time the sexual abuse allegations surfaced and went uncredited. The Sega Technical Institute director Roger Hector and the Sonic co-creator Naoto Ohshima said that Jackson's involvement was terminated and his music reworked following the allegations. However, Jackson's musical director Brad Buxer and other members of Jackson's team said Jackson went uncredited because he was unhappy with how the Genesis replicated his music.
HIStory, second marriage, fatherhood and Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix (1995–1997)
In June 1995, Jackson released the double album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. The first disc, HIStory Begins, is a greatest hits album (reissued in 2001 as Greatest Hits: HIStory, Volume I). The second disc, HIStory Continues, contains 13 original songs and two cover versions. The album debuted at number one on the charts and has been certified for eight million shipments in the US. It is the bestselling multi-disc album of all time, with 20 million copies (40 million units) sold worldwide. HIStory received a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. The New York Times reviewed it as "the testimony of a musician whose self-pity now equals his talent".
The first single from HIStory was "Scream/Childhood". "Scream", a duet with Jackson's youngest sister Janet, protests the media's treatment of Jackson during the 1993 child abuse allegations against him. The single reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100, and received a Grammy nomination for "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals". The second single, "You Are Not Alone", holds the Guinness world record for the first song to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It received a Grammy nomination for "Best Pop Vocal Performance" in 1995.
In 1995 the Anti-Defamation League and other groups complained that "Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/ Kick me, kike me, don't you black or white me", the original lyrics of "They Don't Care About Us", were antisemitic. Jackson released a revised version of the song.
In late 1995, Jackson was admitted to a hospital after collapsing during rehearsals for a televised performance, caused by a stress-related panic attack. In November, Jackson merged his ATV Music catalog with Sony's music publishing division, creating Sony/ATV Music Publishing. He retained ownership of half the company, earning $95 million up front (equivalent to $190 million in 2023) as well as the rights to more songs.
"Earth Song" was the third single released from HIStory, and topped the UK Singles Chart for six weeks over Christmas 1995. It became the 87th-bestselling single in the UK. At the 1996 Brit Awards, Jackson's performance of "Earth Song" was disrupted by Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker, who was protesting what Cocker saw as Jackson's "Christ-like" persona. Jackson said the stage invasion was "disgusting and cowardly".
In 1996, Jackson won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form, for "Scream" and an American Music Award for Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist. In July 1996, Jackson performed for Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's fiftieth birthday at Jerudong Park Amphitheater, which was specifically built for that birthday concert. Jackson was reportedly paid $17 million (equivalent to $33 million in 2023). Jackson promoted HIStory with the HIStory World Tour, from September 7, 1996, to October 15, 1997. He performed 82 concerts in five continents, 35 countries and 58 cities to over 4.5 million fans, his most attended tour. It grossed $165 million. During the tour, in Sydney, Australia, Jackson married Debbie Rowe, a dermatology assistant, who was six months pregnant with his first child.
Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. (commonly known as Prince) was born on February 13, 1997. His sister Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson was born on April 3, 1998. Jackson and Rowe divorced in 2000, Rowe conceded custody of the children, with an $8 million settlement (equivalent to $14.6 million in 2023). In 2004, after the second child abuse allegations against Jackson, she returned to court to reclaim custody. The suit was settled in 2006.
In 1997, Jackson released Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix, which contained remixes of singles from HIStory and five new songs. Worldwide sales stand at 6 million copies, making it the best-selling remix album. It reached number one in the UK, as did the single "Blood on the Dance Floor". In the US, the album reached number 24 and was certified platinum.
Label dispute and Invincible (1997–2002)
From October 1997 to September 2001, Jackson worked on his tenth solo album, Invincible, which cost $30 million (equivalent to $51.6 million in 2023) to record, making it the most expensive album of all time. In June 1999, Jackson joined Luciano Pavarotti for a War Child benefit concert in Modena, Italy. The show raised a million dollars for refugees of the Kosovo War, and additional funds for the children of Guatemala. Later that month, Jackson organized a series of "Michael Jackson & Friends" benefit concerts in Germany and Korea. Other artists involved included Slash, The Scorpions, Boyz II Men, Luther Vandross, Mariah Carey, A. R. Rahman, Prabhu Deva Sundaram, Shobana, Andrea Bocelli and Luciano Pavarotti. The proceeds went to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, the Red Cross and UNESCO. In 1999, Jackson was presented with the "Outstanding Humanitarian Award" at Bollywood Movie Awards in New York City where he noted Mahatma Gandhi to have been an inspiration for him. From August 1999 to 2000, he lived in New York City at 4 East 74th Street. At the turn of the century, Jackson was awarded with the Artist of the 1980s Decade Award at the 27th American Music Awards, and the Best-Selling Pop Male Artist of the Millennium Award at the 12nd World Music Awards. In 2000, Guinness World Records recognized him for supporting 39 charities, more than any other entertainer.
In September 2001, two concerts were held at Madison Square Garden to mark Jackson's 30th year as a solo artist. Jackson performed with his brothers for the first time since 1984. The show also featured Mýa, Usher, Whitney Houston, Destiny's Child, Monica, Liza Minnelli and Slash. The first show was marred by technical lapses, and the crowd booed a speech by Marlon Brando. 45 million people watched the television broadcast of the shows in November according to Nielsen Media Research. After the September 11 attacks (in which Jackson narrowly avoided death by oversleeping and missing a scheduled meeting at the World Trade Center), Jackson helped organize the United We Stand: What More Can I Give benefit concert at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 2001. Jackson performed "What More Can I Give" as the finale.
The release of Invincible was preceded by a dispute between Jackson and his record label, Sony Music Entertainment. Jackson had expected the licenses to the masters of his albums to revert to him in the early 2000s, after which he would be able to promote the material however he pleased and keep the profits, but clauses in the contract set the revert date years into the future. Jackson sought an early exit from his contract. Invincible was released on October 30, 2001. It was Jackson's first full-length album in six years, and the last album of original material he released in his lifetime. It debuted at number one in 13 countries, and went on to sell eight million copies worldwide, receiving double-platinum certification in the US.
On January 9, 2002, Jackson won his 22nd American Music Award for Artist of the Century. Later that year, an anonymous surrogate mother gave birth to his third child, Prince Michael Jackson II (nicknamed "Blanket"), who had been conceived by artificial insemination. On November 20, Jackson briefly held Blanket over the railing of his Berlin hotel room, four stories above ground level, prompting widespread criticism in the media. Jackson apologized for the incident, calling it "a terrible mistake". On January 22, promoter Marcel Avram filed a breach of contract complaint against Jackson for failing to perform two planned 1999 concerts. In March, a Santa Maria jury ordered Jackson to pay Avram $5.3 million. On December 18, 2003, Jackson's attorneys dropped all appeals on the verdict and settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
On April 24, 2002, Jackson performed at Apollo Theater. The concert was a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee and former President Bill Clinton. The money collected would be used to encourage citizens to vote. It raised $2.5 million. The concert was called Michael Jackson: Live at the Apollo and was one of Jackson's final on-stage performances.
In July 2002, at Al Sharpton's National Action Network in Harlem, Jackson called the Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola "a racist, and very, very, very devilish", and accused him of exploiting black artists for his own gain. The accusation prompted Sharpton to form a coalition investigating whether Mottola exploited black artists. Jackson charged that Mottola had called his colleague Irv Gotti a "fat nigger". Sony issued a statement calling the accusations "ludicrous, spiteful, and hurtful" and said Mottola had championed Jackson's career for years. Sony refused to renew Jackson's contract and said that a $25 million promotional campaign had failed because Jackson refused to tour in the US for Invincible.
Documentary, Number Ones, second child abuse allegations and acquittal (2002–2005)
Beginning in May 2002, a documentary film crew led by Martin Bashir followed Jackson for several months. The documentary, broadcast in February 2003 as Living with Michael Jackson, showed Jackson holding hands and discussing sleeping arrangements with a twelve-year-old boy. He said that he saw nothing wrong with having sleepovers with minors and sharing his bed and bedroom with various people, which aroused controversy. He insisted that the sleepovers were not sexual and that his words had been misunderstood.
In October 2003, Jackson received the Key to the City of Las Vegas from Mayor Oscar Goodman. On November 18, 2003, Sony released Number Ones, a greatest hits compilation. It was certified five times platinum by the RIAA, and ten times platinum in the UK, for shipments of at least 3 million units.
On December 18, 2003, Santa Barbara authorities charged Jackson with seven counts of child molestation and two counts of intoxicating a minor with alcoholic drinks. Jackson denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty. The People v. Jackson trial began on January 31, 2005, in Santa Maria, California, and lasted until the end of May. Jackson found the experience stressful and it affected his health. If convicted, he would have faced up to twenty years in prison. On June 13, 2005, Jackson was acquitted on all counts. FBI files on Jackson, released in 2009, revealed the FBI's role in the 2005 trial and the 1993 allegations, and showed that the FBI found no evidence of criminal conduct on Jackson's behalf.
Final years, financial problems, Thriller 25 and This Is It (2005–2009)
After the trial, Jackson became reclusive. In June 2005, he moved to Bahrain as a guest of Sheikh Abdullah. In early 2006, it was announced that Jackson had signed a contract with a Bahrain startup, Two Seas Records. Nothing came of the deal, and the Two Seas CEO, Guy Holmes, later said it was never finalized. Holmes also found that Jackson was on the verge of bankruptcy and was involved in 47 ongoing lawsuits. By September 2006, Jackson was no longer affiliated with Two Seas.
In April 2006, Jackson agreed to use a piece of his ATV catalog stake, then worth about $1 billion, as collateral against his $270 million worth of loans from Bank of America. Bank of America had sold the loans to Fortress Investments, an investment company that buys distressed loans, the year before. As part of the agreement, Fortress Investments provided Jackson a new loan of $300 million with reduced interest payments (equivalent to $450 million in 2023). Sony Music would have the option to buy half of his stake, or about 25% of the catalog, at a set price. Jackson's financial managers had urged him to shed part of his stake to avoid bankruptcy. The main house at Neverland Ranch was closed as a cost-cutting measure, while Jackson lived in Bahrain at the hospitality of Abdullah. At least thirty of Jackson's employees had not been paid on time and were owed $306,000 in back wages. Jackson was ordered to pay $100,000 in penalties. Jackson never returned to Neverland after his acquittal.
In mid-2006, Jackson moved to Grouse Lodge, a residential recording studio near Rosemount, County Westmeath, Ireland. There, he began work on a new album with the American producers will.i.am and Rodney Jenkins. That November, Jackson invited an Access Hollywood camera crew into the studio in Westmeath. On November 15, Jackson briefly joined in on a performance of "We Are the World" at the World Music Awards in London, his last public performance, and accepted the Diamond Award for sales of 100 million records. He returned to the US in December, settling in Las Vegas. That month, he attended James Brown's funeral in Augusta, Georgia, where he gave a eulogy calling Brown his greatest inspiration.
In 2007, Jackson and Sony bought another music publishing company, Famous Music LLC, formerly owned by Viacom. The deal gave Jackson the rights to songs by Eminem and Beck, among others. In a brief interview, Jackson said he had no regrets about his career despite his problems and "deliberate attempts to hurt [him]". That March, Jackson visited a US Army post in Japan, Camp Zama, to greet more than 3,000 troops and their families. As of September, Jackson was still working on his next album, which he never completed.
In 2008, for the 25th anniversary of Thriller, Jackson and Sony released Thriller 25, with two remixes released as singles: "The Girl Is Mine 2008" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' 2008". For Jackson's 50th birthday, Sony BMG released a series of greatest hits albums, King of Pop, with different tracklists for different regions. That July, Fortress Investments threatened to foreclose on Neverland Ranch, which Jackson had used as collateral for his loans. Fortress sold Jackson's debts to Colony Capital LLC. In November, Jackson transferred Neverland Ranch's title to Sycamore Valley Ranch Company LLC, a joint venture between Jackson and Colony Capital LLC. The deal earned him $35 million. In 2009, Jackson arranged to sell a collection of his memorabilia of more than 1,000 items through Julien's Auction House, but canceled the auction in April.
In March 2009, amid speculation about his finances and health, Jackson announced a series of comeback concerts, This Is It, at a press conference at the O2 Arena. The shows were to be his first major concerts since the HIStory World Tour in 1997. Jackson suggested he would retire after the shows. The initial plan was for ten concerts in London, followed by shows in Paris, New York City and Mumbai. Randy Phillips, the president and chief executive of AEG Live, predicted the first ten dates would earn Jackson £50 million.
The London residency was increased to fifty dates after record-breaking ticket sales; more than one million were sold in less than two hours. The concerts were to run from July 13, 2009, to March 6, 2010. Jackson moved to Los Angeles, where he rehearsed in the weeks leading up to the tour under the direction of the choreographer Kenny Ortega, whom he had worked with during his previous tours. Rehearsals took place at the Forum and the Staples Center owned by AEG. By this point, Jackson's debt had grown to almost $500 million. By the time of his death, he was three or four months behind payments on his home in San Fernando Valley. The Independent reported that Jackson planned a string of further ventures designed to recoup his debts, including a world tour, a new album, films, a museum and a casino.
Death
On June 25, 2009, less than three weeks before his concert residency was due to begin in London, with all concerts sold out, Jackson died from cardiac arrest, caused by a propofol and benzodiazepine overdose. Conrad Murray, his personal physician, had given Jackson various medications to help him sleep at his rented mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles. Paramedics received a 911 call at 12:21 pm Pacific time (19:21 UTC) and arrived at the property four minutes later. Jackson was not breathing and CPR was performed. Resuscitation efforts continued en route to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and for more than an hour after Jackson's arrival there, but were unsuccessful, and Jackson was pronounced dead at 2:26 pm Pacific time (21:26 UTC). Murray had administered propofol, lorazepam, and midazolam; Jackson's death was caused by a propofol overdose.
News of his death spread quickly online, causing websites to slow down and crash from user overload, and it put unprecedented strain on many services and websites including Google, AOL Instant Messenger, Twitter and Wikipedia. Overall, web traffic rose by between 11% and 20%. MTV and BET aired marathons of Jackson's music videos, and Jackson specials aired on television stations around the world. MTV briefly returned to its original music video format, and they aired hours of Jackson's music videos, with live news specials featuring reactions from MTV personalities and other celebrities.
Memorial service
Jackson's memorial was held on July 7, 2009, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, preceded by a private family service at Forest Lawn Memorial Park's Hall of Liberty. Over 1.6 million fans applied for tickets to the memorial; the 8,750 recipients were drawn at random, and each received two tickets. The memorial service was one of the most watched events in streaming history, with an estimated US audience of 31.1 million and a worldwide audience of an estimated 2.5 to 3 billion.
Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Jennifer Hudson, and Shaheen Jafargholi performed at the memorial, and Smokey Robinson and Queen Latifah gave eulogies. Al Sharpton received a standing ovation with cheers when he told Jackson's children: "Wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with. But he dealt with it anyway." Jackson's 11-year-old daughter Paris Katherine, speaking publicly for the first time, wept as she addressed the crowd. Lucious Smith provided a closing prayer. On September 3, 2009, the body of Jackson was entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
Criminal investigation and prosecution of Conrad Murray
In August 2009, the Los Angeles County Coroner ruled that Jackson's death was a homicide. Law enforcement officials charged Murray with involuntary manslaughter on February 8, 2010. In late 2011, he was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and held without bail to await sentencing. Murray was sentenced to four years in prison, but was released after one year and eleven months.
Posthumous sales
At the 2009 American Music Awards, Jackson won four posthumous awards, including two for his compilation album Number Ones, bringing his total American Music Awards to 26. In the year after his death, more than 16.1 million copies of Jackson's albums were sold in the US alone, and 35 million copies were sold worldwide, more than any other artist in 2009. He became the first artist to sell one million music downloads in a week, with 2.6 million song downloads. Thriller, Number Ones and The Essential Michael Jackson became the first catalog albums to outsell any new album. Jackson also became the first artist to have four of the top-20 bestselling albums in a single year in the US. Within the year following his death, Jackson sold over 75 million records worldwide. By the end of 2013, Jackson had sold over 50 million albums worldwide since his death.
Following the surge in sales, in March 2010, Sony Music signed a $250 million deal (equivalent to $350 million in 2023) with the Jackson estate to extend their distribution rights to Jackson's back catalog until at least 2017; it had been due to expire in 2015. It was the most expensive music contract for a single artist in history. They agreed to release ten albums of previously unreleased material and new collections of released work. The deal was extended in 2017. That July, a Los Angeles court awarded Quincy Jones $9.4 million of disputed royalty payments for Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad. In July 2018, Sony/ATV bought the estate's stake in EMI for $287.5 million.
In 2014, Jackson became the first artist to have a top-ten single in the Billboard Hot 100 in five different decades. The following year, Thriller became the first album to be certified for 30 million shipments by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). A year later, it was certified 33× platinum after Soundscan added streams and audio downloads to album certifications.
In February 2024, Sony Music acquired half of Jackson's publishing rights and recording masters for an estimated $600 million. The deal includes assets from Jackson's Mijac publishing catalog, but excludes royalties from several Jackson-related productions, including the MJ Broadway musical and the Michael biopic. The deal is possibly the largest transaction ever for a single musician's work.
Posthumous releases and productions
Jackson's posthumous releases and productions are administered by the estate of Michael Jackson, which owns Jackson's trademarks and rights to his name, image and likeness. The first posthumous Jackson song, "This Is It", co-written in the 1980s with Paul Anka, was released in October 2009. The surviving Jackson brothers reunited to record backing vocals. It was followed by a documentary film about the rehearsals for the canceled This Is It tour, Michael Jackson's This Is It, and a compilation album. Despite a limited two-week engagement, the film became the highest-grossing documentary or concert film ever, with earnings of more than $260 million worldwide. Jackson's estate received 90% of the profits. In late 2010, Sony released the first posthumous album, Michael, and the lead single "Hold My Hand", a duet with Akon. The Jackson collaborator will.i.am expressed disgust, saying that Jackson would not have approved the release.
The video game developer Ubisoft released a music game featuring Jackson for the 2010 holiday season, Michael Jackson: The Experience. It was among the first games to use Kinect and PlayStation Move, the motion-detecting camera systems for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In April 2011, Mohamed Al-Fayed, the chairman of Fulham Football Club, unveiled a statue of Jackson outside the club stadium, Craven Cottage. It was moved to the National Football Museum in Manchester in May 2014, and removed from display in March 2019 following renewed sexual assault allegations.
In October 2011, the theater company Cirque du Soleil launched Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour, a $57-million production, in Montreal, with a permanent show resident in Las Vegas. A larger and more theatrical Cirque show, Michael Jackson: One, designed for residency at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas, opened on May 23, 2013, in a renovated theater.
In 2012, in an attempt to end a family dispute, Jackson's brother Jermaine retracted his signature on a public letter criticizing executors of Jackson's estate and his mother's advisors over the legitimacy of his brother's will. T.J. Jackson, the son of Tito Jackson, was given co-guardianship of Michael Jackson's children after false reports of Katherine Jackson going missing. Xscape, an album of unreleased material, was released on May 13, 2014. The lead single, a duet between Jackson and Justin Timberlake, "Love Never Felt So Good", reached number 9 on the US Billboard Hot 100, making Jackson the first artist to have a top-10 single on the chart in five different decades.
Later in 2014, Queen released a duet recorded with Jackson in the 1980s. A compilation album, Scream, was released on September 29, 2017. A jukebox musical, MJ the Musical, premiered on Broadway in 2022. Myles Frost won the 2022 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Jackson. On November 18, 2022, Epic released a 40th-anniversary edition reissue of Thriller. A biographical film based on Jackson's life, Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua, is scheduled for April 2025. Jackson is played by his nephew Jaafar Jackson. Deadline Hollywood reported that the film "will not shy away from the controversies of Jackson's life". Since Jackson's death his estate has grossed 2 Billion in ticket revenue from the Musical production, Documentary and two Cirque shows.
Posthumous child sexual abuse allegations
In 2013, choreographer Wade Robson filed a lawsuit alleging that Jackson had sexually abused him for seven years, beginning when he was seven years old (1989–1996). In 2014, a case was filed by James Safechuck, alleging similar sexual abuse over a four-year period starting when Safechuck was ten (1988–1992). Both had previously testified in Jackson's defense during the 1993 allegations; Robson did so again in 2005. In 2015, Robson's case against Jackson's estate was dismissed as it had been filed too late. Safechuck's claim was also time-barred.
In 2017, it was ruled that Jackson's corporations could not be held accountable for his alleged past actions. The rulings were appealed. On October 20, 2020, Safechuck's lawsuit against Jackson's corporations was again dismissed. The judge ruled that there was no evidence that Safechuck had had a relationship with Jackson's corporation, nor was it proven that there was a special relationship between the two. On April 26, 2021, Robson's case was dismissed because of a lack of supporting evidence that the defendants exercised control over Jackson.
Robson and Safechuck's allegations were the subject of the documentary film Leaving Neverland, released in March 2019. Radio stations in New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands removed Jackson's music from their playlists. Jackson's family condemned the film as a "public lynching", and the Jackson estate released a statement calling the film a "tabloid character assassination [Jackson] endured in life, and now in death". Close associates of Jackson, such as Corey Feldman, Aaron Carter, Brett Barnes, and Macaulay Culkin, defended Jackson in the wake of the documentary's release, saying that Jackson had never molested them.
Documentaries such as Square One: Michael Jackson, Neverland Firsthand: Investigating the Michael Jackson Documentary and Michael Jackson: Chase the Truth, presented information countering the claims suggested by Leaving Neverland. Jackson's album sales increased following the documentary screenings. Billboard senior editor Gail Mitchell said she and a colleague interviewed about thirty music executives who believed Jackson's legacy could withstand the controversy. In late 2019, some New Zealand and Canadian radio stations re-added Jackson's music to their playlists, citing "positive listener survey results".
On February 21, 2019, the Jackson estate sued HBO for breaching a non-disparagement clause from a 1992 contract. The suit sought to compel HBO to participate in a non-confidential arbitration that could result in $100 million or more in damages awarded to the estate. HBO said they did not breach a contract and filed an anti-SLAPP motion against the estate. In September 2019, Judge George H. Wu denied HBO's motion to dismiss the case, allowing the Jackson estate to arbitrate. HBO appealed, but in December 2020 the appeals court affirmed Wu's ruling.
In 2020, a state law passed in California which granted plaintiffs in child sex abuse cases an additional period to file lawsuits. In October 2020 and again in April 2021, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that MJJ Productions Inc. and MJJ Ventures Inc. employees were not legally obligated to protect the two men from Jackson. In August 2023, California's Second District Court of Appeal overturned the ruling, and the case was approved to move forward to trial court.
Legacy
Jackson has been referred to as the "King of Pop" for having transformed the art of music videos and paving the way for modern pop music. For much of Jackson's career, he had an unparalleled worldwide influence over the younger generation. His influence extended beyond the music industry; he impacted dance, led fashion trends, and raised awareness for global affairs. Jackson's music and videos fostered racial diversity in MTV's roster and steered its focus from rock to pop music and R&B, leading to the discontinuation of the album-oriented rock format previously dominant on the channel.
In songs such as "Black or White", "Heal the World", "Earth Song" and "They Don't Care About Us", Jackson's music emphasized racial integration and environmentalism and protested injustice. He is recognized as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time by Guinness World Records. Jackson has also appeared on Rolling Stone's lists of the Greatest Singers of All Time. He is considered one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, and his contributions to music, dance, and fashion, along with his publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades.Trying to trace Michael Jackson's influence on the pop stars that followed him is like trying to trace the influence of oxygen and gravity. So vast, far-reaching and was his impact—particularly in the wake of Thriller's colossal and heretofore unmatched commercial success—that there weren't a whole lot of artists who weren't trying to mimic some of the Jackson formula. Danyel Smith, chief content officer of Vibe Media Group and the editor-in-chief of Vibe, described Jackson as "the greatest star". Steve Huey of AllMusic called him "an unstoppable juggernaut, possessed of all the skills to dominate the charts seemingly at will: an instantly identifiable voice, eye-popping dance moves, stunning musical versatility and loads of sheer star power". BET said Jackson was "quite simply the greatest entertainer of all time" whose "sound, style, movement and legacy continues to inspire artists of all genres".
In 1984, Time pop critic Jay Cocks wrote that "Jackson is the biggest thing since the Beatles. He is the hottest single phenomenon since Elvis Presley. He just may be the most popular black singer ever." He described Jackson as a "star of records, radio, rock video. A one-man rescue team for the music business. A songwriter who sets the beat for a decade. A dancer with the fanciest feet on the street. A singer who cuts across all boundaries of taste and style, and color too." In 2003, The Daily Telegraph writer Tom Utley described Jackson as "extremely important" and a "genius". At Jackson's memorial service on July 7, 2009, Motown founder Berry Gordy called Jackson "the greatest entertainer that ever lived". In a June 28, 2009 Baltimore Sun article, Jill Rosen wrote that Jackson's legacy influenced fields including sound, dance, fashion, music videos and celebrity.
Pop critic Robert Christgau wrote that Jackson's work from the 1970s to the early 1990s showed "immense originality, adaptability, and ambition" with "genius beats, hooks, arrangements, and vocals (though not lyrics)", music that "will stand forever as a reproach to the puritanical notion that pop music is slick or shallow and that's the end of it". During the 1990s, as Jackson lost control of his "troubling life", his music suffered and began to shape "an arc not merely of promise fulfilled and outlived, but of something approaching tragedy: a phenomenally ebullient child star tops himself like none before, only to transmute audibly into a lost weirdo". In the 2000s, Christgau wrote: "Jackson's obsession with fame, his grotesque life magnified by his grotesque wealth, are such an offense to rock aesthetes that the fact that he's a great musician is now often forgotten".
Philanthropy and humanitarian work
Jackson is widely regarded as having been a prolific philanthropist and humanitarian. Jackson's early charitable work has been described by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as having "paved the way for the current surge in celebrity philanthropy", and by the Los Angeles Times as having "set the standard for generosity for other entertainers".
By some estimates, he donated over $500 million, not accounting for inflation, to various charities over the course of his life. In 1992, Jackson established his Heal the World Foundation, to which he donated several million dollars in revenue from his Dangerous World Tour.
Jackson's philanthropic activities went beyond just monetary donations. He also performed at benefit concerts, some of which he arranged. He gifted tickets for his regular concert performances to groups that assist underprivileged children. He visited sick children in hospitals around the world. He opened his own home for visits by underprivileged or sick children and provided special facilities and nurses if the children needed that level of care.
Jackson donated valuable, personal and professional paraphernalia for numerous charity auctions. He received various awards and accolades for his philanthropic work, including two bestowed by presidents of the United States. The vast breadth of Jackson's philanthropic work has earned recognition in the Guinness World Records.
On May 14, 1984, President Ronald Reagan gave Jackson an award recognizing his support of alcohol and drug abuse charities, and in recognition of his support for the Ad Council's and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Drunk Driving Prevention campaign. Jackson allowed the campaign to use "Beat It" for its public service announcements.
Artistry
Influences
Jackson was influenced by musicians including James Brown, Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, Diana Ross, Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr., Gene Kelly, and David Ruffin. Little Richard had a substantial influence on Jackson, but Brown was his greatest inspiration. When Jackson was a small child, his mother would wake him whenever Brown appeared on television. Jackson described being "mesmerized".
Jackson's vocal technique was influenced by Diana Ross; his use of the oooh interjection from a young age was something Ross had used on many of her songs with the Supremes. She was a mother figure to him, and he often watched her rehearse. He said he had learned a lot from watching how she moved and sang, and that she had encouraged him to have confidence in himself.
Choreographer David Winters, who met Jackson while choreographing the 1971 Diana Ross TV special Diana!, said that Jackson watched the musical West Side Story almost every week, and it was his favorite film; he paid tribute to it in "Beat It" and the "Bad" video.
Vocal style
Jackson sang from childhood, and over time his voice and vocal style changed. Between 1971 and 1975, his voice descended from boy soprano to lyric tenor. He was known for his vocal range. With the arrival of Off the Wall in the late 1970s, Jackson's abilities as a vocalist were well regarded; Rolling Stone compared his vocals to the "breathless, dreamy stutter" of Stevie Wonder, and wrote that "Jackson's feathery-timbred tenor is extraordinarily beautiful. It slides smoothly into a startling falsetto that's used very daringly." By the time of 1982's Thriller, Rolling Stone wrote that Jackson was singing in a "fully adult voice" that was "tinged by sadness".
The turn of the 1990s saw the release of the introspective album Dangerous. The New York Times noted that on some tracks, "he gulps for breath, his voice quivers with anxiety or drops to a desperate whisper, hissing through clenched teeth" and he had a "wretched tone". When singing of brotherhood or self-esteem the musician would return to "smooth" vocals. Of Invincible, Rolling Stone wrote that, at 43, Jackson still performed "exquisitely voiced rhythm tracks and vibrating vocal harmonies". Joseph Vogel notes Jackson's ability to use non-verbal sounds to express emotion. Neil McCormick wrote that Jackson's unorthodox singing style "was original and utterly distinctive".
Musicianship
Jackson had no formal music training and could not read or write music notation. He is credited for playing guitar, keyboard, and drums, but was not proficient in them. When composing, he recorded ideas by beatboxing and imitating instruments vocally. Describing the process, he said: "I'll just sing the bass part into the tape recorder. I'll take that bass lick and put the chords of the melody over the bass lick and that's what inspires the melody." The engineer Robert Hoffman recalled that after Jackson came in with a song he had written overnight, Jackson sang every note of every chord to a guitar player. Hoffman also remembered Jackson singing string arrangements part by part into a cassette recorder.
Dance
Jackson danced from a young age as part of the Jackson 5, and incorporated dance extensively in his performances and music videos. According to Sanjoy Roy of The Guardian, Jackson would "flick and retract his limbs like switchblades, or snap out of a tornado spin into a perfectly poised toe-stand". The moonwalk, taught to him by Jeffrey Daniel, was Jackson's signature dance move and one of the most famous of the 20th century. Jackson is credited for coining the name "moonwalk" for this street dance move, previously known as the "backslide". His other moves included the robot, crotch grab, and the "anti-gravity" lean of the "Smooth Criminal" video.
Themes and genres
Jackson explored genres including pop, soul, rhythm and blues, funk, rock, disco, post-disco, dance-pop and new jack swing. Steve Huey of AllMusic wrote that Thriller refined the strengths of Off the Wall; the dance and rock tracks were more aggressive, while the pop tunes and ballads were softer and more soulful. Its tracks included the ballads "The Lady in My Life", "Human Nature", and "The Girl Is Mine", the funk pieces "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", and the disco set "Baby Be Mine" and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)".
With Off the Wall, Jackson's "vocabulary of grunts, squeals, hiccups, moans, and asides" vividly showed his maturation into an adult, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). The album's title track suggested to the critic a parallel between Jackson and Stevie Wonder's "oddball" music personas: "Since childhood his main contact with the real world has been on stage and in bed." With Thriller, Christopher Connelly of Rolling Stone commented that Jackson developed his long association with the subliminal theme of paranoia and darker imagery. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted this on the songs "Billie Jean" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'". In "Billie Jean", Jackson depicts an obsessive fan who alleges he has fathered her child, and in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" he argues against gossip and the media. "Beat It" decried gang violence in a homage to West Side Story, and was Jackson's first successful rock cross-over piece, according to Huey. He observed that "Thriller" began Jackson's interest with the theme of the supernatural, a topic he revisited in subsequent years. In 1985, Jackson co-wrote the charity anthem "We Are the World"; humanitarian themes later became a recurring theme in his lyrics and public persona.In Bad, Jackson's concept of the predatory lover is seen on the rock song "Dirty Diana". The lead single "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" is a traditional love ballad, and "Man in the Mirror" is a ballad of confession and resolution. "Smooth Criminal" is an evocation of bloody assault, rape and likely murder. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine states that Dangerous presents Jackson as a paradoxical person. The first half of the record is dedicated to new jack swing, including songs like "Jam" and "Remember the Time". It was the first Jackson album in which social ills became a primary theme; "Why You Wanna Trip on Me", for example, protests world hunger, AIDS, homelessness and drugs. Dangerous contains sexually charged songs such as "In the Closet". The title track continues the theme of the predatory lover and compulsive desire. The second half includes introspective, pop-gospel anthems such as "Will You Be There", "Heal the World" and "Keep the Faith". In the ballad "Gone Too Soon", Jackson gives tribute to Ryan White and the plight of those with AIDS.
HIStory creates an atmosphere of paranoia. In the new jack swing-funk rock tracks "Scream" and "Tabloid Junkie", and the R&B ballad "You Are Not Alone", Jackson retaliates against the injustice and isolation he feels, and directs his anger at the media. In the introspective ballad "Stranger in Moscow", Jackson laments his "fall from grace"; "Earth Song", "Childhood", "Little Susie" and "Smile" are operatic pop songs. In "D.S.", Jackson attacks lawyer Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., who had prosecuted him in both child sexual abuse cases; he describes Sneddon as a white supremacist who wanted to "get my ass, dead or alive". Invincible includes urban soul tracks such as "Cry" and "The Lost Children", ballads such as "Speechless", "Break of Dawn", and "Butterflies", and mixes hip hop, pop, and R&B in "2000 Watts", "Heartbreaker" and "Invincible".
Music videos and choreography
Jackson released "Thriller", a 14-minute music video directed by John Landis, in 1983. The zombie-themed video "defined music videos and broke racial barriers" on MTV, which had launched two years earlier. Before Thriller, Jackson struggled to receive coverage on MTV, allegedly because he was African American. Pressure from CBS Records persuaded MTV to start showing "Billie Jean" and later "Beat It", which led to a lengthy partnership with Jackson, and helped other black music artists gain recognition. The popularity of his videos on MTV helped the relatively new channel's viewing figures, and MTV's focus shifted toward pop and R&B. His performance on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever changed the scope of live stage shows, making it acceptable for artists to lip-sync to music video on stage. The choreography in Thriller has been copied in Indian films and prisons in the Philippines. Thriller marked an increase in scale for music videos, and was named the most successful music video ever by the Guinness World Records.
In "Bad"'s 19-minute video—directed by Martin Scorsese—Jackson used sexual imagery and choreography, and touched his chest, torso and crotch. When asked by Winfrey in the 1993 interview about why he grabbed his crotch, he said it was spontaneously compelled by the music. Time magazine described the "Bad" video as "infamous". It featured Wesley Snipes; Jackson's later videos often featured famous cameo roles. For the "Smooth Criminal" video, Jackson experimented with leaning forward at a 45-degree angle, beyond the performer's center of gravity. To accomplish this live, Jackson and designers developed a special shoe to lock the performer's feet to the stage, allowing them to lean forward. They were granted U.S. patent 5,255,452 for the device. The video for "Leave Me Alone" was not officially released in the US, but in 1989 was nominated for three Billboard Music Video Awards and won a Golden Lion Award for its special effects. It won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form.
He received the MTV Video Vanguard Award in 1988; in 2001 the award was renamed in his honor. The "Black or White" video simultaneously premiered on November 14, 1991, in 27 countries with an estimated audience of 500 million people, the largest audience ever for a music video at the time. Along with Jackson, it featured Macaulay Culkin, Peggy Lipton, and George Wendt. It helped introduce morphing to music videos. It was controversial for scenes in which Jackson rubs his crotch, vandalizes cars, and throws a garbage can through a storefront. He apologized and removed the final scene of the video.
"In the Closet" featured Naomi Campbell in a courtship dance with Jackson. "Remember the Time" was set in ancient Egypt, and featured Eddie Murphy, Iman, and Magic Johnson. The video for "Scream", directed by Mark Romanek and production designer Tom Foden, gained a record 11 MTV Video Music Award Nominations, and won "Best Dance Video", "Best Choreography", and "Best Art Direction". The song and its video are Jackson's response to being accused of child molestation in 1993. A year later, it won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form. It has been reported as the most expensive music video ever made, at $7 million; Romanek has contradicted this. The "Earth Song" video was nominated for the 1997 Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form.
Michael Jackson's Ghosts, a short film written by Jackson and Stephen King and directed by Stan Winston, premiered at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. At over 38 minutes long, it held the Guinness world record for the longest music video until 2013, when it was eclipsed by the video for the Pharrell Williams song "Happy". The 2001 video for "You Rock My World" lasts over 13 minutes, was directed by Paul Hunter, and features Chris Tucker and Marlon Brando. It won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Music Video in 2002.
In December 2009, the Library of Congress selected "Thriller" as the only music video to be preserved in the National Film Registry, as a work of "enduring importance to American culture". Huey wrote that Jackson transformed the music video into an artform and a promotional tool through complex story lines, dance routines, special effects and famous cameos, while breaking down racial barriers.
Honors and awards
Jackson is one of the best-selling music artists in history, with sales estimated around 500 million records worldwide.[Note 2] He had 13 number-one singles in the US in his solo career—more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era until Drake tied with Jackson with First Person Shooter. He was invited and honored by a president of the United States at the White House three times. In 1984, he was honored with a "Presidential Public Safety Commendation" award by Ronald Reagan for his humanitarian endeavors. In 1990, he was honored as the "Artist of the Decade" by George H. W. Bush. In 1992, he was honored as a "Point of Light Ambassador" by Bush for inviting disadvantaged children to his Neverland Ranch.
Jackson won hundreds of awards, making him one of the most-awarded artists in popular music. His awards include 39 Guinness World Records, including the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time, 13 Grammy Awards, as well as the Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and 26 American Music Awards, including the Artist of the Century and Artist of the 1980s. He also received the World Music Awards' Best-Selling Pop Male Artist of the Millennium and the Bambi Pop Artist of the Millennium Award. Jackson was inducted onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1980 as a member of the Jacksons, and in 1984 as a solo artist. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Vocal Group Hall of Fame as a member of the Jackson 5 in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and again as a solo artist in 2001. In 2002, he was added to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2010, he was the first recording artist to be inducted into the Dance Hall of Fame, and in 2014, he was posthumously inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame. In 2021, he was among the inaugural inductees into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.
In 1988, Fisk University honored him with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. In 1992, he was invested as a titular king of Sanwi, a traditional kingdom located in the south-east of Ivory Coast. In July 2009, the Lunar Republic Society named a crater on the Moon after Jackson. In August, for what would have been Jackson's 51st birthday, Google dedicated their Google Doodle to him. In 2012, the extinct hermit crab Mesoparapylocheles michaeljacksoni was named in his honor. In 2014, the British Council of Cultural Relations deemed Jackson's life one of the 80 most important cultural moments of the 20th century. World Vitiligo Day has been celebrated on June 25, the anniversary of Jackson's death, to raise awareness of the auto-immune disorder that Jackson suffered from.
Earnings
In 1989, Jackson's annual earnings from album sales, endorsements, and concerts were estimated at $125 million. Forbes placed Jackson's annual income at $35 million in 1996 and $20 million in 1997. Jackson has been one of the wealthiest musical artists; estimates of Jackson's net worth during his life range from negative $285 million to positive $350 million for 2002, 2003 and 2007. Forbes reported in August 2018 that Jackson's total career pretax earnings in life and death were $4.2 billion. Sales of his recordings through Sony's music unit earned him an estimated $300 million in royalties. He may have earned another $400 million from concerts, music publishing (including his share of the Beatles catalog), endorsements, merchandising and music videos.
In 2013, the executors of Jackson's estate filed a petition in the United States Tax Court as a result of a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over US federal estate taxes. The executors claimed that it was worth about $7 million, while the IRS that it was worth over $1.1 billion. In February 2014, the IRS reported that Jackson's estate owed $702 million; $505 million in taxes, and $197 million in penalties. A trial was held from February 6 to 24, 2017. In 2021, the Tax Court issued a ruling in favor of the estate, ruling that the estate's total combined value of the estate was $111.5 million and that the value of Jackson's name and likeness was $4 million (not the $61 million estimated by the IRS's outside expert witness).
In 2016, Forbes estimated annual gross earnings by the Jackson Estate at $825 million, the largest ever recorded for a celebrity, mostly due to the sale of the Sony/ATV catalog. In 2018, the figure was $400 million. It was the eighth year since his death that Jackson's annual earnings were reported to be over $100 million, thus bringing Jackson's postmortem total to $2.4 billion. Forbes has consistently recognized Jackson as one of the top-earning dead celebrities since his death, and placed him at the top spot from 2013 to 2023.
Discography
Got to Be There (1972)
Ben (1972)
Music & Me (1973)
Forever, Michael (1975)
Off the Wall (1979)
Thriller (1982)
Bad (1987)
Dangerous (1991)
HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I (1995)
Invincible (2001)
Filmography
The Wiz (1978)
Michael Jackson's Thriller (1983)
Captain EO (1986)
Moonwalker (1988)
Michael Jackson's Ghosts (1997)
Men in Black II (2002)
Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (2004)
Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009)
Bad 25 (2012)
Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall (2016)
Thriller 40 (2023)
Tours
Bad World Tour (1987–1989)
Dangerous World Tour (1992–1993)
HIStory World Tour (1996–1997)
MJ & Friends (1999)
See also
List of dancers
Notes
References
Citations
Print sources
Further reading
Hidalgo, Susan; Weiner, Robert G. (2010). "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin': MJ in the Scholarly Literature: A Selected Bibliographic Guide" (PDF). The Journal of Pan African Studies. 3 (7).
How Michael Jackson Changed Dance History – biography.com
External links
Official website
Michael Jackson at Amazon Music
Michael Jackson at Curlie
Michael Jackson at the FBI's website
Michael Jackson at IMDb |
Amy_Winehouse | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Winehouse | [
296,
598
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Winehouse",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Winehouse"
] | Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was a British singer and songwriter known for her deep, expressive contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres, including soul, rhythm and blues, reggae, and jazz.
Winehouse was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in her youth, signing to Simon Fuller's 19 Management in 2002 and soon recording a number of songs before signing a publishing deal with EMI. She also formed a working relationship with producer Salaam Remi through these record publishers. Winehouse's debut album, Frank, was released in 2003. Many of the album's songs were influenced by jazz and, apart from two covers, were co-written by Winehouse. Frank was a critical and commercial success in the UK, and beyond, and was nominated for the UK's Mercury Prize. The song "Stronger Than Me" won her the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.
Winehouse released her follow-up album, Back to Black, in 2006. The album went on to become a huge international success and one of the best-selling albums of all time, as well as one of the best-selling albums in UK history. At the 2007 Brit Awards, it was nominated for British Album of the Year and Winehouse received the award for British Female Solo Artist. The song "Rehab" won her a second Ivor Novello Award. At the 50th Grammy Awards in 2008, she won five awards, tying the then record for the most wins by a female artist in a single night and becoming the first British woman to win five Grammys. These included three of the General Field "Big Four" Grammy Awards: Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Song of the Year (for "Rehab"), as well as Best Pop Vocal Album.
Winehouse struggled throughout her life with substance abuse, mental illness and addiction. She died, at her Camden Square home in London, of alcohol poisoning on 23 July 2011, at the age of 27. Her brother believed that bulimia was also a factor. After her death, Back to Black briefly became the UK's best-selling album of the 21st century. VH1 ranked Winehouse 26th on their list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music. Her life and career was dramatised in a 2024 biopic, Back to Black, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson.
Early life
Amy Jade Winehouse was born on 14 September 1983 at Chase Farm Hospital in Gordon Hill, Enfield, to Jewish parents. Her father, Mitchell "Mitch" Winehouse, was a window panel installer and taxi driver; her mother, Janis Winehouse (née Seaton), was a pharmacist. Her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2003. Winehouse's great-great-grandfather Harris Winehouse emigrated from Minsk, Belarus, to London in 1891. She had an older brother, Alex (born 1979). The family lived in London's Southgate area, where she attended Osidge Primary School and then secondary at Ashmole School. Winehouse attended a Jewish Sunday school while she was a child. During an interview following her rise to fame, she expressed her disapproval towards the school by saying that she used to beg her father to permit her not to go and that she learned nothing about being Jewish by going anyway. In the same interview, Winehouse said she only went to a synagogue once a year on Yom Kippur "out of respect".
Many of Winehouse's maternal uncles were professional jazz musicians. Amy's paternal grandmother, Cynthia, had been a singer and had dated the English jazz saxophonist Ronnie Scott. She and Amy's parents influenced Amy's interest in jazz. Her father, Mitch, often sang Frank Sinatra songs to her, and whenever she was chastised at school, she would sing "Fly Me to the Moon" before going up to the headmistress to be told off. Winehouse's parents separated when she was nine, and she lived with her mother in Whetstone, London and stayed with her father and his girlfriend in Hatfield Heath, Essex on weekends.
In 1992, her grandmother Cynthia suggested that Amy attend the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School, where she went on Saturdays to further her vocal education and to learn to tap dance. She attended the school for four years and founded a short-lived rap group called Sweet 'n' Sour, with Juliette Ashby, her childhood friend, before seeking full-time training at Sylvia Young Theatre School. Several years later it was reported that Winehouse had been expelled at 14 for "not applying herself" and also for piercing her nose, however these claims were denied by Sylvia Young: "She changed schools at 15 ... I've heard it said she was expelled; she wasn't. I'd never have expelled Amy." Mitch Winehouse also denied the claims. An English teacher at the Sylvia Young Theatre School remembered Amy as a gifted writer, predicting that she would become a novelist or journalist. She attended the Mount School, Mill Hill and the BRIT School in Selhurst, Croydon, dropping out at age 16.
After toying around with her brother Alex's guitar, Winehouse bought her own guitar when she was 14 and began writing music shortly afterwards. Soon after, she began working for a living as an entertainment journalist for the World Entertainment News Network and also singing with local group the Bolsha Band. In July 2000, she became the featured female vocalist with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. At home she learned from and practised singing songs by Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Minnie Ripperton—singers who she said "will get under the song" and remake it as their own rather than sing it straight as written. Winehouse's best friend, soul singer Tyler James, sent her demo tape to an A&R person.
Career
2002–2005: Career beginnings and Frank
Winehouse was signed to Simon Fuller's 19 Management in 2002 and was initially paid £250 a week against future earnings. While being developed by the management company, Winehouse was kept as a recording industry secret, although she was a regular jazz standards singer at the Cobden Club. Her future A&R representative at Island, Darcus Beese, heard of her by chance when the manager of the Lewinson Brothers showed him some productions of his clients, which featured Winehouse as key vocalist. When he asked who the singer was, the manager told him he was not allowed to say. Having decided that he wanted to sign her, it took several months of asking around for Beese to eventually discover who the singer was. However, by that time Winehouse had already recorded a number of songs, signed a publishing deal with EMI, and formed a working relationship with producer Salaam Remi.
Beese introduced Winehouse to his boss, Island head Nick Gatfield, who shared his enthusiasm in signing the young artist. Winehouse was signed to Island while rival interest in her had started to build with representatives of EMI and Virgin Records starting to make moves. Beese told HitQuarters that he felt the excitement over an artist who was an atypical pop star for the time was due to a backlash against reality TV music shows, whose audiences starved for fresh, genuine young talent.
Winehouse's debut album, Frank, was released on 20 October 2003. Produced mainly by Salaam Remi, many of the songs were influenced by jazz and, apart from two covers, Winehouse co-wrote every song. The album received wide critical acclaim with compliments given to the "cool, critical gaze" in its lyrics. Winehouse's voice was compared with those of Sarah Vaughan and Macy Gray, among others.
The album entered the upper reaches of the UK Albums Chart in 2004 when it was nominated for the Brit Awards in the categories of British Female Solo Artist and British Urban Act. It went on to achieve platinum sales. Later in 2004, she and Remi won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song, for their first single together, "Stronger Than Me." The album was also shortlisted for the 2004 Mercury Music Prize. In the same year, she performed at the Glastonbury Festival (on the Jazz World stage), the V Festival and the Montreal International Jazz Festival. After the release of the album, Winehouse commented that she was "only 80 percent behind [the] album" because Island Records had overruled her preferences for the songs and mixes to be included. The further singles from the album were "Take the Box," "In My Bed"/"You Sent Me Flying" and "Pumps"/"Help Yourself."
2006–2008: Back to Black and international success
After the release of her first jazz-influenced album, Winehouse's focus shifted to the girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s. Winehouse hired New York singer Sharon Jones's longtime band, the Dap-Kings, to back her up in the studio and on tour. Mitch Winehouse relates in Amy, My Daughter how fascinating watching her process was: her perfectionism in the studio and how she would put what she had sung on a CD and play it in his taxi outside to know how most people would hear her music. In May 2006, Winehouse's demo tracks such as "You Know I'm No Good" and "Rehab" appeared on Mark Ronson's New York radio show on East Village Radio. These were some of the first new songs played on the radio after the release of "Pumps" and both were slated to appear on her second album. The 11-track album, completed in five months, was produced entirely by Salaam Remi and Ronson, with the production credits being split between them. Ronson said in a 2010 interview that he liked working with Winehouse because she was blunt when she did not like his work. She in turn thought that when they first met, he was a sound engineer and that she was expecting an older man with a beard.
Promotion of Back to Black soon began and, in early October 2006 Winehouse's official website was relaunched with a new layout and clips of previously unreleased songs. Back to Black was released in the UK on 30 October 2006. It went to number one on the UK Albums Chart for two weeks in January 2007, dropping then climbing back for several weeks in February. In the US, it entered at number seven on the Billboard 200. It was the best-selling album in the UK of 2007, selling 1.85 million copies over the course of the year. The first single released from the album was the Ronson-produced "Rehab". The song reached the top ten in the UK and the US. Time magazine named "Rehab" the Best Song of 2007. Writer Josh Tyrangiel praised Winehouse for her confidence, saying, "What she is is mouthy, funny, sultry, and quite possibly crazy" and "It's impossible not to be seduced by her originality. Combine it with production by Mark Ronson that references four decades worth of soul music without once ripping it off, and you've got the best song of 2007." The album's second single and lead single in the US, "You Know I'm No Good," was released in January 2007 with a remix featuring rap vocals by Ghostface Killah. It ultimately reached number 18 on the UK singles chart. The title track, "Back to Black," was released in the UK in April 2007 and peaked at number 25, but was more successful across mainland Europe. "Tears Dry on Their Own," "Love Is a Losing Game" were also released as singles, but failed to achieve the same level of success.
A deluxe edition of Back to Black was also released on 5 November 2007 in the UK. The bonus disc features B-sides, rare, and live tracks, as well as "Valerie". Winehouse's debut DVD I Told You I Was Trouble: Live in London was released the same day in the UK and 13 November in the US. It includes a live set recorded at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire and a 50-minute documentary charting the singer's career over the previous four years. Frank was released in the United States on 20 November 2007 to positive reviews. The album debuted at number 61 on the Billboard 200 chart. In addition to her own album, she collaborated with other artists on singles. Winehouse was a vocalist on the song "Valerie" on Ronson's solo album Version. The song peaked at number two in the UK, upon its October single release. "Valerie" was nominated for a 2008 Brit Award for British Single of the Year. Her work with ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena, "B Boy Baby," was released on 17 December 2007. It served as the fourth single from Buena's debut album, Real Girl. Winehouse was also in talks of working with Missy Elliott for her album Block Party.
Winehouse promoted the release of Back to Black with headline performances in late 2006, including a Little Noise Sessions charity concert at the Union Chapel in Islington, London. On 31 December 2006, Winehouse appeared on Jools Holland's Annual Hootenanny and performed a cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" along with Paul Weller and Holland's Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. She also performed Toots and the Maytals' "Monkey Man". At his request, actor Bruce Willis introduced Winehouse before her performance of "Rehab" at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards in Universal City, California, on 3 June 2007. During the summer of 2007, she performed at various festivals, including Glastonbury Festival and Lollapalooza in Chicago.
The rest of her tour, however, did not go as well. In November 2007, the opening night of a 17-date tour was marred by booing and walkouts at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. A critic for the Birmingham Mail said it was "one of the saddest nights of my life ... I saw a supremely talented artist reduced to tears, stumbling around the stage and, unforgivably, swearing at the audience." Other concerts ended similarly, with, for example, fans at her Hammersmith Apollo performance in London saying that she "looked highly intoxicated throughout," until she announced on 27 November 2007, that her performances and public appearances were cancelled for the remainder of the year, citing her doctor's advice to take a complete rest. A statement issued by concert promoter Live Nation blamed "the rigours involved in touring and the intense emotional strain that Amy has been under in recent weeks" for the decision. Mitch Winehouse wrote about her nervousness before public performances in his 2012 book, Amy, My Daughter. On 13 January 2008, Back to Black held the number-one position on the Billboard Pan European charts for the third consecutive week.
On 10 February 2008, Winehouse received five Grammy Awards, winning in the following categories: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for the single "Rehab", and Best Pop Vocal Album. The singer also earned a Grammy as Best New Artist, earning her an entry in the 2009 edition of the Guinness Book of Records for Most Grammy Awards won by a British Female Act. Additionally, Back to Black was nominated for Album of the Year. Ronson's work with her won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, in the non-classical category. She ended her acceptance speech for Record of the Year with, "This is for London because Camden Town ain't burning down," in reference to the 2008 Camden Market fire. Performing "You Know I'm No Good" and "Rehab" via satellite from London's Riverside Studios at 3 a.m. UK time, she couldn't be at the ceremony in Los Angeles as her visa approval had not been processed in time.
After the Grammys, the album's sales increased, catapulting Back to Black to number two on the US Billboard 200, after it initially peaked in the seventh position. On 20 February 2008, Winehouse performed at the 2008 Brit Awards at Earls Court in London, performing "Valerie" with Mark Ronson, followed by "Love Is a Losing Game". She urged the crowd to "make some noise for my Blake." A special deluxe edition of Back to Black topped the UK album charts on 2 March 2008. Meanwhile, the original edition of the album was ranked at number 30 in its 68th week on the charts, while Frank charted at number 35.
In Paris, she performed what was described as a "well-executed 40-minute" set at the opening of a Fendi boutique in early March. By 12 March, the album had sold a total of 2,467,575 copies—318,350 copies had been sold in the previous 10 weeks—putting the album on the UK's top-10 best-selling albums of the 21st century for the first time. On 7 April, Back to Black was in the top position of the pan-European charts for the sixth consecutive and thirteenth aggregate week. Amy Winehouse – The Girl Done Good: A Documentary Review, a 78-minute DVD, was released on 14 April 2008. The documentary features interviews with those who knew her at a young age, people who helped her achieve success, jazz music experts, and music and pop culture specialists.
At the 2008 Ivor Novello Awards in May, Winehouse became the first-ever artist to receive two nominations for the top award: Best Song Musically & Lyrically. She won the award for "Love Is a Losing Game" and was nominated for "You Know I'm No Good". "Rehab", a Novello winner for best contemporary song in 2006, also received a 2008 nomination for best-selling British song. Winehouse was also nominated for a 2008 MTV Europe Music Award in the Act of the Year category.
Although her father, manager and various members of her touring team reportedly tried to dissuade her, Winehouse performed at the Rock in Rio Lisboa festival in Portugal in May 2008. Although the set was plagued by a late arrival and problems with her voice, the crowd warmed to her. In addition to her own material she performed two Specials covers. Winehouse performed at Nelson Mandela's 90th Birthday Party concert at London's Hyde Park on 27 June 2008, and the next day at the Glastonbury Festival. On 12 July, at the Oxegen Festival in Ireland she performed a well-received 50-minute set which was followed the next day by a 14-song set at T in the Park.
On 16 August she played at the Staffordshire leg of the V Festival, and the following day played the Chelmsford leg of the festival. Organisers said that Winehouse attracted the biggest crowds of the festival. Audience reaction was reported as mixed. On 6 September, Winehouse was Bestival's Saturday headliner, where she started 40 minutes late and was on stage for 35 minutes, before her performance was terminated because of a curfew.
A clip of Winehouse's music was included in the "Roots and Influences" area that looked at connections between different artists at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC, which opened in December 2008. One thread started with Billie Holiday, continued with Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige, and then finished with Winehouse.
Back to Black was the world's seventh-biggest-selling album of 2008. The album's sales meant that the market performance of Universal Music Group's recorded music division did not drop to levels experienced by the overall music market.
2009–2011: Final projects before death
In a 2009 poll of U.S. residents conducted for VisitBritain by Harris Interactive, one-fifth of the participants indicated they had listened to Winehouse's music during the previous year. She performed with Rhythms del Mundo on their cover of the Sam Cooke song "Cupid" for an Artists Project Earth benefit album released in July that year.
Winehouse and Ronson contributed a cover of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" to the Quincy Jones tribute album Q Soul Bossa Nostra, released in November 2010. She had agreed to form a group with Questlove of the Roots, but her problems obtaining a visa delayed their working together. Salaam Remi had already created some material with Winehouse as part of the project. According to The Times, Universal Music pressed her for new material in 2008, but as of 2 September that year she had not been near a recording studio. In late October, Winehouse's spokesman was quoted as saying that Winehouse had not been given a deadline to complete her third album, for which she was learning to play drums.
In May 2009, Winehouse returned to performing at a jazz festival in Saint Lucia amid torrential downpours and technical difficulties. During her set, it was reported she was unsteady on her feet and had trouble remembering lyrics. She apologised to the crowd for being "bored" and ended the set in the middle of a song. During her stay in Saint Lucia, however, she worked on new music with Remi. On 23 August that year, Winehouse sang with the Specials at the V Festival on their songs "You're Wondering Now" and "Ghost Town".
Island claimed that a new album would be due for release in 2010. Island co-president Darcus Beese said, "I've heard a couple of song demos that have absolutely floored me." In July 2010, Winehouse was quoted as saying her next album would be released no later than January 2011, saying: "It's going to be very much the same as my second album, where there's a lot of jukebox stuff and songs that are... just jukebox, really." Ronson, however, said at that time that he had not started to record the album. She performed "Valerie" with Ronson at a movie premiere but forgot some of the song's lyrics. In October, Winehouse performed a four-song set to promote her fashion line. In December 2010, she played a 40-minute concert at a Russian oligarch's party in Moscow, with the tycoon hand-selecting the songs.
In January 2011, Winehouse played five dates in Brazil, with opening acts of Janelle Monáe and Mayer Hawthorne. While performing in Florianópolis, Winehouse forgot the lyrics of her songs several times and had to be aided by the public and her band. During the concert, she only drank from a water bottle, but even so, in two occasions, she left the stage in the midst of the show for a period of circa 5 minutes. Upon her return, the crowd showed strong compassion for her and praised Winehouse for continuing the performance. The following month she cut a performance in Dubai short following booing from the audience. Winehouse was reported to be tired, distracted and "tipsy" during the performance.
On 18 June 2011, Winehouse started her twelve-leg European tour in Belgrade. Local media described her performance as a scandal and disaster; she was booed off the stage due to her apparently being too drunk to perform. Serbian defence minister Dragan Šutanovac called Winehouse's performances "a huge shame and a disappointment". It was reported that she was unable to remember the city she was in, the lyrics of her songs or the names of the members of her band. The local press also claimed that Winehouse was forced to perform by her bodyguards, who did not allow her to leave the stage when she tried to do so. She then pulled out of performances in Istanbul and Athens, which had been scheduled for the following week. On 21 June, it was announced that she had cancelled all shows of her tour and would be given "as long as it takes" to sort herself out.
Winehouse's last public appearance took place at Camden's Roundhouse on 20 July 2011, when she made a surprise appearance on stage to support her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield, who was singing "Mama Said" with the Wanted. Winehouse died three days later. Her last recording was a duet with American singer Tony Bennett for his album Duets II, released on 20 September 2011. Their single from the album, "Body and Soul", was released on 14 September 2011 on MTV and VH1 to commemorate what would have been her 28th birthday.
Other ventures
Activism and philanthropy
Throughout her life Winehouse donated her money, music and time to numerous charities and causes, particularly those concerned with children. She joined a campaign to stop a block of flats being built beside the George Tavern, a famous London East End music venue. Campaign supporters feared the residential development would end the spot's lucrative sideline as a film and photo location, on which it relies to survive. As part of a breast cancer awareness campaign, Winehouse appeared in a revealing photograph for the April 2008 issue of Easy Living magazine. In 2009, she appeared on a CD called Classics alongside musicians such as the Rolling Stones, the Killers and many Cuban musicians to raise awareness of climate change.
Winehouse loaned a vintage dress used in her video for "Tears Dry on Their Own" as well as a DVD to the British Music Experience, a new museum dedicated to the history of British pop music. The museum, located at the O2 Arena in London, opened on 9 March 2009. In March 2011, Winehouse donated over £20,000 worth of clothes to a local charity shop in London.
A Caribbean man, Julian Jean DeBaptiste, revealed that Winehouse had paid for his urgent surgery costing £4,000 during her stay in Saint Lucia in 2009. "I had surgery on 1 July 2009... it cost a fortune and Amy paid for the whole thing. I tried to thank her but she just hugged me and told me not to say anything. Her generosity gave me my life back."
Business
Winehouse had an estimated £10m fortune, tying her for tenth place in the 2008 The Sunday Times listing of the wealth of musicians under age 30. The following year her fortune had dropped to an estimated £5m. Her finances are run by Mitch and Janis Winehouse. It was reported she earned about £1m singing at two private parties during Paris Fashion Week as well as another £1m to perform at a Moscow Art Gallery for Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
In January 2009, Winehouse announced that she was launching her own record label. The first act on her Lioness Records is Winehouse's 13-year-old goddaughter Dionne Bromfield. Her first album, featuring covers of classic soul records, was released on 12 October 2009. Winehouse is the backing singer on several tracks on the album and she performed backing vocals for Bromfield on the BBC's television programme Strictly Come Dancing on 10 October.
Winehouse and her family are the subject of a 2009 documentary shot by Daphne Barak titled Saving Amy. Winehouse entered into a joint venture in 2009 with EMI to launch a range of wrapping paper and gift cards containing song lyrics from her album Back to Black. On 8 January 2010, a television documentary, My Daughter Amy, aired on Channel 4. Saving Amy was released as a paperback book in January 2010.
Winehouse was a notable fan of the brand Fred Perry. She collaborated on a 17-piece fashion collection with the label, which was released for sale in October 2010. According to Fred Perry's marketing director "We had three major design meetings where she was closely involved in product style selection and the application of fabric, colour and styling details," and gave "crucial input on proportion, colour and fit". The collection consists of "vintage-inspired looks including Capri pants, a bowling dress, a trench coat, pencil skirts, a longline argyle sweater and a pink-and-black checkerboard-printed collared shirt." At the behest of her family, three forthcoming collections up to and including autumn/winter 2012 that she had designed prior to her death were released. Following Winehouse's death, Fred Perry has donated 20% of the net revenue from the Amy Winehouse collection to the charity set up in Winehouse's name, the Amy Winehouse Foundation.
Media image
Winehouse's greatest love was 1960s girl groups. Her hairdresser, Alex Foden, borrowed her distinctive beehive hairdo (a weave) from the Ronettes and she borrowed her Cleopatra makeup from the same group. Her imitation was so successful, as The Village Voice reports: "Ronnie Spector—who, it could be argued, all but invented Winehouse's style in the first place when she took the stage at the Brooklyn Fox Theater with her fellow Ronettes more than 40 years ago—was so taken aback at a picture of Winehouse in the New York Post that she exclaimed, "I don't know her, I never met her, and when I saw that pic, I thought, 'That's me!' But then I found out, no, it's Amy! I didn't have on my glasses."
The New York Times style reporter, Guy Trebay, discussed the multiplicity of influences on Winehouse's style after her death. Trebay noted, "her stylish husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, may have influenced her look." Additionally, Trebay observed:
She was a 5-foot-3 almanac of visual reference, most famously to Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes, but also to the white British soul singer Mari Wilson, less famous for her sound than her beehive; to the punk god Johnny Thunders...; to the fierce council-house chicks... (see: Dior and Chanel runways, 2007 and 2008) ... to a lineage of bad girls, extending from Cleopatra to Louise Brooks's Lulu and including Salt-n-Pepa, to irresistible man traps that always seemed to come to the same unfortunate end.
Former Rolling Stone editor Joe Levy, who had put her on the magazine's cover, broke her look down this way:
Just as her best music drew on sampling – assembling sonic licks and stylistic fragments borrowed from Motown, Stax, punk and early hip-hop – her personal style was also a knowing collage. There was a certain moment in the '90s when, if you were headed downtown and turned left, every girl looked like Bettie Page. But they did not do what Winehouse did, mixing Bettie Page with Brigitte Bardot and adding that little bit of Ronnie Spector.
Winehouse's use of bold red lipstick, thick eyebrows and heavy eyeliner came from Latinas she saw in Miami, on her trip there to work with Salaam Remi on Back to Black. Her look was repeatedly denigrated by the British press. At the same time that the NME Awards nominated Winehouse in the categories of "Best Solo Artist" and "Best Music DVD" in 2008, they awarded her "Worst Dressed Performer". Winehouse was also ranked number two on Richard Blackwell's 48th annual "Ten Worst Dressed Women" list, behind Victoria Beckham.
Controversies
Winehouse's dichotomous public image of critical and commercial success versus personal turmoil prompted significant media comment. The New Statesman called Winehouse "a filthy-mouthed, down-to-earth diva", while Newsweek called her "a perfect storm of sex kitten, raw talent and poor impulse control". Karen Heller with The Philadelphia Inquirer summarised the maelstrom this way:
She's only 24 with six Grammy nominations, crashing headfirst into success and despair, with a codependent husband in jail, exhibitionist parents with questionable judgement, and the paparazzi documenting her emotional and physical distress. Meanwhile, a haute designer Karl Lagerfeld appropriates her dishevelled style and eating issues to market to the elite while proclaiming her the new Bardot.
By 2008, her drug problems threatened her career. As Nick Gatfield, the president of Island Records, toyed with the idea of releasing Winehouse "to deal with her problems", he said, "It's a reflection of her status [in the US] that when you flick through the TV coverage [of the Grammys] it's her image they use." Post-Grammys, some questioned whether Winehouse should have been honoured with the awards given her recent personal and drug problems, including Natalie Cole, who introduced Winehouse at the ceremony and who herself battled substance-abuse problems while winning a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1975.
Winehouse was prevented from travelling to and performing at the Grammy Awards ceremony in the US due to failing a drug test, and the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said that the alleged drug habits of Winehouse and other celebrities sent a bad message "to others who are vulnerable to addiction" and undermine the efforts of other celebrities trying to raise awareness of problems in Africa, now that more cocaine used in Europe passes through that continent. Winehouse's spokesperson noted that "Amy has never given a quote about drugs or flaunted it in any way. She's had some problems and is trying to get better. The U.N. should get its own house in order."
In January 2008, her record label stated it believed the extensive media coverage she had received increased record sales. In an April 2008 poll conducted by Sky News, Winehouse was named the second-greatest "ultimate heroine" by the UK population at large, topping the voting for that category of those polled under 25 years old. Psychologist Donna Dawson commented that the results demonstrated that women like Winehouse who had "a certain sense of vulnerability or have had to fight against some adversity in their lives" received recognition.
In July 2008, BBC Radio Scotland's head, Jeff Zycinski, stated that the BBC, and media in general, were complicit in undermining celebrities, including Winehouse. He said that public interest in the singer's lifestyle did not make her lifestyle newsworthy. Rod McKenzie, editor of the BBC Radio One programme Newsbeat, replied: "If you play [Amy Winehouse's] music to a certain demographic, those same people want to know what's happening in her private life. If you don't cover it, you're insulting young licence fee payers." In The Scotsman, British singer and songwriter Lily Allen was quoted to have said – "I know Amy Winehouse very well. And she is very different to what people portray her as being. Yes, she does get out of her mind on drugs sometimes, but she is also a very clever, intelligent, witty, funny person who can hold it together. You just don't see that side."
Personal life
Winehouse was raised Jewish and expressed pride in being Jewish, although she was not religious. During one interview, Winehouse said: "[B]eing Jewish to me is about being together as a real family. It's not about lighting candles and saying a bracha." Winehouse also frequently performed with a Star of David medallion.
In 2013, in memory of Winehouse, the Jewish Museum London ran an exhibition titled "Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait". The museum researched her paternal great-great-grandfather's arrival from Minsk in 1890, and how the family finally settled in London, starting out in working-class jobs before gradually moving to middle-class jobs.
Winehouse had 14 known tattoos, including "Daddy's Girl" on her left arm for her father and a pin-up girl with the name "Cynthia" on her right arm in memory of her Jewish grandmother. In 2011, there were reports that Winehouse was in the process of adopting a 10-year-old girl from St. Lucia named Dannika Augustine. According to Dannika and her family, Amy had formed a strong bond with the poverty-stricken girl during her lengthy stays on the Caribbean island. Dannika referred to Amy as her mother and said they had a close, loving relationship. Her grandmother, Marjorie Lambert, confirmed that Amy had expressed a strong desire to adopt Dannika and was even willing to move to St. Lucia to be her full-time mother. However, Winehouse's representative denied these claims, stating that the adoption story was not true.
Relationships
Winehouse dated chef-musician Alex Clare in 2006, while on a break from her on–off boyfriend and future husband, Blake Fielder-Civil. She and Clare lived together briefly, and in a pattern that Fielder-Civil would later repeat, Clare sold his story to the News of the World, which published it under the headline "Bondage Crazed Amy Just Can't Beehive in Bed."
Fielder-Civil, a former video production assistant, had dropped out of Bourne Grammar School and, aged 16, moved to London from his native Lincolnshire. He married Winehouse on 18 May 2007, in Miami Beach, Florida. In a June 2007 interview, Winehouse admitted she could sometimes be violent toward him after she had been drinking, saying: "If he says one thing I don't like, then I'll chin him." In August 2007, they were photographed, bloodied and bruised, in the streets of London after an alleged fight, although she contended her injuries were self-inflicted. Winehouse's parents and in-laws publicly reported their numerous concerns, the latter citing fears that the two might commit suicide. Fielder-Civil's father encouraged fans to boycott Winehouse's music, and Mitch Winehouse said this would not help. Fielder-Civil was quoted in a British tabloid as saying he introduced Winehouse to crack cocaine and heroin. During a visit with Mitch Winehouse at the prison in July 2008, Fielder-Civil reportedly said that he and Winehouse would cut themselves to ease the pain of withdrawal.
From 21 July 2008 to 25 February 2009, Fielder-Civil was imprisoned following his guilty plea on charges of trying to pervert the course of justice and of grievous bodily harm with intent. The incident, in July 2007, involved his assault of a pub landlord that broke the victim's cheekbone, and also saw Winehouse briefly arrested in connection with it. According to the prosecution, the landlord accepted £200,000 as part of a deal to "effectively throw the [court] case and not turn up", and he testified that the money belonged to Winehouse, but she pulled out of a meeting with the men involved in the plot, to attend an awards ceremony. Mitch Winehouse, as manager of his daughter's money, has denied the payoff came from her.
When Winehouse was spotted with aspiring actor Josh Bowman on holiday in Saint Lucia, in early January 2009, she said she was "in love again, and I don't need drugs." She commented that her "whole marriage was based on doing drugs" and that "for the time being I've just forgotten I'm even married." On 12 January, Winehouse's spokesman confirmed that "papers have been received" for what Fielder-Civil's solicitor said were divorce proceedings based on a claim of adultery. In March, Winehouse was quoted in a magazine as saying, "I still love Blake and I want him to move into my new house with me—that was my plan all along ... I won't let him divorce me. He's the male version of me and we're perfect for each other." Nonetheless, an uncontested divorce was granted on 16 July 2009 and became final on 28 August 2009. Fielder-Civil received no money in the settlement.
Winehouse was in a relationship with a British writer and film director Reg Traviss, from early 2010 until her death. According to media reports and a biography written by Winehouse's father, Traviss and Winehouse had planned to marry and intended to have children.
In July 2008, when Rolling Stone reporter Claire Hoffman asked Winehouse if she was in a relationship with Pete Doherty, she replied: "We're just good friends", and added: "I asked Pete to do a concept EP, and he made this face, he looked at me like I'd pooed on the floor. He wouldn't do it. We're just really close". However, after Winehouse's death, Doherty said that he and Winehouse had been lovers at one point.
Substance abuse and mental illness
Winehouse's troubles with substance abuse were the subject of much media attention over the years. In 2005, she went through a period of drinking, heavy drug use, and weight loss. People who saw her during the end of that year and early 2006 reported a rebound that coincided with the writing of Back to Black. Her family believes that the mid-2006 death of her grandmother, who was a stabilising influence, set her off into addiction. In August 2007, Winehouse cancelled a number of shows in the UK and Europe, citing exhaustion and ill health. She was hospitalised during this period for what was reported as an overdose of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol. In various interviews, she admitted to having problems with self-harm, depression, and eating disorders.
Winehouse told the Los Angeles Times that the drugs were to blame for her hospitalisation and that "I really thought that it was over for me then." Soon afterwards, Winehouse's father commented that when he had made public statements regarding her problems he was using the media because it seemed the only way to get through to her. In an interview with The Album Chart Show on British television, Winehouse said she was manic depressive and not alcoholic, adding that that sounded like "an alcoholic in denial". A US reporter writes that Winehouse was a "victim of mental illness in a society that doesn't understand or respond to mental illness with great effectiveness." According to Forensic physician Dr Jason Payne-James, Winehouse may have suffered from borderline personality disorder (BPD). He explained she shows some symptoms for disorder such as extreme reactions to trauma like abandonment (when described as a symptom "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment"), impulsive or reckless behaviours like substance use disorders, binge eating, recurrent suicidal ideation, self-cutting or self-harm, rapidly shifting intense emotional dysregulation, chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom, unstable and chaotic interpersonal relationships, often characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation, also known as "splitting", inappropriate, intense anger that can be difficult to control. Before her death Winehouse had been examined by a psychiatrist and psychologist and doctors recommended that she undergo dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). DBT is based upon the biosocial theory of mental illness and is the first therapy that has been experimentally demonstrated to be generally effective in treating borderline personality disorder.
In December 2007, Winehouse's spokesman reported that the singer was in a physician-supervised programme and was channelling her difficulties by writing a lot of music. In January 2008, the British tabloid The Sun posted a video Winehouse, apparently smoking crack cocaine and speaking of having taken ecstasy and Valium. The event took place on Friday 18 January, in the early hours of the morning. Later that morning, Winehouse attended a remand hearing for her husband Blake Fielder-Civil, who was then awaiting trial on charges of perverting the course of justice. Shortly after the alleged crack cocaine incident, Winehouse's father moved in with her, to keep her under '24-hour watch'. At this time, Island Records, her record label, announced the abandonment of plans for an American promotion campaign on her behalf. On 23 January 2008, the video was passed on to the Metropolitan Police, who questioned her on 5 February. No charges were brought. In late January, Winehouse reportedly entered a rehabilitation facility for a two-week treatment program. On 26 March, Winehouse's spokesman said she was "doing well". Her record company reportedly believed that her recovery remained fragile. By late April 2008, her erratic behaviour—including an allegation of assault—caused fear that her drug rehabilitation efforts had been unsuccessful. Winehouse's father and manager then sought to have her detained under the Mental Health Act of 1983. Her dishevelled appearance during and after a scheduled club night in September 2008 prompted new rumours of a relapse. Photographers were quoted as saying she appeared to have cuts on her arms and legs.
According to her physician, Winehouse quit using illegal substances in 2008. In an October 2010 interview, speaking of her decision to quit drugs, Winehouse said, "I literally woke up one day and was like, 'I don't want to do this any more.'" However, alcohol emerged as a problem, with Winehouse abstaining for a few weeks and then lapsing into alcohol abuse. Her physician said that Winehouse was treated with Librium for alcohol withdrawal and anxiety and underwent psychological and psychiatric evaluations in 2010, but refused psychological therapy.
Violence and legal difficulties
In 2006, Winehouse admitted to punching a female fan in the face for criticising her having taken Blake Fielder-Civil as a husband. She then attacked her own spouse as he attempted to calm her down, kneeing him in the crotch. In October 2007, Winehouse and Fielder-Civil were arrested in Bergen, Norway, for possession of seven grams of cannabis. The couple were later released and fined 3850 kroner (around £350). Winehouse first appealed the fines, but later dropped the appeal.
On 26 April 2008, Winehouse was cautioned after she admitted to police she slapped a 38-year-old man in the face, a "common assault" offence, her first of two. She voluntarily turned herself in and was held overnight. Police said, at her arrival she was "in no fit state" to be interviewed. Ten days later, Winehouse was arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs after a video of her apparently smoking crack cocaine was passed to the police in January, but was released on bail a few hours later because they could not confirm, from the video, what she was smoking. The Crown Prosecution Service considered charging her, but cleared her when it could not establish that the substance in the video was a controlled drug. Some members of Parliament criticised the decision not to bring charges. Two London residents were subsequently convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine and ecstasy to Winehouse, leading to a two-year prison sentence for one, and a two-year community order.
On 5 March 2009, Winehouse was arrested and charged with common assault following a claim by dancer Sherene Flash that Winehouse hit her in the eye at the September 2008 Prince's Trust charity ball. Winehouse's spokesperson announced the cancellation of the singer's US Coachella Festival appearance in light of the new legal issue, and Winehouse pleaded not guilty in court on 17 March. At her trial on 23–24 July she was charged with "deliberate and unjustifiable violence" while appearing to be under the influence of alcohol or another substance. She testified that she did not punch Flash, but tried to push her away because she was scared of her; she cited her worry that Flash would sell her story to a tabloid, Flash's height advantage, and Flash's "rude" behaviour. On 24 July Winehouse was found not guilty, citing that all but two of the witnesses were intoxicated at the time, and that medical evidence did not show "the sort of injury that often occurs when there is a forceful punch to the eye."
On 19 December 2009, Winehouse was arrested for a third time on charges of common assault and public order offence after assaulting the front-of-house manager of the Milton Keynes Theatre when he asked her to move to a different seat after noisy participation in the pantomime playing, and advised her not to drink more than she already had. Winehouse pleaded guilty, and was given a conditional discharge.
Paparazzi
With the paparazzi taking photographs of her wherever they could, Winehouse obtained an injunction against a leading paparazzi agency, Big Pictures, under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997; the resultant court order issued by the High Court in 2009 banned them from following her. Photographers were also banned from following her within 100 metres of her London home and photographing Winehouse in her home or the homes of her friends and relatives. According to a newspaper report, sources close to the singer said legal action was taken out of concern for the safety of Winehouse and those close to her.
Respiratory and other health problems
On 23 June 2008, Winehouse's publicist corrected earlier misstatements by Mitch Winehouse that his daughter had early-stage emphysema, saying that she instead had signs of what could lead to early-stage emphysema. Mitch Winehouse had also stated that his daughter's lungs were operating at 70 percent capacity and that she had an irregular heartbeat. He said that these problems had been caused by her chain smoking crack cocaine. The singer's father also reported that doctors had warned Winehouse that, if she continued smoking crack cocaine, she would have to wear an oxygen mask and would eventually die. In a radio interview, Mitch Winehouse said the singer was responding "fabulously" to treatment, which included being covered with nicotine patches. British Lung Foundation spokesman Keith Prowse noted that this type of condition could be managed with treatment. Prowse also said the condition was not normal for a person her age but "heavy smoking and inhaling other substances like drugs can age the lungs prematurely." Norman H. Edelman of the American Lung Association explained that if she stopped smoking, her lung functions would decline at the rate of a normal person, but continued smoking would lead to a more rapid decline in lung function.
Winehouse was released from the London Clinic 24 hours after returning from a temporary leave to perform at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebration and at a concert in Glastonbury, and continued receiving treatment as an outpatient. In July 2008, Winehouse stated that she had been diagnosed with "some areas of emphysema" and said she was getting herself together by "eating loads of healthy food, sleeping loads, playing my guitar, making music and writing letters to my husband every day." She also kept a vertical tanning bed in her flat. Winehouse began precautionary testing on her lungs and chest on 25 October 2008 at the London Clinic for what was reported as a chest infection, leaving and returning at will. She returned to the hospital on 23 November 2008 due to a reported reaction to her medication.
Death
Winehouse's bodyguard said that he had arrived at her residence three days before her death and felt she had been somewhat intoxicated. Two days after, her mother likewise admitted she had acted "out of it." This was the same day Winehouse had visited her doctor for one of her routine check-ups due to her fragile state, although no abnormalities were noted: "The doctor was happy with her condition. When he left on Friday night he had no concerns. Less than 24 hours later she was found dead." After the check-up, Winehouse had called her doctor to confess her feelings regarding her codependency, stating: "I don't want to die", alongside how she had attempted sobriety, but could not achieve it. These were Winehouse's last recorded words, while her bodyguard's final conversation with her included the quote: "If I could, I would give it back just to walk down the street with no hassle."
Her bodyguard continued to observe her drinking moderately over the next few days since his arrival, and later said she had been "laughing, listening to music and watching TV at 2 a.m. the day of her death". Another source claims she was watching old re-runs of past performances and reminiscing. At 10 a.m. BST on 23 July 2011, he observed her lying on her bed and tried (unsuccessfully) to rouse her. This did not raise much suspicion because she usually slept late after a night out. According to the bodyguard, shortly after 3 p.m., he checked on her again and observed her lying in the same position as before, leading to a further check, in which he concluded that she was not breathing and had no pulse; he said he called emergency services. At 3:54 p.m., two ambulances reached Winehouse's home in Camden, London. Winehouse was pronounced dead at the scene. Shortly afterwards, the Metropolitan Police confirmed that she had died. Her death at age 27 prompted media comparisons to other musician deaths at the same age, collectively named the 27 Club.
After her death was announced, media and camera crews appeared near Winehouse's residence. Forensic investigators entered the flat as police cordoned off the street outside; they recovered one small and two large bottles of vodka from her room. After her death, the singer broke her second Guinness World Record: for the most songs by a woman to simultaneously appear on the UK singles chart, with eight. Winehouse's record label, Universal Republic, released a statement that read in part: "We are deeply saddened at the sudden loss of such a gifted musician, artist and performer."
With initially little verified information regarding the causes of Winehouse's death, there was considerable speculation on the subject. Various reports speculated on a fatal Class A drug, such as ecstasy overdose, or a lethal cocktail. Winehouse's father Mitch denied these claims, stating: "Three years ago, Amy conquered her drug dependency. She was the happiest she has been for years." By the following month, August 2011, speculation about substance abuse being a factor in Winehouse's death had been disproven by an official toxicology report released to the public which showed that no illegal substances had been identified in Winehouse's system. The coroner's report was released in October 2011, and it stated that Winehouse's blood alcohol content was 416 mg per 100 ml (0.416%) at the time of her death, more than five times the legal drink-drive limit. According to the coroner, the "unintended consequence" of so much drink was her "sudden and unexpected death", as it reached a 'death by misadventure' verdict. Another inquest was ordered when it was ruled that the first coroner was 'not qualified' for the role". The second inquest, delivered in January 2013, matched the conclusions of the first inquest, with coroner Dr. Shirley Radcliffe finding that "She (Winehouse) voluntarily consumed alcohol, a deliberate act that took an unexpected turn in that it caused her death." The second inquest reached the verdict of misadventure due to alcohol poisoning, stated in an interview with The Guardian.
On 17 December 2012, British authorities reopened the probe into Winehouse's death. On 8 January 2013, a second inquest confirmed that Winehouse died of an accidental alcohol overdose. In a June 2013 interview, Alex Winehouse shared his belief that his sister's eating disorder, and the consequent physical weakness, was the primary cause of her death:
She suffered from bulimia very badly. That's not, like, a revelation – you knew just by looking at her... She would have died eventually, the way she was going, but what really killed her was the bulimia... I think that it left her weaker and more susceptible. Had she not had an eating disorder, she would have been physically stronger.Winehouse's funeral was held on 26 July 2011 at Edgwarebury Lane Cemetery in North London, it was a private ceremony attended by family and friends. Her mother and father, Janis and Mitch Winehouse, close friends Nick Grimshaw and Kelly Osbourne, producer Mark Ronson, goddaughter Dionne Bromfield and her boyfriend Reg Traviss were among those in attendance at the private service led by Rabbi Frank Hellner. Her father delivered the eulogy, saying "Goodnight, my angel, sleep tight. Mummy and Daddy love you ever so much." Carole King's "So Far Away" closed the service with mourners singing along as it was one of Winehouse's favourite songs. She was later cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. The family planned to sit a two-day shiva. On 16 September 2012, Winehouse's ashes were buried alongside those of her grandmother Cynthia Levy at Edgwarebury Lane Cemetery.
Legacy
Achievements and critical appraisal
At the time of her death, Winehouse had sold over 1.75 million singles and over 3.98 million albums in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, she had sold about 3.4 million tracks and 2.7 million albums in the United States as of the same date. Among the awards and recognition for her debut album Frank, Winehouse earned an Ivor Novello Award from the British Academy of Songwriters for Best Contemporary Song ("Stronger Than Me"), a Brit Award nomination for Best British Female Solo Artist, and an inclusion in Robert Dimery's 2006 book, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Her second studio album, Back to Black, produced numerous nominations, including two Brit Awards (Best British Album, and won her Best British Female Solo Artist), six Grammy Awards (including five wins), four Ivor Novello Awards, four MTV Europe Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, three World Music Awards, and it was nominated for the Mercury Prize (Album of the Year) and a MOBO Awards (Best UK Female). During her career, Winehouse received 23 awards from 60 nominations.
Winehouse was known for her deep, expressive contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres, including soul, (sometimes labelled as blue-eyed soul and neo soul), rhythm and blues, and jazz. The BBC's Garry Mulholland called Winehouse "the pre-eminent vocal talent of her generation". According to AllMusic's Cyril Cordor, she was one of the UK's premier singers during the 2000s. "Fans and critics alike embraced her rugged charm, brash sense of humor, and distinctively soulful and jazzy vocals". In The Guardian, Caroline Sullivan later wrote that "her idolisation of Dinah Washington and the Ronettes distinguished her from almost all newly minted pop singers of the early 2000s, and her exceptionally-susceptible-to-heartbreak voice did the rest".
Soon after Winehouse's death, a number of prominent critics assessed the singer's legacy. Maura Johnston from The Village Voice said, "When she was on, Winehouse had few peers—she wasn't an octave-jumper like other big divas of the moment, but her contralto had a snap to it that enriched even the simplest syllables with a full spectrum of emotion". Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker proclaimed, "Nobody can match Winehouse's unique transitions or her utterly weird phrasings. She sounded like an original sixties soul star, developed when the landscape had no rules. But now untrammelled traditionalism is in the lead and her beautiful footnote has been cut short. American soul—through visionaries like Erykah Badu and Janelle Monáe and Jill Scott—had moved on. But Winehouse was a fine shepherd of the past."
On 13 February 2012, Winehouse was ranked 26th on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Music list. In March 2017, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan said he was enjoying listening to Winehouse's last record (Back to Black), and called her "the last real individualist around". In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Winehouse at number 83 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
Influence
Adele has credited Winehouse's success in making her and fellow British singer Duffy's journey to the United States "a bit smoother." Lady Gaga credited Winehouse with paving the way for her rise to the top of the charts, explaining that Winehouse made it easier for unconventional women to have mainstream pop success. Raphael Saadiq, Anthony Hamilton and John Legend said "Amy Winehouse was produced by people who wanted to create a marketing coup. The positive side is that it reacquainted an audience with this music and played an introductory role for others. This reinvigorated the genre by overcoming the vintage aspect." Other artists that have credited Winehouse as an influence or for paving the way for them include Bruno Mars, Tove Lo, Jessie J, Emeli Sandé, Victoria Justice, Paloma Faith, Lana Del Rey, Sam Smith, Florence Welch, Halsey, Alessia Cara, Estelle, Daya, Jorja Smith, Lauren Jauregui and Billie Eilish.
After the release of Back to Black, record companies sought out female artists with a similar sound and fearless and experimental female musicians in general. Adele and Duffy were the second wave of artists with a sound similar to Winehouse's. A third wave of female musicians that has emerged since the album was released are led by V V Brown, Florence and the Machine, La Roux and Little Boots. In March 2011, the New York Daily News ran an article attributing the continuing wave of British female artists that have been successful in the United States to Winehouse and her absence. Spin magazine music editor Charles Aaron was quoted as saying "Amy Winehouse was the Nirvana moment for all these women," "They can all be traced back to her in terms of attitude, musical styles or fashion." According to Keith Caulfield, chart manager for Billboard, "Because of Amy, or the lack thereof, the marketplace was able to get singers like Adele, Estelle and Duffy," "Now those ladies have brought on the new ones, like Eliza Doolittle, Rumer and Ellie."
Amy Winehouse Foundation
After the singer's death by alcohol intoxication in July 2011, the Amy Winehouse Foundation was set up by Winehouse's family and launched on 14 September 2011 (which would have been Winehouse's 28th birthday). Its aim is to help vulnerable or disadvantaged young people, and it works with other charitable organisations to provide frontline support. Its central office is in North London, but it also has an office in New York (operating under the name 'The Amy Winehouse Foundation US'). Jon Snow is a patron for the charity, with Barbara Windsor also before she died in 2020, and ambassadors include Jess Glynne, Patsy Palmer, Jessie Wallace, Keira Chaplin and Mica Paris. In October 2015 Mark Ronson became a patron. Amy's brother Alex works full-time for the foundation, having given up his career as an online music journalist.
The charity itself works to prevent the effects of drug and alcohol misuse on young people and it also aims to support, inform and inspire vulnerable and disadvantaged young people to help them reach their full potential. On 12 March 2013, with the help of ex-addict Russell Brand, the Foundation launched the Amy Winehouse Foundation Resilience Programme For Schools across the UK which aims to provide effective education around drugs, alcohol and dealing with emotional issues.
Tributes
Artworks and exhibits
London's Mall Galleries opened an exhibition in May 2008 that included a sculpture of Winehouse, titled Excess. The piece, created by Guy Portelli, had a miniature of the singer lying on top of a cracked champagne bottle, with a pool of spilled liquid underneath. The body was covered with what appeared to be tiny pills, while one outstretched hand held a glass. Another piece, a print titled Celebrity 1 by artist Charlotte Suckling, was shown in the same exhibition.
Winehouse was immortalised at the world-famous London Madame Tussauds on 23 July 2008. Winehouse herself had expressed surprise at plans to make a waxwork of her, stating that she believed a person 'had to be dead' before a waxwork was made of them. Winehouse did not make herself available for sittings for the Madame Tussauds waxwork, which was instead done from photos. A sculpture by Marco Perego, titled The Only Good Rock Star Is a Dead Rock Star, that depicts Winehouse lying in a pool of blood with an apple and a bullet hole in her head after being shot by American novelist and Beat poet William S. Burroughs (in a recreation of the accidental killing of his wife Joan Vollmer), went on on display in New York's Half Gallery on 14 November 2008 with a sale price of US$100,000. Perego said of the sculpture: "Rock stars are the sacrificial animals of society." Winehouse was not supportive of Peregro's work, with her spokesperson stating: "It's a funny kind of tribute. The artist seems in thrall to a tabloid persona that is not the real Amy. People often use her image to sell their work."
Initial reports after her death stated that Winehouse had left a will, which had been altered after her divorce from Blake Fielder-Civil. However it transpired that Winehouse had not left a will; her estate, worth around £4 million, was inherited by her parents. Winehouse's parents set up the Amy Winehouse Foundation to prevent harm from drug misuse among young people, with her brother Alex as an employee.
In 2012, Winehouse was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires.
On 14 September 2014 (which would have been Winehouse's 31st birthday), a statue of her by sculptor Scott Eaton was unveiled at Stables Market in Camden Town, North London. Fans and relatives gathered for the unveiling in Camden's Stable Market. London-based Eaton, who sculpted the piece after being introduced to Winehouse's father Mitch, said the statue was meant to capture her "attitude and strength, but also give subtle hints of insecurity." Her father Mitch said of the statue: "Now Amy will oversee the comings and goings of her home town forever... Amy was in love with Camden and it is the place her fans from all over the world associate her with."
An exhibit of Winehouse's personal items, co-curated by her brother and sister-in-law, titled Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait, was on display at the Jewish Museum London from 3 July 2013 until 15 September 2013, and later exhibited in San Francisco, 23 July 2015 to 1 November 2015. Display items, such as books and music, were featured together with captions written by Winehouse's brother.
In 2018, the artist Dan Llywelyn Hall's portrait of the singer, Amy's Glance, was exhibited at the London Art Fair.
In March 2020, Winehouse's name on a stone was unveiled on the new Music Walk of Fame in Camden, with her parents Mitch and Janis in attendance at the ceremony.
In 2020, an exhibition titled Beyond Black – The Style of Amy Winehouse opened at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibit mainly focused on Winehouse's style and fashion, displaying outfits such as her iconic dresses, shoes, hair accessories, makeup bag as well as Winehouse's personal belongings including her Grammy awards from 2008, handwritten lyrics, records and unseen home videos. The exhibition went on display in the U.S. from 17 January 2020 until 13 April 2020. A follow-up exhibition Amy: Beyond the Stage opened on 26 November 2021 until 10 April 2022 at the Design Museum in Kensington, London which also presented some of Winehouse's personal belongings and focus on her fashion sense, as well as paying homage to her musical career. Also in November 2021, various of Winehouse's personal items and famous dresses would later be auctioned at Julien's Auctions in Los Angeles and made more than £3m, 30% going to the Amy Winehouse Foundation.
Many musical artists have since paid tribute to Winehouse including Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Lady Gaga, Kelly Osbourne, Rihanna, George Michael, Adele, Dita Von Teese, Courtney Love, and the rock band Green Day, who wrote a song in her tribute titled "Amy". In her 2012 album Banga, singer Patti Smith released "This Is the Girl", written as an homage to Winehouse. Mark Ronson dedicated his UK number-one album Uptown Special to Winehouse, stating: "I'm always thinking of you and inspired by you."
Films and memoirs
In late 2011, there were reports that Winehouse's former boyfriend, Reg Traviss, was developing a film about her. Winehouse's father Mitch Winehouse, who owns the copyright to his daughter's music, said he would not authorise the use of her music for the film.
Winehouse's parents have each written memoirs about their daughter and donated the proceeds from both books to the Amy Winehouse Foundation. In the introduction to Mitch Winehouse's biography, titled Amy: My Daughter (2012), he explained: "Apart from being her father, I was also her friend, confidant and adviser—not that she always took my advice, but she always heard me out." Her mother Janis published Loving Amy: A Mother's Story, in 2014.
A documentary film, Amy (2015), directed by Asif Kapadia and produced by James Gay-Rees, was released on 3 July 2015. The film covers Winehouse's life, her relationships, her struggles with substance abuse both before and after her career blossomed, and which eventually caused her death. The film received its première at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival on 16 May and has been reviewed as "a tragic masterpiece", "brilliant", "heartbreaking" and "unmissable". The soundtrack of the same name was released on 30 October 2015, along with the DVD that includes music featured in the documentary by film composer Antônio Pinto and classic and some unreleased tracks by Winehouse. The film was highly acclaimed and received various accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2016 Oscars, Best Music Film at the 2016 Grammy Awards, the BAFTA for Best Documentary, the MTV Movie Award for Best Documentary, in addition to a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best British Film.
On 9 October 2017, it was announced by Winehouse's father Mitch that a West End/Broadway musical on Amy is in the works. Mitch Winehouse revealed the news at the Amy Winehouse Foundation Gala event in London.
In 2018, a documentary film based on Winehouse's album Back to Black, Amy Winehouse – Back to Black, was released. It contains new interviews as well as archival footage. It was made by Eagle Vision and produced by Gil Cang. Released on DVD on 2 November 2018, the film features interviews by producers Ronson & Remi, who worked half and half on the album, along with the Dap Kings, Remi's music team, Ronnie Spector from the Ronettes and close ones to Winehouse, including Nick Shymansky, Juliette Ashby and Dionne Bromfield. The film is accompanied by An Intimate Evening in London, footage of a show Winehouse gave at Riverside Studios, London in 2008. In February 2019, Salaam Remi released a compilation album including the song "Find My Love" which is a posthumous collaboration between Winehouse and rapper Nas.
As the years passed since her death, talk began to grow of a film biopic of Amy Winehouse's life. In October 2018, it was announced that Winehouse's estate had signed a multi-million pound deal to make a film biopic about her life and career. In August 2021 it was reported that a film based on Daphne Barak's 2010 book, Saving Amy, which chronicles the late singer's final years, had been greenlighted by Halcyon Studios. However, in September 2021, Amy's father and estate executor, Mitch, stated that was “100% not allowed.”
In July 2021, a new documentary titled Reclaiming Amy aired on BBC Two to mark the 10th anniversary of Winehouse's death. The film was primarily based on the perspective and narrated by her mother Janis Winehouse-Collins and included intimate stories of those who were close to Winehouse until the end of her life, including close friends Naomi Parry (Winehouse's stylist), Catriona Gourlay and Chantelle Dusette.
In July 2022, it was reported that a feature film biopic, entitled Back To Black (2024) was to be produced by StudioCanal UK, distributed by Focus Features and directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson—who previously made a biopic of The Beatles star John Lennon, Nowhere Boy (2009)—and directed Fifty Shades of Grey (2015). The script was written by Matt Greenhalgh and it was to be made with the full cooperation of Amy's father Mitch, and her estate. In January 2023, it was revealed that British actress Marisa Abela would play the leading role of Winehouse and filming commenced later that month in London. In January 2024, a trailer for Back to Black was released along with a debut release date of April 12 in the UK.
The film was moderately successful at the box office, with a worldwide total of $51.1 million. The film attracted mixed reviews, with criticism for a selective depiction of Winehouse's life, including the complete omission of Reg Traviss, and over-sympathetic depictions of Mitch Winehouse, and Blake Fielder-Civil, but praise for the acting. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 34% of 175 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Back to Black's sympathetic approach to its subject's story is an overdue antidote to the tabloid treatment she often received in life, even if the end results are disappointingly pedestrian."
Discography
Frank (2003)
Back to Black (2006)
See also
List of deaths through alcohol
References
Sources
Winehouse, Mitch (2012). Amy, My Daughter. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-219139-7.
Further reading
Winehouse, Janis (2014). Loving Amy: A Mother's Story. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4735-0816-3.
External links
Official website
Amy Winehouse at AllMusic
Amy Winehouse at Curlie
Amy Winehouse collected news and commentary at The Guardian
Amy Winehouse collected news and commentary at The New York Times
Amy Winehouse Foundation - Charity Commission for England and Wales |
Paramore | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramore | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramore"
] | Paramore is an American rock band formed in Franklin, Tennessee, in 2004. Since 2017, the band's lineup includes lead vocalist Hayley Williams, lead guitarist Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro. Williams and Farro are founding members of the group, while York, a high school friend of the original lineup, joined in 2007. Williams is the only member to appear on all six of Paramore's studio albums.
The band was signed to Fueled by Ramen, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records (which is owned by Warner Music Group.) Williams was signed to Atlantic separately, as she was scouted when she was a teenager. They were the only label to let her stay in the band instead of going solo, but Atlantic said the rest of the band had to sign to Fueled by Ramen. The group's debut album, All We Know Is Falling (2005), reached number 30 on Billboard's Heatseekers Chart in 2006 and number four on the UK Rock Chart in 2009.
The band's second album, Riot! (2007) became a mainstream success thanks to the success of the singles "Misery Business", "Crushcrushcrush", and "That's What You Get". The album was certified Platinum in the US and the band received a Best New Artist nomination at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Their 2009 follow-up, Brand New Eyes, reached number two on the Billboard 200 and became the band's second-highest-charting album to date. It produced the top-forty single "The Only Exception" and went platinum in Ireland and the UK.
Following the departure of Zac and Josh Farro in 2010, the band released their self-titled fourth album in 2013. Paramore gave the band their first number one song on the US Billboard 200 and was also the number one album in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. It included the singles "Still Into You" and "Ain't It Fun", with the latter winning the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song for Williams and York as songwriters, making it Paramore's first Grammy win. The band's lineup changed once again after this album, with bassist Jeremy Davis leaving the band near the end of 2015 and former drummer Zac Farro rejoining the band in 2017. Their fifth and sixth studio albums, After Laughter and This Is Why, were released in May 2017 and February 2023, respectively, to critical acclaim.
History
2002–2004: Formation and early years
In 2002, at age 13, vocalist Hayley Williams moved from her hometown Meridian, Mississippi, to Franklin, Tennessee, where she met brothers Josh Farro and Zac Farro at a weekly supplemental program for home-schooled students. Shortly after arriving, she began taking vocal lessons with Brett Manning. Prior to forming Paramore, Williams and bassist Jeremy Davis, along with friend Kimee Read, took part in a funk cover band called the Factory, while Josh and Zac Farro had practiced together after school. The other members of what was soon to be Paramore had been "edgy about the whole female thing" of having Williams as vocalist, but, because they were good friends, she started writing for them. Williams said of the members when she first met them, "They were the first people I met who were as passionate about music as I was."
Williams was originally signed to Atlantic Records as a solo artist in 2003. She had been introduced to Atlantic A&R Tom Storms by Kent Marcus and Jim Zumwalt, lawyers of managers Dave Steunebrink and Richard Williams, and then eventually signed to Atlantic by Jason Flom. Steunebrink and Richard Williams had originally discovered and signed her to a production deal that was later bought out by Atlantic. The original plan of the label was to turn her into a pop singer, but Williams resisted, saying that she wanted to play alternative rock music with a band. In an interview with HitQuarters the band's A&R at Atlantic, Steve Robertson, said, "She wanted to make sure that we didn't look at her as some straight to Top 40 pop princess. She wanted to make sure that she and her band got the chance to show what they can do as a rock band writing their own songs." Label president Julie Greenwald and the label staff decided to go with her wishes. The original management team for the band was Dave Steunebrink, Creed manager Jeff Hanson, and Hanson's assistant Mark Mercado.
The band was officially formed by Josh Farro (lead guitar/backing vocals), Zac Farro (drums), Davis (bass guitar) and Williams (lead vocals) in 2004, with the later addition of Williams' neighbor Jason Bynum (rhythm guitar). When Davis showed up, he was stunned to find out the drummer was only fourteen years old. He admitted "I had very, very, very, little faith in everyone in the band because of their age. I remember thinking, 'This is not going to work because this kid is way too young,' but that first day of practice was amazing. I knew we were on to something." According to Williams, the name "Paramore" came from the maiden name of the mother of one of their first bass players. Once the group learned the meaning of the homophone paramour ('secret lover'), they decided to adopt the name, using the Paramore spelling.
Paramore was originally supposed to release their music on Atlantic Records, but the label's marketing department decided it would be better for the image of the band to not have them attached to a major label. Instead, they released their music through the niche label Fueled by Ramen. Lyor Cohen, the head of Warner Music Group, had already identified Fueled by Ramen as a label they should partner with. It was decided the rock label would make an ideal match for Paramore. According to Robertson, when the band was presented to Fueled by Ramen's CEO John Janick, "he got the vision of the band immediately." Janick went to a Taste of Chaos performance in Orlando, Florida, to see the band perform live. In April 2005, after a smaller private performance at a warehouse, the band was signed to Atlantic Records and Fueled By Ramen.
The band's first song written together was "Conspiracy", which was later used on their debut album. At this time, they were touring the Southeast, usually being driven by Williams' parents. She commented that "Back then, I guess we were all thinking, after school, we'll go to the house and practice. It was what we loved to do for fun, and still do! I don't think any of us really knew this would turn out to be what it's become."
2005–2006: All We Know Is Falling
Paramore traveled back to Orlando, Florida, but shortly after arriving, Jeremy Davis left the band, citing personal reasons. The remaining four members of Paramore continued with the album, writing "All We Know" about his departure, and later deciding to base All We Know Is Falling around the concept. The album artwork also reflected Paramore's grief, as Hayley Williams explains, "The couch on the cover of All We Know is Falling with no one there and the shadow walking away; it's all about Jeremy leaving us and us feeling like there's an empty space."
Before touring, the band added John Hembree (bass) to their lineup to replace Davis. During that summer, Paramore was featured on the Shiragirl stage of the 2005 Warped Tour. After being asked by the band, Jeremy Davis returned to Paramore after five months apart, replacing Hembree. All We Know Is Falling was released on July 26, 2005, and reached No. 30 on Billboard's Heatseekers Chart. Paramore released "Pressure" as its first single, with a video directed by Shane Drake, but the song failed to chart. The video featured the band performing in a warehouse, eventually getting sprayed with water sprinklers as the storyline of a conflicted couple occurs. In July, "Emergency" was released as the second single, the video again reuniting the band with director Shane Drake and featuring Hunter Lamb (rhythm guitar), who replaced Jason Bynum in December 2005. The video for "Emergency" showcased Paramore in another performance, this time fixing the members' bloody costumes. The third single, "All We Know", was released with limited airtime, with the video consisting of a collection of live performances and backstage footage. After the band's later success, All We Know Is Falling and "Pressure" were certified Gold by the RIAA.
In January 2006, the band took part in the Winter Go West tour, where they played alongside Seattle bands Amber Pacific and the Lashes. In February, Hayley Williams was featured on "Keep Dreaming Upside Down" by October Fall. In spring of 2006, Paramore was an opening act on tours for both Bayside and the Rocket Summer. The band then covered Foo Fighters' "My Hero" for the Sound of Superman soundtrack.
During the summer of 2006, Paramore played a portion of Warped Tour, primarily on the Volcom and Hurley Stages. During the band's time at Warped Tour, they released The Summer Tic EP, which was sold exclusively during the tour. Paramore's first US headlining tour began on August 2, 2006, to a sold-out audience with support from This Providence, Cute Is What We Aim For, and Hit the Lights. That year they were voted "Best New Band", and Hayley Williams was voted as No. 2 "Sexiest Female", by readers of the British magazine Kerrang!.
In 2007, Lamb left the group to get married, and Paramore continued onward as a quartet. Paramore was then named by British magazine NME as one of ten bands to watch out for in their "New Noise 2007" feature. Paramore was featured in Kerrang! magazine once more; however, Hayley Williams believed the article was an untrue portrayal of the band, particularly because it focused on her as the main component. Afterwards, Williams addressed the issue in the band's LiveJournal, with a post saying, "we could've done without a cover piece. sorry, if it offends anyone at Kerrang! but I don't think there was one bit of truth in that article." In April, Hayley Williams' vocals were featured in "Then Came To Kill" by the Chariot. They headlined a tour in April through May 2007 with This Providence, the Almost, and Love Arcade. The Almost and Love Arcade were replaced by Quietdrive for the second half of the tour.
2007–2008: Riot!
Before work began on the band's next album, Davis was expelled from the band due to "his lack of work ethic and participation in things that Zac, Hayley and I didn't agree with", according to Josh Farro. After an agreement involving the remaining three members, Davis was reinstated as bassist, and Taylor York became the band's new guitarist. York had been in a band with the Farro brothers before the two met Williams.
After being courted by producers Neal Avron and Howard Benson, Paramore opted to record the album with producer David Bendeth in New Jersey, who had previously worked with Your Vegas and Breaking Benjamin. The album, titled Riot!, was released on June 12, 2007, entering the Billboard 200 at number 20 and the UK charts at number 24. The album sold 44,000 units its first week in the United States. The name Riot! had been chosen because it meant "a sudden outburst of uncontrolled emotion", and it was a word that "summed it all up". "Misery Business" was released as the first single from the album. According to when discussing what Misery Business was about, Williams stated, "When I was 13 or 14 and I had a crush on Josh, he didn't like me back," Williams said. "He would go hang out with his girlfriend, who I wrote 'Misery Business' about because I was a dick." In the summer of 2007, Paramore participated in their third Warped Tour, and they posted journals of their experiences on yourhereblog for MTV.
On October 11, 2007, the music video for "Crushcrushcrush" debuted on the United States television as the next single from Riot!. The video for "Crushcrushcrush" featured the band playing a performance in a barren desert, being spied upon, and later destroying their equipment. The single was released in the United States on November 19 and made available in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2007. Hayley Williams recorded guest vocals for the tracks "The Church Channel" and "Plea" for the Say Anything concept album In Defense of the Genre, released on October 23, 2007. The group performed live in an acoustic style in Boston on November 29, 2007, for FNX Radio. On December 31, 2007, Paramore performed on the MTV New Year's Eve program which ran from 11:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.
Paramore was featured on the cover of February 2008 issue of Alternative Press magazine and voted "Best Band Of 2007" by the readers. The band was nominated for "Best New Artist" at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, presented on February 10, 2008. Early 2008 saw Paramore touring the United Kingdom, supporting their album Riot!, along with New Found Glory. In early February 2008, the band began a tour in Europe; however, on February 21, 2008, the band announced that they had canceled six shows due to personal issues. Williams wrote on the band's web site that "the break will give that band 'a chance to get away and work out our personal issues'". MTV.com reported that fans of Paramore were speculating about the future of the band and reported rumors of trouble had begun earlier in the month, when Josh Farro expressed his anger against the media's focus on Hayley Williams. The band, however, returned to their hometown to record the music video for the fourth single "That's What You Get", which was then released on March 24, 2008.
The band toured with Jimmy Eat World in the United States in April and May 2008. The band headlined the Give it a Name festival in the United Kingdom on May 10 and 11, 2008. Paramore played their first Ireland show at the RDS in Dublin on June 2, 2008, followed by the 2008 Vans Warped Tour from July 1–6. Starting on July 28, Paramore embarked on a tour named "The Final Riot!". They were joined by Jack's Mannequin, Phantom Planet, and Paper Route on the tour. The band released a live album named The Final Riot! on November 25, 2008. The album includes a bonus DVD with a full concert recorded in Chicago, as well as a behind the scenes documentary. As of April 9, 2009, The Final Riot! is certified gold in the United States.
2009–2011: Brand New Eyes, departure of the Farros, and Singles Club
In September 2008, Williams announced that the band were planning on releasing their third studio album in summer 2009. On November 18, 2008, the band announced they were in the process of writing their next album.
Paramore spent six weeks in pre-production at Emac Studios in their hometown of Franklin, the first time they had undergone pre-production without the guidance of a producer. The band was visited by record producer Rob Cavallo who reassured the band that they were on the right track. The band subsequently felt that the album and that their new material had the potential to surpass the success of their previous work. The band originally planned to record in Nashville, but ended up recording in Calabasas, California, with Cavallo in March 2009. The first single from the album was "Ignorance" and was released July 7, 2009. Paramore was the special guest with Bedouin Soundclash, The Sounds and Janelle Monáe at the No Doubt Summer Tour 2009, starting in May 2009 in outdoor amphitheaters and arenas across the US and Canada. The official music video for "Ignorance" aired on all MTV platforms, networks, and websites on August 13, 2009. Paramore, along with Paper Route and The Swellers, toured in support of Brand New Eyes in the fall of 2009. Some tour dates were postponed due to Hayley Williams becoming infected with laryngitis. "Brick By Boring Brick", "The Only Exception", "Careful" and "Playing God" were the album's following singles. To promote the album, the band recorded a performance for MTV Unplugged.
Paramore then played a sold out 15-date European tour with You Me At Six, Paper Route and Now Now Every Children. Their stadium tour culminated at London's Wembley Arena, to an audience of 12,500. The band performed in 2010 in the Australian Soundwave Festival along with bands such as Faith No More, AFI, You Me at Six, All Time Low, A Day to Remember, and Taking Back Sunday. Shortly before the tour, lead guitarist Josh Farro announced that he was engaged and stayed behind to plan his wedding. Justin York, brother of Taylor York, filled in for him on the tour. The band, with Farro returned, embarked on a spring tour of the U.S. in late April. The band headlined the 2010 Honda Civic Tour, which began on July 23 in Raleigh, NC and closed on September 19 in Anaheim, CA. After a short United Kingdom tour in November 2010, the band announced, on December 2, 2010, the official dates for a South American tour to take place during February and March 2011. The band were set to take a break after their South American Tour in 2011 to write for their fourth studio album.
On December 18, 2010, a message was released through Paramore.net stating that Josh and Zac Farro were leaving the band. The band also confirmed the scheduled South American tour would still happen. Josh Farro wrote a statement on the departure on his Blogger, claiming that the band was "a manufactured product of a major-label". He accused Hayley Williams of being manipulated by her management, treating the rest of the group as her solo project, and claimed she was the only member of the band who was signed to Atlantic Records, while her bandmates were simply "riding on the coattails of her dream". On December 30, 2010, MTV News interviewed Williams, York and Davis in Franklin, Tennessee, regarding their reactions to Farro's response. The band members confirmed many of Farro's statements, notably that Williams was indeed the only member of the band actually signed to Atlantic. They added that they felt the statement was irrelevant, and claimed they had addressed many of the Farro's critiques already throughout the course of their career.
On January 10, 2011, in an interview with MTV, Hayley Williams said that despite the band losing two of its founding members, they would release new music in 2011, although they had not confirmed if it would be a full album for release or just a small number of songs. The singer also admitted that Paramore's style was likely to change with the new lineup, but clarified that the band would still retain their core signature sound. Paramore later confirmed they were entering a studio in Los Angeles with producer Rob Cavallo to record what would be the Singles Club.
On June 3, 2011, Paramore released the single "Monster", featured on the Transformers: Dark of the Moon soundtrack. This is the first song that the band released without the Farro brothers. On June 9, 2011, Hayley Williams announced that the band had started to write their fourth album, which they hoped to start recording at the end of the year, with an early 2012 release. On October 11, 2011, Paramore announced that they would release a new song for each of the remaining months of 2011. The band set up the Singles Club on their website which gave fans the chance to purchase the singles when they were released, as they were released exclusively through the Singles Club and were therefore not sold elsewhere. A song called "Renegade", premiered the day of the announcement, with "Hello Cold World" following on November 7, and "In the Mourning" on December 5. In 2011, former member, Josh Farro, formed Novel American, with Zac Farro later joining the band.
2012–2015: Paramore and Davis' third exit
On April 18, 2012, Williams announced that the producer for their fourth album was Justin Meldal-Johnsen. Former Lostprophets and current Angels & Airwaves and Nine Inch Nails drummer Ilan Rubin was confirmed to be the session drummer for the recording of the album. Paramore was officially released on April 5, 2013, and a #1 at US albums chart Billboard 200. The first single from the album, titled "Now", was released online on January 22, 2013, and the album's second single, "Still Into You", was released on March 14, 2013, achieving commercial success. The third single, "Daydreaming", was released on December 2, 2013. The album's fourth single, "Ain't It Fun", was released on February 4, 2014, eventually becoming the band's highest-charting song in the United States and a winner for Best Rock Song at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. On November 24, 2014, Paramore: Self-Titled Deluxe was released, which includes a remake of "Hate to See Your Heart Break", a song originally on Paramore, featuring Joy Williams; this is the band's first collaboration on a song. The band embarked on an intimate tour with Copeland, they said in a blog post that "It feels right to bring the Self-Titled era to a close. We've had a very personal and hugely triumphant journey with this one. What wouldn't feel right is saying goodbye to this time in the band's career and not celebrating it with our fans in some special way."
On December 14, 2015, bassist Jeremy Davis left the band. In March 2016, Davis was involved in a legal battle with Paramore, claiming to be eligible to enjoy the benefits of a business partnership with Hayley Williams as a co-owner of the band. This was quickly dismissed and he was again involved in a legal battle with Hayley Williams and Taylor York over a breach of contract entitling him to ownership and authorship of songs on their self-titled record, including "Ain't It Fun", and again, claiming to be eligible to enjoy the benefits of the earnings the two received from these songs and album. Davis reached a settlement with the band in May 2017.
During this period, lead singer Williams later revealed that she suffered from depression and mental health issues following the departure of Davis as well as a divorce with her ex-husband Chad Gilbert. In an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 Radio, shes described it as "torment" and mentioned that she "didn't laugh for a long time". As a result, Williams privately left the band for a short period in 2015, briefly leaving York as the only remaining member of the group.
2016–2019: Zac Farro's return and After Laughter
On January 19, 2016, Williams announced that the band was in the process of writing their fifth album. On June 8, 2016, the band posted a short video of themselves in the studio to their social media. This was preceded by a number of images which all included both former drummer Zac Farro and producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen, leading fans and various media outlets to speculate the return of Farro. On June 17, Farro was featured yet again in a picture uploaded to social media, this time behind a drum set, confirming that he would be recording drums for the album, though he later clarified that he was only recording drums for the album and that he had not rejoined the band as a full member. Despite this, on February 2, 2017, the band announced that Farro would return as the official drummer of the band.
On April 19, 2017, Paramore released "Hard Times" as the lead single from their album After Laughter, which they announced would be released on May 12, 2017. On May 3, a second single was released, titled "Told You So". A music video for the song "Fake Happy" was released on November 17, 2017. On February 5, 2018, a music video for "Rose-Colored Boy" was released, which is also the album's fourth single. The music video for "Caught in the Middle", the album's fifth single, was released on June 26, 2018. On September 7, 2018, Hayley Williams announced during a concert that the band will play the song "Misery Business" "for the last time for a really long time", mainly due to a line from the second verse that was perceived to be sexist, though this decision was reversed in 2022.
2020–present: This Is Why
On May 11, 2020, Williams teased a potential return to a more guitar-driven sound on the band's sixth album, commenting, "We've found ourselves listening to a lot of older music that we grew up being inspired by." In January 2022, it was confirmed that the band had entered the studio to work on their upcoming sixth studio album. The band described the album as more "guitar heavy". On January 18, the band was announced to headline the newly founded Las Vegas–based When We Were Young festival alongside My Chemical Romance on October 22, 2022, which was one of the first live performances the band had played since September 2018. On May 10, it was announced that the band would headline the Austin City Limits Festival in Austin, Texas, during October on the 9th and 16th of the same year, alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers, P!nk and Lil Nas X.
On July 15, 2022, it was announced that Paramore would be embarking on a tour in October and November 2022. On September 28, 2022, the band released the song "This Is Why" as the lead single from This Is Why, released on February 10, 2023. In November 2022, the band changed the album cover for their 2013 self-titled album to a picture of Hayley Williams from behind. On December 8, 2022, the band released the second single, "The News". On January 12, 2023, the band released the third single, "C'est Comme Ça". Paramore was nominated for Favorite Music Group at the 2023 Kids' Choice Awards. On February 6, 2023, the band debuted the song "Running Out of Time" at their album release show in Nashville. On February 16, 2023, the band released a music video for the album's fourth single, "Running Out of Time". The band's song, "This is Why", was nominated for "Best Alternative" at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards.
The band began teasing an upcoming remix album, Re: This Is Why in late September 2023, posting audio snippets from the album on their official Discord server. The album was officially announced on October 2. The album is set for release on October 6. Described as "almost a remix album", Re: This Is Why features reworked, remixed, and rewritten versions of songs from the band's 2023 album This Is Why, as well as an unreleased B-side demo. For the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, This Is Why was nominated for Best Rock Album and the album's title track was nominated for Best Alternative Music Performance.
On December 27, 2023, Paramore wiped their social media accounts and the band's website became inaccessible. A week later, they canceled a co-headlining appearance in Anaheim at iHeartRadio's Alter Ego festival scheduled for January 13, 2024, "due to unforeseen circumstances". In their place, Fall Out Boy was announced. Stereogum said that Paramore's label contract had expired. On January 10, 2024, A24 announced a tribute album for the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, which will feature a cover of "Burning Down The House" by Paramore as the leading track. In January 2024, the band were nominated for Best International Group at the 2024 BRIT Awards. On January 31, their cover of "Burning Down The House" was released as a single. On February 4, 2024, the band won two Grammy awards at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards with their album, This Is Why winning Best Rock Album and the title track winning Best Alternative Music Performance. On February 10, 2024, Paramore were announced as the ambassador for Record Store Day 2024 and confirmed that they would continue as an independent band after the end of their contract with Atlantic Records. On March 1, 2024, a music video for "Thick Skull" was released. In September 2024, during an interview with Dork, Williams revealed that Paramore has already started making new music, with demos made before they went on tour with Taylor Swift.
Musical style and influences
Paramore's music style has generally been regarded as pop-punk, emo, pop rock, alternative rock, power pop, emo pop, new wave, punk rock, pop, grunge, electropop, and synth-pop.
Joshua Martin had written after an interview with Hayley Williams, "The band isn't just a short pop-punk girl with red hair and a spunky attitude. Their music is like them, it's aged differently. It's sped up, and slowed down. It's emo without being whiny, or bratty. Almost a very literal anti-Avril Lavigne." Alternative Press magazine had commented that the band was "young-sounding", while consistently being "honest". Paramore's first album All We Know is Falling had an arguably more "formulaic pop-punk" sound that was "delivered particularly well" and the combination of the two had created a "refined rock infused pop/punk album". The band's second release, Riot! was said to explore a 'diverse range of styles," however, not straying far from "their signature sound". The band's later albums, such as Paramore and After Laughter, included more of a new wave and synth-pop sound. The band's sixth studio album, This Is Why went for more of a post-punk and dance-punk sound.
Alternative Press and various other reviewers have noted that the band's stage performances have helped boost them to larger fame. Alternative Press states that Williams "has more charisma than singers twice her age, and her band aren't far behind in their chops, either." Singer-songwriter John Mayer had praised Williams' voice in a blog in October 2007, calling her "The great orange hope"; "orange" in reference to her hair color. Due to the female-fronted aspect of the band, Paramore has gained comparisons to Kelly Clarkson and the aforementioned Avril Lavigne, to which one reviewer said was "sorely unfounded". Reviewer Jonathan Bradley noted that "Paramore attacks its music with infectious enthusiasm." However, he also explained that "there isn't a whole lot of difference between Riot! and the songs from Kelly Clarkson or Avril Lavigne." A reviewer at NME had likened Paramore's sound to that of "No Doubt (stripped of all the ska bollocks)" and "Kelly Clarkson's wildest dreams". Hayley Williams has gone on to comment about the female aspect of the band saying that Paramore is not "this girl-fronted band" and it makes "music for people to enjoy music, not so people can talk about my sexuality."
Paramore has expressed appreciation for Weezer, Hum, Failure, Far, No Doubt, Deftones, the Smiths, Blink-182, Death Cab for Cutie, Jimmy Eat World, Sunny Day Real Estate, and New Found Glory. Hayley Williams has cited her personal influences as MewithoutYou, Elvis Presley, the Shirelles, the Angels, the Ramones, Jawbreaker, Freddie Mercury, Karen O, Josh Scogin, Blondie, Bloc Party, NSYNC, Aaliyah, the Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, and Etta James.
Williams named many singers as heroines: "I love Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sioux. I grew up listening to The Distillers [...] Girl groups are really important to me, but the Shangri-Las especially". Williams also explained that bands such as U2, "who are massive, and do whatever they want, write whatever they want and they stand for something," Jimmy Eat World, "who I don't think ever disappoint their fans," and No Doubt, who "have done amazing things", act as a pattern for the path in which Paramore would like to take their career. In 2012, Williams contributed vocals to MewithoutYou's fifth studio album, Ten Stories.
The band members identified themselves as Christians in the past and in an interview with the BBC, Josh Farro stated "Our faith is very important to us. It's obviously going to come out in our music because if someone believes something, then their worldview is going to come out in anything they do. But we're not out here to preach to kids, we're out here because we love music." Farro later cited differing views on Christianity between him, his brother and Williams as one of the reasons for their departure in 2010. In a 2022 interview, Williams described herself, York, and Zac Farro as being "at different stages of unravelling their relationship to faith".
Live appearances
In 2007, the band played an acoustic set for the grand opening of a Warped Tour exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the dress Hayley Williams wore in the video for "Emergency" was also put on display in the exhibit.
In June 2007, they were declared by Rolling Stone as "Ones to Watch".
In August 2007, Paramore was featured in television spots on MTV, performing acoustic versions of their songs or acting in short accompaniments to MTV program commercials. As "MTV Artists of the Week", the band filmed the faux camping-themed spots in Queens, New York, all written and directed by Evan Silver and Gina Fortunato. MTV.com also has a collection of short videos with the band to promote Riot! as well. For weeks in August 2007, the "Misery Business" video was the number one streamed video at MTV.com. On October 8, Paramore played "Misery Business" live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In August, Paramore participated in New Found Glory's music video for their cover of Sixpence None the Richer's song "Kiss Me".
From September 29 to November 1, 2009, the band held a tour in North America to support Brand New Eyes. The tour for their self-titled fourth album, known as The Self-Titled Tour, took place in North America from October 15 to November 27, 2013. From June 19 through August 17, 2014, the band also supported the album with the Monumentour.
Appearances in films and video games
In 2005, Paramore made its first video game appearance with the song "Pressure" being featured in the console versions of the video game The Sims 2.
In March 2008, Paramore made its first rhythm game appearance with "Crushcrushcrush" as a downloadable track in the Rock Band games and later being a playable song in Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades. Later that year, Rock Band 2 was released with the song "That's What You Get" included as a playable track. The video game Guitar Hero World Tour featured the song "Misery Business" along with Hayley Williams participating in motion capture sessions for the game. She is featured as an unlockable character in the game as well. "Misery Business" was also featured as a playable track on Rock Band 3, while "Pressure", "The Only Exception", "Brick by Boring Brick", and "Ignorance" are available as DLC for the game. In 2015, the song "Still Into You" was featured as an on-disc song for Rock Band 4.
Paramore's song "Decode" was the lead single for the novel-based Twilight film. Another song called "I Caught Myself" is also featured on the film's soundtrack. "Decode" was released on October 1, 2008, on the Paramore Fan Club site as well as Stephenie Meyer's website. The music video premiered on November 3. Hot Topic hosted listening parties for the soundtrack on October 24, 2008, and the album was released on November 4, 2008. "Misery Business" is also featured in Saints Row 2, and the soundtrack for EA Sports NHL 08.
The music video for "Decode", along with the Twilight film trailer, was shown in the North American Home Theater of PlayStation Home from December 11, 2008, to December 18, 2008. The video premiered in full through MTV and its subsidiaries on November 3, 2008, one day ahead of the release of the soundtrack on which the song is featured.
Paramore's song "Now" is featured as a song for the game Rocksmith 2014. In March 2024, "Misery Business" was added as a playable track to Fortnite Festival.
Band members
Timeline
Discography
All We Know Is Falling (2005)
Riot! (2007)
Brand New Eyes (2009)
Paramore (2013)
After Laughter (2017)
This Is Why (2023)
Tours
Headlining tours
The Final Riot! Tour (2008)
Brand New Eyes World Tour (2009–2012)
The Self-Titled Tour (2013–2015)
After Laughter Tour (2017–2018)
This Is Why Tour (2022–2023)
Co-headlining tours
Honda Civic Tour (2010)
Monumentour (2014)
Opening acts
Summer Tour 2009 (2009)
21st Century Breakdown World Tour (2010)
The Eras Tour (2023–2024)
See also
List of awards and nominations received by Paramore
List of songs recorded by Paramore
List of alternative rock artists
Notes
References
External links
Official website
Paramore at AllMusic
Paramore discography at Discogs
Paramore discography at MusicBrainz |
Brand_New_Eyes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_New_Eyes | [
296
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_New_Eyes"
] | Brand New Eyes (stylized in all lowercase) is the third studio album by the American rock band Paramore, released on September 29, 2009, through Fueled by Ramen in the United States and Canada. The album was produced by Rob Cavallo and recorded in Hidden Hills, California from January to March 2009. It was written by band members Hayley Williams and Josh Farro, with guitarist Taylor York who co-wrote on four tracks, as a follow-up to Riot! (2007).
Praised by critics for its songwriting and the band's increased maturity, the album won Best Album at the Kerrang! Awards 2010, and "The Only Exception" received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Several publications included Brand New Eyes in their year-end lists. The album produced five singles: "Ignorance", "Brick by Boring Brick", "The Only Exception", "Careful", and "Playing God", all of which have been commercially successful in the United States and internationally.
Brand New Eyes debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 selling 175,000 copies in its first week, becoming their biggest album on that chart, until their self-titled album debuted at number one in 2013. The album topped the charts in many countries across the world including Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom, making it the band's second-highest charting album to date. The album was certified platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the United Kingdom by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), and Australia by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). It was also certified gold in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand. The band promoted the album with the Brand New Eyes World Tour, playing shows in North America, Asia, Europe, etc., as well as with festival appearances.
Brand New Eyes was the final album recorded by Paramore before Josh and Zac Farro departed the band in 2010. Zac Farro would later rejoin in 2017.
Background and production
After the release of Riot! (2007), a blog post in early 2008 was posted stating that Paramore were having "internal issues." Coupled with a week of cancelled shows, speculation arose that the band was going to break up. Not long after, it was resolved and claimed to be an issue of the members never having time to talk about things such as how they "were all growing up, and sometimes, when you're growing up, you're not always growing together". Further struggles to write new material had singer Hayley Williams expressing doubts about songwriting and meeting the expectations placed on the band after the success of Riot!. In September 2008, Williams revealed that the band might release their next album in summer 2009. On November 18, 2008, the band announced they were writing their next album, again mentioning that it might be out in summer 2009.
Paramore spent six weeks in pre-production at Emac Studios in their hometown of Franklin, the first time they had undergone pre-production without the guidance of a producer. A visit from record producer Rob Cavallo reassured the band that they were on the right track. "The album totally rocks," Cavallo said, "yet it's also very subtle." The band subsequently felt that the album and that their new material had the potential to surpass the success of their previous work. Although it was originally planned to record the album close to home in Nashville, the band commenced recording in Calabasas, California with Cavallo at the end of March 2009. They then added to the original material written at home with additional tunes written with the help of Cavallo after the move to Calabasas. Similar to most rock records, the band mostly tracked the drums first, followed by the rest of the members recording scratch tracks that they later overdubbed. Paramore finished production by May 2009.
Composition
The album's sound has been described as alternative rock, pop-punk, emo pop, and emo. Williams was concerned about lyrics that involved current issues, as opposed to resolved issues that she had written about in the past. "I was like, 'This isn't a feel-good song, because I'm writing about something I'm going through right now, and it's still painful,'" she continued. "And I confused that with actually not liking the songs, when actually I was prouder of them than I've ever been before. They're heavier emotions for me... I'm still going through some of this stuff, and these songs are really healing to me." The band as a whole treated the writing as a therapeutic experience, which helped them hash out old differences. Now that "all those words were out on the table", they were able to have their first real conversations in a long time, resolving the internal struggles they had been facing, by going back to the reasons why they started the band and had wanted to play music in the first place. Consequently, Paramore decided to name the record Brand New Eyes because of the allusion to seeing things from a whole new perspective, "Just trying to let go of whatever we might have struggled with the past and just see each other in a new way," explained Williams. The band soon felt that they were onto the right track, and, retrospectively looking back on Riot!, Paramore guitarist, Josh Farro, said "Riot! was a kiddie album, but we had to do that to get to this point."
Promotion and release
On April 29, 2009, it was revealed that the band's next album would be released in September. The first single from the album was "Ignorance", which was made available via digital download on July 7, on the same date the album became available for pre-order on Paramore's official website. Brand New Eyes was released on September 29 through Fueled by Ramen. The album's cover, an image of a butterfly divided from its wings, inspired the line "The angles were all wrong / Now she's ripping wings off of butterflies". Two versions of the album were made available: a standard CD edition as well as a deluxe, limited edition package that has sold out worldwide. The deluxe version included the album on CD with the acoustic versions of Where The Lines Overlap and Ignorance, a 40-page hardcover journal written by Hayley Williams, an exclusive poster that comes with only the box set, a booklet with the lyrics from all the songs from Brand New Eyes, a color vinyl 7-inch single with the acoustic versions of Ignorance and Where The Lines Overlap, one picture of each band member, a certificate of authenticity, and a DVD featuring a 30 minute long exclusive 'making-of' documentary. The CD was also one of the first to use iTunes LP.
"Brick by Boring Brick" was confirmed to be the second single from the album, released in November 2009. In December, the group went on a headlining UK tour with support from You Me at Six. In November 2010, the group went on a headlining UK tour. The fifth single from the album, "Playing God", was released on the November 16. To assist with promotion of the single, a music video for "Playing God", was also released. The album was released in high resolution (96 kHz/24bit) on HDtracks.com in 2012. The high res version has a greater dynamic range than the CD release. In January 2015 another deluxe edition of the album was released in high resolution (96 kHz/24bit) on the US store of the British company 7digital: this edition includes the acoustic version of Ignorance (also featured on the physical 2009 deluxed edition mentioned above) and two new, previously unreleased, acoustic versions of Brick by Boring Brick and Turn It Off (both later included in the iTunes deluxe edition bundle).
Critical reception
According to Metacritic, Brand New Eyes holds a score of 73 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews", based on 18 reviews through October 1, 2009. AbsolutePunk.net writer Julia Conny scored the album at 82% and praised frontwoman Hayley Williams, "Simultaneously down-to-earth and on top of the world, there is something about this Williams character that makes an album like Brand New Eyes more than another notch on that bitchy pop-rock bedpost. Just imagine what will happen when the band hits their mid-twenties." Andrew Leahey of AllMusic gave the album a positive review, stating, Brand New Eyes presents Paramore as a stronger, leaner, and altogether more consistent band."
Evan Lucy of Billboard also wrote a favorable review, saying, "Although the new set may lack the wide-eyed naiveté that made the group's past efforts so endearing, the newfound maturity makes for a compelling set of songs." Big Cheese magazine awarded a maximum five star rating and Cathy Reay wrote, "Brand New Eyes is a huge milestone for an intelligent, honest young band that deserve far more mainstream recognition than they get."
Alternative Press awarded the album 4.5 out of 5 and Scott Heisel praised the improvement of the album over its predecessor; "Riot! was ridiculously top-loaded, with an unmemorable second half. Eyes astonishes from start to finish, with the bouncy and confessional "Looking Up" and the immensely powerful track "All I Wanted" showing up as diamonds in an already gem-covered rough". Sarah Bee, journalist for the BBC gave a largely favorable review and summarized, "If you didn't like Paramore before, their third album is unlikely to sway you. They make the kind of forceful, commercial emo-pop that music lovers love to hate. However, as forceful, commercial emo-pop goes – and it does – Brand New Eyes is very good. It is brash and gauche, but charming."
Rock Sound however, went on to laud the slower efforts. "The album's big surprise comes in the form of the stripped-down closing tracks 'Misguided Ghosts' and 'All I Wanted', which see the fragility of Hayley's vocals laid against sparse instrumentation with truly immaculate results." Reviewer Faye Lewis went on to summarize, "Paramore are a young band growing up in the public glare, and although that would send many to the funny farm, it's made this quintet even stronger and Brand New Eyes is by far their best record yet".
Jon Dolan of Rolling Stone scored the album at three stars out of five. Much like Leonie Cooper of NME, he was critical of slower moments: "But some of the sweeping moments blunt the band's fresh-faced immediacy — as if the cute kids from the sticks have had a hard time turning pro." Spin magazine awarded four stars out of five in their review and complimented the band for standing out in a generic genre. "Paramore's follow-up, Brand New Eyes, which, at a moment of wet-and-wild Warped Tour cynicism (see Cobra Starship and 3OH!3), offers a principled reminder of a more earnest, honest age."
Drowned In Sound awarded the album eight out of ten and while writer Paul Stephen Gettings stated the record isn't "pushing any boundaries", he praised its longevity: "[...] if you're already a critic, this isn't going to convince you otherwise. This is a realization, and an affirmation, of Paramore's musical craftmanship and potential longevity. They have allowed themselves to grow and still retain the innocence and optimism that makes them so irresistible."
Kerrang! reviewer Dan Slessor gave the album 4 Ks (4/5) and claimed, "...in Brand New Eyes they have arguably delivered the most accomplished and affecting record of their career." NME were also favorable in their review. Although being critical of the album's slower moments, Leonie Cooper praised the record as a whole; "Sure, the two slower tracks might make for a break in the relentless pace, but who needs the rest? If you just so happen to be one of the best in the up-tempo pop-smattered emo-punk game, why bother slowing down? For this lot, more is most certainly more."
Accolades
Commercial performance
Commercially, Brand New Eyes was a major success. In the United States, the album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 175,000 copies. The following week the album slipped to number nine, selling an additional 44,000 copies. The album stayed on the main album chart for 32 weeks. In addition to the Billboard 200, the album managed to peak at number one on the Billboard Rock and Alternative Albums charts. On January 19, 2010, less than six months after the album was released, Brand New Eyes was certified gold by the RIAA for shipments of 500,000 albums and platinum on March 22, 2016 for shipments of 1,000,000 albums.
The tracks "Ignorance", "Brick by Boring Brick" and "Where the Lines Overlap" also made the Pazz & Jop Singles List.
Tour
Paramore went on tour with No Doubt between mid-May and early August 2009. The band announced their North American tour for Brand New Eyes on their official site, with The Swellers and Paper Route joining them as opening acts. The first show of the tour was played at a packed Fox Theatre in Pomona, California, on September 29, 2009 (the day of the album's release). During "Decode", Williams lost her voice. Lead guitarist Josh Farro spoke to the crowd and although their set was cut short, the band played "Misery Business" instrumentally while the crowd sang Williams's vocal parts. The tour, which previously went from September 29 to November 1, 2009, was later officially postponed on October 2, 2009, due to a case of laryngitis for singer Williams. The full tour resumed on October 10, 2009, in Chicago. The band also announced that they would be doing a European tour starting off in Helsinki, Finland, on November 29, 2009, with You Me at Six, Paper Route, and Now, Now Every Children supporting all UK tour dates.
They performed in February 2010 in the Australian Soundwave Festival, along with bands such as You Me at Six, Taking Back Sunday, All Time Low and Alexisonfire. They performed at the Soundwave Festival before they did the Brand New Eyes Tour in Australia. Then in the first week of March they performed two concerts in New Zealand, one to a sell out crowd of 5,000 in Auckland and the other in Christchurch. They also performed in Singapore and the Philippines, respectively, as the last two legs of their Pacific Rim Tour. Paramore have supported Green Day on their tour. They opened the concerts of Green Day in Dublin, Ireland, on June 23, 2010 and in Paris, France, on June 26, 2010.
In July, August and September 2010, the band announced a tour in the Honda Civic Tour 2010. In May 2010, the band had a short UK tour for November 2010. After just one day of being on sale they added a second date at the O2 arena due to huge demand for tickets. They later added 2 extra dates to take it up to 8 concerts instead of the original 5. In June 2010, the band announced a short Australia Tour for October. In November 2010, the band announced a short in South American Tour for February and March 2011, and the band announced a short in American tour for December. In July 2011, the band had a short Europe tour.
Track listing
Limited edition bonus DVD
"Making the Album" documentary – 30:00
In-studio footage
Interviews
Paramore.net episodes:
(Cocky) Basketball
Ping Pong
Cribz, Part 1
Cribz, Part 2
Zac and Kevin
Z and T Presents "Baby Come Back 2 Me"
Photo gallery (exclusive in-studio)
Personnel
Charts
Certifications
Release history
See also
List of number-one albums of 2009 (Australia)
List of number-one albums of 2009 (Ireland)
List of number-one albums from the 2000s (New Zealand)
List of UK Albums Chart number ones of the 2000s
References
External links
Brand New Eyes at YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)
"一般社団法人 日本レコード協会｜各種統計". Riaj.or.jp. Retrieved December 4, 2010.
"Paramore interview". Retrieved April 21, 2011.
Brand New Eyes at MusicBrainz (list of releases) |
Ann_Elizabeth_Fowler_Hodges | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Elizabeth_Fowler_Hodges | [
297
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Elizabeth_Fowler_Hodges"
] | Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges (also known as Mrs. Hodges, Mrs. Hewlett Hodges, and Mrs. Huelitt Hodges; February 2, 1920 – September 10, 1972) was an American woman known for being the first documented individual not only to be struck by a meteorite, but also to live through the encounter.
Meteorite impact
At 12:46 PM (CST) on November 30, 1954, a meteorite fell through the skies of Sylacauga, Alabama. It split into at least three fragments, with one of the fragments falling through a roof and then landing on Hodges, who was napping on her couch. She recalled the meteorite came through her roof around 2:00 PM local time, although the official time the meteorite fell was 12:46 PM. The meteorite left a 3-foot (91 cm) wide hole in the roof of her house, bounced off a radio, and hit her on her upper thigh and hand, giving her a large bruise.
Hodges and her mother, who was in the house at the time, thought the chimney had collapsed as there was a lot of dust and debris. Once they noticed the large rock, they called both the police and fire department. Hodges' husband, Eugene Hodges, came home later that evening at about 6:00 PM local time, unaware of what had happened to his wife. She told him there was a "little excitement." That night she did not sleep well and ended up going to the hospital the next day due to being distressed by the incident, rather than for her physical injury, which was said to be only the large bruise on her upper thigh.
After the incident
Members from the Maxwell Air Force Base went to the Hodges home to look at and confiscate the meteorite. They confirmed its identity as a chondrite meteorite. The Mayor of Sylacauga, Ed J. Howard, originally intended to give it to the Alabama Museum of Natural History (AMNH) of the University of Alabama. Mr. Hodges stated that he had "enough evidence that the thing fell in my house" and the meteorite was eventually given back to the Hodges. Although the meteorite had crashed through the Hodges home and hit Mrs. Hodges, the owner of the house, Birdie Guy, declared ownership. After a year-long legal battle, Mrs. Guy and the Hodgeses agreed on a $500 settlement and Mrs. Hodges was able to keep the meteorite.
Ann Hodges had immense, although short-term, notoriety for the incident. About 200 reporters were waiting to talk to her outside of her house, most of whom were unwelcome. Ann was invited to and attended the game show I’ve Got a Secret hosted by Garry Moore. Mrs. Hodges also received lots of fan mail and questions, although she did not reply to them.
Mr. Hodges indicated they had received several offers for the meteorite while it was at the Air Force Base, but could not accept offers since it was not in their possession. One offer, he states, was close to $5,500. By the time the meteorite was returned to Ann following the legal battle with Mrs. Guy, they could not find a buyer, since the excitement of the event had dwindled. In 1956, Mrs. Hodges decided to sell the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History, against her husband's wishes, and as he recalled, for about $25.
Personal life
Eugene claimed that following the incident, Ann's behavior changed. Her health problems worsened, her shyness became social anxiety, and she suffered from what appeared to be PTSD. Ann and Eugene Hodges would later get divorced in 1964, and they had no children.
Death
Hodges died in a nursing home from kidney failure on September 10, 1972. Her ex-husband, Eugene Hodges, died in 2012.
Legacy
The meteorite that flew through the sky that night was named the Sylacauga meteorite and the fragment that hit Hodges was aptly named the Hodges Fragment. Another fragment from the original meteorite was sold to the Smithsonian, while the Hodges Fragment remains on exhibit at the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
The radio that was hit by the meteorite was later loaned to the American Museum of Natural History in 2005 by Eugene Hodges, fifty years after the impact event.
The titular poem in Space Struck by Paige Lewis was inspired by the event, describing its aftermath from Hodges' point of view.
The November 20th episode of the History Channel's podcast, History This Week, "A Meteorite Hits Ann Hodges" was devoted to her story.
References
External links
Exhibits - Alabama Museum of Natural History |
Billboard_year-end_top_30_singles_of_1954 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_year-end_top_30_singles_of_1954 | [
297
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_year-end_top_30_singles_of_1954"
] | This is a list of Billboard magazine's Top 30 popular songs of 1954 according to retail sales.
See also
1954 in music
List of Billboard number-one singles of 1954
== References == |
Ford_Motor_Company | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company | [
298
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company#Sales_numbers"
] | Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobiles and commercial vehicles under the Ford brand, and luxury cars under its Lincoln brand. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is controlled by the Ford family. They have minority ownership but a plurality of the voting power.
Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines. By 1914, these methods were known around the world as Fordism. Ford's former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover, acquired in 1989 and 2000, respectively, were sold to the Indian automaker Tata Motors in March 2008. Ford owned the Swedish automaker Volvo from 1999 to 2010. In the third quarter of 2010, Ford discontinued the Mercury brand, under which it had marketed upscale cars in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East since 1938.
Ford is the second-largest U.S.-based automaker, behind General Motors, and the sixth-largest in the world, behind Toyota, Volkswagen Group, Hyundai Motor Group, Stellantis, and General Motors, based on 2022 vehicle production. At the end of 2010, Ford was the fifth-largest automaker in Europe. The company went public in 1956 but the Ford family, through special Class B shares, retain 40 percent of the voting rights. During the 2008–2010 automotive industry crisis, the company struggled financially but did not have to be rescued by the federal government, unlike the other two major US automakers. Ford Motors has since returned to profitability, and was the eleventh-ranked overall American-based company in the 2018 Fortune 500 list, based on global revenues in 2017 of $156.7 billion. In 2023, Ford produced 4.4 million automobiles, and employed about 177,000 employees worldwide. The company operates joint ventures in China (Changan Ford), Taiwan (Ford Lio Ho), Thailand (AutoAlliance Thailand), and Turkey (Ford Otosan). Ford owns a 32% stake in China's Jiangling Motors.
History
20th century
The Henry Ford Company was Henry Ford's first attempt at a car manufacturing company and was established on November 3, 1901. This became the Cadillac Motor Company on August 22, 1902, after Ford left with the rights to his name. In 1903, the Ford Motor Company was launched in a converted factory, with $28,000, equivalent to $950,000 in 2023, in cash from twelve investors, most notably John and Horace Dodge, who later founded the Dodge Brothers Motor Vehicle Company.
The first president was not Ford, but local banker John S. Gray, who was chosen in order to assuage investors' fears that Ford would leave the new company the way he had left its predecessor. During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at its factory on Mack Avenue and later at its factory on Piquette Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Groups of two or three men worked on each car, assembling it from parts made mostly by supplier companies contracting for Ford. Within a decade the company led the world in the expansion and refinement of the assembly line concept, and Ford soon brought much of the part production in-house, via vertical integration.
Henry Ford was 39 years old when he founded the Ford Motor Company, which became one of the world's largest and most profitable companies. It has been in continuous family control for over 100 years, and is one of the largest family-controlled companies in the world.
The first gasoline-powered automobile was created in 1885 by the German inventor Karl Benz, with his Benz Patent-Motorwagen. More efficient production methods were needed to make automobiles affordable for middle class people. To which Ford contributed by, for instance, introducing the first moving assembly line in 1913 at the Ford factory in Highland Park.
Between 1903 and 1908, Ford produced the Models A, B, C, F, K, N, R, and S. Hundreds or a few thousand of most of these were sold per year. In 1908, Ford introduced the mass-produced Model T, which totaled millions sold over nearly 20 years. In 1927, Ford replaced the T with the Model A, the first car with safety glass in the windshield. Ford launched the first low-priced car with a V8 engine in 1932.
In an attempt to compete with General Motors' mid-priced Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick, Ford created the Mercury in 1939 as a higher-priced companion car to Ford. Henry Ford purchased the Lincoln Motor Company in 1922, in order to compete with such brands as Cadillac and Packard for the luxury segment of the automobile market.
In 1929, Ford was contracted by the government of the Soviet Union to set up the Gorky Automobile Plant in Russia initially producing Ford Model A and AAs, thereby playing an important role in the industrialization of that country and consequently the Soviet war effort during World War II. To that end, in 1944, Stalin wrote a letter to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce stating that Henry Ford was "one of the world's greatest industrialists".
During World War II, the United States Department of War picked Ford to mass-produce the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber at its Willow Run assembly plant. Ford Werke and Ford SAF, Ford's subsidiaries in Germany and France, respectively, produced military vehicles and other equipment for Nazi Germany's war effort. Some of Ford's operations in Germany at the time were run using forced labor.
The creation of a scientific laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1951, doing unfettered basic research, led to Ford's involvement in superconductivity research. In 1964, Ford Research Labs made a key breakthrough with the invention of a superconducting quantum interference device or SQUID.
Ford offered the Lifeguard safety package from 1956, which included such innovations as a standard deep-dish steering wheel, optional front, and, for the first time in a car, rear seatbelts, and an optional padded dash. Ford introduced child-proof door locks into its products in 1957, and, in the same year, offered the first retractable hardtop on a mass-produced six-seater car.
In late 1955, Ford established the Continental division as a separate luxury car division. This division was responsible for the manufacture and sale of the famous Continental Mark II. At the same time, the Edsel division was created to design and market that car starting with the 1958 model year. Due to limited sales of the Continental and the Edsel disaster, Ford merged Mercury, Edsel, and Lincoln into "M-E-L," which reverted to "Lincoln-Mercury" after Edsel's November 1959 demise.
The Ford Mustang was introduced on April 17, 1964, during the 1964 New York World's Fair, where Ford had a pavilion made by The Walt Disney Company. In 1965, Ford introduced the seat belt reminder light.
With the 1980s, Ford introduced several highly successful vehicles around the world. During the 1980s, Ford began using the advertising slogan, "Have you driven a Ford, lately?" to introduce new customers to their brand and make their vehicles appear more modern. In 1990 and 1994, respectively, Ford also acquired Jaguar Cars and Aston Martin. During the mid-to-late 1990s, Ford continued to sell large numbers of vehicles, in a booming American economy with a soaring stock market and low fuel prices.
With the dawn of the new century, legacy health care costs, higher fuel prices, and a faltering economy led to falling market shares, declining sales, and diminished profit margins. Most of the corporate profits came from financing consumer automobile loans through Ford Motor Credit Company.
21st century
By 2005, both Ford and GM's corporate bonds had been downgraded to junk status as a result of high U.S. health care costs for an aging workforce, soaring gasoline prices, eroding market share, and an overdependence on declining SUV sales. Profit margins decreased on large vehicles due to increased "incentives" (in the form of rebates or low-interest financing) to offset declining demand. In the latter half of 2005, Chairman Bill Ford asked newly appointed Ford Americas Division President Mark Fields to develop a plan to return the company to profitability. Fields previewed the plan, named The Way Forward, at the board meeting of the company on December 7, 2005, and it was unveiled to the public on January 23, 2006. "The Way Forward" included resizing the company to match market realities, dropping some unprofitable and inefficient models, consolidating production lines, closing 14 factories and cutting 30,000 jobs.
Ford moved to introduce a range of new vehicles, including "Crossover SUVs" built on unibody car platforms, rather than more body-on-frame chassis. In developing the hybrid electric powertrain technologies for the Ford Escape Hybrid SUV, the company licensed similar Toyota hybrid technologies in order to avoid patent infringements. Ford announced that it would team up with electricity supply company Southern California Edison (SCE) to examine the future of plug-in hybrids in terms of how home and vehicle energy systems will work with the electrical grid. Under the multimillion-dollar, multi-year project, Ford is to convert a demonstration fleet of Ford Escape Hybrids into plug-in hybrids, and SCE is to evaluate how the vehicles might interact with the home and the utility's electrical grid. Some of the vehicles are to be evaluated "in typical customer settings", according to Ford.
William Clay Ford Jr., great-grandson of Henry Ford (and better known by his nickname "Bill"), was appointed executive chairman in 1998, and also became chief executive officer of the company in 2001, with the departure of Jacques Nasser, becoming the first member of the Ford family to head the company since the retirement of his uncle, Henry Ford II, in 1982. Ford sold motorsport engineering company Cosworth to Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven in 2004, the start of a decrease in Ford's motorsport involvement. Upon the retirement of president and chief operations officer Jim Padilla in April 2006, Bill Ford assumed his roles as well. Five months later, in September, Ford named Alan Mulally as president and CEO, with Ford continuing as executive chairman.
In December 2006, the company raised its borrowing capacity to about $25 billion, placing substantially all corporate assets as collateral. Chairman Bill Ford has stated that "bankruptcy is not an option". Ford and the United Auto Workers, representing approximately 46,000 hourly workers in North America, agreed to a historic contract settlement in November 2007 giving the company a substantial break in terms of its ongoing retiree health care costs and other economic issues. The agreement included the establishment of a company-funded, independently run Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) trust to shift the burden of retiree health care from the company's books, thereby improving its balance sheet. This arrangement took effect on January 1, 2010. As a sign of its currently strong cash position, Ford contributed its entire current liability (estimated at US$5.5 billion as of December 31, 2009) to the VEBA in cash, and also pre-paid US$500 million of its future liabilities to the fund. The agreement also gave hourly workers the job security they were seeking by having the company commit to substantial investments in most of its factories.
The automaker reported the largest annual loss in company history in 2006 of $12.7 billion, and estimated that it would not return to profitability until 2009. However, Ford surprised Wall Street in the second quarter of 2007 by posting a $750 million profit. Despite the gains, the company finished the year with a $2.7 billion loss, largely attributed to finance restructuring at Volvo. On June 2, 2008, Ford sold its Jaguar and Land Rover operations to Tata Motors for $2.3 billion.
During congressional hearings held in November 2008 at Washington D.C., Ford's Alan Mulally stated that "We at Ford are hopeful that we have enough liquidity. But we also must prepare ourselves for the prospect of further deteriorating economic conditions". He went on to state that "The collapse of one of our competitors would have a severe impact on Ford" and that Ford Motor Company supported both Chrysler and General Motors in their search for government bridge loans during the 2008–2010 automotive industry crisis. Together, the three companies presented action plans for the sustainability of the industry. Mulally stated that "In addition to our plan, we are also here today to request support for the industry. In the near-term, Ford does not require access to a government bridge loan. However, we request a credit line of $9 billion as a critical backstop or safeguard against worsening conditions as we drive transformational change in our company". GM and Chrysler received government loans and financing through T.A.R.P. legislation funding provisions.
On December 19, the cost of credit default swaps to insure the debt of Ford was 68 percent of the sum insured for five years, in addition to annual payments of 5 percent. That meant $6.8 million paid upfront to insure $10 million in debt, in addition to payments of $500,000 per year. In January 2009, Ford reported a $14.6 billion loss in the preceding year, a record for the company. The company retained sufficient liquidity to fund its operations. Through April 2009, Ford's strategy of debt-for-equity exchanges erased $9.9 billion in liabilities (28% of its total) in order to leverage its cash position. These actions yielded Ford a $2.7 billion profit in fiscal year 2009, the company's first full-year profit in four years. In 2012, Ford's corporate bonds were upgraded from junk to investment grade again, citing sustainable, lasting improvements.
On October 29, 2012, Ford announced the sale of its climate control components business, its last remaining automotive components operation, to Detroit Thermal Systems LLC for an undisclosed price. On November 1, 2012, Ford announced that CEO Alan Mulally would stay with the company until 2014. Ford also named Mark Fields, its president of operations in the Americas, as its new chief operating officer Mulally was paid a compensation of over $174 million in his previous seven years at Ford since 2006. The generous amount has been a sore point for some workers of the company.
In April 2016, Ford announced a plan to modernize its Dearborn engineering and headquarters campuses through a ten-year building project. The result would see the number of Ford employees working in these areas doubling, to 24,000. During construction, some 2000 of the employees were relocated out of the campus to a temporary location in a disused section of the local shopping mall. Facilities would also be altered to allow ride-sharing and electric and self-driving vehicles. Estimates of the construction cost were $1.2 billion.
On January 3, 2017, Ford CEO Mark Fields announced that in a "vote of confidence" because of the pro-business climate being fostered in part by President-elect Donald Trump, Ford had canceled plans to invest $1.6 billion in a new plant in Mexico to manufacture the Ford Focus; instead, the company would invest $700 million in Michigan, which it planned to use to create 700 new jobs. The Focus would now be manufactured in the existing plant in Mexico.
Also in 2017, Ford began development of a new mixed-use urban campus in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit, with its purchase, renovation, and occupation of The Factory at Michigan and Rosa Parks. The new site was expected to have a major focus on the development of autonomous vehicle and electric vehicle technology. Ford later began buying up other parcels of land in Corktown including a very high-profile purchase of Michigan Central Station which is planned to become the hub of their Corktown campus, and the adjacent Roosevelt Warehouse. Ford expects to move 2,500 of its employees, roughly 5 percent of its southeast Michigan workforce, to the campus with space for an additional 2,500 entrepreneurs, technology companies and partners. Bill Ford envisioned the first-floor concourse of the train station to be a public gathering place with retail outlets and restaurants. In February 2017, Ford Motor Co. acquired majority ownership of Argo AI, a self-driving car startup.
In May 2017, Ford announced cuts to its global workforce amid efforts to address the company's declining share price and to improve profits. The company is targeting $3 billion in cost reduction and a nearly 10% reduction in the salaried workforce in Asia and North America to enhance earnings in 2018. Jim Hackett was announced to replace Mark Fields as CEO of Ford Motor. Mr. Hackett most recently oversaw the formation of Ford Smart Mobility, a unit responsible for experimenting with car-sharing programs, self-driving ventures and other programs aimed at helping Ford better compete with Uber, Alphabet Inc. and other tech giants looking to edge in on the auto industry.
On April 25, 2018, Ford announced that it would discontinue passenger cars in the North American market in the next four years, except for the Mustang, due to declining demand and profitability. The Focus Active, a crossover SUV based on the newly unveiled fourth-generation Focus, was also intended to be marketed in the United States. Due to the vehicle being manufactured in China, Ford later announced that it would not release the Focus Active in the United States, due to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese exports.
In March 2020, the Detroit United Auto Workers union announced that after discussion with the leaders of General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the carmakers would partially shut down factories on a "rotating" basis to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 24, representatives of Ford announced that production in the US, Canada, and Mexico would not resume on March 30 as originally planned, amid the further coronavirus pandemic spread. In the first quarter of 2020, Ford's sales dropped by 15%, entailing the loss of $2 billion.
With the change in the demand for the sport vehicles, on January 6, 2021, Ford reported a sales fall of 9.8% in the fourth quarter, selling 542,749 vehicles, compared to 601,862 in 2019. In April 2021, Ford said that it would provide COVID-19 vaccines for its employees, who were to obtain them at the company; at the beginning the vaccination program would be in southeast Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, but it was to be expanded later on to other locations.
In March 2022, Ford announced that it would restructure the company into three separate divisions. Ford Model E is to focus on electric vehicles; Ford Blue is to focus on internal combustion vehicles; and the existing commercial division is to be rebranded as Ford Pro, to focus on vehicle distribution and service. In August 2022, Ford announced it planned layoffs of roughly 3,000 employees and contract workers, confirming earlier reporting. The cuts would mostly affect divisions in the US, Canada, and India, which Jim Farley said would allow the company to prepare for the future of electric, software-heavy vehicles.
In February 2023, Ford announced that it was going to cut 3,800 jobs across Europe, with the job cuts mainly focusing on their German and British workforce. Ford will be cutting 2,300 jobs from Germany, 1,300 from the United Kingdom, and an additional 200 jobs in the rest of Europe, according to the head of Ford Germany, Martin Sander. The cuts will mainly be done to the company's engineers. Ford also announced during the year that their electric vehicle business had lost $3 billion before taxes over the past two years and will lose a similar amount in 2023 as the company looks to significantly invest in Electric Technology. The Ford Model E is expected to be profitable by 2026.
In April 2023, United Kingdom ministers approved Ford's BlueCruise technology. Because of this assisted driving technology, Ford drivers can now legally take their hands off the wheel on certain roads. Its top speed is 129 km/h (80 mph). BlueCruise uses sensors and cameras to regulate the car's speed and to keep track of speed limits and road signs. It also monitors and keeps a safe distance from other vehicles. It also comes equipped with an eye-tracking system. If the driver stops looking at the road then the car will gradually reduce its speed. This technology will initially be offered in Ford's 2023 model of the electric Mustang Mach-E SUV.
According to Thatcham Research, an automotive research company, this model is not a self-driving car. It is classified as a level 2 or partial automation assistance system. This means that technology controls two or more driving aspects but still requires human driver control in cases of emergencies. The driver is still legally responsible for accidents. In August 2024 Pennsylvania State Police filed charges against a driver that killed two men while using BlueCruise.
Logo history
Corporate affairs
Business trends
The key trends for the Ford Motor Company are (as of the financial year ending December 31):
Executive management
Members of the Ford board as of March 2023 are: William Clay Ford Jr. (executive chairman), Jim Farley (president and CEO), Kimberly Casiano, Alexandra Ford English (daughter of William Clay Ford Jr.), Henry Ford III (son of Edsel Ford II), William W. Helman IV, Jon Huntsman Jr., William E. Kennard, John C. May, Beth E. Mooney, John L. Thornton, John Veihmeyer, Lynn Vojvodich Radakovich, and John S. Weinberg.
Jim Farley succeeded Jim Hackett as the chief executive officer of the company in August 2020; he previously served as Ford's chief operating officer. Hackett stayed in the company as an advisor until the second quarter of 2021.
Ownership
Ford is mainly owned by institutional investors, who own around 60% of shares. The largest shareholders in December 2023 were:
The Vanguard Group (8.71%)
BlackRock (7.20%)
State Street Corporation (4.46%)
Newport Trust (3.98%)
Charles Schwab Corporation (2.25%)
Geode Capital Management (1.94%)
Fisher Investments (1.52%)
Morgan Stanley (1.31%)
Norges Bank (1.00%)
Northern Trust (0.94%)
Ford Philanthropy
The Ford Philanthropy, formerly known as the Ford Motor Company Fund (also known as Ford Fund, not affiliated with the Ford Foundation), based in Dearborn, Michigan, is the philanthropic arm of the Ford Motor Company. Established in 1949 by Henry Ford II, the organization is a nonprofit corporate foundation financed by contributions from Ford Motor Company. In 2017, it contributed $63 million to various causes with a focus on education, driving safely and community building.
The Ford Driving Skills for Life program is a driver safety program aimed at teens that were developed together with the Governors Highway Safety Association and safety experts. The Ford Volunteer Corps allows Ford employees and retirees to sign up for volunteering work on local projects in more than 40 countries. The organization invests $18 million annually in education in the United States and around the world, but accepts applications only from nonprofit organizations registered in the U.S. Education programs and scholarships include Alan Mulally Engineering Scholarship, Ford Blue Oval Scholars Program, Ford College Community Challenge (Ford C3), Ford Driving Dreams Tour, Ford Fund/Detroit Free Press Journalism Scholarship, Ford Next Generation Learning (Ford NGL), Grants to Individuals Program, HBCU Community Challenge, Smithsonian Latino Center Young Ambassadors Program, and William Clay Ford Automotive Design Scholarship.
On April 29, 2024, the Ford Fund announced its official name has changed to Ford Philanthropy.
Operations
Ford has had manufacturing operations worldwide, including in the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, India, the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and South Africa. Ford also helped the Soviet Union to construct Russian automaker GAZ.
North America
In May 2010, Ford reported that its sales increased 23% for the month, and that 37% of its sales came from fleet sales. In June 2010, sales to individual customers at dealerships increased 13% while fleet sales rose by 32%. In the first seven months of 2010, fleet sales of Ford for the same period rose 35% to 386,000 units while retail sales increase 19%. Fleet sales account for 39 percent of Chrysler's sales and 31 percent for GM's.
Europe
At first, Ford in Germany and Ford in Britain built different models from one another until 1965, when the Ford Transit and later the Ford Escort and the Ford Capri became common to both companies. In 1970, the Ford Taunus and the Ford Cortina came into production with a common base construction, both models being produced in left hand drive and right hand drive. Later on, the models became identical and the respective models right- and left-hand-drive exclusively. Rationalisation of model ranges meant that production of many models in the UK switched to elsewhere in Europe, including Belgium and Spain as well as Germany. The Ford Sierra replaced the Taunus and Cortina in 1982, drawing criticism for its radical aerodynamic styling, which was soon given nicknames, the "Jellymould" and "The Salesman's Spaceship".
In February 2002, Ford ended car production in the UK. It was the first time in 90 years that Ford cars had not been made in Britain, although production of the Transit van continued at the company's Southampton facility until mid-2013, engines at Bridgend and Dagenham, and transmissions at Halewood. Development of European Ford is broadly split between Dunton in Essex (powertrain, Fiesta/Ka, and commercial vehicles) and Cologne (body, chassis, electrical, Focus, Mondeo) in Germany. Ford also produced the Thames range of commercial vehicles, although the use of this brand name was discontinued with the introduction of the Ford Transit in 1965. Elsewhere in continental Europe, Ford assembles the Mondeo, Galaxy, S-Max and Kuga in Valencia (Spain), Fiesta in Cologne (Germany), Focus in Saarlouis (Germany), Ecosport and Puma in Craiova (Romania).
Ford also owns a joint-venture production plant in Turkey. Ford Otosan, established in the 1970s, manufactures the Transit Connect compact panel van as well as the "Jumbo" and long-wheelbase versions of the full-size Transit. This new production facility was set up near Kocaeli in 2002, and its opening marked the end of Transit assembly in Genk.
Another joint venture plant near Setúbal in Portugal, set up in collaboration with Volkswagen, formerly assembled the Galaxy people-carrier as well as its sister ships, the VW Sharan and SEAT Alhambra. With the introduction of the third generation of the Galaxy, Ford has moved the production of the people-carrier to the Genk plant, with Volkswagen taking over sole ownership of the Setúbal facility.
In 2008, Ford acquired a majority stake in Automobile Craiova, Romania. Starting 2009, the Ford Transit Connect was Ford's first model produced in Craiova, followed, in 2012, by low-capacity car engines and a new small class car, the B-Max. In 2022, Ford Romania was acquired by Ford Otosan and in 2023, production of the Ford Transit Courier/Tourneo Courier started at the facility.
Its 1959 Anglia two-door saloon was one of the most quirky-looking small family cars in Europe at the time of its launch, but buyers soon became accustomed to its looks and it was hugely popular with British buyers in particular. It was still selling well when replaced by the more practical Escort in 1967.
The third incarnation of the Ford Escort was launched in 1980 and marked the company's move from rear-wheel-drive saloons to front-wheel-drive hatchbacks in the small family car sector.
The fourth-generation Escort was produced from 1990 until 2000, although its successor—the Focus—had been on sale since 1998. On its launch, the Focus was arguably the most dramatic-looking and fine-handling small family cars on sale and sold in huge volumes right up to the launch of the next-generation Focus at the end of 2004.
The 1982 Ford Sierra—replacement for the long-running and massively popular Cortina and Taunus models—was a style-setter at the time of its launch. Its ultramodern aerodynamic design was a world away from a boxy, sharp-edged Cortina, and it was massively popular just about everywhere it was sold. A series of updates kept it looking relatively fresh until it was replaced by the front-wheel-drive Mondeo at the start of 1993.
The rise in popularity of small cars during the 1970s saw Ford enter the mini-car market in 1976 with its Fiesta hatchback. Most of its production was concentrated at Valencia in Spain, and the Fiesta sold in huge figures from the very start. An update in 1983 and the launch of an all-new model in 1989 strengthened its position in the small car market.
On October 24, 2012, Ford announced that it would close its Genk assembly plant in eastern Belgium by the end of 2014.
In 2015, Ford announced that it took control of Ford Sollers, Ford's joint venture with Russian company Sollers.
In September 2018, at the IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Hannover, Germany, Ford introduced an electric tractor-trailer concept vehicle dubbed the F-Vision, which would have Level 4 autonomous driving capability.
On March 1, 2022, Ford announced that it was suspending its Sollers joint venture operation in Russia, in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. On October 26, 2022, Ford sold its 49 percent share in the joint venture, and exited the Russian market, adding that it retains the option to buy them back within a 5-year period "should the global situation change".
East and Southeast Asia
Ford formed its first passenger-vehicle joint venture in China in 2001, six years behind GM and more than a decade after VW. It has spent as of 2013 $4.9 billion to expand its lineup and double production capacity in China to 600,000 vehicles. This includes Ford's largest-ever factory complex in the southwestern city of Chongqing. Ford had 2.5% of the Chinese market in 2013, while VW controlled 14.5% and GM had 15.6%, according to consultant LMC Automotive. GM outsells Ford in China by more than six-to-one. Ford's presence in Asia has traditionally been much smaller, confined to Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Taiwan, where Ford has had a joint venture with Lio Ho since the 1970s. Ford began assembly of cars in Thailand in 1960, but withdrew from the country in 1976, and did not return until 1995 when it formed a joint venture with Mazda called Auto Alliance. Now based in the Bo-win Sub District of the Sriracha District in Chonburi, the factory still produces passenger automobiles. The factory, built in 1941 in Singapore, was soon taken over by the Japanese during the war and was the site of a surrender of the British to the Japanese, at the factory site which is now a national monument in Singapore.
On April 30, 2013, Ford Motor Co. launched their car and pickup truck line in Myanmar. Previously, heavy importation taxes had stifled imported car purchases in Myanmar, but due to currency reform, lifting of previous import restrictions, and the abolishment of shadow currency, Myanmar's car market had grown in demand.
South Korea
In 1967, Ford partnered with the South Korean company Hyundai, and at the new factory in Ulsan, South Korea, built the European Ford Cortina until 1974 when Hyundai introduced their all-new Hyundai Pony in 1975. Ford then developed a relationship with Korea's oldest car manufacturer Kia which built vehicles co-engineered with Mazda, later selling the Ford Festiva from 1988 to 1993, and the Ford Aspire from 1994 to 1997 for export to the United States. With the acquisition of a stake in Japanese manufacturer Mazda in 1979, Ford began selling Mazda's Familia and Capella as the Ford Laser and Telstar throughout the region, replacing the European-sourced Escort and Cortina. From 1989 to 1996, Kia imported the Mercury Sable from Ford in the U.S. and sold them in South Korea as the Kia Sable. Though the Sable was branded and marketed as a Kia, it retained the Mercury badges and emblem. Ford lost their Kia interest to Hyundai in 1998 after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Kia had declared bankruptcy in 1997; in 1998, Hyundai Motor Company acquired 51% of the company, outbidding Ford which had owned an interest in Kia Motors since 1986. After subsequent divestments, Hyundai Motor Company owns less than 50% of the company but remains Kia's largest stakeholder.
As of 2020, Ford sells the Explorer, Mondeo, and Mustang, as well as the Lincoln Aviator, Continental, Corsair, MKZ, and Nautilus in South Korea.
South and West Asia
Ford India began production in 1998 at Chennai, Tamil Nadu, with its Ford Escort model, which was later replaced by the locally produced Ford Ikon in 2001. It has since added the Fusion, Fiesta, Mondeo and Endeavour models to its product line.
On March 9, 2010, Ford launched its first made-for-India compact car. Starting at ₹349,900, the Figo was Ford's first car designed and priced for the mass Indian market. On July 28, 2011, Ford India signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the State of Gujarat for the construction of an assembly and engine plant in Sanand and planned to invest approximately US$1 billion on a 460-acre site. In 2019, the company and Mahindra & Mahindra formed a joint venture to develop, market and distribute Ford-branded vehicles in India. In September 2021 Ford India announced plans to shut down both its assembly plants. The company said that it intends to maintain its parts and service network.
Ford's market presence in the Middle East has traditionally been small, partly due to previous Arab boycotts of companies dealing with Israel. Ford and Lincoln vehicles are currently marketed in ten countries in the region. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are the biggest markets. Ford also established itself in Egypt in 1926 but faced an uphill battle during the 1950s due to the hostile nationalist business environment. Ford's distributor in Saudi Arabia announced in February 2003 that it had sold 100,000 Ford and Lincoln vehicles since commencing sales in November 1986. Half of the Ford and Lincoln vehicles sold in that country were Ford Crown Victorias. In 2004, Ford sold 30,000 units in the region, falling far short of General Motors' 88,852 units and Nissan Motors' 75,000 units.
South America
In South America, Ford's primary operations are in Brazil, Argentina, and Ford Andina (Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela). Ford employs over 18,000 people and operates seven assembly or other plants in the region. In 1987, Ford Brasil and Ford Motor Argentina merged their operations with the Brazilian and Argentine operations of Volkswagen Group, forming a new joint-venture company called Autolatina with a shared model range. Autolatina was dissolved in 1995.
In early 2021, Ford's Brazil branch announced it would completely cease production in the country over the course of a few months.
Africa
In Africa, Ford's market presence has traditionally been strongest in South Africa and neighbouring countries, with only trucks being sold elsewhere on the continent. Ford in South Africa began by importing kits from Canada to be assembled at its facility in Port Elizabeth; the company later sourced its models from the UK and Australia, with local versions of the Ford Cortina including the XR6, with a 3.0 V6 engine, and a Cortina-based 'bakkie' or pick-up, which was exported to the UK. In the mid-1980s Ford merged with a rival company, owned by Anglo American, to form the South African Motor Corporation (Samcor).
Following international condemnation of apartheid, Ford divested from South Africa in 1988, and sold its stake in Samcor, although it licensed the use of its brand name to the company. Samcor began to assemble Mazdas as well, which affected its product line-up and saw the European Fords like the Escort and Sierra replaced by the Mazda-based Laser and Telstar. Ford bought a 45 per cent stake in Samcor following the demise of apartheid in 1994, and this later became, once again, a wholly owned subsidiary, the Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa. Ford now sells a local sedan version of the Fiesta (also built in India and Mexico), and the Focus. The Falcon model from Australia was also sold in South Africa, but was dropped in 2003; the Mondeo, after briefly being assembled locally, was dropped in 2005. The Mondeo was later reintroduced in 2015, badged as the Fusion, but was dropped in 2017.
Research
Ford Research and Innovation Center is the name of the technology research facilities of Ford Motor Company in
Dearborn, Michigan
Palo Alto, California
Aachen, Germany
Nanjing, China
The Ford Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto was first opened in 2012, and in January 2015, announced plans to significantly expand its operations.
Former operations
East and Southeast Asia
Ford decided to shut down their entire operations in Indonesia, including their dealer network by second half of 2016.
Ford of Japan
Ford established a manufacturing facility in the port city of Yokohama in February 1925, where Model T vehicles were assembled using imported knock-down kits. The factory subsequently produced 10,000 Model A's up to 1936. Production ceased in 1940 as a result of political tensions between Japan and the United States.
After World War II, Ford did not have a presence in Japan, as the Ford facility was appropriated by the Japanese Government until 1958 when property was returned as a possession of the Ford Motor Company and became a research and development location for Ford partner Mazda. In 1979, Ford acquired a 24.5% ownership stake in Mazda, and in 1982, Ford and Mazda jointly established a sales channel to sell Ford products in Japan, including vehicles manufactured in North America, at a dealership called Autorama (Japanese). The Autorama sales channel was renamed Ford Sales of Japan in 1997.
Vehicles sold at Autorama locations were the North American assembled Ford Explorer, Probe (1989–1998), Mustang, Taurus (1989–1997), Thunderbird (1990–1993), Lincoln Continental, and Lincoln LS. Ford products manufactured in Europe that were sold in Japan were the Ford Mondeo, Ka, Focus, Focus C-MAX, Fiesta, and the Galaxy. Mazda manufactured Ford vehicles in Japan and sold them as Fords at the Autorama locations. They were the Ford Telstar (Mazda Capella), Laser, Festiva, Festiva Mini Wagon, Ixion (Mazda Premacy), Freda (Mazda Bongo Friendee), Spectron (Mazda Bongo), and commercial trucks J80 and the J100 (Mazda Bongo truck).
Ford increased its shareholding in Mazda to 33.4% in 1996, but as of July 2016, it is listed at 11%. Ford did sell a small range of vehicles in Japan; as of October 2010, the Ford Mustang, Escape, Explorer (and Explorer pickup truck), Ford Kuga, Lincoln Navigator, Lincoln MKX, and more recently, the Ford Ecosport were available in Japan. As of February 2016, Ford no longer maintains a regional office in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, and sales of new cars in Japan have ended.
Oceania
In Australia and New Zealand, the popular Ford Falcon (1960–2016) had long been considered the average family car and is considerably larger than the Mondeo, Ford's largest car sold in Europe. Between 1960 and 1972, the Falcon was based on a U.S. model of the same name, but since then has been entirely designed and manufactured in Australia until 2016, occasionally being manufactured in New Zealand. Like its General Motors rival, the Holden Commodore, the Falcon used a rear-wheel-drive layout. High-performance variants of the Falcon running locally built engines produce up to 362 hp (270 kW). A ute (short for "utility", known in the U.S. as pickup truck) version is also available with the same range of drivetrains. In addition, Ford Australia sold highly tuned limited-production Falcon sedans and utes through its performance car division, Ford Performance Vehicles until it closed in 2014.
In Australia, the Commodore and Falcon had traditionally outsold all other cars and constituted over 20% of the new car market. In New Zealand, Ford was second in market share in the first eight months of 2006 with 14.4%. More recently, Ford has axed its Falcon-based LWB variant of its lineup– the Fairlane and LTD ranges. Ford discontinued the Fairlane in 2007 and LTD in 2008. Ford had announced that their Geelong engine manufacturing plant would be shut down between 2013 and 2016. They had earlier announced local manufacturing of the Focus small car starting from 2011, but instead decided to import the model from Ford's plant in Thailand.
In Australia, the Laser was one of Ford Australia's most successful models and was manufactured in Ford's Homebush West plant from 1981 until the plant's closure in September 1994. It outsold the Mazda 323, despite being almost identical to it because the Laser was manufactured in Australia and Ford was perceived as a local brand. According to research carried out by Ford Australia in 1984, a third of Laser buyers were unaware that the Ford model was based on the Mazda 323.
