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Southampton_F.C. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_F.C. | [
322
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_F.C."
] | Southampton Football Club ( ) is a professional football club based in Southampton, Hampshire, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football, after achieving promotion in the 2024 EFL Championship play-off final. Its home ground since 2001 has been St Mary's Stadium, before which it was based at The Dell. The team play in red and white shirts. They have been nicknamed "The Saints" because of the club's beginnings as a church football team at St Mary's Church. Southampton shares a long-standing South Coast derby rivalry with Portsmouth, in part due to geographic proximity and both cities' respective maritime histories.
Founded in 1885, the club joined the Southern League as Southampton St. Mary's in 1894, dropping the St. Mary's from their name three years later. Southampton won the Southern League on six occasions and were beaten FA Cup finalists in 1900 and 1902, before being invited to become founder members of the Football League Third Division in 1920. They won promotion as Third Division South champions in 1921–22, remaining in the Second Division for 31 years until they were relegated in 1953. Crowned Third Division champions under the stewardship of Ted Bates in 1959–60, they were promoted into the First Division at the end of the 1965–66 campaign. They played top-flight football for eight seasons, but won the FA Cup as a Second Division team in 1976 with a 1–0 victory over Manchester United. Manager Lawrie McMenemy then took the club back into the top-flight with promotion in 1977–78.
Southampton were beaten finalists in the League Cup in 1979 and finished as runners-up in the First Division in 1983–84, three points behind Liverpool. The club were founder members of the Premier League in 1992 and reached another FA Cup final in 2003. Relegation ended their 27-year stay in the top-flight in 2005, and they were relegated down to the third tier in 2009. Southampton won the Football League Trophy in 2010 and won successive promotion from League One and the Championship in 2010–11 and 2011–12. After an 11-year stint in the top flight, during which they were EFL Cup runners-up in 2017, they were relegated in 2023. The club won the 2024 Championship play-off final and returned to the Premier League at the first attempt.
History
Foundation and Southern League (1885–1920)
Southampton were originally founded at St. Mary's Church, on 21 November 1885 by members of the St. Mary's Church of England Young Men's Association.
St. Mary's Y.M.A., as they were usually referred to in the local press, played most of their early games on The Common where games were frequently interrupted by pedestrians insistent on exercising their right to roam. More important matches, such as cup games, were played either at the County Cricket Ground in Northlands Road or the Antelope Cricket Ground in St Mary's Road.
The club was originally known as St. Mary's Young Men's Association F.C. (usually abbreviated to "St. Mary's Y.M.A.") and then became simply St. Mary's F.C. in 1887–88, before adopting the name Southampton St. Mary's when the club joined the Southern League in 1894.
For the start of their League career, Saints signed several new players on professional contracts, including Charles Baker, Alf Littlehales and Lachie Thomson from Stoke and Fred Hollands from Millwall. After winning the Southern League title in 1896–97, the club became a limited company and was renamed Southampton F.C.
Southampton won the Southern League championship for three years running between 1897 and 1899 and again in 1901, 1903 and 1904. During this time, they moved to a newly built £10,000 stadium called The Dell, to the northwest of the city centre in 1898. Although they would spend the next 103 years there, the future was far from certain in those early days and the club had to rent the premises first before they could afford to buy the stadium in the early part of the 20th century. The club reached the first of their four FA Cup Finals in 1900. On that day, they went down 4–0 to Bury and two years later they would suffer a similar fate at the hands of Sheffield United as they were beaten 2–1 in a replay of the 1902 final. Reaching those finals gave Southampton recognition, even internationally: in 1909, an Athletic Bilbao representative who played for affiliated team Atlético Madrid purchased 50 Saints shirts during a trip to England, which were shared between the two squads. This early Southampton connection is the reason why the colours of both Spanish clubs became red and white, as they are nowadays.
Joining the Football League (1920–1966)
After World War I, Southampton joined the newly formed Football League Third Division in 1920 which split into South and North sections a year later. The 1921–22 season ended in triumph with promotion and marked the beginning of a 31-year stay in the Second Division.
The 1922–23 season was a unique "Even Season" – 14 wins, 14 draws and 14 defeats for 42 points, or one point per game. Goals for and against statistics were also equal and the team finished in mid-table.
In 1925 and 1927, they reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, losing 2–0 and 2–1 to Sheffield United and Arsenal respectively.
Southampton were briefly forced to switch home matches to the ground of their local rivals Portsmouth at Fratton Park during World War II when a bomb landed on The Dell pitch in November 1940, leaving an 18-foot crater which damaged an underground culvert and flooded the pitch.
Promotion was narrowly missed in 1947–48 when they finished in third place, a feat repeated the following season (despite having an eight-point lead with eight games to play) whilst in 1949–50 they narrowly missed out on promotion to second placed Sheffield United. In the 1948–49 and 1949–50 seasons, Charlie Wayman scored 56 goals, but relegation in 1953 sent Southampton sliding back into Division 3 (South).
It took until 1960 for Southampton to regain Second Division status with Derek Reeves plundering 39 of the champions' 106 league goals. On 27 April 1963, a crowd of 68,000 at Villa Park saw them lose 1–0 to Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final.
Reaching the First Division and cup win (1966–1977)
In 1966, Ted Bates' team were promoted to the First Division as runners-up, with Martin Chivers scoring 30 of Saints' 85 league goals.
For the following campaign Ron Davies arrived to score 43 goals in his first season. Saints stayed among the elite for eight years, with the highest finishing position being seventh place in 1968–69 and again in 1970–71. These finishes were high enough for them to qualify for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1969–70 (going out in Round 3 to Newcastle United) and its successor, the UEFA Cup in 1971–72, when they went out in the first round to Athletic Bilbao.
In December 1973, Bates stood down to be replaced by his assistant Lawrie McMenemy. The Saints were one of the first victims of the new three-down relegation system in 1974.
Under McMenemy's management, Saints started to rebuild in the Second Division, capturing players such as Peter Osgood, Jim McCalliog, Jim Steele and Peter Rodrigues (captain) and in 1976, Southampton reached the FA Cup final, playing Manchester United at Wembley, and beat much-fancied United 1–0 with a goal from Bobby Stokes. The following season, they played in Europe again in the Cup Winners' Cup, reaching Round 3 where they lost 2–3 on aggregate to Anderlecht.
Return to First Division (1977–1992)
In 1977–78, captained by Alan Ball, Saints finished runners-up in the Second Division (behind Bolton Wanderers) and returned to the First Division. They finished comfortably in 14th place in their first season back in the top flight. The following season they returned to Wembley in the final of the League Cup where they acquitted themselves well, losing 3–2 to Nottingham Forest.
In 1980, McMenemy made his biggest signing, capturing the European Footballer of the Year Kevin Keegan. Although Keegan's Southampton career only lasted two years, Saints fielded an attractive side also containing Alan Ball, prolific goal-scorer Ted MacDougall, (who still holds the record for the largest number of goals in an FA Cup game – nine – for Bournemouth against Margate in an 11–0 win), MacDougall's strike partner at Bournemouth and Norwich City, Phil Boyer, club stalwart Mick Channon and Charlie George and in 1980–81 they scored 76 goals, finishing in sixth place, then their highest league finish. The following season, Kevin Keegan helped lift the club to the top of the First Division. Southampton led the league for over two months, taking top spot on 30 January 1982 and staying there (apart from one week) until 3 April 1982. But in a disappointing end to the season, in which Keegan was hampered by a back injury, Southampton won only two of their last nine games and finished seventh. The winners of a wide-open title race were Keegan's old club Liverpool, who were crowned champions on the final day of the season. Keegan scored 26 of Southampton's 72 goals that season, but was then sold to Newcastle.
Southampton continued to progress under McMenemy's stewardship, and with a team containing Peter Shilton (the England goalkeeper), Nick Holmes, David Armstrong, striker Steve Moran and quick winger Danny Wallace reached their highest ever league finish as runners-up in 1983–84 (three points behind the champions Liverpool) as well as reaching the semi-final of the FA Cup losing 1–0 to Everton at Highbury. McMenemy then added experienced midfielder Jimmy Case to his ranks.
They finished fifth the following year, but as a result of the Heysel Disaster all English clubs were banned from European competition: had it not been for this, then Southampton would have again qualified for the UEFA Cup.
McMenemy left at the end of the 1984–85 season to be succeeded by Chris Nicholl, who was sacked after six years in charge despite preserving the club's top flight status. He was replaced by Ian Branfoot, who until the end of the 1990–91 season had been assistant manager to Steve Coppell at Crystal Palace. By this stage, a key player in the Southampton line-up was Guernsey-born attacking midfielder/striker Matthew Le Tissier, who broke into the first team in the 1986–87 season. He was voted PFA Young Player of the Year in 1990 and later made eight appearances for the England team – he finally retired in 2002 at the age of 33. Another exciting young player to break into the Southampton team just after Le Tissier was Alan Shearer, who at the age of 17 scored a hat-trick against Arsenal in a league match in April 1988. Shearer was a first team regular by 1990, and stayed with Southampton until July 1992, when he was sold to Blackburn Rovers for a national record of more than £3 million. He then became the most expensive footballer in the world when Blackburn sold him to Newcastle for £15 million in 1996. He also scored 30 times for England internationally.
Southampton in the Premier League (1992–2005)
Southampton were founding members of the Premier League in 1992–93, but spent most of the next ten seasons struggling against relegation. In 1995–96, Southampton finished 17th with 38 league points, avoiding relegation on goal difference. Two important wins during the final weeks of the season did much to ensure that Saints and not Manchester City would achieve Premiership survival. First came a 3–1 home win over eventual double winners Manchester United, then came a 1–0 away win over relegated Bolton Wanderers. Former Liverpool and Rangers manager Graeme Souness, was brought in, signing foreign players such as Egil Østenstad and Eyal Berkovic. The highlight of the season was a 6–3 win over Manchester United at The Dell in October, when both his signings scored twice. Souness resigned after just one season in charge, being replaced by Dave Jones who had won promotion to Division One with Stockport County as well as reaching the League Cup semi-finals.
In 1998–99, they were rooted to the bottom of the table for much of the first half of the season but again avoided relegation on the last day of the season after a late run of good results, helped by the intervention of Latvian Marian Pahars and old hero Le Tissier (The so-called "Great Escape"). In 1999, Southampton were given the go-ahead to build a new 32,000-seat stadium in the St Mary's area of the city, having been playing in the Dell since 1898. The stadium had been converted to an all-seater format earlier in the decade, but had a capacity of less than 16,000 and was unsuitable for further expansion.
During the 1999–2000 season, Dave Jones quit as Southampton manager to concentrate on a court case after he was accused of abusing children at the children's home where he had worked during the 1980s. The accusations were later proved to be groundless, but it was too late to save Jones' career as Southampton manager and he was succeeded by ex-England manager Glenn Hoddle. Hoddle helped keep Southampton well clear of the Premier League drop zone but having received an offer he moved to Tottenham Hotspur just before the end of the 2000–01 season. He was replaced by first-team coach Stuart Gray, who oversaw the relocation to the St Mary's Stadium for the 2001–02 season. At the end of the 2000–01 season, in the last competitive match at The Dell, Matthew Le Tissier came on late to score the last ever league goal at the old stadium with a half volley on the turn in a 3–2 win against Arsenal. Gray was sacked after a poor start to the following season, and he was replaced by ex-Coventry City manager Gordon Strachan, who steered Southampton to safety and a secure 11th-place finish.
In 2002–03, Southampton finished eighth in the league and finished runners-up in the FA Cup to Arsenal (after losing 1–0 at the Millennium Stadium), thanks in no small part to the metamorphosis of James Beattie, who fired home 24 goals, 23 in the league. Strachan resigned in March 2004 and within eight months, two managers – Paul Sturrock and Steve Wigley – had come and gone. Chairman Rupert Lowe risked the ire of Saints fans when he appointed Harry Redknapp as manager on 8 December 2004, just after his resignation at South Coast rivals Portsmouth. He brought in a number of new signings, including his son Jamie in the attempt to survive relegation. Southampton were relegated from the Premier League on the last day of the season, ending 27 successive seasons of top flight football for the club. Their relegation was ironically confirmed by a 2–1 home defeat to Manchester United, who had been on the receiving end of many upsets by Southampton over the years, namely in the 1976 FA Cup final and since then on a number of occasions in the league, as well as inflicting a heavy defeat on them in a November 1986 League Cup tie which cost United manager Ron Atkinson his job.
Lowe and Southampton continued to make headlines after former England Rugby World Cup-winning coach Sir Clive Woodward joined the club—eventually being appointed technical director in June 2005.
Outside the top flight (2005–2012)
In November 2005, manager Harry Redknapp resigned to rejoin Portsmouth, and was replaced by George Burley. Rupert Lowe resigned as chairman in June 2006, and Jersey-based businessman Michael Wilde, who had become the club's major shareholder assumed the post. Following a club record £6 million being spent on transfers, Polish strikers Grzegorz Rasiak and Marek Saganowski performed well and the season saw the introduction of 17-year-old left-back Gareth Bale. Southampton finished in sixth place and lost the play-off semi-final to Derby County on penalties.
The board sought new investment in the club, and in February 2007, Wilde stepped down as chairman to be replaced by local businessman Leon Crouch as "Acting chairman", a role Crouch retained until 21 July 2007. In the 2007–08 season, George Burley said that players such as Bale and Kenwyne Jones had to be sold to stop the club going into administration and that failing to achieve promotion had put the club in serious financial difficulty. Burley left the club in January 2008 to take over as Scotland manager and was replaced by Nigel Pearson who saved the club from relegation on the final day.
In July 2008, all the board members except one resigned, allowing Lowe and Wilde to return: Wilde as chairman of Southampton FC and Rupert Lowe as chairman of Southampton Leisure Holdings plc. Although Pearson kept the team up, the board did not renew his contract due to financial constraints, and the relatively unknown Dutchman Jan Poortvliet was appointed manager. Financial troubles continued to mount, resulting in more players being sold or loaned out and parts of St Mary's were closed off to reduce costs. In January 2009, Poortvliet resigned with the club one place from bottom of the Championship, with Mark Wotte taking over managerial duties.
In April 2009, Southampton's parent company was placed in administration. A 10-point penalty was imposed, but as the team was already being relegated due to finishing second from bottom of the Football League Championship this points deduction had to apply to the 2009–10 season. By the end of May, the club was unable to meet its staff wages and asked employees to work unpaid as a gesture of goodwill. The administrator warned that the club faced imminent bankruptcy unless a buyer was found. In June, administrator Mark Fry confirmed negotiations with two groups of investors, followed by confirmation that the club had been sold to an overseas buyer "owned and controlled by Markus Liebherr". Italian businessman Nicola Cortese was brought in by Liebherr to look after the club's business interests on his behalf. In July 2009, with the club in the control of the new owner, Wotte was sacked as head coach and Alan Pardew was appointed as the new first team manager. The Saints made their first big signing under Liebherr, striker Rickie Lambert, who was purchased on 10 August from League One side Bristol Rovers.
Southampton started the 2009–10 season in League One, in the third tier of English football for the first time in 50 years and with −10 points. In March 2010, Southampton won their first trophy since 1976 when they defeated Carlisle United 4–1 at Wembley to claim the Football League Trophy. Southampton finished the season in seventh place, seven points from the last play-off position.
A new home shirt was unveiled on 10 June 2010, in celebration of the club's 125th anniversary. The design was based on the original St. Mary's Y.M.A. kit used in 1885; it featured the new anniversary crest and was without a sponsor's logo. On 11 August, it was announced that Liebherr had died; however, the club's future had been assured and planned for before his death. Pardew was dismissed in August and Nigel Adkins joined from Scunthorpe United as his replacement. The club was promoted to the Championship in May 2011 as runners-up to Brighton & Hove Albion.
Returning to the Championship for the 2011–12 season, Southampton made their best start to a season for 75 years with a winning run at St. Mary's of 13 league games, setting a new club record and going top of the league. In April 2012, Southampton achieved promotion to the Premier League as runners-up to Reading. The final game of the season set a record attendance at St Mary's Stadium of 32,363. Lambert finished the season as the Championship's top goalscorer with 27 league goals, his third "Golden Boot" in four seasons. He also won the Championship Player of the Year award. As a result, they became the second team within a year to achieve back-to-back promotions, a feat that Norwich City had achieved one year before.
Return to the Premier League, relegation, and subsequent promotion (2012–present)
Southampton returned to the Premier League for season 2012–13 initially under Nigel Adkins. Substantial sums were spent to strengthen the playing squad, but early in the season, Adkins was replaced by Argentine coach Mauricio Pochettino. Southampton finished the season in 14th place, and next season in eighth.
At the end of the 2013–14 season, Pochettino departed the club for Tottenham. The club subsequently appointed Ronald Koeman as his replacement on a three-year contract, and made several high-profile sales over the summer. In the final game of the 2014–15 season, a 6–1 victory against Aston Villa, Sadio Mané scored three goals in the space of 176 seconds, the fastest hat-trick in the history of the Premier League. The club finished seventh, then their highest ever Premier League rank, therefore qualifying for the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League. After defeating Vitesse, the Saints were eliminated in the play-off by Midtjylland. The following season, Southampton once again set new records for the club at the end of the season, finishing in sixth place. They once again qualified for the Europa League, although this time immediately entered the group stages, as opposed to the play-off rounds.
In June 2016, Koeman left Southampton to join Everton and Claude Puel replaced him on a three-year contract. The club were eliminated in the group stage of the Europa League but were more successful in the EFL Cup, where they lost 3–2 in the final to Manchester United. The club ended the 2016–17 season in eighth. During the summer, Puel was replaced as manager by Argentine coach Mauricio Pellegrino, previously of Alavés. In mid-season, the club sold Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk to Liverpool for an estimated £75 million, Southampton's record sale and a world record for his position. Pellegrino was sacked in March 2018 with the team one point above the relegation zone, and his replacement, former player, Mark Hughes, guided the club to a 17th-place finish, avoiding relegation on the last day of the season. Hughes signed a new contract at the end of the season but a poor start to the following season led to him being sacked in December with the team in 18th place. He was replaced with former RB Leipzig boss Ralph Hasenhüttl, who steered the club away from relegation to finish 16th.
In August 2017, Southampton Football Club confirmed that the Chinese businessman Gao Jisheng had completed a multimillion-pound takeover of the club, acquiring an 80% stake for around £210m after successfully passing the relevant checks, including the Premier League's owners and directors test. The deal followed more than 12 months of talks between the Gao family and the south coast club. The investment was made personally by Gao and his daughter Nelly as opposed to being sanctioned through Lander Sports, as originally mooted. Hangzhou-based Lander is the family's business arm, which develops, constructs and manages sports sites.
Southampton suffered their worst ever defeat on 25 October 2019, losing 9–0 to Leicester City at home, this would later be replicated on 2 February 2021 against Manchester United at Old Trafford in the following campaign, albeit under different circumstances. It is tied with Ipswich Town's defeat by Manchester United in 1995 as the biggest defeat since the Premier League's inception. Following universal backlash toward the team's performance, the players and coaching staff refused their wages from the match and instead donated them to the Saints Foundation. On 9 April 2020, Southampton became the first Premier League club to defer players' salaries, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite a poor start that saw them in the relegation zone as late as November, Southampton improved greatly as the season went on, ending the year with a seven-game unbeaten streak to finish 11th in the league. Their final tally of 52 points was the team's highest total since 2015–16.
The club's good run continued in the 2020–21 season with the Saints sitting in third after 13 games. The team also had a successful run in the FA Cup where they reached the semi-finals, losing to eventual winners Leicester City. In November, Southampton briefly led the Premier League table. However, despite the outstanding start to the season, a mid-season loss of form and an accumulation of injuries which decimated the senior squad ranks, due in part to the unavailability of much of the club's training facilities resulting from the restrictions imposed during the second lockdown in England. As a consequence of this, Hasenhüttl was forced to field many of the club's youth players in an attempt to fill in the gaps in his senior squad. After an impressive run during the first half of the season, Southampton would eventually finish in 15th place. In January 2022, Gao sold his 80% stake to Sport Republic, a group financed by Serbian Dragan Šolak for £100m. Despite most pundits predicting them to be relegated at the start of the season, Southampton finished the 2021–22 season in 15th place for the second consecutive year.
In November 2022, it was announced Southampton had parted company with manager Ralph Hasenhüttl after four years, to be replaced by Nathan Jones. On 12 February 2023, Jones was sacked following a disappointing run of results during which the Saints lost seven out of eight league matches, leaving them bottom of the Premier League table. After having served as caretaker manager in a 1–0 victory over Chelsea, Rubén Sellés, who had joined Southampton as first-team lead coach in June 2022, was announced as Jones's replacement on 24 February on a contract until the end of the 2022–23 season. Sellés was unable to save the Saints' season, and the team were officially relegated on 13 May, following a 2–0 home loss to Fulham. On 24 May 2023, Southampton confirmed that they would not renew the contract of Sellés when it expired at the end of the season.
On 21 June 2023, the club appointed Russell Martin as manager on a three-year contract. Southampton returned to the Premier League at the first attempt, defeating Leeds United in the play-off final.
Club identity
Crest
Originally, the club used the same crest as the one used by the city itself. However, in 1974 a competition was run for fans to design a new one.
The winning design, designed by Rolland Parris, was used for around 20 years, before being modified slightly by Southampton design agency The Graphics Workshop in the 1990s for copyright reasons.
From top-to-bottom, the halo is a reference to the nickname "Saints", the ball to the nature of the club, the scarf to the fans and the team colours. The tree represents the nearby New Forest and Southampton Common, with the water representing Southampton's connections with the rivers, seas and oceans. Below that is a white rose – the symbol of the city which is also present on the city coat of arms. In the mid-1990s the ball was changed from a vintage style ball (such as those used in the 1960s) to the current ball with black and white panels, for copyright reasons.
On 13 May 2010, the official crest for the 125th anniversary was released: "The black outline and halo feature will now appear in gold, whilst the all important years 1885 and 2010 are scripted either side of the shield, with the figure 125 replacing the ball". The badge was used on Southampton's shirts for the 2010–11 season.
Anthem
The Saints' anthem is the popular sports tune "When the Saints Go Marching In", and since the club's official nickname is "the Saints", they are one of only a few teams who do not change the original lyric.
Kit manufacturers and sponsors
Thirteen companies have sponsored the players' shirts since shirt advertising was permitted in English football. The first company to do so was photocopier manufacturer Rank Xerox which sponsored the club for three years from 1980. Other sponsors have been Air Florida (1983), Draper Tools (1984–93), Dimplex (1993–95), Sanderson (1995–99), Friends Provident (1999–2006), Flybe (2006–10), aap3 (2011–14), Veho (2014–16), Virgin Media (2016–19), LD Sports (2019–20), and Sportsbet.io (2020–24). Since 2024, the shirt sponsor is Rollbit. In addition, Virgin Media was Southampton's sleeve sponsor from 2017 to 2022. JD Sports was the sleeve sponsor for the 2022–23 season. Mairon Freight UK was the sleeve sponsor for the 2023–24 season. Since 2024, the sleeve sponsor is P&O Cruises.
Since 2024, Southampton's kits have been manufactured by Puma. Previous manufacturers have included Umbro (1974–76, 2008–13), Admiral (1976–80, 1991–93), Patrick (1980–87), Hummel (1987–91, 2021–24), Pony (1993–99), Adidas (2013–14, 2015–16) and Under Armour (2016–21). From 1999 to 2008, and in 2014–15, the club used its own brand, Saints.
Stadium and training facilities
The club's first home ground was the Antelope Ground from 1887 to 1896. Followed by the County Cricket Ground from 1896 to 1898.
From 1898 to 2001, Southampton played their home games at The Dell. The purpose-built stadium was redeveloped a number of times through its 103-year history, with two of the stands being completely rebuilt after fires and in 1950 it became the first ground in England to have permanent floodlighting installed. Following the Taylor report, The Dell was converted to an all-seater stadium and, with a capacity of approximately 15,000, became the smallest ground in England's top-flight, precipitating a move to a new home.
St Mary's Stadium has been home to the Saints since August 2001. It has a capacity of 32,689 and is one of only a handful of stadia in Europe to meet UEFA's Four Star criteria. The stadium has also been host to a number of international games. The ground's record attendance is 32,363, set in a game between Southampton and Coventry City in April 2012.
The club's training facilities, Staplewood Campus, are located in Marchwood on the edge of the New Forest. The current facilities were opened in November 2014, at a cost of circa £40m. The main building was named after the club's late owner, Markus Liebherr.
For the 2012–13 season, until the end of the 2013–14 season, the club agreed a deal with Eastleigh, then of the Conference South, for the use of their stadium, Ten Acres, for The Saints' U21 team fixtures. This continues a partnership with Eastleigh that has lasted for the last decade. This partnership though ended and Southampton's youth teams continued to play at Staplewood and St. Mary's until the 2019–20 season when some U23 cup games were to be played at Totton's Testwood Stadium, where Southampton Women play their home matches.
Rivalries
The South Coast Derby is the name given to matches between the Saints and their fierce nearby rivals, Portsmouth, from the city of the same name, 19 miles (31 km) from Southampton. The south coast derbies are also referred to as the Hampshire derby. Including Southern League games, there have been 71 games between the two clubs, with Southampton winning 35 and Portsmouth 21.
Records and statistics
Longest winning run
10 matches, 16 April 2011 – 20 August 2011 (League)
11 matches, 16 April 2011 – 20 August 2011 (All competitions)
Longest unbeaten run
22 matches, 30 September 2023 – 10 February 2024 (League)
25 matches, 30 September 2023 – 10 February 2024 (All competitions)
Longest home winning streak
19 matches, 12 February 2011 – 29 November 2011 (League)
21 matches, 12 February 2011 – 29 November 2011 (All competitions)
Biggest wins
Home
11–0 against Northampton Town, 28 December 1901 (Southern League)
11–0 against Watford, 13 December 1902 (Southern League)
8–0 against Northampton Town, 24 December 1921 (Football League Third Division South)
8–0 against Sunderland, 18 October 2014 (Premier League)
Away
8–0 against Newport County, 25 August 2021 (EFL Cup)
6–0 against Carlisle United, 22 January 1977 (Football League Second Division)
6–0 against Wolverhampton Wanderers, 31 March 2007 (Football League Championship)
6–0 against Oldham Athletic, 11 January 2011 (Football League One)
Biggest losses
Home
0–9 against Leicester City, 25 October 2019 (Premier League)
0–6 against Plymouth Argyle, 5 December 1931 (Football League Second Division)
0–6 against Brentford, 9 March 1959 (Football League Third Division)
Away
0–9 against Manchester United, 2 February 2021 (Premier League)
0–8 against Crystal Palace, 16 November 1913 (Southern League)
0–8 against Tottenham Hotspur, 28 March 1936 (Football League Second Division)
0–8 against Everton, 20 November 1971 (Football League First Division)
Highest scoring Football League game
9–3 (at home) against Wolverhampton Wanderers, 18 September 1965 (Football League Second Division)
Record home attendance
32,363 against Coventry City, 28 April 2012
Player records
Most appearances
Terry Paine – 815: 1956–1974
Most goals
Mick Channon – 228: 1966–1977, 1979–1982
Most goals in one season
Derek Reeves – 44: 1959–60
Most goals in one match
Albert Brown – 7: against Northampton Town, 28 December 1901
Youngest player
Theo Walcott – 16 years 143 days. Against Wolverhampton Wanderers, 6 August 2005
Oldest player
Willy Caballero – 41 years 122 days. Against Blackpool, 28 January 2023
Highest transfer fees
Spent: Kamaldeen Sulemana – £22 million fee paid to Rennes.
Received: Virgil van Dijk – £75 million fee received from Liverpool.
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.
The Saints U21s and Academy
Southampton runs a highly successful youth academy, with a number of teams from ages eight to 21 years. Recent products of the club's youth system include England internationals Adam Lallana, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, James Ward-Prowse, Calum Chambers, Luke Shaw and Theo Walcott; Wales international winger Gareth Bale; and Ireland international striker Michael Obafemi.
Former players
Club management
Managerial history
Controversy
Historic sexual abuse prosecutions
In December 2016, as the United Kingdom football sexual abuse scandal expanded, former Southampton trainees Dean Radford, Jamie Webb and, later, Billy Seymour told the BBC about incidents they said happened when they were in their teens. By 4 December 2016, six players had alleged abuse by an ex-Southampton employee, subsequently named as Bob Higgins. He had been dismissed by Southampton in 1989 after allegations were made against him, and in 1991 he was charged with six counts of indecent assault against young boys he had been coaching; at the trial at Southampton Crown Court, he was acquitted on the direction of the judge when the prosecution offered no evidence. Higgins then worked as a youth coach at Peterborough United in the mid-1990s, and was investigated as part of a 1997 Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, when he denied allegations of abuse.
On 5 July 2017, Higgins was charged with 65 counts of indecent assault. The offences were alleged to have taken place in the 1980s and 1990s and to have involved 23 alleged victims. On 23 July 2018, after a trial at Salisbury Crown Court, Higgins was found guilty of one charge of indecent assault, and not guilty of another count of the same offence, while the jury failed to reach verdicts on 48 other counts of the same charge. After a 2019 retrial, on 51 counts of indecent assault, at Bournemouth Crown Court, Higgins was found guilty of 45 charges of indecent assault against teenage boys, not guilty of five counts of indecent assault, with the jury unable to reach a verdict on one final count. He was sentenced to 24 years and three months in prison.
The FA's Sheldon Review, published in March 2021, identified failures to act adequately on complaints or rumours of sexual abuse at clubs including Southampton. In November 2021, a report by the children's charity Barnardo's criticised Southampton for missing opportunities to prevent Higgins from abusing schoolboy footballers: "adults in Southampton Football Club during the time Higgins worked for them or on their behalf did not consider the welfare and wellbeing of the boys involved with the club as their prime consideration." It said the damage caused was "incalculable" and "devastating". Southampton issued a deep apology, admitting it had "completely failed to protect so many young people from suffering abuse over a long period of time".
Honours
Source:
League
First Division (level 1)
Runners-up: 1983–84
Second Division / Championship (level 2)
Runners-up: 1965–66, 1977–78, 2011–12
Play-off winners: 2024
Third Division South / Third Division / League One (level 3)
Champions: 1921–22, 1959–60
Runners-up: 2010–11
Southern League
Champions (6): 1896–97, 1897–98, 1898–99, 1900–01, 1902–03, 1903–04
Cup
FA Cup
Winners: 1975–76
Runners-up: 1899–1900, 1901–02, 2002–03
Football League Cup / EFL Cup
Runners-up: 1978–79, 2016–17
Football League Trophy
Winners: 2009–10
Full Members' Cup
Runners-up: 1991–92
References
External links
Official website
Independent websites
Southampton F.C. on BBC Sport: Club news – Recent results and fixtures
Southampton at Sky Sports
Southampton FC at Premier League
Southampton FC at UEFA |
George_Howell_(entrepreneur) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Howell_(entrepreneur) | [
323
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Howell_(entrepreneur)#The_Coffee_Connection"
] | George Howell (born 1945) is an American entrepreneur and one of the pioneers of the specialty-coffee movement in the early 1970s.
Early life
Born and raised in New Jersey, Howell's family moved to Mexico City when he was 13. He studied art history, French, and Spanish literature at Yale University from 1964 to 1967, when he dropped out.
Career
In 1974, Howell and his wife Laurie moved to Boston. After having lived in Berkeley, California, for a time, Howell has said, "In 1974 we [decided] to leave the West Coast, I already had two kids with another on the way. We decided to move east to Boston. We drove cross-country. I took with me some whole bean coffee and a grinder. We stopped at the various Howard Johnson’s that were on the interstates on our way and I would go into men’s room, grind the coffee there, leaving it smelling a whole lot better than when I walked in, and then I would take out my French press on the counter, ask for hot water for 35 cents and make my French press at the Howard Johnson’s counter. And within minutes I would always have several people around me wondering what that was, and this is before I even had any clue that I would get into a coffee business."
In 1975, Howell founded Coffee Connection, a coffee shop and retailer in Cambridge, Massachusetts which was a pioneer in third wave coffee. It expanded to 23 locations in the Northeast. It was acquired by Starbucks Corporation for $23 million in 1994 (equivalent to $47.3 million in 2023), and formed the nexus of their expansion into the Boston area. With the acquisition, Starbucks acquired the rights to use the name Frappuccino for a popular blended iced coffee drink, which Starbucks reformulated. Howell later founded George Howell Coffee.
In 1997, Howell was invited to become a quality consultant to Brazil as part of the Gourmet Project, a 2-year initiative set up by the United Nations’ International Trade Council (ITC) and the International Coffee Organization (ICO), which influenced the creation of the Cup of Excellence competition.
References
External links
Article Featuring the life of George Howell from Boston Magazine |
Frappuccino | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frappuccino | [
323
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frappuccino"
] | Frappuccino is a line of blended iced coffee drinks sold by Starbucks. It may consist of coffee or crème base, blended with ice and ingredients such as flavored syrups and usually topped with whipped cream and or spices. It may also include blended Starbucks refreshers. Frappuccinos are also sold as bottled coffee beverages in grocery stores, convenience stores and from vending machines.
History
Frappuccino is a portmanteau of "frappe" (pronounced and also spelled without the accent)—the New England name for a thick milkshake with ice cream, derived from the French word lait frappé (beaten milk)—and cappuccino, an espresso coffee with frothed milk.
The Frappuccino was originally developed, trademarked, and sold by George Howell's Eastern Massachusetts coffee shop chain the Coffee Connection, and created and named by his marketing director, Andrew Frank. When Starbucks purchased the Coffee Connection in 1994, they gained the rights to use, make, market, and sell the Frappuccino drink. The drink, with a different recipe, was introduced under the Starbucks name in 1995. In 2012, Starbucks had annual Frappuccino sales of over $2 billion.
Recipe
The recipe is derived from a fusion of various cold drinks, including the "coffee frap" (similar to iced coffee) and the "frappe" (blended ice cream, syrup, and milk), with the Italian cappuccino. The recipe today consists of an instant coffee mix, ice, an emulsifying agent such as xanthan gum, and other additives such as milk, sugar, flavored syrups, and whipped cream.
Versions
Currently available
The following is a list of the typical versions available of each type of Frappuccino.
Decaffeinated
Upon consumer request, decaf espresso can be used in place of the standard instant coffee mix.
Crème
A coffee-free base was created to make a drink called a Frappuccino Blended Crème. Menu examples include the Mocha Crème, Vanilla Bean Crème, Strawberry Crème, Matcha Crème, and Chai Crème. All Frappuccino menu items can come as a Crème based Frappuccino, occasionally under slightly different names such as the Chocolate Cookie Crumble instead of the Mocha Cookie Crumble. Any syrup or sauce can be used to make a custom Frappuccino Blended Crème. Crème Frappuccinos contain very little or no caffeine.
Non-dairy alternatives
Frappuccinos made with soy milk became available in the United States and Canada in 2010. In January 2011, Starbucks introduced the option to Australian stores, and it has since been made available in other countries. Starbucks has also introduced coconut, almond, and oat milk options.
Modifications
Frappuccinos may include additional ingredients, which can include espresso shots, flavored syrups, "Frappuccino chips" (which are similar to chocolate chips), and flavored powders. Consumers may also customize the consistency of Frappuccinos by ordering light or extra ice. Any Frappuccino can have additional syrups, shots of espresso, or various other modifications at a possible surcharge.
Former
Juice blends
In the summer of 2006, Starbucks introduced Frappuccino Juice Blends, which were described as being "real fruit juices combined with Tazo Tea, blended with ice." Juice Blends were gradually discontinued throughout 2007 and 2008 and are no longer offered by Starbucks.
Frappuccino Light
Previously, Frappuccinos were orderable as "light." The light Frappuccino was an alternative to the coffee Frappuccino, made using a low-sugar Frappuccino base and nonfat milk, and typically served without whipped cream. The light Frappuccino has now been discontinued.
Seasonal Limited Editions
Drinks such as the Unicorn, Frankenstein, Red Velvet Cake Cream, Cherry Blossom, and Zombie Frappuccinos were all seasonal limited edition offerings. The release of these Frappuccinos began in April 2017 and ran through 2018. Each Frappuccino was available only for a short period of time, as the ingredients were produced in relatively low quantities.
Bottled Frappuccino
Bottled Frappuccinos are sold in retail stores and vending machines. The 9.5-US-fluid-ounce (280 ml) bottled version was originally manufactured in 1996. Starbucks offers 19 different bottled Frappuccino flavors including Mocha, Vanilla, Coffee, Toasted White Chocolate Mocha, Pumpkin Spice, and Caramel. The bottled Frappuccino comes in two package sizes, including 13.7 US fluid ounces (410 ml) and 9.5 US fluid ounces (280 ml).
North American Coffee Partnership
In 1994, PepsiCo and Starbucks formed an entity called the North American Coffee Partnership. The joint venture was created so that ready-to-drink products using the Starbucks name could be distributed using Pepsi's global network. The Frappuccino was the joint venture's first product.
High sugar content
The Frappuccino beverages contain a high level of added sugar. A typical grande (16oz) beverage has significantly more than the 36/32 grams of sugar that the American Heart Association suggests men/women should have in a day. For example, a grande Sugar Cookie Almondmilk Frappuccino contains 58 grams of sugar, a grande Matcha Creme Frappuccino has 61 grams, and a grande Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino has 65 grams.
See also
The Coffee Connection
Coffee milk
References
External links
Official website |
Max_Planck | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck"
] | Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (; German: [maks ˈplaŋk] ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame as a physicist rests primarily on his role as the originator of quantum theory and one of the founders of modern physics, which revolutionized understanding of atomic and subatomic processes. He is known for the Planck constant, which is of foundational importance for quantum physics, and which he used to derive a set of units, today called Planck units, expressed only in terms of fundamental physical constants.
Planck was twice president of the German scientific institution Kaiser Wilhelm Society. In 1948, it was renamed the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) and nowadays includes 83 institutions representing a wide range of scientific directions.
Early life and education
Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family. His paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen; his father was a law professor at the University of Kiel and Munich. One of his uncles was also a judge.
Planck was born in 1858 in Kiel, Holstein (now Schleswig-Holstein), to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig. He was baptized with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck; of his given names, Marx was indicated as the "appellation name". However, by the age of ten he signed with the name Max and used this for the rest of his life.
He was the sixth child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his father's first marriage. War was common during Planck's early years and among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Second Schleswig War in 1864. In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium school. There, his mathematical talents emerged early and he later came under the tutelage of Hermann Müller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics. It was from Müller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 17. This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.
Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.
Planck enrolled at the University of Munich in 1874. Under professor Philipp von Jolly's supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but transferred to theoretical physics. Jolly advised Planck against going into theoretical physics. Planck recalls that in 1878, Jolly argued that physics was almost complete, being a "highly developed, nearly fully matured science, that through the crowning achievement of the discovery of the principle of conservation of energy will arguably soon take its final stable form".
In 1877, he went to the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin for a year of study with physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He wrote that Helmholtz was never quite prepared, spoke slowly, miscalculated endlessly, and bored his listeners, while Kirchhoff spoke in carefully prepared lectures which were dry and monotonous. He soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he undertook a program of mostly self-study of Rudolf Clausius's writings, which led him to choose thermodynamics as his field.
In October 1878, Planck passed his qualifying exams and in February 1879 defended his dissertation Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie (On the Second Law of Mechanical Heat Theory). He briefly taught mathematics and physics at his former school in Munich.
By the year 1880, Planck had obtained the two highest academic degrees offered in Europe. The first was a doctorate degree after he completed his paper detailing his research and theory of thermodynamics. He then presented his thesis called Gleichgewichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen (Equilibrium states of isotropic bodies at different temperatures), which earned him a habilitation.
Career
With the completion of his habilitation thesis, Planck became an unpaid Privatdozent (German academic rank comparable to lecturer/assistant professor) in Munich, waiting until he was offered an academic position. Although he was initially ignored by the academic community, he furthered his work on the field of heat theory and discovered one after another the same thermodynamical formalism as Gibbs without realizing it. Clausius's ideas on entropy occupied a central role in his work.
In April 1885, the University of Kiel appointed Planck as associate professor of theoretical physics. Further work on entropy and its treatment, especially as applied in physical chemistry, followed. He published his Treatise on Thermodynamics in 1897. He proposed a thermodynamic basis for Svante Arrhenius's theory of electrolytic dissociation.
In 1889, he was named the successor to Kirchhoff's position at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin – presumably thanks to Helmholtz's intercession – and by 1892 became a full professor. In 1907 Planck was offered Ludwig Boltzmann's position in Vienna, but turned it down to stay in Berlin. During 1909, as a University of Berlin professor, he was invited to become the Ernest Kempton Adams Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at Columbia University in New York City. A series of his lectures were translated and co-published by Columbia University professor A. P. Wills. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914. He retired from Berlin on 10 January 1926, and was succeeded by Erwin Schrödinger. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1926 and the American Philosophical Society in 1933.
Professor at Berlin University
As a professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, Planck joined the local Physical Society. He later wrote about this time: "In those days I was essentially the only theoretical physicist there, whence things were not so easy for me, because I started mentioning entropy, but this was not quite fashionable, since it was regarded as a mathematical spook". Thanks to his initiative, the various local Physical Societies of Germany merged in 1898 to form the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, DPG); from 1905 to 1909 Planck was the president.
Planck started a six-semester course of lectures on theoretical physics, "dry, somewhat impersonal" according to Lise Meitner, "using no notes, never making mistakes, never faltering; the best lecturer I ever heard" according to an English participant, James R. Partington, who continues: "There were always many standing around the room. As the lecture-room was well heated and rather close, some of the listeners would from time to time drop to the floor, but this did not disturb the lecture." Planck did not establish an actual "school"; the number of his graduate students was only about 20, among them:
1897 Max Abraham (1875–1922)
1903 Max von Laue (1879–1960)
1904 Moritz Schlick (1882–1936)
1906 Walther Meissner (1882–1974)
1907 Fritz Reiche (1883–1960)
1912 Walter Schottky (1886–1976)
1914 Walther Bothe (1891–1957)
Entropy
Thermodynamics, also known as the "mechanical theory of heat" at the end of the 19th century, had emerged at the beginning of this century from an attempt to understand the functioning of steam engines and to improve their efficiency. In the 1840s, several researchers independently discovered and formulated the law of conservation of energy, which is now also known as the first law of thermodynamics. In 1850, Rudolf Clausius formulated the so-called second law of thermodynamics, which states that a voluntary (or spontaneous) transfer of energy is only possible from a warmer to a colder body, but not vice versa. In England at this time William Thomson came to the same conclusion.
Clausius generalized his formulation further and further and came up with a new formulation in 1865. To this end, he introduced the concept of Entropy, which he defined as a measure of the reversible supply of heat in relation to the absolute temperature.
The new formulation of the second law, which is still valid today, was: "Entropy can be created, but never destroyed". Clausius, whose work Planck read as a young student during his stay in Berlin, successfully applied this new law of nature to mechanical, thermoelectric and chemical processes.
In his dissertation in 1879, Planck summarized Clausius' writings, pointing out contradictions and inaccuracies in their formulation and then clarifying them. In addition, he generalized the validity of the second law to all processes in nature, Clausius had limited its application to reversible processes and thermal processes. Furthermore, Planck dealt intensively with the new concept of entropy and emphasized, that entropy is not only a property of a physical system, but at the same time a measure of the irreversibility of a process: If entropy is generated in a process, it is irreversible, since entropy cannot be destroyed according to the second law. In reversible processes, the entropy remains constant. He presented this fact in detail in 1887 in a series of treatises entitled "On the Princip of the Increase of Entropy".
In his study of the concept of entropy, Planck did not follow the molecular, probabilistic interpretation that prevailed at the time, as these do not provide absolute proof of universality. Instead, he pursued a phenomenological approach and was also skeptical of atomism. Even though he later abandoned this attitude in the course of his work on the law of radiation, his early work impressively shows the possibilites of the phenome of thermodynamics in solving concrete physicochemical problems.
Planck's understanding of entropy included the realization that the maximum of entropy corresponds to the equilibrium state. The accompanying conclusion that knowledge of the Entropy allows all laws of thermodynamic equilibrium states to be derived corresponds to the modern understanding of such states. Planck therefore chose equilibrium processes as his research focus and, based on his habilitation thesis, researched the coexistence of aggregate states and the equilibrium of gas reactions, for example. This work on the frontier of chemical thermodynamics also received great attention due to the rapidly expanding chemical work at that time.
Independently of Planck, Josiah Willard Gibbs had also discovered almost all the knowledge Planck gained about the properties of physicochemical equilibria and published them from 1876 onwards. Planck was unaware of these essays, and they did not appear in German until 1892. However, both scientists approached the topic in different ways, while Planck dealt with irreversible processes, Gibbs looked at equilibria. This approach was finally able to prevail because of its simplicity, but Planck's approach is attributed the greater universality.
Black-body radiation
In 1894, Planck turned his attention to the problem of black-body radiation. The problem had been stated by Kirchhoff in 1859: "how does the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body (a perfect absorber, also known as a cavity radiator) depend on the frequency of the radiation (i.e., the color of the light) and the temperature of the body?". The question had been explored experimentally, but no theoretical treatment had agreed with the experimentally observed evidence. Wilhelm Wien proposed Wien's law, which correctly predicted the behaviour at high frequencies, but failed at low frequencies. The Rayleigh–Jeans law, another approach to the problem, agreed with experimental results at low frequencies, but created what was later known as the "ultraviolet catastrophe" at high frequencies, as predicted by classical physics. However, contrary to many textbooks, this was not a motivation for Planck.
Planck's first proposed solution to the problem in 1899 followed from what he called the "principle of elementary disorder", which allowed him to derive Wien's law from a number of assumptions about the entropy of an ideal oscillator, creating what was referred to as the Wien–Planck law. Soon, however, it was found that experimental evidence did not confirm the new law at all, to Planck's frustration. He revised his approach and now derived the first version of the famous Planck black-body radiation law, which described clearly the experimentally observed black-body spectrum. It was first proposed in a meeting of the DPG on 19 October 1900 and published in 1901. (This first derivation did not include energy quantisation, and did not use statistical mechanics, to which he held an aversion.) In November 1900 Planck revised this first version, now relying on Boltzmann's statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics as a way of gaining a more fundamental understanding of the principles behind his radiation law. Planck was deeply suspicious of the philosophical and physical implications of such an interpretation of Boltzmann's approach; thus his recourse to them was, as he later put it, "an act of despair ... I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics".
The central assumption behind his new derivation, presented to the DPG on 14 December 1900, was the supposition, now known as the Planck postulate, that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of an elementary unit:
E
=
h
ν
{\displaystyle E=h\nu }
where h is the Planck constant, also known as Planck's action quantum (introduced already in 1899), and ν is the frequency of the radiation. Note that the elementary units of energy discussed here are represented by hν and not simply by ν. Physicists now call these quanta photons, and a photon of frequency ν will have its own specific and unique energy. The total energy at that frequency is then equal to hν multiplied by the number of photons at that frequency.
At first Planck considered that quantisation was only "a purely formal assumption ... actually I did not think much about it ..."; nowadays this assumption, incompatible with classical physics, is regarded as the birth of quantum physics and the greatest intellectual accomplishment of Planck's career. (Boltzmann had been discussing in a theoretical paper in 1877 the possibility that the energy states of a physical system could be discrete). The discovery of the Planck constant enabled him to define a new universal set of physical units (such as the Planck length and the Planck mass), all based on fundamental physical constants, upon which much of quantum theory is based. In a discussion with his son in December 1918 Planck described his discovery as 'a discovery of the first rank, comparable perhaps only to the discoveries of Newton'. In recognition of Planck's fundamental contribution to a new branch of physics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1918; (he received the award in 1919).
Subsequently, Planck tried to grasp the meaning of energy quanta, but to no avail. "My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action quantum into classical theory extended over several years and caused me much trouble." Even several years later, other physicists such as Rayleigh, Jeans, and Lorentz set the Planck constant to zero in order to align with classical physics, but Planck knew well that this constant had a precise nonzero value. "I am unable to understand Jeans' stubbornness – he is an example of a theoretician as should never be existing, the same as Hegel was for philosophy. So much the worse for the facts if they don't fit."
Max Born wrote about Planck: "He was, by nature, a conservative mind; he had nothing of the revolutionary and was thoroughly skeptical about speculations. Yet his belief in the compelling force of logical reasoning from facts was so strong that he did not flinch from announcing the most revolutionary idea which ever has shaken physics."
Einstein and the theory of relativity
In 1905, the three epochal papers by Albert Einstein were published in the journal Annalen der Physik. Planck was among the few who immediately recognized the significance of the special theory of relativity. Thanks to his influence, this theory was soon widely accepted in Germany. Planck also contributed considerably to extend the special theory of relativity. For example, he recast the theory in terms of classical action.
Einstein's hypothesis of light quanta (photons), based on Heinrich Hertz's 1887 discovery (and further investigation by Philipp Lenard) of the photoelectric effect, was initially rejected by Planck. He was unwilling to discard completely Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics. "The theory of light would be thrown back not by decades, but by centuries, into the age when Christiaan Huygens dared to fight against the mighty emission theory of Isaac Newton ..."
In 1910, Einstein pointed out the anomalous behavior of specific heat at low temperatures as another example of a phenomenon which defies explanation by classical physics. Planck and Walther Nernst, seeking to clarify the increasing number of contradictions, organized the First Solvay Conference (Brussels 1911). At this meeting Einstein was able to convince Planck.
Meanwhile, Planck had been appointed dean of Berlin University, whereby it was possible for him to call Einstein to Berlin and establish a new professorship for him (1914). Soon the two scientists became close friends and met frequently to play music together.
First World War
At the onset of the First World War Planck endorsed the general excitement of the public, writing that, "Besides much that is horrible, there is also much that is unexpectedly great and beautiful: the smooth solution of the most difficult domestic political problems by the unification of all parties (and) ... the extolling of everything good and noble." Planck also signed the infamous "Manifesto of the 93 intellectuals", a pamphlet of polemic war propaganda (while Einstein retained a strictly pacifistic attitude which almost led to his imprisonment, only being spared thanks to his Swiss citizenship).
In 1915, when Italy was still a neutral power, Planck voted successfully for a scientific paper from Italy, which received a prize from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where Planck was one of four permanent presidents.
Post-war and the Weimar Republic
In the turbulent post-war years, Planck, now the highest authority of German physics, issued the slogan "persevere and continue working" to his colleagues.
In October 1920, he and Fritz Haber established the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Organization of German Science), aimed at providing financial support for scientific research. A considerable portion of the money the organization would distribute was raised abroad.
Planck held leading positions at Berlin University, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the German Physical Society, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (which became the Max Planck Society in 1948). During this time economic conditions in Germany were such that he was hardly able to conduct research. In 1926, Planck became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
During the interwar period, Planck became a member of the Deutsche Volks-Partei (German People's Party), the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Gustav Stresemann, which aspired to liberal aims for domestic policy and rather revisionistic aims for politics around the world.
Planck disagreed with the introduction of universal suffrage and later expressed the view that the Nazi dictatorship resulted from "the ascent of the rule of the crowds".
Quantum mechanics
At the end of the 1920s, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli had worked out the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it was rejected by Planck, and by Schrödinger, Laue, and Einstein as well. Planck expected that wave mechanics would soon render quantum theory – his own child – unnecessary. This was not to be the case, however. Further work only served to underscore the enduring central importance of quantum theory, even against his and Einstein's philosophical revulsions. Here Planck experienced the truth of his own earlier observation from his struggle with the older views during his younger years: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Planck was 74 years old. He witnessed many Jewish friends and colleagues expelled from their positions and humiliated, and hundreds of scientists emigrate from Nazi Germany. Again he tried to "persevere and continue working" and asked scientists who were considering emigration to remain in Germany. Nevertheless, he did help his nephew, the economist Hermann Kranold, to emigrate to London after his arrest. He hoped the crisis would abate soon and the political situation would improve.
Otto Hahn asked Planck to gather well-known German professors in order to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, but Planck replied, "If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it, because they are eager to take over the positions of the others." Under Planck's leadership, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG) avoided open conflict with the Nazi regime, except concerning the Jewish Fritz Haber. In May of 1933 Planck requested and received an interview with the recently appointed Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler to discuss the issue, telling him that the "forced immigration of Jews would kill German science and Jews could be good Germans", to which the chancellor replied "but we don't have anything against the Jews, only against communists". Planck was therefore unsuccessful, since this reply "took from him every basis for further negotiation", as to Hitler "the Jews are all Communists, and these are my enemies." In the following year, 1934, Haber died in exile.
One year later, Planck, having been the president of the KWG since 1930, organized in a somewhat provocative style an official commemorative meeting for Haber. He also succeeded in secretly enabling a number of Jewish scientists to continue working in institutes of the KWG for several years. In 1936, his term as president of the KWG ended, and the Nazi government pressured him to refrain from seeking another term.
As the political climate in Germany gradually became more hostile, Johannes Stark, prominent exponent of the Deutsche Physik ("German Physics", also called "Aryan Physics") attacked Planck, Arnold Sommerfeld, and Heisenberg for continuing to teach the theories of Einstein, calling them "white Jews". The "Hauptamt Wissenschaft" (Nazi government office for science) started an investigation of Planck's ancestry, claiming that he was "1/16 Jewish", but Planck denied it.
In 1938, Planck celebrated his 80th birthday. The DPG held a celebration, during which the Max-Planck medal (founded as the highest medal by the DPG in 1928) was awarded to French physicist Louis de Broglie. At the end of 1938, the Prussian Academy lost its remaining independence and was taken over by Nazis (Gleichschaltung). Planck protested by resigning his presidency. He continued to travel frequently, giving numerous public talks, such as his talk on Religion and Science, and five years later he was sufficiently fit to climb 3,000-metre peaks in the Alps.
During the Second World War the increasing number of Allied bombing missions against Berlin forced Planck and his wife to temporarily leave the city and live in the countryside. In 1942, he wrote: "In me an ardent desire has grown to persevere this crisis and live long enough to be able to witness the turning point, the beginning of a new rise." In February 1944, his home in Berlin was completely destroyed by an air raid, annihilating all his scientific records and correspondence. His rural retreat was threatened by the rapid advance of the Allied armies from both sides.
In 1944, Planck's son Erwin was arrested by the Gestapo following the attempted assassination of Hitler in the 20 July plot. He was tried and sentenced to death by the People's Court in October 1944. Erwin was hanged at Berlin's Plötzensee Prison in January 1945. The death of his son destroyed much of Planck's will to live.
Personal life and death
In March 1887, Planck married Marie Merck (1861–1909), sister of a school fellow, and moved with her into a sublet apartment in Kiel. They had four children: Karl (1888–1916), the twins Emma (1889–1919) and Grete (1889–1917), and Erwin (1893–1945).
After living in the apartment in Berlin, the Planck family lived in a villa in Berlin-Grunewald, Wangenheimstrasse 21. Several other professors from University of Berlin lived nearby, among them theologian Adolf von Harnack, who became a close friend of Planck. Soon the Planck home became a social and cultural center. Numerous well-known scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner were frequent visitors. The tradition of jointly performing music had already been established in the home of Helmholtz.
After several happy years, in July 1909 Marie Planck died, possibly from tuberculosis.
In March 1911 Planck married his second wife, Marga von Hoesslin (1882–1948); in December his fifth child Hermann was born.
During the First World War Planck's second son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914, while his oldest son Karl was killed in action at Verdun. Grete died in 1917 while giving birth to her first child. Her sister died the same way two years later, after having married Grete's widower. Both granddaughters survived and were named after their mothers. Planck endured these losses stoically.
In January 1945, Erwin Planck, to whom he had been particularly close, was sentenced to death by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof because of his participation in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. Erwin was executed on 23 January 1945.
After World war II ended, Planck, his second wife, and their son were brought to a relative in Göttingen, where Planck died on October 4, 1947. He was buried in the old Stadtfriedhof (City Cemetery) in Göttingen.
Religious views
Planck was a member of the Lutheran Church in Germany. He was very tolerant toward alternative views and religions.
In a lecture in 1937 entitled "Religion und Naturwissenschaft" ("Religion and Natural Science") he suggested the importance of these symbols and rituals related directly with a believer's ability to worship God, but that one must be mindful that the symbols provide an imperfect illustration of divinity. He criticized atheism for being focused on the derision of such symbols, while at the same time warned of the over-estimation of the importance of such symbols by believers.
In "Religion und Naturwissenschaft", Planck expressed the view that God is present everywhere, and he held that "the holiness of the unintelligible Godhead is conveyed by the holiness of symbols." Atheists, he thought, attach too much importance to what are merely symbols. He was a churchwarden from 1920 until his death, and believed in an almighty, all-knowing, beneficent God (although not necessarily a personal one). Both science and religion wage a "tireless battle against skepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition" with the goal "toward God!"
Planck said in 1944, "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent spirit [orig. geist]. This spirit is the matrix of all matter."
Planck argued that the concept of God is important to both religion and science, but in different ways: "Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations … To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view".
Furthermore, Planck wrote, ..."to believe" means "to recognize as a truth", and the knowledge of nature, continually advancing on incontestably safe tracks, has made it utterly impossible for a person possessing some training in natural science to recognize as founded on truth the many reports of extraordinary occurrences contradicting the laws of nature, of miracles which are still commonly regarded as essential supports and confirmations of religious doctrines, and which formerly used to be accepted as facts pure and simple, without doubt or criticism. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely.
Noted historian of science John L. Heilbron characterized Planck's views on God as deistic. Heilbron further relates that when asked about his religious affiliation, Planck replied that although he had always been deeply religious, he did not believe "in a personal God, let alone a Christian God".
Publications
Planck, M. (1900a). "Über eine Verbesserung der Wienschen Spektralgleichung". Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 2: 202–204. Translated in ter Haar, D. (1967). "On an Improvement of Wien's Equation for the Spectrum" (PDF). The Old Quantum Theory. Pergamon Press. pp. 79–81. LCCN 66029628.
Planck, M. (1900b). "Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum". Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 2: 237. Translated in
ter Haar, D. (1967). "On the Theory of the Energy Distribution Law of the Normal Spectrum" (PDF). The Old Quantum Theory. Pergamon Press. p. 82. LCCN 66029628. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 September 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2014.
Planck, M. (1900c). "Entropie und Temperatur strahlender Wärme" [Entropy and Temperature of Radiant Heat]. Annalen der Physik. 306 (4): 719–737. Bibcode:1900AnP...306..719P. doi:10.1002/andp.19003060410.
Planck, M. (1900d). "Über irreversible Strahlungsvorgänge" [On Irreversible Radiation Processes]. Annalen der Physik. 306 (1): 69–122. Bibcode:1900AnP...306...69P. doi:10.1002/andp.19003060105.
Planck, M. (1901). "Ueber das Gesetz der Energieverteilung im Normalspektrum". Annalen der Physik. 309 (3): 553–563. Bibcode:1901AnP...309..553P. doi:10.1002/andp.19013090310. Translated in Ando, K. "On the Law of Distribution of Energy in the Normal Spectrum" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 October 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
Planck, M. (1903). Treatise on Thermodynamics. Ogg, A. (transl.). London: Longmans, Green & Co. OL 7246691M.
Planck, M. (1906). Vorlesungen über die Theorie der Wärmestrahlung. Leipzig: J.A. Barth. LCCN 07004527.
Planck, M. (1914). The Theory of Heat Radiation. Masius, M. (transl.) (2nd ed.). P. Blakiston's Son & Co. OL 7154661M.
Planck, M. (1915). Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics. Wills, A. P. (transl.). Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-69730-4.
Planck, M. (1908). Prinzip der Erhaltung der Energie. Leipzig: B.G.Teubner. ISBN 978-0-598-83768-4.
Planck, M. (1943). "Zur Geschichte der Auffindung des physikalischen Wirkungsquantums". Naturwissenschaften. 31 (14–15): 153–159. Bibcode:1943NW.....31..153P. doi:10.1007/BF01475738. S2CID 44899488.
See also
List of things named after Max Planck
German inventors and discoverers
Photon polarization
Statue of Max Planck
Zero-point energy
References
Sources
Aczel, Amir D. Entanglement, Chapter 4. (Penguin, 2003) ISBN 978-0-452-28457-9
Heilbron, J. L. (2000). The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00439-6.
Pickover, Clifford A. Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them, Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-533611-5
Medawar, Jean; Pyke, David (2012). Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime (Paperback). New York: Arcade Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61145-709-4.
Rosenthal-Schneider, Ilse Reality and Scientific Truth: Discussions with Einstein, von Laue, and Planck (Wayne State University, 1980) ISBN 0-8143-1650-6
External links
Works by Max Planck at Project Gutenberg
Works by Max Planck at Faded Page (Canada)
Works by or about Max Planck at the Internet Archive
Works by Max Planck at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Annotated bibliography for Max Planck from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
Max Planck – Encyclopædia Britannica article
Max Planck Biography – www.nobel-prize-winners.com
Max Planck Institutes of Natural Science and Astrophysics
Max Planck – Selbstdarstellung im Filmportrait (1942), [Cinematic self-portrait of Max Planck], Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1942
Max Planck on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, 2 June 1920 The Genesis and Present State of Development of the Quantum Theory
Life–Work–Personality – Exhibition on the 50th anniversary of Planck's death
Newspaper clippings about Max Planck in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW |
Albert_Einstein | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein"
] | Albert Einstein ( EYEN-styne; German: [ˈalbɛɐt ˈʔaɪnʃtaɪn] ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held as one of the most influential scientists. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory.
Born in the German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship (as a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg) the following year. In 1897, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school in Zürich, graduating in 1900. In 1901, he acquired Swiss citizenship, which he kept for the rest of his life. In 1903, he secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he moved to Berlin in order to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1917, he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics; he also became a German citizen again, this time as a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1933, while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi war of extermination against his fellow Jews, Einstein decided to remain in the US, and was granted American citizenship in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommended that the US begin similar research. Einstein supported the Allies but generally viewed the idea of nuclear weapons with great dismay.
Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. In 1905, he published four groundbreaking papers, sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year). These papers outlined a theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced his special theory of relativity—a theory which addressed the inability of classical mechanics to account satisfactorily for the behavior of the electromagnetic field—and demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass and energy are equivalent to each other. In 1915, he proposed a general theory of relativity that extended his system of mechanics to incorporate gravitation. A cosmological paper that he published the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole.
In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation, in which light consists of particles, subsequently called photons. With the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, he laid the groundwork for Bose-Einstein statistics. For much of the last phase of his academic life, Einstein worked on two endeavors that proved ultimately unsuccessful. First, he advocated against quantum theory's introduction of fundamental randomness into science's picture of the world, objecting that "God does not play dice". Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism too. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from the mainstream modern physics. His intellectual achievements and originality made Einstein broadly synonymous with genius. In 1999, he was named Time's Person of the Century. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, Einstein was ranked the greatest physicist of all time.
Life and career
Childhood, youth and education
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879. His parents, secular Ashkenazi Jews, were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch. In 1880, the family moved to Munich's borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt, where Einstein's father and his uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current. He often related a formative event from his youth, when he was sick in bed and his father brought him a compass. This sparked his lifelong fascination with electromagnetism. He realized that "Something deeply hidden had to be behind things."
Albert attended St. Peter‘s Catholic elementary school in Munich from the age of five. When he was eight, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium, where he received advanced primary and then secondary school education.
In 1894, Hermann and Jakob's company tendered for a contract to install electric lighting in Munich, but without success—they lacked the capital that would have been required to update their technology from direct current to the more efficient, alternating current alternative. The failure of their bid forced them to sell their Munich factory and search for new opportunities elsewhere. The Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Pavia, where they settled in Palazzo Cornazzani. Einstein, then fifteen, stayed behind in Munich in order to finish his schooling. His father wanted him to study electrical engineering, but he was a fractious pupil who found the Gymnasium's regimen and teaching methods far from congenial. He later wrote that the school's policy of strict rote learning was harmful to creativity. At the end of December 1894, a letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, and he joined his family in Pavia. While in Italy as a teenager, he wrote an essay entitled "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".
Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age, and soon acquired the mathematical expertise normally only found in a child several years his senior. He began teaching himself algebra, calculus and Euclidean geometry when he was twelve; he made such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday. A family tutor, Max Talmud, said that only a short time after he had given the twelve year old Einstein a geometry textbook, the boy "had worked through the whole book. He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics ... Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow." Einstein recorded that he had "mastered integral and differential calculus" while still just fourteen. His love of algebra and geometry was so great that at twelve, he was already confident that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure".
At thirteen, when his range of enthusiasms had broadened to include music and philosophy, Talmud introduced Einstein to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant became his favorite philosopher; according to Talmud, "At the time he was still a child, only thirteen years old, yet Kant's works, incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, seemed to be clear to him."
In 1895, at the age of sixteen, Einstein sat the entrance examination for the federal polytechnic school (later the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland. He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of the test, but performed with distinction in physics and mathematics. On the advice of the polytechnic's principal, he completed his secondary education at the Argovian cantonal school (a gymnasium) in Aarau, Switzerland, graduating in 1896. While lodging in Aarau with the family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. (His sister, Maja, later married Winteler's son Paul.)
In January 1896, with his father's approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship of the German Kingdom of Württemberg in order to avoid conscription into military service. The Matura (graduation for the successful completion of higher secondary schooling), awarded to him in September 1896, acknowledged him to have performed well across most of the curriculum, allotting him a top grade of 6 for history, physics, algebra, geometry, and descriptive geometry. At seventeen, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the federal polytechnic school. Marie Winteler, a year older than him, took up a teaching post in Olsberg, Switzerland.
The five other polytechnic school freshmen following the same course as Einstein included just one woman, a twenty year old Serbian, Mileva Marić. Over the next few years, the pair spent many hours discussing their shared interests and learning about topics in physics that the polytechnic school's lectures did not cover. In his letters to Marić, Einstein confessed that exploring science with her by his side was much more enjoyable than reading a textbook in solitude. Eventually the two students became not only friends but also lovers.
Historians of physics are divided on the question of the extent to which Marić contributed to the insights of Einstein's annus mirabilis publications. There is at least some evidence that he was influenced by her scientific ideas, but there are scholars who doubt whether her impact on his thought was of any great significance at all.
Marriages, relationships and children
Correspondence between Einstein and Marić, discovered and published in 1987, revealed that in early 1902, while Marić was visiting her parents in Novi Sad, she gave birth to a daughter, Lieserl. When Marić returned to Switzerland it was without the child, whose fate is uncertain. A letter of Einstein's that he wrote in September 1903 suggests that the girl was either given up for adoption or died of scarlet fever in infancy.
Einstein and Marić married in January 1903. In May 1904, their son Hans Albert was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their son Eduard was born in Zürich in July 1910. In letters that Einstein wrote to Marie Winteler in the months before Eduard's arrival, he described his love for his wife as "misguided" and mourned the "missed life" that he imagined he would have enjoyed if he had married Winteler instead: "I think of you in heartfelt love every spare minute and am so unhappy as only a man can be."
In 1912, Einstein entered into a relationship with Elsa Löwenthal, who was both his first cousin on his mother's side and his second cousin on his father's. When Marić learned of his infidelity soon after moving to Berlin with him in April 1914, she returned to Zürich, taking Hans Albert and Eduard with her. Einstein and Marić were granted a divorce on 14 February 1919 on the grounds of having lived apart for five years. As part of the divorce settlement, Einstein agreed that if he were to win a Nobel Prize, he would give the money that he received to Marić; he won the prize two years later.
Einstein married Löwenthal in 1919. In 1923, he began a relationship with a secretary named Betty Neumann, the niece of his close friend Hans Mühsam. Löwenthal nevertheless remained loyal to him, accompanying him when he emigrated to the United States in 1933. In 1935, she was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems. She died in December 1936.
A volume of Einstein's letters released by Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006 added further names to the catalog of women with whom he was romantically involved. They included Margarete Lebach (a married Austrian), Estella Katzenellenbogen (the rich owner of a florist business), Toni Mendel (a wealthy Jewish widow) and Ethel Michanowski (a Berlin socialite), with whom he spent time and from whom he accepted gifts while married to Löwenthal. After being widowed, Einstein was briefly in a relationship with Margarita Konenkova, thought by some to be a Russian spy; her husband, the Russian sculptor Sergei Konenkov, created the bronze bust of Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Following an episode of acute mental illness at about the age of twenty, Einstein's son Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He spent the remainder of his life either in the care of his mother or in temporary confinement in an asylum. After her death, he was committed permanently to Burghölzli, the Psychiatric University Hospital in Zürich.
1902–1909: Assistant at the Swiss Patent Office
Einstein graduated from the federal polytechnic school in 1900, duly certified as competent to teach mathematics and physics. His successful acquisition of Swiss citizenship in February 1901 was not followed by the usual sequel of conscription; the Swiss authorities deemed him medically unfit for military service. He found that Swiss schools too appeared to have no use for him, failing to offer him a teaching position despite the almost two years that he spent applying for one. Eventually it was with the help of Marcel Grossmann's father that he secured a post in Bern at the Swiss Patent Office, as an assistant examiner – level III.
Patent applications that landed on Einstein's desk for his evaluation included ideas for a gravel sorter and an electric typewriter. His employers were pleased enough with his work to make his position permanent in 1903, although they did not think that he should be promoted until he had "fully mastered machine technology". It is conceivable that his labors at the patent office had a bearing on his development of his special theory of relativity. He arrived at his revolutionary ideas about space, time and light through thought experiments about the transmission of signals and the synchronization of clocks, matters which also figured in some of the inventions submitted to him for assessment.
In 1902, Einstein and some friends whom he had met in Bern formed a group that held regular meetings to discuss science and philosophy. Their choice of a name for their club, the Olympia Academy, was an ironic comment upon its far from Olympian status. Sometimes they were joined by Marić, who limited her participation in their proceedings to careful listening. The thinkers whose works they reflected upon included Henri Poincaré, Ernst Mach and David Hume, all of whom significantly influenced Einstein's own subsequent ideas and beliefs.
1900–1905: First scientific papers
Einstein's first paper, "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen" ("Conclusions drawn from the phenomena of capillarity"), in which he proposed a model of intermolecular attraction that he afterwards disavowed as worthless, was published in the journal Annalen der Physik in 1901. His 24-page doctoral dissertation also addressed a topic in molecular physics. Titled "Eine neue Bestimmung der Moleküldimensionen" ("A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions") and dedicated to his friend Marcel Grossman, it was completed on 30 April 1905 and approved by Professor Alfred Kleiner of the University of Zurich three months later. (Einstein was formally awarded his PhD on 15 January 1906.) Four other pieces of work that Einstein completed in 1905—his famous papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, his special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy—have led to the year being celebrated as an annus mirabilis for physics akin to 1666 (the year in which Isaac Newton experienced his greatest epiphanies). The publications deeply impressed Einstein's contemporaries.
1908–1933: Early academic career
Einstein's sabbatical as a civil servant approached its end in 1908, when he secured a junior teaching position at the University of Bern. In 1909, a lecture on relativistic electrodynamics that he gave at the University of Zurich, much admired by Alfred Kleiner, led to Zürich's luring him away from Bern with a newly created associate professorship. Promotion to a full professorship followed in April 1911, when he accepted a chair at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, a move which required him to become an Austrian citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His time in Prague saw him producing eleven research papers.
In July 1912, he returned to his alma mater, the ETH Zurich, to take up a chair in theoretical physics. His teaching activities there centred on thermodynamics and analytical mechanics, and his research interests included the molecular theory of heat, continuum mechanics and the development of a relativistic theory of gravitation. In his work on the latter topic, he was assisted by his friend, Marcel Grossmann, whose knowledge of the kind of mathematics required was greater than his own.
In the spring of 1913, two German visitors, Max Planck and Walther Nernst, called upon Einstein in Zürich in the hope of persuading him to relocate to Berlin. They offered him membership of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the directorship of the planned Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics and a chair at the Humboldt University of Berlin that would allow him to pursue his research supported by a professorial salary but with no teaching duties to burden him. Their invitation was all the more appealing to him because Berlin happened to be the home of his latest girlfriend, Elsa Löwenthal. He duly joined the Academy on 24 July 1913, and moved into an apartment in the Berlin district of Dahlem on 1 April 1914. He was installed in his Humboldt University position shortly thereafter.
The outbreak of the First World War in July 1914 marked the beginning of Einstein's gradual estrangement from the nation of his birth. When the "Manifesto of the Ninety-Three" was published in October 1914—a document signed by a host of prominent German thinkers that justified Germany's belligerence—Einstein was one of the few German intellectuals to distance himself from it and sign the alternative, eirenic "Manifesto to the Europeans" instead. However, this expression of his doubts about German policy did not prevent him from being elected to a two-year term as president of the German Physical Society in 1916. When the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics opened its doors the following year—its foundation delayed because of the war—Einstein was appointed its first director, just as Planck and Nernst had promised.
Einstein was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1920, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1921. In 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". At this point some physicists still regarded the general theory of relativity skeptically, and the Nobel citation displayed a degree of doubt even about the work on photoelectricity that it acknowledged: it did not assent to Einstein's notion of the particulate nature of light, which only won over the entire scientific community when S. N. Bose derived the Planck spectrum in 1924. That same year, Einstein was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Britain's closest equivalent of the Nobel award, the Royal Society's Copley Medal, was not hung around Einstein's neck until 1925. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1930.
Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy in March 1933. His accomplishments in Berlin had included the completion of the general theory of relativity, proving the Einstein–de Haas effect, contributing to the quantum theory of radiation, and the development of Bose–Einstein statistics.
1919: Putting general relativity to the test
In 1907, Einstein reached a milestone on his long journey from his special theory of relativity to a new idea of gravitation with the formulation of his equivalence principle, which asserts that an observer in an infinitesimally small box falling freely in a gravitational field would be unable to find any evidence that the field exists. In 1911, he used the principle to estimate the amount by which a ray of light from a distant star would be bent by the gravitational pull of the Sun as it passed close to the Sun's photosphere (that is, the Sun's apparent surface). He reworked his calculation in 1913, having now found a way to model gravitation with the Riemann curvature tensor of a non-Euclidean four-dimensional spacetime. By the fall of 1915, his reimagining of the mathematics of gravitation in terms of Riemannian geometry was complete, and he applied his new theory not just to the behavior of the Sun as a gravitational lens but also to another astronomical phenomenon, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury (a slow drift in the point in Mercury's elliptical orbit at which it approaches the Sun most closely). A total eclipse of the Sun that took place on 29 May 1919 provided an opportunity to put his theory of gravitational lensing to the test, and observations performed by Sir Arthur Eddington yielded results that were consistent with his calculations. Eddington's work was reported at length in newspapers around the world. On 7 November 1919, for example, the leading British newspaper, The Times, printed a banner headline that read: "Revolution in Science – New Theory of the Universe – Newtonian Ideas Overthrown".
1921–1923: Coming to terms with fame
With Eddington's eclipse observations widely reported not just in academic journals but by the popular press as well, Einstein became "perhaps the world's first celebrity scientist", a genius who had shattered a paradigm that had been basic to physicists' understanding of the universe since the seventeenth century.
Einstein began his new life as an intellectual icon in America, where he arrived on 2 April 1921. He was welcomed to New York City by Mayor John Francis Hylan, and then spent three weeks giving lectures and attending receptions. He spoke several times at Columbia University and Princeton, and in Washington, he visited the White House with representatives of the National Academy of Sciences. He returned to Europe via London, where he was the guest of the philosopher and statesman Viscount Haldane. He used his time in the British capital to meet several people prominent in British scientific, political or intellectual life, and to deliver a lecture at King's College. In July 1921, he published an essay, "My First Impression of the U.S.A.", in which he sought to sketch the American character, much as had Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835). He wrote of his transatlantic hosts in highly approving terms: "What strikes a visitor is the joyous, positive attitude to life ... The American is friendly, self-confident, optimistic, and without envy."
In 1922, Einstein's travels were to the old world rather than the new. He devoted six months to a tour of Asia that saw him speaking in Japan, Singapore and Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon). After his first public lecture in Tokyo, he met Emperor Yoshihito and his wife at the Imperial Palace, with thousands of spectators thronging the streets in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. (In a letter to his sons, he wrote that Japanese people seemed to him to be generally modest, intelligent and considerate, and to have a true appreciation of art. But his picture of them in his diary was less flattering: "[the] intellectual needs of this nation seem to be weaker than their artistic ones – natural disposition?" His journal also contains views of China and India which were uncomplimentary. Of Chinese people, he wrote that "even the children are spiritless and look obtuse... It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary".) He was greeted with even greater enthusiasm on the last leg of his tour, in which he spent twelve days in Mandatory Palestine, newly entrusted to British rule by the League of Nations in the aftermath of the First World War. Sir Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner, welcomed him with a degree of ceremony normally only accorded to a visiting head of state, including a cannon salute. One reception held in his honor was stormed by people determined to hear him speak: he told them that he was happy that Jews were beginning to be recognized as a force in the world.
Einstein's decision to tour the eastern hemisphere in 1922 meant that he was unable to go to Stockholm in the December of that year to participate in the Nobel prize ceremony. His place at the traditional Nobel banquet was taken by a German diplomat, who gave a speech praising him not only as a physicist but also as a campaigner for peace. A two-week visit to Spain that he undertook in 1923 saw him collecting another award, a membership of the Spanish Academy of Sciences signified by a diploma handed to him by King Alfonso XIII. (His Spanish trip also gave him a chance to meet a fellow Nobel laureate, the neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal.)
1922–1932: Serving the League of Nations
From 1922 until 1932, with the exception of a few months in 1923 and 1924, Einstein was a member of the Geneva-based International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, a group set up by the League to encourage scientists, artists, scholars, teachers and other people engaged in the life of the mind to work more closely with their counterparts in other countries. He was appointed as a German delegate rather than as a representative of Switzerland because of the machinations of two Catholic activists, Oskar Halecki and Giuseppe Motta. By persuading Secretary General Eric Drummond to deny Einstein the place on the committee reserved for a Swiss thinker, they created an opening for Gonzague de Reynold, who used his League of Nations position as a platform from which to promote traditional Catholic doctrine. Einstein's former physics professor Hendrik Lorentz and the Polish chemist Marie Curie were also members of the committee.
1925: Touring South America
In March and April 1925, Einstein and his wife visited South America, where they spent about a week in Brazil, a week in Uruguay and a month in Argentina. Their tour was suggested by Jorge Duclout (1856–1927) and Mauricio Nirenstein (1877–1935) with the support of several Argentine scholars, including Julio Rey Pastor, Jakob Laub, and Leopoldo Lugones. and was financed primarily by the Council of the University of Buenos Aires and the Asociación Hebraica Argentina (Argentine Hebraic Association) with a smaller contribution from the Argentine-Germanic Cultural Institution.
1930–1931: Touring the US
In December 1930, Einstein began another significant sojourn in the United States, drawn back to the US by the offer of a two month research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech supported him in his wish that he should not be exposed to quite as much attention from the media as he had experienced when visiting the US in 1921, and he therefore declined all the invitations to receive prizes or make speeches that his admirers poured down upon him. But he remained willing to allow his fans at least some of the time with him that they requested.
After arriving in New York City, Einstein was taken to various places and events, including Chinatown, a lunch with the editors of The New York Times, and a performance of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera, where he was cheered by the audience on his arrival. During the days following, he was given the keys to the city by Mayor Jimmy Walker and met Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University, who described Einstein as "the ruling monarch of the mind". Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor at New York's Riverside Church, gave Einstein a tour of the church and showed him a full-size statue that the church made of Einstein, standing at the entrance. Also during his stay in New York, he joined a crowd of 15,000 people at Madison Square Garden during a Hanukkah celebration.
Einstein next traveled to California, where he met Caltech president and Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan. His friendship with Millikan was "awkward", as Millikan "had a penchant for patriotic militarism", where Einstein was a pronounced pacifist. During an address to Caltech's students, Einstein noted that science was often inclined to do more harm than good.
This aversion to war also led Einstein to befriend author Upton Sinclair and film star Charlie Chaplin, both noted for their pacifism. Carl Laemmle, head of Universal Studios, gave Einstein a tour of his studio and introduced him to Chaplin. They had an instant rapport, with Chaplin inviting Einstein and his wife, Elsa, to his home for dinner. Chaplin said Einstein's outward persona, calm and gentle, seemed to conceal a "highly emotional temperament", from which came his "extraordinary intellectual energy".
Chaplin's film City Lights was to premiere a few days later in Hollywood, and Chaplin invited Einstein and Elsa to join him as his special guests. Walter Isaacson, Einstein's biographer, described this as "one of the most memorable scenes in the new era of celebrity". Chaplin visited Einstein at his home on a later trip to Berlin and recalled his "modest little flat" and the piano at which he had begun writing his theory. Chaplin speculated that it was "possibly used as kindling wood by the Nazis".
1933: Emigration to the US
In February 1933, while on a visit to the United States, Einstein knew he could not return to Germany with the rise to power of the Nazis under Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
While at American universities in early 1933, he undertook his third two-month visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In February and March 1933, the Gestapo repeatedly raided his family's apartment in Berlin. He and his wife Elsa returned to Europe in March, and during the trip, they learned that the German Reichstag had passed the Enabling Act on 23 March, transforming Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship, and that they would not be able to proceed to Berlin. Later on, they heard that their cottage had been raided by the Nazis and Einstein's personal sailboat confiscated. Upon landing in Antwerp, Belgium on 28 March, Einstein immediately went to the German consulate and surrendered his passport, formally renouncing his German citizenship. The Nazis later sold his boat and converted his cottage into a Hitler Youth camp.
Refugee status
In April 1933, Einstein discovered that the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. Historian Gerald Holton describes how, with "virtually no audible protest being raised by their colleagues", thousands of Jewish scientists were suddenly forced to give up their university positions and their names were removed from the rolls of institutions where they were employed.
A month later, Einstein's works were among those targeted by the German Student Union in the Nazi book burnings, with Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaiming, "Jewish intellectualism is dead." One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged", offering a $5,000 bounty on his head. In a subsequent letter to physicist and friend Max Born, who had already emigrated from Germany to England, Einstein wrote, "... I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise." After moving to the US, he described the book burnings as a "spontaneous emotional outburst" by those who "shun popular enlightenment", and "more than anything else in the world, fear the influence of men of intellectual independence".
Einstein was now without a permanent home, unsure where he would live and work, and equally worried about the fate of countless other scientists still in Germany. Aided by the Academic Assistance Council, founded in April 1933 by British Liberal politician William Beveridge to help academics escape Nazi persecution, Einstein was able to leave Germany. He rented a house in De Haan, Belgium, where he lived for a few months. In late July 1933, he visited England for about six weeks at the invitation of the British Member of Parliament Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, who had become friends with him in the preceding years. Locker-Lampson invited him to stay near his Cromer home in a secluded wooden cabin on Roughton Heath in the Parish of Roughton, Norfolk. To protect Einstein, Locker-Lampson had two bodyguards watch over him; a photo of them carrying shotguns and guarding Einstein was published in the Daily Herald on 24 July 1933.
Locker-Lampson took Einstein to meet Winston Churchill at his home, and later, Austen Chamberlain and former Prime Minister Lloyd George. Einstein asked them to help bring Jewish scientists out of Germany. British historian Martin Gilbert notes that Churchill responded immediately, and sent his friend, physicist Frederick Lindemann, to Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities. Churchill later observed that as a result of Germany having driven the Jews out, they had lowered their "technical standards" and put the Allies' technology ahead of theirs.
Einstein later contacted leaders of other nations, including Turkey's Prime Minister, İsmet İnönü, to whom he wrote in September 1933, requesting placement of unemployed German-Jewish scientists. As a result of Einstein's letter, Jewish invitees to Turkey eventually totaled over "1,000 saved individuals".
Locker-Lampson also submitted a bill to parliament to extend British citizenship to Einstein, during which period Einstein made a number of public appearances describing the crisis brewing in Europe. In one of his speeches he denounced Germany's treatment of Jews, while at the same time he introduced a bill promoting Jewish citizenship in Palestine, as they were being denied citizenship elsewhere. In his speech he described Einstein as a "citizen of the world" who should be offered a temporary shelter in the UK. Both bills failed, however, and Einstein then accepted an earlier offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, US, to become a resident scholar.
Resident scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study
On 3 October 1933, Einstein delivered a speech on the importance of academic freedom before a packed audience at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with The Times reporting he was wildly cheered throughout. Four days later he returned to the US and took up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, noted for having become a refuge for scientists fleeing Nazi Germany. At the time, most American universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Yale, had minimal or no Jewish faculty or students, as a result of their Jewish quotas, which lasted until the late 1940s.
Einstein was still undecided about his future. He had offers from several European universities, including Christ Church, Oxford, where he stayed for three short periods between May 1931 and June 1933 and was offered a five-year research fellowship (called a "studentship" at Christ Church), but in 1935, he arrived at the decision to remain permanently in the United States and apply for citizenship.
Einstein's affiliation with the Institute for Advanced Study would last until his death in 1955. He was one of the four first selected (along with John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, and Hermann Weyl) at the new Institute. He soon developed a close friendship with Gödel; the two would take long walks together discussing their work. Bruria Kaufman, his assistant, later became a physicist. During this period, Einstein tried to develop a unified field theory and to refute the accepted interpretation of quantum physics, both unsuccessfully. He lived in Princeton at his home from 1935 onwards. The Albert Einstein House was made a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
World War II and the Manhattan Project
In 1939, a group of Hungarian scientists that included émigré physicist Leó Szilárd attempted to alert Washington to ongoing Nazi atomic bomb research. The group's warnings were discounted. Einstein and Szilárd, along with other refugees such as Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, "regarded it as their responsibility to alert Americans to the possibility that German scientists might win the race to build an atomic bomb, and to warn that Hitler would be more than willing to resort to such a weapon." To make certain the US was aware of the danger, in July 1939, a few months before the beginning of World War II in Europe, Szilárd and Wigner visited Einstein to explain the possibility of atomic bombs, which Einstein, a pacifist, said he had never considered. He was asked to lend his support by writing a letter, with Szilárd, to President Roosevelt, recommending the US pay attention and engage in its own nuclear weapons research.
The letter is believed to be "arguably the key stimulus for the U.S. adoption of serious investigations into nuclear weapons on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II". In addition to the letter, Einstein used his connections with the Belgian royal family and the Belgian queen mother to get access with a personal envoy to the White House's Oval Office. Some say that as a result of Einstein's letter and his meetings with Roosevelt, the US entered the "race" to develop the bomb, drawing on its "immense material, financial, and scientific resources" to initiate the Manhattan Project.
For Einstein, "war was a disease ... [and] he called for resistance to war." By signing the letter to Roosevelt, some argue he went against his pacifist principles. In 1954, a year before his death, Einstein said to his old friend, Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them ..." In 1955, Einstein and ten other intellectuals and scientists, including British philosopher Bertrand Russell, signed a manifesto highlighting the danger of nuclear weapons. In 1960 Einstein was included posthumously as a charter member of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), an organization founded by distinguished scientists and intellectuals who committed themselves to the responsible and ethical advances of science, particularly in light of the development of nuclear weapons.
US citizenship
Einstein became an American citizen in 1940. Not long after settling into his career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he expressed his appreciation of the meritocracy in American culture compared to Europe. He recognized the "right of individuals to say and think what they pleased" without social barriers. As a result, individuals were encouraged, he said, to be more creative, a trait he valued from his early education.
Einstein joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Princeton, where he campaigned for the civil rights of African Americans. He considered racism America's "worst disease", seeing it as "handed down from one generation to the next". As part of his involvement, he corresponded with civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois and was prepared to testify on his behalf during his trial as an alleged foreign agent in 1951. When Einstein offered to be a character witness for Du Bois, the judge decided to drop the case.
In 1946, Einstein visited Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a historically black college, where he was awarded an honorary degree. Lincoln was the first university in the United States to grant college degrees to African Americans; alumni include Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. Einstein gave a speech about racism in America, adding, "I do not intend to be quiet about it." A resident of Princeton recalls that Einstein had once paid the college tuition for a black student. Einstein has said, "Being a Jew myself, perhaps I can understand and empathize with how black people feel as victims of discrimination".
Personal views
Political views
In 1918, Einstein was one of the signatories of the founding proclamation of the German Democratic Party, a liberal party. Later in his life, Einstein's political view was in favor of socialism and critical of capitalism, which he detailed in his essays such as "Why Socialism?". His opinions on the Bolsheviks also changed with time. In 1925, he criticized them for not having a "well-regulated system of government" and called their rule a "regime of terror and a tragedy in human history". He later adopted a more moderated view, criticizing their methods but praising them, which is shown by his 1929 remark on Vladimir Lenin:
In Lenin I honor a man, who in total sacrifice of his own person has committed his entire energy to realizing social justice. I do not find his methods advisable. One thing is certain, however: men like him are the guardians and renewers of mankind's conscience.
Einstein offered and was called on to give judgments and opinions on matters often unrelated to theoretical physics or mathematics. He strongly advocated the idea of a democratic global government that would check the power of nation-states in the framework of a world federation. He wrote "I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself." The FBI created a secret dossier on Einstein in 1932; by the time of his death, it was 1,427 pages long.
Einstein was deeply impressed by Mahatma Gandhi, with whom he corresponded. He described Gandhi as "a role model for the generations to come". The initial connection was established on 27 September 1931, when Wilfrid Israel took his Indian guest V. A. Sundaram to meet his friend Einstein at his summer home in the town of Caputh. Sundaram was Gandhi's disciple and special envoy, whom Wilfrid Israel met while visiting India and visiting the Indian leader's home in 1925. During the visit, Einstein wrote a short letter to Gandhi that was delivered to him through his envoy, and Gandhi responded quickly with his own letter. Although in the end Einstein and Gandhi were unable to meet as they had hoped, the direct connection between them was established through Wilfrid Israel.
Relationship with Zionism
Einstein was a figurehead leader in the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which opened in 1925. Earlier, in 1921, he was asked by the biochemist and president of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, to help raise funds for the planned university. He made suggestions for the creation of an Institute of Agriculture, a Chemical Institute and an Institute of Microbiology in order to fight the various ongoing epidemics such as malaria, which he called an "evil" that was undermining a third of the country's development. He also promoted the establishment of an Oriental Studies Institute, to include language courses given in both Hebrew and Arabic.
Einstein was not a nationalist and opposed the creation of an independent Jewish state. He felt that the waves of arriving Jews of the Aliyah could live alongside existing Arabs in Palestine. The state of Israel was established without his help in 1948; Einstein was limited to a marginal role in the Zionist movement. Upon the death of Israeli president Weizmann in November 1952, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion offered Einstein the largely ceremonial position of President of Israel at the urging of Ezriel Carlebach. The offer was presented by Israel's ambassador in Washington, Abba Eban, who explained that the offer "embodies the deepest respect which the Jewish people can repose in any of its sons". Einstein wrote that he was "deeply moved", but "at once saddened and ashamed" that he could not accept it.
Religious and philosophical views
Per Lee Smolin, "I believe what allowed Einstein to achieve so much was primarily a moral quality. He simply cared far more than most of his colleagues that the laws of physics have to explain everything in nature coherently and consistently." Einstein expounded his spiritual outlook in a wide array of writings and interviews. He said he had sympathy for the impersonal pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza's philosophy. He did not believe in a personal god who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified, however, that "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself an agnostic, or a "deeply religious nonbeliever". He wrote that "A spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort."
Einstein was primarily affiliated with non-religious humanist and Ethical Culture groups in both the UK and US. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York, and was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Association, which publishes New Humanist in Britain. For the 75th anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. He observed, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity."
In a German-language letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated 3 January 1954, Einstein wrote:The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. ... I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.
Einstein had been sympathetic toward vegetarianism for a long time. In a letter in 1930 to Hermann Huth, vice-president of the German Vegetarian Federation (Deutsche Vegetarier-Bund), he wrote:Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
He became a vegetarian himself only during the last part of his life. In March 1954 he wrote in a letter: "So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It almost seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore."
Love of music
Einstein developed an appreciation for music at an early age. In his late journals he wrote:
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music ... I get most joy in life out of music.
His mother played the piano reasonably well and wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to instill in him a love of music but also to help him assimilate into German culture. According to conductor Leon Botstein, Einstein began playing when he was 5. However, he did not enjoy it at that age.
When he turned 13, he discovered the violin sonatas of Mozart, whereupon he became enamored of Mozart's compositions and studied music more willingly. Einstein taught himself to play without "ever practicing systematically". He said that "love is a better teacher than a sense of duty". At the age of 17, he was heard by a school examiner in Aarau while playing Beethoven's violin sonatas. The examiner stated afterward that his playing was "remarkable and revealing of 'great insight'". What struck the examiner, writes Botstein, was that Einstein "displayed a deep love of the music, a quality that was and remains in short supply. Music possessed an unusual meaning for this student."
Music took on a pivotal and permanent role in Einstein's life from that period on. Although the idea of becoming a professional musician himself was not on his mind at any time, among those with whom Einstein played chamber music were a few professionals, including Kurt Appelbaum, and he performed for private audiences and friends. Chamber music had also become a regular part of his social life while living in Bern, Zürich, and Berlin, where he played with Max Planck and his son, among others. He is sometimes erroneously credited as the editor of the 1937 edition of the Köchel catalog of Mozart's work; that edition was prepared by Alfred Einstein, who may have been a distant relation.
In 1931, while engaged in research at the California Institute of Technology, he visited the Zoellner family conservatory in Los Angeles, where he played some of Beethoven and Mozart's works with members of the Zoellner Quartet. Near the end of his life, when the young Juilliard Quartet visited him in Princeton, he played his violin with them, and the quartet was "impressed by Einstein's level of coordination and intonation".
Death
On 17 April 1955, Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which had previously been reinforced surgically by Rudolph Nissen in 1948. He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the state of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live to complete it.
Einstein refused surgery, saying, "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." He died in the Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to work until near the end.
During the autopsy, the pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein's brain for preservation without the permission of his family, in the hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent. Einstein's remains were cremated in Trenton, New Jersey, and his ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location.
In a memorial lecture delivered on 13 December 1965 at UNESCO headquarters, nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: "He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn."
Einstein bequeathed his personal archives, library, and intellectual assets to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
Scientific career
Throughout his life, Einstein published hundreds of books and articles. He published more than 300 scientific papers and 150 non-scientific ones. On 5 December 2014, universities and archives announced the release of Einstein's papers, comprising more than 30,000 unique documents. In addition to the work he did by himself he also collaborated with other scientists on additional projects including the Bose–Einstein statistics, the Einstein refrigerator and others.
Statistical mechanics
Thermodynamic fluctuations and statistical physics
Einstein's first paper submitted in 1900 to Annalen der Physik was on capillary attraction. It was published in 1901 with the title "Folgerungen aus den Capillaritätserscheinungen", which translates as "Conclusions from the capillarity phenomena". Two papers he published in 1902–1903 (thermodynamics) attempted to interpret atomic phenomena from a statistical point of view. These papers were the foundation for the 1905 paper on Brownian motion, which showed that Brownian movement can be construed as firm evidence that molecules exist. His research in 1903 and 1904 was mainly concerned with the effect of finite atomic size on diffusion phenomena.
Theory of critical opalescence
Einstein returned to the problem of thermodynamic fluctuations, giving a treatment of the density variations in a fluid at its critical point. Ordinarily the density fluctuations are controlled by the second derivative of the free energy with respect to the density. At the critical point, this derivative is zero, leading to large fluctuations. The effect of density fluctuations is that light of all wavelengths is scattered, making the fluid look milky white. Einstein relates this to Rayleigh scattering, which is what happens when the fluctuation size is much smaller than the wavelength, and which explains why the sky is blue. Einstein quantitatively derived critical opalescence from a treatment of density fluctuations, and demonstrated how both the effect and Rayleigh scattering originate from the atomistic constitution of matter.
1905 – Annus Mirabilis papers
The Annus Mirabilis papers are four articles pertaining to the photoelectric effect (which gave rise to quantum theory), Brownian motion, the special theory of relativity, and E = mc2 that Einstein published in the Annalen der Physik scientific journal in 1905. These four works contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, and matter. The four papers are:
Special relativity
Einstein's "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") was received on 30 June 1905 and published 26 September of that same year. It reconciled conflicts between Maxwell's equations (the laws of electricity and magnetism) and the laws of Newtonian mechanics by introducing changes to the laws of mechanics. Observationally, the effects of these changes are most apparent at high speeds (where objects are moving at speeds close to the speed of light). The theory developed in this paper later became known as Einstein's special theory of relativity.
This paper predicted that, when measured in the frame of a relatively moving observer, a clock carried by a moving body would appear to slow down, and the body itself would contract in its direction of motion. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether—one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time—was superfluous.
In his paper on mass–energy equivalence, Einstein produced E = mc2 as a consequence of his special relativity equations. Einstein's 1905 work on relativity remained controversial for many years, but was accepted by leading physicists, starting with Max Planck.
Einstein originally framed special relativity in terms of kinematics (the study of moving bodies). In 1908, Hermann Minkowski reinterpreted special relativity in geometric terms as a theory of spacetime. Einstein adopted Minkowski's formalism in his 1915 general theory of relativity.
General relativity
General relativity and the equivalence principle
General relativity (GR) is a theory of gravitation that was developed by Einstein between 1907 and 1915. According to it, the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of spacetime by those masses. General relativity has developed into an essential tool in modern astrophysics; it provides the foundation for the current understanding of black holes, regions of space where gravitational attraction is so strong that not even light can escape.
As Einstein later said, the reason for the development of general relativity was that the preference of inertial motions within special relativity was unsatisfactory, while a theory which from the outset prefers no state of motion (even accelerated ones) should appear more satisfactory. Consequently, in 1907 he published an article on acceleration under special relativity. In that article titled "On the Relativity Principle and the Conclusions Drawn from It", he argued that free fall is really inertial motion, and that for a free-falling observer the rules of special relativity must apply. This argument is called the equivalence principle. In the same article, Einstein also predicted the phenomena of gravitational time dilation, gravitational redshift and gravitational lensing.
In 1911, Einstein published another article "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light" expanding on the 1907 article, in which he estimated the amount of deflection of light by massive bodies. Thus, the theoretical prediction of general relativity could for the first time be tested experimentally.
Gravitational waves
In 1916, Einstein predicted gravitational waves, ripples in the curvature of spacetime which propagate as waves, traveling outward from the source, transporting energy as gravitational radiation. The existence of gravitational waves is possible under general relativity due to its Lorentz invariance which brings the concept of a finite speed of propagation of the physical interactions of gravity with it. By contrast, gravitational waves cannot exist in the Newtonian theory of gravitation, which postulates that the physical interactions of gravity propagate at infinite speed.
The first, indirect, detection of gravitational waves came in the 1970s through observation of a pair of closely orbiting neutron stars, PSR B1913+16. The explanation for the decay in their orbital period was that they were emitting gravitational waves. Einstein's prediction was confirmed on 11 February 2016, when researchers at LIGO published the first observation of gravitational waves, detected on Earth on 14 September 2015, nearly one hundred years after the prediction.
Hole argument and Entwurf theory
While developing general relativity, Einstein became confused about the gauge invariance in the theory. He formulated an argument that led him to conclude that a general relativistic field theory is impossible. He gave up looking for fully generally covariant tensor equations and searched for equations that would be invariant under general linear transformations only.
In June 1913, the Entwurf ('draft') theory was the result of these investigations. As its name suggests, it was a sketch of a theory, less elegant and more difficult than general relativity, with the equations of motion supplemented by additional gauge fixing conditions. After more than two years of intensive work, Einstein realized that the hole argument was mistaken and abandoned the theory in November 1915.
Physical cosmology
In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to the structure of the universe as a whole. He discovered that the general field equations predicted a universe that was dynamic, either contracting or expanding. As observational evidence for a dynamic universe was lacking at the time, Einstein introduced a new term, the cosmological constant, into the field equations, in order to allow the theory to predict a static universe. The modified field equations predicted a static universe of closed curvature, in accordance with Einstein's understanding of Mach's principle in these years. This model became known as the Einstein World or Einstein's static universe.
Following the discovery of the recession of the galaxies by Edwin Hubble in 1929, Einstein abandoned his static model of the universe, and proposed two dynamic models of the cosmos, the Friedmann–Einstein universe of 1931 and the Einstein–de Sitter universe of 1932. In each of these models, Einstein discarded the cosmological constant, claiming that it was "in any case theoretically unsatisfactory".
In many Einstein biographies, it is claimed that Einstein referred to the cosmological constant in later years as his "biggest blunder", based on a letter George Gamow claimed to have received from him. The astrophysicist Mario Livio has cast doubt on this claim.
In late 2013, a team led by the Irish physicist Cormac O'Raifeartaigh discovered evidence that, shortly after learning of Hubble's observations of the recession of the galaxies, Einstein considered a steady-state model of the universe. In a hitherto overlooked manuscript, apparently written in early 1931, Einstein explored a model of the expanding universe in which the density of matter remains constant due to a continuous creation of matter, a process that he associated with the cosmological constant. As he stated in the paper, "In what follows, I would like to draw attention to a solution to equation (1) that can account for Hubbel's [sic] facts, and in which the density is constant over time" ... "If one considers a physically bounded volume, particles of matter will be continually leaving it. For the density to remain constant, new particles of matter must be continually formed in the volume from space."
It thus appears that Einstein considered a steady-state model of the expanding universe many years before Hoyle, Bondi and Gold. However, Einstein's steady-state model contained a fundamental flaw and he quickly abandoned the idea.
Energy momentum pseudotensor
General relativity includes a dynamical spacetime, so it is difficult to see how to identify the conserved energy and momentum. Noether's theorem allows these quantities to be determined from a Lagrangian with translation invariance, but general covariance makes translation invariance into something of a gauge symmetry. The energy and momentum derived within general relativity by Noether's prescriptions do not make a real tensor for this reason.
Einstein argued that this is true for a fundamental reason: the gravitational field could be made to vanish by a choice of coordinates. He maintained that the non-covariant energy momentum pseudotensor was, in fact, the best description of the energy momentum distribution in a gravitational field. While the use of non-covariant objects like pseudotensors was criticized by Erwin Schrödinger and others, Einstein's approach has been echoed by physicists including Lev Landau and Evgeny Lifshitz.
Wormholes
In 1935, Einstein collaborated with Nathan Rosen to produce a model of a wormhole, often called Einstein–Rosen bridges. His motivation was to model elementary particles with charge as a solution of gravitational field equations, in line with the program outlined in the paper "Do Gravitational Fields play an Important Role in the Constitution of the Elementary Particles?". These solutions cut and pasted Schwarzschild black holes to make a bridge between two patches. Because these solutions included spacetime curvature without the presence of a physical body, Einstein and Rosen suggested that they could provide the beginnings of a theory that avoided the notion of point particles. However, it was later found that Einstein–Rosen bridges are not stable.
Einstein–Cartan theory
In order to incorporate spinning point particles into general relativity, the affine connection needed to be generalized to include an antisymmetric part, called the torsion. This modification was made by Einstein and Cartan in the 1920s.
Equations of motion
In general relativity, gravitational force is reimagined as curvature of spacetime. A curved path like an orbit is not the result of a force deflecting a body from an ideal straight-line path, but rather the body's attempt to fall freely through a background that is itself curved by the presence of other masses. A remark by John Archibald Wheeler that has become proverbial among physicists summarizes the theory: "Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve." The Einstein field equations cover the latter aspect of the theory, relating the curvature of spacetime to the distribution of matter and energy. The geodesic equation covers the former aspect, stating that freely falling bodies follow lines that are as straight as possible in a curved spacetime. Einstein regarded this as an "independent fundamental assumption" that had to be postulated in addition to the field equations in order to complete the theory. Believing this to be a shortcoming in how general relativity was originally presented, he wished to derive it from the field equations themselves. Since the equations of general relativity are non-linear, a lump of energy made out of pure gravitational fields, like a black hole, would move on a trajectory which is determined by the Einstein field equations themselves, not by a new law. Accordingly, Einstein proposed that the field equations would determine the path of a singular solution, like a black hole, to be a geodesic. Both physicists and philosophers have often repeated the assertion that the geodesic equation can be obtained from applying the field equations to the motion of a gravitational singularity, but this claim remains disputed.
Old quantum theory
Photons and energy quanta
In a 1905 paper, Einstein postulated that light itself consists of localized particles (quanta). Einstein's light quanta were nearly universally rejected by all physicists, including Max Planck and Niels Bohr. This idea only became universally accepted in 1919, with Robert Millikan's detailed experiments on the photoelectric effect, and with the measurement of Compton scattering.
Einstein concluded that each wave of frequency f is associated with a collection of photons with energy hf each, where h is the Planck constant. He did not say much more, because he was not sure how the particles were related to the wave. But he did suggest that this idea would explain certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect. Light quanta were dubbed photons by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926.
Quantized atomic vibrations
In 1907, Einstein proposed a model of matter where each atom in a lattice structure is an independent harmonic oscillator. In the Einstein model, each atom oscillates independently—a series of equally spaced quantized states for each oscillator. Einstein was aware that getting the frequency of the actual oscillations would be difficult, but he nevertheless proposed this theory because it was a particularly clear demonstration that quantum mechanics could solve the specific heat problem in classical mechanics. Peter Debye refined this model.
Bose–Einstein statistics
In 1924, Einstein received a description of a statistical model from Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, based on a counting method that assumed that light could be understood as a gas of indistinguishable particles. Einstein noted that Bose's statistics applied to some atoms as well as to the proposed light particles, and submitted his translation of Bose's paper to the Zeitschrift für Physik. Einstein also published his own articles describing the model and its implications, among them the Bose–Einstein condensate phenomenon that some particulates should appear at very low temperatures. It was not until 1995 that the first such condensate was produced experimentally by Eric Allin Cornell and Carl Wieman using ultra-cooling equipment built at the NIST–JILA laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Bose–Einstein statistics are now used to describe the behaviors of any assembly of bosons. Einstein's sketches for this project may be seen in the Einstein Archive in the library of the Leiden University.
Wave–particle duality
Although the patent office promoted Einstein to Technical Examiner Second Class in 1906, he had not given up on academia. In 1908, he became a Privatdozent at the University of Bern. In "Über die Entwicklung unserer Anschauungen über das Wesen und die Konstitution der Strahlung" ("The Development of our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation"), on the quantization of light, and in an earlier 1909 paper, Einstein showed that Max Planck's energy quanta must have well-defined momenta and act in some respects as independent, point-like particles. This paper introduced the photon concept and inspired the notion of wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics. Einstein saw this wave–particle duality in radiation as concrete evidence for his conviction that physics needed a new, unified foundation.
Zero-point energy
In a series of works completed from 1911 to 1913, Planck reformulated his 1900 quantum theory and introduced the idea of zero-point energy in his "second quantum theory". Soon, this idea attracted the attention of Einstein and his assistant Otto Stern. Assuming the energy of rotating diatomic molecules contains zero-point energy, they then compared the theoretical specific heat of hydrogen gas with the experimental data. The numbers matched nicely. However, after publishing the findings, they promptly withdrew their support, because they no longer had confidence in the correctness of the idea of zero-point energy.
Stimulated emission
In 1917, at the height of his work on relativity, Einstein published an article in Physikalische Zeitschrift that proposed the possibility of stimulated emission, the physical process that makes possible the maser and the laser.
This article showed that the statistics of absorption and emission of light would only be consistent with Planck's distribution law if the emission of light into a mode with n photons would be enhanced statistically compared to the emission of light into an empty mode. This paper was enormously influential in the later development of quantum mechanics, because it was the first paper to show that the statistics of atomic transitions had simple laws.
Matter waves
Einstein discovered Louis de Broglie's work and supported his ideas, which were received skeptically at first. In another major paper from this era, Einstein observed that de Broglie waves could explain the quantization rules of Bohr and Sommerfeld. This paper would inspire Schrödinger's work of 1926.
Quantum mechanics
Einstein's objections to quantum mechanics
Einstein played a major role in developing quantum theory, beginning with his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect. However, he became displeased with modern quantum mechanics as it had evolved after 1925, despite its acceptance by other physicists. He was skeptical that the randomness of quantum mechanics was fundamental rather than the result of determinism, stating that God "is not playing at dice". Until the end of his life, he continued to maintain that quantum mechanics was incomplete.
Bohr versus Einstein
The Bohr–Einstein debates were a series of public disputes about quantum mechanics between Einstein and Niels Bohr, who were two of its founders. Their debates are remembered because of their importance to the philosophy of science. Their debates would influence later interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox
Einstein never fully accepted quantum mechanics. While he recognized that it made correct predictions, he believed a more fundamental description of nature must be possible. Over the years he presented multiple arguments to this effect, but the one he preferred most dated to a debate with Bohr in 1930. Einstein suggested a thought experiment in which two objects are allowed to interact and then moved apart a great distance from each other. The quantum-mechanical description of the two objects is a mathematical entity known as a wavefunction. If the wavefunction that describes the two objects before their interaction is given, then the Schrödinger equation provides the wavefunction that describes them after their interaction. But because of what would later be called quantum entanglement, measuring one object would lead to an instantaneous change of the wavefunction describing the other object, no matter how far away it is. Moreover, the choice of which measurement to perform upon the first object would affect what wavefunction could result for the second object. Einstein reasoned that no influence could propagate from the first object to the second instantaneously fast. Indeed, he argued, physics depends on being able to tell one thing apart from another, and such instantaneous influences would call that into question. Because the true "physical condition" of the second object could not be immediately altered by an action done to the first, Einstein concluded, the wavefunction could not be that true physical condition, only an incomplete description of it.
A more famous version of this argument came in 1935, when Einstein published a paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen that laid out what would become known as the EPR paradox. In this thought experiment, two particles interact in such a way that the wavefunction describing them is entangled. Then, no matter how far the two particles were separated, a precise position measurement on one particle would imply the ability to predict, perfectly, the result of measuring the position of the other particle. Likewise, a precise momentum measurement of one particle would result in an equally precise prediction for of the momentum of the other particle, without needing to disturb the other particle in any way. They argued that no action taken on the first particle could instantaneously affect the other, since this would involve information being transmitted faster than light, which is forbidden by the theory of relativity. They invoked a principle, later known as the "EPR criterion of reality", positing that: "If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity." From this, they inferred that the second particle must have a definite value of both position and of momentum prior to either quantity being measured. But quantum mechanics considers these two observables incompatible and thus does not associate simultaneous values for both to any system. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen therefore concluded that quantum theory does not provide a complete description of reality.
In 1964, John Stewart Bell carried the analysis of quantum entanglement much further. He deduced that if measurements are performed independently on the two separated particles of an entangled pair, then the assumption that the outcomes depend upon hidden variables within each half implies a mathematical constraint on how the outcomes on the two measurements are correlated. This constraint would later be called a Bell inequality. Bell then showed that quantum physics predicts correlations that violate this inequality. Consequently, the only way that hidden variables could explain the predictions of quantum physics is if they are "nonlocal", which is to say that somehow the two particles are able to interact instantaneously no matter how widely they ever become separated. Bell argued that because an explanation of quantum phenomena in terms of hidden variables would require nonlocality, the EPR paradox "is resolved in the way which Einstein would have liked least".
Despite this, and although Einstein personally found the argument in the EPR paper overly complicated, that paper became among the most influential papers published in Physical Review. It is considered a centerpiece of the development of quantum information theory.
Unified field theory
Encouraged by his success with general relativity, Einstein sought an even more ambitious geometrical theory that would treat gravitation and electromagnetism as aspects of a single entity. In 1950, he described his unified field theory in a Scientific American article titled "On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation". His attempt to find the most fundamental laws of nature won him praise but not success: a particularly conspicuous blemish of his model was that it did not accommodate the strong and weak nuclear forces, neither of which was well understood until many years after his death. Although most researchers now believe that Einstein's approach to unifying physics was mistaken, his goal of a theory of everything is one to which his successors still aspire.
Other investigations
Einstein conducted other investigations that were unsuccessful and abandoned. These pertain to force, superconductivity, and other research.
Collaboration with other scientists
In addition to longtime collaborators Leopold Infeld, Nathan Rosen, Peter Bergmann and others, Einstein also had some one-shot collaborations with various scientists.
Einstein–de Haas experiment
In 1908, Owen Willans Richardson predicted that a change in the magnetic moment of a free body will cause this body to rotate. This effect is a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum and is strong enough to be observable in ferromagnetic materials. Einstein and Wander Johannes de Haas published two papers in 1915 claiming the first experimental observation of the effect. Measurements of this kind demonstrate that the phenomenon of magnetization is caused by the alignment (polarization) of the angular momenta of the electrons in the material along the axis of magnetization. These measurements also allow the separation of the two contributions to the magnetization: that which is associated with the spin and with the orbital motion of the electrons. The Einstein-de Haas experiment is the only experiment concived, realized and published by Albert Einstein himself.
A complete original version of the Einstein-de Haas experimental equipment was donated by Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz, wife of de Haas and daughter of Lorentz, to the Ampère Museum in Lyon France in 1961 where it is currently on display. It was lost among the museum's holdings and was rediscovered in 2023.
Einstein as an inventor
In 1926, Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd co-invented (and in 1930, patented) the Einstein refrigerator. This absorption refrigerator was then revolutionary for having no moving parts and using only heat as an input. On 11 November 1930, U.S. patent 1,781,541 was awarded to Einstein and Leó Szilárd for the refrigerator. Their invention was not immediately put into commercial production, but the most promising of their patents were acquired by the Swedish company Electrolux.
Einstein also invented an electromagnetic pump, sound reproduction device, and several other household devices.
Non-scientific legacy
While traveling, Einstein wrote daily to his wife Elsa and adopted stepdaughters Margot and Ilse. The letters were included in the papers bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Margot Einstein permitted the personal letters to be made available to the public, but requested that it not be done until twenty years after her death (she died in 1986). Barbara Wolff, of the Hebrew University's Albert Einstein Archives, told the BBC that there are about 3,500 pages of private correspondence written between 1912 and 1955.
Einstein's right of publicity was litigated in 2015 in a federal district court in California. Although the court initially held that the right had expired, that ruling was immediately appealed, and the decision was later vacated in its entirety. The underlying claims between the parties in that lawsuit were ultimately settled. The right is enforceable, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the exclusive representative of that right. Corbis, successor to The Roger Richman Agency, licenses the use of his name and associated imagery, as agent for the university.
Mount Einstein in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska was named in 1955.
Mount Einstein in New Zealand's Paparoa Range was named after him in 1970 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
In popular culture
Einstein became one of the most famous scientific celebrities after the confirmation of his general theory of relativity in 1919. Although most of the public had little understanding of his work, he was widely recognized and admired. In the period before World War II, The New Yorker published a vignette in their "The Talk of the Town" feature saying that Einstein was so well known in America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory". Eventually he came to cope with unwanted enquirers by pretending to be someone else: "Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein."
Einstein has been the subject of or inspiration for many novels, films, plays, and works of music. He is a favorite model for depictions of absent-minded professors; his expressive face and distinctive hairstyle have been widely copied and exaggerated. Time magazine's Frederic Golden wrote that Einstein was "a cartoonist's dream come true".
Many popular quotations are often misattributed to him.
Awards and honors
Einstein received numerous awards and honors, and in 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". None of the nominations in 1921 met the criteria set by Alfred Nobel, so the 1921 prize was carried forward and awarded to Einstein in 1922.
Einsteinium, a synthetic chemical element, was named in his honor in 1955, a few months after his death.
Publications
Scientific
Others
See also
Notes
References
Works cited
Further reading
External links
Works by Albert Einstein at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Albert Einstein at the Internet Archive
Works by Albert Einstein at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Einstein's Personal Correspondence: Religion, Politics, The Holocaust, and Philosophy Shapell Manuscript Foundation
Federal Bureau of Investigation file on Albert Einstein
Einstein and his love of music, Physics World
Albert Einstein on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture 11 July 1923 Fundamental ideas and problems of the theory of relativity
Albert Einstein Archives Online (80,000+ Documents) Archived 11 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine (MSNBC, 19 March 2012)
Einstein's declaration of intention for American citizenship on the World Digital Library
Albert Einstein Collection at Brandeis University
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein "Digital Einstein" at Princeton University
Newspaper clippings about Albert Einstein in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
Home page of Albert Einstein at The Institute for Advanced Study
Albert – The Digital Repository of the IAS, which contains many digitized original documents and photographs
Albert Einstein at IMDb |
Niels_Bohr | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr"
] | Niels Henrik David Bohr (Danish: [ˈne̝ls ˈpoɐ̯ˀ]; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research.
Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. Although the Bohr model has been supplanted by other models, its underlying principles remain valid. He conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed in terms of contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles. The notion of complementarity dominated Bohr's thinking in both science and philosophy.
Bohr founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, which opened in 1920. Bohr mentored and collaborated with physicists including Hans Kramers, Oskar Klein, George de Hevesy, and Werner Heisenberg. He predicted the properties of a new zirconium-like element, which was named hafnium, after the Latin name for Copenhagen, where it was discovered. Later, the synthetic element bohrium was named after him.
During the 1930s, Bohr helped refugees from Nazism. After Denmark was occupied by the Germans, he met with Heisenberg, who had become the head of the German nuclear weapon project. In September 1943 word reached Bohr that he was about to be arrested by the Germans, so he fled to Sweden. From there, he was flown to Britain, where he joined the British Tube Alloys nuclear weapons project, and was part of the British mission to the Manhattan Project. After the war, Bohr called for international cooperation on nuclear energy. He was involved with the establishment of CERN and the Research Establishment Risø of the Danish Atomic Energy Commission and became the first chairman of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1957.
Early life
Niels Henrik David Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 7 October 1885, the second of three children of Christian Bohr, a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and his wife Ellen née Adler, who came from a wealthy Jewish banking family. He had an elder sister, Jenny, and a younger brother Harald. Jenny became a teacher, while Harald became a mathematician and footballer who played for the Danish national team at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. Niels was a passionate footballer as well, and the two brothers played several matches for the Copenhagen-based Akademisk Boldklub (Academic Football Club), with Niels as goalkeeper.
Bohr was educated at Gammelholm Latin School, starting when he was seven. In 1903, Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at Copenhagen University. His major was physics, which he studied under Professor Christian Christiansen, the university's only professor of physics at that time. He also studied astronomy and mathematics under Professor Thorvald Thiele, and philosophy under Professor Harald Høffding, a friend of his father.
In 1905 a gold medal competition was sponsored by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters to investigate a method for measuring the surface tension of liquids that had been proposed by Lord Rayleigh in 1879. This involved measuring the frequency of oscillation of the radius of a water jet. Bohr conducted a series of experiments using his father's laboratory in the university; the university itself had no physics laboratory. To complete his experiments, he had to make his own glassware, creating test tubes with the required elliptical cross-sections. He went beyond the original task, incorporating improvements into both Rayleigh's theory and his method, by taking into account the viscosity of the water, and by working with finite amplitudes instead of just infinitesimal ones. His essay, which he submitted at the last minute, won the prize. He later submitted an improved version of the paper to the Royal Society in London for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Harald became the first of the two Bohr brothers to earn a master's degree, which he earned for mathematics in April 1909. Niels took another nine months to earn his on the electron theory of metals, a topic assigned by his supervisor, Christiansen. Bohr subsequently elaborated his master's thesis into his much-larger Doctor of Philosophy thesis. He surveyed the literature on the subject, settling on a model postulated by Paul Drude and elaborated by Hendrik Lorentz, in which the electrons in a metal are considered to behave like a gas. Bohr extended Lorentz's model, but was still unable to account for phenomena like the Hall effect, and concluded that electron theory could not fully explain the magnetic properties of metals. The thesis was accepted in April 1911, and Bohr conducted his formal defence on 13 May. Harald had received his doctorate the previous year. Bohr's thesis was groundbreaking, but attracted little interest outside Scandinavia because it was written in Danish, a Copenhagen University requirement at the time. In 1921, the Dutch physicist Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen would independently derive a theorem in Bohr's thesis that is today known as the Bohr–Van Leeuwen theorem.
In 1910, Bohr met Margrethe Nørlund, the sister of the mathematician Niels Erik Nørlund. Bohr resigned his membership in the Church of Denmark on 16 April 1912, and he and Margrethe were married in a civil ceremony at the town hall in Slagelse on 1 August. Years later, his brother Harald similarly left the church before getting married. Bohr and Margrethe had six sons. The oldest, Christian, died in a boating accident in 1934, and another, Harald, was severely mentally disabled. He was placed in an institution away from his family's home at the age of four and died from childhood meningitis six years later. Aage Bohr became a successful physicist, and in 1975 was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, like his father. A son of Aage, Vilhelm A. Bohr, is a scientist affiliated with the University of Copenhagen and the National Institute on Aging in the U.S. Hans became a physician; Erik, a chemical engineer; and Ernest, a lawyer. Like his uncle Harald, Ernest Bohr became an Olympic athlete, playing field hockey for Denmark at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.
Physics
Bohr model
In September 1911, Bohr, supported by a fellowship from the Carlsberg Foundation, travelled to England, where most of the theoretical work on the structure of atoms and molecules was being done. He met J. J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory and Trinity College, Cambridge. He attended lectures on electromagnetism given by James Jeans and Joseph Larmor, and did some research on cathode rays, but failed to impress Thomson. He had more success with younger physicists like the Australian William Lawrence Bragg, and New Zealand's Ernest Rutherford, whose 1911 small central nucleus Rutherford model of the atom had challenged Thomson's 1904 plum pudding model. Bohr received an invitation from Rutherford to conduct post-doctoral work at Victoria University of Manchester, where Bohr met George de Hevesy and Charles Galton Darwin (whom Bohr referred to as "the grandson of the real Darwin").
Bohr returned to Denmark in July 1912 for his wedding, and travelled around England and Scotland on his honeymoon. On his return, he became a privatdocent at the University of Copenhagen, giving lectures on thermodynamics. Martin Knudsen put Bohr's name forward for a docent, which was approved in July 1913, and Bohr then began teaching medical students. His three papers, which later became famous as "the trilogy", were published in Philosophical Magazine in July, September and November of that year. He adapted Rutherford's nuclear structure to Max Planck's quantum theory and so created his Bohr model of the atom.
Planetary models of atoms were not new, but Bohr's treatment was. Taking the 1912 paper by Darwin on the role of electrons in the interaction of alpha particles with a nucleus as his starting point, he advanced the theory of electrons travelling in orbits of quantised "stationary states" around the atom's nucleus in order to stabilise the atom, but it wasn't until his 1921 paper that he showed that the chemical properties of each element were largely determined by the number of electrons in the outer orbits of its atoms. He introduced the idea that an electron could drop from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one, in the process emitting a quantum of discrete energy. This became a basis for what is now known as the old quantum theory.
In 1885, Johann Balmer had come up with his Balmer series to describe the visible spectral lines of a hydrogen atom:
1
λ
=
R
H
(
1
2
2
−
1
n
2
)
for
n
=
3
,
4
,
5
,
.
.
.
{\displaystyle {\frac {1}{\lambda }}=R_{\mathrm {H} }\left({\frac {1}{2^{2}}}-{\frac {1}{n^{2}}}\right)\quad {\text{for}}\ n=3,4,5,...}
where λ is the wavelength of the absorbed or emitted light and RH is the Rydberg constant. Balmer's formula was corroborated by the discovery of additional spectral lines, but for thirty years, no one could explain why it worked. In the first paper of his trilogy, Bohr was able to derive it from his model:
R
Z
=
2
π
2
m
e
Z
2
e
4
h
3
{\displaystyle R_{Z}={2\pi ^{2}m_{e}Z^{2}e^{4} \over h^{3}}}
where me is the electron's mass, e is its charge, h is the Planck constant and Z is the atom's atomic number (1 for hydrogen).
The model's first hurdle was the Pickering series, lines that did not fit Balmer's formula. When challenged on this by Alfred Fowler, Bohr replied that they were caused by ionised helium, helium atoms with only one electron. The Bohr model was found to work for such ions. Many older physicists, like Thomson, Rayleigh and Hendrik Lorentz, did not like the trilogy, but the younger generation, including Rutherford, David Hilbert, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Max Born and Arnold Sommerfeld saw it as a breakthrough. The trilogy's acceptance was entirely due to its ability to explain phenomena that stymied other models, and to predict results that were subsequently verified by experiments. Today, the Bohr model of the atom has been superseded, but is still the best known model of the atom, as it often appears in high school physics and chemistry texts.
Bohr did not enjoy teaching medical students. He later admitted that he was not a good lecturer, because he needed a balance between clarity and truth, between "Klarheit und Wahrheit". He decided to return to Manchester, where Rutherford had offered him a job as a reader in place of Darwin, whose tenure had expired. Bohr accepted. He took a leave of absence from the University of Copenhagen, which he started by taking a holiday in Tyrol with his brother Harald and aunt Hanna Adler. There, he visited the University of Göttingen and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he met Sommerfeld and conducted seminars on the trilogy. The First World War broke out while they were in Tyrol, greatly complicating the trip back to Denmark and Bohr's subsequent voyage with Margrethe to England, where he arrived in October 1914. They stayed until July 1916, by which time he had been appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, a position created especially for him. His docentship was abolished at the same time, so he still had to teach physics to medical students. New professors were formally introduced to King Christian X, who expressed his delight at meeting such a famous football player.
Institute of Physics
In April 1917, Bohr began a campaign to establish an Institute of Theoretical Physics. He gained the support of the Danish government and the Carlsberg Foundation, and sizeable contributions were also made by industry and private donors, many of them Jewish. Legislation establishing the institute was passed in November 1918. Now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, it opened on 3 March 1921, with Bohr as its director. His family moved into an apartment on the first floor. Bohr's institute served as a focal point for researchers into quantum mechanics and related subjects in the 1920s and 1930s, when most of the world's best-known theoretical physicists spent some time in his company. Early arrivals included Hans Kramers from the Netherlands, Oskar Klein from Sweden, George de Hevesy from Hungary, Wojciech Rubinowicz from Poland, and Svein Rosseland from Norway. Bohr became widely appreciated as their congenial host and eminent colleague. Klein and Rosseland produced the institute's first publication even before it opened.
The Bohr model worked well for hydrogen and ionized single-electron helium, which impressed Einstein but could not explain more complex elements. By 1919, Bohr was moving away from the idea that electrons orbited the nucleus and developed heuristics to describe them. The rare-earth elements posed a particular classification problem for chemists because they were so chemically similar. An important development came in 1924 with Wolfgang Pauli's discovery of the Pauli exclusion principle, which put Bohr's models on a firm theoretical footing. Bohr was then able to declare that the as-yet-undiscovered element 72 was not a rare-earth element but an element with chemical properties similar to those of zirconium. (Elements had been predicted and discovered since 1871 by chemical properties), and Bohr was immediately challenged by the French chemist Georges Urbain, who claimed to have discovered a rare-earth element 72, which he called "celtium". At the Institute in Copenhagen, Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy took up the challenge of proving Bohr right and Urbain wrong. Starting with a clear idea of the chemical properties of the unknown element greatly simplified the search process. They went through samples from Copenhagen's Museum of Mineralogy looking for a zirconium-like element and soon found it. The element, which they named hafnium (hafnia being the Latin name for Copenhagen), turned out to be more common than gold.
In 1922, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them". The award thus recognised both the trilogy and his early leading work in the emerging field of quantum mechanics. For his Nobel lecture, Bohr gave his audience a comprehensive survey of what was then known about the structure of the atom, including the correspondence principle, which he had formulated. This states that the behaviour of systems described by quantum theory reproduces classical physics in the limit of large quantum numbers.
The discovery of Compton scattering by Arthur Holly Compton in 1923 convinced most physicists that light was composed of photons and that energy and momentum were conserved in collisions between electrons and photons. In 1924, Bohr, Kramers, and John C. Slater, an American physicist working at the Institute in Copenhagen, proposed the Bohr–Kramers–Slater theory (BKS). It was more of a program than a full physical theory, as the ideas it developed were not worked out quantitatively. The BKS theory became the final attempt at understanding the interaction of matter and electromagnetic radiation on the basis of the old quantum theory, in which quantum phenomena were treated by imposing quantum restrictions on a classical wave description of the electromagnetic field.
Modelling atomic behaviour under incident electromagnetic radiation using "virtual oscillators" at the absorption and emission frequencies, rather than the (different) apparent frequencies of the Bohr orbits, led Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and Kramers to explore different mathematical models. They led to the development of matrix mechanics, the first form of modern quantum mechanics. The BKS theory also generated discussion of, and renewed attention to, difficulties in the foundations of the old quantum theory. The most provocative element of BKS – that momentum and energy would not necessarily be conserved in each interaction, but only statistically – was soon shown to be in conflict with experiments conducted by Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger. In light of these results, Bohr informed Darwin that "there is nothing else to do than to give our revolutionary efforts as honourable a funeral as possible".
Quantum mechanics
The introduction of spin by George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit in November 1925 was a milestone. The next month, Bohr travelled to Leiden to attend celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Hendrick Lorentz receiving his doctorate. When his train stopped in Hamburg, he was met by Wolfgang Pauli and Otto Stern, who asked for his opinion of the spin theory. Bohr pointed out that he had concerns about the interaction between electrons and magnetic fields. When he arrived in Leiden, Paul Ehrenfest and Albert Einstein informed Bohr that Einstein had resolved this problem using relativity. Bohr then had Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit incorporate this into their paper. Thus, when he met Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan in Göttingen on the way back, he had become, in his own words, "a prophet of the electron magnet gospel".
Heisenberg first came to Copenhagen in 1924, then returned to Göttingen in June 1925, shortly thereafter developing the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. When he showed his results to Max Born in Göttingen, Born realised that they could best be expressed using matrices. This work attracted the attention of the British physicist Paul Dirac, who came to Copenhagen for six months in September 1926. Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger also visited in 1926. His attempt at explaining quantum physics in classical terms using wave mechanics impressed Bohr, who believed it contributed "so much to mathematical clarity and simplicity that it represents a gigantic advance over all previous forms of quantum mechanics".
When Kramers left the institute in 1926 to take up a chair as professor of theoretical physics at the Utrecht University, Bohr arranged for Heisenberg to return and take Kramers's place as a lektor at the University of Copenhagen. Heisenberg worked in Copenhagen as a university lecturer and assistant to Bohr from 1926 to 1927.
Bohr became convinced that light behaved like both waves and particles and, in 1927, experiments confirmed the de Broglie hypothesis that matter (like electrons) also behaved like waves. He conceived the philosophical principle of complementarity: that items could have apparently mutually exclusive properties, such as being a wave or a stream of particles, depending on the experimental framework. He felt that it was not fully understood by professional philosophers.
In February 1927, Heisenberg developed the first version of the uncertainty principle, presenting it using a thought experiment where an electron was observed through a gamma-ray microscope. Bohr was dissatisfied with Heisenberg's argument, since it required only that a measurement disturb properties that already existed, rather than the more radical idea that the electron's properties could not be discussed at all apart from the context they were measured in. In a paper presented at the Volta Conference at Como in September 1927, Bohr emphasised that Heisenberg's uncertainty relations could be derived from classical considerations about the resolving power of optical instruments. Understanding the true meaning of complementarity would, Bohr believed, require "closer investigation". Einstein preferred the determinism of classical physics over the probabilistic new quantum physics to which he himself had contributed. Philosophical issues that arose from the novel aspects of quantum mechanics became widely celebrated subjects of discussion. Einstein and Bohr had good-natured arguments over such issues throughout their lives.
In 1914 Carl Jacobsen, the heir to Carlsberg breweries, bequeathed his mansion (the Carlsberg Honorary Residence, currently known as Carlsberg Academy) to be used for life by the Dane who had made the most prominent contribution to science, literature or the arts, as an honorary residence (Danish: Æresbolig). Harald Høffding had been the first occupant, and upon his death in July 1931, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters gave Bohr occupancy. He and his family moved there in 1932. He was elected president of the Academy on 17 March 1939.
By 1929 the phenomenon of beta decay prompted Bohr to again suggest that the law of conservation of energy be abandoned, but Enrico Fermi's hypothetical neutrino and the subsequent 1932 discovery of the neutron provided another explanation. This prompted Bohr to create a new theory of the compound nucleus in 1936, which explained how neutrons could be captured by the nucleus. In this model, the nucleus could be deformed like a drop of liquid. He worked on this with a new collaborator, the Danish physicist Fritz Kalckar, who died suddenly in 1938.
The discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn in December 1938 (and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner) generated intense interest among physicists. Bohr brought the news to the United States where he opened the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics with Fermi on 26 January 1939. When Bohr told George Placzek that this resolved all the mysteries of transuranic elements, Placzek told him that one remained: the neutron capture energies of uranium did not match those of its decay. Bohr thought about it for a few minutes and then announced to Placzek, Léon Rosenfeld and John Wheeler that "I have understood everything." Based on his liquid drop model of the nucleus, Bohr concluded that it was the uranium-235 isotope and not the more abundant uranium-238 that was primarily responsible for fission with thermal neutrons. In April 1940, John R. Dunning demonstrated that Bohr was correct. In the meantime, Bohr and Wheeler developed a theoretical treatment, which they published in a September 1939 paper on "The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission".
Philosophy
Heisenberg said of Bohr that he was "primarily a philosopher, not a physicist". Bohr read the 19th-century Danish Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Richard Rhodes argued in The Making of the Atomic Bomb that Bohr was influenced by Kierkegaard through Høffding. In 1909, Bohr sent his brother Kierkegaard's Stages on Life's Way as a birthday gift. In the enclosed letter, Bohr wrote, "It is the only thing I have to send home; but I do not believe that it would be very easy to find anything better ... I even think it is one of the most delightful things I have ever read." Bohr enjoyed Kierkegaard's language and literary style, but mentioned that he had some disagreement with Kierkegaard's philosophy. Some of Bohr's biographers suggested that this disagreement stemmed from Kierkegaard's advocacy of Christianity, while Bohr was an atheist.
There has been some dispute over the extent to which Kierkegaard influenced Bohr's philosophy and science. David Favrholdt argued that Kierkegaard had minimal influence over Bohr's work, taking Bohr's statement about disagreeing with Kierkegaard at face value, while Jan Faye argued that one can disagree with the content of a theory while accepting its general premises and structure.
Quantum physics
There has been much subsequent debate and discussion about Bohr's views and philosophy of quantum mechanics. Regarding his ontological interpretation of the quantum world, Bohr has been seen as an anti-realist, an instrumentalist, a phenomenological realist or some other kind of realist. Furthermore, though some have seen Bohr as being a subjectivist or a positivist, most philosophers agree that this is a misunderstanding of Bohr as he never argued for verificationism or for the idea that the subject had a direct impact on the outcome of a measurement.
Bohr has often been quoted saying that there is "no quantum world" but only an "abstract quantum physical description". This was not publicly said by Bohr, but rather a private statement attributed to Bohr by Aage Petersen in a reminiscence after his death. N. David Mermin recalled Victor Weisskopf declaring that Bohr wouldn't have said anything of the sort and exclaiming, "Shame on Aage Petersen for putting those ridiculous words in Bohr's mouth!"
Numerous scholars have argued that the philosophy of Immanuel Kant had a strong influence on Bohr. Like Kant, Bohr thought distinguishing between the subject's experience and the object was an important condition for attaining knowledge. This can only be done through the use of causal and spatial-temporal concepts to describe the subject's experience. Thus, according to Jan Faye, Bohr thought that it is because of "classical" concepts like "space", "position", "time", "causation", and "momentum" that one can talk about objects and their objective existence. Bohr held that basic concepts like "time" are built in to our ordinary language and that the concepts of classical physics are merely a refinement of them. Therefore, for Bohr, classical concepts need to be used to describe experiments that deal with the quantum world. Bohr writes:
[T]he account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is simply that by the word 'experiment' we refer to a situation where we can tell to others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics (APHK, p. 39).
According to Faye, there are various explanations for why Bohr believed that classical concepts were necessary for describing quantum phenomena. Faye groups explanations into five frameworks: empiricism (i.e. logical positivism); Kantianism (or Neo-Kantian models of epistemology); Pragmatism (which focus on how human beings experientially interact with atomic systems according to their needs and interests); Darwinianism (i.e. we are adapted to use classical type concepts, which Léon Rosenfeld said that we evolved to use); and Experimentalism (which focuses strictly on the function and outcome of experiments that thus must be described classically). These explanations are not mutually exclusive, and at times Bohr seems to emphasise some of these aspects while at other times he focuses on other elements.
According to Faye "Bohr thought of the atom as real. Atoms are neither heuristic nor logical constructions." However, according to Faye, he did not believe "that the quantum mechanical formalism was true in the sense that it gave us a literal ('pictorial') rather than a symbolic representation of the quantum world." Therefore, Bohr's theory of complementarity "is first and foremost a semantic and epistemological reading of quantum mechanics that carries certain ontological implications". As Faye explains, Bohr's indefinability thesis is that
[T]he truth conditions of sentences ascribing a certain kinematic or dynamic value to an atomic object are dependent on the apparatus involved, in such a way that these truth conditions have to include reference to the experimental setup as well as the actual outcome of the experiment.
Faye notes that Bohr's interpretation makes no reference to a "collapse of the wave function during measurements" (and indeed, he never mentioned this idea). Instead, Bohr "accepted the Born statistical interpretation because he believed that the ψ-function has only a symbolic meaning and does not represent anything real". Since for Bohr, the ψ-function is not a literal pictorial representation of reality, there can be no real collapse of the wavefunction.
A much debated point in recent literature is what Bohr believed about atoms and their reality and whether they are something else than what they seem to be. Some like Henry Folse argue that Bohr saw a distinction between observed phenomena and a transcendental reality. Jan Faye disagrees with this position and holds that for Bohr, the quantum formalism and complementarity was the only thing we could say about the quantum world and that "there is no further evidence in Bohr's writings indicating that Bohr would attribute intrinsic and measurement-independent state properties to atomic objects [...] in addition to the classical ones being manifested in measurement."
Second World War
Assistance to refugee scholars
The rise of Nazism in Germany prompted many scholars to flee their countries, either because they were Jewish or because they were political opponents of the Nazi regime. In 1933, the Rockefeller Foundation created a fund to help support refugee academics, and Bohr discussed this programme with the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Max Mason, in May 1933 during a visit to the United States. Bohr offered the refugees temporary jobs at the institute, provided them with financial support, arranged for them to be awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, and ultimately found them places at institutions around the world. Those that he helped included Guido Beck, Felix Bloch, James Franck, George de Hevesy, Otto Frisch, Hilde Levi, Lise Meitner, George Placzek, Eugene Rabinowitch, Stefan Rozental, Erich Ernst Schneider, Edward Teller, Arthur von Hippel and Victor Weisskopf.
In April 1940, early in the Second World War, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Denmark. To prevent the Germans from discovering Max von Laue's and James Franck's gold Nobel medals, Bohr had de Hevesy dissolve them in aqua regia. In this form, they were stored on a shelf at the Institute until after the war, when the gold was precipitated and the medals re-struck by the Nobel Foundation. Bohr's own medal had been donated to an auction to the Finnish Relief Fund, and was auctioned off in March 1940, along with the medal of August Krogh. The buyer later donated the two medals to the Danish Historical Museum in Frederiksborg Castle, where they are still kept, although Bohr's medal temporarily went to space with Andreas Mogensen on ISS Expedition 70 in 2023-2024.
Bohr kept the Institute running, but all the foreign scholars departed.
Meeting with Heisenberg
Bohr was aware of the possibility of using uranium-235 to construct an atomic bomb, referring to it in lectures in Britain and Denmark shortly before and after the war started, but he did not believe that it was technically feasible to extract a sufficient quantity of uranium-235. In September 1941, Heisenberg, who had become head of the German nuclear energy project, visited Bohr in Copenhagen. During this meeting the two men took a private moment outside, the content of which has caused much speculation, as both gave differing accounts.
According to Heisenberg, he began to address nuclear energy, morality and the war, to which Bohr seems to have reacted by terminating the conversation abruptly while not giving Heisenberg hints about his own opinions. Ivan Supek, one of Heisenberg's students and friends, claimed that the main subject of the meeting was Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, who had proposed trying to persuade Bohr to mediate peace between Britain and Germany.
In 1957, Heisenberg wrote to Robert Jungk, who was then working on the book Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists. Heisenberg explained that he had visited Copenhagen to communicate to Bohr the views of several German scientists, that production of a nuclear weapon was possible with great efforts, and this raised enormous responsibilities on the world's scientists on both sides. When Bohr saw Jungk's depiction in the Danish translation of the book, he drafted (but never sent) a letter to Heisenberg, stating that he deeply disagreed with Heisenberg's account of the meeting, that he recalled Heisenberg's visit as being to encourage cooperation with the inevitably victorious Nazis and that he was shocked that Germany was pursuing nuclear weapons under Heisenberg's leadership.
Michael Frayn's 1998 play Copenhagen explores what might have happened at the 1941 meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr. A television film version of the play by the BBC was first screened on 26 September 2002, with Stephen Rea as Bohr. With the subsequent release of Bohr's letters, the play has been criticised by historians as being a "grotesque oversimplification and perversion of the actual moral balance" due to adopting a pro-Heisenberg perspective.
The same meeting had previously been dramatised by the BBC's Horizon science documentary series in 1992, with Anthony Bate as Bohr, and Philip Anthony as Heisenberg. The meeting is also dramatised in the Norwegian/Danish/British miniseries The Heavy Water War.
Manhattan Project
In September 1943, word reached Bohr and his brother Harald that the Nazis considered their family to be Jewish, since their mother was Jewish, and that they were therefore in danger of being arrested. The Danish resistance helped Bohr and his wife escape by sea to Sweden on 29 September. The next day, Bohr persuaded King Gustaf V of Sweden to make public Sweden's willingness to provide asylum to Jewish refugees. On 2 October 1943, Swedish radio broadcast that Sweden was ready to offer asylum, and the mass rescue of the Danish Jews by their countrymen followed swiftly thereafter. Some historians claim that Bohr's actions led directly to the mass rescue, while others say that, though Bohr did all that he could for his countrymen, his actions were not a decisive influence on the wider events. Eventually, over 7,000 Danish Jews escaped to Sweden.
When the news of Bohr's escape reached Britain, Lord Cherwell sent a telegram to Bohr asking him to come to Britain. Bohr arrived in Scotland on 6 October in a de Havilland Mosquito operated by the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). The Mosquitos were unarmed high-speed bomber aircraft that had been converted to carry small, valuable cargoes or important passengers. By flying at high speed and high altitude, they could cross German-occupied Norway, and yet avoid German fighters. Bohr, equipped with parachute, flying suit and oxygen mask, spent the three-hour flight lying on a mattress in the aircraft's bomb bay. During the flight, Bohr did not wear his flying helmet as it was too small, and consequently did not hear the pilot's intercom instruction to turn on his oxygen supply when the aircraft climbed to high altitude to overfly Norway. He passed out from oxygen starvation and only revived when the aircraft descended to lower altitude over the North Sea. Bohr's son Aage followed his father to Britain on another flight a week later, and became his personal assistant.
Bohr was warmly received by James Chadwick and Sir John Anderson, but for security reasons Bohr was kept out of sight. He was given an apartment at St James's Palace and an office with the British Tube Alloys nuclear weapons development team. Bohr was astonished at the amount of progress that had been made. Chadwick arranged for Bohr to visit the United States as a Tube Alloys consultant, with Aage as his assistant. On 8 December 1943, Bohr arrived in Washington, D.C., where he met with the director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. He visited Einstein and Pauli at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and went to Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons were being designed. For security reasons, he went under the name of "Nicholas Baker" in the United States, while Aage became "James Baker". In May 1944 the Danish resistance newspaper De frie Danske reported that they had learned that 'the famous son of Denmark Professor Niels Bohr' in October the previous year had fled his country via Sweden to London and from there travelled to Moscow from where he could be assumed to support the war effort.
Bohr did not remain at Los Alamos, but paid a series of extended visits over the course of the next two years. Robert Oppenheimer credited Bohr with acting "as a scientific father figure to the younger men", most notably Richard Feynman. Bohr is quoted as saying, "They didn't need my help in making the atom bomb." Oppenheimer gave Bohr credit for an important contribution to the work on modulated neutron initiators. "This device remained a stubborn puzzle", Oppenheimer noted, "but in early February 1945 Niels Bohr clarified what had to be done".
Bohr recognised early that nuclear weapons would change international relations. In April 1944, he received a letter from Peter Kapitza, written some months before when Bohr was in Sweden, inviting him to come to the Soviet Union. The letter convinced Bohr that the Soviets were aware of the Anglo-American project, and would strive to catch up. He sent Kapitza a non-committal response, which he showed to the authorities in Britain before posting. Bohr met Churchill on 16 May 1944, but found that "we did not speak the same language". Churchill disagreed with the idea of openness towards the Russians to the point that he wrote in a letter: "It seems to me Bohr ought to be confined or at any rate made to see that he is very near the edge of mortal crimes."
Oppenheimer suggested that Bohr visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt to convince him that the Manhattan Project should be shared with the Soviets in the hope of speeding up its results. Bohr's friend, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, informed President Roosevelt about Bohr's opinions, and a meeting between them took place on 26 August 1944. Roosevelt suggested that Bohr return to the United Kingdom to try to win British approval. When Churchill and Roosevelt met at Hyde Park on 19 September 1944, they rejected the idea of informing the world about the project, and the aide-mémoire of their conversation contained a rider that "enquiries should be made regarding the activities of Professor Bohr and steps taken to ensure that he is responsible for no leakage of information, particularly to the Russians".
In June 1950, Bohr addressed an "Open Letter" to the United Nations calling for international cooperation on nuclear energy. In the 1950s, after the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test, the International Atomic Energy Agency was created along the lines of Bohr's suggestion. In 1957 he received the first ever Atoms for Peace Award.
Later years
Following the ending of the war, Bohr returned to Copenhagen on 25 August 1945, and was re-elected President of the Royal Danish Academy of Arts and Sciences on 21 September. At a memorial meeting of the Academy on 17 October 1947 for King Christian X, who had died in April, the new king, Frederik IX, announced that he was conferring the Order of the Elephant on Bohr. This award was normally awarded only to royalty and heads of state, but the king said that it honoured not just Bohr personally, but Danish science. Bohr designed his own coat of arms, which featured a taijitu (symbol of yin and yang) and a motto in Latin: contraria sunt complementa, "opposites are complementary".
The Second World War demonstrated that science, and physics in particular, now required considerable financial and material resources. To avoid a brain drain to the United States, twelve European countries banded together to create CERN, a research organisation along the lines of the national laboratories in the United States, designed to undertake Big Science projects beyond the resources of any one of them alone. Questions soon arose regarding the best location for the facilities. Bohr and Kramers felt that the Institute in Copenhagen would be the ideal site. Pierre Auger, who organised the preliminary discussions, disagreed; he felt that both Bohr and his Institute were past their prime, and that Bohr's presence would overshadow others. After a long debate, Bohr pledged his support to CERN in February 1952, and Geneva was chosen as the site in October. The CERN Theory Group was based in Copenhagen until their new accommodation in Geneva was ready in 1957. Victor Weisskopf, who later became the Director General of CERN, summed up Bohr's role, saying that "there were other personalities who started and conceived the idea of CERN. The enthusiasm and ideas of the other people would not have been enough, however, if a man of his stature had not supported it."
Meanwhile, Scandinavian countries formed the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1957, with Bohr as its chairman. He was also involved with the founding of the Research Establishment Risø of the Danish Atomic Energy Commission, and served as its first chairman from February 1956.
Bohr died of heart failure at his home in Carlsberg on 18 November 1962. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in the family plot in the Assistens Cemetery in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen, along with those of his parents, his brother Harald, and his son Christian. Years later, his wife's ashes were also interred there. On 7 October 1965, on what would have been his 80th birthday, the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen was officially renamed to what it had been called unofficially for many years: the Niels Bohr Institute.
Accolades
Bohr received numerous honours and accolades. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he received the Hughes Medal in 1921, the Matteucci Medal in 1923, the Franklin Medal in 1926, the Copley Medal in 1938, the Order of the Elephant in 1947, the Atoms for Peace Award in 1957 and the Sonning Prize in 1961. He became foreign member of the Finnish Society of Sciences an Letters in 1922, and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1923, an international member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1925, a member of the Royal Society in 1926, an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 1940, and an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1945. The Bohr model's semicentennial was commemorated in Denmark on 21 November 1963 with a postage stamp depicting Bohr, the hydrogen atom and the formula for the difference of any two hydrogen energy levels:
h
ν
=
ϵ
2
−
ϵ
1
{\displaystyle h\nu =\epsilon _{2}-\epsilon _{1}}
. Several other countries have also issued postage stamps depicting Bohr. In 1997, the Danish National Bank began circulating the 500-krone banknote with the portrait of Bohr smoking a pipe. On 7 October 2012, in celebration of Niels Bohr's 127th birthday, a Google Doodle depicting the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom appeared on Google's home page. An asteroid, 3948 Bohr, was named after him, as was the Bohr lunar crater and bohrium, the chemical element with atomic number 107.
Bibliography
Bohr, Niels (1922). The Theory of Spectra and Atomic Constitution; three essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—— (2008). Nielsen, J. Rud (ed.). Volume 1: Early Work (1905–1911). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Hoyer, Ulrich (ed.). Volume 2: Work on Atomic Physics (1912–1917). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Nielsen, J. Rud (ed.). Volume 3: The Correspondence Principle (1918–1923). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Nielsen, J. Rud (ed.). Volume 4: The Periodic System (1920–1923). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Stolzenburg, Klaus (ed.). Volume 5: The Emergence of Quantum Mechanics (mainly 1924–1926). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Kalckar, Jørgen (ed.). Volume 6: Foundations of Quantum Physics I (1926–1932). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Kalckar, Jørgen (ed.). Volume 7: Foundations of Quantum Physics I (1933–1958). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Thorsen, Jens (ed.). Volume 8: The Penetration of Charged Particles Through Matter (1912–1954). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Peierls, Rudolf (ed.). Volume 9: Nuclear Physics (1929–1952). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Favrholdt, David (ed.). Volume 10: Complementarity Beyond Physics (1928–1962). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Aaserud, Finn (ed.). Volume 11: The Political Arena (1934–1961). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Aaserud, Finn (ed.). Volume 12: Popularization and People (1911–1962). Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
—— (2008). Aaserud, Finn (ed.). Volume 13: Cumulative Subject Index. Niels Bohr Collected Works. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-53286-2. OCLC 272382249.
See also
Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Niels Bohr Archive
Author profile in the database zbMATH
Works by Niels Bohr at Project Gutenberg
Niels Bohr at IMDb
Newspaper clippings about Niels Bohr in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
Niels Bohr on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1922 The Structure of the Atom
Oral history interview transcript for Niels Bohr on 31 October 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives – interviews conducted by Thomas S. Kuhn, Leon Rosenfeld, Erik Rudinger, and Aage Petersen
Oral history interview transcript for Niels Bohr on 1 November 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
Oral history interview transcript for Niels Bohr on 7 November 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
Oral history interview transcript for Niels Bohr on 14 November 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
Oral history interview transcript for Niels Bohr on 17 November 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
"The Bohr-Heisenberg meeting in September 1941". American Institute of Physics. Archived from the original on 4 July 2011. Retrieved 2 March 2013.
"Resources for Frayn's Copenhagen: Niels Bohr". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 9 October 2013.
"Video – Niels Bohr (1962): Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge". Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Retrieved 9 July 2014. |
Johannes_Stark | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Stark | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Stark"
] | Johannes Stark (German pronunciation: [joˈhanəs ʃtaʁk] , 15 April 1874 – 21 June 1957) was a German physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919 "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields". This phenomenon is known as the Stark effect.
Stark received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Munich in 1897 under the supervision of Eugen von Lommel, and served as Lommel's assistant until his appointment as a lecturer at the University of Göttingen in 1900. He was an extraordinary professor at Leibniz University Hannover from 1906 until he became a professor at RWTH Aachen University in 1909. In 1917, he became professor at the University of Greifswald, and he also worked at the University of Würzburg from 1920 to 1922.
A supporter of Adolf Hitler from 1924, Stark was one of the main figures, along with fellow Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard, in the anti-Semitic Deutsche Physik movement, which sought to remove Jewish scientists from German physics. He was appointed head of the German Research Foundation in 1933 and was president of the Reich Physical-Technical Institute from 1933 to 1939. In 1947 he was found guilty as a "Major Offender" by a denazification court.
Biography
Early years
Born in Schickenhof, Kingdom of Bavaria (now Freihung), Stark was educated at Bayreuth Gymnasium (secondary school) and later in Regensburg. His collegiate education began at the University of Munich, where he studied physics, mathematics, chemistry, and crystallography. His tenure at that college began in 1894; he graduated in 1897, with his doctoral dissertation titled Untersuchung über einige physikalische, vorzüglich optische Eigenschaften des Rußes (Investigation of some physical, in particular optical properties of soot).
Career
Stark worked in various positions at the Physics Institute of his alma mater until 1900, when he became an unsalaried lecturer at the University of Göttingen. An extraordinary professor at Hannover by 1906, in 1908 he became professor at RWTH Aachen University. He worked and researched at physics departments of several universities, including the University of Greifswald, until 1922. In 1919, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields" (the latter is known as the Stark effect). From 1933 until his retirement in 1939, Stark was elected President of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, while also President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
It was Stark who, as the editor of the Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik, asked in 1907, then still rather unknown, Albert Einstein to write a review article on the principle of relativity. Stark seemed impressed by relativity and Einstein's earlier work when he quoted "the principle of relativity formulated by H. A. Lorentz and A. Einstein" and "Planck's relationship M0 = E0/c2" in his 1907 paper in Physikalische Zeitschrift, where he used the equation e0 = m0c2 to calculate an "elementary quantum of energy", i.e. the amount of energy related to the mass of an electron at rest. While working on his article, Einstein began a line of thought that would eventually lead to his general theory of relativity, which in turn became (after its confirmation) the start of Einstein's worldwide fame. This is ironic, given Stark's later work as an anti-Einstein and anti-relativity propagandist in the Deutsche Physik movement.
Stark published more than 300 papers, mainly regarding electricity and other such topics. He received various awards, including the Nobel Prize, the Baumgartner Prize of the Vienna Academy of Sciences (1910), the Vahlbruch Prize of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences (1914), and the Matteucci Medal of the Rome Academy. Probably his best known contribution to the field of physics is the Stark effect, which he discovered in 1913. In 1970 the International Astronomical Union honored him with a crater on the far-side of the Moon, without knowing about his Nazi activities. The name was dropped on August 12, 2020.
He married Luise Uepler, and they had five children. His hobbies were the cultivation of fruit trees and forestry. He worked in his private laboratory, which he set up using his Nobel prize money, on his country estate in Upper Bavaria after the second world war. There he studied the deflection of light in an electric field.
Affiliation with Nazism
From 1924 onwards, Stark supported Hitler. During the Nazi regime, Stark attempted to become the Führer of German physics through the Deutsche Physik ("German physics") movement (along with fellow Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard) against the "Jewish physics" of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg (who was not Jewish). After Werner Heisenberg defended Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, Stark wrote an angry article in the official SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps, calling Heisenberg a "White Jew".
On August 21, 1934, Stark wrote to physicist and fellow Nobel laureate Max von Laue, telling him to toe the party line or suffer the consequences. The letter was signed off with "Heil Hitler."
In his 1934 book Nationalsozialismus und Wissenschaft (English: "National Socialism and Science") Stark maintained that the priority of the scientist was to serve the nation—thus, the important fields of research were those that could help German arms production and industry. He attacked theoretical physics as "Jewish" and stressed that scientific positions in Nazi Germany should only be held by pure-blooded Germans.
Writing in Das Schwarze Korps, Stark argued that even if racial antisemitism were to triumph, it would only be a 'partial victory' if 'Jewish' ideas were not similarly defeated: "We also have to eradicate the Jewish spirit, whose blood can flow just as undisturbed today as before if its carriers hold beautiful Aryan passes".
In 1947, following the defeat of Germany in World War II, Stark was classified as a "Major Offender" and received a sentence of four years' imprisonment (later suspended) by a denazification court.
Later life and death
Stark spent the last years of his life on his Gut Eppenstatt near Traunstein in Upper Bavaria, where he died in 1957 at the age of 83. He was buried in Schönau am Königssee in the mountain cemetery.
See also
Stark-Einstein law
Publications
Die Entladung der Elektricität von galvanisch glühender Kohle in verdünntes Gas. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Annalen der Physik und Chemie', Neue Folge, Band 68). Leipzig, 1899
Der elektrische Strom zwischen galvanisch glühender Kohle und einem Metall durch verdünntes Gas. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Annalen der Physik und Chemie', Neue Folge, Band 68). Leipzig, 1899
Aenderung der Leitfähigkeit von Gasen durch einen stetigen elektrischen Strom. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Annalen der Physik', 4. Folge, Band 2). Leipzig, 1900
Ueber den Einfluss der Erhitzung auf das elektrische Leuchten eines verdünnten Gases. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Annalen der Physik', 4. Folge, Band 1). Leipzig, 1900
Ueber elektrostatische Wirkungen bei der Entladung der Elektricität in verdünnten Gasen. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Annalen der Physik', 4. Folge, Band 1). Leipzig, 1900
Kritische Bemerkungen zu der Mitteilung der Herren Austin und Starke über Kathodenstrahlreflexion. Sonderabdruck aus 'Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft', Jahrgang 4, Nr. 8). Braunschweig, 1902
Prinzipien der Atomdynamik. 1. Teil. Die elektrischen Quanten., 1910
Schwierigkeiten für die Lichtquantenhypothese im Falle der Emission von Serienlinien. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft', Jg. XVI, Nr 6). Braunschweig, 1914
Bemerkung zum Bogen – und Funkenspektrum des Heliums. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft.', Jg. XVI, Nr. 10). Braunschweig, 1914
Folgerungen aus einer Valenzhypothese. III. Natürliche Drehung der Schwingungsebene des Lichtes. (Sonderabdruck aus `Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik', Heft 2, Mai 1914), Leipzig, 1914
Methode zur gleichzeitigen Zerlegung einer Linie durch das elektrische und das magnetische Feld. (Sonderabdruck aus 'Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft.', Jg. XVI, Nr. 7). Braunschweig, 1914
Die gegenwärtige Krise der deutschen Physik, ("The Thoroughgoing Crisis in German Physics") 1922
Natur der chemischen Valenzkräfte, 1922
Hitlergeist und Wissenschaft, 1924 together with Philipp Lenard
Die Axialität der Lichtemission und Atomstruktur, Berlin 1927
Atomstruktur und Atombindung, A. Seydel, Berlin 1928
Atomstrukturelle Grundlagen der Stickstoffchemie., Leipzig, 1931
Nationalsozialismus und Katholische Kirche, ("National Socialism and the Catholic Church") 1931
Nationalsozialismus und Katholische Kirche. II. Teil: Antwort auf Kundgebungen der deutschen Bischöfe., 1931
Nationale Erziehung, 1932
Nationalsozialismus und Wissenschaft ("National Socialism and Science") 1934
Stark, J. (1938). "The Pragmatic and the Dogmatic Spirit in Physics". Nature. 141 (3574): 770–772. Bibcode:1938Natur.141..770S. doi:10.1038/141770a0.
Physik der Atomoberfläche, 1940
Jüdische und deutsche Physik, ("Jewish and German Physics") with Wilhelm Müller, written at the University of Munich in 1941
Nationale Erziehung, Zentrumsherrschaft und Jesuitenpolitik, undated
Hitlers Ziele und Persönlichkeit ("Hitler's Aims and Personality"), undated
Notes
References
Andreas Kleinert: "Die Axialität der Lichtemission und Atomstruktur". Johannes Starks Gegenentwurf zur Quantentheorie. In: Astrid Schürmann, Burghard Weiss (Eds.): Chemie – Kultur – Geschichte. Festschrift für Hans-Werner Schütt anlässlich seines 65. Geburtstages. Berlin u. Diepholz 2002, pp. 213–222.
External links
Pictures of a Danish translation of Stark's Adolf Hitler: Aims and Personality
Klaus Hentschel (ed.) Physics and National Socialism. An Anthology of Primary Sources., Birkhäuser-Verlag, Basel, 1996; 2. Aufl. 2011, ISBN 3034802021.
Newspaper clippings about Johannes Stark in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
Johannes Stark on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, June 3, 1920 Structural and Spectral Changes of Chemical Atoms |
James_Franck | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Franck | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Franck"
] | James Franck (German pronunciation: [ˈdʒɛɪ̯ms ˈfʁaŋk] ; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate in 1906 and his habilitation in 1911 at the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of professor extraordinarius. He served as a volunteer in the German Army during World War I. He was seriously injured in 1917 in a gas attack and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.
Franck became the Head of the Physics Division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft for Physical Chemistry. In 1920, Franck became professor ordinarius of experimental physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. While there he worked on quantum physics with Max Born, who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. His work included the Franck–Hertz experiment, an important confirmation of the Bohr model of the atom. He promoted the careers of women in physics, notably Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hilde Levi.
After the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, Franck resigned his post in protest against the dismissal of fellow academics. He assisted Frederick Lindemann in helping dismissed Jewish scientists find work overseas, before he left Germany in November 1933. After a year at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, he moved to the United States, where he worked at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then the University of Chicago. During this period he became interested in photosynthesis.
Franck participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II as Director of the Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory. He was also the chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb, which is best known for the compilation of the Franck Report, which recommended that the atomic bombs not be used on the Japanese cities without warning.
Early life
James Franck was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 26 August 1882, into a Jewish family, the second child and first son of Jacob Franck, a banker, and his wife Rebecca née Nachum Drucker. He had an older sister, Paula, and a younger brother, Robert Bernard. His father was a devout and religious man, while his mother came from a family of rabbis. Franck attended primary school in Hamburg. Starting in 1891 he attended the Wilhelm-Gymnasium, which was then a boys-only school.
Hamburg had no university then, so prospective students had to attend one of the 22 universities elsewhere in Germany. Intending to study law and economics, Franck entered the University of Heidelberg in 1901, as it had a renowned law school. He attended lectures on law, but was far more interested in those on science. While there, he met Max Born, who would become a lifelong friend. With Born's help, he was able to persuade his parents to allow him to switch to studying physics and chemistry. Franck attended mathematics lectures by Leo Königsberger and Georg Cantor, but Heidelberg was not strong on the physical sciences, so he decided to go to the Frederick William University in Berlin.
At Berlin, Franck attended lectures by Max Planck and Emil Warburg. On 28 July 1904 he saved a pair of children from drowning in the Spree River. For his Doctor of Philosophy (Dir. Phil.) under Warburg's supervision, Warburg suggested that he study corona discharges. Franck found this topic too complex, so he changed the focus of his thesis. Entitled Über die Beweglichkeit der Ladungsträger der Spitzenentladung ("On the Mobility of Ions"), it would subsequently be published in the Annalen der Physik.
With his thesis completed, Franck had to perform his deferred military service. He was called up on 1 October 1906 and joined the 1st Telegraph Battalion. He suffered a minor horse riding accident in December and was discharged as unfit for duty. He took up an assistantship at the Physikalische Verein in Frankfurt in 1907, but did not enjoy it, and soon returned to Frederick William University. At a concert Franck met Ingrid Josephson, a Swedish pianist. They were married in a Swedish ceremony in Gothenburg on 23 December 1907. They had two daughters, Dagmar (Daggie), who was born in 1909, and Elisabeth (Lisa), who was born in 1912.
To pursue an academic career in Germany, having a doctorate was not enough; one needed a venia legendi, or habilitation. This could be achieved with either another major thesis or by producing a substantial body of published work. Franck chose the latter route. There were many unsolved problems in physics at the time, and by 1914 he had published 34 articles. He was the sole author of some, but generally preferred working in collaboration with Eva von Bahr, Lise Meitner, Robert Pohl, Peter Pringsheim, Robert W. Wood, Arthur Wehnelt or Wilhelm Westphal. His most fruitful collaboration was with Gustav Hertz, with whom he wrote 19 articles. He received his habilitation on 20 May 1911.
Franck–Hertz experiment
In 1914, Franck teamed up with Hertz to perform an experiment to investigate fluorescence. They designed a vacuum tube for studying energetic electrons that flew through a thin vapour of mercury atoms. They discovered that when an electron collided with a mercury atom it could lose only a specific quantity (4.9 electronvolts) of its kinetic energy before flying away. A faster electron does not decelerate completely after a collision, but loses precisely the same amount of its kinetic energy. Slower electrons just bounce off mercury atoms without losing any significant speed or kinetic energy.
These experimental results provided confirmation of Albert Einstein's photoelectric effect and Planck's relation (E = fh) linking energy (E) and frequency (f) arising from quantisation of energy with the Planck constant (h). But they also provided evidence supporting the model of the atom that had been proposed the previous year by Niels Bohr. Its key feature was that an electron inside an atom occupies one of the atom's "quantum energy levels". Before a collision, an electron inside the mercury atom occupies its lowest available energy level. After the collision, the electron inside occupies a higher energy level with 4.9 eV more energy. This means that the electron is more loosely bound to the mercury atom. There were no intermediate levels or possibilities.
In a second paper presented in May 1914, Franck and Hertz reported on the light emission by the mercury atoms that had absorbed energy from collisions. They showed that the wavelength of this ultraviolet light corresponded exactly to the 4.9 eV of energy that the flying electron had lost. The relationship of energy and wavelength had also been predicted by Bohr. Franck and Hertz completed their last paper together in December 1918. In it, they reconciled the discrepancies between their results and Bohr's theory, which they now acknowledged. In his Nobel lecture, Franck admitted that it was "completely incomprehensible that we had failed to recognise the fundamental significance of Bohr's theory, so much so, that we never even mentioned it once". On 10 December 1926, Franck and Hertz were awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom.".
World War I
Franck enlisted in the German Army soon after the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. In December he was sent to the Picardy sector of the Western Front. He became a deputy officer (offizierstellvertreter), and then a lieutenant (leutnant) in 1915. In early 1915 he was transferred to Fritz Haber's new unit that would introduce clouds of chlorine gas as a weapon. With Otto Hahn he was responsible for locating sites for the attacks. He was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, on 30 March 1915, and the city of Hamburg awarded him the Hanseatic Cross on 11 January 1916. While in hospital with pleurisy, he co-wrote yet another scientific paper with Hertz, and he was appointed an assistant professor in his absence by Frederick William University on 19 September 1916. Sent to the Russian front, he came down with dysentery. He returned to Berlin, where he joined Hertz, Westphal, Hans Geiger, Otto Hahn and others at Haber's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, working on the development of gas masks. He was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, on 23 February 1918. He was discharged from the Army on 25 November 1918, soon after the war ended.
With the war over, Haber's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute now returned to research, and Haber offered Franck a job. His new post came with more pay, but was not a tenured position. It did however allow Franck to pursue his research as he wished. Working with new, younger collaborators such as Walter Grotrian, Paul Knipping, Thea Krüger, Fritz Reiche and Hertha Sponer, his first papers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute examined atomic electrons in their excited state, results that would later prove important in the development of the laser. They coined the term "metastable" for atoms spending an extended time in a state other than that of least energy. When Niels Bohr visited Berlin in 1920, Meitner and Franck arranged for him to come to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute to talk with the younger staff without the presence of the bonzen ("bigwigs").
Göttingen
In 1920, the University of Göttingen offered Max Born its chair of theoretical physics, which had recently been vacated by Peter Debye. Göttingen was an important centre for mathematics, thanks to David Hilbert, Felix Klein, Hermann Minkowski and Carl Runge, but not so much for physics. This would change. As part of his price for coming to Göttingen, Born wanted Franck to head experimental physics there. On 15 November 1920, Franck became Professor of Experimental Physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics, a fully tenured professor ordinarius. He was allowed two assistants, so he brought Hertha Sponer with him from Berlin to fill one of the positions. Pohl, a gifted teacher, headed the First Institute, and handled the lectures. Franck refurbished the laboratory with the latest equipment using funds from his own pocket.
Under Born and Franck, Göttingen was one of the world's great centres for physics between 1920 and 1933. Although they published only three papers together, Born and Franck discussed every one of their papers with each other. Gaining admittance to Franck's laboratory became highly competitive. His doctoral students included Hans Kopfermann, Arthur R. von Hippel, Wilhelm Hanle, Fritz Houtermans, Heinrich Kuhn, Werner Kroebel, Walter Lochte-Holtgreven and Heinz Maier-Leibnitz. In supervising doctoral candidates, Franck had to ensure that thesis topics were well-defined, and would teach the candidate how to conduct original research, while still staying within the limits of the candidate's ability, the laboratory's equipment and the institute's budget. Under his direction, research was carried out into the structure of atoms and molecules.
In his own research, Franck developed what became known as the Franck–Condon principle, a rule in spectroscopy and quantum chemistry that explains the intensity of vibronic transitions, simultaneous changes in electronic and vibrational energy levels of a molecule due to the absorption or emission of a photon of the appropriate energy. The principle states that during an electronic transition, a change from one vibrational energy level to another will be more likely to happen if the two vibrational wave functions overlap more significantly. The principle has since been applied to a wide variety of related phenomena.
For his work during this time period, Franck was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1929.
Exile
This period came to an end when the Nazi Party won power in Germany in an election on 2 March 1933. The following month it enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which provided for the retirement or dismissal of all Jewish civil servants, along with political opponents of the government. As a veteran of the First World War, Franck was exempt, but he submitted his resignation anyway on 17 April 1933. He once commented that science was his God and nature was his religion. He did not require his daughters to attend religious instruction classes at school, and even let them have a decorated tree at Christmas; but he was proud of his Jewish heritage all the same. He was the first academic to resign in protest over the law. Newspapers around the world reported it, but no government or university protested.
Franck assisted Frederick Lindemann in helping dismissed Jewish scientists find work overseas, before he left Germany in November 1933. After a brief visit to the United States, where he measured the absorption of light in heavy water with Wood at Johns Hopkins University, he took up a position at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. He needed a new collaborator, so he took on Hilde Levi, whose recent thesis had impressed him. His original intention was to continue his research into the fluorescence of vapours and liquids, but under Bohr's influence they began to take an interest in biological aspects of these reactions, particularly photosynthesis, the process by which plants use light to convert carbon dioxide and water into more organic compounds. Biological processes turned out to be far more complicated than simple reactions in atoms and molecules. He co-authored two papers with Levi on the subject, which he would return to over the following years.
Franck found a position at the Polytekniske Læreanstalt in Copenhagen for Arthur von Hippel, who was now his son in law, having married his daughter Dagmar. He decided to provide financial security for his children by dividing his Nobel Prize money between them. The gold medal itself was entrusted to Niels Bohr for safekeeping. When Germany invaded Denmark on 9 April 1940, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold medal, along with that of Max von Laue in aqua regia to prevent the Germans from taking them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prize medals.
In 1935, Franck moved to the United States, where he had accepted a professorship at Johns Hopkins University. The laboratory there was poorly equipped compared to the one in Göttingen, but he received $10,000 for equipment from the Rockefeller Foundation. A more intractable problem was that the university had no money to hire skilled staff. Franck was concerned about his family members remaining in Germany, and needed money to help them emigrate. He therefore accepted an offer from the University of Chicago, where his work on photosynthesis had attracted interest, in 1938.
Franck's first paper there, co-authored with Edward Teller, was on photochemical processes in crystals. Hans Gaffron became his collaborator. They were joined by Pringsheim, who escaped from Belgium after the German invasion. Franck arranged a position for Pringsheim at his laboratory. Both his daughters and their families moved to the United States, and he was also able to bring out his elderly mother and aunt. He became a naturalised United States citizen on 21 July 1941, so he was not an enemy alien when the United States declared war on Germany on 11 December 1941. His daughters still were, though, so they were restricted from travelling, and could not take care of their mother when she fell ill and died on 10 January 1942, although they were permitted to attend her funeral.
In February 1942, Arthur H. Compton established its Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. As part of the Manhattan Project, its mission was to build nuclear reactors to create plutonium that would be used in atomic bombs. The Metallurgical Laboratory's Chemistry Division was initially headed by Frank Spedding, but he preferred hands on work to administration. Compton then turned to Franck, with some trepidation owing to his German background. Compton later wrote:
How Franck welcomed an invitation to join our project! It was a vote of confidence that far exceeded his hopes, and it gave him a chance to do his part for the cause of freedom. "It's not the German people I'm fighting", he explained. "It's the Nazis. They have a stranglehold over Germany. The German people are helpless until we can break the strength of their Nazi masters." The chemists welcomed Franck as an elder scientific statesman whose guidance they were glad to follow.
In addition to heading the Chemistry Division, Franck was also the chairman of the Metallurgical Laboratory's Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb, which consisted of himself and Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns and Leó Szilárd. In 1945, Franck warned Henry A. Wallace of their fears that "mankind has learned to unleash atomic power without being ethically and politically prepared to use it wisely." The committee compiled what became known as the Franck Report. Finished on 11 June 1945, it recommended that the atomic bombs not be used on the Japanese cities without warning. In any event, the Interim Committee decided otherwise.
Later life
Franck married Hertha Sponer in a civil ceremony on 29 June 1946, his first wife, Ingrid, having died in 1942. In his post-war research, he continued to tackle the problem of explaining the mechanism of photosynthesis. Meitner saw no break between his early and later work. She recalled that
Franck enjoyed talking about his problems, not so much to explain them to others as to satisfy his own mind. Once a problem had aroused his interest he was completely captivated, indeed obsessed by it. Common sense and straight logic were his main tools, together with simple apparatus. His research followed an almost straight line, from his early studies of ion mobilities to his last work on photosynthesis; it was always the energy exchange between atoms or molecules that fascinated him.
In addition to the Nobel Prize. Franck was awarded the Max Planck medal of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft in 1951 and the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his work on photosynthesis in 1955. He became an honorary citizen of Göttingen in 1953, was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1944, and elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1964. He was also an International Member of the American Philosophical Society.
He died suddenly from a heart attack while visiting Göttingen on 21 May 1964, and was buried in Chicago with his first wife.
In 1967, the University of Chicago named the James Franck Institute after him. A lunar crater has also been named in his honour. His papers are in the University of Chicago Library.
See also
List of Jewish Nobel laureates
Notes
References
Compton, Arthur (1956). Atomic Quest. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 173307.
de Hevesy, Georg (1962). Adventures in Radioisotope Research. New York: Pergamon Press. OCLC 12162216. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
Kuhn, Heinrich Gerhard (November 1965). "James Franck. 1882–1964". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 11: 53–74. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1965.0004. JSTOR 769261. S2CID 71347884.
Lemmerich, Jost (2011). Science and Conscience: The life of James Franck. Translated by Ann M. Hentschel. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7909-8.
Nachmansohn, David (1979). German-Jewish pioneers in science, 1900–1933: highlights in atomic physics, chemistry, and biochemistry. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-0-38790-402-3.
Rice, Stuart A.; Jortner, Joshua (2010). "James Franck 1882–1964: A Biographical Memoir" (PDF). U. S. National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
Schweber, Silvan S. (2012). Nuclear Forces: The Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06587-1. OCLC 758383322.
Further reading
Medawar, Jean; Pyke, David (2012). Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime. New York: Arcade Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61145-709-4.
External links
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck on 9 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives—Session I
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck on 10 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives—Session II
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck on 11 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives—Session III
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck and Hertha Sponer Franck on 12 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives—Session IV
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck and Hertha Sponer Franck on 13 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives—Session V
Oral history interview transcript with James Franck and Hertha Sponer Franck on 14 July 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives—Session VI
James Franck on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1926: "Transformation of Kinetic Energy of Free Electrons into Excitation Energy of Atoms by Impacts" |
Gustav_Hertz | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hertz | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hertz"
] | Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; German: [ˈɡʊs.taf ˈluːt.vɪç hɛʁt͡s] ; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases, and a nephew of Heinrich Hertz.
Biography
Hertz was born in Hamburg, the son of Auguste (née Arning) and a lawyer, Gustav Theodor Hertz (1858–1904), Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's brother. He attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums before studying at the Georg-August University of Göttingen (1906–1907), the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (1907–1908), and the Humboldt University of Berlin (1908–1911). He received his doctorate in 1911 under Heinrich Leopold Rubens.
From 1911 to 1914, Hertz was an assistant to Rubens at the University of Berlin. It was during this time that Hertz and James Franck performed experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases, known as the Franck–Hertz experiments, and for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925.
During World War I, Hertz served in the military from 1914. In 1915 he joined Fritz Haber's unit that would introduce poisonous chlorine gas as a weapon. He was seriously wounded in 1915. In 1917, he returned to the University of Berlin as a Privatdozent. In 1920, he took a job as a research physicist at the Philips Incandescent Lamp Factory in Eindhoven, which he held until 1925.
Career
In 1925, Hertz became ordinarius professor and director of the Physics Institute of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. In 1928 he became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and director of the Physics Institute of the Technische Hochschule Berlin ("THB"), now Technische Universität Berlin. While there, he developed an isotope separation technique via gaseous diffusion. Since Hertz was an officer during World War I, he was temporarily protected from National Socialist policies and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, but eventually the policies and laws became more stringent, and at the end of 1934, he was forced to resign his position at THB, as he was classified as a "second degree part-Jew" (his paternal grandfather Gustav Ferdinand Hertz (originally named David Gustav Hertz) (1827–1914) had been Jewish as a child, before his whole family had converted to Lutheranism in 1834). He then took a position at Siemens, as director of Research Laboratory II. While there, he continued his work on atomic physics and ultrasound, but he eventually discontinued his work on isotope separation. He held this position until he departed for the Soviet Union in 1945.
In the Soviet Union
"Pact to defect"
Hertz was concerned for his safety and, like his fellow Nobel laureate James Franck, was looking to move to the USA or any other place outside Germany. So he made a pact with three colleagues: Manfred von Ardenne, director of his private laboratory Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik, Peter Adolf Thiessen, ordinarius professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in Berlin-Dahlem, and Max Volmer, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the THB. The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past. Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, a member of the Nazi Party, had Communist contacts.
Participation in Soviet program of nuclear weapons
On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist. All four of the pact members were taken to the Soviet Union. Hertz was made head of Institute G, in Agudseri (Agudzery), about 10 km southeast of Sukhumi and a suburb of Gul'rips (Gulrip'shi). Topics assigned to Gustav Hertz's Institute G included:
(1) Separation of isotopes by diffusion in a flow of inert gases, for which Gustav Hertz was the leader,
(2) Development of a condensation pump, for which Justus Mühlenpfordt was the leader,
(3) Design and build a mass spectrometer for determining the isotopic composition of uranium, for which Werner Schütze was the leader,
(4) Development of frameless (ceramic) diffusion partitions for filters, for which Reinhold Reichmann was the leader, and
(5) Development of a theory of stability and control of a diffusion cascade, for which Heinz Barwich was the leader;
Barwich had been deputy to Hertz at Siemens. Other members of Institute G were Werner Hartmann and Karl-Franz Zühlke. Manfred von Ardenne was made head of Institute A. Goals of von Ardenne's Institute A included: (1) Electromagnetic separation of isotopes, for which von Ardenne was the leader, (2) Techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation, for which Peter Adolf Thiessen was the leader, and (3) Molecular techniques for separation of uranium isotopes, for which Max Steenbeck was the leader.