In New Zealand, the Ford Laser and Telstar were assembled alongside the Mazda 323 and 626 until 1997, at the Vehicle Assemblers of New Zealand (VANZ) plant in Wiri, Auckland. The Sierra wagon was also assembled in New Zealand, owing to the popularity of station wagons in that market.
The scheduled closure of Ford's Australian manufacturing base in 2016 was confirmed on May 23, 2013. Headquartered in the Victorian suburb of Broadmeadows, the company had registered losses worth AU$600 million over the five years prior to the announcement. It was noted that the corporate fleet and government sales that account for two-thirds of large, local car sales in Australia are insufficient to keep Ford's products profitable and viable in Australia. The decision will affect 1200 Ford workers—over 600 employees in Geelong and more than 500 in Broadmeadows—who will lose their jobs by October 2016. The closure of Ford's plants in Norlane Geelong and Broadmeadows Melbourne occurred on October 7, 2016.
Products and services
Automobiles
Ford Motor Company sells a broad range of automobiles under the Ford marque worldwide, and an additional range of luxury automobiles under the Lincoln marque in the United States. The company has sold vehicles under a number of other marques during its history. The Mercury brand was introduced by Ford in 1939, continuing in production until 2011 when poor sales led to its discontinuation. In 1958, Ford introduced the Edsel brand, but poor sales led to its discontinuation in 1960. In 1985, the Merkur brand was introduced in the United States to market products produced by Ford of Europe; it was discontinued in 1989.
Ford acquired the British sports car maker Aston Martin in 1989, later selling it on March 12, 2007, although retaining an 8% stake. Ford purchased Volvo Cars of Sweden in 1999, selling it to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in 2010.
In November 2008, it reduced its 33.4% controlling interest in Mazda of Japan to a 13.4% non-controlling interest. On November 18, 2010, Ford reduced their stake further to just 3%, citing the reduction of ownership would allow greater flexibility to pursue growth in emerging markets. Ford and Mazda remain strategic partners through exchanges of technological information and joint ventures, including an American joint venture plant in Flat Rock, Michigan called Auto Alliance. In 2015, Ford sold its remaining 3% stake in Mazda.
Ford sold the United Kingdom-based Jaguar and Land Rover companies and brands to Tata Motors of India in March 2008.
On April 25, 2018, Ford announced that it planned to phase out all but one of its North American automobile models (the Mustang will be the sole surviving model) to focus primarily on pickup trucks and SUVs. Ford had also planned to introduce an "Active" crossover version of the next-generation Focus, but canceled those plans due to tariff issues between the United States and China.
Trucks
Ford has produced trucks since 1908, beginning with the Ford Model TT, followed by the Model AA, and the Model BB. Countries where Ford commercial vehicles are or were formerly produced include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada (also badged as Mercury), France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Philippines, Spain (badged Ebro too), Turkey, UK (badged also Fordson and Thames), and the United States.
From the 1940s to the late 1970s, Ford's Ford F-Series was used as the base for light trucks for the North American market.
Most of these ventures are now extinct. The European one that lasted longest was the lorries arm of Ford of Britain, which became part of the Iveco group in 1986. Ford had a minority share in the new company and Iveco took over sales and production of the Ford Cargo range. Ford's last significant European truck models were the Transcontinental and the Cargo. At the end of 1996, Ford sold the rights to its heavy trucks division to the Freightliner Trucks division of Daimler AG, with Ford producing the Cargo, Louisville, and Aeromax, through the 1998 model year. During the 1998 model year, Freightliner began production of its own versions of Ford-developed trucks in St. Thomas, Ontario, launching the Sterling truck brand. Slotted between Freightliner and Western Star, Sterling trucks were produced through 2009.
Line of heavy trucks made by Ford for the North American market:
Ford F-Series
"Big Job" (1951–1957)
"Super Duty/Extra Heavy Duty (1958–1962)
Ford N-Series (1963–1969)
Ford L-Series trucks (1970–1998)
aka Ford "Louisville Line"
Ford Aeromax (1988–1998)
Ford Louisville (1996–1998)
Sterling (1998–2009)
Ford C-Series (1957–1990)
Ford Cargo/CF-Series (1986–1997)
Ford H-Series (1961–1966)
aka "Two-story Falcon"
Ford W-Series (1966–1977)
Ford CL-Series (1978–1995)
For 1999, Ford briefly withdrew from production of medium-duty trucks. For the 2001 model year, the company entered into a joint venture with Navistar International (the supplier of diesel engines for 1-ton F-Series trucks), named Blue Diamond Truck Company LLC. As part of the joint venture, sharing a common truck chassis, the two companies would produce medium-duty (Class 6–7) trucks in a Navistar facility in Mexico, with each manufacturer supplying its own powertrain and bodywork, with the Ford F-650/F-750 Super Duty and International 4000/DuraStar sharing an assembly line. In 2006, the joint venture debuted the Ford LCF/International CityStar. Using a modified F-Series chassis adopted to fit a Mazda Titan cab, the LCF was a low-cab forward truck that was sold through 2009.
In Europe, Ford manufactures the Ford Transit jumbo van, which is classed as a Large Goods Vehicle and has a payload of up to 2,265 kg; there are options of a panel van, pickup or chassis cab. The Ford Transit is also available as a light van called the Ford Transit Connect and the Ford Ranger pickup is available.
Buses
Ford manufactured complete buses in the company's early history, but today the role of the company has changed to that of a second stage manufacturer. In North America, the E-Series is still used as a chassis for small school buses and the F-650 is used in commercial bus markets. In the 1980s and 1990s, the medium-duty B700 was a popular chassis used by school bus body manufacturers including Thomas Built, Ward, and Blue Bird, but Ford lost its market share due to industry contraction and agreements between body manufacturers. Older bus models included:
Prior to 1936, Ford buses were based on truck bodies:
Model B – 1930s
Model T – 1920s
F-105 school bus
In 1936, Ford introduced the Ford Transit Bus, a series of small transit buses with bodies built by a second party. Originally a front-engine design, it was modified to a rear-engine design in 1939. About 1,000 to 1,200 of the original design were built, and around 12,500 of the rear-engine design, which was in production until 1947 (rebranded as the Universal Bus in 1946).
Rear-engine Transit Bus chassis model numbers:
09-B/19-B City transit bus – 1939–1941
19-B/29-B City transit bus – 1941–1942
49-B/79-B City transit bus – 1944–1947
69-B City transit bus – 1946–1947
29-B City transit bus – 1946–1947
72-T transit bus – 1944–1945
After 1946 the Transit City bus was sold as the Universal Bus with the roof changed from fabric/wood to all-metal:
79-B Universal transit bus – 1946–1947
Succeeding the Ford Transit Bus was the Ford 8M buses:
8MB transit bus – with Wayne Works 1948–?
Following World War II and from the 1950s onwards, Ford lost out to General Motors. This led to the end of transit buses for Ford in North America.
B500 or B-series – 1950–1990s based on Ford F-series truck chassis used by school bus body manufacturers
In Europe, Ford manufactures the Ford Transit Minibus which is classed in Europe as a Passenger Carrying Vehicle and there are options of 12-, 15-, or 17-seaters. In the past, European models included:
EM
N-138
D series buses (Australia)
Tractors
The "Henry Ford and Son Company" began making Fordson tractors in Henry's hometown of Springwells (later part of Dearborn), Michigan, from 1907 to 1928, from 1919 to 1932, at Cork, Ireland, and between 1933 and 1964 at Dagenham, England, later transferred to Basildon. They were also produced in Leningrad beginning in 1924.
Ford reentered the tractor market in 1939 with the Ford N-series tractors. The Ford 8N, introduced in 1947, became the most popular tractor of all time in North America. Production of the N line of models ended in 1952.
The Ford NAA tractor was introduced as an entirely new model in 1953. It was a replacement for the Ford N-Series tractors. Larger than the 8N, with a four-cylinder engine, and streamlined styling.
In 1986, Ford expanded its tractor business when it purchased the Sperry-New Holland skid-steer loader and hay baler, hay tools and implement company from Sperry Corporation and formed Ford-New Holland which bought out Versatile tractors in 1988. This company was bought by Fiat in 1993 and the name changed from Ford New Holland to New Holland. New Holland is now part of CNH Global.
Financial services
Ford offers automotive finance through Ford Motor Credit Company.
Automotive components
Ford's FoMoCo parts division sells aftermarket parts under the Motorcraft brand name. It has spun off its parts division under the name Visteon.
FordWorks Program
Ford Motor Company created the FordWorks program in 2016 with the aim to bring people with disabilities back into the workforce. It was the first automotive program to focus on bringing people with autism in the workforce in the US. They targeted people with autism but have expanded their criteria to people with other disabilities. Ford has partnered with Upbound to broaden their hiring under the FordWorks program.
Marques
Current marques
Former marques
Motorsport
FIA World Championships
Along with Shelby and Chevrolet, Ford is one of only three American constructors to win titles on the international scene at the FIA World Championships. As a constructor, Ford won the World Sportscar Championship three times in 1966 (both sports prototype category and Grand Touring (GT) category), 1967 (GT category), and 1968 (sports prototype category), and at the World Rally Championship Ford won 4 World Drivers' Championships (in 1979, 1981, 2017 and 2018) as well as 4 World Manufacturers' Championships (in 1979, 2006, 2007 and 2017). As an engine supplier, Ford also won 13 Formula One World Drivers' Championships and 10 Formula One World Constructors' Championships.
Ford is also one of only three constructors to complete the Triple Crown of Motorsport (wins at the Indianapolis 500, 24 Hours of Le Mans, and Monaco Grand Prix), a feat that Ford achieved as an engine manufacturer by winning the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix.
Open-wheel racing
IndyCar
IndyCars with Ford engines first competed in 1935 using a production-based Ford V8 in the Miller-Ford racer. A pushrod Ford V8 raced with Lotus in 1963, and Ford's first Indy win was in 1965 with a DOHC V8. Ford motors, including the Ford-sponsored DFX engine developed by Cosworth, have won the Indianapolis 500 eighteen times. On May 12, 1996, Arie Luyendyk, while driving an IndyCar powered by a Ford Cosworth XB engine, broke the Indianapolis 500 records for fastest qualification lap (237.498 mph; 382.216 km/h) and fastest qualification four-lap average (236.986 mph; 381.392 km/h). These speed records still stand as of 2022.
Formula Ford
Formula Ford, conceived in the UK in 1966, is an entry-level type of formula racing with wingless single-seater cars. Many of today's formula racing drivers started their car racing careers in this category.
Formula One
Ford was heavily involved in Formula One for many years and supplied engines to a large number of teams from 1967 until 2004. These engines were designed and manufactured by Cosworth, the racing division that was owned by Ford from 1998 to 2004. Ford-badged engines won 176 Grands Prix between 1967 and 2003 for teams such as Team Lotus and McLaren. Ford entered Formula One as a constructor in 2000 under the Jaguar Racing name, after buying the Stewart Grand Prix team which had been its primary 'works' team in the series since 1997. Jaguar achieved little success in Formula One, and after a turbulent five seasons, Ford withdrew from the category after the 2004 season, selling both Jaguar Racing (which became Red Bull Racing) and Cosworth (to Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven).
Ford has announced that it will return to Formula One in 2026 following a partnership with Red Bull Powertrains, supplying power units to Red Bull Racing and their second team RB.
Stock car racing
Ford is one of three manufacturers in NASCAR's three major series: the Cup Series, Xfinity Series, and Truck Series. Major teams include RFK Racing, Team Penske, Stewart-Haas Racing, and Wood Brothers Racing. Ford is represented by the Mustang GT in the Cup Series, and the Xfinity Series and by the F-150 in the Truck Series. Some of the most successful NASCAR Fords were the aerodynamic fastback Ford Torino, Ford Torino Talladega, Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II, and Mercury Montegos, and the aero-era Ford Thunderbirds. The Ford nameplate has won eight manufacturer's championships in Sprint Cup while Mercury has won one. In the Sprint Cup Series, Ford earned its 1,000th victory in the 2013 Quicken Loans 400. The Ford Fusion is also used in the ARCA Racing Series.
Rally
Ford has a long history in rallying and has been active in the World Rally Championship since the beginning of the world championship, the 1973 season. Ford took the 1979 manufacturers' title with Hannu Mikkola, Björn Waldegård, and Ari Vatanen driving the Ford Escort RS1800. In the Group B era, Ford achieved success with Ford RS200. Since the 1999 season, Ford has used various versions of the Ford Focus WRC to much success. In the 2006 season, BP-Ford World Rally Team secured Ford its second manufacturers' title, with the Focus RS WRC 06 built by M-Sport and driven by "Flying Finns" Marcus Grönholm and Mikko Hirvonen. Continuing with Grönholm and Hirvonen, Ford successfully defended the manufacturers' world championship in the 2007 season. Ford is the only manufacturer to score in the points for 92 consecutive races; since the 2002 season opener Monte Carlo Rally.
In March 1951, the Henri Loos and Henri Berney broke the cross-Africa record of the Algiers-Cape Town Rally with a 1950 Ford V8, from Cape Town to Paris.
Rallycross
Ford has competed in rallycross with its Ford Fiesta and Ford Focus. Tanner Foust won the Global RallyCross Championship in 2011 and 2012 and was runner-up in the FIA European Rallycross Championship in 2011 and 2012. Toomas Heikkinen won the Global RallyCross Championship title in 2013 and Joni Wiman won it in 2014. Other notable Ford drivers include Marcus Grönholm, Ken Block, and Brian Deegan.
Sports cars
Ford sports cars have been visible in the world of sports car racing since 1964. Most notably the Ford GT40 won the 24 Hours of Le Mans four times (in 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969) and is the only American car to ever win overall at this prestigious event. Ford also won four titles at the World Sportscar Championship with the GT40. Swiss team Matech GT Racing, in collaboration with Ford Racing, opened a new chapter with the Ford GT, winning the Teams title in the 2008 FIA GT3 European Championship.
Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang has arguably been Ford's most successful sports car. Jerry Titus won the 1965 SCCA Pro B National Championship with a Mustang and the model went on to earn Ford the SCCA Trans-Am Championship title in both 1966 and 1967. Ford won the Trans-Am Championship again in 1970 with Parnelli Jones and George Follmer driving Boss 302 Mustangs for Bud Moore Engineering. Ford took the 1985 and 1986 IMSA GTO Championship with Mustangs driven by John Jones and Scott Pruett before returning to Trans-Am glory with a championship in 1989 with Dorsey Schroeder. Ford dominated Trans-Am in the 1990s with Tommy Kendall winning championships in 1993, 1995, 1996, and 1997 with Paul Gentilozzi adding yet another title in 1999. In 2005 the Ford Mustang FR500C took the championship in the Rolex Koni Challenge Series in its first year on the circuit. In 2007, Ford added a victory in the GT4 European Championship. 2008 was the first year of the Mustang Challenge for the Miller Cup, a series that pits a full field of identical factory-built Ford Mustang race cars against each other. Also, in 2008, Ford won the manufacturers championship in the Koni Challenge Series and HyperSport drivers Joe Foster and Steve Maxwell won the drivers title in a Mustang GT.
Ford and Michelin teamed up to provide custom-engineered tires for the Ford Performance vehicle lineup. Ford Performance director Dave Pericak said: "That confidence extends from our upcoming racing effort at Le Mans in 2016 with the all-new Ford GT, to the Ford Performance vehicle lineup, including the Shelby GT350 and F-150 Raptor".
Touring cars
Ford has campaigned touring cars such as the Mustang, Focus, Falcon, and Contour/Mondeo and the Sierra Cosworth in many different series throughout the years. Notably, Mondeo drivers finished 1, 2, and 3 in the 2000 British Touring Car Championship and Falcon drivers placed 1, 2, and 3 in the 2005 V8 Supercar Championship Series.
Drag racing
In drag racing, John Force Racing drivers John Force, Tony Pedregon, and Robert Hight have piloted Ford Mustang Funny Cars to several NHRA titles in recent seasons. Teammates Tim Wilkerson and Bob Tasca III also drive Mustangs in Funny Car.
Drifting
Ford has branched out into drifting with the introduction of the new model Mustang. Most noticeable is the Turquoise and Blue Falken Tires Mustang driven by Vaughn Gittin, Jr., (A.K.A. "JR") that produces 750 RWHP (Rear Wheel Horsepower).
Environmental initiatives
Compressed natural gas
The alternative fossil fuel vehicles, such as some versions of the Crown Victoria especially in fleet and taxi service, operate on compressed natural gas—or CNG. Some CNG vehicles have dual fuel tanks—one for gasoline, the other for CNG—the same engine can operate on either fuel via a selector switch.
Flexible fuel vehicles
Flexible fuel vehicles are designed to operate smoothly using a wide range of available ethanol fuel mixtures—from pure gasoline to bioethanol-gasoline blends such as E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline) or E100 (neat hydrous ethanol) in Brazil. Part of the challenge of successful marketing alternative and flexible fuel vehicles in the U.S. is the general lack of establishment of sufficient fueling stations, which would be essential for these vehicles to be attractive to a wide range of consumers. Significant efforts to ramp up production and distribution of E85 fuels are underway and expanding. Current Ford E100 Flex sold in the Brazilian market are the Courier, Ford EcoSport, Ford Fiesta, Ford Focus, and Ford Ka.
Electric drive vehicles
Hybrid electric vehicles
In 2004, Ford and Toyota agreed a patent-sharing accord that granted Ford access to certain hybrid technology patented by Toyota; in exchange, Ford licensed some of its own patents to Toyota. In 2004, Ford introduced the Escape Hybrid. With this vehicle, Ford was third to the automotive market with a hybrid electric vehicle and the first hybrid electric SUV to market. This was also the first hybrid electric vehicle with a flexible fuel capability to run on E85. The Escape's platform mate Mercury Mariner was also available with the hybrid-electric system in the 2006 model year—a full year ahead of schedule. The similar Mazda Tribute will also receive a hybrid-electric powertrain option, along with many other vehicles in the Ford vehicle line.
In 2005, Ford announced a goal to make 250,000 hybrids a year by 2010, but by mid-2006 announced that it would not meet that goal, due to excessively high costs and the lack of sufficient supplies of the hybrid-electric batteries and drivetrain system components. Instead, Ford has committed to accelerating development of next-generation hybrid-electric power plants in Britain, in collaboration with Volvo. This engineering study is expected to yield more than 100 new hybrid-electric vehicle models and derivatives.
In September 2007, Ford announced a partnership with Southern California Edison (SCE) to examine how plug-in hybrids will work with the electrical grid. Under the multimillion-dollar, multi-year project, Ford will convert a demonstration fleet of Ford Escape Hybrids into plug-in hybrids, and SCE will evaluate how the vehicles might interact with the home and the utility's electrical grid. Some of the vehicles will be evaluated "in typical customer settings", according to Ford.
On June 12, 2008, USDOE expanded its own fleet of alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles with the addition of a Ford Escape Plug-In Hybrid Flex-Fuel Vehicle. The vehicle is equipped with a 10-kilowatt (13 hp) lithium-ion battery supplied by Johnson Controls-Saft that stores enough electric energy to drive up to 30 miles (48 km) at speeds of up to 40 mph (64 km/h). In March 2009, Ford launched hybrid versions of the Ford Fusion Hybrid and the Mercury Milan Hybrid in the United States, both as 2010 models.
As of November 2014, Ford has produced for retail sales the following hybrid electric vehicles: Ford Escape Hybrid (2004–2012), Mercury Mariner Hybrid (2005–2010), Mercury Milan Hybrid (2009–2010), Ford Fusion Hybrid (2009–present), Lincoln MKZ Hybrid (2010–present), Ford C-Max Hybrid (2012–present), and Ford Mondeo Hybrid (2014–present). By June 2012, Ford had sold 200,000 full hybrids in the U.S. since 2004, and, as of September 2014, the carmaker has sold over 344,000 hybrids in the United States. The top selling hybrids in the U.S. market are the Fusion Hybrid with 127,572 units, followed by Escape Hybrid with 117,997 units, and the C-Max Hybrid with 54,236. As of November 2014, Ford is the world's second-largest manufacturer of hybrids after Toyota Motor Corporation, with 400,000 hybrid electric vehicles produced since their introduction in 2004.
Plug-in electric vehicles
As of April 2024, Ford currently produces the following plug-in electric vehicles: the Ford Escape/Kuga PHEV, Ford Ranger PHEV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Ford F-150 Lightning, Ford Explorer EV (Europe), Ford E-Transit/Tourneo Courier, Ford E-Transit Custom and the Ford E-Transit.
Bill Ford was one of the first top industry executives to make regular use of a battery electric vehicle, a Ford Ranger EV, while the company contracted with the United States Postal Service to deliver electric postal vans based on the Ranger EV platform. Ford discontinued a line of electric Ranger pickup trucks and ordered them destroyed, though it reversed in January 2005, after environmentalist protest. The all-electric pickup truck leased 205 units to individuals and 1,500 units to fleets in the U.S. from 1998 to 2002.
From 2009 to 2011, Ford offered the Ford TH!NK car. Ford ended production and ordered all the cars repossessed and destroyed, even as many of the people leasing them begged to be able to buy the cars from Ford. After an outcry from the lessees and activists in the U.S. and Norway, Ford returned the cars to Norway for sale. Four hundred and forty units were leased in the U.S. from 1999 until 2003.
In 2017, Ford CEO Mark Fields announced that the company would invest $4.5 billion in further development of plug-in electric vehicles by 2020.
The 2010–2012 Azure Transit Connect Electric is an all-electric van that was developed as a collaboration between Azure Dynamics and Ford Motor Company, but Azure was the official manufacturer of record.
The 2011–2018 Ford Focus Electric is based on the third-generation Focus internal combustion vehicle, converted to an all-electric propulsion system as a production electric car by Magna International, and retail sales began in the U.S. in December 2011.
The 2012–2017 Ford C-Max Energi is a plug-in hybrid released in the U.S. in October 2012. It is followed by the Ford Fusion Energi that was produced in 2013–2020. Both Energi models share the same powertrain technology.
In October 2017, Ford announced its Team Edison battery electric vehicle group to lead the company's renewed efforts into the EV market, which had plans for a small 300-mile range SUV by 2020. The new team will be headquartered in Detroit and have offices in Europe and Asia.
On November 17, 2019, the Mustang Mach-E was introduced which later went on sale December 2020 as a 2021 model. The Mustang Mach-E is assembled at Cuautitlán Assembly in Cuautitlán Izcalli, Mexico. According to former Ford CEO Jim Hackett, assembling the vehicle in Mexico allows Ford to make a profit from the first vehicle, unlike other electric vehicles. In June 2022, the CFO of Ford announced that the Mustang Mach-E was no longer profitable due to increases in the cost of raw materials.
On May 19, 2021, Ford revealed a new electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning. The first F-150 Lightning was manufactured on April 18, 2022, with first delivery in the US on May 26. Ford adjusted its 2024 production plans for the F-150 Lightning, cutting them in half from an anticipated 3,200 weekly units to around 1,600 weekly units due to sales below expectations. In 2022, Ford began manufacturing its E-Transit electric cargo vans at its plant in Kansas City, Missouri.
As the result of 2019 Ford-VW global alliance cooperation agreement, Ford began developing electric vehicles for the European market using the Volkswagen Group MEB platform along with batteries supplied by Volkswagen. The first Ford product based on the MEB is the Ford Explorer EV, which was introduced in March 2023. It is produced in the Cologne plant in Germany, which previously manufactured the Fiesta small car. In August 2023, Ford delayed the Explorer EV deliveries to 2024 due to new battery regulations.
In March 2022, Ford increased its focus in battery electric vehicles by establishing Ford Model E, a division for Ford's electric vehicle business. Ford Model E is expected to be profitable by 2026, and the company said the division "should be seen as a startup". In June 2022, Ford announced its intention to restructure its dealership model, including building an e-commerce platform where customers can buy electric vehicles at non-negotiable prices in an effort to match Tesla"s profit margins. Ford also stated in June 2022 that it planned to spend $3.7 billion to hire 6,200 union workers to staff several assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri in a bid to sell 2 million electric vehicles annually by 2026.
In May 2023, Ford announced its plans to integrate the North American Charging System (NACS) system into their electric vehicles, following Tesla's decision to open and rename its proprietary charging standard to NACS. Newly built Ford electric vehicles after 2024 will have native NACS charging ports on the vehicle. Existing Ford electric models will be able to connect to the NACS system and its chargers by use of an adapter. Both will thus have access to the extensive NACS charging network with more than 12,000 chargers in North America.
Hydrogen
Ford also continues to study fuel cell-powered electric powertrains and has demonstrated hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine technologies, as well as developing the next-generation hybrid-electric systems. Compared with conventional vehicles, hybrid vehicles and/or fuel cell vehicles decrease air pollution emissions as well as sound levels, with favorable impacts upon respiratory health and decrease of noise health effects.
Ford has launched the production of hydrogen-powered shuttle buses, using hydrogen instead of gasoline in a standard internal combustion engine, for use at airports and convention centers. At the 2006 Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, Ford showcased a hydrogen fuel cell version of its Explorer SUV. The Fuel cell Explorer has a combined output of 174 hp (130 kW). It has a large hydrogen storage tank which is situated in the center of the car taking the original place of the conventional model's automatic transmission. The centered position of the tank assists the vehicle reach a notable range of 350 miles (563 km), the farthest for a fuel cell vehicle so far. The fuel cell Explorer the first in a series of prototypes partly funded by the United States Department of Energy to expand efforts to determine the feasibility of hydrogen-powered vehicles. The fuel cell Explorer is one of several vehicles with green technology being featured at the L.A. show, including the 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid, PZEV emissions compliant Fusion and Focus models and a 2008 Ford F-Series Super Duty outfitted with Ford's clean diesel technology.
Increased fuel efficiency
In July 2008, Ford Motor Company announced that it would accelerate its plans to produce more fuel-efficient cars, changing both its North American manufacturing plans and its lineup of vehicles available in the United States. In terms of North American manufacturing, the company planned to convert three existing pickup truck and sport utility vehicle (SUV) plants for small car production, with the first conversion at its Michigan Truck Plant. In addition, Ford's assembly plants near Mexico City, Mexico, and in Louisville, Kentucky, were to be converted from pickups and SUVs to small cars, including the Ford Fiesta, by 2011. Ford then also planned to introduce to North America six of its European small vehicles, including two versions of the Ford Fiesta, by the end of 2012.
Ford of Europe developed the ECOnetic programme to address the market and legislative need for higher fuel efficiency and lower CO2 emissions. As opposed to the hybrid engine technology used in competitor products such as the Toyota Prius, ECOnetic improves existing technology. Using lower-consuming Duratorq TDCi diesel engines, and based on a combination of improved aerodynamics, lower resistance, and improved efficiency, the Ford Fiesta was the lowest-emitting mass-produced car in Europe while the 2012 Ford Focus ECOnetic will have better fuel consumption than the Prius or the Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion. ECOnetic is not presently planned to be sold in North American due to current perceived lower consumer demand.
Ford has challenged University teams to create a vehicle that is simple, durable, lightweight, and comes equipped with a base target price of only $7,000. The students from Aachen University created the "2015 Ford Model T".
In 2000, under the leadership of the current Ford chairman, William Clay Ford, the company announced a planned 25 percent improvement in the average mileage of its SUVs—to be completed by the 2005 calendar year. In 2003, Ford announced that competitive market conditions and technological and cost challenges would prevent the company from achieving this goal.
For the 2007 model year, Ford had thirteen U.S. models that achieve 30 miles per gallon or better (based on the highway fuel economy estimates of the EPA) and several of Ford's vehicles were recognized in the EPA and Department of Energy Fuel Economy Guide for best-in-class fuel economy. Ford claimed to have eliminated nearly three million pounds of smog-forming emissions from their U.S. cars and light trucks over the 2004 to 2006 model years. However, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has linked Ford to 54 Superfund toxic waste sites, twelve of which have been cleaned up and deleted from the list.
Efficient buildings
As part of a renovation of the Ford River Rouge Complex, in 2010 Ford unveiled a 10.4-acre (42,000 m2) living roof covering part of the Dearborn Truck plant, consisting of sedum, a low-growing groundcover. The sedum retains and cleanses rainwater and moderates the internal temperature of the building, saving energy.
In 2016, Ford announced a ten-year renovation plan for its Dearborn campus. The plan features consolidation of office and lab spaces in to fewer and much larger buildings, which will be built to LEED standards, and will feature extensive use of wetlands and park spaces. The new campus features new multi-story parking decks with solar power-generating roofs, and a new natural gas power plant. The DTE Ford Central Energy Plant is a 34MW combined heat-and-power plant which features a high efficiency design and LEED Gold buildings.
Sponsorships
Ford sponsors numerous events and sports facilities around the U.S., most notably the Ford Center in downtown Evansville, Indiana, and Ford Field in downtown Detroit.
The company has also been a major sponsor of the UEFA Champions League for over two decades, and is also a longtime sponsor of the Sky media channel's coverage of Premier League football.
Between 1994 and 1999, Ford was the main kit sponsor of German Bundesliga club 1. FC Köln.
Sales numbers
See also
References
Further reading
External links
Official website
Ford Motor Company records are archived at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Ford Motor Company companies grouped at OpenCorporates
Business data for Ford Motor Company: |
List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Matthew_McConaughey | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Matthew_McConaughey | [
298,
520
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Matthew_McConaughey",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Matthew_McConaughey"
] | Matthew McConaughey is an American actor and producer who rose to prominence with his role in the 1993 ensemble comedy film Dazed and Confused. The film was well received by critics. Since then, McConaughey has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, two Critics' Choice Awards, an MTV Movie Award and a People’s Choice Award. He has also been nominated for five Teen Choice Awards and two Emmys.
Three years after his role in Dazed and Confused, in 1996, McConaughey played the lead role of a lawyer in the movie A Time to Kill, for which he won the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance. His next appearances—in the science fiction drama Contact (1997), alongside Jodie Foster, and the war film U-571 (2000)—garnered him two Blockbuster Entertainment Award nominations. In the early 2000s, he starred in multiple romantic comedies, including The Wedding Planner (2001) and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), for which he received four Teen Choice Award nominations. He received two more nominations and the People's Choice Award for Favorite Male Action Star for his role in the 2005 action-comedy film Sahara.
McConaughey received the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Bernie (2011) and Magic Mike (2012) and was also awarded the Critics' Choice Movie Award in the same category for the latter. He played the role of a hit man in the black comedy crime film Killer Joe (2011) for which he was awarded the Saturn Award for Best Actor. In the same year, McConaughey starred in Mud (2012), which earned him the Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award. The following year, McConaughey played lead role of Ron Woodroof, a real life AIDS patient in the 1980s, in the biopic drama Dallas Buyers Club to critical acclaim. He won the Academy Award, Critics' Choice Movie Award, Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role in the film. In 2014, he starred in the epic sci-fi Interstellar for which he received a Saturn Award for Best Actor nomination. In November of the same year, he was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. McConaughey co-produced and acted in the crime anthology television series True Detective, which earned him Lead Actor nominations for a Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics' Choice Television Award and a Golden Globe. He also received two Primetime Emmy nominations, one for his role as an actor and other for his role as an executive producer as well as a Producers Guild of America Award nomination. For his roles in the war film Free State of Jones and Gold (both 2016), he was nominated for the Women Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the Saturn Award for Best Actor, respectively.
Awards and nominations
Other honors
References
Notes
Sources
External links
List of awards and nominations at the Internet Movie Database |
Zac_Efron | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zac_Efron | [
298
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zac_Efron#Awards_and_nominations"
] | Zachary David Alexander Efron (; born October 18, 1987) is an American actor. Efron began acting professionally in the early 2000s and rose to prominence as a teen idol for his leading role as Troy Bolton in the High School Musical trilogy (2006–2008). During this time, he also starred in the musical film Hairspray (2007) and the comedy film 17 Again (2009).
Efron had starring roles in the films New Year's Eve (2011), The Lucky One (2012), The Paperboy (2012), Neighbors (2014), Dirty Grandpa (2016), Baywatch (2017), and The Greatest Showman (2017). He played Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019) and Kevin Von Erich in The Iron Claw (2023). In 2021, he won a Daytime Emmy Award for hosting the Netflix travel show Down to Earth with Zac Efron (2020–2022).
Early life
Zachary David Alexander Efron was born on October 18, 1987, and grew up in Arroyo Grande, California. His father, David Efron, is an electrical engineer at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and his mother, Starla Baskett, is an administrative assistant who also works at Diablo Canyon. Efron has a younger brother, Dylan, and had, as he has described, a "normal childhood" in a middle-class family. His surname originates from Hebrew. His paternal grandfather is Jewish. Efron has described himself as Jewish, though he was raised agnostically and did not practice religion as a child.
He has said that he would "flip out" if he got a "B" and not an "A" in school, and was a class clown there. Efron subsequently worked at The Great American Melodrama and the Vaudeville theaters, and began taking singing lessons. He performed in shows such as Gypsy; Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up; Little Shop of Horrors; and The Music Man. He was recommended to an agent in Los Angeles by his drama teacher, Robyn Metchik, the mother of actor Aaron Michael Metchik. Efron was later signed to the Creative Artists Agency.
Efron graduated from Arroyo Grande High School in 2006 and was then accepted into the University of Southern California but did not enroll. He also attended Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, a theater company operating out of Allan Hancock College, a community college located in Santa Maria, California, where he performed in 2000 and 2001.
Career
2002–2009: Early career and High School Musical
Efron began acting in the early 2000s with guest roles on several television series including Firefly, ER, and The Guardian. In 2004, he began appearing as a recurring character in the first season of the WB series Summerland. For the show's second season, which aired in 2005, he was promoted to the main cast. He also appeared in some films, including the Lifetime television film Miracle Run (2004), for which he earned a Young Artist Award nomination for his performance as one of two autistic twins.
Efron's career reached a turning point with the teen musical television film High School Musical (2006), which premiered on the Disney Channel in January 2006. The film, which has been described as a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, saw Efron playing the male lead Troy Bolton, a high school basketball player who feels conflicted when he finds himself interested in participating in the school musical with Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens), a girl from the scholastic decathlon team. The film became a major success and helped Efron gain recognition among teenage audiences. The film's soundtrack was certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA, and was one of the best-selling albums of the year in the United States. However, Efron's recordings of the film's songs were not included in the final cut, and the majority of his parts were sung by Drew Seeley; the Troy Bolton role had been intended for a tenor before Efron's casting and Efron was a baritone. In his subsequent musical films, Efron did his own singing.
Efron was next seen as Link Larkin in the musical comedy film Hairspray (2007), based on the 2002 Broadway musical of the same name. Production conflicted with the High School Musical concert tour, which prevented Efron from joining; Drew Seeley filled in. The film became a major commercial and critical success upon its release in July 2007. Later that year, he reprised his role of Troy Bolton in High School Musical 2 (2007), which aired on the Disney Channel in August 2007.
Efron again reprised his role in High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008), the first film in the High School Musical franchise to receive a theatrical release. The film became a major blockbuster at the box office, and received mixed to positive reviews from critics. He followed this with the commercially successful comedy 17 Again (2009) about a 37-year-old man who is transformed into his 17-year-old self (Efron) after a chance accident.
2009–present: Other roles and mainstream success
Efron's next release was Richard Linklater's period drama Me and Orson Welles, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008 and received a wide release in late 2009. The film earned mostly positive reviews from critics. He then played the title role in the supernatural romantic drama Charlie St. Cloud (2010), which became a moderate success at the box office despite receiving mostly negative reviews from critics.
Efron appeared as a part of the large ensemble cast in Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve (2011), which depicted a series of holiday vignettes of different groups of characters. The film received almost unanimously negative reviews from critics, but became a major success at the box office. He also played a supporting role in the critically successful Liberal Arts (2012), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012 and received a limited release later that year. He also starred in The Paperboy (2012), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012 and received a wider release later that year. The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics.
After lending his voice to the animated film The Lorax (2012), he appeared as the male lead in the romantic drama The Lucky One (2012), based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The film became a major box office success despite negative reviews from critics. He also starred in the drama At Any Price, which premiered at the 2012 Venice International Film Festival, and the historical drama Parkland, which premiered at the 2013 Venice International Film Festival. Both films received mixed reviews from critics.
Efron's first release of 2014 was the romantic comedy That Awkward Moment, for which he also served as an executive producer. The film, which starred Efron as one of three bachelors in New York City, became a moderate commercial success despite receiving mostly negative reviews from critics.
Later in 2014, Efron was seen in the adult comedy Neighbors (2014). The film revolved around a young couple who struggle to raise their baby daughter while living next to the house of a wild fraternity led by its president, played by Efron. The film became a major commercial success and earned mostly positive reviews from critics, who also added that he had successfully shed his "Disney pretty boy" image.
Efron's only release in 2015 was the moderately successful We Are Your Friends (2015), in which he played a struggling DJ. In January 2016, he starred in the adult comedy Dirty Grandpa as a straitlaced young man who begrudgingly indulges his grandfather's unhinged personality by taking him on a vacation to Florida. The film received mostly negative reviews from critics for its crude humor but became a commercial success upon its release. He subsequently starred in the comedy sequel Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which became a commercial and critical success upon its release in May 2016. The film followed the same couple who team up with their former rival (Efron) to take down a hard-partying sorority led by a freshman. His third 2016 comedy, released in July, was Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.
In 2017, Efron starred in Baywatch, an action comedy film version of the television series of the same name, released in May. Also in 2017, Efron had a supporting role in two biographical films released in December: The Disaster Artist, a comedy-drama directed by and starring James Franco, and as Phillip in the musical The Greatest Showman. Both films were nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
In 2019, Efron played a drug-addled libertine in the Harmony Korine film The Beach Bum. He also starred as serial killer Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. The film premiered at Sundance in early 2019 and was released by Netflix on May 3.
In 2020, Efron voiced Fred Jones in Warner Bros.' Scooby-Doo animated film, Scoob! In 2021, he won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Program Host for the Netflix web documentary series Down to Earth with Zac Efron.
In 2022, he starred in the survival thriller Gold, directed by Anthony Hayes and headlined the horror film Firestarter, a remake of the 1984 film based upon the novel of the same name by Stephen King, directed by Keith Thomas. Also that year, he starred in Peter Farrelly's Vietnam War–set comedy The Greatest Beer Run Ever, which received mixed reviews.
In 2023, he starred as Kevin Von Erich in Sean Durkin's The Iron Claw, about the Von Erich family of wrestlers.
Other work
In 2010, Efron started his own production company under Warner Bros., Ninjas Runnin' Wild. The company played a part in the production of his films Dirty Grandpa, That Awkward Moment, and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. In 2019, Efron's brother Dylan, who also plays a role in the company, stated that Ninjas Runnin' Wild has started to produce more digital content in addition to their traditional film work.
Efron announced the creation of his YouTube channel in March 2019. The video sharing platform hosts two weekly series. "Off the Grid" follows Efron and his brother Dylan as they participate in outdoor activities and trips without electronic devices—with the exception of a video camera in order to document their experiences. "Gym Time" spotlights fitness and nutrition, with Efron informing his viewers that he plans to "train with celebrities, athletes, and interesting people". YouTube received backlash for promoting Efron's new channel in a post made from their official Twitter account. Some YouTube users accused the platform of promoting a mainstream celebrity's account, which they feared would overshadow lesser known creators.
Personal life
Efron was on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2008 at number 92, with estimated earnings of $5.8 million from June 2007 to June 2008. In April 2009, his personal wealth equaled about $10 million. In May 2015, Efron's net worth was $18 million.
In March 2014, Efron engaged in a fight with a homeless man on Skid Row. Law enforcement officials did not make any arrests because they viewed it as mutual combat.
Efron turned to transcendental meditation (TM) to help decompress after struggling to separate himself from his role as serial killer Ted Bundy in his movie. "I really love TM, transcendental meditation. I did TM on the way home. Not while driving, but when you're shooting a movie, one thing we can afford is a ride home, so on the way home I just do some TM and try to phase out of it."
Efron moved to Australia after selling his Los Angeles home in early 2021 and purchased a property in Byron Bay while working on a number of projects there.
Health issues
Efron sought treatment in early 2013 after struggling with alcoholism and substance abuse. He has been sober since June 2013. In November 2013, Efron had to have his jaw wired shut after breaking it in a fall at home. He revealed in 2022 that he almost died during this incident, and that it was responsible for his facial swelling, apparent in a viral 2021 video for Bill Nye's Earth Day Musical.
In December 2019, Efron contracted a serious and potentially life-threatening illness, a "form of typhoid or similar bacterial infection", while filming his adventure series Killing Zac Efron in Papua New Guinea. He was flown to St Andrews War Memorial Hospital in Brisbane, Australia, and was treated before flying back home on December 25. He recovered with little issue.
Efron was a vegan for two years until 2022, when he began intermittent fasting, and reintroduced meat into his diet after undergoing a series of food sensitivity tests.
In 2022, Efron opened up about his struggles with mental illnesses including insomnia, agoraphobia, and depression. He developed insomnia and depression after taking diuretics for a long period to prepare for his role in Baywatch.
In August 2024, Efron was rushed to hospital after being found unconscious in a swimming pool in Ibiza. According to TMZ, he was discovered by two villa employees who pulled him out of the water. The hospitalization was described as a "precautionary measure" and the incident as "minor". Efron aspirated a significant amount of water into his lungs and had x-rays taken to ensure his lungs were clear before being discharged the following day.
Filmography
Film
Television
Music videos
Discography
Singles
Other charted songs
Awards and nominations
References
External links
Zac Efron at IMDb |
Ursula_K._Le_Guin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin | [
299
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin"
] | Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( KROH-bər lə GWIN; née Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. Her work was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".
Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, to author Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber. Having earned a master's degree in French, Le Guin began doctoral studies but abandoned these after her marriage in 1953 to historian Charles Le Guin. She began writing full-time in the late 1950s and achieved major critical and commercial success with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which have been described by Harold Bloom as her masterpieces. For the latter volume, Le Guin won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, becoming the first woman to do so. Several more works set in Earthsea or the Hainish universe followed; others included books set in the fictional country of Orsinia, several works for children, and many anthologies.
Cultural anthropology, Taoism, feminism, and the writings of Carl Jung all had a strong influence on Le Guin's work. Many of her stories used anthropologists or cultural observers as protagonists, and Taoist ideas about balance and equilibrium have been identified in several writings. Le Guin often subverted typical speculative fiction tropes, such as through her use of dark-skinned protagonists in Earthsea, and also used unusual stylistic or structural devices in books such as the experimental work Always Coming Home (1985). Social and political themes, including race, gender, sexuality, and coming of age were prominent in her writing. She explored alternative political structures in many stories, such as in the philosophical short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973) and the anarchist utopian novel The Dispossessed (1974).
Le Guin's writing was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction, and has been the subject of intense critical attention. She received numerous accolades, including eight Hugos, six Nebulas, and twenty-five Locus Awards, and in 2003 became the second woman honored as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The U.S. Library of Congress named her a Living Legend in 2000, and in 2014, she won the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Le Guin influenced many other authors, including Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and Iain Banks. After her death in 2018, critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", while author Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation".
Life
Childhood and education
Ursula Kroeber was born in Berkeley, California, on October 21, 1929. Her father, Alfred Louis Kroeber, was an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Le Guin's mother, Theodora Kroeber (born Theodora Covel Kracaw), had a graduate degree in psychology, but turned to writing in her sixties, developing a successful career as an author. Among her works was Ishi in Two Worlds (1961), a biographical volume about Ishi, an Indigenous American who had been studied by Alfred Kroeber. Ishi was the last known member of the Yahi tribe after the rest of its members died or (mostly) were killed by white colonizers.
Le Guin had three older brothers: Karl, who became a literary scholar, Theodore, and Clifton. The family had a large book collection, and the siblings all became interested in reading while they were young. The Kroeber family had a number of visitors, including well-known academics such as Robert Oppenheimer; Le Guin would later use Oppenheimer as the model for Shevek, the physicist protagonist of The Dispossessed. The family divided its time between a summer home in the Napa Valley, and a house in Berkeley during the academic year.
Le Guin's reading included science fiction and fantasy: she and her siblings frequently read issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Astounding Science Fiction. She was fond of myths and legends, particularly Norse mythology, and of Native American legends that her father would narrate. Other authors she enjoyed were Lord Dunsany and Lewis Padgett. Le Guin also developed an early interest in writing; she wrote a short story when she was nine, and submitted her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction when she was eleven. The piece was rejected, and she did not submit anything else for another ten years.
Le Guin attended Berkeley High School. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Renaissance French and Italian literature from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1951, and graduated as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. As a child she had been interested in biology and poetry, but had been limited in her choice of career by her difficulties with mathematics. Le Guin undertook graduate studies at Columbia University, and earned a Master of Arts degree in French in 1952. Soon after, she began working towards a PhD, and won a Fulbright grant to continue her studies in France from 1953 to 1954.
Married life and death
In 1953, while traveling to France aboard the Queen Mary, Ursula met historian Charles Le Guin. They married in Paris in December 1953. According to Le Guin, the marriage signaled the "end of the doctorate" for her. While her husband finished his doctorate at Emory University in Georgia, and later at the University of Idaho, Le Guin taught French: first at Mercer University, then at the University of Idaho after their move. She also worked as a secretary until the birth of her daughter Elisabeth in 1957. A second daughter, Caroline, was born in 1959. Also in that year, Charles became an instructor in history at Portland State University, and the couple moved to Portland, Oregon, where their son Theodore was born in 1964. They would live in Portland for the rest of their lives, although Le Guin received further Fulbright grants to travel to London in 1968 and 1975.
Le Guin's writing career began in the late 1950s, but the time she spent caring for her children constrained her writing schedule. She would continue writing and publishing for nearly 60 years. She also worked as an editor, and taught undergraduate classes. She served on the editorial boards of the journals Paradoxa and Science Fiction Studies, in addition to writing literary criticism herself. She taught courses at Tulane University, Bennington College, and Stanford University, among others. In May 1983, she delivered a commencement speech entitled "A Left-handed Commencement Address" at Mills College in Oakland, California. It is listed as No. 82 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century, and was included in her nonfiction collection Dancing at the Edge of the World.
Le Guin died on January 22, 2018, at her home in Portland, at the age of 88. Her son said that she had been in poor health for several months, and stated that it was likely she had had a heart attack. Private memorial services for her were held in Portland. A public memorial service, which included speeches by the writers Margaret Atwood, Molly Gloss, and Walidah Imarisha, was held in Portland on June 13, 2018.
Views and advocacy
Le Guin refused a Nebula Award for her story "The Diary of the Rose" in 1977, in protest at the Science Fiction Writers of America's revocation of Stanisław Lem's membership. Le Guin attributed the revocation to Lem's criticism of American science fiction and willingness to live in the Eastern Bloc, and said she felt reluctant to receive an award "for a story about political intolerance from a group that had just displayed political intolerance".
Le Guin once said she was "raised as irreligious as a jackrabbit". She expressed a deep interest in Taoism and Buddhism, saying that Taoism gave her a "handle on how to look at life" during her adolescent years. In 1997, she published a translation of the Tao Te Ching.
In December 2009, Le Guin resigned from the Authors Guild in protest over its endorsement of Google's book digitization project. "You decided to deal with the devil", she wrote in her resignation letter. "There are principles involved, above all the whole concept of copyright; and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation, on their terms, without a struggle." In a speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, Le Guin criticized Amazon and the control it exerted over the publishing industry, specifically referencing Amazon's treatment of the Hachette Book Group during a dispute over ebook publication. Her speech received widespread media attention within and outside the United States, and was broadcast twice by National Public Radio.
Chronology of writings
Early work
Le Guin's first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while her first published short story was "An die Musik", in 1961; both were set in her fictional country of Orsinia. Between 1951 and 1961 she also wrote five novels, all set in Orsinia, which were rejected by publishers on the grounds that they were inaccessible. Some of her poetry from this period was published in 1975 in the volume Wild Angels. Le Guin turned her attention to science fiction after a lengthy period of receiving rejections from publishers, knowing that there was a market for writing that could be readily classified as such. Her first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962 in Fantastic Science Fiction, and seven other stories followed in the next few years, in Fantastic or Amazing Stories. Among them were "The Dowry of Angyar", which introduced the fictional Hainish universe, and "The Rule of Names" and "The Word of Unbinding", which introduced the world of Earthsea. These stories were largely ignored by critics.
Ace Books released Rocannon's World, Le Guin's first published novel, in 1966. Two more Hainish novels, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions were published in 1966 and 1967, respectively, and the three books together would come to be known as the Hainish trilogy. The first two were each published as half of an "Ace Double": two novels bound into a paperback and sold as a single low-cost volume. City of Illusions was published as a standalone volume, indicating Le Guin's growing name recognition. These books received more critical attention than Le Guin's short stories, with reviews being published in several science fiction magazines, but the critical response was still muted. The books contained many themes and ideas also present in Le Guin's better known later works, including the "archetypal journey" of a protagonist who undertakes both a physical journey and one of self-discovery, cultural contact and communication, the search for identity, and the reconciliation of opposing forces.
When publishing her story "Nine Lives" in 1968, Playboy magazine asked Le Guin whether they could run the story without her full first name, to which Le Guin agreed: the story was published under the name "U. K. Le Guin". She later wrote that it was the first and only time she had experienced prejudice against her as a woman writer from an editor or publisher, and reflected that "it seemed so silly, so grotesque, that I failed to see that it was also important." In subsequent printings, the story was published under her full name.
Critical attention
Le Guin's next two books brought her sudden and widespread critical acclaim. A Wizard of Earthsea, published in 1968, was a fantasy novel written initially for teenagers. Le Guin had not planned to write for young adults, but was asked to write a novel targeted at this group by the editor of Parnassus Press, who saw it as a market with great potential. A coming of age story set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, the book received a positive reception in both the U.S. and Britain.
Her next novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, was a Hainish universe story exploring themes of gender and sexuality on a fictional planet where humans have no fixed sex. The book was Le Guin's first to address feminist issues, and according to scholar Donna White, it "stunned the science fiction critics"; it won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for best novel, making Le Guin the first woman to win these awards, and a number of other accolades. A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness have been described by critic Harold Bloom as Le Guin's masterpieces. She won the Hugo Award again in 1973 for The Word for World Is Forest. The book was influenced by Le Guin's anger over the Vietnam War, and explored themes of colonialism and militarism: Le Guin later described it as the "most overt political statement" she had made in a fictional work.
Le Guin continued to develop themes of equilibrium and coming-of-age in the next two installments of the Earthsea series, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore, published in 1971 and 1972, respectively. Both books were praised for their writing, while the exploration of death as a theme in The Farthest Shore also drew praise. Her 1974 novel The Dispossessed again won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for best novel, making her the first person to win both awards for each of two books. Also set in the Hainish universe, the story explored anarchism and utopianism. Scholar Charlotte Spivack described it as representing a shift in Le Guin's science fiction towards discussing political ideas. Several of her speculative fiction short stories from the period, including her first published story, were later anthologized in the 1975 collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters. The fiction of the period 1966 to 1974, which also included The Lathe of Heaven, the Hugo Award-winning "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and the Nebula Award-winning "The Day Before the Revolution", constitutes Le Guin's best-known body of work.
Wider exploration
Le Guin published a variety of work in the second half of the 1970s. This included speculative fiction in the form of the novel The Eye of the Heron, which, according to Le Guin, may be a part of the Hainish universe. She also published Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, a realistic novel for adolescents, as well as the collection Orsinian Tales and the novel Malafrena in 1976 and 1979, respectively. Though the latter two were set in the fictional country of Orsinia, the stories were realistic fiction rather than fantasy or science fiction. The Language of the Night, a collection of essays, was released in 1979, and Le Guin also published Wild Angels, a volume of poetry, in 1975.
Between 1979, when she published Malafrena, and 1994, when the collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea was released, Le Guin wrote primarily for a younger audience. In 1985 she published the experimental work Always Coming Home. She wrote 11 children's picture books, including the Catwings series, between 1979 and 1994, along with The Beginning Place, an adolescent fantasy novel, released in 1980. Four more poetry collections were also published in this period, all of which were positively received. She also revisited Earthsea, publishing Tehanu in 1990: coming eighteen years after The Farthest Shore, during which Le Guin's views had developed considerably, the book was grimmer in tone than the earlier works in the series, and challenged some ideas presented therein. It received critical praise, won Le Guin a third Nebula Award for Best Novel, and led to the series being recognized among adult literature.
Later writings
Le Guin returned to the Hainish Cycle in the 1990s after a lengthy hiatus with the publication of a series of short stories, beginning with "The Shobies' Story" in 1990. These stories included "Coming of Age in Karhide" (1995), which explored growing into adulthood and was set on the same planet as The Left Hand of Darkness. It was described by scholar Sandra Lindow as "so transgressively sexual and so morally courageous" that Le Guin "could not have written it in the '60s". In the same year she published the story suite Four Ways to Forgiveness, and followed it up with "Old Music and the Slave Women", a fifth, connected, story in 1999. All five of the stories explored freedom and rebellion within a slave society. In 2000 she published The Telling, which would be her final Hainish novel, and the next year released Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind, the last two Earthsea books. The latter won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2002.
From 2002 onwards several collections and anthologies of Le Guin's work were published. A series of her stories from the period 1994–2002 was released in 2002 in the collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, along with the novella Paradises Lost. The volume examined unconventional ideas about gender, as well as anarchist themes. Other collections included Changing Planes, also released in 2002, while the anthologies included The Unreal and the Real (2012), and The Hainish Novels and Stories, a two-volume set of works from the Hainish universe released by the Library of America.
Other works from this period included Lavinia (2008), based on a character from Virgil's Aeneid, and the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, consisting of Gifts (2004), Voices (2006), and Powers (2007). Although Annals of the Western Shore was written for an adolescent audience, the third volume, Powers, received the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2009. In her final years, Le Guin largely turned away from fiction, and produced a number of essays, poems, and some translation. Her final publications included the non-fiction collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, and the poetry volume So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014–2018, all of which were released after her death.
Style and influences
Influences
Le Guin read both classic and speculative fiction widely in her youth. She later said that science fiction did not have much impact on her until she read the works of Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith, and that she had sneered at the genre as a child. Authors Le Guin describes as influential include Victor Hugo, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Boris Pasternak, and Philip K. Dick. Le Guin and Dick attended the same high-school, but did not know each other; Le Guin later described her novel The Lathe of Heaven as an homage to him. She also considered J. R. R. Tolkien and Leo Tolstoy to be stylistic influences, and preferred reading Virginia Woolf and Jorge Luis Borges to well-known science-fiction authors such as Robert Heinlein, whose writing she described as being of the "white man conquers the universe" tradition. Several scholars state that the influence of mythology, which Le Guin enjoyed reading as a child, is also visible in much of her work: for example, the short story "The Dowry of Angyar" is described as a retelling of a Norse myth.
The discipline of cultural anthropology had a powerful influence on Le Guin's writing. Her father Alfred Kroeber is considered a pioneer in the field, and was a director of the University of California Museum of Anthropology: as a consequence of his research, Le Guin was exposed to anthropology and cultural exploration as a child. In addition to myths and legends, she read such volumes as The Leaves of the Golden Bough by Elizabeth Grove Frazer, a children's book adapted from The Golden Bough, a study of myth and religion by her husband James George Frazer. She described living with her father's friends and acquaintances as giving her the experience of the other. The experiences of Ishi, in particular, were influential on Le Guin, and elements of his story have been identified in works such as Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, and The Word for World Is Forest and The Dispossessed.
Several scholars have commented that Le Guin's writing was influenced by Carl Jung, and specifically by the idea of Jungian archetypes. In particular, the shadow in A Wizard of Earthsea is seen as the Shadow archetype from Jungian psychology, representing Ged's pride, fear, and desire for power. Le Guin discussed her interpretation of this archetype, and her interest in the dark and repressed parts of the psyche, in a 1974 lecture. She stated elsewhere that she had never read Jung before writing the first Earthsea books. Other archetypes, including the Mother, Animus, and Anima, have also been identified in Le Guin's writing. the planetary forests featured in multiple Hainish works are described as a metaphor for the mind, and of Jungian "collective unconscious.
Philosophical Taoism had a large role in Le Guin's world view, and the influence of Taoist thought can be seen in many of her stories. Many of Le Guin's protagonists, including in The Lathe of Heaven, embody the Taoist ideal of leaving things alone. The anthropologists of the Hainish universe try not to meddle with the cultures they encounter, while one of the earliest lessons Ged learns in A Wizard of Earthsea is not to use magic unless it is absolutely necessary. Taoist influence is evident in Le Guin's depiction of equilibrium in the world of Earthsea: the archipelago is depicted as being based on a delicate balance, which is disrupted by somebody in each of the first three novels. This includes an equilibrium between land and sea, implicit in the name "Earthsea", between people and their natural environment, and a larger cosmic equilibrium, which wizards are tasked with maintaining. Another prominent Taoist idea is the reconciliation of opposites such as light and dark, or good and evil. A number of Hainish novels, The Dispossessed prominent among them, explored such a process of reconciliation. In the Earthsea universe, it is not the dark powers, but the characters' misunderstanding of the balance of life, that is depicted as evil, in contrast to conventional Western stories in which good and evil are in constant conflict.
Genre and style
Although Le Guin is primarily known for her works of speculative fiction, she also wrote realistic fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and several other literary forms, and as a result her work is difficult to classify. Her writings received critical attention from mainstream critics, critics of children's literature, and critics of speculative fiction. Le Guin herself said that she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist". Le Guin's transgression of conventional boundaries of genre led to literary criticism of Le Guin becoming "Balkanized", particularly between scholars of children's literature and speculative fiction. Commentators have noted that the Earthsea novels specifically received less critical attention because they were considered children's books. Le Guin herself took exception to this treatment of children's literature, describing it as "adult chauvinist piggery". In 1976, literature scholar George Slusser criticized the "silly publication classification designating the original series as 'children's literature'", while in Barbara Bucknall's opinion Le Guin "can be read, like Tolkien, by ten-year-olds and by adults. These stories are ageless because they deal with problems that confront us at any age."
Several of her works have a premise drawn from sociology, psychology, or philosophy. As a result, Le Guin's writing is often described as "soft" science fiction, and she has been described as the "patron saint" of this sub-genre. A number of science fiction authors have objected to the term "soft science fiction", describing it as a potentially pejorative term used to dismiss stories not based on problems in physics, astronomy, or engineering, and also to target the writing of women or other groups under-represented in the genre. Le Guin suggested the term "social science fiction" for some of her writing, while pointing out that many of her stories were not science fiction at all. She argued that the term "soft science fiction" was divisive, and implied a narrow view of what constitutes valid science fiction.
The influence of anthropology can be seen in the setting Le Guin chose for a number of her works. Several of her protagonists are anthropologists or ethnologists exploring a world alien to them. This is particularly true in the stories set in the Hainish universe, an alternative reality in which humans did not evolve on Earth, but on Hain. The Hainish subsequently colonized many planets, before losing contact with them, giving rise to varied but related biology and social structure. Examples include Rocannon in Rocannon's World and Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness. Other characters, such as Shevek in The Dispossessed, become cultural observers in the course of their journeys on other planets. Le Guin's writing often examines alien cultures, and particularly the human cultures from planets other than Earth in the Hainish universe. In discovering these "alien" worlds, Le Guin's protagonists, and by extension the readers, also journey into themselves, and challenge the nature of what they consider "alien" and what they consider "native".
Several of Le Guin's works have featured stylistic or structural features that were unusual or subversive. The heterogeneous structure of The Left Hand of Darkness, described as "distinctly post-modern", was unusual for the time of its publication. This was in marked contrast to the structure of (primarily male-authored) traditional science fiction, which was straightforward and linear. The novel was framed as part of a report sent to the Ekumen by the protagonist Genly Ai after his time on the planet Gethen, thus suggesting that Ai was selecting and ordering the material, consisting of personal narration, diary extracts, Gethenian myths, and ethnological reports. Earthsea also employed an unconventional narrative form described by scholar Mike Cadden as "free indirect discourse", in which the feelings of the protagonist are not directly separated from the narration, making the narrator seem sympathetic to the characters, and removing the skepticism towards a character's thoughts and emotions that are a feature of more direct narration. Cadden suggests that this method leads to younger readers sympathizing directly with the characters, making it an effective technique for young-adult literature.
A number of Le Guin's writings, including the Earthsea series, challenged the conventions of epic fantasies and myths. Many of the protagonists in Earthsea were dark-skinned individuals, in comparison to the white-skinned heroes more traditionally used; some of the antagonists, in contrast, were white-skinned, a switching of race roles that has been remarked upon by multiple critics. In a 2001 interview, Le Guin attributed the frequent lack of character illustrations on her book covers to her choice of non-white protagonists. She explained this choice, saying: "most people in the world aren't white. Why in the future would we assume they are?" Her 1985 book Always Coming Home, described as "her great experiment", included a story told from the perspective of a young protagonist, but also included poems, rough drawings of plants and animals, myths, and anthropological reports from the matriarchal society of the Kesh, a fictional people living in the Napa valley after a catastrophic global flood.
Themes
Gender and sexuality
Gender and sexuality are prominent themes in a number of Le Guin's works. The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction, and is the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction. The story is set on the fictional planet of Gethen, whose inhabitants are ambisexual humans with no fixed gender identity, who adopt female or male sexual characteristics for brief periods of their sexual cycle. Which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships. Gethen was portrayed as a society without war, as a result of this absence of fixed gender characteristics, and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships. Gethenian culture was explored in the novel through the eyes of a Terran, whose masculinity proves a barrier to cross-cultural communication. Outside the Hainish Cycle, Le Guin's use of a female protagonist in The Tombs of Atuan, published in 1971, was described as a "significant exploration of womanhood".
Le Guin's attitude towards gender and feminism evolved considerably over time. Although The Left Hand of Darkness was seen as a landmark exploration of gender, it also received criticism for not going far enough. Reviewers pointed to its usage of masculine gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters, the lack of androgynous characters portrayed in stereotypical feminine roles, and the portrayal of heterosexuality as the norm on Gethen. Le Guin's portrayal of gender in Earthsea was also described as perpetuating the notion of a male-dominated world; according to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "Le Guin saw men as the actors and doers in the [world], while women remain the still centre, the well from which they drink". Le Guin initially defended her writing; in a 1976 essay "Is Gender Necessary?" she wrote that gender was secondary to the primary theme of loyalty in The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin revisited this essay in 1988, and acknowledged that gender was central to the novel; she also apologized for depicting Gethenians solely in heterosexual relationships.
Le Guin responded to these critiques in her subsequent writing. She intentionally used feminine pronouns for all sexually latent Gethenians in her 1995 short story "Coming of Age in Karhide", and in a later reprinting of "Winter's King", which was first published in 1969. "Coming of Age in Karhide" was later anthologized in the 2002 collection The Birthday of the World, which contained six other stories featuring unorthodox sexual relationships and marital arrangements. She also revisited gender relations in Earthsea in Tehanu, published in 1990. This volume was described as a rewriting or reimagining of The Tombs of Atuan, because the power and status of the female protagonist Tenar are the inverse of what they were in the earlier book, which was also focused on her and Ged. During this later period she commented that she considered The Eye of the Heron, published in 1978, to be her first work genuinely centered on a woman.
Moral development
Le Guin explores coming of age, and moral development more broadly, in many of her writings. This is particularly the case in those works written for a younger audience, such as Earthsea and Annals of the Western Shore. Le Guin wrote in a 1973 essay that she chose to explore coming-of-age in Earthsea since she was writing for an adolescent audience: "Coming of age ... is a process that took me many years; I finished it, so far as I ever will, at about age thirty-one; and so I feel rather deeply about it. So do most adolescents. It's their main occupation, in fact." She also said that fantasy was best suited as a medium for describing coming of age, because exploring the subconscious was difficult using the language of "rational daily life".
The first three Earthsea novels together follow Ged from youth to old age, and each of them also follow the coming of age of a different character. A Wizard of Earthsea focuses on Ged's adolescence, while The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore explore that of Tenar and the prince Arren, respectively. A Wizard of Earthsea is frequently described as a Bildungsroman, in which Ged's coming of age is intertwined with the physical journey he undertakes through the novel. To Mike Cadden the book was a convincing tale "to a reader as young and possibly as headstrong as Ged, and therefore sympathetic to him". Reviewers have described the ending of the novel, wherein Ged finally accepts the shadow as a part of himself, as a rite of passage. Scholar Jeanne Walker writes that the rite of passage at the end was an analogue for the entire plot of A Wizard of Earthsea, and that the plot itself plays the role of a rite of passage for an adolescent reader.
Each volume of Annals of the Western Shore also describes the coming of age of its protagonists, and features explorations of being enslaved to one's own power. The process of growing up is depicted as seeing beyond narrow choices the protagonists are presented with by society. In Gifts, Orrec and Gry realize that the powers their people possess can be used in two ways: for control and dominion, or for healing and nurturing. This recognition allows them to take a third choice, and leave. This wrestling with choice has been compared to the choices the characters are forced to make in Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". Similarly, Ged helps Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan to value herself and to find choices that she did not see, leading her to leave the Tombs with him.
Political systems
Alternative social and political systems are a recurring theme in Le Guin's writing. Critics have paid particular attention to The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home, although Le Guin explores related themes in a number of her works, such as in "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". The Dispossessed is an anarchist utopian novel, which according to Le Guin drew from pacifist anarchists, including Peter Kropotkin, as well as from the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Le Guin has been credited with "[rescuing] anarchism from the cultural ghetto to which it has been consigned", and helping to bring it into the intellectual mainstream. Fellow author Kathleen Ann Goonan wrote that Le Guin's work confronted the "paradigm of insularity toward the suffering of people, other living beings, and resources", and explored "life-respecting sustainable alternatives".
The Dispossessed, set on the twin planets of Urras and Anarres, features a planned anarchist society depicted as an "ambiguous utopia". The society, created by settlers from Urras, is materially poorer than the wealthy society of Urras, but more ethically and morally advanced. Unlike classical utopias, the society of Anarres is portrayed as neither perfect nor static; the protagonist Shevek finds himself traveling to Urras to pursue his research. Nonetheless, the misogyny and hierarchy present in the authoritarian society of Urras is absent among the anarchists, who base their social structure on cooperation and individual liberty. The Eye of the Heron, published a few years after The Dispossessed, was described as continuing Le Guin's exploration of human freedom, through a conflict between two societies of opposing philosophies: a town inhabited by descendants of pacifists, and a city inhabited by descendants of criminals.
Always Coming Home, set in California in the distant future, examines a warlike society, resembling contemporary American society, from the perspective of the Kesh, its pacifist neighbors. The society of the Kesh has been identified by scholars as a feminist utopia, which Le Guin uses to explore the role of technology. Scholar Warren Rochelle stated that it was "neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy: men and women just are". "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", a parable depicting a society in which widespread wealth, happiness, and security, comes at the cost of the continued misery of a single child, has also been read as a critique of contemporary American society. The Word for World is Forest explored the manner in which the structure of society affects the natural environment; in the novel, the natives of the planet of Athshe have adapted their way of life to the ecology of the planet. The colonizing human society, in contrast, is depicted as destructive and uncaring; in depicting it, Le Guin also critiqued colonialism and imperialism, driven partly by her disapproval for U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.
Other social structures are examined in works such as the story cycle Four Ways to Forgiveness, and the short story "Old Music and the Slave Women", occasionally described as a "fifth way to forgiveness". Set in the Hainish universe, the five stories together examine revolution and reconstruction in a slave-owning society. According to Rochelle, the stories examine a society that has the potential to build a "truly human community", made possible by the Ekumen's recognition of the slaves as human beings, thus offering them the prospect of freedom and the possibility of utopia, brought about through revolution. Slavery, justice, and the role of women in society are also explored in Annals of the Western Shore.
Reception and legacy
Reception
Le Guin received rapid recognition after the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, and by the 1970s she was among the best known writers in the field. Her books sold many millions of copies, and were translated into more than 40 languages; several remain in print many decades after their first publication. Her work received intense academic attention; she has been described as being the "premier writer of both fantasy and science fiction" of the 1970s, the most frequently discussed science fiction writer of the 1970s, and over her career, as intensively studied as Philip K. Dick. Later in her career, she also received recognition from mainstream literary critics: in an obituary, Jo Walton stated that Le Guin "was so good that the mainstream couldn't dismiss SF any more". According to scholar Donna White, Le Guin was a "major voice in American letters", whose writing was the subject of many volumes of literary critique, more than two hundred scholarly articles, and a number of dissertations.
Le Guin was unusual in receiving most of her recognition for her earliest works, which remained her most popular; a commentator in 2018 described a "tendency toward didacticism" in her later works, while John Clute, writing in The Guardian, stated that her later writing "suffers from the need she clearly felt to speak responsibly to her large audience about important things; an artist being responsible can be an artist wearing a crown of thorns". Not all of her works received as positive a reception; The Compass Rose was among the volumes that had a mixed reaction, while the Science Fiction Encyclopedia described The Eye of the Heron as "an over-diagrammatic political fable whose translucent simplicity approaches self-parody". Even the critically well-received The Left Hand of Darkness, in addition to critique from feminists, was described by Alexei Panshin as a "flat failure".
Her writing was recognized by the popular media and by commentators. The Los Angeles Times commented in 2009 that after the death of Arthur C. Clarke, Le Guin was "arguably the most acclaimed science fiction writer on the planet", and went on to describe her as a "pioneer" of literature for young people. In an obituary, Clute described Le Guin as having "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century", and as having a reputation as an author of the "first rank". In 2016, The New York Times described her as "America's greatest living science fiction writer". Praise for Le Guin frequently focused on the social and political themes her work explored, and for her prose; literary critic Harold Bloom described Le Guin as an "exquisite stylist", saying that in her writing, "Every word was exactly in place and every sentence or line had resonance". According to Bloom, Le Guin was a "visionary who set herself against all brutality, discrimination, and exploitation". The New York Times described her as using "a lean but lyrical style" to explore issues of moral relevance. Prefacing an interview in 2008, Vice magazine described Le Guin as having written "some of the more mind-warping [science fiction] and fantasy tales of the past 40 years".
Le Guin's fellow authors also praised her writing. After Le Guin's death in 2018, writer Michael Chabon referred to her as the "greatest American writer of her generation", and said that she had "awed [him] with the power of an unfettered imagination". Author Margaret Atwood hailed Le Guin's "sane, smart, crafty and lyrical voice", and wrote that social injustice was a powerful motivation through Le Guin's life. Her prose, according to Zadie Smith, was "as elegant and beautiful as any written in the twentieth century". Academic and author Joyce Carol Oates highlighted Le Guin's "outspoken sense of justice, decency, and common sense", and called her "one of the great American writers and a visionary artist whose work will long endure". China Miéville described Le Guin as a "literary colossus", and wrote that she was a "writer of intense ethical seriousness and intelligence, of wit and fury, of radical politics, of subtlety, of freedom and yearning".
Awards and recognition
The accolades Le Guin has received include numerous annual awards for individual works. She won eight Hugo Awards from twenty-six nominations, and six Nebula Awards from eighteen nominations, including four Nebula Awards for Best Novel from six nominations, more than any other writer. Locus Magazine subscribers have voted Le Guin to receive 25 Locus Awards. At the time of her death she was third for total wins, as well as second behind Neil Gaiman for awards for fiction. For her novels alone she won five Locus Awards, four Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, and one World Fantasy Award, and won each of those awards in short fiction categories as well. Her third Earthsea novel, The Farthest Shore, won the 1973 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and she was a finalist for ten Mythopoeic Awards, nine in Fantasy and one for Scholarship. Her 1996 collection Unlocking the Air and Other Stories was one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other awards won by Le Guin include three James Tiptree Jr. Awards, and three Jupiter Awards. She won her final Hugo award a year after her death, for a complete edition of Earthsea, illustrated by Charles Vess; the same volume also won a Locus award.
Other awards and accolades have recognized Le Guin's contributions to speculative fiction. She was voted a Gandalf Grand Master Award by the World Science Fiction Society in 1979. The Science Fiction Research Association gave her its Pilgrim Award in 1989 for her "lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarship". At the 1995 World Fantasy Convention she won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, a judged recognition of outstanding service to the fantasy field. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted her in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named her its 20th Grand Master in 2003: she was the second, and at the time of death one of only six, women to receive that honor. In 2013, she was given the Eaton Award by the University of California, Riverside, for lifetime achievement in science fiction.
Later in her career Le Guin also received accolades recognizing her contributions to literature more generally. In April 2000, the U.S. Library of Congress named Le Guin a Living Legend in the "Writers and Artists" category for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage. The American Library Association granted her the annual Margaret Edwards Award in 2004, and also selected her to deliver the annual May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture. The Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work: the 2004 panel cited the first four Earthsea volumes, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Beginning Place. The panel said that Le Guin "has inspired four generations of young adults to read beautifully constructed language, visit fantasy worlds that inform them about their own lives, and think about their ideas that are neither easy nor inconsequential". A collection of Le Guin's works was published by the Library of America in 2016, an honor only rarely given to living writers. The National Book Foundation awarded Le Guin its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014, stating that she had "defied conventions of narrative, language, character, and genre, and transcended boundaries between fantasy and realism to forge new paths for literary fiction". The American Academy of Arts and Letters made her a member in 2017. On July 27, 2021, Le Guin was honored by the US Postal Service with the 33rd stamp in the Postal Service's Literary Arts series. The stamp features a portrait of the author taken from a 2006 photograph against a background image inspired by her book The Left Hand of Darkness. The stamp was designed by Donato Gionacola.
Legacy and influence
Le Guin had a considerable influence on the field of speculative fiction; Jo Walton argued that Le Guin played a large role in both broadening the genre and helping genre writers achieve mainstream recognition. The Earthsea books are cited as having a wide impact, including outside the field of literature. Atwood considers A Wizard of Earthsea one of the "wellsprings" of fantasy literature, and modern writers have credited the book for the idea of a "wizard school", later made famous by the Harry Potter series of books, and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in Harry Potter. The notion that names can exert power is a theme in the Earthsea series; critics have suggested that this inspired Hayao Miyazaki's use of the idea in his 2001 film Spirited Away.
Le Guin's writings set in the Hainish universe also had a wide influence. Le Guin coined the name "ansible" for an instantaneous interstellar communication device in 1966; the term was later adopted by several other writers, including Orson Scott Card in the Ender Series and Neil Gaiman in a script for a Doctor Who episode. Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time The Left Hand of Darkness was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general. That volume is specifically cited as leaving a large legacy; in discussing it, literary critic Harold Bloom wrote "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time". Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture. This view was echoed in The Paris Review, which wrote that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than The Left Hand of Darkness", while White argued that it was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).
Commentators have also described Le Guin as being influential in the field of literature more generally. Literary critic Elaine Showalter suggested that Le Guin "set the pace as a writer for women unlearning silence, fear, and self-doubt", while writer Brian Attebery stated that "[Le Guin] invented us: science fiction and fantasy critics like me but also poets and essayists and picture book writers and novelists". Le Guin's own literary criticism proved influential; her 1973 essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" led to renewed interest in the work of Kenneth Morris, and eventually to the publication of a posthumous novel by Morris. Le Guin also played a role in bringing speculative fiction into the literary mainstream by supporting journalists and scholarly endeavors examining the genre.
Several prominent authors acknowledge Le Guin's influence on their own writing. Jo Walton wrote that "her way of looking at the world had a huge influence on me, not just as a writer but as a human being". Other writers she influenced include Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, as well as David Mitchell, Gaiman, Algis Budrys, Goonan, and Iain Banks. Mitchell, author of books such as Cloud Atlas, described A Wizard of Earthsea as having a strong influence on him, and said that he felt a desire to "wield words with the same power as Ursula Le Guin". Le Guin is also credited with inspiring several female science fiction authors in the 1970s, including Vonda McIntyre. When McIntyre established a writers' workshop in Seattle in 1971, Le Guin was one of the instructors. Film-maker Arwen Curry began production on a documentary about Le Guin in 2009, filming "dozens" of hours of interviews with the author as well as many other writers and artists who have been inspired by her. Curry launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to finish the documentary in early 2016 after winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
In October 2021, the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction was announced. The award is managed by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust and a panel of jurors. The prize is worth US$25,000 and will be awarded annually to "a single book-length work of imaginative fiction." The inaugural shortlist was announced on July 28, 2022. The prize's inaugural winner was announced on October 21, 2022, Le Guin's birthday.
Adaptations of her work
Le Guin's works have been adapted for radio, film, television, and the stage. Her 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven has been released on film twice, in 1979 by WNET with Le Guin's participation, and then in 2002 by the A&E Network. In a 2008 interview, she said she considered the 1979 version as "the only good adaptation to film" of her work to date. In the early 1980s Hayao Miyazaki asked to create an animated adaptation of Earthsea. Le Guin, who was unfamiliar with his work and anime in general, initially turned down the offer, but later accepted after seeing My Neighbor Totoro. The third and fourth Earthsea books were used as the basis of Tales from Earthsea, released in 2006. Rather than being directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself, the film was directed by his son Gorō, which disappointed Le Guin. Le Guin was positive about the aesthetic of the film, writing that "much of it was beautiful", but was critical of the film's moral sense and its use of physical violence, and particularly the use of a villain whose death provided the film's resolution. In 2004, the Sci Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy as the miniseries Legend of Earthsea. Le Guin was highly critical of the miniseries, calling it a "far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned", objecting to the use of white actors for her red-, brown-, and black-skinned characters.
Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness was adapted for the stage in 1995 by Chicago's Lifeline Theatre. Reviewer Jack Helbig at the Chicago Reader wrote that the "adaptation is intelligent and well crafted but ultimately unsatisfying", in large measure because it is extremely difficult to compress a complex 300-page novel into a two-hour stage presentation. Paradises Lost was adapted into an opera by the opera program of the University of Illinois. The opera was composed by Stephen A. Taylor; the libretto has been attributed both to Kate Gale and to Marcia Johnson. Created in 2005, the opera premiered in April 2012. Le Guin described the effort as a "beautiful opera" in an interview, and expressed hopes that it would be picked up by other producers. She also said she was better pleased with stage versions, including Paradises Lost, than screen adaptations of her work to that date. In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a play based on The Left Hand of Darkness, directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters, with text written by John Schmor. The play opened May 2, 2013, and ran until June 16, 2013, in Portland, Oregon.
Written works
Le Guin's career as a professional writer spanned nearly sixty years, from 1959 to 2018. During this period, she wrote more than twenty novels, more than a hundred short stories, more than a dozen volumes of poetry, five translations, and thirteen children's books. Her writing encompassed speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. Le Guin's first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while her first published short story was "An die Musik", in 1961. Her first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" in 1962, while her first published novel was Rocannon's World, released by Ace Books in 1966. Her final publications included the non-fiction collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, both released after her death. Her best-known works include the six volumes of the Earthsea series, and the many novels of the Hainish Cycle.
See also
List of American novelists
List of fantasy authors
List of science fiction authors
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Official website
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. PBS American Masters. August 2, 2019.
Ursula K. Le Guin papers at the University of Oregon Libraries
Interviews
An audio interview with Ursula K. Le Guin (MP3 format) from Hour 25
Jaggi, Maya (December 17, 2005). "The Magician". The Guardian.
"Oregon Art Beat: Author Ursula Le Guin". OPB FM. Archived from the original on December 12, 2017. Retrieved July 30, 2013.
Ursula Le Guin Bookworm Interviews (Audio) with Michael Silverblatt: January 1992, March 2001
Speeches
"Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards: 'Books aren't just commodities'". The Guardian. November 20, 2014.
"Ursula K. Le Guin on speaking truth to power at National Book Awards". Los Angeles Times. November 20, 2014. |
A_Wizard_of_Earthsea | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_of_Earthsea | [
299
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wizard_of_Earthsea"
] | A Wizard of Earthsea is a fantasy novel written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin and first published by the small press Parnassus in 1968. It is regarded as a classic of children's literature and of fantasy, within which it is widely influential. The story is set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea and centers on a young mage named Ged, born in a village on the island of Gont. He displays great power while still a boy and joins a school of wizardry, where his prickly nature drives him into conflict with a fellow student. During a magical duel, Ged's spell goes awry and releases a shadow creature that attacks him. The novel follows Ged's journey as he seeks to be free of the creature.
The book has often been described as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, as it explores Ged's process of learning to cope with power and come to terms with death. The novel also carries Taoist themes about a fundamental balance in the universe of Earthsea, which wizards are supposed to maintain, closely tied to the idea that language and names have power to affect the material world and alter this balance. The structure of the story is similar to that of a traditional epic, although critics have also described it as subverting this genre in many ways, such as by making the protagonist dark-skinned in contrast to more typical white-skinned heroes.
A Wizard of Earthsea received highly positive reviews, initially as a work for children and later among a general audience. It won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award in 1969 and was one of the final recipients of the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979. Margaret Atwood called it one of the "wellsprings" of fantasy literature. Le Guin wrote five subsequent books that are collectively referred to as the Earthsea Cycle, together with A Wizard of Earthsea: The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), The Other Wind (2001), and Tales from Earthsea (2001). George Slusser described the series as a "work of high style and imagination", while Amanda Craig said that A Wizard of Earthsea was "the most thrilling, wise, and beautiful children's novel ever".
Background
Early concepts for the Earthsea setting were developed in two short stories, "The Rule of Names" (1964) and "The Word of Unbinding" (1964), both published in Fantastic. The stories were later collected in Le Guin's anthology The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975). Earthsea was also used as the setting for a story she wrote in 1965 or 1966, which was never published. In 1967, Herman Schein (the publisher of Parnassus Press and the husband of Ruth Robbins, the illustrator of the book) asked Le Guin to try writing a book "for older kids", giving her complete freedom over the subject and the approach. She had no previous experience specifically with the genre of young adult literature, which rose in prominence during the late 1960s. Drawing from her short stories, she began work on A Wizard of Earthsea. She has said that the book was in part a response to the image of wizards as ancient and wise, and to wondering where they come from. She later said that she chose the medium of fantasy, and the theme of coming of age, with her intended adolescent audience in mind.
The short stories published in 1964 introduced the world of Earthsea and important concepts in it, such as Le Guin's treatment of magic. "The Rule of Names" also introduced Yevaud, a dragon who features briefly in A Wizard of Earthsea. Her depiction of Earthsea was influenced by her familiarity with Native American legends as well as Norse mythology. Her knowledge of myths and legends, as well as her familial interest in anthropology, have been described by scholar Donna White as allowing her to create "entire cultures" for the islands of Earthsea. The influence of Norse lore in particular can be seen in the characters of the Kargs, who are blonde and blue-eyed, and worship two gods who are brothers. The influence of Taoist thought on Le Guin's writing is also visible in the idea of a cosmic "balance".
Book
Setting
Earthsea itself is an archipelago, or group of islands. In the fictional history of this world, the islands were raised from the ocean by a being called Segoy. The world is inhabited by both humans and dragons, and most or all humans have some innate magical gift, some are more gifted sorcerers or wizards. The world is shown as being based on a delicate balance, which most of its inhabitants are aware of, but which is disrupted by somebody in each of the original trilogy of novels. Earthsea is pre-industrial and has diverse cultures within the widespread archipelago. Most of the characters are of the Hardic peoples, who are dark-skinned, and who populate most of the islands. Four large eastern islands are inhabited by the white-skinned Kargish people, who despise magic and see the Hardic folk as evil sorcerers: the Kargs, in turn, are viewed by the Hardic people as barbarians. The far western regions of the archipelago are the realm of the dragons.
Plot summary
The novel follows a young boy called Duny, nicknamed "Sparrowhawk", born on the island of Gont. Discovering that the boy has great innate power, his aunt, a witch, teaches him the little magic she knows. When his village is attacked by Kargish raiders, Duny summons a fog to conceal the village and its inhabitants, enabling the residents to drive off the Kargs. Hearing of this, the powerful mage Ogion takes him as an apprentice, and later gives him his "true name"—Ged. Ogion tries to teach Ged about the "equilibrium", the concept that magic can upset the natural order of the world if used improperly. In an attempt to impress a girl, however, Ged searches Ogion's spell books and inadvertently summons a strange shadow, which has to be banished by Ogion. Sensing Ged's eagerness to act and impatience with his slow teaching methods, Ogion asks if he would rather go to the renowned school for wizards on the island of Roke. Ged loves Ogion, but decides to go to the school.
At the school, Ged meets Jasper, and is immediately on bad terms with him. He is befriended by an older student named Vetch, but generally remains aloof from anyone else. Ged's skills inspire admiration from teachers and students alike. He finds a small creature—an otak, named Hoeg, and keeps it as a pet. During a festival, Jasper acts condescendingly towards Ged, provoking the latter's proud nature. Ged challenges him to a duel of magic, and casts a powerful spell intended to raise the spirit of a legendary dead woman. The spell goes awry and instead releases a shadow creature, which attacks him and scars his face. The Archmage Nemmerle drives the shadow away, but at the cost of his life.
Ged spends many months healing before resuming his studies. The new Archmage, Gensher, describes the shadow as an ancient evil that wishes to possess Ged, and warns him that the creature has no name. Ged eventually graduates and receives his wizard's staff. He then takes up residence in the Ninety Isles, providing the poor villagers protection from the dragons that have seized and taken up residence on the nearby island of Pendor, but discovers that he is still being sought by the shadow. Knowing that he cannot guard against both threats at the same time, he sails to Pendor and gambles his life on a guess of the adult dragon's true name. When he is proved right, the dragon offers to tell him the name of the shadow, but Ged instead extracts a promise that the dragon and his offspring will never threaten the archipelago.
Chased by the shadow, Ged flees to Osskil, having heard of the stone of the Terrenon. He is attacked by the shadow, and barely escapes into the Court of Terrenon. Serret, the lady of the castle, and the same girl that Ged had tried to impress, shows him the stone, and urges Ged to speak to it, claiming it can give him limitless knowledge and power. Recognizing that the stone harbors one of the Old Powers—ancient, powerful, malevolent beings—Ged refuses. He flees and is pursued by the stone's minions, but transforms into a swift falcon and escapes. He loses his otak.
Ged flies back to Ogion on Gont. Unlike Gensher, Ogion insists that all creatures have a name and advises Ged to confront the shadow. Ogion is proved right; when Ged seeks out the shadow, it flees from him. Ged pursues it in a small sailboat, until it lures him into a fog where the boat is wrecked on a reef. Ged recovers with the help of an elderly couple marooned on a small island since they were children; the woman gives Ged part of a broken bracelet as a gift. Ged patches his boat and resumes his pursuit of the creature into the East Reach. On the island of Iffish, he meets his friend Vetch, who insists on joining him. They journey east far beyond the last known lands before they finally come upon the shadow. Naming it with his own name, Ged merges with it and joyfully tells Vetch he is healed and whole.
Illustrations
The first edition of the book, published in 1968, was illustrated by Ruth Robbins. The cover illustration was in color, and the interior of the book contained a map of the archipelago of Earthsea. In addition, each chapter had a black-and-white illustration by Robbins, similar to a woodcut image. The images represented topics from each chapter; for instance, the very first image depicted the island of Gont, while the illustration for the chapter "The Dragon of Pendor" pictured a flying dragon. The image shown here depicts Ged sailing in his boat Lookfar, and was used in the 10th chapter, "The Open Sea", in which Ged and Vetch travel from Iffish eastward past all known lands to confront the shadow creature.
Publication
A Wizard of Earthsea was first published in 1968 by Parnassus Press in Berkeley, a year before The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin's watershed work. It was a personal landmark for Le Guin, as it represented her first attempt at writing for children; she had written only a handful of other novels and short stories prior to its publication. The book was also her first attempt at writing fantasy, rather than science fiction. A Wizard of Earthsea was the first of Le Guin's books to receive widespread critical attention, and has been described as her best known work, as part of the Earthsea series. The book has been released in numerous editions, including an illustrated Folio Society edition released in 2015. It was also translated into a number of other languages. An omnibus edition of all of Le Guin's Earthsea works was released on the 50th anniversary of the publication of A Wizard of Earthsea in 2018.
Le Guin originally intended for A Wizard of Earthsea to be a standalone novel, but decided to write a sequel after considering the loose ends in the first book, and The Tombs of Atuan was released in 1971. The Farthest Shore was written as a third volume after further consideration, and was published in 1972. The Tombs of Atuan tells of the story of Ged's attempt to make whole the ring of Erreth Akbe, half of which is buried in the tombs of Atuan in the Kargish lands, from where he must steal it. There, he meets the child priestess Tenar, on whom the book focuses. In The Farthest Shore, Ged, who has become Archmage, tries to combat a dwindling of magic across Earthsea, accompanied by Arren, a young prince. The first three books are together seen as the "original trilogy"; in each of these, Ged is shown as trying to heal some imbalance in the world. They were followed by Tehanu (1990), Tales from Earthsea (2001), and The Other Wind (2001), which are sometimes referred to as the "second trilogy".
Reception
As children's literature
Initial recognition for the book was from children's-book critics, among whom it garnered acclaim. A Wizard of Earthsea received an even more positive response in the United Kingdom when it was released there in 1971, which, according to White, reflected the greater admiration of British critics for children's fantasy. In her 1975 annotated collection Fantasy for Children, British critic Naomi Lewis described it in the following terms: "[It is not] the easiest book for casual browsing, but readers who take the step will find themselves in one of the most important works of fantasy of our time." Similarly, literary scholar Margaret Esmonde wrote in 1981 that "Le Guin has ... enriched children's literature with what may be its finest high fantasy", while a review in The Guardian by author and journalist Amanda Craig said it was "The most thrilling, wise and beautiful children's novel ever, [written] in prose as taut and clean as a ship's sail."
In discussing the book for a gathering of children's librarians, Eleanor Cameron praised the world building in the story, saying "it is as if [Le Guin] herself has lived on the archipelago." Author David Mitchell called the titular character Ged a "superb creation", and argued that he was a more relatable wizard than those featured in prominent works of fantasy at the time. According to him, characters such as Gandalf were "variants on the archetype of Merlin, a Caucasian scholarly aristocrat amongst sorcerers" with little room to grow, whereas Ged developed as a character through his story. Mitchell also praised the other characters in the story, who he said seemed to have a "fully thought-out inner life" despite being fleeting presences. The 1995 Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said that the Earthsea books had been considered the finest science fiction books for children in the post-World War II period.
As fantasy
Commentators have noted that the Earthsea novels in general received less critical attention because they were considered children's books. Le Guin herself took exception to this treatment of children's literature, describing it as "adult chauvinist piggery". In 1976, literary scholar George Slusser criticized the "silly publication classification designating the original series as 'children's literature'". Barbara Bucknall stated that "Le Guin was not writing for young children when she wrote these fantasies, nor yet for adults. She was writing for 'older kids.' But in fact she can be read, like Tolkien, by ten-year-olds and by adults. These stories are ageless because they deal with problems that confront us at any age." Only in later years did A Wizard of Earthsea receive attention from a more general audience. Literary scholar Tom Shippey was among the first to treat A Wizard of Earthsea as serious literature, assuming in his analysis of the volume that it belonged alongside works by C. S. Lewis and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others. Margaret Atwood said that she saw the book as "a fantasy book for adults", and added that the book could be categorized as either young adult fiction or as fantasy, but since it dealt with themes such as "life and mortality and who are we as human beings", it could be read and enjoyed by anybody older than twelve. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction echoed this view, saying the series's appeal went "far beyond" the young adults for whom it was written. It went on to praise the book as "austere but vivid", and said the series was more thoughtful than the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis.
In his 1980 history of fantasy, Brian Attebery called the Earthsea trilogy "the most challenging and richest American fantasy to date". Slusser described the Earthsea cycle as a "work of high style and imagination", and the original trilogy of books a product of "genuine epic vision". In 1974, critic Robert Scholes compared Le Guin's work favorably to that of C. S. Lewis, saying, "Where C. S. Lewis worked out a specifically Christian set of values, Ursula LeGuin works not with a theology but with an ecology, a cosmology, a reverence for the universe as a self-regulating structure." He added that Le Guin's three Earthsea novels were themselves a sufficient legacy for anybody to leave. In 2014, David Pringle called it "a beautiful story—poetic, thrilling, and profound".
Accolades
A Wizard of Earthsea won or contributed to several awards for Le Guin. It won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award in 1969, and was one of the last winners of the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award ten years later. In 1984 it won the Złota Sepulka or the "Golden Sepulka" in Poland. In 2000 Le Guin was given the Margaret A. Edwards Award by the American Library Association for young adult literature. The award cited six of her works, including the first four Earthsea volumes, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Beginning Place. A 1987 poll in Locus ranked A Wizard of Earthsea third among "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", while in 2014 Pringle listed it at number 39 in his list of the 100 best novels in modern fantasy.
Influence
The book has been seen as widely influential within the genre of fantasy. Margaret Atwood has called A Wizard of Earthsea one of the "wellsprings" of fantasy literature. The book has been compared to major works of high fantasy such as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The notion that names can exert power is also present in Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 film Spirited Away; critics have suggested that that idea originated with Le Guin's Earthsea series. Novelist David Mitchell, author of books such as Cloud Atlas, described A Wizard of Earthsea as having a strong influence on him, and said that he felt a desire to "wield words with the same power as Ursula Le Guin".
Modern writers have credited A Wizard of Earthsea for introducing the idea of a "wizard school", which would later be made famous by the Harry Potter series of books, and with popularizing the trope of a boy wizard, also present in Harry Potter. Reviewers have also commented that the basic premise of A Wizard of Earthsea, that of a talented boy going to a wizard's school and making an enemy with whom he has a close connection, is also the premise of Harry Potter. Ged also receives a facial scar from the shadow, as Harry Potter does from Voldemort. Commenting on the similarity, Le Guin said that she did not feel that J. K. Rowling "ripped her off", but that Rowling's books received too much praise for supposed originality, and that Rowling "could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them. That hurt."
Themes
Coming of age
A Wizard of Earthsea focuses on Ged's adolescence and coming of age, and along with the other two works of the original Earthsea trilogy forms a part of Le Guin's dynamic portrayal of the process of growing old. The three novels together follow Ged from youth to old age, and each of them also follow the coming of age of a different character. The novel is frequently described as a Bildungsroman. Scholar Mike Cadden stated that the book is a convincing tale "to a reader as young and possibly as headstrong as Ged, and therefore sympathetic to him". Ged's coming of age is also intertwined with the physical journey he undertakes through the novel.
Ged is depicted as proud and yet unsure of himself in multiple situations: early in his apprenticeship he believes Ogion to be mocking him, and later, at Roke, feels put upon by Jasper. In both cases, he believes that others do not appreciate his greatness, and Le Guin's sympathetic narration does not immediately contradict this belief. Cadden writes that Le Guin allows young readers to sympathize with Ged, and only gradually realize that there is a price to be paid for his actions, as he learns to discipline his magical powers. Similarly, as Ged begins his apprenticeship with Ogion, he imagines that he will be taught mysterious aspects of wizardry, and has visions of transforming himself into other creatures, but gradually comes to see that Ogion's important lessons are those about his own self.
The passage at the end of the novel, wherein Ged finally accepts the shadow as a part of himself and is thus released from its terror, has been pointed to by reviewers as a rite of passage. Jeanne Walker, for example, wrote that the rite of passage at the end was an analogue for the entire plot of A Wizard of Earthsea, and that the plot itself plays the role of a rite of passage for an adolescent reader. Walker goes on to say, "The entire action of A Wizard of Earthsea ... portrays the hero's slow realization of what it means to be an individual in society and a self in relation to higher powers." Many readers and critics have commented on similarities between Ged's process of growing up and ideas in Jungian psychology. The young Ged has a scary encounter with a shadow creature, which he later realizes is the dark side of himself. It is only after he recognizes and merges with the shadow that he becomes a whole person. Le Guin said that she had never read Jung before writing the Earthsea novels.
Le Guin described coming of age as the main theme of the book, and wrote in a 1973 essay that she chose that theme since she was writing for an adolescent audience. She stated that "Coming of age ... is a process that took me many years; I finished it, so far as I ever will, at about age thirty-one; and so I feel rather deeply about it. So do most adolescents. It's their main occupation, in fact." She also said that fantasy was best suited as a medium for describing coming of age, because exploring the subconscious was difficult using the language of "rational daily life". The coming of age that Le Guin focused on included not just psychological development, but moral changes as well. Ged needs to recognize the balance between his power and his responsibility to use it well, a recognition which comes as he travels to the stone of Terrenon and sees the temptation that that power represents.
Equilibrium and Taoist themes
The world of Earthsea is depicted as being based on a delicate balance, which most of its inhabitants are aware of, but which is disrupted by somebody in each of the original trilogy of novels. This includes an equilibrium between land and sea (implicit in the name Earthsea), and between people and their natural environment. In addition to physical equilibrium, there is a larger cosmic equilibrium, which everybody is aware of, and which wizards are tasked with maintaining. Describing this aspect of Earthsea, Elizabeth Cummins wrote, "The principle of balanced powers, the recognition that every act affects self, society, world, and cosmos, is both a physical and a moral principle of Le Guin's fantasy world." The concept of balance is related to the novel's other major theme of coming of age, as Ged's knowledge of the consequences of his own actions for good or ill is necessary for him to understand how the balance is maintained. While at the school of Roke, the Master Hand tells him: But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
The influence of Taoism on Le Guin's writing is evident through much of the book, especially in her depiction of the "balance". At the end of the novel, Ged may be seen to embody the Taoist way of life, as he has learned not to act unless absolutely necessary. He has also learned that seeming opposites, like light and dark or good and evil, are actually interdependent. Light and dark themselves are recurring images within the story. Reviewers have identified this belief as evidence of a conservative ideology within the story, shared with much of fantasy. In emphasizing concerns over balance and equilibrium, scholars have argued, Le Guin essentially justifies the status quo, which wizards strive to maintain. This tendency is in contrast to Le Guin's science fiction writing, in which change is shown to have value.
The nature of human evil forms a significant related theme through A Wizard of Earthsea as well as the other Earthsea novels. As with other works by Le Guin, evil is shown as a misunderstanding of the balance of life. Ged is born with great power in him, but the pride that he takes in his power leads to his downfall; he tries to demonstrate his strength by bringing a spirit back from the dead, and in performing this act against the laws of nature, releases the shadow that attacks him. Slusser suggests that although he is provoked into performing dangerous spells first by the girl on Gont and then by Jasper, this provocation exists in Ged's mind. He is shown as unwilling to look within himself and see the pride that drives him to do what he does. When he accepts the shadow into himself, he also finally accepts responsibility for his own actions, and by accepting his own mortality he is able to free himself. His companion Vetch describes the moment by saying that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
Thus, although there are several dark powers in Earthsea (like the stone of Terrenon and the Nameless Ones of Atuan), the true evil was not one of these powers, or even death, but Ged's actions that went against the balance of nature. This is contrary to conventional Western and Christian storytelling, in which light and darkness are often considered opposites, and are seen as symbolizing good and evil, which are constantly in conflict. On two different occasions, Ged is tempted to try to defy death and evil, but eventually learns that neither can be eliminated: instead, he chooses not to serve evil, and stops denying death.
True names
In Le Guin's fictional universe, to know the true name of an object or a person is to have power over it. Each child is given a true name when they reach puberty, a name which they share only with close friends. Several of the dragons in the later Earthsea novels, like Orm Embar and Kalessin, are shown as living openly with their names, which do not give anybody power over them. In A Wizard of Earthsea, however, Ged is shown to have power over Yevaud. Cadden writes that this is because Yevaud still has attachment to riches and material possessions, and is thus bound by the power of his name. Wizards exert their influence over the equilibrium through the use of names, thus linking this theme to Le Guin's depiction of a cosmic balance. According to Cummins, this is Le Guin's way of demonstrating the power of language in shaping reality. Since language is the tool we use for communicating about the environment, she argues that it also allows humans to affect the environment, and the wizards' power to use names symbolizes this. Cummins went on to draw an analogy between the wizards' use of names to change things with the creative use of words in fictional writing. Shippey wrote that Earthsea magic seems to work through what he called the "Rumpelstiltskin theory", in which names have power. He argued that this portrayal was part of Le Guin's effort to emphasize the power of words over objects, which, according to Shippey, was in contrast to the ideology of other writers, such as James Frazer in The Golden Bough. Esmonde argued that each of the first three Earthsea books hinged on an act of trust. In A Wizard of Earthsea, Vetch trusts Ged with his true name when the latter is at his lowest ebb emotionally, thus giving Ged complete power over him. Ged later offers Tenar the same gift in The Tombs of Atuan, thereby allowing her to learn trust.
Style and structure
Language and mood
A Wizard of Earthsea and other novels of the Earthsea cycle differ notably from Le Guin's early Hainish cycle works, although they were written at a similar time. George Slusser described the Earthsea works as providing a counterweight to the "excessive pessimism" of the Hainish novels. He saw the former as depicting individual action in a favorable light, in contrast to works such as "Vaster than Empires and More Slow". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said the book was pervaded by a "grave joyfulness". In discussing the style of her fantasy works, Le Guin herself said that in fantasy it was necessary to be clear and direct with language, because there is no known framework for the reader's mind to rest upon.
The story often appears to assume that readers are familiar with the geography and history of Earthsea, a technique which allowed Le Guin to avoid exposition: a reviewer wrote that this method "gives Le Guin's world the mysterious depths of Tolkien's, but without his tiresome back-stories and versifying". In keeping with the notion of an epic, the narration switches from looking ahead into Ged's future and looking back into the past of Earthsea. At the same time, Slusser described the mood of the novel as "strange and dreamlike", fluctuating between objective reality and the thoughts in Ged's mind; some of Ged's adversaries are real, while others are phantoms. This narrative technique, which Cadden characterizes as "free indirect discourse", makes the narrator of the book seem sympathetic to the protagonist, and does not distance his thoughts from the reader.
Myth and epic
A Wizard of Earthsea has strong elements of an epic; for instance, Ged's place in Earthsea history is described at the very beginning of the book in the following terms: "some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragonlord and Archmage." The story also begins with words from the Earthsea song "The Creation of Éa", which forms a ritualistic beginning to the book. The teller of the story then goes on to say that it is from Ged's youth, thereby establishing context for the rest of the book. In comparison with the protagonists of many of Le Guin's other works, Ged is superficially a typical hero, a mage who sets out on a quest. Reviewers have compared A Wizard of Earthsea to epics such as Beowulf. Scholar Virginia White argued that the story followed a structure common to epics in which the protagonist begins an adventure, faces trials along the way, and eventually returns in triumph. White went on to suggest that this structure can be seen in the series as a whole, as well as in the individual volumes.
Le Guin subverted many of the tropes typical to such "monomyths"; the protagonists of her story were all dark-skinned, in comparison to the white-skinned heroes more traditionally used; the Kargish antagonists, in contrast, were white-skinned, a switching of race roles that has been remarked upon by multiple critics. Critics have also cited her use of characters from multiple class backgrounds as a choice subversive to conventional Western fantasy. At the same time, reviewers questioned Le Guin's treatment of gender in A Wizard of Earthsea, and the original trilogy as a whole. Le Guin, who later became known as a feminist, chose to restrict the use of magic to men and boys in the first volume of Earthsea. Initial critical reactions to A Wizard of Earthsea saw Ged's gender as incidental. In contrast, The Tombs of Atuan saw Le Guin intentionally tell a female coming-of-age story, which was nonetheless described as perpetuating a male-dominated model of Earthsea. Tehanu (1990), published as the fourth volume of Earthsea 18 years after the third, has been described both by Le Guin and her commentators as a feminist re-imagining of the series, in which the power and status of the chief characters are reversed, and the patriarchal social structure questioned. Commenting in 1993, Le Guin wrote that she could not continue [Earthsea after 1972] until she had "wrestled with the angels of the feminist consciousness".
Several critics have argued that by combining elements of epic, Bildungsroman, and young adult fiction, Le Guin succeeded in blurring the boundaries of conventional genres. In a 1975 commentary Francis Molson argued that the series should be referred to as "ethical fantasy", a term which acknowledged that the story did not always follow the tropes of heroic fantasy, and the moral questions that it raised. The term did not become popular. A similar argument was made by children's literature critic Cordelia Sherman in 1985; she argued that A Wizard of Earthsea and the rest of the series sought "to teach children by dramatic example what it means to be a good adult".
Adaptations
A condensed, illustrated version of the first chapter was printed by World Book in the third volume of Childcraft in 1989. Multiple audio versions of the book have been released. BBC Radio produced a radioplay version in 1996 narrated by Judi Dench, and a six-part series adapting the Earthsea novels in 2015, broadcast on Radio 4 Extra. In 2011, the work was produced as an unabridged recording performed by Robert Inglis.
Two screen adaptations of the story have also been produced. An original mini-series titled Legend of Earthsea was broadcast in 2004 on the Sci Fi Channel. It is based very loosely on A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. In an article published in Salon, Le Guin expressed strong displeasure at the result. She stated that by casting a "petulant white kid" as Ged (who has red-brown skin in the book) the series "whitewashed Earthsea", and had ignored her choice to write the story of a non-white character, a choice she said was central to the book. This sentiment was shared by a review in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which said that Legend of Earthsea "totally missed the point" of Le Guin's novels, "ripping out all the subtlety, nuance and beauty of the books and inserting boring cliches, painful stereotypes and a very unwelcome 'epic' war in their place".
Studio Ghibli released an adaptation of the series in 2006 titled Tales from Earthsea. The film very loosely combines elements of the first, third, and fourth books into a new story. Le Guin commented with displeasure on the film-making process, saying that she had acquiesced to the adaptation believing Hayao Miyazaki would be producing the film himself, which was eventually not the case. Le Guin praised the imagery of the film, but disliked the use of violence. She also expressed dissatisfaction with the portrayal of morality, and in particular the use of a villain who could be slain as a means of resolving conflict, which she said was antithetical to the message of the book. The film received generally mixed responses.
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
A Wizard of Earthsea title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database |
The_Rule_of_Names | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rule_of_Names | [
299
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rule_of_Names"
] | "The Rule of Names" is a short story by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in the April 1964 issue of Fantastic and reprinted in collections such as The Wind's Twelve Quarters. This story and "The Word of Unbinding" convey Le Guin's initial concepts for the Earthsea realm, including its places and physical manifestation. Most of the characters from the novels do not make an appearance, with the exception of the dragon Yevaud. Both stories help explain the foundations of the Earthsea realm, in particular the importance of true names to magic.
Plot summary
Sattins Island (among the Islands of Earthsea, though this is not mentioned in the original story) contains a rustic village and a resident wizard, nicknamed "Underhill" because he lives in a cave below a hill. Fat, shy, and largely incompetent, Underhill mostly uses simple magic to help the villagers with day-to-day minor medical and agricultural difficulties. Meanwhile, the village's teacher, the pretty Palani, introduces the concept of naming to her schoolchildren: each citizen of Earthsea has one name as a child, which they abandon at puberty in favor of their "true name", but this name must be kept private as it can be used by ill-intentioned magicians to control the individual.
One day, a lone handsome stranger from the distant Archipelago arrives on the island. The locals dub him Blackbeard. He hires a village lad called Birt to guide him to Underhill's home. Speaking to Birt, Blackbeard reveals his purpose: he is a powerful magician searching for his ancestors' treasure, which was stolen by a dragon. He believes Underhill to be a wizard who defeated the dragon and made off with the treasure.
Birt and Blackbeard arrive at Underhill's home. There, Blackbeard confronts Underhill, culminating in a battle in which the two magicians shapeshift into different animals and natural forces. After Underhill transforms into a massive dragon, Blackbeard reveals that he knows Underhill's true name, Yevaud, and that speaking the name will lock Underhill into his true form. This proves effective, but not as Blackbeard expected; Underhill explains that he is in fact the dragon who stole the treasure of Blackbeard's ancestors, and so his true form is indeed that of a dragon. Blackbeard, stunned, is hastily dispatched by Yevaud. Meanwhile, Birt flees the island, taking his love Palani with him. As he does so, Yevaud, embracing his predatory dragon nature, prepares to devour the villagers of Sattins Island.
In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged knows this tale as an ancient bit of lore and makes a desperate gamble based on it.
Literary significance and criticism
Susan Wood points out that it was during the early 1960s, when Ursula K. Le Guin was selling stories such as "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names", that she "was an accomplished writer, expressing valuable insights with grace and humour".
The story underscores the importance of language to the entire Earthsea Cycle. In particular, the use of "names" in the title, along with the use of "word" in "The Word of Unbinding", solidifies this message in the first two Earthsea stories. Specifically, within the Earthsea realm, knowing another man's or dragon's true name gives one power over them; as a result, sharing one's true name with another is an act of complete trust.
In later parts of the Earthsea Cycle, the concept of humans and dragons being akin and having been originally one species is developed, and some persons such as Tehanu have a dual human-dragon nature. However, there is no hint of that in this early story. Yevaud had turned himself into a human being for the purpose of hiding, as Ged turned into a bird in A Wizard of Earthsea and Festin into a fish in "The Word of Unbinding", and there is no suggestion that being human was inherent to him in any way.
References
Sources
External links
The Rule of Names title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database |
Fantastic_(magazine) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_(magazine) | [
299
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_(magazine)"
] | Fantastic was an American digest-size fantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1952 to 1980. It was founded by the publishing company Ziff Davis as a fantasy companion to Amazing Stories. Early sales were good, and the company quickly decided to switch Amazing from pulp format to digest, and to cease publication of their other science fiction pulp, Fantastic Adventures. Within a few years sales fell, and Howard Browne, the editor, was forced to switch the focus to science fiction rather than fantasy. Browne lost interest in the magazine as a result and the magazine generally ran poor-quality fiction in the mid-1950s, under Browne and his successor, Paul W. Fairman.
At the end of the 1950s, Cele Goldsmith took over as editor of both Fantastic and Amazing Stories, and quickly invigorated the magazines, bringing in many new writers and making them, in the words of one science fiction historian, the "best-looking and brightest" magazines in the field. Goldsmith helped to nurture the early careers of writers such as Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin, but was unable to increase circulation, and in 1965 the magazines were sold to Sol Cohen, who hired Joseph Wrzos as editor and switched to a reprint-only policy. This was financially successful, but brought Cohen into conflict with the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America. After a turbulent period at the end of the 1960s, Ted White became editor and the reprints were phased out.
White worked hard to make the magazine successful, introducing artwork from artists who had made their names in comics, and working with new authors such as Gordon Eklund. His budget for fiction was low, but he was occasionally able to find good stories from well-known writers that had been rejected by other markets. Circulation continued to decline, however, and in 1978, Cohen sold out his half of the business to his partner, Arthur Bernhard. White resigned shortly afterwards, and was replaced by Elinor Mavor, but within two years Bernhard decided to close down Fantastic, merging it with Amazing Stories, which had always enjoyed a slightly higher circulation.
Publishing history
In 1938, Ziff Davis, a Chicago-based publisher looking to expand into the pulp magazine market, acquired Amazing Stories. The number of science fiction magazines grew quickly, and several new titles appeared over the next few years, among them Fantastic Adventures, which was launched by Ziff Davis in 1939 as a companion to Amazing. Under the editorship of Raymond Palmer, the magazines were reasonably successful but published poor-quality work; when Howard Browne took over as editor of Amazing in January 1950, he decided to try to move the magazine upmarket. Ziff Davis agreed to back the new magazine, and Browne put together a sample copy, but, when the Korean War broke out, Ziff Davis cut their budgets and the project was abandoned. Browne did not give up, and in 1952 received the go-ahead to try a new magazine instead, focused on high-quality fantasy, a genre which had recently become more popular. The first issue of Fantastic, dated Summer 1952, appeared on March 21 of that year.
Early years
Sales were very good, and Ziff Davis was sufficiently impressed after only two issues to move the magazine from a quarterly to a bimonthly schedule, and to switch Amazing from pulp format to digest-size to match Fantastic. Shortly afterwards the decision was taken to eliminate Fantastic Adventures: the March 1953 issue was the last, and the May–June 1953 issue of Fantastic added a mention of Fantastic Adventures to the masthead, though this ceased with the following issue. Payment started at two cents per word for all rights, but could go up to ten cents at the editor's discretion; this put Fantastic in the second echelon of magazines, behind titles such as Astounding and Galaxy. The experiment with quality fiction did not last. Circulation dropped, which led to budget cuts, and in turn the quality of the fiction fell. Browne had wanted to separate Fantastic from Amazing's pulp roots, but now found he had to print more science fiction (sf) and less fantasy in order to attract Amazing's readers to its sister magazine. Fantastic's poor results were probably a consequence of an overloaded sf-magazine market: far more magazines appeared in the early 1950s than the market was able to support. Ziff Davis sales staff were able to help sell Fantastic and Amazing along with the technical magazines that it published, and the availability of a national sales network, even though it was not focused solely on Fantastic, undoubtedly helped the magazine to survive.
In May 1956, Browne left Ziff Davis to become a screenwriter. Paul W. Fairman took over as editor of both Fantastic and Amazing. In 1957, Bernard Davis left Ziff Davis; it had been Davis who had suggested the acquisition of Amazing in 1939, and he had stayed involved with the sf magazines throughout the time he spent there. With his departure Amazing and Fantastic stagnated; they were still issued monthly, but drew no attention from the management of Ziff Davis.
Mid-1950s to late 1960s
In November 1955, Ziff Davis hired an assistant, Cele Goldsmith, who began by helping with two new magazines under development, Dream World and Pen Pals. She also read the slush piles for all the magazines, and was quickly given more responsibility. In 1957, she was made managing editor of both Amazing and Fantastic, doing administrative chores and reading unsolicited manuscripts. At the end of 1958, she became editor, replacing Fairman, who had left to become managing editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Goldsmith—who became Cele Lalli when she married in 1964—stayed as editor for six and a half years.
Circulation dropped for both Amazing and Fantastic: in 1964, Fantastic had a paid circulation of only 27,000. In 1965, Sol Cohen, who at that time was Galaxy's publisher, set up his own publishing company, Ultimate Publishing, and bought both Amazing and Fantastic from Ziff Davis. Cohen had decided to make the magazines as profitable as possible by filling them only with reprints. This was possible because Ziff Davis had acquired second serial rights for all stories they had published, and since Cohen had bought the backfile of stories he was able to reprint them using these rights. Using reprints in this way saved Cohen about $8,000 a year between the two magazines. Lalli decided that she did not want to work for Cohen, and stayed with Ziff Davis. Her last issue was June 1965. Cohen replaced Lalli with Joseph Wrzos, who used the name "Joseph Ross" on the magazines. Cohen had met Wrzos at the Galaxy offices not long before; Wrzos was teaching English full-time, but had worked for Gnome Press as an assistant editor in 1953–1954.
Cohen also launched a series of reprint magazines, drawing from the backfile of both Amazing and Fantastic, again using the second serial rights he had acquired from Ziff Davis. The first reprint magazine was Great Science Fiction; the first issue, titled Great Science Fiction from Amazing, appeared in August 1965. By early 1967 this had been joined by The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told and Science Fiction Classics. These increased the workload on Wrzos, though Cohen made the selection of stories, and Wrzos found himself able to work on Fantastic and Amazing only part-time. Cohen hired Herb Lehrman to help with the other magazines.
Although Cohen felt that his deal with Ziff Davis gave him the reprint rights he needed, the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) received complaints about Cohen's refusal to pay anything for the reprints. He was also reportedly not responding to requests for reassignment of copyright. SFWA organized a boycott of Cohen's magazines; after a year Cohen agreed to pay a flat fee for the reprints, and in August 1967 he agreed to a graduated scale of payments, and the boycott was withdrawn.
Harry Harrison had been involved in the negotiations between SFWA and Cohen, and when the agreement was reached in 1967 Cohen asked Harrison if he would take over as editor of both magazines. Harrison was available because SF Impulse, which he had been editing, had ceased publication in early 1967. Cohen agreed to phase out the reprints by the end of the year, and Harrison took the job. Cohen added Harrison's name to the masthead of two issues of Great Science Fiction, although Harrison had had nothing to do with that magazine, but the reprints in Fantastic and Amazing continued and Harrison decided to quit in February 1968. He recommended Barry Malzberg as his replacement. Cohen had worked with Malzberg at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, and felt Malzberg would be more cooperative than Harrison. Malzberg, however, turned out to be just as unwilling as Harrison to work with Cohen if the reprints continued, and soon regretted taking the job. In October 1968 Cohen refused to pay for a cover that Malzberg had commissioned; Malzberg insisted, threatening to resign if Cohen did not agree. Cohen contacted Robert Silverberg, then the president of SFWA, and told him (falsely) that Malzberg had actually resigned. Silverberg recommended Ted White as a replacement. Cohen secured White's agreement and then fired Malzberg; White took over in October 1968, but because there was a backlog of stories Malzberg had acquired, the first issue on which he was credited as editor was the June 1969 issue.
1970s to present
Like his immediate predecessors, White took the job on condition that the reprints would be phased out. It was some time before this was achieved: there was at least one reprinted story in every issue until the end of 1971. The February 1972 issue contained some artwork reprinted from 1939, and after that the reprints ceased.
Fantastic's circulation was about 37,000 when White took over; only about 4 percent of this was subscription sales. Cohen's wife filled the subscriptions from their garage, and according to White, Cohen regarded this as a burden, and never tried to increase the subscription base. Despite White's efforts, Fantastic's circulation fell, from almost 37,000 when he took over as editor to less than 24,000 in the summer of 1975. Cohen was rumored to be interested in selling both Fantastic and Amazing; among other possibilities, both Roger Elwood, at that time an active science fiction anthology editor, and Edward Ferman, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, approached Cohen with a view to acquiring the titles. Nothing came of it, however, and White was not aware of the possible sales. He was working at a low salary, with unpaid help from friends to read unsolicited submissions—at one point he introduced a 25-cent reading fee for manuscripts from unpublished writers; the fee would be refunded if White bought the story. White sometimes found himself at odds with Cohen's business partner, Arthur Bernhard, due to their different political views. White's unhappiness with his working conditions culminated in his resignation after Cohen refused his proposal to publish Fantastic as a slick magazine, with larger pages and higher quality paper. White commented in an article in Science Fiction Review that he had brought to the magazines "a lot of energy and enthusiasm and a great many ideas for their improvement ...Well, I have put into effect nearly every idea which I was allowed to follow through on ... and have spent most of my energy and enthusiasm." Cohen was able to persuade him to stay for another year; in the event White stayed for another three.
White was unable to completely halt the slide in circulation, though it rose a little in 1977. That year Cohen lost $15,000 on the magazines, and decided to sell. He spent some time looking for a new publisher—editor Roy Torgeson was one of those interested—but on September 15, 1978, he sold his half of the business to Arthur Bernhard, his partner. White renewed his suggestions for improving the format of the magazine: he wanted to make Fantastic the same size as Time, and believed he could avoid the mistakes that had been made by other sf magazines that had tried that approach. White also proposed an increase in the budget and asked for a raise. Bernhard not only turned down White's ideas, but also stopped paying him: White responded by resigning. His last official day as editor was November 9; the last issue of Fantastic under his control was the January 1979 issue. He returned all submissions to their authors, saying that he had been told to do so by Bernhard; Bernhard denied this.
Bernhard brought in Elinor Mavor to edit both Amazing and Fantastic. Mavor had previously edited Bill of Fare, a restaurant trade journal, and was a long-time science fiction reader, but she had little knowledge of the history of the magazines. She was unaware, for example, that she was not the first woman to edit them, and so adopted a male pseudonym—"Omar Gohagen"—for a while. She suggested a campaign to increase circulation, and went so far as to gather information about costs while on a trip to New York in 1979. Bernhard decided instead to merge the two magazines. Circulation was continuing to drop; the figures for the last two years are not available, but sf historian Mike Ashley estimates that Fantastic's paid circulation may have been as low as 13,000. Bernhard felt that since Fantastic had never been profitable, whereas Amazing had made money, it was best to keep Amazing. Until the March 1985 issue, Amazing included a mention of Fantastic on the spine and on the contents page. In 1999, the fiction magazine formerly known as Pirate Writings revived the Fantastic title and Cele Goldsmith-era logotype for several issues, ultimately unsuccessfully, though this was not intended as a continuation of the original magazine.
In August 2014, Warren Lapine, former editor of Absolute Magnitude, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, revived the Fantastic logotype of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination as a free webzine.
Contents and reception
Browne and Fairman
The first issue of Fantastic was impressive, with a cover that sf historian Mike Ashley has described as "one of the most captivating of all first issues"; the painting, by Barye Phillips and Leo Summers, illustrated Kris Neville's "The Opal Necklace". The fiction included some stories by well known names; in particular, Raymond Chandler's "Professor Bingo's Snuff" would have caught readers' eyes—the story had appeared the year before in Park East magazine, but would have been new to most readers. It was a short mystery in which the fantasy element was invisibility, achieved by magical snuff. Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury also contributed stories, and the issue led with "Six and Ten Are Johnny", by Walter M. Miller. The rear cover reprinted Pierre Roy's painting "Danger on the Stairs", which depicted a snake on a staircase; it was an odd choice, but subsequent back covers were more natural fits for a fantasy magazine. The quality of the fiction continued to be high for the first year; sf historian Mike Ashley comments that almost every story in the first seven issues was of high quality, and historian David Kyle regards it as an "outstandingly successful experiment". Science fiction bibliographer Donald Tuck dissents, however, regarding the first few years as containing "little of note", and James Blish wrote a contemporary review of the second issue which found it lacking: Blish dismissed three of the seven stories in the Fall 1952 issue as being essentially crime stories written for the sf market, and commented that of the remaining four, only two were "reasonably competent and craftsmanlike".
Other well-known writers appeared in the early issues, including Shirley Jackson, B. Traven, Truman Capote and Evelyn Waugh. Mickey Spillane had written a story called "The Woman With Green Skin", but had been unable to sell it; Browne offered to buy it on condition that he had permission to rewrite it as he wished. This was agreed and Browne scrapped Spillane's text completely, writing a new story called "The Veiled Woman" and publishing it as by Spillane in the November–December 1952 issue. The issue sold so well it was reprinted, with over 300,000 copies sold.
The emphasis was on fantasy, and much of it was "slick" fantasy—the sort of genre fiction that the upmarket slick magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, were willing to buy. Some science fiction appeared as well in the first couple of years, including Isaac Asimov's "Sally", which portrays a world in which cars have been given robotic brains and are intelligent. In 1955 it was decided to move the focus from fantasy to sf: in Browne's words, "Stories of straight fantasy were largely eliminated and straight science-fiction substituted, cover subject matter became of a scientific nature, the words "science fiction" appeared under the title, interior artwork was tightened up to replace the loose, 'arty' kind of drawing we had been using." Sales rose 17% within two issues. Browne was uninterested in science fiction, however, and the quality of the fiction soon dropped, with a small stable of writers producing much of Fantastic's fiction under house names over the next couple of years. By the start of 1956 the fiction in Fantastic was, in the opinion of sf historian Mike Ashley, "[in] a trough of hack predictability", but there was some inventiveness evident from newer writers such as Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison and Randall Garrett.
Although Browne had been unable to make Fantastic successful by specializing in fantasy, he was still interested in the fantasy genre, and experimented in the December 1955 issue with the theme of wish fulfilment. He dropped the words "Science Fiction" from the cover, and published five stories, all of which dealt with male fantasies in one form or another. The cover showed a man walking through a wall to find a woman undressing; the art was by Ed Valigursky and illustrated Paul Fairman's "All Walls Were Mist". Reader reaction, according to Browne, was almost entirely favorable, and he continued to publish occasional stories on the wish-fulfilment theme. The experiment was repeated with the October 1956 issue, which again ran without "Science Fiction" on the cover, and contained stories on the theme of "Incredible Powers". Once again the cover illustrated a male fantasy: this time it showed a man materializing in a bath house where women were showering. Browne had left Ziff Davis by the time this issue appeared, but Browne's plans for a magazine around these themes were well advanced, and Fairman, who by this time was editing both Fantastic and Amazing, was given Dream World to edit as well. It ran for three quarterly issues, starting in February 1957, but proved too narrow a market to succeed.
Fairman devoted the July 1958 issue of Fantastic to the Shaver Mystery—a lurid set of beliefs propounded by Richard Shaver in the late 1940s that told of "detrimental robots", or "deros", who were behind many of the disasters that befell humanity. Most of these stories had run in Amazing, though the editor at that time, Ray Palmer, had been forced to drop Shaver by Ziff Davis when the stories began to attract ridicule in the press. Fantastic's readers were no kinder, complaining vigorously.
Goldsmith
When Goldsmith took over as editor, there was some concern at Ziff Davis that she might not be able to handle the job. A consultant, Norman Lobsenz, was brought in to help her; Lobsenz's title was "editorial director", but in fact Goldsmith made the story selections. Lobsenz provided blurbs and editorials, read the stories Goldsmith bought, and met with Goldsmith every week or so. Goldsmith was not a long-time sf reader, and knew little about the field; she simply looked for good quality fiction and bought what she liked. In Mike Ashley's words, "the result, between 1961 and 1964, was the two most exciting and original magazines in the field". New writers whose first story appeared in Fantastic during this period included Phyllis Gotlieb, Larry Eisenberg, Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas M. Disch, and Piers Anthony. The November 1959 issue was dedicated to Fritz Leiber; it included "Lean Times in Lankhmar", one of Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Goldsmith published another half-dozen stories in the series over the next six years, along with other similar (and sometimes imitative) fiction such as early work by Michael Moorcock, and John Jakes' early stories of Brak the Barbarian. This helped to invigorate the nascent sword and sorcery subgenre. Goldsmith obtained an early story by Cordwainer Smith, "The Fife of Bodidharma", which ran in the June 1959 issue, but shortly thereafter Pohl at Galaxy reached an agreement to get first refusal on all Smith's work.
During the early 1960s Goldsmith managed to make Fantastic and Amazing, in the words of Mike Ashley, "the best-looking and brightest" magazines around. This applied both to the covers, where Goldsmith used artists such as Alex Schomburg and Leo Summers, and the content. Ashley also describes Fantastic as the "premier fantasy magazine" during Goldsmith's tenure—at that time the only other magazine focused specifically on fantasy fiction was the British Science Fantasy.
Goldsmith's tastes were too diverse for Fantastic to be limited to genre fantasy, however, and her willingness to buy fiction she liked, regardless of genre expectations, allowed many new writers to flourish on the pages of both Amazing and Fantastic. Writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny and Thomas M. Disch sold regularly to her at the start of their careers Le Guin later commented that Goldsmith was "as enterprising and perceptive an editor as the science fiction magazines ever had". Not all Goldsmith's choices were universally popular with the magazine's subscribers: she regularly published fiction by David R. Bunch, for example, to mixed reviews from the readership.
Reprint era
Wrzos persuaded Cohen that both Amazing and Fantastic should carry a new story in every issue, rather than running nothing but reprints; Goldsmith had left a backlog of unpublished stories, and Wrzos was able to stretch these out for some time. One such story was Fritz Leiber's "Stardock", another Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story, which appeared in the September 1965 issue; it was subsequently nominated for a Hugo Award. The reprints were well received by the fans, because Wrzos was able to find good quality stories that were unavailable except in the original magazines, meaning that to many of Fantastic's readers they were fresh material. Wrzos also reprinted "The People of the Black Circle", a Robert E. Howard story from Weird Tales, in 1967, when Howard's Conan stories were becoming popular.
In addition to the backlog of new stories from the Ziff Davis era, Wrzos was able to acquire some new material. He was especially glad to acquire "For a Breath I Tarry", by Roger Zelazny; however, he had to wait for Cohen's approval for his acquisitions. Cohen, perhaps uncertain because of the story's originality, delayed until it appeared in the British magazine New Worlds before agreeing to publish it. Wrzos commented years later that he would "never forgive him [Cohen] his timidity at that time". Wrzos bought Doris Piserchia's first story, "Rocket to Gehenna", and was the first editor to acquire a story by Dean Koontz. He had to work with Koontz to improve it, and the delay this caused, in addition to the slow publishing schedule for new material, meant that Koontz appeared in print with "Soft Come the Dragons", in the August 1967 Fantasy & Science Fiction, before "A Darkness in My Soul" appeared in the January 1968 Fantastic.
After Wrzos's departure, Harrison and Malzberg had little opportunity to reshape the magazine as between them they only took responsibility for a handful of issues before Ted White took over. However, Harrison did print James Tiptree's first sale, "Fault", in the August 1968 issue; again the slow schedule meant that this was not Tiptree's first appearance in print. Harrison added a science column by Leon Stover, but was unable to change Cohen's position on the reprints, and so could not print much new fiction. When Malzberg took over from Harrison he published John Sladek, Thomas M. Disch, and James Sallis, all of whom were associated with New Wave science fiction, but his tenure was too short for him to have a significant impact on the magazine.
White and Mavor
White was only able to offer his writers one cent per word, which was substantially lower than the leading magazines in the field—Analog Science Fiction and Fact paid five cents, and Galaxy and Fantasy & Science Fiction paid three. Most stories would only be submitted to White once the higher-paying markets had rejected them, but among the rejects White was sometimes able to find experimental material that he liked. For example, Piers Anthony had been unable to sell an early fantasy novel, Hasan; White saw a review of the manuscript and promptly acquired it for Fantastic, where it was serialized starting in the December 1969 issue. White also took care to establish relationships with newer writers. White bought Gordon Eklund's first story, "Dear Aunt Annie", it appeared in the April 1970 issue and was nominated for a Nebula Award. Eklund was unwilling to become a full-time writer, despite this success, because of the financial risks, so White agreed to buy anything Eklund wrote, on condition that Eklund himself believed it was a good story. The result was that much of Eklund's fiction appeared in Amazing and Fantastic over the next few years. In addition to experimental work, White was able to obtain material by some of the leading sf writers of the day, including Brian Aldiss and John Brunner. White also acquired some early work by writers who became better known in other fields: Roger Ebert sold two stories in the early 1970s to Fantastic; the first, "After the Last Mass", appeared in the February 1972 issue; and in 1975 White bought Ian McEwan's second story, "Solid Geometry". It was included in First Love, Last Rites, McEwan's first short story collection, which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976.
White had been an active science fiction fan before he became professionally involved in the field, and although he estimated that only 1 in 30 readers were active sf fans, he tried to use this fan base to help by urging the readership to give him feedback and to help with distribution by checking local newsstands for the magazines. White wanted to introduce established artists from outside the sf field, such as Jeff Jones, Vaughn Bodē, and Steve Hickman; however, the company was saddled with cheap artwork acquired from European magazines to be used for the cover and he was instructed to make use of them. He commissioned a comic strip from Vaughn Bodé, but was outbid by Judy-Lynn Benjamin at Galaxy; he subsequently told his readers that he'd signed up Bodé again for interior artwork, but this never materialized. Instead a four-page comic strip by Jay Kinney appeared in December 1970; a second strip, by Art Spiegelman, was planned, but never published. Eventually White was allowed to commission original cover art; he published early work by Mike Hinge, and Mike Kaluta made his first professional sale to Fantastic. He tried to hire Hinge as art director, but this fell through and White filled the role himself, sometimes using the pseudonym "J. Edwards".
Because of poor distribution, Fantastic was never able to benefit from the increasing popularity of the fantasy genre, though White was able to publish several stories by well-known writers in the field, including a sword and sorcery novella by Dean R. Koontz, which appeared in the October 1970 issue, and an Elric story by Michael Moorcock in February 1972. A revival of Robert E. Howard's character Conan, in stories by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, was successful at increasing sales; the first of these stories appeared in August 1972, and White reported that sales of that issue were higher than for any other issue of Amazing or Fantastic that year. Each Conan story, according to White, increased sales of that issue by 10,000 copies. White also published several of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, and added "Sword and Sorcery" to the cover in 1975. In the same year a companion magazine, Sword & Sorcery Annual, was launched, but the first issue was the only one to appear.
The quality of the magazine remained high even as the financial stress was mounting in the late 1970s. White acquired cover artwork by Stephen Fabian and Douglas Beekman, and stories by some of the new generation of sf writers, such as George R. R. Martin and Charles Sheffield. White departed in November 1978, but the first issue of Fantastic under Elinor Mavor's editorial control was April 1979. Because White had returned unsold stories she had very little to work with and was forced to fill the magazine with reprints. This led to renewed conflict with the sf community, which she did her best to defuse. At a convention in 1979 she met Harlan Ellison, who complained about the reprint policy; she explained that it was temporary and was able to get him to agree to contribute stories, publishing two pieces by him in Amazing over the next three years. The January 1980 issue of Fantastic (Mavor's fourth issue) was the last to contain reprinted stories. Once the reprints had been phased out, Mavor was able to find new writers to work with, including Brad Linaweaver and John E. Stith, both of whom sold their first stories to Fantastic. The last year of Fantastic showed "a steady improvement in content", according to Mike Ashley, who cites in particular Daemon, a serialized graphic story, illustrated by Stephen Fabian. However, at the end of 1980 Fantastic's independent existence ceased, and it was merged with Amazing.
Publication details
Editors
The list below gives the person who was acting as editor. In some cases, such as at the start of Cele Goldsmith's stint, the official editor was not the same person; details are given above.
Howard Browne (Summer 1952 – August 1956).
Paul Fairman (October 1956 – November 1958).
Cele Goldsmith (December 1958 – June 1965). Goldsmith used her married name, Cele G. Lalli, from July 1964.
Joseph Ross (September 1965 – November 1967).
Harry Harrison (January 1968 – October 1968).
Barry N. Malzberg (December 1968 – April 1969).
Ted White (June 1969 – January 1979)
Elinor Mavor (April 1979 – October 1980)
Other bibliographic details
The title changed multiple times, and was frequently inconsistently given between the cover, spine, indicia, and masthead.
The following table shows which issues appeared from which publisher.
A British edition published by Thorpe & Porter ran for eight bimonthly issues from December 1953 to February 1955; the issues were not dated on the cover. These correspond to the US issues from September/October 1953 to December 1954, and were numbered volume 1, numbers 1 through 8.
Fantastic was digest-sized throughout its life. The page count began at 160 but dropped to 144 with the September/October 1953 issue, and then again to 128 pages with the very next issue, November/December 1953. The July 1960 issue had 144 pages, but apart from that one issue the page count stayed at 128 until September 1965, when it increased to 160. In January 1968 it went back down to 144 pages, and it dropped to 128 pages from February 1971 through the end of its run. The first issue was priced at 35 cents; thereafter the price went up as follows: 50 cents in May 1963, 60 cents in December 1969, 75 cents in July 1974, $1.00 in October 1975, $1.25 in April 1978, and finally $1.50 from April 1979 until the last issue.
Derivative anthologies
Three anthologies of stories from Fantastic have been published. Note that Time Untamed contains stories that were published in Fantastic during its reprint years, but which did not necessarily first appear there.
Notes
References
Sources
Ashley, Mike (2000). The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the beginning to 1950. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-865-0.
Ashley, Mike (2005). Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-779-4.
Ashley, Mike (2007). Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-003-4.
Atheling Jr., William (1967). The Issue at Hand. Chicago: Advent, Inc.
Clute, John; Grant, John (1997). The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc. ISBN 0-312-15897-1.
Clute, John; Peter Nicholls (1993). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-09618-6.
de Camp, L. Sprague (1953). Science-Fiction Handbook: The Writing of Imaginative Fiction. New York: Hermitage House.
del Rey, Lester (1979). The World of Science Fiction: 1926–1976: The History of a Subculture. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-25452-X.
Kyle, David (1977). The Pictorial History of Science Fiction. London: Hamlyn. ISBN 0-600-38193-5.
Pohl, Frederik (1979). The Way the Future Was. London: Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-02672-3.
Tuck, Donald H. (1982). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 3. Chicago: Advent. ISBN 0-911682-26-0.
Tymn, Marshall B.; Mike Ashley (1985). Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines. West: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.
External links
Media related to Fantastic (magazine) at Wikimedia Commons
Fantastic at Internet Speculative Fiction Database |
1984_(Van_Halen_album) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(Van_Halen_album) | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(Van_Halen_album)"
] | 1984 (stylized in Roman numerals as MCMLXXXIV) is the sixth studio album by American rock band Van Halen, released on January 9, 1984. It was the last Van Halen studio album until A Different Kind of Truth (2012) to feature lead singer David Lee Roth, who left the band in 1985 following creative differences. This is the final full-length album to feature all four original members (the Van Halen brothers Eddie and Alex, Roth, and Michael Anthony), although they reunited briefly in 2000 to start work on what would much later become 2012's A Different Kind of Truth. Roth returned in 2007, but Eddie's son Wolfgang replaced Anthony in 2006. 1984 and Van Halen's self-titled debut album are the band's best-selling albums, each having sold more than 10 million copies in the United States.
1984 was well received by music critics. Rolling Stone ranked the album number 81 on its list of the "100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s". It reached number two on the Billboard 200 and remained there for five weeks, kept off the top spot by Michael Jackson's Thriller, on which guitarist Eddie Van Halen made a guest performance. 1984 produced four singles, including "Jump", Van Halen's only number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100; the top-20 hits "Panama" and "I'll Wait"; and the MTV favorite "Hot for Teacher". The album was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1999 for ten million shipped copies in the U.S.
Background and recording
Following the tour in support of their fourth studio album, Fair Warning, the band initially wanted to slow down and take a break. They released just one single, "(Oh) Pretty Woman"/"Happy Trails", intended to be a stand-alone release. However, the band's label asked for another album due to the A-side's success and the band recorded their fifth studio album, Diver Down, very quickly. Following the recording of the album, guitarist Eddie Van Halen was dissatisfied by the concessions he had made to Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth and Warner Bros. producer Ted Templeman. Both discouraged Eddie from making keyboards a prominent instrument in the band's music.
By 1983, Eddie was in the process of building his own studio, naming it 5150 after the California law code for the temporary, involuntary psychiatric commitment of individuals (who present a danger to themselves or others due to signs of mental illness), with Donn Landee, the band's longtime engineer (and later, producer on the 5150 and OU812 recordings). While boards and tape machines were being installed, Eddie began working on synthesizers to pass the time. "There were no presets," said Templeman. "He would just twist off until it sounded right." There, he composed Van Halen's follow-up to Diver Down without as much perceived "interference" from Roth or Templeman. The result was a compromise between the two creative factions in the band: a mixture of keyboard-heavy songs, and the guitar-driven hard rock for which the band was known. 1984 was the longest-in-the-making album of the band's career to date, taking about three months to record, compared to most of their previous LPs taking less than two weeks, and their first LP taking only five days, all at Sunset Studios.
In Rolling Stone's retrospective review of 1984 in its '100 Best Albums of the Eighties' list, Templeman said, "It's real obvious to me [why 1984 won Van Halen a broader and larger audience]. Eddie Van Halen discovered the synthesizer."
Artwork
The album cover art was directed by Richard Seireeni and Pete Angelus, and the cover art was painted by graphic artist Margo Nahas. Seireeni, then Creative Director at Warner Bros. Records, had collected a number of artist portfolios for the band to review. Among those was the work of Margo Nahas. Nahas had initially been asked to create a cover that featured four chrome women dancing, but declined due to the creative difficulties. The band reviewed her work once again, and from her previously created material they chose the painting of a putto stealing cigarettes that was used. The model was Carter Helm, who was the child of one of Nahas' best friends, whom she photographed holding a candy cigarette. The front cover was censored in the UK at the time of the album's release. It featured a sticker that obscured the cigarette in the putto's hand and the pack of cigarettes. The back cover features all four band members individually with 1984 in a green futuristic typeface.
Composition
Musically, 1984 has been described as glam/pop metal, hard rock, heavy metal, synth rock, and pop rock. Michael Hann of The Quietus comments that the album sees Van Halen become "everything all at once – synthpop, hard rock, thundering metal, art rock", citing "Top Jimmy" as an example of the latter, with its guitar lines being comparable to Talking Heads. The album's first two singles, "Jump" and "I'll Wait", feature prominent synthesizers, as does the album's intro track, "1984", a one-minute instrumental. Eddie Van Halen played an Oberheim OB-Xa synthesizer on the album except for “I’ll Wait” which was recorded with the newer Oberheim OB-8. The reason for this is that Ed's OB-Xa was having an issue staying in tune and while it was being repaired he was sent the newer model OB-8 (which was featured prominently on future Van Halen albums).
Van Halen became stuck while writing the song "I'll Wait", and producer Ted Templeman suggested that Michael McDonald (with whom Templeman had worked extensively during McDonald's career with The Doobie Brothers) could help them. Templeman sent McDonald a copy of Van Halen's instrumental demo of the song, and after getting some ideas, he met with David Lee Roth in Templeman's office, where the two of them worked out the lyrics and melodies.
Eddie Van Halen stated he wrote the arrangement for "Jump" several years before 1984 was recorded. In a 1995 cover story in Rolling Stone, the guitarist said Roth had rejected the synth riff for "Jump" for at least two years before agreeing to write lyrics to it. In his memoir Crazy from the Heat, Roth confirms Eddie's account, admitting a preference for Van Halen's guitar work; however, he says he now enjoys the song. Additionally in his memoir, Roth writes that he wrote the lyrics to "Jump" after watching a man waffle as to whether to commit suicide by jumping off a skyscraper.
The album's third single was "Panama", which features a heavy guitar riff reminiscent of Van Halen's earlier work. The engine noise was from Eddie revving up his Lamborghini, with microphones used near the tailpipes. Later, a video of "Hot for Teacher" was released and played regularly on MTV, giving the band a fourth hit which sustained sales of the album.
Other songs on 1984 included "Girl Gone Bad", parts of which previously had been played during the 1982 tour amidst performances of "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" (including the US Festival show), the hard rock "Drop Dead Legs", and "Top Jimmy", a tribute to James Paul Koncek of the band Top Jimmy & The Rhythm Pigs. The album concludes with "House of Pain", a heavy metal song that dates back to the band's early club days of the mid-1970s.
Eddie Van Halen told an interviewer that "Girl Gone Bad" was written in a hotel room that he and then-wife Valerie Bertinelli had rented. Bertinelli was asleep, and Van Halen woke up during the night with an idea he had to put on tape. Not wanting to wake Bertinelli, Van Halen grabbed a cassette recorder and recorded himself playing guitar in the closet.
Release
1984 peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200 (behind Michael Jackson's Thriller, which featured an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It"), and remained in that spot for 5 consecutive weeks. It contained the anthems "Jump", "Panama", "I'll Wait", and "Hot for Teacher". "Jump" reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. 1984 is the second of two Van Halen albums to have achieved RIAA Diamond status, selling over ten million copies in the United States. Their debut Van Halen was the first. "Jump" went on to be certified Gold in April 1984, only months after the album's release.
The album's follow-up singles – the synth-driven "I'll Wait", and "Panama", each peaked at Billboard number 13 on the Pop charts, respectively, in March and June. "Hot for Teacher" was a moderate Billboard Hot 100 success, reaching number 56; the MTV video for "Hot for Teacher" became even more popular. The "Hot for Teacher" video, which was directed by Roth, stars preteen lookalikes of the four Van Halen band members; a stereotypical nerd named "Waldo"; David Lee Roth as Waldo's bus driver; and numerous teachers stripping.
To promote the album, the band ran a contest on MTV. The contest was called, "Lost Weekend" with Van Halen. Fans mailed over 1 million postcards to MTV in hopes of winning the contest. In the promo for MTV, David Lee Roth said, "You won't know where you are, you won't know what's going to happen, and when you come back, you're not gonna have any memory of it." Kurt Jeffries won the contest and was flown to Detroit to join the band. Jeffries was allowed to bring along his best friend. He was given a Lost Weekend T-shirt and a hat. He was also brought on stage and had a large sheet cake smashed in his face which was followed by about a dozen people pouring champagne on him.
Songwriting credits
The UK single release for "I'll Wait" credited Michael McDonald as a co-writer, but he was not credited on the US version. The ASCAP entry for "I'll Wait" lists Michael McDonald as co-writer with Roth and the Van Halen members.
After the release of Best Of – Volume I (1996), Van Halen renegotiated their royalties with their label Warner Bros. In 2004, Roth discovered that the rest of the band had renegotiated a royalty rate five times greater than his for releases made during his time as lead singer.
Songs from 1984 that appear on compilations after the royalty renegotiation and Roth's lawsuit were credited to Edward Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, and David Lee Roth, with Michael Anthony's name removed from the credits, as evident in the end song credits of the 2007 film Superbad.
Michael Anthony's longstanding bass technician Kevin Dugan has noted that the opening title track instrumental from the album originates from a Roland bass synthesizer passage created as an intro for Anthony's in-concert bass solos, and has claimed that he and Anthony wrote and programmed it together.
Critical reception
Reviews for 1984 were generally favorable. Robert Christgau rated the album a B+. He explained that "Side one is pure 'up', and not only that, it sticks to the ears" and that "Van Halen's pop move avoids fluff because they're heavy, and schlock because they're built for speed, finally creating an all-purpose mise-en-scene for Brother Eddie's hair-raising, stomach-churning chops." He also called side two "consolation for their loyal fans—a little sexism, a lot of pyrotechnics, and a standard HM bass attack on something called 'House of Pain'." J.D. Considine, a reviewer for Rolling Stone, rated 1984 four out of five stars. He called it "the album that brings all of Van Halen's talent into focus." He stated that ""Jump" is not exactly the kind of song you'd expect from Van Halen", but that "once Alex Van Halen's drums kick in and singer David Lee Roth starts to unravel a typically convoluted story line, things start sounding a little more familiar". Although he mentioned "Jump" as having "suspended chords and a pedalpoint bass in a manner more suited to Asia", he went on to state that "Eddie Van Halen manages to expand his repertoire of hot licks, growls, screams and seemingly impossible runs to wilder frontiers than you could have imagined." He concluded that "what really makes this record work is the fact that Van Halen uses all this flash as a means to an end—driving the melody home—rather than as an end in itself" and that "despite all the bluster, Van Halen is one of the smartest, toughest bands in rock & roll. Believe me, that's no newspeak."
In a 1984 review, Billboard states the album is "funnier and more versatile than most of their metal brethren", calling the production "typically strong". A retrospective review by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine was extremely positive. He noted that the album caused "a hoopla that was a bit of a red herring since the band had been layering in synths since their third album, Women and Children First". He further stated that "Jump"'s "synths played a circular riff that wouldn't have sounded as overpowering on guitar", but that "the band didn't dispense with their signature monolithic, pulsating rock." He also stated that "where [previous] albums placed an emphasis on the band's attack, this places an emphasis on the songs." In The Great Rock Discography (2004), Martin C. Strong opines that 1984 "saw Van Halen successfully tackling obligatory 80's experimentation". In his book Copendium (2012), Julian Cope described 1984 as a "curious" record which "expected us to accept the wholsesale metaphor change from Guitar Eddie to Synth Eddie and suck on 'Jump''s Genesis-plays-the-Who-by-numbers."
Guitar Player magazine writer Matt Blackett praises the "deeper cuts" of the album, "Drop Dead Legs", "House of Pain", and "Girl Gone Bad", calling the guitar work "fresh and vital", noting Eddie's "dark, complex sense of harmony and melody". Len Comaratta from Consequence of Sound felt Van Halen reached the pinnacle of its commercial and critical success. At the end of the 1980s, Rolling Stone, which had previously been critical of Van Halen, ranked 1984 at number 81 on its list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Guitar World magazine placed the album on their list of "New Sensations: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1984". In 1991, Chuck Eddy ranked the album 12th in his book of the 500 best heavy metal albums. He praised it as "pop cock-rock" that spanned showy crescendos ("Girl Gone Bad"), "space age symphonics" ("1984"), "Baba O'Riley"-style electronics ("Jump"), drum solos comparable to Kenny Aronoff joining Motörhead ("Hot for Teacher"), "Betty Boop with her top down" ("Panama"), and "unrooted tributes to roots bands" ("Top Jimmy"), overall saying: "It was pure avant-garde vaudeville, it was pure Hollywood, it was a chorus line in bed with the chainsaw massacre."
Following the death of lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen in October 2020, 1984 saw a brief resurgence to the charts.
Track listing
Tracks recorded for the album that remain unreleased or were renamed are according to a Warner Bros. memo from August 24, 1983: "Baritone Slide", "Lie to You", "Ripley", "Any Time, Any Place", "Forget It", "5150 Special", and "Anything to Make It Right (synth)". A September 7, 1983 memo adds an 8th title that didn't make the album, "Won't Let Go (needs lyrics)" while dropping "Lie To You" and "5150 Special". "Ripley" is confirmed to have become "Blood and Fire" on the A Different Kind of Truth album and as "I'll Wait", "Top Jimmy", "Drop Dead Legs" and "Girl Gone Bad" are not mentioned on either memo the titles may have changed, leaving at least four unreleased tracks from the 1984 sessions.
Personnel
Van Halen
David Lee Roth – vocals
Eddie Van Halen – guitars, keyboards, synthesizer on "Jump", backing vocals
Michael Anthony – bass guitar, synth bass on "I'll Wait", backing vocals
Alex Van Halen – drums
Production
Pete Angelus – art direction
Chris Bellman – mastering
Ken Deane – engineering
Gregg Geller – mastering
Donn Landee – engineering
Jo Motta – project coordination
Margo Nahas – cover art
Joan Parker – production coordination
Richard Seireeni – art direction
Ted Templeman – production
Charts
Certifications
See also
"Coma Guy", an episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin's life is transformed by borrowing the album from the library
References
Monk, Noel E.; Layden, Joe (2017). Runnin' With the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen. New York: Dey Street Books. ISBN 978-0-06-247412-4.
Further reading
Draper, Jason (2008). A Brief History of Album Covers. London: Flame Tree Publishing. pp. 254–255. ISBN 9781847862112. OCLC 227198538.
Gill, Chris; Tolinski, Brad (2021). Eruption—Conversations With Eddie Van Halen. New York: Hachette Books. pp. 103–123. ISBN 9780306826658.
Templeman, Ted; Renoff, Greg (2020). Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer's Life In Music. Toronto: ECW Press. pp. 335–58. ISBN 9781770414839. OCLC 1121143123. |
Van_Halen_discography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen_discography | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen_discography"
] | Van Halen was an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California in 1972 by the Dutch-born American brothers Eddie Van Halen (guitar) and Alex Van Halen (drums), plus singer David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony. The band's discography consists of 12 studio albums, two live albums, two compilation albums, and 56 singles.
The band signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1977, and in the following year released the album Van Halen. Over the next few years, the band alternated album releases, one per year between 1979 and 1982, and touring to increasing commercial and critical acclaim, becoming one of the world's most successful and influential rock bands. In 1984, Van Halen released 1984, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and had the band's sole No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, "Jump". After the tour promoting that album, Roth left the band due to artistic and personal tensions with Eddie.
To replace Roth, Eddie picked Sammy Hagar, formerly of Montrose and at that time a very successful solo artist. Van Halen's first album with Hagar, 1986's 5150, was the band's first No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The three studio albums that followed, OU812, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance, also topped the charts. In 1996, Hagar left Van Halen amidst similar tension with the Van Halen brothers.
Roth rejoined briefly and recorded two songs with the band for the 1996 compilation Best Of – Volume I, but Van Halen eventually settled on Gary Cherone, frontman of the then defunct Boston-based band Extreme. Cherone's sole release with the band was Van Halen III, released in 1998 to mixed reviews and diminishing sales, being the only Van Halen studio album not to get a platinum RIAA certification. Van Halen's last release for Warner was the 2004 compilation Best of Both Worlds, which featured three new songs with Hagar. In 2011, the band left the label and signed with Interscope Records.
In February 2012, Van Halen released its twelfth and final studio album, A Different Kind of Truth, featuring Roth on vocals and Eddie's son Wolfgang on bass guitar. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, and became the band's highest-charting album on the UK Albums Chart with a sixth spot.
As of 2007, Van Halen has sold 75 million albums worldwide and have thirteen No. 1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. During the 1980s, they, along with the band Heart, had more Billboard Hot 100 hits, fifteen, than any other hard rock or heavy metal band. According to the RIAA, Van Halen is the 19th best-selling music group/artist of all time with sales of over 56 million albums in the US, and is one of five rock bands that have had two albums (Van Halen and 1984) sell more than ten million copies in the US.
Albums
Studio albums
Live albums
Compilation albums
Singles
Notes
1^ UK and NL position for 1980 re-release
A^ released in Japan
B^ released in some European territories
C^ released in Europe and Japan
D^ released in the Netherlands
Videos
References
External links
Van Halen discography at Discogs |
Manatee | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatee | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatee"
] | Manatees (, family Trichechidae, genus Trichechus) are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows. There are three accepted living species of Trichechidae, representing three of the four living species in the order Sirenia: the Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis), the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), and the West African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis). They measure up to 4.0 metres (13 ft 1 in) long, weigh as much as 590 kilograms (1,300 lb), and have paddle-like tails.
Manatees are herbivores and eat over 60 different freshwater and saltwater plants. Manatees inhabit the shallow, marshy coastal areas and rivers of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Amazon basin, and West Africa.
The main causes of death for manatees are human-related issues, such as habitat destruction and human objects. Their slow-moving, curious nature has led to violent collisions with propeller-driven boats and ships. Some manatees have been found with over 50 scars on them from propeller blades. Natural causes of death include adverse temperatures, predation by crocodiles on young, and disease.
Etymology
The etymology of the name is unclear, with connections having been made to Latin manus "hand" and to Carib manaty "breast". The term sea cow is a reference to the species' slow, peaceful, herbivorous nature, reminiscent of that of bovines.
Taxonomy
Manatees are three of the four living species in the order Sirenia. The fourth is the Eastern Hemisphere's dugong. The Sirenia are thought to have evolved from four-legged land mammals more than 60 million years ago, with the closest living relatives being the Proboscidea (elephants) and Hyracoidea (hyraxes).
Description
Manatees weigh 400 to 550 kg (880 to 1,210 lb), and average 2.8 to 3.0 m (9 ft 2 in to 9 ft 10 in) in length, sometimes growing to 4.6 m (15 ft 1 in) and 1,775 kg (3,913 lb) and females tend to be larger and heavier than males. At birth, baby manatees weigh about 30 kg (66 lb) each. The female manatee has two teats, one under each flipper, a characteristic that was used to make early links between the manatee and elephants.
The lids of manatees' small, widely spaced eyes close in a circular manner. The manatee has a large, flexible, prehensile upper lip, used to gather food and eat and for social interaction and communication. Manatees have shorter snouts than their fellow sirenians, the dugongs.
Manatee adults have no incisor or canine teeth, just a set of cheek teeth, which are not clearly differentiated into molars and premolars. These teeth are repeatedly replaced throughout life, with new teeth growing at the rear as older teeth fall out from farther forward in the mouth, somewhat as elephants' teeth do. At any time, a manatee typically has no more than six teeth in each jaw of its mouth.
The manatee's tail is paddle-shaped, and is the clearest visible difference between manatees and dugongs; a dugong tail is fluked, similar in shape to that of a whale.
The manatee is unusual among mammals in having just six cervical vertebrae, a number that may be due to mutations in the homeotic genes. All other mammals have seven cervical vertebrae, other than the two-toed and three-toed sloths.
Like the horse, the manatee has a simple stomach, but a large cecum, in which it can digest tough plant matter. Generally, the intestines are about 45 meters, unusually long for an animal of the manatee's size.
Evolution
Fossil remains of manatee ancestors - also known as sirenians - date back to the Early Eocene. It is thought that they reached the isolated area of the South American continent and became known as Trichechidae. In the Late Miocene, trichechids were likely restricted in South American coastal rivers and they fed on many freshwater plants. Dugongs inhabited the West Atlantic and Caribbean waters and fed on seagrass meadows instead. As the sea grasses began to grow, manatees adapted to the changing environment by growing supernumerary molars. Sea levels lowered and increased erosion and silt runoff was caused by glaciation. This increased the tooth wear of the bottom-feeding manatees.
Behavior
Apart from mothers with their young, or males following a receptive female, manatees are generally solitary animals. Manatees spend approximately 50% of the day sleeping submerged, surfacing for air regularly at intervals of less than 20 minutes. The remainder of the time is mostly spent grazing in shallow waters at depths of 1–2 m (3 ft 3 in – 6 ft 7 in). The Florida subspecies (T. m. latirostris) has been known to live up to 60 years.
Locomotion
Generally, manatees swim at about 5 to 8 km/h (3 to 5 mph). However, they have been known to swim at up to 30 km/h (20 mph) in short bursts.
Intelligence and learning
Manatees are capable of understanding discrimination tasks and show signs of complex associative learning. They also have good long-term memory. They demonstrate discrimination and task-learning abilities similar to dolphins and pinnipeds in acoustic and visual studies. Social interactions between manatees are highly complex and intricate, which may indicate higher intelligence than previously thought, although they remain poorly understood by science.
Reproduction
Manatees typically breed once every two years; generally only a single calf is born. Gestation lasts about 12 months and to wean the calf takes a further 12 to 18 months, although females may have more than one estrous cycle per year.
Communication
Manatees emit a wide range of sounds used in communication, especially between cows and their calves. Their ears are large internally but the external openings are small, and they are located four inches behind each eye. Adults communicate to maintain contact and during sexual and play behaviors. Taste and smell, in addition to sight, sound, and touch, may also be forms of communication.
Diet
Manatees are herbivores and eat over 60 different freshwater (e.g., floating hyacinth, pickerel weed, alligator weed, water lettuce, hydrilla, water celery, musk grass, mangrove leaves) and saltwater plants (e.g., sea grasses, shoal grass, manatee grass, turtle grass, widgeon grass, sea clover, and marine algae). Using their divided upper lip, an adult manatee will commonly eat up to 10%–15% of their body weight (about 50 kg) per day. Consuming such an amount requires the manatee to graze for up to seven hours a day. To be able to cope with the high levels of cellulose in their plant based diet, manatees utilize hindgut fermentation to help with the digestion process. Manatees have been known to eat small numbers of fish from nets.
Feeding behavior
Manatees use their flippers to "walk" along the bottom whilst they dig for plants and roots in the substrate. When plants are detected, the flippers are used to scoop the vegetation toward the manatee's lips. The manatee has prehensile lips; the upper lip pad is split into left and right sides which can move independently. The lips use seven muscles to manipulate and tear at plants. Manatees use their lips and front flippers to move the plants into the mouth. The manatee does not have front teeth, however, behind the lips, on the roof of the mouth, there are dense, ridged pads. These horny ridges, and the manatee's lower jaw, tear through ingested plant material.
Dentition
Manatees have four rows of teeth. There are 6 to 8 high-crowned, open-rooted molars located along each side of the upper and lower jaw giving a total of 24 to 32 flat, rough-textured teeth. Eating gritty vegetation abrades the teeth, particularly the enamel crown; however, research indicates that the enamel structure in manatee molars is weak. To compensate for this, manatee teeth are continually replaced. When anterior molars wear down, they are shed. Posterior molars erupt at the back of the row and slowly move forward to replace these like enamel crowns on a conveyor belt, similarly to elephants. This process continues throughout the manatee's lifetime. The rate at which the teeth migrate forward depends on how quickly the anterior teeth abrade. Some studies indicate that the rate is about 1 cm/month although other studies indicate 0.1 cm/month.
Ecology
Range and habitat
Manatees inhabit the shallow, marshy coastal areas and rivers of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico (T. manatus, West Indian manatee), the Amazon basin (T. inunguis, Amazonian manatee), and West Africa (T. senegalensis, West African manatee).
West Indian manatees prefer warmer temperatures and are known to congregate in shallow waters. They frequently migrate through brackish water estuaries to freshwater springs. They cannot survive below 15 °C (60 °F). Their natural source for warmth during winter is warm, spring-fed rivers.
West Indian
The coast of the state of Georgia is usually the northernmost range of the West Indian manatees because their low metabolic rate does not protect them in cold water. Prolonged exposure to water below 20 °C (68 °F) can cause "cold stress syndrome" and death.
West Indian manatees can move freely between fresh water and salt water. However, studies suggest that they are susceptible to dehydration if freshwater is not available for an extended period of time.
Manatees can travel hundreds of miles annually, and have been seen as far north as Cape Cod, and in 1995 and again in 2006, one was seen in New York City and Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay. A manatee was spotted in the Wolf River harbor near the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis in 2006, and was later found dead 16 km (10 mi) downriver in McKellar Lake. Another manatee was found dead on a New Jersey beach in February 2020, considered especially unusual given the time of year. At the time of the manatee's discovery, the water temperature in the area was below 6.5 °C (43.7 °F).
The West Indian manatee migrates into Florida rivers—such as the Crystal, the Homosassa, and the Chassahowitzka rivers, whose headsprings are 22 °C (72 °F) all year. Between November and March each year, about 600 West Indian manatees gather in the rivers in Citrus County, Florida such as the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge.
In winter, manatees often gather near the warm-water outflows of power plants along the Florida coast, instead of migrating south as they once did. Some conservationists are concerned that these manatees have become too reliant on these artificially warmed areas.
Accurate population estimates of the West Indian manatee in Florida are difficult. They have been called scientifically weak because they vary widely from year to year, with most areas showing decreases, and little strong evidence of increases except in two areas. Manatee counts are highly variable without an accurate way to estimate numbers. In Florida in 1996, a winter survey found 2,639 manatees; in 1997, a January survey found 2,229, and a February survey found 1,706. A statewide synoptic survey in January 2010 found 5,067 manatees living in Florida, the highest number recorded to that time.
As of January 2016, the USFWS estimates the range-wide West Indian manatee population to be at least 13,000; as of January 2018, at least 6,100 are estimated to be in Florida.
Population viability studies conducted in 1997 found that decreasing adult survival and eventual extinction were probable future outcomes for Florida manatees unless they received more protection. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed downgrading the manatee's status from endangered to threatened in January 2016 after more than 40 years.
There is a small population of the subspecies Antillean manatee (T. m. manatus) found in Mexico's Caribbean coastal area. The best estimate for this population is 200-250. As of 2022, a new manatee habitat was discovered by Klaus Thymann within the cenotes of Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve on the Yucatán Peninsula. The explorer and his team documented the discovery with a 12-minute film that is available on the interactive streaming platform WaterBear. The discovery got picked up by the New Scientist in 2024, who featured in a 10-minute short film.
Amazonian
The freshwater Amazonian manatee (T. inunguis) inhabits the Central Amazon Basin in Brazil, eastern Perú, southeastern Colombia, but not Ecuador. It is the only exclusively freshwater manatee, and is also the smallest. Since they are unable to reduce peripheral heat loss, it is found primarily in tropical waters.
West African
They are found in coastal marine and estuarine habitats, and in freshwater river systems along the west coast of Africa from the Senegal River south to the Cuanza River in Angola. They live as far upriver on the Niger River as Koulikoro in Mali, 2,000 km (1,200 mi) from the coast.
Predation
In relation to the threat posed by humans, predation does not present a significant threat to manatees. When threatened, the manatee's response is to dive as deeply as it can, suggesting that threats have most frequently come from land dwellers such as humans rather than from other water-dwelling creatures such as caimans or sharks.
Relation to humans
Threats
The main causes of death for manatees are human-related issues, such as habitat destruction and human objects. Natural causes of death include adverse temperatures, predation by crocodiles on young, and disease.
Ship strikes
Their slow-moving, curious nature, coupled with dense coastal development, has led to many violent collisions with propeller-driven boats and ships, leading frequently to maiming, disfigurement, and even death. As a result, a large proportion of manatees exhibit spiral cutting propeller scars on their backs, usually caused by larger vessels that do not have skegs in front of the propellers like the smaller outboard and inboard-outboard recreational boats have. They are now even identified by humans based on their scar patterns. Many manatees have been cut in two by large vessels like ships and tug boats, even in the highly populated lower St. Johns River's narrow channels. Some are concerned that the current situation is inhumane, with upwards of 50 scars and disfigurements from vessel strikes on a single manatee. Often, the lacerations lead to infections, which can prove fatal. Internal injuries stemming from being trapped between hulls and docks and impacts have also been fatal. Recent testing shows that manatees may be able to hear speed boats and other watercraft approaching, due to the frequency the boat makes. However, a manatee may not be able to hear the approaching boats when they are performing day-to-day activities or distractions. The manatee has a tested frequency range of 8 to 32 kilohertz.
Manatees hear on a higher frequency than would be expected for such large marine mammals. Many large boats emit very low frequencies, which confuse the manatee and explain their lack of awareness around boats. The Lloyd's mirror effect results in low frequency propeller sounds not being discernible near the surface, where most accidents occur. Research indicates that when a boat has a higher frequency the manatees rapidly swim away from danger.
In 2003, a population model was released by the United States Geological Survey that predicted an extremely grave situation confronting the manatee in both the Southwest and Atlantic regions where the vast majority of manatees are found. It states,
In the absence of any new management action, that is, if boat mortality rates continue to increase at the rates observed since 1992, the situation in the Atlantic and Southwest regions is dire, with no chance of meeting recovery criteria within 100 years. "Hurricanes, cold stress, red tide poisoning and a variety of other maladies threaten manatees, but by far their greatest danger is from watercraft strikes, which account for about a quarter of Florida manatee deaths," said study curator John Jett.
According to marine mammal veterinarians:
The severity of mutilations for some of these individuals can be astounding – including long term survivors with completely severed tails, major tail mutilations, and multiple disfiguring dorsal lacerations. These injuries not only cause gruesome wounds, but may also impact population processes by reducing calf production (and survival) in wounded females – observations also speak to the likely pain and suffering endured. In an example, they cited one case study of a small calf "with a severe dorsal mutilation trailing a decomposing piece of dermis and muscle as it continued to accompany and nurse from its mother ... by age 2 its dorsum was grossly deformed and included a large protruding rib fragment visible."
These veterinarians go on to state:
[T]he overwhelming documentation of gruesome wounding of manatees leaves no room for denial. Minimization of this injury is explicit in the Recovery Plan, several state statutes, and federal laws, and implicit in our society's ethical and moral standards.
One quarter of annual manatee deaths in Florida are caused by boat collisions with manatees. In 2009, of the 429 Florida manatees recorded dead, 97 were killed by commercial and recreational vessels, which broke the earlier record number of 95 set in 2002.
Red tide
Another cause of manatee deaths are red tides, a term used for the proliferation, or "blooms", of the microscopic marine algae Karenia brevis. This dinoflagellate produces brevetoxins that can have toxic effects on the central nervous system of animals.
In 1996, a red tide was responsible for 151 manatee deaths in Florida. The bloom was present from early March to the end of April and killed approximately 15% of the known population of manatees along South Florida's western coast. Other blooms in 1982 and 2005 resulted in 37 and 44 deaths respectively, and a red tide killed 123 manatees between November 2022 and June 2023.
Starvation
In 2021 a massive die-off of seagrass along the Atlantic coast of Florida left manatees without enough food to eat. As a result of this ecological disaster Florida's manatees began dying at an alarming rate, largely from starvation. In early 2022 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a feeding program to address the situation by distributing 3,000 pounds (1,361 kg) of lettuce per day to save the malnourished animals.
Additional threats
Manatees can also be crushed and isolated in water control structures (navigation locks, floodgates, etc.) and are occasionally killed by entanglement in fishing gear, such as crab pot float lines, box traps, and shark nets.
While humans are allowed to swim with manatees in one area of Florida, there have been numerous charges of people harassing and disturbing the manatees. According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, approximately 99 manatee deaths each year are related to human activities. In January 2016, there were 43 manatee deaths in Florida alone.
Conservation
All three species of manatee are listed by the World Conservation Union as vulnerable to extinction. However, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) does not consider the West Indian manatee to be "endangered" anymore, having downgraded its status to "threatened" as of March 2017. They cite improvements to habitat conditions, population growth and reductions of threats as reasoning for the change. The reclassification was met with controversy, with Florida congressman Vern Buchanan and groups such as the Save the Manatee Club and the Center for Biological Diversity expressing concerns that the change would have a detrimental effect on conservation efforts. The new classification will not affect current federal protections. West Indian manatees were originally classified as endangered with the 1967 class of endangered species.
Manatee deaths in the state of Florida nearly doubled in 2021 from 637 (2020) to 1100. Although this number decreased to 800 in 2022, it is likely that current rate of development in Florida, climate change, and decreasing water quality, habitat range, and genetic diversity among this population may lead to reconsideration of the West Indian Manatee as an endangered species. Manatee population in the United States reached a low in the 1970s, during which only a few hundred individuals lived in the nation. As of February 2016, 6,250 manatees were reported swimming in Florida's springs. It is illegal under federal and Florida law to injure or harm a manatee.
There are many conservation programs that have been created to help manatees. Save the Manatee Club is a non-profit group and membership organization that works to protect manatees and their aquatic ecosystems. Founded by Bob Graham, former Florida governor, and singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett, this is today's leading manatee conservation club.
The MV Freedom Star and MV Liberty Star, ships used by NASA to tow Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters back to Kennedy Space Center, were propelled only by water jets to protect the endangered manatee population that inhabits regions of the Banana River where the ships are based.
Brazil outlawed hunting in 1973 in an effort to preserve the species. Deaths by boat strikes are still common. Although countries are protecting Amazonian manatees in the locations where they are endangered, as of 1994 there were no enforced laws, and the manatees were still being captured throughout their range.
Captivity
There are a number of manatee rehabilitation centers in the United States. These include three government-run critical care facilities in Florida at Lowry Park Zoo, Miami Seaquarium, and SeaWorld Orlando. After initial treatment at these facilities, the manatees are transferred to rehabilitation facilities before release. These include the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Epcot's The Seas, South Florida Museum, and Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park.
The Columbus Zoo was a founding member of the Manatee Rehabilitation Partnership in 2001. Since 1999, the zoo's Manatee Bay facility has helped rehabilitate 20 manatees. The Cincinnati Zoo has rehabilitated and released more than a dozen manatees since 1999.
Manatees can also be viewed in a number of European zoos, such as the Tierpark Berlin and the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany, in ZooParc de Beauval in France, the Aquarium of Genoa in Italy and the Royal Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, where manatees have parented offspring. The River Safari at Singapore features seven of them.
The oldest manatee in captivity was Snooty, at the South Florida Museum's Parker Manatee Aquarium in Bradenton, Florida. Born at the Miami Aquarium and Tackle Company on July 21, 1948, Snooty was one of the first recorded captive manatee births. Raised entirely in captivity, Snooty was never to be released into the wild. As such he was the only manatee at the aquarium, and one of only a few captive manatees in the United States that was allowed to interact with human handlers. That made him uniquely suitable for manatee research and education.
Snooty died suddenly two days after his 69th birthday, July 23, 2017, when he was found in an underwater area only used to access plumbing for the exhibit life support system. The South Florida Museum's initial press release stated, “Early indications are that an access panel door that is normally bolted shut had somehow been knocked loose and that Snooty was able to swim in.”
Guyana
Since the 19th century, Georgetown, Guyana has kept West Indian manatees in its botanical garden, and later, its national park.
In the 1910s and again in the 1950s, sugar estates in Guyana used manatees to keep their irrigation canals weed-free.
Between the 1950s and 1970s, the Georgetown water treatment plant used manatees in their storage canals for the same purpose.
Culture
The manatee has been linked to folklore on mermaids. In West African folklore, they were considered sacred and thought to have been once human. Killing one was taboo and required penance.
In the novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville distinguishes manatees ("Lamatins", cf. lamantins) from small whales; stating, "I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology."
A manatee called Wardell appears in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons video game. He is part of a paid downloadable content expansion, managing and selling furniture to the player.
In Rudyard Kipling's The White Seal (one of the stories in The Jungle Book), Sea Cow, about whom the story says that he has only six cervical vertebrae, is a manatee.
See also
Dwarf manatee
Manatee of Helena
References
Further reading
Hall, Alice J. (September 1984). "Man and Manatee: Can We Live Together?". National Geographic. Vol. 166, no. 3. pp. 400–418. ISSN 0027-9358. OCLC 643483454.
External links
Save the Manatee Archived 2013-05-10 at the Wayback Machine
Murie, James On the Form and Structure of the Manatee (Manatus americanus), (1872) London, Zoological Society of London Year
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Archived 2018-12-12 at the Wayback Machine
Reuters: Florida manatees may lose endangered status Archived 2020-09-25 at the Wayback Machine
A website with many manatee photos
USGS/SESC Sirenia Project Archived 2010-05-27 at the Wayback Machine
Bibliography and Index of the Sirenia and Desmostylia – Dr. Domning's authoritative manatee research bibliography |
Sirenia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenia | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenia"
] | The Sirenia (), commonly referred to as sea cows or sirenians, are an order of fully aquatic, herbivorous mammals that inhabit swamps, rivers, estuaries, marine wetlands, and coastal marine waters. The extant Sirenia comprise two distinct families: Dugongidae (the dugong and the now extinct Steller's sea cow) and Trichechidae (manatees, namely the Amazonian manatee, West Indian manatee, and West African manatee) with a total of four species. The Protosirenidae (Eocene sirenians) and Prorastomidae (terrestrial sirenians) families are extinct. Sirenians are classified in the clade Paenungulata, alongside the elephants and the hyraxes, and evolved in the Eocene 50 million years ago (mya). The Dugongidae diverged from the Trichechidae in the late Eocene or early Oligocene (30–35 mya).
Sirenians grow to between 2.5 and 4 metres (8.2 and 13.1 feet) in length and 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) in weight. The recently extinct Steller's sea cow was the largest known sirenian to have lived, reaching lengths of 10 metres (33 feet) and weights of 5 to 10 tonnes (5.5 to 11.0 short tons).
Sirenians have a large, fusiform body which reduces drag through the water and heavy bones that act as ballast to counteract the buoyancy of their blubber. They have a thin layer of blubber and consequently are sensitive to temperature fluctuations, which cause migrations when water temperatures dip too low. Sirenians are slow-moving, typically coasting at 8 kilometres per hour (5.0 miles per hour), but they can reach 24 kilometres per hour (15 miles per hour) in short bursts. They use their strong lips to pull out seagrasses, consuming 10–15% of their body weight per day.
While breathing, sirenians hold just their nostrils above the surface, sometimes standing on their tails to do so. They typically inhabit warm, shallow, coastal waters, or rivers. They are mainly herbivorous, but have been known to consume animals such as birds and jellyfish. Males typically mate with more than one female and may gather in leks to mate. Sirenians are K-selected, displaying parental care.
The meat, oil, bones, and skins are commercially valuable. Mortality is often caused by direct hunting by humans or other human-induced causes, such as habitat destruction, entanglement in fishing gear, and watercraft collisions. Steller's sea cow was driven to extinction due to overhunting in 1768.
Taxonomy
Etymology
Sirenia, commonly sirenians, are also referred to by the common name sirens, deriving from the sirens of Greek mythology.
Classification
Sirenians are classified within the cohort Afrotheria in the clade Paenungulata, alongside Proboscidea (elephants), Hyracoidea (hyraxes), Embrithopoda, Desmostylia, and Afroinsectiphilia. This clade was first established by George Gaylord Simpson in 1945 on the basis of anatomical evidence, such as testicondy and similar fetal development. The Paenungulata, along with the Afrotheria, are one of the most well-supported mammalian clades in molecular phylogeny. Sirenia, Proboscidae, and Desmotylia are grouped together in the clade Tethytheria. On the basis of morphological similarities, Tethytheria, Perissodactyla, and Hyracoidea were previously thought to be grouped together as the Altungulata, but this has been invalidated by molecular data.
Sirenia families
† = Extinct
Family Dugongidae:
Family Trichechidae:
†Family Protosirenidae:
†Family Prorastomidae:
Distribution
The warm shallow waters of the equator have been the center of Sirenian habitation. The northernmost living population, the Florida subspecies of the West Indian manatee (T. manatus latirostris), inhabits the coast and frequents freshwater springs, power plants, and canals in Florida to stay warm during the winter. Individuals may migrate north in the warm summer months, some up to 1,000 kilometers (about 621.37 mi) from their winter range. The Antillean subspecies (T. manatus manatus) occurs in the Caribbean, South America, and Central America and frequent drowned cays, mangroves, lagoons, and sea grass beds.
The Amazonian manatee (T. inunguis) has been documented in all parts of the Amazon River Basin in South America. River channels that connect allow easy travel to other waterways where food may be plentiful. The Amazonian manatee lives only in freshwater.
The West African manatee (T. senegalensis) lives in murky isolated inland mangroves and coastal flats in West Africa. It is found in waters above 18 °C, and its range spans Senegal to Angola.
The dugong (Dugong dugong), the closest living relative of Steller's sea cow, lives in the Indo-West Pacific Ocean in more than 40 different countries. They are coastal animals supported by wide protected sea grass meadows.
Steller's sea cow was discovered in 1741 around islands in the Bering Sea and was specialized for cold subarctic temperatures. It ranged from Alaska through the Amchitka and Aleutian Islands, and even to Japan. Steller's sea cow was reported to have congregated in shallow, sandy areas along coastline and mouths of rivers and creeks to feed on kelp.