In his first meeting with Lavrentij Beria, von Ardenne was asked to participate in building the bomb, but von Ardenne quickly realized that participation would prohibit his repatriation to Germany, so he suggested isotope enrichment as an objective, which was agreed to.
Research at Sukhumi
By the end of the 1940s, nearly 300 Germans were working at the institute, and they were not the total work force. Institute A was used as the basis for the Sukhumi Physical-Technical Institute in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi. Volmer went to the Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (NII-9) in Moscow; he was given a design bureau to work on the production of heavy water. In Institute A, Thiessen became leader for developing techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation.
In 1949, six German scientists, including Hertz, Thiessen, and Barwich were called in for consultation at Sverdlovsk-44, which was responsible for uranium enrichment. The plant, smaller than the American Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant, was getting only a little over half of the expected 90% or higher enrichment.
After 1950, Hertz moved to Moscow. In 1951, Hertz was awarded a Stalin Prize, second class, with Barwich. In that year, James Franck and Hertz were jointly awarded the Max Planck Medal by the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. Hertz remained in the Soviet Union until 1955.
Return to the GDR
Upon return from the Soviet Union, Hertz became ordinarius professor at the University of Leipzig. From 1955 to 1967, he was also the chairman of the Physical Society of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (GDR); he was honorary chairman from 1967 to 1975.
Personal life
Gustav Hertz was a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz and a cousin of Mathilde Carmen Hertz. In 1919, Hertz married Ellen née Dihlmann, who died in 1941. They had two sons, Carl Helmut Hertz and Johannes Heinrich Hertz; both became physicists.
He died on 30 October 1975 in East Berlin at the age 88.
Scientific memberships
Hertz was a Member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a Member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Publications
Franck, J.; Hertz, G. (1914). "Über Zusammenstöße zwischen Elektronen und Molekülen des Quecksilberdampfes und die Ionisierungsspannung desselben". Verh. Dtsch. Phys. Ges. 16: 457–467.
Gustav Hertz Über das ultrarote Adsorptionsspektrum der Kohlensäure in seiner Abhängigkeit von Druck und Partialdruck. (Dissertation). (Vieweg Braunschweig, 1911)
Gustav Hertz (editor) Lehrbuch der Kernphysik I-III (Teubner, 1961–1966)
Gustav Hertz (editor) Grundlagen und Arbeitsmethoden der Kernphysik (Akademie Verlag, 1957)
Gustav Hertz Gustav Hertz in der Entwicklung der modernen Physik (Akademie Verlag, 1967)
See also
Electron diffraction
Electric glow discharge
Franck–Hertz experiment
Plasma window
Vacuum tube
Scattering
Russian Alsos
References
Further reading
Albrecht, Ulrich, Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, and Arend Wellmann Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945 (Dietz, 1992, 2001) ISBN 3-320-01788-8
Barwich, Heinz and Elfi Barwich Das rote Atom (Fischer-TB.-Vlg., 1984)
Beneke, Klaus Die Kolloidwissenschaftler Peter Adolf Thiessen, Gerhart Jander, Robert Havemann, Hans Witzmann und ihre Zeit (Knof, 2000)
Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas Die sowjetische Atombombe (Westfaelisches Dampfboot, 1992)
Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas Keinerlei Untergang: German Armaments Engineers during the Second World War and in the Service of the Victorious Powers in Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker (editors) Science, Technology and National Socialism 30–50 (Cambridge, 2002 paperback edition) ISBN 0-521-52860-7
Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996) ISBN 0-8176-5312-0
Holloway, David Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939–1956 (Yale, 1994) ISBN 0-300-06056-4
Kruglov, Arkadii The History of the Soviet Atomic Industry (Taylor and Francis, 2002)
Maddrell, Paul "Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–1961" (Oxford, 2006) ISBN 0-19-926750-2
Mehra, Jagdish, and Helmut Rechenberg The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 1 Part 1 The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld 1900–1925: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties. (Springer, 2001) ISBN 0-387-95174-1
Naimark, Norman M. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Belknap, 1995)
Oleynikov, Pavel V. 2000. German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project. The Nonproliferation Review Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 30 The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70).
External links
Media related to Gustav Hertz at Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Hertz on Nobelprize.org
SIPT – Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology, on the website are published the photographs of the German nuclear physicists who had been working for the Soviet nuclear program |
List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics | [
324
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics"
] | The Nobel Prize in Physics (Swedish: Nobelpriset i fysik) is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel (who died in 1896), awarded for outstanding contributions in physics. As dictated by Nobel's will, the award is administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The award is presented in Stockholm at an annual ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel's death. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award prize that has varied throughout the years.
Statistics
The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to 226 individuals as of 2024. The first prize in physics was awarded in 1901 to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, of Germany, who received 150,782 SEK. John Bardeen is the only laureate to win the prize twice—in 1956 and 1972.
William Lawrence Bragg was the youngest Nobel laureate in physics; he won the prize in 1915 at the age of 25. He was also the youngest laureate for any Nobel prize until 2014 (when Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17). The oldest Nobel Prize laureate in physics was Arthur Ashkin who was 96 years old when he was awarded the prize in 2018.
Only five women have won the prize: Marie Curie (1903), Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1963), Donna Strickland (2018), Andrea Ghez (2020), and Anne L'Huillier (2023). Before L'Huillier, each woman only ever received a quarter share of the prize, although Marie Curie did receive an unshared Nobel prize in chemistry in 1911. In 2023, L'Huillier received a one-third share.
There have been six years for which the Nobel Prize in Physics was not awarded (1916, 1931, 1934, 1940–1942). There were also nine years for which the Nobel Prize in Physics was delayed for one year:
The 1914 prize awarded to Max von Laue was announced only in November 1915.
The Prize was not awarded in 1917, as the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that none of that year's nominations met the necessary criteria, but was awarded to Charles Glover Barkla in 1918 and counted as the 1917 prize.
This precedent was followed for the 1918 prize awarded to Max Planck in 1919,
the 1921 prize awarded to Albert Einstein in 1922,
the 1924 prize awarded to Manne Siegbahn in 1925,
the 1925 prize awarded to James Franck and Gustav Hertz in 1926,
the 1928 prize awarded to Owen Richardson in 1929,
the 1932 prize awarded to Werner Heisenberg in 1933, and
the 1943 prize awarded to Otto Stern in 1944.
A 2020 study reported that half of the Nobel Prizes for science awarded between 1995 and 2017 are clustered in few disciplines. Particle physics (14%), atomic physics (10.9%), and 3 non-physics disciplines dominate the prize in recent decades, followed by semiconductor physics and magnetics.
Laureates
Number of Nobel laureates in Physics by country
See also
List of Nobel laureates
List of Nobel laureates by country
List of physicists
Notes
References
External links
Official website of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Archived 21 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine
Official website of the Nobel Foundation Archived 5 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine |
Quantum_mechanics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics"
] | Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory that describes the behavior of nature at and below the scale of atoms.: 1.1 It is the foundation of all quantum physics, which includes quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.
Quantum mechanics can describe many systems that classical physics cannot. Classical physics can describe many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic and (optical) microscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at very small submicroscopic (atomic and subatomic) scales. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation, valid at large (macroscopic/microscopic) scale.
Quantum systems have bound states that are quantized to discrete values of energy, momentum, angular momentum, and other quantities, in contrast to classical systems where these quantities can be measured continuously. Measurements of quantum systems show characteristics of both particles and waves (wave–particle duality), and there are limits to how accurately the value of a physical quantity can be predicted prior to its measurement, given a complete set of initial conditions (the uncertainty principle).
Quantum mechanics arose gradually from theories to explain observations that could not be reconciled with classical physics, such as Max Planck's solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem, and the correspondence between energy and frequency in Albert Einstein's 1905 paper, which explained the photoelectric effect. These early attempts to understand microscopic phenomena, now known as the "old quantum theory", led to the full development of quantum mechanics in the mid-1920s by Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Paul Dirac and others. The modern theory is formulated in various specially developed mathematical formalisms. In one of them, a mathematical entity called the wave function provides information, in the form of probability amplitudes, about what measurements of a particle's energy, momentum, and other physical properties may yield.
Overview and fundamental concepts
Quantum mechanics allows the calculation of properties and behaviour of physical systems. It is typically applied to microscopic systems: molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles. It has been demonstrated to hold for complex molecules with thousands of atoms, but its application to human beings raises philosophical problems, such as Wigner's friend, and its application to the universe as a whole remains speculative. Predictions of quantum mechanics have been verified experimentally to an extremely high degree of accuracy. For example, the refinement of quantum mechanics for the interaction of light and matter, known as quantum electrodynamics (QED), has been shown to agree with experiment to within 1 part in 1012 when predicting the magnetic properties of an electron.
A fundamental feature of the theory is that it usually cannot predict with certainty what will happen, but only give probabilities. Mathematically, a probability is found by taking the square of the absolute value of a complex number, known as a probability amplitude. This is known as the Born rule, named after physicist Max Born. For example, a quantum particle like an electron can be described by a wave function, which associates to each point in space a probability amplitude. Applying the Born rule to these amplitudes gives a probability density function for the position that the electron will be found to have when an experiment is performed to measure it. This is the best the theory can do; it cannot say for certain where the electron will be found. The Schrödinger equation relates the collection of probability amplitudes that pertain to one moment of time to the collection of probability amplitudes that pertain to another.: 67–87
One consequence of the mathematical rules of quantum mechanics is a tradeoff in predictability between measurable quantities. The most famous form of this uncertainty principle says that no matter how a quantum particle is prepared or how carefully experiments upon it are arranged, it is impossible to have a precise prediction for a measurement of its position and also at the same time for a measurement of its momentum.: 427–435
Another consequence of the mathematical rules of quantum mechanics is the phenomenon of quantum interference, which is often illustrated with the double-slit experiment. In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source, such as a laser beam, illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate.: 102–111 : 1.1–1.8 The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen – a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles rather than waves; the interference pattern appears via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen. Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave).: 109 However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. This behavior is known as wave–particle duality. In addition to light, electrons, atoms, and molecules are all found to exhibit the same dual behavior when fired towards a double slit.
Another non-classical phenomenon predicted by quantum mechanics is quantum tunnelling: a particle that goes up against a potential barrier can cross it, even if its kinetic energy is smaller than the maximum of the potential. In classical mechanics this particle would be trapped. Quantum tunnelling has several important consequences, enabling radioactive decay, nuclear fusion in stars, and applications such as scanning tunnelling microscopy, tunnel diode and tunnel field-effect transistor.
When quantum systems interact, the result can be the creation of quantum entanglement: their properties become so intertwined that a description of the whole solely in terms of the individual parts is no longer possible. Erwin Schrödinger called entanglement "...the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought". Quantum entanglement enables quantum computing and is part of quantum communication protocols, such as quantum key distribution and superdense coding. Contrary to popular misconception, entanglement does not allow sending signals faster than light, as demonstrated by the no-communication theorem.
Another possibility opened by entanglement is testing for "hidden variables", hypothetical properties more fundamental than the quantities addressed in quantum theory itself, knowledge of which would allow more exact predictions than quantum theory provides. A collection of results, most significantly Bell's theorem, have demonstrated that broad classes of such hidden-variable theories are in fact incompatible with quantum physics. According to Bell's theorem, if nature actually operates in accord with any theory of local hidden variables, then the results of a Bell test will be constrained in a particular, quantifiable way. Many Bell tests have been performed and they have shown results incompatible with the constraints imposed by local hidden variables.
It is not possible to present these concepts in more than a superficial way without introducing the mathematics involved; understanding quantum mechanics requires not only manipulating complex numbers, but also linear algebra, differential equations, group theory, and other more advanced subjects. Accordingly, this article will present a mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics and survey its application to some useful and oft-studied examples.
Mathematical formulation
In the mathematically rigorous formulation of quantum mechanics, the state of a quantum mechanical system is a vector
ψ
{\displaystyle \psi }
belonging to a (separable) complex Hilbert space
H
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}}
. This vector is postulated to be normalized under the Hilbert space inner product, that is, it obeys
⟨
ψ
,
ψ
⟩
=
1
{\displaystyle \langle \psi ,\psi \rangle =1}
, and it is well-defined up to a complex number of modulus 1 (the global phase), that is,
ψ
{\displaystyle \psi }
and
e
i
α
ψ
{\displaystyle e^{i\alpha }\psi }
represent the same physical system. In other words, the possible states are points in the projective space of a Hilbert space, usually called the complex projective space. The exact nature of this Hilbert space is dependent on the system – for example, for describing position and momentum the Hilbert space is the space of complex square-integrable functions
L
2
(
C
)
{\displaystyle L^{2}(\mathbb {C} )}
, while the Hilbert space for the spin of a single proton is simply the space of two-dimensional complex vectors
C
2
{\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{2}}
with the usual inner product.
Physical quantities of interest – position, momentum, energy, spin – are represented by observables, which are Hermitian (more precisely, self-adjoint) linear operators acting on the Hilbert space. A quantum state can be an eigenvector of an observable, in which case it is called an eigenstate, and the associated eigenvalue corresponds to the value of the observable in that eigenstate. More generally, a quantum state will be a linear combination of the eigenstates, known as a quantum superposition. When an observable is measured, the result will be one of its eigenvalues with probability given by the Born rule: in the simplest case the eigenvalue
λ
{\displaystyle \lambda }
is non-degenerate and the probability is given by
|
⟨
λ
→
,
ψ
⟩
|
2
{\displaystyle |\langle {\vec {\lambda }},\psi \rangle |^{2}}
, where
λ
→
{\displaystyle {\vec {\lambda }}}
is its associated eigenvector. More generally, the eigenvalue is degenerate and the probability is given by
⟨
ψ
,
P
λ
ψ
⟩
{\displaystyle \langle \psi ,P_{\lambda }\psi \rangle }
, where
P
λ
{\displaystyle P_{\lambda }}
is the projector onto its associated eigenspace. In the continuous case, these formulas give instead the probability density.
After the measurement, if result
λ
{\displaystyle \lambda }
was obtained, the quantum state is postulated to collapse to
λ
→
{\displaystyle {\vec {\lambda }}}
, in the non-degenerate case, or to
P
λ
ψ
/
⟨
ψ
,
P
λ
ψ
⟩
{\textstyle P_{\lambda }\psi {\big /}\!{\sqrt {\langle \psi ,P_{\lambda }\psi \rangle }}}
, in the general case. The probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics thus stems from the act of measurement. This is one of the most difficult aspects of quantum systems to understand. It was the central topic in the famous Bohr–Einstein debates, in which the two scientists attempted to clarify these fundamental principles by way of thought experiments. In the decades after the formulation of quantum mechanics, the question of what constitutes a "measurement" has been extensively studied. Newer interpretations of quantum mechanics have been formulated that do away with the concept of "wave function collapse" (see, for example, the many-worlds interpretation). The basic idea is that when a quantum system interacts with a measuring apparatus, their respective wave functions become entangled so that the original quantum system ceases to exist as an independent entity (see Measurement in quantum mechanics).
Time evolution of a quantum state
The time evolution of a quantum state is described by the Schrödinger equation:
i
ℏ
∂
∂
t
ψ
(
t
)
=
H
ψ
(
t
)
.
{\displaystyle i\hbar {\frac {\partial }{\partial t}}\psi (t)=H\psi (t).}
Here
H
{\displaystyle H}
denotes the Hamiltonian, the observable corresponding to the total energy of the system, and
ℏ
{\displaystyle \hbar }
is the reduced Planck constant. The constant
i
ℏ
{\displaystyle i\hbar }
is introduced so that the Hamiltonian is reduced to the classical Hamiltonian in cases where the quantum system can be approximated by a classical system; the ability to make such an approximation in certain limits is called the correspondence principle.
The solution of this differential equation is given by
ψ
(
t
)
=
e
−
i
H
t
/
ℏ
ψ
(
0
)
.
{\displaystyle \psi (t)=e^{-iHt/\hbar }\psi (0).}
The operator
U
(
t
)
=
e
−
i
H
t
/
ℏ
{\displaystyle U(t)=e^{-iHt/\hbar }}
is known as the time-evolution operator, and has the crucial property that it is unitary. This time evolution is deterministic in the sense that – given an initial quantum state
ψ
(
0
)
{\displaystyle \psi (0)}
– it makes a definite prediction of what the quantum state
ψ
(
t
)
{\displaystyle \psi (t)}
will be at any later time.
Some wave functions produce probability distributions that are independent of time, such as eigenstates of the Hamiltonian.: 133–137 Many systems that are treated dynamically in classical mechanics are described by such "static" wave functions. For example, a single electron in an unexcited atom is pictured classically as a particle moving in a circular trajectory around the atomic nucleus, whereas in quantum mechanics, it is described by a static wave function surrounding the nucleus. For example, the electron wave function for an unexcited hydrogen atom is a spherically symmetric function known as an s orbital (Fig. 1).
Analytic solutions of the Schrödinger equation are known for very few relatively simple model Hamiltonians including the quantum harmonic oscillator, the particle in a box, the dihydrogen cation, and the hydrogen atom. Even the helium atom – which contains just two electrons – has defied all attempts at a fully analytic treatment, admitting no solution in closed form.
However, there are techniques for finding approximate solutions. One method, called perturbation theory, uses the analytic result for a simple quantum mechanical model to create a result for a related but more complicated model by (for example) the addition of a weak potential energy.: 793 Another approximation method applies to systems for which quantum mechanics produces only small deviations from classical behavior. These deviations can then be computed based on the classical motion.: 849
Uncertainty principle
One consequence of the basic quantum formalism is the uncertainty principle. In its most familiar form, this states that no preparation of a quantum particle can imply simultaneously precise predictions both for a measurement of its position and for a measurement of its momentum. Both position and momentum are observables, meaning that they are represented by Hermitian operators. The position operator
X
^
{\displaystyle {\hat {X}}}
and momentum operator
P
^
{\displaystyle {\hat {P}}}
do not commute, but rather satisfy the canonical commutation relation:
[
X
^
,
P
^
]
=
i
ℏ
.
{\displaystyle [{\hat {X}},{\hat {P}}]=i\hbar .}
Given a quantum state, the Born rule lets us compute expectation values for both
X
{\displaystyle X}
and
P
{\displaystyle P}
, and moreover for powers of them. Defining the uncertainty for an observable by a standard deviation, we have
σ
X
=
⟨
X
2
⟩
−
⟨
X
⟩
2
,
{\displaystyle \sigma _{X}={\textstyle {\sqrt {\left\langle X^{2}\right\rangle -\left\langle X\right\rangle ^{2}}}},}
and likewise for the momentum:
σ
P
=
⟨
P
2
⟩
−
⟨
P
⟩
2
.
{\displaystyle \sigma _{P}={\sqrt {\left\langle P^{2}\right\rangle -\left\langle P\right\rangle ^{2}}}.}
The uncertainty principle states that
σ
X
σ
P
≥
ℏ
2
.
{\displaystyle \sigma _{X}\sigma _{P}\geq {\frac {\hbar }{2}}.}
Either standard deviation can in principle be made arbitrarily small, but not both simultaneously. This inequality generalizes to arbitrary pairs of self-adjoint operators
A
{\displaystyle A}
and
B
{\displaystyle B}
. The commutator of these two operators is
[
A
,
B
]
=
A
B
−
B
A
,
{\displaystyle [A,B]=AB-BA,}
and this provides the lower bound on the product of standard deviations:
σ
A
σ
B
≥
1
2
|
⟨
[
A
,
B
]
⟩
|
.
{\displaystyle \sigma _{A}\sigma _{B}\geq {\tfrac {1}{2}}\left|{\bigl \langle }[A,B]{\bigr \rangle }\right|.}
Another consequence of the canonical commutation relation is that the position and momentum operators are Fourier transforms of each other, so that a description of an object according to its momentum is the Fourier transform of its description according to its position. The fact that dependence in momentum is the Fourier transform of the dependence in position means that the momentum operator is equivalent (up to an
i
/
ℏ
{\displaystyle i/\hbar }
factor) to taking the derivative according to the position, since in Fourier analysis differentiation corresponds to multiplication in the dual space. This is why in quantum equations in position space, the momentum
p
i
{\displaystyle p_{i}}
is replaced by
−
i
ℏ
∂
∂
x
{\displaystyle -i\hbar {\frac {\partial }{\partial x}}}
, and in particular in the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation in position space the momentum-squared term is replaced with a Laplacian times
−
ℏ
2
{\displaystyle -\hbar ^{2}}
.
Composite systems and entanglement
When two different quantum systems are considered together, the Hilbert space of the combined system is the tensor product of the Hilbert spaces of the two components. For example, let A and B be two quantum systems, with Hilbert spaces
H
A
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}_{A}}
and
H
B
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}_{B}}
, respectively. The Hilbert space of the composite system is then
H
A
B
=
H
A
⊗
H
B
.
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}_{AB}={\mathcal {H}}_{A}\otimes {\mathcal {H}}_{B}.}
If the state for the first system is the vector
ψ
A
{\displaystyle \psi _{A}}
and the state for the second system is
ψ
B
{\displaystyle \psi _{B}}
, then the state of the composite system is
ψ
A
⊗
ψ
B
.
{\displaystyle \psi _{A}\otimes \psi _{B}.}
Not all states in the joint Hilbert space
H
A
B
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}_{AB}}
can be written in this form, however, because the superposition principle implies that linear combinations of these "separable" or "product states" are also valid. For example, if
ψ
A
{\displaystyle \psi _{A}}
and
ϕ
A
{\displaystyle \phi _{A}}
are both possible states for system
A
{\displaystyle A}
, and likewise
ψ
B
{\displaystyle \psi _{B}}
and
ϕ
B
{\displaystyle \phi _{B}}
are both possible states for system
B
{\displaystyle B}
, then
1
2
(
ψ
A
⊗
ψ
B
+
ϕ
A
⊗
ϕ
B
)
{\displaystyle {\tfrac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}\left(\psi _{A}\otimes \psi _{B}+\phi _{A}\otimes \phi _{B}\right)}
is a valid joint state that is not separable. States that are not separable are called entangled.
If the state for a composite system is entangled, it is impossible to describe either component system A or system B by a state vector. One can instead define reduced density matrices that describe the statistics that can be obtained by making measurements on either component system alone. This necessarily causes a loss of information, though: knowing the reduced density matrices of the individual systems is not enough to reconstruct the state of the composite system. Just as density matrices specify the state of a subsystem of a larger system, analogously, positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) describe the effect on a subsystem of a measurement performed on a larger system. POVMs are extensively used in quantum information theory.
As described above, entanglement is a key feature of models of measurement processes in which an apparatus becomes entangled with the system being measured. Systems interacting with the environment in which they reside generally become entangled with that environment, a phenomenon known as quantum decoherence. This can explain why, in practice, quantum effects are difficult to observe in systems larger than microscopic.
Equivalence between formulations
There are many mathematically equivalent formulations of quantum mechanics. One of the oldest and most common is the "transformation theory" proposed by Paul Dirac, which unifies and generalizes the two earliest formulations of quantum mechanics – matrix mechanics (invented by Werner Heisenberg) and wave mechanics (invented by Erwin Schrödinger). An alternative formulation of quantum mechanics is Feynman's path integral formulation, in which a quantum-mechanical amplitude is considered as a sum over all possible classical and non-classical paths between the initial and final states. This is the quantum-mechanical counterpart of the action principle in classical mechanics.
Symmetries and conservation laws
The Hamiltonian
H
{\displaystyle H}
is known as the generator of time evolution, since it defines a unitary time-evolution operator
U
(
t
)
=
e
−
i
H
t
/
ℏ
{\displaystyle U(t)=e^{-iHt/\hbar }}
for each value of
t
{\displaystyle t}
. From this relation between
U
(
t
)
{\displaystyle U(t)}
and
H
{\displaystyle H}
, it follows that any observable
A
{\displaystyle A}
that commutes with
H
{\displaystyle H}
will be conserved: its expectation value will not change over time.: 471 This statement generalizes, as mathematically, any Hermitian operator
A
{\displaystyle A}
can generate a family of unitary operators parameterized by a variable
t
{\displaystyle t}
. Under the evolution generated by
A
{\displaystyle A}
, any observable
B
{\displaystyle B}
that commutes with
A
{\displaystyle A}
will be conserved. Moreover, if
B
{\displaystyle B}
is conserved by evolution under
A
{\displaystyle A}
, then
A
{\displaystyle A}
is conserved under the evolution generated by
B
{\displaystyle B}
. This implies a quantum version of the result proven by Emmy Noether in classical (Lagrangian) mechanics: for every differentiable symmetry of a Hamiltonian, there exists a corresponding conservation law.
Examples
Free particle
The simplest example of a quantum system with a position degree of freedom is a free particle in a single spatial dimension. A free particle is one which is not subject to external influences, so that its Hamiltonian consists only of its kinetic energy:
H
=
1
2
m
P
2
=
−
ℏ
2
2
m
d
2
d
x
2
.
{\displaystyle H={\frac {1}{2m}}P^{2}=-{\frac {\hbar ^{2}}{2m}}{\frac {d^{2}}{dx^{2}}}.}
The general solution of the Schrödinger equation is given by
ψ
(
x
,
t
)
=
1
2
π
∫
−
∞
∞
ψ
^
(
k
,
0
)
e
i
(
k
x
−
ℏ
k
2
2
m
t
)
d
k
,
{\displaystyle \psi (x,t)={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2\pi }}}\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }{\hat {\psi }}(k,0)e^{i(kx-{\frac {\hbar k^{2}}{2m}}t)}\mathrm {d} k,}
which is a superposition of all possible plane waves
e
i
(
k
x
−
ℏ
k
2
2
m
t
)
{\displaystyle e^{i(kx-{\frac {\hbar k^{2}}{2m}}t)}}
, which are eigenstates of the momentum operator with momentum
p
=
ℏ
k
{\displaystyle p=\hbar k}
. The coefficients of the superposition are
ψ
^
(
k
,
0
)
{\displaystyle {\hat {\psi }}(k,0)}
, which is the Fourier transform of the initial quantum state
ψ
(
x
,
0
)
{\displaystyle \psi (x,0)}
.
It is not possible for the solution to be a single momentum eigenstate, or a single position eigenstate, as these are not normalizable quantum states. Instead, we can consider a Gaussian wave packet:
ψ
(
x
,
0
)
=
1
π
a
4
e
−
x
2
2
a
{\displaystyle \psi (x,0)={\frac {1}{\sqrt[{4}]{\pi a}}}e^{-{\frac {x^{2}}{2a}}}}
which has Fourier transform, and therefore momentum distribution
ψ
^
(
k
,
0
)
=
a
π
4
e
−
a
k
2
2
.
{\displaystyle {\hat {\psi }}(k,0)={\sqrt[{4}]{\frac {a}{\pi }}}e^{-{\frac {ak^{2}}{2}}}.}
We see that as we make
a
{\displaystyle a}
smaller the spread in position gets smaller, but the spread in momentum gets larger. Conversely, by making
a
{\displaystyle a}
larger we make the spread in momentum smaller, but the spread in position gets larger. This illustrates the uncertainty principle.
As we let the Gaussian wave packet evolve in time, we see that its center moves through space at a constant velocity (like a classical particle with no forces acting on it). However, the wave packet will also spread out as time progresses, which means that the position becomes more and more uncertain. The uncertainty in momentum, however, stays constant.
Particle in a box
The particle in a one-dimensional potential energy box is the most mathematically simple example where restraints lead to the quantization of energy levels. The box is defined as having zero potential energy everywhere inside a certain region, and therefore infinite potential energy everywhere outside that region.: 77–78 For the one-dimensional case in the
x
{\displaystyle x}
direction, the time-independent Schrödinger equation may be written
−
ℏ
2
2
m
d
2
ψ
d
x
2
=
E
ψ
.
{\displaystyle -{\frac {\hbar ^{2}}{2m}}{\frac {d^{2}\psi }{dx^{2}}}=E\psi .}
With the differential operator defined by
p
^
x
=
−
i
ℏ
d
d
x
{\displaystyle {\hat {p}}_{x}=-i\hbar {\frac {d}{dx}}}
the previous equation is evocative of the classic kinetic energy analogue,
1
2
m
p
^
x
2
=
E
,
{\displaystyle {\frac {1}{2m}}{\hat {p}}_{x}^{2}=E,}
with state
ψ
{\displaystyle \psi }
in this case having energy
E
{\displaystyle E}
coincident with the kinetic energy of the particle.
The general solutions of the Schrödinger equation for the particle in a box are
ψ
(
x
)
=
A
e
i
k
x
+
B
e
−
i
k
x
E
=
ℏ
2
k
2
2
m
{\displaystyle \psi (x)=Ae^{ikx}+Be^{-ikx}\qquad \qquad E={\frac {\hbar ^{2}k^{2}}{2m}}}
or, from Euler's formula,
ψ
(
x
)
=
C
sin
(
k
x
)
+
D
cos
(
k
x
)
.
{\displaystyle \psi (x)=C\sin(kx)+D\cos(kx).\!}
The infinite potential walls of the box determine the values of
C
,
D
,
{\displaystyle C,D,}
and
k
{\displaystyle k}
at
x
=
0
{\displaystyle x=0}
and
x
=
L
{\displaystyle x=L}
where
ψ
{\displaystyle \psi }
must be zero. Thus, at
x
=
0
{\displaystyle x=0}
,
ψ
(
0
)
=
0
=
C
sin
(
0
)
+
D
cos
(
0
)
=
D
{\displaystyle \psi (0)=0=C\sin(0)+D\cos(0)=D}
and
D
=
0
{\displaystyle D=0}
. At
x
=
L
{\displaystyle x=L}
,
ψ
(
L
)
=
0
=
C
sin
(
k
L
)
,
{\displaystyle \psi (L)=0=C\sin(kL),}
in which
C
{\displaystyle C}
cannot be zero as this would conflict with the postulate that
ψ
{\displaystyle \psi }
has norm 1. Therefore, since
sin
(
k
L
)
=
0
{\displaystyle \sin(kL)=0}
,
k
L
{\displaystyle kL}
must be an integer multiple of
π
{\displaystyle \pi }
,
k
=
n
π
L
n
=
1
,
2
,
3
,
…
.
{\displaystyle k={\frac {n\pi }{L}}\qquad \qquad n=1,2,3,\ldots .}
This constraint on
k
{\displaystyle k}
implies a constraint on the energy levels, yielding
E
n
=
ℏ
2
π
2
n
2
2
m
L
2
=
n
2
h
2
8
m
L
2
.
{\displaystyle E_{n}={\frac {\hbar ^{2}\pi ^{2}n^{2}}{2mL^{2}}}={\frac {n^{2}h^{2}}{8mL^{2}}}.}
A finite potential well is the generalization of the infinite potential well problem to potential wells having finite depth. The finite potential well problem is mathematically more complicated than the infinite particle-in-a-box problem as the wave function is not pinned to zero at the walls of the well. Instead, the wave function must satisfy more complicated mathematical boundary conditions as it is nonzero in regions outside the well. Another related problem is that of the rectangular potential barrier, which furnishes a model for the quantum tunneling effect that plays an important role in the performance of modern technologies such as flash memory and scanning tunneling microscopy.
Harmonic oscillator
As in the classical case, the potential for the quantum harmonic oscillator is given by: 234
V
(
x
)
=
1
2
m
ω
2
x
2
.
{\displaystyle V(x)={\frac {1}{2}}m\omega ^{2}x^{2}.}
This problem can either be treated by directly solving the Schrödinger equation, which is not trivial, or by using the more elegant "ladder method" first proposed by Paul Dirac. The eigenstates are given by
ψ
n
(
x
)
=
1
2
n
n
!
⋅
(
m
ω
π
ℏ
)
1
/
4
⋅
e
−
m
ω
x
2
2
ℏ
⋅
H
n
(
m
ω
ℏ
x
)
,
{\displaystyle \psi _{n}(x)={\sqrt {\frac {1}{2^{n}\,n!}}}\cdot \left({\frac {m\omega }{\pi \hbar }}\right)^{1/4}\cdot e^{-{\frac {m\omega x^{2}}{2\hbar }}}\cdot H_{n}\left({\sqrt {\frac {m\omega }{\hbar }}}x\right),\qquad }
n
=
0
,
1
,
2
,
…
.
{\displaystyle n=0,1,2,\ldots .}
where Hn are the Hermite polynomials
H
n
(
x
)
=
(
−
1
)
n
e
x
2
d
n
d
x
n
(
e
−
x
2
)
,
{\displaystyle H_{n}(x)=(-1)^{n}e^{x^{2}}{\frac {d^{n}}{dx^{n}}}\left(e^{-x^{2}}\right),}
and the corresponding energy levels are
E
n
=
ℏ
ω
(
n
+
1
2
)
.
{\displaystyle E_{n}=\hbar \omega \left(n+{1 \over 2}\right).}
This is another example illustrating the discretization of energy for bound states.
Mach–Zehnder interferometer
The Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) illustrates the concepts of superposition and interference with linear algebra in dimension 2, rather than differential equations. It can be seen as a simplified version of the double-slit experiment, but it is of interest in its own right, for example in the delayed choice quantum eraser, the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester, and in studies of quantum entanglement.
We can model a photon going through the interferometer by considering that at each point it can be in a superposition of only two paths: the "lower" path which starts from the left, goes straight through both beam splitters, and ends at the top, and the "upper" path which starts from the bottom, goes straight through both beam splitters, and ends at the right. The quantum state of the photon is therefore a vector
ψ
∈
C
2
{\displaystyle \psi \in \mathbb {C} ^{2}}
that is a superposition of the "lower" path
ψ
l
=
(
1
0
)
{\displaystyle \psi _{l}={\begin{pmatrix}1\\0\end{pmatrix}}}
and the "upper" path
ψ
u
=
(
0
1
)
{\displaystyle \psi _{u}={\begin{pmatrix}0\\1\end{pmatrix}}}
, that is,
ψ
=
α
ψ
l
+
β
ψ
u
{\displaystyle \psi =\alpha \psi _{l}+\beta \psi _{u}}
for complex
α
,
β
{\displaystyle \alpha ,\beta }
. In order to respect the postulate that
⟨
ψ
,
ψ
⟩
=
1
{\displaystyle \langle \psi ,\psi \rangle =1}
we require that
|
α
|
2
+
|
β
|
2
=
1
{\displaystyle |\alpha |^{2}+|\beta |^{2}=1}
.
Both beam splitters are modelled as the unitary matrix
B
=
1
2
(
1
i
i
1
)
{\displaystyle B={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}{\begin{pmatrix}1&i\\i&1\end{pmatrix}}}
, which means that when a photon meets the beam splitter it will either stay on the same path with a probability amplitude of
1
/
2
{\displaystyle 1/{\sqrt {2}}}
, or be reflected to the other path with a probability amplitude of
i
/
2
{\displaystyle i/{\sqrt {2}}}
. The phase shifter on the upper arm is modelled as the unitary matrix
P
=
(
1
0
0
e
i
Δ
Φ
)
{\displaystyle P={\begin{pmatrix}1&0\\0&e^{i\Delta \Phi }\end{pmatrix}}}
, which means that if the photon is on the "upper" path it will gain a relative phase of
Δ
Φ
{\displaystyle \Delta \Phi }
, and it will stay unchanged if it is in the lower path.
A photon that enters the interferometer from the left will then be acted upon with a beam splitter
B
{\displaystyle B}
, a phase shifter
P
{\displaystyle P}
, and another beam splitter
B
{\displaystyle B}
, and so end up in the state
B
P
B
ψ
l
=
i
e
i
Δ
Φ
/
2
(
−
sin
(
Δ
Φ
/
2
)
cos
(
Δ
Φ
/
2
)
)
,
{\displaystyle BPB\psi _{l}=ie^{i\Delta \Phi /2}{\begin{pmatrix}-\sin(\Delta \Phi /2)\\\cos(\Delta \Phi /2)\end{pmatrix}},}
and the probabilities that it will be detected at the right or at the top are given respectively by
p
(
u
)
=
|
⟨
ψ
u
,
B
P
B
ψ
l
⟩
|
2
=
cos
2
Δ
Φ
2
,
{\displaystyle p(u)=|\langle \psi _{u},BPB\psi _{l}\rangle |^{2}=\cos ^{2}{\frac {\Delta \Phi }{2}},}
p
(
l
)
=
|
⟨
ψ
l
,
B
P
B
ψ
l
⟩
|
2
=
sin
2
Δ
Φ
2
.
{\displaystyle p(l)=|\langle \psi _{l},BPB\psi _{l}\rangle |^{2}=\sin ^{2}{\frac {\Delta \Phi }{2}}.}
One can therefore use the Mach–Zehnder interferometer to estimate the phase shift by estimating these probabilities.
It is interesting to consider what would happen if the photon were definitely in either the "lower" or "upper" paths between the beam splitters. This can be accomplished by blocking one of the paths, or equivalently by removing the first beam splitter (and feeding the photon from the left or the bottom, as desired). In both cases, there will be no interference between the paths anymore, and the probabilities are given by
p
(
u
)
=
p
(
l
)
=
1
/
2
{\displaystyle p(u)=p(l)=1/2}
, independently of the phase
Δ
Φ
{\displaystyle \Delta \Phi }
. From this we can conclude that the photon does not take one path or another after the first beam splitter, but rather that it is in a genuine quantum superposition of the two paths.
Applications
Quantum mechanics has had enormous success in explaining many of the features of our universe, with regard to small-scale and discrete quantities and interactions which cannot be explained by classical methods. Quantum mechanics is often the only theory that can reveal the individual behaviors of the subatomic particles that make up all forms of matter (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and others). Solid-state physics and materials science are dependent upon quantum mechanics.
In many aspects, modern technology operates at a scale where quantum effects are significant. Important applications of quantum theory include quantum chemistry, quantum optics, quantum computing, superconducting magnets, light-emitting diodes, the optical amplifier and the laser, the transistor and semiconductors such as the microprocessor, medical and research imaging such as magnetic resonance imaging and electron microscopy. Explanations for many biological and physical phenomena are rooted in the nature of the chemical bond, most notably the macro-molecule DNA.
Relation to other scientific theories
Classical mechanics
The rules of quantum mechanics assert that the state space of a system is a Hilbert space and that observables of the system are Hermitian operators acting on vectors in that space – although they do not tell us which Hilbert space or which operators. These can be chosen appropriately in order to obtain a quantitative description of a quantum system, a necessary step in making physical predictions. An important guide for making these choices is the correspondence principle, a heuristic which states that the predictions of quantum mechanics reduce to those of classical mechanics in the regime of large quantum numbers. One can also start from an established classical model of a particular system, and then try to guess the underlying quantum model that would give rise to the classical model in the correspondence limit. This approach is known as quantization.: 299
When quantum mechanics was originally formulated, it was applied to models whose correspondence limit was non-relativistic classical mechanics. For instance, the well-known model of the quantum harmonic oscillator uses an explicitly non-relativistic expression for the kinetic energy of the oscillator, and is thus a quantum version of the classical harmonic oscillator.: 234
Complications arise with chaotic systems, which do not have good quantum numbers, and quantum chaos studies the relationship between classical and quantum descriptions in these systems.: 353
Quantum decoherence is a mechanism through which quantum systems lose coherence, and thus become incapable of displaying many typically quantum effects: quantum superpositions become simply probabilistic mixtures, and quantum entanglement becomes simply classical correlations.: 687–730 Quantum coherence is not typically evident at macroscopic scales, though at temperatures approaching absolute zero quantum behavior may manifest macroscopically.
Many macroscopic properties of a classical system are a direct consequence of the quantum behavior of its parts. For example, the stability of bulk matter (consisting of atoms and molecules which would quickly collapse under electric forces alone), the rigidity of solids, and the mechanical, thermal, chemical, optical and magnetic properties of matter are all results of the interaction of electric charges under the rules of quantum mechanics.
Special relativity and electrodynamics
Early attempts to merge quantum mechanics with special relativity involved the replacement of the Schrödinger equation with a covariant equation such as the Klein–Gordon equation or the Dirac equation. While these theories were successful in explaining many experimental results, they had certain unsatisfactory qualities stemming from their neglect of the relativistic creation and annihilation of particles. A fully relativistic quantum theory required the development of quantum field theory, which applies quantization to a field (rather than a fixed set of particles). The first complete quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics, provides a fully quantum description of the electromagnetic interaction. Quantum electrodynamics is, along with general relativity, one of the most accurate physical theories ever devised.
The full apparatus of quantum field theory is often unnecessary for describing electrodynamic systems. A simpler approach, one that has been used since the inception of quantum mechanics, is to treat charged particles as quantum mechanical objects being acted on by a classical electromagnetic field. For example, the elementary quantum model of the hydrogen atom describes the electric field of the hydrogen atom using a classical
−
e
2
/
(
4
π
ϵ
0
r
)
{\displaystyle \textstyle -e^{2}/(4\pi \epsilon _{_{0}}r)}
Coulomb potential.: 285 Likewise, in a Stern–Gerlach experiment, a charged particle is modeled as a quantum system, while the background magnetic field is described classically.: 26 This "semi-classical" approach fails if quantum fluctuations in the electromagnetic field play an important role, such as in the emission of photons by charged particles.
Quantum field theories for the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force have also been developed. The quantum field theory of the strong nuclear force is called quantum chromodynamics, and describes the interactions of subnuclear particles such as quarks and gluons. The weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force were unified, in their quantized forms, into a single quantum field theory (known as electroweak theory), by the physicists Abdus Salam, Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg.
Relation to general relativity
Even though the predictions of both quantum theory and general relativity have been supported by rigorous and repeated empirical evidence, their abstract formalisms contradict each other and they have proven extremely difficult to incorporate into one consistent, cohesive model. Gravity is negligible in many areas of particle physics, so that unification between general relativity and quantum mechanics is not an urgent issue in those particular applications. However, the lack of a correct theory of quantum gravity is an important issue in physical cosmology and the search by physicists for an elegant "Theory of Everything" (TOE). Consequently, resolving the inconsistencies between both theories has been a major goal of 20th- and 21st-century physics. This TOE would combine not only the models of subatomic physics but also derive the four fundamental forces of nature from a single force or phenomenon.
One proposal for doing so is string theory, which posits that the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. In string theory, one of the many vibrational states of the string corresponds to the graviton, a quantum mechanical particle that carries gravitational force.
Another popular theory is loop quantum gravity (LQG), which describes quantum properties of gravity and is thus a theory of quantum spacetime. LQG is an attempt to merge and adapt standard quantum mechanics and standard general relativity. This theory describes space as an extremely fine fabric "woven" of finite loops called spin networks. The evolution of a spin network over time is called a spin foam. The characteristic length scale of a spin foam is the Planck length, approximately 1.616×10−35 m, and so lengths shorter than the Planck length are not physically meaningful in LQG.
Philosophical implications
Since its inception, the many counter-intuitive aspects and results of quantum mechanics have provoked strong philosophical debates and many interpretations. The arguments centre on the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, the difficulties with wavefunction collapse and the related measurement problem, and quantum nonlocality. Perhaps the only consensus that exists about these issues is that there is no consensus. Richard Feynman once said, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." According to Steven Weinberg, "There is now in my opinion no entirely satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics."
The views of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and other physicists are often grouped together as the "Copenhagen interpretation". According to these views, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics is not a temporary feature which will eventually be replaced by a deterministic theory, but is instead a final renunciation of the classical idea of "causality". Bohr in particular emphasized that any well-defined application of the quantum mechanical formalism must always make reference to the experimental arrangement, due to the complementary nature of evidence obtained under different experimental situations. Copenhagen-type interpretations were adopted by Nobel laureates in quantum physics, including Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Feynman, and Zeilinger as well as 21st-century researchers in quantum foundations.
Albert Einstein, himself one of the founders of quantum theory, was troubled by its apparent failure to respect some cherished metaphysical principles, such as determinism and locality. Einstein's long-running exchanges with Bohr about the meaning and status of quantum mechanics are now known as the Bohr–Einstein debates. Einstein believed that underlying quantum mechanics must be a theory that explicitly forbids action at a distance. He argued that quantum mechanics was incomplete, a theory that was valid but not fundamental, analogous to how thermodynamics is valid, but the fundamental theory behind it is statistical mechanics. In 1935, Einstein and his collaborators Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen published an argument that the principle of locality implies the incompleteness of quantum mechanics, a thought experiment later termed the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox. In 1964, John Bell showed that EPR's principle of locality, together with determinism, was actually incompatible with quantum mechanics: they implied constraints on the correlations produced by distance systems, now known as Bell inequalities, that can be violated by entangled particles. Since then several experiments have been performed to obtain these correlations, with the result that they do in fact violate Bell inequalities, and thus falsify the conjunction of locality with determinism.
Bohmian mechanics shows that it is possible to reformulate quantum mechanics to make it deterministic, at the price of making it explicitly nonlocal. It attributes not only a wave function to a physical system, but in addition a real position, that evolves deterministically under a nonlocal guiding equation. The evolution of a physical system is given at all times by the Schrödinger equation together with the guiding equation; there is never a collapse of the wave function. This solves the measurement problem.
Everett's many-worlds interpretation, formulated in 1956, holds that all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes. This is a consequence of removing the axiom of the collapse of the wave packet. All possible states of the measured system and the measuring apparatus, together with the observer, are present in a real physical quantum superposition. While the multiverse is deterministic, we perceive non-deterministic behavior governed by probabilities, because we do not observe the multiverse as a whole, but only one parallel universe at a time. Exactly how this is supposed to work has been the subject of much debate. Several attempts have been made to make sense of this and derive the Born rule, with no consensus on whether they have been successful.
Relational quantum mechanics appeared in the late 1990s as a modern derivative of Copenhagen-type ideas, and QBism was developed some years later.
History
Quantum mechanics was developed in the early decades of the 20th century, driven by the need to explain phenomena that, in some cases, had been observed in earlier times. Scientific inquiry into the wave nature of light began in the 17th and 18th centuries, when scientists such as Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens and Leonhard Euler proposed a wave theory of light based on experimental observations. In 1803 English polymath Thomas Young described the famous double-slit experiment. This experiment played a major role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light.
During the early 19th century, chemical research by John Dalton and Amedeo Avogadro lent weight to the atomic theory of matter, an idea that James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann and others built upon to establish the kinetic theory of gases. The successes of kinetic theory gave further credence to the idea that matter is composed of atoms, yet the theory also had shortcomings that would only be resolved by the development of quantum mechanics. While the early conception of atoms from Greek philosophy had been that they were indivisible units – the word "atom" deriving from the Greek for "uncuttable" – the 19th century saw the formulation of hypotheses about subatomic structure. One important discovery in that regard was Michael Faraday's 1838 observation of a glow caused by an electrical discharge inside a glass tube containing gas at low pressure. Julius Plücker, Johann Wilhelm Hittorf and Eugen Goldstein carried on and improved upon Faraday's work, leading to the identification of cathode rays, which J. J. Thomson found to consist of subatomic particles that would be called electrons.
The black-body radiation problem was discovered by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1859. In 1900, Max Planck proposed the hypothesis that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete "quanta" (or energy packets), yielding a calculation that precisely matched the observed patterns of black-body radiation. The word quantum derives from the Latin, meaning "how great" or "how much". According to Planck, quantities of energy could be thought of as divided into "elements" whose size (E) would be proportional to their frequency (ν):
E
=
h
ν
{\displaystyle E=h\nu \ }
,
where h is the Planck constant. Planck cautiously insisted that this was only an aspect of the processes of absorption and emission of radiation and was not the physical reality of the radiation. In fact, he considered his quantum hypothesis a mathematical trick to get the right answer rather than a sizable discovery. However, in 1905 Albert Einstein interpreted Planck's quantum hypothesis realistically and used it to explain the photoelectric effect, in which shining light on certain materials can eject electrons from the material. Niels Bohr then developed Planck's ideas about radiation into a model of the hydrogen atom that successfully predicted the spectral lines of hydrogen. Einstein further developed this idea to show that an electromagnetic wave such as light could also be described as a particle (later called the photon), with a discrete amount of energy that depends on its frequency. In his paper "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation", Einstein expanded on the interaction between energy and matter to explain the absorption and emission of energy by atoms. Although overshadowed at the time by his general theory of relativity, this paper articulated the mechanism underlying the stimulated emission of radiation, which became the basis of the laser.
This phase is known as the old quantum theory. Never complete or self-consistent, the old quantum theory was rather a set of heuristic corrections to classical mechanics. The theory is now understood as a semi-classical approximation to modern quantum mechanics. Notable results from this period include, in addition to the work of Planck, Einstein and Bohr mentioned above, Einstein and Peter Debye's work on the specific heat of solids, Bohr and Hendrika Johanna van Leeuwen's proof that classical physics cannot account for diamagnetism, and Arnold Sommerfeld's extension of the Bohr model to include special-relativistic effects.
In the mid-1920s quantum mechanics was developed to become the standard formulation for atomic physics. In 1923, the French physicist Louis de Broglie put forward his theory of matter waves by stating that particles can exhibit wave characteristics and vice versa. Building on de Broglie's approach, modern quantum mechanics was born in 1925, when the German physicists Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan developed matrix mechanics and the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger invented wave mechanics. Born introduced the probabilistic interpretation of Schrödinger's wave function in July 1926. Thus, the entire field of quantum physics emerged, leading to its wider acceptance at the Fifth Solvay Conference in 1927.
By 1930, quantum mechanics had been further unified and formalized by David Hilbert, Paul Dirac and John von Neumann with greater emphasis on measurement, the statistical nature of our knowledge of reality, and philosophical speculation about the 'observer'. It has since permeated many disciplines, including quantum chemistry, quantum electronics, quantum optics, and quantum information science. It also provides a useful framework for many features of the modern periodic table of elements, and describes the behaviors of atoms during chemical bonding and the flow of electrons in computer semiconductors, and therefore plays a crucial role in many modern technologies. While quantum mechanics was constructed to describe the world of the very small, it is also needed to explain some macroscopic phenomena such as superconductors and superfluids.
See also
Explanatory notes
References
Further reading
External links
J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson: A history of quantum mechanics.
Introduction to Quantum Theory at Quantiki.
Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple: three video lectures by Hans Bethe.
Course material
Quantum Cook Book and PHYS 201: Fundamentals of Physics II by Ramamurti Shankar, Yale OpenCourseware.
Modern Physics: With waves, thermodynamics, and optics – an online textbook.
MIT OpenCourseWare: Chemistry and Physics. See 8.04, 8.05 and 8.06.
5+1/2 Examples in Quantum Mechanics.
Imperial College Quantum Mechanics Course.
Philosophy
Ismael, Jenann. "Quantum Mechanics". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Krips, Henry. "Measurement in Quantum Theory". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. |
Photoelectric_effect | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect"
] | The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons from a material caused by electromagnetic radiation such as ultraviolet light. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, solid state, and quantum chemistry to draw inferences about the properties of atoms, molecules and solids. The effect has found use in electronic devices specialized for light detection and precisely timed electron emission.
The experimental results disagree with classical electromagnetism, which predicts that continuous light waves transfer energy to electrons, which would then be emitted when they accumulate enough energy. An alteration in the intensity of light would theoretically change the kinetic energy of the emitted electrons, with sufficiently dim light resulting in a delayed emission. The experimental results instead show that electrons are dislodged only when the light exceeds a certain frequency—regardless of the light's intensity or duration of exposure. Because a low-frequency beam at a high intensity does not build up the energy required to produce photoelectrons, as would be the case if light's energy accumulated over time from a continuous wave, Albert Einstein proposed that a beam of light is not a wave propagating through space, but a swarm of discrete energy packets, known as photons—term coined by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926.
Emission of conduction electrons from typical metals requires a few electron-volt (eV) light quanta, corresponding to short-wavelength visible or ultraviolet light. In extreme cases, emissions are induced with photons approaching zero energy, like in systems with negative electron affinity and the emission from excited states, or a few hundred keV photons for core electrons in elements with a high atomic number. Study of the photoelectric effect led to important steps in understanding the quantum nature of light and electrons and influenced the formation of the concept of wave–particle duality. Other phenomena where light affects the movement of electric charges include the photoconductive effect, the photovoltaic effect, and the photoelectrochemical effect.
Emission mechanism
The photons of a light beam have a characteristic energy, called photon energy, which is proportional to the frequency of the light. In the photoemission process, when an electron within some material absorbs the energy of a photon and acquires more energy than its binding energy, it is likely to be ejected. If the photon energy is too low, the electron is unable to escape the material. Since an increase in the intensity of low-frequency light will only increase the number of low-energy photons, this change in intensity will not create any single photon with enough energy to dislodge an electron. Moreover, the energy of the emitted electrons will not depend on the intensity of the incoming light of a given frequency, but only on the energy of the individual photons.
While free electrons can absorb any energy when irradiated as long as this is followed by an immediate re-emission, like in the Compton effect, in quantum systems all of the energy from one photon is absorbed—if the process is allowed by quantum mechanics—or none at all. Part of the acquired energy is used to liberate the electron from its atomic binding, and the rest contributes to the electron's kinetic energy as a free particle. Because electrons in a material occupy many different quantum states with different binding energies, and because they can sustain energy losses on their way out of the material, the emitted electrons will have a range of kinetic energies. The electrons from the highest occupied states will have the highest kinetic energy. In metals, those electrons will be emitted from the Fermi level.
When the photoelectron is emitted into a solid rather than into a vacuum, the term internal photoemission is often used, and emission into a vacuum is distinguished as external photoemission.
Experimental observation of photoelectric emission
Even though photoemission can occur from any material, it is most readily observed from metals and other conductors. This is because the process produces a charge imbalance which, if not neutralized by current flow, results in the increasing potential barrier until the emission completely ceases. The energy barrier to photoemission is usually increased by nonconductive oxide layers on metal surfaces, so most practical experiments and devices based on the photoelectric effect use clean metal surfaces in evacuated tubes. Vacuum also helps observing the electrons since it prevents gases from impeding their flow between the electrodes.
As sunlight, due to atmosphere's absorption, does not provide much ultraviolet light, the light rich in ultraviolet rays used to be obtained by burning magnesium or from an arc lamp. At the present time, mercury-vapor lamps, noble-gas discharge UV lamps and radio-frequency plasma sources, ultraviolet lasers, and synchrotron insertion device light sources prevail.
The classical setup to observe the photoelectric effect includes a light source, a set of filters to monochromatize the light, a vacuum tube transparent to ultraviolet light, an emitting electrode (E) exposed to the light, and a collector (C) whose voltage VC can be externally controlled.
A positive external voltage is used to direct the photoemitted electrons onto the collector. If the frequency and the intensity of the incident radiation are fixed, the photoelectric current I increases with an increase in the positive voltage, as more and more electrons are directed onto the electrode. When no additional photoelectrons can be collected, the photoelectric current attains a saturation value. This current can only increase with the increase of the intensity of light.
An increasing negative voltage prevents all but the highest-energy electrons from reaching the collector. When no current is observed through the tube, the negative voltage has reached the value that is high enough to slow down and stop the most energetic photoelectrons of kinetic energy Kmax. This value of the retarding voltage is called the stopping potential or cut off potential Vo. Since the work done by the retarding potential in stopping the electron of charge e is eVo, the following must hold eVo = Kmax.
The current-voltage curve is sigmoidal, but its exact shape depends on the experimental geometry and the electrode material properties.
For a given metal surface, there exists a certain minimum frequency of incident radiation below which no photoelectrons are emitted. This frequency is called the threshold frequency. Increasing the frequency of the incident beam increases the maximum kinetic energy of the emitted photoelectrons, and the stopping voltage has to increase. The number of emitted electrons may also change because the probability that each photon results in an emitted electron is a function of photon energy.
An increase in the intensity of the same monochromatic light (so long as the intensity is not too high), which is proportional to the number of photons impinging on the surface in a given time, increases the rate at which electrons are ejected—the photoelectric current I—but the kinetic energy of the photoelectrons and the stopping voltage remain the same. For a given metal and frequency of incident radiation, the rate at which photoelectrons are ejected is directly proportional to the intensity of the incident light.
The time lag between the incidence of radiation and the emission of a photoelectron is very small, less than 10−9 second. Angular distribution of the photoelectrons is highly dependent on polarization (the direction of the electric field) of the incident light, as well as the emitting material's quantum properties such as atomic and molecular orbital symmetries and the electronic band structure of crystalline solids. In materials without macroscopic order, the distribution of electrons tends to peak in the direction of polarization of linearly polarized light. The experimental technique that can measure these distributions to infer the material's properties is angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
Theoretical explanation
In 1905, Einstein proposed a theory of the photoelectric effect using a concept that light consists of tiny packets of energy known as photons or light quanta. Each packet carries energy
h
ν
{\displaystyle h\nu }
that is proportional to the frequency
ν
{\displaystyle \nu }
of the corresponding electromagnetic wave. The proportionality constant
h
{\displaystyle h}
has become known as the Planck constant. In the range of kinetic energies of the electrons that are removed from their varying atomic bindings by the absorption of a photon of energy
h
ν
{\displaystyle h\nu }
, the highest kinetic energy
K
max
{\displaystyle K_{\max }}
is
K
max
=
h
ν
−
W
.
{\displaystyle K_{\max }=h\,\nu -W.}
Here,
W
{\displaystyle W}
is the minimum energy required to remove an electron from the surface of the material. It is called the work function of the surface and is sometimes denoted
Φ
{\displaystyle \Phi }
or
φ
{\displaystyle \varphi }
. If the work function is written as
W
=
h
ν
o
,
{\displaystyle W=h\,\nu _{o},}
the formula for the maximum kinetic energy of the ejected electrons becomes
K
max
=
h
(
ν
−
ν
o
)
.
{\displaystyle K_{\max }=h\left(\nu -\nu _{o}\right).}
Kinetic energy is positive, and
ν
>
ν
o
{\displaystyle \nu >\nu _{o}}
is required for the photoelectric effect to occur. The frequency
ν
o
{\displaystyle \nu _{o}}
is the threshold frequency for the given material. Above that frequency, the maximum kinetic energy of the photoelectrons as well as the stopping voltage in the experiment
V
o
=
h
e
(
ν
−
ν
o
)
{\textstyle V_{o}={\frac {h}{e}}\left(\nu -\nu _{o}\right)}
rise linearly with the frequency, and have no dependence on the number of photons and the intensity of the impinging monochromatic light. Einstein's formula, however simple, explained all the phenomenology of the photoelectric effect, and had far-reaching consequences in the development of quantum mechanics.
Photoemission from atoms, molecules and solids
Electrons that are bound in atoms, molecules and solids each occupy distinct states of well-defined binding energies. When light quanta deliver more than this amount of energy to an individual electron, the electron may be emitted into free space with excess (kinetic) energy that is
h
ν
{\displaystyle h\nu }
higher than the electron's binding energy. The distribution of kinetic energies thus reflects the distribution of the binding energies of the electrons in the atomic, molecular or crystalline system: an electron emitted from the state at binding energy
E
B
{\displaystyle E_{B}}
is found at kinetic energy
E
k
=
h
ν
−
E
B
{\displaystyle E_{k}=h\nu -E_{B}}
. This distribution is one of the main characteristics of the quantum system, and can be used for further studies in quantum chemistry and quantum physics.
Models of photoemission from solids
The electronic properties of ordered, crystalline solids are determined by the distribution of the electronic states with respect to energy and momentum—the electronic band structure of the solid. Theoretical models of photoemission from solids show that this distribution is, for the most part, preserved in the photoelectric effect. The phenomenological three-step model for ultraviolet and soft X-ray excitation decomposes the effect into these steps:
Inner photoelectric effect in the bulk of the material that is a direct optical transition between an occupied and an unoccupied electronic state. This effect is subject to quantum-mechanical selection rules for dipole transitions. The hole left behind the electron can give rise to secondary electron emission, or the so-called Auger effect, which may be visible even when the primary photoelectron does not leave the material. In molecular solids phonons are excited in this step and may be visible as satellite lines in the final electron energy.
Electron propagation to the surface in which some electrons may be scattered because of interactions with other constituents of the solid. Electrons that originate deeper in the solid are much more likely to suffer collisions and emerge with altered energy and momentum. Their mean-free path is a universal curve dependent on electron's energy.
Electron escape through the surface barrier into free-electron-like states of the vacuum. In this step the electron loses energy in the amount of the work function of the surface, and suffers from the momentum loss in the direction perpendicular to the surface. Because the binding energy of electrons in solids is conveniently expressed with respect to the highest occupied state at the Fermi energy
E
F
{\displaystyle E_{F}}
, and the difference to the free-space (vacuum) energy is the work function of the surface, the kinetic energy of the electrons emitted from solids is usually written as
E
k
=
h
ν
−
W
−
E
B
{\displaystyle E_{k}=h\nu -W-E_{B}}
.
There are cases where the three-step model fails to explain peculiarities of the photoelectron intensity distributions. The more elaborate one-step model treats the effect as a coherent process of photoexcitation into the final state of a finite crystal for which the wave function is free-electron-like outside of the crystal, but has a decaying envelope inside.
History
19th century
In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel discovered the related photovoltaic effect while studying the effect of light on electrolytic cells. Though not equivalent to the photoelectric effect, his work on photovoltaics was instrumental in showing a strong relationship between light and electronic properties of materials. In 1873, Willoughby Smith discovered photoconductivity in selenium while testing the metal for its high resistance properties in conjunction with his work involving submarine telegraph cables.
Johann Elster (1854–1920) and Hans Geitel (1855–1923), students in Heidelberg, investigated the effects produced by light on electrified bodies and developed the first practical photoelectric cells that could be used to measure the intensity of light.: 458 They arranged metals with respect to their power of discharging negative electricity: rubidium, potassium, alloy of potassium and sodium, sodium, lithium, magnesium, thallium and zinc; for copper, platinum, lead, iron, cadmium, carbon, and mercury the effects with ordinary light were too small to be measurable. The order of the metals for this effect was the same as in Volta's series for contact-electricity, the most electropositive metals giving the largest photo-electric effect.
In 1887, Heinrich Hertz observed the photoelectric effect and reported on the production and reception of electromagnetic waves. The receiver in his apparatus consisted of a coil with a spark gap, where a spark would be seen upon detection of electromagnetic waves. He placed the apparatus in a darkened box to see the spark better. However, he noticed that the maximum spark length was reduced when inside the box. A glass panel placed between the source of electromagnetic waves and the receiver absorbed ultraviolet radiation that assisted the electrons in jumping across the gap. When removed, the spark length would increase. He observed no decrease in spark length when he replaced the glass with quartz, as quartz does not absorb UV radiation.
The discoveries by Hertz led to a series of investigations by Wilhelm Hallwachs, Hoor, Augusto Righi and Aleksander Stoletov on the effect of light, and especially of ultraviolet light, on charged bodies. Hallwachs connected a zinc plate to an electroscope. He allowed ultraviolet light to fall on a freshly cleaned zinc plate and observed that the zinc plate became uncharged if initially negatively charged, positively charged if initially uncharged, and more positively charged if initially positively charged. From these observations he concluded that some negatively charged particles were emitted by the zinc plate when exposed to ultraviolet light.
With regard to the Hertz effect, the researchers from the start showed the complexity of the phenomenon of photoelectric fatigue—the progressive diminution of the effect observed upon fresh metallic surfaces. According to Hallwachs, ozone played an important part in the phenomenon, and the emission was influenced by oxidation, humidity, and the degree of polishing of the surface. It was at the time unclear whether fatigue is absent in a vacuum.
In the period from 1888 until 1891, a detailed analysis of the photoeffect was performed by Aleksandr Stoletov with results reported in six publications. Stoletov invented a new experimental setup which was more suitable for a quantitative analysis of the photoeffect. He discovered a direct proportionality between the intensity of light and the induced photoelectric current (the first law of photoeffect or Stoletov's law). He measured the dependence of the intensity of the photo electric current on the gas pressure, where he found the existence of an optimal gas pressure corresponding to a maximum photocurrent; this property was used for the creation of solar cells.
Many substances besides metals discharge negative electricity under the action of ultraviolet light. G. C. Schmidt and O. Knoblauch compiled a list of these substances.
In 1897, J. J. Thomson investigated ultraviolet light in Crookes tubes. Thomson deduced that the ejected particles, which he called corpuscles, were of the same nature as cathode rays. These particles later became known as the electrons. Thomson enclosed a metal plate (a cathode) in a vacuum tube, and exposed it to high-frequency radiation. It was thought that the oscillating electromagnetic fields caused the atoms' field to resonate and, after reaching a certain amplitude, caused subatomic corpuscles to be emitted, and current to be detected. The amount of this current varied with the intensity and color of the radiation. Larger radiation intensity or frequency would produce more current.
During the years 1886–1902, Wilhelm Hallwachs and Philipp Lenard investigated the phenomenon of photoelectric emission in detail. Lenard observed that a current flows through an evacuated glass tube enclosing two electrodes when ultraviolet radiation falls on one of them. As soon as ultraviolet radiation is stopped, the current also stops. This initiated the concept of photoelectric emission. The discovery of the ionization of gases by ultraviolet light was made by Philipp Lenard in 1900. As the effect was produced across several centimeters of air and yielded a greater number of positive ions than negative, it was natural to interpret the phenomenon, as J. J. Thomson did, as a Hertz effect upon the particles present in the gas.
20th century
In 1902, Lenard observed that the energy of individual emitted electrons was independent of the applied light intensity. This appeared to be at odds with Maxwell's wave theory of light, which predicted that the electron energy would be proportional to the intensity of the radiation.
Lenard observed the variation in electron energy with light frequency using a powerful electric arc lamp which enabled him to investigate large changes in intensity. However, Lenard's results were qualitative rather than quantitative because of the difficulty in performing the experiments: the experiments needed to be done on freshly cut metal so that the pure metal was observed, but it oxidized in a matter of minutes even in the partial vacuums he used. The current emitted by the surface was determined by the light's intensity, or brightness: doubling the intensity of the light doubled the number of electrons emitted from the surface.
Initial investigation of the photoelectric effect in gasses by Lenard were followed up by J. J. Thomson and then more decisively by Frederic Palmer Jr. The gas photoemission was studied and showed very different characteristics than those at first attributed to it by Lenard.
In 1900, while studying black-body radiation, the German physicist Max Planck suggested in his "On the Law of Distribution of Energy in the Normal Spectrum" paper that the energy carried by electromagnetic waves could only be released in packets of energy. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper advancing the hypothesis that light energy is carried in discrete quantized packets to explain experimental data from the photoelectric effect. Einstein theorized that the energy in each quantum of light was equal to the frequency of light multiplied by a constant, later called the Planck constant. A photon above a threshold frequency has the required energy to eject a single electron, creating the observed effect. This was a step in the development of quantum mechanics. In 1914, Robert A. Millikan's highly accurate measurements of the Planck constant from the photoelectric effect supported Einstein's model, even though a corpuscular theory of light was for Millikan, at the time, "quite unthinkable". Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", and Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 for "his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect". In quantum perturbation theory of atoms and solids acted upon by electromagnetic radiation, the photoelectric effect is still commonly analyzed in terms of waves; the two approaches are equivalent because photon or wave absorption can only happen between quantized energy levels whose energy difference is that of the energy of photon.
Albert Einstein's mathematical description of how the photoelectric effect was caused by absorption of quanta of light was in one of his Annus Mirabilis papers, named "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light". The paper proposed a simple description of energy quanta, and showed how they explained the blackbody radiation spectrum. His explanation in terms of absorption of discrete quanta of light agreed with experimental results. It explained why the energy of photoelectrons was not dependent on incident light intensity. This was a theoretical leap, but the concept was strongly resisted at first because it contradicted the wave theory of light that followed naturally from James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, and more generally, the assumption of infinite divisibility of energy in physical systems.
Einstein's work predicted that the energy of individual ejected electrons increases linearly with the frequency of the light. The precise relationship had not at that time been tested. By 1905 it was known that the energy of photoelectrons increases with increasing frequency of incident light and is independent of the intensity of the light. However, the manner of the increase was not experimentally determined until 1914 when Millikan showed that Einstein's prediction was correct.
The photoelectric effect helped to propel the then-emerging concept of wave–particle duality in the nature of light. Light simultaneously possesses the characteristics of both waves and particles, each being manifested according to the circumstances. The effect was impossible to understand in terms of the classical wave description of light, as the energy of the emitted electrons did not depend on the intensity of the incident radiation. Classical theory predicted that the electrons would 'gather up' energy over a period of time, and then be emitted.
Uses and effects
Photomultipliers
These are extremely light-sensitive vacuum tubes with a coated photocathode inside the envelope. The photo cathode contains combinations of materials such as cesium, rubidium, and antimony specially selected to provide a low work function, so when illuminated even by very low levels of light, the photocathode readily releases electrons. By means of a series of electrodes (dynodes) at ever-higher potentials, these electrons are accelerated and substantially increased in number through secondary emission to provide a readily detectable output current. Photomultipliers are still commonly used wherever low levels of light must be detected.
Image sensors
Video camera tubes in the early days of television used the photoelectric effect. For example, Philo Farnsworth's "Image dissector" used a screen charged by the photoelectric effect to transform an optical image into a scanned electronic signal.
Photoelectron spectroscopy
Because the kinetic energy of the emitted electrons is exactly the energy of the incident photon minus the energy of the electron's binding within an atom, molecule or solid, the binding energy can be determined by shining a monochromatic X-ray or UV light of a known energy and measuring the kinetic energies of the photoelectrons. The distribution of electron energies is valuable for studying quantum properties of these systems. It can also be used to determine the elemental composition of the samples. For solids, the kinetic energy and emission angle distribution of the photoelectrons is measured for the complete determination of the electronic band structure in terms of the allowed binding energies and momenta of the electrons. Modern instruments for angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy are capable of measuring these quantities with a precision better than 1 meV and 0.1°.
Photoelectron spectroscopy measurements are usually performed in a high-vacuum environment, because the electrons would be scattered by gas molecules if they were present. However, some companies are now selling products that allow photoemission in air. The light source can be a laser, a discharge tube, or a synchrotron radiation source.
The concentric hemispherical analyzer is a typical electron energy analyzer. It uses an electric field between two hemispheres to change (disperse) the trajectories of incident electrons depending on their kinetic energies.
Night vision devices
Photons hitting a thin film of alkali metal or semiconductor material such as gallium arsenide in an image intensifier tube cause the ejection of photoelectrons due to the photoelectric effect. These are accelerated by an electrostatic field where they strike a phosphor coated screen, converting the electrons back into photons. Intensification of the signal is achieved either through acceleration of the electrons or by increasing the number of electrons through secondary emissions, such as with a micro-channel plate. Sometimes a combination of both methods is used. Additional kinetic energy is required to move an electron out of the conduction band and into the vacuum level. This is known as the electron affinity of the photocathode and is another barrier to photoemission other than the forbidden band, explained by the band gap model. Some materials such as gallium arsenide have an effective electron affinity that is below the level of the conduction band. In these materials, electrons that move to the conduction band all have sufficient energy to be emitted from the material, so the film that absorbs photons can be quite thick. These materials are known as negative electron affinity materials.
Spacecraft
The photoelectric effect will cause spacecraft exposed to sunlight to develop a positive charge. This can be a major problem, as other parts of the spacecraft are in shadow which will result in the spacecraft developing a negative charge from nearby plasmas. The imbalance can discharge through delicate electrical components. The static charge created by the photoelectric effect is self-limiting, because a higher charged object does not give up its electrons as easily as a lower charged object does.
Moon dust
Light from the Sun hitting lunar dust causes it to become positively charged from the photoelectric effect. The charged dust then repels itself and lifts off the surface of the Moon by electrostatic levitation. This manifests itself almost like an "atmosphere of dust", visible as a thin haze and blurring of distant features, and visible as a dim glow after the sun has set. This was first photographed by the Surveyor program probes in the 1960s, and most recently the Chang'e 3 rover observed dust deposition on lunar rocks as high as about 28 cm. It is thought that the smallest particles are repelled kilometers from the surface and that the particles move in "fountains" as they charge and discharge.
Competing processes and photoemission cross section
When photon energies are as high as the electron rest energy of 511 keV, yet another process, Compton scattering, may occur. Above twice this energy, at 1.022 MeV, pair production is also more likely. Compton scattering and pair production are examples of two other competing mechanisms.
Even if the photoelectric effect is the favoured reaction for a particular interaction of a single photon with a bound electron, the result is also subject to quantum statistics and is not guaranteed. The probability of the photoelectric effect occurring is measured by the cross section of the interaction, σ. This has been found to be a function of the atomic number of the target atom and photon energy. In a crude approximation, for photon energies above the highest atomic binding energy, the cross section is given by:
σ
=
c
o
n
s
t
a
n
t
⋅
Z
n
E
3
{\displaystyle \sigma =\mathrm {constant} \cdot {\frac {Z^{n}}{E^{3}}}}
Here Z is the atomic number and n is a number which varies between 4 and 5. The photoelectric effect rapidly decreases in significance in the gamma-ray region of the spectrum, with increasing photon energy. It is also more likely from elements with high atomic number. Consequently, high-Z materials make good gamma-ray shields, which is the principal reason why lead (Z = 82) is preferred and most widely used.
See also
Anomalous photovoltaic effect
Compton scattering
Dember effect
Photo–Dember effect
Wave–particle duality
Photomagnetic effect
Photochemistry
Timeline of atomic and subatomic physics
References
External links
Astronomy Cast "http://www.astronomycast.com/2014/02/ep-335-photoelectric-effect/". AstronomyCast.
Nave, R., "Wave-Particle Duality". HyperPhysics.
"Photoelectric effect". Physics 2000. University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. (page not found)
ACEPT W3 Group, "The Photoelectric Effect". Department of Physics and Astronomy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.
Haberkern, Thomas, and N Deepak "Grains of Mystique: Quantum Physics for the Layman". Einstein Demystifies Photoelectric Effect, Chapter 3.
Department of Physics, "The Photoelectric effect Archived 2009-08-01 at the Wayback Machine". Physics 320 Laboratory, Davidson College, Davidson.
Fowler, Michael, "The Photoelectric Effect". Physics 252, University of Virginia.
Go to "Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and Transformation of Light" to read an English translation of Einstein's 1905 paper. (Retrieved: 2014 Apr 11)
http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Ru-Sp/Solar-Cells.html
Photo-electric transducers: http://sensorse.com/page4en.html
Applets
"HTML 5 JavaScript simulator" Open Source Physics project
"Photoelectric Effect". The Physics Education Technology (PhET) project. (Java)
Fendt, Walter, "The Photoelectric Effect". (Java)
"Applet: Photo Effect Archived 2010-03-14 at the Wayback Machine". Open Source Distributed Learning Content Management and Assessment System. (Java) |
Bohr_model | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model | [
324
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr_model"
] | In atomic physics, the Bohr model or Rutherford–Bohr model was the first successful model of the atom. Developed from 1911 to 1918 by Niels Bohr and building on Ernest Rutherford's nuclear model, it supplanted the plum pudding model of J J Thomson only to be replaced by the quantum atomic model in the 1920s. It consists of a small, dense nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons. It is analogous to the structure of the Solar System, but with attraction provided by electrostatic force rather than gravity, and with the electron energies quantized (assuming only discrete values).
In the history of atomic physics, it followed, and ultimately replaced, several earlier models, including Joseph Larmor's Solar System model (1897), Jean Perrin's model (1901), the cubical model (1902), Hantaro Nagaoka's Saturnian model (1904), the plum pudding model (1904), Arthur Haas's quantum model (1910), the Rutherford model (1911), and John William Nicholson's nuclear quantum model (1912). The improvement over the 1911 Rutherford model mainly concerned the new quantum mechanical interpretation introduced by Haas and Nicholson, but forsaking any attempt to explain radiation according to classical physics.
The model's key success lies in explaining the Rydberg formula for hydrogen's spectral emission lines. While the Rydberg formula had been known experimentally, it did not gain a theoretical basis until the Bohr model was introduced. Not only did the Bohr model explain the reasons for the structure of the Rydberg formula, it also provided a justification for the fundamental physical constants that make up the formula's empirical results.
The Bohr model is a relatively primitive model of the hydrogen atom, compared to the valence shell model. As a theory, it can be derived as a first-order approximation of the hydrogen atom using the broader and much more accurate quantum mechanics and thus may be considered to be an obsolete scientific theory. However, because of its simplicity, and its correct results for selected systems (see below for application), the Bohr model is still commonly taught to introduce students to quantum mechanics or energy level diagrams before moving on to the more accurate, but more complex, valence shell atom. A related quantum model was proposed by Arthur Erich Haas in 1910 but was rejected until the 1911 Solvay Congress where it was thoroughly discussed. The quantum theory of the period between Planck's discovery of the quantum (1900) and the advent of a mature quantum mechanics (1925) is often referred to as the old quantum theory.
Background
Until the second decade of the 20th century, atomic models were generally speculative. Even the concept of atoms, let alone atoms with internal structure, faced opposition from some scientists.: 2
Planetary models
In the late 1800's speculations on the possible structure of the atom included planetary models with orbiting charged electrons.: 35
These models faced a significant constraint.
In 1897, Joseph Larmor showed that an accelerating charge would radiate power according to classical electrodynamics, a result known as the Larmor formula. Since electrons forced to remain in orbit are continuously accelerating, they would be mechanically unstable. Larmor noted that electromagnetic effect of multiple electrons, suitable arranged, would cancel each other. Thus subsequent atomic models based on classical electrodynamics needed to adopt such special multi-electron arrangements.: 113
Thomson's atom model
When Bohr began his work on a new atomic theory in the summer of 1912: 237 the atomic model proposed by J J Thomson, now known as the Plum pudding model, was the best available.: 37 Thomson proposed a model with electrons rotating in coplanar rings within an atomic-sized, positively-charged, spherical volume. Thomson showed that this model was mechanically stable by lengthy calculations and was electrodynamically stable under his original assumption of thousands of electrons per atom. Moreover, he suggested that the particularly stable configurations of electrons in rings was connected to chemical properties of the atoms. He developed a formula for the scattering of beta particles that seemed to match experimental results.: 38
However Thomson himself later showed that the atom had a factor of a thousand fewer electrons, challenging the stability argument and forcing the poorly understood positive sphere to have most of the atom's mass. Thomson was also unable to explain the many lines in atomic spectra.: 18
Rutherford nuclear model
In 1908, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden demonstrated that alpha particle occasionally scatter at large angles, a result inconsistent with Thomson's model.
In 1911 Ernest Rutherford developed a new scattering model, showing that the observed large angle scattering could be explained by a compact, highly charged mass at the center of the atom.
Rutherford scattering did not involve the electrons and thus his model of the atom was incomplete.
Bohr begins his first paper on his atomic model by describing Rutherford's atom as consisting of a small, dense, positively charged nucleus attracting negatively charged electrons.
Atomic spectra
By the early twentieth century, it was expected that the atom would account for the many atomic spectral lines. These lines were summarized in empirical formula by Johann Balmer and Johannes Rydberg. In 1897, Lord Rayleigh showed that vibrations of electrical systems predicted spectral lines that depend on the square of the vibrational frequency, contradicting the empirical formula which depended directly on the frequency.: 18
In 1907 Arthur W. Conway showed that, rather than the entire atom vibrating, vibrations of only one of the electrons in the system described by Thomson might be sufficient to account for spectral series.: II:106 Although Bohr's model would also rely on just the electron to explain the spectrum, he did not assume an electrodynamical model for the atom.
The other important advance in the understanding of atomic spectra was the Rydberg–Ritz combination principle which related atomic spectral line frequencies to differences between 'terms', special frequencies characteristic of each element.: 173 Bohr would recognize the terms as energy levels of the atom divided by the Planck constant, leading to the modern view that the spectral lines result from energy differences.: 847
Haas atomic model
In 1910, Arthur Erich Haas proposed a model of the hydrogen atom with an electron circulating on the surface of a sphere of positive charge. The model resembled Thomson's plum pudding model, but Haas added a radical new twist: he constrained the electron's potential energy,
E
pot
{\displaystyle E_{\text{pot}}}
, on a sphere of radius a to equal the frequency, f, of the electron's orbit on the sphere times the Planck constant:: 197
E
pot
=
−
e
2
a
=
h
f
{\displaystyle E_{\text{pot}}={\frac {-e^{2}}{a}}=hf}
where e represents the charge on the electron and the sphere. Haas combined this constraint with the balance-of-forces equation. The attractive force between the electron and the sphere balances the centrifugal force:
e
2
a
2
=
m
a
(
2
π
f
)
2
{\displaystyle {\frac {e^{2}}{a^{2}}}=ma(2\pi f)^{2}}
where m is the mass of the electron. This combination relates the radius of the sphere to the Planck constant:
a
=
h
2
4
π
2
e
2
m
{\displaystyle a={\frac {h^{2}}{4\pi ^{2}e^{2}m}}}
Haas solved for the Planck constant using the then-current value for the radius of the hydrogen atom.
Three years later, Bohr would use similar equations with different interpretation. Bohr took the Planck constant as given value and used the equations to predict, a, the radius of the electron orbiting in the ground state of the hydrogen atom. This value is now called the Bohr radius.: 197
Influence of the Solvay Conference
The first Solvay Conference, in 1911, was one of the first international physics conferences. Nine Nobel or future Nobel laureates attended, including
Ernest Rutherford, Bohr's mentor.: 271
Bohr did not attend but he read the Solvay reports and discussed them with Rutherford.: 233
The subject of the conference was the theory of radiation and the energy quanta of Max Planck's oscillators.
Planck's lecture at the conference ended with comments about atoms and the discussion that followed it concerned atomic models. Hendrik Lorentz raised the question of the composition of the atom based on Haas's model, a form of Thomson's plum pudding model with a quantum modification. Lorentz explained that the size of atoms could be taken to determine the Planck constant as Haas had done or the Planck constant could be taken as determining the size of atoms.: 273 Bohr would adopt the second path.
The discussions outlined the need for the quantum theory to be included in the atom. Planck explicitly mentions the failings of classical mechanics.: 273 While Bohr had already expressed a similar opinion in his PhD thesis, at Solvay the leading scientists of the day discussed a break with classical theories.: 244 Bohr's first paper on his atomic model cites the Solvay proceedings saying: "Whatever the alteration in the laws of motion of the electrons may be, it seems necessary to introduce in the laws in question a quantity foreign to the classical electrodynamics, i.e. Planck's constant, or as it often is called the elementary quantum of action." Encouraged by the Solvay discussions, Bohr would assume the atom was stable and abandon the efforts to stabilize classical models of the atom: 199
Nicholson atom theory
In 1911 John William Nicholson published a model of the atom which would influence Bohr's model. Nicholson developed his model based on the analysis of astrophysical spectroscopy. He connected the observed spectral line frequencies with the orbits of electrons in his atoms. The connection he adopted associated the atomic electron orbital angular momentum with the Planck constant.
Whereas Planck focused on a quantum of energy, Nicholson's angular momentum quantum relates to orbital frequency.
This new concept gave Planck constant an atomic meaning for the first time.: 169 In his 1913 paper Bohr cites Nicholson as finding quantized angular momentum important for the atom.
The other critical influence of Nicholson work was his detailed analysis of spectra. Before Nicholson's work Bohr thought the spectral data was not useful for understanding atoms. In comparing his work to Nicholson's, Bohr came to understand the spectral data and their value. When he then learned from a friend about Balmer's compact formula for the spectral line data, Bohr quickly realized his model would match it in detail.: 178
Nicholson's model was based on classical electrodynamics along the lines of J.J. Thomson's plum pudding model but his negative electrons orbiting a positive nucleus rather than circulating in a sphere. To avoid immediate collapse of this system he required that electrons come in pairs so the rotational acceleration of each electron was matched across the orbit.: 163 By 1913 Bohr had already shown, from the analysis of alpha particle energy loss, that hydrogen had only a single electron not a matched pair.: 195 Bohr's atomic model would abandon classical electrodynamics.
Nicholson's model of radiation was quantum but was attached to the orbits of the electrons. Bohr quantization would associate it with differences in energy levels of his model of hydrogen rather than the orbital frequency.
Bohr's previous work
Bohr completed his PhD in 1911 with a thesis 'Studies on the Electron Theory of Metals', an application of the classical electron theory of Hendrik Lorentz. Bohr noted two deficits of the classical model. The first concerned the specific heat of metals which James Clerk Maxwell noted in 1875: every additional degree of freedom in a theory of metals, like subatomic electrons, cause more disagreement with experiment. The second, the classical theory could not explain magnetism.: 194
After his PhD, Bohr worked briefly in the lab of JJ Thomson before moving to Rutherford's lab in Manchester to study radioactivity. He arrived just after Rutherford completed his proposal of a compact nuclear core for atoms. Charles Galton Darwin, also at Manchester, had just completed an analysis of alpha particle energy loss in metals, concluding the electron collisions where the dominant cause of loss. Bohr showed in a subsequent paper that Darwin's results would improve by accounting for electron binding energy. Importantly this allowed Bohr to conclude that hydrogen atoms have a single electron.: 195
Development
Next, Bohr was told by his friend, Hans Hansen, that the Balmer series is calculated using the Balmer formula, an empirical equation discovered by Johann Balmer in 1885 that described wavelengths of some spectral lines of hydrogen. This was further generalized by Johannes Rydberg in 1888, resulting in what is now known as the Rydberg formula.
After this, Bohr declared, "everything became clear".
In 1913 Niels Bohr put forth three postulates to provide an electron model consistent with Rutherford's nuclear model:
The electron is able to revolve in certain stable orbits around the nucleus without radiating any energy, contrary to what classical electromagnetism suggests. These stable orbits are called stationary orbits and are attained at certain discrete distances from the nucleus. The electron cannot have any other orbit in between the discrete ones.
The stationary orbits are attained at distances for which the angular momentum of the revolving electron is an integer multiple of the reduced Planck constant:
m
e
v
r
=
n
ℏ
{\displaystyle m_{\mathrm {e} }vr=n\hbar }
, where
n
=
1
,
2
,
3
,
.
.
.
{\displaystyle n=1,2,3,...}
is called the principal quantum number, and
ℏ
=
h
/
2
π
{\displaystyle \hbar =h/2\pi }
. The lowest value of
n
{\displaystyle n}
is 1; this gives the smallest possible orbital radius, known as the Bohr radius, of 0.0529 nm for hydrogen. Once an electron is in this lowest orbit, it can get no closer to the nucleus. Starting from the angular momentum quantum rule as Bohr admits is previously given by Nicholson in his 1912 paper, Bohr was able to calculate the energies of the allowed orbits of the hydrogen atom and other hydrogen-like atoms and ions. These orbits are associated with definite energies and are also called energy shells or energy levels. In these orbits, the electron's acceleration does not result in radiation and energy loss. The Bohr model of an atom was based upon Planck's quantum theory of radiation.
Electrons can only gain and lose energy by jumping from one allowed orbit to another, absorbing or emitting electromagnetic radiation with a frequency
ν
{\displaystyle \nu }
determined by the energy difference of the levels according to the Planck relation:
Δ
E
=
E
2
−
E
1
=
h
ν
{\displaystyle \Delta E=E_{2}-E_{1}=h\nu }
, where
h
{\displaystyle h}
is the Planck constant.
Other points are:
Like Einstein's theory of the photoelectric effect, Bohr's formula assumes that during a quantum jump a discrete amount of energy is radiated. However, unlike Einstein, Bohr stuck to the classical Maxwell theory of the electromagnetic field. Quantization of the electromagnetic field was explained by the discreteness of the atomic energy levels; Bohr did not believe in the existence of photons.
According to the Maxwell theory the frequency
ν
{\displaystyle \nu }
of classical radiation is equal to the rotation frequency
ν
{\displaystyle \nu }
rot of the electron in its orbit, with harmonics at integer multiples of this frequency. This result is obtained from the Bohr model for jumps between energy levels
E
n
{\displaystyle E_{n}}
and
E
n
−
k
{\displaystyle E_{n-k}}
when
k
{\displaystyle k}
is much smaller than
n
{\displaystyle n}
. These jumps reproduce the frequency of the
k
{\displaystyle k}
-th harmonic of orbit
n
{\displaystyle n}
. For sufficiently large values of
n
{\displaystyle n}
(so-called Rydberg states), the two orbits involved in the emission process have nearly the same rotation frequency, so that the classical orbital frequency is not ambiguous. But for small
n
{\displaystyle n}
(or large
k
{\displaystyle k}
), the radiation frequency has no unambiguous classical interpretation. This marks the birth of the correspondence principle, requiring quantum theory to agree with the classical theory only in the limit of large quantum numbers.
The Bohr–Kramers–Slater theory (BKS theory) is a failed attempt to extend the Bohr model, which violates the conservation of energy and momentum in quantum jumps, with the conservation laws only holding on average.
Bohr's condition, that the angular momentum be an integer multiple of
ℏ
{\displaystyle \hbar }
, was later reinterpreted in 1924 by de Broglie as a standing wave condition: the electron is described by a wave and a whole number of wavelengths must fit along the circumference of the electron's orbit:
n
λ
=
2
π
r
.
{\displaystyle n\lambda =2\pi r.}
According to de Broglie's hypothesis, matter particles such as the electron behave as waves. The de Broglie wavelength of an electron is
λ
=
h
m
v
,
{\displaystyle \lambda ={\frac {h}{mv}},}
which implies that
n
h
m
v
=
2
π
r
,
{\displaystyle {\frac {nh}{mv}}=2\pi r,}
or
n
h
2
π
=
m
v
r
,
{\displaystyle {\frac {nh}{2\pi }}=mvr,}
where
m
v
r
{\displaystyle mvr}
is the angular momentum of the orbiting electron. Writing
ℓ
{\displaystyle \ell }
for this angular momentum, the previous equation becomes
ℓ
=
n
h
2
π
,
{\displaystyle \ell ={\frac {nh}{2\pi }},}
which is Bohr's second postulate.
Bohr described angular momentum of the electron orbit as
2
/
h
{\displaystyle 2/h}
while de Broglie's wavelength of
λ
=
h
/
p
{\displaystyle \lambda =h/p}
described
h
{\displaystyle h}
divided by the electron momentum. In 1913, however, Bohr justified his rule by appealing to the correspondence principle, without providing any sort of wave interpretation. In 1913, the wave behavior of matter particles such as the electron was not suspected.
In 1925, a new kind of mechanics was proposed, quantum mechanics, in which Bohr's model of electrons traveling in quantized orbits was extended into a more accurate model of electron motion. The new theory was proposed by Werner Heisenberg. Another form of the same theory, wave mechanics, was discovered by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger independently, and by different reasoning. Schrödinger employed de Broglie's matter waves, but sought wave solutions of a three-dimensional wave equation describing electrons that were constrained to move about the nucleus of a hydrogen-like atom, by being trapped by the potential of the positive nuclear charge.
Electron energy levels
The Bohr model gives almost exact results only for a system where two charged points orbit each other at speeds much less than that of light. This not only involves one-electron systems such as the hydrogen atom, singly ionized helium, and doubly ionized lithium, but it includes positronium and Rydberg states of any atom where one electron is far away from everything else. It can be used for K-line X-ray transition calculations if other assumptions are added (see Moseley's law below). In high energy physics, it can be used to calculate the masses of heavy quark mesons.
Calculation of the orbits requires two assumptions.
Classical mechanics
The electron is held in a circular orbit by electrostatic attraction. The centripetal force is equal to the Coulomb force.
m
e
v
2
r
=
Z
k
e
e
2
r
2
,
{\displaystyle {\frac {m_{\mathrm {e} }v^{2}}{r}}={\frac {Zk_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2}}{r^{2}}},}
where me is the electron's mass, e is the elementary charge, ke is the Coulomb constant and Z is the atom's atomic number. It is assumed here that the mass of the nucleus is much larger than the electron mass (which is a good assumption). This equation determines the electron's speed at any radius:
v
=
Z
k
e
e
2
m
e
r
.
{\displaystyle v={\sqrt {\frac {Zk_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2}}{m_{\mathrm {e} }r}}}.}
It also determines the electron's total energy at any radius:
E
=
−
1
2
m
e
v
2
.
{\displaystyle E=-{\frac {1}{2}}m_{\mathrm {e} }v^{2}.}
The total energy is negative and inversely proportional to r. This means that it takes energy to pull the orbiting electron away from the proton. For infinite values of r, the energy is zero, corresponding to a motionless electron infinitely far from the proton. The total energy is half the potential energy, the difference being the kinetic energy of the electron. This is also true for noncircular orbits by the virial theorem.
A quantum rule
The angular momentum L = mevr is an integer multiple of ħ:
m
e
v
r
=
n
ℏ
.
{\displaystyle m_{\mathrm {e} }vr=n\hbar .}
Derivation
In classical mechanics, if an electron is orbiting around an atom with period T, and if its coupling to the electromagnetic field is weak, so that the orbit doesn't decay very much in one cycle, it will emit electromagnetic radiation in a pattern repeating at every period, so that the Fourier transform of the pattern will only have frequencies which are multiples of 1/T.
However, in quantum mechanics, the quantization of angular momentum leads to discrete energy levels of the orbits, and the emitted frequencies are quantized according to the energy differences between these levels. This discrete nature of energy levels introduces a fundamental departure from the classical radiation law, giving rise to distinct spectral lines in the emitted radiation.
Bohr assumes that the electron is circling the nucleus in an elliptical orbit obeying the rules of classical mechanics, but with no loss of radiation due to the Larmor formula.
Denoting the total energy as E, the negative electron charge as e, the positive nucleus charge as K=Z|e|, the electron mass as me, half the major axis of the ellipse as a, he starts with these equations:: 3
E is assumed to be negative, because a positive energy is required to unbind the electron from the nucleus and put it at rest at an infinite distance.
Eq. (1a) is obtained from equating the centripetal force to the Coulombian force acting between the nucleus and the electron, considering that
E
=
T
+
U
{\displaystyle E=T+U}
(where T is the average kinetic energy and U the average electrostatic potential), and that for Kepler's second law, the average separation between the electron and the nucleus is a.
Eq. (1b) is obtained from the same premises of eq. (1a) plus the virial theorem, stating that, for an elliptical orbit,
Then Bohr assumes that
|
E
|
{\displaystyle \vert E\vert }
is an integer multiple of the energy of a quantum of light with half the frequency of the electron's revolution frequency,: 4 i.e:
From eq. (1a,1b,2), it descends:
He further assumes that the orbit is circular, i.e.
a
=
r
{\displaystyle a=r}
, and, denoting the angular momentum of the electron as L, introduces the equation:
Eq. (4) stems from the virial theorem, and from the classical mechanics relationships between the angular momentum, the kinetic energy and the frequency of revolution.
From eq. (1c,2,4), it stems:
where:
that is:
This results states that the angular momentum of the electron is an integer multiple of the reduced Planck constant.: 15
Substituting the expression for the velocity gives an equation for r in terms of n:
m
e
k
e
Z
e
2
m
e
r
r
=
n
ℏ
,
{\displaystyle m_{\text{e}}{\sqrt {\dfrac {k_{\text{e}}Ze^{2}}{m_{\text{e}}r}}}r=n\hbar ,}
so that the allowed orbit radius at any n is
r
n
=
n
2
ℏ
2
Z
k
e
e
2
m
e
.
{\displaystyle r_{n}={\frac {n^{2}\hbar ^{2}}{Zk_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2}m_{\mathrm {e} }}}.}
The smallest possible value of r in the hydrogen atom (Z = 1) is called the Bohr radius and is equal to:
r
1
=
ℏ
2
k
e
e
2
m
e
≈
5.29
×
10
−
11
m
=
52.9
p
m
.
{\displaystyle r_{1}={\frac {\hbar ^{2}}{k_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2}m_{\mathrm {e} }}}\approx 5.29\times 10^{-11}~\mathrm {m} =52.9~\mathrm {pm} .}
The energy of the n-th level for any atom is determined by the radius and quantum number:
E
=
−
Z
k
e
e
2
2
r
n
=
−
Z
2
(
k
e
e
2
)
2
m
e
2
ℏ
2
n
2
≈
−
13.6
Z
2
n
2
e
V
.
{\displaystyle E=-{\frac {Zk_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2}}{2r_{n}}}=-{\frac {Z^{2}(k_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2})^{2}m_{\mathrm {e} }}{2\hbar ^{2}n^{2}}}\approx {\frac {-13.6Z^{2}}{n^{2}}}~\mathrm {eV} .}
An electron in the lowest energy level of hydrogen (n = 1) therefore has about 13.6 eV less energy than a motionless electron infinitely far from the nucleus. The next energy level (n = 2) is −3.4 eV. The third (n = 3) is −1.51 eV, and so on. For larger values of n, these are also the binding energies of a highly excited atom with one electron in a large circular orbit around the rest of the atom. The hydrogen formula also coincides with the Wallis product.
The combination of natural constants in the energy formula is called the Rydberg energy (RE):
R
E
=
(
k
e
e
2
)
2
m
e
2
ℏ
2
.
{\displaystyle R_{\mathrm {E} }={\frac {(k_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2})^{2}m_{\mathrm {e} }}{2\hbar ^{2}}}.}
This expression is clarified by interpreting it in combinations that form more natural units:
m
e
c
2
{\displaystyle m_{\mathrm {e} }c^{2}}
is the rest mass energy of the electron (511 keV),
k
e
e
2
ℏ
c
=
α
≈
1
137
{\displaystyle {\frac {k_{\mathrm {e} }e^{2}}{\hbar c}}=\alpha \approx {\frac {1}{137}}}
is the fine-structure constant,
R
E
=
1
2
(
m
e
c
2
)
α
2
{\displaystyle R_{\mathrm {E} }={\frac {1}{2}}(m_{\mathrm {e} }c^{2})\alpha ^{2}}
.
Since this derivation is with the assumption that the nucleus is orbited by one electron, we can generalize this result by letting the nucleus have a charge q = Ze, where Z is the atomic number. This will now give us energy levels for hydrogenic (hydrogen-like) atoms, which can serve as a rough order-of-magnitude approximation of the actual energy levels. So for nuclei with Z protons, the energy levels are (to a rough approximation):
E
n
=
−
Z
2
R
E
n
2
.
{\displaystyle E_{n}=-{\frac {Z^{2}R_{\mathrm {E} }}{n^{2}}}.}
The actual energy levels cannot be solved analytically for more than one electron (see n-body problem) because the electrons are not only affected by the nucleus but also interact with each other via the Coulomb force.
When Z = 1/α (Z ≈ 137), the motion becomes highly relativistic, and Z2 cancels the α2 in R; the orbit energy begins to be comparable to rest energy. Sufficiently large nuclei, if they were stable, would reduce their charge by creating a bound electron from the vacuum, ejecting the positron to infinity. This is the theoretical phenomenon of electromagnetic charge screening which predicts a maximum nuclear charge. Emission of such positrons has been observed in the collisions of heavy ions to create temporary super-heavy nuclei.
The Bohr formula properly uses the reduced mass of electron and proton in all situations, instead of the mass of the electron,
m
red
=
m
e
m
p
m
e
+
m
p
=
m
e
1
1
+
m
e
/
m
p
.
{\displaystyle m_{\text{red}}={\frac {m_{\mathrm {e} }m_{\mathrm {p} }}{m_{\mathrm {e} }+m_{\mathrm {p} }}}=m_{\mathrm {e} }{\frac {1}{1+m_{\mathrm {e} }/m_{\mathrm {p} }}}.}
However, these numbers are very nearly the same, due to the much larger mass of the proton, about 1836.1 times the mass of the electron, so that the reduced mass in the system is the mass of the electron multiplied by the constant 1836.1/(1+1836.1) = 0.99946. This fact was historically important in convincing Rutherford of the importance of Bohr's model, for it explained the fact that the frequencies of lines in the spectra for singly ionized helium do not differ from those of hydrogen by a factor of exactly 4, but rather by 4 times the ratio of the reduced mass for the hydrogen vs. the helium systems, which was much closer to the experimental ratio than exactly 4.
For positronium, the formula uses the reduced mass also, but in this case, it is exactly the electron mass divided by 2. For any value of the radius, the electron and the positron are each moving at half the speed around their common center of mass, and each has only one fourth the kinetic energy. The total kinetic energy is half what it would be for a single electron moving around a heavy nucleus.
E
n
=
R
E
2
n
2
{\displaystyle E_{n}={\frac {R_{\mathrm {E} }}{2n^{2}}}}
(positronium).
Rydberg formula
Beginning in late 1860s, Johann Balmer and later Johannes Rydberg and Walther Ritz developed increasingly accurate empirical formula matching measured atomic spectral lines.
Critical for Bohr's later work, Rydberg expressed his formula in terms of wave-number, equivalent to frequency. These formula contained a constant,
R
{\displaystyle R}
, now known the Rydberg constant and a pair of integers indexing the lines:: 247
ν
=
R
(
1
m
2
−
1
n
2
)
.
{\displaystyle \nu =R\left({\frac {1}{m^{2}}}-{\frac {1}{n^{2}}}\right).}
Despite many attempts, no theory of the atom could reproduce these relatively simple formula.: 169
In Bohr's theory describing the energies of transitions or quantum jumps between orbital energy levels is able to explain these formula. For the hydrogen atom Bohr starts with his derived formula for the energy released as a free electron moves into a stable circular orbit indexed by
τ
{\displaystyle \tau }
:
W
τ
=
2
π
2
m
e
4
h
2
τ
2
{\displaystyle W_{\tau }={\frac {2\pi ^{2}me^{4}}{h^{2}\tau ^{2}}}}
The energy difference between two such levels is then:
h
ν
=
W
τ
2
−
W
τ
1
=
2
π
2
m
e
4
h
2
(
1
τ
2
2
−
1
τ
1
2
)
{\displaystyle h\nu =W_{\tau _{2}}-W_{\tau _{1}}={\frac {2\pi ^{2}me^{4}}{h^{2}}}\left({\frac {1}{\tau _{2}^{2}}}-{\frac {1}{\tau _{1}^{2}}}\right)}
Therefore Bohr's theory gives the Rydberg formula and moreover the numerical value the Rydberg constant for hydrogen in terms of more fundamental constants of nature, including the electron's charge, the electron's mass, and the Planck constant:: 31
c
R
H
=
2
π
2
m
e
4
h
3
.
{\displaystyle cR_{H}={\frac {2\pi ^{2}me^{4}}{h^{3}}}.}
Since the energy of a photon is
E
=
h
c
λ
,
{\displaystyle E={\frac {hc}{\lambda }},}
these results can be expressed in terms of the wavelength of the photon given off:
1
λ
=
R
(
1
n
f
2
−
1
n
i
2
)
.
{\displaystyle {\frac {1}{\lambda }}=R\left({\frac {1}{n_{f}^{2}}}-{\frac {1}{n_{i}^{2}}}\right).}
Bohr's derivation of the Rydberg constant, as well as the concomitant agreement of Bohr's formula with experimentally observed spectral lines of the Lyman (nf =1), Balmer (nf =2), and Paschen (nf =3) series, and successful theoretical prediction of other lines not yet observed, was one reason that his model was immediately accepted.: 34
To apply to atoms with more than one electron, the Rydberg formula can be modified by replacing Z with Z − b or n with n − b where b is constant representing a screening effect due to the inner-shell and other electrons (see Electron shell and the later discussion of the "Shell Model of the Atom" below). This was established empirically before Bohr presented his model.
Shell model (heavier atoms)
Bohr's original three papers in 1913 described mainly the electron configuration in lighter elements. Bohr called his electron shells, "rings" in 1913. Atomic orbitals within shells did not exist at the time of his planetary model. Bohr explains in Part 3 of his famous 1913 paper that the maximum electrons in a shell is eight, writing: "We see, further, that a ring of n electrons cannot rotate in a single ring round a nucleus of charge ne unless n < 8." For smaller atoms, the electron shells would be filled as follows: "rings of electrons will only join together if they contain equal numbers of electrons; and that accordingly the numbers of electrons on inner rings will only be 2, 4, 8". However, in larger atoms the innermost shell would contain eight electrons, "on the other hand, the periodic system of the elements strongly suggests that already in neon N = 10 an inner ring of eight electrons will occur". Bohr wrote "From the above we are led to the following possible scheme for the arrangement of the electrons in light atoms:"
In Bohr's third 1913 paper Part III called "Systems Containing Several Nuclei", he says that two atoms form molecules on a symmetrical plane and he reverts to describing hydrogen. The 1913 Bohr model did not discuss higher elements in detail and John William Nicholson was one of the first to prove in 1914 that it couldn't work for lithium, but was an attractive theory for hydrogen and ionized helium.
In 1921, following the work of chemists and others involved in work on the periodic table, Bohr extended the model of hydrogen to give an approximate model for heavier atoms. This gave a physical picture that reproduced many known atomic properties for the first time although these properties were proposed contemporarily with the identical work of chemist Charles Rugeley Bury
Bohr's partner in research during 1914 to 1916 was Walther Kossel who corrected Bohr's work to show that electrons interacted through the outer rings, and Kossel called the rings: "shells". Irving Langmuir is credited with the first viable arrangement of electrons in shells with only two in the first shell and going up to eight in the next according to the octet rule of 1904, although Kossel had already predicted a maximum of eight per shell in 1916. Heavier atoms have more protons in the nucleus, and more electrons to cancel the charge. Bohr took from these chemists the idea that each discrete orbit could only hold a certain number of electrons. Per Kossel, after that the orbit is full, the next level would have to be used. This gives the atom a shell structure designed by Kossel, Langmuir, and Bury, in which each shell corresponds to a Bohr orbit.
This model is even more approximate than the model of hydrogen, because it treats the electrons in each shell as non-interacting. But the repulsions of electrons are taken into account somewhat by the phenomenon of screening. The electrons in outer orbits do not only orbit the nucleus, but they also move around the inner electrons, so the effective charge Z that they feel is reduced by the number of the electrons in the inner orbit.
For example, the lithium atom has two electrons in the lowest 1s orbit, and these orbit at Z = 2. Each one sees the nuclear charge of Z = 3 minus the screening effect of the other, which crudely reduces the nuclear charge by 1 unit. This means that the innermost electrons orbit at approximately 1/2 the Bohr radius. The outermost electron in lithium orbits at roughly the Bohr radius, since the two inner electrons reduce the nuclear charge by 2. This outer electron should be at nearly one Bohr radius from the nucleus. Because the electrons strongly repel each other, the effective charge description is very approximate; the effective charge Z doesn't usually come out to be an integer.
The shell model was able to qualitatively explain many of the mysterious properties of atoms which became codified in the late 19th century in the periodic table of the elements. One property was the size of atoms, which could be determined approximately by measuring the viscosity of gases and density of pure crystalline solids. Atoms tend to get smaller toward the right in the periodic table, and become much larger at the next line of the table. Atoms to the right of the table tend to gain electrons, while atoms to the left tend to lose them. Every element on the last column of the table is chemically inert (noble gas).
In the shell model, this phenomenon is explained by shell-filling. Successive atoms become smaller because they are filling orbits of the same size, until the orbit is full, at which point the next atom in the table has a loosely bound outer electron, causing it to expand. The first Bohr orbit is filled when it has two electrons, which explains why helium is inert. The second orbit allows eight electrons, and when it is full the atom is neon, again inert. The third orbital contains eight again, except that in the more correct Sommerfeld treatment (reproduced in modern quantum mechanics) there are extra "d" electrons. The third orbit may hold an extra 10 d electrons, but these positions are not filled until a few more orbitals from the next level are filled (filling the n=3 d orbitals produces the 10 transition elements). The irregular filling pattern is an effect of interactions between electrons, which are not taken into account in either the Bohr or Sommerfeld models and which are difficult to calculate even in the modern treatment.
Moseley's law and calculation (K-alpha X-ray emission lines)
Niels Bohr said in 1962: "You see actually the Rutherford work was not taken seriously. We cannot understand today, but it was not taken seriously at all. There was no mention of it any place. The great change came from Moseley."
In 1913, Henry Moseley found an empirical relationship between the strongest X-ray line emitted by atoms under electron bombardment (then known as the K-alpha line), and their atomic number Z. Moseley's empiric formula was found to be derivable from Rydberg's formula and later Bohr's formula (Moseley actually mentions only Ernest Rutherford and Antonius Van den Broek in terms of models as these had been published before Moseley's work and Moseley's 1913 paper was published the same month as the first Bohr model paper). The two additional assumptions that [1] this X-ray line came from a transition between energy levels with quantum numbers 1 and 2, and [2], that the atomic number Z when used in the formula for atoms heavier than hydrogen, should be diminished by 1, to (Z − 1)2.
Moseley wrote to Bohr, puzzled about his results, but Bohr was not able to help. At that time, he thought that the postulated innermost "K" shell of electrons should have at least four electrons, not the two which would have neatly explained the result. So Moseley published his results without a theoretical explanation.
It was Walther Kossel in 1914 and in 1916 who explained that in the periodic table new elements would be created as electrons were added to the outer shell. In Kossel's paper, he writes: "This leads to the conclusion that the electrons, which are added further, should be put into concentric rings or shells, on each of which ... only a certain number of electrons—namely, eight in our case—should be arranged. As soon as one ring or shell is completed, a new one has to be started for the next element; the number of electrons, which are most easily accessible, and lie at the outermost periphery, increases again from element to element and, therefore, in the formation of each new shell the chemical periodicity is repeated." Later, chemist Langmuir realized that the effect was caused by charge screening, with an inner shell containing only 2 electrons. In his 1919 paper, Irving Langmuir postulated the existence of "cells" which could each only contain two electrons each, and these were arranged in "equidistant layers".
In the Moseley experiment, one of the innermost electrons in the atom is knocked out, leaving a vacancy in the lowest Bohr orbit, which contains a single remaining electron. This vacancy is then filled by an electron from the next orbit, which has n=2. But the n=2 electrons see an effective charge of Z − 1, which is the value appropriate for the charge of the nucleus, when a single electron remains in the lowest Bohr orbit to screen the nuclear charge +Z, and lower it by −1 (due to the electron's negative charge screening the nuclear positive charge). The energy gained by an electron dropping from the second shell to the first gives Moseley's law for K-alpha lines,
E
=
h
ν
=
E
i
−
E
f
=
R
E
(
Z
−
1
)
2
(
1
1
2
−
1
2
2
)
,
{\displaystyle E=h\nu =E_{i}-E_{f}=R_{\mathrm {E} }(Z-1)^{2}\left({\frac {1}{1^{2}}}-{\frac {1}{2^{2}}}\right),}
or
f
=
ν
=
R
v
(
3
4
)
(
Z
−
1
)
2
=
(
2.46
×
10
15
Hz
)
(
Z
−
1
)
2
.
{\displaystyle f=\nu =R_{\mathrm {v} }\left({\frac {3}{4}}\right)(Z-1)^{2}=(2.46\times 10^{15}~{\text{Hz}})(Z-1)^{2}.}
Here, Rv = RE/h is the Rydberg constant, in terms of frequency equal to 3.28 x 1015 Hz. For values of Z between 11 and 31 this latter relationship had been empirically derived by Moseley, in a simple (linear) plot of the square root of X-ray frequency against atomic number (however, for silver, Z = 47, the experimentally obtained screening term should be replaced by 0.4). Notwithstanding its restricted validity, Moseley's law not only established the objective meaning of atomic number, but as Bohr noted, it also did more than the Rydberg derivation to establish the validity of the Rutherford/Van den Broek/Bohr nuclear model of the atom, with atomic number (place on the periodic table) standing for whole units of nuclear charge. Van den Broek had published his model in January 1913 showing the periodic table was arranged according to charge while Bohr's atomic model was not published until July 1913.
The K-alpha line of Moseley's time is now known to be a pair of close lines, written as (Kα1 and Kα2) in Siegbahn notation.
Shortcomings
The Bohr model gives an incorrect value L=ħ for the ground state orbital angular momentum: The angular momentum in the true ground state is known to be zero from experiment. Although mental pictures fail somewhat at these levels of scale, an electron in the lowest modern "orbital" with no orbital momentum, may be thought of as not to rotate "around" the nucleus at all, but merely to go tightly around it in an ellipse with zero area (this may be pictured as "back and forth", without striking or interacting with the nucleus). This is only reproduced in a more sophisticated semiclassical treatment like Sommerfeld's. Still, even the most sophisticated semiclassical model fails to explain the fact that the lowest energy state is spherically symmetric – it doesn't point in any particular direction.
Nevertheless, in the modern fully quantum treatment in phase space, the proper deformation (careful full extension) of the semi-classical result adjusts the angular momentum value to the correct effective one. As a consequence, the physical ground state expression is obtained through a shift of the vanishing quantum angular momentum expression, which corresponds to spherical symmetry.
In modern quantum mechanics, the electron in hydrogen is a spherical cloud of probability that grows denser near the nucleus. The rate-constant of probability-decay in hydrogen is equal to the inverse of the Bohr radius, but since Bohr worked with circular orbits, not zero area ellipses, the fact that these two numbers exactly agree is considered a "coincidence". (However, many such coincidental agreements are found between the semiclassical vs. full quantum mechanical treatment of the atom; these include identical energy levels in the hydrogen atom and the derivation of a fine-structure constant, which arises from the relativistic Bohr–Sommerfeld model (see below) and which happens to be equal to an entirely different concept, in full modern quantum mechanics).
The Bohr model also has difficulty with, or else fails to explain:
Much of the spectra of larger atoms. At best, it can make predictions about the K-alpha and some L-alpha X-ray emission spectra for larger atoms, if two additional ad hoc assumptions are made. Emission spectra for atoms with a single outer-shell electron (atoms in the lithium group) can also be approximately predicted. Also, if the empiric electron–nuclear screening factors for many atoms are known, many other spectral lines can be deduced from the information, in similar atoms of differing elements, via the Ritz–Rydberg combination principles (see Rydberg formula). All these techniques essentially make use of Bohr's Newtonian energy-potential picture of the atom.
The relative intensities of spectral lines; although in some simple cases, Bohr's formula or modifications of it, was able to provide reasonable estimates (for example, calculations by Kramers for the Stark effect).
The existence of fine structure and hyperfine structure in spectral lines, which are known to be due to a variety of relativistic and subtle effects, as well as complications from electron spin.
The Zeeman effect – changes in spectral lines due to external magnetic fields; these are also due to more complicated quantum principles interacting with electron spin and orbital magnetic fields.
The model also violates the uncertainty principle in that it considers electrons to have known orbits and locations, two things which cannot be measured simultaneously.
Doublets and triplets appear in the spectra of some atoms as very close pairs of lines. Bohr's model cannot say why some energy levels should be very close together.
Multi-electron atoms do not have energy levels predicted by the model. It does not work for (neutral) helium.
Refinements
Several enhancements to the Bohr model were proposed, most notably the Sommerfeld or Bohr–Sommerfeld models, which suggested that electrons travel in elliptical orbits around a nucleus instead of the Bohr model's circular orbits. This model supplemented the quantized angular momentum condition of the Bohr model with an additional radial quantization condition, the Wilson–Sommerfeld quantization condition
∫
0
T
p
r
d
q
r
=
n
h
,
{\displaystyle \int _{0}^{T}p_{r}\,dq_{r}=nh,}
where pr is the radial momentum canonically conjugate to the coordinate qr, which is the radial position, and T is one full orbital period. The integral is the action of action-angle coordinates. This condition, suggested by the correspondence principle, is the only one possible, since the quantum numbers are adiabatic invariants.
The Bohr–Sommerfeld model was fundamentally inconsistent and led to many paradoxes. The magnetic quantum number measured the tilt of the orbital plane relative to the xy plane, and it could only take a few discrete values. This contradicted the obvious fact that an atom could have any orientation relative to the coordinates, without restriction. The Sommerfeld quantization can be performed in different canonical coordinates and sometimes gives different answers. The incorporation of radiation corrections was difficult, because it required finding action-angle coordinates for a combined radiation/atom system, which is difficult when the radiation is allowed to escape. The whole theory did not extend to non-integrable motions, which meant that many systems could not be treated even in principle. In the end, the model was replaced by the modern quantum-mechanical treatment of the hydrogen atom, which was first given by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925, using Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. The current picture of the hydrogen atom is based on the atomic orbitals of wave mechanics, which Erwin Schrödinger developed in 1926.
However, this is not to say that the Bohr–Sommerfeld model was without its successes. Calculations based on the Bohr–Sommerfeld model were able to accurately explain a number of more complex atomic spectral effects. For example, up to first-order perturbations, the Bohr model and quantum mechanics make the same predictions for the spectral line splitting in the Stark effect. At higher-order perturbations, however, the Bohr model and quantum mechanics differ, and measurements of the Stark effect under high field strengths helped confirm the correctness of quantum mechanics over the Bohr model. The prevailing theory behind this difference lies in the shapes of the orbitals of the electrons, which vary according to the energy state of the electron.
The Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization conditions lead to questions in modern mathematics. Consistent semiclassical quantization condition requires a certain type of structure on the phase space, which places topological limitations on the types of symplectic manifolds which can be quantized. In particular, the symplectic form should be the curvature form of a connection of a Hermitian line bundle, which is called a prequantization.
Bohr also updated his model in 1922, assuming that certain numbers of electrons (for example, 2, 8, and 18) correspond to stable "closed shells".
Model of the chemical bond
Niels Bohr proposed a model of the atom and a model of the chemical bond. According to his model for a diatomic molecule, the electrons of the atoms of the molecule form a rotating ring whose plane is perpendicular to the axis of the molecule and equidistant from the atomic nuclei. The dynamic equilibrium of the molecular system is achieved through the balance of forces between the forces of attraction of nuclei to the plane of the ring of electrons and the forces of mutual repulsion of the nuclei. The Bohr model of the chemical bond took into account the Coulomb repulsion – the electrons in the ring are at the maximum distance from each other.
Symbolism of planetary atomic models
Although Bohr's atomic model was superseded by quantum models in the 1920's, the visual image of electrons orbiting a nucleus has remained the popular concept of atoms.
The concept of an atom as a tiny planetary system has been widely used as a symbol for atoms and even for "atomic" energy (even though this is more properly considered nuclear energy).: 58 Examples of its use over the past century include but are not limited to:
The logo of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, which was in part responsible for its later usage in relation to nuclear fission technology in particular.
The flag of the International Atomic Energy Agency is a "crest-and-spinning-atom emblem", enclosed in olive branches.
The US minor league baseball Albuquerque Isotopes' logo shows baseballs as electrons orbiting a large letter "A".
A similar symbol, the atomic whirl, was chosen as the symbol for the American Atheists, and has come to be used as a symbol of atheism in general.
The Unicode Miscellaneous Symbols code point U+269B (⚛) for an atom looks like a planetary atom model.
The television show The Big Bang Theory uses a planetary-like image in its print logo.
The JavaScript library React uses planetary-like image as its logo.
On maps, it is generally used to indicate a nuclear power installation.
See also
References
Footnotes
Primary sources
Bohr, N. (July 1913). "I. On the constitution of atoms and molecules". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 26 (151): 1–25. Bibcode:1913PMag...26....1B. doi:10.1080/14786441308634955.
Bohr, N. (September 1913). "XXXVII. On the constitution of atoms and molecules". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 26 (153): 476–502. Bibcode:1913PMag...26..476B. doi:10.1080/14786441308634993.
Bohr, N. (1 November 1913). "LXXIII. On the constitution of atoms and molecules". The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 26 (155): 857–875. Bibcode:1913PMag...26..857B. doi:10.1080/14786441308635031.
Bohr, N. (October 1913). "The Spectra of Helium and Hydrogen". Nature. 92 (2295): 231–232. Bibcode:1913Natur..92..231B. doi:10.1038/092231d0. S2CID 11988018.
Bohr, N. (March 1921). "Atomic Structure". Nature. 107 (2682): 104–107. Bibcode:1921Natur.107..104B. doi:10.1038/107104a0. S2CID 4035652.
A. Einstein (1917). "Zum Quantensatz von Sommerfeld und Epstein". Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. 19: 82–92. Reprinted in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, A. Engel translator, (1997) Princeton University Press, Princeton. 6 p. 434. (provides an elegant reformulation of the Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization conditions, as well as an important insight into the quantization of non-integrable (chaotic) dynamical systems.)
de Broglie, Maurice; Langevin, Paul; Solvay, Ernest; Einstein, Albert (1912). La théorie du rayonnement et les quanta : rapports et discussions de la réunion tenue à Bruxelles, du 30 octobre au 3 novembre 1911, sous les auspices de M.E. Solvay (in French). Gauthier-Villars. OCLC 1048217622.
Further reading
Linus Carl Pauling (1970). "Chapter 5-1". General Chemistry (3rd ed.). San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co.
Reprint: Linus Pauling (1988). General Chemistry. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-65622-5.
George Gamow (1985). "Chapter 2". Thirty Years That Shook Physics. Dover Publications.
Walter J. Lehmann (1972). "Chapter 18". Atomic and Molecular Structure: the development of our concepts. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0-471-52440-9.
Paul Tipler and Ralph Llewellyn (2002). Modern Physics (4th ed.). W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-4345-0.
Klaus Hentschel: Elektronenbahnen, Quantensprünge und Spektren, in: Charlotte Bigg & Jochen Hennig (eds.) Atombilder. Ikonografien des Atoms in Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit des 20. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag 2009, pp. 51–61
Steven and Susan Zumdahl (2010). "Chapter 7.4". Chemistry (8th ed.). Brooks/Cole. ISBN 978-0-495-82992-8.
Kragh, Helge (November 2011). "Conceptual objections to the Bohr atomic theory — do electrons have a 'free will'?". The European Physical Journal H. 36 (3): 327–352. Bibcode:2011EPJH...36..327K. doi:10.1140/epjh/e2011-20031-x. S2CID 120859582.
External links
Standing waves in Bohr's atomic model—An interactive simulation to intuitively explain the quantization condition of standing waves in Bohr's atomic mode |
Bury_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency) | [
325
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency)"
] | Bury North is a borough constituency in Greater Manchester, created in 1983 and represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. With a Conservative majority of 105 votes, it was the most marginal constituency for a sitting MP in the United Kingdom at the 2019 general election. Labour took the seat at the 2024 general election.
History
Summary of results
Bury North is a marginal seat between Labour and the Conservatives, and a bellwether constituency throughout most of its existence — the winner of the seat has tended to win the general election, with 2017 being an exceptional Labour gain, though it was subsequently regained by the Conservatives in 2019. In forerunner seats, the town of Bury did not have a Labour MP until 1964, since when Bury North has become reported on as an important marginal seat.
The 2010 Conservative win at Bury North was the Conservative Party's sole gain in Greater Manchester. The 2015 general election result was narrower, which produced the fifth-most marginal majority of the Conservative Party's 331 seats by percentage of majority. The 2019 general election result made this the most marginal constituency in Great Britain, with a narrow majority of 105 votes. Only Sinn Fein's majority of 57 in Fermanagh and South Tyrone was lower in the UK, and as Sinn Fein members do not take their seats, Daly's majority was therefore the smallest for that of a sitting MP.
Boundaries
The constituency of Bury North covers the towns of Ramsbottom, Tottington and Bury. It was created in 1983 from parts of the former seats of Rossendale and Bury and Radcliffe. In those boundary changes Ramsbottom was transferred from Rossendale to Bury North, while with the loss of Ramsbottom, Rossendale was linked with Darwen. In 2010 the Unsworth area was transferred to Bury South.
1983–2010: The Metropolitan Borough of Bury wards of Church, East, Elton, Moorside, Ramsbottom, Redvales, Tottington, and Unsworth.
2010–2024: The Metropolitan Borough of Bury wards of Church, East, Elton, Moorside, North Manor, Ramsbottom, Redvales, and Tottington.
2024–present: The Metropolitan Borough of Bury wards of Bury East; Bury West (part); Elton; Moorside; North Manor; Radcliffe North & Ainsworth (part); Ramsbottom; Redvales; Tottington; and Unsworth (part).
Expanded to bring the electorate within the permitted range.
Constituency profile
Despite its name, Bury North includes the entirety of the town of Bury.
A traditional Labour-Conservative marginal, Ramsbottom and Tottington are mostly Conservative, but in the case of Ramsbottom, not always overwhelmingly so, whereas the town of Bury itself (particularly the Bury East ward) is generally more favourable to Labour, with Elton being a marginal. Tottington, Church ward and the rural North Manor ward are safely Conservative, however Ramsbottom is now a Labour marginal, re-gained by the party in 2018. The 2011 Ramsbottom local election was famously a tie between the Labour and Conservative candidates, decided by drawing straws which Labour won and took control of the council.
The wards surrounding the town centre include some terraced and social housing and is ethnically diverse. The Bury town centre itself features two large sixth form colleges, the 'World Famous' market famed for Black Pudding as well as newer shopping and leisure developments such as The Rock. Tourist attractions include the East Lancashire Heritage Railway and Fusiliers Museum. North of Bury the area becomes more rural, approaching the provincial towns of Tottington and Ramsbottom, which are becoming increasingly desirable for Manchester commuters looking for quieter housing overlooking the West Pennines.
Ramsbottom features Peel Monument, a tower on Holcombe Hill dedicated to former Conservative Prime Minister Robert Peel who was born in Bury. The tower is occasionally opened by volunteers, which offers views across Greater Manchester and as far out as Cheshire.
The constituency voted Leave in the 2016 referendum with a margin close to that of the national average at an estimated 54%.
Members of Parliament
Elections
Elections in the 2020s
Elections in the 2010s
This was the smallest Conservative majority at the 2019 general election.
Elections in the 2000s
Elections in the 1990s
Elections in the 1980s
See also
List of parliamentary constituencies in Greater Manchester
References
External links
nomis Constituency Profile for Bury North — presenting data from the ONS annual population survey and other official statistics.
Bury North UK Parliament constituency (boundaries April 1997 – April 2010) at MapIt UK
Bury North UK Parliament constituency (boundaries April 2010 – May 2024) at MapIt UK
Bury North UK Parliament constituency (boundaries from June 2024) at MapIt UK |
Streatham_(UK_Parliament_constituency) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streatham_(UK_Parliament_constituency) | [
325
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streatham_(UK_Parliament_constituency)"
] | Streatham was a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament.
In the 2016 EU referendum, Streatham was estimated to have voted to remain in the European Union by 79%. This was the second highest remain vote in the United Kingdom, behind Vauxhall.
Further to the completion of the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, the seat was abolished. The four southern wards, comprising the town of Streatham, were included in the new constituency of Streatham and Croydon North. Northern areas (Brixton Hill, Clapham Common, Thornton, and Tulse Hill) form part of the new constituency of Clapham and Brixton Hill.
Boundaries
1918–1974: The Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth ward of Streatham.
1974–1983: The London Borough of Lambeth wards of Clapham Park, St Leonard's, Streatham Hill, Streatham South, Streatham Wells, and Thornton.
1983–1997: As above plus Town Hall ward.
1997–2010: As above, plus St Martin's and Tulse Hill wards.
2010–2024: The London Borough of Lambeth wards of Brixton Hill, Clapham Common, St Leonard's, Streatham Hill, Streatham South, Streatham Wells, Thornton, and Tulse Hill.
Streatham was a long constituency comprising the south-west portion of the London Borough of Lambeth. The town of Streatham constituted the four wards in the southern half of the constituency. At its north-western tip the seat included half of Clapham Common; the north-east takes in part of Brixton which was shared with neighbouring Vauxhall and Dulwich and West Norwood.
The northern boundary followed Clapham Park Road, Acre Lane, and Coldharbour Lane through Clapham and Brixton to Lambeth Town Hall. The north-eastern boundary generally followed Effra Road and Tulse Hill, but ran east of the main road to include the part of the Tulse Hill estate and the Cressingham Gardens estate west of Brockwell Park. The boundary skirted the Tulse Hill district centre, following Hardel Rise, Christchurch Road and Norwood Road, and then ran along Leigham Vale and Leigham Court Road. The southern and western constituency boundaries followed Lambeth's borough boundaries with Croydon, Merton and Wandsworth.
History
Local government results
The constituency shared boundaries with the Streatham electoral division for election of councillors to the Greater London Council at elections in 1973, 1977 and 1981.
The local government wards in the constituency are currently represented by 20 Labour councillors, 1 Conservative councillor and 3 Green councillors, including Jonathan Bartley, the leader of the opposition on Lambeth Council, and former London MEP Scott Ainslie.
Nine Liberal Democrat councillors represented the wards of Streatham Hill, Streatham Wells and St Leonard's, with one additional councillor elected at Clapham Common in 2010. All Streatham wards had been represented by the Liberal Democrats from 1990 to 2014 before Labour subsequently gained seven seats from them at the 2014 council elections. The Liberal Democrats were unsuccessful in gaining any seats back at the 2018 local elections. In a 2019 Thornton Ward by-election, the Lib Dems came within 19 votes of winning the seat.
In 2018, the Conservatives held one seat and lost two to Labour in Clapham Common by a very narrow margin, whilst the Greens took the other two seats from Labour in St Leonard's.
Political history
Streatham was for a few decades solidly Tory suburbia overall: the Conservatives won Streatham when Labour gained large majorities in 1945 and 1966, and it was the only seat in the former LCC area (Inner London) apart from the Chelsea/Kensington/Westminster/City central core to remain consistently Conservative. More recently, demographic and voting pattern changes combined with unfavourable boundary changes converted Streatham into a marginal seat, then into a mid-ranking safe Labour seat.
Streatham has modestly swung against the Conservative Party since the 1980s, even more than other similar seats in South London (such as Croydon North, Dulwich and West Norwood, Lewisham East and West).
The Conservative Party lost Streatham in 1992, despite winning the general election that year with a small majority, having held it since 1918. The Conservative candidate was beaten into third place by a Liberal Democrat in 2001, and there were swings from Labour to the Liberal Democrats at the two subsequent general elections. In 2010, when the Labour incumbent, Keith Hill, retired and Chuka Umunna stood for the party, there was a serious Liberal Democrat campaign resulting in their best showing to date in the seat, but there was also a marginal increase in the Conservative vote share and Umunna was elected. The 2015 result was the re-election of Umunna, which made the seat the 96th safest of Labour's 232 seats by percentage of majority.
In 2015 the Conservatives moved into second place with a sharp increase in numerical vote share, and remained there in 2017. However, in 2019, they reverted to third place behind the Liberal Democrats.
Historic boundaries
The constituency of Streatham was contested under this name at the 1918 general election, when it approximately followed the historic parish boundaries of Streatham, including a substantial part of Balham, a 19th-century founded and primarily urban parish by that time.
The constituency was carved out of the former constituency of Wandsworth in the same way as Putney, Wandsworth Central and Balham and Tooting under the Representation of the People Act 1918, the fourth major UK reform, that settled upon single member constituencies, and roughly equal electorates.
The 1918 boundaries remained unchanged until the 1965 changes to Greater London local government became reflected in the parliamentary constituencies, at the February 1974 general election. This resulted in a net reduction in the size of the area. The western district Streatham Park (location of the Streatham Conservative Club) and the remainder of Furzedown ward went into the Tooting seat.
The rest of the constituency, including the town of Streatham has since 1965 been in the London Borough of Lambeth. Three other constituencies covered Lambeth from 1974, Vauxhall, Norwood and Lambeth Central. The Clapham constituency was abolished as part of the 1974 changes. The Clapham Park area and Hyde Farm (commonly thought of as part of Balham) came into the Streatham seat, whereas the rest of Clapham went into the Vauxhall seat creating an enduring split.
On abolition of Lambeth Central at the 1983 election, the constituency gained much of southern Brixton. Following further population decline, Lambeth was paired with Southwark in the next boundary review, and from the 1997 election, Streatham constituency gained areas around Tulse Hill from the former Norwood constituency, the rest of which became part of Dulwich and West Norwood.
2016 European Union Referendum
In the 2016 referendum on European Union membership, Streatham is estimated to have posted the highest proportion of support for Remain of any constituency, at 79.5%.
Constituency profile
Among the most ethnically diverse constituencies, Streatham - which covered parts of Clapham, Brixton, Tulse Hill and Streatham itself - was in the south London borough of Lambeth. Only 58.2% of residents were white and it had among the most mixed race and black residents in the country, according to the 2011 Census. It also had Polish, Portuguese and Hispanic communities.
The bulk of residents were aged 25–44, with relatively few pensioners. Although it is a residential area, it is more popular with young workers than families, having good transport links into central London. Many residents rent, and there is a large social housing sector. Commercially, Streatham High Road is home to over 400 businesses, whilst a £26m ice rink and leisure centre opened in November 2013, part of continuing investment. The population is highly qualified and a high percentage are in full-time work.
At just over 6% of the population, Streatham, (which is located in the London Borough of Lambeth) has the largest proportion of LGBT+ people in the country.
Members of Parliament
Elections
Elections in the 2010s
17% was the largest vote share increase in a Labour held seat for the Liberal Democrats at the 2019 general election.
NB Percentage comparisons in the table above are against the notional result on the new constituency boundaries.
Elections in the 2000s
Elections in the 1990s
Elections in the 1980s
Elections in the 1970s
Elections in the 1960s
Elections in the 1950s
Elections in the 1940s
Elections in the 1930s
Elections in the 1920s
Elections in the 1910s
See also
List of parliamentary constituencies in London
Notes
References
Sources
Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "S" (part 5)
External links
Politics Resources (Election results from 1922 onwards)
Electoral Calculus (Election results from 1955 onwards)
Streatham UK Parliament constituency (boundaries April 1997 – April 2010) at MapIt UK
Streatham UK Parliament constituency (boundaries April 2010 – May 2024) at MapIt UK |
The_Twist_(song) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twist_(song) | [
326
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twist_(song)"
] | "The Twist" is an American pop song written and originally released in 1958 by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters as a B-side to "Teardrops on Your Letter". It was inspired by the twist dance craze. Ballard's version was a moderate hit, peaking at number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960. On the US Billboard Hot R&B Sides chart, the original version of "The Twist" first peaked at number 16 in 1959 and at number six in 1960. By 1962, the record sold in excess of one million copies, becoming Ballard's fourth million seller.
Chubby Checker's 1960 cover version of the song reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 19, 1960, where it stayed for one week, and setting a record at the time as the only song to reach number 1 in two different hit parade runs when it resurfaced and topped the popular hit parade again for two weeks starting on January 13, 1962. This would not happen for another song for nearly 59 years until December 2020, when Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" reached the summit after previously topping in another separate chart run in December 2019.
On Canada's CHUM Charts, the songs were co-charted, reaching number 2 on August 22, 1960.
In 1988, "The Twist" again became popular due to a new recording of the song by The Fat Boys featuring Chubby Checker. This version reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 in Germany. In 2014, Billboard magazine declared the song the "biggest hit" of the 1960s.
History
Hank Ballard wrote "The Twist" after seeing teenagers in Tampa, Florida doing the titular dance. In a 2014 interview with Tom Meros, Midnighters member Lawson Smith claimed that The Gospel Consolaters' Nathaniel Bills wrote the song and initially asked The Spaniels to record it, and that Ballard "stole" the song, falsely claiming authorship. Green and Ballard already had written a song together called "Is Your Love for Real", which was based on Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters' 1955 song "What'cha Gonna Do", so they created an entirely new song by simply putting the new Twist words to the older melody. They originally recorded a loose version of the song in a Florida studio for Vee-Jay Records in early 1958, with slightly different lyrics, featuring Green on guitar playing like Jimmy Reed. This version appeared on the box set "The Vee-Jay Story" in 1993, but it went unreleased at the time. They did not get around to recording the released version until November 11, 1958, when the Midnighters were in Cincinnati.
Ballard thought "The Twist" was the hit side, but King Records producer Henry Glover preferred the ballad "Teardrops on Your Letter", which he had written himself. The song ultimately became the B-side of Hank Ballard and The Midnighters' 1959 single "Teardrops on Your Letter". The song was used in the 2007 film Spider-Man 3.
Chubby Checker version
The song became popular on a Baltimore television dance show hosted by local DJ Buddy Deane; Deane recommended the song to Dick Clark, host of the national American Bandstand. When the song proved popular with his audience, Clark attempted to book Ballard to perform on the show. Ballard was unavailable, and Clark searched for a local artist to record the song. He settled on Checker, whose voice was very similar to Ballard's. Checker's version featured Buddy Savitt on saxophone and Ellis Tollin on drums, with backing vocals by the Dreamlovers. Exposure for the song on American Bandstand and on The Dick Clark Saturday Night Show helped propel the song to the top of the American charts.
In July 1960, Checker performed "The Twist" for the first time in front of a live audience at the Rainbow Club in Wildwood, New Jersey, and just weeks later, on Aug. 6, 1960, the song became a national sensation after Checker performed it on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
In late 1961 and early 1962, the twist craze belatedly caught on in high society. Sightings of celebrities doing the dance made the song a hit with adults, particularly after a report in the Cholly Knickerbocker gossip column. Soon there were long lines at the Peppermint Lounge nightclub in New York, the most popular celebrity twisting spot. This new interest made "The Twist" the first recording to hit number one on the United States charts during two separate chart runs, and marked a major turning point for adult acceptance of rock and roll music.
Checker re-recorded the song numerous times. An updated 1982 recording (from his album The Change Has Come) was retitled "T-82", and in the 1990s, he recorded a country version. In the late 1970s, he recorded a new version that, except for the sound mix and some minor arrangement changes, was identical to the 1960 original; as a result this later version is often misidentified on compilations as the original recording. In 1988, he joined The Fat Boys on a rap version of the song, which hit number 2 in the UK, number 16 in the US, and number 1 in Germany and Switzerland. Checker also joined the group to perform the song that summer at a London tribute concert for Nelson Mandela. In addition, he recorded variations on the theme, such as "Let's Twist Again" to keep the craze alive ("Let's Twist Again" was and has remained more popular than "The Twist" itself in the United Kingdom). Joey Dee and the Starliters, the Peppermint Lounge house band, scored a hit with "Peppermint Twist", while other artists, including Sam Cooke scored with other "Twist"-themed songs. In Europe, Petula Clark scored hits in several countries with "Twist"-themed records, while Bill Haley and His Comets recorded several albums of Twist songs in Mexico for the Orfeon Records label. In 1997, the song was featured in a Teledyne Waterpik commercial, and a commercial for Denny's in 1998, to promote the New Slams.
In the sixth episode of the second season of the TV series Quantum Leap, entitled "Good Morning, Peoria" (set on September 9, 1959), Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) and Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell) meet Chubby Checker (played by himself) in a radio station, where they sing and dance "The Twist". An impressed Checker asks, "Can I use that move?" Sam responds, "Yah, but I got it from you!"
Checker later toured with this signature piece throughout the U.S. Midwest in the 1980s. The song was used in 2007 in Spider-Man 3.
Weekly charts
Accolades
Chubby Checker's "The Twist" held the honor of being the most successful single in Billboard history on its various "Greatest Hot 100 Songs of All Time" charts over the decades. It held the title until 2021, when it was dethroned by the Weeknd's "Blinding Lights".
The song is ranked number 451 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 and number 457 in 2010. Jim Dawson wrote a 1995 book about the song and the Twist phenomenon called The Twist: The Story of the Song and Dance That Changed the World for Faber and Faber.
In 2000, the 1960 recording by Chubby Checker on Parkway Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
The song has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress on March 21, 2013 for long-term preservation. In 2014, Billboard magazine declared the song the "biggest hit" of the 1960s.
In 2018, Checker's version was one of six singles inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a new category honoring singles by artists who have not been elected to the Hall.
Editions
USA: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: "Teardrops on Your Letter" b/w "The Twist" 1959
USA: Chubby Checker: "The Twist" b/w "Toot" Parkway 811; 7/60
USA: Chubby Checker: "The Twist" b/w "Twistin' USA" Parkway 811; 11/61
See also
List of Billboard Hot 100 number-one songs of 1960
List of Billboard Hot 100 number-one songs of 1962
List of number-one hits of 1988 (Germany)
List of number-one hits of 1988 (Switzerland)
List of twist songs
References
External links
Chubby Checker discography |
Hank_Ballard | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Ballard | [
326
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Ballard"
] | Hank Ballard (born John Henry Kendricks; November 18, 1927 – March 2, 2003) was an American singer and songwriter, the lead vocalist of the Midnighters and one of the first rock and roll artists to emerge in the early 1950s. He played an integral part in the development of the genre, releasing the hit singles "Work with Me, Annie" and answer songs "Annie Had a Baby" and "Annie's Aunt Fannie" with his Midnighters. He later wrote and originally recorded (in 1959) "The Twist" which was notably covered a year later by Chubby Checker, this second version spreading the popularity of the dance. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
Early years
Born John Henry Kendricks in Detroit, Michigan, he and his brother, Dove Ballard, grew up and attended school in Bessemer, Alabama, after the death of their father. He lived with his paternal aunt and her husband, and began singing in church. His major vocal inspiration during his formative years was the "Singing Cowboy", Gene Autry, and in particular, his signature song, "Back in the Saddle Again". Ballard returned to Detroit in his teens and later worked on the assembly line for Ford.
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters
In 1953, Ballard joined doo-wop group the Royals, which had previously been discovered by Johnny Otis and signed to Federal Records (a division of King Records), in Cincinnati. Ballard joined Henry Booth, Charles Sutton, Sonny Woods and Alonzo Tucker in the group, replacing previous singer Lawson Smith.
The Royals released "Get It" (1953), an R&B song with possibly sexually oriented lyrics, which some radio stations refused to play, although it still made it to number 6 on the US Billboard R&B chart.
The group then changed its name to the Midnighters to avoid confusion with the "5" Royales. In 1954, Ballard wrote a song called "Work with Me, Annie" that was drawn from "Get It". It became the Midnighters' first major R&B hit, spending seven weeks at number 1 on the R&B chart and also selling well in mainstream markets, along with the answer songs "Annie Had a Baby" and "Annie's Aunt Fannie"; all were banned by the FCC from radio air play. Their third major hit was "Sexy Ways", a song that cemented the band's reputation as one of the most risqué groups of the time.
They had four other R&B chart hits in 1954–55, but no others until 1959, by which time the group was billed as "Hank Ballard and The Midnighters" with their label changed from Federal to King, the parent label. Between 1959 and 1961 they had several more both on the R&B and Pop charts, starting with "Teardrops on Your Letter", a number 4 R&B hit in 1959, that had as its B-side the Ballard-written song "The Twist". A few months later, Chubby Checker's cover version of the song went to number 1 on the Hot 100 chart. It would return to the top of the charts again in 1962 – the only song in the rock and roll era to reach number 1 in two different non-consecutive years.
Ballard and the Midnighters had several other hit singles in the early 1960s, including the Grammy-nominated "Finger Poppin' Time" (1960) and "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go" (1960) which hit number 7 and number 6, respectively, on the Billboard pop chart. They did not reach the charts again after 1962 and dissolved in 1965.
Later career
After the Midnighters disbanded, Ballard launched a solo career. His 1968 single, "How You Gonna Get Respect (When You Haven't Cut Your Process Yet)", was his biggest post-Midnighters hit, peaking at number 15 on the R&B chart. James Brown produced Ballard's 1969 album You Can't Keep a Good Man Down. A 1972 single, "From the Love Side", credited to Hank Ballard and the Midnight Lighters, went to number 43 on the R&B chart. Ballard also appeared on Brown's 1972 album Get on the Good Foot, on two tracks, "Recitation By Hank Ballard", that features Ballard describing Brown and the album, and “Funky Side of Town”, in duet, with James Brown.
One-off sides, "Sunday Morning, Coming Down", and "I'm a Junkie for My Baby's Love", followed in the 1970s. He had some more upbeat releases in the mid-1970s, including "Hey There Sexy Lady" and "Let’s Go Streaking", as well as a beat ballad, "Love On Love". In 1979, he had moderate success with the disco number, "Freak Your Boom-Boom".
During the 1960s, Ballard's cousin, Florence Ballard, was a member of the Detroit girl group the Supremes. In the mid-1980s, Ballard re-formed The Midnighters and the group performed until 2002.
Death
On March 2, 2003, he died at age 75 of throat cancer in his Los Angeles home. He was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.
Legacy
In 1990, Ballard was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; the other Midnighters were inducted in 2012.
In 2010, Hank Ballard & The Midnighters were voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame.
Ballard was the great uncle of NFL player Christian Ballard. He was a cousin of original Supremes member Florence Ballard.
Discography
Solo albums
A Star in Your Eyes (King Records, 1964)
You Can't Keep a Good Man Down (King Records, 1968)
Hanging with Hank (Stang Records, 1976)
Singles
Note: Credited as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters unless stated otherwise.
References
External links
A history of The Midnighters
Allmusic profile
Hank Ballard at Find a Grave
Discography at Soulfulkindamusic
Radio interview, WFMU, 1988 at the Wayback Machine (archived June 26, 2008)
"Hank Ballard". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. |
Chubby_Checker | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubby_Checker | [
326
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubby_Checker"
] | Chubby Checker (born Ernest Evans; October 3, 1941) is an American singer and dancer. He is widely known for popularizing many dance styles, including the Twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard & The Midnighters' R&B song "The Twist", and the pony dance style with the 1961 cover of the song "Pony Time". His biggest UK hit, "Let's Twist Again", was released one year later (in 1962); that year, he also popularized the song "Limbo Rock", originally a previous-year instrumental hit by the Champs to which he added lyrics, and its trademark Limbo dance, as well as other dance styles such as The Fly. In September 2008, "The Twist" topped Billboard's list of the most popular singles to have appeared in the Hot 100 since its debut in 1960, an honor it maintained in an August 2013 update of the list.
Early life
Checker was born Ernest Evans in Spring Gully, South Carolina. He was raised in the projects of South Philadelphia, where he lived with his parents, Raymond and Eartle Evans, and two brothers. By age eleven, Evans formed a street-corner harmony group. By the time he entered high school, Ernest had learned to play the piano a little at Settlement Music School. He entertained his classmates by performing vocal impressions of popular entertainers of the day, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino. One of his classmates and friends at South Philadelphia High School was Fabian Forte, who would become a popular performer of the late 1950s and early 1960s as Fabian.
After school Evans would entertain customers at his various jobs, including Fresh Farm Poultry in the Italian Market on Ninth Street and at the Produce Market, with songs and jokes. It was his boss at the Produce Market, "Tony A.", who gave Evans the nickname "Chubby". The owner of Fresh Farm Poultry, Henry Colt, was so impressed by the boy's performances for the customers that he, along with his colleague and friend Kal Mann, who worked as a songwriter for Cameo-Parkway Records, arranged for young Chubby to do a private recording for American Bandstand host Dick Clark. After hearing Chubby's Fats Domino impression, Clark's wife Barbara suggested that Chubby be called "Chubby Checker" in homage to Fats Domino.
Career
1950s–1960s
In December 1958, Checker privately recorded a novelty single for Clark in which the singer portrayed a school teacher with an unruly classroom of musical performers. The premise allowed Checker to imitate such acts as Fats Domino, The Coasters, Elvis Presley, Cozy Cole, and The Chipmunks, each singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Clark sent the song out as his Christmas greeting, and it received such good response that Cameo-Parkway signed Checker to a recording contract. Titled "The Class", the single became Checker's first release, charting at No. 38 in the spring of 1959.
Checker introduced his version of "The Twist" at the age of 18 in July 1960 in Wildwood, New Jersey at the Rainbow Club. "The Twist" went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 not just once in 1960, but yet again in a separate chart run in late 1961. The first success was attributed to teens, and the unprecedented second number-one Billboard ranking was driven by older audiences following a spirited live performance of the song by Checker on The Ed Sullivan Show, seen by over 10 million viewers. (Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" had also achieved number one twice on Billboard's earlier chart.)
"The Twist" had previously peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard rhythm and blues chart, in the 1959 version recorded by its author, Hank Ballard, whose band The Midnighters first performed the dance on stage. Checker's "Twist", however, was a nationwide smash, aided by his many appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, the top 10 American Bandstand ranking of the song, and the teenagers on the show who enjoyed dancing the Twist. The song was so ubiquitous that Checker felt that his critics thought he could only succeed as a dance demonstrator. Checker later lamented: ""The Twist" really ruined my life. I was on my way to becoming a big nightclub performer, and "The Twist" just wiped it out ... It got so out of proportion. No one ever believes I have talent." By 1965 alone, "The Twist" had sold over 15 million copies, and was awarded multiple gold discs by the RIAA.
Despite Checker's initial disapproval, he found follow-up success with a succession of up-tempo dance tracks, including "The Hucklebuck" (#14), "The Fly" (#7), "Dance the Mess Around" (#24), and "Pony Time", which became his second No. 1 single. Checker's follow-up "twist" single, "Let's Twist Again", won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Rock and Roll Recording. A 1962 duet with Dee Dee Sharp, "Slow Twistin'", reached No. 3 on the national charts. Other substantial hits included "Dancin' Party", "Popeye the Hitchhiker", "Twenty Miles", "Birdland", "Loddy Lo", and a Christmas duet with Bobby Rydell, "Jingle Bell Rock". "Limbo Rock" reached No. 2 on 22–29 December 1962, becoming Checker's last top ten hit. Checker continued to have top 40 singles until 1965, his last being "Let's Do the Freddie" (#40), a variation on Freddie and the Dreamers' dance tune "Do the Freddie", with new melody and lyrics. Changes in public tastes, owing mostly to the British Invasion and counterculture era, ended his hit-making career. He spent much of the rest of the 1960s touring and recording in Europe.
1970s–1990s
"The Twist" was recorded for Cameo-Parkway Records and along with the label's other material, became unavailable after the early 1970s because of the company's internal legal disputes. For decades, almost all compilations of Checker's hits consisted of re-recordings. The 1970s saw a shift and resurgence for his career, including a temporary stint as a disco artist. Checker continued to be a superstar in Europe with television and records. A dance-floor cover version of the Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R." released in 1969 on Buddah Records, his first chart entry in three years, reached No. 82. It was Checker's last chart appearance until 1982 when he hit No. 91 with "Running".
In 1971, Checker at his own insistence recorded a psychedelic album filled with music he felt was "current" that was initially only released in Europe. Originally named Chequered!, it was renamed over the years in subsequent re-releases as New Revelation, The Other Side Of Chubby Checker, and sometimes as Chubby Checker. The songs were all written by Checker and produced by former Jimi Hendrix producer Ed Chalpin, but the studio musicians' names are unknown. The album flopped.
Later in the decade, he recorded an album of "audiophile re-creations" of his greatest hits, for producer Stan Shulman.
In 1988, Chubby teamed up with hip-hop trio The Fat Boys with their version of The Twist (Yo, Twist): this reached No 2 in the UK.
2000s and beyond
Checker had a single at No. 1 on Billboard's dance chart in July 2008 with "Knock Down the Walls". The single also made the top 30 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Roger Filgate of Wishbone Ash is featured on lead guitar.
In 2009, Checker recorded a public service announcement (PSA) for the Social Security Administration to help launch a new campaign to promote recent changes in Medicare law. In the PSA, Checker encourages Americans on Medicare to apply for Extra Help, "A new 'twist' in the law makes it easier than ever to save on your prescription drug plan costs."
On February 25, 2013, Checker released a new single, the ballad "Changes," via iTunes; it was posted on YouTube and amassed over 160,000 views. "Changes" was produced by the hill & hifi and reached 43 on the Mediabase Top 100 AC Chart and 41 on the Gospel Chart. Checker performed it on July 5, 2013, on NBC's Today show. In 2015, Checker joined forces with Howard Perl Entertainment to produce live events, such as "Rock and Roll to The Rescue", a tour designed to raise funds for rescue animals in need nationwide.
Controversies
In 2002, Checker protested outside of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, over the lack of radio airplay of his hit "The Twist" and his perception that the Hall of Fame had snubbed him. Seymour Stein, president of the Rock Hall's New York chapter and member of the nomination committee, claimed "I think that Chubby is someone who will be considered. He has in certain years."
In 2013, Checker sued HP over a WebOS application using his name. The application, before being pulled in September 2012, was used to unscientifically estimate penis size from shoe size. The district court said that Checker's trademark claim survived HP's motion to dismiss, but his other claims were dismissed per Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Film and musical depictions
Checker performed as well as appeared as a version of himself in Twist Around the Clock (1961) and Don't Knock the Twist (1962). In both films he provided advice and crucial breaks for the protagonist.
In 1988, Checker appeared as himself performing alongside the Purple People Eater in the film of the same name.
Checker later appeared as himself in the 1989 Quantum Leap episode entitled "Good Morning, Peoria" where he walks into a radio station in 1959 hoping to have his demo record played on the air. The show's main character, Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula), persuades the station owner to play the song "The Twist", inadvertently teaching Checker himself how to do The Twist.
In 2001, Checker again guest-starred as himself singing "The Twist" in the fourth season of Ally McBeal. He also performed the track in the tenth season of Murphy Brown.
Awards
In 2008, Checker's "The Twist" was named the biggest chart hit of all time by Billboard magazine. Billboard looked at all singles that made the charts between 1958 and 2008. He was also honored by Settlement Music School as part of the school's centennial celebration and named to the Settlement 100, a list of notable people connected to the school.
Checker received the prestigious Sandy Hosey Lifetime Achievement Award on November 9, 2013, from the Artists Music Guild. Checker was the host of the 2013 AMG Heritage Awards and was given the honor during the television broadcast. The award was presented to him by longtime friend and labelmate Dee Dee Sharp.
In 2014, Checker was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Personal life
On December 12, 1963, Checker proposed to Catharina Lodders, a 21-year-old Dutch model and Miss World 1962 from Haarlem. Checker said he met Lodders in Manila the prior January. The song "Loddy Lo" is about her. They were married on April 12, 1964, at Temple Lutheran Church in Pennsauken, New Jersey. Their first child, Bianca Johanna Evans, was born in a Philadelphia hospital on December 8, 1966. Their other two children are Ilka Evans and musician Shan Egan (Evans), lead singer of Funk Church, a band in the Philadelphia area. Checker is also the father of WNBA player Mistie Bass.
Discography
Studio albums
Compilation albums
Singles
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955–1990. P.O. Box 200, Menomonee Falls WI: Record Research Inc. 1991. ISBN 0-89820-089-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
Joel Whitburn's Top R&B Singles 1942–1988. P.O. Box 200, Menomonee Falls WI: Record Research Inc. 1988. ISBN 0-89820-069-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
External links
Official website
Chubby Checker at IMDb
The Chubby Checker Show 1963 on YouTube
Chubby Checker – King Of The Twist – by Dr. Frank Hoffmann
Chubby Checker says "There's a New 'Twist' in the Law!" (Social Security Public Service Announcements)
Interviewed March 22, 2010 on WNYC SoundCheck with John Schaefer; Discusses this Wikipedia entry and career
Chubby Checker discography at Discogs |
NCT_(group) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCT_(group) | [
327
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCT_(group)#Members"
] | NCT (Korean: 엔시티; RR: Ensiti; an acronym for Neo Culture Technology) is a South Korean boy band formed and managed by SM Entertainment. Introduced in January 2016, the group consists of 25 members divided into six different sub-units: NCT U, NCT 127, NCT Dream, WayV, NCT DoJaeJung, and NCT Wish. They are known for their versatility in music, vocal and rap abilities, and powerful performances, and have been cited as K-pop's "most experimental boy band" due to their concept of having limitless members. As of June 2024, NCT has recorded more than 40 million album sales in Korea across all sub-units, making them the best-selling act under SM Entertainment and one of the best-selling K-pop artists of all time.
The group debuted their first sub-unit, the rotational NCT U, on April 9, 2016, with the double digital single "The 7th Sense" and "Without You". It was followed by the Seoul-based sub-unit NCT 127 on July 7, 2016, with their eponymous extended play and the then-teenaged sub-unit NCT Dream on August 24, 2016, with the digital single "Chewing Gum". WayV, a seven-member sub-unit based in China and NCT's first overseas sub-unit, debuted on January 17, 2019, with the single album The Vision. On April 17, 2023, a new fixed sub-unit featuring members Doyoung, Jaehyun, and Jungwoo debuted as NCT DoJaeJung with the extended play (EP) Perfume. NCT's next overseas unit, NCT Wish, debuted in 2024 as their final overseas subunit.
Although each sub-unit promotes separately, NCT has united four times as a group to record four full-length albums: Empathy (2018), Resonance (2020), Universe (2021), and Golden Age (2023). Within two months of release, Resonance sold over 2.6 million copies across its two parts, becoming the highest-selling physical album released by an act from SM Entertainment at the time and earning the group their first Daesang (Grand Prize) Award at the 2020 Asia Artist Awards. Universe, which was released in December 2021, became their most pre-ordered album at 1.7 million copies, and later surpassed 1.8 million sales after its release.
Background and name
In January 2016, SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man delivered a presentation at the SM Coex Artium titled "SMTOWN: New Culture Technology 2016". The label planned to debut a new boy group that would "fall in line" with their culture contents strategy, one that would contain an "unlimited" number of members that would debut in separate sub-units within the group. Furthermore, the members would form "sub-unit teams" and have "collaborations" with each other. The name of the group was later revealed to be NCT, an acronym for the presentation title. NCT as a whole was SM Entertainment's first idol group to debut in nearly two years since Red Velvet in 2014 and SM Entertainment's first boy group to debut since Exo in 2012.
History
2013–2016: Formation and pre-debut activities
Prior to joining SM Entertainment, some of the members were already involved in the entertainment industry. Jeno appeared in various commercials as a child. Jisung was a child actor and filmed movies such as Boys, Be Curious (2012) and Go, Stop, Murder (2013). Chenle was active on the Chinese music scene as a singer from 2009 to 2015; he released three albums and headlined a concert in China. In 2011, Yuta participated in the singing competition "Juice Winter Collection" in Japan, while Ten competed on the Thai TV show Teen Superstar under the name TNT. Xiaojun was a singing contestant on the Zhejiang TV program X-Fire in November 2015.
Johnny, Yuta, Ten, Mark and Renjun joined the company via SM Global Auditions, while the remaining members were discovered through street casting, personal recommendation, community entertainment shows, and local auditions. Prior to their debut as members of NCT, 19 of the 23 overall members of NCT were introduced as part of SM Rookies, a group of trainees under SM Entertainment created in December 2013. The first members of NCT to be introduced were Taeyong and Jeno. Sixteen other members were introduced through SM Rookies until early January 2016.
Taeyong released the short rap track "Open the Door" in July 2014 and featured on Red Velvet's second single "Be Natural" in October of the same year. He appeared alongside Johnny, Yuta, Ten, Jaehyun, Mark, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin and Jisung on the Mnet-produced Exo 90:2014, a show starring labelmates Exo, where they performed dances to K-pop songs from the 1990s. Some members appeared in various Exo music video remakes in the same year. From January through June 2015, Doyoung and Jaehyun were the hosts of the music show Show Champion; from July through December of that year, Yuta was a Japanese representative on Abnormal Summit, a series in which non-Korean men debate Korean culture. Mark, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin and Jisung were Mouseketeers on Disney Channel Korea's The Mickey Mouse Club. SM Rookies Boys held their first concert, titled SM Rookies Show, which started in Seoul in September 2015 and expanded to Bangkok, Thailand in February 2016. Taeil released his first solo soundtrack "Because Of You" for the series The Merchant: Gaekju 2015 on January 26, 2016. In April 2016, Kun sang with NCT U on the Chinese version of "Without You" and joined them for the song's promotional stages. Winwin performed NCT U's "The 7th Sense" at their first live performance in China at the 16th Music Feng Yun Bang Awards that same month. In October 2016, Johnny participated in the music festival "Spectrum Dance Music Festival" as an SM Dreamstation Crew DJ.
SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man held a presentation at the SM Coex Artium titled "SM Town: Neo Culture Technology 2016" on January 28, 2016, where he outlined the company's plans for a new boy group in line with their "culture contents" strategy that would debut different teams based in different cities and countries around the world.
2016–2018: Debut of NCT U, NCT 127 and NCT Dream and first collaborative project
On April 4, 2016, SM Entertainment announced NCT's first sub-unit would be NCT U, meaning "NCT United", which then consisted of six members: Taeil, Taeyong, Doyoung, Ten, Jaehyun and Mark. NCT U released the digital singles "The 7th Sense" on April 9 and "Without You" in two versions on April 10 (a Korean version sung by Taeil, Doyoung, and Jaehyun and a Chinese version with the addition of SM Rookies' Kun). On April 9, NCT U made their first broadcast appearance with NCT On Air on V Live hosted by Super Junior's Kim Hee-chul. The same day, they had their first live performance in China at the 16th Music Feng Yun Bang Awards alongside Chinese rookies Kun and Winwin. On April 15, the group made their debut in Korea on Music Bank.
On July 1, SM announced NCT's second sub-unit, NCT 127. The unit would be based in Seoul, the number "127" representing the longitude coordinate of the city. The unit debuted with seven members: Taeil, Taeyong, Yuta, Jaehyun, Winwin, Mark, and Haechan. On July 7, they had their official debut performance on the music program M Countdown, performing debut single "Fire Truck" and "Once Again." Their debut EP, NCT#127, was released digitally on July 10 and physically on July 11. On August 18, SM announced that NCT's third sub-unit would be NCT Dream. The unit debuted with seven members: Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle and Jisung. Their first single, "Chewing Gum", was released on August 24, and the group had their debut performance on M Countdown the next day.
On December 27, 2016, NCT 127 announced they would be making a comeback with two new members, Johnny and NCT U's Doyoung. On March 8, NCT 127 members Johnny and Jaehyun were announced as the DJs for SBS Power FM's new program, NCT's Night Night, which began airing on March 20. In January 2018, Taeil, Doyoung, and Jaehyun released the single "Timeless" under NCT U as part of the SM Station project.
Later that month, SM Entertainment unveiled NCT 2018, a project involving all 18 members of NCT at the time. On January 30, SM released a video titled "NCT 2018 Yearbook #1", which featured all prior members and introduced new members Kun, Lucas, and Jungwoo. In February, NCT released a series of online documentary videos titled NCTmentary as part of the NCT 2018 project. NCT released their first full-length album, NCT 2018 Empathy, on March 14. The album featured six singles, showcasing each sub-unit of NCT: "Boss", "Baby Don't Stop", and "Yestoday" by various NCT U lineups; "Go" by NCT Dream; "Touch" by NCT 127; and "Black on Black" with all 18 members. NCT topped Billboard's Emerging Artists chart on May 5, marking the first time that a K-pop act had led the list.
Mark graduated from NCT Dream after the release of their second EP, We Go Up, in September. On September 11, Xiaojun was the first of the then-undebuted WayV members to be introduced through SM Rookies, with Hendery and Yangyang following on September 13 and September 15, respectively. Jungwoo was added to NCT 127 in October, with the release of their first studio album, Regular-Irregular. Winwin did not participate in promotional activities of the album's reissue, Regulate, in order to prepare for his debut with WayV, and his activities in NCT 127 have been discontinued since then.
2019–2020: Debut of WayV, NCT Dream restructure and NCT 2020 Resonance
On December 31, 2018, SM Entertainment announced NCT's fourth sub-unit, WayV (Chinese: 威神V; pinyin: Wēi shén V) under Label V. The unit would be based in China and consists of seven members: Kun, Winwin, Ten, Lucas, Hendery, Xiaojun and Yangyang. The sub-unit officially debuted on January 17, 2019, with a Chinese version of NCT 127's "Regular". Their debut single album, The Vision, was released digitally and included a Chinese version of NCT 127's "Come Back" and an original song titled "Dream Launch". On December 13, NCT U (consisting of Taeil, Doyoung, Jaehyun and Haechan) released "Coming Home" as part of the SM Station X project. After wrapping up album promotions for their EP Reload in April, NCT Dream abandoned their original concept in which members "graduate" from the sub-unit upon reaching age of majority (20 in Korean age reckoning, 19 internationally) and continued as seven members, with Mark returning to the lineup.
In September, NCT announced a reunion for a second group project, NCT 2020, in October 2020. The first part of their second album, NCT 2020 Resonance Pt. 1, was released on October 12. The record featured all four existing units and two new members, Shotaro and Sungchan, who are set to debut with a future NCT unit. NCT 2020 Resonance Pt. 1 garnered more than 1.1 million stock pre-orders ahead of release, making it NCT's first million-selling album without repackaging. NCT released NCT 2020 Resonance Pt. 2 on November 23.
On December 4, NCT released the single "Resonance" as the finale of their second group studio album. The single combines the tracks "Make a Wish (Birthday Song)", "90's Love", "Work It", and "Raise the Roof" from their second studio album and features all 23 members.
They held their first concert as a full group, titled NCT: Resonance "Global Wave", on December 27 through Beyond Live, which attracted more than 200,000 viewers.
2021–present: Universe, new sub-units, end of expansion, member departures, and Golden Age
On November 13, 2021, NCT announced they would reunite under the name NCT 2021 for their third studio album, Universe, set for release on December 14. The 13-track album included the lead singles "Universe (Let's Play Ball)", which was released on December 10, and "Beautiful". Universe surpassed more than 1.7 million pre-orders on the day of release, breaking their previous record of 1.1 million pre-orders for NCT 2020 Resonance.
On February 4, 2022, the SM Station sub-project NCT Lab was established, dedicated to releasing solo music for NCT members. The first single was "Child" by Mark, followed by "Conextion (Age of Light)", sung by Doyoung, Mark and Haechan. NCT Lab was restructured in 2023 to be independent from SM Station, with SM Entertainment announcing a lineup of new singles beginning with "Horizon" by Jaehyun, released on August 8, 2023.
On February 3, 2023, SM Entertainment announced their producing strategy for 2023, where it was revealed that the group's next unit, NCT Tokyo, will be debuting in the third quarter of 2023. On February 24, SM revealed their plans for the first half of 2023, where they announced that following NCT Tokyo's debut, the group's concept of international expansion would come to an end, permanently fixing the group at five sub-units. On March 8, SM Entertainment announced that members Doyoung, Jaehyun, and Jungwoo would debut as a fixed sub-unit, named NCT DoJaeJung. On April 17, they released their first EP Perfume, alongside its lead single of the same name.
On May 10, Lucas confirmed his departure from NCT and WayV to pursue individual endeavors, following a 21-month hiatus. On May 24, Sungchan and Shotaro departed from NCT to join SM Entertainment's new boy group Riize. It was also announced that SM Rookies trainees Eunseok and Seunghan, who were expected to debut in NCT Tokyo and had previously appeared in the variety show Welcome to NCT Universe, would join Riize.
On June 5, Taeyong released his first EP, Shalala, becoming the first member of NCT to debut as a soloist. On July 27, SM Entertainment aired the survival reality show NCT Universe: LASTART, where trainees competed to debut as part of NCT's final sub-unit. Among ten contestants, five were chosen to join SM Rookies trainees Yushi and Sion in the lineup of NCT Tokyo, now known as NCT New Team: Sion, Riku, Yushi, Jungmin, Daeyoung, Ryo, Sakuya.
On August 28, NCT reunited for their fourth studio album, Golden Age. The album contains two singles, "Golden Age" and "Baggy Jeans", with the latter reuniting the members from NCT U's debut single "The 7th Sense". They later held five full-group concerts, titled NCT Nation: To The World. They performed at the Incheon Munhak Stadium in South Korea and at the Yanmar Stadium Nagai and Ajinomoto Stadium in Japan, with NCT New Team serving as the opening act for the Japan shows. On October 2, Jungmin departed from NCT New Team for health reasons, with the unit's final lineup consisting of six members. On October 8, NCT New Team released their pre-debut single "Hands Up"; the "New Team" subunit later officially debuted as NCT Wish on February 28, 2024. On August 28, 2024, Taeil was removed from NCT following sexual offense allegations.
Members
Adapted from the group's profile on SM Entertainment's official website.
Current members
Former members
Timeline
Sub-units
Country-based units
Other units
Discography
NCT 2018 Empathy (2018)
NCT 2020 Resonance (2020)
Universe (2021)
Golden Age (2023)
Concerts
NCT: Resonance "Global Wave" (2020)
NCT Nation: To The World (2023)
Filmography
NCT Life
NCT World 2.0
Welcome to NCT Universe
NCT Universe: LASTART
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Media related to NCT (musical group) at Wikimedia Commons
nct.smtown.com (2020 archive)
www.nct2018.com
NCT 2020
NCT 2021 |
Mark_Lee_(singer) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lee_(singer) | [
327
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lee_(singer)"
] | Mark Lee (born August 2, 1999), known mononymously as Mark, is a Canadian rapper based in South Korea. He is a member of the South Korean boy band NCT and its fixed sub-units NCT 127 and NCT Dream, as well as the South Korean supergroup SuperM.
Career
2012–2016: Pre-debut
In 2012, Mark joined SM Entertainment as a trainee after passing the SM Global Audition in Vancouver, Canada.
On December 16, 2013, he was introduced as a member of SM Rookies, a pre-debut team of trainees under SM Entertainment. As a part of the SM Rookies program, in October 2014, he and several of his co-members appeared on the Mnet-produced Exo 90:2014, a show starring labelmates Exo, where they perform dances to K-pop songs from the 1990s.
In 2015, Mark and other SM Rookies members starred as Mouseketeers in a Korean revival of The Mickey Mouse Club, which aired on Disney Channel Korea. The show included musical performances, games, and skits, similar to the original American show. It aired from July 23 to December 17, 2015, hosted by Leeteuk of Super Junior.
2016–2018: NCT and solo endeavors
In April 2016, SM Entertainment confirmed that Mark and four other members of SM Rookies—Taeyong, Doyoung, Ten and Jaehyun—would debut as members of NCT's first sub-unit, NCT U. They released their first digital single on April 9, titled "The 7th Sense", in which he and Taeyong participated in songwriting. Three months later, SM Entertainment announced that Mark would become a member of NCT's second sub-unit, NCT 127, along with Taeyong, Taeil, Yuta, Jaehyun, Winwin and Haechan. NCT 127 made their official debut with the extended play NCT #127 and title track "Fire Truck" on July 10, 2016.
Mark joined NCT's third sub-unit, NCT Dream, which consisted of members Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle and Jisung. The group officially debuted on August 24, 2016, with the single "Chewing Gum". The following month, Mark featured on Henry Lau's "Going Through Your Heart", an original soundtrack for the KBS drama, Sweet Stranger and Me. This marked his first solo endeavour since his debut in NCT.
In January 2017, Mark joined High School Rapper, a survival hip hop reality TV show that aired on Mnet. He advanced to the finals and performed an original song, "Drop" featuring labelmate Seulgi of Red Velvet, and placed seventh overall. In July 2017, Mark collaborated with Exo's Xiumin on single "Young & Free". It was released through Season 2 of SM Entertainment's digital music project SM Station. The same month, Mark appeared in the first season of the music variety show Snowball Project. He teamed up with Parc Jae-jung to release "Lemonade Love" on July 21, also through SM Station, which was produced by former labelmate Henry Lau and Yoon Jong-shin.
Beginning in February 2018, Mark served as one of the main hosts of the music program Show! Music Core, leaving in January 2019 to focus on his activities with NCT 127. In May 2018, he became a regular cast member on the MBC reality TV show It's Dangerous Beyond The Blankets. In October 2018, Mark released the song "Dream Me" with Red Velvet's Joy for the soundtrack of the KBS drama The Ghost Detective. Mark was the first member to officially graduate from NCT Dream on December 31, 2018.
2019–present: SuperM and rejoining NCT Dream
On August 7, 2019, Mark was confirmed as a member of SuperM, a supergroup created by SM Entertainment in collaboration with Capitol Records. The group began promoting in October of that year in the American music market. SuperM's self-titled debut EP was released on October 4, 2019, led by the single "Jopping". Mark continued to promote with SuperM throughout 2020, through the release the group's first studio album, Super One. On April 14, SM Entertainment announced through an official statement that Mark would be rejoining NCT Dream, thus abolishing their original age-based graduation system. His return was affirmed through his participation in the NCT Dream song "Déjà Vu" on the group-wide studio album NCT 2020 Resonance.
On January 28, 2022, it was announced that Mark would release his first single, "Child", on February 4, as part of NCT Lab. "Child", described as an emotional hip-hop track, was commended for its lyrics.
On March 30, 2023, it was announced that Mark would release his new solo song and second single, "Golden Hour", on April 7, as part of NCT Lab."Golden Hour" described as a hip-hop genre song that combines impactful guitar and drum sounds and flashy rapping and also a self-produced song that based of his bad review from chef Gordon Ramsay for the fried eggs he made in the past.
On May 10, 2024, Mark was announced to release his pre-release single "200" on May 16 and plans to release his first solo album in February 2025."200" is a self-composed that described as drum & bass genre song based on rock sound.
On May 16, 2024, Mark announced the start of his solo album, set to be released in February 2025, with a digital single titled "200." The new song "200" is a drum & bass track based on rock sounds, featuring a captivating blend of early 2000s electric guitar sounds and lyrical melodies. The lyrics convey the meaning of love, describing how two people make each other shine brighter and how their relationship becomes more perfect when they are together.
Other ventures
Endorsements
In 2022, Polo Ralph Lauren selected Mark as the Korean ambassador of the brand.
Philanthropy
In February 2023, Mark donated ₩150 million to the Hope Bridge National Disaster Relief Association to help victims of the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake and ₩10 million to the Community Chest of Korea along with Genie Music.
Discography
Singles
As lead artist
As featured artist
Collaborations
Soundtrack appearances
Songwriting credits
All credits are adapted from the Korea Music Copyright Association, unless cited otherwise.
Filmography
Television shows
Music videos
Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
Media related to Mark Lee at Wikimedia Commons
Mark Lee at SM Town |
Series_finale | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_finale | [
328
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_finale"
] | A series finale is the final installment of an episodic entertainment series, most often a television series. It may also refer to a final theatrical sequel, the last part of a television miniseries, the last installment of a literary series, or any final episode.
Origins in television
Most early television series consisted of stand-alone episodes rather than continuing story arcs, so there was little reason to provide closure at the end of their runs. Early comedy series that had special finale episodes include Howdy Doody in September 1960, Leave It to Beaver in June 1963, Hank in April 1966, and The Dick Van Dyke Show in June 1966. One of the few dramatic series to have a planned finale during this period was Route 66, which concluded in March 1964 with a two-part episode in which the pair of philosophical drifters ended their journey across America and then went their separate ways.
Considered to be "the series finale that invented the modern-day series finale," the August 1967 final episode of ABC's The Fugitive, "The Judgment: Part 2", attracted a 72% audience share when broadcast. This remained the highest viewership percentage in U.S. television history until the 1977 finale of the TV mini-series Roots (on the same network) and later the 1980 resolution episode of the internationally prominent "Who shot J.R.?" cliffhanger of CBS' Dallas.
Notable television series finales
Most-watched American series finales
The most watched series finale in U.S. television history remains the 1983 finale of the CBS war/medical dramedy M*A*S*H, titled "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". Viewed by 105.9 million viewers and drawing 77% of those watching televisions at the time, the finale of M*A*S*H held the record for most watched telecast of all-time for decades until 2010's Super Bowl XLIV edged it out with 106 million viewers, which coincidentally also aired on CBS. However, M*A*S*H's final episode remains the all-time most-watched U.S. television episode (and so far, the only single television episode in U.S. history to be watched by at least 100 million viewers for a single telecast).
The second-most-watched series finale in U.S. television history was the 1993 finale of the NBC comedy Cheers, titled "One for the Road". "One for the Road" was watched by between 80.4 million and 93.5 million viewers (estimates vary) while drawing 64% of TVs turned on at the time. To date, "One for the Road" remains the most watched U.S. TV series finale following the rise of cable television, and in terms of sheer viewership numbers for non-sports programming, sits second only to the aforementioned finale of M*A*S*H.
With only slightly fewer viewers than the series finale of Cheers was the finale of its one-time follow-up on NBC's "Must See TV" Thursday night line-up, the absurdist NBC comedy Seinfeld. The third most-watched U.S. TV series finale in television history, Seinfeld's controversial 1998 episode "The Finale" was watched by 76.3 million people, drawing 67% of all televisions turned on at the time – as the New York Times put it, "grazing Super Bowl country" in terms of viewership.
With the shift away from network television viewing toward cable television viewing (and later, internet use) that occurred during the decade between the finales of M*A*S*H (1983) and Cheers (1993) – and continued unabated until and beyond the finale of Seinfeld (1998) – it remains debatable which of these three "event" series finales accomplished the most impressive viewership numbers. Moreover, a large gap in viewership numbers exists between the Super Bowl-sized audiences of the M*A*S*H, Cheers and Seinfeld finales, and the fourth and fifth most watched series finales in television history – respectively, those of the comedy Friends (2004, NBC, 52.5 million viewers) and the detective procedural Magnum, P.I. (1988, CBS, 50.7 million viewers). The Friends finale's ("The Last One") viewership numbers dwarf those of all finales since the start of the new millennium and seem particularly impressive in light of the increased media options since the 1990s "event" finales of Cheers (1993) and Seinfeld (1998).
In Britain, the most-acclaimed series finale of sitcoms was from Blackadder. In 1989 the Britcom, starring Rowan Atkinson as a Blackadder in 1917 WW1, goes "over the top" with his regiment, leaving their fate unknown as fade to a field of poppies. The finale was praised as a "perfect end-of-show finale".
Reception
No matter how critically lauded during their respective runs, relatively few popular television series finales end up pleasing critics and audiences universally, or escaping controversy. Prominent examples of controversial series finales include the final episodes of the comedies Roseanne ("Into That Good Night", 1997), Seinfeld ("The Finale", 1998), How I Met Your Mother ("Last Forever", 2014), and Two and a Half Men ("Of Course He's Dead", 2015), and those of the dramas The Prisoner (Fall Out ,1968) , Game of Thrones ("The Iron Throne", 2019), True Blood ("Thank You", 2014), and Dexter ("Remember the Monsters?", 2013). The final episodes of Dexter, How I Met Your Mother and Game of Thrones, in particular, triggerred massive backlash from both fans and critics upon airing, and are often regarded as the worst finales in recent memory.
Some series endings have proved divisive among viewers immediately on airing, leading to extensive discussions online, but ended up being generally lauded by critics. Notable examples of this trend are the finales of The Sopranos ("Made in America", 2007), The Wire ("-30-", 2008), and Lost ("The End", 2010). For example, The Sopranos' finale caused millions of viewers to temporarily believe they had lost cable service due to an abrupt blackout. All three episodes were also nominated for multiple Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Writing, with The Sopranos' finale winning.
Several television series have, however, managed to produce final episodes that lived up to both critics' and audiences' expectations. Examples include the twist endings that concluded both the Newhart and St. Elsewhere finales, the mixture of comedy and resonance that wrapped up The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the redemption arc that concluded The Fugitive.
Several more series finales have received unanimous critical and popular acclaim, and are often considered as benchmarks for great TV endings. Recent examples include the finales of Breaking Bad ("Felina", 2013), Community ("Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television", 2015), The Good Place ("Whenever You're Ready", 2020), Better Call Saul ("Saul Gone", 2022), and Succession ("With Open Eyes", 2023).
Examples of universally acclaimed finales from earlier in the millennium include those of Britain's The Office ("Interview", 2002), The Shield ("Family Meeting", 2008), and Six Feet Under ("Everyone's Waiting", 2005), the last of which TV Guide ranked at No. 22 on their list of "TV's Top 100 Episodes of All Time".
Plot devices
Television series finales frequently feature fundamental deviations from the central plot line, such as the resolution of a central mystery or problem, (e.g. Dallas, Two and a Half Men, Full House) the separation or return of a major character (e.g. Cheers, That '70s Show, The Office) or an event signifying the end of an era, such as a change to primary setting for the series (e.g. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Boy Meets World, Martin, Liv and Maddie)
Series finales will sometimes include clips or characters from the series' past (e.g. Seinfeld, Suits, Martin, Star Trek: The Next Generation), and the ending moments of the episode often take place in the show's primary setting.