Evolution
The evolution of sirenians is characterized by the appearance of several traits that are found in all sirenians. The nostrils are large and retracted, the upper-jaw bone contacts the frontal bone, the sagittal crest is missing, the mastoid fills the supratemporal fenestra (an opening on the top of the skull), there is a drop-like ectotympanic (a bony ring that holds the ear drum), and the bones are pachyosteosclerotic (dense and bulky).
Sirenians first appeared in the fossil record in the Early Eocene and diversified throughout the epoch. They inhabited rivers, estuaries, and nearshore marine waters. Sirenians, unlike other marine mammals such as cetaceans, lived in the New World. In Western Europe the first and oldest sirenian remains have been found in a new paleontological site, in Santa Brígida, Amer (La Selva, Catalonia, Spain). One of the earliest aquatic sirenians discovered is Prorastomus, which dates back to 40 million years ago, and the first known sirenian, the quadruped Pezosiren, lived 50 million years ago. An ancient sirenian fossil of a petrosal bone was found in Tunisia, dating back to approximately the same time as Prorastomus. This is the oldest sirenian fossil to be found in Africa and supports molecular data suggesting that sirenians may have originated in Africa. Prorastomidae and Protosirenidae, the earliest sirenian families, consisted of pig-like amphibious creatures who died out at the end of the Eocene. With the appearance of the Dugongidae at this time, sirenians had evolved the characteristics of the modern order, including an aquatic, streamlined body with flipper-like fore limbs and no hind limbs, and a powerful tail with horizontal caudal fins which uses an up-and-down motion to move them through the water.
The last of the sirenian families to appear, Trichechidae, apparently arose from early dugongids in the late Eocene or early Oligocene. In 1994, the family was expanded to include not only the subfamily Trichechinae (Potamosiren, Ribodon, and Trichechus), but also Miosireninae (Anomotherium and Miosiren). The African manatee and the West Indian manatee are more closely related to each other than to the Amazonian manatee.
Dugongidae comprises the subfamilies Dugonginae and Hydrodamalinae and the paraphyletic Halitheriinae. The tusks of modern-day dugongs may have originally been used for digging, but they are now used for social interaction. The genus Dugong probably originated in the Indo-Pacific.
Description
Adaptations
The tail fluke of a dugong is notched and similar to those of dolphins, whereas the tail fluke of manatee is paddle-shaped. The fluke is pumped up and down in long strokes to move the animal forward, or twisted to turn. The forelimbs are paddle-like flippers which aid in turning and slowing. Unlike manatees, the dugong lacks nails on its flippers, which are only 15% of a dugong's body length. Manatees generally glide at speeds of 8 kilometres per hour (5 mph), but can reach speeds of 24 kilometres per hour (15 mph) in short bursts. The body is fusiform to reduce drag in the water. Like those of cetaceans, the hind limbs are internal and vestigial. The snout is angled downwards to aid in bottom-feeding. Sirenians typically make two- to three-minute dives, but manatees can hold their breath for up to 15 minutes while resting and dugongs up to six minutes. They may stand on their tails to hold their heads above water.
Much like elephants, manatees are polyphyodonts, continuously replacing their teeth from the back of the jaw. Adults lack incisors, canines, and premolars, and instead have 8 to 10 cheek teeth. Manatees have an unlimited supply of teeth moving in from the back and shedding in the front; these are continuously formed by a dental capsule behind the tooth row. These teeth are constantly worn down by the abrasive vascular plants they forage, particularly aquatic grasses. Unlike those of manatees, the dugong's teeth do not continually grow back via horizontal tooth replacement. The dugong has two tusks which emerge in males during puberty, and sometime later in life for females after reaching the base of the premaxilla. The number of growth layer groups in a tusk indicates the age of a dugong.
Sirenians exhibit pachyostosis, a condition in which the ribs and other long bones are solid and contain little or no bone marrow. They have among the densest bones in the animal kingdom. These may act as ballast, countering the buoyancy of their blubber and helping them remain suspended slightly below the water's surface. Manatees do not possess blubber per se, but rather have thick skin and consequently are sensitive to temperature changes. They often migrate to warmer waters whenever the water temperature dips below 20 °C (68 °F). The lungs of sirenians are unlobed; along with the diaphragm, these extend the entire length of the vertebral column, helping the animals control their buoyancy and reducing tipping in the water.
Extant sirenians grow to between 2.5 and 4 metres (8.2 and 13.1 ft) in length and can weigh up to 1,500 kilograms (3,300 lb). Steller's sea cow was the largest known sirenian to have lived, and could reach lengths of 9 metres (30 ft) and weight of 8 to 10 tonnes (8.8 to 11.0 short tons). A dugong's brain weighs a maximum of 300 grams (11 ounces), about 0.1% of the animal's body weight. The bodies of sirenians are sparsely covered in short hair (vibrissae), except that it becomes denser on the muzzle, which may allow for tactile interpretation of their environment. Manatees are the only known organism with uniformly vascularized corneas. This may be the result of irritation from or protection against their hypotonic freshwater environment.
Diet
Sirenians are referred to as "sea cows" because their diet consists mainly of seagrass. Dugongs sift through the seafloor in search of seagrasses, using their sense of smell because their eyesight is poor. They ingest the whole plant, including the roots, although they will feed on just the leaves if this is not possible. Using its divided upper lip, the West Indian manatee is known to consume over 60 different freshwater and saltwater plants, such as shoalweed, water lettuce, muskgrass, manatee grass, and turtle grass. An adult manatee will commonly eat up to 10–15% of its body weight, or 50 kilograms (110 lb), per day, which requires the manatee to graze for several hours per day. By contrast, 10% of the diet of the African manatee is fish and mollusks. Manatees have been known to eat small amounts of fish from nets.
As opposed to bulk feeding, dugongs target high-nitrogen grasses to maximize nutrient intake, and, although predominantly herbivorous, dugongs will occasionally eat invertebrates such as jellyfish, sea squirts, and shellfish. Some populations of dugongs, such as the one in Moreton Bay, Australia, are omnivorous, feeding on invertebrates such as polychaetes or marine algae when their supply of seagrasses is low. In other dugong populations in western and eastern Australia, there is evidence that dugongs actively seek out large invertebrates.
Populations of Amazonian manatees become restricted to lakes during the July–August dry season when water levels begin to fall, and are thought to fast during this period. Their large fat reserves and low metabolic rates—only 36% of the usual placental mammal metabolic rate—allow them to survive for up to seven months with little or no food.
Feeding behavior
Important anatomy in feeding
Perioral bristles are not only used to sense things, but can be used to grasp and manipulate food. Of the 6 distinct fields of bristles on upper and lower lips, the perioral fields have distinct length-to-diameter ratios, defining their boundaries. Macrovibrissae are used to detect food by its size and microvibrissae to manipulate food. They can be used to break off leaves and undesirable parts while feeding. Sirenians use their elaborate facial musculature along with perioral bristles to acquire, manipulate, and ingest aquatic vegetation. The snout makes up a muscular hydrostat, a biological structure that relies on muscular pressure and muscle contractions to manipulate and move food. The manatee uses its large upper perioral bristles to carry out a grasping motion: it performs a flare that tightens the muscular hydrostat while the large upper bristles get pushed out and the lower jaw drops and sweeps the vegetation in by closing. The primary bristles used for vegetation ingestion are the U2 and L1 fields. Dugongs and trichechids differ in how they use the U1 and U2 bristle fields during feeding. Dugongs use a medial-to-lateral motion for U2 bristles, while trichechids use a prehensile, lateral-to-medial grasping motion. These divergent feeding behaviors allow dugongs to exploit benthic foraging, including rhizome consumption, more effectively than trichechids.
Food Handling
Food handling was measured by observing the length of cyclic movements (feeding cycles) of the manatees' perioral bristles used to introduce food into their mouths. Mean feeding cycle lengths varied based on the manatees' body size and the species of plant being consumed. Rates of food introduction, derived from mean feeding-cycle lengths, were comparable to chewing rates reported in other studies. Manatees consumed plants with tubular stems and numerous branches more quickly than plants with flat blades. Food-handling time using perioral bristles differed depending on the species of plants consumed, as reflected in the mean feeding cycle length. Thus, Florida manatees adapt their feeding behavior depending on the characteristics of the plants they consume. They exhibit different food-handling strategies and efficiencies based on the plant species, with faster consumption observed for plants with tubular stems and numerous branches. This research provides valuable insights into the feeding ecology.
Cultivation Grazing
Dugongs are constrained in their feeding by their rudimentary dentition and limited nitrogen abundance in seagrasses. To counter this, they use a strategy called "cultivation grazing". This grazing can alter the composition of seagrass communities and favor species. Early and rapidly growing species will succeed over slow-growing species. Oftentimes, these "pioneer" species can be high in nitrogen and low in fibre, making them a preferred diet for the dugongs. To ensure the abundance of favored seagrasses, dugongs exhibit sustained grazing pressure on seagrass patches up to a month or more. The grazing maximizes the presence of species preferred by the dugongs at the expense of less nutritious and less favored species. This grazing method also encourages rapid recovery of seagrass meadows- the dugongs graze in meandering, single trails that leave uncropped patches of seagrass. This ungrazed reserve with their surviving rhizomes are key to the expansion and restoration of seagrasses. Seagrasses respond to cropping by increasing nitrogen levels and decreasing lignin. Cultivation grazing allows dugongs to increase both nutritionally superior seagrasses, but the overall nutritional quality of the seagrasses. By maintaining the seagrasses in an immature state, dugongs ensure the highest level of nutrition.
Reproduction
Despite being mostly solitary, sirenians congregate in groups while females are in estrus. These groups usually include one female with multiple males. Sirenians are K-selectors; despite their longevity, females give birth only a few times during their lives and invest considerable parental care in their young. Dugongs generally gather in groups of less than a dozen individuals for one to two days. Since they congregate in turbid waters, little is known about their reproductive behavior. The males are often seen with scars, and the tusks on dugongs grow in first for males, suggesting they are important in lekking. They have also been known to lunge at each other. The age when a female first gives birth is disputed, ranging anywhere from 6 to 17 years. The time between births is unclear, with estimates ranging from 2 to 7 years. In Sarasota, Florida, 53 females under observation produced at least 55 calves during a five-year period.
Manatees can reach sexual maturity as early as two to five years of age. Manatee gestation is around one year, and then they lactate for one to two years. West Indian manatees and African manatees can breed year-round, and a female will mate with multiple males. Amazonian manatees have a breeding season, usually mating when the river levels begin to rise, which varies from place to place.
Manatees in captivity
Manatees may be taken into captivity after being found stranded to facilitate their recovery, and there are many instances of manatees being successfully rehabilitated and released into the wild. As all extant sirenian species are rated as Vulnerable, these rehabilitation programs present a useful means to support these species. However, the vulnerability of these animals also means that the taking of manatees from the wild for commercial purposes is a conservation issue.
Diet in captivity
Manatees tend to do well in a captive environment and have been known to thrive. However, it can be difficult to replicate the conditions of their natural environment to the extent necessary to maintain a manatee at its healthiest; the typical diet fed to captive manatee populations may contain insufficient quantities of the nutrients they need.
Manatee captive-fed diets vary greatly from the manatee's diet in the wild. In captivity manatees are fed 70–80% leafy green vegetables, 10–20% dried forage, and 5% vegetables and fruits. Dried forage is foods such as hay and timothy grass, which are often used as horse and cattle feed. The vegetables and fruits that are fed to manatees include romaine lettuce, carrots, and apples. In their natural habitat approximately half of the manatee's diet is marine or estuarine plants. When compared to the captive diet, aquatic plants have more dry matter and soluble neutral detergent fiber, and less digestible nutrients. Although more easily digestible nutrients may seem to represent a better diet, a manatee's gastrointestinal tract is adapted to the wild diet through microbial processes of fermentation.
Rescue and rehabilitation efforts often involve orphaned infant manatees. In captivity, young manatees will be bottle-fed an amino acid-based milk formula that includes a protein source, oils, and a stabilizing agent. This concoction is supplemented with vitamins. During intake, young manatees might require electrolytes via intravenous hydration or even tube feeding if they continuously reject the bottle. After six months, they will be introduced to solid foods like romaine and iceberg lettuce, pumpkin, and root vegetables. After a year and a half, the weaning process will begin and the juvenile manatees will be offered less and less milk during feeding times, slowly transitioning to a completely solid food diet.
Threats and conservation
The three extant manatee species (family Trichechidae) and the dugong (family Dugongidae) are rated as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. All four are vulnerable to extinction from habitat loss and other negative impacts related to human population growth and coastal development. Steller's sea cow, extinct since 1768, was hunted to extinction by humans.
The meat, oil, bones, and skin of manatees have commercial value. In some countries, such as Nigeria and Cameroon, African manatees are sold to zoos, aquariums, and online as pets, sometimes being shipped internationally. Though hunting of them is illegal, lack of law enforcement in these areas allows poaching. Some residents of West African countries, such as Mali and Chad, believe that the oil of the African manatee can cure ailments such as ear infections, rheumatism, and skin conditions. Hunting is the largest source of mortality in Amazonian manatees, and there are no management plans except in Colombia. Amazonian manatees, especially calves, are sometimes illegally sold as pets, but there are several institutions that care for and rescue these orphans, with the possibility of releasing them into the wild. The body parts of dugongs are used as medicinal remedies across the Indian Ocean.
Manatees in Cuba have faced poaching, entanglement and pollution. The area has some of the most extensive and best manatee habitat in the Caribbean, but the population has been unable to thrive there. Existing information about manatees in Cuba is limited; this makes it difficult to spread awareness, which therefore enhances the risks of poaching and entanglement in fishing nets in coastal communities. Poaching of the manatees has been a significant issue since the 1970s, when it was initially reported that the hunting was taking its toll on the manatee population in Cuba. In 1975, it was reported that the manatees' population in Cuba was rare and declining at an alarming rate due to pollution and hunting. In 1996 ,manatees were placed under protection through Fishery Decree Law 164. This law provided penalties against those who manipulate, harm, or injure manatees. The hunting of manatees in Cuba in the 1990s may have been the result of economic hardship, with the manatees being seen as a source of protein. Although there have been efforts made to protect the population of manatees in Cuba, it has not proven to be effective as those working to protect the population had hoped. Many of these areas are seen as parks that exist only on paper, and they do not have a significant impact on conversation and protection.
Environmental hazards induced by humans also puts sirenians at risk. Sirenians, especially the West Indian manatee, face high mortality from watercraft collision, and about half of all West Indian manatee deaths are caused by watercraft collisions. An increased use of hydroelectric power and consequent damming of rivers increase waterway traffic, which can lead to vessel collisions, and manatees may become entrapped in navigational locks. The urbanization of the coastline of areas such as the Caribbean, Florida, and Australia can result in a decline in seagrass populations. Seagrass meadows are also highly susceptible to pollution, and are currently among the top threatened ecosystems on Earth. Reliable areas of warm water in Florida are generally the result of discharge from power plants, but newer plants with more efficient cooling systems may disrupt the pattern of warm water refuges, and an increased demand on artesian springs, the animals' natural source of warm water, for human use decreases the number of warm water refuges. Congregating in the warm waters of industrial areas of Florida can expose manatees to pollutants and toxins at a time of year when their immune systems are already compromised.
Sirenians can be caught as bycatch from fisheries, and they can be seen as pests that interfere with local fishermen and damage their nets. African manatees have also been known to venture into rice paddies and destroy the crops during the rainy season, and these confrontations with locals may lead to intentional killing of the manatees.
Red tide, a harmful algae bloom of Karenia brevis that releases toxins into the water, kills many marine species. In 1982, many manatees were sickened by consuming brevetoxins that had accumulated in filter-feeding organisms attached to seagrass blades. Manatees can also inhale these brevotoxins from the surface of the water as they come up for air, leading to respiratory symptoms and even drowning. Manatee die-offs from exposure to red tide toxins were recorded by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in southwest Florida in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2013. A 2018 red tide bloom spread from Pasco County to Collier County off the west coast of Florida. As of January 2018, there were a total of 472 manatee deaths caused by this red tide, along with watercraft, cold stress, and other factors.
Manatees have been negatively impacted by plastics and other debris that makes its way into the ocean and other waterways. Plastic and debris can result in manatee entanglement, ingestion, amputation or even death. When a manatee ingests plastic, it is often not known until after death, when a necropsy is conducted and debris is found in the manatee's GI tract. Of the 40 Antillean manatees that were rescued, rehabilitated, and released by the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Manatee Reintroduction Program along the Central and South American coast, four were found to have plastic in their GI tract. Treatment was completed and the manatees were released. Later, three of the four were found dead, two as a direct result of plastic ingestion and the third with plastic pieces in its GI tract. Items found in the deceased manatees' GI tracts included condoms, plastic bags, Raschel knit polyester, unknown plastic debris, and ice cream and sanitary product wrappers.
A study at the University of Miami in Florida assessed 439 manatee carcasses that were recovered and necropsied between 1978 and 1986. Of these, 63 (14.4%) had ingested debris; 4 of the animals died as a direct result of ingestion of plastic or other debris. Some of the debris that was found in the animals' GI tracts included monofilament fishing line (the most common item found), plastic bags, string, twine, rope, fishhooks, wire, paper, cellophane, synthetic sponges, rubber bands and stockings.
Infectious diseases may also play an important role in morbidity and mortality. Although viruses have been identified only from Florida manatees, parasites and bacteria have been observed in at least three of the four sirenian species. The viruses that have been detected in Florida manatees include trichechid herpesvirus 1 (TrHV-1) and manatee papillomaviruses (TmPV) 1 through 4. Mycobacteriosis has reportedly led to mortality in captive Florida manatees and illness in Amazonian manatees while bacteria such as Vibrio, Pasteurella, Pseudomonas, Streptococcus, and Clostridium have been cultured from dead dugongs in Australia. Salmonellosis has been associated with mortality in dugongs since at least 1981. Although not well studied, the Senegal manatee is known to host the nematode Heterocheilus tunicatus, just as its sister species the West Indian manatee does. There is still a great deal to learn about the threat that infectious diseases pose to both wild and captive populations of manatees. The relationship between the presence of certain potential pathogens, including those listed above, and their effect on disease in individuals is still largely unknown, although many wild manatees are found to be positive for papillomavirus with no known negative health effects. Immunosuppressed individuals that test positive for papillomavirus can sometimes develop cutaneous lesions; however, cutaneous papillomatosis is not always correlated with a papillomavirus infection, and further study is warranted.
In Florida, agricultural runoff can negatively affect the manatee habitat, and during the rainy season, over 50 counties practice fertilizer bans to try to limit the pollutants that end up in waterways. Weather disasters and other natural occurrences are also sources of mortality. The West Indian manatee and dugong face risks from hurricanes and cyclones, which are predicted to increase in the future. These storms can spread pollutants and may damage seagrass populations. African manatees can become stranded during the dry season when rivers and lakes become too small or dry up completely.
Climate change is a growing concern for manatees, as changes in temperature can affect sea levels, pH, precipitation, salinity, and the circulation patterns of coastal ecosystems. Climate change is also predicted to make winter months even colder, leading to increased instances of cold stress in manatees. Manatees are known to have an incredibly low metabolic rate and poor insulation, therefore, it is harder for them to thermoregulate in cold water conditions. They typically will migrate to warmer waters once water temperatures start to drop below 20 degrees Celsius. This can include naturally warmer waters or artificial warm water habitats produced by power plants/energy center outfalls. Manatee cold stress syndrome can occur when there is prolonged exposure to water temperatures below the 20 degrees Celsius threshold, which can ultimately result in frostbite-like skin lesions, anorexia, fat atrophy, lymphoid depletion, and secondary infections and diseases. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission over the past three years, they have documented the highest number of cold-related deaths to date. This a common disease that is treated through the manatee rehabilitation facilities in the state of Florida like SeaWorld Orlando, Zoo Tampa at Lowry Park, Miami Seaquarium, and the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens.
Manatee rehabilitation for diseases like cold stress syndrome is possible through the support of veterinary staff, zookeepers, researchers, and volunteers in the field. The number of manatees needing intervention is likely to rise as the number of warm water habitats decrease due to declining spring discharges and retirement of power plants. Common treatment therapies for manatee cold stress syndrome can include warm clean water, antibiotics, rehydration, enemas and mineral oil for constipation and foreign debris, and most importantly nutritional supplementation. For some manatee patients experiencing frostbite-like lesions, long-term supplementation may be recommended for optimal recovery. Those most affected by cold stress syndrome are those recently weaned, which can be trickier to treat because of concerns surrounding hypothermia.
Warming ocean temperatures can cause harmful algal blooms, which can choke out the light needed for growth of seagrass. Reduced seagrass beds means that more manatees end up congregating in smaller areas to feed, increasing competition for resources and the spread of pathogens. Exposure to brevetoxin during a red tide event is also a source of mortality; manatees may be exposed to brevetoxin after a red tide has subsided, as it can accumulate on seagrasses. The act of eating vegetation also stirs up sediment, resulting in the ingestion of contaminants trapped in the mud.
All sirenians are protected by the US Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the US Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). In addition to this, the four species are further protected by various specialty organizations. The dugong is listed in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Migratory Species, and the Coral Triangle Initiative. In Florida, manatees are protected by the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act of 1978, which implements actions such as the prohibition of watercraft or limits on their speeds where manatees exist. Marine mammal rehabilitation programs have been underway and regulated in the United States for more than 40 years. In 1973, injured and distressed manatees were rescued or aided in Florida. Eventually, the program was formalized into the Manatee Rescue, Rehabilitation, and Release Program managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2012, the program became the Manatee Rescue & Rehabilitation Partnership, with permitting and oversight by the USFWS. From 1973 through 2014, this program rescued 1,619 manatees and released 526.
See also
Dwarf manatee
Cetacea
Marine mammal
References
Further reading
Daryl P. Domning. "Bibliography and Index of the Sirenia and Desmostylia". Archived from the original on 2013-11-03.
Shoshani, J. (2005). Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M. (eds.). Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 92–93. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0. OCLC 62265494.
Berta, A.; Sumich, J. L.; Kovacs, K. M. (2015). Marine Mammals: Evolutionary Biology (3rd ed.). Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-397002-2.
Garrison, Tom. Oceanography, 5th Ed., Brooks Cole, 30 July 2008. ISBN 978-0-495-55531-5
External links
Save The Manatee |
Tethytheria | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethytheria | [
301
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethytheria"
] | Tethytheria is a clade of mammals that includes the sirenians and proboscideans, as well as the extinct order Embrithopoda.
Though there is strong anatomical and molecular support for the monophyly of Tethytheria, the interrelationships between the included taxa remain disputed. The tethytheres are united by several characters, including anteriorly facing orbits and more or less bilophodont cheek teeth (double transverse ridges on the crowns of the teeth). Proboscidea and Sirenia are linked together based on auditory characters in their petrosal bones, but this link may be a homoplasy. Desmostylians, traditionally considered tethytheres, have been tentatively assigned to Perissodactyla, along with the Early Eocene family Anthracobunidae, which was considered a sister group to Tethytheria.
Systematics
Cladogram modified from Rose 2006 and Cooper et al. 2014.
Classification
Classification modified from Rose 2006.
Clade Tethytheria
order †Embrithopoda
†Phenacolophidae
†Arsinoitheriidae
order Sirenia
†Prorastomidae
†Protosirenidae (Dugongidae?)
Dugongidae
Trichechidae
order Proboscidea
†Phosphatheriidae (Numidotheriidae?)
†Numidotheriidae
†Moeritheriidae
†Barytheriidae
†Deinotheriidae
†Palaeomastodontidae
†Phiomiidae
†Hemimastodontidae
†Mammutidae
†Gomphotheriidae
Elephantidae
Notes
== References == |
Proboscidea | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proboscidea | [
301
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proboscidea"
] | Proboscidea (; from Latin proboscis, from Ancient Greek προβοσκίς (proboskís) 'elephant's trunk') is a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family (Elephantidae) and several extinct families. First described by J. Illiger in 1811, it encompasses the elephants and their close relatives. Three species of elephant are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant.
Extinct members of Proboscidea include the deinotheres, mastodons, gomphotheres and stegodonts. The family Elephantidae also contains several extinct groups, including mammoths and Palaeoloxodon. Proboscideans include some of the largest known land mammals, with the elephant Palaeoloxodon namadicus and mastodon "Mammut" borsoni suggested to have body masses surpassing 16 tonnes (35,000 lb), rivalling or exceeding paraceratheres (the otherwise largest known land mammals) in size. The largest extant proboscidean is the African bush elephant, with a world record of size of 4 m (13.1 ft) at the shoulder and 10.4 t (11.5 short tons). In addition to their enormous size, later proboscideans are distinguished by tusks and long, muscular trunks, which were less developed or absent in early proboscideans.
Evolution
Over 180 extinct members of Proboscidea have been described. The earliest proboscideans, Eritherium and Phosphatherium are known from the late Paleocene of Africa. The Eocene included Numidotherium, Moeritherium and Barytherium from Africa. These animals were relatively small and some, like Moeritherium and Barytherium were probably amphibious.
A major event in proboscidean evolution was the collision of Afro-Arabia with Eurasia, during the Early Miocene, around 18-19 million years ago allowing proboscideans to disperse from their African homeland across Eurasia, and later, around 16-15 million years ago into North America across the Bering Land Bridge. Proboscidean groups prominent during the Miocene include the deinotheres, along with the more advanced elephantimorphs, including mammutids (mastodons), gomphotheres, amebelodontids (which includes the "shovel tuskers" like Platybelodon), choerolophodontids and stegodontids. Around 10 million years ago, the earliest members of the family Elephantidae emerged in Africa, having originated from gomphotheres. The Late Miocene saw major climatic changes, which resulted in the decline and extinction of many proboscidean groups such as amebelodontids and choerolophodontids. The earliest members of modern genera of Elephantidae appeared during the latest Miocene-early Pliocene around 6-5 million years ago. The elephantid genera Elephas (which includes the living Asian elephant) and Mammuthus (mammoths) migrated out of Africa during the late Pliocene, around 3.6 to 3.2 million years ago.
Over the course of the Early Pleistocene, all non-elephantid probobscideans outside of the Americas became extinct (including mammutids, gomphotheres and deinotheres), with the exception of Stegodon. Gomphotheres dispersed into South America during this era as part of the Great American interchange, and mammoths migrating into North America around 1.5 million years ago. At the end of the Early Pleistocene, around 800,000 years ago the elephantid genus Palaeoloxodon dispersed outside of Africa, becoming widely distributed in Eurasia. By the beginning of the Late Pleistocene, proboscideans were represented by around 23 species. Proboscideans underwent a dramatic decline during the Late Pleistocene as part of the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions, with all remaining non-elephantid proboscideans (including Stegodon, mastodons, and the American gomphotheres Cuvieronius and Notiomastodon) and Palaeoloxodon becoming extinct, with mammoths only surviving in relict populations on islands around the Bering Strait into the Holocene, with their latest survival being on Wrangel Island around 4,000 years ago.
The following cladogram is based on endocasts
Morphology
Over the course of their evolution, proboscideans experienced a significant increase in body size. Some members of the families Deinotheriidae, Mammutidae, Stegodontidae and Elephantidae are thought to have exceeded modern elephants in size, with shoulder heights over 4 metres (13 ft) and masses over 10 tonnes (22,000 lb), with average fully grown males of the mammutid "Mammut" borsoni having an estimated body mass of 16 tonnes (35,000 lb), making it one the largest and perhaps the largest land mammal ever, with a fragmentary specimen of the Indian elephant species Palaeoloxodon namadicus only known from a partial femur being speculatively estimated in the same study to have possibly reached a body mass of 22 tonnes (49,000 lb). As with other megaherbivores, including the extinct sauropod dinosaurs, the large size of proboscideans likely developed to allow them to survive on vegetation with low nutritional value. Their limbs grew longer and the feet shorter and broader. The feet were originally plantigrade and developed into a digitigrade stance with cushion pads and the sesamoid bone providing support, with this change developing around the common ancestor of Deinotheriidae and Elephantiformes. Members of Elephantiformes which have retracted nasal regions of the skull indicating the development of a trunk, as well as well-developed tusks on the upper and lower jaws.
The skull grew larger, especially the cranium, while the neck shortened to provide better support for the skull. The increase in size led to the development and elongation of the mobile trunk to provide reach. The number of premolars, incisors and canines decreased. The cheek teeth (molars and premolars) became larger and more specialised. In Elephantiformes, the second upper incisor and lower incisor were transformed into ever growing tusks. The tusks are proportionally heavy for their size, being primarily composed of dentine. In primitive proboscideans, a band of enamel covers part of the tusk surface, though in many later groups including modern elephants the band is lost, with elephants only having enamel on the tusk tips of juveniles. The upper tusks were initially modest in size, but from the Late Miocene onwards proboscideans developed increasingly large tusks, with the longest ever recorded tusk being 5.02 metres (16.5 ft) long belonging to the mammutid "Mammut" borsoni found in Greece, with some mammoth tusks likely weighing over 200 kilograms (440 lb). The lower tusks are generally smaller than the upper tusks, but could grow to large sizes in some species, like in Deinotherium (which lacks upper tusks), where they could grow over 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) long, the amebelodontid Konobelodon has lower tusks 1.61 metres (5.3 ft) long, with the longest lower tusks ever recorded being from the primitive elephantid Stegotetrabelodon which are around 2.2 metres (7.2 ft) long.
The molar teeth changed from being replaced vertically as in other mammals to being replaced horizontally in the clade Elephantimorpha. While early Elephantimorpha generally had lower jaws with an elongated mandibular symphysis at the front of the jaw with well developed lower tusks/incisors, from the Late Miocene onwards, many groups convergently developed brevirostrine (shortened) lower jaws with vestigial or no lower tusks. Elephantids are distinguished from other proboscideans by a major shift in the molar morphology to parallel lophs rather than the cusps of earlier proboscideans, allowing them to become higher crowned (hypsodont) and more efficient in consuming grass.
Dwarfism
Several species of proboscideans lived on islands and experienced insular dwarfism. This occurred primarily during the Pleistocene, when some elephant populations became isolated by fluctuating sea levels, although dwarf elephants did exist earlier in the Pliocene. These elephants likely grew smaller on islands due to a lack of large or viable predator populations and limited resources. By contrast, small mammals such as rodents develop gigantism in these conditions. Dwarf proboscideans are known to have lived in Indonesia, the Channel Islands of California, and several islands of the Mediterranean.
Elephas celebensis of Sulawesi is believed to have descended from Elephas planifrons. Elephas falconeri of Malta and Sicily was only 1 m (3 ft), and had probably evolved from the straight-tusked elephant. Other descendants of the straight-tusked elephant existed in Cyprus. Dwarf elephants of uncertain descent lived in Crete, Cyclades and Dodecanese, while dwarf mammoths are known to have lived in Sardinia. The Columbian mammoth colonised the Channel Islands and evolved into the pygmy mammoth. This species reached a height of 1.2–1.8 m (4–6 ft) and weighed 200–2,000 kg (440–4,410 lb). A population of small woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island as recently as 4,000 years ago. After their discovery in 1993, they were considered dwarf mammoths. This classification has been re-evaluated and since the Second International Mammoth Conference in 1999, these animals are no longer considered to be true "dwarf mammoths".
Ecology
It has been suggested that members of Elephantimorpha, including mammutids, gomphotheres, and stegodontids, lived in herds like modern elephants. Analysis of remains of the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) suggest that like modern elephants, that herds consisted of females and juveniles and that adult males lived solitarily or in small groups, and that adult males periodically engaged in fights with other males during periods similar to musth found in living elephants. These traits are suggested to be inherited from the last common ancestor of elephantimorphs, with musth-like behaviour also suggested to have occurred in gomphotheres. All elephantimorphs are suggested to have been capable of communication via infrasound, as found in living elephants. Deinotheres may have also lived in herds, based on tracks found in the Late Miocene of Romania. Over the course of the Neogene and Pleistocene, various members of Elephantida shifted from a browse-dominated diet towards mixed feeding or grazing.
Classification
Below is an unranked taxonomy of proboscidean genera as of 2019.
Order Proboscidea Illiger, 1811
†Eritherium Gheerbrant, 2009
†Moeritherium Andrews, 1901
†Saloumia Tabuce et al., 2019
†Family Numidotheriidae Shoshani & Tassy, 1992
†Phosphatherium Gheerbrant et al., 1996
†Arcanotherium Delmer, 2009
†Daouitherium Gheerbrant & Sudre, 2002
†Numidotherium Mahboubi et al., 1986
†Family Barytheriidae Andrews, 1906
†Omanitherium Seiffert et al., 2012
†Barytherium Andrews, 1901
†Family Deinotheriidae Bonaparte, 1845
†Chilgatherium Sanders et al., 2004
†Prodeinotherium Ehik, 1930
†Deinotherium Kaup, 1829
Suborder Elephantiformes Tassy, 1988
†Eritreum Shoshani et al., 2006
†Hemimastodon Pilgrim, 1912
†Palaeomastodon Andrews, 1901
†Phiomia Andrews & Beadnell, 1902
Infraorder Elephantimorpha Tassy & Shoshani, 1997
†Family Mammutidae Hay, 1922
†Losodokodon Rasmussen & Gutierrez, 2009
†Eozygodon Tassy & Pickford, 1983
†Zygolophodon Vacek, 1877
†Sinomammut Mothé et al., 2016
†Mammut Blumenbach, 1799
Parvorder Elephantida Tassy & Shoshani, 1997
†Family Choerolophodontidae Gaziry, 1976
†Afrochoerodon Pickford, 2001
†Choerolophodon Schlesinger, 1917
†Family Amebelodontidae Barbour, 1927
†Afromastodon Pickford, 2003
†Progomphotherium Pickford, 2003
†Eurybelodon Lambert, 2016
†Serbelodon Frick, 1933
†Archaeobelodon Tassy, 1984
†Protanancus Arambourg, 1945
†Amebelodon Barbour, 1927
†Konobelodon Lambert, 1990
†Torynobelodon Barbour, 1929
†Aphanobelodon Wang et al., 2016
†Platybelodon Borissiak, 1928
†Family Gomphotheriidae Hay, 1922 (paraphyletic)
"trilophodont gomphotheres"
†Gomphotherium Burmeister, 1837
†Blancotherium May, 2019
†Gnathabelodon Barbour & Sternberg, 1935
†Eubelodon Barbour, 1914
†Stegomastodon Pohlig, 1912
†Sinomastodon Tobien et al., 1986
†Notiomastodon Cabrera, 1929
†Rhynchotherium Falconer, 1868
†Cuvieronius Osborn, 1923
"tetralophodont gomphotheres"
†Anancus Aymard, 1855
†Paratetralophodon Tassy, 1983
†Pediolophodon Lambert, 2007
†Tetralophodon Falconer, 1857
Superfamily Elephantoidea Gray, 1821
†Family Stegodontidae Osborn, 1918
†Stegolophodon Schlesinger, 1917
†Stegodon Falconer, 1857
Family Elephantidae Gray, 1821
†Stegodibelodon Coppens, 1972
†Stegotetrabelodon Petrocchi, 1941
†Selenotherium Mackaye, Brunet & Tassy, 2005
†Primelephas Maglio, 1970
Loxodonta Anonymous, 1827
†Palaeoloxodon Matsumoto, 1924
†Mammuthus Brookes, 1828
Elephas Linnaeus, 1758
References
Bibliography
Nowak, Ronald M. (1999), Walker's Mammals of the World (6th ed.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-0-8018-5789-8, LCCN 98023686
Haynes, Gary (1993), Mammoths, Mastodonts, and Elephants: Biology, Behavior and the Fossil Record (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521456913
Sukumar, R. (11 September 2003). The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behaviour, and Conservation. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-510778-4. OCLC 935260783. |
2016_French_Open | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_French_Open | [
302
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_French_Open"
] | The 2016 French Open was a tennis tournament played on outdoor clay courts. It was the 120th edition of the French Open and the second Grand Slam event of the year. It took place at the Stade Roland Garros from 22 May to 5 June and consisted of events for professional players in singles, doubles and mixed doubles play. Junior and wheelchair players also took part in singles and doubles events.
Novak Djokovic won the men's singles in the 2016 edition. Stan Wawrinka was the defending champion in men's singles, but he lost to Andy Murray in the semifinals. Serena Williams was the defending champion in the women's singles, but she lost to Garbiñe Muguruza in the final.
Roger Federer withdrew before the tournament to avoid "unnecessary [fitness] risk", making this tournament the first Grand Slam he missed since the 1999 US Open. Furthermore, nine-time champion Rafael Nadal withdrew during the tournament due to injury, for the first time in his French Open career.
Novak Djokovic's victory at this tournament in his 20th Grand Slam final completed his career Grand Slam of all four major tournaments, the eighth man to do so in singles and the fifth since the start of the Open Era (after Rod Laver, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal). Djokovic also achieved a non-calendar year Grand Slam, becoming the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four major titles at once. The victory by Garbiñe Muguruza was her first Grand Slam win in her second Grand Slam final.
Tournament
The 2016 French Open was the 115th edition of the French Open and was held at Stade Roland Garros in Paris.
The tournament was run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and was part of the 2016 ATP World Tour and the 2016 WTA Tour calendars under the Grand Slam category. The tournament consisted of men's and women's singles and doubles draws as well as a mixed doubles event.
There were singles and doubles events for both boys and girls (players under 18), and singles and doubles events for men's and women's wheelchair tennis players as part of the UNIQLO tour under the Grand Slam category. The tournament was played on clay courts and took place over a series of 22 courts, including the three main showcourts, Court Philippe Chatrier, Court Suzanne Lenglen and Court 1.
Points and prize money
Points distribution
The ranking points awarded for each event are shown below.
Senior points
Prize money
The total prize money for the tournament was €32,017,500, an increase of 14% compared to the previous edition. The winners of both the men's and women's singles title received €2,000,000, an increase of €200,000 compared to 2015.
* per team
Singles players
2016 French Open – Men's singles
2016 French Open – Women's singles
Day-by-day summaries
Singles seeds
The following are the seeded players and notable players who withdrew from the event. Seedings are based on ATP and WTA rankings as of 16 May 2016. Rank and points before are as of 23 May 2016.
An * in pink signifies the player is out of the event.
Men's singles
Withdrawn players
Women's singles
† The player did not qualify for the tournament in 2015. Accordingly, points for her 16th best result are deducted instead.
Withdrawn players
Doubles seeds
Mixed doubles
1 Rankings are as of 16 May 2016.
Main draw wildcard entries
The following players were given wildcards to the main draw based on internal selection and recent performances.
Mixed doubles
Virginie Razzano / Vincent Millot
Pauline Parmentier / Julien Benneteau
Chloé Paquet / Benoît Paire (withdrew to focus on other events)
Alize Lim / Paul-Henri Mathieu
Alizé Cornet / Jonathan Eysseric
Mathilde Johansson / Tristan Lamasine
Main draw qualifiers
Protected ranking
The following players were accepted directly into the main draw using a protected ranking:
Champions
Seniors
Men's singles
Novak Djokovic def. Andy Murray, 3–6, 6–1, 6–2, 6–4
Women's singles
Garbiñe Muguruza def. Serena Williams, 7–5, 6–4
Men's doubles
Feliciano López / Marc López def. Bob Bryan / Mike Bryan, 6–4, 6–7(6–8), 6–3
Women's doubles
Caroline Garcia / Kristina Mladenovic def. Ekaterina Makarova / Elena Vesnina, 6–3, 2–6, 6–4
Mixed doubles
Martina Hingis / Leander Paes def. Sania Mirza / Ivan Dodig, 4–6, 6–4, [10–8]
Juniors
Boys' singles
Geoffrey Blancaneaux def. Félix Auger-Aliassime, 1–6, 6–3, 8–6
Girls' singles
Rebeka Masarova def. Amanda Anisimova, 7–5, 7–5
Boys' doubles
Yshai Oliel / Patrik Rikl def. Chung Yun-seong / Orlando Luz, 6–3, 6–4
Girls' doubles
Paula Arias Manjón / Olga Danilović def. Olesya Pervushina / Anastasia Potapova, 3–6, 6–3, [10–8]
Wheelchair events
Wheelchair men's singles
Gustavo Fernández def. Gordon Reid, 7–6(7–4), 6–1
Wheelchair women's singles
Marjolein Buis def. Sabine Ellerbrock, 6–3, 6–4
Wheelchair men's doubles
Shingo Kunieda / Gordon Reid def. Michaël Jérémiasz / Stefan Olsson, 6–3, 6–2
Wheelchair women's doubles
Yui Kamiji / Jordanne Whiley def. Jiske Griffioen / Aniek van Koot, 6–4, 4–6, [10–6]
Other events
Legends under 45 doubles
Juan Carlos Ferrero / Carlos Moyá def. Sébastien Grosjean / Fabrice Santoro, 6–4, 6–4
Legends over 45 doubles
Sergi Bruguera / Goran Ivanišević def. Yannick Noah / Cédric Pioline, 6–3, 7–6(7–2)
Women's legends doubles
Lindsay Davenport / Martina Navratilova def. Conchita Martínez / Nathalie Tauziat, 6–3, 6–2
Withdrawals
The following players were accepted directly into the main tournament, but withdrew with injuries, suspensions or personal reasons.
Retirements
References
External links
Roland Garros |
List_of_ATP_number_1_ranked_singles_tennis_players | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ATP_number_1_ranked_singles_tennis_players | [
302
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ATP_number_1_ranked_singles_tennis_players"
] | The PIF ATP rankings are the Association of Tennis Professionals' (ATP) merit-based system for determining the rankings in men's tennis. The top-ranked player is the player who, over the previous 52 weeks, has garnered the most ranking points on the ATP Tour. Points are awarded based on how far a player advances in tournaments and the category of those tournaments. The ATP has used a computerized system for determining the rankings since August 23, 1973. Starting in 1979, an updated rankings list is released at the beginning of each week. Since 1973, 29 players have been ranked No. 1 by the ATP, of which 18 have been year-end No. 1.
Ranking method
Since the introduction of the rankings, the method used to calculate a player's ranking points has changed several times. As of 2019, the rankings are calculated by totaling the points a player wins in his best eighteen tournaments, subject to certain restrictions. For top players the counting tournaments are the four Grand Slam tournaments, the eight mandatory ATP Masters tournaments, the non-mandatory ATP Masters 1000 event in Monte-Carlo, the player's best four eligible ATP Tour 500 tournaments and his best two results from ATP Tour 250 tournaments. Lower-ranked players who are not eligible for some or all of the top tournaments may include additional ATP 500 and ATP 250 events, and also ATP Challenger Tour and ITF Men's Circuit tournaments. Players who qualify for the year-end ATP Finals also include any points gained from the tournament in their total, increasing the number of tournaments counted to 19.
ATP singles ranking
1973–1982; ATP ranking's average system as introduced on 23 August 1973.
1983–1989; ATP ranking's average system with bonus points for beating top ranked players.
1990–1999; ‘Best of 14’ ranking system, where a player’s best 14 results in the events counted.
2000–2008; ‘Best of 18’ ranking system, where a player’s best 18 results in the events counted.
2009–2019; A new point scale for ATP rankings to the ‘Best of 18’ ranking system.
2020–2021; ‘Best of 24-month’ ranking system from Aug 23, 2020 to Aug 9, 2021 for the pandemic-impacted seasons.
2022–present; Normal ATP’s ranking system over a 52-week period restored since August 2021.
ATP records and distinctions
Novak Djokovic has spent the most weeks as world No. 1, a record total 428 weeks. Roger Federer has a record 237 consecutive weeks at No. 1. Djokovic also holds the record for the most year-end No. 1 finishes, achieving the feat for eight years (including the pandemic-shortened season). Pete Sampras held the year-end No. 1 ranking for a record six consecutive years.
Carlos Alcaraz is both the youngest world No. 1 (19 years, 4 months), and the youngest year-end No. 1 (19 years, 7 months). Djokovic is both the oldest world No. 1 (37 years and 16 days) and the oldest year-end No. 1 (36 years, 7 months).
Federer is the player with the longest time span (14 years) between his first and most recent dates at No. 1 (February 2004–June 2018), while Rafael Nadal is the only player to hold the top ranking in three different decades, spanning 11 years and 5 months (2008–2020). Djokovic has the longest time span (12 years) between his first and last year-end No. 1 finish (2011–2023), and is the only player to be ranked No. 1 at least once in a year for 13 different years.
Two players, Ivan Lendl and Marcelo Ríos, have reached No. 1 without previously having won a major singles title. Lendl reached No. 1 on February 21, 1983, but did not win his first Grand Slam title until the 1984 French Open. Ríos reached No. 1 on March 30, 1998, but retired without ever having won a Grand Slam title, making him the only No. 1 player with that distinction.
Federer holds the record of wire-to-wire No. 1 for three consecutive calendar years. Since 1973 when the ATP rankings started, there have been 13 years in which one player held the top spot for the entire year: Jimmy Connors in 1975, 1976, and 1978; Lendl in 1986 and 1987; Pete Sampras in 1994 and 1997; Hewitt in 2002; Federer in 2005, 2006, and 2007; and Djokovic in 2015 and 2021. In contrast, 1999 saw five players hold the No. 1 ranking (the most in any single year): Sampras, Carlos Moyá, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Andre Agassi, and Patrick Rafter.
Prior to 2009, Federer accumulated the most year-end ATP ranking points in any season, with 8,370 points in 2006. Since the introduction of a new point scale for the ATP rankings from 2009, Djokovic achieved the same feat with 16,585 ranking points in 2015 season. Djokovic also holds the record of 16,950 ranking points on 6 June 2016, the most ATP points ever accumulated by any player.
John McEnroe held the No. 1 ranking a record 14 times, Sampras and Djokovic are the only two other players to have held it 10 or more times, with 11 and 10 stints respectively. Rafter spent the least time at number 1 (one week).
ATP No. 1 ranked singles players
The statistics are updated only when the ATP website revises its rankings (usually on Monday mornings except when tournament finals are postponed).
Weeks at No. 1
Weeks as No. 1 leaders timeline
Current record in bold.
No. 1 leaders timeline
Year-end No. 1 players
The ATP year-end No. 1 (ATP Player of the Year), in recent decades, has been determined as the player who ends the year as world No. 1 in the ATP rankings. Prior to the early 1990s this was not always the case, in some instances the "ATP Player of the Year" and the Year-end No. 1 in the rankings were different players (1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1982, 1989). Novak Djokovic holds the ATP record of eight year-end No. 1 finishes. Overall, 18 players have achieved the year-end No. 1 ranking. Ten of them have achieved this more than once, of which four (Lendl, Federer, Djokovic, Nadal) have done so in non-consecutive years. Six players have stayed at No. 1 in the ATP rankings for every week of the calendar year. Connors and Federer have done so in three years, Connors non-consecutively and Federer consecutively.
Players who became No. 1 without having won a Grand Slam
Time span between first and last dates No. 1 was held
Active players and age records indicated in bold.
Weeks at No. 1 by decade
Current No. 1 player indicated in italic.
No. 1 players by country
Current No. 1 player indicated in bold.
Weeks are updated automatically.
See also
World number 1 ranked male tennis players (includes rankings before 1973)
List of ATP number 1 ranked doubles tennis players
List of WTA number 1 ranked singles tennis players
List of WTA number 1 ranked doubles tennis players
ITF World Champions
Current ATP rankings
ATP players with highest rank of 2 to 10
Top ten ranked male tennis players
Top ten ranked male tennis players (1912–1972)
ATP rankings achievements – Men's singles
List of highest ranked tennis players per country
Notes
References
General
Specific
External links
ATP Tour website
Former no 1s |
2016_Australian_Open_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_singles | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Australian_Open_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_singles | [
302
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Australian_Open_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_singles"
] | Defending champion Novak Djokovic defeated Andy Murray in a rematch of the previous year's final, 6–1, 7–5, 7–6(7–3) to win the men's singles tennis title at the 2016 Australian Open. It was his record-equaling sixth Australian Open men's singles title (tying Roy Emerson) and eleventh major title overall. This was the fourth Australian Open final between the pair. Murray became the second man in the Open Era to lose five finals at the same major (after Ivan Lendl at the US Open), and is the only one to have the distinction without having won the title.
Australian Lleyton Hewitt, a former finalist, two-time major champion and former world No. 1, played his last professional singles match at this event. He lost to David Ferrer in the second round.
Seeds
Click on the seed number of a player to go to their draw section.
Qualifying
Wildcards
Draw
Key
Finals
Top half
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Bottom half
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
Section 8
References
General
Specific
External links
2016 Australian Open – Men's draws and results at the International Tennis Federation |
Djokovic%E2%80%93Murray_rivalry | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djokovic%E2%80%93Murray_rivalry | [
302
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djokovic%E2%80%93Murray_rivalry"
] | The Djokovic–Murray rivalry was a tennis rivalry between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. They met 36 times, and Djokovic leads 25–11 overall and 11–8 in finals. Ten of their encounters were played in majors, with Djokovic leading 8–2. Djokovic and Murray are one of two male pairs to have contested the finals of each of the four majors (Djokovic–Nadal is the other pair).
Djokovic leads on hard courts 20–8 and 5–1 on clay, while Murray won their two matches played on grass. The rivalry began highly competitive and remained so for many years. However, after Murray won the 2013 Wimbledon Championships over Djokovic in the final, Djokovic took a commanding lead, winning 14 of their last 17 encounters.
The two are almost the same age, Murray being a week older than Djokovic. They went to training camp together, and as juniors, Murray won the first match they played together. In 2006, both aged 19, Djokovic and Murray partnered in doubles at the Australian Open, losing in the first round. The rivalry became an important part of both men's careers. Between May and August 2013 and between May 2016 and June 2017, they were the world No. 1 and 2 in ATP rankings; Djokovic held the top spot throughout the entire first period and the second period until November 2016, when Murray claimed it. They were the 2015 and 2016 year-end top two players in the world. Their last meeting came in January 2017 at the Qatar Open (even though both players remained active through 2024), mainly due to Murray's subsequent string of injuries and decline from the peak of the sport.
Djokovic and Murray met each other a record four times in the final of the Australian Open, but their most notable encounter there was in the 2012 semifinals. Other notable matches contested include the 2011 Italian Open semifinals, 2012 US Open final, 2012 Shanghai Masters final, 2015 French Open semifinals and 2017 Qatar Open final.
Notable matches
2006 Madrid Masters round of 16
This was the first professional match between Djokovic and Murray, in the round of 16 at the 2006 Madrid Masters. This was the first of 20 matches at ATP Tour Masters 1000 tournaments the two would play, with Djokovic being the winner here in three sets.
2008 Cincinnati Masters final
The first tour-level final the two played came at the 2008 Western & Southern Open. This was Murray's first ATP 1000 final, and Djokovic's 6th. Murray beat Djokovic in straight sets, both in tiebreaks, to claim his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title.
2011 Australian Open final
Djokovic and Murray first met in a Grand Slam tournament at the final of the 2011 Australian Open. Djokovic beat Murray in straight sets to win his second Australian Open title in just over 2 and a half hours.
2011 Italian Open semi-final
Their second professional meeting on clay came at the 2011 Italian Open. Djokovic was dominant in the first set, breaking Murray three times and winning 6–1. Murray then held his serve and broke Djokovic to win the second set 6 games to 3. Djokovic then rallied to a 3 to 1 lead in the deciding set but Murray rallied back to serve for the match at 5 games to 4, giving him the chance to inflict Djokovic's first defeat of the year and to snap Djokovic's 38 match winning streak. However, two double faults from Murray allowed Djokovic to break back and win the match in a deciding tiebreak. It was praised as an epic.
2012 Australian Open semi-final
Djokovic and Murray met each other in the semifinals of the 2012 Australian Open, in one of the longest and closest fought matches the two have ever played, at 4 hours and 50 minutes long. Murray took a two sets to one lead in the third set, before Djokovic came back in the last two, claiming victory in five sets. It was the closest that Murray came to beating Djokovic at the Australian Open and has been praised as being one of the best matches between the two and an epic. Following its conclusion, journalist Jacob Steinberg stated that it was "the best match since the Wimbledon final in 2008". Djokovic later went on to defend his title against Rafael Nadal in another marathon match.
2012 US Open final
This was the second Grand Slam final the two played, and the first time the two had met at the US Open. After a 4-hour, 54 minute long final, Murray defeated Djokovic to claim his first ever major title, making him the first British man to win a Grand Slam title since Fred Perry in 1936. Murray claimed the first two sets, the first in a 24-minute tiebreak, and the second by 7 games to 5 after being 4–0 up at one point, before Djokovic levelled the scoring to take the match into a deciding fifth set, in which Murray regained his prior momentum and emerged victorious. This match equals the record set by Ivan Lendl and Mats Wilander as the longest US Open final in history, as well as the second longest major final in the Open Era at the time, behind the 2012 Australian Open final earlier that year (which also featured Djokovic). It also featured the longest ever tie-break in a US Open final, with a 12–10 final score in the first set.
2012 Shanghai Masters final
Murray was the two-time defending champion in Shanghai and was going for his third successive title, whilst Djokovic had just won the China Open the previous week. Andy Murray took a close first set before the second set went to a tiebreak. Murray had five championship points in the second set, but Djokovic saved them all, and won the tiebreak 13–11, going on to win the final set and claim the title. It has been described as an epic and one of the best matches in their rivalry, lasting 3 hours and 21 minutes.
2013 Australian Open final
This was the second time (after 2011) Djokovic and Murray met in an Australian Open final. Djokovic was the two-time defending champion (having beaten Murray in 2011 and Nadal in 2012), while Murray looked to win his 2nd consecutive Grand Slam. Murray was coming off an exhausting five-set win over Roger Federer in the semifinals, while Djokovic breezed to an easy 89 minute, straight sets victory over David Ferrer. The first set was a tightly contested one. Djokovic had 5 break points, but failed to convert any of them, as Murray won the 1st set. Murray and Djokovic again went to a tiebreak in the next set, but Djokovic capitalized on a key double fault by Murray to win the 2nd set. The first two sets lasted a combined 2 hours and 13 minutes. From there, Djokovic took control and won in four sets, becoming the first man in the Open Era to win 3 straight Australian Open championships. The trophy was presented by former Australian Open winner Andre Agassi, whose record of four Australian Open titles overall Djokovic had matched.
2013 Wimbledon final
Just 12 months after his loss to Roger Federer at the previous year's tournament, Murray made it through to his second consecutive final at Wimbledon, where he would face Djokovic in their fourth Grand Slam final. Murray fought back from a break down in both the second and third sets, winning the last 4 games of the match after being down by 4 games to 2. Leading by two sets and 5 games to 4 in the third, Murray raced into a 40–0 lead in the final game, gaining three championship points. However, not to be outdone, Djokovic fought back strongly, first to deuce, after which he held three separate break point opportunities. Murray saved each of these to claim the title, the first by any British man since Fred Perry in 1936. The victory meant Murray tied Djokovic at 2 wins each in Grand Slam finals, leading by 5 to 4 in their total finals head-to-head. In addition, the loss marked the first time in 80 Grand Slam matches that Djokovic had failed to win a set, his previous straight sets defeat coming against Tomas Berdych at Wimbledon in 2010. In the trophy ceremony immediately after the final, Murray said in his speech that the final game was "the toughest I've ever had to play in my career", and that his concentration was "so high" during the closing minutes of the match. Djokovic conceded that Murray was the better player on the day, and that he "absolutely deserved to win today".
2014 US Open quarterfinal
This was the second time the two met at the US Open. The first two sets were tightly contested and split between each, both in tiebreaks after Murray made comebacks when down 4 games to 1 in the first set and 3 games to 1 in the second set. However, Murray's fitness dropped in the third set with stiffness in his back and hips, allowing Djokovic to break Murray twice and take the third set 6 games to 2. Both players held their serve in the fourth set until Djokovic broke Murray's serve when leading 5 games to 4, winning the match in four sets and advancing onto the semifinals. This loss resulted in Murray dropping out of the top 10 for the first time since 2008.
2015 Australian Open final
This was the third time (after 2011 and 2013) that Djokovic and Murray met in an Australian Open final. Djokovic was the four-time champion (having won in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013), while Murray had made his 4th Australian Open final. Djokovic was coming off an exhausting five-set win over Stanislas Wawrinka in the semifinals, while Murray beat Tomas Berdych in 4 sets. The first two sets were tightly contested. Djokovic took the first set in a tiebreak as a Murray backhand sailed long. In the second set, Murray made the push taking the set in a tiebreak, after failing to convert a set point earlier in the set. After Murray broke early in the third set, Djokovic would win twelve of the next thirteen games, including the last nine in a row, to take the match and the championship in four sets, becoming the first man in the Open era to win 5 Australian Open championships. The trophy was presented to him by six-time Australian Open champion Roy Emerson, who held the then-record of Australian Open titles.
2015 French Open semi-final
This was their first meeting in the French Open. It was a five-set match played over the course of two days. Djokovic had ended Rafael Nadal's run of 39 consecutive victories in the French Open with a straight sets victory while Murray came off a four set victory against David Ferrer. With Nadal and Roger Federer's quarterfinal defeats guaranteeing a first time champion at the tournament, both players each had winning streaks entering the match, Djokovic with an overall 27 match winning streak while Murray with a 15 match winning streak on Clay. Djokovic broke Murray's serve once to win the first set and then broke Murray twice in the second set for a two set to love lead. However, despite Djokovic having break points in the third set for a possible straight sets victory, Murray battled back and broke Djokovic's serve at 5 games all to win the third set on serve. After two breaks of serve in the fourth set, the match was suspended for the day at 3 games all due to an approaching thunderstorm. The match then resumed the following day and Murray again broke Djokovic's serve at 5 games all and closed the set on serve to take it into a fifth set. However, with the match being similar to their one in the 2012 US Open, Djokovic won the fifth set comfortably, winning 6 of the last 7 games to reach his third final in the French Open, ending Murray's winning streak on clay and denying him a place for his first French Open final. Djokovic would then lose the final to Stan Wawrinka in four sets.
2015 Canadian Open final
Djokovic headed into the Montreal final on an eight match winning streak against Murray, who had not beaten Djokovic since the 2013 Wimbledon final. Djokovic was seeking his fourth Canadian title (after 2007, 2011, 2012) with Murray looking for his third (after 2009 and 2010). The world No. 1 had also won the last 12 Masters finals in which he had competed, including wins at Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo and Rome this year. Both players started strong, with Murray taking a lead, squandering it, and breaking back to win the set. Djokovic broke early to win set two. In the final set, Murray took an early lead which set up the pivotal fifth game. It lasted 15 minutes and had ten deuces, but Murray held on to extend his lead. Murray had three match points on Djokovic's serve but failed to convert, and he sealed the match on his own serve for a three set victory. This ended Djokovic's two year winning streak with Murray, who rose to world No. 2 again, overtaking Roger Federer.
2016: The battle for the world number one
Djokovic and Murray met five times in 2016 and created history by taking the battle for world number 1 to the final match of the season. Djokovic and Murray contested the finals at both the Madrid and Rome Masters in May; these were the first two times that they contested a final on clay. Both dethroned each other as the defending champion, with Djokovic defeating Murray in Madrid by way of a three-set win and Murray reversing the result in Rome with a straight-sets victory. By winning in Rome, Murray became the first player other than Djokovic or any Spanish player to win in the Italian capital since Andre Agassi in 2002, and the first British male champion since Pat Hughes in 1931. After losing to Djokovic in Madrid, Murray trailed him by 9,025 points. Murray then went on a 58-4 streak for the rest of the season, including a loss to Djokovic at the French Open final 3–6, 6–1, 6–2, 6–4 who became the first man since 1969 to win 4 Grand Slam titles consecutively, completing the "Nole Slam". This was the first Major final since the 1984 French Open where the top 2 seeds met and neither had won the title yet.
Murray then went on to win two more Masters finals, three 500 series events and Wimbledon, plus a further Masters final appearance.
Djokovic and Murray met for the first time since the French Open final in the championship match of the season-concluding ATP World Tour Finals in London in November. Of the five meetings (all in championship matches) that took place between the pair in 2016, this one had added significance, as the winner would be the year-end world number one. The stakes were high in Djokovic's case, as a win would have seen him win his fifth overall year-end title, just one short of the overall record held by Roger Federer and Pete Sampras; Murray, on the other hand, was shooting for his first year-end title, having reached the championship match for the first time. Ultimately, Murray won in straight sets, becoming the first man other than Djokovic, Federer or Nadal to finish the year at the top of the rankings since Andy Roddick in 2003.
2017: Qatar Open final
Djokovic and Murray met each other for the last time at the 2017 Qatar Open. They were the top 2 players in the world at the time, with Murray being No. 1 and Djokovic No. 2. The final was a 3-hour thriller where both were going for their shots and had to dig deep to stay in the match. Murray saved multiple match points in the second set to force a decider but in the end it was not enough as Djokovic sealed the victory in the third, ending Murray's 28-match win streak. "It was a really, really thrilling performance from both of us. Just a great way to start the year," Djokovic said after the match.
List of all matches
Singles (36)
Djokovic 25 – Murray 11
Analysis
Head-to-head tallies
All matches: (36) Djokovic, 25–11
All finals: Djokovic, 11–8
Grand Slam matches: Djokovic, 8–2
ATP World Tour Finals matches: Tied, 1–1
ATP World Tour Masters 1000 matches: Djokovic, 14–6
Olympic matches: Murray, 1–0
Best of 3 sets matches: Djokovic, 17–9
Best of 5 sets matches: Djokovic, 8–2
Matches lasting 5 sets: Djokovic, 2–1
Grand Slam finals: Djokovic, 5–2
ATP World Tour Masters 1000 finals: Tied, 5–5
ATP World Tour Finals finals: Murray, 1–0
Results on each court surface
Clay courts: Djokovic, 5–1
Hard courts: Djokovic, 20–8
Outdoor: Djokovic, 16–7
Indoor: Djokovic, 4–1
Grass courts: Murray, 2–0
Exhibition matches
Djokovic—Murray (3–0)
Performance timeline comparison (Grand Slam tournaments)
Bold = players met during this tournament
2005–2010
2011–2016
2017–2022
2023–Present
Djokovic–Murray Grand Slam tournament era (2008–present)
* Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Wimbledon Championships of the tournament was cancelled.
Combined singles performance timeline (best result)
ATP rankings
Year-end ranking timeline
Career evolution
Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray were born one week apart (22 and 15 May 1987, respectively). Therefore, they have the same age at the end of a season.
updated Monday 5 August 2024
See also
Big Four
Djokovic–Federer rivalry
Djokovic–Nadal rivalry
List of tennis rivalries
Andy Murray career statistics
Novak Djokovic career statistics
References
External links
Djokovic–Murray head-to-head
Novak and Andy The Rivalry |
X-Men:_The_Animated_Series | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_The_Animated_Series | [
303
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_The_Animated_Series"
] | X-Men: The Animated Series, also known as X-Men, is an animated superhero television series aired in the United States for five seasons from October 31, 1992, to September 20, 1997, on Fox's Fox Kids programming block. It was Marvel Comics' second attempt at an animated X-Men television series after the pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men was not picked up. Set in the same fictional universe as Spider-Man (1994–1998), Earth-92131, it was followed by a revival, X-Men '97, which began airing on March 20, 2024, on Disney+ to critical acclaim.
Production
In March 1990, Margaret Loesch (who had previously worked as president and chief executive officer at Marvel Productions) became head of Fox Children's Network. Having championed the Pryde of the X-Men pilot in 1989, she ordered 13 episodes of X-Men. Saban Entertainment was contracted to produce the show and hired a small studio, Graz Entertainment, to produce episodes because, at the time, they lacked sufficient staff to handle in-house production. Mark Edward Edens and Eric Lewald were to write the show, with the two dividing the job between Edens as head writer and Lewald as story editor. The voice work was done through Canadian studios, and South Korean studio AKOM was hired to animate episodes. X-Men was initially set to premiere over Labor Day weekend in September; however, due to production delays, it was delayed to the end of October. When AKOM turned in the first episode, it contained several animation errors, which they refused to fix. Because of time constraints, the episode was aired unfinished; when Fox re-aired the pilot in early 1993, the errors were corrected. The second episode was submitted just before the deadline, with 50 scenes missing and a single day reserved for editing. The two-part episode "Night of the Sentinels" originally aired as a "sneak preview" on October 31.
Because of the production delays and animation errors, Fox threatened to sever AKOM's contracts. The series earned top ratings throughout its first season, and was renewed for a second season of 13 episodes. Throughout its run, producers had to deal with quality control issues, including attempts to cut costs and requests to change the tone of the series to more child-friendly and integrated toys.
The show was originally planned to run for 65 episodes, but as a result of its success, Saban funded eleven more episodes, albeit with a reduced budget due to Marvel's bankruptcy.
The series is currently owned and distributed by The Walt Disney Company (Marvel's parent company), which acquired all Fox Kids-related properties from News Corporation and Saban International in 2001.
The series was added to streaming service Disney+ following its launch on November 12, 2019, with a revival, X-Men '97, subsequently announced to be in development. The series premiered on March 20, 2024.
Episodes
Synopsis
The show features a team similar to that of the early 1990s X-Men comics by Jim Lee, specifically the Blue Team established early on in X-Men (vol. 2). It consists of Cyclops, Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, Beast, Gambit, Jubilee, Jean Grey, and Professor X, as well as original character Morph, who is based on Changeling. All 76 episodes were directed by Larry Houston.
The series deals with social issues, including divorce ("Proteus"), religion ("Nightcrawler" and "Bloodlines"), the Holocaust ("Enter Magneto", "Deadly Reunions", "Days of Future Past" and "The Phalanx Covenant"), AIDS hysteria ("Time Fugitives"), and loneliness ("No Mutant Is an Island"). It satirizes television in the episodes "Mojovision" and "Longshot".
It crossed over with Spider-Man when Spider-Man seeks the X-Men's help to stop his progressing mutation. In the abbreviated form of the Secret Wars storyline, the Beyonder and Madame Web select Spider-Man to lead a team of heroes against a group of villains. An earlier draft of "Secret Wars" involved all the X-Men, but transporting the voice cast from Canada to Los Angeles, where production for the Spider-Man animated series was based, had been too costly in previous crossovers, so the episode was rewritten to feature only Storm, whose actress, Iona Morris, lived in Los Angeles.
In the first season, the X-Men come into conflict with human conspirators building Sentinel robots to kill mutants, Magneto's plan to instigate a human-mutant war, and the powerful mutant Apocalypse's plan to eradicate the weak. Other storylines include X-Men member Morph's death at the hands of the Sentinels, Beast's incarceration, and Apocalypse's minions attempting to assassinate U.S. Senator Kelly to turn humans against mutants.
In the second season, Cyclops and Jean are married and targeted by Mister Sinister, who seeks to use the genetically perfect combination of their DNA to create an army of obedient mutants. Morph returns, having been rescued by Sinister and brainwashed into forcing the X-Men apart. Over time, a rift grows between humans and mutants, with the Friends of Humanity, an anti-mutant group, leading their persecution. Apocalypse returns, developing a deadly plague that he plans to blame on mutants to fuel hatred against them. It features a parallel narrative of Professor X and Magneto being lost in the Savage Land.
The third season involves the Phoenix, a cosmic force that merges with Jean Grey and turns her into the Dark Phoenix. It introduces the Shi'ar Empire, which includes Lilandra and Gladiator, and seeks to stop the Dark Phoenix. Other storylines include the introduction of Wolverine's former lover turned mercenary, Lady Deathstrike, former X-Men member Iceman, and the villainous Shadow King.
Volume 5 of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z Hardcovers lists the cartoon as part of the Marvel multiverse, inhabiting Earth-92131. As well, the plague-infested future that Bishop tries to prevent in Season 2 is listed as Earth-13393, while Cable's release of the cure is listed as Earth-121893.
Voice cast
The series' voice acting was recorded in Toronto studios, with Dan Hennessey serving as voice director. Toronto voice actors had also been used in the 1960s Marvel Comics cartoons. Catherine Disher had originally auditioned for the part of Storm before she was cast as Jean Grey. Chris Potter was cast in the role of Gambit during filming for Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (1993-1997) which was helpful since his co-star David Carradine, a big fan of the comics, helped as he was unfamiliar. Alyson Court and Cal Dodd were neighbors when Court was a child and Dodd was a well-known actor in Canada long before voicing both Jubilee and Wolverine respectively, attributing their characters' chemistry to being previously acquainted with one another. Another voice actor originally had been cast as Jubilee, but Court was cast when the original voice was deemed too sweet and innocent for the role.
Principal cast
George Buza: Dr. Hank McCoy / Beast, Jack the Ripper
Alyson Court: Jubilation Lee / Jubilee
Tony Daniels: Remy LeBeau / Gambit (1997), Bobby LeBeau, Toad, Watchdog
Catherine Disher: Jean Grey / Marvel Girl, Rebecca Grey
Cathal J. Dodd: Logan / Wolverine
Iona Morris: Ororo Munroe / Storm (1992–1993)
Chris Potter: Remy LeBeau / Gambit (1992–1996)
Cedric Smith: Professor Charles Xavier / Professor X, Cerebro, Red Skull, Dr. James Xavier
Alison Sealy-Smith: Ororo Munroe / Storm (1993–1997)
Norm Spencer: Scott Summers / Cyclops, Caliban
Lenore Zann: Rogue
Additional cast
Other versions
The original opening sequence, used throughout the first four seasons, features the X-Men demonstrating their mutant abilities to an instrumental theme written by Ron Wasserman and composed by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy. A modified version is introduced in season five, episode one ("Phalanx Covenant, Part One"), which slightly changes the beginning of the theme. When UPN began airing reruns on Sunday mornings, an alternate credits sequence was used: a high-quality Japanese-animated version of the original opening. This modified version occasionally appears in the digital streaming release of the show, which was used for re-runs on Toon Disney.
In Italy, where the series began airing in 1994 on Canale 5, the intro and outro sequences were replaced by a new sequence and theme song: "Insuperabili X-Men", sung by Marco Destro and Pietro Ubaldi.
X-Men originally aired on TV Tokyo from 1994 to 1995. For the TV Tokyo dub of the series, the intro was replaced with a new, Japanese-animated sequence and a new theme: "Rising" by Ambience. Starting with episode 42, a second intro was used, featuring the song "Dakishimetai Dare Yori Mo" (抱きしめたい誰よりも, "I want to embrace you more than anyone else"). The end credits sequence was also changed: it featured shots of American X-Men comic books set to the song "Back to You", also by Ambience.
The TV Tokyo dub was directed by Yoshikazu Iwanami and featured scripts rewritten to include a more humorous, self-satirical tone with an emphasis on comical adlibbing, a hallmark of his dubbing style. Episodes were edited for time so that new segments could be added to the end to promote X-Men: Children of the Atom, which featured the dub actors pretending to play the game as their characters. A second dub was made in the early 2000s for broadcast on Toon Disney (Japan) that is more faithful to the original English scripts and does not cut episodes for time. This version used the original American intro and end credits rather than the unique ones created for the TV Tokyo version.
Two versions of the episode "No Mutant is an Island" exist, each with a different animation. The first version was aired for Toon Disney reruns, can be seen on digital streaming services such as Amazon Video, aired on Fox Kids in the United States, and uses the remixed intro theme from Season 5. The second version is available on Region 1 DVD, aired on Fox Kids overseas, and uses the default intro theme from Seasons 1–4.
Viewership
In its prime, X-Men garnered very high ratings for a Saturday morning cartoon and received praise for adapting many different storylines from the comics. Haim Saban credits the success of the series in assisting him to sell his next project to Fox: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
X-Men reached a viewership of over 23 million households.
Legacy
X-Men '97
By 2019, there were ongoing talks with Disney+ to revive the series. In November 2021, it was revealed that a revival titled X-Men '97 was in development which will continue the plot of the series. X-Men '97 eventually premiered on March 20, 2024. Beau DeMayo served as head writer for the first two seasons, with most of the surviving cast members of the original series reprising their roles, including Dodd, Zann, Buza, Disher, Potter, Sealy-Smith, Hough, and Britton. They were joined by Jennifer Hale, Anniwaa Buachie, Ray Chase, Matthew Waterson, JP Karliak, Holly Chou, Jeff Bennett, and A.J. LoCascio. Alyson Court did not reprise her role as Jubilee, requesting that Jubilee be voiced by an Asian actress. She instead returned to voice an alternate version of the character. The series is produced by Marvel Studios Animation, but does not take place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Comics
X-Men Adventures
X-Men Adventures was a comic book spin-off of the animated series. Beginning in November 1992, it adapted the first three seasons of the show; in April 1996, it became Adventures of the X-Men, which contained original stories set within the same continuity. The comic book lasted until March 1997, shortly after the show's cancellation by the Fox Network.
Bibliography
X-Men Adventures vol. 1 (1992–94) (15 issues)
X-Men Adventures vol. 2 (1994–95) (13 issues)
X-Men Adventures vol. 3 (1995–96) (13 issues)
Adventures of the X-Men (1996–97) (12 issues)
Additionally, stories featuring the same characters were printed through the 19 issues of Spider-Man Magazine, published between March 1994 and March 1997, alongside stories inspired by the animated series Spider-Man.
X-Men '92
The comic book series X-Men '92 was first released as one of the many tie-in titles for Marvel's 2015 Secret Wars event, and continued in its second volume as a regular series in early 2016, starring characters of the TV show's reality.
In January 2022 Marvel announced a new series inspired by the cartoon, X-Men '92: House of XCII. Scheduled for publication in April of that same year, the series will explore an alternate universe where the events of Jonathan Hickman's House of X and Powers of X happened decades earlier, in the '90s of the original show.
Manga
Books
Previously on X-Men
In 2017, series developer and showrunner Eric Lewald released the book Previously on X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series, which features his interviews with 36 of the staff and voice cast behind the TV series, as well as Lewald's personal experiences on the series' development and production.
X-Men: The Art and Making of The Animated Series
In 2020, Eric Lewald and Julia Lewald released the book X-Men: The Art and Making of The Animated Series, which features previously unseen concept art, storyboards, character models, background layouts, animation cels, and other production/promotional materials, along with new interviews with the series principal artists and production staff.
Video games
X-Men Cartoon Maker: a recreational software package that allows the user to create limited animations from a library of backdrops, animations, and sound effects from the show. Wolverine and Storm appear as tutors.
Capcom's VS. Series: the characters in the series were licensed by Capcom and were the inspiration for the video game X-Men: Children of the Atom, which in turn would be the basis for the Marvel vs. Capcom sub-series of video games. Most of the voice actors who did the voices in the series reprised their roles for the video game. Capcom would continue to use these characters long after the show was canceled, before eventually losing the rights to create Marvel-based games to Electronic Arts in 2001. Capcom, however, would reacquire the rights in 2008 and released Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds / Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in 2011.
In film
The series was credited for being responsible for the beginning development of the 2000 X-Men film. Fox Kids owner 20th Century Fox was impressed by the success of the TV show, and producer Lauren Shuler Donner purchased the film rights for them in 1994. The film's success led to a film franchise, which includes a series of sequels, prequels, and spin-offs, for two decades up to 2020, when the series came to an end due to Disney's acquisition of Fox, with the character rights reverting to Marvel Studios. Potter revealed that he once auditioned for the role of Cyclops in the 2000 film before losing it to James Marsden, while Buza would appear in the film proper as a truck driver.
In the 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, produced by Marvel Studios, the theme song from the TV series (orchestrated by Danny Elfman and credited as X-Men '97 Theme) is played when Charles Xavier (portrayed by Patrick Stewart) first appears; in the film, unlike his previous performances as the character in Fox's X-Men franchise, Stewart's Xavier is visually redesigned to match his animated counterpart, complete with his iconic green suit, blue and black tie, and yellow hoverchair.
In television
In the Ms. Marvel episode "No Normal", set in the MCU, the theme song from the X-Men animated series is played when Kamala Khan discovers that she is a "mutant".
Lawsuit
On October 9, 2019, Hungarian immigrant Zoltán Krisko, manager of the estate of György Vukán, filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment Group, Warner Chappell Music, Haim Saban, Shuki Levy, Ron Wasserman, UMG Recordings, the current distributor of Disney Music Group, and Fox Corporation. He claims the theme music was plagiarized from the theme song to the 1984–1991 Hungarian action-adventure television series Linda, which was composed by Vukán.
Notes
References
Sources
External links
Official website
X-Men at IMDb
DRG4's X-Men the Animated Series Page
Marvel Animation Page Presents: X-Men
X-Men TV series cast
"Marvel Teases X-Men '92's Return". Comic Book. Retrieved 2013-11-03. |
The_Simpsons | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons | [
303,
774
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons"
] | The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Developed by Groening, James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon, the series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Set in the fictional town of Springfield, it caricatures society, Western culture, television, and the human condition.
The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer Brooks. He created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after his own family members, substituting Bart for his own name; he thought Simpson was a funny name in that it sounded similar to "simpleton". The shorts became a part of The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. After three seasons, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show and became Fox's first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990).
Since its debut on December 17, 1989, 770 episodes of the show have been broadcast. It is the longest-running American animated series, longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running American scripted primetime television series, both in seasons and individual episodes. A feature-length film, The Simpsons Movie, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, to critical and commercial success, with a sequel in development as of 2018. The series has also spawned numerous comic book series, video games, books, and other related media, as well as a billion-dollar merchandising industry. The Simpsons is produced by Gracie Films with 20th Television distributing the series. It has been distributed under the 20th Television Animation label since 2021, although the animation studio has produced animation for the series since season 28.
On January 26, 2023, the series was renewed for its 35th and 36th seasons, taking the show through the 2024–25 television season. Both seasons contain a combined total of 51 episodes. Seven of these episodes are season 34 holdovers, while the other 44 will be produced in the production cycle of the upcoming seasons, bringing the show's overall episode total up to 801. Season 35 premiered on October 1, 2023. Season 36 premiered on September 29, 2024.
The Simpsons received widespread acclaim throughout its early seasons in the 1990s, which are generally considered its "golden age". Since then, it has been criticized for a perceived decline in quality. Time named it the 20th century's best television series, and Erik Adams of The A.V. Club named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format". On January 14, 2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 37 Primetime Emmy Awards, 34 Annie Awards, and 2 Peabody Awards. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase of "D'oh!" has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has influenced many other later adult-oriented animated sitcom television series.
Premise
Characters
The main characters are the Simpson family, who live in the fictional "Middle America" town of Springfield. Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality. He is married to Marge (née Bouvier), a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: Bart, a ten-year-old troublemaker and prankster; Lisa, a precocious eight-year-old activist; and Maggie, the baby of the family who rarely speaks, but communicates by sucking on a pacifier. Although the family is dysfunctional, many episodes examine their relationships and bonds with each other and they are often shown to care about one another.
The family also owns a greyhound, Santa's Little Helper, (who first appeared in the episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire") and a cat, Snowball II, who is replaced by a cat also called Snowball II in the fifteenth-season episode "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot". Extended members of the Simpson and Bouvier family in the main cast include Homer's father Abe and Marge's sisters Patty and Selma. Marge's mother Jacqueline and Homer's mother Mona appear less frequently.
The show includes a vast array of quirky supporting characters, which include Homer's friends Barney Gumble, Lenny Leonard and Carl Carlson; the school principal Seymour Skinner and staff members such as Edna Krabappel and Groundskeeper Willie; students such as Milhouse Van Houten, Nelson Muntz and Ralph Wiggum; shopkeepers such as Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Comic Book Guy and Moe Szyslak; government figures Mayor "Diamond" Joe Quimby and Clancy Wiggum; next-door neighbor Ned Flanders; local celebrities such as Krusty the Clown and news reporter Kent Brockman; nuclear tycoon Montgomery Burns and his devoted assistant Waylon Smithers; and dozens more.
The creators originally intended many of these characters as one-time jokes or for fulfilling needed functions in the town. A number of them have gained expanded roles and subsequently starred in their own episodes. According to Matt Groening, the show adopted the concept of a large supporting cast from the comedy show SCTV.
Continuity and the floating timeline
Despite the depiction of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays passing, the characters never age. The series uses a floating timeline in which episodes generally take place in the year the episode is produced. Flashbacks and flashforwards do occasionally depict the characters at other points in their lives, with the timeline of these depictions also generally floating relative to the year the episode is produced. For example, the 1991 episodes "The Way We Was" and "I Married Marge" depict Homer and Marge as high schoolers in the 1970s who had Bart (who is always 10 years old) in the early '80s, while the 2008 episode "That '90s Show" depicts Homer and Marge as a childless couple in the '90s, and the 2021 episode "Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars" portrays Homer as an adolescent in the same period. The 1995 episode "Lisa's Wedding" takes place during Lisa's college years in the then-future year of 2010, the same year the show began airing its 22nd season, in which Lisa was still 8. Regarding the contradictory flashbacks, Selman stated that "they all kind of happened in their imaginary world."
The show follows a loose and inconsistent continuity. For example, Krusty the Clown may be able to read in one episode, but not in another. However, it is consistently portrayed that he is Jewish, that his father was a rabbi, and that his career began in the 1960s. The latter point introduces another snag in the floating timeline: historical periods that are a core part of a character's backstory remain so even when their age makes it unlikely or impossible, such as Grampa Simpson and Principal Skinner's respective service in World War II and Vietnam.
The only episodes not part of the series' main canon are the Treehouse of Horror episodes, which often feature the deaths of main characters. Characters who die in "regular" episodes, such as Maude Flanders, Mona Simpson and Edna Krabappel, however, stay dead. Most episodes end with the status quo being restored, though occasionally major changes will stick, such as Lisa's conversions to vegetarianism and Buddhism, the divorce of Milhouse van Houten's parents, and the marriage and subsequent parenthood of Apu and Manjula.
Setting
The Simpsons takes place in a fictional American town called Springfield. Although there are many real settlements in America named Springfield, the town the show is set in is fictional. The state it is in is not established. In fact, the show is intentionally evasive with regard to Springfield's location. Springfield's geography and that of its surroundings is inconsistent: from one episode to another, it may have coastlines, deserts, vast farmland, mountains, or whatever the story or joke requires. Groening has said that Springfield has much in common with Portland, Oregon, the city where he grew up. Groening has said that he named it after Springfield, Oregon, and the fictitious Springfield which was the setting of the series Father Knows Best. He "figured out that Springfield was one of the most common names for a city in the U.S. In anticipation of the success of the show, I thought, 'This will be cool; everyone will think it's their Springfield.' And they do." Many landmarks, including street names, have connections to Portland.
Production
Development
When producer James L. Brooks was working on the television variety show The Tracey Ullman Show, he decided to include small animated sketches before and after the commercial breaks. Having seen one of cartoonist Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strips, Brooks asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts. Groening initially intended to present an animated version of his Life in Hell series. However, Groening later realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work. He therefore chose another approach while waiting in the lobby of Brooks's office for the pitch meeting, hurriedly formulating his version of a dysfunctional family that became the Simpsons. He named the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name, adopting an anagram of the word brat.
The Simpson family first appeared as shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned up in production. However, the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial shorts. The animation was produced domestically at Klasky Csupo, with Wes Archer, David Silverman, and Bill Kopp being animators for the first season. The colorist, "Georgie" Gyorgyi Kovacs Peluce (Kovács Györgyike) made the characters yellow; as Bart, Lisa and Maggie have no hairlines, she felt they would look strange if they were flesh-colored. Groening supported the decision, saying: "Marge is yellow with blue hair? That's hilarious — let's do it!"
In 1989, a team of production companies adapted The Simpsons into a half-hour series for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The team included the Klasky Csupo animation house. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content. Groening said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" that they were watching. The half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989, with "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire". "Some Enchanted Evening" was the first full-length episode produced, but it did not broadcast until May 1990, as the last episode of the first season, because of animation problems. In 1992, Tracey Ullman filed a lawsuit against Fox, claiming that her show was the source of the series' success. The suit said she should receive a share of the profits of The Simpsons—a claim rejected by the courts.
Executive producers and showrunners
Matt Groening and James L. Brooks have served as executive producers during the show's entire history, and also function as creative consultants. Sam Simon, described by former Simpsons director Brad Bird as "the unsung hero" of the show, served as creative supervisor for the first four seasons. He was constantly at odds with Groening, Brooks and the show's production company Gracie Films and left in 1993. Before leaving, he negotiated a deal that sees him receive a share of the profits every year, and an executive producer credit despite not having worked on the show since 1993, at least until his passing in 2015. A more involved position on the show is the showrunner, who acts as head writer and manages the show's production for an entire season.
Writing
The first team of writers, assembled by Sam Simon, consisted of John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, George Meyer, Jeff Martin, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky. Newer Simpsons' writing teams typically consist of sixteen writers who propose episode ideas at the beginning of each December. The main writer of each episode writes the first draft. Group rewriting sessions develop final scripts by adding or removing jokes, inserting scenes, and calling for re-readings of lines by the show's vocal performers. Until 2004, George Meyer, who had developed the show since the first season, was active in these sessions. According to long-time writer Jon Vitti, Meyer usually invented the best lines in a given episode, even though other writers may receive script credits. Each episode takes six months to produce so the show rarely comments on current events.
Credited with sixty episodes, John Swartzwelder is the most prolific writer on The Simpsons. One of the best-known former writers is Conan O'Brien, who contributed to several episodes in the early 1990s before replacing David Letterman as host of the talk show Late Night. English comedian Ricky Gervais wrote the episode "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife", becoming the first celebrity both to write and guest star in the same episode. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, writers of the film Superbad, wrote the episode "Homer the Whopper", with Rogen voicing a character in it.
At the end of 2007, the writers of The Simpsons went on strike together with the other members of the Writers Guild of America, East. The show's writers had joined the guild in 1998.
In May 2023, the writers of The Simpsons went on strike together with the other members of the Writers Guild of America, East.
Voice actors
The Simpsons has six main cast members: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, and Harry Shearer. Castellaneta voices Homer Simpson, Grampa Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Barney Gumble, and other adult male characters. Julie Kavner voices Marge Simpson and Patty and Selma, as well as several minor characters. Castellaneta and Kavner had been a part of The Tracey Ullman Show cast and were given the parts so that new actors would not be needed. Cartwright voices Bart Simpson, Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum and other children. Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, is the only cast member who regularly voices only one character, although she occasionally plays other episodic characters. The producers decided to hold casting for the roles of Bart and Lisa. Smith had initially been asked to audition for the role of Bart, but casting director Bonita Pietila believed her voice was too high, so she was given the role of Lisa instead. Cartwright was originally brought in to voice Lisa, but upon arriving at the audition, she found that Lisa was simply described as the "middle child" and at the time did not have much personality. Cartwright became more interested in the role of Bart, who was described as "devious, underachieving, school-hating, irreverent, [and] clever". Groening let her try out for the part instead, and upon hearing her read, gave her the job on the spot. Cartwright is the only one of the six main Simpsons cast members who had been professionally trained in voice acting prior to working on the show. Azaria and Shearer do not voice members of the title family, but play a majority of the male townspeople. Azaria, who has been a part of the main voice cast since the second season in one episode "Old Money" and then perpetually part of the regular main voice cast since the third season, voices recurring characters such as Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and Professor Frink. Shearer provides voices for Mr. Burns, Mr. Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy and formerly Dr. Hibbert. Every main cast member has won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance.
With one exception, episode credits list only the voice actors, and not the characters they voice. Both Fox and the production crew wanted to keep their identities secret during the early seasons and, therefore, closed most of the recording sessions while refusing to publish photos of the recording artists. However, the network eventually revealed which roles each actor performed in the episode "Old Money", because the producers said the voice actors should receive credit for their work. In 2003, the cast appeared in an episode of Inside the Actors Studio, doing live performances of their characters' voices.
The six main actors were paid $30,000 per episode, until 1998, when they were involved in a pay dispute with Fox. The company threatened to replace them with new actors, even going as far as preparing for casting of new voices, but series creator Groening supported the actors in their action. The issue was soon resolved and, from 1998 to 2004, they were paid $125,000 per episode. The show's revenue continued to rise through syndication and DVD sales, and in April 2004 the main cast stopped appearing for script readings, demanding they be paid $360,000 per episode. The strike was resolved a month later and their salaries were increased to something between $250,000 and $360,000 per episode. In 2008, production for the twentieth season was put on hold due to new contract negotiations with the voice actors, who wanted a "healthy bump" in salary to an amount close to $500,000 per episode. The negotiations were soon completed, and the actors' salary was raised to $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, the cast members accepted a 30 percent pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode.
In addition to the main cast, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Marcia Wallace, Maggie Roswell, and Russi Taylor voice supporting characters. From 1999 to 2002, Roswell's characters were voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven. Karl Wiedergott has also appeared in minor roles, but does not voice any recurring characters. Wiedergott left the show in 2010, and since then Chris Edgerly has appeared regularly to voice minor characters. Repeat "special guest" cast members include Albert Brooks, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Joe Mantegna, Maurice LaMarche, and Kelsey Grammer. Following Hartman's death in 1998, the characters he voiced (Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz) were retired; Wallace's character of Edna Krabappel was retired as well after her death in 2013. Following Taylor's death in 2019, her characters (including Sherri, Terri, and Martin Prince) are now voiced by Grey Griffin.
Episodes will quite often feature guest voices from a wide range of professions, including actors, athletes, authors, bands, musicians and scientists. In the earlier seasons, most of the guest stars voiced characters, but eventually more started appearing as themselves. Tony Bennett was the first guest star to appear as himself, appearing briefly in the season two episode "Dancin' Homer". The Simpsons holds the world record for "Most Guest Stars Featured in a Television Series".
The Simpsons has been dubbed into several other languages, including Japanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. It is also one of the few programs dubbed in both standard French and Quebec French. The show has been broadcast in Arabic, but due to Islamic customs, numerous aspects of the show have been changed. For example, Homer drinks soda instead of beer and eats Egyptian beef sausages instead of hot dogs. Because of such changes, the Arabized version of the series met with a negative reaction from the lifelong Simpsons fans in the area.
Animation
Several different U.S. and international studios animate The Simpsons. Throughout the run of the animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, the animation was produced domestically at Klasky Csupo. With the debut of the series, because of an increased workload, Fox subcontracted production to several local and foreign studios. These are AKOM, Anivision, Rough Draft Studios, USAnimation, and Toonzone Entertainment.
For the first three seasons, Klasky Csupo animated The Simpsons in the United States. In 1992, the show's production company, Gracie Films, switched domestic production to Film Roman, who continued to animate the show until 2016 when they were replaced by Fox Television Animation, which allowed the show to be made more in-house. In Season 14, production switched from traditional cel animation to digital ink and paint. The first episode to experiment with digital coloring was "Radioactive Man" in 1995. Animators used digital ink and paint during production of the season 12 episode "Tennis the Menace", but Gracie Films delayed the regular use of digital ink and paint until two seasons later. The already completed "Tennis the Menace" was broadcast as made.
The production staff at the U.S. animation studio, Film Roman, draws storyboards, designs new characters, backgrounds, props and draws character and background layouts, which in turn become animatics to be screened for the writers at Gracie Films for any changes to be made before the work is shipped overseas. The overseas studios then draw the inbetweens, ink and paint, and render the animation to tape before it is shipped back to the United States to be delivered to Fox three to four months later.
The series began high-definition production in Season 20; the first episode, "Take My Life, Please", aired February 15, 2009. The move to HDTV included a new opening sequence. Matt Groening called it a complicated change because it affected the timing and composition of animation.
Themes
The Simpsons uses the standard setup of a situational comedy, or sitcom, as its premise. The series centers on a family and their life in a typical American town, serving as a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle. However, because of its animated nature, The Simpsons' scope is larger than that of a regular sitcom. The town of Springfield acts as a complete universe in which characters can explore the issues faced by modern society. By having Homer work in a nuclear power plant, the show can comment on the state of the environment. Through Bart and Lisa's days at Springfield Elementary School, the show's writers illustrate pressing or controversial issues in the field of education. The town features a vast array of television channels, which enables the producers to make jokes about the entertainment industry and the press.
Some commentators say the show is political in nature and susceptible to a left-wing bias. Al Jean acknowledged in an interview that "We [the show] are of liberal bent." The writers often evince an appreciation for progressive leanings, but the show makes jokes across the political spectrum. The show portrays government and large corporations as evil entities that take advantage of the common worker. Thus, the writers often portray authority figures in an unflattering or negative light. In The Simpsons, politicians are corrupt, ministers such as Reverend Lovejoy are dismissive to churchgoers, and the local police force is incompetent. Religion also figures as a recurring theme. In times of crisis, the family often turns to God, and the show has dealt with most of the major religions.
Sexuality is often a source of jokes in the series or serves as the theme of certain episodes. Even though homosexuals are sometimes sources of gags, the series often comments on how American society treats them, with "Homer's Phobia" devoting an entire episode to the family making a gay friend and Homer's initial hostility to him. In 1990, The Simpsons became the first animated early evening show to depict a kiss between two men in "Simpson and Delilah".
Hallmarks
Opening sequence
The Simpsons' opening sequence is one of the show's most memorable hallmarks. The standard opening has gone through three iterations (a replacement of some shots at the start of the second season, and a brand new sequence when the show switched to high-definition in 2009).
Each has the same basic sequence of events: the camera zooms through cumulus clouds, through the show's title towards the town of Springfield. The camera then follows the members of the family on their way home. Upon entering their house, the Simpsons settle down on their couch to watch television. The original opening was created by David Silverman, and was the first task he did when production began on the show. The series' distinctive theme song was composed by musician Danny Elfman in 1989, after Groening approached him requesting a retro-style piece. This piece has been noted by Elfman as the most popular of his career.
One of the most distinctive aspects of the opening is that three of its elements change from episode to episode: Bart writes different things on the school chalkboard, Lisa plays different solos on her saxophone (or occasionally a different instrument), and different gags accompany the family as they enter their living room to sit on the couch.
Halloween episodes
The special Halloween episode has become an annual tradition. "Treehouse of Horror" first broadcast in 1990 as part of season two and established the pattern of three separate, self-contained stories in each Halloween episode. These pieces usually involve the family in some horror, science fiction, or supernatural setting and often parody or pay homage to a famous piece of work in those genres. They always take place outside the normal continuity of the show. Although the Treehouse series is meant to be seen on Halloween, this changed by the 2000s (and again in 2020), when new installments have premiered after Halloween due to Fox's current contract with Major League Baseball's World Series. Prior to 2020 (between 2011 and 2019), every Treehouse of Horror episode had aired in October.
Humor
The show's humor turns on cultural references that cover a wide spectrum of society so that viewers from all generations can enjoy the show. Such references, for example, come from movies, television, music, literature, science, and history. The animators also regularly add jokes or sight gags into the show's background via humorous or incongruous bits of text in signs, newspapers, billboards, and elsewhere. The audience may often not notice the visual jokes in a single viewing. Some are so fleeting that they become apparent only by pausing a video recording of the show or viewing it in slow motion. Kristin Thompson argues that The Simpsons uses a "flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show."
One of Bart's early hallmarks was his prank calls to Moe's Tavern owner Moe Szyslak where he asks for a gag name. Moe tries to find that person in the bar, but soon realizes it is a prank call and angrily threatens Bart. These calls were apparently based on a series of prank calls known as the Tube Bar recordings, though Groening has denied any causal connection.
Moe was based partly on Tube Bar owner Louis "Red" Deutsch, whose often profane responses inspired Moe's violent side. As the series progressed, it became more difficult for the writers to come up with a fake name and to write Moe's angry response, and the pranks were dropped as a regular joke during the fourth season. The Simpsons also often includes self-referential humor. The most common form is jokes about Fox Broadcasting. For example, the episode "She Used to Be My Girl" included a scene in which a Fox News Channel van drove down the street while displaying a large "Bush Cheney 2004" banner and playing Queen's "We Are the Champions", in reference to the 2004 U.S. presidential election and claims of conservative bias in Fox News.
The show uses catchphrases, and most of the primary and secondary characters have at least one each. Notable expressions include Homer's annoyed grunt "D'oh!", Mr. Burns' "Excellent" and Nelson Muntz's "Ha-ha!" Some of Bart's catchphrases, such as "¡Ay, caramba!", "Don't have a cow, man!" and "Eat my shorts!" appeared on T-shirts in the show's early days. However, Bart rarely used the latter two phrases until after they became popular through the merchandising. The use of many of these catchphrases has declined in recent seasons. The episode "Bart Gets Famous" mocks catchphrase-based humor, as Bart achieves fame on the Krusty the Clown Show solely for saying "I didn't do it."
Purported foreshadowing of actual events
The Simpsons has gained notoriety for jokes that appeared to become reality. Perhaps the most famous example comes from the episode "Bart to the Future", which mentions billionaire Donald Trump having been president of the United States at one time and leaving the nation broke. The episode first aired in 2000, sixteen years before Trump (who at the time was exploring a presidential run) was elected. Another episode, "When You Dish Upon a Star", lampooned 20th Century Fox as a division of The Walt Disney Company. Nineteen years later, Disney purchased Fox. Other examples purported as The Simpsons predicting the future include the introduction of the smartwatch, video chat services, Richard Branson's spaceflight and Lady Gaga's acrobatic performance at the Super Bowl LI halftime show.
Al Jean has commented on the show's purported ability to predict the future, explaining that they're really just "educated guesses" and stating that "if you throw enough darts, you're going to get some bullseyes." Producer Bill Oakley stated, "There are very few cases where The Simpsons predicted something. It's mainly just coincidence because the episodes are so old that history repeats itself." Fact-checking sources such as Snopes have debunked many of the claimed prophecies, explaining that the show's extensive run means "a lot of jokes, and a lot of opportunities for coincidences to appear" and "most of these 'predictions' have rather simple and mundane explanations". For example, the device shown on The Simpsons with autocorrection is an Apple Newton, a real 1993 device notorious for its poor handwriting recognition. Technologically advanced watches have appeared in numerous works of fiction, decades before The Simpsons.
Influence and legacy
Idioms
A number of neologisms that originated on The Simpsons have entered popular vernacular. Mark Liberman, director of the Linguistic Data Consortium, remarked, "The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture's greatest source of idioms, catchphrases and sundry other textual allusions." The most famous catchphrase is Homer's annoyed grunt: "D'oh!" So ubiquitous is the expression that it is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, but without the apostrophe. Dan Castellaneta says he borrowed the phrase from James Finlayson, an actor in many Laurel and Hardy comedies, who pronounced it in a more elongated and whining tone. The staff of The Simpsons told Castellaneta to shorten the noise, and it went on to become the well-known exclamation in the television series.
Groundskeeper Willie's description of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" was used by National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg in 2003, after France's opposition to the proposed invasion of Iraq. The phrase quickly spread to other journalists. "Cromulent" and "embiggen", words used in "Lisa the Iconoclast", have since appeared in the Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon, and scientific journals respectively. "Kwyjibo", a fake Scrabble word invented by Bart in "Bart the Genius", was used as one of the aliases of the creator of the Melissa worm. "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords", was used by Kent Brockman in "Deep Space Homer" and has become a snowclone, with variants of the utterance used to express obsequious submission. It has been used in media, such as New Scientist magazine. The dismissive term "Meh", believed to have been popularized by the show, entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2008. Other words credited as stemming from the show include "yoink" and "craptacular".
The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations includes several quotations from the show. As well as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", Homer's lines, "Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is never try", from "Burns' Heir" (season five, 1994) as well as "Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the Internet and all", from "Eight Misbehavin'" (season 11, 1999), entered the dictionary in August 2007.
Many quotes/scenes have become popular Internet memes, including Jasper Beardley's quote "That's a paddlin'" from "The PTA Disbands" (season 6, 1995) and "Steamed Hams" from "22 Short Films About Springfield" (season 7, 1996).
Television
The Simpsons was the first successful animated program in American prime time since Wait Till Your Father Gets Home in the 1970s. During most of the 1980s, US pundits considered animated shows as appropriate only for children, and animating a show was too expensive to achieve a quality suitable for prime-time television. The Simpsons changed this perception, initially leading to a short period where networks attempted to recreate prime-time cartoon success with shows like Capitol Critters, Fish Police, and Family Dog, which were expensive and unsuccessful. The Simpsons' use of Korean animation studios for tweening, coloring, and filming made the episodes cheaper. The success of The Simpsons and the lower production cost prompted US television networks to take chances on other adult animated series. This development led US producers to a 1990s boom in new, animated prime-time shows for adults, such as Beavis and Butt-Head, South Park, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Futurama (which was created by Matt Groening), and The Critic (which was also produced by Gracie Films). For Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, "The Simpsons created an audience for prime-time animation that had not been there for many, many years ... As far as I'm concerned, they basically re-invented the wheel. They created what is in many ways—you could classify it as—a wholly new medium."
The Simpsons has had crossovers with four other shows. In the episode "A Star Is Burns", Marge invites Jay Sherman, the main character of The Critic, to be a judge for a film festival in Springfield. Matt Groening had his name removed from the episode since he had no involvement with The Critic. South Park later paid homage to The Simpsons with the episode "Simpsons Already Did It". In "Simpsorama", the Planet Express crew from Futurama come to Springfield in the present to prevent the Simpsons from destroying the future. In the Family Guy episode "The Simpsons Guy", the Griffins visit Springfield and meet the Simpsons.
The Simpsons has also influenced live-action shows like Malcolm in the Middle, which featured the use of sight gags and did not use a laugh track unlike most sitcoms. Malcolm in the Middle debuted January 9, 2000, in the time slot after The Simpsons. Ricky Gervais called The Simpsons an influence on The Office, and fellow British sitcom Spaced was, according to its director Edgar Wright, "an attempt to do a live-action The Simpsons". In Georgia, the animated television sitcom The Samsonadzes, launched in November 2009, has been noted for its very strong resemblance with The Simpsons, which its creator Shalva Ramishvili has acknowledged.
LGBT representation
The Simpsons has historically been open to portrayals of LGBT characters and settings, and it has routinely challenged heteronormativity. It was one of several animated television shows in the United States that began introducing characters that were LGBT, both openly and implied, in the 1990s. While early episodes involving LGBT characters primarily included them through the use of stereotypes, The Simpsons developed several prominent LGBT characters over its run. Producers of the show, such as Matt Groening and Al Jean, have expressed their opinion that LGBT representation in media is important, and that they seek to actively include it. Some characters, such as Julio, were created with their sexual orientation in mind, with it being central to their character. The show expanded its roster of openly LGBT characters through episodes in which prominent characters Patty Bouvier and Waylon Smithers came out in seasons 16 and 27, respectively.
Release
Broadcast
Syndication
The cable television network FXX, a sibling of 20th Television and formerly the Fox network, has exclusive cable and digital syndication rights for The Simpsons. Original contracts had previously stated that syndication rights for The Simpsons would not be sold to cable until the series conclusion, at a time when cable syndication deals were highly rare. The series has been syndicated to local broadcast stations in nearly all markets throughout the United States since September 1994.
FXX premiered The Simpsons on their network on August 21, 2014, by starting a twelve-day marathon which featured the first 552 episodes (every single episode that had already been released at the time) aired chronologically, including The Simpsons Movie, which FX Networks had already owned the rights to air. It was the longest continuous marathon in the history of television (until VH1 Classic aired a 433-hour, nineteen-day, marathon of Saturday Night Live in 2015; celebrating that program's 40th anniversary). The first day of the marathon was the highest rated broadcast day in the history of the network so far, the ratings more than tripled those of regular prime time programming for FXX. Ratings during the first six nights of the marathon grew night after night, with the network ranking within the top 5 networks in basic cable each night. In Australia, a marathon of every episode of the show (at the time) aired from December 16, 2019, to January 5, 2020, on Fox8 (a cable network operated on pay TV provider Foxtel and a corporate sibling to the American Fox network).
After Disney acquired both 20th Television and FX Networks, it was announced that The Simpsons would air on the company's Freeform channel starting October 2, 2019.
Streaming and digital sell-through
On October 21, 2014, a digital service courtesy of the FXNOW app, called Simpsons World, launched with every episode of the series accessible to authenticated FX subscribers, and is available on game consoles such as Xbox One, streaming devices such as Roku and Apple TV, and online via web browser. There was early criticism of both wrong aspect ratios for earlier episodes and the length of commercial breaks on the streaming service, but that problem was soon amended with fewer commercial breaks during individual episodes. Later it was announced that Simpsons World would now let users watch all of the SD episodes in their original format. Simpsons World was discontinued after the launch of Disney+ on November 12, 2019, where the series streams exclusively. Initially, the series was only available cropped to 16:9 without the option to view the original 4:3 versions, reigniting criticisms of cropping old episodes. In response, Disney announced that "in early 2020, Disney+ will make the first 19 seasons (and some episodes from season 20) of The Simpsons available in their original 4:3 aspect ratio, giving subscribers a choice of how they prefer to view the popular series." On May 28, 2020, Disney+ made the first 19 seasons, along with some episodes from season 20, of The Simpsons available in both 16:9 and the original 4:3 aspect ratio. Season 31 came to Disney+ on October 2, 2020, with Hulu streaming the latest episodes of season 32 the next day. Season 32 came to Disney+ on September 29, 2021.
The season 3 premiere "Stark Raving Dad", which features Michael Jackson as the voice of Leon Kompowsky, was pulled out of rotation in 2019 by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and Al Jean after HBO aired the documentary Leaving Neverland, in which two men share details into how Jackson allegedly abused them as children. It is therefore unavailable on Disney+. However, the episode is still available on The Complete Third Season DVD box set released on August 26, 2003.
In July 2017, all episodes from seasons 4 to 19 were made available for purchase on the iTunes Store in Canada.
On August 10, 2024, it was announced that four episodes of season 36 would air exclusively on Disney+.
Reception and achievements
Early success
The Simpsons was the Fox network's first television series to rank among a season's top 30 highest-rated shows. In 1990, Bart quickly became one of the most popular characters on television in what was termed "Bartmania". He became the most prevalent Simpsons character on memorabilia, such as T-shirts. In the early 1990s, millions of T-shirts featuring Bart were sold; as many as one million were sold on some days. Believing Bart to be a bad role model, several American public schools banned T-shirts featuring Bart next to captions such as "I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?" and "Underachiever ('And proud of it, man!')". The Simpsons merchandise sold well and generated $2 billion in revenue during the first 14 months of sales. Because of his popularity, Bart was often the most promoted member of the Simpson family in advertisements for the show, even for episodes in which he was not involved in the main plot.
Due to the show's success, over the summer of 1990 the Fox Network decided to switch The Simpsons' time slot from 8:00 p.m. ET on Sunday night to the same time on Thursday, where it competed with The Cosby Show on NBC, the number one show at the time. Through the summer, several news outlets published stories about the supposed "Bill vs. Bart" rivalry. "Bart Gets an 'F'" (season two, 1990) was the first episode to air against The Cosby Show, and it received a lower Nielsen rating, tying for eighth behind The Cosby Show, which had an 18.5 rating. The rating is based on the number of household televisions that were tuned into the show, but Nielsen Media Research estimated that 33.6 million viewers watched the episode, making it the number one show in terms of actual viewers that week. At the time, it was the most watched episode in the history of the Fox Network, and it is still the highest rated episode in the history of The Simpsons. The show moved back to its Sunday slot in 1994 and has remained there ever since.
The Simpsons has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, and it has been noted for being described as "the most irreverent and unapologetic show on the air." In a 1990 review of the show, Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly described it as "the American family at its most complicated, drawn as simple cartoons. It's this neat paradox that makes millions of people turn away from the three big networks on Sunday nights to concentrate on The Simpsons." Tucker also described the show as a "pop-cultural phenomenon, a prime-time cartoon show that appeals to the entire family."
Run length achievements
On February 9, 1997, The Simpsons surpassed The Flintstones with the episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" as the longest-running prime-time animated series in the United States. In 2004, The Simpsons replaced The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952 to 1966) as the longest-running sitcom (animated or live action) in the United States in terms of the number of years airing. In 2009, The Simpsons surpassed The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet's record of 435 episodes and is now recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's longest running sitcom (in terms of episode count). In October 2004, Scooby-Doo briefly overtook The Simpsons as the American animated show with the highest number of episodes (albeit under several different iterations). However, network executives in April 2005 again canceled Scooby-Doo, which finished with 371 episodes, and The Simpsons reclaimed the title with 378 episodes at the end of their seventeenth season. In May 2007, The Simpsons reached their 400th episode at the end of the eighteenth season. While The Simpsons has the record for the number of episodes by an American animated show, other animated series have surpassed The Simpsons. For example, the Japanese anime series Sazae-san has over 2,000 episodes (7,000+ segments) to its credit.
In 2009, Fox began a year-long celebration of the show titled "Best. 20 Years. Ever." to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the premiere of The Simpsons. One of the first parts of the celebration is the "Unleash Your Yellow" contest in which entrants must design a poster for the show. The celebration ended on January 10, 2010 (almost 20 years after "Bart the Genius" aired on January 14, 1990), with The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice!, a documentary special by documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock that examines the "cultural phenomenon of The Simpsons".
As of the twenty-first season (2009–2010), The Simpsons became the longest-running American scripted primetime television series, having surpassed the 1955–1975 run of Gunsmoke. On April 29, 2018, The Simpsons also surpassed Gunsmoke's 635-episode count with the episode "Forgive and Regret".
The Simpsons is both the longest-running and the highest ranking animated series to feature on TV Time's top 50 most followed TV shows ever.
On February 6, 2019, it was announced that The Simpsons has been renewed for seasons 31 and 32.
On March 3, 2021, it was announced that The Simpsons was renewed for seasons 33 and 34.
Awards and honors
The Simpsons has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 34 Primetime Emmy Awards, 34 Annie Awards and a Peabody Award. In a 1999 issue celebrating the 20th century's greatest achievements in arts and entertainment, Time named The Simpsons the century's best television series, writing: "Dazzlingly intelligent and unapologetically vulgar, the Simpsons have surpassed the humor, topicality and, yes, humanity of past TV greats." In that same issue, Time included Bart Simpson in the Time 100, the publication's list of the century's 100 most influential people. Bart was the only fictional character on the list. On January 14, 2000, the Simpsons were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Also in 2000, Entertainment Weekly magazine TV critic Ken Tucker named The Simpsons the greatest television show of the 1990s. Furthermore, viewers of the UK television channel Channel 4 have voted The Simpsons at the top of two polls: 2001's 100 Greatest Kids' TV shows (despite the show not being aimed at children), and 2005's The 100 Greatest Cartoons, with Homer Simpson voted into first place in 2001's 100 Greatest TV Characters. Homer also placed ninth on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Greatest TV icons". In 2002, The Simpsons ranked No. 8 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and was ranked the No. 6 cult show in 2004. In 2007, it moved to No. 8 on TV Guide's cult shows list and was included in Time's list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time". In 2008 the show was placed in first on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 100 Shows of the Past 25 Years". Empire named it the greatest TV show of all time. In 2010, Entertainment Weekly named Homer "the greatest character of the last 20 years", while in 2013 the Writers Guild of America listed The Simpsons as the 11th "best written" series in television history. In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Simpsons as the greatest TV cartoon of all time and the tenth greatest show of all time. A 2015 The Hollywood Reporter survey of 2,800 actors, producers, directors, and other industry people named it as their No. 10 favorite show. In 2015, British newspaper The Telegraph named The Simpsons as one of the 10 best TV sitcoms of all time. Television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ranked The Simpsons as the greatest American TV series of all time in their 2016 book TV (The Book). In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked The Simpsons as the second-greatest TV show of all time. In 2023, Variety ranked The Simpsons as the fourth-greatest TV show of all time.
Criticism
Controversy
Bart's rebellious, bad boy nature, which underlies his misbehavior and rarely leads to any punishment, led some people to characterize him as a poor role model for children. In schools, educators claimed that Bart was a "threat to learning" because of his "underachiever and proud of it" attitude and negative attitude regarding his education. Others described him as "egotistical, aggressive and mean-spirited". In a 1991 interview, Bill Cosby described Bart as a bad role model for children, calling him "angry, confused, frustrated". In response, Matt Groening said, "That sums up Bart, all right. Most people are in a struggle to be normal [and] he thinks normal is very boring, and does things that others just wished they dare do." On January 27, 1992, then-President George H. W. Bush said, "We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the American family, to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons." The writers rushed out a tongue-in-cheek reply in the form of a short segment that aired three days later before a rerun of "Stark Raving Dad" in which Bart replied, "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."
The show also received criticism from the nuclear power industry in its early years, with its portrayal of the evil boss Mr. Burns and "bungling idiot" employees (including Homer Simpson himself) with their lack of safety and security. In a letter to the nuclear power-backed U.S. Council for Energy Awareness, producer Sam Simon apologized, stating, "I apologize that the Simpsons have offended a lot of people in the energy industry. I agree with you that in real life, Homer Simpson would not be employed at a nuclear power plant. On the other hand, he probably wouldn't be employed anywhere."
Various episodes of the show have generated controversy. The Simpsons visit Australia in "Bart vs. Australia" (season six, 1995) and Brazil in "Blame It on Lisa" (season 13, 2002) and both episodes generated controversy and negative reaction in the visited countries. In the latter case, Rio de Janeiro's tourist board—which claimed that the city was portrayed as having rampant street crime, kidnappings, slums, and monkey and rat infestations—went so far as to threaten Fox with legal action. Groening was a fierce and vocal critic of the episode "A Star Is Burns" (season six, 1995), which featured a crossover with The Critic. He felt that it was just an advertisement for The Critic, and that people would incorrectly associate the show with him. When he was unsuccessful in getting the episode pulled, he had his name removed from the credits and went public with his concerns, openly criticizing James L. Brooks and saying the episode "violates the Simpsons' universe." In response, Brooks said, "I am furious with Matt, ... he's allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far. ... his behavior right now is rotten."
"The Principal and the Pauper" (season nine, 1997) is one of the most controversial episodes of The Simpsons. Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Seymour Skinner, a recurring character since the first season, was an impostor. The episode has been criticized by Groening and by Harry Shearer, who provides the voice of Skinner. In a 2001 interview, Shearer recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."
Bans
The show has reportedly been taken off the air in several countries. China banned it from prime-time television in August 2006, "in an effort to protect China's struggling animation studios." In 2008, Venezuela barred the show from airing on morning television as it was deemed "unsuitable for children". The same year, several Russian Pentecostal churches demanded that The Simpsons, South Park and some other Western cartoons be removed from broadcast schedules "for propaganda of various vices" and the broadcaster's license to be revoked. However, a court decision later dismissed this request.
Perceived decline in quality
Critics' reviews of early Simpsons episodes praised the show for its sassy humor, wit, realism, and intelligence. However, in the late 1990s, around the airing of season 9, the tone and emphasis of the show began to change. Some critics started calling the show "tired". By 2000, some long-term fans had become disillusioned with the show, and pointed to its shift from character-driven plots to what they perceived as an overemphasis on zany antics. Jim Schembri of The Sydney Morning Herald attributed the decline in quality to an abandonment of character-driven storylines in favor of celebrity cameo appearances and references to popular culture. Schembri wrote in 2011: "The central tragedy of The Simpsons is that it has gone from commanding attention to merely being attention-seeking. It began by proving that cartoon characters don't have to be caricatures; they can be invested with real emotions. Now the show has in essence fermented into a limp parody of itself. Memorable story arcs have been sacrificed for the sake of celebrity walk-ons and punchline-hungry dialogue."
In 2010, the BBC noted "the common consensus is that The Simpsons' golden era ended after season nine", and Todd Leopold of CNN, in an article looking at its perceived decline, stated "for many fans ... the glory days are long past." Similarly, Tyler Wilson of Coeur d'Alene Press has referred to seasons one to nine as the show's "golden age", and Ian Nathan of Empire described the show's classic era as being "say, the first ten seasons". Jon Heacock of LucidWorks stated that "for the first ten years [seasons], the show was consistently at the top of its game", with "so many moments, quotations, and references – both epic and obscure – that helped turn the Simpson family into the cultural icons that they remain to this day".
Mike Scully, who was showrunner during seasons nine through twelve, has been the subject of criticism. Chris Suellentrop of Slate wrote that "under Scully's tenure, The Simpsons became, well, a cartoon ... Episodes that once would have ended with Homer and Marge bicycling into the sunset now end with Homer blowing a tranquilizer dart into Marge's neck. The show's still funny, but it hasn't been touching in years." When asked in 2007 how the series' longevity is sustained, Scully joked: "Lower your quality standards. Once you've done that you can go on forever."
Al Jean, who was showrunner during seasons thirteen through thirty-three, has also been the subject of criticism, with some arguing that the show has continued to decline in quality under his tenure. Former writers have complained that under Jean, the show is "on auto-pilot", "too sentimental", and the episodes are "just being cranked out". Some critics believe that the show has "entered a steady decline under Jean and is no longer really funny". John Ortved, author of The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, characterized the Jean era as "toothless", and criticized what he perceived as the show's increase in social and political commentary. Jean responded: "Well, it's possible that we've declined. But honestly, I've been here the whole time and I do remember in season two people saying, 'It's gone downhill.' If we'd listened to that then we would have stopped after episode 13. I'm glad we didn't."
In 2004, cast member Harry Shearer criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now." Cast member Dan Castellaneta responded: "I don't agree, ... I think Harry's issue is that the show isn't as grounded as it was in the first three or four seasons, that it's gotten crazy or a little more madcap. I think it organically changes to stay fresh." Also in 2004 author Douglas Coupland described claims of declining quality in the series as "hogwash", saying "The Simpsons hasn't fumbled the ball in fourteen years, it's hardly likely to fumble it now." In an April 2006 interview, Groening said: "I honestly don't see any end in sight. I think it's possible that the show will get too financially cumbersome ... but right now, the show is creatively, I think, as good or better than it's ever been. The animation is incredibly detailed and imaginative, the stories do things that we haven't done before, so creatively there's no reason to quit."
In 2016, popular culture writer Anna Leszkiewicz suggested that even though The Simpsons still holds cultural relevance, "contemporary appeal" is only for the "first ten or so seasons", with recent episodes only garnering mainstream attention when a favorite character from the golden era is killed off, or when new information and shock twists are given for old characters. The series' ratings have also declined; while the first season enjoyed an average of 13.4 million viewing households per episode in the U.S., the twenty-first season had an average of 7.2 million viewers.
Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz argued in their 2016 book titled TV (The Book) that the peak of The Simpsons are "roughly seasons 3–12", and that despite the decline, episodes from the later seasons such as "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" and "Holidays of Future Passed" could be considered on par with the earlier classic episodes, further stating that "even if you want to call the show today a thin shadow of its former self, think about how mind-boggingly great its former self had to be for so-diminished a version to be watchable at all."
In 2020, Uproxx writer Josh Kurp stated that while he agrees with the sentiment that The Simpsons is not as good as it used to be, it is because "it was working at a level of comedy and characterization that no show ever has." He felt there were still many reasons to watch the series, as it was "still capable of quality television, and even the occasional new classic" and the fact that the show was willing to experiment, giving examples such as bringing on guest animators like Don Hertzfeldt and Sylvain Chomet to produce couch gags, and guest writers like Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, Pete Holmes and Megan Amram to write episodes. In the season 32 episode "I, Carumbus", the show itself makes a nod to these concerns in its credits gag where the god Jupiter notes that "It definitely feels like they're wrapping it up ... any day now."
In a 2021 interview with NME, Jean was quoted as saying, "To people who say The Simpsons isn't as good as it used to be, I would say I think the world isn't as good as it used to be. But we're declining at a slower rate."
Race controversy
The stereotypical nature of the character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon has been the subject of controversy. Indian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu stated in his 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu that as a child he was a fan of The Simpsons and liked Apu, but he now finds the character's stereotypical nature troublesome. Defenders of the character responded that the show is built on comical stereotypes, with creator Matt Groening saying, "that's the nature of cartooning." He added that he was "proud of what we do on the show", and "it's a time in our culture where people love to pretend they're offended". In response to the controversy, Apu's voice actor, Hank Azaria, said he was willing to step aside from his role as Apu: "The most important thing is to listen to South Asian people, Indian people in this country when they talk about what they feel and how they think about this character." In February 2020, he confirmed that he would no longer voice Apu. Groening stated at the same time that the character would remain in the show.
The criticisms were referenced in the season 29 episode "No Good Read Goes Unpunished", when Lisa breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience by saying, "Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?" to which Marge replies, "Some things will be addressed at a later date." Lisa adds, "If at all." This reference was clarified by the fact that there was a framed photo of Apu with the caption on the photo saying "Don't have a cow, Apu", a play on Bart's catchphrase "Don't have a cow, man," as well as the fact that many Hindus do not eat cows as they are considered sacred. In October 2018, it was reported that Apu would be written out of the show, which Groening denied.
On June 26, 2020, in light of the various Black Lives Matter protests, Fox announced that recurring characters of color (Carl Carlson and Dr. Hibbert, among others) would no longer be voiced by white actors. Beginning with season 32, Carl, a black character originally voiced by Azaria, is now voiced by black actor Alex Désert. In addition, Bumblebee Man, a Spanish-speaking Latino character also originally voiced by Azaria, is now voiced by Mexican-American actor Eric Lopez, and Dr. Hibbert, a black character originally voiced by Harry Shearer, is now voiced by black actor Kevin Michael Richardson.
Other media
Comic books
Numerous Simpson-related comic books have been released over the years. The first comic strips based on The Simpsons appeared in 1991 in the magazine Simpsons Illustrated, which was a companion magazine to the show. The comic strips were popular and a one-shot comic book titled Simpsons Comics and Stories, containing four different stories, was released in 1993 for the fans. The book was a success and due to this, Groening and his companions Bill Morrison, Mike Rote, and Steve and Cindy Vance created the publishing company Bongo Comics. A total of nine comic book series were published by Bongo Comics between 1993 and the company's dissolution in 2018. Issues of Simpsons Comics, Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror and Bart Simpson have been collected and reprinted in trade paperbacks in the United States by HarperCollins.
Film
20th Century Fox and Gracie Films produced The Simpsons Movie, an animated film that was released on July 27, 2007. The film was directed by long-time Simpsons producer David Silverman and written by a team of Simpsons writers comprising Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Al Jean, George Meyer, Mike Reiss, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, David Mirkin, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, and Ian Maxtone-Graham. Production of the film occurred alongside continued writing of the series despite long-time claims by those involved in the show that a film would enter production only after the series had concluded. There had been talk of a possible feature-length Simpsons film ever since the early seasons of the series. James L. Brooks originally thought that the story of the episode "Kamp Krusty" was suitable for a film, but he encountered difficulties in trying to expand the script to feature-length. For a long time, difficulties such as lack of a suitable story and an already fully engaged crew of writers delayed the project.
On August 10, 2018, 20th Century Fox announced that a sequel is in development.
Music
Collections of original music featured in the series have been released on the albums Songs in the Key of Springfield, Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons and The Simpsons: Testify. Several songs have been recorded with the purpose of a single or album release and have not been featured on the show. The album The Simpsons Sing the Blues was released in September 1990 and was a success, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and becoming certified 2× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The first single from the album was the pop rap song "Do the Bartman", performed by Nancy Cartwright and released on November 20, 1990. The song was written by Michael Jackson, although he did not receive any credit. The Yellow Album was released in 1998, but received poor reception and did not chart in any country.
The Simpsons Ride
In 2007, it was officially announced that The Simpsons Ride, a simulator ride, would be implemented into the Universal Studios Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood. It officially opened May 15, 2008, in Florida and May 19, 2008, in Hollywood. In the ride, patrons are introduced to a cartoon theme park called Krustyland built by Krusty the Clown. However, Sideshow Bob is loose from prison to get revenge on Krusty and the Simpson family. It features more than 24 regular characters from The Simpsons and features the voices of the regular cast members, as well as Pamela Hayden, Russi Taylor and Kelsey Grammer. Harry Shearer did not participate in the ride, so none of his characters have vocal parts. The ride also features clips from the show in the waiting line.
Video games
Numerous video games based on the show have been produced. Some of the early games include Konami's arcade game The Simpsons (1991) and Acclaim Entertainment's The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (1991). More modern games include The Simpsons: Road Rage (2001), The Simpsons: Hit & Run (2003) and The Simpsons Game (2007). Electronic Arts, which produced The Simpsons Game, has owned the exclusive rights to create video games based on the show since 2005. In 2010, they released a game called The Simpsons Arcade for iOS. Another EA-produced mobile game, Tapped Out, was released in 2012 for iOS users, then in 2013 for Android and Kindle users. Two Simpsons pinball machines have been produced: one that was available briefly after the first season, and another in 2007, both out of production.
Merchandise
The popularity of The Simpsons has made it a billion-dollar merchandising industry. The title family and supporting characters appear on everything from T-shirts to posters. The Simpsons has been used as a theme for special editions of well-known board games, including Clue, Scrabble, Monopoly, Operation, and The Game of Life, as well as the trivia games What Would Homer Do? and Simpsons Jeopardy!. Several card games such as trump cards and The Simpsons Trading Card Game have also been released. Many official or unofficial Simpsons books such as episode guides have been published. Many episodes of the show have been released on DVD and VHS over the years. When the first season DVD was released in 2001, it quickly became the best-selling television DVD in history, although it was later overtaken by the first season of Chappelle's Show. In particular, seasons one through seventeen were released on DVD for 13 years between September 2001 to December 2014 in the U.S./Canada (Region 1), Europe (Region 2), and Australia/New Zealand/Latin America (Region 4). However, on April 8, 2015, Al Jean announced that the Season 17 DVD would be the last one ever produced, leaving the collection from Seasons 1 to 17, Season 20 (released out of order in 2010), with Seasons 18, 19, and 21 onwards unreleased. Jean also stated that the deleted scenes and commentaries would try to be released to the Simpsons World app, and that they were pushing for Simpsons World to be expanded outside of the U.S. Two years later, however, on July 22, 2017, it was announced that Season 18 would be released on December 5, 2017, on DVD. Another two years later, on July 20, 2019, it was announced that Season 19 would be released on December 3, 2019, on DVD.
In 2003, about 500 companies around the world were licensed to use Simpsons characters in their advertising. As a promotion for The Simpsons Movie, twelve 7-Eleven stores were transformed into Kwik-E-Marts and sold The Simpsons related products. These included "Buzz Cola", "Krusty-O" cereal, pink doughnuts with sprinkles, and "Squishees".
In 2008, consumers around the world spent $750 million on merchandise related to The Simpsons, with half of the amount originating from the United States. By 2009, 20th Century Fox had greatly increased merchandising efforts. On April 9, 2009, the United States Postal Service unveiled a series of five 44-cent stamps featuring Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, to commemorate the show's twentieth anniversary. The Simpsons is the first television series still in production to receive this recognition. The stamps, designed by Matt Groening, were made available for purchase on May 7, 2009. Approximately one billion were printed, but only 318 million were sold, costing the Postal Service $1.2 million.
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
Official website
The Simpsons Archive
The Simpsons at IMDb
The Simpsons at epguides.com
The Simpsons on Metacritic
The Simpsons on Rotten Tomatoes
The Simpsons at Curlie
The Simpsons at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
The Simpsons at Don Markstein's Toonopedia Archived from the original on June 4, 2017. |
List_of_animated_television_series_by_episode_count | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animated_television_series_by_episode_count | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animated_television_series_by_episode_count"
] | This is a list of animated television series by episode count. This article does not include anime series which originate from Japan (for this see the list of anime series by episode count). Single series with at least 100 episodes and television franchises with at least 40 episodes are listed.
Single series
Longest-running animated television franchises
See also
List of television programs by episode count
List of anime series by episode count
List of anime franchises by episode count
List of animated television series
== References == |
List_of_African-American_United_States_presidential_and_vice_presidential_candidates | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_United_States_presidential_and_vice_presidential_candidates | [
304
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_United_States_presidential_and_vice_presidential_candidates#:~:text=In%201848%2C%20Frederick%20Douglass%20became,major%20party%2C%20namely%20the%20Democrats."
] | The following is a list of African-American United States presidential and vice presidential nominees and candidates for nomination. Nominees are candidates nominated or otherwise selected by political parties for particular offices. Listed are the African-American and Jamaican/Indian-American who achieved ballot access for the national election in at least one state. They may have won the nomination of one of the US political parties (either one of the major parties, or one of the third parties), or made the ballot as an independent, and in either case must have votes in the election to qualify for this list. Exception is made for candidates whose parties lost ballot status for additional runs.
Not included in the first and second sections are African-Americans who ran unsuccessful campaigns in nominating conventions or primary elections for their party's nomination (or who have not yet completed that process), write-in candidates, potential candidates (suggested by media, objects of draft movements, etc.), or fictional candidates. The third section includes African-Americans who ran for their party's presidential nomination but who were not nominated, as well as those who are currently pursuing their party's presidential nomination (when applicable).
There has been one African American and one Jamaican/Indian American on major party tickets in U.S. history: Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2020.
Barack Obama was the first African American and first biracial president of the United States, being elected in the 2008 election and re-elected in the 2012 election.
Kamala Harris became the first Jamaican/Indian-American vice president of the United States of America, being elected in the 2020 election alongside President Joe Biden. She is also the first female vice president. She is the second biracial vice president, the first being Republican Charles Curtis.
U.S. presidential candidates: party nominees
† Denotes winning candidate.
Candidates receiving electoral votes
Candidates receiving popular votes
U.S. vice presidential candidates: party nominees
† Denotes winning candidate.
Candidates receiving electoral votes
Until the 2020 presidential election, no African-American candidates had received electoral votes for vice president.
Candidates receiving popular votes
U.S. president: other candidates for party nomination
Candidates who failed to receive their party's nomination (or who are currently campaigning for their party's nomination). Candidates who won the nomination belong in the above tables only.
U.S. vice president: other candidates for party nomination
See also
African-American candidates for President of the United States
List of female United States presidential and vice presidential candidates
Jesse Jackson 1984 presidential campaign
Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign
African-American presidents of the United States in popular culture
List of African-American United States Senate candidates
Notes
References
Sears, Thomas James (2001). Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-2964-6. |
John_Russell,_1st_Earl_Russell | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Russell,_1st_Earl_Russell | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Russell,_1st_Earl_Russell"
] | John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, (18 August 1792 – 28 May 1878), known by his courtesy title Lord John Russell before 1861, was a British Whig and Liberal statesman who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1852 and again from 1865 to 1866.
The third son of the 6th Duke of Bedford, Russell was educated at Westminster School and Edinburgh University before entering Parliament in 1813. In 1828 he took a leading role in the repeal of the Test Acts which discriminated against Catholics and Protestant dissenters. He was one of the principal architects of the Reform Act 1832, which was the first major reform of Parliament since the Restoration, and a significant early step on the road to democracy and away from rule by the aristocracy and landed gentry. He favoured expanding the right to vote to the middle classes and enfranchising Britain's growing industrial towns and cities, but he never advocated universal suffrage and he opposed the secret ballot. Russell was outspoken on many issues over the course of his career, advocating Catholic emancipation in the 1820s, calling for the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1845, denouncing Pope Pius IX's revival of Catholic bishoprics in 1850, and supporting Italian unification during the 1860s.
Russell's ministerial career spanned four decades. In addition to his two terms as prime minister, between 1831 and 1865 he served in the cabinets of Earl Grey, Viscount Melbourne, the Earl of Aberdeen, and Viscount Palmerston. Russell's relationship with Palmerston was often stormy and contributed to bringing down Russell's first government in 1852 and Palmerston's first government in 1858. However, their renewed alliance from 1859 was one of the foundations of the united Liberal Party, which would go on to dominate British politics in the following decades. While Russell was an energetic and effective minister during the 1830s and helped to commit the Whigs to a reform agenda, he proved less successful as prime minister. During his two periods as prime minister he often suffered from a disunited cabinet and weak support in the House of Commons, meaning he was unable to carry out much of his agenda. During his first premiership, his government failed to deal effectively with the Irish Famine, a disaster that saw the loss of a quarter of Ireland's population through death and emigration. During his second premiership, he split his party by pressing for further parliamentary reform and was forced from office only to watch Derby and Disraeli carry a more ambitious Reform Bill. It has been said that Russell's ministry of 1846–1852 was the ruin of the old Whig party and that his ministry of 1865–1866 was very nearly the ruin of the Liberal Party that took its place.
Background and early life
Russell was born on 18 August 1792 into the highest echelons of the British aristocracy, being the third son of John Russell, later 6th Duke of Bedford, and Georgiana Byng, daughter of George Byng, 4th Viscount Torrington. The Russell family had been one of the principal Whig dynasties in England since the 17th century, and were among the richest handful of aristocratic landowning families in the country, but as a younger son of the 6th Duke of Bedford, he was not expected to inherit the family estates. As a younger son of a duke, he bore the courtesy title "Lord John Russell", but he was not a peer in his own right. He was, therefore, able to sit in the House of Commons until he was made an earl in 1861 and was elevated to the House of Lords.
Russell was born two months premature and was small and sickly as a child (even in adulthood he remained under 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) in height, and his small stature was frequently the butt of jokes by political opponents and caricaturists). In 1801 at the age of nine he was sent away to school. Shortly thereafter his mother died. After being withdrawn from Westminster School in 1804 due to ill health, Russell was educated by tutors, including Edmund Cartwright. In 1806 Russell's father was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the short-lived Ministry of All the Talents and it was during this time that the young Russell met Charles James Fox. Fox was Russell's formative political hero and would remain an inspiration throughout his life. Russell attended the University of Edinburgh from 1809 to 1812, lodging with Professor John Playfair, who oversaw his studies. He did not take a degree. Although often in poor health, he travelled widely in Britain and in Continental Europe, and held commission as Captain in the Bedfordshire Militia in 1810. During his continental travels, Russell visited Spain where his brother was serving as aide-de-camp to Lord Wellington in the Peninsular War. The following year, Russell had a 90-minute meeting with Napoleon in December 1814, during the former emperor's exile at Elba.
Early political career
Backbench MP: 1813–1830
Russell entered the House of Commons as a Whig in 1813 at the age of 20. The future reformer gained his seat by virtue of his father, the Duke of Bedford, instructing the 30 or so electors of Tavistock to return him as an MP even though at the time Russell was abroad and under age.
Russell entered Parliament more out of a sense of duty and family tradition than out of serious political ambition. With the exception the 1806-1807 coalition government in which Russell's father had served, the Whigs had been out of power since 1783, and Russell could have had had no certain expectation of a ministerial career. In June 1815, Russell denounced the Bourbon Restoration and Britain's declaration of war against the recently-returned Napoleon by arguing in the House of Commons that foreign powers had no right to dictate France's form of government.
In 1817, tired of the prospect of perpetual opposition, Russell resigned from Parliament. After spending a year out of politics and travelling on the continent, he changed his mind and re-entered Parliament for Tavistock at the 1818 general election. In 1819, Russell embraced the cause of parliamentary reform and he led the more reformist wing of the Whigs throughout the 1820s. In 1828, while still an opposition backbencher, Russell introduced a Sacramental Test bill with the aim of abolishing the prohibitions on Catholics and Protestant dissenters being elected to local government and from holding civil and military offices. The bill gained the backing of the Tory Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel and was passed into law.
Minister under Grey and Melbourne: 1830–1841
When the Whigs came to power in 1830, Russell entered Earl Grey's government as Paymaster of the Forces. Despite being a relatively junior minister, as a vocal advocate for Parliamentary reform for over a decade, Russell became a principal leader in the fight for the Reform Act 1832. He was one of the committee of four tasked by Grey with drafting the reform bill, alongside cabinet ministers Lord Durham, Lord Duncannon and Sir James Graham. Despite not yet being in the Cabinet, Russell was chosen to introduce the bill in March 1831 and over the following year he successfully steered the Reform Act's difficult progress through the Commons.
Russell earned the nickname "Finality Jack" from his pronouncing the Act a final measure but in later years he would go on to push for further reform of Parliament. In May 1834, Russell made a speech on the Irish Tithes bill, in which he argued that the revenue generated by tithes was more than was justified by the size of the established Protestant church in Ireland. Russell argued that a proportion the tithe revenue should instead be appropriated for the education of the Irish poor, regardless of denomination.
The speech was seen by its opponents as an attack on the established church in Ireland and it cemented a split within Grey's government over the issue of Irish tithes. The following month four members of the Cabinet resigned over the issue, weakening the government's hold on Parliament. Sensing that his position was now hopeless, Grey offered his resignation to the King in July, and was replaced by Viscount Melbourne at the head of the government.
In November 1834, when the leader of the Commons, Lord Althorp, succeeded to the peerage as Earl Spencer, Russell became the leader of the Whigs in the Commons. Russell's appointment prompted King William IV to terminate Melbourne's government, in part because the King objected to Russell's views on the Irish Church. This remains the last time in British history that a monarch has dismissed a government. The subsequent minority Conservative government lasted less than five months before resigning in April 1835. Russell then returned to office as Home Secretary in Melbourne's second government, before serving as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies from 1839 to 1841. Through this period, he continued to lead the more reformist wing of the Whig party.
As Home Secretary, Russell recommended and secured royal pardons for the Tolpuddle Martyrs and partial commutation of their sentences. In 1836, he introduced the Marriages Act, which introduced civil marriages in England and Wales and allowed Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to marry in their own churches.
In 1837, he steered a series of seven Acts through Parliament, which together reduced the number of offences carrying a sentence of death from thirty-seven to sixteen. This number was reduced further by the Substitution of Punishments of Death Act 1841. After these reforms the death penalty was rarely used in the United Kingdom for crimes other than murder. As Home Secretary Russell also introduced the public registration for births, marriages and deaths and played a large role in democratising the government of cities outside of London.
Opposition: 1841–1846
In 1841 the Whigs lost the general election to the Conservatives and Russell and his colleagues returned to opposition. In November 1845, following the failure of that year's potato harvest across Britain and Ireland, Russell came out in favour of the repeal of the Corn Laws and called upon the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel to take urgent action to alleviate the emerging food crisis.
Peel had by this time already become convinced of the need for repeal, but he was opposed in this by the majority of his own cabinet and party. On 11 December 1845, frustrated by his party's unwillingness to support him on repeal, Peel resigned as prime minister and Queen Victoria invited Russell to form a new government. With the Whigs a minority in the Commons however, Russell struggled to assemble the necessary support. When Lord Grey declared that he would not serve in cabinet if Lord Palmerston was made Foreign Secretary, it became clear to Russell that he could not form a viable government.
Russell declined the Queen's invitation on 21 December and Peel agreed to stay on as prime minister. In June 1846, Peel repealed the Corn Laws with Whig support, bitterly dividing the Conservative Party in the process. Later that same night Peel's Irish Coercion Bill was defeated after vengeful anti-repeal Tories voted with the opposition; and Peel, taking this as a vote of no confidence, resigned as prime minister. Russell accepted the Queen's offer to form a government; this time Grey did not object to Palmerston's appointment.
Prime minister: 1846–1852
Appointment
Russell took office as prime minister with the Whigs only a minority in the House of Commons. It was the bitter split in the Conservative Party over the Corn Laws that allowed Russell's government to remain in power in spite of this, with Sir Robert Peel and his supporters offering tentative support to the new ministry in order to keep the protectionist Conservatives under Lord Stanley in opposition. At the general election of August 1847 the Whigs made gains at the expense of the Conservatives, but remained a minority, with Russell's government still dependent on the votes of Peelite and Irish Repealer MPs to win divisions in the Commons.
Domestic agenda
Russell's political agenda was frequently frustrated by his lack of a reliable Commons majority. However, his government was able to secure a number of notable social reforms. Russell introduced teachers' pensions and used Orders in Council to make grants for teacher training. The Public Baths and Wash-houses Acts of 1847 and 1848 enabled local authorities to build municipal baths and washing facilities for the growing urban working classes. Russell lent his support to the passage of the Factories Act 1847, which restricted the working hours of women and young persons (aged 13–18) in textile mills to 10 hours per day.
1848 saw the introduction of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers and the Public Health Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vict. c. 63), by which the state assumed responsibility for sewerage, clean water supply, refuse collection and other aspects of public health across much of England and Wales.
Following the election of Lionel de Rothschild in the 1847 general election, Russell introduced a Jewish Relief bill, which would have allowed Rothschild and other Jews to sit in the House of Commons without their having to take the explicitly Christian oath of allegiance. In 1848, the bill was passed by the House of Commons, receiving support from the Whigs and a minority of Conservatives (including future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli). However, it was twice rejected by the Tory dominated House of Lords, as was a new bill in 1851. Rothschild was re-elected in the 1852 general election following the fall of the Russell government but was unable to take his seat until the Jews Relief Act was finally passed in 1858.
Ireland
Russell's government led the calamitous response to the Irish Famine. During the course of the famine, an estimated one million people died from a combination of malnutrition, disease and starvation and well over one million more emigrated from Ireland. After taking office in 1846, Russell's ministry introduced a programme of public works that by the end of that year employed some half-a-million but proved impossible to administer. In January 1847, the government abandoned this policy, realising that it had failed, and turned to a mixture of "indoor" and "outdoor" direct relief; the former administered in workhouses through the Irish Poor Laws, the latter through soup kitchens. The costs of the Poor Law fell primarily on the local landlords, some of whom in turn attempted to reduce their liability by evicting their tenants. In June 1847, the Poor Law Extension Act was passed, which embodied the principle, popular in Britain, that Irish property should support Irish poverty. Irish landlords were believed in Britain to have created the conditions that led to the famine, a view which Russell shared.
Relations with the Roman Catholic Church
In the first half of his premiership Russell aimed to improve the British government's relations with the papacy and the Catholic clergy in Ireland, which he saw as one of the keys to making Ireland a more willing part of the United Kingdom. Russell proposed to make an annual grant of £340,000 to the Catholic Church in Ireland, with the aim of ameliorating Irish Catholic opinion towards the Union. In 1847, Russell's father-in-law the Earl of Minto was dispatched on a confidential mission to Rome to seek the Pope's support for the grants plan. In the end, the idea had to be abandoned due to Catholic objections to what they saw as an attempt to control their clergy.
However, Russell pressed ahead with plans to re-establish formal diplomatic relations between the Court of St James's and the Holy See, which had been severed when James II was deposed in 1688. Russell managed to pass an Act to authorise an exchange of ambassadors with Rome, but not before the bill was amended by Parliament to stipulate that the Pope's ambassador must be a layman. The Pope refused to accept such a restriction on his choice of representative and so the exchange of ambassadors did not take place. It would not be until 1914 that formal UK-Vatican diplomatic relations were finally established.
Relations with the papacy soured badly in late 1850 after Pope Pius IX issued the bull Universalis Ecclesiae. By this bull Pius unilaterally reintroduced Catholic bishops to England and Wales for the first time since the Reformation. Anti-Catholic feelings ran high with many Protestants incensed at what they saw as impertinent foreign interference in the prerogative of the established Church of England to appoint bishops. Russell, not withstanding his long record of advocating civil liberties for Catholics, shared the traditional Whig suspicion of the Catholic hierarchy, and was angered at what he saw as a papal imposition. On 4 November 1850, in a letter to the Bishop of Durham published in The Times the same day, Russell wrote that the Pope's actions suggested a "pretension to supremacy" and declared that "No foreign prince or potentate will be permitted to fasten his fetters upon a nation which has so long and so nobly vindicated its right to freedom of opinion, civil, political, and religious". Russell's "Durham letter" won him popular support in England but in Ireland it was viewed as an unwarranted insult to the Pope. It lost Russell the confidence of Irish Repealer MPs and the cabinet were angered that he had made such an incendiary statement without having consulting them.
The following year Russell passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 with Tory support, which made it a criminal offence carrying a fine of £100 for anyone outside of the Church of England to assume an episcopal title "of any city, town or place, or of any territory or district...in the United Kingdom." The Act was widely ignored without consequences and only served to further alienate Irish MPs, thereby weakening the government's position in the Commons.
Disagreements with Palmerston and fall of ministry
Russell frequently clashed with his headstrong Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, whose belligerence and support for continental revolution he found embarrassing. In 1847 Palmerston provoked a confrontation with the French government by undermining the plans of the Spanish court to marry the young Spanish Queen and her sister into the French royal family.
He subsequently clashed with Russell over plans to increase the size of the army and the navy to defend against the perceived threat of French invasion, which subsided after the overthrow of the French king in 1848.
In 1850, further tension arose between the two over Palmerston's gunboat diplomacy in the Don Pacifico affair, in which Palmerston sought compensation from the Greek government for the ransacking and the burning of the house of David Pacifico, a Gibraltarian holder of a British passport. Russell considered the matter "hardly worth the interposition of the British lion," and when Palmerston ignored some of his instructions, the Prime Minister wrote to Palmerston telling him he had informed the Queen that he "thought the interests of the country required that a change should take place at the Foreign Department." However, less than a month later Lord Stanley successfully led the House of Lords into passing a motion of censure of the Government over its handling of the affair and Russell realised that he needed to align with Palmerston in order to prevent a similar motion being passed by the House of Commons, which would have obliged the Government to resign. The Government prevailed, but Palmerston came out of the affair with his popularity at new heights since he was seen as the champion of defending British subjects anywhere in the world.
Russell forced Palmerston to resign as Foreign Secretary after Palmerston recognised Napoleon III's coup of 2 December 1851 without first consulting the Queen or Cabinet. Russell tried to strengthen his government by recruiting leading Peelites such as Sir James Graham and the Duke of Newcastle to his administration, but they declined. Out of office, Palmerston sought revenge by turning a vote on a militia bill into a vote of confidence in the Government. A majority vote in favour of an amendment proposed by Palmerston caused the downfall of Russell's ministry on 21 February 1852. This was Palmerston's famous "tit for tat with Johnny Russell."
Between premierships
In opposition: February–December 1852
Following Russell's resignation, on the 23 February 1852 the Earl of Derby accepted the Queen's invitation to form a government. The new Conservative ministry were a minority in the Commons due to the continuing rift with the Peelites. Derby called a general election for July but failed to secure a majority. After the election Derby's Conservatives held 292 out of the 662 seats in the Commons but were able to carry on in office due to divisions among the opposition. Negotiations over a Whig-Peelite coalition stalled over the question of who would lead it. Russell's authority and popularity within the Whigs had been dented by his falling out with Palmerston, who flatly refused to serve under him again. Moreover he had alienated many in the Peelites and the Irish Brigade, who held the balance of power in the Commons, leaving them unwilling to support another Russell-led government. Palmerston proposed Lord Lansdowne as a compromise candidate. This was acceptable to Russell but Lansdowne was reluctant to take on the burdens of leading a government. The defeat of Disraeli's Budget in December 1852 forced the issue. Derby's government resigned and the Queen sent for Lansdowne and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen. Lansdowne declined the Queen's invitation, pleading ill-health and so Aberdeen was tasked with forming a government.
The Aberdeen coalition: 1852–1855
Russell, as the leader of the Whigs, agreed to bring his party into a coalition with the Peelites, headed by Aberdeen. As the leader of the largest party in the coalition, Russell was reluctant to serve under Aberdeen in a subordinate position, but agreed to take on the role of Foreign Secretary on a temporary basis, to lend stability to the fledgling government. He resigned the role in February 1853 in favour of Clarendon, but continued to lead for the government in the Commons and attended cabinet without ministerial responsibilities. Russell was unhappy that half of Aberdeen's cabinet was made up of Peelites, despite the fact that the Whigs contributed hundreds of MPs to the Government's support in the Commons, and the Peelites only around 40. However, he came to admire some of his Peelite colleagues, particularly the Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone, who would go on to become an important political ally in later years.
With Aberdeen's agreement, Russell used his position as Leader of the House of Commons to push for a new Reform Act. Although Russell had promoted the Reform Act 1832 as a one-off measure to re-balance the constitution, after twenty years he had become convinced of the need for further electoral reform. In February 1854 Russell introduced his bill to the House. The property qualification was to be reduced from £10 to £6 in boroughs, and from £50 to £10 in the counties. Additionally 66 seats would be removed from undersized constituencies and redistributed. The second reading of the bill was set for March 1854, but the prospect of imminent war with Russia led to it being postponed until April. After the outbreak of war on 28 March Russell came under pressure from the cabinet to withdraw the bill entirely. Russell threatened to resign if the cabinet abandoned the reform bill, but he was convinced to stay on by Aberdeen, who promised that he would support the reform bill if Russell reintroduced it in a future session. However, with the fall of the Aberdeen government the following year, it would be 12 years before Russell had another chance to introduce a reform bill.
Together with Palmerston, Russell supported the government taking a hard line against Russian territorial ambitions in the Ottoman Empire, a policy that ultimately resulted in Britain's entry into the Crimean War in March 1854, an outcome that the more cautious Aberdeen had hoped to avoid. In the following months Russell grew frustrated by what he saw as a lack of effective war leadership by Aberdeen and the Secretary of State for War, the Duke of Newcastle. Dispatches from the front reported that the army was suffering from supply shortages and a lack of adequate accommodation and medical facilities. In November 1854 Russell urged Aberdeen to replace Newcastle with Palmerston, who he believed would get a firmer grip on the organisation of the war, but these suggestions came to nothing. In January 1855, after a series of military setbacks, a Commons motion was brought by the radical MP John Roebuck to appoint a select committee to investigate the management of the war. Russell, not wishing to vote against an inquiry he believed was badly needed, resigned from the cabinet in order to abstain. Aberdeen viewed the Roebuck motion as a vote of no confidence in his leadership and, accordingly, when it passed by 305-148, he resigned.
In the eyes of many, including the Queen and Aberdeen, Russell's temperamental behaviour and personal ambition had undermined the stability of the coalition. On visiting Windsor Castle to resign, Aberdeen told the Queen "Had it not been for the incessant attempts of Lord John Russell to keep up party differences, it must be acknowledged that the experiment of a coalition had succeeded admirably," an assessment with which the Queen agreed. Russell accepted an invitation from the Queen to form a new government but found that he could not assemble the necessary support, with many of his colleagues having been angered by his abandonment of Aberdeen over the Roebuck motion. Palmerston became prime minister, and Russell reluctantly accepted the role of Colonial Secretary in his cabinet. Russell was sent to Vienna to negotiate peace terms with Russia, but his proposals were rejected and he resigned from the cabinet and returned to the backbenches in July 1855.
Return to the backbenches: 1855–1859
Following his resignation Russell wrote to his father-in-law that he would not serve again under Palmerston or any other prime minister. For a time it appeared as if his career in frontbench politics might be over. Russell continued to speak out from the backbenches on the issues he most cared about - lobbying for increased government grants for education and for reduction in the property qualification for Parliamentary elections. In early 1857 Russell became a vocal critic of Palmerston's government over the Anglo-Persian War and the Second Opium War. Russell spoke in support of a motion tabled by Richard Cobden, which criticised British military action in China and calling for a select committee inquiry. When the motion passed on 3 March, Palmerston dissolved Parliament and went to the country. In the subsequent general election Palmerston was swept back into power on a tide of patriotic feeling with an increased majority. Many of Palmerston's critics lost their seats but Russell hung on in the City of London, after fighting off an attempt to deselect him and replace him with a pro-Palmerston Whig candidate. Palmerston's triumph was short-lived. In February 1858 the Government rushed through a Conspiracy to Murder bill, following the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Italian nationalist Felice Orsini - an attack planned in Britain using British-made explosives. Russell attacked the bill, which he saw as undermined traditional British political liberties to appease a foreign government. On 19 February Russell voted in favour of Thomas Milner Gibson's motion, which criticised the government for bowing to French demands. When the motion passed by 19 votes Palmerston's government resigned.
Foreign Secretary under Palmerston: 1859–1865
In 1859, following another short-lived Conservative government, Palmerston and Russell made up their differences, and Russell consented to serve as Foreign Secretary in a new Palmerston cabinet, usually considered the first true Liberal cabinet. This period was a particularly eventful one in the world outside Britain, seeing the Unification of Italy (the change of British government to one sympathetic to Italian nationalism had a marked part in this process), the American Civil War, and the 1864 war over Schleswig-Holstein between Denmark and the German states. Russell arranged the London Conference of 1864, but failed to establish peace in the war. His tenure of the Foreign Office was noteworthy for the famous dispatch in which he defended Italian unification: "Her Majesty's Government will turn their eyes rather to the gratifying prospect of a people building up the edifice of their liberties, and consolidating the work of their independence, amid the sympathies and good wishes of Europe" (27 October 1860).
Elevation to the peerage: 1861
In 1861 Russell was elevated to the peerage as Earl Russell, of Kingston Russell in the County of Dorset, and as Viscount Amberley, of Amberley in the County of Gloucester, and of Ardsalla in the County of Meath
in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Henceforth, as a suo jure peer, rather than merely being known as 'Lord' because he was the son of a Duke, he sat in the House of Lords for the remainder of his career.
Prime Minister again: 1865–1866
When Palmerston suddenly died in late 1865, Russell again became prime minister. His second premiership was short and frustrating, and Russell failed in his great ambition of expanding the franchise, a task that would be left to his Conservative successors, Derby and Benjamin Disraeli. In 1866, party disunity again brought down his government. Russell never again held any office. His last contribution to the House of Lords was on 3 August 1875.
Personal life
Marriages and children
Russell married Adelaide Lister (widow of Thomas Lister, 2nd Baron Ribblesdale, who had died in 1832) on 11 April 1835. Together they had two daughters:
Lady Georgiana Adelaide Russell (1836 – 25 September 1922). She married Archibald Peel (son of General Jonathan Peel) on 15 August 1867. They had seven children.
Lady Victoria Russell (20 October 1838 – 9 May 1880). She married Henry Villiers (the son of The Honorable Henry Montagu Villiers) on 16 April 1861. They had ten children and left many descendants.
Adelaide came down with a fever following the birth of their second child and died a few days later on 1 November 1838. Following her death, Russell continued to raise his late wife's four children from her first marriage, as well their two daughters.
On 20 July 1841 Russell remarried, to Lady Frances ("Fanny") Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, daughter of Russell's cabinet colleague Gilbert Elliot, 2nd Earl of Minto. Together they had four children:
John Russell, Viscount Amberley (10 December 1842 – 9 January 1876). He married The Hon. Katherine Stanley on 8 November 1864. They had four children, including a stillborn daughter. Their eldest son, Frank, would succeed Lord John to the title to become the 2nd Earl Russell. Another son, the 3rd Earl, was the philosopher Bertrand Russell.
Hon. George Gilbert William Russell (14 April 1848 – 27 January 1933).
Hon. Francis Albert Rollo Russell (11 July 1849 – 30 March 1914). He married Alice Godfrey (d. 12 May 1886) on 21 April 1885. They had one son. He remarried Gertrude Joachim on 28 April 1891. They had two children.
Lady Mary Agatha Russell (1853 – 23 April 1933).
In 1847 Queen Victoria granted Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park to Lord and Lady John. It remained their family home for the rest of their lives.
Religious views
Russell was religious in a simple non-dogmatic way and supported "broad church" stances in the Church of England. He opposed the "Oxford Movement" because its "Tractarian" members were too dogmatic and too close to Roman Catholicism. He supported Broad Churchmen or Latitudinarians by several appointments of liberal churchmen as bishops. In 1859 he reversed himself and decided to free non-Anglicans of the duty of paying rates (taxes) to the local Anglican parish. His political clumsiness and opposition to Church finance made him a target of attack and ridicule in many Church circles.
Final years and death
Following the death of their daughter-in-law Viscountess Amberley in 1874 and their son Viscount Amberley in 1876, Earl Russell and Countess Russell brought up their orphaned grandchildren, John ("Frank") Russell, who became 2nd Earl Russell on his grandfather's death, and Bertrand Russell who would go on to become a noted philosopher and who in later life recalled his elderly grandfather as "a kindly old man in a wheelchair."
Earl Russell died at home at Pembroke Lodge on 28 May 1878. The Prime Minister, the Earl of Beaconsfield, offered a public funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey for Russell but this was declined by Countess Russell in accordance with her late husband's wish to be buried among his family and ancestors. He is buried at the 'Bedford Chapel' at St. Michael's Church, Chenies, Buckinghamshire.
Legacy and reputation
Scion of one of the most powerful aristocratic families, Russell was a leading reformer who weakened the power of the aristocracy. His great achievements, wrote A. J. P. Taylor, were based on his persistent battles in Parliament over the years on behalf of the expansion of liberty; after each loss he tried again and again, until finally, his efforts were largely successful. E. L. Woodward, however, argued that he was too much the abstract theorist:
He was more concerned with the removal of obstacles to civil liberty than with the creation of a more reasonable and civilized society. His political theory centred in the revolution of 1688, and in the clique of aristocratic families to whom the country owed loyalty in return for something like the charte octroyée of the reform bill. Nevertheless, Russell led his Whig party into support for reform; he was the principal architect of the Reform Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 45).
He was succeeded as Liberal leader by former Peelite William Gladstone, and was thus the last true Whig to serve as prime minister. Generally taken as the model for Anthony Trollope's Mr. Mildmay, aspects of his character may also have suggested those of Plantagenet Palliser. An ideal statesman, said Trollope, should have "unblemished, unextinguishable, inexhaustible love of country.... But he should also be scrupulous, and, as being scrupulous, weak."
The Reform Act 1832 and extension of the franchise to British cities are partly attributed to his efforts. He also worked for emancipation, leading the attack on the Test and Corporation acts, which were repealed in 1828, as well as towards legislation limiting working hours in factories in the Factories Act 1847, and the Public Health Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vict. c. 63).
His government's approach to dealing with the Great Irish Famine is now widely condemned as counterproductive, ill-informed and disastrous. Russell himself was sympathetic to the plight of the Irish poor, and many of his relief proposals were blocked by his cabinet or by the British Parliament.
Queen Victoria's attitude toward Russell was coloured by his role in the Aberdeen administration. On his death in 1878 her journal records that he was "a man of much talent, who leaves a name behind him, kind, & good, with a great knowledge of the constitution, who behaved very well, on many trying occasions; but he was impulsive, very selfish (as shown on many occasions, especially during Ld Aberdeen's administration) vain, & often reckless & imprudent."
A public house in Bloomsbury, large parts of which are still owned by the Bedford Estate, is named after Russell, located on Marchmont Street.
Earl Russell Street is named after him in Aylestone, a suburb of Leicester.
Russell Road in Merton Park, a suburb of London, is named after him, adjacent to Derby, Gladstone, Palmerston and Pelham Roads, all named after former Prime Ministers.
The town of Russell in the Northland Region of New Zealand, was named in honour of him as the then Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Literature
Original works
Russell published numerous books and essays over the course of his life, especially during periods out of office. He principally wrote on politics and history, but also turned his hand to a variety of other topics and genres. His published works include:
The Life of William Lord Russell (1819) - a biography of his famous ancestor.
Essays and Sketches of Life and Character by a Gentleman who has left his lodgings (1820) - a series of social and cultural commentaries ostensibly found in a missing lodger's rooms, published anonymously.
An Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution, from the reign of Henry VII. to the present time (1821)
The Nun of Arrouca: a Tale (1822) - a romantic novel set in Portugal during the Peninsular War.
Don Carlos: or, Persecution. A tragedy, in five acts (1822) - a blank verse play on the same subject as the play of the same title by Friedrich Schiller.
Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht (1824) - a second volume appeared in 1829.
The Establishment of the Turks in Europe, An Historical Discourse (1828)
The Causes of the French Revolution (1832)
Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds (1836) - a collection of fantasy short stories, published anonymously.
The Life and Times of Charles James Fox (1859-1866) - a three volume biography of Russell's political hero.
Essays on the Rise and Progress of the Christian Religion in the West of Europe, from the reign of Tiberius to the Council of Trent (1871)
The Foreign Policy of England 1570-1870, An Historical Essay (1871)
Recollections and Suggestions 1813-1873 (1875) - Russell's political memoir.
As editor
Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford - in three volumes, published between 1842 and 1846.
Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore - in eight volumes, published between 1853 and 1856. Russell was Moore's literary executor and published his papers in accordance with his late friend's wishes.
Memorials and correspondence of Charles James Fox - in four volumes, published between 1853 and 1857.
Dedications
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens was dedicated to Lord John Russell, "In remembrance of many public services and private kindnesses." In speech given in 1869, Dickens remarked of Russell that "there is no man in England whom I respect more in his public capacity, whom I love more in his private capacity."
Ancestry
See also
British Blue Book
Internationalization of the Danube River
Confederate States of America § International diplomacy
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Historiography
External links
Works by John Russell, 1st Earl Russell at Project Gutenberg
Lord John Russell 1st Earl Russell, short biography from the 10 Downing Street website
Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Lord John Russell
Lord John Russell 1792–1878 biography from the Liberal Democrat History Group
Works by or about John Russell, 1st Earl Russell at the Internet Archive
Works by John Russell, 1st Earl Russell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
More about Earl Russell on the Downing Street website
Pembroke Lodge (principal residence and museum)
Portraits of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell at the National Portrait Gallery, London |
WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines | [
305
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines"
] | The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (aka Essential Medicines List or EML), published by the World Health Organization (WHO), contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system. The list is frequently used by countries to help develop their own local lists of essential medicines. As of 2016, more than 155 countries have created national lists of essential medicines based on the World Health Organization's model list. This includes both developed and developing countries.
The list is divided into core items and complementary items. The core items are deemed to be the most cost-effective options for key health problems and are usable with little additional health care resources. The complementary items either require additional infrastructure such as specially trained health care providers or diagnostic equipment or have a lower cost–benefit ratio. About 25% of items are in the complementary list. Some medications are listed as both core and complementary. While most medications on the list are available as generic products, being under patent does not preclude inclusion.
The first list was published in 1977 and included 208 medications. The WHO updates the list every two years. There are 306 medications in the 14th list in 2005, 410 in the 19th list in 2015, 433 in the 20th list in 2017, 460 in the 21st list in 2019, and 479 in the 22nd list in 2021. Various national lists contain between 334 and 580 medications. The Essential Medicines List (EML) was updated in July 2023 to its 23rd edition. This list contains 1200 recommendations for 591 drugs and 103 therapeutic equivalents.
A separate list for children up to 12 years of age, known as the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines for Children (EMLc), was created in 2007 and is in its 9th edition. It was created to make sure that the needs of children were systematically considered such as availability of proper formulations. Everything in the children's list is also included in the main list. The list and notes are based on the 19th to 23rd edition of the main list. Therapeutic alternatives with similar clinical performance are listed for some medicines and they may be considered for national essential medicines lists. The 9th Essential Medicines List for Children was updated in July 2023.
Note: An α indicates a medicine is on the complementary list.
Anaesthetics, preoperative medicines and medical gases
General anaesthetics and oxygen
Inhalational medicines
Halothane
Isoflurane
Nitrous oxide
Oxygen
Sevoflurane
Injectable medicines
Ketamine
Propofol
Thiopental
Local anaesthetics
Bupivacaine
Lidocaine
Lidocaine/epinephrine (lidocaine + epinephrine)
Complementary:
Ephedrineα
Preoperative medication and sedation for short-term procedures
Atropine
Midazolam
Morphine
Medical gases
Oxygen
Medicines for pain and palliative care
Non-opioids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicines (NSAIMs)
Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin)
Ibuprofen
Paracetamol (acetaminophen)
Opioid analgesics
Codeine
Fentanyl
Morphine
Complementary:
Methadoneα
Medicines for other common symptoms in palliative care
Amitriptyline
Cyclizine
Dexamethasone
Diazepam
Docusate sodium
Fluoxetine
Haloperidol
Hyoscine butylbromide
Hyoscine hydrobromide
Lactulose
Loperamide
Metoclopramide
Midazolam
Ondansetron
Senna
Antiallergics and medicines used in anaphylaxis
Dexamethasone
Epinephrine (adrenaline)
Hydrocortisone
Loratadine
Prednisolone
Antidotes and other substances used in poisonings
Non-specific
Charcoal, activated
Specific
Acetylcysteine
Atropine
Calcium gluconate
Methylthioninium chloride (methylene blue)
Naloxone
Penicillamine
Prussian blue
Sodium nitrite
Sodium thiosulfate
Complementary:
Deferoxamineα
Dimercaprolα
Fomepizoleα
Sodium calcium edetateα
Succimerα
Medicines for diseases of the nervous system
Antiseizure medicines
Carbamazepine
Diazepam
Lamotrigine
Levetiracetam
Lorazepam
Magnesium sulfate
Midazolam
Phenobarbital
Phenytoin
Valproic acid (sodium valproate)
Complementary:
Ethosuximideα
Levetiracetamα
Valproic acid (sodium valproate)α
Medicines for multiple sclerosis
Complementary:
Cladribineα
Glatiramer acetateα
Rituximabα
Medicines for parkinsonism
Biperiden
Levodopa/carbidopa (levodopa + carbidopa)
Anti-infective medicines
Anthelminthics
Intestinal anthelminthics
Albendazole
Ivermectin
Levamisole
Mebendazole
Niclosamide
Praziquantel
Pyrantel
Antifilarials
Albendazole
Diethylcarbamazine
Ivermectin
Antischistosomals and other antinematode medicines
Praziquantel
Triclabendazole
Complementary:
Oxamniquineα
Cysticidal medicines
Complementary:
Albendazoleα
Mebendazoleα
Praziquantelα
Antibacterials
Access group antibiotics
Amikacin
Amoxicillin
Amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (amoxicillin + clavulanic acid)
Ampicillin
Benzathine benzylpenicillin
Benzylpenicillin
Cefalexin
Cefazolin
Chloramphenicol
Clindamycin
Cloxacillin
Doxycycline
Gentamicin
Metronidazole
Nitrofurantoin
Phenoxymethylpenicillin (penicillin V)
Procaine benzylpenicillin
Spectinomycin
Sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (sulfamethoxazole + trimethoprim)
Trimethoprim
Watch group antibiotics
Azithromycin
Cefixime
Cefotaxime
Ceftriaxone
Cefuroxime
Ciprofloxacin
Clarithromycin
Piperacillin/tazobactam (piperacillin + tazobactam)
Vancomycin
Complementary:
Ceftazidimeα
Meropenemα
Vancomycinα
Reserve group antibiotics
Reserve antibiotics are last-resort antibiotics. The EML antibiotic book was published in 2022.
Complementary:
Cefiderocolα
Ceftazidime/avibactam (ceftazidime + avibactam)α
Ceftolozane/tazobactam (ceftolozane + tazobactam)α
Colistinα
Fosfomycinα
Linezolidα
Meropenem/vaborbactam (meropenem + vaborbactam)α
Plazomicinα
Polymyxin Bα
Antileprosy medicines
Clofazimine
Dapsone
Rifampicin
Antituberculosis medicines
Ethambutol
Ethambutol/isoniazid/pyrazinamide/rifampicin (ethambutol + isoniazid + pyrazinamide + rifampicin)
Ethambutol/isoniazid/rifampicin (ethambutol + isoniazid + rifampicin)
Ethionamide
Isoniazid
Isoniazid/pyrazinamide/rifampicin (isoniazid + pyrazinamide + rifampicin)
Isoniazid/rifampicin (isoniazid + rifampicin)
Isoniazid/rifapentine (isoniazid + rifapentine)
Moxifloxacin
Pyrazinamide
Rifabutin
Rifampicin
Rifapentine
Complementary:
Amikacinα
Amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (amoxicillin + clavulanic acid)α
Bedaquilineα
Clofazimineα
Cycloserineα
Delamanidα
Ethionamideα
Levofloxacinα
Linezolidα
Meropenemα
Moxifloxacinα
P-aminosalicylic acid (p-aminosalicylate sodium)α
Pretomanidα
Streptomycinα
Antifungal medicines
Amphotericin B
Clotrimazole
Fluconazole
Flucytosine
Griseofulvin
Itraconazole
Nystatin
Voriconazole
Complementary:
Micafunginα
Potassium iodideα
Antiviral medicines
Antiherpes medicines
Aciclovir
Antiretrovirals
Nucleoside/nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors
Abacavir
Lamivudine
Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate
Zidovudine
Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors
Efavirenz
Nevirapine
Protease inhibitors
Atazanavir/ritonavir (atazanavir + ritonavir)
Darunavir
Lopinavir/ritonavir (lopinavir + ritonavir)
Ritonavir
Integrase inhibitors
Dolutegravir
Raltegravir
Fixed-dose combinations of antiretroviral medicines
Abacavir/lamivudine (abacavir + lamivudine)
Dolutegravir/lamivudine/tenofovir (dolutegravir + lamivudine + tenofovir)
Efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir
Efavirenz/lamivudine/tenofovir (efavirenz + lamivudine + tenofovir)
Emtricitabine/tenofovir (emtricitabine + tenofovir)
Lamivudine/zidovudine (lamivudine + zidovudine)
Medicines for prevention of HIV-related opportunistic infections
Isoniazid/pyridoxine/sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (isoniazid + pyridoxine + sulfamethoxazole + trimethoprim)
Other antivirals
Ribavirin
Valganciclovir
Complementary:
Oseltamivirα
Valganciclovirα
Antihepatitis medicines
Medicines for hepatitis B
Nucleoside/Nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors
Entecavir
Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate
Medicines for hepatitis C
Pangenotypic direct-acting antiviral combinations
Daclatasvir
Daclatasvir/sofosbuvir (daclatasvir + sofosbuvir)
Glecaprevir/pibrentasvir (glecaprevir + pibrentasvir)
Ravidasvir
Sofosbuvir
Sofosbuvir/velpatasvir (sofosbuvir + velpatasvir)
Non-pangenotypic direct-acting antiviral combinations
Ledipasvir/sofosbuvir (ledipasvir + sofosbuvir)
Other antivirals for hepatitis C
Ribavirin
Antiprotozoal medicines
Antiamoebic and antigiardiasis medicines
Diloxanide
Metronidazole
Antileishmaniasis medicines
Amphotericin B
Meglumine antimoniate
Miltefosine
Paromomycin
Sodium stibogluconate
Antimalarial medicines
For curative treatment
Amodiaquine
Artemether
Artemether/lumefantrine (artemether + lumefantrine)
Artesunate
Artesunate/amodiaquine (artesunate + amodiaquine)
Artesunate/mefloquine (artesunate + mefloquine)
Artesunate/pyronaridine tetraphosphate (artesunate + pyronaridine tetraphosphate)
Chloroquine
Dihydroartemisinin/piperaquine phosphate (dihydroartemisinin + piperaquine phosphate)
Doxycycline
Mefloquine
Primaquine
Quinine
Sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine (sulfadoxine + pyrimethamine)
For chemoprevention
Amodiaquine + sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine (Co-packaged)
Chloroquine
Doxycycline
Mefloquine
Proguanil
Sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine (sulfadoxine + pyrimethamine)
Antipneumocystosis and antitoxoplasmosis medicines
Pyrimethamine
Sulfadiazine
Sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (sulfamethoxazole + trimethoprim)
Complementary:
Pentamidineα
Antitrypanosomal medicines
African trypanosomiasis
Fexinidazole
Medicines for the treatment of 1st stage African trypanosomiasis
Pentamidine
Suramin sodium
Medicines for the treatment of 2nd stage African trypanosomiasis
Eflornithine
Melarsoprol
Nifurtimox
Complementary:
Melarsoprolα
American trypanosomiasis
Benznidazole
Nifurtimox
Medicines for ectoparasitic infections
Ivermectin
Medicines for Ebola virus disease
Ansuvimab
Atoltivimab/maftivimab/odesivimab (atoltivimab + maftivimab + odesivimab)
Medicines for COVID-19
No listings in this section.
Antimigraine medicines
For treatment of acute attack
Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin)
Ibuprofen
Paracetamol (acetaminophen)
Sumatriptan
For prophylaxis
Propranolol
Immunomodulators and antineoplastics
Immunomodulators for non-malignant disease
Complementary:
Adalimumabα
Azathioprineα
Ciclosporinα
Tacrolimusα
Antineoplastics and supportive medicines
Cytotoxic medicines
Complementary:
Arsenic trioxideα
Asparaginaseα
Bendamustineα
Bleomycinα
Calcium folinate (leucovorin calcium)α
Capecitabineα
Carboplatinα
Chlorambucilα
Cisplatinα
Cyclophosphamideα
Cytarabineα
Dacarbazineα
Dactinomycinα
Daunorubicinα
Docetaxelα
Doxorubicinα
Doxorubicin (as pegylated liposomal)α
Etoposideα
Fludarabineα
Fluorouracilα
Gemcitabineα
Hydroxycarbamide (hydroxyurea)α
Ifosfamideα
Irinotecanα
Melphalanα
Mercaptopurineα
Methotrexateα
Oxaliplatinα
Paclitaxelα
Pegaspargaseα
Procarbazineα
Realgar Indigo naturalis formulationα
Tioguanineα
Vinblastineα
Vincristineα
Vinorelbineα
Targeted therapies
Complementary:
All-trans retinoic acid (tretinoin) (ATRA)α
Bortezomibα
Dasatinibα
Erlotinibα
Everolimusα
Ibrutinibα
Imatinibα
Nilotinibα
Rituximabα
Trastuzumabα
Immunomodulators
Complementary:
Filgrastimα
Lenalidomideα
Nivolumabα
Pegfilgrastimα
Thalidomideα
Hormones and antihormones
Complementary:
Abirateroneα
Anastrozoleα
Bicalutamideα
Dexamethasoneα
Hydrocortisoneα
Leuprorelinα
Methylprednisoloneα
Prednisoloneα
Tamoxifenα
Supportive medicines
Complementary:
Allopurinolα
Mesnaα
Rasburicaseα
Zoledronic acidα
Therapeutic foods
Ready-to-use therapeutic food
Medicines affecting the blood
Antianaemia medicines
Ferrous salt
Ferrous salt/folic acid (ferrous salt + folic acid)
Folic acid
Hydroxocobalamin
Complementary:
Erythropoiesis-stimulating agentsα
Medicines affecting coagulation
Dabigatran
Enoxaparin
Heparin sodium
Phytomenadione
Protamine sulfate
Tranexamic acid
Warfarin
Complementary:
Desmopressinα
Heparin sodiumα
Protamine sulfateα
Warfarinα
Other medicines for haemoglobinopathies
Deferasirox
Complementary:
Deferoxamineα
Hydroxycarbamide (hydroxyurea)α
Blood products of human origin and plasma substitutes
Blood and blood components
Cryoprecipitate, pathogen-reduced
Fresh frozen plasma
Platelets
Red blood cells
Whole blood
Plasma-derived medicines
Human immunoglobulins
Rho(D) immune globulin (anti-D immunoglobulin)
Anti-rabies immunoglobulin
Anti-tetanus immunoglobulin
Complementary:
Normal immunoglobulinα
Blood coagulation factors
Complementary:
Coagulation factor VIIIα
Coagulation factor IXα
Plasma substitutes
Dextran 70
Cardiovascular medicines
Antianginal medicines
Bisoprolol
Glyceryl trinitrate
Isosorbide dinitrate
Verapamil
Antiarrhythmic medicines
Bisoprolol
Digoxin
Epinephrine (adrenaline)
Lidocaine
Verapamil
Complementary:
Amiodaroneα
Antihypertensive medicines
Amlodipine
Bisoprolol
Enalapril
Hydralazine
Hydrochlorothiazide
Lisinopril/amlodipine (lisinopril + amlodipine)
Lisinopril/hydrochlorothiazide (lisinopril + hydrochlorothiazide)
Losartan
Methyldopa
Telmisartan/amlodipine (telmisartan + amlodipine)
Telmisartan/hydrochlorothiazide (telmisartan + hydrochlorothiazide)
Complementary:
Sodium nitroprussideα
Medicines used in heart failure
Bisoprolol
Digoxin
Enalapril
Furosemide
Hydrochlorothiazide
Losartan
Spironolactone
Complementary:
Digoxinα
Dopamineα
Antithrombotic medicines
Anti-platelet medicines
Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin)
Clopidogrel
Thrombolytic medicines
Complementary:
Alteplaseα
Streptokinaseα
Lipid-lowering agents
Simvastatin
Fixed-dose combinations for prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease
Acetylsalicylic acid/atorvastatin/ramipril (acetylsalicylic acid + atorvastatin + ramipril)
Acetylsalicylic acid/simvastatin/ramipril/atenolol/hydrochlorothiazide (acetylsalicylic acid + simvastatin + ramipril + atenolol + hydrochlorothiazide)
Atorvastatin/perindopril/amlodipine (atorvastatin + perindopril + amlodipine)
Dermatological medicines (topical)
Antifungal medicines
Miconazole
Selenium sulfide
Sodium thiosulfate
Terbinafine
Anti-infective medicines
Mupirocin
Potassium permanganate
Silver sulfadiazine
Anti-inflammatory and antipruritic medicines
Betamethasone
Calamine
Hydrocortisone
Medicines affecting skin differentiation and proliferation
Benzoyl peroxide
Calcipotriol
Coal tar
Fluorouracil
Podophyllum resin
Salicylic acid
Urea
Complementary:
Methotrexateα
Scabicides and pediculicides
Benzyl benzoate
Permethrin
Diagnostic agents
Ophthalmic medicines
Fluorescein
Tropicamide
Radiocontrast media
Amidotrizoate
Barium sulfate
Iohexol
Complementary:
Barium sulfateα
Meglumine iotroxateα
Antiseptics and disinfectants
Antiseptics
Chlorhexidine
Ethanol
Povidone iodine
Disinfectants
Alcohol based hand rub
Chlorine base compound
Chloroxylenol
Glutaral
Diuretics
Amiloride
Furosemide
Hydrochlorothiazide
Mannitol
Spironolactone
Complementary:
Hydrochlorothiazideα
Mannitolα
Spironolactoneα
Gastrointestinal medicines
Complementary:
Pancreatic enzymesα
Antiulcer medicines
Omeprazole
Ranitidine
Antiemetic medicines
Dexamethasone
Metoclopramide
Ondansetron
Complementary:
Aprepitantα
Anti-inflammatory medicines
Sulfasalazine
Complementary:
Hydrocortisoneα
Prednisoloneα
Laxatives
Senna
Medicines used in diarrhoea
Oral rehydration salts + zinc sulfate (Co-packaged)
Oral rehydration
Oral rehydration salts
Medicines for diarrhoea
Zinc sulfate
Medicines for endocrine disorders
Adrenal hormones and synthetic substitutes
Fludrocortisone
Hydrocortisone
Androgens
Complementary:
Testosteroneα
Estrogens
No listings in this section.