Premature series finales
In some cases, a TV series finale proves premature, as was the case with Here's Lucy, 7th Heaven, Charmed, Babylon 5, and Arrested Development to name but a few. Some shows that have constantly been in danger of cancellation wrote every season finale with the idea that the episode would serve as a quality series finale if the network decided not to bring it back; in recent years from NBC's Thursday night comedy lineup, Parks and Recreation used this formula for the season finales for Seasons 3–6, before getting a renewal for a seventh and final season where the series finale was planned in advance, and Community wrote its fifth-season finale with the notion that whether the show found new life elsewhere or not, it would definitely not be returning to the network (while NBC did indeed cancel the show, it was renewed for a sixth season by Yahoo! Screen, where the season, and sure enough, series finale was once again scripted as a potential last episode ever; the final image is that of text reading "#andamovie", a reference to the show's recurring catchphrase "six seasons and a movie"). The series finale of Dr. Ken, a fictionalized sitcom based on the life of doctor-turned-actor Ken Jeong, features the title character trying out for a fictional version of Community (Jeong was a cast member in real life).
The medical comedy Scrubs aired its two-part finale episode billed simply as a "My Finale" in May 2009 as the show's renewal or cancellation had not been decided as of its airing, and so it was not known whether the episode would conclude just the season or the entire series; Scrubs would eventually be renewed for one additional season, which became a de facto spin-off series titled Scrubs: Med School.
The cartoon Futurama has had four designated series finales, due to the recurringly uncertain future of the series. "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", "Into the Wild Green Yonder (Part 4)", "Overclockwise", and "Meanwhile" have all been written to serve as a final episode for the show.
The series American Dad! had two possible finales, the season premiere of the eighth season, "Hot Water" was written due to the uncertainty from the staff of the show getting picked up. The penultimate episode of Season 19 was also intended as a series finale, as revealed by showrunner and executive producer Matt Weitzman.
The series finale of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (itself an epilogue to I Love Lucy) was unintentionally fitting: stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were about to divorce and end the show, a fact that the show's guest star for what would be the final program, Edie Adams, did not know when she chose the song she would sing on the program. Prophetically, the song was named "That's All." The series also ended with Lucy and Ricky making up and kissing, while in reality Ball and Arnaz would not (the two would eventually reconcile later in life, although both would go on to marry other people). The last produced half-hour episode was titled "The Ricardos Dedicate a Statue" which included real-life kids Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. in the final scene where Ricky unveils what he thinks is a Revolutionary War statue only to find out that it is Lucy.
The aforementioned Magnum, P.I. had a premature series finale, as well. At the end of the seventh season, protagonist Thomas Magnum was to be killed off, which was intended to end the series. The final episode of the season, "Limbo", after seeing Magnum wander around as a ghost for nearly the entire run-time, closes with him appearing to walk off into heaven. However, following outcry from fans, who demanded a more satisfactory conclusion, an eighth, final season was produced, to bring Magnum "back to life", and to round the series off. The mystery of whether Higgins was Robin Masters, or not, was a highly anticipated series finale reveal. The mystery still has yet to be revealed. A number of other episodes also make reference to supernatural occurrences and the seeming existence of ghosts.
The Showtime series Californication was designed from start to make any season finale work as a series finale, in case of early cancelling the show. It is seen most primarily at the end of the first and fourth season.
After its fifth season, the sitcom Reba was in danger of being cancelled as a result of its original home, The WB, being replaced by The CW in September 2006, and the resulting uncertainty over which WB series (as well as which series from CW co-predecessor UPN) would be carried over to the new network. (Reba would be renewed by The CW for an additional season as one of the holdover WB series.) The sixth (and final) season's finale episode was written to serve as a series finale, in which Brock and Barbara-Jean come to a reconciliation and Van and Cheyenne move back in with Reba, bringing the show to a full wrap.
A series finale may not be the last aired episode of a show, such as King of the Hill, which produced "To Sirloin with Love" as its series finale, though four more episodes produced before it were aired after in syndication.
Another instance of premature endings was with the Rural Purge of 1971 where networks (notably CBS) axed still-popular TV series in an effort to move to more sophisticated programming. Shows were The Beverly Hillbillies, Mayberry R.F.D., Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.
Finales launching spin-offs
Series finales are sometimes used as a backdoor pilot to launch spinoff series. Two well-known examples include The Andy Griffith Show's series finale, which launched the spinoff Mayberry RFD and The Practice's series finale, and much of its final season was used as a launching pad for Boston Legal, starring James Spader and William Shatner. The Golden Girls series finale was set up to lead into a new series with most of the remaining cast, The Golden Palace, Three's Company transitioned more or less seamlessly into Three's a Crowd, the Henry Danger finale served as a pilot to Danger Force while The Fosters series finale acted as an introduction to its spin-off series Good Trouble. The Closer was spun off into a new series, Major Crimes the same night that the original ended, after star Kyra Sedgwick chose, as producer, to end the series.
The Steven Universe finale "Change Your Mind" served as not just a conclusion to the original series and its overarching plot, but helped pave the way for Steven Universe: The Movie, and eventually the limited epilogue series Steven Universe Future.
Some planned spin-offs that influenced series finales, however, never materialized, as in the case of the proposed Laverne & Shirley spin-off for Carmine that never came into fruition, or Posse Impossible, a proposed spin-off of Hong Kong Phooey that, instead of getting its own show, aired as an interstitial segment on CB Bears. Arrow used its penultimate episode of its final season, "Green Arrow & The Canaries", as a backdoor pilot for a potential spin-off series based on the characters Mia Smoak, Laurel Lance and Dinah Drake, however, the series was ultimately not picked up.
See also
Television pilot
Series premiere
Season premiere
Season finale
Most-watched US series finales
== References == |
Goodbye,_Farewell_and_Amen | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye,_Farewell_and_Amen | [
328
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye,_Farewell_and_Amen"
] | "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" is a television film that served as the series finale of the American television series M*A*S*H. The 2½-hour episode first aired on CBS on February 28, 1983, ending the series' original run. The episode was written by eight collaborators, including series star Alan Alda, who also directed. As of 2024, it remains the most-watched single episode of any television series in U.S. history, and for twenty-seven years was the most-watched single broadcast in television history.
The episode's plot chronicles the final days of the Korean War at the 4077th MASH; it features several storylines intended to show the war's effects on the individual personnel of the unit and to bring closure to the series. After the ceasefire goes into effect, the members of the 4077th throw a party before taking down the camp for the last time. After tear-filled goodbyes, the main characters go their separate ways, leading to the final scene of the series.
Plot
The film begins with Hawkeye Pierce being treated at a psychiatric hospital by Sidney Freedman. It is revealed he suffered a PTSD-induced nervous breakdown while working in the operating room. He tells Freedman about a recent beach outing by a busload of camp staff. They picked up some refugees and wounded soldiers on their return home. Forced to pull off the road to avoid an enemy patrol, Hawkeye remembers telling a refugee to keep her chicken quiet. However, as a result of his command, the chicken was smothered and died.
Conditions back at the 4077 are chaotic with the camp now home to large numbers of refugees and prisoners of war. A wounded tank driver demolishes the camp latrine and abandons the tank in the camp. Charles Winchester leaves camp to perform his ablutions and meets five Chinese soldiers on a motorcycle-sidecar combination eager to surrender. The men are revealed to be musicians and Winchester marches them to camp while they play Oh! Susanna. B.J. eagerly takes possession of the motorcycle while Winchester begins to teach the prisoners classical music. Despite a language barrier, the musicians recognize Mozart's name and learn to play Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.
Margaret Houlihan and Winchester discuss their postwar careers. Houlihan is offered an Army administrative post while Winchester is disappointed to find his absence from Boston has left a less talented colleague as the front-runner for a coveted chief surgeon spot. Winchester eventually receives a letter confirming his appointment to the position, but becomes angry after learning from Klinger that Margaret had intervened in the selection process by having a relative pull strings.
Klinger falls in love with a refugee named Soon-Lee Han, who wants to return to the combat zone to find her missing parents. B.J. Hunnicutt receives repatriation orders and prepares to leave once Colonel Potter can get a replacement surgeon. The chaos in the camp is intensified by enemy mortar fire on the abandoned tank. Father Mulcahy loses his hearing while saving POWs under fire in their holding area. He swears B.J. to secrecy about the nature of his injury, afraid the Army will return him home, away from the local orphans he has tended throughout his time in Korea.
Hawkeye's treatment progresses, and he eventually realizes that the woman on the bus had actually smothered her baby to prevent being heard by the enemy patrol, not a chicken as Hawkeye had initially thought in a false memory. He breaks down at the realization and vents anger on Sidney for making him remember the true nature of the incident. Sidney explains it is necessary for his recovery and returns Hawkeye to duty. B.J. meanwhile is offered a chance to fly out in time for his daughter's birthday and leaves. Hawkeye returns to find B.J. left without a farewell, as Trapper John had earlier in the series. When the mortar fire intensifies, Hawkeye impulsively drives the tank into a garbage dump to draw fire away from the camp, raising renewed concerns about his mental health and prompting Sidney to return to check on him.
A nearby forest fire causes the camp to relocate. A helicopter bringing B.J.'s replacement arrives, and it is revealed to be Hunnicutt himself, who had made it to Guam before being sent back to Korea. He celebrates his daughter's birthday at a party for orphaned refugee children. Hawkeye is unable to watch the party due to his experiences, and discusses his postwar future with Sidney, fearing he can no longer be around children without being reminded of his recent trauma. When Hawkeye finds he can operate on an injured young girl, Sidney leaves the 4077th with Hawkeye's thanks.
Charles's musicians leave camp as part of a prisoner exchange, playing Mozart Clarinet Quintet as they depart. The ceasefire is announced ending hostilities in the war. The 4077 returns to its campsite with wounded soldiers continuing to arrive in the last hours of the war. Winchester is shocked to find the body of one of the musicians among the wounded - he had died en route to the camp, and the others had been killed outright. Dazed, Winchester returns to The Swamp and tries to listen to the Mozart piece he'd taught the musicians but soon smashes the record in anger.
The camp personnel throw a final party and reveal their postwar plans. Klinger will marry Soon-Lee and ironically, given his attempts throughout the series to be sent home, remain in Korea to help her search for her missing parents. Mulcahy officiates at their wedding while the camp is dismantled. Camp staff say their goodbyes and leave in different ways. Winchester apologizes to Houlihan for his earlier poor treatment of her, and gives her a signed book of her favorite poetry before leaving in a garbage truck, saying “what better way to leave a garbage dump” before departing. Houlihan says goodbye to Potter and B.J. before Hawkeye steals a long kiss. Potter takes a final ride on Sophie, the horse that was gifted to him earlier in the series, before donating her to the orphanage. Hawkeye and B.J. give him a final parting gift, a heartfelt salute, which Potter tearfully returns.
In the final scene of the series, B.J. gives Hawkeye a ride to his chopper on the motorcycle. Just before the chopper takes off, B.J. shouts that he left a note this time and rides away on his bike. Hawkeye doesn't understand until the helicopter gains altitude and he sees the word GOODBYE spelled out with rocks on the ground below. He smiles as the chopper carries him away.
Production
The script was written between April and September 16, 1982, with filming taking place in late September and early October. After a wildfire through Malibu Creek State Park on October 9 destroyed much of the set, two additional scenes were written to incorporate a fire into the story. Morgan and Nakahara returned to the set on October 15 to film a short scene among the still smoldering ruins.
Cultural reaction and impact
The anticipation before the airing of "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" was unprecedented, especially for a regular television series (in contrast to awards shows, sporting events, or special events). Interest from advertisers prompted CBS, the network broadcasting M*A*S*H, to sell 30-second commercial blocks for US$450,000 each (equivalent to $1.38 million in 2023) – costlier than even NBC's airing of the Super Bowl of that year.
On the night the episode aired, large areas of California (particularly the San Francisco Bay Area) suffered power outages due to unusually stormy winter weather, which prevented many viewers from watching the series finale.
Reaction and AfterMASH
In the United States, the episode drew 105.97 million total viewers and a total audience of 121.6 million, more than both Super Bowl XVII and the Roots miniseries. The episode surpassed the single-episode ratings record that had been set by the Dallas episode that resolved the "Who Shot J.R.?" cliffhanger. From 1983 until 2010, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" remained the most watched television broadcast in American history, passed only in total viewership (but not in ratings or share) in February 2010 by Super Bowl XLIV. As of 2024, it still stands as the most-watched single episode of any television series in U.S. history.
As M*A*S*H was one of the most successful shows in TV history, in order not to lose the franchise completely, CBS quickly created a new series, AfterMASH, that followed the postwar adventures of Colonel Potter, Max Klinger, and Father Mulcahy in a stateside veterans hospital. Despite wide popularity in its premiere episodes, script problems and constant character changes led to a sharp decline in viewers, and the show was canceled by CBS after only two seasons. Another would-be spin-off, W*A*L*T*E*R, was a pilot made in 1984 that was never picked up. It starred Gary Burghoff, who reprised his M*A*S*H character.
"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" was not initially included in the syndication package for M*A*S*H's final season; however, in 1992, the episode made its syndication premiere in time for its 10th anniversary. Local stations aired it as a part of a Movie of the Week.
See also
List of most watched television broadcasts
Footnotes
External links
"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" at IMDb |
One_for_the_Road_(Cheers) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_the_Road_(Cheers) | [
328
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_the_Road_(Cheers)"
] | "One for the Road" is the final episode of the American television series Cheers. It was the 271st episode of the series and the twenty-sixth episode of the eleventh season of the show. It first aired on NBC on May 20, 1993, to an audience of approximately 42.4 million households in a 98-minute version, making it the second-highest-rated series finale of all time behind the series finale of M*A*S*H and the highest-rated episode of the 1992–1993 television season in the United States. The 98-minute version was rebroadcast on May 23, 1993, and an edited 90-minute version aired on August 19, 1993.
According to estimates by NBC, the finale was watched by 93 million viewers, almost 40% of the US population at the time.
In this episode, Shelley Long reprised the role of Diane Chambers, a character who is reunited with her former on-off love interest Sam Malone after six years of separation. Rebecca Howe continues her relationship with plumber Don Santry. Frasier Crane helps Woody Boyd write Woody's political speech. A semi-unemployed Norm Peterson wants a city job. Cliff Clavin wants a promotion from the Post Office.
The episode was filmed between March 31 and April 7, 1993.
Synopsis
Background
The television series Cheers follows the fortunes and inter-relationships of a group of Bostonians who meet regularly at "Cheers", their local bar. Sam Malone (Ted Danson), a ladies' man, former professional baseball player, and bartender, and Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), a college graduate student and cocktail waitress, had on-and-off relationships throughout the first five seasons of the program (1982–1987) until Diane left Boston to pursue a writing career in the season five finale, "I Do, Adieu" (1987). This was Shelley Long's last contracted appearance as Diane Chambers. Six years after the season five finale, the Sam and Diane storyline is resurrected with a special guest appearance by Shelley Long and then concluded in the final episode.
During season eleven there are many transformations before the finale. Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson), another bartender at Cheers, is married to socialite Kelly Gaines (Jackie Swanson), expecting a child with her, and has been running to be a councilmember of the Boston City Council. The waitress Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman) has gone through two husbands—her first marriage ended with divorce before the series began, and she became widowed in her second—and is a single mother of eight. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) and Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth) face marital problems, including Lilith's affair with another man. After her failed relationships with rich men in the past, the bar manager Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley) and the plumber Don Santry (Tom Berenger) start dating each other in the preceding episode, "The Guy Can't Help It" (1993). Meanwhile in that episode, Sam faces up to his sexual addiction and begins to attend group therapy. Norm Peterson (George Wendt) is still semi-unemployed. Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger) is still a postal carrier living with his mother.
The episode ran for 98 minutes, including commercials, when it was originally broadcast. This episode was rebroadcast on August 19, 1993, but was trimmed to 90 minutes. In syndicated and online reruns, this episode was split into three parts, but the DVD release has the original, uncut version.
Plot
The episode begins with Frasier writing a political speech for Woody, who has trouble doing it himself. Rebecca accidentally rejects Don Santry's (Tom Berenger) proposal because she is too excited to accept it, causing him to break up with her. Diane Chambers, making her first appearance on the series after six years, appears on television, accepting an award for outstanding writing of a television movie, surprising Sam. Diane calls Sam at night to thank him for the congratulatory telegram he sent earlier and accepts Sam's invitation to return to Boston, but Sam doubts that she will actually come.
The following day, Diane arrives with her husband Reed (Mark Harelik). Shocked, Sam eventually uses Rebecca, who is grieving over her breakup, as his pretend wife. At Melville's restaurant, when Don enters and re-proposes, Rebecca finally accepts, ruining Sam's charade. Then Reed's actual partner Kevin (Anthony Heald) arrives to confront him for "cheating" with Diane. Now alone at the table, Diane admits to Sam that she broke her promise to return to him after six months in the episode "I Do, Adieu" (1987). Indeed, she had to convert her rejected finished manuscript into a screenplay, prompting her to remain in Los Angeles for six years for greater success. Sam and Diane both admit having been incompatible together and having no family of their own. When Diane bids Sam farewell, he stops her from leaving and convinces her to restart their relationship for old times' sake.
The following day, Woody, now elected city councilman, gives Norm a job with the city. Rebecca marries Don but secretly regrets it, feeling he is too good for her. Cliff is promoted to postal assistant supervisor after bribing the head of the postal department with gifts. Sam and Diane walk in and announce their engagement. His friends disapprove; however, having enough of going years without a family, Sam leaves the bar with Diane. On the plane, they begin to reconsider their decision to be together again. As the flight is delayed, they amicably agree to part ways. Diane returns to Los Angeles, and Sam returns to Cheers to see his friends again.
While Sam and his gang celebrate the reunion, Rebecca announces happily that Don has a job with the sewer department and leaves for their honeymoon. After the rest of the gang head home for the night, Norm briefly stays behind and tells Sam that he knew he would return to Boston for his "one true love." Sam asks what he means, but Norm just smiles and says, "you'll always come back to her." After Norm leaves, Sam looks around the empty bar and says to himself, "I'm the luckiest son of a bitch on earth," before he tells someone (Bob Broder) knocking on the door, "Sorry, we're closed." He walks over and straightens a picture of Geronimo hanging on the back wall, and then exits into the corridor toward the billiard room and the back door. The final shot of the series is of Cheers seen from the street at night.
Cast
Production
Three hundred people attended the filming of the finale at Paramount Studios' Stage 25 in Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 31, 1993, from 7:20 p.m. to 2:15 a.m. Because of Shelley Long's commitment to the CBS sitcom Good Advice, the finale's bar scene ending, where the series main cast gather as their own respective characters, was shot without her on Wednesday, April 7, 1993, after the episode "It's Lonely on the Top" was completely filmed out of sequence on the same day. However, the ending was concealed from the general public and the studio audience until the episode was first broadcast. Before her special guest appearance in this episode, Shelley Long's reprise as Diane Chambers was rumored in 1989 when she appeared with Ted Danson at the premiere of one of his movies, Cousins. A spokesperson for Paramount Television denied these rumors. Long appeared as herself for the 200th episode special in 1990, hosted by John McLaughlin, along with other surviving cast members at the time.
The series's creators Glen and Les Charles co-wrote the series finale, and James Burrows directed it. Despite what Les Charles considered the basic story intended to resolve the Sam and Diane story arc, the producers expanded the length of the finale, longer than a typical Cheers episode, to accommodate the network NBC's demands for more commercials. The total number of 30-second commercials that aired on the initial, original broadcast was 25 to 30, each of which cost $650,000.
United States President Bill Clinton sent the crew his message saying that he wanted to appear in the finale, so the Charles brothers wrote a segment where Clinton supposedly appeared. However, when the filming of the episode started, Clinton decided to cancel his own appearance. Brandon Tartikoff, former executive of NBC and former chief of Paramount Studios, and Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau appeared in the finale as uncredited bar extras. Bob Broder, agent for the show's creators, also made an uncredited appearance in the final moments of the show as the man who is told by Sam that the bar is closed.
Promotion
The final episode was promoted extensively, including in the media, before its initial airing. NBC executives expected a rating of 65 percent of total television households. Sources on Madison Avenue estimated a Nielsen rating of 33–40s and a share of 50–70; one expected a rating of 37–38 and a share of 60.
NBC and its affiliates, such as KNBC, promoted the finale's broadcast for a few weeks up to the day of the original airing on the network's news programs, such as Dateline NBC and Today. KTLA, a Los Angeles station that reran Cheers in syndication, played a variation of the show's theme song, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name", during the week before the finale. Entertainment Tonight showed blooper reels of Cheers in the same week. Ratings of Season 11 episodes (1992–1993) were growing in the weeks prior to the finale.
Between April 1–4, 1993, the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press (now the Pew Research Center) surveyed 1,011 people by telephone. Sam Malone was voted a favorite by 26% and had a 15% chance of a spin-off. Answering a question as to who he should marry, 21% voted Diane Chambers, 19% voted Rebecca Howe, 48% voted for Sam to remain single, and 12% had no opinion on this matter. Woody Boyd was voted a favorite by 18% and had 12% chance of a spin-off, and Norm Peterson was voted by 14% and had 10% chance of a spin-off.
Newspapers counted down to the Cheers finale in different ways. The Washington Post covered the show's background. The Star Tribune published stories related to Cheers, including one about local residents playing trivia games that paid tribute to the show and characters such as Cliff and Norm; the future of the fictional Sam Malone was addressed. The Deseret News asked its readers to send in their own fantasy finale endings before it was broadcast.
Many bars across the United States and one of the Canadian stadiums, the 50,000-seat SkyDome in Toronto, organized parties for screenings of the series finale.
Reception
Critical reviews
Reviews of this episode at the time of its initial broadcast were mixed. John J. O'Connor from The New York Times called the episode "overly long and uncharacteristically labored" and considered its length "a miscalculation." Nevertheless, O'Connor wrote, "Things didn't turn absolutely soppy, but nearly." Tony Scott of Daily Variety praised the writing, yet he found the finale "overly long" and described the last 30 minutes as "limping." John Carman of the San Francisco Chronicle "liked the finale" and "was choked up at the end"; nevertheless, he found Shelley Long's special guest performance "disappointing" – her "cute pills" were past "their expiration date." Ann Hodges of The Houston Chronicle "found the conclusion fitting" but was not sad about the series' cancellation. One reader's letter in The Post-Standard pointed out the episode has not explicitly mentioned Coach Ernie Pantusso, one of the original Cheers characters who died in 1985, and expressed disdain over this but was pleased to see the Geronimo picture (which Coach's portrayer Nicholas Colasanto had always kept in his dressing room) shown at the end.
The reviews in later years were mostly positive. In 1998, A. J. Jacobs of Entertainment Weekly graded this finale a B+, calling it "a satisfying nightcap" and "sharply written by the [Charles brothers]", with its final moments "classy as a flute of chilled Cristal." In 2006, Ron Geraci, author of the book The Bachelor Chronicles: A Dating Memoir, called it "raw and moving" and "significant." In 2007, Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly called it one of his "Five Best (pre-Sopranos) Series Finales." In 2007, Douglas Durden of The Richmond Times-Dispatch named it her fifth most favorite television finale of all-time. In 2009, the A.V. Club ranked it No. 3 in "10 American TV Series with Satisfying Endings" in the book Inventory. In 2010, Sharon Knolle of The Huffington Post was relieved to see the final onscreen romance between Sam and Diane end rather than conclude with their marriage. In the same year, Oliver Miller of The Huffington Post was heartbroken by Sam and Diane's on-screen "absurd protracted double-gut-punch break-up" in the episode. Claire Suddath from Time magazine called it one of the top ten "anticipated" finales ever. In 2011, the finale was ranked fifth on the TV Guide Network special, TV's Most Unforgettable Finales. In 2014, IGN ranked it number six of the top ten Cheers episodes.
Ratings
The episode aired on NBC on May 20, 1993, at 9:22 p.m. instead of 9:30 pm, the regular time for Cheers, as the episode was scheduled to run 98-minutes. The overall Nielsen rating was 45.5 (approximately 42.4 million households), 64 or 62 share, and the number of American viewers was either 80 million or 93 million. NBC estimates that the finale was watched by 93 million viewers, almost 40% of the US population at the time. The broadcast in 29 major markets resulted an overnight 46.7 Nielsen rating (22 million households) and 62 share. In the Los Angeles area, the finale scored a 44.5 rating (KNBC); in the Minneapolis–St. Paul market (KARE), a 54.8 rating and 72 share; in New York City (WNBC), a 45.6 rating; in the Hartford–New Haven (WVIT) area, a 48 rating and 63 share; and in Boston (WBZ-TV), the series' setting, a 54.1 rating.
The retrospective program Cheers: Last Call!, produced by NBC (not the series producers) and hosted by Bob Costas, paid tribute to 11 years of Cheers and aired at 9:00 p.m. before the 9:22 p.m. finale. It received an overall 39.6 rating (36.9 million households); the Los Angeles rating was 40.0.
The finale reran on Sunday, May 23, 1993, from 7:22 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET with a Nielsen rating of 10.0. Cheers: Last Call!, which ran from 7:00 p.m. to 7:22 p.m. ET had a 7.4 rating. The finale reran again on Thursday, August 19, 1993, in a 90-minute format from 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and received a 9.4 rating.
Accolades
At the 45th Primetime Emmy Awards (1993), Robert Bramwell won Outstanding Achievement in Editing for a Series (Multi-Camera Production). Shelley Long lost the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series to Tracey Ullman (Love and War). Tom Berenger lost the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series to David Clennon (Dream On). James Burrows lost the Outstanding Individual Achievement in Directing in a Comedy Series to Betty Thomas (Dream On)
Aftermath
Before and after the production of Cheers had ended, the cast had moved on to other stages in their careers. Shelley Long appeared on the CBS show Good Advice before this episode, and resumed her work there. Ted Danson appeared in Made in America, which opened in theatres soon after the episode aired. Kirstie Alley participated in the film Look Who's Talking Now, the sequel to Look Who's Talking and Look Who's Talking Too.
Woody Harrelson appeared in Indecent Proposal, with Demi Moore and Robert Redford already showing in theaters, and appeared in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. George Wendt appeared in an off-Broadway play. John Ratzenberger appeared in Fox's Locals. Rhea Perlman took "a break" from acting for a while. Kelsey Grammer soon reappeared as Frasier Crane in the spinoff Frasier, set in Seattle, as the host of a new radio show with only occasional appearances of Lilith Sternin or their son Frederick during its 11-year run. However, Frasier would eventually return to Boston for a visit, along with his brother Niles and father Martin (played by David Hyde Pierce and John Mahoney, respectively).
Before the first airing of this series finale, more than five hundred people, including the cast of Cheers (except Shelley Long, Kirstie Alley, and Bebe Neuwirth) and politicians such as William M. Bulger and then-Governor of Massachusetts William Weld, participated at an afternoon celebration on Beacon Street near the Bull & Finch Pub in Boston, to celebrate the series' ending. After the episode aired, the remaining cast appeared live on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in the Bull & Finch Pub. According to host Jay Leno, not only the cast but nearly everyone at the bar was intoxicated.
In 1997, one copy of this episode's script was donated by George Wendt to the Handel and Haydn Society, a Boston music institution. It contained the autographs of eight cast members, including of Shelley Long, Woody Harrelson, and George Wendt. On February 15, 1997, it was stolen from the Boston Four Seasons Hotel. The high bid for it at the benefit auction was $1,000 before it was stolen. About one week later, the stolen script, in a manila envelope, was left at a church; the Society then retrieved it. In March 1997, the autographed copy of the episode's script was sold to the Bull and Finch Pub (now Cheers Beacon Hill) for $10,000.
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Ariano, Tara, and Sarah D. Bunting. Television without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2006. Print. ISBN 978-1-59474-117-3.
Bark, Ed. "'Cheers' closer gives Channel 5 a ratings boost." The Dallas Morning News May 29, 1993. Web. January 9, 2012. Document ID number is 0ED3D38C34E6DF2B. (subscription required)
Bonko, Larry. "The Best and the Worst on TV in 1993." The Virginian-Pilot [Norfolk, Virginia] December 27, 1993. Print. (subscription required)
Hein, John. Jump the Shark: When Good Things Go Bad. TV ed. New York: Plume, 2003. Print. ISBN 0-452-28410-4.
Holbert, Ginny. "'Frontline' Leans Too Heavily on Politics." Chicago Sun-Times May 25, 1993: 35. Print. (subscription required)
Husted, Bill. "Funny Dream for Self-Promoter." Rocky Mountain News May 19, 1993. Print. (subscription required)
Kepnes, Caroline. "One for the Road." Entertainment Weekly May 25, 2001. Web. February 2, 2012 <[1]>.
Lazare, Lewis. "Move over, `M*A*S*H'." Chicago Sun-Times February 9, 2010: 16. Print. (subscription required)
Mink, Eric. "'Cheers' Was Fine; Leno Show a Fiasco." St. Louis Post-Dispatch May 24, 1993, Five Star ed.: 5D. Print. ID number for Web version is 9305220632. (subscription required)
Stevenson, Jennifer L. "3 Cheers // Hype, hype, hooray! It's over! Series: Entertainment – TV Review." St. Petersburg Times [St. Petersburg, Florida] May 21, 1993, City ed.: 5B. Print. (subscription required)
"Although television's Cheers closes tonight, real-life versions of the bar will go right on being second families to a lot of folks." Fort Worth Star-Telegram May 20, 1993. Print. (subscription required)
"Loving `Cheers' and loving work." Star Tribune [Minneapolis] May 22, 1993. Print. (subscription required)
"WTMJ-TV's post `Cheers' news gets heady rating." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel May 24, 1993. Web. January 15, 2012. (subscription required) Document ID number is 0EB827D3BA3592DF.
External links
"One for the Road" at IMDb
"One for the Road" at the Paley Center for Media |
Jackson_Hole_Mountain_Resort | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Hole_Mountain_Resort | [
329
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Hole_Mountain_Resort"
] | Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR) is a ski resort in the western United States, at Teton Village, Wyoming. In the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains, it is located in Teton County, twelve miles (20 km) northwest of Jackson and due south of Grand Teton National Park.
It is named after the historically significant Jackson Hole valley and is known for its steep terrain and large continuous vertical drop of 4,139 ft (1,262 m). JHMR appears frequently in the media as one of North America's most expensive ski resorts.
Ski area information
The ski area partially covers Rendezvous and Apres Vous Mountains and is known for its challenging terrain, including the infamous Corbet's Couloir.
Half of the terrain is rated expert, 40% intermediate, and only 10% beginner. The intermediate terrain is primarily on south-facing Apres Vous Mountain, while Rendezvous Mountain has Jackson Hole's more advanced terrain, including bowls, glades, and chutes. At over 4,000 vertical feet of skiing, Jackson Hole boasts one of the greatest continuous inbounds rises in the U.S, after nearby Big Sky, Montana, which has an overall vertical of 4,350 feet (1,326 m), but its continuous vertical is 700 feet (213 m) less; and Snowmass in Colorado, which has the greatest lift-served vertical drop in the nation at 4,406 feet (1,343 m)).
In addition to the skiable terrain in-bounds, there is an even larger area to be explored off-piste (out of bounds). These areas are accessed through marked gates by expert skiers/boarders who are equipped with avalanche safety gear.
Jackson Hole's original aerial tram was closed to the public in the spring of 2006 and replaced with a new tram that opened in 2008. The tram's vertical rise is 4,139 feet (1,262 m) to an elevation of 10,450 feet (3,185 m) above sea level. Construction on the new, 100-passenger Doppelmayr CTEC tram began the day after the Resort closed for the 2006-2007 ski season. Service began on December 20, 2008. During the two seasons without a tram, a temporary double chairlift named East Ridge was built to service the runs at the top of Rendezvous Mountain. This lift was subsequently moved and renamed the Marmot Chair, which provides access from the base of the Thunder Lift to the Bridger Gondola summit.
In the summer, the resort offers numerous activities such as mountain biking, hiking, paragliding, bungee trampoline, ropes course, rock climbing, and the Via ferrata in Casper bowl at the top of the Bridger gondola.
The resort and region is served by the Jackson Hole Airport KJAC, located 11 miles north east of Teton Village and offers seasonal service to 20 cities across the United States.
History
Before 1961, the area of the future resort was the Crystal Springs Girl Scout Ranch. Paul McCollister purchased the ranch and formed the Jackson Hole Ski Corporation in 1963 with partners Alex Morley and Gordon Graham. Construction began a year later, and Apres Vous mountain opened to the public the 1965-66 winter with 3 double chairlifts. Eagles rest, Teewinot, and Apres Vous. The original tram on Rendezvous opened on July 31, 1966; with capacity for 62 people and 1 conductor. It took between 8-12 minutes, depending on speed set, to reach the summit of Rendezvous Mountain at 10,450 ft. The Aerial Tram officially opened to the skiing public Winter Season 1966/67. The Resort opened winter of 1965/66 and reigning Olympic gold medalist Josef "Pepi" Stiegler of Austria was hired that same year as ski school director. In 1992, McCollister sold his interests in the resort to John Kemmerer III. From there, the Kemmerer Family made multiple new changes to the resort, including new lifts, hotels, and new ski runs.
Jackson Hole hosted World Cup ski races in the inaugural 1967 season, and again in 1970 and 1975. The most recent races in 1975 were downhills, won by Franz Klammer and Marie-Theres Nadig.
The first national Powder 8 Championship was held at Jackson Hole in 1970.
Avalanches
Jackson Hole was the site of two in-bounds avalanches in late 2008, first on December 27 and another two days later on December 29. The first avalanche resulted in the death of skier David Nodine, one of three in-bound deaths in the American West in the 2008-09 ski season, the most since three skiers were killed at Alpine Meadows in 1976. The second avalanche occurred in the Headwall area and buried part of the Bridger Restaurant but resulted in no injuries.
An in-bounds avalanche swept a longtime member of the ski patrol, Mark Wolling (known as Big Wally), off a cliff on January 6, 2010. Although he was rescued, he later died from his injuries. A double-black-diamond run in Cheyenne Bowl was named after Big Wally. It is marked on the trail map as Wally World. A set of flags lying on the run's fall line indicates where he was found.
Lifts
Jackson Hole has 13 lifts.
References
External links
Official website
Ski Lifts.org - Jackson Hole - current and removed lifts |
Wyoming | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming | [
329
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming"
] | Wyoming ( wye-OH-ming) is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the south. With a population of 576,851 in 2020, Wyoming is the least populous state despite being the 10th largest by area, with the second-lowest population density after Alaska. The state capital and most populous city is Cheyenne, which had a population of 65,132 in 2020.
Wyoming's western half consists mostly of the ranges and rangelands of the Rocky Mountains; its eastern half consists of high-elevation prairie, and is referred to as the High Plains. Wyoming's climate is semi-arid in some parts and continental in others, making it drier and windier overall than other states, with greater temperature extremes. The federal government owns just under half of Wyoming's land, generally protecting it for public use. The state ranks sixth in the amount of land—and fifth in the proportion of its land—that is owned by the federal government. Its federal lands include two national parks (Grand Teton and Yellowstone), two national recreation areas, two national monuments, and several national forests, as well as historic sites, fish hatcheries, and wildlife refuges.
Indigenous peoples inhabited the region for thousands of years. Historic and currently federally recognized tribes include the Arapaho, Crow, Lakota, and Shoshone. Part of the land that is now Wyoming came under American sovereignty via the Louisiana Purchase, part via the Oregon Treaty, and, lastly, via the Mexican Cession. With the opening of the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the California Trail, vast numbers of pioneers traveled through parts of the state that had once been traversed mainly by fur trappers, and this spurred the establishment of forts, such as Fort Laramie, that today serve as population centers. The Transcontinental Railroad supplanted the wagon trails in 1867 with a route through southern Wyoming, bringing new settlers and the establishment of founding towns, including the state capital of Cheyenne. On March 27, 1890, Wyoming became the union's 44th state.
Wyoming is known for having a political culture that leans towards libertarian conservatism. The Republican presidential nominee has carried the state in every election since 1968. It is one of the least religious states in the country. Wyoming was the first state to allow women the right to vote (not counting New Jersey, which had allowed it until 1807), and the right to assume elected office, as well as the first state to elect a female governor. In honor of this part of its history, its most common nickname is "The Equality State" and its official state motto is "Equal Rights".
Farming and ranching, and the attendant range wars, feature prominently in the state's history. Wyoming's economy is largely based on tourism and the extraction of minerals such as coal, natural gas, oil, and trona. Its agricultural commodities include barley, hay, livestock, sugar beets, wheat, and wool.
Wyoming does not require the beneficial owners of LLCs to be disclosed in the filing, which creates an opportunity for a tax haven. Wyoming levies no individual or corporate income tax and no tax on retirement income.
History
Several Native American groups originally inhabited the region today known as Wyoming. The Crow, Arapaho, Lakota, and Shoshone were but a few of the original inhabitants European explorers encountered when they first visited the region. What is now southwestern Wyoming was claimed by the Spanish Empire, which extended through the Southwest and Mexico. With Mexican independence in 1821, it was considered part of Alta California. U.S. expansion brought settlers who fought for control. Mexico ceded these territories after its defeat in 1848 in the Mexican–American War.
From the late 18th century, French-Canadian trappers from Québec and Montréal regularly entered the area for trade with the tribes. French toponyms such as Téton and La Ramie are marks of that history.
American John Colter first recorded a description in English of the region in 1807. He was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which was guided by French Canadian Toussaint Charbonneau and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. At the time, Colter's reports of the Yellowstone area were considered fictional. On a return from Astoria, Robert Stuart and a party of five men discovered South Pass in 1812.
The Oregon Trail later followed that route as emigrants moved to the west coast. In 1850, mountain man Jim Bridger first documented what is now known as Bridger Pass. Bridger also explored Yellowstone, and filed reports on the region that, like Colter's, were largely regarded at the time as tall tales. The Union Pacific Railroad constructed track through Bridger Pass in 1868. It was used as the route for construction of Interstate 80 through the mountains 90 years later.
After the Union Pacific Railroad reached Cheyenne in 1867, population growth was stimulated. The federal government established the Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868. Lacking significant deposits of gold and silver, unlike mineral-rich Colorado, Wyoming did not have such a population boom. But South Pass City had a short-lived boom after the Carissa Mine began producing gold in 1867. Copper was mined in some areas between the Sierra Madre Mountains and the Snowy Range near Grand Encampment.
Once government-sponsored expeditions to the Yellowstone country began, Colter's and Bridger's descriptions of the region's landscape were confirmed. In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was created as the world's first, to protect this area. Nearly all of the park lies within the northwestern corner of Wyoming.
On December 10, 1869, territorial Governor John Allen Campbell extended the right to vote to women, making Wyoming the first territory to do so, and upon statehood became the first state to grant women's suffrage. Women first served on juries in Wyoming (Laramie in 1870). Wyoming was also a pioneer in welcoming women into electoral politics. It had the first female court bailiff (Mary Atkinson, Laramie, in 1870), and the first female justice of the peace in the country (Esther Hobart Morris, South Pass City, in 1870). In 1924, Wyoming was the first state to elect a female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, who took office in January 1925. Due to its civil-rights history, one of Wyoming's state nicknames is "The Equality State", and the official state motto is "Equal Rights".
Wyoming's constitution also included a pioneering article on water rights. Bills for Wyoming Territory's admission to the union were introduced in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives in December 1889. On March 27, 1890, the House passed the bill and President Benjamin Harrison signed Wyoming's statehood bill; Wyoming became the 44th state in the union.
Wyoming was the location of the Johnson County War of 1892, which erupted between competing groups of cattle ranchers. The passage of the Homestead Act led to an influx of small ranchers. A range war broke out when either or both of the groups chose violent conflict over commercial competition in the use of the public land.
Etymology
The region had acquired the name Wyoming by 1865 when Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio introduced a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming". The territory was named after the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Thomas Campbell wrote his 1809 poem "Gertrude of Wyoming", inspired by the Battle of Wyoming in the American Revolutionary War. The name ultimately derives from the Lenape Munsee word xwé:wamənk ("at the big river flat").
Geography
Climate
Wyoming's climate is generally semi-arid and continental (Köppen climate classification BSk) and is drier and windier in comparison to most of the United States with greater temperature extremes. Much of this is due to the topography of the state. Summers in Wyoming are warm with July high temperatures averaging between 80 and 90 °F (27 and 32 °C) in most of the state. With increasing elevation, however, this average drops rapidly with locations above 9,000 feet (2,700 m) averaging around 70 °F (21 °C). Summer nights throughout the state are characterized by a rapid cooldown with even the hottest locations averaging in the 50–60 °F (10–16 °C) range at night. In most of the state, most of the precipitation tends to fall in the late spring and early summer. Winters are cold but are variable with periods of sometimes extreme cold interspersed between generally mild periods, with Chinook winds providing unusually warm temperatures in some locations.
Wyoming is a dry state with much of the land receiving less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rainfall per year. Precipitation depends on elevation with lower areas in the Big Horn Basin averaging 5–8 inches (130–200 mm), making the area nearly a true desert. The lower areas in the North and on the eastern plains typically average around 10–12 inches (250–300 mm), making the climate there semi-arid. Some mountain areas do receive a good amount of precipitation, 20 inches (510 mm) or more, much of it as snow, sometimes 200 inches (510 cm) or more annually. The state's highest recorded temperature is 114 °F (46 °C) at Basin on July 12, 1900, and the lowest recorded temperature is −66 °F (−54 °C) at Riverside on February 9, 1933.
The number of thunderstorm days varies across the state with the southeastern plains of the state having the most days of thunderstorm activity. Thunderstorm activity in the state is highest during the late spring and early summer. The southeastern corner of the state is the most vulnerable part of the state to tornado activity. Moving away from that point and westwards, the incidence of tornadoes drops dramatically with the west part of the state showing little vulnerability. Tornadoes, where they occur, tend to be small and brief, unlike some of those that occur farther east.
Location and size
As specified in the designating legislation for the Territory of Wyoming, Wyoming's borders are lines of latitude 41°N and 45°N, and longitude 104°3'W and 111°3'W (27 and 34 west of the Washington Meridian)—a geodesic quadrangle. Wyoming is one of only three states (the others being Colorado and Utah) to have borders defined by only "straight" lines. Due to surveying inaccuracies during the 19th century, Wyoming's legal border deviates from the true latitude and longitude lines by up to one-half mile (0.80 km) in some spots, especially in the mountainous region along the 45th parallel. Wyoming is bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, and on the west by Idaho. It is the tenth largest state in the United States in total area, containing 97,814 square miles (253,340 km2) and is made up of 23 counties. From the north border to the south border, it is 276 miles (444 km); and from the east to the west border is 365 miles (587 km) at its south end and 342 miles (550 km) at the north end.
Natural landforms
Mountain ranges
The Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. The state is a great plateau broken by many mountain ranges. Surface elevations range from the summit of Gannett Peak in the Wind River Mountain Range, at 13,804 feet (4,207 m), to the Belle Fourche River valley in the state's northeast corner, at 3,125 feet (952 m). In the northwest are the Absaroka, Owl Creek, Gros Ventre, Wind River, and the Teton ranges. In the north central are the Big Horn Mountains; in the northeast, the Black Hills; and in the southern region the Laramie, Snowy, and Sierra Madre ranges.
The Snowy Range in the south-central part of the state is an extension of the Colorado Rockies both in geology and in appearance. The Wind River Range in the west central part of the state is remote and includes more than 40 mountain peaks in excess of 13,000 ft (4,000 m) tall in addition to Gannett Peak, the highest peak in the state. The Bighorn Mountains in the north-central portion are somewhat isolated from the bulk of the Rocky Mountains.
The Teton Range in the northwest extends for 50 miles (80 km), part of which is included in Grand Teton National Park. The park includes the Grand Teton, the second-highest peak in the state.
The Continental Divide spans north–south across the central portion of the state. Rivers east of the divide drain into the Missouri River Basin and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. They are the North Platte, Wind, Bighorn, and Yellowstone rivers. The Snake River in northwest Wyoming eventually drains into the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, as does the Green River through the Colorado River Basin.
The Continental Divide forks in the south-central part of the state in an area known as the Great Divide Basin where water that precipitates onto or flows into it cannot reach an ocean—it all sinks into the soil and eventually evaporates.
Several rivers begin in or flow through the state, including the Yellowstone River, Bighorn River, Green River, and the Snake River.
Basins
Much of Wyoming is covered with large basins containing different eco-regions, from shrublands to smaller patches of desert. Regions of the state classified as basins contain everything from large geologic formations to sand dunes and vast unpopulated spaces. Basin landscapes are typically at lower elevations and include rolling hills, valleys, mesas, terraces and other rugged terrain, but also include natural springs as well as rivers and artificial reservoirs. They have common plant species such as various subspecies of sagebrush, juniper and grasses such as wheatgrass, but basins are known for their diversity of plant and animal species.
Islands
Wyoming has 32 named islands; the majority are in Jackson Lake and Yellowstone Lake, within Yellowstone National Park in the northwest portion of the state. The Green River in the southwest also contains a number of islands.
Regions and administrative divisions
Counties
The state of Wyoming has 23 counties.
Wyoming license plates have a number on the left that indicates the county where the vehicle is registered, ranked by an earlier census. Specifically, the numbers are representative of the property values of the counties in 1930. The county license plate numbers are:
Cities and towns
The State of Wyoming has 99 incorporated municipalities.
In 2020, 51.1% of Wyomingites lived in one of the 12 most populous Wyoming municipalities.
Metropolitan areas
The United States Census Bureau has defined two metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) and eight micropolitan statistical areas (MiSA) for the state. In 2020, 31.3% of Wyomingites lived in either of the metropolitan statistical areas, and 80.4% lived in either a metropolitan or a micropolitan area.
Demographics
Population
The 2020 United States census counted 576,851 people living in Wyoming. The center of population of Wyoming is in Natrona County. Sparsely populated, Wyoming is the least populous state of the United States. Wyoming has the second-lowest population density in the country (behind Alaska) and is the sparsest-populated of the 48 contiguous states. It is one of only two states with a population smaller than that of the nation's capital; the only other state with this distinction is Vermont.
According to HUD's 2022 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, there were an estimated 648 homeless people in Wyoming.
According to the 2020 census, the population's racial composition was 84.7% white (81.4% non-Hispanic white), 2.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.9% Black or African American, 0.9% Asian American, and 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 3.5% from some other race, and 7.5% from two or more races. As of 2011, 24.9% of Wyoming's population younger than age 1 were minorities. According to data from the American Community Survey, as of 2018, Wyoming was the only U.S. state where African Americans earn a higher median income than white workers.
As of 2015, Wyoming had an estimated population of 586,107, which was an increase of 1,954, or 0.29%, from the prior year and an increase of 22,481, or 3.99%, since the 2010 census. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 12,165 (33,704 births minus 21,539 deaths) and an increase from net migration of 4,035 into the state. Immigration resulted in a net increase of 2,264 and migration within the country produced a net increase of 1,771. In 2004, the foreign-born population was 11,000 (2.2%). In 2005, total births in Wyoming were 7,231 (birth rate of 14.04 per thousand).
According to the 2000 census, the largest ancestry groups in Wyoming were: German (26.0%), English (16.0%), Irish (13.3%), Norwegian (4.3%), and Swedish (3.5%).
In 2018, The top countries of origin for Wyoming's immigrants were Mexico, China, Germany, England and Canada.
Birth data
Note: Births in table do not add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
Since 2016, data for births of White Hispanic origin are not collected, but included in one Hispanic group; persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.
Languages
In 2010, 93.39% (474,343) of Wyomingites over age 5 spoke English as their primary language; 4.47% (22,722) spoke Spanish, 0.35% (1,771) spoke German, and 0.28% (1,434) spoke French. Other common non-English languages included Algonquian (0.18%), Russian (0.10%), Tagalog, and Greek (both 0.09%).
In 2007, the American Community Survey reported 6.2% (30,419) of Wyoming's population over five spoke a language other than English at home. Of those, 68.1% were able to speak English very well, 16.0% spoke English well, 10.9% did not speak English well, and 5.0% did not speak English at all.
Religion
Surveys have consistently ranked Wyoming among the most irreligious states. According to the 2020 American Values Atlas survey, Wyoming was the least religious state in the country.
In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute determined that about 55% of Wyoming's adult population was Christian, primarily evangelical and mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Mormon. The Public Religion Research Institute survey documented a decrease in religiosity from a 2014 separate Pew Research Center study; according to the Public Religion Research Institute, the irreligious made up 40% of the state population by 2020. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, Wyomingites' religious affiliations were 49% Protestant, 23% nonreligious or other, 18% Catholic, 9% Latter-day Saint (Mormons), and less than 1% Jewish.
A 2010 Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) report recognized as Wyoming's largest denominations the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), with 62,804 (11%); the Catholic Church, with 61,222 (10.8%); and the Southern Baptist Convention, with 15,812 (2.8%). The report counted 59,247 evangelical Protestants (10.5%), 36,539 mainline Protestants (6.5%), 785 Eastern Orthodox Christians; 281 Black Protestants; 65,000 adhering to other traditions; and 340,552 claiming no religious tradition. In 2020, ARDA reported the state's largest individual denominations as the following: the Catholic Church (69,500); the LDS Church (67,729); and the Southern Baptist Convention (11,082). Non-denominational Protestants were 23,410 in number.
According to ARDA's 2020 report, the Roman Catholics had an adherence rate of 120.48 per 1,000 people, Mormons 117.41 per 1,000 people, and Southern Baptists 19.21 per 1,000 people. Non-denominational Protestants had an adherence rate of 40.58 per 1,000 people; these trends reflected the separate 2014 Pew study's varying attendance at religious services. In 2014, 38% visited a religious service at least once a week, 28% once or twice a month, and 32% seldom/never. A 2018 research article by the National Christian Foundation cited non-churchgoing Christians nationwide did not attend religious services often through practicing the faith in other ways, not finding a house of worship they liked, disliking sermons and feeling unwelcomed, and logistics.
Economy and infrastructure
According to a 2012 United States Bureau of Economic Analysis report, Wyoming's gross state product was $38.4 billion. As of 2014, the population was growing slightly with the most growth in tourist-oriented areas, such as Teton County. Boom conditions in neighboring states, such as North Dakota, were drawing energy workers away. About half of Wyoming's counties showed population loss. The state makes active efforts through Wyoming Grown, an internet-based recruitment program, to find jobs for young people educated in Wyoming who have emigrated but may wish to return.
The mineral-extraction industry and travel and tourism sector are the main drivers of Wyoming's economy. The federal government owns about 42.3% of its landmass, while the state controls 6%. The total taxable value of mining production in Wyoming in 2007 was over $14.5 billion. In 2018, tourism industry accounted for over $3.8 billion in revenue.
In 2002, more than six million people visited Wyoming's national parks and monuments. Wyoming's main tourist attractions include Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Devils Tower National Monument, Independence Rock and Fossil Butte National Monument. Yellowstone, the world's first national park, receives three million visitors each year.
Historically, agriculture has been an important component of Wyoming's economy. Its overall importance to the economy has waned, but it is still an essential part of Wyoming's culture and lifestyle. The main agricultural commodities Wyoming produces include livestock (beef), hay, sugar beets, grain (wheat and barley), and wool. More than 91% of Wyoming's land is classified as rural.
Wyoming is the home of only a handful of companies with a regional or national presence. Taco John's and Sierra Trading Post, both in Cheyenne, are privately held. Cloud Peak Energy in Gillette and U.S. Energy Corp. (NASDAQ: USEG) in Riverton are Wyoming's only publicly traded companies.
Various initiatives have been put in place and legislation adopted to encourage the use of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies in the state. Tyler Lindholm, a former state legislator, claimed that 500 member-owned limited liability companies built on blockchain had been established and that 17,000 businesses with "crypto" in their name registered by 2023.These included the blockchain platforms Cardano and Tacen.
Mineral and energy production
Wyoming's mineral commodities include coal, natural gas, coalbed methane, crude oil, uranium, and trona.
Coal
Wyoming produced 277 million short tons (251.29 million metric tons) of coal in 2019, a 9% drop from 2018. Wyoming's coal production peaked in 2008, when 514 million short tons (466.3 million metric tons) were produced. Wyoming has a reserve of 68.7 billion tons (62.3 billion metric tons) of coal. Major coal areas include the Powder River Basin and the Green River Basin.
CBM is methane gas extracted from coal bed seams and coalbed methane extraction (CBM) boomed in the mid-1990s. There has been substantial CBM production in the Powder River Basin. In 2002, the CBM production yield was 327.5 billion cubic feet (9.3 km3). In 2016, Wyoming produced 1.77 trillion cubic feet (50.0 billion m3) of natural gas, ranking the state ranked 6th nationwide in natural gas production.
Oil
Wyoming produced 53.4 million barrels (8.49×10^6 m3) of crude oil in 2007, ranking fifth nationwide in oil production.
Wind energy
Because of its geography and altitude, the potential for wind power in Wyoming is one of the highest of any U.S. state. The Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project is the largest commercial wind generation facility under development in North America. Carbon County is home to the largest proposed wind farm in the nation. Construction plans have been halted because of proposed new taxes on wind power energy production.
Other
The Kelsey Lake Diamond Mine in Colorado, less than 1,000 feet (300 m) from the Wyoming border, produced gem-quality diamonds for several years. The Wyoming craton, which hosts the kimberlite volcanic pipes that were mined, underlies most of Wyoming.
Wyoming possesses the world's largest known reserve of trona, a mineral used in manufacturing glass, paper, soaps, baking soda, water softeners, and pharmaceuticals. In 2008, Wyoming produced 46 million short tons (41.7 million metric tons) of trona, 25% of the world's production.
Although uranium mining in Wyoming is much less active than in previous decades, recent increases in uranium's price have generated new interest in prospecting and mining.
Rare earth metals.
Taxes
Unlike most other states, Wyoming levies no individual or corporate income tax. It also assesses no tax on retirement income earned and received from another state. Wyoming has a state sales tax of 4%. Counties have the option to collect an additional 1% tax for general revenue and a 1% tax for specific purposes, if approved by voters. Food for human consumption is not subject to sales tax. A county lodging tax varies from 2% to 5%. The state collects a use tax of 5% on items purchased elsewhere and brought into Wyoming. All property tax is based on the property's assessed value; Wyoming's Department of Revenue's Ad Valorem Tax Division supports, trains, and guides local government agencies in the uniform assessment, valuation and taxation of locally assessed property. "Assessed value" means taxable value; "taxable value" means a percentage of the fair market value of property in a particular class. Statutes limit property tax increases. For county revenue, the property tax rate cannot exceed 12 mills (or 1.2%) of assessed value. For cities and towns, the rate is limited to eight mills (0.8%). With very few exceptions, state law limits the property tax rate for all governmental purposes.
Personal property held for personal use is tax-exempt. Inventory held for resale, pollution control equipment, cash, accounts receivable, stocks and bonds are also exempt. Other exemptions include property used for religious, educational, charitable, fraternal, benevolent and government purposes and improvements for handicapped access. Mine lands, underground mining equipment, and oil and gas extraction equipment are exempt from property tax, but companies must pay a gross products tax on minerals and a severance tax on mineral production.
Wyoming does not collect inheritance taxes. There is limited estate tax related to federal estate tax collection.
In 2008, the Tax Foundation reported that Wyoming had the most "business-friendly" tax climate of any U.S. state. Wyoming state and local governments in fiscal year 2007 collected $2.242 billion in taxes, levies, and royalties from the oil and gas industry. The state's mineral industry, including oil, gas, trona, and coal, provided $1.3 billion in property taxes from 2006 mineral production. As of 2017, Wyoming receives more federal tax dollars as a percentage of state general revenue than any state except Montana.
As of 2016, Wyoming does not require the beneficial owners of LLCs to be disclosed in the filing, which creates an opportunity for a tax haven, according to Clark Stith of Clark Stith & Associates. If fact, Wyoming was the first state to enact a statute authorizing the creation of LLCs.
Transportation
Wyoming's largest airport is Jackson Hole Airport, with more than 500 employees. Three interstate highways and 13 U.S. highways pass through Wyoming. The Wyoming state highway system also serves the state.
Interstate 25 enters Wyoming south of Cheyenne and runs north, intersecting Interstate 80 immediately west of Cheyenne. It passes through Casper and ends at Interstate 90, near Buffalo. Interstate 80 crosses the Utah border west of Evanston and runs east through the southern third of the state, passing through Cheyenne before entering Nebraska near Pine Bluffs. Interstate 90 comes into Wyoming near Parkman and cuts through the northeastern part of the state. It serves Gillette and enters South Dakota east of Sundance.
U.S. Routes 14, 16, and the eastern section of U.S. 20 have their western terminus at the eastern entrance to Yellowstone National Park and pass through Cody. U.S. 14 runs eastward before joining I-90 at Gillette. U.S. 14 then follows I-90 to the South Dakota border. U.S. 16 and 20 split off of U.S. 14 at Greybull and U.S. 16 turns east at Worland while U.S. 20 continues south Shoshoni. U.S. Route 287 runs from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Laramie, Wyoming, through a pass between the Laramie Mountains and the Medicine Bow Mountains, then merges with US 30 and I-80 until it reaches Rawlins, where it continues north, passing Lander. Outside of Moran, U.S. 287 is part of a large interchange with U.S. Highways 26, 191, and 89, before continuing north to Yellowstone's southern entrance. U.S. 287 continues north of Yellowstone, but the park separates the two sections.
Other U.S. highways that pass through Wyoming are 18, 26, 30, 85, 87, 89, 189, 191, 212, and 287.
Wyoming is one of only two states (the other is South Dakota) in the 48 contiguous states not served by Amtrak. It was once served by Amtrak's San Francisco Zephyr and Pioneer lines. While no passenger trains roll through Wyoming today, intercity buses continue to connect residents across the state. Intercity bus carriers in the state include Express Arrow, Greyhound Lines, and Jefferson Lines.
Major interstates
I-25 (300.5 mi) connects Denver, Cheyenne, Casper and Buffalo. Most of the highway is connected with US 87. Major junctions include Interstate 80, US 30, US 85, US 26, US Routes 18 & 20 and US 16 before its northern terminus at Interstate 90 in Buffalo.
I-80 (402.8 mi) connects Evanston, Rock Springs, Rawlins, Laramie and Cheyenne. Major junctions include US 191, US 287, I-25, and US 85 & I-180.
I-90 (208.8 mi) connects Sheridan, Buffalo and Gillette. Primarily in northeastern Wyoming. Major junctions include US 14, I-25 and US 16.
Wind River Indian Reservation
The Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes share the Wind River Indian Reservation in central western Wyoming, near Lander. The reservation is home to 2,500 Eastern Shoshone and 5,000 Northern Arapaho.
Chief Washakie established the reservation in 1868 as the result of negotiations with the federal government in the Fort Bridger Treaty, but the federal government forced the Northern Arapaho onto the Shoshone reservation in 1876 after it failed to provide a promised separate reservation.
Today the Wind River Indian Reservation is jointly owned, with each tribe having a 50% interest in the land, water, and other natural resources. It is a sovereign, self-governed land with two independent governing bodies: the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Until 2014, the Shoshone Business Council and Northern Arapaho Business Council met jointly as the Joint Business Council to decide matters that affect both tribes. Six elected council members from each tribe served on the joint council.
Public lands
The federal government owns nearly half of Wyoming's land (about 30,099,430 acres (121,808.1 km2)); the state owns another 3,864,800 acres (15,640 km2). Most of it is administered by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service in numerous national forests and a national grassland, not to mention vast swaths of "public" land and an air force base near Cheyenne.
There are also areas managed by the National Park Service and agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
National parks
Grand Teton National Park
Yellowstone National Park—first designated national park in the world
Memorial parkway
The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway connects Yellowstone and Grand Teton.
National recreation areas
Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area
Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area (managed by the Forest Service as part of Ashley National Forest)
National monuments
Devils Tower National Monument—first national monument in the U.S.
Fossil Butte National Monument
National historic trails, landmarks and sites
California National Historic Trail
Fort Laramie National Historic Site
Independence Rock National Historic Landmark
Medicine Wheel/Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark
Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail
National Register of Historic Places listings in Wyoming
Oregon National Historic Trail
Pony Express National Historic Trail
National fish hatcheries
Jackson National Fish Hatchery
Saratoga National Fish Hatchery
National wildlife refuges
National Elk Refuge
Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge
Education
The state superintendent of public instruction, an elected state official, directs public education. The State Board of Education, a nine-member board appointed by the governor, sets educational policy. The constitution prohibits the state from establishing curriculum and textbook selections; these are the prerogative of local school boards. The Wyoming School for the Deaf was the only in-state school dedicated to supporting deaf students before it closed in the summer of 2000.
Higher education
Wyoming has a public four-year institution, the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and a private four-year college, Wyoming Catholic College, in Lander. There are also seven two-year community colleges.
Before the passing of a new law in 2006, Wyoming had hosted unaccredited institutions, many of them suspected diploma mills. The 2006 law requires unaccredited institutions to make one of three choices: move out of Wyoming, close down, or apply for accreditation. The Oregon State Office of Degree Authorization predicted in 2007 that in a few years the problem of diploma mills in Wyoming might be resolved.
Media
Wyoming's media market consists of 16 broadcast TV stations, radio stations and dozens of small to medium-sized newspapers. There are also a few small independent news sources such as the nonprofit news site Wyofile.com and Oil City News.
Government and politics
State government
Wyoming's Constitution established three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The state legislature comprises a House of Representatives with 60 members and a Senate with 30 members. The executive branch is headed by the governor and includes a secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, and superintendent of public instruction. As Wyoming does not have a lieutenant governor, the secretary of state is first in the line of succession.
Wyoming's sparse population warrants the state only one at-large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and hence only three votes in the Electoral College.
The Wyoming State Liquor Association is the state's sole legal wholesale distributor of spirits, making it an alcoholic beverage control state. With the exception of wine, state law prohibits the purchase of alcoholic beverages for resale from any other source.
Judicial system
Wyoming's highest court is the Supreme Court of Wyoming, with five justices presiding over appeals from the state's lower courts. Wyoming is unusual in that it does not have an intermediate appellate court, like most states. This is largely attributable to the state's population and correspondingly lower caseload. Appeals from the state district courts go directly to the Wyoming Supreme Court. Wyoming also has state circuit courts (formerly county courts), of limited jurisdiction, which handle certain types of cases, such as civil claims with lower dollar amounts, misdemeanor criminal offenses, and felony arraignments. Circuit court judges also commonly hear small claims cases as well.
Before 1972, Wyoming judges were selected by popular vote on a nonpartisan ballot. This earlier system was criticized by the state bar which called for the adoption of the Missouri Plan, a system designed to balance judiciary independence with judiciary accountability. In 1972, an amendment to Article 5 of the Wyoming Constitution, which incorporated a modified version of the plan, was adopted by the voters. Since the adoption of the amendment, all state court judges in Wyoming are nominated by the Judicial Nominating Commission and appointed by the Governor. They are then subject to a retention vote by the electorate one year after appointment.
Political history
Wyoming's political history defies easy classification. The state was the first to grant women the right to vote and to elect a woman governor. On December 10, 1869, John Allen Campbell, the first Governor of the Wyoming Territory, approved the first law in United States history explicitly granting women the right to vote. This day was later commemorated as Wyoming Day. On November 5, 1889, voters approved the first constitution in the world granting full voting rights to women.
While the state elected notable Democrats to federal office in the 1960s and 1970s, politics have become decidedly more conservative since the 1980s as the Republican Party came to dominate the state's congressional delegation. Today, Wyoming is represented in Washington by its two Senators, John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, and its one member of the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Harriet Hageman. All three are Republicans; a Democrat has not represented Wyoming in the Senate since 1977 or in the House since 1978. The state has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, one of only eight times since statehood. In the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush won his second-largest victory, with 69% of the vote. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is a Wyoming resident and represented the state in Congress from 1979 to 1989.
The last time a Democrat won a statewide election in Wyoming was in 2006, when Democratic governor Dave Freudenthal was re-elected to a second term by a wide margin, winning every county in the state. For 19 of Wyoming's 23 counties, 2006 marked the last time that they voted for the Democratic nominee in a statewide race. Of the remaining 4, Sweetwater County last voted Democratic in the 2008 U.S. House race and Laramie County last voted Democratic in the 2014 Superintendent of Public Instruction race, leaving Teton and Albany as the only counties that Democrats are able to win. Teton, which is composed of affluent resort communities, is reliably Democratic, except in Republican landslides like the 2022 gubernatorial election; Albany, which contains the college town of Laramie, is more competitive.
Republicans are dominant at the state level. They have held a majority in the state senate continuously since 1936 and in the state house since 1964, though Democrats held the governorship for all but eight years between 1975 and 2011. Uniquely, Wyoming elected Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross as the first woman in United States history to serve as state governor. She served from 1925 to 1927, winning a special election after her husband, William Bradford Ross, unexpectedly died a little more than a year into his term.
Wyoming retains the death penalty. Authorized methods of execution include the gas chamber.
Culture
Sports
Due to its sparse population, Wyoming lacks any major professional sports teams; the Gillette Mustangs, an indoor football team based in Gillette that began play in 2021 prior to their departure from the city in 2023, were previously the only professional team in the state. However, the Wyoming Cowboys and Cowgirls—particularly the football and basketball teams—are quite popular; their stadiums in Laramie are about 7,200 feet (2,200 m) above sea level, the highest in NCAA Division I. The Wyoming High School Activities Association also sponsors twelve sports and there are three junior ice hockey teams, all of which are members of the NA3HL. Casper has hosted the College National Finals Rodeo since 2001.
State symbols
List of all Wyoming state symbols:
State bird: western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta)
State coin: Sacagawea dollar
State dinosaur: Triceratops
State emblem: Bucking Horse and Rider
State fish: cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki)
State flag: Flag of the State of Wyoming
State flower: Wyoming Indian paintbrush (Castilleja linariifolia)
State fossil: Knightia
State gemstone: Wyoming nephrite jade
State grass: western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii)
State insect: Sheridan's green hairstreak butterfly (Callophrys sheridanii)
State mammal: American bison (Bison bison)
State motto: Equal Rights
State nicknames: Equality State; Cowboy State; Big Wyoming
State reptile: horned lizard (Phrynosoma douglassi brevirostre)
State seal: Great Seal of the State of Wyoming
State song: "Wyoming" by Charles E. Winter & George E. Knapp
State sport: rodeo
State tree: plains cottonwood (Populus sargentii)
See also
Bibliography of Wyoming history
Index of Wyoming-related articles
Outline of Wyoming
Notes
References
External links
State of Wyoming government official website
Official Wyoming State Travel Website
Wyoming State Facts from USDA
Wyoming at Curlie
Geographic data related to Wyoming at OpenStreetMap |
Cheyenne,_Wyoming | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne,_Wyoming | [
329
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne,_Wyoming"
] | Cheyenne ( shy-AN or shy-EN) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming, as well as the county seat of Laramie County, with 65,132 residents, per the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Cheyenne metropolitan statistical area which encompasses all of Laramie County and had 100,512 residents as of the 2020 census. Local residents named the town for the Cheyenne Native American people in 1867 when it was founded in the Dakota Territory. Along with Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Topeka, Kansas, Cheyenne is one of four state capitals with an indigenous name in a state with an indigenous name.
Cheyenne is the northern terminus of the extensive Southern Rocky Mountain Front, which extends southward to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and includes the fast-growing Front Range Urban Corridor. Cheyenne is situated on Crow Creek and Dry Creek.
History
At a celebration on July 4, 1867, Grenville M. Dodge of the Union Pacific Railroad announced the selection of a townsite for its mountain region headquarters adjacent to the bridge the railroad planned to build across Crow Creek in the Territory of Dakota. At the same celebration, Major General Christopher C. Augur announced the selection of a site three miles (5 km) west of Crow Creek Crossing for a U.S. Army fort to protect the railroad.
The Union Pacific Railroad platted its Crow Creek Crossing townsite on July 5, 1867. Residents named the town Cheyenne for the Cheyenne Native American people. On August 8, 1867, the Town of Cheyenne, Dakota Territory was incorporated, and on August 10, 1867, H. M. Hook was elected as Cheyenne's first mayor. The tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad reached Cheyenne on November 13, 1867, and the first train arrived the following day. Cheyenne grew so quickly it gained the nickname of "Magic City of the Plains".
On September 8, 1867, the United States Army established Fort D.A. Russell in honor of Brigadier General David Allen Russell. Initially a cavalry encampment, construction of the fort began the following month. The fort was renamed Fort Francis E. Warren in 1930 in honor of the first Governor of the State of Wyoming, Francis E. Warren. The fort was transferred to the new United States Air Force and was renamed Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in October 1949.
On July 25, 1868, the United States organized the Territory of Wyoming. Territorial Governor John Allen Campbell arrived in Cheyenne on May 7, 1869, and named Cheyenne the temporary territorial capital. Cheyenne has remained the only capital of Wyoming. On December 10, 1869, the first session of the Wyoming Territorial Legislature met in Cheyenne. That day, the legislature passed and Territorial Governor Campbell signed an act to re-incorporate the Town of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, and an act granting women the right to vote, the first U.S. state or territory to grant suffrage to women.
On July 10, 1890, the Territory of Wyoming was admitted to the Union as the State of Wyoming. The Wyoming State Capitol was constructed between 1886 and 1890, with further improvements being completed in 1917.
The Cheyenne Regional Airport was opened in 1920, initially serving as a stop for airmail. It soon developed into a civil-military airport, serving DC-3s and various military craft. During World War II, hundreds of B-17s, B-24s, and PBYs were outfitted and upgraded at the airfield. Today, it serves a number of military functions, and as a high-altitude testbed for civilian craft.
Geography
Lying near the southeast corner of the state, Cheyenne is one of the least centrally located state capitals in the nation (together with cities such as Carson City, Nevada; Juneau, Alaska; Tallahassee, Florida; Topeka, Kansas; and Trenton, New Jersey).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 24.63 square miles (63.79 km2), of which 24.52 square miles (63.51 km2) is land and 0.11 square miles (0.28 km2) is water.
Climate
Cheyenne, like much of Wyoming, has a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk) and is part of USDA Hardiness zone 5b, with the suburbs falling in zone 5a. Winters are cold and moderately long, but relatively dry with highs often above freezing, having a normal mean temperature of 27.7 °F (−2.4 °C), highs that fail to breach freezing for 35 days per year, and lows that dip to the 0 °F (−18 °C) mark on 9.2 mornings. However, the cold is often interrupted, with chinook winds blowing downslope from the Rockies that can bring warm conditions, bringing the high above 50 °F (10 °C) on twenty days from December to February.
While December is the coldest month, snowfall is greatest in March and April, seasonally averaging 60 inches (1,500 mm), historically ranging from 13.1 inches (330 mm) between July 1965 and June 1966 up to 121.5 inches (3,090 mm) between July 1979 and June 1980, yet thick snow cover rarely stays. Summers are warm, with a high diurnal temperature range; July averages 69.4 °F (20.8 °C), and highs reach 90 °F (32 °C) on average for twelve afternoons annually. Spring and autumn are quick transitions, with the average window for freezing temperatures being September 29 thru May 14, allowing a growing season of 106 days. Official record temperatures range from −38 °F (−39 °C) on January 9, 1875, up to 100 °F (38 °C) on June 23, 1954, the last of four occurrences; the record cold daily maximum is −21 °F (−29 °C) on January 11, 1963, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum is 68 °F (20 °C) on July 31, 1960. The annual precipitation of 15.9 inches (400 mm) tends to be concentrated from May to August and is low during fall and winter; it has historically ranged from 5.04 inches (128.0 mm) in 1876 to 23.69 inches (602 mm) in 1942.
The city averages below 60% daily relative humidity in each month and receives an average 2,980 hours (~67% of the possible total) of sunshine annually. On July 16, 1979, an F3 tornado struck Cheyenne, causing one death and 40 injuries. It was the most destructive tornado in Wyoming history.
See or edit raw graph data.
Demographics
In 2020, Cheyenne had a total population of 65,132. As of the census of 2010, there were 59,467 people, 25,558 households, and 15,270 families living in the city. The population density was 2,425.2 inhabitants per square mile (936.4/km2). There were 27,284 housing units at an average density of 1,112.7 per square mile (429.6/km2). As of the census of 2000, there were 53,011 people, 22,324 households, 14,175 families living in the city, and 81,607 people living in the metropolitan statistical area making it the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Wyoming. The population density was 2,511.4 inhabitants per square mile (969.6/km2). There were 23,782 housing units at an average density of 1,126.7 per square mile (435.0/km2).
At the 2019 American Community Survey, the city had an owner-occupied housing rate of 65.9% with a median value at $214,300. There were 27,344 households from 2015 to 2019, and an average of 2.20 persons per household. Residents of Cheyenne had a median household income of $64,598 and per capita of $35,637. An estimated 10.4% lived at or below the poverty line.
In 2010, there were 25,558 households, of which 30.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.1% were married couples living together, 12.0% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.7% had a male householder with no wife present, and 40.3% were non-families. 33.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.29 and the average family size was 2.92. In 2000, there were 22,324 households, out of which 30.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.2% were married couples living together, 10.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.5% were non-families. 31.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and the average family size was 2.93.
The median age in the city was 36.5 years at the 2010 census. Twenty-four percent of residents were under the age of 18; 9.5% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 26.9% were from 25 to 44; 26.2% were from 45 to 64; and 13.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.3% male and 50.7% female. In 2000, 24.9% under the age of 18, 8.8% from 18 to 24, 29.7% from 25 to 44, 22.8% from 45 to 64, and 13.8% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.7 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $38,856, and the median income for a family was $46,771. Males had a median income of $32,286 versus $24,529 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,809. About 6.3% of families and 8.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 11.1% of those under age 18 and 5.8% of those age 65 or over.
Ethnicity
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the racial and ethnic makeup of the city was 77.1% non-Hispanic white, 1.7% Black or African American, 0.6% American Indian or Alaska Native, 1.5% Asian, 0.2% Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, 6.7% two or more races, and 15.9% Hispanic or Latin American of any race, in 2020.
In 2010, the racial makeup of the city was 87.44% White, 2.88% African American, 0.96% Native American, 1.24% Asian, 0.20% Pacific Islander, 4.0% from other races, and 3.28% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 14.45% of the population. At the 2005–2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates, the city's population was 87.2% White (79.3% non-Hispanic White alone), 12.7% Hispanic or Latino (of any race), 4.5% Black or African American, 2.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 2.1% Asian and 6.4% from some other race.
In 2000, the racial makeup of the city was 88.1% White, 2.8% Black or African American, 0.8% Native American, 1.1% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 4.4% from other races, and 2.7% from two or more races. 12.5% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
Arts and culture
Cheyenne Frontier Days, which is held over ten days centered around the last full week in July, is known as the largest outdoor rodeo and western festival in the world. The events include professional bull riding, calf roping, barrel racing, steer wrestling, team roping, bronc riding, steer roping, bareback riding, and many others. During this week there are many parades and other events. Additionally there is a carnival with numerous rides, games, and shops. The festival has been held since 1897.
Landmarks
Tivoli Building (Cheyenne, Wyoming)
William Sturgis House
Wyoming State Capitol
F.E. Warren Air Force Base, one of the United States's oldest, continuously active installations (originally U.S. Army Fort D.A. Russell).
Nagle Warren Mansion
Frontier Mall (Cheyenne)
National Register of Historic Places
Over fifty different locations in Cheyenne are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including:
The Historic Plains Hotel (added 1978)
Atlas Theatre (added 1973)
Union Pacific Depot (Cheyenne Depot Museum) (1973)
the Governor's Mansion (1969)
Nagle-Warren Mansion (1976)
First Presbyterian Church (1869)
First United Methodist Church (1975)
St. Mark's Episcopal Church (1970)
St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral (1974)
Cheyenne High School (2005)
High Plains Horticulture Research Station a.k.a. High Plains Arboretum (1930–1974)
Storey Gymnasium (2005)
Park Addition School (1970)
Big Boy Steam Engine (1956)
Botanic Gardens Rotary Century Plaza & Steam Locomotive (1921)
Several districts in the city are also listed, including:
Downtown Cheyenne Historic District (1978, with boundary increase in 1980, 1988, 1996. Encompasses 205 acres (0.83 km2) and 67 buildings)
Lakeview Historic District (1996, 350 acres and 109 buildings)
Rainsford Historic District (1984, 1980 acres and 288 buildings)
Capitol North Historic District (1980, 204 acres and 112 buildings)
Fort David A. Russell (1969, 6,300 acres and 19 buildings)
Union Pacific Roundhouse, Turntable and Machine Shop (1992, 113 acres and 2 buildings)
South Side Historic District (2006)
Sports
Sports venues in Cheyenne include the Cheyenne Ice and Events Center, Pioneer Park, Powers Field, Bison Stadium, and Okie-Blanchard Stadium.
In 2012, the Cheyenne Warriors were founded as an American Professional Football League team. After playing a season in the APFL, they announced a move to the Indoor Football League. Shortly after the owner of the team died in December, the Warriors announced that they were forming the new Developmental Football League. In May 2013, after playing several games in this new league, the team folded.
In 2020, the City of Cheyenne was chosen to host the historical match between Canadian Dave Leduc who was defending his Lethwei world title against American challenger Cyrus Washington. The event marked the first time in the history of the ancient Burmese combat sport of Lethwei to be held in North America. The event was held at the Outlaw Saloon and was sanctioned by the World Lethwei Federation in partnership with the Wyoming Combat Sports Commission. As of 2024, Wyoming is the first and only US State to have legalized Lethwei in its territory.
Parks and recreation
The Cheyenne Community Recreation and Events Department operates an Ice and Events center, swimming pool, spray park, skateboard park, two golf courses, Cheyenne Botanic Gardens (including the Paul Smith Children's Village at the Gardens), paddle boat rentals in Lions Park (summers only), cemeteries, forestry operations, community house, Youth Activity Center and a miniature golf park.
The Cheyenne Parks and Recreation Department also operates a 37 miles (60 kilometers) Greater Cheyenne Greenway system. The greenway connects parks and neighborhoods of greater Cheyenne. It includes many bridges and underpasses where travelers can avoid high traffic roads and travel above waterways and drainages. It is known that the famous bicycler, Cheyenne Otero, spent many weekends there training for marathons. In 1996, as a result of the greenway, Cheyenne was named a "Trail Town USA" by the National Park service and the American Hiking Society.
Government
Cheyenne's government consists of a mayor and a city council, elected on a non-partisan basis. The mayor is elected in a citywide vote. The current Mayor, Patrick Collins, a bicycle shop owner, took office on January 4, 2021, with a term ending January 6, 2025. The city council has nine members each of whom are elected from one of three wards. Each ward elects three members. The mayor's office is responsible for managing the various city departments which consist of Police, Fire Rescue, Planning and Development, Engineering, Public Works, Treasury, Attorney's Office, Human Resources, and Municipal Court. The Planning and Development Department manages the Downtown Development Authority. The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities is owned by the city but is semi-autonomous.
Education
Public education in all of the city of Cheyenne is provided by Laramie County School District #1. The district is served by four high schools, Central High on the northwest side, East High on the east side, South High on the south side, and Triumph High, also on the south side.
Cheyenne is home to the Laramie County Community College (LCCC), one of seven constituent campuses managed by the Wyoming Community College Commission.
Cheyenne has a public library, a branch of the Laramie County Library System.
Media
Wyoming Tribune Eagle newspaper
The Cheyenne Herald (OCLC 51310460) was written and published by Dave Featherly from 2002 to 2012.
KGWN
Infrastructure
Transportation
Major highways
I-25 – North–South Interstate running from New Mexico to Wyoming intersects I-80 southwest of Cheyenne.
I-80 – East-West Interstate running from California to New Jersey. Intersects I-25 southwest of Cheyenne.
I-180 – Bypass Interstate that runs concurrent with US 85 from I-80 to US 30.
US 30 (Lincoln Highway) – East–west route through Cheyenne
US 85 (South Greeley Highway, Central Avenue (Southbound), Warren Avenue (Northbound)) – North–South route through Cheyenne
US 87 – North–South through Cheyenne that runs concurrent with I-25 through Cheyenne
WYO 210 (Happy Jack Road) – East–west route from I-25/US 87 (Exit 10) west out of Cheyenne towards Laramie
WYO 211 (Horsecreek Road) – Runs northwest out of Cheyenne to Horse Creek.
WYO 212 (College Drive, Four Mile Road) – North–South route that forms a beltway around Cheyenne. From I-25 (Exit 7) to WYO 219
WYO 219 (Yellowstone Road) – North–South route from US 85 in Cheyenne near the Cheyenne Airport north out of the city
WYO 221 (Fox Farm Road) – East–west route from US 85 east to WYO 212 in Cheyenne
WYO 222 (Fort Access Road) – North–South route from WYO 225 just southeast of Cheyenne and travels north to F.E. Warren Air Force Base and continues on its north route east of the city to WYO 221
WYO 225 (Otto Road) – East–west route from I-80/US 30 southwest of Cheyenne west
Public transit
Cheyenne Transit Program provides bus service to the Cheyenne area.
Intercity bus service to the city is provided by Express Arrow and Greyhound Lines.
Airports
Cheyenne Regional Airport features daily, nonstop airline service on United Express to Denver International Airport.
Railroads
The Union Pacific and BNSF railroads intersect in Cheyenne. The city is home to a BNSF railyard, as well as the Union Pacific's roundhouse that hosts their steam program. UP's operational steam locomotives 844 and 4014 reside in the steam shop. By November 2022, Challenger 3985 was moved to its new home at Silvis, Illinois along with Centennial unit 6936, & 2-10-2 number 5511.
Notable people
Sister cities
Cheyenne's sister cities are:
Bismarck, North Dakota, United States
Waimea, Hawaii County, Hawaii, United States
Lompoc, California, United States
Hammam Sousse, Tunisia
Lourdes, France
Taichung, Taiwan
Voghera, Italy
Accra, Ghana
See also
Cheyenne County, Jefferson Territory
First transcontinental railroad
List of municipalities in Wyoming
USS Cheyenne, 6 ships
Notes
References
External links
Official website
"Cheyenne" . The New Student's Reference Work . 1914.
"Cheyenne, the chief city and capital of Wyoming, U.S.A." . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. |
City_of_London | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London | [
330
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London"
] | The City of London, also known as the City, is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the ancient centre, and constitutes, along with Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London and one of the leading financial centres of the world. It constituted most of London from its settlement by the Romans in the 1st century AD to the Middle Ages, but the modern area referred to as London has since grown far beyond the City of London boundary. The City is now only a small part of the metropolis of Greater London, though it remains a notable part of central London. The City of London is not one of the London boroughs, a status reserved for the other 32 districts (including Greater London's only other city, the City of Westminster). It is also a separate ceremonial county, being an enclave surrounded by the ceremonial county of Greater London, and is the smallest ceremonial county in England.
The City of London is known colloquially as the Square Mile, as it is 1.12 sq mi (716.80 acres; 2.90 km2) in area. Both the terms the City and the Square Mile are often used as metonyms for the UK's trading and financial services industries, which continue a notable history of being largely based in the City. The name London is now ordinarily used for a far wider area than just the City. London most often denotes the sprawling London metropolis, or the 32 Greater London boroughs, in addition to the City of London itself.
The local authority for the City, namely the City of London Corporation, is unique in the UK and has some unusual responsibilities for a local council, such as being the police authority. It is also unusual in having responsibilities and ownerships beyond its boundaries, e.g. Hampstead Heath. The corporation is headed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London (an office separate from, and much older than, the Mayor of London). The Lord Mayor, as of November 2023, is Michael Mainelli. The City is made up of 25 wards, with administration at the historic Guildhall. Other historic sites include St Paul's Cathedral, Royal Exchange, Mansion House, Old Bailey, and Smithfield Market. Although not within the City, the adjacent Tower of London, built to dominate the City, is part of its old defensive perimeter. The City has responsibility for five bridges across the Thames in its capacity as trustee of the Bridge House Estates: Blackfriars Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Southwark Bridge, London Bridge and Tower Bridge.
The City is a major business and financial centre, with both the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange based in the City. Throughout the 19th century, the City was the world's primary business centre, and it continues to be a major meeting point for businesses. London was ranked second (after New York) in the Global Financial Centres Index, published in 2022. The insurance industry is concentrated in the eastern side of the city, around Lloyd's building. Since about the 1980s, a secondary financial district has existed outside the city, at Canary Wharf, 2.5 miles (4 km) to the east. The legal profession has a major presence in the northern and western sides of the City, especially in the Temple and Chancery Lane areas where the Inns of Court are located, two of which (Inner Temple and Middle Temple) fall within the City of London boundary.
Primarily a business district, the City has a small resident population of 8,583 based on 2021 census figures, but over 500,000 are employed there (as of 2019) and some estimates put the number of workers in the City to be over 1 million. About three-quarters of the jobs in the City of London are in the financial, professional, and associated business services sectors.
History
Origins
The Roman legions established a settlement known as "Londinium" on the current site of the City of London around AD 43. Its bridge over the River Thames turned the city into a road nexus and major port, serving as a major commercial centre in Roman Britain until its abandonment during the 5th century. Archaeologist Leslie Wallace notes that, because extensive archaeological excavation has not revealed any signs of a significant pre-Roman presence, "arguments for a purely Roman foundation of London are now common and uncontroversial."
At its height, the Roman city had a population of approximately 45,000–60,000 inhabitants. Londinium was an ethnically diverse city, with inhabitants from across the Roman Empire, including natives of Britannia, continental Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The Romans built the London Wall some time between AD 190 and 225. The boundaries of the Roman city were similar to those of the City of London today, though the City extends further west than Londinium's Ludgate, and the Thames was undredged and thus wider than it is today, with Londinium's shoreline slightly north of the city's present shoreline. The Romans built a bridge across the river, as early as AD 50, near to today's London Bridge.
Decline
By the time the London Wall was constructed, the city's fortunes were in decline, and it faced problems of plague and fire. The Roman Empire entered a long period of instability and decline, including the Carausian Revolt in Britain. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the city was under attack from Picts, Scots, and Saxon raiders. The decline continued, both for Londinium and the Empire, and in AD 410 the Romans withdrew entirely from Britain. Many of the Roman public buildings in Londinium by this time had fallen into decay and disuse, and gradually after the formal withdrawal the city became almost (if not, at times, entirely) uninhabited. The centre of trade and population moved away from the walled Londinium to Lundenwic ("London market"), a settlement to the west, roughly in the modern-day Strand/Aldwych/Covent Garden area.
Anglo-Saxon restoration
During the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, the London area came in turn under the Kingdoms of Essex, Mercia, and later Wessex, though from the mid 8th century it was frequently under threat from raids by different groups including the Vikings.
Bede records that in AD 604 St Augustine consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Saxons and their king, Sæberht. Sæberht's uncle and overlord, Æthelberht, king of Kent, built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the new bishop. It is assumed, although unproven, that this first Anglo-Saxon cathedral stood on the same site as the later medieval and the present cathedrals.
Alfred the Great, King of Wessex occupied and began the resettlement of the old Roman walled area, in 886, and appointed his son-in-law Earl Æthelred of Mercia over it as part of their reconquest of the Viking occupied parts of England. The refortified Anglo-Saxon settlement was known as Lundenburh ("London Fort", a borough). The historian Asser said that "Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, restored the city of London splendidly ... and made it habitable once more." Alfred's "restoration" entailed reoccupying and refurbishing the nearly deserted Roman walled city, building quays along the Thames, and laying a new city street plan.
Alfred's taking of London and the rebuilding of the old Roman city was a turning point in history, not only as the permanent establishment of the City of London, but also as part of a unifying moment in early England, with Wessex becoming the dominant English kingdom and the repelling (to some degree) of the Viking occupation and raids. While London, and indeed England, were afterwards subjected to further periods of Viking and Danish raids and occupation, the establishment of the City of London and the Kingdom of England prevailed.
In the 10th century, Athelstan permitted eight mints to be established, compared with six in his capital, Winchester, indicating the wealth of the city. London Bridge, which had fallen into ruin following the Roman evacuation and abandonment of Londinium, was rebuilt by the Saxons, but was periodically destroyed by Viking raids and storms.
As the focus of trade and population was moved back to within the old Roman walls, the older Saxon settlement of Lundenwic was largely abandoned and gained the name of Ealdwic (the "old settlement"). The name survives today as Aldwych (the "old market-place"), a name of a street and an area of the City of Westminster between Westminster and the City of London.
Medieval era
Following the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror marched on London, reaching as far as Southwark, but failed to get across London Bridge or defeat the Londoners. He eventually crossed the River Thames at Wallingford, pillaging the land as he went. Rather than continuing the war, Edgar the Ætheling, Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria surrendered at Berkhamsted. William granted the citizens of London a charter in 1075; the city was one of a few examples of the English retaining some authority. The city was not covered by the Domesday Book.
William built three castles around the city, to keep Londoners subdued:
Tower of London, which is still a major establishment.
Baynard's Castle, which no longer exists but gave its name to a city ward.
Montfichet's Tower or Castle on Ludgate Hill, which was dismantled and sold off in the 13th century.
Around 1132 the City was given the right to appoint its own sheriffs rather than having sheriffs appointed by the monarch. London's chosen sheriffs also served as the sheriffs for the county of Middlesex. This meant that the City and Middlesex were regarded as one administratively for addressing crime and keeping the peace (not that the county was a dependency of the city). London's sheriffs continued to serve Middlesex until the county was given its own sheriffs again following the Local Government Act 1888. By 1141 the whole body of the citizenry was considered to constitute a single community. This 'commune' was the origin of the City of London Corporation and the citizens gained the right to appoint, with the king's consent, a mayor in 1189—and to directly elect the mayor from 1215.
From medieval times, the city has been composed of 25 ancient wards, each headed by an alderman, who chairs Wardmotes, which still take place at least annually. A Folkmoot, for the whole of the City held at the outdoor cross of St Paul's Cathedral, was formerly also held. Many of the medieval offices and traditions continue to the present day, demonstrating the unique nature of the City and its Corporation.
In 1381, the Peasants' Revolt affected London. The rebels took the City and the Tower of London, but the rebellion ended after its leader, Wat Tyler, was killed during a confrontation that included Lord Mayor William Walworth. In 1450, rebel forces again occupied the City during Jack Cade's Rebellion before being ousted by London citizens following a bloody battle on London Bridge. In 1550, the area south of London Bridge in Southwark came under the control of the City with the establishment of the ward of Bridge Without.
The city was burnt severely on a number of occasions, the worst being in 1123 and in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Both of these fires were referred to as the Great Fire. After the fire of 1666, a number of plans were drawn up to remodel the city and its street pattern into a renaissance-style city with planned urban blocks, squares and boulevards. These plans were almost entirely not taken up, and the medieval street pattern re-emerged almost intact.
Early modern period
In the 1630s the Crown sought to have the Corporation of the City of London extend its jurisdiction to surrounding areas. In what is sometimes called the "great refusal", the Corporation said no to the King, which in part accounts for its unique government structure to the present.
By the late 16th century, London increasingly became a major centre for banking, international trade and commerce. The Royal Exchange was founded in 1565 by Sir Thomas Gresham as a centre of commerce for London's merchants, and gained Royal patronage in 1571. Although no longer used for its original purpose, its location at the corner of Cornhill and Threadneedle Street continues to be the geographical centre of the city's core of banking and financial services, with the Bank of England moving to its present site in 1734, opposite the Royal Exchange. Immediately to the south of Cornhill, Lombard Street was the location from 1691 of Lloyd's Coffee House, which became the world-leading insurance market. London's insurance sector continues to be based in the area, particularly in Lime Street.
In 1708, Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, was completed on his birthday. The first service had been held on 2 December 1697, more than 10 years earlier. It replaced the original St Paul's, which had been completely destroyed in the Great Fire of London, and is considered to be one of the finest cathedrals in Britain and a fine example of Baroque architecture.
Growth of London
The 18th century was a period of rapid growth for London, reflecting an increasing national population, the early stirrings of the Industrial Revolution, and London's role at the centre of the evolving British Empire. The urban area expanded beyond the borders of the City of London, most notably during this period towards the West End and Westminster.
Expansion continued and became more rapid by the beginning of the 19th century, with London growing in all directions. To the East the Port of London grew rapidly during the century, with the construction of many docks, needed as the Thames at the City could not cope with the volume of trade. The arrival of the railways and the Tube meant that London could expand over a much greater area. By the mid-19th century, with London still rapidly expanding in population and area, the City had already become only a small part of the wider metropolis.
19th and 20th centuries
An attempt was made in 1894 with the Royal Commission on the Amalgamation of the City and County of London to end the distinction between the city and the surrounding County of London, but a change of government at Westminster meant the option was not taken up. The city as a distinct polity survived despite its position within the London conurbation and numerous local government reforms. Supporting this status, the city was a special parliamentary borough that elected four members to the unreformed House of Commons, who were retained after the Reform Act 1832; reduced to two under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885; and ceased to be a separate constituency under the Representation of the People Act 1948. Since then the city is a minority (in terms of population and area) of the Cities of London and Westminster.
The city's population fell rapidly in the 19th century and through most of the 20th century, as people moved outwards in all directions to London's vast suburbs, and many residential buildings were demolished to make way for office blocks. Like many areas of London and other British cities, the City fell victim to large scale and highly destructive aerial bombing during World War II, especially in the Blitz. Whilst St Paul's Cathedral survived the onslaught, large swathes of the area did not and the particularly heavy raids of late December 1940 led to a firestorm called the Second Great Fire of London.
There was a major rebuilding programme in the decades following the war, in some parts (such as at the Barbican) dramatically altering the urban landscape. But the destruction of the older historic fabric allowed the construction of modern and larger-scale developments, whereas in those parts not so badly affected by bomb damage the City retains its older character of smaller buildings. The street pattern, which is still largely medieval, was altered slightly in places, although there is a more recent trend of reversing some of the post-war modernist changes made, such as at Paternoster Square.
The City suffered terrorist attacks including the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing (IRA) and the 7 July 2005 London bombings (Islamist). In response to the 1993 bombing, a system of road barriers, checkpoints and surveillance cameras referred to as the "ring of steel" has been maintained to control entry points to the city.
The 1970s saw the construction of tall office buildings including the 600-foot (183 m), 47-storey NatWest Tower, the first skyscraper in the UK. By the 2010s, office space development had intensified in the City, especially in the central, northern and eastern parts, with skyscrapers including 30 St. Mary Axe ("the Gherkin"'), Leadenhall Building ("the Cheesegrater"), 20 Fenchurch Street ("the Walkie-Talkie"), the Broadgate Tower, the Heron Tower and 22 Bishopsgate.
The main residential section of the City today is the Barbican Estate, constructed between 1965 and 1976. The Museum of London was based there until March 2023 (due to reopen in West Smithfield in 2026), whilst a number of other services provided by the corporation are still maintained on the Barbican Estate.
Governance
The city has a unique political status, a legacy of its uninterrupted integrity as a corporate city since the Anglo-Saxon period and its singular relationship with the Crown. Historically its system of government was not unusual, but it was not reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 and little changed by later reforms, so that it is the only local government in the UK where elections are not run on the basis of one vote for every adult citizen.
It is administered by the City of London Corporation, headed by the Lord Mayor of London (not to be confused with the separate Mayor of London, an office created only in the year 2000), which is responsible for a number of functions and has interests in land beyond the city's boundaries. Unlike other English local authorities, the corporation has two council bodies: the (now largely ceremonial) Court of Aldermen and the Court of Common Council. The Court of Aldermen represents the wards, with each ward (irrespective of size) returning one alderman. The chief executive of the Corporation holds the ancient office of Town Clerk of London.
The city is a ceremonial county which has a Commission of Lieutenancy headed by the Lord Mayor instead of a Lord-Lieutenant and has two Sheriffs instead of a High Sheriff (see list of Sheriffs of London), quasi-judicial offices appointed by the livery companies, an ancient political system based on the representation and protection of trades (guilds). Senior members of the livery companies are known as liverymen and form the Common Hall, which chooses the lord mayor, the sheriffs and certain other officers.
Wards
The city is made up of 25 wards. They are survivors of the medieval government system that allowed a very local area to exist as a self-governing unit within the wider city. They can be described as electoral/political divisions; ceremonial, geographic and administrative entities; sub-divisions of the city. Each ward has an Alderman, who until the mid-1960s held office for life but since put themselves up for re-election at least every 6 years, and are the only directly elected Aldermen in the United Kingdom. Wards continue to have a Beadle, an ancient position which is now largely ceremonial whose main remaining function is the running of an annual Wardmote of electors, representatives and officials. At the Wardmote the ward's Alderman appoints at least one Deputy for the year ahead, and Wardmotes are also held during elections. Each ward also has a Ward Club, which is similar to a residents' association.
The wards are ancient and their number has changed three times since time immemorial:
in 1394 Farringdon was divided into Farringdon Within and Farringdon Without
in 1550 the ward of Bridge Without, south of the river, was created, the ward of Bridge becoming Bridge Within;
in 1978 these Bridge wards were merged as Bridge ward.
Following boundary changes in 1994, and later reform of the business vote in the city, there was a major boundary and electoral representation revision of the wards in 2003, and they were reviewed again in 2010 for change in 2013, though not to such a dramatic extent. The review was conducted by senior officers of the corporation and senior judges of the Old Bailey; the wards are reviewed by this process to avoid malapportionment. The procedure of review is unique in the United Kingdom as it is not conducted by the Electoral Commission or a local government boundary commission every 8 to 12 years, which is the case for all other wards in Great Britain. Particular churches, livery company halls and other historic buildings and structures are associated with a ward, such as St Paul's Cathedral with Castle Baynard, and London Bridge with Bridge; boundary changes in 2003 removed some of these historic connections.
Each ward elects an alderman to the Court of Aldermen, and commoners (the City equivalent of a councillor) to the Court of Common Council of the corporation. Only electors who are Freemen of the City of London are eligible to stand. The number of commoners a ward sends to the Common Council varies from two to ten, depending on the number of electors in each ward. Since the 2003 review it has been agreed that the four more residential wards: Portsoken, Queenhithe, Aldersgate and Cripplegate together elect 20 of the 100 commoners, whereas the business-dominated remainder elect the remaining 80 commoners. 2003 and 2013 boundary changes have increased the residential emphasis of the mentioned four wards.
Census data provides eight nominal rather than 25 real wards, all of varying size and population. Being subject to renaming and definition at any time, these census 'wards' are notable in that four of the eight wards accounted for 67% of the 'square mile' and held 86% of the population, and these were in fact similar to and named after four City of London wards:
Elections
The city has a unique electoral system. Most of its voters are representatives of businesses and other bodies that occupy premises in the city. Its ancient wards have very unequal numbers of voters. In elections, both the businesses based in the city and the residents of the City vote.
The City of London Corporation was not reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, because it had a more extensive electoral franchise than any other borough or city; in fact, it widened this further with its own equivalent legislation allowing one to become a freeman without being a liveryman. In 1801, the city had a population of about 130,000, but increasing development of the city as a central business district led to this falling to below 5,000 after the Second World War. It has risen slightly to around 9,000 since, largely due to the development of the Barbican Estate. In 2009, the business vote was about 24,000, greatly exceeding residential voters. As the City of London Corporation has not been affected by other municipal legislation over the period of time since then, its electoral practice has become increasingly anomalous. Uniquely for city or borough elections, its elections remain independent-dominated.
The business or "non-residential vote" was abolished in other UK local council elections by the Representation of the People Act 1969, but was preserved in the City of London. The principal reason given by successive UK governments for retaining this mechanism for giving businesses representation, is that the city is "primarily a place for doing business". About 330,000 non-residents constitute the day-time population and use most of its services, far outnumbering residents, who number around 7,000 (2011). By contrast, opponents of the retention of the business vote argue that it is a cause of institutional inertia.
The City of London (Ward Elections) Act 2002, a private Act of Parliament, reformed the voting system and greatly increased the business franchise, allowing many more businesses to be represented. Under the new system, the number of non-resident voters has doubled from 16,000 to 32,000. Previously disenfranchised firms (and other organisations) are entitled to nominate voters, in addition to those already represented, and all such bodies are now required to choose their voters in a representative fashion. Bodies employing fewer than 10 people may appoint 1 voter; those employing 10 to 50 people 1 voter for every 5 employees; those employing more than 50 people 10 voters and 1 additional voter for each 50 employees beyond the first 50. The Act also changed other aspects of an earlier act relating to elections in the city, from 1957.
The Temple
Inner Temple and Middle Temple (which neighbour each other) in the western ward of Farringdon Without are within the boundaries and liberties of the City, but can be thought of as independent enclaves. They are two of the few remaining liberties, an old name for a geographic division with special rights. They are extra-parochial areas, historically not governed by the City of London Corporation (and are today regarded as local authorities for most purposes) and equally outside the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of London.
Other functions
Within the city, the Corporation owns and runs both Smithfield Market and Leadenhall Market. It owns land beyond its boundaries, including open spaces (parks, forests and commons) in and around Greater London, including most of Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath. The Corporation owns Old Spitalfields Market and Billingsgate Fish Market, in the neighbouring London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It owns and helps fund the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court for England and Wales, as a gift to the nation, having begun as the City and Middlesex Sessions. The Honourable The Irish Society, a body closely linked with the corporation, also owns many public spaces in Northern Ireland.
The city has its own independent police force, the City of London Police—the Common Council (the main body of the corporation) is the police authority. The corporation also run the Hampstead Heath Constabulary, Epping Forest Keepers and the City of London market constabularies (whose members are no longer attested as constables but retain the historic title). The majority of Greater London is policed by the Metropolitan Police Service, based at New Scotland Yard.
The city has one hospital, St Bartholomew's Hospital, also known as 'Barts'. Founded in 1123, it is located at Smithfield, and is undergoing a long-awaited regeneration after doubts as to its continuing use during the 1990s.
The city is the third largest UK patron of the arts. It oversees the Barbican Centre and subsidises several important performing arts companies.
The London Port Health Authority, which is the responsibility of the corporation, is responsible for all port health functions on the tidal part of the Thames, including the Port of London and related seaports, and London City Airport. The Corporation oversees the Bridge House Estates, which maintains Blackfriars Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Southwark Bridge, London Bridge and Tower Bridge. The City's flag flies over Tower Bridge, although neither footing is in the city.
The boundary of the City
The size of the city was constrained by a defensive perimeter wall, known as London Wall, which was built by the Romans in the late 2nd century to protect their strategic port city. However the boundaries of the City of London no longer coincide with the old city wall, as the City expanded its jurisdiction slightly over time. During the medieval era, the city's jurisdiction expanded westwards, crossing the historic western border of the original settlement—the River Fleet—along Fleet Street to Temple Bar. The city also took in the other "City bars" which were situated just beyond the old walled area, such as at Holborn, Aldersgate, West Smithfield, Bishopsgate and Aldgate. These were the important entrances to the city and their control was vital in maintaining the city's special privileges over certain trades.
Most of the wall has disappeared, but several sections remain visible. A section near the Museum of London was revealed after the devastation of an air raid on 29 December 1940 at the height of the Blitz. Other visible sections are at St Alphage, and there are two sections near the Tower of London. The River Fleet was canalised after the Great Fire of 1666 and then in stages was bricked up and has been since the 18th century one of London's "lost rivers or streams", today underground as a storm drain.
The boundary of the city was unchanged until minor boundary changes on 1 April 1994, when it expanded slightly to the west, north and east, taking small parcels of land from the London Boroughs of Westminster, Camden, Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets. The main purpose of these changes was to tidy up the boundary where it had been rendered obsolete by changes in the urban landscape. In this process the city also lost small parcels of land, though there was an overall net gain (the City grew from 1.05 to 1.12 square miles). Most notably, the changes placed the (then recently developed) Broadgate estate entirely in the city.
Southwark, to the south of the city on the other side of the Thames, was within the City between 1550 and 1899 as the Ward of Bridge Without, a situation connected with the Guildable Manor. The city's administrative responsibility there had in practice disappeared by the mid-Victorian period as various aspects of metropolitan government were extended into the neighbouring areas. Today it is part of the London Borough of Southwark. The Tower of London has always been outside the city and comes under the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Arms, motto and flag
The Corporation of the City of London has a full achievement of armorial bearings consisting of a shield on which the arms are displayed, a crest displayed on a helm above the shield, supporters on either side and a motto displayed on a scroll beneath the arms.
The coat of arms is "anciently recorded" at the College of Arms. The arms consist of a silver shield bearing a red cross with a red upright sword in the first quarter. They combine the emblems of the patron saints of England and London: the Cross of St George with the symbol of the martyrdom of Saint Paul. The sword is often erroneously supposed to commemorate the killing of Peasants' Revolt leader Wat Tyler by Lord Mayor of London William Walworth. However the arms were in use some months before Tyler's death, and the tradition that Walworth's dagger is depicted may date from the late 17th century.
The Latin motto of the city is "Domine dirige nos", which translates as "Lord, direct us". It is thought to have been adopted in the 17th century, as the earliest record of it is in 1633.
A banner of the arms (the design on the shield) is flown as a flag.
Geography
The City of London is the smallest ceremonial county of England by area and population, and the fourth most densely populated. Of the 326 English districts, it is the second smallest by population, after the Isles of Scilly, and the smallest by area. It is also the smallest English city by population (and in Britain, only two cities in Wales are smaller), and the smallest in the UK by area.
The elevation of the City ranges from sea level at the Thames to 21.6 metres (71 ft) at the junction of High Holborn and Chancery Lane. Two small but notable hills are within the historic core, Ludgate Hill to the west and Cornhill to the east. Between them ran the Walbrook, one of the many "lost" rivers or streams of London (another is the Fleet).
Boundary
Beginning in the west, where the City borders Westminster, the boundary crosses the Victoria Embankment from the Thames, passes to the west of Middle Temple, then turns for a short distance along the Strand and near Temple Bar then north up Chancery Lane, where it borders Camden. It turns east along Holborn to Holborn Circus and then goes northeast to Charterhouse Street. As it crosses Farringdon Road it becomes the boundary with Islington. It continues to Aldersgate, goes north, and turns east into some back streets soon after Aldersgate becomes Goswell Road, since 1994 embracing all of the corporation's Golden Lane Estate. Here, at Baltic Street West, is the most northerly extent. The boundary includes all of the Barbican Estate and continues east along Ropemaker Street and its continuation on the other side of Moorgate, becomes South Place. It goes north, reaching the border with Hackney, then east, north, east on back streets, with Worship Street forming a northern boundary, so as to include the Broadgate estate. The boundary then turns south at Norton Folgate and becomes the border with Tower Hamlets. It continues south into Bishopsgate, and takes some backstreets to Middlesex Street (Petticoat Lane) where it continues south-east then south. It then turns south-west, crossing the Minories so as to exclude the Tower of London, and then reaches the Thames.
The boundary then runs up the centre of the low-tide channel of the Thames, with the exception that Blackfriars Bridge (including the river beneath and land at its south end) is entirely part of the City, whilst the span and southern abutment of London Bridge is part of the city for some purposes (and as such is part of Bridge ward).
The boundaries are marked by black bollards bearing the city's emblem, and by dragon boundary marks at major entrances, such as Holborn and the south end of London Bridge. A more substantial monument marks the boundary at Temple Bar on Fleet Street.
In some places, the financial district extends slightly beyond the boundaries, notably to the north and east, into the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Islington, and informally these locations are regarded as being part of the "Square Mile". Since the 1990s the eastern fringe, extending into Hackney and Tower Hamlets, has increasingly been a focus for large office developments due to the availability of large sites compared to within the city.
Gardens and public art
The city has no sizeable parks within its boundary, but does have a network of a large number of gardens and small open spaces, many of them maintained by the corporation. These range from formal gardens such as the one in Finsbury Circus, containing a bowling green and bandstand, to churchyards such as St Olave Hart Street, to water features and artwork in courtyards and pedestrianised lanes.
Gardens include:
Barber-Surgeon's Hall Garden, London Wall
Cleary Garden, Queen Victoria Street
Finsbury Circus, Blomfield Street/London Wall/Moorgate
Jubilee Garden, Houndsditch
Portsoken Street Garden, Portsoken Street/Goodman's Yard
Postman's Park, Little Britain
Seething Lane Garden, Seething Lane
St Dunstan-in-the-East, St Dunstan's Hill
St Mary Aldermanbury, Aldermanbury
St Olave Hart Street churchyard, Seething Lane
St Paul's churchyard, St Paul's Cathedral
West Smithfield Garden, West Smithfield
Whittington Gardens, College Street
There are a number of private gardens and open spaces, often within courtyards of the larger commercial developments. Two of the largest are those of the Inner Temple and Middle Temple Inns of Court, in the far southwest.
The Thames and its riverside walks are increasingly being valued as open space and in recent years efforts have been made to increase the ability for pedestrians to access and walk along the river.
Climate
The nearest weather station has historically been the London Weather Centre at Kingsway/ Holborn, although observations ceased in 2010. Now St. James Park provides the nearest official readings.
The city has an oceanic climate (Köppen "Cfb") modified by the urban heat island in the centre of London. This generally causes higher night-time minima than outlying areas. For example, the August mean minimum of 14.7 °C (58.5 °F) compares to a figure of 13.3 °C (55.9 °F) for Greenwich and Heathrow whereas is 11.6 °C (52.9 °F) at Wisley in the middle of several square miles of Metropolitan Green Belt. All figures refer to the observation period 1971–2000.
Accordingly, the weather station holds the record for the UK's warmest overnight minimum temperature, 24.0 °C (75.2 °F), recorded on 4 August 1990. The maximum is 37.6 °C (99.7 °F), set on 10 August 2003. The absolute minimum for the weather station is a mere −8.2 °C (17.2 °F), compared to readings around −15.0 °C (5.0 °F) towards the edges of London. Unusually, this temperature was during a windy and snowy cold spell (mid-January 1987), rather than a cold clear night—cold air drainage is arrested due to the vast urban area surrounding the city.
The station holds the record for the highest British mean monthly temperature, 24.5 °C (76.1 °F) (mean maximum 29.2 °C (84.6 °F), mean minimum 19.7 °C (67.5 °F) during July 2006). However, in terms of daytime maximum temperatures, Cambridge NIAB and Botanical Gardens with a mean maximum of 29.1 °C (84.4 °F), and Heathrow with 29.0 °C (84.2 °F) all exceeded this.
Public services
Police and security
The city is a police area and has its own police force, the City of London Police, separate from the Metropolitan Police Service covering the majority of Greater London. The City Police previously had three police stations, at Snow Hill, Wood Street and Bishopsgate. They now only retain Bishopsgate along with an administrative headquarters at Guildhall Yard East. The force comprises 735 police officers including 273 detectives. It is the smallest territorial police force in England and Wales, in both geographic area and the number of police officers.
Where the majority of British police forces have silver-coloured badges, those of the City of London Police are black and gold featuring the City crest. The force has rare red and white chequered cap bands and unique red and white striped duty arm bands on the sleeves of the tunics of constables and sergeants (red and white being the colours of the city), which in most other British police forces are black and white. City police sergeants and constables wear crested custodian helmets whilst on foot patrol. These helmets do not feature either St Edward's Crown or the Brunswick Star, which are used on most other police helmets in England and Wales.
The city's position as the United Kingdom's financial centre and a critical part of the country's economy, contributing about 2.5% of the UK's gross national product, has resulted in it becoming a target for political violence. The Provisional IRA exploded several bombs in the early 1990s, including the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing.
The area is also spoken of as a possible target for al-Qaeda. For instance, when in May 2004 the BBC's Panorama programme examined the preparedness of Britain's emergency services for a terrorist attack on the scale of the 11 September 2001 attacks, they simulated a chemical explosion on Bishopsgate in the east of the city. The "Ring of Steel" was established in the wake of the IRA bombings to guard against terrorist threats.
Fire brigade
The city has fire risks in many historic buildings, including St Paul's Cathedral, Old Bailey, Mansion House, Smithfield Market, the Guildhall, and also in numerous high-rise buildings. There is one London Fire Brigade station in the city, at Dowgate, with one pumping appliance. The City relies upon stations in the surrounding London boroughs to support it at some incidents. The first fire engine is in attendance in roughly five minutes on average, the second when required in a little over five and a half minutes. There were 1,814 incidents attended in the City in 2006/2007—the lowest in Greater London. No-one died in an event arising from a fire in the four years prior to 2007.
Power
There is power station located in Charterhouse Street that also provides heat to some of the surrounding buildings.
Demography
The Office for National Statistics recorded the population in 2011 as 7,375; slightly higher than in the previous census, 2001, and estimates the population as at mid-2016 to be 9,401. At the 2001 census the ethnic composition was 84.6% White, 6.8% South Asian, 2.6% Black, 2.3% Mixed, 2.0% Chinese and 1.7% were listed as "other". To the right is a table showing the change in population since 1801, based on decadal censuses. The first half of the 19th century shows a population of between 120,000 and 140,000, decreasing dramatically from 1851 to 1991, with a small increase between 1991 and 2001. The only notable boundary change since the first census in 1801 occurred in 1994.
The city's full-time working residents have much higher gross weekly pay than in London and Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland): £773.30 compared to £598.60 and £491.00 respectively. There is a large inequality of income between genders (£1,085.90 in men compared to £653.50 in women), and this can be explained by job type and length of employment respectively. The 2001 Census showed the city as a unique district amongst 376 districts surveyed in England and Wales. The city had the highest proportional population increase, one-person households, people with qualifications at degree level or higher and the highest indications of overcrowding. It recorded the lowest proportion of households with cars or vans, people who travel to work by car, married couple households and the lowest average household size: just 1.58 people. It also ranked highest within the Greater London area for the percentage of people with no religion and people who are employed.
Ethnicity
Economy
The City of London vies with New York City's Lower Manhattan for the distinction of the world's pre-eminent financial centre. The London Stock Exchange (shares and bonds), Lloyd's of London (insurance) and the Bank of England are all based in the city. Over 500 banks have offices in the city. The Alternative Investment Market, a market for trades in equities of smaller firms, is a recent development. In 2009, the City of London accounted for 2.4% of UK GDP.
London's foreign exchange market has been described by Reuters as 'the crown jewel of London's financial sector'. Of the $3.98 trillion daily global turnover, as measured in 2009, trading in London accounted for around $1.85 trillion, or 46.7% of the total. The pound sterling, the currency of the United Kingdom, is globally the fourth-most traded currency and the fourth most held reserve currency.
Canary Wharf, a few miles east of the City in Tower Hamlets, which houses many banks and other institutions formerly located in the Square Mile, has since 1991 become another centre for London's financial services industry. Although growth has continued in both locations, and there have been relocations in both directions, the Corporation has come to realise that its planning policies may have been causing financial firms to choose Canary Wharf as a location.
In 2022, 12.3% of City of London residents had been granted non-domicile status in order to avoid their paying tax in the UK.
Headquarters
Many major global companies have their headquarters in the city, including Aviva, BT Group, Lloyds Banking Group, Quilter, Prudential, Schroders, Standard Chartered, and Unilever.
A number of the world's largest law firms are headquartered in the city, including four of the "Magic Circle" law firms (Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters and Slaughter & May), as well as other firms such as Ashurst LLP, DLA Piper, Eversheds Sutherland, Herbert Smith Freehills and Hogan Lovells.
Other sectors
Whilst the financial sector, and related businesses and institutions, continue to dominate, the economy is not limited to that sector. The legal profession has a strong presence, especially in the west and north (i.e., towards the Inns of Court). Retail businesses were once important, but have gradually moved to the West End of London, though it is now Corporation policy to encourage retailing in some locations, for example at Cheapside near St Paul's. The city has a number of visitor attractions, mainly based on its historic heritage as well as the Barbican Centre and adjacent Museum of London, though tourism is not at present a major contributor to the city's economy or character. The city has many pubs, bars and restaurants, and the "night-time" economy does feature in the Bishopsgate area, towards Shoreditch. The meat market at Smithfield, wholly within the city, continues to be one of London's main markets (the only one remaining in central London) and the country's largest meat market. In the east is Leadenhall Market, a fresh food market that is also a visitor attraction.
Retail and residential
The trend for purely office development is beginning to reverse as the Corporation encourages residential use, albeit with development occurring when it arises on windfall sites. The city has a target of 90 additional dwellings per year. Some of the extra accommodation is in small pre-World War II listed buildings, which are not suitable for occupation by the large companies which now provide much of the city's employment. Recent residential developments include "the Heron", a high-rise residential building on the Milton Court site adjacent to the Barbican, and the Heron Plaza development on Bishopsgate is also expected to include residential parts.
Since the 1990s, the City has diversified away from near exclusive office use in other ways. For example, several hotels and the first department store opened in the 2000s. A shopping centre was more recently opened at One New Change, Cheapside (near St Paul's Cathedral) in October 2010, which is open seven days a week. However, large sections remain quiet at weekends, especially in the eastern section, and it is quite common to find shops, pubs and cafes closed on these days.
Landmarks
Historic buildings
Fire, bombing and post-World War II redevelopment have meant that the city, despite its history, has fewer intact historic structures than one might expect. Nonetheless, there remain many dozens of (mostly Victorian and Edwardian) fine buildings, typically in historicist and neoclassical style. They include the Monument to the Great Fire of London ("the Monument"), St Paul's Cathedral, the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, Dr. Johnson's House, Mansion House and a great many churches, many designed by Sir Christopher Wren, who also designed St Paul's.
Prince Henry's Room and 2 King's Bench Walk are notable historic survivors of heavy bombing of the Temple area, which has largely been rebuilt to its historic form. Another example of a bomb-damaged place having been restored is Staple Inn on Holborn. A few small sections of the Roman London Wall exist, for example near the Tower of London and in the Barbican area. Among the twentieth-century listed buildings are Bracken House, the first post World War II buildings in the country to be given statutory protection, and the whole of the Barbican and Golden Lane Estate.
The Tower of London is not in the city, but is a notable visitor attraction which brings tourists to the southeast of the city. Other landmark buildings with historical significance include the Bank of England, the Old Bailey, the Custom House, Smithfield Market, Leadenhall Market and St Bartholomew's Hospital. Noteworthy contemporary buildings include a number of modern high-rise buildings (see section below) as well as the Lloyd's building.
Skyscrapers and tall buildings
Completed
A growing number of tall buildings and skyscrapers are principally used by the financial sector. Almost all are situated in the eastern side around Bishopsgate, Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street, in the financial core of the city. In the north there is a smaller cluster comprising the Barbican Estate's three tall residential towers and the commercial CityPoint tower. In 2007, the 100 m (328 ft) tall Drapers' Gardens building was demolished and replaced by a shorter tower.
The city's buildings of at least 100 m (328 ft) in height are:
Timeline
The timeline of the tallest building in the city is as follows:
Transport
Rail and Tube
The city is well served by the London Underground ("tube") and National Rail networks.
Seven London Underground lines serve the city; the underground stations include:
Aldgate
Bank and Monument
Barbican
Blackfriars
Cannon Street
Chancery Lane
Liverpool Street
Mansion House
Moorgate
St. Paul's
In addition, Aldgate East ( ), Farringdon ( ), Temple ( ) and Tower Hill ( ) tube stations are all situated within metres of the City of London boundary.
The Docklands Light Railway (DLR ) has two termini in the city: Bank and Tower Gateway. The DLR links the City directly to the East End. Destinations include Canary Wharf and London City Airport.
The Elizabeth line (constructed by the Crossrail project) runs east–west underneath the City of London. The line serves two stations in the City – Farringdon and Liverpool Street – which additionally serves the Barbican and Moorgate areas. Elizabeth line services link the City directly to destinations such as Canary Wharf, Heathrow Airport, and the M4 Corridor high-technology hub (serving Slough and Reading).
The city is served by a frequent Thameslink rail service which runs north–south through London. Thameslink services call at Farringdon, City Thameslink, and London Blackfriars. This provides the city with a direct link to key destinations across London, including Elephant & Castle, London Bridge, and St Pancras International (for the Eurostar to mainland Europe). There are also regular, direct trains from these stations to major destinations across East Anglia and the South East, including Bedford, Brighton, Cambridge, Gatwick Airport, Luton Airport, and Peterborough.
There are several "London Terminals" in the city:
London Blackfriars – Thameslink services and some Southeastern services to South East London and Kent.
London Cannon Street – Southeastern services to South East London and Kent.
London Fenchurch Street – C2c services along the Thames Estuary towards East London, south Essex, and Southend.
London Liverpool Street – Greater Anglia and some C2c services towards destinations in East London and East Anglia, including Stratford, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Ipswich, Norwich, Southend, and Southend Airport. Stansted Express to Stansted Airport. London Overground () to destinations in north-east London including Hackney Downs, Seven Sisters, Walthamstow, Chingford, Enfield, and Cheshunt.
Moorgate – Great Northern towards Finsbury Park, Enfield, and other destinations in North London and Hertfordshire, including Hertford and Welwyn Garden City.
All stations in the city are in London fare zone 1.
Road
The national A1, A10 A3, A4, and A40 road routes begin in the city. The city is in the London congestion charge zone, with the small exception on the eastern boundary of the sections of the A1210/A1211 that are part of the Inner Ring Road. The following bridges, listed west to east (downstream), cross the River Thames: Blackfriars Bridge, Blackfriars Railway Bridge, Millennium Bridge (footbridge), Southwark Bridge, Cannon Street Railway Bridge and London Bridge; Tower Bridge is not in the city. The city, like most of central London, is well served by buses, including night buses. Two bus stations are in the city, at Aldgate on the eastern boundary with Tower Hamlets, and at Liverpool Street by the railway station.
However although the London Road Traffic Act 1924 removed from existing local authorities the powers to prevent the development of road passengers transport services within the London Metropolitan Area, the City of London retained most such powers. As a consequence, neither Trolleybus nor Green Line Coach services were permitted to enter the City to pick up or set down passengers. Hence the building of Aldgate (Minories) Trolleybus and Coach station as well as the complex terminal arrangements at Parliament Hill Fields. This restriction was removed by the Transport Act 1985
Cycling
Cycling infrastructure in the city is maintained by the City of London Corporation and Transport for London (TfL).
Cycle Superhighway 1 runs from Tottenham to the city. It is a signposted cycle route, passing through Stoke Newington and Hackney before entering the City south of Old Street.
Cycle Superhighway 2 runs from Stratford to the city, via Bow, Mile End, and Whitechapel. The route enters the city near Aldgate. The route runs primarily on segregated cycle track.
Cycleway 3 is an east–west bike freeway through the city. The route runs along the southern rim of the city, following the route of the Thames. Eastbound, Cycleway 3 provides cyclists with a direct, signposted cycle link to Shadwell, Poplar and Canary Wharf, and Barking. The route runs Westbound on traffic-free track to Lancaster Gate via Parliament Square, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park.
Cycleway 6 runs north–south through the city on traffic-free cycle track. The track passes Farringdon Station, the Holborn Viaduct, Ludgate Circus, Blackfriars station, and Blackfriars Bridge. Northbound, the route passes through Clerkenwell, Bloomsbury, King's Cross, and Kentish Town. The route southbound carries cyclists to Elephant and Castle.
Cycle Superhighway 7 begins in the City at an interchange with Cycleway 3. It leaves the City over Southwark Bridge and provides cyclists with an unbroken, signposted route to Colliers Wood via Elephant and Castle, Clapham, and Tooting, amongst other destinations.
Quietway 11 is a northbound continuation of Cycleway 7. It is a signposted cycle route which runs from Southwark Bridge to Hoxton, via the Barbican and Moorgate.
The Sandander Cycles and Beryl bike sharing systems operate in the City of London.
River
One London River Services pier is on the Thames in the city, Blackfriars Millennium Pier, though the Tower Millennium Pier lies adjacent to the boundary near the Tower of London. One of the Port of London's 25 safeguarded wharves, Walbrook Wharf, is adjacent to Cannon Street station, and is used by the corporation to transfer waste via the river. Swan Lane Pier, just upstream of London Bridge, is proposed to be replaced and upgraded for regular passenger services, planned to take place in 2012–2015. Before then, Tower Pier is to be extended.
There is a public riverside walk along the river bank, part of the Thames Path, which opened in stages – the route within the city was completed by the opening of a stretch at Queenhithe in 2023. The walk along Walbrook Wharf is closed to pedestrians when waste is being transferred onto barges.
Travel to work (by residents)
According to a survey conducted in March 2011, the methods by which employed residents 16–74 get to work varied widely: 48.4% go on foot; 19.5% via light rail, (i.e. the Underground, DLR, etc.); 9.2% work mainly from home; 5.8% take the train; 5.6% travel by bus, minibus, or coach; and 5.3% go by bicycle; with just 3.4% commuting by car or van, as driver or passenger.
Education
The city is home to a number of higher education institutions including: the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Cass Business School, The London Institute of Banking & Finance and parts of three of the universities in London: the Maughan Library of King's College London on Chancery Lane, the business school of London Metropolitan University, and a campus of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The College of Law has its London campus in Moorgate. Part of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry is on the Barts hospital site at West Smithfield.
The city has only one directly maintained primary school, The Aldgate School (formerly Sir John Cass's Foundation Primary School) at Aldgate (ages 4 to 11). It is a Voluntary-Aided (VA) Church of England school, maintained by the Education Service of the City of London.
City residents send their children to schools in neighbouring Local Education Authorities, such as Islington, Tower Hamlets, Westminster and Southwark.
The City controls three independent schools, City of London School (a boys' school) and City of London School for Girls in the city, and the City of London Freemen's School (co-educational day and boarding) in Ashtead, Surrey. The City of London School for Girls and City of London Freemen's School have their own preparatory departments for entrance at age seven. It is the principal sponsor of The City Academy, Hackney, City of London Academy Islington, and City of London Academy, Southwark.
Public libraries
Libraries operated by the Corporation include three lending libraries; Barbican Library, Shoe Lane Library and Artizan Street Library and Community Centre. Membership is open to all – with one official proof of address required to join.
Guildhall Library, and City Business Library are also public reference libraries, specialising in the history of London and business reference resources.
Money laundering
The City of London's role in illicit financial activity such as money laundering has earned the financial hub sobriquets like ‘The Laundromat’ and ‘Londongrad.’
London’s role as the world’s dirty money clearing house is well-documented but efforts are being made to clean up through legislation, e.g. authorising unexplained wealth orders. High-value properties are sought after by criminals and money launderers legitimising their gains by investing in the city’s prestigious real estate.
In May 2024, the UK's then deputy foreign secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said that 40% of the dirty money in the world goes through the City of London and other crown dependencies.
See also
City of London Corporation
City of London School
City of London Freemen's School
List of churches in the City of London
List of areas of London
Londinium
Street names of the City of London
References
Further reading
Richard Tames. City of London Past, London: Historical Publications, 1995. ISBN 978-0-94866-731-2
Notes
External links
City of London Corporation
Classical Architecture in the City of London |
City_of_London_Police | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Police | [
330
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Police"
] | The City of London Police is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the City of London, England, including the Middle and Inner Temples.
The force responsible for law enforcement within the remainder of the London region, outside the city, is the much larger Metropolitan Police, a separate organisation. The City of London, which is now primarily a financial business district with a small resident population but a large commuting workforce, is the historic core of London, and has an administrative history distinct from that of the rest of the metropolis, of which its separate police force is one manifestation.
The City of London area has a resident population of around 8,700, however there is also a daily influx of approximately 513,000 commuters into the city, along with thousands of tourists.
The police authority is the Common Council of the City and, unlike other territorial forces in England and Wales, there is not a police and crime commissioner replacing that police authority by way of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, but like a police and crime commissioner, the Common Council is elected.
As of 2021, the force had a workforce of 1,355 including 861 full-time police officers and 494 support staff. The force is also supported by much smaller numbers of special constables, police community support officers, and designated officers. The headquarters is located at the Guildhall (which also housed it from 1832 to 1840) and there is an additional station at Bishopsgate, with former stations including Moor Lane (destroyed in the Blitz on 29 December 1940) and Cloak Lane (closed 1965).
The City of London Police is the smallest territorial police force in England and Wales, both in terms of geographic area and head-count. The current commissioner (equivalent to the chief constable in non-London forces), appointed in 2022, is Angela McLaren.
History
To 1850
Traditionally the responsibility for policing in the city had been divided between day and night City Watch, primarily under the two sheriffs. Their responsibilities were shared with the aldermen's officers – the ward beadles – who are now purely ceremonial. It was these officers' responsibility for ensuring that the Night Watch was maintained. Policing during the day eventually came under the City Patrol, which evolved into the City Day Police, which was modelled on the Metropolitan Police. The London City Police was officially formed in 1832, before becoming the City of London Police with the passing of the City of London Police Act 1839, which gave statutory approval to the force as an independent police body and headed off attempts made to merge it with the Metropolitan Police. It moved its headquarters from the corporation's Guildhall to 26 Old Jewry in 1840.
1850–1989
The first officer of the force to die in the line of duty was in 1857, followed by 31 more to date, including three killed in the 1910 Houndsditch murders. The force was involved in the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders.
Teams of the City of London Police have participated in the Olympic games three times in the tug of war tournament. At the 1908 Summer Olympics they won the gold medal, beating a Liverpool City Police team in the final. In 1912 a joint City-Metropolitan Police team was beaten in the final by a Stockholm Police team. At the 1920 Summer Olympics a solely City of London Police British team regained its title, beating the Netherlands. This was the last time tug of war was an Olympic sport, which means the City of London Police is still the reigning Olympic champion.
The force has had special constables since at least 1911, when 1,648 were called for duty during docks strikes. There was one day in 1918, when the only warranted officer within the city of London was a special constable Several regular officers of the force were killed in Nazi German air raids over London in 1941 and 1942.
1990–2001
The early 1990s saw the IRA carry out a number of high-profile attacks in the city as part of the Troubles, such as the 1992 Baltic Exchange bombing and the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing, resulting in huge economic and infrastructural damage. As a result, the Traffic and Environmental Zone, better known as the "ring of steel", was officially established in 1993 by Owen Kelly, the then City of London Police commissioner. Commander Hugh Moore suffered a fatal heart failure in 1993 following a violent arrest.
Some aspects of the ring of steel were 'stepped down' in the late 1990s following the cessation of IRA hostilities but stepped up again after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The force's headquarters relocated to Wood Street in 2001.
2001–present
The City of London Special Constabulary were awarded the Ferrers Trophy in 2006 for the efforts of their officers after the 7 July 2005 London bombings. The award is given annually to police volunteers, for exceptional dedication and innovation. It was the first time in the award's history that an entire special constabulary received the trophy. In 2010 the same trophy was awarded to Special Constable Patrick Rarden of the Honourable Artillery Company Detachment (part of the City of London Special Constabulary) for using his banking skills and experience to help train colleagues and provide invaluable assistance to solve fraud cases. 2002 saw the most recent City officer to die in the line of duty.
In 2015, the City of London Police mounted unit also escorted the exhumed remains of King Richard III through the city of Leicester from St Nicholas Church to Leicester Cathedral, en route to their reburial.
In May 2020, City of London Police officers stopped a vehicle driven by a man who had recently been interviewed by Channel 4 about a prior instance of police harassment, who they incorrectly accused of concealing drugs. After smashing his car window, officers strip-searched him, detained him for 21 hours and impounded his car. Following an investigation, City of London Police acknowledged failings in their treatment of the man, including returning the vehicle to him without first removing the broken glass, but declined to apologise and said his arrest had been lawful. In March 2021 the Independent Office for Police Conduct ordered City of London Police to conduct a new investigation into the incident, which resulted in the City of London Police having to apologise to the driver and identified 'organisational and individual learning'.
List of commissioners
Daniel Whittle Harvey (1839–1863)
Colonel Sir James Fraser (1863–1890)
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Smith (1890–1902)
Captain Sir William Nott-Bower (1902–1925)
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Hugh Turnbull (1925–1950)
Colonel Sir Arthur Young (1950–1971)
James Page (1971–1977)
Peter Marshall (1977–1985)
Owen Kelly (1985–1994)
William Taylor (1994–1998)
Perry Nove (1998–2002)
James Hart (2002–2006)
Mike Bowron (2006–2011)
Adrian Leppard (2011–2015)
Ian Dyson (2016–2022)
Angela McLaren (2022–present)
Organisation
The City Police is organised into five directorates:
Economic Crime Directorate
Crime Directorate
Uniformed Policing Directorate
Information and Intelligence Directorate
Business Support Directorate
Because of the City's role as a world financial centre, the City of London Police has developed a great deal of expertise in dealing with fraud and "is the acknowledged lead force within the UK for economic crime investigation." The Economic Crime Directorate includes:
Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU)
Insurance Fraud Department (IFED)
National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) and Action Fraud
Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU)
Economic Crime Academy (ECA) responsible for delivering counter fraud and economic crime training both nationally and internationally
The Directorate also formerly had an Overseas Anti-Corruption Unit (OACU), however this unit (along with the Metropolitan Police's Proceeds of Corruption Unit) was transferred to the NCA in 2015 and renamed the International Corruption Unit (ICU).
Leadership structure
Commissioner – Angela McLaren
Assistant Commissioner (Operational Policing) – Paul Betts
Assistant Commissioner (Fraud and Cyber Crime) – Peter O'Doherty
Chief Operating Officer - Mari Ladu
Commander (Operations and Security) – Umer Khan
Commander (National Coordinator for Economic and Cyber Crime) – Nik Adams
Uniform
Whereas the majority of British police forces have white metal cap badges and buttons, those of the City Police are brass. The force also have red and white chequered sleeve and cap bands (red and white being the colours of the City of London), which in most other British police forces are black and white. In formal uniform, female officers wear a red and white cravat.
Their helmet (worn by male constables and sergeants) has altered little since its introduction in 1865 and has a crest instead of the white metal boss worn on the Metropolitan Police helmet. The "helmet plate" or badge is the City of London coat of arms; this is unusual for a police force in England and Wales in that it does not include St Edward's Crown, neither does it have the Brunswick Star, which is used on most other police helmets in England and Wales.
On state and ceremonial occasions, the commissioner and assistant commissioners wear a special court dress uniform with a gold aiguillette and a cocked hat adorned with white swan's feathers; other than on these occasions, they wear standard uniform.
Equipment and vehicles
City of London police officers carry warrant cards. Like most other police forces in Great Britain, City of London police officers are not routinely armed, but some officers have received firearms training and are authorised firearms officers. City of London police equipment includes PAVA irritant spray, batons, and handcuffs. Many officers are also equipped with the Taser electroshock weapon; according to the police force's reported figures, Tasers have been deployed (including drawing or "red-dotting") about seven times per month. In the September 2018 to September 2020 period, the City of London Police recorded 11 incidents of police officers firing Tasers on suspects.
The City of London Police maintains a fleet of police vehicles, including SUVs, compact cars, motorcycle, and vans, as well as one horsebox. All of the force's response vehicles, including armed response vehicles (ARVs) carry a defibrillator and first aid supplies, for use in the event of an emergency.
Mounted unit
The City of London Police maintains a mounted police unit. In addition to regular duties, the horses of the mounted unit have been used to trample wildflower seeds at the Barbican Wildlife Garden at the request of the community wildlife gardeners. The horses' ceremonial duties include participation in Trooping the Colour and the Lord Mayor's Show.
Ranks
The ranks from constable to chief superintendent are the same as all other British police forces. The three senior ranks are similar to those used by the Metropolitan Police.
Insignia
Constables and sergeants display collar numbers on their rank badges (in the range 1 to 150 for sergeants and 151 to 999 for constables). Officers between the ranks of inspector and chief superintendent (who do not have collar numbers) display their warrant numbers instead. All officers also wear name badges with their rank and surname (e.g. Police Constable John Smith would wear a badge displaying "Constable Smith").
The City of London police also has a special constabulary with seven ranks of officers. As with regular officers, constables and sergeants display collar numbers on their rank badges (in the range 1001 to 1099 for sergeants and 1101 to 1299 for constables) and officers between the ranks of inspector and chief superintendent display their warrant numbers, in all cases followed by the letters "SC". The rank badge for a special commander is identical to that for a regular commander. Name badges are identical to those worn by regular officers (e.g. Special Sergeant Mary Jones would wear a badge displaying "Sergeant Jones").
As well as a PCSO rank
Workforce
The following is the current released workforce data. The "chief officer" category includes the commissioner, assistant commissioner and commanders, and the "special constable" category includes all special constable ranks.
Special Constabulary
As of December 2023 it consists of 47 volunteer officers, led by a special chief inspector, assisted by 2 special inspectors, 6 special sergeants and 38 special constables. The majority undertake duties during evenings and nights in support of the regular force in dealing with issues arising from the busy night-time economy of the city. However, other officers perform more specialist roles in the force's other directorates including supporting the National Lead Force (NLF) in the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) with a number of officers joining the national Cyber Volunteering initiative.
In 2023 the City of London Police undertook a major restructure of the COLP Special Constabulary, with the ranks of Special Commander and Special Superintendent being abolished and the chief officer now being Special Chief Inspector who reports to the Chief Superintendent for Local Policing who in turn answers to the Commander for Ops and Security.
Many officers have specialist training and perform duties as response drivers, "Level 2" public order officers and cycle officers. As in all forces, special constables are expected to commit to a minimum of 200 hours' duty each year, and in return receive out-of-pocket expenses and free travel on the Transport for London network. They receive no pay.
Uniform and equipment is identical to that of regular (full-time) police officers. Officers of the Honourable Artillery Company Detachment of Special Constabulary CLSC (originally part of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary but moved to the City force on reorganisation) wear the title "HAC" when in formal uniform. Special Constables have four-digit collar numbers beginning 11 or 12, and Special Sergeants have four-digit collar numbers beginning 10.
Chief Officers of City of London Special Constabulary
Colonel Vickers Dunfee CBE (1911-1914)
Colonel JW Benningfield OBE (1914-1918)
Colonel Vickers Dunfee CBE (1918-1927)
Colonel RT Blackham (1927-1928)
WG Lovell CBE (1928-1933)
GT Foxon OBE (1933-1944)
W Penman MBE (1944-1952)
Colonel A Woods MBE (1952-1966)
HE Wright MBE (1966-1974)
Major SC Holmes MBE (1975-1982)
F AD Ralfe (1983-1988)
J Hurcombe-Blight MBE (1988-1999)
B Willis (1999-2004)
Ian Miller MBE (2004-2016)
James Phipson (2016-2023)
Philip Nastri (2023-present
Other corporation policing bodies
The City of London Corporation, the local authority for the city, also operates further limited policing bodies. These bodies are not part of the City of London Police:
City of London market constabularies
Hampstead Heath Constabulary,
Epping Forest Keepers
See also
Fraud Squad
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom
List of law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories
Project Griffin
References
External links
Official website
City of London Police at HMICFRS |
2019_European_Parliament_election_in_Lombardy | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election_in_Lombardy | [
330
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election_in_Lombardy"
] | The 2019 European Parliament election took place in Italy on 26 May 2019.
In Lombardy Lega Nord came first with 43.4% of the vote (country-level result 34.3%) and more than 20pp than the Democratic Party, which came second with 23.1%. The Five Star Movement came third with 9.3%, ahead of Forza Italia (8.7%), Brothers of Italy (5.5%), More Europe (3.1%), Green Europe (2.5%) and The Left (1.3%).
Results
Source: Ministry of the Interior
== References == |
Forza_Italia_(2013) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forza_Italia_(2013) | [
330
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forza_Italia_(2013)"
] | Forza Italia (FI; lit. 'Forward Italy' or 'Come on Italy' or 'Let's Go Italy') is a centre-right political party in Italy, whose ideology includes elements of liberal conservatism, Christian democracy, liberalism and populism. FI is a member of the European People's Party. Silvio Berlusconi (former Prime Minister of Italy, 1994–1995, 2001–2006, and 2008–2011) was the party's leader and president until his death in 2023. The party has since been led by Antonio Tajani (former President of the European Parliament, 2017–2019), who had been vice president and coordinator and now functions as secretary. Other leading members include Elisabetta Casellati (former President of the Senate, 2018–2022).
The party branched out of the People of Freedom (PdL) in 2013, and is a revival of the original Forza Italia (FI), founded in 1994 and disbanded in 2009, when it was merged with National Alliance (AN) and several minor parties to form the PdL. FI is a smaller party than the early PdL, which suffered three significant splits: Future and Freedom in 2010, Brothers of Italy in 2012, and the New Centre-Right in 2013. In the 2018 general election FI was overtaken by the League as the largest party of the centre-right coalition, and in the 2022 general election it became the third largest in the coalition, as Brothers of Italy (FdI) became the new dominant party of the Italian centre-right.
After participating in the national unity government led by Mario Draghi, FI joined the government majority of the Meloni Cabinet in October 2022 with five ministers; these ministers include Tajani as deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister.
History
Background and foundation
The new FI, announced in June 2013, was launched on 18 September and the PdL was formally dissolved into the party on 16 November. The day before a group of dissidents (mainly Christian democrats), led by Berlusconi's former protégé Angelino Alfano, had broken away by announcing the foundation of the alternative New Centre-Right (NCD). Another group of PdL members, led by former mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno, had left the party earlier to form Italy First and would later join Brothers of Italy (FdI). According to Berlusconi, the PdL would become a coalition of centre-right parties, including the new FI, Lega Nord (LN), the NCD, the FdI, etc.
Among the supporters of the return to FI, the so-called "hawks" and self-proclaimed "loyalists", a leading role was played by Raffaele Fitto, who, despite the common Christian-democratic background, was a long-time rival of Alfano. Loyalists included Antonio Martino, Renato Brunetta, Denis Verdini, Mariastella Gelmini, Mara Carfagna, Daniela Santanchè, Niccolò Ghedini and Daniele Capezzone, while Maurizio Gasparri, Altero Matteoli and Paolo Romani tried to mediate, but finally joined the new FI. The symbol of FI made its return in the 2013 Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol provincial elections, although in a regional fashion: "Forza Trentino" and "Forza Alto Adige" (in list with Lega Nord Alto Adige – Südtirol).
On 27 November, the Senate approved Berlusconi's expulsion, following the leader's conviction for tax evasion in August, when Berlusconi was sentenced to four years of imprisonment, the last three being automatically pardoned. The day before FI had joined the opposition to Enrico Letta's government, which was still supported by Alfano's NCD instead. The latter voted against Berlusconi's expulsion, but since then completely parted ways from FI.
Internal struggles and Toti's rise
As of the end of December 2013, Berlusconi was set to appoint two vice presidents: Antonio Tajani (European Commissioner and vice president of the European People's Party) and Giovanni Toti (former editor of Studio Aperto and TG4, two news programs of Berlusconi's Mediaset). As a result of the resentment by the party's old guard, notably including Fitto, on the alleged appointment of Toti also as coordinator-at-large, Berlusconi appointed him merely "political counselor" to the party.
In the 2014 European Parliament election, FI obtained 16.8% of the vote and had 13 MEPs elected, including Toti in the North-West, Elisabetta Gardini in the North-East, Tajani (who had first been elected to the European Parliament in 1994) in the Centre and, most notably, Fitto (who garnered more than 180,000 votes in his native Apulia alone) in the South.
Fitto, the strongest backer of Berlusconi's leadership in late 2013, became his main internal challenger by mid 2014. After months of bickering with Berlusconi over the so-called "Nazareno pact" with Matteo Renzi, leader of the Democratic Party and Prime Minister, in February 2015, Fitto launched his own faction, named "Rebuilders". Fitto's supporters included Capezzone, Maurizio Bianconi, Rocco Palese, Saverio Romano, Cinzia Bonfrisco, Augusto Minzolini and most Apulian MPs.
In September 2014, FI was admitted into the European People's Party (EPP), inheriting the PdL's membership.
2015 regional elections and splits
In the run-up of the 2015 regional elections, the party was riven in internal disputes and was divided mainly in three groups: Berlusconi's loyalists, Fitto's "Rebuilders" and nostalgics of the "Nazareno pact". The latter were led by Verdini and some of them, notably including Bondi, were openly pro-Renzi. Bondi, a former Berlusconi loyalist, and his partner Manuela Repetti left the party in March, while other disgruntled Verdiniani propped up the government from time to time. Berlusconi chose Toti as candidate for president in Liguria, confirmed incumbent Stefano Caldoro as the party's standard-bearer in Campania and renewed their support of LN's Luca Zaia in Veneto. However, Berlusconi and Fitto did not find an agreement on the composition of the slates in Apulia, where the two wings of the party fielded opposing candidates for president, and similar problems arose in Tuscany, Verdini's (and Renzi's) home region and stronghold.
Two weeks before the elections, Fitto left FI and the European People's Party group in the European Parliament in order to join the European Conservatives and Reformists and start his own party, the Conservatives and Reformists (CR). By mid July, when CR was formally established as a party, nine deputies, ten senators and another MEP had left FI to follow Fitto.
In the elections, the party lost many votes, mainly to the LN, and gained more than 10% only in three regions out seven (including Apulia, where the party's candidate did worse than Fitto's one, while, in Veneto, a former stronghold, FI barely reached 6%), but, thanks to the LN's strong showing, Toti was elected President of Liguria.
Another split occurred in late July, when Verdini led his group out of the party and launched the Liberal Popular Alliance (ALA).
Toward a new centre-right coalition
In the 2016 Milan municipal election, FI found a strong candidate for mayor in Stefano Parisi, a former director-general of Confindustria and CEO of Fastweb, who pulled the party to 20.2% (virtually double than the LN's score), but narrowly lost to his Democratic opponent in the run-off, Giuseppe Sala. After the election, FI was basically divided in two camps: one led by Parisi, who did not officially joined the party and proposed a more traditional centre-right "liberal-popular" path, and the other led by Toti, who had formed a strong partnership with Roberto Maroni and Luca Zaia, the LN's presidents of Lombardy and Veneto, and was supportive of a full-scale alliance with LN and, possibly, of its leader Matteo Salvini's bid to become the leader of the centre-right coalition. In November, when it was clear that Parisi would not come to terms with Salvini, Berlusconi disowned Parisi, who responded by launching his own Energies for Italy (EpI) party.
Since then, the party has strengthened its position in parliament, thanks to an influx of MPs from other parties, including several returning after years of dissent. In August 2016, the party was re-joined by two senators, including Renato Schifani from the NCD and another from the ALA. In November came Mario Mauro and his Populars for Italy (PpI). Since June 2017, the party was joined by three deputies and one senator from Popular Alternative (AP, ex-NCD), one deputy and one senator from the Mixed Group (ex-Five Star Movement, M5S), one deputy from Direction Italy (DI, ex-CR), one from Solidary Democracy (Demo.S), one from Act! (F!, ex-LN) and two senators from the ALA. Particularly, Enrico Costa left AP and resigned from minister of Regional Affairs in Paolo Gentiloni's centre-left government, aiming at forming a "liberal centre" with FI. In the context of a more united centre-right, Costa might form the "fourth leg" of the coalition, after the LN, FI and the FdI, by uniting other AP splinters, DI, F!, Identity and Action (IdeA), the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), the Union of the Centre (UdC), and the Pensioners' Party (PP), all variously affiliated with FI and the centre-right. Not all FI members were happy with all that; in fact, two senators and one deputy, Daniela Santanchè, switched to the FdI.
In January 2017, Antonio Tajani was elected President of the European Parliament, the first Italian since Emilio Colombo (1977–1979).
2018 general and 2019 European Parliament elections
In the 2018 general election, FI obtained 14.0% of the vote and was overtaken by the LN for the first time as the largest party of the centre-right. After the election, long-time FI senator Elisabetta Casellati, was appointed President of the Senate, with centre-right's and M5S' support. After months of negotiations, the centre-right fragmented as the LN chose to team up with the M5S and formed a yellow-green government, also dubbed as Government of Change, under Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
In July, Berlusconi appointed Tajani, who had been previously tipped as candidate for Prime Minister in the run-up of the 2018 general election, vice president and Adriano Galliani coordinator of departments, in an effort to restructure the party, which was shrinking in opinion polls.
2019 European Parliament election and internal developments
Berlusconi decided to run in the 2019 European Parliament election as FI's top candidate in all Italian constituencies, except for central Italy. In the election, FI received only 8.8% of the vote, its worst result ever. Berlusconi was one of the party's elected representatives to the European Parliament, and the oldest member of the assembly.
In June, Berlusconi appointed Toti and Carfagna national coordinators, with the goal of reforming and relaunching the party. However, after a few weeks, Toti left the party in opposition to Berlusconi and launched Cambiamo!. One of the main reasons for the split was Toti's support of an alliance with the League and the Brothers of Italy (FdI) at national-level, about which Berlusconi was reticent and Carfagna against.
Draghi's national unity government
In January 2021, Conte's second government fell after losing support from Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva party. Subsequently, President Mattarella appointed Mario Draghi to form a cabinet, which won support from FI, the League, the PD and the M5S. FI was given three ministers in the new government: Renato Brunetta at Public Administration, Mariastella Gelmini at Regional Affairs and Mara Carfagna at the South.
In July 2022, the M5S did not participate in a Senate's confidence vote on a government bill. Prime Minister Draghi offered his resignation, which was rejected by President Mattarella. After a few days, Draghi sought a confidence vote again to secure the government majority supporting his cabinet, while rejecting the proposal put forward by Lega and FI of a new government without the M5S. In that occasion, FI as well as the M5S, Lega and FdI, did not participate in the vote. Consequently, Draghi tendered his final resignation to President Mattarella, who dissolved the houses of Parliament, leading to a snap election. The party's abstention led some leading members of FI, notably including the three ministers Brunetta, Gelmini and Carfagna, to leave the party.
Meloni government and Berlusconi's death
In the 2022 general election, FI, which was part of the winning centre-right coalition, won 8.1% of the vote, compared to FdI's 26.0% and the League's 8.8%. As a result, Giorgia Meloni, leader of FdI, accepted the task of forming a new government and announced the Meloni Cabinet, which assumed official functions after each ministers were sworn in on 22 October. FI joined the new government with five ministers, notably including Tajani as deputy prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs.
On 12 June 2023, Berlusconi died, leaving the party's future in uncertainty. The Italian government, led by Meloni, proclaimed a national day of mourning for the day of the funeral, also ordering that flags be flown half mast for three days. On 14 June, Berlusconi's state funeral was officiated in the Ambrosian Rite in the Milan Cathedral by Mario Delpini, the Archbishop of Milan; the funeral was attended, among others, by President Mattarella, Meloni and the entire government, as well as opposition leaders and foreign heads of state or government.
A few days after Berlusconi's death, the party announced that a national council would be summoned before the end of summer in order to appoint an acting president and determine the road map toward the national congress that would elect the new party's leadership.
Leadership of Tajani and 2024 EP election
In July 2023, the party's national council amended the party's statute by removing the post of president, which would be forever associated with Berlusconi (including in the party's symbol), and introducing the post of secretary. Contextually, Tajani was unanimously elected secretary.
In February 2024, the party held its first national congress. Tajani was unanimously re-elected secretary, along with four deputy secretaries (Stefano Benigni, Deborah Bergamini, Alberto Cirio and Roberto Occhiuto), while Renato Schifani was appointed president of the national council.
In the run-up of the 2024 European Parliament election, FI formed a joint list with Us Moderates, signed an electoral pact with the South Tyrolean People's Party and welcomed candidates of the Sardinian Reformers. Additionally, FI or individual FI candidates were endorsed by Coraggio Italia, the Movement for Autonomy, Future Sicily, Christian Democracy, New Times – United Populars, other minor or local Christian-democratic groups and the Transnational Radical Party Moreover, a number of former members of Lega Nord, notably including Flavio Tosi (former leader of Liga Veneta, now leader of FI in Veneto), Alessandro Sorte (leader of FI in Lombardy), Roberto Cota (former president of Piedmont), Marco Reguzzoni (former floor leader of Lega Nord in the Chamber of Deputies), Massimiliano Bastoni (former member of Lega Nord's right-wing and leading Padanian nationalist), Matteo Gazzini (outgoing MEP and leader of FI in South Tyrol) and Stefania Zambelli (outgoing MEP), formed, within the party, a coalition named "Forza Nord".
In September 2024, FI was admitted into the International Democracy Union.
Ideology and factions
FI's ideology is similar to that of its predecessor, The People of Freedom (PdL), a big tent centre-right party including Christian democrats, liberals, conservatives, and social democrats. FI presents itself as a "liberal", "Catholic", "reformist", and "moderate" alternative to the political left in alliance with the political right but not rightist itself. The PdL's break-up and the exit of the New Centre-Right (NCD) left FI with a more liberal base. Generally speaking, with the long-prepared return to FI, Berlusconi aimed at returning to the party's "liberal roots"; in doing so, he reinforced his ties with those liberals, like Antonio Martino, who had been marginalised in the PdL, while losing many of its Christian democrats and conservatives to the NCD. After NCD's internal struggles, its transformation into Popular Alternative (AP) and several splits, some NCD conservatives have returned to FI. In 2015, FI lost several liberal MPs, who formed the Liberal Popular Alliance in support to Matteo Renzi's cabinet.
FI includes several factions and ideological trends. The party's leading faction was long not an organised one: named the "magic circle" by journalists (a reference to a defunct faction within Lega Nord), it was composed of Berlusconi's closest allies, notably including Giovanni Toti, Mariarosaria Rossi, Deborah Bergamini, and Francesca Pascale (Berlusconi's partner). Since being elected President of Liguria in 2015, Toti became more autonomous from Berlusconi and more and more a strong supporter of closer ties with Lega Nord. In 2018, Toti lost the title of "political counselor" (the closest thing to a number two so far) and Berlusconi appointed Antonio Tajani as vice president. In 2019, Toti finally left the party.
On social issues, most FI politicians are conservative, even though a minority of them can be considered liberal. According to an article from Corriere della Sera, on the so-called "ethical issues" like abortion and LGBT rights, the party aimed at returning to its 1994's original values, including "liberalism, the socialist roots, even the radical component", respected its MPs' "freedom of conscience", and was open to civil unions, while NCD's positions were "closer to those of the European traditionalist right". In October 2014, Berlusconi personally endorsed Renzi's proposals on civil unions for gays and a quicker path to citizenship to Italian-born children of immigrants; however, the party remained socially conservative. FI clarified that it considers marriage solely as the union between a man and a woman. The majority of its members voted against civil unions, whereas the NCD voted in favour. Moreover, the party is critical of teaching gender studies in schools. Party members are generally opposed to abortion and seek to limit access to them and euthanasia. The party has criticised illegal immigration and the way it has been managed by centre-left coalition governments. It has also declared itself against the introduction of jus soli in Italy. In addition, the party is opposed to drug liberalisation, which it considers potentially negative for health and not useful for solving criminal matters. When FI's predecessors were in power, they restricted the legislation on the matter, with the Fini-Giovanardi law. Finally, FI considers Italy as a country with a Christian civilisation and favours displaying Christian symbols in public places.
On economic issues, FI is more supportive of the private rather than the public sector. It aims at representing business owners' interests and has often advocated for a reduction of taxation, red tape, and public expenditure. One of its latest proposals is the introduction of a flat tax. In addition, FI is more supportive of free trade agreements rather than protectionism.
On foreign policy, the party supports the European Union (EU), despite elements of criticism, NATO, and a close relationship with the United States. FI also seeks good relations with Russia, especially in defence of the interests of Italian companies that export to the Russian market. The party is a member of the Europeanist, centre-right European People's Party (EPP). Whereas most of its members are supportive of the European Union (EU), the most notable example being Tajani (President of the European Parliament from 2017 to 2019), others are slightly Eurosceptic and have criticised the Euro and Germany's role in the EU. The party refuses the "Eurosceptic" label, while supporting a reform of the EU. In 2017 Berlusconi reconciled with Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and one of the EPP leaders, after years of hostility, re-affirming his support to the European integration and his hostility towards populism.
Popular support
The electoral results of the FI in general (Chamber of Deputies) and European Parliament elections since 2014 are shown in the chart below.
Election results
Italian Parliament
European Parliament
Regional Councils
Leadership
2013–2023
President: Silvio Berlusconi (2013–2023)
Vice President: Antonio Tajani (2018–2023)
Coordinator: Giovanni Toti (2019), Mara Carfagna (2019), Antonio Tajani (2021–2023)
Deputy Coordinator: Anna Maria Bernini (2021–2023), Alessandro Cattaneo (2023)
Political Counselor: Giovanni Toti (2014–2018), Renato Schifani (2020–2023)
Spokesperson: Deborah Bergamini (2014–2018), Giorgio Mulé (2018–2023)
Organisational secretary: Gregorio Fontana (2015–2023)
2023–present
Secretary: Antonio Tajani (2021–present)
First Deputy Secretary: Deborah Bergamini (2024–present)
Deputy Secretary: Stefano Benigni (2024–present), Alberto Cirio (2024–present), Roberto Occhiuto (2024–present)
President of the National Council: Renato Schifani (2024–present)
President of the National Board: Letizia Moratti (2023–present)
Spokesperson: Raffaele Nevi (2023–present)
Organisational secretary: Francesco Battistoni (2023–present)
Parliament
Party Leader in the Chamber of Deputies: Renato Brunetta (2013–2018), Mariastella Gelmini (2018–2021), Roberto Occhiuto (2021), Paolo Barelli (2021–2022), Alessandro Cattaneo (2022–2023), Paolo Barelli (2023–present)
Party Leader in the Senate: Paolo Romani (2013–2018), Anna Maria Bernini (2018–2022), Licia Ronzulli (2022–2023), Maurizio Gasparri (2023–present)
Party Leader in the European Parliament: Raffaele Baldassarre (2013–2014), Elisabetta Gardini (2014–2019), Antonio Tajani (2019–2022), Fulvio Martusciello (2022–present)
Symbols
See also
Berlusconism
Notes
References
External links
Official website |
Lauryn_Hill | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauryn_Hill | [
331
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauryn_Hill#Early_life"
] | Lauryn Noelle Hill (born May 26, 1975) is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, and actress. She is often credited for breaking barriers for female rappers, popularizing melodic rap, and pioneering neo soul for mainstream audiences. In addition to being named one of the 50 Great Voices by NPR, Hill was listed as one of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone. In 2015, she was named the greatest female rapper by Billboard. Her other accolades include eight Grammy Awards—the most for any female rapper.
Hill began her career as a teen actress. She landed a role in the soap opera As the World Turns (1991), and starred in the off-Broadway play Club XII alongside MC Lyte. Her performance as Rita in the film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993) was widely praised. Hill gained further prominence as the frontwoman of the hip hop trio Fugees, which she formed in 1990 with fellow musicians Wyclef Jean and Pras. Their second album, The Score (1996), peaked atop the Billboard 200, and led her to become the first woman to win the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album. The album included the hit singles "Killing Me Softly", "Fu-Gee-La", and "Ready or Not". As a soloist, she made her debut guest appearance on Nas's 1996 single "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)". After the Fugees' disbandment the following year, Hill wrote, produced, and directed the music video for Aretha Franklin's single "A Rose Is Still a Rose", and co-produced for Whitney Houston's album My Love Is Your Love (1997).
Her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), was met with widespread critical acclaim. Its release made Hill the first female rapper to both debut atop the Billboard 200 and receive a diamond certification by Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); it remains one of the best-selling albums of all time worldwide and was ranked number one on Apple Music's 100 Best Albums list. Its lead single, "Doo Wop (That Thing)" debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, and was listed as a Song of the Century by the RIAA. Its follow-up singles, "Ex-Factor" and "Everything Is Everything" both peaked within the top 40 on the chart. At the 41st Grammy Awards, she set the record for the most nominations in one night for a female, and became the first rapper to win Album of the Year.
In 1999, Hill became the first rapper to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, received a President's Award from the NAACP for her humanitarian work, and released the Bob Marley duet "Turn Your Lights Down Low". Furthermore, she produced and wrote Mary J. Blige's single "All That I Can Say". Her work as a producer on Santana's album Supernatural (1999) earned her a second-consecutive Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Her live album of newly recorded material, MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 (2002), peaked within the top five on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum by the RIAA. Ultimately, Hill dropped out of the public eye, only periodically releasing songs such as "Black Rage (Sketch)" and "Nobody". In 2023, Hill co-wrote the single "Praise Jah in the Moonlight" for her son YG Marley.
Since the 2000s, her music has been frequently sampled by numerous artists, while Hill herself has been inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, the Grammy Hall of Fame, and the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.
Life and career
1975–1990: Early life
Lauryn Noelle Hill was born on May 26, 1975, in East Orange, New Jersey. Her mother, Valerie Hill, was an English teacher and her father, Mal Hill, a computer and management consultant. She has one older brother named Malaney who was born in 1972. Her Baptist family moved to New York for a short period before settling in South Orange.
Hill has said of her musically oriented family: "there were so many records, so much music constantly being played. My mother played the piano, my father sang, and we were always surrounded by music." Her father sang in local nightclubs and at weddings. While growing up, Hill frequently listened to Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Gladys Knight; years later she recalled playing Marvin Gaye's What's Going On repeatedly until she fell asleep to it.
In middle school, Hill performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" before a basketball game. Due to its popularity, subsequent games featured a recording of her rendition. In 1988, Hill appeared as an Amateur Night contestant on It's Showtime at the Apollo. She sang her version of the Smokey Robinson track "Who's Lovin' You", garnering an initially harsh reaction from the crowd. She persevered through the performance.
Hill attended Columbia High School, where she was a member of the track team, cheerleading squad and was a classmate of actor Zach Braff. She also took violin lessons, went to dance class, and founded the school's gospel choir. Academically, she took advanced placement classes and received primarily 'A' grades. School officials recognized her as a leader among the student body. Later recalling her education, Hill commented, "I had a love for—I don't know if it was necessarily for academics, more than it just was for achieving, period. If it was academics, if it was sports, if it was music, if it was dance, whatever it was, I was always driven to do a lot in whatever field or whatever area I was focusing on at the moment."
1991–1993: Career beginnings
While a freshman in high school, through mutual friends, Prakazrel "Pras" Michel approached Hill about a music group he was creating. Hill and Pras began under the name Translator Crew. They came up with this name because they wanted to rhyme in different languages. Another female vocalist was soon replaced by Michel's cousin, multi-instrumentalist Wyclef Jean. The group began performing in local showcases and high school talent shows. Hill was initially only a singer, but then learned to rap too; instead of modeling herself on female rappers like Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte, she preferred male rappers like Ice Cube and developed her flow from listening to them. Hill later said, "I remember doing my homework in the bathroom stalls of hip-hop clubs."
While growing up, Hill took acting lessons in Manhattan. She began her acting career in 1991 appearing with Jean in Club XII, MC Lyte's Off-Broadway hip-hop rendering of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. While the play was not a success, an agent noticed her. Later that year, Hill began appearing on the soap opera As the World Turns in a recurring role as troubled teenager Kira Johnson. She subsequently co-starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg in the 1993 release Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, playing Rita Louise Watson, an inner-city Catholic school teenager with a surly, rebellious attitude. In it, she performed the songs "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" (a duet with Tanya Blount) and "Joyful, Joyful".
Director Bill Duke credited Hill with improvising a rap in a scene: "None of that was scripted. That was all Lauryn. She was amazing." Critic Roger Ebert called her "the girl with the big joyful voice", although he thought her talent was wasted, while Rolling Stone said she "performed marvelously against type ... in the otherwise perfunctory [film]". Hill also appeared in Steven Soderbergh's 1993 motion picture King of the Hill, in a minor but pivotal role as a 1930s gum-popping elevator operator. Soderbergh biographer Jason Wood described her as supplying one of the warmest scenes in the film. Hill graduated from Columbia High School in 1993.
1994–1996: Success with the Fugees and motherhood
Pras, Hill and Jean renamed their group Fugees, a derivative of the word "refugee", which was a derogatory term for Haitian Americans. Hill began a romantic relationship with Jean. The Fugees, who signed a contract with Columbia/Ruffhouse Records in 1993, became known for their genre blending, particularly of reggae, rock and soul, which was first experimented on their debut album, Blunted on Reality, released in 1994. It reached No. 62 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart but overall sold poorly and was met by poor critical reviews due to their management's insistence they adopt gangsta rap attitudes. Although the album made little impact, Hill's rapping on "Some Seek Stardom" was seen as a highlight. Within the group, she was frequently referred to by the nickname "L. Boogie". Hill's image and artistry, as well as her full, rich, raspy alto voice, placed her at the forefront of the band, with some fans urging her to begin a solo career.
The Fugees' second album, The Score (1996), peaked at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and stayed in the top ten of that chart for over half a year. It sold about seven million copies in the United States and more than 20 million copies worldwide. In the 1996 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, The Score came second in the list of best albums and three of its tracks placed within the top 20 best singles. It won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, and was later included on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The Score garnered praise for being a strong alternative to the gangsta idiom, and Hill stated, "We're trying to do something positive with the music because it seems like only the negative is rising to the top these days. It only takes a drop of purity to clean a cesspool."
Singles from The Score included "Fu-Gee-La" and "Ready or Not", which highlighted Hill's singing and rapping abilities, and the Bob Marley cover "No Woman, No Cry". Her rendition of "Killing Me Softly" became the group's breakout hit. Buttressed by what Rolling Stone publications later called Hill's "evocative" vocal line and her "amazing pipes", the track became pervasive on pop, R&B, hip hop, and adult contemporary radio formats. It won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. On the album, Hill combined African-American music and Caribbean music influences with socially conscious lyrics. Newsweek mentioned Hill's "irresistibly cute looks" and proclaimed her "the most powerful new voice in rap".
When she was 21 years old, Hill was still living at home with her parents. She had been enrolled at Columbia University during this period, and considered majoring in history as she became a sophomore, but left after about a year of total studies once sales of The Score went into the millions. In 1996, she responded to a false rumor on The Howard Stern Show that she had made a racist comment on MTV, saying "How can I possibly be a racist? My music is universal. And I believe in God. If I believe in God, then I have to love all of God's creations. There can be no segregation."
In 1996, Hill founded the Refugee Project, a non-profit outreach organization that sought to transform the attitudes and behavior of at-risk urban youth. Part of this was Camp Hill, which offered stays in the Catskill Mountains for such youngsters; another was production of an annual Halloween haunted house in East Orange. Hill also raised money for Haitian refugees, supported clean water well-building projects in Kenya and Uganda, and staged a rap concert in Harlem to promote voter registration. A 1997 benefit event for the Refugee Project introduced a board of trustees for the organization that included Sean Combs, Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes, Spike Lee, and others as members.
In 1997, the Fugees split to work on solo projects, which Jean later blamed on his tumultuous relationship with Hill and the fact he married his wife Claudinette while still involved with Hill. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1996 Hill had met Rohan Marley, a son of Bob Marley and a former University of Miami football player. Hill subsequently began a relationship with him, while still also involved with Jean. Hill became pregnant in late 1996, and on August 3, 1997, Marley and Hill's first child, Zion David, was born. The couple lived in Hill's childhood house in South Orange after she bought her parents a new house down the street.
Hill had a cameo appearance in the 1997 film Hav Plenty. In 1998, Hill took up another small, but important role in the film Restaurant; Entertainment Weekly praised her portrayal of the protagonist's pregnant former girlfriend as bringing vigor to the film.
1997–1999: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Hill recorded her solo record The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill from late 1997 through June 1998 at Tuff Gong Studios in Jamaica. The title was inspired by the book The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) by Carter G. Woodson and The Education of Sonny Carson, a film and autobiographical novel. The album featured contributions from D'Angelo, Carlos Santana, Mary J. Blige and the then-unknown John Legend. Wyclef Jean initially did not support Hill recording a solo album, but eventually offered his production help; Hill turned him down.
Several songs on the album concerned her frustration with the Fugees; "I Used to Love Him" dealt with the breakdown of the relationship between Hill and Wyclef Jean. Other songs such as "To Zion" spoke about her decision to have her first baby (Zion David Marley, the first of five she was to have with Rohan Marley), even though some at the time encouraged her to have an abortion so to not interfere with her blossoming career. Indeed, Hill's pregnancy revived her from a period of writer's block.
In terms of production, Hill collaborated with a group of musicians known as New Ark, consisting of Vada Nobles, Rasheem Pugh, Tejumold Newton, and Johari Newton. Hill later said that she wanted to "write songs that lyrically move me and have the integrity of reggae and the knock of hip-hop and the instrumentation of classic soul" and that the production on the album was intended to make the music sound raw and not computer-aided. Hill spoke of pressure from her label to emulate Prince, wherein all tracks would be credited as written and produced by the artist with little outside help. She also wanted to be appreciated as an auteur as much as Jean had within the Fugees. She also saw a feminist cause: "But step out and try and control things and there are doubts. This is a very sexist industry. They'll never throw the 'genius' title to a sister." While recording the album, when Hill was asked about providing contracts or documentation to the musicians, she replied, "We all love each other. This ain't about documents. This is blessed."
Released on August 25, 1998, the album received rave reviews from contemporary music critics, and was the most acclaimed album of 1998. Critics lauded the album's blending of the R&B, doo-wop, pop, hip-hop, and reggae genres and its honest representation of a woman's life and relationships. David Browne, writing in Entertainment Weekly, called it "an album of often-astonishing power, strength, and feeling", and praised Hill for "easily flowing from singing to rapping, evoking the past while forging a future of her own". Robert Christgau quipped, "PC record of the year—songs soft, singing ordinary, rapping skilled, rhymes up and down, skits de trop, production subtle and terrific". In 2017, NPR rated the album as the second-best album of all time created by a woman.
It sold nearly 423,000 copies in its first week (boosted by advance radio play of two non-label-sanctioned singles, "Lost Ones" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You") and topped the Billboard 200 for four weeks and the Billboard R&B Albums chart for six weeks. It went on to sell about 10 million copies in the United States, and 20 million copies worldwide. During 1998 and 1999, Hill earned $25 million from record sales and touring. Hill, along with Blige, Missy Elliott, Meshell Ndegeocello, Erykah Badu, and others, found a voice with the neo soul genre.
The first single released from the album was "Doo Wop (That Thing)", which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It exemplified Hill's appeal, combining feelings of self-empowerment with self-defense. Other charted singles from the album were "Ex-Factor", which has been sampled by Drake and Cardi B, "Everything Is Everything" and "To Zion". In the 1998 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll, Miseducation came second in the list of best albums and "Doo Wop (That Thing)" second in best singles.
In November 1998, Marley and Hill's second child, Selah Louise, was born. Of being a young mother of two, Hill said, "It's not an easy situation at all. You have to really pray and be honest with yourself."
In the run-up to the 1999 Grammy Awards, Hill became the first woman to be nominated in ten categories in a single year. In addition to Miseducation works, the nominations included her rendition of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" for the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, which had appeared on Billboard charts, and Hill's writing and producing of "A Rose Is Still a Rose", which became a late-in-career hit for Aretha Franklin. She appeared on several magazine covers, including Time, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Teen People, and The New York Times Fashion Magazine. During the ceremony, Hill broke another record by becoming the first woman to win five times in one night, taking home the awards for Album of the Year, Best R&B Album, Best R&B Song, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best New Artist. During an acceptance speech, she said, "This is crazy. This is hip-hop!" Hill had brought forth a new, mainstream acceptance of the genre.
In February 1999, Hill received four awards at the 30th Annual NAACP Image Awards. In May 1999, she became the youngest woman ever named to Ebony magazine's 100+ Most Influential Black Americans list; in November of that year, the same publication named her as one of "10 For Tomorrow" in the "Ebony 2000: Special Millennium Issue". In May 1999, she made People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list. The publication, which has called her "model-gorgeous", praised the 5-foot-4-inch (1.63 m) Hill for her idiosyncratic sense of personal style. In June 1999, she received an Essence Award, but her acceptance speech, where she said there was no contradiction in religious love and servitude and "[being] who you are, as fly and as hot and as whatever", drew reaction from those in the public who thought she was not a good role model as a young, unwed mother of two. This was a repetition of criticism she had received after the birth of her first child, and she had said that she and Marley would soon be married. In early 2000, Hill was one of the producers to share the Grammy Award for Album of the Year awarded for Santana's 1999 multi-million-selling Supernatural, whereon she had written, produced, and rapped on the track "Do You Like the Way" (a rumination on the direction the world was headed, it also featured the singing of CeeLo Green and the signature guitar runs of Carlos Santana). She was also nominated for Best R&B Song for "All That I Can Say", which she had written and produced for Mary J. Blige. Also, her concocted duet with Bob Marley on "Turn Your Lights Down Low" for the 1999 remix tribute album Chant Down Babylon additionally appeared in the 1999 film The Best Man and later received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
In November 1998, New Ark filed a fifty-page lawsuit against Hill, her management, and record label, claiming that Hill "used their songs and production skills, but failed to properly credit them for the work" on Miseducation. The musicians claimed to be the primary songwriters on two tracks, and major contributors on several others, though Gordon Williams, a prominent recorder, engineer, and mixer on Miseducation, described the album as a "powerfully personal effort by Hill" and said, "It was definitely her vision." Hill responded that New Ark had been appropriately credited and now were seeking to take advantage of her success. New Ark requested partial writing credits on most of the tracks on the album as well as monetary reimbursement. After many delays, depositions took place during the latter part of 2000. In part, the case illustrated the difficult boundaries between songwriting and all other aspects that went into contemporary arranging, sampling, and recording. The suit was eventually settled out of court in February 2001, with Hill paying New Ark a reported $5 million. A friend of Hill's later said of the suit, "That was the beginning of a chain effect that would turn everything a little crazy."
2000–2003: Self-imposed exile and MTV Unplugged No. 2.0
Hill began writing a screenplay about the life of Bob Marley, in the production of which she planned to play his wife Rita. She also began producing a romantic comedy about soul food with a working title of Sauce, and accepted a starring role in the film adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved; she later dropped out of both projects due to pregnancy. She also reportedly turned down acting roles in the remake for A Star Is Born (the movie was later released in 2018, with the part going to Lady Gaga), Dreamgirls (the role of Deena, later played by Beyoncé), Charlie's Angels (the part that went to Lucy Liu), The Bourne Identity, The Mexican, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions.
In 2000, Hill dropped out of the public eye. The pressures of fame began to overwhelm her. She disliked not being able to go out of her house to do simple errands without having to worry about her physical appearance. She fired her management team and began attending Bible study classes five days a week; she also stopped doing interviews, watching television, and listening to music. She started associating with a "spiritual advisor" named Brother Anthony. Some familiar with Hill believe Anthony more resembled a cult leader than a spiritual advisor, and thought his guidance probably inspired much of Hill's more controversial public behavior.
She later described this period of her life to Essence saying "People need to understand that the Lauryn Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at that time ... I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised. I felt uncomfortable about having to smile in someone's face when I really didn't like them or even know them well enough to like them." She also spoke about her emotional crisis, saying, "For two or three years I was away from all social interaction. It was a very introspective time because I had to confront my fears and master every demonic thought about inferiority, about insecurity or the fear of being black, young and gifted in this western culture." She went on to say that she had to fight to retain her identity, and was forced "to deal with folks who weren't happy about that."
In July 2001, while pregnant with her third child, Hill unveiled her new material to a small crowd, for a taping of an MTV Unplugged special. A live album of the concert, titled MTV Unplugged No. 2.0, was released in May 2002 and featured only her singing and playing an acoustic guitar. Unlike the near-unanimous praise of Miseducation, 2.0 sharply divided critics. AllMusic gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, saying that the recording "is the unfinished, unflinching presentation of ideas and of a person. It may not be a proper follow-up to her first album, but it is fascinating." Rolling Stone called the album "a public breakdown", and Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times said the album's title opened Hill up for jokes that she had become unhinged. NME wrote that "Unplugged 2.0 is a sparse and often gruelling listen, but there is enough genius shading these rough sketches to suggest that all might not yet be lost." With the mixed reviews and no significant radio airplay, 2.0 debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. The album was later certified Platinum in the U.S. by the RIAA; and has received retrospective praise by music critics.
Her song "Mystery of Iniquity" from the album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rap Solo Performance, and was used as an interpolation by Kanye West for his single "All Falls Down" featuring Syleena Johnson, leading to Hill being credited as a songwriter on the song.
Around 2001, Marley and Hill's third child, Joshua Omaru, was born. He was followed a year later by their fourth, John Nesta. While Hill sometimes had spoken of Marley as her husband, they never married, and along the way she was informed that Marley had been previously married at a young age. According to a 2003 Rolling Stone report, he had never secured a divorce. Marley later disputed this and made public to a blog a 1996 divorce document from Haiti. The two had been living in a high-end Miami hotel, but around 2003 she moved out into her own place in that city. Hill later said that she and Marley "have had long periods of separation over the years". Hill slowly worked on a new album and it was reported that by 2003, Columbia Records had spent more than $2.5 million funding it, including installing a recording studio in the singer's Miami apartment and flying different musicians around the country.
By 2002, Hill had shut down her non-profit Refugee Project. She said, "I had a nonprofit organization and I had to shut all that down. You know, smiling with big checks, obligatory things, not having things come from a place of passion. That's slavery. Everything we do should be a result of our gratitude for what God has done for us. It should be passionate."
In December 2003, Hill, during a performance in Vatican City, spoke of the "corruption, exploitation, and abuses" in reference to the molestation of boys by Catholic priests in the United States and the cover-up of offenses by Catholic Church officials. High-ranking church officials were in attendance, but Pope John Paul II was not present. The Catholic League called Hill "pathologically miserable" and claimed her career was "in decline". The following day, several reporters suggested that Hill's comments at the Vatican may have been influenced by her spiritual advisor, Brother Anthony.
2004–2009: Sporadic touring and recording
In 2004, Hill contributed a new song, "The Passion", to The Passion of the Christ: Songs. A remix version with John Legend of his "So High" ended up receiving a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Around this time, Hill began selling a pay-per-view music video of the song "Social Drugs" through her website. Those who purchase the $15 video would only be able to view it three times before it expired. In addition to the video, Hill began selling autographed posters and Polaroids through her website, with some items listed at upwards of $500.
For the first time since 1997, the Fugees performed in September 2004 at Dave Chappelle's Block Party in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The concert featured Hill's nearly a cappella rendition of "Killing Me Softly". The event was recorded by director Michel Gondry and was released on March 3, 2006, to universal acclaim. The Fugees also appeared at BET Awards 2005 during June 2005, where they opened the show with a 12-minute set. One track, "Take It Easy", was leaked online and thereafter was released as an Internet single in late September. It peaked at No. 40 on the Billboard R&B Chart.
In 2005, she told USA Today, "If I make music now, it will only be to provide information to my own children. If other people benefit from it, then so be it." When asked how she now felt about the songs on 2.0, she stated "a lot of the songs were transitional. The music was about how I was feeling at the time, even though I was documenting my distress as well as my bursts of joy."
The Fugees embarked on a European tour in late 2005. Old tensions between Hill and the other members of the group soon resurfaced, and the reunion ended before an album could be recorded; Jean and Michel both blamed Hill for the split. Hill reportedly demanded to be addressed by everyone, including her bandmates, as "Ms. Hill"; she also considered changing her moniker to "Empress". Hill's tardiness was also cited as a contributing factor.
Hill began touring on her own, although to mixed reviews; often arriving late to concerts (sometimes by over two hours), performing unpopular reconfigurations of her songs and sporting an exaggerated appearance. On some occasions, fans booed her and left early. In June 2007, Sony Records said Hill had been recording through the past decade, had accumulated considerable unreleased material and had re-entered the studio with the goal of making a new album. Later that same year, an album titled Ms. Hill, which featured cuts from Miseducation, various soundtrack contributions and other "unreleased" songs, was released. It features guest appearances from D'Angelo, Rah Digga and John Forté. Also in June 2007, Hill released a new song, "Lose Myself", on the soundtrack to the film Surf's Up.
In early 2008, Marley and Hill's fifth child, Sara, was born. The couple were not living together, although Marley considered them "spiritually together" even while listing himself as single on social media. Hill later said that she and Marley "have [had] a long and complex history about which many inaccuracies have been reported since the beginning" and that they both valued their privacy. By August 2008, Hill was living with her mother and children in her hometown of South Orange, New Jersey.
Reports in mid-2008 claimed that Columbia Records then believed Hill to be on hiatus. Marley disputed these claims, telling an interviewer that Hill has enough material for several albums: "She writes music in the bathroom, on toilet paper, on the wall. She writes it in the mirror if the mirror smokes up. She writes constantly. This woman does not sleep". One of the few public appearances Hill made in 2008 was at a Martha Stewart book signing in New Jersey, perplexing some in the press.
In April 2009, it was reported that Hill would engage in a 10-day tour of European summer festivals during mid-July of that year. She performed two shows for the tour and passed out on stage during the start of her second performance and left the stage. She refused to provide refunds for angry consumers. On June 10, Hill's management informed the promoters of the Stockholm Jazz Festival, which she was scheduled to headline, that she would not be performing due to unspecified "health reasons". Shortly afterward, the rest of the tour was canceled as well.
2010–2022: Further activities and imprisonment
In January 2010, Hill returned to the live stage and performed in stops across New Zealand and Australia on the Raggamuffin Music Festival. Many of the songs that Hill had performed and recorded over the past six years were included on an April 2010 unofficial compilation album titled Khulami Phase. The album also features a range of other material found on the Ms. Hill compilation. Hill appeared at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, California, in June 2010, her first live American performance in several years. An unreleased song called "Repercussions" was leaked via the Internet in late July 2010, debuting at No. 94 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (and peaked at No. 83 the following week), making it her first Billboard chart appearance as a lead artist since 1999.
Hill joined the Rock the Bells hip-hop festival series in the U.S. during August 2010, and as part of that year's theme of rendering classic albums, she performed The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in its entirety for the first time. She increased the tempo and urgency from the original recording, but at times had difficulty in communicating with her band. Hill continued touring, including a set at the 6th Annual Jazz in the Gardens, in Miami Gardens, Florida in December. In Spring 2011, Hill performed at the Coachella Valley Music Festival, New Orleans Jazz Fest, and at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. In July 2011, Hill gave birth to her sixth child, Micah, her first not with Rohan Marley; the father remains publicly unknown.
In February 2012, Hill performed a new song titled "Fearless Vampire Killer", during a sold-out performance at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. In late 2012, Hill toured with rapper Nas; her portion of the tour, titled Black Rage, is named after her song, released October 30. Hill has described the song as being "about the derivative effects of racial inequity and abuse" and "a juxtaposition to the statement 'life is good,' which she believes can only be so when these long standing issues are addressed and resolved."
In June 2012, Hill was charged with three counts of tax fraud or failing to file taxes (Title 26 USC § 7202 Willful failure to collect or pay over tax) not tax evasion on $1.8 million of income earned between 2005 and 2007. During this time she had toured as a musical artist, earned royalties from both her records and from films she had appeared in, and had owned and been in charge of multiple corporations. In a long post to her Tumblr, Hill said that she had gone "underground" and had rejected pop culture's "climate of hostility, false entitlement, manipulation, racial prejudice, sexism, and ageism." She added, "When I was working consistently without being affected by the interferences mentioned above, I filed and paid my taxes. This only stopped when it was necessary to withdraw from society, in order to guarantee the safety and well-being of myself and my family."
In June 2012, Hill appeared in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark and pleaded guilty to the charges. Her attorney said she would make restitution for the back taxes she owed. By April 2013, Hill had paid back only $50,000 of the $554,000 she owed immediately. U.S. Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo criticized Hill, saying "This is not someone who stands before the court penniless. This is a criminal matter. Actions speak louder than words, and there has been no effort here to pay these taxes." Hill faced possible eviction from her rented home in South Orange as well as a civil lawsuit from the town for running a business out of a home without a zoning permit.
On May 4, 2013, Hill released her first official single in over a decade, "Neurotic Society (Compulsory Mix)". She later published a message on her Tumblr describing how she was "required to release [it] immediately, by virtue of the impending legal deadline". The release received some criticism for lyrics that appeared to tie societal decay to certain LGBT social movements. Hill responded that the song was not targeted at any particular group but was instead focused on anyone hiding behind neurotic behavior. Following a deal with Sony Music, which involves Hill creating a new record label within the company, Hill was said to be scheduled to release her first album in fifteen years during 2013.
On May 6, 2013, Hill was sentenced by Judge Arleo to serve three months in prison for failing to file taxes/tax fraud and three months' house arrest afterwards as part of a year of supervised probation. She had faced a possible sentence of as long as 36 months, and the sentence given took into account her lack of a prior criminal record and her six minor-aged children. By this point Hill had fully paid back $970,000 in back taxes and penalties she owed, which also took into account an additional $500,000 that Hill had in unreported income for 2008 and 2009. In the courtroom, Hill said that she had lived "very modestly" considering how much money she had made for others, and that "I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them. I had an economic system imposed on me." Hill reported to the minimum-security Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury on July 8, 2013, to begin serving her sentence.
Hill was released from prison on October 4, 2013, a few days early for good behavior, and began her home confinement and probationary periods. She put out a single called "Consumerism" that she had finished, via verbal and e-mailed instructions, while incarcerated. Judge Arleo allowed her to postpone part of her confinement in order to tour in late 2013 under strict conditions.
During 2014, Hill was heard as the narrator of Concerning Violence, an award-winning Swedish documentary on the African liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. She also continued to draw media attention for her erratic behavior, appearing late twice in the same day for sets at Voodoo Fest in November 2014.
In May 2015, Hill canceled her scheduled concert outside Tel Aviv in Israel following a social media campaign from activists promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. She said she had wanted to also perform a show in Ramallah in the West Bank but logistical problems had proved too great. Hill stated: "It is very important to me that my presence or message not be misconstrued, or a source of alienation to either my Israeli or my Palestinian fans."
Hill contributed her voice to the soundtrack for What Happened, Miss Simone?, a 2015 documentary about the life of Nina Simone, an American singer, pianist, and civil rights activist. Hill was originally supposed to record only two songs for the record, but ended up recording six. She also served as a producer on the compilation alongside Robert Glasper. Hill said of her connection to Simone: "Because I fed on this music ... I believed I always had a right to have a voice. Her example is clearly a form of sustenance to a generation needing to find theirs. What a gift." NPR critically praised Hill's performance on the soundtrack, stating: "This album mainly showcases Lauryn Hill's breadth and dexterity. Not formally marketed as Hill's comeback album, her six tracks here make this her most comprehensive set of studio recordings since The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998."
In April 2016, Hill hosted and headlined what was billed as the inaugural Diaspora Calling! festival at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn. The festival's purpose was to showcase the efforts of musicians and artists from around the African diaspora like Brooklyn Haitian Rara band Brother High Full Tempo. The following month, Hill was approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes late for her show at the Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Atlanta, though members of Hill's team claimed it was only an hour after their scheduled start time. Moments after the less-than-40-minute show ended due to the venue's strict 11:00 p.m. closing time, Hill said her driver had gotten lost and she could not help that. Less than 48 hours later, after a large backlash from her fans on Twitter, she took to her Facebook page and stated she was late for the concert because of certain needs, including her need to "align her energy with the time".
Hill recorded a studio version of her song, "Guarding the Gates", for the movie Queen & Slim, which was released on November 27, 2019. This song appears on the album, Queen & Slim: The Soundtrack.
2023–present: Fugees reunion tour controversy
On April 14th, 2024, Lauryn Hill made her return to the stage at Coachella. Hill's son, YG Marley, was performing when Hill surprised the crowd by making an appearance. Hill performed several solo songs from her career, but was also reunited with former Fugees bandmate, Wyclef Jean, to perform numerous beloved hit songs.
The Fugees were scheduled to start a reunion tour in August 2024 but it was quietly canceled three days before the first show, with no reason given to customers receiving refunds, but Hill cited "clickbait headlines" and low-ticket sales as an explanation. The cancellations received media scrutiny, to which Hill responded "I can assure you that no one is more disappointed about not being able to perform than I am." Pras released a diss track titled "Bar Mitzfa" which criticized Hill that same month. In October 2024, Pras sued Hill for breach of contract and fraud, accusing her of mismanaging the budgeting of their tour in "a veiled and devious attempt to make a big score for herself". Hill responded to each of the claims made in the lawsuit on Instagram, and said it "is full of false claims and unwarranted attacks. It notably omits that he was advanced overpayment for the last tour and has failed to repay substantial loans extended by myself as an act of good will."
She sings on the 2024 concept album by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis, Warriors.
Other ventures
Fashion and endorsements
Well known for styling her hair in locs, braids, bantu knots and afros, Hill is often associated with the revival of the natural hair movement. She has been credited as one of the people who have helped normalize locs, and introduced them to pop culture. Author Joan Morgan noted that "for a young person who was growing up in the '90s and liked that natural look but didn't want to identify as Rasta, there was really no example until Lauryn Hill." Hill is also frequently listed among the people who have defined modern bantu knots and afros. Ebony noted that she "helped to usher in a new standard of beauty for Black women -one grounded in the richness and authenticity of their African heritage."
PopSugar placed her on their list of the "18 Moments in Hair History That Changed the World", and wrote, "When searching for the originator in the recent natural hair revival, you must look to Lauryn Hill. She emerged as the feminine lead in The Fugees and broke Grammy records as a soloist, all while popularizing dreadlocks in the mainstream." Stylist mentioned Hill gracing the cover of Time in locs, and being named one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People in 1999, as one of the most definitive moments in the history of black hair.
In an interview with Vogue, R&B singer SZA, stated "The only girl that I could look to for natural hair inspiration growing up was Lauryn Hill." According to celebrity hairstylist Yusef Williams, who styled Rihanna's hair on the set of Ocean's 8, the singer "channeled her inner Lauryn Hill" while wearing locs for her role in the movie. Halle Bailey named Hill as one of her beauty icons, while mentioning "I love Lauryn Hill's hair".
In 1999, Hill partnered with Levi Strauss & Co. to create custom outfits for her Miseducation Tour. Journalist Thembisa Mshaka of Okayplayer wrote: "when Levi Strauss put its name next to Lauryn Hill, a new course was charted. The Fortune 500 brand partnerships with black musicians that are ubiquitous today were seeded by the success of Lauryn's solo debut". A custom ensemble made for Hill by Levi's was put on display during the Levi Strauss: A History of American Style exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Hill also partnered with Armani during the late 1990s; the brand designed multiple custom looks for Hill and helped sponsored her Miseducation of Lauryn Hill tour. A design created by Armani for the tour was on put display for the 1999 "Rock Style" themed Met Gala.
Impact
In 2015, Vogue mentioned her as one of the female hip hop entertainers of 1990s, whose style they considered to be influential to 2010s fashion, with Emily Barasch of Vogue, writing "Lauryn Hill's sense of style endures today, as nineties nostalgia continues to pervade the runways." She was hailed as a "fashion and music icon" by CR Fashion Book and was also included on the list of the most stylish rappers of all time by Complex.
She is often named as a leading contributor in the modern popularization of the hoop earring, which first grew in popularity among black women in the 1970s, before reaching a wider audience after female hip hop artists like Hill wore them in the 1980s and 1990s. Considered as an inspiration for Kanye West's fashion, singer Solange Knowles also cited Hill among her style influences in an interview for Fashionista.
British fashion designer John Galliano chose Hill as his muse for the 2000 Spring/Summer Dior collection, he designed; The Hill-inspired collection featured models wearing dreadlocks and hoop earrings, and introduced the Dior 'Saddle Bag', which was made famous by the character Carrie Bradshaw in the television series Sex and the City; and according to Who What Wear, it is one of the ten most popular designer handbags ever. In 2017, the hip hop-based collection designed by Alexander Wang, as well as Tory Burch's resort collection, were both inspired by Hill.
The Men's Spring/Summer 2021 Louis Vuitton collection designed by Virgil Abloh, drew influence from Hill, with Abloh mentioning Hill as his "forever muse". Hill later performed at Abloh's memorial service after he died from a rare form of cancer in December 2021. She was also named among Daniel Roseberry's influences for the Spring/Summer 2022 Schiaparelli collection. Designers Esteban Cortazar, Kerby Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss, and Humberto Leon of Kenzo, and Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga, have also noted her as an inspiration.
Philanthropy
In the late 1990s, Hill presided over the Refugee Project, a nonprofit organization that served youth in New Jersey. The organization offered New Jersey youth scholarships, mentoring, after-school programs, a reading club and a summer camp program. The Refugee Project's board of directors included Mariah Carey, Spike Lee, actor Malcolm Jamal Warner, and rappers Busta Rhymes, Q-Tip, and Nas.
In 1999, she collaborated with the Federal government of the United States for an anti-drug campaign. On July 11, 2000, a hearing evaluating the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign was held at Congress. During the hearing, it was announced that Hill's ad from the campaign was the most popular amongst a group of polled youth, with nearly 95 percent stating that they were affected by the ad. That same year, Hill participated in UNCF's 'Evening of Stars' telethon fundraiser, which raised $13.5 million.
In 2003, Hill was scheduled to perform at a Christmas benefit concert at the Vatican, located in a 7,500-seat concert hall customarily used by the Pope for his weekly general audiences. During the concert, Hill spoke out against sexual abuse of children by priests, stating "God has been a witness to the corruption of his leadership, to the exploitation and abuses. It is the least one can say about the clergy." Hill added "I realize some of you may be offended by what I'm saying, but what do you say to the families who were betrayed by the people in whom they believed?". The Pope was not in attendance; however, concert attendees included Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the pope's vicar for Rome and the head of Italian bishops conference, his deputy, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, and Edmund Szoka. The comments sparked controversy at the time, and were edited out of the broadcast, which was set to air on Mediaset's flagship Canale 5 station. In retrospect, many critics have applauded Hill for speaking out.
Hill later performed during the 2005 Live 8 benefit concert, to help raise awareness on global poverty.
She published the song "Black Rage" to SoundCloud in protest of the 2014 killing of Michael Brown. That same year, she performed at the Amnesty International 'Bringing Human Rights Home' benefit concert in New York, in support of Pussy Riot; where she gave a rendition of her protest song "Black Rage".
In 2015, she canceled a show in Israel after she was faced with a social media campaign by activists who urged her to boycott Israel over its occupation of Palestinian land. She later clarified that she does not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but "believes in dignity for all sides", according to professor Noura Erakat.
Hill released an updated version of her 2002 track "I Find It Hard to Say (Rebel)" from her MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 album entitled "Rebel" in 2016. The 2002 song was originally written about the Killing of Amadou Diallo, and was updated due to the influx of Police brutality in the United States at the time. The updated song was released exclusively on Tidal, and was performed at the Tidal X 1015 charity concert hosted by Jay-Z.
Variety reported that Hill declined an offer by the National Football League to join pop rock band Maroon 5 during their Super Bowl LIII halftime show, in solidarity with American football player Colin Kaepernick, after he received backlash for taking the knee.
According to Billboard, Hill provided 10 scholarships for the 2019–2020 academic year to students at Alpha Institute in Kingston, Jamaica, through her MLH Fund.
Legacy and impact
Hill is widely considered to be one of the greatest rappers of all time and has often been called the greatest female rapper. The New York Times once referred to Hill as "the most popular woman in hip-hop". Rapper Kool Moe Dee gave Hill the highest score of any rapper on his rap 'Report Cards' list from the book, Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists. Furthermore, Beyoncé once stated that she is "one of the best hip-hop rappers ever". In 1998, Time declared her as the "Queen of Hip Hop"; while Academy of Achievement, The Boston Globe, and Billboard, among others, have also crowned her with the same title. In 2015, Billboard ranked Hill as the seventh greatest rapper of all time on their "10 Best Rappers of All Time" list, with her being the only woman on the list. In the peak of her career, Hill had earned over $25 million for her work.
Music critic Brandon Tensley argued that "few artists have marked culture as profoundly as Hill did with her solo debut". In 2012, VH1 ranked Hill as one of the Greatest Woman in Music. In 2014, she was named the most influential woman in hip hop history by AllHipHop. Hill was also included on the NPR list of the '50 Great Voices'; and on the Consequence of Sound list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2019, Hill ranked No. 1 on the Ranker poll of the greatest singer/rappers. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Hill at number 136 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. American Journalist Touré stated that "She was—she is—the greatest female MC of all time".
Musical impact
With her solo music and work with Fugees, Hill is often credited as the artist who popularized the technique of blending rap and melodic singing together into one single song, sometimes referred to as melodic rap; this has since become popular, with many modern artists like Beyoncé, Drake, Nicki Minaj and Kanye West emulating it. Writing for The Ringer, author Musa Okwonga wrote "Decades before the ubiquity of the MC who could also croon, she could channel the greatness of Nina Simone and Rakim in the same set." In Complex, Andy Gee commented that "the modern music landscape is dominated by artists like Drake and Nicki Minaj, who fall in the Lauryn Hill archetype as traditionalist-appeasing MCs who have records where they're singing their hearts out." XXL argued that "she set the bar high, not just for woman creators, but for anyone who wanted to rap or sing."
Former RIAA president Hilary Rosen, recognized Hill as a leading contributor to the blurring of lines that distinguished hip hop and R&B. Minaj alluded to Hill's impact on melodic rap on the song "Can Anybody Hear Me", where she mentions that prior to fame, Def Jam Recordings wouldn't sign her because she wanted to integrate rapping and singing on her album, but the record label told her she "wasn't Lauryn Hill". Lizzo who started her career as a rapper, later incorporated singing into her debut record. She stated in an interview in 2018, "I was always afraid of being a singer, but then when I heard Lauryn Hill, I was like, maybe I can do both", further adding that her debut album drew influence from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, "rapping, singing, being political". According to Da Brat, Hill's "sound shifted the whole game".
In 1999, Billboard considered Hill's success to be a breakthrough for female rappers, which resulted in a brief increase of female rappers in the music industry at the time, that the publication dubbed 'The Lauryn Hill Effect'. Author Nelson George noted, "the presence of women is increasing"; while Missy Elliott also added that "Latifah opened the door for doing TV, and she might have opened it for Brandy. Now, it's open for everybody. This is just the beginning". That same year, a public survey was conducted by MTV, which directly impacted its programming. In the survey, she was ranked the most respected solo artist, and placed among the acts that participants thought best defined their generation; with former Viacom executive Todd Cunningham referring to Hill as a "massive phenomenon". Music journalist Danyel Smith credited Hill with reviving the hip hop genre, following the murders of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur.
Influence on other artists
Hill has often been cited as one of the most influential entertainers of her generation. In 2021, Pitchfork named her as one of the 200 most influential artists since 1996. Many artists have named Lauryn Hill as an inspiration to their careers, including pop artists Adele, Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Mumford & Sons, Doja Cat, H.E.R., P!nk, Kelly Clarkson, Babyface, Summer Walker, rappers Kanye West, Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Nicki Minaj, Nas, Lil' Kim, Brent Faiyaz, Rapsody; Lizzo, Doechii, Afrobeats singers Tems, and Wizkid; and K-pop artists Jennie of Blackpink, CL of 2NE1, and RM of BTS.
Nicki Minaj has made mention of Hill's influence on her on multiple occasions; Including on 2020 U.S. number one single "Say So Remix", In which Minaj raps, "Spittin' like Weezy, Foxy, plus Lauryn". Minaj has also referred to Hill as her idol and quoted the artist in her high school yearbook. John Legend attributes his early career success and his launch into the music industry to Hill, who gave him his first major opportunity as a pianist on the song "Everything Is Everything". Rapsody and Bebe Rexha have both cited Hill as their biggest musical inspiration, as well as UK grime rapper Stormzy naming her his biggest female musical influence.
Furthermore, musicians Erykah Badu and Jazmine Sullivan have both mentioned her as their musical hero. In addition Kehlani has a tattoo of Hill on her arm. After performing with Hill, The Weeknd described the experience as the "most important experience of my life". During her 2018 Grammy award acceptance speech, Spanish singer Rosalía thanked her for being influential to her.
Music sampling
Billboard stated that Hill "is to hip-hop as a gardener is to soil", and added that "the rapper/singer planted classic gems in her catalog — especially her pristine 1998 debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill — that have become samples for many rap game MVPs".
Her single "Doo Wop (That Thing)", was sampled by Drake (on the song "Draft Day"), Kanye West (on "Believe What I Say"), and interpolated by Lizzo (on the song "Break up Twice" from her album Special). In 2018, Hill became one of the most sampled artists of the year, when her single "Ex-Factor" was sampled on Cardi B's "Be Careful" and Drake's "Nice for What", while A$AP Rocky and Frank Ocean released "Purity" which sampled "I Gotta Find Peace of Mind". J. Cole's songs "Cole Summer" and "Can I Holla at Ya" from his EP Truly Yours, both contain samples of songs from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Hill's vocals from her work with the Fugees has been sampled or interpolated by countless artists, including DJ Khaled & Nas, Busta Rhymes, The Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar, Meek Mill, Jay-Z, and Mariah Carey (on the single "Save the Day", from her compilation album The Rarities). Furthermore, multiple artists have sampled Hill's songs from her live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 including Frank Ocean (on the Jazmine Sullivan-featured "Rushes" from his 2016 album Endless), Method Man ("Say"), and most notably Kanye West ("All Falls Down" featuring Syleena Johnson).
Film and stage
As an actress, Hill's most memorable role was portraying Rita Watson in the 1993 film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Hill's performance in the film inspired Janelle Monáe to pursue an acting career. Multiple publications have listed her performance in the film as one of the best acting performances by a rapper.
The 2015 Broadway musical Hamilton was heavily influenced by Hill, with creator Lin-Manuel Miranda naming Hill as one of his favorite rappers. Miranda also referenced the track "Lost Ones" during the song "We Know", and Hill's verse from the Fugees single "Ready or Not", on the song "Helpless" from the musical.
Lateness in concert
Hill has earned a reputation for being late to her own concerts. She irritated Wyclef Jean during a short 2005 tour by failing to appear on stage with the rest of the Fugees until 45–50 minutes into the performance. At the 2007 Nice Jazz Festival, Hill was 90 minutes late for her set, and she sang too softly to be heard. She was 2.5 hours late for a Brooklyn show in August 2007: the free Martin Luther King Jr. Concert Series. In December 2010, she took the stage in Boston two-and-a-half hours late. She was two hours late in Atlanta in May 2016, performing for only 40 minutes because the venue had a strict 11 pm curfew; she explained she had been "aligning my energy with the time".
In November 2023, she was widely criticized for being late to a show in Los Angeles. She responded by saying her fans should consider themselves "lucky" that she appears on stage "every night". The comments were made a week after she said her doctors ordered her to vocal rest after she postponed a series of shows due to vocal injuries. According to Paul Meara of BET, Hill later shared an extended version of her comments that could be perceived as directed more toward the music industry than Hill's fans.
Achievements
Hill has won numerous accolades throughout her career, including eight Grammy Awards (including Album of the Year), the most won by a female rapper. She has also received six MTV Video Music Awards (including Video of the Year), four NAACP Image Awards (including the President's Award), four Guinness World Records, and three American Music Awards. In 2021, she was among the inaugural nominees for the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame, and was inducted in 2022.
Hill won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album as a member of The Fugees, for their album The Score, becoming the first woman to win the award. The Score also peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. Her first solo studio album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, also peaked at number one, making Hill the first solo female hip hop act to reach number one on that chart. The album sold more than 422,000 copies in its first week, which had broken the record previously held by Madonna, for highest first-week sales by a female artist. Both The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and its lead single "Doo Wop (That Thing)" debuted at number one in the U.S., making Hill the first act to have debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 with their first entries on each chart. The album also topped the Billboard Year-End Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, making it the first album by a female artist to accomplish this feat.
At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards, Hill received ten Grammy Award nominations and won five that night, including Album of the Year, with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill being the first Hip hop album to win the award. She also set the record for most nominations for a female artist in one night, broke the record at the time previously set by Carole King for the most wins by a female artist in one night, and became the first female rapper to win the Best New Artist award. Furthermore, she also became the first black solo act to win MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.
In 1999, following the success of her first solo album, Hill landed on the cover of Time magazine, being the only black musician to land on the cover during that decade. With The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, she became a pioneer in the neo soul movement, when the album was one of the first in the genre to achieve mainstream success, and became the best-selling neo soul album of all time. The album has also been inducted into the Library of Congress. NPR ranked it 2nd on its list of "The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women". Rolling Stone listed it as the 10th-Greatest Album of All Time, on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, in 2020.
In 2021, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), making Hill the first female hip hop artist to ever receive a Diamond certification in the United States. That same year, Rolling Stone placed her single "Doo Wop (That Thing)" and the Fugees version of "Killing Me Softly" on their revised list of the 500 Greatest Songs. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture included "Doo Wop (That Thing)" on their Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap box set. In 2024, The Recording Academy selected it to be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was also featured as the number one album of Apple Music's 2024 list of the 100 best albums.
Along with having a successful music career as a member of The Fugees and as a solo artist, Hill also achieved success as a songwriter and producer for other artists. Hill has written songs for Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blige, CeCe Winans and produced songs for Whitney Houston and Santana, among others. In 2015, she received the Golden Note Award from American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Hill has also won ASCAP songwriting awards for her credits on Drake's "Nice for What", Aretha Franklin's "A Rose Is Still a Rose", Cardi B's "Be Careful", Mary J. Blige's "All That I Can Say", and Kanye West's "All Falls Down".
Discography
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)
Filmography
Tours
Smokin' Grooves Tour (with Fugees, Cypress Hill, Ziggy Marley, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes and Spearhead) (1996)
Refugee Camp Tour (with Fugees) (1997)
The Miseducation Tour (1999)
Smokin' Grooves Tour (with The Roots and Outkast) (2002)
Reunion Tour (with Fugees) (2005)
Moving Target: Extended Intimate Playdate Series Tour (2011)
Life Is Good / Black Rage Tour (with Nas) (2012)
Homecoming Tour (2013–2014)
Small Axe Tour (2015)
MLH Caravan: A Diaspora Calling! Tour (2016–2017)
PowerNomics Tour (with Nas) (2017)
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 20th Anniversary World Tour (2018–2019)
Ms. Lauryn Hill Live in Concert (2020)
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 25th Anniversary Tour: Ms Lauryn Hill & The Return of The Fugees (with Fugees) (2023)
See also
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
References
Kaufman, Gil (2024-04-15), Lauryn Hill Joined By Wyclef For Mini Fugees Reunion During Coachella Set By Son YG Marley, billboard
External links
Official website
Lauryn Hill at IMDb
Lauryn Hill at MTV
Lauryn Hill at Pitchfork
Lauryn Hill at NPR |
1972 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972 | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972#"
] | 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1972nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 972nd year of the 2nd millennium, the 72nd year of the 20th century, and the 3rd year of the 1970s decade.
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using mean solar time [the legal time scale], its duration was 31622401.141 seconds of Terrestrial Time (or Ephemeris Time), which is slightly shorter than 1908).
Events
January
January 1 – Kurt Waldheim becomes Secretary-General of the United Nations.
January 4 – The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) is introduced (price $395).
January 7 – Iberia Airlines Flight 602 crashes into a 462-meter peak on the island of Ibiza; 104 are killed.
January 9 – The RMS Queen Elizabeth catches fire and sinks in Hong Kong's Victoria harbor while undergoing conversion to a floating university.
January 10 – Independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to Bangladesh after spending over nine months in prison in Pakistan.
January 11 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declares a new constitutional government in Bangladesh, with himself as president.
January 12 – In a 10-hour siege, a cell of 4 left-wing insurgents hold off a task force of 2500 army soldiers and police agents in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: eight members of the security forces and the entire insurgent cell are killed in the course of the siege.
January 13 – Prime Minister of Ghana Kofi Abrefa Busia is overthrown in a military coup by Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.
January 14 – Queen Margrethe II of Denmark succeeds her father, King Frederik IX, on the throne of Denmark, the first queen regnant of Denmark since 1412 and the first Danish monarch not named Frederick or Christian since 1513.
January 18 – Members of the Mukti Bahini lay down their arms to the government of the newly independent Bangladesh, 33 days after winning the war against the occupying Pakistan Army.
January 19 – The Libertarian enclave Minerva on a platform in the South Pacific, sponsored by the Phoenix Foundation, declares independence. Soon neighboring Tonga annexes the area and dismantles the platform.
January 20 – President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto announces that Pakistan will immediately begin a nuclear weapons program.
January 21
A New Delhi bootlegger sells wood alcohol to a wedding party; 100 people die.
Tripura, part of the former independent Twipra Kingdom, becomes a full state of India.
January 24 – Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is discovered in Guam; he has spent 28 years in the jungle, having failed to surrender after World War II.
January 26
Yugoslavian air stewardess Vesna Vulović is the only survivor when her plane crashes in Czechoslovakia. She survives after falling 10,160 meters (33,330 feet) in the tail section of the aircraft.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is set up on the lawn of Parliament House in Canberra.
January 30
Bloody Sunday: The British Army kills 14 unarmed nationalist civil rights marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.
January 31 – King Birendra succeeds his father as King of Nepal.
February
February 2
A bomb explodes at the British Yacht Club in West Berlin, killing Irwin Beelitz, a German boat builder. The German militant group 2 June Movement claims responsibility, announcing its support of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Anti-British riots take place throughout Ireland. The British Embassy in Dublin is burned to the ground, as are several British-owned businesses.
February 3–13 – The 1972 Winter Olympics are held in Sapporo, Japan.
February 4 – Mariner 9 sends pictures as it orbits Mars.
February 15 – President of Ecuador José María Velasco Ibarra is deposed for the fourth time.
February 17 – Volkswagen Beetle sales exceed those of the Ford Model T when the 15,007,034th Beetle is produced.
February 19 – Asama-Sansō incident: Five United Red Army members break into a lodge below Mount Asama in Japan, taking the wife of the lodgekeeper hostage.
February 21 – The Soviet uncrewed spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon.
February 21–28 – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon makes an unprecedented 8-day visit to the People's Republic of China and meets with Mao Zedong.
February 22
The Troubles: 1972 Aldershot bombing – A car bomb planted by the Official Irish Republican Army kills seven people outside a British military base in Aldershot, England.
Lufthansa Flight 649 is hijacked and taken to Aden. Passengers are released the following day after a ransom of 5 million US dollars is agreed.
February 23 – US activist Angela Davis is released from jail. Rodger McAfee, a farmer from Caruthers, California, helps her make bail.
February 26 – Luna 20 comes back to Earth with 55 grams (1.9 ounces) of lunar soil.
February 28 – The Asama-Sansō incident ends in a standoff between 5 members of the Japanese United Red Army and the authorities, in which two policemen are killed and 12 injured.
March
March 1 – Juan María Bordaberry is sworn in as President of Uruguay amid accusations of electoral fraud.
March 2
The Club of Rome presents the research results leading to its report The Limits to Growth, published later in the month.
The Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy, to be the first man-made spacecraft to leave the solar system.
Jean-Bédel Bokassa becomes President of the Central African Republic.
March 4
Libya and the Soviet Union sign a cooperation treaty.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference Charter is signed (effective February 28, 1973).
March 19 – India and Bangladesh sign the Indo-Bangladeshi Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace.
March 22
The 92nd U.S. Congress votes to send the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification.
Eisenstadt v. Baird: The Supreme Court of the U.S. rules that unmarried people have the right to access contraception on the same basis as married couples
March 25 – "Après toi" sung by Vicky Leandros (music by Klaus Munro & Mario Panas, lyric by Klaus Munro & Yves Dessca) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1972 (staged in Edinburgh) for Luxembourg.
March 26 – An avalanche on Mount Fuji in Japan kills 19 climbers.
March 27 – The First Sudanese Civil War ends.
March 30 – Vietnam War: The Easter Offensive begins after North Vietnamese forces cross into the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of South Vietnam
April
April 4 – The U.S. formally recognizes Bangladesh.
April 10
The U.S. and the Soviet Union join some 70 nations in signing the Biological Weapons Convention, an agreement to ban biological warfare.
Tombs containing bamboo slips, among them Sun Tzu's Art of War and Sun Bin's lost military treatise, are accidentally discovered by construction workers in Shandong.
The 6.7 Mw Qir earthquake shakes southern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing 5,374 people in the province of Fars.
The 44th Annual Academy Awards are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.
April 13 – The Universal Postal Union decides to recognize the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative, effectively expelling the Republic of China administering Taiwan.
April 16
Apollo 16 (John Young, Ken Mattingly, Charlie Duke) is launched. During the mission, the astronauts, driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle, achieve a lunar rover speed record of 18 km/h.
Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive – Prompted by the North Vietnamese offensive, the United States resumes bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.
April 26 – The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar enters service with Eastern Airlines.
April 27
Ikiza: Burundi government forces begin a 4-month genocide against the Hutu people, killing 100,000–300,000.
A no-confidence vote against German Chancellor Willy Brandt fails under obscure circumstances.
April 29 – The fourth anniversary of the Broadway musical Hair is celebrated with a free concert at a Central Park bandshell, followed by dinner at the Four Seasons. There, 13 Black Panther protesters and the show's co-author, Jim Rado, are arrested for disturbing the peace and for using marijuana.
May
May 2 – Fire at the Sunshine Mine, a silver mine in Idaho, kills 91.
May 5 – An Alitalia DC-8 crashes west of Palermo, Sicily; 115 die.
May 7 – General elections are held in Italy.
May 10 – Operation Linebacker and Operation Custom Tailor begin with large-scale bombing operations against North Vietnam by tactical fighter aircraft.
May 13 – A fire in a nightclub atop the Sennichi department store in Osaka, Japan, kills 115.
May 21 – In St. Peter's Basilica (Vatican City), Laszlo Toth attacks Michelangelo's Pietà statue with a geologist's hammer, shouting that he is Jesus Christ.
May 22
The Dominion of Ceylon becomes the republic of Sri Lanka under prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, when its new constitution is ratified.
Ferit Melen forms the new (interim) government of Turkey (35th government)
May 23 – The Tamil United Front (later known as Tamil United Liberation Front), a pro-Tamil organization, is founded in Sri Lanka.
May 26
Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty in Moscow, as well as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other agreements.
Willandra National Park is established in Australia.
May 27 – Mark Donohue wins the Indianapolis 500 in a Penske Racing McLaren–Offenhauser.
May 30
Lod Airport massacre: Three Japanese Red Army members operating on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations kill 26 and injure 80 people at Lod Airport, Israel.
The Troubles: The Official Irish Republican Army declares a ceasefire.
June
June – Iraq nationalizes the Iraq Petroleum Company.
June 3 – Sally Priesand becomes the first American woman (and the second known woman anywhere) to be ordained as a rabbi within Judaism.
June 5–16 – The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment is held in Stockholm, Sweden
June 8
Seven men and three women hijack a plane from Czechoslovakia to West Germany.
Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a naked nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road after being burned by napalm.
June 9 – The Black Hills flood kills 238 in South Dakota.
June 11 – Henri Pescarolo (France) and co-driver former World Drivers' Champion Graham Hill (Britain) win the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Equipe Matra MS670.
June 14–23 – Hurricane Agnes kills 117 on the U.S. East Coast.
June 14 – Japan Airlines Flight 471 crashes outside New Delhi airport, killing 82 of 87 occupants.
June 16 – 108 die as two passenger trains hit the debris of a collapsed railway tunnel near Soissons, France.
June 17
Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee.
Chilean president Salvador Allende forms a new government.
June 18
Staines air disaster: 118 die when a British European Airways Trident 1 jet airliner crashes two minutes after takeoff from London Heathrow Airport.
West Germany beats the Soviet Union 3–0 in the final to win Euro '72.
Hong Kong's worst flooding and landslides in recorded history with 653.2 millimetres (25.72 in) of rainfall in the previous three days. 67 people die due to building collapses in Mid-levels districts landslide and building collapses, with a further 83 due to flooding-related fatalities. It is the second worst fatality due to building collapses, and the worst flooding in Hong Kong's recorded history.
June 23
Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the C.I.A. to obstruct the investigation by the F.B.I. into the Watergate break-ins.
The United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Barber, announces a decision for the pound sterling to move to a floating exchange rate. Although intended to be temporary, this remains permanent. Foreign exchange controls are applied to most members of the sterling area.
June 30 – The International Time Bureau adds the first leap second (23:59:60) of this year to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
July
July 1 – The Canadian ketch Vega, flying the Greenpeace III banner, collides with the French naval minesweeper La Paimpolaise while in international waters to protest French nuclear weapon tests in the South Pacific.
July 2 – Following Pakistan's surrender to India in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, both nations sign the historic Simla Agreement, agreeing to settle their disputes bilaterally.
July 4 – The first Rainbow Gathering is held in Colorado.
July 10 – At least 24 people have been killed by elephants crazed by heat and drought in separate incidents in the Chandka Forest of India, according to news agency reports.
July 11
The long anticipated chess match between world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, and United States champion Bobby Fischer, begins in Iceland at Reykjavík.
Curtis Mayfield releases the soundtrack to the 1972 film, Super Fly.
July 10–14 – The Democratic National Convention meets in Miami Beach. Senator George McGovern, who backs the immediate and complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam, is nominated for president. He names fellow Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate.
July 18 – Anwar Sadat expels 20,000 Soviet advisors from Egypt.
July 21
The Troubles: Bloody Friday – 22 bombs planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army explode in Belfast, Northern Ireland; nine people are killed and 130 seriously injured.
A collision between two trains near Seville, Spain, kills 76 people.
July 23 – The United States launches Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.
July 24 – Jigme Singye Wangchuck succeeds his father Jigme Dorji Wangchuck as King of Bhutan.
July 25 – U.S. health officials admit that African-American men were used as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study without their informed consent.
July 27 – The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle fighter aircraft makes its first flight in the United States.
July 31 – The Troubles, Northern Ireland:
Operation Motorman 4:00 AM: The British Army begins to regain control of the "no-go areas" established by Irish republican paramilitaries in Belfast, Derry ("Free Derry") and Newry.
Claudy bombing ("Bloody Monday"), 10:00 AM: Three car bombs in Claudy, County Londonderry, kill nine. It becomes public knowledge only in 2010 that a local Catholic priest was an IRA officer believed to be involved in the bombings but his role was covered up by the authorities.
August
August 4
Expulsion of Asians from Uganda: Dictator Idi Amin declares that Uganda will expel 50,000 Asians with British passports to Britain within 3 months. Most of their property is confiscated.
August 1972 solar storms: A huge solar flare (one of the largest ever recorded) knocks out cable lines in the U.S. It begins with the appearance of sunspots on August 2; an August 4 flare kicks off high levels of activity until August 10.
August 10 – 1972 Great Daylight Fireball: A brilliant meteor is seen in the western U.S. and Canada as an Apollo asteroid skips off the Earth's atmosphere.
August 12 – Oil tankers Oswego-Guardian and Texanita collide near Stilbaai, South Africa.
August 14 – An East German Ilyushin airliner crashes near East Berlin; all 156 on board perish.
August 16 – As part of a coup attempt, members of the Royal Moroccan Air Force fire upon, but fail to bring down, Hassan II of Morocco's plane while he is traveling back to Rabat.
August 19 – The first daytime episode of the second incarnation of the American game show The Price Is Right is taped at CBS Television City, to be aired on September 4.
August 21 – The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, renominates U.S. President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew for a second term.
August 22
Rhodesia is expelled by the International Olympic Committee for its racist policies.
In the Almirante Zar Naval Base, Argentina, 16 detainees are executed by firing squad in the Trelew massacre.
August 26–September 10 – The 1972 Summer Olympics are held in Munich, West Germany.
September
September 1
Bobby Fischer defeats Boris Spassky in a chess match in Reykjavík, Iceland, becoming the first American world chess champion.
The Second Cod War begins between the United Kingdom and Iceland.
September 5–6 – Munich massacre: Eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich are murdered after eight members of the Arab terrorist group Black September invade the Olympic Village; five guerillas and one policeman are also killed in a failed hostage rescue.
September 10 – Brazilian driver Emerson Fittipaldi wins the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and becomes the youngest Formula One World Champion at the age of 25.
September 14 – West Germany and Poland renew diplomatic relations.
September 23 – Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos announces on national television the issuance of Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law.
September 24 – An F-86 fighter aircraft leaving an air show at Sacramento Executive Airport fails to become airborne and crashes into a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour, killing 12 children and 11 adults.
September 25 – 1972 Norwegian EC referendum: Norway rejects membership of the European Economic Community.
September 28 – The Canada men's national ice hockey team defeats the Soviet national ice hockey team in the eighth and final game of the 1972 Summit Series 6–5 to win the series 4–3–1.
September 29 – China–Japan relations: The Joint Communiqué of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China is signed in Beijing, which normalizes Japanese diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China after breaking official ties with the Republic of China (Taiwan).
October
October – In Somalia, the government of President Siad Barre formally introduces the Somali alphabet as the country's official writing script.
October 1
The first publication reporting the production of a recombinant DNA molecule, by Paul Berg and colleagues, marks the birth of modern molecular biology methodology.
Alex Comfort's bestselling manual The Joy of Sex is published.
October 2 – Denmark joins the European Community; the Faroe Islands stay out.
October 5 – The United Reformed Church in England is founded out of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches.
October 6 – A train crash in Saltillo, Mexico, kills 208 people.
October 8 – A major breakthrough occurs in the Paris peace talks between Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ.
October 13 – Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571: A Fairchild FH-227D passenger aircraft transporting a rugby union team crashes at about 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in the Andes mountain range, near the Argentina/Chile border. Sixteen of the survivors are found alive December 20 but they have had to resort to cannibalism to survive.
October 22 – The Oakland Athletics defeat the Cincinnati Reds four games to three to capture Major League Baseball's World Series. It is the Athletics' first championship since 1930, when the franchise was in Philadelphia.
October 25 – Belgian Eddy Merckx sets a new world hour record in cycling in Mexico City.
October 26 – A coup in the Republic of Dahomey (later Benin) led by Mathieu Kérékou removes a civilian government (which has been headed by a triumvirate consisting of Ahomadégbé, Apithy and Maga).
October 28 – The Airbus A300 flies for the first time.
November
November – The Nishitetsu Lions baseball club, part of the NPB's Pacific League, is sold to the Fukuoka Baseball Corporation, a subsidiary of Nishi-Nippon Railroad. The team is renamed the Taiheiyo Club Lions.
November 7 – 1972 United States presidential election: Republican incumbent Richard Nixon defeats Democratic Senator George McGovern in a landslide. The election has the lowest voter turnout since 1948, with only 55 percent of the electorate voting.
November 11 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization – The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.
November 14 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 1,000 (1,003.16) for the first time.
November 16 – The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopts the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.
November 19 – Seán Mac Stíofáin, a leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, is arrested in Dublin after giving a radio interview to RTÉ and charged with being a member of the IRA.
November 28 – The last executions in Paris, France. Roger Bontems and Claude Buffet – the Clairvaux Mutineers – are guillotined at La Santé Prison by chief executioner André Obrecht. Bontems, found not guilty of murder by the court, is condemned as Buffet's accomplice. President Georges Pompidou, in private an abolitionist, upholds both death sentences in deference to French public opinion.
November 29 – The "tea house" Mellow Yellow opens on the river Amstel in Amsterdam, pioneering the legal sale of cannabis in the Netherlands.
December
December 2 – 1972 Australian federal election: The Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam defeats the Liberal/Country Coalition government led by Prime Minister William McMahon. Consequently, Whitlam becomes the first Labor Prime Minister of Australia since the defeat of Ben Chifley in 1949. Whitlam will be sworn in on December 5th; his first action using executive power is to withdraw all Australian personnel from the Vietnam War. McMahon resigns from the Liberal leadership almost immediately; he will be replaced by outgoing Treasurer Billy Snedden.
December 7
Apollo 17 (Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans, Harrison Schmitt), the last crewed Moon mission for more than 50 years, is launched and The Blue Marble photograph of the Earth is taken. The mission also includes five mice.
Imelda Marcos, First Lady of the Philippines, is stabbed and seriously wounded by an assailant; her bodyguards shoot the assailant.
December 8
United Airlines Flight 553 crashes short of a runway in Chicago, killing 43 of 61 passengers and two people on the ground. A day later, over $10,000 cash is found in the purse of Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt's wife, who was on board.
International Human Rights Day is proclaimed by the United Nations.
December 11 – Apollo 17 lands on the Moon.
December 14 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan is the last person to walk on the Moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of Apollo 17. The next person to set foot on the Moon will not do so before 2026.
December 15
The Commonwealth of Australia ordains equal pay for women.
The United Nations Environment Programme is established as a specialized agency of the United Nations.
December 16
The Constitution of Bangladesh comes into effect.
The Portuguese army kills 400 Africans in Tete, Mozambique.
December 19 – Apollo program: Apollo 17 returns to Earth, concluding the program of lunar exploration.
December 21 – ZANLA troopers attack Altera Farm in north-east Rhodesia.
December 22
Australia establishes diplomatic relations with China and East Germany.
A peace delegation that includes singer-activist Joan Baez and human rights attorney Telford Taylor visit Hanoi to deliver Christmas mail to American prisoners of war (they will be caught in the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam).
December 23
The 6.2 Mw Nicaragua earthquake kills 5,000–11,000 people in the capital Managua. President Anastasio Somoza Debayle is later accused of not distributing millions of dollars worth of foreign aid.
Swedish Prime minister Olof Palme compares the American bombings of North Vietnam to Nazi massacres. The U.S. breaks diplomatic contact with Sweden.
Asker accident: Braathens SAFE Flight 239 crashes during approach to Oslo Airport, Fornebu, Norway; forty people on board are killed.
December 28 – The bones of Nazi Party official Martin Bormann are discovered in Berlin during construction work.
December 29 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashes into the Everglades in Florida, killing 101 of 176 on board. It is the first hull loss of a wide-body aircraft.
December 31 – For the first and last time, a 2nd leap second is added (23:59:60) to a year, making 1972 366 days and two seconds long, the longest year ever within the context of UTC.
Date unknown
Colombian looters find the lost 1st millennium city of Ciudad Perdida; it is not reached by official archaeologists until 1976.
Births
January
January 1 – Lilian Thuram, French football player
January 2 – Shiraz Minwalla, Indian theoretical physicist and string theorist
January 5
Ariel McDonald, American-Slovenian basketball player
Sakis Rouvas, Greek recording, film and television artist, athlete and businessman
January 10 – Thomas Alsgaard, Norwegian cross-country skier
January 11 – Amanda Peet, American actress
January 12 – Toto Wolff, Austrian racing driver and team principal
January 13
Nicole Eggert, American actress
Vitaly Scherbo, Belarusian gymnast
January 16
Salah Hissou, Moroccan long-distance runner
Greg Page, Australian singer, musician and actor (The Wiggles)
January 20 – Nikki Haley, Indian-American politician, Governor of South Carolina (2010–2017) and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2017–2018)
January 21 – Billel Dziri, Algerian footballer and manager
January 22 – Gabriel Macht, American actor
January 23 – Marcel Wouda, Dutch swimmer
January 27
Bibi Gaytán, Mexican singer and actress
Mark Owen, British pop singer (Take That)
Keith Wood, Irish rugby player
January 28 – Amy Coney Barrett, American attorney, jurist and associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court
February
February 1
Tego Calderón, Puerto Rican hip hop musician and actor
Leymah Gbowee, Liberian peace activist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
February 2
Klára Dobrev, Hungarian politician
Hendrick Ramaala, South African long-distance runner
February 3 – Michael Kovrig, Canadian diplomat and hostage victim
February 5 – Queen Mary of Denmark
February 8 – Big Show, American professional wrestler
February 9 – Norbert Rózsa, Hungarian swimmer
February 11
Craig Jones, American sampler / keyboardist
Steve McManaman, British footballer
Kelly Slater, American professional surfer
February 13
Virgilijus Alekna, Lithuanian discus thrower
Ana Paula Connelly, Brazilian beach volleyball player
February 14 – Rob Thomas, American singer-songwriter (Matchbox Twenty)
February 15 – Jaromír Jágr, Czech ice hockey player
February 17
Billie Joe Armstrong, American rock musician and lead singer/guitarist (Green Day)
Taylor Hawkins, American musician (d. 2022)
Valeria Mazza, Argentinian model and businesswoman
February 18 – Olexandra Timoshenko, Ukrainian rhythmic gymnast
February 22
Michael Chang, American tennis player
Claudia Pechstein, German speed-skater
Haim Revivo, Israeli footballer
February 24
Pooja Bhatt, Indian actress
Richard Chelimo, Kenyan athlete (d. 2001)
February 26 – Keith Ferguson, American voice actor
February 29
Dave Williams, American singer (d. 2002)
Pedro Sánchez, Spanish politician, Prime Minister 2018–
March
March 4 – Pae Gil-su, North Korean gymnast
March 6
Shaquille O'Neal, American basketball player
Marianne Thieme, Dutch politician and activist
March 10 – Timbaland, American record producer, songwriter and rapper
March 13
Leigh-Allyn Baker, American actress
Common, African-American rapper and actor
March 15 – Mark Hoppus, American musician and bassist (blink-182)
March 17 – Mia Hamm, American soccer player
March 18 – Dane Cook, American comedian
March 20 – Segundo Cernadas, Argentine actor
March 21
Balázs Kiss, Hungarian Olympic athlete
Derartu Tulu, Ethiopian long-distance runner
March 22
Shawn Bradley, American basketball player
Elvis Stojko, Canadian figure skater
March 23
Joe Calzaghe, Welsh boxer
Judith Godrèche, French actress
March 25 – Naftali Bennett, Israeli politician
March 26 – Leslie Mann, American actress
March 27
Kieran Modra, Australian Paralympic swimmer and cyclist (d. 2019)
Charlie Haas, American professional wrestler
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Dutch footballer
March 28 – Nick Frost, English actor, comedian and screenwriter
March 29
Hera Björk, Icelandic singer
Rui Costa, Portuguese footballer
Priti Patel, British Indian politician, Secretary of State for the Home Department
March 30 – Karel Poborský, Czech footballer
April
April 2 – Eyal Berkovic, Israeli footballer
April 3 – Jennie Garth, American actress
April 7 – Tim Peake, British astronaut
April 10 – Vincent Zhao, Chinese actor and martial artist
April 12 – Marco Goecke, German choreographer
April 13 – Mariusz Czerkawski, Polish ice hockey player
April 15 – Arturo Gatti, Canadian boxer (d. 2009)
April 16 – Conchita Martínez, Spanish tennis player
April 17
Jennifer Garner, American actress
Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lankan cricketer
April 19 – Rivaldo, Brazilian footballer
April 20
Lê Huỳnh Đức, Vietnamese footballer
Carmen Electra, American actress and singer
Željko Joksimović, Serbian singer, composer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer
Stephen Marley, American musician
April 21 – Narges Mohammadi, Iranian human rights activist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
April 26 – Avi Nimni, Israeli footballer
April 28 – Sergio Massa, Argentine lawyer and politician
May
May 1 – Julie Benz, American actress
May 2 – Dwayne Johnson, American professional wrestler and actor
May 3 – Steve Barclay, British politician
May 4 – Mike Dirnt, American rock musician and bassist (Green Day)
May 5
Devin Townsend, Canadian musician
James Cracknell, British Olympic rower
May 6
Martin Brodeur, Canadian ice hockey goaltender
Naoko Takahashi, Japanese long-distance runner
May 7 – Asghar Farhadi, Iranian film director
May 8 – Darren Hayes, Australian musician
May 9 – Daniela Silivaș, Romanian gymnast
May 10 – Katja Seizinger, German alpine skier
May 15 – Élisa Martin, French politician
May 19
Jenny Berggren, Swedish rock singer (Ace of Base)
Özcan Deniz, Turkish actor, singer and composer
Claudia Karvan, Australian actress
May 20 – Busta Rhymes, African-American rapper and actor
May 21 – The Notorious B.I.G., African-American rapper (d. 1997)
May 22 – Max Brooks, American horror author and screenwriter
May 23
Rubens Barrichello, Brazilian racing driver
Kevin Ullyett, Zimbabwean tennis player
May 24 – Maia Sandu, Prime Minister of Moldova
May 25
Karan Johar, Indian film director, producer and screenwriter
Cung Le, Vietnamese-born American actor and mixed martial artist
Octavia Spencer, African-American actress, author and producer
May 26 – Dhani Muhammad Prasetyo, Indonesian singer-songwriter, musician, arranger, record executive, entrepreneur, and politician
May 28 – Michael Boogerd, Dutch cyclist
May 29 – Laverne Cox, American actress and LGBTQ+ advocate
May 30 – Manny Ramírez, Dominican baseball player
May 31 – Frode Estil, Norwegian cross-country skier
June
June 2 – Wentworth Miller, British-born American actor and screenwriter
June 4 – Stoja, Serbian singer
June 5 – Yogi Adityanath, Indian priest and politician
June 6
Noriaki Kasai, Japanese ski jumper
Natalie Morales, American journalist
Cristina Scabbia, Italian singer
June 7 – Karl Urban, New Zealand actor
June 15 – Poppy Montgomery, Australian-American actress
June 16 – John Cho, Korean-American actor and musician
June 17 – Iztok Čop, Slovenian rower
June 18 – Michal Yannai, Israeli actress
June 19 – Jean Dujardin, French actor, comedian and film director
June 21 – Irene van Dyk, South African born New Zealand netball player
June 23 – Zinedine Zidane, French footballer and manager
June 24
Robbie McEwen, Australian professional bicycle road racer
Kim Yeo-jin, South Korean actress and activist
June 28
Geeta Tripathee, Nepali poet, lyricist and literary critic
Maria Butyrskaya, Russian figure skater
June 29
DJ Shadow, American DJ and record producer
Samantha Smith, American peace activist (d. 1985)
June 30
Molly Parker, Canadian actress
July
July 1 – Steffi Nerius, German javelin thrower
July 2 – Darren Shan, Irish author
July 4
Nina Badrić, Croatian pop singer
Alexei Shirov, Spanish chess Grandmaster
Craig Spearman, New Zealand cricketer
July 5
Robert Esmie, Canadian Olympic athlete
Gary Shteyngart, Soviet-born American writer
July 6
Isabelle Boulay, French Canadian singer
Zhanna Pintusevich-Block, Ukrainian sprinter
July 7
Lisa Leslie, American basketball player
Kirsten Vangsness, American actress and writer
July 8 – Sourav Ganguly, Indian cricketer
July 10
Sofía Vergara, Colombian-American actress, television producer, comedian, presenter and model
Julián Legaspi, Uruguayan-Peruvian actor
July 11 – Michael Rosenbaum, American actor, producer, singer and comedian
July 17 – Jaap Stam, Dutch football player and coach
July 20 – Jozef Stümpel, Slovak professional ice hockey player
July 21 – Catherine Ndereba, Kenyan long-distance runner
July 22
Andrew Holness, 9th Prime Minister of Jamaica
Keyshawn Johnson, American football player
Nataša Ninković, Serbian actress
July 23 – Marlon Wayans, American actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter
July 25 – Carole Samaha, Lebanese singer and actress
July 27
Clint Robinson, Australian kayaker
Maya Rudolph, American actress, comedienne and singer
Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, Malaysian orthopaedic surgeon and the first commercial astronaut
July 28
Elizabeth Berkley, American actress
Evan Farmer, American television host, actor and musician
July 29 – Wil Wheaton, American actor, blogger and writer
August
August 1 – Devon Hughes, American professional wrestler
August 4 – Audrey Azoulay, French politician and civil servant
August 6 – Geri Halliwell, British pop singer (Spice Girls)
August 7 – Chip Roy, American politician
August 9
A-mei, Taiwanese singer
Bang Si-Hyuk, South Korean Producer
August 10 – Angie Harmon, American actress
August 12 – Demir Demirkan, Turkish rock musician and songwriter
August 13 – Michael Sinterniklaas, French-American voice actor
August 14 – Yoo Jae-suk, South Korean comedian and television comedy show host
August 15 – Ben Affleck, American actor and film director
August 19
Roberto Abbondanzieri, Argentine footballer
Sammi Cheng, Hong Kong singer and actress
August 27
Denise Lewis, English track and field athlete
The Great Khali, Indian promoter, actor, powerlifter and professional wrestler
August 29 – Bae Yong-joon, South Korean actor
August 30
Cameron Diaz, American actress
Pavel Nedvěd, Czech footballer
September
September 2 – Sergejs Žoltoks, Latvian hockey player (d. 2004)
September 4
Daniel Nestor, Serbian born-Canadian tennis player
Françoise Yip, Chinese-Canadian actress
September 6 – Idris Elba, English actor
September 9 – Goran Višnjić, Croatian-American actor
September 10 – Ghada Shouaa, Syrian athlete
September 12 – Vebjørn Rodal, Norwegian middle-distance athlete
September 15 – Queen Letizia of Spain
September 16
Sprent Dabwido, Nauruan politician (d. 2019)
Vebjørn Rodal, Norwegian Olympic athlete
September 17 – Bobby Lee, Asian-American comedian
September 19 – Ashot Nadanian, Armenian chess player, theoretician and coach
September 20 – Victor Ponta, 3-Time Prime Minister of Romania
September 21
Liam Gallagher, British singer (Oasis)
Erin Fitzgerald, Canadian-American voice actress
September 23
Pierre Amine Gemayel, Lebanese politician (d. 2006)
Galit Gutman, Israeli female model
September 26
Beto O'Rourke, American politician, representative of Texas 16th congressional district
Shawn Stockman, American singer and musician (Boyz II Men)
September 27 – Gwyneth Paltrow, American actress
September 28 – Dita Von Teese, American burlesque artist, model and businesswoman
September 30
Ari Behn, Norwegian author (d. 2019)
José Lima, Dominican baseball player (d. 2010)
Shaan, Indian singer
October
October 2 – Konstantinos Papadakis, Greek pianist
October 3 – Kim Joo-hyuk, South Korean actor (d. 2017)
October 5 – Grant Hill, African-American basketball player
October 6 – Mark Schwarzer, Australian soccer player
October 11 – Claudia Black, Australian actress
October 15 – Sandra Kim, Belgian singer, Eurovision Song Contest 1986 winner
October 17
Eminem, American rapper and actor
Sharon Leal, American actress and director
Tarkan, Turkish singer
October 21
Evgeny Afineevsky, Russian-born American film director and producer
Evhen Tsybulenko, Ukrainian professor of international law
October 22 – Saffron Burrows, British actress
October 24 – Kim Ji-soo, South Korean actress
October 25 – Esther Duflo, French American economist, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
October 26 – Dianno A. Jakelj, Slovenian abstract painter
October 27
Elissa, Lebanese singer
Maria de Lurdes Mutola, Mozambican athlete
October 28 – Brad Paisley, American country music singer-songwriter and guitarist.
October 29 – Gabrielle Union, American actress
November
November 1
Mario Barth, German comedian
Toni Collette, Australian actress, singer and musician
Jenny McCarthy, American actress and model
November 2 – Vladimir Vorobiev, Russian ice hockey player
November 4 – Luís Figo, Portuguese footballer
November 6
Adonis Georgiades, Greek historian and politician, Minister of Health
Thandiwe Newton, British actress
Rebecca Romijn, American actress and model
November 8
Gretchen Mol, American actress
Maja Marijana, Serbian pop-folk singer
November 9
Eric Dane, American actor
Corin Tucker, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
November 10 – Trevor Devall, Canadian voice actor and podcaster
November 11 – Adam Beach, Canadian actor
November 13 – Takuya Kimura, Japanese actor
November 14 – Josh Duhamel, American actor and model
November 15 – Jonny Lee Miller, English-American actor
November 16
Aurelia Dobre, Romanian artistic gymnast
Missi Pyle, American actress and singer
November 18 – Zubeen Garg, Indian singer
November 23 – Alfie Haaland, Norwegian footballer
November 26 – Arjun Rampal, Indian actor
November 29
Brian Baumgartner, American actor and director
Andreas Goldberger, Austrian ski jumper
Rodrigo Pessoa, Brazilian equestrian
November 30 – Christopher Fitzgerald, American actor
December
December 4 – Yūko Miyamura, Japanese voice actress, actress and singer
December 7 – Hermann Maier, Austrian skier
December 9
Tré Cool, American rock musician and drummer (Green Day)
Fabrice Santoro, French tennis player
December 11 – Daniel Alfredsson, Swedish-Canadian ice hockey player
December 12
Wilson Kipketer, Kenyan-Danish athlete
Arihito Muramatsu, Japanese baseball player
December 13 – Mauricio Solís, Costa Rican footballer
December 14 – Miranda Hart, British comedian and actress
December 15
Lee Jung-jae, South Korean actor
Stuart Townsend, Irish actor
December 16 – Zeljko Kalac, Australian footballer
December 17
John Abraham, Indian actor
Iván Pedroso, Cuban long jumper
December 18
Eimear Quinn, Irish Celtic singer, Eurovision Song Contest 1996 winner
Lawrence Wong, Singapore economist and fourth Prime Minister of Singapore
December 19 – Alyssa Milano, American actress
December 22 – Vanessa Paradis, French singer and actress
December 24 – Álvaro Mesén, Costa Rican footballer
December 25 – Qu Yunxia, Chinese middle-distance runner
December 27 – Colin Charvis, Welsh rugby player
December 28
Pat Rafter, Australian tennis player
Kevin Stitt, American politician and businessman and 28th Governor of Oklahoma
December 29
Jude Law, British actor
Leonor Varela, Chilean actress
December 31 – Grégory Coupet, French footballer
Deaths
January
January 1
Maurice Chevalier, French singer and actor (b. 1888)
Maximus V of Constantinople, Turkish Orthodox Christian bishop (b. 1897)
January 3 – Frans Masereel, Belgian painter and graphic artist (b. 1889)
January 7 – Emma P. Carr, American spectroscopist (b. 1880)
January 8 – Wesley Ruggles, American film director (b. 1889)
January 10
Nubar Gulbenkian, Ottoman-born Armenian-British oil trader, socialite and intelligence operative (b. 1896)
Aksel Larsen, Danish politician (b. 1897)
January 14 – King Frederik IX of Denmark (b. 1899)
January 16 – Ross Bagdasarian, American record producer (b. 1919)
January 17 – Rochelle Hudson, American actress (b. 1916; heart attack)
January 19 – Mohammad Al-Abbasi, 45th Prime Minister of Jordan (b. 1914)
January 25 – Erhard Milch, German field marshal and Luftwaffe officer (b. 1892)
January 27 – Mahalia Jackson, American gospel singer (b. 1911)
January 30
Beatrice Forbes, Countess of Granard, American-born heiress (b. 1883)
Prince Sisowath Watchayavong, 5th Prime Minister of Cambodia (b. 1891)
January 31 – King Mahendra of Nepal (b. 1920)
February
February 2 – Jessie Royce Landis, American actress (b. 1896)
February 5 – Marianne Moore, American poet (b. 1887)
February 7 – Walter Lang, American film director (b. 1896)
February 11 – Colin Munro MacLeod, Canadian-American geneticist (b. 1909)
February 17 – Gavriil Popov, Soviet Russian composer (b. 1904)
February 19
John Grierson, Scottish documentary filmmaker (b. 1898)
Lee Morgan, American jazz trumpeter and composer (b. 1938)
February 20
Maria Goeppert Mayer, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)
Walter Winchell, American journalist (b. 1897)
February 25 – Gottfried Fuchs, German footballer (b. 1889)
March
March 4 – Sir Harold Barrowclough, New Zealand general, lawyer and chief justice (b. 1894)
March 8 – Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, German Nazi politician and SS functionary (b. 1899)
March 11
Fredric Brown, American science fiction and mystery writer (b. 1906)
Zack Wheat, American baseball player (b. 1888)
March 17 – Claude J. Crenshaw, American Air Force officer and flying ace (b. 1918)
March 20 – Marilyn Maxwell, American actress (b. 1921)
March 23 – Cristóbal Balenciaga, Spanish couturier (b. 1895)
March 27
M. C. Escher, Dutch artist (b. 1898)
Lorenzo Wright, American athlete (b. 1926)
March 28 – Joseph Paul-Boncour, 71st Prime Minister of France (b. 1873)
March 31 – Meena Kumari, Indian actress, singer and poet (b. 1933)
April
April 2 – Franz Halder, German general (b. 1884)
April 3 – Ferde Grofé, American pianist and composer (b. 1892)
April 4 – Stefan Wolpe, German-born American composer (b. 1902)
April 4 – Gil Hodges, American baseball player (b. 1924)
April 5 – Isabel Jewell, American actress (b. 1907)
April 6
Brian Donlevy, American actor (b. 1901)
Heinrich Lübke, 2nd President of the Federal Republic of Germany (b. 1894)
April 7
Abeid Karume, 1st President of Zanzibar (b. 1905)
August Zaleski, 6th President of Poland (b. 1883)
April 9 – James F. Byrnes, United States Secretary of State and Justice of the Supreme Court (b. 1882)
April 10 – Henry de La Falaise, French film director, Croix de guerre recipient (b. 1898)
April 16 – Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese novelist (b. 1899)
April 20 – Andrea Andreen, Swedish physician (b. 1888)
April 24
Fernando Amorsolo, Filipino painter (b. 1892)
Nora K. Chadwick, English philologist (b. 1891)
April 25 – George Sanders, Russian-born British actor (b. 1906)
April 27 – Kwame Nkrumah, 1st President of Ghana (b. 1909)
April 29 – King Ntare V of Burundi (b. 1947)
April 30
Gia Scala, British actress (b. 1934)
Clara Campoamor, Spanish politician and suffragist (b. 1888)
May
May 2 – J. Edgar Hoover, American civil servant, 1st Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (b. 1895)
May 3 – Bruce Cabot, American actor (b. 1904)
May 4
Father Chrysanthus, Dutch arachnologist (b. 1905)
Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1886)
Josep Samitier, Spanish footballer (b. 1902)
May 5
Reverend Gary Davis, American blues and gospel singer (b. 1896)
Frank Tashlin, American animation director (b. 1913)
May 6 – Deniz Gezmiş, Turkish Marxist revolutionary (executed) (b. 1947)
May 10 – Rice Gemmell, Australian tennis champion (b. 1896)
May 11 – Lee Beom-seok, Korean activist, 1st Prime Minister of South Korea (b. 1900)
May 12 – Lionel Penrose, English geneticist (b. 1898)
May 13 – Dan Blocker, American actor (b. 1928)
May 15 - Nigel Green, South African-English actor (b. 1924)
May 17 – Sir Gordon Lowe, Bt., British tennis player (b. 1884)
May 18 – Sidney Franklin, American film director (b. 1893)
May 22
Cecil Day-Lewis, British poet (b. 1904)
Dame Margaret Rutherford, English actress (b. 1892)
May 23 – Richard Day, Canadian art director (b. 1896)
May 24 – Asta Nielsen, Danish silent film star (b. 1881)
May 28
The Duke of Windsor, previously King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (b. 1894)
Violette Leduc, French writer (b. 1907)
May 29 – Prithviraj Kapoor, Indian actor and director (b. 1906)
May 31 – Walter Jackson Freeman II, American neurologist (b. 1895)
June
June 10 – Edward Milford, Australian general (b. 1894)
June 12
Saul Alinsky, American political activist (b. 1909)
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Austrian biologist (b. 1901)
Edmund Wilson, American writer and critic (b. 1895)
June 13
Georg von Békésy, Hungarian biophysicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1899)
Stephanie von Hohenlohe, Austrian-born German World War II spy (b. 1891)
Clyde McPhatter, American singer (b. 1932)
Felix Stump, American admiral (b. 1894)
June 18 – Milton L. Humason, American astronomer (b. 1891)
June 22 – Vladimir Durković, Serbian footballer (b. 1937)
June 25 – Jan Matulka, Czech-born American artist (b. 1890)
June 28 – Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, Indian scientist (b. 1893)
June 30 – Joe Deakin, British Olympic athlete (b. 1879)
July
July 2 – Joseph Fielding Smith, 10th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1876)
July 5 – Raúl Leoni, 55th President of Venezuela (b. 1905)
July 6 – Brandon deWilde, American actor (b. 1942)
July 7
Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople (b. 1886)
King Talal of Jordan (b. 1909)
July 8 – Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian author (b. 1936)
July 20 – Geeta Dutt, Indian singer (b. 1930)
July 21
Ralph Craig, American Olympic athlete (b. 1889)
King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck (b. 1929)
July 24 − Lance Reventlow, English playboy, entrepreneur and racing driver (b. 1936)
July 27 – Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, Austrian-Japanese politician, geopolitician and philosopher (b. 1894)
July 28 – Helen Traubel, American soprano (b. 1899)
July 31
Alfons Gorbach, Austrian politician, 15th Chancellor of Austria (b. 1898)
Paul-Henri Spaak, Belgian politician and statesman, 31st Prime Minister of Belgium and 2nd Secretary General of NATO (b. 1899)
August
August 8 – Andrea Feldman, American actress (b. 1948)
August 9 – Ernst von Salomon, German writer (b. 1902)
August 11 – Max Theiler, South African-born American virologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1899)
August 14
Oscar Levant, American pianist and actor (b. 1906)
Jules Romains, French poet and writer (b. 1885)
August 16 – Pierre Brasseur, French actor (b. 1905)
August 19 – Rudolf Belling, German sculptor (b. 1886)
August 20 – Juan Manuel Gálvez, 39th President of Honduras (b. 1887)
August 24 – Jinichi Kusaka, Japanese admiral (b. 1888)
August 26 – Francis Chichester, British sailor and aviator (b. 1901)
August 28 – Prince William of Gloucester (b. 1941)
August 29 – René Leibowitz, French composer (b. 1913)
September
September 1 – He Xiangning, Chinese revolutionary, feminist, politician, painter and poet (b. 1878)
September 2 – Ivan Yumashev, Soviet admiral (b. 1895)
September 5 (Munich massacre):
Yossef Romano, Israeli weightlifter (b. 1940)
Moshe Weinberg, Israeli wrestling coach (b. 1939)
September 6 (Munich massacre):
David Berger, Israeli weightlifter (b. 1944)
Ze'ev Friedman, Israeli weightlifter (b. 1944)
Yossef Gutfreund, Israeli wrestling referee (b. 1931)
Eliezer Halfin, Israeli wrestler (b. 1948)
Amitzur Shapira, Israeli athletics coach (b. 1932)
Kehat Shorr, Israeli shooting coach (b. 1919)
Mark Slavin, Israeli wrestler (b. 1954)
Andre Spitzer, Israeli fencing coach (b. 1945)
September 8 – Warren Kealoha, American Olympic swimmer (b. 1903)
September 12 – William Boyd, American actor (b. 1895)
September 13 – Zoel Parenteau, American composer (b. 1883)
September 15
Ásgeir Ásgeirsson, 2nd President of Iceland (b. 1894)
Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1887)
September 17 – Akim Tamiroff, Armenian actor (b. 1899)
September 19 – Robert Casadesus, French pianist (b. 1899)
September 21 – Henry de Montherlant, French writer (b. 1896)
September 25 – Max Fleischer, American animator (b. 1883)
October
October 1 – Louis Leakey, British paleontologist (b. 1903)
October 5 – Ivan Yefremov, Soviet paleontologist and science fiction author (b. 1908)
October 8 – Prescott Bush, American banker and politician (b. 1895)
October 9 – Miriam Hopkins, American actress (b. 1902)
October 10 – Kenneth Edgeworth, Irish army officer, economist and astronomer (b. 1880)
October 16 – Leo G. Carroll, English actor (b. 1886)
October 17 – George, Crown Prince of Serbia (b. 1887)
October 20 – Harlow Shapley, American astronomer (b. 1885)
October 24
Jackie Robinson, African-American baseball player (b. 1919)
Claire Windsor, American actress (b. 1892)
October 26 – Igor Sikorsky, Soviet aviation engineer (b. 1889)
October 27 – Katherine Oppenheimer, American biologist (b. 1910)
October 28 – Mitchell Leisen, American film director (b. 1898)
November
November 1 – Ezra Pound, American poet (b. 1885)
November 5 – Reginald Owen, English actor (b. 1887)
November 12
Rudolf Friml, Czech composer (b. 1879)
José Nucete Sardi, Venezuelan historian and diplomat (b. 1897)
November 13 – Arnold Jackson, British Olympic athlete (b. 1891)
November 17
Thomas C. Kinkaid, American admiral (b. 1888)
Eugène Minkowski, French psychiatrist (b. 1885)
November 23 – Marie Wilson, American actress (b. 1916)
November 25 – Henri Coandă, Romanian aerodynamics pioneer (b. 1886)
November 28
Havergal Brian, English composer (b. 1876)
Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (b. 1908)
November 29 – Carl W. Stalling, American musician (b. 1891)
November 30 – Hans Erich Apostel, Austrian composer (b. 1901)
December
December 1 – Antonio Segni, 34th Prime Minister of Italy (1955–1957, 1959–1960), 4th President of the Italian Republic (b. 1891)
December 2 – Ettore Bastico, Italian field marshal (b. 1876)
December 9
William Dieterle, German film director (b. 1893)
Louella Parsons, American gossip columnist (b. 1881)
December 11 – Numa Turcatti, Uruguayan law student, victim of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash (b. 1947)
December 13 – René Mayer, 91st Prime Minister of France (b. 1895)
December 20 – Günter Eich, German lyricist, dramatist and author (b. 1907)
December 21 – Paul Hausser, German Waffen SS general and commander (b. 1880)
December 23 – Andrei Tupolev, Soviet aircraft designer (b. 1888)
December 24
Charles Atlas, Italian-born American strongman and sideshow performer (b. 1892)
Gisela Richter, English art historian (b. 1882)
December 25 – C. Rajagopalachari, Indian politician and freedom-fighter. Last Governor-General of India (1948–50) (b. 1878)
December 26 – Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States (b. 1884)
December 27 – Lester B. Pearson, 14th Prime Minister of Canada, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1897)
December 31 – Roberto Clemente, Puerto Rican baseball player (b. 1934)
Nobel Prizes
Physics – John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, John Robert Schrieffer
Chemistry – Christian B. Anfinsen, Stanford Moore, William H. Stein
Physiology or Medicine – Gerald M. Edelman, Rodney R. Porter
Literature – Heinrich Böll
Peace – not awarded
Economics – John Hicks, Kenneth Arrow
Other academic awards
Turing Award – Edsger W. Dijkstra
== References == |
Zack_Wheat | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Wheat | [
331
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Wheat#"
] | Zachariah Davis Wheat (May 23, 1888 – March 11, 1972), nicknamed "Buck", was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a left fielder from 1909 to 1927, most notably as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers who were known as the Robins at that time. After 18 seasons in Brooklyn, he played his final season with the Philadelphia Athletics.
Although Wheat spent the first part of his career playing in the Dead ball era, he hit over .300 in 13 seasons and won the National League batting championship in 1918. He ended his career with a .317 career batting average and remains the Dodgers all-time franchise leader in hits, doubles, triples, RBI, and total bases. Wheat was also known as a stylish and graceful outfielder, leading National League left fielders in putouts seven times and fielding percentage twice.
Wheat was unanimously elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1959. His brother McKinley "Mack" Wheat also played in the major leagues, and the two were teammates in Brooklyn for five seasons.
Early life
Born in Hamilton, Missouri, he was the son of Basil and Julia Wheat. His father was of English descent. For many years, it was believed that Wheat was at least partially of Cherokee descent but, according to the Society for American Baseball Research, this was likely untrue.
Career
Wheat began his professional baseball career in 1906 for Enterprise in the Kansas League, followed by Wichita in 1907, the Shreveport Pirates of the Texas League in 1908, and the Mobile Sea Gulls of the Southern Association in 1909. It was during that 1909 season that the Brooklyn Superbas of the National League purchased Wheat for $1,200, and he made his major league debut in September. Wheat batted with a corkscrew type of swing, and held his hands down near the end of the bat, unlike most hitters during his time, a time noted as the "Dead Ball Era". Along with his consistently high levels of hitting, he was also noted for his graceful and stylish defense.
Wheat played his first full season in 1910. He played every game for the Superbas that season as the regular left fielder, leading the league in games played. He batted .284 that season, the second-lowest average of his career, which led the team, and was among the league leaders in hits, doubles, and triples. It was in 1911 that his reputation as a slugger began to take hold. Along with hitting .287, Wheat finished eighth in the league with 13 triples and slugged five home runs. In an era when players rarely hit double-digit home runs for a season, five was enough for people to take notice.
Wheat continued his steady and consistent climb up the batting charts in 1912, hitting .305 and finishing the season among the league leaders in home runs and slugging percentage. Over the next four seasons, he continued to be among the leaders in many offensive categories, including home runs, batting average, slugging average, hits, doubles, triples, and RBI. It was during the 1912 season that Wheat married Daisy Kerr Forsman. His wife quickly became his de facto agent, encouraging him to hold out for a better contract each season. Each time Wheat held out, he received more money, the club not wanting to lose one of its best hitters and the team's most popular player. This tactic of threatening to hold out served him well during throughout his career, including during the World War I era, when he raised and sold mules to the United States Army as pack animals. Wheat claimed that he was making so much money from his business that he wouldn't need to play baseball at all. The team, fearing that they might lose a great player during the prime of his career, succumbed to his demands every year.
In 1916, Wheat topped off a string of seasons with a finish in the top ten in all the above categories, topping the league in total bases and slugging. He also had a career-high hitting streak, which reached 29 games. The Brooklyn Robins won the National League pennant that season. In the World Series, they faced the Boston Red Sox, who had the formidable pitching rotation of Ernie Shore, Dutch Leonard, Carl Mays, and Babe Ruth. The Red Sox won the series four games to one, holding the Robins to a .200 batting average and Wheat to a paltry .211.
During the 1917 and 1918 seasons, Wheat hit well, but missed many games due to injuries. He had tiny feet, around size 5, and this is believed to be the cause of the many nagging ankle injuries that caused to miss many games in his career. However, Wheat led the league in batting average for the only time in his career with a .335 batting average, his highest average up to that point. Despite being known as a slugger and consistently placing in the top ten in home runs, Wheat hit no home runs that season and had hit just one the season prior. Not until Rod Carew in 1972 would another player win a batting title without hitting a home run during the season.
Starting in 1919, Wheat returned to the league slugging leaders once again as the baseball began to become livelier. The Robins made their second World Series appearance in 1920, this time facing off against the Cleveland Indians. The Robins lost this series as well, 5 games to 2, although Wheat's series average was .333. Wheat's statistics climbed during this new live era of baseball, reaching double-digit home runs for the first time with 14 in 1921, and again three more times in the next four years. Wheat hit .320 or higher every season from 1920 through 1925, topping out with .375 in consecutive seasons. He failed to lead the league in hitting those two seasons, not getting enough at bats in 1923 to qualify, and Hornsby topped the league with .384, and in 1924, his .375 was a distant second to Hornsby's .424.
A subtle but longstanding friction existed between Wheat and his manager, Wilbert Robinson. The friction reportedly stemmed from Robinson's belief that Wheat pursued the manager's job behind his back. When owner Charles Ebbets died in 1925, new team president Ed McKeever reassigned Robinson into the front office and named Wheat as player-manager. Newspapers confirm that he managed the Dodgers for two weeks. McKeever caught pneumonia at Ebbets' funeral, and died soon afterward, and Robinson quickly returned to the manager's position. As it turned out, Wheat never again managed in the majors, much to his disappointment. Moreover, Wheat's 1925 managerial stint never made it into the official records. In 1931, Steve McKeever, Ed's brother, hired Wheat as a coach, leading to widespread speculation that he was being groomed for the manager's spot, threatening Robinson's job for a second time in seven years, and he treated his former star as coldly as ever.
Wheat was signed by the Philadelphia Athletics after his release from Brooklyn in 1927. After the season, he was released again; this time he signed and played for the minor league Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. Wheat played very little that season due to a heel injury, and retired from playing following the season. He still holds the Dodger franchise records for hits, doubles, triples and total bases.
Career statistics
In 2,410 games over 19 seasons, Wheat posted a .317 batting average (2,884-for-9,106) with 1,289 runs, 476 doubles, 172 triples, 132 home runs, 1,248 RBI, 205 stolen bases, 650 bases on balls, .367 on-base percentage and .450 slugging percentage. He finished his career with a .966 fielding percentage as a left fielder. In 12 World Series games (1916,1920), he batted .283 (13-for-46) with 4 runs, 2 doubles, 1 triple, 3 RBI and 3 walks.
Post-career
After Wheat retired from baseball, he moved back to his 160-acre (0.65 km2) farm in Polo, Missouri, until the Great Depression forced him to sell it in 1932. He moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he operated a bowling alley with Cotton Tierney. Wheat later became a police officer. During his duties as an officer in 1936, he crashed his vehicle while pursuing a felon, and nearly died. Following five months in hospital after the accident, he moved his family to Sunrise Beach, Missouri, a resort town on the Lake of the Ozarks, where he opened a 46-acre (190,000 m2) hunting and fishing resort.
Wheat was first voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1957, but could not be inducted because he had not been retired for the required 30 years. The committee unanimously elected him in 1959. In 1981, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. In 2006, the stretch of Route 13 that runs through Caldwell County, Missouri was named the Zach Wheat Memorial Highway.
Due to the long-held belief about his supposed Cherokee ancestry, Wheat was featured in "Baseball's League of Nations: A Tribute to Native Americans in Baseball", a 2008 exhibit at the Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, N.Y.
Wheat died of a heart attack on March 11, 1972.
Legacy
The American Legion Post in Sunrise Beach, Missouri, where Wheat lived following his retirement, is named "Zachariah (Zack) Davis Wheat Post 624 American Legion, Sunrise Beach, Missouri" in his honor.
See also
List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders
List of Major League Baseball career doubles leaders
List of Major League Baseball career triples leaders
List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders
List of Major League Baseball career runs batted in leaders
List of Major League Baseball career total bases leaders
List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders
List of Major League Baseball batting champions
References
External links
Zack Wheat at the Baseball Hall of Fame
Career statistics and player information from Baseball Reference
Zack Wheat at Find a Grave
Zack Wheat at the SABR Baseball Biography Project , by Eric Enders, Retrieved 2008-04-19. |
List_of_members_of_the_Baseball_Hall_of_Fame | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Baseball_Hall_of_Fame | [
331
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Baseball_Hall_of_Fame"
] | The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, honors individuals who have excelled in playing, managing, and serving the sport, and is the central point for the study of the history of baseball in the United States and beyond, displaying baseball-related artifacts and exhibits. Elections of worthy individuals to be honored by induction into the Hall of Fame commenced in 1936, although the first induction ceremonies were not held until the hall opened in 1939. Through the elections for 2024, a total of 346 people will have been inducted, including 274 former professional players, 39 executives/pioneers, 23 managers, and 10 umpires. Each is listed showing his primary position; that is, the position or role in which the player made his greatest contribution to baseball according to the Hall of Fame.
According to the current rules, players must have at least 10 years of major league experience to be eligible for induction. In addition, they must be retired for at least five years if living, or deceased for at least six months. Players meeting these qualifications must pass through a screening committee, and are then voted on by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). Each writer may vote for up to 10 players; to be admitted into the Hall of Fame, a player must be approved by 75% of those casting ballots. Players receiving less than 5% approval are removed from future BBWAA ballots. The rules, as revised in July 2016, allow that all individuals eligible for induction but not for the BBWAA ballot—players who have not been approved by the BBWAA election process within 15 years of their retirement, umpires, managers, pioneers, and executives—may be considered by one of four voting bodies that have taken over the role of the former Veterans Committee, based on the era in which each individual candidate made his greatest contribution to the sport. On a few occasions, exceptions have been made to the guidelines in place at the time: Lou Gehrig was elected in 1939 following his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Roberto Clemente was elected shortly after his death in 1972; and Addie Joss was elected in 1978 even though he completed only nine seasons before his death.
Between 1971 and 1977, nine players from the Negro leagues were inducted by a special Negro Leagues Committee, which was given the task of identifying worthy players who played in the Negro leagues prior to the breaking of baseball's color line. Since 1977, players from the Negro leagues have been considered by the Veterans Committee, and nine more individuals have been approved by that body. In 2005, the Hall announced the formation of a Committee on African-American Baseball, which held a 2006 election for eligible figures from the Negro leagues and earlier 19th-century teams; 17 additional Negro leagues figures were chosen in that election, including executive Effa Manley, the first woman inducted.
Key
Members
In the table below, "primary team" is based on the inductees' biographies at the Hall of Fame website. This does not necessarily match the cap logo on the inductee's Hall of Fame plaque (if applicable; those inducted as executives are shown without caps, and many early players are depicted without cap logos because logos were not in use during the individuals' careers).
Notes
^ Prior to the 2001 re-organization of the Veterans Committee, the percentage of the vote generally was not released for candidates selected by the committee.
^ Percentage of the vote was not released for candidates approved by the Committee on African American Baseball (2006).
^ Ford Frick's two tenures as an executive included his stints as the president of the National League (1934–1951) and Commissioner of Baseball (1951–1965).
^ Lou Gehrig was elected by acclamation at the December 1939 winter meetings of the BBWAA.
^ There were no regular elections in 1940, 1941, 1943, and 1944, as the Hall decided to hold elections every three years as opposed to annually. Landis was elected in a special election shortly after his death in November 1944. Annual elections resumed in 1946, one year after the end of World War II.
^ There was no event in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns over the members of the Hall who were able to attend the event. The extended Class of 2021 features those elected in December 2019 (veterans' committee), January 2020 (BBWAA), and January 2021 (BBWAA). The planned December 2020 Veterans Committee elections, in the Golden Age and Early Baseball Eras, were postponed until December 2021.
Cap logos
See also
Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, by year
List of members of the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame
List of members of the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame
List of members of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame
References
General
"Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees". Baseball-Reference.com. Retrieved September 16, 2009.
"Members Of The Baseball Hall Of Fame And Their Year Of Induction". National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved July 6, 2010.
Inline citations
External links
Baseball Hall of Fame biographies |
Pud_Galvin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pud_Galvin | [
331
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pud_Galvin"
] | James Francis "Pud" Galvin (December 25, 1856 – March 7, 1902) was an American Major League Baseball pitcher in the 19th century. He was MLB's first 300-game winner and was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1965.
Baseball career
Galvin grew up in Kerry Patch, an Irish neighborhood in St. Louis. He debuted for St. Louis of the National Association in 1875, the franchise's inaugural season, and started eight games for the team. He spent the next 6+1⁄2 seasons with Buffalo in the International Association and later of the National League. In his first full MLB season in 1879, Galvin had a win–loss record of 37–27 and a 2.28 earned run average (retroactively calculated; ERA was not an established statistic before the 20th century) in 593 innings pitched. On August 20, 1880, he became the first major league pitcher to throw a no-hitter on the road, leading his Buffalo Bisons to a 1–0 victory over the Worcester Worcesters. He pitched over 400 innings in 1880, 1881, and 1882. In 1883, Galvin went 46–29 with a 2.72 ERA, setting career highs in wins, games started (75), complete games (72), and innings pitched (656.1); he led the NL in the latter three categories. The following season, in 1884, he went 46–22 with a 1.99 ERA in 72 games started, 71 complete games, and 636.1 innings pitched.
Galvin was traded to the Pittsburgh Alleghenys midseason in 1885. He played for the Allegheny club from 1885 to 1889, pitching over 300 innings each year. He jumped to the Pittsburgh Burghers of the short-lived Players League before the 1890 season and then returned to the Alleghenys (now named the "Pirates") after the season. On June 14, 1892, Galvin was traded to the St. Louis Browns. He retired after the 1892 season, though he made a brief return to Buffalo (by this time a minor league franchise) in 1894.
Galvin played in an era where two-man pitching rotations were common – hence his 6,003 innings pitched and 646 complete games, both of which are second only to the career totals of Cy Young. Upon his retirement, Galvin held all-time records in several pitching categories, including wins, innings pitched, games started, games completed and shutouts. He became MLB's first 300-game winner in 1888. Galvin holds the record for most games started in a single season by a pitcher before 1893, 75 (tied with Will White). Galvin is the only player in baseball history to win 20 or more games in 10 different years without winning a pennant, finishing his career with a total of 365 wins and 310 losses.
The nickname "Pud" originated because Galvin was said to make hitters "look like pudding." Galvin was also nicknamed "The Little Steam Engine", a tribute to his power in spite of his small size. He was sometimes known as "Gentle Jeems" because of his kind disposition.
Legacy
Galvin died poor at age 45 on March 7, 1902, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and, as a Roman Catholic, is buried in Calvary Catholic Cemetery. He was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1965 by the Veterans Committee. In honor of his achievements in Buffalo, Galvin was inducted into the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985.
A 2006 NPR article referred to Galvin as "the first baseball player to be widely known for using a performance-enhancing substance." The Washington Post reported that Galvin used the Brown-Séquard elixir, which contained monkey testosterone, before a single game in 1889. However, no one seemed bothered by the use of the elixir, and the newspaper practically endorsed it after the game, saying that Galvin's performance was "the best proof yet furnished of the value of the discovery."
See also
300 win club
List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders
List of Major League Baseball career shutout leaders
List of Major League Baseball annual shutout leaders
List of Major League Baseball no-hitters
List of Major League Baseball player-managers
References
External links
Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball Reference, or Fangraphs, or Baseball Reference (Minors), or Retrosheet
Pud Galvin at the Baseball Hall of Fame
Pud Galvin at Find a Grave |
Chinchilla | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinchilla | [
332
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinchilla"
] | Chinchillas are either of two species (Chinchilla chinchilla and Chinchilla lanigera) of crepuscular rodents of the parvorder Caviomorpha, and are native to the Andes mountains in South America. They live in colonies called "herds" at high elevations up to 4,270 m (14,000 ft). Historically, chinchillas lived in an area that included parts of Bolivia, Peru and Chile, but today, colonies in the wild are known only in Chile. Along with their relatives, viscachas, they make up the family Chinchillidae. They are also related to the chinchilla rat.
The chinchilla has the densest fur of all mammals that live on land, with around 20,000 hairs per square centimeter and 50 hairs growing from each follicle. In the water, the sea otter has a denser coat. The chinchilla is named after the Chincha people of the Andes, who once wore its dense, velvet-like fur and ate their meat. By the end of the 19th century, chinchillas had become quite rare after being hunted for their notably soft fur. Most chinchillas currently used by the fur industry for clothing and other accessories are farm-raised. Domestic chinchillas descended from C. lanigera are sometimes kept as pets, and may be considered a type of pocket pet.
Species
The two living species of chinchilla are Chinchilla chinchilla (formerly known as Chinchilla brevicaudata) and Chinchilla lanigera. C. chinchilla has a shorter tail, a thicker neck and shoulders, and shorter ears than C. lanigera. The former species is currently facing extinction; the latter, though rare, can be found in the wild. Domesticated chinchillas are thought to be of the C. lanigera species.
Distribution and habitat
Chinchillas formerly occupied the coastal regions, hills, and mountains of Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia. Overexploitation caused the downturn of these populations and, as early as 1914, one scientist claimed that the species was headed for extinction. Five years of fieldwork (published in 2007) in Jujuy Province, Argentina, failed to find a single specimen. Populations in Chile were thought extinct by 1953, but the animal was found to inhabit an area in the Antofagasta Region in the late 1900s and early 2000s. The animal may be extinct in Bolivia and Peru, though one specimen found (in a restaurant in Cerro de Pasco) may hail from a native population.
In their native habitats, chinchillas live in burrows or crevices in rocks. They are agile jumpers and can jump up to 1.8 m (6 ft). Predators in the wild include birds of prey, skunks, felines, snakes and canines. Chinchillas have a variety of defensive tactics, including spraying urine and releasing fur if bitten. In the wild, chinchillas have been observed eating plant leaves, fruits, seeds, and small insects.
In nature, chinchillas live in social groups that resemble colonies, but are properly called herds. Herd sizes can range from 14 members up to 100, and herding behavior is thought to promote both social interaction and protection from predators. They can breed any time of the year, though breeding season typically falls between May and November. They are typically monogamous. Their gestation period is 111 days, longer than most rodents. Due to this long pregnancy, chinchillas are born fully furred and with eyes open. Litters are usually small in number, predominantly two.
Conservation
Both species of chinchilla are currently listed as Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species due to a severe population loss approximated at a 90% global population loss over the last 15 years. The severe population decline has been caused by chinchilla hunting by humans. The long tailed-species was listed on the IUCN Red List as “Very rare and believed to be decreasing in numbers” in 1965. From 1982 to 1996, both species were listed as Indeterminate. In 2006, the long-tailed species was listed as "Vulnerable" while the short-tailed species was listed as "Critically Endangered". By 2008, both were listed as "Critically Endangered", and in 2016 they were reclassified as "Endangered" due to limited recovery in some areas.
Relationship with humans
Fur industry
Chinchilla fur trade on an international level goes back to the 16th century. Their fur is popular due to its extremely soft feel, which is caused by the sprouting of 25 hairs (on average) from each hair follicle. The color is usually very even, which makes it ideal for small garments or the lining of larger ones, though some large pieces can be made entirely from the fur. A single, full-length coat made from chinchilla fur may require as many as 150 pelts, as chinchillas are relatively small. Their use for fur led to the extinction of one species, and put serious pressure on the other two. Though it is illegal to hunt wild chinchillas, they are now on the verge of becoming extinct because of continued poaching. Domesticated chinchillas are still bred for fur.
As pets
The domestic chinchilla is descended from Chinchilla lanigera, the long-tailed Chinchilla. They are the more common one in the wild, as the other species, Chinchilla chinchilla, or short-tailed Chinchilla, has been hunted nearly to extinction. Therefore, domestic chinchillas have thinner bodies, longer tails and larger ears. In the wild, the average life-span of a chinchilla is ten years; however, they could live up to 20 years in human care.
Chinchillas are popular pets, though they require extensive exercise and dental care, due to their teeth continually growing throughout their life span, and since they lack the ability to sweat, they require a temperature-controlled environment.
The animals instinctively clean their fur by taking dust baths, in which they roll around in special dust made of fine pumice, a few times a week; they do not bathe in water. Their thick fur resists parasites, such as fleas, and reduces loose dander.
Pet chinchillas require easy access to food, water, and hiding places, where they can sleep undisturbed for extended periods of time. Chinchillas are typically highly social creatures, so owners should interact often with their pets. They also have sensitive hearing and are easily startled by loud, unexpected noises.
In scientific research
Chinchillas have been used in research since the 1950s. Since the 1970s, the prime interest in chinchillas by researchers is their auditory system. Other research fields in which chinchillas are used as an animal model include the study of Chagas disease, gastrointestinal diseases, pneumonia, and listeriosis, as well as of Yersinia and Pseudomonas infections.
Veterinary medicine
Fractures
Chinchillas live active lives and can recover well from minor physical injury. Fractures may be problematic, because chinchillas sit on their hind legs and eat with their front paws, so many types of injuries will disturb their natural eating behavior.
Convulsions
Chinchilla breeders sometimes report seeing their animals have convulsions. Typically this happens only irregularly and then only for a few seconds, and not more than a few minutes at the most. Convulsions are a symptom that can have many causes, including a brain problem such as hemorrhaging, a vitamin or dietary element deficiency in the diet, or some kind of nervous system injury. If convulsions are observed after chinchillas mate then it is likely related to a circulatory problem. Some chinchillas who are kept in groups have stress convulsions during feeding if they see other chinchillas getting food first. Vitamin B, cardiac medication, or a calcium injection may be used to prevent convulsions.
Infectious diseases
Listeriosis is not a typical chinchilla disease, but rats in group housing conditions it can spread as a digestive tract disease in a community. Pasteurella can be contracted from food and then transmitted among a group of chinchillas. Symptoms include apathy, digestive disorder, and fever. Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections are widely distributed in nature and can affect chinchillas like many other animals. They can cause wide deaths in populations of chinchillas and spontaneous abortion in pregnant chinchillas.
Respiratory tract infections can be caused by many pathogens, but, regardless of cause, usually result in difficult breathing and a nasal discharge. Young chinchilla are more likely to be affected and these infections are unlikely to result in an epidemic, even if transmissible.
Gastrointestinal disorders are observed as either constipation or diarrhea. These are almost always the result of a problem with the diet, but if the diet is optimal, they could be the symptom of an infectious disease. Constipation in chinchillas is difficult to observe in groups because it may not be obvious that an animal is not contributing to the population's waste. If it is identified, mild treatments include feeding paraffin to soften the feces.
Mental health
Chinchillas are easily distressed, and when they are unhappy, they may exhibit physical symptoms. A common indicator of stress in pet chinchillas is fur-chewing (or fur barbering), an excessive grooming behavior that results in uneven patches of fur; chinchillas may chew their own fur or that of their cagemates. Fur-chewing can sometimes be alleviated through changes in living environment, but is regarded by some experts to be passed genetically from parents to offspring. Usually, fur-chewing itself is a benign symptom that does not cause physiological distress.
Sick chinchillas may stop eating if they are stressed, which can make them even weaker. Chinchillas that live in communities are especially sensitive in their breeding seasons of February to March and August to September. Chinchillas are social animals and are likely to be upset to have their breeding mate changed in breeding season. They are known to be disturbed by a change of diet in these times.
Pharmaceutical treatment
Chinchillas may be treated with chloramphenicol, neomycin, or spectinomycin for digestive problems. Sulfonamides dissolved in drinking water may be used. Colistin can be an effective antibiotic.
References
Sources
Kraft, Helmut (1987). Diseases of Chinchillas. Translated by U. Erich Friese. Neptune City, NJ: T.F.H. ISBN 978-0866224925.
Saunders, Richard. "Veterinary Care Of Chinchillas." In Practice (0263841X) 31.6 (2009): 282–291. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
External links
Media related to Chinchillas at Wikimedia Commons
Data related to Chinchilla at Wikispecies |
List_of_Copa_Am%C3%A9rica_finals | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Copa_Am%C3%A9rica_finals | [
333
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Copa_Am%C3%A9rica_finals#Finals"
] | The Copa América is an international association football competition established in 1916. It is contested by the men's national teams of the members of the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL), the sport's continental governing body.
Early editions of the tournament, then known as the South American Football Championship, consisted of a round-robin group, where the team with the most points was declared the champion (with a play-off to break a tie if necessary). In 1975, when the tournament was rebranded to its current title, a final stage using the single-elimination format was introduced, which culminates with a final match between the last two teams remaining in contention. This type of format has been used ever since, except in 1989 and 1991, which featured a final group stage.
Argentina defeated Colombia in the final of the latest competition, held in 2024.
Finals
Keys
aet: after extra time
p: penalty shoot-out
Final played in two-legged format (with a playoff if necessary).
Defined on penalties after 90 minutes.
Defined on penalties after extra time
Teams in italics are non-CONMEBOL members that participated as invitees.
Results by nation
* Indicates host country
See also
List of FIFA World Cup finals
List of UEFA European Championship finals
List of AFC Asian Cup finals
List of Africa Cup of Nations finals
List of CONCACAF Gold Cup finals
List of OFC Nations Cup finals
References
External links
The Copa América Archive by Martín Tabeira on the RSSSF |
Tony_Blair | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair | [
334,
662
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair"
] | Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997 and held various shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994. Blair was Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007, and was special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East from 2007 to 2015. He is the second-longest-serving prime minister in post-war British history after Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving Labour politician to have held the office, and the first and only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.
Blair attended the independent school Fettes College, studied law at St John's College, Oxford, and qualified as a barrister. He became involved in the Labour Party and was elected to the House of Commons in 1983 for the Sedgefield constituency in County Durham. As a backbencher, Blair supported moving the party to the political centre of British politics. He was appointed to Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet in 1988 and was appointed shadow home secretary by John Smith in 1992. Following Smith's death in 1994, Blair won a leadership election to succeed him. As leader, Blair began a historic rebranding of the party, which became known as "New Labour".
Blair became the youngest prime minister of the 20th century after his party won a landslide victory of 418 seats (the largest in its history) in the 1997 general election, bringing an end to 18 years in the opposition. It was the first victory for the Labour Party in nearly 23 years, the last one being in October 1974.
During his first term, Blair enacted constitutional reforms and significantly increased public spending on healthcare and education while also introducing controversial market-based reforms in these areas. In addition, Blair saw the introduction of a minimum wage, tuition fees for higher education, constitutional reform such as devolution in Scotland and Wales, an extensive expansion of LGBT+ rights in the UK, and significant progress in the Northern Ireland peace process with the passing of the landmark Good Friday Agreement. On foreign policy, Blair oversaw British interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and Sierra Leone in 2000, which were generally perceived to be successful.
Blair won a second term after Labour won a second landslide victory in the 2001 general election. Three months into his second term, Blair's premiership was shaped by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, resulting in the start of the war on terror. Blair supported the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration by ensuring that the British Armed Forces participated in the War in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, destroy al-Qaeda, and capture Osama bin Laden. Blair supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and had the British Armed Forces participate in the Iraq War, on the inaccurate beliefs that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction and developed ties with al-Qaeda. The invasion of Iraq was particularly controversial, as it attracted widespread public opposition and 139 of Blair's own MPs opposed it. As a result, he faced criticism over the policy itself and the circumstances of the decision. The Iraq Inquiry report of 2016 gave a damning assessment of Blair's role in the Iraq War. As the casualties of the Iraq War mounted, Blair was accused of misleading Parliament, and his popularity dropped dramatically.
Blair won a third term after Labour won a third election victory in 2005, in part thanks to the UK's strong economic performance, but with a substantially reduced majority, due to the UK's involvement in the Iraq War. During his third term, Blair pushed for more systemic public sector reform and brokered a settlement to restore powersharing to Northern Ireland. He had a surge in popularity at the time of terrorist bombings of London of July 2005, but by the Spring of 2006 faced significant difficulties, most notably with scandals over failures by the Home Office to deport illegal immigrants. Amid the Cash-for-Honours scandal, Blair was interviewed three times as prime minister, though only as a witness and not under caution. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars continued, and in 2006, Blair announced he would resign within a year. He resigned the party leadership on 24 June 2007 and as prime minister on 27 June, and was succeeded by Gordon Brown, his chancellor.
After leaving office, Blair gave up his seat and was appointed special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post he held until 2015. He has been the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change since 2016 and has made occasional political interventions, and has been a key influence on Keir Starmer. In 2009, Blair was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. He was made a Knight Companion of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. At various points in his premiership, Blair was among both the most popular and most unpopular politicians in British history. As prime minister, he achieved the highest recorded approval ratings during his first few years in office but also one of the lowest ratings during and after the Iraq War. Blair is usually rated as above average in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers.
Early years
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was born on 6 May 1953 at Queen Mary Maternity Home in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the second son of Leo and Hazel (née Corscadden) Blair. Leo Blair was the illegitimate son of two entertainers and was adopted as a baby by the Glasgow shipyard worker James Blair and his wife, Mary. Hazel Corscadden was the daughter of George Corscadden, a butcher and Orangeman who moved to Glasgow in 1916. In 1923, he returned to (and later died in) Ballyshannon, County Donegal, in Ireland. In Ballyshannon, Corscadden's wife, Sarah Margaret (née Lipsett), gave birth above the family's grocery shop to Blair's mother, Hazel.
Blair has an elder brother, William, and a younger sister, Sarah. Blair's first home was with his family at Paisley Terrace in the Willowbrae area of Edinburgh. During this period, his father worked as a junior tax inspector whilst studying for a law degree from the University of Edinburgh.
Blair's first relocation was when he was nineteen months old. At the end of 1954, Blair's parents and their two sons moved from Paisley Terrace to Adelaide, South Australia. His father lectured in law at the University of Adelaide. In Australia, Blair's sister, Sarah, was born. The Blairs lived in the suburb of Dulwich close to the university. The family returned to the United Kingdom in mid-1958. They lived for a time with Hazel's mother and stepfather (William McClay) at their home in Stepps on the outskirts of north-east Glasgow. Blair's father accepted a job as a lecturer at Durham University, and moved the family to Durham when Blair was five. It was the beginning of a long association Blair was to have with Durham.
Since childhood, Blair has been a fan of Newcastle United Football Club.
Education and legal career
With his parents basing their family in Durham, Blair attended the Chorister School from 1961 to 1966. Aged 13, he was sent to spend his school term-time boarding at Fettes College in Edinburgh from 1966 to 1971. According to Blair, he hated his time at Fettes. His teachers were unimpressed with him; his biographer, John Rentoul, reported that "[a]ll the teachers I spoke to when researching the book said he was a complete pain in the backside and they were very glad to see the back of him." Blair reportedly modelled himself on Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones. Leaving Fettes College at the age of 18, Blair next spent a gap year in London working as a rock music promoter.
In 1972, at the age of 19, Blair matriculated at St John's College, Oxford, reading jurisprudence for three years. As a student, he played guitar and sang in a rock band called Ugly Rumours, and performed stand-up comedy. He was influenced by fellow student and Anglican priest Peter Thomson, who awakened his religious faith and left-wing politics. While at Oxford, Blair has stated that he was briefly a Trotskyist, after reading the first volume of Isaac Deutscher's biography of Leon Trotsky, which was "like a light going on". He graduated from Oxford at the age of 22 in 1975 with a second-class Honours B.A. in jurisprudence.
In 1975, while Blair was at Oxford, his mother Hazel died aged 52 of thyroid cancer, which greatly affected him. After Oxford, Blair served his barrister pupillage at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the Bar. He met his future wife, Cherie Booth, at the chambers founded by Derry Irvine (who was to be Blair's first lord chancellor), 11 King's Bench Walk Chambers.
Early political career
Blair joined the Labour Party shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1975. In the early 1980s, he was involved in Labour politics in Hackney South and Shoreditch, where he aligned himself with the "soft left" of the party. He stood as a candidate for the Hackney council elections of 1982 in Queensbridge ward, a safe Labour area, but was not selected.
In 1982, Blair was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield, where there was a forthcoming by-election. Although Blair lost the Beaconsfield by-election and Labour's share of the vote fell by ten percentage points, he acquired a profile within the party. Despite his defeat, William Russell, political correspondent for The Glasgow Herald, described Blair as "a very good candidate", while acknowledging that the result was "a disaster" for the Labour Party. In contrast to his later centrism, Blair made it clear in a letter he wrote to Labour leader Michael Foot in July 1982 (published in 2006) that he had "come to Socialism through Marxism" and considered himself on the left. Like Tony Benn, Blair believed that the "Labour right" was bankrupt, saying "[s]ocialism ultimately must appeal to the better minds of the people. You cannot do that if you are tainted overmuch with a pragmatic period in power." Yet, he saw the hard left as no better, saying:
There is an arrogance and self-righteousness about many of the groups on the far left which is deeply unattractive to the ordinary would-be member ... There's too much mixing only with people [with] whom they agree.
With a general election due, Blair had not been selected as a candidate anywhere. He was invited to stand again in Beaconsfield, and was initially inclined to agree but was advised by his head of chambers Derry Irvine to find somewhere else which might be winnable. The situation was complicated by the fact that Labour was fighting a legal action against planned boundary changes, and had selected candidates on the basis of previous boundaries. When the legal challenge failed, the party had to rerun all selections on the new boundaries; most were based on existing seats, but unusually in County Durham a new Sedgefield constituency had been created out of Labour-voting areas which had no obvious predecessor seat.
The selection for Sedgefield did not begin until after the 1983 general election was called. Blair's initial inquiries discovered that the left was trying to arrange the selection for Les Huckfield, sitting MP for Nuneaton, who was trying elsewhere; several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were also interested in it. When he discovered the Trimdon branch had not yet made a nomination, Blair visited them and won the support of the branch secretary John Burton, and with Burton's help was nominated by the branch. At the last minute, he was added to the shortlist and won the selection over Huckfield. It was the last candidate selection made by Labour before the election, and was made after the Labour Party had issued biographies of all its candidates ("Labour's Election Who's Who").
John Burton became Blair's election agent and one of his most trusted and longest-standing allies. Blair's election literature in the 1983 general election endorsed left-wing policies that Labour advocated in the early 1980s. He called for Britain to leave the EEC as early as the 1970s, though he had told his selection conference that he personally favoured continuing membership and voted "Yes" in the 1975 referendum on the subject. He opposed the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1986 but supported the ERM by 1989. He was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, despite never strongly being in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Blair was helped on the campaign trail by soap opera actress Pat Phoenix, his father-in-law's girlfriend. At the age of thirty, he was elected as MP for Sedgefield in 1983; despite the party's landslide defeat at the general election.
In his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 6 July 1983, Blair stated, "I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for cooperation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality."
Once elected, Blair's political ascent was rapid. He received his first front bench appointment in 1984 as assistant Treasury spokesman. In May 1985, he appeared on the BBC's Question Time, arguing that the Conservative Government's Public Order White Paper was a threat to civil liberties.
Blair demanded an inquiry into the Bank of England's decision to rescue the collapsed Johnson Matthey bank in October 1985. By this time, Blair was aligned with the reforming tendencies in the party (headed by leader Neil Kinnock) and in 1988 was promoted to the shadow Trade and Industry team as spokesman on the City of London.
Leadership roles
In 1987, he stood for election to the Shadow Cabinet, receiving 71 votes. When Kinnock resigned after a fourth consecutive Conservative victory in the 1992 general election, Blair became shadow home secretary under John Smith. The old guard argued that trends showed they were regaining strength under Smith's strong leadership. Meanwhile, the breakaway SDP faction had merged with the Liberal Party; the resulting Liberal Democrats seemed to pose a major threat to the Labour base. Blair, the leader of the modernising faction, had an entirely different vision, arguing that the long-term trends had to be reversed. The Labour Party was too locked into a base that was shrinking, since it was based on the working-class, on trade unions, and on residents of subsidised council housing. The rapidly growing middle-class was largely ignored, especially the more ambitious working-class families. They aspired to middle-class status but accepted the Conservative argument that Labour was holding ambitious people back with its levelling-down policies. They increasingly saw Labour in terms defined by the opposition, regarding higher taxes and higher interest rates. The steps towards what would become New Labour were procedural but essential. Calling on the slogan "One member, one vote", John Smith, with limited input from Blair, secured an end to the trade union block vote for Westminster candidate selection at the 1993 conference. But Blair and the modernisers wanted Smith to go further still, and called for radical adjustment of Party goals by repealing "Clause IV", the historic commitment to nationalisation of industry. This would be achieved in 1995.
Leader of the Opposition
John Smith died suddenly of a heart attack on 12 May 1994. Blair defeated John Prescott and Margaret Beckett in the subsequent leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition. As is customary for the holder of that office, Blair was appointed a Privy Counsellor. It has long been rumoured a deal was struck between Blair and Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown at the former Granita restaurant in Islington, in which Blair promised to give Brown control of economic policy in return for Brown not standing against him in the leadership election. Whether this is true or not, the relationship between Blair and Brown was central to the fortunes of New Labour, and they mostly remained united in public, despite reported serious private rifts.
During his speech at the 1994 Labour Party conference, Blair announced a forthcoming proposal to update the party's objects and objectives, which was widely interpreted to relate to replacing Clause IV of the party's constitution with a new statement of aims and values. This involved the deletion of the party's stated commitment to "the common ownership of the means of production and exchange", which was generally understood to mean wholesale nationalisation of major industries. At a special conference in April 1995, the clause was replaced by a statement that the party is "democratic socialist", and Blair also claimed to be a "democratic socialist" himself in the same year. However, the move away from nationalisation in the old Clause IV made many on the left wing of the Labour Party feel that Labour was moving away from traditional socialist principles of nationalisation set out in 1918, and was seen by them as part of a shift of the party towards "New Labour".
Blair inherited the Labour leadership at a time when the party was ascendant over the Conservatives in the opinion polls, since the Conservative government's reputation in monetary policy declined as a result of the Black Wednesday economic disaster of September 1992. Blair's election as leader saw Labour support surge higher still in spite of the continuing economic recovery and fall in unemployment that the Conservative government (led by John Major) had overseen since the end of the 1990–92 recession. At the 1996 Labour Party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on coming to office were "education, education, and education".
Aided by the unpopularity of John Major's Conservative government (itself deeply divided over the European Union), Blair won a landslide victory for Labour at the 1997 general election, ending eighteen years of Conservative Party government, with the heaviest Conservative defeat since 1906. In 1996, the manifesto New Labour, New Life for Britain was published, which set out the party's new "Third Way" centrist approach to policy, and was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. In May 1995, Labour had achieved considerable success in the local and European elections and had won four by-elections. For Blair, these achievements were a source of optimism, as they indicated that the Conservatives were in decline. Virtually every opinion poll since late-1992 put Labour ahead of the Conservatives with enough support to form an overall majority.
Prime Minister (1997–2007)
Blair became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 2 May 1997; aged 43, he was the youngest person to reach that office since Lord Liverpool became prime minister aged 42 in 1812. He was also the first prime minister born after the Second World War and the accession of Elizabeth II to the throne. With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair was the Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, and the first person (and the only one, to date) to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.
Northern Ireland
His contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland peace process by helping to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement (after 30 years of conflict) was widely recognised. Following the Omagh bombing on 15 August 1998, by members of the Real IRA opposed to the peace process, which killed 29 people and wounded hundreds, Blair visited the County Tyrone town and met with victims at Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.
Military intervention and the War on Terror
In his first six years in office, Blair ordered British troops into combat five times, more than any other prime minister in British history. This included Iraq in both 1998 and 2003, Kosovo (1999), Sierra Leone (2000) and Afghanistan (2001).
The Kosovo War, which Blair had advocated on moral grounds, was initially a failure when it relied solely on air strikes; the threat of a ground offensive convinced Serbia's Slobodan Milošević to withdraw. Blair had been a major advocate for a ground offensive, which Bill Clinton was reluctant to do, and ordered that 50,000 soldiers – most of the available British Army – should be made ready for action. The following year, the limited Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone swiftly swung the tide against the rebel forces; before deployment, the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone had been on the verge of collapse. Palliser had been intended as an evacuation mission but Brigadier David Richards was able to convince Blair to allow him to expand the role; at the time, Richards' action was not known and Blair was assumed to be behind it.
Blair ordered Operation Barras, a highly successful SAS/Parachute Regiment strike to rescue hostages from a Sierra Leone rebel group. Journalist Andrew Marr has argued that the success of ground attacks, real and threatened, over air strikes alone was influential on how Blair planned the Iraq War, and that the success of the first three wars Blair fought "played to his sense of himself as a moral war leader". When asked in 2010 if the success of Palliser may have "embolden[ed] British politicians" to think of military action as a policy option, General Sir David Richards admitted there "might be something in that".
From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of George W. Bush, participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was particularly controversial, as it attracted widespread public opposition and 139 of Blair's own MPs opposed it. As a result, he faced criticism over the policy itself and the circumstances of the decision. Alastair Campbell described Blair's statement that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond doubt" as his "assessment of the assessment that was given to him." In 2009, Blair stated that he would have supported removing Saddam Hussein from power even in the face of proof that he had no such weapons. Playwright Harold Pinter and former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad accused Blair of war crimes.
Testifying before the Iraq Inquiry on 29 January 2010, Blair said Saddam Hussein was a "monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world." Blair said that British and American attitude towards Hussein had "changed dramatically" after the September 11 attacks. Blair denied that he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if he had thought Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. He said he believed the world was safer as a result of the invasion. He said there was "no real difference between wanting regime change and wanting Iraq to disarm: regime change was US policy because Iraq was in breach of its UN obligations."
In an October 2015 CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria, Blair apologised for his "mistakes" over the Iraq War and admitted there were "elements of truth" to the view that the invasion helped promote the rise of ISIS. The Chilcot Inquiry report of 2016 gave a damning assessment of Blair's role in the Iraq War, though the former prime minister again refused to apologise for his decision to back the US-led invasion.
Relationship with Parliament
One of Blair's first acts as prime minister was to replace the then twice-weekly 15-minute sessions of Prime Minister's Questions held on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a single 30-minute session on Wednesdays. In addition to PMQs, Blair held monthly press conferences at which he fielded questions from journalists and, from 2002, broke precedent by agreeing to give evidence twice yearly before the most senior Commons select committee, the Liaison Committee. Blair was sometimes perceived as paying insufficient attention both to the views of his own Cabinet colleagues and to those of the House of Commons. His style was sometimes criticised as not that of a prime minister and head of government, which he was, but of a president and head of state, which he was not. Blair was accused of excessive reliance on spin. He was the first UK prime minister to have been formally questioned by police, though not under caution, while still in office.
Events before resignation
As the casualties of the Iraq War mounted, Blair was accused of misleading Parliament, and his popularity dropped as a result, with Labour's overall majority at the 2005 election reduced from 167 to 66 seats. As a combined result of the Blair–Brown pact, the Iraq War and low approval ratings, pressure built up within the Labour Party for Blair to resign. Over the summer of 2006, many MPs criticised Blair for not calling for a ceasefire in the Israel–Lebanon conflict. On 7 September 2006, Blair publicly stated he would step down as leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress conference held from 10 to 13 September 2007, despite promising to serve a full term during the previous general election campaign. On 10 May 2007, during a speech at the Trimdon Labour Club, Blair announced his intention to resign as both Labour leader and prime minister, triggering a leadership election in which Brown was the only candidate.
At a special party conference in Manchester on 24 June 2007, Blair formally handed over the leadership of the Labour Party to Brown, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Blair's three ministries. Blair tendered his resignation as prime minister on 27 June and Brown assumed office the same afternoon. Blair resigned from his Sedgefield seat in the traditional form of accepting the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, to which he was appointed by Brown in one of the latter's last acts as chancellor; the resulting by-election was won by Labour candidate Phil Wilson. Blair decided not to issue a list of Resignation Honours, making him the first prime minister of the modern era not to do so.
Policies
In 2001, Blair said, "We are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social justice as partners and not as opposites." Blair rarely applies such labels to himself; he promised before the 1997 election that New Labour would govern "from the radical centre", and according to one lifelong Labour Party member always described himself as a social democrat. In a 2007 opinion piece in The Guardian, left-wing commentator Neil Lawson described Blair as to the right of centre. A YouGov opinion poll in 2005 found that a small majority of British voters, including many New Labour supporters, placed Blair on the right of the political spectrum. The Financial Times argued that Blair is not conservative but instead a populist.
Critics and admirers tend to agree that Blair's electoral success was based on his ability to occupy the centre ground and appeal to voters across the political spectrum, to the extent that he has been fundamentally at odds with traditional Labour Party values. Some left-wing critics, such as Mike Marqusee in 2001, argued that Blair oversaw the final stage of a long term shift of the Labour Party to the right.
There is some evidence that Blair's long term dominance of the centre forced his Conservative opponents to shift a long distance to the left to challenge his hegemony there. Leading Conservatives of the post-New Labour era hold Blair in high regard: George Osborne describes him as "the master", Michael Gove thought he had an "entitlement to conservative respect" in February 2003, while David Cameron reportedly maintained Blair as an informal adviser. Former Conservative Party Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared Blair and New Labour to be her greatest achievement.
Social reforms
Blair introduced significant constitutional reforms; promoted new rights for gay people; and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU. With specific regards to Blair's LGBTQ+ reforms, Blair introduced the Civil Partnership Act 2004 which granted civil partners rights and responsibilities similar to those in civil marriages, equalised the age of consent between straight and gay couples, ended the ban on gay people serving in the British military, introduced the Gender Recognition Act 2004 which allows those with gender dysphoria to legally change their gender, repealed Section 28, gave gay couples the right to adopt and enacted several anti-discrimination policies into law. In 2014 he was proclaimed a "gay icon" by the Gay Times.
The New Labour government increased police powers by adding to the number of arrestable offences, compulsory DNA recording and the use of dispersal orders. Under Blair's government the amount of new legislation increased which attracted criticism. He also introduced tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation.
Economic policies
Blair has been credited with overseeing a strong economy, with real incomes of British citizens growing 18% between 1997 and 2006. Britain saw rapid productivity growth and significant GDP growth, as well as falling poverty rates and inequality which, despite stubbornly failing to fall, stalled thanks to New Labour's economic policies (such as tax credits). Despite the financial bubble developing in the property markets, studies have credited the growth to investments in education and the maintenance of fiscal responsibility, rather than a financial sugar-high.
During his time as prime minister, Blair kept direct taxes low, while raising indirect taxation; invested a significant amount in Human capital; introduced a National Minimum Wage and some new employment rights (while keeping Margaret Thatcher's trade union reforms). He introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors; introduced student tuition fees; introduced a welfare to work scheme and sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments. He did not reverse the privatisation of the railways enacted by his predecessor John Major and instead strengthened regulation (by creating the Office of Rail Regulation) and limited fare rises to inflation +1%.
Blair and Brown raised spending on the NHS and other public services, increasing spending from 39.9% of GDP to 48.1% in 2010–11. They pledged in 2001 to bring NHS spending to the levels of other European countries, and doubled spending in real terms to over £100 billion in England alone.
Immigration
Non-European immigration rose significantly during the period from 1997, not least because of the government's abolition of the primary purpose rule in June 1997. This change made it easier for UK residents to bring foreign spouses into the country. The former government advisor Andrew Neather in the Evening Standard stated that the deliberate policy of ministers from late 2000 until early 2008 was to open up the UK to mass migration. Neather later stated that his words had been twisted, saying: "The main goal was to allow in more migrant workers at a point when – hard as it is to imagine now – the booming economy was running up against skills shortages.... Somehow this has become distorted by excitable Right-wing newspaper columnists into being a "plot" to make Britain multicultural. There was no plot."
Environmental record
Blair criticised other governments for not doing enough to solve global climate change. In a 1997 visit to the United States, he made a comment on "great industrialised nations" that fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Again in 2003, Blair went before the United States Congress and said that climate change "cannot be ignored", insisting "we need to go beyond even Kyoto." Blair and his party promised a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide. The Labour Party also claimed that by 2010 10% of the energy would come from renewable resources; however, it only reached 7% by that point.
In 2000, Blair "flagged up" 100 million euros for green policies and urged environmentalists and businesses to work together.
Foreign policy
Blair built his foreign policy on basic principles (close ties with the United States and European Union) and added a new activist philosophy of "interventionism". In 2001, Britain joined the U.S. in the global war on terror.
Blair forged friendships with several European leaders, including Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Angela Merkel of Germany and later Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
Along with enjoying a close relationship with Bill Clinton, Blair formed a strong political alliance with George W. Bush, particularly in the area of foreign policy. For his part, Bush lauded Blair and the UK. In his post-9/11 speech, for example, he stated that "America has no truer friend than Great Britain".
The alliance between Bush and Blair seriously damaged Blair's standing in the eyes of Britons angry at American influence; a 2002 poll revealed that a large amount of Britons viewed Blair as a "lapdog" of Bush. Blair argued it was in Britain's interest to "protect and strengthen the bond" with the United States regardless of who was in the White House.
However, a perception of one-sided compromising personal and political closeness led to discussion of the term "Poodle-ism" in the UK media, to describe the "Special Relationship" of the UK government and prime minister with the US White House and president. A revealing conversation between Bush and Blair, with the former addressing the latter as "Yo [or Yeah], Blair" was recorded when they did not know a microphone was live at the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg in 2006.
Middle East policy
On 30 January 2003, Blair signed The letter of the eight supporting U.S. policy on Iraq.
Blair showed a deep feeling for Israel, born in part from his faith. Blair has been a longtime member of the pro-Israel lobby group Labour Friends of Israel.
In 1994, Blair forged close ties with Michael Levy, a leader of the Jewish Leadership Council. Levy ran the Labour Leader's Office Fund to finance Blair's campaign before the 1997 election and raised £12 million towards Labour's landslide victory, Levy was rewarded with a peerage, and in 2002, Blair appointed Lord Levy as his personal envoy to the Middle East. Levy praised Blair for his "solid and committed support of the State of Israel". Tam Dalyell, while Father of the House of Commons, suggested in 2003 that Blair's foreign policy decisions were unduly influenced by a "cabal" of Jewish advisers, including Levy, Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw (the last two are not Jewish but have some Jewish ancestry).
Blair, on coming to office, had been "cool towards the right-wing Netanyahu government". During his first visit to Israel, Blair thought the Israelis bugged him in his car. After the election in 1999 of Ehud Barak, with whom Blair forged a close relationship, he became much more sympathetic to Israel. From 2001, Blair built up a relationship with Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, and responded positively to Arafat, whom he had met thirteen times since becoming prime minister and regarded as essential to future negotiations. In 2004, 50 former diplomats, including ambassadors to Baghdad and Tel Aviv, stated they had "watched with deepening concern" at Britain following the US into war in Iraq in 2003. They criticised Blair's support for the road map for peace which included the retaining of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.
In 2006 Blair was criticised for his failure to immediately call for a ceasefire in the 2006 Lebanon War. The Observer newspaper claimed that at a cabinet meeting before Blair left for a summit with Bush on 28 July 2006, a significant number of ministers pressured Blair to publicly criticise Israel over the scale of deaths and destruction in Lebanon. Blair was criticised for his solid stance alongside US president George W. Bush on Middle East policy.
Syria and Libya
A Freedom of Information request by The Sunday Times in 2012 revealed that Blair's government considered knighting Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. The documents showed Blair was willing to appear alongside Assad at a joint press conference even though the Syrians would probably have settled for a farewell handshake for the cameras; British officials sought to manipulate the media to portray Assad in a favourable light; and Blair's aides tried to help Assad's "photogenic" wife Asma al-Assad boost her profile. The newspaper noted:
The Arab leader was granted audiences with the Queen and the Prince of Wales, lunch with Blair at Downing Street, a platform in parliament and many other privileges ... The red carpet treatment he and his entourage received is embarrassing given the bloodbath that has since taken place under his rule in Syria ... The courtship has parallels with Blair's friendly relations with Muammar Gaddafi.
Blair had been on friendly terms with Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, when sanctions imposed on the country were lifted by the US and the UK.
Even after the Libyan Civil War in 2011, he said he had no regrets about his close relationship with the late Libyan leader. During Blair's premiership, MI6 rendered Abdelhakim Belhaj to the Gaddafi regime in 2004, though Blair later claimed he had "no recollection" of the incident.
Zimbabwe
Blair had an antagonistic relationship with Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and allegedly planned regime change against Mugabe in the early 2000s. Zimbabwe had embarked on a program of uncompensated land redistribution from the country's white commercial farmers to the black population, a policy that disrupted agricultural production and threw Zimbabwe's economy into chaos. General Charles Guthrie, the Chief of the Defence Staff, revealed in 2007 that he and Blair had discussed the invasion of Zimbabwe. Guthrie advised against military action: "Hold hard, you'll make it worse." In 2013, South African president Thabo Mbeki said that Blair had pressured South Africa to join in a "regime change scheme, even to the point of using military force" in Zimbabwe. Mbeki refused because he felt that "Mugabe is part of the solution to this problem." However, a spokesman for Blair said that "he never asked anyone to plan or take part in any such military intervention."
Russia
Blair went on a trip to Moscow to watch a performance of the War and Peace opera with Vladimir Putin, while he was the acting president of Russia. This meeting was criticised by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. In 2018, Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, said there was "significant regret" over this trip, which helped Putin rise to power. Dearlove also alleged that in 2000, a KGB officer approached him, seeking Britain's help in boosting Putin's political profile, and this was why Blair met Putin in Russia.
Blair also hosted Putin in London in April 2000, despite hesitation towards Putin from other world leaders, and opposition from human rights groups over atrocities committed in Chechnya. Blair told Jim Hoagland of The Washington Post that "[Putin's] vision of the future is one that we would feel comfortable with. Putin has a very clear agenda of modernizing Russia. When he talks of a strong Russia, he means strength not in a threatening way but in a way that means the country economically and politically is capable of standing up for itself, which is a perfectly good aim to have". During the meeting, Blair acknowledged and discussed "concerns about Chechnya", but described Putin as a political reformer "who is ready to embrace a new relationship with the European Union and the United States, who wants a strong and modern Russia and a strong relationship with the West".
Relationship with media
Rupert Murdoch
Blair was reported by The Guardian in 2006 to have been supported politically by Rupert Murdoch, the founder of the News Corporation organisation. In 2011, Blair became godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch's children with Wendi Deng, but he and Murdoch later ended their friendship, in 2014, after Murdoch suspected him of having an affair with Deng while they were still married, according to The Economist magazine.
Contacts with UK media proprietors
A Cabinet Office freedom of information response, released the day after Blair handed over power to Gordon Brown, documents Blair having various official phone calls and meetings with Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation and Richard Desmond of Northern and Shell Media.
The response includes contacts "clearly of an official nature" in the specified period, but excludes contacts "not clearly of an official nature." No details were given of the subjects discussed. In the period between September 2002 and April 2005, Blair and Murdoch are documented speaking six times; three times in the nine days before the Iraq War, including the eve of the 20 March US and UK invasion, and on 29 January, 25 April, and 3 October 2004. Between January 2003 and February 2004, Blair had three meetings with Richard Desmond; on 29 January and 3 September 2003, and 23 February 2004.
The information was disclosed after a 3+1⁄2-year battle by the Liberal Democrats' Lord Avebury. Lord Avebury's initial October 2003 information request was dismissed by then leader of the Lords, Baroness Amos. A following complaint was rejected, with Downing Street claiming the information compromised "free and frank discussions", while Cabinet Office claimed releasing the timing of the PM's contacts with individuals is "undesirable", as it might lead to the content of the discussions being disclosed. While awaiting a following appeal from Lord Avebury, the cabinet office announced that it would release the information. Lord Avebury said: "The public can now scrutinise the timing of his (Murdoch's) contacts with the former prime minister, to see whether they can be linked to events in the outside world."
Blair appeared before the Leveson Inquiry on Monday 28 May 2012. During his appearance, a protester, later named as David Lawley-Wakelin, got into the court-room and claimed he was guilty of war crimes before being dragged out.
Media portrayal
Blair has been noted as a charismatic, articulate speaker with an informal style. Film and theatre director Richard Eyre opined that "Blair had a very considerable skill as a performer". A few months after becoming prime minister Blair gave a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, on the morning of her death in August 1997, in which he famously described her as "the People's Princess".
After taking office in 1997, Blair gave particular prominence to his press secretary, who became known as the prime minister's official spokesman (the two roles have since been separated). Blair's first PMOS was Alastair Campbell, who served in that role from May 1997 to 8 June 2001, after which he served as the prime minister's director of communications and strategy until his resignation on 29 August 2003 in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry.
Blair had close relationships with the Clinton family. The strong partnership with Bill Clinton was made into the film The Special Relationship in 2010.
Relationship with Labour Party
Blair's apparent refusal to set a date for his departure was criticised by the British press and Members of Parliament. It has been reported that a number of cabinet ministers believed that Blair's timely departure from office would be required to be able to win a fourth election. Some ministers viewed Blair's announcement of policy initiatives in September 2006 as an attempt to draw attention away from these issues.
Gordon Brown
After the death of John Smith in 1994, Blair and his close colleague Gordon Brown (they shared an office at the House of Commons) were both seen as possible candidates for the party leadership. They agreed not to stand against each other, it is said, as part of a supposed Blair–Brown pact. Brown, who considered himself the senior of the two, understood that Blair would give way to him: opinion polls soon indicated, however, that Blair appeared to enjoy greater support among voters. Their relationship in power became so turbulent that it was reported the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, often had to act as "marriage guidance counsellor".
During the 2010 election campaign Blair publicly endorsed Brown's leadership, praising the way he had handled the financial crisis.
Post-premiership (2007-present)
Diplomacy
On 27 June 2007, Blair officially resigned as prime minister after ten years in office, and he was officially confirmed as Middle East envoy for the United Nations, European Union, United States, and Russia. Blair originally indicated that he would retain his parliamentary seat after his resignation as prime minister came into effect; however, on being confirmed for the Middle East role he resigned from the Commons by taking up an office of profit. President George W. Bush had preliminary talks with Blair to ask him to take up the envoy role. White House sources stated that "both Israel and the Palestinians had signed up to the proposal". In May 2008 Blair announced a new plan for peace and for Palestinian rights, based heavily on the ideas of the Peace Valley plan. Blair resigned as envoy in May 2015.
Private sector
In January 2008, it was confirmed that Blair would be joining investment bank JPMorgan Chase in a "senior advisory capacity" and that he would advise Zurich Financial Services on climate change. His salary for this work is unknown, although it has been claimed it may be in excess of £500,000 per year. Blair also gives lectures, earning up to US$250,000 for a 90-minute speech, and in 2008 he was said to be the highest paid speaker in the world.
Blair taught a course on issues of faith and globalisation at the Yale University Schools of Management and Divinity as a Howland distinguished fellow during the 2008–09 academic year. In July 2009, this accomplishment was followed by the launching of the Faith and Globalisation Initiative with Yale University in the US, Durham University in the UK, and the National University of Singapore in Asia, to deliver a postgraduate programme in partnership with the Foundation.
Blair's links with, and receipt of an undisclosed sum from, UI Energy Corporation, have also been subject to media comment in the UK.
In July 2010 it was reported that his personal security guards claimed £250,000 a year in expenses from the taxpayer. Foreign Secretary William Hague said; "we have to make sure that [Blair's security] is as cost-effective as possible, that it doesn't cost any more to the taxpayer than is absolutely necessary".
Tony Blair Associates
Blair established Tony Blair Associates to "allow him to provide, in partnership with others, strategic advice on a commercial and pro bono basis, on political and economic trends and governmental reform". The profits from the firm go towards supporting Blair's "work on faith, Africa and climate change".
Blair has been subject to criticism for potential conflicts of interest between his diplomatic role as a Middle East envoy, and his work with Tony Blair Associates, and a number of prominent critics have even called for him to be sacked. Blair has used his Quartet Tony Blair Associates works with the Kazakhstan government, advising the regime on judicial, economic and political reforms, but has been subject to criticism after accusations of "whitewashing" the image and human rights record of the regime.
Blair responded to such criticism by saying his choice to advise the country is an example of how he can "nudge controversial figures on a progressive path of reform", and has stated that he receives no personal profit from this advisory role. The Kazakhstan foreign minister said that the country was "honoured and privileged" to be receiving advice from Blair. A letter obtained by The Daily Telegraph in August 2014 revealed Blair had given damage-limitation advice to Nursultan Nazarbayev after the December 2011 Zhanaozen massacre. Blair was reported to have accepted a business advisory role with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, a situation deemed incompatible with his role as Middle East envoy. Blair described the report as "nonsense".
Charity and non-profits
In November 2007 Blair launched the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, which aims to "increase childhood participation in sports activities, especially in the North East of England, where a larger proportion of children are socially excluded, and to promote overall health and prevent childhood obesity." On 30 May 2008, Blair launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as a vehicle for encouraging different faiths to join in promoting respect and understanding, as well as working to tackle poverty. Reflecting Blair's own faith but not dedicated to any particular religion, the Foundation aims to "show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world". "The Foundation will use its profile and resources to encourage people of faith to work together more closely to tackle global poverty and conflict," says its mission statement.
In February 2009 he applied to set up a charity called the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative: the application was approved in November 2009. Blair's foundation hit controversy in October 2012, when news emerged that it was taking on unpaid interns.
In December 2016, Blair created the Tony Blair Institute to promote global outlooks by governments and organisations. In September 2023 former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin joined him as a strategic adviser on political leaders' reform programmes in the institute.
Books
A Journey
In March 2010, it was reported that Blair's memoirs, titled The Journey, would be published in September 2010. In July 2010 it was announced the memoirs would be retitled A Journey. The memoirs were seen by many as controversial and a further attempt to profit from his office and from acts related to overseas wars that were widely seen as wrong, leading to anger and suspicion prior to launch.
On 16 August 2010 it was announced that Blair would give the £4.6 million advance and all royalties from his memoirs to the Royal British Legion – the charity's largest ever single donation.
Media analysis of the sudden announcement was wide-ranging, describing it as an act of "desperation" to obtain a better launch reception of a humiliating "publishing flop" that had languished in the ratings, "blood money" for the lives lost in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, an act with a "hidden motive" or an expression of "guilt", a "genius move" to address the problem that "Tony Blair ha[d] one of the most toxic brands around" from a PR perspective, and a "cynical stunt to wipe the slate", but also as an attempt to make amends. Friends had said that the act was partly motivated by the wish to "repair his reputation".
The book was published on 1 September and within hours of its launch had become the fastest-selling autobiography of all time. On 3 September Blair gave his first live interview since publication on The Late Late Show in Ireland, with protesters lying in wait there for him. On 4 September, Blair was confronted by 200 anti-war and hardline Irish nationalist demonstrators before the first book signing of his memoirs at Eason's bookstore on O'Connell Street in Dublin, with angry activists chanting "war criminal" and that he had "blood on his hands", and clashing with Irish Police (Garda Síochána) as they tried to break through a security cordon outside the Eason's store. Blair was pelted with eggs and shoes, and encountered an attempted citizen's arrest for war crimes.
On Leadership
Published in 2024, and described by George Osborne as "the most practically useful guide to politics I have ever read."
Accusations of war crimes
Since the Iraq War, Blair has been the subject of war crimes accusations. Critics of his actions, including Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harold Pinter and Arundhati Roy have called for his trial at the International Criminal Court.
In November 2011, a war crimes tribunal of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, established by Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, reached a unanimous conclusion that Blair was guilty of crimes against peace, as a result of his role in the Iraq War. The proceedings lasted for four days, and consisted of five judges of judicial and academic backgrounds, a tribunal-appointed defence team in lieu of the defendants or representatives, and a prosecution team including international law professor Francis Boyle.
In September 2012, Desmond Tutu suggested that Blair should follow the path of former African leaders who had been brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman concurred with Tutu's suggestion that there should be a war crimes trial. In a statement made in response to Tutu's comments, Blair defended his actions. He was supported by Lord Falconer, who stated that the war had been authorised by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441.
In July 2017, former Iraqi general Abdulwaheed al-Rabbat launched a private war crimes prosecution in the High Court in London, asking for Blair, former foreign secretary Jack Straw and former attorney general Lord Goldsmith to be prosecuted for "the crime of aggression" for their role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The High Court ruled that, although the crime of aggression was recognised in international law, it was not an offence under UK law, and therefore the prosecution could not proceed.
Blair defended
Some, such as John Rentoul, John McTernan, Geoffrey Robertson and Iain Dale, have countered accusations that Blair committed war crimes during his premiership, often highlighting how no case against Blair has ever made it to trial, suggesting that Blair broke no laws.
Blair himself has defended his involvement in the Iraq War by highlighting the findings of the Iraq Survey Group, which found that Saddam had attempted to get sanctions lifted by undermining them, which would have enabled him to restart his WMD program.
Political interventions and views
Response to the Iraq Inquiry
The Chilcot report issued after the conclusion of the Iraq Inquiry was published on 6 July 2016; it criticised Blair for joining the US in the war in Iraq in 2003. Afterward, Blair issued a statement and held a two-hour press conference to apologise, to justify the decisions he had made in 2003 "in good faith" and to deny allegations that the war had led to a significant increase in terrorism. He acknowledged that the report made "real and material criticisms of preparation, planning, process and of the relationship with the United States" but cited sections of the report that he said "should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit". He stated: "whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein; I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country. ... I will take full responsibility for any mistakes without exception or excuse. I will at the same time say why, nonetheless, I believe that it was better to remove Saddam Hussein and why I do not believe this is the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world".
Iran–West tensions
In an op-ed published by The Washington Post on 8 February 2019, Blair said: "Where Iran is exercising military interference, it should be strongly pushed back. Where it is seeking influence, it should be countered. Where its proxies operate, it should be held responsible. Where its networks exist, they should be disrupted. Where its leaders are saying what is unacceptable, they should be exposed. Where the Iranian people — highly educated and connected, despite their government — are protesting for freedom, they should be supported." The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change warned of a growing Iranian threat. The Tony Blair Institute confirmed that it has received donations from the U.S. State Department and Saudi Arabia.
European Union
Blair did not want the UK to leave the EU and called for a referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement. Blair also maintained that once the terms deciding how the UK leaves the EU were known, the people should be able to vote again on those terms. Blair stated, "We know the options for Brexit. Parliament will have to decide on one of them. If Parliament can't then it should decide to go back to the people."
However, after the 2019 general election in which the pro-withdrawal Conservative party won a sizeable majority of seats, Blair argued that remain supporters should "face up to one simple point: we lost" and "pivot to a completely new position...We're going to have to be constructive about it and see how Britain develops a constructive relationship with Europe and finds its new niche in the world."
American power
Blair was interviewed in June 2020 for an article in the American magazine The Atlantic on European views of U.S. foreign policy concerning the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession, the rise of China, and the George Floyd protests. He affirmed his belief in the continued strength of American soft power and the need to address Iranian military aggression, European military underinvestment, and illicit Chinese trade practices. He said, however, "I think it's fair to say a lot of political leaders in Europe are dismayed by what they see as the isolationism growing in America and the seeming indifference to alliances. But I think there will come a time when America decides in its own interest to reengage, so I'm optimistic that America will in the end understand that this is not about relegating your self-interest behind the common interest; it's an understanding that by acting collectively in alliance with others you promote your own interests." Blair warned that structural issues plaguing American domestic policy needed to be addressed imminently.
In August 2021, Blair criticised the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan, saying that it was "in obedience to an imbecilic slogan about ending 'the forever wars'". Blair admitted mistakes in the management of the war but warned that "the reaction to our mistakes has been, unfortunately, further mistakes".
Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn
Blair was a critic of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party, seeing it as too left-wing. He wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian during the party's 2015 leadership election that if the party elected Corbyn, it would face a "rout, possibly annihilation" at the next election. After the 2019 general election, Blair accused Corbyn of turning the party into a "glorified protest movement" and in a May 2021 New Statesman article, Blair suggested that the party needed to undergo a programme of "total deconstruction and reconstruction" and also said the party needed to shift to the centre on social issues in order to survive. Blair touched on controversial topics such as transgender rights, the Black Lives Matter movement and climate change.
Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer's leadership of the party has been widely compared to Blair's leadership and New Labour, having taken the party rightward to gain electability. Initially saying in 2021 that Starmer lacked a compelling message, Blair has since reacted more positively towards Starmer's leadership of the party, telling him he's "done a great job" in reforming the party during a Tony Blair Institute for Global Change's Future of Britain conference in 2023. Blair's continued influence on the party, and on Starmer led him to be ranked sixteenth in the New Statesman's Left Power List 2023, described by the paper as electorally an "incomparable authority on how to win". After Labour won the 2024 general election and Starmer became prime minister, Blair congratulated him on his victory, saying Starmer was "determined and ruthlessly effective" and appointed "exceptional talent to conduct the change and put the most capable frontbenchers in the most important positions for future government." He also offered Starmer advice, recommending he controls immigration amid the rise of the Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage, saying that the party poses a threat to Labour and not just the Conservatives.
Personal life
Family
Blair married Cherie Booth on 29 March 1980. They have four children: Euan, Nicky, Kathryn, and Leo. Leo was the first legitimate child born to a serving prime minister in over 150 years – since Francis Russell was born to Lord John Russell on 11 July 1849. All four children have Irish passports, by virtue of Blair's mother, Hazel Elizabeth Rosaleen Corscadden (12 June 1923 – 28 June 1975). The family's primary residence is in Connaught Square; the Blairs own eight residences in total. His first grandchild (a girl) was born in October 2016.
Wealth
Blair's financial assets are structured in an opaque manner, and estimates of their extent vary widely. These include figures of up to £100 million. Blair stated in 2014 that he was worth "less than £20 million". A 2015 assertion, by Francis Beckett, David Hencke and Nick Kochan, concluded that Blair had acquired $90 million and a property portfolio worth $37.5 million in the eight years since he had left office.
In October 2021, Blair was named in the Pandora Papers.
Religious faith
In 2006, Blair referred to the role of his Christian faith in his decision to go to war in Iraq, stating that he had prayed about the issue, and saying that God would judge him for his decision: "I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people ... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."
According to Press Secretary Alastair Campbell's diary, Blair often read the Bible before taking any important decisions. He states that Blair had a "wobble" and considered changing his mind on the eve of the bombing of Iraq in 1998.
A longer exploration of his faith can be found in an interview with Third Way Magazine. There he says that "I was brought up as [a Christian], but I was not in any real sense a practising one until I went to Oxford. There was an Australian priest at the same college as me who got me interested again. In a sense, it was a rediscovery of religion as something living, that was about the world around me rather than some sort of special one-to-one relationship with a remote Being on high. Suddenly I began to see its social relevance. I began to make sense of the world".
At one point Alastair Campbell intervened in an interview, preventing Blair from answering a question about his Christianity, explaining, "We don't do God." Campbell later said that he had intervened only to end the interview because the journalist had been taking an excessive time, and that the comment had just been a throwaway line.
Cherie Blair's friend and "spiritual guru" Carole Caplin is credited with introducing her and her husband to various New Age symbols and beliefs, including "magic pendants" known as "BioElectric Shields". The most controversial of the Blairs' New Age practices occurred when on holiday in Mexico. The couple, wearing only bathing costumes, took part in a rebirthing procedure, which involved smearing mud and fruit over each other's bodies while sitting in a steam bath.
In 1996, Blair, then an Anglican, was reprimanded by Cardinal Basil Hume for receiving Holy Communion while attending Mass at Cherie Blair's Catholic church, in contravention of canon law. On 22 December 2007, it was disclosed that Blair had joined the Catholic Church. The move was described as "a private matter". He had informed Pope Benedict XVI on 23 June 2007 — four days before he stepped down as Prime Minister — that he wanted to become a Catholic. The Pope and his advisors criticised some of Blair's political actions, but followed up with a reportedly unprecedented red carpet welcome, which included the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who would be responsible for Blair's Catholic instruction. In 2009, Blair questioned the Pope's attitude towards homosexuality, arguing that religious leaders must start "rethinking" the issue. In 2010, The Tablet named him as one of Britain's most influential Catholics.
Honours
Privy Counsellor (1994)
Congressional Gold Medal (2003)
Honorary Doctor of Law (LLD) from Queen's University Belfast (2008)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009)
Dan David Prize (2009)
Liberty Medal (2010)
Order of Freedom (2010)
Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (2022)
In May 2007, Blair was invested as a paramount chief by the chiefs and people of the village of Mahera in Sierra Leone. The honour was bestowed upon him in recognition of the role played by his government in the Sierra Leone Civil War.
On 22 May 2008, Blair received an honorary law doctorate from Queen's University Belfast, alongside Bertie Ahern, for distinction in public service and roles in the Northern Ireland peace process.
On 13 January 2009, Blair was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Bush stated that Blair was given the award "in recognition of exemplary achievement and to convey the utmost esteem of the American people" and cited Blair's support for the War on Terror and his role in achieving peace in Northern Ireland as two reasons for justifying his being presented with the award.
On 16 February 2009, Blair was awarded the Dan David Prize by Tel Aviv University for "exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict". He was awarded the prize in May 2009.
On 8 July 2010, Blair was awarded the Order of Freedom by President Fatmir Sejdiu of Kosovo. As Blair is considered to have been instrumental in ending the conflict in Kosovo, some boys born in the country following the war have been given the name Toni or Tonibler.
On 13 September 2010, Blair was awarded the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was presented by former president Bill Clinton, and is awarded annually to "men and women of courage and conviction who strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe".
On 31 December 2021, it was announced that the Queen had appointed Blair a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter (KG). Blair had reportedly indicated when he left office that he did not want the traditional knighthood or peerage bestowed on former prime ministers. A petition cited his role in the Iraq War as a reason to remove the knighthood and garnered more than one million signatures. He received his Garter insignia on 10 June 2022 from the Queen during an audience at Windsor Castle.
Works
Blair, Tony (2024). On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century. London: Hutchinson Heinemann. ISBN 9781529151510.
Blair, Tony (2010). A Journey. London: Random House. ISBN 0-09-192555-X. OCLC 657172683.
Blair, Tony (2002). The Courage of Our Convictions. London: Fabian Society. ISBN 0-7163-0603-4.
Blair, Tony (2000). Superpower: Not Superstate? (Federal Trust European Essays). London: Federal Trust for Education & Research. ISBN 1-903403-25-1.
Blair, Tony (1998). The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century. London: Fabian Society. ISBN 0-7163-0588-7.
Blair, Tony (1998). Leading the Way: New Vision for Local Government. London: Institute for Public Policy Research. ISBN 1-86030-075-8.
Blair, Tony (1997). New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-8133-3338-5.
Blair, Tony (1995). Let Us Face the Future. London: Fabian Society. ISBN 0-7163-0571-2.
Blair, Tony (1994). What Price a Safe Society?. London: Fabian Society. ISBN 0-7163-0562-3.
Blair, Tony (1994). Socialism. London: Fabian Society. ISBN 0-7163-0565-8.
See also
Blatcherism
Bush–Blair 2003 Iraq memo
Cash-for-Honours scandal
Cultural depictions of Tony Blair
Parliamentary motion to impeach Tony Blair
Halsbury's Laws of England (2004), reference to impeachment in volume on Constitutional Law and Human Rights, paragraph 416
Notes and references
NotesReferences
Sources
Further reading
External links
The Office of Tony Blair Archived 17 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine – Official website
Tony Blair Faith Foundation Archived 10 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine
Tony Blair collected news and commentary at The Guardian
Tony Blair collected news and commentary at The New York Times
The Blair Years – Timeline at BBC News
Tony Blair at IMDb
Appearances on C-SPAN
Portraits of Tony Blair at the National Portrait Gallery, London
The Prime Minister Tony Charles Lynton Blair at the Wayback Machine (archived 7 June 2007) at www.pm.gov.uk
Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
Voting record at Public Whip
Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou |
Marathon_world_record_progression | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_world_record_progression | [
334,
799
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_world_record_progression",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_world_record_progression"
] | World records in the marathon are ratified by World Athletics, the international governing body for the sport of athletics .
The late Kenyan athlete Kelvin Kiptum set a men's world record time of 2:00:35 on October 8, 2023, at the 2023 Chicago Marathon.
Ethiopian athlete Tigst Assefa broke the women's world record for a mixed-sex race with a time of 2:11:53 on September 24, 2023 at the 2023 Berlin Marathon.
In addition to the standard women's marathon world record, World Athletics also recognizes a second world record for women in the "Women Only" category, meaning that the marathon was run on a course without any male athletes in the competition. The current "Women Only" record of 2:16:16 was set by Peres Jepchirchir on April 21, 2024 at the London Marathon in the elite women's race.
History
Marathon races were first held in 1896, but the distance was not standardized by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF, now World Athletics) until 1921.
The actual distance for pre-1921 races frequently varied from the 1921 standard of 42.195 km (26 miles 385 yards). In qualifying races for the 1896 Summer Olympics, Greek runners Charilaos Vasilakos (3:18:00) and Ioannis Lavrentis (3:11:27) won the first two modern marathons. On April 10, 1896, Spiridon Louis of Greece won the first Olympic marathon in Athens, Greece, in a time of 2:58:50. However, the distance for the event was 40,000 meters. Three months later, British runner Len Hurst won the inaugural Paris to Conflans Marathon (also around 40 km) in a time of 2:31:30. In 1900, Hurst would better his time on the same course with a 2:26:28 performance.
Later, Shizo Kanakuri of Japan was reported to have set a world record of 2:32:45 in a November 1911 domestic qualification race for the 1912 Summer Olympics, but this performance was also run over a distance of approximately 40 km.
The first marathon over the official distance was won by American Johnny Hayes at the 1908 Summer Olympics, with a time of 2:55:18.4.
It is possible that Stamata Revithi, who ran the 1896 Olympic course a day after Louis, is the first woman to run the modern marathon; she is said to have finished in 5+1⁄2 hours. World Athletics credits Violet Piercy's 1926 performance as the first woman to race the standard marathon distance; however, other sources report that the 1918 performance of Marie-Louise Ledru in the Tour de Paris set the initial mark for women. Other "unofficial" performances have also been reported to be world bests or world records over time: although her performance is not recognized by World Athletics, Adrienne Beames from Australia is frequently credited as the first woman to break the three-hour barrier in the marathon.
In the 1953 Boston Marathon, the top three male finishers were thought to have broken the standing world record, but Keizo Yamada's mark of 2:18:51 is considered to have been set on a short course of 25.54 miles (41.1 km). The Boston Athletic Association also does not report Yamada's performance as a world best for this reason.
On October 25, 1981, American Alberto Salazar and New Zealander Allison Roe set apparent world bests at the New York City Marathon (2:08:13 and 2:25:29), however, these marks were invalidated when the course was later found to have been 151 meters short. Although World Athletics' progression notes three performances set on the same course in 1978, 1979, and 1980 by Norwegian Grete Waitz, the Association of Road Racing Statisticians considers the New York City course suspect for those performances, too.
On April 18, 2011, the Boston Marathon produced what were at that time the two fastest marathon performances of all time. Winner Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya recorded a time of 2:03:02, followed by countryman Moses Mosop in 2:03:06. However, since the Boston course does not meet the criteria for record attempts, these times were not ratified by the IAAF.
Eight IAAF world records were set at the Polytechnic Marathon (1909, 1913, 1952–54, 1963–65). WA-recognized world records have been broken at all of the original five World Marathon Majors on numerous occasions (updated 09/2022); twelve times at the Berlin Marathon, three times at the Boston Marathon, five times at the Chicago Marathon, six times at the London Marathon, and five times at the New York City Marathon. However, the records established in the Boston event have been disputed on grounds of a downhill point-to-point course, while four of the five New York records have been disputed on grounds of a short course.
Criteria for record eligibility
For a performance to be ratified as a world record by World Athletics, the marathon course on which the performance occurred must be 42.195 km (26.219 mi) long, measured in a defined manner using the calibrated bicycle method (the distance in kilometers being the official distance; the distance in miles is an approximation) and meet other criteria that rule out artificially fast times produced on courses aided by downhill slope or tailwind. The criteria include:
"The start and finish points of a course, measured along a theoretical straight line between them, shall not be further apart than 50% of the race distance."
"The decrease in elevation between the start and finish shall not exceed an average of one in a thousand (i.e., 1m per km)."
In recognizing Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai's mark of 2:03:02 at the 2011 Boston Marathon as (at the time) "the fastest Marathon ever run", the IAAF said: "Due to the elevation drop and point-to-point measurements of the Boston course, performances [on that course] are not eligible for World record consideration."
The Association of Road Racing Statisticians, an independent organization that compiles data from road running events, also maintains an alternate marathon world best progression but with standards they consider to be more stringent.
Women's world record changes
The IAAF Congress, at the 2011 World Championships, passed a motion changing the record eligibility criteria effective October 6, 2007, so that women's world records must be set in all-women competitions. The result of the change was that Radcliffe's 2:17:42 performance at the 2005 London Marathon supplanted her own existing women's mark as the "world record"; the earlier performance is to be referred to as a "world best".
Per the 2021 IAAF Competition Rules, "a World Record for performance achieved in mixed sex ("Mixed") races and a World Record for performance achieved in single sex ("Women only") races" are tracked separately.
Unofficial record attempts
In December 2016, Nike, Inc., announced that three top distance runners — Eliud Kipchoge, Zersenay Tadese, and Lelisa Desisa — had agreed to forgo the spring marathon season to work with the company in an effort to run a sub-two-hour marathon.
The Breaking2 event took place in the early morning of May 6, 2017; Kipchoge crossed the finish line with a time of 2:00:25. This time was more than two minutes faster than the world record.
Kipchoge took part in a similar attempt to break the two-hour barrier in Vienna on October 12, 2019, as part of the Ineos 1:59 Challenge. He successfully ran the first sub two-hour marathon distance, with a time of 1:59:40.2. The effort did not count as a new world record under IAAF rules due to the setup of the challenge. Specifically, it was not an open event, Kipchoge was handed fluids by his support team throughout, the run featured a pace car, and included rotating teams of other runners pacing Kipchoge in a formation designed to reduce wind resistance and maximize efficiency. The achievement was recognized by Guinness World Records with the titles 'Fastest marathon distance (male)' and 'First marathon distance run under two hours' instead of an official world record.
Men
The edition of the marathon is linked on some of the dates.
Women
Gallery of world record holders
See also
Marathon year rankings
National records in the marathon
Men's Masters Records
Masters M35 marathon world record progression
Masters M40 marathon world record progression
Masters M45 marathon world record progression
Masters M50 marathon world record progression
Masters M55 marathon world record progression
Masters M60 marathon world record progression
Masters M65 marathon world record progression
Masters M70 marathon world record progression
Masters M75 marathon world record progression
Masters M80 marathon world record progression
Masters M85 marathon world record progression
Masters M90 marathon world record progression
Women's Masters Records
Masters W35 marathon world record progression
Masters W40 marathon world record progression
Masters W45 marathon world record progression
Masters W50 marathon world record progression
Masters W55 marathon world record progression
Masters W60 marathon world record progression
Masters W65 marathon world record progression
Masters W70 marathon world record progression
Masters W75 marathon world record progression
Masters W80 marathon world record progression
Masters W85 marathon world record progression
Masters W90 marathon world record progression
Notes
References
Sources
External links
13th IAAF World Championships in Athletics – IAAF Statistics Handbook – Daegu 2011 (all 5 parts)
Runner's World | What Will It Take to Run A 2-Hour Marathon?
BBC – "Could a marathon ever be run in under two hours?"
Interactive graph of men's and women's marathon times with race descriptions (outdated) |
Queen_(band) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_(band) | [
335
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_(band)"
] | Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1970 by Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals), later joined by John Deacon (bass). Their earliest works were influenced by progressive rock, hard rock and heavy metal, but the band gradually ventured into more conventional and radio-friendly works by incorporating further styles, such as arena rock and pop rock.
Before forming Queen, May and Taylor had played together in the band Smile. Mercury was a fan of Smile and encouraged them to experiment with more elaborate stage and recording techniques. He joined in 1970 and suggested the name "Queen". Deacon was recruited in February 1971, before the band released their self-titled debut album in 1973. Queen first charted in the UK with their second album, Queen II, in 1974. Sheer Heart Attack later that year and A Night at the Opera in 1975 brought them international success. The latter featured "Bohemian Rhapsody", which topped the UK singles chart for nine weeks and helped popularise the music video format. The band's 1977 album News of the World contained "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions", which have become anthems at sporting events. By the early 1980s, Queen were one of the biggest stadium rock bands in the world. "Another One Bites the Dust" from The Game (1980) became their best-selling single, while their 1981 compilation album Greatest Hits is the best-selling album in the UK and is certified nine times platinum in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Their performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert is ranked among the greatest in rock history by various publications. In August 1986, Mercury gave his last performance with Queen at Knebworth, England.
Though he kept his condition private, Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987. The band released two more albums, The Miracle in 1989 and Innuendo in 1991. On 23 November 1991, Mercury publicly revealed that he had AIDS, and the next day died of bronchopneumonia, a complication of AIDS. One more album was released featuring Mercury's vocal, 1995's Made in Heaven. Deacon retired in 1997, while May and Taylor continued to make sporadic appearances together. Since 2004, they have toured as "Queen +", with vocalists Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert.
Queen have been a global presence in popular culture for more than half a century. Estimates of their record sales range from 250 million to 300 million, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. In 1990, Queen received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and with each member having composed hit singles, all four were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2005, they received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors, and in 2018 were presented the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
History
1968–1971: Foundations
The founding members of Queen met in west London during the late 1960s. Guitarist Brian May had built his own guitar with his father in 1963, and formed the group 1984 (named after Orwell's novel) the following year with singer Tim Staffell. May left the group in early 1968 to focus on his degree in Physics and Infrared Astronomy at Imperial College and find a group that could write original material. He formed the group Smile with Staffell (now playing bass) and keyboardist Chris Smith. To complete the line-up, May placed an advertisement on a college notice board for a "Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type" drummer; Roger Taylor, a young dental student, auditioned and got the job. Smith left the group in early 1969, immediately before a gig at the Royal Albert Hall with Free and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
While attending Ealing Art College in west London, Staffell became friends with fellow student Farrokh "Freddie" Bulsara, who was from Zanzibar and of Indian Parsi descent. Bulsara had studied fashion design for a year before switching to graphic art and design, and soon became a keen fan of Smile. He asked if he could join the group as lead singer, but May felt Staffell would not give up that role. He also ran a stall in Kensington Market with Taylor.
In 1970, Staffell quit Smile, feeling his interests in soul and R&B clashed with the group's hard rock sound and being fed up with the lack of success. He formed the group Humpy Bong with former Bee Gees drummer Colin Petersen. The remaining members accepted Bulsara as lead singer, and recruited Taylor's friend Mike Grose as bassist. The four played their first gig at a fundraising event in Truro on 27 June 1970. Bulsara suggested the group should be renamed to "Queen". The others were uncertain at first, but he said, "it's wonderful, dear, people will love it". At the same time, he decided to change his surname to Mercury, inspired by the line "Mother Mercury, look what they've done to me" in the song "My Fairy King". The group played their first London gig on 18 July. The early set consisted of material that later appeared on the first two albums, along with various rock and roll covers, such as Cliff Richard and the Shadows' "Please Don't Tease". They attracted the attention of producer John Anthony, who was interested in the group's sound but thought they had the wrong bass player. After three live gigs, Mike Grose decided not to continue with the band and was replaced by Barry Mitchell (ex Crushed Butler). Mitchell played thirteen gigs with Queen between August 1970 and January 1971. In turn, Mitchell left in January 1971 and was replaced by Doug Bogie for two live gigs.
1971–1974: Queen and Queen II
In February 1971, John Deacon joined Queen. In addition to being an experienced bassist, his quiet demeanour complemented the band, and he was skilled in electronics. On 2 July, Queen played their first show with the classic line-up of Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon at a Surrey college outside London. May called Terry Yeadon, an engineer at Pye Studios where Smile had recorded, to see if he knew anywhere where Queen could go. Yeadon had since moved to De Lane Lea Studios' new premises in Wembley, and they needed a group to test out the equipment and recording rooms. He tried asking the Kinks but couldn't get hold of them. Therefore, he told Queen they could record some demos in exchange for the studio's acoustic tests. They recorded five of their own songs, "Liar", "Keep Yourself Alive", "Great King Rat", "The Night Comes Down" and "Jesus". During the recording, producers John Anthony and Roy Thomas Baker visited the band. The two were taken with "Keep Yourself Alive" and began promoting the band to several record companies.
Promoter Ken Testi managed to attract the interest of Charisma Records, who offered Queen an advance of around £25,000, but the group turned them down as they realised the label would promote Genesis as a priority. Testi then entered discussions with Trident Studios' Norman Sheffield, who offered the band a management deal under Neptune Productions, a subsidiary of Trident, to manage the band and enable them to use their facilities, while the management searched for a deal. This suited both parties, as Trident were expanding into management, and under the deal, Queen were able to make use of the hi-tech recording facilities used by signed musicians. Taylor later described these early off-peak studio hours as "gold dust".
Queen began 1972 with a gig at Bedford College, London where only six people turned up. After a few more shows, they stopped live performances for eight months to work on the album with Anthony and Baker. During the sessions at Trident, they saw David Bowie with the Spiders from Mars live and realised they needed to make an impact with the album, otherwise they would be left behind. Co-producers Anthony and Baker initially clashed with the band (May in particular) on the direction of the album, bringing the band's inexperience in the studio to bear. The band's fighting centered around their efforts to integrate technical perfection with the reality of live performances, leading to what Baker referred to as "kitchen sink overproduction". The resulting album was a mix of heavy metal and progressive rock. The group were unhappy with the re-recording of "The Night Comes Down", so the finished album uses the De Lane Lea demo. Another track, "Mad the Swine" was dropped from the running order after the band and Baker could not agree on a mix. Mike Stone created the final mix for "Keep Yourself Alive", and he went on to work on several other Queen albums. By January 1972, the band finished recording their debut album, but had yet to secure a record contract. In order to attract record company interest, Trident booked a "showcase" gig on 6 November at The Pheasantry, followed by a show at the Marquee Club on 20 December.
Queen promoted the unreleased album in February 1973 on BBC Radio 1, still unsigned. The following month, Trident managed to strike a deal with EMI Records. "Keep Yourself Alive" was released as a single on 6 July, with the album Queen appearing a week later. The front cover showed a shot of Mercury live on stage taken by Taylor's friend Douglass Puddifoot. Deacon was credited as "Deacon John" while Taylor used his full name, Roger Meddows-Taylor. The album was received well by critics; Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone called it "superb", and Chicago's Daily Herald called it an "above-average debut". However, it drew little mainstream attention, and "Keep Yourself Alive" sold poorly. Retrospectively, it is cited as the album's highlight, and in 2008 Rolling Stone ranked it 31st in the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time", describing it as "an entire album's worth of riffs crammed into a single song". The album was certified gold in the UK and the US.
The group began to record their second album, Queen II in August 1973. Now able to use regular studio time, they decided to make full use of the facilities available. May created a multi-layer guitar introduction "Procession", while Mercury wrote "The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke" based on the painting of the same name by Richard Dadd. The group spent the remainder of the year touring the UK, supporting Mott The Hoople, and began to attract an audience. The tour ended with two shows at the Hammersmith Odeon on 14 December, playing to 7,000 people.
In January 1974, Queen played the Sunbury Pop Festival in Australia. They arrived late, and were jeered and taunted by the audience who expected to see home grown acts. Before leaving, Mercury announced, "when we come back to Australia, Queen will be the biggest band in the world!" Queen II was released in March, and features Mick Rock's iconic Dietrich-inspired image of the band on the cover. This image would later be used as the basis for "Bohemian Rhapsody" music video production. The album reached number five on the British album chart and became the first Queen album to chart in the UK. The Mercury-written lead single "Seven Seas of Rhye" reached number 10 in the UK, giving the band their first hit. The album featured a 'layered' sound which would become their signature, and features long complex instrumental passages, fantasy-themed lyrics, and instrumental virtuosity. Aside from its only single, the album also included the song "The March of the Black Queen", a six-minute epic which lacks a chorus. Critical reaction was mixed; the Winnipeg Free Press, while praising the band's debut album, described Queen II as an "over-produced monstrosity". AllMusic has described the album as a favourite among the band's hardcore fans, and it is the first of three Queen albums to feature in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The group ended their early 1974 UK tour with a show at the Rainbow Theatre on 31 March. Mercury chose to a wear a Zandra Rhodes-designed tunic for the gig, changing into a slashed black top midway through the show.
1974–1976: Sheer Heart Attack to A Night at the Opera
In May 1974, a month into the band's first US tour opening for Mott the Hoople, May collapsed and was diagnosed with hepatitis, forcing the cancellation of their remaining dates. While recuperating, May was initially absent when the band started work on their third album, but he returned midway through the recording process. Released in 1974, Sheer Heart Attack reached number two in the UK, sold well throughout Europe, and went gold in the US. It gave the band their first real experience of international success, and was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The album experimented with a variety of musical genres, including British music hall, heavy metal, ballads, ragtime, and Caribbean. May's "Now I'm Here" documented the group's curtailed American tour, and "Brighton Rock" served as a vehicle for his regular on-stage solo guitar spot. Deacon wrote his first song for the group, "Misfire", while the live favourite "Stone Cold Crazy" was credited to the whole band. Mercury wrote the closing number, "In the Lap of the Gods", with the intention that the audience could sing along to the chorus when played live. This would be repeated later on, more successfully, in songs such as "We Are the Champions.
The single "Killer Queen" was written by Mercury about a high-class prostitute. It reached number two on the British charts, and became their first US hit, reaching number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was partly recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales. With Mercury playing the grand piano, it combines camp, vaudeville, and British music hall with May's guitar. "Now I'm Here" was released as the second single, reached number eleven. In 2006, Classic Rock ranked Sheer Heart Attack number 28 in "The 100 Greatest British Rock Albums Ever", and in 2007, Mojo ranked it No.88 in "The 100 Records That Changed the World". It is also the second of three Queen albums to feature in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
In January 1975, Queen left for a world tour with an upgraded light show. They toured the US as headliners, and played in Canada for the first time. Several dates were cancelled after Mercury contracted laryngitis. The band then toured Japan from mid-April to the beginning of May. They were greeted by thousands of screaming fans, and played eight times in seven cities. Despite the success, Queen were still tied to the original Trident deal and wages. They were all living in relative poverty in bedsits, while Deacon was refused money for a deposit on a house. EMI contacted lawyer Jim Beach, who tried to find a way of extracting them from their contract. Trident complained that they had invested £200,000 in Queen and wanted their money back first. In August, after an acrimonious split with Trident, the band negotiated themselves out of their contract and searched for new management. One of the options they considered was an offer from Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant, who wanted them to sign with Led Zeppelin's own production company, Swan Song Records. The band were concerned about being a lower priority than Zeppelin and Bad Company (also signed to Swan Song) and instead contacted Elton John's manager, John Reid, who accepted the position. Reid's first instruction to the band was "I'll take care of the business; you make the best record you can".
Queen started work on their fourth album A Night at the Opera, taking its name from the popular Marx Brothers movie. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced, costing £40,000 and using three different studios. Like its predecessor, the album features diverse musical styles and experimentation with stereo sound. Mercury wrote the opening song "Death on Two Legs", a savage dig at perceived wrongdoers (and later dedicated to Trident in concert) and the camp vaudeville "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" and "Seaside Rendezvous". May's "The Prophet's Song" was an eight-minute epic; the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The Mercury penned ballad, "Love of My Life", featured a harp and overdubbed vocal harmonies.
The best-known song on the album, "Bohemian Rhapsody", originated from pieces of music that Mercury had written at Ealing College. Mercury played a run-through of the track on piano in his flat to Baker, stopping suddenly to announce, "This is where the opera section comes in". When the rest of the band started recording the song they were unsure as to how it would be pieced together. After recording the backing track, Baker left a 30-second section of tape to add the operatic vocals. Reportedly, 180 overdubs were used, to the extent that the original tape wore thin. EMI initially refused to release the single, thinking it too long, and demanded a radio edit which Queen refused. Mercury's close friend and advisor, Capital London radio DJ Kenny Everett, played a pivotal role in giving the single exposure. He was given a promotional copy on the condition he didn't play it, but ended up doing so fourteen times over a single weekend. Capital's switchboard was overwhelmed with callers inquiring when the song would be released. With EMI forced to release "Bohemian Rhapsody" due to public demand, the single reached number one in the UK for nine weeks. It is the third-best-selling single of all time in the UK, surpassed only by Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997", and is the best-selling commercial single (i.e. not for charity) in the UK. It also reached number nine in the US (a 1992 re-release reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks). It is the only single ever to sell a million copies on two separate occasions, and became the Christmas number one twice in the UK, the only single ever to do so. It has also been voted the greatest song of all time in three different polls.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was promoted with a music video directed by Bruce Gowers, who had already shot several of Queen's live concerts. The group wanted a video so they could avoid appearing on the BBC's Top of the Pops, which would clash with tour dates, and it would have looked strange miming to such a complex song. Filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, the video cost £3,500, five times the typical promotional budget, and was shot in three hours. The operatic section featured a reprise of the Queen II cover, with the band member's heads animated. On the impact of the "Bohemian Rhapsody" promotional video, Rolling Stone states: "Its influence cannot be overstated, practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air." Ranking it number 31 on their list of the 50 key events in rock music history, The Guardian stated it "ensured videos would henceforth be a mandatory tool in the marketing of music". Radio broadcaster Tommy Vance states, "It became the first record to be pushed into the forefront by virtue of a video. Queen were certainly the first band to create a 'concept' video. The video captured the musical imagery perfectly. You cannot hear that music without seeing the visuals in your mind's eye."
A Night at the Opera was very successful in the UK, and went triple platinum in the United States. The British public voted it the 13th-greatest album of all time in a 2004 Channel 4 poll. It has also ranked highly in international polls; in a worldwide Guinness poll, it was voted the 19th-greatest of all time, while an ABC poll saw the Australian public vote it the 28th-greatest of all time. A Night at the Opera has frequently appeared in "greatest albums" lists reflecting the opinions of critics. Among other accolades, it was ranked number 16 in Q magazine's "The 50 Best British Albums Ever" in 2004, a poll done in collaboration with British music and entertainment retailer HMV. It was also placed at number 230 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2003. A Night at the Opera is the third and final Queen album to be featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The second single from the album was Deacon's "You're My Best Friend", which peaked at number sixteen on the US Billboard Hot 100, and went on to become a worldwide top-ten hit. The band's A Night at the Opera Tour began in November 1975, and covered Europe, the United States, Japan, and Australia. On 24 December, Queen played a special concert at the Hammersmith Odeon which was broadcast live on the BBC show The Old Grey Whistle Test, with the audio being later broadcast on BBC Radio 1. It became one of the band's most popular bootleg recordings for decades before being officially released in 2015.
1976–1979: A Day at the Races to Live Killers
By 1976, Queen were back in the studio recording A Day at the Races, which is often regarded as a sequel album to A Night at the Opera. It again borrowed the name of a Marx Brothers movie, and its cover was similar to that of A Night at the Opera, a variation on the same Queen logo. The most recognisable of the Marx Brothers, Groucho Marx, invited Queen to visit him in his Los Angeles home in March 1977; there the band thanked him in person, and performed "'39" a cappella. Baker did not return to produce the album; instead the band self-produced with assistance from Mike Stone, who performed several of the backing vocals. The major hit on the album was "Somebody to Love", a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to create a gospel choir. The song went to number two in the UK, and number thirteen in the US. The album also featured one of the band's heaviest songs, May's "Tie Your Mother Down", which became a staple of their live shows. Musically, A Day at the Races was by both fans' and critics' standards a strong effort, reaching number one in the UK and Japan, and number five in the US.
Queen played a landmark gig on 18 September 1976, a free concert in Hyde Park, London, organised by the entrepreneur Richard Branson. It set an attendance record at the park, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience. Queen were late arriving onstage and ran out of time to play an encore; the police informed Mercury that he would be arrested if he attempted to go on stage again. May enjoyed the gig particularly, as he had been to see previous concerts at the park, such as the first one organised by Blackhill Enterprises in 1968, featuring Pink Floyd.
On 1 December 1976, Queen were the intended guests on London's early evening Today programme, but they pulled out at the last-minute, which saw their late replacement on the show, EMI labelmate the Sex Pistols, give their infamous expletive-strewn interview with Bill Grundy. During the A Day at the Races Tour in 1977, Queen performed sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, New York, in February, supported by Thin Lizzy, and Mercury and Taylor socialised with that group's leader Phil Lynott. They ended the tour with two concerts at Earls Court, London, in June, which commemorated the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, and at the cost of £50,000 the band used a lighting rig in the shape of a crown for the first time.
The band's sixth studio album News of the World was released in 1977, which has gone four times platinum in the US, and twice in the UK. The album contained many songs tailor-made for live performance, including two of rock's most recognisable anthems, "We Will Rock You" and the rock ballad "We Are the Champions", both of which became enduring international sports anthems, and the latter reached number four in the US. Queen commenced the News of the World Tour in November 1977, and Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times called this concert tour the band's "most spectacularly staged and finely honed show". During the tour they sold out another two shows at MSG, and in 1978 they received the Madison Square Garden Gold Ticket Award for passing more than 100,000 unit ticket sales at the venue.
In 1978, Queen released Jazz, which reached number two in the UK and number six on the Billboard 200 in the US. The album included the hit singles "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" on a double-sided record. Critical reviews of the album in the years since its release have been more favourable than initial reviews. Another notable track from Jazz, "Don't Stop Me Now", provides another example of the band's exuberant vocal harmonies.
In 1978, Queen toured the US and Canada, and spent much of 1979 touring in Europe and Japan. They released their first live album, Live Killers, in 1979; it went platinum twice in the US. Queen also released the very successful single "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", a rockabilly inspired song done in the style of Elvis Presley. The song made the top 10 in many countries, topped the Australian ARIA Charts for seven consecutive weeks, and was the band's first number one single in the United States where it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks. Having written the song on guitar and played rhythm on the record, Mercury played rhythm guitar while performing the song live, which was the first time he ever played guitar in concert. On 26 December 1979, Queen played the opening night at the Concert for the People of Kampuchea in London, having accepted a request by the event's organiser, Paul McCartney. The concert was the last date of their Crazy Tour of London.
1980–1982: The Game, Hot Space and stadium tours
Queen began their 1980s career with The Game. It featured the singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust", both of which reached number one in the US. After attending a Queen concert in Los Angeles, Michael Jackson suggested to Mercury backstage that "Another One Bites the Dust" be released as a single, and in October 1980 it spent three weeks at number one. The album topped the Billboard 200 for five weeks, and sold over four million copies in the US. It was also the first appearance of a synthesiser on a Queen album. Heretofore, their albums featured a distinctive "No Synthesisers!" sleeve note. The note is widely assumed to reflect an anti-synth, pro-"hard"-rock stance by the band, but was later revealed by producer Roy Thomas Baker to be an attempt to clarify that those albums' multi-layered solos were created with guitars, not synths, as record company executives kept assuming at the time. In September 1980, Queen performed three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. In 1980, Queen also released the soundtrack they had recorded for Flash Gordon. At the 1981 American Music Awards in January, "Another One Bites the Dust" won the award for Favorite Pop/Rock Single, and Queen were nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Band, Duo, or Group.
In February 1981, Queen travelled to South America as part of The Game Tour, and became the first rock band to play stadiums in Latin America. On playing the concerts, Classic Rock magazine states, "They were under the spotlight from all quarters, as the entire music industry waited to see if their ambitious plans would bear fruit". Tom Pinnock in the March 1981 issue of Melody Maker wrote, Queen chalked up a major international "first" by becoming the band to do for popular music in South America what The Beatles did for North America 17 years ago. Half a million Argentinians and Brazilians, starved of appearances of top British or American bands at their peak, gave Queen a heroic welcome which changed the course of pop history in this uncharted territory of the world rock map. The ecstatic young people saw eight Queen concerts at giant stadia, while many more millions saw the shows on TV and heard the radio broadcasts live.
The tour included five shows in Argentina, one of which drew the largest single concert crowd in Argentine history with an audience of 300,000 in Buenos Aires and two concerts at the Morumbi Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, where they played to more than 131,000 people in the first night (then the largest paying audience for a single band anywhere in the world) and more than 120,000 people the following night. A region then largely ruled by military dictatorships, the band were greeted with scenes of fan-fever, and the promoter of their first shows at the Vélez Sarsfield Stadium in Buenos Aires was moved to say: "For music in Argentina, this has been a case of before the war and after the war. Queen have liberated this country, musically speaking." The group's second show at Vélez Sarsfield was broadcast on national television and watched by over 30 million. Backstage, they were introduced to footballer Diego Maradona.
Topping the charts in Brazil and Argentina, the ballad "Love of My Life" stole the show in South American concerts. Mercury would stop singing and would then conduct the audience as they took over, with Lesley-Ann Jones writing "the fans knew the song by heart. Their English was word-perfect." Later that year Queen performed for more than 150,000 on 9 October at Monterrey (Estadio Universitario) and 17 and 18 at Puebla (Estadio Zaragoza), Mexico. Though the gigs were successful, they were marred by a lack of planning and suitable facilities, with audiences throwing projectiles on stage. Mercury finished the final gig saying, "Adios, amigos, you motherfuckers!" On 24 and 25 November, Queen played two nights at the Montreal Forum, Quebec, Canada. One of Mercury's most notable performances of The Game's final track, "Save Me", took place in Montreal, and the concert is recorded in the live album, Queen Rock Montreal.