Progestogens
Medroxyprogesterone acetate
Medicines for diabetes
Insulins
Insulin injection (soluble)
Intermediate-acting insulin
Long-acting insulin analogues
Oral hypoglycaemic agents
Empagliflozin
Gliclazide
Metformin
Complementary:
Metforminα
Medicines for hypoglycaemia
Glucagon
Complementary:
Diazoxideα
Thyroid hormones and antithyroid medicines
Levothyroxine
Potassium iodide
Methimazole
Propylthiouracil
Complementary:
Lugol's solutionα
Methimazoleα
Potassium iodideα
Propylthiouracilα
Medicines for disorders of the pituitary hormone system
Cabergoline
Complementary:
Octreotideα
Immunologicals
Diagnostic agents
Tuberculin, purified protein derivative (PPD)
Sera, immunoglobulins and monoclonal antibodies
Anti-rabies virus monoclonal antibodies
Antivenom immunoglobulin
Diphtheria antitoxin
Equine rabies immunoglobulin
Vaccines
Recommendations for all
BCG vaccine
Diphtheria vaccine
Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine
Hepatitis B vaccine
Human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine
Measles vaccine
Pertussis vaccine
Pneumococcal vaccine
Poliomyelitis vaccine
Rotavirus vaccine
Rubella vaccine
Tetanus vaccine
Recommendations for certain regions
Japanese encephalitis vaccine
Tick-borne encephalitis vaccine
Yellow fever vaccine
Recommendations for some high-risk populations
Cholera vaccine
Dengue vaccine
Hepatitis A vaccine
Meningococcal meningitis vaccine
Rabies vaccine
Typhoid vaccine
Recommendations for immunization programmes with certain characteristics
Influenza vaccine (seasonal)
Mumps vaccine
Varicella vaccine
Muscle relaxants (peripherally-acting) and cholinesterase inhibitors
Atracurium
Neostigmine
Suxamethonium
Vecuronium
Complementary:
Pyridostigmineα
Vecuroniumα
Ophthalmological preparations
Anti-infective agents
Aciclovir
Azithromycin
Erythromycin
Gentamicin
Natamycin
Ofloxacin
Tetracycline
Anti-inflammatory agents
Prednisolone
Local anesthetics
Tetracaine
Miotics and antiglaucoma medicines
Acetazolamide
Latanoprost
Pilocarpine
Timolol
Mydriatics
Atropine
Complementary:
Epinephrine (adrenaline)α
Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) preparations
Complementary:
Bevacizumabα
Medicines for reproductive health and perinatal care
Contraceptives
Oral hormonal contraceptives
Ethinylestradiol/levonorgestrel (ethinylestradiol + levonorgestrel)
Ethinylestradiol/norethisterone (ethinylestradiol + norethisterone)
Levonorgestrel
Ulipristal
Injectable hormonal contraceptives
Estradiol cypionate/medroxyprogesterone acetate (estradiol cypionate + medroxyprogesterone acetate)
Medroxyprogesterone acetate
Norethisterone enantate
Intrauterine devices
Copper-containing device
Levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system
Barrier methods
Condoms
Diaphragms
Implantable contraceptives
Etonogestrel-releasing implant
Levonorgestrel-releasing implant
Intravaginal contraceptives
Ethinylestradiol/etonogestrel (ethinylestradiol + etonogestrel)
Progesterone vaginal ring
Ovulation inducers
Complementary:
Clomifeneα
Letrozoleα
Uterotonics
Carbetocin
Ergometrine
Mifepristone + misoprostol (Co-packaged)
Misoprostol
Oxytocin
Antioxytocics (tocolytics)
Nifedipine
Other medicines administered to the mother
Dexamethasone
Multiple micronutrient supplement
Tranexamic acid
Medicines administered to the neonate
Caffeine citrate
Chlorhexidine
Complementary:
Ibuprofenα
Prostaglandin E1α
Surfactantα
Peritoneal dialysis solution
Complementary:
Intraperitoneal dialysis solution (of appropriate composition)α
Medicines for mental and behavioural disorders
Medicines used in psychotic disorders
Fluphenazine
Haloperidol
Olanzapine
Paliperidone
Risperidone
Complementary:
Clozapineα
Medicines used in mood disorders
Medicines used in depressive disorders
Amitriptyline
Fluoxetine
Medicines used in bipolar disorders
Carbamazepine
Lithium carbonate
Quetiapine
Valproic acid (sodium valproate)
Medicines for anxiety disorders
Diazepam
Fluoxetine
Medicines used for obsessive compulsive disorders
Clomipramine
Fluoxetine
Medicines for disorders due to psychoactive substance use
Medicines for alcohol use disorders
Acamprosate calcium
Naltrexone
Medicines for nicotine use disorders
Bupropion
Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT)
Varenicline
Complementary:
Methadoneα
Medicines acting on the respiratory tract
Antiasthmatic medicines and medicines for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Budesonide
Budesonide/formoterol (budesonide + formoterol)
Epinephrine (adrenaline)
Ipratropium bromide
Salbutamol
Tiotropium
Solutions correcting water, electrolyte and acid-base disturbances
Oral
Oral rehydration salts
Potassium chloride
Parenteral
Glucose
Glucose with sodium chloride
Potassium chloride
Sodium chloride
Sodium hydrogen carbonate
Sodium lactate, compound solution (Ringer's lactate solution)
Miscellaneous
Water for injection
Vitamins and minerals
Ascorbic acid
Calcium
Colecalciferol
Ergocalciferol
Iodine
Multiple micronutrient powder
Nicotinamide
Pyridoxine
Retinol
Riboflavin
Thiamine
Complementary:
Calcium gluconateα
Ear, nose and throat medicines
Acetic acid
Budesonide
Ciprofloxacin
Xylometazoline
Medicines for diseases of joints
Medicines used to treat gout
Allopurinol
Disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs)
Chloroquine
Complementary:
Azathioprineα
Hydroxychloroquineα
Methotrexateα
Penicillamineα
Sulfasalazineα
Medicines for juvenile joint diseases
Complementary:
Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin)
Adalimumabα
Methotrexateα
Triamcinolone hexacetonideα
Dental medicines and preparations
Fluoride
Glass ionomer cement
Resin-based composite (low-viscosity)
Resin-based composite (high-viscosity)
Silver diamine fluoride
Notes
An α indicates the medicine is on the complementary list for which specialized diagnostic or monitoring or training is needed. An item may also be listed as complementary on the basis of higher costs or a less attractive cost-benefit ratio.
References
Further reading
Serafini M, Cargnin S, Massarotti A, Pirali T, Genazzani AA (September 2020). "Essential Medicinal Chemistry of Essential Medicines". Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 63 (18): 10170–10187. doi:10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c00415. PMC 8007110. PMID 32352778.
Stuart MC, Kouimtzi M, Hill SR, eds. (2009). WHO Model Formulary 2008. World Health Organization. hdl:10665/44053. ISBN 978-92-4-154765-9.
The selection and use of essential medicines. Twentieth report of the WHO Expert Committee 2015 (including 19th WHO Model List of Essential Medicines and 5th WHO Model List of Essential Medicines for Children). Geneva: World Health Organization. 2015. hdl:10665/189763. ISBN 978-92-4-069494-1. ISSN 0512-3054. WHO technical report series; no. 994.
The selection and use of essential medicines: report of the WHO Expert Committee, 2017 (including the 20th WHO Model List of Essential Medicines and the 6th Model List of Essential Medicines for Children). Geneva: World Health Organization. 2017. hdl:10665/259481. ISBN 978-92-4-121015-7. ISSN 0512-3054. WHO technical report series; no. 1006.
The selection and use of essential medicines: report of the WHO Expert Committee on Selection and Use of Essential Medicines, 2019 (including the 21st WHO Model List of Essential Medicines and the 7th WHO Model List of Essential Medicines for Children). Geneva: World Health Organization. 2019. hdl:10665/330668. ISBN 978-92-4-121030-0. ISSN 0512-3054. WHO technical report series;1021.
Organization WH (2019). "Additions and deletions of medicines on the WHO model lists of essential medicines: 1977–2017". World Health Organization. hdl:10665/278038. WHO/MVP/EMP/IAU/2019.01.
External links
eEML - Electronic Essential Medicines List |
Clofazimine | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clofazimine | [
305
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clofazimine"
] | Clofazimine, sold under the brand name Lamprene, is a medication used together with rifampicin and dapsone to treat leprosy. It is specifically used for multibacillary (MB) leprosy and erythema nodosum leprosum. Evidence is insufficient to support its use in other conditions though a retrospective study found it 95% effective in the treatment of Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) when administered with a macrolide and ethambutol, as well as the drugs amikacin and clarithromycin. However, in the United States, clofazimine is considered an orphan drug, is unavailable in pharmacies, and its use in the treatment of MAC is overseen by the Food and Drug Administration. It is taken orally.
Common side effects include abdominal pain, diarrhea, itchiness, dry skin, and change in skin color. It can also cause swelling of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, increased blood sugar, and sensitivity to the sun. It is unclear if use during pregnancy is safe. Clofazimine is a phenazine dye and is believed to work by interfering with DNA.
Clofazimine was discovered in the 1950s at Trinity College, Dublin, and approved for medical use in the United States in 1986. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In the United States it is not available commercially but can be obtained from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Medical uses
The primary use of clofazimine is for the treatment of leprosy. Other uses have not been proven to be safe or effective.
It has been studied in combination with other antimycobacterial drugs to treat Mycobacterium avium infections in people with HIV/AIDS and Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis. Clofazimine also has a marked anti-inflammatory effect and is given to control the leprosy reaction, erythema nodosum leprosum (ENL). (From AMA Drug Evaluations Annual, 1993, p1619). The drug is given as an alternative to people who can not tolerate the effects of dapsone for leprosy.
Early research suggested clofazimine inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro and reduce viral load and inflammation in the lung in animal models
Side effects
Clofazimine produces pink to brownish skin pigmentation in 75-100% of patients within a few weeks, as well as similar discoloration of most bodily fluids and secretions. These discolorations are reversible but may take months to years to disappear. There is evidence in medical literature that as a result of clofazimine administration, several patients have developed depression which in some cases resulted in suicide. It has been hypothesized that the depression was a result of this chronic skin discoloration.
Cases of ichthyosis and skin dryness are also reported in response to this drug (8%-28%), as well as rash and itchiness (1-5%).
Mechanism
Clofazimine works by binding to the guanine bases of bacterial DNA, thereby blocking the template function of the DNA and inhibiting bacterial proliferation. It also increases activity of bacterial phospholipase A2, leading to release and accumulation of lysophospholipids, which are toxic and inhibit bacterial proliferation.
Clofazimine is also a FIASMA (functional inhibitor of acid sphingomyelinase).
Metabolism
Clofazimine has a biological half life of about 70 days. Autopsies performed on those who have died while on clofazimine show crystal-like aggregates in the intestinal mucosa, liver, spleen, and lymph nodes.
History
Clofazimine, initially known as B663, was first synthesised in 1954 by a team of scientists at Trinity College, Dublin: Frank Winder, J.G. Belton, Stanley McElhinney, M.L. Conalty, Seán O'Sullivan, and Dermot Twomey, led by Vincent Barry. Clofazimine was originally intended as an anti-tuberculosis drug but proved ineffective. In 1959, a researcher named Y. T. Chang identified its effectiveness against leprosy. After clinical trials in Nigeria and elsewhere during the 1960s, Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis launched the product in 1969 under the brand name Lamprene.
Novartis was granted FDA approval of clofazimine in December 1986 as an orphan drug. The drug is currently no longer commercially available in the United States as Novartis has discontinued production of clofazimine for the US market and no generic or other brand names are marketed in the US although it retains FDA approval.
Society and culture
Clofazimine is marketed under the trade name Lamprene by Novartis although its discontinued in some countries like the US. Other brands are also available in many countries. Another producer of the clofazimine molecule is Sangrose Laboratories, located in Mavelikara, India.
Research
The immunosuppressive effects of clofazimine were immediately noticed when applied in animal model. Macrophages were first reported to be inhibited due to the stabilization of lysosomal membrane by clofazimine. Clofazimine also showed a dosage-dependent inhibition of neutrophil motility, lymphocyte transformation, mitogen-induced PBMC proliferation and complement-mediated solubilization of pre-formed immune complexes in vitro. A mechanistic studying of clofazimine in human T cells revealed that this drug is a Kv1.3 (KCNA3) channel blocker. This indicates that clofazimine will be potentially used for treatment of multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. Because the Kv1.3-high effector memory T cells (TEM) are actively involved in the development of these diseases, and Kv1.3 activity is essential for stimulation and proliferation of TEM by regulating calcium influx in the T cells.
Several clinical trials were also conducted looking for its immunosuppressive activity even before it was approved for leprosy by FDA. It was first reported to be effective in treating chronic discoid lupus erythematosus with 17 out of 26 patients got remission. But later another group found it was ineffective in treating diffuse, photosensitive, systemic lupus erythematosus. Clofazimine also has been sporadically reported with some success in other autoimmune diseases such as psoriasis, Miescher's granulomatous cheilitis.
References
External links
"Lamprene (clofazimine) capsules, for oral use Initial U.S. Approval: 1986". DailyMed. 31 January 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2020. |
Dapsone | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dapsone | [
305
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dapsone"
] | Dapsone, also known as 4,4'-sulfonyldianiline (SDA) or diaminodiphenyl sulfone (DDS), is an antibiotic commonly used in combination with rifampicin and clofazimine for the treatment of leprosy. It is a second-line medication for the treatment and prevention of pneumocystis pneumonia and for the prevention of toxoplasmosis in those who have poor immune function. Additionally, it has been used for acne, dermatitis herpetiformis, and various other skin conditions. Dapsone is available both topically and by mouth.
Severe side effects may include a decrease in blood cells, red blood cell breakdown especially in those with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (G-6-PD), or hypersensitivity. Common side effects include nausea and loss of appetite. Other side effects include liver inflammation, methemoglobinemia, and a number of types of skin rashes. While the safety of use during pregnancy is not entirely clear some physicians recommend that it be continued in those with leprosy. It is of the sulfone class.
Dapsone was first studied as an antibiotic in 1937. Its use for leprosy began in 1945. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. The form, which is taken by mouth, is available as a generic drug and not very expensive.
Medical uses
Infections
Dapsone is commonly used in combination with rifampicin and clofazimine for the treatment of leprosy. It is also used to both treat and prevent pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP). It is also used for toxoplasmosis in people unable to tolerate trimethoprim with sulfamethoxazole.
Dapsone by mouth was one of the first medications used to treat moderate to severe acne vulgaris, and is still occasionally prescribed for the treatment of severe cases. A topical form of dapsone is also effective with potentially less side effects.
It is unclear if the combination with pyrimethamine is useful in the prevention of malaria.
Autoimmune disease
Cutaneous lupus erythematosus. Dapsone is effective and safe in persons with moderate, severe, or refractory cutaneous lupus erythematosus.
Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Dapsone is effective and safe for adjunctive glucocorticoid-sparing treatment of persons with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and is preferred over danazol or interferon alpha in those people with antinuclear antibodies.
Chronic spontaneous urticaria. Dapsone is effective and safe for treatment of second-line therapy for people with chronic spontaneous urticaria in those for whom antihistamines and other first-line agents have failed.
Relapsing polychondritis. There are no clinical trials but there are many case reports that dapsone is effective at doses of 25 mg/day to 200 mg/day for treatment of relapsing polychondritis.
Other
Dermatitis herpetiformis in combination with a gluten-free diet.
Dapsone may be used to treat brown recluse spider bites that become necrotic.
Dapsone is the recommended treatment for erythema elevatum diutinum, as a review found that using oral dapsone alone was effective in 80% of early cases of the disease. However, dapsone can potentially cause severe side effects, meaning that sometimes steroids or other antibiotics should be used instead, although these alternative treatments are much less effective.
An August 2015 review notes that dapsone is reported to be effective against generalized granuloma annulare.
Dapsone has been used as a monomer in the design of dye adsorbent polymers.
Contraindications and precautions
People with porphyria, anemia, cardiac disease, lung disease, HIV infection, G6PD deficiency, and liver impairment are at higher risks of adverse effects when using dapsone.
Adverse effects
Hypersensitivity reactions occur in 1.4% of persons treated with dapsone, and can be fatal in medical settings with low resources. It is a form of severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs) in which a SCARs disorder, primarily the DRESS syndrome or a DRESS syndrome-like reaction occurs.
Blood
Hemolysis is the most prominent side-effect, occurring in about 20 % of patients treated with dapsone, although it is dose-related. It may lead to hemolytic anemia and methemoglobinemia. The side-effect is more common and severe in those with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, leading to the dapsone-containing antimalarial combination Lapdap being withdrawn from clinical use. A case of hemolysis in a neonate from dapsone in breast milk has been reported. Agranulocytosis occurs rarely when dapsone is used alone but more frequently in combination regimens for malaria prophylaxis. Abnormalities in white blood cell formation, including aplastic anemia, are rare, yet are the cause of the majority of deaths attributable to dapsone therapy.
Methemoglobinemia occurs in about 15 % of patients treated with long-term dapsone at standard doses (100 mg/day). Only special multi-wavelength oximeters (CO-oximeters) can detect methemoglobinemia directly. When there is a "saturation gap" between a low ordinary pulse oximeter reading and a high arterial blood gas analysis result, methemoglobinemia may be suspected.
Liver
Toxic hepatitis and cholestatic jaundice have been reported by the manufacturer. These toxic reactions may also occur as part of the dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome (a form of SCARs-see above) or dapsone syndrome (see below). Dapsone is metabolized by the Cytochrome P450 system, specifically isozymes CYP2D6, CYP2B6, CYP3A4, and CYP2C19. Dapsone metabolites produced by the cytochrome P450 2C19 isozyme are associated with the methemoglobinemia side effect of the drug.
Skin
When used topically, dapsone can cause mild skin irritation, redness, dry skin, burning, and itching. When used together with benzoyl peroxide products, temporary yellow or orange skin discolorations can occur.
Dapsone hypersensitivity syndrome
Hypersensitivity reactions occur in some patients. This reaction may be more frequent in patients receiving multiple-drug therapy.
The reaction always involves a rash, may also include fever, jaundice, and eosinophilia, and is likely to be one manifestation of the SCARs reaction viz., the DRESS syndrome (see above). In general, these symptoms will occur within the first six weeks of therapy or not at all, and may be ameliorated by corticosteroid therapy.
Other adverse effects
Other adverse effects include nausea, headache, and rash (which are common), and insomnia, psychosis, and peripheral neuropathy. Effects on the lung occur rarely and may be serious, though are generally reversible.
Mechanism of action
As an antibacterial, dapsone inhibits bacterial synthesis of dihydrofolic acid, via competition with para-aminobenzoate for the active site of dihydropteroate synthase, thereby inhibiting nucleic acid synthesis. Though structurally distinct from dapsone, the sulfonamide group of antibacterial drugs also work in this way.
As an anti-inflammatory, dapsone inhibits the myeloperoxidase-H2O2-halide-mediated cytotoxic system in polymorphonucleocytes. As part of the respiratory burst that neutrophils use to kill bacteria, myeloperoxidase converts hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into hypochlorous acid (HOCl). HOCl is the most potent oxidant generated by neutrophils, and can cause significant tissue damage during inflammation. Dapsone arrests myeloperoxidase in an inactive intermediate form, reversibly inhibiting the enzyme. This prevents accumulation of hypochlorous acid, and reduces tissue damage during inflammation. Myeloperoxidase inhibition has also been suggested as a neuron-sparing mechanism for reducing inflammation in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and stroke.
Dapsone's anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects are thought to be its mechanism of action in treating dermatitis herpetiformis.
Dapsone is an odorless white to creamy-white crystalline powder with a slightly bitter taste.
History
Discovery
In the early 20th century, the German chemist Paul Ehrlich was developing theories of selective toxicity based largely on the ability of certain dyes to kill microbes. Gerhard Domagk, who would later win a Nobel Prize for his efforts, made a major breakthrough in 1932 with the discovery of the antibacterial prontosil red (sulfonamidochrysoidine). Further investigation into the involved chemicals opened the way to sulfa drug and sulfone therapy, first with the discovery of sulfanilamide, the active agent of prontosil, by Daniel Bovet and his team at Pasteur Institute (1935), then with that of dapsone independently by Ernest Fourneau in France and Gladwin Buttle in the United Kingdom.
Proposed use in antimalarial drugs
The spread of drug-resistant malaria in Africa has encouraged the development of new, low-cost antimalarial drugs. Plasmodium falciparum, one of the Plasmodium species that causes malaria, has developed resistance both to chloroquine and sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine, two of the most common treatments for malaria. Artemisinin, another antimalarial drug, had been developed in the 1980s but was too expensive for large-scale use. This led GlaxoSmithKline to develop Lapdap, a combination drug consisting of chlorproguanil and dapsone. Lapdap was licensed in the United Kingdom starting in October 2003.
One advantage of Lapdap was that chlorproguanil and dapsone are both low-cost drugs. Another was that by virtue of being a combination drug, it was less likely to cause drug resistance. However, because dapsone causes hemolytic anemia in patients with G6PD deficiency, and because G6PD deficiency affects 10-25% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, it was discovered that Lapdap is not safe for use in Africa. It was available in many African countries for four years before GlaxoSmithKline took it off the market in February 2008.
Dapsone gel
Dapsone had been reported in a few cases to effectively treat acne, but the risk of hemolytic anemia kept it from being widely used for this purpose. For many years scientists attempted to develop a topical formulation of dapsone that would be as effective against acne as oral dapsone, but without the hemolysis side effect. This was difficult to accomplish because dapsone is highly insoluble in aqueous solvents. In the early 2000s QLT USA developed Aczone, a 5% dapsone gel that was shown to be effective against acne without causing clinically significant declines in hemoglobin levels, even in subjects with G6PD deficiency. In February 2016, the FDA approved a 7.5% dapsone gel. This higher strength has the advantage of a once-daily application, versus twice-daily application of the 5% formulation.
Other uses
4,4-Diaminodiphenyl sulfone also finds uses as a curing agent for materials like epoxy resins and imine-based vitrimers, applications include in printed circuit boards, adhesives and coatings. Its use in epoxy systems typically give a resin with a high glass-transition temperature.
See also
Promin, a more-soluble derivative
References
External links
"Dapsone". Drug Information Portal. U.S. National Library of Medicine. |
Rifampicin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifampicin | [
305
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifampicin"
] | Rifampicin, also known as rifampin, is an ansamycin antibiotic used to treat several types of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis (TB), Mycobacterium avium complex, leprosy, and Legionnaires' disease. It is almost always used together with other antibiotics with two notable exceptions: when given as a "preferred treatment that is strongly recommended" for latent TB infection; and when used as post-exposure prophylaxis to prevent Haemophilus influenzae type b and meningococcal disease in people who have been exposed to those bacteria. Before treating a person for a long period of time, measurements of liver enzymes and blood counts are recommended. Rifampicin may be given either by mouth or intravenously.
Common side effects include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of appetite. It often turns urine, sweat, and tears a red or orange color. Liver problems or allergic reactions may occur. It is part of the recommended treatment of active tuberculosis during pregnancy, though its safety in pregnancy is not known. Rifampicin is of the rifamycin group of antibiotics. It works by decreasing the production of RNA by bacteria.
Rifampicin was discovered in 1965, marketed in Italy in 1968, and approved in the United States in 1971. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. The World Health Organization classifies rifampicin as critically important for human medicine. It is available as a generic medication. Rifampicin is made by the soil bacterium Amycolatopsis rifamycinica.
Medical uses
Mycobacteria
Rifampicin is used for the treatment of tuberculosis in combination with other antibiotics, such as pyrazinamide, isoniazid, and ethambutol. For the treatment of tuberculosis, it is administered daily for at least six months. Combination therapy is used to prevent the development of resistance and to shorten the length of treatment. Resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to rifampicin develops quickly when it is used without another antibiotic, with laboratory estimates of resistance rates from 10−7 to 10−10 per tuberculosis bacterium per generation.
Rifampicin can be used alone in patients with latent tuberculosis infections to prevent or delay the development of active disease because only small numbers of bacteria are present. A Cochrane review found no difference in efficacy between a 3- to 4-month regimen of rifampicin and a 6-month regimen of isoniazid for preventing active tuberculosis in patients not infected with HIV, and patients who received rifampicin had a lower rate of hepatotoxicity. However, the quality of the evidence was judged to be low. A shorter 2-month course of rifampicin and pyrazinamide had previously been recommended but is no longer recommended due to high rates of hepatotoxicity.
Rifampicin should be taken on an empty stomach with a glass of water. It is generally taken either at least one hour before meals or two hours after meals.
Rifampicin is also used to treat nontuberculous mycobacterial infections including leprosy (Hansen's disease) and Mycobacterium kansasii.
With multidrug therapy used as the standard treatment of Hansen's disease, rifampicin is always used in combination with dapsone and clofazimine to avoid causing drug resistance.
It is also used in the treatment of Mycobacterium ulcerans infections as associated with Buruli ulcer, usually in combination with clarithromycin or other antibiotics.
Other bacteria and protozoans
In 2008, tentative evidence showed rifampicin may be useful in the treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in combination with other antibiotics, including in difficult-to-treat infections such as osteomyelitis and prosthetic joint infections. As of 2012, if rifampicin combination therapy was useful for pyogenic vertebral osteomyelitis was unclear. A meta-analysis concluded that adding adjunctive rifampicin to a β-lactam or vancomycin may improve outcomes in staphylococcus aureus bacteremia. However, a more recent trial found no benefit from adjunctive rifampicin.
It is also used as preventive treatment against Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcal) infections. Rifampicin is also recommended as an alternative treatment for infections by the tick-borne pathogens Borrelia burgdorferi and Anaplasma phagocytophilum when treatment with doxycycline is contraindicated, such as in pregnant women or in patients with a history of allergy to tetracycline antibiotics.
It is also sometimes used to treat infections by Listeria species, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Legionella pneumophila. For these nonstandard indications, antimicrobial susceptibility testing should be done (if possible) before starting rifampicin therapy.
The Enterobacteriaceae, Acinetobacter species, and Pseudomonas species are intrinsically resistant to rifampicin.
It has been used with amphotericin B in largely unsuccessful attempts to treat primary amoebic meningoencephalitis caused by Naegleria fowleri.
Rifampicin can be used as monotherapy for a few days as prophylaxis against meningitis, but resistance develops quickly during long-term treatment of active infections, so the drug is always used against active infections in combination with other antibiotics.
Rifampicin is relatively ineffective against spirochetes, which has led to its use as a selective agent capable of isolating them in materials being cultured in laboratories.
Viruses
Rifampicin has some effectiveness against vaccinia virus.
Pathogen susceptibility
The minimum inhibitory concentrations of rifampicin for several medically significant pathogens are:
Mycobacterium tuberculosis — 0.002 – 64 μg/mL
Mycobacterium bovis — 0.125 μg/mL
Staphylococcus aureus (methicillin resistant) — ≤ 0.006–256 μg/mL
Chlamydia pneumoniae — 0.005 μg/mL
Primary biliary cholangitis
Rifampicin is used to treat itchiness caused by primary biliary cholangitis. The treatment-related adverse effects include hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, hemolysis, and interactions with other drugs. For those reasons as well as some ethical concerns regarding off-label use of antibiotics, rifampin as a very effective preventive antibiotic for meningitis, is not considered appropriate for itchiness.
Hidradenitis suppurativa
Rifampicin with clindamycin has been used to treat the skin disease hidradenitis suppurativa.
Adverse effects
The most serious adverse effect is hepatotoxicity, and people receiving it often undergo baseline and frequent liver function tests to detect early liver damage.
The more common side effects include fever, gastrointestinal disturbances, rashes, and immunological reactions. Taking rifampicin usually causes certain bodily fluids, such as urine, sweat, and tears, to become orange-red in color, a benign side effect that nonetheless can be frightening if it is not expected. This may also be used to monitor effective absorption of the drug (if drug color is not seen in the urine, the patient may wish to move the drug dose farther in time from food or milk intake). The discolorization of sweat and tears is not directly noticeable, but sweat may stain light clothing orange, and tears may permanently stain soft contact lenses. Since rifampicin may be excreted in breast milk, breastfeeding should be avoided while it is being taken.
Other adverse effects include:
Liver toxicity—hepatitis, liver failure in severe cases
Respiratory—breathlessness
Cutaneous—flushing, pruritus, rash, hyperpigmentation, redness and watering of eyes
Abdominal — nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea
Flu-like symptoms—chills, fever, headache, arthralgia, and malaise. Rifampicin has good penetration into the brain, and this may directly explain some malaise and dysphoria in a minority of users.
Allergic reaction—rashes, itching, swelling of the tongue or throat, severe dizziness, and trouble breathing
Chemical structure
Rifampicin is a polyketide belonging to the chemical class of compounds termed ansamycins, so named because of their heterocyclic structure containing a naphthoquinone core spanned by an aliphatic ansa chain. The naphthoquinonic chromophore gives rifampicin its characteristic red-orange crystalline color.
The critical functional groups of rifampicin in its inhibitory binding of bacterial RNA polymerase are the four critical hydroxyl groups of the ansa bridge and the naphthol ring, which form hydrogen bonds with amino acid residues on the protein.
Rifampicin is the 3-(4-methyl-1-piperazinyl)-iminomethyl derivative of rifamycin SV.
Interactions
Rifampicin is the most powerful known inducer of the hepatic cytochrome P450 enzyme system, including isoenzymes CYP2B6, CYP2C8, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP3A4, CYP3A5, and CYP3A7. It increases metabolism of many drugs and as a consequence, can make them less effective, or even ineffective, by decreasing their levels. For instance, patients undergoing long-term anticoagulation therapy with warfarin have to increase their dosage of warfarin and have their clotting time checked frequently because failure to do so could lead to inadequate anticoagulation, resulting in serious consequences of thromboembolism.
Rifampicin can reduce the efficacy of birth control pills or other hormonal contraception by its induction of the cytochrome P450 system, to the extent that unintended pregnancies have occurred in women who use oral contraceptives and took rifampicin even for very short courses (for example, as prophylaxis against exposure to bacterial meningitis).
Other interactions include decreased levels and less effectiveness of antiretroviral agents, everolimus, atorvastatin, rosiglitazone, pioglitazone, celecoxib, clarithromycin, caspofungin, voriconazole, and lorazepam.
Rifampicin is antagonistic to the microbiologic effects of the antibiotics gentamicin and amikacin. The activity of rifampicin against some species of mycobacteria can be potentiated by isoniazid (through inhibiting mycolate synthesis) and ambroxol (through host directed effects in autophagy and pharmacokinetics).
Pharmacology
Mechanism of action
Rifampicin inhibits bacterial DNA-dependent RNA synthesis by inhibiting bacterial DNA-dependent RNA polymerase.
Crystal structure data and biochemical data suggest that rifampicin binds to the pocket of the RNA polymerase β subunit within the DNA/RNA channel, but away from the active site. The inhibitor prevents RNA synthesis by physically blocking elongation, and thus preventing synthesis of host bacterial proteins. By this "steric-occlusion" mechanism, rifampicin blocks synthesis of the second or third phosphodiester bond between the nucleotides in the RNA backbone, preventing elongation of the 5' end of the RNA transcript past more than 2 or 3 nucleotides.
In a recent study Rifampicin was shown to bind to cytochrome P450 reductase and alter its conformation as well as activity towards supporting metabolism of progesterone via CYP21A2.
Mechanism of resistance
Resistance to rifampicin arises from mutations that alter residues of the rifampicin binding site on RNA polymerase, resulting in decreased affinity for rifampicin. Resistance mutations map to the rpoB gene, encoding the beta subunit of RNA polymerase. The majority of resistance mutations in E. coli are in 3 clusters on rpoB. Cluster I is amino acids 509 to 533, cluster II is amino acids 563 to 572, and cluster III is amino acid 687.
When describing mutations in rpoB in other species, the corresponding amino acid number in E. coli is usually used. In Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the majority of mutations leading to rifampicin resistance are in cluster I, in a 81bp hotspot core region called RRDR for "rifampcin resistance determining region". A change in amino acid 531 from serine to leucine arising from a change in the DNA sequence of TCG to TTG is the most common mutation. Tuberculosis resistance has also occurred due to mutations in the N-terminal region of rpoB and cluster III.
An alternative mechanism of resistance is through Arr-catalyzed ADP-ribosylation of rifampicin. With the assistance of the enzyme Arr produced by the pathogen Mycobacterium smegmatis, ADP-ribose is added to rifampicin at one of its ansa chain hydroxy groups, thereby inactivating the drug.
Resistance in tuberculosis
Mycobacterial resistance to rifampicin may occur alone or along with resistance to other first-line antitubercular drugs. Early detection of such multidrug or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis is critical in improving patient outcomes by instituting appropriate second-line treatments, and in decreasing transmission of drug-resistant TB. Traditional methods of detecting resistance involve mycobacterial culture and drug susceptibility testing, results of which could take up to 6 weeks. Xpert MTB/RIF assay is an automated test that can detect rifampicin resistance, and also diagnose tuberculosis. A Cochrane review updated in 2014 and 2021 concluded that for rifampicin resistance detection, Xpert MTB/RIF was accurate, that is (95%) sensitive and (98%) specific.
Pharmacokinetics
Orally administered rifampicin results in peak plasma concentrations in about 2–4 hours. 4-Aminosalicylic acid (another antituberculosis drug) significantly reduces absorption of rifampicin, and peak concentrations may be lower. If these two drugs must be used concurrently, they must be given separately, with an interval of 8 to 12 hours between administrations.
Rifampicin is easily absorbed from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract; its ester functional group is quickly hydrolyzed in bile, and it is catalyzed by a high pH and substrate-specific esterases. After about 6 hours, almost all of the drug is deacetylated. Even in this deacetylated form, rifampicin is still a potent antibiotic; however, it can no longer be reabsorbed by the intestines and is eliminated from the body. Only about 7% of the administered drug is excreted unchanged in urine, though urinary elimination accounts for only about 30% of the drug excretion. About 60% to 65% is excreted through feces.
The half-life of rifampicin ranges from 1.5 to 5.0 hours, though hepatic impairment significantly increases it. Food consumption inhibits its absorption from the GI tract, and the drug is more quickly eliminated. When rifampicin is taken with a meal, its peak blood concentration falls by 36%. Antacids do not affect its absorption. The decrease in rifampicin absorption with food is sometimes enough to noticeably affect urine color, which can be used as a marker for whether or not a dose of the drug has been effectively absorbed.
Distribution of the drug is high throughout the body, and reaches effective concentrations in many organs and body fluids, including the cerebrospinal fluid. Since the substance itself is red, this high distribution is the reason for the orange-red color of the saliva, tears, sweat, urine, and feces. About 60% to 90% of the drug is bound to plasma proteins.
Use in biotechnology
Rifampicin inhibits bacterial RNA polymerase, and is commonly used to inhibit the synthesis of host bacterial proteins during recombinant protein expression in bacteria. RNA encoding for the recombinant gene is usually transcribed from DNA by a viral T7 RNA polymerase, which is not affected by rifampicin.
History
In 1957, a soil sample from a pine forest on the French Riviera was brought for analysis to the Lepetit Pharmaceuticals research lab in Milan, Italy. There, a research group headed by Piero Sensi and Maria Teresa Timbal discovered a new bacterium. This new species produced a new class of molecules with antibiotic activity. Because Sensi, Timbal and the researchers were particularly fond of the French crime story Rififi (about a jewel heist and rival gangs), they decided to call these compounds rifamycins. After two years of attempts to obtain more stable semisynthetic products, a new molecule with high efficacy and good tolerability was produced in 1965 and was named rifampicin.
Rifampicin was first sold in Italy in 1968 and was approved by the FDA in 1971.
Society and culture
Cancer-causing impurities
In August 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) became aware of nitrosamine impurities in certain samples of rifampin. The FDA and manufacturers are investigating the origin of these impurities in rifampin, and the agency is developing testing methods for regulators and industry to detect the 1-methyl-4-nitrosopiperazine (MNP). MNP belongs to the nitrosamine class of compounds, some of which are classified as probable or possible human carcinogens (substances that could cause cancer), based on laboratory tests such as rodent carcinogenicity studies. Although there are no data available to directly evaluate the carcinogenic potential of MNP, information available on closely related nitrosamine compounds was used to calculate lifetime exposure limits for MNP.
As of January 2021, the FDA continues to investigate the presence of 1-methyl-4-nitrosopiperazine (MNP) in rifampin or 1-cyclopentyl-4-nitrosopiperazine (CPNP) in rifapentine approved for sale in the US.
Names
Rifampicin is the INN and BAN, while rifampin is the USAN. Rifampicin may be abbreviated R, RMP, RA, RF, or RIF (US).
Rifampicin is also known as rifaldazine, rofact, and rifampin in the United States, also as rifamycin SV.
Its chemical name is 5,6,9,17,19,21-hexahydroxy-23-methoxy-2,4,12,16,18,20,22-heptamethyl-8-[N-(4-methyl-1-piperazinyl)formimidoyl]-2,7-(epoxypentadeca[1,11,13]trienimino)-naphtho[2,1-b]furan-1,11(2H)-dione 21-acetate.
Rifampicin is available under many brand names worldwide.
References
External links
"Nitrosamine impurities in medications: Guidance". Health Canada. 4 April 2022. |
Jordan_Luck | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Luck | [
306
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Luck"
] | Jordan William Hunter Luck (born 15 October 1961) is the former lead singer and songwriter of the New Zealand rock band the Exponents. He was born in Vanderhoof in the province of British Columbia, Canada. His family moved to Tokarahi (near Oamaru) and later moved to Geraldine where he grew up. He attended University of Canterbury and College House. He is now in a band called The Jordan Luck Band.
At the 2007 APRA Silver Scroll Awards on 18 September, Luck was named as the first inductee to the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame. He was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music in the 2012 Queen's Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours.
In 2019, Luck would cover Al Park's "I Walked Away" for the covers collection Better Already - The Songs Of Al Park. Park, a singer-songwriter sometimes credited as the father figure for the 'Lyttelton Sound' and the first guy to bring punk music to Otautahi, had featured in the video for "Victoria", a top ten hit in 1982 for Luck and his band The Dance Exponents.
Also in 2019, Luck would tour New Zealand with The Jordan Luck Band, starting off at Peach & Porker in Te Awamutu on 23 February 2019 and ending the tour in Christchurch on 22 June 2019.
Discography
Singles
See also
The Exponents
Awards
Aotearoa Music Awards
The Aotearoa Music Awards (previously known as New Zealand Music Awards (NZMA)) are an annual awards night celebrating excellence in New Zealand music and have been presented annually since 1965.
References
Jordan Luck bio on Luck Website
External links
Jordan Luck at IMDb |
The_Exponents | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exponents | [
306
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exponents"
] | The Exponents, formerly The Dance Exponents, is a New Zealand rock group led by vocalist and songwriter Jordan Luck.
Their major hits are "Victoria", "Why Does Love Do This To Me", "Who Loves Who The Most" and, "I'll Say Goodbye (Even Though I'm Blue)".
History
1980s: Dance Exponents
The group formed in 1981 after vocalist Jordan Luck and guitarist Brian Jones disbanded their first group, Basement, and relocated from the South Canterbury town of Timaru to Christchurch with their ex-Splash Alley friend, Steve "Fingers" Cowan. Searching for a drummer in Christchurch, the trio met David Gent (bass) and Michael "Harry" Harallambi (drums) from punk band Channel 4. Cowan moved from bass to keyboards and guitar and the five piece became the Dance Exponents. Their first gig was at the Hillsborough Tavern on Luck's 20th birthday and Cowan's 22nd – 15 October 1981. A residency at Christchurch's Aranui Tavern quickly earned them a strong live reputation, and on the recommendation of Jim Wilson they were signed by Mushroom Records by Mike Chunn in 1982.
The band's debut single "Victoria", released in mid-1982 was a top ten hit and was the start of a run of successful songs by Luck. Steve Cowan left the group after the release of "Victoria" and was replaced by Martin Morris who only spent six months with the band and left before they began recording their debut album. Cowan died in 1986.
With their popularity growing nationally from extensive touring, TVNZ recorded them live at Mainstreet cabaret in Auckland. The show was simulcast on television and FM radio and the companion album released in June 1983 called Live at Mainstreet saw six songs from the Dance Exponents on one side of the album with four songs from the Legionnaires on the other side.
In December 1983 the group's debut album Prayers Be Answered was released. The album featured re-recordings of "Victoria", "Your Best Friend Loves Me Too", "Poland" and "All I Can Do" and two further singles, "Know Your Own Heart", and "I'll Say Goodbye (Even Though I'm Blue)". The album stayed in the NZ Album chart for nearly a year, selling double platinum in the process.
Chris Sheehan joined the band on guitar in late 1983 and brought a new edge to the group, best heard on his first recording with them; the Julian Mendlesohn produced single "Sex & Agriculture". In late 1984 Harry left the group and moved to Auckland where he drummed for Grey Parade. He was replaced for a short while by Christchurch drummer Steve Birss, who played only a handful of shows.
As Birss had not had time to settle with the band before they recorded their second album, Vince Ely from the Psychedelic Furs was hired by producer Ian (Fab) Taylor to drum on the album. The album was called Expectations and featured the singles "My Love For You", "Christchurch (In Cashel St. I Wait)" and the Australian only single "Greater Hopes. Greater Expectations" . It was released in New Zealand in May 1985, and shortly before that Eddie Olson joined the band on drums for the nationwide "Expectations" tour.
The band's third album Amplifier was co produced by John Jansen and Doug Rogers and released on Roger's Zulu label in 1986. Amplifier featured the single "Caroline Skies" and re-recordings of "Sex and Agriculture" and "Only I Could Die (And Love You Still)". After only a moderate response to the album, Eddie Olson left the group and the band moved to Britain in 1987 and attracted A&R interest, but did not gain a record contract. During their four-year hiatus in the UK, Luck continued to write and accumulated a number of strong songs which were demoed by the band.
1990s: The Exponents
Interest in the UK demos from PolyGram Records NZ brought the band back to New Zealand in 1990, although Sheehan remained in the UK and went on to form the Starlings. In New Zealand, Harry rejoined the group and to mark the new start of the four original members, they dropped the "Dance" from their name to become The Exponents. Their subsequent 1992 album for PolyGram Something Beginning with C, yielded the group's biggest hits of their career in "Why Does Love Do This to Me" and "Who Loves Who the Most" and the album became the band's first number 1 record in New Zealand. It is included in Nick Bollinger's book "100 Essential New Zealand Albums".
In 1992, the Exponents relocated to Sydney to record their fifth album Grassy Knoll. The album delivered the singles "Like She Said", "Don't Say Goodbye" and "House of Love". With limited promotion in New Zealand, Grassy Knoll was certified gold but failed to match the success of Something Beginning With C.
Following the release of Grassy Knoll, the band met Rockingham-raised Dave "Duck" Barraclough in Sydney in 1994 and he joined them as guitarist and songwriting partner to Luck. His first contribution to the group was his song "La La Lulu", which was backed by a song co-written with Luck called "Summer You Never Meant". "La La Lulu" returned the band to the singles charts and the two songs featured on the group's first hits compilation entitled Once Bitten, Twice Bitten – The Singles 1981–1995 which was released in 1995. The album peaked at Number 1 on the New Zealand album charts and selling 5×Platinum. In 1996, the group recorded a final, one-off single for Warner Music entitled "Do You Feel in Love".
In 1997, the Exponents signed to Sony Music and released their sixth studio album Better Never Than Late, which featured the singles "One in a Lifetime", "Close" and "Change Your Mind". Produced by Eddie Rayner and the Exponents, it reached number 3 on the album chart.
In 1999, Dave Gent took a break from the group and Steve Simpson was drafted in on bass. Shortly after, the Exponents decided to call it quits and went out on a final New Zealand tour in support of their final album Hello, Love You, Goodbye. The record featured Simpson on bass with six new tracks and 8 live tracks recorded at the Poenamo Hotel in Takapuna in 1999. Following the tour, Barraclough returned to Australia and joined Mental As Anything.
2000s: Reformation
Luck formed his own band, Luck, playing Exponents songs and new compositions with songwriting partner Bryan Bell and he continues to play in the Jordan Luck Band today.
Brian Jones returned to New Zealand in the early 2000s and began working with former Bird Nest Roys singer Little Ross Hollands in their new group the Diamond Rings which also included a rhythm section of fellow Exponents David Gent and Harry. The Diamond Rings released their debut album The Rasper in June 2009.
In 2005 the four original Exponents – Luck, Gent, Jones and Harry got together to record "Geraldine" and "Or a Girl I Knew" with producer Neil Finn for inclusion in a new Exponents hits compilation called Sex and Agriculture: The Very Best of The Exponents. The album featured one disc of the hits and a second of b-sides and rarities. They played a few shows in support of the album which went platinum and reached number 7 on the charts.
The four reunited again in 2010 to play at the "Band Together" benefit concert for the 2010 Canterbury earthquake. Their 1985 hit "Christchurch (In Cashel Street I Wait)" became the theme song for the concert and the band closed the show with a mass chorus of the song featuring all the artists who performed at the concert.
October 2011 marked the 30th anniversary of the group and on 14 November of that year, almost 30 years after the Dance Exponents first ever show in Christchurch, Jordan, Brian, Dave and Harry got together to play a one-off show at the Ferrymead Speights Alehouse, a venue very close to the Hillsborough Tavern where the band made their debut three decades earlier. To mark the occasion, Universal Music released a new best of album called Why Does Love Do This to Me: The Exponents Greatest Hits.
The group's anniversary sparked interest in the band's story from Notable Pictures, who secured funding and support from Prime Television and NZ On Air to produce a feature television documentary about the band. Production commenced in August 2012 and in addition to telling the group's story it documented their return to Neil Finn's Roundhead Studios in Auckland to record some of their earliest songs, most of which had never been recorded or released. Simply entitled The Exponents, the documentary first screened on New Zealand television on Prime on 22 May 2013.
The result of their documentary sessions at the studio was a new album Eight Days at Roundhead that featured seven new recordings, an acoustic version of Caroline Skies and two tracks the band recorded with Neil Finn in 2005. Eight Days at Roundhead was released on 10 May 2013 as a stand-alone digital album and as bonus album packaged with the Exponents Greatest Hits album.
In December 2014 the Exponents heard the news that Chris Sheehan, who had done so much to shape the group's sound in the eighties, had died in Spain after a long battle with cancer.
On 13 October 2015, Recorded Music NZ and The New Zealand Herald announced that the 2015 New Zealand Herald Legacy Award recipients would be The Exponents. The New Zealand Herald Legacy Award pays tribute to notable and celebrated Kiwi artists who have helped shape the NZ music industry. In addition to being presented with the Legacy Award at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards on 19 November 2015, The Exponents were inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame, joining Jordan Luck who was already there in recognition of his outstanding contribution to New Zealand songwriting. Along with Luck, Jones, Gent and Harry, Recorded Music New Zealand included Steve Cowan, Chris Sheehan and Dave Barraclough into the Hall of Fame induction to recognise their extensive contributions to the group.
In April 2018 Dave Barraclough died from pancreatic cancer. "There will be no funeral" Luck said. "David has just gone out to buy some strings."
In April 2023, The Exponents reunited for a 10 date sold-out tour of New Zealand.
Discography
Albums
Live albums
Compilation albums
Singles
Videos
Awards and nominations
Aotearoa Music Awards
The Aotearoa Music Awards (previously known as New Zealand Music Awards (NZMA)) are an annual awards night celebrating excellence in New Zealand music and have been presented annually since 1965.
APRA Awards
In 2001, to celebrate 75 years of its existence, APRA invited its members and an academy to vote on what they believe are to be New Zealand's top songs of all time.
The Exponents had several songs appearing in the top 100:
#8 – "Victoria"
#47 – "Why Does Love Do This To Me"
#89 – "I'll Say Goodbye"
External links
The Exponents Official Website
AudioCulture profile
Notable Pictures' Exponents Documentary Facebook Page
== Notes == |
Amplifier_(Dance_Exponents_album) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplifier_(Dance_Exponents_album) | [
306
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplifier_(Dance_Exponents_album)#Track_listing"
] | Amplifier is the third studio album by the New Zealand band Dance Exponents (later known as The Exponents), released in November 1986. The album peaked at #18 and spent four weeks on the New Zealand Album Chart. The CD version was released in 1992 with an alternative cover and two additional tracks but has since been deleted. In May 2013, Universal Music re-released the album digitally for the first time in New Zealand in a remastered extended edition. The extended edition has the original LP cover and running order and adds three additional tracks, two from the CD release and one additional B-side. It also restores "Worldwide Wireless" to its full length after it was edited for the CD release.
Track listing
"Time X Space" (Sheehan/Dance Exponents)
"Only I Could Die (And Love You Still)" (Luck/Sheehan)
"Sex And Agriculture" (Jones/Luck)
"Halcyon Rain" (Cowan/Luck)
"Brodelia The Cat" (Luck)
"Birth Of The Reds" (Luck/Sheehan)
"As I Love You" (Jones/Luck/Sheehan)
"Worldwide Wireless" (Fitzgerald/Gent/Jones/Luck/Sheehan)
"Caroline Skies" (Luck/Dance Exponents)
Additional tracks on 2013 digital extended edition:
"Victoria" (Luck)
"Brand New Doll" (Luck)
"One Sad River" (Luck)
Band members
Jordan Luck (vocals)
Brian Jones (guitar/vocals)
David Gent (bass guitar)
Chris Sheehan (guitars)
Eddie Olson (drums/vocals)
Credits
Co-produced by John Jansen and Doug Rogers
Recorded and mixed by Doug Rogers, Rhys Moody and John Jansen
Assistant engineer - Nelson Ayres
Recorded at Harlequin Studios, Auckland, New Zealand
Mixed at The House Of Music, New York
Charts
== References == |
100_metres | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_metres | [
307
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_metres"
] | The 100 metres, or 100-meter dash, is a sprint race in track and field competitions. The shortest common outdoor running distance, the 100-meter (109.36 yd) dash is one of the most popular and prestigious events in the sport of athletics. It has been contested at the Summer Olympics since 1896 for men and since 1928 for women. The inaugural World Championships were in 1983.
On an outdoor 400-metre running track, the 100 m is held on the home straight, with the start usually being set on an extension to make it a straight-line race. There are three instructions given to the runners immediately before and at the beginning of the race: "on your marks", "set", and the firing of the starter's pistol. The runners move to the starting blocks when they hear the 'on your marks' instruction. The following instruction, to adopt the 'set' position, allows them to adopt a more efficient starting posture and isometrically preload their muscles: this will help them to start faster. A race-official then fires the starter's pistol to signal the race beginning and the sprinters stride forwards from the blocks. Sprinters typically reach top speed after somewhere between 50 and 60 m. Their speed then slows towards the finish line.
The 10-second barrier has historically been a barometer of fast men's performances, while the best female sprinters take eleven seconds or less to complete the race. The men's world record is 9.58 seconds, set by Jamaica's Usain Bolt in 2009, while the women's world record is 10.49 seconds, set by American Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988.
The unofficial "world's fastest man" title typically goes to the Olympic 100 metre champion.
The 200 metre time almost always yields a "faster" average speed than a 100-metre race time, since the initial slow speed at the start is spread out over the longer distance. The current men's Olympic and world champion is Noah Lyles, while the current women's Olympic champion is Julien Alfred, and the world champion is Sha'Carri Richardson.
Race dynamics
Start
At the start, some athletes play psychological games such as trying to be last to the starting blocks.
At high level meets, the time between the gun and first kick against the starting block is measured electronically, via sensors built in the gun and the blocks. A reaction time less than 0.100 s is considered a false start. This time interval accounts for the sum of the time it takes for the sound of the starter's pistol to reach the runners' ears, and the time they take to react to it.
For many years a sprinter was disqualified if responsible for two false starts individually. However, this rule allowed some major races to be restarted so many times that the sprinters started to lose focus. The next iteration of the rule, introduced in February 2003, meant that one false start was allowed among the field, but anyone responsible for a subsequent false start was disqualified.
This rule led to some sprinters deliberately false-starting to gain a psychological advantage: an individual with a slower reaction time might false-start, forcing the faster starters to wait and be sure of hearing the gun for the subsequent start, thereby losing some of their advantage. To avoid such abuse and to improve spectator enjoyment, the IAAF implemented a further change in the 2010 season – a false starting athlete now receives immediate disqualification. This proposal was met with objections when first raised in 2005, on the grounds that it would not leave any room for innocent mistakes. Justin Gatlin commented, "Just a flinch or a leg cramp could cost you a year's worth of work." The rule had a dramatic impact at the 2011 World Championships, when current world record holder Usain Bolt was disqualified.
Mid-race
Runners usually reach their top speed just past the halfway point of the race and progressively decelerate to the finish. Maintaining that top speed for as long as possible is a primary focus of training for the 100 m. Pacing and running tactics do not play a significant role in the 100 m, as success in the event depends more on pure athletic qualities and technique.
Finish
The winner, by IAAF Competition Rules, is determined by the first athlete with their torso (not including limbs, head, or neck) over the nearer edge of the finish line. There is therefore no requirement for the entire body to cross the finish line. When the placing of the athletes is not obvious, a photo finish is used to distinguish which runner was first to cross the line.
Climatic conditions
Climatic conditions, in particular air resistance, can affect performances in the 100 m. A strong head wind is very detrimental to performance, while a tail wind can improve performances significantly. For this reason, a maximum tail wind of 2.0 metres per second (4.5 mph) is allowed for a 100 m performance to be considered eligible for records, or "wind legal".
Furthermore, sprint athletes perform a better run at high altitudes because of the thinner air, which provides less air resistance. In theory, the thinner air would also make breathing slightly more difficult (due to the partial pressure of oxygen being lower), but this difference is negligible for sprint distances where all the oxygen needed for the short dash is already in the muscles and bloodstream when the race starts. While there are no limitations on altitude, performances made at altitudes greater than 1000 m above sea level are marked with an "A".
10-second and 11-second barriers
The 10-second mark had been widely considered a barrier for the 100 metres in men's sprinting. The first man to break the 10 second barrier with automatic timing was Jim Hines at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Since then, over 190 sprinters have run faster than 10 seconds. Similarly, 11 seconds is considered the standard for female athletes. The first woman to go under 11 seconds was Marlies Göhr in 1977.
Record performances
Major 100 m races, such as at the Olympic Games, attract much attention, particularly when the world record is thought to be within reach.
The men's world record has been improved upon twelve times since electronic timing became mandatory in 1977. The current men's world record of 9.58 s is held by Usain Bolt of Jamaica, set at the 2009 World Athletics Championships final in Berlin, Germany on 16 August 2009, breaking his own previous world record by 0.11 s. The current women's world record of 10.49 s was set by Florence Griffith-Joyner of the US, at the 1988 United States Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, Indiana, on 16 July 1988 breaking Evelyn Ashford's four-year-old world record by 0.27 seconds. The extraordinary nature of this result and those of several other sprinters in this race raised the possibility of a technical malfunction with the wind gauge which read at 0.0 m/s – a reading which was at complete odds to the windy conditions on the day with high wind speeds being recorded in all other sprints before and after this race as well as the parallel long jump runway at the time of the Griffith-Joyner performance. The next best wind legal performance is Elaine Thompson-Herah's 10.54 second clocking in 2021 at the Prefontaine Classic. Griffith-Joyner's next best legal performance of 10.61 from 1988, would have her third on the all-time list behind Thompson-Herah and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (10.60).
Some records have been marred by prohibited drug use – in particular, the scandal at the 1988 Summer Olympics when the winner, Canadian Ben Johnson was stripped of his medal and world record.
Jim Hines, Ronnie Ray Smith and Charles Greene were the first to break the 10-second barrier in the 100 m, all on 20 June 1968, the Night of Speed. Hines also recorded the first legal electronically timed sub-10 second 100 m in winning the 100 metres at the 1968 Olympics. Bob Hayes ran a wind-assisted 9.91 seconds at the 1964 Olympics.
Continental records
Updated 29 July 2023
Notes
All-time top 25 men
As of August 2024
Assisted marks
Any performance with a following wind of more than 2.0 metres per second is not counted for record purposes. Below is a list of wind-assisted times (equal or superior to 9.80). Only times that are superior to legal bests are shown:
Tyson Gay (USA) ran 9.68 (+4.1 m/s) during the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon on 29 June 2008.
Obadele Thompson (BAR) ran 9.69 (+5.7 m/s) at high altitude in El Paso, Texas on 13 April 1996.
Andre De Grasse (CAN) ran 9.69 (+4.8 m/s) during the Diamond League in Stockholm on 18 June 2017, 9.74 (+2.9 m/s) during the Diamond League in Eugene, Oregon on 21 August 2021, and 9.75 (+2.7 m/s) during the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon on 12 June 2015.
Richard Thompson (TTO) ran 9.74 (+5.0 m/s) in Clermont, Florida on 31 May 2014.
Darvis Patton (USA) ran 9.75 (+4.3 m/s) in Austin, Texas on 30 March 2013.
Trayvon Bromell (USA) ran 9.75 (+2.1 m/s) in Jacksonville, Florida on 30 April 2022 and 9.76 (+3.7 m/s) in Eugene, Oregon on 26 June 2015.
Churandy Martina (AHO) ran 9.76 (+6.1 m/s) at high altitude in El Paso, Texas on 13 May 2006.
Carl Lewis (USA) ran 9.78 (+5.2 m/s) during the U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, Indiana on 16 July 1988 and 9.80 (+4.3 m/s) during the World Championships in Tokyo on 24 August 1991.
Maurice Greene (USA) ran 9.78 (+3.7 m/s) in Eugene, Oregon on 31 May 2004.
Ronnie Baker (USA) ran 9.78 (+2.4 m/s) during the Diamond League in Eugene, Oregon on 26 May 2018.
Andre Cason (USA) ran 9.79 (+5.3 m/s) and (+4.5 m/s) in Eugene, Oregon on 16 June 1993.
Favour Ashe (NGR) ran 9.79 (+3.0 m/s) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on 30 April 2022.
Walter Dix (USA) ran 9.80 (+4.1 m/s) during the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon on 29 June 2008.
Mike Rodgers (USA) ran 9.80 (+2.7 m/s) in Eugene, Oregon on 31 May 2014 and 9.80 (+2.4 m/s) in Sacramento, California on 27 June 2014.
Terrance Laird (USA) ran 9.80 (+3.2 m/s) in College Station, Texas on 15 May 2021.
Marvin Bracy (USA) ran 9.80 (+2.9 m/s) in Montverde, Florida on 4 June 2022.
Annulled marks
Tim Montgomery ran 9.78 (+2.0 m/s) in Paris on 14 September 2002, which was at the time ratified as a world record. However, the record was rescinded in December 2005 following his indictment in the BALCO scandal on drug use and drug trafficking charges. The time had stood as the world record until Asafa Powell first ran 9.77.
Ben Johnson ran 9.79 (+1.1 m/s) at the Olympics in Seoul on 24 September 1988, but he was disqualified after he tested positive for stanozolol after the race. He subsequently admitted to drug use between 1981 and 1988, and his time of 9.83 (+1.0 m/s) at the World Championships in Rome on 30 August 1987 was rescinded.
All-time top 25 women
As of August 2024
Assisted marks
Any performance with a following wind of more than 2.0 metres per second is not counted for record purposes. Below is a list of wind-assisted times (equal or superior to 10.75). Only times that are superior to legal bests are shown:
Sha'Carri Richardson ran 10.57 (+4.1 m/s) in Miramar, Florida on 8 April 2023.
Brittany Brown (USA) ran 10.66 (+3.2 m/s) during the Michael Johnson Invitational in Waco, Texas on 24 April 2022.
Melissa Jefferson (USA) ran 10.69 (+2.9 m/s) during the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon on 24 June 2022.
Tori Bowie (USA) ran 10.72 (+3.2 m/s) during the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon on 26 June 2015 and 10.74 (+3.1 m/s) during the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon on 3 July 2016.
Tawanna Meadows (USA) ran 10.72 (+4.5 m/s) in Lubbock, Texas on 6 May 2017.
Blessing Okagbare (NGR) ran 10.72 (+2.7 m/s) in Austin, Texas on 31 March 2018 and 10.75 (+2.2 m/s) in Eugene, Oregon on 1 June 2013.
Aleia Hobbs (USA) ran 10.72 (+2.9 m/s) during the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon on 24 June 2022.
Cambrea Sturgis ran 10.74 (+2.2 m/s) in Eugene, Oregon on 12 June 2021.
Twanisha Terry (USA) ran 10.74 (+2.9 m/s) during the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon on 24 June 2022.
Jenna Prandini (USA) ran 10.75 (+4.3 m/s) in Montverde, Florida on 4 June 2022.
Annulled assisted marks
Sha'Carri Richardson ran 10.64 (+2.6 m/s) at the US Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon on 19 June 2021, but her result was later nullified due to a positive test for cannabis.
Season's bests
Top 25 junior (under-20) men
Updated July 2024
Notes
Top 25 junior (under-20) women
Updated January 2024
Notes
Top 25 Youth (under-18) boys
Updated June 2023
Notes
Below is a list of all other legal times equal or superior to 10.20:
Puripol Boonson also ran 10.09 (2022), 10.12 (2022), 10.20 (2022).
Top 20 Youth (under-18) girls
Updated March 2024
Notes
Briana Williams ran 10.94 s at the Jamaican Championships on 21 June 2019, which would have been a world under-18 best time. However, she tested positive for the banned diuretic hydrochlorothiazide during the competition. She was determined to be not at fault and received no period of ineligibility to compete, but her results from the Jamaican Championships were nullified.
Below is a list of all other legal times equal or superior to 11.24:
Briana Williams also ran 11.10 (2019), 11.11 (2019), 11.13 (2018), 11.21 (2018).
Adaejah Hodge also ran 11.12 (2023).
Tamari Davis also ran 11.15 (2020).
Tina Clayton also ran 11.17.
Kevona Davis also ran 11.24 (2017).
100 metres per age category
The best performances by 5- to 19-year-old athletes are also recorded by Dominique Eisold, exclusively considering performances from 60 countries.
Para world records men
Updated August 2024
Para world records women
Updated September 2024
Olympic medalists
Men
Women
World Championships medalists
Men
Medalists by country
Women
Medalists by country
See also
100-yard dash
National records in the 100 metres
List of 100 metres national champions (men)
List of 100 metres national champions (women)
Men's 100 metres world record progression
Women's 100 metres world record progression
2018 in 100 metres
2019 in 100 metres
2020 in 100 metres
Notes
References
External links
Media related to 100 metres at Wikimedia Commons
IAAF list of 100-metres records in XML
All-time men's 100 m list
All-time women's 100 m list
Olympics 100 m – Men
Olympics 100 m – Women |
Jim_Hines | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hines | [
307
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hines"
] | James Ray Hines (September 10, 1946 – June 3, 2023) was an American track and field athlete and National Football League (NFL) player, who held the 100-meter world record for 15 years. In 1968, he became the first man to officially break the 10-second barrier in the 100 meters, and won individual and relay gold at the Mexico City Olympics.
Track career
Born in Dumas, Arkansas, Hines was raised in Oakland, California, and graduated from McClymonds High School in 1964. He was a baseball player in his younger years until he was spotted by track coach Jim Coleman as a running talent, and Hines became a sprinter. At the 1968 U.S. national championships in Sacramento, California, Hines became the first man to break the ten second barrier in the 100-metre race, setting 9.9 (manual timing), with an electronic time of 10.03 – two other athletes, Ronnie Ray Smith behind him (electronic time 10.13) and Charles Greene on the other semi-final (electronic time 10.09) having the same official clocking. That evening of June 20, 1968, at Hughes Stadium has been dubbed by track and field historians as the "Night of Speed". Hines attended Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. He was a member of the Texas Southern University Tigers track team.
A few months later, at the 1968 Summer Olympics, Hines – a black athlete – found himself in a tense situation, with racial riots going on in his home country and a threat of a boycott by the black athletes of the U.S. team, who were disturbed by the controversial idea of admitting apartheid South Africa to the Games and revelations linking the head of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, to a racist and antisemitic country club. Hines reached the 100 m final, and won it with the time 9.89 appearing on the screen, later corrected to 9.95. The 9.89 was taken from a light beam across the finish line, while the official photographic process used Polaroid film and took a couple of minutes to process and read. There was some controversy over how his (slower appearing) automatic time of 9.95 should compare to the hand timed 9.9 world record (Hines was again recorded at 9.9 in his 9.95 race). Automatic times start instantly with the sound of the gun, while hand times include human reaction time to start the watch. It took until 1977 before fully automatic timing was required of world records. As the fastest electronic time to that point, Hines' mark was recognized exclusively as a new world record. The race was also significant for being the third all-black podium in Olympic history. Hines helped break another world record, when he and his teammates sprinted to the 4 × 100 m relay gold at the same Games.
Professional football career
Hines was drafted by the Miami Dolphins of the NFL in the sixth round of the 1968 NFL/AFL draft. Hines spent the 1968 season on the Dolphins' practice squad. He was given the nickname "Oops". He appeared in ten games with Miami in 1969, accumulating a total of 52 all-purpose yards. Hines' final professional game was his first and only game with the Kansas City Chiefs in 1970. Hines was ranked as the 10th-worst NFL player of all time by Deadspin writer Jeff Pearlman.
Later years
For years Hines worked with inner-city youth in Houston, as well as on oil rigs outside the city.
Hines's world record remained unsurpassed until Calvin Smith ran a time of 9.93 in 1983.
Hines competed in the 100 at a 1984 Masters Track and Field Competition at UCLA.
Hines was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, class of 1994. Hines was also inducted into the Texas Track and Field coaches Hall of Fame, class of 2016.
Hines died in Hayward, California, on June 3, 2023, at the age of 76.
References
External links
Official Website
Jim Hines at World Athletics
Jim Hines wins the 1968 Olympics men's 100 meters final in 9.95 seconds via the Olympic Channel on YouTube |
Wu-Tang_Clan | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu-Tang_Clan | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu-Tang_Clan"
] | Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop musical collective formed in Staten Island, New York City, in 1992. Its members include RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and, until his death in 2004, Ol' Dirty Bastard. Close affiliate Cappadonna later became an official member. They are credited for revitalizing East Coast hip hop and are considered one of the greatest hip hop groups of all time.
After signing to Steve Rifkind's label Loud Records in 1992, Wu-Tang Clan released their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in 1993; initially receiving positive reviews, it has since garnered widespread critical acclaim and is widely considered to be one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. Members of the group released solo albums between 1994 and 1996. In 1997, the group released their second album, Wu-Tang Forever. It debuted atop the Billboard 200 and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards. The group later released the albums The W (2000), Iron Flag (2001), 8 Diagrams (2007), and A Better Tomorrow (2014), to less popularity. The only copy of their seventh album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (2015), was purchased for $2 million by former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli.
Wu-Tang Clan has introduced and launched the careers of a number of affiliated artists and groups, collectively known as the Wu-Tang Killa Bees.
History
Founding
In the late 1980s, cousins Robert Diggs, Gary Grice, and Russell Jones formed a group named Force of the Imperial Master, also known as the All in Together Now Crew. Each member recorded under an alias: Diggs as Prince Rakeem or The Scientist, Grice as The Genius, and Jones as The Specialist. The group never signed to a major label, but caught the attention of the New York City rap scene and was recognized by rapper Biz Markie. By 1991, The Genius and Prince Rakeem were signed to separate record labels. The Genius released Words from the Genius (1991) on Cold Chillin' Records and Prince Rakeem released Ooh I Love You Rakeem (1991) on Tommy Boy Records. Both were soon dropped by their labels. They then adopted new monikers; The Genius became GZA (pronounced "jizza"), and Prince Rakeem became RZA (pronounced "rizza"). The Specialist also took on a new name and became known as Ol' Dirty Bastard.
RZA began collaborating with Dennis Coles, later known as Ghostface Killah, another rapper from the Stapleton Houses in Staten Island. The duo decided to create a hip hop group whose ethos would be a blend of "Eastern philosophy picked up from kung fu movies, Five-Percent Nation teachings picked up on the New York streets, and comic books". Wu-Tang Clan assembled in late 1992, with RZA as the de facto leader and the group's producer. RZA and Ol' Dirty Bastard adopted the name for the group after the film Shaolin and Wu Tang. The group developed backronyms for the name (as hip hop pioneers such as KRS-One and Big Daddy Kane did with their names), including "We Usually Take All Niggas' Garments", "Witty Unpredictable Talent And Natural Game", and "Wisdom of the Universe, and the Truth of Allah for the Nation of the Gods".
1992–96: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and solo albums
Wu-Tang Clan became known in 1993 following the release of the independent single "Protect Ya Neck", which helped gain the group a sizable underground following. Though there was some difficulty in finding a record label that would sign the Wu-Tang Clan while still allowing each member to record solo albums with other labels, Loud/RCA finally agreed, releasing their debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), in November 1993. The album loosely adopted a Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang theme, dividing the album into Shaolin and Wu-Tang sections. The album received critical acclaim, and to date is regarded as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. The success of their debut album established the group as a creative and influential force in the 1990s, allowing individual members to negotiate solo contracts. RZA spoke on the Wu-Tang Clan's unorthodox business model:
We reinvented the way hip hop was structured, and what I mean is, you have a group signed to a label, yet the infrastructure of our deal was like anyone else's [...] We still could negotiate with any label we wanted, like Meth went with Def Jam, Rae stayed with Loud, Ghost went with Sony, GZA went with Geffen Records, feel me? [...] And all these labels still put "Razor Sharp Records" on the credits [...] Wu Tang was a financial movement. So what do you wanna diversify...? [...] Your assets?
In 1994, RZA founded the group Gravediggaz with Prince Paul, Frukwan (both of Stetsasonic) and Poetic. In August of the same year, the group released 6 Feet Deep, which became one of the best known works to emerge from the horrorcore subgenre.
RZA held the role of primary producer for the first wave of the group members' solo albums, producing out of his basement studio in Staten Island. In November 1994, Method Man's debut album, Tical, was released. RZA's hands-on approach to Tical extended beyond his merely creating the beats to devising song concepts and structures. The track "All I Need" from Tical was the winner of the "Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group" at the 1995 Grammy Awards. Ol' Dirty Bastard's debut album, Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, was released in March 1995, and is considered a hip hop classic. Raekwon's debut studio album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., was released in August 1995. It featured all but one member of the Wu-Tang Clan, and featured the debut of Cappadonna, who later joined the group. The album is also credited with reviving the mafioso rap subgenre. GZA's debut album, Liquid Swords, was released in November 1995. Liquid Swords features guest appearances from every Wu-Tang Clan member, and is linked together by excerpts from the 1980 movie Shogun Assassin. Ghostface Killah released his first solo album, Ironman, in October 1996. Ironman was critically acclaimed and is widely considered to be one of the best of Wu-Tang solo albums.
1997–2000: Wu-Tang Forever, diversification and second string of solo albums
Wu-Tang Clan re-assembled and released their second studio album, Wu-Tang Forever, in June 1997; it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The album's lead single, "Triumph", is over five minutes long, features nine verses (one from each member plus Cappadonna and excluding Ol' Dirty Bastard who appeared on the intro and bridge), and no hook or a repeated phrase. The album was produced by RZA and his protégés True Master and 4th Disciple. The group's lyrics differed significantly from those of 36 Chambers, with many verses written in a dense stream of consciousness form heavily influenced by the teachings of the Five-Percent Nation. Wu-Tang Forever was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards, losing to Puff Daddy; Ol' Dirty Bastard infamously protested the loss by interrupting Shawn Colvin's acceptance speech for Song of the Year.
Killah Priest, a close associate of the group, released Heavy Mental in March 1998. That same month, Cappadonna released his debut album The Pillage. Affiliated groups Sunz of Man and Killarmy also released well-received albums, followed by Wu-Tang Killa Bees: The Swarm—a compilation album released in 1998, showcasing these and more Wu-affiliated artists, and including new solo tracks from the group members themselves. The Swarm sold well and was certified gold. There was also a long line of releases from secondary affiliates such as Popa Wu, Shyheim, GP Wu, and Wu-Syndicate. Second albums from Gravediggaz and Killarmy, as well as a greatest hits album and a b-sides compilation, were also released.
The second round of solo albums from Wu-Tang Clan members included second albums from the five members who had already released albums, as well as debuts from all the remaining members, with the exception of Masta Killa. In the space of two years, RZA's Bobby Digital In Stereo, Method Man's Tical 2000: Judgement Day and Blackout! (with Redman), GZA's Beneath the Surface, Ol' Dirty Bastard's Nigga Please, U-God's Golden Arms Redemption, Raekwon's Immobilarity, Ghostface Killah's Supreme Clientele and Inspectah Deck's Uncontrolled Substance were all released (seven of them being released in the space of seven months between June 1999 and January 2000). RZA also composed the score for the film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, directed by Jim Jarmusch, while he and other Wu-Tang members contributed music to a companion "music inspired by the film" album.
The frequent release of Wu-Tang Clan content between 1997 and 2000 was considered by some critics to have resulted in an oversaturation that was responsible for the group's decline in popularity.
2000–01: The W and Iron Flag
The group reconvened again for their third album, The W. Despite his incarceration in California for violating the terms of his probation, Ol' Dirty Bastard was on the song "Conditioner", featuring Snoop Dogg. Ol' Dirty Bastard's vocals were recorded via prison telephones.The W was released in November 2000, and was mostly well received by critics, and included the single "Gravel Pit". The album reached platinum status.
In 2001, Wu-Tang Clan released their fourth album, Iron Flag. While originally featured on the cover of Iron Flag, Cappadonna was airbrushed out of the artwork and absent from the album entirely. This may be related to tension that arose within the group when it was revealed that Cappadonna's manager was, or had been, a police informant, a revelation that also brought on the manager's subsequent firing. Cappadonna continued collaborating and touring with the group in the following years.
2004: Issues and resurgence
In early 2004, U-God allegedly left the group. A DVD titled Rise of a Fallen Soldier was released detailing his problems, which were mostly with his treatment by RZA, who he claimed had hindered his success as a solo artist. U-God formed a group of young protegés called the Hillside Scramblers with whom he released the album U-Godzilla Presents the Hillside Scramblers in March 2004. The dispute culminated in a heated phone conversation between RZA and U-God on live radio, which ultimately saw the two reconcile. He has since returned to the group.
In 2004, the group embarked on a short European tour before coming together as a complete group for the first time in several years to headline the Rock the Bells festival in California. The concert was released on CD under the name Disciples of the 36 Chambers: Chapter 1, and they also released a music-video greatest hits album, Legend of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Death of Ol' Dirty Bastard
Ol' Dirty Bastard's career was tumultuous. His run-ins with the law were well publicized—he was arrested several times for offenses including assault, shoplifting, wearing body armor after being convicted of a felony, and possession of cocaine, and he missed multiple court dates. In April 2001, he was sentenced to two to four years in prison. Once released from prison, he signed a million-dollar contract with Roc-A-Fella Records.
On November 13, 2004, Ol' Dirty Bastard collapsed at Wu-Tang's recording studio in New York City, and was pronounced dead later that night. Wu-Tang Clan paid him homage a number of times: in August 2006, one of his sons came out at a Wu-Tang concert at Webster Hall and rapped "Brooklyn Zoo", along with his mother, and during a concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom the Clan brought his mother out on stage for a sing-along to "Shimmy Shimmy Ya".
2005–10: Solo albums and 8 Diagrams
In 2005, RZA released a book titled The Wu-Tang Manual. In the same year, U-God's second album, Mr. Xcitement and a collaboration between GZA and producer DJ Muggs, entitled Grandmasters were also released.
On March 28, 2006, Ghostface Killah released Fishscale, to much critical acclaim and some commercial success. The entire group, including Cappadonna and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard, appeared on the track "9 Milli Bros". The same year, Ghostface Killah released More Fish.
On June 25, 2006, Inspectah Deck released a street album entitled The Resident Patient, a prelude to his upcoming album, titled The Rebellion, which is said to be his final solo album. Also released in 2006 were Masta Killa's second studio album, Made in Brooklyn, to lukewarm reviews, and Method Man's 4:21... the Day After. Ghostface Killah released his seventh full-length album, The Big Doe Rehab, in December 2007.
In 2007, Wu-Tang Clan released their fifth album, 8 Diagrams, on Steve Rifkind's new label SRC Records. This album marked the inclusion of Cappadonna as an official member of the group. In an interview with MTV.com, Ghostface Killah stated that he was upset with RZA for starting the 8 Diagrams project while he was in the middle of writing and recording The Big Doe Rehab, as well as giving 8 Diagrams the same release date as The Big Doe Rehab, for which RZA rescheduled a release date one week later. The outcome of 8 Diagrams received mixed views from both fans and critics, and is regarded as being RZA's most experimental work to date. Raekwon and Ghostface Killah were unhappy with the album, and proposed recording a group album titled Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tan without RZA production. That album would eventually become Raekwon's fifth solo album Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang.
In 2008, RZA released Digi Snacks, under the name Bobby Digital. The album included lesser-known Wu-Tang Clan affiliates such as Freemurder, Killa Sin, Black Knights, and others. In the same year, GZA released the album Pro Tools. In September 2008, RZA announced that he had signed a deal with digital music company The Orchard to release the Wu-Tang Clan's back catalogue worldwide digitally, for the first time. In addition to forthcoming material, the Wu-Tang Clan's catalogue includes 13 previous releases that have been previously unavailable digitally, including recordings by the group as a whole, U-God, Wu-Syndicate, Killarmy, Shyheim, West Coast Killa Beez, Black Knights and others, and would be available online beginning September 23. RZA said: "The time is right to bring some older Wu material to the masses digitally. Our fans have been dedicated and patient and they're hungry to hear the music that has set us apart from so many others. Hip-hop is alive in Wu Music, and with The Orchard, we've got a solid partner that understands our audience and is committed to doing all they can to help us reach the fans. I'm definitely looking forward to working with them to see what else we all come up with. There's much more to come".
In 2009, U-God released his third solo album, Dopium, which features guest appearances from several Wu-Tang Clan members, and affiliates, among others, and was met with mostly lukewarm reviews. Wu-Tang Chamber Music was released in the same year, a side project executively produced by RZA, featuring live instrumentation from a Brooklyn soul band The Revelations. The album features appearances from five Wu-Tang Clan members, along with AZ, Kool G Rap, Cormega, Havoc, Sean Price, and M.O.P. Its first single, "Harbor Masters" featured Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, and AZ. RZA spoke about the album to Billboard.com: "I think the Chamber Music title is very fitting. This music is totally in the chamber, or in the mind-frame of Wu-Tang like in the [Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)] days. But it's not a Wu-Tang album. The whole Clan's not on this album. But it couldn't be in any other category but Wu-Tang".
Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II was released in September 2009, which features guest appearances from several big-name artists, and Clan members, with Ghostface being the most prominent, and also production from RZA, Dr. Dre, Pete Rock, and J Dilla, among others. The album was initially intended to be released on Dr. Dre's Aftermath Records. The album debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200 and at number 2 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and has been praised by most music critics. Several weeks later, Ghostface Killah released Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City.
Talk of the album Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang re-surfaced in July 2009; originally planned as a Wu-Tang album without RZA's input. The project evolved to include RZA only vocally, with no contribution to production. Raekwon stated "[It'll] be alter egos challenging each other, really allowing RZA to fall back on the production and allowing us to give him a flashback memory to the things we know we need from the abbot [RZA]. We want him to be involved [with the album as an MC], but the concept was for him not to be involved production-wise". Speaking to MTV.com, Method Man revealed his, Ghostface Killah's and Raekwon's plans to record a separate album as a trio: "I don't want to say it's written in stone, but it's in discussion. I want some feedback from the fans to see how they would take that. RZA produced tracks, some other outside producers, of course, and we gonna have Wu-Tang members on the album, but it'll be a Rae, Ghost and Meth album". Soon after, Ghostface Killah cemented the details: the record, featuring other Wu-Tang Clan members, was to consist primarily of him, Method Man, and Raekwon. The title, as announced in three separate trailers (directed by Rik Cordero) promoting the upcoming release, is Wu-Massacre. Speaking on their willingness to complete the album, Ghostface Killah estimated the release date of the album to be the end of 2009 or January 2010. It was then announced that the album would be pushed back from December to March 30, 2010; the single, "Meth vs. Chef Part II", was released after the announcement. Produced by Mathematics, it is an update of the song "Meth vs. Chef" from Method Man's first solo album, Tical, featuring verses by only Method Man and Raekwon. It had been confirmed by Raekwon that Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang would in fact be his next solo album and that Wu-Massacre is a separate album, while the rapper stated that he himself had petitioned to have Wu-Massacre's release date postponed in order to yield more studio time.
On February 25, 2011, Wu Tang Live At The Palladium NYC was released through the group's official Facebook page as a collectors digital download. This included exclusive, unreleased freestyles. It was limited to 100 downloads before the page was disabled after this figure was reached.
2011–present: A Better Tomorrow, and Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
A Better Tomorrow
On June 29, 2011, Raekwon announced that the group were working on a new studio album, still in early stages. Ghostface Killah later said that the album would be released in May 2012.
Members went back and forth on the issue. While GZA hinted that a new album was unlikely, the RZA said a new Wu-Tang Clan album might happen after all, on the occasion of the group's 20th anniversary, though Raekwon doubted it.
On January 9, 2013, work on the sixth Wu-Tang Clan album was announced via the group's official Facebook page. In early March 2013 Method Man announced that the Clan was working on a sixth studio album and it would be released during 2013 in celebration of their 20-year anniversary since 36 Chambers. Cappadonna has said the album is in recording process taking place in New York, Los Angeles and the Wu mansion in New Jersey. RZA has also said he had talked to Adrian Younge about working on a song for the album. On April 11, 2013, it was announced via a press release that their upcoming sixth studio album would be titled, A Better Tomorrow and was set to be released in July 2013. During late April 2013, the Clan performed at the 2013 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. On May 17, an unreleased Wu-Tang song titled "Execution in Autumn" was released for purchase through RZA's record label Soul Temple Records. They performed at the 2013 HOT 97 Summer Jam at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, twenty years after they performed at the first annual Summer Jam concert. On June 5, 2013, the first promotional single "Family Reunion" featuring Masta Killah, Method Man, Ghostface Killah and RZA was released via the Soul Temple Records website.
In June 2013 RZA said so far every member of the Clan except Raekwon and GZA had put in work on the A Better Tomorrow album and that recording was being done at the Wu-Mansion, and the Wu-Mansion West. Unreleased verses from Ol' Dirty Bastard will also be featured on the album. He also stated he was hoping to release the album in November 2013. In July 2013 Cappadonna indicated the album was half way finished. Once November 2013 arrived, RZA gave an update on the album, saying that not every member had been significantly working on the album. He gave credit to Method Man, Cappadonna, U-God and Masta Killa for working hard on the album, while saying he needed more effort from Ghostface, Raekwon and GZA. Shortly after Method Man stated that Raekwon had not worked on the album at all, and Ghostface had only recorded two songs for the album so far. In late November, RZA suggested that the album was approximately six weeks from completion. In January 2014, the group posted a message on their Facebook page, saying: "The new Wu album 'A Better Tomorrow' coming soon." After several disputes between Raekwon and RZA about the direction of the group and album, they reconciled, with the latter agreeing to record verses for A Better Tomorrow. On October 3, 2014, it was announced that the album will arrive December 2, 2014, courtesy of a new deal with Warner Bros. Records. The album was released late 2014.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
In March 2014 it was reported that in addition to work on A Better Tomorrow, a Wu-Tang Clan compilation album entitled The Wu – Once Upon A Time In Shaolin had been recorded, with Wu-Tang-affiliated producer Cilvaringz as the primary producer instead of RZA. The album, a double album consisting of 31 tracks, was not given a conventional commercial release and only one copy has been produced; the copy toured in museums, art galleries and music festivals before being sold at a high price to a single individual. In August 2014, a reporter from Forbes traveled to Marrakech to meet Cilvaringz and hear a 51-second snippet of a song from the album, which featured Cher. The snippet was subsequently put on their website. The album is encased in a handcrafted silver-and-nickel box made by British-Moroccan artist Yahya and features never-before-heard music recorded over years. RZA stated he has been receiving multiple million dollar offers for the album. Despite the album's exclusivity it made an appearance in electronic dance music producer Skrillex's music video for his song "Fuck That" even though he did not purchase the project. The album was sold through Paddle8, an online auction house, for $2 million to Martin Shkreli. When the FBI arrested Martin Shkreli on December 17, 2015, they did not seize the Wu-Tang Clan album. Following the victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Shkreli broadcast excerpts from the album on streaming platforms Periscope and Hitbox.tv.
In July 2021, it was announced that the album had been again sold by the US government for an undisclosed amount (later revealed as $4 million USD), following Shkreli handing it over to the FBI in 2018 after being convicted of defrauding investors. The new owner of the album is the PleasrDAO group.
The Saga Continues
On August 25, 2017, Wu-Tang Clan released the song, "People Say", which featured Redman. RZA announced that the song would be part of an upcoming album, titled The Saga Continues. The album was released on October 13 under the name "Wu-Tang", as U-God was absent from it. The Saga Continues was primarily produced by Mathematics, and debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200.
Las Vegas residency
The Wu-Tang Clan collective became the first HipHop act to receive a Las Vegas artist residency with "Wu-Tang Clan: The Saga Continues… The Las Vegas Residency" at The Theater at Virgin Hotels, launched February 2024.
Members
RZA (Robert Fitzgerald Diggs) – vocals, production (1992–present)
GZA (Gary Grice) – vocals (1992–present)
Ol' Dirty Bastard (Russell Tyrone Jones) – vocals (1992–2004, his death)
Method Man (Clifford Smith) – vocals (1992–present)
Raekwon (Corey Woods) – vocals (1992–present)
Ghostface Killah (Dennis Coles) – vocals (1992–present)
Inspectah Deck (Jason Hunter) – vocals (1992–present)
U-God (Lamont Jody Hawkins) – vocals (1992–present)
Masta Killa (Elgin Turner) – vocals (1993–present)
Cappadonna (Darryl Hill) – vocals (2007–present)
Artistry
Production
According to RZA, he tries to have no more than 20–25% sampling on any given record, something starkly different from many other major hip hop groups. He uses "the sampler more like a painter's palette than a Xerox. Then again, I might use it as a Xerox if I find rare beats that nobody had in their crates yet". He played much of the piano himself, with Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk as major influences; for instance, he created the piano part to "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'" after watching the Thelonious Monk documentary, Straight, No Chaser.
RZA's production technique, specifically the manner of chopping up and/or speeding or slowing soul samples, has been picked up by producers including Kanye West and Just Blaze. West's own take on RZA's style briefly flooded the rap market with what was dubbed "chipmunk soul", the pitch bending of a vocal sample to where it sounded as though the singer had inhaled helium. Several producers at the time copied the style, creating other offshoots. West has admitted that his style was distinctly influenced by RZA's production, and RZA has acknowledged his influence in an issue of Scratch magazine, saying he wished he had produced "Jesus Walks" and "Breathe", two 2004 hits produced by Kanye West and Just Blaze, respectively. Kanye West commented:
Wu-Tang? Me and my friends talk about this all the time... We think Wu-Tang had one of the biggest impacts as far as a movement. From slang to style of dress, skits, the samples. Similar to the [production] style I use, RZA has been doing that.
Lyrics
Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... helped (with the likes of Kool G Rap) popularize mafioso rap, which remained widespread for more than half a decade. The landmark album touted a lifestyle patterned on drug dealing, regrets of living in harsh conditions, and partying (including popularizing the Cristal brand of champagne) which Nas, Mobb Deep, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, and other popular artists all borrowed and/or expanded upon these themes at points in their respective careers.
The Wu-Tang Clan's slang has long been a staple of their music, wherein members would blend Five Percenter terms, Kung Fu/oriental words, and comic book and street terms to create their own nicknames for actions, people, places and things (such as the christening of Staten Island as "Shaolin Land" and money as "C.R.E.A.M."). RZA noted in The Wu-Tang Manual, that Raekwon was the resident "slang-master" of a great deal of the slang used by the group.
Syndication
Video games
All nine original members of the group were featured in the game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, released for the PlayStation on October 31, 1999, as well as a special collector's edition controller. Ghostface Killah and Yung Dirty Doucette, as well as collaborators, Redman and Keith Murray, also play themselves in all three games in the Def Jam series Def Jam Vendetta, Def Jam Fight For NY, and Def Jam: Icon.
Method Man is an avid fan of video games himself and has publicly stated that he loves playing SOCOM online with other PlayStation 2 users, and is part of an online clan ("KMA/Kiss My Ass"). His SOCOM II name is "ICU". He has a fellow SOCOM player featured on a skit on his album 4:21... The Day After.
In Army of Two, main character Salem talks about Wu-Tang asking his teammate Rios who the best member is. Salem says it's RZA but he says Ghostface Killah is pretty good himself. In the ending cut scene, a reference is made when Salem says "Survey says?" and Rios replies "You're dead". The exchange referenced the lyric, "And the survey says? / You're dead!" from "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' Ta F' Wit", from the album Enter the Wu-Tang Clan (36 Chambers).
Several tracks by Clan members and affiliates such as Method Man, Ghostface, Cappadonna, Trife, DJ Mathematics and others were featured in the 2006 game Saints Row.
Afro Samurai, based on the TV series, was released in January 2009 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Its soundtrack, like the show, was produced by RZA.
Clothing line
Oliver "Power" Grant was one of the first to move from music to clothes. The Clan's executive producer, Grant began making clothes in the early 1990s, with little success. But in 1995, after the platinum success of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), manufacturers who earlier wouldn't extend Power credit saw the potential. He opened four Wu Wear stores, in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Norfolk, Virginia. The line was carried in Macy's, Rich's, and d.e.m.o, among others. Power says he earned $10 million in 1998.
Method Man was unhappy with the decision to bring Wu-Tang into the fashion world with Wu Wear, despite the brand being a major money-maker for the group. "When Wu-Wear started making shoes and sneakers and pants, it was shoddy material. I never rocked that shit."
"I'm going to bring out Dirty Wear," declared ODB. "A set of ready-worn clothes: 'Dirty Wear, for the girl who likes to wear her panties three days in a row.'"
In 1999, Nike released a Wu-Tang Clan themed dunk high. The shoes were produced in low quantities. Their rarity and popularity makes them very sought after, with reseller prices as much as $7,500.
A partnership between Wu-Tang and the Alife NYC clothing group took place in 2007 through 2008 for an exclusive series of custom sneakers, T-shirts, hoodies and other accessories for men and women. The collection was named "A Wu-Tang Life".
Television
Documentaries
Wu-Tang Revealed, a GZA-directed documentary, promised to show behind the scenes of the Clan, has yet to be released.
U-God: Rise of a Fallen Soldier details U-God's side of the struggle between him and RZA circa 2004–2005.
Gerald K. Barclay directed the Wu-Tang documentary, entitled Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan, which premiered on BET on November 13, 2008. The documentary was released on DVD on November 18, 2008.
On November 10, 2009, a documentary on Ol' Dirty Bastard was released, entitled Dirty: The Official ODB Biography. The documentary features interviews and stories from his family members, Wu-Tang members, and affiliates, as well as old interviews with Ol' Dirty, and live performances.
Wu Tang Saga, starring Cappadonna and featuring footage of the Clan dating back to the early nineties through their most recent tours was released on February 25, 2010.
In May 2019, Showtime premiered the four-episode documentary series Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men. The documentary was created by Sacha Jenkins and tells a story of the New York-based hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan from their earliest times to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the group. The series features interviews from all living members of the Wu-Tang Clan. A 7-track EP was released on May 17, 2019, one week after the documentary premiered.
Wu-Tang: An American Saga
On September 4, 2019, Hulu released Wu-Tang: An American Saga, a fictionalized account of the formation of the Wu-Tang Clan. The drama web series was created by RZA and Alex Tse. In January 2020, Hulu renewed the series for a second season. In November 2021, the series was renewed for a third and final season which premiered on February 15, 2023 and concluded on April 5, 2023.
Collaborators
The Wu-Tang Clan has a wide range of collaborators and associates. Close collaborators to individual members or the group as a whole include or have included mainly East Coast–based artists, including Redman, Mobb Deep, Busta Rhymes, Erick Sermon, Nas, Pete Rock, and others.
Discography
Studio albums
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
Wu-Tang Forever (1997)
The W (2000)
Iron Flag (2001)
8 Diagrams (2007)
A Better Tomorrow (2014)
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (2015)
See also
List of Wu-Tang Clan affiliates
The Nine Rings of Wu-Tang
List of Wu-Recording record labels
References
External links
Official website |
RZA | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RZA | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RZA"
] | Robert Fitzgerald Diggs (born July 5, 1969), better known by his stage name RZA ( RIZ-ə) or The RZA, is an American rapper, record producer, composer, actor, and filmmaker. He is the de facto leader of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan, having produced most albums for the group and its respective members. He is a cousin of two other original Wu-Tang Clan members: GZA and Ol' Dirty Bastard. He has also released solo albums under the alter-ego Bobby Digital, along with executive producing credits for side projects. After forming the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA was a founding member of the horrorcore group Gravediggaz, since 1992, where he went by the name The RZArector.
RZA has been heavily involved in filmmaking since the late 90s. He has scored a number of films, most notably Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004). He has written and directed in film and television, starting with his directorial debut, The Man with the Iron Fists, in 2012. He has also acted in numerous films and TV series, including the films American Gangster and Brick Mansions, and the TV series Gang Related and Californication.
He is especially known for his music production, with a style that includes the use of soul samples and sparse beats that has proved highly influential. The magazine The Source placed him on its list of the 20 greatest producers in the magazine's twenty-year history. Vibe listed him among the top 8 greatest hip-hop producers of all time, and NME placed him on their list of the 50 Greatest Producers Ever.
Early life
Diggs was born on July 5, 1969, in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He was named after the Kennedy brothers Robert and John Fitzgerald, both of whom his mother greatly admired. Diggs has called his given name an "honorable" name, given the legacy of both Robert and John. Diggs has a younger brother, Terrance Hamlin, better known as the rapper 9th Prince, and an older brother named Mitchell “Divine” Diggs.
From ages three to seven, Diggs spent summers in North Carolina with his uncle, who encouraged him to read and study. Diggs was introduced to hip hop music at the age of nine, and by eleven, was competing in rap battles. He relocated to Steubenville, Ohio, in 1990, to live with his mother. He spent weekends in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his father ran a convenience store in the city's Hill District.
Diggs got involved with petty crime and drug-dealing, and was charged with attempted murder while in Steubenville. He was acquitted of the charge, giving him what he has called a "second chance".
Music career
Before the Wu-Tang Clan
Diggs first became interested in making his own hip-hop music in 1979 when a friend of his introduced him to Rapper's Delight by The Sugarhill Gang and in 1984, Diggs formed a rap group with his cousins Russell Jones, then known as The Specialist, and Gary Grice, then known as Allah Justice, called "Force of the Imperial Master", which they soon after renamed as "All in Together Now" in 1985. Around this time Diggs formed the DMD Posse which consisted of RZA, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, U-God, Inspectah Deck, 4th Disciple and Method Man. Diggs and Grice then signed with Jamaica Records for management purposes and Jamaica convinced Tommy Boy Records to sign Diggs as a solo artist in 1989 under the name Prince Rakeem. He released the original Ooh I Love You Rakeem promotion version of the EP, but was forced to remix and rerelease the single when Tommy Boy failed to acquire the rights to the original sample. The rereleased version underperformed commercially, and Diggs was subsequently dropped by Tommy Boy.
1992–1993: Forming the Wu-Tang Clan
After a shoot-out in Ohio in 1992, he faced eight years in jail. "When they said 'not guilty', my face stuck in a smile for three days," he recalled. "I was just walking around town, thinking about my daughter and my wife. Right then I said goodbye to anything that would put me in that situation again. I was up on trial on an attempted murder charge. I was a motherfucking fool, with all that knowledge in my head and ending up there."
In 1992, Diggs formed a new group with his two cousins and five other childhood friends. They named the group Wu-Tang Clan, after the 1983 kung fu film Shaolin and Wu Tang. As part of the group's formation, each member chose a new nickname for themselves. Diggs chose "RZA", based on a nickname he had been given by fans of his music, "Rza Rza Rakeem", which in turn was based on a song by All in Together Now, "Pza Pza Pumpin", as well as Diggs' graffiti tag, "Razor". He created a backronym for "RZA", stating that the name stood for "Ruler, Zig-Zag-Zig, Allah" which further translated into "Ruler, Knowledge-Wisdom-Understanding, Allah" when using the Supreme Alphabet.
Wu-Tang Clan released its first single, "Protect Ya Neck", in December 1992. Masta Killa then joined the group in 1993, becoming its ninth member. They released their debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in November 1993. RZA operated as Wu-Tang Clan's de facto leader, producing the group's songs and deciding who would get placed on which tracks.
1994–1996: Gravediggaz and Wu-Tang solo projects: Round one
As each of the group's members embarked on solo careers, RZA continued to produce nearly everything Wu-Tang released during the period 1994–1996, which included both composing and arranging the instrumental tracks as well as overseeing and directing the creative process. RZA's rule over the Clan at this time is described in 2004's Wu-Tang Manual book as "a dictatorship". He also released a hit single of his own, in the form of "Wu-Wear: The Garment Renaissance". The song was featured on the High School High soundtrack, and was released to promote the Wu-Tang clothing brand, also called "Wu-Wear". It peaked at #60 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #6 on the Hot Rap Singles chart.
When it came time for the Gravediggaz, Prince Paul was thinking about putting a group together. He wanted to get some good MCs. Poetic was another dope MC who was underrated out on Long Island. He had one single out on Tommy Boy that didn't take off, but he was a dope MC. As the Grym Reaper, you know how many dope lyrics he dropped. Frukwan, one of the top lyricists out of Stetsasonic. He and Paul were friends already. He told him about me. He said, "I know this one guy who is super-dope."
At the same time, I was also trying to do Wu-Tang. I was trying to start my own company and stuff, so when Paul called me up and invited me to his crib on Long Island and told me his idea for forming this group, I thought it would be an honor to be in a group with him. But I told him, "I'm also producing a group, and I'm also part of a family that I'm building." He said, "Yo, that's crazy." We would talk a lot of times. [Ol' Dirty Bastard] came to his house a lot of times with me. [Method Man], too. We all would just go there and try to find ways to get out of the streets. Me, I was trying to get out of the ghetto. Paul had a lot of respect for me, so he helped me break out of it. I think he liked that I was so dark, but I didn't know I was dark.
1997: Wu-Tang Forever
1997 saw the release of Wu-Tang Forever, the Wu-Tang Clan's highly anticipated second album. The album for the first time featured RZA delegating a small number of beat-making duties to other producers in the Wu-Tang camp, such as his protégés Mathematics, True Master and 4th Disciple who are known as the original Wu-Elements, and Clan member Inspectah Deck.
1998–1999: Gravediggaz and Wu-Tang solo projects: Round two
During the 1998–2000 period RZA ceased to produce every Wu-Tang solo album as he had done previously, but continued to contribute usually one or two songs on average to each record as well as receiving an Executive Producer credit.
"I had to put out Bobby Digital instead of The Cure because if I didn't do that I would've suffered two things. First, I would have revealed where I was musically too soon. Wu-Tang is the perfect medium to expose anything new because I got the most people coming together to buy it. For me to expose it for my own self, I don't think that would've been a wise thing for me to do. I might've caught more people than Bobby Digital caught, but I still wouldn't catch the magnitude of what the Wu-Tang could catch. Maybe this year or next year the game may be different. The Cure is so intimate in writing that you gotta live that Cure shit. I was living like Bobby Digital in '98, '99 na'mean? So if I put "The Cure" out, then I wouldn't even be able to get on stage and perform it for ya'll cause I'd be lying."
2001–2004: Post The W solo projects
In 1999 the RZA moved into composing film scores. His first work, Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), earned praise; he also had a brief cameo in the film itself, as a fellow samurai wearing camouflage. The experience was positive and, as he noted during an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, the work with traditional musicians gave him the desire to learn how to read and write music. In 2004, he co-scored David S. Goyer's "Blade: Trinity" with composer Ramin Djawadi.
This is one of my biggest adventures, and one of my [best] feelings. We watched Kill Bill in Manhattan. At the premiere, that happened, but you know, that's Hollywood. But in Manhattan, a theater, just a bunch of kids coming from wherever New York, inside a movie theater and the movie's coming on. They don't even know that I'm the man with the music, and when it said, "Original Music by The RZA", we hear the audience clapping. And they didn't clap for nothing else, because the movie's just coming on. I was like, 'Wow, what the fuck is that about?' That's different. It actually might be something special. You never care who did that... Once you see who stars in the shit, you don't read "edited", you don't read all that. You be eating your popcorn and it go right by you. But, for somebody to see that and then clap, that's a different thing right there. That felt pretty pleasing.
2005–present: Solo projects: Round three
He has also stated that the long-delayed The Cure album will be his final solo album, so that he can devote more time to his movie directing career.
Before signing with SRC Records in 2007, RZA was flooded with offers from Bad Boy Records, Aftermath Records, Interscope and Def Jam among others for the Wu-Tang Clan super-group.
In 2007, he produced the score of the Japanese anime Afro Samurai starring Samuel L. Jackson. In 2007 he released the little-publicized instrumental album The RZA-Instrumental Experience, and worked with Raekwon on his highly anticipated Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II. From 2005 to 2008 he collaborated with System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian on the project Achozen The group released two singles, one of which, "Deuces", was included in the 2009 film Babylon A.D. The group also recorded an album that has remained unreleased, although eight of the songs were released in 2015.
"The time is right to bring some older material to the masses digitally. Our fans have been dedicated and patient, and they're hungry to hear the music that has set us apart from so many others. Hip-hop is alive in Wu Music, and with The Orchard, we've got a solid partner that understands our audience and is committed to doing all they can to help us reach the fans. I'm definitely looking forward to working with them to see what else we all come up with. There's much more to come."
In 2010 he worked on what was intended as a solo album for GZA, Liquid Swords II, but the album remains unreleased. RZA also worked with Kanye West on the latter's fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, as well as Watch the Throne by Kanye and Jay-Z.
In a 2011 interview, RZA revealed that he had recently decided to clean out his beat machines of instrumentals he made for the Wu-Tang Clan that were never used; as a result, he gave away ten beats each to Nas, Busta Rhymes and Talib Kweli, as well as 20 beats for Kanye West, including two that were used on West's previous two albums. RZA produced UK artist Josh Osho's 2012 debut album L.I.F.E.
RZA also contributed vocals to three songs on John Frusciante's 2012 EP Letur-Lefr and in 2013 he contributed vocals to one song on Kid Cudi's 2013 album Indicud. In August 2012 RZA founded a new record label, Soul Temple Records, with a distribution deal from RED Distribution. On September 28, 2012, he hosted one episode of the web series Equals Three, substituting for regular host Ray William Johnson. He appeared on Earl Sweatshirt's album Doris, contributing a verse on the track "Molasses". Despite artistic disagreements with Raekwon, RZA and The Wu-Tang Clan released their sixth album A Better Tomorrow in 2014.
In 2013, RZA and Paul Banks began to collaborate as Banks & Steelz for what became the 2016 album Anything But Words. Guest appearances include Kool Keith, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, and Masta Killa. Two singles were released from the album, "Love + War" and "Giant". RZA collaborated with Ramin Djawadi, with whom he co-scored Blade Trinity and Blake Perlman for the song "Drift" for the Guillermo del Toro film "Pacific Rim".
In June 2020, ice cream company Good Humor approached RZA to create a new jingle for ice cream trucks to play, to replace the tune "Turkey in the Straw", long associated with minstrel shows that often featured racist lyrics. (Good Humor does not directly operate any trucks, but the company wanted to encourage ice cream truck drivers to not play the song.) RZA's resulting composition was released in August 2020.
In a 2020 interview, RZA discussed how being stuck at home during the COVID global crisis resulted in him resuming work on his long-unreleased The Cure album.
In August 2024, RZA released the album A Ballet Through Mud, an orchestral ballet score. The score was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic based on a notebook of lyrics RZA had written as a teenager. Before being released as an album, the score premiered in 2023 on stage through a performance by the Colorado Symphony.
Wu-Recording labels
Since the early 1990s, various Wu Tang Clan-affiliated recording labels were established. The earlier labels are believed to be dissolved. The connection that RZA had to these labels is unknown.
Other record labels were later founded in the early 2000s, and are still active in the present. Very little is known about these labels, other than the fact that RZA produces music on them. It is unknown if RZA is CEO, or has high position within these labels, considering that he was never known to have a CEO position of any recording label.
Wu-Tang Records
Razor Sharp Records
36 Chambers Records and Wu Music Group
Protect Ya Neck Records
Wu-Tang International
Soul Temple Records
Artistry
RZA's production technique, specifically the manner of chopping up and/or speeding or slowing soul samples to fit his beats, has been imitated by hip hop producers including Kanye West and Just Blaze. West's own take on RZA's style briefly flooded the rap market with what was dubbed "chipmunk soul," the speeding of a vocal sample to where it sounded as though the singer had inhaled helium. Several producers at the time copied the style, creating other offshoots. West has admitted that his style was distinctly influenced by the RZA's production, saying
"Wu-Tang? Me and my friends talk about this all the time... We think Wu-Tang had one of the biggest impacts as far as a movement. From slang to style of dress, skits, the samples. Similar to the [production] style I use, RZA has been doing that."
In response, RZA himself has spoken quite positively of the comparisons:
"All good. I got super respect for Kanye. He came up to me about a year or two ago. He gave me mad praising and blessings... For people to say Wu-Tang inspire Kanye, Kanye is one of the biggest artists in the world. That goes back to what we say: 'Wu-Tang is forever.' Kanye is going to inspire people to be like him."
After hearing Kanye's work on The Blueprint, RZA claimed that a torch-passing had occurred between him and West, saying, "The shoes gotta be filled. If you ain't gonna do it, somebody else is gonna do it. That's how I feel about rap today."
His Bobby Digital albums introduced tweaked-out new age elements to his sound; these have incorporated themselves more fully into his beats on newer albums such as Method Man's 4:21... The Day After.
"The way I produce now is I produce more like a musician", RZA said. "In the old days, I produced more like a DJ. I didn't understand music theory at all. Now that I do understand music theory, I make my music more playable, meaning not only could you listen to it, you could get someone else to play it. Before, you couldn't even write down Wu-Tang music. I think almost 80 percent of this record can be duplicated by a band, which is important for music, because that means 10 years from now, somebody can make a whole song out of it and cover it like how I'm covering The Beatles song."
In a 2010 radio interview with UK hip hop station Conspiracy Worldwide Radio, RZA spoke in great detail about the homemade, candid ethos of much of his work, including the organic creation process behind ODB's debut album.
Alter egos
RZA is known for having multiple aliases, for different lyrical styles and personalities: Prince Rakeem, The Abbot, Bobby Digital, Bobby Steels, the Scientist, Prince Delight, Prince Dynamite, Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah. During his time with the Gravediggaz, he went by the name the RZArector, which is for waking up the mentally dead.
Film career
Acting
RZA has had cameo appearances in films including Funny People, Due Date, Gospel Hill, Ghost Dog, Life Is Hot in Cracktown and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.
RZA appeared in Derailed, Coffee and Cigarettes, and American Gangster. He appeared in G.I. Joe: Retaliation, as the character Blind Master. In 2010, RZA appeared in the science fiction action film Repo Men. In 2014, RZA took on the role of Tremaine Alexander in the film Brick Mansions opposite Paul Walker and David Belle, a remake of District 13. He played "Mr. L.C.", the main antagonist, in the Thai martial arts film Tom Yum Goong 2.
RZA directed and starred in The Man with the Iron Fists (2012).
In 2013, RZA provided guest voices in the sixth season episode of Robot Chicken. "Botched Jewel Heist", in three sketches. His first role is an anthropomorphic strawberry who is shot dead in a mob hit, causing his jelly blood to splatter onto a large slice of bread below (which was covered in the peanut-butter blood of Mr. Peanut, who was killed the same way moments before). In his second role, he plays himself, and raps about being a pescetarian, although RZA had shifted from a pescetarian diet to a vegan diet in 1997. His third role was as the Halloween Road Warrior in a sketch where in a post-apocalyptic world, a family is pursued by road warriors representing forgotten holidays, who aim to kidnap their two children.
RZA played the role of Samurai Apocalypse in the television series Californication in 9 episodes.
RZA played the supporting role of Shotgun Steve in the romantic action comedy movie Mr. Right with Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick.
RZA portrayed Dean in 2019 film The Dead Don't Die.
RZA narrates a character, known as Wesley, on the 2019 Netflix original series Day Break in Season 1, episode 5 named "Homecoming Redux or My So Called Stunt Double Life".
RZA portrayed Harry Mansell, brother of the protagonist, in the 2021 action comedy film Nobody with Bob Odenkirk and Connie Nielsen.
Filmmaking
I made my albums like movies, you know what I mean? I wanted people to be able to listen to a movie in their car while they was driving. "I want to start off making movies where people will know they're at a movie. Like my man Tarantino, he did that movie Pulp Fiction – classic movie, man. Every time it comes on TV or cable, I have to stop and watch it. And it's based on nothing, really. There's only a few people out there that are able to do that, where it comes from nothing but the vision and imagination of the artist.
In the late 1990s, RZA began production of a feature-length film based on "Bobby Digital", an alias he used on various albums. Though the film was never completed, he continued shooting music videos for his side projects and solo tracks.
RZA directed his first feature film, The Man with the Iron Fists, in 2011, from a script he wrote the previous year. Directors Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth were involved in production, writing, and casting according to several movie websites. The film was released in fall 2012.
Personal life
RZA is a Five Percenter and is usually seen wearing the 5% Nation's flag necklace around his neck. He actively extols the 5% culture (which include the Supreme Mathematics and the Supreme Alphabet). He has also embraced various aspects of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity, as he describes in his two books, The Wu-Tang Manual and The Tao of Wu. He has described the Quran, The Bible, and the Lotus Sutra as three of his favorite books, stating that each contains enlightenment. RZA provided the afterword to See You at San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture.
His hobbies include watching martial arts films, and he is considered an "encyclopedia of martial arts films" due to his knowledge of the genre. RZA met and befriended Shaolin Monk Shi Yan Ming after being introduced by Ol' Dirty Bastard's manager Sophia Chang. His favorite movies include Five Deadly Venoms, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Ninja Scroll and Fist of the North Star. His second well-known hobby is chess. He is a Director of Development and champion of the Hip-Hop Chess Federation.
RZA is a vegan and has promoted the vegan lifestyle and compassion for animals on behalf of PETA. Until 1997, he was a pescetarian; "I tell you one thing I did use to like: the fish and chips," he stated. "But I stopped eating fish this year. One day I just felt the death in it."
RZA is a resident of Millstone Township, New Jersey.
Discography
Studio albums
Bobby Digital in Stereo (1998)
Digital Bullet (2001)
Birth of a Prince (2003)
Digi Snacks (2008)
Bobby Digital and The Pit of Snakes (2022)
Collaboration albums
6 Feet Deep with Gravediggaz (1994)
The Pick, the Sickle and the Shovel with Gravediggaz (1997)
The World According to RZA (2003)
Anything But Words with Banks & Steelz (2016)
Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater with DJ Scratch (2022)
A Ballet Through Mud with Colorado Symphony and Christopher Dragon (2024)
Filmography
Films
Television
Video games
Awards and nominations
Bibliography
The Wu-Tang Manual (2005)
The Tao of Wu (2009)
References
External links
RZA at AllMusic
RZA discography at Discogs
RZA at IMDb |
GZA | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GZA | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GZA"
] | Gary Eldridge Grice (born August 22, 1966), better known by his stage names GZA ( JIZ-ə) and The Genius, is an American rapper. A founding member of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan, GZA is the group's "spiritual head", being both the first member in the group to receive a record deal and being the oldest member. He has appeared on his fellow Wu-Tang members' solo projects, and has maintained a successful solo career starting with his second album Liquid Swords (1995).
His lyrical style often dismisses typical rap story lines in favor of science and wide-ranging philosophies and has been characterized as "armed with sharp metaphors and a smooth flow". An analysis of GZA's lyrics found that he has one of the largest vocabularies in popular hip hop music. He teamed up with an education group to promote science education in New York City through hip hop.
Early life
GZA was born Gary Grice in Brooklyn, New York City, on August 22, 1966. He developed an interest in hip-hop by attending block parties as a child in the early 1970s, becoming involved in breakdance, graffiti, and DJing. Early on he developed an interest in writing, studying Mother Goose and nursery rhyme. In 1974–1976, before moving from Brooklyn to Staten Island, he listened to The Last Poets; however, he was attracted by profanity rather than content, and didn't understand the underlying messages until many years later. The Last Poets, as well as songs by The Isley Brothers, the Commodores, and the O'Jays had a big part in his early life, especially regarding the tone and cadence of speech. Later on, he began to listen to hip hop and R&B, for example by Secret Weapon and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. In 1982, Grice dropped out of high school in the tenth grade.
He formed a three-man group with his cousins, Robert Diggs and Russell Jones, who would later be known as RZA and Ol' Dirty Bastard. At the time he didn't like the sound of his voice. The group, FOI: Force of the Imperial Master, and later All in Together, saw the three rapping and DJing, switching names and performing local shows; since they lived in different boroughs, GZA and Ol' Dirty would travel from Brooklyn out to Staten Island to meet up with their cousin RZA, after which the three would travel across New York City and challenge other MCs to battles. He left school in the 10th grade, but nurtured his affection for science as he developed his skills as a lyricist.
After some years of this, GZA was signed to Cold Chillin' Records as a solo artist under the name The Genius. He released his debut album, Words from the Genius (1991), produced mostly by Easy Mo Bee, but it failed to sell due to lack of promotion. This, combined with his rocky experience on tour, fed up GZA and he asked to be released from the label. The album's beat selection is similar to the classic boom-bap sound of the early 1990s, while the lyricism subject is the everyday situations of an individual living in the parts of New York. At the time he worked as a bicycle messenger.
Wu-Tang Clan
In 1992, GZA joined the Wu-Tang Clan, a group of nine, formed by his cousin RZA. GZA had some high-profile appearances on the group's debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993), including a solo track, "Clan in da Front". This, combined with appearances on other Clan members' albums such as Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (1995) and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... (1995) brought him much recognition. According to Method Man, "we form like Voltron and GZA happens to be the head".
Solo career
1995–1999: Liquid Swords, Beneath the Surface
These guest appearances were followed up in 1995 with GZA's second studio album, Liquid Swords, produced and recorded entirely in the basement studio by RZA, with the participation of all original Clan members. It was released on November 7 by Geffen Records. The album's complex composition included dialogue sampled from the film Shogun Assassin. The album was met with positive reviews and sold well. It is considered to be one of the best albums from the Wu-Tang camp. It peaked at the #9 spot on the Billboard 200 chart and #2 on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart. On October 8, 2015, the Recording Industry Association of America announced that the album had earned a Platinum certification for having sold more than 1 million copies. It became the first Wu-Tang-related album to get certified since 2004, when Method Man and Ghostface Killah both earned plaques. In addition, he directed music videos for four album singles.
After appearing on the Wu-Tang Clan's second album, Wu-Tang Forever (1997), his third studio album Beneath the Surface was released by MCA Records in 1999. The album and its singles "Crash Your Crew" and "Breaker, Breaker" met with critical acclaim. The album earned a Gold certification by RIAA, peaked at #9 on the Billboard 200 chart, and topped the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart.
2000–2009: Legend of the Liquid Sword, Pro Tools
In 2000 the single "Ich lebe für Hip Hop" was released with DJ Tomekk and placed 11th in the German charts.
In 2002, a sequel to his second solo album was released, Legend of the Liquid Sword. It was well-received by critics, yet did not sell well and failed to go Gold. GZA spent 2004 touring, both solo and with the Clan, and made an appearance with RZA in Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee and Cigarettes, opposite Bill Murray. The two also appeared on the Chappelle Show's skits "Wu Tang Financial" and "Racial Draft".
In 2005, GZA and DJ Muggs (the producer for hip-hop group Cypress Hill) released collaboration album Grandmasters. Muggs provided all the production for the album, which saw GZA using chess as a metaphor for the rap game, with most of the songs having a chess-themed title.
In the summer of 2008, his fifth solo studio album Pro Tools was released by Babygrande Records. It featured production from Black Milk and Jay "Waxxx" Garfield, RZA, Mathematics and True Master. A very controversial song on the album was entitled "Paper Plate", a smooth flowing response aimed at rival rapper 50 Cent. After the release, GZA toured various parts of Europe on a "Liquid Swords Tour", where he performed songs from Liquid Swords as well as Pro Tools. He later toured parts of the US.
2010–present: Dark Matter
In 2010, he spoke at Harvard University, and since then has visited, among others, MIT, Oxford, USC, NYU, Cornell, where he met with scientists such as David Kaiser and Sallie W. Chisholm to seek inspiration. In 2012, he talked "hip-hop and science" with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
To improve science education in New York City and beyond in late 2012, with the assistance of Columbia University's professor Christopher Emdin and website Rap Genius, he began work on a pilot program called Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S. (Bringing Attention to Transforming, Teaching and Learning Science). This initiative motivates young high school students, especially African-American and Latino students, who together make up 70 percent of New York City's student body, to learn science through hip hop, creating scientific raps and engaging in a rap competition.
In the meantime, he continued to work on a related, new studio album called Dark Matter, which is based on a journey through spacetime, universe and physics. In late 2015, GZA canceled European tour dates to focus on working on the album with composer Vangelis. It is planned to be one in a series of albums related to Earth, with the following conceived around oceans. GZA hinted that the albums will be without parental advisory, profanity and nudity.
In February 2015, GZA released a single "The Mexican" (a cover of Babe Ruth's song), featuring guitarist Tom Morello and singer Kara Lane. They performed the song live along with The Roots on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. On June 30, 2016, he released a new space-themed track, "The Spark", produced by Paul Ryder, for NASA's project "Destination: Jupiter", in celebration of the agency's ongoing Juno Mission.
In 2020, GZA provided a voice role in Netflix's Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts as Bad Billions, and contributed a song to the series.
Discography
Studio albums
Words from the Genius (1991)
Liquid Swords (1995)
Beneath the Surface (1999)
Legend of the Liquid Sword (2002)
Pro Tools (2008)
Collaboration albums
GrandMasters with DJ Muggs (2005)
References
External links
GZA on Facebook
GZA on Twitter
GZA on Genius
GZA at IMDb |
Method_Man | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_Man | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_Man"
] | Clifford Smith, Jr. (born March 2, 1971), better known by his stage name Method Man, is an American rapper, record producer, and actor. He is a member of the East Coast hip hop collective Wu-Tang Clan, and is half of the hip hop duo Method Man & Redman. He took his stage name from the 1979 film Method Man. In 1996, Method Man won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By", featuring R&B singer Mary J. Blige, with whom he formerly starred in Power Book II: Ghost, a spin-off of Power.
Method Man has appeared in films such as 187 (1997), Belly (1998), How High (2001), Garden State (2004), The Wackness (2008), Venom (2005), Red Tails (2012), Keanu (2016), and The Cobbler (2014). He and frequent collaborator rapper Redman co-starred on the short-lived Fox television sitcom Method & Red. He has also had recurring roles in three HBO series, as Tug Daniels in Oz, Melvin "Cheese" Wagstaff in The Wire, and Rodney in The Deuce. Method Man also appeared in the TBS comedy series The Last O.G..
Early life
Born on March 2, 1971, in Hempstead, Long Island, Smith divided his childhood between his father's Long Island residence and his mother's home in the Park Hill section of Clifton, Staten Island, locally known as Killa Hill. Growing up in Hempstead, Smith began playing lacrosse at a young age and continues to be a passionate supporter of the sport. He attended New Dorp High School, where he became friends with Remedy. He has two sisters.
Music career
1992–1996: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Tical
As Wu-Tang Clan ascended to hip hop stardom, Method Man was always one of the most visible members of the collective. He was one of only two members to get a solo song on the group's debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and he was the first to release a solo album under the Clan's unusual contract which allowed its members to release albums under any record label. Method Man chose to sign with rap label Def Jam Recordings, although Elektra Records A&R man Dante Ross initially wanted to sign him around the same time Ross signed fellow group member Ol' Dirty Bastard. Method Man's solo debut, Tical (1994), was critically acclaimed and well received, entering the American charts at #4 and eventually selling in excess of one million copies. That album featured the hit single "All I Need", later remixed featuring Mary J. Blige, which won a Grammy ("I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need"). During this time Method Man also became close friends with fellow New York City-based rapper The Notorious B.I.G., and was the only guest rapper featured on his debut album Ready to Die, on the song "The What". He was also featured on Spice 1's album AmeriKKKa's Nightmare on the track "Hard 2 Kill". In 1995, he was also featured on "Got the Flava" off Showbiz and A.G.'s album Goodfellas. He also appeared on the Batman Forever soundtrack: his track, The Riddler, produced by RZA included a video with clips from the film. In 1996, Method Man appeared on Tupac Shakur's album All Eyez on Me, on the song "Got My Mind Made Up" alongside his rhyme partner Redman, Tha Dogg Pound and Inspectah Deck, whose verse did not make the released album version, although his nickname "Rebel INS" can be heard as the song fades. He was also featured on Redman's 1996 album Muddy Waters on the track "Do What Ya Feel".
1997–1998: Wu-Tang Forever and Tical 2000: Judgment Day
On June 3, 1997, the Wu-Tang Clan released their Grammy-nominated multiplatinum double CD Wu-Tang Forever, the long-awaited follow up to 36 Chambers. The album has sold over 6 million copies to date worldwide.
In 1996, the movie Space Jam was released. Method Man, alongside LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, B-Real and Coolio released a song from the Space Jam Soundtrack called, "Hit 'Em High". Method Man would go on to feature on LL Cool J's, "4 ,3, 2, 1" the following year.
His second solo album was Tical 2000: Judgement Day, released in 1998, which was heavily influenced by the apocalypse theories surrounding the forthcoming end of the millennium, and featured myriad guest appearances from his fellow Wu-Tang MCs. Other guest appearances include Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, D'Angelo, Chris Rock, Mobb Deep, Redman, and brief cameos from Russell Simmons, Bishop Don "Magic" Juan, Janet Jackson, and Donald Trump. Fueled by the party track "Judgment Day" and the D'Angelo collaboration "Break Ups 2 Make Ups", the album sold better than his debut, earning Platinum certifications in both the U.S. and Canada. Reviews for the album were mixed and its long runtime and abundance of intermittent comedy skits were widely criticized. Producers on this album included True Master, 4th Disciple and the RZA.
In 1997, the Scottish rock band Texas, found some success with their single, "Say What You Want". In 1998, the band collaborated with Method Man and RZA on a remix of the song titled "Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day)", with RZA producing. It was later included in the Greatest Hits album released by Texas.
1999–2001: Blackout! (with Redman) and WWF Aggression
Method Man was part of the very successful Hard Knock Life Tour with Jay-Z, Redman, Ja Rule, and DMX. During this tour, Method Man & Redman recorded Blackout!, a light-hearted, bass-heavy, profanity-laced, party record with an EPMD-evoking emphasis on funky beats and the mischievous wit and cool flows and good rhythm of the two MCs. The album reached platinum status quickly, both in the U.S. and Canada, fueled by "Da Rockwilder", "Cereal Killa", "1, 2, 1, 2", "Tear It Off" and "Y.O.U." This album also featured three previously released tracks on which the two collaborated.
Their success would lead the duo on to star in movies and TV shows, become product spokespersons and household names, but also associated them with marijuana use in the media. The most immediate results of their success were their co-starring roles in the major motion picture film How High, their endorsement deal for Right Guard, Redman's starring role in Seed of Chucky and a short-lived sitcom on Fox Television entitled Method & Red.
In 1999, Method Man featured on Limp Bizkit's song "N 2 Gether Now" from their album Significant Other.
In 2000, Method Man performed Know Your Role which was included on the album titled, WWF Aggression. The song is focused on the popularity of professional wrestler at the time Dwayne Johnson whose wrestling name was 'The Rock' and the main line in the song is The Rock's most famous caption "Do you smell what The Rock is cookin'?".
2001–2004: The W, Iron Flag, and Tical 0: The Prequel
The Wu-Tang Clan released The W on November 21, 2000, and Iron Flag on December 18, 2001. The W received both critical and commercial success for the group, while Iron Flag did receive some but not to the same extent as its predecessor. The efforts earned two more platinum plaques for the Wu-Tang Clan.
In 2003, Method Man criticized Oli "Power" Grant and Mitchell "Divine" Diggs, the managers of the Wu-Tang Clan business. "Number 1 on my shit list right now is Divine from Wu-Tang management. He took something major from me that he had no intention of giving back."
Aside from the financial issues, Method Man was unhappy with the decision to bring Wu-Tang into the fashion world for a brief period of time with Wu-Wear, despite the brand being a major money-maker for the group. "When Wu-Wear started making shoes and sneakers and pants, it was shoddy material. I never rocked that shit."
In 2004, Method Man released his third solo album Tical 0: The Prequel, which featured the hit party single "What's Happenin'" with Busta Rhymes and included guest appearances of pop-rap stars like Missy Elliott and P. Diddy. The album sold well and was certified gold record by the RIAA but did not see the platinum success of his previous solo releases.
P. Diddy was one of the executive producers for the album, although Meth later voiced his displeasure with the final product. "On the third LP, it was suggested (by Def Jam) to bring in Harve Pierre and P. Diddy. Who am I to argue? Puff knows how to sell some records. But that wasn't the direction to go in, and I know that."
2006–2007: 4:21... The Day After
Method Man's fourth album, entitled 4:21: The Day After was released in August 2006 with a star lineup of producers featuring Havoc, Erick Sermon, Scott Storch, Allah Mathematics, Mr. Porter, and fellow Wu-Tang Clan member, RZA. This time around, a more focused Method Man went back to his hip hop roots and both hip hop fans and the media took notice. He did an interview on the ItsHipHop.Tv. Despite this being one of Meth's strongest solo efforts to date, the album failed to do well commercially due to it having no single or video, which Method Man has held discontent towards his own label for. However, he toured strongly all over the world to promote the album, and appeared onstage with fellow Wu-Tang member Inspectah Deck, as well as New York up and comers Saigon, and Gat Murdah. Meth cited various reasons for the problems between him and his label, Def Jam. While he puts most of the blame on personal agendas in the Def Jam offices, Meth did take some blame, himself, for giving in to his record label.
In early May 2007, Method Man's camp leaked the street single "New York New York" which became a popular track on the internet.
2007–2010: Blackout! 2
On March 27, 2007, Redman confirmed on BET's Rap City: Tha Bassment that a sequel to How High was then being written .
In an April 10, 2007, Onion A.V. Club interview, Redman hinted that there would be a second collaborative album with Method Man, with work beginning in midsummer or early September.
In early 2008, a remake of the Smooth da Hustler and Trigger tha Gambler classic Broken Language was released to the internet by the duo entitled Broken Language 2008, fueling rumors of an upcoming Blackout! sequel. This rumor was further fueled by the duo while performing in Gainesville, Florida, at the University of Florida. Blackout! 2 was scheduled for a December 9, 2008, release but was pushed back to the second quarter of 2009, with a new release date of May 19, 2009. Bun B confirmed that he guested on Blackout! 2. In April 2009, a single was released entitled "City Lights", produced by Nasty Kutt. Erick Sermon, Rockwilder and Pete Rock also confirmed their presence on Blackout! 2.
The duo finished their Still High tour with Termanology, The Alchemist, and Evidence of Dilated Peoples.
2011–present: The Meth Lab and Crystal Meth
Crystal Meth was to be Method Man's fifth and final studio album. The album has no confirmed release date. The Crystal Meth album was first announced before Method Man began working on his and Redman's second album together, Blackout! 2, at which time it was tentatively titled The Crystal Method. In the liner notes of that album, it was given a scheduled release date of 2009. The album, however, was further postponed until it was later mentioned in an MTV interview that it would be released in early 2010. At a concert on December 23, 2010, Method Man told the crowd to look for his album in March 2011. However, the album was postponed again.
In an April 2011 interview with The Come Up Show, following a performance in Canada, Method Man replied to a question regarding his "weed-loving" image: "When you get older and you've got kids and your kids are going to school and you know [their] teachers...and they see how active you are and concerned [you are] with your kids' education or well being, it's hard to sit there and be taken seriously if people are always talking about he's always high...which is totally not the case", he said. "When I first came out, I was young, we were doing our thing, we smoked a lot...and we didn't care if the world knew. Now, I have to use more discretion because of my kids. This is not for me; everything I do is for them now, so I use a bit more discretion and I don't put weed as a forefront any more."
On October 5, 2011, a new single from Method Man, entitled "World Gone Sour (The Lost Kids)", was released on iTunes. In July 2012, he confirmed that the album would come out in 2013 & would be produced by RZA, although he has also stated that RZA would not produce the whole album, but instead be one of a few producers which would also include Erick Sermon, Rockwilder, and some then-younger producers such as Diggilo. He also expressed a desire to work with Odd Future frontman Tyler, the Creator. Throughout 2013, Method Man worked on material for Crystal Meth and on the Wu-Tang Clan's sixth studio album, A Better Tomorrow. He also toured with Redman throughout the year. On January 1, 2014, Method Man announced that a mixtape titled The Meth Lab would be released in March 2014 and that Crystal Meth would be released in August 2014 on Tommy Boy Entertainment. However, Method Man released The Meth Lab as a mixtape album through Tommy Boy on August 21, 2015. In 2019 Method Man featured on the record 'Winnebago' with South London rapper Blue Meth. The music video was directed by Nick Donnelly
Crystal Meth was supposedly going to be released in August 2016 but still hasn't been released as of 2024.
Acting career
In the late 1990s, Method Man began a career in acting. He has had recurring roles in critically acclaimed television shows such as HBO's Oz as Tug Daniels, HBO's The Wire as Prop Joe's nephew Cheese, The Twilight Zone, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, in which Method Man portrays Drops, a wealthy Las Vegas party promoter who clashes with the CSI team (specifically investigator Nick Stokes) in their investigations involving Drops' clubs or entourage, in the episodes "Poppin' Tags" (2006), "Big Shots" (2007), and "Drops Out" (2008).
Method Man and Redman hosted a pilot on MTV called Stung. Additionally, Method Man has made numerous appearances as himself on TV shows such as Mind of Mencia and Chappelle's Show.
His first prominent role came in with the film Belly (1998), along with fellow rappers Nas and DMX. Method Man has since added many credits to his name, including roles in the films Garden State, One Eight Seven, and many others, with starring roles in feature films such as How High and Soul Plane. Method Man had a cameo in the horror movie Venom (2005), where he played a deputy who is killed shortly into the movie. On March 27, 2007, Redman confirmed on BET's show Rap City that the sequel to How High was being written; the script for How High 2 is being written by Dustin Lee Abraham of CSI, who also wrote the first movie. Method Man also appeared in the 2008 movies The Wackness (2008) and Meet the Spartans (2008).
Method Man stars in the Law & Order SVU episode "Snitch" as the main antagonist. The episode was first broadcast December 4, 2007.
Method Man appeared in the Def Jam series of video games. In Fight for NY he voiced Blaze, one of the main characters. In Icon, he voiced Gooch, a major character in the storyline. In Underground, he voiced Meth, one of the major characters.
He made a guest appearance in the music video for "If I Ain't Got You" (2003) by Alicia Keys, where he played the role of her boyfriend. He also appeared in Beanie Sigel's music video "Feel It in the Air", where Method Man played an undercover cop leading an operation against Sigel.
Method Man played the main antagonist, an arsonist wealthy executive, in an episode of the FOX TV show The Good Guys.
Method Man appears as Valentine, a hip hop business mogul, in the episode Bad Blood in season 2 of Burn Notice.
Method Man had a cameo appearance in the film Cop Land (1997), as a violent criminal who, while fleeing, throws Peter Berg's character off of a New York rooftop. Method Man has also appeared in the TV drama Wonderland, as a patient in a mental hospital.
Method Man has a small role in the film The Sitter (2011), starring Jonah Hill. He also played crewman "Sticks" in the George Lucas movie Red Tails (2012), about the Tuskegee Airmen.
Method Man played the leads in the films The Mortician (2011) and #Lucky Number (2015).
In 2014, he voiced Phantasm, the primary antagonist on the FX animated comedy Chozen.
In 2016, he played himself in Difficult People, Luke Cage, and Paterson. Also that year, he portrayed "Cheddar" in the film Keanu.
In 2017, he became the host of the TBS series Drop the Mic, based on the popular recurring segment on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
Method Man played a recurring character in the HBO show The Deuce.
In 2019, Method Man voiced Ben Urich in the scripted podcast Marvels. He also appeared in Shaft as Freddie P, an acquaintance of John Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson).
In 2020, Method Man appeared as a recurring character in the Netflix original series Teenage Bounty Hunters as Terrance Coin, Bowser's rival bounty hunter.
He also starred in the 2020 film Concrete Cowboy, an adaptation of the book Ghetto Cowboy.
In 2020, Method Man also starred as Father Jackson in Netflix film Vampires vs. the Bronx.
In 2021, he made appearances as Samuel Christian in Season 2 of the MGM+ series, Godfather of Harlem.
He starred in the 50 Cent-produced series Power Book II: Ghost as Davis MacLean, Tasha's Lawyer.
Other ventures
Method Man appeared in the documentary entitled The Show (1995). There is a scene in which Method Man, on a train in Japan, gets into an argument with U-God and Ghostface Killah, over camera time, radio interviews, and clothing mishaps.
In 2006, Method Man appeared on the MTV reality game show Yo Momma, in the pilot episode.
Method Man is the first of the Wu-Tang Clan to produce a series of eponymous graphic novels for Hachette Book Group USA's imprint Grand Central Publishing (to be followed by GZA and Ghostface Killah).
In 2017, he became the co-host (with Hailey Baldwin) of a celebrity battle rap show Drop the Mic
In February 2021, Method Man began hosting Marvel/Method, a podcast series for Marvel Entertainment and Sirius XM. The podcast features interviews with celebrity guests discussing Marvel comics, music, and culture.
In 2022, Method Man produced and hosted "The Wire At 20" 20th anniversary podcast for HBO.
Personal life
Dating since 1992, Smith married Tamika in 2001.
The couple have three children together: son Shakuan; and girl-boy twins Cheyenne and Raekwon.
Tamika is a breast cancer survivor.
His son Raekwon Smith played football for Stony Brook University.
Method Man is a comic book fan and has a collection of around 30,000 comics, including Hulk #181, which features the first full appearance of Wolverine.
Legal issues
On May 17, 2007, Method Man was arrested in New York City for marijuana possession. His SUV was pulled over near the Battery Tunnel toll booths for having an expired inspection sticker. An unidentified source said, "It was like something out of Cheech & Chong. He rolls down the window and the smoke would choke a horse." The arresting officer noticed two blunts and a plastic bag containing marijuana in plain view. Upon further inspection more marijuana was found under the driver's seat. Method Man was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, criminal possession of marijuana, DWI, and driving an uninspected motor vehicle. He reached a plea agreement to perform community service including rapping to children about the dangers of drugs.
On October 5, 2009, Method Man was arrested at his home in Staten Island for income tax violations. He was accused of failing to file income tax returns for the state of New York between 2004 and 2007, and owed nearly $33,000 in taxes. On June 28, 2010, Method Man pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to a conditional discharge and paid a $106,000 fine.
Controversies
Wendy Williams
In 2006, Method Man had a personal and publicized conflict with TV talk show host Wendy Williams on The Breakdown, an Internet show on Onloq.com. Williams talked on air about Method Man's wife's having cancer, which was something he wanted to keep private and her own family members had not yet known about. He said that people who lived next door to him did not know, but Williams had dug it up and made it public over the radio. Because of this leaked information, Method Man and his wife had many problems.
Williams also reported rumors that Method Man had been having an affair with his wife's doctor. Method Man first heard of this while in recording sessions in Los Angeles.
Sean Combs
During a concert in 2006, Method Man criticized Diddy's decisions on Duets: The Final Chapter, the posthumous album by The Notorious B.I.G., saying that Biggie never would have worked with some of the rappers.
Fox Television
In 2004, Method Man starred in a Fox sitcom called Method & Red. However, after only a short time on the air, the show was put on hiatus and never returned. Method Man later spoke to the press about Fox's influence on the show's style, saying that "there's been too much compromise on our side and not enough on their side", and criticizing the network's decision to add a laugh track. Before the show premiered, he was telling fans not to bother watching it. He told the Los Angeles Times:
This is frustrating for me. I'm trying to keep this show ghetto, and there's a way for it to be both ghetto and intelligent. But it's not going that way.
Discography
Filmography
Film
Television
Music videos
Video games
Documentary
See also
List of celebrities who own cannabis businesses
References
External links
Method Man discography at Discogs
Method Man at AllMusic
Method Man at IMDb
Method Man at Curlie |
Raekwon | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raekwon | [
308
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raekwon"
] | Corey Woods (born January 12, 1970), better known by his stage name Raekwon (, ray-KWON), is an American rapper. He rose to prominence as a founding member of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, which achieved mainstream success following the release of their debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), in 1993. Raekwon would subsequently pursue a solo career, releasing his first solo album, entitled Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., in 1995. The album received critical acclaim, and is regarded by many critics as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time, as well as a staple of 1990s rap.
Whereas his next two albums, Immobilarity in 1999 and then The Lex Diamond Story in 2003, drew mixed reviews, his fourth album, long delayed, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II, released in September 2009, was likened to The Godfather 2. Recognized for his "street epics" that are "straightforward yet linguistically rich," Raekwon is ranked among leading rappers. Meanwhile, he founded the record label ICE H20 Records.
Early life
Raekwon was born Corey Woods in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he was raised by his mother during his early childhood. His father was an addict. Raekwon only met his father once when he was six years old. On that occasion, his father brought him to meet his paternal grandmother (also for the first time) and then snuck out of the apartment. Raekwon moved with his mother to Staten Island after his mother was robbed. They were living in Park Hill by the time Raekwon was adolescent.
Raekwon attributes the name Raekwon to the Five-Percent Nation, an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, when he was a "young kid." He converted to Islam in 2009.
Growing up, he witnessed his mother being hit and abused by different men, an experience which he said "affected [him] a lot." As a young man, his mother kicked him out of their Park Hill home when Raekwon got into an argument with her boyfriend and his mother sided with the boyfriend. During this time, he spiraled into a pattern of hopelessness and violent behavior. He became addicted to cocaine and crack cocaine until he became aware of how the crack epidemic was affecting those around him, at which point "it was an automatic stop."
Raekwon and rap partner Ghostface Killah attended junior high school together on Staten Island. Raekwon attended New Dorp High School, where he befriended rappers Remedy, Method Man and Inspectah Deck.
After being caught in a crossfire and accidentally shot four times, Raekwon began rapping in earnest. He later described being shot as an "important eye opener."
Career
Wu-Tang Clan
Woods first rapped as Sha Raider. In 1992, he joined the Wu-Tang Clan, an originally nine-member rap group drawing mainly from the Staten Island but also from the Brooklyn boroughs of New York City. He rapped as Raekwon The Chef, and also used the aliases Lex Diamonds, Shallah Raekwon, and Louis Rich.
As recording artists, the Wu-Tang Clan debuted with the November 1993 album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which was later certified platinum. Its single "C.R.E.A.M." reached #8 on the Billboard rap chart. Wu-Tang Forever, a double album, followed in 1997, and was certified 4x multi-platinum. Amid other solo albums by its members, the group released The W in 2000, Iron Flag in 2001, and 8 Diagrams in 2007.
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
In 1994, Raekwon signed a solo deal with Loud Records and released his debut solo single "Heaven & Hell" for the soundtrack to the film Fresh. His first solo album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., was released on August 1, 1995. Sales lagged his fellow Wu-Tang member Method Man's Tical. Raekwon's album drew rave reviews, however, and it was promptly recognized as a classic.
The album's narrative struggle is set to imagery of criminal activity, largely cocaine trafficking, and emergence from it into the good life. Wu-Tang member and house producer RZA, who produced the entire album, called it "like a crime mafia story." Wu-Tang member Ghostface Killah rapped in over half of the album's tracks, and the two wrote some lyrics in Barbados and Miami. It also follows a cinematic narrative, inspired by mob and kung-fu movies and a plethora of references and samples in which the main rapping lines with an on-going story of struggle and success.
Raekwon explained the lyrics' context as "trying to get out the hood. We wanted to buy the most expensive cars and jewelry and different things like that." The album, he perceived, "was only built for a certain lifestyle or people that understood that language. But eventually, it would break off to people looking at it as a movie and respecting it saying, 'Yo, wow! This is authentic. This is something that never been done before' " Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... debuted at No. 4 on the popular albums chart the Billboard 200, and at No. 2 on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It shipped about 130,000 copies in its first week, and was certified gold, at least 500,000 copies shipped, two months later, October 1995.
Immobilarity and The Lex Diamond Story
After Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., Raekwon featured on R&B group Allure's debut or 1997 album. He also featured alongside rappers Nas, Jadakiss, and Big Pun in rapper Fat Joe's song "John Blaze." Raekwon's next album, Immobilarity, lacking RZA's record production and Ghostface Killah features, was issued in 1999 to mixed reviews. The Lex Diamond Story, released in 2003 under major label Universal Records, also drew mixed reviews, most critics unimpressed while user reviews widely varied. Raekwon cited a low promotional budget.
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II
Raekwon planned to release Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II through record producer Dr. Dre's label Aftermath Entertainment in 2007. Raekwon credited the executive producer Busta Rhymes with restoring his "Cuban Linx mindset," while most tracks were produced by RZA, who likened collaboration with Dr. Dre to "yin and yang" styles.
Amid many delays, as for sample clearance, the Only Built For Cuban Linx... Pt. II track "Surgical Gloves" had been leaked already when the album was released by Raekwon's label, Ice H20, under major label EMI's distribution on September 8, 2009. The album features Wu-Tang members and affiliates as well as Slick Rick, Jadakiss, Busta Rhymes, Beanie Sigel, and others.
Also in September 2009, MTV ranked Raekwon tenth among "hottest" rappers. In December, HipHopDx's 2009 awards named Only Built For Cuban Linx... Pt. II album of the year, calling it "the Hip Hop equivalent to The Godfather 2, with Rae as revitalized as Marlon was". Raekwon won Emcee of the Year—the prior year, Nas won—while HipHopDX staff explained,Raekwon brought it back to lyrical, dope rap. He released an album that spoke to teens, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, and beyond. Without compromising, the Chef made an edgy Hip Hop record that refused to bastardize the catalog he laid down 15 years ago. On top of that, Rae (along with Ghostface) was a go-to for numerous rappers making albums, ranging from the Playaz Circle to Jadakiss to BK One. That's beyond real, as was a year filled with performing in arenas, clubs and even churches. When it came to mastering the ceremony, Rae had 'em all following the leader.
Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang
After the critical and relative commercial success of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II, Raekwon collaborated with Method Man and Ghostface Killah for Wu-Massacre, a short trio album designed to showcase unity within the group. Following this release, Raekwon resurrected talk of Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, a project announced in 2007, originally planned as a Wu-Tang album, minus RZA, due to his response to the previous group album 8 Diagrams. Raekwon forwarded his projects continuously through his growing label Icewater. He both worked on his own project while signing other underground artists.
Although not a Wu-Tang Clan project, Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang was released in March 2011, serving as Raekwon's fifth solo LP. As originally planned, RZA did not participate on the project, however, several other Wu-Tang members made appearances, as well as Black Thought, Nas and Rick Ross, among others. Raekwon revealed that he intends on eventually releasing a third installment to the Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... albums.
Lost Jewlry, Fly International Luxurious Art, The Wild, and present
In 2012, Raekwon launched his own record label, Ice H20 Records. Raekwon announced on November 30, 2012, that he would soon release an EP entitled Lost Jewlry. On December 20, he released "Never Can Say Goodbye", which did not end up on the EP. Lost Jewlry was released on January 15, 2013. It featured guest appearances from Maino and Freddie Gibbs, as well as production from Scram Jones, among others.
On January 1, 2013, Raekwon announced that the title of his next album would be F.I.L.A., an acronym for Fly International Luxurious Art, and that it would be released during the second quarter of 2013. He would later specify a release month of September 2013. Following the release of the first single "All About You", Raekwon intimated that the album would be released in January 2014; it finally saw release on April 28, 2015. In November 2016, Raekwon announced that a new album was complete.
On March 24, 2017, Raekwon released a studio album, The Wild, his first not to feature collaborations with fellow members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Critical reception was positive, with Pitchfork saying the album was stronger than Fly, which it alleged had a "bloated roster". Consequence of Sound agreed, saying The Wild was largely understood as a return to form by Raekwon, with fewer guest appearances by other artists than usual and more focus on Raekwon's long-established style, albeit with the "maximalist modern production" he had employed on Fly.
Raekwon was featured as a guest on the intro to the WWCD compilation by Griselda. On August 1, 2020, Elliot Wilson, of Tidal and Rap Radar, announced Raekwon will be releasing Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 3 soon. In his most recent appearance, Raekwon provided guest vocals alongside Ghostface Killah and Busta Rhymes on "Science Class", a song off Griselda leader Westside Gunn's 2022 mixtape 10.
Discography
Studio albums
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... (1995)
Immobilarity (1999)
The Lex Diamond Story (2003)
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II (2009)
Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang (2011)
Fly International Luxurious Art (2015)
The Wild (2017)
Collaboration albums
Wu-Massacre (with Method Man & Ghostface Killah) (2010)
References
Further reading
Raekwon; Anthony Bozza (2021). From Staircase to Stage: The Story of Raekwon and the Wu-Tang Clan. Gallery Books. ISBN 978-1-9821-6872-8.
External links
Official website
Raekwon at IMDb
Raekwon discography at Discogs |
Ghostface_Killah | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostface_Killah | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostface_Killah"
] | Dennis David Coles (born May 9, 1970), better known by his stage name Ghostface Killah, is an American rapper and a member of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. After the group achieved breakthrough success in the aftermath of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the members went on to pursue solo careers to varying levels of success. Ghostface Killah debuted his solo career with Ironman, which was well-received by music critics, in 1996. He has enjoyed continued success in the years that have followed, releasing critically acclaimed albums such as Supreme Clientele (2000) and Fishscale (2006). His stage name was taken from one of the characters in the 1979 kung fu film The Mystery of Chess Boxing. He is the founder of his own record label, Starks Enterprises.
Ghostface Killah is critically acclaimed for his loud, fast-paced flow, and his emotional stream-of-consciousness narratives containing cryptic slang and non-sequiturs. In 2006, MTV included him as an "honourable mention" on their list of the "Greatest MCs of All Time", while the editors of About.com placed him on their list of the "Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987–2007)", calling him "one of the most imaginative storytellers of our time." Q magazine called him "rap's finest storyteller." Pitchfork Media has stated that "Ghostface has unparalleled storytelling instincts; he might be the best, most colorful storyteller rap has ever seen." NPR has called him "a compulsive storyteller", and asserts that "his fiction is painterly."
Early life
Ghostface grew up in the Stapleton Houses housing project in Staten Island, New York City, helping with daily care of two younger brothers who had muscular dystrophy. The 2019 series Wu-Tang: An American Saga depicts a feud between him and fellow Clan member Raekwon; however the feud was purely fictional and never took place in reality. Raekwon and Ghostface attended junior high school together.
Career
Early work
A roommate of Wu-Tang founder RZA, Ghostface helped bring together the other seven members. In 1995, Ghostface guest-starred extensively on fellow Clan member Raekwon's debut album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., appearing on almost every song and receiving nearly equal billing. "It felt good to have my boy next to me, Ghostface, who basically comes from the same lifestyle as I come from. And we were able to sit down and concoct an idea that we both were able to respect and basically get everybody in the crew involved...", said Raekwon about Ghostface's involvement in the project. Raekwon intended Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... to play like a film, with himself as the "star," Ghostface Killah as the "guest star" and producer RZA as the "director." He also contributed songs to the Sunset Park and Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood soundtracks; both songs were included on his first solo LP, Ironman, in 1996. The album, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200, had a more pronounced soul influence (particularly 1970s soul) than previous Wu-Tang releases, and Ghostface's future albums would continue to feature this stylistic trait. He readily and regularly took on the role of executive producer for many collective efforts as well along with RZA and Oli Power Grant.
In the year 2000, Ghostface released his second studio album, Supreme Clientele. The album was well received by critics, and peaked at #7 on the Billboard 200. It included "Apollo Kids", a popular single which featured Raekwon and had a sample of "Cool Breeze" by Solomon Burke. "Cherchez La Ghost", another single off the album, became a minor club hit. Supreme Clientele marked a turning point in terms of RZA's influence on Ghostface's sound, as only six songs on it are produced by RZA, whereas on Ironman, its predecessor, every song but one is produced by RZA. Although he contributed fewer beats to the project than to Ironman, RZA personally oversaw the mixing and production of the album as a whole, thereby contributing to Supreme Clientele's unified sound.
Ghostface wasted little time in recording his next album, the heavily R&B-influenced Bulletproof Wallets, released a year after Supreme Clientele. Its main single, "Never Be the Same Again", featured Raekwon and Carl Thomas. It produced another minor club hit, "Flowers", which featured guest vocals from fellow Wu-Tang members Method Man and Raekwon, and a popular single, "Ghost Showers" which featured Madame Majestic, whose other key claim to fame is that she sings on the popular Wu-Tang track "Gravel Pit".
Def Jam
In 2003, Ghostface signed with Def Jam Records. After temporarily dropping "Killah" from his stage name, Ghostface released The Pretty Toney Album in April 2004. The album, while containing two RZA productions, featured none of the Clan; instead, it featured collaborations with Missy Elliott, D-Block, and Jacki-O. The singles "Tush" and "Run", which were collaborations with Missy and Jadakiss respectively, achieved moderate success in the clubs and on the charts, and the album was featured on numerous "best of the year" lists; for instance, it was Pitchfork Media's #9 album of the year. Ghostface also appeared on the track "On My Knees" by UK R&B group the 411; the song became a hit in the UK and Australia. Ghostface then released an album entitled 718 (after the Staten Island area code) with a group of his protégés, the Theodore Unit. Ghostface also appeared on "He Comes" by De La Soul, on The Grind Date. In November 2005, Ghostface and Theodore Unit's breakout star Trife Da God released a joint project, Put It on the Line.
In 2006, Ghostface teamed up with underground artist MF Doom for a still-unreleased album entitled Swift & Changeable. MF Doom also produced several songs for Ghostface's 2006 album Fishscale, on which he chose to revert to the stage name "Ghostface Killah", rather than just "Ghostface". The album debuted strongly, appearing at the #4 position on the U.S. Billboard 200 and at #2 on the R&B charts, the rapper's most auspicious chart showing since the heyday of the Wu-Tang Clan and the release of his solo debut. The album also received near-unanimous positive reviews. Ghostface embarked on a limited-date tour of U.S. venues in support of the album, performing several of his concerts together with most of the other members of the Wu-Tang Clan.
In 2007, Ghostface provided the theme song for the Irish animated series Skunk Fu! that ran on Kids' WB. On December 4, 2007, Ghostface released his seventh solo studio album, The Big Doe Rehab.
In a May 2008 interview, Ghostface Killah stated that he would make an R&B-inspired album in the vein of certain tracks he had done before with artists such as Ne-Yo and Jodeci. That album would become his eighth studio album, Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, which won good reviews from music critics. It featured singles such as "Baby" and "Do Over". In March 2009, Ghostface responded to the Rihanna/Chris Brown controversy by recording a song, "Message from Ghostface", which was dedicated to women in abusive relationships.
In a May 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, Raekwon indicated that Ghostface Killah was preparing to release a new album. In response to a question asking if the Wu-Tang Clan were going to release a follow-up to 8 Diagrams, Raekwon stated, "Everybody's doing different things right now — you got Meth [Method Man] coming out with an album, you got Ghostface coming out with an album, some guys working on their projects, some guys getting into the film world, everybody is multi-tasking right now." Ghostface appeared on a total of 8 songs on Raekwon's highly anticipated release of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II.
Shortly after the release of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II, Def Jam contracted Raekwon to work with their label artists Method Man and Ghostface Killah on an album which later received the title Wu-Massacre. Production began in November 2009. Wu-Massacre was released March 30, 2010 to generally positive reviews from music critics; this time, however, reviews were more mixed, with some critics objecting to the 30-minute-long album's rushed feel. With heavy promotion, it sold 37,900 units in its first week; it has sold 64,000 units as of May 12, 2010. It features production from Scram Jones, Mathematics, and The RZA, who produced the album's lead single, "Our Dreams".
In 2010, Ghostface confirmed that he would be releasing two new studio albums, Apollo Kids and one which would serve as a sequel to his 2000 album Supreme Clientele. In 2011, Ghostface Killah featured on UK artist Josh Osho's debut single "Redemption Days".
Post Def Jam
Ghostface released a collaborative album with D-Block member Sheek Louch called Wu Block. The album was released on November 27, 2012, on E1 Music and debuted at number 73 on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 8,600 copies in the United States. It fell to #152 in its second week selling 4,200 more copies. In January of 2017, Ghostface and Sheek Louch announced on their respective social media accounts that a second collaborative album was in the works.
In an interview with Complex Magazine on November 17, 2012, Ghostface confirmed that he had left Def Jam, making Apollo Kids his last album on the label. In the same interview, he also stated that Blue & Cream, the sequel to his critically acclaimed album Supreme Clientele, was 80-85 percent done. On April 16, 2013, Ghostface released his tenth album Twelve Reasons to Die which was produced by Adrian Younge and executive produced by RZA. The album was released in various formats such as CD, vinyl and cassette under RZA's Soul Temple Records. The deluxe digital and CD versions also came with a comic book.
He would later announce that the sequel to Supreme Clientele would be released between July and September 2013 and that his collaborative album with MF Doom would be released around Halloween 2013 though neither projects materialized. In January 2014, he appeared on the VH1 series Couples Therapy with his girlfriend Kelsey Nykole. Later that year Ghostface announced he would be releasing his eleventh album titled 36 Seasons in December 2014. He collaborated with Canadian jazz band BADBADNOTGOOD on an album titled Sour Soul, which was released in 2015 which earned a nomination for the 2015 Polaris Music Prize.
A sequel to Twelve Reasons to Die, simply titled Twelve Reasons to Die II, was released on July 10, 2015.
Ghostface had a string of UK and European tour dates scheduled in 2016.
Ghostface provided vocals on the song "Purple Hearts" from Kendrick Lamar's album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers in 2022.
In January 2023, Ghostface partnered with Kano Computing to release exclusive music, videos, meetings, and concerts on the Stem Player.
In May 2024, Ghostface released his 12th studio album, Set the Tone (Guns & Roses).
Lawsuits and criminal charges
In 1995, Coles was issued an arrest warrant for robbery. In December 1997, Coles was arrested for weapons possession after being pulled over for a traffic violation whereby police claimed that Coles got out of the car and became verbally abusive. He was wearing a bulletproof vest which gave them probable cause to search him and his car where they found a .357 Magnum handgun and he was charged with third-degree criminal possession of a weapon. In February 1999, Coles was issued a 6-month sentence for attempted robbery, and later pleaded guilty to an additional charge of weapons possession and was issued five years of probation with four months of prison time.
In July 2011, Coles was sued by Jack Urbont for copyright violation stemming from the "improper use" of the 1960s "Iron Man" theme song, which Urbont claimed as his own. Urbont also took issue with Coles' appropriation of the Iron Man brand name. Coles was granted summary judgment on the lawsuit in April 2015, which stated that Marvel Entertainment, owners of the Iron Man character and brand, owned the "Iron Man" theme song, not Urbont.
In August 2011, Coles filed a lawsuit against Universal Music for unpaid royalties.
Personal life
Like fellow Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon, Coles is a revert to Islam., having reverted in 2004. Ghostface is the father of rappers Sun God, Supreme, and singer Infinite.
Aliases
Ghostface Killah, like most members of the Wu-Tang clan, rapped under several personae, each with their own name, mythology and influences. Some recurring aliases:
Ghostface Killah (occasionally spelled Ghostface Killer, Ghost Face Killer, Ghost Face Killah, or abbreviated GFK)
Ghostface (shortened stage name during The Pretty Toney Album era)
Ghost Deini
Ironman, Tony Starks, or just Starks
Ghostface has frequently assumed the names of both Ironman and Tony Starks [sic], a reference to the Marvel Comics character Iron Man and his true identity, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark. He released a 1996 album titled Ironman. His song, "Slept On Tony With Dirt," appears in the 2008 film Iron Man, and he also appears in a deleted scene on the DVD.
Starky Love
Pretty Toney, P Tone
Discography
Filmography
Movie appearances
The Show (1995) as himself
Belly (1998) cameo appearance
Black and White (1999) as himself
Hunter Dawson (2002) as himself
Big Wigs (2002) as himself
Fade to Black (2004) as himself
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) as himself
Iron Man (2008) as himself; also appearing in a music video aired on Tony Stark's private jet. (Cut in post-production, his cameo can be found in the DVD's deleted scenes section.)
Big Pun: The Legacy (2008) as himself
Up and Above (2008) as himself
When in Rome (2010) as Guggenheim DJ
Purple Tape Documentary (2016) as himself
You're Watching Video Music Box (2021) as himself
TV series appearances
The World According To Pretty Toney (2005 - 2007) as himself
30 Rock (2006) as himself (episodes "Jack-Tor" and "The Source Awards")
Human Giant (2007) as himself (episodes "Mind Explosion" and "Mosh Pit!")
The Boondocks (2007) as himself (episode "Stinkmeaner Strikes Back")
Rushing Jason (2008) as Big Poppa
Mob Wives (VH1 Series) (2011) as himself
Couples Therapy (2014) as himself
Luke Cage (2018) as himself (episode "All Souled Out")
Video game appearances
Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style (1999) as himself
Def Jam Vendetta (2003) as himself
Def Jam: Fight for NY (2004) as himself
Def Jam Fight for NY: The Takeover (2006) as himself
WWE Smackdown VS. Raw 2007 (2006) Coles had his song “The Champ” on the soundtrack
Def Jam: Icon (2007) as himself
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (2009), created the theme music
References
External links
Ghostface Killah at IMDb |
Inspectah_Deck | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspectah_Deck | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspectah_Deck"
] | Jason Richard Hunter (born July 6, 1970), better known by his stage name Inspectah Deck, is an American rapper and hip hop producer. He is a member of the groups Wu-Tang Clan and Czarface.
He has acquired critical praise for his intricate lyricism, and for his verses on many of the group's most revered songs. He has grown to become a producer in his own right, taking up tracks for fellow Wu rappers and his own projects.
Early life
Hunter was born July 6, 1970 in Bronx and grew up in Staten Island, New York. Hunter routinely mentions the Park Hill Projects in Clifton, Staten Island, where he grew up and went to school with Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Remedy. Hunter's father died when he was six years old.
Career
Hunter developed a laid-back and quiet personality which he carried into his stage persona, as a low-key counterbalance to the antics of Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and RZA, referenced by Method Man at the end of the track "Can it Be All So Simple?" on Wu-Tang's debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers):
Inspectah Deck, he's like that dude that'll sit back and watch you play yourself and all that right? And see you sit there and know you lying; and he'll take you to court after that, cause he the Inspectah.
Despite this inconspicuous persona, Inspectah Deck maintained a relatively high profile, as he was the second most featured member on the album, and provided highly acclaimed verses for the singles "C.R.E.A.M.," "Protect Ya Neck," "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing ta Fuck Wit," and "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'." In the years following, Hunter would appear on several Wu members' solo projects, including Method Man's Tical (1994), Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… (1995), GZA's Liquid Swords (1995), and Ghostface Killah's Ironman (1996). On Wu-Tang's second group album, Wu-Tang Forever (1997), Deck produced the track "Visionz" and contributed a solo track, "The City", as well as writing one of the most critically acclaimed verses in hip-hop on the group's hit single "Triumph". He would also provide production for some of his Wu cohorts, including "Elements" and "Spazzola" for Method Man's Tical 2000: Judgement Day (1998), "Kiss of a Black Widow" for RZA's RZA as Bobby Digital in Stereo (1998), and the title track for GZA's Beneath the Surface (1999).
Solo career
Inspectah Deck was originally supposed to be featured on the track "Got My Mind Made Up" by 2Pac for his album All Eyez on Me along with Lady of Rage, however both artists were cut out at Shakur's request. The song went on to feature Tha Dogg Pound, Redman, and Deck's fellow Wu-Tang Clan member Method Man. Despite his verse being cut out, he can still be heard at the end of the song saying "INS the rebel" before it fades out. His debut album Uncontrolled Substance was initially set for a 1995 release on Loud Records, on which he signed for $650,000. But after Loud was acquired by Sony, it was delayed and set to release in late 1997, however, this experienced several additional delays due to a flood in producer RZA's basement studio, which destroyed over one hundred beats, including all of the instrumentals made for the album. In September 1999, Uncontrolled Substance was released, and featured more of Deck's own production, and appearances from several lesser known affiliates. The album received generally favorable reviews from music critics, but failed to garner the reception attained by earlier Wu-Tang solo projects. Shortly after this release, Deck returned to the Wu-Tang fold for the group albums The W (2000), and Iron Flag (2001).
In 2003, Inspectah Deck released his second studio album, The Movement, which he would later state did not live up to his expectations, and in 2006, he released The Resident Patient, intended as a prequel to The Movement. In 2007, the rapper reconvened with the Wu-Tang Clan to record the group album 8 Diagrams. Along with Raekwon, and Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck
partook in the controversy, sparked when several group members disparaged RZA's tight artistic control of the album, championing Ghost's album The Big Doe Rehab. In regards to these disagreements, Deck stated in an interview:
I feel like we have to give them a newer, better album such as the new Ghost album. I’m not saying that’s the truth either. I’m just saying that his album sounds like what a Wu-Tang album should sound like, but it’s him by himself.
Around this time he announced two new projects: an album called Czarface as a new collaboration called Czarface with Boston's 7L & Esoteric featuring the legendary DJ Premier and his up-coming solo album The Rebellion, confirming production from RZA and the Wu-Elements; it is now set to come after The Resident Patient II, and will reportedly be his final album as a solo artist.
On March 23, 2010, Inspectah Deck released his fourth solo album Manifesto, which features guest-appearances from Raekwon, Cormega, Termanology, Planet Asia, Cappadonna, Kurupt, and M.O.P.'s Billy Danze. In 2008, a mixtape entitled The Resident Patient II was leaked on to the internet; this features some original material, as well as freestyles over other artists' songs. Inspectah Deck stated in an interview that The Manifesto was meant to be the originally announced full-length sequel, Resident Patient II.
Since early 2010, Inspectah Deck has begun work on Czarface and The Rebellion, and has expressed his interest in working with several Wu-Tang members, as well as Snoop Dogg, E-40, Nas and Jadakiss on the album. He had mentioned in an interview with Conspiracy Radio that he will only retire from solo albums if the fans don't show support for The Manifesto and The Rebellion. He has also mentioned his plans to release an instrumental album of his own production, entitled The Bodyrock Volume 1, which is inspired by the instrumental albums released by Alchemist, Ayatollah, and Pete Rock. On February 11, 2013, in an interview with HipHopDX, Inspectah Deck stated that he also has an upcoming album with producer Agallah in the works, and later confirmed during that year that he had renamed his "The Rebellion" album to Rebellion 2013. He recently confirmed via Twitter that he has again changed the name of his final album to Uncontrolled Substance II, a sequel to his debut album; that will be produced primarily by RZA along with The Wu-Elements.
After working with The Wu-Tang Clan on their sixth studio album A Better Tomorrow, he reunited with 7L & Esoteric for another Czarface album titled Every Hero Needs a Villain, which was released in June 2015, and again in 2016 for the third Czarface album, A Fistful of Peril, after Marvel Entertainment reached out to them to record a track for their Black Panther web-series.
Discography
Studio albums
Uncontrolled Substance (1999)
The Movement (2003)
The Resident Patient (2006)
Manifesto (2010)
Chamber No. 9 (2019)
with Czarface
Czarface (2013)
Every Hero Needs a Villain (2015)
A Fistful of Peril (2016)
First Weapon Drawn (2017)
The Odd Czar Against Us (2019)
Czar Noir (2021)
Czarmageddon (2022)
Czartificial Intelligence (2023)
Collaboration albums with Czarface
Czarface Meets Metal Face (with MF Doom) (2018)
Czarface Meets Ghostface (with Ghostface Killah) (2019)
Super What? (with MF Doom) (2021)
References
External links
Media related to Inspectah Deck at Wikimedia Commons
Inspectah Deck at IMDb |
U-God | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-God | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-God"
] | Lamont Jody Hawkins (born November 10, 1970), better known by his stage name U-God, meaning Universal-God, is an American rapper and member of the hip hop collective Wu-Tang Clan. He has been with the group since its inception, and is known for his deep voice and rhythmic flow that can alternate between gruff and smooth.
Early life
Hawkins was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York City. He moved to Staten Island as a youth. He was originally a beatboxer for Cappadonna, and was friends with future members Method Man, Inspectah Deck and childhood friend of Raekwon. Sometime before the members united, U-God was mentored in rap by Cappadonna. He soon became friends with RZA and Ghostface Killah, and he began rhyming under the alias Golden Arms, based on the Kung-Fu movie Kid with the Golden Arm. Later on he changed his name to U-God (which is short for his Five-Percent Nation righteous name "Universal God Allah").
Career
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) / Wu-Tang Forever
U-God was convicted on the grounds of firearm and drug possession charges on April 17, 1992, and was paroled in January 1993. His incarceration prevented him from attending the group's debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) recording sessions for the most part, his input on the seminal LP consisting of only a short bridge on the group's debut single "Protect Ya Neck" as well as the fan-favorite opening verse of "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'". Nevertheless, after his release, he quickly became known to fans for his rugged flow and bass-like voice on Wu tracks such as "Winter Warz", "Knuckleheadz", "Investigative Reports", and "Black Jesus". He was featured heavily on the group's second album Wu-Tang Forever, on which he was one of only four of the group to get a solo track – "Black Shampoo" (the others being Inspectah Deck with "The City", RZA with "Sunshower" and Ol' Dirty Bastard with "Dog Shit").
Golden Arms Redemption
U-God was the eighth member of the group to record a solo album, releasing Golden Arms Redemption in 1999 on Priority Records, which displayed a wide variety of sounds from gritty blaxploitation funk to urgent string sections, and featured guest appearances from several Wu-Tang members and affiliates. It had two singles in "Dat's Gangsta" and "Bizarre". The song "Rumble" was used as the main song for the video game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style. Bizarre debuted #7 on the Billboard Hot Rap Singles, but soon after Priority Records was on the verge of shutting down. Still, the album managed to go Gold in sales. Based on the initial success, U-God was able to open his own label, Suppa Nigga Productions. He released his second album Mr. Xcitement in 2005.
Dopium and The Keynote Speaker
In 2009 U-God released the album Dopium and had the lead single "Wu-Tang" featuring Method Man. The album featured guest appearances by Sheek Louch, Jim Jones, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, GZA, Cappadonna, Killah Priest and Scotty Wotty with production by Bloody Beat Roots, Felix Cartel and Large Professor. In 2013 U-God announced a new album The Keynote Speaker with production by RZA who also served as the albums executive producer. The album was released on July 23, 2013, by RZA's Soul Temple Records with guest appearances from Styles P, Kool Keith, Method Man, RZA, GZA and Inspectah Deck.
Venom and autobiographical book
On December 13, 2016, U-God released through Babygrande Records' SoundCloud account a song "Venom" and announced that his new album, also called Venom, would be released soon. On September 25, 2017, he added a tweet in which he announced that he had finished his autobiography entitled Raw: My Journey Into The Wu-Tang and it would be released along with his new album in March 2018. On February 2, 2018, he released a free mixtape Bring Back God II through DatPiff platform. Venom was released on March 30, 2018 and debuted at #34 on the U.S. Rap Albums Chart.
Discography
Studio albums
Golden Arms Redemption (1999)
Mr. Xcitement (2005)
Dopium (2009)
The Keynote Speaker (2013)
Venom (2018)
Collaboration albums
UGodz-Illa Presents: The Hillside Scramblers with The Hillside Scramblers (2004)
Personal life
Around the time of Wu Tang Forever, his two-year-old son Dontae (now a hip-hop artist as iNTeLL) was struck by a stray bullet while on his way to a birthday party, suffering permanent damage to his kidneys and hands, an ordeal U-God documented on the Wu-Tang Clan track "A Better Tomorrow".
Bibliography
U-God (2018). Raw: My Journey Into The Wu-Tang. New York: Picador. ISBN 978-1-250-19116-8. OCLC 1001859919.
References
External links
U-God at IMDb
NPR interview, March 2018 |
Masta_Killa | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masta_Killa | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masta_Killa"
] | Jamel Irief (born Elgin Evander Turner; August 18, 1969), better known by his stage name Masta Killa, is an American rapper and member of the Wu-Tang Clan. Though one of the lesser-known members of the group (he was featured on only one track on their 1993 debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)), he has been prolific on Clan group albums and solo projects since the mid-1990s. He released his debut album No Said Date in 2004 to positive reviews, and has since released three additional albums.
Career
I never performed until we launched Wu-Tang. That was my first time as an MC. I have history since elementary school doing talent shows. Breaking and shit like that. I was that kind of dude. I loved to pop. That was me. Always doing shit around music. As far as with a mic in my hand, Wu-Tang was the first time. There never was next level for me. It was Wu-Tang and that was it. I never tried to get on. Never looked for any of this, because it was never my vision. I'm kinda like hanging out with GZA, and just stumbled across some shit. "Oh word?" And I was like, "Maybe I can do this." When I was young going to clubs, I was just hanging out. I never went in there like I was trying to be an MC. I never tried to get a record deal, or pass out tapes. It's just been Wu-Tang and I'm here.
Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Masta Killa was the last member to join the Wu-Tang Clan; consequently he did not appear on the group's debut single "Protect Ya Neck". He was also the only member who was not a rapper at the time of the group's formation. He was extensively mentored by the GZA during his early days with the group, evident in the similar flow they both employ. He derived his rap name from the 1978 kung fu film Shaolin Master Killer, (Shao Lin san shi liu fang). Masta Killa only appeared on one track on the Wu-Tang Clan's first album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), in the closing verse to "Da Mystery of Chessboxin". Masta only narrowly made the track, and was almost left off in favor of Killah Priest. On the No Said Date DVD, Killah Priest claims that he and Masta Killa were in competition for the spot on "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'", and while Killah Priest fell asleep, Masta Killa stayed up all night writing and Killah Priest woke up the next morning to Masta Killa's verse. During the time period that Enter the Wu-Tang was being written, Masta Killa was still developing his skills as a rapper. Since the other members of Wu-Tang were far more experienced, his verse from "Da Mystery of Chessboxin", was the only thing Masta Killa had written, that was fine tuned to the point that it fit with the verses from the rest of the members.
During the first round of solo projects, he made several appearances on Wu-Tang tracks, such as "Winter Warz", "Duel of the Iron Mic", and "Glaciers of Ice". His flow at the time attracted attention for being very slow and laid-back, in contrast to the more manic, forceful styles of members like Inspectah Deck and Ghostface Killah. Masta Killa is also Wu-Tang's member fondest of Chinese martial arts imagery. In 1997, the Wu-Tang Clan's second album Wu-Tang Forever saw Masta become a mainstay in the group's line-up with regular appearances throughout the double album.
Masta Killa was the last member to release a solo project, after it was delayed for several years and finally released in June 2004 with the title No Said Date; critically acclaimed, it became independent label Nature Sounds' best-selling album, notable for featuring every core member of the Wu-Tang Clan on the album after a period in the group's history that lacked unity. His second album, Made in Brooklyn, was released on August 8, 2006, and includes production from Pete Rock and MF Doom. "Ringing Bells", the Bronze Nazareth-produced lead single from the album, was released in March 2006.
In December 2012 he released his third album titled Selling My Soul, an LP with heavy soul grooves and guests including Kurupt and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard. The album was intended as a precursor to his long-awaited album Loyalty is Royalty, first announced in 2010 and eventually released in 2017.
Personal life
On the Wu-Tang Corp. website, Masta Killa stated, "I know I seem serious and quiet to a lot of the fans. That's because I take my work seriously. It's not a game. The Clan and I work hard to give you the best." He is a fan of Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Barry White, Parliament-Funkadelic and Ohio Players.
Like fellow Wu-Tang Clan member GZA, Masta Killa is a vegetarian.
Masta Killa is related to both Marvin Gaye, Nat Turner and Joe Budden as revealed in the 2019 Wu-Tang documentary Of Mics and Men. Masta Killa has two sons, Eternal and Jason.
Moniker and aliases
Masta Killa gets his name from the 1978 kung fu movie Shaolin Master Killer, also known as the 36th Chamber of Shaolin. He is often referred to as Jamel Irief.
Discography
Studio albums
No Said Date (2004)
Made in Brooklyn (2006)
Selling My Soul (2012)
Loyalty is Royalty (2017)
References
External links
Masta Killa Biography |
Ol%27_Dirty_Bastard | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ol%27_Dirty_Bastard | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ol%27_Dirty_Bastard"
] | Russell Tyrone Jones (November 15, 1968 – November 13, 2004), better known by his stage name Ol' Dirty Bastard (often abbreviated as ODB), was an American rapper. He was one of the founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan, a rap group primarily from Staten Island, New York City, which rose to mainstream prominence with its 1993 debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
His professional success was hampered by frequent legal troubles, including incarceration. He died on November 13, 2004, of an accidental drug overdose, at age 35.
Ol' Dirty Bastard was noted for his "outrageously profane, free-associative rhymes delivered in a distinctive half-rapped, half-sung style". His stage name was derived from the 1980 Chinese martial arts film Ol' Dirty and the Bastard (also called An Old Kung Fu Master, starring Yuen Siu-tien). According to fellow Wu-Tang Clan member Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard's name was also a reference to the unique nature of his rapping and, specifically, the fact "there ain't no father to his style."
He is the father of rapper Young Dirty Bastard.
Biography
Early life, formation of the Wu-Tang Clan
Russell Tyrone Jones was born on November 15, 1968, in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York City. He and his cousins Robert Diggs and Gary Grice shared a taste for rap music and martial arts-style movies. Jones, Diggs, and Grice (later known as Ol' Dirty Bastard, RZA, and GZA respectively) formed the group Force of the Imperial Master, which became known as All in Together Now after their successful underground single of the same name. They eventually added six more members to their group, calling it the Wu-Tang Clan. The group released their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in 1993, receiving notable commercial and critical success.
Music career
Ol' Dirty Bastard's solo career began March 28, 1995, at the age of 26. His first solo album, Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, spawned the hit singles "Brooklyn Zoo" and "Shimmy Shimmy Ya", which helped propel the album to platinum status. The album's sound was noted by several music writers as being as "raw and gritty" as 36 Chambers, with RZA and 4th Disciple producing beats of an even more minimalist and stripped-down style than on the group's debut album. In this same year, Ol' Dirty Bastard collaborated with Mariah Carey for the remix version of her single "Fantasy".
It was around this time that Ol' Dirty Bastard gained notoriety when, as he was being profiled for an MTV biography, he took two of his three children by limousine to a New York State welfare office to cash a $375 welfare check and receive food stamps while his latest album was still in the top 10 of the U.S. charts. The entire incident was filmed by an MTV camera crew and was broadcast nationwide. Although he had recently received a $45,000 cash advance for his first solo album and was earning a cut of the profits from the Wu-Tang Clan's debut album, Ol' Dirty Bastard was still listed as eligible for welfare and food stamps due to the fact that he had not yet filed his taxes for the current year. His caseworker revoked his eligibility after seeing the MTV segment, and the incident was presented by critics of welfare as representative of the allegedly widespread abuse and fraud that led to the significant welfare reforms enacted in 1996.
In 1997, Ol' Dirty Bastard appeared on the Wu-Tang Clan's second and most commercially successful work, the double album Wu-Tang Forever. He had fewer appearances on this album than the group's debut, contributing to one solo track ("Dog Shit"), three verses ("Maria", "Reunited", "Heaterz"), one hook ("As High as Wu-Tang Get"), and a spoken introduction/refrain ("Triumph").
In February 1998, Ol' Dirty Bastard witnessed a car accident from the window of his Brooklyn recording studio. He and a friend ran to the accident scene and organized about a dozen onlookers, who assisted in lifting the 1996 Ford Mustang—rescuing a 4-year-old girl from the wreckage. She was taken to a hospital with first and second-degree burns. Using a false name, Ol' Dirty Bastard visited the girl in the hospital frequently until he was spotted by members of the media.
The evening following the traffic accident, Ol' Dirty Bastard rushed on-stage unexpectedly as Shawn Colvin took the stage to give her acceptance speech for Song of the Year at the 1998 Grammy Awards, and he announced he had recently purchased expensive clothes in anticipation of winning the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album that he lost to Puff Daddy. As Ol' Dirty Bastard took the stage to a round of applause, he asked the audience, "Please calm down, the music and everything. It's nice that I went and bought me an outfit today that costed a lot of money today, you know what I mean? 'Cause I figured that Wu-Tang was gonna win. I don't know how you all see it, but when it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children. We teach the children. You know what I mean? Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best. Okay? I want you all to know that this is ODB, and I love you all. Peace!" The incident was widely covered in the media. The morning after the Grammy Awards, he appeared on The Howard Stern Show, to discuss the incident.
In 1999, Ol' Dirty Bastard wrote and recorded his second studio album, Nigga Please, between jail sentences. The album received notable commercial success, although it failed to parallel the critical praise of his debut. This release included the single "Got Your Money", which garnered worldwide chart success. The song was produced by The Neptunes and featured chorus vocals by R&B singer Kelis.
In 1999, Ol' Dirty Bastard was paid $30,000 to appear on Insane Clown Posse's fifth studio album, The Amazing Jeckel Brothers. Completing his track in two days, his recording consisted of his "rambling about bitches". Insane Clown Posse re-recorded the track and re-edited Ol' Dirty Bastard's vocals in order to form four rhymes out of his rambling, titling the song "Bitches".
In 2001, with Ol' Dirty Bastard again in jail for crack cocaine possession, his record label Elektra Records made the decision to release a greatest hits album (despite there being only two albums in his back catalog) in order to both end their contract with the artist (see below section), and to profit from the publicity generated by his legal troubles. After the contract with Elektra was terminated, the label D-3 Records released the album The Trials and Tribulations of Russell Jones in 2002, composed of tracks compiled without Ol' Dirty Bastard's input.
In 2003, the day he was released from prison, Ol' Dirty Bastard signed a contract with Roc-A-Fella Records. Living at his mother's home under house arrest and with a court-ordered probation, he used his criminal record to title his VH1 special, Inside Out: Ol' Dirty Bastard on Parole. He also managed to record his third album A Son Unique, which was originally scheduled to be released through Dame Dash Music Group in 2004; as of 2020, however, the album has never been released in physical form. In October 2004, one month before his death, his last collaboration was with Jon B. on the track "Everytime" from the album, Stronger Everyday. In 2005, five months after his death, he appeared posthumously on the song "Blah-Blah-Blah" by Brooke Valentine on her debut album, Chain Letter.
On July 17, 2004, Ol' Dirty Bastard had his second to last live performance at the Rock the Bells hip-hop festival in San Bernardino, California, with the rest of the Wu-Tang Clan.
On July 18, 2004, his final live performance was at the Gathering of the Juggalos in Garrettsville, Ohio.
In August 2017 in an interview on Hot 97, Wu-Tang Clan member RZA confirmed that the new Wu-Tang album, The Saga Continues, will contain unreleased vocals by Ol' Dirty Bastard.
To celebrate Ol' Dirty Bastard's birthday, "Intoxicated" from the unreleased album A Son Unique was released as a single on November 15, 2018.
Legal issues
In 1993, Ol' Dirty Bastard was convicted of second-degree assault for an attempted robbery and in 1994, he was shot in the abdomen following an argument with another rapper. In 1997, he was arrested for failure to pay child support for three of his children. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to attempted assault on his wife and was the victim of a home invasion robbery at his girlfriend's house. He was shot in the back and arm but the wounds were superficial.
In July 1998, only days after being shot in a push-in robbery at his girlfriend's house in Brooklyn, he was arrested for shoplifting a pair of $50 shoes from a Sneaker Stadium store in Virginia Beach, Virginia, although he was carrying close to $500 in cash at the time. He was issued bench warrants by the Virginia Beach Sheriff's Department to stand trial after he failed to appear in court numerous times. He was arrested for criminal threatening after a series of confrontations in Los Angeles a few weeks later, and was then re-arrested for similar charges not long after that. During a traffic stop, the details of which remain clouded in multiple versions of events, he was arrested for attempted murder and criminal weapon possession. The case was later dismissed.
On January 14, 1999, two officers from the Street Crimes Unit fired eight shots at Ol' Dirty Bastard and accused him of firing at them after they stopped his car in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Ol' Dirty Bastard was cleared by a grand jury and insisted that the officers had been scared by his cellular phone. No weapons or shell casings (besides those of the officers) were found in the vehicle or near the scene.
In February 1999, he was arrested for driving without a license and for being a convicted felon wearing a bulletproof vest. At the time, it was illegal for felons to own body armor. Back in New York weeks later, he was arrested for drug possession of crack cocaine and for traffic offenses. With multiple cases in the past and present, he was arrested with marijuana and 20 vials of crack.
In October 2000, he escaped from his court-mandated drug treatment facility and spent one month as a fugitive. During his time on the run, he met with RZA and spent some time in their recording studio. He then appeared onstage at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York drinking from a bottle at the record release party for The W, the third Wu-Tang Clan album. In late November 2000, while still a fugitive, he was arrested outside a South Philadelphia McDonald's (at 29th and Gray's Ferry Ave.), after he drew a crowd while signing autographs. He spent several days in a Philadelphia jail and was later extradited to New York City. A Manhattan court sentenced him to two to four years incarceration. He was released on parole on May 1, 2003.
In 2012, his FBI file was released to the public after a Freedom of Information Act request. It contains details of numerous crimes, such as alleged connections to three murders, a shootout with the New York City Police Department, and a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act investigation against the Wu-Tang Clan.
Death
Leading up to his death, Jones' legal troubles and eccentric behavior made him "something of a folk hero", according to The New Yorker writer Michael Agger. Music writer Steve Huey wrote: "it was difficult for observers to tell whether Ol' Dirty Bastard's wildly erratic behavior was the result of serious drug problems or genuine mental instability." According to The Atlantic contributing editor and music biographer James Parker, Jones had been diagnosed with schizophrenia around 2003.
Jones collapsed at approximately 4:35 p.m. (EST) on November 13, 2004, just two days before his 36th birthday, at RZA's recording studio in New York City; he was pronounced dead at the scene. The official cause of death was a drug overdose; an autopsy found a lethal mixture of cocaine and the prescription opioid tramadol. The overdose was ruled accidental and witnesses said Jones reportedly complained of chest pain before collapsing.
Mourning the decline of Jones' mental and physical health, RZA wrote in his 2009 book The Tao of Wu:Trust me, the man who became ODB, A son Unique, my cousin, he was a scientist and a minor prophet... People may not know this from the outrageous character he played, but ODB was a visionary. But he decayed, he lost that vision... From the time they put him in jail to all the drugs he was doing to all the stress he went through with his family, it took away his ability to see. And this night, he sat there and looked me in the eye and said, "RZA, I don't understand." ... Now, I know that right there, right when he said that—we lost him. Eight hours later, ODB was gone.
Discography
Studio albums
Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (1995)
Nigga Please (1999)
A Son Unique (2005)
Awards and nominations
Grammy Awards
References
External links
Wu-Tang Clan at Curlie
Ol' Dirty Bastard at IMDb
Ol' Dirty Bastard discography at Discogs
Ol' Dirty Bastard Tells Why He Stormed Grammy Stage
The Economist – Obituary in brief Ol' Dirty Bastard
FBI Records: The Vault – Russell Tyrone Jones at vault.fbi.gov |
Cappadonna | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadonna | [
308
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadonna"
] | Darryl Hill (born September 18, 1969), better known by his stage name Cappadonna, is an American rapper. He is a member of the hip hop collective Wu-Tang Clan and is a member of the hip hop group Theodore Unit together with Ghostface Killah.
Career
Cappadonna (also known as Cappachino) was known to the future members of the Wu-Tang Clan, and had been U-God's mentor. However, Cappadonna went to prison and was replaced in the group by Method Man.
Cappadonna made his recording debut as an affiliate of the Wu-Tang Clan on Raekwon's 1995 single "Ice Cream" on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.... He was also a guest star, along with Raekwon, on Ghostface Killah's solo debut album, Ironman. He made his first appearance on a Wu-Tang Clan album in 1997 on Wu-Tang Forever on the single "Triumph". Following his appearance on Forever, he contributed significantly to the group's third studio album, The W, at which point his appearances were no longer marked with "Featuring Cappadonna", as they had been on Forever. After a falling-out with RZA the next year over royalties, he only appeared one song called Da Glock on the group's subsequent album Iron Flag. He reunited with the group for their concert at 2004's Rock the Bells, and appeared on 2007 release 8 Diagrams.
Cappadonna's status as a Wu-Tang member or as a featured artist has varied throughout the years, while long referred to by both the group and fans as the "Unofficial Tenth Member". Also, while his vocals on 8 Diagrams were not marked with "Feat. Cappadonna", much like The W, he does not appear on the front cover with the original eight living members, and is not featured in the album's booklet with a picture, although he is included in the group's shout-outs sections. In a press conference held October 2, 2014, at Warner Studios for the upcoming release of the Wu-Tang Clan's A Better Tomorrow album, RZA clarified any misunderstanding of Cappadonna's affiliation with Wu-Tang Clan, stating that Cappadonna has been an official member of Wu-Tang Clan since 8 Diagrams.
Cappadonna's first solo effort was 1998's The Pillage which debuted and peaked at number 3 on the charts and certified Gold. His follow-up – 2001's The Ying and The Yang – debuted at number 51 on the charts. Staying vigilant in his support of The Clan, he then featured on over 25 releases including classics from Raekwon, Method Man and Ghostface.
Known for his colorful wardrobe, he frequently refers to fashion designers and his large collection of boutique clothing in his raps.
In 2019 Cappadonna was featured in Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, a documentary in honor of the 25th anniversary of Wu-Tang Clan's debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
Cappadonna once mentioned in a podcast that his name is an acronym for "Consider All Poor People Acceptable Don't Oppress Nor Neglect Anyone.".
Most Recently He has Joined Legends of Hip Hip Grandmaster Melle Mel , Grand Puba on a Track by Son of Sam for Eric Spade Rivas Film "The Brooklyn Premiere 2024" song by the same name. This was last film Angel Salazar From Scarface appeared in and the song is also a tribute idea that Director had about finishing a film with such a loss occurring during production and yet persevering. The three legends pep talk the director into continuing.
Discography
Albums
Collaboration albums
Singles and EPs
1996 "Taking Drastic Measures"
1996 Don't Be a Menace soundtrack – track "Winter Warz"
1998 "Slang Editorial"
1998 "Run"
1999 "Black Boy"
2001 "Super Model"
2007 "Don't Turn Around"
2009 "Somebody's Got To Go"
2011 "Cuban Link Kings"
Guest Darts
1995 "Ice Cream", "Ice Water" {Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...}
1996 "If It's Alright with You" {The Great White Hype (soundtrack)}
~~~~ "Winter Warz" {Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (soundtrack)}
~~~~ "Wu-Wear (Garment Renaissance)" {High School High (soundtrack)}
1997 "For Heavenz' Sake", "Maria", "Triumph", "Little Ghetto Boy", "Heaterz" {Wu-Tang Forever}
1998 "Strange Fruit" {Soul Survivor}
~~~~ "Sweet Love" {Tical 2000: Judgement Day}
~~~~ "'97 Mentality" {The Swarm}
~~~~ "I Can See" {Slam (soundtrack)}
~~~~ "Run" {Bulworth (soundtrack)}
1999 "'96 Recreation" {Wu-Chronicles}
2000 "Buck 50", "Wu-Banga 101" {Supreme Clientele}
2024 "The Brooklyn Premiere" {The Brooklyn Premiere soundtrack} with Melle Mel and Grand Puba
References
External links
Cappadonna Interview
Cappadonna Interview with Fake Shore Drive |
Glyn_Harper | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyn_Harper | [
309
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyn_Harper"
] | Glyn John Harper (born 12 March 1958) is a New Zealand historian who specialises in the military history of the 20th century. He has published several books on New Zealand's participation in the First and Second World Wars.
Biography
Born on 12 March 1958 in Christchurch, Harper was trained as a secondary school teacher, earning a diploma in teaching from Christchurch Teachers' College in 1980. He then joined the University of Canterbury, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1981. After completing a Master of Arts degree the following year with a thesis on the Fall of Singapore, he moved to Australia, teaching at Catholic schools in New South Wales.
In 1988, Harper joined the Australian Army in which he served for eight years before transferring to the New Zealand Army. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in 2001 from the University of New England with a thesis on Howard Kippenberger, a New Zealand general of the Second World War. Harper was the official historian for New Zealand's military deployment to East Timor from 1999 to 2001. He retired from the New Zealand Army in 2001 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He became a lecturer at Massey University in Palmerston North, and was made an associate professor in military studies the following year. In 2003 he was appointed director of the Centre for Defence Studies. He was Professor of War Studies at Massey University until his retirement.
Harper was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship in 2010 and carried out five months of research at the Virginia Military Institute and the US Army's War College on the Battle of Monte Cassino. This resulted in the publication of a book on this topic in 2013.
In 2011, Harper became a project manager for the publication of the First World War Centenary Print Histories, a series of books on New Zealand's role in the First World War. He wrote one volume in the series, Johnny Enzed: The New Zealand Soldier in the First World War, which was published in 2015. In the 2012 Queen's Birthday and Diamond Jubilee Honours, in recognition of his services to historical research, Harper was awarded the Queen's Service Medal.
As well as his non-fiction historical works for adults, Harper has written several children's picture books with military themes, including Le Quesnoy, Roly, the Anzac Donkey, and Bobby the Littlest War Hero. In 2015, he won the Best Picture Book Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults for his book Jim's Letters, which was illustrated by Jenny Cooper.
Publications
Harper's publications include:
Author
Kippenberger: An Inspired New Zealand Commander (1997)
Massacre at Passchendaele: The New Zealand Story (2000)
Operation East Timor: The New Zealand Defence Force in East Timor 1999–2001 (2001) (co-authored with John Crawford)
Spring Offensive: New Zealand and the Second Battle of the Somme (2003)
Dark Journey: Three Key New Zealand Battles of the Western Front (2007)
In the Face of the Enemy: The Complete History of the Victoria Cross and New Zealand (2007) (co-authored with Colin Richardson)
Images of War: New Zealand and the First World War in Photographs (2013)
The Battles of Monte Cassino: The Campaign and its Controversies (2013) (co-authored with John Tonkin-Covell)
Johnny Enzed: The New Zealand Soldier in the First World War 1914–1918 (2015)
The Battle for North Africa: El Alamein and the Turning Point for World War II (2017)
Editor
Born to Lead? Portraits of New Zealand Commanders (2003) (co-editor with Joel Hayward)
Letters from Gallipoli: New Zealand Soldiers Write Home (2011)
== Notes and references == |
King%27s_Service_Medal | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Service_Medal | [
309
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Service_Medal"
] | The King's Service Medal (created as the Queen's Service Medal in 1975 and renamed in 2024) is a medal awarded by the government of New Zealand to recognise and reward volunteer service to the community and also public service in elected or appointed public office. It was established in 1975 and is related to the Queen's Service Order. The QSM replaced the Imperial Service Medal as an award of New Zealand.
On 3 May 2024, the Queen's Service Medal was renamed to the King's Service Medal by Royal Warrant. Recipients of the Queen's Service Medal from 1975 until May 2024 will continue to use the 'QSM' postnominal with recipients of the King's Service Medal from June 2024 using the postnominal 'KSM'.
Appearance
1975–2007
The original medal was made of sterling silver, 36 millimetres (1.4 in) in diameter. The obverse bears the same effigy of The Queen as the badge of the Queen's Service Order. Surrounding the effigy are the Royal styles and titles "ELIZABETH II DEI GRATIA REGINA F.D.". The reverse depicts the New Zealand Coat of Arms surrounded by the inscription "The Queen's Service Medal" and the name of the sub-division either "for Community Service" or "for Public Services". The initials and name of the recipient is engraved on the rim of the Medal. The medals were made by the Royal Mint.
2007–2023
The medal is also made of sterling silver, and is 36 mm in diameter. The obverse bears the Ian Rank-Broadley designed effigy of The Queen. The effigy is surrounded by the Royal styles and titles "ELIZABETH II QUEEN OF NEW ZEALAND". The reverse bears the New Zealand Coat of Arms surrounded by the inscription "The Queen's Service Medal" above and "for service – MO NGA MAHI NUI" below. The new Badge and Medal are made by Thomas Fattorini Limited, of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Since 2024
The obverse of the King's Service Medal depicts King Charles III's portrait and his title 'CHARLES III KING OF NEW ZEALAND'.
The reverse of the King's Service Medal is the same as the Q.S.M., but references to 'Queen's' has been replaced with 'King's'.
Ribbon
Both versions of the medal are suspended from a ribbon 36 mm wide. The edges are a narrow red ochre (kokowhai) stripe. The centre has alternating stripes of red ochre, white and black in a descending step pattern from left to right. The design is inspired by the Māori poutama pattern used in tukutuku wall panels. It is usually interpreted as the "stairway to heaven", but in this case it refers to "steps of service".
See also
British and Commonwealth orders and decorations
New Zealand Honours System
References
External links
Statutes of the Queen's Service Order |
List_of_honorary_citizens_of_Beijing | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_honorary_citizens_of_Beijing | [
310
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_honorary_citizens_of_Beijing"
] | Honorary citizen of Beijing is an honorary title awarded to foreigners, overseas Chinese and Hong Kong and Macau compatriots who have made outstanding contributions to Beijing's foreign cooperation, economic construction and social development. The honorary citizen's certificate and badge will be issued by the Beijing Municipal Government.
For foreigners, overseas Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau compatriots who have been awarded the honorary citizenship of Beijing, all relevant institutions in Beijing shall provide assistance in their working and living in Beijing. They will be invited to participate in major celebrations organized by Beijing and enjoy VIP privileges.
List of honorary citizens
As of 30 March 2017.
== References == |
George_E._Killian | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._Killian | [
310
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_E._Killian"
] | George Ernest Killian (April 6, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American sports administrator, president of the International University Sports Federation (FISU) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA)
After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in education from the Ohio Northern University in 1949, Killian obtained a Master's degree in Education from the University at Buffalo, N.Y. in 1954. The Ohio Northern University honored him in 1989 with a PhD in Public Service.
Killian coached basketball teams of Wharton High School between 1949 and 1951 and Erie Community College, Buffalo, N.Y. from 1954 to 1969. He was president of the international basketball federation FIBA between 1990 and 1998. In 1996, he was member of the International Olympic Committee in his capacity as president of FIBA. Killian served also as treasurer of COPABA, Panamaerican Basketball Confederation and director of the NJCAA, National Junior College Athletic Association.
After presiding the US delegation at the Universiades three times, Killian held office in FISU. He was member of the International Control Commission from 1975 to 1987. Then, he was elected vice president of FISU. In 1995, Killian was promoted to First Vice President. On November 26, 1999, he was confirmed as FISU President by the executive committee succeeding late Dr. Primo Nebiolo.
On August 5, 2007, Killian was reelected for a second full term as president of FISU by an overwhelming majority of the votes at FISU's 30th General Assembly, which was held in Bangkok, Thailand.
On August 9, 2011, he was replaced by Claude-Louis Gallien as FISU President.
Accomplishments:
President of the International University Sports Federation (FISU) – 1999–2011
President of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) – 1990–1998
Member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – 1996–1998
President of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame – 1977–1978
Board of trustees of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame – 1969–2004
Award winner – Men's Naismith Outstanding Contribution to Basketball – 2004
Inductee to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame – 2000
Awards:
Ohio Northern University Athletic Hall of Fame – 1979
W.P. Fehring Award of Merit from the U.S. Baseball Federation – 1982
NJCAA Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame – 1987
NJCAA Basketball Hall of Fame – 1988
John W. Bunn Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame – 1989
Gold Medal Award from the Basketball Federation of Poland – 1998
FIBA Order of Merit – 2000
FIBA Hall of Fame - 2010
Former Volunteer Positions:
Secretary/Treasurer – U.S. Track and Field Federation
Board of Directors – U.S. Gymnastics Federation, Basketball Federation of the US, Amateur Basketball
Association of the US, U.S. Wrestling Federations
U.S. Olympic Administrative Committee
== References == |
Ohio_Northern_University | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Northern_University | [
310
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] | Ohio Northern University (Ohio Northern or ONU) is a private college in Ada, Ohio. Founded by Henry Solomon Lehr in 1871, ONU is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. It offers over 60 programs across five colleges and is affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
History
Early years
Henry Solomon Lehr founded the Northwestern Ohio Normal School in August 1871. When the college's curriculum grew to include pharmacy, engineering, law and business programs, its name was changed to Ohio Normal University in 1885 and, eventually, in 1903, to Ohio Northern University. In 1899, it became affiliated with the United Methodist Church to reduce debt.
Interwar and post-war education
Before the Great Depression, more than one thousand students were typically enrolled at Ohio Northern every year. Both the Great Depression and the following World War II plunged the school into low enrollment, and the possibility of closure was considered. During World War II, enrollment reached a low of 156 students. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, Ohio Northern was able to bring enrollment back up to nine hundred students by 1946.
Throughout the 1960s, a number of ONU students and faculty/staff participated in the American Civil Rights Movement. ONU hosted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on January 11, 1968, four days before his 39th birthday and just three months before his assassination. During his visit at ONU, King famously spoke regarding the myth that many immigrant and/or ethnic groups successfully pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, whereas African Americans were incapable of doing so. ONU honored King and his speech on campus with the unveiling of a statue in his likeness on April 17, 2018.
Later 20th century into today
Growth continued under DeBow Freed through the 1980s and 1990s with additions to the Taggart Law Library, Presser Hall, Dukes Memorial, Wilson Art Building, Biggs Engineering, Heterick Memorial Library, and Meyer Hall of Science, and the construction of the Freed Center for the Performing Arts and a new president's on-campus home. Under Kendall Baker, campus additions include Dicke Hall, an expansion of the Robertson-Evans Pharmacy building, the Dial-Roberson Stadium and the Mathile Center for the Natural Sciences. In 2008, Ohio Northern University built and opened The Inn at Ohio Northern University. A new engineering building was opened in October 2019.
2024 Closure of Hill Memorial
Hill Memorial Building is a historic building on campus. The building was finished in 1879 and is the second structure built on the grounds. Initially, Hill held administrative offices and classrooms, though many University departments would enter and leave the building throughout its history. The building is currently the oldest on campus and one of the oldest standing structures in Ada.
In July 2024, the administration of Ohio Northern announced the closure of Hill Building. Citing age and a need of expansive repairs, the building was closed to the students and faculty. Classes and offices were temporarily relocated to the neighboring Dukes Hall while the administration worked to create a plan on how to progress at the site. University Alumni created a Change.org petition to try and save the building amassing more than six-hundred signatures. As of 2024, there is no definitive public plan for the future of the building.
Leadership
Melissa J. Baumann is Ohio Northern University’s 12th president, and first female to serve in the role.
Past ONU presidents
Henry Solomon Lehr (1871–1900)
Leroy A. Belt (1900–1905)
Albert Edwin Smith (1905–1930)
Robert Williams (1929*–1943)
Robert O. McClure (1943–1949)
Frank Bringle McIntosh (1949–1965)
Samuel Lewis Meyer (1965–1977)
Ray B. Loeschner (1977–1979)
Harold A. Bolz (1979, interim)
DeBow Freed (1979–1999)
Kendall L. Baker (1999–2011)
Daniel A. DiBasio (2011–2022)
Academics
The institution comprises five colleges:
Getty College of Arts and Sciences
James F. Dicke College of Business Administration
T.J. Smull College of Engineering
Rudolph H. Raabe College of Pharmacy
Claude W. Pettit College of Law (established 1885)
Prior to 1973, the law school was known as "the Warren G. Harding College of Law". It was renamed in honor of Claude W. Pettit, a judge and former dean of the college.
Athletics
ONU students participate in intercollegiate, intramural, and sports clubs in a variety of sports. The ONU Polar Bears compete in the NCAA Division III Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC). The men's volleyball team participates in the Midwest Intercollegiate Volleyball Association in the Great Midwest Men's Volleyball Conference.
The school mascot is a polar bear named Klondike.
The ONU varsity football team defeated Mount Union College in 2005 to snap the Purple Raiders 110-game regular season winning streak.
The ONU women's volleyball team had an NCAA All-Divisions record 36 consecutive winning seasons.
National honors
NCAA Championship
1993 Men's Basketball NCAA Division III Champions
NCAA Runner-up finishes
1989 Women's Volleyball NCAA Division III Runners-up
2012 Men's Soccer NCAA Division III Runners-up
NCAA Final Four appearances
2001 Men's Basketball NCAA Division III Final Four
2008 Women's Volleyball NCAA Division III Final Four
NCAA Elite Eight appearance
2008 Men’s Soccer
2017 Women's Basketball
NCAA Sweet Sixteen appearances
1999 Football
2000 Football
2010 Football
2011 Men’s Soccer
2015 Football
2019 Women's Soccer
2022 Men’s Soccer
2023 Women’s Basketball
2023 Men’s Soccer
Club Sport Championship
2007 Men's Volleyball NIRSA Division II National Champions
Notable alumni
Anthony Alaimo, jurist
Frank T. Bow, jurist and politician who was honored by naming the Frank T. Bow Federal Building in Canton, Ohio.
James Cloyd Bowman, a children's book author who received a Newbery Honor in 1938 for Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time.
Benjamin Brafman, a prominent criminal defense attorney based in New York.
William J. Brown, former Ohio Attorney General (1971–1983).
Anthony J. Celebrezze, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the 49th Mayor of Cleveland, and a Sixth Circuit Appellate Judge
George Washington Crile, founder of the Cleveland Clinic and inventor of the system for blood transfusion
Robert R. Cupp, former Ohio Supreme Court Justice and former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives
Mike DeWine, Governor of Ohio
Simeon Davison Fess, a Republican politician a former president of Antioch College
Amanda Everlove, two time Paralympian
George Getty, American lawyer, father of industrialist J. Paul Getty and patriarch of the Getty family
John W. Grabiel, Arkansas Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1922 and 1924; Ohio native, attorney in Fayetteville, Arkansas, until his death in 1928
Stephanie L. Haines, United States federal judge
Stacey Hairston, former Cleveland Browns player
Thomas Hutson, doctor and medical researcher
Robert Franklin Jones, served as Allen County (Ohio) prosecuting attorney, 1935–1939. Elected in 1938 to the Seventy-sixth U.S. Congress, and elected for three subsequent terms to Congress, serving from 1939 to 1947. Appointed commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, serving from 1947 to 1952
Cassius Jackson Keyser, a mathematician
George E. Killian, a sports administrator and a president of the International University Sports Federation
Carla F. Kim, Associate Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Principal Investigator at the Stem Cell Program at Boston Children's Hospital
Cheryl L. Mason, Chairman of the Board of Veterans' Appeals, US Department of Veterans' Affairs (first woman appointed to the position)
Clay Mathile, former owner of Iams pet food
Harry McNeal, Major League baseball player
Bill Peterson, former head football coach at Florida State, Rice University, and with the Houston Oilers
Bob Peterson, story artist, animator and voice actor
Tom Reed, United States Congressman from New York
Joseph Banks Rhine, founder of the parapsychology lab at Duke University
Nate Riles, retired CFL player
Jamal Robertson, retired NFL football player
Ralph L. Ropp (class of 1923), president of Louisiana Tech University from 1949 to 1962
Joe Thomas (1921–1983), professional football coach and executive
Jason Trusnik, retired NFL football player. Owner of Pro Sports Performance in Strongsville, OH
Steve Vagedes, former Arena Football League player
Baldemar Velasquez, is president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL–CIO
Jim Wilson, Los Angeles city council member, studied pharmacy
References
External links
Official website |
University_of_Mount_Union | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Mount_Union | [
310
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] | The University of Mount Union is a private liberal arts university in Alliance, Ohio. Founded in 1846, the university was affiliated with the Methodist Church until the spring of 2019. In the fall of 2020, Mount Union had an enrollment of 1,958 undergraduate and 220 graduate students.
History
Mount Union was founded in 1846 by Orville Nelson Hartshorn as the Select School as "a place where men and women could be educated with equal opportunity, science would parallel the humanities, and there would be no distinction due to race, color, or sex." Only three years after opening, in 1849, it was renamed as the Mount Union Seminary.
The school would not be chartered under Ohio state law until June 9, 1856, after which it adopted the name Mount Union College.
In approximately 1911, Scio College of Scio, Ohio, merged with Mount Union, moving faculty to the Mount Union campus and abandoning the Scio campus. Mount Union College was renamed the University of Mount Union effective August 1, 2010.
Academics
Eighty-five percent of the faculty at Mount Union have earned a doctoral degree or other terminal degree with graduate training at universities in the United States and Europe.
Mount Union offers 46 majors and 47 minors as undergraduate programs. The university also offers Pre-Health/Pre-Medicine and Pre-Law programs. Mount Union offers 13 master's degree programs, most of which are online. The university also has a Doctor of Physical Therapy program and an Emergency Nurse Practitioner certificate program.
Rankings
In 2024, U.S. News & World Report ranked Mount Union tied for #32 out of 167 Regional Universities Midwest and #18 in Best Value Schools.
Undergraduate admissions
In 2024, Mount Union accepted 75.7% of undergraduate applicants, with those admitted having an average 3.33 high school GPA. The university does not require submission of standardized test scores, Mount Union being a test optional school where scores will only be considered if scores increase the scholarship level for which the applicant is eligible although applicants who choose not to submit test scores are still eligible for academic scholarships. Those accepted that submitted test scores had an average 1070 SAT score (17% submitting scores) or average 22 ACT score (64% submitting scores). An application essay is required.
Campus
The University of Mount Union is located on a 123-acre campus in Alliance, Ohio, 70 miles from Cleveland, Ohio and 80 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university's 162-acre Huston-Brumbaugh Nature Center is approximately six miles away from the campus. Two buildings, Chapman Hall and Miller Hall, are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Kehres Stadium is the oldest college stadium in the state of Ohio.
Athletics
Mount Union's school colors are purple and white and competes in the Ohio Athletic Conference and in NCAA Division III athletics. The teams are nicknamed Purple Raiders, and the school's mascot is MUcaw, a purple macaw.
Mount Union sponsors 12 men's varsity teams: baseball, basketball, cross-country, football, golf, track & field, soccer, swimming & diving, tennis, lacrosse, wrestling, and volleyball. The school also sponsors 10 women's varsity teams: basketball, cross-country, golf, lacrosse, track & field, soccer, softball, swimming & diving, tennis and volleyball.
Club sports include bowling, and intramural Sports include flag football, dodgeball, innertube water polo, ultimate frisbee, sand volleyball, 2 person golf scramble, men's basketball, women's basketball, softball, indoor soccer, indoor volleyball, 2 on 2 basketball, badminton, and pickleball.
Mount won the NCAA Men's Division III Cross Country Championship in 1974 under Coach Jim Wuske, the NCAA Men's Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships in 2017, and in 2014 & 2018 Mount Union won the NCAA Men's Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships under Coach Kevin Lucas.
The men’s basketball team was retroactively named the pre-NCAA Tournament national champion in 1897-98 by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll.
Football
Mount Union's football is currently led by head coach Geoff Dartt. Mount Union has won a record 13 Division III national championships—all since 1993. Mount Union holds the all-division record for consecutive victories at 55 from 2000 to 2003, which ended with their loss to St. John's University (Collegeville, MN) in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl (Division III National Championship) on December 20, 2003. Mount Union previously held the all divisions mark at 54 consecutive games until losing in the semifinals on December 12, 1999, to Rowan University (Glassboro, NJ). During both the 55 and 54 game streaks Mount Union won 3 consecutive National Championships. Since both streaks were connected—from 1997 to 2003 Mount Union won 109 of 110 games played. The Purple Raiders won 110 consecutive regular-season games between 1994 and 2005 (which was ended by conference foe Ohio Northern University on Oct 22, 2005), posted 14 undefeated regular seasons, won 16 Ohio Athletic Conference Championships, and had the best overall record in the 1990s (120–7–1, an overall winning percentage of 0.941).
National Championships: 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2015, 2017
Cross country
Mount won the NCAA Men's Division III Cross Country Championship in 1974 under coach Jim Wuske.
Track and field
In 2014, Mount Union won the NCAA Men's Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championship under coach Kevin Lucas [1].
Student life
Mount Union's radio station is 91.1 WRMU, and the campus paper is The Dynamo.
The university's music program offers participation in numerous bands and choirs, including Concert Choir, Mount Union Alliance Chorale, Opera Workshop, Alliance Symphony Orchestra, Repertory Strings, Marching Band, The Raider Steel Band, Jazz Band, Percussion Ensemble, and more.
The Theatre Department puts on two productions every fall, and varying productions in the spring. Every spring semester alternates between a musical and a straight play every year for the main stage show, and every spring there are also student-directed one-acts. Theatre productions are open to all students, regardless of major or class rank.
Esports
In the spring of 2019, the University of Mount Union started its Esports program by fielding its first Overwatch roster. Later, the team began competing in Overwatch, League of Legends, and Rocket League.
Greek life
There are four major social fraternities and four major social sororities with chapters at the institution.
People
References
External links
Official website |
NCAA_Division_III_men%27s_cross_country_championships | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_III_men%27s_cross_country_championships | [
310
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_III_men%27s_cross_country_championships"
] | The NCAA Division III men's cross country championships are contested at an annual cross country meet hosted by the NCAA to decide the team and individual national champions of men's intercollegiate cross country running among its Division III members in the United States. It has been held every fall, usually in November, since the NCAA split into its current three-division format in 1973.
The current champions are Pomona–Pitzer, who won their third national title in 2023.
Format
The field for the national championship race varied in the early years, reaching a high of 52 teams in 1977. From 1982 to 1998 the field was fixed at 21 teams. From 1999 to 2005 the field included 24 teams. Beginning in 2006, the national championship race has included 32 teams. Teams compete in one of ten regional championships to qualify. In addition to the 32 teams, 70 individual runners qualify for the national championship.
The race distance from 1973 to 1975 was 5 miles (8,046 meters). Since 1976 the race distance has been 8,000 meters (4.97 miles).
Results
† indicates a then-NCAA record-setting time for that particular distance.
A time highlighted in ██ indicates the all-time NCAA championship record for that distance.
Source:
Champions
Source:
Former Division III
See also
NCAA Men's Cross Country Championships (Division I, Division II)
NCAA Women's Cross Country Championships (Division I, Division II, Division III)
Pre-NCAA Cross Country Champions
NAIA Cross Country Championships (Men, Women)
References
External links
NCAA Division III Men's Cross Country
U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association - Year by Year Results |
Cleopatra | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra | [
311
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] | Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Koinē Greek: Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ lit. 'Cleopatra father-loving goddess'; 70/69 BC – 10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. Her first language was Koine Greek, and she is the only Ptolemaic ruler known to have learned the Egyptian language. After her death, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the last Hellenistic-period state in the Mediterranean, a period which had lasted since the reign of Alexander (336–323 BC).
In 58 BC, Cleopatra presumably accompanied her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, during his exile to Rome after a revolt in Egypt (a Roman client state) allowed his daughter and rival, Berenice IV, to claim his throne. Berenice was killed in 55 BC when Ptolemy returned to Egypt with Roman military assistance. When he died in 51 BC, Cleopatra began reigning alongside her brother Ptolemy XIII, but a falling-out between them led to an open civil war. Roman statesman Pompey fled to Egypt after losing the 48 BC Battle of Pharsalus in Greece against his rival Julius Caesar (a Roman dictator and consul) in Caesar's civil war. Pompey had been a political ally of Ptolemy XII, but Ptolemy XIII, at the urging of his court eunuchs, had Pompey ambushed and killed before Caesar arrived and occupied Alexandria. Caesar then attempted to reconcile the rival Ptolemaic siblings, but Ptolemy's chief adviser, Potheinos, viewed Caesar's terms as favoring Cleopatra, so his forces besieged her and Caesar at the palace. Shortly after the siege was lifted by reinforcements, Ptolemy XIII died in the Battle of the Nile; Cleopatra's half-sister Arsinoe IV was eventually exiled to Ephesus for her role in carrying out the siege. Caesar declared Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIV joint rulers but maintained a private affair with Cleopatra that produced a son, Caesarion. Cleopatra traveled to Rome as a client queen in 46 and 44 BC, where she stayed at Caesar's villa. After Caesar's assassination, followed shortly afterwards by that of Ptolemy XIV (on Cleopatra's orders), she named Caesarion co-ruler as Ptolemy XV.
In the Liberators' civil war of 43–42 BC, Cleopatra sided with the Roman Second Triumvirate formed by Caesar's grandnephew and heir Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. After their meeting at Tarsos in 41 BC, the queen had an affair with Antony which produced three children. He carried out the execution of Arsinoe at her request, and became increasingly reliant on Cleopatra for both funding and military aid during his invasions of the Parthian Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia. The Donations of Alexandria declared their children rulers over various erstwhile territories under Antony's triumviral authority. This event, their marriage, and Antony's divorce of Octavian's sister Octavia Minor led to the final war of the Roman Republic. Octavian engaged in a war of propaganda, forced Antony's allies in the Roman Senate to flee Rome in 32 BC, and declared war on Cleopatra. After defeating Antony and Cleopatra's naval fleet at the 31 BC Battle of Actium, Octavian's forces invaded Egypt in 30 BC and defeated Antony, leading to Antony's suicide. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to bring her to his Roman triumphal procession, she killed herself by poisoning, contrary to the popular belief that she was bitten by an asp.
Cleopatra's legacy survives in ancient and modern works of art. Roman historiography and Latin poetry produced a generally critical view of the queen that pervaded later Medieval and Renaissance literature. In the visual arts, her ancient depictions include Roman busts, paintings, and sculptures, cameo carvings and glass, Ptolemaic and Roman coinage, and reliefs. In Renaissance and Baroque art, she was the subject of many works including operas, paintings, poetry, sculptures, and theatrical dramas. She has become a pop culture icon of Egyptomania since the Victorian era, and in modern times, Cleopatra has appeared in the applied and fine arts, burlesque satire, Hollywood films, and brand images for commercial products.
Etymology
The Latinized form Cleopatra comes from the Ancient Greek Kleopátra (Κλεοπάτρα), meaning "glory of her father", from κλέος (kléos, "glory") and πατήρ (patḗr, "father"). The masculine form would have been written either as Kleópatros (Κλεόπατρος) or Pátroklos (Πάτροκλος). Cleopatra was the name of Alexander the Great's sister Cleopatra of Macedonia, as well as the wife of Meleager in Greek mythology, Cleopatra Alcyone. Through the marriage of Ptolemy V Epiphanes and Cleopatra I Syra (a Seleucid princess), the name entered the Ptolemaic dynasty. Cleopatra's adopted title Theā́ Philopátōra (Θεᾱ́ Φιλοπάτωρα) means "goddess who loves her father".
Background
Ptolemaic pharaohs were crowned by the Egyptian high priest of Ptah at Memphis, but resided in the multicultural and largely Greek city of Alexandria, established by Alexander the Great. They spoke Greek and governed Egypt as Hellenistic Greek monarchs, refusing to learn the native Egyptian language. In contrast, Cleopatra could speak multiple languages by adulthood and was the first Ptolemaic ruler known to learn the Egyptian language. Plutarch implies that she also spoke Ethiopian, the language of the "Troglodytes", Hebrew (or Aramaic), Arabic, the Syrian language (perhaps Syriac), Median, and Parthian, and she could apparently also speak Latin, although her Roman contemporaries would have preferred to speak with her in her native Koine Greek. Aside from Greek, Egyptian, and Latin, these languages reflected Cleopatra's desire to restore North African and West Asian territories that once belonged to the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
Roman interventionism in Egypt predated the reign of Cleopatra. When Ptolemy IX Lathyros died in late 81 BC, he was succeeded by his daughter Berenice III. With opposition building at the royal court against the idea of a sole reigning female monarch, Berenice III accepted joint rule and marriage with her cousin and stepson Ptolemy XI Alexander II, an arrangement made by the Roman dictator Sulla. Ptolemy XI had his wife killed shortly after their marriage in 80 BC, and was lynched soon after in the resulting riot over the assassination. Ptolemy XI, and perhaps his uncle Ptolemy IX or father Ptolemy X Alexander I, willed the Ptolemaic Kingdom to Rome as collateral for loans, so that the Romans had legal grounds to take over Egypt, their client state, after the assassination of Ptolemy XI. The Romans chose instead to divide the Ptolemaic realm among the illegitimate sons of Ptolemy IX, bestowing Cyprus on Ptolemy of Cyprus and Egypt on Ptolemy XII Auletes.
Biography
Early childhood
Cleopatra VII was born in early 69 BC to the ruling Ptolemaic pharaoh Ptolemy XII and an uncertain mother, presumably Ptolemy XII's wife Cleopatra V Tryphaena (who may have been the same person as Cleopatra VI Tryphaena), the mother of Cleopatra's older sister, Berenice IV Epiphaneia. Cleopatra Tryphaena disappears from official records a few months after the birth of Cleopatra in 69 BC. The three younger children of Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe IV and brothers Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator and Ptolemy XIV, were born in the absence of his wife. Cleopatra's childhood tutor was Philostratos, from whom she learned the Greek arts of oration and philosophy. During her youth Cleopatra presumably studied at the Musaeum, including the Library of Alexandria.
Reign and exile of Ptolemy XII
In 65 BC the Roman censor Marcus Licinius Crassus argued before the Roman Senate that Rome should annex Ptolemaic Egypt, but his proposed bill and the similar bill of tribune Servilius Rullus in 63 BC were rejected. Ptolemy XII responded to the threat of possible annexation by offering remuneration and lavish gifts to powerful Roman statesmen, such as Pompey during his campaign against Mithridates VI of Pontus, and eventually Julius Caesar after he became Roman consul in 59 BC. However, Ptolemy XII's profligate behavior bankrupted him, and he was forced to acquire loans from the Roman banker Gaius Rabirius Postumus.
In 58 BC the Romans annexed Cyprus and on accusations of piracy drove Ptolemy of Cyprus, Ptolemy XII's brother, to commit suicide instead of enduring exile to Paphos. Ptolemy XII remained publicly silent on the death of his brother, a decision which, along with ceding traditional Ptolemaic territory to the Romans, damaged his credibility among subjects already enraged by his economic policies. Ptolemy XII was then exiled from Egypt by force, traveling first to Rhodes, then Athens, and finally the villa of triumvir Pompey in the Alban Hills, near Praeneste, Italy.
Ptolemy XII spent roughly up to a year there on the outskirts of Rome, ostensibly accompanied by his daughter Cleopatra, then about 11. Berenice IV sent an embassy to Rome to advocate for her rule and oppose the reinstatement of her father Ptolemy XII. Ptolemy had assassins kill the leaders of the embassy, an incident that was covered up by his powerful Roman supporters. When the Roman Senate denied Ptolemy XII the offer of an armed escort and provisions for a return to Egypt, he decided to leave Rome in late 57 BC and reside at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.
The Roman financiers of Ptolemy XII remained determined to restore him to power. Pompey persuaded Aulus Gabinius, the Roman governor of Syria, to invade Egypt and restore Ptolemy XII, offering him 10,000 talents for the proposed mission. Although it put him at odds with Roman law, Gabinius invaded Egypt in the spring of 55 BC by way of Hasmonean Judea, where Hyrcanus II had Antipater the Idumaean, father of Herod the Great, furnish the Roman-led army with supplies. As a young cavalry officer, Mark Antony was under Gabinius's command. He distinguished himself by preventing Ptolemy XII from massacring the inhabitants of Pelousion, and for rescuing the body of Archelaos, the husband of Berenice IV, after he was killed in battle, ensuring him a proper royal burial. Cleopatra, then 14 years of age, would have traveled with the Roman expedition into Egypt; years later, Antony would profess that he had fallen in love with her at this time.
Gabinius was put on trial in Rome for abusing his authority, for which he was acquitted, but his second trial for accepting bribes led to his exile, from which he was recalled seven years later in 48 BC by Caesar. Crassus replaced him as governor of Syria and extended his provincial command to Egypt, but Crassus was killed by the Parthians at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. Ptolemy XII had Berenice IV and her wealthy supporters executed, seizing their properties. He allowed Gabinius's largely Germanic and Gallic Roman garrison, the Gabiniani, to harass people in the streets of Alexandria and installed his longtime Roman financier Rabirius as his chief financial officer.
Within a year Rabirius was placed under protective custody and sent back to Rome after his life was endangered for draining Egypt of its resources. Despite these problems, Ptolemy XII created a will designating Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII as his joint heirs, oversaw major construction projects such as the Temple of Edfu and a temple at Dendera, and stabilized the economy. On 31 May 52 BC, Cleopatra was made a regent of Ptolemy XII, as indicated by an inscription in the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. Rabirius was unable to collect the entirety of Ptolemy XII's debt by the time of the latter's death, and so it was passed on to his successors Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII.
Accession to the throne
Ptolemy XII died sometime before 22 March 51 BC, when Cleopatra, in her first act as queen, began her voyage to Hermonthis, near Thebes, to install a new sacred Buchis bull, worshiped as an intermediary for the god Montu in the Ancient Egyptian religion. Cleopatra faced several pressing issues and emergencies shortly after taking the throne. These included famine caused by drought and a low level of the annual flooding of the Nile, and lawless behavior instigated by the Gabiniani, the now unemployed and assimilated Roman soldiers left by Gabinius to garrison Egypt. Inheriting her father's debts, Cleopatra also owed the Roman Republic 17.5 million drachmas.
In 50 BC Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, proconsul of Syria, sent his two eldest sons to Egypt, most likely to negotiate with the Gabiniani and recruit them as soldiers in the desperate defense of Syria against the Parthians. The Gabiniani tortured and murdered these two, perhaps with secret encouragement by rogue senior administrators in Cleopatra's court. Cleopatra sent the Gabiniani culprits to Bibulus as prisoners awaiting his judgment, but he sent them back to Cleopatra and chastised her for interfering in their adjudication, which was the prerogative of the Roman Senate. Bibulus, siding with Pompey in Caesar's Civil War, failed to prevent Caesar from landing a naval fleet in Greece, which ultimately allowed Caesar to reach Egypt in pursuit of Pompey.
By 29 August 51 BC, official documents started listing Cleopatra as the sole ruler, evidence that she had rejected her brother Ptolemy XIII as a co-ruler. She had probably married him, but there is no record of this. The Ptolemaic practice of sibling marriage was introduced by Ptolemy II and his sister Arsinoe II. A long-held royal Egyptian practice, it was loathed by contemporary Greeks. By the reign of Cleopatra, however, it was considered a normal arrangement for Ptolemaic rulers.
Despite Cleopatra's rejection of him, Ptolemy XIII still retained powerful allies, notably the eunuch Potheinos, his childhood tutor, regent, and administrator of his properties. Others involved in the cabal against Cleopatra included Achillas, a prominent military commander, and Theodotus of Chios, another tutor of Ptolemy XIII. Cleopatra seems to have attempted a short-lived alliance with her brother Ptolemy XIV, but by the autumn of 50 BC Ptolemy XIII had the upper hand in their conflict and began signing documents with his name before that of his sister, followed by the establishment of his first regnal date in 49 BC.
Assassination of Pompey
In the summer of 49 BC, Cleopatra and her forces were still fighting against Ptolemy XIII within Alexandria when Pompey's son Gnaeus Pompeius arrived, seeking military aid on behalf of his father. After returning to Italy from the wars in Gaul and crossing the Rubicon in January of 49 BC, Caesar had forced Pompey and his supporters to flee to Greece. In perhaps their last joint decree, both Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII agreed to Gnaeus Pompeius's request and sent his father 60 ships and 500 troops, including the Gabiniani, a move that helped erase some of the debt owed to Rome. Losing the fight against her brother, Cleopatra was then forced to flee Alexandria and withdraw to the region of Thebes. By the spring of 48 BC Cleopatra had traveled to Roman Syria with her younger sister, Arsinoe IV, to gather an invasion force that would head to Egypt. She returned with an army, but her advance to Alexandria was blocked by her brother's forces, including some Gabiniani mobilized to fight against her, so she camped outside Pelousion in the eastern Nile Delta.
In Greece, Caesar and Pompey's forces engaged each other at the decisive Battle of Pharsalus on 9 August 48 BC, leading to the destruction of most of Pompey's army and his forced flight to Tyre, Lebanon. Given his close relationship with the Ptolemies, Pompey ultimately decided that Egypt would be his place of refuge, where he could replenish his forces. Ptolemy XIII's advisers, however, feared the idea of Pompey using Egypt as his base in a protracted Roman civil war. In a scheme devised by Theodotus, Pompey arrived by ship near Pelousion after being invited by a written message, only to be ambushed and stabbed to death on 28 September 48 BC. Ptolemy XIII believed he had demonstrated his power and simultaneously defused the situation by having Pompey's head, severed and embalmed, sent to Caesar, who arrived in Alexandria by early October and took up residence at the royal palace. Caesar expressed grief and outrage over the killing of Pompey and called on both Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra to disband their forces and reconcile with each other.
Relationship with Julius Caesar
Ptolemy XIII arrived at Alexandria at the head of his army, in clear defiance of Caesar's demand that he disband and leave his army before his arrival. Cleopatra initially sent emissaries to Caesar, but upon allegedly hearing that Caesar was inclined to having affairs with royal women, she came to Alexandria to see him personally. Historian Cassius Dio records that she did so without informing her brother, dressed in an attractive manner, and charmed Caesar with her wit. Plutarch provides an entirely different account that alleges she was bound inside a bed sack to be smuggled into the palace to meet Caesar.
When Ptolemy XIII realized that his sister was in the palace consorting directly with Caesar, he attempted to rouse the populace of Alexandria into a riot, but he was arrested by Caesar, who used his oratorical skills to calm the frenzied crowd. Caesar then brought Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII before the assembly of Alexandria, where Caesar revealed the written will of Ptolemy XII—previously possessed by Pompey—naming Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII as his joint heirs. Caesar then attempted to arrange for the other two siblings, Arsinoe IV and Ptolemy XIV, to rule together over Cyprus, thus removing potential rival claimants to the Egyptian throne while also appeasing the Ptolemaic subjects still bitter over the loss of Cyprus to the Romans in 58 BC.
Judging that this agreement favored Cleopatra over Ptolemy XIII and that the latter's army of 20,000, including the Gabiniani, could most likely defeat Caesar's army of 4,000 unsupported troops, Potheinos decided to have Achillas lead their forces to Alexandria to attack both Caesar and Cleopatra. After Caesar managed to execute Potheinos, Arsinoe IV joined forces with Achillas and was declared queen, but soon afterward had her tutor Ganymedes kill Achillas and take his position as commander of her army. Ganymedes then tricked Caesar into requesting the presence of the erstwhile captive Ptolemy XIII as a negotiator, only to have him join the army of Arsinoe IV. The resulting siege of the palace, with Caesar and Cleopatra trapped together inside, lasted into the following year of 47 BC.
Sometime between January and March of 47 BC, Caesar's reinforcements arrived, including those led by Mithridates of Pergamon and Antipater the Idumaean. Ptolemy XIII and Arsinoe IV withdrew their forces to the Nile, where Caesar attacked them. Ptolemy XIII tried to flee by boat, but it capsized, and he drowned. Ganymedes may have been killed in the battle. Theodotus was found years later in Asia, by Marcus Junius Brutus, and executed. Arsinoe IV was forcefully paraded in Caesar's triumph in Rome before being exiled to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Cleopatra was conspicuously absent from these events and resided in the palace, most likely because she had been pregnant with Caesar's child since September 48 BC.
Caesar's term as consul had expired at the end of 48 BC. However, Antony, an officer of his, helped to secure Caesar's appointment as dictator lasting for a year, until October 47 BC, providing Caesar with the legal authority to settle the dynastic dispute in Egypt. Wary of repeating the mistake of Cleopatra's sister Berenice IV in having a female monarch as sole ruler, Caesar appointed Cleopatra's 12-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIV, as joint ruler with the 22-year-old Cleopatra in a nominal sibling marriage, but Cleopatra continued living privately with Caesar. The exact date at which Cyprus was returned to her control is not known, although she had a governor there by 42 BC.
Caesar is alleged to have joined Cleopatra for a cruise of the Nile and sightseeing of Egyptian monuments, although this may be a romantic tale reflecting later well-to-do Roman proclivities and not a real historical event. The historian Suetonius provided considerable details about the voyage, including use of Thalamegos, the pleasure barge constructed by Ptolemy IV, which during his reign measured 90 metres (300 ft) in length and 24 metres (80 ft) in height and was complete with dining rooms, state rooms, holy shrines, and promenades along its two decks, resembling a floating villa. Caesar could have had an interest in the Nile cruise owing to his fascination with geography; he was well-read in the works of Eratosthenes and Pytheas, and perhaps wanted to discover the source of the river, but turned back before reaching Ethiopia.
Caesar departed from Egypt around April 47 BC, allegedly to confront Pharnaces II of Pontus, the son of Mithridates VI of Pontus, who was stirring up trouble for Rome in Anatolia. It is possible that Caesar, married to the prominent Roman woman Calpurnia, also wanted to avoid being seen together with Cleopatra when she had their son. He left three legions in Egypt, later increased to four, under the command of the freedman Rufio, to secure Cleopatra's tenuous position, but also perhaps to keep her activities in check.
Caesarion, Cleopatra's alleged child with Caesar, was born 23 June 47 BC and was originally named "Pharaoh Caesar", as preserved on a stele at the Serapeum of Saqqara. Perhaps owing to his still childless marriage with Calpurnia, Caesar remained publicly silent about Caesarion (but perhaps accepted his parentage in private). Cleopatra, on the other hand, made repeated official declarations about Caesarion's parentage, naming Caesar as the father.
Cleopatra and her nominal joint ruler Ptolemy XIV visited Rome sometime in late 46 BC, presumably without Caesarion, and were given lodging in Caesar's villa within the Horti Caesaris. As with their father Ptolemy XII, Caesar awarded both Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIV the legal status of "friend and ally of the Roman people" (Latin: socius et amicus populi Romani), in effect client rulers loyal to Rome. Cleopatra's visitors at Caesar's villa across the Tiber included the senator Cicero, who found her arrogant. Sosigenes of Alexandria, one of the members of Cleopatra's court, aided Caesar in the calculations for the new Julian calendar, put into effect 1 January 45 BC. The Temple of Venus Genetrix, established in the Forum of Caesar on 25 September 46 BC, contained a golden statue of Cleopatra (which stood there at least until the 3rd century AD), associating the mother of Caesar's child directly with the goddess Venus, mother of the Romans. The statue also subtly linked the Egyptian goddess Isis with the Roman religion.
Cleopatra's presence in Rome most likely had an effect on the events at the Lupercalia festival a month before Caesar's assassination. Antony attempted to place a royal diadem on Caesar's head, but the latter refused in what was most likely a staged performance, perhaps to gauge the Roman public's mood about accepting Hellenistic-style kingship. Cicero, who was present at the festival, mockingly asked where the diadem came from, an obvious reference to the Ptolemaic queen whom he abhorred. Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March (15 March 44 BC), but Cleopatra stayed in Rome until about mid-April, in the vain hope of having Caesarion recognized as Caesar's heir. However, Caesar's will named his grandnephew Octavian as the primary heir, and Octavian arrived in Italy around the same time Cleopatra decided to depart for Egypt. A few months later, Cleopatra had Ptolemy XIV killed by poisoning, elevating her son Caesarion as her co-ruler.
Cleopatra in the Liberators' civil war
Octavian, Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate in 43 BC, in which they were each elected for five-year terms to restore order in the Republic and bring Caesar's assassins to justice. Cleopatra received messages from both Gaius Cassius Longinus, one of Caesar's assassins, and Publius Cornelius Dolabella, proconsul of Syria and Caesarian loyalist, requesting military aid. She decided to write Cassius an excuse that her kingdom faced too many internal problems, while sending the four legions left by Caesar in Egypt to Dolabella. These troops were captured by Cassius in Palestine.
While Serapion, Cleopatra's governor of Cyprus, defected to Cassius and provided him with ships, Cleopatra took her own fleet to Greece to personally assist Octavian and Antony. Her ships were heavily damaged in a Mediterranean storm and she arrived too late to aid in the fighting. By the autumn of 42 BC, Antony had defeated the forces of Caesar's assassins at the Battle of Philippi in Greece, leading to the suicide of Cassius and Brutus.
By the end of 42 BC, Octavian had gained control over much of the western half of the Roman Republic and Antony the eastern half, with Lepidus largely marginalized. In the summer of 41 BC, Antony established his headquarters at Tarsos in Anatolia and summoned Cleopatra there in several letters, which she rebuffed until Antony's envoy Quintus Dellius convinced her to come. The meeting would allow Cleopatra to clear up the misconception that she had supported Cassius during the civil war and address territorial exchanges in the Levant, but Antony also undoubtedly desired to form a personal, romantic relationship with the queen. Cleopatra sailed up the Kydnos River to Tarsos in Thalamegos, hosting Antony and his officers for two nights of lavish banquets on board the ship. Cleopatra managed to clear her name as a supposed supporter of Cassius, arguing she had really attempted to help Dolabella in Syria, and convinced Antony to have her exiled sister, Arsinoe IV, executed at Ephesus. Cleopatra's former rebellious governor of Cyprus was also handed over to her for execution.
Relationship with Mark Antony
Cleopatra invited Antony to come to Egypt before departing from Tarsos, which led Antony to visit Alexandria by November 41 BC. Antony was well received by the populace of Alexandria, both for his heroic actions in restoring Ptolemy XII to power and coming to Egypt without an occupation force like Caesar had done. In Egypt, Antony continued to enjoy the lavish royal lifestyle he had witnessed aboard Cleopatra's ship docked at Tarsos. He also had his subordinates, such as Publius Ventidius Bassus, drive the Parthians out of Anatolia and Syria.
Cleopatra carefully chose Antony as her partner for producing further heirs, as he was deemed to be the most powerful Roman figure following Caesar's demise. With his powers as a triumvir, Antony also had the broad authority to restore former Ptolemaic lands, which were currently in Roman hands, to Cleopatra. While it is clear that both Cilicia and Cyprus were under Cleopatra's control by 19 November 38 BC, the transfer probably occurred earlier in the winter of 41–40 BC, during her time spent with Antony.
By the spring of 40 BC, Antony left Egypt due to troubles in Syria, where his governor Lucius Decidius Saxa was killed and his army taken by Quintus Labienus, a former officer under Cassius who now served the Parthian Empire. Cleopatra provided Antony with 200 ships for his campaign and as payment for her newly acquired territories. She would not see Antony again until 37 BC, but she maintained correspondence, and evidence suggests she kept a spy in his camp. By the end of 40 BC, Cleopatra had given birth to twins, a boy named Alexander Helios and a girl named Cleopatra Selene II, both of whom Antony acknowledged as his children. Helios (the Sun) and Selene (the Moon) were symbolic of a new era of societal rejuvenation, as well as an indication that Cleopatra hoped Antony would repeat the exploits of Alexander the Great by conquering the Parthians.
Mark Antony's Parthian campaign in the east was disrupted by the events of the Perusine War (41–40 BC), initiated by his ambitious wife Fulvia against Octavian in the hopes of making her husband the undisputed leader of Rome. It has been suggested that Fulvia wanted to cleave Antony away from Cleopatra, but the conflict emerged in Italy even before Cleopatra's meeting with Antony at Tarsos. Fulvia and Antony's brother Lucius Antonius were eventually besieged by Octavian at Perusia (modern Perugia, Italy) and then exiled from Italy, after which Fulvia died at Sicyon in Greece while attempting to reach Antony. Her sudden death led to a reconciliation of Octavian and Antony at Brundisium in Italy in September 40 BC. Although the agreement struck at Brundisium solidified Antony's control of the Roman Republic's territories east of the Ionian Sea, it also stipulated that he concede Italia, Hispania, and Gaul, and marry Octavian's sister Octavia the Younger, a potential rival for Cleopatra.
In December 40 BC Cleopatra received Herod in Alexandria as an unexpected guest and refugee who fled a turbulent situation in Judea. Herod had been installed as a tetrarch there by Antony, but he was soon at odds with Antigonus II Mattathias of the long-established Hasmonean dynasty. The latter had imprisoned Herod's brother and fellow tetrarch Phasael, who was executed while Herod was fleeing toward Cleopatra's court. Cleopatra attempted to provide him with a military assignment, but Herod declined and traveled to Rome, where the triumvirs Octavian and Antony named him king of Judea. This act put Herod on a collision course with Cleopatra, who would desire to reclaim the former Ptolemaic territories that comprised his new Herodian kingdom.
Relations between Antony and Cleopatra perhaps soured when he not only married Octavia, but also sired her two children, Antonia the Elder in 39 BC and Antonia Minor in 36 BC, and moved his headquarters to Athens. However, Cleopatra's position in Egypt was secure. Her rival Herod was occupied with civil war in Judea that required heavy Roman military assistance, but received none from Cleopatra. Since the authority of Antony and Octavian as triumvirs had expired on 1 January 37 BC, Octavia arranged for a meeting at Tarentum, where the triumvirate was officially extended to 33 BC. With two legions granted by Octavian and a thousand soldiers lent by Octavia, Antony traveled to Antioch, where he made preparations for war against the Parthians.
Antony summoned Cleopatra to Antioch to discuss pressing issues, such as Herod's kingdom and financial support for his Parthian campaign. Cleopatra brought her now three-year-old twins to Antioch, where Antony saw them for the first time and where they probably first received their surnames Helios and Selene as part of Antony and Cleopatra's ambitious plans for the future. In order to stabilize the east, Antony not only enlarged Cleopatra's domain, he also established new ruling dynasties and client rulers who would be loyal to him, yet would ultimately outlast him.
In this arrangement Cleopatra gained significant former Ptolemaic territories in the Levant, including nearly all of Phoenicia (Lebanon) minus Tyre and Sidon, which remained in Roman hands. She also received Ptolemais Akko (modern Acre, Israel), a city that was established by Ptolemy II. Given her ancestral relations with the Seleucids, she was granted the region of Coele-Syria along the upper Orontes River. She was even given the region surrounding Jericho in Palestine, but she leased this territory back to Herod. At the expense of the Nabataean king Malichus I (a cousin of Herod), Cleopatra was also given a portion of the Nabataean Kingdom around the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea, including Ailana (modern Aqaba, Jordan). To the west Cleopatra was handed Cyrene along the Libyan coast, as well as Itanos and Olous in Roman Crete. Although still administered by Roman officials, these territories nevertheless enriched her kingdom and led her to declare the inauguration of a new era by double-dating her coinage in 36 BC.
Antony's enlargement of the Ptolemaic realm by relinquishing directly controlled Roman territory was exploited by his rival Octavian, who tapped into the public sentiment in Rome against the empowerment of a foreign queen at the expense of their Republic. Octavian, fostering the narrative that Antony was neglecting his virtuous Roman wife Octavia, granted both her and Livia, his own wife, extraordinary privileges of sacrosanctity. Some 50 years before, Cornelia Africana, daughter of Scipio Africanus, had been the first living Roman woman to have a statue dedicated to her. She was now followed by Octavia and Livia, whose statues were most likely erected in the Forum of Caesar to rival that of Cleopatra's, erected by Caesar.
In 36 BC, Cleopatra accompanied Antony to the Euphrates in his journey toward invading the Parthian Empire. She then returned to Egypt, perhaps due to her advanced state of pregnancy. By the summer of 36 BC, she had given birth to Ptolemy Philadelphus, her second son with Antony.
Antony's Parthian campaign in 36 BC turned into a complete debacle for a number of reasons, in particular the betrayal of Artavasdes II of Armenia, who defected to the Parthian side. After losing some 30,000 men, more than Crassus at Carrhae (an indignity he had hoped to avenge), Antony finally arrived at Leukokome near Berytus (modern Beirut, Lebanon) in December, engaged in heavy drinking before Cleopatra arrived to provide funds and clothing for his battered troops. Antony desired to avoid the risks involved in returning to Rome, and so he traveled with Cleopatra back to Alexandria to see his newborn son.
Donations of Alexandria
As Antony prepared for another Parthian expedition in 35 BC, this time aimed at their ally Armenia, Octavia traveled to Athens with 2,000 troops in alleged support of Antony, but most likely in a scheme devised by Octavian to embarrass him for his military losses. Antony received these troops but told Octavia not to stray east of Athens as he and Cleopatra traveled together to Antioch, only to suddenly and inexplicably abandon the military campaign and head back to Alexandria. When Octavia returned to Rome Octavian portrayed his sister as a victim wronged by Antony, although she refused to leave Antony's household. Octavian's confidence grew as he eliminated his rivals in the west, including Sextus Pompeius and even Lepidus, the third member of the triumvirate, who was placed under house arrest after revolting against Octavian in Sicily.
Dellius was sent as Antony's envoy to Artavasdes II in 34 BC to negotiate a potential marriage alliance that would wed the Armenian king's daughter to Alexander Helios, the son of Antony and Cleopatra. When this was declined, Antony marched his army into Armenia, defeated their forces and captured the king and Armenian royal family. Antony then held a military parade in Alexandria as an imitation of a Roman triumph, dressed as Dionysus and riding into the city on a chariot to present the royal prisoners to Cleopatra, who was seated on a golden throne above a silver dais. News of this event was heavily criticized in Rome as a perversion of time-honored Roman rites and rituals to be enjoyed instead by an Egyptian queen.
In an event held at the gymnasium soon after the triumph, Cleopatra dressed as Isis and declared that she was the Queen of Kings with her son Caesarion, King of Kings, while Alexander Helios was declared king of Armenia, Media, and Parthia, and two-year-old Ptolemy Philadelphus was declared king of Syria and Cilicia. Cleopatra Selene II was bestowed with Crete and Cyrene. Antony and Cleopatra may have been wed during this ceremony. Antony sent a report to Rome requesting ratification of these territorial claims, now known as the Donations of Alexandria. Octavian wanted to publicize it for propaganda purposes, but the two consuls, both supporters of Antony, had it censored from public view.
In late 34 BC, Antony and Octavian engaged in a heated war of propaganda that would last for years. Antony claimed that his rival had illegally deposed Lepidus from their triumvirate and barred him from raising troops in Italy, while Octavian accused Antony of unlawfully detaining the king of Armenia, marrying Cleopatra despite still being married to his sister Octavia, and wrongfully claiming Caesarion as the heir of Caesar instead of Octavian. The litany of accusations and gossip associated with this propaganda war have shaped the popular perceptions about Cleopatra from Augustan-period literature through to various media in modern times. Cleopatra was said to have brainwashed Mark Antony with witchcraft and sorcery and was as dangerous as Homer's Helen of Troy in destroying civilization. Pliny the Elder claims in his Natural History that Cleopatra once dissolved a pearl worth tens of millions of sesterces in vinegar just to win a dinner-party bet. The accusation that Antony had stolen books from the Library of Pergamum to restock the Library of Alexandria later turned out to be an admitted fabrication by Gaius Calvisius Sabinus.
A papyrus document dated to February 33 BC, later used to wrap a mummy, contains the signature of Cleopatra, probably written by an official authorized to sign for her. It concerns certain tax exemptions in Egypt granted to either Quintus Caecillius or Publius Canidius Crassus, a former Roman consul and Antony's confidant who would command his land forces at Actium. A subscript in a different handwriting at the bottom of the papyrus reads "make it happen" or "so be it" (Ancient Greek: γινέσθωι, romanized: ginésthōi); this is likely the autograph of the queen, as it was Ptolemaic practice to countersign documents to avoid forgery.
Battle of Actium
In a speech to the Roman Senate on the first day of his consulship on 1 January 33 BC, Octavian accused Antony of attempting to subvert Roman freedoms and territorial integrity as a slave to his Oriental queen. Before Antony and Octavian's joint imperium expired on 31 December 33 BC, Antony declared Caesarion as the true heir of Caesar in an attempt to undermine Octavian. In 32 BC, the Antonian loyalists Gaius Sosius and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus became consuls. The former gave a fiery speech condemning Octavian, now a private citizen without public office, and introduced pieces of legislation against him. During the next senatorial session, Octavian entered the Senate house with armed guards and levied his own accusations against the consuls. Intimidated by this act, the consuls and over 200 senators still in support of Antony fled Rome the next day to join the side of Antony.
Antony and Cleopatra traveled together to Ephesus in 32 BC, where she provided him with 200 of the 800 naval ships he was able to acquire. Ahenobarbus, wary of having Octavian's propaganda confirmed to the public, attempted to persuade Antony to have Cleopatra excluded from the campaign against Octavian. Publius Canidius Crassus made the counterargument that Cleopatra was funding the war effort and was a competent monarch. Cleopatra refused Antony's requests that she return to Egypt, judging that by blocking Octavian in Greece she could more easily defend Egypt. Cleopatra's insistence that she be involved in the battle for Greece led to the defections of prominent Romans, such as Ahenobarbus and Lucius Munatius Plancus.
During the spring of 32 BC Antony and Cleopatra traveled to Athens, where she persuaded Antony to send Octavia an official declaration of divorce. This encouraged Plancus to advise Octavian that he should seize Antony's will, invested with the Vestal Virgins. Although a violation of sacred and legal rights, Octavian forcefully acquired the document from the Temple of Vesta, and it became a useful tool in the propaganda war against Antony and Cleopatra. Octavian highlighted parts of the will, such as Caesarion being named heir to Caesar, that the Donations of Alexandria were legal, that Antony should be buried alongside Cleopatra in Egypt instead of Rome, and that Alexandria would be made the new capital of the Roman Republic. In a show of loyalty to Rome, Octavian decided to begin construction of his own mausoleum at the Campus Martius. Octavian's legal standing was also improved by being elected consul in 31 BC. With Antony's will made public, Octavian had his casus belli, and Rome declared war on Cleopatra, not Antony. The legal argument for war was based less on Cleopatra's territorial acquisitions, with former Roman territories ruled by her children with Antony, and more on the fact that she was providing military support to a private citizen now that Antony's triumviral authority had expired.
Antony and Cleopatra had a larger fleet than Octavian, but the crews of Antony and Cleopatra's navy were not all well-trained, some of them perhaps from merchant vessels, whereas Octavian had a fully professional force. Antony wanted to cross the Adriatic Sea and blockade Octavian at either Tarentum or Brundisium, but Cleopatra, concerned primarily with defending Egypt, overrode the decision to attack Italy directly. Antony and Cleopatra set up their winter headquarters at Patrai in Greece, and by the spring of 31 BC they had moved to Actium, on the southern side of the Ambracian Gulf.
Cleopatra and Antony had the support of various allied kings, but Cleopatra had already been in conflict with Herod, and an earthquake in Judea provided him with an excuse to be absent from the campaign. They also lost the support of Malichus I, which would prove to have strategic consequences. Antony and Cleopatra lost several skirmishes against Octavian around Actium during the summer of 31 BC, while defections to Octavian's camp continued, including Antony's long-time companion Dellius and the allied kings Amyntas of Galatia and Deiotaros of Paphlagonia. While some in Antony's camp suggested abandoning the naval conflict to retreat inland, Cleopatra urged for a naval confrontation, to keep Octavian's fleet away from Egypt.
On 2 September 31 BC the naval forces of Octavian, led by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, met those of Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. Cleopatra, aboard her flagship, the Antonias, commanded 60 ships at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, at the rear of the fleet, in what was likely a move by Antony's officers to marginalize her during the battle. Antony had ordered that their ships should have sails on board for a better chance to pursue or flee from the enemy, which Cleopatra, ever concerned about defending Egypt, used to swiftly move through the area of major combat in a strategic withdrawal to the Peloponnese.
Burstein writes that partisan Roman writers would later accuse Cleopatra of cowardly deserting Antony, but their original intention of keeping their sails on board may have been to break the blockade and salvage as much of their fleet as possible. Antony followed Cleopatra and boarded her ship, identified by its distinctive purple sails, as the two escaped the battle and headed for Tainaron. Antony reportedly avoided Cleopatra during this three-day voyage, until her ladies in waiting at Tainaron urged him to speak with her. The Battle of Actium raged on without Cleopatra and Antony until the morning of 3 September, and was followed by massive defections of officers, troops, and allied kings to Octavian's side.
Downfall and death
While Octavian occupied Athens, Antony and Cleopatra landed at Paraitonion in Egypt. The couple then went their separate ways, Antony to Cyrene to raise more troops and Cleopatra to the harbor at Alexandria in an attempt to mislead the oppositional party and portray the activities in Greece as a victory. She was afraid that news about the outcome of the battle of Actium would lead to a rebellion. It is uncertain whether or not, at this time, she actually executed Artavasdes II and sent his head to his rival, Artavasdes I of Media Atropatene, in an attempt to strike an alliance with him.
Lucius Pinarius, Mark Antony's appointed governor of Cyrene, received word that Octavian had won the Battle of Actium before Antony's messengers could arrive at his court. Pinarius had these messengers executed and then defected to Octavian's side, surrendering to him the four legions under his command that Antony desired to obtain. Antony nearly committed suicide after hearing news of this but was stopped by his staff officers. In Alexandria he built a reclusive cottage on the island of Pharos that he nicknamed the Timoneion, after the philosopher Timon of Athens, who was famous for his cynicism and misanthropy. Herod, who had personally advised Antony after the Battle of Actium that he should betray Cleopatra, traveled to Rhodes to meet Octavian and resign his kingship out of loyalty to Antony. Octavian was impressed by his speech and sense of loyalty, so he allowed him to maintain his position in Judea, further isolating Antony and Cleopatra.
Cleopatra perhaps started to view Antony as a liability by the late summer of 31 BC, when she prepared to leave Egypt to her son Caesarion. Cleopatra planned to relinquish her throne to him, take her fleet from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, and then set sail to a foreign port, perhaps in India, where she could spend time recuperating. However, these plans were ultimately abandoned when Malichus I, as advised by Octavian's governor of Syria, Quintus Didius, managed to burn Cleopatra's fleet in revenge for his losses in a war with Herod that Cleopatra had largely initiated. Cleopatra had no other option but to stay in Egypt and negotiate with Octavian. Although most likely later pro-Octavian propaganda, it was reported that at this time Cleopatra started testing the strengths of various poisons on prisoners and even her own servants.
Cleopatra had Caesarion enter into the ranks of the ephebi, which, along with reliefs on a stele from Koptos dated 21 September 31 BC, demonstrated that Cleopatra was now grooming her son to become the sole ruler of Egypt. In a show of solidarity, Antony also had Marcus Antonius Antyllus, his son with Fulvia, enter the ephebi at the same time. Separate messages and envoys from Antony and Cleopatra were then sent to Octavian, still stationed at Rhodes, although Octavian seems to have replied only to Cleopatra. Cleopatra requested that her children should inherit Egypt and that Antony should be allowed to live in exile in Egypt, offered Octavian money in the future, and immediately sent him lavish gifts. Octavian sent his diplomat Thyrsos to Cleopatra after she threatened to burn herself and vast amounts of her treasure within a tomb already under construction. Thyrsos advised her to kill Antony so that her life would be spared, but when Antony suspected foul intent, he had this diplomat flogged and sent back to Octavian without a deal.
After lengthy negotiations that ultimately produced no results, Octavian set out to invade Egypt in the spring of 30 BC, stopping at Ptolemais in Phoenicia, where his new ally Herod provided his army with fresh supplies. Octavian moved south and swiftly took Pelousion, while Cornelius Gallus, marching eastward from Cyrene, defeated Antony's forces near Paraitonion. Octavian advanced quickly to Alexandria, but Antony returned and won a small victory over Octavian's tired troops outside the city's hippodrome. However, on 1 August 30 BC, Antony's naval fleet surrendered to Octavian, followed by Antony's cavalry.
Cleopatra hid herself in her tomb with her close attendants and sent a message to Antony that she had committed suicide. In despair, Antony responded to this by stabbing himself in the stomach and taking his own life at age 53. According to Plutarch, he was still dying when brought to Cleopatra at her tomb, telling her he had died honorably and that she could trust Octavian's companion Gaius Proculeius over anyone else in his entourage. It was Proculeius, however, who infiltrated her tomb using a ladder and detained the queen, denying her the ability to burn herself with her treasures. Cleopatra was then allowed to embalm and bury Antony within her tomb before she was escorted to the palace.
Octavian entered Alexandria, occupied the palace, and seized Cleopatra's three youngest children. When she met with Octavian, Cleopatra told him bluntly, "I will not be led in a triumph" (Ancient Greek: οὑ θριαμβεύσομαι, romanized: ou thriambéusomai), according to Livy, a rare recording of her exact words. Octavian promised that he would keep her alive but offered no explanation about his future plans for her kingdom. When a spy informed her that Octavian planned to move her and her children to Rome in three days, she prepared for suicide as she had no intentions of being paraded in a Roman triumph like her sister Arsinoe IV. It is unclear if Cleopatra's suicide on 10 August 30 BC, at age 39, took place within the palace or her tomb. It is said she was accompanied by her servants Eiras and Charmion, who also took their own lives.
Octavian was said to have been angered by this outcome but had Cleopatra buried in royal fashion next to Antony in her tomb. Cleopatra's physician, Olympos, did not explain her cause of death, although the popular belief is that she allowed an asp or Egyptian cobra to bite and poison her. Plutarch relates this tale, but then suggests an implement (κνῆστις, knêstis, lit. 'spine, cheese-grater') was used to introduce the toxin by scratching, while Dio says that she injected the poison with a needle (βελόνη, belónē), and Strabo argued for an ointment of some kind. Meanwhile, Horace collaborates the common belief that it was a venomous snake, but instead states that it was multiple (serpentēs, lit.‘serpents’). Vergil also agrees with the take of it being multiple serpents. Both this and Horace’s account suggest that this belief stemmed from Octavian’s propaganda. No venomous snake was found with her body, but she did have tiny puncture wounds on her arm that could have been caused by a needle.
Cleopatra decided in her last moments to send Caesarion away to Upper Egypt, perhaps with plans to flee to Kushite Nubia, Ethiopia, or India. Caesarion, now Ptolemy XV, would reign for a mere 18 days until executed on the orders of Octavian on 29 August 30 BC, after returning to Alexandria under the false pretense that Octavian would allow him to be king. Octavian was convinced by the advice of the philosopher Arius Didymus that there was room for only one Caesar in the world. With the fall of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the Roman province of Egypt was established, marking the end of the Hellenistic period. In January of 27 BC Octavian was renamed Augustus ("the revered") and amassed constitutional powers that established him as the first Roman emperor, inaugurating the Principate era of the Roman Empire.
Cleopatra's kingdom and role as a monarch
Following the tradition of Macedonian rulers, Cleopatra ruled Egypt and other territories such as Cyprus as an absolute monarch, serving as the sole lawgiver of her kingdom. She was the chief religious authority in her realm, presiding over religious ceremonies dedicated to the deities of both the Egyptian and Greek polytheistic faiths. She oversaw the construction of various temples to Egyptian and Greek gods, a synagogue for the Jews in Egypt, and even built the Caesareum of Alexandria, dedicated to the cult worship of her patron and lover Julius Caesar.
Cleopatra was directly involved in the administrative affairs of her domain, tackling crises such as famine by ordering royal granaries to distribute food to the starving populace during a drought at the beginning of her reign. Although the command economy that she managed was more of an ideal than a reality, the government attempted to impose price controls, tariffs, and state monopolies for certain goods, fixed exchange rates for foreign currencies, and rigid laws forcing peasant farmers to stay in their villages during planting and harvesting seasons. Apparent financial troubles led Cleopatra to debase her coinage, which included silver and bronze currencies but no gold coins like those of some of her distant Ptolemaic predecessors.
Legacy
Children and successors
After her suicide, Cleopatra's three surviving children, Cleopatra Selene II, Alexander Helios, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, were sent to Rome with Octavian's sister Octavia the Younger, a former wife of their father, as their guardian. Cleopatra Selene II and Alexander Helios were present in the Roman triumph of Octavian in 29 BC. The fates of Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus are unknown after this point. Octavia arranged the betrothal of Cleopatra Selene II to Juba II, son of Juba I, whose North African kingdom of Numidia had been turned into a Roman province in 46 BC by Julius Caesar due to Juba I's support of Pompey.
The emperor Augustus installed Juba II and Cleopatra Selene II, after their wedding in 25 BC, as the new rulers of Mauretania, where they transformed the old Carthaginian city of Iol into their new capital, renamed Caesarea Mauretaniae (modern Cherchell, Algeria). Cleopatra Selene II imported many important scholars, artists, and advisers from her mother's royal court in Alexandria to serve her in Caesarea, now permeated in Hellenistic Greek culture. She also named her son Ptolemy of Mauretania, in honor of their Ptolemaic dynastic heritage.
Cleopatra Selene II died c. 5 BC, and when Juba II died in 23/24 AD he was succeeded by his son Ptolemy. However, Ptolemy was eventually executed by the Roman emperor Caligula in 40 AD, perhaps under the pretense that Ptolemy had unlawfully minted his own royal coinage and utilized regalia reserved for the Roman emperor. Ptolemy of Mauretania was the last known monarch of the Ptolemaic dynasty, although Queen Zenobia, of the short-lived Palmyrene Empire during the Crisis of the Third Century, claimed descent from Cleopatra. A cult dedicated to Cleopatra still existed as late as 373 AD when Petesenufe, an Egyptian scribe of the book of Isis, explained that he "overlaid the figure of Cleopatra with gold."
Roman literature and historiography
Although almost 50 ancient works of Roman historiography mention Cleopatra, these often include only terse accounts of the Battle of Actium, her suicide, and Augustan propaganda about her personal deficiencies. Despite not being a biography of Cleopatra, the Life of Antonius written by Plutarch in the 1st century AD provides the most thorough surviving account of Cleopatra's life. Plutarch lived a century after Cleopatra but relied on primary sources, such as Philotas of Amphissa, who had access to the Ptolemaic royal palace, Cleopatra's personal physician named Olympos, and Quintus Dellius, a close confidant of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Plutarch's work included both the Augustan view of Cleopatra—which became canonical for his period—as well as sources outside of this tradition, such as eyewitness reports.
The Jewish Roman historian Josephus, writing in the 1st century AD, provides valuable information on the life of Cleopatra via her diplomatic relationship with Herod the Great. However, this work relies largely on Herod's memoirs and the biased account of Nicolaus of Damascus, the tutor of Cleopatra's children in Alexandria before he moved to Judea to serve as an adviser and chronicler at Herod's court. The Roman History published by the official and historian Cassius Dio in the early 3rd century AD, while failing to fully comprehend the complexities of the late Hellenistic world, nevertheless provides a continuous history of the era of Cleopatra's reign.
Cleopatra is barely mentioned in De Bello Alexandrino, the memoirs of an unknown staff officer who served under Caesar. The writings of Cicero, who knew her personally, provide an unflattering portrait of Cleopatra. The Augustan-period authors Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid perpetuated the negative views of Cleopatra approved by the ruling Roman regime, although Virgil established the idea of Cleopatra as a figure of romance and epic melodrama. Horace also viewed Cleopatra's suicide as a positive choice, an idea that found acceptance by the Late Middle Ages with Geoffrey Chaucer.
The historians Strabo, Velleius, Valerius Maximus, Pliny the Elder, and Appian, while not offering accounts as full as Plutarch, Josephus, or Dio, provided some details of her life that had not survived in other historical records. Inscriptions on contemporary Ptolemaic coinage and some Egyptian papyrus documents demonstrate Cleopatra's point of view, but this material is very limited in comparison to Roman literary works. The fragmentary Libyka commissioned by Cleopatra's son-in-law Juba II provides a glimpse at a possible body of historiographic material that supported Cleopatra's perspective.
Cleopatra's gender has perhaps led to her depiction as a minor if not insignificant figure in ancient, medieval, and even modern historiography about ancient Egypt and the Greco-Roman world. For instance, the historian Ronald Syme asserted that she was of little importance to Caesar and that the propaganda of Octavian magnified her importance to an excessive degree. Although the common view of Cleopatra was one of a prolific seductress, she had only two known sexual partners, Caesar and Antony, the two most prominent Romans of the time period, who were most likely to ensure the survival of her dynasty. Plutarch described Cleopatra as having had a stronger personality and charming wit than physical beauty.
Cultural depictions
Depictions in ancient art
Statues
Cleopatra was depicted in various ancient works of art, in the Egyptian as well as Hellenistic-Greek and Roman styles. Surviving works include statues, busts, reliefs, and minted coins, as well as ancient carved cameos, such as one depicting Cleopatra and Antony in Hellenistic style, now in the Altes Museum, Berlin. Contemporary images of Cleopatra were produced both in and outside of Ptolemaic Egypt. For instance, there was once a large gilded bronze statue of Cleopatra inside the Temple of Venus Genetrix in Rome, the first time that a living person had their statue placed next to that of a deity in a Roman temple. It was erected there by Caesar and remained in the temple at least until the 3rd century AD, its preservation perhaps owing to Caesar's patronage, although Augustus did not remove or destroy artworks in Alexandria depicting Cleopatra.
A life-sized Roman-style statue of Cleopatra was found near the Tomba di Nerone, Rome, along the Via Cassia, and is now housed in the Museo Pio-Clementino, part of the Vatican Museums. Plutarch, in his Life of Antonius, said that the public statues of Antony were torn down by Augustus, but those of Cleopatra were preserved following her death thanks to her friend Archibius paying the emperor 2,000 talents to dissuade him from destroying hers.
Since the 1950s scholars have debated whether or not the Esquiline Venus—discovered in 1874 on the Esquiline Hill in Rome and housed in the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Capitoline Museums—is a depiction of Cleopatra, based on the statue's hairstyle and facial features, apparent royal diadem worn over the head, and the uraeus Egyptian cobra wrapped around the base. Detractors of this theory argue that the face in this statue is thinner than the face on the Berlin portrait and assert that it was unlikely she would be depicted as the naked goddess Venus (or the Greek Aphrodite). However, she was depicted in an Egyptian statue as the goddess Isis, while some of her coinage depicts her as Venus-Aphrodite. She also dressed as Aphrodite when meeting Antony at Tarsos. The Esquiline Venus is generally thought to be a mid-1st-century AD Roman copy of a 1st-century BC Greek original from the school of Pasiteles.
Coinage portraits
Surviving coinage of Cleopatra's reign include specimens from every regnal year, from 51 to 30 BC. Cleopatra, the only Ptolemaic queen to issue coins on her own behalf, almost certainly inspired her partner Caesar to become the first living Roman to present his portrait on his own coins. Cleopatra was the first foreign queen to have her image appear on Roman currency. Coins dated to the period of her marriage to Antony, which also bear his image, portray the queen as having a very similar aquiline nose and prominent chin as that of her husband. These similar facial features followed an artistic convention that represented the mutually-observed harmony of a royal couple.
Her strong, almost masculine facial features in these particular coins are strikingly different from the smoother, softer, and perhaps idealized sculpted images of her in either the Egyptian or Hellenistic styles. Her masculine facial features on minted currency are similar to that of her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, and perhaps also to those of her Ptolemaic ancestor Arsinoe II (316–260 BC) and even depictions of earlier queens such as Hatshepsut and Nefertiti. It is likely, due to political expediency, that Antony's visage was made to conform not only to hers but also to those of her Macedonian Greek ancestors who founded the Ptolemaic dynasty, to familiarize himself to her subjects as a legitimate member of the royal house.
The inscriptions on the coins are written in Greek, but also in the nominative case of Roman coins rather than the genitive case of Greek coins, in addition to having the letters placed in a circular fashion along the edges of the coin instead of across it horizontally or vertically as was customary for Greek ones. These facets of their coinage represent the synthesis of Roman and Hellenistic culture, and perhaps also a statement to their subjects, however ambiguous to modern scholars, about the superiority of either Antony or Cleopatra over the other. Diana Kleiner argues that Cleopatra, in one of her coins minted with the dual image of her husband Antony, made herself more masculine-looking than other portraits and more like an acceptable Roman client queen than a Hellenistic ruler. Cleopatra had actually achieved this masculine look in coinage predating her affair with Antony, such as the coins struck at the Ascalon mint during her brief period of exile to Syria and the Levant, which Joann Fletcher explains as her attempt to appear like her father and as a legitimate successor to a male Ptolemaic ruler.
Various coins, such as a silver tetradrachm minted sometime after Cleopatra's marriage with Antony in 37 BC, depict her wearing a royal diadem and a 'melon' hairstyle. The combination of this hairstyle with a diadem is also featured in two surviving sculpted marble heads. This hairstyle, with hair braided back into a bun, is the same as that worn by her Ptolemaic ancestors Arsinoe II and Berenice II in their own coinage. After her visit to Rome in 46–44 BC it became fashionable for Roman women to adopt it as one of their hairstyles, but it was abandoned for a more modest, austere look during the conservative rule of Augustus.
Greco-Roman busts and heads
Of the surviving Greco-Roman-style busts and heads of Cleopatra, the sculpture known as the "Berlin Cleopatra", located in the Antikensammlung Berlin collection at the Altes Museum, possesses her full nose, whereas the head known as the "Vatican Cleopatra", located in the Vatican Museums, is damaged with a missing nose. Both the Berlin Cleopatra and Vatican Cleopatra have royal diadems, similar facial features, and perhaps once resembled the face of her bronze statue housed in the Temple of Venus Genetrix.
Both heads are dated to the mid-1st century BC and were found in Roman villas along the Via Appia in Italy, the Vatican Cleopatra having been unearthed in the Villa of the Quintilii. Francisco Pina Polo writes that Cleopatra's coinage present her image with certainty and asserts that the sculpted portrait of the Berlin head is confirmed as having a similar profile with her hair pulled back into a bun, a diadem, and a hooked nose.
A third sculpted portrait of Cleopatra accepted by scholars as being authentic survives at the Archaeological Museum of Cherchell, Algeria. This portrait features the royal diadem and similar facial features as the Berlin and Vatican heads, but has a more unique hairstyle and may actually depict Cleopatra Selene II, daughter of Cleopatra. A possible Parian-marble sculpture of Cleopatra wearing a vulture headdress in Egyptian style is located at the Capitoline Museums. Discovered near a sanctuary of Isis in Rome and dated to the 1st century BC, it is either Roman or Hellenistic-Egyptian in origin.
Other possible sculpted depictions of Cleopatra include one in the British Museum, London, made of limestone, which perhaps only depicts a woman in her entourage during her trip to Rome. The woman in this portrait has facial features similar to others (including the pronounced aquiline nose), but lacks a royal diadem and sports a different hairstyle. However, the British Museum head, once belonging to a full statue, could potentially represent Cleopatra at a different stage in her life and may also betray an effort by Cleopatra to discard the use of royal insignia (i.e. the diadem) to make herself more appealing to the citizens of Republican Rome. Duane W. Roller speculates that the British Museum head, along with those in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, the Capitoline Museums, and in the private collection of Maurice Nahmen, while having similar facial features and hairstyles as the Berlin portrait but lacking a royal diadem, most likely represent members of the royal court or even Roman women imitating Cleopatra's popular hairstyle.
Paintings
In the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus at Pompeii, Italy, a mid-1st century BC Second Style wall painting of the goddess Venus holding a cupid near massive temple doors is most likely a depiction of Cleopatra as Venus Genetrix with her son Caesarion. The commission of the painting most likely coincides with the erection of the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar in September 46 BC, where Caesar had a gilded statue erected depicting Cleopatra. This statue likely formed the basis of her depictions in both sculpted art as well as this painting at Pompeii.
The woman in the painting wears a royal diadem over her head and is strikingly similar in appearance to the Vatican Cleopatra, which bears possible marks on the marble of its left cheek where a cupid's arm may have been torn off. The room with the painting was walled off by its owner, perhaps in reaction to the execution of Caesarion in 30 BC by order of Octavian, when public depictions of Cleopatra's son would have been unfavorable with the new Roman regime.
Behind her golden diadem, crowned with a red jewel, is a translucent veil with crinkles that suggest the "melon" hairstyle favored by the queen. Her ivory-white skin, round face, long aquiline nose, and large round eyes were features common in both Roman and Ptolemaic depictions of deities. Roller affirms that "there seems little doubt that this is a depiction of Cleopatra and Caesarion before the doors of the Temple of Venus in the Forum Julium and, as such, it becomes the only extant contemporary painting of the queen."
Another painting from Pompeii, dated to the early 1st century AD and located in the House of Giuseppe II, contains a possible depiction of Cleopatra with her son Caesarion, both wearing royal diadems while she reclines and consumes poison in an act of suicide. The painting was originally thought to depict the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba, who toward the end of the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) drank poison and committed suicide at the behest of her lover Masinissa, King of Numidia. Arguments in favor of it depicting Cleopatra include the strong connection of her house with that of the Numidian royal family, Masinissa and Ptolemy VIII Physcon having been associates, and Cleopatra's own daughter marrying the Numidian prince Juba II.
Sophonisba was also a more obscure figure when the painting was made, while Cleopatra's suicide was far more famous. An asp is absent from the painting, but many Romans held the view that she received poison in another manner than a venomous snakebite. A set of double doors on the rear wall of the painting, positioned very high above the people in it, suggests the described layout of Cleopatra's tomb in Alexandria. A male servant holds the mouth of an artificial Egyptian crocodile (possibly an elaborate tray handle), while another man standing by is dressed as a Roman.
In 1818 a now lost encaustic painting was discovered in the Temple of Serapis at Hadrian's Villa, near Tivoli, Lazio, Italy, that depicted Cleopatra committing suicide with an asp biting her bare chest. A chemical analysis performed in 1822 confirmed that the medium for the painting was composed of one-third wax and two-thirds resin. The thickness of the painting over Cleopatra's bare flesh and her drapery were reportedly similar to the paintings of the Fayum mummy portraits. A steel engraving published by John Sartain in 1885 depicting the painting as described in the archaeological report shows Cleopatra wearing authentic clothing and jewelry of Egypt in the late Hellenistic period, as well as the radiant crown of the Ptolemaic rulers, as seen in their portraits on various coins minted during their respective reigns. After Cleopatra's suicide, Octavian commissioned a painting to be made depicting her being bitten by a snake, parading this image in her stead during his triumphal procession in Rome. The portrait painting of Cleopatra's death was perhaps among the great number of artworks and treasures taken from Rome by Emperor Hadrian to decorate his private villa, where it was found in an Egyptian temple.
A Roman panel painting from Herculaneum, Italy, dated to the 1st century AD possibly depicts Cleopatra. In it she wears a royal diadem, red or reddish-brown hair pulled back into a bun, pearl-studded hairpins, and earrings with ball-shaped pendants, the white skin of her face and neck set against a stark black background. Her hair and facial features are similar to those in the sculpted Berlin and Vatican portraits as well as her coinage. A highly similar painted bust of a woman with a blue headband in the House of the Orchard at Pompeii features Egyptian-style imagery, such as a Greek-style sphinx, and may have been created by the same artist.
Portland Vase
The Portland Vase, a Roman cameo glass vase dated to the Augustan period and now in the British Museum, includes a possible depiction of Cleopatra with Antony. In this interpretation, Cleopatra can be seen grasping Antony and drawing him toward her while a serpent (i.e. the asp) rises between her legs, Eros floats above, and Anton, the alleged ancestor of the Antonian family, looks on in despair as his descendant Antony is led to his doom. The other side of the vase perhaps contains a scene of Octavia, abandoned by her husband Antony but watched over by her brother, the emperor Augustus. The vase would thus have been created no earlier than 35 BC, when Antony sent his wife Octavia back to Italy and stayed with Cleopatra in Alexandria.
Native Egyptian art
The Bust of Cleopatra in the Royal Ontario Museum represents a bust of Cleopatra in the Egyptian style. Dated to the mid-1st century BC, it is perhaps the earliest depiction of Cleopatra as both a goddess and ruling pharaoh of Egypt. The sculpture also has pronounced eyes that share similarities with Roman copies of Ptolemaic sculpted works of art. The Dendera Temple complex, near Dendera, Egypt, contains Egyptian-style carved relief images along the exterior walls of the Temple of Hathor depicting Cleopatra and her young son Caesarion as a grown adult and ruling pharaoh making offerings to the gods. Augustus had his name inscribed there following the death of Cleopatra.
A large Ptolemaic black basalt statue measuring 104 centimetres (41 in) in height, now in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, is thought to represent Arsinoe II, wife of Ptolemy II, but recent analysis has indicated that it could depict her descendant Cleopatra due to the three uraei adorning her headdress, an increase from the two used by Arsinoe II to symbolize her rule over Lower and Upper Egypt. The woman in the basalt statue also holds a divided, double cornucopia (dikeras), which can be seen on coins of both Arsinoe II and Cleopatra. In his Kleopatra und die Caesaren (2006), Bernard Andreae contends that this basalt statue, like other idealized Egyptian portraits of the queen, does not contain realistic facial features and hence adds little to the knowledge of her appearance. Adrian Goldsworthy writes that, despite these representations in the traditional Egyptian style, Cleopatra would have dressed as a native only "perhaps for certain rites" and instead would usually dress as a Greek monarch, which would include the Greek headband seen in her Greco-Roman busts.
Medieval and Early Modern reception
In modern times Cleopatra has become an icon of popular culture, a reputation shaped by theatrical representations dating back to the Renaissance as well as paintings and films. This material largely surpasses the scope and size of existent historiographic literature about her from classical antiquity and has made a greater impact on the general public's view of Cleopatra than the latter. The 14th-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, in The Legend of Good Women, contextualized Cleopatra for the Christian world of the Middle Ages. His depiction of Cleopatra and Antony, her shining knight engaged in courtly love, has been interpreted in modern times as being either playful or misogynistic satire.
Chaucer highlighted Cleopatra's relationships with only two men as hardly the life of a seductress and wrote his works partly in reaction to the negative depiction of Cleopatra in De Mulieribus Claris and De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, Latin works by the 14th-century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio. The Renaissance humanist Bernardino Cacciante, in his 1504 Libretto apologetico delle donne, was the first Italian to defend the reputation of Cleopatra and criticize the perceived moralizing and misogyny in Boccaccio's works. Works of Islamic historiography written in Arabic covered the reign of Cleopatra, such as the 10th-century Meadows of Gold by Al-Masudi, although his work erroneously claimed that Octavian died soon after Cleopatra's suicide.
Cleopatra appeared in miniatures for illuminated manuscripts, such as a depiction of her and Antony lying in a Gothic-style tomb by the Boucicaut Master in 1409. In the visual arts, the sculpted depiction of Cleopatra as a free-standing nude figure committing suicide began with the 16th-century sculptors Bartolommeo Bandinelli and Alessandro Vittoria. Early prints depicting Cleopatra include designs by the Renaissance artists Raphael and Michelangelo, as well as 15th-century woodcuts in illustrated editions of Boccaccio's works.
In the performing arts, the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603, and the German publication in 1606 of alleged letters of Cleopatra, inspired Samuel Daniel to alter and republish his 1594 play Cleopatra in 1607. He was followed by William Shakespeare, whose Antony and Cleopatra, largely based on Plutarch, was first performed in 1608 and provided a somewhat salacious view of Cleopatra in stark contrast to England's own Virgin Queen. Cleopatra was also featured in operas, such as George Frideric Handel's 1724 Giulio Cesare in Egitto, which portrayed the love affair of Caesar and Cleopatra; Domenico Cimarosa wrote Cleopatra on a similar subject in 1789.
Modern depictions and brand imaging
In Victorian Britain, Cleopatra was highly associated with many aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and her image was used to market various household products, including oil lamps, lithographs, postcards and cigarettes. Fictional novels such as H. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra (1889) and Théophile Gautier's One of Cleopatra's Nights (1838) depicted the queen as a sensual and mystic Easterner, while the Egyptologist Georg Ebers's Cleopatra (1894) was more grounded in historical accuracy. The French dramatist Victorien Sardou and Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw produced plays about Cleopatra, while burlesque shows such as F. C. Burnand's Antony and Cleopatra offered satirical depictions of the queen connecting her and the environment she lived in with the modern age.
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra was considered canonical by the Victorian era. Its popularity led to the perception that the 1885 painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema depicted the meeting of Antony and Cleopatra on her pleasure barge in Tarsus, although Alma-Tadema revealed in a private letter that it depicts a subsequent meeting of theirs in Alexandria. Also based on Shakespeare's play was Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra (1966), commissioned for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House. In his unfinished 1825 short story The Egyptian Nights, Alexander Pushkin popularized the claims of the 4th-century Roman historian Aurelius Victor, previously largely ignored, that Cleopatra had prostituted herself to men who paid for sex with their lives. Cleopatra also became appreciated outside the Western world and Middle East, as the Qing-dynasty Chinese scholar Yan Fu wrote an extensive biography of her.
Georges Méliès's Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb (French: Cléopâtre), an 1899 French silent horror film, was the first film to depict the character of Cleopatra. Hollywood films of the 20th century were influenced by earlier Victorian media, which helped to shape the character of Cleopatra played by Theda Bara in Cleopatra (1917), Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra (1934), and Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra (1963). In addition to her portrayal as a "vampire" queen, Bara's Cleopatra also incorporated tropes familiar from 19th-century Orientalist painting, such as despotic behavior, mixed with dangerous and overt female sexuality. Colbert's character of Cleopatra served as a glamour model for selling Egyptian-themed products in department stores in the 1930s, targeting female moviegoers. In preparation for the film starring Taylor as Cleopatra, women's magazines of the early 1960s advertised how to use makeup, clothes, jewelry, and hairstyles to achieve the "Egyptian" look similar to the queens Cleopatra and Nefertiti. By the end of the 20th century there were forty-three films, two hundred plays and novels, forty-five operas, and five ballets associated with Cleopatra.
Written works
Whereas myths about Cleopatra persist in popular media, important aspects of her career go largely unnoticed, such as her command of naval forces and administrative acts. Publications on ancient Greek medicine attributed to her are, likely to be the work of a physician by the same name writing in the late first century AD. Ingrid D. Rowland, who highlights that the "Berenice called Cleopatra" cited by the 3rd- or 4th-century female Roman physician Metrodora was likely conflated by medieval scholars as referring to Cleopatra. Only fragments exist of these medical and cosmetic writings, such as those preserved by Galen, including remedies for hair disease, baldness, and dandruff, along with a list of weights and measures for pharmacological purposes. Aëtius of Amida attributed a recipe for perfumed soap to Cleopatra, while Paul of Aegina preserved alleged instructions of hers for dyeing and curling hair.
Ancestry
Cleopatra belonged to the Macedonian Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies, their European origins tracing back to northern Greece. Through her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, she was a descendant of two prominent companions of Alexander the Great of Macedon: the general Ptolemy I Soter, founder of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, and Seleucus I Nicator, the Macedonian Greek founder of the Seleucid Empire of West Asia. While Cleopatra's paternal line can be traced, the identity of her mother is uncertain. She was presumably the daughter of Cleopatra V Tryphaena, the sister-wife of Ptolemy XII who had previously given birth to their daughter Berenice IV.
Cleopatra I Syra was the only member of the Ptolemaic dynasty known for certain to have introduced some non-Greek ancestry. Her mother Laodice III was a daughter born to King Mithridates II of Pontus, a Persian of the Mithridatic dynasty, and his wife Laodice who had a mixed Greek-Persian heritage. Cleopatra I Syra's father Antiochus III the Great was a descendant of Queen Apama, the Sogdian Iranian wife of Seleucus I Nicator. It is generally believed that the Ptolemies did not intermarry with native Egyptians. Michael Grant asserts that there is only one known Egyptian mistress of a Ptolemy and no known Egyptian wife of a Ptolemy, further arguing that Cleopatra probably did not have any Egyptian ancestry and "would have described herself as Greek."
Stacy Schiff writes that Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek with some Persian ancestry, arguing that it was rare for the Ptolemies to have an Egyptian mistress. Duane W. Roller speculates that Cleopatra could have been the daughter of a theoretical half-Macedonian-Greek, half-Egyptian woman from Memphis in northern Egypt belonging to a family of priests dedicated to Ptah (a hypothesis not generally accepted in scholarship), but contends that whatever Cleopatra's ancestry, she valued her Greek Ptolemaic heritage the most. Ernle Bradford writes that Cleopatra challenged Rome not as an Egyptian woman "but as a civilized Greek."
Claims that Cleopatra was an illegitimate child never appeared in Roman propaganda against her. Strabo was the only ancient historian who claimed that Ptolemy XII's children born after Berenice IV, including Cleopatra, were illegitimate. Cleopatra V (or VI) was expelled from the court of Ptolemy XII in late 69 BC, a few months after the birth of Cleopatra, while Ptolemy XII's three younger children were all born during the absence of his wife. The high degree of inbreeding among the Ptolemies is also illustrated by Cleopatra's immediate ancestry, of which a reconstruction is shown below.
The family tree given below also lists Cleopatra V as a daughter of Ptolemy X Alexander I and Berenice III. This would make her a cousin of her husband, Ptolemy XII, but she could have been a daughter of Ptolemy IX Lathyros, which would have made her a sister-wife of Ptolemy XII instead. The confused accounts in ancient primary sources have also led scholars to number Ptolemy XII's wife as either Cleopatra V or Cleopatra VI; the latter may have actually been a daughter of Ptolemy XII. Fletcher and John Whitehorne assert that this is a possible indication Cleopatra V had died in 69 BC rather than reappearing as a co-ruler with Berenice IV in 58 BC (during Ptolemy XII's exile in Rome).
See also
List of female hereditary monarchs
Notes
References
Sources
Online
Print
Further reading
External links
Ancient Roman depictions of Cleopatra VII of Egypt, at YouTube
Cleopatra on In Our Time at the BBC
Jacob Abbott (1852). Cleopatra at Project Gutenberg, a Victorian children's book
"Mysterious Death of Cleopatra" at the Discovery Channel
Cleopatra VII at BBC History
Cleopatra VII at World History Encyclopedia
Eubanks, W. Ralph. (1 November 2010). "How History and Hollywood Got 'Cleopatra' Wrong". National Public Radio (NPR) (a book review of Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff).
Jarus, Owen (13 March 2014). "Cleopatra: Facts & Biography". Live Science.
Watkins, Thayer. "The Timeline of the Life of Cleopatra Archived 13 August 2021 at the Wayback Machine." San Jose State University.
Draycott, Jane (22 May 2018). "Cleopatra's Daughter: While Antony and Cleopatra have been immortalised in history and in popular culture, their offspring have been all but forgotten. Their daughter, Cleopatra Selene, became an important ruler in her own right". History Today. |
HMS_Asp | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Asp | [
311
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Asp"
] | Five vessels of Britain's Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Asp, named after the Asp, which in antiquity referred to any one of several venomous snake species found in the Nile region.
HMS Asp (1797) was an Acute-class gunbrig (ex-GB No.5), disposed of in 1803.
HMS Asp (1808) was the French Navy's corvette Serpent, under the command of Lieutenant de vaisseau Paul de Lamanon, when HMS Acasta captured her in 1808 off La Guaira, Venezuela. Rear-Admiral the Honourable Sir Alexander Cochrane provisionally named her Pert, but as there was already a brig HMS Pert, the Admiralty named her HMS Asp. The Royal Navy commissioned her as 16-gun sloop and disposed of her in 1814. She then made four voyages as a whaler, and wrecked in December 1828 on the fifth voyage.
HMS Asp (1826) was a cutter that the Royal Navy purchased in 1826 and sold in 1829.
HMS Asp (1837) was a paddle steamer packet of 112 tons that the Admiralty acquired from the Post Office in 1837 and disposed of in 1881.
HMS Asp (1890) was a tug in service 1891-1947 |
French_brig_Serpent_(1807) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_brig_Serpent_(1807) | [
311
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_brig_Serpent_(1807)"
] | Serpent was a French navy brig of the Palinure class, launched in 1807 at Paimbeouf (Nantes) as Rivolli, but renamed. HMS Acasta captured her in 1808 in the Caribbean and the British Royal Navy took her into service there as HMS Pert but renamed her Asp. The navy disposed of her in 1814. She then made five voyages as a whaler, and wrecked in December 1828 on her sixth voyage.
French service and capture
Lieutenant de vaisseau Paul de Lamanon sailed Serpent from Paimboeuf carrying troops to Senegal. He then conducted missions to Cayenne and Venezuela.
HMS Acasta captured Serpent on 17 July 1808 off La Guaira, Venezuela. Serpent was armed with sixteen 24-pounder carronades and two long 6-pounder guns, and had a crew of 104 men. British records name the commander as enseigne de vaisseau Mons. Lamanon.
Royal Navy service
The Royal Navy commissioned her as 16-gun sloop and Rear-Admiral the Honourable Sir Alexander Cochrane provisionally named her Pert. Commander Robert Preston took command in August 1808. As there was already a brig HMS Pert, the Admiralty named her HMS Asp.
On 8 February 1809 Asp and Superieure sighted Junon passing close to the Virgin Islands. Junon ignored their orders that she halt and prepare to be boarded.
The British frigate Horatio brought Junon to action and she surrendered when the frigate Latona and the brig Driver arrived on the scene and joined the engagement. Junon was carrying some sugar and cargo, which resulted in prize money (over and above that for the vessel itself) for all five British captors (i.e., including Asp).
In January -February 1810 Asp was also at the invasion of Guadeloupe. This campaign led to the award in 1847 of the clasp "Guadaloupe" to the Naval General Service Medal to all surviving claimants from the invasion.
Commander William M'Culloch replaced Preston after the invasion. Then in May Commander Henry Nathaniel Rowe replaced M'Culloch. Rowe sailed Asp back to Britain with dispatches, and M'Culloch replaced Rowe in command of Saint Christopher.
Asp arrived at Portsmouth on 30 July 1810 and was paid off and laid up. She spent much of that time in Ordinary.
Disposal: The "Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy" offered the "Asp sloop, of 333 tons", for sale at Portsmouth on 16 March 1814. She sold on that day for £1,050.
Whaler
John Bell & Co. purchased Asp to employ her as a South Seas whaler and appointed Captain J. Kenney master. Captain John Kenney received a letter of marque against America on 27 July 1814.
Whaling voyage #1: Captain Kenney sailed Asp on 23 August 1814, bound for the coast of Peru. On 20 October she was at 1°15′S 28°30′W. At some point in 1815 she was on the coast of Peru with 680 barrels. She left the Galapagos on 15 March, and called at St Catherine's (Florianópolis) after transiting Cape Horn. She returned on 6 August 1816 with 460 casks of oil.
Whaling voyage #2: Captain Kenney sailed on 8 October 1816 for the Pacific Ocean. She was reported to have been "on-the-line" on 24 November 1816 "all well". She returned on 27 August 1818 with 480 casks of oil.
Whaling voyage #3: Captain Kenney sailed on 15 December 1818 bound for the Galapagos. Asp was there in February 1820. She returned on 14 August 1821 with 2110 casks.
Whaling voyage #4: By this time Bell & Co. had sold Asp to Samuel Enderby & Sons. Captain William Darby Brind sailed from Britain on 17 July 1822 bound for New Zealand. On 20 December 1823 she was at the Bay of Islands with 1200 barrels. Under Captain Phillip Tapsell she then undertook whaling during the winter right whaling season at Great Oyster Bay (Tasmania). There she took four whales. She left New Zealand on 10 January 1825 and returned home on 26 May with 760 casks, including some black oil.
Whaling voyage #5: Captain House left Britain on 2 August 1825 bound for the Seychelles. She stopped at Mauritius in December 1825, or 1826. She returned to Britain on 21 September 1827 with 700 casks.
Fate
Asp, Kenneck (or Kenneth, or Renneck, or Rennick), master, sailed from Britain on 16 November 1827 with destination the Indian Ocean. She was wrecked on the Mudge Rocks, Madagascar, on 17 December 1828. The crew was rescued.
Notes
Citations
References
Clayton, Jane M (2014). Ships employed in the South Sea Whale Fishery from Britain: 1775–1815: An alphabetical list of ships. Berforts Group. ISBN 9781908616524.
Marshall, John (1832). "Rowe, Henry Nathaniel" . Royal Naval Biography. Vol. 3, part 2. London: Longman and company.
Winfield, Rif (2008). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-246-7.
Winfield, Rif; Roberts, Stephen S. (2015). French Warships in the Age of Sail 1786–1861: Design Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84832-204-2.
This article includes data released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported UK: England & Wales Licence, by the National Maritime Museum, as part of the Warship Histories project. |
1828_United_States_presidential_election | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1828_United_States_presidential_election | [
311
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1828_United_States_presidential_election"
] | The 1828 United States presidential election was the 11th quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Friday, October 31 to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a repetition of the 1824 election, as President John Quincy Adams of the National Republican Party faced Andrew Jackson of the Democratic Party. Both parties were new organizations, and this was the first presidential election their nominees contested. This election saw the second rematch in presidential history, something that would not occur again until 1840.
With the collapse of the Federalist Party, four members of the Democratic-Republican Party, including Jackson and Adams, had sought the presidency in the 1824 election. Jackson had won a plurality (but not majority) of both the electoral vote and popular vote in the 1824 election, but had lost the contingent election that was held in the House of Representatives. In the aftermath of the election, Jackson's supporters accused Adams and Henry Clay of having reached a "corrupt bargain" in which Clay helped Adams win the contingent election in return for the position of Secretary of State. After the 1824 election, Jackson's supporters immediately began plans for a campaign in 1828, and the Democratic-Republican Party fractured into the National Republican Party and the Democratic Party during Adams's presidency.
The 1828 campaign was marked by large amounts of "mudslinging", as both parties attacked the personal qualities of the opposing party's candidate. Jackson dominated in the South and the West, aided in part by the passage of the Tariff of 1828. With the ongoing expansion of the right to vote to most white men, the election marked a dramatic expansion of the electorate, with 9.5% of Americans casting a vote for president, compared with 3.4% in 1824. Several states transitioned to a popular vote for president, leaving South Carolina and Delaware as the only states in which the legislature chose presidential electors.
Jackson decisively won the election, carrying 55.5% of the popular vote and 178 electoral votes, to Adams' 83. The election marked the rise of Jacksonian Democracy and the transition from the First Party System to the Second Party System. Historians debate the significance of the election, with many arguing that it marked the beginning of modern American politics by removing key barriers to voter participation and establishing a stable two-party system. Jackson became the first president whose home state was neither Massachusetts nor Virginia, while Adams was the second to lose re-election, following his father John Adams.
Background
While Andrew Jackson won a plurality of electoral votes and the popular vote in the election of 1824, he lost to John Quincy Adams as the election was deferred to the House of Representatives (by the terms of the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a presidential election in which no candidate wins a majority of the electoral vote is decided by a contingent election in the House of Representatives). Henry Clay, unsuccessful candidate and Speaker of the House at the time, despised Jackson, in part due to their fight for Western votes during the election, and he chose to support Adams, which led to Adams being elected president on the first ballot.
A few days after the election, Adams appointed Clay his Secretary of State, a position held by Adams and his three immediate predecessors prior to becoming president. Jackson and his followers promptly accused Clay and Adams of striking a "corrupt bargain," and continued to lambaste the president until the 1828 election.
In 1824, the national Democratic-Republican Party collapsed as national politics became increasingly polarized between supporters of Adams and supporters of Jackson. In a prelude to the presidential election, the Jacksonians bolstered their numbers in Congress in the 1826 congressional elections, with Jackson ally Andrew Stevenson chosen as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1827 over Adams ally Speaker, John W. Taylor.
Nominations
Jacksonian Party nomination
In October 1825, the Tennessee legislature re-nominated Jackson for president. Congressional opponents of Adams, including former William H. Crawford supporter Martin Van Buren, rallied around Jackson's candidacy. Jackson's supporters called themselves Democrats, and would formally organize as the Democratic Party shortly after his election. In hopes of uniting those opposed to Adams, Jackson ran on a ticket with Calhoun. Calhoun would decline the invitation to join the Democratic Party, however, and instead formed the Nullifier Party after the election; the Nullifiers would remain largely aligned with the Democrats for the next few years, but ultimately broke with Jackson over the issue of states' rights during his first term. No congressional nominating caucus or national convention was held.
Adams' relationship with Vice President John C. Calhoun deteriorated, with Calhoun opposing Clay's appointment as Secretary of State due to his own presidential ambitions. In June 1826, Calhoun gave his support to Jackson for the 1828 election. Calhoun's stance on the removal of Native Americans was not accepted by the Georgian electors who instead voted for William Smith.
Van Buren, who supported Crawford during the 1824 election, supported Jackson during the 1828 election and aided in the selection of Calhoun as vice president in order to prevent DeWitt Clinton, his political enemy, from being selected. Clinton died on February 11, 1828. Van Buren arranged for incidents to divide Calhoun and Adams such as him abstaining from a vote on tariff legislation supported by Adams in order for Calhoun to break the tie by voting against it.
Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Examiner, was one of the leading supporters of Crawford during the 1824 election and Van Buren convinced him to support Jackson. Van Buren convinced him of an alliance "between the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North".
Adams Party nomination
President Adams and his allies, including Secretary of State Clay and Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, became known as the National Republicans or "Adams Party." The National Republicans were significantly less organized than the Democrats, and many party leaders did not embrace the new era of popular campaigning. Adams was re-nominated on the endorsement of state legislatures and partisan rallies. As with the Democrats, no nominating caucus or national convention was held. Adams chose Secretary of the Treasury Richard Rush, a Pennsylvanian known for his protectionist views, as his running mate. Adams, who was personally popular in New England, hoped to assemble a coalition in which Clay attracted Western voters, Rush attracted voters in the middle states, and Webster won over former members of the Federalist Party.
Adams support in New York aligned with the Anti-Masonic Party and Thurlow Weed, his campaign manager in the state, was sympathetic to the anti-masonic movement.
General election
One memoir of 19th-century life in Illinois gives a sense of importance of the 1828 in American life:
It was probably the most exciting election, and probably more bitter feeling indulged in, than at any elec- tion that has ever taken place in this country. For several months before the election almost every occupation was dropped and the men occupied their time electioneering. Almost every day long lines of men could be seen marching after the fife and drum and led by some officer that had served in the war of 1812. The Jackson party would erect their hickory poles and the Adams party their tall maple poles, and stands would be erected under their respective poles, and the best speakers in the country would be brought out, and each party would have a barbecue of a roast ox or half-a-dozen sheep about every week.
Campaign
The campaign was marked by large amounts of nasty "mudslinging." Jackson's marriage, for example, came in for vicious attack. When Jackson married his wife Rachel in 1791, the couple believed that she was divorced, but the divorce was not yet finalized, so he had to remarry her once the legal papers were complete. In the Adams campaign managers' hands, this became a scandal. Charles Hammond, in his Cincinnati Gazette, asked: "Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?"
Jackson's campaigners fired back by claiming that while serving as minister to Russia, Adams had procured a young girl to serve as a prostitute for Emperor Alexander I. They also stated that Adams had a billiard table in the White House and that he had charged the government for it. (In fact Adams while minister to Russia had employed a young girl as a maid to his wife; the girl had written a letter which had been intercepted by the Russian postal services. Alexander I had been curious to meet the letter writer publicly at court and Adams had done so. The billiard table was Adams' personal property; a bill for repairing it had been accidentally included in the White House expense accounts. Adams also came under attack for having a chess set). Jackson also came under heavy attack as a slave trader who bought and sold slaves and moved them about in defiance of modern standards of morality (he was not attacked for merely owning slaves used in plantation work). The Coffin Handbills attacked Jackson for his courts-martial, execution of deserters and massacres of Indian villages, and also his habit of dueling and that he supposedly fought over 100 duels. In fact Jackson had only fought three duels: in the first both men had fired at each other but made up; in the second duel, Jackson vs John Sevier, it had taken place but only two persons not connected with either party had been slightly injured. The third duel was with Charles Dickinson in which Dickinson was mortally wounded while Jackson was left with a bullet in his chest. A so-called fourth duel between Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton was in fact a frontier brawl which left Jackson badly wounded in the shoulder.
Ezra Stiles Ely attacked Adams' Unitarian beliefs and called for Christians to vote for Jackson.
Jackson avoided articulating issue positions, instead campaigning on his personal qualities and his opposition to Adams. Adams avoided popular campaigning, instead emphasizing his support of specific issues. Adams's praise of internal improvements in Europe, such as "lighthouses of the skies" (observatories), in his first annual message to Congress, and his suggestion that Congress not be "palsied by the will of our constituents" were given attention in and out of the press. John Randolph stated on the floor of the Senate that he "never will be palsied by any power save the constitution, and the will of my constituents." Jackson wrote that a lavish government combined with contempt of the constituents could lead to despotism, if not checked by the "voice of the people."
Modern campaigning was also introduced by Jackson. People kissed babies, had picnics, and started many other traditions during the campaign.
Jefferson's opinion
Thomas Jefferson wrote favorably in response to Jackson in December 1823 and extended an invitation to his estate of Monticello: "I recall with pleasure the remembrance of our joint labors while in the Senate together in times of great trial and of hard battling, battles indeed of words, not of blood, as those you have since fought so much for your own glory & that of your country; with the assurance that my attempts continue undiminished, accept that of my great respect & consideration."
Jefferson wrote of the outcome of the contingent election of 1825 in a letter to William H. Crawford, who had been the nominee of the congressional caucus of Democratic-Republicans, saying that he had hoped to congratulate Crawford on his election to the presidency but "events had not been what we had wished."
In the next election, Jackson's and Adams's supporters saw value in establishing the opinion of Jefferson in regards to their respective candidates and against their opposition. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, on the same day as his predecessor, John Adams, Adam's father.
A goal of the pro-Adams was to depict Jackson as a "mere military chieftain." Edward Coles recounted that Jefferson told him in a conversation in August 1825 that he feared the popular enthusiasm for Jackson: "It has caused me to doubt more than anything that has occurred since our Revolution." Coles used the opinion of Thomas Gilmer to back himself up; Gilmer said Jefferson told him at Monticello before the election of Adams in 1825, "One might as well make a sailor of a cock, or a soldier of a goose, as a President of Andrew Jackson." Daniel Webster, who was also at Monticello at the time, made the same report. Webster recorded that Jefferson told him in December 1824 that Jackson was a dangerous man unfit for the presidency. Historian Sean Wilentz described Webster's account of the meeting as "not wholly reliable." Biographer Robert V. Remini said that Jefferson "had no great love for Jackson."
Gilmer accused Coles of misrepresentation, in Jefferson's opinion had changed, Gilmer said. Jefferson's son-in-law, former Virginia Governor Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., said in 1826 that Jefferson had a "strong repugnance" to Henry Clay. Randolph publicly stated that Jefferson became friendly to Jackson's candidacy as early as the summer of 1825, perhaps because of the "corrupt bargain" charge, and thought of Jackson as "an honest, sincere, clear-headed and strong-minded man; of the soundest political principles" and "the only hope left" to reverse the increasing powers assumed by the federal government. Others said the same thing, but Coles could not believe Jefferson's opinion had changed.
In 1827, Virginia Governor William B. Giles released a letter from Jefferson meant to be kept private to Thomas Ritchie's Richmond Enquirer. It was written after Adams's first annual message to Congress and it contained an attack from Jefferson on the incumbent administration. Giles said Jefferson's alarm was with the usurpation of the rights of the states, not with a "military chieftain." Jefferson wrote, "take together the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of the President, and the misconstructions of the constitutional compact acted on by the legislature of the federal bench, and it is but too evident, that the three ruling branches of that department are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic." Of the Federalists, he continued, "But this opens with a vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who, having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76, now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce, and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered plowman and beggared yeomanry." The Jacksonians and states' rights men heralded its publication; the Adams men felt it a symptom of senility. Giles omitted a prior letter of Jefferson's praise of Adams for his role in the embargo of 1808. Thomas Jefferson Randolph soon collected and published Jefferson's correspondence.
Results
All of the states, except for Delaware and South Carolina, selected their electors through a popular vote. The selection of electors began on October 31 with elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania and ended on November 13 with elections in North Carolina. The Electoral College met on December 3.
Adams won the same states that his father had won in the election of 1800 (the New England states, New Jersey, and Delaware) and Maryland, but Jackson won all other states and won the election in a landslide.
The Democratic Party in Georgia was hopelessly divided into two factions (Troup and Clark) at the time. Despite this, both factions nominated Jackson for President, with the election being primarily a test of the strength of these two factions - the Adams electors ran a very poor third, with just 3.21% of the vote. The winning slate, which received a 3,000 vote majority.
Jackson received 50.3% of the vote in states without slavery while he received 72.6% of the vote in states with slavery. He received 200,000 votes in the South and 400,000 votes in the North, but the Three-fifths Compromise, which inflated the South's electoral votes, resulted in him receiving 105 electoral votes from the South and 73 votes from the North.
This was the first election in American history in which the incumbent president lost re-election despite winning a greater share of the popular vote than in the previous election. This would not happen again until 2020. Adams' loss was also the second time an elected president lost the popular vote twice, this also occurred with Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and 1892, and Donald Trump who lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020.
This was the last election in which the Democrats won Kentucky until 1856. It is also the only election where Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont voted for the National Republicans, and the last time that New Hampshire voted against the Democrats until 1856.
It was also the only election in which an electoral vote split occurred in Maine until the election of 2016, the first election in which the winning ticket did not have a north–south balance, and the first election in which two northerners ran against two southerners.
Source (Popular Vote): Dubin, Michael J. United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860
Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 31, 2005.
(a) The popular vote figures exclude Delaware and South Carolina: both states' electors were chosen by the state legislatures rather than by a popular vote.
(b) The other vote was from Georgia where two slates pledged to Jackson, representing factions of the party, ran. The winning slate was Jackson with Smith - the Troup Faction - and the other was Jackson with Calhoun - the Clark faction. Many sources combine the vote when reporting the Georgia results, but this is legally incorrect.
Results by state
States that flipped from Democratic-Republican to National Republican
Connecticut
Delaware
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
New Jersey
Rhode Island
Vermont
States that flipped from Democratic-Republican to Democratic
Alabama
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Virginia
Close states
Districts where the margin of victory was under 1%:
NY-20 0.45%
MD-3 0.49%
MD-6 0.65%
States and Districts where the margin of victory was under 5%:
Maine-Cumberland 2.22%
NY-16 2.63%
MD-4 2.67%
NY-8 2.77%
Ohio 3.16%
NY-10 3.34%
NY-1 3.85%
New Jersey 4.02%
MD-7 4.04%
NY-13 4.19%
NY-9 4.34%
States and Districts where the margin of victory was under 10%:
NY-19 5.65%
NY-23 5.81%
Maine-Oxford 5.90%
Louisiana 6.07%
NY-14 6.22%
New Hampshire 6.48%
NY-4 9.15%
NY-22 9.20%
NY-17 9.51%
NY-28 9.77%
Aftermath
Rachel Jackson had been having chest pains throughout the campaign, and she was traumatized by the personal attacks on her marriage. She became ill and died on December 22, 1828. Jackson accused the Adams campaign, and Henry Clay even more so, of causing her death, saying, "I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy."
Andrew Jackson was sworn in as president on March 4, 1829. After the inauguration, a mob entered the White House to shake the new president's hand, damaging the furniture and lights. Jackson escaped through the back, and large punch bowls were set up to lure the crowd outside. Conservatives were horrified at this event, and held it up as a portent of terrible things to come from the first Democratic president. When Jackson arrived in Washington, D.C., he was to pay the customary courtesy call on the outgoing president, but he refused to do so. John Quincy Adams responded by refusing to go to the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, similar to his father who did not attend the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson 28 years before. While Jackson did not hold John Quincy Adams among those who had slandered Rachel Jackson, social relations between the two men were cold and impersonal: for example, when Adams heard from a third party that Jackson would invite him to a social dinner he responded that Jackson should send the invitation personally. In his diary Adams also revealed his disgust that not only was his alma mater Harvard College going to award Jackson an honorary Doctor of Law degree (Jackson had not gone to study law in college but had learned law as a law clerk to a judge) but that they were going to do so to a "barbarian" [i.e., someone who had not studied the classical languages of Latin and Greek].
Electoral College selection
See also
First inauguration of Andrew Jackson
History of the United States (1789–1849)
Jacksonian democracy
1828–29 United States House of Representatives elections
1828–29 United States Senate elections
References
Bibliography
Bemis, Samuel Flagg (1956). John Quincy Adams and the Union. Vol. 2. New York, Knopf.
Cheathem, Mark R. (2013). Andrew Jackson, Southerner.
Cheathem, Mark R. (2018). The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson. doi:10.56021/9781421425979. ISBN 9781421425979.
Cheathem, Mark R. (2014), "Frontiersman or Southern Gentleman? Newspaper Coverage of Andrew Jackson during the 1828 Presidential Campaign", The Readex Report, vol. 9, no. 3
Cole, Donald B. (2009). Vindicating Andrew Jackson: The 1828 Election and the Rise of the Two Party System. excerpt and text search
Heidler, David S.; Heidler, Jeanne T. (2018). The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics.
Holt, Michael F. (1992). Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln.
Howe, Daniel (2007). What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507894-7.
Howell, William Huntting (Summer 2010). "Read, Pause, and Reflect!!". Journal of the Early Republic. 30 (2): 293–300. doi:10.1353/jer.0.0149. S2CID 144448483. examines the campaign literature of 1828
McCormick, Richard P. (1966). The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.
Parsons, Lynn H. (2009). The Birth of Modern Politics: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828. excerpt and text search
Remini, Robert V. (1959). Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party. New York, Columbia University Press.
Remini, Robert V. (1981). Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832. ISBN 9780060148447.
Stahr, Walter (2012). Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-2118-4.
Swint, Kerwin C. (2006). Mudslingers: The Top 25 Negative Political Campaigns of All Time. Praeger Publishers.
Ward, John William (1955). Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
Watson, Harry L. (1990). Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-52196-4.
Wilentz, Sean (2005). The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.
Further reading
"A Brief Biography of Andrew Jackson 1767-1845: The Election of 1828". From Revolution to Reconstruction. Archived from the original on February 22, 2008. Retrieved November 15, 2004.
"Election of 1828". U-S-History.com. Retrieved November 15, 2004.
"A Historical Analysis of the Electoral College". The Green Papers. Retrieved March 20, 2005.
External links
Presidential Election of 1828: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
Historian James Parton describes election
The 1828 Campaign of Andrew Jackson and the Growth of Party Politics
Election of 1828 in Counting the Votes Archived January 1, 2018, at the Wayback Machine |
UEFA_European_Championship | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_European_Championship | [
312
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_European_Championship"
] | The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro or Euros, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The competition is contested by UEFA members' senior men's national teams, determining the continental champion of Europe. It is the second-most watched football tournament in the world after the FIFA World Cup; the Euro 2016 final was watched by a global audience of around 600 million. The competition has been held every four years since 1960, except for 2020, when it was postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, but kept the name Euro 2020. Scheduled to be in the even-numbered year between FIFA World Cup tournaments, it was originally called the European Nations' Cup before changing to its current name in 1968. Since 1996, the individual events have been branded as "UEFA Euro [year]".
Before entering the tournament, all teams other than the host nations (which qualify automatically) compete in a qualifying process. Until 2016, the championship winners could compete in the following year's FIFA Confederations Cup, but were not obliged to do so. From the 2020 edition onwards, the winner competes in the CONMEBOL–UEFA Cup of Champions.
The seventeen European Championship tournaments have been won by ten national teams: Spain have won four titles, Germany have won three titles, Italy and France have won two titles, and the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece and Portugal have won one title each. To date, Spain is the only team to have won consecutive titles, doing so in 2008 and 2012.
The most recent championship, held in Germany in 2024, was won by Spain, who lifted a record fourth European title after beating England 2–1 in the final at the Olympiastadion in Berlin.
History
Beginnings
Regional tournaments for national teams existed before the advent of a truly pan-European competition. Starting in 1883, the British Home Championship was an annual competition contested between the United Kingdom's four national teams, England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Until these national teams entered the FIFA World Cup in 1950, it was the most important international tournament these nations competed in. Similarly, from 1927 until 1960, the Central European International Cup was held six times. It brought together the national teams of Austria, Hungary, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. The idea for a pan-European football tournament was first proposed by the French Football Federation's secretary-general Henri Delaunay in 1927, but it was not until 1958 that the tournament was started, three years after Delaunay's death. In honour of Delaunay, the trophy awarded to the champions is named after him. The 1960 tournament, held in France, had four teams competing in the finals out of 17 that entered the competition. It was won by the Soviet Union, beating Yugoslavia 2–1 in a tense final in Paris. Spain withdrew from its quarter-final match against the Soviet Union because of two political protests. Of the 17 teams that entered the qualifying tournament, notable absentees were England, the Netherlands, West Germany and Italy.
Spain held the next tournament in 1964, which saw an increase in entries to the qualification tournament, with 29 entering; West Germany was a notable absentee once again and Greece withdrew after being drawn against Albania, with whom they were still at war. The hosts beat the title holders, the Soviet Union, 2–1 at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid.
The tournament format stayed the same for the 1968 tournament, hosted and won by Italy. For the first and only time, a match was decided on a coin toss (the semi-final between Italy and the Soviet Union) and the final went to a replay, after the match against Yugoslavia finished 1–1. Italy won the replay 2–0. More teams entered this tournament (31), a testament to its burgeoning popularity.
Belgium hosted the 1972 tournament, which West Germany won, beating the Soviet Union 3–0 in the final, with goals coming from Gerd Müller (twice) and Herbert Wimmer at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. This tournament would provide a taste of things to come, as the German side contained many of the key members of the 1974 FIFA World Cup-winning team.
The 1976 tournament in Yugoslavia was the last in which only four teams took part in the final tournament, and the last in which the hosts had to qualify. Czechoslovakia beat West Germany in the newly introduced penalty shootout. After seven successful conversions, Uli Hoeneß missed, leaving Czechoslovakian Antonín Panenka with the opportunity to score and win the tournament. An "audacious" chipped shot, described by UEFA as "perhaps the most famous spot kick of all time" secured the victory as Czechoslovakia won 5–3 on penalties.
Expansion to 8 teams
The competition was expanded to eight teams in the 1980 tournament, again hosted by Italy. It involved a group stage, with the winners of the groups going on to contest the final, and the runners-up playing in the third place play-off. West Germany won their second European title by beating Belgium 2–1, with two goals scored by Horst Hrubesch at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. Horst Hrubesch scored early in the first half before René Vandereycken equalised for Belgium with a penalty in the second half. With two minutes remaining, Hrubesch headed the winner for West Germany from a Karl-Heinz Rummenigge corner.
France won their first major title at home in the 1984 tournament, with their captain Michel Platini scoring 9 goals in just 5 games, including the opening goal in the final, in which they beat Spain 2–0. The format also changed, with the top two teams in each group going through to a semi-final stage, instead of the winners of each group going straight into the final. The third place play-off was also abolished. The losing teams from the semi-finals win the bronze medal.
West Germany hosted UEFA Euro 1988, but lost 2–1 to the Netherlands, their traditional rivals, in the semi-finals, which sparked vigorous celebrations in the Netherlands. The Netherlands went on to win the tournament in a rematch of their first game of the group stage, beating the Soviet Union 2–0 at the Olympiastadion in Munich. Marco van Basten scored the second goal, a volley over the keeper from the right wing which is often considered one of the best goals ever scored.
UEFA Euro 1992 was held in Sweden, and was won by Denmark, who had been invited to the finals after UN sanctions prevented Yugoslavia's participation as some of the states constituting the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were at war with each other. The Danes beat holders the Netherlands on penalties in the semi-finals, then defeated world champions Germany 2–0. This was the first tournament in which a unified Germany took part and also the first major tournament to have the players' names printed on their backs.
Expansion to 16 teams
England hosted UEFA Euro 1996, the first tournament to use the nomenclature "Euro [year]" and would see the number of teams taking part double to 16. The hosts, in a replay of the 1990 FIFA World Cup semi-final, were knocked out on penalties by Germany. The surprise team of the tournament was the newly formed Czech Republic, participating on its first international competition following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which reached the final after beating Portugal and France in the knockout stage. Germany would go on to win the final 2–1 thanks to the first golden goal ever in a major tournament, scored by Oliver Bierhoff five minutes into extra time. This was Germany's first title as a unified nation.
UEFA Euro 2000 was the first tournament to be held by two countries, in the Netherlands and Belgium. France, the reigning World Cup champions, were favoured to win, and they lived up to expectations when they beat Italy 2–1 after extra time, having come from being 1–0 down: Sylvain Wiltord equalised in the last minute of regular time and David Trezeguet scored the winning golden goal in extra time.
UEFA Euro 2004, like 1992, produced an upset: Greece, who had only qualified for one World Cup (1994) and one European Championship (1980) before, beat hosts Portugal 1–0 in the final (after having also beaten them in the opening game) with a goal scored by Angelos Charisteas in the 57th minute to win a tournament for which they were considered among the biggest underdogs. On their way to the Final, they also beat holders France as well as the Czech Republic with a silver goal, a rule which replaced the previous golden goal in 2003, before being abolished itself shortly after this tournament.
The 2008 tournament, hosted by Austria and Switzerland, marked the second time that two nations co-hosted and the first edition where the new trophy was awarded. It commenced on 7 June and finished on 29 June. The final between Germany and Spain was held at the Ernst Happel Stadion in Vienna. Spain defeated Germany 1–0, with a goal scored by Fernando Torres in the 33rd minute, sparking much celebration across the country. This was their first title since the 1964 tournament. Spain were the highest scoring team with 12 goals scored and David Villa finished as the top scorer with four goals. Xavi was awarded the player of the tournament, and nine Spanish players were picked for the team of the tournament.
The UEFA Euro 2012 tournament was co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine. Spain defeated Italy 4–0 in the Final, thus becoming the first nation to defend a European Championship title, as well as the first European team to win three consecutive major tournaments. In scoring the third goal of the final, Torres became the first player to score in two European Championship finals. He was equal top scorer for the tournament with three goals in total, along with Mario Balotelli, Alan Dzagoev, Mario Gómez, Mario Mandžukić, and Cristiano Ronaldo, despite only being used as a substitute player. The tournament was otherwise notable for having the most headed goals in a Euro tournament (26 out of 76 goals in total); a disallowed goal in the England versus Ukraine group game which replays showed had crossed the goal line, and which prompted President of FIFA Sepp Blatter to tweet, "GLT (Goal-line technology) is no longer an alternative but a necessity", thus reversing his long-held reluctance to embrace such technology; and some crowd violence in group games.
Expansion to 24 teams
In 2007, the Football Association of Ireland and Scottish Football Association proposed the expansion of the tournament, which was later confirmed by the UEFA Executive Committee in September 2008. Out of the 54 member associations of UEFA, only three, including England and Germany, opposed the expansion. On 28 May 2010, UEFA announced that UEFA Euro 2016 would be hosted by France. France beat bids of Turkey (7–6 in voting in the second voting round) and Italy, which had the fewest votes in the first voting round. Euro 2016 was the first to have 24 teams in the finals. This was the third time France have hosted the competition. Portugal, which qualified for the knock-out phase despite finishing third in its group, went on to win the championship by defeating heavily favoured host team France 1–0 in the Final, thanks to a goal from Eder in the 109th minute. Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal's world-renowned striker, came out of the game due to injury in the 25th minute. This was the first time Portugal won a major tournament.
For the 2020 tournament, three bids were proposed, including a bid from Turkey, a joint bid from the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and a joint bid from Georgia and Azerbaijan. In December 2012, however, UEFA announced that the 2020 tournament would be hosted in several cities in various countries across Europe, with the semi-finals and final being played in London. The venues were selected and announced by UEFA on 19 September 2014. However, Brussels was removed as a host city on 7 December 2017 due to delays with the building of the Eurostadium. On 17 March 2020, UEFA announced that Euro 2020 would be delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, and proposed it take place from 11 June to 11 July 2021. The competition was postponed in order to reduce pressure on the public services in affected countries and to provide space in the calendar for the completion of domestic leagues that had been suspended. Before the Euro 2020, Dublin was also removed as one of the host cities due to its inability to guarantee spectators to the stadium, while Bilbao was replaced by Seville for the same reason. In the Final, Italy defeated maiden finalists England 3–2 on penalties, after the game was tied 1–1 after extra time, to win their second European Championship.
Trophy
The Henri Delaunay Trophy, which is awarded to the winner of the European Championship, is named in honour of Henri Delaunay, the first General Secretary of UEFA, who came up with the idea of a European championship but died five years before the first tournament in 1960. His son Pierre was in charge of creating the trophy. Since the first tournament it has been awarded to the winning team for them to keep for four years, until the next tournament. This trophy bore the words Coupe d'Europe ("European Cup"), Coupe Henri Delaunay ("Henri Delaunay Cup"), and Championnat d'Europe ("European Championship") on the front and a juggling boy on the back.
For the 2008 tournament, the Henri Delaunay Trophy was remodelled to make it larger, as the old trophy was overshadowed by UEFA's other trophies such as the new European Champion Clubs' Cup. The new trophy, which is made of sterling silver, now weighs 8 kilograms (18 lb) and is 60 centimetres (24 in) tall, being 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) heavier and 18 centimetres (7.1 in) longer than the old one. The marble plinth that was serving as base was removed. The new silver base of the trophy had to be enlarged to make it stable. The names of the winning countries that had appeared on the plaques glued to the plinth are now engraved on the back of the trophy, under the word Coupe Henri Delaunay and are written in English rather than French its predecessor had. Since 2016, the juggling boy was returned on the trophy's back.
The players and coaches of the winning team and the runner-up team are awarded gold and silver medals, respectively. Each association that competes in the final tournament receives a commemorative plaque. Each time the team losing semi-finalist, as well as each finalist, receive a dedicated plaque. Though there is no longer a third place play-off, UEFA decided in the 2008 edition to award the semi-final losers (Turkey and Russia) bronze medals for the first time, and did the same in the 2012 edition when Germany and Portugal received bronze medals. However, UEFA decided that losing semi-finalists would no longer receive medals from the 2016 edition onwards. Bronze medals were previously awarded for winners of the third place play-off, the last of which was held in 1980.
Format
The competition
Before 1980, only four teams qualified for the final tournament. From 1980, eight teams competed. In 1996 the tournament expanded to 16 teams, since it was easier for European nations to qualify for the World Cup than their own continental championship; 14 of the 24 teams at the 1982, 1986 and 1990 World Cups had been European, whereas the European Championship finals still involved only eight teams.
In 2007, there was much discussion about an expansion of the tournament to 24 teams, started by Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, due to the increased number of football associations in Europe after the break-ups of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, and the inclusion of Israel and Kazakhstan. The new president of UEFA, Michel Platini, was reported to be in favour of expansion which proved an accurate assumption. Whilst on 17 April 2007, UEFA's executive committee formally decided against expansion in 2012, Platini indicated in June 2008 that UEFA will increase participation from 16 to 24 teams in future tournaments, starting from 2016. On 25 September, it was announced by Franz Beckenbauer that an agreement had been reached, and the expansion to 24 teams would be officially announced the next day.
The competing teams are chosen by a series of qualifying games: in 1960 and 1964 through home and away play-offs; from 1968 through a combination of both qualifying groups and play-off games. The host country was selected from the four finalists after they were determined through qualifying.
Since the expansion of the final tournament starting from 1980, the host country, or countries, have been chosen beforehand and qualify automatically.
In most tournaments, the tournament consists of a round-robin group stage followed by a single-elimination knockout stage.
Up to 1968 draws were to be broken via a coin toss in all matches but the final, draw in final match was resolved via a replay.
No third place play-off has been played since 1980.
Qualifying
To qualify, a team must finish in one of the direct qualifying spots or win a play-off. After this, a team proceeds to the finals round in the host country, although hosts qualify for the tournament automatically.
The groups for qualification are drawn by a UEFA committee using seeding. Seeded teams include reigning champions and other teams based on their performance in the preceding FIFA World Cup qualifying and the last European Championship qualifying. To obtain an accurate view of the teams' abilities, a ranking is produced. This is calculated by taking the total number of points won by a particular team and dividing it by the number of games played, i.e. points per game. In the case of a team having hosted one of the two previous competitions and therefore having qualified automatically, only the results from the single most recent qualifying competition are used. If two teams have equal points per game, the committee then bases their positions in the rankings on:
Coefficient from the matches played in its most recent qualifying competition.
Average goal difference.
Average number of goals scored.
Average number of away goals scored.
Drawing of lots.
The qualifying phase is played in a group format, the composition of the groups is determined through means of a draw of teams from pre-defined seeded bowls. The draw takes place after the preceding World Cup's qualifying competition. For UEFA Euro 2020, the group qualifying phase consisted of ten groups; five of six teams and the remainder of five teams each.
Each group is played in a league format with teams playing each other home and away. The top two teams then qualified for the final tournament, with remaining places decided by playoffs depending on their ranking in the UEFA Nations League. As with most leagues, the points are awarded as three for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. In the eventuality of one or more teams having equal points after all matches have been played, the following criteria are used to distinguish the sides:
Higher number of points obtained in the group matches played among the teams in question.
Superior goal difference from the group matches played among the teams in question.
Higher number of goals scored in the group matches played among the teams in question.
Higher number of goals scored away from home in the group matches played among the teams in question.
Results of all group matches:
Superior goal difference
Higher number of goals scored
Higher number of goals scored away from home
Fair play conduct.
Drawing of lots.
Final tournament
Sixteen teams progressed to the final tournament for the 2012 tournament. They were joint hosts Poland and Ukraine, the winners and the highest ranked second-placed team from the nine qualifying groups as well as the winners of four play-off matches between the runners-up of the other groups. These sixteen teams were divided equally into four groups, A, B, C and D, each consisting of four teams. The groups were drawn up by the UEFA administration, again using seeding. The seeded teams being the host nations, the reigning champions, should they qualify, and those with the best points per game coefficients over the qualifying phase of the tournament and the previous World Cup qualifying. Other finalists were assigned to by means of a draw, using coefficients as a basis.
For the 2016 tournament, the expansion to 24 teams means that the teams will be drawn into six groups of four, with the six group winners, six group runners-up and the four best third-placed teams advancing to the round of 16 when it becomes a knockout competition.
The groups are again played in a league format, where a team plays its opponents once each. The same points system is used (three points for a win, one point for a draw, no points for a defeat). A schedule for the group matches will be drawn up, but the last two matches in a group must kick off simultaneously. The winner and runner-up of each group progress to the next round, where a knockout system is used (the two teams play each other once, the winner progresses), this is used in all subsequent rounds as well. The winners of the quarter-finals matches progress to the semi-finals, where the winners play in the final. If in any of the knockout rounds, the scores are still equal after normal playing time, extra time and penalties are employed to separate the two teams. Unlike the FIFA World Cup, this tournament no longer has a third place playoff.
Results
Notes
Summary
Records and statistics
Awards
There are currently five post-tournament awards, and one given during the tournament:
Player of the Tournament award for the best player, first awarded in 1996.
Top Scorer award (currently named Alipay Top Scorer award for sponsorship reasons) for the most prolific goal scorer.
Young Player of the Tournament (currently named SOCAR Young Player of the Tournament for sponsorship reasons) for the best player under the age of 21, first awarded in 2016.
Man of the Match award for outstanding performance during each game of the tournament, first awarded in 1996.
Team of the Tournament award for the best combined team of players in the tournament.
See also
British Home Championship
Central European International Cup
UEFA European Championship mascot
UEFA European Championship records and statistics
UEFA European Championship top goalscorers
UEFA European Championship Teams of the Tournament
UEFA European Under-17 Championship
UEFA European Under-19 Championship
UEFA European Under-21 Championship
UEFA Women's Championship
References
External links
UEFA European Championship history at Union of European Football Associations
European Championship results at the RSSSF |
1960_European_Nations%27_Cup | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_European_Nations%27_Cup | [
312
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_European_Nations%27_Cup"
] | The 1960 European Nations' Cup was the inaugural tournament of the UEFA European Championship, held every four years and organised by UEFA. The first tournament was held in France. It was won by the Soviet Union, who beat Yugoslavia 2–1 in Paris after extra time.
The tournament was a knockout competition, with just 17 teams entering. There were some notable absences, including West Germany, Italy, Netherlands and England, each of whom had voted against the creation of the tournament in 1957. The entrants would play home-and-away matches until the semi-finals; the final four teams would then move on to the final tournament, whose host was selected after the teams became known.
In the quarter-finals, Spain, who were under Francoist rule, refused to travel to the Soviet Union for political reasons. After a proposal to play the tie over one leg at a neutral venue were rejected by the Soviets, Spain were disqualified: accordingly, three of the final four teams were from communist countries: the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and SFR Yugoslavia, to go with hosts France.
In the semi-finals, the Soviets made easy work of the Czechoslovaks in Marseille, beating them 3–0. The other match saw a nine-goal thriller as Yugoslavia came on top 5–4 after coming back from a two-goal deficit twice. Czechoslovakia beat the French 2–0 for third place.
In the final, Yugoslavia scored first, but the Soviet Union, led by legendary goalkeeper Lev Yashin, equalised in the 49th minute. After 90 minutes the score was 1–1, and Viktor Ponedelnik scored with seven minutes left in extra time to give the Soviets the inaugural European Championship.
Qualified teams
Venues
Squads
Match officials
Final tournament
In all matches but the final, extra time and a coin toss were used to decide the winner if necessary. If the final remained level after extra time, a replay would be used to determine the winner.
All times are local, CET (UTC+1).
Bracket
Semi-finals
Third place play-off
Final
Statistics
Goalscorers
There were 17 goals scored in 4 matches, for an average of 4.25 goals per match.
2 goals
1 goal
Awards
UEFA Team of the Tournament
References
External links
1960 European Nations' Cup at UEFA.com |
France | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France | [
312
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France"
] | France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the northeast, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the southeast, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi) and have a total population of 68.4 million as of January 2024. France is a semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre.
Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralized feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th century, the French Renaissance saw culture flourish and a French colonial empire rise. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.
The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the Ancien Régime and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating part of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. The collapse of the empire initiated a period of relative decline, in which France endured the Bourbon Restoration until the founding of the French Second Republic which was succeeded by the Second French Empire upon Napoleon III's takeover. His empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. This led to the establishment of the Third French Republic, and subsequent decades saw a period of economic prosperity and cultural and scientific flourishing known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost. It was among the Allies of World War II, but it surrendered and was occupied in 1940. Following its liberation in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the defeat in the Algerian War. The current Fifth Republic was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France.
France retains its centuries-long status as a global centre of art, science, and philosophy. It hosts the fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world's leading tourist destination, receiving 100 million foreign visitors in 2023. France is a developed country with a high nominal per capita income globally, and its advanced economy ranks among the largest in the world. It is a great power, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state. France is a founding and leading member of the European Union and the eurozone, as well as a member of the Group of Seven, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Francophonie.
Etymology
Originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or "realm of the Franks". The name of the Franks is related to the English word frank ("free"): the latter stems from the Old French franc ("free, noble, sincere"), and ultimately from the Medieval Latin word francus ("free, exempt from service; freeman, Frank"), a generalisation of the tribal name that emerged as a Late Latin borrowing of the reconstructed Frankish endonym *Frank. It has been suggested that the meaning "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation, or more generally because they had the status of freemen in contrast to servants or slaves. The etymology of *Frank is uncertain. It is traditionally derived from the Proto-Germanic word *frankōn, which translates as "javelin" or "lance" (the throwing axe of the Franks was known as the francisca), although these weapons may have been named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around.
In English, 'France' is pronounced FRANSS in American English and FRAHNSS or FRANSS in British English. The pronunciation with is mostly confined to accents with the trap-bath split such as Received Pronunciation, though it can be also heard in some other dialects such as Cardiff English.
History
Pre-6th century BC
The oldest traces of archaic humans in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago. Neanderthals occupied the region into the Upper Paleolithic era but were slowly replaced by Homo sapiens around 35,000 BC. This period witnessed the emergence of cave painting in the Dordogne and Pyrenees, including at Lascaux, dated to c. 18,000 BC. At the end of the Last Glacial Period (10,000 BC), the climate became milder; from approximately 7,000 BC, this part of Western Europe entered the Neolithic era, and its inhabitants became sedentary.
After demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, metallurgy appeared, initially working gold, copper and bronze, then later iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic, including the Carnac stones site (approximately 3,300 BC).
Antiquity (6th century BC – 5th century AD)
In 600 BC, Ionian Greeks from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia (present-day Marseille). Celtic tribes penetrated parts of eastern and northern France, spreading through the rest of the country between the 5th and 3rd century BC. Around 390 BC, the Gallic chieftain Brennus and his troops made their way to Roman Italy, defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Allia, and besieged and ransomed Rome. This left Rome weakened, and the Gauls continued to harass the region until 345 BC when they entered into a peace treaty. But the Romans and the Gauls remained adversaries for centuries.
Around 125 BC, the south of Gaul was conquered by the Romans, who called this region Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), which evolved into Provence in French. Julius Caesar conquered the remainder of Gaul and overcame a revolt by Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix in 52 BC. Gaul was divided by Augustus into provinces and many cities were founded during the Gallo-Roman period, including Lugdunum (present-day Lyon), the capital of the Gauls. In 250-290 AD, Roman Gaul suffered a crisis with its fortified borders attacked by barbarians. The situation improved in the first half of the 4th century, a period of revival and prosperity. In 312, Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity. Christians, who had been persecuted, increased. But from the 5th century, the Barbarian Invasions resumed. Teutonic tribes invaded the region, the Visigoths settling in the southwest, the Burgundians along the Rhine River Valley, and the Franks in the north.
Early Middle Ages (5th–10th century)
In Late antiquity, ancient Gaul was divided into Germanic kingdoms and a remaining Gallo-Roman territory. Celtic Britons, fleeing the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, settled in west Armorica; the Armorican peninsula was renamed Brittany and Celtic culture was revived.
The first leader to unite all Franks was Clovis I, who began his reign as king of the Salian Franks in 481, routing the last forces of the Roman governors in 486. Clovis said he would be baptised a Christian in the event of victory against the Visigothic Kingdom, which was said to have guaranteed the battle. Clovis regained the southwest from the Visigoths and was baptised in 508. Clovis I was the first Germanic conqueror after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire to convert to Catholic Christianity; thus France was given the title "Eldest daughter of the Church" by the papacy, and French kings called "the Most Christian Kings of France".
The Franks embraced the Christian Gallo-Roman culture, and ancient Gaul was renamed Francia ("Land of the Franks"). The Germanic Franks adopted Romanic languages. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty, but his kingdom would not survive his death. The Franks treated land as a private possession and divided it among their heirs, so four kingdoms emerged from that of Clovis: Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. The last Merovingian kings lost power to their mayors of the palace (head of household). One mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated an Umayyad invasion of Gaul at the Battle of Tours (732). His son, Pepin the Short, seized the crown of Francia from the weakened Merovingians and founded the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin's son, Charlemagne, reunited the Frankish kingdoms and built an empire across Western and Central Europe.
Proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III and thus establishing the French government's longtime historical association with the Catholic Church, Charlemagne tried to revive the Western Roman Empire and its cultural grandeur. Charlemagne's son, Louis I kept the empire united, however in 843, it was divided between Louis' three sons, into East Francia, Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia approximated the area occupied by modern France and was its precursor.
During the 9th and 10th centuries, threatened by Viking invasions, France became a decentralised state: the nobility's titles and lands became hereditary, and authority of the king became more religious than secular, and so was less effective and challenged by noblemen. Thus was established feudalism in France. Some king's vassals grew so powerful they posed a threat to the king. After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror added "King of England" to his titles, becoming vassal and the equal of the king of France, creating recurring tensions.
High and Late Middle Ages (10th–15th century)
The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet was crowned king of the Franks. His descendants unified the country through wars and inheritance. From 1190, the Capetian rulers began to be referred as "kings of France" rather than "kings of the Franks". Later kings expanded their directly possessed domaine royal to cover over half of modern France by the 15th century. Royal authority became more assertive, centred on a hierarchically conceived society distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners.
The nobility played a prominent role in Crusades to restore Christian access to the Holy Land. French knights made up most reinforcements in the 200 years of the Crusades, in such a fashion that the Arabs referred to crusaders as Franj. French Crusaders imported French into the Levant, making Old French the base of the lingua franca ("Frankish language") of the Crusader states. The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical Cathars in the southwest of modern-day France.
From the 11th century, the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the County of Anjou, established its dominion over the surrounding provinces of Maine and Touraine, then built an "empire" from England to the Pyrenees, covering half of modern France. Tensions between France and the Plantagenet empire would last a hundred years, until Philip II of France conquered, between 1202 and 1214, most continental possessions of the empire, leaving England and Aquitaine to the Plantagenets.
Charles IV the Fair died without an heir in 1328. The crown passed to Philip of Valois, rather than Edward of Plantagenet, who became Edward III of England. During the reign of Philip, the monarchy reached the height of its medieval power. However Philip's seat on the throne was contested by Edward in 1337, and England and France entered the off-and-on Hundred Years' War. Boundaries changed, but landholdings inside France by English Kings remained extensive for decades. With charismatic leaders, such as Joan of Arc, French counterattacks won back most English continental territories. France was struck by the Black Death, from which half of the 17 million population died.
Early modern period (15th century–1789)
The French Renaissance saw cultural development and standardisation of French, which became the official language of France and Europe's aristocracy. France became rivals of the House of Habsburg during the Italian Wars, which would dictate much of their later foreign policy until the mid-18th century. French explorers claimed lands in the Americas, paving expansion of the French colonial empire. The rise of Protestantism led France to a civil war known as the French Wars of Religion. This forced Huguenots to flee to Protestant regions such as the British Isles and Switzerland. The wars were ended by Henry IV's Edict of Nantes, which granted some freedom of religion to the Huguenots. Spanish troops, assisted the Catholics from 1589 to 1594 and invaded France in 1597. Spain and France returned to all-out war between 1635 and 1659. The war cost France 300,000 casualties.
Under Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu promoted centralisation of the state and reinforced royal power. He destroyed castles of defiant lords and denounced the use of private armies. By the end of the 1620s, Richelieu established "the royal monopoly of force". France fought in the Thirty Years' War, supporting the Protestant side against the Habsburgs. From the 16th to the 19th century, France was responsible for about 10% of the transatlantic slave trade.
During Louis XIV's minority, trouble known as The Fronde occurred. This rebellion was driven by feudal lords and sovereign courts as a reaction to the royal absolute power. The monarchy reached its peak during the 17th century and reign of Louis XIV. By turning lords into courtiers at the Palace of Versailles, his command of the military went unchallenged. The "Sun King" made France the leading European power. France became the most populous European country and had tremendous influence over European politics, economy, and culture. French became the most-used language in diplomacy, science, and literature until the 20th century. France took control of territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, forcing thousands of Huguenots into exile and published the Code Noir providing the legal framework for slavery and expelling Jews from French colonies.
Under the wars of Louis XV (r. 1715–1774), France lost New France and most Indian possessions after its defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Its European territory kept growing, however, with acquisitions such as Lorraine and Corsica. Louis XV's weak rule, including the decadence of his court, discredited the monarchy, which in part paved the way for the French Revolution.
Louis XVI (r. 1774–1793) supported America with money, fleets and armies, helping them win independence from Great Britain. France gained revenge, but verged on bankruptcy—a factor that contributed to the Revolution. Some of the Enlightenment occurred in French intellectual circles, and scientific breakthroughs, such as the naming of oxygen (1778) and the first hot air balloon carrying passengers (1783), were achieved by French scientists. French explorers took part in the voyages of scientific exploration through maritime expeditions. Enlightenment philosophy, in which reason is advocated as the primary source of legitimacy, undermined the power of and support for the monarchy and was a factor in the Revolution.
Revolutionary France (1789–1799)
The French Revolution was a period of political and societal change that began with the Estates General of 1789, and ended with the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 and the formation of the French Consulate. Many of its ideas are fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while its values and institutions remain central to modern political discourse.
Its causes were a combination of social, political and economic factors, which the Ancien Régime proved unable to manage. A financial crisis and social distress led in May 1789 to the convocation of the Estates General, which was converted into a National Assembly in June. The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, among them the abolition of feudalism, state control over the Catholic Church in France, and a declaration of rights.
The next three years were dominated by struggle for political control, exacerbated by economic depression. Military defeats following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792 resulted in the insurrection of 10 August 1792. The monarchy was abolished and replaced by the French First Republic in September, while Louis XVI was executed in January 1793.
After another revolt in June 1793, the constitution was suspended and power passed from the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety. About 16,000 people were executed in a Reign of Terror, which ended in July 1794. Weakened by external threats and internal opposition, the Republic was replaced in 1795 by the Directory. Four years later in 1799, the Consulate seized power in a coup led by Napoleon.
Napoleon and 19th century (1799–1914)
Napoleon became First Consul in 1799 and later Emperor of the French Empire (1804–1814; 1815). Changing sets of European coalitions declared wars on Napoleon's empire. His armies conquered most of continental Europe with swift victories such as the battles of Jena-Auerstadt and Austerlitz. Members of the Bonaparte family were appointed monarchs in some of the newly established kingdoms.
These victories led to the worldwide expansion of French revolutionary ideals and reforms, such as the metric system, Napoleonic Code and Declaration of the Rights of Man. In 1812 Napoleon attacked Russia, reaching Moscow. Thereafter his army disintegrated through supply problems, disease, Russian attacks, and finally winter. After this catastrophic campaign and the ensuing uprising of European monarchies against his rule, Napoleon was defeated. About a million Frenchmen died during the Napoleonic Wars. After his brief return from exile, Napoleon was finally defeated in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, and the Bourbon monarchy was restored with new constitutional limitations.
The discredited Bourbon dynasty was overthrown by the July Revolution of 1830, which established the constitutional July Monarchy; French troops began the conquest of Algeria. Unrest led to the French Revolution of 1848 and the end of the July Monarchy. The abolition of slavery and introduction of male universal suffrage was re-enacted in 1848. In 1852, president of the French Republic, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon I's nephew, was proclaimed emperor of the Second Empire, as Napoleon III. He multiplied French interventions abroad, especially in Crimea, Mexico and Italy. Napoleon III was unseated following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and his regime replaced by the Third Republic. By 1875, the French conquest of Algeria was complete, with approximately 825,000 Algerians killed from famine, disease, and violence.
France had colonial possessions since the beginning of the 17th century, but in the 19th and 20th centuries its empire extended greatly and became the second-largest behind the British Empire. Including metropolitan France, the total area reached almost 13 million square kilometres in the 1920s and 1930s, 9% of the world's land. Known as the Belle Époque, the turn of the century was characterised by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity and technological, scientific and cultural innovations. In 1905, state secularism was officially established.
Early to mid-20th century (1914–1946)
France was invaded by Germany and defended by Great Britain at the start of World War I in August 1914. A rich industrial area in the north was occupied. France and the Allies emerged victorious against the Central Powers at tremendous human cost. It left 1.4 million French soldiers dead, 4% of its population. Interwar was marked by intense international tensions and social reforms introduced by the Popular Front government (e.g., annual leave, eight-hour workdays, women in government).
In 1940, France was invaded and quickly defeated by Nazi Germany. France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north, an Italian occupation zone and an unoccupied territory, the rest of France, which consisted of the southern France and the French empire. The Vichy government, an authoritarian regime collaborating with Germany, ruled the unoccupied territory. Free France, the government-in-exile led by Charles de Gaulle, was set up in London.
From 1942 to 1944, about 160,000 French citizens, including around 75,000 Jews, were deported to death and concentration camps. On 6 June 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy, and in August they invaded Provence. The Allies and French Resistance emerged victorious, and French sovereignty was restored with the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF). This interim government, established by de Gaulle, continued to wage war against Germany and to purge collaborators from office. It made important reforms e.g. suffrage extended to women and the creation of a social security system.
1946–present
A new constitution resulted in the Fourth Republic (1946–1958), which saw strong economic growth (les Trente Glorieuses). France was a founding member of NATO and attempted to regain control of French Indochina, but was defeated by the Viet Minh in 1954. France faced another anti-colonialist conflict in Algeria, then part of France and home to over one million European settlers (Pied-Noir). The French systematically used torture and repression, including extrajudicial killings to keep control. This conflict nearly led to a coup and civil war.
During the May 1958 crisis, the weak Fourth Republic gave way to the Fifth Republic, which included a strengthened presidency. The war concluded with the Évian Accords in 1962 which led to Algerian independence, at a high price: between half a million and one million deaths and over 2 million internally-displaced Algerians. Around one million Pied-Noirs and Harkis fled from Algeria to France. A vestige of empire is the French overseas departments and territories.
During the Cold War, de Gaulle pursued a policy of "national independence" towards the Western and Eastern blocs. He withdrew from NATO's military-integrated command (while remaining within the alliance), launched a nuclear development programme and made France the fourth nuclear power. He restored cordial Franco-German relations to create a European counterweight between American and Soviet spheres of influence. However, he opposed any development of a supranational Europe, favouring sovereign nations. The revolt of May 1968 had an enormous social impact; it was a watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) shifted to a more liberal moral ideal (secularism, individualism, sexual revolution). Although the revolt was a political failure (the Gaullist party emerged stronger than before) it announced a split between the French and de Gaulle, who resigned.
In the post-Gaullist era, France remained one of the most developed economies in the world but faced crises that resulted in high unemployment rates and increasing public debt. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, France has been at the forefront of the development of a supranational European Union, notably by signing the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, establishing the eurozone in 1999 and signing the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. France has fully reintegrated into NATO and since participated in most NATO-sponsored wars. Since the 19th century, France has received many immigrants, often male foreign workers from European Catholic countries who generally returned home when not employed. During the 1970s France faced an economic crisis and allowed new immigrants (mostly from the Maghreb, in northwest Africa) to permanently settle in France with their families and acquire citizenship. It resulted in hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in subsidised public housing and suffering from high unemployment rates. The government had a policy of assimilation of immigrants, where they were expected to adhere to French values and norms.
Since the 1995 public transport bombings, France has been targeted by Islamist organisations, notably the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015 which provoked the largest public rallies in French history, gathering 4.4 million people, the November 2015 Paris attacks which resulted in 130 deaths, the deadliest attack on French soil since World War II and the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings in 2004. Opération Chammal, France's military efforts to contain ISIS, killed over 1,000 ISIS troops between 2014 and 2015.
Geography
Location and borders
The vast majority of France's territory and population is situated in Western Europe and is called Metropolitan France. It is bordered by the North Sea in the north, the English Channel in the northwest, the Atlantic Ocean in the west and the Mediterranean Sea in the southeast. Its land borders consist of Belgium and Luxembourg in the northeast, Germany and Switzerland in the east, Italy and Monaco in the southeast, and Andorra and Spain in the south and southwest. Except for the northeast, most of France's land borders are roughly delineated by natural boundaries and geographic features: to the south and southeast, the Pyrenees and the Alps and the Jura, respectively, and to the east, the Rhine river. Metropolitan France includes various coastal islands, of which the largest is Corsica. Metropolitan France is situated mostly between latitudes 41° and 51° N, and longitudes 6° W and 10° E, on the western edge of Europe, and thus lies within the northern temperate zone. Its continental part covers about 1000 km from north to south and from east to west.
Metropolitan France covers 551,500 square kilometres (212,935 sq mi), the largest among European Union members. France's total land area, with its overseas departments and territories (excluding Adélie Land), is 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi), 0.45% of the total land area on Earth. France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to mountain ranges of the Alps in the southeast, the Massif Central in the south-central and Pyrenees in the southwest.
Due to its numerous overseas departments and territories scattered across the planet, France possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,261,000 sq mi). Its EEZ covers approximately 8% of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world.
Geology, topography and hydrography
Metropolitan France has a wide variety of topographical sets and natural landscapes. During the Hercynian uplift in the Paleozoic Era, the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central, the Morvan, the Vosges and Ardennes ranges and the island of Corsica were formed. These massifs delineate several sedimentary basins such as the Aquitaine Basin in the southwest and the Paris Basin in the north. Various routes of natural passage, such as the Rhône Valley, allow easy communication. The Alpine, Pyrenean and Jura mountains are much younger and have less eroded forms. At 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft) above sea level, Mont Blanc, located in the Alps on the France–Italy border, is the highest point in Western Europe. Although 60% of municipalities are classified as having seismic risks (though moderate).
The coastlines offer contrasting landscapes: mountain ranges along the French Riviera, coastal cliffs such as the Côte d'Albâtre, and wide sandy plains in the Languedoc. Corsica lies off the Mediterranean coast. France has an extensive river system consisting of the four major rivers Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, the Rhône and their tributaries, whose combined catchment includes over 62% of the metropolitan territory. The Rhône divides the Massif Central from the Alps and flows into the Mediterranean Sea at the Camargue. The Garonne meets the Dordogne just after Bordeaux, forming the Gironde estuary, the largest estuary in Western Europe which after approximately 100 kilometres (62 mi) empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Other water courses drain towards the Meuse and Rhine along the northeastern borders. France has 11,000,000 km2 (4,200,000 sq mi) of marine waters within three oceans under its jurisdiction, of which 97% are overseas.
Environment
France was one of the first countries to create an environment ministry, in 1971. France is ranked 19th by carbon dioxide emissions due to the country's heavy investment in nuclear power following the 1973 oil crisis, which now accounts for 75 per cent of its electricity production and results in less pollution. According to the 2020 Environmental Performance Index conducted by Yale and Columbia, France was the fifth most environmentally conscious country in the world.
Like all European Union state members, France agreed to cut carbon emissions by at least 20% of 1990 levels by 2020. As of 2009, French carbon dioxide emissions per capita were lower than that of China. The country was set to impose a carbon tax in 2009; however, the plan was abandoned due to fears of burdening French businesses.
Forests account for 31 per cent of France's land area—the fourth-highest proportion in Europe—representing an increase of 7 per cent since 1990. French forests are some of the most diverse in Europe, comprising more than 140 species of trees. France had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 4.52/10, ranking it 123rd globally. There are nine national parks and 46 natural parks in France. A regional nature park (French: parc naturel régional or PNR) is a public establishment in France between local authorities and the national government covering an inhabited rural area of outstanding beauty, to protect the scenery and heritage as well as setting up sustainable economic development in the area. As of 2019 there are 54 PNRs in France.
Politics
France is a representative democracy organised as a unitary semi-presidential republic. Democratic traditions and values are deeply rooted in French culture, identity and politics. The Constitution of the Fifth Republic was approved by referendum on 28 September 1958, establishing a framework consisting of executive, legislative and judicial branches. It sought to address the instability of the Third and Fourth Republics by combining elements of both parliamentary and presidential systems, while greatly strengthening the authority of the executive relative to the legislature.
Government
The executive branch has two leaders. The President of the Republic, currently Emmanuel Macron, is the head of state, elected directly by universal adult suffrage for a five-year term. The Prime Minister, currently Michel Barnier, is the head of government, appointed by the President to lead the government. The President has the power to dissolve Parliament or circumvent it by submitting referendums directly to the people; the President also appoints judges and civil servants, negotiates and ratifies international agreements, as well as serves as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The Prime Minister determines public policy and oversees the civil service, with an emphasis on domestic matters. In the 2022 presidential election, president Macron was re-elected. Two months later, in the June 2022 legislative elections, Macron lost his parliamentary majority and had to form a minority government.
The legislature consists of the French Parliament, a bicameral body made up of a lower house, the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale) and an upper house, the Senate. Legislators in the National Assembly, known as députés, represent local constituencies and are directly elected for five-year terms. The Assembly has the power to dismiss the government by majority vote. Senators are chosen by an electoral college for six-year terms, with half the seats submitted to election every three years. The Senate's legislative powers are limited; in the event of disagreement between the two chambers, the National Assembly has the final say. The parliament is responsible for determining the rules and principles concerning most areas of law, political amnesty, and fiscal policy; however, the government may draft specific details concerning most laws.
From World War II until 2017, French politics was dominated by two politically opposed groupings: one left-wing, the French Section of the Workers' International, which was succeeded by the Socialist Party (in 1969); and the other right-wing, the Gaullist Party, whose name changed over time to the Rally of the French People (1947), the Union of Democrats for the Republic (1958), the Rally for the Republic (1976), the Union for a Popular Movement (2007) and The Republicans (since 2015). In the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, the radical centrist party La République En Marche! (LREM) became the dominant force, overtaking both Socialists and Republicans. LREM's opponent in the second round of the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections was the growing far-right party National Rally (RN). Since 2020, Europe Ecology – The Greens (EELV) have performed well in mayoral elections in major cities while on a national level, an alliance of Left parties (the NUPES) was the second-largest voting block elected to the lower house in 2022. Right-wing populist RN became the largest opposition party in the National Assembly in 2022.
The electorate is constitutionally empowered to vote on amendments passed by the Parliament and bills submitted by the president. Referendums have played a key role in shaping French politics and even foreign policy; voters have decided on such matters as Algeria's independence, the election of the president by popular vote, the formation of the EU, and the reduction of presidential term limits.
Administrative divisions
The French Republic is divided into 18 regions (located in Europe and overseas), five overseas collectivities, one overseas territory, one special collectivity—New Caledonia and one uninhabited island directly under the authority of the Minister of Overseas France—Clipperton.
Regions
Since 2016, France is divided into 18 administrative regions: 13 regions in metropolitan France (including Corsica), and five overseas. The regions are further subdivided into 101 departments, which are numbered mainly alphabetically. The department number is used in postal codes and was formerly used on vehicle registration plates. Among the 101 French departments, five (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, and Réunion) are in overseas regions (ROMs) that are simultaneously overseas departments (DOMs), enjoying the same status as metropolitan departments and are thereby included in the European Union.
The 101 departments are subdivided into 335 arrondissements, which are, in turn, subdivided into 2,054 cantons. These cantons are then divided into 36,658 communes, which are municipalities with an elected municipal council. Three communes—Paris, Lyon and Marseille—are subdivided into 45 municipal arrondissements.
Overseas territories and collectivities
In addition to the 18 regions and 101 departments, the French Republic has five overseas collectivities (French Polynesia, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna), one sui generis collectivity (New Caledonia), one overseas territory (French Southern and Antarctic Lands), and one island possession in the Pacific Ocean (Clipperton Island). Overseas collectivities and territories form part of the French Republic, but do not form part of the European Union or its fiscal area (except for Saint Barthélemy, which seceded from Guadeloupe in 2007). The Pacific Collectivities (COMs) of French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and New Caledonia continue to use the CFP franc whose value is strictly linked to that of the euro. In contrast, the five overseas regions used the French franc and now use the euro.
Foreign relations
France is a founding member of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights. In 2015, it was described as "the best networked state in the world" due to its membership in more international institutions than any other country; these include the G7, World Trade Organization (WTO), the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Indian Ocean Commission (COI). It is an associate member of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) and a leading member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) of 84 French-speaking countries.
As a significant hub for international relations, France has the third-largest assembly of diplomatic missions, second only to China and the United States, which are far more populous. It also hosts the headquarters of several international organisations, including the OECD, UNESCO, Interpol, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, and the OIF.
French foreign policy after World War II has been largely shaped by membership in the European Union, of which it was a founding member. Since the 1960s, France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the most influential driving force of the EU. Since 1904, France has maintained an "Entente cordiale" with the United Kingdom, and there has been a strengthening of links between the countries, especially militarily.