Queen worked with David Bowie on the 1981 single "Under Pressure". The first-time collaboration with another artist was spontaneous, as Bowie happened to drop by the studio while Queen were recording. Mercury and Bowie recorded their vocals on the track separately to each other, each coming up with individual ideas. The song topped the UK charts. In October, Queen released their first compilation album, titled Greatest Hits, which showcased the group's highlights from 1974 to 1981. The best-selling album in UK chart history, it is the only album to sell over seven million copies in the UK. As of July 2022, it has spent over 1000 weeks in the UK Album Chart. According to The Telegraph, approximately one in three families in the UK own a copy. The album is certified nine times platinum in the US. As of August 2024, it has spent over 600 weeks on the US Billboard 200. Greatest Hits has sold over 25 million copies worldwide.
In 1982, the band released the album Hot Space, a departure from their trademark seventies sound, this time being a mixture of pop rock, dance, disco, funk, and R&B. Most of the album was recorded in Munich during the most turbulent period in the band's history. While Mercury and Deacon enjoyed the new soul and funk influences, Taylor and May were less favourable, and were critical of the influence Mercury's personal manager Paul Prenter had on him. According to Mack, Queen's producer, Prenter loathed rock music and was in Mercury's ear throughout the Hot Space sessions. May was also scathing of Prenter—Mercury's manager from 1977 to 1984—for being dismissive of the importance of radio stations and their vital connection between the artist and the community, and for denying them access to Mercury. May states, "this guy, in the course of one tour, told every record station to fuck off". Queen roadie Peter Hince wrote "None of the band cared for him [Prenter], apart from Freddie", with Hince regarding Mercury's favouring of Prenter as an act of "misguided loyalty". During the Munich sessions, Mercury spent time with Mack and his family, becoming godfather to Mack's first child. Q magazine would list Hot Space as one of the top fifteen albums where great rock acts lost the plot. Though the album confused some fans with the change of musical direction, it still reached number 4 in the UK.
Queen toured to promote Hot Space, but found some audience unreceptive to the new material. At a gig in Frankfurt, Mercury told some people heckling the new material, "If you don't want to listen to it, go home!" Former Mott The Hoople keyboardist Morgan Fisher joined as an additional touring member. Shows were planned at Arsenal Stadium and Old Trafford, but these were cancelled as Pope John Paul II was touring Britain, leading to a lack of available outdoor facilities such as toilets. The gigs were moved to the Milton Keynes Bowl and Elland Road, Leeds instead. The Milton Keynes concert was filmed by Tyne Tees Television and later released on DVD. On 14 and 15 September 1982, the band performed their last two gigs in the US with Mercury on lead vocals, playing at The Forum in Inglewood, California. Fisher was replaced as touring keyboardist by Fred Mandel for the North American shows. The band stopped touring North America after their Hot Space Tour, as their success there had waned, although they performed on American television for the only time during the eighth-season premiere of Saturday Night Live on 25 September of the same year; it became the final public performance of the band in North America before the death of their frontman. Their fall in popularity in the US has been partially attributed to a homophobia: Mikal Gilmore for Rolling Stone writes, "At some shows on the band's 1980 American tour, fans tossed disposable razor blades onstage: They didn't like this identity of Mercury—what they perceived as a brazenly gay rock & roll hero—and they wanted him to shed it." The group finished the year with a Japanese tour.
1983–1984: The Works
After the Hot Space Tour concluded with a concert at Seibu Lions Stadium in Tokorozawa, Japan in November 1982, Queen decided they would take a significant amount of time off. May later said at that point, "we hated each other for a while". The band reconvened nine months later to begin recording a new album at the Record Plant Studios, Los Angeles and Musicland Studios, Munich. Several members of the band also explored side projects and solo work. Taylor released his second solo album, Strange Frontier. May released the mini-album Star Fleet Project, collaborating with Eddie Van Halen. Queen left Elektra Records, their label in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and signed onto EMI/Capitol Records.
In February 1984, Queen released their eleventh studio album, The Works. Hit singles included "Radio Ga Ga", which makes a nostalgic defence of the radio format, "Hammer to Fall" and "I Want to Break Free". Rolling Stone hailed the album as "the Led Zeppelin II of the eighties." In the UK The Works went triple platinum and remained in the albums chart for two years. The album failed to do well in the US, where, in addition to issues with their new record label Capitol Records (who had recently severed ties with their independent promotions teams due to a government report on payola), the cross-dressing video for "I Want to Break Free", a spoof of the British soap opera Coronation Street, proved controversial and was banned by MTV. The concept of the video came from Roger Taylor via a suggestion from his girlfriend. He told Q magazine: "We had done some really serious, epic videos in the past, and we just thought we'd have some fun. We wanted people to know that we didn't take ourselves too seriously, that we could still laugh at ourselves." Director of the video David Mallet said Mercury was reluctant to do it, commenting "it was a hell of a job to get him out of the dressing room".
That year, Queen began The Works Tour, the first tour to feature keyboardist Spike Edney as an extra live musician. The tour featured nine sold-out dates in October in Bophuthatswana, South Africa, at the arena in Sun City. Upon returning to England, they were the subject of outrage, having played in South Africa during the height of apartheid and in violation of worldwide divestment efforts and a United Nations cultural boycott. The band responded to the critics by stating that they were playing music for fans in South Africa, and they also stressed that the concerts were played before integrated audiences. Queen donated to a school for the deaf and blind as a philanthropic gesture but were fined by the British Musicians' Union and placed on the United Nations' blacklisted artists. In 2021, Taylor voiced his regret for the decision to perform at Sun City, saying that "we went with the best intentions, but I still think it was kind of a mistake."
1985–1986: Live Aid, A Kind of Magic and tours
In January 1985, Queen headlined two nights of the first Rock in Rio festival at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and played in front of over 300,000 people each night. The Boston Globe described it as a "mesmerising performance". Highlights from both nights were released on VHS as Queen: Live in Rio, which was broadcast on MTV in the US. In April and May 1985, Queen completed the Works Tour with sold-out shows in Australia and Japan.
At Live Aid, held at Wembley on 13 July 1985, in front of the biggest-ever TV audience of an estimated 1.9 billion, Queen performed some of their greatest hits. Many of the sold-out stadium audience of 72,000 people clapped, sang, and swayed in unison. The show's organisers, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure; other musicians such as Elton John and Cliff Richard; and journalists writing for the BBC, CNN, Rolling Stone, MTV, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, among others, described Queen as the highlight. Interviewed backstage, Roger Waters stated: "Everybody's been buzzing about Queen that I've run into. They had everybody completely spellbound." An industry poll in 2005 ranked it the greatest rock performance of all time. Mercury's powerful, sustained note—"Aaaaaay-o"—during the call-and-response a cappella segment came to be known as "The Note Heard Round the World". The band were revitalised by the response to Live Aid—a "shot in the arm" Roger Taylor called it—and the ensuing increase in record sales. In 1986 Mercury commented: "From our perspective, the fact that Live Aid happened when it did was really lucky. It came out of nowhere to save us. For sure that was a turning point. Maybe you could say that in the history of Queen, it was a really special moment."
Queen ended 1985 by releasing the single "One Vision" and a limited-edition boxed set of Queen albums, The Complete Works. The package included the 1984 Christmas single "Thank God It's Christmas" and previously unreleased material. In early 1986, Queen recorded the album A Kind of Magic, containing several reworkings of songs written for the fantasy action film Highlander. The album was successful in the UK, West Germany and several other countries, producing a string of hits including "A Kind of Magic", "Friends Will Be Friends", "Princes of the Universe" and "Who Wants to Live Forever"; the latter featuring an orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen. The album was less successful in North America, reaching 46 in the US, and was described by biographer Mark Blake as "a so-so album" and "a somewhat uneven listening experience". In 2007, Classic Rock ranked it the 28th greatest soundtrack album of all time.
In mid-1986, Queen went on the Magic Tour, their final tour with Mercury. They once again hired Spike Edney. Queen began the tour at the Råsunda Stadium in Stockholm, Sweden, and later performed a concert at Slane Castle, Ireland, in front of an audience of 95,000, which broke the venue's attendance record. The band also played behind the Iron Curtain when they performed to a crowd of 80,000 at the Népstadion in Budapest (released in the concert film Hungarian Rhapsody: Queen Live in Budapest), in what was one of the biggest rock concerts ever held in Eastern Europe. More than one million people saw Queen on the tour—400,000 in the UK alone, a record at the time.
The Magic Tour's highlight was at Wembley Stadium and resulted in the live double album Queen at Wembley, released on CD and as a live concert VHS/DVD, which has gone five times platinum in the US and four times platinum in the UK. The demand for tickets saw extra dates added to the tour, with concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith stating "they seem to have an endless market." Queen could not book Wembley for a third night, but played at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire on 9 August. The show sold out within two hours and over 120,000 fans packed the park for what was Queen's final performance with Mercury. At the end of the concert the band appeared on stage for the final time to an encore of "God Save the Queen", with Mercury, in his crown and gown, bidding the crowd "goodnight and sweet dreams". Roadie Peter Hince states, "At Knebworth, I somehow felt it was going to be the last for all of us", while Brian May recalled Mercury saying "I'm not going to be doing this forever. This is probably the last time."
1988–1992: The Miracle, Innuendo and Mercury's final years
In October 1986, two months after his final concert, Mercury, on his return to London from holiday, was confronted by a tabloid frenzy at Heathrow Airport with the British newspapers the News of the World and The Sun reporting he had his blood tested for HIV/AIDS at a Harley Street clinic, but Mercury was quoted as saying he was "perfectly fit and healthy". Fans noticed his increasingly gaunt appearance in 1988, with Mercury insisting he was merely "exhausted" and too busy to provide interviews; he was now 42 years old and had been involved in music for nearly two decades. He had in fact been diagnosed as HIV positive in 1987, but did not make his illness public, with only his inner circle of colleagues and friends aware of his condition.
After working on various solo projects during 1988 (including Mercury's collaboration with Montserrat Caballé, Barcelona), the band released The Miracle in 1989. The album continued the direction of A Kind of Magic, using a pop-rock sound mixed with a few heavy numbers. It spawned the hit singles "I Want It All"—which became an anti-apartheid anthem in South Africa—"Scandal", and "The Miracle". The Miracle also began a change in direction of Queen's songwriting philosophy. Beforehand, nearly all songs had been written by and credited to a single member. With The Miracle, their songwriting became more collaborative, and they vowed to credit the final product only to Queen as a group.
In 1990, Queen ended their contract with Capitol and signed with Hollywood Records; through the deal, Disney acquired the North American distribution rights to Queen's catalogue for $10 million, and remains the group's music catalogue owner and distributor in the United States and Canada; the band retained ownership of the global rights through the UK-based Queen Productions Ltd. In February that year, Mercury made what would prove to be his final public appearance when he joined the rest of Queen onstage at the Dominion Theatre in London to collect the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.
Their fourteenth studio album, Innuendo, was released in early 1991 with "Innuendo" and other charting singles released later in the year. The music video for "The Show Must Go On" featured archive footage of Queen's performances between 1981 and 1989, and along with the manner of the song's lyrics, fuelled reports that Mercury was dying. Mercury was increasingly ill and could barely walk when the band recorded "The Show Must Go On" in 1990. Because of this, May had concerns about whether he was physically capable of singing it, but May recalled that he "completely killed it". The rest of the band were ready to record when Mercury felt able to come into the studio, for an hour or two at a time. May says of Mercury: "He just kept saying. 'Write me more. Write me stuff. I want to just sing this and do it and when I am gone you can finish it off.' He had no fear, really." The band's second-greatest hits compilation, Greatest Hits II, followed in October 1991; it is the tenth best-selling album in the UK, the seventh best-selling album in Germany, is certified Diamond in France where it is one of the best-selling albums, and has sold 16 million copies worldwide.
On 23 November 1991, in a prepared statement made on his deathbed, Mercury confirmed that he had AIDS. Within 24 hours of the statement, he died of bronchial pneumonia, which was brought on as a complication of the disease. His funeral service on 27 November in Kensal Green, West London was private, and held in accordance with the Zoroastrian religious faith of his family.
"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single shortly after Mercury's death, with "These Are the Days of Our Lives" as the double A-side. The music video for the latter contains Mercury's final scenes in front of the camera. Ron Hart of Rolling Stone wrote, "the conga-driven synth ballad "These Are the Days of Our Lives" is Innuendo's most significant single, given that its video marked the last time his fans were able to see the singer alive." The video was recorded on 30 May 1991 (which proved to be Mercury's final work with Queen). The single went to number one in the UK, remaining there for five weeks—the only recording to top the Christmas chart twice and the only one to be number one in four different years (1975, 1976, 1991, and 1992). Initial proceeds from the single—approximately £1,000,000—were donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust, an AIDS charity.
Queen's popularity was stimulated in North America when "Bohemian Rhapsody" was featured in the 1992 comedy film Wayne's World. Its inclusion helped the song reach number two on the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks in 1992 (including its 1976 chart run, it remained in the Hot 100 for a combined 41 weeks), and won the band an MTV Award at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. The compilation album Classic Queen also reached number four on the Billboard 200, and is certified three times platinum in the US. Wayne's World footage was used to make a new music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody", with which the band and management were delighted.
On 20 April 1992, The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium to a crowd of 72,000. Performers, including Def Leppard, Robert Plant, Tony Iommi, Roger Daltrey, Guns N' Roses, Elton John, David Bowie, George Michael, Annie Lennox, Seal, Extreme, and Metallica performed various Queen songs along with the three remaining Queen members (and Spike Edney.) The concert is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as "The largest rock star benefit concert", as it was televised to over 1.2 billion viewers worldwide, and raised over £20,000,000 for AIDS charities.
1995–2003: Made in Heaven to 46664 Concert
Queen's last album with Mercury, titled Made in Heaven, was released in 1995, four years after his death. Featuring tracks such as "Too Much Love Will Kill You" and "Heaven for Everyone", it was constructed from Mercury's final recordings in 1991, material left over from their previous studio albums and re-worked material from May, Taylor, and Mercury's solo albums. The album also featured the song "Mother Love", the last vocal recording Mercury made, which he completed using a drum machine, over which May, Taylor and Deacon later added the instrumental track. After completing the penultimate verse, Mercury had told the band he "wasn't feeling that great" and stated, "I will finish it when I come back, next time". Mercury never returned to the studio afterwards, leaving May to record the final verse of the song. Both stages of recording, before and after Mercury's death, were completed at the band's studio in Montreux, Switzerland. The album reached number one in the UK following its release, their ninth number one album, and sold 20 million copies worldwide. On 25 November 1996, a statue of Mercury was unveiled in Montreux overlooking Lake Geneva, almost five years to the day since his death.
In 1997, Queen returned to the studio to record "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)", a song dedicated to Mercury and all those who die too soon. It was released as a bonus track on the Queen Rocks compilation album later that year, and features in Greatest Hits III. In January 1997, Queen performed "The Show Must Go On" live with Elton John and the Béjart Ballet in Paris on a night Mercury was remembered, and it marked the last performance and public appearance of John Deacon, who chose to retire. The Paris concert was only the second time Queen had played live since Mercury's death, prompting Elton John to urge them to perform again. Brian May and Roger Taylor performed together at several award ceremonies and charity concerts, sharing vocals with various guest singers. During this time, they were billed as Queen + followed by the guest singer's name. In 1998, the duo appeared at Luciano Pavarotti's benefit concert with May performing "Too Much Love Will Kill You" with Pavarotti, later playing "Radio Ga Ga", "We Will Rock You", and "We Are the Champions" with Zucchero. They again attended and performed at Pavarotti's benefit concert in Modena, Italy in May 2003. Several of the guest singers recorded new versions of Queen's hits under the Queen + name, such as Robbie Williams providing vocals for "We Are the Champions" for the soundtrack of A Knight's Tale (2001).
In November 1999, Greatest Hits III was released. This featured, among others, "Queen + Wyclef Jean" on a rap version of "Another One Bites the Dust". A live version of "Somebody to Love" by George Michael and a live version of "The Show Must Go On" with Elton John were also featured in the album. By this point, Queen's vast amount of record sales made them the second-bestselling artist in the UK of all time, behind the Beatles. In November 2000, the band released the box set, The Platinum Collection. It is certified seven times platinum in the UK and five times platinum in the US. On 18 October 2002, Queen were awarded the 2,207th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for their work in the music industry, which is located at 6358 Hollywood Blvd. On 29 November 2003, May and Taylor performed at the 46664 Concert hosted by Nelson Mandela at Green Point Stadium, Cape Town, to raise awareness of the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. A new song, "Invincible Hope", featuring Mandela's speech and credited to Queen + Nelson Mandela, was performed during the concert and later released on the 46664: One Year On EP. During that period May and Taylor spent time at Mandela's home, discussing how Africa's problems might be approached, and two years later the band were made ambassadors for the 46664 cause.
2004–2009: Queen + Paul Rodgers
At the end of 2004, May and Taylor announced that they would reunite and return to touring in 2005 with Paul Rodgers (founder and former lead singer of Free and Bad Company). Brian May's website also stated that Rodgers would be "featured with" Queen as "Queen + Paul Rodgers", not replacing Mercury. Deacon, who was retired, did not participate. In November 2004, Queen were among the inaugural inductees into the UK Music Hall of Fame, and the award ceremony was the first event at which Rodgers joined May and Taylor as vocalist.
Between 2005 and 2006, Queen + Paul Rodgers embarked on a world tour, which was the first time Queen toured since their last tour with Freddie Mercury in 1986. Taylor said: "We never thought we would tour again, Paul came along by chance and we seemed to have a chemistry. Paul is just such a great singer. He's not trying to be Freddie." The first leg was in Europe, the second in Japan, and the third in the US in 2006. Queen received the inaugural VH1 Rock Honors at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 25 May 2006. Foo Fighters paid homage, performing "Tie Your Mother Down" to open the ceremony before being joined on stage by May, Taylor, and Rodgers, who played a selection of Queen hits.
On 15 August 2006, May confirmed through his website and fan club that Queen + Paul Rodgers would begin producing their first studio album beginning in October, to be recorded at a "secret location". Queen + Paul Rodgers performed at the Nelson Mandela 90th Birthday Tribute held in Hyde Park, London on 27 June 2008, to commemorate Mandela's ninetieth birthday, and again promote awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The first Queen + Paul Rodgers album, titled The Cosmos Rocks, was released in Europe on 12 September 2008 and in the United States on 28 October 2008. Following the release of the album, the band again went on a tour through Europe, opening on Kharkiv's Freedom Square in front of 350,000 Ukrainian fans. The Kharkiv concert was later released on DVD. The tour then moved to Russia, and the band performed two sold-out shows at the Moscow Arena. Having completed the first leg of its extensive European tour, which saw the band play 15 sold-out dates across nine countries, the UK leg of the tour sold out within 90 minutes of going on sale and included three London dates, the first of which was the O2 Arena on 13 October. The last leg of the tour took place in South America, and included a sold-out concert at José Amalfitani Stadium, Buenos Aires.
Queen and Paul Rodgers officially split up without animosity on 12 May 2009. Rodgers stated: "My arrangement with [Queen] was similar to my arrangement with Jimmy [Page] in The Firm in that it was never meant to be a permanent arrangement". Rodgers did not rule out the possibility of working with Queen again.
2009–2011: Departure from EMI, 40th anniversary
On 20 May 2009, May and Taylor performed "We Are the Champions" live on the season finale of American Idol with winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert providing a vocal duet. In mid-2009, after the split of Queen + Paul Rodgers, the Queen online website announced a new greatest hits compilation named Absolute Greatest. The album was released on 16 November and peaked at number 3 in the official UK Chart. The album contains 20 of Queen's biggest hits spanning their entire career and was released in four different formats: single disc, double disc (with commentary), double disc with feature book, and a vinyl record. Before its release, Queen ran an online competition to guess the track listing as a promotion for the album. On 30 October 2009, May wrote a fanclub letter on his website stating that Queen had no intentions to tour in 2010 but that there was a possibility of a performance. On 15 November 2009, May and Taylor performed "Bohemian Rhapsody" live on the British TV show The X Factor alongside the finalists.
On 7 May 2010, May and Taylor announced that they were quitting their record label, EMI, after almost 40 years. On 20 August 2010, Queen's manager Jim Beach put out a Newsletter stating that the band had signed a new contract with Universal Music. During an interview for HARDtalk on the BBC on 22 September, May confirmed that the band's new deal was with Island Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. Hollywood Records remained as the group's label in the United States and Canada, however. As such, for the first time since the late 1980s, Queen's catalogue now has the same distributor worldwide, as Universal distributes for both the Island and Hollywood labels (for a time in the late 1980s, Queen was on EMI-owned Capitol Records in the US).
On 14 March 2011, which marked the band's 40th anniversary, Queen's first five albums were re-released in the UK and some other territories as remastered deluxe editions (the US versions were released on 17 May). The second five albums of Queen's back catalogue were released worldwide on 27 June, with the exception of the US and Canada (27 September). The final five were released in the UK on 5 September.
In May 2011, Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell noted that Queen are currently scouting their once former and current live bassist Chris Chaney to join the band. Farrell stated: "I have to keep Chris away from Queen, who want him and they're not gonna get him unless we're not doing anything. Then they can have him." In the same month, Paul Rodgers stated he may tour with Queen again in the near future. At the 2011 Broadcast Music, Incorporated (BMI) Awards held in London on 4 October, Queen received the BMI Icon Award in recognition for their airplay success in the US. At the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards on 6 November, Queen received the Global Icon Award, which Katy Perry presented to Brian May. Queen closed the awards ceremony, with Adam Lambert on vocals, performing "The Show Must Go On", "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions". The collaboration garnered a positive response from both fans and critics, resulting in speculation about future projects together.
2011–present: Queen + Adam Lambert, Queen Forever
On 25 and 26 April, May and Taylor appeared on the eleventh series of American Idol at the Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, performing a Queen medley with the six finalists on the first show, and the following day performed "Somebody to Love" with the 'Queen Extravaganza' band. Queen were scheduled to headline Sonisphere at Knebworth on 7 July 2012 with Adam Lambert before the festival was cancelled. Queen's final concert with Freddie Mercury was in Knebworth in 1986. Brian May commented, "It's a worthy challenge for us, and I'm sure Adam would meet with Freddie's approval." Queen expressed disappointment at the cancellation and released a statement to the effect that they were looking to find another venue. Queen + Adam Lambert played two shows at the Hammersmith Apollo, London on 11 and 12 July 2012. Both shows sold out within 24 hours of tickets going on open sale. A third London date was scheduled for 14 July. On 30 June, Queen + Lambert performed in Kyiv, Ukraine at a joint concert with Elton John for the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation. Queen also performed with Lambert on 3 July 2012 at Moscow's Olympic Stadium, and on 7 July 2012 at the Municipal Stadium in Wroclaw, Poland.
On 12 August 2012, Queen performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The performance at London's Olympic Stadium opened with a special remastered video clip of Mercury on stage performing his call and response routine during their 1986 concert at Wembley Stadium. Following this, May performed part of the "Brighton Rock" solo before being joined by Taylor and solo artist Jessie J for a performance of "We Will Rock You".
On 20 September 2013, Queen + Adam Lambert performed at the iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Queen + Adam Lambert toured North America in Summer 2014 and Australia and New Zealand in August/September 2014. In an interview with Rolling Stone, May and Taylor said that although the tour with Lambert is a limited thing, they are open to him becoming an official member, and cutting new material with him.
In November 2014 Queen released a new album Queen Forever. The album is largely a compilation of previously released material but features three new Queen tracks featuring vocals from Mercury with backing added by the surviving members of Queen. One new track, "There Must Be More to Life Than This", is a duet between Mercury and Michael Jackson. Queen + Adam Lambert performed in the shadow of Big Ben in Central Hall, Westminster, central London at the Big Ben New Year concert on New Year's Eve 2014 and New Year's Day 2015.
In 2016, the group embarked across Europe and Asia on the Queen + Adam Lambert 2016 Summer Festival Tour. This included closing the Isle of Wight Festival in England on 12 June where they performed "Who Wants to Live Forever" as a tribute to the victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida earlier that day. On 12 September they performed at the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Israel for the first time in front of 58,000 people. As part of the Queen + Adam Lambert Tour 2017–2018, the band toured North America in the summer of 2017, toured Europe in late 2017, before playing dates in Australia and New Zealand in February and March 2018. On 24 February 2019, Queen + Adam Lambert opened the 91st Academy Awards ceremony held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. In July 2019 they embarked on the North American leg of The Rhapsody Tour, with the dates sold out in April. They toured Japan and South Korea in January 2020 followed by Australia and New Zealand the following month. On 16 February the band reprised their Live Aid set for the first time in 35 years at the Fire Fight Australia concert at ANZ Stadium in Sydney to raise money for the 2019–20 Australian bushfire crisis.
Because Queen were not able to tour due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they released a live album with Adam Lambert on 2 October 2020. The 20-plus song collection, titled Live Around the World, contains personally selected highlights by the band members from over 200 shows throughout their history. It marked their first live album with Lambert who, as of 2020, has played 218 shows with the band. On 31 December 2020, Queen performed on the Japanese New Year's Eve television special Kōhaku with composer Yoshiki and vocalist Sarah Brightman. In 2021, Queen received the Japan Gold Disc Award for the fourth time (having previously won it in 2005, 2019 and 2020) as the most popular Western act in Japan.
On 4 June 2022, Queen + Adam Lambert opened the Platinum Party at the Palace outside Buckingham Palace to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. Performing a three-song set, they opened with "We Will Rock You" which had been introduced in a comedy segment where Queen Elizabeth II and Paddington Bear tapped their tea cups to the beat of the song.
A previously unheard Queen song with Mercury's vocals, "Face It Alone", recorded over thirty years ago and originally thought "unsalvageable" by May and Taylor, was released on 13 October 2022; five more songs — "You Know You Belong to Me", "When Love Breaks Up", "Dog With a Bone", "Water", and "I Guess We're Falling Out" — were released on 18 November 2022 as part of The Miracle Collector's Edition box set.
Music style and influences
Queen drew artistic influence from British rock acts of the 1960s and early 1970s, such as the Beatles, the Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Who, Black Sabbath, Slade, Deep Purple, David Bowie, Genesis, and Yes, with Mercury also inspired by the rock and roll singers Little Richard, Elvis Presley and the gospel singer Aretha Franklin. On the Beatles, Brian May stated they "built our bible as far as musical composition, arrangement and production went. The White Album is a complete catalogue of how you should use a studio to build songs." Mercury said, "John Lennon was larger than life, and an absolute genius. Even at a very early stage when they were the Beatles, I always preferred John Lennon's things. I don't know why. He just had that magic." May and Mercury were influenced by Jimi Hendrix, with Mercury saying "he really had everything any rock 'n' roll star should have", and May saying "Jimi is, of course, my number one. And I've always said that [...] I never stop learning from Jimi." Mercury's thesis for his Ealing College diploma was on Hendrix, and Mercury and Taylor closed their Kensington Market stall on 18 September 1970 to commemorate his death.
At their outset in the early 1970s, Queen's music has been characterised as "Led Zeppelin meets Yes" due to its combination of "acoustic/electric guitar extremes and fantasy-inspired multi-part song epics". Although Mercury stated Robert Plant as his favourite singer and Led Zeppelin as "the greatest" rock band, he also said Queen "have more in common with Liza Minnelli than Led Zeppelin. We're more in the showbiz tradition than the rock'n'roll tradition". In his book on Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, Eddie Trunk described Queen as "a hard rock band at the core but one with a high level of majesty and theatricality that delivered a little something for everyone", as well as observing that the band "sounded British". Rob Halford of Judas Priest commented, "It's rare that you struggle to label a band. If you're a heavy metal band you're meant to look and sound like a heavy metal band but you can't really call Queen anything. They could be a pop band one day or the band that wrote 'Bicycle Race' the next and a full-blown metal band the next. In terms of the depth of the musical landscape that they covered, it was very similar to some extent to the Beatles." While stating they were influenced by various artists and genres, Joe Bosso of Guitar World magazine writes, "Queen seemed to occupy their own lane."
Queen composed music that drew inspiration from many different genres of music, often with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. The music styles and genres they have been associated with include progressive rock (also known as symphonic rock), art rock, glam rock, arena rock, heavy metal, operatic pop, pop rock, psychedelic rock, baroque pop, and rockabilly. Queen also wrote songs that were inspired by diverse musical styles which are not typically associated with rock groups, such as opera, music hall, folk music, gospel, ragtime, and dance/disco. Their 1980 single "Another One Bites the Dust" became a major hit single in the funk rock genre. Known for their anthemic songs which are a staple of sports arenas and stadiums the world over, several Queen songs were written with audience participation in mind, such as "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions". Similarly, "Radio Ga Ga" became a live favourite for the band because it would have "crowds clapping like they were at a Nuremberg rally".
In 1963, the teenage Brian May and his father custom-built his signature guitar Red Special, which was purposely designed to feedback. May has used Vox AC30 amplifiers almost exclusively since a meeting with his long-time hero Rory Gallagher at a gig in London during the late 1960s/early 1970s. He also uses a sixpence as a plectrum to get the sound he wants. Sonic experimentation figured heavily in Queen's songs. A distinctive characteristic of Queen's music are the vocal harmonies which are usually composed of the voices of May, Mercury, and Taylor best heard on the studio albums A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. Some of the ground work for the development of this sound is attributed to the producer Roy Thomas Baker and engineer Mike Stone. Besides vocal harmonies, Queen were also known for multi-tracking voices to imitate the sound of a large choir through overdubs. For instance, according to Brian May, there are over 180 vocal overdubs in "Bohemian Rhapsody". The band's vocal structures have been compared with the Beach Boys.
Media
Logo
Having studied graphic design in art college, Mercury also designed Queen's logo, called the Queen crest, shortly before the release of the band's first album. The logo combines the zodiac signs of all four members: two lions for Leo (Deacon and Taylor), a crab for Cancer (May), and two fairies for Virgo (Mercury). The lions embrace a stylised letter Q, the crab rests atop the letter with flames rising directly above it, and the fairies are each sheltering below a lion. There is also a crown inside the Q and the whole logo is over-shadowed by an enormous phoenix. The whole symbol bears a passing resemblance to the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom, particularly with the lion supporters. The original logo, as found on the reverse-side of the cover of the band's first album, was a simple line drawing. Later sleeves bore more intricate-coloured versions of the logo.
Music videos
Directed by Bruce Gowers, the groundbreaking "Bohemian Rhapsody" promotional video sees the band adopt a "decadent 'glam' sensibility". Replicating Mick Rock's photograph of the band from the cover of Queen II—which itself was inspired by a photo of actress Marlene Dietrich from Shanghai Express (1932)—the video opens with "Queen standing in diamond formation, heads tilted back like Easter Island statues" in near darkness as they sing the a cappella part.
One of the industry's leading music video directors, David Mallet, directed a number of their subsequent videos. Some of their later videos use footage from classic films: "Under Pressure" incorporates 1920s silent films, Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu; the 1984 video for "Radio Ga Ga" includes footage from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927); "Calling All Girls" was a homage to George Lucas's THX 1138; and the 1995 video "Heaven for Everyone" shows footage from Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). The first part of Mallet's music video for "I Want to Break Free" spoofed the popular long-running British soap opera Coronation Street.
The music video for "Innuendo" combines stop motion animation with rotoscoping and band members appear as illustrations and images taken from earlier Queen music videos on a cinema screen akin to the dystopian film Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). The music videos for "Flash" (from Flash Gordon) and "Princes of the Universe" (from Highlander) are themed on the films the band recorded soundtracks for, with the latter featuring Mercury briefly re-enact the sword-fighting scene with the titular character. Queen also appeared in conventional music videos. "We Will Rock You" was filmed outdoors in Roger Taylor's back garden during a cold day in early January 1977. Filmed at the New London Theatre later that year, the music video for "We Are the Champions" features the band—with Mercury in a trademark Harlequin outfit—performing in front of an enthusiastic crowd who wave Queen scarves in a manner similar to English football fans. The last music video of the group while Mercury was alive, "These Are the Days of Our Lives", was filmed in black-and-white to hide the full extent of his illness.
Musical theatre
In May 2002, a musical or "rock theatrical" based on the songs of Queen, titled We Will Rock You, opened at the Dominion Theatre in London's West End. The musical was written by British comedian and author Ben Elton in collaboration with Brian May and Roger Taylor, and produced by Robert De Niro. It has since been staged in many cities around the world. The launch of the musical coincided with Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. As part of the Jubilee celebrations, Brian May performed a guitar solo of "God Save the Queen", as featured on Queen's A Night at the Opera, from the roof of Buckingham Palace. The recording of this performance was used as video for the song on the 30th Anniversary DVD edition of A Night at the Opera. Following the Las Vegas premiere on 8 September 2004, Queen were inducted into the Hollywood RockWalk in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles.
The original London production was scheduled to close on Saturday, 7 October 2006, at the Dominion Theatre, but due to public demand, the show ran until May 2014. We Will Rock You has become the longest-running musical ever to run at this prime London theatre, overtaking the previous record holder, the musical Grease. Brian May stated in 2008 that they were considering writing a sequel to We Will Rock You. The musical toured around the UK in 2009, playing at Manchester Palace Theatre, Sunderland Empire, Birmingham Hippodrome, Bristol Hippodrome, and Edinburgh Playhouse. By December 2022 the musical had been seen by 20 million people across 28 countries. In the summer of 2023 it returned to London with a 12-week run at the London Coliseum.
Sean Bovim created "Queen at the Ballet", a tribute to Mercury, which uses Queen's music as a soundtrack for the show's dancers, who interpret the stories behind tracks such as "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Radio Ga Ga", and "Killer Queen". Queen's music also appears in the Off-Broadway production Power Balladz, most notably the song "We Are the Champions", with the show's two performers believing the song was "the apex of artistic achievement in its day".
Software and digital releases
In conjunction with Electronic Arts, Queen released the computer game Queen: The eYe in 1998. The game received mixed reviews. Several reviewers described the fight sequences as frustrating, due to unresponsive controls and confusing camera angles. PC Zone found the game's graphics unimpressive, although PC PowerPlay considered them "absolutely stunning". The extremely long development time resulted in graphic elements that already seemed outdated by the time of release.
Under the supervision of May and Taylor, numerous restoration projects have been under way involving Queen's lengthy audio and video catalogue. DVD releases of their 1986 Wembley concert (titled Live at Wembley Stadium), 1982 Milton Keynes concert (Queen on Fire – Live at the Bowl), and two Greatest Video Hits (Volumes 1 and 2, spanning the 1970s and 1980s) have seen the band's music remixed into 5.1 and DTS surround sound. So far, only two of the band's albums, A Night at the Opera and The Game, have been fully remixed into high-resolution multichannel surround on DVD-Audio. A Night at the Opera was re-released with some revised 5.1 mixes and accompanying videos in 2005 for the 30th anniversary of the album's original release (CD+DVD-Video set). In 2007, a Blu-ray edition of Queen's previously released concerts, Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid, was released, marking their first project in 1080p HD.
Queen have been featured multiple times in the Guitar Hero franchise: a cover of "Killer Queen" in the original Guitar Hero, "We Are The Champions", "Fat Bottomed Girls", and the Paul Rodgers collaboration "C-lebrity" in a track pack for Guitar Hero World Tour, "Under Pressure" with David Bowie in Guitar Hero 5, "I Want It All" in Guitar Hero: Van Halen, "Stone Cold Crazy" in Guitar Hero: Metallica, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. On 13 October 2009, Brian May revealed there was "talk" going on "behind the scenes" about a dedicated Queen Rock Band game.
Queen have also been featured multiple times in the Rock Band franchise: a track pack of 10 songs which are compatible with Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and Rock Band 3 (three of those are also compatible with Lego Rock Band). Their hit "Bohemian Rhapsody" was featured in Rock Band 3 with full harmony and keys support.
The band also appeared in the video game Lego Rock Band as playable Lego avatars. In March 2009, Sony Computer Entertainment released a Queen branded version of the company's karaoke franchise, SingStar. The game, which is available on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, is titled SingStar Queen and has 25 songs on the PS3 and 20 on the PS2. "We Will Rock You" and other songs by Queen also appear in DJ Hero.
Bohemian Rhapsody
In a September 2010 BBC interview, Brian May announced that Sacha Baron Cohen was to play Mercury in a biographical film about the band. Time commented with approval on his singing ability and visual similarity to Mercury. However, in July 2013, Baron Cohen dropped out of the role due to "creative differences" between him and the surviving band members. In December 2013, it was announced that Ben Whishaw, known for playing Q in the James Bond film Skyfall, was a possible replacement for Baron Cohen in the role of Mercury, but Whishaw pulled out a few months later amidst uncertainty about how the film was progressing.
The project regained momentum in 2016. It was announced on 4 November that the film had secured the backing of 20th Century Fox, New Regency and GK Films. By this time, the film's working title was Bohemian Rhapsody, after the band's song of the same name. Freddie Mercury was to be played by Rami Malek, and shooting was scheduled to begin in early 2017. The motion picture was written by Anthony McCarten, with a story by McCarten and Peter Morgan, who received Oscar nominations for his screenplays The Queen and Frost/Nixon.
Released in October 2018, Bohemian Rhapsody focuses on Queen's formative years and the period leading up to the celebrated performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert. The film has grossed over $900 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all time. Despite receiving mixed reviews, it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. Malek received wide acclaim and numerous accolades for his portrayal of Mercury, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. While the Live Aid segment was praised, criticism came from not exploring more complex themes involving Mercury, with the New York Post's Johnny Oleksinski stating, "What we ultimately wanted from Bohemian Rhapsody was not carbon-copied concerts, but behind-closed-doors insight into a deeply private, complicated, internationally beloved superstar." After the release of the film, "Bohemian Rhapsody" re-entered the US Billboard Hot 100 for the third time (having previously charted in 1976 and 1992), charting at number 33 on 12 November 2018. Bohemian Rhapsody: The Original Soundtrack received an American Music Award for Top Soundtrack.
Other films
The soundtrack for the film Flash Gordon (1980) was by Queen. The band also contributed music to Highlander (the original 1986 film), with "A Kind of Magic", "One Year of Love", "Who Wants to Live Forever", "Hammer to Fall", and the theme "Princes of the Universe", which was also used as the theme of the Highlander TV series (1992–1998). In choosing music for Highlander, director Russell Mulcahy stated, "I thought about one band – Queen. They write strong, anthemic songs and this movie needs their energy". In the United States, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single in 1992 after appearing in the comedy film Wayne's World. The single subsequently reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 (with "The Show Must Go On" as the first track on the single) and helped rekindle the band's popularity in North America.
Several films have featured their songs performed by other artists. A version of "Somebody to Love" by Anne Hathaway was in the 2004 film Ella Enchanted. In 2006, Brittany Murphy also recorded a cover of the same song for the 2006 film Happy Feet. In 2001, a version of "The Show Must Go On" was performed by Jim Broadbent and Nicole Kidman in the film musical Moulin Rouge!. The 2001 film A Knight's Tale has a version of "We Are the Champions" performed by Robbie Williams and Queen; the film also features "We Will Rock You" played by the medieval audience.
Television
"I Was Born to Love You" was used as the theme song of the Japanese television drama Pride on Fuji Television in 2004, starring Takuya Kimura and Yūko Takeuchi. The show's soundtrack also contained other songs by Queen. A song that has grown in popularity four decades since its release, the initial rebirth of "Don't Stop Me Now" has been attributed to its appearance in the 2004 cult classic zombie apocalypse film Shaun of the Dead. The song has featured in the BBC television show Top Gear, and in 2005 it was voted as "The Greatest Driving Song Ever" by the series' viewers.
Keeping in a tradition of naming each season's episodes after songs by 1970s rock bands, the eighth and final season of That '70s Show had episodes named after Queen songs. "Bohemian Rhapsody" served as the season premiere. With an entry for the year 1977, Queen featured in the VH1 series I Love the '70s, broadcast in the US. The Simpsons has made storylines which have featured Queen songs such as "We Will Rock You", "We Are the Champions" (both sung by Homer), and "You're My Best Friend". The latter also appears in Family Guy, as does "Another One Bites the Dust", while an episode of the show, "Killer Queen", is named after (and features) the song. Queen were profiled in season 1, episode 16 of VH1's Legends, broadcast in 1998.
On 11 April 2006, Brian May and Roger Taylor appeared on the American singing contest television show American Idol. Each contestant was required to sing a Queen song during that week of the competition. Songs which appeared on the show included "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "The Show Must Go On", "Who Wants to Live Forever", and "Innuendo". Brian May later criticised the show for editing specific scenes, one of which made the group's time with contestant Ace Young look negative, despite it being the opposite. Taylor and May again appeared on the American Idol season 8 finale in May 2009, performing "We Are the Champions" with finalists Adam Lambert and Kris Allen. On 15 November 2009, Brian May and Roger Taylor appeared on the singing contest television show The X Factor in the UK.
In 2007, Queen featured as one of the main artists in the fifth episode of the BBC/VH1 series Seven Ages of Rock—focusing on stadium rock, the episode itself was named "We Are the Champions". In the autumn of 2009, Glee featured the fictional high school's show choir singing "Somebody to Love" as their second act performance in the episode "The Rhodes Not Taken". The performance was included on the show's Volume 1 soundtrack CD. In June 2010, the choir performed "Another One Bites the Dust" in the episode "Funk". The following week's episode, "Journey to Regionals", features a rival choir performing "Bohemian Rhapsody" in its entirety. The song was featured on the episode's EP. In May 2012, the choir performed "We Are the Champions" in the episode "Nationals", and the song features in The Graduation Album. In November 2014, The Nation's Favourite Queen Song, a 90-minute television special counting down Britain's 20 favourite Queen songs, aired on ITV in the UK. In November 2021, The Queen Family Singalong, featuring performances of songs by Queen accompanied with on-screen karaoke lyrics encouraging viewers to sing along, aired on ABC in the US.
Legacy
In 2002, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted "the UK's favourite hit of all time" in a poll conducted by the Guinness World Records British Hit Singles Book. In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Many scholars consider the "Bohemian Rhapsody" music video groundbreaking, crediting it with popularising the medium. Rock historian Paul Fowles stated that the song is "widely credited as the first global hit single for which an accompanying video was central to the marketing strategy". It has been hailed as paving the way for the MTV Generation. In December 2018, "Bohemian Rhapsody" became the most-streamed song from the 20th century, and the most-streamed classic rock song of all time. The number of downloads of the song and original video exceeded 1.6 billion across global on-demand streaming services. In March 2021 it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units. Acclaimed for their stadium rock, in 2005 an industry poll ranked Queen's performance at Live Aid in 1985 as the best live act in history. In 2007, they were also voted the greatest British band in history by BBC Radio 2 listeners.
As of 2005, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, Queen albums have spent a total of 1,322 weeks (twenty-six years) on the UK Album Charts, more time than any other act. Also in 2005, with the release of their live album with Paul Rodgers, Queen moved into third place on the list of acts with the most aggregate time spent on the British record charts. In 2022, Greatest Hits was the best-selling album in UK chart history, and the only album to sell over seven million copies in the UK. As of August 2024, the album has spent over 600 weeks on the US Billboard 200. Their Greatest Hits II album is the UK's tenth best seller, with sales of 3,746,404 copies. Based on record sales, Billboard charts performance, online views and popularity on Spotify, in 2018 Business Insider in the US ranked Queen the third most popular rock band of all time, after the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
The band have released a total of 18 number-one albums, 18 number-one singles, and 10 number-one DVDs worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. Estimates of their record sales range from 250 million to 300 million worldwide. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the band is the only group in which every member has composed more than one chart-topping single, and all four members were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2009, "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and the latter was voted the world's favourite song in a 2005 Sony Ericsson global music poll. The band received Ivor Novello Awards for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, in 1987, and Outstanding Song Collection, in 2005, from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors. In recognition of the vocal harmonies of Mercury, May and Taylor, in 2006 Queen were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. In 2018 they were presented the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In their top 10 list for the Global Recording Artist of the Year, the IFPI named Queen the sixth best-selling artist worldwide in 2018, and the fifth best-selling artist in 2019, in both cases the most popular act of their contemporaries. In January 2020, Queen became the first band to join Queen Elizabeth II on a British coin. Issued by the Royal Mint, the commemorative £5 coin features the instruments of all four members of the band. In July 2020, Queen became the third band (after the Beatles and Pink Floyd) to feature on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail.
Queen are one of the most bootlegged bands ever, according to Nick Weymouth, who manages the band's official website. A 2001 survey discovered the existence of 12,225 websites dedicated to Queen bootlegs, the highest number for any band. Bootleg recordings have contributed to the band's popularity in certain countries where Western music is censored, such as Iran. In a project called Queen: The Top 100 Bootlegs, many of these have been made officially available to download for a nominal fee from Queen's website, with profits going to the Mercury Phoenix Trust. In 2004, Queen became the first Western rock act to be officially accepted in Iran following the release of their Greatest Hits album. Rolling Stone ranked Queen at number 52 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", while ranking Mercury the 18th-greatest singer, and May the twenty-sixth-greatest guitarist. Rolling Stone readers voted Mercury the second-greatest frontman. Queen were named 13th on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock list, and in 2010 were ranked 17th on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time list. In 2012, Gigwise readers named Queen the best band of the past 60 years. Eddie Trunk argued that Queen's importance, in common with Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple, was "not as fully recognized" in the United States because elsewhere they "often played to much bigger crowds in stadium venues". Queen had stopped touring the US in 1982 as their success there had started to wane, but they remained a touring "juggernaut", filling stadiums and arenas internationally in the 1980s until their final tour (with Mercury) in 1986.
Influence
Queen have been credited with making a significant contribution to genres such as hard rock and heavy metal. The band have been cited as an influence by many other musicians. Moreover, like their music, the bands and artists that have claimed to be influenced by Queen or have expressed admiration for them are diverse, spanning different generations, countries, and genres, including heavy metal: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Trivium, Megadeth, Anthrax, Melvins, Slipknot, Rob Zombie, and Rage Against the Machine; hard rock: Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Steve Vai, the Cult, the Darkness, and Foo Fighters; alternative rock: Nirvana, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Muse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, the Flaming Lips, Kid Rock, and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins; shock rock: Marilyn Manson; pop rock: the Killers, My Chemical Romance, and Panic! at the Disco; country: Faith Hill, and Carrie Underwood; pop: George Michael, Robbie Williams, Adele, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry; and K-pop: Psy, and BTS.
Musicians have been saying for decades Queen are in the pantheon of all-time greats. In the countless interviews I have done over the years they have been name checked by numerous superstars. What is most impressive though is the diversity of artists they've influenced. Why Queen were able to cut across such an incredibly wide range of musicians is easy to see – they are one of the most versatile bands that rock has ever had.
In the early 1970s, Queen helped spur the heavy metal genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence. Queen's 1974 song "Stone Cold Crazy" has been cited as a precursor of speed metal. Metallica recorded a cover version of "Stone Cold Crazy", which first appeared on the Rubáiyát: Elektra's 40th Anniversary album in 1990, and they still performed it live in the 2000s. Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, a pioneer of "neo-classical metal", listened to Queen as a kid, and spoke of Brian May being "very inventive when it comes to tones and having all those pickup configurations. Brian tends not to stick to just pentatonics, either; he mixes it all up, which is how I like to think, too." Thom Yorke of Radiohead received his first guitar at 7 years old, encouraged after seeing May in a broadcast of a Queen concert. At 10 years old, Yorke made his own homemade guitar, trying to imitate what May had done with his Red Special, but he was not satisfied with the result. Subsequently, Queen was one of the first influences of his band.
Band members
Current members
Brian May – guitars, vocals, keyboards, bass guitar (1970–present)
Roger Taylor – drums, vocals, percussion, guitars, keyboards, bass guitar (1970–present)
Former members
Freddie Mercury – vocals, piano, keyboards, occasional guitar (1970–1991; his death)
John Deacon – bass guitar, guitars, keyboards, backing vocals (1971–1997)
Long-term Queen + vocalists
Paul Rodgers – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards (2004–2009)
Adam Lambert – lead vocals (2011–present)
Current touring members
Spike Edney – keyboards, piano, rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1984–present)
Neil Fairclough – bass, backing vocals (2011–present)
Tyler Warren – percussion, drums, backing vocals (2017–present)
Former touring members
Morgan Fisher – keyboards (1982)
Fred Mandel – keyboards (1982)
David Grosman – bass, backing vocals, keyboards (1998–2004)
Jamie Moses – rhythm guitar, backing vocals, bass (1998–2009)
Danny Miranda – bass, backing vocals, acoustic guitar (2005–2009)
Neil Murray – bass (substitute 2008)
Rufus Tiger Taylor – percussion, drums, backing vocals (2011–2017)
Early members
Mike Grose – bass (1970; died 2019)
Barry Mitchell – bass (1970–1971)
Doug Bogie – bass (1971)
Timeline
Awards and nominations
Discography
Studio albums
Concert tours
References
Bibliography
External links
Official website
Queen at Curlie |
Smile_(band) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_(band) | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_(band)"
] | Smile were an English rock band formed in London in 1968 and was the predecessor of the band Queen. The band was formed by Tim Staffell and Brian May, who later went on to form Queen. They were later joined by drummer Roger Taylor, who also went on to form Queen. They recorded six songs and disbanded in 1970. These songs were titled "April Lady", "Step on Me", "Polar Bear", "Earth", "Blag", and "Doin' Alright" (later re-recorded by Queen for their self-titled debut album in 1973). These songs exist on the CD Ghost of a Smile. "April Lady" was dedicated to Roger Taylor's girlfriend at the time.
History
Hampton School mates and guitarists Tim Staffell and Brian May joined other friends to form a musical group in 1965 called "1984". They played many gigs in West London, opening for more famous bands, and they recorded four cover songs at Thames Television in May 1967, as well as "Step On Me" written by May and Staffell. In early 1968, first May then Staffell left the group. May was an astrophysics student at London's Imperial College, and Staffell was enrolled at Ealing Art College. They placed an advertisement on the college notice board for a "Ginger Baker type" drummer, and a young dental student named Roger Taylor auditioned on bongos (his drum kit was elsewhere) and got the job. The band debuted by opening for either Pink Floyd or the Troggs (stories differ) at Imperial College in October 1968. The band now a trio had their biggest public performance on 27 February 1969 at a concert in aid of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child, held at the Royal Albert Hall. May, Taylor and Staffell performed on guitar, drums and bass respectively.
Smile gigged quite a bit on the London scene, according to Time Out's listings. On 19 April they played at the Speakeasy, and on 31 May appeared at the Whisky-A-Go-Go.
In March 1969, the band played at a venue known as PJ's, using claims—probably false—to have previously been played on BBC Radio 1 to secure an audience. In May the band signed a one-off recording deal with Mercury Records to record three tracks, "Earth" (Staffell), "Step on Me" (May), and "Doin' All Right" (May/Staffell). These were recorded in June 1969 at Trident Studios in Soho.
Ultimately this U.S. promotional recording was never published commercially, however, in September of the same year, Mercury Records commissioned them to record three more songs: "April Lady" (Stanley Lucas), "Blag", and "Polar Bear", a "gentle song about a polar bear" written and led by May, at De Lane Lea Studios. Again, the record was not released at the time.
When Staffell left in 1970 to join another band, Humpy Bong, Smile effectively disbanded. Ealing graduate Farrokh Bulsara persuaded May and Taylor to continue, and at about the same time, he changed his name to Freddie Mercury, and joined them as lead vocalist, thus forming a new group, Queen. Queen tried several bass players during this period – Mike Grose, Barry Mitchell and Doug Bogie – none of whom fitted in with the band's chemistry. Not until February 1971 did John Deacon join and complete the lineup, whereupon they began rehearsing for their first album. This definitive lineup lasted until Mercury's death in 1991, their last album being Made in Heaven, released posthumously in 1995.
For their debut album, Queen recorded "Doing All Right". According to the book Queen: The Early Years, Staffell has been well compensated through royalties from the sale of the album, given his co-songwriting credit for the song with May. Queen also recorded the song for their first BBC recording session with John Peel. That session, along with their third session, have been released in the UK as At the Beeb (Band of Joy Records) in 1989, and in the U.S. as Queen at the BBC (Hollywood Records) in 1995. Also in 1995, Queen issued their "Let Me Live" singles, one of which features three of the first session BBC recordings, including "Doing Alright".
Smile reunited for several songs on 22 December 1992. Taylor's band The Cross were headlining a gig, and he brought May and Staffell on to play "Earth" and "If I Were a Carpenter". May also performed several other songs that night.
In 2018, Smile reunited once more, at Abbey Road Studios to re-record "Doing All Right". This release was used in Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody movie, with May and Taylor taking lead vocals and using Staffell's vocals from the original recording on the middle section.
Discography
Two legitimate releases of the six Smile tracks have been issued:
Gettin' Smile (LP) from Japan, released 23 September 1982, on Mercury Records. The sleeve contains notoriously inaccurate lyrics and songwriting credits for the songs. This release was used for all subsequent bootlegs which contain the songs.
Ghost of a Smile (CD) from the Netherlands, released in 1997, on Pseudonym Records. The CD booklet is comprehensive and features new liner notes by Staffell. All the tracks were newly remastered. The album also features two versions of the Eddie Howell/Freddie Mercury collaboration "The Man from Manhattan" (no relation to Smile, except that May plays guitar on it).
There is a bootleg album of their early tracks circa the Smile-era titled Pre-Ordained. Most of them also appeared on the 1995 Italian bootleg In Nuce.
References
External links
Queen - Birth of a Rock Legend |
List_of_World_War_II_aces_from_the_United_States | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_aces_from_the_United_States | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_aces_from_the_United_States"
] | This is a list of fighter aces in World War II from United States. For other countries see List of World War II flying aces by country
Notes
Abbreviations
"DOW" in Notes means Died of Wounds which, in some cases, may have occurred months later.
"KIA" in Notes means Killed in action (dates are included where possible).
"KIFA" in Notes means Killed in Flying Accident.
"MIA" in Notes means Missing in action.
"POW" in Notes means Prisoner of War.
"USAAF" means United States Army Air Forces
"USMC" means United States Marine Corps
"USN" means United States Navy
Awards
References
Further reading
Mersky, Cmdr Peter B., USNR (1993). Time of Aces: Marine Pilots in the Solomons. Marines in World War II Commemorative Series. Washington, D.C.: Marine Corps Historical Center. Retrieved 2007-12-02.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) |
David_McCampbell | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCampbell | [
336
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] | Captain David McCampbell (January 16, 1910 – June 30, 1996) was a United States Navy captain, naval aviator, and a Medal of Honor recipient. He retired from the navy in 1964 with 31 years of service.
McCampbell is the United States Navy's all-time leading flying ace (called Ace of the Aces in the Navy) and top F6F Hellcat ace with 34 aerial victories. He was the third-highest American scoring ace of World War II and the highest-scoring American ace to survive the war. He also set a United States single mission aerial combat record of shooting down nine enemy planes in one mission, on October 24, 1944, at the beginning of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in the Philippines.
Early life
McCampbell was born in Bessemer, Alabama. When aged around 12, his family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida. He attended the Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and one year at the Georgia School of Technology in Atlanta. There, he joined the US Navy ROTC, played football and was on the swim team.
In 1929, McCampbell was appointed to United States Naval Academy, where he again played football and was on the swim team. He graduated with the class of 1933 with a degree in marine engineering. However, the Great Depression meant there were not enough Navy commissions available for Academy graduates, so he was immediately placed in the United States Navy Reserve. He returned to Atlanta and spent a year working in construction and at an aircraft assembly plant.
United States Navy
On June 1, 1934, McCampbell was ordered to report for active duty and commissioned as an ensign. He went on active duty on June 14, 1934, and served aboard the heavy cruiser USS Portland from June 1934 to June 1937 before he started flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. He received his "wings of gold" as a Naval Aviator on April 21, 1938 and was assigned to Fighter Squadron Four (VF-4) on the aircraft carrier USS Ranger in May 1940.
World War II
McCampbell served as a landing signal officer (LSO) from May 1940, surviving the sinking of the carrier USS Wasp (CV-7) by a Japanese submarine near Guadalcanal on September 15, 1942. He returned to the United States, was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and was stationed at Naval Air Station Melbourne, Florida as LSO Instructor until August 1943.
McCampbell formed Fighter Squadron 15 (VF-15) on September 1, 1943 and led the squadron before being reassigned as Commander of Air Group 15 (CAG-15) in February 1944 to September 1944. As Commander, Carrier Air Group (CAG) 15, he was Commander of the Air Group (fighters, bombers, and torpedo bombers) when the group was embarked on the aircraft carrier USS Essex. From April to November 1944, his group saw six months of combat and participated in two major air-sea battles, the First and Second Battles of the Philippine Sea. During the more than 20,000 hours of air combat operations before it returned to the United States for a rest period, Air Group 15 destroyed more enemy planes (315 airborne and 348 on the ground) and sank more enemy shipping than any other Air Group in the Pacific War. Air Group 15's attacks on the Japanese in the Marianas and at Iwo Jima, Taiwan, and Okinawa were key to the success of the "island hopping" campaign.
In addition to his duties as commander of the "Fabled Fifteen", then Commander McCampbell became the Navy's "ace of aces" during the missions he flew in 1944. McCampbell entered combat on May 14 and flew at least four Grumman F6F Hellcats while aboard the Essex: an F6F-3 named Monsoon Maiden (damaged by AA, removed from service on 20 May 1944), an F6F-3 named The Minsi (10+1⁄2 kills), an F6F-5 named Minsi II, and an F6F-5 named Minsi III (Bureau Number 70143), in which he scored the last 23+1⁄2 of his 34 kills.
On June 19, 1944, during the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," Commander McCampbell shot down five Japanese Yokosuka D4Y 'Judy' dive-bombers, to become an "ace in a day". Later that afternoon, during a second sortie, McCampbell downed two Mitsubishi A6M 'Zekes' over Guam.
On October 24, 1944, in the initial phase of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in the Philippines, he became the only American airman to achieve "ace in a day" status twice. McCampbell and his wingman attacked a Japanese force of 60 aircraft. McCampbell shot down nine—seven Zeros and two Oscars—setting a U.S. single-mission aerial combat record. During this same action, his wingman downed another six Japanese warplanes. When he landed his Grumman F6F Hellcat aboard USS Langley (the flight deck of Essex wasn't clear), his six machine guns had just two rounds remaining, and his airplane had to be manually released from the arrestor wire due to complete fuel exhaustion. Commander McCampbell received the Medal of Honor for both actions, becoming the only Fast Carrier Task Force aviator to be so honored.
Aerial victories
Post-war
Following World War II, McCampbell had several postings. He returned to the United States in March 1945 and served as Chief of Staff to the Commander Fleet Air at NAS Norfolk, Virginia, until January 1947. He then attended Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, and remained as an instructor after graduating.
He served as the Senior Naval Aviation Advisor to the Argentine Navy, stationed at Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 1948 to January 1951, and then served as executive officer aboard USS Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Korean War (although the ship did not participate in combat) from February 1951 to March 1952. He was promoted to captain in July 1952; he was assigned as the Planning Officer on the Staff of Commander Aircraft Atlantic from March 1952 to July 1953. He served as the Commanding Officer, Naval Air Technical Training Center Jacksonville at NAS Jacksonville, Florida, from July 1953 to July 1954. He then commanded the fleet oiler USS Severn, followed by the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard.
McCampbell was then assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon from 1960 to September 1962. His final assignment was as Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations to the Commander in Chief, Continental Air Defense Command, where he served from September 1962 until his retirement from the navy on July 1, 1964.
Retirement and death
McCampbell retired from active duty in 1964. He died in Florida in 1996 and was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.
Military awards
McCampbell's decorations and awards include:
Medal of Honor citation
Rank and Organization: Commander, United States Navy, Air Group 15
Place and Date: First and second battles of the Philippine Sea, 19 June 1944
Entered Service at: Florida
Born: January 16, 1910, Bessemer, Alabama
The President of the United States take pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Commander David McCampbell, United States Navy for service as set forth in the following
Citation:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commander, Air Group Fifteen, during combat against enemy Japanese aerial forces in the First and Second Battles of the Philippine Sea. An inspiring leader, fighting boldly in the face of terrific odds, Commander McCampbell led his fighter planes against a force of eighty Japanese carrier-based aircraft bearing down on our Fleet on June 19, 1944. Striking fiercely in valiant defense of our surface force, he personally destroyed seven hostile planes during this single engagement in which the outnumbering attack force was utterly routed and virtually annihilated. During a major Fleet engagement with the enemy on October 24, Commander McCampbell, assisted by but one plane, intercepted and daringly attacked a formation of sixty hostile land-based craft approaching our forces. Fighting desperately but with superb skill against such overwhelming airpower, he shot down nine Japanese planes and, completely disorganizing the enemy group, forced the remainder to abandon the attack before a single aircraft could reach the Fleet. His great personal valor and indomitable spirit of aggression under extremely perilous combat conditions reflect the highest credit upon Commander McCampbell and the United States Naval Service.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Other honors
In October 1988 the new passenger terminal at the Palm Beach International Airport was named in his honor.
In 1996, McCampbell was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
In 1999 he was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.
An Arleigh Burke-class AEGIS guided-missile destroyer was christened the USS McCampbell (DDG-85) in 2000.
See also
List of Medal of Honor recipients for World War II
References
External links
Dave McCampbell, Top U.S. Navy Ace, at acesofww2.com
CAPT David S. McCampbell at the Wayback Machine (archived June 5, 2004)
Remembering David McCampbell – Ace of Aces
Arlington National Cemetery |
Bessemer,_Alabama | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer,_Alabama | [
336
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer,_Alabama"
] | Bessemer is a city in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States and a southwestern suburb of Birmingham. The population was 26,019 at the 2020 census. It is within the Birmingham-Hoover, AL Metropolitan Statistical Area, of which Jefferson County is the center. It developed rapidly as an industrial city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
History
The town was founded in the Reconstruction Era by the Bessemer Land and Improvement Company, named after Henry Bessemer and owned by coal magnate Henry F. DeBardeleben. He had inherited Daniel Pratt's investments. The mayor and councilmen voted to incorporate the city of Bessemer on September 9, 1887. Located 16 miles southwest of Birmingham, Bessemer grew rapidly and its promoters believed that it might overtake the other city in economic power.
Given the iron ore, coal and limestone deposits in the area, the city became a center of steelmaking from about 1890 through the 20th century. It attracted rural migrants from across the South, as well as European immigrants. By the 1950s, the city was majority African American in population.
The industry went through considerable restructuring in the late 20th century, and jobs moved out of the area. Steel is no longer made there.
In 2019, it was named Alabama's "Worst City to Live in" by 24/7 Wall Street.
Geography
Bessemer is located approximately 16 miles (26 km) southwest of Birmingham.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 40.74 square miles (105.5 km2), of which 40.53 square miles (105.0 km2) is land and 0.55 square miles (1.4 km2) (0.55%) is water.
Bessemer is situated in the midst of the iron ore and limestone district of Alabama, in the southern part of Jones Valley (about 3 miles (4.8 km) wide). Iron ore was mined on the hills on the city's southeast side, coal was, and still is mined to the north and west, and limestone deposits were also nearby. All three ingredients were necessary for steelmaking, which led to the area becoming a major steel center from about 1890 through the twentieth century. Steel is no longer made within the city limits but is still manufactured in the neighboring city of Fairfield.
Climate
The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters. Bessemer has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps, within the Köppen Climate Classification system.
Demographics
2020 census
As of the 2020 census, there were 26,019 people, 10,492 households, and 6,378 families residing in the city.
2013 ACS
In the 2013 American Community Survey, there were 27,336 people living in the city. 72.0% were African American, 24.0% White, 0.1% Native American, 0.2% Asian, 0.1% from some other race and 0.4% from two or more races. 3.2% were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
2000 census
As of the 2000 census, there were 29,672 people, 11,537 households, and 7,868 families living in the city. The population density was 729.0 inhabitants per square mile (281.5/km2). There were 12,790 housing units, with an average density of 314.2 per square mile (121.3/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 69.6% Black or African American, 28.9% White, 0.3% Native American, 0.2% Asian, <0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.3% from other races, and 0.7% from two or more races. 1.1% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 11,537 households, out of which 30.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.6% were married couples living together, 29.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.8% were non-families. 29.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.52 and the average family size was 3.12.
In the city, the population was spread out, with 26.8% under the age of 18, 9.6% from 18 to 24, 26.1% from 25 to 44, 21.1% from 45 to 64, and 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 82.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 75.8 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $23,066, and the median income for a family was $28,230. Males had a median income of $29,413 versus $21,552 for females. The per capita income for the city was $12,232. About 24.2% of families and 27.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 37.8% of those under age 18 and 24.7% of those age 65 or over.
Economy
In 1900, Bessemer ranked eighth in the population in Alabama, second in the amount of capital invested in manufacturing, and fourth in the value of its manufactured product for the year. By 1911, ore mining, iron smelting, and the manufacture of iron and coke were the chief industries of Bessemer. Truck farming was an important industry, dating from the area's agricultural past.
Both blacks and whites from rural areas were attracted to the city for its new work opportunities. Gradually African Americans moved into industrial jobs and became part of integrated unions. Such jobs enabled many working-class families to enjoy middle-class incomes.
Today, ore mining has ended, as supplies were exhausted. Manufacturing remains a factor, with the U.S. Pipe and Foundry ductile pipe plant on the city's north side. In May 2007, U.S. Pipe announced that it would be building a new $45-million foundry near the current plant. The site was selected, among other reasons, for having available space for potential future expansions. U.S. Pipe is the largest domestic producer of Ductile Iron pipe in sizes 4 inch through 64 inch.
Bessemer was once home to a large railroad car manufacturing factory, operated by Pullman Standard for many decades and later by Trinity Industries. With railroad restructuring in the late 20th century and other manufacturing moving offshore, this plant ceased most production in the 1990s. In 2012, BLOX LLC (bloxbuilt.com) a manufacturer of modular components for healthcare facilities moved into this facility.
The decline of mining and exodus of the steelmaking and railcar manufacturing industries resulted in extensive loss of jobs. Bessemer has lost population since a peak population in 1970. It faced an economic crisis in the early to mid-1980s, as unemployed workers constituted more than one-third of the workforce. Since that time the city has been successful in diversifying its economy, through the efforts of the Bessemer Area Chamber of Commerce and the Bessemer Industrial Development Board. It is recognized for its business growth. In June 2018, Amazon announced that it would build a new 800,000 square feet (74,000 m2), $325 million fulfillment center in Bessemer, which will initially create 1,500 new jobs.
Crime
According to the Uniform Crime Report statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2022, there were 469 violent crimes and 2,057 property crimes per 100,000 residents. Of these, the violent crimes consisted of 10 murders, 17 forcible rapes, 76 robberies and 366 aggravated assaults, while 221 burglaries, 1,542 larceny-thefts, 286 motor vehicle thefts and 8 acts of arson defined the property offenses.
According to NeighborhoodScout, Bessemer ranks first in terms of violent crimes for U.S. cities with 25,000 or more people as of 2019.
Arts and culture
The performance center Bessemer Civic Center provides multiple performance spaces for music and theatre.
Government
Bessemer uses the mayor–city council form of government. The council has seven members, elected from single-member districts. As of 2016, Kenneth Gulley is mayor, a position elected at-large. He was first elected in 2010 and reelected to a second term in 2014.
A satellite Jefferson County Courthouse is located in downtown Bessemer. There is a special county government district, known as the "Bessemer Cutoff", which was established in the middle of the 20th century when Bessemer was a major city in its own right. A separate county government was considered a possibility, but there was not sufficient land area to meet legislative requirements for a county. The "Cutoff" had a separate series of Alabama license plates, with a different numeric prefix than the rest of the county.
Bessemer has since been surpassed in size by Birmingham suburbs such as Hoover, Vestavia Hills, and Homewood. But Bessemer retains the branch county courthouse to this day. The term "Bessemer Cutoff" continues to be used regularly by area residents.
The United States Postal Service operates the Bessemer Post Office.
The state Alabama Department of Corrections operates the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility, a prison for men, in unincorporated Jefferson County, Alabama, near Bessemer. The prison includes one of the two Alabama death rows for men.
Education
Public schools
Bessemer has its own school system independent of Jefferson County schools, Bessemer City School District. The system includes:
Hard Elementary
Jonesboro Elementary
Greenwood Elementary
Abrams Elementary
Westhills Elementary
Bessemer City Middle
Bessemer City High School (formally Jess Lanier)
The Board of Education also operates the Quitman Mitchell Opportunity Center, which includes an adult learning center, Even Start child care center, and New Horizon Alternative School.
Private schools
K–12 private schools in the Bessemer include Rock Christian School and Bessemer Academy, which was founded as a segregation academy.
Community college
Lawson State Community College operates the former Bessemer Technical College campus. The two schools merged in 2005 as a cost-saving measure.
Media
The Western Star is a weekly newspaper which covers Bessemer and nearby communities.
The Birmingham News is published three days per week, and also publishes a weekly section devoted to news from Bessemer and nearby communities.
One radio station, WZGX (1450 AM), operates within the city; it broadcasts some Spanish-language programming and music to appeal to the growing Mexican-American population of Jefferson County. It also continues a tradition of broadcasting high school football games on Friday nights. All of metro Birmingham's stations are heard in Bessemer, as well as several stations broadcasting from Tuscaloosa.
Television station WDBB (channel 17) is licensed to Bessemer, but broadcasts from studios in Birmingham, simulcasting with WTTO (channel 21). All of Birmingham's television stations may be viewed in Bessemer, and some have established news bureaus there.
Infrastructure
Transportation
In 1911, the town was served by five railroad lines: Alabama Great Southern (Queen & Crescent route), the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, the Kansas City, Memphis & Birmingham (St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad system), the Birmingham Southern Railroad, and the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic railways. Passenger service decreased after people started choosing to travel by automobiles, increasingly so after World War II. In addition, there was widespread restructuring in the railroad industry that also applied to freight lines.
By 2006, the companies listed above had consolidated into CSX Transportation, which has lines to Birmingham and Brookwood, and the Norfolk Southern Railway, with lines to Birmingham, Mobile and New Orleans. Birmingham Southern continues in service. A major railroad feature is the "High Line", constructed by Tennessee Coal & Iron (predecessor to U.S. Steel) to ship iron ore from the mines on the city's south side to the steel works in nearby Fairfield. This elevated line traverses the eastern side of the city. Though tracks were removed over much of the High Line when the mines closed, part of the line is still used by the Birmingham Southern. All of the roadbed and bridges remain in place.
Bessemer is served by the small Bessemer Airport to the southeast of the city. Commercial service in the region is provided by the much larger Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, located 5 miles (8.0 km) north of downtown Birmingham, about 21 miles away in total.
Major highways in Bessemer include I-20/59, I-459, U.S. Route 11, and State Route 150, which connects Bessemer with Hoover.
Notable people
David Bonnett, NASCAR driver
Neil Bonnett, NASCAR driver
McKinley Boykin, professional football player
Alex Bradford, composer, singer, arranger, and choir director
Mildred Brown, journalist
David L. DeJarnette, archaeologist, generally considered the "Father of Alabama Archaeology"
Thornton Dial, African-American folk artist
Nelsan Ellis, actor and playwright
Anthony Henton, former NFL linebacker
Mike Hill, Broadcaster, ESPN/Fox Sports and other national outlets
Virginia Hill, actress, mob courier and girlfriend of Bugsy Siegel
Andre Holland, actor
Frank House, born in Bessemer, major league baseball player
Bo Jackson, Heisman Trophy winner, NFL and MLB player
Lamar Johnson, former MLB first baseman
Eddie LeVert, singer
Gucci Mane, rapper
Reese McCall, former NFL tight end
David McCampbell, naval aviator, Medal of Honor recipient, and the US Navy's all-time leading ace with 34 aerial victories during World War II.
Edward McClain, Alabama state legislator
Deborah E. McDowell, English professor and author of a 1997 memoir of life in Bessemer, Leaving Pipe Shop
Elijah Nevett, NFL player
Kerry Rhodes, NFL player
Curtis Rowe, professional basketball player
DeMeco Ryans, NFL player and head coach
Glenn Shadix, born in Bessemer, actor
John Paul Thomas, artist, educator and scholar; born in Bessemer
Ontario Tillman, member of the Alabama House of Representatives born in Bessemer and resident
Olanda Truitt, NFL player
Larry Watkins, former NFL running back
Jack Whitten, abstract painter
Andre Williams, singer and producer
Gran Wilson, opera singer
Rod Windsor, NFL player
Jameis Winston, Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback for the New Orleans Saints
Notable animal
Matilda (chicken), Guinness World Record holder
See also
SS Bessemer Victory – World War II cargo ship named for Bessemer
Bessemer union drive - unionization movement of workers at Amazon
References
External links
City of Bessemer – Official Website
Bessemer Area Chamber of Commerce |
Lawson_State_Community_College | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_State_Community_College | [
336
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_State_Community_College"
] | Lawson State Community College (Lawson State, Lawson, LSCC) is a public, historically black community college with campuses in Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama. The technical division of the college was founded as Wenonah State Technical Institute in Birmingham in 1949. Lawson State is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, and offers nearly 200 associate degree and certificate programs.
LSCC's athletic teams compete in the Alabama Community College Conference (ACCC) of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). They are collectively known as the Cougars.
In 2014, LSCC was announced as the leader of a four-year, $10 million federally-funded transportation industry training across four states. The college was ranked No. 5 on the Washington Monthly's Best Community Colleges list in 2013. The White House recognized LSCC as a "Champion of Change" in 2011 for its efforts to educate workers for its community.
History
The technical division of Lawson State was founded in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1949, when the Wallace Patterson State Trade School Act of 1947 permitted the establishment of Wenonah State Technical Institute. The school was created to offer trade courses to Black students. Dr. Theodore Alfred Lawson served as the first director of the school, which was renamed Wenonah Technical College in 1963. LSCC's academic division, Wenonah State Junior College, was established in 1965 under Alabama state legislature. Dr. Lawson served as the first president of the junior college, which was also designed to serve Black students, and was renamed Theodore Alfred Lawson State Junior College in his honor.
On October 1, 1973, Wenonah Technical College and Theodore Alfred Lawson State Junior College merged to form T. A. Lawson State Community College at 3060 Wilson Road SW in Birmingham. This location is currently known as LSCC's Birmingham Campus.
In 2005, Bessemer State Technical College was set to merge with LSCC as a part of a statewide effort to remove duplicate community college programs. The merger was officially approved by the Alabama State Board of Education and Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in June 2005. As a result of the merger, Bessemer Technical College, located at 1100 Ninth Avenue SW in Bessemer, Alabama, became LSCC's Bessemer Campus.
Administration and organization
LSCC operates under four divisions: Business Technologies, College Transfer (general education), Technical and Health Professions Programs.
LSCC's endowment had a market value of approximately $586,000 in the fiscal year that ended in 2019.
Academics and programs
LSCC has an open admissions policy and offers credits for life experience. The college offers dual enrollment programs to local high school students, as well as a government-funded college preparatory program to students attending Birmingham-area high schools. In addition to its associate and certificate degree programs, LSCC offers adult education, GED and fast-track career training courses.
LSCC has transfer agreements with four-year institutions in Alabama. The agreements allow students to automatically transfer after completing an associate degree at LSCC.
LSCC is a Student Support Services TRIO program participant. The government-funded program helps students who are educationally disadvantaged and disabled graduate from college, and supports low-income and first-generation college students in achieving their career and economic goals.
LSCC's nursing program has ranked No. 1 in Alabama in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021.
Student life
Student body
As of fall 2020, LSCC's student body consists of 2,823 students. There are 42 percent full time and 58 percent part time students.
Organizations
Several student clubs and organizations operate at LSCC, including honors societies and student government, special interest and service organizations. Campus groups include: Ambassadors, American Welding Society and Human Services Club.
LSCC holds "Miss Lawson State Community College", an annual beauty pageant that honors a select group of current, high-achieving female students.
Athletics
The LSCC athletic association chairs four varsity athletic programs. The teams are collectively known as the Cougars. They belong to the Alabama Community College Conference (ACCC) and Region 22 of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). Men's sports include basketball and baseball. Women's sports include basketball and volleyball. Although they are not affiliated with the NJCAA, LSCC also chairs a cheerleading squad and dance team.
Presidents
Dr. Theodore A. Lawson, 1949–1971
Dr. Leon Kennedy, 1971–1978
Dr. Jesse J. Lewis, 1978–1987
Dr. Perry W. Ward, 1987–2020
Dr. Cynthia T. Anthony, (interim: September 2020 – March 2021, acting: April 2021–present)
Notable alumni
Coty Clarke, professional basketball player
Mickell Gladness, professional basketball player
Johnny High, former NBA player
See also
List of historically black colleges and universities
Notes
References
External links
Official website |
Apriona_brunneomarginata | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apriona_brunneomarginata | [
337
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apriona_brunneomarginata"
] | Apriona brunneomarginata is a species of beetle in the family Cerambycidae. It was described by Stephan von Breuning in 1948. It is known from Borneo.
== References == |
Stephan_von_Breuning_(entomologist) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_von_Breuning_(entomologist) | [
337
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_von_Breuning_(entomologist)"
] | Stephan von Breuning (21 November 1894 – 11 March 1983) was an Austrian entomologist who specialised in the study of beetles (coleopterology), particularly within the longhorn family (Cerambycidae).
Career
An amateur working on the rich collections of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris, France, von Breuning described 7,894 taxa of Cerambycidae.
Works
The complete list of von Breuning's entomological works is published in the Bulletin de la Société Sciences Nat, number 41. One of his most famous works is Études sur les Lamiaires, published in Novitates Entomologicae, 1934–1946.
Personal life
Von Breuning and his wife lived in a small studio at the top of an old building on rue Durantin, Paris 18ème.
Further reading
References
External links
Media related to Stephan von Breuning (entomologist) at Wikimedia Commons
Lamiaires du Monde Short Bio in English
DEI Zalf Collection and publication list.
Works by or about Stephan von Breuning from the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek |
Wolfgang_Hutter | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Hutter | [
337
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Hutter"
] | Wolfgang Hutter (December 13, 1928 – September 26, 2014) was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker and stage designer. Hutter's imagery is characterised by an artificial paradise of gardens and fantastical fairytale-like scenes. His work is said to have been influenced by his psychedelic experiences.
Hutter was born in Vienna. With Jewish origins, the son of A. P. von Gütersloh, Hutter studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Professor Robin C. Andersen and then under his father. Together with Ernst Fuchs, Maître Leherb (Helmut Leherb), Rudolf Hausner, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden and Arik Brauer, he is one of the main representatives and founding members of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. Hutter was awarded the UNESCO Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1954. In 1966, he was appointed a professorship at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Bibliography
O. Breicha, Wolfgang Hutter – Werkkatalog, Vienna 1977.
Tatowierungen. (Foreword Alfred Schmeller) Verlag Grasl, Baden b. Wien 1965
Berichte aus einer anderen Welt (Introduction Otto Breicha) Waldheim-Eberle Verlagshaus, Wien 1967
Auflage in zwei Bande (1. "Malerei und Zeichnung; Schriften zu "Kunst und Urwelt" (Preface A. P. Gutersloh).
Graphik; "Über sich selbst nachzudenken" (in Conversation with Wolfgang Hutter), Essay und Werkkatalog Otto Breicha. Verlag Jugend und Volk, Wien— München 1977
Zauberflote (Monographie über das gleichnamige Portfolio, mit einem beigelegten Text "Zur Zauberflote" von Wolfgang Hutter), Euro-Art-Bucherkreis GmbH, Wien 1974
Federmenschen (with an introduction by Wolfgang Hutter) (Self-published.)
References
External links
early works from Wolfgang Hutter
Wolfgang Hutter Passed Away |
Lucy_Steele | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Steele | [
338
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Steele"
] | Lucy Steele (born 12 May 1969) is a Canadian former cross-country skier who competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics.
Cross-country skiing results
All results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).
Olympic Games
World Championships
World Cup
Season standings
== References == |
1992_Winter_Olympics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Winter_Olympics | [
338
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Winter_Olympics"
] | The 1992 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVI Olympic Winter Games (French: XVIes Jeux Olympiques d'hiver) and commonly known as Albertville '92 (Arpitan: Arbèrtvile '92), were a winter multi-sport event held from 8 to 23 February 1992 in and around Albertville, France. Albertville won the bid to host the Winter Olympics in 1986, beating Sofia, Falun, Lillehammer, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Anchorage, and Berchtesgaden. The 1992 Winter Olympics were the last winter games held in the same year as the Summer Olympics. The Games were the fifth Olympic Games held in France and the country's third Winter Olympics, after the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix and the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble. This games was the first of two consecutive Olympic games to be held in Western Europe, preceding the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
18 events in Figure skating, short track speed skating, speed skating, and the opening and closing ceremonies took place in Albertville. The 39 other events were held in the nearby 9 villages and resorts around Savoie: Courchevel, La Plagne, Les Arcs, Les Menuires, Les Saisies, Méribel, Pralognan-la-Vanoise, Tignes, and Val d'Isère. Sixty-four National Olympic Committees and 1,801 athletes participated in six sports and fifty-seven events. This included both the Unified Team, representing the non-Baltic former Soviet republics, and Germany, newly consolidated again as a team following the reunification of the former East and West Germany in 1990. The event also saw the debut of eight nations in the Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympic program has grown this time with the addition of 11 new events. While sports that were already on the program received 5 new events (2 new events in cross-country skiing, at the same time women were allowed to compete in biathlon for the first time and won 3 events exclusive to them.) Another 6 events were added with the implementation of 2 sports that were demonstrated 4 years earlier (freestyle skiing and short track speed skating).These were the last Winter Olympics to include demonstration sports, consisting of curling, aerials and ski ballet, and speed skiing. Due to a rule change implemented in 1986, this was the last edition in the history of the Winter Olympic Games in which all speed skating events were held in an open-air venue.
Host city selection
A record-breaking seven locations bid for the games. The non-winning bids were from Anchorage, Berchtesgaden, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Falun, Lillehammer, and Sofia. The 91st IOC Session, held in Lausanne on 17 October 1986, voted Albertville the host of the Games.
Opening ceremony
Highlights
Bjørn Dæhlie and Vegard Ulvang dominated the men's cross-country skiing races, both taking home three gold medals with Norway taking a medal sweep in the event. 16-year-old Ski jumper Toni Nieminen became the youngest male gold medalist in a Winter Olympic event until 2002. Petra Kronberger won both the combined event and the slalom of alpine skiing, while Bonnie Blair won both the 500 m and 1000 m speed skating events, and Gunda Niemann took both of the longest races.
Three National Olympic Committees in Asia-Pacific region won their first medals at the Winter Olympics, one in a sport making its debut at the Games (short track speed skating.) Kim Ki-hoon's gold medal in 1000 m short track speed skating signified South Korea's first medal in the Winter Olympics, while Ye Qiaobo's silver medal in women's 500 m speed skating represented China's first Winter Olympics medal. Annelise Coberger from New Zealand became the first Oceanian athlete to win a medal in women's alpine skiing slalom, making her the first athlete from the southern hemisphere to mount the podium at the Winter Games.
Swiss speed skier Nicolas Bochatay died on the penultimate day of the Games, when he crashed into a snow-grooming vehicle during a training run.
Legacy
The 1992 Olympic Winter Games marked the last time both the Winter and Summer games were held in the same year. The 1992 Winter Olympics also marked the last time France hosted the Olympics until 2024, when Paris become the second city to host the Summer Olympics three times.
Cost and cost overrun
The Oxford Olympics Study established the outturn cost of the Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics at US$2.0 billion (in 2015-dollars) and cost overrun at 137% in real terms. This includes sports-related costs only, that is: (i) operational costs incurred by the organizing committee to stage the Games, e.g., expenditures for technology, transportation, workforce, administration, security, catering, ceremonies, and medical services; and (ii) direct capital costs incurred by the host city and country or private investors to build, e.g., the competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, and media and press center, which are required to host the Games. Indirect capital costs were not included, e.g. road, rail, or airport infrastructure, or hotel upgrades or other business investment incurred in preparation for the Games but not directly related to their staging. In comparison, the cost and cost overrun of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics were US$2.5 billion and 13%, respectively, while the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (the most costly Olympics to date) had costs and cost overrun at US$51 billion and 289%, respectively. The average cost for the Winter Games since 1960 is US$3.1 billion, while the average cost overrun is 142%.
Mascot
The 1992 Winter Games mascot, Magique (Magic), was a small imp in the shape of a star and a cube. The mascot was created by Philippe Mairesse and replaced the bid mascot, which was a mountain goat. The star shape symbolized dreams and imagination, while the mascot's red and blue colors originated from the French flag.
Sports
There were 57 events contested in 6 sports (12 disciplines). See the medal winners, ordered by sport:
Demonstration sports
This was the last time demonstration events were included in the Winter Olympics program. Of the 8 events that were under evaluation, 4 received the endorsement to be included in an official form in future editions of the Games (Curling tournaments and the aerials events on the freestyle skiing). The other four events (speed skiing and skiing ballet events on the freestyle skiing) were rejected and have not since returned.
Curling – Was an official sport in the Olympic program in 1924, after which it was a demonstration sport twice, in 1932 and 1988. There was a possibility of re-inclusion in Lillehammer 1994, but in 1990 the IOC Executive Committee rejected its return as an official sport. The IOC accepted its return in Nagano 1998.
Freestyle skiing – Like curling, it was a demonstration sport four years previously before becoming part of the official program. Only moguls skiing received this status, while aerials and ballet remained demonstration events. Aerials became an official event two years later, while ballet skiing appeared in the games for the last time, going into a progressive decline and losing its status as a competitive discipline by the International Ski Federation (FIS) in 2000.
Speed skiing – Considered one of the most dangerous events in the sporting world, the event won a chance to be evaluated by the members of the International Olympic Committee and the FIS, with the possibility of appearing in the program of a future edition. However, this possibility was extinguished when Swiss skier Nicolas Bochatay ran into a snow-grooming vehicle during a training run, dying immediately. According to reports, Bochatay was moving at a speed of more than 110 kilometres per hour (68 mph) and was unable to hear the machine's warning siren. His death is the subject of several controversies, as speed skiing was not a part of the official program. After this incident, the sport was excluded from any evaluation for future additions to the Olympic program.
Participating nations
Sixty-four nations sent competitors to the 1992 Olympics, including seven nations making their first appearance at a Winter Olympics. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, six former-Soviet bloc nations chose to form a Unified Team, while the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania competed as independent nations for the first time since 1936. Czechoslovakia made its last appearance in the Winter Olympics before its dissolution at the end of 1992. United Nations Security Council Resolution 757 took effect on 30 May 1992 (97 days after the closing ceremonies), and Yugoslav athletes were able to participate under their country's national symbols. It also suspended the activities of the Yugoslav Olympic Committee, making the country's athletes ineligible to compete on the 1992 Summer Olympics. Despite this, some of their athletes classified in individual sports and gained authorization to compete as Independent Olympic Participants (which also happened at the 1992 Summer Paralympics). Yugoslav athletes returned to the Olympic Games in the 1996 Summer Olympics, when only Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo were still part of the country. The 1992 Winter Olympics were the first time since the 1964 Summer Olympics that Germany competed with a unified team. Seven National Olympic Committees sent their first delegations to the Winter Olympics: Algeria, Bermuda, Brazil, Honduras, Ireland, Swaziland, Croatia, and Slovenia (the last two making their first appearances at any Olympics, just a few months after their respective declarations of independence from Yugoslavia). Through the 2022 Winter Olympics, this has been the only participation of Swaziland (now Eswatini) and Honduras in an edition of the Winter Olympics.
Number of athletes by National Olympic Committees
Venues
The 1992 Games are the last in which the speed skating venue was outdoors.
Albertville Olympic Park
Halle Olympique – Figure skating and short-track speed skating
L'anneau de vitesse – Speed skating
Théâtre des Cérémonies – Ceremonies (opening & closing)
Les Arcs – Speed skiing
Courchevel – Ski jumping and Nordic combined
Les Ménuires – Alpine skiing (slalom men)
Méribel – Alpine skiing (women)
Méribel Ice Palace – Ice hockey
La Plagne – Bobsleigh and luge
Pralognan-la-Vanoise – Curling
Les Saisies – Biathlon, cross-country skiing
Tignes – Freestyle skiing
Val d'Isère – Alpine skiing (men combined, downhill, giant slalom, and super-giant slalom)
Medal table
(Host nation is highlighted.)
* Host nation (France)
(1 combined team with athletes from 6 nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States; the team only appeared in these Winter Olympics)
Podium sweeps
Schedule
See also
1992 Winter Paralympics
1992 Summer Paralympics
1992 Summer Olympics
Olympic Games held in France
1900 Summer Olympics – Paris
1924 Summer Olympics – Paris
1924 Winter Olympics – Chamonix
1968 Winter Olympics – Grenoble
1992 Winter Olympics – Albertville
2024 Summer Olympics – Paris
List of IOC country codes
References
Notes
Citations
External links
"Albertville 1992". Olympics.com. International Olympic Committee.
Olympic Review – Official Results
The program of the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics |
Albertville | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertville | [
338
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertville"
] | Albertville (French pronunciation: [albɛʁvil] ; Arpitan: Arbèrtvile) is a subprefecture of the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Southeastern France.
It is best known for hosting the 1992 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. In 2018, the commune had a population of 19,214; its urban area had 39,780 inhabitants.
Geography
Albertville is one of two subprefectures of the Savoie department, alongside Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne.
Albertville is situated on the river Arly, close to the confluence with the river Isère. Its altitude ranges from 345 to 2,037 metres (1,132 to 6,683 ft). Nearby mountains include: Belle Étoile, Dent de Cons, Négresse, Roche Pourrie, Mirantin, Pointe de la Grande Journée, Chaîne du Grand Arc. Nearby mountain ranges include the Bauges, the Beaufortain and the beginning of the Vanoise.
History
The modern city of Albertville was formed in 1836 by King Charles Albert of Sardinia, who merged the medieval town of Conflans, which had buildings dating to the 14th century, with the town of L'Hôpital. Since then, Albertville has fostered trade between France, Italy and Switzerland. Industries such as paper mills and hydroelectricity are found along its river.
The 1992 Winter Olympics were organised in the Savoie region, with Albertville hosting it. Some of the sports venues were later adapted for other uses. Some sports venues still remain, such as the ice rink, La halle de glace Olympique, designed by the architect Jacques Kalisz. Despite this, the town remains more industrial than touristic.
In 2003, the town was labelled a "Town of Art and History".
Population
Transport
Albertville station was put into service in 1879 by the Compagnie des chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM).
Notable people
Justine Braisaz (born 1996), Olympic champion and world medalist in biathlon
Jean-Luc Crétier (born 1966), Olympic champion in alpine skiing (WOC 1998, downhill)
Florine De Leymarie (born 1981), skier
Jérôme Jarre (born 1990), comedian on the Vine app
Léa Lemare (born 1996), ski jumper and national champion
Lucette Mazzella (1910–1987) teacher, communist organizer and women's rights activist
Gérard Mourou (born 1944), Nobel Prize winner in Physics, 2018
Julia Simon (biathlete) (born 1996), world champion in biathlon
Sites of interest
La halle de glace Olympique, or the Olympic ice hall, the ice arena that hosted events during the 1992 Winter Olympics.
L'anneau de vitesse, or speed oval, the athletic stadium that previously served as the site of the speed skating competitions of 1992 Winter Olympics.
International relations
Albertville is twinned with:
Aosta, Italy
Winnenden, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Sainte-Adèle, Quebec, Canada
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which like Albertville, hosted a Winter Olympics, doing so in 2010
Heraldry
See also
Communes of the Savoie department
1992 Winter Olympics
References
External links
City council website
Tourism webpage about Albertville Archived 2012-02-19 at the Wayback Machine (in French)
Tourism webpage about Albertville Archived 2008-04-18 at the Wayback Machine(in English) |
The_Comedy_Store | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_Store | [
339
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_Store"
] | The Comedy Store is an American comedy club opened in April 1972. It is located in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip. An associated club is located in La Jolla, San Diego, California.
History
The Comedy Store was opened in April 1972 by comedians Sammy Shore (1927–2019), and Rudy De Luca. The building was formerly the home of Club Seville (1935), later, Ciro's (1940–1957), a popular Hollywood nightclub owned by William Wilkerson, and later Ciro's Le Disc, a rock and roll venue, where the Byrds were discovered in 1964.
When the venue reopened as The Comedy Store in 1972, it included a 99-seat theatre. As a result of a divorce settlement, Sammy Shore's ex-wife Mitzi Shore began operating the club in 1973, and she was able to buy the building in 1976. She immediately renovated and expanded the club to include a 450-seat main room.
In 1974, The Comedy Store hosted the wedding reception of newlyweds Liza Minnelli and Jack Haley, Jr. The Comedy Club signage was covered, for the evening, by signs reading "Ciro's", denoting the venue's prior identity. The event was attended by many dozens of Hollywood glitterati, including Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr., Cher, Bob Fosse, Johnny Carson, Goldie Hawn, Cesar Romero, Priscilla Presley and other stars, past and present.
Locations
The original Comedy Store on Sunset at Ciro's had been joined by the Comedy Store Westwood, at 1621 Westwood Blvd., the Comedy Store La Jolla, at 916 Pearl St., Comedy Store Playhouse, on Las Palmas, Comedy Store at the Sheraton Universal Hotel, in Universal City, and the Comedy Store Las Vegas at the Dunes Hotel.
Job action
Beginning in 1979, The Comedy Store served for many years as the host location for the annual HBO Young Comedians specials.
Tension between the club owners stems from a 1979 strike of Los Angeles comedians against the Comedy Store's "no-pay policy". Until that time, neither Shore nor Friedman paid comedians a salary. The theory was that comedians should almost be paying the owners for the exposure the clubs provided. When the comedians' strike began, The Improv (opened in 1974 at 8162 Melrose Avenue) was closed for fire-damage repairs. Therefore, the strike focused on Shore, not Friedman.
Also in 1979, stand-up comedians formed a short-lived labor union and demanded to be paid for their appearances at The Comedy Store. For six weeks (beginning in March), several comedians staged a protest in front of the club, while others crossed the picket line. The comedians involved formed a union called Comedians for Compensation and fought for pay where they had received none before. They eventually picketed in front of the club when their demands were not met. Jay Leno and David Letterman were among those on the picket line while Garry Shandling and Yakov Smirnoff crossed the line.
The job action was not legally a strike as the comedians were classified as "independent contractors" and were not under contract with the club.
Mitzi Shore argued that the club was and had always been a showcase and training ground for young comedians and was not about profits. She alleged that comedians came to the club and could work on their material in front of casting agents and other talent scouts who would possibly hire them as professionals if they were good enough.
The comedians at the club became unhappy when the club was expanded several times and it was perceived that Shore's profits were quite substantial. Shore also paid the rest of her staff, including waitresses and bartenders.
After the strike, some comedians were no longer allowed to perform at the club, including Steve Lubetkin, who committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the Continental Hyatt House next door. His suicide note included the line: "My name is Steve Lubetkin. I used to work at The Comedy Store." Lubetkin hoped that his suicide would resolve the labor dispute. He also cited Shore as the reason he no longer had a job.
The union ceased to exist in 1980, although from the time of the job action onward, comedians in Los Angeles were paid for their shows. This included The Comedy Store and The Improv.
Cresthill house
"When she and Sammy divorced in 1974, he gave her the club to lower his alimony payments; two years later, after being briefly evicted (and opening a new Comedy Store location in Westwood), she negotiated a deal to buy the entire building — plus Cresthill...around the time of Lubetkin’s suicide(After a bitter labor dispute between comedians and management), she essentially gave the place over to the comedians who worked at the Store."
Mitzi Shore also owned a 5,000-square-foot house a few doors away from the club, on 8420 Cresthill Road. The house was bought with the club in 1976. In 1979, she started to let the comedians from the clubs sleep there. During the 1980s, numerous comedians resided or just partied there, including Andrew Dice Clay, Marc Maron, Robin Williams, and Richard Pryor. Argus Hamilton and Mike Binder were the first to officially move into the house. Dave Coulier was also an early resident, and Yakov Smirnoff moved in in 1980. The place was known for its all-night parties and heavy consumption of cocaine and alcohol. Bill Hicks moved there in 1980 when he was 18 and running away from his parents to pursue his career as a comedian. Many of those comedians developed their style while residing there. Sam Kinison was a pillar there, and Jim Carrey turned his act around in this house. Mitzi Shore had a plan to cash in on the house's unique atmosphere, and even shot a 12-minute pilot around 1987 starring Daphne Davis, Nancy Redman, and Tamayo Otsuki. In 1988, because of the debauchery that had been going on for years, Mitzi Shore kicked everybody out of the house and turned it into a recovery house. By the early 1990s, Her son Pauly moved into the house, and by the end of the 1990s, the house was sold.
Notable alumni
Knoedelseder, William (2009). I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Standup Comedy's Golden Era (1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781586483173. — "A history of the young comedians coming to Los Angeles in the 1970s and performing at the club."
Docu-series
A docu-series based on The Comedy Store debuted on Showtime in October 2020.
Each episode is an hour long and breaks down a different time period throughout the existence of the Comedy Store. The director, Mike Binder goes on a podcast with a different comedian to set the tone and help provide the narrative of each episode.
Episodes
References
External links
Official website
Nesteroff, Kliph (3 June 2011). "An Interview with Sammy Shore, Comedy Store Founder". Classic Television Showbiz. |
Sammy_Shore | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Shore | [
339
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Shore"
] | Sammy Shore (February 7, 1927 – May 18, 2019) was an American actor, stand-up comedian and co-founder of The Comedy Store.
Early life
Sammy Shore was born in 1927 in New York City at the start of the Great Depression in the United States. He grew up in a traditional household to Jewish parents.
Career
Shore began his career doing stand-up comedy with Shecky Greene in the Catskill Mountains. He was chosen, in 1969, to open for Elvis Presley’s comeback performance at the International Hotel, Las Vegas. He then opened for Elvis’ road shows until 1972. Shore continued to perform comedy, opening for Tony Orlando, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Sammy Davis Jr. and others. Shore served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
On April 7, 1972, he founded the Comedy Store with his writing partner Rudy De Luca. In 1974, his ex-wife, Mitzi, became the owner of the club. The club launched the careers of many comedians including Rodney Dangerfield, David Letterman, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, and Joe Rogan, also including his own son, Pauly.
Shore appeared in many films including The Bellboy with Jerry Lewis and both Life Stinks and History of the World Part 1 from Mel Brooks. He appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and was on Sanford and Son.
Shore was voted Best Comedy Act in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors named a day after him on July 24, 1990. He appeared at Harrah's Casinos and hotels more than any other entertainer.
Personal life
Shore was married to Mitzi for 24 years, and was the father of four, including actor and comedian Pauly Shore. Shore married Suzanne Dennie in 1990. She was Miss Alabama in 1970. They remained together until his death in Las Vegas, Nevada of natural causes at the age of 92.
References
IMDB |
Mitzi_Shore | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzi_Shore | [
339
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzi_Shore"
] | Mitzi Shore (born Lillian Saidel; July 25, 1930 – April 11, 2018) was an American comedy club owner. Her husband, Sammy Shore, co-founded The Comedy Store in 1972 and she became its owner two years later. Through the club, she had a huge influence on the careers of up-and-coming comedians for many decades.
Early life
Shore was born Lillian Saidel in Marinette, Wisconsin, on July 25, 1930, the daughter of Jewish parents Fanny and Morris Saidel. Her father was a traveling salesman. She grew up near Green Bay, Wisconsin, and attended Green Bay East High School. She later studied art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but dropped out to marry Sammy Shore after meeting him in 1950.
Career
Overview
Shore's husband Sammy co-founded The Comedy Store in 1972 alongside screenwriter and actor Rudy De Luca. When Sammy and Mitzi divorced in 1974, Mitzi acquired complete ownership as part of their divorce settlement. Sammy was later quoted in 2003 by the Los Angeles Times as explaining that he "relinquished control of the club to lower his alimony payments". Shortly after she took full control, Shore obtained a significant cash loan from comedian Shecky Greene to help ensure continued operations. She was not only involved in day-to-day management but also in the recruitment and development of talent.
Comedians whose rise to fame was associated with working at the Comedy Store include Roseanne Barr, Bill Burr, Jim Carrey, Chevy Chase, Andrew Dice Clay, Joey Diaz, Whoopi Goldberg, Bobcat Goldthwait, Tony Hinchcliffe, Sam Kinison, Bobby Lee, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Sebastian Maniscalco, Marc Maron, Carlos Mencia, Joe Rogan, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Duncan Trussell, Robin Williams, and John Witherspoon.
1979 strike and picket
Shore refused to pay comics who performed in her club, insisting that the venue was a sort of "college of comedy" where comedians learned their craft rather than a money-making enterprise. However, in 1979, after the club had been expanded extensively, comedians began to insist that they be paid for their work. Shore refused and the performers picketed the establishment in what became a bitter six-week strike action. Among those involved in leading the strike were Jay Leno, Tom Dreesen, and the club's MC David Letterman.
After several months of picketing, and an incident in which Leno was injured by a car attempting to rush the picket line, Shore relented after Budd Friedman from The Improv decided to start paying comics. She then agreed to pay talent $15 (an amount equal to $63 today) per set. The events in L.A. set a precedent that resulted in New York City comedy clubs beginning to pay their talent as well, and other comedy clubs across the U.S. followed suit by paying comics to perform.
Belly Room
As early as 1978, Shore had converted the upstairs section of The Comedy Store into the Belly Room: a 50-seat audience for which she exclusively booked female comedians. At the time, professional comedy was very much a "boys' club", and bookings for female comedians were rare; opportunities for women to perform their own stand-up material with the most popular comics in the U.S. were unheard of.
Shore's liberal risk-taking with booking talent continued for decades. In the 1990s, once female comics had become more established, Shore continued to cross boundaries with her audience by creating specialty nights for Latino, gay and lesbian performers. She was also instrumental in providing a space for Black American comics in Los Angeles. Phat Tuesday's became a staple in the Black comedy scene and was the start of many of today's favorite comics.
Comedy Channel Inc.
Shore owned and operated Comedy Channel Inc. from 1982 until her death—a company established to create and sell video tapes of performances at The Comedy Store.
In 1989, HBO launched its premium cable service The Comedy Channel. Shore's suit claimed HBO's service was an "indirect unauthorized use" of the name and trademark Comedy Channel. Mitzi Shore retained counsel James Blancarte and sued HBO for copyright infringement. The channel merged with Viacom's competing Ha! channel two years later, first under the name CTV: The Comedy Network, and then under its current name Comedy Central.
Depictions in media
The character Goldie on the Showtime series I'm Dying Up Here is based loosely on Shore.
Joe Rogan dedicated his 2018 comedy special Strange Times to Shore following her death earlier in the year.
Personal life
Shore and her husband Sammy were married in 1950 and divorced in 1974. They had four children: sons Peter, Scott, and Pauly, and daughter Sandi.
Death
On April 11, 2018, at the age of 87, Shore died of an undisclosed neurological disorder at a hospice in West Hollywood, California. She had been suffering from Parkinson's disease in her later years.
References
External links
Mitzi Shore at the Comedy Store
Mitzi Shore at IMDb
Mitzi Shore at Find a Grave |
Grammy_Award_for_Best_Metal_Performance | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Best_Metal_Performance | [
340
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Best_Metal_Performance"
] | The Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance is an award presented at the Grammy Awards to recording artists for works (songs or albums) containing quality performances in the heavy metal music genre. The Grammy Awards is an annual ceremony, where honors in several categories are presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position". The ceremony was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards.
The Recording Academy recognized heavy metal music artists for the first time at the 31st Annual Grammy Awards (1989). The category was originally presented as Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental, combining two of the most popular music genres of the 1980s. Jethro Tull won that award for the album Crest of a Knave, beating Metallica, which were expected to win with the album ...And Justice for All. This choice led to widespread criticism of The Recording Academy, as journalists suggested that the music of Jethro Tull did not belong in the hard rock or heavy metal genres. In response, The Recording Academy created the categories Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Metal Performance, separating the genres.
The Best Metal Performance category was first presented at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards in 1990, and was again the subject of controversy when rock musician Chris Cornell (lead vocalist for the band Soundgarden) was perplexed by the academy's nomination of the band Dokken in this category. Metallica won in the first three years. The awards were presented for the song "One", a cover version of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy", and the album Metallica. During 2012–2013, the award was temporarily discontinued in a major overhaul of Grammy categories; all solo or duo/group performances in the hard rock and metal categories were shifted to the newly formed Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category. However, in 2014, the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category was split, returning the Best Metal Performance category and recognizing quality hard rock performances in the Best Rock Performance category.
The award goes to the artist. The producer, engineer and songwriter can apply for a Winners Certificate.
Metallica holds the record for the most wins in this category, with a total of seven. Tool has received the award three times. Black Sabbath, Nine Inch Nails, Ozzy Osbourne and Slayer have each received the award twice. The band Ministry holds the record for the most nominations without a win, with six, while the band Megadeth holds the record for most nominations before their first win, winning on their 10th nomination. Poppy is the only female solo artist to be nominated in the category, 30 years after the establishment of the category.
Recipients
^[I] Each year is linked to the article about the Grammy Awards held that year.
Multiple wins
Multiple nominations
See also
List of Grammy Award categories
References
External links
Official site of the Grammy Awards Archived 2014-05-07 at the Wayback Machine |
Download_Festival | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Festival | [
340
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Festival"
] | Download Festival is a rock festival created by Terrance Gough, held annually at the Donington Park motorsport circuit in Leicestershire, England (since 2003); in Paris, France (since 2016); at Parramatta Park, Sydney (since 2019); Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne (since 2018) and at the Hockenheimring in Baden-Württemberg, Germany (since 2022).
Download at Donington is the most popular and has hosted some of the biggest names, including Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Metallica, Linkin Park, Korn, Soundgarden, Motörhead, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Kiss, Judas Priest, Rammstein, Status Quo, Mötley Crüe, Journey, ZZ Top, Whitesnake, Faith No More, Guns N' Roses, and Fall Out Boy.
History
The Download Festival was conceived as a follow-up to the Monsters of Rock festivals which had been held at the Donington Park circuit between 1980 and 1996. The first Download Festival was created by Stuart Galbraith and co-booked by Andy Copping in 2003 in the same location. Download was initially a two-day event, expanding to three days in 2005.
The name Download was chosen for the festival for two reasons. Downloading was a dirty word in the music industry at the time, due to file sharing, and rock is seen as a rebellious genre of music. Also Download was to be a Monsters of Rock for the 21st century and the internet would provide connectivity with its audience.
The 2003 festival tickets had a code on them, which would allow festival goers to download tracks from bands which had played. Although this idea has been dropped in subsequent years, the festival organisers have nurtured an online community through the Download Festival Forums. Initially a sounding board for the fans (and critics) of the festival, the boards have become an integral part of the festival organisation with regular contributions from festival director John Probyn and promoter Andy Copping. The forums also provide face to face feedback through the Fan Forum meetings (started in 2006) and organise the Boardie BBQ (2006 on) and the Boardie Takeover night (2009), football tournaments and a pub quiz for the R.I.P. campers who arrive on a Wednesday night.
When Download began, it took place on the Donington Park circuit infield as had Monsters of Rock. However, in 2008 developments for Formula One meant that the infield was no longer suitable as a festival site. The festival moved to the "Sunday Markets" site to the west of the circuit. Although adequate, numbers were limited and the location of the campsite meant that getting from tents to the arena was quite a hike. 2009 saw the arena move to a much more suitable location to the south of the circuit and has remained there every year since. In 2019 the capacity was 111,000.
Security for the festival has constantly been undertaken by professional crowd management specialists Specialized Security, although the campsite area has had various contractors throughout.
From 2009 to 2019 and returning in 2021, there has been on-site radio broadcasting from Rock Radio on 87.7FM. This RSL broadcast has aired music from festival bands, interviews and news to the festival site and the surrounding area, with the signal reaching as far as Nottingham.
The Download Dog
The Download Dog is the official mascot of the Download Festival and appears on a wide range of material related to the festival, such as tickets, stage banners, merchandise, marketing, and the official Download website.
Overview
Notes:
DLTV (Download TV) was an online virtual festival that took place on the same days the 2020 Download Festival was due to take place, the event show clips of live performances and interviews from past years and was shown on the Download Festival Youtube and Facebook pages.
Download TV returned in 2021 renamed Download Reloaded celebrating the best headliners from the past 10 years, the event was filmed at the Download site in Donington and will be shown on Sky Arts over two nights during 4–5 June.
The original 2021 event was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, however it was announced on 26 May 2021 that Download would take place in 2021 as part in the UK government events research programme to trial large events. The three-day pilot event will have 10,000 fans attending.
2003
The first Download was held on 31 May – 1 June 2003. The original headliners were Iron Maiden and Limp Bizkit, although the latter pulled out and were replaced by Audioslave. Metallica attempted to step in as headliners, but were unable to do so, owing to headlining that year's Reading and Leeds Festivals. Instead, having performed an exclusive club show in London the night before, they played an unannounced "secret slot" in the afternoon on the second stage, with no soundcheck. "Sunday belonged to Metallica," wrote Mick Middles in Classic Rock. "At 3.15 the band were fired into the heart of the festival. Before me, a nonplussed, earplugged infant was held aloft. Somehow it seemed historical. Debuting selections from St. Anger, Metallica swept into a 90-minute frenzy so irresistible that even the Hells Angels were seen clapping in wholehearted appreciation at the end. The coup was complete."
Chevelle were scheduled to play the Scuzz stage on Sunday but pulled out at the last minute. Instruction, playing their second set of the festival, stepped in as the replacements.
2004
Donington
The 2004 edition of the festival was held on 5–6 June. Another stage was added to the festival, bringing the total to three. Seventy-two bands played over the two days. The 2004 event was also notable for several last minute hitches. First, SOiL got lost on the way to Donington and missed their main stage appearance on Saturday (they later joined Drowning Pool on stage to perform Drowning Pool's "Bodies" and their own song "Halo"). Static-X missed their slot due to a bus breakdown. On Sunday, Slayer arrived on time, but their equipment did not, leading to a slot change from the middle of the afternoon on the main stage to a later slot (and longer set) on the second stage. Slayer were replaced on the main stage by Damageplan, who were scheduled to play the second stage. Their setlist ended with a rendition of Damageplan founders Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell's most recognisable song from Pantera, "Walk."
The biggest news came from the headliners Metallica, when Lars Ulrich was rushed to hospital. Taking to the stage an hour and a half late, James Hetfield explained the situation with Ulrich and the show then began with Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo playing on "Battery" and "The Four Horsemen." Slipknot's Joey Jordison played the rest of the set apart from Fade to Black which was played by Metallica's drum technician, Flemming Larsen.
The full line-up included:
Scotland
In June 2004 a two-day Download Festival was held on Glasgow Green, several days before the Donington event. This had a limited line up with only nine bands performing over a two-day period. The bands which did play included the headliners, Metallica and Linkin Park. Download Scotland also saw an appearance from the Welsh rock band Lostprophets who did not perform at Donington.
Acts which also appeared over the two days at Download Scotland were Korn, Slipknot, Iggy and the Stooges, Machine Head, the Distillers and HIM.
The running order went as follows:
2005
Download 2005 was held again at Donington Park, on 10–12 June 2005. This festival was different from previous years as the Saturday was officially dubbed Ozzfest 2005, as well as an "Indie day" on the first day of the festival.
Billy Idol performed on the Snickers stage on the Friday night, his first UK gig after a lengthy hiatus, performing songs such as White Wedding, Rebel Yell and a cover version of Van Halen's anthem, Jump.
Feeder's frontman Grant Nicholas was so relieved the band had won the crowd over (there were concerns that they would be received badly by the traditional attendees to the festival), he decided to smash his green Fender Jazzmaster guitar after "Descend" was performed. He later said that he regretted it, but also said he kept the neck and the tremeloes, and might use what was left to make a new guitar. In a July 2010 interview with Kerrang!, it was suggested to Nicholas that he destroyed the guitar as he was frustrated at trying to win the crowd over, as their music was different from the Download demographic, but claimed himself in reply to this that he "Wanted to do the most rock and roll thing after eventually winning over the crowd". In the same interview, Nicholas said that they were "guinea pigs" at the festival as part of the organisers experiment to make it an alternative festival, but said it was a moment of the band's career he is still proud of.
Lemmy also took to the stage, with former MC5 members, and Gilby Clarke, to perform Back in the USA.
Initially, Bert McCracken of the Used and Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance were asked to perform their cover of Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, but the former friends refused the offer to perform the cover as they had recently fallen out.
The official line-up included:
2006
The 2006 Download Festival was held at Donington Park, England on 9–11 June. The headlining acts (Tool, Metallica and Guns N' Roses) have sales of approximately 200–250 million albums between them, more than the entire line up of 2006's V Festival.
2006 was the first time the festival was mirrored in the Republic of Ireland, as Download Festival Ireland.
2006 was also by far the warmest year Download has ever had.
During the festival Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis was rushed to hospital. Similar to 2004's Metallica set, Munky, Fieldy and David Silveria arrived and explained to the fans why Davis could not make it and played with guest vocalists Corey Taylor from Slipknot, Dez Fafara from DevilDriver, Jesse Hasek from 10 Years, Benji Webbe from Skindred, M. Shadows from Avenged Sevenfold, and Matt Heafy from Trivium. Lyrics from the song "Blind" were displayed on the screen for Matt Heafy. Metallica played the album Master of Puppets in its entirety in honour of its twentieth anniversary. Guns N' Roses also performed material from the long forthcoming Chinese Democracy album.
Main Stage
The main stage was situated in the centre of the arena with crowd control moving around it, and was the largest of all three stages, the safety barriers used at this stage were in a T shape so as to avoid crowd crush in the middle. The stage was open-air and named in honour of the 25th anniversary of Kerrang! magazine. Down played an unannounced set on Saturday (With the laminates showing ??? in their time slot); opening up the Main Stage.
Snickers Stage
The Snickers Stage was situated in a tent, behind the main stage and was the second largest stage at the festival. Access to the stage was via a one-way system which attempted to spread people around the site, rather than all attempting to push through a rather small space.
Soilwork were scheduled to play on Sunday, but were replaced by DevilDriver (playing their second set of the festival).
Gibson/Myspace Stage
The Myspace stage was the smallest of the three and under a smaller tent. It was positioned across from the front of the main stage.
Controversy
During the Sunday headline set of Guns N' Roses, bottles were thrown at the band. This caused problems after the band's lead singer, Axl Rose, slipped on the wet surface and a bottle hit bassist Tommy Stinson. Stinson threw his bass, hitting one of the cameramen, and left the stage. He returned after the song and apologised, but warned the crowd that if this activity continued, he would leave for good. There were some disturbances but they eventually died down, and later in the set Rose commented "I'm actually having quite a good time now! I couldn't have said that an hour ago!"
On the final night, fires were started by some festival goers and police were called, arresting twelve people. At around 4 am, the fire brigade arrived to put out a large fire at the gold campsite. A number of people had taken the railings that had been used to separate the campsite area from the path and used them to barricade the road to prevent the fire engines from reaching the main fire. At this point a number of police assembled in riot gear stormed the campsite. The festival director, John Probyn, posted a message on the official website stating that "About 150 people spoiled the end of what had been a great weekend for over 75,000 of us."
2007
The 2007 Download Festival took place on 8–10 June 2007.
The three bands that headlined the 2007 festival were My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park and Iron Maiden. Korn's Jonathan Davis stated that the reason for the band returning in 2007 was because of his absence due to illness the previous year. He stated on the official Download Festival website, "I am so looking forward to coming to the Download Festival this year. I was heartbroken to pull out last time. So this time I am very happy to be coming back and we promise to rock the place! I will definitely make-up for missing the last one. You can expect an amazing Korn show!"
Download 2007 was Dimmu Borgir's first ever festival appearance in England. Hardcore Superstar pulled out of their slot on the Tuborg stage on the Sunday because their tour bus broke down in Germany. Download 2007 featured an Indian band Parikrama. They became the first band from India to make it to Donington.
Download 2007 also featured the first band to officially perform on the Thursday of the festival. Scumface played on the Tuborg Stage during the boardie barbecue.
Lamb of God's DVD Walk With Me in Hell features the band's full performance at the festival.
2008
The 2008 festival took place on 13–15 June. It had a significantly different layout to previous years: the arena area was situated in land to the west of the race track instead of the traditional race track infield area. Among numerous changes, the second stage became larger and moved from a marquee to open-air, on a tarmac car park.
"I am looking forward to humiliating those little boys in little bands who think they count," declared Gene Simmons of Kiss. "We're going to blow their shit to pieces... If U2 or Radiohead are on the bill at Download, then I accept these are good bands. But they will still run for cover when Kiss take the stage, for they are in the presence of a transcendent rock force."
Chris Cornell was scheduled, but cancelled his European tour to focus on a new album. Twin Method, and Finger Eleven were announced but removed from the official website's lineup. On the Friday of the festival, Kid Rock was meant to appear between Seether and Disturbed on the Main Stage but pulled out at the last minute. At first it was announced that this was due to illness. Rock later claimed he left the festival grounds after becoming dissatisfied with the amenities. But, the following year, Download's booker theorised that it had been due to a broken heart. Rock's no-show allowed two bands following him, Disturbed and Judas Priest, to play longer sets.
The 2008 Boardie BBQ took place on the Gibson stage on Thursday 12 June and included a performance by Forever Never.
2009
The 2009 Download Festival took place on 12–14 June at Donington Park with an estimated attendance of 120,000 over 3 days. The arena had once again changed location, this time to an open field area south of the race track which was more suitable and a shorter walking distance from the camping areas than last year.
The headliners were Faith No More (Friday), Slipknot (Saturday) and Def Leppard (Sunday). Sunday had a strong classic rock themed line-up on the main stage with bands such as Whitesnake, ZZ Top and Journey, somewhat reminiscent of Monsters of Rock. This would become a recurring feature in future years. Other notable performers included Limp Bizkit, who were playing in the UK with their original line-up for the first time since 2001, Trivium returning for their third appearance and first head lining spot, Anvil, the band featured in the 2008 film Anvil! The Story of Anvil, and Steel Panther, who were making their first appearance in the UK on the Tuborg Stage. A fourth stage, the "Red Bull Bedroom Jam Stage", also made an appearance at this year's festival. This stage was also present at other UK festivals, such as T in the Park in Balado, Scotland, and the Underage Festival in Victoria Park, London.
The 2009 Boardie BBQ took place in the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Stage on Thursday 11 June. This year the band was Attica Rage.
The Thursday night of the 2009 festival also saw the Boardie Takeover night. Four bands, three DJ's: Cyst, Dave KC and Gabber Fox, solo singers Hevs and TonsO'Fun, a stand-up and a burlesque dancer – all members of the Download Festival Forums – performed to a full house in the End Tent. These bands were Scumface (returning after a successful appearance at the Boardie BBQ in 2007), Orestea, Echovirus and headliners, Silent Descent.
On Monday 18 May the festival confirmed on its official website that Camping tickets had completely sold out.
On 19 May, it was revealed in an interview with Andy Copping on Music Channel Scuzz that there would be secret sets. It was later revealed the bands would be Enter Shikari and Thunder.
On Wednesday 3 June, one week before the campsite opened, Download released a further 2,500 camping tickets. These limited tickets sold out within 24 hours of being released.
The winners of the "Red Bull Bedroom Jam Competition" was Gravesend-based band After the Ordeal. This set was a 'virtual gig', with the band playing live from their bedroom and this footage being streamed live onto the Main Stage at Download Festival, between Pendulum and Marilyn Manson.
The winners of the "Tuborg Battle of the bands" was Leeds punk band Acid Drop and they opened the Tuborg stage on Saturday 13 June.
The Ghost of a Thousand were scheduled to headline the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Stage on Saturday but the band cancelled. the Blackout stepped in to play their slot, thus giving them two slots on the festival's bill.
Slipknot's performance is available in their new DVD (sic)nesses. It was released on 28 September 2010 and served as a tribute to their late bassist Paul Gray. It was Gray's last UK gig with Slipknot before his death in May 2010.
2010
The Download Festival was confirmed to return to Donington on the weekend 11–13 June 2010, the campsites opening on 9 June. On 25 January, nine bands were announced at the official Download website, including AC/DC as one of the main stage headliners. On 15 February Rage Against the Machine and Aerosmith were confirmed as the other two main stage headliners, as well as 5 more bands confirmed a few hours later.
Saxon performed their 'Wheels of Steel' album in its entirety to commemorate its 30th anniversary. Download 2010 was also the 30th anniversary of rock festivals at Donington Park, since the first one – which Saxon performed at – in 1980.
It was announced on 16 May that the second stage would be renamed "The Ronnie James Dio Stage" in tribute to the singer who died of stomach cancer on the same day. It was also announced that the main stage would be called the Maurice Jones Stage after the co-founder of Monsters of Rock who also died the previous year.
28 May saw 15 more bands added, and an official announcement of the Jägermeister-sponsored fifth stage, which would host acoustic acts, including bands also performing regular sets at the festival. The initially announced Sum 41 cancelled, owing to drummer Steve Jocz being involved in an accident. On 30 May 2010 it was announced that Wolfmother had to cancel due to illness. They were replaced by Killswitch Engage.
Aside from Dio, the year was sadly memorable for other deaths. Y&T performed the Pepsi Max Stage to a jam-packed audience, marking the band's long-anticipated return to Donington after performing at Monsters of Rock in 1984. Download would be bassist Phil Kennemore's last UK show in the UK: he died from lung cancer six months later. Killing For Company drummer Stuart Cable, previously of Stereophonics, died the week of the festival, at which the band were to play.
Ratt were scheduled to play on Sunday, but cancelled due to illness of vocalist Stephen Pearcy. On 9 June, FM were announced as Ratt's replacement.
The Boardie Takeover ran for the second year in a row on Thursday 10 June. It featured the bands Silent Descent, Fallen Fate, Jacknife Holiday and Cyster Scalpel, as well as singers, DJs and a burlesque dancer.
AC/DC played on an exclusive stage next to the Maurice Jones stage, allowing the band to utilise their full stadium show, as announced on 28 May. This marked the first time a headlining band brought their own stage to Donington. All headlining bands on the other stages had finished before AC/DC began. The stage was used only by AC/DC; the next day, the runway at the front was dismantled and the stage remained empty. "I took my son to see AC/DC..." recalled Saxon's Biff Byford. "Watching Angus from out in the crowd was great, and it was a rite of passage for my son."
The final day saw torrential rain. "By the time Aerosmith take the stage," noted Classic Rock, "we're essentially one amorphous mud blob of an organism blinking through the mire towards the bright lights. They, on the other hand, have Steven Tyler, a man whose dress sense... makes Lady Gaga look like a vicar's wife."
2011
The Download Festival was confirmed to return to Donington on the 10, 11, and 12 June 2011. Linkin Park and System of a Down were the two main stage headliners officially announced, with Saturday subheadliners Avenged Sevenfold and Sunday second stage headliner Rob Zombie announced a short while later.
On 22 February, Def Leppard were announced as Friday's main stage headliner, with Twisted Sister, Down, Duff McKagan's Loaded and Trash Talk also added to the line-up.
15 March saw the Darkness unveiled as the widely speculated Friday subheadliner, with Funeral for a Friend, Plain White T's, Framing Hanley and Hyro Da Hero also added. In April, the Red Bull Bedroom Jam stage and Jägermeister Acoustic stage's acts were revealed.
Wayne Static was scheduled to open up the main stage on the Sunday, but he pulled out a month prior. Masters of Reality were scheduled to perform but pulled out on 30 March and Karma to Burn were to play the second stage on Sunday but were replaced by Hyro Da Hero, thus giving him three sets over the course of the festival; the most in Download history.
Steward 0836 was manning the main stage at the festival, when he caught the attention of fans waiting for Sunday's bands to appear. Some friendly interaction led to cheers from the audience, then one of the giant stage-screens showed him making the "devil horns" gesture, which was applauded by tens of thousands of rock fans. The official Download Festival website even featured him as an artist on their site.
2012
On 12 July 2011 it was confirmed via Twitter, and the Download official website that the festival would be staged in 2012 between 8–10 June. Limited early-bird tickets were put on sale on 15 July. It was announced on 10 November via BBC Radio 1 that Metallica would headline the main stage on the Saturday and also that they would be playing their self titled album in its entirety. The next day Black Sabbath were announced to headline the main stage on Sunday 10 June, closing the festival. On 18 November, the Prodigy was announced as the headliner for Friday 8 June.
On 12 April 2012, Download Festival announced on their website, official Facebook page and official Twitter page that the main stage will be named after Jim Marshall who died a week earlier.
Due to the wet and windy conditions on the site, there was a delay in opening the arena on the Friday, resulting in the cancellation/postponement of certain performers.
American heavy metal band Machine Head reportedly broke the festival record for the most circle pits happening during one song, with a reported 29 pits happening at once.
Comedian Bob Slayer, who is a regular on the comedy stage at Download, broke his neck doing a wheelie bin crowd surf stunt whilst entertaining at the festival.
The line-up won an award in the 2012 UK Festival Awards, and festival director John Probyn won a "Lifetime achievement award".
Cancellations
Five Finger Death Punch were scheduled to perform on Sunday on the Main Stage between DevilDriver and Kyuss Lives! but on 5 April they pulled out due to logistical difficulties. Anthrax, who were initially set to play on the Zippo Encore Stage, were brought up to the main stage (later dubbed the Jim Marshall stage) due to Five Finger Death Punch's cancellation.
T. Mills was scheduled to perform on Saturday on the Red Bull stage but pulled out in May and also Porter Robinson, who was also set to play on the same stage on the Friday pulled out due to the recording of a new album. He was replaced by Voodoo Six.
Problems
Due to the wet and windy weather, Download did not open its Arena gates on Friday 8 June until 14:00 whilst laying down straw in the Arena and removing potentially dangerous signs and banners which could prove hazardous in high winds, meaning some of the bands were shifted around. Cancer Bats were moved from second opening band on the Jim Marshall Stage to a headline slot on the Red Bull Bedroom Jam Stage, with Rise to Remain and Six Hour Sundown missing out on a slot entirely. Fear Factory were also given an additional 10 minutes of performance time due Cancer Bats being relocated to a different stage and Rise to Remain being cancelled. Europe were scheduled to play the Zippo Encore stage on Friday before Little Angels, but it was announced at the last minute that they will not be able to perform due to traffic and transportation issues. Much criticism was aimed at the organisers for not preparing better as the poor weather occurred before the festival goers arrived. Also the conditions in the camping and arena meant that many fans who required disabled access were left stuck in the mud requiring help from their fellow fans to reach their destination, or even the toilets, often with little to no help from organisers.
2013
The eleventh annual Download festival was confirmed for 14–16 June 2013. Early bird tickets went on sale 15 June 2012, where a newly implemented deposit scheme was introduced; which allowed customers to pay for their ticket(s) over three payments rather than one. Iron Maiden were announced as the Saturday headliner on 20 September 2012 to commemorate 25 Years since first appearing and headlining Monsters of Rock in 1988 on Seventh Tour of a Seventh Tour . Rammstein let slip on the same day that they will be headlining Download on the Sunday, which was confirmed by the festival organisers the following morning. Seven days later it was confirmed via Andy Copping (festival promoter) that Slipknot would be the Friday headliner. From 5 November, bands started to be announced sporadically via Facebook, Scuzz TV, BBC Radio 1, Kerrang! Magazine and the personal Twitter account of Andy Copping.
Goldsboro were due to be playing at the festival, but on 19 February they confirmed they would not be able to perform. After the Burial were scheduled to perform on the Red Bull Studios stage, but pulled out on 17 May in order to focus on their new album.
On 28 May, Skin and Red, White & Blues cancelled their appearances at the festival. Both acts were to perform twice over the weekend, on the Zippo Encore and Jägermeister Acoustic stages. On 3 June, Andy Copping confirmed that Buckcherry would be pulling out of the festival and that they would be replaced by Black Star Riders.
2014
The twelfth annual festival was held 13–15 June 2014. Earlybird tickets went on sale 21 June 2013. Between 4–6 November, all three main stage headliners were confirmed, along with all the sub-headliners. Linkin Park performed their debut album, Hybrid Theory album in its entirety.
Reactions to Avenged Sevenfold being announced as headliners were very mixed. After a Facebook user suggested that Dying Fetus headline the festival instead, a social media trend titled #WhyNotDyingFetus was started as a joke. However, this actually led to the band being booked to play, although not in a headline slot, and they were officially confirmed on 6 November.
To commemorate its 20th anniversary, the Offspring performed their third studio album, Smash, in its entirety. Also, their appearance marked the first time in Download history that a previous main stage headliner returned to play a lower slot (though Limp Bizkit, who were originally scheduled to headline the festival in 2003 would return in 2009 to play a lower slot).
Andy Copping confirmed via Twitter that there would be a Secret Set on the Pepsi Max Stage on the Sunday, performing in the time slot in between Crazy Town and Memphis May Fire. This transpired to be Black Stone Cherry.
On 23 May, the Main stage was renamed the Stephen Sutton stage after Stephen Sutton who died on 14 May.
The Boardie Takeover returned on Thursday 12 June and featured four bands and 2 DJs. The bands playing the Takeover are: Last Edition, Scumface, Dumbjaw & Incinery.
Joe Bonamassa was originally booked to play on the Zippo Encore Stage Saturday before Status Quo but he was moved to the Sunday Main Stage due to a double booking. Trivium were initially confirmed to be headlining the Red Bull Studios Live stage on the Sunday, but following a generally negative response from fans due to the size and limited capacity of the tent, the band was moved to Zippo Encore Stage headliner.
In Flames were scheduled to sub-headline the Zippo Encore stage on Sunday, but they were quietly removed from the line-up poster on 26 February. It was later revealed that they had cancelled all of their Summer shows to finish recording their new album. On 22 March the latest announcement was leaked by Classic Rock Magazine. Shortly after the leak, Defeater, who were scheduled to play on the Pepsi Max Stage Sunday, were confirmed to have pulled out due to their lead singer, Derek Archambault, suffering an injury and having to undergo hip replacement surgery. Danger Danger were originally confirmed, but pulled out on 7 April, claiming that bookings had been erroneously made for various dates. September Mourning were confirmed for the Pepsi Max Stage on the Friday but were removed from the lineup on 2 May (as they wished to focus on getting their sophomore album completed), they were replaced by I Am Fire. Cage the Gods also pulled out on 2 May. King 810 pulled out the day before they were due to play because their lead vocalist and bassist were arrested. Upon a Burning Body were scheduled to appear on the Pepsi Max stage on Saturday, but were forced to pull out because singer Danny Leal was taken seriously ill with an inner ear infection that meant doctors would not clear him to fly to the UK.
The unknown band 'Iceman Thesis' were subtly added to the lineup poster in the buildup to the event. They were scheduled to perform for five minutes on both the Pepsi Max and Red Bull Studios Live Stage on the Saturday at the same time. The band performed both sets as scheduled with all ten (two bands of five) member's identities hidden using balaclavas. They performed one song known as 'Return to Harmony' before leaving the stages.
2015
The 2015 edition of the festival took place on 12–14 June. The top three acts on the main stage and the second stage headliner for each day were announced over 18, 19 and 20 November. Bad weather on Friday night and Saturday left the Arena, Village and campsites extremely muddy. Many tents were abandoned over night due to flooding and leaks.
On 22 March 2015, the Download Dog made an appearance at a Progress Wrestling show in London. The Dog invited the entire roster to do a show at Download 2015 but excluded the current Progress Champion Jimmy Havoc. Havoc attacked the Dog at the show. It was confirmed that Progress would do a show at Download after previously in 2014 doing three shows at the Sonisphere Festival.
Following on from the Offspring's second stage appearance in 2014, Faith No More's subheadlining position marks the second time a previous main stage headliner have returned to play in a lower slot. Mötley Crüe's performance was their last ever UK festival appearance.
Several bands who pulled out of the 2014's festival returned to play in 2015, these bands include In Flames, Defeater, Upon a Burning Body & September Mourning.
The Sword were due to play on the Maverick Stage on Friday, but were removed from the line-up poster in March, later being confirmed to have pulled out. King 810 were due to play the Maverick Stage on Sunday, but pulled out on 15 May due to undisclosed reasons, just as they had done before in 2014. On 22 May, Ghost Town, who were confirmed to play on Jake's stage on Saturday, pulled out due to undisclosed reasons; they were replaced by Dub War. Antemasque were due to play on the Zippo Encore Stage on Friday, but pulled out in May, the Cadillac Three were moved up from Jake's Stage to replace them.
After many weeks of discussion surrounding the identities of two secret bands playing over the weekend, Young Guns and the Darkness were confirmed on 8 June. Babymetal also joined DragonForce on stage to perform their song "Gimme Chocolate!!".
The Jägermeister Acoustic Stage will no longer be present at the festival, due to Jägermeister pulling out as a sponsor, however, bands will still perform acoustic sets, on the brand new Dog's Bed Stage. Hands Like Houses were scheduled to perform there on Friday, but the show was cancelled.
Returning for its 7th year, the Boardie Takeover took place on the Thursday night in the Doghouse Tent located within the festivals Village area. This year's bands were selected by the Takeover team, Hevs and Phil
Police surveillance and marketing profile collection
At the 2015 festival, the police and the festival organizers engaged in massive technological surveillance of those who attended the festival. RFID wristband and facial recognition technology were used, installed by the Leicestershire Police without notifying the public prior to the event, and compared visual scans of the festival attendees against a European criminal database. RFID wristbands were the only way to make purchases or travel across the festival grounds' zones. Information about purchases were stored and sold to other marketers. Muse frontman Matt Bellamy commented on the surveillance during the band's performance of "Uprising", in which he said "Fuck Leicestershire police for scanning your faces!"
2016
Donington
The 14th annual Download Festival was held on 10–12 June 2016. All three headliners were confirmed between 19–21 October 2015 and it was confirmed that Bruce Dickinson was due to fly his Ed Force One 747-400 Jumbo Jet across Download to get to the festival. However, this didn't happen, and in fact Ed Force One flew into East Midlands airport from the opposite direction. Motörhead were due to play the Main Stage on the Friday of the festival; however, due to the death of lead singer Lemmy Kilmister on 28 December 2015, the band would no longer be playing, as confirmed by drummer Mikkey Dee. On 7 February 2016, 36 more bands were added to the bill, as well as the announcement that the Main Stage would be renamed "The Lemmy Stage" in memory of Kilmister, instead of having a band replace Motörhead, it was confirmed that there would be a tribute to Lemmy, which was confirmed at the fan forum to be a 20-minute video.
Heavy rain caused the venue to flood, with some campsites suffering worse than others. The Met Office later confirmed that it could have been the wettest in the festival's history. By Saturday, The Village area was mainly mud with a bit of straw laid down near the entrance to the Blue Campsite. This led to great difficulty trying to get to the main arena, as one had to walk through thick mud most of the way. Architects was scheduled to play on the Encore stage on 11 June but had dropped all of their European festival tours due to a family emergency and were replaced by Against the Current.
Both Moses and Ghost were also forced to pull out of their scheduled sets on Friday and Sunday respectively due to illness on both counts.
The Maverick stage on Friday was closed out by a screening of Gutterdämmerung, coupled with a live score; described as a "rock ‘n’ roll / film / gig concept from the mind of Belgian-Swedish visual artist Bjorn Tagemose".
As confirmed by The Mirror, NXT also appeared at this years event, although where Progress Wrestling was after the bands in the campsite, WWE NXT was in the main arena, with a special stage constructed. During the event, the companies' COO and founder of NXT Triple H was awarded by Dave Mustaine the Spirit of Lemmy Award due to their friendship and working relationship.
France
In addition to the annual UK edition of Download Festival, it was also announced that in 2016 there would also be a Download held at the Longchamp Racecourse (French: Hippodrome de Longchamp) in Paris on the same weekend as the UK Festival. The lineup will be similar to the UK Festival, but not identical. Iron Maiden were announced as the Friday headliner on 19 October 2015, part of their The Book Of Souls Tour. Rammstein were announced as Sunday headliners on 21 October 2015.
2017
The 15th annual event took place on 9–11 June 2017. From 3 November 2016, band announcements began, including the headline acts in System of a Down, Biffy Clyro and Aerosmith.
Donington
France
Returning for its second year, Download Festival France takes place just south of Paris the same weekend as the Donington event. So far five bands have been announced including headliners System Of A Down, Linkin Park, and Green Day the lineup reads as follows:
Spain
Download Festival Madrid is a brand new member of the rock and metal festival family, taking place in the Spanish capital. After hosting a Parisian edition of the festival for the first time last year, the iconic festival spreads its reach even further in 2017, establishing a new outpost in Madrid.
2018
The 2018 event has been confirmed for the weekend of 8, 9 & 10 June 2018. On 6 November Ozzy Osbourne was announced as the first headliner, with Avenged Sevenfold and Guns N' Roses being announced on 8 and 10 November.
Donington
Australia
It has been confirmed that Live Nation, Unified and Secret Sounds will take the UK-founded rock festival to Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse on Saturday 24 March 2018. This will be a one-day event and the line-up is to be announced on Thursday 9 November.
France
Returning for its third year, Download Festival France takes place in Brétigny-sur-Orge just south of Paris the weekend after the Donington event (15th, 16, 17 & 18 June). Headliners were Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson, Guns N' Roses & Foo Fighters. Originally, Black Veil Brides was supposed to play on 15 June but pulled out the festival to join the Vans Warped Tour back in America.
Spain
Returning for its second year, Download Festival Spain takes place just south of Madrid three weekends after the Donington event (28, 29 & 30 June).
2019
Donington
The 2019 event took place during 14–16 June. The first 20 bands, including all three main stage headliners, were announced at 2 pm on 23 October 2018. More bands were announced on 27 January 2019. In terms of genres, 44 artists represented rock (out of 117), while 41 bands played metal music.
Now three-time headliner Def Leppard played their seminal album Hysteria in full as part of their set.
Some people left the festival before any of the bands had even started playing due to heavy rain turning the site into a "mud-bath". Several festival goers injured themselves due to falling over because of the conditions.
Australia
The 2019 event was held in Sydney on 9 March and in Melbourne on 11 March.
Ozzy Osbourne was announced as the headliner of the festival, but cancelled due to his illness, pneumonia.
Japan
The Live Nation and Creativeman Productions took place at the UK-founded rock festival to Makuhari Messe, located in Chiba, on Thursday, 21 March 2019. This was a one-day event.
Ozzy Osbourne was announced as the headliner of the festival, but cancelled due to his illness, pneumonia.
Spain
2020
The 2020 Download events were due to be held in the UK, Australia and Japan. They were all cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A return of the Paris edition was also planned but was cancelled in September 2019 due to construction work on the festival site by French transportation company SNCF.
Donington
The 2020 event was scheduled to take place during 12–14 June. The initial lineup was announced on 23 September 2019, with Kiss, Iron Maiden and System of a Down to headline. On 26 March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, it was announced that the 2020 event had been cancelled.
The 2020 festival was replaced by Download TV, a 3 day virtual festival showing old performances, unseen interviews, new performances and more. The online festival started on the same day the festival was due to take place.
Australia
The 2020 event was scheduled to take place in Melbourne on 20 March and in Sydney on 21 March. However, due to headliners My Chemical Romance withdrawing from the festival due to fears regarding the pandemic, and the organisers unable to secure a replacement headline act in such a short time, Download Australia 2020 was cancelled. The other headliners were to be Deftones and Jimmy Eat World.
Japan
The 2020 event was scheduled to take place in Chiba City on 29 March, headlined by My Chemical Romance.
2021
For 2021, only a UK Download event was scheduled to take place from 4 to 6 June. The dates for the 2021 Download event in the UK were announced on 3 June 2020. The announcement revealed that two headliners, KISS and System of a Down, as well as many other acts, would be returning to the festival after its cancellation in 2020. As was the case with the previous year, the 2021 event was cancelled on 1 March 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
The 2021 event was replaced with another virtual event similar to 2020. It was announced on 14 May 2021 that there would be two special programmes on Sky Arts on 5 and 6 June featuring the best headliners from the past 10 years of Download.
As part of the second phase of the UK Government's Event Research Programme, a pilot testing event of Download Festival 2021 was announced on 26 May 2021 called Download Festival Pilot. The event was held from 18 to 20 June with an all-British lineup headlined by Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes, Enter Shikari and Bullet For My Valentine. The main stage on the Sunday experienced a few sound issues, notable during Loathe's set which saw them lose their sound during the final song of their set, and The Wildhearts who ended their set early and left the stage.
2022
The 2022 UK Download event took place from 10 to 12 June.
Donington
The dates for the 2022 Download event in the UK were announced on 1 March 2021, with Kiss, Iron Maiden and Biffy Clyro set to headline. Wednesday 13 pulled out a few weeks before due to bicep surgery.
On Saturday 11 June, East Midlands Airport was forced to close its runway for a short time due to drones being in the vicinity, which were reported by Leicestershire Police and the Festival as being flown by guests at the festival.
Germany
Japan
2023
The 2023 event took place from Thursday 8 June to Sunday 11 June. As a celebration for the twentieth anniversary of the festival, a four night event was announced.
On 7 November, over 60 artists were announced to perform at the festival; including headliners Bring Me the Horizon, Slipknot and two unique sets from Metallica. Five Finger Death Punch were originally scheduled to headline the Opus Stage on the Thursday but had do withdraw due to an illness of lead vocalist Ivan Moody. On 26 May, Skindred were announced as a replacement.
Greg Puciato was scheduled to perform on the Saturday but on Friday 9 June he announced his decision to pull out due to "multiple inner circle emergencies". nothing,nowhere., also scheduled to perform on the Saturday, also pulled out of the festival line-up for undisclosed reasons.
On 14 June 2023, Derbyshire Live reported on the experience of disabled festival goers who highlighted overflowing toilets, camping on gravel, staff unaware of basic information and "appalling" transport for disabled people.
Donington
2024
Billed as Download XXI, the twenty first iteration of the Donington-based festival took place between 14 and 16 June 2024. It returned to the three-day festival format that began in 2005.
The first wave of acts, including headliners Queens of the Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold were announced on 7 November.
Donington
Scowl, Pest Control, Zulu, Speed and Ithaca were booked to perform but pulled out because of the festivals partnership with Barclays, and their ties to Israel. The bank later suspended their sponsorship of Download and other UK festivals, following pressure from fans of Download and other artists who had been booked to play at the festival.
Bad Omens were set to headline the Opus stage on the Friday, but pulled out due to mental health concerns, they were replaced by Funeral for a Friend
See also
List of Festivals at Donington Park
List of historic rock festivals
Love Not Riots
References
External links
Official website |
Spyro_the_Dragon | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyro_the_Dragon | [
341
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyro_the_Dragon"
] | Spyro the Dragon is a 1998 platform game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The first game in the Spyro series, it stars the title character, a young purple dragon named Spyro, and his dragonfly friend, Sparx, who must journey across the Dragon Kingdom to defeat Gnasty Gnorc, who has overtaken the five dragon Homeworlds by trapping the other dragons in crystal and turning their hoard of gems into an army of minions. Spyro the Dragon is an open-ended 3D platformer, featuring large, sprawling levels in which the player must locate collectable items, among which are gemstones, crystallized dragons, and stolen dragon eggs. Spyro's abilities as a dragon include fire breath, a head-on charging attack, and a mid-air glide which he can use to scale large distances, all of which must be used strategically to find items and defeat enemies.
Spyro the Dragon started development following the release of Insomniac's debut game, Disruptor, which sold poorly but was generally praised by critics, impressing Universal Interactive enough to encourage them to make a second game. Artist Craig Stitt suggested a game about a dragon, and work began on a new game. Taking inspiration from the film Dragonheart, the game started out as a more mature title with a dark and realistic approach, but the direction was shifted to have a more whimsical and light-hearted tone to appeal to a wider market of consumers. The game was one of the first on the PlayStation to utilize shifting levels of detail among rendered objects, thanks to a panoramic engine developed by Alex Hastings which allowed the game's open-ended nature to be fully realized. Stewart Copeland, the former drummer for The Police, composed the game's music, and the titular character was voice acted by Carlos Alazraqui, alongside additional voices done by Clancy Brown, Michael Gough and Jamie Alcroft.
Spyro the Dragon was released by Sony Computer Entertainment as part of a general effort to reach out to a younger age demographic and compete with the more popular children's platform, the Nintendo 64. Although sales were initially sluggish, it found larger success following the advent of the 1998 holiday season and went on to sell nearly five million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling PlayStation games. Critics praised the game's graphics and gameplay, while some noted its low difficulty level. The game established Spyro as a well-known platforming mascot on the PlayStation alongside Crash Bandicoot, and two sequels, titled Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon, were later released for the PlayStation in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Although Insomniac gave up the development rights to the Spyro series following the third game, the success of the PlayStation titles lent itself to a continued series of games across various platforms. The game, alongside its two successors, was later remade as part of Spyro Reignited Trilogy in 2018.
Gameplay
Spyro the Dragon is a 3D platform game; the player controls the titular character as he ventures across the realms of the Dragon World to defeat the antagonistic Gnasty Gnorc, as well as rescue his fellow dragons and recover all of their stolen treasure. Worlds consist of six dragon "home worlds", each of which acts as a dedicated hub, containing portals that serve as gateways to different levels. The player must progress from one Homeworld to the next by talking to a balloonist, who transports Spyro to the next world on a hot air balloon after the player has found the required collectibles in the current given world. In addition to regular platforming stages, each Homeworld contains a boss fight and a hidden flight stage that involves flying throughout an environment and destroying a number of objects.
The levels in Spyro the Dragon are open-ended, and they revolve around exploring and obtaining various collectible items to progress in the game. Each stage contains a number of crystallized dragons, whom Spyro must turn back to normal by locating and stepping on their statue bases. These dragons give the player advice on how to progress through the game, as well as their respective locations acting as save points after the dragon has been freed. Another important collectible in the game is the dragons' stolen treasure, which is dispersed throughout each level in the form of multicolored gemstones. These gems are located in numerous different places, including inside enemies, breakable boxes, and treasure chests, and most stages contain a set amount of treasure to be found. There are also stolen dragon eggs that must be reclaimed by chasing and defeating thieves. Finding every collectible in the game unlocks an additional world that otherwise cannot be accessed.
Spyro has two main offensive moves, which are used to attack enemies as well as destroy certain objects: charging, in which Spyro sprints forward and rams into things with his head, and breathing fire. These attacks must be used appropriately for certain enemies and situations; for instance, some enemies carry fireproof metal armor, meaning that they can only be defeated by charging, while larger enemies can only be hit using fire breath, as they will immediately crush Spyro otherwise. Spyro can also use his wings to glide in midair, letting him travel further distances in the air and access areas otherwise unreachable via a regular jump. Throughout the game, Spyro is accompanied by Sparx, a yellow dragonfly who protects Spyro from taking damage and serves as the player's system of health. Sparx's current health is represented by the color of his body; if Spyro is hurt by an obstacle, such as an enemy or by touching water, Sparx changes colors, with yellow, blue and green representing different subsequent amounts of withheld damage. If the player is damaged too many times, Sparx disappears, leaving Spyro vulnerable to losing a life if he is hurt again. Sparx can be rejuvenated by consuming butterflies, which are found by killing passive creatures such as sheep that roam throughout most levels. Sparx also helps Spyro collect items by retrieving any gems that Spyro passes by.
Plot
In the world of dragons, the Dragon Kingdom consists of five Homeworlds – the Artisans, the Peace Keepers, the Magic Crafters, the Beast Makers, and the Dream Weavers – which have lived in harmony for many years. One day, a TV interview with a pair of dragons from the Artisan realm catches the attention of Gnasty Gnorc, a powerful gnorc (half gnome and half orc) who was banished from the kingdom due to his abrasive demeanor and sent to an abandoned junkyard, which he renames to "Gnasty's World". The dragons' openly dismissive and derisive commentary concerning Gnasty enrages him, driving him to unleash a full-fledged attack on the kingdom. Using his magic, he casts a spell across the land that encases every dragon in a crystal shell; he also steals the dragons' prized collection of treasure, turning the gemstones into devious gnorc soldiers and other creatures to help him take over the dragon worlds. Spyro, a young purple dragon, is the only dragon that manages to avoid getting crystallized by the attack. Aided by his dragonfly companion, Sparx, Spyro eagerly sets out to locate and defeat Gnasty.
Spyro visits each of the dragon homeworlds, defeating Gnasty's forces who have been set out to stop him. Along the way, he frees the crystallized dragons, who give him advice and urge him to recover any stolen treasure and dragon eggs along the way. He eventually makes his way to Gnasty's World, where he finally confronts and defeats Gnasty. After Spyro's quest is over, he has access to Gnasty's treasure portal, which can only be opened if Spyro rescues every dragon in the kingdom and recovers all of the dragons' treasure and retrieves the stolen dragon eggs. A secret ending can then be unlocked by retrieving everything inside of the treasure portal. In this ending, Spyro is seen getting interviewed on TV when another spell is placed on the dragons, prompting Spyro to set out on yet another adventure.
Development
Concept
Spyro the Dragon was the second game developed by Insomniac Games, following the release of their first game, Disruptor, in December 1996. Although Disruptor was a commercial failure, its positive critical reception was enough to impress Universal Interactive Studios and encourage the team to continue with their next endeavor. The idea of a game about a dragon was introduced by Insomniac artist Craig Stitt, who suggested the concept out of his own interest in the mythical creature. Initially, the game's tone was far darker and more realistic; according to Insomniac's COO, John Fiorito, who joined the company in 1997 during Spyro's development, inspiration was taken in part from the film DragonHeart, and the game was initially "realistic and kind of dark and gritty" before it eventually took a more whimsical, light-hearted direction. Mark Cerny, an executive at Universal Interactive Studios and the game's producer, advised that the team create a game with more mass market appeal, as the demographics of the PlayStation were decreasing and its selection of children's titles were greatly outnumbered by the Nintendo 64's.
According to programmer Peter Hastings, the dragon character was originally going to be named "Pete", but due to copyright concerns over similarities to the Disney film Pete's Dragon, the name was scrapped. After considering the name "Pyro," which was ultimately considered "too mature", they finally settled on "Spyro". In-game dialogue was written by Peter Kleiner, and Spyro's character was designed by Charles Zembillas, who had previously done design work on Crash Bandicoot. Spyro was originally going to be green, but the developers worried he would blend in with grass, so they eventually changed him to purple. During development of Spyro, Insomniac had a very close relationship with Crash Bandicoot creator and fellow PlayStation developer Naughty Dog, who had their office located directly across the hall from theirs. The two developers frequently worked together, playing early builds of each other's games and later sharing game technology. As a result, a demo of Crash Bandicoot: Warped was hidden in Spyro, and vice versa.
Design
Spyro the Dragon was unique compared to other 3D platform games of the time; Spyro's ability to glide allowed him to travel long distances in the air, meaning that the player could cross almost an entire level if starting from a high enough point. While this made designing levels more difficult for the team, it also meant that levels could be made more open-ended and explorative in nature. To make Spyro’s controls feel fluid, Matt Whiting—a NASA engineer who specialized in flight controls—was brought on to help with programming camera movement as well Spyro's movement controls. The game's camera was particularly challenging; initially, it always followed directly behind Spyro, but the resulting high-speed movements were found to make several playtesters feel nauseous. This was most evident with Spyro's basic jump, which triggered the camera to quickly tilt up and down, compared by Whiting to the motion of a rocking boat; this was ultimately tweaked so that the camera would stay steady. Spyro was coded with efficiency in mind, as 3D rendering technology was new at the time and the game had to fit the limited specifications of the PlayStation. Around 80% of the game's code was written using Assembly, while other parts were programmed in C due to its simplicity and speed.
Graphics
Spyro the Dragon made use of a 3D panoramic engine, developed by Alex Hastings, that could display far-away objects by utilizing varying levels of detail, a method of rendering which was new and unexplored at the time. The developers believed that the engine would be fitting for the game, as it could allow for more expansive levels that could take advantage of the character's abilities, such as gliding. This dynamic system, used to complement the large and sprawling environments, generated two different versions of a level; one version rendered in high detail and the other a simpler, textureless render. Objects in the player's vicinity were drawn using the detailed render, whereas distant ones were drawn from the simple render. This system allowed objects to be displayed from far distances while adhering to the PlayStation's limited RAM capabilities; it was one of the first video games to make use of such a system.
The game made extensive use of vertex shading to colour objects and provide light and shade- with the smooth skies entirely reliant on the technique to depict clouds and other distant details without the use of textures. Base textures were intentionally kept relatively desaturated so as to prevent them from becoming oversaturated with use of the technique.
Audio
The game's music was composed and produced by Stewart Copeland, formerly the drummer for the British band The Police. Copeland was given early builds of the game's levels, which he played through to get a feel for them and come up with a fitting composition. He was also given game cheats such as invincibility so that he could have an easier time clearing levels. Copeland wrote four songs per day, all of which he further developed and polished the next day. According to Copeland, each song in the game was written to correspond to a specific level, but this correlation ultimately went unused. Copeland has looked back positively on his work on Spyro, calling the game's music some of his best compositions.
Carlos Alazraqui provided the voice of Spyro in the game, and additional voices were done by Clancy Brown, Michael Gough, Jamie Alcroft and Michael Connor. Alazraqui explained in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly that he tried to make Spyro's voice sound like "a kid at camp that everybody likes." Alazraqui did not continue in this role after the first game, being replaced by Tom Kenny for the sequels.
Release
Spyro the Dragon was first unveiled at the 1998 E3 convention in Atlanta, Georgia. It was then later released in North America on September 9, 1998, and in Europe on October 23 of the same year. According to Sony Computer Entertainment's American Marketing Vice President, Andrew House, at a press party in Las Vegas, the game, along with other upcoming 4th quarter PlayStation releases such as Crash Bandicoot: Warped, A Bug's Life, and Rugrats: Search for Reptar, was part of a general effort to appeal to a wider demographic of younger audiences and provide more games suited for younger players to compete with the Nintendo 64, which had a far larger library of children's titles at the time compared to the PlayStation's largely adult-centric demographic. An advertisement campaign was pushed to promote the game, featuring a character from the game, Toasty the Sheep, protesting against the title character's actions against sheep. The campaign included TV commercials, featuring an actor in an animatronic costume of Toasty, and a promotional website, sheepagainstspyro.com. On August 16, 1999, SCEA announced that the game would be included as a part of their "Greatest Hits" lineup of budgeted releases alongside other games such as Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Gran Turismo, Cool Boarders 3, and Twisted Metal III, and alongside the announcement of a price drop for the PlayStation console to compete with the highly anticipated launch of the Sega Dreamcast. On December 12, 2012, the game was digitally re-released to the PlayStation Store together with Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! and Spyro: Year of the Dragon. A remake of the game, alongside its two sequels, was included as a part of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy compilation for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2018, followed by the Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows in September 2019.
Sales
According to Spyro's developers, sales were initially slow at the game's launch but quickly began picking up following the holiday season. In the week of November 29, 1998, it was the 3rd best-selling game in the UK, behind Tomb Raider and FIFA 99. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, it took home a "Gold" prize for revenues above €20,000,000 in the European Union during the previous year. Spyro the Dragon received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) by the end of August 1999, for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. By December 1999, the game had sold 1,000,000 copies in North America. As of 2007, the title had gone on to sell a total of nearly 5,000,000 units.
Reception
Spyro the Dragon currently holds a score of 85% at GameRankings, based on an aggregate of 18 reviews. IGN's Craig Harris hailed it as the most fun 3D platformer he had played since Crash Bandicoot, writing "Two claws up. Way up." Computer and Video Games called the game "easily the best 3D platform game on the PlayStation", despite noting its largely child-friendly nature. Shawn Smith of Electronic Gaming Monthly wrote that "Spyro is to the PlayStation what Banjo-Kazooie is to the Nintendo 64", and stated that it "combines the two most-important aspects in any good game: graphics and gameplay." Crispin Boyer, also of Electronic Gaming Monthly, proclaimed that Spyro "raises the bar" for 3D platformers, and wrote that it had replaced Gex 3D: Enter the Gecko as his favorite "PS mascot game". Joe Fielder of GameSpot called the game "a proficient, fully 3D platform game" for the PlayStation, comparing it favorably to one of the more recent platformers on the system, Blasto, and proclaiming that it "excels over Blasto in every way imaginable." Despite this, he wrote that the game "only gets very, very high marks, instead of outrageously high marks", citing its lack of high difficulty as the main factor that made it inferior to games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. Edge named it the best 3D platform game for the PlayStation, but criticized Spyro's limited abilities and said that the game was not as varied as Super Mario 64.
Critics lauded the game's presentation, specifically speaking praise for its graphics, technical performance, and Copeland's music done for the game. GamePro reviewer "Slo Mo" wrote that the game's graphics and animations gave Spyro "the look and feel of an animated film" while calling the in-game environments "breathtaking". Harris wrote that the game "utilizes the PlayStation's hardware to the max", and praised the quality of the in-game animations; he particularly praised the rescued dragons' talking animations, which he said gave the characters "incredible personality." Fielder praised the game's dynamic lighting system and character designs, and noted "a near-complete lack of pop-up" during gameplay. Sushi-X of Electronic Gaming Monthly said that the graphics were "among the finest" on the PlayStation. AllGame editor Scott Alan Marriott applauded the graphics, scenery, characters and control as some of the best on the PlayStation, if not the best at the time of the games release. Fielder spoke positively of Copeland's compositional work, calling it "wonderfully atmospheric." Slo Mo described the music as having a "catchy, mellow jazz-rock swing to it" while also praising the voice work for its wide array of unique voices.
Many critics held praise for the game's level design and controls, though some noted its simplicity and low difficulty level (with the exception of Tree Tops). Fielder called the level design "exceptional", while Boyer praised the levels for encouraging exploration among players. Sushi-X called the play controls "perfectly tuned" whilst Fielder wrote that they worked well both with and without the DualShock's analog stick, although Smith expressed that controls were unsuited for maneuvering in "high-risk areas." The camera system received varying reactions, with Boyer praising it as one of the best in any 3D platformer and Fielder declaring that it fixed the common issues present in most other 3D platform games, while Harris criticized its lack of precision when following the player, stating that it "tends to float around on a loose tether", and highlighted the camera system as one of the game's only flaws. Fielder wrote that an overabundance of extra lives caused the game to feel "like it was aimed at a younger or broader audience," holding the final boss and the bonus level as the only exceptions. Despite praising Spyro, Sushi-X noted the game's "lack of diversity" in obstacles and objects leading to "repetitive play." Boyer lamented that the common trope of collecting items, while still very fun in Spyro, was starting to become less interesting, while also criticizing the game's boss fights, calling them "small, easy and decidedly unBoss-like."
During the 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Spyro the Dragon was named as a finalist by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for "Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics", "Console Action Game of the Year", and "Console Game of the Year"; the first two awards went to Banjo-Kazooie, while the latter was won by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Legacy
The popularity of Spyro the Dragon helped to push the character of Spyro as a popular platforming mascot for the PlayStation alongside Crash Bandicoot. It was the first game in what became an expansive video game series, spawning 2 more platforming sequels for the PlayStation – Ripto's Rage and Year of the Dragon – released in 1999 and 2000, respectively. As of the year 2000, the series had sold more than 3.2 million copies in the U.S. and over 4 million copies worldwide. Insomniac stopped developing the Spyro series after Year of the Dragon, as it finished off their 4-game contract with Universal Interactive. Despite this, the series was continued across various different developers, and shifted to several other platforms besides PlayStation. Spyro being their first considerable success, Insomniac went on to develop several other successful video game franchises, including the Ratchet & Clank series of platform games and the first-person shooter series Resistance. The game's rendering system, new and unheard of at the time, has gone on to be used in several other 3D video games.
References
External links
Spyro the Dragon at MobyGames |
Spyro_2:_Ripto%27s_Rage! | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyro_2:_Ripto%27s_Rage! | [
341
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyro_2:_Ripto%27s_Rage!"
] | Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, known as Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer in PAL regions, is a 1999 platform game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. It is the second game in the main Spyro series. A remake was released as part of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy in 2018.
Gameplay
Players control Spyro the Dragon as he fights against various enemies and obstacles using his flame breath, charge attack, and glide abilities. His health is indicated by the color of his dragonfly partner, Sparx, who can replenish his health by eating butterflies. Bottled butterflies will both completely restore Sparx's health and give Spyro an extra life. The game is split up into three main hub worlds containing portals to various realms. In order to progress through the first two hub worlds, the player must acquire a talisman from each realm, which is awarded for reaching the end of the level, before facing the boss of each world. Each level also contains a certain number of orbs, which can be earned by completing secondary tasks for particular NPCs, such as lighting a series of lamps or protecting characters from attacks. These orbs are required for opening some of the portals to certain levels, as well as progressing through the third hub world. Gems gathered throughout the game are required to pay fees Moneybags charges in order to progress through the game. As well as opening portals or granting access to certain areas, Moneybags also teaches Spyro three brand new abilities over the course of the game. Swimming lets Spyro dive underwater to reach submerged treasure and hidden tunnels, climbing lets Spyro climb up certain surfaces, and the headbash lets Spyro perform an overhead smashing attack which can break rocks and certain cages. In addition, each level has a power-up gate, activated after defeating a specific number of enemies in a level, which grants Spyro a temporary super-ability. The power-up can grant invulnerability or the abilities to fly, supercharge, super flame, breathe ice, or super jump to reach high up areas.
Characters and setting
The only characters from the original game to return as main characters in this game are Spyro, the game's protagonist, and Sparx, his dragonfly sidekick. Sparx functions as the player's health meter, and assists the player in gathering gems. This game introduces new characters into the Spyro series, many of whom would appear in later games. Both Hunter and Moneybags make recurring appearances in the series, while Ripto would make more series appearances than any other antagonist, making him the key villain of the original series. The dragons of the previous installment have been replaced with an entirely new cast of characters, including fauns, satyrs, anthropomorphic animals, and robotic businessmen, among others.
The world of Avalar is divided into three realms: the Summer Forest, the Autumn Plains, and the Winter Tundra. In every realm, there is a castle that, during the course of the storyline, is captured by Ripto. Each realm features a number of different worlds, a speedway world, and a dungeon in which Ripto or his minions are hiding.
Plot
A few years after the defeat of Gnasty Gnorc, Spyro the Dragon and his dragonfly partner, Sparx, having had enough with the continuous raining in Artisans, decide to take a vacation to Dragon Shores. Upon going through the portal, however, Spyro instead ends up in Glimmer, one of the many realms of the fantasy land of Avalar, having been summoned there by Elora the Faun, Hunter the Cheetah, and the Professor. They explain that one week prior, they were experimenting with a large portal device when they inadvertently summoned an angry, iron-fisted warlock known as Ripto, along with his minions Crush and Gulp. Pleased to find himself in a world without dragons, whom he views as pests, Ripto decided to conquer Avalar, prompting Elora and the others to deactivate the portal by scattering the mystical orbs powering it all across the realm. As Ripto and his henchmen leave to retrieve the orbs, Elora gets the idea to summon a dragon to fight against him, thus leading to Spyro's situation. After getting stranded in Avalar as a result of Ripto destroying the portal he came in through, Spyro agrees to help fight against him.
During his quest, Spyro must travel through the various realms of Avalar and help the inhabitants with certain problems they are facing in order to receive their realm's talisman, which Spyro must use to undo Ripto's tyranny. He must also collect the orbs scattered across Avalar to empower portals and other various devices or spells, as well as gems to pay off the sleazy elitist bear, Moneybags for certain favors. Hunter the Cheetah helps out Spyro on certain missions with his athletic abilities, and the Professor does the same using his intellect.
After collecting six talismans in Summer Forest, Spyro fights and defeats Crush, prompting Ripto and Gulp to retreat. The young dragon then pursues them to Autumn Plains, where he collects eight more talismans before engaging and vanquishing Gulp in combat. Then, Ripto seemingly falls to his demise, and Elora and her friends repay Spyro by returning to Winter Tundra and reactivating the portal device to send him to Dragon Shores. However, Ripto reveals himself to be alive and steals the power crystal that was meant to power the portal, using it to create a new magic scepter (since Gulp ate the original in the intro). After collecting enough orbs, Spyro is able to confront Ripto; the warlock ironically perishes in a lake of lava which he himself created. With peace returned to Avalar, Elora and the others return all the gems that Moneybags had extorted from Spyro to fix the portal device, allowing him to take his long-awaited vacation to Dragon Shores.
The game's epilogue, which is unlocked by completing the Skill Points list in the Guidebook, reveals what happened to various friends and enemies that Spyro encountered in Avalar, as well as moments such as Spyro and Elora missing their chance to kiss, Crush being taught by the Professor how to spell, and a list of dummied enemies that didn't make it into the game. In the end, Spyro returns to the Dragon Realm, with Hunter joining him, setting the stage for the next game.
Development
The sequel to Spyro the Dragon was tentatively titled Spyro the Dragon 2 during its pre-production phase. According to Ted Price, Insomniac's president and founder, the game was designed to provide a "greater challenge" for experienced players, as it was made to have greater depth and more gameplay variety than Spyro the Dragon. The music for Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! was composed by Stewart Copeland and was engineered and co-produced by Jeff Seitz. The character Spyro is voiced by Tom Kenny, replacing Carlos Alazraqui from the first game, while additional voices are provided by Kenny, Gregg Berger, Melissa Disney, Milton James, Mary Linda Phillips and Marcelo Tubert. The game's sound effects were created by Mike Gollom, Harry Woolway and Ron Horwitz of Universal Sound Studios. The game was officially announced at the 1999 E3 convention in Los Angeles, CA. In Volume 3 Issue 1 of the Official US PlayStation Magazine, which was released in October 1999, the name "Ripto" originated from the Japanese katakana spelling of Spyro. The game was released in North America on November 2, 1999. Sony Computer Entertainment of America director of product development Ami Blaire stated, "Spyro 2 isn't just another sequel. Players will surely be lured by Spyro's playful antics, but they'll experience gameplay that's more challenging and more fun then ever before."
Re-releases
The game became available for download on the European PlayStation Network on July 26, 2007, before its predecessor was released to the same market. Less than a week later, however, it was removed because the Colossus and Idol Springs levels failed to load. On April 17, 2008, it was released on the Japanese PlayStation Store. On May 7, 2009, the game became available for download from the North American PlayStation Store and a corrected version was re-released on the European PlayStation Store on December 12, 2012, although as the NTSC version instead of PAL. Spyro 2, alongside its predecessor and sequel, received a remastered release with updated visuals on November 13, 2018 as part of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy compilation for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This compilation retains the game's North American name, Ripto's Rage!, as opposed to the title used for the original European and Australasian release, Gateway to Glimmer.
Reception
The game received favorable reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. However, Chris Kramer of NextGen said that the game "feels like a kids' title, but it has more meat to it than the first, and the cute graphics may make your girlfriend finally stop cooing over those damn Pokémon." In Japan, where the game was ported for release under the name Spyro X Sparx: Tondemo Tours (スパイロ×スパークス トンでもツアーズ, Supairo × Supākusu Tondemo Tsuāzu) on March 16, 2000, Famitsu gave it a score of 30 out of 40. GamePro said of the game, "If you simply loved the first Spyro, or are very intrigued by the second, you can't go wrong with Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage. Once you get over its cute exterior, you'll find an excellent platform action/adventure game ripe with the goods that make gaming great."
The game received a "Gold" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 200,000 units in the UK.
As of June 30, 2007, the game sold more than 3.4 million units.
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! received nominations for "Console Children's/Family Title of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction", and "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" during the AIAS' 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; they were ultimately awarded to Pokémon Snap (Children's/Family) and Final Fantasy VIII (Art Direction, Animation).
Notes
References
External links
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! at MobyGames
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! at IMDb |
Tony_Hawk%27s_Pro_Skater | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hawk%27s_Pro_Skater | [
341
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hawk%27s_Pro_Skater"
] | Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, released as Tony Hawk's Skateboarding in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe, is a 1999 skateboarding video game developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. It is the first installment in the Tony Hawk's series. It was released for the PlayStation on September 29, 1999 and was later ported to the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast, and N-Gage.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater takes place in an urban environment permeated by an ambience of punk rock and ska punk music. The player takes control of a variety of skateboarders and must complete missions by performing skateboarding tricks and collecting objects. The game offers several modes of gameplay, including a career mode in which the player must complete objectives and evolve their character's attributes, a single session, in which the player accumulates a high score within two minutes, a free skate mode in which the player may skate without any given objective, and a multiplayer mode that features a number of competitive games.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was met with critical acclaim for all versions except the Game Boy Color version, which had a more mixed reception. The game resulted in a successful franchise, receiving eight annualized sequels developed by Neversoft from Pro Skater 2 (2000) to Proving Ground (2007). It is also credited with introducing skateboarding to a more mainstream global audience. It received a remake along with the sequel, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, in 2020.
Gameplay
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater puts the player in control of a skateboarder and takes place in a third-person view with a fixed camera. The goal of the game is to perform tricks and combinations thereof in an effort to increase the player's score. Movement can be altered using the d-pad or analog stick, and ollies, grabs, flips and grinds are each assigned to individual buttons. Each skateboarder has eight grabs, eight grinds and eight flips. The number of points earned from a successful trick sequence is dependent on the amount of time spent in the air, the degree of rotation, and the number and variety of tricks performed; the more a single trick is performed in a sequence, the fewer points it will earn. When the player succeeds in performing tricks, a special gauge increases. When this gauge is full and flashing, the player is capable of performing a special trick that is worth many more points than ordinary tricks. If the player bails (falls off their skateboard), any points that may have been earned from the current combo are lost, and the special gauge is emptied.
In the game's "Career Mode", the player must complete five objectives (represented by VHS tapes) in each level within a period of two minutes. The player is not obligated to complete all the objectives within a single run; any completed objective is committed to the game's memory, which allows other objectives to be completed within multiple playthroughs of a level. Two common objectives in each level are achieved by accumulating two defined scores, which gradually increases in difficulty throughout the game; while one other common objective is to collect letters of the word "SKATE". Another common objective is to destroy five of a certain object within each level. The fifth objective involves collecting a VHS tape hidden in the level. Completing objectives unlocks additional levels and equipment for use. Three of the mode's levels take place in a competition setting in which the player performs for judges and accumulates the highest score within three one-minute rounds. The player receives a bronze, silver or gold medal depending on the final score they are given. Other single-player modes include the "Single Session", in which the player can freely accumulate a high score within two minutes using any previously obtained levels and characters, and the "Free Skate", in which there is no time limit imposed.
The multiplayer mode is played by two players in a split screen view and offers three games: "Graffiti", "Trick Attack", and "HORSE". In "Graffiti", players must accumulate the highest score by changing level elements into their own color via the use of tricks. If a player performs a higher-scoring trick on an element that has already been marked, the element will change to that player's color. "Trick Attack" is a mode in which players must accumulate the highest score by chaining tricks together. "HORSE" is a game that is played intermittently between two players, who must compete in rounds lasting either eight seconds or until a trick has been made. The player with the lower score on any given turn receives a letter in the word "HORSE" or whatever word the players have generated prior to the game's start. The first player to accumulate the entire word loses.
Featured pro skaters
The game features a total of ten real life professional skateboarders, along with two unlockable original characters: Officer Dick and Private Carrera.
Development
Following the releases of arcade game Top Skater (1997) by Sega and PlayStation game Street Sk8er (1998) by Electronic Arts, Activision identified skateboarding-simulation games as a growing market in the gaming industry and concluded that such a title would resonate with a young audience. Preceding Neversoft's involvement in the project, the task of developing a skateboarding title for Activision was given to another studio. However, this studio's attempt did not impress Activision and didn't move past the concept stage. The publisher then decided to entrust the project to Neversoft, which had recently completed the third-person shooter game Apocalypse (1998) within nine months. Although Neversoft had never developed a sports video game before, the development team was confident in its ability to accomplish the task before its given deadline of the 1999 Christmas season.
During development, the Neversoft team would spend its lunch breaks at a bowling alley near the studio, where they would play and subsequently study from Sega's Top Skater in the arcade. The game's design served as a strong basic influence, along with observances of real skaters performing in the X Games, which were taking place during the game's development. Although the team decided early on that Top Skater's linearity lacked the sense of fun they aimed for, the "racetrack" element was retained in two of the game's final levels. Contrary to subsequent titles in the series, Neversoft did not primarily focus on using pre-existing locations as reference for the game's level design, but simply envisioned potential skating areas such as a school or a city and incorporated elements such as ramps and rails to benefit the gameplay. The team consciously prioritized fun over realism in the approach to the game's level design and physics.
The game's engine is a modified version of that of Neversoft's previous title Apocalypse, and the game's prototype used Bruce Willis's character from that game as the placeholder player character. Once the prototype reached a functional and demonstrable state, the Neversoft team realized that they would require a professional skateboarder to aid in the remainder of production. At the time, Tony Hawk had been a popular figure within skateboarding for quite some time. In September 1998, Activision established contact with Hawk and arranged a meeting between him and Neversoft. Hawk was quickly impressed by the design team members' devotion to skateboarding, the controls and engine of their game's early build and agreed to lend his name and involvement to the production. Subsequently, Hawk would turn down Activision's offer of a one-time buyout for the permanent use of his name and likeness on the game in favor of a royalty deal in which Hawk would earn a percentage for every copy sold. As a result of the series' eventual success, Hawk would earn ten times Activision's initial offer within two years. By January 1999, Activision publicly announced their agreement with Hawk to include him in the game. Activision senior vice president Mitch Lasky, in an interview with GameSpot, stated that the character was meant "to reflect Tony's signature style – an intense mix of acrobatics and hard-core technical skating". Hawk remarked that "[he had] always wanted to help create a video game that represented the reality and excitement of professional skateboarding".
Hawk would spend the development time periodically playing through the game's beta builds and providing feedback, using a specially modified PlayStation console that can play games burned on CD-Rs. Hawk even went so far as to purposely send advanced copies of the game to a trusted group of people who also owned modchipped PlayStations: "I had a modified PlayStation so I could use burned discs, and they'd send me new developments and we'd go back and forth. I'd let people play it, people that I trust. At one point, I felt it was getting so far along that I started to sneak out copies for those same people - these people had modded PlayStations. As subversive as that was, it started to create a buzz in the industry, because they were key players in the skating industry and they were also hardcore gamers". He would also personally select a group of other professional skaters to include as playable characters based on their skills, personalities and diversity; each skater received a cut of the royalties and got to select their own attire and special tricks for the game. While animating the skaters, the design team largely depended on using available video footage as reference. The incorporation of motion capture was attempted to aid in the realism of the animation, but due to the technology's infancy, the result was ultimately determined to have not translated as well as what had already been animated. The 900 featured in the game was itself drawn from footage of Hawk's famed performance of the feat in the X Games that summer, and was a relatively late addition as a result.
The collection of VHS tapes was directly inspired by the collection of stars in Super Mario 64 (1996). In designing the objectives, the team would gather at a table, draw a level and then ask what could be done within said level, upon which the team members would provide ideas. Rejected concepts arising from these sessions include levels taking place on a highway and a jetty, and a scenario in which the player would lose a wheel and have to skate on three wheels. Manuals were originally intended to be implemented into the game, but were omitted due to time constraints; manuals would subsequently be included in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.
Promotion and release
Elissa Steamer's inclusion in the game, along with the game's final release date of September 29, was presented on August 26, 1999. A playable demo with only two available skaters was integrated into the Jampack Summer '99 compilation CD released by PlayStation Underground. The game was made available for pre-order two weeks prior to the game's release; those who pre-ordered the game at Electronics Boutique or FuncoLand respectively received a miniature replica of Tony Hawk's Birdhouse skateboard, a sticker sheet featuring the game's ten professional skaters and a game tip on the back of each sticker. A second playable demo was included on a promotional compilation disc released by Pizza Hut on November 14.
While Neversoft would begin development of the game's sequel, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, shortly before the release of the first game, Activision would entrust the game's Nintendo 64 port to Edge of Reality, which had recently ported Monster Truck Madness 2 to the same system. The Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color versions received a multi-million dollar advertising campaign on several major youth-targeted channels in the United States beginning in April 2000. Customers who purchased the Game Boy Color version at Toys "R" Us or FuncoLand received a special-edition miniature skateboard.
As a result of the disappointing sales of Blue Stinger, Activision was discouraged from publishing further titles for the Dreamcast and relinquished the distribution of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on the console to Crave Entertainment. After online speculation and teasing comments from company insiders, a port for the Dreamcast was revealed to be developed by Treyarch. Later in 2003, the N-Gage version was in development. The game came bundled with the N-Gage QD that was released in 2004.
Ports
The Nintendo 64 port of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was developed by Edge of Reality and released on March 15, 2000. While the port is largely faithful to the original version and retains all game modes, characters and levels, the soundtrack had been truncated and the voices were removed to accommodate the lessened space in the cartridge format. The blood effects had also been removed, so Nintendo could market the game with an "E" game rating. The Dreamcast version was developed by Treyarch, published by Crave Entertainment and released on May 24, 2000. The graphics and animations in the Dreamcast version are improved from those in the PlayStation version.
The Game Boy Color version was developed by the Japanese company Natsume and released on March 30, 2000. The Game Boy Color version is an adaptation rather than a true port of the PlayStation version due to the limited capacity of the platform. The game offers two different gameplay styles: an overhead view with vertical scrolling, and a side-scrolling view in which there is a ramp on each side. There are four gameplay modes in which the player can only perform a few tricks. In "Half Pipe Mode", the player must attempt to achieve the highest score possible. "Tournament Mode" is a five-level vertically scrolling game in which the player must race against three computer-controlled skaters and achieve the highest rank. Jumps are made automatically when the player maneuvers onto ramps, and tricks are displayed as a brief static image. "Versus Mode" and "Rival Mode" are identical to "Tournament Mode", except the player plays in a single level against a single opponent; the opponent in "Rival Mode" is computer-controlled, while the opponent in "Versus Mode" is human, which necessitates the use of a Game Link Cable.
The N-Gage version was developed by Ideaworks3D and released on October 13, 2003, a week following the launch of the N-Gage. The game is a faithful port of the PlayStation version and retains most of the characters, levels, control scheme and original music while adding levels from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and two multiplayer games. The game's multiplayer functions via the N-Gage's Bluetooth feature. The N-Gage version was named "Best-Mobile Game" by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2004.
A remake of both the first game and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, titled Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, was developed by Vicarious Visions and released on September 4, 2020, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, followed up a year later on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. The remake includes all of the original levels and skaters from the original games, but also includes improved skater creation and park creation modes, online multiplayer, and other new features, and featuring most of the original soundtracks, with a few exceptions due to licensing issues.