France is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but under President de Gaulle excluded itself from the joint military command, in protest of the Special Relationship between the United States and Britain, and to preserve the independence of French foreign and security policies. Under Nicolas Sarkozy, France rejoined the NATO joint military command on 4 April 2009.
France retains strong political and economic influence in its former African colonies (Françafrique) and has supplied economic aid and troops for peacekeeping missions in Ivory Coast and Chad. From 2012 to 2021, France and other African states intervened in support of the Malian government in the Northern Mali conflict.
In 2017, France was the world's fourth-largest donor of development aid in absolute terms, behind the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. This represents 0.43% of its GNP, the 12th highest among the OECD. Aid is provided by the governmental French Development Agency, which finances primarily humanitarian projects in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on "developing infrastructure, access to health care and education, the implementation of appropriate economic policies and the consolidation of the rule of law and democracy".
Military
The French Armed Forces (Forces armées françaises) are the military and paramilitary forces of France, under the President of the Republic as supreme commander. They consist of the French Army (Armée de Terre), the French Navy (Marine Nationale, formerly called Armée de Mer), the French Air and Space Force (Armée de l'Air et de l’Espace), and the National Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie nationale), which serves as both military police and civil police in rural areas. Together they are among the largest armed forces in the world and the largest in the EU. According to a 2015 study by Crédit Suisse, the French Armed Forces ranked as the world's sixth-most powerful military, and the second most powerful in Europe. France's annual military expenditure in 2022 was US$53.6 billion, or 1.9% of its GDP, making it the eighth biggest military spender in the world. There has been no national conscription since 1997.
France has been a recognised nuclear state since 1960. It is a party to both the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The French nuclear force (formerly known as "Force de Frappe") consists of four Triomphant class submarines equipped with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. In addition to the submarine fleet, it is estimated that France has about 60 ASMP medium-range air-to-ground missiles with nuclear warheads; 50 are deployed by the Air and Space Force using the Mirage 2000N long-range nuclear strike aircraft, while around 10 are deployed by the French Navy's Super Étendard Modernisé (SEM) attack aircraft, which operate from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.
France has major military industries and one of the largest aerospace sectors in the world. The country has produced such equipment as the Rafale fighter, the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, the Exocet missile and the Leclerc tank among others. France is a major arms seller, with most of its arsenal's designs available for the export market, except for nuclear-powered devices.
One French intelligence unit, the Directorate-General for External Security (Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure), is considered to be a component of the Armed Forces under the authority of the Ministry of Defense. The other, the Directorate-General for Internal Security (Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure) operates under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior. France's cybersecurity capabilities are regularly ranked as some of the most robust of any nation in the world.
French weapons exported totaled 27 billion euros in 2022, up from 11.7 billion euros the previous year 2021. Additionally, the UAE alone contributed more than 16 billion euros arms to the French total. Among the largest French defence companies are Dassault, Thales and Safran.
Law
France uses a civil legal system, wherein law arises primarily from written statutes; judges are not to make law, but merely to interpret it (though the amount of judicial interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to case law in a common law system). Basic principles of the rule of law were laid in the Napoleonic Code (which was largely based on the royal law codified under Louis XIV). In agreement with the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the law should only prohibit actions detrimental to society.
French law is divided into two principal areas: private law and public law. Private law includes, in particular, civil law and criminal law. Public law includes, in particular, administrative law and constitutional law. However, in practical terms, French law comprises three principal areas of law: civil law, criminal law, and administrative law. Criminal laws can only address the future and not the past (criminal ex post facto laws are prohibited). While administrative law is often a subcategory of civil law in many countries, it is completely separated in France and each body of law is headed by a specific supreme court: ordinary courts (which handle criminal and civil litigation) are headed by the Court of Cassation and administrative courts are headed by the Council of State. To be applicable, every law must be officially published in the Journal officiel de la République française.
France does not recognise religious law as a motivation for the enactment of prohibitions; it has long abolished blasphemy laws and sodomy laws (the latter in 1791). However, "offences against public decency" (contraires aux bonnes mœurs) or disturbing public order (trouble à l'ordre public) have been used to repress public expressions of homosexuality or street prostitution.
France generally has a positive reputation regarding LGBT rights. Since 1999, civil unions for homosexual couples have been permitted, and since 2013, same-sex marriage and LGBT adoption are legal. Laws prohibiting discriminatory speech in the press are as old as 1881. Some consider hate speech laws in France to be too broad or severe, undermining freedom of speech.
France has laws against racism and antisemitism, while the 1990 Gayssot Act prohibits Holocaust denial. In 2024, France became the first nation in the European Union to explicitly protect abortion in its constitution.
Freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State is the basis for laïcité (state secularism): the state does not formally recognise any religion, except in Alsace-Moselle, which continues to subsidize education and clergy of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Judaism. Nonetheless, France does recognise religious associations. The Parliament has listed many religious movements as dangerous cults since 1995 and has banned wearing conspicuous religious symbols in schools since 2004. In 2010, it banned the wearing of face-covering Islamic veils in public; human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described the law as discriminatory towards Muslims. However, it is supported by most of the population.
Economy
France has a social market economy, characterised by sizeable government involvement, and economic diversity. For roughly two centuries, the French economy has consistently ranked among the ten largest globally; it is currently the world's ninth-largest by purchasing power parity, the seventh-largest by nominal GDP, and the second-largest in the European Union by both metrics. France is considered an economic power, with membership in the Group of Seven leading industrialised countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Group of Twenty largest economies.
France's economy is highly diversified; services represent two-thirds of both the workforce and GDP, while the industrial sector accounts for a fifth of GDP and a similar proportion of employment. France is the third-biggest manufacturing country in Europe, behind Germany and Italy, and ranks eighth in the world by share of global manufacturing output, at 1.9 per cent. Less than 2 per cent of GDP is generated by the primary sector, namely agriculture; however, France's agricultural sector is among the largest in value and leads the EU in terms of overall production.
In 2018, France was the fifth-largest trading nation in the world and the second-largest in Europe, with the value of exports representing over a fifth of GDP. Its membership in the eurozone and the broader European single market facilitates access to capital, goods, services, and skilled labour. Despite protectionist policies over certain industries, particularly in agriculture, France has generally played a leading role in fostering free trade and commercial integration in Europe to enhance its economy. In 2019, it ranked first in Europe and 13th in the world in foreign direct investment, with European countries and the United States being leading sources. According to the Bank of France (founded in 1800), the leading recipients of FDI were manufacturing, real estate, finance and insurance. The Paris Region has the highest concentration of multinational firms in mainland Europe.
Under the doctrine of Dirigisme, the government historically played a major role in the economy; policies such as indicative planning and nationalisation are credited for contributing to three decades of unprecedented postwar economic growth known as Trente Glorieuses. At its peak in 1982, the public sector accounted for one-fifth of industrial employment and over four-fifths of the credit market. Beginning in the late 20th century, France loosened regulations and state involvement in the economy, with most leading companies now being privately owned; state ownership now dominates only transportation, defence and broadcasting. Policies aimed at promoting economic dynamism and privatisation have improved France's economic standing globally: it is among the world's 10 most innovative countries in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index, and the 15th most competitive, according to the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report (up two places from 2018).
The Paris stock exchange (French: La Bourse de Paris) is one of the oldest in the world, created in 1724. In 2000, it merged with counterparts in Amsterdam and Brussels to form Euronext, which in 2007 merged with the New York stock exchange to form NYSE Euronext, the world's largest stock exchange. Euronext Paris, the French branch of NYSE Euronext, is Europe's second-largest stock exchange market. Some examples of the most valuable French companies include LVMH, L'Oréal and Sociéte Générale.
France has historically been one of the world's major agricultural centres and remains a "global agricultural powerhouse"; France is the world's sixth-biggest exporter of agricultural products, generating a trade surplus of over €7.4 billion. Nicknamed "the granary of the old continent", over half its total land area is farmland, of which 45 per cent is devoted to permanent field crops such as cereals. The country's diverse climate, extensive arable land, modern farming technology, and EU subsidies have made it Europe's leading agricultural producer and exporter.
Tourism
With 100 million international tourist arrivals in 2023, France is the world's top tourist destination, ahead of Spain (85 million) and the United States (66 million). However, it ranks third in tourism-derived income due to the shorter duration of visits. The most popular tourist sites include (annual visitors): Eiffel Tower (6.2 million), Château de Versailles (2.8 million), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (2 million), Pont du Gard (1.5 million), Arc de Triomphe (1.2 million), Mont Saint-Michel (1 million), Sainte-Chapelle (683,000), Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg (549,000), Puy de Dôme (500,000), Musée Picasso (441,000), and Carcassonne (362,000).
France, especially Paris, has some of the world's largest and most renowned museums, including the Louvre, which is the most visited art museum in the world (7.7 million visitors in 2022), the Musée d'Orsay (3.3 million), mostly devoted to Impressionism, the Musée de l'Orangerie (1.02 million), which is home to eight large Water Lily murals by Claude Monet, as well as the Centre Georges Pompidou (3 million), dedicated to contemporary art. Disneyland Paris is Europe's most popular theme park, with 15 million combined visitors to the resort's Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park in 2009. With more than 10 million tourists a year, the French Riviera (French: Côte d'Azur), in Southeast France, is the second leading tourist destination in the country, after the Paris Region. With 6 million tourists a year, the castles of the Loire Valley (French: châteaux) and the Loire Valley itself are the third leading tourist destination in France.
France has 52 sites inscribed in UNESCO's World Heritage List and features cities of high cultural interest, beaches and seaside resorts, ski resorts, as well as rural regions that many enjoy for their beauty and tranquillity (green tourism). Small and picturesque French villages are promoted through the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (literally "The Most Beautiful Villages of France"). The "Remarkable Gardens" label is a list of the over 200 gardens classified by the Ministry of Culture. This label is intended to protect and promote remarkable gardens and parks. France attracts many religious pilgrims on their way to St. James, or to Lourdes, a town in the Hautes-Pyrénées that hosts several million visitors a year.
Energy
France is the world's tenth-largest producer of electricity. Électricité de France (EDF), which is majority-owned by the French government, is the country's main producer and distributor of electricity, and one of the world's largest electric utility companies, ranking third in revenue globally. In 2018, EDF produced around one-fifth of the European Union's electricity, primarily from nuclear power. As of 2021, France was the biggest energy exporter in Europe, mostly to the U.K. and Italy, and the largest net exporter of electricity in the world.
Since the 1973 oil crisis, France has pursued a strong policy of energy security, namely through heavy investment in nuclear energy. It is one of 32 countries with nuclear power plants, ranking second in the world by the number of operational nuclear reactors, at 56. Consequently, 70% of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power, the highest proportion in the world by a wide margin; only Slovakia and Ukraine also derive a majority of electricity from nuclear power, at roughly 53% and 51%, respectively. France is considered a world leader in nuclear technology, with reactors and fuel products being major exports.
France's significant reliance on nuclear power has resulted in comparatively slower development of renewable energy sources than in other Western nations. Nevertheless, between 2008 and 2019, France's production capacity from renewable energies rose consistently and nearly doubled. Hydropower is by far the leading source, accounting for over half the country's renewable energy sources and contributing 13% of its electricity, the highest proportion in Europe after Norway and Turkey. As with nuclear power, most hydroelectric plants, such as Eguzon, Étang de Soulcem, and Lac de Vouglans, are managed by EDF. France aims to further expand hydropower into 2040.
Transport
France's railway network, which stretches 29,473 kilometres (18,314 mi) as of 2008, is the second most extensive in Western Europe after Germany. It is operated by the SNCF, and high-speed trains include the Thalys, the Eurostar and TGV, which travels at 320 km/h (199 mph). The Eurostar, along with the Eurotunnel Shuttle, connects with the United Kingdom through the Channel Tunnel. Rail connections exist to all other neighbouring countries in Europe except Andorra. Intra-urban connections are also well developed, with most major cities having underground or tramway services complementing bus services.
There are approximately 1,027,183 kilometres (638,262 mi) of serviceable roadway in France, ranking it the most extensive network of the European continent. The Paris Region is enveloped with the densest network of roads and highways, which connect it with virtually all parts of the country. French roads also handle substantial international traffic, connecting with cities in neighbouring Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Andorra and Monaco. There is no annual registration fee or road tax; however, usage of the mostly privately owned motorways is through tolls except in the vicinity of large communes. The new car market is dominated by domestic brands such as Renault, Peugeot and Citroën. France possesses the Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest bridge, and has built many important bridges such as the Pont de Normandie. Diesel and petrol-driven cars and lorries cause a large part of the country's air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
There are 464 airports in France. Charles de Gaulle Airport, located in the vicinity of Paris, is the largest and busiest airport in the country, handling the vast majority of popular and commercial traffic and connecting Paris with virtually all major cities across the world. Air France is the national carrier airline, although numerous private airline companies provide domestic and international travel services. There are ten major ports in France, the largest of which is in Marseille, which also is the largest bordering the Mediterranean Sea. 12,261 kilometres (7,619 mi) of waterways traverse France including the Canal du Midi, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean through the Garonne river.
Science and technology
Since the Middle Ages, France has contributed to scientific and technological achievement. In the early 11th century, the French-born Pope Sylvester II reintroduced the abacus and armillary sphere and introduced Arabic numerals and clocks to much of Europe. The University of Paris, founded in the mid-12th century, is still one of the most important academic institutions in the Western world. In the 17th century, mathematician and philosopher René Descartes pioneered rationalism as a method for acquiring scientific knowledge, while Blaise Pascal became famous for his work on probability and fluid mechanics; both were key figures of the Scientific Revolution, which blossomed in Europe during this period. The French Academy of Sciences, founded in the mid-17th century by Louis XIV to encourage and protect French scientific research, was one of the earliest national scientific institutions in history.
The Age of Enlightenment was marked by the work of biologist Buffon, one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, and chemist Lavoisier, who discovered the role of oxygen in combustion. Diderot and D'Alembert published the Encyclopédie, which aimed to give the public access to "useful knowledge" that could be applied to everyday life. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century saw spectacular scientific developments in France, with Augustin Fresnel founding modern optics, Sadi Carnot laying the foundations of thermodynamics, and Louis Pasteur pioneering microbiology. Other eminent French scientists of the period have their names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Famous French scientists of the 20th century include the mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré; physicists Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie, who remain famous for their work on radioactivity; physicist Paul Langevin; and virologist Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV AIDS. Hand transplantation was developed in Lyon in 1998 by an international team that included Jean-Michel Dubernard, who afterward performed the first successful double hand transplant. Telesurgery was first performed by French surgeons led by Jacques Marescaux on 7 September 2001 across the Atlantic Ocean. A face transplant was first done on 27 November 2005 by Bernard Devauchelle. France ranked 12th in the 2024 Global Innovation Index, compared to 16th in 2019.
Demographics
With an estimated January 2024 population of 68,373,433 people, France is the 20th most populous country in the world, the third-most populous in Europe (after Russia and Germany), and the second most populous in the European Union (after Germany).
France is an outlier among developed countries, particularly in Europe, for its relatively high rate of natural population growth: By birth rates alone, it was responsible for almost all natural population growth in the European Union in 2006. Between 2006 and 2016, France saw the second-highest overall increase in population in the EU and was one of only four EU countries where natural births accounted for the most population growth. This was the highest rate since the end of the baby boom in 1973 and coincides with the rise of the total fertility rate from a nadir of 1.7 in 1994 to 2.0 in 2010.
As of January 2021, the fertility rate declined slightly to 1.84 children per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1, and considerably below the high of 4.41 in 1800. France's fertility rate and crude birth rate nonetheless remain among the highest in the EU. However, like many developed nations, the French population is aging; the average age is 41.7 years, while about a fifth of French people are 65 or over. The life expectancy at birth is 82.7 years, the 12th highest in the world.
From 2006 to 2011, population growth averaged 0.6 per cent per year; since 2011, annual growth has been between 0.4 and 0.5 per cent annually. Immigrants are major contributors to this trend; in 2010, 27 per cent of newborns in metropolitan France had at least one foreign-born parent and another 24 per cent had at least one parent born outside Europe (excluding French overseas territories).
Major cities
France is a highly urbanised country, with its largest cities (in terms of metropolitan area population in 2021) being Paris (13,171,056 inh.), Lyon (2,308,818), Marseille (1,888,788), Lille (1,521,660), Toulouse (1,490,640), Bordeaux (1,393,764), Nantes (1,031,953), Strasbourg (864,993), Montpellier (823,120), and Rennes (771,320). (Note: since its 2020 revision of metropolitan area borders, INSEE considers that Nice is a metropolitan area separate from the Cannes-Antibes metropolitan area; these two combined would have a population of 1,019,905, as of the 2021 census). Rural flight was a perennial political issue throughout most of the 20th century.
Ethnic groups
Historically, French people were mainly of Celtic-Gallic origin, with a significant admixture of Italic (Romans) and Germanic (Franks) groups reflecting centuries of respective migration and settlement. Through the course of the Middle Ages, France incorporated various neighbouring ethnic and linguistic groups, as evidenced by Breton elements in the west, Aquitanian in the southwest, Scandinavian in the northwest, Alemannic in the northeast, and Ligurian in the southeast.
Large-scale immigration over the last century and a half have led to a more multicultural society; beginning with the French Revolution, and further codified in the French Constitution of 1958, the government is prohibited from collecting data on ethnicity and ancestry; most demographic information is drawn from private sector organisations or academic institutions. In 2004, the Institut Montaigne estimated that within Metropolitan France, 51 million people were White (85% of the population), 6 million were Northwest African (10%), 2 million were Black (3.3%), and 1 million were Asian (1.7%).
A 2008 poll conducted jointly by the Institut national d'études démographiques and the French National Institute of Statistics estimated that the largest minority ancestry groups were Italian (5 million), followed by Northwest African (3–6 million), Sub-Saharan African (2.5 million), Armenian (500,000), and Turkish (200,000). There are also sizeable minorities of other European ethnic groups, namely Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Greek. France has a significant Gitan (Romani) population, numbering between 20,000 and 400,000; many foreign Roma are expelled back to Bulgaria and Romania frequently.
Immigration
It is currently estimated that 40% of the French population is descended at least partially from the different waves of immigration since the early 20th century; between 1921 and 1935 alone, about 1.1 million net immigrants came to France. The next largest wave came in the 1960s when around 1.6 million pieds noirs returned to France following the independence of its Northwest African possessions, Algeria and Morocco. They were joined by numerous former colonial subjects from North and West Africa, as well as numerous European immigrants from Spain and Portugal.
France remains a major destination for immigrants, accepting about 200,000 legal immigrants annually. In 2005, it was Western Europe's leading recipient of asylum seekers, with an estimated 50,000 applications (albeit a 15% decrease from 2004). In 2010, France received about 48,100 asylum applications—placing it among the top five asylum recipients in the world. In subsequent years it saw the number of applications increase, ultimately doubling to 100,412 in 2017. The European Union allows free movement between the member states, although France established controls to curb Eastern European migration. Foreigners' rights are established in the Code of Entry and Residence of Foreigners and of the Right to Asylum. Immigration remains a contentious political issue.
In 2008, the INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) estimated that the total number of foreign-born immigrants was around 5 million (8% of the population), while their French-born descendants numbered 6.5 million, or 11% of the population. Thus, nearly a fifth of the country's population were either first or second-generation immigrants, of which more than 5 million were of European origin and 4 million of Maghrebi ancestry. In 2008, France granted citizenship to 137,000 persons, mostly from Morocco, Algeria and Turkey. In 2022, more than 320,000 migrants came to France, with the majority coming from Africa.
In 2014, the INSEE reported a significant increase in the number of immigrants coming from Spain, Portugal and Italy between 2009 and 2012. According to the institute, this increase resulted from the financial crisis that hit several European countries in that period. Statistics on Spanish immigrants in France show a growth of 107 per cent between 2009 and 2012, with the population growing from 5,300 to 11,000. Of the total of 229,000 foreigners coming to France in 2012, nearly 8% were Portuguese, 5% British, 5% Spanish, 4% Italian, 4% German, 3% Romanian, and 3% Belgian.
Language
The official language of France is French, a Romance language derived from Latin. Since 1635, the Académie française has been France's official authority on the French language, although its recommendations carry no legal weight. There are also regional languages spoken in France, such as Occitan, Breton, Catalan, Flemish (Dutch dialect), Alsatian (German dialect), Basque, and Corsican (Italian dialect). Italian was the official language of Corsica until 9 May 1859.
The Government of France does not regulate the choice of language in publications by individuals, but the use of French is required by law in commercial and workplace communications. In addition to mandating the use of French in the territory of the Republic, the French government tries to promote French in the European Union and globally through institutions such as the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. Besides French, there exist 77 vernacular minority languages of France, eight spoken in French metropolitan territory and 69 in the French overseas territories. It is estimated that between 300 million and 500 million people worldwide can speak French, either as a mother tongue or as a second language.
According to the 2007 Adult Education survey, part of a project by the European Union and carried out in France by the INSEE and based on a sample of 15,350 persons, French was the native language of 87.2% of the total population, or roughly 55.81 million people, followed by Arabic (3.6%, 2.3 million), Portuguese (1.5%, 960,000), Spanish (1.2%, 770,000) and Italian (1.0%, 640,000). Native speakers of other languages made up the remaining 5.2% of the population.
Religion
France is a secular country in which freedom of religion is a constitutional right. The French policy on religion is based on the concept of laïcité, a strict separation of church and state under which the government and public life are kept completely secular, detached from any religion. The region of Alsace and Moselle is an exception to the general French norm since the local law stipulates official status and state funding for Lutheranism, Catholicism, and Judaism. According to the national survey of 2020 held by the INSEE, 34-38% of the French population adhered to Christianity, of whom approximately 25-29% were Catholics and 9% other Christians (without further specification); at the same time, 10-11% of the French population adhered to Islam, 0.5% to Buddhism, 0.5% to Judaism, and 1% to other religions. 51-53% of the population declared that they had no religion.
Catholicism was the main religion in France for more than a millennium, and it was once the country's state religion. France was traditionally considered the Church's eldest daughter (French: Fille aînée de l'Église), and the King of France always maintained close links to the Pope, receiving the title Most Christian Majesty from the Pope in 1464. However, the French monarchy maintained a significant degree of autonomy, namely through its policy of "Gallicanism", whereby the king selected bishops rather than the papacy. Its role nowadays, however, has been greatly reduced, although, as of 2012, among the 47,000 religious buildings in France 94% were still Catholic churches. After alternating between royal and secular republican governments during the 19th century, in 1905 France passed the 1905 law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, which established the aforementioned principle of laïcité.
The government is prohibited from recognising specific rights to any religious community (with the exception of legacy statutes like those of military chaplains and the aforementioned local law in Alsace-Moselle). It recognises religious organisations according to formal legal criteria that do not address religious doctrine, and religious organisations are expected to refrain from intervening in policymaking. Some religious groups, such as Scientology, the Children of God, the Unification Church, and the Order of the Solar Temple, are considered cults (sectes in French, which is considered a pejorative term) in France, and therefore they are not granted the same status as recognised religions.
Health
The French health care system is one of universal health care largely financed by government national health insurance. In its 2000 assessment of world health care systems, the World Health Organization found that France provided the "close to best overall health care" in the world. The French health care system was ranked first worldwide by the World Health Organization in 1997. In 2011, France spent 11.6% of its GDP on health care, or US$4,086 per capita, a figure much higher than the average spent by countries in Europe but less than in the United States. Approximately 77% of health expenditures are covered by government-funded agencies.
Care is generally free for people affected by chronic diseases (affections de longues durées) such as cancer, AIDS or cystic fibrosis. The life expectancy at birth is 78 years for men and 85 years for women, one of the highest in the European Union and the World. There are 3.22 physicians for every 1000 inhabitants in France, and average health care spending per capita was US$4,719 in 2008.
As of 2007, approximately 140,000 inhabitants (0.4%) of France are living with HIV/AIDS.
Education
In 1802, Napoleon created the lycée, the second and final stage of secondary education that prepares students for higher education studies or a profession. Jules Ferry is considered the father of the French modern school, leading reforms in the late 19th century that established free, secular and compulsory education (currently mandatory until the age of 16).
French education is centralised and divided into three stages: primary, secondary, and higher education. The Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, ranked France's education as near the OECD average in 2018. France was one of the PISA-participating countries where school children perceived some of the lowest levels of support and feedback from their teachers. Schoolchildren in France reported greater concern about the disciplinary climate and behaviour in classrooms compared to other OECD countries.
Higher education is divided between public universities and the prestigious and selective Grandes écoles, such as Sciences Po Paris for political studies, HEC Paris for economics, Polytechnique, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales for social studies and the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris that produce high-profile engineers, or the École nationale d'administration for careers in the Grands Corps of the state. The Grandes écoles have been criticised for alleged elitism, producing many if not most of France's high-ranking civil servants, CEOs and politicians.
Culture
Art
The origins of French art were very much influenced by Flemish art and by Italian art at the time of the Renaissance. Jean Fouquet, the most famous medieval French painter, is said to have been the first to travel to Italy and experience the Early Renaissance firsthand. The Renaissance painting School of Fontainebleau was directly inspired by Italian painters such as Primaticcio and Rosso Fiorentino, who both worked in France. Two of the most famous French artists of the time of the Baroque era, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, lived in Italy.
French artists developed the rococo style in the 18th century, as a more intimate imitation of the old baroque style, the works of the court-endorsed artists Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard being the most representative in the country. The French Revolution brought great changes, as Napoleon favoured artists of neoclassic style such as Jacques-Louis David and the highly influential Académie des Beaux-Arts defined the style known as Academism.
In the second part of the 19th century, France's influence over painting grew, with the development of new styles of painting such as Impressionism and Symbolism. The most famous impressionist painters of the period were Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. The second generation of impressionist-style painters, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Georges Seurat, were also at the avant-garde of artistic evolutions, as well as the fauvist artists Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Cubism was developed by Georges Braque and the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, living in Paris. Other foreign artists also settled and worked in or near Paris, such as Vincent van Gogh, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Wassily Kandinsky.
There are many art museums in France, the most famous of which being the state-owned Musée du Louvre, which collects artwork from the 18th century and earlier. The Musée d'Orsay was inaugurated in 1986 in the old railway station Gare d'Orsay, in a major reorganisation of national art collections, to gather French paintings from the second part of the 19th century (mainly Impressionism and Fauvism movements). It was voted the best museum in the world in 2018. Modern works are presented in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which moved in 1976 to the Centre Georges Pompidou. These three state-owned museums are visited by close to 17 million people a year.
Architecture
During the Middle Ages, many fortified castles were built by feudal nobles to mark their powers. Some French castles that survived are Chinon, Château d'Angers, the massive Château de Vincennes and the so-called Cathar castles. During this era, France had been using Romanesque architecture like most of Western Europe.
Gothic architecture, originally named Opus Francigenum meaning "French work", was born in Île-de-France and was the first French style of architecture to be imitated throughout Europe. Northern France is the home of some of the most important Gothic cathedrals and basilicas, the first of these being the Saint Denis Basilica (used as the royal necropolis); other important French Gothic cathedrals are Notre-Dame de Chartres and Notre-Dame d'Amiens. The kings were crowned in another important Gothic church: Notre-Dame de Reims.
The final victory in the Hundred Years' War marked an important stage in the evolution of French architecture. It was the time of the French Renaissance and several artists from Italy were invited to the French court; many residential palaces were built in the Loire Valley, from 1450 as a first reference the Château de Montsoreau. Examples of such residential castles include the Château de Chambord, the Château de Chenonceau, or the Château d'Amboise.
Following the Renaissance and the end of the Middle Ages, Baroque architecture replaced the traditional Gothic style. However, in France, Baroque architecture found greater success in the secular domain than in the religious one. In the secular domain, the Palace of Versailles has many Baroque features. Jules Hardouin Mansart, who designed the extensions to Versailles, was one of the most influential French architects of the Baroque era; he is famous for his dome at Les Invalides. Some of the most impressive provincial Baroque architecture is found in places that were not yet French such as Place Stanislas in Nancy. On the military architectural side, Vauban designed some of the most efficient fortresses in Europe and became an influential military architect; as a result, imitations of his works can be found all over Europe, the Americas, Russia and Turkey.
After the Revolution, the Republicans favoured Neoclassicism although it was introduced in France before the revolution with such buildings as the Parisian Pantheon or the Capitole de Toulouse. Built during the first French Empire, the Arc de Triomphe and Sainte Marie-Madeleine represent the best example of Empire-style architecture. Under Napoleon III, a new wave of urbanism and architecture was given birth; extravagant buildings such as the neo-Baroque Palais Garnier were built. The urban planning of the time was very organised and rigorous; most notably, Haussmann's renovation of Paris. The architecture associated with this era is named Second Empire in English, the term being taken from the Second French Empire. At this time there was a strong Gothic resurgence across Europe and in France; the associated architect was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In the late 19th century, Gustave Eiffel designed many bridges, such as the Garabit viaduct, and remains one of the most influential bridge designers of his time, although he is best remembered for the Eiffel Tower.
In the 20th century, French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed several buildings in France. More recently, French architects have combined both modern and old architectural styles. The Louvre Pyramid is an example of modern architecture added to an older building. The most difficult buildings to integrate within French cities are skyscrapers, as they are visible from afar. For instance, in Paris, since 1977, new buildings had to be under 37 metres (121 ft). France's largest financial district is La Défense, where a significant number of skyscrapers are located. Other massive buildings that are a challenge to integrate into their environment are large bridges; an example of the way this has been done is the Millau Viaduct. Some famous modern French architects include Jean Nouvel, Dominique Perrault, Christian de Portzamparc and Paul Andreu.
Literature and philosophy
The earliest French literature dates from the Middle Ages when what is now known as modern France did not have a single, uniform language. There were several languages and dialects, and writers used their own spelling and grammar. Some authors of French medieval texts, such as Tristan and Iseult and Lancelot-Grail are unknown. Three famous medieval authors are Chrétien de Troyes, Christine de Pizan (langue d'oïl), and Duke William IX of Aquitaine (langue d'oc). Much medieval French poetry and literature was inspired by the legends of the Carolingian cycle, such as the Song of Roland and the chansons de geste. The Roman de Renart, written in 1175 by Perrout de Saint Cloude, tells the story of the medieval character Reynard ('the Fox') and is another example of early French writing. An important 16th-century writer was François Rabelais, who wrote five popular early picaresque novels. Rabelais was also in regular communication with Marguerite de Navarre, author of the Heptameron. Another 16th-century author was Michel de Montaigne, whose most famous work, Essais, started a literary genre.
French literature and poetry flourished during the 18th and 19th centuries. Denis Diderot is best known as the main editor of the Encyclopédie, whose aim was to sum up all the knowledge of his century and to fight ignorance and obscurantism. During that same century, Charles Perrault was a prolific writer of children's fairy tales including Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard. At the start of the 19th century, symbolist poetry was an important movement in French literature, with poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé.
The 19th century saw the writings of many renowned French authors. Victor Hugo is sometimes seen as "the greatest French writer of all time" for excelling in all literary genres. Hugo's verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Dante and Homer. His novel Les Misérables is widely seen as one of the greatest novels ever written and The Hunchback of Notre Dame has remained immensely popular. Other major authors of that century include Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo), Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas), Émile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart), Honoré de Balzac (La Comédie humaine), Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier and Stendhal (The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma), whose works are among the most well known in France and the world.
In the early 20th century France was a haven for literary freedom. Works banned for obscenity in the US, the UK and other Anglophone nations were published in France decades before they were available in the respective authors' home countries. The French were disinclined to punish literary figures for their writing, and prosecutions were rare. Important writers of the 20th century include Marcel Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince, which is one of the best selling books in history.
Medieval philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism until the emergence of Humanism in the Renaissance. Modern philosophy began in France in the 17th century with the philosophy of René Descartes, Blaise Pascal and Nicolas Malebranche. Descartes was the first Western philosopher since ancient times to attempt to build a philosophical system from the ground up rather than building on the work of predecessors. France in the 18th century saw major philosophical contributions from Voltaire who came to embody the Enlightenment and Jean-Jacques Rousseau whose work highly influenced the French Revolution. French philosophers made major contributions to the field in the 20th century including the existentialist works of Simone de Beauvoir, Camus, and Sartre. Other influential contributions during this time include the moral and political works of Simone Weil, contributions to structuralism including from Claude Lévi-Strauss and the post-structuralist works by Michel Foucault.
Music
France has a long and varied musical history. It experienced a golden age in the 17th century thanks to Louis XIV, who employed talented musicians and composers in the royal court. The most renowned composers of this period include Marc-Antoine Charpentier, François Couperin, Michel-Richard Delalande, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marin Marais, all of them composers at the court. After the death of the "Roi Soleil", French musical creation lost dynamism, but in the next century the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau reached some prestige, and he is still one of the most renowned French composers. Rameau became the dominant composer of French opera and the leading French composer of the harpsichord.
In the field of classical music, France has produced a number of notable composers such as Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Hector Berlioz. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. The two composers invented new musical forms and new sounds. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. His music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of atonality. Erik Satie was a key member of the early-20th-century Parisian avant-garde. Francis Poulenc's best-known works are his piano suite Trois mouvements perpétuels (1919), the ballet Les biches (1923), the Concert champêtre (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1957) and the Gloria (1959) for soprano, choir and orchestra. In the middle of the 20th century, Maurice Ohana, Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Boulez contributed to the evolution of contemporary classical music.
French music then followed the rapid emergence of pop and rock music in the middle of the 20th century. Although English-speaking creations achieved popularity in the country, French pop music, known as chanson française, has also remained very popular. Among the most important French artists of the century are Édith Piaf, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré, Charles Aznavour and Serge Gainsbourg. Modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop, French rock, techno/funk, and turntablists/DJs. Although there are very few rock bands in France compared to English-speaking countries, bands such as Noir Désir, Mano Negra, Niagara, Les Rita Mitsouko and more recently Superbus, Phoenix and Gojira, or Shaka Ponk, have reached worldwide popularity.
Cinema
France has historical and strong links with cinema, with two Frenchmen, Auguste and Louis Lumière (known as the Lumière Brothers) credited with creating cinema in 1895. The world's first female filmmaker, Alice Guy-Blaché, was also from France. Several important cinematic movements, including the late 1950s and 1960s Nouvelle Vague, began in the country. It is noted for having a strong film industry, due in part to protections afforded by the government. France remains a leader in filmmaking, as of 2015 producing more films than any other European country. The nation also hosts the Cannes Festival, one of the most important and famous film festivals in the world.
Apart from its strong and innovative film tradition, France has also been a gathering spot for artists from across Europe and the world. For this reason, French cinema is sometimes intertwined with the cinema of foreign nations. Directors from nations such as Poland (Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrzej Żuławski), Argentina (Gaspar Noé, Edgardo Cozarinsky), Russia (Alexandre Alexeieff, Anatole Litvak), Austria (Michael Haneke) and Georgia (Géla Babluani, Otar Iosseliani) are prominent in the ranks of French cinema. Conversely, French directors have had prolific and influential careers in other countries, such as Luc Besson, Jacques Tourneur or Francis Veber in the United States. Although the French film market is dominated by Hollywood, France is the only nation in the world where American films make up the smallest share of total film revenues, at 50%, compared with 77% in Germany and 69% in Japan. French films account for 35% of the total film revenues of France, which is the highest percentage of national film revenues in the developed world outside the United States, compared to 14% in Spain and 8% in the UK. In 2013 France was the second greatest exporter of films in the world, after the United States.
As part of its advocacy of cultural exception, a political concept of treating culture differently from other commercial products, France succeeded in convincing all EU members to refuse to include culture and audiovisuals in the list of liberalised sectors of the WTO in 1993. Moreover, this decision was confirmed in a vote by UNESCO in 2005: the principle of "cultural exception" won an overwhelming victory with 198 countries voting for it and only 2 countries, the United States and Israel, voting against it.
Fashion
Fashion has been an important industry and cultural export of France since the 17th century, and modern "haute couture" originated in Paris in the 1860s. Today, Paris, along with London, Milan, and New York City, is considered one of the world's fashion capitals, and the city is home or headquarters to many of the premier fashion houses. The expression Haute couture is, in France, a legally protected name, guaranteeing certain quality standards.
The association of France with fashion and style (French: la mode) dates largely to the reign of Louis XIV when the luxury goods industries in France came increasingly under royal control and the French royal court became, arguably, the arbiter of taste and style in Europe. But France renewed its dominance of the high fashion (French: couture or haute couture) industry in the years 1860–1960 through the establishment of the great couturier houses such as Chanel, Dior, and Givenchy. The French perfume industry is the world leader in its sector and is centred on the town of Grasse.
According to 2017 data compiled by Deloitte, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH), a French brand, is the largest luxury company in the world by sales, selling more than twice the amount of its nearest competitor. Moreover, France also possesses 3 of the top 10 luxury goods companies by sales (LVMH, Kering SA, L'Oréal), more than any other country in the world.
Media
In 2021, regional daily newspapers, such as Ouest-France, Sud Ouest, La Voix du Nord, Dauphiné Libéré, Le Télégramme, and Le Progrès, more than doubled the sales of national newspapers, such as Le Monde, Le Figaro, L'Équipe (sports), Le Parisien, and Les Echos (finance). Free dailies, distributed in metropolitan centers, continue to increase their market share. The sector of weekly magazines includes more than 400 specialised weekly magazines published in the country.
The most influential news magazines are the left-wing Le Nouvel Observateur, centrist L'Express and right-wing Le Point (in 2009 more than 400,000 copies), but the highest circulation numbers for weeklies are attained by TV magazines and by women's magazines, among them Marie Claire and ELLE, which have foreign versions. Influential weeklies also include investigative and satirical papers Le Canard Enchaîné and Charlie Hebdo, as well as Paris Match. As in most industrialised nations, the print media have been affected by a severe crisis with the rise of the internet. In 2008, the government launched a major initiative to help the sector reform and become financially independent, but in 2009 it had to give 600,000 euros to help the print media cope with the economic crisis, in addition to existing subsidies.
In 1974, after years of centralised monopoly on radio and television, the governmental agency ORTF was split into several national institutions, but the three already-existing TV channels and four national radio stations remained under state control. It was only in 1981 that the government allowed free broadcasting in the territory, ending the state monopoly on radio.
Cuisine
French cuisine is renowned for being one of the finest in the world. Different regions have different styles. In the North, butter and cream are common ingredients, whereas olive oil is more commonly used in the South. Each region of France has traditional specialties: cassoulet in the Southwest, choucroute in Alsace, quiche in the Lorraine region, beef bourguignon in Burgundy, provençal tapenade, etc. France is most famous for its wines, and cheeses, which are often named for the territory where they are produced (AOC). A meal typically consists of three courses, entrée (starter), plat principal (main course), and fromage (cheese) or dessert, sometimes with a salad served before the cheese or dessert.
French cuisine is also regarded as a key element of the quality of life and the attractiveness of France. A French publication, the Michelin guide, awards Michelin stars for excellence to a select few establishments. The acquisition or loss of a star can have dramatic effects on the success of a restaurant. By 2006, the Michelin Guide had awarded 620 stars to French restaurants.
In addition to its wine tradition, France is also a major producer of beer and rum. The three main French brewing regions are Alsace (60% of national production), Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Lorraine. French rum is made in distilleries located on islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Sports
France hosts "the world's biggest annual sporting event", the annual cycling race Tour de France. Other popular sports played in France include: football, judo, tennis, rugby union and pétanque. France has hosted events such as the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, and the 2023 Rugby World Cup. The country also hosted the 1960 European Nations' Cup, UEFA Euro 1984, UEFA Euro 2016 and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup. The Stade de France in Saint-Denis is France's largest stadium and was the venue for the 1998 FIFA World Cup and 2007 Rugby World Cup finals. Since 1923, France is famous for its 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race. Several major tennis tournaments take place in France, including the Paris Masters and the French Open, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments. French martial arts include Savate and Fencing.
France has a close association with the Modern Olympic Games; it was a French aristocrat, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who suggested the Games' revival, at the end of the 19th century. After Athens was awarded the first Games, in reference to the Olympics' Greek origins, Paris hosted the second Games in 1900. Paris was the first home of the International Olympic Committee, before it moved to Lausanne. Since 1900, France has hosted the Olympics on 5 further occasions: the 1924 Summer Olympics, the 2024 Summer Olympics both in Paris and three Winter Games (1924 in Chamonix, 1968 in Grenoble and 1992 in Albertville). Similar to the Olympics, France introduced Olympics for deaf people (Deaflympics) in 1924 with the idea of a French deaf car mechanic, Eugène Rubens-Alcais who paved the way to organise the inaugural edition of the Summer Deaflympics in Paris.
Both the national football team and the national rugby union team are nicknamed "Les Bleus" in reference to the team's shirt colour as well as the national French tricolour flag. Football is the most popular sport in France, with over 1,800,000 registered players and over 18,000 registered clubs.
The French Open, also called Roland-Garros, is a major tennis tournament held over two weeks between late May and early June at the Stade Roland-Garros in Paris. It is the premier clay court tennis championship event in the world and the second of four annual Grand Slam tournaments.
Rugby union is popular, particularly in Paris and the southwest of France. The national rugby union team has competed at every Rugby World Cup; it takes part in the annual Six Nations Championship.
See also
Outline of France
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
France at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
France at UCB Libraries GovPubs
France at Curlie
France at the EU
Wikimedia Atlas of France
Geographic data related to France at OpenStreetMap
Key Development Forecasts for France from International Futures
Economy
INSEE
OECD France statistics
Government
France.fr – official French tourism site (in English)
Gouvernement.fr – official site of the government (in French)
Official site of the French public service – links to various administrations and institutions
Official site of the National Assembly
Culture
Contemporary French Civilization. Archived 27 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine. Journal, University of Illinois.
FranceGuide Archived 17 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine – official site of the French Government Tourist Office |
List_of_national_parks_of_the_United_States | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_United_States | [
313,
414
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_United_States",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_parks_of_the_United_States"
] | The United States has 63 national parks, which are congressionally designated protected areas operated by the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior. National parks are designated for their natural beauty, unique geological features, diverse ecosystems, and recreational opportunities, typically "because of some outstanding scenic feature or natural phenomena." While legislatively all units of the National Park System are considered equal with the same mission, national parks are generally larger and more of a destination, and hunting and extractive activities are prohibited. National monuments, on the other hand, are also frequently protected for their historical or archaeological significance. Eight national parks (including six in Alaska) are paired with a national preserve, areas with different levels of protection that are administered together but considered separate units and whose areas are not included in the figures below. The 431 units of the National Park System can be broadly referred to as national parks, but most have other formal designations.
A bill creating the first national park, Yellowstone, was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, followed by Mackinac National Park in 1875 (decommissioned in 1895), and then Rock Creek Park (later merged into National Capital Parks), Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890. The Organic Act of 1916 created the National Park Service "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." Many current national parks had been previously protected as national monuments by the president under the Antiquities Act or as other designations created by Congress before being redesignated by Congress; the newest national park is New River Gorge, previously a National River, and the most recent entirely new park is National Park of American Samoa. A few former national parks are no longer designated as such, or have been disbanded. Fourteen national parks are designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS), and 21 national parks are named UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BR), with eight national parks in both programs.
Thirty states have national parks, as do the territories of American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The state with the most national parks is California with nine, followed by Alaska with eight, Utah with five, and Colorado with four. The largest national park is Wrangell–St. Elias in Alaska: at over 8 million acres (32,375 km2), it is larger than each of the nine smallest states. The next three largest parks are also in Alaska. The smallest park is Gateway Arch National Park, Missouri, at 192.83 acres (0.7804 km2). The total area protected by national parks is approximately 52.4 million acres (212,000 km2), for an average of 833 thousand acres (3,370 km2) but a median of only 220 thousand acres (890 km2).
The national parks set a visitation record in 2021, with more than 92 million visitors. Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee has been the most-visited park since 1944, and had almost 13 million visitors in 2022. In contrast, only about 9,500 people visited the remote Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska in 2022.
National parks
Legend
Parks by state or territory
The following table includes the 30 states and two territories that have national parks. Exclusive parks refer to parks entirely within one state or territory. Shared parks refer to parks in multiple states.
Territories are set in italics.
See also
National Park Service
History of the National Park Service
List of areas in the United States National Park System
List of the United States National Park System official units
List of national monuments of the United States
List of National Wildlife Refuges of the United States
List of U.S. National Forests
Lists of state parks by U.S. state
List of World Heritage Sites in the United States
References
External links
Official website of the National Park Service (NPS)
Find a park (NPS)
Visitor use statistics (NPS)
The National Parks: America's Best Idea by PBS
America's Natural Heritage - The Essential Guide to the National Parks by The Washington Post
List of National Parks by State |
John_Muir | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir | [
313
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir"
] | John Muir ( MURE; April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", was a Scottish-born American: 42 naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States.
His books, letters and essays describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as an inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to his wife and the preservation of the Western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in The Century Magazine, "The Treasures of the Yosemite" and "Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park"; this helped support the push for US Congress to pass a bill in 1890 establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.
John Muir has been considered "an inspiration to both Scots and Americans". Muir's biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity", both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he has often been quoted by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams. "Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world", writes Holmes.
Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and environmental advocate, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for many people, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth", while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was "saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism".: 403 On April 21, 2013, the first John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist.
Early life
Boyhood in Scotland
John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, in a three-story stone building now preserved as a museum. He was the third of eight children of Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye; their other children were Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (twins), and the American-born Joanna. His earliest recollections were of taking short walks with his grandfather when he was three. In his autobiography, he described his boyhood pursuits, which included fighting, either by re-enacting romantic battles from the Wars of Scottish Independence or just wrestling on the playground, and hunting for birds' nests (ostensibly to one-up his fellows as they compared notes on who knew where the most were located).: 25, 37 Author Amy Marquis notes that he began his "love affair" with nature while young, and implies that it may have been in reaction to his strict religious upbringing. "His father believed that anything that distracted from Bible studies was frivolous and punishable." But the young Muir was a "restless spirit" and especially "prone to lashings". As a young boy, Muir became fascinated with the East Lothian landscape, and spent a lot of time wandering the local coastline and countryside. It was during this time that he became interested in natural history and the works of Scottish naturalist Alexander Wilson.
Although he spent the majority of his life in America, Muir never forgot his roots in Scotland. He held a strong connection with his birthplace and Scottish identity throughout his life and was frequently heard talking about his childhood spent amid the East Lothian countryside. He greatly admired the works of Thomas Carlyle and poetry of Robert Burns; he was known to carry a collection of poems by Burns during his travels through the American wilderness. He returned to Scotland on a trip in 1893, where he met one of his Dunbar schoolmates and visited the places of his youth that were etched in his memory. He never lost his Scottish accent since he was already 11 years old when he and his family emigrated to America.
Immigration to America
In 1849, Muir's family immigrated to the United States, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin, called Fountain Lake Farm. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Stephen Fox recounts that Muir's father found the Church of Scotland insufficiently strict in faith and practice, leading to their immigration and joining a congregation of the Campbellite Restoration Movement, called the Disciples of Christ.: 7 By the age of 11, the young Muir had learned to recite "by heart and by sore flesh" all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament.: 30 In maturity, while remaining a deeply spiritual man, Muir may have changed his orthodox beliefs. He wrote, "I never tried to abandon creeds or code of civilization; they went away of their own accord ... without leaving any consciousness of loss." Elsewhere in his writings, he described the conventional image of a Creator "as purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half-penny theater".: 95, 115
When he was 22 years old, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, paying his own way for several years. There, under a towering black locust tree beside North Hall, Muir took his first botany lesson. A fellow student plucked a flower from the tree and used it to explain how the grand locust is a member of the pea family, related to the straggling pea plant. Fifty years later, the naturalist Muir described the day in his autobiography. "This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm".: 225 As a freshman, Muir studied chemistry with Professor Ezra Carr and his wife Jeanne; they became lifelong friends and Muir developed a lasting interest in chemistry and the sciences.: 76 Muir took an eclectic approach to his studies, attending classes for two years but never being listed higher than a first-year student due to his unusual selection of courses. Records showed his class status as "irregular gent" and, even though he never graduated, he learned enough geology and botany to inform his later wanderings.: 36
In 1863, his brother Daniel left Wisconsin and moved to Southern Ontario (then known as Canada West in the United Canadas), to avoid the draft during the US Civil War. Muir left school and travelled to the same region in 1864, and spent the spring, summer, and fall exploring the woods and swamps, and collecting plants around the southern reaches of Lake Huron's Georgian Bay.: 85, 92 Muir hiked along the Niagara Escarpment, including much of today's Bruce Trail. With his money running low and winter coming, he reunited with his brother Daniel near Meaford, Ontario, who persuaded him to work with him at the sawmill and rake factory of William Trout and Charles Jay. Muir lived with the Trout family in an area called Trout Hollow, south of Meaford, on the Bighead River. While there, he continued "botanizing", exploring the escarpment and bogs, collecting and cataloging plants. One source appears to indicate he worked at the mill/factory until the summer of 1865,: 37 while another says he stayed on at Trout Hollow until after a fire burned it down in February 1866.
In March 1866, Muir returned to the United States, settling in Indianapolis to work in a wagon wheel factory. He proved valuable to his employers because of his inventiveness in improving the machines and processes; he was promoted to supervisor, being paid $25 per week.: 48 In early-March 1867, an accident changed the course of his life: a tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye. The file slipped and cut the cornea in his right eye and then his left eye sympathetically failed. He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks to regain his sight, worried about whether he would end up blind. When he regained his sight, "he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light". Muir later wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons". From that point on, he determined to "be true to [himself]" and follow his dream of exploration and study of plants.: 97
In September 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Kentucky to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find". When Muir arrived at Cedar Key, he began working for Richard Hodgson at Hodgson's sawmill. However, three days after accepting the job at Hodgson's, Muir almost died of a malarial sickness. After spending three months in an oft delirious state, Muir's condition improved to such that he was able to move about the Hodgson's house and look outside. Due to their unending kindness in caring for his life, Muir stated that he "doubtless owe my life" to the Hodgsons.
One evening in early January 1868, Muir climbed onto the Hodgson house roof to watch the sunset. He saw a ship, the Island Belle, and learned it would soon be sailing for Cuba.: 150, 154 Muir boarded the ship, and while in Havana, he spent his hours studying shells and flowers and visiting the botanical garden in the city.: 56 Afterwards, he sailed to New York City and booked passage to California.: 40–41 In 1878, Muir served as a guide and artist for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey on the survey of the 39th parallel across the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah.
Explorer of nature
California
Experiencing Yosemite
Finally settling in San Francisco, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Muir notes that "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower." He later returned to Yosemite and worked as a shepherd for a season. He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak and Mount Dana, and hiked an old trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake.
Muir built a small cabin along Yosemite Creek,: 207 designing it so that a section of the stream flowed through a corner of the room so he could enjoy the sound of running water. He lived in the cabin for two years: 143 and wrote about this period in his book First Summer in the Sierra (1911). Muir's biographer, Frederick Turner, notes Muir's journal entry upon first visiting the valley and writes that his description "blazes from the page with the authentic force of a conversion experience".: 172
Friendships
During these years in Yosemite, Muir was unmarried, often unemployed, with no prospects for a career, and had "periods of anguish", writes naturalist author John Tallmadge. He did marry in 1880 to Louisa Strentzel. He went into business for 10 years with his father-in-law managing the orchards on the family 2600 acre farm in Martinez, California. John and Louisa had two daughters, Wanda Muir Hanna and Helen Muir Funk. He was sustained by the natural environment and by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote about the very life that Muir was then living. On excursions into the back country of Yosemite, he traveled alone, carrying "only a tin cup, a handful of tea, a loaf of bread, and a copy of Emerson.": 52–53 He usually spent his evenings sitting by a campfire in his overcoat, reading Emerson under the stars. As the years passed, he became a "fixture in the valley", respected for his knowledge of natural history, his skill as a guide, and his vivid storytelling.: 53 Visitors to the valley often included scientists, artists, and celebrities, many of whom made a point of meeting with Muir.
Muir maintained a close friendship for 38 years with William Keith, a California landscape painter. They were both born the same year in Scotland and shared a love for the mountains of California.
In 1871, after Muir had lived in Yosemite for three years, Emerson, with several friends and family, arrived in Yosemite during a tour of the Western United States.: 105–46 The two men met, and according to Tallmadge, "Emerson was delighted to find at the end of his career the prophet-naturalist he had called for so long ago ... And for Muir, Emerson's visit came like a laying on of hands.": 53 Emerson spent one day with Muir, and he offered him a teaching position at Harvard, which Muir declined. Muir later wrote, "I never for a moment thought of giving up God's big show for a mere profship!": 53
Muir also spent time with photographer Carleton Watkins and studied his photographs of Yosemite.
Geological studies and theories
Pursuit of his love of science, especially geology, often occupied his free time. Muir soon became convinced that glaciers had sculpted many of the features of the Yosemite Valley and surrounding area. This notion was in strong contradiction to the accepted contemporary theory, promulgated by Josiah Whitney (head of the California Geological Survey), which attributed the formation of the valley to a catastrophic earthquake. As Muir's ideas spread, Whitney tried to discredit Muir by branding him as an amateur. But Louis Agassiz, the premier geologist of the day, saw merit in Muir's ideas and lauded him as "the first man I have ever found who has any adequate conception of glacial action".
In 1871, Muir discovered an active alpine glacier below Merced Peak, which helped his theories gain acceptance.
A large earthquake centered near Lone Pine in Owens Valley strongly shook occupants of Yosemite Valley in March 1872. The quake woke Muir in the early morning, and he ran out of his cabin "both glad and frightened", exclaiming, "A noble earthquake!" Other valley settlers, who believed Whitney's ideas, feared that the quake was a prelude to a cataclysmic deepening of the valley. Muir had no such fear and promptly made a moonlit survey of new talus piles created by earthquake-triggered rockslides. This event led more people to believe in Muir's ideas about the formation of the valley.
Botanical studies
In addition to his geologic studies, Muir also investigated the plant life of the Yosemite area. In 1873 and 1874, he made field studies along the western flank of the Sierra on the distribution and ecology of isolated groves of Giant Sequoia. In 1876, the American Association for the Advancement of Science published Muir's paper on the subject.
Pacific Northwest
Between 1879 and 1899, Muir made seven trips to Alaska, as far as Unalaska and Barrow. Muir, Mr. Young (Fort Wrangell missionary) and a group of Native American Guides first traveled to Alaska in 1879 and were the first Euro-Americans to explore Glacier Bay. Muir Glacier was later named after him. He traveled into British Columbia a third of the way up the Stikine River, likening its Grand Canyon to "a Yosemite that was a hundred miles long". Muir recorded over 300 glaciers along the river's course.
He returned for further explorations in southeast Alaska in 1880 and in 1881 was with the party that landed on Wrangel Island on the USS Corwin and claimed that island for the United States. He documented this experience in journal entries and newspaper articles—later compiled and edited into his book The Cruise of the Corwin. In 1888 after seven years of managing the Strentzel fruit ranch in Alhambra Valley, California, his health began to suffer. He returned to the hills to recover, climbing Mount Rainier in Washington and writing Ascent of Mount Rainier.
Activism
Preservation efforts
Establishing Yosemite National Park
Muir threw himself into the preservationist role with great vigor. He envisioned the Yosemite area and the Sierra as pristine lands. He thought the greatest threat to the Yosemite area and the Sierra was domesticated livestock—especially domestic sheep, which he referred to as "hoofed locusts". In June 1889, the influential associate editor of The Century magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, camped with Muir in Tuolumne Meadows and saw firsthand the damage a large flock of sheep had done to the grassland. Johnson agreed to publish any article Muir wrote on the subject of excluding livestock from the Sierra high country. He also agreed to use his influence to introduce a bill to Congress to make the Yosemite area into a national park, modeled after Yellowstone National Park.
On September 30, 1890, the US Congress passed a bill that essentially followed recommendations that Muir had suggested in two Century articles, "The Treasures of the Yosemite" and "Features of the Proposed National Park", both published in 1890. But to Muir's dismay, the bill left Yosemite Valley under state control, as it had been since the 1860s.
Co-founding the Sierra Club
In early 1892, Professor Henry Senger, a philologist at the University of California, Berkeley, contacted Muir with the idea of forming a local 'alpine club' for mountain lovers. Senger and San Francisco attorney Warren Olney sent out invitations "for the purpose of forming a 'Sierra Club'. Mr. John Muir will preside". On May 28, 1892, the first meeting of the Sierra Club was held to write articles of incorporation. One week later Muir was elected president, Warren Olney was elected vice-president, and a board of directors was chosen that included David Starr Jordan, president of the new Stanford University. Muir remained president until his death 22 years later.: 107–108
The Sierra Club immediately opposed efforts to reduce Yosemite National Park by half, and began holding educational and scientific meetings. At one meeting in the fall of 1895 that included Muir, Joseph LeConte, and William R. Dudley, the Sierra Club discussed the idea of establishing 'national forest reservations', which were later called National Forests. The Sierra Club was active in the successful campaign to transfer Yosemite National Park from state to federal control in 1906. The fight to preserve Hetch Hetchy Valley was also taken up by the Sierra Club, with some prominent San Francisco members opposing the fight. Eventually a vote was held that overwhelmingly put the Sierra Club behind the opposition to Hetch Hetchy Dam.
Preservation vs conservation
In July 1896, Muir became associated with Gifford Pinchot, a national leader in the conservation movement. Pinchot was the first head of the United States Forest Service and a leading spokesman for the sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the people. His views eventually clashed with Muir's and highlighted two diverging views of the use of the country's natural resources. Pinchot saw conservation as a means of managing the nation's natural resources for long-term sustainable commercial use. As a professional forester, his view was that "forestry is tree farming", without destroying the long-term viability of the forests. Muir valued nature for its spiritual and transcendental qualities. In one essay about the National Parks, he referred to them as "places for rest, inspiration, and prayers." He often encouraged city dwellers to experience nature for its spiritual nourishment. Both men opposed reckless exploitation of natural resources, including clear-cutting of forests. Even Muir acknowledged the need for timber and the forests to provide it, but Pinchot's view of wilderness management was more resource-oriented.
Their friendship ended late in the summer of 1897 when Pinchot released a statement to a Seattle newspaper supporting sheep grazing in forest reserves. Muir confronted Pinchot and demanded an explanation. When Pinchot reiterated his position, Muir told him: "I don't want any thing more to do with you". This philosophical divide soon expanded and split the conservation movement into two camps: the "preservationists", led by Muir; and Pinchot's camp, who used the term "conservation". The two men debated their positions in popular magazines, such as Outlook, Harper's Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, World's Work, and Century. Their contrasting views were highlighted again when the United States was deciding whether to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley. Pinchot favored damming the valley as "the highest possible use which could be made of it". In contrast, Muir proclaimed, "Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the hearts of man".
In 1899, Muir accompanied railroad executive E. H. Harriman and esteemed scientists on the famous exploratory voyage along the Alaska coast aboard the luxuriously refitted 250-foot (76 m) steamer, the George W. Elder. He later relied on his friendship with Harriman to pressure Congress to pass conservation legislation.
In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt accompanied Muir on a visit to Yosemite. Muir joined Roosevelt in Oakland, California, for the train trip to Raymond. The presidential entourage then traveled by stagecoach into the park. While traveling to the park, Muir told the president about state mismanagement of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley's resources. Even before they entered the park, he was able to convince Roosevelt that the best way to protect the valley was through federal control and management.
After entering the park and seeing the magnificent splendor of the valley, the president asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite. Muir and Roosevelt set off largely by themselves and camped in the back country. The duo talked late into the night, slept in the brisk open air of Glacier Point, and were dusted by a fresh snowfall in the morning. It was a night Roosevelt never forgot. He later told a crowd, "Lying out at night under those giant Sequoias was like lying in a temple built by no hand of man, a temple grander than any human architect could by any possibility build." Muir, too, cherished the camping trip. "Camping with the President was a remarkable experience", he wrote. "I fairly fell in love with him".
Muir then increased efforts by the Sierra Club to consolidate park management. In 1906 Congress transferred the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the park.
Nature writer
In his life, Muir published six volumes of writings, all describing explorations of natural settings. Four additional books were published posthumously. Several books were subsequently published that collected essays and articles from various sources. Miller writes that what was most important about his writings was not their quantity, but their "quality". He notes that they have had a "lasting effect on American culture in helping to create the desire and will to protect and preserve wild and natural environments".: 173
His first appearance in print was by accident, writes Miller; a person he did not know submitted, without his permission or awareness, a personal letter to his friend Jeanne Carr, describing Calypso borealis, a rare flower he had encountered. The piece was published anonymously, identified as having been written by an "inspired pilgrim".: 174 Throughout his many years as a nature writer, Muir frequently rewrote and expanded on earlier writings from his journals, as well as articles published in magazines. He often compiled and organized such earlier writings as collections of essays or included them as part of narrative books.: 173
Jeanne Carr: friend and mentor
Muir's friendship with Jeanne Carr had a lifelong influence on his career as a naturalist and writer. They first met in the fall of 1860, when, at age 22, he entered a number of his homemade inventions in the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society Fair. Carr, a fair assistant, was asked by fair officials to review Muir's exhibits to see if they had merit. She thought they did and "saw in his entries evidence of genius worthy of special recognition", notes Miller.: 33 As a result, Muir received a diploma and a monetary award for his handmade clocks and thermometer.: 1 During the next three years while a student at the University of Wisconsin, he was befriended by Carr and her husband, Ezra, a professor at the same university. According to Muir biographer Bonnie Johanna Gisel, the Carrs recognized his "pure mind, unsophisticated nature, inherent curiosity, scholarly acumen, and independent thought". Jeanne Carr, 35 years of age, especially appreciated his youthful individuality, along with his acceptance of "religious truths" that were much like her own.: 2
Muir was often invited to the Carrs' home; he shared Jeanne's love of plants. In 1864, he left Wisconsin to begin exploring the Canadian wilderness and, while there, began corresponding with her about his activities. Carr wrote Muir in return and encouraged him in his explorations and writings, eventually having an important influence over his personal goals. At one point she asked Muir to read a book she felt would influence his thinking, Lamartine's The Stonemason of Saint Point. It was the story of a man whose life she hoped would "metabolize in Muir", writes Gisel, and "was a projection of the life she envisioned for him". According to Gisel, the story was about a "poor man with a pure heart", who found in nature "divine lessons and saw all of God's creatures interconnected".: 3
After Muir returned to the United States, he spent the next four years exploring Yosemite, while at the same time writing articles for publication. During those years, Muir and Carr continued corresponding. She sent many of her friends to Yosemite to meet Muir and "to hear him preach the gospel of the mountains", writes Gisel. The most notable was naturalist and author Ralph Waldo Emerson. The importance of Carr, who continually gave Muir reassurance and inspiration, "cannot be overestimated", adds Gisel. It was "through his letters to her that he developed a voice and purpose". She also tried to promote Muir's writings by submitting his letters to a monthly magazine for publication. Muir came to trust Carr as his "spiritual mother", and they remained friends for 30 years.: 6 In one letter she wrote to Muir while he was living in Yosemite, she tried to keep him from despairing as to his purpose in life.: 43
The value of their friendship was first disclosed by a friend of Carr's, clergyman and writer G. Wharton James. After obtaining copies of their private letters from Carr, and despite pleadings from Muir to return them, he instead published articles about their friendship, using those letters as a primary source. In one such article, his focus was Muir's debt to Carr, stating that she was his "guiding star" who "led him into the noble paths of life, and then kept him there".: 87–88
John Charles Van Dyke and Dix Strong Van Dyke
John Charles Van Dyke was an author and Professor of Art at Rutgers College (now Rutgers, State University of New Jersey). His nephew Dix Strong Van Dyke had gone to Daggett, California to seek his fortune. Like his uncle, Dix was an author, who wrote Daggett: Life in a Mojave Frontier Town (Creating the North American Landscape). John Muir found his way to Daggett and had many conversations with the uncle and nephew Van Dyke at the Dix ranch. This likely had an effect on his writings. His daughter Helen married Frank Buel and lived in Daggett.
Writing becomes his work
Muir's friend, zoologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, writes that Muir's style of writing did not come to him easily, but only with intense effort. "Daily he rose at 4:30 o'clock, and after a simple cup of coffee labored incessantly. ... he groans over his labors, he writes and rewrites and interpolates". Osborn notes that he preferred using the simplest English language, and therefore admired above all the writings of Carlyle, Emerson and Thoreau. "He is a very firm believer in Thoreau and starts by reading deeply of this author".: 29 His secretary, Marion Randall Parsons, also noted that "composition was always slow and laborious for him. ... Each sentence, each phrase, each word, underwent his critical scrutiny, not once but twenty times before he was satisfied to let it stand". Muir often told her, "This business of writing books is a long, tiresome, endless job".: 33
Miller speculates that Muir recycled his earlier writings partly due to his "dislike of the writing process". He adds that Muir "did not enjoy the work, finding it difficult and tedious". He was generally unsatisfied with the finished result, finding prose "a weak instrument for the reality he wished to convey".: 173 However, he was prodded by friends and his wife to keep writing and as a result of their influence he kept at it, although never satisfied. Muir wrote in 1872, "No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to 'know' these mountains. One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books".: xviii In one of his essays, he gave an example of the deficiencies of writing versus experiencing nature.
Philosophical beliefs
Nature and theology
Muir believed that to discover truth, he must turn to what he believed were the most accurate sources. In his book, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913), he writes that during his childhood, his father made him read the Bible every day. Muir eventually memorized three-quarters of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament.: 20 Muir's father read Josephus's War of the Jews to understand the culture of first-century Judea, as it was written by an eyewitness, and illuminated the culture during the period of the New Testament.: 43 But as Muir became attached to the American natural landscapes he explored, Williams notes that he began to see another "primary source for understanding God: the Book of Nature". According to Williams, in nature, especially in the wilderness, Muir was able to study the plants and animals in an environment that he believed "came straight from the hand of God, uncorrupted by civilization and domestication".: 43 As Tallmadge notes, Muir's belief in this "Book of Nature" compelled him to tell the story of "this creation in words any reader could understand". As a result, his writings were to become "prophecy, for [they] sought to change our angle of vision".: 53
Williams notes that Muir's philosophy and world view rotated around his perceived dichotomy between civilization and nature. From this developed his core belief that "wild is superior".: 41 His nature writings became a "synthesis of natural theology" with scripture that helped him understand the origins of the natural world. According to Williams, philosophers and theologians such as Thomas Dick suggested that the "best place to discover the true attributes of deity was in Nature". He came to believe that God was always active in the creation of life and thereby kept the natural order of the world.: 41 As a result, Muir "styled himself as a John the Baptist", adds Williams, "whose duty was to immerse in 'mountain baptism' everyone he could".: 46 Williams concludes that Muir saw nature as a great teacher, "revealing the mind of God", and this belief became the central theme of his later journeys and the "subtext" of his nature writing.: 50
During his career as writer and while living in the mountains, Muir continued to experience the "presence of the divine in nature", writes Holmes.: 5 : 317 His personal letters also conveyed these feelings of ecstasy. Historian Catherine Albanese stated that in one of his letters, "Muir's eucharist made Thoreau's feast on wood-chuck and huckleberry seem almost anemic". Muir was extremely fond of Thoreau and was probably influenced more by him than even Emerson. Muir often referred to himself as a "disciple" of Thoreau.: 100
Sensory perceptions and light
During his first summer in the Sierra as a shepherd, Muir wrote field notes that emphasized the role that the senses play in human perceptions of the environment. According to Williams, he speculated that the world was an unchanging entity that was interpreted by the brain through the senses, and, writes Muir, "If the creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us ... we would never doubt that we were in another world ...": 43 While doing his studies of nature, he would try to remember everything he observed as if his senses were recording the impressions, until he could write them in his journal. As a result of his intense desire to remember facts, he filled his field journals with notes on precipitation, temperature, and even cloud formations.: 45
However, Muir took his journal entries further than recording factual observations. Williams notes that the observations he recorded amounted to a description of "the sublimity of Nature", and what amounted to "an aesthetic and spiritual notebook". Muir felt that his task was more than just recording "phenomena", but also to "illuminate the spiritual implications of those phenomena", writes Williams. For Muir, mountain skies, for example, seemed painted with light, and came to "... symbolize divinity".: 45 He often described his observations in terms of light.
Muir biographer Steven Holmes notes that Muir used words like "glory" and "glorious" to suggest that light was taking on a religious dimension: "It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the notion of glory in Muir's published writings, where no other single image carries more emotional or religious weight",: 178 adding that his words "exactly parallels its Hebraic origins", in which biblical writings often indicate a divine presence with light, as in the burning bush or pillar of fire, and described as "the glory of God".: 179 : 24
Seeing nature as home
Muir often used the term "home" as a metaphor for both nature and his general attitude toward the "natural world itself", notes Holmes. He often used domestic language to describe his scientific observations, as when he saw nature as providing a home for even the smallest plant life: "the little purple plant, tended by its Maker, closed its petals, crouched low in its crevice of a home, and enjoyed the storm in safety".: 57 Muir also saw nature as his own home, as when he wrote friends and described the Sierra as "God's mountain mansion". He considered not only the mountains as home, however, as he also felt a closeness even to the smallest objects: "The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. No wonder when we consider that we all have the same Father and Mother".: 319
In his later years, he used the metaphor of nature as home in his writings to promote wilderness preservation.: 1
Not surprisingly, Muir's deep-seated feeling about nature as being his true home led to tension with his family at his home in Martinez, California. He once told a visitor to his ranch there, "This is a good place to be housed in during stormy weather, ... to write in, and to raise children in, but it is not my home. Up there", pointing towards the Sierra Nevada, "is my home".: 74
Native Americans
Muir's expressed mixed attitudes towards Native Americans over his life, from sympathy to distaste. He saw nature as ideal when it was free from man's influence, including Native Americans, but he did not recognize that the landscapes he loved had been shaped by Native Americans for millennia. His earliest encounters, during his childhood in Wisconsin, were with Winnebago Indians, who begged for food and stole his favorite horse. In spite of that, he had expressed sympathy for their "being robbed of their lands and pushed ruthlessly back into narrower and narrower limits by alien races who were cutting off their means of livelihood". His early encounters with the Paiute in California left him feeling ambivalent after seeing their lifestyle, which he described as "lazy" and "superstitious".
Muir wrote of the Miwoks in Yosemite as “most ugly, and some of them altogether hideous" and that “they seemed to have no right place in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down the pass.” Ecofeminist philosopher Carolyn Merchant has criticized Muir, believing that he wrote disparagingly of the Native Americans he encountered in his early explorations. Later, after living with Indians, he praised and grew more respectful of their low impact on the wilderness, compared to the heavy impact by European Americans. However, in his journals, he often describes those he encounters as "dirty," "irregular" and "unnatural."
Muir was given the Stickeen (Muir's spelling, coastal tribe) name "Ancoutahan", meaning "adopted chief".
In response to claims about Muir's attitudes about Native Americans, Sierra Club national Board member Chad Hanson wrote, "Muir wrote repeatedly about the intelligence and dignity of Native Americans, and honored how traditional Indigenous peoples lived in peaceful coexistence with Nature and wild creatures, expressing his view that Native peoples ‘rank above’ white settlers, who he increasingly described as selfish, base, and lacking honor. This would become a constant theme in Muir's writings, as he attacked the dominant white culture's destructive and greedy ways, and its anthrosupremacist mindset that placed humans above all else and recognized no intrinsic value in ecosystems or wildlife species beyond whatever profit could be gained by exploiting them."
African Americans
Muir spoke and wrote about the equality of all people, "regardless of color, or race", and wrote about the immorality of slavery in his final book, Travels in Alaska. During his time in Alaska he also wrote,...how we were all children of one father; sketched the characteristics of the different races of mankind, showing that no matter how far apart their countries were, how they differed in color, size, language, etc. and no matter how different and how various the ways in which they got a living, that the white man and all the people of the world were essentially alike, that we all had ten fingers and toes and our bodies were the same, whether white, brown, black or different colors, and speak different languages.
In his earlier years, Muir did make some disparaging remarks about African Americans. In A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, Muir described African Americans as "well trained" but "making a great deal of noise and doing little work. One energetic white man, working with a will, would easily pick as much cotton as half a dozen Sambos and Sallies." Describing the sight of two African Americans at a campfire, he wrote, "I could see their ivory gleaming from the great lips, and their smooth cheeks flashing off light as if made of glass. Seen anywhere but in the South, the glossy pair would have been taken for twin devils, but here it was only a Negro and his wife at their supper." However, at no point in Muir's personal journey to the Gulf did he support or empathize with the Southern cause, avoiding entreaties from Southern hosts when they prodded him.
In 2020, in light of the movement to remove Confederate monuments across the country, Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, reflected on Muir's complex and controversial legacy and announced that the club would shift towards investing in racial justice work and determine which of its monuments need to be renamed or removed. On July 22, 2020, the Sierra Club wrote:Muir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement. He made derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life. As the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir's words and actions carry an especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.
Some of Muir's associates cited by Brune and others, such as Joseph LeConte, David Starr Jordan, and Henry Fairfield Osborn were closely related to the early eugenics movement in the United States. Some claim Muir did not espouse such beliefs.
Aaron Mair, who in 2015 became the first Black president of the Sierra Club board, stated that the contents and framing of Muir in Brune's post "are a misrepresentation". Mair went on to state that Brune, "did not consult him or the other two Black board members before pushing ahead on what he called a “revisionist” and “ahistorical” account of Muir's writings, thoughts and life." Mair, along with two other Sierra Club board members, Chad Hanson and Mary Ann Nelson, wrote a response to Brune's attack on Muir, writing:...while some of Muir’s colleagues promoted White supremacist myths and exclusionary views regarding national parks and forests, Muir spoke out about the importance of making these areas accessible and encouraging all people to experience them, writing, “Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.” He came to believe deeply in the equality of all people, writing, “We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places.”
Hetch Hetchy Dam controversy
With population growth continuing in San Francisco, political pressure increased to dam the Tuolumne River for use as a water reservoir. Muir passionately opposed the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley because he found Hetch Hetchy as stunning as Yosemite Valley.: 249–62 Muir, the Sierra Club and Robert Underwood Johnson fought against inundating the valley. Muir wrote to President Roosevelt pleading for him to scuttle the project. Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, suspended the Interior Department's approval for the Hetch Hetchy right-of-way. After years of national debate, Taft's successor Woodrow Wilson signed the bill authorizing the dam into law on December 19, 1913. Muir felt a great loss from the destruction of the valley, his last major battle. He wrote to his friend Vernon Kellogg, "As to the loss of the Sierra Park Valley [Hetch Hetchy] it's hard to bear. The destruction of the charming groves and gardens, the finest in all California, goes to my heart."
Personal life
In 1878, when he was nearing the age of 40, Muir's friends "pressured him to return to society". Soon after he returned to the Oakland area, he was introduced by Jeanne Carr to Louisa Strentzel, daughter of a prominent physician and horticulturist with a 2,600-acre (11 km2) fruit orchard in Martinez, California, northeast of Oakland. In 1880, after he returned from a trip to Alaska, Muir and Strentzel married. John Muir went into partnership with his father-in-law John Strentzel, and for ten years directed most of his energy into managing this large fruit farm. Although Muir was a loyal, dedicated husband, and father of two daughters, "his heart remained wild", writes Marquis. His wife understood his needs, and after seeing his restlessness at the ranch would sometimes "shoo him back up" to the mountains. He sometimes took his daughters with him.
The house and part of the ranch are now the John Muir National Historic Site. In addition, the W.H.C. Folsom House, where Muir worked as a printer, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Muir became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1903.
Death
Muir died, aged 76, at California Hospital in Los Angeles on December 24, 1914, of pneumonia. He had been in Daggett, California, to see his daughter, Helen Muir Funk. His grandson, Ross Hanna, lived until 2014, when he died at age 91.
Legacy
During his lifetime John Muir published over 300 articles and 12 books. He co-founded the Sierra Club, which helped establish a number of national parks after he died. Today the club has over 2.4 million members.
Muir has been called the "patron saint of the American wilderness" and its "archetypal free spirit". "As a dreamer and activist, his eloquent words changed the way Americans saw their mountains, forests, seashores, and deserts", said nature writer Gretel Ehrlich. He not only led the efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks, but his writings presented "human culture and wild nature as one of humility and respect for all life".
Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century Magazine, which published many of Muir's articles, states that he influenced people's appreciation of nature and national parks, which became a lasting legacy:
The world will look back to the time we live in and remember the voice of one crying in the wilderness and bless the name of John Muir. ... He sung the glory of nature like another Psalmist, and, as a true artist, was unashamed of his emotions. His countrymen owe him gratitude as the pioneer of our system of national parks. ... Muir's writings and enthusiasm were the chief forces that inspired the movement. All the other torches were lighted from his.
Muir exalted wild nature over human culture and civilization, believing that all life was sacred. Turner describes him as "a man who in his singular way rediscovered America. ... an American pioneer, an American hero". The primary aim of Muir's nature philosophy, writes Wilkins, was to challenge mankind's "enormous conceit", and in so doing, he moved beyond the Transcendentalism of Emerson to a "biocentric perspective on the world". He did so by describing the natural world as "a conductor of divinity", and his writings often made nature synonymous with God.: 265 His friend, Henry Fairfield Osborn, observed that as a result of his religious upbringing, Muir retained "this belief, which is so strongly expressed in the Old Testament, that all the works of nature are directly the work of God". In the opinion of Enos Mills, a contemporary who established Rocky Mountain National Park, Muir's writings were "likely to be the most influential force in this century".
Since 1970, the University of the Pacific has housed the largest collection of Muir's personal papers, including his travel journals and notebooks, manuscripts, correspondence, drawings and personal library. In 2019, the University of the Pacific was given full ownership of the Muir collection, which had been expanding over the years. The university has a John Muir Center for Environmental Studies, the Muir Experience, as well as other programs related to Muir and his work.
Tributes and honors
California celebrates John Muir Day on April 21 each year. Muir was the first person honored with a California commemorative day when legislation signed in 1988 created John Muir Day, effective from 1989 onward. Muir is one of three people so honored in California, along with Harvey Milk Day and Ronald Reagan Day.
Mountain Days, a 2000 musical by Craig Bohmler and Mary Bracken Phillips, celebrates Muir's life and was performed annually in a custom-built amphitheater in Muir's adult hometown of Martinez, California.
The play Thank God for John Muir, by Andrew Dallmeyer is based on his life.
The following places are named after Muir:
Muir Woods also called John Muir Park, in Madison, Wisconsin, was designed by G. William Longenecker and Richard E Tipple from the University of Wisconsin Landscape Architecture Department. Official dedication of John Muir Park took place on February 8, 1964. Ceremonies at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin headquarters building included the unveiling of a John Muir commemorative stamp.
Muir Valley – a privately owned nature preserve and rock climbing area in the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky. The Valley is approximately 400 acres in size and walled in by over seven miles of majestic cliffs of hard Corbin Sandstone. The owners, Rick & Liz Weber, chose the name, "Muir Valley", to honor the memory of John Muir.
John Muir was featured on two US commemorative postage stamps. A 5-cent stamp issued on April 29, 1964, was designed by Rudolph Wendelin, and showed Muir's face superimposed on a grove of redwood trees, and the inscription, "John Muir Conservationist". A 32-cent stamp issued on February 3, 1998, was part of the "Celebrate the Century" series, and showed Muir in Yosemite Valley, with the inscription "John Muir, Preservationist". An image of Muir, with the California condor and Half Dome, appears on the California state quarter released in 2005. A quotation of his appears on the reverse side of the Indianapolis Prize Lilly Medal for conservation. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted John Muir into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
The John Muir Trust is a Scottish charity established as a membership organization in 1983 to conserve wild land and wild places. It has more than 11,000 members internationally.
The John Muir Birthplace Charitable Trust is a Scottish charity whose aim is to support John Muir's birthplace in Dunbar, which opened in 2003 as an interpretative centre focused on Muir's work. A statue of Muir as a boy by the Ukrainian sculptor Valentin Znoba had been unveiled outside the house in 1997.
Muirite (a mineral), Erigeron muirii, Carlquistia muirii (two species of aster), Ivesia muirii (a member of the rose family), Troglodytes troglodytes muiri (a wren), Ochotona princeps muiri (a pika), Thecla muirii (a butterfly), Calamagrostis muiriana (a Sierra Nevada subalpine-alpine grass) and Amplaria muiri (a millipede) were all named after John Muir.
In 2006, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
See also
George Dorr
Works
Books
Essays online
Notes
Further reading
Austin, Richard C. (1991). Baptized into Wilderness: A Christian Perspective on John Muir. Creekside Press. ISBN 978-0-9625831-2-4.
Bilbro, Jeffrey. "Preserving "God's Wildness" for Redemptive Baptism: Muir and Disciples of Christ Theology," in Loving God's Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2015. 63-98. ISBN 978-0-8173-1857-4.
Blessing, Matt. "'The inventions, though of little importance, opened all doors for me': John Muir's Years as an Inventor". Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 99, no. 4 (Summer 2016): 16–27.
Ehrlich, Gretel (2000). John Muir: Nature's Visionary. National Geographic. ISBN 978-0-7922-7954-9.
Engberg, Robert and Donald Wesling, 1999. John Muir: To Yosemite and Beyond. University of Utah Press: Salt Lake City. ISBN 978-0-87480-580-2
Fleck, Richard F., ed., 1997. Mountaineering Essays. University of Utah Press: Salt Lake City. ISBN 978-0-87480-544-4.
Gifford, Terry (2011). John Muir's Literary Science. The Public Domain Review.
Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "Muir, John" . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
Hunt, James B. 2013. Restless Fires: Young John Muir's Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf in 1867–68. Mercer University Press.
King, Dean. Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite. New York: Scribner, 2023.
Lasky, Kathryn. John Muir: America's first environmentalist (Candlewick Press, 2014)
Miller, Char (2001). Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism. Island Press. ISBN 978-1-55963-822-7.
O'Casey, Terrence (September 24, 2006). "John Muir: God's Preacher of Creation". Christian Standard.
Smith, Michael B. (June 1998). "The Value of a Tree: Public Debates of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot". The Historian. 60 (4): 757–778. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1998.tb01414.x. ISSN 0018-2370.
Turner, Frederick. John Muir: From Scotland to the Sierra: A Biography (Canongate Books, 2014)
White, Graham, ed. (2009). Journeys in the Wilderness, A John Muir Reader. Birlinn. ISBN 978-1-84158-697-7.
Williams, Dennis (2002). God's Wilds: John Muir's Vision of Nature. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1-58544-143-3.
Witschi, N.S. (2002). Traces of Gold: California's Natural Resources and the Claim to Realism in Western American Literature. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-1117-9.
Worster, Donald (January 2005). "John Muir and the Modern Passion for Nature". Environmental History. 10 (1): 8–19. doi:10.1093/envhis/10.1.8.
Worster, Donald (2008). A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516682-8.
Wuerthner, George (1994). Yosemite: A Visitor's Companion. Stackpole Books. pp. 25–37. ISBN 978-0-8117-2598-9.
Young, Samuel Hall (1915). Alaska Days with John Muir. Fleming H. Revell.
External links
Works by John Muir in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
Works by John Muir at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about John Muir at the Internet Archive
Works by John Muir at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
John Muir at Find a Grave
John Muir Papers at Holt-Atherton Special Collections. |
Ulysses_S._Grant | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant | [
313
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant"
] | Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant; April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was the 18th president of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877. As commanding general, Grant led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865.
Grant was born in Ohio and graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1843. He served with distinction in the Mexican–American War, but resigned from the army in 1854 and returned to civilian life impoverished. In 1861, shortly after the Civil War began, Grant joined the Union Army and rose to prominence after securing victories in the western theater. In 1863, he led the Vicksburg campaign that gave Union forces control of the Mississippi River and dealt a major strategic blow to the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general and command of all Union armies after his victory at Chattanooga. For thirteen months, Grant fought Robert E. Lee during the high-casualty Overland Campaign which ended with the capture of Lee's army at Appomattox, where he formally surrendered to Grant. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson promoted Grant to General of the Army. Later, Grant broke with Johnson over Reconstruction policies. A war hero, drawn in by his sense of duty, Grant was unanimously nominated by the Republican Party and then elected president in 1868.
As president, Grant stabilized the post-war national economy, supported congressional Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment, and prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan. Under Grant, the Union was completely restored. An effective civil rights executive, Grant signed a bill to create the United States Department of Justice and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction. In 1871, he created the first Civil Service Commission, advancing the civil service more than any prior president. Grant was re-elected in the 1872 presidential election, but was inundated by executive scandals during his second term. His response to the Panic of 1873 was ineffective in halting the Long Depression, which contributed to the Democrats winning the House majority in 1874. Grant's Native American policy was to assimilate Indians into Anglo-American culture. In Grant's foreign policy, the Alabama Claims against Britain were peacefully resolved, but the Senate rejected Grant's annexation of Santo Domingo. In the disputed 1876 presidential election, Grant facilitated the approval by Congress of a peaceful compromise.
Leaving office in 1877, Grant undertook a world tour, becoming the first president to circumnavigate the world. In 1880, he was unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican nomination for a third term. In 1885, impoverished and dying of throat cancer, Grant wrote his memoirs, covering his life through the Civil War, which were posthumously published and became a major critical and financial success. At his death, Grant was the most popular American and was memorialized as a symbol of national unity. Due to the pseudohistorical and negationist mythology of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy spread by Confederate sympathizers around the turn of the 20th century, historical assessments and rankings of Grant's presidency suffered considerably before they began recovering in the 21st century. Grant's critics take a negative view of his economic mismanagement and the corruption within his administration, while his admirers emphasize his policy towards Native Americans, vigorous enforcement of civil and voting rights for African Americans, and securing North and South as a single nation within the Union. Modern scholarship has better appreciated Grant's appointments of Cabinet reformers.
Early life and education
Grant's father Jesse Root Grant was a Whig Party supporter and a fervent abolitionist. Jesse and Hannah Simpson were married on June 24, 1821, and their first child, Hiram Ulysses Grant, was born on April 27, 1822. The name Ulysses was drawn from ballots placed in a hat. To honor his father-in-law, Jesse named the boy "Hiram Ulysses", though he always referred to him as "Ulysses". In 1823, the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio, where five siblings were born: Simpson, Clara, Orvil, Jennie, and Mary. At the age of five, Ulysses started at a subscription school and later attended two private schools. In the winter of 1836–1837, Grant was a student at Maysville Seminary, and in the autumn of 1838, he attended John Rankin's academy.
In his youth, Grant developed an unusual ability to ride and manage horses; his father gave him work driving supply wagons and transporting people. Unlike his siblings, Grant was not forced to attend church by his Methodist parents. For the rest of his life, he prayed privately and never officially joined any denomination. To others, including his own son, Grant appeared to be agnostic. Grant was largely apolitical before the war but wrote, "If I had ever had any political sympathies they would have been with the Whigs. I was raised in that school."
Early military career and personal life
West Point and first assignment
At Jesse Grant's request, Representative Thomas L. Hamer nominated Ulysses to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in spring 1839. Grant was accepted on July 1. Unfamiliar with Grant, Hamer altered his name, so Grant was enlisted under the name "U. S. Grant". Since the initials "U.S." also stood for "Uncle Sam", he became known among army colleagues as "Sam."
Initially, Grant was indifferent to military life, but within a year he reexamined his desire to leave the academy and later wrote that "on the whole I like this place very much". He earned a reputation as the "most proficient" horseman. Seeking relief from military routine, he studied under Romantic artist Robert Walter Weir, producing nine surviving artworks. He spent more time reading books from the library than his academic texts. On Sundays, cadets were required to march to services at the academy's church, which Grant disliked. Quiet by nature, he established a few intimate friends among fellow cadets, including Frederick Tracy Dent and James Longstreet. He was inspired both by the Commandant, Captain Charles Ferguson Smith, and by General Winfield Scott, who visited the academy to review the cadets. Grant later wrote of the military life, "there is much to dislike, but more to like."
Grant graduated on June 30, 1843, ranked 21st out of 39 in his class and was promoted the next day to brevet second lieutenant. He planned to resign his commission after his four-year term. He would later write that among the happiest days of his life were the day he left the presidency and the day he left the academy. Despite his excellent horsemanship, he was not assigned to the cavalry, but to the 4th Infantry Regiment. Grant's first assignment was the Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri. Commanded by Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, this was the nation's largest military base in the West. Grant was happy with his commander but looked forward to the end of his military service and a possible teaching career.
Marriage and family
In 1844, Grant accompanied Frederick Dent to Missouri and met his family, including Dent's sister Julia. The two soon became engaged. On August 22, 1848, they were married at Julia's home in St. Louis. Grant's abolitionist father disapproved of the Dents' owning slaves, and neither of Grant's parents attended the wedding. Grant was flanked by three fellow West Point graduates in their blue uniforms, including Longstreet, Julia's cousin.
The couple had four children: Frederick, Ulysses Jr. ("Buck"), Ellen ("Nellie"), and Jesse II. After the wedding, Grant obtained a two-month extension to his leave and returned to St. Louis, where he decided that, with a wife to support, he would remain in the army.
Mexican–American War
Grant's unit was stationed in Louisiana as part of the Army of Occupation under Major General Zachary Taylor. In September 1846, President James K. Polk ordered Taylor to march 150 miles (240 km) south to the Rio Grande. Marching to Fort Texas, to prevent a Mexican siege, Grant experienced combat for the first time on May 8, 1846, at the Battle of Palo Alto. Grant served as regimental quartermaster, but yearned for a combat role; when finally allowed, he led a charge at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. He demonstrated his equestrian ability at the Battle of Monterrey by volunteering to carry a dispatch past snipers; he hung off the side of his horse, keeping the animal between him and the enemy. Polk, wary of Taylor's growing popularity, divided his forces, sending some troops (including Grant's unit) to form a new army under Major General Winfield Scott.
Traveling by sea, Scott's army landed at Veracruz and advanced toward Mexico City. They met the Mexican forces at the battles of Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. For his bravery at Molino del Rey, Grant was brevetted first lieutenant on September 30. At San Cosmé, Grant directed his men to drag a disassembled howitzer into a church steeple, then reassembled it and bombarded nearby Mexican troops. His bravery and initiative earned him his brevet promotion to captain. On September 14, 1847, Scott's army marched into the city; Mexico ceded the vast territory, including California, to the U.S. on February 2, 1848.
During the war, Grant established a commendable record as a daring and competent soldier and began to consider a career in the army. He studied the tactics and strategies of Scott and Taylor and emerged as a seasoned officer, writing in his memoirs that this is how he learned much about military leadership. In retrospect, although he respected Scott, he identified his own leadership style with Taylor's. Grant later believed the Mexican war was morally unjust and that the territorial gains were designed to expand slavery. He opined that the Civil War was divine punishment for U.S. aggression against Mexico.
Historians have pointed to the importance of Grant's experience as an assistant quartermaster during the war. Although he was initially averse to the position, it prepared Grant in understanding military supply routes, transportation systems, and logistics, particularly with regard to "provisioning a large, mobile army operating in hostile territory", according to biographer Ronald White. Grant came to recognize how wars could be won or lost by factors beyond the battlefield.
Post-war assignments and resignation
Grant's first post-war assignments took him and Julia to Detroit on November 17, 1848, but he was soon transferred to Madison Barracks, a desolate outpost in upstate New York, in bad need of supplies and repair. After four months, Grant was sent back to his quartermaster job in Detroit. When the discovery of gold in California brought prospectors and settlers to the territory, Grant and the 4th infantry were ordered to reinforce the small garrison there. Grant was charged with bringing the soldiers and a few hundred civilians from New York City to Panama, overland to the Pacific and then north to California. Julia, eight months pregnant with Ulysses Jr., did not accompany him.
While Grant was in Panama, a cholera epidemic killed many soldiers and civilians. Grant organized a field hospital in Panama City, and moved the worst cases to a hospital barge offshore. When orderlies protested having to attend to the sick, Grant did much of the nursing himself, earning high praise from observers. In August, Grant arrived in San Francisco. His next assignment sent him north to Vancouver Barracks in the Oregon Territory.
Grant tried several business ventures but failed, and in one instance his business partner absconded with $800 of Grant's investment, equivalent to $23,000 in 2023. After he witnessed white agents cheating local Indians of their supplies, and their devastation by smallpox and measles transferred to them by white settlers, he developed empathy for their plight.
Promoted to captain on August 5, 1853, Grant was assigned to command Company F, 4th Infantry, at the newly constructed Fort Humboldt in California. Grant arrived at Fort Humboldt on January 5, 1854, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Buchanan. Separated from his family, Grant began to drink. Colonel Buchanan reprimanded Grant for one drinking episode and told Grant to "resign or reform." Grant told Buchanan he would "resign if I don't reform." On Sunday, Grant was found influenced by alcohol, but not incapacitated, at his company's paytable. Keeping his pledge to Buchanan, Grant resigned, effective July 31, 1854. Buchanan endorsed Grant's resignation but did not submit any report that verified the incident. Grant did not face court-martial, and the War Department said: "Nothing stands against his good name." Grant said years later, "the vice of intemperance (drunkenness) had not a little to do with my decision to resign." With no means of support, Grant returned to St. Louis and reunited with his family.
Civilian struggles, slavery, and politics
In 1854, at age 32, Grant entered civilian life, without any money-making vocation to support his growing family. It was the beginning of seven years of financial struggles and instability. Grant's father offered him a place in the Galena, Illinois, branch of the family's leather business, but demanded Julia and the children stay in Missouri, with the Dents, or with the Grants in Kentucky. Grant and Julia declined. For the next four years, Grant farmed with the help of Julia's slave, Dan, on his brother-in-law's property, Wish-ton-wish, near St. Louis. The farm was not successful and to earn a living he sold firewood on St. Louis street corners.
In 1856, the Grants moved to land on Julia's father's farm, and built a home called "Hardscrabble" on Grant's Farm; Julia described it as an "unattractive cabin". Grant's family had little money, clothes, and furniture, but always had enough food. During the Panic of 1857, which devastated Grant as it did many farmers, Grant pawned his gold watch to buy Christmas gifts. In 1858, Grant rented out Hardscrabble and moved his family to Julia's father's 850-acre plantation. That fall, after having malaria, Grant gave up farming.
That same year, Grant acquired a slave from his father-in-law, a thirty-five-year-old man named William Jones. Although Grant was not an abolitionist at the time, he disliked slavery and could not bring himself to force an enslaved man to work. In March 1859, Grant freed Jones by a manumission deed, potentially worth at least $1,000 (equivalent to $34,000 in 2023).
Grant moved to St. Louis, taking on a partnership with Julia's cousin Harry Boggs working in the real estate business as a bill collector, again without success and at Julia's prompting ended the partnership. In August, Grant applied for a position as county engineer. He had thirty-five notable recommendations, but Grant was passed over by the Free Soil and Republican county commissioners because he was believed to share his father-in-law's Democratic sentiments.
In April 1860, Grant and his family moved north to Galena, accepting a position in his father's leather goods business, "Grant & Perkins", run by his younger brothers Simpson and Orvil. In a few months, Grant paid off his debts. The family attended the local Methodist church and he soon established himself as a reputable citizen.
Civil War
On April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The news came as a shock in Galena, and Grant shared his neighbors' concern about the war. On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. The next day, Grant attended a mass meeting to assess the crisis and encourage recruitment, and a speech by his father's attorney, John Aaron Rawlins, stirred Grant's patriotism. In an April 21 letter to his father, Grant wrote out his views on the upcoming conflict: "We have a government and laws and a flag, and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots."
Early commands
On April 18, Grant chaired a second recruitment meeting, but turned down a captain's position as commander of the newly formed militia company, hoping his experience would aid him to obtain a more senior rank. His early efforts to be recommissioned were rejected by Major General George B. McClellan and Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon. On April 29, supported by Congressman Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, Grant was appointed military aide to Governor Richard Yates and mustered ten regiments into the Illinois militia. On June 14, again aided by Washburne, Grant was appointed colonel and put in charge of the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment; he appointed John A. Rawlins as his aide-de-camp and brought order and discipline to the regiment. Soon after, Grant and the 21st Regiment were transferred to Missouri to dislodge Confederate forces.
On August 5, with Washburne's aid, Grant was appointed brigadier general of volunteers. Major General John C. Frémont, Union commander of the West, passed over senior generals and appointed Grant commander of the District of Southeastern Missouri. On September 2, Grant arrived at Cairo, Illinois, assumed command by replacing Colonel Richard J. Oglesby, and set up his headquarters to plan a campaign down the Mississippi, and up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.
After the Confederates moved into western Kentucky, taking Columbus, with designs on southern Illinois, Grant notified Frémont and, without waiting for his reply, advanced on Paducah, Kentucky, taking it without a fight on September 6. Having understood the importance to Lincoln of Kentucky's neutrality, Grant assured its citizens, "I have come among you not as your enemy, but as your friend." On November 1, Frémont ordered Grant to "make demonstrations" against the Confederates on both sides of the Mississippi, but prohibited him from attacking.
Belmont (1861), Forts Henry and Donelson (1862)
On November 2, 1861, Lincoln removed Frémont from command, freeing Grant to attack Confederate soldiers encamped in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. On November 5, Grant, along with Brigadier General John A. McClernand, landed 2,500 men at Hunter's Point, and on November 7 engaged the Confederates at the Battle of Belmont. The Union army took the camp, but the reinforced Confederates under Brigadier Generals Frank Cheatham and Gideon J. Pillow forced a chaotic Union retreat. Grant had wanted to destroy Confederate strongholds at Belmont, Missouri, and Columbus, Kentucky, but was not given enough troops and was only able to disrupt their positions. Grant's troops escaped back to Cairo under fire from the fortified stronghold at Columbus. Although Grant and his army retreated, the battle gave his volunteers much-needed confidence and experience.
Columbus blocked Union access to the lower Mississippi. Grant and lieutenant colonel James B. McPherson planned to bypass Columbus and move against Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. They would then march east to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, with the aid of gunboats, opening both rivers and allowing the Union access further south. Grant presented his plan to Henry Halleck, his new commander in the newly created Department of Missouri. Halleck rebuffed Grant, believing he needed twice the number of troops. However, after consulting McClellan, he finally agreed on the condition that the attack would be in close cooperation with the navy Flag Officer, Andrew H. Foote. Foote's gunboats bombarded Fort Henry, leading to its surrender on February 6, 1862, before Grant's infantry even arrived.
Grant ordered an immediate assault on Fort Donelson, which dominated the Cumberland River. Unaware of the garrison's strength, Grant, McClernand, and Smith positioned their divisions around the fort. The next day McClernand and Smith independently launched probing attacks on apparent weak spots but were forced to retreat. On February 14, Foote's gunboats began bombarding the fort, only to be repulsed by its heavy guns. The next day, Pillow attacked and routed McClernand's division. Union reinforcements arrived, giving Grant a total force of over 40,000 men. Grant was with Foote four miles away when the Confederates attacked. Hearing the battle, Grant rode back and rallied his troop commanders, riding over seven miles of freezing roads and trenches, exchanging reports. When Grant blocked the Nashville Road, the Confederates retreated back into Fort Donelson. On February 16, Foote resumed his bombardment, signaling a general attack. Confederate generals John B. Floyd and Pillow fled, leaving the fort in command of Simon Bolivar Buckner, who submitted to Grant's demand for "unconditional and immediate surrender".
Grant had won the first major victory for the Union, capturing Floyd's entire army of more than 12,000. Halleck was angry that Grant had acted without his authorization and complained to McClellan, accusing Grant of "neglect and inefficiency". On March 3, Halleck sent a telegram to Washington complaining that he had no communication with Grant for a week. Three days later, Halleck claimed "word has just reached me that ... Grant has resumed his bad habits (of drinking)." Lincoln, regardless, promoted Grant to major general of volunteers and the Northern press treated Grant as a hero. Playing off his initials, they took to calling him "Unconditional Surrender Grant".
Shiloh (1862) and aftermath
Reinstated by Halleck at the urging of Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Grant rejoined his army with orders to advance with the Army of the Tennessee into Tennessee. His main army was located at Pittsburg Landing, while 40,000 Confederate troops converged at Corinth, Mississippi. Grant wanted to attack the Confederates at Corinth, but Halleck ordered him not to attack until Major General Don Carlos Buell arrived with his division of 25,000. Grant prepared for an attack on the Confederate army of roughly equal strength. Instead of preparing defensive fortifications, they spent most of their time drilling the largely inexperienced troops while Sherman dismissed reports of nearby Confederates.
On the morning of April 6, 1862, Grant's troops were taken by surprise when the Confederates, led by Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard, struck first "like an Alpine avalanche" near Shiloh church, attacking five divisions of Grant's army and forcing a confused retreat toward the Tennessee River. Johnston was killed and command fell upon Beauregard. One Union line held the Confederate attack off for several hours, giving Grant time to assemble artillery and 20,000 troops near Pittsburg Landing. The Confederates finally broke and captured a Union division, but Grant's newly assembled line held the landing, while the exhausted Confederates, lacking reinforcements, halted their advance.
Bolstered by 18,000 troops from the divisions of Major Generals Buell and Lew Wallace, Grant counterattacked at dawn the next day and regained the field, forcing the disorganized and demoralized rebels to retreat to Corinth. Halleck ordered Grant not to advance more than one day's march from Pittsburg Landing, stopping the pursuit. Although Grant had won the battle, the situation was little changed. Grant, now realizing that the South was determined to fight, would later write, "Then, indeed, I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest."
Shiloh was the costliest battle in American history to that point and the staggering 23,746 casualties stunned the nation. Briefly hailed a hero for routing the Confederates, Grant was soon mired in controversy. The Northern press castigated Grant for shockingly high casualties, and accused him of drunkenness during the battle, contrary to the accounts of those with him at the time. Discouraged, Grant considered resigning but Sherman convinced him to stay. Lincoln dismissed Grant's critics, saying "I can't spare this man; he fights." Grant's costly victory at Shiloh ended any chance for the Confederates to prevail in the Mississippi valley or regain its strategic advantage in the West.
Halleck arrived from St. Louis on April 11, took command, and assembled a combined army of about 120,000 men. On April 29, he relieved Grant of field command and replaced him with Major General George Henry Thomas. Halleck slowly marched his army to take Corinth, entrenching each night. Meanwhile, Beauregard pretended to be reinforcing, sent "deserters" to the Union Army with that story, and moved his army out during the night, to Halleck's surprise when he finally arrived at Corinth on May 30.
Halleck divided his combined army and reinstated Grant as field commander on July 11. Later that year, on September 19, Grant's army defeated Confederates at the Battle of Iuka, then successfully defended Corinth, inflicting heavy casualties. On October 25, Grant assumed command of the District of the Tennessee. In November, after Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Grant ordered units under his command to incorporate former slaves into the Union Army, giving them clothes, shelter, and wages for their services.
Vicksburg campaign (1862–1863)
The Union capture of Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, was considered vital as it would split the Confederacy in two. Lincoln appointed McClernand for the job, rather than Grant or Sherman. Halleck, who retained power over troop displacement, ordered McClernand to Memphis, and placed him and his troops under Grant's authority.
On November 13, 1862, Grant captured Holly Springs and advanced to Corinth. His plan was to attack Vicksburg overland, while Sherman would attack Vicksburg from Chickasaw Bayou. However, Confederate cavalry raids on December 11 and 20 broke Union communications and recaptured Holly Springs, preventing Grant and Sherman from converging on Vicksburg. McClernand reached Sherman's army, assumed command, and independently of Grant led a campaign that captured Confederate Fort Hindman. After the sack of Holly Springs, Grant considered and sometimes adopted the strategy of foraging the land, rather than exposing long Union supply lines to enemy attack.
Fugitive African-American slaves poured into Grant's district, whom he sent north to Cairo to be domestic servants in Chicago. However, Lincoln ended this when Illinois political leaders complained. On his own initiative, Grant set up a pragmatic program and hired Presbyterian chaplain John Eaton to administer contraband camps. Freed slaves picked cotton that was shipped north to aid the Union war effort. Lincoln approved and Grant's program was successful. Grant also worked freed black labor on a canal to bypass Vicksburg, incorporating the laborers into the Union Army and Navy.
Grant's war responsibilities included combating illegal Northern cotton trade and civilian obstruction. He had received numerous complaints about Jewish speculators in his district. The majority, however, of those involved in illegal trading were not Jewish. To help combat this, Grant required two permits, one from the Treasury and one from the Union Army, to purchase cotton. On December 17, 1862, Grant issued a controversial General Order No. 11, expelling "Jews, as a class", from his military district. After complaints, Lincoln rescinded the order on January 3, 1863. Grant finally ended the order on January 17. He later described issuing the order as one of his biggest regrets.
On January 29, 1863, Grant assumed overall command. To bypass Vicksburg's guns, Grant slowly advanced his Union army south through water-logged terrain. The plan of attacking Vicksburg from downriver was risky because, east of the river, his army would be distanced from most of its supply lines, and would have to rely on foraging. On April 16, Grant ordered Admiral David Dixon Porter's gunboats south under fire from the Vicksburg batteries to meet up with troops who had marched south down the west side of the river. Grant ordered diversionary battles, confusing Pemberton and allowing Grant's army to move east across the Mississippi. Grant's army captured Jackson. Advancing west, he defeated Pemberton's army at the Battle of Champion Hill on May 16, forcing their retreat into Vicksburg.
After Grant's men assaulted the entrenchments twice, suffering severe losses, they settled in for a siege which lasted seven weeks. During quiet periods of the campaign, Grant would drink on occasion. The personal rivalry between McClernand and Grant continued until Grant removed him from command when he contravened Grant by publishing an order without permission. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to Grant on July 4, 1863.
Vicksburg's fall gave Union forces control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy. By that time, Grant's political sympathies fully coincided with the Radical Republicans' aggressive prosecution of the war and emancipation of the slaves. The success at Vicksburg was a morale boost for the Union war effort. When Stanton suggested Grant be brought east to run the Army of the Potomac, Grant demurred, writing that he knew the geography and resources of the West better and he did not want to upset the chain of command in the East.
Chattanooga (1863) and promotion
On October 16, 1863, Lincoln promoted Grant to major general in the regular army and assigned him command of the newly formed Division of the Mississippi, which comprised the Armies of the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland. After the Battle of Chickamauga, the Army of the Cumberland retreated into Chattanooga, where they were partially besieged. Grant arrived in Chattanooga, where plans to resupply and break the partial siege had already been set. Forces commanded by Major General Joseph Hooker, which had been sent from the Army of the Potomac, approached from the west and linked up with other units moving east from inside the city, capturing Brown's Ferry and opening a supply line to the railroad at Bridgeport.
Grant planned to have Sherman's Army of the Tennessee, assisted by the Army of the Cumberland, assault the northern end of Missionary Ridge and roll down it on the enemy's right flank. On November 23, Major General George Henry Thomas surprised the enemy in open daylight, advancing the Union lines and taking Orchard Knob, between Chattanooga and the ridge. The next day, Sherman failed to get atop Missionary Ridge, which was key to Grant's plan of battle. Hooker's forces took Lookout Mountain in unexpected success. On the 25th, Grant ordered Thomas to advance to the rifle-pits at the base of Missionary Ridge after Sherman's army failed to take Missionary Ridge from the northeast. Four divisions of the Army of the Cumberland, with the center two led by Major General Philip Sheridan and Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood, chased the Confederates out of the rifle-pits at the base and, against orders, continued the charge up the 45-degree slope and captured the Confederate entrenchments along the crest, forcing a hurried retreat. The decisive battle gave the Union control of Tennessee and opened Georgia, the Confederate heartland, to Union invasion.
On March 2, 1864, Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general, giving him command of all Union Armies. Grant's new rank had previously been held only by George Washington. Grant arrived in Washington on March 8 and was formally commissioned by Lincoln the next day at a Cabinet meeting. Grant developed a good working relationship with Lincoln, who allowed Grant to devise his own strategy.
Grant established his headquarters with General George Meade's Army of the Potomac in Culpeper, Virginia, and met weekly with Lincoln and Stanton in Washington. After protest from Halleck, Grant scrapped a risky invasion of North Carolina and planned five coordinated Union offensives to prevent Confederate armies from shifting troops along interior lines. Grant and Meade would make a direct frontal attack on Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, while Sherman—now in command of all western armies—would destroy Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee and take Atlanta. Major General Benjamin Butler would advance on Lee from the southeast, up the James River, while Major General Nathaniel Banks would capture Mobile. Major General Franz Sigel was to capture granaries and rail lines in the fertile Shenandoah Valley. Grant now commanded 533,000 battle-ready troops spread out over an eighteen-mile front.
Overland Campaign (1864)
The Overland Campaign was a series of brutal battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864. Sigel's and Butler's efforts failed, and Grant was left alone to fight Lee. On May 4, Grant led the army from his headquarters towards Germanna Ford. They crossed the Rapidan unopposed. On May 5, the Union army attacked Lee in the battle of the Wilderness, a three-day battle with estimated casualties of 17,666 Union and 11,125 Confederate.
Rather than retreat, Grant flanked Lee's army to the southeast and attempted to wedge his forces between Lee and Richmond at Spotsylvania Court House. Lee's army got to Spotsylvania first and a costly battle ensued, lasting thirteen days, with heavy casualties. On May 12, Grant attempted to break through Lee's Muleshoe salient guarded by Confederate artillery, resulting in one of the bloodiest assaults of the Civil War, known as the Bloody Angle. Unable to break Lee's lines, Grant again flanked the rebels to the southeast, meeting at North Anna, where a battle lasted three days.
Cold Harbor
The recent bloody Wilderness campaign had severely diminished Confederate morale; Grant believed breaking through Lee's lines at its weakest point, Cold Harbor, a vital road hub that linked to Richmond, would mean a quick end to the war. Grant already had two corps in position at Cold Harbor with Hancock's corps on the way.
Lee's lines were extended north and east of Richmond and Petersburg for approximately ten miles, but at several points there were no fortifications built yet, including Cold Harbor. On June 1 and 2 both Grant and Lee were waiting for reinforcements to arrive. Hancock's men had marched all night and arrived too exhausted for an immediate attack that morning. Grant postponed the attack until 5 p.m., and then again until 4:30 a.m. on June 3. However, Grant and Meade did not give specific orders for the attack, leaving it up to the corps commanders to coordinate. Grant had not yet learned that overnight Lee had hastily constructed entrenchments to thwart any breach attempt at Cold Harbor. Grant was anxious to make his move before the rest of Lee's army arrived. On the morning of June 3, with a force of more than 100,000 men, against Lee's 59,000, Grant attacked, not realizing that Lee's army was now well entrenched, much of it obscured by trees and bushes. Grant's army suffered 12,000–14,000 casualties, while Lee's army suffered 3,000–5,000 casualties, but Lee was less able to replace them.
The unprecedented number of casualties heightened anti-war sentiment in the North. After the battle, Grant wanted to appeal to Lee under the white flag for each side to gather up their wounded, most of them Union soldiers, but Lee insisted that a total truce be enacted and while they were deliberating all but a few of the wounded died in the field. Without giving an apology for the disastrous defeat in his official military report, Grant confided in his staff after the battle and years later wrote in his memoirs that he "regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made."
Siege of Petersburg (1864–1865)
Undetected by Lee, Grant moved his army south of the James River, freed Butler from the Bermuda Hundred, and advanced toward Petersburg, Virginia's central railroad hub, resulting in a nine-month siege. Northern resentment grew. Sheridan was assigned command of the Union Army of the Shenandoah and Grant directed him to "follow the enemy to their death" in the Shenandoah Valley. After Grant's abortive attempt to capture Petersburg, Lincoln supported Grant in his decision to continue.
Grant had to commit troops to check Confederate General Jubal Early's raids in the Shenandoah Valley, which were getting dangerously close to Washington. By late July, at Petersburg, Grant reluctantly approved a plan to blow up part of the enemy trenches from a tunnel filled with gunpowder. The massive explosion instantly killed an entire Confederate regiment. The poorly led Union troops under Major General Ambrose Burnside and Brigadier General James H. Ledlie, rather than encircling the crater, rushed into it. Recovering from the surprise, Confederates, led by Major General William Mahone, surrounded the crater and easily picked off Union troops. The Union's 3,500 casualties outnumbered the Confederates' three-to-one. The battle marked the first time that Union black troops, who endured a large proportion of the casualties, engaged in any major battle in the east. Grant admitted that the tactic had been a "stupendous failure".
Grant would later meet with Lincoln and testify at a court of inquiry against Generals Burnside and Ledlie for their incompetence. In his memoirs, he blamed them for that disastrous Union defeat. Rather than fight Lee in a full-frontal attack as he had done at Cold Harbor, Grant continued to force Lee to extend his defenses south and west of Petersburg, better allowing him to capture essential railroad links.
Union forces soon captured Mobile Bay and Atlanta and now controlled the Shenandoah Valley, ensuring Lincoln's reelection in November. Sherman convinced Grant and Lincoln to allow his army to march on Savannah. Sherman cut a 60-mile (97 km) path of destruction unopposed, reached the Atlantic Ocean, and captured Savannah on December 22. On December 16, after much prodding by Grant, the Union Army under Thomas smashed John Bell Hood's Confederates at Nashville. These campaigns left Lee's forces at Petersburg as the only significant obstacle remaining to Union victory.
By March 1865, Lee was trapped and his strength severely weakened. He was running out of reserves to replace the high battlefield casualties and remaining Confederate troops, no longer having confidence in their commander and under the duress of trench warfare, deserted by the thousands. On March 25, in a desperate effort, Lee sacrificed his remaining troops (4,000 Confederate casualties) at Fort Stedman, a Union victory and the last Petersburg line battle.
Surrender of Lee and Union victory (1865)
On April 2, Grant ordered a general assault on Lee's forces; Lee abandoned Petersburg and Richmond, which Grant captured. A desperate Lee and part of his army attempted to link up with the remnants of Joseph E. Johnston's army. Sheridan's cavalry stopped the two armies from converging, cutting them off from their supply trains. Grant sent his aide Orville Babcock to carry his last dispatch to Lee demanding his surrender. Grant immediately rode west, bypassing Lee's army, to join Sheridan who had captured Appomattox Station, blocking Lee's escape route. On his way, Grant received a letter from Lee stating Lee would surrender his army.
On April 9, Grant and Lee met at Appomattox Court House. Although Grant felt depressed at the fall of "a foe who had fought so long and valiantly," he believed the Southern cause was "one of the worst for which a people ever fought." Grant wrote out the terms of surrender: "each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by U.S. authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside." Lee immediately accepted Grant's terms and signed the surrender document, without any diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy. Lee asked that his former Confederate troops keep their horses, which Grant generously allowed. Grant ordered his troops to stop all celebration, saying the "war is over; the rebels are our countrymen again." Johnston's Tennessee army surrendered on April 26, 1865, Richard Taylor's Alabama army on May 4, and Kirby Smith's Texas army on May 26, ending the war.
Lincoln's assassination
On April 14, 1865, Grant attended a cabinet meeting in Washington. Lincoln invited him and his wife Julia to Ford's Theatre but they declined, because they planned to travel to their home in Burlington. In a conspiracy that also targeted top cabinet members in one last effort to topple the Union, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at the theater and died the next morning. Many, including Grant himself, thought that Grant had been a target in the plot, and during the subsequent trial, the government tried to prove that Grant had been stalked by Booth's conspirator Michael O'Laughlen. Stanton notified Grant of the president's death and summoned him to Washington. Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as president on April 15. Grant was determined to work with Johnson, and he privately expressed "every reason to hope" in the new president's ability to run the government "in its old channel".
Commanding generalship (1865–1869)
At the war's end, Grant remained commander of the army, with duties that included dealing with Emperor Maximilian and French troops in Mexico, enforcement of Reconstruction in the former Confederate states, and supervision of Indian wars on the western Plains. After the Grand Review of the Armies, Lee and his generals were indicted for treason in Virginia. Johnson demanded they be put on trial, but Grant insisted that they should not be tried, citing his Appomatox amnesty. Charges against Lee were dropped. Grant secured a house for his family in Georgetown Heights in 1865 but instructed Elihu Washburne that for political purposes his legal residence remained in Galena, Illinois. On July 25, 1866, Congress promoted Grant to the newly created rank of General of the Army of the United States.
Tour of the South
President Johnson's Reconstruction policy included a speedy return of the former Confederates to Congress, reinstating white people to office in the South, and relegating black people to second-class citizenship. On November 27, 1865, Grant was sent by Johnson on a fact-finding mission to the South, to counter a pending less favorable report by Senator Carl Schurz which reported that white people in the South harbored resentment of the North, and that black people suffered from violence and fraud. Grant recommended continuation of the Freedmen's Bureau, which Johnson opposed, but advised against using black troops.
Grant believed the people of the South were not ready for self-rule and required federal government protection. Concerned that the war led to diminished respect for civil authorities, he continued using the Army to maintain order. Grant's report on the South, which he later recanted, sympathized with Johnson's Reconstruction policies. Although Grant desired former Confederates be returned to Congress, he advocated eventual black citizenship. On December 19, the day after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment was announced in the Senate, Johnson's response used Grant's report, read aloud to the Senate, to undermine Schurz's final report and Radical opposition to Johnson's policies.
Break from Johnson
Grant was initially optimistic about Johnson. Despite differing styles, the two got along cordially and Grant attended cabinet meetings concerning Reconstruction. By February 1866, the relationship began to break down. Johnson opposed Grant's closure of the Richmond Examiner for disloyal editorials and his enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed over Johnson's veto. Needing Grant's popularity, Johnson took Grant on his "Swing Around the Circle" tour, a failed attempt to gain national support for lenient policies toward the South. Grant privately called Johnson's speeches a "national disgrace" and he left the tour early. On March 2, 1867, overriding Johnson's veto, Congress passed the first of three Reconstruction Acts, using military officers to enforce the policy. Protecting Grant, Congress passed the Command of the Army Act, preventing his removal or relocation, and forcing Johnson to pass orders through Grant.
In August 1867, bypassing the Tenure of Office Act, Johnson discharged Secretary of War Edwin Stanton without Senate approval and appointed Grant ad interim Secretary of War. Stanton was the only remaining cabinet member friendly to the Radicals. Although Grant initially recommended against dismissing Stanton, he accepted the position, not wanting the Army to fall under a conservative appointee who would impede Reconstruction, and managed an uneasy partnership with Johnson.
In December 1867, Congress voted to keep Stanton, who was reinstated by a Senate Committee on January 10, 1868. Grant told Johnson he was going to resign the office to avoid fines and imprisonment. Johnson, who believed the law would be overturned, said he would assume Grant's legal responsibility, and reminded Grant that he had promised to delay his resignation until a suitable replacement was found. The following Monday, not willing to wait for the law to be overturned, Grant surrendered the office to Stanton, causing confusion with Johnson. With the backing of his cabinet, Johnson accused Grant of lying and "duplicity" at a stormy cabinet meeting, while a shocked and disappointed Grant felt it was Johnson who was lying. The publication of angry messages between Grant and Johnson led to a complete break between them. The controversy led to Johnson's impeachment and trial in the Senate; he was acquitted by one vote. Grant's popularity rose among the Radical Republicans and his nomination for the presidency appeared certain.
Election of 1868
At the 1868 Republican National Convention, the delegates unanimously nominated Grant for president on the first ballot and Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax for vice president on the fifth. Although Grant had preferred to remain in the army, he accepted the Republican nomination, believing that he was the only one who could unify the nation. The Republicans advocated "equal civil and political rights to all" and African American enfranchisement. The Democrats, having abandoned Johnson, nominated former governor Horatio Seymour of New York for president and Francis P. Blair of Missouri for vice president. The Democrats opposed suffrage for African Americans and advocated the immediate restoration of former Confederate states to the Union and amnesty from "all past political offenses".
Grant played no overt role during the campaign and was joined by Sherman and Sheridan in a tour of the West that summer. However, the Republicans adopted his words "Let us have peace" as their campaign slogan. Grant's 1862 General Order No. 11 became an issue during the presidential campaign; he sought to distance himself from the order, saying "I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit." The Democrats and their Klan supporters focused mainly on ending Reconstruction, intimidating black people and Republicans, and returning control of the South to the white Democrats and the planter class, alienating War Democrats in the North. Grant won the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide of 214 votes to Seymour's 80. Seymour received a majority of white voters, but Grant was aided by 500,000 votes cast by black people, winning him 52.7 percent of the popular vote. He lost Louisiana and Georgia, primarily due to Ku Klux Klan violence against African-American voters. At the age of 46, Grant was the youngest president yet elected.
Presidency (1869–1877)
On March 4, 1869, Grant was sworn in as President by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. In his inaugural address, Grant urged the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment; many African Americans attended his inauguration. He urged that bonds issued during the Civil War should be paid in gold, called for "proper treatment" of Native Americans and encouraged their "civilization and ultimate citizenship".
Grant's cabinet appointments sparked both criticism and approval. He appointed Elihu B. Washburne Secretary of State and John A. Rawlins Secretary of War. Washburne resigned, and Grant appointed him Minister to France. Grant then appointed former New York Senator Hamilton Fish Secretary of State. Rawlins died in office, and Grant appointed William W. Belknap Secretary of War. Grant appointed New York businessman Alexander T. Stewart Secretary of Treasury, but Stewart was found legally ineligible by a 1789 law. Grant then appointed Massachusetts Representative George S. Boutwell Secretary of Treasury. Philadelphia businessman Adolph E. Borie was appointed Secretary of Navy, but found the job stressful and resigned. Grant then appointed New Jersey's attorney general, George M. Robeson, Secretary of Navy. Former Ohio Governor Jacob D. Cox (Interior), former Maryland Senator John Creswell (Postmaster-General), and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (Attorney General) rounded out the cabinet.
Grant nominated Sherman to succeed him as general-in-chief and gave him control over war bureau chiefs. When Rawlins took over the War Department he complained that Sherman was given too much authority. Grant reluctantly revoked his order, upsetting Sherman and damaging their friendship. James Longstreet, a former Confederate general, was nominated for Surveyor of Customs of New Orleans; this was met with amazement, and seen as a genuine effort to unite the North and South. In March 1872, Grant signed legislation that established Yellowstone National Park, the first national park. Grant was sympathetic to women's rights, including suffrage, saying he wanted "equal rights to all citizens".
To make up for his infamous General Order No. 11, Grant appointed more than fifty Jewish people to federal office, including consuls, district attorneys, and deputy postmasters. He appointed Edward S. Salomon territorial governor of Washington, the first time an American Jewish man occupied a governor's seat. In November 1869, reports surfaced of Alexander II of Russia penalizing 2,000 Jewish families for smuggling by expelling them to the interior of the country. In response, Grant publicly supported the Jewish American B'nai B'rith petition against Alexander. In 1875, Grant proposed a constitutional amendment that limited religious indoctrination in public schools. Schools would be for all children "irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions". Grant's views were incorporated into the Blaine Amendment, but it was defeated by the Senate.
In October 1871, under the Morrill Act, using federal marshals, Grant prosecuted hundreds of Utah Territory Mormon polygamists. Grant called polygamy a "crime against decency and morality". In 1874, Grant signed into law the Poland Act, which made Mormon polygamists subject to trial in District Courts and limited Mormons on juries.
Beginning in March 1873, under the Comstock Act, Grant prosecuted pornographers, in addition to abortionists. To administer the prosecutions, Grant put in charge a vigorous anti-vice activist and reformer Anthony Comstock. Comstock headed a federal commission and was empowered to destroy obscene material and hand out arrest warrants to offenders.
Reconstruction
Grant was considered an effective civil rights president, concerned about the plight of African Americans. On March 18, 1869, Grant signed into law equal rights for black people, to serve on juries and hold office, in Washington D.C., and in 1870 he signed the Naturalization Act that gave foreign black people citizenship. During his first term, Reconstruction took precedence. Republicans controlled most Southern states, propped up by Republican-controlled Congress, northern money, and southern military occupation. Grant advocated the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment that said states could not disenfranchise African Americans. Within a year, the three remaining states—Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas—adopted the new amendment—and were admitted to Congress. Grant put military pressure on Georgia to reinstate its black legislators and adopt the amendment. Georgia complied, and on February 24, 1871, its senators were seated in Congress, with all former Confederate states represented, the Union was completely restored under Grant. Under Grant, for the first time in history, Black-American men served in the United States Congress, all from the Southern states.
In 1870, to enforce Reconstruction, Congress and Grant created the Justice Department that allowed the Attorney General and the new Solicitor General to prosecute the Klan. Congress and Grant passed three Enforcement Acts, designed to protect black people and Reconstruction governments. Using the Enforcement Acts, Grant crushed the Klan. By October, Grant suspended habeas corpus in part of South Carolina and sent federal troops to help marshals, who initiated prosecutions. Grant's Attorney General, Amos T. Akerman, who replaced Hoar, was zealous to destroy the Klan. Akerman and South Carolina's U.S. marshal arrested over 470 Klan members, while hundreds of Klansmen, fled the state. By 1872, the Klan's power had collapsed, and African Americans voted in record numbers in the South. Attorney General George H. Williams, Akerman's replacement, suspended prosecutions of the Klan in 1873, but prior to the election of 1874, changed course and prosecuted the Klan.
During Grant's second term, the North retreated from Reconstruction, while southern conservatives called "Redeemers" formed armed groups, the Red Shirts and the White League, who openly used violence, intimidation, voter fraud, and racist appeals to overturn Republican rule. Northern apathy toward black people, the depressed economy and Grant's scandals made it politically difficult for the administration to maintain support for Reconstruction. Power shifted when the House was taken over by Democrats in the 1874 election. Grant ended the Brooks–Baxter War, bringing Reconstruction in Arkansas to a peaceful conclusion. He sent troops to New Orleans in the wake of the Colfax massacre and disputes over the election of Governor William Pitt Kellogg.
By 1875, Redeemer Democrats had taken control of all but three Southern states. As violence against black Southerners escalated, Grant's Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont told Republican Governor Adelbert Ames of Mississippi that the people were "tired of the autumnal outbreaks in the South", and declined to intervene directly. Grant later regretted not issuing a proclamation to help Ames, having been told Republicans in Ohio would bolt the party if he did. Grant told Congress in January 1875 he could not "see with indifference Union men or Republicans ostracized, persecuted, and murdered." Congress refused to strengthen the laws against violence but instead passed the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1875 to guarantee black people access to public facilities. However, there was little enforcement and the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in 1883. In 1876, Grant dispatched troops to South Carolina to keep Republican Governor Daniel Henry Chamberlain in office. After Grant left office, the Compromise of 1877 meant Republicans obtained the White House for Rutherford B. Hayes in return for ending enforcement of racial equality for black people and removing federal troops from the South, marking the end of Reconstruction.
Financial affairs
Soon after taking office, Grant took conservative steps to return the economy to pre-war monetary standards. During the War, Congress had authorized the Treasury to issue banknotes that, unlike the rest of the currency, were not backed by gold or silver. These "greenbacks" were necessary to pay the war debts, but caused inflation and forced gold-backed money out of circulation. On March 18, 1869, Grant signed the Public Credit Act of 1869, which guaranteed bondholders would be repaid in "coin or its equivalent". The act committed the government to the full return of the gold standard within ten years. This followed a policy of "hard currency, economy and gradual reduction of the national debt." Grant's own ideas about the economy were simple, and he relied on the advice of businessmen.
Gold corner conspiracy
In April 1869, railroad tycoons Jay Gould and Jim Fisk conspired to corner the gold market in New York. They controlled the Erie Railroad, and a high gold price would allow foreign agriculture buyers to purchase exported crops, shipped east over the Erie's routes. Boutwell's policy of selling gold from the Treasury biweekly, however, kept gold artificially low. Unable to corrupt Boutwell, the schemers built a relationship with Grant's brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, and gained access to Grant. Gould bribed Assistant Treasurer Daniel Butterfield to gain inside information into the Treasury.
In July, Grant reduced the sale of Treasury gold to $2,000,000 per month. Fisk told Grant his gold selling policy would destroy the nation. By September, Grant, who was naive regarding finance, was convinced a low gold price would help farmers, and the sale of gold for September was not decreased. On September 23, when the gold price reached 143+1⁄8, Boutwell rushed to the White House and talked with Grant. On September 24, known as Black Friday, Grant ordered Boutwell to sell, whereupon Boutwell wired Butterfield to sell $4,000,000 in gold. The bull market at Gould's Gold Room collapsed, the price plummeted from 160 to 133+1⁄3, a bear market panic ensued, Gould and Fisk fled, and economic damages lasted months. By January 1870, the economy resumed its post-war recovery.
Foreign affairs
Grant had limited foreign policy experience, so relied heavily on his talented Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. Grant and Fish had cordial friendship. Besides Grant, the main players in foreign affairs were Fish and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Charles Sumner. Sumner, who hated Grant, led the opposition to Grant's plan to annex Santo Domingo, despite fully supporting annexation of Alaska.
Grant had an expansionist impulse to protect American interests abroad and was a strong advocate of the Monroe Doctrine. For instance, when Tomás Frías became President of Bolivia in 1872, Grant stressed the importance of maintaining good relations between Bolivia and the US. He had an idealist side to his foreign policy. For instance, Grant appointed a Jewish lawyer, Benjamin F. Peixotto, U.S. Consul in Bucharest, in response to the Romanian persecution of Jews. Grant said that respect "for human rights is the first duty for those set as rulers" over the nations.
Treaty of Washington (1871)
The most pressing diplomatic problem in 1869 was the settlement of the Alabama Claims, depredations caused to Union merchant ships by the Confederate warship CSS Alabama, built in a British shipyard in violation of neutrality rules. Fish played the central role in formulating and implementing the Treaty of Washington and the Geneva arbitration (1872). Senator Charles Sumner led the demand for reparations, with talk of British Columbia as payment. Sumner, among other politicians, argued that British complicity in arms delivery to the Confederacy via blockade runners prolonged the war. Fish and Treasurer George Boutwell convinced Grant that peaceful relations with Britain were essential, and the two nations agreed to negotiate.
To avoid jeopardizing negotiations, Grant refrained from recognizing Cuban rebels who were fighting for independence from Spain, which would have been inconsistent with American objections to the British granting belligerent status to Confederates. A commission in Washington produced a treaty whereby an international tribunal would settle the damage amounts; the British admitted regret, but not fault. The Senate, including Grant critics Sumner and Carl Schurz, approved the Treaty of Washington, which settled disputes over fishing rights and maritime boundaries. The Alabama Claims settlement was Grant's most successful foreign policy achievement, securing peace with Great Britain. The settlement ($15,500,000) of the Alabama claims resolved troubled Anglo-American issues and turned Britain into America's strongest ally.
Korean expedition (1871)
In 1871, a U.S. expedition was sent to Korea to open up trade with a country which had a policy that excluded trading with foreign powers, and to learn the fate of U.S. merchant ship SS General Sherman, which had disappeared up the Taedong River in 1866. Grant dispatched a land and naval force consisting of five warships and over 1,200 men, under Admiral John Rodgers, to support a diplomatic delegation, led by US ambassador to China, Frederick Low, sent to negotiate trade and political relations.
On June 1, the American ships entered the Ganghwa Straits on the Han River and, as foreign ships were barred from entering the river, onshore Korean garrisons fired upon the ships, but little damage was done. When Rodgers demanded an apology and to begin treaty negotiations, the Korean government refused. On June 10, Rodgers destroyed several Korean forts, culminating in the Battle of Ganghwa, at which 250 Koreans were killed with a loss of 3 Americans. The expedition failed to open up trade and merely strengthened Korea's isolationist policy.
Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)
In 1869, Grant initiated his plan to annex the Dominican Republic, then called Santo Domingo. Grant believed acquisition would increase the United States' natural resources, and strengthen U.S. naval protection to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, safeguard against British obstruction of U.S. shipping and protect a future oceanic canal, stop slavery in Cuba and Brazil, while black people in the United States would have a safe haven from "the crime of Klu Kluxism".
Joseph W. Fabens, an American speculator who represented Buenaventura Báez, the president of the Dominican Republic, met with Secretary Fish and proposed annexation. On July 17, Grant sent a military aide Orville E. Babcock to evaluate the islands' resources, local conditions, and Báez's terms for annexation, but gave him no diplomatic authority. When Babcock returned to Washington with unauthorized annexation treaties, Grant pressured his cabinet to accept them. Grant ordered Fish to draw up formal treaties, sent to Báez by Babcock's return to the island nation. The Dominican Republic would be annexed for $1.5 million and Samaná Bay would be lease-purchased for $2 million. Generals D.B. Sackett and Rufus Ingalls accompanied Babcock. On November 29, President Báez signed the treaties. On December 21, the treaties were placed before Grant and his cabinet.
Grant's plan, however, was obstructed by Senator Charles Sumner. On December 31, Grant met with Sumner at Sumner's home to gain his support for annexation. Grant left confident that Sumner approved, but what Sumner actually said was disputed by various witnesses. Without appealing to the American public, Grant submitted the treaties on January 10, 1870, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Sumner, for ratification, but Sumner shelved the bills. Prompted by Grant to stop stalling the treaties, Sumner's committee took action but rejected the bills by a 5-to-2 vote. Sumner opposed annexation and reportedly said the Dominicans were "a turbulent, treacherous race" in a closed session of the Senate. Sumner sent the treaties for a full Senate vote, while Grant personally lobbied other senators. Despite Grant's efforts, the Senate defeated the treaties.
Grant was outraged, and on July 1, 1870, he sacked his appointed Minister to Great Britain, John Lothrop Motley, Sumner's friend and ally. In January 1871, Grant signed a joint resolution to send a commission to investigate annexation. He chose three neutral parties, with Frederick Douglass to be secretary of the commission, that gave Grant the moral high ground from Sumner. Although the commission approved its findings, the Senate remained opposed, forcing Grant to abandon further efforts. Seeking retribution, in March 1871, Grant maneuvered to have Sumner deposed from his powerful Senate chairmanship. The stinging controversy over Santo Domingo overshadowed Grant's foreign diplomacy. Critics complained of Grant's reliance on military personnel to implement his policies.
Cuba and Virginius Affair
American policy under Grant was to remain neutral during the Ten Years' War (1868–78) in Cuba against Spanish rule. On the recommendation of Fish and Sumner, Grant refused to recognize the rebels, in effect endorsing Spanish colonial rule, while calling for the abolition of slavery in Cuba. This was done to protect American commerce and to keep peace with Spain.
This fragile policy was broken in October 1873, when a Spanish cruiser captured a merchant ship, Virginius, flying the U.S. flag, carrying supplies and men to aid the insurrection. Treating them as pirates, Spanish authorities executed 53 prisoners without trial, including eight Americans. American Captain Joseph Frye and his crew were executed and their bodies mutilated. Enraged Americans called for war with Spain. Grant ordered U.S. Navy Squadron warships to converge on Cuba. On November 27, Fish reached a diplomatic resolution in which Spain's president, Emilio Castelar y Ripoll, expressed his regret, surrendered the Virginius and the surviving captives. Spain paid $80,000 to the families of the executed Americans.
Free trade with Hawaii
In the face of strong opposition from Democrats, Grant and Fish secured a free trade treaty in 1875 with Hawaii, incorporating its sugar industry into the U.S. economic sphere. To secure the agreement, King Kalākaua made a 91-day state visit, the first reigning monarch to set foot in the United States. Despite opposition from Southern Democrats, who wanted to protect American rice and sugar producers, and Democrats, who believed the treaty to be an island annexation attempt and referred to the Hawaiians as an "inferior" race, a bill implementing the treaty passed Congress.
The treaty gave free access to the U.S. market for sugar and other products grown in Hawaii from September 1876. The U.S. gained lands in the area known as Puʻu Loa for what would become known as the Pearl Harbor naval base. The treaty led to large investment by Americans in sugar plantations in Hawaii.
Federal Indian policy
When Grant took office in 1869, the nation's more than 250,000 Native Americans were governed by 370 treaties. Grant's faith influenced his "peace" policy, believing that the "Creator" did not place races of men on earth for the "stronger" to destroy the "weaker". Grant was mostly an assimilationist, wanting Native Americans to adopt European customs, practices, and language, and accept democratic government, leading to eventual citizenship. At Grant's 1869 Inauguration, Grant said "I will favor any course towards them which tends to their civilization, Christianization and ultimate citizenship." Grant appointed Ely S. Parker, an assimilated Seneca and member of his wartime staff, as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to serve in this position, surprising many.
In April 1869, Grant signed legislation establishing an unpaid Board of Indian Commissioners to reduce corruption and oversee the implementation of his "Peace" policy, aimed to replace entrepreneurs serving as Native American agents with missionaries and to protect Native Americans on reservations and educate them in farming.
In 1870, a setback in Grant's policy occurred over the Marias Massacre, causing public outrage. In 1871, Grant ended the sovereign tribal treaty system; by law individual Native Americans were deemed wards of the federal government. Grant's policy was undermined by Parker's resignation in 1871, denominational infighting among religious agents, and entrenched economic interests. Nonetheless, Indian wars declined overall during Grant's first term, and on October 1, 1872, Major General Oliver Otis Howard negotiated peace with the Apache leader Cochise. On December 28, 1872, another setback took place when General George Crook and the 5th Cavalry massacred about 75 Yavapai Apache Indians at Skeleton Cave, Arizona.
On April 11, 1873, Major General Edward Canby was killed in North California by Modoc leader Kintpuash. Grant ordered restraint. The army captured Kintpuash and his followers, who were convicted of Canby's murder and hanged on October 3, while the remaining Modoc were relocated to the Indian Territory. The beginning of the Indian Wars has been dated to this event.
In 1874, the army defeated the Comanche at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, forcing them to settle at the Fort Sill reservation in 1875. Grant pocket-vetoed a bill in 1874 protecting bison and instead supported Interior Secretary Columbus Delano, who correctly believed killing bison would force Plains Indians to abandon their nomadic lifestyle. In April 1875, another setback occurred: the U.S. Army massacred 27 Cheyenne Indians in Kansas.
With the lure of gold discovered in the Black Hills and the westward force of Manifest Destiny, white settlers trespassed on Sioux protected lands. Red Cloud reluctantly entered negotiations on May 26, 1875, but other Sioux chiefs readied for war. Grant told the Sioux leaders to make "arrangements to allow white persons to go into the Black Hills" and that their children would attend schools, speak English, and prepare "for the life of white men."
On November 3, 1875, under advice from Sheridan, Grant agreed not to enforce excluding miners from the Black Hills, forcing Native Americans onto the Sioux reservation. Sheridan told Grant that the U.S. Army was undermanned and the territory involved was vast, requiring many soldiers.
During the Great Sioux War that started after Sitting Bull refused to relocate to agency land, warriors led by Crazy Horse massacred George Armstrong Custer and his men at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Angry white settlers demanded retribution. Grant castigated Custer in the press, saying "I regard Custer's massacre as a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, that was wholly unnecessary." In September and October 1876, Grant persuaded the tribes to relinquish the Black Hills. Congress ratified the agreement three days before Grant left office in 1877.
In spite of Grant's peace efforts, over 200 battles were fought with Native Americans during his presidency. Grant's peace policy survived Custer's death, even after Grant left office in 1877; Indian policy remained under the Interior Department rather than the War Department. The policy was considered humanitarian for its time but later criticized for disregarding tribal cultures.
Election of 1872 and second term
The Liberal Republicans—reformers, men who supported low tariffs, and those who opposed Grant's prosecution of the Klan—broke from Grant and the Republican Party. The Liberals disliked Grant's alliance with Senators Simon Cameron and Roscoe Conkling, considered to be spoilsmen politicians.
In 1872, the Liberals nominated Horace Greeley, a New York Tribune editor and enemy of Grant, for president, and Missouri governor B. Gratz Brown, for vice president. The Liberals denounced Grantism, corruption, and inefficiency, and demanded withdrawal of federal troops from the South, literacy tests for black voters, and amnesty for Confederates. The Democrats adopted the Greeley-Brown ticket and the Liberals party platform. Greeley pushed the themes that the Grant administration was failed and corrupt.
The Republicans nominated Grant for reelection, with Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts as the vice presidential nominee. The Republicans shrewdly borrowed from the Liberal platform, including "extended amnesty, lowered tariffs, and embraced civil service reform." Grant lowered customs duties, gave amnesty to Confederates, and implemented a civil service merit system, neutralizing the opposition. To placate the burgeoning suffragist movement, the Republican platform said women's rights would be treated with "respectful consideration." Concerning Southern policy, Greeley advocated that local government control be given to white people, while Grant advocated federal protection of black people. Grant was supported by Frederick Douglass, prominent abolitionists, and Indian reformers.
Grant won reelection easily thanks to federal prosecution of the Klan, a strong economy, debt reduction, and lowered tariffs and taxes. He received 56% of the vote and an Electoral College landslide (286 to 66). Most African Americans in the South voted for Grant, while Democratic opposition remained mostly peaceful. Grant lost in six former slave states that wanted an end to Reconstruction. He proclaimed the victory as a personal vindication, but felt betrayed by the Liberals.
Grant was sworn in by Salmon P. Chase on March 4, 1873. In his second inaugural address, he focused on what he considered the chief issues: freedom and fairness for all Americans and the benefits of citizenship for freed slaves. Grant concluded his address: "My efforts in the future will be directed towards the restoration of good feelings between the different sections of our common community". Wilson died in office on November 22, 1875. With Wilson's loss, Grant relied on Fish's guidance more than ever.
Panic of 1873 and loss of House
Grant signed the Coinage Act of 1873, effectively ending the legal basis for bimetallism. The Coinage Act discontinued the standard silver dollar and established the gold dollar as the monetary standard; because the gold supply did not increase as quickly as the population, the result was deflation. Silverites, who wanted more money in circulation to raise the prices farmers received, denounced the move as the "Crime of 1873", claiming deflation made debts more burdensome for farmers.
Economic turmoil renewed during Grant's second term. In September 1873, Jay Cooke & Company, a New York brokerage house, collapsed after it failed to sell all the bonds issued by Northern Pacific Railway. Other banks and brokerages that owned railroad stocks and bonds were ruined. Grant, who knew little about finance, traveled to New York to consult leading businessmen on how to resolve the crisis, which became known as the Panic of 1873. Grant believed that, as with the collapse of the Gold Ring in 1869, the panic was merely an economic fluctuation. He instructed the Treasury to buy $10 million in government bonds, which curbed the panic, but the Long Depression, swept the nation. Eighty-nine of the nation's 364 railroads went bankrupt.
In 1874, hoping inflation would stimulate the economy, Congress passed the Ferry Bill. Many farmers and workingmen favored the bill, which would have added $64 million in greenbacks to circulation, but some Eastern bankers opposed it because it would have weakened the dollar. Belknap, Williams, and Delano told Grant a veto would hurt Republicans in the November elections. Grant believed the bill would destroy the credit of the nation and vetoed it despite their objections. Grant's veto placed him in the Republican conservative faction and began the party's commitment to a gold-backed dollar. Grant later pressured Congress for a bill to strengthen the dollar by gradually reducing the greenbacks in circulation. When the Democrats gained a majority in the House after the 1874 elections, the lame-duck Republican Congress did so before the Democrats took office. On January 14, 1875, Grant signed the Specie Payment Resumption Act, which required reduction of greenbacks allowed to circulate and declared that they would be redeemed for gold beginning on January 1, 1879.
Reforms and scandals
The post-Civil War economy brought on massive industrial wealth and government expansion. Speculation, lifestyle extravagance, and corruption in federal offices were rampant. All of Grant's executive departments were investigated by Congress. Grant by nature was honest, trusting, gullible, and loyal to his friends. His responses to malfeasance were mixed: at times appointing cabinet reformers, others defending culprits.
Grant in his first term appointed Secretary of Interior Jacob D. Cox, who implemented civil service reform, including firing unqualified clerks. On October 3, 1870, Cox resigned after a dispute with Grant over handling of a mining claim. Authorized by Congress on March 3, 1871, Grant created and appointed the first Civil Service Commission. Grant's Commission created rules for competitive exams for appointments, ending mandatory political assessments and classifying positions into grades.
In November 1871, Grant's appointed New York Collector, Thomas Murphy, resigned. Grant replaced him with Chester A. Arthur, who implemented Boutwell's reforms. A Senate committee investigated the New York Customs House in 1872. Previous Grant appointed collectors Murphy and Moses H. Grinnell charged lucrative fees for warehouse space, without the legal requirement of listing the goods. This led to Grant firing warehouse owner George K. Leet, for pocketing the exorbitant freight fees. Boutwell's reforms included stricter record-keeping and that goods be stored on company docks. Grant ordered prosecutions by Attorney General George H. Williams and Secretary of Treasury Boutwell of persons accepting and paying bribes.
On March 3, 1873, Grant signed into law an appropriation act that increased pay for federal employees, Congress (retroactive), the judiciary, and the president. Grant's annual salary doubled to $50,000. Critics derided Congress' two-year retroactive $4,000 payment for each Congressman, and the law was partially repealed. Grant kept his much-needed pay raise, while his reputation remained intact.
In 1872, Grant signed into law an act that ended private moiety (tax collection) contracts, but an attached rider allowed three more contracts. Boutwell's assistant secretary William A. Richardson hired John B. Sanborn to go after "individuals and cooperations" who allegedly evaded taxes. Sanborn aggressively collected $213,000, while splitting $156,000 to others, including Richardson, and the Republican Party campaign committee. During an 1874 Congressional investigation, Richardson denied involvement, but Sanborn said he met with Richardson over the contracts. Congress severely condemned Richardson's permissive manner. Grant appointed Richardson judge of the Court of Claims, and replaced him with reformer Benjamin Bristow. In June, Grant and Congress abolished the moiety system.
Bristow tightened up the Treasury's investigation force, implemented civil service, and fired hundreds of corrupt appointees. Bristow discovered Treasury receipts were low, and launched an investigation that uncovered the notorious Whiskey Ring, that involved collusion between distillers and Treasury officials to evade millions in taxes. In mid-April, Bristow informed Grant of the ring. On May 10, Bristow struck hard and broke the ring. Federal marshals raided 32 installations nationwide, leading to 110 convictions and $3,150,000 in fines.
Grant appointed David Dyer, under Bristow's recommendation, federal attorney to prosecute the Ring in St. Louis, who indicted Grant's friend General John McDonald, supervisor of Internal Revenue. Grant endorsed Bristow's investigation, writing on a letter "Let no guilty man escape..." Bristow's investigation discovered Babcock received kickback payments, and that Babcock had secretly forewarned McDonald, the ring's mastermind, of the investigation. On November 22, the jury convicted McDonald. On December 9, Babcock was indicted; Grant refused to believe in Babcock's guilt and was ready to testify in Babcock's favor, but Fish warned that doing so would put Grant in the embarrassing position of testifying against a case prosecuted by his own administration. Instead, on February 12, 1876, Grant gave a deposition in Babcock's defense, expressing that his confidence in his secretary was "unshaken". Grant's testimony silenced all but his strongest critics.
The St. Louis jury acquitted Babcock, and Grant allowed him to remain at the White House. However, after Babcock was indicted in a frame-up of a Washington reformer, called the Safe Burglary Conspiracy, Grant dismissed him. Babcock kept his position of Superintendent of Public Buildings in Washington.
The Interior Department under Secretary Columbus Delano, whom Grant appointed to replace Cox, was rife with fraud and corruption. The exception was Delano's effective oversight of Yellowstone. Grant reluctantly forced Delano's resignation. Surveyor General Silas Reed had set up corrupt contracts that benefited Delano's son, John Delano. Grant's Secretary of Interior Zachariah Chandler, who succeeded Delano in 1875, implemented reforms, fired corrupt agents and ended profiteering. When Grant was informed by Postmaster Marshall Jewell of a potential Congressional investigation into an extortion scandal involving Attorney General George H. Williams' wife, Grant fired Williams and appointed reformer Edwards Pierrepont. Grant's new cabinet appointments temporarily appeased reformers.
After the Democrats took control of the House in 1875, more corruption in federal departments was exposed. Among the most damaging scandal involved Secretary of War William W. Belknap, who took quarterly kickbacks from the Fort Sill tradership; he resigned in February 1876. Belknap was impeached by the House but was acquitted by the Senate. Grant's brother Orvil set up "silent partnerships" and received kickbacks from four trading posts. Congress discovered that Secretary of Navy Robeson had been bribed by a naval contractor, but no articles of impeachment were drawn up. In his December 5, 1876, Annual Message, Grant apologized to the nation: "Failures have been errors of judgement, not of intent."
Election of 1876
The abandonment of Reconstruction played a central role during the 1876 election. Mounting investigations into corruption by the House, controlled by the Democrats, discredited Grant's presidency. Grant did not run for a third term, while the Republicans chose Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, a reformer, at their convention. The Democrats nominated Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Voting irregularities in three Southern states caused the election to remain undecided for several months.
Grant told Congress to settle the matter through legislation and assured both sides that he would not use the army to force a result, except to curb violence. On January 29, 1877, he signed legislation forming an Electoral Commission, which ruled Hayes elected president; to forestall Democratic protests, Republicans agreed to the Compromise of 1877, in which the last troops were withdrawn from Southern capitals. With Reconstruction dead, 80 years of Jim Crow segregation was launched. Grant's "calm visage" throughout the election crisis appeased the nation.
Post-presidency (1877–1885)
After leaving the White House, Grant said he "was never so happy in my life". The Grants left Washington for New York, to attend the birth of their daughter Nellie's child. Calling themselves "waifs", the Grants toured Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Galena, without a clear idea of where they would live.
World tour and diplomacy
Using $25,000 (equivalent to $715,000 in 2023) from liquidating an investment in a Nevada-based mining company, the Grants set out on a world tour for approximately two and a half years. On May 16, Grant and his wife left for England aboard the SS Indiana. During the tour, the Grants made stops in Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East and the Far East, meeting with notable dignitaries such as Queen Victoria, Tsar Alexander II, Pope Leo XIII, Otto von Bismarck, Li Hongzhang, and Emperor Meiji.
As a courtesy to Grant by the Hayes administration, his touring party received federal transportation on three U.S. Navy ships: a five-month tour of the Mediterranean on the USS Vandalia, travel from Hong Kong to China on the USS Ashuelot, and from China to Japan on the USS Richmond. The Hayes administration encouraged Grant to assume a public unofficial diplomatic role and strengthen American interests abroad during the tour. Homesick, the Grants left Japan on the SS City of Tokio and landed in San Francisco on September 20, 1879, greeted by cheering crowds. Grant's tour demonstrated to Europe and Asia that the United States was an emerging world power.
Third term attempt
Stalwarts, led by Grant's old political ally, Roscoe Conkling, saw Grant's renewed popularity as an opportunity, and sought to nominate him for the presidency in 1880. Opponents called it a violation of the unofficial two-term rule in use since George Washington. Grant said nothing publicly but wanted the job and encouraged his men. Washburne urged him to run; Grant demurred. Even so, Conkling and John A. Logan began to organize delegates in Grant's favor. When the convention convened in Chicago in June, there were more delegates pledged to Grant than to any other candidate, but he was still short of a majority vote.
At the convention, Conkling nominated Grant with an eloquent speech, the most famous line being: "When asked which state he hails from, our sole reply shall be, he hails from Appomattox and its famous apple tree." With 378 votes needed for the nomination, the first ballot had Grant at 304, Blaine at 284, Sherman at 93, and the rest to minor candidates. After thirty-six ballots, Blaine's delegates combined with those of other candidates to nominate a compromise candidate: James A. Garfield. A procedural motion made the vote unanimous for Garfield. Grant gave speeches for Garfield but declined to criticize the Democratic nominee, Winfield Scott Hancock, a general who had served under him. Garfield won the election. Grant gave Garfield his public support and pushed him to include Stalwarts in his administration. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by an assassin and died on September 19. On learning of Garfield's death from a reporter, Grant wept.
Business failures
In the 19th century, there were no federal presidential pensions, and the Grants' personal income was $6,000 a year. Grant's world tour had been costly, and he had depleted most of his savings. Wealthy friends bought him a house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and to make an income, Grant, Jay Gould, and former Mexican Finance Secretary Matías Romero chartered the Mexican Southern Railroad, with plans to build a railroad from Oaxaca to Mexico City. Grant urged President Chester A. Arthur to negotiate a free trade treaty with Mexico. Arthur and the Mexican government agreed, but the United States Senate rejected the treaty in 1883. The railroad was similarly unsuccessful, falling into bankruptcy the following year.
At the same time, Grant's son Buck had opened a Wall Street brokerage house with Ferdinand Ward. A conniving man who swindled numerous wealthy men, Ward was at the time regarded as a rising star on Wall Street. The firm, Grant & Ward, was initially successful. In 1883, Grant joined the firm and invested $100,000 (~$2.78 million in 2023) of his own money. Ward paid investors abnormally high interest by pledging the company's securities on multiple loans in a process called rehypothecation (now regarded as a Ponzi scheme). Ward, in collusion with banker James D. Fish and kept secret from bank examiners, retrieved the firm's securities from the company's bank vault. When the trades went bad, multiple loans came due, all backed by the same collateral.
Historians agree that the elder Grant was likely unaware of Ward's intentions, but it is unclear how much Buck Grant knew. In May 1884, enough investments went bad to convince Ward that the firm would soon be bankrupt. Ward, who assumed Grant was "a child in business matters", told him of the impending failure, but assured Grant that this was a temporary shortfall. Grant approached businessman William Henry Vanderbilt, who gave him a personal loan of $150,000. Grant invested the money in the firm, but it was not enough to save it. The fall of Grant & Ward set off the Panic of 1884.
Vanderbilt offered to forgive Grant's debt entirely, but Grant refused. Impoverished but compelled by personal honor, he repaid what he could with his Civil War mementos and the sale or transfer of all other assets. Vanderbilt took title to Grant's home, although he allowed the Grants to continue to reside there, and pledged to donate the souvenirs to the federal government and insisted the debt had been paid in full. Grant was distraught over Ward's deception and asked privately how he could ever "trust any human being again." In March 1885, he testified against both Ward and Fish. After the collapse of Grant & Ward, there was an outpouring of sympathy for Grant.
Memoirs, military pension, illness and death
Grant attended a service for Civil War veterans in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, on August 4, 1884, receiving a standing ovation from the ten thousand attendees; it would be his last public appearance. In the summer of 1884, Grant complained of a sore throat but put off seeing a doctor until late October, when he learned it was cancer, possibly caused by his frequent cigar smoking. Grant chose not to reveal the seriousness of his condition to his wife, who soon found out from Grant's doctor. In March 1885, The New York Times announced that Grant was dying of cancer, causing nationwide public concern. Knowing of Grant and Julia's financial difficulties, Congress restored him to the rank of General of the Army with full retirement pay—Grant's assumption of the presidency had required that he resign his commission and forfeit his (and his widow's) pension.
Grant was nearly penniless and worried about leaving his wife money to live on. He approached The Century Magazine and wrote a number of articles on his Civil War campaigns for $500 (equivalent to $17,000 in 2023) each. The articles were well received by critics, and the editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, suggested that Grant write a memoir, as Sherman and others had done. The magazine offered him a book contract with a 10% royalty. However, Grant's friend Mark Twain, one of the few who understood Grant's precarious financial condition, offered him an unheard-of 70% royalty. To provide for his family, Grant worked intensely on his memoirs in New York City. His former staff member Adam Badeau assisted with the research, while his son Frederick located documents and did much of the fact-checking. Because of the summer heat and humidity, his doctors recommended that he move upstate to a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor, offered by a family friend.
On July 18, 1885, Grant finished his memoir, which includes the events of his life to the end of the Civil War. The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant was a critical and commercial success. Julia Grant eventually received about $450,000 in royalties (equivalent to $15,300,000 in 2023). The memoir has been highly regarded by the public, military historians, and literary critics. Grant portrayed himself as an honorable Western hero, whose strength lies in his honesty. He candidly depicted his battles against both the Confederates and internal army foes.
Grant died at 8:08 a.m. in the Mount McGregor cottage on July 23, 1885.
Sheridan, then Commanding General of the Army, ordered a day-long tribute to Grant on all military posts, and President Grover Cleveland ordered a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning. After private services, the honor guard placed Grant's body on a funeral train, which traveled to West Point and New York City. A quarter of a million people viewed it in the two days before the funeral. Tens of thousands of men, many of them veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), marched with Grant's casket drawn by two dozen black stallions to Riverside Park in Morningside Heights, Manhattan. His pallbearers included Union generals Sherman and Sheridan, Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Joseph E. Johnston, Admiral David Dixon Porter, and Senator John A. Logan, the head of the GAR. Following the casket in the seven-mile-long (11 km) procession were President Cleveland, two former living presidents Hayes and Arthur, all of the president's cabinet, and justices of the Supreme Court.
Attendance at the New York funeral topped 1.5 million. Ceremonies were held in other major cities around the country, while Grant was eulogized in the press. Grant's body was laid to rest in Riverside Park, first in a temporary tomb, and then on April 17, 1897, in the General Grant National Memorial, known as "Grant's Tomb", the largest mausoleum in North America.
Historical reputation
Grant was hailed across the North as the General who "saved the Union" and overall his military reputation has held up well. Achieving great national fame for his victories at Vicksburg and the surrender at Appomattox, Grant was the most successful general, Union or Confederate, in the American Civil War. He was criticized by the South for using excessive force, and his drinking was often exaggerated by the press and stereotyped by rivals and critics. Historians also debate how effective Grant was at halting corruption. The scandals during his administration stigmatized his political reputation.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Grant's reputation was damaged by the "Lost Cause" movement and the Dunning School. Views of Grant reached new lows as he was seen as an unsuccessful president and an unskilled, if lucky, general. In the 1950s, some historians reassessed Grant's military career, shifting the analysis of Grant as the victor by brute force to that of skillful modern strategist and commander. Historian William S. McFeely's biography, Grant (1981), won the Pulitzer Prize, and brought renewed scholarly interest in Grant. McFeely believed Grant was an "ordinary American" trying to "make his mark" during the 19th century. In the 21st century, Grant's reputation improved markedly among historians after the publication of Grant (2001), by historian Jean Edward Smith. Opinions of Grant's presidency demonstrate a better appreciation of Grant's personal integrity, Reconstruction efforts, and peace policy towards Indians, even when they fell short. H. W. Brands' The Man Who Saved the Union (2012), Ronald C. White's American Ulysses (2016), and Ron Chernow's Grant (2017) continued the elevation of Grant's reputation. White said that Grant "demonstrated a distinctive sense of humility, moral courage, and determination", and as president he "stood up for African Americans, especially fighting against voter suppression perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan". White believed that Grant was "an exceptional person and leader". Historian Robert Farley writes that the "Cult of Lee" and the Dunning School's resentment of Grant for his defeat of Lee and his strong enforcement of Reconstruction resulted in Grant's shoddy treatment by historians.
In a 2021 C-SPAN survey ranking presidents from worst to best, Grant was ranked 20 out of 44 presidents, up from his previous ranking of 33 in 2017. This was due to the rehabilitation of his image and legacy in recent years, with Grant now receiving "more credit for Reconstruction and his diplomacy than condemnation for his alleged corruption."
Dates of rank
See also
List of American Civil War battles
List of American Civil War generals (Union)
Notes
References
Bibliography
Biographical
Military and politics
Historiography
Further reading
Articles
Bell, Robert A. (2018). "The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and the Sioux: Is the United States Honoring the Agreements it Made?". Indigenous Policy Journal. XXVIII (3).
Ferraro, William M. (January 2019). "Old and New Views of Ulysses S. Grant: The Soldier and The Man". Journal of Military History. 83 (1): 195–212.
Foner, Eric (March 28, 2015). "Why Reconstruction Matters". The New York Times.
—— (July 23, 2015). "Ulysses S. Grant Died 130 Years Ago. Racists Hate Him, But Historians No Longer Do". The Huffington Post.
Kaczorowski, Robert J. (1995). "Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights During the First Reconstruction". Fordham Urban Law Journal. 23 (1): 155–186. ISSN 2163-5978.
King, Gilbert (January 16, 2013). "War and Peace of Mind for Ulysses S. Grant". Smithsonian.
Roza, Matthew (December 24, 2022). "The true story of the president who couldn't hear music". Salon.
Simon, John Y. (1965). "From Galena to Appomattox: Grant and Washburne". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 58 (2): 165–189. JSTOR i40006018.
Solly, Meilan (March 31, 2023). "When President Ulysses S. Grant Was Arrested for Speeding in a Horse-Drawn Carriage". Smithsonian.
Stockwell, Mary (January 9, 2019). "Ulysses Grant's Failed Attempt to Grant Native Americans Citizenship". Smithsonian.
Waugh, Joan (May 1, 2011). "How the "Lost Cause" poisoned our history books: Ulysses S. Grant championed civil rights in the South during Reconstruction — and he's still paying dearly for it". Salon.
Books
Bordewich, Fergus M. Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction (Knopf, 2023)
Catton, Bruce (1953). A Stillness at Appomattox. Doubleday.
Grant, Ulysses S. (1885). Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Vol. I. Charles L. Webster and Company.
—— (1885). Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Vol. II. Charles L. Webster and Company.
Poore, Benjamin Perley; Tiffany, O. H. (1885). Life of U. S. Grant. Hubbard Bros. ISBN 978-0795018916.
Porter, Lorle (2005). Politics & Peril: Mount Vernon, Ohio in the Nineteenth Century. New Concord Press. ISBN 978-1-887932-25-7.
Reeves, John Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant (2023), focus on 1860-1861.
Simpson, Brooks D. (1991). Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807819661.
Wilson, Edmund (1962). Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-31256-0. (Ch. IV. "Northern Soldiers: Ulysses S. Grant")
Young, John Russell (1879a). Around the World with General Grant. Vol. I. American News Company.
—— (1879b). Around the World with General Grant. Vol. II. American News Company.
External links
Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library
Ulysses S. Grant Personal Manuscripts
Works by Ulysses S. Grant at Project Gutenberg
Works by Ulysses S. Grant at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Ulysses S. Grant: A Resource Guide – Library of Congress
In Our Time: President Ulysses S. Grant, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Cooke, Eric Matheson, and Susan Mary Grant (May 30, 2019)
Ulysses S. Grant on C-SPAN
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant at Mississippi State University
Scholarly coverage of Grant at the Miller Center, University of Virginia |
Auckland_Island | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Island | [
314
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Island#Human_presence_on_the_island"
] | Auckland Island (Māori: Mauka Huka) is the main island of the eponymous uninhabited archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the New Zealand subantarctic area. It is inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list together with the other New Zealand Subantarctic Islands in the region.
Geography
The island has a land area of about 442.5 km2 (170.9 sq mi), and is 42 kilometres (26 mi) long. It was formed 25 to 10 million years ago from a huge volcanic pile which formed two domes – one centred around Carnley Harbour in the south and another (the Ross Dome) around Disappointment Island to the west. The island is made of volcanic scoria, blanketed in over 2m of peat. It is notable for its steep cliffs and rugged terrain, which rises to over 600 m (1,969 ft). Prominent peaks include Cavern Peak, at 659 m or 2,162 ft; Mount Raynal, at 635 m or 2,083 ft; Mount D'Urville, at 630 m or 2,067 ft; Mount Easton, at 610 m or 2,001 ft; and the Tower of Babel, at 550 m or 1,804 ft.
The southern end of the island broadens to a width of 26 kilometres (16 mi), encompassing Carnley Harbour. At the western side a very narrow channel known as Victoria Passage separates the main island from the smaller Adams Island. Adams Island and the southern part of the main island form the crater rim; three kilometres (1.9 mi) north of Carnley Harbour's mouth lies Cape Lovitt, the westernmost point of New Zealand.
Flora
There are distinct vegetation zones. There is a band of Southern rata Metrosideros umbellata around the coast apart from on the western side, the height of which is determined by the shelter, aspect and degree of the slope. The rata forest may extend into the Chionochloa tussock grasslands but in most places merges into a thick band of low, tight scrub dominated by Dracophyllum longifolium, Ozothamnus vauvilliersii and Myrsine divaricata. This scrub band is almost impenetrable and in places is dense enough to walk on top of.
An expedition report from 1907 describes the scrub thusly:
The subalpine scrub at 400 ft. made our advance extremely toilsome, the thick masses of Suttonia divaricata scrub had to be cut through before any progress could be made. Throughout our stay on the island this scrub was one of the worst drawbacks we had to encounter; from four to six feet high it is quite impassable with reasonable exertion; walking on the top can be undertaken only by a very light man. Only with the severest exertion can it be pushed aside to enable a man to pass, crawling under it is out of the question.
The scrub band breaks into patches and transitions into extensive grassland of Chionochloa antarctica which in turn merges into a sparsely vegetated fellfield community on the most exposed alpine areas. The megaherbs Anisotome antipoda, Anisotome latifolia, Bulbinella rossii, Pleurophyllum criniferum, Pleurophyllum hookeri, Pleurophyllum speciosum and Stilbocarpa polaris were historically found from the coast into the alpine, however the distribution and populations of these species have been severely impacted by the actions of introduced pigs.
Marine mammals
Port Ross at the north end of Auckland Island is the only breeding site for the New Zealand population of southern right whales. Up to 400 may be found in the harbour during the winter months, and are regularly surveyed by the University of Otago.
A breeding population of New Zealand sea lions is found on the island. 80% of the total population live and breed in the archipelago. The New Zealand Department of Conservation has conducted an annual survey of the population on the islands since 1994.
Bird life
The island is part of the Auckland Island group Important Bird Area (IBA), identified as such by BirdLife International because of the significance of the group as a breeding site for several species of seabirds.
The Gibson's albatross Diomedea antipodensis gibsoni, Auckland shag Leucocarbo colensoi, Auckland teal Anas aucklandica, Auckland rail Lewinia muelleri and Auckland snipe Coenocorypha aucklandica are all endemic to the Auckland Island group. Of these only shags are currently breeding on main Auckland Island, in areas where introduced cats and pigs cannot access their nests.
The Auckland Island merganser Mergus australis went extinct in 1902. The population is thought to have been 20–30 breeding pairs prior to predation by introduced pigs and cats. The last specimen was collected as a museum specimen in January 1902.
Introduced species
There are currently introduced pigs, cats and mice on Auckland Island. Auckland Island is the only island within the New Zealand Subantarctic Island Area with invasive mammalian pests. A project proposed by the Department of Conservation aims to remove these pests from the island, with feasibility trials started in 2018.
DNA analysis suggests that mice—Mus musculus—did not colonise Auckland Island from a New Zealand population but instead arrived with whalers or sealers from North America. They eat invertebrates, seeds, other plant material, native fish eggs and can eat bird eggs and chicks. They severely deplete invertebrate populations, reduce the seedbank, eat seedlings & plants and compete with birds for food resources.
Domestic cats—Felis catus—were first recorded at Terror Cove in 1840, presumably introduced by sealers, but most likely arrived in the two decades prior to this. The impact of cats on the birds of Auckland Island was first noted by the Coastwatchers, who tamed some for company – the Ranui Station cats were recorded to kill 60 Antarctic prions over three months in 1942. Ornithologist Brian Bell found that prions were confined to cliff faces at Crozier Point in 1962 and noted "any bird landing...[fell] an immediate prey to the feral cats.". Gut content and scat analysis show that cats are feeding on small passerines and seabirds. A cat was seen feeding on a pre-fledging juvenile white-capped mollymawk at South West Cape.
Goats were introduced to the Auckland Islands several times in the second half of the nineteenth century, to serve as a source of food for castaway sailors, with at least one liberation in 1865 on the main Auckland Island. By the 1970s, only one population remained, a group of about 100 based on the northwest side of Port Ross, in the north-east of the main island. Browsing by goats caused significant damage to lowland tussock Chinochloa antarctica in particular. In 1986 and 1987, over 60 animals were removed from the island for captive breeding in New Zealand. A decision was made to eradicate the remaining animals, an operation which was completed by 1992. An investigation in 1999 into the fate of the translocated animals in New Zealand found that the breed had become extinct.
Pigs—Sus scrofa—were first introduced at Port Ross in the north of Auckland Island in 1807 by Captain Abraham Bristow and several further liberations occurred in the 19th century. The pigs were intended as a food source for shipwreck survivors and sealers. Auckland Island pigs are a feral race of domestic pigs which are considered a distinct breed by the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of New Zealand. Pigs have had a severe impact on populations of megaherbs, with populations of these plants on Auckland Island being almost totally depleted by the early 1900s.
Dunnocks, common redpolls, Eurasian blackbirds, song thrushes and common starlings which were introduced onto mainland New Zealand have naturally established on Auckland Island.
Oleria lyalli is a tree asterad native to New Zealand which may have arrived with humans in the 19th century. It is spreading from a historic settlement site at Erebus Cove and covers neighbouring Ewing Island. Harakeke Phormium tenax is found at Erebus Cove, Sealer's Creek, Ranui Cove and Tandy Inlet, and was introduced probably by the second wave of sealers to visit the island, to make rope, twine, baskets, mats etc. Kormiko, Veronica salicifolia, was first reported in 1975 around the Lindley Point farmhouse site at Deas Head, built in 1851.
Human presence on the island
There is archaeological evidence that the Auckland Islands were briefly settled and abandoned by Polynesians around 600–700 years ago. Māori and Moriori from the Chatham Islands settled at Ranui Cove from 1842 till 1856. Auckland Island was the site of the failed settlement of Hardwicke, which was founded in 1849 but survived only three years before being disbanded in 1852.
Both the Grafton and the Invercauld were wrecked on Auckland Island in 1864, and groups of survivors lived unaware of each other on opposite ends of the island. The Grafton survivors lived for 18 months on the island before building a boat and sailing to New Zealand; the Invercauld survivors camped in the remains of Hardwicke; and all but three died before being rescued.
The German transit of Venus expedition of 1874 made observations from Terror Cove in Port Ross.
Coastwatchers from the Cape Expedition were stationed on the island from March 1941 to October 1945. Two stations were constructed: One at Ranui Cove in outer Port Ross and another at Tagua, on Musgrave Peninsula in Carnley Harbour. A base at Waterfall Inlet was the mooring point for the Ranui which serviced the stations.
See also
List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands
List of islands of New Zealand
List of islands
New Zealand subantarctic islands
Desert island
== Footnotes == |
Rose_Island_(New_Zealand) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Island_(New_Zealand) | [
314
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Island_(New_Zealand)"
] | Rose Island is an uninhabited island and, with an area of 121 hectares, the fifth largest of the Auckland Islands group, a subantarctic chain that forms part of the New Zealand Outlying Islands.
It is located in the northeast of the group, in the mouth of Port Ross, Auckland Island and south west of the larger Enderby Island. It was stocked with rabbits and provided with a boatshed for the relief of castaways during the nineteenth century. The rabbits have since been eradicated by the Department of Conservation, and provides a secure home for a population of Auckland Islands teal. The vegetation on Rose contains rata, and while much original vegetation has been destroyed, it is less modified than much of the Auckland Islands.
See also
Composite Antarctic Gazetteer
SCAR
Territorial claims in Antarctica
New Zealand Subantarctic Islands
List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands#List of subantarctic islands
List of islands of New Zealand
List of islands
Desert island
== References == |
Budelli | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budelli | [
314
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budelli"
] | Budelli is an island in the Maddalena archipelago, near the strait of Bonifacio in northern Sardinia, Italy. It is one of the seven islands that comprise Arcipelago di La Maddalena National Park.
Geography
Budelli is several hundred metres south of the islands of Razzoli and Santa Maria. It has an area of 1.6 square kilometres (0.62 sq mi) and a circumference of 12.3 kilometres (7.6 mi). The highest point is Monte Budello, at 87 metres (285 ft).
History
In antiquity, the Romans used the island. More recently, it was the site of some of the filming for Red Desert, released in 1964. For decades, the island had a series of private owners.
Budelli is especially renowned for its Spiaggia Rosa (Pink Beach), on the southeastern shoreline, which owes its colour to microscopic fragments of corals and shells, such as Miriapora truncata and Miniacina miniacea, and was featured in Antonioni’s 1964 film Il deserto rosso (The Red Desert). Budelli was one of four uninhabited islands in the Maddalena archipelago—the others being Caprera, Spargi and Razzoli. However, from 1989 to 2021, the island had a permanent caretaker, Mauro Morandi, who took over from a married couple.
Rules imposed as of the 1990s by La Maddalena NP have not allowed tourists to walk on the pink beach or swim in the sea; however, day trips by boat, as well as walking along a path behind the beach, were permitted.
In October 2013, the island was to be sold for €2.94 million to New Zealand businessman Michael Harte after the bankruptcy of the previous owner. Harte intended to protect the island's ecosystem. The government protested, and after a three year court battle, a judge in Sardinia reverted the island to the state, with the national park planning to use it for environmental education.
Inhabitants
The sole former occupant of the island, Mauro Morandi, lived there from 1989 until his eviction in April 2021. To explain why he could not be allowed to live on the island indefinitely, the park's president said in 2016: "[He] symbolizes a man enchanted by the elements who decides to devote his life to contemplation and custody ... No one ignores his role in representing the historical memory of the place … But it's hard to find a contractual arrangement for a person in his position."
See also
List of islands of Italy
References
== External links == |
Grey_parrot | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_parrot | [
315
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_parrot"
] | The grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus), also known as the Congo grey parrot, African grey parrot or Congo African grey parrot, is an African parrot in the family Psittacidae. The Timneh parrot (Psittacus timneh) was previously treated as a subspecies of the grey parrot, but has since been elevated to a full species.
Taxonomy
The grey parrot was formally described in 1758 by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae. He placed it with all other parrots in the genus Psittacus and coined the binomial name Psittacus erithacus. Linnaeus erroneously specified the type locality as "Guinea": the locality was later designated as Ghana in West Africa. The genus name is Latin for "parrot". The specific epithet erithacus is Latin and is derived from the Ancient Greek εριθακος (erithakos) for an unknown bird that was said to mimic human sounds, perhaps the black redstart.
The species is monotypic; no subspecies are accepted. The Timneh parrot was formerly treated as a subspecies of the grey parrot, but is now considered a separate species based mainly on results from a genetic and morphological study published in 2007. Although Linnaeus placed all the parrots known to him in the genus Psittacus, only the grey parrot and the Timneh parrot are now assigned to this genus.
Description
The grey parrot is medium-sized, predominantly grey and black-billed. Its typical weight is 400 g (14 oz), with an approximate length of 33 cm (13 in), and a wingspan of 46–52 cm (18–20+1⁄2 in). The head and wings are generally darker than the body. The head and body feathers have slight white edges; the tail feathers are red.
Both sexes appear similar. Juvenile colouration is similar to that of adults, but typically their eyes are dark grey to black, compared to the adults' yellow irises around dark pupils, and their undertail coverts are tinged with grey. Adults weigh 418–526 g (14+3⁄4–18+1⁄2 oz).
Grey parrots may live for 40–60 years in captivity, although their mean lifespan in the wild appears to be shorter — approximately 23 years. They start breeding at an age of 3–5 years and lay 3-5 eggs per brood.
Distribution and habitat
The grey parrot is native to equatorial Africa, including Angola, Cameroon, the Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda. The species is found inside a range from Kenya to the eastern part of the Ivory Coast. Current estimates for the global population are uncertain and range from 630,000 to 13 million birds. Populations are decreasing worldwide. The species seems to favour dense forests, but can also be found at forest edges and in more open vegetation types, such as gallery and savanna forests.
A population study published in 2015 found that the species had been "virtually eliminated" from Ghana with numbers declining 90 to 99% since 1992. They were found in only 10 of 42 forested areas, and three roosts that once held 700–1200 birds each, now had only 18 in total. Local people mainly blamed the pet trade and the felling of timber for the decline. Populations are thought to be stable in Cameroon. In the Congo, an estimated 15,000 are taken every year for the pet trade, from the eastern part of the country, although the annual quota is stated to be 5,000.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission indicated they have observed grey parrots escaped or released into South Florida since at least 1984, but no evidence indicates that the population is breeding naturally.
Behaviour and ecology in the wild
Little is known about the behaviour and activities of these birds in the wild. In addition to a lack of research funding, it can be particularly difficult to study these birds in wild situations due to their status as prey animals, which leads them to have rather secretive personalities. It has been shown that wild grey parrots may also imitate a wide variety of sounds they hear, much like their captive relatives. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, two greys sound-recorded while roosting reportedly had a repertoire of over 200 different calls, including nine imitations of other wild bird songs and one of a bat.
Feeding
Grey parrots are mainly frugivorous, with most of their diet consisting of fruit, nuts, and seeds, including oil palm fruit. They sometimes also eat flowers and tree bark, as well as insects and snails. In the wild, the grey parrot is partly a ground feeder.
Breeding
Grey parrots are monogamous breeders who nest in tree cavities. Each mated pair of parrots needs their own tree for their nest. The hen lays three to five eggs, which she incubates for 30 days while being fed by her mate. The adults defend their nesting sites.