Reception
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was met with critical acclaim. Doug Perry of IGN praised the game's "imaginative, deep, and amazingly addictive" gameplay, "steady and consistent" learning curve, "intuitive and natural" controls, large and complex levels, "jaw-dropping" physics and "perfect" soundtrack. Perry concluded that the game had "captured the pure grit and radical feel of skateboarding, delivering it in near perfect form onto the PlayStation with a mastery and sense of programming finesse beyond anyone's imagination", and described the game as "that rare gem of a game that defies what other developers say can't be done". Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot commended the game's graphics, frame rate, camera and sound effects, and declared the game to be "a worthy addition to anyone's PlayStation collection", though he was not personally fond of the soundtrack and wished that there was more variety in the game's tricks. He additionally noted that the Dreamcast version used the console's hardware to its advantage by displaying clearer textures and a smoother frame rate "that may very well cause longtime fans of the game to weep". Chris Carle of IGN also praised the Dreamcast version's improved textures.
Matt Casamassina of IGN praised the Nintendo 64 version's visuals as "very impressive" in spite of the reduced quality of the textures and the omitted full-motion video effects, and the audio as "surprisingly clear", albeit compressed and "dumbed down" to accommodate the cartridge format. Martin Taylor of Eurogamer cited the game's graphics as "crisp, smooth and very, very hard to fault", but noted that the game's soundtrack suffered from the compression process and that the looping music "quickly becomes incredibly annoying"; the latter sentiment was mirrored by Dr. Moo of Game Revolution.
In reviewing the Game Boy Color version, Craig Harris of IGN decided that while the half-pipe portion of the game "isn't half-bad", the overhead portion is "absolutely stupid"; he criticized the representation of tricks as static images as "completely destroy[ing] the flow of the game", and noted that the issue is exacerbated in the "Versus" mode by having both parties' game pause when either one performs a trick. Frank Provo of GameSpot cited the game's lack of level variety and "borderline mediocre" audio, but felt that it was the best skateboarding title to be made for a portable console. Both Chadd Chambers of IGN and Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot considered the N-Gage version to be the best game available on the system and were relatively impressed by the game's graphics, but noted the less comfortable control scheme and reduced sound quality.
Three reviewers for Next Generation magazine - Blake Fischer, Eric Bratcher, and Greg Orlando - gave five stars out of five for PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and Dreamcast versions, respectively. They virtually praised every aspect of the game despite noting some minor differences between all three versions.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was ranked #36 in Game Informer's "Top 100 Games of All Time" in its 100th issue in August 2001. The game was nominated for "Console Game of the Year" and "Console Sports Game of the Year" during the 3rd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, but lost to Soulcalibur and Knockout Kings 2000, respectively. The game was included on Polygon's 2017 list of The 500 Best Games of All Time.
Sales
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was the third highest-selling PlayStation title of November 1999 in the United States. From its release date to late-December 1999, the game shipped in excess of 350,000 units and was available in over 10,000 retailers nationwide. The PlayStation version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. The Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland gave the PlayStation version a Gold Award for 100,000 sold copies in Germany by February 2000. The PlayStation versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and its successor were respectively the third and second highest-selling console games of 2000. The Nintendo 64 version was the sixth highest-selling Nintendo 64 title in the United States during the week of November 19–26, 2000. As of 2001, it has sold 3.5 million units.
Sequels
The game resulted in a successful franchise, receiving eight annualized sequels developed by Neversoft from Pro Skater 2 (2000) to Proving Ground (2007), and a 2020 remake along with the sequel, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2.
Cultural impact
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is credited with introducing skateboarding to a more mainstream global audience.
In a 2023 essay for The New York Times Magazine Irish writer Jack Sheehan reflected on the game's impact writing, "Released at a moment when skateboarding was beginning to go mainstream, T.H.P.S. became popular because it invited skaters and nonskaters alike to feel the thrill of getting air, doing a kick flip or landing a trick by the thinnest margin." In 2023, the book Right, Down + Circle: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater by Cole Nowicki was released tackling and analyzing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater's meaning and impact. Reflecting on both the game's development history and his personal experience as a skateboarder and player, Nowicki called the game an "unprecedented success" and a "Trojan horse, entering the homes of millions worldwide, exposing kids, teenagers, their parents, and more to this gamified version of skateboarding."
In 2020, a documentary film Pretending I'm Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story from Swedish director Ludvig Gür was released chronicling the development and impact of the game.
Throughout the 2010s and 2020s the game's soundtrack was acknowledged as having been a major cultural influence in music, particularly in spreading punk and metal to millennials.
Notes
References
Further reading
Agnello, Anthony John (August 30, 2019). "The Oral History of 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater'". The Ringer. Retrieved October 4, 2023.
External links
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater at MobyGames |
Uduak_Amimo | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uduak_Amimo | [
342
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uduak_Amimo"
] | Uduak Amimo is a journalist of Kenyan origin. She hosted the current affairs talk show, Cheche, on Citizen TV, which is part of the Royal Media Services stable between 2012 and 2017. Before returning to Kenya, Amimo worked for several international media organisations, including the BBC World Service, Voice of America and Reuters. She was one of the moderators of Kenya's first presidential debates, held during the 2013 general election.
Amimo serves as a trustee on the board of Uraia, a national civic education organisation. She is a Media Fellow of the African Leadership Initiative, part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network; she is a Boehm Media Fellow, a Tutu Fellow and a GSIH Fellow.
She took a break from her talk show and the media in 2017, she has said, to pursue her interest in coaching and social impact projects. She is the founder of a community-based organisation, Ramani Life Group, which offers career guidance to students in under-resourced secondary schools in Kenya. She also runs a mentoring and coaching program for young professionals in communication-affiliated industries.
Education
Amimo begun her primary education at Lavington Primary School in Nairobi before spending three years at Roosevelt Elementary School in Iowa in the United States. She then returned to St George's Primary School in Nairobi before moving to the Navy Primary and Secondary schools in Nigeria. She completed her secondary education in Kenya at the Bunyore Girls High School, where she was a prefect.
Amimo holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in International Relations from the United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya. She was part of the team that launched the university's newspaper and soon became its editor.
She also holds a Master of Arts in Journalism and Public Policy from the American University in Washington, D.C., which she received after winning a scholarship and teaching assistantship.
Career
Amimo says she became a journalist to address what she felt was the negative portrayal of Africa, particularly in the international media. Her first job was as an Assistant Producer with Reuters Television in Kenya, where she had interned in her senior year of university. She left Reuters to pursue her MA. After completing her studies, she joined the Voice of America in Washington as a radio and television host, reporter and producer in the English to Africa service.
BBC
She joined the BBC in 2002, as a producer and presenter with the English-language BBC African news and current affairs programmes, Network Africa and Focus on Africa Amimo presented, produced and edited radio programmes for the African News and Current Affairs section of the BBC World Service before becoming a Senior Producer and Presenter of the BBC African flagship programme, Focus on Africa.
In 2006, Amimo was appointed Senior Editorial Adviser, supporting the Director of the BBC World Service, Nigel Chapman. She moved to Ethiopia in 2009 to become the BBC correspondent in Addis Ababa, covering both the country and the African Union. She has reported from several other African countries.
She left the BBC and returned to Kenya in 2011. She took up her position at Royal Media Services in 2012.
Personal life
Amimo is a Christian. Her parents are from Kenya and Nigeria.Uduak, her Nigerian name means God's will in her father's language.
Her second name Amimo is a Kenyan name. She is named after her great-grandmother on her mother's side of the family from western Kenya. She is a first-born.
== References == |
President_of_Kenya | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Kenya | [
342
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Kenya"
] | The president of the Republic of Kenya (Swahili: Rais wa Jamhuri ya Kenya) is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of Kenya. The president is also the head of the executive branch of the Government of Kenya and is the commander-in-chief of the Kenya Defence Forces. The country's current president is William Ruto since 13 September 2022.
History
On 12 December 1964, the Republic of Kenya was proclaimed, and Jomo Kenyatta became Kenya's first president.
Kenya has had a total of five presidents since establishment, in successive order: Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta, and the incumbent, William Ruto, who was inaugurated on 13 September 2022. Moi remains the country's longest serving president, having served for a total of 24 years.
Qualifications and election to office
According to the current Constitution, if a person wishes to be elected as president, the following qualifications must be met:
Should be a Kenyan citizen by birth;
Should be qualified for election as a Member of Parliament;
Should have been nominated by a political party to stand as its candidate for the presidency, or they may stand as an independent candidate; and
The person should have been nominated by more than two thousand voters from each of a majority of the country's 47 counties.
A candidate will be disqualified to run for presidency if they have allegiance to a foreign state or is working for the government in any capacity as a public officer. Being a public officer is not applicable to the incumbent president if running for a second term.
The president is elected by popular vote in the general election held in the month of August every five years. For a presidential candidate to be declared the winner, they must have:
More than half of the total votes cast in the election; and
At least 25% of the votes cast in each of more than half of the 47 counties in the country.
The official residence of the president of Kenya is State House, Nairobi.
The wife of the president is referred to as the first lady of Kenya.
Term of office
A president is eligible for two consecutive terms of five years each, starting from the date the president is sworn in.
Roles and responsibilities
The following is a summary of the roles of the president of Kenya as provided in the Constitution of Kenya:
Is the country's head of state and government.
Exercises the country's executive authority.
Is the commander-in-chief of the country's military, the Kenya Defence Forces.
Is the chairperson of the country's National Security Council.
Is a symbol of national unity.
The responsibilities of the president are summarised as follows:
Is responsible for addressing each newly elected Parliament and report once to special parliamentary seating concerning issues of national value and governance.
Holds nominating and appointing authority, with Parliament's approval, over the country's cabinet secretaries, attorney-general, principal secretaries, diplomatic and consular representatives and any other public officer over whom the Constitution grants said authority.
Is the chairperson of Cabinet meetings and oversees the running of operations in various ministries and government departments.
The president may also undertake any other executive functions as permitted by the Constitution.
The president also exercises the power of mercy, whereupon the president may pardon a person convicted of an offence.
Additionally, a person serving as president has legal immunity, with the exception of crimes under treaties to which Kenya is party with provisions that prohibit such immunity.
List of presidents
Presidential standards
As with most other countries, the president of Kenya has a presidential standard to signify their status as the country's head of state and government. Its design is generally based on the country's national flag, although the president has some leeway to customise its appearance. The flag is generally displayed in notable locations associated with the president, usually alongside the national flag, such as the president's offices and the president's official state car, and during notable state occasions.
The presidential standards of Kenya's presidents since the country's independence have been as follows:
Lists of incumbents
Politics of Kenya
Prime Minister of Kenya
References
External links
Official website |
List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history | [
343
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history"
] | This article lists the largest human settlements in the world (by population) over time, as estimated by historians, from 7000 BC when the largest human settlement was a proto-city in the ancient Near East with a population of about 1,000–2,000 people, to the year 2000 when the largest human settlement was Tokyo with 26 million.
Rome, Chang'an or Baghdad may have been the first city to have 1,000,000 people, as early as the 1st century or as late as the 8th century. Later cities that might have reached 1 million include Luoyang, Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Jinling, Beijing, and Edo. There is wide agreement that London was the first city to reach 2 million and New York was the first to reach 10 million.
The Greater Tokyo Area has been the most populous metropolitan area in the world since 1955, with more than 37.393 million residents as of 2020. Jakarta is expected to overtake Tokyo by 2030, partly due to Tokyo's shrinking population.
As disagreements between the sources show, any of the pre-19th century figures are uncertain, especially in ancient times. Estimating population sizes before censuses were conducted is a difficult task.
List of the most populous human settlements over time
The following table lists the most populous human settlements by estimated population at specified points in history according to three sources: Ian Morris, George Modelski and Tertius Chandler. City names are in bold where all three sources agree. It shows the evolution of the largest settlement from proto-city to city to urban area to metropolitan area.
See also
Historical urban community sizes, 7000 BC – 1875
List of largest European cities in history
List of largest cities, present day
Estimates of historical world population
Valeriepieris circle
References
External links
Top Ten Cities Through History, animation showing the ten largest cities throughout history according to Chandler
Top 20 Most Populated Cities in The World 1500 to 2100 (History + Projection) |
Edo | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo | [
343
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo"
] | Edo (Japanese: 江戸, lit. '"bay-entrance" or "estuary"'), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.
Edo, formerly a jōkamachi (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the de facto capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world under the Tokugawa.
After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Meiji government renamed Edo as Tokyo (東京, "Eastern Capital") and relocated the Emperor from the historic capital of Kyoto to the city. The era of Tokugawa rule in Japan from 1603 to 1868 is known as the Edo period.
History
Before Tokugawa
Before the 10th century, there is no mention of Edo in historical records, but for a few settlements in the area. That name for the area first appears in the Azuma Kagami chronicles, being used probably since the second half of the Heian period. Edo's development started in the late 11th century with a branch of the Kanmu-Taira clan (桓武平氏) called the Chichibu clan (秩父氏) coming from the banks of the then-Iruma River, present day upstream of the Arakawa river. A descendant of the head of the Chichibu clan settled in the area and took the name Edo Shigetsugu (江戸重継), likely based on the name used for the place, and founded the Edo clan. Shigetsugu built a fortified residence, probably around the edge of the Musashino Terrace, that would become Edo castle. Shigetsugu's son, Edo Shigenaga (江戸重長), took the Taira's side against Minamoto no Yoritomo in 1180 but eventually surrendered to Minamoto and became a gokenin for the Kamakura shogunate. At the fall of the shogunate in the 14th century, the Edo clan took the side of the Southern Court, and its influence declined during the Muromachi period.
In 1456, a vassal of the Ōgigayatsu branch of the Uesugi clan started to build a castle on the former fortified residence of the Edo clan and took the name Ōta Dōkan. Dōkan lived in the castle until his assassination in 1486. Under Dōkan, with good water connections to Kamakura, Odawara and other parts of Kanto and the country, Edo expanded as a jōkamachi, with the castle bordering a cove (now Hibiya Park) opening into Edo Bay, and the town developing along the Hirakawa River running into the cove, and on Edomaeto (江戸前島), the stretch of land on the eastern side of the cove (now roughly where Tokyo Station is). Some priests and scholars fleeing Kyoto after the Ōnin War came to Edo during that period.
After the death of Dōkan, the castle became one of strongholds of the Uesugi clan, which fell to the Later Hōjō clan at the battle of Takanawahara in 1524, during the expansion of their rule over the Kantō area. When the Hōjō clan was finally defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590, the Kanto area was given to rule to Toyotomi's senior officer Tokugawa Ieyasu, who took his residence in Edo.
Tokugawa shogunate
Tokugawa Ieyasu emerged as the paramount warlord of the Sengoku period following his victory at the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600. He formally founded the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and established his headquarters at Edo Castle. Edo became the center of political power and the de facto capital of Japan, although the historic capital of Kyoto remained the de jure capital as the seat of the emperor. Edo grew from a fishing village in Musashi Province in 1457 into the largest metropolis in the world, with an estimated population of 1 million by 1721.
Edo was repeatedly devastated by fires, the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657 being the most disastrous, with an estimated 100,000 victims and a vast portion of the city completely burnt. The population of Edo was around 300,000, and the impact of the fire was tremendous. The fire destroyed the central keep of Edo Castle, which was never rebuilt, and it influenced the urban planning afterwards to make the city more resilient, with many empty areas to break spreading fires, and wider streets. Reconstruction efforts expanded the city east of the Sumida River, and some daimyō residences were relocated to give more space to the city, especially in the immediate vicinity of the shogun's residence, creating a large green space beside the castle, now the Fukiage gardens of the Imperial Palace. During the Edo period, there were about 100 major fires, mostly begun by accident and often quickly escalating and spreading through neighborhoods of wooden nagaya that were heated with charcoal fires.
In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown in the Meiji Restoration by supporters of Emperor Meiji and his Imperial Court in Kyoto, ending Edo's status as the de facto capital of Japan. However, the new Meiji government soon renamed Edo to Tōkyō (東京, "Eastern Capital") and the city became the formal capital of Japan when the emperor moved his residence to the city.
Urbanism
Very quickly after its inception, the shogunate undertook major works in Edo that drastically changed the topography of the area, notably under the Tenka-Bushin (天下普請) nationwide program of major civil works involving the now pacified daimyō workforce. The Hibiya cove facing the castle was soon filled after the arrival of Ieyasu, the Hirakawa river was diverted, and several protective moats and logistical canals were dug (including the Kanda river), to limit the risks of flooding. Landfill works on the bay began, with several areas reclaimed during the duration of the shogunate (notably the Tsukiji area). East of the city and of the Sumida River, a massive network of canals was dug.
Fresh water was a major issue, as direct wells would provide brackish water because of the location of the city over an estuary. The few fresh water ponds of the city were put to use, and a network of canals and underground wooden pipes bringing freshwater from the western side of the city and the Tama River was built. Some of this infrastructure was used until the 20th century.
General layout of the city
The city was laid out as a castle town around Edo Castle, which was positioned at the tip of the Musashino terrace. The area in the immediate proximity of the castle consisted of samurai and daimyō residences, whose families lived in Edo as part of the sankin-kōtai system; the daimyō made journeys in alternating years to Edo and used the residences for their entourages. The location of each residence was carefully attributed depending on their position as tozama, shinpan or fudai. It was this extensive organization of the city for the samurai class which defined the character of Edo, particularly in contrast to the two major cities of Kyoto and Osaka, neither of which were ruled by a daimyō or had a significant samurai population. Kyoto's character was defined by the Imperial Court, the court nobles, its Buddhist temples and its history; Osaka was the country's commercial center, dominated by the chōnin or the merchant class. On the contrary, the samurai and daimyō residences occupied up to 70% of the area of Edo. On the east and northeast sides of the castle lived the Shomin (庶民, "regular people") including the chōnin in a much more densely populated area than the samurai class area, organized in a series of gated communities called machi (町, "town" or "village"). This area, Shitamachi (下町, "lower town" or "lower towns"), was the center of urban and merchant culture. Shomin also lived along the main roads leading in and out of the city. The Sumida River, then called the Great River (大川, Ōkawa), ran on the eastern side of the city. The shogunate's official rice-storage warehouses and other official buildings were located here.
The Nihonbashi bridge (日本橋, lit. "bridge of Japan") marked the center of the city's commercial center and the starting point of the gokaidō (thus making it the de facto "center of the country"). Fishermen, craftsmen and other producers and retailers operated here. Shippers managed ships known as tarubune to and from Osaka and other cities, bringing goods into the city or transferring them from sea routes to river barges or land routes.
The northeastern corner of the city was considered dangerous in the traditional onmyōdō cosmology and was protected from evil by a number of temples including Sensō-ji and Kan'ei-ji, one of the two tutelary Bodaiji temples of the Tokugawa. A path and a canal, a short distance north of Sensō-ji, extended west from the Sumida riverbank leading along the northern edge of the city to the Yoshiwara pleasure district. Previously located near Ningyōchō, the district was rebuilt in this more remote location after the great fire of Meireki. Danzaemon, the hereditary position head of eta, or outcasts, who performed "unclean" works in the city resided nearby.
Temples and shrines occupied roughly 15% of the surface of the city, equivalent to the living areas of the townspeople, with however an average of one-tenth of its population. Temples and shrines were spread out over the city. Besides the large concentration in the northeast side to protect the city, the second Bodaiji of the Tokugawa, Zōjō-ji occupied a large area south of the castle.
Housing
Military caste
The samurai and daimyōs residential estates varied dramatically in size depending on their status. Some daimyōs could have several of those residences in Edo. The upper residence (上屋敷, kami-yashiki), was the main residence while the lord was in Edo and was used for official duties. It was not necessarily the largest of his residences, but the most convenient to commute to the castle. The upper residence also acted as the representative embassy of the domain in Edo, connecting the shogunate and the clan. The shogunate did not exercise its investigative powers inside the precincts of the residential estate of the upper residence, which could also act as a refuge. The estate of the upper residence was attributed by the shogunate according to the status of the clan and its relation with the Shogun. The middle residence (中屋敷, naka-yashiki), a bit further from the castle, could house the heir of the lord, his servants from his fief when he was in Edo for the sankin-kotai alternate residency, or be a hiding residence if needed. The lower residence (下屋敷, shimo-yashiki), if there was any, was on the outskirts of town, more of a pleasure retreat with gardens. The lower residence could also be used as a retreat for the lord if a fire had devastated the city. Some of the powerful daimyōs residences occupied vast grounds of several dozens of hectares. Maintenance and operations of those residential estates could be extremely expensive. Samurai in service of a specific clan would normally live in the residence of their lord.
The hatamoto samurais, in direct service of the Shogun, would have their own residences, usually located behind the castle on the Western side in the Banchō area.
Shonin
In a strict sense of the word, chōnin were only the townspeople who owned their residence, which was actually a minority. The shonin population mainly lived in semi-collective housings called nagaya (長屋, litt. "Long house"), multi-rooms wooden dwellings, organized in enclosed machi (町, "town" or "village"), with communal facilities, such as wells connected to the city's fresh water distribution system, garbage collection area and communal bathrooms. A typical machi was of rectangular shape and could have a population of several hundred.
The machi had curfew for the night with closing and guarded gates called kidomon (木戸門) opening on the main street (表通り, omote-dori) in the machi. Two floor buildings and larger shops, reserved to the higher-ranking members of the society, were facing the main street. A machi would typically follow a grid pattern and smaller streets, Shinmichi (新道), were opening on the main street, also with (sometimes) two-floor buildings, shop on the first floor, living quarter on the second floor, for the more well-off residents. Very narrow streets accessible through small gates called roji (路地), would enter deeper inside the machi, where single floor nagayas, the uranagayas (裏長屋, litt. "backstreet long houses") were located. Rentals and smaller rooms for lower ranked shonin were located in those back housings.
Edo was nicknamed the City of 808 towns (江戸八百八町, Edo happyaku yachō), depicting the large number and diversity of those communities, but the actual number was closer to 1,700 by the 18th century.
Government and administration
Edo's municipal government was under the responsibility of the rōjū, the senior officials who oversaw the entire bakufu – the government of the Tokugawa shogunate. The administrative definition of Edo was called Gofunai (御府内, litt. "where the government is").
The Kanjō-bugyō (finance commissioners) were responsible for the financial matters of the shogunate, whereas the Jisha-Bugyō handled matters related to shrines and temples. The Machi-bugyō (町奉行) were samurai (at the very beginning of the shogunate daimyōs, later hatamoto) officials appointed to keep the order in the city, with the word designating both the heading magistrate, the magistrature and its organization. They were in charge of Edo's day-to-day administration, combining the role of police, judge and fire brigade. There were two offices, the South Machi-Bugyō and the North Machi-Bugyō, which had the same geographical jurisdiction in spite of their name but rotated roles on a monthly basis. Despite their extensive responsibilities, the teams of the Machi-Bugyō were rather small, with 2 offices of 125 people each. The Machi-Bugyō did not have jurisdiction over the samurai residential areas, which remained under the shogunate direct rule. The geographical jurisdiction of the Machi-Bugyō did not exactly coincide with the Gofunai, creating some complexity on the handling on the matters of the city. The Machi-bugyō oversaw the numerous Machi where shonin lived through representatives called Machidoshiyori (町年寄). Each Machi had a Machi leader called Nanushi (名主), who reported to a Machidoshiyori (町年寄) who himself was in charge of several Machis.
See also
Edo society
Fires in Edo
1703 Genroku earthquake
Edokko (native of Edo)
History of Tokyo
Iki (a Japanese aesthetic ideal)
Asakusa
Notes
References
Forbes, Andrew; Henley, David (2014). 100 Famous Views of Edo. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B00HR3RHUY
Gordon, Andrew. (2003). A Modern History of Japan from Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511060-9/ISBN 978-0-19-511060-9 (cloth); ISBN 0-19-511061-7/ISBN 978-0-19-511061-6.
Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1956). Kyoto: the Old Capital, 794–1869. Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society.
Sansom, George. (1963). A History of Japan: 1615–1867. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0527-5/ISBN 978-0-8047-0527-1.
Akira Naito (Author), Kazuo Hozumi. Edo, the City that Became Tokyo: An Illustrated History. Kodansha International, Tokyo (2003). ISBN 4-7700-2757-5
Alternate spelling from 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article.
External links
A Trip to Old Edo
(in Japanese) Fukagawa Edo Museum
Map of Bushū Toshima District, Edo from 1682 |
Tokyo | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo"
] | Tokyo (; Japanese: 東京, Tōkyō, [toːkʲoː] ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis (東京都, Tōkyō-to), is the capital of Japan and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of over 14 million residents as of 2023 and the second-most-populated capital in the world. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and parts of six neighboring prefectures, is the most-populous metropolitan area in the world, with 41 million residents as of 2024.
Located at the head of Tokyo Bay, Tokyo is part of the Kantō region on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Tokyo serves as Japan's economic center and the seat of both the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government administers Tokyo's central 23 special wards (which formerly made up Tokyo City), various commuter towns and suburbs in its western area, and two outlying island chains known as the Tokyo Islands. Despite most of the world recognizing Tokyo as a city, since 1943 its governing structure has been more akin to a prefecture, with an accompanying Governor and Assembly taking precedence over the smaller municipal governments which make up the metropolis. Notable special wards in Tokyo include Chiyoda, the site of the National Diet Building and the Tokyo Imperial Palace; Shinjuku, the city's administrative center; and Shibuya, a commercial, cultural, and business hub in the city.
Before the 17th century, Tokyo, then known as Edo, was mainly a fishing village. It gained political prominence in 1603 when it became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, Edo was among the world's largest cities, with over a million residents. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the imperial capital in Kyoto was moved to Edo, and the city was renamed Tokyo (lit. 'Eastern Capital'). In 1923, Tokyo was damaged substantially by the Great Kantō earthquake, and the city was later badly damaged by allied bombing raids during World War II. Beginning in the late 1940s, Tokyo underwent rapid reconstruction and expansion that contributed to the era's so-called Japanese economic miracle in which Japan's economy propelled to the second-largest in the world at the time behind that of the United States. As of 2023, the city is home to 29 of the world's 500 largest companies, as listed in the annual Fortune Global 500; the second-highest number of any city.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, Tokyo became the first city in Asia to host the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 1964, and again in 2021, and it also hosted three G7 summits in 1979, 1986, and 1993. Tokyo is an international research and development hub and an academic center with several major universities, including the University of Tokyo, the top-ranking university in the country. Tokyo Station is the central hub for the Shinkansen, Japan's high-speed railway network, and Shinjuku Station in Tokyo is the world's busiest train station. The city is home to the world's tallest tower, Tokyo Skytree. The Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, which opened in 1927, is the oldest underground metro line in Asia–Pacific.
Tokyo's nominal gross domestic output was 113.7 trillion yen or US$1.04 trillion in FY2021 and accounted for 20.7% of the country's total economic output, which converts to 8.07 million yen or US$73,820 per capita. Including the Greater Tokyo Area, Tokyo is the second-largest metropolitan economy in the world after New York, with a 2022 gross metropolitan product estimated at US$2.08 trillion. Although Tokyo's status as a leading global financial hub has diminished with the Lost Decades since the 1990s, when the Tokyo Stock Exchange was the world's largest, with a market capitalization about 1.5 times that of the NYSE, the city is still a large financial hub, and the TSE remains among the world's top five major stock exchanges. Tokyo is categorized as an Alpha+ city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is also recognized as one of the world's most livable ones; it was ranked fourth in the world in the 2021 edition of the Global Livability Ranking. Tokyo has also been ranked as the safest city in the world in multiple international surveys.
Etymology
Tokyo was originally known as Edo (江戸), a kanji compound of 江 (e, "cove, inlet") and 戸 (to, "entrance, gate, door"). The name, which can be translated as "estuary", is a reference to the original settlement's location at the meeting of the Sumida River and Tokyo Bay. During the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the name of the city was changed to Tokyo (東京, from 東 tō "east", and 京 kyō "capital"), when it became the new imperial capital, in line with the East Asian tradition of including the word capital (京) in the name of the capital city (for example, Kyoto (京都), Keijō (京城), Beijing (北京), Nanjing (南京), and Xijing (西京)). During the early Meiji period, the city was sometimes called "Tōkei", an alternative pronunciation for the same characters representing "Tokyo", making it a kanji homograph. Some surviving official English documents use the spelling "Tokei"; however, this pronunciation is now obsolete.
History
Pre-1869 (Edo period)
Tokyo was originally a village called Edo, part of the old Musashi Province. Edo was first fortified by the Edo clan in the late twelfth century. In 1457, Ōta Dōkan built Edo Castle to defend the region from the Chiba clan. After Dōkan was assassinated in 1486, the castle and the area came to be possessed by several feudal lords. In 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu was granted the Kantō region by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and moved there from his ancestral land of Mikawa Province. He greatly expanded the castle, which was said to have been abandoned and in tatters when he moved there, and ruled the region from there. When he became shōgun, the de facto ruler of the country, in 1603, the whole country came to be ruled from Edo. While the Tokugawa shogunate ruled the country in practice, the Imperial House of Japan was still the de jure ruler, and the title of shōgun was granted by the Emperor as a formality. The Imperial House was based in Kyoto from 794 to 1868, so Edo was still not the capital of Japan.
During the Edo period, the city enjoyed a prolonged period of peace known as the Pax Tokugawa, and in the presence of such peace, the shogunate adopted a stringent policy of seclusion, which helped to perpetuate the lack of any serious military threat to the city. The absence of war-inflicted devastation allowed Edo to devote the majority of its resources to rebuilding in the wake of the consistent fires, earthquakes, and other devastating natural disasters that plagued the city. Edo grew into one of the largest cities in the world with a population reaching one million by the 18th century.
This prolonged period of seclusion however came to an end with the arrival of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. Commodore Perry forced the opening of the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, leading to an increase in the demand for new foreign goods and subsequently a severe rise in inflation. Social unrest mounted in the wake of these higher prices and culminated in widespread rebellions and demonstrations, especially in the form of the "smashing" of rice establishments. Meanwhile, supporters of the Emperor leveraged the disruption caused by widespread rebellious demonstrations to further consolidate power, which resulted in the overthrow of the last Tokugawa shōgun, Yoshinobu, in 1867. After 265 years, the Pax Tokugawa came to an end. In May 1868, Edo castle was handed to the Emperor-supporting forces after negotiation (the Fall of Edo). Some forces loyal to the shogunate kept fighting, but with their loss in the Battle of Ueno on 4 July 1868, the entire city came under the control of the new government.
1869–1941
After the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate, for the first time in a few centuries, the Emperor ceased to be a mere figurehead and became both the de facto and de jure ruler of the country. Hisoka Maejima advocated for the relocation of the capital functions to Tokyo, recognizing the advantages of the existing infrastructure and the vastness of the Kanto Plain compared to the relatively small Kyoto basin. After being handed over to the Meiji government, Edo was renamed Tokyo (Eastern Capital) on 3 September 1868. Emperor Meiji visited the city once at the end of that year and eventually moved there in 1869. Tokyo had already been the nation's political center for nearly three centuries, and the emperor's residence made it a de facto imperial capital as well, with the former Edo Castle becoming the Imperial Palace.
Government ministries such as the Ministry of Finance were also relocated to Tokyo by 1871, and the first railway line in the country was opened on 14 October 1872, connecting Shimbashi (Shiodome) and Yokohama (Sakuragicho), which is now part of the Tokaido line. The 1870s saw the establishment of other institutions and facilities that now symbolize Tokyo, such as Ueno Park (1873), the University of Tokyo (1877) and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (1878). The rapid modernization of the country was driven from Tokyo, with its business districts such as Marunouchi filled with modern brick buildings and the railway network serving as a means to help the large influx of labour force needed to keep the development of the economy. The City of Tokyo was officially established on May 1, 1889. The Imperial Diet, the national legislature of the country, was established in Tokyo in 1889, and it has ever since been operating in the city.
On 1 September 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck the city, and the earthquake and subsequent fire killed an estimated 105,000 citizens. The loss amounted to 37 percent of the country's economic output. On the other hand, the destruction provided an opportunity to reconsider the planning of the city, which had changed its shape hastily after the Meiji Restoration. The high survival rate of concrete buildings promoted the transition from timber and brick architecture to modern, earthquake-proof construction. The Tokyo Metro Ginza Line portion between Ueno and Asakusa, the first underground railway line built outside Europe and the American continents, was completed on December 30, 1927.
Although Tokyo recovered robustly from the earthquake and new cultural and liberal political movements, such as Taishō Democracy, spread, the 1930s saw an economic downturn caused by the Great Depression and major political turmoil. Two attempted military coups d'état happened in Tokyo, the May 15 incident in 1932 and the February 26 incident in 1936. This turmoil eventually allowed the military wings of the government to take control of the country, leading to Japan joining the Second World War as an Axis power. Due to the country's political isolation on the international stage caused by its military aggression in China and the increasingly unstable geopolitical situations in Europe, Тоkуо had to give up hosting the 1940 Summer Olympics in 1938. Rationing started in June 1940 as the nation braced itself for another world war, while the 26th Centenary of the Enthronement of Emperor Jimmu celebrations took place on a grand scale to boost morale and increase the sense of national identity in the same year. On 8 December 1941, Japan attacked the American bases at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, entering the Second World War against the Allied Powers. The wartime regime greatly affected life in the city.
1942–1945
In 1943, Tokyo City merged with Tokyo Prefecture to form the Tokyo Metropolis (東京都, Tōkyō-to). This reorganization aimed to create a more centralized and efficient administrative structure to better manage resources, urban planning, and civil defence during wartime. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government thus became responsible for both prefectural and city functions while administering cities, towns, and villages in the suburban and rural areas.
Although Japan enjoyed significant success in the initial stages of the war and rapidly expanded its sphere of influence, the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942, marked the first direct foreign attack on Tokyo. Although the physical damage was minimal, the raid demonstrated the vulnerability of the Japanese mainland to air attacks and boosted American morale. Large-scale Allied air bombing of cities in the Japanese home islands, including Tokyo, began in late 1944 when the US seized control of the Mariana Islands. From these islands, newly developed long-range B-29 bombers could conduct return journeys. The bombing of Tokyo in 1944 and 1945 is estimated to have killed between 75,000 and 200,000 civilians and left more than half of the city destroyed.
The deadliest night of the war came on March 9–10, 1945, the night of the American "Operation Meetinghouse" raid. Nearly 700,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on the east end of the city (shitamachi, 下町), an area with a high concentration of factories and working-class houses. Two-fifths of the city were completely burned, more than 276,000 buildings were destroyed, 100,000 civilians were killed, and 110,000 more were injured. Numerous Edo and Meiji-era buildings of historical significance were destroyed, including the main building of the Imperial Palace, Sensō-ji, Zōjō-ji, Sengaku-ji and Kabuki-za. Between 1940 and 1945, the population of Tokyo dwindled from 6,700,000 to less than 2,800,000, as soldiers were sent to the front and children were evacuated.
1945–1972
After the war, Tokyo became the base from which the Allied Occupational Forces, under Douglas MacArthur, an American general, administered Japan for six years. The original rebuilding plan of Tokyo was based on a plan modelled after the Metropolitan Green Belt of London, devised in the 1930s but canceled due to the war. However, due to the monetary contraction policy known as the Dodge Line, named after Joseph Dodge, the neoliberal economic advisor to MacArthur, the plan had to be reduced to a minimal one focusing on transport and other infrastructure. In 1947, the 35 pre-war special wards were reorganized into the current 23 wards. Tokyo did not experience fast economic growth until around 1950, when heavy industry output returned to pre-war levels.
Since around the time the Allied occupation of Japan ended in 1952, Tokyo's focus shifted from rebuilding to developing beyond its pre-war stature. From the 1950s onwards, Tokyo's Metro and railway network saw significant expansion, culminating in the launch of the world's first dedicated high-speed railway line, the Shinkansen, between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964. The same year saw the development of other transport infrastructure such as the Shuto Expressway to meet the increased demand brought about by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the first Olympic Games held in Asia. Around this time, the 31-metre height restriction, imposed on all buildings since 1920, was relaxed due to the increased demand for office buildings and advancements in earthquake-proof construction. Starting with the Kasumigaseki Building (147 metres) in 1968, skyscrapers began to dominate Tokyo's skyline. During this period of rapid rebuilding, Tokyo celebrated its 500th anniversary in 1956 and the Ogasawara Islands, which had been under control of the US since the war ended, were returned in 1968. Ryokichi Minobe, a Marxian economist who served as the governor for 12 years starting in 1967, is remembered for his welfare state policy, including free healthcare for the elderly and financial support for households with children, and his ‘war against pollution’ policy, as well as the large government deficit they caused.
1973–present
Although the 1973 oil crisis put an end to the rapid post-war recovery and development of Japan's economy, its position as the world's second-largest economy at the time had seemed secure by that point, remaining so until 2010 when it was surpassed by China. Tokyo's development was sustained by its status as the economic, political, and cultural hub of such a country. In 1978, after years of the intense Sanrizuka Struggle, Narita International Airport opened as the new gateway to the city, while the relatively small Haneda Airport switched to primarily domestic flights. West Shinjuku, which had been occupied by the vast Yodobashi Water Purification Centre until 1965, became the site of an entirely new business district characterized by skyscrapers surpassing 200 metres during this period.
The American-led Plaza Accord in 1985, which aimed to depreciate the US dollar, had a devastating effect on Japan's manufacturing sector, particularly affecting small to mid-size companies based in Tokyo. This led the government to adopt a domestic-demand-focused economic policy, ultimately causing an asset price bubble. Land redevelopment projects were planned across the city, and real estate prices skyrocketed. By 1990, the estimated value of the Imperial Palace surpassed that of the entire state of California. The Tokyo Stock Exchange became the largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization, with the Tokyo-based NTT becoming the most highly valued company globally.
After the bubble burst in the early 1990s, Japan experienced a prolonged economic downturn called the "Lost Decades", which was charactized by extremely low or negative economic growth, deflation, stagnant asset prices. Tokyo's status as a world city is said to have depreciated greatly during these three decades. Nonetheless, Tokyo still saw new urban developments during this period. Recent projects include Ebisu Garden Place, Tennōzu Isle, Shiodome, Roppongi Hills, Shinagawa, and the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. Land reclamation projects in Tokyo have also been going on for centuries. The most prominent is the Odaiba area, now a major shopping and entertainment center. Various plans have been proposed for transferring national government functions from Tokyo to secondary capitals in other regions of Japan, to slow down rapid development in Tokyo and revitalize economically lagging areas of the country. These plans have been controversial within Japan and have yet to be realized.
On September 7, 2013, the IOC selected Tokyo to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. Thus, Tokyo became the first Asian city to host the Olympic Games twice. However, the 2020 Olympic Games were postponed and held from July 23 to August 8, 2021, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Administration
Local government
Under Japanese law, the prefecture of Tokyo is designated as a to (都), translated as metropolis. Tokyo Prefecture is the most populous prefecture and the densest, with 6,100 inhabitants per square kilometer (16,000/sq mi); by geographic area it is the third-smallest, above only Osaka and Kagawa. Its administrative structure is similar to that of Japan's other prefectures. The 23 special wards (特別区, tokubetsu-ku), which until 1943 constituted the city of Tokyo, are self-governing municipalities, each having a mayor, a council, and the status of a city.
In addition to these 23 special wards, Tokyo also includes 26 more cities (市 -shi), five towns (町 -chō or machi), and eight villages (村 -son or -mura), each of which has a local government. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government administers the whole metropolis including the 23 special wards and the cities and towns that constitute the prefecture. It is headed by a publicly elected governor and metropolitan assembly. Its headquarters is in Shinjuku Ward.
The governor of Tokyo is elected every four years. The incumbent governor, Yuriko Koike, was elected in 2016, following the resignation of her predecessor, Yoichi Masuzoe. She was re-elected in 2020 and in 2024. The legislature of the Metropolis is called the Metropolitan Assembly, and it has one house with 127 seats. The assembly is responsible for enacting and amending prefectural ordinances, approving the budget (8.5 trillion yen in fiscal 2024), and voting on important administrative appointments made by the governor, including the vice governors. Its members are also elected on a four-year cycle.
Municipalities
Since the completion of the Great Mergers of Heisei in 2001, Tokyo consists of 62 municipalities: 23 special wards, 26 cities, 5 towns and 8 villages. All municipalities in Japan have a directly elected mayor and a directly elected assembly, each elected on independent four-year cycles. The 23 Special Wards cover the area that had been Tokyo City until 1943, 30 other municipalities are located in the Tama area, and the remeining 9 are on Tokyo's outlying islands.
The special wards (特別区, tokubetsu-ku) of Tokyo comprise the area formerly incorporated as Tokyo City. Each special ward has used the word "city" in their official English name in recent times (e.g. Chiyoda City), but their status is more akin to boroughs in London or New York. Certain municipal functions, such as waterworks, sewerage, and fire-fighting, are handled by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government rather than each ward. To pay for the added administrative costs, the Metropolitan Government collects municipal taxes, which would usually be levied by each ward. The "three central wards" of Tokyo – Chiyoda, Chūō and Minato – are the business core of the city, with a daytime population more than seven times higher than their nighttime population. Chiyoda Ward is occupied by many major Japanese companies and is also the seat of the national government, and the Emperor of Japan, yet is one of the least populated wards.
To the west of the special wards, Tokyo Metropolis consists of cities, towns, and villages that enjoy the same legal status as those elsewhere in Japan. While serving as "bed towns" for those working in central Tokyo, some of them also have a local commercial and industrial base, such as Tachikawa. Collectively, these are often known as the Tama area or Western Tokyo. The far west of the Tama area is occupied by the district (gun) of Nishi-Tama. Much of this area is mountainous and unsuitable for urbanization. The highest mountain in Tokyo, Mount Kumotori, is 2,017 m (6,617 ft) high; other mountains in Tokyo include Takanosu (1,737 m (5,699 ft)), Odake (1,266 m (4,154 ft)), and Mitake (929 m (3,048 ft)). Lake Okutama, on the Tama River near Yamanashi Prefecture, is Tokyo's largest lake and serves as the primary reservoir for Tokyo's water supply. The district is composed of three towns (Hinode, Mizuho and Okutama) and one village (Hinohara). The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has designated Hachiōji, Tachikawa, Machida, Ōme and Tama New Town as regional centers of the Tama area.
Tokyo has numerous outlying islands, which extend as far as 1,850 km (1,150 mi) from central Tokyo. Because of the islands' distance from the administrative headquarters of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in Shinjuku, local subprefectural branch offices administer them. The Izu Islands are a group of volcanic islands and form part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. The islands in order from closest to Tokyo are Izu Ōshima, Toshima, Nii-jima, Shikine-jima, Kōzu-shima, Miyake-jima, Mikurajima, Hachijō-jima, and Aogashima. The Izu Islands are grouped into three subprefectures. Izu Ōshima and Hachijojima are towns. The remaining islands are six villages, with Niijima and Shikinejima forming one village. The Ogasawara Islands include, from north to south, Chichi-jima, Nishinoshima, Haha-jima, Kita Iwo Jima, Iwo Jima, and Minami Iwo Jima. Ogasawara also administers two small outlying islands: Minami Torishima, the easternmost point in Japan and at 1,850 km (1,150 mi) the most distant island from central Tokyo, and Okinotorishima, the southernmost point in Japan. Japan's claim on an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) surrounding Okinotorishima is contested by China and South Korea as they regard Okinotorishima as uninhabitable rocks which have no EEZ. The Iwo chain and the outlying islands have no permanent population, but hosts Japan Self-Defense Forces personnel. Local populations are only found on Chichi-Jima and Haha-Jima. The islands form both Ogasawara Subprefecture and the village of Ogasawara, Tokyo.
Environmental policies
Tokyo has enacted a measure to cut greenhouse gases. Governor Shintaro Ishihara created Japan's first emissions cap system, aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emission by a total of 25% by 2020 from the 2000 level. Tokyo is an example of an urban heat island, and the phenomenon is especially serious in its special wards. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the annual mean temperature has increased by about 3 °C (5.4 °F) over the past 100 years. Tokyo has been cited as a "convincing example of the relationship between urban growth and climate".
In 2006, Tokyo enacted the "10 Year Project for Green Tokyo" to be realized by 2016. It set a goal of increasing roadside trees in Tokyo to 1 million (from 480,000), and adding 1,000 ha (2,500 acres) of green space, 88 ha (220 acres) of which will be a new park named "Umi no Mori" (Sea Forest) which will be on a reclaimed island in Tokyo Bay which used to be a landfill. From 2007 to 2010, 436 ha (1,080 acres) of the planned 1,000 ha of green space was created and 220,000 trees were planted, bringing the total to 700,000. As of 2014, roadside trees in Tokyo have increased to 950,000, and a further 300 ha (740 acres) of green space has been added.
National government
Tokyo is the seat of all three branches of government: the legislature (National Diet), the executive (Cabinet led by the Prime Minister), and the judiciary (Supreme Court of Japan), as well as the Emperor of Japan, the head of state. Most government ministries are concentrated in the Kasumigaseki district in Chiyoda, and the name Kasumigaseki is often used as a metonym for the Japanese national civil service. Tokyo has 25 constituencies for the House of Representatives, 18 of which were won by the ruling Liberal Democrats and 7 by the main opposition Constitutional Democrats in the 2021 general election. Apart from these seats, through the Tokyo proportional representation block, Tokyo sends 17 more politicians to the House of Representatives, 6 of whom were members of the ruling LDP in the 2021 election. The Tokyo at-large district, which covers the entire metropolis, sends 12 members to the House of Councillors.
Geography
The mainland portion of Tokyo lies northwest of Tokyo Bay and measures about 90 km (56 mi) east to west and 25 km (16 mi) north to south. The average elevation in Tokyo is 40 m (131 ft). Chiba Prefecture borders it to the east, Yamanashi to the west, Kanagawa to the south, and Saitama to the north. Mainland Tokyo is further subdivided into the special wards (occupying the eastern half) and the Tama area (多摩地域) stretching westwards. Tokyo has a latitude of 35.65 (near the 36th parallel north), which makes it more southern than Rome (41.90), Madrid (40.41), New York City (40.71) and Beijing (39.91).
Within the administrative boundaries of Tokyo Metropolis are two island chains in the Pacific Ocean directly south: the Izu Islands, and the Ogasawara Islands, which stretch more than 1,000 km (620 mi) away from the mainland. Because of these islands and the mountainous regions to the west, Tokyo's overall population density figures far under-represent the real figures for the urban and suburban regions of Tokyo.
Climate
The former city of Tokyo and the majority of Tokyo prefecture lie in the humid subtropical climate zone (Köppen climate classification: Cfa), with hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters with occasional cold spells. The region, like much of Japan, experiences a one-month seasonal lag. The warmest month is August, which averages 26.9 °C (80.4 °F). The coolest month is January, averaging 5.4 °C (41.7 °F). The record low temperature was −9.2 °C (15.4 °F) on January 13, 1876. The record high was 39.5 °C (103.1 °F) on July 20, 2004.
The record highest low temperature is 30.3 °C (86.5 °F), on August 12, 2013, making Tokyo one of only seven observation sites in Japan that have recorded a low temperature over 30 °C (86.0 °F).
Annual rainfall averages nearly 1,600 millimeters (63.0 in), with a wetter summer and a drier winter. The growing season in Tokyo lasts for about 322 days from around mid-February to early January. Snowfall is sporadic, and occurs almost annually. Tokyo often sees typhoons every year, though few are strong. The wettest month since records began in 1876 was October 2004, with 780 millimeters (30 in) of rain, including 270.5 mm (10.65 in) on the ninth of that month. The most recent of four months on record to observe no precipitation is December 1995. Annual precipitation has ranged from 879.5 mm (34.63 in) in 1984 to 2,229.6 mm (87.78 in) in 1938.
See or edit raw graph data.
Tokyo's climate has warmed significantly since temperature records began in 1876.
The western mountainous area of mainland Tokyo, Okutama also lies in the humid subtropical climate (Köppen classification: Cfa).
The climates of Tokyo's offshore territories vary significantly from those of the city. The climate of Chichijima in Ogasawara village is on the boundary between the tropical savanna climate (Köppen classification: Aw) and the tropical rainforest climate (Köppen classification: Af). It is approximately 1,000 km (621 mi) south of the Greater Tokyo Area, resulting in much different climatic conditions.
Tokyo's easternmost territory, the island of Minamitorishima in Ogasawara village, is in the tropical savanna climate zone (Köppen classification: Aw). Tokyo's Izu and Ogasawara islands are affected by an average of 5.4 typhoons a year, compared to 3.1 in mainland Kantō.
Natural disasters
Earthquakes
Tokyo is near the boundary of three plates, making it an extremely active region for smaller quakes and slippage which frequently affect the urban area with swaying as if in a boat, although epicenters within mainland Tokyo (excluding Tokyo's 2,000 km (1,243 mi)–long island jurisdiction) are quite rare. It is not uncommon in the metro area to have hundreds of these minor quakes (magnitudes 4–6) that can be felt in a single year, something local residents merely brush off but can be a source of anxiety not only for foreign visitors but for Japanese from elsewhere as well. They rarely cause much damage (sometimes a few injuries) as they are either too small or far away as quakes tend to dance around the region. Particularly active are offshore regions and to a lesser extent Chiba and Ibaraki.
Tokyo has been hit by powerful megathrust earthquakes in 1703, 1782, 1812, 1855, 1923, and much more indirectly (with some liquefaction in landfill zones) in 2011; the frequency of direct and large quakes is a relative rarity. The 1923 earthquake, with an estimated magnitude of 7.9, killed more than 100,000 people, the last time the urban area was directly hit.
Volcanic eruptions
Mount Fuji is about 100 km (62 mi) southwest of Tokyo. There is a low risk of eruption. The last recorded was the Hōei eruption which started on December 16, 1707, and ended about January 1, 1708 (16 days). During the Hōei eruption, the ash amount was 4 cm in southern Tokyo (bay area) and 2 cm to 0.5 cm in central Tokyo. Kanagawa had 16 cm to 8 cm ash and Saitama 0.5 to 0 cm. If the wind blows north-east it could send volcanic ash to Tokyo metropolis. According to the government, less than a millimeter of the volcanic ash from a Mount Fuji eruption could cause power grid problems such as blackouts and stop trains in the Tokyo metropolitan area. A mixture of ash with rain could stick to cellphone antennas, power lines and cause temporary power outages. The affected areas would need to be evacuated.
Floods
Tokyo is located on the Kantō Plain with five river systems and dozens of rivers that expand during each season. Important rivers are Edogawa, Nakagawa, Arakawa, Kandagawa, Megurogawa and Tamagawa. In 1947, Typhoon Kathleen struck Tokyo, destroying 31,000 homes and killing 1,100 people. In 1958, Typhoon Ida dropped 400 mm (16 in) of rain in a single week, causing streets to flood. In the 1950s and 1960s, the government invested 6–7% of the national budget on disaster and risk reduction. A huge system of dams, levees and tunnels was constructed. The purpose is to manage heavy rain, typhonic rain, and river floods.Tokyo has currently the world's largest underground floodwater diversion facility called the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel (MAOUDC). It took 13 years to build and was completed in 2006. The MAOUDC is a 6.3 km (3.9 mi) long system of tunnels, 22 meters (72 ft) underground, with 70-meter (230 ft) tall cylindrical tanks, each tank being large enough to fit a space shuttle or the Statue of Liberty. During floods, excess water is collected from rivers and drained to the Edo River. Low-lying areas of Kōtō, Edogawa, Sumida, Katsushika, Taitō and Arakawa near the Arakawa River are most at risk of flooding.
Architecture
Tokyo's buildings are too diverse to be characterized by any specific archtectural style, but it can be generally said that a majority of extant structures were built in the past a hundred years; twice in recent history has the metropolis been left in ruins: first in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and later after extensive firebombing in World War II.
Early modern (1407–1868)
The oldest known extant building in Tokyo is Shofukuji in Higashi-Murayama. The current building was constructed in 1407, during the Muromachi period (1336–1573). Although greatly reduced in number by later fires, earthquakes, and air raids, a considerable number of Edo-era buildings survive to this day. The Tokyo Imperial Palace, which was occupied by the Tokugawa Shogunate as Edo Castle during the Edo Period (1603–1868), has many gates and towers dating from that era, although the main palace buildings and the tenshu tower have been lost.
Numerous temple and shrine buildings in Tokyo date from this era: the Ueno Toshogu still maintains the original 1651 building built by the third shogun Iemitsu Tokugawa. Although partially destroyed during the Second World War, Zojo-ji, which houses the Tokugawa family mausoleum, still has grand Edo-era buildings such as the Sangedatsu gate. Kaneiji has grand 17th-century buildings such as the five-storey pagoda and the Shimizudo. The Nezu Shrine and Gokokuji were built by the fifth shogun Tsunayoshi Tokugawa in the late 1600s. All feudal lords (daimyo) had large Edo houses where they stayed when in Edo; at one point, these houses amounted to half the total area of Edo. None of the grand Edo-era daimyo houses still exist in Tokyo, as their vast land footprint made them easy targets for redevelopment programs for modernization during the Meiji Period. Some gardens were immune from such fates and are today open to the public; Hamarikyu (Kofu Tokugawa family), Shibarikyu (Kishu Tokugawa family), Koishikawa Korakuen (Mito Tokugawa family), Rikugien (Yanagisawa family), and Higo Hosokawa Garden (Hosokawa family). The Akamon, which is now widely seen as a symbol of the University of Tokyo, was originally built to commemorate the marriage of a shogun's daughter into the Maeda clan, one of the most affluent of the feudal lords, while the campus itself occupies their former edo estate.
Modern (1869–1945)
The Meiji era saw a rapid modernization in architectural styles as well; until the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 exposed their weakness to seimic shocks, grand brick buildings were constantly built across the city. Tokyo Station (1914), the Ministry of Justice building (1895) and Mistubishi building one (1894, rebuilt in 2010) are some of the few brick survivors from this period. It was regarded as fashionable by some members of the Japanese aristocracy to build their Tokyo residences in grand and modern styles, and some of these buildings still exist, although most are in private hands and open to the public on limited occasions. Aristocratic residences today open to the public include the Marquess Maeda residence in Komaba, the Baron Iwasaki residence in Ikenohata and the Baron Furukawa residence in Nishigahara.
The Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 ushered in an era of concrete architecture. Surviving reinforced concrete buildings from this era include the Meiji Insurance Headquarters (completed in 1934), the Mitsui Headquarters (1929), Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi flagship store (1914, refurbished in 1925), Takashimaya Nihonbashi flagship store (1932), Wako in Ginza (1932) and Isetan Shinjuku flagship store (1933). This spread of earthquake and fire-resistant architecture reached council housing too, most notably the Dōjunkai apartments.
The 1930s saw the rise of styles that combined characteristics of both traditional Japanese and modern designs. Chuta Ito was a leading figure in this movement, and his extant works in Tokyo include Tsukiji Hongan-ji (1934). The Imperial Crown Style, which often features Japanese-style roofs on top of elevated concrete structures, was adopted for the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno and the Kudan Hall in Kudanminami.
Contemporary (1946–)
Since the 30-metre height restriction was lifted in the 1960s, Tokyo's most dense areas have been dominated by skyscrapers. As of May 2024, there are at least 184 buildings exceeding 150 metres (492 feet) in Tokyo. Apart from these, Tokyo Tower (333m) and Tokyo Sky Tree (634m) feature high-elevation observation decks; the latter is the tallest tower in both Japan and the world, and the second tallest structure in the world after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. With a scheduled completion date in 2027, Torch Tower (385m) will overtake Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower (325.2m) as the tallest building in Tokyo.
Kenzo Tange designed notable contemporary buildings in Tokyo, including Yoyogi National Gymnasium (1964), St. Mary's Cathedral (1967), and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (1991). Kisho Kurokawa was also active in the city, and his works there include the National Art Center (2005) and the Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972). Other notable contemporary buildings in Tokyo include the Tokyo Dome, Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, Roppongi Hills, Tokyo International Forum, and Asahi Beer Hall.
Demographics
As of October 2012, the official intercensal estimate showed 13.506 million people in Tokyo, with 9.214 million living within Tokyo's 23 wards. During the daytime, the population swells by over 2.5 million as workers and students commute from adjacent areas. This effect is even more pronounced in the three central wards of Chiyoda, Chūō, and Minato, whose collective population as of the 2005 National Census was 326,000 at night, but 2.4 million during the day.
According to April 2024 official estimates, Setagaya (942,003), Nerima (752,608), and Ota (748,081) were the most populous wards and municipalities in Tokyo. The least inhabited of all Tokyo municipalities are remote island villages such as Aogashima (150), Mikurajima (289), and Toshima (306).
Age structure and average age
In 2021, Tokyo's average and median ages were both 45.5 years old. This is below the national median age of 49.0, placing Tokyo among the youngest regions in Japan. 16.8% of the population was below 15, while 34.6% was above 65. In the same year, the youngest municipalities in Tokyo were Mikura-jima (average age 40.72), Chuo (41.92), and Chiyoda (42.07), while the oldest included Okutama (59.11) and Miyake (53.82).
Immigration
In 1889, the Home Ministry recorded 1,375,937 people in Tokyo City and a total of 1,694,292 people in Tokyo-fu. In the same year, a total of 779 foreign nationals were recorded as residing in Tokyo. The most common nationality was English (209 residents), followed by American (182) and Chinese nationals (137).
As of January 2024, Tokyo had 647,416 foreign nationals registered as residents, with China, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Nepal, Taiwan, and the United States each having more than 20,000 nationals living there as citizens. Since the COVID-19 pandemic ended, Tokyo's foreign population has increased significantly, now nearly 20% above the January 2022 population of 546,436. There is no official survey of race or place of birth as of June 2024.
Dialects
Japanese is the primary language spoken throughout the metropolis, though regional and socio-economic differences can be heard. Traditionally, dialects in Tokyo are classified into two groups: the Yamanote dialect and the Shitamachi dialect. The former has traditionally been spoken in the upper- and upper-middle-class residential area of Yamanote, which includes Bancho, Kojimachi, Koishikawa, Kudan, Yotsuya, Azabu, and Akasaka. During the Edo period, these neighborhoods were occupied by Daimyo and other powerful samurai families, and the dialect evolved largely based on their way of speech. Standard Japanese pronunciation is largely based on this accent and spread across the country with the introduction of radio. The Shitamachi dialect, in contrast, has been associated with the Chōnin district of Shitamachi and retains many characteristics of the accents spoken there in the Edo era. However, socio-economic changes in the post-war period and the large influx of people moving from other areas have largely blurred these distinctions in recent years. It has been reported that young generations are not as aware of the differences in dialects as their parents' and grandparents' generations were.
The Hachijō dialect, spoken primarily in Hachijōjima and Aogashima, descended from 6th-8th century Eastern Old Japanese and has fewer than 1,000 speakers. Bonin English is a creole spoken in the Ogasawara Islands, derived from English and Japanese, as the islands’ population historically consisted of people of Japanese, British, American, Hawaiian, and Polynesian origins, mostly mixed-race.
Economy
Tokyo's gross regional product was 113.7 trillion yen or US$1.04 trillion in FY2021 and accounted for 20.7% of the country's total economic output, which converts to 8.07 million yen or US$73,820 per capita. By sector, Wholesale and Retail was the largest contributor, accounting for 21.5% of the total output. This was followed by Real Estate (13.5%), Professional, Scientific and Technical (12.2%), Information and Communications (11.7%), Finance and Insurance (7.6%), Manufacturing (7.0%), and Healthcare (6.7%). Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, and Mining combined accounted for less than 0.1% of the economic output. As these numbers suggest, Tokyo's economy is heavily dependent on the tertiary sector. As the Greater Tokyo Area, it has the second-largest metropolitan economy in the world, after Greater New York, with a gross metropolitan product estimated at US$2 trillion. The area's economy is slightly smaller than Canada's economy while being slightly larger than Mexico's, according to IMF estimates from the same year.
Tokyo's business districts are concentrated in four central wards: Chiyoda (Marunouchi, Otemachi, Kasumigaseki), Chuo (Nihombashi, Kyobashi, Yaesu), Minato (Shimbashi, Shiodome, Toranomon), and Shinjuku (West Shinjuku). The 23 Special Wards of Tokyo had 73.5 million m2 of office space as of January 2022.
In 2023, 29 of the Fortune Global 500 companies were headquartered in Tokyo, which was the second highest concentration in the world after Beijing. Notably, around 20 of them are based in Marunouchi, such as MUFG, Mitsubish Corp. and Hitachi. Tokyo was rated by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the most expensive (highest cost-of-living) city in the world for 14 years in a row ending in 2006, when it was replaced by Oslo, and later Paris. However, years of deflation and an extremely weak yen starting in 2022 due to Japan's low interest rates made the cost of living in Tokyo 31% cheaper than in New York City in 2023, which is roughly the same as in Beijing and Manchester according to the 2023 EIU rankings. Henley & Partners estimated that there were 298,300 individuals with a net worth of more than US$1 million living in Tokyo in 2024, the third highest number in the world.
Finance
Tokyo is a major international finance center; it houses the headquarters of several of the world's largest investment banks and insurance companies, and serves as a hub for Japan's transportation, publishing, electronics and broadcasting industries. During the centralized growth of Japan's economy following World War II, many large firms moved their headquarters from cities such as Osaka (the historical commercial capital) to Tokyo, in an attempt to take advantage of better access to the government.
Tokyo emerged as a leading international financial center (IFC) in the 1960s and has been described as one of the three "command centers" for the world economy, along with New York City and London. In the 2020 Global Financial Centers Index, Tokyo was ranked as having the fourth most competitive financial center in the world, and second most competitive in Asia (after Shanghai). Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo-Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mizuho Financial Group, all among the top 20 banks in the world by total assets in 2023, are headquartered in Tokyo.
The Japanese financial market opened up slowly in 1984 and accelerated its internationalization with the "Japanese Big Bang" in 1998. Despite the emergence of Singapore and Hong Kong as competing financial centers, the Tokyo IFC manages to keep a prominent position in Asia. The Tokyo Stock Exchange is Japan's largest stock exchange, and third largest in the world by market capitalization and fourth largest by share turnover. In 1990 at the end of the Japanese asset price bubble, it accounted for more than 60% of the world stock market value.
Media and communications
Tokyo's position as the country's cultural, political and economic hub has made its media industry the largest in Japan. A majority of national media companies are headquartered in Tokyo, as well as the Asian or Japanese branches of international media companies. The NHK, the oldest and only nation-wide public broadcaster in the country, is headquartered in Shibuya. Other national broadcasters, such as TBS, Nippon Television, Fuji Television, and TV Asahi, are also based in Tokyo. Of the five major national newspapers, The Nikkei, The Mainichi, and The Yomiuri are headquartered in Tokyo, while the other two, The Asahi and The Sankei, maintain head offices both in Tokyo and Osaka. Major publishers based in Tokyo include Shueisha, Kodansha, Kadokawa, Shogakukan, Bungeishunju, Shinchosha, and Iwanami Shoten, with a high concentration in Chiyoda and Shinjuku.
Dentsu, Hakuhodo, and ADK Holdings, all based in Tokyo, are the country's largest advertising agencies. All three major telecommunications companies in Japan, namely NTT (whose market capitalization was once the largest among all publicly traded companies in the world), KDDI, and SoftBank, are based in Tokyo. Tokyo is also a major hub for anime production, with major anime studios such as Studio Ghibli, Gainax, Madhouse, A-1 Pictures, MAPPA, Wit Studio, Toei, and Shaft based particularly in the west of the metropolis.
Tourism
In 2019, tourism accounted for slightly more than one percent of Tokyo's total economic output, with 15.18 million foreign visitors spending 1.26 trillion yen, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
According to a 2022 government survey, the most visited areas in Tokyo were:
Shibuya: Shibuya Crossing, Yoyogi Park, Hachiko statue
Shinjuku: Kabukicho, Shinjuku Gyoen
Ginza: Shopping district, Kabukiza
Marunouchi/Nihombashi: Imperial Palace, Shopping district (Mitsukoshi, Takashimaya)
Asakusa: Sensoji, Tokyo Skytree
Akihabara: electronics and anime culture
Ueno: National Museum, National Science Museum, Ueno zoo, Ueno Park
Harajuku/Omoesando: Meiji Shrine, Takeshita dori
Roppongi: Roppongi Hills, Azabudai Hills, National Arts Center Tokyo, Suntory Art Museum, Mori Art Museum
Ikebukuro: Shopping district
Luxury hotels in Tokyo include the Imperial Hotel (opened in 1890), Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo (opened in 1992), Hotel Okura Tokyo (opened in 1962), Meguro Gajoen Hotel, Conrad Tokyo, the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo and Aman Tokyo.
Agriculture, fishery and forestry
The Toyosu Market in Tokyo is the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world since it opened on October 11, 2018. It is also one of the largest wholesale food markets of any kind. It is located in the Toyosu area of Kōtō ward. The Toyosu Market holds strong to the traditions of its predecessor, the Tsukiji Fish Market and Nihonbashi fish market, and serves some 50,000 buyers and sellers every day. Retailers, whole-sellers, auctioneers, and public citizens alike frequent the market, creating a unique microcosm of organized chaos that still continues to fuel the city and its food supply after over four centuries.
Tokyo had 8,460 hectares (20,900 acres) of agricultural land as of 2003, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, placing it last among the nation's prefectures. The farmland is concentrated in Western Tokyo. Perishables such as vegetables, fruits, and flowers can be conveniently shipped to the markets in the eastern part of the prefecture.
With 36% of its area covered by forest, Tokyo has extensive growths of cryptomeria and Japanese cypress, especially in the mountainous western communities of Akiruno, Ōme, Okutama, Hachiōji, Hinode, and Hinohara. Decreases in the price of timber, increases in the cost of production, and advancing old age among the forestry population have resulted in a decline in Tokyo's output. In addition, pollen, especially from cryptomeria, is a major allergen for the nearby population centers. Tokyo Bay was once a major source of fish. Most of Tokyo's fish production comes from the outer islands, such as Izu Ōshima and Hachijō-Jima. Skipjack tuna, nori, and aji are among the ocean products.
Transportation
Tokyo, which is the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, is Japan's largest domestic and international hub for rail and ground transportation. Public transportation within Tokyo is dominated by an extensive network of "clean and efficient" trains and subways run by a variety of operators, with buses, monorails and trams playing a secondary feeder role. There are up to 62 electric train lines and more than 900 train stations in Tokyo. Shibuya Crossing is the "world's busiest pedestrian crossing", with around 3,000 people crossing at a time.
Rail
Rail is the primary mode of transportation in Tokyo, which has the most extensive urban railway network in the world and an equally extensive network of surface lines. JR East operates Tokyo's largest railway network, including the Yamanote Line loop that circles central Tokyo. It operates rail lines throughout the entire metropolitan area of Tokyo and the rest of northeastern Honshu. JR East is also responsible for the Shinkansen high-speed rail lines that link Tokyo and Northeastern cities of Japan (Joetsu Shinkansen, Tohoku/Hokkaido Shinkansen, Yamagata Shinkansen, Akita Shinkansen, Hokuriku Shinkansen). The Tokaido Shinkansen, which links Tokyo and Osaka via Nagoya and Kyoto, as well as western cities beyond, is operated by JR Central. The Chuo Shinkansen, the first-ever long-distance high-speed floating maglev line currently under construction, will also be operated by JR Central. Both JR companies were created from the privatization of Japan National Railways in 1987. JR Freight does not own any part of the railway network but operates freight trains on the JR network.
Two different entities operate Tokyo's underground railway network: the privatized Tokyo Metro, which operates Tokyo Metro lines, and the governmental Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation, which operates Toei lines. Tokyo Metro is entirely owned by the Japanese Government and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government since it was privatized in 2004 (it was previously a public entity called the Imperial Capital Rapid Transit Authority from 1941 to 2004), but it is scheduled to go public in 2024. Other major railway operators in Tokyo include Odakyu, Tokyu, Keio, Seibu, Tobu, and Keisei. Although each operator directly owns its railway lines, through services that travel across different lines owned by different operators are common.
Tokyo once had an extensive tram network, with a total distance of 213 km (Tokyo Toden). However, similar to other major cities worldwide, the age of motorization since the 1950s made it considered unfit to share busy roads with cars. Today, only one line, the Arakawa line, remains.
Roads
Tokyo has the lowest car ownership rate among all prefectures in Japan, with 0.416 cars per household compared to the national average of 1.025 per household. This is despite Tokyo being one of the most affluent areas in the country, with a nominal GDP per capita of around US$75,000. A 2021 survey found that 81% of respondents without a car were satisfied with public transport and saw no need to own one.
Each road in Tokyo falls into one of the following categories depending on the type of ownership: private roads, municipal roads, metropolitan roads and expressways. As of April 1, 2022, the total length of roads in Tokyo is approximately 24,741 km (including 2,370 km of metropolitan roads), with a total area of approximately 190.31 km2 (including 46.30 km2 of metropolitan roads).
Intercity expressways in and around Tokyo are managed by NEXCO East, while expressways that serve only within the Greater Tokyo Area (Shuto Expressway) are operated by the Metropolitan Expressway Company. Tolls are collected based on the distance travelled. The total length of the Shuto Expressway is 337.8 km, with speed limits usually set at 80 km/h or 60 km/h to reduce noise pollution and accommodate the relatively winding road shapes.
Aviation
The mainland portion of Tokyo is served by two international airports: Haneda Airport in Ōta and Narita International Airport in neighboring Chiba Prefecture. Haneda has served as the primary airport for Tokyo since 1931. However, the Jet Age saw an exponential increase in flights, prompting the government to build a second airport. Narita was chosen as the site for this second airport in 1966, but local farmers and left-wing activists who sympathized with them protested vehemently for more than a decade (the Sanrizuka Struggle), delaying the new airport's opening until 1978. Almost all international flights were transferred to Narita Airport upon its completion, and Haneda became primarily a domestic airport.
The situation changed when it was decided to expand Haneda Airport and build new runways in 2001. The new runway, Runway D, was constructed partly as a pier-like structure rather than a landfilled structure to avoid obstructing the flow of water in the bay. Its opening in 2010 marked the return of international flights to Haneda, which is much closer to central Tokyo. In 2023, Haneda handled 17.9 million international passengers and 60.8 million domestic passengers, while Narita was used by 25.4 million international passengers and 7.7 million domestic passengers. According to a 2023 survey, Haneda is the fifth busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic.
Hachijō-jima (Hachijojima Airport), Kōzu-shima (Kōzushima Airport), Miyakejima (Miyakejima Airport), Nii-jima (Niijima Airport), and Izu Ōshima (Oshima Airport), located on the Izu Islands, which are governed by the Tokyo Metropolis have services to Haneda and the Chōfu Airport located in Chōfu.
Water transport
Water transport is the primary means of importing and exporting goods as well as connecting the Tokyo Islands to the mainland. According to Lloyd's List, the Port of Tokyo handled 4,430,000 TEU of containers in 2022, making it the 46th largest port in the world. The Greater Tokyo Area is served by other major ports such as the Port of Yokohama and the Port of Chiba as well.
Takeshiba Pier (竹芝埠頭) in Minato is used by Tōkai Kisen, which serves islands such as Izu Ōshima, Miyakejima, Hachijojima, Kozushima, and Ogasawara Kaiun, which serves the Ogasawara Islands. Many of these islands are accessible only by ocean routes and helicopters, as they are too small or undulating for a landing ground, making these ships the primary means of inter-island transport. There are ferry routes that connect landmarks within the mainland portion of Tokyo as well; the Tokyo Cruise Ship and the Tokyo Mizube Line operate several routes between tourist attractions such as Asakusa, Hamarikyu, Odaiba, and Shinagawa Aquarium. The Symphony Cruise operates two large restaurant ships that can also be hired as party venues.
Education
Tokyo is the educational, academic, and cultural hub of Japan. From primary to tertiary levels, numerous educational institutions operate in the city to cater to a diverse range of pupils and students.
Tertiary education
Tokyo is the heartland of tertiary education in the country, home to 143 authorized universities in 2020. This number includes the nation's most prestigious and selective universities, such as, the University of Tokyo (QS National:1st), Tokyo Institute of Technology (4th), Hitotsubashi University (15th), Waseda University (9th), and Keio University (10th). Additionally, Tokyo University of the Arts is widely regarded as the most prestigious painting, sculpture, crafts, and music school in the country. The United Nations University, which is the academic arm of the United Nations, is headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. In 2024, QS Best Student Cities ranked Tokyo as the second-best city for university students, after London. The ranking noted that Tokyo is ideal for 'those who favour total immersion in local culture rather than living in a “student bubble”', stating that despite having high-ranking universities and large global companies offering internships as well as rich culture, Tokyo still has a very low international student population ratio.
Primary and secondary education
At the secondary level, 429 senior high schools are located in Tokyo, six of which are national, 186 are public, and 237 are private. Some senior high schools, often prestigious national or private ones, run jointly with their affiliated junior high schools, providing six-year educational programs (Chūkō Ikkan Kyōiku). The Kaisei Academy, Komaba Junior & Senior High School, University of Tsukuba, Azabu High School, and Oin Junior and Senior High School, the largest sources of successful applicants to the nation's top university, the University of Tokyo, are some examples of such. At the primary level, there are 1332 elementary schools in Tokyo. Six of them are national, 1261 are public, and 53 are private.
Early-modern-established academies such as Gakushuin and Keio provide all-through educational programs from primary schools to universities, originally to cater to the needs of traditionally affluent and powerful families. There are international and ethnic schools that abide by the national curricula of their respective countries or international curricula rather than the Japanese one as well, such as the British School in Tokyo, Tokyo Chinese School, the American School in Japan, and the Tokyo International School.
Learned societies
Almost all major Japanese learned societies are based in Tokyo. The Japan Academy, the country's academy of sciences, was established in 1879 to bring together leading scholars in various disciplines. The Japan Art Academy was established in 1919 with a similar purpose. These two national academies are headquartered in Ueno Park. The newest national academy, the Science Council of Japan, was established in 1949 with the purpose of promoting scientific research and the application of research findings to civilian life. It is located in Roppongi, Minato.
Culture
Museums, art galleries, libraries and zoos
Tokyo is home to a wide array of museums, art galleries, and libraries, catering to various interests. Ueno Park has the Tokyo National Museum, the country's largest museum specializing in traditional Japanese art, the National Museum of Western Art, whose building designed by Le Corbusier is a world heritage site, and the National Museum of Nature and Science. Ueno Zoo is also located within the park, near the Shinobazu Pond. It is famous for being one of the three zoos in Japan to have giant pandas, with a population of 4 as of May 2024. Other notable museums include the Artizon Museum in Chūō, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Odaiba, and the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Sumida, which provides insights into the history and culture of Tokyo. The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum preserves various buildings that have existed throughout the history of Tokyo. The Nezu Museum in Aoyama has a collection of pre-modern Japanese and East Asian art. Located near the Imperial Palace, the National Diet Library, the National Archives, and the National Museum of Modern Art are also notable cultural institutions. Additionally, the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi and the Sumida Hokusai Museum in Sumida ward are notable for their contemporary and ukiyo-e art collections, respectively. The Sompo Museum of Art in Shinjuku is best known for owning one of Gogh's Sunflowers. The Tokyo Metropolitan Garden Art Museum in Minato features the former Tokyo House of Yasuhiko, Prince Asaka, which was built in an opulent Art Deco style in 1933. The Railway Museum, which used to be located in Kanda, has relocated to a larger site in Omiya, Saitama and stores 42 train carriages and locomotives of historical importance. The Tobacco and Salt Museum in Sumida has one of the world's most extensive collections of different types of tobacco and salt. Major aquariums in Tokyo include: Shinagawa Aquarium, Tokyo Sea Life Park, Sunshine Aquarium and Sumida Aquarium.
Leisure and entertainment
Tokyo offers a diverse array of leisure and entertainment options. The city is home to numerous theatres. The National Noh Theatre and Kabuki-za are dedicated to traditional Japanese plays. The New National Theatre Tokyo in Shibuya serves as a central venue for opera, ballet, contemporary dance, and drama. Other major play and concert venues include: the National Theatre of Japan, the Imperial Theatre, the Meiji-za, the NHK Hall, the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Tokyo Opera City and the Tokyo International Forum. Two sports venues, the Nippon Budokan and the Tokyo Dome, are usually used to host concerts by popular pop artists.
The nightlife district of Tokyo is centered around areas in the west of the city such as Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Roppongi, with high a concentration of bars, clubs, host and hostess clubs, and live music venues. Tokyo is also known for its festivals, such as the Sannō Matsuri at Hie Shrine, the Sanja Festival at Asakusa Shrine, and the biennial Kanda Matsuri, which features parades with elaborately decorated floats. Harajuku, located in Shibuya, is internationally famous for its youth fashion and street culture, with trendy shops, cafes, and Takeshita Street. Akihabara, known as “Electric Town”, is a hub for electronics and otaku culture such as anime and computer games, with numerous shops selling anime, manga, and gaming merchandise.
Ginza and Nihombashi are two of Tokyo's most notable shopping districts. Ginza is known for its high-end shopping, featuring luxury brand stores, boutique shops, and department stores such as Mitsukoshi and Wako. It is also home to numerous fine dining places and art galleries, making it a cultural and commercial hub. Nihombashi, historically a center of commerce, has long-established shops and the Mitsukoshi department flagship store, Japan's first department store, founded in 1673. Jinbōchō is known for its concentration of bookstores, publishing houses, and literary cafes, and its links to a large number of famous literary figures.
Modern attractions in Tokyo include the Tokyo Skytree in Sumida, the tallest structure in Japan, which provides panoramic views of the city from its observation decks. Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo Bay, features shopping, dining and entertainment attractions such as the teamLab Planets digital art museum and Joypolis indoor amusement park. The Tokyo Disney Resort and its two theme parks Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea are major destinations for family entertainment. Although these Disney theme parks bear the name Tokyo, they are in fact located in nearby Urayasu, Chiba, just east of Tokyo.
Food
In November 2007, Michelin released their first guide for fine dining in Tokyo, awarding 191 stars in total, or about twice as many as Tokyo's nearest competitor, Paris. As of 2017, 227 restaurants in Tokyo have been awarded (92 in Paris). Twelve establishments were awarded the maximum of three stars (Paris has 10), 54 received two stars, and 161 earned one star.
Recreation
Natural settings for outdoor activities include Okutama and Mount Takao, which are known for their hiking trails and scenic views. Kasai Seaside Park provides coastal leisure activities. Ueno Park houses several museums, a zoo, and is famous for its cherry blossoms. Inokashira Park in Kichijoji features a pond, a zoo, and in its vicinity the Ghibli Museum. Yoyogi Park, located near Shibuya, is popular for picnics and outdoor events. Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, Koishikawa Korakuen Garden, Rikugien Garden, Hamarikyu Gardens, Kiyosumi Garden, Kyu Shiba Rikyu Garden, Chinzanso Garden, Happo-en Garden, Mukojima-Hyakkaen Garden and Meiji Jingu Inner Garden are popular traditional Japanese gardens in Tokyo, some of which originally belonged to members of the kazoku nobility. Botanical gardens in Tokyo include the University of Tokyo's Koishikawa Botanical Garden, the Yumenoshima Tropical Greenhouse Dome and the Institute for Nature Study Nature Reserve.
National parks
As of March 31, 2008, 36% of the total land area of the prefecture was designated as Natural Parks (second only to Shiga Prefecture), namely the Chichibu Tama Kai, Fuji-Hakone-Izu, and Ogasawara National Park (the last a UNESCO World Heritage Site); Meiji no Mori Takao Quasi-National Park; and Akikawa Kyūryō, Hamura Kusabana Kyūryō, Sayama, Takao Jinba, Takiyama, and Tama Kyūryō Prefectural Natural Parks.
In popular culture
As the largest population center in Japan and the site of the country's largest broadcasters and studios, Tokyo is frequently the setting for many Japanese movies, television shows, animated series' (anime), web comics, light novels, video games, and comic books (manga). In the kaiju (monster movie) genre, landmarks of Tokyo are usually destroyed by giant monsters such as Godzilla and Gamera.
Tokyo is also a popular foreign setting for non-Japanese media. Some Hollywood directors have turned to Tokyo as a backdrop for movies set in Japan. Postwar examples include Tokyo Joe, My Geisha, Tokyo Story and the James Bond film You Only Live Twice; recent examples include Kill Bill, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Lost in Translation, Babel, Inception, The Wolverine and Avengers: Endgame.
Japanese author Haruki Murakami has based some of his novels in Tokyo (including Norwegian Wood), and David Mitchell's first two novels (number9dream and Ghostwritten) featured the city. Contemporary British painter Carl Randall spent 10 years living in Tokyo as an artist, creating a body of work depicting the city's crowded streets and public spaces.
Sports
Tokyo, with a diverse array of sports, is home to two professional baseball clubs, the Yomiuri Giants who play at the Tokyo Dome and Tokyo Yakult Swallows at Meiji-Jingu Stadium. The Japan Sumo Association is also headquartered in Tokyo at the Ryōgoku Kokugikan sumo arena where three official sumo tournaments are held annually (in January, May, and September). Soccer clubs in Tokyo include F.C. Tokyo and Tokyo Verdy, both of which play at Ajinomoto Stadium in Chōfu, and FC Machida Zelvia at Nozuta Stadium in Machida. Rugby Union is also played in Tokyo, with multiple Japan Rugby League One clubs based in the city including: Black Rams Tokyo (Setagaya), Tokyo Sungoliath (Fuchū) and Toshiba Brave Lupus Tokyo (Fuchū).
Basketball clubs include the Hitachi SunRockers, Toyota Alvark Tokyo, and Tokyo Excellence.
Tokyo hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, thus becoming the first Asian city to host the Summer Games. The National Stadium, also known as the Olympic Stadium, was host to a number of international sporting events. In 2016, it was to be replaced by the New National Stadium. With a number of world-class sports venues, Tokyo often hosts national and international sporting events such as basketball tournaments, women's volleyball tournaments, tennis tournaments, swim meets, marathons, rugby union and sevens rugby games, soccer exhibition games, judo, and karate. Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, in Sendagaya, Shibuya, is a large sports complex that includes swimming pools, training rooms, and a large indoor arena. According to Around the Rings, the gymnasium has played host to the October 2011 artistic gymnastics world championships, despite the International Gymnastics Federation's initial doubt in Tokyo's ability to host the championships after the triple disaster hits Japan. Tokyo was also selected to host a number of games for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, and to host the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, which had to be rescheduled to the summer of 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic.
International relations
Tokyo is the founding member of the Asian Network of Major Cities 21 and is a member of the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations. Tokyo was also a founding member of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.
Sister cities and states
As of 2022, Tokyo has twinning or friendship agreements with the following twelve cities and states:
Friendship and cooperation agreements
Tomsk Oblast, Russia (since May 2015)
Brussels, Belgium (since October 2016)
Los Angeles County, United States (since August 2021)
International academic and scientific research
Research and development in Japan and the Japanese space program are globally represented by several of Tokyo's medical and scientific facilities, including the University of Tokyo and other universities in Tokyo, which work in collaboration with many international institutions. Especially with the United States, including NASA and the many private spaceflight companies, Tokyo universities have working relationships with all of the Ivy League institutions (including Harvard and Yale University), along with other research universities and development laboratories, such as Stanford, MIT, and the UC campuses throughout California, as well as UNM and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Other partners worldwide include Oxford University in the United Kingdom, the National University of Singapore in Singapore, the University of Toronto in Canada, and Tsinghua University in China.
See also
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Guides
Bender, Andrew, and Timothy N. Hornyak. Tokyo (City Travel Guide) (2010)
Mansfield, Stephen. Dk Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guide: Tokyo (2013)
Waley, Paul. Tokyo Now and Then: An Explorer's Guide. (1984). 592 pp
Yanagihara, Wendy. Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter
Contemporary
Allinson, Gary D. Suburban Tokyo: A Comparative Study in Politics and Social Change. (1979). 258 pp.
Bestor, Theodore. Neighborhood Tokyo (1989). online edition
Bestor, Theodore. Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Centre of the World. (2004) online edition
Fowler, Edward. San'ya Blues: Labouring Life in Contemporary Tokyo. (1996) ISBN 0-8014-8570-3.
Friedman, Mildred, ed. Tokyo, Form and Spirit. (1986). 256 pp.
Jinnai, Hidenobu. Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology. (1995). 236 pp.
Jones, Sumie et al. eds. A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan's Modern Metropolis, 1850–1920 (2017); primary sources excerpt
Perez, Louis G. Tokyo: Geography, History, and Culture (ABC-CLIO, 2019).
Reynolds, Jonathan M. "Japan's Imperial Diet Building: Debate over Construction of a National Identity". Art Journal. 55#3 (1996) pp. 38+.
Sassen, Saskia. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. (1991). 397 pp.
Sorensen, A. Land Readjustment and Metropolitan Growth: An Examination of Suburban Land Development and Urban Sprawl in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (2000)
Taira, J. [re]TOKYO. (2018). San Francisco: ORO Editions. ISBN 978-1-940743-66-0
Waley, Paul. "Tokyo-as-world-city: Reassessing the Role of Capital and the State in Urban Restructuring". Urban Studies 2007 44(8): 1465–1490. ISSN 0042-0980 Fulltext: Ebsco
External links
Official website (in Japanese)
Official website (in English)
Tokyo tourism website
Go Tokyo travel guide
Tokyo Convention & Visitors Bureau |
Potsdam_Agreement | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Agreement | [
344
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Agreement"
] | The Potsdam Agreement (German: Potsdamer Abkommen) was the agreement among three of the Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union after the war ended in Europe on 1 August 1945 and it was published the next day. A product of the Potsdam Conference, it concerned the military occupation and reconstruction of Germany, its border, and the entire European Theatre of War territory. It also addressed Germany's demilitarisation, reparations, the prosecution of war criminals and the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from various parts of Europe. France was not invited to the conference but formally remained one of the powers occupying Germany.
Executed as a communiqué, the agreement was not a peace treaty according to international law, although it created accomplished facts. It was superseded by the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany signed on 12 September 1990.
As De Gaulle had not been invited to the Conference, the French resisted implementing the Potsdam Agreements within their occupation zone. In particular, the French refused to resettle any expelled Germans from the east. Moreover, the French did not accept any obligation to abide by the Potsdam Agreement in the proceedings of the Allied Control Council; in particular resisting all proposals to establish common policies and institutions across Germany as a whole (for example France separated Saarland from Germany to establish its protectorate on 16 February 1946), and anything that they feared might lead to the emergence of an eventual unified German government.
Overview
After the end of World War II in Europe (1939–1945), and the decisions of the earlier Tehran, Casablanca and Yalta Conferences, the Allies assumed supreme authority over Germany by the Berlin Declaration of June 5, 1945.
At the Potsdam Conference the Western Allies were presented with Stalin's fait accompli awarding Soviet-occupied Poland the river Oder as its western border, placing the entire Soviet Occupation Zone east of it (with the exception of the Kaliningrad enclave), including Pomerania, most of East Prussia, and Danzig, under Polish administration. The German population who had not fled were expelled and their properties acquisitioned by the state. President Truman and the British delegations protested at these actions.
The Three Power Conference took place from 17 July to 2 August 1945, in which they adopted the Protocol of the Proceedings, August 1, 1945, signed at Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam. The signatories were General Secretary Joseph Stalin, President Harry S. Truman, and Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who, as a result of the British general election of 1945, had replaced Winston Churchill as the UK's representative. The three powers also agreed to invite France and China to participate as members of the Council of Foreign Ministers established to oversee the agreement. The Provisional Government of the French Republic accepted the invitation on August 7, with the key reservation that it would not accept a priori any commitment to the eventual reconstitution of a central government in Germany.
James F. Byrnes wrote "we specifically refrained from promising to support at the German Peace Conference any particular line as the western frontier of Poland." The Berlin Protocol declared: "The three heads of government reaffirm their opinion that the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the [final] peace settlement." Byrnes continues: "In the light of this history, it is difficult to credit with good faith any person who asserts that Poland's western boundary was fixed by the conferences, or that there was a promise that it would be established at some particular place." Despite this, the Oder-Neisse Line was set as Poland's provisional (and therefore theoretically subject to change) western frontier in Article 8 of the Agreement but was not finalized as Poland's permanent western frontier until the 1990 German-Polish Border Treaty, having been recognized by East Germany in 1950 (in the Treaty of Zgorzelec) and acquiesced to by West Germany in 1970 (in the Treaty of Moscow (1970) and the Treaty of Warsaw (1970)).
Protocol
In the Potsdam Agreement (Berlin Conference) the Allies (UK, USSR, US) agreed on the following matters:
Establishment of a Council of Foreign Ministers, also including France and China; tasked the preparation of a peace settlement for Germany, to be accepted by the Government of Germany once a government adequate for the purpose had been established.
See the London Conference of Foreign Ministers and the Moscow Conference which took place later in 1945.
The principles to govern the treatment of Germany in the initial control period.
See European Advisory Commission and Allied Control Council
A. Political principles.
Post-war Germany to be divided into four Occupation Zones under the control of Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and France; with the Commanders-in-chief of each country's forces exercising sovereign authority over matters within their own zones, while exercising authority jointly through the Allied Control Council for 'Germany as a whole'.
Democratization. Treatment of Germany as a single unit. Disarmament and Demilitarization. Elimination of all Nazi influence.
B. Economic principles.
Reduction or destruction of all civilian heavy industry with war potential, such as shipbuilding, machine production and chemical factories. Restructuring of German economy towards agriculture and light industry.
Reparations from Germany.
This section covered reparation claims of the USSR from the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. The section also agreed that 10% of the industrial capacity of the western zones unnecessary for the German peace economy should be transferred to the Soviet Union within two years. The Soviet Union withdrew its previous objections to French membership of the Allied Reparations Commission, which had been established in Moscow following the Yalta conference.
Disposal of the German Navy and merchant marine.
All but thirty submarines to be sunk and the rest of the German Navy was to be divided equally between the three powers.
The German merchant marine was to be divided equally between the three powers, and they would distribute some of those ships to the other Allies. But until the end of the war with the Empire of Japan all the ships would remain under the authority of the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board and the United Maritime Authority.
City of Königsberg and the adjacent area (then East Prussia, now Kaliningrad Oblast).
The United States and Britain declared that they would support the transfer of Königsberg and the adjacent area to the Soviet Union at the peace conference.
War criminals
This was a short paragraph and covered the creation of the London Charter and the subsequent Nuremberg Trials:
The Three Governments have taken note of the discussions which have been proceeding in recent weeks in London between British, United States, Soviet and French representatives with a view to reaching agreement on the methods of trial of those major war criminals whose crimes under the Moscow Declaration of October 1943 have no particular geographical localization. The Three Governments reaffirm their intention to bring these criminals to swift and sure justice. They hope that the negotiations in London will result in speedy agreement being reached for this purpose, and they regard it as a matter of great importance that the trial of these major criminals should begin at the earliest possible date. The first list of defendants will be published before 1st September.
Austria:
The government of Austria was to be decided after British and American forces entered Vienna, and that Austria should not pay any reparations.
Poland
There should be a Provisional Government of National Unity recognised by all three powers, and that those Poles who were serving in British Army formations should be free to return to Poland. The provisional western border should be the Oder–Neisse line, with territories to the east of this excluded from the Soviet Occupation zone and placed under Polish and Soviet civil administration. Poland would receive former German territories in the north and west, but the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the peace settlement; which eventually took place as the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany in 1990.
Conclusion on peace treaties and admission to the United Nations organization.
See Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers which took place later in 1945.
It was noted that Italy had fought on the side of the Allies and was making good progress towards establishment of a democratic government and institutions and that after the peace treaty the three Allies would support an application from a democratic Italian government for membership of the United Nations. Further
[t]he three Governments have also charged the Council of Foreign Ministers with the task of preparing peace treaties for Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and Romania. The conclusion of Peace Treaties with recognized democratic governments in these States will also enable the three Governments to support applications from them for membership of the United Nations. The three Governments agree to examine each separately in the near future in the light of the conditions then prevailing, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary to the extent possible prior to the conclusion of peace treaties with those countries.
The details were discussed later that year at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers and the treaties were signed in 1947 at the Paris Peace Conference
By that time the governments of Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary were Communist.
Territorial Trusteeship
Italian former colonies would be decided in connection with the preparation of a peace treaty for Italy. Like most of the other former European Axis powers the Italian peace treaty was signed at the 1947 Paris Peace Conference.
Revised Allied Control Commission procedure in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary
Now that hostilities in Europe were at an end the Western Allies should have a greater input into the Control Commissions of Central and Eastern Europe, the Annex to this agreement included detailed changes to the workings of the Hungarian Control Commission.
Orderly transfer of German Populations
The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.
"German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland" refers to Germans living within the 1937 boundaries of Poland up to the Curzon line going East. In theory, that German ethnic population could have been expelled to the Polish temporarily administered territories of Silesia, Farther Pomerania, East Prussia and eastern Brandenburg.
Because the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany were under great strain, the Czechoslovak government, the Polish provisional government and the control council in Hungary were asked to submit an estimate of the time and rate at which further transfers could be carried out having regard to the present situation in Germany and suspend further expulsions until these estimates were integrated into plans for an equitable distribution of these "removed" Germans among the several zones of occupation.
Oil equipment in Romania
Iran
Allied troops were to withdraw immediately from Tehran and that further stages of the withdrawal of troops from Iran should be considered at the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers to be held in London in September 1945.
The international zone of Tangier.
The city of Tangier and the area around it should remain international and discussed further.
The Black Sea straits
The Montreux Convention should be revised and that this should be discussed with the Turkish government.
International inland waterways
European inland transport conference
Directives to the military commanders on allied control council for Germany
Use of Allied property for satellite reparations or war trophies
These were detailed in Annex II
Military Talks
Annex I
Annex II
Moreover, towards concluding the Pacific Theatre of War, the Potsdam Conference issued the Potsdam Declaration, the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender (26 July 1945) wherein the Western Allies (UK, US, USSR) and the Nationalist China of General Chiang Kai-shek asked Japan to surrender or be destroyed.
Aftermath
Already during the Potsdam Conference, on 30 July 1945, the Allied Control Council was constituted in Berlin to execute the Allied resolutions (the "Four Ds"):
Denazification of the German society to eradicate Nazi influence
Demilitarization of the former Wehrmacht forces and the German arms industry; however, the circumstances of the Cold War soon led to Germany's Wiederbewaffnung including the re-establishment of both the Bundeswehr and the National People's Army
Democratization, including the formation of political parties and trade unions, freedom of speech, of the press and religion
Decentralization resulting in German federalism, along with disassemblement as part of the industrial plans for Germany. Dismantling was stopped in West Germany in 1951 according to the Truman Doctrine, whereafter East Germany had to cope with the impact alone.
Territorial changes
The northern half of the German province of East Prussia, occupied by the Red Army during its East Prussian Offensive followed by its evacuation in winter 1945, had already been incorporated into Soviet territory as the Kaliningrad Oblast. The Western Allies promised to support the annexation of the territory north of the Braunsberg–Goldap line when a Final German Peace Treaty was held.
The Allies had acknowledged the legitimacy of the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity, which was about to form a Soviet satellite state. Urged by Stalin, the UK and the US gave in to put the German territories east of the Oder–Neisse line from the Baltic coast west of Świnoujście up to the Czechoslovak border "under Polish administration"; allegedly confusing the Lusatian Neisse and the Glatzer Neisse rivers. The proposal of an Oder-Bober-Queis line was rejected by the Soviet delegation. The cession included the former Free City of Danzig and the seaport of Stettin on the mouth of the Oder River (Szczecin Lagoon), vital for the Upper Silesian Industrial Region.
Post-war, 'Germany as a whole' would consist solely of aggregate territories of the respective zones of occupation. As all former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line were excluded from the Soviet Occupation Zone, they were consequently excluded from 'Germany as a whole'.
Expulsions
In the course of the proceedings, and after the German state killed around 5-6 million Polish citizens during the war, Polish communists had begun to suppress the German population west of the Bóbr river to underline their demand for a border on the Lusatian Neisse. The Allied resolution on the "orderly transfer" of German population became the legitimation of the expulsion of Germans from the nebulous parts of Central Europe, if they had not already fled from the advancing Red Army.
The expulsion of ethnic Germans by the Poles concerned, in addition to Germans within areas behind the 1937 Polish border in the West (such as in most of the old Prussian province of West Prussia), the territories placed "under Polish administration" pending a Final German Peace Treaty, i.e. southern East Prussia (Masuria), Farther Pomerania, the New March region of the former Province of Brandenburg, the districts of the Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia, Lower Silesia and those parts of Upper Silesia that had remained with Germany after the 1921 Upper Silesia plebiscite. It further affected the German minority living within the territory of the former Second Polish Republic in Greater Poland, eastern Upper Silesia, Chełmno Land and the Polish Corridor with Danzig.
The Germans in Czechoslovakia (34% of the population of the territory of what is now the Czech Republic), known as Sudeten Germans but also Carpathian Germans, were expelled from the Sudetenland region where they formed a majority, from linguistic enclaves in central Bohemia and Moravia, as well as from the city of Prague.
Though the Potsdam Agreement referred only to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, expulsions also occurred in Romania, where the Transylvanian Saxons were deported and their property seized, and in Yugoslavia. In the Soviet territories, Germans were expelled from northern East Prussia (Oblast Kaliningrad) but also from the adjacent Lithuanian Klaipeda Region and other lands settled by Baltic Germans.
See also
Territorial changes of Poland after World War II
History of Germany (1945–90)
Oder-Neisse Line
References
External links
Cornerstone of Steel Monday, January 21, 1946
The Road Back Time Magazine, Monday, September 8, 1947
Protocol of the Proceedings of the Berlin Conference Official US text of the Potsdam protocols; annotated with editing variants and variant readings from the official Soviet and British texts. |
Wellington_Convention | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Convention | [
344
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Convention"
] | The Wellington Convention (formally, the Convention for the Prohibition of Fishing with Long Driftnets in the South Pacific) is a 1989 multilateral treaty whereby states agreed to prohibit the use of fishing driftnets longer than 2.5 kilometres in the South Pacific. The Wellington Convention played a role in the 1991 United Nations General Assembly's resolution calling for a global moratorium of driftnet fishing on the high seas.
Creation, signatures, and ratifications
The Convention was concluded at Wellington on 24 November 1989. It was opened for signature to states which have territory within the South Pacific. The Convention was signed by Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, France, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, United States, and Vanuatu.
Of the states that signed the Convention, it has not been ratified by France, Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Samoa, which did not sign the Convention, has acceded to it. Additionally, Papua New Guinea has notified New Zealand—the depositary state—that the prohibitions of the Convention had been taken into account when Papua New Guinea enacted its Fisheries Act 1994.
Global moratorium of driftnet fishing
On 20 December 1991, the UN General Assembly passed the Resolution on Large-scale Pelagic Driftnet Fishing and its Impact on the Living Marine Resources of the World's Oceans and Seas. The resolution called for a worldwide moratorium on driftnet fishing and cited the entry into force of the Wellington Convention as contributing support to such a moratorium.
Protocols
The Convention has two Protocols that supplement it. Both were concluded at Noumea, New Caledonia on 20 October 2000
Ratification of Protocol I allows states that do not have territory in the Convention Area to nevertheless agree that they will prohibit their nationals and their fishing vessels from using driftnets while fishing in the Convention Area. Protocol I has been ratified only by the United States; it entered into force for the U.S. on 28 February 1992.
Ratification of Protocol II allows states that do not have territory in the Convention Area but have territory in the waters that are contiguous to the Convention Area to nevertheless agree that they will prohibit their nationals and their fishing vessels from using driftnets while fishing in the Convention Area. Protocol II has been ratified by Chile (5 October 1993) and Canada (28 August 1998).
Notes
References
Ellen Hey et al. (eds), The Regulation of Driftnet Fishing on the High Seas: Legal Issues (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1991).
External links
Text of Convention and Protocols, paclii.org |
List_of_prime_ministers_of_New_Zealand | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_New_Zealand | [
344,
680
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_New_Zealand",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_New_Zealand"
] | The prime minister of New Zealand is the country's head of government and the leader of the Cabinet, whose powers and responsibilities are defined by convention. Officially, the prime minister is appointed by the governor-general, but by convention, the prime minister must have the confidence of the House of Representatives. The prime minister is always a member of parliament.
Originally, prime ministers headed loose coalitions of independents, which were often unstable; since the advent of political parties, the prime minister is usually the leader of the largest party represented in the house. Since 1935, every prime minister has been a member of either the National party or the Labour party, reflecting their domination of New Zealand politics. After the introduction of mixed-member proportional voting in 1996, prime ministers have usually needed to negotiate agreements with smaller parties to maintain a majority in Parliament.
The title of the office was originally "colonial secretary", which was formally changed to "premier" in 1869. That title remained in use almost exclusively for more than 30 years, until Richard Seddon changed it to "prime minister" during his tenure in the office; he used the title officially at the 1902 Colonial Conference.
Some historians regard James FitzGerald as New Zealand's first prime minister, although a more conventional view is that neither he nor his successor (Thomas Forsaith) should properly be given that title, as New Zealand did not yet have responsible government when they served. Most commonly, Henry Sewell, who served during 1856, is regarded as New Zealand's first premier. Beginning with Sewell, 42 individuals have so far held the premiership, not including acting prime ministers. Eight prime ministers have held the position for more than one period in office. Richard Seddon, prime minister for thirteen years between 1893 and 1906, held the office for the longest term. The youngest prime minister was Edward Stafford, who assumed office at age 37, and the oldest was Walter Nash, who left office at age 78. Three prime ministers have been women, a count equalled by Iceland, Lithuania, Poland and the United Kingdom, and only surpassed by Finland and Switzerland.
The current prime minister is Christopher Luxon, who assumed office on 27 November 2023.
List of officeholders
The parties shown are those to which the heads of government belonged at the time they held office and the electoral districts shown are those they represented while in office. Several prime ministers belonged to parties other than those given and represented other electorates before and after their time in office. A number in brackets indicates the prime minister served a previous term in office.
Political parties
Symbols
† Died in office
Timeline
See also
List of prime ministers of New Zealand by age
List of prime ministers of New Zealand by place of birth
List of prime ministers of Queen Victoria
List of prime ministers of Edward VII
List of prime ministers of George V
List of prime ministers of Edward VIII
List of prime ministers of George VI
List of prime ministers of Elizabeth II
List of prime ministers of Charles III
== References == |
List_of_chancellors_of_Germany | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chancellors_of_Germany | [
344
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chancellors_of_Germany"
] | The chancellor of Germany is the political leader of Germany and the head of the federal government. The office holder is responsible for selecting all other members of the government and chairing cabinet meetings.
The office was created in the North German Confederation in 1867, when Otto von Bismarck became the first chancellor. With the unification of Germany and establishment of the German Empire in 1871, the Confederation evolved into a German nation-state and its leader became known as the chancellor of Germany. Originally, the chancellor was only responsible to the emperor. This changed with the constitutional reform in 1918, when the Parliament was given the right to dismiss the chancellor. Under the 1919 Weimar Constitution the chancellors were appointed by the directly elected president, but were responsible to Parliament.
The constitution was set aside during the 1933–1945 Nazi regime. During the Allied occupation, no independent German government and no chancellor existed; and the office was not reconstituted in East Germany, thus the head of government of East Germany was chairman of the Council of Ministers. The 1949 Basic Law made the chancellor the most important office in West Germany, while diminishing the role of the president.
North German Confederation (1867–1871)
Federal Chancellor of the North German Confederation
The North German Confederation came into existence after the German Confederation was dissolved following the Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The chancellor was appointed by the Bundespräsidium, a position that was held constitutionally by the Prussian king.
German Reich (1871–1945)
German Empire (1871–1918)
Reich Chancellor of the German Reich
The German Empire was born out of the North German Confederation as result of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71). The Präsidium (the Prussian king), which now had also the title Emperor, named the chancellor.
Political parties:
None
Centre
Weimar Republic (1918–1933)
On 9 November 1918, Chancellor Max von Baden handed over his office to Friedrich Ebert. Ebert continued to serve as head of government during the three months between the end of the German Empire in November 1918 and the first gathering of the National Assembly in February 1919 as Chairman of the Council of the People's Deputies, until 29 December 1918 together with USPD Leader Hugo Haase.
The Weimar Constitution of 1919 set the framework for the Weimar Republic. The chancellors were officially installed by the president; in some cases the chancellor did not have a majority in parliament.
Political parties:
SPD
Centre
DVP
NSDAP
None
Nazi Germany (1933–1945)
Soon after Adolf Hitler was appointed as chancellor in 1933, the German Reichstag (parliament) passed the so-called Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz), officially titled "Law for Removing the Distress of People and Reich" (German: Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich), which effectively gave the chancellor the power of a dictator. This event marked the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Nazi Germany. Hitler thereupon destroyed all democratic systems and consolidated all power to himself. After the death of president Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler merged the offices of chancellor and president in his own person and called himself Führer und Reichskanzler.
Political parties:
NSDAP
Federal Republic of Germany (1949–present)
In 1949, two separate German states were established: the Federal Republic of Germany (known as West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (known as East Germany). The list below gives the chancellors of West Germany; the government of East Germany was headed by the chairman of the Council of Ministers. In 1990, East Germany was dissolved as it merged with West Germany; Germany was reunified. It retained the name of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Political parties:
CDU (4)
SPD (4)
Independent (1)
Timeline
See also
Leadership of East Germany
List of chancellors of Germany by time in office
List of German monarchs
List of German presidents
Minister-Presidents of the French "Saar protectorate"
Religious affiliations of chancellors of Germany
List of vice-chancellors of Germany
== References == |
Richard_Seddon | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Seddon | [
344
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Seddon"
] | Richard John Seddon (22 June 1845 – 10 June 1906) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 15th premier (prime minister) of New Zealand from 1893 until his death. In office for thirteen years, he is to date New Zealand's longest-serving head of government.
Seddon was born in Eccleston, Lancashire, England. He arrived in New Zealand in 1866. His prominence in local politics gained him a seat in the House of Representatives in 1879. Seddon became a key member of the Liberal Party under the leadership of John Ballance. When the Liberal Government came to power in 1891 Seddon was appointed to several portfolios, including Minister of Public Works. Seddon succeeded to the leadership of the Liberal Party following Ballance's death in 1893, inheriting a bill for women's suffrage, which was passed the same year despite Seddon's opposition to it. Seddon's government achieved many social and economic changes, such as the introduction of old age pensions. His personal popularity, charisma and strength overcame dissent from within his cabinet. This has been described as firmly establishing "Seddonism", a colloquial term for Seddon's strand of nationalist conservatism, as New Zealand's dominant political ideology. His government also purchased vast amounts of land from the Māori, aided by his allies Alfred Cadman and James Carroll as the Ministers of Native Affairs. He spent the 1899 general election trying to relieve New Zealand's parliament of the independent politicians who had so greatly dominated the country's organised national politics since its provenance, in which he triumphed greatly. An imperialist in foreign policy, his attempt to incorporate Fiji into New Zealand failed, but he successfully annexed the Cook Islands in 1901. Seddon's government supported Britain with troops in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) and supported preferential trade between British colonies.
Seddon was regarded as deeply regionalist; the late Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington, D.A. Hamer, described him as "an intensely parochial politician...a great fighter for the interests of West Coasters but with no interest in or knowledge about wider New Zealand problems". His heritage from the region defined him not only as a politician, but as a man; he became well-known for the "uncouth" stereotypes of the generally West Coast Pākehā population of the time, expressed in his lack of education, boisterous and aggressive persona, and his dialectal tendency to drop his aitches. Seddon continued to live on the West Coast of the South Island throughout his premiership, only coming to Wellington on a regular basis very reluctantly, from the late 1890s. Seddon was also described as a man of secret brooding, who secretly battled anxiety and depression beneath his public surface of rodomontade and bravado; he hid his personal struggles to ensure his enemies would not feel pleasure knowing they had hurt him.
Despite his personal insecurities, dominating and almost illiberal viewpoints, and erratic nature, he inspired serious and long-lasting loyalty among his cabinet members. Leading the Liberal Party until his death, the party afterwards struggled to recover, going through a string of leaders before essentially giving way to New Zealand's modern two-party system of what would become the Labour and National Parties. Ironically, this was something Seddon had been instrumental in creating, through his successful attempt at suppressing New Zealand's previously dominant political cohort of independents. Despite being derisively known as "King Dick" for his autocratic style, and criticised for his actions on Māori land deprivation and his views on race (especially towards Chinese), he has nonetheless been named as one of the greatest, most influential, and most widely known politicians in New Zealand history.
Early life and family
Seddon was born in the town of Eccleston, near St Helens in Lancashire, England, on 22 June 1845. His father Thomas Seddon (born 1817) was a school headmaster, and his mother Jane Lindsay was a teacher; they married on 8 February 1842 at Christ Church, Eccleston. Richard was the third of their eight children.
Despite this background, Seddon did not perform well at school, and was described as unruly. Despite his parents' attempt to give him a classical education, Seddon developed an interest in engineering, but was removed from school at age 12. After working on his grandfather Richard's farm at Barrow Nook Hall for two years, Seddon was an apprentice at Daglish's Foundry in Sutton. He later worked at Vauxhall foundry in Liverpool, where he attained a Board of Trade Certificate as a mechanical engineer. During his time in Lancashire, he was heavily influenced by social liberalism, and many of its ideas would form part of his political philosophy as a politician.
On 15 June 1862, at the age of 16, Seddon decided to emigrate to Australia, working his passage to Melbourne on the SS Great Britain. He later provided his reasoning: "A restlessness to get away to see new, broad lands seized me: My work was irksome. I felt cramped." He entered the railway workshops at Williamstown, and also worked in the goldfields at Bendigo; he did not meet with any great success. In either 1865 or 1866, he became engaged to Louisa Jane Spotswood, but her family would not permit marriage until Seddon was financially secure.
Seddon moved to New Zealand's West Coast in 1866. Initially, he worked the goldfields in Waimea. He is believed to have prospered here, and he returned briefly to Melbourne to marry Louisa. He established a store, and then expanded his business to include the sale of alcohol, becoming a publican. He was followed to the West Coast by his older sister Phoebe, younger brothers Edward and Jim and younger sister Mary. Phoebe married William Cunliffe on 9 May 1863 at Holy Trinity Church Eccleston. Their son Bill was Labour MP David Cunliffe's grandfather, making Richard Seddon David Cunliffe's great-great-uncle.
Local politics
Seddon first entered politics in 1870, when he ran unsuccessfully for the Westland County Council, finishing third. The same year, he was elected to the Arahura Road Board. He ran again for the County Council in 1872, finishing a distant third.
In 1874 Seddon stood for the newly created Westland Provincial Council and was elected for Arahura. He established himself as a broadly effective, if rather bellicose, advocate for miners' interests. He also took an interest in education during this time. He lost this position with the abolition of the provinces in 1876, and was elected instead to the newly reconstituted county council. In 1876 he stood for Parliament in the two-member Hokitika electorate and placed fourth out of five candidates.
Kumara became a prominent goldmining town. Seddon was elected its first Mayor in 1877. He had staked a claim in Kumara the previous year, and had shortly afterwards moved his business there. Despite occasional financial troubles (he filed for bankruptcy in 1878), his political career prospered.
Entry to Parliament
In the 1879 election, he stood for Parliament again, and was elected. He represented Hokitika to 1881, then Kumara from 1881 to 1890, then Westland from 1890 to his death in 1906. His son Tom Seddon succeeded him as MP for Westland.
In Parliament, Seddon aligned himself with George Grey, a former Governor turned Premier. Seddon later claimed to be particularly close to Grey, although some historians believe that this was an invention for political purposes. Initially, Seddon was derided by many members of Parliament, who mocked his "provincial" accent (which tended to drop the letter "h") and his lack of formal education. He nevertheless proved quite effective in Parliament, being particularly good at "stonewalling" certain legislation. His political focus was on issues of concern to his West Coast constituents. He specialised on mining issues, became a recognised authority on the topic, and chaired the goldfields committee in 1887 and 1888.
He aggressively proclaimed a populist anti-elitist philosophy in many speeches and toast. "It is the rich and the poor; it is the wealthy people and the landowners against the middle classes and the labouring classes," he explained.
Liberal Party
Seddon joined the nascent Liberal Party, led by John Ballance, following the December 1890 general election. Their platform was for reform in the areas of land and labour. They were greatly helped by the abolition of plural voting, which allowed landowners in each district they owned land in to vote in them.
Seddon was sworn into his first ministerial positions when the Liberals came to power in January 1891. He became minister of public works, mines, defence, and marine. He promoted co-operative contract system for road-making and other public works projects.
Unlike Ballance who believed in classical liberalism, Seddon did not have any great commitment to any ideology. Rather, he saw the Liberals as champions of "the common man" against large commercial interests and major landowners. His strong advocacy for what he saw as the interests of ordinary New Zealanders won him considerable popularity. Attacks by the opposition, which generally focused on his lack of education and sophistication (one opponent said that he was only "partially civilised") reinforced his growing reputation as an enemy of elitism.
Seddon quickly became popular across the country. Some of his colleagues, however, were not as happy, accusing him of putting populism ahead of principle, and of being an anti-intellectual. John Ballance, now Premier, had a deep commitment to liberal causes such as women's suffrage and Māori rights, which Seddon was not always as enthusiastic about. Nevertheless, many people in the Liberal Party believed that Seddon's popularity was a huge asset for the party, and Seddon developed a substantial following.
Premiership
Ballance fell seriously ill in 1892 and made Seddon acting leader of the House. After Ballance's death in April 1893, the Governor David Boyle, 7th Earl of Glasgow asked Seddon, as the acting leader of the house, to form a new ministry. Despite the refusal of William Pember Reeves and Thomas Mackenzie to accept his leadership, Seddon managed to secure the backing of his Liberal Party colleagues as interim leader, with an understanding being reached that a full vote would occur when Parliament resumed sitting. Seddon's most prominent challenger was Robert Stout, a former Premier for two separate terms. Like Ballance, Stout had a strong belief in classical-liberal principles. Ballance himself had preferred Stout as his successor, but had died before being able to secure this aim. Stout was not a member of the House of Representatives at the time of Ballance's death, and only re-entered following the by-election in Inangahua on 8 June 1893.
Despite Seddon's promise, however, there was no vote on the party leadership and therefore the premiership. By convincing his party colleagues that a leadership contest would split the party in two, or at least leave deep divisions, Seddon managed to secure a permanent hold on the leadership. Stout continued to be one of his strongest critics and led the campaign for women's suffrage despite Seddon's opposition. Eventually Stout left the Liberal Party in 1896 and remained in the house as an independent until 1898. In 1899 however, Seddon recommended Stout to the Governor as the next Chief Justice of New Zealand.
Women's suffrage
John Ballance, founder of the Liberal Party, had been a strong supporter of voting rights for women, declaring his belief in the "absolute equality of the sexes". At the time women's suffrage was closely linked to the temperance movement, which sought prohibition of alcohol. As a former publican and self-styled "Champion of the Common Man" Seddon initially opposed women's suffrage. In July 1893, two months after Seddon became Premier, the second of two major petitions for women's suffrage was presented to the House.
This resulted in considerable debate within the Liberal Party. John Hall, a former conservative premier, moved a Bill to enact women's suffrage. Seddon's opponents within the party, led by Stout (also an advocate of temperance), managed to gather enough support for the Bill to be passed despite Seddon's opposition. When Seddon realised that the passage of the bill was inevitable, he changed his position, claiming to accept the people's will. In actuality, however, he took strong measures to ensure that the Legislative Council would vote down the Bill, as it had done previously. Seddon's tactics in lobbying the council were seen by many as underhand, and two Councillors, despite opposing suffrage, voted in favour of the bill in protest. The Bill was granted Royal Assent in September.
Nonetheless, at the 1893 general election in November, Seddon's Liberal Party managed to increase its majority.
Alcohol licensing
The debate on women's suffrage exposed deep divisions within the Liberal Party between more doctrinaire liberals, broadly led by Stout, and "popular" liberals, led by Seddon. This division was again highlighted by the debate over alcohol licensing. Seddon moved the radical Alcoholic Liquors Sale Control Bill in 1893 to introduce licensing districts where a majority could vote for continuance (continued liquor licensing in that district) or reduction of licences or no liquor licences at all. Votes were to be taken every three years at general elections and licensing districts were matched to electoral districts.
Old-age pensions
One of the policies for which Seddon is most remembered is his Old-age Pensions Act of 1898, which established the basis of the welfare state later expanded by Michael Joseph Savage and the Labour Party. Seddon put considerable weight behind the scheme, despite considerable opposition from many quarters. Its successful passage is often seen as a testament to Seddon's political power and influence.
Foreign policy
In the sphere of foreign policy, Seddon was a notable supporter of the British Empire. After he attended the Colonial Conference in London in 1897, he became known "as one of the pillars of British imperialism", and he was a strong supporter of the Second Boer War and sponsored preferential tariffs for trade with Britain. He is also noted for his support of New Zealand's own "imperial" designs – Seddon believed that New Zealand should play a major role in the Pacific Islands as a "Britain of the South". Seddon's plans focused mainly on establishing New Zealand dominion over Fiji and Samoa. However, his expansionist policies were discouraged by the Imperial Government. Only the Cook Islands came under New Zealand's control during his term in office.
Immigration
Seddon was firmly opposed Chinese immigration to New Zealand, harbouring an ethnic prejudice against them stemming from his years in the goldfields.
Although Chinese immigrants were invited to New Zealand by the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce, prejudice against them quickly led to calls for restrictions on immigration. Following the example of anti-Chinese poll taxes enacted by California in 1852 and by Australian states in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, John Hall's government passed the Chinese Immigration Act 1881. This imposed a £10 tax per Chinese person entering New Zealand, and permitted only one Chinese immigrant for every 10 tons of cargo. Richard Seddon's government increased the tax to £100 per head in 1896 ($20,990 in modern New Zealand dollars), and tightened the other restriction to only one Chinese immigrant for every 200 tons of cargo.
Seddon compared Chinese people to monkeys, and so used the Yellow Peril conspiracy theory to promote racialist politics in New Zealand. In 1879, in his first political speech, Seddon said that New Zealand did not wish her shores "deluged with Asiatic Tartars. I would sooner address white men than these Chinese. You can't talk to them, you can't reason with them. All you can get from them is 'No savvy'."
Style of government
Seddon was a strong premier, and enforced his authority with great vigour. At one point, he even commented that "A president is all we require", and that Cabinet could be abolished. His opponents, both within the Liberal Party and in opposition, accused him of being an autocrat – the label "King Dick" was first applied to him at this point.
Seddon accumulated a large number of portfolios for himself, including that of Minister of Finance (from which he displaced Joseph Ward), Minister of Labour (from which he displaced William Pember Reeves), Minister of Education, Minister of Defence, Minister of Native Affairs, and Minister of Immigration.
Seddon was also accused of cronyism – his friends and allies, particularly those from the West Coast, were given various political positions, while his enemies within the Liberal Party were frequently denied important office. Many of Seddon's appointees were not qualified for the positions that they received – Seddon valued loyalty above ability. One account, possibly apocryphal, claims that he installed an ally as a senior civil servant despite the man being illiterate. He was also accused of nepotism – in 1905, it was claimed that one of his sons had received an unauthorised payment, but this claim was proved false.
Sir Carl Berendsen recalled seeing Seddon in 1906 as a Department of Education junior innocently bearing what was an unwelcome document. A replacement was needed for a small native school. The inspectors had picked out three outstanding candidates, but Seddon picked out the last on the lengthy list; he had no academic qualifications and had just been released from gaol for embezzlement. When the Premier appointed the gentlemen from gaol, Departmental officials returned the papers and called attention to his criminal record. Berendsen cowered in the corner while with a snarl Seddon grasped his pen and wrote once more in very large letters, "Appoint Mr X". Berendsen noted though that when an Editor was required for the new School Journal, Departmental officials had agreed on the best man, but the Massey Government (which had replaced the Liberal Government) was "quite shameless in devotion to the principle of the loaves and fishes ... and the Minister of the day appointed the third choice".
As Minister of Native Affairs, Seddon took a generally "sympathetic" but "paternalistic" approach. As Minister of Immigration, he was well known for his hostility to Chinese immigration – the so-called "Yellow Peril" was an important part of his populist rhetoric, and he compared Chinese people to monkeys. In his first political speech in 1879 he had declared New Zealand did not wish her shores to be "deluged with Asiatic Tartars. I would sooner address white men than these Chinese. You can't talk to them, you can't reason with them. All you can get from them is 'No savvy'."
Successive governments had also shown a lack of firmness in dealing with Māori, he said: "The colony, instead of importing Gatling guns with which to fight Maori, should wage war with locomotives" ... pushing through roads and railways and compulsorily purchasing "the land on both sides".
Religion and freemasonry
Seddon was an Anglican.
Seddon became a Freemason in 1868 when he was initiated into Pacific Lodge No 1229 (under the United Grand Lodge of England) in Hokitika. The lodge is still extant, but has since relocated to Christchurch. In 1898, while premier, he was elected Grand Master of New Zealand, and served in that role for two years.
Honours
Seddon attended Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and received her Jubilee Medal and an appointment in the Privy Council. In 1902 he attended the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra and received his Coronation Medal. During the same visit, he received the Freedom of the Borough of his home-town St Helens during a visit there in July 1902, and the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh and an honorary degree LL.D. from the University of Edinburgh during a visit to the city later the same month. He was also presented with the Honorary Freedom of the Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers on 8 August 1902.
He twice refused a knighthood, wanting to be seen as a man of the people.
Death
Seddon remained Prime Minister for 13 years, but gradually, calls for him to retire became more frequent. Various attempts to replace him with Joseph Ward met with failure.
In June 1906, while returning from a trip to Australia on the ship Oswestry Grange, he was sitting with his wife in his cabin waiting to be called to dinner when he suddenly placed his head on his wife's shoulder, and said, "Oh, mother," before expiring of a massive heart attack at 6.20 pm on 10 June. Immediately following his death the ship, which was 110 miles (180 km) from Sydney Heads, turned back to port, its flag at half-mast. he died 12 days before his 61st birthday, . On the eve of his departure, he had sent a number of telegrams, among whom was one to the premier of Victoria, Thomas Bent, which contained the words, “Just leaving for God's own country”.
News of his death provoked numerous public gestures of grief, which included black-bordered displays in shop windows and several public monuments, including a memorial lamp post outside the St Helens Hospital in Pitt Street Auckland.
Seddon’s funeral was held on 21 June 1906 and he was buried in Wellington's Bolton Street Cemetery, now Bolton Street Memorial Park.
Joseph Ward was away in London at the time of Seddon's death. He succeeded Seddon as Prime Minister nearly two months later, on 6 August 1906.
Personal life
Seddon married Louisa Jane Spotswood on 13 January 1869 in Trinity Church, Williamstown, Victoria, Australia. Lousia was born on 28 May 1851 in Williamstown, Victoria, Australia to Anna Victoria (nee Normandale) and John Stuart Spotswood. After a long illness Louisa died at her home, "Eeeleston,” in Wellington on 9 July 1931. Flags were flown at half-mast, on various Government buildings on the day of her funeral.
The couple had the following eleven children with nine surviving to adulthood.
Jane Anne Seddon. Born 8 May 1870 In Waimea, Westland. She died on 20 August 1955.
Phoebe Alicia Seddon. Born on 26 June 1871. She died on 5 December 1944.
Louisa Jane Spottswood Seddon. Born on 10 December 1872 in Big Dam, Westland. She died on 12 October 1957.
Mary Stuart Charleston Seddon. Born on 20 June 1874 in Charlestown, West Coast. She died on 17 April 1946. Interred with her parents.
Catherine Youd Lindsay Seddon. Born on 17 January 1876 in Kumara. She died on 20 October 1877.
Catherine Youd Lindsay Seddon. Born on 24 March 1878 in Kumara, West Coast. She died on 2 July 1881.
Elizabeth May Seddon. Born on 24 March 1880 in Kumara. She died on 29 February 1960.
Richard John Spotswood Seddon. Born on 29 May 1881 in Kumara. He was killed in Bagaume, France on 21 August 1918 while serving as a captain with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Over a ten-year period his mother campaigned without success to have his remains repatriated back to New Zealand. The original wooden cross from Seddon’s grave was brought back to New Zealand by one of his sisters and now resides inside the Seddon Memorial.
Thomas Edward Youd Seddon. Born 2 July 1884 in Kumara. He died 22 January 1972.
John Stewart Spotswood Seddon. Born on 20 July 1887 in Kumara. He died in 1969.
Rubi Jessie Seddon. Born on 11 January 1889 in Kumara. She died on 19 December 1956.
Legacy
He is considered by academics and historians to be one of New Zealand's greatest and most revered prime ministers. Seddon centralised government decision-making around himself—at his peak he exercised "almost one-man, one-party rule"—and, in doing so, he established the premiership as the de facto most important political office in New Zealand.
Seddon's son Thomas replaced him as MP for Westland in the by-election following his death. When Thomas met former US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1918, he expressed admiration for his late father, particularly the labour legislation his government passed.
A town in New Zealand and a suburb of Melbourne, Australia are named after him. Wellington Zoo was originally created when a young lion was presented to Prime Minister Richard Seddon by the Bostock and Wombwell Circus. Seddon created the Zoo from this single specimen and the lion was later named King Dick in the Prime Minister's honour. The stuffed body of King Dick (the lion) is displayed on the ground floor of the Museum of Wellington City & Sea. St Mary's Church in Addington, Christchurch also has a memorial bell tower to Richard Seddon.
The Duke of Argyll unveiled a memorial to Seddon in St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1910. It shows a portrait of Seddon with the inscription "
To the memory of Richard John Seddon prime minister of New Zealand 1893–1906 imperialist statesman reformer born June 22nd 1845 at St Helens Lancashire buried at Observatory Hill Wellington New Zealand"
Seddon memorial
Following Seddon's death plans were put in place to erect a suitable memorial which would also incorporate a Seddon family mausoleum. It was quickly agreed that the existing Colonial Time Service Observatory on top of Observatory Hill (today part of Bolton Street Memorial Park) should be torn down to make way for it. A new observatory was later constructed on the site of the former Garden coast defence battery at the top of the Botanic Gardens.
The memorial was designed by government architect John Campbell and constructed by Edwards and Son of Wellington with the above ground portion consisting of reinforced concrete faced with Coromandel granite. It cost £2,746. Constructed between 1908 and 1910 the memorial is topped by a bronze female figure approximately 8 feet (2.4 m) in height and weighing 2 long tons (2,000 kg) symbolising the “Zealandia”, the country mourning its dead. Costing approximately £500, the figure was designed at the London studio of sculptor Henry Poole and cast by Alexander Parlanti. The concrete crypt underneath contains the body of Seddon, his wife Louisa, their daughter Mary Stuart Hay and memorial to their son Captain Richard Spotswood Seddon, who was killed in 1918 while serving in France.
The family remains were temporally removed when between 2021 and December 2022 when the memorial was restored and seismically strengthened by the installation of a structural steel frame in the crypt and central void, combined with the installation of 17 post-tension tie rods.
Statues of Seddon
A 9 feet 6 inches (2.90 m) high bronze statue on a 15 feet (4.6 m) pedestal of Aberdeen granite to Seddon was erected facing Molesworth Street in front of the main entrance to Parliament Buildings. It was commissioned by then prime minister Sir Jospeh Ward from Sir Thomas Brock. The statue has him wearing a frock coat which was based on the one that he had worn while speaking at Papawai near Greytown. The coat had been brought to Brock in 1905 by Louisa Seddon and her daughter Mary.
The statue was paid for by jointly by the government and the public and. Its completion was delayed by the landscaping of the grounds and the completion of Seddon’s memorial. At a public event attended by 1,500 people on 26 June 1915 the statue was unveiled by the Governor-General, Lord Liverpool. Among those attending were members of Seddon’s family, the prime minister William Massey, Sir Joseph Ward and Sir John Luke, mayor of Wellington.
In October 1966 anti-Vietnam war protestors painted “No New Zealand Troops in Vietnam” across the plinth. In November 1988 a group protesting against the signing of the Antarctic convention and the risk they believed it posed to wildlife enclosed the statue in a giant penguin suit. In February 2022 an anti-mandate and anti-lockdown Covid-19 protestor tagged it with a Nazi Swastika and the words “Freedom” and “Truth”.
Since 11 November 1981 the statue has had a Historic Places category 1 listing.
Another statue of Seddon has a prominent position in the West Coast town of Hokitika.
Notes and references
Notes
References
Further reading
Drummond, James Mackay (1907). The Life and Work of Richard John Seddon . Whitcombe and Tombs Limited – via Wikisource.
External links
Sketch of Richard Seddon asleep in Parliament during an all-night sitting, 1898
The Seddon-Stout struggle
"Cartoons of Dick Seddon's Royal Progress". Observer. 24 July 1897 – via Papers Past. |
Bernhard_von_B%C3%BClow | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_von_B%C3%BClow | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_von_B%C3%BClow"
] | Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin, Prince of Bülow (German: Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin Fürst von Bülow German: [fɔn ˈbyːloː]; 3 May 1849 – 28 October 1929) was a German statesman who served as the chancellor of the German Empire and minister-president of Prussia from 1900 to 1909. A fervent supporter of Weltpolitik, Bülow devoted his chancellorship to transforming Germany into a global power. Despite presiding over sustained economic growth and major technological advancements within his country, his government's foreign policy did much to antagonize France and Great Britain thereby contributing significantly to the outbreak of the World War I, a conflict that resulted in the fall of the German Empire.
Born into a prominent family of Danish-German aristocrats, Bülow entered the German foreign service after his father, Bernhard Ernst von Bülow, was appointed foreign secretary in Otto von Bismarck's government. He held several diplomatic posts, including German ambassador to Rome, before being appointed foreign secretary in 1897 by Wilhelm II. Three years later, he was appointed chancellor following the resignation of the Prince of Hohenlohe.
As chancellor, Bülow promoted cautious and conservative domestic policies while pursuing an ambitious and expansionist policy in foreign affairs. His open challenge to France's growing control over Morocco sparked the First Moroccan Crisis, which aggravated the French and the British and helped strengthen the Entente Cordiale. In 1908, Wilhelm's indiscreet remarks were published during the Daily Telegraph Affair, causing significant damage to German foreign relations and the Kaiser's prestige. Bülow was blamed for failing to prevent the blunder and, having lost the support of both the Kaiser and the Reichstag, he resigned in 1909 and was succeeded by Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg.
Bülow moved to Rome after his resignation. He came out of retirement in late 1914 to serve as interim ambassador to Italy, but was unable to bring King Victor Emmanuel III to the side of the Central Powers. Bülow died in Rome in 1929 at the age of 80.
Early life
He was born at Klein-Flottbeck, Holstein (now part of Altona, Hamburg). His father, Bernhard Ernst von Bülow, was a Danish and German statesman and member of an old House of Bülow, while his mother was a wealthy heiress, Louise Victorine Rücker (1821–1894). His brother, Major-General Karl Ulrich von Bülow, was a cavalry commander during World War I. Bülow attributed his grasp of English and French to having learnt it from governesses as a young child. His father spoke French, and his mother spoke English, as was common in Hamburg society.
In 1856, his father was sent to the Federal Diet in Frankfurt to represent Holstein and Lauenburg, when Otto von Bismarck was also there to represent Prussia. He became a great friend of Bismarck's son Herbert when they played together. At 13, the family moved to Neustrelitz when his father became Chief Minister to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, where Bernhard attended the Frankfort gymnasium, before attending Lausanne, Leipzig and Berlin Universities.
He volunteered for military service during the Franco-Prussian War and became a lance-corporal in the King's Hussar Regiment. In December 1870, the squadron was in action near Amiens, and he later described charging and killing French riflemen with his sabre. He was promoted to lieutenant and was invited to remain in the army after the war but declined. He completed his law degree at the University of Greifswald in 1872. Afterwards, he entered first the Prussian Civil Service and then the diplomatic service.
His religion was Lutheran
Early career
In 1873 his father became State Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the German government, serving under Bismarck. Bülow entered the diplomatic corps. His first short assignments were to Rome, St. Petersburg, Vienna and then Athens. In 1876, he was appointed attaché to the German embassy in Paris, attended the Congress of Berlin as a secretary and became second secretary to the embassy in 1880.
In 1884, he had hoped to be posted to London but instead became first secretary at the embassy in St. Petersburg. On the way to his new assignment, he stayed for a couple of days at Varzin with the Bismarck family. Bismarck explained that he considered relations with Russia much more important than with Britain and so he had posted Bülow there. Bismarck reported himself as impressed by Bülow's calmness and demeanour during the interview. In Russia, he acted as chargé d'affaires in 1887 and advocated the ethnic cleansing of Poles from Polish territories of the German Empire in a future armed conflict. Bülow wrote regularly to the Foreign Office, complaining about his superior, Ambassador Schweinitz, who, however, was well-liked. Bülow earned for himself a reputation as only a schemer. In 1885, Friedrich von Holstein noted that Bülow was attempting to have Prince Chlodwig von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst removed as ambassador to France to get the post despite meanwhile exchanging friendly letters with him.
On 9 January 1886, still in St. Petersburg, he married Maria Anna Zoe Rosalia Beccadelli di Bologna, Principessa di Camporeale, Marchesa di Altavilla, whose first marriage with Count Karl von Dönhoff had been annulled by the Holy See in 1884. The princess, an accomplished pianist and pupil of Franz Liszt, was a stepdaughter of Marco Minghetti and the daughter of Donna Laura Minghetti (née Acton). She had been married for sixteen years and had three children. Bülow previously had numerous love affairs, but the marriage was intended to further his career. In 1888, he was offered the choice of appointments to Washington, DC, or Bucharest, and chose Bucharest, as Maria objected to the prospect of traveling to the United States and leaving her family behind. He spent the next five years scheming to be appointed to Rome, where his wife was well connected. King Umberto I of Italy was persuaded to write to Kaiser Wilhelm that he would be pleased if Bülow became ambassador there, which occurred in 1893.
State Secretary for Foreign Affairs
On 21 June 1897 Bülow received a telegram instructing him to go to Kiel to speak to Wilhelm. On the way, he stopped at Frankfurt while changing trains and spoke to Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg. Eulenburg explained that Wilhelm wanted a new State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and urged Bülow to take the post, which his father had once held. Eulenburg also passed on advice about how best to manage Wilhelm, who lived on praise and could not stand to be contradicted. In Berlin, Bülow first spoke to Friedrich von Holstein, who was head of the political department of the German Foreign Office. Holstein advised him that although he would have preferred the present Secretary, Adolf Marschall von Bieberstein, to stay in his post, Wilhelm was determined to replace him and that he would prefer the successor to be Bülow. Perhaps Bülow might be able to find him an ambassador's post in due course. Chancellor Hohenlohe, desperate to retire because of old age, urged Bülow to take the position with an eye to succeeding him as chancellor. Bülow urged Hohenlohe to continue in office for as long as he could.
On 26 June, Bülow met with the Kaiser, who advised that it would be one of the new secretary's main tasks to set about building a world-class fleet capable of taking on the British without precipitating a war. Bülow asked for time to consider the offer, and on 3 August, he accepted. The two men formed a good working relationship. Rather than oppose Wilhelm, which some of his predecessors had done, Bülow agreed with him on all matters by sometimes privately relying on Wilhelm's bad memory and frequent changes of opinion to take the action that he thought best and ignore Wilhelm had instructed. The post of State Secretary was subordinate to that of the Chancellor and under Bismarck's chancellorship, it had been only a functionary. Under Bülow, that was largely reversed, Hohenlohe being content to let Bülow manage foreign affairs with his principal adviser, Holstein. Wilhelm would call on Bülow every morning to discuss state affairs but would rarely see the chancellor.
Imperial State Secretary
Bülow also held a seat in the Prussian government. Although Wilhelm was emperor of all Germany, he was also king of Prussia. As Foreign Secretary, Bülow was chiefly responsible for carrying out the policy of colonial expansion with which the emperor was identified. He was welcomed by the Foreign Office because he was the first professional diplomat to be placed in charge since Bismarck's resignation in 1890. Bülow had been wary of accepting the post if Holstein remained as Imperial First Councillor, as Holstein had in practice held great authority in recent years. Holstein was regarded as indispensable because of his long experience in office, rank, cunning and phenomenal memory. Eulenburg advised Bülow to stake out a firm but working relationship immediately on his arrival, and both succeeded in working together. In 1899, on bringing to a successful conclusion the negotiations by which Germany acquired the Caroline Islands, he was raised to the rank of Count.
In October 1900, Bülow was summoned to Wilhelm's hunting retreat at Hubertsstock, where Wilhelm asked Bülow to become Chancellor of the German Empire and Prime Minister of Prussia. Bülow queried whether he was the best man for the job. Wilhelm admitted he would have preferred Eulenburg on a personal level but was not sure he was sufficiently able. On 16 October, Bülow was summoned again to Homburg, where the Kaiser met his train in person. Wilhelm explained that Hohenlohe had announced he could no longer be and so Bülow accepted the job. A replacement State Secretary was necessary, which was first offered to Holstein, who turned it down since he preferred not to take a position that required appearing before the Reichstag. The post was given to Baron Oswald von Richthofen, who had already been serving as undersecretary to Bülow. It was made clear that the State Secretary's post would now revert to the subordinate role it had played in Bismarck's time, with Holstein remaining the more important adviser on foreign affairs.
Chancellor
Bülow's mornings were reserved for Wilhelm, who would visit the chancellery every morning when in Berlin. His determination to remain on Wilhelm's good side was remarkable, even for those accustomed to his irascible manner. Wilhelm's household controller noted, "Whenever, by oversight, he expresses an opinion in disagreement with the emperor, he remains silent for a few moments and then says the exact contrary, with the preface, 'as Your Majesty so wisely remarked'". He gave up tobacco, beer, coffee and liqueurs and took 35 minutes of exercise every morning and would ride in good weather through the Tiergarten. He would, on Sundays, take long walks in the woods. In 1905, at 56, he led his old Hussars regiment at the gallop in an imperial parade and was rewarded by an appointment to the rank of major general. Wilhelm remarked to Eulenburg in 1901, "Since I have Bülow I can sleep peacefully". His first conspicuous act as chancellor was a masterly defence in the Reichstag of German imperialism in China. Bülow often spent his time defending German foreign policy there, to say nothing of covering for the Kaiser's many undiplomatic gaffes. In a speech in November 1906, Bülow introduced the concept of "encirclement" to the Reichstag that triggered the Teutonic press to blame Der Krieg in der Gegenwart. To Germany, the Triple Entente was a disaster, but he put a brave face on it.
Domestic policy and politics
Various reforms were also introduced during his tenure, including an extension of the period in which workers could claim accident insurance (1900), the making of industrial arbitration courts compulsory for towns with a population of more than 20,000 (1901) and an extension of health insurance and further controls on child labour (1903). A polling booth law was introduced that improved the secret ballot in 1904. Two years later, payment for Reichstag deputies was introduced.
In preparation for the 1907 election, Bülow created the "Bülow Bloc" of parties that were fervently antisocialist and anticlerical, devoutly patriotic, enthusiastically imperialist, and loyal to the Kaiser and the Fatherland. What Bebel labeled the "Hottentot election" was a disaster for the Social Democrats, who lost almost half their seats. However, Bülow was unable to turn the election coalition into a stable bloc in parliament
Bülow also produced proposals for the expropriation of lands from Prussian Poland for purposes of German settlement. In 1908, after the passing of an expropriation bill in the Diet, Bülow quelled concerns from Cardinal Kopp that the bill was too extreme. Other protesters of Bülow's expropriation bills included Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, who pleaded publicly to the global intellectual community for support.
Economic policy
Under pressure from the Junker-dominated Agrarian League, Bülow passed a tariff in 1902 that increased the duties on agriculture. As a result, the German grain production became one of the most protected in the world. Bülow's government also negotiated a series of commercial treaties with other European countries that came into force in March 1906.
Foreign policy
Bülow served as foreign minister, 1897–1909. To gain a stronger voice in world affairs he encouraged Admiral Tirpitz's naval expansion policy. Expecting Britain to be defeated by Russia he planned to pick up some colonies of the British Empire. He miscalculated, and alienated Britain even more, as it moved closer to an alliance with France and Russia. Bülow was motivated by domestic political concerns in his support of Tirpitz naval policy. In 1898 he said that such a policy would "mobilize the best patriotic forces" and "appeal to the highest national emotions" which would in turn "keep the non-Socialist workers away from Social Democracy" and pull the worker away from "the ensnarements of the socialists and accustom him to the monarchical order".
Britain still held the balance of power in Europe. France and Britain had been colonial rivals and had a long mutual opposition, but King Edward VII was determined to boost British popularity in France by a personal tour. Serious negotiations for the Entente Cordiale began between the French ambassador to London, Paul Cambon, and the British Foreign Secretary, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne. As part of settling differences, France agreed not to dispute British control of Egypt if Britain agreed to France's claims to Morocco.
On 24 March 1904, France formally informed the German ambassador of the new Anglo-French Convention. Prince Hugo von Radolin, the ambassador, responded that he felt the agreement natural and justified. The German press noted that the deal in Morocco did not harm national interests and that the French intervention to restore order in the country might help German trade. Still, Bülow was cynical and took the Social Darwinist's view that expansion was a fact of life. His policy was unclear, even to the generals.
Although not swayed by bellicose generals, he followed a central planning agenda. If Prussia was euphoric, Bülow remained ambitious for imperial grandiosity and world power. Commercial growth in iron, steel, mining, railways and ironclads, and a new navy was driven by huge outputs and highly-competitive contractors. His chauvinism was extensive, a defensive embrasure against British alliance-building on which Germany would reject negotiations. He had promised to reply directly to British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain but thought better of it: "it is the English who must make advances to us". That unintentionally entrenched the Entente.
Bülow assured the British ambassador that he was pleased to see Britain and France settling their differences. He informed the Reichstag that Germany had no objections to the deal and no concerns about German interests in Morocco. Holstein had a different view: intervention in Moroccan affairs was governed by the Treaty of Madrid. Holstein argued that Germany had been sidelined by not being included in the negotiations and that Morocco was a country that showed promise for German influence and trade, which must eventually suffer if it came under French control. Previously he had dismissed any possibility of agreement between France and Britain. France now offered military assistance to Morocco to improve order in the country. Bülow responded by supporting the position of an independent Morocco, encouraging the United States to become involved and threatened war if France intervened. He was now convinced that the new friendliness between France and Britain was a threat to Germany, particularly if the accord deepened, but France was ill-prepared for war. Despite the possible risks of assassination, Bülow persuaded Wilhelm to make a visit to Tangier in 1905, where he made a speech supporting Morocco's independence, but his presence there simultaneously demonstrated Germany's determination to maintain its own influence.
Algeciras Conference
A friendly German naval presence in Morocco and a military base nearby could threaten the British or the important trade routes through the Mediterranean. The British continued to support beleaguered French Foreign Minister Theophile Delcassé. Lansdowne had been surprised by the German reaction, but Britain might take on the fledgling German fleet before it grew too large. On 3 June 1905, Abdelaziz of Morocco, prompted by Germany, rejected the French offer of assistance and called for an international conference. On 6 June, after Delcassé had resigned, news spread to Berlin. The following morning, Bülow was elevated to the rank of prince (Fürst). The occasion coincided with the marriage of the crown prince and echoed the elevation of Bismarck to prince in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Germany continued to press for further French concessions. Bülow carefully instructed Radolin and also spoke to the French ambassador in Berlin. However, the effect was somewhat the reverse of what he intended by hardening the resolve of French Premier Maurice Rouvier to resist further demands for rapprochement. The Algeciras Conference commenced on 16 January 1906 at Algeciras Town Hall. During the conference, a British fleet of 20 battleships, with accompanying cruisers and destroyers, visited the port town, and all of the delegates were invited on board.
The conference went badly for Germany, with a vote against German proposals that was 10–3. Holstein wished to threaten war against France, but Bülow ordered Holstein to take no further part in the conference. No satisfactory outcome for Germany was in sight by April, which left the only course of action to wind it down as best he could. The result was received badly in Germany, with objections raised in the press. On 5 April 1906, Bülow was obliged to appear before the Reichstag to defend the outcome, and during a heated exchange, he collapsed and was carried from the hall. At first, it was thought he had suffered a fatal stroke. Lord Fitzmaurice, in the British House of Lords, compared the incident with that of the death of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, a compliment that was much appreciated in Germany. Bülow's collapse was ascribed to overwork and influenza but, after a month's rest, he was able to resume his duties.
Scandal
In 1907, during the Harden–Eulenburg Affair, Adolf Brand, the founding editor of the homosexual periodical Der Eigene, printed a pamphlet alleging that Bülow had been blackmailed for engaging in homosexual practices and was morally obligated to oppose Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which outlawed homosexuality. Sued for slander and brought to trial on 7 November 1907, Brand asserted that Bülow had embraced and kissed his private secretary, Privy Councilor Max Scheefer, at all-male gatherings hosted by Eulenburg. Testifying in his own defense, Bülow denied the accusation but remarked he had heard unsavoury rumours about Eulenburg. Taking the stand, Eulenburg defended himself against Brand's charge by denying that he had ever held such events and claimed that he had never engaged in same-sex acts, which subsequently led to a perjury trial. Despite concluding testimony by the chief of the Berlin police that Bülow may have been the victim of a homosexual blackmailer, he easily prevailed in court, and Brand was sent to prison.
Daily Telegraph Affair
In November 1907, Wilhelm made a long-planned state visit to Britain. He had attempted to cancel the visit because of the recent scandals, but it went ahead and was so successful that he decided to remain in Britain for a holiday. He rented a house for the purpose from Colonel Edward Montague Stuart-Wortley and spoke freely to its owner while he was there. After he had departed, Stuart-Wortley wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph about the conversations, submitted it to Wilhelm and requested approval for its publication. The English manuscript was passed to Bülow to review for publication. Wilhelm had asked Bülow not to pass on the article to the Foreign Office, but Bülow instead sent it unread to State Secretary Wilhelm von Schoen and requested an official translation and the addition of any amendments that might be necessary.
Since Schoen was away, it instead went to the undersecretary, Stemrich. He read it but passed it without comment to Reinhold Klehmet, who interpreted his instructions as meaning to correct any errors of fact but not otherwise to comment. The manuscript was returned to Bülow, still unread, to Wilhelm, who saw no reason not to publish. It duly appeared in print and caused a storm. In the interview, Wilhelm expressed many controversial and offensive opinions:
The English were mad as March hares.
He could not understand why they repeatedly rejected his offers of friendship.
Most Germans disliked the English and so his own friendly attitude put him in a "distinct minority".
He had intervened against France and Russia on Britain's side during the Second Boer War.
He had provided the campaign plan that was used by the British during that war.
One day, they might come to be glad Germany was building up its fleet because of the rise of Japan.
Wilhelm thus managed to offend Japanese, French, Russian and especially British sensibilities. Even Germans were outraged, as he claimed to have helped the British with their war against the Boers, whom most Germans had supported.
Bülow accused the Foreign Office of failing to comment properly on the article. The office responded that it was his role to decide on publication in such a situation. Although Bülow denied having read the article, how he could have failed to do so remained unclear because of Wilhelm's continuous record of public gaffes. Questions arose as to Wilhelm's competence to rule and the role he should be permitted under the constitution. The matter was to be debated in the Reichstag, where Bülow would have to defend his own position and that of Wilhelm. Bülow wrote to Wilhelm and successfully offered to resign unless Wilhelm could give him full support in the matter. Bülow arranged the publication of a defence of the events in Norddeutsch Allgemeine Zeitung, which glossed over Wilhelm's remarks and concentrated on the failings of the Foreign Office in not examining the article properly. It explained that Bülow had offered to take full responsibility for the office's failings, but Wilhelm had refused to accept his resignation.
Bülow succeeded in turning away criticism from himself in the Reichstag and finished his speech to cheering from the assembly. Holstein observed that the nature of the comments meant that he could almost certainly not have defended Wilhelm for making them and that Bülow could not have done otherwise: disputing the factual accuracy of much of what Wilhelm had said and leaving blame for events squarely with him. His explanation was that the comments had been made with the best of intentions and would certainly not be repeated. He declared his conviction that the disastrous effects of the interview would induce Wilhelm to observe strict reserve, even in private conversations, or neither he nor any successor could assume responsibility.
Wilhelm was due to be away from Germany during the Reichstag debate, on a trip to Austria, and received much criticism for not staying at home. Wilhelm queried whether he ought to cancel the trip, but Bülow advised him to continue with it. Holstein asked Bülow about Wilhelm's absence; Bülow denied advising Wilhelm to go. Matters were not improved when during the visit, Count Dietrich von Hülsen-Haeseler, the chief of the German Imperial Military Cabinet, died from a heart attack at Donaueschingen, the estate of Prince Max von Fürstenberg. On Wilhelm's return, Bülow persuaded him to endorse a statement that he concurred with Bülow's statements to the Reichstag. Wilhelm was now close to breakdown and considering abdication.
Wilhelm withdrew from public appearances for six weeks, which was generally seen as an act of penitence rather than the consequence of his depression. Public opinion began to reflect on whether the Chancellor had failed to advise him properly and then failed to defend Wilhelm's actions in the Reichstag. Wilhelm's own view of the affair began to change to blaming Bülow for failing to warn him of the difficulties that the article would cause. He determined that Bülow would have to be replaced. In June 1909, difficulties arose in obtaining additional finance for ongoing ship construction. Wilhelm warned Bülow that if he failed to carry a majority for imposing inheritance taxes, Bülow would have to resign. He was defeated by eight votes. On board the royal yacht, Hohenzollern, on 26 June, Bülow offered his resignation, exactly twelve years after accepting the office.
On 14 July, the resignation was announced, and Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg became the new Chancellor. Wilhelm dined with the Bülows and expressed his regret that the prince was determined to resign. He observed that he had been informed that some of those who voted against the inheritance tax had done so out of animosity against Bülow and his handling of the Telegraph affair, rather out of opposition to the tax. For his services to the state, Bülow was awarded the Order of the Black Eagle set in diamonds.
Later life
After his resignation in 1909, Bülow lived principally at the villa in Rome that he had purchased for his retirement. Part of the summer was usually spent by him at Klein Flottbek, near Hamburg, or on the island of Norderney. A large fortune left him by a cousin, a Hamburg merchant, enabled him to live in elegant leisure and to make his house in Rome a centre of literary and political society.
He employed his leisure in writing for the centenary celebrations of the Wars of Liberation, a remarkable book on Imperial Germany, extolling its achievements and defending the main lines of his own foreign policy. In a revised edition of his book on Imperial Germany, published after the start of the First World War, he omitted or altered many passages that seemed compromising in light of the war like his policy of lulling Britain into a false sense of security while the German Navy was being constructed. He was understood to be in deeply malodorous company with Wilhelm, who never forgave him his attitude and action with regard to a 1908 interview in The Daily Telegraph.
Wartime diplomat
In 1914–1915, Bülow was the ambassador to Italy but failed to bring King Victor Emmanuel III to join the Central Powers. Italy had declared its neutrality at the outbreak of the war but intimated on 5 July 1914 through diplomatic channels that Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia was aggressive and provocative. On 9 December 1914, Sidney Sonnino addressed the Austrian Note to the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, to call attention to Article VII of the treaty by which Italy participated in the Triple Alliance, with particular reference to the clause that bound Austria-Hungary, if it disturbed the status quo in the Balkans even by a temporary occupation of Serbian territory, to come to an agreement with Italy and to arrange for compensations. The questions of the Trentino Agreement and Trieste were thus formally opened.
Austria-Hungary manifested great reluctance to enter upon the question of compensations, but Germany was more alert to its own concerns. Bülow was, therefore, entrusted with the temporary charge of the German embassy in Rome since the actual ambassador, Flotow, went on sick leave (19 December 1914). Bülow at once plunged into active negotiations and was sympathetic with Italian demands for compensation. He had, however, to fight the intransigence of Hungarian Prime Minister István Tisza, and Tisza's nominee, who was Berchtold's successor, Baron von Burian. Bülow was from the first for the complete cession of the Trentino region to Italy, but Austria-Hungary was willing to cede only part of it. Sonnino pointed out that Italian feeling would not be satisfied even with the whole of the Trentino but would also, in accordance with its irredentism, demand Trieste. Bülow continued to urge that all he could mediate for was the Trentino but that Austria would fight to keep Trieste.
In early April 1915, Italy's secret negotiations demanded the Trentino, Trieste and the Curzolane Islands, off the coast of Dalmatia. Austria-Hungary recognised Italian sovereignty over Valona. However, negotiations dragged on until the middle of May, when Bülow made a grave but characteristic tactical mistake. He induced the former Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti to come to Rome from Turin in the hope of preventing a rupture and bringing about the acceptance of the Austro-Hungarian terms.
Prime Minister Antonio Salandra suddenly resigned. There was a great outburst of popular indignation, fanned by the impassioned eloquence of d'Annunzio and expressed in demonstrations in front of the Quirinal, the royal palace, and on the Capitoline Hill, the centre of Rome. After a great majority in the Italian Parliament had on 20 May supported Salandra, a general mobilisation was ordered on 22 May, and the formal declaration of war against Austria-Hungary followed on 23 May 1915. The next day, Bülow left Rome. He regarded his task as impossible in any case, and on returning, he remarked: "Morale and attitude of the German people: A-1. Political leadership: Z-Minus".
Considered for chancellorship
He lived in Berlin, but after the peace he again resided in Rome for part of every year and spent the rest of the year in Germany. His name was mentioned in a ministerial crisis of 1921, as a possible chancellor. Although many of the leading figures in the Reichstag, including Matthias Erzberger, hoped that Bülow would succeed Bethmann Hollweg, who resigned in 1917, he was entirely unacceptable to the vast majority of both the German people and the Reichstag.
He died on 28 October 1929 in Rome.
Personality
Bülow spoke several languages and was a charming conversationalist. He was comfortably at home in high society and could entertain and impress even his opponents. He was thought by some colleagues to be untrustworthy: Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter referred to him as "the Eel". Once he had obtained power and position in the German government, he had no overarching ideas of what to do with them, allowing others to guide policy. His character made him a good choice to work with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who required agreement and flattery from his senior ministers, even if they sometimes then ignored his instructions. He wrote four volumes of autobiography, to be published after his death, which markedly altered public perception of his character, as they included his candid and malicious descriptions of others. He was a fine debater in the Reichstag but was generally lazy in carrying out his duties. He was described by Friedrich von Holstein, who was for 30 years the first councillor in the foreign department and a major influence on policy throughout that time, as having "read more Machiavelli than he could digest". His mother-in-law claimed, "Bernhard makes a secret out of everything".
Honours
Granted the noble title of Prince (Fürst) in 1905.
Honorary member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Honorary doctorates from the Universities of Königsberg and Münster
Canon of the Brandenburg Cathedral chapter
Bülowplatz in Berlin-Mitte named in his honour between 1910 and 1933 (now Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz)
German orders and decorations
Foreign orders and decorations
Military appointments
À la suite of the Prussian Army
Notes
References
Further reading
Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012)
Gooch, G.P. Before the war: studies in diplomacy (vol 1 1936) online see chapter on von Bulow pp 187–204.
Hale, Oron James. "Prince Von Bulow: His Memoirs and His German Critics" Journal of Modern History (1932), 4#2 pp 261–277. online
Robert K. Massie (1992). Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-03260-7.; extensive coverage of German foreign policy
Lerman, Katherine Anne. Chancellor as Courtier. Bernhard von Bulow & the Governance of Germany, 1900-1909 (1990) 350pp.
Massie, Robert K. Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War (Random House, 1991) excerpt see Dreadnought (book), popular history; pp 134–149.
Morrow, Ian F. D. "The Foreign Policy of Prince Von Bulow, 1898-1909." Cambridge Historical Journal 4#1 (1932): 63–93. online.
van Waarden, Betto. "Demands of a transnational public sphere: the diplomatic conflict between Joseph Chamberlain and Bernhard von Bülow and how the mass press shaped expectations for mediatized politics around the turn of the twentieth century." European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 26.3 (2019): 476–504. online
Winzen, Peter. "Prince Bülow's 'Weltmachtpolitik.'" Australian Journal of Politics & History (1976) 22#2 pp 227–242.
Primary sources
Bülow, Bernhard, Fürst von. Imperial Germany (1916) online
Bülow, Bernhard, Fürst von. Letters; a selection from Prince von Bülow's official correspondence as Imperial Chancellor during the years 1903-1909 online
Bernhard von Bülow (1932). Memoirs of Prince von Bülow Vol IV, 1849-1897. translated from German by Geoffrey Dunlop and F. A. Voight. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
External links
Norman Domeier: Bülow, Bernhard, Fürst von, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
Chancellor Von Bulows Memoirs, Vol.I. In English at archive.org
Chancellor Von Bulows Memoirs, Vol.II. In English at archive.org
Chancellor Von Bulows Memoirs, Vol.IV. In English at archive.org
Bernhard Bülow, Marie A. Lewenz (1914). Imperial Germany. Dodd, Mead.
Bernhard Bülow (1907). Fürst Bülows reden nebst urkundlichen Beiträgen zu seiner Politik. Reimer. p. 1.
Newspaper clippings about Bernhard von Bülow in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW |
Moana_(2016_film) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moana_(2016_film) | [
345
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moana_(2016_film)"
] | Moana (also known as Vaiana or Oceania in some markets), is a 2016 American animated musical fantasy adventure film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, co-directed by Chris Williams and Don Hall, and produced by Osnat Shurer, from a screenplay written by Jared Bush, and based on a story conceived by Clements, Musker, Williams, Hall, Pamela Ribon, and the writing team of Aaron Kandell and Jordan Kandell.
The film stars Dwayne Johnson and Auliʻi Cravalho in her film debut as the voice of the eponymous character and also features the ensemble voices of Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement, Nicole Scherzinger, and Alan Tudyk. It features original songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa'i, and Mark Mancina, and an original musical orchestral score also composed by Mancina. The film is set in ancient Polynesia and tells the story of Moana, the strong-willed daughter of a chief of a coastal village, who is chosen by the ocean itself to reunite a mystical relic with the goddess Te Fiti. When a blight strikes her island, Moana sets sail in search of Maui, a legendary demigod, in hopes of returning the relic to Te Fiti and saving her people. The plot is original, but takes inspiration from Polynesian myths.
Moana premiered during the AFI Fest at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 14, 2016, and was released theatrically in the United States on November 23. The film received positive reviews from critics, who praised its animation, music, and vocal performances. The film went on to gross over $687 million worldwide. Along with Zootopia, it marked the first time since 2002 that Walt Disney Animation Studios released two feature films in the same year, after Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet. At the 89th Academy Awards, the film received two nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song ("How Far I'll Go"). A sequel, Moana 2, is set to be released on November 27, 2024, while a live-action remake is scheduled for release on July 10, 2026, with Johnson reprising his role in both.
Plot
On the Polynesian island of Motunui, the inhabitants worship the goddess of nature, Te Fiti; a living island who, long ago, brought life to the ocean using a pounamu stone as her heart and the source of her power. One day, Maui, the shape-shifting demigod of the wind and sea and master of wayfinding, stole Te Fiti's heart to give humanity the power of creation. This caused Te Fiti to disintegrate, and Maui was attacked by Te Kā, a volcanic demon. Maui lost both the heart and his magic fish hook to the depths of the sea.
A thousand years later, the ocean chooses Moana, the daughter of Motunui's chief Tui, to return the heart to Te Fiti. Tui and Sina, Moana's parents, try to keep her away from the ocean to prepare her to become the island's chief. Sixteen years later, blight strikes the island, killing vegetation and shrinking the fish catch. Moana suggests going beyond the island's reef with her pet pig, Pua, to find more fish and discover what is happening, but Tui forbids it. Moana tries conquering the reef, but is overpowered by the tides and shipwrecked. That afternoon, Moana's grandmother Tala shows her a secret cavern of ships and reveals Motunui's people were voyagers until Maui stole Te Fiti's heart; the ocean was no longer safe without it. Tala explains Te Kā's darkness is destroying the island, but can be cured if Moana finds Maui and has him restore the heart of Te Fiti. Having been given the heart by the ocean, Tala gives it to Moana. Tala later becomes severely ill and tells Moana to find Maui.
Moana sets sail on a camakau from the cavern along with her dimwitted pet rooster, Heihei, who stowed away on it. They are caught in a typhoon and shipwrecked on an island, where she finds Maui, who boasts about his achievements. She demands Maui return the heart, but he refuses and traps her in a cave before leaving on her boat. She escapes and confronts Maui, who reluctantly lets her on the camakau. They are attacked by Kakamora, coconut pirates who seek the heart, but Moana and Maui outwit them. Moana realizes Maui is no longer a hero since he stole the heart and cursed the world, and convinces him to redeem himself by returning the heart. However, Maui first needs to retrieve his fishhook in Lalotai, the Realm of Monsters, from Tamatoa, a giant coconut crab. While Moana distracts Tamatoa, Maui retrieves his hook, only to find himself unable to control his shape-shifting. He is overpowered by Tamatoa, but Moana's quick thinking allows them to escape with the hook. Maui reveals his first tattoo was earned when his human parents abandoned him as an infant, and the gods, taking pity on him, granted him his powers. After reassurance from Moana, Maui teaches her the art of way-finding, regaining control of his powers, and the two grow closer.
They arrive at Te Fiti's island, only to be attacked by Te Kā. Moana refuses to turn back, resulting in Maui's hook being badly damaged. Unwilling to lose his hook again, Maui abandons Moana, who tearfully asks the ocean to find someone else to restore the heart and loses hope. The ocean obliges and takes the heart, but Tala's spirit appears, inspiring Moana to find her true calling. She retrieves the heart and sails back to confront Te Kā. Maui returns, having had a change of heart, and buys Moana time to reach Te Fiti by fighting Te Kā, destroying his hook in the process. Upon being unable to find Te Fiti, Moana realizes Te Kā is Te Fiti, having become corrupted without her heart. The ocean clears a path for Moana, allowing her to return the heart to Te Fiti, who heals the ocean and islands of blight. Maui apologizes to Te Fiti, who fixes his hook as well as Moana's boat before falling into a deep sleep and becoming an island. Moana bids farewell to Maui and Te Fiti, returning home and reuniting with her parents. After placing a shell on top of the stack of stones placed by all previous chiefs, she takes up her role as chief and wayfinder, leading her people as they resume voyaging, accompanied by Maui.
Cast
Auliʻi Cravalho as Moana, who is the curious daughter of village chief Tui and his wife Sina, and is chosen by the ocean to restore the heart of Te Fiti
Cravalho reprised her role in the film's Hawaiian-language version.
Louise Bush as young Moana
Dwayne Johnson as Maui, a legendary strong-willed yet easily annoyed shapeshifting demigod who sets off with Moana on her journey
Rachel House as Tala, Tui's mother and Moana's paternal grandmother. Like Moana, Tala shares a passion for the ocean and the two have a very deep bond.
House reprised her role in the film's Māori-language dub.
Temuera Morrison as Tui, Moana's overprotective father, Sina's husband, and Tala's son. He is chief of Motunui Island.
Morrison reprised his role in the film's Māori-language dub.
Christopher Jackson as Tui's singing voice
Jemaine Clement as Tamatoa, a giant, villainous, treasure-hoarding coconut crab from Lalotai, the Realm of Monsters.
Clement reprised his role in the film's Māori-language dub.
Nicole Scherzinger as Sina, Moana's mother, Tui's wife, and Chieftess of Motunui.
Scherzinger also reprised her role in the film's Hawaiian-language dub.
Alan Tudyk as Heihei, Moana's pet rooster
Tudyk also voices Villager No. 3, an old man who suggests cooking Heihei
Oscar Kightley as a fisherman
Troy Polamalu as Villager No. 1
Puanani Cravalho (Auli'i Cravalho's mother) as Villager No. 2
Production
Development
After directing The Princess and the Frog (2009), Clements and Musker started working on an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Mort, but problems with acquiring the necessary film rights prevented them from continuing with that project. To avoid a recurrence of that issue, they pitched three original ideas. The genesis of one of those ideas (the one that was ultimately green-lit) occurred in 2011, when Musker began reading up on Polynesian mythology, and learned of the heroic exploits of the demigod Māui. Intrigued with the rich culture of Polynesia, he felt it would be a suitable subject for an animated film. Shortly thereafter, Musker and Clements wrote a treatment and pitched it to John Lasseter, who recommended that both of them should go on research trips. Accordingly, in 2012, Clements and Musker went on research trips to Fiji, Samoa, and Tahiti to meet the people of the South Pacific Ocean and learn about their culture. At first, they had planned to make the film entirely about Maui, but their initial research trips inspired Clements to pitch a new idea focused on the young daughter of a chief.
Clements and Musker were fascinated to learn during their research that the people of Polynesia abruptly stopped making long-distance voyages about three thousand years ago. Polynesian navigational traditions had long predated those of European explorers, beginning around 300 CE. Native people of the Pacific possessed knowledge of the world and their place in it prior to the incursion of foreigners. For example, Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) were well aware of the existence of far away islands, had names for these places, and were interested in exploring them to benefit their societies. This voyaging heritage was made possible by a geographical knowledge system based on individual perspective rather than the European cardinal direction system. The reasons for the halt of this voyaging tradition remain unknown, but scholars have offered climate change and resulting shifts in ocean currents and wind patterns as one possible explanation. Native peoples of the Pacific resumed voyaging again a thousand years later. Clements and Musker set the film at that point in time, about two thousand years ago, on a fictional island in the central Pacific Ocean, which drew inspiration from elements of the real-life island nations of Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. Although, Motunui is actually a real islet located south of Easter Island in Chilean Polynesia.
Over the five years it took to develop and produce the film, Clements and Musker recruited experts from across the South Pacific to form an Oceanic Story Trust, who consulted on the film's cultural accuracy and sensitivity as the story evolved through nine versions. The Trust responded negatively, for example, to a depiction of Maui as bald, and to a proposed scene in which Moana threw a tantrum by throwing coconuts. In response, Maui was reworked with long hair and the coconut scene was scrapped.
During the 2015 D23 Expo's panel for Disney's slate of upcoming animated films, Moana's last name was given as "Waialiki", but that name was not retained in the final film.
Writing
Taika Waititi wrote the initial screenplay, but went home to New Zealand in 2012 to focus on his newborn first child and What We Do in the Shadows. Years later, Waititi joked that all that was left of his original draft was "EXT: OCEAN – DAY". The first draft focused on Moana as the sole daughter in a family with "five or six brothers", in which gender played into the story. However, the brothers and gender-based theme were deleted from the story, as the directors thought Moana's journey should be about finding herself. A subsequent draft presented Moana's father as the one who wanted to resume navigation, but it was rewritten to have him oppose navigation so he would not overshadow Moana. Instead, Pamela Ribon came up with the idea of a grandmother character for the film, who would serve as a mentor linking Moana to ancient traditions. Another version focused on Moana rescuing her father, who had been lost at sea. The film's story changed drastically during the development phase (which happens with most Disney films), and that idea ultimately survived only as a subtle element of the father's backstory.
Te Kā was referred to in early drafts of the film as Te Pō, a reference to the Māori goddess Hine-nui-te-pō, who was originally the life-giving goddess Hine-tītama, but became the goddess of death upon discovering that her husband, the god Tāne, was also her father. Māui set out to defeat her in order to bring immortality to humans, but failed and was himself killed.
Aaron and Jordan Kandell joined the project during a critical period to help deepen the emotional story architecture of the film. They are credited with developing the core relationship between Moana and Maui, the prologue, the Cave of the Wayfinders, the Kakamora, and the collector crab Tamatoa (played by Jemaine Clement). Jared Bush received sole credit as the writer of the final version of the screenplay.
Several major story problems were identified in 2015 after the film had already transitioned from development into production, but computer-generated films tend to have much shorter production schedules and much larger animation teams (in this case, about 90 animators) than traditionally animated films. Since Clements and Musker were already working 12-hour days (and Saturdays) directing such a large team of animators, Don Hall and Chris Williams (who had just finished directing Big Hero 6) came on board as co-directors to help fix the film's story issues. The scene in which Maui and Moana encounter the Kakamora is an intentional homage to Mad Max: Fury Road.
Casting
After the filmmakers sat through auditions of hundreds of candidates from across the Pacific, 14-year-old high school freshman Auliʻi Cravalho was cast as the lead character Moana. At that point in time, the design of Moana's face and personality was already complete, and Cravalho's obvious physical resemblance to her character was simply a coincidence. During animation production, Disney animators were able to integrate some of Cravalho's mannerisms into Moana's behavior as depicted onscreen.
The majority of the film's cast members are of Polynesian descent: Auliʻi Cravalho (Moana) and Nicole Scherzinger (Sina, Moana's mother) were born in Hawaii and are of Native Hawaiian heritage; Dwayne Johnson (Maui), Oscar Kightley (Fisherman), and Troy Polamalu (Villager No. 1) are of Samoan heritage; and New Zealand-born Rachel House (Tala, Moana's grandmother), Temuera Morrison (Tui, Moana's father), and Jemaine Clement (Tamatoa) are of Māori heritage.
Animation
Moana is Clements and Musker's first fully computer-animated film. One of the reasons for using computer animation was that the environment, including the ocean, benefited much more from the use of CGI as opposed to traditional animation. The filmmakers have also suggested that three-dimensional computer animation is well-suited to the "beautiful sculpturing" of the faces of the people of the South Pacific. Eric Goldberg worked on the hand-drawn animation used to depict Maui's sentient tattoos. During early development, the filmmakers considered the possibility of making the film with hand-drawn traditional animation, but only a few early animation tests were made in that style. In the final cut, only Maui's tattoos are hand-drawn.
Moana was produced in makeshift quarters in a giant warehouse in North Hollywood (together with Zootopia), while Disney Animation's headquarters building in Burbank was being renovated. Musker observed that Moana was similar in that respect to The Little Mermaid, which was produced in a warehouse in Glendale. Production wrapped on October 20, 2016.
Music and soundtrack
The film's soundtrack was released by Walt Disney Records on November 18, 2016. The songs were written by Opetaia Foa'i, Mark Mancina, who previously collaborated with the studio on Tarzan and Brother Bear, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, while the score was written by Mancina. The lyrics are in English, Samoan, and the Tokelauan language. The soundtrack peaked at number two on the Billboard 200.
Localization
In many European countries, the name of the titular character, Moana, was changed to Vaiana due to a trademark conflict. The film was released in those countries to bear the alternative name in the title. In Italy, the film was released with the title Oceania; media outlets speculated that the name change was to avoid confusion with Italian pornographic actress Moana Pozzi, and Disney Italy's head of theatrical marketing, Davide Romani, acknowledged they were "thinking about the issue" at a meeting of Italian exhibitors in 2015.
Following the success brought by international productions of Disney's Frozen, which led to the release of a complete set album which included all the official versions of "Let It Go" released at the time, Disney decided to produce a special Tahitian dubbing for the film. On October 25, 2016, at a press conference in Papeete, it was announced that the film will be the first motion picture to be fully dubbed in the Tahitian language. This marks the second time Disney has released a special dubbing dedicated to the culture which inspired the film: the first case was The Lion King (1994), for which the directors travelled to South Africa to cast voice actors for a Zulu-dubbed version. The Tahitian dubbing was made available in schools and institutions, but never for the public to purchase.
In June 2017, a Māori-language dubbing of the film produced by Matewa Media was announced, premiering in Auckland on September 11, with 30 theatres screening it for free as part of Māori Language Week. Rachel House, Jemaine Clement, Temuera Morrison, and Oscar Kightley reprised their respective roles in this version, directed by Rachel House herself. In contrast to the Tahitian dubbing, the Māori version was made available for purchase in Australia and New Zealand, and the soundtrack was uploaded on Disney's official Vevo channel.
In November 2017, a Hawaiian-language (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi) dubbing was announced to be under way, with Auliʻi Cravalho reprising her role as Moana and Nicole Scherzinger reprising the role of Sina. The film premiered on June 10, 2018, and like the Tahitian dubbing, was later distributed for free to schools in Hawaii. It was never released for sale in home media form.
Release
On October 20, 2014, Walt Disney Pictures announced that it would be releasing the film in late 2016, and hinted that it might be the November 23, 2016, release window previously announced by the studio in March 2014 for a then-untitled film. In November 2014, Disney confirmed that it would be releasing the film on November 23, 2016. The film is accompanied by the short film Inner Workings. The film's world premiere was held at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 14, 2016.
On January 27, 2017, a sing-along version of Moana was released in more than 2,000 theaters in the United States, featuring on-screen lyrics.
As part of Disney's 100th anniversary, Moana was re-released between October 13 to 26, 2023 in the United States, on October 14 in Helios theaters across Poland, and between October 26 to November 1 in Latin America opposite Coco. This re-release included the short Once Upon a Studio, which was shown before the film.
Marketing
On October 15, 2016, Hawaiian Airlines unveiled their Moana-themed livery for three of their Airbus A330-200 fleet. Disney initiating a partnership with Hawaiian Airlines to promote the film has been perceived as having the motive of fetishizing Polynesian island nations as exotic vacation spots, the people and culture of which exist only to entertain foreign audiences, as well as Auliʻi Cravalho speaking with The New York Times in an interview sharing travel tips for visitors to Hawaii. Critiques of these promotional tactics focus on how adverse effects of tourism have devastated native communities in the Pacific, resulting in environmental degradation and poverty.
A Maui "skin suit" costume made to tie in with the film was pulled by Disney from its online store following complaints about it being culturally insensitive and for appearing to promote brownface.
There are currently meet-and-greets with Moana at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris, and at Aulani, a Disney Resort and Spa. At the parks, she is located in Adventureland and is occasionally joined by Maui.
At Hong Kong Disneyland, there is a stage show called Moana's Village Festival, which opened in 2018.
Home media
Moana was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD in the United States on March 7, 2017, with a digital release on February 21, 2017. The releases include the short film Inner Workings. The Blu-ray release also introduces a short film featuring Maui and Moana titled Gone Fishing. The film sold 4.4 million units and made a revenue of $116.3 million from home video sales, making it the best-selling film of 2017. Moana was also released on the streaming service Disney+ on its launch date November 12, 2019. A sing-along version of the film was released on Disney+ July 22, 2022.
Reception
Box office
Moana grossed $248.7 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $438.4 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $687.2 million. On January 22 and March 16, 2017, respectively, the film reached the $500 million and $600 million marks, becoming the fourth consecutive Walt Disney Animation Studios film to reach both milestones after Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014), and Zootopia (2016). Although Disney had not disclosed the film's production budget, most of its animated films cost around $150 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $121.3 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film, making it the 12th-most profitable release of 2016.
North America
In the United States, Moana was released during the Thanksgiving weekend. The film played in 3,875 theaters of which a majority of them (80%) screened it in 3D. It also played in 50 premium large-format screens and more than 400 D-Box screens. It was projected to take in around $50 million in three days, with $75–85 million in five days (some estimates going as high as $90 million). Deadline.com said the numbers were good for the original Disney film and marked a great rebound for the company in the wake of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur the previous year, which had made $55 million over five days off a production budget of $175–200 million.
Moana made $2.6 million from Tuesday paid previews which began at 7 pm, the highest ever for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film and for a non-Pixar Disney animated film. On its opening day, it made $15.5 million, a new record for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film opening on Wednesday (breaking Frozen's record) and the biggest opening day ever for a film released on pre-Thanksgiving Day. On Thanksgiving Day, it earned $9.9 million, a decrease of 36% from its previous day. On Black Friday—the highest-grossing day of the Thanksgiving stretch—it made $21.8 million, a 127% increase from the day before. Through Sunday, the film posted a three-day opening weekend worth $56.6 million over its Friday-to-Sunday debut and $82.1 million from Wednesday to Sunday, the third biggest three-day Thanksgiving opening (behind Frozen and Toy Story 2) and the second-biggest five-day Thanksgiving opening (behind Frozen), dethroning Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them off the top spot. Among all films that did not necessarily open in this weekend but may have played, Moana ranks sixth among three-day weekends and fifth among five-day weekends.
The film's opening was considered to be another animated success for the studio after Zootopia and Pixar's Finding Dory posted huge openings, respectively, the same year in March and June.
In its second weekend, the film dropped by about 50% for a total of $28.3 million, a smaller drop than Toy Story 2, Frozen, Tangled, and The Good Dinosaur. The film managed to top the box office for its third weekend, despite competition from newcomers and holdovers, earning $18.5 million while falling by 34%. It became the sixth film of 2016 to top the box office three times, following Deadpool, Zootopia, The Jungle Book, Finding Dory, and Suicide Squad. The film was overtaken by Disney's own Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in its fourth weekend, despite only a marginal decline.
It fell to number six in its fifth weekend, due to competition from four new releases—Sing, Passengers, Why Him?, and Assassin's Creed—despite a small drop again; it grossed $2.9 million on Christmas Day. On the holiday week of December 23–29, the film finished at number four with a gross of $26 million, which was 14% up from the previous week, despite losing over 300 theaters. It finished at number four in its sixth weekend, going up 42% and 97%, respectively, during the three-day and four-day weekends; it grossed $3.6 million on New Year's Day.
It fell outside the top ten in its eighth weekend (which included Martin Luther King Jr. Day), dropping 33% and 4%, respectively, during the three-day and four-day weekends.
Outside North America
Internationally, the film earned $17.2 million in its first weekend from 12 markets, the bulk of which came from China. In its second weekend, the film expanded to a total of 30 markets, adding an additional $33.7 million.
In China, the film had a November 25 opening day with $1.9 million from 38,000 screenings. However, it enjoyed a big weekend bump on Saturday—even though its screens dipped—and Sunday. In total, it scored an opening weekend of $12.3 million, the second best for a Disney animated title, behind only Zootopia. It was No. 2 behind Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Strong social media numbers showed among the highest the studio has seen there, similar to how Zootopia started off slow and later became a blockbuster phenomenon. The film slipped 55% in its second weekend, earning $5.8 million, and $21.8 in total in China. It would eventually earn a total of $32.7 million in China.
It had similar successful number-one debuts in France, Russia, Mexico and Spain. The film also saw success in Belgium, the Netherlands and French-speaking Switzerland. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the film faced competition from Fantastic Beasts—which was playing in its third weekend—and as a result, it posted a low opening of only £2.2 million ($2.8 million).
The biggest earning markets to date have been Japan ($45.9 million), followed by France ($35.5 million), China ($32.8 million), the UK ($25.3 million), Brazil ($22.9 million), Australia ($19 million), Germany ($17 million), Italy ($15.9 million), and South Korea ($15.5 million).
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Moana holds an approval rating of 96% based on 289 reviews and an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads "With a title character as three-dimensional as its lush animation and a story that adds fresh depth to Disney's time-tested formula, Moana is truly a family-friendly adventure for the ages." Subsequently, the film is also listed as number 18 on the website's "100 Best Computer-Animated Movies" list. On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave an 89% overall positive score and a 79% "definite recommend".
Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal proclaimed that "Moana is beautiful in more ways than I can tell, thanks to the brilliance of more animators than I could count." Animator Eric Goldberg received praise from critics and audiences for his hand-drawn animation of Maui's tattoos, which they claimed "stole the show" from the actual CGI-animated motion picture. Wai Chee Dimock, writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, compared the ocean in Moana to the one in "The Water Baby", a short story by Jack London, saying that both are animated: one, by the tension between digital and analog animation, and the other, by the tension between an encroaching future and a past in retreat still capable of pushing back.
Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, stating "...its dazzling visuals, catchy tunes, enjoyable performances, clever running gags and overall sense of fun. It's all there, and—except for a few scary moments—it'll delight viewers of all ages." Peter Debruge of Variety praised the film, calling it "a return to the heights of the Disney Renaissance".
Critics also lauded Moana for centering on a strong female protagonist whose narrative is not confined to finding a Prince Charming, a contrast to princess characters of past Disney films. Brent Lang of Variety wrote, "Whereas earlier Disney heroines waited around for their prince to come and save the day, Moana takes it upon herself to embark on a perilous oceanic voyage in order to lift her island home from a curse. It's the kind of adventuring that would have been left for the guys in Disney films of yore...Her journey is about finding herself, not landing a husband".
Accolades
Other media
Due to the success of the film, Moana was officially added to the Disney Princess franchise and was the 12th addition to the lineup. According to the official list of the most-watched streaming titles of 2021 released on January 21, 2022, by Deadline and Nielsen, Moana ranked as the second most streamed film of 2021 with a view-time of 8.9 billion minutes, just behind Luca (2021), which had been watched for 10.5 billion minutes.
Theme park attraction
On October 16, 2023, Walt Disney World Resort announced that a new water walk-through attraction, Journey of Water Pavilion was opened in World Nature section of the park at EPCOT, as part of The Walt Disney Company's 100th anniversary celebration, since the opening date was indefinitely delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sequel
A sequel, Moana 2, was written and directed by Dave G. Derrick Jr. It is scheduled to be released in theaters on November 27, 2024. A 16 second first look at the film was released in February 2024. The project was originally announced in December 2020 as a television series for Disney+ before being redeveloped into a feature film.
Live-action adaptation
In April 2023, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Walt Disney Pictures was developing a live-action adaptation of Moana to be produced by Johnson, Dany Garcia, and Hiram Garcia, under their production company Seven Bucks Productions, and Beau Flynn of Flynn Pictures Co., executive produced by Auliʻi Cravalho and Scott Sheldon, and written by Jared Bush, with Johnson set to reprise his role as Maui. Johnson remarked "This story is my culture, and this story is emblematic of our people's grace and warrior strength. I wear this culture proudly on my skin and in my soul, and this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reunite with Maui, inspired by the mana and spirit of my late grandfather, High Chief Peter Maivia, is one that runs very deep for me. ... [T]here is no better world for us to honor the story of our people, our passion and our purpose than through the realm of music and dance, which is at the core of who we are as Polynesian people." Sean Bailey, Disney Live Action's president of production, acknowledged that, although only seven years had passed since the animated film was released, the celebration of Disney's 100th anniversary contributed to the decision to remake the film so soon.
Thomas Kail is set to direct. Cravalho will not reprise her role as Moana. The film was originally scheduled for theatrical release on June 27, 2025, in the United States, but was delayed to July 10, 2026, due to the release of Moana 2.
On June 12, 2024, it was announced that newcomer Catherine Laga‘aia from Sydney, Australia was cast as the titular character. Additional casting includes John Tui as Chief Tui, Frankie Adams as Sina, and Rena Owen as Gramma Tala.
See also
House of Moana
Māui (mythology)
Māui (Hawaiian mythology)
Polynesian narrative
Polynesian navigation
Polynesians
Austronesian peoples
Notes
References
External links
Official website
Moana at IMDb
Moana at AllMovie
Moana at Box Office Mojo
Moana at Rotten Tomatoes
National Geographic interview of real life Moana, Lehua Kamalu |
2016_World_Series | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_World_Series | [
345
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_World_Series"
] | The 2016 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 2016 season. The 112th edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff between the National League (NL) champion Chicago Cubs and the American League (AL) champion Cleveland Indians, the first meeting of those franchises in postseason history. The series was played between October 25 and November 2 (although Game 7 ended slightly after 12:00 am local time on November 3). The Indians had home-field advantage because the AL had won the 2016 All-Star Game. This was the final World Series to have home-field advantage determined by the All-Star Game results; since 2017, home-field advantage has been awarded to the team with the better record.
The Cubs defeated the Indians 4–3 to capture their first World Series championship since 1908, and their first while playing at Wrigley Field. The deciding seventh game, won by Chicago 8–7 in ten innings, was the fifth World Series Game 7 to go into extra innings, and the first since 1997 (which, coincidentally, the Indians also lost). It was also the first Game 7 to have a rain delay, which occurred as the 10th inning was about to start. The Cubs became the sixth team to come back from a 3–1 deficit to win a best-of-seven World Series.
The Cubs, playing in their 11th World Series overall and their first since 1945, won their third championship and first since 1908, ending the longest championship drought in North American professional sports history. It was the Indians' sixth appearance in the World Series and their first since 1997, with their last Series win having come in 1948. Cleveland manager Terry Francona, who had previously won World Series titles with the Boston Red Sox in 2004 and 2007, fell short in his bid to become the third manager to win his first three trips to the Fall Classic, after Casey Stengel and Joe Torre.
The 2016 World Series was highly anticipated; the two teams entered their matchup as the two franchises with the longest World Series title droughts, a combined 176 seasons without a championship. At the series' conclusion, numerous outlets listed Game 7 as an instant classic, and the entire Series as one of the greatest of all time.
Background
Chicago Cubs
The Cubs made their 11th appearance in the World Series; their only previous two championships were in 1907 and 1908. They lost their eight other appearances, in 1906, 1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938, and 1945. The Cubs' 107 season World Series victory drought was the longest league title drought in the history of the major American professional sports leagues. It was also regarded to be the most famous championship drought in American sports history. Sports folklore attributed this due to the "Curse of the Billy Goat", which was one of the most famous purported curses in baseball.
The Cubs qualified for the postseason by winning the National League Central, ending the regular season with the best record in all of MLB (103–58) for the first time since 1945; they also posted their highest winning percentage since 1935, and won their most games since 1910. The division title was their sixth since division play began in 1969, and their first since 2008. The Cubs entered the postseason as the No. 1 seed in the National League, and they defeated the 5th-seeded San Francisco Giants 3–1 of the NL Division Series before clinching their first NL pennant since 1945 with a 4–2 series win over the 3rd-seeded Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series.
For Cubs manager Joe Maddon, it was his second appearance in the World Series as manager – in 2008, he managed the Tampa Bay Rays, who lost 4–1 to the Philadelphia Phillies. This made him the eighth person to manage pennant winning teams in both leagues.
It was also Maddon's third World Series appearance overall – in 2002, he was bench coach for the Anaheim Angels.
Cleveland Indians
The Indians made their sixth appearance in the World Series. They won two championships in 1920 and 1948. They lost their three most recent appearances in the Fall Classic in 1954, 1995, and 1997. Their 67-season (at the time) World Series victory drought was the second-longest ongoing drought at the time, behind only the Cubs.
The Indians qualified for the postseason by winning the American League Central, their eighth division title and their first since 2007. The Indians were the #2 seed in the American League, and they defeated the 3rd-seeded Boston Red Sox 3–0 in the AL Division Series before clinching the pennant with a 4–1 victory over the 4th-seeded Toronto Blue Jays in the AL Championship Series.
For Indians manager Terry Francona, it was his third appearance in the World Series. He won his previous two appearances – 2004 and 2007 – as manager of the Boston Red Sox, in sweeps of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Colorado Rockies.
This was the third postseason meeting between Francona and Maddon. Maddon's Rays defeated Francona's Red Sox in the 2008 American League Championship Series, while Maddon's Rays defeated Francona's Indians in the 2013 American League Wild Card Game.
Summary
Chicago (NL) won the series, 4–3.
Game summaries
Game 1
Former Indians and Cubs player Kenny Lofton threw the ceremonial first pitch before Game 1 while Rachel Platten sang the national anthem. Corey Kluber started for the Indians, and Jon Lester started for the Cubs. Kyle Schwarber, who had missed nearly all of the 2016 season after tearing ligaments in his left leg in the season's third game, was added to the Cubs' World Series roster and started as their designated hitter. Schwarber struck out twice, but also doubled and drew a walk. The double made Schwarber the first non-pitcher to get his first hit of the season in the World Series.
Kluber made World Series history by striking out eight hitters in the first three innings. Roberto Pérez became the first ever ninth-place hitter with two homers in a World Series game, the first Indians player to hit two homers in a Series game, and the first Puerto Rican-born player to hit two homers in a World Series game. In the first, the Indians loaded the bases off Lester on a single and two walks before José Ramirez's single drove in a run, then Lester hit Brandon Guyer with a pitch to force in another. Perez's home run in the fourth made it 3–0 Indians. In the eighth, Justin Grimm walked Guyer with two outs and allowed a single to Lonnie Chisenhall, then Hector Rondon allowed Perez's second home run of the night. Andrew Miller and Cody Allen finished the victory for the Indians despite Miller having to pitch out of a bases-loaded jam in the seventh, and the Indians took Game 1 of the series 6–0. Francona's World Series winning streak reached nine with this victory.
Leading off the first inning, Dexter Fowler became the first African-American to play for the Cubs in a World Series.
Game 2
Former Indians player Carlos Baerga threw the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 while LoCash performed the national anthem. The start time for the game was moved up an hour, because of the possibility of heavy rain in the forecast. Looking to tie the series at one game apiece, the Cubs sent Jake Arrieta to the mound against the Indians' Trevor Bauer who was still healing a lacerated pinkie resulting from an accident with a drone. The Cubs also featured six players under age 25 in the starting lineup, a postseason record. The Cubs started things off early as Kris Bryant singled in the first inning and Anthony Rizzo doubled to score Bryant and give the Cubs an early 1–0 lead. Arrieta started well too, retiring the first two batters before walking back-to-back batters in the bottom of the first. However, Arrieta got a flyout to end the inning. The Cubs struck again in the third following a two-out walk by Rizzo and a single by Ben Zobrist. A single by Kyle Schwarber scored Rizzo from second and pushed the Cubs' lead to 2–0. Bauer was forced from the game in the fourth, and the Cubs struck again in the fifth. Rizzo walked again off Zach McAllister, and Zobrist tripled to plate Rizzo. Another run-scoring single by Schwarber off Bryan Shaw and a bases-loaded walk by Addison Russell pushed the lead to 5–0.
Arrieta continued to pitch well, walking three batters but holding the Indians without a hit into the sixth inning. In the sixth, a double by Jason Kipnis ended the no-hitter, moved to third on a groundout and scored the lone Indians run of the game on a wild pitch by Arrieta. Arrieta allowed another single and was lifted for reliever Mike Montgomery. Both teams threatened in the seventh but could not score and, following a single by Mike Napoli in the bottom of the eighth, Aroldis Chapman entered to finish the game for the Cubs. The win marked the Cubs' first World Series game victory since 1945 and tied up the series at one game all. The game marked Indians manager Terry Francona's first loss in ten World Series games.
Game 3
For Game 3, former Cubs player Billy Williams threw the ceremonial first pitch before the start of the game, Fall Out Boy lead singer Patrick Stump sang the national anthem, and Bill Murray sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch, to mark the Cubs' first World Series night game at home. Chicago pitcher Kyle Hendricks started against Cleveland pitcher Josh Tomlin.
The game's only run came off a Coco Crisp single that scored Michael Martínez from third in the seventh inning. Josh Tomlin, Andrew Miller, Bryan Shaw, and Cody Allen combined to shut out the Cubs. Allen earned his sixth postseason save as Javier Báez struck out swinging to end the game, leaving the tying and winning runs in scoring position. It was the fourth time in which the Cubs had lost in a shutout during the 2016 postseason.
Game 4
For Game 4, former Cubs pitchers Greg Maddux and Ferguson Jenkins threw the ceremonial first pitches before the start of the game while Cubs anthem singer John Vincent sang the national anthem, and actor Vince Vaughn sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch.
The Cubs struck first when Dexter Fowler doubled to lead off the first and scored on Anthony Rizzo's one-out single, but Kluber held them to that one run through six innings before Francona turned it over to the bullpen. In the second, Carlos Santana's leadoff home run off Lackey tied the game; then, with two on, Kluber's RBI single put the Indians up 2–1. Kris Bryant committed two errors in that inning. Next inning, Jason Kipnis hit a leadoff double and scored on Francisco Lindor's single. In the sixth, Lonnie Chisenhall's sacrifice fly with two on off Mike Montgomery made it 4–1 Indians. Next inning, Justin Grimm allowed a leadoff double and one-out hit-by-pitch before being relieved by Travis Wood, who gave up a three-run home run to Kipnis put to the Indians ahead 7–1. The Cubs got one run back in the eighth, on a Dexter Fowler home run off Andrew Miller, which was the first run he gave up in the post-season. With the victory, the Indians were just one win away from their 1st World Series championship since 1948.
Game 5
For Game 5, former Cubs star and Hall of Fame member Ryne Sandberg threw the ceremonial first pitch before the start of the game, former Cubs public address announcer and former Chicago Blackhawks anthem singer Wayne Messmer performed the national anthem, and Eddie Vedder (a Chicago native and die hard Cubs fan) sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch. José Ramírez hit a home run for Cleveland in the second inning off Jon Lester, but the Cubs, facing elimination, scored three runs in the fourth inning off Trevor Bauer. Kris Bryant led off the inning with a home run. After Bryant's home run, Anthony Rizzo doubled and Ben Zobrist singled. Addison Russell's RBI single put the Cubs up 2–1. After Jason Heyward struck out, Javier Baez's bunt single moved Zobrist to third before David Ross's sacrifice fly made it 3–1 Cubs. The Indians cut their deficit to 3–2 off Lester in the sixth on Francisco Lindor's RBI single that scored Rajai Davis from second base. With the tying run on second base in the seventh inning, Maddon brought in Aroldis Chapman, who threw 2+2⁄3 scoreless innings, earning his first save of the series and fourth overall in the postseason. The win was the first World Series game victory for the Cubs at Wrigley Field since 1945.
Game 6
The last living member of Cleveland's 1948 World Series championship team, Eddie Robinson, attended Game 6 at Progressive Field. Former Indians pitcher Dennis Martínez threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game while country singer Hunter Hayes sang the national anthem.
The Cubs scored three runs in the first inning, all with two outs, on a Kris Bryant home run and a two-run double by Addison Russell after two singles off Josh Tomlin. In the third inning, the Cubs loaded the bases on a walk and two singles off Tomlin, who was relieved by Dan Otero. Following the pitching change, Russell hit the 19th grand slam in World Series history to extend the Cubs lead to 7–0. Russell's grand slam was the first in a World Series game since Paul Konerko of the crosstown Chicago White Sox in 2005, as well as the first by a visiting player since Lonnie Smith in 1992. In the bottom of the fourth, Mike Napoli drove in Jason Kipnis, who doubled to lead off, with an RBI single to cut the deficit to 7–1. In the bottom of the fifth, Kipnis drove a ball over the left field wall for a home run to make it a 7–2 game. In the top of the ninth with a runner on and two outs, Anthony Rizzo hit a two-run home run to right to make it 9–2. In the bottom of the inning, Aroldis Chapman allowed a leadoff walk to Brandon Guyer and was relieved by Pedro Strop, who threw a wild pitch to move Guyer to second and Roberto Perez's RBI single made it 9–3 Cubs with Perez thrown out at second for the second out. After Carlos Santana walked, Travis Wood relieved Strop and got Jason Kipnis to pop out to short to end the game and force a Game 7.
Russell's six RBIs tied a World Series single-game record. Arrieta became the first NL starting pitcher to notch two road wins in a single World Series since Bob Gibson in 1967.
Game 7
Game 7 of the series would go down as a classic, with some calling it the greatest Game 7 in World Series history, comparing it to 1924, 1960, 1991, 1997, and 2001 for its drama and tension. Former Indians player Jim Thome threw the ceremonial first pitch before the game while members of the Cleveland Orchestra string section performed the national anthem. The pitching matchup was between MLB earned run average (ERA) champion Kyle Hendricks, who had started Game 3 for the Cubs, and Corey Kluber, who had won games 1 and 4 and was pitching on three days' rest. Kluber came into the game 4–1 in the postseason with a 0.89 ERA.
Dexter Fowler led off the game with a home run for Chicago off Kluber, becoming the first player ever to hit a lead-off home run in a World Series Game 7. The Indians tied the game in the bottom of the third inning with an RBI single by Carlos Santana after Coco Crisp doubled and advanced to third on a Roberto Pérez sacrifice bunt. The Cubs scored two runs in the fourth inning with a sacrifice fly by Addison Russell (Kris Bryant running aggressively to tag up from third on the short fly ball and slide under the tag at home) and a double by Willson Contreras. To start the fifth inning, Javier Báez hit a home run to center making it 4–1 on the first pitch he saw to knock Kluber out of the game. ALCS MVP Andrew Miller came on in relief and gave up a walk to Bryant and RBI single to Anthony Rizzo to push the lead to 5–1 (Bryant's aggressiveness again instrumental as he was attempting to steal second on the hit, allowing him to score all the way from first). In the bottom of the fifth inning, Hendricks retired the first two batters. A two-out walk to Santana, which included a pitch that was called a ball and appeared to be a strike, persuaded Joe Maddon to relieve both his starter and the catcher. This move, along with others throughout the series, would be highly criticized afterward, as it appeared to some that Hendricks was pulled out too soon.
Jon Lester, who had started Games 1 and 5, came on in relief for the first time since the 2007 ALCS, coincidentally also against the Indians. David Ross (who usually caught for Lester and was playing in his final game) committed a throwing error that allowed Jason Kipnis to reach base and put runners on second and third. A wild pitch that ricocheted off Ross's helmet allowed Santana and Kipnis to score, narrowing the Cubs' lead to 5–3. To atone for his blunders, the 39-year-old Ross hit a home run to center, in his last official at-bat of his career, in the top of the sixth to make it a 6–3 game, becoming the oldest player to hit a home run in a World Series Game 7.
Lester retired the first two batters in the eighth inning, but was pulled after a José Ramírez single that Russell did not field cleanly at short. Maddon opted to use Aroldis Chapman, who had thrown 42 pitches in Game 5 and had also pitched in Game 6, despite the fact that the Cubs had already built a large lead. Brandon Guyer promptly hit a run-scoring double off Chapman, making the score 6–4. The next batter was Indians center fielder Rajai Davis, who had hit 55 career home runs in 11 seasons entering this game, and who was hitting .132 in the postseason up to that point. Davis hit a dramatic 2-run home run off Chapman, just barely clearing the left field wall and the left field foul pole, scoring Guyer and tying the game, making the score 6–6. Davis's home run was the latest-occurring game-tying home run in World Series Game 7 history. Many fans and Chapman himself believe he blew the lead due to his unnecessary use in Game 6.
The Cubs squandered a scoring chance in the top of the 9th. Ross led off with a walk and Jason Heyward grounded into a fielder's choice to take pinch runner Chris Coghlan off the bases. Heyward stole second and advanced to third on a throw to second by Yan Gomes that got away from Kipnis. At this point Cleveland's Terry Francona made a defensive change in left, replacing Coco Crisp by inserting Michael Martinez in right and moving Guyer to left; this was eventually to backfire for the Indians. Javier Baez attempted a squeeze bunt with two strikes—another decision by Maddon which drew criticism—and fouled it off for the second out. Dexter Fowler would eventually ground out on a spectacular game-saving play by shortstop Francisco Lindor to end the top of the ninth. To the shock of many observers, Aroldis Chapman was asked by Maddon to return to the mound for the bottom of the ninth, but he promptly retired the Indians in order, facing Carlos Santana, Jason Kipnis, and Francisco Lindor.
With the game tied 6–6 after nine innings, a sudden cloudburst resulted in a 17-minute rain delay. During the delay, Cubs right fielder Heyward called his teammates into a weight room behind Chicago's dugout and told them, "We're the best team in baseball ... for a reason... Stick together and we're going to win this game." After the game, many of Heyward's teammates credited him with renewing their spirits.
When play resumed in the top of the tenth, Kyle Schwarber promptly led off with a single off of Indians pitcher Bryan Shaw. Maddon replaced Schwarber with pinch-runner Albert Almora. Kris Bryant then hit a deep fly ball to center, and Almora tagged up and advanced to second base in what was called the "savviest baserunning play of the season." After an intentional walk to Anthony Rizzo, Ben Zobrist stepped up to the plate. Zobrist had been 0-for-4 in the game, but he delivered a clutch RBI double into the left field corner, scoring Almora and breaking the tie, making the score 7–6. Zobrist later said, "I was just battling, grinding up there. Fortunately, that last one he left over the plate and up to where I could just slap it down the line, and that was all I was trying to do."
After another intentional walk to Addison Russell, Miguel Montero, who had replaced Ross at catcher and was hitting just .091 in the postseason, delivered another clutch single into left, scoring Rizzo and making the score 8–6. Trevor Bauer, the losing pitcher of Games 2 and 5, relieved Shaw and got out of the bases-loaded jam by striking out Heyward and retiring Baez on a flyout to escape further damage.
Carl Edwards Jr. was called on to finish off the Indians in the bottom of the tenth, but after retiring the first two hitters (Mike Napoli and José Ramírez), he walked Brandon Guyer, who took second base on defensive indifference. Rajai Davis, following up on his eighth-inning heroics, lined a single to center, making it a one-run game, and the score 8–7. Maddon then called on Mike Montgomery, who had zero career saves. Montgomery retired Michael Martinez (the replacement for Crisp who had scored the game-winning run in Game 3 but had struck out in his only two at-bats of the Series) with an infield grounder fielded by Bryant, who threw to Rizzo. This ended the game and the World Series, with the Cubs winning the series and ending their 108-year World Series championship drought. Zobrist was awarded the World Series MVP award after hitting .357 in the series and delivering the go-ahead hit.
After Game 7
Rizzo called the rain delay "the most important thing to happen to the Chicago Cubs in the past 100 years. I don't think there's any way we win the game without it." Cubs president Theo Epstein said that when he heard about the meeting called by Heyward, "Right then I thought, 'We're winning this game.'"
The Cubs became the first team to come back from a 3–1 deficit to win the Series since the 1985 Kansas City Royals. They were also the first since the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates to do so while winning Games 6 and 7 on the road, and the second team since the 1979 Pirates to win Game 7 as the visiting team, with the 2014 San Francisco Giants also having achieved that feat in Kansas City; almost one year later, the 2017 Houston Astros did the same thing in Los Angeles. Yet another Game 7 would be won by a road team in 2019, when the Washington Nationals did so in Houston. With the Game 7 victory, Joe Maddon is 3–0 in postseason series against Terry Francona, having also won the 2008 ALCS and the 2013 Wild Card Game against him. Game 7 was the 60th extra inning game in World Series history, and the fifth time a Game 7 went into extra innings. This was the first extra inning Game 7 to be won by the visiting team, as the home team won the previous four times in 1912, 1924, 1991, and 1997.
With the Cubs winning, the Indians became the owners of MLB's longest active championship drought, which stood at 68 years, and currently stands at 75 years. Their last title came in 1948; however, earlier in 2016, the Cleveland sports curse had already been broken, with the Cleveland Cavaliers having won the city's first championship since 1964 by defeating the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals.
Game 7 of the 2016 World Series won the 2017 ESPY Award for Best Game.
This marked the last World Series in which the visiting team's championship presentation took place in the locker room instead of the playing field. Following the 2017 World Series, every World Series presentation would take place on the field, regardless of whether or not the home or road team won the championship.
Composite line score
2016 World Series (4–3): Chicago Cubs (NL) beat Cleveland Indians (AL).
Broadcasting
Television
Fox televised the series in the United States, under contract with Major League Baseball giving it exclusive rights to the World Series through 2021. Joe Buck was the network's play-by-play announcer, with John Smoltz as color commentator and Ken Rosenthal and Tom Verducci as field reporters. Fox Deportes also aired the Series and provided a Spanish-language simulcast over-the-air via Fox's SAP audio, with Carlos Álvarez and Duaner Sánchez announcing.
Sportsnet in English and RDS in French televised the series in Canada. Sportsnet used the MLB International feed produced by the MLB Network; Matt Vasgersian was MLB International's play-by-play announcer with the Toronto Blue Jays' play-by-play announcer Buck Martinez as their color analyst and MLB Network correspondent Lauren Shehadi and analyst Mark DeRosa as field reporters. Alain Usereau and former Montreal Expos player Marc Griffin handled the French-language telecast for RDS. BT Sport televised the series live in the United Kingdom and Ireland. WAPA-TV transmitted the series to Puerto Rico, with Rafael Bracero at the helm of the station's sports commentary of the series.
Ratings
Initial reports often utilize "fast national" ratings, which are subject to revision. Game 7 had over 40 million viewers, the largest audience for a baseball game since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, while the series as a whole was the first to average double-digit ratings nationally since 2009.
Radio
ESPN Radio's national network covered the World Series through affiliated stations, with Dan Shulman providing the play-by-play and Aaron Boone serving as color analyst. Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Chris Archer appeared as a guest analyst for select innings of Games 1 and 2.
Locally, the teams' flagship stations broadcast the series with their regular announcers. In Cleveland, WTAM (1100) and WMMS (100.7) carried the Indians' play-by-play with Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus, while in Chicago, WSCR (670) carried the Cubs' play-by-play with Pat Hughes, Ron Coomer, and Len Kasper. The affiliate stations of the teams' regional radio networks were contractually obligated to carry the national ESPN Radio feed; even so, since both WSCR and WTAM are clear-channel stations, most of the eastern and midwestern United States was able to hear the local broadcasts.
Celebration
Following the team's win in Game 7, Cubs fans congregated outside of Wrigley Field and the surrounding Wrigleyville neighborhood to celebrate the championship. On November 4, the team's victory parade began at Wrigley Field and headed down Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue at downtown for a noon rally at Grant Park. Country singer Brett Eldredge sang a cover of "Go, Cubs, Go" during the rally. The city of Chicago estimated that over five million people attended the World Series parade and rally celebration, making it one of the largest gatherings in history, and according to some sources, the largest gathering in the history of the United States. After the season, the Cubs chose to make two traditional White House visits during then-President (and White Sox fan) Barack Obama's final week in office on January 16, 2017, and during President Donald Trump's tenure on June 28, 2017.
Prior pop culture portrayals of drought-breaking Cubs World Series victories
In the decades prior to the 2016 World Series, the prospect of the Cubs eventually breaking their World Series victory drought appeared in pop culture.
Back to the Future portrayal of a 2015 victory
In the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II, the Chicago Cubs are depicted as the 2015 World Series champions, defeating a fictional American League team from Miami whose mascot is an alligator in four-game sweep starting October 17 and ending on October 21. The team now known as the Miami Marlins was not formed until four years later, with a billfish as a mascot. Screenwriter Bob Gale, who co-wrote the script of Back to the Future Part II, originally intended it as a joke, saying "Being a baseball fan, I thought, 'OK, let's come up with one of the most unlikely scenarios we can think of", referencing both the Cubs' long championship drought and the fact that Florida did not have a baseball team in 1989. He also explained that the October 21 prediction was based on the postseason structure at the time of the writing of the film, and thus could have been accurate had MLB not added the Division Series in 1994 and Wild Card Game in 2012.
The film's prediction of the Cubs winning the World Series proved to be incorrect by one year, although it did pick the correct date on which the Cubs' 2015 season ended, when they lost to the New York Mets in a four-game sweep of the NLCS. The official Back to the Future Twitter account acknowledged this following the Cubs' win in 2016 by tweeting "Way to go Cubbies" and posting a still image from the film stating the same, and a follow-up tweet that said the 1994 players' strike, in which that year's World Series was canceled, caused a "disruption in the space-time continuum". Following the Cubs win, Michael J. Fox, star of the movie, reacted to the Cubs' win by tweeting "Only off by a year, not bad" and a congratulatory message to the Cubs organization.
Parks and Recreation portrayal of a 2016 victory
The episode "Ron and Jammy" in the seventh season of the sitcom Parks and Recreation (broadcast in early 2015) portrays the Cubs as having won the 2016 World Series, with a line in that episode mentioning such a victory. Michael Schur (co-creator of the show) took credit for this line. After the World Series, he recalled the prediction as having been informed by observations that promising talent in the Cubs' Minor League Baseball farm system put the team in a position to be competitive in 2016 despite having had a poor 2014 season. In an interview following the World Series, Schur remarked, It’s not like I was only person who thought the Cubs were going to be good. [In 2014], every baseball writer in America knew the Cubs were going to be good [in 2016]. I can’t emphasize enough how little credit I feel like I should take for that prediction.
Aftermath
Cubs
While the 2015–2020 Cubs had the greatest sustained run of success since the dead-ball era, the Cubs only reached one World Series during those six seasons. The 2017 Cubs returned to the NLCS, but lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games. In 2018, the Cubs finished tied with the Milwaukee Brewers for the division, but lost the tie-breaker game and were relegated to the 2018 NL Wild Card Game against the Colorado Rockies, which the Cubs also lost. They failed to qualify in the postseason in 2019 and were upset by the Miami Marlins in 2020. To date, 2020 represents the Cubs last trip to the postseason.
In addition, the Cubs' 2016 championship core slowly moved on via free agency, trade, or retirement:
Dexter Fowler signed with the rival St. Louis Cardinals during the 2016–17 off-season.
Aroldis Chapman returned to the New York Yankees by signing the largest contract ever for a relief pitcher.
At the 2016 Winter Meetings, Jorge Soler and Travis Wood were traded to the Kansas City Royals for All-Star closer Wade Davis, effectively replacing Chapman. Mike Montgomery, the man who recorded the last out of the World Series, was also traded to Kansas City in 2019.
Game 7 was also the last game for fan favorite David Ross, who retired. After the 2019 season, Ross replaced Joe Maddon as Cubs manager. Maddon mutually parted ways with the club after five seasons in Chicago.
Miguel Montero was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays during the 2017 season.
The 2017 season also turned out to be Jake Arrieta's last with the club; he signed a free agent contract with the Philadelphia Phillies (though he later returned to the Cubs in 2021). The 2017 season was also the last for John Lackey, who retired.
After a serious abuse allegation made by his ex-wife, Addison Russell's career came to an abrupt end after he was non-tendered by the Cubs following the 2019 season. World Series MVP Ben Zobrist retired after 2019 after familial problems as well.
Theo Epstein announced that he would step down from his role with the Cubs as President of Baseball Operations effective November 20, 2020. A few weeks later, the Cubs non-tendered Kyle Schwarber and Albert Almora. Later in the off-season, Schwarber and Jon Lester signed one-year free agent contracts with the Washington Nationals, while Almora signed with the New York Mets.
By the 2021 trade deadline, the Cubs had fully committed to a re-build, as established players such as Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Baez were traded away for young players and prospects. Many fans and media drew a comparison with the 2016 Cubs to the 1986 New York Mets, as both teams had a young core when they won a World Series, both clubs had staged thrilling comebacks to win their respective World Series in seven games, and they both looked like a start to a potential dynasty that ended up not happening.
As of 2024, Kyle Hendricks is the last remaining member of Cubs' 2016 World Series team. Meanwhile, Soler won a second World Series ring with the Atlanta Braves in 2021, even winning World Series MVP. Chapman won his second ring with the Texas Rangers in 2023. Bench coach Dave Martinez later became a manager and skippered the Washington Nationals to its first World Series title in 2019.
Indians
2016 was also the high point for the Indians. The 2017 Indians won 22 straight games – the second-longest winning streak in MLB history – on their way to a 102–60 record and AL Central title. During their 22 game win streak, they were nicknamed "WIndians" by fans and media. However, their near record winning streak did not translate into postseason success, as they lost to the New York Yankees in five games in the ALDS after taking a 2–0 series lead. The Indians won their division again in 2018, but were swept by the Houston Astros in the ALDS.
During the 2020–21 off-season, the Indians had traded star shortstop Francisco Lindor, along with longtime rotation stalwart Carlos Carrasco, to the New York Mets. Currently, the only remaining player from Cleveland's 2016 roster is José Ramírez Since their 2016 World Series appearance, the team has not made it past the American League Division Series. This would also mark the Indians' last World Series appearance with that nickname, as they changed their name to the "Cleveland Guardians" in 2022.
After the loss, the Indians now became the team with the longest World Series title drought as well as the second longest championship drought in North American sports, which stood at 68 years, and is now 75 years. The only team of the four major North American leagues to have a longer championship drought are the NFL's Arizona Cardinals, who won their last championship in 1947, a year before Cleveland's last World Series title.
In popular culture
The final game of the World Series is a plot point in the fourth episode of the second season of the sitcom Not Dead Yet (aired in 2024).
See also
List of World Series champions
Curse of Rocky Colavito
2016 Japan Series
2016 Korean Series
References
External links
2016 World Series at Baseball Almanac
2016 World Series at Baseball-Reference.com
The 2016 Post-Season Games (box scores and play-by-play) at Retrosheet |
2016_Cleveland_Indians_season | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Cleveland_Indians_season | [
345
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Cleveland_Indians_season"
] | The 2016 Cleveland Indians season was the 116th season for the franchise and the 23rd season at Progressive Field. The Indians won the American League Central for the first time since 2007 and also beat the Boston Red Sox in the ALDS for their first playoff win in nine years. They defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in five games in the ALCS before losing to the Chicago Cubs in seven games in the World Series, despite holding a 3-1 series lead. This was their first appearance in the World Series since 1997.
Regular season
Opening day starting lineup
Tuesday, April 5, 2016, vs Boston Red Sox
Starting Pitcher: Corey Kluber
April
The Cleveland Indians opened up their 2016 season with a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox at Progressive Field. Opening Day was scheduled for April 4, but was postponed due to a mixture of rain and snow until April 5. The Indians lost the opener 6–2. They would get their first win a day later, as newly acquired 1B Mike Napoli hit the go-ahead home run in a 7–6 victory over his former team.
The Indians struggled during the month of April, going just 10-11 during the month. On April 24, SP Carlos Carrasco left a game with a hamstring injury. He would miss the next six weeks. Trevor Bauer, who started the year in the bullpen, would take Carrasco's spot in the rotation. SP Josh Tomlin was a bright spot for April, as he went 3-0 throughout the month.
May
Outfielder Michael Brantley came back from a shoulder injury he suffered late in 2015. He would only play 11 games before re-aggravating his shoulder. He would not return the rest of the season. The Indians won 12 of 17 games between May 2–20, to close to within two games of the division leading Chicago White Sox. The Indians would take three of four in Chicago later in the month to take the division lead. The team finished the month 16–3.
June
The Indians continued their success into June, as they would win their first six games of the month. Later in the month, the Indians would win a franchise record 14 straight games from June 17 through July 1. The Indians were a perfect 11–0 at home in June. They spent the month battling with the Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, and fading Chicago White Sox atop the AL Central. The Indians finished the month two games ahead of Kansas City.
SP Danny Salazar, who went 5–0 with a 1.91 ERA and a .177 opponent's batting average, was named the American League Pitcher of the Month for June. OF Tyler Naquin was named the AL Rookie of the Month after batting .338 with an AL-best 1.219 OPS.
July
The Indians won their game on July 1, 2–1 over the Toronto Blue Jays, in 19 innings - the longest game of the 2016 season - to extend their winning streak to 14 games, but it would end the next day with a 9–6 loss to the Blue Jays. The Indians would maintain a 5–7 game lead over the Detroit Tigers throughout much of July. However the team struggled near the end of the month and the lead slipped down to 4 games. Adding to the struggle was an injury to C Yan Gomes, who would not return until the final game of the season.
The Indians were active at the trade deadline. On July 31, they acquired RP Andrew Miller from the New York Yankees for four prospects including OF Clint Frazier and P Justus Sheffield, widely considered two of the top four prospects in the Indians' farm system. The Indians also had a deal on the table for Milwaukee Brewers C Jonathan Lucroy, but Lucroy exercised his no-trade clause and vetoed the trade to Cleveland. He would later be traded to the Texas Rangers.
On July 5, SP Danny Salazar and SS Francisco Lindor were named to the All Star team. On July 8, SP Corey Kluber was also named to the team as an injury replacement. OF Tyler Naquin was named the AL Rookie of the Month for the second straight month.
August
The Indians struggled in early August, going just 3–6 in their first nine games. Their lead over the Tigers decreased to just 2 games. However, On August 11, the team opened an 11-game home stand - its longest of the season - that would put them on the winning track. The Indians swept a four-game series from the Anaheim Angels to open up the home stand and took two out of three games from the Toronto Blue Jays to end the home stand. The Blue Jays series, which was believed to be a potential playoff preview, featured three one-run games including a walk-off inside-the-park home run by OF Tyler Naquin. The Indians' lead over Detroit was back to 71⁄2 games by August 22.
The Indians would then go on a west-coast trip that saw them go 2–5, and score one run or less in six of the seven games. However, the team returned home to sweep the Minnesota Twins to end the month. On August 31, the team acquired OF Coco Crisp from the Oakland Athletics for cash considerations. The acquisition of Crisp added outfield depth for the pennant race and postseason run.
September/October
The Indians won six of their first eight games in September to maintain a sizable lead over the Detroit Tigers. However, the team's rotation, widely believed to be their biggest strength, suffered two major injuries during the month. All-Star SP Danny Salazar left the game on September 9 with a strained elbow, resulting in a 3-4 week recovery time. On September 17, SP Carlos Carrasco left the game with a broken hand as the result of a line-drive. This injury ended Carrasco's season. The Indians would put the Tigers away in September by winning two of three September 16–18. On September 26, the Indians clinched the division title - the team's first since 2007 - with a win over the Tigers.
The Indians would end the season with a record of 94–67, earning the No. 2 seed in the American League.
Roster
Season standings
American League Central
American League Wild Card
Record against opponents
Game log
Player stats
Batting
Note: G = Games played; AB = At bats; R = Runs; H = Hits; 2B = Doubles; 3B = Triples; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in; SB = Stolen bases; BB = Walks; AVG = Batting average; SLG = Slugging average
Source:[1]
Pitching
Note: W = Wins; L = Losses; ERA = Earned run average; G = Games pitched; GS = Games started; SV = Saves; IP = Innings pitched; H = Hits allowed; R = Runs allowed; ER = Earned runs allowed; BB = Walks allowed; SO = Strikeouts
Source:[2]
Postseason
American League Division Series
By virtue of winning the AL Central, the Indians were placed in the American League Division Series against the AL East champion Boston Red Sox. Because the Indians had the better regular season record, they had home field advantage in the best-of-five series.
The Indians won Game 1, 5–4, thanks in part to a three-run 3rd inning that featured home runs by Roberto Perez, Jason Kipnis, and Francisco Lindor, the first postseason home run in each of their careers. The Indians' pitching was led by starter Trevor Bauer and relievers Andrew Miller and Cody Allen, who each threw over 40 pitches, to clinch the victory. Indians' ace Corey Kluber went seven shutout innings in Game 2, a 6-0 Indians' win. The big blow for the Indians was a Lonnie Chisenhall 3-run home run.
The Indians and Red Sox then had two days off - a regularly scheduled travel day and rainout as the remnants of Hurricane Matthew affected Boston. When the teams got back to baseball on October 10, Josh Tomlin and the Indians' bullpen would lead the team to a 4–3 victory and a sweep of the division series. The Red Sox mounted a rally in the bottom of the 9th, but Cody Allen was able to close out the game. The Indians would advance to the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2007.
American League Championship Series
The Indians would face the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series, again having home-field advantage. The Indians would win a pair of pitchers' duels in Games 1 and 2, 2-0 and 2–1. In Game 1, the Indians scored their only runs on a Francisco Lindor home run in the sixth inning. Indians' starter Corey Kluber went six shutout innings and relievers Andrew Miller and Cody Allen completed the shutout. In Game 2, Carlos Santana's leadoff home run in the second off of Toronto pitcher J. A. Happ gave the Indians a 1−0 lead, but the Blue Jays tied it in the third with a Josh Donaldson RBI double. Cleveland responded with a Lindor RBI single in the third. Starter Josh Tomlin, along with Bryan Shaw, Miller, and Allen, would make that 2–1 lead stand up the rest of the game.
The series shifted to Toronto for Game 3. Indians' starter Trevor Bauer left the game in the bottom of the inning due to a bloody finger as a result of being cut from a drone before the series started. The bullpen answered the call and gave up two runs in more than 8 innings of work. Led by Mike Napoli and Jason Kipnis home runs, the Indians won this game 4–2, to take a 3–0 series lead.
World Series
Postseason game log
Postseason rosters
Farm system
LEAGUE CHAMPIONS: Akron
References
External links
2016 Cleveland Indians Season Official Site Archived July 4, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
2016 Cleveland Indians season at Baseball Reference |
Foster_(short_story) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_(short_story) | [
346
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_(short_story)"
] | "Foster" is a short story or novella by Irish author Claire Keegan.
Plot
In 1981 Ireland, County Wexford, a girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, while her mother gives birth. She has no notion of when she will return home. In the strangers' house she finds affection she has not known before, and slowly she begins to blossom in their care. But when a secret is suddenly revealed, she realizes how fragile her idyll is.
Reception
"Foster" has received a very positive reception, winning the 2009 Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award (it was submitted for the award prior to publication). The Daily Telegraph compared it to the work of Seamus Heaney and William Trevor, while The Observer called it "Among the finest stories written recently in English." Recognition of the literary merit of Foster was reflected in its inclusion as a text prescribed for comparative study by the Department of Education and Training (An Roinn Oideachais agus Scoileanna) for the syllabus of the English Leaving Certificate examination in Ireland.
Adaptation
An audio version of "Foster" was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's "Afternoon Reading" on 9 March 2015, read by Irish actress Evanna Lynch.
In 2022, a film version was released in the Irish language: An Cailín Ciúin, starring Catherine Clinch and Carrie Crowley. In 2023, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
== References == |
Claire_Keegan | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Keegan | [
346
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Keegan"
] | Claire Keegan (born 1968) is an Irish writer known for her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review.
Early life and education
Claire Keegan was born in 1968, and raised on a farm as one of a large family in County Wicklow, Ireland.
She travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, when she was 17 and studied English and political science at Loyola University. She returned to Ireland in 1992, and later lived for a year in Cardiff, Wales, where she undertook an MA in creative writing and taught undergraduates at the University of Wales. She subsequently received an M.Phil at Trinity College Dublin.
Career
Keegan's first collection of short stories, Antarctica (1999), won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the William Trevor Prize.
Her second collection of short stories, Walk the Blue Fields, was published in 2007. Keegan's 'long, short story' "Foster" won the 2009 Davy Byrnes Short Story Award. "Foster" appeared in the 15 February 2010 issue of The New Yorker and was included in The Best American Short Stories 2011. It was later published by Faber and Faber in a longer form. "Foster" is now included as a text for the Irish Leaving Certificate. It was adapted for film by writer/director Colm Bairéad as An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl; 2022), and was nominated in 2023 for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
In late 2021, Keegan published a novella, Small Things like These, set in Ireland in the mid-1980s. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. The film adaptation, starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, and Eileen Walsh, had its world premiere at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on 15 February 2024.
In February 2022 the story So Late in the Day was published in The New Yorker, and was released in a hardback edition in 2023 by Faber.
Awards and honours
Keegan has won the inaugural William Trevor Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Olive Cook Award and the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009. Other awards include the Hugh Leonard Bursary, the Macaulay Fellowship, the Martin Healy Prize, the Kilkenny Prize, and the Tom Gallon Award. She was also a 2002 Wingate Scholar and a two-time recipient of the Francis MacManus Award. She was a visiting professor at Villanova University in 2008. Keegan was the Ireland Fund Artist-in-Residence in the Celtic Studies Department of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto in March 2009. In 2019, she was appointed as Writing Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Pembroke College Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin selected Keegan as the 2021 Briena Staunton Visiting Fellow.
The French translation of Small Things like These (Ce genre de petites choses) has been shortlisted for two prestigious awards: the Francophonie Ambassadors' Literary Award and the Grand Prix de L'Heroine Madame Figaro. In March 2021, Keegan and her French translator, Jacqueline Odin, won the Francophonie Ambassadors' Literary Award. Small Things like These won the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. It became the shortest book to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize at the ceremony in 2022. It was also shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize.
In 2023 Keegan was named "Author of the Year" in conjunction with the Irish Book Awards. Her book So Late in the Day was also shortlisted for the Irish "Novel of the Year" award.
Keegan has been a member of Aosdána since 2008.
Works
Novella
2021 – Small Things like These
Short story collections
1999 – Antarctica. Faber and Faber, London. ISBN 978-0-571-19712-5.
2007 – Walk the Blue Fields. Faber and Faber, London. ISBN 978-0-571-23306-9.
2019 – The Forester's Daughter. Faber and Faber, London. ISBN 978-0-571-35185-5.
2023 – So Late in the Day: stories of women and men. Grove Press, New York. ISBN 978-0-8021-6085-0.
Short stories
2010 – Foster. Faber and Faber, London. ISBN 978-0-571-25565-8. (Available as pdf at Internet Archive)
Printed in The New Yorker, February 15, 2010.
2022 – So Late in the Day.. Printed in The New Yorker, 21 February 2022.
References
External links
Claire Keegan at Aosdána
A reading of Foster by Evanna Lynch
"Claire Keegan and the art of subtraction". YouTube. HoCoPoLitSo. 4 January 2013.
"Claire Keegan's answers readers' questions about 'Small Things Like These' | The Booker Prize". YouTube. 6 October 2022.
"Claire Keegan interview with Claire Mabey VIDEO". YouTube. Wanaka Festival of Colour. 22 April 2024. |
County_Wicklow | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Wicklow | [
346
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Wicklow"
] | County Wicklow ( WIK-loh; Irish: Contae Chill Mhantáin [ˈkɔn̪ˠt̪ˠeː ˌçiːl̠ʲ ˈwan̪ˠt̪ˠaːnʲ]) is a county in Ireland. The last of the traditional 32 counties, having been formed as late as 1606, it is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the province of Leinster. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the east and the counties of Wexford to the south, Carlow to the southwest, Kildare to the west, and South Dublin and Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown to the north.
Wicklow is named after its county town of Wicklow, which derives from the name Víkingaló (Old Norse for "Vikings' Meadow"). Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county, which had a population of 155,258 at the 2022 census. Colloquially known as the "Garden of Ireland" for its scenery—which includes extensive woodlands, nature trails, beaches, and ancient ruins while allowing for a multitude of walking, hiking, and climbing options—it is the 17th largest of Ireland's 32 counties by area and the 16th largest by population. It is also the fourth largest of Leinster's 12 counties by size and the fifth largest in terms of population.
History
Missions and monasteries
During the 5th century Saint Palladius, a bishop from Britain or Gaul was sent to 'the Irish believing in Christ.' He and his companions landed at Wicklow harbour in the year 431 AD. Palladius founded three ancient churches at Donard, Tigroney and Colbinstown. Along with him came two clerics named St. Sylvester and Solonius who died and were buried at Donard. The local tribe in the area were called Cualann and their chief, a man named Naithi was opposed to these Christian missionaries. Despite this hostility however Palladius seems to have gained support elsewhere as he was able to erect those three churches in the Wicklow area. After a rather unsuccessful stay in the county St. Palladius departed Ireland and journeyed to Scotland.
A large number of early Irish saints male and female founded churches, monasteries and convents in Wicklow. Among them were St. Kevin, St. Dagan, St. Ernan, St. Credan, St. Baotan and the holy women St. Cainnear, St. Ceoltigherna, St. Fledh, St. Tartinna, St. Coine and St. Croine. The ancient monastery of Glendalough is located in the county.
17th century onwards
County Wicklow was the last of the traditional counties of Ireland to be shired in 1606 from land previously part of counties Dublin and Carlow. Established as a distinct county, it was aimed at controlling local groups such as the O'Byrnes. The Military Road, stretching from Rathfarnham to Aghavannagh crosses the mountains, north to south, and was built by government forces to assist them in defeating the rebels still active in the Wicklow Mountains following the failed Irish Rebellion of 1798. It provided them with access to an area that had been a hotbed of Irish rebellion for centuries. Several barracks to house the soldiers were built along the route; in 1974 the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation was opened alongside the remains of Glencree barracks. Battalions of the Irish Army use firing ranges in County Wicklow for tactical exercises, especially the largest one in the Glen of Imaal which was previously used by the British Army prior to independence.
During the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, local authorities immediately surrendered without a fight. During the Irish Rebellion of 1798, some of the United Irishmen insurgents took refuge in the Wicklow Mountains, resulting in clashes between British forces and rebels commanded by Joseph Holt near Aughrim and later at Arklow.
The boundaries of the county were extended in 1957 by the Local Government Act which "detached lands from the County of Dublin and from the jurisdiction and powers of the Council of the County of Dublin" near Bray and added them to the County of Wicklow.
Irish language
Wicklow was the first county in Ireland to lose the Irish language, with only around 2% of people speaking it in the 1770s. It was spoken on the Western slopes of the Wicklow Mountains in the 1790s. Andrew and Hannah Byrne of Glenealy, who both died in 1830, were among the last native speakers speaker in the county.
Geography
Location
Wicklow is part of the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. It is bounded by four counties, Dublin to the north; Kildare and Carlow to the west; Wexford to the south; and the Irish Sea to the east. Wicklow is the 17th largest of Ireland's 32 traditional counties by land area, and the 16th most populous. It is the fourth largest of Leinster's 12 counties by size and the fifth most populous. The county is named after the town of Wicklow, located approximately 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of Dublin, the capital city of Ireland.
The Wicklow Mountains are Ireland's largest continuous upland area and occupy a significant portion of the county, spanning the entire centre of Wicklow and stretching into Dublin and Wexford at their southern and northern fringes. Lugnaquilla, at 925 metres (3,035 ft) above sea level, is the tallest peak in the range, the highest mountain in Ireland outside of County Kerry, and Ireland's 13th-highest mountain overall. The Wicklow Mountains National Park, located in the middle of the county, is a dedicated protected area covering 205 square kilometres (50,657 acres), making it the largest national park in Ireland. The Wicklow Way was the first long-distance trail in the State, and crosses the range for 131 kilometres (81 mi).
Geology
The Wicklow Mountains are centred on the Leinster batholith and are primarily composed of granite surrounded by an envelope of mica-schist and much older rocks such as quartzite. Covering 1,500 square kilometres (580 sq mi), the Leinster batholith is the most expansive mass of intrusive igneous rock in Ireland or Britain. The oldest rocks in the county are the quartzites of the Bray Group that include Bray Head and the Little Sugar Loaf and Great Sugar Loaf mountains. These metamorphosed from sandstone deposited in the deep waters of the primeval Iapetus Ocean during the Cambrian period (542-488 million years ago).
As with much of Ireland, Wicklow's terrain was sculpted by successive periods of glaciation during the quaternary. Weathering and erosion by ice carved out long valleys known as glens (from the Irish gleann) such as Glenmacnass, Glen of the Downs, Glenmalure, Glen of Imaal, Glencree and Glendalough. The Irish Sea Ice-Sheet began to retreat shortly after the Last Glacial Maximum ca. 20,000–23,000 years ago but significant ice masses persisted in the Wicklow Mountains for another 4,000–7,000 years.
Hydrology
Major rivers include the 132-kilometre (82.0 mi) River Liffey, Ireland's 8th-longest river, which rises near Tonduff mountain and flows through the centre of Dublin City, reaching the Irish Sea at Dublin Bay. Its biggest tributary by volume, the River Dodder, rises along the northern slope of Kippure in the far north of the county, while the Kings River joins at Blessington Lakes. Multiple other Liffey tributaries flow within the county.
The 117.5-kilometre (73.0 mi) River Slaney, which starts at Lugnaquilla, flows west and then south before reaching St George's Channel at Wexford town. The Avonmore and Avonbeg rivers join to form the Avoca River at the Meeting of the Waters in the Vale of Avoca. The River Derreen in the south of the county defines a section of the border with Carlow.
Most of the county's lakes (or loughs) are glacially derived ribbon and corrie lakes found in scenic trough valleys surrounded by mountains, making them popular with tourists. Notable lakes in the county include Glendalough Upper Lake, Lough Tay ('The Guinness Lake'), Lough Ouler ('The Heart-shaped Lake'), Lough Bray, Lough Dan and Lough Nahanagan.
Poulaphouca Reservoir is the largest of Wicklow's lakes, covering 2,226 hectares (5,500 acres) in the west of the county. It is the largest artificial lake in Ireland and was created following the damming of the River Liffey at Poulaphouca in 1940. The village of Ballinahown was completed submerged by the reservoir and its 70 families were relocated. Ruins of the old village including buildings, fences and farm machinery can be seen during droughts when water levels in the reservoir diminish. The lower Vartry Reservoir, constructed between 1862 and 1868, is the county's second largest lake.
Coast
Wicklow has a relatively short coastline, at 64 kilometres (40 mi) in length. Wicklow's coastline is mostly straight, with few sizable bays or inlets and no offshore islands, giving it a shorter coastline than smaller counties like Louth and Dublin. Wicklow Head is the county's most prominent coastal headland, and is also the most easterly mainland point of the Republic of Ireland. Wicklow's east coast is a popular domestic summer holiday destination, and the county has numerous beaches including Brittas Bay, Clogga Beach, The Cove, Silver Strand Beach, Sallymount Bay Beach, Ennereilly Beach, Newcastle Beach, Arklow's Porter's Rock Beach and South Beach, Greystones North and South Beaches, Bray Strand, and Magheramore Beach.
Forest
The county has roughly 37,500 hectares (93,000 acres) of wooded area, the 8th highest total forest cover in Ireland. In terms of forest cover as a proportion of land area, Wicklow ranks second in the country, at 18.5%. Known as the "Garden of Ireland", Wicklow was historically the county with the highest percentage of woodlands. The 2017 National Forestry Inventory revealed that County Leitrim had overtaken it for the first time. Wicklow is in a temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome, although the majority of Wicklow's forests are commercial conifers. The economic tree line in the region is around 400 metres (1,300 ft), above which hill farming and blanket bog dominates.
Urban development
In terms of urban development, Wicklow County Council imposes the most stringent planning restrictions in Ireland. In order to build a house outside of the main towns, a person must be "born and bred in the area, or have lived there for a period of 10 years" and must also demonstrate that the house is for their own housing needs, rather than for resale. Further, potential buyers in rural areas must be approved by the council before the homeowner is allowed to sell to them. The primary justification for these restrictions is to avoid one-off housing or other poorly planned developments which could put a strain on the county's infrastructure and degrade its natural environment.
Climate
The climate of Wicklow is temperate oceanic (Köppen climate classification Cfb in most areas, and Cfc oceanic subpolar in some highland areas), with cool, humid summers, and mild, wet winters. The climate of the eastern portion of the county is moderated by the Irish Sea and averages milder winters and cooler summers, while the western inland portion along the Kildare border experiences warmer summers and colder winters. The county's upland interior experiences significantly lower temperatures and higher rainfall year-round. Snow typically falls from December to March, but most low-lying and coastal areas see only a few days of lying snow per year, or may see no snow at all during some winters. The Wicklow Mountains region is the snowiest part of Ireland and can experience 50 or more days of snowfall each year.
The county experiences a narrow annual temperature range. Typical daytime highs range from 17–22 °C (63–72 °F) throughout the county in July and August, with overnight lows in the 11–14 °C (52–57 °F) range, although temperatures in the mountains can be 5–10 °C (41–50 °F) lower. Mean January temperatures range from 7 °C (45 °F) on the coast to 0 °C (32 °F) at high elevations. Precipitation is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, although the wettest months (October and November) receive roughly twice as much rain as the driest months (February, March and April). The driest area of Wicklow is the northeast corner of the county, which is protected from the prevailing south-westerly winds by the Wicklow Mountains and receives around 750 mm (30 in) of rainfall per year. The coastal region of County Dublin immediately to the north is the driest location in all of Ireland as a result of the rain shadow created by the mountains.
Easterly winds can occur between February and May, and are often associated with extreme snowfall events such as the 2018 "Beast from the East" and the "Big Snow of 1947". Much of Wicklow is very vulnerable to heavy snowfall and the county is typically the hardest hit by such events, with some areas recording over 2 feet (61 cm) of snow. During the winter of 1947, residents of Rathdrum called upon the Irish Red Cross to drop them food parcels by plane as the village had been inaccessible by road for over a month due to heavy snow.
Wicklow is occasionally affected by hurricanes, although they are usually extratropical storms by the time they reach Ireland. On 24 August 1986, during Hurricane Charley, 280 mm (11 in) of rain fell over a 24-hour period at Kippure on the Wicklow-Dublin border, the greatest daily rainfall total ever recorded in Ireland. The hurricane caused severe flooding and up to 1,000 homes had to be evacuated in Bray alone. Other major floods in Wicklow which resulted in loss of life occurred in 1886–87, 1931, 1965 and 2011.
Subdivisions
Baronies
There are eight historic baronies in the county. While baronies continue to be officially defined units, they are no longer used for administrative purposes. Their official status is illustrated by Placenames Orders made since 2003, where official Irish names of baronies are listed under "Administrative units". The largest barony in Wicklow is Lower Talbotstown, at 88,704 acres (359 km2), and the smallest barony is Rathdown, at 33,463 acres (135 km2).
Arklow (An tInbhear Mór)
Ballinacor North (Baile na Corra Thuaidh)
Ballinacor South (Baile na Corra Theas)
Newcastle (An Caisleán Nua)
Rathdown (Ráth an Dúin)
Shillelagh (Síol Éalaigh)
Lower Talbotstown (Baile an Talbóidigh Íochtarach)
Upper Talbotstown (Baile an Talbóidigh Uachtarach)
Townlands
Towns and villages
Demographics
Population
As of the 2016 census, the resident population of Wicklow was 142,425, a 4.2% increase since the Census of Ireland 2011. The county's population is one of the fastest growing in the country, increasing 38.7 percent in the 20 years between 1996 and 2016. However, its share of the Mid East's population has steadily fallen as Meath and Kildare have experienced even more rapid population growth. While Bray remains by far the largest town in the county, improved transport links to Dublin such as upgrades to the M11 and the completion of the M50 in 2005 encouraged the growth of towns further south. Between 2002 and 2016 Bray grew by 5.3 percent. By contrast, over the same period Arklow grew by 32.2 percent, Greystones grew by 53.3 percent and Rathnew grew by 133.9%.
The most densely populated areas of the county are concentrated in the northeast, with over 50 percent of Wicklow's residents living within 15 kilometres (9 mi) of the Dublin border. Many of the county's largest urban areas are clustered in this region along an axis stretching from Bray to Newtownmountkennedy, which incorporates Greystones, Delgany, Enniskerry, Kilmacanogue, Kilpedder and Kilcoole. Outside of this region, Wicklow, Rathnew and Arklow are the only sizable towns in the eastern portion of the county, while Blessington is the only large settlement in west Wicklow.
The county's interior is very sparsely populated, with only a few small settlements located in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains such as Rathdrum, Laragh, Roundwood and Tinahely. Most small areas in central Wicklow have a population density of less than 20 people per km2, compared with an average of 77 people per km2 in the county as a whole.
The gender makeup of the county in 2016 was 50.74% female and 49.26% male. 29.0% of the population were under the age of 19; 58% were between the ages of 19 and 64; and 13.0% were 65 years of age or older.
Whites of any ethnic background constituted 95.2% of the population in 2016: 86.0% were White Irish, 0.6% Irish Traveller, and 8.6% White of any other background.
Asians were the second largest ethnic group, comprising 1.6% of the county's population, followed by mixed race or other backgrounds at 1.2%. Just over 2,300 people (1.6%) did not state their ethnicity.
Accounting for just 0.4% of the population, Wicklow has by far the lowest percentage of black residents in the Greater Dublin Area. The 2016 census recorded 524 black residents in Wicklow, of which 408 (78%) were of African descent and 116 (22%) were of other black backgrounds.
Urban areas
The 2016 census recorded that 65 percent of Wicklow's residents lived in urban areas (settlements with a population greater than 1,500) and 35 percent lived in rural areas. Of Wicklow's rural population, roughly 26 percent (36,800 people) live in the open countryside outside of any designated settlements, while 9 percent (13,032 people) live in settlements with less than 1,500 people. According to the CSO report Urban and Rural Life in Ireland 2019, Wicklow (alongside Kildare) has the highest proportion of residents living in satellite towns.
The 10 largest settlements in the county are listed below. The county town is marked in bold.
Migration
As of 2016, around 85% of Wicklow's population was born within the Republic of Ireland, and a further 0.9% was born in Northern Ireland. Just over 38% of Wicklow's usually resident population was born within the county, making it the second least indigenous county in Ireland, after Meath. While around 35% of the county's population was born in neighbouring Dublin, it is likely that a significant portion of these are Wicklow natives who were born in one of Dublin's many hospitals.
People born in the United Kingdom are by far the largest immigrant group, comprising 5.9% of Wicklow's population (8,388 people). Of this group, only around half (4,045 people) stated that they were either UK or dual Irish-UK citizens. The Poles are the second largest immigrant group, constituting 2.0% of the county's population. The census recorded 2,905 Polish citizens in Wicklow, of which 2,759 were born in Poland. The fastest growing major immigrant groups between 2011 and 2016 were Romanians, Indians and Filipinos. There was also a large increase in the number of Brazilians (+107%), Italians (+59%) and Spaniards (+53%) living in Wicklow over this period.
*Includes Hong Kong SAR
Religion
The 2016 census showed that religious affiliation in Wicklow was as follows: Catholic 73%, Irreligion 13.3%, Other Christian 8.8%, Other stated religions 3.1%, and not stated 1.8%.
The single largest religious denomination in 2016 was the Roman Catholic Church, with 103,947 adherents. This is a 4.4% decrease from the 2011 census. Catholicism in Wicklow reached its peak percentage in the 1961 census, when 87.5% of the population identified as Catholic. As of 2016, Wicklow is the second least Catholic county in the State, and among the most irreligious.
Other Christian denominations comprised 8.8% of the population. As a proportion of population, Wicklow has the largest Church of Ireland affiliation of any county in the Republic of Ireland, at 6.2%, although this figure was historically much higher. The 1901 census recorded that just under 20% of Wicklow's population was affiliated with the Church of Ireland. In 2016 Greystones had the highest percentage of Protestants in the State (10.5%), and was also Ireland's least religious town, with 18.3% of residents stating they did not follow any religion.
Just over 0.5% of the population adhered to smaller Protestant denominations such as Presbyterian, Apostolic and Pentecostal. A further 1.05% of respondents stated that they were "Christian" but did not specify any denomination. Eastern Orthodox is the fastest growing of the major Christian denominations, increasing from 840 adherents in 2011 to 1,317 in 2016, a 56.7% increase.
The largest non-Christian religions were Islam (0.4%) and Hinduism (0.16%). All other stated religions constituted 2.5% of the population, and 1.8% of respondents did not state their religion.
Economy
Built environment
Wicklow is home to several major water supply and hydroelectric facilities. The Turlough Hill pumped-storage scheme, a significant civil engineering project, was carried out in the mountains in the 1960s and 1970s.
Leisure and tourism
Wicklow, often called "The Garden of Ireland", has been a popular tourist destination for many years, due to its scenery, beaches, walking, hiking and climbing options, and attractions including the ruins of the monastic city of Glendalough, Wicklow Gaol and water-based activities on reservoirs and the coast.
The Wicklow Way is the oldest waymarked long-distance walking trail in Ireland.
The popular annual mass participation bike ride Wicklow 200 has taken place in the county every year since 1982.
Governance and politics
Local government
The local government authority is Wicklow County Council which returns 32 councillors from six local electoral areas: Arklow, Baltinglass, Bray East, Bray West, Greystones, and Wicklow. Wicklow County Council sends three members to the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly, where it is part of the Eastern Strategic Planning Area.
Former districts
County Wicklow was formerly divided into the rural districts of Baltinglass No. 1, Rathdown No. 2, Rathdrum, and Shillelagh, and the urban districts of Arklow, Bray and Wicklow. The rural districts were abolished in 1925. Greystones, in the former rural district of Rathdown No. 2, was given town commissioners in 1984. The urban districts of Arklow, Bray and Wicklow and the town commissioners of Greystones became town councils in 2002. All town councils in Ireland were abolished in 2014.
National politics
The whole county is in the Dáil constituency of Wicklow (5 seats).
Transportation
Road
Wicklow has a well-maintained network of regional roads which connect the county's western portion to its eastern portion, cross-cutting the Wicklow Mountains from east to west. Several north-south regional roads also traverse the mountains, providing amenity access to the county's interior.
The county is also serviced by a National secondary road (N81) in western Wicklow, and a National primary road (N11) in eastern Wicklow which becomes a motorway at Junction 14 north of Ashford. The N11/M11 is the main route used by Wicklow commuters heading northbound to Dublin. Southbound traffic can also be heavy on weekends due to the influx of Dublin visitors into Wicklow and Wexford.
Major routes include:
N11/M11 – Runs near the east coast for 129 km (80 mi), linking Dublin and Wexford. Becomes the M11 at Junction 14 north of Ashford.
N81 – National secondary road that runs from Dublin to Tullow, crossing through western Wicklow from Blessington to Baltinglass.
R115 – Ireland's highest paved mountain pass. Follows the route of the old Military Road, constructed by the British Army from 1800 to 1809 to put down insurgents in the Wicklow mountains. Terminates at Laragh.
R412 – Regional road that runs north–south from the outskirts of Naas, crossing through western Wicklow for 8 km (5.0 mi), terminating at the N81 near Loughmogue.
R725 – 53 km (33 mi) long regional road that crosses the Wicklow Mountains from east to west, connecting Gorey to Carlow.
R747 – Crosses the southern foothills of the Wicklow Mountains through Tinahely, connecting Arklow to Ballitore.
R750 – Runs for 30 km (19 mi) in eastern Wicklow from Rathnew to the northern outskirts of Arklow.
R755 – North-south regional road that runs for 36 km (22 mi) from the N11 at Kilmacanogue to Rathdrum.
R756 – Runs west-east through the Wicklow Gap for 32 km (20 mi) from Dunlavin to Laragh, intersecting the N81 at the village of Hollywood. The section from Hollywood to Laragh is known as the Wicklow Gap Road.
R759 – Runs south-east to north-west through the Sally Gap. The road is 27 km (17 mi) in length, and in winter can be dangerous or impassable as it is not treated by the Local Authority.
R761 – 25 km (16 mi) long regional road that runs through several settlements in northeastern Wicklow (Bray, Greystones, Kilcoole, Newcastle) south to Rathnew.
Culture
Mermaid, County Wicklow Arts Centre is based in Bray. Mermaid is the county's hub of artistic activity and creation, offering a programme in many art forms: visual arts, theatre productions, opera, dance performances, arthouse cinema, comedy and a music programme. Two of the county's festivals take place in Arklow, the Arklow Music Festival and the Arklow Seabreeze Festival.
The county is a popular film-making location in Ireland. Bray is home to Ardmore Studios, where many of Ireland's best known feature films, including John Boorman's Excalibur and Zardoz, Jim Sheridan's Oscar-winning In the Name of the Father, Rawhead Rex, and several Neil Jordan films, have been shot. The BBC series Ballykissangel was also filmed in County Wicklow. Scenes from the movie P.S. I Love You were shot in the Wicklow Mountains National Park while several scenes from other movies, from Barry Lyndon to Haywire, have been filmed in the county.
Media
Local newspapers include The Bray People, Wicklow Times and Wicklow People.
WicklowNews.net is a popular news website in the county. See Wicklow News.
The local radio station in Wicklow is East Coast FM. In 2010, Radio Nova became the second local radio service to be licensed for North Wicklow. The station broadcasts to Bray, Greystones, Kilmacanogue, Enniskerry and Blessington, in addition to Dublin, North Kildare and South Meath. It broadcasts to North Wicklow on 95.7 from Bray Head and 100.3 FM. Beat 102-103 also can be picked up in parts of South and West Wicklow where the borders of Wexford and Carlow meet.
Filming locations
Much of the television series Vikings, (Amazon Prime), was filmed at Ashford Studios in the county, particularly scenes that required a green screen for subsequent CGI work. Some on-location filming was done elsewhere in the county. For example, certain scenes for Vikings (season 6) were filmed at and Powerscourt Waterfall and Powerscourt Estate and in Lough Tay. Ashford Studios was also the base for production of this final season. The spinoff from the series, Vikings: Valhalla (Netflix), is also based at Ashford Studios.
From 2016 to 2018, most of Into the Badlands (TV series) was filmed in County Wicklow.
Fate: The Winx Saga, announced by Netflix in 2019, was also shot in the county and based at Ardmore Studios, Bray.
Disenchanted, an Walt Disney Pictures film, was also filmed in the town of Greystones and Enniskerry village. The latter location being notable because the entire village was decorated for the production and closed to the public for certain days.
Places of interest
Twinning
County Wicklow is twinned with Würzburg, Germany and Seminole County, Florida, USA.
See also
High Sheriff of Wicklow
List of abbeys and priories in County Wicklow.
Lord Lieutenant of Wicklow
List of Baronies and Civil Parishes of County Wicklow
References
Citations
Sources
External links
Wicklow County Council
Wicklow County Tourism |
Field_hockey_at_the_Pan_American_Games | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_hockey_at_the_Pan_American_Games | [
347
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_hockey_at_the_Pan_American_Games"
] | The winner of the field hockey event of the Pan American Games qualifies for the Summer Olympics in the following year.
Women's field hockey was introduced at the 1987 edition, and has served as the Olympics qualifying event since 1999.
Men's tournament
Results
Summary
Team appearances
Women's tournament
Results
Summary
Team appearances
Medal table
Total
Men
Women
See also
Men's Pan American Cup
Women's Pan American Cup
External links
Pan American Games - Final Standings Archived 2018-12-02 at the Wayback Machine |
Field_hockey_at_the_Summer_Olympics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_hockey_at_the_Summer_Olympics | [
347
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_hockey_at_the_Summer_Olympics"
] | Field hockey made its debut at the Modern Olympic Games as a men's competition in the 1908 Games in London. It was removed from the Olympic schedule of the Summer Olympic Games for the 1924 Paris Games and was reintroduced in the 1928 Amsterdam Games. The Women's field hockey was introduced into the Olympic programme at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
The International Hockey Federation (FIH) was founded in 1924 and governs the hockey events. Until the 1988 Olympics, the tournament was invitational but a qualification system was introduced since the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The last edition at Paris was the 25th occurrence of the men's event and 12th consecutive occurrence of women's event in the Olympics.
India holds the record for the most appearances in the Olympic men's competitions (22) while Australia and Netherlands hold the same record in women's competitions (11). India leads the medal tally for the men's events with 13 medals while the Netherlands heads the women's events with 10 medals.
Great Britain won the first two editions of the men's event in 1908 and 1920. India won the gold medal in seven out of eight Olympics from 1928 to 1964 with Pakistan winning three gold and silver medals each between the 1956 and 1984 Games. The matches are played on artificial turf since 1976. Since the late 1980s, European nations have dominated the hockey events with Germany and Netherlands having won three gold medals each in the men's event. In the women's event, Netherlands and Australia have been dominant, having won five and three gold medals respectively since its introduction in 1980.
History
Field hockey was introduced at the Modern Olympic Games as a men's competition at the 1908 Games in London. Great Britain won the first two editions in 1908 (as England) and 1920. It was removed from the Olympic schedule of the Summer Olympic Games for the 1924 Paris Games because of the lack of an international sporting structure. The International Hockey Federation (FIH) was founded in Paris that year as a response to the same. Men's field hockey was added to the Olympics for the next Olympic Games in 1928 Games held at Amsterdam.
Starting in 1928, India won the gold medal in seven out of eight Olympics till 1964 including six consecutive gold medals from the 1928 Olympics to 1956. Pakistan won its first gold medal in 1960 and won three gold and silver medals each in a run lasting from 1956 to 1984. West Germany won the gold medal in the 1972 Munich Olympics, for the first gold medal by a non-Asian country since 1928. Olympic field hockey games were first played on artificial turf at the 1976 Montreal Games and was won by New Zealand. The domination of both the Asian countries came to an end in the late 1980s with India winning its last gold medal in the competition in 1980 and Pakistan in 1984.
Though the International Federation of Women’s Hockey Associations (IFWHA) was founded way back in 1927, Women's field hockey made its debut at the Summer Olympics only at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and was won by Zimbabwe. On 23 April 1983, women’s hockey programme was taken over by FIH and the IFWHA was dissolved. Great Britain won its first gold medal in the men's event since 1920 in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Until the 1988 Olympics, the tournament was invitational but FIH introduced a qualification system starting from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Since the 1990s, European countries have been dominant in the men's sport with the only exceptions being the wins by Australia in 2004 and Argentina in 2016. Both Germany and Netherlands have won three gold medals each, with the only other European winner being Belgium in 2020. In the women's events, Netherlands and Australia have been dominant, having won five and three gold medals respectively since its introduction to the Olympic programme in 1980. The only other winners of the women's event were Spain in 1992, Germany in 2004, and Great Britain in 2016.
The last edition of both the men's and women's events were held as a part of the 2024 Paris Olympics with Netherlands winning both the events. India holds the record for the most appearances in the Olympic men's competitions (22) and Spain has appeared in the most Olympic men's competitions (19) without winning the men's gold medal with the best place finishes being the silver medal won in 1980, 1996, and 2008. Australia and Netherlands hold the record for the most appearances in the Olympic women's competitions (11). India leads the medal tally for the men's events with 13 medals including eight gold medals. Netherlands heads the women's events with 10 medals including five gold medals and also leads the overall medal tally with 20 medals (eight gold, six silver and six bronze).
Men
Results
Medal table
Top four statistics
* = host nation
Team appearances
Since the debut of the hockey programme in 1908, 45 teams have competed in at least one Olympic Games.
Debut of teams
Women
Results
Medal table
Top four statistics
* = host nation
Team appearances
Since its debut at the 1980 Games, 23 teams have competed in at least one Olympic Games.
# = states or teams that have since split into two or more independent teams
Debut of teams
* = Defunct Team
Overall medal table
Source:
* = Defunct Team
Olympic records
Men
Most appearances : India (22)
Most consecutive appearances : India (18, 1928 Amsterdam – 2004 Athens)
Most medals : India (13)
Most titles : India (8)
Longest winning streak : 30 matches (India, 1928 Amsterdam – 1960 Rome)
Most goals scored in a single tournament : India (43, 1980 Moscow)
Least goals conceded in a single tournament: India (nil, (1928 Amsterdam, 1956 Melbourne)
Biggest margin of victory : India 24–1 United States (1932 Los Angeles)
Biggest margin of victory at an Olympic final : India 8–1 Germany (1936 Berlin)
Most appearances by a player: Teun de Nooijer (Netherlands), Ric Charlesworth (Australia), David Alegre and Pol Amat (Spain) (5 appearances)
Most goals scored by a player in a match : Roop Singh (India, 10 goals vs United States at 1932 Los Angeles)
Most goals scored by a player in an Olympic final : Balbir Singh Sr. (India, 5 goals vs Netherlands at 1952 Helsinki)
Women
Most appearances : Australia and Netherlands (11)
Most consecutive appearances : Australia and Netherlands (11, 1980 Moscow – 2024 Paris)
Most medals : Netherlands (10)
Most titles : Netherlands (5)
Most goals scored : Netherlands (192)
Most goals scored in a single tournament : Netherlands (29, 2020 Tokyo)
Most appearances by a player: Natascha Keller (Germany, 5 appearances)
Most goals by a player: Maartje Paumen (Netherlands, 19 goals)
Most goals scored by a player in a single tournament: Maartje Paumen (Netherlands, 11 goals at 2008 Beijing)
See also
List of Olympic venues in field hockey
Notes
== References == |
Daniel_Radcliffe | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Radcliffe | [
348,
752
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Radcliffe",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Radcliffe"
] | Daniel Jacob Radcliffe (born 23 July 1989) is an English actor. He rose to fame at age 12 when he began portraying Harry Potter in the Harry Potter film series. Radcliffe plays Potter in all eight films in the series, beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and concluding with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011).
Radcliffe branched out to stage acting in 2007, starring in the West End and Broadway productions of Equus. He returned to Broadway in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (2011), earning a Grammy Award nomination. His other Broadway roles include Martin McDonagh's drama The Cripple of Inishmaan (2014) and Stephen Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along (2023), the latter of which earned him a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He also starred in the London revivals of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (2017) and Samuel Beckett's Endgame (2020).
Radcliffe also expanded his film roles, acting in a variety of genres such as the horror film The Woman in Black (2012), surreal drama Swiss Army Man (2016), thriller Now You See Me 2 (2016), and comedy The Lost City (2022). He also portrayed Allen Ginsberg in the biopic Kill Your Darlings (2013) and "Weird Al" Yankovic in the musical parody Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022). The latter earned him nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a British Academy Television Award. He also played multiple roles in the anthology comedy television series Miracle Workers from 2019 to 2023.
Radcliffe has contributed to various charities, including Demelza Hospice Care for Children and the Trevor Project; the latter awarded him its Hero Award in 2011 for his advocacy with LGBTQ youth.
Early life and education
Daniel Jacob Radcliffe was born at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in Hammersmith, London, England on 23 July 1989, the only child of casting agent Marcia Jeannine Gresham (née Jacobson) and literary agent Alan George Radcliffe. His Jewish mother, born in South Africa, traces her ancestry to Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, and was raised in the English town of Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex. His Northern Irish father was raised in a "very working-class" Protestant family in Banbridge in County Down. In 2019, he explored both sides of his family history in the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? Radcliffe's parents had both acted as children. As a casting agent, his mother was involved in BBC productions including The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.
Radcliffe was educated at three private schools for boys in London: Redcliffe School, Sussex House School, and the City of London School. After the release of the first Harry Potter film, attending school proved difficult for him as some fellow pupils became hostile, though he states they were just trying to "have a crack at the kid that plays Harry Potter" rather than acting out of jealousy. As his acting career began to consume his schedule, he continued his education through on-set tutors. He has admitted to not being a very good student, considering school useless and finding the work "really difficult". He achieved A grades in the three AS level exams that he took in 2006, but decided to take a break from education and did not attend university. Part of his reasoning was he already knew he wanted to be an actor and screenwriter, and it would be difficult to have a normal university experience.
Career
1999–2001: Acting debut and early career
Radcliffe first expressed a desire to act at age five. After one of his mother's casting agent friends secured him an audition, he made his acting debut at age ten in BBC One's two-part adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield (1999), portraying the title character as a young boy. He made his film debut in The Tailor of Panama (2001), an American film based on John le Carré's 1996 spy novel, which was a moderate commercial success.
2001–2011: Stardom with Harry Potter
In 2000, producer David Heyman met Radcliffe while he was at the theatre with his father, a well-known literary agent who Heyman was friends with. He asked him to audition for the role of Harry Potter for the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the best-selling book by British author J. K. Rowling. Rowling had been searching for an unknown British actor to personify the character, and the film's director Chris Columbus recalled thinking, "This is what I want. This is Harry Potter" after he saw a video of the young actor in David Copperfield. Eight months later, following several auditions, Radcliffe was selected to play the part. Rowling endorsed the selection, saying: "I don't think Chris Columbus could have found a better Harry." Radcliffe's parents originally turned down the offer, as they had been told that it would involve six films shot in Los Angeles. Warner Bros. instead offered Radcliffe a two-film contract with shooting in the UK; Radcliffe was unsure at the time if he would act in more than two Harry Potter films.
The release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone took place in 2001. Radcliffe received a seven-figure salary for the lead role, but asserted that the fee was "not that important" to him; his parents chose to invest the money for him. The film was highly popular and was met with positive reviews, and critics took notice of Radcliffe: "Radcliffe is the embodiment of every reader's imagination. It is wonderful to see a young hero who is so scholarly looking and filled with curiosity and who connects with very real emotions, from solemn intelligence and the delight of discovery to deep family longing," wrote Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle.
A year later, Radcliffe starred in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second installment of the series. Reviewers were positive about the lead actors' performances but had polarising opinions on the film overall. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) was the third film in the series. Radcliffe's performance was criticised by The New York Times film critic A. O. Scott, who felt that co-star Emma Watson had to carry him with her performance. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) was the second-highest grossing Harry Potter film at that point, and Radcliffe singled out the humour as a reason for the film's creative success.
The future of the franchise was put into question when Radcliffe, Watson, and co-star Rupert Grint hesitated to sign on to continue their roles. By March 2007, however, Radcliffe had signed for the final Harry Potter films; his signing put an end to weeks of press "speculation that he would be denied the role due to his involvement in Equus", in which he had performed nude onstage. Radcliffe reprised the role of Harry for the fifth time in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007). Radcliffe stated that director David Yates and co-star Imelda Staunton made Order of the Phoenix the "most fun" film to work on in the series. His performance earned him several award nominations, and he received the 2008 National Movie Award for "Best Male Performance". Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson left imprints of their hands, feet, and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the series' sixth instalment, was released in July 2009. Radcliffe received nominations for "Best Male Performance" and "Global Superstar" at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards.
For financial and scripting reasons, the last Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) was divided into two films that were shot back-to-back. This decision drew criticism from the series' fans, but Radcliffe defended the split, stating that it would have been impossible to properly adapt the final novel into a single film.
The two-film finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2, was released in November 2010 and July 2011, respectively. While Deathly Hallows – Part 1 grossed $960 million, Deathly Hallows – Part 2 grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide; as of May 2019, it was the 11th-highest-grossing film of all time. Deathly Hallows – Part 2 was critically acclaimed, as was Radcliffe's performance; Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post asked, "Who could have predicted that Radcliffe, Grint and Watson would turn out to be good actors"? Critic Rex Reed remarked, "Frankly, I'm sorry to see [Radcliffe] go"; Roger Ebert gave the film a highly positive review, but felt that Radcliffe, Grint and Watson were "upstaged by the supporting [actors]."
Radcliffe acknowledged that some people would never be able to separate him from the Harry Potter character; however, he has said he is "proud to be associated with this film series forever." Despite positive feelings about the films, he has no interest in doing more Harry Potter films. After Rowling hinted about writing an eighth book, Radcliffe was asked if he would do another Harry Potter film, to which he replied, "[It is] very doubtful. I think 10 years is a long time to spend with one character". Despite devoting so much time to the series, Radcliffe has asserted that he did not miss out on a childhood like other child actors, remarking, "I've been given a much better perspective on life by doing Potter."
2002–2008: West End and Broadway Theatre debut
In 2002, Radcliffe made his stage debut as a celebrity guest in a West End production of The Play What I Wrote, directed by Kenneth Branagh—who also appeared with him in the second Harry Potter film. He appeared in the film December Boys, an Australian family drama about four orphans that was shot in 2005 and released to theaters in mid-September 2007. On 13 April 2006, a portrait of Radcliffe by Stuart Pearson Wright was unveiled as part of a new exhibition opening at the National Theatre, before being moved to the National Portrait Gallery.
In 2007, Radcliffe co-starred with Carey Mulligan in My Boy Jack, a television drama film shown on ITV. The film received mostly positive reviews, with several critics praising Radcliffe's performance as an eighteen-year-old who goes missing in action during a battle. Radcliffe stated, "For many people my age, the First World War is just a topic in a history book. But I've always been fascinated by the subject and think it's as relevant today as it ever was." Later that year, he published several poems under the pen name Jacob Gershon—a combination of his middle name and the Hebrew version of his mother's maiden name Gresham—in the underground fashion magazine Rubbish.
At age seventeen, in a bid to demonstrate that he was prepared for adult roles, Radcliffe starred in a West End revival of Peter Shaffer's play Equus at the Gielgud Theatre. The piece had not been revived since its first run in 1973. Radcliffe took on the lead role of Alan Strang, a stable boy who has an obsession with horses. Advance sales topped £1.7 million. The role generated significant pre-opening media interest, as Radcliffe performed a nude scene. Equus opened on 27 February 2007 and ran until 9 June 2007. Radcliffe's performance was acclaimed, as critics were impressed by the nuance and depth of his against-type role. Charles Spencer of The Telegraph wrote that the actor "displays a dramatic power and an electrifying stage presence that marks a tremendous leap forward." He added: "I never thought I would find the diminutive (but perfectly formed) Radcliffe a sinister figure, but as Alan Strang ... there are moments when he seems genuinely scary in his rage and confusion." The production transferred to Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre in September 2008. Radcliffe continued in the lead role, starring alongside Kate Mulgrew, Anna Camp, and his Harry Potter co-star Richard Griffiths. Radcliffe was nervous about reprising the role on Broadway as he considered American audiences to be more discerning than those in London. Radcliffe's performance was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.
2010–2018: Return to Broadway and independent films
After voicing a character in The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XXI" in late 2010, Radcliffe debuted as J. Pierrepont Finch in a 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. The role had previously been played by Robert Morse and Matthew Broderick. Other cast members included John Larroquette, Rose Hemingway and Mary Faber. Both the actor and production received favourable reviews, with USA Today commenting: "Radcliffe ultimately succeeds not by overshadowing his fellow cast members, but by working in conscientious harmony with them – and having a blast in the process." Radcliffe's performance in the show earned him Drama Desk Award, Drama League Award and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations. The production itself later received nine Tony Award nominations. Radcliffe left the show on 1 January 2012.
Radcliffe's first post-Harry Potter project was the 2012 horror film The Woman in Black, adapted from the 1983 novel by Susan Hill. The film was released on 3 February 2012 in the United States and Canada, and was released on 10 February in the UK. Radcliffe portrays a man sent to deal with the legal matters of a mysterious woman who has just died, and soon after he begins to experience strange events and hauntings from the ghost of a woman dressed in black. He has said he was "incredibly excited" to be part of the film and described the script as "beautifully written".
In 2013, he portrayed American beat poet Allen Ginsberg in the thriller drama Kill Your Darlings, directed by John Krokidas. He also starred in an Irish-Canadian romantic comedy film The F Word (2013) directed by Michael Dowseand written by Elan Mastai, based on TJ Dawe and Michael Rinaldi's play Toothpaste and Cigars and then he starred in an American dark fantasy horror film directed by Alexandre Aja Horns. Both of the films premiered at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival. Also in 2013, Radcliffe performed at the Noël Coward Theatre in the stage play revival of Martin McDonagh's dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan as the lead, Billy Claven, for which he won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actor in a Play.
Radcliffe starred as Igor in a science fiction horror film Victor Frankenstein (2015), directed by Paul McGuigan and written by Max Landis. The film was based on contemporary adaptations of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein. He also starred as Sam Houser, one of the founders of Rockstar Games, in the biographical drama film The Gamechangers.
Radcliffe starred in the action adventure film Now You See Me 2 (2016) alongside Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, and Woody Harrelson. playing a technological prodigy, entrepreneur, criminal mastermind and a main leading antagonist all along with Michael Caine's character named Arthur Tressler (of whom Radcliffe's character is revealed to be the son), who whilst in turn resents magic. In 2016, Radcliffe portrayed Manny, a talkative corpse, in the indie film Swiss Army Man with Paul Dano. That same year, He also starred in critically acclaimed independent film Imperium (2016) with Toni Collette, and Tracy Letts. He played Nate Foster, an idealistic FBI agent who goes undercover to take down a radical white supremacy group.
The film received an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus reading, "The unsettling Imperium boasts troublingly timely themes and a talented cast led by Daniel Radcliffe as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a ring of white supremacists."
Radcliffe starred off-Broadway at The Public Theater in a documentary theatre piece titled Privacy, playing the role of The Writer. In 2017, he starred as Yossi Ghinsberg in the thriller Jungle, which was based on an internationally best-selling memoir of the same name by Yossi Ghinsberg. In 2018, Radcliffe portrayed a pilot smuggling drugs across borders in the independent action-thriller Beast of Burden directed by Jesper Ganslandt. Radcliffe returned to Broadway in the ninety-minute comedy play The Lifespan of a Fact at Studio 54 Theatre with Bobby Cannavale and Cherry Jones. The play revolves around a determined young fact checker who goes up against his demanding editor and an unorthodox author.
2019–present: Career expansion
In 2019, Radcliffe starred as Craig in the TBS comedy limited series Miracle Workers based on the book by Simon Rich. The show's second season premiered on 28 January 2020. He voice–starred as Rex Dasher, a secret agent who helps Marla, in the animated film Playmobil: The Movie directed by Lino DiSalvo. In 2020, Radcliffe starred as Miles in the action comedy film Guns Akimbo directed by Jason Lei Howden and co-starring Samara Weaving and Natasha Liu Bordizzo. He also starred as Tim Jenkin in the thriller film Escape from Pretoria, based on the real-life prison escape by three young political prisoners from jail in South Africa in 1979. He also played the role of Prince Frederick in the Netflix special Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt opposite Ellie Kemper. Radcliffe reunited with multiple cast members of the Harry Potter film series for an HBO Max special titled Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, which was released on 1 January 2022. Radcliffe stars as the villain in the action-adventure comedy film The Lost City, opposite Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. He portrayed musician "Weird Al" Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a biographical parody film produced for The Roku Channel, for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
In early 2022, Radcliffe returned to the stage acting alongside Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez in the New York Theatre Workshop revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, in which he played Charley Kringas. The revival started on 21 November 2022 and opened on 12 December 2022, running for a limited engagement through 8 January 2023, before transferring to a critically acclaimed run on Broadway. The production closed on July 7, 2024. For his performance, Radcliffe won his first Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, his first major award win ever. Radcliffe will appear alongside Jessica Biel and Ethan Hawke in the upcoming film Batso, which will be directed by American film director Kyle Marvin.
Other ventures
Philanthropy
Radcliffe has lent his support to various charitable organisations. He designed the Cu-Bed for Habitat's VIP Kids range (a cube made of eight smaller ones which can be made into a bed, chaise-longue or chair) with all the royalties from the sale of the bed going directly to his favourite charity, Demelza House Children's Hospice in Sittingbourne, Kent. Radcliffe has urged fans to make donations to the charity's Candle for Care programme in lieu of giving him Christmas presents. In 2008, he was among several celebrities who donated their old glasses to an exhibit honouring victims of the Holocaust. During the Broadway run of Equus he auctioned off a pair of jeans and other items worn in the show, for New-York-based Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and was a presenter at the 2011 Gypsy of the Year competition. He has also made donations in support of Get Connected UK, a London-based free confidential national helpline for troubled youth.
Political and social views
Radcliffe is a supporter of the Labour Party. He previously supported the Liberal Democrats, and endorsed then-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg in the 2010 general election. In 2012, however, he switched his political alignment to Labour, citing disillusionment with the performance of Clegg and the Liberal Democrats while in government, and approving of then-Labour leader Ed Miliband. In 2015, he endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party leadership campaign. He told The Big Issue, "I feel like this show of sincerity by a man who has been around long enough and stuck to his beliefs long enough that he knows them and doesn't have to be scripted is what is making people sit up and get excited. It is great."
Radcliffe supports abolishing the British monarchy and replacing it with a republic. He also supports British unionism, and opposed the 2014 Scottish independence referendum because he "personally like[s] the UK being how it is".
Radcliffe is supportive of the LGBTQ community. Speaking out against homophobia, he began filming public service announcements in 2009 for The Trevor Project, promoting awareness of gay teen suicide prevention. He first learnt of the organisation while performing Equus on Broadway in 2008 and has contributed financially to it. He said in a 2010 interview, "I have always hated anybody who is not tolerant of gay men or lesbians or bisexuals. Now I am in the very fortunate position where I can actually help or do something about it." In the same interview, he stressed the importance of public figures advocating for equal rights. He received The Trevor Project's Hero Award in 2011 for his contributions. In June 2020, amid controversy over Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling's remarks on gender identity — which many have condemned as transphobic, although Rowling has strongly denied this — Radcliffe penned an essay published by The Trevor Project in which he voiced support for the transgender community and expressed regret that Rowling's statements had damaged fans' experience of the Harry Potter books.
Personal life
Radcliffe splits his time between homes in the Fulham area of London and the West Village neighbourhood of New York City's Manhattan borough. He has been in a relationship with American actress Erin Darke since 2012, after having met on the set of Kill Your Darlings. In March 2023, they were confirmed to be expecting their first child together. Darke gave birth to a son the following month. Radcliffe called fatherhood "the literal best thing that ever happened."
In 2008, Radcliffe revealed that he has a mild form of the neurological disorder dyspraxia, which sometimes prevents him from doing simple activities such as writing or tying his shoelaces. He said, "I was having a hard time at school, in terms of being crap at everything, with no discernible talent."
Radcliffe has expressed his fondness for hip hop music and admitted to having "an obsession with memorising complicated, lyrically intricate and fast songs". On 28 October 2014, he rhymed the 1999 Blackalicious song "Alphabet Aerobics" during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Radcliffe is close to his family, whom he credits for keeping him grounded. In August 2010, he became teetotal after finding himself becoming too reliant on alcohol. In March 2020, he appeared as the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, where he discussed his alcohol misuse during his teens and his decision to become teetotal, and how his parents' support and staying in his native England helped him cope with fame.
Radcliffe stated of his beliefs in 2012: "There was never [religious] faith in the house. I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English." He has said that his family are "Christmas tree Jews," and he said: "I'm an atheist, but I'm very proud of being Jewish. It means I have a good work ethic, and you get Jewish humour and you're allowed to tell Jewish jokes." In 2009, he stated that he was an atheist and said, "I'm very relaxed about [being an atheist]. I don't preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do. Anything he does on television, I will watch." He said in 2012, "I'm an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation." In 2019, he described himself as "agnostic leaning toward atheism". In 2009, Radcliffe stated that although he considers himself a "fierce patriot", he is not a royalist, adding that the monarchy "symbolized a lot of what is wrong with the country".
His favourite films include 12 Angry Men, A Matter of Life and Death, Dr. Strangelove, Little Miss Sunshine and Jason and the Argonauts. He has said that his favorite novel is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, and that his favorite Harry Potter book is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He is also an avid ping-pong player.
While on the set of the 2013 film Horns, Radcliffe accidentally drank antifreeze, which caused him to become "horrendously ill" for "a disgusting, feverish three days."
Radcliffe was reported to have earned £1 million for the first Harry Potter film, around £15 million for the sixth, and around £39 million for the final two movies combined. In all, he is estimated to have made a total of £75.4 million from the entire franchise. He appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List in 2006, which estimated his personal fortune to be £14 million, making him one of the richest young people in the UK. In March 2009, he was ranked at number one on the Forbes "Most Valuable Young Stars" list, and by April The Daily Telegraph measured his net worth at £30 million, making him the 12th richest young person in the UK. Radcliffe was considered to be the richest teenager in England later that year. In February 2010, he was named the sixth highest-paid Hollywood male star and placed at number five on Forbes' December list of Hollywood's highest-grossing actors with a film revenue of US$780 million, mainly due to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being released that year. As of 2021, Radcliffe's net worth is estimated at £95 million.
Acting credits and accolades
Explanatory notes
References
External links
Media related to Daniel Radcliffe at Wikimedia Commons
Daniel Radcliffe at IMDb
Daniel Radcliffe at the Internet Broadway Database |
Emma_Watson | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Watson | [
348
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Watson"
] | Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson (born 15 April 1990) is an English actress. Known for her roles in both blockbusters and independent films, she has received a selection of accolades, including a Young Artist Award and three MTV Movie Awards. Watson has been ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses by Forbes and Vanity Fair, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2015. Watson was also listed by Forbes as an honouree on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2015 and 2016.
Watson attended the Dragon School and trained in acting at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts. As a child, she rose to stardom after landing her first professional acting role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series, having previously acted only in school plays. Watson made her first major forays beyond the Potter franchise starring in Ballet Shoes (2007), and lent her voice to The Tale of Despereaux (2008). After the final Harry Potter film, she took on a supporting role in My Week with Marilyn (2011), before starring as Sam, a flirtatious, free-spirited student in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), to critical success. Further acclaim came from portraying Alexis Neiers in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring (2013) and the titular character's adoptive daughter in Darren Aronofsky's biblical epic Noah (2014). That same year, Watson was honoured by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, winning British Artist of the Year. She also starred as Belle in the live-action musical romantic fantasy Beauty and the Beast (2017), and as Meg March in Greta Gerwig's coming-of-age drama Little Women (2019).
From 2011 to 2014, Watson split her time between working on films and continuing her education, graduating from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in English literature in May 2014. That year, she was appointed a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and helped launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which advocates for gender equality. In 2018, she helped launch Time's Up UK as a founding member. Watson was appointed to a G7 advisory body for women's rights in 2019, consulting with leaders on foreign policy. Her modelling work has included campaigns for Burberry and Lancôme. She also lent her name to a clothing line for the sustainable brand People Tree. From 2020 to 2023, she sat on the board of directors of Kering, a luxury brand group, in her capacity as an advocate for sustainable fashion.
Early life and education
Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson was born on 15 April 1990 in Paris, to English lawyers Chris Watson and Jacqueline Luesby. Watson lived in Maisons-Laffitte near Paris until age five. Her parents divorced when she was five, and Watson moved to England to live with her mother in Oxfordshire while spending weekends at her father's house in London. Watson has said she speaks some French, though "not as well" as she used to. After moving to Oxford with her mother and brother, she attended the Dragon School, remaining there until 2003. From age six, she wanted to become an actress, and trained at the Oxford branch of Stagecoach Theatre Arts, a part-time theatre school where she studied singing, dancing, and acting.
By age ten, Watson had performed in Stagecoach productions and school plays including Arthur: The Young Years and The Happy Prince, but she had never acted professionally prior to the Harry Potter series. After the Dragon School, Watson moved on to Headington School, Oxford. While on film sets, she and her castmates were tutored for up to five hours a day. In June 2006, she took GCSE school examinations in ten subjects, achieving eight A* and two A grades. In May 2007, she took AS levels in English, Geography, Art, and History of Art. The following year, she dropped History of Art to pursue the three A levels, receiving an A grade in each subject.
Watson took a gap year after finishing secondary school, to film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Parts 1 & 2 beginning in February 2009, but asserted that she intended to continue her studies and later confirmed she had chosen Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In March 2011, after 18 months at the university, Watson announced she was deferring her course for "a semester or two", though she attended Worcester College, Oxford during the 2011–12 academic year as part of the Visiting Student Programme. In a 2014 interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Watson said just before graduation that it took five years to finish her degree instead of four because, owing to her acting work, she "ended up taking two full semesters off". On 25 May 2014, she graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. In 2023, she began a course of Master of Studies in creative writing at the University of Oxford, where she matriculated at Lady Margaret Hall.
Acting career
1999–2009: Harry Potter and worldwide recognition
In 1999, casting began for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the film adaptation of British author J. K. Rowling's best-selling novel. Casting agents found Watson through her Oxford theatre teacher. She had acted in school plays, but had no film acting experience. Her first audition took place when she was nine years old. Although Watson had to audition a total of eight times before earning the role, Rowling supported her casting after her first screen test. Prior to casting Watson, the producers considered Hatty Jones for the role.
The release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001 was Watson's debut screen performance. The film broke records for opening-day sales and opening-weekend takings and was the highest-grossing film of 2001. Critics singled out Watson for particular acclaim; The Daily Telegraph called her performance "admirable", and IGN said she "stole the show". Watson was nominated for five awards for her performance in Philosopher's Stone, winning the Young Artist Award for Leading Young Actress. She was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly's Breakout Performers of 2001.
A year later, Watson reprised her role as Hermione in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second instalment of the series. Reviewers praised the lead actors' performances. The Los Angeles Times said Watson and her co-stars had matured between films, while The Times criticised director Chris Columbus for "under-employing" Watson's hugely popular character. Watson received an Otto Award from the German magazine Bravo for her performance.
In 2004, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released. Watson was appreciative of the more assertive role Hermione played, calling her "charismatic" and "a fantastic role to play". Critics lauded Watson's performance; A. O. Scott of The New York Times remarked: "Luckily Mr. Radcliffe's blandness is offset by Ms. Watson's spiky impatience. Harry may show off his expanding wizardly skills ... but Hermione ... earns the loudest applause with a decidedly unmagical punch to Draco Malfoy's deserving nose." Although Prisoner of Azkaban proved to be the lowest-grossing Harry Potter film in the entire series, Watson's performance won her two Otto Awards and the Child Performance of the Year award from Total Film.
With Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), both Watson and the Harry Potter film series reached new milestones. The film set records for a Harry Potter opening weekend and opening weekend in the UK. Critics praised the increasing maturity of Watson and her teenage co-stars; The New York Times called her performance "touchingly earnest", and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that "Watson's gutsy, confident performance nicely shows that inside and outside the world of magic there is a growing discrepancy between a teenage girl's status and her accelerating emotional and intellectual development." For Watson, much of the film's humour sprang from the tension among the three lead characters as they matured. She said, "I loved all the arguing. ... I think it's much more realistic that they would argue and that there would be problems." Nominated for three awards for Goblet of Fire, Watson won a bronze Otto Award. Watson almost quit the franchise after Goblet of Fire, saying, "I think I was scared. I don’t know if you ever felt like it got to a tipping point where you were like, 'this is kind of forever now.'"
In 2006, Watson played Hermione in The Queen's Handbag, a special mini-episode of Harry Potter in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday. The fifth film in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was released in 2007. A huge financial success, the film set a record worldwide opening-weekend gross of $332.7 million. Watson won the inaugural National Movie Award for Best Female Performance. As the fame of the actress and the series continued to rise, Watson and her Harry Potter co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint left imprints of their hands, feet and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on 9 July 2007. That month, Watson's work on the Harry Potter series was said to have earned her more than £10 million, and she acknowledged she would never have to work for money again.
Prior to the release of Order of the Phoenix, the future of the Harry Potter series was in jeopardy, as all three lead actors were hesitant to sign on to continue their roles for the final installments. Watson was considerably more ambivalent than her co-stars during renegotiations. She explained that the decision was significant, as the films represented a further four-year commitment to the role, but eventually conceded that she "could never let [the role of] Hermione go", signing for the role on 23 March 2007.
Watson's first non-Potter role was the 2007 BBC film Ballet Shoes, a television adaptation of the 1936 novel of the same name by Noel Streatfeild. The film's director, Sandra Goldbacher, commented that Watson was "perfect" for the starring role of aspiring actress Pauline Fossil: "She has a piercing, delicate aura that makes you want to gaze and gaze at her." Ballet Shoes was broadcast in the UK on Boxing Day to 5.7 million viewers, to mixed reviews. The following year, she voiced the character Princess Pea in the animation The Tale of Despereaux, a children's comedy, based on the 2003 novel of the same name, by Kate DiCamillo, starring Matthew Broderick, with Harry Potter co-star Robbie Coltrane also starring in the film. The Tale of Despereaux was released in December 2008 and grossed $87 million worldwide.
Principal photography for the sixth Harry Potter film began in late 2007, with Watson's part being filmed from 18 December to 17 May 2008. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince premiered on 15 July 2009, having been delayed from November 2008. With the lead actors in their late teens, critics were increasingly willing to review them on the same level as the rest of the franchise's all-star cast, which the Los Angeles Times described as "a comprehensive guide to contemporary UK acting". The Washington Post felt Watson had given "[her] most charming performance to date", while The Daily Telegraph described the lead actors as "newly liberated and energised, eager to give all they have to what's left of the series".
Watson's filming for the final instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, began on 18 February 2009 and ended on 12 June 2010. For financial and scripting reasons, the original book was divided into two films which were shot consecutively. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 was released in November 2010 while the second film was released in July 2011. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 became a commercial and critical success. The highest-grossing film in the franchise, it grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide and proved to be Watson's most commercially successful film to date.
2010–2016: Independent films and mainstream work
Watson appeared in a music video for One Night Only, after meeting lead singer George Craig at the 2010 Winter/Summer Burberry advertising campaign. The video, "Say You Don't Want It", was screened on Channel 4 on 26 June 2010 and released on 16 August. In her first post-Harry Potter film, Watson appeared in My Week with Marilyn (2011) as Lucy, a wardrobe assistant who briefly dates protagonist Colin Clark, portrayed by Eddie Redmayne.
In May 2010, Watson was reported to be in talks to star in Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, based on the 1999 novel of the same name. Filming began in summer of 2011, and the film was released in September 2012. Watson starred opposite Logan Lerman as Sam, a high school senior who befriends a fellow student called Charlie (Lerman), and helps him through his freshman year. The film opened to favourable reviews; David Sexton of the Evening Standard opined that Watson's performance was "plausible and touching", while The Atlantic reviewer thought that Watson "sheds the memory of a decade playing Hermione in the Harry Potter series with an about-face as a flirtatious but insecure free spirit.
Watson joined the cast of the satirical crime film The Bling Ring on 29 February 2012, The Sofia Coppola-directed film is based on the real-life Bling Ring robberies, with Watson playing a fictionalised version of Alexis Neiers, a television personality who was one of seven teenagers involved in the robberies. The film was released in 2013. While the film mostly received mixed reviews, critics gave almost unanimous praise for Watson's performance. Adam White of The Independent later stated that "She prove[d] remarkable.... Watson oozes casual disdain. Her sticky American vocal fry is clipped and monotone, as if she's swallowed a Kardashian for breakfast." Watson also had a supporting role in the apocalyptic comedy This Is the End (2013), in which she, Seth Rogen, James Franco and many others played "exaggerated versions of themselves" and Watson memorably dropped the "f-bomb". She said she could not pass up the opportunity to make her first comedy and "work with some of the best comedians [...] in the world right now".
In June 2012, Watson was confirmed for the role as Ila, Shem's wife, in Darren Aronofsky's Noah, which began filming the following month, and was released in March 2014. Watson referred to the role as "physically very demanding" given the usage of special effects and did extensive research on childbirth to effectively portray a scene in the film. The film, a box office success, received mixed reviews for its direction and casting; Vanity Fair wrote that "Watson anchors the film's rawest emotional scenes.... Sitting on an Icelandic beach with Russell Crowe, her hair wild and eyes burning, Watson is quiet but ferocious." In March 2013, it was reported that Watson was in negotiations to star as the title character in Kenneth Branagh's live-action Disney adaptation of Cinderella. Watson was offered the role, but turned it down because she did not connect with the character. The role ultimately went to Lily James.
Watson performed the background vocals in the second chorus of the song "Pantomime" by singer Ben Hammersley, alongside Ólafur Arnalds. The song was released on 20 January 2014.
Watson joined Judi Dench, Robert Downey Jr., Mike Leigh, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Mark Ruffalo as recipients of the 2014 Britannia Awards, presented on 30 October in Los Angeles. Watson was awarded British Artist of the Year and she dedicated the prize to Millie, her pet hamster who died as Watson was filming Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Watson starred in two 2015 releases, the thrillers Colonia, opposite Daniel Brühl and Michael Nyqvist; and Regression by Alejandro Amenábar, alongside Ethan Hawke and her Harry Potter co-star David Thewlis. Both of these films received generally negative reviews; The Daily Telegraph critic blamed Regression's script for her "pure dramatic cardboard" role. She also appeared in an episode of BBC's The Vicar of Dibley, in which she played Reverend Iris. In February 2016, Watson announced she was taking a year-long break from acting. She planned to spend the time on her "personal development" and her women's rights work.
2017–present: Recent career and hiatus
Watson starred as Belle in the 2017 live-action Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast directed by Bill Condon, and starring opposite Dan Stevens as the Beast. She was given autonomy within Belle's portrayal; she re-characterised her as an assistant to her inventor father and incorporated bloomers and boots into her wardrobe. The film grossed over $1.2 billion at the worldwide box office and emerged as the second-highest-grossing film of 2017 and the 17th-highest-grossing film of all time. Her reported fee was $3 million upfront with profit participation, bringing her salary up to $15 million. The film garnered positive reviews; Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times thought her performance was "all pluck and spunk and sass and smarts and fierce independence as Belle". Watson later said "When I finished the film, it kind of felt like I had made that transition into being a woman on-screen".
In the same year, she starred opposite Tom Hanks in the film adaptation of Dave Eggers' novel The Circle as Mae Holland, who begins working at a powerful tech corporation and enters a perilous situation concerning surveillance and freedom. The film received negative reviews but was a moderate box office success. In 2019, Watson starred as Meg March in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women, co-starring with Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, and Meryl Streep. On the premise, Watson has stated "I think [Little Women] was good literary device to explain that there's not one way to be a feminist.... [Meg's] way of being a feminist is making the choice – because that's really, for me anyway, what feminism is about. Her choice is that she wants to be a full-time mother and wife." Forbes stated that "Watson has perhaps the most challenging [...] role, as the proverbial straight woman of the sisters who is put on the defensive when her dreams end up being the most conventional of the lot." The film was critically acclaimed and grossed over $218 million against its $40 million budget.
In 2020, Watson discussed her future career plans, stating: "Having been so public in making films and being so active on social [media] in my activism, I am curious to embrace a role where I work to amplify more voices, to continue to learn from those with different experiences", adding that her work would include "fewer red carpets and more conference meetings". In 2021, various reports surfaced stating that Watson was engaged or retiring. Watson and her representatives refuted these reports; she later labelled the speculation as clickbait and cited her relative public absence to continued social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, Watson reunited with multiple cast members of the Harry Potter film series for an HBO Max special titled Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts. The following year, Watson revealed in an interview with the Financial Times that a reason why she had not acted in almost five years was because she "wasn't very happy" with the profession and that she felt "a bit caged". However, she went on to say that she will "absolutely" return to acting while also saying, "But I'm happy to sit and wait for the next right thing. I love what I do. It's finding a way to do it where I don't have to fracture myself into different faces and people. And I just don't want to switch into robot mode any more."
Fashion career
In 2005, Watson began her modelling career with a photo shoot for Teen Vogue, which made her the youngest person to cover the magazine. Three years later, the British press reported that Watson was to replace Keira Knightley as the face of Chanel, but this was denied by both parties. In June 2009, following several months of rumours, Watson confirmed she would be partnering with Burberry as the face of their Autumn/Winter 2009 campaign, for which she received an estimated six-figure fee. She also appeared in Burberry's 2010 Spring/Summer campaign alongside her brother Alex, musicians George Craig and Matt Gilmour, and model Max Hurd. In February 2011, Watson was awarded the Style Icon award from British Elle by Dame Vivienne Westwood. Watson continued her involvement in fashion advertising when she announced she had been chosen as the face of Lancôme in March 2011.
In September 2009, Watson announced her involvement with People Tree, a fair trade fashion brand. Watson worked as a creative adviser for the company to create a spring line of clothing, which was released in February 2010; the range featured styles inspired by southern France and London. The collection, described by The Times as "very clever" despite their "quiet hope that [she] would become tangled at the first hemp-woven hurdle", was widely publicised in magazines such as Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and People. Watson, who was not paid for the collaboration, admitted that competition for the range was minimal, but argued that "Fashion is a great way to empower people and give them skills; rather than give cash to charity you can help people by buying the clothes they make and supporting things they take pride in"; adding, "I think young people like me are becoming increasingly aware of the humanitarian issues surrounding fast fashion and want to make good choices but there aren't many options out there." Watson continued her involvement with People Tree, resulting in the release of a 2010 Autumn/Winter collection.
In 2013, Madame Tussauds in London unveiled a wax statue of Watson wearing an Elie Saab haute couture design donated to the museum by the designer. A spokesperson for the museum stated, "[Watson] is one of the most requested personalities by our guests. She's a true English rose known and loved by millions of film and fashion fans around the world". Watson was awarded Best British Style at the 2014 British Fashion Awards. The competition included David Beckham, Amal Clooney, Kate Moss, and Keira Knightley.
Watson has been described as "an early adopter of sustainable fashion" and is noted for dressing ethically on the red carpet. She wore a Calvin Klein gown to the 2016 Met Gala made out of recycled plastic bottles. Watson has supported Good On You, an app that acts as a directory for the sustainability level of fashion brands. In 2017, she began updating an Instagram account entitled "The Press Tour", detailing the ethical brands she wore during the press tours for films such as Beauty and the Beast and The Circle. Watson guest-edited the March 2018 issue of Vogue Australia focusing on fashion sustainability, and was photographed by Peter Lindbergh for the magazine. In January 2020, she partnered with consignment website ThredUP to launch a "Fashion Footprint Calculator", which allows website visitors to calculate the carbon impact of their wardrobes and ways to reduce it.
In June 2020, Watson was appointed the youngest member of the board of directors of Kering, the owner of various fashion brands such as Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Watson will chair Kering's sustainability committee. Kering chairman François-Henri Pinault praised the new board members' "knowledge and competences, and the multiplicity of their backgrounds and perspectives". Watson stated she "hope[d] to influence decisions that will impact future generations and the world that we leave them" and was "extremely excited" to collaborate with the Kering Foundation as part of their women's rights work and looked forward to making a difference "behind the scenes". She served in this capacity until 2023.
In August 2022, Watson became the face of Prada Beauty's new fragrance Paradoxe. She starred in, directed, wrote and narrated the short film for the fragrance's promotional campaign. In January 2024, Watson became the face of Prada's Re-Nylon collection, the sustainable product line of the brand.
Activism and advocacy
Watson is an outspoken feminist. She has promoted education for girls, travelling to Bangladesh and Zambia to do so. In July 2014, she was appointed a UN Women Goodwill ambassador. That September, an admittedly nervous Watson delivered an address at UN Headquarters in New York City to launch the UN Women campaign HeForShe, which aims to urge men to advocate for gender equality. In that speech she said she began questioning gender-based assumptions at age eight when she was called "bossy", a trait she has attributed to her being a "perfectionist", whilst boys were not, and at 14 when she was "sexualised by certain elements of the media". Watson's speech described feminism as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities" and declared that the perception of feminism as being "man-hating" is something that "has to stop". The speech made worldwide headlines from both major news outlets and fashion blogs, and the organisation's website crashed after press coverage of the event. Watson later said she received threats within less than twelve hours of making the speech, which left her "raging. [...] If they were trying to put me off [women's rights work], it did the opposite."
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women, stated, "For a time, there was a conversation about whether 'feminism' was a good thing or a bad thing... [Her speech] gave us the word back." In 2015, Malala Yousafzai told Watson she decided to call herself a feminist after hearing her speech.
Also in September, Watson made her first country visit as a UN Women Goodwill ambassador to Uruguay, where she gave a speech at the Legislative Palace in Montevideo highlighting the need for women's political participation. In November 2014, Watson designed a Paddington Bear statue, one of fifty located around London prior to the release of the film Paddington, which was auctioned to raise funds for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). In December, the Ms. Foundation for Women named Watson its Feminist Celebrity of 2014, following an online poll. Watson also gave a speech about gender equality in January 2015, at the World Economic Forum's annual winter meeting.
Watson took the top spot on the AskMen "Top 99 Outstanding Women 2015" list on the strength of having "thrown her back" into women's rights issues. In the same year, Watson was included on the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people, her first-ever appearance on the list. For its recap, former New York Times editor Jill Abramson noted Watson's "gutsy, smart take on feminism" and called her effort to get men involved "refreshing".
Watson has cited Gloria Steinem and Maya Angelou as influences. In January 2016, Watson started a feminist Goodreads book club: Our Shared Shelf. The goal of the club is to share feminist ideas and encourage discussion on the topic. One book is selected per month and is discussed in the last week of that month. The first book to be selected was My Life on the Road by Steinem, whom Watson would later interview that February at the How to: Academy in London. Our Shared Shelf ceased updates in January 2020, but continues to be open as a discussion board for recommendations.
On 2016 International Day of the Girl Child, Watson visited Malawi to meet with traditional chiefs and girls who returned to school after being freed from child marriage. Watson has partnered with organisations such as Book Fairies and Books on the Underground to leave literature on public transit for consumption.
In March 2017, Watson received backlash for a Vanity Fair photo shoot in which one of the shots had her breasts partly visible, for which some in the news media accused her of hypocrisy. Bemused by the controversy, she argued that "feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women" but is instead about freedom, liberation and equality, adding, "I really don't know what my tits have to do with it."
Watson has discussed her white privilege in feminist spaces; in an interview with British Vogue, she commented, "I saw 'white feminism' coming up again and again, and I was like, 'Hey, this is clearly something that I have to meaningfully engage with. I have to understand this better". She has written about intersectionality for Our Shared Shelf, discussing her self-reflection on "What are the ways I have benefited from being white? In what ways do I support and uphold a system that is structurally racist?"
Watson is a founding member of Time's Up UK and coordinated its launch at the 71st British Academy Film Awards. Watson also assisted in the establishment of nationwide industry guidelines on bullying and harassment, implemented by the British Film Institute and British Academy of Film and Television Arts. She donated £1 million to Time's Up UK in February 2018 and later helped set up the organisation's Justice and Equality Fund in October, which donated to women's groups across the country. Marai Larasi, an activist on the issue of violence against women, was her guest to the 2018 Golden Globe Awards.
In July 2019, Watson helped launch a legal helpline for people who have suffered sexual harassment in the workplace. Legal advice is provided by Rights of Women, a charity which works to help women through the law. In the same year, she joined a G7 gender equality advisory group convened by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, to "call on G7 to make political and economic advances for women within their own countries" as well as a "centerpiece of foreign policy". She attended their first meeting at the Élysée Palace in Paris in February and attended the 45th G7 summit in August as part of the committee.
In an interview with Paris Lees, she voiced her support for transgender rights, reiterating this on Twitter amidst controversy concerning Rowling's remarks on gender identity. Watson has spoken out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement; in June 2020, she shared anti-racism educational resources on social media in support of the George Floyd protests after initially participating in Blackout Tuesday, and uploaded a podcast episode onto Spotify interviewing Reni Eddo-Lodge about her book Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race.
In July 2020, she partnered with Lodge and the WOW Foundation to spearhead a project reimagining the London Underground Map, renaming the 270 stops to spotlight women and non-binary people who have shaped the city's history. The initiative will consult writers, museums, and librarians and is set to be published by Haymarket Books on International Women's Day 2021. Watson was among the 400 signatories in a letter calling for the UK government to include women in "decision-making roles" at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
In June 2021, it was reported that Watson was part of a group of investors funding $12.5 million into FabricNano, a startup developing sustainable alternatives to petrochemical products. In January 2022, Watson showed support for the Palestine cause by posting an image of a pro-Palestinian protest with a "Solidarity is a verb" banner on Instagram. This received backlash from former Israeli science minister Danny Danon, who posted on Twitter, "10 points from Gryffindor for being an antisemite". Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan also criticised her. Danon's comment was criticised by Leah Greenberg, a co-executive director of Indivisible Project and Conservative Party peer Sayeeda Warsi. More than forty people, including Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Miriam Margolyes, Gael García Bernal, Peter Capaldi, Maxine Peake, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Coogan and Charles Dance, supported Watson in a letter organised by Artists for Palestine UK.
Watson is an activist for environmental justice and climate change mitigation. In 2019, Swedish researchers from Lund University analysed the carbon footprints of ten celebrities including Watson's. Watson's carbon footprint was the lowest of the celebrities analysed, but her CO2 emissions from flying alone was still 15.1 tons of CO2 – three times the global average. At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Watson hosted a panel on climate change with guests including climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Public image
Watson has often been cited as a role model, though she shies away from the term, stating that "it puts the fear of god into [her]". Her impact on teenage girls' view of women's rights has been referred to as the "Emma Watson effect", with respondents from a National Citizen Service survey stating that her work in activism had inspired them to label themselves feminists. In her initial post-Harry Potter career, she was noted to focus on smaller films rather than big-budget studio films. Adam White of The Independent states that Watson's acting style possesses "a very human sensitivity and quiet strength."
Describing Watson's off-screen persona, Derek Blasberg of Vanity Fair has called her "shy", "friendly, intelligent, and down to earth." Steinem has described her as "way more like a real person than a movie star", while author bell hooks considers her to be part of "a very different, new breed [of actors] who are interested in being whole and having a holistic life, as opposed to being identified with just wealth and fame."
Watson's character in Harry Potter has had a significant impact on pop culture; the actress has commented, "I have met fans [with] my face tattooed on their bod[ies]. I've met people who used the Harry Potter books to get through cancer. I don't know how to explain it, but the Harry Potter phenomenon steps into a different zone." Watson has been the subject of substantial media attention since the beginning of her career; on her eighteenth birthday she was photographed by paparazzi attempting to take pictures up her skirt, and she has been victim of numerous stalking threats. Watson does not take selfies with fans, citing security concerns, and instead prefers to talk one-on-one during interactions.
In March 2009, she was ranked sixth on the Forbes list of "Most Valuable Young Stars" and in February 2010, she was Hollywood's highest-paid female star, having earned an estimated £19 million in 2009. In 2017, Forbes ranked her among the world's highest-paid actresses, with annual earnings of $14 million. In 2013, Watson was British GQ's Woman of the Year and topped Empire's list of the 100 Sexiest Movie Stars. Watson was found to be the sixth most admired woman in the world in global surveys conducted by YouGov in 2020.
Personal life
When asked about her faith in 2014, Watson described herself as a spiritual universalist. In February 2016, Watson was appointed visiting fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University.
Watson was in a relationship with Tech entrepreneur William ‘Mack’ Knight, from 2017 for two years. and had a relationship with corporate executive Brandon Green, from 2021 ending in 2023. She remains close with Tom Felton, fellow actor, having first met him on the Harry Potter movie set in 1999.
On coping with intense fame from a young age, she has said that remaining rooted in her own identity helped her eventually "find peace". In 2013, she had become certified to teach yoga and meditation. As part of this certification, she attended a week-long meditation course at a Canadian facility, in which residents are not allowed to speak, in order "to figure out how to be at home with myself". Regarding her meditation training, she stated in an interview with Elle Australia that an uncertain future meant finding "a way to always feel safe and at home within myself. Because I can never rely on a physical place."
Filmography
Film
Television
Music videos
Theme park attractions
Authored articles
Watson, Emma; Mlambo-Ngcuka, Phumzile; Iversen, Katja; Kaufman, Michael (22 August 2019). "Every G7 country should have a feminist foreign policy". The Guardian.
Recognition and accolades
Throughout her career, Watson has received several awards and nominations, including a Young Artist Award for her portrayal of Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001). Additionally, she received nominations for three Critics' Choice Movie Awards, four Empire Awards, 14 MTV Movie & TV Awards (winning three), six People's Choice Awards (winning two), 12 Teen Choice Awards (winning eight).
Watson's efforts in activism and philanthropy, most notably her support of women's rights and her role in launching the UN Women campaign HeForShe, has received widespread media recognition and acclaim. Watson was listed among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2015. She has received several recognitions for her style, from the Teen Choice Awards and British Fashion Awards.
See also
List of Harry Potter cast members
List of women's rights activists from the United Kingdom
Notes
References
Further reading
Blasberg, Derek (28 February 2017). "Cover Story: Emma Watson, Rebel Belle". Vanity Fair.
Lees, Paris (15 April 2020). "From the Archive: Emma Watson on Being Happily 'Self-Partnered' at 30". British Vogue.
External links
Emma Watson at IMDb
Emma Watson at Rotten Tomatoes
Emma Watson at AllMovie
Emma Watson at UN Women's official website
Emma Watson at Kering's official website
Emma Watson's 2014 Speech at United Nations Headquarters – Official UN Video |
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Grint"
] | Rupert Alexander Lloyd Grint (; born 24 August 1988) is an English actor. He rose to fame for his role as Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter film series, for which he was cast at age eleven, having previously acted only in school plays and his local theatre group. Grint portrayed Weasley in all eight films in the series, beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and concluding with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011). Since then, he has continued his work on film, television, and theatre.
Beginning in 2002, Grint began to work outside of the Harry Potter franchise, with a co-leading role in Thunderpants. He starred in the dramedy Driving Lessons (2006) and the drama Cherrybomb (2009) and co-starred in the comedy Wild Target (2010). After the Harry Potter series concluded, he appeared in the films Into the White (2012), Charlie Countryman (2013), CBGB (2013), Moonwalkers (2015), and Knock at the Cabin (2023). Grint made his stage debut in 2013 in Mojo at the Harold Pinter Theatre. He executive-produced and starred in the television series Snatch, based on the film of the same name. He has also starred in the black comedy series Sick Note, the mystery thriller miniseries The ABC Murders, and the psychological horror series Servant.
Early life
Grint was born on 24 August 1988 in Harlow, Essex, to Nigel Grint, a dealer in racing memorabilia, and Joanne Grint (née Parsons). He is the eldest of five siblings. He has said that his earliest goal in life was to become an ice cream man. He grew up in Watton-at-Stone, Hertfordshire, and was educated at Richard Hale School, in Hertford. Grint was raised a Catholic and said he "feared God" as a child.
While in school, he took an avid interest in theatre. He began performing in school productions and joined the Top Hat Stage and Screen School, a local theatre group that cast him as a fish in Noah's Ark and a donkey in a nativity play. He continued participating in school plays as he moved into secondary school. Nonetheless, he had never acted professionally prior to the Harry Potter series. He left school at sixteen to focus on his acting career, saying he "didn't really like school that much".
Career
1999–2011: Harry Potter and worldwide recognition
Starting in 1999, casting began for the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the best-selling novel by J. K. Rowling. Rowling insisted the cast be British and assisted Susie Figgis and director Chris Columbus in casting the roles. Grint, a fan of the book series, chose to audition for the role of Ron Weasley, one of Harry Potter's best friends at Hogwarts. Having seen a Newsround report about the open casting, he sent in a video of himself rapping about how he wished to receive the role, and the casting team asked for a meeting with him. In August 2000, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Grint were selected to play Harry, Hermione Granger, and Ron. Grint is the oldest member of the trio. The release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001 was Grint's debut screen performance. Breaking records for opening-day sales and opening-weekend takings, it was the year's highest-grossing film. With a total of US$974 million in its theatrical run, it stands as the series' second most commercially successful entry. It was critically well-received, scoring mainly positive reviews. However, a number of critics found the adaption's faithfulness to the book both its best and worst quality. Grint won a Satellite Award in the category of Outstanding New Talent, and a Young Artist Award for Most Promising Young Newcomer.
A year later, Grint again starred as Ron in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). It opened to positive reviews and critics generally enjoyed the lead actors' performances. Both Los Angeles Times and New York Magazine observed that Grint and his peers had matured between films, with the latter pointing out that Grint had become "more proficient" and said they missed "the amateurish ardour" the actor and Watson carried in Philosopher's Stone. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) was released on 31 May in the UK. The film sees all three of its lead characters hover on the brink of adolescence, "and while they look braver and more capable than before, the dangers they face seem far more grave and their vulnerability more intense." Alfonso Cuarón took over direction for Prisoner of Azkaban, which remains the lowest-grossing Harry Potter film with US$795 million in revenue. Nonetheless, it was the second highest-grossing movie of 2004, behind Shrek 2.
In 2005, Grint reprised his role for the fourth film in the series – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The adaptation, unlike previous films, explored romantic elements and included more humour. In a 2005 interview with IGN, all three lead actors singled out humour as a reason for the film's success. It was directed by Mike Newell, whom Grint characterised as "really loud and not afraid to swear at you, but he was really cool." Goblet of Fire is one of the series' best-reviewed instalments, and is noted for its characters' maturity and sophistication, darker and more complex plotline, and the quality of the screenplay and lead actors' performances.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth film in the Harry Potter franchise, was released to cinemas in 2007. A huge financial success, it set a record worldwide opening-weekend gross of US$394 million, superseding Spider-Man 3. It was directed by a new filmmaker, David Yates, who directed all of the subsequent Potter films. Grint said the laid-back director was "really good" and helped keep the material fresh. Grint and his Harry Potter co-stars left imprints of their hands, feet and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
On 15 July 2009, the series' sixth instalment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released and again set box office records. In its theatrical run, it earned US$933 million ticket sales. It is also one of the most positively reviewed Harry Potter films, with critics praising its "emotionally satisfying" story, direction, cinematography, visual design and music. Grint observed a change in Ron in this entry, pointing out that his once insecure, often overshadowed character started to become more secure and even began to show a dark side. He found it fun to personify a more emotional Ron. Between 2009 and 2010, Grint's work received three award nominations, including one win—an Otto Award from the German magazine Bravo.
Despite the previous films' successes, the franchise's future was put into question when the three lead actors had reservations about signing on for the final two films. However, by March 2007, Grint agreed to return for the last installments. For financial and scripting reasons, the final book was divided into two films, shot back-to-back, with filming concluding in June 2010. After completing the final film, Grint said: "I mean it literally has been my childhood, and suddenly it all came down to really just one random scene, with us jumping through a fireplace, and then it was over. ...it's very odd. Because suddenly it was all over, just like that. It was really emotional for all of us, realising that we're never going to be doing this again."
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010) was released in November and grossed over US$950 million. It set several box office records and received mostly favourable reviews. Grint's portrayal of Ron again earned him critical praise. Reviewing the adaption for Slate, Dana Stevens called all three of the leads "terrific". Although he disliked the film, Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote that "Grint has grown up to be a skilful actor who knows the value of a slow burn". Grint's performance brought him nominations from the MTV Movie Awards and National Movie Awards for Best Fight and Performance of the Year in 2011. He reprised his role for the seventh time in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, the final Harry Potter instalment. It resumed from where the previous film left off, and included a lot of action, whereas Part 1 had focused more on character development. Grint, along with the film, was critically acclaimed: Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post wrote, "Who could have predicted that Radcliffe, Grint and Watson would turn out to be good actors?". The film broke several box office records, including biggest midnight release, biggest first-day opening, and biggest opening-weekend. Deathly Hallows – Part 2 became the fourth highest-grossing film of all time.
Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling gave a speech at the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 on 7 July 2011 in London. She said that there were seven Harry Potter film series cast members whom she called "The Big Seven"; Grint was one of them, with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Tom Felton, Matthew Lewis, Evanna Lynch and Bonnie Wright.
2002–2011: Concurrent film work during Harry Potter
In 2002, Grint starred in his first non-Harry Potter film, Thunderpants, which revolves around Patrick (played by Bruce Cook) whose remarkable capacity for flatulence scores him a job as an astronaut. In this film, Grint played the co-lead role of Alan, an anosmic boy who is Patrick's only friend. It was generally ignored by critics and audiences. Most critics who did take notice of it did not respond well to it, with one writing: "This film should be shown in prisons so that inmates have a good reason to never return." Grint also appeared in Driving Lessons, a comedy drama released in 2006, starring opposite Julie Walters. It met with a mixed reception by critics, but his portrayal of an oppressed teenage boy was generally praised. Alt Film Guide's Andre Soares wrote: "Grint, on the other hand, is a revelation . . . [He] displays an innate naturalness mixed with personal charisma that turn a potentially pathetic Christian freak into a humorous, thoroughly likable – if more than a little awkward – young man".
In July 2008, it was announced that Grint would star in the drama film Cherrybomb with Robert Sheehan and Kimberley Nixon. Grint found shooting this film very different from the Harry Potter films, as he had to adjust to doing a dozen scenes per day. Grint's character—Malachy, a worker at Belfast—goes to great lengths to impress his boss's daughter, with whom he is infatuated. This film, like his next project, involved him playing violent roles. Despite premiering at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, the film was initially unable to find a distributor. An online campaign by Grint's fans was credited with helping to secure a distribution deal in the UK in 2010.
Jonathan Lynn directed Grint in Wild Target, a 2010 comedy thriller, where he starred with Emily Blunt and Bill Nighy. A remake of the 1993 French film Cible Emouvante, it was made on a relatively small budget of US$8 million. It was a commercial failure, earning only US$3.4 million, and garnered mostly negative reviews in the media, which criticised it for dishonouring the original film and wasting the comedic potential of its cast. However, Grint also attracted some positive notice: "It's nice to see Rupert Grint perform well in a role other than that of Ron Weasley, and it's clear that he's got a career ahead of him."
In January 2011, Grint made a cameo appearance on the BBC popular comedy show Come Fly with Me, starring comedy duo Matt Lucas and David Walliams (Little Britain). In March 2011, he was cast as the lead character in the small-budget anti-war Norwegian film Into the White, directed by Petter Næss. Principal photography started in April, and the film, which was shot on location, was released in 2012. It is based on a real incident that took place on 27 April 1940, when German Luftwaffe pilot Horst Schopis's bomber was shot down at Grotli by a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Blackburn Skua, which then crash-landed. The several German and British crew members found shelter by chance during a harsh winter there.
In August 2011, Grint did a photo shoot with his friend and Harry Potter co-star Tom Felton in Los Angeles for the autumn/winter collection of the fashion label Band of Outsiders. In September 2011, it was announced that Grint would voice a character in the film adaptation of Postman Pat along with David Tennant, Stephen Mangan and Jim Broadbent; it was released in May 2014. Grint also appears in the music video for Ed Sheeran's song "Lego House", released on 20 October 2011.
2012–present: Further work, theatre, and television
In March 2012, the "Visit Britain" TV ad was released, featuring Grint alongside Julie Walters, Michelle Dockery and Stephen Fry, promoting holidaying at home in the UK. Later that month, Variety reported that Grint had been cast alongside Chloë Grace Moretz in The Drummer, a biopic film about drummer Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. That day, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed it and announced that filming would begin 15 June 2012 in California and Savannah, Georgia.
On 25 July 2012, Grint carried the 2012 London Olympic torch during the Olympic Torch Relay, part of the London 2012 Summer Olympics. He told the BBC News that it was an "overwhelming" experience that he "hoped to remember forever", and told The Daily Telegraph, "It was amazing, it was really overwhelming. It's just such an honour to be a part of this. I'm really proud". In October 2012, he narrated We Are Aliens, a 25-minute 3D Planetarium Fulldome film about the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe.
On 13 February 2013, The Hollywood Reporter's Live Feed announced that Grint would star in a television pilot for CBS called Super Clyde. It did not become a series. In July 2013, it was confirmed that Grint would make his stage debut in the second run of Jez Butterworth's black comedy Mojo, with Grint playing Sweets, a hood who "pops amphetamines like Smarties" and "does a sort of double act, full of comic menace". The play, which also starred Brendan Coyle, Ben Whishaw and Daniel Mays, was based on real-life events, and ran from 26 October 2013 to 8 February 2014 at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. Grint won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best London Newcomer for his role.
In September 2013, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Grint would star in an adaptation of Macbeth called Enemy of Man, also featuring Sean Bean, Charles Dance, Jason Flemyng, James D'Arcy, Neil Maskell and Joe Gilgun, and directed by Vincent Regan. Filming began in January 2014 in the United Kingdom. In June 2014, it was announced that Grint would make his Broadway debut as Frank Finger in the play It's Only a Play at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, appearing with Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, and Megan Mullally. It ran from 28 August 2014 to 4 January 2015.
Since 2019, Grint has starred as Julian Pearce in the Apple TV+ psychological horror series Servant. The series has been critically praised. In December 2021, the show was renewed for its fourth and final season.
Grint starred in the 2022 Netflix anthology series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities and in M. Night Shyamalan's 2023 thriller film Knock at the Cabin. He also reunited with multiple cast members of the Harry Potter film series for an HBO Max special, Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, which premiered on 1 January 2022.
Personal life
Grint has been in a relationship with actress Georgia Groome since 2011. They have a daughter, Wednesday, born in May 2020. He joined Instagram in November 2020, posting a photo of himself holding his newborn daughter. He reached one million followers within four hours and one minute of creating his account, breaking the previous Guinness World Records title for the fastest time to reach one million followers on the platform.
As Grint's earliest ambition was to be an ice cream man, he bought an ice cream truck with the money he earned from the Harry Potter series and sold ice cream to local customers.
He took part in the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay, carrying the flame through Hendon in northwest London to outside Middlesex University.
Grint is a keen football fan and an avid supporter of Tottenham Hotspur.
Philanthropy
Grint has supported various charitable organisations, including donating personal items to charity auctions. He participated in the Wacky Rally in 2010 with James and Oliver Phelps, which raised money for Britain's Royal National Lifeboat Institution. He was one of more than 40 people to produce designs for the Chrysalis Collection for Keech Hospice Care in Luton. His piece, a painted butterfly, was auctioned on eBay in March 2010. In May 2011, with other celebrities, he took part in the "Make Mine Milk" ad campaign to promote daily milk drinking. His ads were seen on posters and the sides of thousands of buses across the United Kingdom. Since 2011, he has supported the Little Star Award for Cancer Research UK. "I think that it's wonderful that Cancer Research UK is helping to bring a little bit of magic to the children's lives in this way," he said.
Filmography
Film
Television
Stage
Video games
Music
Other roles
Awards and nominations
See also
List of Harry Potter cast members
References
External links
Rupert Grint at IMDb
Rupert Grint: Overview at MSN Movies site |
Eastern_Shawnee_Tribe_of_Oklahoma | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Shawnee_Tribe_of_Oklahoma | [
349
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Shawnee_Tribe_of_Oklahoma"
] | The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized Shawnee tribes. They are located in Oklahoma and Missouri.
The tribe holds an annual powwow every September at their powwow grounds. This is not a closed powwow and visitors from other tribes or peoples are welcome as long as they respect our culture.
Government
The headquarters of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe are Wyandotte, Oklahoma, and their tribal jurisdictional area is in Ottawa County, Oklahoma. There are 3,787 enrolled tribal members, and 904 of them living within the state of Oklahoma. Some live nearby in Missouri, where the tribe has a Cultural Preservation Center at Seneca, Missouri, and a community in western Missouri.
Glenna J. Wallace is the elected Chief, since 2006, and is currently serving a four-year term. She is the tribe's first female Chief. The Chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe is the Executive Branch of the tribal government.
The Business Committee is the Legislative Branch and consists of six members elected at large. The Second Chief, Treasurer, Secretary, First Council, Second Council, and Third Council comprise the Business Committee. The Eastern Shawnee Tribe issues its own tribal vehicle tags.
Membership in the tribe is based on documented lineal descent to persons listed on the Dawes Rolls. The tribe has no minimum blood quantum requirements.
Economic Development
The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma owns and operates the Indigo Sky Casino & Resort and Outpost Casino. They operate own a housing authority. They own 51% of the shares in the People's Bank of Seneca, Missouri; The Eastern Shawnee Tribe owns a Print Shop; Four Feathers Recycling, an Early Childhood Learning Center, and a splash pad. Their annual economic impact is estimated by the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commissions to be $164,000,000.
History
The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma are primarily descendants of Shawnees who lived in Ohio until the 1830s. The Shawnees, an Eastern Woodland tribe who were once nomadic, occupied territory throughout what became the eastern United States, living in present-day Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Western Maryland, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. In the late 18th century, European-American encroachment crowded Shawnee lands in the east, and one band migrated to Missouri, eventually becoming the Absentee Shawnee tribe.
Three reservations were granted to the Shawnees in Ohio by the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs: Wapakoneta, Lewistown, and Hog Creek. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830 passed, the Lewiston band, who lived with a group of Senecas, relocated to Indian Territory in July 1831, and were known as the "Mixed Band" of Senecas and Shawnees. Another band, who would become the federally recognized Shawnee Tribe, relocated to Kansas in August 1831.
The U.S. federal government carved out a 60,000-acre (240 km2) reservation for the "Mixed Band" or United Nation of Senecas and Shawnees from Cherokee lands in Indian Territory in 1832. A treaty was negotiated between the US and the Seneca and Shawnee in 1867, which made portions of their land available to other tribes, and restored the independence of the Seneca and Shawnee tribes. They were from different language families, Iroquoian and Algonquian, respectively. The Shawnees of the "Mixed Band" became the Eastern Shawnee Tribe. The Eastern Shawnee organized as a federally recognized tribe under the 1936 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act.
In May 2019, the Eastern Shawnee ceremonial grounds flooded with three feet of water. Thirty families were evacuated, and "local roads stayed impassable for weeks." Tribal leaders have joined the city of Miami in opposition to increased water levels at Pensacola Dam and Grand Lake. They argue that when the water backs up downstream on the Neosho River, it can increase problems with flooding in their communities.
Flag
The tribe's flag displays our tribal seal on a white (sometimes red) field. The seal displays the Me-she-Pe-She, the panther, and the Wa-be-the, the swan. The story of the beginning of our tribe was recorded by George Blue Jacket in 1829 as a record of the tale passed down through generations of Shawnee people.
The story goes that the Grandmother of Shawnee people came across the great salt water (Atlantic Ocean, presumably) holding the tail of a panther and our Grandfather was carried on the back of a swan, thus beginning the Shawnee People. The Panther also represents courage, strength, and prowess in battle. The Swan symbolizes tranquility, peace and beauty. The symbolism of these two animals contrasts just as distinctly as the black and white colors contrast. The two feathers on the spear symbolize our dual citizenship in the United States and Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The spear itself represents that we will fight to our death to defend this universe that we hold as sacred.
All of this sits inside of a circle, representing the univers; continuous, never-ending, with no beginning nor no ending, only one world, one universe, one tribe united. The round shape encircles and holds all of the other objects, just as the tribe holds all of its members as one. The shape with four eagle feathers at the bottom. The four feathers hold significance to our tribe and many others as a symbol of the four elements, four winds and four directions. Eagle feathers were used for our flag due to the fact that the Eagle is the most revered of all species and symbolizes courage, strength and spirit. The Eagle is said to be the closest to the Creator and rumored to have even seen the Creator's face.
Notable Eastern Shawnee people
J. R. Conrad (1974–), National Football League player
Moscelyne Larkin (1925–2012), ballerina
Glenna J. Wallace, Chief (2006-present)
Taylor M. Wright (1993–), U.S. Army Officer
Thomas Captain, Chief (1850 - 1920)
Thomas A Captain, Chief (1884 - 1980)
See also
Shawnee language
Stomp dance
Notes
External links
Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, official website
Constitution of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma Archived 2009-08-27 at the Wayback Machine
Almost Home, Eastern Shawnee makes an Ohio Connection Native American Times 9 September 2012
[1] |
Wyandotte,_Oklahoma | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyandotte,_Oklahoma | [
349
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyandotte,_Oklahoma"
] | Wyandotte is a town in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 333 at the 2010 census, a decline of 8.26 percent from the figure of 363 recorded in 2000. The town is the tribal headquarters of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, for which the town was named.
History
The Wyandotte tribe was removed to this area in 1867. The Society of Friends (Quakers) established a mission here in 1869, and the Wyandotte Tribal Council donated land for the Quakers to establish a boarding school for Seneca, Shawnee and Wyandotte children. Construction of the school began in 1871 and classes began in 1872. Originally named Prairie City, the post office was renamed to the city's current name in 1894.
In the mid 1920s, Wyandotte was nationally known for having an all-female city government due to changes in the electorate of the town after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The mayor of the town during this period, Mamie Foster, served for over five years as Oklahoma's first female mayor.
In the late 1930s, the Federal Government built Pensacola Dam, which created Grand Lake o' the Cherokees. Although the lake took away part of Wyandotte's land, it added business in the form of residential development and tourist industry. This caused a resumption of population growth.
In 1966, town officials discovered that Wyandotte had never filed incorporation papers. They petitioned the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners for an election, which was approved. A majority voted for incorporation, which became effective in April 1966.
Geography
Wyandotte is located 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Miami.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.5 square miles (1.3 km2), all land.
Demographics
Wyandotte is part of the Joplin, Missouri metropolitan area.
As of the census of 2000, there were 363 people, 128 households, and 93 families residing in the town. The population density was 739.6 inhabitants per square mile (285.6/km2). There were 148 housing units at an average density of 301.5 per square mile (116.4/km2). The racial makeup of the town was 63.36% White, 29.75% Native American, 0.28% Asian, 1.10% from other races, and 5.51% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.20% of the population.
There were 128 households, out of which 39.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.1% were married couples living together, 12.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.3% were non-families. 25.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 17.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.84 and the average family size was 3.39.
In the town, the population was spread out, with 35.5% under the age of 18, 5.2% from 18 to 24, 24.8% from 25 to 44, 20.7% from 45 to 64, and 13.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.2 males.
The median income for a household in the town was $23,281, and the median income for a family was $27,321. Males had a median income of $25,938 versus $15,625 for females. The per capita income for the town was $10,315. About 17.2% of families and 22.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 35.9% of those under age 18 and 8.2% of those age 65 or over.
Education
Wyandotte Public Schools serves the town and surrounding areas with elementary, middle, and high school education.
Oklahoma D-Day
Every year in June, Wyandotte hosts one of the largest scenario paintball games in the world; up to 5,000 players attend annually. It is played at the D-Day Adventure Park, a privately owned 740 acres (3.0 km2) of thickly wooded terrain.
Places of Interest
Grand Lake `O Cherokees is formed by Pensacola Dam between the towns of Langley and Disney Oklahoma from three rivers, the Neosho and Spring Rivers from the north, and the Elk River from the east. It covers 59,000 acres, and has 1,300 miles of shoreline. It is a popular spot for bass fishing, boating, and water sports.
Twin Bridges State Park sits west of Wyandotte at the junction of US-60/OK-137, and between the Neosho and Spring Rivers. The park offers boat access to Grand Lake, fishing, camping, and other immensities.
Transportation
Highways
Wyandotte is served by US-60.
Railroads
The Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) Cherokee Subdivision runs through Wyandotte. The BNSF Cherokee Subdivision runs between Springfield Missouri to the east, and Tulsa Oklahoma to the west.
== References == |
Snell_&_Wilmer | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell_&_Wilmer | [
350
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell_&_Wilmer"
] | Snell & Wilmer is an American law firm based in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 1938, Snell & Wilmer is a full-service business law firm with more than 500 attorneys practicing in 16 locations throughout the United States and in Mexico, including Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, California; Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; Denver, Colorado; Washington, D.C.; Boise, Idaho; Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon; Dallas, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle, Washington; and Los Cabos, Mexico. The firm represents clients ranging from large, publicly traded corporations to small businesses, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Barbara J. Dawson is the chair.
History
Snell & Wilmer traces its origins to 1938, when Mark Wilmer joined Frank L. Snell, Jr., Riney Salmon, and Charles Strouss, who had practiced together since 1934.
After World War II, Joseph T. Melczer, Jr. and James Walsh joined the firm that became known as Snell, Wilmer, Walsh and Melczer. Shortly after that Edwin Beauchamp arrived, and the firm’s name became Snell, Wilmer, Walsh, Melczer & Beauchamp. Recognizing that the firm’s letterhead was becoming unwieldy, Mr. Walsh suggested shortening the firm name to Snell & Wilmer.
In the 1940s, Mr. Melczer became dean of Arizona’s tax and estate planning bar. When famous individuals (like John Wayne or Barry Goldwater) were seen in the firm’s reception area, people generally assumed that the celebrities had come to see Mr. Melczer. According to the lore of the firm, the U.S. Senate once reconvened to fix an error in a recently enacted tax code that was found by Mr. Melczer.
During the 1950s, Snell & Wilmer practiced in the Heard Building. This was a period of moderate growth in attorney numbers and substantial growth in the firm’s prominence and contribution to the Bar and the community. As Mr. Wilmer established his position as one of Arizona’s leading trial lawyers, Mr. Snell emerged as a visionary who helped Phoenix and Arizona capitalize on post-World War II opportunities. Mr. Snell, who was instrumental in the merger of the state’s two largest utilities into Arizona Public Service Company, also helped find a use for an abandoned World War II flight training facility in Glendale. We now know the institution built there as the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Mr. Snell was instrumental in cleaning up the city’s crooked political system. He and a small group of community leaders demanded and received the resignation of elected officials whose abuses threatened the city’s growth.
During the 1960s, the firm moved from the Heard Building to the Security Building, which could accommodate the growing number of lawyers required to staff the firm’s emerging practice areas, including complex business transactions, securities, and utility regulation. The hiring and training of larger groups of young lawyers became a firm priority and a system of committees began to address the challenges that confronted the firm. The firm’s summer clerkship program, the first in Arizona, was one of the “innovations” adopted during this decade.
The year 1972 found Snell & Wilmer at an important juncture in its development. Mr. Snell, who had managed the firm, decided to reduce his administrative role. Snell & Wilmer’s first Executive Committee was elected consisting of Mr. Wilmer, Mr. Melczer, Donald O. Corbitt, Richard B. Snell, and John J. Bouma. The partners agreed to invest in the future and commit partner earnings to building the infrastructure required to become a major law firm. The firm diversified its practice groups, developed non-attorney administrative support, and placed more emphasis on recruiting, continuing legal education, and community service.
In 1973, the firm moved from the Security Building to the newly constructed Valley Bank Center (now the Chase Building). As the decade closed, the then nascent national legal press reported storm clouds on the economic horizon for lawyers.
The 1980s marked a period of retrenchment and “shake out” for law firms throughout the country. Rapid growth and economic excesses led to the demise and restructuring of many established firms. As the economics of the marketplace began to penetrate what The American Lawyer termed “the law business,” Snell & Wilmer’s conservative fiscal management and lean operations served it well. The firm’s market share increased in a period of market contraction. Unencumbered by debt or unwieldy compensation systems, Snell & Wilmer was successful in bringing on exceptionally capable attorneys from other prominent firms and began the firm’s geographic expansion. In 1983, John J. Bouma became Chairman, succeeding Mr. Wilmer and Mr. Melczer.
In 1988, the Tucson office was established. Within months, negotiations with Tucson’s largest and oldest law firm, Bilby & Shoenhair, led to a combination of the two firms, completed and celebrated at the firm’s spring retreat in May 1989.
By the 1990s, Snell & Wilmer’s status in the State of Arizona could be called “legendary.” The (Phoenix) Business Journal ran an article describing the firm as one of the “big daddies of Phoenix law firms.” Arizona Business magazine rated Snell & Wilmer No. 1 out of the top 10 law firms in Arizona, dishing out high marks for “corporate and securities work,” “real estate,” “employee benefits,” and other categories. However, its growth had just begun.
During the 1990s, the firm moved its Phoenix offices to the Arizona Center and opened offices in Orange County, California and Salt Lake City, Utah. Orange County began as an adjunct to Snell & Wilmer’s product liability practice, and quickly grew into one of Orange County’s largest law firms. The Salt Lake City office rapidly grew from a small cadre of transactional lawyers into a full-service practice that serves Utah’s rapidly growing business community.
The 2000s began with the establishment of new offices in Denver and Las Vegas, each continuing the firm’s tradition of providing quality legal counsel to businesses throughout the region. The firm’s first international office, located in Los Cabos, Mexico, opened in October 2008, and our office in downtown Los Angeles opened in February of 2009. The firm expanded its Nevada practice by opening a Reno location in early 2010. In March 2015, Matthew P. Feeney, a partner with more than three decades of service at the firm, became Firm Chair, succeeding John Bouma.
During 2017 and 2018, the firm established working locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Boise, Idaho; and Washington, D.C. to better serve our existing clients and expand our national presence in each area.
Despite the challenges faced in 2020, Snell & Wilmer persevered and continued to expand its geographic reach from coast to coast. In early 2020, the Washington D.C. location began functioning as a full-service office. Additionally, we grew our presence in the Pacific Northwest by opening a working location in Seattle, Washington and a full-service office in Portland, Oregon. Our Portland and Seattle locations developed as a result of our combination with commercial finance firm, Assayag Mauss. We also welcomed Assayag Mauss attorneys to our Orange County office. Also in 2020, Snell & Wilmer expanded into San Diego, California, propelled by an influx of client needs in the area. Since opening, the office continues to strengthen its corporate, employment, intellectual property, private client services, and tax services to key sectors in the region. Finally, the firm’s rapid expansion culminated in the opening of our first office in Texas. Located in Dallas, our attorneys are focused on intellectual property, private client services, commercial finance, labor and employment, corporate and securities, and litigation.
In April 2023, Barbara J. Dawson, a partner with more than three decades of service at the firm, became Firm Chair, succeeding Matthew P. Feeney.
Over the years, Snell & Wilmer has emerged as a nationally recognized firm, with the capability and resources to serve many thousands of diverse clients domestically and abroad. The firm remains poised for the 21st century with a unique combination of gifted attorneys, an exceptional staff, and a firmwide commitment to quality, client satisfaction, and service.
Legal Practice
Regional, national, and international. Clients include major national and multinational corporations, educational and research institutions, municipalities and government agencies, non-profits, charitable organizations, industry executives, and high-net-worth individuals.
Practice Areas
Snell & Wilmer offers a wide array of services to help clients navigate complex legal landscapes. Clients have easy access to attorney skills and knowledge specific to a particular business and industry – a full serviced law firm with the following practice areas:
Bankruptcy and Reorganization
Commercial Litigation and Investigations
Corporate and Securities
Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation
Environmental and Natural Resources
Finance
Government Affairs and Regulatory Compliance
Intellectual Property
International
Labor, Employment, OSHA and Immigration
Product Liability
Real Estate and Construction
Tax – Federal, International, State and Local
Tax – Private Client Services
Industries
Snell & Wilmer’s reach spans a wide range of industries, including:
Aerospace and Defense (A&D)
Automotive
Aviation
Cannabis
Construction
Education
Emerging Business
Emerging Growth and Venture Capital
Energy and Utilities
Financial Services
Gaming
Healthcare
Hospitality
Life Sciences, Medical Technology, Devices and Pharmaceuticals
Manufacturing
Mexico
Military
Native American Affairs
Sports and Entertainment
Technology
Telecommunications
Transportation and Logistics
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) |
1954_Masters_Tournament | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Masters_Tournament | [
350
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Masters_Tournament"
] | The 1954 Masters Tournament was the 18th Masters Tournament, held April 8–12 at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. Sam Snead defeated defending champion Ben Hogan by one stroke in an 18-hole Monday playoff to win his third Masters tournament. It was Snead's seventh and final major victory.
Both Snead and Hogan were age 41, and they had won the previous three Masters; Snead in 1952 and Hogan in 1951 and 1953. Hogan was also the reigning champion of the U.S. Open and British Open; he did not win another major, but often contended until his final appearances in 1967 at the Masters and U.S. Open.
Snead's 289 (+1), along with Jack Burke Jr. in 1956 and Zach Johnson in 2007, remains the highest winning total in Masters history. Amateur Billy Joe Patton, 31, led after the first and second rounds and during the fourth, but a seven at the 13th hole and a six at the 15th ended his title hopes, and he finished one stroke back.
Snead remained the oldest winner of the Masters for nearly a quarter century, until Gary Player won his third green jacket at age 42 in 1978.
Field
1. Masters champions
Jimmy Demaret (10), Claude Harmon (12), Ben Hogan (2,4,6,9,10), Byron Nelson (2,6), Gene Sarazen (2,4,6), Horton Smith, Sam Snead (4,6,7,9,10), Craig Wood (2)
Ralph Guldahl (2), Herman Keiser and Henry Picard (6) did not play.
2. U.S. Open champions
Julius Boros (9,10), Lawson Little (3,5), Lloyd Mangrum (7,9,10), Fred McLeod, Cary Middlecoff (7), Sam Parks Jr., Lew Worsham
3. U.S. Amateur champions
Dick Chapman (5,8,a), Charles Coe (8,9,a), Gene Littler (8,11), Billy Maxwell, Skee Riegel, Jess Sweetser (5,a)
4. British Open champions
Jock Hutchison (6), Denny Shute (6)
5. British Amateur champions
Frank Stranahan (9,10,a), Robert Sweeny Jr. (a), Harvie Ward (8,9,a)
6. PGA champions
Walter Burkemo (7,12), Jim Ferrier (9), Vic Ghezzi, Chandler Harper (9), Johnny Revolta, Jim Turnesa (7,10)
7. Members of the U.S. 1953 Ryder Cup team
Jack Burke Jr. (9,10), Dave Douglas (12), Fred Haas (10), Ted Kroll (9,10), Ed Oliver (9)
8. Members of the U.S. 1953 Walker Cup team
Arnold Blum (a), William C. Campbell (a), Don Cherry (a), Jimmy Jackson (a), Jim McHale Jr. (a), Billy Joe Patton (a), Ken Venturi (a)
Sam Urzetta (3,a) and Jack Westland (3,a) did not play. Blum, McHale and Patton were reserves for the team.
9. Top 24 players and ties from the 1953 Masters Tournament
Jerry Barber, Al Besselink, Tommy Bolt, Doug Ford (10), Leland Gibson, Chick Harbert, Fred Hawkins, Dick Mayer, Al Mengert (10), Dick Metz (10), Johnny Palmer, Earl Stewart
Bob Hamilton (6) did not play.
10. Top 24 players and ties from the 1953 U.S. Open
Pete Cooper, Gardner Dickinson, Clarence Doser, George Fazio, Marty Furgol, Dutch Harrison, Jay Hebert, Bill Nary (12), Bill Ogden, Bob Rosburg, Frank Souchak (a)
11. 1953 U.S. Amateur quarter-finalists
Don Albert (a), Bruce Cudd (a), Bobby Kuntz (a), Dale Morey (a), Ray Palmer (a), Angelo Santilli (a)
Ted Richards Jr. did not play.
12. 1953 PGA Championship quarter-finalists
Jimmy Clark, Jack Isaacs, Felice Torza
Henry Ransom did not play.
13. One amateur, not already qualified, selected by a ballot of ex-U.S. Amateur champions
Johnny Dawson (a) was selected but did not play.
14. One professional, not already qualified, selected by a ballot of ex-U.S. Open champions
Skip Alexander
15. Two players, not already qualified, with the best scoring average in the winter part of the 1954 PGA Tour
Bud Holscher, Bob Toski
16. Foreign invitations
Peter Thomson
Round summaries
First round
Thursday, April 8, 1954
Second round
Friday, April 9, 1954
Third round
Saturday, April 10, 1954
Final round
Sunday, April 11, 1954
Final leaderboard
Sources:
Scorecard
Cumulative tournament scores, relative to par
Playoff
Monday, April 12, 1954
Scorecard
Source:
References
External links
Masters.com – past winners and results
GolfCompendium.com: 1954 Masters
Augusta.com – 1954 Masters leaderboard and scorecards |
Billy_Joe_Patton | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Joe_Patton | [
350
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Joe_Patton"
] | William Joseph Patton (April 19, 1922 – January 1, 2011) was an American golfer best known for almost winning the 1954 Masters Tournament.
Patton was born in Morganton, North Carolina. He graduated from Wake Forest University in 1943.
In the 1954 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club, Patton came within one stroke of being in a three-man playoff with Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. His final round 71 included a hole-in-one on the par-3 6th hole and a double bogey on the par-5 13th hole, when he tried to reach the green in two and put his ball into Rae's Creek.
Patton won several amateur tournaments including the North and South Amateur three times and the Southern Amateur twice. He also won the Carolinas Open twice.
Patton played on five Walker Cup teams; 1955, 1957, 1959, 1963, and 1965 and was captain of the 1969 team. He played on the Eisenhower Trophy team in 1958 and 1962.
Patton was awarded the Bob Jones Award by the United States Golf Association in 1982.
Patton was inducted into several Halls of Fame:
North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1967
Wake Forest University's Sports Hall of Fame in 1974
Southern Golf Association Hall of Fame in 1975
Carolinas Golf Reporters Association Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame in 1981
Burke County Sports Hall of Fame in 2007
Tournament wins
1947 Carolinas Amateur
1951 Carolinas Open
1952 Carolinas Open (tied with Bobby Locke)
1954 North and South Amateur
1958 Carolinas Amateur
1961 Southern Amateur, Azalea Invitational, Carolinas Amateur
1962 North and South Amateur
1963 North and South Amateur
1964 North Carolina Amateur
1965 Southern Amateur
1979 Carolinas Senior Amateur
1981 Carolinas Senior Amateur
Results in major championships
LA = low amateur
CUT = missed the half-way cut
"T" indicates a tie for a place
R256, R128, R64, R32, R16, QF, SF = Round in which player lost in match play
Sources: Masters, U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, British Amateur: 1955, 1959
U.S. national team appearances
Walker Cup: 1955 (winners), 1957 (winners), 1959 (winners), 1963 (winners), 1965 (tied, cup retained), 1969 (non-playing captain, winners)
Eisenhower Trophy: 1958, 1962 (winners)
Americas Cup: 1954 (winners), 1956 (winners), 1958 (winners), 1963 (winners)
References
External links
Seventy Years of Great Golf with Billy Joe
Let's Smile Again - Sports Illustrated, August 23, 1954 |
Moon_landing | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing | [
351,
362
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing"
] | A Moon landing or lunar landing is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, including both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959.
In 1969 Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon. There were six crewed landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings. All crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the Apollo program, with the last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. After Luna 24 in 1976 there were no soft landings on the Moon until Chang'e 3 in 2013. All soft landings took place on the near side of the Moon until January 2019, when Chang'e 4 made the first landing on the far side of the Moon.
Uncrewed landings
Government landings
Six government space agencies, Interkosmos, NASA, CNSA, ISRO, JAXA and ESA, have reached the Moon with uncrewed missions. Three private/commercial missions, Beresheet (hard landing), Hakuto-R (hard landing), and Odysseus (soft landing) have also reached the lunar surface (see #Commercial landings). The Soviet Union (Interkosmos), the United States (NASA), China (CNSA), India (ISRO), and Japan (JAXA) are the only five nations to have successfully achieved soft landings.
The Soviet Union performed the first hard Moon landing – "hard" meaning the spacecraft intentionally crashes into the Moon at high speeds – with the Luna 2 spacecraft in 1959, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4.
Following their initial hard landings on the Moon, sixteen Soviet, U.S., Chinese and Indian spacecraft have used braking rockets (retrorockets) to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on the lunar surface. In 1966 the Soviet Union accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions. The U.S. followed with five Surveyor soft landings. China's ongoing "Chang'e" program has landed 4 times since 2013, achieving robotic soil sample return and the first landing on the far side of the Moon.
On 23 August 2023, ISRO successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 module in the lunar south pole region, making India the fourth nation to successfully complete a soft landing on the Moon. Chandrayaan-3 saw a successful soft landing of its Vikram lander and Pragyan rover at 6.04 pm IST (1234 GMT), marking the first uncrewed soft landing in the little-explored region.
On 19 January 2024, JAXA successfully landed its SLIM lander, making Japan the fifth nation to successfully complete a soft landing.
Commercial landings
Two organizations have attempted but failed to achieve soft landings: Israeli private space agency SpaceIL with their Beresheet spacecraft (2019), and Japanese company ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 1 (2023).
On 22 February 2024, Intuitive Machine's Odysseus successfully landed on the Moon after taking off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 liftoff on 15 February 2024 in a mission between NASA, SpaceX, and Intuitive Machines, marking the United States' first soft unmanned Moon landing in over 50 years. This event marked the first successful landing of a privately owned spacecraft on the Moon.
Crewed landings
A total of twelve astronauts have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions. The missions spanned a 41-month period starting 20 July 1969, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, and ending on 14 December 1972 with Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17. Cernan was the last man to step off the lunar surface.
All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained on board the command module.
Scientific background
To get to the Moon, a spacecraft must first leave Earth's gravity well; currently, the only practical means is a rocket. Unlike airborne vehicles such as balloons and jets, a rocket can continue accelerating in the vacuum outside the atmosphere.
Upon approach of the target moon, a spacecraft will be drawn ever closer to its surface at increasing speeds due to gravity. In order to land intact it must decelerate to less than about 160 kilometres per hour (100 mph) and be ruggedized to withstand a "hard landing" impact, or it must decelerate to negligible speed at contact for a "soft landing" (the only option for humans). The first three attempts by the U.S. to perform a successful hard Moon landing with a ruggedized seismometer package in 1962 all failed. The Soviets first achieved the milestone of a hard lunar landing with a ruggedized camera in 1966, followed only months later by the first uncrewed soft lunar landing by the U.S.
The speed of a crash landing on its surface is typically between 70 and 100% of the escape velocity of the target moon, and thus this is the total velocity which must be shed from the target moon's gravitational attraction for a soft landing to occur. For Earth's Moon, the escape velocity is 2.38 kilometres per second (1.48 mi/s). The change in velocity (referred to as a delta-v) is usually provided by a landing rocket, which must be carried into space by the original launch vehicle as part of the overall spacecraft. An exception is the soft moon landing on Titan carried out by the Huygens probe in 2005. As the moon with the thickest atmosphere, landings on Titan may be accomplished by using atmospheric entry techniques that are generally lighter in weight than a rocket with equivalent capability.
The Soviets succeeded in making the first crash landing on the Moon in 1959. Crash landings may occur because of malfunctions in a spacecraft, or they can be deliberately arranged for vehicles which do not have an onboard landing rocket. There have been many such Moon crashes, often with their flight path controlled to impact at precise locations on the lunar surface. For example, during the Apollo program the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V rocket as well as the spent ascent stage of the Lunar Module were deliberately crashed on the Moon several times to provide impacts registering as a moonquake on seismometers that had been left on the lunar surface. Such crashes were instrumental in mapping the internal structure of the Moon.
To return to Earth, the escape velocity of the Moon must be overcome for the spacecraft to escape the gravity well of the Moon. Rockets must be used to leave the Moon and return to space. Upon reaching Earth, atmospheric entry techniques are used to absorb the kinetic energy of a returning spacecraft and reduce its speed for safe landing. These functions greatly complicate a moon landing mission and lead to many additional operational considerations. Any moon departure rocket must first be carried to the Moon's surface by a moon landing rocket, increasing the latter's required size. The Moon departure rocket, larger moon landing rocket and any Earth atmosphere entry equipment such as heat shields and parachutes must in turn be lifted by the original launch vehicle, greatly increasing its size by a significant and almost prohibitive degree.
Political background
The political context of the 1960s helps to parse both the United States and Soviet Union's efforts to land spacecraft, and eventually humans, on the Moon. World War II had introduced many new and deadly innovations including blitzkrieg-style surprise attacks used in the invasion of Poland and Finland, as well as in the attack on Pearl Harbor; the V-2 rocket, a ballistic missile which killed thousands in attacks on London and Antwerp; and the atom bomb, which killed hundreds of thousands in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the 1950s, tensions mounted between the two ideologically opposed superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union that had emerged as victors in the conflict, particularly after the development by both countries of the hydrogen bomb.
On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 as the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and so initiated the Space Race. This unexpected event was a source of pride to the Soviets and shock to the U.S., who could now potentially be surprise attacked by nuclear-tipped Soviet rockets in under 30 minutes. The craft was also barely visible to the naked eye as the steady beeping of the radio beacon aboard Sputnik 1 as it passed overhead every 96 minutes, which was widely viewed on both sides as effective propaganda to Third World countries demonstrating the technological superiority of the Soviet political system compared to that of the U.S. This perception was reinforced by a string of subsequent rapid-fire Soviet space achievements. In 1959, the R-7 rocket was used to launch the first escape from Earth's gravity into a solar orbit, the first crash impact onto the surface of the Moon, and the first photography of the never-before-seen far side of the Moon. These were the Luna 1, Luna 2, and Luna 3 spacecraft.
The U.S. response to these Soviet achievements was to greatly accelerate previously existing military space and missile projects and to create a civilian space agency, NASA. Military efforts were initiated to develop and produce mass quantities of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that would bridge the so-called missile gap and enable a policy of deterrence to nuclear war with the Soviets known as mutual assured destruction or MAD. These newly developed missiles were made available to civilians of NASA for various projects (which would have the added benefit of demonstrating the payload, guidance accuracy and reliabilities of U.S. ICBMs to the Soviets).
Early Soviet uncrewed lunar missions (1958–1965)
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historical records were released to allow the true accounting of Soviet lunar efforts. Unlike the U.S. tradition of assigning a particular mission name in advance of a launch, the Soviets assigned a public "Luna" mission number only if a launch resulted in a spacecraft going beyond Earth orbit. The policy had the effect of hiding Soviet Moon mission failures from public view. If the attempt failed in Earth orbit before departing for the Moon, it was frequently (but not always) given a "Sputnik" or "Cosmos" Earth-orbit mission number to hide its purpose. Launch explosions were not acknowledged at all.
Early U.S. uncrewed lunar missions (1958–1965)
The U.S. was not able to reach the Moon with the Pioneer and Ranger programs, with fifteen consecutive U.S. uncrewed lunar missions from 1958 to 1964 failing their primary photographic missions. However, Rangers 4 and 6 successfully repeated the Soviet lunar impacts as part of their secondary missions.
Three U.S. missions in 1962 attempted to hard land small seismometer packages released by the main Ranger spacecraft. These surface packages were to use retrorockets to survive landing, unlike the parent vehicle, which was designed to deliberately crash onto the surface. The final three Ranger probes performed successful high altitude lunar reconnaissance photography missions during intentional crash impacts between 2.62 and 2.68 kilometres per second (9,400 and 9,600 km/h).
Pioneer missions
Three different designs of Pioneer lunar probes were flown on three different modified ICBMs. Those flown on the Thor booster modified with an Able upper stage carried an infrared image scanning television system with a resolution of 1 milliradian to study the Moon's surface, an ionization chamber to measure radiation in space, a diaphragm/microphone assembly to detect micrometeorites, a magnetometer, and temperature-variable resistors to monitor spacecraft internal thermal conditions. The first, a mission managed by the United States Air Force, exploded during launch; all subsequent Pioneer lunar flights had NASA as the lead management organization. The next two returned to Earth and burned up upon reentry into the atmosphere after achieved maximum altitudes of around 114,000 kilometres (71,000 mi) and 1,530 kilometres (950 mi) respectively, far short of the roughly 400,000 kilometres (250,000 mi) required to reach the vicinity of the Moon.
NASA then collaborated with the United States Army's Ballistic Missile Agency to fly two extremely small cone-shaped probes on the Juno ICBM, carrying only photocells which would be triggered by the light of the Moon and a lunar radiation environment experiment using a Geiger-Müller tube detector. The first of these reached an altitude of only around 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi), gathering data that established the presence of the Van Allen radiation belts before reentering Earth's atmosphere. The second passed by the Moon at a distance of more than 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), twice as far as planned and too far away to trigger either of the on-board scientific instruments, yet still becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to reach a solar orbit.
The final Pioneer lunar probe design consisted of four "paddlewheel" solar panels extending from a one-meter diameter spherical spin-stabilized spacecraft body equipped to take images of the lunar surface with a television-like system, estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, study radiation, measure magnetic fields, detect low frequency electromagnetic waves in space and use a sophisticated integrated propulsion system for maneuvering and orbit insertion as well. None of the four spacecraft built in this series of probes survived launch on its Atlas ICBM outfitted with an Able upper stage.
Following the unsuccessful Atlas-Able Pioneer probes, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory embarked upon an uncrewed spacecraft development program whose modular design could be used to support both lunar and interplanetary exploration missions. The interplanetary versions were known as Mariners; lunar versions were Rangers. JPL envisioned three versions of the Ranger lunar probes: Block I prototypes, which would carry various radiation detectors in test flights to a very high Earth orbit that came nowhere near the Moon; Block II, which would try to accomplish the first Moon landing by hard landing a seismometer package; and Block III, which would crash onto the lunar surface without any braking rockets while taking very high resolution wide-area photographs of the Moon during their descent.
Ranger missions
The Ranger 1 and 2 Block I missions were virtually identical. Spacecraft experiments included a Lyman-alpha telescope, a rubidium-vapor magnetometer, electrostatic analyzers, medium-energy-range particle detectors, two triple coincidence telescopes, a cosmic-ray integrating ionization chamber, cosmic dust detectors, and scintillation counters. The goal was to place these Block I spacecraft in a very high Earth orbit with an apogee of 110,000 kilometres (68,000 mi) and a perigee of 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi).
From that vantage point, scientists could make direct measurements of the magnetosphere over a period of many months while engineers perfected new methods to routinely track and communicate with spacecraft over such large distances. Such practice was deemed vital to be assured of capturing high-bandwidth television transmissions from the Moon during a one-shot fifteen-minute time window in subsequent Block II and Block III lunar descents. Both Block I missions suffered failures of the new Agena upper stage and never left low Earth parking orbit after launch; both burned up upon reentry after only a few days.
The first attempts to perform a Moon landing took place in 1962 during the Rangers 3, 4 and 5 missions flown by the United States. All three Block II missions basic vehicles were 3.1 m high and consisted of a lunar capsule covered with a balsa wood impact-limiter, 650 mm in diameter, a mono-propellant mid-course motor, a retrorocket with a thrust of 5,050 pounds-force (22.5 kN), and a gold- and chrome-plated hexagonal base 1.5 m in diameter. This lander (code-named Tonto) was designed to provide impact cushioning using an exterior blanket of crushable balsa wood and an interior filled with incompressible liquid freon. A 42-kilogram (93 lb) 30-centimetre-diameter (0.98 ft) metal payload sphere floated and was free to rotate in a liquid freon reservoir contained in the landing sphere.
This payload sphere contained six silver-cadmium batteries to power a fifty-milliwatt radio transmitter, a temperature sensitive voltage controlled oscillator to measure lunar surface temperatures, and a seismometer designed with sensitivity high enough to detect the impact of a 2.3 kg (5 lb) meteorite on the opposite side of the Moon. Weight was distributed in the payload sphere so it would rotate in its liquid blanket to place the seismometer into an upright and operational position no matter what the final resting orientation of the external landing sphere. After landing, plugs were to be opened allowing the freon to evaporate and the payload sphere to settle into upright contact with the landing sphere. The batteries were sized to allow up to three months of operation for the payload sphere. Various mission constraints limited the landing site to Oceanus Procellarum on the lunar equator, which the lander ideally would reach 66 hours after launch.
No cameras were carried by the Ranger landers, and no pictures were to be captured from the lunar surface during the mission. Instead, the 3.1 metres (10 ft) Ranger Block II mother ship carried a 200-scan-line television camera to capture images during the free-fall descent to the lunar surface. The camera was designed to transmit a picture every 10 seconds. Seconds before impact, at 5 and 0.6 kilometres (3.11 and 0.37 mi) above the lunar surface, the Ranger mother ships took pictures (which may be viewed here).
Other instruments gathering data before the mother ship crashed onto the Moon were a gamma ray spectrometer to measure overall lunar chemical composition and a radar altimeter. The radar altimeter was to give a signal ejecting the landing capsule and its solid-fueled braking rocket overboard from the Block II mother ship. The braking rocket was to slow and the landing sphere to a dead stop at 330 metres (1,080 ft) above the surface and separate, allowing the landing sphere to free fall once more and hit the surface.
On Ranger 3, failure of the Atlas guidance system and a software error aboard the Agena upper stage combined to put the spacecraft on a course that would miss the Moon. Attempts to salvage lunar photography during a flyby of the Moon were thwarted by in-flight failure of the onboard flight computer. This was probably because of prior heat sterilization of the spacecraft by keeping it above the boiling point of water for 24 hours on the ground, to protect the Moon from being contaminated by Earth organisms. Ranger 3 later began orbiting the Sun, called heliocentric orbit. Heat sterilization was also blamed for subsequent in-flight failures of the spacecraft computer on Ranger 4 and the power subsystem on Ranger 5. Only Ranger 4 reached the Moon in an uncontrolled crash impact on the far side of the Moon.
Block III probes replaced the Block II landing capsule and its retrorocket with a heavier, more capable television system to support landing site selection for upcoming Apollo crewed Moon landing missions. Six cameras were designed to take thousands of high-altitude photographs in the final twenty-minute period before crashing on the lunar surface. Camera resolution was 1,132 scan lines, far higher than the 525 lines found in a typical U.S. 1964 home television. While Ranger 6 suffered a failure of this camera system and returned no photographs despite an otherwise successful flight, the subsequent Ranger 7 mission to Mare Cognitum was a complete success.
Breaking the six-year string of failures in U.S. attempts to photograph the Moon at close range, the Ranger 7 mission was viewed as a national turning point and instrumental in allowing the key 1965 NASA budget appropriation to pass through the United States Congress intact without a reduction in funds for the Apollo crewed Moon landing program. Subsequent successes with Ranger 8 and Ranger 9 further buoyed U.S. hopes.
Soviet uncrewed soft landings (1966–1976)
The Luna 9 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union, performed the first successful soft Moon landing on 3 February 1966. Airbags protected its 99-kilogram (218 lb) ejectable capsule which survived an impact speed of over 15 metres per second (54 km/h; 34 mph). Luna 13 duplicated this feat with a similar Moon landing on 24 December 1966. Both returned panoramic photographs that were the first views from the lunar surface.
Luna 16 was the first robotic probe to land on the Moon and safely return a sample of lunar soil back to Earth. It represented the first lunar sample return mission by the Soviet Union, and was the third lunar sample return mission overall, following the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions. This mission was later successfully repeated by Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976).
In 1970 and 1973 two Lunokhod ("Moonwalker") robotic lunar rovers were delivered to the Moon, where they successfully operated for 10 and 4 months respectively, covering 10.5 km (6.5 mi) (Lunokhod 1) and 37 km (23 mi) (Lunokhod 2). These rover missions were in operation concurrently with the Zond and Luna series of Moon flyby, orbiter and landing missions.
U.S. uncrewed soft landings (1966–1968)
The U.S. robotic Surveyor program was part of an effort to locate a safe site on the Moon for a human landing and test under lunar conditions the radar and landing systems required to make a true controlled touchdown. Five of Surveyor's seven missions made successful uncrewed Moon landings. Surveyor 3 was visited two years after its Moon landing by the crew of Apollo 12. They removed parts of it for examination back on Earth to determine the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment.
Transition from direct ascent landings to lunar orbit operations
Within four months of each other in early 1966 the Soviet Union and the United States had accomplished successful Moon landings with uncrewed spacecraft. To the general public both countries had demonstrated roughly equal technical capabilities by returning photographic images from the surface of the Moon. These pictures provided a key affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether or not lunar soil would support upcoming crewed landers with their much greater weight.
However, the Luna 9 hard landing of a ruggedized sphere using airbags at a 50-kilometre-per-hour (31 mph) ballistic impact speed had much more in common with the failed 1962 Ranger landing attempts and their planned 160-kilometre-per-hour (99 mph) impacts than with the Surveyor 1 soft landing on three footpads using its radar-controlled, adjustable-thrust retrorocket. While Luna 9 and Surveyor 1 were both major national accomplishments, only Surveyor 1 had reached its landing site employing key technologies that would be needed for a crewed flight. Thus as of mid-1966, the United States had begun to pull ahead of the Soviet Union in the so-called Space Race to land a man on the Moon.
Advances in other areas were necessary before crewed spacecraft could follow uncrewed ones to the surface of the Moon. Of particular importance was developing the expertise to perform flight operations in lunar orbit. Ranger, Surveyor and initial Luna Moon landing attempts all flew directly to the surface without a lunar orbit. Such direct ascents use a minimum amount of fuel for uncrewed spacecraft on a one-way trip.
In contrast, crewed vehicles need additional fuel after a lunar landing to enable a return trip back to Earth for the crew. Leaving this massive amount of required Earth-return fuel in lunar orbit until it is used later in the mission is far more efficient than taking such fuel down to the lunar surface in a Moon landing and then hauling it all back into space yet again, working against lunar gravity both ways. Such considerations lead logically to a lunar orbit rendezvous mission profile for a crewed Moon landing.
Accordingly, beginning in mid-1966 both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. naturally progressed into missions featuring lunar orbit as a prerequisite to a crewed Moon landing. The primary goals of these initial uncrewed orbiters were extensive photographic mapping of the entire lunar surface for the selection of crewed landing sites and, for the Soviets, the checkout of radio communications gear that would be used in future soft landings.
An unexpected major discovery from initial lunar orbiters were vast volumes of dense materials beneath the surface of the Moon's maria. Such mass concentrations ("mascons") can send a crewed mission dangerously off course in the final minutes of a Moon landing when aiming for a relatively small landing zone that is smooth and safe. Mascons were also found over a longer period of time to greatly disturb the orbits of low-altitude satellites around the Moon, making their orbits unstable and forcing an inevitable crash on the lunar surface in the relatively short period of months to a few years.
Controlling the location of impact for spent lunar orbiters can have scientific value. For example, in 1999 the NASA Lunar Prospector orbiter was deliberately targeted to impact a permanently shadowed area of Shoemaker Crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that energy from the impact would vaporize suspected shadowed ice deposits in the crater and liberate a water vapor plume detectable from Earth. No such plume was observed. However, a small vial of ashes from the body of pioneer lunar scientist Eugene Shoemaker was delivered by the Lunar Prospector to the crater named in his honor – the only human remains on the Moon.