Grey parrot chicks require feeding and care from their parents in the nest. The parents take care of them until 4–5 weeks after they are fledged. Young leave the nest at the age of 12 weeks. Little is known about the courtship behaviour of this species in the wild. They weigh 12–14 g (7⁄16–1⁄2 oz) at hatching and 372–526 g (13+1⁄8–18+1⁄2 oz) when they leave their parents.
Conservation
Natural predators for this species include palm-nut vultures and several raptors. Monkeys target eggs and the young for food.
Humans are by far the largest threat to wild grey populations. Between 1994 and 2003, more than 359,000 grey parrots were traded on the international market. Approximately 21% of the wild population was being harvested every year. Mortality rates are extremely high between the time they are captured and they reach the market, ranging from 60 to 66%. This species also is hunted for its meat and for its body parts, which are used in traditional medicines. As a result of the extensive harvest of wild birds, in addition to habitat loss, this species is believed to be undergoing a rapid decline in the wild and therefore, has been rated as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
In October 2016, the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Fauna and Flora (CITES) extended the highest level of protection to grey parrots by listing the species under Appendix 1, which regulates international trade in the species.
In 2021, the Kenyan government held a short amnesty, during which grey parrot owners could pay a fee to obtain a permit for their birds and facilitate legal ownership. Following the expiry of this time period, it is now illegal to own this species without a permit.
In captivity
The species is common in captivity and regularly kept by humans as a companion parrot, prized for its ability to mimic human speech, which makes it one of the most popular avian pets. An escaped pet in Japan was returned to his owner after repeating the owner's name and address.
Grey parrots are notorious for mimicking noises heard in their environment and using them tirelessly. They are highly intelligent birds, needing extensive behavioural and social enrichment as well as extensive attention in captivity or else they may become distressed. Feather plucking is a common symptom seen among such distressed grey parrots, affecting up to 40% of captive individuals. They may also be prone to behavioural problems due to their sensitive nature. Social isolation hastens stress and aging.
The grey parrot is a highly social species which relies on a flock-type structure, even when raised in captivity. Because they are so dependent on the other birds within their flock, much of their speech and vocal ability is acquired through interaction with the humans with whom they reside. Both wild and captive parrots have been shown to use contact calls, which allow them to interact with their flock mates and communicate information about their location, detection of predators, availability of food, and safety status. In addition, contact calls are used to form strong social bonds with their flock mates, or in the case of captive greys, with their human housemates. In captivity, they have been shown to display communicative competence, meaning they not only use human language correctly, but also in such a way that is appropriate for the social situation which they are in.
In January 2024, keepers at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in Friskney, England, moved a notorious group of eight swearing parrots into a group of more than 100 birds in an attempt to "dilute" their excessive profane mimicry.
Diet
In captivity, grey parrots may be fed bird pellets, a variety of fruits such as pear, orange, pomegranate, apple, and banana, and vegetables such as carrot, cooked sweet potato, celery, fresh kale, green beans and peas. The birds also need a source of calcium.
Disease
Grey parrots in captivity have been observed to be susceptible to fungal infections, bacterial infections, nutritional insufficiency, malignant tumors, psittacine beak and feather disease, tapeworms, and blood-worms. Young grey parrots are more commonly infected by psittacine beak and feather disease than adults. Infected birds show symptoms such as loss of appetite, fluffy feathers, sluggishness, and reduced walking abilities due to brittle bones.
Grey parrots are more likely to have rhinitis, an inflammatory and infectious disease of the nasal cavity. Birds may exhibit signs such as wheezing, sneezing, nasal snuffling, and swelling or occlusion of the nares. Treatment options include gentle debridement and nasal irrigation.
Intelligence and cognition
Grey parrots are highly intelligent and are considered to be one of the most intelligent species of psittacines. Many individuals have been shown to perform some tasks at the cognitive level of a four- to six-year-old human child. Several studies have been conducted indicating a suite of higher-level cognitive abilities. Experiments have shown grey parrots can learn number sequences and can learn to associate human voices with the faces of the humans who create them. It has been reported that grey parrots are capable of using existing English words to create new labels for objects when the bird does not know the name of the object, for example "banerry" ("banana" + "cherry") for "apple", "banana crackers" for "dried banana chips" or "yummy bread" for "cake".
American scientist Irene Pepperberg's research with Alex the parrot showed his ability to learn more than 100 words, differentiating between objects, colours, materials and shapes. Pepperberg spent several decades working with Alex, and wrote numerous scientific papers on experiments performed, indicating the bird's advanced cognitive abilities. One such study found that Alex had the ability to add numbers as well as having a zero-like concept, similar to that of young children and apes.
In addition to their striking cognitive abilities, grey parrots have displayed altruistic behaviour and concern for others. Researchers found that while blue-headed macaws were unlikely to share a nut with other members of their own species, grey parrots would actively give their conspecific partner a nut even if it meant they would not be able to get one themselves. When the roles were reversed, their partners were overwhelmingly likely to return the favour, forgoing their own nut to their partner's benefits. This indicates not only a display of selflessness but also an act of reciprocity.
A 2012 study demonstrated that captive grey parrots have individual musical preferences. When presented with the opportunity to choose between two different pieces of music via a touch screen monitor located in their cage, the two birds in the test consistently chose different songs, to which they then danced and sang along. Some pet grey parrots have also been observed using the music feature of smart speakers (such as Google Nest or Amazon Echo) to verbally request playback of specific favoured songs.
Some research has shown that foot preference can be linked to the number of words a particular parrot may know and use. Researchers found grey parrots who prefer to use their right foot showed a marked increase in the number of words within their lexicon as compared to left-footed parrots. Scientists postulate that parrots may have lateralization of brain function, much as mammals do.
In two murder trials, there was consideration to use the deceased victim's pet grey parrot's "testimony" as evidence due to the parrot's witnessing and repeating the victim's last words. In the 1993 murder trial of Gary Joseph Rasp, the defendant was accused of murdering Jane Gill. Public defender Charles Ogulnik wanted to use Jane's pet grey parrot Max to prove Gary's innocence, due to Max repeating Jane's last words, "Richard, no, no, no!". In the 2017 murder trial of Glenna Duram, the defendant was accused of murdering her husband Martin Duram. The prosecutor was exploring the possibility of using the couple's pet parrot Bud as evidence when Bud kept repeating Martin's last words, "Don't fucking shoot."
Mutations
Grey mutations occur naturally in the wild, such as the Blue Ino (albino), the Incomplete Ino, and the Blue varieties. The Blue Ino is all white.The Incomplete Ino has light pigmentation. The Blue has a white tail.
Due to selection by breeders, some captive grey parrots are partly or completely red. Breeders from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia have bred grey parrots intensively since the 1800s. These bred varieties include the Red Pied, F2 Pied, Grizzles, Ino, Incomplete, Parino, Lutino, Cinnamon, and Red Factor. South African bird breeder Von van Antwerpen and New Zealand partner Jaco Bosman selected F2 Pieds and created the first Red Factor Greys. They are rare, may be predominantly red-pigmented, and vary in price depending upon the extent of the red plumage displayed.
History
The domestication of grey parrots dates back to 2000 B.C., depicting native birds as pets in Egyptian hieroglyphics. They were considered valuable by the Greeks and the Romans, who kept them in cages. Grey parrots, due to illegal trading in recent years, were listed as Endangered in 2016 on the IUCN Red List.
References
External links
Media related to Psittacus erithacus at Wikimedia Commons |
Carl_Linnaeus | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus | [
315
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus"
] | Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as Carolus a Linné.
Linnaeus was the son of a curate and was born in Råshult, in the countryside of Småland, southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, while publishing several volumes. By the time of his death in 1778, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe.
Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on Earth." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly." Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist." Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists) and "The Pliny of the North". He is also considered one of the founders of modern ecology.
In botany, the abbreviation L. is used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for a species' name. In zoology, the abbreviation Linnaeus is generally used; the abbreviations L., Linnæus and Linné are also used. In older publications, the abbreviation "Linn." is found. Linnaeus's remains constitute the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen that he is known to have examined was himself.
Early life
Childhood
Linnaeus was born in the village of Råshult in Småland, Sweden, on 23 May 1707. He was the first child of Nicolaus (Nils) Ingemarsson (who later adopted the family name Linnaeus) and Christina Brodersonia. His siblings were Anna Maria Linnæa, Sofia Juliana Linnæa, Samuel Linnæus (who would eventually succeed their father as rector of Stenbrohult and write a manual on beekeeping), and Emerentia Linnæa. His father taught him Latin as a small child.
One of a long line of peasants and priests, Nils was an amateur botanist, a Lutheran minister, and the curate of the small village of Stenbrohult in Småland. Christina was the daughter of the rector of Stenbrohult, Samuel Brodersonius.
A year after Linnaeus's birth, his grandfather Samuel Brodersonius died, and his father Nils became the rector of Stenbrohult. The family moved into the rectory from the curate's house.
Even in his early years, Linnaeus seemed to have a liking for plants, flowers in particular. Whenever he was upset, he was given a flower, which immediately calmed him. Nils spent much time in his garden and often showed flowers to Linnaeus and told him their names. Soon Linnaeus was given his own patch of earth where he could grow plants.
Carl's father was the first in his ancestry to adopt a permanent surname. Before that, ancestors had used the patronymic naming system of Scandinavian countries: his father was named Ingemarsson after his father Ingemar Bengtsson. When Nils was admitted to the University of Lund, he had to take on a family name. He adopted the Latinate name Linnæus after a giant linden tree (or lime tree), lind in Swedish, that grew on the family homestead. This name was spelled with the æ ligature. When Carl was born, he was named Carl Linnæus, with his father's family name. The son also always spelled it with the æ ligature, both in handwritten documents and in publications. Carl's patronymic would have been Nilsson, as in Carl Nilsson Linnæus.
Early education
Linnaeus's father began teaching him basic Latin, religion, and geography at an early age. When Linnaeus was seven, Nils decided to hire a tutor for him. The parents picked Johan Telander, a son of a local yeoman. Linnaeus did not like him, writing in his autobiography that Telander "was better calculated to extinguish a child's talents than develop them".
Two years after his tutoring had begun, he was sent to the Lower Grammar School at Växjö in 1717. Linnaeus rarely studied, often going to the countryside to look for plants. At some point, his father went to visit him and, after hearing critical assessments by his preceptors, he decided to put the youth as an apprentice to some honest cobbler. He reached the last year of the Lower School when he was fifteen, which was taught by the headmaster, Daniel Lannerus, who was interested in botany. Lannerus noticed Linnaeus's interest in botany and gave him the run of his garden.
He also introduced him to Johan Rothman, the state doctor of Småland and a teacher at Katedralskolan (a gymnasium) in Växjö. Also a botanist, Rothman broadened Linnaeus's interest in botany and helped him develop an interest in medicine. By the age of 17, Linnaeus had become well acquainted with the existing botanical literature. He remarks in his journal that he "read day and night, knowing like the back of my hand, Arvidh Månsson's Rydaholm Book of Herbs, Tillandz's Flora Åboensis, Palmberg's Serta Florea Suecana, Bromelii's Chloros Gothica and Rudbeckii's Hortus Upsaliensis".
Linnaeus entered the Växjö Katedralskola in 1724, where he studied mainly Greek, Hebrew, theology and mathematics, a curriculum designed for boys preparing for the priesthood. In the last year at the gymnasium, Linnaeus's father visited to ask the professors how his son's studies were progressing; to his dismay, most said that the boy would never become a scholar. Rothman believed otherwise, suggesting Linnaeus could have a future in medicine. The doctor offered to have Linnaeus live with his family in Växjö and to teach him physiology and botany. Nils accepted this offer.
University studies
Lund
Rothman showed Linnaeus that botany was a serious subject. He taught Linnaeus to classify plants according to Tournefort's system. Linnaeus was also taught about the sexual reproduction of plants, according to Sébastien Vaillant. In 1727, Linnaeus, age 21, enrolled in Lund University in Skåne. He was registered as Carolus Linnæus, the Latin form of his full name, which he also used later for his Latin publications.
Professor Kilian Stobæus, natural scientist, physician and historian, offered Linnaeus tutoring and lodging, as well as the use of his library, which included many books about botany. He also gave the student free admission to his lectures. In his spare time, Linnaeus explored the flora of Skåne, together with students sharing the same interests.
Uppsala
In August 1728, Linnaeus decided to attend Uppsala University on the advice of Rothman, who believed it would be a better choice if Linnaeus wanted to study both medicine and botany. Rothman based this recommendation on the two professors who taught at the medical faculty at Uppsala: Olof Rudbeck the Younger and Lars Roberg. Although Rudbeck and Roberg had undoubtedly been good professors, by then they were older and not so interested in teaching. Rudbeck no longer gave public lectures, and had others stand in for him. The botany, zoology, pharmacology and anatomy lectures were not in their best state. In Uppsala, Linnaeus met a new benefactor, Olof Celsius, who was a professor of theology and an amateur botanist. He received Linnaeus into his home and allowed him use of his library, which was one of the richest botanical libraries in Sweden.
In 1729, Linnaeus wrote a thesis, Praeludia Sponsaliorum Plantarum on plant sexual reproduction. This attracted the attention of Rudbeck; in May 1730, he selected Linnaeus to give lectures at the University although the young man was only a second-year student. His lectures were popular, and Linnaeus often addressed an audience of 300 people. In June, Linnaeus moved from Celsius's house to Rudbeck's to become the tutor of the three youngest of his 24 children. His friendship with Celsius did not wane and they continued their botanical expeditions. Over that winter, Linnaeus began to doubt Tournefort's system of classification and decided to create one of his own. His plan was to divide the plants by the number of stamens and pistils. He began writing several books, which would later result in, for example, Genera Plantarum and Critica Botanica. He also produced a book on the plants grown in the Uppsala Botanical Garden, Adonis Uplandicus.
Rudbeck's former assistant, Nils Rosén, returned to the University in March 1731 with a degree in medicine. Rosén started giving anatomy lectures and tried to take over Linnaeus's botany lectures, but Rudbeck prevented that. Until December, Rosén gave Linnaeus private tutoring in medicine. In December, Linnaeus had a "disagreement" with Rudbeck's wife and had to move out of his mentor's house; his relationship with Rudbeck did not appear to suffer. That Christmas, Linnaeus returned home to Stenbrohult to visit his parents for the first time in about three years. His mother had disapproved of his failing to become a priest, but she was pleased to learn he was teaching at the University.
Expedition to Lapland
During a visit with his parents, Linnaeus told them about his plan to travel to Lapland; Rudbeck had made the journey in 1695, but the detailed results of his exploration were lost in a fire seven years afterwards. Linnaeus's hope was to find new plants, animals and possibly valuable minerals. He was also curious about the customs of the native Sami people, reindeer-herding nomads who wandered Scandinavia's vast tundras. In April 1732, Linnaeus was awarded a grant from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala for his journey.
Linnaeus began his expedition from Uppsala on 12 May 1732, just before he turned 25. He travelled on foot and horse, bringing with him his journal, botanical and ornithological manuscripts and sheets of paper for pressing plants. Near Gävle he found great quantities of Campanula serpyllifolia, later known as Linnaea borealis, the twinflower that would become his favourite. He sometimes dismounted on the way to examine a flower or rock and was particularly interested in mosses and lichens, the latter a main part of the diet of the reindeer, a common and economically important animal in Lapland.
Linnaeus travelled clockwise around the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, making major inland incursions from Umeå, Luleå and Tornio. He returned from his six-month-long, over 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) expedition in October, having gathered and observed many plants, birds and rocks. Although Lapland was a region with limited biodiversity, Linnaeus described about 100 previously unidentified plants. These became the basis of his book Flora Lapponica. However, on the expedition to Lapland, Linnaeus used Latin names to describe organisms because he had not yet developed the binomial system.
In Flora Lapponica Linnaeus's ideas about nomenclature and classification were first used in a practical way, making this the first proto-modern Flora. The account covered 534 species, used the Linnaean classification system and included, for the described species, geographical distribution and taxonomic notes. It was Augustin Pyramus de Candolle who attributed Linnaeus with Flora Lapponica as the first example in the botanical genre of Flora writing. Botanical historian E. L. Greene described Flora Lapponica as "the most classic and delightful" of Linnaeus's works.
It was during this expedition that Linnaeus had a flash of insight regarding the classification of mammals. Upon observing the lower jawbone of a horse at the side of a road he was travelling, Linnaeus remarked: "If I only knew how many teeth and of what kind every animal had, how many teats and where they were placed, I should perhaps be able to work out a perfectly natural system for the arrangement of all quadrupeds."
In 1734, Linnaeus led a small group of students to Dalarna. Funded by the Governor of Dalarna, the expedition was to catalogue known natural resources and discover new ones, but also to gather intelligence on Norwegian mining activities at Røros.
Years in the Dutch Republic (1735–38)
Doctorate
His relations with Nils Rosén having worsened, Linnaeus accepted an invitation from Claes Sohlberg, son of a mining inspector, to spend the Christmas holiday in Falun, where Linnaeus was permitted to visit the mines.
In April 1735, at the suggestion of Sohlberg's father, Linnaeus and Sohlberg set out for the Dutch Republic, where Linnaeus intended to study medicine at the University of Harderwijk while tutoring Sohlberg in exchange for an annual salary. At the time, it was common for Swedes to pursue doctoral degrees in the Netherlands, then a highly revered place to study natural history.
On the way, the pair stopped in Hamburg, where they met the mayor, who proudly showed them a supposed wonder of nature in his possession: the taxidermied remains of a seven-headed hydra. Linnaeus quickly discovered the specimen was a fake, cobbled together from the jaws and paws of weasels and the skins of snakes. The provenance of the hydra suggested to Linnaeus that it had been manufactured by monks to represent the Beast of Revelation. Even at the risk of incurring the mayor's wrath, Linnaeus made his observations public, dashing the mayor's dreams of selling the hydra for an enormous sum. Linnaeus and Sohlberg were forced to flee from Hamburg.
Linnaeus began working towards his degree as soon as he reached Harderwijk, a university known for awarding degrees in as little as a week. He submitted a dissertation, written back in Sweden, entitled Dissertatio medica inauguralis in qua exhibetur hypothesis nova de febrium intermittentium causa, in which he laid out his hypothesis that malaria arose only in areas with clay-rich soils. Although he failed to identify the true source of disease transmission, (i.e., the Anopheles mosquito), he did correctly predict that Artemisia annua (wormwood) would become a source of antimalarial medications.
Within two weeks he had completed his oral and practical examinations and was awarded a doctoral degree.
That summer Linnaeus reunited with Peter Artedi, a friend from Uppsala with whom he had once made a pact that should either of the two predecease the other, the survivor would finish the decedent's work. Ten weeks later, Artedi drowned in the canals of Amsterdam, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript on the classification of fish.
Publishing of Systema Naturae
One of the first scientists Linnaeus met in the Netherlands was Johan Frederik Gronovius, to whom Linnaeus showed one of the several manuscripts he had brought with him from Sweden. The manuscript described a new system for classifying plants. When Gronovius saw it, he was very impressed, and offered to help pay for the printing. With an additional monetary contribution by the Scottish doctor Isaac Lawson, the manuscript was published as Systema Naturae (1735).
Linnaeus became acquainted with one of the most respected physicians and botanists in the Netherlands, Herman Boerhaave, who tried to convince Linnaeus to make a career there. Boerhaave offered him a journey to South Africa and America, but Linnaeus declined, stating he would not stand the heat. Instead, Boerhaave convinced Linnaeus that he should visit the botanist Johannes Burman. After his visit, Burman, impressed with his guest's knowledge, decided Linnaeus should stay with him during the winter. During his stay, Linnaeus helped Burman with his Thesaurus Zeylanicus. Burman also helped Linnaeus with the books on which he was working: Fundamenta Botanica and Bibliotheca Botanica.
George Clifford, Philip Miller, and Johann Jacob Dillenius
In August 1735, during Linnaeus's stay with Burman, he met George Clifford III, a director of the Dutch East India Company and the owner of a rich botanical garden at the estate of Hartekamp in Heemstede. Clifford was very impressed with Linnaeus's ability to classify plants, and invited him to become his physician and superintendent of his garden. Linnaeus had already agreed to stay with Burman over the winter, and could thus not accept immediately. However, Clifford offered to compensate Burman by offering him a copy of Sir Hans Sloane's Natural History of Jamaica, a rare book, if he let Linnaeus stay with him, and Burman accepted. On 24 September 1735, Linnaeus moved to Hartekamp to become personal physician to Clifford, and curator of Clifford's herbarium. He was paid 1,000 florins a year, with free board and lodging. Though the agreement was only for a winter of that year, Linnaeus practically stayed there until 1738. It was here that he wrote a book Hortus Cliffortianus, in the preface of which he described his experience as "the happiest time of my life". (A portion of Hartekamp was declared as public garden in April 1956 by the Heemstede local authority, and was named "Linnaeushof". It eventually became, as it is claimed, the biggest playground in Europe.)
In July 1736, Linnaeus travelled to England, at Clifford's expense. He went to London to visit Sir Hans Sloane, a collector of natural history, and to see his cabinet, as well as to visit the Chelsea Physic Garden and its keeper, Philip Miller. He taught Miller about his new system of subdividing plants, as described in Systema Naturae. At first, Miller was reluctant to use the new binomial nomenclature, preferring instead the classifications of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and John Ray. Nevertheless, Linnaeus applauded Miller's Gardeners Dictionary. The conservative Miller actually retained in his dictionary a number of pre-Linnaean binomial signifiers discarded by Linnaeus but which have been retained by modern botanists. He only fully changed to the Linnaean system in the edition of The Gardeners Dictionary of 1768. Miller ultimately was impressed, and from then on started to arrange the garden according to Linnaeus's system.
Linnaeus also travelled to Oxford University to visit the botanist Johann Jacob Dillenius. He failed to make Dillenius publicly fully accept his new classification system, though the two men remained in correspondence for many years afterwards. Linnaeus dedicated his Critica Botanica to him, as "opus botanicum quo absolutius mundus non-vidit". Linnaeus would later name a genus of tropical tree Dillenia in his honour. He then returned to Hartekamp, bringing with him many specimens of rare plants. The next year, 1737, he published Genera Plantarum, in which he described 935 genera of plants, and shortly thereafter he supplemented it with Corollarium Generum Plantarum, with another sixty (sexaginta) genera.
His work at Hartekamp led to another book, Hortus Cliffortianus, a catalogue of the botanical holdings in the herbarium and botanical garden of Hartekamp. He wrote it in nine months (completed in July 1737), but it was not published until 1738. It contains the first use of the name Nepenthes, which Linnaeus used to describe a genus of pitcher plants.
Linnaeus stayed with Clifford at Hartekamp until 18 October 1737 (new style), when he left the house to return to Sweden. Illness and the kindness of Dutch friends obliged him to stay some months longer in Holland. In May 1738, he set out for Sweden again. On the way home, he stayed in Paris for about a month, visiting botanists such as Antoine de Jussieu. After his return, Linnaeus never again left Sweden.
Return to Sweden
When Linnaeus returned to Sweden on 28 June 1738, he went to Falun, where he entered into an engagement to Sara Elisabeth Moræa. Three months later, he moved to Stockholm to find employment as a physician, and thus to make it possible to support a family. Once again, Linnaeus found a patron; he became acquainted with Count Carl Gustav Tessin, who helped him get work as a physician at the Admiralty. During this time in Stockholm, Linnaeus helped found the Royal Swedish Academy of Science; he became the first Praeses of the academy by drawing of lots.
Because his finances had improved and were now sufficient to support a family, he received permission to marry his fiancée, Sara Elisabeth Moræa. Their wedding was held 26 June 1739. Seventeen months later, Sara gave birth to their first son, Carl. Two years later, a daughter, Elisabeth Christina, was born, and the subsequent year Sara gave birth to Sara Magdalena, who died when 15 days old. Sara and Linnaeus would later have four other children: Lovisa, Sara Christina, Johannes and Sophia.
In May 1741, Linnaeus was appointed Professor of Medicine at Uppsala University, first with responsibility for medicine-related matters. Soon, he changed place with the other Professor of Medicine, Nils Rosén, and thus was responsible for the Botanical Garden (which he would thoroughly reconstruct and expand), botany and natural history, instead. In October that same year, his wife and nine-month-old son followed him to live in Uppsala.
Öland and Gotland
Ten days after he was appointed professor, he undertook an expedition to the island provinces of Öland and Gotland with six students from the university to look for plants useful in medicine. They stayed on Öland until 21 June, then sailed to Visby in Gotland. Linnaeus and the students stayed on Gotland for about a month, and then returned to Uppsala. During this expedition, they found 100 previously unrecorded plants. The observations from the expedition were later published in Öländska och Gothländska Resa, written in Swedish. Like Flora Lapponica, it contained both zoological and botanical observations, as well as observations concerning the culture in Öland and Gotland.
During the summer of 1745, Linnaeus published two more books: Flora Suecica and Fauna Suecica. Flora Suecica was a strictly botanical book, while Fauna Suecica was zoological. Anders Celsius had created the temperature scale named after him in 1742. Celsius's scale was originally inverted compared to the way it is used today, with water boiling at 0 °C and freezing at 100 °C. Linnaeus was the one who inverted the scale to its present usage, in 1745.
Västergötland
In the summer of 1746, Linnaeus was once again commissioned by the Government to carry out an expedition, this time to the Swedish province of Västergötland. He set out from Uppsala on 12 June and returned on 11 August. On the expedition his primary companion was Erik Gustaf Lidbeck, a student who had accompanied him on his previous journey. Linnaeus described his findings from the expedition in the book Wästgöta-Resa, published the next year. After he returned from the journey, the Government decided Linnaeus should take on another expedition to the southernmost province Scania. This journey was postponed, as Linnaeus felt too busy.
In 1747, Linnaeus was given the title archiater, or chief physician, by the Swedish king Adolf Frederick—a mark of great respect. The same year he was elected member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.
Scania
In the spring of 1749, Linnaeus could finally journey to Scania, again commissioned by the government. With him he brought his student Olof Söderberg. On the way to Scania, he made his last visit to his brothers and sisters in Stenbrohult since his father had died the previous year. The expedition was similar to the previous journeys in most aspects, but this time he was also ordered to find the best place to grow walnut and Swedish whitebeam trees; these trees were used by the military to make rifles. While there, they also visited the Ramlösa mineral spa, where he remarked on the quality of its ferruginous water. The journey was successful, and Linnaeus's observations were published the next year in Skånska Resa.
Rector of Uppsala University
In 1750, Linnaeus became rector of Uppsala University, starting a period where natural sciences were esteemed. Perhaps the most important contribution he made during his time at Uppsala was to teach; many of his students travelled to various places in the world to collect botanical samples. Linnaeus called the best of these students his "apostles". His lectures were normally very popular and were often held in the Botanical Garden. He tried to teach the students to think for themselves and not trust anybody, not even him. Even more popular than the lectures were the botanical excursions made every Saturday during summer, where Linnaeus and his students explored the flora and fauna in the vicinity of Uppsala.
Philosophia Botanica
Linnaeus published Philosophia Botanica in 1751. The book contained a complete survey of the taxonomy system he had been using in his earlier works. It also contained information of how to keep a journal on travels and how to maintain a botanical garden.
Nutrix Noverca
During Linnaeus's time it was normal for upper class women to have wet nurses for their babies. Linnaeus joined an ongoing campaign to end this practice in Sweden and promote breast-feeding by mothers. In 1752 Linnaeus published a thesis along with Frederick Lindberg, a physician student, based on their experiences. In the tradition of the period, this dissertation was essentially an idea of the presiding reviewer (prases) expounded upon by the student. Linnaeus's dissertation was translated into French by J. E. Gilibert in 1770 as La Nourrice marâtre, ou Dissertation sur les suites funestes du nourrisage mercénaire. Linnaeus suggested that children might absorb the personality of their wet nurse through the milk. He admired the child care practices of the Lapps and pointed out how healthy their babies were compared to those of Europeans who employed wet nurses. He compared the behaviour of wild animals and pointed out how none of them denied their newborns their breastmilk. It is thought that his activism played a role in his choice of the term Mammalia for the class of organisms.
Species Plantarum
Linnaeus published Species Plantarum, the work which is now internationally accepted as the starting point of modern botanical nomenclature, in 1753. The first volume was issued on 24 May, the second volume followed on 16 August of the same year. The book contained 1,200 pages and was published in two volumes; it described over 7,300 species. The same year the king dubbed him knight of the Order of the Polar Star, the first civilian in Sweden to become a knight in this order. He was then seldom seen not wearing the order's insignia.
Ennoblement
Linnaeus felt Uppsala was too noisy and unhealthy, so he bought two farms in 1758: Hammarby and Sävja. The next year, he bought a neighbouring farm, Edeby. He spent the summers with his family at Hammarby; initially it only had a small one-storey house, but in 1762 a new, larger main building was added. In Hammarby, Linnaeus made a garden where he could grow plants that could not be grown in the Botanical Garden in Uppsala. He began constructing a museum on a hill behind Hammarby in 1766, where he moved his library and collection of plants. A fire that destroyed about one third of Uppsala and had threatened his residence there necessitated the move.
Since the initial release of Systema Naturae in 1735, the book had been expanded and reprinted several times; the tenth edition was released in 1758. This edition established itself as the starting point for zoological nomenclature, the equivalent of Species Plantarum.
The Swedish King Adolf Frederick granted Linnaeus nobility in 1757, but he was not ennobled until 1761. With his ennoblement, he took the name Carl von Linné (Latinised as Carolus a Linné), 'Linné' being a shortened and gallicised version of 'Linnæus', and the German nobiliary particle 'von' signifying his ennoblement. The noble family's coat of arms prominently features a twinflower, one of Linnaeus's favourite plants; it was given the scientific name Linnaea borealis in his honour by Gronovius. The shield in the coat of arms is divided into thirds: red, black and green for the three kingdoms of nature (animal, mineral and vegetable) in Linnaean classification; in the centre is an egg "to denote Nature, which is continued and perpetuated in ovo." At the bottom is a phrase in Latin, borrowed from the Aeneid, which reads "Famam extendere factis": we extend our fame by our deeds. Linnaeus inscribed this personal motto in books that were given to him by friends.
After his ennoblement, Linnaeus continued teaching and writing. In total, he presided at 186 PhD ceremonies, with many of the dissertations written by himself.His reputation had spread over the world, and he corresponded with many different people. For example, Catherine II of Russia sent him seeds from her country. He also corresponded with Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, "the Linnaeus of the Austrian Empire", who was a doctor and a botanist in Idrija, Duchy of Carniola (nowadays Slovenia). Scopoli communicated all of his research, findings, and descriptions (for example of the olm and the dormouse, two little animals hitherto unknown to Linnaeus). Linnaeus greatly respected Scopoli and showed great interest in his work. He named a solanaceous genus, Scopolia, the source of scopolamine, after him, but because of the great distance between them, they never met.
Final years
Linnaeus was relieved of his duties in the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1763, but continued his work there as usual for more than ten years after. In 1769 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society for his work. He stepped down as rector at Uppsala University in December 1772, mostly due to his declining health.
Linnaeus's last years were troubled by illness. He had had a disease called the Uppsala fever in 1764, but survived due to the care of Rosén. He developed sciatica in 1773, and the next year, he had a stroke which partially paralysed him. He had a second stroke in 1776, losing the use of his right side and leaving him bereft of his memory; while still able to admire his own writings, he could not recognise himself as their author.
In December 1777, he had another stroke which greatly weakened him, and eventually led to his death on 10 January 1778 in Hammarby. Despite his desire to be buried in Hammarby, he was buried in Uppsala Cathedral on 22 January.
His library and collections were left to his widow Sara and their children. Joseph Banks, an eminent botanist, wished to purchase the collection, but his son Carl refused the offer and instead moved the collection to Uppsala. In 1783 Carl died and Sara inherited the collection, having outlived both her husband and son. She tried to sell it to Banks, but he was no longer interested; instead an acquaintance of his agreed to buy the collection. The acquaintance was a 24-year-old medical student, James Edward Smith, who bought the whole collection: 14,000 plants, 3,198 insects, 1,564 shells, about 3,000 letters and 1,600 books. Smith founded the Linnean Society of London five years later.
The von Linné name ended with his son Carl, who never married. His other son, Johannes, had died aged 3. There are over two hundred descendants of Linnaeus through two of his daughters.
Apostles
During Linnaeus's time as Professor and Rector of Uppsala University, he taught many devoted students, 17 of whom he called "apostles". They were the most promising, most committed students, and all of them made botanical expeditions to various places in the world, often with his help. The amount of this help varied; sometimes he used his influence as Rector to grant his apostles a scholarship or a place on an expedition. To most of the apostles he gave instructions of what to look for on their journeys. Abroad, the apostles collected and organised new plants, animals and minerals according to Linnaeus's system. Most of them also gave some of their collection to Linnaeus when their journey was finished. Thanks to these students, the Linnaean system of taxonomy spread through the world without Linnaeus ever having to travel outside Sweden after his return from Holland. The British botanist William T. Stearn notes, without Linnaeus's new system, it would not have been possible for the apostles to collect and organise so many new specimens. Many of the apostles died during their expeditions.
Early expeditions
Christopher Tärnström, the first apostle and a 43-year-old pastor with a wife and children, made his journey in 1746. He boarded a Swedish East India Company ship headed for China. Tärnström never reached his destination, dying of a tropical fever on Côn Sơn Island the same year. Tärnström's widow blamed Linnaeus for making her children fatherless, causing Linnaeus to prefer sending out younger, unmarried students after Tärnström. Six other apostles later died on their expeditions, including Pehr Forsskål and Pehr Löfling.
Two years after Tärnström's expedition, Finnish-born Pehr Kalm set out as the second apostle to North America. There he spent two-and-a-half years studying the flora and fauna of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Canada. Linnaeus was overjoyed when Kalm returned, bringing back with him many pressed flowers and seeds. At least 90 of the 700 North American species described in Species Plantarum had been brought back by Kalm.
Cook expeditions and Japan
Daniel Solander was living in Linnaeus's house during his time as a student in Uppsala. Linnaeus was very fond of him, promising Solander his eldest daughter's hand in marriage. On Linnaeus's recommendation, Solander travelled to England in 1760, where he met the English botanist Joseph Banks. With Banks, Solander joined James Cook on his expedition to Oceania on the Endeavour in 1768–71. Solander was not the only apostle to journey with James Cook; Anders Sparrman followed on the Resolution in 1772–75 bound for, among other places, Oceania and South America. Sparrman made many other expeditions, one of them to South Africa.
Perhaps the most famous and successful apostle was Carl Peter Thunberg, who embarked on a nine-year expedition in 1770. He stayed in South Africa for three years, then travelled to Japan. All foreigners in Japan were forced to stay on the island of Dejima outside Nagasaki, so it was thus hard for Thunberg to study the flora. He did, however, manage to persuade some of the translators to bring him different plants, and he also found plants in the gardens of Dejima. He returned to Sweden in 1779, one year after Linnaeus's death.
Major publications
Systema Naturae
The first edition of Systema Naturae was printed in the Netherlands in 1735. It was a twelve-page work. By the time it reached its 10th edition in 1758, it classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants. People from all over the world sent their specimens to Linnaeus to be included. By the time he started work on the 12th edition, Linnaeus needed a new invention—the index card—to track classifications.
In Systema Naturae, the unwieldy names mostly used at the time, such as "Physalis annua ramosissima, ramis angulosis glabris, foliis dentato-serratis", were supplemented with concise and now familiar "binomials", composed of the generic name, followed by a specific epithet—in the case given, Physalis angulata. These binomials could serve as a label to refer to the species. Higher taxa were constructed and arranged in a simple and orderly manner. Although the system, now known as binomial nomenclature, was partially developed by the Bauhin brothers (see Gaspard Bauhin and Johann Bauhin) almost 200 years earlier, Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently throughout the work, including in monospecific genera, and may be said to have popularised it within the scientific community.
After the decline in Linnaeus's health in the early 1770s, publication of editions of Systema Naturae went in two different directions. Another Swedish scientist, Johan Andreas Murray, issued the Regnum Vegetabile section separately in 1774 as the Systema Vegetabilium, rather confusingly labelled the 13th edition. Meanwhile, a 13th edition of the entire Systema appeared in parts between 1788 and 1793 under the editorship of Johann Friedrich Gmelin. It was through the Systema Vegetabilium that Linnaeus's work became widely known in England, following its translation from the Latin by the Lichfield Botanical Society as A System of Vegetables (1783–1785).
Orbis eruditi judicium de Caroli Linnaei MD scriptis
('Opinion of the learned world on the writings of Carl Linnaeus, Doctor') Published in 1740, this small octavo-sized pamphlet was presented to the State Library of New South Wales by the Linnean Society of NSW in 2018. This is considered among the rarest of all the writings of Linnaeus, and crucial to his career, securing him his appointment to a professorship of medicine at Uppsala University. From this position he laid the groundwork for his radical new theory of classifying and naming organisms for which he was considered the founder of modern taxonomy.
Species Plantarum
Species Plantarum (or, more fully, Species Plantarum, exhibentes plantas rite cognitas, ad genera relatas, cum differentiis specificis, nominibus trivialibus, synonymis selectis, locis natalibus, secundum systema sexuale digestas) was first published in 1753, as a two-volume work. Its prime importance is perhaps that it is the primary starting point of plant nomenclature as it exists today.
Genera Plantarum
Genera plantarum: eorumque characteres naturales secundum numerum, figuram, situm, et proportionem omnium fructificationis partium was first published in 1737, delineating plant genera. Around 10 editions were published, not all of them by Linnaeus himself; the most important is the 1754 fifth edition. In it Linnaeus divided the plant Kingdom into 24 classes. One, Cryptogamia, included all the plants with concealed reproductive parts (algae, fungi, mosses and liverworts and ferns).
Philosophia Botanica
Philosophia Botanica (1751) was a summary of Linnaeus's thinking on plant classification and nomenclature, and an elaboration of the work he had previously published in Fundamenta Botanica (1736) and Critica Botanica (1737). Other publications forming part of his plan to reform the foundations of botany include his Classes Plantarum and Bibliotheca Botanica: all were printed in Holland (as were Genera Plantarum (1737) and Systema Naturae (1735)), the Philosophia being simultaneously released in Stockholm.
Collections
At the end of his lifetime the Linnean collection in Uppsala was considered one of the finest collections of natural history objects in Sweden. Next to his own collection he had also built up a museum for the university of Uppsala, which was supplied by material donated by Carl Gyllenborg (in 1744–1745), crown-prince Adolf Fredrik (in 1745), Erik Petreus (in 1746), Claes Grill (in 1746), Magnus Lagerström (in 1748 and 1750) and Jonas Alströmer (in 1749). The relation between the museum and the private collection was not formalised and the steady flow of material from Linnean pupils were incorporated to the private collection rather than to the museum. Linnaeus felt his work was reflecting the harmony of nature and he said in 1754 "the earth is then nothing else but a museum of the all-wise creator's masterpieces, divided into three chambers". He had turned his own estate into a microcosm of that 'world museum'.
In April 1766 parts of the town were destroyed by a fire and the Linnean private collection was subsequently moved to a barn outside the town, and shortly afterwards to a single-room stone building close to his country house at Hammarby near Uppsala. This resulted in a physical separation between the two collections; the museum collection remained in the botanical garden of the university. Some material which needed special care (alcohol specimens) or ample storage space was moved from the private collection to the museum.
In Hammarby the Linnean private collections suffered seriously from damp and the depredations by mice and insects. Carl von Linné's son (Carl Linnaeus) inherited the collections in 1778 and retained them until his own death in 1783. Shortly after Carl von Linné's death his son confirmed that mice had caused "horrible damage" to the plants and that also moths and mould had caused considerable damage. He tried to rescue them from the neglect they had suffered during his father's later years, and also added further specimens. This last activity however reduced rather than augmented the scientific value of the original material.
In 1784 the young medical student James Edward Smith purchased the entire specimen collection, library, manuscripts, and correspondence of Carl Linnaeus from his widow and daughter and transferred the collections to London. Not all material in Linné's private collection was transported to England. Thirty-three fish specimens preserved in alcohol were not sent and were later lost.
In London Smith tended to neglect the zoological parts of the collection; he added some specimens and also gave some specimens away. Over the following centuries the Linnean collection in London suffered enormously at the hands of scientists who studied the collection, and in the process disturbed the original arrangement and labels, added specimens that did not belong to the original series and withdrew precious original type material.
Much material which had been intensively studied by Linné in his scientific career belonged to the collection of Queen Lovisa Ulrika (1720–1782) (in the Linnean publications referred to as "Museum Ludovicae Ulricae" or "M. L. U."). This collection was donated by her grandson King Gustav IV Adolf (1778–1837) to the museum in Uppsala in 1804. Another important collection in this respect was that of her husband King Adolf Fredrik (1710–1771) (in the Linnean sources known as "Museum Adolphi Friderici" or "Mus. Ad. Fr."), the wet parts (alcohol collection) of which were later donated to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and is today housed in the Swedish Museum of Natural History at Stockholm. The dry material was transferred to Uppsala.
System of taxonomy
The establishment of universally accepted conventions for the naming of organisms was Linnaeus's main contribution to taxonomy—his work marks the starting point of consistent use of binomial nomenclature. During the 18th century expansion of natural history knowledge, Linnaeus also developed what became known as the Linnaean taxonomy; the system of scientific classification now widely used in the biological sciences. A previous zoologist Rumphius (1627–1702) had more or less approximated the Linnaean system and his material contributed to the later development of the binomial scientific classification by Linnaeus.
The Linnaean system classified nature within a nested hierarchy, starting with three kingdoms. Kingdoms were divided into classes and they, in turn, into orders, and thence into genera (singular: genus), which were divided into species (singular: species). Below the rank of species he sometimes recognised taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank; these have since acquired standardised names such as variety in botany and subspecies in zoology. Modern taxonomy includes a rank of family between order and genus and a rank of phylum between kingdom and class that were not present in Linnaeus's original system.
Linnaeus's groupings were based upon shared physical characteristics, and not based upon differences. Of his higher groupings, only those for animals are still in use, and the groupings themselves have been significantly changed since their conception, as have the principles behind them. Nevertheless, Linnaeus is credited with establishing the idea of a hierarchical structure of classification which is based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships. While the underlying details concerning what are considered to be scientifically valid "observable characteristics" have changed with expanding knowledge (for example, DNA sequencing, unavailable in Linnaeus's time, has proven to be a tool of considerable utility for classifying living organisms and establishing their evolutionary relationships), the fundamental principle remains sound.
Human taxonomy
Linnaeus's system of taxonomy was especially noted as the first to include humans (Homo) taxonomically grouped with apes (Simia), under the header of Anthropomorpha.
German biologist Ernst Haeckel speaking in 1907 noted this as the "most important sign of Linnaeus's genius".
Linnaeus classified humans among the primates beginning with the first edition of Systema Naturae. During his time at Hartekamp, he had the opportunity to examine several monkeys and noted similarities between them and man. He pointed out both species basically have the same anatomy; except for speech, he found no other differences. Thus he placed man and monkeys under the same category, Anthropomorpha, meaning "manlike". This classification received criticism from other biologists such as Johan Gottschalk Wallerius, Jacob Theodor Klein and Johann Georg Gmelin on the ground that it is illogical to describe man as human-like. In a letter to Gmelin from 1747, Linnaeus replied:
It does not please [you] that I've placed Man among the Anthropomorpha, perhaps because of the term 'with human form', but man learns to know himself. Let's not quibble over words. It will be the same to me whatever name we apply. But I seek from you and from the whole world a generic difference between man and simian that [follows] from the principles of Natural History. I absolutely know of none. If only someone might tell me a single one! If I would have called man a simian or vice versa, I would have brought together all the theologians against me. Perhaps I ought to have by virtue of the law of the discipline.
The theological concerns were twofold: first, putting man at the same level as monkeys or apes would lower the spiritually higher position that man was assumed to have in the great chain of being, and second, because the Bible says man was created in the image of God (theomorphism), if monkeys/apes and humans were not distinctly and separately designed, that would mean monkeys and apes were created in the image of God as well. This was something many could not accept. The conflict between world views that was caused by asserting man was a type of animal would simmer for a century until the much greater, and still ongoing, creation–evolution controversy began in earnest with the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859.
After such criticism, Linnaeus felt he needed to explain himself more clearly. The 10th edition of Systema Naturae introduced new terms, including Mammalia and Primates, the latter of which would replace Anthropomorpha as well as giving humans the full binomial Homo sapiens. The new classification received less criticism, but many natural historians still believed he had demoted humans from their former place of ruling over nature and not being a part of it. Linnaeus believed that man biologically belongs to the animal kingdom and had to be included in it. In his book Dieta Naturalis, he said, "One should not vent one's wrath on animals, Theology decree that man has a soul and that the animals are mere 'automata mechanica,' but I believe they would be better advised that animals have a soul and that the difference is of nobility."
Linnaeus added a second species to the genus Homo in Systema Naturae based on a figure and description by Jacobus Bontius from a 1658 publication: Homo troglodytes ("caveman") and published a third in 1771: Homo lar. Swedish historian Gunnar Broberg states that the new human species Linnaeus described were actually simians or native people clad in skins to frighten colonial settlers, whose appearance had been exaggerated in accounts to Linnaeus. For Homo troglodytes Linnaeus asked the Swedish East India Company to search for one, but they did not find any signs of its existence. Homo lar has since been reclassified as Hylobates lar, the lar gibbon.
In the first edition of Systema Naturae, Linnaeus subdivided the human species into four varieties: "Europæus albesc[ens]" (whitish European), "Americanus rubesc[ens]" (reddish American), "Asiaticus fuscus" (tawny Asian) and "Africanus nigr[iculus]" (blackish African).
In the tenth edition of Systema Naturae he further detailed phenotypical characteristics for each variety, based on the concept of the four temperaments from classical antiquity, and changed the description of Asians' skin tone to "luridus" (yellow). While Linnaeus believed that these varieties resulted from environmental differences between the four known continents, the Linnean Society acknowledges that his categorization's focus on skin color and later inclusion of cultural and behavioral traits cemented colonial stereotypes and provided the foundations for scientific racism. Additionally, Linnaeus created a wastebasket taxon "monstrosus" for "wild and monstrous humans, unknown groups, and more or less abnormal people".
In 1959, W. T. Stearn designated Linnaeus to be the lectotype of H. sapiens.
Influences and economic beliefs
Linnaeus's applied science was inspired not only by the instrumental utilitarianism general to the early Enlightenment, but also by his adherence to the older economic doctrine of Cameralism. Additionally, Linnaeus was a state interventionist. He supported tariffs, levies, export bounties, quotas, embargoes, navigation acts, subsidised investment capital, ceilings on wages, cash grants, state-licensed producer monopolies, and cartels.
Commemoration
Anniversaries of Linnaeus's birth, especially in centennial years, have been marked by major celebrations. Linnaeus has appeared on numerous Swedish postage stamps and banknotes. There are numerous statues of Linnaeus in countries around the world. The Linnean Society of London has awarded the Linnean Medal for excellence in botany or zoology since 1888. Following approval by the Riksdag of Sweden, Växjö University and Kalmar College merged on 1 January 2010 to become Linnaeus University. Other things named after Linnaeus include the twinflower genus Linnaea, Linnaeosicyos (a monotypic genus in the family Cucurbitaceae), the crater Linné on the Earth's moon, a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the cobalt sulfide mineral Linnaeite.
Commentary
Linnaeus wrote a description of himself in his autobiography Egenhändiga anteckningar af Carl Linnæus om sig sjelf : med anmärkningar och tillägg, which was published by his student Adam Afzelius in 1823:
Linnaeus was not big, not small, thin, brown-eyed, light, hasty, walked quickly, did everything promptly, could not stand lateness; was quickly moved, sensitive, worked continuously; could not spare himself. He enjoyed good food, drank good drinks; but was never inebriated by them. He cared little for appearance, believed that the man should embellish the clothes and not vice versa. He was certainly not argumentative, so he never answered those who wrote against him, and said: If I am wrong, I will not win and if I am right, I will be shown to be right as long as Nature exists.
Andrew Dickson White wrote in A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896):
Linnaeus ... was the most eminent naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close thinker; but the atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his being was saturated with biblical theology, and this permeated all his thinking. ... Toward the end of his life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted at the creation one species; and from the last edition of his Systema Naturæ he quietly left out the strongly orthodox statement of the fixity of each species, which he had insisted upon in his earlier works. ... warnings came speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides.
The mathematical PageRank algorithm, applied to 24 multilingual Wikipedia editions in 2014, published in PLOS ONE in 2015, placed Carl Linnaeus at the top historical figure, above Jesus, Aristotle, Napoleon, and Adolf Hitler (in that order).
In the 21st century, Linnæus's taxonomy of human "races" has been problematised and discussed. Some critics claim that Linnæus was one of the forebears of the modern pseudoscientific notion of scientific racism, while others hold the view that while his classification was stereotyped, it did not imply that certain human "races" were superior to others.
Standard author abbreviation
Selected publications by Linnaeus
See also
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
Biographies
Biography at the Department of Systematic Botany, University of Uppsala
Biography at The Linnean Society of London
Biography from the University of California Museum of Paleontology
A four-minute biographical video from the London Natural History Museum on YouTube
Biography from Taxonomic Literature, 2nd Edition. 1976–2009.
Resources
Works by Carl von Linné at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Carl Linnaeus at the Internet Archive
The Linnean Society of London
The Linnaeus Apostles
The Linnean Collections
The Linnean Correspondence
Linnaeus's Disciples and Apostles
The Linnaean Dissertations
Linnean Herbarium
The Linnaeus Tercentenary
Works by Carl von Linné at the Biodiversity Heritage Library
Digital edition: "Critica Botanica" by the University and State Library Düsseldorf
Digital edition: "Classes plantarum seu systemata plantarum" by the University and State Library Düsseldorf
Oratio de telluris habitabilis incremento Archived 29 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine (1744) – full digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library
Other
Linnaeus was depicted by Jay Hosler in a parody of Peanuts titled "Good ol' Charlie Darwin".
The 15 March 2007 issue of Nature featured a picture of Linnaeus on the cover with the heading "Linnaeus's Legacy" and devoted a substantial portion to items related to Linnaeus and Linnaean taxonomy.
A tattoo of Linnaeus's definition of the order Primates (Archived 2 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine) mentioned by Carl Zimmer
Ginkgo biloba tree at the University of Harderwijk, said to have been planted by Linnaeus in 1735
SL Magazine, Spring 2018 features an article by Nicholas Sparks, librarian, Collection Strategy and Development titled "Origins of Taxonomy", describing a generous donation from the Linnean Society of NSW to supplement the State Library of New South Wales's collections on Carl Linnaeus of documents, photographs, prints and drawings as well as a fine portrait of Linnaeus painted about 1800. |
Systema_Naturae | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systema_Naturae | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systema_Naturae"
] | Systema Naturae (originally in Latin written Systema Naturæ with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomenclature, was partially developed by the Bauhin brothers, Gaspard and Johann, Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently throughout his book. The first edition was published in 1735. The full title of the 10th edition (1758), which was the most important one, was Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis, which appeared in English in 1806 with the title: "A General System of Nature, Through the Three Grand Kingdoms of Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals, Systematically Divided Into their Several Classes, Orders, Genera, Species, and Varieties, with their Habitations, Manners, Economy, Structure and Peculiarities".
The tenth edition of this book (1758) is considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature. In 1766–1768 Linnaeus published the much enhanced 12th edition, the last under his authorship. Another again enhanced work in the same style titled "Systema Naturae" was published by Johann Friedrich Gmelin between 1788 and 1793. Since at least the early 20th century, zoologists have commonly recognized this as the last edition belonging to this series.
Overview
Linnaeus (later known as "Carl von Linné", after his ennoblement in 1761) published the first edition of Systema Naturae in the year 1735, during his stay in the Netherlands. As was customary for the scientific literature of its day, the book was published in Latin. In it, he outlined his ideas for the hierarchical classification of the natural world, dividing it into the animal kingdom (regnum animale), the plant kingdom (regnum vegetabile), and the "mineral kingdom" (regnum lapideum).
Linnaeus's Systema Naturae lists only about 10,000 species of organisms, of which about 6,000 are plants and 4,236 are animals. According to the historian of botany William T. Stearn, "Even in 1753 he believed that the number of species of plants in the whole world would hardly reach 10,000; in his whole career he named about 7,700 species of flowering plants."
Linnaeus developed his classification of the plant kingdom in an attempt to describe and understand the natural world as a reflection of the logic of God's creation. His sexual system, where species with the same number of stamens were treated in the same group, was convenient but in his view artificial. Linnaeus believed in God's creation and that there were no deeper relationships to be expressed. He is frequently quoted as saying: "God created, Linnaeus organized" (Latin: Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit). The classification of animals was more natural. For instance, humans were for the first time placed together with other primates, as Anthropomorpha. They were also divided into four varieties, as distinguished by skin color and corresponding with the four known continents and temperaments. The tenth edition expanded on these varieties with behavioral and cultural traits that the Linnean Society acknowledges as having cemented colonial stereotypes and provided the foundations for scientific racism.
As a result of the popularity of the work, and the number of new specimens sent to him from around the world, Linnaeus kept publishing new and ever-expanding editions of his work. It grew from eleven very large pages in the first edition (1735) to 2,400 pages in the 12th edition (1766–1768). Also, as the work progressed, he made changes: in the first edition, whales were classified as fishes, following the work of Linnaeus' friend and "father of ichthyology" Peter Artedi; in the 10th edition, published in 1758, whales were moved into the mammal class. In this same edition, he introduced two-part names (see binomen) for animal species, something that he had done for plant species (see binary name) in the 1753 publication of Species Plantarum. The system eventually developed into modern Linnaean taxonomy, a hierarchically organized biological classification.
After Linnaeus' health declined in the early 1770s, publication of editions of Systema Naturae went in two directions. Another Swedish scientist, Johan Andreas Murray issued the Regnum Vegetabile section separately in 1774 as the Systema Vegetabilium, rather confusingly labelled the 13th edition. Meanwhile, a 13th edition of the entire Systema appeared in parts between 1788 and 1793. It was as the Systema Vegetabilium that Linnaeus' work became widely known in England following translation from the Latin by the Lichfield Botanical Society, as A System of Vegetables (1783–1785).
Taxonomy
In his Imperium Naturæ, Linnaeus established three kingdoms, namely Regnum Animale, Regnum Vegetabile and Regnum Lapideum. This approach, the Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Kingdoms, survives until today in the popular mind, notably in the form of parlour games: "Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" The classification was based on five levels: kingdom, class, order, genus, and species. While species and genus was seen as God-given (or "natural"), the three higher levels were seen by Linnaeus as constructs. The concept behind the set ranks being applied to all groups was to make a system that was easy to remember and navigate, a task which most say he succeeded in.
Linnaeus's work had a huge impact on science; it was indispensable as a foundation for biological nomenclature, now regulated by the Nomenclature Codes. Two of his works, the first edition of the Species Plantarum (1753) for plants and the 10th edition of the Systema Naturæ (1758), are accepted to be among the starting points of nomenclature. Most of his names for species and genera were published at very early dates, and thus take priority over those of other, later authors. In zoology there is one exception, which is a monograph on Swedish spiders, Svenska Spindlar, published by Carl Clerck in 1757, so the names established there take priority over the Linnean names. His exceptional importance to science was less in the value of his taxonomy, more his deployment of skilful young students abroad to collect specimens. At the close of the 18th century, his system had effectively become the standard for biological classification.
Animals
Only in the animal kingdom is the higher taxonomy of Linnaeus still more or less recognizable and some of these names are still in use, but usually not quite for the same groups as used by Linnaeus. He divided the Animal Kingdom into six classes; in the tenth edition (1758), these were:
Mammalia comprised the mammals. In the first edition, whales and the West Indian manatee were classified among the fishes.
Aves comprised the birds. Linnaeus was the first to remove bats from the birds and classify them under mammals.
Amphibia comprised amphibians, reptiles, and assorted fishes that are not of Osteichthyes.
Pisces comprised the bony fishes. These included the spiny-finned fishes (Perciformes) as a separate order.
Insecta comprised all arthropods. Crustaceans, arachnids and myriapods were included as the order "Aptera".
Vermes comprised the remaining invertebrates, roughly divided into "worms", molluscs, and hard-shelled organisms like echinoderms.
Humans
Linnaeus was one of the first scientists to classify humans as primates (originally Anthropomorpha for "manlike"), eliciting some controversy for placing people among animals and thus not ruling over nature. He distinguished humans (Homo sapiens) from Homo troglodytes, a species of human-like creatures with exaggerated or non-human characteristics, despite finding limited evidence. He divided Homo sapiens into four varieties, corresponding with the four known continents and four temperaments (some editions also classify Ferus wild children and Monstrosus monstrous to accommodate adaptations to extreme environments). The first edition included Europæus albescens (whitish Europeans), Americanus rubescens (reddish Americans), Asiaticus fuscus (tawny Asians), and Africanus nigriculus (blackish Africans). The tenth edition solidified these descriptions by removing the "ish" qualifiers (e.g. albus "white" instead of albescens "whitish") and revising the characterization of Asiaticus from fuscus (tawny) to luridus (pale yellow). It also incorporates behavioral and cultural traits that the Linnean Society recognizes as having cemented colonial stereotypes and provided the foundations for scientific racism.
Plants
The orders and classes of plants, according to his Systema Sexuale, were never intended to represent natural groups (as opposed to his ordines naturales in his Philosophia Botanica) but only for use in identification. They were used in that sense well into the 19th century.
The Linnaean classes for plants, in the Sexual System, were:
Minerals
Linnaeus's taxonomy of minerals has long since fallen out of use. In the 10th edition, 1758, of the Systema Naturæ, the Linnaean classes were:
Classis 1. Petræ (rocks)
Classis 2. Mineræ (minerals and ores)
Classis 3. Fossilia (fossils and aggregates)
Editions
Gmelin's thirteenth (decima tertia) edition of Systema Naturae (1788–1793) should be carefully distinguished from the more limited Systema Vegetabilium first prepared and published by Johan Andreas Murray in 1774 (but labelled as "thirteenth edition").
The dates of publication for Gmelin's edition were the following:
Part 1: pp. [1–12], 1–500 (25 July 1788)
Part 2: pp. 501–1032 (20 April 1789)
Part 3: pp. 1033–1516 (20 November 1789)
Part 4: pp. 1517–2224 (21 May 1790)
Part 5: pp. 2225–3020 (6 December 1790)
Part 6: pp. 3021–3910 (14 May 1791)
Part 7: pp. 3911–4120 (2 July 1792)
See also
Supplementum Plantarum
Animalia Paradoxa
10th edition of Systema Naturae
12th edition of Systema Naturae
Systema Vegetabilium
English edition by William Turton, translated from Gmelin's last edition. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.37018
References
Bibliography
External links
Linné online
Systema Naturae is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive |
Willis_Tower | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Tower | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Tower"
] | The Willis Tower, originally and still commonly referred to as the Sears Tower, is a 110-story, 1,451-foot (442.3 m) skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), it opened in 1973 as the world's tallest building, a title that it held for nearly 25 years. It is the third-tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the 23rd-tallest in the world. Each year, more than 1.7 million people visit the Skydeck observation deck, the highest in the United States, making it one of Chicago's most popular tourist destinations.
The building occupies a site bounded by Franklin Street, Jackson Boulevard, Wacker Drive, and Adams Street. Graham and Khan designed the building as nine square "tubes", clustered in a 3×3 matrix; seven of the tubes set back at upper floors. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard methods, though the building's owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. The facade is made of anodized aluminum and black glass. The base of the building contains a retail complex known as the Catalog. The lower half of the tower was originally occupied by retail company Sears, which had its headquarters there until 1994, while the upper stories were rented out.
The structure was known as the Sears Tower from its construction until the naming rights were included in a 2009 lease with the Willis Group. Local area residents still refer to the building by its old name. As of April 2018, the building's largest tenant is United Airlines, which occupies around 20 floors. Other major tenants include the building's namesake Willis Towers Watson, and law firms Schiff Hardin and Seyfarth Shaw. Morgan Stanley became the building's fourth-largest tenant in 2017.
History
Planning
Site selection
Sears, Roebuck & Co. had occupied an office complex on Chicago's west side since 1906. The existing offices were inadequate by 1966, prompting Sears executives to begin searching for a new site. By 1969, Sears was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives quickly determined that a new headquarters complex in the suburbs was infeasible, since it would require relocating about 7,000 employees. Instead, Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop.
Sears asked its outside counsel, Arnstein, Gluck, Weitzenfeld & Minow (now known as Saul Ewing LLP) to suggest a location. The firm consulted with local and federal authorities and the applicable law, then offered Sears two options. The first option was the Goose Island area northwest of the Loop, but Sears's vice president of real estate, Matthew J. Stacom, rejected this proposal. The other was a two-block area in the Loop, bounded by Franklin Street on the east, Jackson Boulevard on the south, Wacker Drive on the west, and Adams Street on the north. Though the site was more centrally located, it was also relatively small, with about 55,000 square feet (5,100 m2). Bernard Feinberg, Albert I. Rubenstein, and Philip Teinowitz had assembled that site over the previous five years, but they had failed to acquire a neighboring 74,000-square-foot (6,900 m2) lot from bus company Greyhound Lines.
Feinberg, Rubenstein, and Teinowitz then bought options for three adjacent lots. Under the terms of each option, unless the three men were able to acquire at least one of the lots within 90 days, all three options would be forfeited. Ultimately, Sears acquired the Loop site in 1970. Sears then obtained permits to close down one block of Quincy Street, which bisected the site from east to west. Attorneys from the Arnstein firm, headed by Andrew Adsit, began buying the properties parcel by parcel. Sears purchased 15 buildings from 100 owners and paid the government of Chicago $2.7 million (equivalent to $21.2 million in 2023) for the block of Quincy Street that was to be closed down.
Design process
Sears executives estimated that their new building would need about 4.2 million square feet (390,000 m2), split into 70 stories with 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2) each or 60 stories with 70,000 square feet (6,500 m2) each. Sears commissioned architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to design the tower. SOM was also the lead structural engineer, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles provided MEP engineering.
Sears planned to move its merchandise group into the building initially, renting out the remaining space to other tenants until needed. Sears executives were accustomed to large floor areas of at least 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2), but SOM architects raised concerns that the large floors would be unattractive to smaller tenants. A subsequent proposal called for two buildings connected by a footbridge, which would respectively contain 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2) and 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2) on each floor, but this was also infeasible.
Some floors were designed with smaller footprints to attract prospective lessees, so the building's height was increased to meet Sears's floor-area requirements. Architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan, both of whom were partners with SOM, proposed a tower with 55,000-square-foot (5,100 m2) floors in the lower part of the building, as well as a series of setbacks with gradually tapering floor plates, giving the tower its distinctive look. During the design process, one of the architects reportedly pulled out nine cigars and staggered them vertically until the pair both agreed to the arrangement. This allowed Sears to occupy the large lower stories, while providing more conventional office space that could be rented out on the upper stories. The firm of Saphier, Lerner, Schindler was responsible for determining Sears's space requirements and designing furniture for the company. It conducted a year-long study to determine how 16 of the company's departments should be laid out within the building.
As Sears continued to offer optimistic growth projections, the height of the proposed tower also increased. Under Chicago's relatively lax zoning laws, the site could theoretically accommodate a 300-story building with 13.5 million square feet (1,250,000 m2). In practice, most potential tenants did not want excessively high offices. Additionally, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) restricted the height of structures in the area to protect air traffic. FAA officials publicly denied that they had imposed a height limit; however, the area's minimum safe altitude would need to be raised by 1,000 feet (300 m) if the building was just 1 foot (0.30 m) taller. Plans for the tower were announced on July 27, 1970. The 1,450-foot-tall (440 m) building would contain 109 stories as measured from Wacker Drive and 110 stories as measured from Franklin Street. This would make Sears's new tower the tallest in the world, as measured by roof height, although New York City's under-construction World Trade Center Twin Towers would have a taller antenna. Although the Sears Tower would contain 4.4 million square feet (410,000 m2) of space, only about 3.7 million square feet (340,000 m2) would be used as offices.
Construction
Early construction
Work on the building's foundation commenced in August 1970. Contractors excavated the lot to a depth of 50 feet (15 m), and they removed 180,000 cubic feet (5,100 m3) of dirt from the site. By that November, Spencer, White & Prentis Inc. was excavating a trench around the site, measuring 60 feet (18 m) deep and 20 by 216 feet (6.1 by 65.8 m) across. The contractors then built a slurry wall within the trench, made of concrete and reinforced steel. Workers used steel bracing to prevent the slurry wall from collapsing inward, then used caissons to drill 201 holes into the ground. They also rerouted a sewer that had run underneath Quincy Street, which was to be closed permanently as part of the tower's construction.
The Diesel Construction Company was hired as the Sears Tower's general contractor. Sears, Roebuck & Co. chairman Gordon M. Metcalf installed the building's first steel beam at a ceremony on June 7, 1971. The project employed 2,000 workers. To accelerate the building's construction, a concrete plant was built in the building's basement, allowing workers to pour one-third of a concrete floor every day. Contractors built two temporary kitchens on the site for workers, and telephone and loudspeaker systems were installed on every floor to allow workers to communicate. In addition, contractors installed temporary generators that could supply up to 14,000 kilowatts (19,000 hp) simultaneously; during the winter, most of this electricity was used to heat the exposed steel beams on the lowest five floors.
Broadcast-signal controversy
By late 1971, area residents and broadcasters had raised concerns that the new Sears Tower would disrupt television broadcasts. According to one estimate, the building would obstruct television signals for 15 percent of Chicagoans and cause "double images" for another 20 percent, primarily affecting communities to the northwest and southeast. The same year, officials of the village of Skokie, northwest of Chicago, threatened to request an injunction to prevent further construction. In response to these concerns, Sears started researching methods to reduce the tower's effect on broadcast signals. Variety magazine stated that the Sears Tower did not interfere with broadcasts on its own, since several shorter towers in the Loop also interfered with broadcast signals. Nonetheless, the Illinois Citizens' Committee for Broadcasting filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in February 1972.
The first lawsuit against the building was filed by the state attorney in neighboring Lake County on March 17, 1972. A second suit was filed on March 28 in Cook County Circuit Court by the villages of Skokie, Northbrook, and Deerfield, Illinois. Sears filed motions to dismiss the Lake and Cook County lawsuits, which both sought to cap the building at 67 stories. Sears studied the possibility of erecting antennas atop its tower in April 1972, and the tower's construction continued, even as decisions on both lawsuits were delayed. At the end of the month, the company applied for permission to increase the building's height limit by 350 feet (110 m) and install a new antenna, although eight of Chicago's ten television stations criticized the plan. On May 17, 1972, Judge LaVerne Dickson, Chief of the Lake County Circuit Court, dismissed the suit, saying, "I find nothing that gives television viewers the right to reception without interference." By then, the building had reached the 58th story. The Lake County attorney appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court. In his decision on June 12, Judge Charles R. Barrett contended the plaintiffs did not have a right to undistorted television reception.
Meanwhile, the FCC declined to act on the height dispute on the grounds it did not have jurisdiction. The FAA approved the antennas atop the tower in June 1972, and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the previous rulings by Lake and Cook County circuit courts at the end of the month. Work was temporarily paused that July due to a labor strike. The next month, Sears formally announced plans for broadcast antennas on the tower's roof, and the company offered to spend $5 million (equivalent to $36.4 million in 2023) to help relocate broadcast stations to the Sears Tower. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld the FCC's decision in September, and the United States Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the Seventh Circuit's decision that November.
Topping-out and completion
In November 1972, the Sears Tower became Chicago's tallest building, surpassing the Standard Oil Building, which had held the record for one month. At the time, the Sears project employed 1,600 workers in three shifts; one worker had been killed during the project so far. The building's final completion had been delayed significantly due to labor strikes and bad weather. The concrete work had reached the 77th floor, while the steel superstructure had reached the 84th floor; the remainder of the steelwork would be difficult to construct because of high winds at higher altitudes. Local television stations WTTW and WLS-TV were planning to install temporary broadcast antennas atop the tower when the steel frame was completed. The tower's superstructure had reached the 100th floor in February 1973, at which point it was taller than the Empire State Building in New York City.
The building was topped out on May 3, 1973. The day before the event, the Chicago Tribune's editorial board wrote: "Move aside, New York. After tomorrow, when schoolchildren dream of big buildings, they'll no longer think of you and the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center." The frame was still not technically complete, as three to four stories remained to be built. One week after the ceremony, four workers died after an elevator shaft caught fire. A fifth worker died after falling from the tower in an unrelated incident four days later. Work was halted again that June due to a labor strike, and Sears began moving furniture into the building that month. The construction cost was about US$150 million, (equivalent to $1.03 billion in 2023). Despite the size of the project, Sears executives said the building could not accommodate Sears' annual shareholder meetings, and the company continued to rent space in other structures.
20th century
Opening and early years
The first Sears employees began moving into the tower during the weekend of September 9, 1973. Flashing beacons on the building's roof, the first to be installed at any building in Chicago, were activated the same month. Upon the tower's opening, broadcasters at the John Hancock Center, Chicago's second-tallest building, had to decide whether to relocate to the Sears Tower. Two television stations decided to relocate. Six other stations remained at the John Hancock Center, citing a study which showed that relocating to the Sears Tower would provide only minimal benefits. Documents released in late 1973 indicated that the Sears Tower would cause much more interference than either Sears or the television stations had disclosed. WLS-TV moved to the Sears Tower in February 1974, followed by WTTW the next month.
By March 1974, three-fourths of the space in the building was occupied; Sears had leased the upper stories to tenants such as Goldman Sachs, Northwest Industries, and Schiff Hardin. A mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder was dedicated in the lobby in October 1974. Sears' optimistic growth projections were not realized; instead, in late 1974, the company fired 500 workers, about seven percent of the 7,000 Sears employees that worked in the tower. Competition beyond its traditional rivals such as Montgomery Ward arose from emerging retail giants including Kmart, Kohl's, and Walmart. As a result of a surplus of office space that emerged in the 1980s, the tower did not draw as many tenants as projected and so stood half-vacant for a decade.
Renovation and relocation
In February 1984, Sears announced that it would renovate the building to attract visitors to the lower floors. At the time, 6,500 Sears employees occupied more than half of the building, taking up the lowest 48 stories. The remainder of the tower was occupied by 5,500 employees from about 70 companies. As part of the project, the main entrance was covered with a four-story glass dome, and the first four stories were converted into a shopping atrium. In addition, a visitor center for the building's Skydeck was constructed. The renovations, designed by SOM, were completed in mid-1985. Paul Gapp of the Chicago Tribune wrote that SOM had "scaled the new entrance skillfully, in keeping with the main building's height" and that the new atrium "relieves the formerly cramped feeling from just inside the Franklin entrance".
Sears announced in 1988 that it would sell the tower and relocate its merchandising division from the lower half of the building. The company wanted to earn at least $1 billion from the sale of the Sears Tower, so it offered multiple concessions to potential buyers, including a guarantee that Sears would continue to pay rent on the lower half of the building until tenants were found for these stories. Four large firms were negotiating to buy the tower by July 1989. The company had difficulties finding a buyer, in part because the lower stories were too large for many potential tenants. Sears nearly sold the tower to Canadian company Olympia & York, but the deal was canceled in September 1989 because the two firms could not agree on who would pay the property taxes. In November 1989, Sears decided to instead refinance the building. The next year, Sears took out a mortgage loan on the tower for $850 million from MetLife and AEW Capital Management, with MetLife as the holder of the mortgage note; the loan would mature in 2005.
In 1990, the law firm of Keck, Mahin & Cate decided to move into a development that would become 77 West Wacker Drive, rebuffing Sears' attempts to entice the firm to stay. Just two years later, Sears began moving its own offices out of the building to a new campus in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, which was completed in 1995. As the maturation of the mortgage approached, Sears renegotiated the loan in 1994. The negotiations resulted in an agreement where Sears would no longer be liable for the $850 million loan, although it would only nominally own the building, while AEW and MetLife effectively had total control. As part of the 1994 agreement, AEW and MetLife would be able to take official ownership of the building in 2003. In 1997, Toronto-based TrizecHahn, at the time the lessee of the CN Tower, acquired AEW's holdings in the building for $110 million, assuming $4 million in liabilities and a $734 million mortgage.
21st century
Trizec had projected that the Sears Tower would quickly reach a value of $1 billion. These projections were not met, with the tower facing the same vacancy and other problems it saw under Sears, although Trizec made somewhat successful efforts to attract new tenants. Following the September 11 attacks, two of the largest tenants, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, immediately announced plans for vacating 300,000 ft2 of space. In 2003, Trizec sold its holdings of the tower to MetLife for $9 million.
Syndicate ownership
In March 2004, MetLife announced that it would sell the building to a group of investors, including Joseph Chetrit, Joseph Moinian, Lloyd Goldman, Joseph Cayre, and Jeffrey Feil of New York, as well as American Landmark Properties of Skokie, Illinois. The quoted price was $840 million, with $825 million held in a mortgage. Two years later, in February 2007, the Sears Tower's owners obtained a $780 million loan from UBS. At the time, UBS valued the tower at $1.2 billion.
Since 2007, the owners had considered plans for the construction of a hotel on the north side of Jackson Boulevard, between Wacker Drive and Franklin Street, close to the entrance of the observation deck, above the tower's underground parking garage. According to the tower's owners, the second building was considered in the original design. The plan was eventually cancelled as city zoning did not permit construction of such a tall building in that location. In February 2009, the owners announced they were considering a plan to paint the structure silver, an idea that was later abandoned. It was hoped that a new, silver, paint-job would "rebrand" the building and highlight its advances in energy efficiency for an estimated cost of $50 million.
Although Sears' naming rights expired in 2003, the building continued to be called the Sears Tower for several years, despite multiple changes in ownership. In March 2009, London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings agreed to lease a portion of the building and obtained the naming rights. On July 16, 2009, the building was officially renamed the Willis Tower. By 2011, the building's owners were considering selling a partial ownership stake, or even the entire building, to an investor. The next year, United Airlines announced it would move its corporate headquarters from 77 West Wacker Drive to Willis Tower.
Blackstone ownership
By March 2015, the Willis Tower was being marketed at a price of $1.5 billion. The same month, the Blackstone Group purchased the tower for a reported $1.3 billion, the highest price ever paid for a property in the U.S. outside of New York City. Blackstone announced a $500 million renovation in January 2017, which would include the construction of the Catalog, a six-story commercial complex, replacing a plaza on Jackson Boulevard and the entrance on Wacker Drive. Architectural firm Gensler designed the renovation. A rooftop terrace was built atop the Catalog, and the building's HVAC systems were overhauled. Most of the building's elevators, excluding those that served the Skydeck, were also renovated for the first time in the tower's history. The new elevators would be faster than the original elevators and would use use 35 percent less energy. The building's owners installed artwork by Olafur Eliasson, Jacob Hashimoto, and other artists.
To fund these improvements, in February 2017, Blackstone obtained a $1 billion loan from a group of banks including Goldman Sachs. The new loan replaced $750 million of CMBS debt that was maturing. The following year, because of the increasing costs of the renovation, Blackstone received a new $1.3 billion loan from Deutsche Bank and Barclays. The Wacker Drive "Lunchbox" entrance was demolished in early 2018 to make way for the Catalog. A steel globe next to the entrance, manufactured by the Poblocki Sign Company and installed in 2010, was relocated to Elmhurst, Illinois. A 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m2) private club on the 66th and 67th stories opened in June 2018. The club included a restaurant named Craftsman and a lounge named Frame, both of which exclusively served the tower's tenants, as well as a public restaurant known as the East Room. That September, Urbanspace announced that it would operate a food hall on the lower stories.
In 2020, insurance company Aon had proposed acquiring Willis Towers Watson (which had succeeded the Willis Group as the building's owner), prompting speculation that the building could be renamed again. The planned merger was canceled in 2021 following an antitrust lawsuit from the United States Department of Justice. The building's renovation was completed in May 2022. At the time, although the Willis Tower was nearly 85 percent leased, the number of tenants and visitors entering the building had decreased significantly since 2019, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago. In April 2023, The New York Times reported that Blackstone had written down the value of its investment in the tower by $119 million.
Incidents
In June 2006, seven men were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting to destroy the tower. Deputy FBI Director John Pistole described their plot as "more aspirational than operational". The case went to court in October 2007. After three trials, five of the suspects were convicted and two acquitted. The alleged leader of the group, Narseal Batiste, was sentenced to 13+1⁄2 years in prison. In response to the perceived threat of an attack, the building's largest tenant at this time, Ernst & Young, moved to North Wacker Drive in early 2009.
In May 2020, heavy rains caused three of the basement levels to flood, knocking out power to the building. This also resulted in many TV and radio stations going off the air.
Architecture
The Willis Tower was designed by architect Bruce Graham and structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Graham and Khan designed the building as nine square "tubes", clustered in a 3×3 matrix forming a square base with 225-foot (69 m) sides. The building's rentable area is 3,810,000 sq ft (354,000 m2). The structure was intended to accommodate 16,500 employees.
Form and facade
Each of the "tubes" is a column-free module measuring 75 by 75 feet (23 by 23 m), which set back at different stories. There are setbacks at the 50th, 66th, and 90th floors. The lowest 50 stories contain nine tubes and cover 52,000 square feet (4,800 m2) each. The northwest and southeast tubes terminate at the 50th floor. The 51st through 66th floors each span 41,420 square feet (3,848 m2), above which the northeast and southwest tubes end. From the 67th to 90th floors, each story is shaped like a cross, covering 30,170 square feet (2,803 m2). The north, east, and south tubes end at the 90th floor; the remaining west and center tubes reach 108 floors, with an area of 12,283 square feet (1,141.1 m2) on each of the top stories.
The Sears Tower was the first building to use this innovative design. It was both structurally efficient and economic: at 1,450 feet, it provided more space and rose higher than the Empire State Building and cost much less per unit area. The system would prove highly influential in skyscraper construction and has been used in most supertall buildings since, including the world's current tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. In February 1982, two television antennas were added to the structure, increasing its total height to 1,707 feet (520.3 m). The western antenna was later extended, bringing the overall height to 1,729 feet (527 m) on June 5, 2000, to improve reception of local NBC station WMAQ-TV.
The perimeter of the Willis Tower contains columns that are spaced 15 feet (4.6 m) apart on their centers. The facade is made of anodized aluminum and black glass. Alcoa manufactured 4 million pounds (1.8 kt) of aluminum sheeting for the building's facade. Black bands appear on the tower around the 29th–32nd, 64th–65th, 88th–89th, and 104th–108th floors. These elements are louvers to ventilate the building's environmental support systems and obscure its belted trusses. The rest of the facade is made of 16,000 rectangular windows. all of which measure 5 by 8 feet (1.5 by 2.4 m) and are tinted with bronze.
Outside the building, there was originally a 80,000-square-foot (7,400 m2) plaza made of pink granite. In the late 2010s, a three-level wing was built along the western and southern sides of the tower replacing the plaza. The roof garden above the annex spans 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2). The annex contains a facade of black steel and aluminum, similar to in the original building. The Jackson Boulevard facade of the annex contains an artwork by Olafur Eliasson, entitled Atmospheric wave wall. The work, measuring 30 by 60 feet (9.1 by 18.3 m) across, comprises almost 2,000 blue-and-green steel tiles, which are decorated with hexagonal motifs. The wall is backlit at night.
Structural and mechanical features
The interior includes 74,000 short tons (66,000 long tons; 67,000 t) of steel, 4 million pounds (1.8 kt) of aluminum, and 101 acres (4,400,000 sq ft; 410,000 m2) of concrete flooring. The building contains diagonal columns only on the two stories immediately below each of the setbacks, thus reducing shear stress. The interior of the building could not contain diagonal beams, since these would have obstructed the connections between each of the "tubes". Therefore, the columns and the horizontal beams on each story are connected by rigid joints. The superstructure was designed to withstand wind gusts of 130 miles per hour (210 km/h), which on average would occur once every hundred years. According to the Chicago Tribune, the top of the building would be able to bend by as much as 7 inches (180 mm), returning to its normal position within 7.2 seconds.
The Willis Tower's basement extends 50 feet (15 m) deep, resting on a 5-foot-thick (1.5 m) concrete slab. The ground directly beneath the building was largely made of clay; the underlying layer of limestone was as much as 100 feet (30 m) beneath ground level. As a result, the foundation was excavated using 201 caissons, of which 114 reached the underlying limestone. The caissons created holes that measured up to 10 feet (3.0 m) across. Some holes at the northwestern and northeastern corners of the site filled up with groundwater and had to be drained. Workers next placed steel tubes into the holes, then poured concrete around the tubes.
During the Sears Tower's construction, SOM and Chicago government officials considered adding "smoke free and fire free" areas to the building, as well as a complete sprinkler system serving all floors. Neither of these features had previously been used in a structure in Chicago. Even though regulations did not require a fire sprinkler system, the building was equipped with one from the beginning. There are around 40,000 sprinkler heads in the building, installed at a cost of $4 million. When it was completed, the Sears Tower was heated electrically, unlike older structures that used gas heating. It included 145,000 light fixtures and a cooling system capable of 17,000 tons of refrigeration. Furthermore, the tower contained fire-suppression and communications systems for emergency use, which were powered by diesel generators. If there was a fire in one section of the building, the building's smoke-detection system would close off the fresh-air intake openings in that section, discharging smoke outdoors.
Fifteen above-ground stories, as well as three of the basement levels, contain mechanical equipment. Above the Skydeck on the 103rd floor is a seven-story mechanical penthouse.
Elevators and escalators
The Sears Tower was planned with 103 elevators, including 14 double-deck elevators. The office stories are served by 97 elevator cabs; due to the presence of the double-deck elevators, these occupy 83 shafts. As designed, one bank of single-deck elevators connected the lobby to the lowest 28 stories. Banks of double-deck elevators traveled to "sky lobbies" at the 33rd/34th and 66th/67th floors, where passengers could transfer to local elevators. The 34th through 103rd stories were served by local elevators that operated from the sky lobbies. Two elevators also ran directly from the lobby to the Skydeck on the 103rd floor. As of 2018, the elevators carried 5.8 million passengers per year.
Six of the elevators are used for freight. One of the freight elevators served all stories, traveling to a height of 1,440 feet (440 m). During a fire or another emergency, this elevator would be reserved for the Chicago Fire Department. Other elevators would be controlled from the 33rd floor. During a fire, elevators would be dispatched to the affected floors to assist with evacuation.
The building also had 16 escalators, including a set of double-height escalators that traveled from the main lobby to the lower mezzanine. Another set of escalators connects the 33rd and 34th stories.
Interior
Base
When the building was completed, the main entrance was on Wacker Drive to the west. There was a plaza on the south side of the building, sloping upward toward Franklin Street to the east. The Franklin Street side of the building was 6 feet (1.8 m) lower than the Wacker Drive entrance, so the entrances on Franklin Street were actually below the plaza, leading to the building's lower mezzanine. Below ground level are three basement levels with a total area of 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2). The basements included a 1,200-seat cafeteria, commercial space, service areas, and a loading dock for 17 trucks. The basement also contained a 150-spot parking garage.
As of 2022, the building's base covers 463,000 square feet (43,000 m2) and contains two lobbies for tenants. The building's tenants primarily enter from Wacker Drive and Franklin Street. Shoppers, restaurant patrons, and visitors to the Skydeck observation deck use the southern entrance on Jackson Boulevard. The Wacker Drive lobby contains In the Heart of this Infinite Particle of Galactic Dust, a 2019 artwork by Jacob Hashimoto. It consists of over 7,000 rice-paper and resin disks that are hung from the ceiling. To honor Khan's contributions to skyscraper engineering design, the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois also commissioned a sculpture of him for the lobby of the Willis Tower.
The commercial complex at the building's lowest stories is known as the Catalog, a reference to Sears' mail-order catalogs. The six-story complex includes numerous restaurants. It extends into three of the building's basement levels, as well as the three-story annex to the south and west of the tower. The roof of the annex includes a curved skylight with 240 glass panes, and the northern section of the annex's roof is supported by black columns that resemble those in the original tower. The Catalog also contains decorative details, such as handrails and staircase landings, which are inspired by elements of Chicago's "built environment". The third story of the Catalog contains a 30,000-square-foot coworking space operated by Convene.
Skydeck
The Willis Tower observation deck, called the Skydeck, opened on June 22, 1974. Located on the 103rd floor, 1,353 feet (412.4 m) above ground level, it is the highest observation deck in the United States and one of Chicago's most famous tourist attractions. Tourists can experience how the building sways in wind and see far over the plains of Illinois and across Lake Michigan to Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin in clear conditions. Elevators reach the top in about 60 seconds, allowing occupants to feel the change in pressure as they ascend. Some 1.7 million tourists visit annually as of 2018. There is also an event venue on the 99th floor.
In January 2009, a major renovation of the Skydeck began, including the installation of retractable glass balconies which extend approximately 4 feet (1.2 m) from the facade of the 103rd floor, overlooking South Wacker Drive. The all-glass boxes, informally dubbed "The Ledge", allow visitors to see the street below. The boxes, which can accommodate 5 short tons (4.5 metric tons), opened to the public on July 2, 2009. On May 29, 2014, the laminated glass flooring of one of the boxes cracked while visitors were inside, but there were no injuries. The flooring of the same box cracked again on June 12, 2019. In May 2022 a fifth glass ledge opened on the west facade overlooking South Wacker Drive.
Height
When completed, the Sears Tower was the world's tallest building but not the world's tallest structure. Toronto's CN Tower was about 350 feet (106.7 m) taller, although the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) does not consider the CN Tower to be a building, since it does not have floors from the ground up. The Willis Tower remains the third tallest building in the Americas and in the Western Hemisphere (after One World Trade Center and Central Park Tower in New York City). With a pinnacle height of 1,729 feet (527 m), it is the third-tallest freestanding structure in the Americas. It is the 16th-tallest freestanding structure in the world by pinnacle height.
When the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was completed in 1998, it claimed to be the tallest building in the world, measuring 1,482.6 feet (451.9 m) tall including decorative spires. Chicagoans objected to this claim on the basis that the Sears Tower's top floor was higher than that of either of the Petronas Towers. In the ensuing controversy, four categories of "tallest building" were created. Of these, Petronas was the tallest in the category of height to the top of architectural elements, meaning spires but not antennas. Taipei 101 in Taiwan claimed the record in three of the four categories in 2004, surpassing the Petronas Twin Towers in spire height and the Sears Tower in roof height and highest occupied floor. People suggested that Sears add cosmetics atop its tower to surpass Taipei 101, but this did not materialize. On August 12, 2007, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai was reported by its developers to have surpassed the tower in all height categories. Upon completion, One World Trade Center in New York City surpassed the Willis Tower through its structural and pinnacle heights, but not by roof, observation deck elevation, or highest occupied floor.
Until 2000, the tower did not hold the record for being the tallest building by pinnacle height. From 1969 to 1978, this record was held by John Hancock Center, whose antenna reached a height of 1,500 feet (457.2 m), 49 feet (14.9 m) taller than the Sears Tower's original height. One World Trade Center became taller by pinnacle height with the addition of a 359-foot (109.4-meter) antenna, bringing its total height to 1,727 feet (526.4 m). In 1982, two antennas were installed which brought its total height to 1,707 feet (520.3 m), making it taller than the John Hancock Center but not One World Trade Center. However, the extension of the tower's western antenna in June 2000 to 1,729 feet (527 m) allowed it to just barely claim the title of tallest building by pinnacle height.
The lowest level of Willis Tower is 43 feet (13 m) below the elevation of Franklin Street.
Climbing
On May 25, 1981, Dan Goodwin, wearing a homemade Spider-Man suit while using suction cups, camming devices, and sky hooks, and despite several attempts by the Chicago Fire Department to stop him, made the first successful outside ascent of the tower. Goodwin was arrested at the top after the seven-hour climb and was later charged with trespassing. Goodwin stated that the reason he made the climb was to call attention to shortcomings in high-rise rescue and firefighting techniques. After a lengthy interrogation by Chicago's District Attorney and Fire Commissioner, Goodwin was officially released from jail.
In August 1999, French urban climber Alain "Spiderman" Robert, using only his bare hands and bare feet, scaled the building's exterior glass and steel wall all the way to the top. A thick fog settled in near the end of his climb, making the last 20 stories of the building's glass and steel exterior slippery.
Annually, since 2009, the Willis Tower has hosted SkyRise Chicago, the world's tallest indoor stair climb, as a charity event benefiting Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, where participants can (legally) climb the Willis Tower's 103-story staircase.
Naming rights
Sears sold the tower in 1994 and vacated it by 1995, but retained naming rights through 2003. The new owners were rebuffed in renaming deals with CDW Corp in 2005 and the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2008. British insurance broker Willis Group Holdings leased more than 140,000 square feet (13,000 m2) of space on three floors in 2009. A Willis spokesman said the naming rights were obtained as part of the negotiations at no cost to Willis and the building was renamed Willis Tower on July 16, 2009.
The naming rights are valid for 15 years, so it is possible that the building's name could change again as soon as 2024. The Chicago Tribune joked that the building's new name reminded them of the oft-repeated "What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?" catchphrase from the American television sitcom Diff'rent Strokes and considered the name-change ill-advised in "a city with a deep appreciation of tradition and a healthy ego, where some Chicagoans still mourn the switch from Marshall Field's to Macy's". This feeling was confirmed in a July 16, 2009, CNN article in which some Chicago-area residents expressed reluctance to accept the Willis Tower name, and in an article that appeared in the October 2010 issue of Chicago magazine that ranked the building among Chicago's 40 most important, the author pointedly refused to acknowledge the name change and referred to the building as the "Sears Tower". Time magazine called the name change one of the top 10 worst corporate name changes and pointed to negative press coverage by local news outlets and online petitions from angry residents. The naming rights issue continued into 2013, when Eric Zorn noted in the Chicago Tribune that "We're stubborn about such things. This month marked four years since the former Sears Tower was re-christened Willis Tower, and the new name has yet to stick."
Broadcasting
Many broadcast station transmitters are located at the top of Willis Tower. Each list is ranked by height from the top down. Stations at the same height on the same mast indicate the use of a diplexer into the same shared antenna. Due to its extreme height, FM stations (all class B) are very limited in power output.
Radio stations
NOAA Weather Radio station KWO39 transmits off the tower at 162.550 MHz. Programmed by the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Chicago, it is equipped with Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME), which sets off a siren on specially programmed weather radios to alert of an impending hazard.
Television stations
Cultural depictions
The building has appeared in numerous films and television shows set in Chicago such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where Ferris and company visit the observation deck. Late Night with Conan O'Brien introduced a character called The Sears Tower Dressed In Sears Clothing when the show visited Chicago in 2006. The building is also featured in History Channel's Life After People, in which it and other human-made landmarks suffer from neglect without humans around, collapsing two hundred years after people are gone.
In the 2008 film The Dark Knight, it is part of Gotham City. In the 2011 film Transformers: Dark of the Moon, it is featured in a number of scenes. In the 2013 film Man of Steel, the tower is the location of the offices of the Daily Planet.
Position in Chicago's skyline
See also
References
Citations
Sources
Kamin, Blair (2001). Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-42322-7.
Pridmore, Jay; Larson, George A. (2018). Chicago Architecture and Design (3rd ed.). ABRAMS. ISBN 978-1-68335-421-5.
External links
Official website Willis Tower office-space leasing website
Willis Tower Skydeck website
Willis Tower on CTBUH Skyscraper Center
"Willis Tower". Emporis. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
Willis Tower at Structurae |
Chicago_Spire | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Spire | [
316
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Spire"
] | The Chicago Spire was a skyscraper project in Chicago that was partially built between 2007 and 2008 before being cancelled. Located at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, it would have stood 2,000 feet (610 m) high with 150 floors and been the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. When originally proposed as the Fordham Spire in July 2005, the design had 116 stories, included a hotel and condominiums, and was topped with a broadcast antenna mast. The building was designed and spearheaded by Spanish architect-engineer Santiago Calatrava and Chicago developer Christopher T. Carley of the Fordham Company. On March 16, 2006, the Chicago Plan Commission unanimously approved the initial design of the building. On November 4, 2016, a court ruling brought the original development plan and the extended litigation over the nine-year-old project to a close. Developer Garrett Kelleher signed over the property location to the project's biggest creditor, Related Midwest, who announced that they would not build the Spire and released plans for a different project.
Planning
Christopher T. Carley of the Fordham Company proposed the Fordham Spire in July 2005. In the proposal the Spire was to be a 116-story structure with hotel and condominiums topped by a tall broadcast antenna mast. The initial design of the building was passed unanimously by the Chicago Plan Commission on March 16, 2006, and by the Chicago Zoning Committee on March 23, 2006. On March 29, 2006, the Chicago City Council also approved the building's design. As part of the approval process, the council passed a measure that raised the height limit on structures at the site to accommodate the 2,000-foot (610 m) design height. The Fordham Spire would have become the second tallest building in the entire world, surpassed only by the Burj Khalifa, and would have become the tallest freestanding structure as well as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, surpassing the CN Tower in Toronto.
The building was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and was being developed by Garrett Kelleher of Shelbourne Development Group, Inc., the then-owner of St Patrick's Athletic F.C.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley approved of the design, stating that it was environmentally friendly. Burton F. Natarus, who was the 42nd-ward alderman when the building was announced, said, "This is a very unique opportunity for the city of Chicago. This building belongs to Chicago and should be in Chicago." Donald Trump immediately voiced opposition to the building, stating that the tall structure would be a target for terrorists and did not even seem to be a viable project.
Development
Initial financial problems
After several months of development in 2005, Carley failed to obtain sufficient financing for the construction of the building. Irish developer Garrett Kelleher, executive chairman of Shelbourne Development Group, Inc., acquired the land and took over the project. It was announced that he would put up 100% of the equity, something Carley had been unable to do. He also had the financial backing to acquire the land, something Carley lacked. Kelleher stated he would consider using Carley's services on the development and that "Carley will be paid an unspecified sum for his involvement in the deal so far." Kelleher later renamed the project "Chicago Spire" after briefly going by "400 North Lake Shore Drive", as it was no longer a Fordham project.
New designs
In the final quarter of 2006, Shelbourne Development issued two separate press releases regarding the construction and design of the spire. A November 2006 press release stated that construction of the Chicago Spire would begin in June 2007. In early December 2006, Shelbourne Development issued another press release stating that the design of the building had been revised. This included the removal of the hotel and the antenna mast, making the building consist solely of condominium units. The design change altered the building design such that it was wider than the original plan. Additionally, the spire no longer tapered at the top, resulting in an increase in floor space and overall floor count. The revision also removed the separate parking structure from the original plan, instead incorporating underground parking into the spire itself. This first major redesign of the Chicago Spire was criticized by architectural critics and city officials.
In late December 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that the developer was soliciting opinions on a further revision from community leaders. Several weeks following that report the Chicago Tribune held an exclusive interview with architect Santiago Calatrava and lead developer Garrett Kelleher. During the interview, Calatrava drew out design ideas restoring the rotating design of the building and showcasing his vision for the Chicago Spire's lobby. On March 26, 2007, further revisions were shown during a public presentation by Shelbourne Development showcasing the most recent design.
Approval
Following the March 26, 2007 public presentation by Shelbourne Development, residents showed a favorable reaction to the newest design of the Chicago Spire. The Chicago Plan Commission approved the final plans of the Chicago Spire on April 19, 2007. Chicago's zoning committee also approved the tower on April 26 and, on May 9, 2007, the Chicago City Council approved the final design of the Chicago Spire.
Marketing
By June 2008, Shelbourne had sold more than 350 of the 1,193 units—more than half of those to foreign investors in markets where certain United States Securities and Exchange Commission regulations do not apply. Shelbourne announced on September 30, 2008 that the building's penthouse had been sold to Beanie Babies manufacturer Ty Warner. Kelleher offered to rent out units at a guaranteed 7.5% return to spur sales. The approach is common outside the United States where the tower was marketed more heavily and was meant to spur sales of the smallest units, which are the most likely to be purchased as rental property investments by foreigners.
Financial crisis and suspension of construction
By October 2008, the late-2000s recession was beginning to affect the project. Construction was suspended and the tower's architect, Santiago Calatrava, placed an $11.34 million lien on the construction site, stating that Kelleher had not yet paid him for his work. Within a few months Anglo Irish Bank, the primary lender for the project, was on the brink of financial collapse. The bank's stocks had lost nearly all of their value and Anglo Irish Bank was facing nationalization. Due to the bank's dire financial situation, Shelbourne Development was forced to suspend construction, and would eventually have to pay back the $69.5 million (USD) it had already borrowed.
Additional litigation and liens threatened the project by autumn 2009. The owner of the NBC Tower in Chicago sued to evict Shelbourne Development from their sales office, where extensive modeling of Chicago Spire units had been installed. The lawsuit alleged that Shelbourne was behind $316,000 (USD) in lease payments. In addition to this and other liens listed on the property, Bank of America filed a lawsuit against Shelbourne Development for $4.92 million (USD). The lawsuit was an attempt to collect that sum on two unpaid loans used for initial construction at the Chicago Spire site.
After these setbacks, the AFL–CIO and Kelleher announced in late 2009 that they were discussing the potential for a $170 million (USD) land loan that would retire Kelleher's loan from Anglo Irish Bank, pay off the outstanding liens, and restart work in exchange for making the construction a complete union job. Due to the lack of construction and the sluggish economy, Chicago unions were desperate to find work for their employees as they faced near 30% unemployment. Construction of the Chicago Spire would have provided approximately 900 full-time jobs to union members for four years if construction had resumed. In addition to the $194 million (USD) that Kelleher has invested personally in the project already, backup financing of an unspecified amount and from an unknown source in the form of mezzanine capital and bridge loans has been guaranteed and would have kicked in automatically if the $170 million (USD) AFL-CIO loan had been secured.
But within weeks of the official announcement that Kelleher was searching for union bailouts, four major labor union investment funds declined to offer Shelbourne Development any loans. Kelleher continued to search for financing. Shelbourne Development faced eviction from its offices on the 50th floor of 111 South Wacker Drive on which Shelbourne owed $27,600 in unpaid rent. Earlier in the year, the spire's Chicago sales office had been ejected from the nearby NBC Tower.
In October 2010 Anglo Irish Bank Corp. filed a $77 million foreclosure lawsuit against Kelleher, claiming that loans made to Kelleher's development company had been in default for a year. The bank was expected to take possession of the site. By the end of the year, courts handed control of the site to a receiver, leaving the project (at the time) dead. In addition, two Chicago firms purchased the tax lien certificates on the property.
End of the project
In 2013, with the Chicago Spire site for sale by Ireland's National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), interest resumed, drawing in at least a half-dozen offers for the property. Under the involuntary bankruptcy ruling in October 2013, Shelbourne had until the end of March 2014 to obtain approval of a reorganization plan, and was considering a bid to take back control of the property, reigniting hope that the skyscraper might actually be built.
However, on October 31, 2014, the developer failed to make a required payment to Related Midwest and Related filed suit to compel Shelbourne to turn over the deed to the property. On 4 November 2016, Garrett Kelleher signed over the property located at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive to Related Midwest. President Curt Bailey said that Related Midwest would not build the Spire.
In February 2016, Shelbourne sought court approval to take up an offer of up to $135 million from Atlas Apartment Holdings intended to underpin the project's emergence from bankruptcy, with a deadline of August 31, 2016 for having a court-approved reorganization plan. At a hearing on March 11, 2016, Shelbourne announced that it had reached agreement on a repayment plan with the project's creditors, including Related Midwest, which had bought up much of the project's debt. Assuming the project finds funding to satisfy that agreement, Atlas said that the building would be built and that Atlas would control the project, but that Kelleher would still be the developer, with the intention of building the same building planned prior to the suspension of construction.
In early 2018, the former developer Garrett Kelleher launched a $1.2 billion (USD) lawsuit, in the US Federal District Court in Illinois, against NAMA alleging that the agency destroyed his chances of building the Chicago Spire through a combination of "sheer spite" and "consistent incompetence". The lawsuit is formally brought by Kelleher's company, Shelbourne North Water Street Corporation.
Future site development
In 2016, Crain's Chicago Business reported that Related Midwest had hired former SOM architect Michael Pfeffer to guide the design of developments on the former Chicago Spire site. Although President Curt Bailey disclosed no project details—such as whether, for example, Related Midwest plans to build one big tower or multiple structures on the site—he did announce the development firm's intent to discuss plan outlines with the public in 2017.
In 2018, it was revealed that Related Midwest will build two skyscrapers at the site of the Spire. The taller of the two would include 300 condominiums and a 175-room luxury hotel and the other 550 apartments. The two tower plan has been approved by the city and the development will be called 400 Lake Shore Drive.
Location
The skyscraper was being constructed at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, on Chicago's waterfront west of Navy Pier and northeast of the Loop, in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area. The site is at the junction of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River, and is bordered by the Ogden Slip of the Chicago River to the north, North Lake Shore Drive to the east, the Chicago River to the south, and existing residential property to the west. The site was originally zoned for two 35 to 50-story buildings. Originally, it was to be sold by a joint venture of LR Development Company of Chicago and JER Partners of Virginia for $64 million to Christopher Carley of the Fordham Company. After numerous short-term extensions, and later Carley's failure to obtain financing, Kelleher of Shelbourne Development purchased the land instead and pledged to finance the rest of the project.
DuSable Park
When the project was first announced, the Fordham Company pledged almost $500,000 to assist in the development of the city's proposed DuSable Park, which would adjoin the property of the Chicago Spire. DuSable Park would cover 3.24 acres (1.31 ha) and a $11.4 million budget was planned for its renovation. On March 26, 2007, Shelbourne pledged to pay $6 million toward the development of the park, making up the deficit left over from the city's own initial pledge of $6 million and far exceeding the Fordham Co's initial offer. In May 2007 Shelbourne's pledge jumped to $9.6 million. Soil tests performed in December 2000 on the soil of the proposed park showed contamination of radioactive thorium. Thorium was used by the Lindsay Light Company, which operated a location nearby. After the closing of the location in the 1930s, contaminated soil was dumped on the location of the proposed park. In March 2003, the Chicago Park District stated that the thorium clean-up on that land was incomplete. Hazards of contamination can be avoided by laying a minimum of 6 inches (15 cm) of concrete over any affected soil, an approach that would be more feasible for the site of the Chicago Spire than for the adjacent park.
In 2012 the Chicago Park District received funding from the EPA for remediation of the site, bagging the radioactive soil and shipping it to a Superfund site. By summer 2013 the Park District website reported the remediation had been completed by September 2012.
Architecture
As with many of his designs, Calatrava was inspired by themes and designs in nature for the tall, twisting skyscraper. He likened the structure to an imaginary smoke spiral coming from a campfire near the Chicago River lit by Native Americans indigenous to the area, and also related the building's newly designed pinnacle to the "graceful" and "rotating forms" of a snail shell.
Standing at 2,000 feet (610 m), the Chicago Spire would have further transformed the always-growing Chicago skyline. Plans for the tower included 1,193 condominiums with each of the building's 150 stories rotated 2.4 degrees from the one below it for a total 360-degree rotation. In February 2008, prices for the condominiums were announced as ranging from $750,000 to US$40 million. For supplemental structural support, each floor was to be surrounded by cantilevered corners and four concave sides. Similar to the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) and John Hancock Center observation decks, the Chicago Spire design included a community room on the top floor offering residents a view of four U.S. states. The design for the soaring four story lobby of the skyscraper included translucent glass walls framed by arching, steel-reinforced concrete vaults. The building has been described as a giant "drill bit" by the public and others in the media have likened it to a "tall twisting tree" and a "blade of grass".
The curved design offered two major benefits to the structure of the building. First, curved designs, such as that found in Calatrava's Turning Torso in Malmö, Sweden, tend to add to the strength of a structure. A similar principle has been used in the past with curved stadium roofs. In addition to structural support, the curved face of the exterior would minimize wind forces. In rectangular buildings, a fluid wind flow puts pressure on the windward face of the building; while air moves around it, a suction is applied to the leeward face. This often causes a sway in tall buildings usually counteracted, at least partially, by stiffening the structure or by using a dynamic wind damper. Since the curved design of the Chicago Spire would not completely negate wind forces, a tapering concrete core and twelve shear walls radiating from it were planned to counteract the remaining wind load.
Additionally, the Chicago Spire was designed with world-class sustainable engineering practices to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold recognition. Sustainable features included recycled rainwater, river water used for cooling, ornithologically-sensitive glass to protect migratory birds, intelligent building and management systems, waste storage and recycling management, and monitored outdoor air delivery.
Construction
Following the city approval, it was announced that construction of the Chicago Spire was to begin in the summer of 2007, with caisson work scheduled to begin as early as June 2007. DuSable Park was designated as a staging area for the construction of the tower. The sales center for the Chicago Spire opened on January 14, 2008.
On September 19, 2008, a spokeswoman for the developer announced that construction was continuing on the building, but that the pace of construction would be slowed until the financial markets recovered from the subprime mortgage crisis. Kelleher promised that he still had financial backing, although analysts questioned the ability of the project to survive the current economic decline. A contractor to build the building's superstructure had not yet been named. The October 1, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal said that the building foundation was complete and the above ground construction would not continue until the markets recover. The Spire has remained a fenced-off hole in the ground at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive since 2008. But before Shelbourne faced financial difficulties and was forced into bankruptcy, about 370 of the planned 1,200 luxury condos were sold, half of which were to people outside the U.S., according to the suit.
“Shelbourne remains the only person logically capable of completing it because it still owns the intellectual property necessary to construct it and it still maintains the goodwill of the diverse governmental and community interests without which a project of this dimension would be doomed,” the lawsuit states.
Underground phase
Crane parts and construction equipment arrived at the site on June 25, 2007. The following day Shelbourne Development officially announced the first construction contract. In preparation for construction, 34 concrete and steel caissons were drilled 120 feet (37 m) into bedrock underground; this was completed June 25, 2008. A cofferdam with a 104 foot (32 m) diameter and 78 foot (24 m) depth was installed to create a work environment and would have later acted as a foundation for the building's core. Utility upgrades were planned for the surrounding neighborhood.
Images
See also
List of skyscrapers
List of tallest buildings in Chicago
List of tallest buildings in the United States
List of buildings with 100 floors or more
World's tallest structures
References
Notes
Further reading
Keegan, E. (2005). Calatrava designing massive tower in Chicago. Architectural Record, 193, 29.
McKeoug, T. (2006). Artist at work: Santiago Calatrava. Azure, 22, 56–61.
Nobel, P. (2005). Onward and upward? Four years after 9/11 – at perhaps the peak of the real estate bubble – very tall has never been hotter. Metropolis, 25, 66–72.
Pridmore, J., & Larson, G.A. (2005) Chicago Architecture and Design : Revised and expanded. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.: New York.
== External links == |
Coit_Tower | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coit_Tower | [
316
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coit_Tower"
] | Coit Tower (also known as the Coit Memorial Tower) is a 210-foot (64 m) tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, overlooking the city and San Francisco Bay. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built between 1932 and 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's bequest to beautify the city of San Francisco. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 29, 2008.
The Art Deco tower, built of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown Jr. and Henry Temple Howard. The interior features fresco murals in the American Social Realism style, painted by 22 different onsite artists and their numerous assistants. Three artists preferred oil on canvas and worked offsite. One artist preferred egg tempera rather than fresco.
It is often erroneously stated that the structure was dedicated to the volunteer firemen who had died in San Francisco's five major fires, but that is not accurate. The tower was constructed as the result of a bequest by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, whose will included two bequests, one to create a memorial to the city's volunteer firefighters, which was done by statuary in Washington Square, and the other to beautify the city. Coit Tower is the result of the second bequest. A concrete relief of a phoenix by sculptor Robert Boardman Howard is placed above the main entrance. It was commissioned by the architect and cast as part of the building.
Although an apocryphal story claims that the tower was designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle due to Coit's affinity with the San Francisco firefighters of the day, the resemblance is coincidental.
History
Telegraph Hill, the tower's location, has been described as "the most optimal 360 degree viewing point to the San Francisco Bay and five surrounding counties." In 1849, it became the site of a two-story observation deck, from which information about incoming ships was broadcast to city residents using an optical semaphore system, replaced in 1853 by an electrical telegraph that was destroyed by a storm in 1870.
Coit Tower was paid for with money left by Lillie Hitchcock Coit (1843–1929), a wealthy socialite who loved to chase fires in the early days of the city's history. Before December 1866, there was no city fire department, and fires in the city, which broke out regularly in the wooden buildings, were extinguished by several volunteer fire companies. Coit was one of the more eccentric characters in the history of North Beach and Telegraph Hill, smoking cigars and wearing trousers long before it was socially acceptable for women to do so. She was an avid gambler and often dressed like a man in order to gamble in the males-only establishments that dotted North Beach.
Coit's fortune funded the monument four years following her death in 1929. She had a special relationship with the city's firefighters. At the age of fifteen she witnessed the Knickerbocker Engine Co. No. 5 in response to a fire call up on Telegraph Hill when they were shorthanded; she threw her school books to the ground and pitched in to help, calling out to other bystanders to help get the engine up the hill to the fire, to get the first water onto the blaze. After that Coit became the Engine Co. mascot and could barely be constrained by her parents from jumping into action at the sound of every fire bell. She frequently rode with the Knickerbocker Engine Co. 5, especially in street parades and celebrations in which the Engine Co. participated. Through her youth and adulthood Coit was recognized as an honorary firefighter.
In her will she specified that one third of her fortune, amounting to $118,000, "be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved." Two memorials were built in her name. One was Coit Tower, and the other was a sculpture depicting three firemen, one of them carrying a woman in his arms.
The San Francisco County Board of Supervisors proposed that Coit's bequest be used for a road at Lake Merced. This proposal brought disapproval from the estate's executors, who expressed a desire that the county find "ways and means of expending this money on a memorial that in itself would be an entity and not a unit of public development". Art Commission president Herbert Fleishhacker suggested a memorial on Telegraph Hill, which was approved by the estate executors. An additional $7,000 in city funds was appropriated, and a design competition was initiated. The winner was architect Arthur Brown, Jr, whose design was completed and dedicated on October 8, 1933.
The following month Honore Bowlby-Gledhill, proprietor of the Dead Fish Cafe (an 'artists' restaurant') in Telegraph Hill, was charged (under the name 'Helen Smith') with shooting a pistol at the tower. Bowlby-Gledhill was quoted as objecting to the tower because it 'looked like a silo'.
Coit Tower was listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark in 1984 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. Although Coit Tower itself is not technically a California Historical Landmark, the state historical plaque for Telegraph Hill is located in the tower's lobby, marking the site of the original signal station.
The San Francisco Arts Commission ordered the removal of the Statue of Christopher Columbus that had stood outside the entrance of the tower since 1957, following numerous other removals of controversial statues during the George Floyd protests that began in May 2020, and it was removed on June 18, 2020.
Architecture
Brown's competition design envisioned a restaurant in the tower, which was changed to an exhibition area in the final version. The design uses three nesting concrete cylinders, the outermost a tapering fluted 180-foot (55 m) shaft that supports the viewing platform. An intermediate shaft contains a stairway, and an inner shaft houses the elevator. The observation deck is 32 feet (9.8 m) below the top, with an arcade and skylights above it. A rotunda at the base houses display space and a gift shop.
Potable water is pumped from a water main at street level to two 1,000 US gal (3,800 L) tanks on the fifth floor, and gravity is used to feed all systems in the tower; a booster pump was installed later at the tanks to provide adequate pressure for the restrooms. Because of this arrangement, the murals (on the second and ground floors) are vulnerable to water damage from system leaks, which could be avoided if adequate pressure was available from the water supply at the street.
Mural project
The Coit Tower murals in the American Social Realism style formed the pilot project of the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal federal employment programs for artists. Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim successfully sought the commission in 1933, and supervised the muralists, including Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Jane Berlandina, Ray Bertrand, Ray Boynton, Ralph Chessé, Rinaldo Cuneo, Ben Cunningham, Mallette "Harold" Dean, Parker Hall, Edith Hamlin, George Albert Harris, William Hesthal, John Langley Howard, Lucien Labaudt, Gordon Langdon, Jose Moya del Pino Otis Oldfield, Frederick Olmsted Jr., Suzanne Scheuer, Edward Terada, Frede Vidar, and Clifford Wight. Many were faculty and students of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA).
These artists (chosen by Walter Heil, director of the de Young Museum, together with other officials) were each paid $25 to $45 per week to depict "aspects of life in California." The most well-known of them were assigned sections that were 10 by 36 feet (3.0 by 11.0 m) in size, while less famous artists were confined to 10 by 4 feet (3.0 by 1.2 m).
Themes
The artists were committed in varying degrees to racial equality and to leftist and Marxist political ideas, which are strongly expressed in the paintings. Bernard Zakheim's mural Library 7 depicts fellow artist John Langley Howard crumpling a newspaper in his left hand as he reaches for a shelved copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital (here spelled as Das Capital) with his right. Workers of all races are shown as equals, often in the heroic poses of Socialist realism, while well-dressed racially white members of the capitalist classes enjoy the fruit of their labor.
Victor Arnautoff's City Life 9 includes the periodicals The New Masses and The Daily Worker in the scene's news stand rack.
John Langley Howard's mural California Industrial Scenes 2 depicts an ethnically diverse Labor March as well as showing a destitute family panning for gold while a wealthy, heavily caricatured ensemble observes.
Stackpole's Industries of California 5 was composed along the same lines as an early study of the destroyed Man at the Crossroads.
The youngest of the muralists, George Albert Harris, painted a mural called Banking and Law 10 . In the mural, the world of finance is represented by the Federal Reserve Bank and a stock market ticker (in which stocks are shown as declining) and law is illustrated by a law library. Some of the book titles that appear in the law library, such as Civil, Penal, and Moral Codes, are legitimate, while others list fellow muralists as authors, in a joking or derogatory manner.
After Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural was destroyed by its Rockefeller Center patrons for the inclusion of an image of Lenin, the Coit Tower muralists protested, picketing the tower. Sympathy for Rivera led some artists to incorporate references to the Rivera incident; in Zakheim's Library panel 7 , Stackpole is painted reading a newspaper headline announcing the destruction of Rivera's mural.
Censorship
After most of the Coit Tower murals had already been completed, the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, taking place nearby at the foot of Telegraph Hill, caused government officials, shipping companies, some union leaders and the press to raise fears about communist agitation. This "red scare" has been identified as playing a "crucial role" in a subsequent controversy that mainly focused on two of the murals:
4a and 4b : These portraits were linked originally by a third small fresco in which Clifford Wight portrayed capitalism, the New Deal and communism, the three prominent economic systems of the era, with the communism part containing a hammer and sickle and the caption "Workers of the World Unite."
2 : John Langley Howard's Industry mural (designed with the support of his architect brother Henry Howard), which depicts California industrial scenes including out-of-work men, and angered conservatives by showing a banner of the communist periodical Western Worker above a crowd of workers.
On June 23, 1934, the conservative banker Herbert Fleishhacker, the most powerful member of the committee allocating funds from the Public Works of Art Project, asked Heil to inspect the art, who telegraphed back that some artists had included "details ... and certain symbols which might be interpreted as communistic propaganda," and that "editors of influential papers ... have warned us that they would take hostile attitude towards whole project unless those details be removed." The official opening of the tower, planned for July 7, was canceled and Fleishhacker ordered to close the tower and to block the view from outside through the windows. Subsequently, articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner attacked the project, sometimes using misleading representations of the artworks in question, while Wight refused to remove the hammer and sickle symbol from his mural. However, federal government officials decided that the offending parts would need to be painted over, and 16 of the artists signed a statement saying that they opposed the hammer and sickle symbol and that it "has no place in the subject matter assigned." Eventually, only the hammer and sickle and the "Western Worker" banner were removed, and Coit Tower opened on October 12, 1934.
Technical details and access
Two of the murals are of San Francisco Bay scenes. Most murals are done in fresco; the exceptions are one mural done in egg tempera (Home Life by Jane Berlandina, 27 : upstairs, in the last decorated room) and the works done in the elevator foyer, which are oil on canvas ( 16 , 17 , 18 , and 19 ).: 65, 118 While most of the murals were restored in 1990 and again in 2014 through cleaning and touching up scratches, the murals in the spiral stairway exit to the observation platform (Powell Street by Lucien Labaudt) were not restored but durably painted over with epoxy surfacing.
Most of the murals are open for public viewing without charge during open hours, although there are ongoing negotiations by the Recreation and Parks Department of San Francisco to begin charging visitors a fee to enter the mural rotunda. The murals in the spiral stairway and second floor, normally closed to the public, are open for viewing through tours. Labaudt's Powell Street runs along both sides of the spiral staircase; the second-floor murals all carry recreational themes.
Since 2004 artist Ben Wood collaborated with other artists on large scale video projections onto the exterior of Coit Tower, in 2004, 2006, 2008 & 2009.
Panorama
The tower, which stands atop Telegraph Hill in San Francisco's Pioneer Park, offers panoramic views of San Francisco that take in "crooked" Lombard Street, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Twin Peaks, Aquatic Park, Pier 39, the Financial District and the Ferry Building, as well as San Francisco Bay itself including Angel Island, Alcatraz, Treasure Island, and the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges.
Gallery
In popular culture
Coit Tower is a prominent landscape feature in Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film, Vertigo, set largely in San Francisco. The character of Madeleine (Kim Novak) tells Scotty (James Stewart) that she has used the tower to orient herself to his apartment, as she did not know his street address; he responds this is the first time he had been grateful for the tower. Art director Henry Bumstead, who worked on Vertigo, noted that Hitchcock was adamant that Coit Tower should be seen in the film from the apartment of the lead character, portrayed by Stewart. When Bumstead asked why, Hitchcock said, "It's a phallic symbol."
Coit Tower is also featured in:
After the Thin Man (1936 film): the roundabout in front of the tower served as the driveway for Nick and Nora Charles' home in San Francisco.
The Strawberry Statement (1970 film)
The Enforcer (1976)
Tex Murphy series (1989–2014)
California's Gold Episode 12004
PBS The History Detectives Episode 709 August 24, 2009.
Just like Heaven (2005)
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010)
See also
49-Mile Scenic Drive
History of San Francisco
List of San Francisco Designated Landmarks
References
External links
Official website
Coit Tower at Structurae |
The_Washington_Post | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post | [
317
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post"
] | The Washington Post, locally known as "the Post" and, informally, WaPo or WP, is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area and has a national audience. As of 2023, the Post has the third-largest print circulation in the United States, with 135,980 print subscribers. It has 2.5 million digital subscribers.
The Post was founded in 1877. In its early years, it went through several owners and struggled both financially and editorially. Financier Eugene Meyer purchased it out of bankruptcy in 1933 and revived its health and reputation; this work was continued by his successors Katharine and Phil Graham, Meyer's daughter and son-in-law, respectively, who bought out several rival publications. The Post's 1971 printing of the Pentagon Papers helped spur opposition to the Vietnam War. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters that developed into the Watergate scandal, which resulted in the 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon. In October 2013, the Graham family sold the newspaper to Nash Holdings, a holding company owned by Jeff Bezos, for $250 million.
As of 2024, the newspaper had won the Pulitzer Prize 76 times for its work, the second-most of any publication after The New York Times. It is considered a newspaper of record in the U.S. Post journalists have received 18 Nieman Fellowships and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards. The paper is well known for its political reporting and is one of the few remaining American newspapers to operate foreign bureaus, with international breaking news hubs in London and Seoul.
Overview
The Washington Post is regarded as one of the leading daily American newspapers along with The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. The Post has distinguished itself through its political reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress, and other aspects of the U.S. government. It is considered a newspaper of record in the U.S.
The Washington Post does not print an edition for distribution away from the East Coast. In 2009, the newspaper ceased publication of its National Weekly Edition due to shrinking circulation. The majority of its newsprint readership is in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia.
The newspaper's 21 current foreign bureaus are in Baghdad, Beijing, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Dakar, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jerusalem, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toronto. In November 2009, the newspaper announced the closure of three U.S. regional bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, as part of an increased focus on Washington, D.C.-based political stories and local news. The newspaper has local bureaus in Maryland (Annapolis, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and Southern Maryland) and Virginia (Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun County, Richmond, and Prince William County).
As of March 2023, the Post's average printed weekday circulation is 139,232, making it the third largest newspaper in the country by circulation.
For many decades, the Post had its main office at 1150 15th Street NW. This real estate remained with Graham Holdings when the newspaper was sold to Jeff Bezos' Nash Holdings in 2013. Graham Holdings sold 1150 15th Street, along with 1515 L Street, 1523 L Street, and land beneath 1100 15th Street, for $159 million in November 2013. The Post continued to lease space at 1150 L Street NW. In May 2014, The Post leased the west tower of One Franklin Square, a high-rise building at 1301 K Street NW in Washington, D.C.
Mary Jordan was the founding editor, head of content, and moderator for Washington Post Live, The Post's editorial events business, which organizes political debates, conferences and news events for the media company, including "The 40th Anniversary of Watergate" in June 2012 that featured key Watergate figures including former White House counsel John Dean, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which was held at the Watergate hotel. Regular hosts include Frances Stead Sellers. Lois Romano was formerly the editor of Washington Post Live.
The Post has its own exclusive Zip Code, 20071.
Publishing service
Arc XP is a department of The Washington Post, which provides a publishing system and software for news organizations such as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
History
Founding and early period
The newspaper was founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins (1838–1912); in 1880, it added a Sunday edition, becoming the city's first newspaper to publish seven days a week.
19th century
In April 1878, about four months into publication, The Washington Post purchased The Washington Union, a competing newspaper which was founded by John Lynch in late 1877. The Union had only been in operation about six months at the time of the acquisition. The combined newspaper was published from the Globe Building as The Washington Post and Union beginning on April 15, 1878, with a circulation of 13,000. The Post and Union name was used about two weeks until April 29, 1878, returning to the original masthead the following day.
In 1889, Hutchins sold the newspaper to Frank Hatton, a former Postmaster General, and Beriah Wilkins, a former Democratic congressman from Ohio. To promote the newspaper, the new owners requested the leader of the United States Marine Band, John Philip Sousa, to compose a march for the newspaper's essay contest awards ceremony. Sousa composed "The Washington Post". It became the standard music to accompany the two-step, a late 19th-century dance craze, and remains one of Sousa's best-known works.
In 1893, the newspaper moved to a building at 14th and E streets NW, where it would remain until 1950. This building combined all functions of the newspaper into one headquarters – newsroom, advertising, typesetting, and printing – that ran 24 hours per day.
In 1898, during the Spanish–American War, the Post printed Clifford K. Berryman's classic illustration Remember the Maine, which became the battle-cry for American sailors during the War. In 1902, Berryman published another famous cartoon in the Post – Drawing the Line in Mississippi. This cartoon depicts President Theodore Roosevelt showing compassion for a small bear cub and inspired New York store owner Morris Michtom to create the teddy bear. Wilkins acquired Hatton's share of the newspaper in 1894 at Hatton's death.
20th century
After Wilkins' death in 1903, his sons John and Robert ran the Post for two years before selling it in 1905 to John Roll McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer. During the Wilson presidency, the Post was credited with the "most famous newspaper typo" in D.C. history according to Reason magazine; the Post intended to report that President Wilson had been "entertaining" his future-wife Mrs. Galt, but instead wrote that he had been "entering" Mrs. Galt.
When McLean died in 1916, he put the newspaper in a trust, having little faith that his playboy son Edward "Ned" McLean could manage it as part of his inheritance. Ned went to court and broke the trust, but, under his management, the newspaper slumped toward ruin. He bled the paper for his lavish lifestyle and used it to promote political agendas.
During the Red Summer of 1919 the Post supported the white mobs and even ran a front-page story which advertised the location at which white servicemen were planning to meet to carry out attacks on black Washingtonians.
In 1929, financier Eugene Meyer, who had run the War Finance Corp. since World War I, secretly made an offer of $5 million for the Post, but he was rebuffed by Ned McLean. On June 1, 1933, Meyer bought the paper at a bankruptcy auction for $825,000 three weeks after stepping down as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He had bid anonymously, and was prepared to go up to $2 million, far higher than the other bidders. These included William Randolph Hearst, who had long hoped to shut down the ailing Post to benefit his own Washington newspaper presence.
The Post's health and reputation were restored under Meyer's ownership. In 1946, he was succeeded as publisher by his son-in-law, Philip Graham. Meyer eventually gained the last laugh over Hearst, who had owned the old Washington Times and the Herald before their 1939 merger that formed the Times-Herald. This was in turn bought by and merged into the Post in 1954. The combined paper was officially named The Washington Post and Times-Herald until 1973, although the Times-Herald portion of the nameplate became less and less prominent over time.
The merger left the Post with two remaining local competitors, the Washington Star (Evening Star) and The Washington Daily News. In 1972, the two competitors merged, forming the Washington Star-News.
Following Graham's death in 1963, control of The Washington Post Company passed to his wife, Katharine Graham (1917–2001), who was also Eugene Meyer's daughter. Few women had run prominent national newspapers in the United States. In her autobiography, Katharine Graham described her own anxiety and lack of confidence when she stepped into a leadership role. She served as publisher from 1969 to 1979.
Graham took The Washington Post Company public on June 15, 1971, in the midst of the Pentagon Papers controversy. A total of 1,294,000 shares were offered to the public at $26 per share. By the end of Graham's tenure as CEO in 1991, the stock was worth $888 per share, not counting the effect of an intermediate 4:1 stock split.
Graham also oversaw the Post company's diversification purchase of the for-profit education and training company Kaplan, Inc. for $40 million in 1984. Twenty years later, Kaplan had surpassed the Post newspaper as the company's leading contributor to income, and by 2010 Kaplan accounted for more than 60% of the entire company revenue stream.
Executive editor Ben Bradlee put the newspaper's reputation and resources behind reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, in a long series of articles, chipped away at the story behind the 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington. The Post's dogged coverage of the story, the outcome of which ultimately played a major role in the resignation of President Richard Nixon, won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1972, the "Book World" section was introduced with Pulitzer Prize-winning critic William McPherson as its first editor. It featured Pulitzer Prize-winning critics such as Jonathan Yardley and Michael Dirda, the latter of whom established his career as a critic at the Post. In 2009, after 37 years, with great reader outcries and protest, The Washington Post Book World as a standalone insert was discontinued, the last issue being Sunday, February 15, 2009, along with a general reorganization of the paper, such as placing the Sunday editorials on the back page of the main front section rather than the "Outlook" section and distributing some other locally oriented "op-ed" letters and commentaries in other sections. However, book reviews are still published in the Outlook section on Sundays and in the Style section the rest of the week, as well as online.
In 1975, the pressmen's union went on strike. The Post hired replacement workers to replace the pressmen's union, and other unions returned to work in February 1976.
Donald E. Graham, Katharine's son, succeeded her as a publisher in 1979.
In 1995, the domain name washingtonpost.com was purchased. That same year, a failed effort to create an online news repository called Digital Ink launched. The following year it was shut down and the first website was launched in June 1996.
Jeff Bezos era (2013–present)
In August 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post and other local publications, websites, and real estate for US$250 million, transferring ownership to Nash Holdings LLC, Bezos's private investment company. The paper's former parent company, which retained some other assets such as Kaplan and a group of TV stations, was renamed Graham Holdings shortly after the sale.
Nash Holdings, which includes the Post, is operated separately from technology company Amazon, which Bezos founded and where he is as of 2022 executive chairman and the largest single shareholder, with 12.7% of voting rights.
Bezos said he has a vision that recreates "the 'daily ritual' of reading the Post as a bundle, not merely a series of individual stories..." He has been described as a "hands-off owner", holding teleconference calls with executive editor Martin Baron every two weeks. Bezos appointed Fred Ryan (founder and CEO of Politico) to serve as publisher and chief executive officer. This signaled Bezos' intent to shift the Post to a more digital focus with a national and global readership.
In 2015, the Post moved from the building it owned at 1150 15th Street to a leased space three blocks away at One Franklin Square on K Street. Since 2014 the Post has launched an online personal finance section, a blog, and a podcast with a retro theme. The Post won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for News & Politics in the Social and Web categories.
In 2017, the newspaper hired Jamal Khashoggi as a columnist. In 2018, Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents in Istanbul.
In October 2023, the Post announced it would cut 240 jobs across the organization by offering voluntary separation packages to employees. In a staff-wide email announcing the job cuts, interim CEO Patty Stonesifer wrote, "Our prior projections for traffic, subscriptions and advertising growth for the past two years — and into 2024 — have been overly optimistic". The Post has lost around 500,000 subscribers since the end of 2020 and was set to lose $100 million in 2023, according to The New York Times. The layoffs prompted Dan Froomkin of Presswatchers to suggest that the decline in readership could be reversed by focusing on the rise of authoritarianism (in a fashion similar to the role the Post played during the Watergate scandal) instead of staying strictly neutral, which Froomkin says places the paper into an undistinguished secondary role in competition with other contemporary media. As part of the shift in tone, in 2023 the paper closed down the "KidsPost" column for children, the "Skywatch" astronomy column, and the "John Kelly's Washington" column about local history and sights, which had been running under different bylines since 1947.
In May 2024, CEO and publisher William Lewis announced that the organization would embrace AI to improve the paper's financial situation, telling staff it would seek "AI everywhere in our newsroom."
In June 2024, Axios reported the Post faced significant internal turmoil and financial challenges. The new CEO, Lewis, has already generated controversy with his leadership style and proposed restructuring plans. The abrupt departure of executive editor Buzbee and the appointment of two white men to top editorial positions have sparked internal discontent, particularly given the lack of consideration for the Post's senior female editors. Additionally, Lewis' proposed division for social media and service journalism has met with resistance from staff. Recent reports alleging Lewis' attempts to influence editorial decisions, including pressuring NPR's media correspondent to drop a story about his past ties to a phone hacking scandal, have further shaken the newsroom's morale. Lewis continues to grapple with declining revenue and audience on the business front, seeking strategies to regain subscribers lost since the Trump era.
Later that month, the paper ran a story allegedly exposing a connection between incoming editor Robert Winnett and John Ford, a man who "admitted to an extensive career using deception and illegal means to obtain confidential information." Winnett withdrew from the position shortly thereafter.
Political stance
20th century
In 1933, financier Eugene Meyer bought the bankrupt Post, and assured the public that neither he nor the newspaper would be beholden to any political party. But as a leading Republican who had been appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve by Herbert Hoover in 1930, his opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal colored the paper's editorials and news coverage, including editorializing news stories written by Meyer under a pseudonym. His wife Agnes Ernst Meyer was a journalist from the other end of the spectrum politically. The Post ran many of her pieces including tributes to her personal friends John Dewey and Saul Alinsky.
In 1946, Meyer was appointed head of World Bank, and he named his son-in-law Phil Graham to succeed him as Post publisher. The post-war years saw the developing friendship of Phil and Kay Graham with the Kennedys, the Bradlees and the rest of the "Georgetown Set", including many Harvard University alumni that would color the Post's political orientation. Kay Graham's most memorable Georgetown soirée guest list included British diplomat and communist spy Donald Maclean.
The Post is credited with coining the term "McCarthyism" in a 1950 editorial cartoon by Herbert Block. Depicting buckets of tar, it made fun of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "tarring" tactics, i.e., smear campaigns and character assassination against those targeted by his accusations. Sen. McCarthy was attempting to do for the Senate what the House Un-American Activities Committee had been doing for years—investigating Soviet espionage in America. The HUAC made Richard Nixon nationally known for his role in the Hiss/Chambers case that exposed communist spying in the State Department. The committee had evolved from the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of the 1930s.
Phil Graham's friendship with John F. Kennedy remained strong until their deaths in 1963. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly told the new President Lyndon B. Johnson, "I don't have much influence with the Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker."
Ben Bradlee became the editor-in-chief in 1968, and Kay Graham officially became the publisher in 1969, paving the way for the aggressive reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandals. The Post strengthened public opposition to the Vietnam War in 1971 when it published the Pentagon Papers. In the mid-1970s, some conservatives referred to the Post as "Pravda on the Potomac" because of its perceived left-wing bias in both reporting and editorials. Since then, the appellation has been used by both liberal and conservative critics of the newspaper.
21st century
In the PBS documentary Buying the War, journalist Bill Moyers said in the year prior to the Iraq War there were 27 editorials supporting the Bush administration's desire to invade Iraq. National security correspondent Walter Pincus reported that he had been ordered to cease his reports that were critical of the administration. According to author and journalist Greg Mitchell: "By the Post's own admission, in the months before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war, while contrary information got lost".
On March 23, 2007, Chris Matthews said on his television program, "The Washington Post is not the liberal newspaper it was [...] I have been reading it for years and it is a neocon newspaper". It has regularly published a mixture of op-ed columnists, with some of them left-leaning (including E. J. Dionne, Dana Milbank, Greg Sargent, and Eugene Robinson), and some of them right-leaning (including George Will, Marc Thiessen, Michael Gerson and Charles Krauthammer).
Responding to criticism of the newspaper's coverage during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, former Post ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote: "The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama." According to a 2009 Oxford University Press book by Richard Davis on the impact of blogs on American politics, liberal bloggers link to The Washington Post and The New York Times more often than other major newspapers; however, conservative bloggers also link predominantly to liberal newspapers.
Since 2011, the Post has been running a column called "The Fact Checker" that the Post describes as a "truth squad". The Fact Checker received a $250,000 grant from Google News Initiative/YouTube to expand production of video fact checks.
In mid-September 2016, Matthew Ingram of Forbes joined Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, and Trevor Timm of The Guardian in criticizing The Washington Post for "demanding that [former National Security Agency contractor Edward] Snowden ... stand trial on espionage charges".
In February 2017, the Post adopted the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" for its masthead.
Political endorsements
In the vast majority of U.S. elections, for federal, state, and local office, the Post editorial board has endorsed Democratic candidates. The paper's editorial board and endorsement decision-making are separate from newsroom operations. Until 1976, the Post did not regularly make endorsements in presidential elections. Since it endorsed Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Post has endorsed Democrats in presidential elections, and has never endorsed a Republican for president in the general election, although in the 1988 presidential election, the Post declined to endorse either Governor Michael Dukakis (the Democratic candidate) or Vice President George H. W. Bush (the Republican candidate). The Post editorial board endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012; Hillary Clinton in 2016; and Joe Biden for 2020.
While the newspaper predominantly endorses Democrats in congressional, state, and local elections, it has occasionally endorsed Republican candidates. While the paper has not endorsed Republican candidates for governor of Virginia, it endorsed Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich's unsuccessful bid for a second term in 2006. In 2006, it repeated its historic endorsements of every Republican incumbent for Congress in Northern Virginia. The Post editorial board endorsed Virginia's Republican U.S. Senator John Warner in his Senate reelection campaign in 1990, 1996 and 2002; the paper's most recent endorsement of a Maryland Republican for U.S. Senate was in the 1980s, when the paper endorsed Senator Charlies "Mac" Mathias Jr. In U.S. House of Representatives elections, moderate Republicans in Virginia and Maryland, including Wayne Gilchrest, Thomas M. Davis, and Frank Wolf, have enjoyed the support of the Post; the Post also endorsed Republican Carol Schwartz in her campaign in Washington, D.C.
Criticism and controversies
"Jimmy's World" fabrication
In September 1980, a Sunday feature story appeared on the front page of the Post titled "Jimmy's World" in which reporter Janet Cooke wrote a profile of the life of an eight-year-old heroin addict. Although some within the Post doubted the story's veracity, the paper's editors defended it, and assistant managing editor Bob Woodward submitted the story to the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University for consideration. Cooke was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing on April 13, 1981. The story was subsequently found to be a complete fabrication, and the Pulitzer was returned.
Private "salon" solicitation
In July 2009, in the midst of an intense debate over health care reform, The Politico reported that a health-care lobbyist had received an "astonishing" offer of access to the Post's "health-care reporting and editorial staff." Post publisher Katharine Weymouth had planned a series of exclusive dinner parties or "salons" at her private residence, to which she had invited prominent lobbyists, trade group members, politicians, and business people. Participants were to be charged $25,000 to sponsor a single salon, and $250,000 for 11 sessions, with the events being closed to the public and to the non-Post press. Politico's revelation gained a somewhat mixed response in Washington as it gave the impression that the parties' sole purpose was to allow insiders to purchase face time with Post staff.
Almost immediately following the disclosure, Weymouth canceled the salons, saying, "This should never have happened." White House counsel Gregory B. Craig reminded officials that under federal ethics rules, they need advance approval for such events. Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, who was named on the flier as one of the salon's "Hosts and Discussion Leaders", said he was "appalled" by the plan, adding, "It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase."
China Daily advertising supplements
Dating back to 2011, The Washington Post began to include "China Watch" advertising supplements provided by China Daily, an English language newspaper owned by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party, on the print and online editions. Although the header to the online "China Watch" section included the text "A Paid Supplement to The Washington Post", James Fallows of The Atlantic suggested that the notice was not clear enough for most readers to see. Distributed to the Post and multiple newspapers around the world, the "China Watch" advertising supplements range from four to eight pages and appear at least monthly. According to a 2018 report by The Guardian, "China Watch" uses "a didactic, old-school approach to propaganda."
In 2020, a report by Freedom House, titled "Beijing's Global Megaphone", criticized the Post and other newspapers for distributing "China Watch". In the same year, 35 Republican members of the U.S. Congress wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice in February 2020 calling for an investigation of potential FARA violations by China Daily. The letter named an article that appeared in the Post, "Education Flaws Linked to Hong Kong Unrest", as an example of "articles [that] serve as cover for China's atrocities, including ... its support for the crackdown in Hong Kong." According to The Guardian, the Post had already stopped running "China Watch" in 2019.
Employee relations
In 1986, five employees, including Newspaper Guild unit chairman Thomas R. Sherwood and assistant Maryland editor Claudia Levy, sued The Washington Post for overtime pay, stating that the newspaper had claimed that budgets did not allow for overtime wages.
In June 2018, over 400 employees of The Washington Post signed an open letter to the owner Jeff Bezos demanding "fair wages; fair benefits for retirement, family leave and health care; and a fair amount of job security." The open letter was accompanied by video testimonials from employees, who alleged "shocking pay practices" despite record growth in subscriptions at the newspaper, with salaries rising an average of $10 per week, which the letter claimed was less than half the rate of inflation. The petition followed on a year of unsuccessful negotiations between The Washington Post Guild and upper management over pay and benefit increases.
In March 2022, reporter Paul Farhi was suspended for five days without pay after he tweeted about the publication's policy on bylines and datelines regarding Russian-based stories.
Felicia Sonmez
In 2020, The Post suspended reporter Felicia Sonmez after she posted a series of tweets about the 2003 rape allegation against basketball star Kobe Bryant after Bryant's death. She was reinstated after over 200 Post journalists wrote an open letter criticizing the paper's decision. In July 2021, Sonmez sued The Post and several of its top editors, alleging workplace discrimination; the suit was dismissed in March 2022, with the court determining that Sonmez had failed to make plausible claims.
In June 2022, Sonmez engaged in a Twitter feud with fellow Post staffers David Weigel, criticizing him over what he later described as "an offensive joke", and Jose A. Del Real, who accused Sonmez of "engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague". Following the feud, the newspaper suspended Weigel for a month for violating the company's social media guidelines, and the newspaper's executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out a newsroom-wide memorandum directing employees to "Be constructive and collegial" in their interactions with colleagues. The newspaper fired Sonmez, writing in an emailed termination letter that she had engaged in "misconduct that includes insubordination, maligning your co-workers online and violating The Post's standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity." The Post faced criticism from the Post Guild after refusing to go to arbitration over the dismissal, stating that the expiration of the Post's contract "does not relieve the Post from its contractual obligation to arbitrate grievances filed prior to expiration."
Lawsuit by Covington Catholic High School student
In 2019, Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann filed a defamation lawsuit against the Post, alleging that it libeled him in seven articles regarding the January 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation between Covington students and the Indigenous Peoples March. A federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that 30 of the 33 statements in the Post that Sandmann alleged were libelous were not, but allowed Sandmann to file an amended complaint as to three statements. After Sandmann's lawyers amended the complaint, the suit was reopened on October 28, 2019.
In 2020, The Post settled the lawsuit brought by Sandmann for an undisclosed amount.
Controversial op-eds and columns
Several Washington Post op-eds and columns have prompted criticism, including a number of comments on race by columnist Richard Cohen over the years, and a controversial 2014 column on campus sexual assault by George Will.
The Post's decision to run an op-ed by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a leader in Yemen's Houthi movement, was criticized by some activists on the basis that it provided a platform to an "anti-Western and antisemitic group supported by Iran." The headline of a 2020 op-ed titled "It's time to give the elites a bigger say in choosing the president" was changed, without an editor's note, after backlash.
In 2022, actor Johnny Depp successfully sued ex-wife Amber Heard for an op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post where she described herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse two years after she had publicly accused him of domestic violence.
Criticism by elected officials
Speaking on behalf of Richard Nixon, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler infamously accused The Washington Post of "shabby journalism" for their focus on Watergate only to apologize when the damning reporting on Nixon was proved correct.
Former president Donald Trump repeatedly spoke out against The Washington Post on his Twitter account, having "tweeted or retweeted criticism of the paper, tying it to Amazon more than 20 times since his campaign for president" by August 2018. In addition to often attacking the paper itself, Trump used Twitter to blast various Post journalists and columnists.
During the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders repeatedly criticized The Washington Post, saying that its coverage of his campaign was slanted against him and attributing this to Jeff Bezos' purchase of the newspaper. Sanders' criticism was echoed by the socialist magazine Jacobin and the progressive journalist watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron responded by saying that Sanders' criticism was "baseless and conspiratorial".
Fossil fuel advertising
An investigation by the Intercept, the Nation, and DeSmog found that The Washington Post is one of the leading media outlets that publishes advertising for the fossil fuel industry. Journalists who cover climate change for The Washington Post are concerned that conflicts of interest with the companies and industries that caused climate change and obstructed action will reduce the credibility of their reporting on climate change and cause readers to downplay the climate crisis.
Executive officers and editors
Major stockholders
Stilson Hutchins (1877–1889)
Frank Hatton and Beriah Wilkins (1889–1905)
John R. McLean (1905–1916)
Edward (Ned) McLean (1916–1933)
Eugene Meyer (1933–1948)
The Washington Post Company (1948–2013)
Nash Holdings (Jeff Bezos) (2013–present)
Publishers
Stilson Hutchins (1877–1889)
Beriah Wilkins (1889–1905)
John R. McLean (1905–1916)
Edward (Ned) McLean (1916–1933)
Eugene Meyer (1933–1946)
Philip L. Graham (1946–1961)
John W. Sweeterman (1961–1968)
Katharine Graham (1969–1979)
Donald E. Graham (1979–2000)
Boisfeuillet Jones Jr. (2000–2008)
Katharine Weymouth (2008–2014)
Frederick J. Ryan Jr. (2014–2023)
William Lewis (2024–present)
Executive editors
James Russell Wiggins (1955–1968)
Ben Bradlee (1968–1991)
Leonard Downie Jr. (1991–2008)
Marcus Brauchli (2008–2012)
Martin Baron (2012–2021)
Sally Buzbee (2021–2024)
Matt Murray (2024–present)
See also
1975–76 Washington Post pressmen's strike
All the President's Men, a 1974 book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward about the Watergate scandal
All the President's Men, a 1976 film based on Bernstein's and Woodward's book
List of prizes won by The Washington Post
The Post, a 2017 film based on the publication of the Pentagon Papers
The Washington Star (1852–1981)
The Washington Times (1982–present)
References
Further reading
Kelly, Tom. The imperial Post: The Meyers, the Grahams, and the paper that rules Washington (Morrow, 1983)
Lewis, Norman P. "Morning Miracle. Inside the Washington Post: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life". Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly (2011) 88#1 pp: 219.
Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers (1980) pp 342–52
Roberts, Chalmers McGeagh. In the shadow of power: the story of the Washington Post (Seven Locks Pr, 1989)
External links
Official website
Today's The Washington Post front page at the Freedom Forum website
The Washington Post Company history at Graham Holdings Company
The Washington Post channel in Telegram
Scott Sherman, May 2002, "Donald Graham's Washington Post" Columbia Journalism Review. September / October 2002.
"War Reporters – Imperial Life in the Emerald City" at the Wayback Machine (archived January 2, 2007)
Jaffe, Harry. "Post Watch: Family Dynasty Continues with Katharine II", Washingtonian, February 26, 2008.
"Washington+Post", Core.ac.uk, Open access research papers |
Edward_Beale_McLean | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Beale_McLean | [
317
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Beale_McLean"
] | Edward "Ned" Beale McLean (1889 – July 28, 1941) was the publisher and owner of The Washington Post newspaper, from 1916 until 1933. His wife, Evalyn Walsh McLean, was a prominent Washington socialite. McLean was also a thoroughbred racehorse owner and purchaser of the Hope Diamond, which was traditionally believed to carry a curse. McLean was declared insane and died in a psychiatric hospital.
Early life
McLean was born into a publishing fortune founded by his paternal grandfather, Washington McLean, who owned The Washington Post and The Cincinnati Enquirer. He was the only child of John Roll McLean, for whom McLean, Virginia, is named, and the former Emily Truxtun Beale, daughter of Edward F. Beale and the former Mary Edwards. Emily was a hostess and socialite who was the inspiration for the character Victoria Dare in the 1880 comic novel, Democracy: An American Novel by Henry Brooks Adams. He attended Brooks Debartolo Collegiate High School.
Career
In 1916, Edward inherited The Washington Post, which he owned and published until 1933.
Thoroughbred horse racing
In 1915, Edward McLean acquired Belmont Plantation, where he had built a horse stable and training track for thoroughbreds. Involved with show horses for a number of years, in 1917 McLean purchased 32 racehorses and hired trainer H. Eugene Leigh. His notable runners included Toro, the winner of the 1928 American Derby. The horse also ran third in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Preakness Stakes. McLean dispersed his bloodstock in June 1931 and, in December, the estate was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Patrick J. Hurley.
Hope Diamond ownership
On January 28, 1911, in a deal made in the offices of The Washington Post, McLean purchased the Hope Diamond for US$180,000 from Pierre Cartier of Cartier Jewelers on Fifth Avenue in New York City. A clause in the sale agreement for the diamond (which was widely believed to have brought death and disaster to its owners) stated: "Should any fatality occur to the family of Edward B. McLean within six months, the said Hope diamond is agreed to be exchanged for jewelry of equal value". By March, as the diamond had not been paid for, Cartier retained a lawyer to sue McLean for payment. McLean responded by saying that the diamond was on loan for inspection. On February 2, 1912 The New York Times reported, "Wealthy Purchasers of Famous Stone to Retain It Despite Sinister Reputation." The McLeans purchased the diamond for $180,000. For eight years, the bad luck association of the diamond was not evident. However, some subsequent events led to further speculation of the curse. In 1997, The Washington Post referenced its former publisher, the feckless Ned McLean, as "more of a curse even than the diamond".
Personal life
In 1908, Edward McLean married Evalyn Walsh, the only surviving child and sole heiress of mining millionaire Thomas Walsh. Following a honeymoon trip around the world, the couple returned to Washington and settled into the McLean family's country house, called "Friendship", now the McLean Gardens Condominium development in the Tenleytown neighborhood of Washington. The McLeans lived lavishly and were prominent in Washington society.
Political friends
The McLeans were close friends of Senator and President Warren G. Harding and first lady Florence Harding.
McLean was also a friend of Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, through whom he became embroiled in the Teapot Dome scandal. McLean falsely told investigating Senator Thomas J. Walsh that he had given Fall a $100,000 loan when, in fact, Fall had illegally received money from private oil companies. When Walsh threatened to have McLean charged with perjury, McLean admitted the falsity of his claim. This admission was later characterized as "the first climactic sensation" and "the smoking gun" of the scandal.
Divorce, mental illness, and death
The McLean marriage ended with much publicized and bitterly contested divorce proceedings, initiated by Mrs. McLean on grounds of infidelity, in October 1931. McLean filed for divorce in Mexico but his wife obtained a permanent injunction from a District of Columbia court ordering the cessation of the Mexican proceedings. Edward McLean then suddenly announced he had already married Rose Douras, a sister of Hollywood film star Marion Davies; though a marriage had not occurred. McLean immediately took up residence in Riga, Latvia, where he again filed for a divorce, which was granted on December 13, 1932.
Edward McLean's increasingly erratic behavior and reckless spending led to the forced sale of The Washington Post by trustees appointed by the court. The divorce proceedings of Evalyn McLean continued in United States court but were dropped following an October 31, 1933, verdict by a jury in a Maryland trial that declared Edward McLean to be legally insane and incapable of managing his affairs. The court ordered that he be committed indefinitely to a psychiatric hospital.
Edward McLean died of a heart attack at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland in 1941.
Progeny
On May 18, 1919, nine-year-old Vinson Walsh McLean (born December 18, 1909), the eldest of four McLean children, was struck by a car and killed while crossing Wisconsin Avenue in front of their house.
On October 9, 1941, their 19-year-old daughter, Evalyn Washington "Evie" McLean (November 16, 1921–September 20, 1946), became the fifth wife of 57-year-old Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina. Less than five years later, she was found dead by her mother. A coroner's inquest determined the cause of death to be an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Their daughter, Mamie Spears Reynolds, who was the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500, married Luigi "Coco" Chinetti Jr., son of Italian race car driver and Ferrari agent Luigi Chinetti, in 1963; they divorced two years later. She later married Joseph E. Gregory, with whom she had two children.
The couple's second son, John Randolph "Jock" McLean II, married three times to socialites: first to Agnes Landon Pyne Davis Bacon (née Davis) in 1941, then to Elizabeth Muhlenberg “Betty” Brooke Blake Phipps Reed (née Blake) in 1943, and finally to former model Mildred W. "Brownie" Brown Schrafft (née Brown) in 1953. In 1976, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt rented Brownie McLean's Palm Beach estate, El Solano, as a background for published photographs. In January 1980 she sold the mansion to Yoko Ono and John Lennon. She turned down the Hope Diamond in 1952 when offered by her husband on the passing of his mother, due to the so-called "curse" associated with it.
Third son, Edward Beale McLean, Jr., married Ann Carroll Meem in May 1938. Their divorce was granted in July 1943 and in August he married actress Gloria Hatrick, with whom he had two sons, Ronald and Michael. Ronald was killed in action in 1969 by enemy fire while serving in Vietnam as a first lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. McLean Jr. and Gloria divorced in January 1948. In October of that year, he married Manuela Mercedes "Mollie" Hudson, who had been the first wife of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr.; in August 1949, Gloria married actor James Stewart. McLean Jr. and Hudson-Vanderbilt separated in the 1960s and divorced in 1973, after which he married Patricia Dewey.
References
== External links == |
Eugene_Meyer_(financier) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Meyer_(financier) | [
317
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Meyer_(financier)"
] | Eugene Isaac Meyer (October 31, 1875 – July 17, 1959) was an American banker, businessman, financier, and newspaper publisher. Through his public career, he served as the 5th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer published The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, and the paper stayed in his family throughout the rest of the 20th century. He was the first president of the World Bank Group from June to December 1946.
His daughter, Katharine "Kay" Graham, took the Post over in 1963 and remained its titular head until her death in 2001.
Early life and education
Meyer was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California, descended from a long line of rabbis and civic leaders. He was one of eight children of Harriet (née Newmark) and Marc Eugene Meyer. His mother was the daughter of Joseph Newmark. He grew up in San Francisco and attended college across the bay at the University of California, Berkeley, but he dropped out after one year and later enrolled at Yale University. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1895.
Career
Banking and finance
After college, Meyer went to work for Lazard Frères, where his father was a partner, but quit in 1901 after four years and went out on his own. He was a successful investor and speculator, and owned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. He married Agnes Elizabeth Ernst, a Lutheran, in 1910; they had five children, including the future Katharine Graham, and another daughter, Florence Meyer (Mrs. Oskar Homolka). By 1915, when he was forty, he was worth $40 million.
In 1920, Meyer teamed with William H. Nichols of General Chemical to help fulfill his vision of a bigger, better chemical company. Meyer and Nichols combined five smaller chemical companies to create the Allied Chemical & Dye Corporation, which later became Allied Chemical Corp., which in turn became part of AlliedSignal, the forerunner of Honeywell’s specialty materials business. Both men have buildings named after them at Honeywell’s Morris Plains, New Jersey, headquarters.
Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Meyer went to Washington, D.C., during World War I as a "dollar-a-year man" (his token salary) for Woodrow Wilson, becoming the head of the War Finance Corporation and serving there long after the end of hostilities. President Calvin Coolidge named him as chairman of the Federal Farm Loan Board in 1927.
Herbert Hoover promoted him to Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1930. He took on an additional half-year post in 1932 as chief of the new Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was Hoover's unsuccessful attempt to aid companies by providing loans to businesses. After Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, Meyer resigned his Fed position on May 10, 1933.
Meyer has been criticized as Fed Chairman for not attacking the economic catastrophe of the early 1930s with monetary stimulus, thus allowing the banking crisis to get out of hand and deepening the economic collapse. One of his biggest critics at the time condemned Meyer along with J. P. Morgan, Andrew Mellon and Ogden Mills
as being the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
More recent critics include Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and his fellow economist Anna Schwartz who, in their landmark book A Monetary History of the United States, put forth the argument that the Fed could have lessened the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and ameliorating banking panics.
Publishing
The Washington Post
In 1929, Meyer made an offer of $5 million for The Washington Post, but he was rebuffed. In June 1933, he bought the paper at a bankruptcy auction for $825,000, the paper having been ruined by its spendthrift socialite owner Ned McLean, and by the Great Depression. Meyer had resigned as Fed chairman just three weeks earlier, and he had no experience in the publishing business. But he was prepared to bid up to $2 million for the Post, far more than the other bidders, including William Randolph Hearst. Preferring to remain anonymous, Meyer stayed home from the proceedings.
After weeks of speculation when even his daughter Katharine did not know the buyer's name, it was finally revealed in newspapers around the country on June 13.
In his statement to the press, Meyer vowed to improve the Post, and asserted that he would operate it independently. He also said that he had bought the Post on his own, without the influence of "any person, group or organization." He made this statement to contradict the rumors that as a well-known Republican, he would soon turn it into a voice for Republican causes. Press reaction to the purchase was positive, with other newspapers being pleased that the Post would not go out of business, and would continue to report the news from the nation's capital; given its important location, said one editorial, rescuing the Post was "a public service."
An editorial in a newspaper that was identifiably Republican praised the purchase as "good news for journalism." While expressing the hope that Meyer would in fact take the Republican point of view, the editorial acknowledged that he probably would not do so, since he seemed to be "no slavish supporter of any party or leader," assuring that under his leadership the Washington Post would be "hard hitting and independent, a paper that nobody can ignore." As it turned out, Meyer did take the side of the Republican party on some issues. He was opposed to FDR's New Deal, and this was reflected in the Post's editorial stance as well as its news coverage, especially regarding the National Recovery Administration (NRA). He even wrote an editorializing "news" story under a fake name.
Over the next twenty years, Meyer spent millions of dollars of his own money to keep the money-losing paper in business, while focusing on improving its quality; by the 1950s, it was finally consistently profitable and was increasingly recognized for good reporting and important editorials. As publisher, Meyer occasionally contributed to stories: his friendship with the British Ambassador, Lord Lothian, led to a Washington Post scoop on reporting of Edward VIII's relationship with Wallis Simpson.
World Bank
Following World War II in June 1946, U.S. president Harry S. Truman named Meyer, then 70 years old, the first head of the World Bank. Meyer appointed his son-in-law, Phil Graham, as publisher of the Post. After six months with the World Bank, Meyer returned to the Post, serving as chairman of the Washington Post Company until his death in Mount Kisco, New York, in 1959.
Personal life
Meyer's older sister, Florence Meyer Blumenthal, was noted for the philanthropic organization she formed, the Franco-American Florence Blumenthal Foundation, which awarded the Prix Blumenthal. His brother, Edgar J. Meyer, married to Leila Saks Meyer, the daughter of Andrew Saks, perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
Meyer died at age 83 on July 17, 1959 at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. where he had been under treatment for a heart ailment and cancer.
Legacy
Eugene Meyer Elementary School in Washington, D.C., was named in Meyer's honor in 1963. The school closed in 2008, and the building has since been used as swing space by District of Columbia Public Schools.
References
Notes
Bibliography
Butkiewicz, James. "Eugene Meyer and the German Influence on the Origin of US Federal Financial Rescues." Journal of the History of Economic Thought 37.1 (2015): 57-77. online
Friedman, Milton; Schwartz, Anna J. (1993) [1963]. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 327–389. ISBN 978-0691003542.
Graham, Katharine . Personal History. 1997.
Meltzer, Allan H. (2003). A History of the Federal Reserve – Volume 1: 1913–1951. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 320–436. ISBN 978-0226520001.
Meyer, Agnes E. Out of These Roots. 1959.
Pusey, Merlo J. Eugene Meyer. 1974.
External links
Biography of Eugene Meyer (website)
Statements and Speeches of Eugene Meyer
Selections from the Eugene Meyer Papers relating to the Federal Reserve, from the Library of Congress
Works by or about Eugene Meyer at the Internet Archive |
David_L._Jones_(botanist) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Jones_(botanist) | [
318
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Jones_(botanist)"
] | David Lloyd Jones (born 1944) is an Australian horticultural botanist and the author of many books and papers, especially on Australian orchids.
Jones was born in Victoria and in his youth was a student at Burnley Horticultural College, then the University of Melbourne, graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. He was employed for 14 years by the Victorian Department of Agriculture where he helped develop programs involving the nutrient requirements of Australian native plants. He later owned several commercial nurseries. In 1972 his first description of an orchid, Pterostylis aestiva, was published, then in 1978, his first book, Australian Ferns and Fern Allies, written with Stephen Clemesha, was published. In 1987 Jones worked first as a horticultural research officer at the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra and a year later began an intensive study of the taxonomy of Australian plant groups, especially orchids. From 1994 he worked as a research scientist in the Orchid Research Group at the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research until his retirement in 2007.
Jones facilitated a cooperation with groups of both professional and amateur botanists which has led to the description of many new species. Jones has travelled extensively and visited many remote areas of Australia in the search for new orchid species. He is the author of more than 350 papers describing new species of orchids, 18 of cycads, as well as of other groups including the fern genus Revwattsia, and has published many books on Australian plants. He is described by fellow botanist, Mark Alwin Clements as "without doubt one of the outstanding botanists of our time" and by Rob Cross and Roger Spencer, horticultural botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, as "probably the most prolific horticultural botanist that Australia has produced".
The standard author abbreviation D.L.Jones is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Bibliography
Jones, D.L., A complete guide to native orchids of Australia, including the island territories New Holland Publishing (2006)
Jones, D.L., Palms throughout the world Reed Books (1995)
Jones, David L., Palmiers du monde KÖNEMANN (2000)
Jones, D.L., Cycads of the world Reed Books (1993)
Jones, D.L., Palms in Australia Reed New Holland (2000)
Elliot, W. Rodger & Jones, D.L., Encyclopaedia of Australian plants suitable for cultivation Lothian Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd. (1980)
Jones, D.L., Native Orchids of Australia Reed Books (1988)
Jones, D.L. & Elliot, W. Rodger, Lothian Pub. Co. (1986) Pests, diseases and ailments of Australian plants, with suggestions for their control Reed Books (1993)
Honours
(Orchidaceae) Diuris jonesii C.J.French and G.Brockman
References
External links
Data related to David Lloyd Jones at Wikispecies |
Pterostylis_aestiva | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterostylis_aestiva | [
318
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterostylis_aestiva#Description"
] | Pterostylis aestiva, commonly known as the long-tongued summer greenhood, is a species of orchid endemic to south-eastern Australia. As with similar greenhoods, the flowering plants differ from those which are not flowering. The non-flowering plants have a rosette of leaves flat on the ground but the flowering plants have a single flower with leaves on the flowering spike.
Description
Pterostylis aestiva is a terrestrial, perennial, deciduous, herb with an underground tuber and when not flowering, a rosette of dark bluish-green leaves, each leaf 10–30 millimetres (0.4–1 in) long and 10–15 millimetres (0.4–0.6 in) wide. Flowering plants have a single flower 20–30 millimetres (0.8–1 in) long and 7–9 millimetres (0.3–0.4 in) wide borne on a spike 150–350 millimetres (6–10 in) high with between three and five stem leaves. The flowers are dark bluish-green, white and brown. The dorsal sepal and petals are fused, forming a hood or "galea" over the column. The dorsal sepal curves forward with a thread-like tip 8–12 millimetres (0.3–0.5 in) long. The lateral sepals are held closely against the galea, have an erect, thread-like tip 25–35 millimetres (0.98–1.4 in) long and a protruding sinus between their bases. The labellum is 15–19 millimetres (0.6–0.7 in) long, about 4 millimetres (0.2 in) wide, brown, blunt, and curved and protrudes above the sinus. Flowering occurs from January to April.
Taxonomy and naming
Pterostylis aestiva was first formally described in 1972 by David Jones from a specimen collected near Wulgulmerang. The description was published in Muelleria. The specific epithet (aestiva) is a Latin word meaning "pertaining to summer".
Distribution and habitat
The long-tongued summer greenhood grows among grasses in high rainfall forests in north-east Victoria and New South Wales as far north as Mount Canobolas.
Use in horticulture
This greenhood is easily grows in pots although plants must be kept moist during the growing season and dry when dormant.
== References == |
Thelema | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema | [
319
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema"
] | Thelema () is a Western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and a new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician. Central to Thelema is the concept of discovering and following one's True Will, a unique purpose that transcends ordinary desires. Crowley's system begins with The Book of the Law, a text he maintained was dictated to him by a non-corporeal entity named Aiwass. This work outlines key principles, including the axiom "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," emphasizing personal freedom and the pursuit of one's true path, guided by love.
The Thelemic cosmology features deities inspired by ancient Egyptian religion. The highest deity is Nuit, the night sky symbolized as a naked woman covered in stars, representing the ultimate source of possibilities. Hadit, the infinitely small point, symbolizes manifestation and motion. Ra-Hoor-Khuit, a form of Horus, represents the Sun and active energies of Thelemic magick. Crowley believed that discovering and following one's True Will is the path to self-realization and personal fulfillment, often referred to as the Great Work.
Magick is a central practice in Thelema, involving various physical, mental, and spiritual exercises aimed at uncovering one's True Will and enacting change in alignment with it. Practices such as rituals, yoga, and meditation are used to explore consciousness and achieve self-mastery. The Gnostic Mass, a central ritual in Thelema, mirrors traditional religious services but conveys Thelemic principles. Thelemites also observe specific holy days, such as the Equinoxes and the Feast of the Three Days of the Writing of the Book of the Law, commemorating the writing of Thelema's foundational text.
Post-Crowley figures like Jack Parsons, Kenneth Grant, James Lees, and Nema Andahadna have further developed Thelema, introducing new ideas, practices, and interpretations. Parsons conducted the Babalon Working to invoke the goddess Babalon, while Grant synthesized various traditions into his Typhonian Order. Lees invented the English Qaballa, and Nema Andahadna developed Maat Magick to transform humanity. These contributions have diversified and deepened the exploration of personal will, spiritual growth, and ceremonial magic within Thelema.
Historical precedents
The word θέλημα (thelema) is rare in Classical Greek, where it "signifies the appetitive will: desire, sometimes even sexual", but it is frequent in the Septuagint. Early Christian writings occasionally use the word to refer to the human will, and even the will of the Devil, but it usually refers to the will of God. In his 5th-century sermon, Catholic philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo gave a similar instruction: "Love, and what you will, do." (Dilige et quod vis fac).
In the Renaissance, a character named "Thelemia" represents will or desire in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of the Dominican friar and writer Francesco Colonna. The protagonist Poliphilo has two allegorical guides, Logistica (reason) and Thelemia (will or desire). When forced to choose, he chooses fulfillment of his sexual will over logic. Colonna's work was a great influence on the Franciscan friar and writer François Rabelais, who in the 16th century used Thélème, the French form of the word, as the name of a fictional abbey in his novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel. The only rule of this Abbey was "fay çe que vouldras" ("Fais ce que tu veux", or, "Do what you will").
In the mid-18th century, Sir Francis Dashwood inscribed the adage on a doorway of his abbey at Medmenham, where it served as the motto of the Hellfire Club. Rabelais's Abbey of Thelema has been referred to by later writers Sir Walter Besant and James Rice, in their novel The Monks of Thelema (1878), and C. R. Ashbee in his utopian romance The Building of Thelema (1910).
Definitions
In Classical Greek
In Classical Greek there are two words for will: thelema (θέλημα) and boule (βουλή).
Boule means 'determination', 'purpose', 'intention', 'counsel', or 'project'
Thelema means 'divine will', 'inclination', 'desire', or 'pleasure'
'Thelema' is a rarely used word in Classical Greek. There are very few documents, the earliest being Antiphon the Sophist (5th century BCE). In antiquity it was beside the divine will which a man performs, just as much for the will of sexual desire. The intention of the individual was less understood as an overall, generalized, ontological place wherever it was arranged.
The verb thelo appears very early (Homer, early Attic inscriptions) and has the meanings of "ready", "decide" and "desire" (Homer, 3, 272, also in the sexual sense).
"Aristotle says in the book On Plants that the goal of the human will is perception - unlike the plants that do not have 'epithymia' (translation of the author). "Thelema", says the Aristoteles, "has changed here, 'epithymia'", and 'thelema', and that 'thelema' is to be neutral, not somehow morally determined, the covetous driving force in man."
In the Old Testament
In the Septuagint the term is used for the will of God himself, the pious desire of the God-fearing, and the royal will of a secular ruler. It is thus used only for the representation of high ethical willingness in the faith, the exercise of authority by the authorities, or the non-human will, but not for more profane striving. In the Septuagint, the terms boule and thelema appear, whereas in the Vulgate text, the terms are translated into the Latin voluntas ("will"). Thus, the different meaning of both concepts was lost.
In the New Testament
In the original Greek version of the New Testament the word thelema is used 62 or 64 times, twice in the plural (thelemata). Here, God's will is always and exclusively designated by the word thelema (θέλημα, mostly in the singular), as the theologian Federico Tolli points out by means of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament of 1938 ("Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"). In the same way the term is used in Paul the Apostle and Ignatius of Antioch. For Tolli it follows that the genuine idea of Thelema does not contradict the teachings of Jesus.
François Rabelais and the Abbey of Thélème
François Rabelais was a Franciscan and later a Benedictine monk of the 16th century. Eventually he left the monastery to study medicine, and moved to the French city of Lyon in 1532. There he wrote Gargantua and Pantagruel, a connected series of books. They tell the story of two giants—a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures—written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein.
Most critics today agree that Rabelais wrote from a Christian humanist perspective. The Crowley biographer Lawrence Sutin notes this when contrasting the French author's beliefs with the Thelema of Aleister Crowley. In the previously mentioned story of Thélème, which critics analyze as referring in part to the suffering of loyal Christian reformists or "evangelicals" within the French Church, the reference to the Greek word θέλημα "declares that the will of God rules in this abbey". Sutin writes that Rabelais was no precursor of Thelema, with his beliefs containing elements of Stoicism and Christian kindness.
In his first book (ch. 52–57), Rabelais writes of this Abbey of Thélème, built by the giant Gargantua. It is a classical utopia presented in order to critique and assess the state of the society of Rabelais's day, as opposed to a modern utopian text that seeks to create the scenario in practice. It is a utopia where people's desires are more fulfilled. Satirical, it also epitomises the ideals considered in Rabelais's fiction. The inhabitants of the abbey were governed only by their own free will and pleasure, the only rule being "Do What Thou Wilt". Rabelais believed that men who are free, well born and bred have honour, which intrinsically leads to virtuous actions. When constrained, their noble natures turn instead to remove their servitude, because men desire what they are denied.
Some modern Thelemites consider Crowley's work to build upon Rabelais's summary of the instinctively honourable nature of the Thelemite. Rabelais has been variously credited with the creation of the philosophy of Thelema, as one of the earliest people to refer to it. The current National Grand Master General of the U.S. Ordo Templi Orientis Grand Lodge has opined that:
Saint Rabelais never intended his satirical, fictional device to serve as a practical blueprint for a real human society ... Our Thelema is that of The Book of the Law and the writings of Aleister Crowley.
Aleister Crowley wrote in The Antecedents of Thelema (1926), an incomplete work not published in his day, that Rabelais not only set forth the law of Thelema in a way similar to how Crowley understood it, but predicted and described in code Crowley's life and the holy text that he received, The Book of the Law. Crowley said the work he had received was deeper, showing in more detail the technique people should practice, and revealing scientific mysteries. He said that Rabelais confines himself to portraying an ideal, rather than addressing questions of political economy and similar subjects, which must be solved in order to realize the Law.
Rabelais is included among the Saints of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.
Francis Dashwood and the Hellfire Club
Sir Francis Dashwood adopted some of the ideas of Rabelais and invoked the same rule in French, when he founded a group called the Monks of Medmenham (better known as the Hellfire Club). An abbey was established at Medmenham, in a property which incorporated the ruins of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1201. The group was known as the Franciscans, not after Saint Francis of Assisi, but after its founder, Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer. John Wilkes, George Dodington and other politicians were members. There is little direct evidence of what Dashwood's Hellfire Club practiced or believed. The one direct testimonial comes from John Wilkes, a member who never got into the chapter-room of the inner circle.
Sir Nathaniel Wraxall in his Historical Memoires (1815) accused the Monks of performing Satanic rituals, but these reports have been dismissed as hearsay. Daniel Willens argued that the group likely practiced Freemasonry, but also suggests Dashwood may have held secret Roman Catholic sacraments. He asks if Wilkes would have recognized a genuine Catholic Mass, even if he saw it himself and even if the underground version followed its public model precisely.
Beliefs
The Book of the Law
Aleister Crowley's system of Thelema begins with The Book of the Law, which bears the official name Liber AL vel Legis. It was written in Cairo, Egypt, during his honeymoon with his new wife Rose Crowley (née Kelly). This small book contains three chapters, each of which he said he had written in exactly one hour, beginning at noon, on April 8, April 9, and April 10, 1904. Crowley wrote that he took dictation from an entity named Aiwass, whom he later identified as his own Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley stated that "no forger could have prepared so complex a set of numerical and literal puzzles" and that study of the text would dispel all doubts about the method of how the book was obtained.
Besides the reference to Rabelais, an analysis by Dave Evans shows similarities to The Beloved of Hathor and Shrine of the Golden Hawk, a play by Florence Farr. Evans says this may result from the fact that "both Farr and Crowley were thoroughly steeped in Golden Dawn imagery and teachings", and that Crowley probably knew the ancient materials that inspired some of Farr's motifs. Sutin also finds similarities between Thelema and the work of W. B. Yeats, attributing this to "shared insight" and perhaps to the older man's knowledge of Crowley.
Crowley wrote several commentaries on The Book of the Law, the last of which he wrote in 1925. This brief statement called simply "The Comment" warns against discussing the book's contents, and states that all "questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings" and is signed Ankh-f-n-khonsu.
Axioms
Three statements from The Book of the Law distill the practice and ethics of Thelema. Of these statements, one in particular, known as the Law of Thelema, forms the central doctrine of Thelema as a system of thought. The primary statement, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", is supplemented by a second, follow-up statement: "Love is the law, love under will." These two statements are generally believed to be better understood by considering a third statement: "Every man and every woman is a star."
These three statements have specific meanings:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law": Adherents of Thelema should seek out and follow their true path, known as their True Will.
"Every man and every woman is a star": This refers to the body of light, which Plato described as being composed of the same substance as the stars. It implies that individuals doing their Wills are like stars in the universe—occupying a time and position in space, yet distinctly individual and having an independent nature largely without undue conflict with other stars.
"Love is the law, love under will": The nature of the Law of Thelema is love, which Crowley wrote should be understood in the sense of the Greek word agape. Both agape and thelema sum to 93 in Hermetic Qabalah. The phrase "love under will" is often abbreviated as "93/93", suggesting that "love under will" represents unity.
Cosmology
Thelema draws its principal gods and goddesses, three altogether as the speakers presented in Liber AL vel Legis, from Ancient Egyptian religion.
The highest deity in the theology of Thelema is the goddess Nuit (also spelled Nuith). She is the night sky arched over the Earth symbolized in the form of a naked woman, and is usually depicted as a naked woman who is covered with stars. She is conceived as the "Great Mother", the ultimate source of all things, the collection of all possibilities, "Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof", and the circumference of an infinite circle or sphere. Nuit is derived from the Egyptian sky goddess Nut, and is referred to poetically as "Our Lady of the Stars", and in The Book of the Law as "Queen of Space", and "Queen of Heaven".
The second principal deity of Thelema is the god Hadit, conceived as the infinitely small point, complement and consort of Nuit. Hadit symbolizes manifestation, motion, and time. He is also described in Liber AL vel Legis as "the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star."
Hadit has sometimes been said to represent a 'point-event,' and all individual point-events within the body of Nuit. Hadit is said, in The Book of the Law, to be "perfect, being Not." Additionally, it is written of Nuit in Liber AL that "men speak not of Thee [Nuit] as One but as None."
The third deity in the cosmology of Thelema is Ra-Hoor-Khuit, a manifestation of Horus. He is symbolized as a throned man with the head of a hawk who carries a wand. He is associated with the Sun and the active energies of Thelemic magick.
Other deities within the cosmology of Thelema are Hoor-paar-kraat (or Harpocrates), god of silence and inner strength, the twin of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Babalon, the goddess of all pleasure, known as the Virgin Whore, and Therion, the beast that Babalon rides, who represents the wild animal within man, a force of nature.
True Will
According to Crowley, every individual has a True Will, to be distinguished from the ordinary wants and desires of the ego. The True Will is essentially one's "calling" or "purpose" in life. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" for Crowley refers not to hedonism, fulfilling everyday desires, but to acting in response to that calling. According to Lon Milo DuQuette, a Thelemite is anyone who bases their actions on striving to discover and accomplish their true will, when a person does their True Will, it is like an orbit, their niche in the universal order, and the universe assists them:
But the Magician knows that the pure Will of every man and every woman is already in perfect harmony with the divine Will; in fact, they are one and the same.
In order for the individual to be able to follow their True Will, the everyday self's socially-instilled inhibitions may have to be overcome via deconditioning. Crowley believed that in order to discover the True Will, one had to free the desires of the subconscious mind from the control of the conscious mind, especially the restrictions placed on sexual expression, which he associated with the power of divine creation. He identified the True Will of each individual with the Holy Guardian Angel, a daimon unique to each individual. The spiritual quest to find what you are meant to do and do it is also known in Thelema as the Great Work.
Ethics
Liber AL vel Legis does make clear some standards of individual conduct. The primary of these is "Do what thou wilt" which is presented as the whole of the law, and also as a right. Some interpreters of Thelema believe that this right includes an obligation to allow others to do their own wills without interference, but Liber AL makes no clear statement on the matter. Crowley himself wrote that there was no need to detail the ethics of Thelema, for everything springs from "Do what thou Wilt". Crowley wrote several additional documents presenting his personal beliefs regarding individual conduct in light of the Law of Thelema, some of which do address the topic interference with others: Liber OZ, Duty, and Liber II
Liber OZ enumerates some of the rights of the individual implied by the one overarching right, "Do what thou wilt". For each person, these include the right to: live by one's own law; live in the way that one wills to do; work, play, and rest as one will; die when and how one will; eat and drink what one will; live where one will; move about the earth as one will; think, speak, write, draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build, and dress as one will; love when, where and with whom one will; and kill those who would thwart these rights.
Duty is described as "A note on the chief rules of practical conduct to be observed by those who accept the Law of Thelema." It is not a numbered "Liber" as are all the documents which Crowley intended for A∴A∴, but rather listed as a document intended specifically for Ordo Templi Orientis. There are four sections:
A. Your Duty to Self: describes the self as the center of the universe, with a call to learn about one's inner nature. Admonishes the reader to develop every faculty in a balanced way, establish one's autonomy, and to devote oneself to the service of one's own True Will.
B. Your Duty to Others: An admonishment to eliminate the illusion of separateness between oneself and all others, to fight when necessary, to avoid interfering with the Wills of others, to enlighten others when needed, and to worship the divine nature of all other beings.
C. Your Duty to Mankind: States that the Law of Thelema should be the sole basis of conduct. That the laws of the land should have the aim of securing the greatest liberty for all individuals. Crime is described as being a violation of one's True Will.
D. Your Duty to All Other Beings and Things: States that the Law of Thelema should be applied to all problems and used to decide every ethical question. It is a violation of the Law of Thelema to use any animal or object for a purpose for which it is unfit, or to ruin things so that they are useless for their purpose. Natural resources can be used by man, but this should not be done wantonly, or the breach of the law will be avenged.
In Liber II: The Message of the Master Therion, the Law of Thelema is summarized succinctly as "Do what thou wilt—then do nothing else." Crowley describes the pursuit of Will as not only with detachment from possible results, but with tireless energy. It is Nirvana but in a dynamic rather than static form. The True Will is described as the individual's orbit, and if they seek to do anything else, they will encounter obstacles, as doing anything other than the will is a hindrance to it.
Practice
The core of Thelemic thought is "Do what thou wilt". However, beyond this, there exists a wide range of interpretation of Thelema. Modern Thelema is a syncretic philosophy and religion, and many Thelemites try to avoid strongly dogmatic thinking. Crowley emphasized that each individual should follow their own inherent "True Will", rather than blindly following his teachings, saying he did not wish to found a flock of sheep. Thus, contemporary Thelemites may practice more than one religion, including Wicca, Gnosticism, Satanism, Setianism and Luciferianism. Many adherents of Thelema recognize correlations between Thelemic and other systems of spiritual thought; most borrow freely from the methods and practices of other traditions, including alchemy, astrology, qabalah, tantra, tarot divination and yoga. For example, Nu and Had are thought to correspond with the Tao and Teh of Taoism, Shakti and Shiva of the Hindu Tantras, Shunyata and Bodhicitta of Buddhism, Ain Soph and Kether in the Hermetic Qabalah.
Magick
Thelemic magick is a system of physical, mental, and spiritual exercises which practitioners believe are of benefit. Crowley defined magick as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will", and spelled it with a 'k' to distinguish it from stage magic. He recommended magick as a means for discovering the True Will. Generally, magical practices in Thelema are designed to assist in finding and manifesting the True Will, although some include celebratory aspects as well. Crowley believed that after discovering the True Will, the magician must also remove any elements of himself that stand in the way of its success.
Crowley was a prolific writer, integrating Eastern practices with Western magical practices from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He recommended a number of these practices to his followers, including: basic yoga (asana and pranayama); rituals of his own devising or based on those of the Golden Dawn, such as the lesser ritual of the pentagram, for banishing and invocation; Liber Samekh, a ritual for the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; eucharistic rituals such as The Gnostic Mass and The Mass of the Phoenix; and Liber Resh, consisting of four daily adorations to the sun. He also discussed sex magick and sexual gnosis in various forms involving masturbation and sexual intercourse between heterosexual and homosexual partners; practices which are among his suggestions for those in the higher degrees of Ordo Templi Orientis.
One goal in the study of Thelema within the magical Order of the A∴A∴ is for the magician to obtain the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: conscious communication with their own personal daimon, thus gaining knowledge of their True Will. The chief task for one who has achieved this goes by the name of "crossing the abyss"; completely relinquishing the ego. If the aspirant is unprepared, he will cling to the ego instead, becoming a Black Brother. According to Crowley, the Black Brother slowly disintegrates, while preying on others for his own self-aggrandisement.
Crowley taught skeptical examination of all results obtained through meditation or magick, at least for the student. He tied this to the necessity of keeping a magical record or diary, that attempts to list all conditions of the event. Remarking on the similarity of statements made by spiritually advanced people of their experiences, he said that fifty years from his time they would have a scientific name based on "an understanding of the phenomenon" to replace such terms as "spiritual" or "supernatural". Crowley stated that his work and that of his followers used "the method of science; the aim of religion", and that the genuine powers of the magician could in some way be objectively tested. This idea has been taken on by later practitioners of Thelema. They may consider that they are testing hypotheses with each magical experiment. The difficulty lies in the broadness of their definition of success, in which they may see as evidence of success things which a non-magician would not define as such, leading to confirmation bias. Crowley believed he could demonstrate, by his own example, the effectiveness of magick in producing certain subjective experiences that do not ordinarily result from taking hashish, enjoying oneself in Paris, or walking through the Sahara desert. It is not strictly necessary to practice ritual techniques to be a Thelemite, as due to the focus of Thelemic magick on the True Will, Crowley stated "every intentional act is a magickal act."
Gnostic Mass
Crowley wrote 'The Gnostic Mass' — technically called Liber XV or "Book 15" — in 1913 while travelling in Moscow, Russia. The structure is similar to the Mass of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, communicating the principles of Thelema. It is the central rite of Ordo Templi Orientis and its ecclesiastical arm, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.
Holidays
The Book of the Law gives several holy days to be observed by Thelemites. There are no established or dogmatic ways to celebrate these days, so as a result Thelemites will often take to their own devices or celebrate in groups, especially within Ordo Templi Orientis. These holy days are usually observed on the following dates:
March 20. The Feast of the Supreme Ritual, which celebrates the Invocation of Horus, the ritual performed by Crowley on this date in 1904 that inaugurated the New Aeon.
March 20/March 21. The Equinox of the Gods, which is commonly referred to as the Thelemic New Year (although some celebrate the New Year on April 8). Although the equinox and the Invocation of Horus often fall on the same day, they are often treated as two different events. This date is the Autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.
April 8 through April 10. The Feast of the Three Days of the Writing of the Book of the Law. These three days are commemorative of the three days in the year 1904 during which Aleister Crowley wrote The Book of the Law. One chapter was written each day, the first being written on April 8, the second on April 9, and the third on April 10. Although there is no official way of celebrating any Thelemic holiday, this particular feast day is usually celebrated by reading the corresponding chapter on each of the three days, usually at noon.
June 20/June 21. The Summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the Winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
August 12. The Feast of the Prophet and His Bride. This holiday commemorates the marriage of Aleister Crowley and his first wife Rose Edith Crowley. Rose was a key figure in the writing of The Book of the Law.
September 22/September 23. The Autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the Vernal Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.
December 21/December 22. The Winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Feast for Life, celebrated at the birth of a Thelemite and on birthdays.
The Feast for Fire/The Feast for Water. These feast days are usually taken as being when a child hits puberty and steps unto the path of adulthood. The Feast for Fire is celebrated for a male, and the Feast for Water for a female.
The Feast for Death, celebrated on the death of a Thelemite and on the anniversary of their death. Crowley's Death is celebrated on December 1.
Greetings
The number 93 is of great significance in Thelema. The central philosophy of Thelema is in two phrases from Liber AL: "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and "love is the law, love under will". Crowley urged their use in everyday communications, and himself used them to greet people. Today, rather than using the full phrases, Thelemites often use numerological abbreviations to shorten these greeting in informal contexts, a practice Crowley also applied in his informal written correspondences. The two primary terms in these statements are 'will' and 'love', respectively. Using the Greek technique of isopsephy, which applies a numerical value to each letter, the letters of words thelema ('will') and agape ('love') each sum to 93:
Thelema: Θελημα = 9 + 5 + 30 + 8 + 40 + 1 = 93
Agapé: Αγαπη = 1 + 3 + 1 + 80 + 8 = 93
In this way, the first phrase is abbreviated to "93" while the second is abbreviated to "93 93/93", with the division "93/93" symbolizing love "under" will.
Post-Crowley developments
Aleister Crowley was highly prolific and wrote on the subject of Thelema for over 35 years, and many of his books remain in print. During his time, there were several others who wrote on the subject, including U.S. O.T.O. Grand Master Charles Stansfeld Jones, whose works on Qabalah are still in print, and Major-General J. F. C. Fuller. Subsequent to Crowley, a number of figures have made significant contributions to Thelema. Each has their own following within the broader Thelemic community.
Jack Parsons
John Whiteside Parsons (1914–1952) was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Parsons converted to Thelema, and together with his first wife, Helen Northrup, joined the Agape Lodge, the Californian branch of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), in 1941. At Crowley's bidding, Parsons replaced Wilfred Talbot Smith as its leader in 1942 and ran the Lodge from his mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard.
Parsons identified four obstacles that prevented humans from achieving and performing their True Will, all of which he connected with fear: the fear of incompetence, the fear of the opinion of others, the fear of hurting others, and the fear of insecurity. He insisted that these must be overcome, writing that "The Will must be freed of its fetters. The ruthless examination and destruction of taboos, complexes, frustrations, dislikes, fears and disgusts hostile to the Will is essential to progress."
The project was based on the ideas of Crowley, and his description of a similar project in his 1917 novel Moonchild. The rituals performed drew largely upon rituals and sex magic described by Crowley. Crowley was in correspondence with Parsons during the course of the Babalon Working, and warned Parsons of his potential overreactions to the magic he was performing, while simultaneously deriding Parsons' work to others.
A brief text entitled Liber 49, self-referenced within the text as The Book of Babalon, was written by Jack Parsons as a transmission from the goddess or force called 'Babalon' received by him during the Babalon Working. Parsons wrote that Liber 49 constituted a fourth chapter of Crowley's Liber AL Vel Legis (The Book of the Law), the holy text of Thelema.
Kenneth Grant
Kenneth Grant (1924–2011) was an English ceremonial magician and advocate of the Thelemic religion. A poet, novelist, and writer, he founded his own Thelemic organisation, the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis—later renamed the Typhonian Order—with his wife Steffi Grant.
Grant drew eclectically on a range of sources in devising his teachings. Although based in Thelema, Grant's Typhonian tradition has been described as "a bricolage of occultism, Neo-Vedanta, Hindu tantra, Western sexual magic, Surrealism, ufology and Lovecraftian gnosis". Grant promoted what he termed the Typhonian or Draconian tradition of magic, and wrote that Thelema was only a recent manifestation of this wider tradition. In his books, he portrayed the Typhonian tradition as the world's oldest spiritual tradition, writing that it had ancient roots in Africa. The religious studies scholar Gordan Djurdjevic noted that Grant's historical claims regarding Typhonian history were "at best highly speculative" and lacked any supporting evidence; however he also suggested that Grant may never have intended these claims to be taken literally.
Grant wrote that Indian spiritual traditions like Tantra and Yoga correlate to Western esoteric traditions, and that both stem from a core, ancient source, has parallels in the perennial philosophy promoted by the Traditionalist School of esotericists. He believed that by mastering magic, one masters this illusory universe, gaining personal liberation and recognising that only the Self really exists. Doing so, according to Grant, leads to the discovery of one's True Will, the central focus of Thelema. Grant further wrote that the realm of the Self was known as 'the Mauve Zone', and that it could be reached while in a state of deep sleep, where it has the symbolic appearance of a swamp. He also believed that the reality of consciousness, which he deemed the only true reality, was formless and thus presented as a void, although he also taught that it was symbolised by the Hindu goddess Kali and the Thelemic goddess Nuit.
Grant's views on sex magic drew heavily on the importance of sexual dimorphism among humans and the subsequent differentiation of gender roles. Grant taught that the true secret of sex magic were bodily secretions, the most important of which was a woman's menstrual blood. In this he differed from Crowley, who viewed semen as the most important genital secretion. Grant referred to female sexual secretions as kalas, a term adopted from Sanskrit. He thought that because women have kalas, they have oracular and visionary powers. The magical uses of female genital secretions are a recurring theme in Grant's writings.
James Lees
James Lees (August 22, 1939 - 2015) was an English magician known for inventing the system he called English Qaballa. in November 1976, Lees constructed the "order & value of the English Alphabet." Follow this, Lees founded the order O∴A∴A∴ in order to assist others in the pursuit of their own spiritual paths. The first public report of the system known as English Qaballa (EQ) was published in 1979 by Ray Sherwin in an editorial in the final issue of his journal, The New Equinox. Lees subsequently assumed the role of publisher of The New Equinox and, starting in 1981, published additional material about the EQ system over the course of five issues of the journal, extending into 1982.
The "order & value" proposed by James Lees lays the letters out on the grid superimposed on the page of manuscript of Liber AL on which this verse (Ch. III, v. 47) appears (sheet 16 of Chapter III). Also appearing on this page are a diagonal line and a circled cross. The Book of the Law states that the book should only be printed with Crowley's hand-written version included, suggesting that there are mysteries in the "chance shape of the letters and their position to one another" of Crowley's handwriting. Whichever top-left to bottom-right diagonal is read the magical order of the letters is obtained.
Little, if any, further material on English Qaballa was published until the appearance of Jake Stratton-Kent's book, The Serpent Tongue: Liber 187, in 2011. This was followed in 2016 by The Magickal Language of the Book of the Law: An English Qaballa Primer by Cath Thompson. An account of the invention, exploration, and continuing research and development of the system up to 2010, by James Lees and members of his group in England, is detailed in her 2018 book, All This and a Book.
Nema Andahadna
Nema Andahadna (1939-2018) practiced and wrote about magick (magical working, as defined by Aleister Crowley) for over thirty years. In 1974, she clamied to have channelled a short book called Liber Pennae Praenumbra.
From her experience with Thelemic magick, she developed her own system of magic called "Maat Magick" which has the aim of transforming the human race. In 1979, she co-founded the Horus-Maat Lodge. The Lodge and her ideas have been featured in the writings of Kenneth Grant.
Her writings have appeared in many publications, including the Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial Magick, Aeon, and Starfire. According to Donald Michael Kraig:
Nema has been one of the most influential occultists of the last quarter century although most occultists have never read her works. What Nema has done is influence those who have been writers and teachers. They, in turn, influenced the rest of us.
See also
Sri Sabhapati Swami – Yoga teacher from Madras, Tamil Nadu, India
Wiccan Rede – Wicca moral statement
Worship of heavenly bodies – Worship of stars and other heavenly bodies as deities
Notes
References
Citations
Works cited
Primary sources
Secondary sources
Tertiary sources
Other sources
Further reading
External links
Thelema at Curlie
Thelema 101 – a complete introduction to the spiritual philosophy of Thelema
Thelema at the Internet Sacred Texts Archive – a collection of texts on the topic of Thelema
Journal of Thelemic Studies – an academic journal investigating the occult tradition of Thelema |
Aleister_Crowley | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley | [
319
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley"
] | Aleister Crowley ( AL-ist-ər KROH-lee; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, philosopher, political theorist, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life.
Born to a wealthy family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Crowley rejected his parents' fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren faith to pursue an interest in Western esotericism. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life. In 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. He went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. In 1904, he married Rose Edith Kelly and they honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt, where Crowley wrote down The Book of the Law, a sacred text that serves as the basis for Thelema, which he said had been dictated by a supernatural entity named Aiwass. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should "Do what thou wilt" and seek to align themselves with their True Will through the practice of ceremonial magic.
After the unsuccessful 1905 Kanchenjunga expedition and a visit to India and China, Crowley returned to Britain, where he attracted attention as a prolific author of poetry, novels and occult literature. In 1907, he and George Cecil Jones co-founded an esoteric order, the A∴A∴, through which they propagated Thelema. After spending time in Algeria, in 1912 he was initiated into another esoteric order, the German-based Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), rising to become the leader of its British branch, which he reformulated in accordance with his Thelemite beliefs. Through O.T.O., Thelemite groups were established in Britain, Australia and North America. Crowley spent the First World War in the United States, where he took up painting and campaigned for the German war effort against Britain; his biographers later revealed that he had infiltrated the pro-German movement to assist the British intelligence services. In 1920, he established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily where he lived with various followers. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and the Italian government evicted him in 1923. He divided the following two decades between France, Germany and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death.
Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a drug user, bisexual and an individualist social critic. Crowley has remained a highly influential figure over Western esotericism and the counterculture of the 1960s and continues to be considered a prophet in Thelema. He is the subject of various biographies and academic studies.
Early life
Youth
Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, on 12 October 1875. His father, Edward Crowley (1829–1887), was trained as an engineer, but his share in a lucrative family brewing business, Crowley's Alton Ales, allowed him to retire before his son was born. His mother, Emily Bertha Bishop (1848–1917), came from a Devonshire-Somerset family and had a strained relationship with her son; she described him as "the Beast", a name that he revelled in. The couple had been married at London's Kensington Registry Office in November 1874, and were evangelical Christians. Crowley's father was born a Quaker, but converted to the Exclusive Brethren, a faction of a Christian fundamentalist group known as the Plymouth Brethren; Emily likewise converted upon marriage. Crowley's father was particularly devout, spending his time as a travelling preacher for the sect and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife and son after breakfast every day. Following the death of their baby daughter in 1880, in 1881 the Crowleys moved to Redhill, Surrey. At the age of 8, Crowley was sent to H. T. Habershon's evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings, and then to Ebor preparatory school in Cambridge, run by the Reverend Henry d'Arcy Champney, whom Crowley considered a sadist.
In March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer. Crowley described this as a turning point in his life, and he always maintained an admiration of his father, describing him as "my hero and my friend". Inheriting a third of his father's wealth, he began misbehaving at school and was harshly punished by Champney; Crowley's family removed him from the school when he developed albuminuria. He then attended Malvern College and Tonbridge School, both of which he despised and left after a few terms. He became increasingly sceptical of Christianity, pointing out Biblical inconsistencies to his religious teachers, and went against the Christian morality of his upbringing by smoking, masturbating, and having sex with prostitutes from whom he contracted gonorrhea. Sent to live with a Brethren tutor in Eastbourne, he undertook chemistry courses at Eastbourne College. Crowley developed interests in chess, poetry, and mountain climbing, and in 1894 climbed Beachy Head before visiting the Alps and joining the Scottish Mountaineering Club. The following year he returned to the Bernese Alps, climbing the Eiger, Trift, Jungfrau, Mönch, and Wetterhorn.
Cambridge University: 1895–1898
Having adopted the name of Aleister over Edward, in October 1895 Crowley began a three-year course at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was entered for the Moral Science Tripos studying philosophy. With approval from his personal tutor, he changed to English literature, which was not then part of the curriculum offered. Crowley spent much of his time at university engaged in his pastimes, becoming president of the chess club and practising the game for two hours a day; he briefly considered a professional career as a chess player. Crowley also embraced his love of literature and poetry, particularly the works of Richard Francis Burton and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Many of his own poems appeared in student publications such as The Granta, Cambridge Magazine, and Cantab. He continued his mountaineering, going on holiday to the Alps to climb every year from 1894 to 1898, often with his friend Oscar Eckenstein, and in 1897 he made the first ascent of the Mönch without a guide. These feats led to his recognition in the Alpine mountaineering community.
Crowley had his first significant mystical experience while on holiday in Stockholm in December 1896. Several biographers, including Lawrence Sutin, Richard Kaczynski, and Tobias Churton, believed that this was the result of Crowley's first same-sex sexual experience, which enabled him to recognize his bisexuality. At Cambridge, Crowley maintained a vigorous sex life with women—largely with female prostitutes, from one of whom he caught syphilis—but eventually he took part in same-sex activities, despite their illegality. In October 1897, Crowley met Herbert Charles Pollitt, president of the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, and the two entered into a relationship. They broke apart because Pollitt did not share Crowley's increasing interest in Western esotericism, a break-up that Crowley regretted for many years.
In 1897, Crowley travelled to Saint Petersburg in Russia, later saying that he was trying to learn Russian as he was considering a future diplomatic career there. In October 1897, a brief illness triggered considerations of mortality and "the futility of all human endeavour", and Crowley abandoned all thoughts of a diplomatic career in favour of pursuing an interest in the occult.
In March 1898, he obtained A. E. Waite's The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, and then Karl von Eckartshausen's The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, furthering his occult interests. That same year, Leonard Smithers, a publisher who Crowley met through Pollitt, published 100 copies of Crowley's poem Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In, but it was not a particular success. That same year, Crowley published a string of other poems, including White Stains, a Decadent collection of erotic poetry that was printed abroad lest its publication be prohibited by the British authorities. In July 1898, he left Cambridge, not having taken any degree at all despite a "first class" showing in his 1897 exams and consistent "second class honours" results before that.
The Golden Dawn: 1898–1899
In August 1898, Crowley was in Zermatt, Switzerland, where he met the chemist Julian L. Baker, and the two began discussing their common interest in alchemy. Back in London, Baker introduced Crowley to George Cecil Jones, Baker's brother-in-law and a fellow member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was founded in 1888. Crowley was initiated into the Outer Order of the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898 by the group's leader, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. The ceremony took place in the Golden Dawn's Isis-Urania Temple held at London's Mark Masons Hall, where Crowley took the magical motto and name "Frater Perdurabo", which he interpreted as "Brother I shall endure to the end".
Crowley moved into his own luxury flat at 67–69 Chancery Lane and soon invited a senior Golden Dawn member, Allan Bennett, to live with him as his personal magical tutor. Bennett taught Crowley more about ceremonial magic and the ritual use of drugs, and together they performed the rituals of the Goetia, until Bennett left for South Asia to study Buddhism. In November 1899, Crowley purchased Boleskine House in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. He developed a love of Scottish culture, describing himself as the "Laird of Boleskine", and took to wearing traditional highland dress, even during visits to London. He continued writing poetry, publishing Jezebel and Other Tragic Poems, Tales of Archais, Songs of the Spirit, Appeal to the American Republic, and Jephthah in 1898–99; most gained mixed reviews from literary critics, although Jephthah was considered a particular critical success.
Crowley soon progressed through the lower grades of the Golden Dawn, and was ready to enter the group's inner Second Order. He was unpopular in the group; his bisexuality and libertine lifestyle gained him a bad reputation, and he developed feuds with some of the members, including W. B. Yeats. When the Golden Dawn's London lodge refused to initiate Crowley into the Second Order, he visited Mathers in Paris, who personally admitted him into the Adeptus Minor Grade. A schism had developed between Mathers and the London members of the Golden Dawn, who were unhappy with his autocratic rule. Acting under Mathers' orders, Crowley—with the help of his mistress and fellow initiate Elaine Simpson—attempted to seize the Vault of the Adepts, a temple space at 36 Blythe Road in West Kensington, from the London lodge members. When the case was taken to court, the judge ruled in favour of the London lodge, as they had paid for the space's rent, leaving both Crowley and Mathers isolated from the group.
Mexico, India, Paris, and marriage: 1900–1903
In 1900, Crowley travelled to Mexico via the United States, settling in Mexico City and starting a relationship with a local woman. Developing a love of the country, he continued experimenting with ceremonial magic, working with John Dee's Enochian invocations. He later said he had been initiated into Freemasonry while there, and he wrote a play based on Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser as well as a series of poems, published as Oracles (1905). Eckenstein joined him later in 1900, and together they climbed several mountains, including Iztaccihuatl, Popocatepetl, and Colima, the latter of which they had to abandon owing to a volcanic eruption. Leaving Mexico, Crowley headed to San Francisco before sailing for Hawaii aboard the Nippon Maru. On the ship, he had a brief affair with a married woman named Mary Alice Rogers; saying he fell in love with her, he wrote a series of poems about the romance, published as Alice: An Adultery (1903).
Briefly stopping in Japan and Hong Kong, Crowley reached Ceylon, where he met with Allan Bennett, who was there studying Shaivism. The pair spent some time in Kandy before Bennett decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, travelling to Burma to do so. Crowley decided to tour India, devoting himself to the Hindu practice of Rāja yoga, by which means he believed he had achieved the spiritual state of dhyana. He spent much of this time studying at the Meenakshi Temple in Madura. At this time he also wrote poetry which was published as The Sword of Song (1904). He contracted malaria, and had to recuperate from the disease in Calcutta and Rangoon. In 1902, he was joined in India by Eckenstein and several other mountaineers: Guy Knowles, H. Pfannl, V. Wesseley, and Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. Together, the Eckenstein-Crowley expedition attempted K2, which was never climbed before. On the journey, Crowley was afflicted with influenza, malaria, and snow blindness, and other expedition members were also struck with illness. They reached an altitude of 20,000 feet (6,100 m) before turning back.
Having arrived in Paris in November 1902, he socialized with his friend the painter Gerald Kelly, and through him became a fixture of the Parisian arts scene. Whilst there, Crowley wrote a series of poems on the work of an acquaintance, the sculptor Auguste Rodin. These poems were later published as Rodin in Rime (1907). One of those frequenting this milieu was W. Somerset Maugham, who after briefly meeting Crowley later used him as a model for the character of Oliver Haddo in his novel The Magician (1908). He returned to Boleskine in April 1903. In August, Crowley wed Gerald Kelly's sister Rose Edith Kelly in a "marriage of convenience" to prevent her from entering an arranged marriage; the marriage appalled the Kelly family and damaged his friendship with Gerald. Heading on a honeymoon to Paris, Cairo, and then Ceylon, Crowley fell in love with Rose and worked to prove his affections. While on his honeymoon, he wrote her a series of love poems, published as Rosa Mundi and other Love Songs (1906), as well as authoring the religious satire Why Jesus Wept (1904).
Developing Thelema
Egypt and The Book of the Law: 1904
In February 1904, Crowley and Rose arrived in Cairo. Pretending to be a prince and princess, they rented an apartment in which Crowley set up a temple room and began invoking ancient Egyptian deities, while studying Islamic mysticism and Arabic. According to Crowley's later account, Rose regularly became delirious and informed him "they are waiting for you." On 18 March, she explained that "they" were the god Horus, and on 20 March proclaimed that "the Equinox of the Gods has come". She led him to a nearby museum, where she showed him a seventh-century BCE mortuary stele known as the Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu; Crowley thought it important that the exhibit's number was 666, the Number of the Beast in Christian belief, and in later years termed the artefact the "Stele of Revealing."
According to Crowley's later statements, on 8 April he heard a disembodied voice identifying itself as that of Aiwass, the messenger of Horus, or Hoor-Paar-Kraat. Crowley said that he wrote down everything the voice told him over the course of the next three days, and titled it Liber AL vel Legis or The Book of the Law. The book proclaimed that humanity was entering a new Aeon, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. It stated that a supreme moral law was to be introduced in this Aeon, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," and that people should learn to live in tune with their Will. This book, and the philosophy that it espoused, became the cornerstone of Crowley's religion, Thelema. Crowley said that at the time he was unsure what to do with The Book of the Law. Often resenting it, he said that he ignored the instructions which the text commanded him to perform, which included taking the Stele of Revealing from the museum, fortifying his own island, and translating the book into all the world's languages. According to his account, he instead sent typescripts of the work to several occultists he knew, putting the manuscript away and ignoring it.
Kanchenjunga and China: 1905–1906
Returning to Boleskine, Crowley came to believe that Mathers was using magic against him, and the relationship between the two broke down. On 28 July 1905, Rose gave birth to Crowley's first child, a daughter named Lilith, with Crowley writing the pornographic Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden to entertain his recuperating wife. He also founded a publishing company through which to publish his poetry, naming it the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth in parody of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Among its first publications were Crowley's Collected Works, edited by Ivor Back, an old friend of Crowley's who was both a practicing surgeon and an enthusiast of literature. His poetry often received strong reviews (either positive or negative), but never sold well. In an attempt to gain more publicity, he issued a reward of £100 for the best essay on his work. The winner of this was J. F. C. Fuller, a British Army officer and military historian, whose essay, The Star in the West (1907), heralded Crowley's poetry as some of the greatest ever written.
Crowley decided to climb Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas of Nepal, widely recognised as the world's most treacherous mountain. The collaboration between Jacot-Guillarmod, Charles Adolphe Reymond, Alexis Pache, and Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, the expedition was marred by much argument between Crowley and the others, who thought that he was reckless. They eventually mutinied against Crowley's control, with the other climbers heading back down the mountain as nightfall approached despite Crowley's warnings that it was too dangerous. Subsequently, Pache and several porters were killed in an accident, something for which Crowley was widely blamed by the mountaineering community.
Spending time in Moharbhanj, where he took part in big-game hunting and wrote the homoerotic work The Scented Garden, Crowley met up with Rose and Lilith in Calcutta before being forced to leave India after non-lethally shooting two men who tried to mug him. Briefly visiting Bennett in Burma, Crowley and his family decided to tour Southern China, hiring porters and a nanny for the purpose. Crowley smoked opium throughout the journey, which took the family from Tengyueh through to Yungchang, Tali, Yunnanfu, and then Hanoi. On the way, he spent much time on spiritual and magical work, reciting the "Bornless Ritual", an invocation to his Holy Guardian Angel, on a daily basis.
While Rose and Lilith returned to Europe, Crowley headed to Shanghai to meet old friend Elaine Simpson, who was fascinated by The Book of the Law; together they performed rituals in an attempt to contact Aiwass. Crowley then sailed to Japan and Canada, before continuing to New York City, where he unsuccessfully solicited support for a second expedition up Kanchenjunga. Upon arrival in Britain, Crowley learned that his daughter Lilith had died of typhoid in Rangoon, something he later blamed on Rose's increasing alcoholism. Under emotional distress, his health began to suffer, and he underwent a series of surgical operations. He began short-lived romances with actress Vera "Lola" Neville (née Snepp) and author Ada Leverson, while Rose gave birth to Crowley's second daughter, Lola Zaza, in February 1907.
The A∴A∴ and The Holy Books of Thelema: 1907–1909
With his old mentor George Cecil Jones, Crowley continued performing the Abramelin rituals at the Ashdown Park Hotel in Coulsdon, Surrey. Crowley believed that in doing so he attained samadhi, or union with Godhead, thereby marking a turning point in his life. Making heavy use of hashish during these rituals, he wrote an essay on "The Psychology of Hashish" (1909) in which he championed the drug as an aid to mysticism. He also said he had been contacted once again by Aiwass in late October and November 1907, adding that Aiwass dictated two further texts to him, "Liber VII" and "Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente", both of which were later classified in the corpus of The Holy Books of Thelema. Crowley wrote down more Thelemic Holy Books during the last two months of the year, including "Liber LXVI", "Liber Arcanorum", "Liber Porta Lucis, Sub Figura X", "Liber Tau", "Liber Trigrammaton" and "Liber DCCCXIII vel Ararita", which he again said he had received from a preternatural source. Crowley stated that in June 1909, when the manuscript of The Book of the Law was rediscovered at Boleskine, he developed the opinion that Thelema represented objective truth.
Crowley's inheritance was running out. Trying to earn money, he was hired by George Montagu Bennett, the Earl of Tankerville, to help protect him from witchcraft; recognising Bennett's paranoia as being based in his cocaine addiction, Crowley took him on holiday to France and Morocco to recuperate. In 1907, he also began taking in paying students, whom he instructed in occult and magical practice. Victor Neuburg, whom Crowley met in February 1907, became his sexual partner and closest disciple; in 1908 the pair toured northern Spain before heading to Tangier, Morocco. The following year Neuburg stayed at Boleskine, where he and Crowley engaged in sadomasochism. Crowley continued to write prolifically, producing such works of poetry as Ambergris, Clouds Without Water, and Konx Om Pax, as well as his first attempt at an autobiography, The World's Tragedy. Recognizing the popularity of short horror stories, Crowley wrote his own, some of which were published, and he also published several articles in Vanity Fair, a magazine edited by his friend Frank Harris. He also wrote Liber 777, a book of magical and Qabalistic correspondences that borrowed from Mathers and Bennett.
In November 1907, Crowley and Jones decided to found an occult order to act as a successor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, being aided in doing so by Fuller. The result was the A∴A∴. The group's headquarters and temple were situated at 124 Victoria Street in central London, and their rites borrowed much from those of the Golden Dawn, but with an added Thelemic basis. Its earliest members included solicitor Richard Noel Warren, artist Austin Osman Spare, Horace Sheridan-Bickers, author George Raffalovich, Francis Henry Everard Joseph Feilding, engineer Herbert Edward Inman, Kenneth Ward, and Charles Stansfeld Jones. In March 1909, Crowley began production of a biannual periodical titled The Equinox. He billed this periodical, which was to become the "Official Organ" of the A∴A∴, as "The Review of Scientific Illuminism".
Crowley became increasingly frustrated with Rose's alcoholism, and in November 1909 he divorced her on the grounds of his own adultery. Lola was entrusted to Rose's care; the couple remained friends and Rose continued to live at Boleskine. Her alcoholism worsened, and as a result she was institutionalized in September 1911.
Algeria and the Rites of Eleusis: 1909–1911
In November 1909, Crowley and Neuburg travelled to Algeria, touring the desert from El Arba to Aumale, Bou Saâda, and then Dā'leh Addin, with Crowley reciting the Quran on a daily basis. During the trip he invoked the thirty aethyrs of Enochian magic, with Neuburg recording the results, later published in The Equinox as The Vision and the Voice. Following a mountaintop sex magic ritual, Crowley also performed an evocation to the demon Choronzon involving blood sacrifice, and considered the results to be a watershed in his magical career. Returning to London in January 1910, Crowley found that Mathers was suing him for publishing Golden Dawn secrets in The Equinox; the court found in favour of Crowley. The case was widely reported in the press, with Crowley gaining wider fame. Crowley enjoyed this, and played up to the sensationalist stereotype of being a Satanist and advocate of human sacrifice, despite being neither.
The publicity attracted new members to the A∴A∴, among them Frank Bennett, James Bayley, Herbert Close, and James Windram. The Australian violinist Leila Waddell soon became Crowley's lover. Deciding to expand his teachings to a wider audience, Crowley developed the Rites of Artemis, a public performance of magic and symbolism featuring A∴A∴ members personifying various deities. It was first performed at the A∴A∴ headquarters, with attendees given a fruit punch containing peyote to enhance their experience. Various members of the press attended, and reported largely positively on it. In October and November 1910, Crowley decided to stage something similar, the Rites of Eleusis, at Caxton Hall, Westminster; this time press reviews were mixed. Crowley came under particular criticism from West de Wend Fenton, editor of The Looking Glass newspaper, who called him "one of the most blasphemous and cold-blooded villains of modern times". Fenton's articles suggested that Crowley and Jones were involved in homosexual activity; Crowley did not mind, but Jones unsuccessfully sued for libel. Fuller broke off his friendship and involvement with Crowley over the scandal, and Crowley and Neuburg returned to Algeria for further magical workings.
The Equinox continued publishing, and various books of literature and poetry were also published under its imprint, like Crowley's Ambergris, The Winged Beetle, and The Scented Garden, as well as Neuburg's The Triumph of Pan and Ethel Archer's The Whirlpool. In 1911, Crowley and Waddell holidayed in Montigny-sur-Loing, where he wrote prolifically, producing poems, short stories, plays, and 19 works on magic and mysticism, including the two final Holy Books of Thelema. In Paris, he met Mary Desti, who became his next "Scarlet Woman", with the two undertaking magical workings in St. Moritz; Crowley believed that one of the Secret Chiefs, Ab-ul-Diz, was speaking through her. Based on Desti's statements when in trance, Crowley wrote the two-volume Book 4 (1912–13) and at the time developed the spelling "magick" in reference to the paranormal phenomenon as a means of distinguishing it from the stage magic of illusionists.
Ordo Templi Orientis and the Paris Working: 1912–1914
In early 1912, Crowley published The Book of Lies, a work of mysticism that biographer Lawrence Sutin described as "his greatest success in merging his talents as poet, scholar, and magus". The German occultist Theodor Reuss later accused him of publishing some of the secrets of his own occult order, Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), within The Book. Crowley convinced Reuss that the similarities were coincidental, and the two became friends. Reuss appointed Crowley as head of O.T.O's British branch, the Mysteria Mystica Maxima (MMM), and at a ceremony in Berlin Crowley adopted the magical name of Baphomet and was proclaimed "X° Supreme Rex and Sovereign Grand Master General of Ireland, Iona, and all the Britons". With Reuss' permission, Crowley set about advertising the MMM and re-writing many O.T.O. rituals, which were then based largely on Freemasonry; his incorporation of Thelemite elements proved controversial in the group. Fascinated by O.T.O's emphasis on sex magic, Crowley devised a magical working based on anal sex and incorporated it into the syllabus for those O.T.O. members who were initiated into the eleventh degree.
In March 1913, Crowley acted as producer for The Ragged Ragtime Girls, a group of female violinists led by Waddell, as they performed at London's Old Tivoli theatre. They subsequently performed in Moscow for six weeks, where Crowley had a sadomasochistic relationship with the Hungarian Anny Ringler. In Moscow, Crowley continued to write plays and poetry, including "Hymn to Pan", and the Gnostic Mass, a Thelemic ritual that became a key part of O.T.O. liturgy. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city. In January 1914, Crowley and Neuburg settled into an apartment in Paris, where the former was involved in the controversy surrounding Jacob Epstein's new monument to Oscar Wilde. Together Crowley and Neuburg performed the six-week "Paris Working", a period of intense ritual involving strong drug use in which they invoked the gods Mercury and Jupiter. As part of the ritual, the couple performed acts of sex magic together, at times being joined by journalist Walter Duranty. Inspired by the results of the Working, Crowley wrote Liber Agapé, a treatise on sex magic. Following the Paris Working, Neuburg began to distance himself from Crowley, resulting in an argument in which Crowley cursed him.
United States: 1914–1919
By 1914, Crowley was living a hand-to-mouth existence, relying largely on donations from A∴A∴ members and dues payments made to O.T.O. In May, he transferred ownership of Boleskine House to the MMM for financial reasons, and in July he went mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. During this time the First World War broke out.
After recuperating from a bout of phlebitis, Crowley set sail for the United States aboard the RMS Lusitania in October 1914. Arriving in New York City, he moved into a hotel and began earning money writing for the American edition of Vanity Fair and undertaking freelance work for the famed astrologer Evangeline Adams. In the city, he continued experimenting with sex magic, through the use of masturbation, female prostitutes, and male clients of a Turkish bathhouse; all of these encounters were documented in his diaries.
Professing to be of Irish ancestry and a supporter of Irish independence from Great Britain, Crowley began to espouse support for Germany in their war against Britain. He became involved in New York's pro-German movement, and in January 1915 German spy George Sylvester Viereck employed him as a writer for his propagandist paper, The Fatherland, which was dedicated to keeping the US neutral in the conflict. In later years, detractors denounced Crowley as a traitor to Britain for this action.
Crowley entered into a relationship with Jeanne Robert Foster, with whom he toured the West Coast. In Vancouver, headquarters of the North American O.T.O., he met with Charles Stansfeld Jones and Wilfred Talbot Smith to discuss the propagation of Thelema on the continent. In Detroit he experimented with Peyote at Parke-Davis, then visited Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and the Grand Canyon, before returning to New York. There he befriended Ananda Coomaraswamy and his wife Alice Richardson; Crowley and Richardson performed sex magic in April 1916, following which she became pregnant and then miscarried. Later that year he took a "magical retirement" to a cabin by Lake Pasquaney owned by Evangeline Adams. There, he made heavy use of drugs and undertook a ritual after which he proclaimed himself "Master Therion". He also wrote several short stories based on James George Frazer's The Golden Bough and a work of literary criticism, The Gospel According to Bernard Shaw.
In December, he moved to New Orleans, his favourite US city, before spending February 1917 with evangelical Christian relatives in Titusville, Florida. Returning to New York City, he moved in with artist and A∴A∴ member Leon Engers Kennedy in May, learning of his mother's death. After the collapse of The Fatherland, Crowley continued his association with Viereck, who appointed him contributing editor of arts journal The International. Crowley used it to promote Thelema, but it soon ceased publication. He then moved to the studio apartment of Roddie Minor, who became his partner and Scarlet Woman. Through their rituals, which Crowley called "The Amalantrah Workings", he believed that they were contacted by a preternatural entity named Lam. The relationship soon ended.
In 1918, Crowley went on a magical retreat in the wilderness of Esopus Island on the Hudson River. Here, he began an adaptation of the Tao Te Ching, painted Thelemic slogans on the riverside cliffs, and—he later wrote—experienced past life memories of being Ge Xuan, Pope Alexander VI, Alessandro Cagliostro, and Éliphas Lévi. Back in New York City, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he took Leah Hirsig as his lover and next Scarlet Woman. He took up painting as a hobby, exhibiting his work at the Greenwich Village Liberal Club and attracting the attention of The Evening World. With the financial assistance of sympathetic Freemasons, Crowley revived The Equinox with the first issue of volume III, known as The Blue Equinox. He spent mid-1919 on a climbing holiday in Montauk before returning to London in December.
Abbey of Thelema: 1920–1923
Now destitute and back in London, Crowley came under attack from the tabloid John Bull, which labelled him traitorous "scum" for his work with the German war effort; several friends aware of his intelligence work urged him to sue, but he decided not to. When he was suffering from asthma, a doctor prescribed him heroin, to which he soon became addicted. In January 1920, he moved to Paris, renting a house in Fontainebleau with Leah Hirsig; they were soon joined in a ménage à trois by Ninette Shumway, and also (in living arrangement) by Leah's newborn daughter Anne "Poupée" Leah. Crowley had ideas of forming a community of Thelemites, which he called the Abbey of Thelema after the Abbaye de Thélème in François Rabelais' satire Gargantua and Pantagruel. After consulting the I Ching, he chose Cefalù in Sicily as a location, and after arriving there, began renting the old Villa Santa Barbara as his Abbey on 2 April.
Moving to the commune with Hirsig, Shumway, and their children Hansi, Howard, and Poupée, Crowley described the scenario as "perfectly happy ... my idea of heaven." They wore robes, and performed rituals to the sun god Ra at set times during the day, also occasionally performing the Gnostic Mass; the rest of the day they were left to follow their own interests. Undertaking widespread correspondences, Crowley continued to paint, wrote a commentary on The Book of the Law, and revised the third part of Book 4. He offered a libertine education for the children, allowing them to play all day and witness acts of sex magic. He occasionally travelled to Palermo to visit rent boys and buy supplies, including drugs; his heroin addiction came to dominate his life, and cocaine began to erode his nasal cavity. There was no cleaning rota, and wild dogs and cats wandered throughout the building, which soon became unsanitary. Poupée died in October 1920, and Ninette gave birth to a daughter, Astarte Lulu Panthea, soon afterwards.
New followers continued to arrive at the Abbey to be taught by Crowley. Among them was film star Jane Wolfe, who arrived in July 1920, where she was initiated into the A∴A∴ and became Crowley's secretary. Another was Cecil Frederick Russell, who often argued with Crowley, disliking the same-sex sexual magic that he was required to perform, and left after a year. More conducive was the Australian Thelemite Frank Bennett, who also spent several months at the Abbey. In February 1922, Crowley returned to Paris for a retreat in an unsuccessful attempt to kick his heroin addiction. He then went to London in search of money, where he published articles in The English Review criticising the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 and wrote a novel, The Diary of a Drug Fiend, completed in July. On publication, it received mixed reviews; he was lambasted by the Sunday Express, which called for its burning and used its influence to prevent further reprints.
Subsequently, a young Thelemite named Raoul Loveday moved to the Abbey with his wife Betty May; while Loveday was devoted to Crowley, May detested him and life at the commune. She later said that Loveday was made to drink the blood of a sacrificed cat, and that they were required to cut themselves with razors every time they used the pronoun "I". Loveday drank from a local polluted stream, soon developing a liver infection resulting in his death in February 1923. Returning to London, May told her story to the press. John Bull proclaimed Crowley "the wickedest man in the world" and "a man we'd like to hang", and although Crowley deemed many of their accusations against him to be slanderous, he was unable to afford the legal fees to sue them. As a result, John Bull continued its attack, with its stories being repeated in newspapers throughout Europe and in North America. The Fascist government of Benito Mussolini learned of Crowley's activities, and in April 1923 he was given a deportation notice forcing him to leave Italy; without him, the Abbey closed.
Later life
Tunisia, Paris, and London: 1923–1929
Crowley and Hirsig went to Tunis, where, dogged by continuing poor health, he unsuccessfully tried again to give up heroin, and began writing what he termed his "autohagiography", The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. They were joined in Tunis by the Thelemite Norman Mudd, who became Crowley's public relations consultant. Employing a local boy, Mohammad ben Brahim, as his servant, Crowley went with him on a retreat to Nefta, where they performed sex magic together. In January 1924, Crowley travelled to Nice, France, where he met with Frank Harris, underwent a series of nasal operations, and visited the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man and had a positive opinion of its founder, George Gurdjieff. Destitute, he took on a wealthy student, Alexander Zu Zolar, before taking on another American follower, Dorothy Olsen. Crowley took Olsen back to Tunisia for a magical retreat in Nefta, where he also wrote To Man (1924), a declaration of his own status as a prophet entrusted with bringing Thelema to humanity. After spending the winter in Paris, in early 1925 Crowley and Olsen returned to Tunis, where he wrote The Heart of the Master (1938) as an account of a vision he experienced in a trance. In March Olsen became pregnant, and Hirsig was called to take care of her; she miscarried, following which Crowley took Olsen back to France. Hirsig later distanced herself from Crowley, who then denounced her.
According to Crowley, Reuss named him head of O.T.O. upon his death, but this was challenged by a leader of the German O.T.O., Heinrich Tränker. Tränker called the Hohenleuben Conference in Thuringia, Germany, which Crowley attended. There, prominent members like Karl Germer and Martha Küntzel championed Crowley's leadership, but other key figures like Albin Grau, Oskar Hopfer, and Henri Birven backed Tränker by opposing it, resulting in a split in O.T.O. Moving to Paris, where he broke with Olsen in 1926, Crowley went through a large number of lovers over the following years, with whom he experimented in sex magic. Throughout, he was dogged by poor health, largely caused by his heroin and cocaine addictions. In 1928, Crowley was introduced to Israel Regardie, a young Englishman, who embraced Thelema and became Crowley's secretary for the next three years. That year, Crowley also met Gerald Yorke, who began organising Crowley's finances but never became a Thelemite. He also befriended the journalist Tom Driberg; Driberg did not accept Thelema either. It was here that Crowley also published one of his most significant works, Magick in Theory and Practice, which received little attention at the time.
In December 1928 Crowley met the Nicaraguan Maria Teresa Sanchez (Maria Teresa Ferrari de Miramar). Crowley was deported from France by the authorities, who disliked his reputation and feared that he was a German agent. So that she could join him in Britain, Crowley married Sanchez in August 1929. Now based in London, Mandrake Press agreed to publish his autobiography in a limited edition six-volume set, also publishing his novel Moonchild and book of short stories The Stratagem. Mandrake went into liquidation in November 1930, before the entirety of Crowley's Confessions could be published. Mandrake's owner P. R. Stephensen meanwhile wrote The Legend of Aleister Crowley, an analysis of the media coverage surrounding him.
Berlin and London: 1930–1938
In April 1930, Crowley moved to Berlin, where he took Hanni Jaegar as his magical partner; the relationship was troubled. In September he went to Lisbon in Portugal to meet the poet Fernando Pessoa. There, he decided to fake his own death, doing so with Pessoa's help at the Boca do Inferno rock formation. He then returned to Berlin, where he reappeared three weeks later at the opening of his art exhibition at the Gallery Neumann-Nierendorf. Crowley's paintings fitted with the fashion for German Expressionism; few of them sold, but the press reports were largely favourable. In August 1931, he took Bertha Busch as his new lover; they had a violent relationship, and often physically assaulted one another. He continued to have affairs with both men and women while in the city, and met with famous people like Aldous Huxley and Alfred Adler. After befriending him, in January 1932 he took the communist Gerald Hamilton as a lodger, through whom he was introduced to many figures within the Berlin far left; it is possible that he was operating as a spy for British intelligence at this time, monitoring the communist movement.
Crowley left Busch and returned to London, where he took Pearl Brooksmith as his new Scarlet Woman. Undergoing further nasal surgery, it was here in 1932 that he was invited to be guest of honour at Foyles' Literary Luncheon, also being invited by Harry Price to speak at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. In need of money, he launched a series of court cases against people whom he believed to have libelled him, some of which proved successful. He gained much publicity for his lawsuit against Constable and Co for publishing Nina Hamnett's Laughing Torso (1932)—a book he alleged libelled him by referring to his occult practice as black magic—but lost the case. The court case added to Crowley's financial problems, and in February 1935 he was declared bankrupt. During the hearing, it was revealed that Crowley was spending three times his income for several years.
Crowley developed a friendship with Deidre Patricia Doherty; she offered to bear his child, who was born in May 1937. Named Randall Gair, Crowley nicknamed him Aleister Atatürk. He died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 65. Crowley continued to socialize with friends, holding curry parties in which he cooked particularly spicy food for them. In 1936, he published his first book in six years, The Equinox of the Gods, which contained a facsimile of The Book of the Law and was considered to be volume III, number 3, of The Equinox periodical. The work sold well, resulting in a second print run. In 1937, he gave a series of public lectures on yoga in Soho. Crowley was now living largely off contributions supplied by O.T.O.'s Agape Lodge in California, led by rocket scientist Jack Parsons. Crowley was intrigued by the rise of Nazism in Germany, and influenced by his friend Martha Küntzel believed that Adolf Hitler might convert to Thelema; when the Nazis abolished the German O.T.O. and imprisoned Germer, who fled to the US, Crowley then lambasted Hitler as a black magician.
Second World War and death: 1939–1947
When the Second World War broke out, Crowley wrote to the Naval Intelligence Division offering his services, but they declined. He associated with a variety of figures in Britain's intelligence community at the time, including Dennis Wheatley, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight, and wrote that he originated the "V for Victory" sign first used by the BBC; this has never been proven.
In 1940, his asthma worsened, and with his German-produced medication unavailable, he returned to using heroin, once again becoming addicted. As the Blitz hit London, Crowley relocated to Torquay, where he was briefly admitted to hospital with asthma, and entertained himself with visits to the local chess club. Tiring of Torquay, he returned to London, where he was visited by American Thelemite Grady McMurtry, to whom Crowley awarded the title of "Hymenaeus Alpha". He stipulated that though Germer would be his immediate successor, McMurty should succeed Germer as head of O.T.O. after the latter's death. With O.T.O. initiate Lady Frieda Harris, Crowley developed plans to produce a tarot card set, designed by him and painted by Harris. Accompanying this was a book, published in a limited edition as The Book of Thoth by Chiswick Press in 1944. To aid the war effort, he wrote a proclamation on the rights of humanity, "Liber OZ", and a poem for the liberation of France, Le Gauloise. Crowley's final publication during his lifetime was a book of poetry, Olla: An Anthology of Sixty Years of Song. Another of his projects, Aleister Explains Everything, was posthumously published as Magick Without Tears.
In April 1944 Crowley briefly moved to Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire, where he was visited by the poet Nancy Cunard, before relocating to Hastings in Sussex, where he took up residence at the Netherwood boarding house. He took a young man named Kenneth Grant as his secretary, paying him in magical teaching rather than wages. He was also introduced to John Symonds, whom he appointed to be his literary executor; Symonds thought little of Crowley, later publishing negative biographies of him. Corresponding with the illusionist Arnold Crowther, it was through him that Crowley was introduced to Gerald Gardner, the future founder of Gardnerian Wicca. They became friends, with Crowley authorising Gardner to revive Britain's ailing O.T.O. Another visitor was Eliza Marian Butler, who interviewed Crowley for her book The Myth of the Magus. Other friends and family also spent time with him, among them Doherty and Crowley's son Aleister Atatürk.
On 1 December 1947, Crowley died at Netherwood of chronic bronchitis aggravated by pleurisy and myocardial degeneration, aged 72. His funeral was held at a Brighton crematorium on 5 December; about a dozen people attended, and Louis Wilkinson read excerpts from the Gnostic Mass, The Book of the Law, and "Hymn to Pan". The funeral generated press controversy, and was labelled a Black Mass by the tabloids. Crowley's body was cremated; his ashes were sent to Karl Germer in the US, who buried them in his garden in Hampton, New Jersey.
Beliefs and thought
Crowley's belief system, Thelema, has been described by scholars as a religion, and more specifically as both a new religious movement, and as a "magico-religious doctrine". It has also been characterized as a form of esotericism and Modern paganism. Although holding The Book of the Law—which was composed in 1904—as its central text, Thelema took shape as a complete system in the years after 1904.
In his autobiography, Crowley wrote that his purpose in life was to "bring oriental wisdom to Europe and to restore paganism in a purer form", although what he meant by "paganism" was unclear. Crowley also wrote in the 4th Book of Magick about a great pagan Umbral fleet ruled by Ottovius that would be handed down to the great Spartan. The esoteric nature of this was also unclear. Crowley's thought was not always cohesive, and was influenced by a variety of sources, ranging from eastern religious movements and practices like Hindu yoga and Buddhism, scientific naturalism, and various currents within Western esotericism, among them ceremonial magic, alchemy, astrology, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, and the Tarot. He was steeped in the esoteric teachings he had learned from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, although pushed further with his own interpretations and strategies than the Golden Dawn had done. Crowley incorporated concepts and terminology from South Asian religious traditions like yoga and Tantra into his Thelemic system, believing that there was a fundamental underlying resemblance between Western and Eastern spiritual systems. The historian Alex Owen noted that Crowley adhered to the "modus operandi" of the Decadent movement throughout his life.
Crowley believed that the twentieth century marked humanity's entry to the Aeon of Horus, a new era in which humans would take increasing control of their destiny. He believed that this Aeon follows on from the Aeon of Osiris, in which paternalistic religions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism dominated the world, and that this in turn had followed the Aeon of Isis, which was maternalistic and dominated by goddess worship. He believed that Thelema was the proper religion of the Aeon of Horus, and also deemed himself to be the prophet of this new Aeon. Thelema revolves around the idea that human beings each have their own True Will that they should discover and pursue, and that this exists in harmony with the Cosmic Will that pervades the universe. Crowley referred to this process of searching and discovery of one's True Will to be "the Great Work" or the attaining of the "knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel". His favoured method of doing so was through the performance of the Abramelin operation, a ceremonial magic ritual obtained from a 17th-century grimoire. The moral code of "Do What Thou Wilt" is believed by Thelemites to be the religion's ethical law, although the historian of religion Marco Pasi noted that this was not anarchistic or libertarian in structure, as Crowley saw individuals as part of a wider societal organism.
Magick and theology
Crowley believed in the objective existence of magic, which he chose to spell as "Magick", which is an archaic spelling of the word. He provided various different definitions of this term over his career. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley defined Magick as "the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will". He also told his disciple Karl Germer that "Magick is getting into communication with individuals who exist on a higher plane than ours. Mysticism is the raising of oneself to their level." Crowley saw Magick as a third way between religion and science, giving The Equinox the subtitle of The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion. Within that journal, he expressed positive sentiments toward science and the scientific method, and urged magicians to keep detailed records of their magical experiments, having said: "The more scientific the record is, the better." His understanding of magic was also influenced by the work of the anthropologist James Frazer, in particular the belief that magic was a precursor to science in a cultural evolutionary framework. Unlike Frazer, however, Crowley did not see magic as a survival from the past that required eradication, but rather he believed that magic had to be adapted to suit the new age of science. In Crowley's alternative schema, old systems of magic had to decline (per Frazer's framework) so that science and magic could synthesize into magick, which would simultaneously accept the existence of the supernatural and an experimental method. Crowley deliberately adopted an exceptionally broad definition of magick that included almost all forms of technology as magick, adopting an instrumentalist definition of magic, science, and technology.
Sexuality played an important role in Crowley's ideas about magick and his practice of it, and has been described as being central to Thelema. He outlined three forms of sex magick—the autoerotic, homosexual, and heterosexual—and argued that such acts could be used to focus the magician's will onto a specific goal such as financial gain or personal creative success. For Crowley, sex was treated as a sacrament, with the consumption of sexual fluids interpreted as a Eucharist. This was often manifested as the Cakes of Light, a biscuit containing either menstrual blood or a mixture of semen and vaginal fluids. The Gnostic Mass is the central religious ceremony within Thelema.
Crowley's theological beliefs were not clear. The historian Ronald Hutton noted that some of Crowley's writings could be used to argue that he was an atheist, while some support the idea that he was a polytheist, and others would bolster the idea that he was a mystical monotheist. On the basis of the teachings in The Book of the Law, Crowley described a pantheon of three deities taken from the ancient Egyptian pantheon: Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. In 1928, he wrote that all true deities were derived from this trinity. Jason Josephson Storm has argued that Crowley built on 19th-century attempts to link early Christianity to pre-Christian religions, such as Frazer's Golden Bough, to synthesize Christian theology and Neopaganism while remaining critical of institutional and traditional Christianity.
Both during his life and after it, Crowley has been widely described as a Satanist, usually by detractors. Crowley stated he did not consider himself a Satanist, nor did he worship Satan, as he did not accept the Christian world view in which Satan was believed to exist. He nevertheless used Satanic imagery, for instance by describing himself as "the Beast 666" and referring to the Whore of Babylon in his work, while in later life he sent "Antichristmas cards" to his friends. In his writings, Crowley occasionally identified Aiwass as Satan and designated him as "Our Lord God the Devil" at one occasion. The scholar of religion Gordan Djurdjevic stated that Crowley "was emphatically not" a Satanist, "if for no other reason than simply because he did not identify himself as such". Crowley nevertheless expressed strong anti-Christian sentiment, stating that he hated Christianity "as Socialists hate soap", an animosity probably stemming from his experiences among the Plymouth Brethren. He was nevertheless influenced by the King James Bible, especially the Book of Revelation, the impact of which can be seen in his writings. He was also accused of advocating human sacrifice, largely because of a passage in Book 4 in which he stated that "A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory victim" and added that he had sacrificed about 150 every year. This was a tongue-in-cheek reference to ejaculation, something not realized by his critics.
Image and opinions
Crowley considered himself to be one of the outstanding figures of his time. The historian Ronald Hutton stated that in Crowley's youth, he was "a self-indulgent and flamboyant young man" who "set about a deliberate flouting and provocation of social and religious norms", while being shielded from an "outraged public opinion" by his inherited wealth. Hutton also described Crowley as having both an "unappeasable desire" to take control of any organisation that he belonged to, and "a tendency to quarrel savagely" with those who challenged him. Crowley biographer Martin Booth asserted that Crowley was "self-confident, brash, eccentric, egotistic, highly intelligent, arrogant, witty, wealthy, and, when it suited him, cruel". Similarly, Richard B. Spence noted that Crowley was "capable of immense physical and emotional cruelty". Biographer Lawrence Sutin noted that Crowley exhibited "courage, skill, dauntless energy, and remarkable focus of will" while at the same time showing a "blind arrogance, petty fits of bile, [and] contempt for the abilities of his fellow men". The Thelemite Lon Milo DuQuette noted that Crowley "was by no means perfect" and "often alienated those who loved him dearest."
Political opinions
Crowley enjoyed being outrageous and flouting conventional morality, with John Symonds noting that he "was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time". Crowley's political thought was studied by the academic Marco Pasi, who noted that for Crowley, socio-political concerns were subordinate to metaphysical and spiritual ones. He was neither on the political left nor right but perhaps best categorized as a "conservative revolutionary" despite not being affiliated with the German-based movement of the same name. Pasi described Crowley's fascination with the extreme ideologies of Nazism and Marxism–Leninism, which aimed to violently overturn society: "What Crowley liked about Nazism and communism, or at least what made him curious about them, was the anti-Christian position and the revolutionary and socially subversive implications of these two movements. In their subversive powers, he saw the possibility of an annihilation of old religious traditions, and the creation of a void that Thelema, subsequently, would be able to fill." Crowley described democracy as an "imbecile and nauseating cult of weakness", and commented that The Book of the Law proclaimed that "there is the master and there is the slave; the noble and the serf; the 'lone wolf' and the herd". In this attitude, he was influenced by Social Darwinism and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Although he had contempt for most of the British aristocracy, he regarded himself as an aristocrat and styled himself as Laird Boleskine, once describing his ideology as "aristocratic communism".
Opinions on race and gender
Crowley was bisexual, but exhibited a preference for women, with his relationships with men being fewer and mostly in the early part of his life. In particular he was attracted to "exotic women", and said he had fallen in love on multiple occasions; Kaczynski stated that "when he loved, he did so with his whole being, but the passion was typically short-lived". Even in later life, Crowley was able to attract young bohemian women to be his lovers, largely due to his charisma. He applied the term "Scarlet Woman" to various female lovers whom he believed played an important role in his magical work. During homosexual acts, he usually played 'the passive role', which Booth believed "appealed to his masochistic side". An underlying theme in many of his writings is that spiritual enlightenment arises through transgressing socio-sexual norms.
Crowley advocated complete sexual freedom for both men and women. He argued that homosexual and bisexual people should not suppress their sexual orientation, commenting that a person "must not be ashamed or afraid of being homosexual if he happens to be so at heart; he must not attempt to violate his own true nature because of public opinion, or medieval morality, or religious prejudice which would wish he were otherwise." On other issues he adopted a more conservative attitude; he opposed abortion on moral grounds, believing that no woman following her True Will would ever desire one.
Biographer Lawrence Sutin stated that "blatant bigotry is a persistent minor element in Crowley's writings". Sutin thought Crowley "a spoiled scion of a wealthy Victorian family who embodied many of the worst John Bull racial and social prejudices of his upper-class contemporaries", noting that he "embodied the contradiction that writhed within many Western intellectuals of the time: deeply held racist viewpoints courtesy of society, coupled with a fascination with people of colour". Crowley is said to have insulted his close Jewish friend Victor Neuburg, using antisemitic slurs, and he had mixed opinions about Jewish people as a group. Although he praised their "sublime" poetry and stated that they exhibited "imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity", he also thought that centuries of persecution had led some Jewish people to exhibit "avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest". He was also known to praise various ethnic and cultural groups, for instance he thought that the Chinese people exhibited a "spiritual superiority" to the English, and praised Muslims for exhibiting "manliness, straightforwardness, subtlety, and self-respect".
Both critics of Crowley and adherents of Thelema have accused Crowley of sexism. Booth described Crowley as exhibiting a "general misogyny", something the biographer believed arose from Crowley's bad relationship with his mother. Sutin noted that Crowley "largely accepted the notion, implicitly embodied in Victorian sexology, of women as secondary social beings in terms of intellect and sensibility". The scholar of religion Manon Hedenborg White noted that some of Crowley's statements are "undoubtedly misogynist by contemporary standards", but characterized Crowley's attitude toward women as complex and multi-faceted. Crowley's comments on women's role varied dramatically within his written work, even that produced in similar periods. Crowley described women as "moral inferiors" who had to be treated with "firmness, kindness and justice", while also arguing that Thelema was essential to women's emancipation.
Possible links to intelligence
Biographers Richard B. Spence and Tobias Churton have suggested that Crowley was a spy for the British secret services and that among other things he joined the Golden Dawn under their command to monitor the activities of Mathers, who was known to be a Carlist. Spence suggested that the conflict between Mathers and the London lodge for the temple was part of an intelligence operation to undermine Mathers' authority. Spence has suggested that the purpose of Crowley's trip to Mexico might have been to explore Mexican oil prospects for British intelligence. Spence has suggested that his trip to China was orchestrated as part of a British intelligence scheme to monitor the region's opium trade. Churton suggested that Crowley had travelled to Moscow on the orders of British intelligence to spy on revolutionary elements in the city.
Spence and Sutin both wrote that Crowley's pro-German work in the United States during World War I was actually a cover for him being a double agent for Britain, citing his hyperbolic articles in The Fatherland to make the German lobby appear ridiculous in the eyes of the American public. Spence also wrote that Crowley encouraged the German Navy to destroy the Lusitania, informing them that it would ensure the US stayed out of the war, while in reality hoping that it would bring the US into the war on Britain's side.
Legacy and influence
Crowley has remained an influential figure, both amongst occultists and in popular culture, particularly that of Britain, but also of other parts of the world. In 2002, a BBC poll placed Crowley seventy-third in a list of the 100 Greatest Britons. Richard Cavendish has written of him that "In native talent, penetrating intelligence and determination, Aleister Crowley was the best-equipped magician to emerge since the seventeenth century." The scholar of esotericism Egil Asprem described him as "one of the most well-known figures in modern occultism". The scholar of esotericism Wouter Hanegraaff asserted that Crowley was an extreme representation of "the dark side of the occult", adding that he was "the most notorious occultist magician of the twentieth century". The philosopher John Moore opined that Crowley stood out as a "Modern Master" when compared with other prominent occult figures like George Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, or Helena Blavatsky, also describing him as a "living embodiment" of Oswald Spengler's "Faustian Man". Biographer Tobias Churton considered Crowley "a pioneer of consciousness research". Hutton noted that Crowley had "an important place in the history of modern Western responses to Oriental spiritual traditions", while Sutin thought that he had made "distinctly original contributions" to the study of yoga in the West.
Thelema continued to develop and spread following Crowley's death. In 1969, O.T.O. was reactivated in California under the leadership of Grady Louis McMurtry; in 1985 its right to the title was unsuccessfully challenged in court by a rival group, the Society Ordo Templi Orientis, led by Brazilian Thelemite Marcelo Ramos Motta. Another American Thelemite is the filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who was influenced by Crowley's writings from a young age. In the United Kingdom, Kenneth Grant propagated a tradition known as Typhonian Thelema through his organisation, the Typhonian O.T.O., later renamed the Typhonian Order. Also in Britain, an occultist known as Amado Crowley claimed to be Crowley's son; this has been refuted by academic investigation. Amado argued that Thelema was a false religion created by Crowley to hide his true esoteric teachings, which Amado said he was propagating.
Several Western esoteric traditions other than Thelema were also influenced by Crowley, with Djurdjevic observing that "Crowley's influence on twentieth-century and contemporary esotericism has been enormous". Gerald Gardner, the founder of Gardnerian Wicca, used much of Crowley's published material when composing the Gardnerian ritual liturgy, and the Australian witch Rosaleen Norton was also heavily influenced by Crowley's ideas. More widely, Crowley became "a dominant figure" in the modern Pagan community. L. Ron Hubbard, the American founder of Scientology, was involved in Thelema in the early 1940s (with Jack Parsons), and it has been argued that Crowley's ideas influenced some of Hubbard's work. The scholars of religion Asbjørn Dyrendel, James R. Lewis, and Jesper Petersen noted that despite the fact that Crowley was not a Satanist, he "in many ways embodies the pre-Satanist esoteric discourse on Satan and Satanism through his lifestyle and his philosophy", with his "image and ought" becoming an "important influence" on the later development of religious Satanism. For instance, two prominent figures in religious Satanism, Anton LaVey and Michael Aquino, were influenced by Crowley's work.
In popular culture
Crowley also had a wider influence in British popular culture. After his time in Cefalù, which brought him to public attention in Britain, various "literary Crowleys" appeared: characters in fiction based upon him. One of the earliest was the character of the poet Shelley Arabin in John Buchan's 1926 novel The Dancing Floor. In his novel The Devil Rides Out, the writer Dennis Wheatley used Crowley as a partial basis for the character of Damien Mocata, a portly bald defrocked priest who engages in black magic. The occultist Dion Fortune used Crowley as a basis for characters in her books The Secrets of Doctor Taverner (1926) and The Winged Bull (1935). He was included as one of the figures on the cover art of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), and his motto of "Do What Thou Wilt" was inscribed on the vinyl of Led Zeppelin's album Led Zeppelin III (1970). Led Zeppelin co-founder Jimmy Page bought Boleskine in 1971, and part of the band's film The Song Remains the Same was filmed in the grounds. He sold it in 1992. Though David Bowie makes but a fleeting reference to Crowley in the lyrics of his song "Quicksand" (1971), it has been suggested that the lyrics of Bowie's No. 1 hit single "Let's Dance" (1983) may substantially paraphrase Crowley's 1923 poem "Lyric of Love to Leah". Ozzy Osbourne and his lyricist Bob Daisley wrote a song titled "Mr. Crowley" (1980). A prophetic quote about the coming of the New Aeon borrowed from Crowley's work Magick in Theory and Practice (1911) has been featured as the opening introduction to the video game Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (1996). Crowley began to receive scholarly attention from academics in the late 1990s.
Bibliography
See also
Sri Sabhapati Swami
Notes and references
Explanatory notes
Citations
Works cited
Further reading
External links
Works by Aleister Crowley at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Aleister Crowley at the Internet Archive
Works by Aleister Crowley at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Aleister Crowley Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas
"Aleister Crowley and the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù" at WondersOfSicily.com, with photos
Perdurabo (Where is Aleister Crowley?) – film on the Abbey of Thelema by Carlos Atanes
Aleister Crowley at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database |
List_of_highest_mountains_on_Earth | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_mountains_on_Earth | [
319,
451
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_mountains_on_Earth",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_mountains_on_Earth"
] | There are at least 108 mountains on Earth with elevations of 7,200 m (23,600 ft; 4.5 mi) or greater above sea level. Of these, 14 are more than 8,000 m (26,000 ft; 5.0 mi). The vast majority of these mountains are located on the edge of the Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate in China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.
The dividing line between a mountain with multiple peaks and separate mountains is not always clear (see also Highest unclimbed mountain). A popular and intuitive way to distinguish mountains from subsidiary peaks is by their height above the highest saddle connecting it to a higher summit, a measure called topographic prominence or re-ascent (the higher summit is called the "parent peak"). A common definition of a mountain is a summit with 300 m (980 ft) prominence. Alternatively, a relative prominence (prominence/height) is used (usually 7–8%) to reflect that in higher mountain ranges everything is on a larger scale. The table below lists the highest 100 summits with at least 500 m (1,640 ft) prominence, approximating a 7% relative prominence. A drawback of a prominence-based list is that it may exclude well-known or spectacular mountains that are connected via a high ridge to a taller summit, such as Eiger, Nuptse or Annapurna IV. A few such peaks and mountains with nearly sufficient prominence are included in this list, and given a rank of "S".
It is very unlikely that all given heights are correct to the nearest metre; indeed, the sea level is often problematic to define when a mountain is remote from the sea. Different sources often differ by many metres, and the heights given below may well differ from those elsewhere in this encyclopedia. As an extreme example, Ulugh Muztagh on the north Tibetan Plateau is often listed as 7,723 m (25,338 ft) to 7,754 m (25,440 ft), but appears to be only 6,973 m (22,877 ft) to 6,987 m (22,923 ft). Some mountains differ by more than 100 m (330 ft) on different maps, while even very thorough current measurements of Mount Everest range from 8,840 m (29,003 ft) to 8,849 m (29,032 ft). These discrepancies serve to emphasize the uncertainties in the listed heights.
Though some parts of the world, especially the most mountainous parts, have never been thoroughly mapped, it is unlikely that any mountains this high have been overlooked, because synthetic aperture radar can and has been used to measure elevations of most otherwise inaccessible places. Still, heights or prominences may be revised, so that the order of the list may change and even new mountains could enter the list over time. To be safe, the list has been extended to include all 7,200 m (23,622 ft) peaks.
The highest mountains above sea level are generally not the highest above the surrounding terrain. There is no precise definition of surrounding base, but Denali, Mount Kilimanjaro and Nanga Parbat are possible candidates for the tallest mountain on land by this measure. The bases of mountain islands are below sea level, and given this consideration Mauna Kea (4,207 m (13,802 ft) above sea level) is the world's tallest mountain and volcano, rising about 10,203 m (33,474 ft) from the Pacific Ocean floor. Mount Lamlam on Guam is periodically claimed to be among the world's highest mountains because it is adjacent to the Mariana Trench; the most extreme claim is that, measured from Challenger Deep 313 kilometres (194 mi) away, Mount Lamlam is 11,530 metres (37,820 ft) tall. Ojos del Salado has the greatest rise on Earth: 13,420 m (44,029 ft) vertically to the summit from the bottom of the Atacama Trench, which is about 560 km (350 mi) away, although most of this rise is not part of the mountain.
The highest mountains are also not generally the most voluminous. Mauna Loa (4,169 m or 13,678 ft) is the largest mountain on Earth in terms of base area (about 5,200 km2 or 2,000 sq mi) and volume (about 42,000 km3 or 10,000 cu mi), although, due to the intergrade of lava from Kilauea, Hualalai and Mauna Kea, the volume can only be estimated based on surface area and height of the edifice. Mount Kilimanjaro is the largest non-shield volcano in terms of both base area (635 km2 or 245 sq mi) and volume (4,793 km3 or 1,150 cu mi). Mount Logan is the largest non-volcanic mountain in base area (311 km2 or 120 sq mi).
The highest mountains above sea level are also not those with peaks farthest from the centre of the Earth, because the figure of the Earth is not spherical. Sea level closer to the equator is several kilometres farther from the centre of the Earth. The summit of Chimborazo, Ecuador's tallest mountain, is usually considered to be the farthest point from the Earth's centre, although the southern summit of Peru's tallest mountain, Huascarán, is another contender. Both have elevations above sea level more than 2 km (1.2 mi) less than that of Everest.
Geographical distribution
Almost all mountains in the list are located in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges to the south and west of the Tibetan plateau. All peaks 7,000 m (23,000 ft) or higher are located in East, Central or South Asia in a rectangle edged by Noshaq (7,492 m or 24,580 ft) on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border in the west, Jengish Chokusu (Tuōmù'ěr Fēng, 7,439 m or 24,406 ft) on the Kyrgyzstan–Xinjiang border to the north, Gongga Shan (Minya Konka, 7,556 m or 24,790 ft) in Sichuan to the east, and Kabru (7,412 m or 24,318 ft) on the Sikkim–Nepal border to the south.
As of December 2018, the highest peaks on four of the mountains—Gangkhar Puensum, Labuche Kang III, Karjiang, and Tongshanjiabu, all located in Bhutan or China—have not been ascended. The most recent peak to have its first ever ascent is Saser Kangri II East, in India, on 24 August 2011.
The highest mountain outside of Asia is Aconcagua (6,961 m or 22,838 ft), the 189th highest in the world.
List of world's highest peaks
Gallery
See also
List of elevation extremes by country
List of mountain peaks by prominence
List of mountain peaks of Uttarakhand
List of mountain ranges of the world
List of mountains by elevation
List of mountains on Mars by height
List of past presumed highest mountains
List of tallest mountains in the Solar System
List of the highest major summits of North America
List of unclimbed mountains of Nepal
List of volcanoes by elevation
Lists of mountains
Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain on any planet in the Solar System
Rheasilvia crater's central peak, the tallest mountain in the Solar System
Notes
References
Sources
External links
SummitPost.org (currently with detailed description of 30 of the top 100 peaks)
Prominence lists (including all mountains in the world with >1,450m prominence)
Alpine Club Himalayan index (Especially informative for history of ascents and location of obscure peaks)
Discussion of frequently misquoted elevations
BlankontheMap site on mountains of Northern Kashmir
Digital elevation data, including all the above peaks and many more worldwide
Hispar area: expedition reports and maps
List of highest mountains down to 6750 metres
Google Earth Community (Google Earth KMZ file of Wikipedia list of highest mountains)
List of worlds highest mountains in Nepal |
1905_Kanchenjunga_expedition | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Kanchenjunga_expedition | [
319
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Kanchenjunga_expedition"
] | The 1905 Kanchenjunga expedition was a Himalayan mountaineering expedition aimed to climb to the summit of Kanchenjunga, which would ultimately only be achieved in 1955.
The expedition was an idea of the Swiss doctor and photographer Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. In April 1905 he proposed his plans to the British occultist Aleister Crowley, with whom he had participated in Oscar Eckenstein's K2 expedition in 1902. Crowley agreed to join because as the climbing leader he would have the opportunity to break the altitude record. The record at the time was held by either William Woodman Graham, Emil Boss and Ulrich Kaufmann on Kabru (7,315 m), a widely contested, but possibly accurate claim, or Matthias Zurbriggen on Aconcagua (6,962 m).
Jacot-Guillarmod recruited two of his countrymen, Alexis Pache and Charles-Adolphe Reymond, while Crowley recruited his hotelkeeper in Darjeeling, the young Italian Alcesti C. Rigo de Righi, as transport officer. On July 31 the five left with three Kashmiri servants (who had been in the K2 expedition as well), and about 230 local porters. Armed with Douglas Freshfield's map of the range and Vittorio Sella's pictures, created during a circumnavigation of the massif in 1899, Crowley planned to climb the southwest face of Kanchenjunga over the Yalung Glacier. When Camp IV was made above this glacier, the team had fallen apart: Jacot-Guillarmod especially was shocked by Crowley's arrogant behavior and brutal treatment of the (barefooted) porters. Camp V was still made around 6,200 m, and on September 1, Crowley, Pache, Reymond and a group of porters made it to about 6,500 m before a small avalanche forced a nervous retreat. In his autobiography, Crowley claimed they reached about 25,000 feet or 7,620 m and claimed to have held the altitude record until the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition reached 8,320 m.
The next day Jacot-Guillarmod and De Righi attempted to depose Crowley from expedition leadership. The argument could not be settled, and Jacot-Guillarmod, De Righi, and Pache decided to retreat from Camp V to Camp III. At 5 pm they left with four porters on a single rope, but a fall precipitated an avalanche that killed three porters as well as Alexis Pache. People in Camp V heard "frantic cries" and Reymond immediately descended to help, but Crowley stayed in his tent. That evening he wrote a letter to a Darjeeling newspaper stating that he had advised against the descent and that "a mountain 'accident' of this sort is one of the things for which I have no sympathy whatever". The next day Crowley passed the site of the accident without pausing nor speaking to the survivors and left on his own to Darjeeling, where he took the expedition funds, which mostly had been paid by Jacot-Guillarmod. The latter would get at least some of his money back after threatening to make public some of Crowley's pornographic poetry.
The 1955 British Kangchenjunga expedition was the first to succeed in reaching the summit, starting off on the same route as pioneered in 1905.
== References == |
Lake_Peigneur | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur | [
320
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur"
] | Lake Peigneur is a brackish lake in the U.S. state of Louisiana, 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) north of Delcambre and 9.1 mi (14.6 km) west of New Iberia, near the northernmost tip of Vermilion Bay. With a maximum depth of 200 feet (60 meters), it is the deepest lake in Louisiana. Its name comes from the French word "peigneur", meaning "one who combs."
Previously, it had been a 10-foot-deep (3 m) freshwater lake, popular for recreation, until human activity caused an unusual disaster on November 20, 1980, that changed its structure and the surrounding land.
Drilling disaster
In petroleum geology, the formation of a salt dome often pushes terrain upward from the surrounding land, while also creating a subterranean salt dome trap, holding petroleum deposits. On Thursday, November 20, 1980, the drill assembly of a Texaco contracted oil rig, just offshore of the salt dome-caused Jefferson Island (itself in the east southeast section of Lake Peigneur), pierced an inactive third level of the Diamond Crystal Salt Company salt mine. The hole produced a vortex that drained the lake into the mine, filling the enormous caverns that had been left by the removal of salt.
The mine, in operation since 1919, was made up of several levels up to 1,500 feet (460 m) below the surface. Each tunnel was about 100 by 80 feet (30 m × 24 m). Pillars of salt had been left in place to support the ceiling at each level. The pillars were dissolved by the encroaching fresh water and caused the mine tunnels to collapse.
The resultant sinkhole swallowed the drilling platform, eleven barges holding supplies for the drilling operation, a tugboat, many trees, and 65 acres (26 hectares) of the surrounding terrain, including much of Jefferson Island. So much water drained into the caverns that the flow of the Delcambre Canal that usually empties the lake into Vermilion Bay was reversed, causing salt water from the Gulf of Mexico to flow into what was now a dry lakebed. This backflow created for a few days the tallest waterfall ever in the state of Louisiana, at 164 ft (50 m), as the lake refilled with salty water from the Delcambre Canal and Vermilion Bay. Air displaced by water flowing into the mine caverns erupted through the mineshafts as compressed air and then later as 400-foot (120 m) geysers.
Although there were no human deaths, three dogs were reported killed. All 55 employees in the mine at the time of the accident escaped, with six employees later given awards by Diamond Crystal for heroism. Their successful evacuation was thanks to the mine's electrician who noticed a torrent of water and sounded the alarm, as well as the employees' discipline and training making their escape via the only elevator in an orderly fashion. The crew of seven on the drilling rig fled the platform shortly before it collapsed into the new depths of the lake. A fisherman who was on the lake at the time piloted his small boat to shore and escaped. Days after the disaster, once the water pressure equalized, nine of the eleven sunken barges popped out of the whirlpool and refloated on the lake's surface.
Cause
On the date of the disaster, the oil rig was conducting exploratory drilling in the lake alongside a salt dome under the water, that contained a salt mine.
The rig's 14-inch (36 cm) drill assembly had become stuck at 1,228 feet (374 m) two-and-a-half hours before the drilling rig began to tilt.
The drill assembly punctured the salt mine beneath the lake, and the water entered the mine. Over the course of several hours, the fresh lake water dissolved the salt and enlarged the hole, causing the lake to drain into the mine.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration was unable to determine blame because they could not determine whether Texaco was drilling in the wrong place or if the mine's maps were inaccurate.
Evidence that could have confirmed the cause was washed away in the maelstrom. Engineers from Texaco and Diamond Crystal worked together after the fact and pinpointed the likely location of the hole within a mined out portion of the 1300-foot level of the mine.
Aftermath
In 1983, Texaco and the drilling contractor Wilson Brothers paid US$32 million (equivalent to $98 million in 2023) to Diamond Crystal, while Texaco, Wilson Brothers and Diamond Crystal also paid a total of $12.8 million (equivalent to $39.2 million in 2023) to the Live Oak Gardens botanical garden and plant nursery, in out-of-court settlements to compensate for the damage caused. The Mine Safety and Health Administration released a report on the disaster in August 1981 which exhaustively documented the event but stopped short of identifying an official reason for the disaster. The mine was finally closed in December 1986.
Since 1994, AGL Resources has used Lake Peigneur's underlying salt dome as a storage and hub facility for pressurized natural gas. There was concern from local residents in 2009 over the safety of storing the gas under the lake and nearby drilling operations.
See also
Bayou Corne sinkhole
Döda fallet
Lake Beloye (Nizhny Novgorod Oblast)
List of sinkholes of the United States
Rylands v Fletcher
References
External links
Lake Peigneur: The biggest sinkhole ever created (archived)
Oil Driller Breaches Salt Mine Under Louisana [sic] Lake on YouTube
Endangered Earth - Sinkholes Assorted
Warren, John K. (2006). Evaporites: Sediments, Resources, and Hydrocarbons. Berlin; New York: Springer Publishing. pp. 928–930. ISBN 9783540260110. Retrieved 2020-02-04. Contains a description of the event, with a focus on the geology of the region.
Mine-mouth geyser problem, Chemical Engineering Education, an in-depth discussion of how the inrush of water could have created a powerful geyser
Gold, Michael (November 1981). "Who Pulled the Plug on Lake Peigneur?". Science 81. pp. 56–63.
The podcast Eclipsed has a two-part episode about Lake Peigneur. Part 1 Part 2 |
Texaco | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texaco | [
320
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texaco"
] | Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company until its refining operations merged into Chevron in 2001, at which time most of its station franchises were divested to Shell plc through its American division.
Texaco began as the "Texas Fuel Company", founded in 1902 in Beaumont, Texas, by Joseph S. Cullinan, Thomas J. Donoghue, and Arnold Schlaet upon the discovery of oil at Spindletop.
The Texas Fuel Company was not set up to drill wells or to produce crude oil. To accomplish this, Cullinan organized the Producers Oil Company in 1902, as a group of investors affiliated with The Texas Fuel Company. Men such as John W. ("Bet A Million") Gates invested in "certificates of interest" to an amount of almost ninety thousand dollars. Future restructuring would merge Producers Oil Company and The Texas Fuel Company as Texaco when the company needed additional funding, which J.W. Gates provided in the amount of approximately $590,000 in return for company stock.
Texaco was one of the Seven Sisters which dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Its current logo features a white star in a red circle (a reference to the lone star of Texas), leading to the long-running advertising jingles "You can trust your car to the man who wears the star" and "Star of the American Road." The company was headquartered in Harrison, New York, near White Plains, prior to the merger with Chevron.
Texaco gasoline comes with Techron, an additive developed by Chevron, as of 2005, replacing the previous CleanSystem3. The Texaco brand is strong in the U.S., Latin America, and West Africa. It has a presence in Europe as well; for example, it is a well-known retail brand in the UK, with around 980 Texaco-branded service stations.
History
1902–59: Beginnings
Texaco was founded in Beaumont, Texas as the "Texas Fuel Company" in 1902, by Jim Hogg, Joseph S. Cullinan, John Warne Gates, and Arnold Schlaet. On 1 May 1902, the Texas Company was formed from the assets of Texas Fuel assets, and additional capitalization. In 1905, it established an operation in Antwerp, Belgium, under the name Continental Petroleum Company, which it acquired control of in 1913. In 1915, Texaco moved to new 13 story offices on 1111 Rusk St., Houston, Texas. In 1928, Texaco became the first U.S. oil company to sell its gasoline nationwide under one single brand name in all of the then 48 states.
In 1931, Texaco purchased Indian Oil Company, based in Illinois. This expanded Texaco's refining and marketing base in the Midwest and also gave Texaco the rights to Indian's Havoline motor oil, which became a Texaco product. The next year, Texaco introduced Fire Chief gasoline nationwide, a so-called "super-octane" motor fuel touted as meeting or exceeding government standards for gasoline for fire engines and other emergency vehicles. It was promoted through a radio program over NBC hosted by Ed Wynn, called the Texaco Fire Chief.
In 1936, the Texas Corporation purchased the Barco oil concession in Colombia, and formed a joint venture with Socony-Vacuum, now Mobil, to develop it. Over the next three years the company engaged in a highly challenging project to drill wells and build a pipeline to the coast across mountains and then through uncharted swamps and jungles. During this time, Texaco also illegally supplied the fascist Gen. Franco faction in Spanish Civil War with a total 3,500,000 barrels (560,000 m3) of oil. For these illegal sales to Francisco Franco's fascist forces the company was fined $20,000 for violating the Neutrality Act of 1937, although it continued to sell to Franco on credit till the end of the war.
Also in 1936, marketing operations "East of Suez" (including Asia, East Africa, and Australasia) were placed into a joint venture with Standard Oil Company of California – Socal (now Chevron) – under the brand name Caltex, in exchange for Socal placing its Bahrain refinery and Arabian oilfields into the venture. The next year, Texaco commissioned industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague to develop a modern service station design.
In 1938, Texaco introduced Sky Chief gasoline, a premium fuel developed from the ground up as a high-octane gasoline rather than just an ethylized regular product. In 1939, Texaco became one of the first oil companies to introduce a "Registered Rest Room" program to ensure that restroom facilities at all Texaco stations nationwide maintained a standard level of cleanliness to the motoring public.
After the onset of World War II in 1939, Texaco's CEO, Torkild Rieber, admirer of Hitler, hired pro-Nazi assistants who cabled Berlin "coded information about ships leaving New York for Britain and what their cargoes were." This espionage easily enabled Hitler to destroy the ships. In 1940, Rieber was forced to resign when his connections with German Nazism, and his illegal supply of oil to the fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War were made public by the Herald Tribune through information produced by British Security Coordination. Life Magazine portrayed Rieber's resignation as unfair, advocating that he only dined with Westrick, and lent him a company car.
During the war, Texaco ranked 93rd among United States corporations in the value of military production contracts. In 1947, Caltex expanded to include Texaco's European marketing operations. That same year, Texaco merged its British operation with Trinidad Leaseholds under the name Regent; it gained full control of Regent in 1956, but the Regent brand remained in use until 1968–9. In 1954, the company added the detergent additive Petrox to its "Sky Chief" gasoline, which was also souped up with higher octane to meet the antiknock needs of new cars with high-compression engines.
The next year, Texaco became the sole sponsor of The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC-TV. In 1959, the Texas Company changed its corporate name to Texaco, Inc. to better reflect the value of the Texaco brand name, which represented the biggest selling gasoline brand in the U.S. and only marketer selling gasoline under one brand name in all (by then) 50 states. It also acquired McColl-Frontenac Oil Company Ltd. of Canada and changes its name to Texaco Canada Limited. Around this time, Paragon Oil, a major fuel oil distribution company in the northeastern U.S., was acquired.
1964–98: Various ventures
In 1964, Texaco introduced the "Matawan" service station design at a station in Matawan, New Jersey. Two years later, Texaco replaced the long-running banjo sign with a new hexagon logo that had previously been test-marketed with the "Matawan" station design introduced two years earlier. The new logo featured a red outline with TEXACO in black bold lettering and a small banjo logo with a red star and green T at bottom. The following year, the Regent name was replaced by Texaco at British petrol stations. In 1970, in response to increasingly stringent federal emission standards that would ultimately lead to the mandating of unleaded gasoline in 1975, and later-model cars and trucks, Texaco introduced lead-free Texaco as the first regular-octane lead-free gasoline at stations in the Los Angeles area and throughout Southern California. Lead-free Texaco became available nationwide in 1974. On November 20, 1980, the Lake Peigneur/Jefferson Island disaster occurred. Two years later, a new service station design was introduced. Several product names were also changed with the advent of self-service including Lead-free Texaco to Texaco Unleaded, Fire Chief to Texaco Regular, and Super Lead-free Sky Chief to Texaco Super Unleaded.
At the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, members of the Medellín Cartel (including the now famous "Pablo Escobar"), the Colombian military, the U.S.-based corporation Texas Petroleum, the Colombian legislature, small industrialists, and wealthy cattle ranchers came together in a series of meetings in Puerto Boyacá, and formed a paramilitary organization known as Muerte a Secuestradores ("Death to Kidnappers", MAS) to defend their economic interests, and to provide protection for local elites from kidnappings and extortion. By 1983, Colombian internal affairs had registered 240 political killings by MAS death squads, mostly community leaders, elected officials, and farmers.
On November 19, 1985, Pennzoil won a US$10.53 billion verdict against Texaco in the largest civil verdict in US history. This was due to the fact that Texaco established a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Gordon Getty. In 1987, Texaco filed for bankruptcy. It was the largest in U.S. history until 2001.
In January 1989, Texaco and Saudi Aramco agreed to form a joint venture known as Star Enterprise in which Saudi Aramco would own a 50% share of Texaco's refining and marketing operations in the eastern U.S. and Gulf Coast. In 1989, Texaco introduced System3 gasolines in all three grades of fuel, featuring the latest detergent additive technology to improve performance by reducing deposits that clog fuel injection systems. The Toronto-based Texaco Canada Incorporated subsidiary was sold to Imperial Oil with all Texaco Canada retail operations converted to Esso brand. Two years later, the company was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 1993, several dozen tribal leaders and residents from the Ecuadoran Amazon filed a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Texaco, as a result of massive ecological pollution of the area and rivers around Texaco's Ecuadorian offshore drilling sites, causing toxic contamination of approximately 30,000 residents.
In 1994, Texaco's System3 gasolines were replaced by new CleanSystem3 gasoline for improved engine performance. In 1995, Texaco merged its Danish and Norwegian downstream operations with those of Norsk Hydro under the new brand HydroTexaco. This joint venture was sold in 2007, to Norwegian retail interests as YX Energi, following the purchase of Hydro by Statoil. In 1996, Texaco paid over $170 million to settle racial discrimination lawsuits filed by black employees at the company. It was the largest racial discrimination lawsuit settlement in the U.S. at the time, and was particularly damaging to Texaco's public relations when tapes were released of meetings with company executives planning to destroy incriminating evidence.
1999–present: Chevron Corporation
In 1999, the company formed the joint venture Equilon with Shell Oil Company, combining their Western and Midwestern U.S. refining and marketing. This gave rise to the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust case of Texaco Inc. v. Dagher, which cleared both Texaco and Shell of any antitrust liability concerning the pricing of Equilon's gasoline. That same year, another joint venture, Motiva Enterprises, was formed with Shell Oil Company and Saudi Aramco in which the Star Enterprise operations were merged with the Eastern and Gulf Coast U.S. refining and marketing operations of Shell.
In October 2000, Chevron Corporation agreed to buy Texaco for $36 billion. The merger was completed October 9, 2001. As required by the FTC consent agreement, Texaco's interest in the Equilon and Motiva joint ventures were sold to Shell. Shell began re-branding its Texaco stations as Shell the next year. Around 2003, due to lack of demand, Texaco closed Refineria Panamá, a refinery in Colón, Panama. In July 2004, Chevron regained non-exclusive rights to the Texaco brand name in the U.S. The following year, in August, Texaco introduced the Techron additive into its fuels in the U.S. and parts of Latin America. In 2007, Delek Benelux took over marketing activities for Chevron in Benelux, including 869 filling stations, mostly under the Texaco brand. In 2010, Chevron ended retail operations in the Mid-Atlantic US, removing its brand from 450 stations in Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C.
Corporate headquarters
Prior to the merger with Chevron, Texaco's headquarters was a 750,000-square-foot (70,000 m2) building in Harrison, in Westchester County, New York, near to White Plains. In 2002, Chevron Corporation sold the former Texaco Headquarters to Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley bought the building and the surrounding 107 acres (0.43 km2) for $42 million.
Texaco leased 14 floors of the Chrysler Building in Midtown Manhattan, New York City in the 1930s. As part of the leasing agreement with Texaco the building opened the Cloud Club, a lunch club for executives. Texaco's move to Westchester County in 1977 contributed to the closure of the Cloud Club in 1979.
Leadership
President
Joseph S. Cullinan, 1901–1913
Elgood C. Lufkin, 1913–1920
Amos L. Beaty, 1920–1926
Ralph C. Holmes, 1926–1933
William S. Rodgers, 1933–1944
Harry T. Klein, 1944–1952
John S. Leach, 1952–1953
Augustus C. Long, 1953–1956
James W. Foley, 1956–1963
J. Howard Rambin Jr, 1964
Marion J. Epley, 1965–1970
Maurice F. Granville, 1970–1971
John K. McKinley, 1971–1983
Alfred C. DeCrane Jr, 1983–1986
James W. Kinnear, 1987–1993
Chairman of the Board
Elgood C. Lufkin, 1920–1926
Amos L. Beaty, 1926–1927
Ralph C. Holmes, –1933
Charles B. Ames, 1933–1935
Torkild Rieber, 1935–1940
William S. Rodgers, 1944–1953
John S. Leach, 1953–1956
Augustus C. Long, 1956–1965
J. Howard Rambin Jr, 1965–1970
Marion J. Epley, 1970–1971
Maurice F. Granville, 1971–1980
John K. McKinley, 1980–1986
Alfred C. DeCrane Jr, 1987–1996
Peter I. Bijur, 1997–2001
Glenn F. Tilton, 2001
Sponsorships
Sports
Texaco is associated with the Havoline brand of motor oil and other automotive products. It was one of the sponsors of NASCAR with many drivers, such as Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan, Dale Jarrett, Kenny Irwin Jr., Ricky Rudd, Jamie McMurray, Casey Mears, and Juan Pablo Montoya. Havoline continuously sponsored a car from the early 1980s to 2008. At the end of the 2008 season, Texaco/Havoline ended their sponsorship with NASCAR and Chip Ganassi Racing. This brought a 20-plus-year relationship with the sport to a close.
Texaco was also involved in open wheel racing, sponsoring the Texaco Grand Prix of Houston along with sponsoring drivers like Indianapolis 500 winner Mario Andretti and his son Michael.
In Formula One, Texaco sponsored the Team Lotus in 1972 and 1973, and McLaren from 1974 to 1978. The company returned to Grand Prix racing at a smaller scale in 1997, with their brands appearing on the Stewart SF01 car. Their association with the team and its successor, Jaguar Racing, continued until the end of 2001, in the same timeline they also sponsored ITV's Formula 1 Coverage.
Texaco sponsored the Tom Walkinshaw Racing Rover Vitesse factory team at the 1985 and 1986 European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) under their Bastos brand, and the Ford Sierra RS500 factory cars entered by Eggenberger Motorsport in the 1987 World Touring Car Championship (plus the 1988 ETCC and other European-based championships). Texaco also sponsored cars in the 1987 World Rally Championship.
From 1987 to 1993, Texaco was the major sponsor (through its Australian Caltex offshoot) Colin Bond Racing in Australian touring car racing, first with the Alfa Romeo 75 in 1987, then the Ford Sierra RS500 from 1988 to 1992 and then Toyota Corollas in 1993. From 2000 until 2007, it was title sponsor of Stone Brothers Racing with Russell Ingall winning the 2005 championship. In 2016, Caltex became title sponsor of the Triple Eight Race Engineering car of Craig Lowndes, having previously been an associate sponsor of the team.
From 1984 to 1998, Texaco were the title sponsors of the main One Day International cricket tournament in England, the Texaco Trophy. It also sponsored the Texaco Cup, a football tournament for clubs of the British Isles.
Entertainment broadcast (music or comedy/variety)
Texaco was long associated with the Metropolitan Opera as sole sponsor of its radio broadcasts for 63 years. It was identified as well with such entertainment legends as Ed Wynn, Fred Allen and Milton Berle (many of their shows were originally sponsored by Texaco – see Texaco Star Theatre, which includes the sponsorship lyrics of the opening theme: "We're the men of Texaco, We work from Maine to Mexico..."). Berle's program was broadcast in the same time slot as Fulton J. Sheen's religious program for a while, thus leading to Berle's oft-quoted quip, "We both have the same boss – Sky Chief!"
Texaco was also the sponsor of the weekly Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, which air to this day since its inception in 1931.
In the 1930s, comedian Ed Wynn hosted a half hour stand-up comedy/variety show on the NBC Radio Network, billed as "The Texaco Fire Chief", a reference to its regular grade gasoline. This trend continued into the late 1940s, when Wynn was replaced by Milton Berle as television becoming the dominant medium. The title was changed to the 60-minute Texaco Star Theater, which was also broadcast on NBC.
In a 1983 video for their song, Cruel Summer, members of girl group Bananarama are depicted as working as mechanics at a Texaco gas station.
Environmental issues
From 1965 to 1993, Texaco participated in a consortium to develop the Lago Agrio oil field in Ecuador. The company was accused of extensive environmental damage from these operations, and faces legal claims from both private plaintiffs and from the government of Ecuador. The case was widely publicized by environmental activists and was the subject of Crude, a 2009 documentary film by Joe Berlinger.
In turn, Texaco's owner Chevron claims that it was being unfairly targeted as a deep pocket defendant, when the actual responsibility lies with the government and its national oil company, Petroecuador.
Texaco allegedly decided to forgo their standard drilling practices in favor for a minor savings on the cost to produce a barrel of crude oil (approximately $3/barrel). Texaco allegedly dumped toxic wastewater directly into rivers, dumped waste into unlined pits, and created pits that were fitted with overflow pipes to nearby waterways, with pits also never being emptied after the drilling operations were concluded. In total, it is estimated that over 18 billion gallons of toxic waste were released into the Amazon Rainforest. In addition to the liquid pollution, it is alleged that workers burned off toxic natural gasses and some liquid waste, thus releasing highly toxic dioxins into the atmosphere.
Diversification
The NiMH chemistry used in modern hybrid vehicles was invented by ECD Ovonics founder, Stan Ovshinsky, and Dr. Masahiko Oshitani of the Yuasa Company In 1994, General Motors acquired a controlling interest in Ovonics's battery development and manufacturing. On October 10, 2001, Texaco purchased GM's share in GM Ovonics, and Chevron completed its acquisition of Texaco six days later. In 2003, Texaco Ovonics Battery Systems was restructured into Cobasys, a 50/50 joint venture between Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) Ovonics.
See also
Chevron Corporation - Texaco parent
Caltex – joint venture between Texaco and Chevron, now a major international brand name of Chevron Corporation
Cobasys - 50-50 joint venture between Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices, a power supplier in the automotive industry
References
External links
Official website |
Emory_Kristof | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Kristof | [
321
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Kristof"
] | Emory Kristof (November 19, 1942 – February 6, 2023) was an American photographer. He was on the expedition that discovered the Titanic. His work has been published in National Geographic Magazine and elsewhere.
Life and career
Kristof was born in Laurel, Maryland, on November 19, 1942.
Kristof participated in multiple undersea expeditions with Canadian explorers Joseph MacInnis and Phil Nuytten, including the exploration of the Breadalbane, the world's northernmost known shipwreck, and the 1995 expedition to recover the bell from the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Kristof also accompanied MacInnis and Russian explorer Anatoly Sagalevich on a descent 16,400 feet into Kings Trough in the eastern North Atlantic aboard the submersible Mir 1, and on the expedition which made the IMAX film Titanica.
Kristof served as Supervising Producer of 2003 IMAX documentary, Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, about the ecosystems surrounding hydrothermal vents.
Kristof died Northfield, Massachusetts, on February 6, 2023, at the age of 80.
Awards
NOGI Awards for Arts, the Underwater Society of America, 1988
Northeast Diver of the Year, Beneath the Sea, 1988
The J. Winton Lemon Fellowship Award, National Press Photographers Association, 1998
Wired (magazine) 25, Class of 1998
References
External links
Wired, November 1998
aquaCORPS, June 1995
Emory Kristof discography at Discogs
Emory Kristof at IMDb |
University_of_Maryland,_College_Park | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Maryland,_College_Park | [
321
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Maryland,_College_Park#Notable_alumni"
] | The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland.
UMD is the largest university in both the state and the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. Its 12 schools and colleges offer over 200 degree-granting programs, including 113 undergraduate majors, 107 master's programs, and 83 doctoral programs. UMD is a member of the Association of American Universities and competes in intercollegiate athletics as a member of the Big Ten Conference.
The University of Maryland's proximity to Washington, D.C. has resulted in many research partnerships with the federal government; faculty receive research funding and institutional support from many agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Security Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and has been labeled a "Public Ivy". According to the National Science Foundation, the university spent a combined $1.14 billion on research and development in 2021, ranking it 17th among American universities. As of 2021, the operating budget of the University of Maryland is approximately $2.2 billion.
History
Early history
On March 6, 1856, the forerunner of today's University of Maryland was chartered as the Maryland Agricultural College. Two years later, Charles Benedict Calvert (1808–1864), a future U.S. Representative (Congressman) and descendant of the first Lord Baltimore, purchased 420 acres (1.7 km2) of the Riversdale Mansion estate nearby today's College Park, Maryland. Later that year, Calvert founded the school and was the acting president from 1859 to 1860. On October 5, 1859, the first 34 students entered the Maryland Agricultural College. The school became a land grant college in February 1864.
Civil War
During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers under Brigadier General Bradley Tyler Johnson moved past the college on July 12, 1864, as part of Jubal Early's raid on Washington, D.C. By the end of the war, financial problems forced the administrators to sell off 200 acres (81 ha) of land, and the continuing decline in enrollment sent the Maryland Agricultural College into bankruptcy. The campus was used as a boys' preparatory school for the next two years.
The Maryland legislature assumed half ownership of the school in 1866. The college thus became, in part, a state institution. By October 1867, the school reopened with 11 students. In 1868, the former Confederate admiral Franklin Buchanan was appointed president of the school. Enrollment grew to 80 at the time of his resignation, and the school soon paid off its debt. In 1873, Samuel Jones, a former Confederate Major General, became president of the college.
Twenty years later, the federally-funded Agricultural Experiment Station was established there. During this same period, state laws granted the college regulatory powers in several areas—including controlling farm disease, inspecting feed, establishing a state weather bureau and geological survey, and housing the forestry board. Morrill Hall (the oldest instructional building still in use on campus) was built the following year.
Great Fire of 1912
On November 29, 1912, a fire destroyed student housing, school records, and most of the academic buildings, leaving only Morrill Hall untouched. There were no injuries or fatalities, and all but two students returned to the university and insisted on classes continuing. A new administration building was not built until the 1940s.
20th century
The state took control of the school in 1916 and renamed it Maryland State College. That year, the first female students enrolled at the school. On April 9, 1920, the college became part of the existing University of Maryland, replacing St. John's College, Annapolis as the university's undergraduate campus. In the same year, the graduate school on the College Park campus awarded its first Ph.D. degrees and the university's enrollment reached 500 students. In 1925 the university was accredited by the Association of American Universities.
By the time the first black students enrolled at the university in 1951, enrollment had grown to nearly 10,000 students—4,000 of whom were women. Before 1951, many black students in Maryland were enrolled at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore.
In 1957, President Wilson H. Elkins pushed to increase the university's academic standards. His efforts resulted in creating one of the first Academic Probation Plans. The first year the plan went into effect, 1,550 students (18% of the total student body) faced expulsion.
On October 19, 1957, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom attended her first and only college football game at the University of Maryland after expressing interest in seeing a typically American sport during her first tour of the United States. The Maryland Terrapins beat the North Carolina Tar Heels 21 to 7 in the historical game now referred to as "The Queen's Game".
Phi Beta Kappa established a chapter at The University of Maryland in 1964. In 1969, the university was elected to the Association of American Universities. The school continued to grow, and by the fall of 1985 reached an enrollment of 38,679. Like many colleges during the Vietnam War, the university was the site of student protests and had curfews enforced by the National Guard.
In a massive restructuring of the state's higher education system in 1988, the school was designated as the flagship campus of the newly formed University of Maryland System (later changed to the University System of Maryland in 1997). It was formally named the University of Maryland, College Park. All five campuses in the former network were designated distinct campuses in the new system. However, in 1997 the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation allowing the University of Maryland, College Park, to be known simply as the University of Maryland, recognizing the campus' role as the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland.
In 1994, the National Archives at College Park completed construction and opened on a parcel of land adjoining the campus donated by the University of Maryland, after lobbying by President William Kirwan and congressional leaders to foster academic collaboration between the institutions.
21st century
In 2004, the university began constructing the 150-acre (61 ha) "M Square Research Park", which includes facilities affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense, Food and Drug Administration, and the new National Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, affiliated with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In May 2010, ground was broken on a new Physical Science Complex, including an advanced quantum science laboratory.
The university suffered multiple data breaches in 2014. The first resulted in the compromise of over 300,000 student and faculty records. A second data breach occurred several months later. The second breach was investigated by the FBI and Secret Service and found to be done by David Helkowski. Despite the attribution, no charges were filed. As a result of the data breaches, the university offered free credit protection for five years to the students and faculty affected.
In 2017, the university received a record-breaking donation of $219.5 million from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, ranking among the country's largest philanthropic gifts to a public university. Darryll J. Pines became the 34th president of the university in 2020. Pines was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the university before becoming president.
In 2021, the university announced it had raised $1.5 billion in donations since 2018.
In April of 2024, UMD students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Israel–Hamas war. Students called attention to the genocide in Palestine and for the university to divest from companies that support the Hamas-Israel war. Activism continued in next academic year with the placement of small flags in the lawn on McKeldin Mall, representing the more than 150,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza.
Academics
Profile
As of 2023, The University of Maryland ranked #46 in National Universities and #19 in Top Public Schools in the United States. The University of Maryland offers 127 undergraduate degrees and 112 graduate degrees in thirteen colleges and schools:
Faculty
The university's faculty has included four Nobel Prize laureates. The earliest recipient (1956), was Juan Ramón Jiménez, a Spanish language and literature professor. Four decades later, physics professor William Daniel Phillips won a prize in physics for his contributions to laser cooling. In 2005, Thomas Schelling was awarded the prize in economics for his contributions to game theory. In 2006, John C. Mather was awarded the prize in physics alongside George Smoot for their work in the discovery of blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. In addition, two University of Maryland alumni are Nobel Prize laureates; Herbert Hauptman won the 1985 prize in chemistry, and Raymond Davis Jr. won the 2002 prize in physics.
The university has many notable academics. Professor of mathematics, Sergei Novikov won the Fields Medal in 1970, followed by alumnus Charles Fefferman in 1978. Alumnus George Dantzig won the 1975 National Medal of Science for his work in the field of linear programming. Professor of physics Michael Fisher won the Wolf Prize in 1980 (together with Kenneth G. Wilson and Leo Kadanoff) and the IUPAP Boltzmann Medal in 1983. James A. Yorke, a distinguished university professor of mathematics and physics and chair of the mathematics department, won the 2003 Japan Prize for his work in chaotic systems. In 2013, professor of physics Sylvester James Gates was awarded the National Medal of Science.
Research
UMD is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". In FY 2020, the university spent about 1.103 billion dollars in total R&D expenditures, ranking it 16th in the nation.
On October 14, 2004, the university added 150 acres (61 ha) in an attempt to create the largest research park inside the Washington, D.C. Capital Beltway, formerly known as "M Square" and now known as the "Discovery District."
Many of the faculty members have funding from federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Security Agency.
The Space Systems Laboratory researches human-robotic interaction for astronautics applications and includes the only neutral buoyancy facility at a university. The Joint Global Change Research Institute was formed in 2001 by the University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The institute focuses on multidisciplinary approaches to climate change research.
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) launched in 2005 as one of the Centers of Excellence supported by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. START is focused on the scientific study of the causes and consequences of terrorism in the United States and worldwide.
Living-Learning Programs
The university hosts "living-learning" programs (LLPs) that allow students with similar academic interests to live in the same residential community take specialized courses and perform research in those areas of expertise. These include CIVICUS, focused on politics and community service; Hinman CEOs, an entrepreneurship program; and the Language House, where students learning a shared target language live together. Several LLPs exist under the university's Honors College, with focuses in topics including cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, and life sciences. College Park Scholars is another LLP umbrella that includes programs in the arts, public health, and legal thought, among other things.
Admissions
Undergraduate
Admission to Maryland is rated "most selective" by U.S. News & World Report. For the Class of 2026 (enrolled fall 2022), Maryland received 56,766 applications and accepted 19,451 (34.3%). Of those accepted, 4,742 enrolled, a yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend the university) of 24.4%. Maryland's freshman retention rate is 95.5%, with 88.3% going on to graduate within six years.
Of the 34% of the incoming freshman class who submitted SAT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite scores were 1340–1490. Of the 9% of enrolled freshmen in 2021 who submitted ACT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite score was between 30 and 34.
The University of Maryland, College Park is a college sponsor of the National Merit Scholarship Program and sponsored 58 Merit Scholarship awards in 2020. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 69 freshman students were National Merit Scholars.
In 2020, the university announced it was joining the Common App. Beginning with the 2017-18 admissions cycle, the University of Maryland uses the application provided by The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success.
Rankings
The university is tied for 46th in the 2024 U.S. News & World Report rankings of "National Universities" across the United States, and it is ranked tied for 19th nationally among public universities. The Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked Maryland as 43rd in the world in 2015. The 2017–2018 Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed Maryland 69th worldwide. The 2016/17 QS World University Rankings ranked Maryland 131st worldwide.
The university was ranked among Peace Corps' 25 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges for the tenth consecutive year in 2020. The University of Maryland is ranked among Teach for America's Top 20 Colleges and Universities, contributing the greatest number of graduating seniors to its 2017 teaching corps.
For the fourth consecutive year in 2015, the university was ranked 1st in the U.S. for the number of Boren Scholarship recipients – with nine students receiving awards for intensive international language study. The university is ranked as a Top Producing Institution of Fulbright U.S. Students and Scholars for the 2017–2018 academic year by the United States Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
In 2017, the University of Maryland was ranked among the top 50 universities in the 2018 Best Global Universities Rankings by U.S. News & World Report based on its high academic research performance and global reputation.
In 2021, the university was ranked among the top 10 universities in The Princeton Review's annual survey of the Top Schools for Innovation & Entrepreneurship; this was the sixth consecutive such ranking.
Campus
The center of the university's 1,250 acres (5.1 km2) is McKeldin Mall, which is the largest academic mall in the United States. The Mall is bordered on the east and west by McKeldin Library and the Thomas V. Miller, Jr. Administration Building, respectively. Academic buildings surround McKeldin Mall on the north and south ends. They are the homes to many departments in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, College of Arts and Humanities, and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. West of McKeldin Mall is the North Hill Community, and south of McKeldin Mall lies Morrill Hall and the Morrill Quad, which was the original center of campus. South of the Morrill Quad are the South Hill and South Campus Commons Communities, and the Southwest Mall and the Robert H. Smith School of Business to the southwest.
Running parallel to McKeldin Mall to the north is Campus Drive, the main thoroughfare through campus. Another thoroughfare, Regents Drive, runs perpendicular to the Mall and is home to the Memorial Chapel and the Campus Farms. Regents Drive crosses Campus Drive at the campus hallmark, "M" Circle, which is a traffic circle with a large "M" formed by flowers in its center. The northeast quadrant of campus, formed by Campus and Regent Drives, is home to many of natural sciences and applied sciences departments. The Rossborough Inn, which, was built during the years 1798 to 1812, is the oldest building on campus (and is older than the university itself). There are five regularly used entrances to campus; the main entrance, off of Baltimore Avenue and onto Campus Drive, is referred to as North Gate and features the Gatehouse, an ornate gateway honoring the university's founders. The 140-acre (57 ha), 18-hole University of Maryland Golf Course sits at the northern edge of campus, as does the Observatory.
The campus contains 7,500 documented trees and garden plantings, leading the American Public Gardens Association to designate the campus the University of Maryland Arboretum & Botanical Garden in 2008. There are also nearly 400 acres (1.6 km2) of urban forest on campus and the Arbor Day Foundation has named the university to its 'Tree Campus USA' list. The recreational Paint Branch Trail, part of the Anacostia Tributary Trails system, cuts through campus, as does the Paint Branch stream, a tributary of the Northeast Branch Anacostia River. The university's first Leed Gold building, Knight Hall, opened in April 2010 as the new home for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. In 2021, President Pines pledged that the University of Maryland would achieve carbon neutrality by Earth Day 2025.
Student life
Residential life
There are two main residential areas on campus, North Campus and South Campus, further divided into seven residential communities. North Campus is made up of Cambridge Community (which consists of five residence halls and houses the College Park Scholars program), Denton Community (which consists of four halls), and Ellicott Community (consisting of three halls). The Heritage community, completed in 2022, features two residence halls and a dining hall.
South Campus includes the North Hill Community, made up of nine Georgian-style halls and Prince Frederick Hall (which opened in 2014) immediately west of McKeldin Mall; South Hill Community, made up of fourteen small residence halls for upper-level students; Leonardtown Community, which offers apartment-style housing; the South Campus Commons Community, which consists of seven apartment-style buildings (the seventh and most recent building being opened in January 2010); and the Courtyards, a garden-style apartment community in north campus consisting of seven buildings.
Dining
There are three dining halls on campus. In addition, a food court in the Stamp Student Union provides many fast food dining options for the university community. The dining hall 251 lies in the Denton Community on the northern part of campus.The second northern dining hall, the university's newest dining facility, Yahentamitsi Dining Hall, is the first building on campus named in honor of Indigenous people. The word “Yahentamitsi” means A Place to Go to Eat in the native Algonquian language. The third and final dining hall, South Campus Dining Hall, can be found just south of Mckeldin Library. https://dining.umd.edu/hours-locations/dining-halls
Transportation
The university is accessible through the three airports in the greater Washington metropolitan area: Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. A small public airport in College Park, College Park Airport, lies nearly adjacent to campus, but operations are limited. This airport is the world's oldest continually operating airport and the site of many significant aviation firsts.
A free shuttle service, known as Shuttle–UM, is available for UMD students, faculty, staff, and some residents of College Park and Greenbelt. The university is served by an off-campus stop on the Washington Metro's Green Line called College Park – University of Maryland. The station is also served by the Camden Line of the MARC Train and Route 104 of the Shuttle-UM bus system.
The university has attempted to make the campus more bike-friendly by installing covered bike parking and bike lockers on campus, introducing a bike-sharing program, and plans to add more bike lanes on campus. As of Spring 2011, the university has encouraged cycling on campus by installing covered bike storage outside of the newly built Oakland dorm as well as security lockers in the Mowatt Lane Garage.
In 2011, the university signed on to the state's Purple Line program. The Purple Line route will have five stops on and around the university's campus: M Square, the College Park Metro station, the main entrance to the campus on Route 1, near Stamp Student Union on Campus Drive, and on the other edge of campus on Adelphi Road, along with a parallel running bike path.
The Diamondback
The Diamondback is an independent student newspaper. It was founded in 1910 as The Triangle and renamed in 1921 in honor of a local reptile, the Diamondback terrapin, which became the school mascot in 1933. The newspaper is published daily during the spring and fall semesters, with a print circulation of 17,000 and annual advertising revenues of over $1 million. Notable journalists who have been with the paper include David Simon of HBO's The Wire and NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street, and cartoonists Jeff Kinney, who created the Diary of a Wimpy Kid fiction series and whose Igdoof strip appeared in The Diamondback; Aaron McGruder, who first published his cartoon The Boondocks in The Diamondback; and Frank Cho, who began his career with the popular University Squared for The Diamondback.
Other student activities
WMUC-FM (90.5 FM) is the university's non-commercial radio station, staffed by UMD students and volunteers. WMUC is a freeform and sports broadcasting station broadcast at 10 watts. Its broadcasts can be heard throughout the Washington metropolitan area. Notable WMUC alumni include Connie Chung, Bonnie Bernstein, Peter Rosenberg and Aaron McGruder.
Approximately 16% of men and women in Maryland's undergraduate student body were involved in fraternities and sororities in 2017.
Athletics
The university sponsors varsity athletic teams in 20 men's and women's sports. The teams, named the "Terrapins", represent Maryland in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I competition. Maryland became a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1952 but left to join the Big Ten Conference on July 1, 2014. As of 2017, Maryland's athletic teams have been awarded 44 national championships by the NCAA, USILA, AIAW, and NCA. In 2008 and 2010, The Princeton Review named the University of Maryland's athletic facilities the best in the nation. The Terrapins nickname (often shortened to "Terps") was coined by former university president, football coach, and athletic director H. C. "Curly" Byrd in 1932. The mascot is a diamondback terrapin named Testudo, which is Latin for "tortoise". Since the early 20th century, the school athletic colors have been some combination of those on the Maryland state flag: red, white, black, and gold. Maryland is the only NCAA Division I school to have four official school colors.
Basketball and football
Men's basketball is the most popular sport at the university. Long-time head coach Lefty Driesell began the now nationwide tradition of "Midnight Madness" in 1971. Beginning in 1989, alumnus Gary Williams revived the program, which was struggling in the wake of Len Bias's death and NCAA rules infractions. Williams led Maryland basketball to national prominence with two Final Four appearances, and in 2002, a national championship. On February 7, 2006, Williams won his 349th game to surpass Driesell and became Maryland's all-time leader among basketball coaches. Mark Turgeon became head coach in 2011.
Maryland football is also popular at the university.
Lacrosse
Maryland men's lacrosse remains one of the sport's top programs since its beginnings as a squad in 1865. The team most recently won the national championship in 2022, completing an undefeated season, the first since Virginia in 2006, and the first to go undefeated across 18 games. The team has won ten USILA and NCAA national championships since its promotion to varsity status in 1924 and is a regular fixture in the NCAA tournament. The Maryland women's lacrosse team has won 15 national championships, the most of any program in the nation. The team has produced the National Player of the Year/Tewaaraton Award winner eight times, more than any other collegiate program. The Terrapins have also made the most NCAA tournament appearances, won the most tournament games, and made the most NCAA championship game appearances of any program. They most recently won the NCAA championship in 2019.
Soccer
The men's soccer team has won four NCAA Division I College Cup national championships, most recently in 2018. Under the guidance of head coach Sasho Cirovski, the soccer team has reached nine Final Fours and won three College Cups since 1997. The soccer team has developed a large, devoted fan base among students and the local community. The attendance record at Ludwig Field was set in 2015 when 8,449 fans saw Maryland win over top-ranked UCLA in extra time. The annual total attendance increased dramatically from 12,710 in 1995 to 35,631 in 2008.
Field hockey
The Maryland field hockey team has won a total of eight NCAA national championships and 13 conference championships (10 in the ACC and 5 in the Big Ten).
Marching band
The Mighty Sound of Maryland marching band attends all home football games and provides pre-game performances. During basketball season, the marching band provides music in the stands.
Notable alumni
Notable alumni include House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer; Google co-founder Sergey Brin; The Muppets creator Jim Henson; The Wire creator David Simon; former NFL Quarterback Norman "Boomer" Esiason; CBS host Gayle King; journalist Connie Chung; and Seinfeld co-creator and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David. Prominent alumni in business include Ed Snider, former chairman of Comcast Spectacor and former owner of the Philadelphia Flyers; journalist Jim Walton, former president and CEO of CNN; Kevin Plank, founder and executive chairman of the athletic apparel company Under Armour; Chris Kubasik, former president of Lockheed Martin; and Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Journalist Carl Bernstein, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his coverage of the Watergate scandal, attended the university but did not graduate.
Attendees within the fields of science and mathematics are Nobel laureates Raymond Davis Jr., 2002 winner in Physics; Herbert Hauptman, 1985 winner in Chemistry, and Fields Medal winner Charles Fefferman. Other alumni include George Dantzig, considered the father of linear programming; late NASA astronaut Judith Resnik, who died in the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger during the launch of mission STS-51-L; and NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin.
Several donors have distinguished themselves for their sizable gifts to the university. Businessman Robert H. Smith, who graduated from the university in 1950 with a degree in accounting, gave over $45 million to the business school that now bears his name and to the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, which bears his wife's name. Construction entrepreneur A. James Clark, who graduated with an engineering degree in 1950, donated over $45 million to the college of engineering, which also bears his name. Another engineering donor, Jeong H. Kim, earned his Ph.D. from the university in 1991 and gave $5 million for the construction of a state-of-the-art engineering building. Philip Merrill, a media figure, donated $10 million to the College of Journalism. Robert E. Fischell, physicist, inventor, and holder of more than 200 U.S. and foreign medical patents donated $30 million to the A. James Clark School of Engineering, establishing the Fischell Department of Bioengineering. Brendan Iribe, a co-founder of Oculus VR, donated $31 million to the university in 2014 towards a new computer science building and scholarships.
See also
Shuping Yang commencement speech controversy
Monroe H. Martin Prize
Explanatory notes
References
External links
Official website
Maryland Athletics website
"Maryland Agricultural College" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
Fear the Turtle Project collection at the University of Maryland Libraries |
Larry_David | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_David | [
321
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_David"
] | Lawrence Gene David (born July 2, 1947) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and television producer. He and Jerry Seinfeld created the NBC television sitcom Seinfeld, of which David was head writer and executive producer for the first seven seasons. He gained further recognition for creating and writing the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which he also stars as a fictionalized version of himself. David's work on Seinfeld won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in 1993, for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Comedy Series; he was nominated 17 other times.
Formerly a stand-up comedian, David went into television comedy, writing and starring in ABC's Fridays, and writing briefly for Saturday Night Live. He has been nominated for 27 Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. Fellow comedians and comedy insiders voted him the 23rd-greatest comedy star ever in a 2004 British poll to select "The Comedian's Comedian", and he received the Writers Guild of America's Laurel Award in 2010. He made his Broadway debut writing and starring in the comedic play Fish in the Dark (2015). Since 2015 he has made recurring guest appearances on Saturday Night Live, where he impersonates 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who is his sixth cousin once removed.
Early life and education
David was born on July 2, 1947, in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. His parents are Rose (née Regina Brandes) and Mortimer Julius "Morty" David, a men's clothing manufacturer, and he has an older brother, Ken. David's family is Jewish. His American Jewish father's family moved from Germany to the U.S. during the 19th century, while David's mother was born into a Polish-Jewish family in Ternopil, now in Ukraine, and her mother's family name was Superfein.
David graduated from Sheepshead Bay High School, now defunct and operating as Frank J. Macchiarola Educational Complex, in 1965. A sign with his photo is displayed in one of the complex's hallways. He then attended the University of Maryland, College Park, where he was a brother in Tau Epsilon Phi. He graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in history. At college, he discovered that he could make people laugh simply by being himself. After college, David enlisted in the United States Army Reserve and received training as a petroleum storage specialist. To avoid the final year of his six-year enlistment, he paid a psychiatrist to write a letter declaring him unfit for duty.
Career
1980–1987: Stand-up and SNL
While a stand-up comedian, David also worked as a store clerk, limousine driver, and historian. He lived in Manhattan Plaza, a federally subsidized housing complex in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, across the hall from Kenny Kramer, the inspiration for the Cosmo Kramer character in Seinfeld. From 1980 to 1982, David became a writer and cast member for ABC's Fridays, where he worked with Michael Richards, who later played Kramer on Seinfeld.
From 1984 to 1985, David was a writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) and met Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who also worked on the show in this period. During his time at SNL, he was able to get only one sketch on the air, which aired at 12:50 am, the show's last time slot. David quit his job at SNL in the first season, only to show up to work two days later acting as though nothing had happened. That event inspired the second-season Seinfeld episode "The Revenge". He can be heard heckling Michael McKean when McKean hosted SNL in 1984, and can be seen in the sketch "The Run, Throw, and Catch Like a Girl Olympics" when Howard Cosell hosted the season finale in 1985. In 1987, David was a writer and performer for Way Off Broadway, a variety talk show on Lifetime hosted by Joy Behar.
1989–1998: Breakthrough with Seinfeld
In 1989, David teamed up with comedian Jerry Seinfeld to create a pilot for NBC called The Seinfeld Chronicles, which became the basis for Seinfeld, one of the most successful shows in history, reaching the top of TV Guide's list of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time. Entertainment Weekly ranked it the third-best TV show of all time. David made occasional uncredited appearances on the show, playing such roles as Frank Costanza's cape-wearing lawyer and the voice of George Steinbrenner. He was also the primary inspiration for the show's character George Costanza. David left Seinfeld on friendly terms after the show's seventh season and returned two years later to write the series finale in 1998. He also continued to voice Steinbrenner.
David wrote 62 Seinfeld episodes, including 1992's "The Contest", for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award and which TV Guide ranked as episode No. 1 on its list of "TV's Top 100 Episodes of All Time". He has also been involved in other films and television series. David wrote and directed the 1998 film Sour Grapes, about two cousins who feud over a casino jackpot. It was neither a commercial nor a critical success. He has also appeared in bit roles in Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987) and New York Stories (1989).
1999–2024: Curb Your Enthusiasm and acclaim
The HBO cable television channel aired David's one-hour special, Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, on October 17, 1999. This was followed by Curb Your Enthusiasm, an HBO television series whose first episode aired on October 15, 2000. The show revisits many of the themes of Seinfeld and is improvised from a story outline only several pages long written by David (and, from the fifth season onward, additional writers).
The actors improvise their dialogue based on the outline, direction, and their creativity. David has said that his character in the show, a fictionalized version of himself, is what he would be like in real life if he lacked social awareness and sensitivity. The character's numerous and frequent social faux pas, misunderstandings, and ironic coincidences are the basis of much of the show's comedy and have led to the entry into the American pop culture lexicon of the expression "Larry David moment", meaning an inadvertently created socially awkward situation. Curb Your Enthusiasm has been described as depicting "the things nobody wants to say, but wish they could".
The show is based on David's life following the fortune he earned from Seinfeld; semi-retired, he strives to live a fulfilled life. Alongside David is his wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), his manager and best friend Jeff (Jeff Garlin), and Jeff's wife Susie (Susie Essman). Celebrities, including comedians Richard Lewis, Wanda Sykes, and Bob Einstein, appeared on the show regularly. Actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen have had recurring roles as themselves.
The show is critically acclaimed and has been nominated for 30 Primetime Emmy Awards, with one win, as well as a Golden Globe win. In the first six seasons, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander appear in several episodes, and Jerry Seinfeld has a cameo. In season 7, the cast of Seinfeld, including Michael Richards, return in a story arc involving David's attempt to organize a Seinfeld reunion special. On June 2, 2010, the series premiered on the TV Guide Network, its network television debut. TV Guide Network also produced a series of related discussions with high-profile guest stars, media pundits, and prominent social figures called "Curb: The Discussion" debating the moral implications of each episode. David is quoted as saying "Finally, thanks to the TV Guide Network, I'll get a chance to watch actual, intelligent people discuss and debate the issues addressed on 'Curb'. Now if only someone could tell me where this alleged 'Network' is, I might even watch it." The show's 12th and final season premiered in January 2024.
David played the leading role in Woody Allen's 2009 comedy film Whatever Works alongside Evan Rachel Wood. He had a cameo appearance on the HBO series Entourage as a client of Ari Gold, and because his daughters were Hannah Montana fans, David and his daughters guest-starred as themselves in the episode "My Best Friend's Boyfriend", in which they wait for a table at a fancy restaurant. David appeared as a panelist on the NBC series The Marriage Ref and also played Sister Mary-Mengele in the 2012 reboot of The Three Stooges. He co-wrote and starred in the 2013 HBO television film Clear History. David wrote and starred in the Broadway play Fish in the Dark. Also appearing were Rita Wilson, Jayne Houdyshell, and Rosie Perez. The play centers on the death of a family patriarch. It opened on March 5, 2015. Jason Alexander took over David's role in July. The play closed in August. As of February 1, 2015, its advance sale of $13.5 million had broken records for a Broadway show.
Bernie Sanders
Since 2015, David has made multiple guest appearances portraying 2016 and 2020 United States presidential election candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday Night Live; he also hosted the show on February 6, 2016, with musical guest The 1975 and a cameo by Sanders himself, and on November 4, 2017, with musical guest Miley Cyrus.
In 2017, PBS's Finding Your Roots discovered through genealogical research that David and Sanders are distantly related. Sanders told David the news. "I was very happy about that," David said, according to Variety. "I thought there must have been some connection." The comedian explained that Sanders is "a third cousin or something." He is in fact David's sixth cousin once removed.
On January 8, 2020, David joked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, "I would say, I would beg him [Bernie] to drop out so I don't have to keep flying in from Los Angeles to do SNL. I thought when he had the heart attack that would be it, I wouldn't have to fly in from Los Angeles. But, you know, he's indestructible. Nothing stops this man!" He later added, "If he wins, do you know what that's going to do to my life? Do you have any idea? I mean, it will be great for the country—great for the country, terrible for me."
Influences
David has named Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Phil Silvers, Abbott and Costello, Jackie Mason, Alan King, Don Rickles, and Mad magazine as influences.
Personal life
David lives in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. He was married to Laurie Lennard from 1993 to 2007. They have two daughters, Cazzie David and Romy David. Larry and Laurie became contributing bloggers at The Huffington Post in 2005. In 2017, David was introduced to producer Ashley Underwood at a birthday party for Sacha Baron Cohen. They married in 2020. David's niece is actress Julie Claire, who appears in Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
David is a supporter of the Democratic Party. In 2010, he wrote an article for The New York Times criticizing the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. He ended the article with a sarcastic thank-you to then-President Barack Obama for approving the extension.
David is an atheist and an avid sports fan. A native New Yorker, he supports the New York Jets, Yankees, Knicks and Rangers.
Wealth
In 2013, Charlie Rose estimated David's net worth at around $500 million. Two years later, two other estimates put the number between $400 million and $900 million. In 2020, National Review offered an estimate of about $400 million.
Most of David's wealth originates from syndication deals of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, the former having netted $3.1 billion in rerun fees as of 2013. The syndication of Seinfeld earned David an estimated $250 million in 1998 alone. In 2008, David was reported to have grossed $55 million, mostly from Seinfeld syndication and work on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
David's net worth was parodied in a 2001 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, "The Shrimp Incident", in which HBO executive Allan Wasserman yells at David: "If you want shrimp, take your $475 million, go buy a shrimp boat."
In a 2015 interview with CBS, David confirmed that half of his wealth was eroded by his 2007 divorce in the community property state of California. "I have a lot of money", he said, adding that the "figures out there are crazy".
Legal issue
David was among several celebrities who appeared in a commercial for cryptocurrency exchange FTX that aired during Super Bowl LVI. In November 2022, FTX filed for bankruptcy, and David, alongside other spokespeople, was sued in a class-action lawsuit. In February 2022, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit against Bitconnect that the Securities Act of 1933 extends to targeted solicitation using social media.
Filmography
Film
Television
Theater
Written works
David, Larry (January 1, 2006). "Cowboys Are My Weakness". The New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2023.
David, Larry (December 20, 2010). "Thanks for the Tax Cut!". The New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2020.
David, Larry (July 23, 2018). "The Most Important Meal of the Day". The New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2020.
David, Larry (August 10, 2018). "What Really Happened at Trump Tower". The New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2020.
David, Larry (November 18, 2019). "On the First-World Campaign Trail". Shouts & Murmurs. The New Yorker. Vol. 95, no. 36. p. 29. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
David, Larry (November 22, 2019). "Imagining What Keeps Trump Up at Night". The New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2020.
David, Larry (November 29, 2021). "Larry David's Notes for His Biographer". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
Awards and nominations
David has received numerous awards, including two Emmy Awards, three Producers Guild of America Awards, and three Writers Guild of America Awards. He has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and six Screen Actors Guild Awards. Fellow comedians and comedy insiders voted David the 23rd-greatest comedy star ever in a poll to select The Comedian's Comedian.
Notes
References
Further reading
Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good: Larry David and the Making of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm by Josh Levine (ECW Press, 2010)
External links
Larry David at AllMovie
Larry David at IMDb
Larry David at Rotten Tomatoes |
Tom%C3%A1%C5%A1_Pekhart | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1%C5%A1_Pekhart | [
322
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1%C5%A1_Pekhart"
] | Tomáš Pekhart (born 26 May 1989) is a Czech professional footballer who plays as a forward for Polish club Legia Warsaw. He has represented the Czech Republic at both junior and senior level.
Club career
Early career
Born in Sušice, Czechoslovakia, he began his youth career with his hometown club TJ Sušice and also played for TJ Klatovy before joining Slavia Prague in 2003.
Pekhart joined the Tottenham Hotspur youth academy during the summer of 2006.
Loan to Southampton
In August 2008, Pekhart joined Championship side Southampton on loan until January 2009. He made his first league appearance as a substitute on 14 September, away against Queens Park Rangers which Southampton lost 4–1. He scored his only league goal for Southampton in a 2–2 home draw against Ipswich.
loan to Slavia Prague
He returned to Spurs in January 2009 and on transfer deadline day Pekhart returned to his old club Slavia Prague on a year-long loan until January 2010. On 15 March 2009, Pekhart scored a late goal for Slavia in a 2–1 victory over FK Jablonec. Pekhart was rewarded for his first goal with the club and was handed a start on 22 March, scoring the lone goal in the 1–0 victory over FC Zlín.
FK Jablonec
On 12 January 2010, FK Jablonec confirmed the signing of Pekhart on a three-and-a-half-year deal for an undisclosed fee. On 20 March 2010, Pekhart scored his first goal for Jablonec, a late winner in a 2–1 victory over Příbram. On 2 May 2010, Pekhart scored two goals in a 4–0 victory over Bohemians 1905. On 8 May 2010, Pekhart scored the opening goal in a 3–0 victory over his former club Slavia Prague. Pekhart continued his fine form during the 2010–11 season, scoring 11 goals in 15 league matches. However, after just half of the 2010–11 Gambrinus liga season, he moved on loan to fellow Gambrinus liga side Sparta Prague as part of a deal with 1. FC Nürnberg, whom he joined on 1 July 2011.
loan to Sparta Prague
Pekhart moved on loan for the second half of the 2010–11 season to Sparta Prague. On 19 March 2011, Pekhart scored his first two goals for Sparta in a 2-0 victory over FC Zbrojovka Brno. In nine league games for Sparta, Pekhart scored seven goals. He ended the 2010-11 season scoring 18 goals in 24 matches, one goal behind former teammate David Lafata in the Czech First League scoring table.
Nürnberg
On 6 August 2011, Pekhart scored in his debut in the Bundesliga, helping 1. FC Nürnberg to a 1–0 victory over Hertha Berlin on the opening day of Germany’s football season. On 1 October 2011, Pekhart scored the equalizer in a 3–3 draw with Mainz. He ended his first season in Germany with 10 goals in 34 matches.
FC Ingolstadt 04
On 28 August 2014, Pekhart signed a three-year deal with the German second league side FC Ingolstadt 04. He made his debut for the club on 31 August, appearing as a second half substitute in a 0–3 victory over SV Sandhausen. While with Ingolstadt Pekhart was seldom used.
AEK Athens
Pekhart moved to AEK Athens on 1 February 2016. On 4 February 2016, he made his debut with the club, in an away 1–1 draw against Iraklis at Kaftanzoglio Stadium. On 20 February 2016, Pekhart scored his first goal for AEK in a 1–1 draw with Iraklis. On 10 April 2016, Pekhart scored two goals in a 2–1 victory over Panionios F.C. During the 2016–17 season, Pekhart was AEK's top scorer, scoring 12 goals in 31 matches.
Hapoel Be'er Sheva
On 21 July 2017, Pekhart signed with Hapoel Be'er Sheva for three years. On 10 August 2017, Pekhart scored his first goal for Hapoel in a 4–2 victory over Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv in the 2017 Israel Super Cup, claiming his first title with the Israeli side. On 19 August 2017, Pekhart scored his first goal in the Israeli league in a 1–1 draw with Maccabi Netanya. He ended the 2017–18 season scoring 10 goals in 28 matches, helping Hapoel win its fifth league title.
Las Palmas
On 13 August of the following year, he agreed to a two-year deal with Segunda División side UD Las Palmas. Pekhart scored his first goal for Las Palmas on 18 November 2018 in a 4–1 loss to Cádiz CF. On 27 September 2019, he scored his club's third goal in a 3–2 victory over Albacete Balompié. With the trio of Pekhart, Pedri, and Jonathan Viera Las Palmas went on an unbeaten run to move up the Segunda Division standings. On 5 October 2019, Pedri and Pekhart goals helped the island side to a 0–2 victory over CD Lugo. On 13 October 2019, Las Palmas won their fourth straight match, defeating Deportivo La Coruña 3–0 with two goals by Pekhart and one by Jonathan Viera.
Legia Warsaw
On 10 February 2020, Pekhart agreed to a two-and-a-half-year deal with Ekstraklasa side Legia Warsaw. On 22 February 2020, Pekhart made his debut for Legia, scoring his club's fourth goal in a 4–0 victory over Jagiellonia Białystok. On 7 June 2020, Pekhart scored two goals to help Legia to a 1–3 victory over Wisła Kraków. He ended his first season in Poland appearing in 11 league matches scoring 5 goals, helping Legia to a league title.
On 21 March 2021, Pekhart scored four goals in a 4–0 victory over Zagłębie Lubin. During the 2020–21 season, he was the leading scorer in Ekstraklasa, scoring 22 goals as Legia won the league title again. On 14 July 2021, Pekhard scored the second goal in a 2–0 victory in the second leg of the first round of UEFA Champions League qualifying against FK Bodø/Glimt as the Polish champions advanced to the next round. Pekhart ended the 2021–22 season in Poland appearing in 45 matches and scoring 10 goals, in a season in which Legia finished 10th in the league standings. After rejecting offers to renew his contract by Legia, Pekhart left the Polish club on 30 June 2022.
Gaziantep
On 10 August 2022, Pekhart joined Gaziantep in Turkey on a two-year contract.
Return to Legia Warsaw
On 30 January 2023, Pekhart agreed to a one-and-a-half-year deal with Ekstraklasa side Legia Warsaw.
International career
Pekhart has represented his country at youth international level. Pekhart played and scored in the final of the 2006 UEFA Under-17 Championship in Luxembourg for his country against Russia.
In 2007, he represented his country in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Canada as the youngest player in the squad having just turned 18. He played in all seven matches of the tournament, including the final against Argentina in which the Czechs finished runners up after Mauro Zárate scored the winning goal four minutes from full-time for Argentina.
He made his debut for the Czech Republic on 22 May 2010 in a match against Turkey.
Career statistics
Club
As of 9 August 2024
International
Scores and results list the Czech Republic's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Pekhart goal.
Honours
Slavia Prague
Czech First League: 2008–09
FC Ingolstadt
2. Bundesliga: 2014–15
AEK Athens
Greek Cup: 2015–16
Hapoel Be'er-Sheva
Israeli Premier League: 2017–18
Israel Super Cup: 2017
Legia Warsaw
Ekstraklasa: 2019–20, 2020–21
Polish Cup: 2022–23
Polish Super Cup: 2023
Czech Republic U17
UEFA European Under-17 Championship runner-up: 2006
Czech Republic U20
FIFA U-20 World Cup runner-up: 2007
Individual
Ekstraklasa top scorer: 2020–21 (22 goals)
Ekstraklasa Forward of the Season: 2020–21
Piłka Nożna Foreigner of the Year: 2020
References
External links
Tomáš Pekhart at Soccerbase
Tomáš Pekhart at FAČR (in Czech)
Tomáš Pekhart – Czech First League statistics at Fotbal DNES (in Czech)
Tomáš Pekhart at Soccerway
Tomáš Pekhart at 90minut.pl (in Polish) |
Tottenham_Hotspur_F.C. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Hotspur_F.C. | [
322
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Hotspur_F.C."
] | Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as simply Tottenham (, TOT-ən-əm, , tot-nəm) or Spurs, is a professional football club based in Tottenham, North London, England. It competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. The team has played its home matches in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium since 2019, replacing their former home of White Hart Lane, which had been demolished to make way for the new stadium on the same site.
Founded in 1882, Tottenham Hotspur's emblem is a cockerel standing upon a football, with the Latin motto Audere est Facere ("to dare is to do"). The club has traditionally worn white shirts and navy blue shorts as their home kit since the 1898–99 season. Their training ground is on Hotspur Way in Bulls Cross, Enfield. After its inception, Tottenham won the FA Cup for the first time in 1901, the only non-League club to do so since the formation of the Football League in 1888. Tottenham were the first club in the 20th century to achieve the League and FA Cup Double, winning both competitions in the 1960–61 season. After successfully defending the FA Cup in 1962, in 1963 they became the first British club to win a UEFA club competition – the European Cup Winners' Cup. They were also the inaugural winners of the UEFA Cup in 1972, becoming the first British club to win two different major European trophies. They collected at least one major trophy in each of the six decades from the 1950s to 2000s, an achievement only matched by Manchester United.
In domestic football, Spurs have won two league titles, eight FA Cups, four League Cups, and seven FA Community Shields. In European football, they have won one European Cup Winners' Cup and two UEFA Cups. Tottenham were also runners-up in the 2018–19 UEFA Champions League. They have a long-standing rivalry with nearby club Arsenal, with whom they contest the North London derby. Tottenham is owned by ENIC Group, which purchased the club in 2001. The club was estimated to be worth £2.6 billion ($3.2 billion) in 2024, and it was the eighth-highest-earning football club in the world, with an annual revenue of £549.2 million in 2023.
History
Formation and early years (1882–1908)
Originally named Hotspur Football Club, the club was formed on 5 September 1882 by a group of schoolboys led by Bobby Buckle. They were members of the Hotspur Cricket Club and the football club was formed to play sports during the winter months. A year later the boys sought help with the club from John Ripsher, the Bible class teacher at All Hallows Church, who became the first president of the club and its treasurer. Ripsher helped and supported the boys through the club's formative years, reorganised and found premises for the club. In April 1884 the club was renamed "Tottenham Hotspur Football Club" to avoid confusion with another London club named Hotspur, whose post had been mistakenly delivered to North London. Nicknames for the club include "Spurs" and "the Lilywhites".
Initially, the north London side played games between themselves and friendly matches against other local clubs. The first recorded match took place on 30 September 1882 against a local team named the Radicals, which Hotspur lost 2–0. The team entered their first cup competition in the London Association Cup, and won 5–2 in their first competitive match on 17 October 1885 against a company's works team called St Albans. The club's fixtures began to attract the interest of the local community and attendances at its home matches increased. In 1892, they played for the first time in a league, the short-lived Southern Alliance.
The club turned professional on 20 December 1895 and, in the summer of 1896, was admitted to Division One of the Southern League (the third tier at the time). On 2 March 1898, the club also became a limited company, the Tottenham Hotspur Football and Athletic Company. Soon after, Frank Brettell became the first ever manager of Spurs, and he signed John Cameron, who took over as player-manager when Brettell left a year later. Cameron would have a significant impact on Spurs, helping the club win its first trophy, the Southern League title in the 1899–1900 season. The following year Spurs won the 1901 FA Cup by beating Sheffield United 3–1 in a replay of the final, after the first game ended in a 2–2 draw. In doing so they became the only non-League club to achieve the feat since the formation of The Football League in 1888.
Early decades in the Football League (1908–1958)
In 1908, the club was elected into the Football League Second Division and won promotion to the First Division in their first season, finishing runners-up. In 1912, Peter McWilliam became manager; Tottenham finished bottom of the league at the end of the 1914–15 season when football was suspended due to the First World War. Spurs were relegated to the Second Division on the resumption of league football after the war, but quickly returned to the First Division as Second Division champions of the 1919–20 season.
On 23 April 1921, McWilliam guided Spurs to their second FA Cup win, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers 1–0 in the Cup Final. Spurs finished second to Liverpool in the league in 1922, but would finish mid-table in the next five seasons. Spurs were relegated in the 1927–28 season after McWilliam left. For most of the 1930s and 40s, Spurs languished in the Second Division, apart from a brief return to the top flight in the 1933–34 and 1934–35 seasons.
Former Spurs player Arthur Rowe became manager in 1949. Rowe developed a style of play, known as "push and run", that proved to be successful in his early years as manager. He took the team back to the First Division after finishing top of the Second Division in the 1949–50 season. In his second season in charge, Tottenham won their first ever top-tier league championship title when they finished top of the First Division for the 1950–51 season. Rowe resigned in April 1955 due to a stress-induced illness from managing the club. Before he left, he signed one of Spurs' most celebrated players, Danny Blanchflower, who won the FWA Footballer of the Year twice while at Tottenham.
Bill Nicholson and the glory years (1958–1974)
Bill Nicholson took over as manager in October 1958. He became the club's most successful manager, guiding the team to major trophy success three seasons in a row in the early 1960s: the Double in 1961, the FA Cup in 1962 and the Cup Winners' Cup in 1963. Nicholson signed Dave Mackay and John White in 1959, two influential players of the Double-winning team, and Jimmy Greaves in 1961, the most prolific goal-scorer in the history of the top tier of English football.
The 1960–61 season started with a run of 11 wins, followed by a draw and another four wins, at that time the best ever start by any club in the top flight of English football. The title was won on 17 April 1961 when they beat the eventual runner-up Sheffield Wednesday at home 2–1, with three more games still to play. The Double was achieved when Spurs won 2–0 against Leicester City in the final of the 1960–61 FA Cup. It was the first Double of the 20th century, and the first since Aston Villa achieved the feat in 1897. The next year Spurs won their consecutive FA Cup after beating Burnley in the 1962 FA Cup Final.
On 15 May 1963, Tottenham became the first British team to win a European trophy by winning the 1962–63 European Cup Winners' Cup when they beat Atlético Madrid 5–1 in the final. Spurs also became the first British team to win two different European trophies when they won the 1971–72 UEFA Cup with a rebuilt team that included Martin Chivers, Pat Jennings, and Steve Perryman. They had also won the FA Cup in 1967, two League Cups (in 1971 and 1973), as well as a second place league finish (1962–63) and runners-up to the 1973–74 UEFA Cup. In total, Nicholson won eight major trophies in his 16 years at the club as manager.
Burkinshaw to Venables (1974–1992)
Spurs went into a period of decline after the successes of the early 1970s, and Nicholson resigned after a poor start to the 1974–75 season. The team was then relegated at the end of the 1976–77 season with Keith Burkinshaw as manager. Burkinshaw quickly returned the club to the top flight, building a team that included Glenn Hoddle, as well as two Argentinians, Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa, which was unusual as players from outside the British Isles were rare at that time. The team that Burkinshaw rebuilt went on to win the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982 and the UEFA Cup in 1984.
The 1980s was a period of change that began with a new phase of redevelopment at White Hart Lane, as well as a change of directors. Irving Scholar took over the club and moved it in a more commercial direction, the beginning of the transformation of English football clubs into commercial enterprises. Debt at the club would again lead to a change in the boardroom, and Terry Venables teamed up with businessman Alan Sugar in June 1991 to take control of Tottenham Hotspur plc. Venables, who had become manager in 1987, signed players such as Paul Gascoigne and Gary Lineker. Under Venables, Spurs won the 1990–91 FA Cup, making them the first club to win eight FA Cups.
Premier League football (1992–present)
Tottenham was one of the five clubs that pushed for the founding of the Premier League, created with the approval of The Football Association, replacing the Football League First Division as the highest division of English football. Despite a succession of managers and players such as Teddy Sheringham, Jürgen Klinsmann and David Ginola, for a long period in the Premier League until the late 2000s, Spurs finished mid-table most seasons with few trophies won. They won the League Cup in 1999 under George Graham, and again in 2008 under Juande Ramos. Performance improved under Harry Redknapp with players such as Gareth Bale and Luka Modrić, and the club finished in the top five in the early 2010s.
In February 2001, Sugar sold his shareholding in Spurs to ENIC Sports plc, run by Joe Lewis and Daniel Levy, and stepped down as chairman. Lewis and Levy would eventually own 85% of the club, with Levy responsible for the running of the club. They appointed Mauricio Pochettino as head coach, who was in the role between 2014 and 2019. Under Pochettino, Spurs finished second in the 2016–17 season, their highest league finish since the 1962–63 season, and advanced to the UEFA Champions League final in 2019, the club's first, where they ultimately lost to Liverpool 2–0. Pochettino was subsequently sacked after a poor start to the 2019–20 season, in November 2019, and was replaced by José Mourinho.
Mourinho was sacked in April 2021, while Nuno Espírito Santo lasted just four months as his successor. The next manager, Antonio Conte, guided Spurs to fourth during the 2021–22 season and back to a Champions League place. Following a poor run of form, Conte criticised the players and management of the club in press conferences; after exiting both the Champions League and FA Cup, he departed the club by mutual agreement in March 2023. Ange Postecoglou took over as head coach on 1 July 2023 and the club qualified for the 2024-25 UEFA Europa League after a fifth-place finish in the Premier League.
Stadiums
Early grounds
Spurs played their early matches on public land at the Park Lane end of Tottenham Marshes, where they had to mark out and prepare their own pitch. Occasionally fights broke out on the marshes in disputes with other teams over the use of the ground. The first Spurs game reported by the local press took place on Tottenham Marshes on 6 October 1883 against Brownlow Rovers, which Spurs won 9–0. It was at this ground that, in 1887, Spurs first played the team that would later become their arch rivals, Arsenal (then known as Royal Arsenal), leading 2–1 until the match was called off due to poor light after the away team arrived late.
As they played on public parkland, the club could not charge admission fees and, while the number of spectators grew to a few thousand, it yielded no gate receipts. In 1888, the club rented a pitch between numbers 69 and 75 Northumberland Park at a cost of £17 per annum, where spectators were charged 3d a game, raised to 6d for cup ties. The first game at the Park was played on 13 October 1888, a reserve match that yielded gate receipts of 17 shillings. The first stand with just over 100 seats and changing rooms underneath was built at the ground for the 1894–95 season at a cost of £60. However, the stand was blown down a few weeks later and had to be repaired. In April 1898, 14,000 fans turned up to watch Spurs play Woolwich Arsenal. Spectators climbed on the roof of the refreshment stand for a better view of the match. The stand collapsed, causing a few injuries. As Northumberland Park could no longer cope with the larger crowds, Spurs were forced to look for a larger ground and moved to the White Hart Lane site in 1899.
White Hart Lane
The White Hart Lane ground was built on an unused plant nursery owned by the Charrington Brewery and located behind a public house named the White Hart on Tottenham High Road (the road White Hart Lane actually lies a few hundred yards north of the main entrance). The ground was initially leased from Charringtons, and the stands they used at Northumberland Park were moved here, giving shelter for 2,500 spectators. Notts County were the first visitors to 'the Lane' in a friendly watched by 5,000 people and yielding £115 in receipts; Spurs won 4–1. Queens Park Rangers became the first competitive visitors to the ground and 11,000 people saw them lose 1–0 to Tottenham. In 1905, Tottenham raised enough money to buy the freehold to the land, as well as land at the northern (Paxton Road) end.
After Spurs were admitted to the Football League, the club started to build a new stadium, with stands designed by Archibald Leitch being constructed over the next two and a half decades. The West Stand was added in 1909, the East Stand was also covered this year and extended further two years later. The profits from the 1921 FA Cup win were used to build a covered terrace at the Paxton Road end and the Park Lane end was built at a cost of over £3,000 some two years later. This increased the stadium's capacity to around 58,000, with room for 40,000 under cover. The East Stand (Worcester Avenue) was finished in 1934 and this increased capacity to around 80,000 spectators and cost £60,000.
Starting in the early 1980s, the stadium underwent another major phase of redevelopment. The West Stand was replaced by an expensive new structure in 1982, and the East Stand was renovated in 1988. In 1992, following the Taylor Report's recommendation that Premier League clubs eliminate standing areas, the lower terraces of the south and east stand were converted to seating, with the North Stand becoming all-seater the following season. The South Stand redevelopment was completed in March 1995 and included the first giant Sony Jumbotron TV screen for live game coverage and away match screenings. In the 1997–98 season the Paxton Road stand received a new upper tier and a second Jumbotron screen. Minor amendments to the seating configuration were made in 2006, bringing the capacity of the stadium to 36,310.
By the turn of the millennium, the capacity of White Hart Lane had become lower than other major Premier League clubs. Talks began over the future of the ground with a number of schemes considered, such as increasing the stadium capacity through redevelopment of the current site, or using of the 2012 London Olympic Stadium in Stratford. Eventually the club settled on the Northumberland Development Project, whereby a new stadium would be built on a larger piece of land that incorporated the existing site. In 2016, the northeast corner of the stadium was removed to facilitate the construction of the new stadium. As this reduced the stadium capacity below that required for European games, Tottenham Hotspur played every European home game in 2016–17 at Wembley Stadium. Domestic fixtures of the 2016–17 season continued to be played at the Lane, but demolition of the rest of the stadium started the day after the last game of the season, and White Hart Lane was completely demolished by the end of July 2017.
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
In October 2008, the club announced a plan to build a new stadium immediately to the north of the existing White Hart Lane stadium, with the southern half of the new stadium's pitch overlapping the northern part of the Lane. This proposal would become the Northumberland Development Project. The club submitted a planning application in October 2009 but, following critical reactions to the plan, it was withdrawn in favour of a substantially revised planning application for the stadium and other associated developments. The new plan was resubmitted and approved by Haringey Council in September 2010, and an agreement for the Northumberland Development Project was signed on 20 September 2011.
After a long delay over the compulsory purchase order of local businesses located on land to the north of the stadium and a legal challenge against the order, resolved in early 2015, planning application for another new design was approved by Haringey Council on 17 December 2015. Construction started in 2016, and the new stadium was scheduled to open during the 2018–19 season. While it was under construction, all Tottenham home games in the 2017–18 season as well as all but five in 2018–19 were played at Wembley Stadium. After two successful test events, Tottenham Hotspur officially moved into the new ground on 3 April 2019 with a Premier League match against Crystal Palace which Spurs won 2–0. The new stadium is called Tottenham Hotspur Stadium while a naming-rights agreement is reached.
Training grounds
An early training ground used by Tottenham was located at Brookfield Lane in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. The club bought the 11-acre ground used by Cheshunt F.C. in 1952 for £35,000. It had three pitches, including a small stadium with a small stand used for matches by the junior team. The ground was later sold for over £4 million, and the club moved the training ground to the Spurs Lodge on Luxborough Lane, Chigwell in Essex, opened in September 1996 by Tony Blair. The training ground and press centre in Chigwell were used until 2014.
In 2007, Tottenham bought a site at Bulls Cross in Enfield, a few miles south of their former ground in Cheshunt. A new training ground was constructed at the site for £45 million, which opened in 2012. The 77-acre site has 15 grass pitches and one-and-a-half artificial pitches, as well as a covered artificial pitch in the main building. The main building on Hotspur Way also has hydrotherapy and swimming pools, gyms, medical facilities, dining and rest areas for players as well as classrooms for academy and schoolboy players. A 45-bedroom players lodge with catering, treatment, rest and rehabilitation facilities was later added at Myddleton Farm next to the training site in 2018. The lodge is mainly used by Tottenham's first team and Academy players, but it has also been used by national football teams – the first visitors to use the facilities at the site were the Brazilian team in preparation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Crest
Since the 1921 FA Cup Final the Tottenham Hotspur crest has featured a cockerel. Harry Hotspur, after whom the club is named, was said to have been given the nickname Hotspur as he dug in his spurs to make his horse go faster as he charged in battles, and spurs are also associated with fighting cocks. The club used spurs as a symbol in 1900, which then evolved into a fighting cock. A former player named William James Scott made a bronze cast of a cockerel standing on a football at a cost of £35 (equivalent to £4,610 in 2023), and this 9-foot-6-inch (2.90 m) figure was then placed on top of the West Stand at the end of the 1909–10 season. Since then the cockerel and ball emblem has become a part of the club's identity. The club badge on the shirt used in 1921 featured a cockerel within a shield, but it was changed to a cockerel sitting on a ball in the late 1960s.
Between 1956 and 2006 Spurs used a faux heraldic shield featuring a number of local landmarks and associations. The castle is Bruce Castle, 400 yards from the ground and the trees are the Seven Sisters. The arms featured the Latin motto Audere Est Facere (to dare is to do).
In 1983, to overcome unauthorised "pirate" merchandising, the club's badge was altered by adding the two red heraldic lions to flank the shield (which came from the arms of the Northumberland family, of which Harry Hotspur was a member), as well as the motto scroll. This device appeared on Spurs' playing kits for three seasons 1996–99.
In 2006, in order to rebrand and modernise the club's image, the club badge and coat of arms were replaced by a professionally designed logo/emblem. This revamp displayed a sleeker and more elegant cockerel standing on an old-time football. The club claimed that they dropped their club name and would be using the rebranded logo only on playing kits. In November 2013, Tottenham forced non-league club Fleet Spurs to change their badge because its new design was "too similar" to the Tottenham crest.
In 2017, Spurs added a shield around the cockerel logo on the shirts similar to the 1950s badge, but with the cockerel of modern design. The shield was however removed the following season.
Kit
The first Tottenham kit recorded in 1883 included a navy blue shirt with a letter H on a scarlet shield on the left breast, and white breeches. In 1884 or 1885, the club changed to a "quartered" kit similar to Blackburn Rovers after watching them win in the 1884 FA Cup Final. After they moved to Northumberland Park in 1888, they returned to the navy blue shirts for the 1889–90 season. Their kit changed again to red shirt and blue shorts in 1890, and for a time the team were known as 'the Tottenham Reds'. Five years later in 1895, the year they became a professional club, they switched to a chocolate and gold striped kit.
In the 1898–99 season, their final year at Northumberland Park, the club switched colours to white shirts and blue shorts, same colour choice as that for Preston North End. White and navy blue have remained as the club's basic colours ever since, with the white shirts giving the team the nickname "The Lilywhites". In 1921, the year they won the FA Cup, the cockerel badge was added to the shirt for the final. A club crest has featured on the shirt since, and Spurs became the first major club to have its club crest on the players shirt on every match apart from the war years. In 1939 numbers first appeared on shirt backs.
In the early days, the team played in kits sold by local outfitters. An early supplier of Spurs' jerseys recorded was a firm on Seven Sisters Road, HR Brookes. In the 1920s, Bukta produced the jerseys for the club. From the mid-1930s onwards, Umbro was the supplier for forty years. In 1959, the V-neck shirt replaced the collared shirts of the past, and then in 1963, the crew neck shirt appeared (the style has fluctuated since). In 1961, Bill Nicholson sent Spurs players out to play in white instead of navy shorts for their European campaign, starting a tradition which continues to this day in European competitions.
In 1977, a deal was signed with Admiral to supply the team their kits. Although Umbro kits in generic colours had been sold to football fans since 1959, it was with the Admiral deal that the market for replica shirts started to take off. Admiral changed the plain colours of earlier strips to shirts with more elaborate designs, which included manufacturer's logos, stripes down the arms and trims on the edges. Admiral was replaced by Le Coq Sportif in the summer of 1980. In 1985, Spurs entered into a business partnership with Hummel, who then supplied the strips. However, the attempt by Tottenham to expand the business side of the club failed, and in 1991, they returned to Umbro. In 1991, the club was the first to wear long-cut shorts, an innovation at a time when football kits all featured shorts cut well above the knee. Umbro was followed by Pony in 1995, Adidas in 1999, Kappa in 2002, and a five-year deal with Puma in 2006. In March 2011, Under Armour announced a five-year deal to supply Spurs with shirts and other apparel from the start of 2012–13, with the home, away and the third kits revealed in July and August 2012. The shirts incorporate technology that can monitor the players' heart rate and temperature and send the biometric data to the coaching staff. In June 2017, it was announced that Nike would be their new kits supplier, with the 2017–18 kit released on 30 June, featuring the Spurs' crest encased in a shield, paying homage to Spurs' 1960–61 season, where they became the first post-war-club to win both the Football League First Division and the FA Cup. In October 2018, Nike agreed a 15-year deal reportedly worth £30 million a year with the club to supply their kits until 2033.
Shirt sponsorship in English football was first adopted by the non-league club Kettering Town F.C. in 1976 despite it being banned by the FA. FA soon lifted the ban, and this practice spread to the major clubs when sponsored shirts were allowed on non-televised games in 1979, and then on televised games as well in 1983. In December 1983, after the club was floated on the London Stock Exchange, Holsten became the first commercial sponsor logo to appear on a Spurs shirt. When Thomson was chosen as kit sponsor in 2002 some Tottenham fans were unhappy as the shirt-front logo was red, the colour of their closest rivals, Arsenal. In 2006, Tottenham secured a £34 million sponsorship deal with internet casino group Mansion.com. In July 2010, Spurs announced a two-year shirt sponsorship contract with software infrastructure company Autonomy said to be worth £20 million. A month later they unveiled a £5 million deal with leading specialist bank and asset management firm Investec as shirt sponsor for the Champions League and domestic cup competitions for the next two years. Since 2014, AIA has been the main shirt sponsor, initially in a deal worth over £16 million annually, increased to a reported £40 to £45 million per year in 2019 in an eight-year deal that lasts until 2027. In 2023, Tottenham provisionally agreed a three-year shirt sponsorship deal with South Africa Tourism (SAT) starting in 2023/24 and ending in the 2026/27 season.
Kit suppliers and shirt sponsors
Ownership
Tottenham Hotspur F.C. became a limited company, the Tottenham Hotspur Football and Athletic Company Ltd, on 2 March 1898 so as to raise funds for the club and limit the personal liability of its members. 8,000 shares were issued at £1 each, although only 1,558 shares were taken up in the first year. 4,892 shares were sold in total by 1905. A few families held significant shares; they included the Wale family, who had association with the club since the 1930s, as well as the Richardson and the Bearman families. From 1943 to 1984, members of these families were chairmen of Tottenham Hotspur F.C. after Charles Robert who had been chairman since 1898 died.
In the early 1980s, cost overruns in the construction of a new West Stand together with the cost of rebuilding the team in previous years led to accumulating debts. In November 1982, a fan of the club Irving Scholar bought 25% of Tottenham for £600,000, and together with Paul Bobroff gained control of the club. In order to bring in funds, Scholar floated Tottenham Hotspur plc, which wholly owns the football club, on the London Stock Exchange in 1983, the first European sports club to be listed in a stock market, and became the first sports company to go public. Fans and institutions alike can now freely buy and trade shares in the company; a court ruling in 1935 involving the club (Berry and Stewart v Tottenham Hotspur FC Ltd) had previously established a precedent in company law that the directors of a company can refuse the transfer of shares from a shareholder to another person. The share issue was successful with 3.8 million shares quickly sold. However, ill-judged business decisions under Scholar led to financial difficulties, and in June 1991 Terry Venables teamed up with businessman Alan Sugar to buy the club, initially as equal partner with each investing £3.25 million. Sugar increased his stake to £8 million by December 1991 and became the dominant partner with effective control of the club. In May 1993, Venables was sacked from the board after a dispute. By 2000, Sugar began to consider selling the club, and in February 2001, he sold the major part of his shareholding to ENIC International Ltd.
The majority shareholder, ENIC International Ltd, is an investment company established by the British billionaire Joe Lewis. Daniel Levy, Lewis's partner at ENIC, is Executive Chairman of the club. They first acquired 29.9% share of the club in 1991, of which 27% was bought from Sugar for £22 million. Shareholding by ENIC increased over the decade through the purchase of the remaining 12% holding of Alan Sugar in 2007 for £25m, and the 9.9% stake belonging to Stelios Haji-Ioannou through Hodram Inc. in 2009. On 21 August 2009 the club reported that they had issued a further 30 million shares to fund the initial development costs of the new stadium project, and that 27.8 million of these new shares had been purchased by ENIC. The Annual Report for 2010 indicated that ENIC had acquired 76% of all Ordinary Shares and also held 97% of all convertible redeemable preference shares, equivalent to a holding of 85% of share capital. The remaining shares are held by over 30,000 individuals. Between 2001 and 2011 shares in Tottenham Hotspur F.C. were listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM index). Following an announcement at the 2011 AGM, in January 2012 Tottenham Hotspur confirmed that the club had delisted its shares from the stock market, taking it into private ownership.
Lewis' shares are owned by the Lewis Family Trusts. In October 2022, Lewis ceased to be a person with significant control of the club, following a reorganisation of the Trusts. The club continues to be owned by Levy and the Lewis trusts and, in the summer of 2022, ENIC intended to inject up to £150 million into the club by the issuing of new shares. Only £100 million of shares were subscribed for and this took ENIC's shareholding up to 86.58%.
Support
Tottenham has a large fan base in the United Kingdom, drawn largely from North London and the Home counties. The attendance figures for its home matches, however, have fluctuated over the years. Five times between 1950 and 1962, Tottenham had the highest average attendance in England. Tottenham was 9th in average attendances for the 2008–09 Premier League season, and 11th for all Premier League seasons. In the 2017–18 season when Tottenham used Wembley as its home ground, it had the second-highest attendance in the Premier League. It also holds the record for attendance in the Premier League, with 83,222 attending the North London derby on 10 February 2018. Historical supporters of the club have included such figures as philosopher A. J. Ayer. There are many official supporters' clubs located around the world, while an independent supporters club, the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust, is officially recognised by the club as the representative body for Spurs supporters.
Historically, the club had a significant Jewish following from the Jewish communities in east and north London, with around a third of its supporters estimated to be Jewish in the 1930s. Due to this early support, all three chairmen of the club since 1984 have been Jewish businessmen with prior history of supporting the club. The club no longer has a greater Jewish contingent among its fans than other major London clubs (Jewish supporters are estimated to form at most 5% of its fanbase), though it is nevertheless still identified as a Jewish club by rival fans. Antisemitic chants directed at the club and its supporters by rival fans have been heard since the 1960s, with words such as "Yids" or "Yiddos" used against Tottenham supporters. In response to the abusive chants, Tottenham supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, began to chant back the insults and adopt the "Yids" or "Yid Army" identity starting from around the late 1970s or early 1980s. Some fans view adopting "Yid" as a badge of pride, helping defuse its power as an insult. The use of "Yid" as a self-identification, however, has been controversial; some argued that the word is offensive and its use by Spurs fans "legitimis[es] references to Jews in football", and that such racist abuse should be stamped out in football. Both the World Jewish Congress and the Board of Deputies of British Jews have denounced the use of the word by fans. Others, such as former Prime Minister David Cameron, argued that its use by the Spurs fans is not motivated by hate as it is not used pejoratively, and therefore cannot be considered hate speech. Attempts to prosecute Tottenham fans who chanted the words have failed, as the Crown Prosecution Service considered that the words as used by Tottenham fans could not be judged legally "threatening, abusive or insulting".
Fan culture
There are a number of songs associated with the club and frequently sung by Spurs fans, such as "Glory Glory Tottenham Hotspur". The song originated in 1961 after Spurs completed the Double in 1960–61, and the club entered the European Cup for the first time. Their first opponents were Górnik Zabrze, the Polish champions, and after a hard-fought match Spurs suffered a 4–2 reverse. Tottenham's tough tackling prompted the Polish press to write that "they were no angels". These comments incensed a group of three fans and for the return match at White Hart Lane they dressed as angels wearing white sheets fashioned into togas, sandals, false beards and carrying placards bearing biblical-type slogans. The angels were allowed on the perimeter of the pitch and their fervour whipped up the home fans who responded with a rendition of "Glory Glory Hallelujah", which is still sung on terraces at White Hart Lane and other football grounds. The Lilywhites also responded to the atmosphere to win the tie 8–1. Then manager of Spurs, Bill Nicholson, wrote in his autobiography: A new sound was heard in English football in the 1961–62 season. It was the hymn Glory, Glory Hallelujah being sung by 60,000 fans at White Hart Lane in our European Cup matches. I don't know how it started or who started it, but it took over the ground like a religious feeling.
There had been a number of incidents of hooliganism involving Spurs fans, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Significant events include the rioting by Spurs fans in Rotterdam at the 1974 UEFA Cup Final against Feyenoord, and again during the 1983–84 UEFA Cup matches against Feyenoord in Rotterdam and Anderlecht in Brussels. Although fan violence has since abated, the occasional incidence of hooliganism continues to be reported.
Rivalries
Tottenham supporters have rivalries with several clubs, mainly within the London area. The fiercest of these is with north London rivals Arsenal. The rivalry began in 1913 when Arsenal moved from the Manor Ground, Plumstead to Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, and this rivalry intensified in 1919 when Arsenal were unexpectedly promoted to the First Division, taking a place that Tottenham believed should have been theirs.
Tottenham also share notable rivalries with fellow London clubs Chelsea and West Ham United. The rivalry with Chelsea is secondary in importance to the one with Arsenal and began when Tottenham beat Chelsea in the 1967 FA Cup Final, the first ever all-London final. West Ham fans view Tottenham as a bitter rival, although the animosity is not reciprocated to the same extent by Tottenham fans.
Social responsibility
The club through its Community Programme has, since 2006, been working with Haringey Council and the Metropolitan Housing Trust and the local community on developing sports facilities and social programmes which have also been financially supported by Barclays Spaces for Sport and the Football Foundation. The Tottenham Hotspur Foundation received high-level political support from the prime minister when it was launched at 10 Downing Street in February 2007.
In March 2007 the club announced a partnership with the charity SOS Children's Villages UK, whereby player fines would go towards this charity's children's village in Rustenburg, South Africa to support of a variety of community development projects in and around Rustenburg. In the financial year 2006–07, Tottenham topped a league of Premier League charitable donations when viewed both in overall terms and as a percentage of turnover by giving £4,545,889, including a one-off contribution of £4.5 million over four years, to set up the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation.
In contrast, they have successfully sought the reduction of section 106 planning obligations connected to the redevelopment of the stadium in the Northumberland Development Project. Initially the development would incorporate 50% affordable housing, but this requirement was later waived, and a payment of £16m for community infrastructure was reduced to £0.5m. This is controversial in an area which has suffered high levels of deprivation as Spurs had bought up properties for redevelopment, removing existing jobs and businesses for property development but not creating enough new jobs for the area. The club however argued that the project, when completed, would support 3,500 jobs and inject an estimated £293 million into the local economy annually, and that it would serve as the catalyst for a wider 20-year regeneration programme for the Tottenham area. In other developments in Tottenham, the club has built 256 affordable homes and a 400-pupil primary school.
London Academy of Excellence
As part of the development of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the club built an elite educational facility to sit alongside its club offices. The London Academy of Excellence Tottenham (LAET) is a state-funded Sixth Form, sponsored by the Club and Highgate School - the principle academic sponsors who deliver expert teaching. LAET was named the Sunday Times Sixth Form College of the Year, 2020 by Parent Power, The Sunday Times School Guide. In 2022, LAET achieved an 'Outstanding' Ofsted rating across all areas.
Environmental sustainability
Spurs are one of the high-profile participants in the 10:10 project, which they joined in 2009. In a year, the carbon emissions were reduced by 14%, an estimated 400 tonnes of carbon. The club further said it is dedicated to minimising the environmental impact of its activities across all operations, setting targets to reduce its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and become net-zero by 2040.
In September 2021, the club partnered with Sky Sports to host the world's first net-zero carbon top-level football game. The initiative won in the Sustainability category at the 2022 Football Business Awards. In 2023, the club was ranked top in Premier League's Sustainability Rankings for fourth year running.
Honours
Sources: Tottenham Hotspur – History
Domestic
Leagues
First Division / Premier League (Tier 1)
Winners (2): 1950–51, 1960–61
Second Division / Championship (Tier 2)
Winners (2): 1919–20, 1949–50
Cups
FA Cup
Winners (8): 1900–01, 1920–21, 1960–61, 1961–62, 1966–67, 1980–81, 1981–82, 1990–91
League Cup
Winners (4): 1970–71, 1972–73, 1998–99, 2007–08
FA Charity Shield / FA Community Shield
Winners (7): 1921, 1951, 1961, 1962, 1967, 1981, 1991
Sheriff of London Charity Shield
Winners (1): 1902
European
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
Winners (1): 1962–63
UEFA Cup / UEFA Europa League
Winners (2): 1971–72, 1983–84
Anglo-Italian League Cup
Winners (1): 1971
Statistics and records
Steve Perryman holds the appearance record for Spurs, having played 854 games for the club between 1969 and 1986, of which 655 were league matches. Harry Kane holds the club goal scoring record with 280 goals scored.
Tottenham's record league win is 9–0 against Bristol Rovers in the Second Division on 22 October 1977. The club's record cup victory came on 3 February 1960 with a 13–2 win over Crewe Alexandra in the FA Cup. Spurs' biggest top-flight victory came against Wigan Athletic on 22 November 2009, when they won 9–1 with Jermain Defoe scoring five goals. The club's record defeat is an 8–0 loss to 1. FC Köln in the Intertoto Cup on 22 July 1995.
The record home attendance at White Hart Lane was 75,038 on 5 March 1938 in a cup tie against Sunderland. The highest recorded home attendances were at their temporary home, Wembley Stadium, due to its higher capacity – 85,512 spectators were present on 2 November 2016 for the 2016–17 UEFA Champions League game against Bayer Leverkusen, while 83,222 attended the North London derby against Arsenal on 10 February 2018 which is the highest attendance recorded for any Premier League game.
The club is ranked No. 21 by UEFA with a club coefficient of 80.0 points as of June 2023.
Players
Current squad
As of 31 August 2024
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Out on loan
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Youth Academy
Management and support staff
Directors
Managers and players
Managers and head coaches in club's history
Listed according to when they became managers for Tottenham Hotspur:
(A) – Acting
(C) – Caretaker
(I) – Interim
(FTC) – First team coach
Club hall of fame
The following players are noted as "greats" for their contributions to the club or have been inducted into the club's Hall of Fame: The most recent additions to the club's Hall of Fame are Steve Perryman and Jimmy Greaves on 20 April 2016.
Player of the Year
As voted by members and season ticket holders (calendar year until 2005–06 season)
Tottenham Hotspur Women
Tottenham's women's team was founded in 1985 as Broxbourne Ladies. They started using the Tottenham Hotspur name for the 1991–92 season and played in the London and South East Women's Regional Football League (then fourth tier of the game). They won promotion after topping the league in 2007–08. In the 2016–17 season they won the FA Women's Premier League Southern Division and a subsequent playoff, gaining promotion to the FA Women's Super League 2.
On 1 May 2019 Tottenham Hotspur Ladies won promotion to the FA Women's Super League with a 1–1 draw at Aston Villa, which confirmed they would finish second in the Championship. Tottenham Hotspur Ladies changed their name to Tottenham Hotspur Women in the 2019–20 season.
Tottenham Hotspur Women announced the signing of Cho So-hyun on 29 January 2021. With her Korean men's counterpart Son Heung-min already at the club it gave Spurs the rare distinction of having both the men's and women's Korean National Team captains at one club.
Formula racing
Tottenham Hotspur competed in Superleague Formula for three seasons from 2008 to 2010. Duncan Tappy was the main driver in the first season racing 10 times with 3 podium finishes. In 2010 Tottenham won the trophy with driver Craig Dolby.
Through its partnership with F1, the club has also introduced Go Karting. Three track layouts are available, suiting everyone from beginners to elite karters.
Affiliated clubs
Internacional
San Jose Earthquakes
South China AA
Supersport United
Kickstart FC
References
Bibliography
Cloake, Martin; Fisher, Alan (2016). People's History of Tottenham Hotspur: How Spurs Fans Shaped the Identity of One of the World's Most Famous Clubs. Pitch Publishing. ISBN 9781785312465.
Davies, Hunter (1972). The Glory Game. Mainstream. ISBN 978-1840182422.
Donovan, Mike (2017). Glory, Glory Lane. Pitch Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78531-326-4.
Goodwin, Bob (1988). Spurs: A Complete Record 1882–1988. Breedon Books. ISBN 978-0907969426.
Goodwin, Bob (2003). Spurs: The Illustrated History. Bredon. ISBN 1-85983-387-X.
Shakeshaft, Simon; Burney, Daren; Evans, Neville (2018). The Spurs Shirt. Vision Sports Publishing. ISBN 978-1909534-76-6.
Welch, Julie (2015). The Biography of Tottenham Hotspur. Vision Sports Publishing. ISBN 9781909534506.
The Tottenham & Edmonton Herald (1921). A Romance of Football, The History of the Tottenham Hotspur F.C. Retrieved 30 June 2018.
Further reading
External links
Official website
Independent websites
Tottenham Hotspur F.C. on BBC Sport: Club news – Recent results and fixtures
Tottenham Hotspur at Sky Sports
Tottenham Hotspur FC at Premier League
Tottenham Hotspur FC at UEFA |
Subsets and Splits