Soviet lunar orbit satellites (1966–1974)
Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon on 3 April 1966.
U.S. lunar orbit satellites (1966–1967)
Soviet circumlunar loop flights (1967–1970)
It is possible to aim a spacecraft from Earth so it will loop around the Moon and return to Earth without entering lunar orbit, following the so-called free return trajectory. Such circumlunar loop missions are simpler than lunar orbit missions because rockets for lunar orbit braking and Earth return are not required. However, a crewed circumlunar loop trip poses significant challenges beyond those found in a crewed low-Earth-orbit mission, offering valuable lessons in preparation for a crewed Moon landing. Foremost among these are mastering the demands of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere upon returning from the Moon.
Inhabited Earth-orbiting vehicles such as the Space Shuttle return to Earth from speeds of around 7,500 m/s (27,000 km/h). Due to the effects of gravity, a vehicle returning from the Moon hits Earth's atmosphere at a much higher speed of around 11,000 m/s (40,000 km/h). The g-loading on astronauts during the resulting deceleration can be at the limits of human endurance even during a nominal reentry. Slight variations in the vehicle flight path and reentry angle during a return from the Moon can easily result in fatal levels of deceleration force.
Achieving a crewed circumlunar loop flight prior to a crewed lunar landing became a primary goal of the Soviets with their Zond spacecraft program. The first three Zonds were robotic planetary probes; after that, the Zond name was transferred to a completely separate human spaceflight program. The initial focus of these later Zonds was extensive testing of required high-speed reentry techniques. This focus was not shared by the U.S., who chose instead to bypass the stepping stone of a crewed circumlunar loop mission and never developed a separate spacecraft for this purpose.
Initial crewed spaceflights in the early 1960s placed a single person in low Earth orbit during the Soviet Vostok and U.S. Mercury programs. A two-flight extension of the Vostok program known as Voskhod effectively used Vostok capsules with their ejection seats removed to achieve Soviet space firsts of multiple person crews in 1964 and spacewalks in early 1965. These capabilities were later demonstrated by the U.S. in ten Gemini low Earth orbit missions throughout 1965 and 1966, using a totally new second-generation spacecraft design that had little in common with the earlier Mercury. These Gemini missions went on to prove techniques for orbital rendezvous and docking crucial to a crewed lunar landing mission profile.
After the end of the Gemini program, the Soviet Union began flying their second-generation Zond crewed spacecraft in 1967 with the ultimate goal of looping a cosmonaut around the Moon and returning him or her immediately to Earth. The Zond spacecraft was launched with the simpler and already operational Proton launch rocket, unlike the parallel Soviet human Moon landing effort also underway at the time based on third-generation Soyuz spacecraft requiring development of the advanced N-1 booster. The Soviets thus believed they could achieve a crewed Zond circumlunar flight years before a U.S. human lunar landing and so score a propaganda victory. However, significant development problems delayed the Zond program and the success of the U.S. Apollo lunar landing program led to the eventual termination of the Zond effort.
Like Zond, Apollo flights were generally launched on a free return trajectory that would return them to Earth via a circumlunar loop if a service module malfunction failed to place them in lunar orbit. This option was implemented after an explosion aboard the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, which is the only crewed circumlunar loop mission flown to date.
Zond 5 was the first spacecraft to carry life from Earth to the vicinity of the Moon and return, initiating the final lap of the Space Race with its payload of tortoises, insects, plants, and bacteria. Despite the failure suffered in its final moments, the Zond 6 mission was reported by Soviet media as being a success as well. Although hailed worldwide as remarkable achievements, both these Zond missions flew off-nominal reentry trajectories resulting in deceleration forces that would have been fatal to humans.
As a result, the Soviets secretly planned to continue uncrewed Zond tests until their reliability to support human flight had been demonstrated. However, due to NASA's continuing problems with the lunar module, and because of CIA reports of a potential Soviet crewed circumlunar flight in late 1968, NASA fatefully changed the flight plan of Apollo 8 from an Earth-orbit lunar module test to a lunar orbit mission scheduled for late December 1968.
In early December 1968 the launch window to the Moon opened for the Soviet launch site in Baikonur, giving the USSR their final chance to beat the US to the Moon. Cosmonauts went on alert and asked to fly the Zond spacecraft then in final countdown at Baikonur on the first human trip to the Moon. Ultimately, however, the Soviet Politburo decided the risk of crew death was unacceptable given the combined poor performance to that point of Zond/Proton and so scrubbed the launch of a crewed Soviet lunar mission. Their decision proved to be a wise one, since this unnumbered Zond mission was destroyed in another uncrewed test when it was finally launched several weeks later.
By this time flights of the third generation U.S. Apollo spacecraft had begun. Far more capable than the Zond, the Apollo spacecraft had the necessary rocket power to slip into and out of lunar orbit and to make course adjustments required for a safe reentry during the return to Earth. The Apollo 8 mission carried out the first human trip to the Moon on 24 December 1968, certifying the Saturn V booster for crewed use and flying not a circumlunar loop but instead a full ten orbits around the Moon before returning safely to Earth. Apollo 10 then performed a full dress rehearsal of a crewed Moon landing in May 1969. This mission orbited within 14.4 kilometres (47,400 ft) of the lunar surface, performing necessary low-altitude mapping of trajectory-altering mascons using a factory prototype lunar module too heavy to land. With the failure of the robotic Soviet sample return Moon landing attempt Luna 15 in July 1969, the stage was set for Apollo 11.
Human Moon landings (1969–1972)
US strategy
Plans for human Moon exploration began during the Eisenhower administration. In a series of mid-1950s articles in Collier's magazine, Wernher von Braun had popularized the idea of a crewed expedition to establish a lunar base. A human Moon landing posed several daunting technical challenges to the US and USSR. Besides guidance and weight management, atmospheric re-entry without ablative overheating was a major hurdle. After the Soviets launched Sputnik, von Braun promoted a plan for the US Army to establish a military lunar outpost by 1965.
After the early Soviet successes, especially Yuri Gagarin's flight, US President John F. Kennedy looked for a project that would capture the public imagination. He asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to make recommendations on a scientific endeavor that would prove US world leadership. The proposals included non-space options such as massive irrigation projects to benefit the Third World. The Soviets, at the time, had more powerful rockets than the US, which gave them an advantage in some kinds of space mission.
Advances in US nuclear weapon technology had led to smaller, lighter warheads; the Soviets' were much heavier, and the powerful R-7 rocket was developed to carry them. More modest missions such as flying around the Moon, or a space lab in lunar orbit (both were proposed by Kennedy to von Braun), offered too much advantage to the Soviets; landing, however, would capture the world's imagination.
Johnson had championed the US human spaceflight program ever since Sputnik, sponsoring legislation to create NASA while he was still a senator. When Kennedy asked him in 1961 to research the best achievement to counter the Soviets' lead, Johnson responded that the US had an even chance of beating them to a crewed lunar landing, but not for anything less. Kennedy seized on Apollo as the ideal focus for efforts in space. He ensured continuing funding, shielding space spending from the 1963 tax cut, but diverting money from other NASA scientific projects. These diversions dismayed NASA's leader, James E. Webb, who perceived the need for NASA's support from the scientific community.
The Moon landing required development of the large Saturn V launch vehicle, which achieved a perfect record: zero catastrophic failures or launch vehicle-caused mission failures in thirteen launches.
For the program to succeed, its proponents would have to defeat criticism from politicians both on the left (more money for social programs) and on the right (more money for the military). By emphasizing the scientific payoff and playing on fears of Soviet space dominance, Kennedy and Johnson managed to swing public opinion: by 1965, 58 percent of Americans favored Apollo, up from 33 percent two years earlier. After Johnson became president in 1963, his continuing defense of the program allowed it to succeed in 1969, as Kennedy had planned.
Soviet strategy
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said in October 1963 the USSR was "not at present planning flight by cosmonauts to the Moon," while insisting that the Soviets had not dropped out of the race. Only after another year did the USSR fully commit itself to a Moon-landing attempt, which ultimately failed.
At the same time, Kennedy had suggested various joint programs, including a possible Moon landing by Soviet and U.S. astronauts and the development of better weather-monitoring satellites, eventually resulting in the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Khrushchev, sensing an attempt by Kennedy to steal Russian space technology, rejected the idea at first: if the USSR went to the Moon, it would go alone. Though Khrushchev was eventually warming up to the idea, the realization of a joint Moon landing was choked by Kennedy's assassination.
Sergey Korolev, the Soviet space program's chief designer, had started promoting his Soyuz craft and the N1 launcher rocket that would have the capability of carrying out a human Moon landing. Khrushchev directed Korolev's design bureau to arrange further space firsts by modifying the existing Vostok technology, while a second team started building a completely new launcher and craft, the Proton booster and the Zond, for a human cislunar flight in 1966. In 1964 the new Soviet leadership gave Korolev the backing for a Moon landing effort and brought all crewed projects under his direction.
With Korolev's death and the failure of the first Soyuz flight in 1967, coordination of the Soviet Moon landing program quickly unraveled. The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for a mission that would have placed Alexei Leonov on the Moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a crewed landing suffered first delay and then cancellation.
A program of automated return vehicles was begun, in the hope of being the first to return lunar rocks. This had several failures. It eventually succeeded with Luna 16 in 1970. But this had little impact, because the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 lunar landings and rock returns had already taken place by then.
Apollo missions
In total, twenty-four U.S. astronauts have traveled to the Moon. Three have made the trip twice, and twelve have walked on its surface. Apollo 8 was a lunar-orbit-only mission, Apollo 10 included undocking and Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI), followed by LM staging to CSM redocking, while Apollo 13, originally scheduled as a landing, ended up as a lunar fly-by, by means of free return trajectory; thus, none of these missions made landings. Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 were Earth-orbit-only missions. Apart from the inherent dangers of crewed Moon expeditions as seen with Apollo 13, one reason for their cessation according to astronaut Alan Bean is the cost it imposes in government subsidies.
Human Moon landings
Other aspects of the successful Apollo landings
President Richard Nixon had speechwriter William Safire prepare a condolence speech for delivery in case Armstrong and Aldrin became marooned on the Moon's surface and could not be rescued.
In 1951, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke forecast that a man would reach the Moon by 1978.
On 16 August 2006, the Associated Press reported that NASA is missing the original Slow-scan television tapes (which were made before the scan conversion for conventional TV) of the Apollo 11 Moon walk. Some news outlets have mistakenly reported the SSTV tapes found in Western Australia, but those tapes were only recordings of data from the Apollo 11 Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package. The tapes were found in 2008 and sold at auction in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of the landing.
Scientists believe the six American flags planted by astronauts have been bleached white because of more than 40 years of exposure to solar radiation. Using LROC images, it has been determined that five of the six American flags are still standing and casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported that the flag was blown over by the exhaust from the ascent engine during liftoff of Apollo 11.
Late 20th century–21st century uncrewed crash landings
Hiten (Japan)
Launched on 24 January 1990, 11:46 UTC. At the end of its mission, the Japanese lunar orbiter Hiten was commanded to crash into the lunar surface and did so on 10 April 1993 at 18:03:25.7 UT (11 April 03:03:25.7 JST).
Lunar Prospector (U.S.)
Lunar Prospector was launched on 7 January 1998. The mission ended on 31 July 1999, when the orbiter was deliberately crashed into a crater near the lunar south pole after the presence of water ice was successfully detected.
SMART-1 (ESA)
Launched 27 September 2003, 23:14 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. At the end of its mission, the ESA lunar orbiter SMART-1 performed a controlled crash into the Moon, at about 2 km/s (7,200 km/h; 4,500 mph). The time of the crash was 3 September 2006, at 5:42 UTC.
Chandrayaan-1 (India)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) performed a controlled hard landing with its Moon Impact Probe (MIP). The MIP was ejected from the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter and performed remote sensing experiments during its descent to the lunar surface. It impacted near Shackleton crater at the south pole of the lunar surface at 14 November 2008, 20:31 IST.
Chandrayaan-1 was launched on 22 October 2008, 00:52 UTC.
Chang'e 1 (China)
The Chinese lunar orbiter Chang'e 1, executed a controlled crash onto the surface of the Moon on 1 March 2009, 20:44 GMT, after a 16-month mission. Chang'e 1 was launched on 24 October 2007, 10:05 UTC.
SELENE (Japan)
SELENE or Kaguya after successfully orbiting the Moon for a year and eight months, the main orbiter was instructed to impact on the lunar surface near the crater Gill at 18:25 UTC on 10 June 2009. SELENE or Kaguya was launched on 14 September 2007.
LCROSS (U.S.)
The LCROSS data collecting shepherding spacecraft was launched together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on 18 June 2009 on board an Atlas V rocket with a Centaur upper stage. On 9 October 2009, at 11:31 UTC, the Centaur upper stage impacted the lunar surface, releasing the kinetic energy equivalent of detonating approximately 2 tons of TNT (8.86 GJ). Six minutes later at 11:37 UTC, the LCROSS shepherding spacecraft also impacted the surface.
GRAIL (U.S.)
The GRAIL mission consisted of two small spacecraft: GRAIL A (Ebb), and GRAIL B (Flow). They were launched on 10 September 2011 on board a Delta II rocket. GRAIL A separated from the rocket about nine minutes after launch, and GRAIL B followed about eight minutes later. The first probe entered orbit on 31 December 2011 and the second followed on 1 January 2012. The two spacecraft impacted the Lunar surface on 17 December 2012.
LADEE (U.S.)
LADEE was launched on 7 September 2013. The mission ended on 18 April 2014, when the spacecraft's controllers intentionally crashed LADEE into the far side of the Moon, which, later, was determined to be near the eastern rim of Sundman V crater.
Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (Luxembourg)
The Manfred Memorial Moon Mission was launched on 23 October 2014. It conducted a lunar flyby and operated for 19 days which was four times longer than expected. The Manfred Memorial Moon Mission remained attached to the upper stage of its launch vehicle (CZ-3C/E). The spacecraft along with its upper stage impacted the Moon on 4 March 2022.
21st century uncrewed soft landings and attempts
Chang'e 3 (China)
On 14 December 2013 at 13:12 UTC, Chang'e 3 soft-landed a rover on the Moon. This was China's first soft landing on another celestial body and world's first lunar soft landing since Luna 24 on 22 August 1976. The mission was launched on 1 December 2013. After successful landing, the lander release the Yutu rover, which moved 114 meters before being immobilized due to system malfunction. But the rover was still operational until July 2016.
Chang'e 4 (China)
On 3 January 2019 at 2:26 UTC, Chang'e 4 became the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon. Chang'e 4 was originally designed as the backup of Chang'e 3. It was later adjusted as a mission to the far side of the Moon after the success of Chang'e 3. After making a successful landing within Von Kármán crater, the Chang'e 4 lander deployed the 140-kilogram (310 lb) Yutu-2 rover and began human's first close exploration of the far side of the Moon. Because the Moon blocks the communications between far side and Earth, a relay satellite, Queqiao, was launched to the Earth–Moon L2 Lagrangian point a few months prior to the landing to enable communications.
Yutu-2, the second lunar rover from China, was equipped with panoramic camera, lunar penetrating radar, visible and near-infrared Imaging spectrometer and advanced small analyzer for neutrals. As of July 2022, it has survived more than 1000 days on the lunar surface and is still driving with cumulative travel distance of over 1200 meters.
Beresheet (Israel/SpaceIL)
On 22 February 2019, Israeli private space agency SpaceIL launched their spacecraft Beresheet on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida with the intention of achieving a soft landing. SpaceIL lost contact with the spacecraft during final descent on 11 April 2019, and it crashed as a result of a main engine failure.
The mission was the first Israeli, and the first privately funded, lunar landing attempt. Despite the failure, the mission represented the closest a private entity had come to a soft lunar landing at the time.
SpaceIL was originally conceived in 2011 as a venture to pursue the Google Lunar X Prize. The Beresheet lunar lander's target landing destination was within Mare Serenitatis, a vast volcanic basin on the Moon's northern near side.
Chandrayaan-2 (India)
ISRO, the Indian National Space agency, launched Chandrayaan-2 on 22 July 2019. It had three major modules: orbiter, lander and rover. Each of these modules had scientific instruments from scientific research institutes in India and the US. On 7 September 2019 contact was lost with the Vikram lander at an altitude of 2.1 km (1.3 mi) after a rough braking phase. Vikram was later confirmed to have crashed and been destroyed.
Chang'e 5 (China)
On 6 December 2020 at 21:42 UTC, Chang'e 5 landed and collected the first lunar soil samples in over 40 years, and then returned the samples to Earth. The 8.2t stack consisting of lander, ascender, orbiter and returner was launched to lunar orbit by a Long March 5 rocket on 24 November. The lander-ascender combination was separated with the orbiter and returner before landing near Mons Rümker in Oceanus Procellarum. The ascender was later launched back to lunar orbit, carrying samples collected by the lander, and completed the first-ever robotic rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit. The sample container was then transferred to the returner, which successfully landed on Inner Mongolia on 16 December 2020, completing China's first extraterrestrial sample return mission.
Luna 25 (Russia)
In Russia's first attempt to reach the Moon since 1976, and since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Luna 25 spacecraft failed during "pre-landing" maneuvers, and crashed into the lunar surface on 19 August 2023.
Chandrayaan-3 (India)
India's national space agency ISRO launched Chandrayaan-3 on 14 July 2023. Chandrayaan-3 consists of an Indigenous Lander Module (LM), Propulsion module (PM) and the Pragyan rover. The lander with the rover successfully landed near the lunar south pole at 18:04 IST on 23 August 2023.
Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Japan)
JAXA launched the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission on 6 September 2023 at 23:42 UTC (7 September 08:42 Japan Standard Time). It landed on 19 January 2024 at 15:20 UTC, making Japan the fifth country to soft-land on the Moon. Solar panel orientation issues and possible landing damage complicated the spacecraft's operation. The mission also deployed two rovers which operated successfully and independently communicated with Earth.
Intuitive Machines-1 Odysseus lander (U.S.)
On 22 February 2024, Intuitive Machine's Odysseus successfully landed on the Moon after taking off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 liftoff on 15 February 2024 in a mission between NASA, SpaceX, and Intuitive Machines, marking the United States' first soft unmanned Moon landing in over 50 years. This mission also marks the first privately owned spacecraft to land on the Moon and the first landing with cryogenic propellants. Though it landed successfully, one of the lander's legs broke upon landing and it tilted up on the other side, 18°, due to landing on a slope, but the lander survived and payloads are functioning as expected. EagleCam was not ejected prior to landing. It was later ejected on 28 February but was partially a failure as it returned all types of data except post-IM-1 landing images that were the main aim of its mission.
Chang'e 6 (China)
China sent Chang'e 6 on 3 May 2024, which conducted the first lunar sample return from Apollo Basin on the far side of the Moon. This is China's second lunar sample return mission, the first was achieved by Chang'e 5 from the lunar near side four years earlier. It also carried a Chinese rover called Jinchan to conduct infrared spectroscopy of lunar surface and imaged Chang'e 6 lander on lunar surface. The lander-ascender-rover combination was separated with the orbiter and returner before landing on 1 June 2024 at 22:23 UTC. It landed on the Moon's surface on 1 June 2024. The ascender was launched back to lunar orbit on 3 June 2024 at 23:38 UTC, carrying samples collected by the lander, and later completed another robotic rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit. The sample container was then transferred to the returner, which landed on Inner Mongolia on 25 June 2024, completing China's far side extraterrestrial sample return mission.
Landings on moons of other Solar System bodies
21st century progress in space exploration has broadened the phrase moon landing to include other moons in the Solar System. The Huygens probe of the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn performed a successful moon landing on Titan in 2005. Similarly, the Soviet probe Phobos 2 came within 190 km (120 mi) of performing a landing on Mars' moon Phobos in 1989 before radio contact with that lander was suddenly lost. A similar Russian sample return mission called Fobos-Grunt ("grunt" means "soil" in Russian) launched in November 2011, but stalled in low Earth orbit. There is widespread interest in performing a future landing on Jupiter's moon Europa to drill down and explore the possible liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface.
Proposed future missions
The Lunar Polar Exploration Mission is a robotic space mission concept by ISRO and Japan's space agency JAXA that would send a lunar rover and lander to explore south pole region of the Moon in 2025. JAXA is likely to provide launch service using the future H3 rocket, along with responsibility for the rover. ISRO would be responsible for the lander. ISRO, following the success of Chandrayaan 3 also has plans to launch Chandrayaan 4, a lunar sample return mission, which would possibly be the first to return soil from the water rich south polar basin, in a landing close to Statio Shiv Shakti. The mission is planned by late 2028. Both nations are also active participants in the Artemis program.
On 11 December 2017, US President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, which directed NASA to return to the Moon with a crewed mission, for long-term exploration and use and missions to other planets. On 26 March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence formally announced that the mission will include the first female lunar astronaut. The Artemis program had intended to land a crewed mission on the Moon in 2024, and to begin sustained operations by 2028, supported by a planned Lunar Gateway. The NASA lunar landing mission has since been postponed to launch no earlier than September 2026.
The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program plans 3 additional Chang'e uncrewed missions between 2025 and 2028, in active preparation for the International Lunar Research Station it plans to construct with Russia, Venezuela, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates in the 2030s. In addition, the China Manned Space Agency intends to conduct crewed lunar landings by 2029 or 2030; in preparation for this effort, the various Chinese space agencies and contractors are currently developing a human-rated super-heavy launch vehicle (the Long March 10), a new crewed lunar spacecraft, and a crewed lunar lander.
Russia's Roscosmos has announced plans to launch a lunar polar orbiter as Luna 26, in 2027.
See also
List of Apollo astronauts
Lunar Escape Systems
Robert Goddard
Soyuz 7K-L1
First on the Moon (disambiguation)
References
Further reading
James Gleick, "Moon Fever" [review of Oliver Morton, The Moon: A History of the Future; Apollo's Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 3 July – 22 September 2019; Douglas Brinkley, American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race; Brandon R. Brown, The Apollo Chronicles: Engineering America's First Moon Missions; Roger D. Launius, Reaching for the Moon: A Short History of the Space Race; Apollo 11, a documentary film directed by Todd Douglas Miller; and Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys (50th Anniversary Edition)]
Mehta, Jatan (8 February 2024). "How to test a Moon landing from Earth". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00352-w. PMID 38326425. S2CID 267545517. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
External links
NASA's page on Moon landings, missions, etc. (includes information on other space agencies' missions).
Moon missions (United States) at Curlie
Project Apollo Archive Flickr Gallery: an independently organized collection of high-res photos for the Moon Landing and the Apollo Missions.
Apollo in Real Time: an independently organized collection of different Apollo missions media, creating a comprehensive and interactive documentation of Apollo missions. |
Neil_Armstrong | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong"
] | Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who, in 1969, became the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.
Armstrong was born and raised in Wapakoneta, Ohio. He entered Purdue University, studying aeronautical engineering, with the U.S. Navy paying his tuition under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in 1949 and a naval aviator the following year. He saw action in the Korean War, flying the Grumman F9F Panther from the aircraft carrier USS Essex. After the war, he completed his bachelor's degree at Purdue and became a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was the project pilot on Century Series fighters and flew the North American X-15 seven times. He was also a participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs.
Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash.
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the Lunar Module Eagle spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Apollo Command Module Columbia. When Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." It was broadcast live to an estimated 530 million viewers worldwide. Apollo 11 was a major U.S. victory in the Space Race, by fulfilling a national goal proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy "of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the decade. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon and received the 1969 Collier Trophy. President Jimmy Carter presented him with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1979, and with his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
After he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In 2012, Armstrong died due to complications resulting from coronary bypass surgery, at the age of 82.
Early life and education
Armstrong was born near Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930, the son of Viola Louise (née Engel) and Stephen Koenig Armstrong. He was of German, English, Scots-Irish, and Scottish descent. He is a descendant of Clan Armstrong. He had a younger sister, June, and a younger brother, Dean. His father was an auditor for the Ohio state government, and the family moved around the state repeatedly, living in 16 towns over the next 14 years. Armstrong's love for flying grew during this time, having started at the age of two when his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. When he was five or six, he experienced his first airplane flight in Warren, Ohio, when he and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor (also known as the "Tin Goose").
The family's last move was in 1944 and took them back to Wapakoneta, where Armstrong attended Blume High School and took flying lessons at the Wapakoneta airfield. He earned a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday, then soloed in August, all before he had a driver's license. He was an active Boy Scout and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. As an adult, he was recognized by the Scouts with their Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award. While flying toward the Moon on July 18, 1969, he sent his regards to attendees at the National Scout jamboree in Idaho. Among the few personal items that he carried with him to the Moon and back was a World Scout Badge.
At age 17, in 1947, Armstrong began studying aeronautical engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; he was the second person in his family to attend college. Armstrong was also accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but he resolved to go to Purdue after watching a football game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the Ohio State Buckeyes at the Ohio Stadium in 1945 in which quarterback Bob DeMoss led the Boilermakers to a sound victory over the highly regarded Buckeyes. An uncle who attended MIT had also advised him that he could receive a good education without going all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts. His college tuition was paid for under the Holloway Plan. Successful applicants committed to two years of study, followed by two years of flight training and one year of service as an aviator in the U.S. Navy, then completion of the final two years of their bachelor's degree. Armstrong did not take courses in naval science, nor did he join the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps.
Navy service
Armstrong's call-up from the Navy arrived on January 26, 1949, requiring him to report to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training with class 5-49. After passing the medical examinations, he became a midshipman on February 24, 1949. Flight training was conducted in a North American SNJ trainer, in which he soloed on September 9, 1949. On March 2, 1950, he made his first aircraft carrier landing on USS Cabot, an achievement he considered comparable to his first solo flight. He was then sent to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for training on the Grumman F8F Bearcat, culminating in a carrier landing on USS Wright. On August 16, 1950, Armstrong was informed by letter that he was a fully qualified naval aviator. His mother and sister attended his graduation ceremony on August 23, 1950.
Armstrong was assigned to Fleet Aircraft Service Squadron 7 (FASRON 7) at NAS San Diego (now known as NAS North Island). On November 27, 1950, he was assigned to VF-51, an all-jet squadron, becoming its youngest officer, and made his first flight in a jet, a Grumman F9F Panther, on January 5, 1951. He was promoted to ensign on June 5, 1951, and made his first jet carrier landing on USS Essex two days later. On June 28, 1951, Essex had set sail for Korea, with VF-51 aboard to act as ground-attack aircraft. VF-51 flew ahead to Naval Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii, where it conducted fighter-bomber training before rejoining the ship at the end of July.
On August 29, 1951, Armstrong saw action in the Korean War as an escort for a photo reconnaissance plane over Songjin. Five days later, on September 3, he flew armed reconnaissance over the primary transportation and storage facilities south of the village of Majon-ni, west of Wonsan. According to Armstrong, he was making a low bombing run at 350 mph (560 km/h) when 6 feet (1.8 m) of his wing was torn off after it collided with a cable that was strung across the hills as a booby trap. He was flying 500 feet (150 m) above the ground when he hit it. While there was heavy anti-aircraft fire in the area, none hit Armstrong's aircraft. An initial report to the commanding officer of Essex said that Armstrong's F9F Panther was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The report indicated he was trying to regain control and collided with a pole, which sliced off 2 feet (0.61 m) of the Panther's right wing. Further perversions of the story by different authors added that he was only 20 feet (6.1 m) from the ground and that 3 feet (0.91 m) of his wing was sheared off.
Armstrong flew the plane back to friendly territory, but due to the loss of the aileron, ejection was his only safe option. He intended to eject over water and await rescue by Navy helicopters, but his parachute was blown back over land. A jeep driven by a roommate from flight school picked him up; it is unknown what happened to the wreckage of his aircraft, F9F-2 BuNo 125122.
In all, Armstrong flew 78 missions over Korea for a total of 121 hours in the air, a third of them in January 1952, with the final mission on March 5, 1952. Of 492 U.S. Navy personnel killed in the Korean War, 27 of them were from Essex on this war cruise. Armstrong received the Air Medal for 20 combat missions, two gold stars for the next 40, the Korean Service Medal and Engagement Star, the National Defense Service Medal, and the United Nations Korea Medal.
Armstrong's regular commission was terminated on February 25, 1952, and he became an ensign in the United States Navy Reserve. On completion of his combat tour with Essex, he was assigned to a transport squadron, VR-32, in May 1952. He was released from active duty on August 23, 1952, but remained in the reserve, and was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on May 9, 1953. As a reservist, he continued to fly, with VF-724 at Naval Air Station Glenview in Illinois, and then, after moving to California, with VF-773 at Naval Air Station Los Alamitos. He remained in the reserve for eight years, before resigning his commission on October 21, 1960.
College years
After his service with the Navy, Armstrong returned to Purdue. His previously earned good but not outstanding grades now improved, lifting his final Grade Point Average (GPA) to a respectable but not outstanding 4.8 out of 6.0. He pledged the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and lived in its fraternity house. He wrote and co-directed two musicals as part of the all-student revue. The first was a version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, co-directed with his girlfriend Joanne Alford from the Alpha Chi Omega sorority, with songs from the 1937 Walt Disney film, including "Someday My Prince Will Come"; the second was titled The Land of Egelloc ("college" spelled backward), with music from Gilbert and Sullivan but new lyrics.
Armstrong was chairman of the Purdue Aero Flying Club, and flew the club's aircraft, an Aeronca and a couple of Pipers, which were kept at nearby Aretz Airport in Lafayette, Indiana. Flying the Aeronca to Wapakoneta in 1954, he damaged it in a rough landing in a farmer's field, and it had to be hauled back to Lafayette on a trailer. He was a baritone player in the Purdue All-American Marching Band. Ten years later he was made an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi national band honorary fraternity. Armstrong graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering in January 1955. In 1970, he completed his Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He would eventually be awarded honorary doctorates by several universities.
Armstrong met Janet Elizabeth Shearon, who was majoring in home economics, at a party hosted by Alpha Chi Omega. According to the couple, there was no real courtship, and neither could remember the exact circumstances of their engagement. They were married on January 28, 1956, at the Congregational Church in Wilmette, Illinois. When he moved to Edwards Air Force Base, he lived in the bachelor quarters of the base, while Janet lived in the Westwood district of Los Angeles. After one semester, they moved into a house in Antelope Valley, near Edwards AFB. Janet did not finish her degree, a fact she regretted later in life. The couple had three children. In June 1961, their daughter Karen was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a malignant tumor of the middle part of her brain stem. X-ray treatment slowed its growth, but her health deteriorated to the point where she could no longer walk or talk. She died of pneumonia, related to her weakened health, on January 28, 1962, aged two.
Test pilot
Following his graduation from Purdue, Armstrong became an experimental research test pilot. He applied at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base. NACA had no open positions, and forwarded his application to the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, where Armstrong made his first test flight on March 1, 1955. Armstrong's stint at Cleveland lasted only a couple of months before a position at the High-Speed Flight Station became available, and he reported for work there on July 11, 1955.
On his first day, Armstrong was tasked with piloting chase planes during releases of experimental aircraft from modified bombers. He also flew the modified bombers, and on one of these missions had his first flight incident at Edwards. On March 22, 1956, he was in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, which was to air-drop a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. He sat in the right-hand co-pilot seat while pilot in command, Stan Butchart sat in the left-hand pilot seat flying the B-29.
As they climbed to 30,000 feet (9 km), the number-four engine stopped and the propeller began windmilling (rotating freely) in the airstream. Hitting the switch that would stop the propeller's spinning, Butchart watched it slow, then resume spinning even faster than the others; if it spun too fast, it would break apart. Their aircraft needed to hold an airspeed of 210 mph (338 km/h) to launch its Skyrocket payload, and the B-29 could not land with the Skyrocket attached to its belly. Armstrong and Butchart brought the aircraft into a nose-down attitude to increase speed, then launched the Skyrocket. At the instant of launch, the number-four engine propeller disintegrated. Pieces of it damaged the number-three engine and hit the number-two engine. Butchart and Armstrong were forced to shut down the damaged number-three engine, along with the number-one engine, due to the torque it created. They made a slow, circling descent from 30,000 ft (9 km) using only the number-two engine, and landed safely.
Armstrong served as project pilot on Century Series fighters, including the North American F-100 Super Sabre A and C variants, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. He also flew the Douglas DC-3, Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, North American F-86 Sabre, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Douglas F5D-1 Skylancer, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Boeing B-47 Stratojet and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, and was one of eight elite pilots involved in the Parasev paraglider research vehicle program. Over his career, he flew more than 200 different models of aircraft. His first flight in a rocket-powered aircraft was on August 15, 1957, in the Bell X-1B, to an altitude of 11.4 miles (18.3 km). On landing, the poorly designed nose landing gear failed, as had happened on about a dozen previous flights of the Bell X-1B. He flew the North American X-15 seven times, including the first flight with the Q-ball system, the first flight of the number 3 X-15 airframe, and the first flight of the MH-96 adaptive flight control system. He became an employee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) when it was established on October 1, 1958, absorbing NACA.
Armstrong was involved in several incidents that went down in Edwards folklore or were chronicled in the memoirs of colleagues. During his sixth X-15 flight on April 20, 1962, Armstrong was testing the MH-96 control system when he flew to a height of over 207,000 feet (63 km) (the highest he flew before Gemini 8). He held up the aircraft nose during its descent to demonstrate the MH-96's g-limiting performance, and the X-15 ballooned back up to around 140,000 feet (43 km). He flew past the landing field at Mach 3 at over 100,000 feet (30 km) in altitude, and ended up 40 miles (64 km) south of Edwards. After sufficient descent, he turned back toward the landing area, and landed. It was the longest X-15 flight in both flight time and length of the ground track.
Fellow astronaut Michael Collins wrote that of the X-15 pilots Armstrong "had been considered one of the weaker stick-and-rudder men, but the very best when it came to understanding the machine's design and how it operated". Many of the test pilots at Edwards praised Armstrong's engineering ability. Milt Thompson said he was "the most technically capable of the early X-15 pilots". Bill Dana said Armstrong "had a mind that absorbed things like a sponge". Those who flew for the Air Force tended to have a different opinion, especially people like Chuck Yeager and Pete Knight, who did not have engineering degrees. Knight said that pilot-engineers flew in a way that was "more mechanical than it is flying", and gave this as the reason why some pilot-engineers got into trouble: Their flying skills did not come naturally. Armstrong made seven flights in the X-15 between November 30, 1960, and July 26, 1962. He reached a top speed of Mach 5.74 (3,989 mph, 6,420 km/h) in the X-15-1, and left the Flight Research Center with a total of 2,400 flying hours.
On April 24, 1962, Armstrong flew for the only time with Yeager. Their job, flying a T-33, was to evaluate Smith Ranch Dry Lake in Nevada for use as an emergency landing site for the X-15. In his autobiography, Yeager wrote that he knew the lake bed was unsuitable for landings after recent rains, but Armstrong insisted on flying out anyway. As they attempted a touch-and-go, the wheels became stuck and they had to wait for rescue. As Armstrong told the story, Yeager never tried to talk him out of it and they made a first successful landing on the east side of the lake. Then Yeager told him to try again, this time a bit slower. On the second landing, they became stuck, provoking Yeager to fits of laughter.
On May 21, 1962, Armstrong was involved in the "Nellis Affair". He was sent in an F-104 to inspect Delamar Dry Lake in southern Nevada, again for emergency landings. He misjudged his altitude and did not realize that the landing gear had not fully extended. As he touched down, the landing gear began to retract; Armstrong applied full power to abort the landing, but the ventral fin and landing gear door struck the ground, damaging the radio and releasing hydraulic fluid. Without radio communication, Armstrong flew south to Nellis Air Force Base, past the control tower, and waggled his wings, the signal for a no-radio approach. The loss of hydraulic fluid caused the tailhook to release, and upon landing, he caught the arresting wire attached to an anchor chain, and dragged the chain along the runway.
It took thirty minutes to clear the runway and rig another arresting cable. Armstrong telephoned Edwards and asked for someone to collect him. Milt Thompson was sent in an F-104B, the only two-seater available, but a plane Thompson had never flown. With great difficulty, Thompson made it to Nellis, where a strong crosswind caused a hard landing and the left main tire suffered a blowout. The runway was again closed to clear it, and Bill Dana was sent to Nellis in a T-33, but he almost landed long. The Nellis base operations office then decided that to avoid any further problems, it would be best to find the three NASA pilots ground transport back to Edwards.
Astronaut career
In June 1958, Armstrong was selected for the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest program, but the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) canceled its funding on August 1, 1958, and on November 5, 1958, it was superseded by Project Mercury, a civilian project run by NASA. As a NASA civilian test pilot, Armstrong was ineligible to become one of its astronauts at this time, as selection was restricted to military test pilots. In November 1960, he was chosen as part of the pilot consultant group for the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a military space plane under development by Boeing for the U.S. Air Force, and on March 15, 1962, he was selected by the U.S. Air Force as one of seven pilot-engineers who would fly the X-20 when it got off the design board.
In April 1962, NASA sought applications for the second group of NASA astronauts for Project Gemini, a proposed two-man spacecraft. This time, selection was open to qualified civilian test pilots. Armstrong visited the Seattle World's Fair in May 1962 and attended a conference there on space exploration that was co-sponsored by NASA. After he returned from Seattle on June 4, he applied to become an astronaut. His application arrived about a week past the June 1, 1962, deadline, but Dick Day, a flight simulator expert with whom Armstrong had worked closely at Edwards, saw the late arrival of the application and slipped it into the pile before anyone noticed. At Brooks Air Force Base at the end of June, Armstrong underwent a medical exam that many of the applicants described as painful and at times seemingly pointless.
NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, Deke Slayton, called Armstrong on September 13, 1962, and asked whether he would be interested in joining the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of what the press dubbed "the New Nine"; without hesitation, Armstrong said yes. The selections were kept secret until three days later, although newspaper reports had circulated since earlier that year that he would be selected as the "first civilian astronaut". Armstrong was one of two civilian pilots selected for this group; the other was Elliot See, another former naval aviator. NASA selected the second group that, compared with the Mercury Seven astronauts, were younger, and had more impressive academic credentials. Collins wrote that Armstrong was by far the most experienced test pilot in the Astronaut Corps.
Gemini program
Gemini 5
On February 8, 1965, Armstrong and Elliot See were picked as the backup crew for Gemini 5, with Armstrong as commander, supporting the prime crew of Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad. The mission's purpose was to practice space rendezvous and to develop procedures and equipment for a seven-day flight, all of which would be required for a mission to the Moon. With two other flights (Gemini 3 and Gemini 4) in preparation, six crews were competing for simulator time, so Gemini 5 was postponed. It finally lifted off on August 21. Armstrong and See watched the launch at Cape Kennedy, then flew to the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. The mission was generally successful, despite a problem with the fuel cells that prevented a rendezvous. Cooper and Conrad practiced a "phantom rendezvous", carrying out the maneuver without a target.
Gemini 8
The crews for Gemini 8 were assigned on September 20, 1965. Under the normal rotation system, the backup crew for one mission became the prime crew for the third mission after, but Slayton designated David Scott as the pilot of Gemini 8. Scott was the first member of the third group of astronauts, who was selected on October 18, 1963, to receive a prime crew assignment. See was designated to command Gemini 9. Henceforth, each Gemini mission was commanded by a member of Armstrong's group, with a member of Scott's group as the pilot. Conrad would be Armstrong's backup this time, and Richard F. Gordon Jr. his pilot. Armstrong became the first American civilian in space. (Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union had become the first civilian—and first woman—nearly three years earlier aboard Vostok 6 when it launched on June 16, 1963.) Armstrong would also be the last of his group to fly in space, as See died in a T-38 crash on February 28, 1966, that also took the life of crewmate Charles Bassett. They were replaced by the backup crew of Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, while Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin moved up from the backup crew of Gemini 10 to become the backup for Gemini 9, and would eventually fly Gemini 12.
Gemini 8 launched on March 16, 1966. It was the most complex mission yet, with a rendezvous and docking with an uncrewed Agena target vehicle, and the planned second American spacewalk (EVA) by Scott. The mission was planned to last 75 hours and 55 orbits. After the Agena lifted off at 10:00:00 EST, the Titan II rocket carrying Armstrong and Scott ignited at 11:41:02 EST, putting them into an orbit from which they chased the Agena. They achieved the first-ever docking between two spacecraft. Contact with the crew was intermittent due to the lack of tracking stations covering their entire orbits. While out of contact with the ground, the docked spacecraft began to roll, and Armstrong attempted to correct this with the Gemini's Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS). Following the earlier advice of Mission Control, they undocked, but the roll increased dramatically until they were turning about once per second, indicating a problem with Gemini's attitude control. Armstrong engaged the Reentry Control System (RCS) and turned off the OAMS. Mission rules dictated that once this system was turned on, the spacecraft had to reenter at the next possible opportunity. It was later thought that damaged wiring caused one of the thrusters to stick in the on position.
A few people in the Astronaut Office, including Walter Cunningham, felt that Armstrong and Scott "had botched their first mission". There was speculation that Armstrong could have salvaged the mission if he had turned on only one of the two RCS rings, saving the other for mission objectives. These criticisms were unfounded; no malfunction procedures had been written, and it was possible to turn on only both RCS rings, not one or the other. Gene Kranz wrote, "The crew reacted as they were trained, and they reacted wrong because we trained them wrong." The mission planners and controllers had failed to realize that when two spacecraft were docked, they must be considered one spacecraft. Kranz considered this the mission's most important lesson. Armstrong was depressed that the mission was cut short, canceling most mission objectives and robbing Scott of his EVA. The Agena was later reused as a docking target by Gemini 10. Armstrong and Scott received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the Air Force awarded Scott the Distinguished Flying Cross as well. Scott was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and Armstrong received a $678 raise in pay to $21,653 a year (equivalent to $203,338 in 2023), making him NASA's highest-paid astronaut.
Gemini 11
In Armstrong's final assignment in the Gemini program, he was the back-up Command Pilot for Gemini 11. Having trained for two flights, Armstrong was quite knowledgeable about the systems and took on a teaching role for the rookie backup pilot, William Anders. The launch was on September 12, 1966, with Conrad and Gordon on board, who successfully completed the mission objectives, while Armstrong served as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM).
Following the flight, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Armstrong and his wife to take part in a 24-day goodwill tour of South America. Also on the tour, which took in 11 countries and 14 major cities, were Dick Gordon, George Low, their wives, and other government officials. In Paraguay, Armstrong greeted dignitaries in their local language, Guarani; in Brazil he talked about the exploits of the Brazilian-born aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont.
Apollo program
On January 27, 1967—the day of the Apollo 1 fire—Armstrong was in Washington, D.C., with Cooper, Gordon, Lovell and Scott Carpenter for the signing of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. The astronauts chatted with the assembled dignitaries until 18:45, when Carpenter went to the airport, and the others returned to the Georgetown Inn, where they each found messages to phone the MSC. During these calls, they learned of the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the fire. Armstrong and the group spent the rest of the night drinking scotch and discussing what had happened.
On April 5, 1967, the same day the Apollo 1 investigation released its final report, Armstrong and 17 other astronauts gathered for a meeting with Slayton. The first thing Slayton said was, "The guys who are going to fly the first lunar missions are the guys in this room." According to Cernan, only Armstrong showed no reaction to the statement. To Armstrong it came as no surprise—the room was full of veterans of Project Gemini, the only people who could fly the lunar missions. Slayton talked about the planned missions and named Armstrong to the backup crew for Apollo 9, which at that stage was planned as a medium Earth orbit test of the combined lunar module and command and service module.
The crew was officially assigned on November 20, 1967. For crewmates, Armstrong was assigned Lovell and Aldrin, from Gemini 12. After design and manufacturing delays of the lunar module (LM), Apollo 8 and 9 swapped prime and backup crews. Based on the normal crew rotation, Armstrong would command Apollo 11, with one change: Collins on the Apollo 8 crew began experiencing trouble with his legs. Doctors diagnosed the problem as a bony growth between his fifth and sixth vertebrae, requiring surgery. Lovell took his place on the Apollo 8 crew, and, when Collins recovered, he joined Armstrong's crew.
To give the astronauts practice piloting the LM on its descent, NASA commissioned Bell Aircraft to build two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV), later augmented with three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). Nicknamed the "Flying Bedsteads", they simulated the Moon's one-sixth gravity using a turbofan engine to support five-sixths of the craft's weight. On May 6, 1968, 100 feet (30 m) above the ground, Armstrong's controls started to degrade and the LLRV began rolling. He ejected safely before the vehicle struck the ground and burst into flames. Later analysis suggested that if he had ejected half a second later, his parachute would not have opened in time. His only injury was from biting his tongue. The LLRV was completely destroyed. Even though he was nearly killed, Armstrong maintained that without the LLRV and LLTV, the lunar landings would not have been successful, as they gave commanders essential experience in piloting the lunar landing craft.
In addition to the LLRV training, NASA began lunar landing simulator training after Apollo 10 was completed. Aldrin and Armstrong trained for a variety of scenarios that could develop during a real lunar landing. They also received briefings from geologists at NASA.
Apollo 11
After Armstrong served as backup commander for Apollo 8, Slayton offered him the post of commander of Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968, as Apollo 8 orbited the Moon. According to Armstrong's 2005 biography, Slayton told him that although the planned crew was Commander Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, he was offering Armstrong the chance to replace Aldrin with Jim Lovell. After thinking it over for a day, Armstrong told Slayton he would stick with Aldrin, as he had no difficulty working with him and thought Lovell deserved his own command. Replacing Aldrin with Lovell would have made Lovell the lunar module pilot, unofficially the lowest ranked member, and Armstrong could not justify placing Lovell, the commander of Gemini 12, in the number 3 position of the crew. The crew of Apollo 11 was assigned on January 9, 1969, as Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin, with Lovell, Anders, and Fred Haise as the backup crew.
According to Chris Kraft, a March 1969 meeting among Slayton, George Low, Bob Gilruth, and Kraft determined that Armstrong would be the first person on the Moon, in part because NASA management saw him as a person who did not have a large ego. A press conference on April 14, 1969, gave the design of the LM cabin as the reason for Armstrong's being first; the hatch opened inwards and to the right, making it difficult for the LM pilot, on the right-hand side, to exit first. At the time of their meeting, the four men did not know about the hatch consideration. The first knowledge of the meeting outside the small group came when Kraft wrote his book. Methods of circumventing this difficulty existed, but it is not known if these were considered at the time. Slayton added, "Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out ... I changed it as soon as I found they had the time line that showed that. Bob Gilruth approved my decision."
Voyage to the Moon
A Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969, at 13:32:00 UTC (09:32:00 EDT local time). Armstrong's wife Janet and two sons watched from a yacht moored on the Banana River. During the launch, Armstrong's heart rate peaked at 110 beats per minute. He found the first stage the loudest, much noisier than the Gemini 8 Titan II launch. The Apollo command module was relatively roomy compared with the Gemini spacecraft. None of the Apollo 11 crew suffered space sickness, as some members of previous crews had. Armstrong was especially glad about this, as he had been prone to motion sickness as a child and could experience nausea after long periods of aerobatics.
Apollo 11's objective was to land safely on the Moon, rather than to touch down at a precise location. Three minutes into the lunar descent, Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Lunar Module Eagle would probably touch down several miles (kilometres) beyond the planned landing zone. As the Eagle's landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms sounded. The first was a code 1202 alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin knew what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM Charles Duke in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; the 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by executive overflows in the lunar module guidance computer. In 2007, Aldrin said the overflows were caused by his own counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing process, causing the computer to process unnecessary radar data. When it did not have enough time to execute all tasks, the computer dropped the lower-priority ones, triggering the alarms. Aldrin said he decided to leave the radar on in case an abort was necessary when re-docking with the Apollo command module; he did not realize it would cause the processing overflows.
When Armstrong noticed they were heading toward a landing area that seemed unsafe, he took manual control of the LM and attempted to find a safer area. This took longer than expected, and longer than most simulations had taken. For this reason, Mission Control was concerned that the LM was running low on fuel. On landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had 40 seconds of fuel left, including the 20 seconds' worth which had to be saved in the event of an abort. During training, Armstrong had, on several occasions, landed with fewer than 15 seconds of fuel; he was also confident the LM could survive a fall of up to 50 feet (15 m). Post-mission analysis showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50 seconds of propellant burn time left.
The landing on the surface of the Moon occurred several seconds after 20:17:40 UTC on July 20, 1969. One of three 67-inch (170 cm) probes attached to three of the LM's four legs made contact with the surface, a panel light in the LM illuminated, and Aldrin called out, "Contact light." Armstrong shut the engine off and said, "Shutdown." As the LM settled onto the surface, Aldrin said, "Okay, engine stop"; then they both called out some post-landing checklist items. After a 10-second pause, Duke acknowledged the landing with, "We copy you down, Eagle." Armstrong confirmed the landing to Mission Control and the world with the words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Aldrin and Armstrong celebrated with a brisk handshake and pat on the back. They then returned to the checklist of contingency tasks, should an emergency liftoff become necessary. After Armstrong confirmed touch down, Duke re-acknowledged, adding a comment about the flight crew's relief: "Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot." During the landing, Armstrong's heart rate ranged from 100 to 150 beats per minute.
First Moon walk
The flight plan called for a crew rest period before leaving the module, but Armstrong asked for this to be moved to earlier in the evening, Houston time. When he and Aldrin were ready to go outside, Eagle was depressurized, the hatch was opened, and Armstrong made his way down the ladder. At the bottom of the ladder, while standing on a Lunar Module landing pad, Armstrong said, "I'm going to step off the LM now". He turned and set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC July 21, 1969, then said, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." The exact time of Armstrong's first step on the Moon is unclear.
Armstrong prepared his famous epigram on his own. In a post-flight press conference, he said that he chose the words "just prior to leaving the LM." In a 1983 interview in Esquire magazine, he explained to George Plimpton: "I always knew there was a good chance of being able to return to Earth, but I thought the chances of a successful touch down on the moon surface were about even money—fifty–fifty ... Most people don't realize how difficult the mission was. So it didn't seem to me there was much point in thinking of something to say if we'd have to abort landing." In 2012, his brother Dean Armstrong said that Neil showed him a draft of the line months before the launch. Historian Andrew Chaikin, who interviewed Armstrong in 1988 for his book A Man on the Moon, disputed that Armstrong claimed to have conceived the line during the mission.
Recordings of Armstrong's transmission do not provide evidence for the indefinite article "a" before "man", though NASA and Armstrong insisted for years that static obscured it. Armstrong stated he would never make such a mistake, but after repeated listenings to recordings, he eventually conceded he must have dropped the "a". He later said he "would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said—although it might actually have been". There have since been claims and counter-claims about whether acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing "a"; Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer programmer, conducted a digital audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did say "a man", but the "a" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time. Ford and James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own analysis. Armstrong found Ford's analysis "persuasive." Linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote of their skepticism of Ford's claims on the blog Language Log. A 2016 peer-reviewed study again concluded Armstrong had included the article. NASA's transcript continues to show the "a" in parentheses.
When Armstrong made his proclamation, Voice of America was rebroadcast live by the BBC and many other stations worldwide. An estimated 530 million people viewed the event, 20 percent out of a world population of approximately 3.6 billion.
About 19 minutes after Armstrong's first step, Aldrin joined him on the surface, becoming the second human to walk on the Moon. They began their tasks of investigating how easily a person could operate on the lunar surface. Armstrong unveiled a plaque commemorating the flight, and with Aldrin, planted the flag of the United States. Although Armstrong had wanted the flag to be draped on the flagpole, it was decided to use a metal rod to hold it horizontally. However, the rod did not fully extend, leaving the flag with a slightly wavy appearance, as if there were a breeze. Shortly after the flag planting, President Richard Nixon spoke to them by telephone from his office. He spoke for about a minute, after which Armstrong responded for about thirty seconds. In the Apollo 11 photographic record, there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected. The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of photographic tasks performed by Armstrong with the single Hasselblad camera.
After helping to set up the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package, Armstrong went for a walk to what is now known as East Crater, 65 yards (59 m) east of the LM, the greatest distance traveled from the LM on the mission. His final task was to remind Aldrin to leave a small package of memorial items to Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, and Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. The Apollo 11 EVA lasted two and a half hours. Each of the subsequent five landings was allotted a progressively longer EVA period; the crew of Apollo 17 spent over 22 hours exploring the lunar surface. In a 2010 interview, Armstrong explained that NASA limited their Moon walk because they were unsure how the space suits would cope with the Moon's extremely high temperature.
Return to Earth
After they re-entered the LM, the hatch was closed and sealed. While preparing for liftoff, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered that, in their bulky space suits, they had broken the ignition switch for the ascent engine; using part of a pen, they pushed in the circuit breaker to start the launch sequence. The Eagle then continued to its rendezvous in lunar orbit, where it docked with Columbia, the command and service module. The three astronauts returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, to be picked up by the USS Hornet.
After being released from an 18-day quarantine to ensure that they had not picked up any infections or diseases from the Moon, the crew was feted across the United States and around the world as part of a 38-day "Giant Leap" tour.
The tour began on August 13, when the three astronauts spoke and rode in ticker-tape parades in their honor in New York and Chicago, with an estimated six million attendees. On the same evening an official state dinner was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the flight, attended by members of Congress, 44 governors, the Chief Justice of the United States, and ambassadors from 83 nations. President Nixon and Vice President Agnew presented each astronaut with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
After the tour Armstrong took part in Bob Hope's 1969 USO show, primarily to Vietnam. In May 1970, Armstrong traveled to the Soviet Union to present a talk at the 13th annual conference of the International Committee on Space Research; after arriving in Leningrad from Poland, he traveled to Moscow where he met Premier Alexei Kosygin. Armstrong was the first westerner to see the supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 and was given a tour of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, which he described as "a bit Victorian in nature". At the end of the day, he was surprised to view a delayed video of the launch of Soyuz 9 as it had not occurred to Armstrong that the mission was taking place, even though Valentina Tereshkova had been his host and her husband, Andriyan Nikolayev, was on board.
Life after Apollo
Teaching
Shortly after Apollo 11, Armstrong stated that he did not plan to fly in space again. He was appointed Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics for the Office of Advanced Research and Technology at ARPA, served in the position for a year, then resigned from it and NASA in 1971. He accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, having chosen Cincinnati over other universities, including his alma mater Purdue, because Cincinnati had a small aerospace department, and said he hoped the faculty there would not be annoyed that he came straight into a professorship with only a USC master's degree. He began his master's degree while stationed at Edwards years before, and completed it after Apollo 11 by presenting a report on various aspects of Apollo, instead of a thesis on the simulation of hypersonic flight.
At Cincinnati, Armstrong was University Professor of Aerospace Engineering. He took a heavy teaching load, taught core classes, and created two graduate-level classes: aircraft design and experimental flight mechanics. He was considered a good teacher, and a tough grader. His research activities during this time did not involve his work at NASA, as he did not want to give the appearance of favoritism; he later regretted the decision. After teaching for eight years, Armstrong resigned in 1980. When the university changed from an independent municipal university to a state school, bureaucracy increased. He did not want to be a part of the faculty collective bargaining group, so he decided to teach half-time. According to Armstrong, he had the same amount of work but received half his salary. In 1979, less than 10% of his income came from his university salary. Employees at the university did not know why he left.
NASA commissions
In 1970, after an explosion aboard Apollo 13 aborted its lunar landing, Armstrong was part of Edgar Cortright's investigation of the mission. He produced a detailed chronology of the flight. He determined that a 28-volt thermostat switch in an oxygen tank, which was supposed to have been replaced with a 65-volt version, led to the explosion. Cortright's report recommended the entire tank be redesigned at a cost of $40 million. Many NASA managers, including Armstrong, opposed the recommendation, since only the thermostat switch had caused the problem. They lost the argument, and the tanks were redesigned.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan asked Armstrong to join the Rogers Commission investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Armstrong was made vice chairman of the commission and held private interviews with contacts he had developed over the years to help determine the cause of the disaster. He helped limit the committee's recommendations to nine, believing that if there were too many, NASA would not act on them.
Armstrong was appointed to a fourteen-member commission by President Reagan to develop a plan for American civilian spaceflight in the 21st century. The commission was chaired by former NASA administrator Dr. Thomas O. Paine, with whom Armstrong had worked during the Apollo program. The group published a book titled Pioneering the Space Frontier: The Report on the National Commission on Space, recommending a permanent lunar base by 2006, and sending people to Mars by 2015. The recommendations were largely ignored, overshadowed by the Challenger disaster.
Armstrong and his wife attended the memorial service for the victims of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, at the invitation of President George W. Bush.
Business activities
After Armstrong retired from NASA in 1971, he acted as a spokesman for several businesses. The first company to successfully approach him was Chrysler, for whom he appeared in advertising starting in January 1979. Armstrong thought they had a strong engineering division, and they were in financial difficulty. He later acted as a spokesman for other American companies, including General Time Corporation and the Bankers Association of America. He acted as a spokesman for only American companies.
In addition to his duties as a spokesman, he also served on the board of directors of several companies. The first company board Armstrong joined was Gates Learjet, chairing their technical committee. He flew their new and experimental jets and even set a climb and altitude record for business jets. Armstrong became a member of Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company's board in 1973. They were interested in nuclear power and wanted to increase the company's technical competence. He served on the board of Taft Broadcasting, also based in Cincinnati. Armstrong joined the board of solid rocket booster Thiokol in 1989, after previously serving on the Rogers Commission which found that the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed due to a defect in the Thiokol-manufactured solid rocket boosters. When Armstrong left the University of Cincinnati, he became the chairman of Cardwell International Ltd., a company that manufactured drilling rigs. He served on additional aerospace boards, first United Airlines in 1978, and later Eaton Corporation in 1980. He was asked to chair the board of directors for a subsidiary of Eaton, AIL Systems. He chaired the board through the company's 2000 merger with EDO Corporation, until his retirement in 2002.
North Pole expedition
In 1985, professional expedition leader Mike Dunn organized a trip to take men he deemed the "greatest explorers" to the North Pole. The group included Armstrong, Edmund Hillary, Hillary's son Peter, Steve Fossett, and Patrick Morrow. They arrived at the Pole on April 6, 1985. Armstrong said he was curious to see what it looked like from the ground, as he had seen it only from the Moon. He did not inform the media of the trip, preferring to keep it private.
Public profile
Armstrong's family described him as a "reluctant American hero". He kept a low profile later in his life, leading to the belief that he was a recluse. Recalling Armstrong's humility, John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, told CNN: "[Armstrong] didn't feel that he should be out huckstering himself. He was a humble person, and that's the way he remained after his lunar flight, as well as before." Armstrong turned down most requests for interviews and public appearances. Michael Collins said in his book Carrying the Fire that when Armstrong moved to a dairy farm to become a college professor, it was like he "retreated to his castle and pulled up the drawbridge". Armstrong found this amusing, and said, "... those of us that live out in the hinterlands think that people that live inside the Beltway are the ones that have the problems."
Andrew Chaikin says in A Man on the Moon that Armstrong kept a low profile but was not a recluse, citing his participation in interviews, advertisements for Chrysler, and hosting a cable television series. Between 1991 and 1993, he hosted First Flights with Neil Armstrong, an aviation history documentary series on A&E. In 2010, Armstrong voiced the character of Dr. Jack Morrow in Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, an animated educational sci-fi adventure film initiated by JPL/NASA through a grant from Jet Propulsion Lab.
Armstrong guarded the use of his name, image, and famous quote. When it was launched in 1981, MTV wanted to use his quote in its station identification, with the American flag replaced with the MTV logo, but he refused the use of his voice and likeness. He sued Hallmark Cards in 1994, when they used his name, and a recording of the "one small step" quote, in a Christmas ornament without his permission. The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which Armstrong donated to Purdue.
For many years, he wrote letters congratulating new Eagle Scouts on their accomplishment, but decided to quit the practice in the 1990s because he felt the letters should be written by people who knew the scout. (In 2003, he received 950 congratulation requests.) This contributed to the myth of his reclusiveness. Armstrong used to autograph everything except first day covers. Around 1993, he found out his signatures were being sold online, and that most of them were forgeries, and stopped giving autographs.
Personal life
Some former astronauts, including Glenn and Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt, sought political careers after leaving NASA. Armstrong was approached by groups from both the Democratic and Republican parties but declined the offers. He supported states' rights and opposed the U.S. acting as the "world's policeman".
When Armstrong applied at a local Methodist church to lead a Boy Scout troop in the late 1950s, he gave his religious affiliation as "deist". His mother later said that his religious views caused her grief and distress in later life, as she was a Christian. Upon his return from the Moon, Armstrong gave a speech in front of the U.S. Congress in which he thanked them for giving him the opportunity to see some of the "grandest views of the Creator". In the early 1980s, he was the subject of a hoax claiming that he converted to Islam after hearing the call to prayer while walking on the Moon. Indonesian singer Suhaemi wrote a song called "Gema Suara Adzan di Bulan" ("The Resonant Sound of the Call to Prayer on the Moon") which described Armstrong's supposed conversion, and the song was widely discussed by Jakarta news outlets in 1983. Similar hoax stories were seen in Egypt and Malaysia. In March 1983, the U.S. State Department responded by issuing a message to embassies and consulates in Muslim countries saying that Armstrong had not converted to Islam. The hoax surfaced occasionally for the next three decades. Part of the confusion arose from the similarity between the names of the country of Lebanon, which has a majority Muslim population, and Armstrong's longtime residence in Lebanon, Ohio.
In 1972, Armstrong visited the Scottish town of Langholm, the traditional seat of Clan Armstrong. He was made the first freeman of the burgh, and happily declared the town his home. To entertain the crowd, the Justice of the Peace read from an unrepealed archaic 400-year-old law that required him to hang any Armstrong found in the town.
Armstrong flew light aircraft for pleasure. He enjoyed gliders and before the Moon flight had earned a gold badge with two diamonds from the International Gliding Commission. He continued to fly engineless aircraft well into his 70s.
While working on his farm in November 1978, Armstrong jumped off the back of his grain truck and caught his wedding ring in its wheel, tearing the tip off his left ring finger. He collected the severed tip, packed it in ice, and had surgeons reattach it at a nearby hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. In February 1991, he suffered a mild heart attack while skiing with friends at Aspen, Colorado.
Armstrong and his first wife, Janet, separated in 1990 and divorced in 1994 after 38 years of marriage. He met his second wife, Carol Held Knight, at a golf tournament in 1992, when they were seated together at breakfast. She said little to Armstrong, but he called her two weeks later to ask what she was doing. She replied that she was cutting down a cherry tree, and he arrived at her house 35 minutes later to help. They were married in Ohio on June 12, 1994, and had a second ceremony at San Ysidro Ranch in California. They lived in Indian Hill, Ohio. Through his marriage to Carol, he was the father-in-law of future New York Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen.
In May 2005, Armstrong became involved in a legal dispute with Mark Sizemore, his barber of 20 years. After cutting Armstrong's hair, Sizemore sold some of it to a collector for $3,000 without Armstrong's knowledge or permission. Armstrong threatened legal action against Sizemore unless he returned the hair or donated the proceeds to a charity of Armstrong's choosing. Sizemore, unable to retrieve the hair, donated the proceeds to charity.
Illness and death
On August 7, 2012, Armstrong underwent bypass surgery at Mercy Faith–Fairfield Hospital in Fairfield, Ohio, to relieve coronary artery disease. Although he was reportedly recovering well, he developed complications and died on August 25. President Barack Obama issued a statement memorializing Armstrong as "among the greatest of American heroes—not just of his time, but of all time", and added that Armstrong had carried the aspirations of the United States' citizens and had delivered "a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."
Armstrong's family released a statement describing him as a "reluctant American hero [who had] served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut ... While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves. For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."
Buzz Aldrin called Armstrong "a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew", and said he was disappointed that they would not be able to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing together in 2019. Michael Collins said, "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly." NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, "As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own".
A tribute was held for Armstrong on September 13, at Washington National Cathedral, whose Space Window depicts the Apollo 11 mission and holds a sliver of Moon rock amid its stained-glass panels. In attendance were Armstrong's Apollo 11 crewmates, Collins and Aldrin; Gene Cernan, the Apollo 17 mission commander and last man to walk on the Moon; and former senator and astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. In his eulogy, Charles Bolden praised Armstrong's "courage, grace, and humility". Cernan recalled Armstrong's low-fuel approach to the Moon: "When the gauge says empty, we all know there's a gallon or two left in the tank!" Diana Krall sang the song "Fly Me to the Moon". Collins led prayers. David Scott spoke, possibly for the first time, about an incident during their Gemini 8 mission: minutes before the hatch was to be sealed, a small chip of dried glue fell into the latch of his harness and prevented it from being buckled, threatening to abort the mission. Armstrong then called on Conrad to solve the problem, which he did, and the mission proceeded. "That happened because Neil Armstrong was a team player—he always worked on behalf of the team." Congressman Bill Johnson from Armstrong's home state of Ohio led calls for President Barack Obama to authorize a state funeral in Washington D.C. Throughout his lifetime, Armstrong shunned publicity and rarely gave interviews. Mindful that Armstrong would have objected to a state funeral, his family opted to have a private funeral in Cincinnati. On September 14, Armstrong's cremated remains were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean from the USS Philippine Sea. Flags were flown at half-staff on the day of Armstrong's funeral.
In July 2019, after observations of the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, The New York Times reported on details of a medical malpractice suit Armstrong's family had filed against Mercy Health–Fairfield Hospital, where he died. When Armstrong appeared to be recovering from his bypass surgery, nurses removed the wires connected to his temporary pacemaker. He began to bleed internally and his blood pressure dropped. Doctors took him to the hospital's catheterization laboratory, and only later began operating. Two of the three physicians who reviewed the medical files during the lawsuit called this a serious error, saying surgery should have begun immediately; experts the Times talked to, while qualifying their judgement by noting that they were unable to review the specific records in the case, said that taking a patient directly to the operating room under those circumstances generally gave them the highest chance of survival.
The family ultimately settled for $6 million in 2014. Letters included with the 93 pages of documents sent to the Times by an unknown person show that his sons intimated to the hospital, through their lawyers, that they might discuss what happened to their father publicly at the 45th anniversary observances in 2014. The hospital, fearing the bad publicity that would result from being accused of negligently causing the death of a revered figure such as Armstrong, agreed to pay as long as the family never spoke about the suit or the settlement. Armstrong's wife, Carol, was not a party to the lawsuit. She reportedly felt that her husband would have been opposed to taking legal action.
Legacy
When Pete Conrad of Apollo 12 became the third man to walk on the Moon, on November 19, 1969, his first words referenced Armstrong. The shorter of the two, when Conrad stepped from the LM onto the surface he proclaimed "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."
Armstrong received many honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (with distinction) from President Nixon, the Cullum Geographical Medal from the American Geographical Society, and the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautic Association (1969); the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy (1970); the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy (1971); the Congressional Space Medal of Honor from President Jimmy Carter (1978); the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy from the National Aeronautic Association (2001); and a Congressional Gold Medal (2011).
Armstrong was elected as member into the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 for contributions to aerospace engineering, scientific knowledge, and exploration of the universe as an experimental test pilot and astronaut. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2001.
Armstrong and his Apollo 11 crewmates were the 1999 recipients of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution. On April 18, 2006, he received NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award. The Space Foundation named Armstrong as a recipient of its 2013 General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award. Armstrong was also inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor, the International Space Hall of Fame, National Aviation Hall of Fame, and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame. He was awarded his Naval Astronaut badge in a ceremony on board the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower on March 10, 2010, in a ceremony attended by Lovell and Cernan.
The lunar crater Armstrong, 31 miles (50 km) from the Apollo 11 landing site, and asteroid 6469 Armstrong are named in his honor. There are more than a dozen elementary, middle and high schools named for Armstrong in the United States, and many places around the world have streets, buildings, schools, and other places named for him and/or Apollo. The Armstrong Air and Space Museum, in Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, and the Neil Armstrong Airport in New Knoxville, Ohio, are named after him. The mineral armstrongite is named after him, and the mineral armalcolite is named, in part, after him.
In October 2004 Purdue University named its new engineering building Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering; the building was dedicated on October 27, 2007, during a ceremony at which Armstrong was joined by fourteen other Purdue astronauts. The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center was renamed the NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center in 2014. In September 2012, the U.S. Navy named the first Armstrong-class vessel RV Neil Armstrong. Delivered to the Navy on September 23, 2015, it is a modern oceanographic research platform supporting a wide range of activities by academic groups. In 2019, the College of Engineering at Purdue University celebrated the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's walk on the Moon by launching the Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Fellows Program, which brings highly accomplished scholars and practitioners to the college to catalyze collaborations with faculty and students.
Armstrong's authorized biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, was published in 2005. For many years, he turned down biography offers from authors such as Stephen Ambrose and James A. Michener but agreed to work with James R. Hansen after reading one of Hansen's other biographies. He recalled his initial concerns about the Apollo 11 mission, when he had believed there was only a 50% chance of landing on the Moon. "I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful". A film adaptation of the book, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Damien Chazelle, was released in October 2018.
In July 2018, Armstrong's sons put his collection of memorabilia up for sale, including his Boy Scout cap, and various flags and medals flown on his space missions. A series of auctions held November 1–3, 2018, realized $5,276,320 (~$6.31 million in 2023). As of July 2019, the auction sales totaled $16.7 million. Two fragments of wood from the propeller and four pieces of fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer that Armstrong took to the Moon fetched between $112,500 and $275,000 each. Armstrong's wife, Carol, has not put any of his memorabilia up for sale.
Armstrong donated his papers to Purdue. Along with posthumous donations by his widow Carol, the collection consists of over 450 boxes of material. In May 2019, she donated two 25-by-24-inch (640 by 610 mm) pieces of fabric from the Wright Flyer, along with his correspondence related to them.
In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Armstrong was ranked as the number-one most popular space hero; and in 2013, Flying magazine ranked him number one on its list of 51 Heroes of Aviation. The press often asked Armstrong for his views on the future of spaceflight. In 2005, he said that a human mission to Mars would be easier than the lunar challenge of the 1960s. In 2010, he made a rare public criticism of the decision to cancel the Ares I launch vehicle and the Constellation Moon landing program. In an open letter also signed by fellow Apollo veterans Lovell and Cernan, he said, "For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature". On November 18, 2010, aged 80, he said in a speech during the Science & Technology Summit in the Hague, Netherlands, that he would offer his services as commander on a mission to Mars if he were asked.
The planetarium at Altoona Area High School in Altoona, Pennsylvania is named after Armstrong and is home to a Space Race museum. A campsite in Camp Sandy Beach at Yawgoog Scout Reservation in Rockville, Rhode Island, is named in his honor, a nod to his Scouting career.
Armstrong was named the class exemplar for the Class of 2019 at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
See also
Apollo 11 in popular culture
Cueva de los Tayos
History of aviation
List of spaceflight records
Society of Experimental Test Pilots
The Astronaut Monument
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Neil Armstrong Commemorative Website – University of Cincinnati
Neil Armstrong collected news and commentary. The New York Times.
Neil Armstrong collected news and commentary at The Guardian
Appearances on C-SPAN |
Grumman_F9F_Panther | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F9F_Panther | [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F9F_Panther"
] | The Grumman F9F Panther is an early carrier-based jet fighter designed and produced by the American aircraft manufacturer Grumman. It was the first jet-powered fighter aircraft to see air-to-air combat with the United States Navy as well as being Grumman’s first jet fighter.
Development of the Panther commenced in the final months of World War II to harness the recent innovation of the jet engine. Grumman designed a single-engined, straight-winged day fighter that was armed with four 20 mm (0.79 in) cannons and could also carry a wide assortment of air-to-ground munitions. Production aircraft were typically powered by a single Allison J33 or Pratt & Whitney J48-P-2 turbojet engine. On 21 November 1947, the prototype performed its maiden flight, powered by an imported Rolls-Royce Nene engine. During September 1949, the F9F was cleared for flight from aircraft carriers.
The Panther was used extensively by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps in the Korean War. On 3 July 1950, a F9F-3 recorded the first U.S. Navy air victory of the conflict, having shot down a propeller-powered Yak-9. In the Korean theatre, Panther pilots cumulatively claimed the shooting down of seven Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s. During 1956, the type was withdrawn from front-line combat service, but remained in secondary roles, such as for training and with U.S. Naval Air Reserve and U.S. Marine Air Reserve units, until 1958. The Panther was also the first jet aircraft used by the Blue Angels aerobatics demonstration team, being flown in this capacity from 1949 through to late 1954. Future astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn both flew the F9F extensively during the Korean War.
While Australia was interested in the Panther during the late 1940s, the nation ultimately opted for the Gloster Meteor F.8 and the CAC Sabre instead. The aircraft's only export customer was Argentina, where it became the first jet aircraft to be operated by the Argentine Naval Aviation. It was operated mainly from land, as the catapults of the aircraft carrier ARA Independencia lacked sufficient power to readily launch the F9F. Several Panthers participated in the 1963 Argentine Navy Revolt, firing upon Argentine Army forces sent to quell the revolt. During 1969, it was withdrawn from Argentine service due to a lack of spare parts. Grumman would develop the F9F design in response to U.S. Navy interest, producing the swept wing Grumman F-9 Cougar.
Design and development
Background
The origins of the Panther can be traced back to development studies performed by Grumman into jet-powered fighter aircraft near the end of World War II. The company was keen to capitalise on the emergence of the first practical jet engines by integrating them into a new aircraft design. This design, which was internally designated G-75, was submitted to a United States Navy competition that sought a jet-powered night fighter to equip its aircraft carriers with. However, on 3 April 1946, it was announced that the Douglas F3D Skyknight, a competing two-seat aircraft powered by four Westinghouse J30 turbojets, had been selected. On 11 April 1946, the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) issued a development contract to Grumman to produce a pair of G-75 prototypes, which were given the Navy designation XF9F-1, in case development of the Skyknight encountered severe problems.
Shortly thereafter, Grumman recognised that the G-75 did not have much potential for either performance or growth; the company had already undertaken work on a completely different single-engine day fighter, the G-79. In a bureaucratic maneuver, BuAer opted not to cancel the G-75 contract, but instead changed the wording to include three prototypes of the entirely different G-79. It was this design that became the Panther.
At that time, the few American engines that were available for use, such as the Allison J33 and Westinghouse J34, were not considered to be sufficiently reliable; thus, the Navy specified the imported Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet, which was also more powerful, at 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) of thrust. Production aircraft were to also be powered by the Nene, built under license by Pratt & Whitney as the J42. Since there was insufficient space within the wings and fuselage to provide sufficient fuel for the thirsty jet engine, the design team opted to add permanently mounted wingtip fuel tanks, which had incidental advantage of improving the fighter's rate of roll. The wings featured another innovation in the form of leading edge flaps that generated additional lift while landing; speed brakes were also present on the underside of the fuselage.
Flight testing
On 21 November 1947, the prototype Panther conducted its maiden flight, piloted by test pilot Corky Meyer. It was followed by the second prototype only five days later. Initial issues with directional and longitudinal stability were encountered, but were quickly rectified. During one early land-based arresting gear test, the detachable rear section of the aircraft unintentionally came off; remedial changes were made to avoid any future repetition.
During May 1949, carrier suitability trails commenced. In September 1949, the F9F was cleared for flight from aircraft carriers. During the development phase, Grumman decided to change the Panther's engine, selecting the Pratt & Whitney J48-P-2, a license built version of the Rolls-Royce RB.44 Tay. The other engine that had been tested was the Allison J33-A-16. The armament was a quartet of 20mm guns, the Navy having already switched to this caliber (as opposed to the USAAF/USAF which continued to use .50 caliber M2/M3 guns). In addition, the Panther was soon armed with underwing air-to-ground rockets and up to 2,000 lb (910 kg) of bombs.
From 1946, interest in developing an aircraft that harnessed the increasingly popular swept wing grew and, following concerns that the Panther was inferior to its MiG opponents over the skies of Korea, Grumman launched work on a conversion project, known as Design 93. This effort resulted in a swept-wing derivative, the F9F Cougar, which retained the Panther's designation number. Later stage development work on the Panther continued, being largely focused on engine improvements, expanding fuel capacity, and the use of alternative munitions.
In 1949, the Panther was considered by the Australian government, as a possible locally-built replacement for the Mustang Mk 23 and De Havilland Vampire then operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The other designs considered initially were an Australian design, the CAC CA-23 (an unconventional, twin-jet all-weather fighter) and the Hawker P.1081. By mid-1950, however, RAAF Mustangs were in action in Korea and seen as highly vulnerable to the MiG-15. An immediately available stop-gap in the shape of the Gloster Meteor F.8 was operated by the RAAF in Korea from July 1951. (After its less-than-satisfactory performance against MiGs, the Meteor was replaced from 1954 by the CAC Sabre – an Australian-built, up-engined variant of the F-86.)
Operational history
US Navy
The Panther was the primary jet fighter and ground-attack aircraft of both the US Navy and USMC during the Korean War. It was the widest used Navy jet fighter of the conflict, cumulatively flying 78,000 sorties. F9F-2s, F9F-3s and F9F-5s, as rugged attack aircraft, were able to sustain operations despite being frequently opposed by intense anti-aircraft fire. The pilots also appreciated the air conditioned cockpit, which made for a welcome change from the humid environment of piston-powered aircraft.
On 3 July 1950, Lieutenant, junior grade Leonard H. Plog, of VF-51, flying an F9F-3 scored the first US Navy air victory of the war by shooting down a propeller-powered Yak-9.
Despite their relatively low speed, Panther pilots also claimed seven Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s, for the loss of two F9Fs. The first MiG-15 was downed on 9 November 1950, by Lieutenant Commander William (Bill) Amen of VF-111 flying an F9F-2B, during a UN Command attack on the Sinuiju bridges, near the mouth of the Yalu River. Two more MiG-15s were downed on 18 November 1950.
On 18 November 1952, the American aircraft carrier USS Oriskany and three other carriers were operating in the Sea of Japan conducting air strikes against the North Korean city of Hoeryong. The group launched four F9F's for a combat patrol near the North Korean border with China. The group's leader suffered mechanical problems and returned to the carrier together with his wingman. Lt Royce Williams of VF-781, flying off USS Oriskany and his wingman continued on the mission. They then identified seven Soviet Naval Aviation Migs heading towards the task force from the Russian mainland. The naval commanders therefore ordered the two F9Fs to position themselves between the Migs and the carrier group.
During this maneuver, four Soviet MiG-15s opened fire, despite the fact that the countries were not at war. Williams opened fire on the tail Mig, which dropped out of formation, and was followed down by Williams' wingman. What followed was a 35-minute dogfight between Williams and six MiG-15s. The Mig 15 was a more capable plane, but Williams nevertheless succeeded in shooting down three more. He ascribed this to both sides doing as they were trained, but the Soviet pilots making mistakes. While heading back to the carriers, Williams was out of ammo, but still had one Mig on his tail. The re-appearance of his wingman on the Mig's tail then scared this one off. By that time Williams's plane was so damaged that he could not turn sideways anymore. Oriskany was therefore aligned with the plane, so he could land. After landing, his Panther was found to have 263 hits by cannon shells or fragments and was beyond repair. It was therefore pushed overboard.
The engagement is little-known for two reasons. The US feared that publication of the incident could increase tensions with the Soviet Union. Another reason was the involvement of the US National Security Agency (NSA) – the existence of which was then top secret – in planning the mission; the MiGs were intercepted as a result of intelligence provided by the NSA. The four MiGs that were shot down were flown by Soviet Naval Aviation pilots: Russian sources confirmed Williams' claims, 40 years later, stating the pilots lost were Captains Belyakov and Vandalov, and Lieutenants Pakhomkin and Tarshinov.
As the conflict progressed, Panthers became primarily tasked with ground attack missions. Attacks upon hostile anti-aircraft equipment were commonly conducted. This was a risky mission type, with numerous Panthers being damaged or even lost to fire from the same ground batteries that they were seeking to neutralize. Furthermore, the danger posed by these systems increased over time as more capable AA apparatus was supplied to the North Korean force. Panthers also routinely undertook aerial reconnaissance missions over Korea. Starting in 1952, the Panther began to be supplemented by the newer Cougar derivative in the theatre.
Future astronaut Neil Armstrong flew the F9F extensively during the Korean conflict, although he ejected from one of the aircraft after it was brought down by a wire strung across a valley in 1951. Future astronaut John Glenn and Boston Red Sox all-star baseball player Ted Williams also flew the F9F as Marine Corps pilots.
During 1956, the Panther was withdrawn from frontline combat service, having been displaced by new fighter aircraft, including its swept-wing Cougar derivative. However, the type remained active in secondary roles, such as for training and with U.S. Naval Air Reserve and U.S. Marine Air Reserve units, until 1958. The Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration team used the Panther for four years, beginning in 1951. The Panther was the Blue Angels' first jet. Some Panthers continued to serve in small numbers into the 1960s. From September 1962, surviving operational Panthers were designated F-9 within the new combined US tri-service designation system.
Argentine Navy
The only foreign buyer of the Panther was the Argentine Naval Aviation, which purchased 28 ex-USN F9F-2B aircraft during 1957; the first 10 arrived in 1958. Only 24 aircraft were put in service, as the remainder were used as spares. The first flight of an Argentine Panther was in December 1958, and the last aircraft entered into service during January 1961.
The catapult on the then only Argentine carrier, ARA Independencia, was not powerful enough to launch the F9F, so the aircraft were land-based. However, in July 1963, a Panther (serial 0453/3-A-119) landed on Independencia as part of trials, the first jet to land on an Argentine aircraft carrier; it was not then catapult-launched, but off-loaded by crane when the ship returned to port.
Argentine Navy F9F-2 Panthers were engaged in combat during the 1963 Argentine Navy Revolt. Several rebel-controlled aircraft flew bombing and strafing runs against a column of the Army 8th Tank Regiment which was advancing on the rebelling Punta Indio Naval Air Base. The attack destroyed several M4 Sherman tanks while one F9F Panther was shot down.
The Argentine Panthers were involved in the general mobilization during the 1965 border clash between Argentina and Chile, but no combat occurred. The type was removed from service during 1969 due to a lack of available spare parts, the service opted to replace them with Douglas A-4Q Skyhawks.
The Argentine Navy also operated the F-9 Cougar trainer version.
Variants
XF9F-2
Prototypes, two built
F9F-2
First production version, powered by Pratt & Whitney J42 engine, 567 built.
F9F-2B
Version fitted with underwing racks for bombs and rockets. As all F9F-2s were brought up to this standard, the B designation was dropped.
F9F-2P
Unarmed photo-reconnaissance version used in Korea, 36 built.
XF9F-3
Prototype for the F9F-3, one built.
F9F-3
Allison J33 powered version produced as insurance against the failure of the J42, with all converted to the J42 later; redesignated F-9B in 1962, 54 built.
XF9F-4
Prototypes used in the development of the F9F-4, two built.
F9F-4
Version with longer fuselage with greater fuel load and powered by J33 engine. Most re-engined with J42s. F9F-4s were the first aircraft to successfully employ pressurized bleed air, tapped from the engine's compressor stages, and blown across the surface of the slot flaps, simulating a higher airspeed across the control surface, and thus achieving a decrease in stalling speed of 9 kn (17 km/h) for takeoff and 7 kn (13 km/h) on power approach for landing; re-designated F-9C in 1962, 109 ordered, all completed as F9F-5s.
F9F-5
Variant of F9F-4, but powered by Pratt & Whitney J48 engine, 616 built. Re-designated F-9D in 1962.
F9F-5P
Unarmed photo-reconnaissance version, with longer nose; redesignated RF-9D in 1962, 36 built.
F9F-5K
After the F9F Panther was withdrawn from operational service, a number of F9F-5s were converted into unmanned target drone aircraft; redesignated QF-9D in 1962.
F9F-5KD
Radio controlled drone director conversions for F9F-5K drones; redesignated DF-9E in 1962.
Operators
Argentina
Argentine Navy - Argentine Naval Aviation
United States
United States Navy
United States Marine Corps
Surviving aircraft
Argentina
On display
F9F-2B
0421/3-A-106 (Argentine Navy) - Gate guardian at Puerto Belgrano Naval Base (Base Naval Puerto Belgrano - BNPB) at Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
0425/3-A-113 (Argentine Navy) - Being restored at Argentine Naval Aviation Museum (es:Museo de la Aviación Naval Argentina - MUAN) at Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
0452/3-A-111 (Argentine Navy) - Gate guardian at Punta Indio Naval Air Base (Base Aeronaval Punta Indio - BAPI) near La Plata, Argentina.
0453/3-A-118 (Argentine Navy) - Displayed at National Naval Museum (es:Museo Naval de la Nación) at Tigre, Argentina.
United States
Airworthy
F9F-2B
123078 - Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Addison, Texas. Removed from public display when the museum indefinitely closed on 1 January 2024. To be moved to North Texas Regional Airport in Denison, Texas.
On display
F9F-2
123050 - National Naval Aviation Museum at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.
123557 - VFW Post 1621 in Janesville, Wisconsin.
123612 - NAS Oceana Air Park, Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia.
123652 - Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California.
125183 - Pima Air & Space Museum, adjacent to Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona.
127120 - Wings of Freedom Aviation Museum at the former NAS JRB Willow Grove in Horsham, Pennsylvania.
F9F-2B
123526 - National Museum of the Marine Corps, adjacent to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Triangle, Virginia.
F9F-4
125180 - Lion's Park in Costa Mesa, California.
F9F-5
bureau number unknown (incorrectly marked as 141136) - USS Midway Museum in San Diego, California
125295 - Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum at Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville, Florida.
125992 - Aviation Heritage Park in Bowling Green, KY.
126226 - Combat Air Museum adjacent to Forbes Air National Guard Base at Topeka Regional Airport / Forbes Field (former Forbes AFB) in Topeka, Kansas.
126275 - Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama.
F9F-5P
125316 - Palm Springs Air Museum, Palm Springs, California.
126277 - Planes of Fame Air Museum, Chino, California.
Under restoration or in storage
F9F-2
123054 - under restoration at Yanks Air Museum in Chino, California.
123092 - in storage for restoration at USS John F. Kennedy Museum in North Kingston, Rhode Island.
123420 - in storage at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida.
F9F-5
125467 - in storage by private owner in Bulverde, Texas.
Specifications (F9F-5 Panther)
Data from United States Navy Aircraft since 1911General characteristics
Crew: 1
Length: 38 ft 10 in (11.84 m)
Wingspan: 38 ft 0 in (11.58 m)
Height: 12 ft 3 in (3.73 m)
Wing area: 250 sq ft (23 m2)
Empty weight: 10,147 lb (4,603 kg)
Gross weight: 18,721 lb (8,492 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × Pratt & Whitney J48-P-6A turbojet, 6,250 lbf (27.8 kN) thrust
Performance
Maximum speed: 503 kn (579 mph, 932 km/h) at 5,000 ft (1,500 m)
Cruise speed: 418 kn (481 mph, 774 km/h)
Range: 1,100 nmi (1,300 mi, 2,100 km)
Service ceiling: 42,800 ft (13,000 m)
Rate of climb: 5,090 ft/min (25.9 m/s)
Armament
Guns: 4 × 20 mm (0.79 in) AN/M3 cannon, 760 rounds total
Hardpoints: 8 with a capacity of 3,465 lb (1,572 kg)
Notable appearances in media
The F9F Panther was featured in the 1954 Korean War film The Bridges at Toko-Ri starring William Holden, Grace Kelly, Mickey Rooney and Fredric March, and in Men of the Fighting Lady starring Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon and Keenan Wynn.
Stock footage of an F9F piloted by George Chamberlain Duncan crashing into the fantail of the USS Midway (CV-41) during a 1951 test flight appears in several Hollywood films.
In 1954's Men of the Fighting Lady, the crash is portrayed as the death of Lieutenant Commander Ted Dodson (played by Keenan Wynn).
In the 1976 film Midway, the F9F footage stands in for an SB2C Helldiver crash-landing.
In the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October, the F9F footage is used to depict the crash-landing of an F-14A Tomcat that had collided with a Soviet aircraft onto the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), reenacting an incident from Tom Clancy's original novel.
See also
Related development
Grumman F-9 Cougar
Grumman XF10F Jaguar
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era
Hawker Sea Hawk
McDonnell F2H Banshee
Related lists
List of fighter aircraft
List of military aircraft of the United States
List of United States Navy aircraft designations (pre-1962)
References
Citations
Bibliography
Boyne, Walter J. (2002). Air Warfare: an International Encyclopedia: A-L. ABC-CLIO.
Danby, Peter A. (1977). United States Navy Serials 1941 to 1976. Liverpool, United Kingdom: Merseyside Aviation Society. ISBN 0-902420-17-8.
Davies, Peter E. (2022). F9F Panther Vs Communist AAA: Korea 1950–53. Bloomberg. ISBN 978-1-472-85064-5.
Francillon, René J. (1989). Grumman Aircraft since 1929. London, United Kingdom: Putnam. ISBN 0-85177-835-6.
Grossnick, Roy; Armstrong, William J. (1997). United States Naval Aviation, 1910-1995. Annapolis, Maryland, United Kingdom: Naval Historical Center. ISBN 0-16-049124-X.
Hansen, James R. (2012). First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-476-72781-3.}
Hardy, Michael John (1987). Sea, Sky and Stars: An Illustrated History of Grumman Aircraft. London, United States: Arms & Armour Press. ISBN 978-0853688327.
Kott, Richard C. (2007). "Attack from the Sky". In Marolda, Edward (ed.). The United States Navy in the Korean War. Annapolis, Maryland, United States: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1591144878.
Meyer, Corwin H. (October 2002). "Grumman Panther". Flight Journal.
Sears, David (2010). Such Men As These. ReadHowYouWant.com. ISBN 978-1-458-76026-5.
Swanborough, Gordon; Bowers, Peter M. (1976). United States Navy Aircraft since 1911. London, United Kingdom: Putnam. ISBN 0-370-10054-9.
Taylor, John W.R. (1969). "Grumman F9F Cougar". Combat Aircraft of the World from 1909 to the Present. New York, United States: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0-425-03633-2.
Thomason, Tommy H. (2008). U.S. Naval Air Superiority: Development of Shipborne Jet Fighters, 1943-1962. Specialty Press. ISBN 978-1-580-07110-9.
Winchester, Jim, ed. (2006). "Grumman F9F Panther". Military Aircraft of the Cold War (The Aviation Factfile). London, United Kingdom: Grange Books plc. ISBN 1-84013-929-3.
Online sources
Cicalesi, Juan Carlos; Rivas, Santiago (22 December 2008). "Grumman Panther en Argentina" [Grumman Panther in Argentina]. Instituto Aeronaval - Articulos - Historia (in Spanish). Instituto Aeronaval. Archived from the original on 29 October 2014. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
Mey, Carlos (ed.). "CAZA BOMBARDEROS DE LA AVIACION NAVAL - Grumman F9F-2 Panther" [Naval Aviation Fighter-bombers - Grumman F9F-2 Panther]. Histarmar - Historia y Arqueologia Marítima (in Spanish). FUNDACION HISTARMAR. Retrieved 29 August 2014.
Further reading
Bedford, Alan (September–October 1999). "Early American Carrier Jets: Evolving Jet Operations with the US Fleet, Part Three". Air Enthusiast (83): 62–67. ISSN 0143-5450.
Meyer, Corwin (2003). GRUMMAN F9F PANTHER PART ONE – Development, Testing, Structures. Naval Fighters. Vol. Nº59 (First ed.). California, United States: Ginter Books. ISBN 0-942612-59-0. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
Ginter, Steve (2003). GRUMMAN F9F PANTHER PART TWO – USMC Panthers (Includes Blue Angels, Reserves and Argentina). Naval Fighters. Vol. Nº60 (First ed.). California, United States: Ginter Books. ISBN 0-942612-60-4. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
Ginter, Steve (2003). GRUMMAN F9F PANTHER PART 3 – NAVY Panthers (Korea and Beyond). Naval Fighters. Vol. Nº61 (First ed.). California, United States: Ginter Books. ISBN 0-942612-61-2. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
Núñez Padin, Jorge Felix (2010). Núñez Padin, Jorge Felix (ed.). Grumman F9F Panther & Cougar. Serie Aeronaval (in Spanish). Vol. 29. Bahía Blanca, Argentina: Fuerzas Aeronavales. ISBN 978-987-1682-03-4. Archived from the original on 6 January 2015. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
Rivas, Santiago (2023). "Argentina's Big Cats: The Grumman F9F-2 Panther & F9F-8T Cougar in Argentinian Navy Service". The Aviation Historian (43): 104–112. ISSN 2051-1930.
Schnitzer, George (2007). Panthers Over Korea. Baltimore, Maryland, United States: Publish America. ISBN 978-1-4241-7942-8.
Sullivan, Jim (1982). F9F Panther/Cougar in action. Carrollton, Texas, United States: Squadron/Signal Publications. ISBN 978-0-89747-127-5.
External links
U.S. Navy Naval Aviation News article on the F9F Panther Archived 9 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
The Grumman F9F Panther/Cougar at Airvectors
July 23, 1951 F9F Panther crash on USS Midway |
John_Glenn | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn | [
351
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn"
] | John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American Marine Corps aviator, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the third American in space and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Following his retirement from NASA, he served from 1974 to 1999 as a U.S. Senator from Ohio; in 1998, he flew into space again at the age of 77.
Before joining NASA, Glenn was a distinguished fighter pilot in World War II, the Chinese Civil War, and the Korean War. He shot down three MiG-15s and was awarded six Distinguished Flying Crosses and eighteen Air Medals. In 1957, he made the first supersonic transcontinental flight across the United States. His on-board camera took the first continuous, panoramic photograph of the United States.
Glenn was one of the Mercury Seven military test pilots selected in 1959 by NASA as the nation's first astronauts. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission, becoming the first American to orbit the Earth. He was the third American, and the fifth person, to be in space. He received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
Glenn resigned from NASA in January 1964. A member of the Democratic Party, Glenn was first elected to the Senate in 1974 and served for 24 years until January 1999. In 1998, at age 77, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission, making him the oldest person to enter Earth orbit, the only person to fly in both the Mercury and the Space Shuttle programs, and the first Member of Congress to visit space since Congressman Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) in 1986. Glenn, both the oldest and the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven, died at the age of 95 on December 8, 2016.
Early life and education
John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, the son of John Herschel Glenn Sr. (1895–1966), who worked for a plumbing firm, and Clara Teresa Glenn (née Sproat; 1897–1971), a teacher. His parents had married shortly before John Sr., a member of the American Expeditionary Force, left for the Western Front during World War I. The family moved to New Concord, Ohio, soon after his birth, and his father started his own business, the Glenn Plumbing Company. Glenn Jr. was only a toddler when he met Anna Margaret (Annie) Castor, whom he would later marry. The two would not be able to recall a time when they did not know each other. He first flew in an airplane with his father when he was eight years old. He became fascinated by flight and built model airplanes from balsa wood kits. Along with his adopted sister Jean, he attended New Concord Elementary School. He washed cars and sold rhubarb to earn money to buy a bicycle, after which he took a job delivering The Columbus Dispatch newspaper. He was a member of the Ohio Rangers, an organization similar to the Cub Scouts. His boyhood home in New Concord has been restored as a historic house museum and education center.
Glenn attended New Concord High School, where he played on the varsity football team as a center and linebacker. He also made the varsity basketball and tennis teams and was involved with Hi-Y, a junior branch of the YMCA. After graduating in 1939, Glenn entered Muskingum College (now Muskingum University), where he studied chemistry, joined the Stag Club fraternity, and played on the football team. Annie majored in music with minors in secretarial studies and physical education and competed on the swimming and volleyball teams, graduating in 1942. Glenn earned a private pilot license and a physics course credit for free through the Civilian Pilot Training Program in 1941. He did not complete his senior year in residence or take a proficiency exam, both required by the school for its Bachelor of Science degree.
Military career
World War II
When the United States entered World War II, Glenn quit college to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was not called to duty by the Army and enlisted as a U.S. Navy aviation cadet in March 1942. Glenn attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City for pre-flight training and made his first solo flight in a military aircraft at Naval Air Station Olathe in Kansas, where he went for primary training. During advanced training at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas, he accepted an offer to transfer to the U.S. Marine Corps. Having completed his flight training in March 1943, Glenn was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Glenn married Annie in a Presbyterian ceremony at College Drive Church in New Concord on April 6, 1943. After advanced training at Camp Kearny, California, he was assigned to Marine Squadron VMJ-353, which flew R4D transport planes from there.
The fighter squadron VMO-155 was also at Camp Kearny flying the Grumman F4F Wildcat. Glenn approached the squadron's commander, Major J. P. Haines, who suggested that he could put in for a transfer. This was approved, and Glenn was posted to VMO-155 on July 2, 1943, two days before the squadron moved to Marine Corps Air Station El Centro in California. The Wildcat was obsolete by this time, and VMO-155 re-equipped with the F4U Corsair in September 1943. He was promoted to first lieutenant in October 1943, and shipped out to Hawaii in January 1944. VMO-155 became part of the garrison on Midway Atoll on February 21, then moved to the Marshall Islands in June 1944 and flew 57 combat missions in the area. He received two Distinguished Flying Crosses and ten Air Medals.
At the end of his one-year tour of duty in February 1945, Glenn was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina, then to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. He was promoted to captain in July 1945 and ordered back to Cherry Point. There, he joined VMF-913, another Corsair squadron, and learned that he had qualified for a regular commission. In March 1946, he was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in southern California. He volunteered for service with the occupation in North China, believing it would be a short tour. He joined VMF-218 (another Corsair squadron), which was based at Nanyuan Field near Beijing, in December 1946, and flew patrol missions until VMF-218 was transferred to Guam in March 1947.
In December 1948, Glenn was re-posted to NAS Corpus Christi as a student at the Naval School of All-Weather Flight before becoming a flight instructor. In July 1951, he traveled to the Amphibious Warfare School at Marine Corps Base Quantico in northern Virginia for a six-month course. He then joined the staff of the commandant of the Marine Corps Schools. He maintained his proficiency (and flight pay) by flying on weekends and was only allowed four hours of flying time per month. He was promoted to major in July 1952. Glenn received the World War II Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (with one star), Navy Occupation Service Medal (with Asia clasp), and the China Service Medal for his efforts.
Korean War
Glenn moved his family back to New Concord during a short period of leave, and after two and a half months of jet training at Cherry Point, was ordered to South Korea in October 1952, late in the Korean War. Before he set out for Korea in February 1953, he applied to fly the F-86 Sabre jet fighter-interceptor through an inter-service exchange position with the U.S. Air Force (USAF). In preparation, he arranged with Colonel Leon W. Gray to check out the F-86 at Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts. Glenn reported to K-3, an airbase in South Korea, on February 3, 1953, and was assigned to be the operations officer for VMF-311, one of two Marine fighter squadrons there while he waited for the exchange assignment to go through. VMF-311 was equipped with the F9F Panther jet fighter-bomber. Glenn's first mission was a reconnaissance flight on February 26. He flew 63 combat missions in Korea with VMF-311 and was nicknamed "Magnet Ass" because of the number of flak hits he took on low-level close air support missions; twice, he returned to base with over 250 holes in his plane. He flew for a time with Marine reservist Ted Williams (then in the midst of a Hall of Fame baseball career with the Boston Red Sox) as his wingman. Williams later said about Glenn "Absolutely fearless. The best I ever saw. It was an honor to fly with him." Glenn also flew with future major general Ralph H. Spanjer.
In June 1953, Glenn reported for duty with the USAF's 25th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron and flew 27 combat missions in the F-86, a much faster aircraft than the F9F Panther, patrolling MiG Alley. Combat with a MiG-15, which was faster and better armed still, was regarded as a rite of passage for a fighter pilot. On the Air Force buses that ferried the pilots out to the airfields before dawn, pilots who had engaged a MiG could sit while those who had not had to stand. Glenn later wrote, "Since the days of the Lafayette Escadrille during World War I, pilots have viewed air-to-air combat as the ultimate test not only of their machines but of their own personal determination and flying skills. I was no exception." He hoped to become the second Marine jet flying ace after John F. Bolt. Glenn's USAF squadron mates painted "MiG Mad Marine" on his aircraft when he complained about there not being any MIGs to shoot at. He shot down his first MiG in a dogfight on July 12, 1953, downed a second one on July 19, and a third on July 22 when four Sabres shot down three MiGs. These were the final air victories of the war, which ended with an armistice five days later. For his service in Korea, Glenn received two more Distinguished Flying Crosses and eight more Air Medals. Glenn also received the Korean Service Medal (with two campaign stars), United Nations Korea Medal, Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal, National Defense Service Medal (with one star), and the Korean War Service Medal.
Test pilot
With combat experience as a fighter pilot, Glenn applied for training as a test pilot while still in Korea. He reported to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River in Maryland in January 1954 and graduated in July. At Patuxent River, future Medal of Honor recipient James Stockdale tutored him in physics and math. Glenn's first flight test assignment, testing the FJ-3 Fury, nearly killed him when its cockpit depressurized and its oxygen system failed. He also tested the armament of aircraft such as the Vought F7U Cutlass and F8U Crusader. From November 1956 to April 1959, he was assigned to the Fighter Design Branch of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington, D.C., and attended the University of Maryland.
On July 16, 1957, Glenn made the first supersonic transcontinental flight. Disliking his Bureau of Aeronautics desk job, he devised the flight as both a way to keep flying and publicly demonstrate the F8U Crusader. At that time, the transcontinental speed record, held by an Air Force Republic F-84 Thunderjet, was 3 hours 45 minutes and Glenn calculated that the F8U Crusader could do it faster. Because its 586-mile-per-hour (943 km/h) air speed was faster than that of a .45 caliber bullet, Glenn called the flight Project Bullet. He flew an F8U Crusader 2,445 miles (3,935 km) from Los Alamitos, California, to Floyd Bennett Field in New York City in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8.3 seconds, averaging supersonic speed despite three in-flight refuelings when speeds dropped below 300 miles per hour (480 km/h). His on-board camera took the first continuous, transcontinental panoramic photograph of the United States. He received his fifth Distinguished Flying Cross for this mission, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel on April 1, 1959. The cross-country flight made Glenn a minor celebrity. A profile appeared in The New York Times, and he appeared on the television show Name That Tune. Glenn now had nearly 9,000 hours of flying time, including about 3,000 hours in jets, but knew that at the age of 36, he was now likely too old to continue to fly.
NASA career
Selection
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. This damaged American confidence in its technological superiority, creating a wave of anxiety known as the Sputnik crisis. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched the Space Race. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established on October 1, 1958, as a civilian agency to develop space technology. One of its first initiatives was announced on December 17, 1958. This was Project Mercury, which aimed to launch a man into Earth orbit, return him safely to the Earth, and evaluate his capabilities in space.
His Bureau of Aeronautics job gave Glenn access to new spaceflight news, such as the X-15 rocket plane. While on duty at Patuxent and in Washington, Glenn read everything he could find about space. His office was asked to send a test pilot to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to make runs on a spaceflight simulator, as part of research by the newly formed NASA into re-entry vehicle shapes. The pilot would also be sent to the Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, and would be subjected to high G-forces in a centrifuge for comparison with data collected in the simulator. His request for the position was granted, and he spent several days at Langley and a week in Johnsville for the testing. As one of the very few pilots to have done such testing, Glenn had become an expert on the subject. NASA asked military-service members to participate in planning the mockup of a spacecraft. Having participated in the research at Langley and Johnsville, he was sent to the McDonnell plant in St. Louis as a service adviser to NASA's spacecraft mockup board. Envisioning himself in the vehicle, Glenn stated that the passenger would have to be able to control the spacecraft. McDonnell engineers told him of the importance of lightening the vehicle as much as possible, so Glenn began exercising to lose the 30 pounds he estimated that he was overweight.
Eisenhower directed NASA to recruit its first astronauts from military test pilots. Of 508 graduates of test pilot schools, 110 matched the minimum standards. Marine Corps pilots were mistakenly omitted at first; two were quickly found, including Glenn. The candidates had to be younger than 40, possess a bachelor's degree or equivalent, and be 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) or less. Only the height requirement was strictly enforced, owing to the size of the Project Mercury spacecraft. This was fortunate for Glenn, who barely met the requirements, as he was near the age cutoff and lacked a science-based degree, but had taken more classes since leaving college than needed for graduation. Glenn was otherwise so outstanding a candidate that Colonel Jake Dill, his commanding officer at test pilot school, visited NASA headquarters to insist that Glenn would be the perfect astronaut.
For an interview with Charles Donlan, associate director of Project Mercury, Glenn brought the results from the centrifuge to show that he had done well on a test that perhaps no other candidate had taken. Donlan also noticed that Glenn stayed late at night to study schematics of the Mercury spacecraft. He was among the 32 of the first 69 candidates that passed the first step of the evaluation and were interested in continuing, sufficient for the astronaut corps NASA wanted. On February 27 a grueling series of physical and psychological tests began at the Lovelace Clinic and the Wright Aerospace Medical Laboratory.
Because of his Bureau of Aeronautics job, Glenn was already participating in Project Mercury; while other candidates were at Wright, on March 17 he and most of those who would choose the astronauts visited the McDonnell plant building the spacecraft to inspect its progress and make changes. While Glenn had not scored the highest on all the tests, a member of the selection committee recalled how he had impressed everyone with his "strength of personality and his dedication". On April 6 Donlan called Glenn to offer him a position at Project Mercury, one of seven candidates chosen as astronauts. Glenn was pleased while Annie was supportive but wary of the danger; during his three years at Patuxent, 12 test pilots had died.
The identities of the seven were announced at a press conference at Dolley Madison House in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1959: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe wrote that Glenn "came out of it as tops among seven very fair-haired boys. He had the hottest record as a pilot, he was the most quotable, the most photogenic, and the lone Marine." The magnitude of the challenge ahead of them was made clear a few weeks later, on the night of May 18, 1959, when the seven astronauts gathered at Cape Canaveral to watch their first rocket launch, of an SM-65D Atlas, which was similar to the one that was to carry them into orbit. A few minutes after liftoff, it exploded spectacularly, lighting up the night sky. The astronauts were stunned. Shepard turned to Glenn and said: "Well, I'm glad they got that out of the way."
Glenn remained an officer in the Marine Corps after his selection, and was assigned to the NASA Space Task Group at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The task force moved to Houston, Texas, in 1962, and became part of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center. A portion of the astronauts' training was in the classroom, where they learned space science. The group also received hands-on training, which included scuba diving and work in simulators. Astronauts secured an additional role in the spaceflight program: to provide pilot input in design. The astronauts divided the various tasks between them. Glenn's specialization was cockpit layout design and control functioning for the Mercury and early Apollo programs. He pressed the other astronauts to set a moral example, living up to the squeaky-clean image of them that had been portrayed by Life magazine, a position that was not popular with the other astronauts.
Friendship 7 flight
Glenn was the backup pilot for Shepard and Grissom on the first two crewed Project Mercury flights, the sub-orbital missions Mercury-Redstone 3 and Mercury-Redstone 4. Glenn was selected for Mercury-Atlas 6, NASA's first crewed orbital flight, with Carpenter as his backup. Putting a man in orbit would achieve one of Project Mercury's most important goals. Shepard and Grissom had named their spacecraft Freedom 7 and Liberty Bell 7. The numeral 7 had originally been the production number of Shepard's spacecraft, but had come to represent the Mercury 7. Glenn named his spacecraft, number 13, Friendship 7, and had the name hand-painted on the side like the one on his F-86 had been. Glenn and Carpenter completed their training for the mission in January 1962, but postponement of the launch allowed them to continue rehearsing. Glenn spent 25 hours and 25 minutes in the spacecraft performing hangar and altitude tests, and 59 hours and 45 minutes in the simulator. He flew 70 simulated missions and reacted to 189 simulated system failures.
After a long series of delays, Friendship 7 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on February 20, 1962. During the countdown, there were eleven delays due to equipment malfunctions and improvements and the weather. During Glenn's first orbit, a failure of the automatic-control system was detected. This forced Glenn to operate in manual mode for the second and third orbits, and for re-entry. Later in the flight, telemetry indicated that the heat shield had loosened. If this reading had been accurate, Glenn and his spacecraft would have burned up on re-entry. After a lengthy discussion on how to deal with this problem, ground controllers decided that leaving the retrorocket pack in place might help keep the loose heat shield in place. They relayed these instructions to Glenn, but did not tell him the heat shield was possibly loose; although confused at this order, he complied. The retrorocket pack broke up into large chunks of flaming debris that flew past the window of his capsule during re-entry; Glenn thought this might have been the heat shield. He told an interviewer, "Fortunately it was the rocket pack—or I wouldn't be answering these questions." After the flight, it was determined that the heat shield was not loose; the sensor was faulty.
Friendship 7 safely splashed down 800 miles (1,290 km) southeast of Cape Canaveral after Glenn's 4-hour, 55-minute flight. He carried a note on the flight which read, "I am a stranger. I come in peace. Take me to your leader and there will be a massive reward for you in eternity" in several languages, in case he landed near southern Pacific Ocean islands. The original procedure called for Glenn to exit through the top hatch, but he was uncomfortably warm and decided that egress through the side hatch would be faster. During the flight, he endured up to 7.8 g of acceleration and traveled 75,679 miles (121,794 km) at about 17,500 miles per hour (28,200 km/h). The flight took Glenn to a maximum altitude (apogee) of about 162 miles (261 km) and a minimum altitude of 100 miles (160 km) (perigee). Unlike the crewed missions of Soviet Union's Vostok programme, Glenn remained within the spacecraft during landing. The flight made Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth, the third American in space, and the fifth human in space. The mission, which Glenn called the "best day of his life", renewed U.S. confidence. His flight occurred while the U.S. and the Soviet Union were embroiled in the Cold War and competing in the Space Race.
As the first American in orbit, Glenn became a national hero, met President John F. Kennedy, and received a ticker-tape parade in New York reminiscent of those honoring Charles Lindbergh and other heroes. He became "so valuable to the nation as an iconic figure", according to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, that Kennedy would not "risk putting him back in space again." Glenn's fame and political potential were noted by the Kennedys, and he became a friend of the Kennedy family. On February 23, 1962, President Kennedy gave him the NASA Distinguished Service Medal for his Friendship 7 flight. Upon receiving the award, Glenn said, "I would like to consider I was a figurehead for this whole big, tremendous effort, and I am very proud of the medal I have on my lapel." Glenn also received his sixth Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts. He was among the first group of astronauts to be awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. The award was presented to him by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. After his 1962 spaceflight, NASA proposed giving Glenn the Medal of Honor, but Glenn did not think that would be appropriate. His military and space awards were stolen from his home in 1978, and he remarked that he would keep this medal in a safe.
Comments about women in space
In 1962, NASA contemplated recruiting women to the astronaut corps via the Mercury 13, but Glenn gave a speech before the House Space Committee detailing his opposition to sending women into space, in which he said: I think this gets back to the way our social order is organized, really. It is just a fact. The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.
In May 1965, after he left NASA, Glenn was quoted in the Miami Herald as saying NASA "offer a serious chance for space women" as scientist astronauts.
NASA had no official policy prohibiting women, but the requirement that astronauts had to be test pilots effectively excluded them. NASA dropped this requirement in 1965, but did not select any women as astronauts until 1978, when six women were selected, none as pilots. In June 1963, the Soviet Union launched a female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, into orbit. After Tereshkova, no women of any nationality flew in space again until August 1982, when the Soviet Union launched pilot-cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya. During the late 1970s, Glenn reportedly supported Space Shuttle Mission Specialist Judith Resnik in her career.
Political campaigning
1964 Senate campaign
At 42, Glenn was the oldest member of the astronaut corps and would likely be close to 50 by the time the lunar landings took place. During Glenn's training, NASA psychologists determined that he was the astronaut best suited for public life. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy suggested to Glenn and his wife in December 1962 that he run for the 1964 United States Senate election in Ohio, challenging aging incumbent Stephen M. Young (1889–1984) in the Democratic primary election. As it seemed unlikely that he would be selected for Project Apollo missions, he resigned from NASA on January 16, 1964, and announced his Democratic Party candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio the following day, becoming the first astronaut-politician. Glenn was still a Marine and had plenty of unused leave time. He elected to use it while he waited for his retirement papers to go through.
To avoid partisanship, NASA quickly closed Glenn's agency office. The New York Times reported that while many Ohioans were skeptical of Glenn's qualifications for the Senate, he could defeat Young in the Democratic primary; whether he could defeat Representative Robert Taft Jr., the likely Republican candidate, in the general election was much less clear. In late February he was hospitalized for a concussion sustained in a fall against a bathtub while attempting to fix a mirror in a hotel room; an inner-ear injury from the accident left him unable to campaign. Both his wife and Scott Carpenter campaigned on his behalf during February and March, but doctors gave Glenn a recovery time of one year. Glenn did not want to win solely because of his astronaut fame, so he dropped out of the race on March 30.
Glenn was still on leave from the Marine Corps, and he withdrew his papers to retire so he could keep a salary and health benefits. Glenn was on the list of potential candidates to be promoted to full colonel, but he notified the Commandant of the Marine Corps of his intention to retire so another Marine could receive the promotion. President Johnson later decided to promote Glenn to full colonel status without taking someone else's slot. He retired as a colonel on January 1, 1965. Glenn was approached by RC Cola to join their public relations department, but Glenn declined it because he wanted to be involved with a business and not just the face of it. The company revised their offer and offered Glenn a vice president of corporate development position, as well as a place on the board of directors. The company later expanded Glenn's role, promoting him to president of Royal Crown International. A Senate seat was open in 1968, and Glenn was asked about his current political aspirations. He said he had no current plan, and "Let's talk about it one of these days." Glenn also said that a 1970 Senate run was a possibility.
In 1973, he and a friend bought a Holiday Inn near Disney World. The success of Disney World expanded to their business, and the pair built three more hotels. One of Glenn's business partners was Henri Landwirth, a Holocaust survivor who became his best friend. He remembered learning about Landwirth's background: "Henri doesn't talk about it much. It was years before he spoke about it with me and then only because of an accident. We were down in Florida during the space program. Everyone was wearing short-sleeved Ban-Lon shirts—everyone but Henri. Then one day I saw Henri at the pool and noticed the number on his arm. I told Henri that if it were me I'd wear that number like a medal with a spotlight on it."
1970 Senate campaign
Glenn remained close to the Kennedy family, and campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy during his 1968 presidential campaign. In 1968, Glenn was in Kennedy's hotel suite when Kennedy heard he had won California. Glenn was supposed to go with him to celebrate but decided not to as there would be many people there. Kennedy went downstairs to make his victory speech and was assassinated. Glenn and Annie went with Kennedy to the hospital, and the next morning took Kennedy's children home to Virginia. Glenn was later a pallbearer at the funeral in New York.
In 1970, Young did not seek reelection and the seat was open. Businessman Howard Metzenbaum, Young's former campaign manager, was backed by the Ohio Democratic party and major labor unions, which provided him a significant funding advantage over Glenn. Glenn's camp persuaded him to be thrifty during the primary so he could save money for the general election. By the end of the primary campaign, Metzenbaum was spending four times as much as Glenn. Glenn was defeated in the Democratic primary by Metzenbaum (who received 51 percent of the vote to Glenn's 49 percent). Some prominent Democrats said Glenn was a "hapless political rube", and one newspaper called him "the ultimate square".
Metzenbaum lost the general election to Robert Taft Jr. Glenn remained active in the political scene following his defeat. Governor John J. Gilligan appointed Glenn to be the chairman of the Citizens Task Force on Environmental Protection in 1970. The task force was created to survey environmental problems in the state and released a report in 1971 detailing the issues. The meetings and the final report of the task force were major contributors to the formation of Ohio's Environmental Protection Agency.
1974 Senate campaign
In 1973, President Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest, triggering the Saturday Night massacre. Ohio Senator William Saxbe, elected in 1968, was appointed attorney general. Both Glenn and Metzenbaum sought the vacated seat, which was to be filled by Governor John Gilligan. Gilligan was planning on a presidential or vice-presidential run in the near future, and offered Glenn the lieutenant governor position, with the thought that Glenn would ascend to governor when Gilligan was elected to a higher position. The Ohio Democratic party backed this solution to avoid what was expected to be a divisive primary battle between Metzenbaum and Glenn. He declined, denouncing their attempts as "bossism" and "blackmail". Glenn's counteroffer suggested that Gilligan fill the position with someone other than Metzenbaum or Glenn so neither would have an advantage going into the 1974 election. Metzenbaum's campaign agreed to back Gilligan in his governor re-election campaign, and Metzenbaum was subsequently appointed in January 1974 to the vacated seat. At the end of Saxbe's term, Glenn challenged Metzenbaum in the primary for the Ohio Senate seat.
Glenn's campaign changed their strategy after the 1970 election. In 1970, Glenn won most of the counties in Ohio but lost in those with larger populations. The campaign changed its focus, and worked primarily in the large counties. In the primary, Metzenbaum contrasted his strong business background with Glenn's military and astronaut credentials and said that his opponent had "never held a payroll". Glenn's reply became known as the "Gold Star Mothers" speech. He told Metzenbaum to go to a veterans' hospital and "look those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn't hold a job. You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job". He defeated Metzenbaum 54 to 46 percent before defeating Ralph Perk (the Republican mayor of Cleveland) in the general election, beginning a Senate career which would continue until 1999.
1976 vice presidential consideration
After Jimmy Carter became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in the 1976 election, Glenn was reported to be in consideration to be Carter's running mate because he was a senator in a pivotal state and for his fame and straightforwardness. Some thought he was too much like Carter, partially because they both had military backgrounds, and he did not have enough experience to become president. Barbara Jordan was the first keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. Her speech electrified the crowd and was filled with applause and standing ovations. Glenn's keynote address immediately followed Jordan's, and he failed to impress the delegates. Walter Cronkite described it as "dull", and other delegates complained that he was hard to hear. Carter called Glenn to inform him the nomination was going to another candidate and later nominated the veteran politician Walter Mondale. It was also reported that Carter's wife thought Annie Glenn, who had a stutter, would hurt the campaign.
1980 Senate campaign
In his first reelection campaign, Glenn ran opposed in the primary for the 1980 Senate election. His opponents, engineer Francis Hunstiger and ex-teacher Frances Waterman, were not well-known and poorly funded. His opponents spent only a few thousand dollars on the campaign, while Glenn spent $700,000. Reporters noted that for a race he was likely to win, Glenn was spending a lot of time and money on the campaign. His chief strategist responded to the remarks saying, "It's the way he does things. He takes nothing for granted." Glenn won the primary by a landslide, with 934,230 of the 1.09 million votes.
Jim Betts, who ran unopposed in the Republican primary, challenged Glenn for his seat. Betts publicly stated that Glenn's policies were part of the reason for inflation increases and a lower standard of living. Betts' campaign also attacked Glenn's voting record, saying that he often voted for spending increases. Glenn's campaign's response was that he has been a part of over 3,000 roll calls and "any one of them could be taken out of context". Glenn was projected to win the race easily, and won by the largest margin ever for an Ohio Senator, defeating Betts by over 40 percent.
1984 presidential campaign
Glenn was unhappy with how divided the country was, and thought labels like conservative and liberal increased the divide. He considered himself a centrist. Glenn thought a more centrist president would help unite the country. Glenn believed his experience as a senator from Ohio was ideal because of the state's diversity. Glenn thought that Ted Kennedy could win the election, but after Kennedy's announcement in late 1982 that he would not seek the presidency, Glenn thought he had a much better chance of winning. He hired a media consultant to help him with his speaking style.
Glenn announced his candidacy for president on April 21, 1983, in the John Glenn High School gymnasium. He started out the campaign out-raising the front-runner, Mondale. He also polled the highest of any Democrat against Reagan. During the fall of 1983, The Right Stuff, a film about the Mercury Seven astronauts, was released. Reviewers saw Ed Harris' portrayal of Glenn as heroic and his staff began to publicize the film to the press. One reviewer said that "Harris' depiction helped transform Glenn from a history-book figure into a likable, thoroughly adoration-worthy Hollywood hero," turning him into a big-screen icon. Others considered the movie to be damaging to Glenn's campaign, serving as only a reminder that Glenn's most significant achievement had occurred decades earlier. Glenn's autobiography said the film "had a chilling effect on the campaign."
William White managed Glenn's campaign until his replacement by Jerry Vento on January 26, 1984. Glenn's campaign decided to forgo the traditional campaigning in early caucuses and primaries and focus on building campaign offices nationwide. He opened offices in 43 states by January 1984. Glenn's campaign spent a significant amount of money on television advertising in Iowa, and Glenn chose not to attend an Iowan debate on farm issues. He finished fifth in the Iowa caucus and went on to lose New Hampshire. Glenn's campaign continued into Super Tuesday, and he lost there as well. He announced his withdrawal from the race on March 16, 1984. After Mondale defeated him for the nomination, Glenn carried $3 million in campaign debt for over 20 years before receiving a reprieve from the Federal Election Commission.
1986 Senate campaign
Glenn's Senate seat was challenged by Thomas Kindness. Kindness was unopposed in his primary, while Glenn faced Lyndon LaRouche supporter Don Scott. LaRouche supporters had been recently elected in Illinois, but the Ohio Democratic Party chairman did not think it was likely they would see the same success in Ohio. LaRouche was known for his fringe theories, such as the queen of England being a drug dealer. Kindness spoke to his supporters and warned them against LaRouche candidates. He issued a statement telling voters to reject LaRouche candidates in both Republican and Democratic primaries. Glenn won the primary contest with 88% of the vote.
With the primary complete, Glenn began his campaign against Kindness. Glenn believed he and other Democrats were the targets of a negative campaign thought up by the GOP strategists in Washington. Kindness focused on Glenn's campaign debts for his failed presidential run and the fact he stopped payments on it while campaigning for the Senate seat. After winning the race with 62% of the vote, Glenn remarked, "We proved that in 1986, they couldn't kill Glenn with Kindness."
1992 Senate campaign
In 1992, Republican Mike DeWine won the Republican primary and challenged Glenn in the Senate election. Glenn ran unopposed in the primary. DeWine's campaign focused on the need for change and for term limits for senators. This would be Glenn's fourth term as senator. DeWine also criticized Glenn's campaign debts, using a bunny dressed as an astronaut beating a drum, with an announcer saying, "He just keeps owing and owing and owing", a play on the Energizer Bunny. During a debate, Glenn asked DeWine to stop his negative campaign ads, saying "This has been the most negative campaign". DeWine responded that he would if Glenn would disclose how he spent the money he received from Charles Keating, fallout from Glenn being named one of the Keating Five. Glenn won the Senate seat, with 2.4 million votes to DeWine's 2 million votes. It was DeWine's first-ever campaign loss. DeWine later worked on the intelligence committee with Glenn and watched his second launch into space.
Senate career
Committee on Governmental Affairs
Glenn requested to be assigned to two committees during his first year as senator: the Government Operations Committee (later known as the Committee on Governmental Affairs), and the Foreign Relations Committee. He was immediately assigned to the Government Operations Committee and waited for a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. In 1977, Glenn wanted to chair the Energy, Nuclear Proliferation, and Federal Services Subcommittee of the Governmental Affairs Committee. Abraham Ribicoff, chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee, said he could chair the subcommittee if he also chaired the less popular Federal Services Subcommittee, which was in charge of the U.S. Postal Service. Previous chairs of the Federal Services Subcommittee had lost elections in part because of negative campaigns associated with the poorly regarded mail service to the chairmen, but Glenn accepted the offer and became the chair of both subcommittees. One of his goals as a new senator was developing environmental policies. Glenn introduced bills on energy policy to try to counter the energy crisis in the 70s. Glenn also introduced legislation promoting nuclear non-proliferation and was the chief author of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978, the first of six major pieces of legislation that he produced on the subject.
Glenn chaired the Committee on Governmental Affairs from 1987 to 1995. It was in this role that he discovered safety and environmental problems with the nation's nuclear weapons facilities. Glenn was made aware of the problem at the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center near Cincinnati and soon found that it affected sites across the nation. Glenn requested investigations from the General Accounting Office of Congress and held several hearings on the issue. He also released a report on the potential costs of hazardous waste cleanup at former nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities, known as the Glenn Report. He spent the remainder of his Senate career acquiring funding to clean up the nuclear waste left at the facilities.
Glenn also focused on reducing government waste. He created legislation to mandate CFOs for large governmental agencies. Glenn wrote a bill to add the office of the inspector general to federal agencies, to help find waste and fraud. He also created legislation intended to prevent the federal government from imposing regulations on local governments without funding. Glenn founded the Great Lakes Task Force, which helped protect the environment of the Great Lakes.
In 1995 Glenn became the ranking minority member of the Committee on Governmental Affairs. Glenn disputed the focus on illegal Chinese donations to the Democrats and asserted that Republicans also had egregious fundraising issues. The committee chair, Fred Thompson of Tennessee, disagreed and continued the investigation. Thompson and Glenn continued to work together poorly for the duration of the investigation. Thompson would give Glenn only information he was legally required to. Glenn would not authorize a larger budget and tried to expand the scope of the investigation to include members of the GOP. The investigation concluded with a Republican-written report, which Thompson described as, "... a lot of things strung together that paint a real ugly picture." The Democrats, led by Glenn, said the report "... does not support the conclusion that the China plan was aimed at, or affected, the 1996 presidential election."
Glenn was the vice chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a subcommittee of the Committee on Governmental Affairs. When the Republican Party regained control of the Senate in 1996, Glenn became the ranking minority member on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations until he was succeeded by Carl Levin. During this time, the committee investigated issues such as fraud on the Internet, mortgage fraud, and day trading of securities.
Other committees and activities
Glenn's father spent his retirement money battling cancer and would have lost his house if Glenn had not intervened. His father-in-law also had expensive treatments for Parkinson's disease. These health and financial issues motivated him to request a seat on the Special Committee on Aging.
Glenn was considered an expert in matters of science and technology. He was a supporter of continuing the B-1 bomber program, which he considered successful. This conflicted with President Carter's desire to fund the B-2 bomber program. Glenn did not fully support development of the B-2 because he had doubts about the feasibility of the stealth technology. He drafted a proposal to slow down the development of the B-2, which could have potentially saved money, but the measure was rejected.
Glenn joined the Foreign Relations Committee in 1978. He became the chairman of the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, for which he traveled to Japan, Korea, the Republic of China, and the People's Republic of China. Glenn helped to pass the Taiwan Enabling Act of 1979. The same year, Glenn's stance on the SALT II treaty caused another dispute with President Carter. Given the loss of radar listening posts in Iran, Glenn did not believe that the U.S. had the capability to monitor the Soviet Union accurately enough to verify compliance with the treaty. During the launching ceremony for the USS Ohio, he spoke about his doubts about verifying treaty compliance. First Lady Rosalynn Carter also spoke at the event, during which she criticized Glenn for speaking publicly about the issue. The Senate never ratified the treaty, in part because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Glenn served on the committee until 1985, when he traded it for the Armed Services Committee.
Glenn became chairman of the Manpower Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee in 1987. He introduced legislation such as increasing pay and benefits for American troops in the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War. He served as chairman until 1993, becoming chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Readiness and Defense Infrastructure.
Keating Five
Glenn was one of the Keating Five—the U.S. Senators involved with the savings and loan crisis—after he accepted a $200,000 campaign contribution from Lincoln Savings and Loan Association head Charles Keating. During the crisis, the senators were accused of delaying the seizure of Keating's S&L, which cost taxpayers an additional $2 billion. The combination of perceived political pressure and Keating's monetary contributions to the senators led to an investigation.
The Ethics Committee's outside counsel, Robert Bennett, wanted to eliminate Republican senator John McCain and Glenn from the investigation. The Democrats did not want to exclude McCain, as he was the only Republican being investigated, which means they could not excuse Glenn from the investigation either. McCain and Glenn were reprimanded the least of the five, as the Senate commission found that they had exercised "poor judgment". The GOP focused on Glenn's "poor judgment" rather than what Glenn saw as complete exoneration. GOP chairman Robert Bennett said, "John Glenn misjudged Charles Keating. He also misjudged the tolerance of Ohio's taxpayers, who are left to foot the bill of nearly $2 billion." After the Senate's report, Glenn said, "They so firmly put this thing to bed ... there isn't much there to fuss with. I didn't do anything wrong." In his autobiography, Glenn wrote, "outside of people close to me dying, these hearings were the low point of my life." The case cost him $520,000 in legal fees. The association of his name with the scandal made Republicans hopeful that he could be defeated in the 1992 campaign, but Glenn defeated Lieutenant Governor Mike DeWine to retain his seat.
Retirement
On February 20, 1997, which was the 35th anniversary of his Friendship 7 flight, Glenn announced that his retirement from the Senate would occur at the end of his term in January 1999. Glenn retired because of his age, noting that he would have been 83 at the end of another term and quipping that "... there is still no cure for the common birthday".
Return to space
After the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, Glenn criticized putting a "lay person in space for the purpose of gaining public support ... while the shuttle is still in its embryonic stage". He supported flying research scientists. In 1995, Glenn read Space Physiology and Medicine, a book written by NASA doctors. He realized that many changes that occur to physical attributes during space flight, such as loss of bone and muscle mass and blood plasma, are the same as changes that result from aging. Glenn thought NASA should send an older person on a shuttle mission, and that it should be him. Starting in 1995, he began lobbying NASA director Dan Goldin for the mission. Goldin said he would consider it if there was a scientific reason, and if Glenn could pass the same physical examination the younger astronauts took. Glenn performed research on the subject and passed the physical examination. On January 16, 1998, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin announced that Glenn would be part of the STS-95 crew; this made him, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space at that time.
NASA and the National Institute of Aging (NIA) planned to use Glenn as a test subject for research, with biometrics taken before, during, and after his flight. Some experiments (in circadian rhythms, for example) compared him with the younger crew members. In addition to these tests, he was in charge of the flight's photography and videography. Glenn returned to space on the Space Shuttle on October 29, 1998, as a payload specialist on Space Shuttle Discovery. Shortly before the flight, researchers disqualified Glenn from one of the flight's two major human experiments (on the effect of melatonin) for undisclosed medical reasons; he participated in experiments on sleep monitoring and protein use. On November 6, President Bill Clinton sent a congratulatory email to Glenn aboard the Discovery. This is often cited as the first email sent by a sitting U.S. president, but records exist of emails being sent by President Clinton several years earlier.
His participation in the nine-day mission was criticized by some members of the space community as a favor granted by Clinton; John Pike, director of the Federation of American Scientists' space-policy project, said: "If he was a normal person, he would acknowledge he's a great American hero and that he should get to fly on the shuttle for free ... He's too modest for that, and so he's got to have this medical research reason. It's got nothing to do with medicine".
In a 2012 interview, Glenn said he regretted that NASA did not continue its research on aging by sending additional elderly people into space. After STS-95 returned safely, its crew received a ticker-tape parade. On October 15, 1998, NASA Road 1 (the main route to the Johnson Space Center) was temporarily renamed John Glenn Parkway for several months. Glenn was awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1998 for flying on STS-95. In 2001, Glenn opposed sending Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist, to the International Space Station because Tito's trip had no scientific purpose.
Personal life
Glenn and Annie had two children—John David and Carolyn Ann—and two grandchildren, and remained married for 73 years until his death.
A Freemason, Glenn was a member of Concord Lodge No. 688 in New Concord, Ohio. He received all his degrees in full in a Mason at Sight ceremony from the Grand Master of Ohio in 1978, 14 years after petitioning his lodge. In 1999, Glenn became a 33rd-degree Scottish Rite Mason in the Valley of Cincinnati (NMJ). As an adult, he was honored as part of the DeMolay Legion of Honor by DeMolay International, a Masonic youth organization for boys.
Glenn was an ordained elder of the Presbyterian Church. His religious faith began before he became an astronaut and was reinforced after he traveled in space. "To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible", said Glenn after his second (and final) space voyage. He saw no contradiction between belief in God and the knowledge that evolution is "a fact" and believed evolution should be taught in schools: "I don't see that I'm any less religious that I can appreciate the fact that science just records that we change with evolution and time, and that's a fact. It doesn't mean it's less wondrous and it doesn't mean that there can't be some power greater than any of us that has been behind and is behind whatever is going on."
Public appearances
Glenn was an honorary member of the International Academy of Astronautics and a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Marine Corps Aviation Association, Order of Daedalians, National Space Club board of trustees, National Space Society board of governors, International Association of Holiday Inns, Ohio Democratic Party, State Democratic Executive Committee, Franklin County (Ohio) Democratic Party and the 10th District (Ohio) Democratic Action Club. In 2001 he guest-starred as himself on the American television sitcom Frasier.
On September 5, 2009, John and Annie Glenn dotted the "i" in Ohio State University's Script Ohio marching band performance during the Ohio State–Navy football-game halftime show, which is normally reserved for veteran band members. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Friendship 7 flight on February 20, 2012, he had an unexpected opportunity to speak with the orbiting crew of the International Space Station when he was onstage with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden at Ohio State University. On April 19, 2012, Glenn participated in the ceremonial transfer of the retired Space Shuttle Discovery from NASA to the Smithsonian Institution for permanent display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. He used the occasion to criticize the "unfortunate" decision to end the Space Shuttle program, saying that grounding the shuttles delayed research.
Illness and death
Glenn was in good health for most of his life. He retained a private pilot's license until 2011 when he was 90. In June 2014, Glenn underwent successful heart valve replacement surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. In early December 2016, he was hospitalized at the James Cancer Hospital of Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. According to a family source, Glenn had been in declining health, and his condition was grave; his wife and their children and grandchildren were at the hospital.
Glenn died on December 8, 2016, at the OSU Wexner Medical Center; he was 95 years old. No cause of death was disclosed. After his death, his body lay in state at the Ohio Statehouse. There was a memorial service at Mershon Auditorium at Ohio State University. Another memorial service was performed at Kennedy Space Center near the Heroes and Legends building. His body was interred at Arlington National Cemetery on April 6, 2017. At the time of his death, Glenn was the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven.
The Military Times reported that William Zwicharowski, a senior mortuary official at Dover Air Force Base, had offered to let visiting inspectors view Glenn's remains, sparking an official investigation. Zwicharowski has denied the remains were disrespected. At the conclusion of the investigation, officials said the remains were not disrespected as inspectors did not accept Zwicharowski's offer, and that Zwicharowski's actions were improper. No administrative action was taken as he had retired.
President Barack Obama said that Glenn, "the first American to orbit the Earth, reminded us that with courage and a spirit of discovery there's no limit to the heights we can reach together". Tributes were also paid by Vice President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The phrase "Godspeed, John Glenn", which fellow Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter had used to hail Glenn's launch into space, became a social-media hashtag: #GodspeedJohnGlenn. Former and current astronauts added tributes; so did NASA Administrator and former shuttle astronaut Charles Bolden, who wrote: "John Glenn's legacy is one of risk and accomplishment, of history created and duty to country carried out under great pressure with the whole world watching." President Obama ordered flags to be flown at half-staff until Glenn's burial. On April 5, 2017, President Donald Trump issued presidential proclamation 9588, titled "Honoring the Memory of John Glenn".
Awards and honors
Glenn was awarded the John J. Montgomery Award in 1963. Glenn received the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal in 1962. Glenn, along with 37 other space race astronauts, received the Ambassador of Space Exploration Award in 2006. He was also awarded the General Thomas D. White National Defense Award and the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. In 1964, Glenn received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2004, he received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution and was awarded the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Theodore Roosevelt Award for 2008.
Glenn earned the Navy's astronaut wings and the Marine Corps' Astronaut Medal. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011 and was among the first group of astronauts to be granted the distinction. In 2012, President Barack Obama presented Glenn with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Glenn was the seventh astronaut to receive this distinction. The Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom are considered the two most prestigious awards that can be bestowed on a civilian. The Society of Experimental Test Pilots awarded Glenn the Iven C. Kincheloe award in 1963, and he was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame in 1968, National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1976, the International Space Hall of Fame in 1977, and the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990. In 2000, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for public service by an elected or appointed official, one of the annual Jefferson Awards.
In 1961, Glenn received an honorary LL.D from Muskingum University, the college he attended before joining the military in World War II. He also received honorary doctorates from Nihon University in Tokyo; Wagner College in Staten Island, New York; Ohio Northern University; Williams College; and Brown University. In 1998, he helped found the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at Ohio State University to encourage public service. The institute merged with OSU's School of Public Policy and Management to become the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. He held an adjunct professorship at the school. In February 2015, it was announced that it would become the John Glenn College of Public Affairs in April.
The Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland is named after him, and the Senator John Glenn Highway runs along a stretch of I-480 in Ohio across from the Glenn Research Center. Colonel Glenn Highway (which passes Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Wright State University near Dayton, Ohio), John Glenn High School in his hometown of New Concord, Elwood-John H. Glenn High School in the hamlet of Elwood, Town of Huntington, Long Island, New York, and the former Col. John Glenn Elementary in Seven Hills, Ohio, were also named for him. Colonel Glenn Road in Little Rock, Arkansas, was named for him in 1962. High schools in Westland and Bay City, Michigan; Walkerton, Indiana; and Norwalk, California bear Glenn's name. The fireboat John H. Glenn Jr., operated by the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department and protecting sections of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers which run through Washington, D.C., was named for him, as was USNS John Glenn (T-MLP-2), a mobile landing platform delivered to the U.S. Navy on March 12, 2014. In June 2016, the Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, was renamed John Glenn Columbus International Airport. Glenn and his family attended the ceremony, during which he spoke about how visiting the airport as a child had kindled his interest in flying. On September 12, 2016, Blue Origin announced the New Glenn, a rocket. Orbital ATK named the Cygnus space capsule used in the NASA CRS OA-7 mission to the international space station "S.S. John Glenn" in his honor. The mission successfully lifted off on April 16, 2017.
Although never a Scout himself, Glenn heavily endorsed the Boy Scouts. His son, John David, attained the coveted rank of Eagle Scout that many of Glenn's aviator peers also achieved.
Legacy
Glenn's public life and legacy began when he received his first ticker-tape parade for breaking the transcontinental airspeed record. As a senator, he used his military background to write legislation to reduce nuclear proliferation. He also focused on reducing government waste. Buzz Aldrin wrote that Glenn's Friendship 7 flight "... helped to galvanize the country's will and resolution to surmount significant technical challenges of human spaceflight."
President Barack Obama said, "With John's passing, our nation has lost an icon and Michelle and I have lost a friend. John spent his life breaking barriers, from defending our freedom as a decorated Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, to setting a transcontinental speed record, to becoming, at age 77, the oldest human to touch the stars." Obama issued a presidential proclamation on December 9, 2016, ordering the US flag to be flown at half-staff in Glenn's memory. NASA administrator Charles Bolden said: "Senator Glenn's legacy is one of risk and accomplishment, of history created and duty to country carried out under great pressure with the whole world watching".
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
Further reading
External links
United States Congress. "John Glenn (id: G000236)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Appearances on C-SPAN
"Colonel John H. Glenn Jr., USMC (Retired)". USMC History Division. Archived from the original on January 16, 2017. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
John Glenn's Flight on Friendship 7, MA-6 – complete 5-hour capsule audio recording
The 1962 documentary The John Glenn Story on YouTube
John Glenn's Flight on the Space Shuttle, STS-95 Archived August 31, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
John Glenn at IMDb
John Glenn discography at Discogs
"Burial Detail: Glenn, John Herschel (Section 35, Grave 1543)". ANC Explorer. Arlington National Cemetery. (Official website). |
Alois_Burgstaller | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Burgstaller | [
352
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Burgstaller"
] | Alois Burgstaller (21 September 1872 – 19 April 1945) was a German operatic tenor.
Burgstaller was born in Holzkirchen. A trained watchmaker, he always loved to sing and his vocal talent was discovered during an amateur theatre performance in church. Alois was encouraged to sing professionally by Cosima Wagner, the widow of Richard Wagner, and he made a serious study of opera music. He took lessons in Frankfurt and at the Bayreuth School under Julius Kniese, making his stage debut in 1894 at the Bayreuth Festival in a small part. Alois would go on to sing the major Wagnerian roles of Siegfried, Siegmund, Erik, and Parsifal at Bayreuth from 1896 to 1903. He also performed these roles at other leading European opera houses, including those in such important cities as Paris, Zurich, Budapest, London, Amsterdam, and Moscow.
Alois made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, as Siegmund in "Die Walküre" on February 12, 1903. He appeared throughout the United States, singing in San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles during the next six or so years. His final performance, as Siegmund, occurred on January 14, 1909.
On Christmas Eve, 1903, he had sung the title role in the first staged American performance of Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" in New York City. This performance was in violation of German copyright law and angered Cosima Wagner, who was trying to keep productions of the work exclusive to Bayreuth. As a result, Alois, as well as the baritone singer Anton van Rooy and conductor Alfred Hertz, were banned from any further performances at Bayreuth. When his American career began winding down, Burgstaller appealed to the Wagner family and was eventually welcomed back to Bayreuth, performing in the festivals of 1908 and 1909.
Alois spent his old age in St. Quirin, municipality Gmund, at the Tegernsee, until his death in 1945. He lies buried at the Holzkirchner cemetery and was accorded the honor of having the local market municipality and a roadway named after him.
References
https://web.archive.org/web/20070804152834/http://www.historicopera.com/jbayreuth1_page.htm |
Adolf_Hitler | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler | [
353
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler"
] | Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.
Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna in the first decade of the 1900s before moving to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I, receiving the Iron Cross. In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was appointed leader of the Nazi Party. In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was sentenced to five years in prison, serving just over a year of his sentence. While there, he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his early release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. He frequently denounced communism as being part of an international Jewish conspiracy.
By November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the Reichstag, but not a majority. No political parties were able to form a majority coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. Former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders convinced President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933. Shortly thereafter, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933, which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. Upon Hindenburg's death on 2 August 1934, Hitler succeeded him, becoming simultaneously the head of state and government, with absolute power. Domestically, Hitler implemented numerous racist policies and sought to deport or kill German Jews. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the abrogation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans, which initially gave him significant popular support.
One of Hitler's key goals was Lebensraum (lit. 'living space') for the German people in Eastern Europe, and his aggressive, expansionist foreign policy is considered the primary cause of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and, on 1 September 1939, invaded Poland, causing Britain and France to declare war on Germany. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. In December 1941, he declared war on the United States. By the end of 1941, German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army. On 29 April 1945, he married his longtime partner, Eva Braun, in the Führerbunker in Berlin. The couple committed suicide the next day to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army. In accordance with Hitler's wishes, their corpses were burned.
The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw described Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil". Under Hitler's leadership and racist ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of an estimated six million Jews and millions of other victims, whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen (subhumans) or socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the deliberate killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre. The number of civilians killed during World War II was unprecedented in warfare, and the casualties constitute the deadliest conflict in history.
Ancestry
Hitler's father, Alois Hitler (1837–1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother's surname, "Schicklgruber". In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. In 1876, Alois was made legitimate and his baptismal record annotated by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father (recorded as "Georg Hitler"). Alois then assumed the surname "Hitler", also spelled "Hiedler", "Hüttler", or "Huettler". The name is probably based on the German word Hütte (lit. 'hut'), and has the meaning "one who lives in a hut".
Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Alois's mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the family's 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois, a claim that came to be known as the Frankenberger thesis. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenberger's existence, so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish.
Early years
Childhood and education
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire. He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler's siblings—Gustav, Ida, and Otto—died in infancy. Also living in the household were Alois's children from his second marriage: Alois Jr. (born 1882) and Angela (born 1883). When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany. There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech throughout his life. The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding in 1894, and in June 1895 Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Volksschule (a state-funded primary school) in nearby Fischlham.
The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by Hitler's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school. Alois tried to browbeat his son into obedience, while Adolf did his best to be the opposite of whatever his father wanted. Alois would also beat his son, although his mother tried to protect him from regular beatings.
Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding. Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund in 1900 from measles. Hitler changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers. Paula Hitler recalled how Adolf was a teenage bully who would often slap her.
Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed. Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule in Linz in September 1900. Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in Mein Kampf states that he intentionally performed poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream".
Like many Austrian Germans, Hitler began to develop German nationalist ideas from a young age. He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg monarchy and its rule over an ethnically diverse empire. Hitler and his friends used the greeting "Heil", and sang the "Deutschlandlied" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem. After Alois's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated and his mother allowed him to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904, where his behaviour and performance improved. In 1905, after passing a repeat of the final exam, Hitler left the school without any ambitions for further education or clear plans for a career.
Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich
In 1907, Hitler left Linz to live and study fine art in Vienna, financed by orphan's benefits and support from his mother. He applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna but was rejected twice. The director suggested Hitler should apply to the School of Architecture, but he lacked the necessary academic credentials because he had not finished secondary school.
On 21 December 1907, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 47; Hitler was 18 at the time. In 1909, Hitler ran out of money and was forced to live a bohemian life in homeless shelters and a men's dormitory. He earned money as a casual labourer and by painting and selling watercolours of Vienna's sights. During his time in Vienna, he pursued a growing passion for architecture and music, attending ten performances of Lohengrin, his favourite Wagner opera.
In Vienna, Hitler was first exposed to racist rhetoric. Populists such as mayor Karl Lueger exploited the city's prevalent anti-Semitic sentiment, occasionally also espousing German nationalist notions for political benefit. German nationalism was even more widespread in the Mariahilf district, where Hitler then lived. Georg Ritter von Schönerer became a major influence on Hitler, and he developed an admiration for Martin Luther. Hitler read local newspapers that promoted prejudice and utilised Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of Eastern European Jews as well as pamphlets that published the thoughts of philosophers and theoreticians such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon, and Arthur Schopenhauer. During his life in Vienna, Hitler also developed fervent anti-Slavic sentiments.
The origin and development of Hitler's anti-Semitism remains a matter of debate. His friend August Kubizek claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed anti-Semite" before he left Linz. However, historian Brigitte Hamann describes Kubizek's claim as "problematical". While Hitler states in Mein Kampf that he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna, Reinhold Hanisch, who helped him sell his paintings, disagrees. Hitler had dealings with Jews while living in Vienna. Historian Richard J. Evans states that "historians now generally agree that his notorious, murderous anti-Semitism emerged well after Germany's defeat [in World War I], as a product of the paranoid "stab-in-the-back" explanation for the catastrophe".
Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich, Germany. When he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, he journeyed to Salzburg on 5 February 1914 for medical assessment. After he was deemed unfit for service, he returned to Munich. Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Habsburg Empire because of the mixture of races in its army and his belief that the collapse of Austria-Hungary was imminent.
World War I
In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted in the Bavarian Army. According to a 1924 report by the Bavarian authorities, allowing Hitler to serve was most likely an administrative error, because as an Austrian citizen, he should have been returned to Austria. Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment), he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time at the regimental headquarters in Fournes-en-Weppes, well behind the front lines. In 1914, he was present at the First Battle of Ypres and in that year was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class.
During his service at headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout. Hitler spent almost two months recovering in hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917. He was present at the Battle of Arras of 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele. He received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918. Three months later, in August 1918, on a recommendation by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, his Jewish superior, Hitler received the Iron Cross, First Class, a decoration rarely awarded at Hitler's Gefreiter rank. On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk. While there, Hitler learned of Germany's defeat, and, by his own account, suffered a second bout of blindness after receiving this news.
Hitler described his role in World War I as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery. His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918. His displeasure with the collapse of the war effort began to shape his ideology. Like other German nationalists, he believed the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders, Jews, Marxists, and those who signed the armistice that ended the fighting—later dubbed the "November criminals".
The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany had to relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans saw the treaty as an unjust humiliation. They especially objected to Article 231, which they interpreted as declaring Germany responsible for the war. The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gain.
Entry into politics
After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich. Without formal education or career prospects, he remained in the Army. In July 1919, he was appointed Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance unit) of the Reichswehr, assigned to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). At a DAP meeting on 12 September 1919, Party Chairman Anton Drexler was impressed by Hitler's oratorical skills. He gave him a copy of his pamphlet My Political Awakening, which contained anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas. On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party, and within a week was accepted as party member 555 (the party began counting membership at 500 to give the impression they were a much larger party).
Hitler made his earliest known written statement about the Jewish question in a 16 September 1919 letter to Adolf Gemlich (now known as the Gemlich letter). In the letter, Hitler argues that the aim of the government "must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether". At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the party's founders and a member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of Munich society. To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), now known as the "Nazi Party"). Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.
Hitler was discharged from the Army on 31 March 1920 and began working full-time for the party. The party headquarters was in Munich, a centre for anti-government German nationalists determined to eliminate Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic. In February 1921—already highly effective at crowd manipulation—he spoke to a crowd of over 6,000. To publicise the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around Munich waving swastika flags and distributing leaflets. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his rowdy polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially against Marxists and Jews.
In June 1921, while Hitler and Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the Nazi Party in Munich. Members of its executive committee wanted to merge with the Nuremberg-based German Socialist Party (DSP). Hitler returned to Munich on 11 July and angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised that the resignation of their leading public figure and speaker would mean the end of the party. Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed, and he rejoined the party on 26 July as member 3,680. Hitler continued to face some opposition within the Nazi Party. Opponents of Hitler in the leadership had Hermann Esser expelled from the party, and they printed 3,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking Hitler as a traitor to the party. In the following days, Hitler spoke to several large audiences and defended himself and Esser, to thunderous applause. His strategy proved successful, and at a special party congress on 29 July, he was granted absolute power as party chairman, succeeding Drexler, by a vote of 533 to 1.
Hitler's vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. A demagogue, he became adept at using populist themes, including the use of scapegoats, who were blamed for his listeners' economic hardships. Hitler used personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology to his advantage while engaged in public speaking. Historians have noted the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Alfons Heck, a former member of the Hitler Youth, recalled:
We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul.
Early followers included Rudolf Hess, former air force ace Hermann Göring, and army captain Ernst Röhm. Röhm became head of the Nazis' paramilitary organisation, the Sturmabteilung (SA, "Stormtroopers"), which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. A critical influence on Hitler's thinking during this period was the Aufbau Vereinigung, a conspiratorial group of White Russian exiles and early Nazis. The group, financed with funds channelled from wealthy industrialists, introduced Hitler to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy, linking international finance with Bolshevism.
The programme of the Nazi Party was laid out in their 25-point programme on 24 February 1920. This did not represent a coherent ideology, but was a conglomeration of received ideas which had currency in the völkisch Pan-Germanic movement, such as ultranationalism, opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, distrust of capitalism, as well as some socialist ideas. For Hitler, the most important aspect of it was its strong anti-Semitic stance. He also perceived the programme as primarily a basis for propaganda and for attracting people to the party.
Beer Hall Putsch and Landsberg Prison
In 1923, Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Erich Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the "Beer Hall Putsch". The Nazi Party used Italian Fascism as a model for their appearance and policies. Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini's "March on Rome" of 1922 by staging his own coup in Bavaria, to be followed by a challenge to the government in Berlin. Hitler and Ludendorff sought the support of Staatskommissar (State Commissioner) Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler. However, Kahr, along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von Seisser and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow, wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Hitler.
On 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Interrupting Kahr's speech, he announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government with Ludendorff. Retiring to a back room, Hitler, with his pistol drawn, demanded and subsequently received the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow. Hitler's forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters, but Kahr and his cohorts quickly withdrew their support. Neither the Army nor the state police joined forces with Hitler. The next day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, but police dispersed them. Sixteen Nazi Party members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.
Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and by some accounts contemplated suicide. He was depressed but calm when arrested on 11 November 1923 for high treason. His trial before the special People's Court in Munich began in February 1924, and Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the Nazi Party. On 1 April, Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison. There, he received friendly treatment from the guards, and was allowed mail from supporters and regular visits by party comrades. Pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court, he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections. Including time on remand, Hitler served just over one year in prison.
While at Landsberg, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of Mein Kampf (lit. 'My Struggle'); originally titled Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice) at first to his chauffeur, Emil Maurice, and then to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and exposition of his ideology. The book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race. Throughout the book, Jews are equated with "germs" and presented as the "international poisoners" of society. According to Hitler's ideology, the only solution was their extermination. While Hitler did not describe exactly how this was to be accomplished, his "inherent genocidal thrust is undeniable", according to Ian Kershaw.
Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, Mein Kampf sold 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. One million copies were sold in 1933, Hitler's first year in office. Shortly before Hitler was eligible for parole, the Bavarian government attempted to have him deported to Austria. The Austrian federal chancellor rejected the request on the specious grounds that his service in the German Army made his Austrian citizenship void. In response, Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925.
Rebuilding the Nazi Party
At the time of Hitler's release from prison, politics in Germany had become less combative and the economy had improved, limiting Hitler's opportunities for political agitation. As a result of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi Party and its affiliated organisations were banned in Bavaria. In a meeting with the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Heinrich Held, on 4 January 1925, Hitler agreed to respect the state's authority and promised that he would seek political power only through the democratic process. The meeting paved the way for the ban on the Nazi Party to be lifted on 16 February.
However, after an inflammatory speech he gave on 27 February, Hitler was barred from public speaking by the Bavarian authorities, a ban that remained in place until 1927. To advance his political ambitions in spite of the ban, Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser, Otto Strasser, and Joseph Goebbels to organise and enlarge the Nazi Party in northern Germany. Gregor Strasser steered a more independent political course, emphasising the socialist elements of the party's programme.
The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929. The impact in Germany was dire: millions became unemployed and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the Nazi Party prepared to take advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to repudiate the Versailles Treaty, strengthen the economy, and provide jobs.
Rise to power
Brüning administration
The Great Depression provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent about the parliamentary republic, which faced challenges from right- and left-wing extremists. The moderate political parties were increasingly unable to stem the tide of extremism, and the German referendum of 1929 helped to elevate Nazi ideology. The elections of September 1930 resulted in the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement with a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party, governed through emergency decrees from President Paul von Hindenburg. Governance by decree became the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government. The Nazi Party rose from obscurity to win 18.3 per cent of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats in the 1930 election, becoming the second-largest party in parliament.
Hitler made a prominent appearance at the trial of two Reichswehr officers, Lieutenants Richard Scheringer and Hanns Ludin, in late 1930. Both were charged with membership in the Nazi Party, at that time illegal for Reichswehr personnel. The prosecution argued that the Nazi Party was an extremist party, prompting defence lawyer Hans Frank to call on Hitler to testify. On 25 September 1930, Hitler testified that his party would pursue political power solely through democratic elections, which won him many supporters in the officer corps.
Brüning's austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular. Hitler exploited this by targeting his political messages specifically at people who had been affected by the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression, such as farmers, war veterans, and the middle class.
Although Hitler had terminated his Austrian citizenship in 1925, he did not acquire German citizenship for almost seven years. This meant that he was stateless, legally unable to run for public office, and still faced the risk of deportation. On 25 February 1932, the interior minister of Brunswick, Dietrich Klagges, who was a member of the Nazi Party, appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Hitler a citizen of Brunswick, and thus of Germany.
Hitler ran against Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential elections. A speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf on 27 January 1932 won him support from many of Germany's most powerful industrialists. Hindenburg had support from various nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties, and some Social Democrats. Hitler used the campaign slogan "Hitler über Deutschland" ("Hitler over Germany"), a reference to his political ambitions and his campaigning by aircraft. He was one of the first politicians to use aircraft travel for campaigning and used it effectively. Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 35 per cent of the vote in the final election. Although he lost to Hindenburg, this election established Hitler as a strong force in German politics.
Appointment as chancellor
The absence of an effective government prompted two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several other industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to Hindenburg. The signers urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties", which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people".
Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections—in July and November 1932—had not resulted in the formation of a majority government. Hitler headed a short-lived coalition government formed by the Nazi Party (which had the most seats in the Reichstag) and Hugenberg's party, the German National People's Party (DNVP). On 30 January 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The Nazi Party gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring Minister of the Interior for Prussia. Hitler had insisted on the ministerial positions as a way to gain control over the police in much of Germany.
Reichstag fire and March elections
As chancellor, Hitler worked against attempts by the Nazi Party's opponents to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate, he asked Hindenburg to again dissolve the Reichstag, and elections were scheduled for early March. On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Göring blamed a communist plot, as Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found in incriminating circumstances inside the burning building. Until the 1960s, some historians, including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, thought the Nazi Party itself was responsible; the current consensus of nearly all historians is that van der Lubbe set the fire alone.
At Hitler's urging, Hindenburg responded by signing the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, drafted by the Nazis, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The decree was permitted under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take emergency measures to protect public safety and order. Activities of the German Communist Party (KPD) were suppressed, and some 4,000 KPD members were arrested.
In addition to political campaigning, the Nazi Party engaged in paramilitary violence and the spread of anti-communist propaganda in the days preceding the election. On election day, 6 March 1933, the Nazi Party's share of the vote increased to 43.9 per cent, and the party acquired the largest number of seats in parliament. Hitler's party failed to secure an absolute majority, necessitating another coalition with the DNVP.
Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act
On 21 March 1933, the new Reichstag was constituted with an opening ceremony at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. This "Day of Potsdam" was held to demonstrate unity between the Nazi movement and the old Prussian elite and military. Hitler appeared in a morning coat and humbly greeted Hindenburg.
To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament, Hitler's government brought the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) to a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The Act—officially titled the Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich ("Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich")—gave Hitler's cabinet the power to enact laws without the consent of the Reichstag for four years. These laws could (with certain exceptions) deviate from the constitution.
Since it would affect the constitution, the Enabling Act required a two-thirds majority to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest all 81 Communist deputies (in spite of their virulent campaign against the party, the Nazis had allowed the KPD to contest the election) and prevent several Social Democrats from attending.
On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats towards the arriving members of parliament. After Hitler verbally promised Centre party leader Ludwig Kaas that Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. The Act passed by a vote of 444–94, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship.
Dictatorship
At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the National Socialist movement will go on for 1,000 years! ... Don't forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!
Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his allies began to suppress the remaining opposition. The Social Democratic Party was made illegal, and its assets were seized. While many trade union delegates were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA stormtroopers occupied union offices around the country. On 2 May 1933, all trade unions were forced to dissolve, and their leaders were arrested. Some were sent to concentration camps. The German Labour Front was formed as an umbrella organisation to represent all workers, administrators, and company owners, thus reflecting the concept of Nazism in the spirit of Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").
By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. This included the Nazis' nominal coalition partner, the DNVP; with the SA's help, Hitler forced its leader, Hugenberg, to resign on 29 June. On 14 July 1933, the Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany. The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler purged the entire SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders who, along with a number of Hitler's political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher), were rounded up, arrested, and shot. While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the killings, many in Germany believed Hitler was restoring order.
Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. On the previous day, the cabinet had enacted the Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich. This law stated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of president would be abolished, and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor of the Reich), although Reichskanzler was eventually dropped. With this action, Hitler eliminated the last legal remedy by which he could be removed from office.
As head of state, Hitler became commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Immediately after Hindenburg's death, at the instigation of the leadership of the Reichswehr, the traditional loyalty oath of soldiers was altered to affirm loyalty to Hitler personally, by name, rather than to the office of commander-in-chief (which was later renamed to supreme commander) or the state. On 19 August, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by 88 per cent of the electorate voting in a plebiscite.
In early 1938, Hitler used blackmail to consolidate his hold over the military by instigating the Blomberg–Fritsch affair. Hitler forced his War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, to resign by using a police dossier that showed that Blomberg's new wife had a record for prostitution. Army commander Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch was removed after the Schutzstaffel (SS) produced allegations that he had engaged in a homosexual relationship. Both men had fallen into disfavour because they objected to Hitler's demand to make the Wehrmacht ready for war as early as 1938. Hitler assumed Blomberg's title of Commander-in-Chief, thus taking personal command of the armed forces. He replaced the Ministry of War with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), headed by General Wilhelm Keitel. On the same day, sixteen generals were stripped of their commands and 44 more were transferred; all were suspected of not being sufficiently pro-Nazi. By early February 1938, twelve more generals had been removed.
Hitler took care to give his dictatorship the appearance of legality. Many of his decrees were explicitly based on the Reichstag Fire Decree and hence on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag renewed the Enabling Act twice, each time for a four-year period. While elections to the Reichstag were still held (in 1933, 1936, and 1938), voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and pro-Nazi "guests" which received well over 90 per cent of the vote. These sham elections were held in far-from-secret conditions; the Nazis threatened severe reprisals against anyone who did not vote or who voted against.
Nazi Germany
Economy and culture
In August 1934, Hitler appointed Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics, and in the following year, as Plenipotentiary for War Economy in charge of preparing the economy for war. Reconstruction and rearmament were financed through Mefo bills, printing money, and seizing the assets of people arrested as enemies of the State, including Jews. The number of unemployed fell from six million in 1932 to fewer than one million in 1936. Hitler oversaw one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in German history, leading to the construction of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Wages were slightly lower in the mid to late 1930s compared with wages during the Weimar Republic, while the cost of living increased by 25 per cent. The average work week increased during the shift to a war economy; by 1939, the average German was working between 47 and 50 hours a week.
Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale. Albert Speer, instrumental in implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture, was placed in charge of the proposed architectural renovations of Berlin. Despite a threatened multi-nation boycott, Germany hosted the 1936 Olympic Games. Hitler officiated at the opening ceremonies and attended events at both the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Summer Games in Berlin.
Rearmament and new alliances
In a meeting with German military leaders on 3 February 1933, Hitler spoke of "conquest for Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanisation" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives. In March, Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, secretary at the Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), issued a statement of major foreign policy aims: Anschluss with Austria, the restoration of Germany's national borders of 1914, rejection of military restrictions under the Treaty of Versailles, the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a German zone of influence in Eastern Europe. Hitler found Bülow's goals to be too modest. In speeches during this period, he stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and a willingness to work within international agreements. At the first meeting of his cabinet in 1933, Hitler prioritised military spending over unemployment relief.
Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933. In January 1935, over 90 per cent of the people of the Saarland, then under League of Nations administration, voted to unite with Germany. That March, Hitler announced an expansion of the Wehrmacht to 600,000 members—six times the number permitted by the Versailles Treaty – including development of an air force (Luftwaffe) and an increase in the size of the navy (Kriegsmarine). Britain, France, Italy, and the League of Nations condemned these violations of the Treaty but did nothing to stop it. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June allowed German tonnage to increase to 35 per cent of that of the British navy. Hitler called the signing of the AGNA "the happiest day of his life", believing that the agreement marked the beginning of the Anglo-German alliance he had predicted in Mein Kampf. France and Italy were not consulted before the signing, directly undermining the League of Nations and setting the Treaty of Versailles on the path towards irrelevance.
Germany reoccupied the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland in March 1936, in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler also sent troops to Spain to support Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War after receiving an appeal for help in July 1936. At the same time, Hitler continued his efforts to create an Anglo-German alliance. In August 1936, in response to a growing economic crisis caused by his rearmament efforts, Hitler ordered Göring to implement a Four Year Plan to prepare Germany for war within the next four years. The plan envisaged an all-out struggle between "Judeo-Bolshevism" and German Nazism, which in Hitler's view required a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs.
In October 1936, Count Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Mussolini's government, visited Germany, where he signed a Nine-Point Protocol as an expression of rapprochement and had a personal meeting with Hitler. On 1 November, Mussolini declared an "axis" between Germany and Italy. On 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937. Hitler abandoned his plan of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming "inadequate" British leadership. At a meeting in the Reich Chancellery with his foreign ministers and military chiefs that November, Hitler restated his intention of acquiring Lebensraum for the German people. He ordered preparations for war in the East, to begin as early as 1938 and no later than 1943. In the event of his death, the conference minutes, recorded as the Hossbach Memorandum, were to be regarded as his "political testament". He felt that a severe decline in living standards in Germany as a result of the economic crisis could only be stopped by military aggression aimed at seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler urged quick action before Britain and France gained a permanent lead in the arms race. In early 1938, in the wake of the Blomberg–Fritsch affair, Hitler asserted control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as foreign minister and appointing himself as War Minister. From early 1938 onwards, Hitler was carrying out a foreign policy ultimately aimed at war.
World War II
Early diplomatic successes
Alliance with Japan
In February 1938, on the advice of his newly appointed foreign minister, the strongly pro-Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler ended the Sino-German alliance with the Republic of China to instead enter into an alliance with the more modern and powerful Empire of Japan. Hitler announced German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, and renounced German claims to their former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan. Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China and recalled all German officers working with the Chinese Army. In retaliation, Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek cancelled all Sino-German economic agreements, depriving the Germans of many Chinese raw materials.
Austria and Czechoslovakia
On 12 March 1938, Hitler announced the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss. Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. On 28–29 March 1938, Hitler held a series of secret meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten German Party, the largest of the ethnic German parties of the Sudetenland. The men agreed that Henlein would demand increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian government, thus providing a pretext for German military action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 Henlein told the foreign minister of Hungary that "whatever the Czech government might offer, he would always raise still higher demands ... he wanted to sabotage an understanding by any means because this was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly". In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.
In April, Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for Fall Grün (Case Green), the code name for an invasion of Czechoslovakia. As a result of intense French and British diplomatic pressure, on 5 September Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš unveiled the "Fourth Plan" for constitutional reorganisation of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's demands for Sudeten autonomy. Henlein's party responded to Beneš' offer by instigating a series of violent clashes with the Czechoslovakian police that led to the declaration of martial law in certain Sudeten districts.
Germany was dependent on imported oil; a confrontation with Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could curtail Germany's oil supplies. This forced Hitler to call off Fall Grün, originally planned for 1 October 1938. On 29 September, Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, and Mussolini attended a one-day conference in Munich that led to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.
Chamberlain was satisfied with the Munich conference, calling the outcome "peace for our time", while Hitler was angered about the missed opportunity for war in 1938; he expressed his disappointment in a speech on 9 October in Saarbrücken. In Hitler's view, the British-brokered peace, although favourable to the ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which spurred his intent of limiting British power to pave the way for the eastern expansion of Germany. As a result of the summit, Hitler was selected Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938. In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by rearmament forced Hitler to make major defence cuts. In his "Export or die" speech of 30 January 1939, he called for an economic offensive to increase German foreign exchange holdings to pay for raw materials such as high-grade iron needed for military weapons.
On 14 March 1939, under threat from Hungary, Slovakia declared independence and received protection from Germany. The next day, in violation of the Munich Agreement and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade the Czech rump state, and from Prague Castle he proclaimed the territory a German protectorate.
Start of World War II
In private discussions in 1939, Hitler declared Britain the main enemy to be defeated and that Poland's obliteration was a necessary prelude for that goal. The eastern flank would be secured and land would be added to Germany's Lebensraum. Offended by the British "guarantee" on 31 March 1939 of Polish independence, he said, "I shall brew them a devil's drink". In a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship Tirpitz on 1 April, he threatened to denounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the British continued to guarantee Polish independence, which he perceived as an "encirclement" policy. Poland was to either become a German satellite state or it would be neutralised in order to secure the Reich's eastern flank and prevent a possible British blockade.
Hitler initially favoured the idea of a satellite state, but upon its rejection by the Polish government, he decided to invade and made this the main foreign policy goal of 1939. On 3 April, Hitler ordered the military to prepare for Fall Weiss ("Case White"), the plan for invading Poland on 25 August. In a Reichstag speech on 28 April, he renounced both the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact. Historians such as William Carr, Gerhard Weinberg, and Ian Kershaw have argued that one reason for Hitler's rush to war was his fear of an early death. He had repeatedly claimed that he must lead Germany into war before he got too old, as his successors might lack his strength of will. Hitler was concerned that a military attack against Poland could result in a premature war with Britain. Hitler's foreign minister and former Ambassador to London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, assured him that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland. Accordingly, on 22 August 1939 Hitler ordered a military mobilisation against Poland.
This plan required tacit Soviet support, and the non-aggression pact (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, included a secret agreement to partition Poland between the two countries. Contrary to Ribbentrop's prediction that Britain would sever Anglo-Polish ties, Britain and Poland signed the Anglo-Polish alliance on 25 August 1939. This, along with news from Italy that Mussolini would not honour the Pact of Steel, prompted Hitler to postpone the attack on Poland from 25 August to 1 September. Hitler unsuccessfully tried to manoeuvre the British into neutrality by offering them a non-aggression guarantee on 25 August; he then instructed Ribbentrop to present a last-minute peace plan with an impossibly short time limit in an effort to blame the imminent war on British and Polish inaction.
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland under the pretext of having been denied claims to the Free City of Danzig and the right to extraterritorial roads across the Polish Corridor, which Germany had ceded under the Versailles Treaty. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, surprising Hitler and prompting him to angrily ask Ribbentrop, "Now what?" France and Britain did not act on their declarations immediately, and on 17 September, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.
The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists dubbed the "Phoney War" or Sitzkrieg ("sitting war"). Hitler instructed the two newly appointed Gauleiters of north-western Poland, Albert Forster of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Arthur Greiser of Reichsgau Wartheland, to Germanise their areas, with "no questions asked" about how this was accomplished. In Forster's area, ethnic Poles merely had to sign forms stating that they had German blood. In contrast, Greiser agreed with Himmler and carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign towards Poles. Greiser soon complained that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles to be accepted as "racial" Germans and thus endangered German "racial purity". Hitler refrained from getting involved. This inaction has been advanced as an example of the theory of "working towards the Führer", in which Hitler issued vague instructions and expected his subordinates to work out policies on their own.
Another dispute pitched one side represented by Heinrich Himmler and Greiser, who championed ethnic cleansing in Poland, against another represented by Göring and Hans Frank (governor-general of occupied Poland), who called for turning Poland into the "granary" of the Reich. On 12 February 1940, the dispute was initially settled in favour of the Göring–Frank view, which ended the economically disruptive mass expulsions. On 15 May 1940, Himmler issued a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East", calling for the expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and the reduction of the Polish population to a "leaderless class of labourers". Hitler called Himmler's memo "good and correct", and, ignoring Göring and Frank, implemented the Himmler–Greiser policy in Poland.
On 9 April, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. On the same day Hitler proclaimed the birth of the Greater Germanic Reich, his vision of a united empire of Germanic nations of Europe in which the Dutch, Flemish, and Scandinavians were joined into a "racially pure" polity under German leadership. In May 1940, Germany attacked France, and conquered Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. These victories prompted Mussolini to have Italy join forces with Hitler on 10 June. France and Germany signed an armistice on 22 June. Kershaw notes that Hitler's popularity within Germany—and German support for the war—reached its peak when he returned to Berlin on 6 July from his tour of Paris. Following the unexpected swift victory, Hitler promoted twelve generals to the rank of field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.
Britain, whose troops were forced to evacuate France by sea from Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler made peace overtures to the new British leader, Winston Churchill, and upon their rejection he ordered a series of aerial attacks on Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations in southeast England. On 7 September the systematic nightly bombing of London began. The German Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force in what became known as the Battle of Britain. By the end of September, Hitler realised that air superiority for the invasion of Britain (in Operation Sea Lion) could not be achieved, and ordered the operation postponed. The nightly air raids on British cities intensified and continued for months, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry.
On 27 September 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin by Saburō Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Italian foreign minister Ciano, and later expanded to include Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, thus yielding the Axis powers. Hitler's attempt to integrate the Soviet Union into the anti-British bloc failed after inconclusive talks between Hitler and Molotov in Berlin in November, and he ordered preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
In early 1941, German forces were deployed to North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian presence. In April, Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia, quickly followed by the invasion of Greece. In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete.
Path to defeat
On 22 June 1941, contravening the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, over three million Axis troops attacked the Soviet Union. This offensive (codenamed Operation Barbarossa) was intended to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its natural resources for subsequent aggression against the Western powers. The action was also part of the overall plan to obtain more living space for German people; and Hitler thought a successful invasion would force Britain to negotiate a surrender. The invasion conquered a huge area, including the Baltic republics, Belarus, and West Ukraine. By early August, Axis troops had advanced 500 km (310 mi) and won the Battle of Smolensk. Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to temporarily halt its advance to Moscow and divert its Panzer groups to aid in the encirclement of Leningrad and Kiev. His generals disagreed with this change, having advanced within 400 km (250 mi) of Moscow, and his decision caused a crisis among the military leadership. The pause provided the Red Army with an opportunity to mobilise fresh reserves; historian Russel Stolfi considers it to be one of the major factors that caused the failure of the Moscow offensive, which was resumed in October 1941 and ended disastrously in December. During this crisis, Hitler appointed himself as head of the Oberkommando des Heeres.
On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Hitler declared war against the United States. On 18 December 1941, Himmler asked Hitler, "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", to which Hitler replied, "als Partisanen auszurotten" ("exterminate them as partisans"). Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.
In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the Second Battle of El Alamein, thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. Overconfident in his own military expertise following the earlier victories in 1940, Hitler became distrustful of his Army High Command and began to interfere in military and tactical planning, with damaging consequences. In December 1942 and January 1943, Hitler's repeated refusal to allow their withdrawal at the Battle of Stalingrad led to the almost total destruction of the 6th Army. Over 200,000 Axis soldiers were killed and 235,000 were taken prisoner. Thereafter came a decisive strategic defeat at the Battle of Kursk. Hitler's military judgement became increasingly erratic, and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated, as did Hitler's health.
Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Mussolini was removed from power by King Victor Emmanuel III after a vote of no confidence of the Grand Council of Fascism. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, placed in charge of the government, soon surrendered to the Allies. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord. Many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that continuing under Hitler's leadership would result in the complete destruction of the country.
Between 1939 and 1945, there were numerous plans to assassinate Hitler, some of which proceeded to significant degrees. The most well-known and significant, the 20 July plot of 1944, came from within Germany and was at least partly driven by the increasing prospect of a German defeat in the war. Part of Operation Valkyrie, the plot involved Claus von Stauffenberg planting a bomb in one of Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly survived because staff officer Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase containing the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table, which deflected much of the blast. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals resulting in the execution of more than 4,900 people. Hitler was put on the United Nations War Crimes Commission's first list of war criminals in December 1944, after determining that Hitler could be held criminally responsible for the acts of the Nazis in occupied countries. By March 1945, at least seven indictments had been filed against him.
Defeat and death
By late 1944, both the Red Army and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. Recognising the strength and determination of the Red Army, Hitler decided to use his remaining mobile reserves against the American and British armies, which he perceived as far weaker. On 16 December, he launched the Ardennes Offensive to incite disunity among the Western Allies and perhaps convince them to join his fight against the Soviets. After some temporary successes, the offensive failed. With much of Germany in ruins in January 1945, Hitler spoke on the radio: "However grave as the crisis may be at this moment, it will, despite everything, be mastered by our unalterable will." Acting on his view that Germany's military failures meant it had forfeited its right to survive as a nation, Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands. Minister for Armaments Albert Speer was entrusted with executing this scorched earth policy, but he secretly disobeyed the order. Hitler's hope to negotiate peace with the United States and Britain was encouraged by the death of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, but contrary to his expectations, this caused no rift among the Allies.
On 20 April, his 56th and final birthday, Hitler made his last trip from the Führerbunker to the surface. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth, who were now fighting the Red Army at the front near Berlin. By 21 April, Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the defences of General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced to the outskirts of Berlin. In denial about the dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the undermanned and under-equipped Armeeabteilung Steiner (Army Detachment Steiner), commanded by Felix Steiner. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient, while the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.
During a military conference on 22 April, Hitler inquired about Steiner's offensive. He was informed that the attack had not been launched and that the Soviets had entered Berlin. Hitler ordered everyone but Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hans Krebs, and Wilhelm Burgdorf to leave the room, then launched into a tirade against the perceived treachery and incompetence of his generals, culminating in his declaration—for the first time—that "everything is lost". He announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.
By 23 April, the Red Army had surrounded Berlin, and Goebbels made a proclamation urging its citizens to defend the city. That same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden, arguing that as Hitler was isolated in Berlin, Göring should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a deadline, after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated. Hitler responded by having Göring arrested, and in his last will and testament of 29 April, he removed Göring from all government positions. On 28 April, Hitler discovered that Himmler, who had left Berlin on 20 April, was attempting to negotiate a surrender to the Western Allies. He considered this treason and ordered Himmler's arrest. He also ordered the execution of Hermann Fegelein, Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's headquarters in Berlin, for desertion.
After midnight on the night of 28–29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in the Führerbunker. Later that afternoon, Hitler was informed that Mussolini had been executed by the Italian resistance movement on the previous day; this is believed to have increased his determination to avoid capture. On 30 April, Soviet troops were within five hundred metres of the Reich Chancellery when Hitler shot himself in the head and Braun bit into a cyanide capsule. In accordance with Hitler's wishes, their corpses were carried outside to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol, and set on fire as the Red Army shelling continued. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Goebbels assumed Hitler's roles as head of state and chancellor respectively. On the evening of 1 May, Goebbels and his wife, Magda, committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery garden, after having poisoned their six children with cyanide.
Berlin surrendered on 2 May. The remains of the Goebbels family, General Hans Krebs (who had committed suicide that day), and Hitler's dog Blondi were repeatedly buried and exhumed by the Soviets. Hitler's and Braun's remains were alleged to have been moved as well, but this is most likely Soviet disinformation. There is no evidence that any identifiable remains of Hitler or Braun—with the exception of dental bridges—were ever found by them. While news of Hitler's death spread quickly, a death certificate was not issued until 1956, after a lengthy investigation to collect testimony from 42 witnesses. Hitler's death was entered as an assumption of death based on this testimony.
The Holocaust
If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!
The Holocaust and Germany's war in the East were based on Hitler's long-standing view that the Jews were the enemy of the German people, and that Lebensraum was needed for Germany's expansion. He focused on Eastern Europe for this expansion, aiming to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union and then removing or killing the Jews and Slavs. The Generalplan Ost (General Plan East) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to West Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered; the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanised" settlers. The goal was to implement this plan after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when this failed, Hitler moved the plans forward. By January 1942, he had decided that the Jews, Slavs, and other deportees considered undesirable should be killed.
The genocide was organised and executed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference, held on 20 January 1942 and led by Heydrich, with fifteen senior Nazi officials participating, provide the clearest evidence of systematic planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews". Similarly, at a meeting in July 1941 with leading functionaries of the Eastern territories, Hitler said that the easiest way to quickly pacify the areas would be best achieved by "shooting everyone who even looks odd". Although no direct order from Hitler authorising the mass killings has surfaced, his public speeches, orders to his generals, and the diaries of Nazi officials demonstrate that he conceived and authorised the extermination of European Jewry. During the war, Hitler repeatedly stated his prophecy of 1939 was being fulfilled, namely, that a world war would bring about the annihilation of the Jewish race. Hitler approved the Einsatzgruppen—killing squads that followed the German army through Poland, the Baltic, and the Soviet Union—and was well informed about their activities. By summer 1942, Auschwitz concentration camp was expanded to accommodate large numbers of deportees for murder or enslavement. Scores of other concentration camps and satellite camps were set up throughout Europe, with several camps devoted exclusively to extermination.
Between 1939 and 1945, the Schutzstaffel (SS), assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, were responsible for the deaths of at least eleven million non-combatants, including the murders of about 6 million Jews (representing two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe), and between 200,000 and 1,500,000 Romani people. The victims were killed in concentration and extermination camps and in ghettos, and through mass shootings. Many victims of the Holocaust were murdered in gas chambers or shot, while others died of starvation or disease or while working as slave labourers. In addition to eliminating Jews, the Nazis planned to reduce the population of the conquered territories by 30 million people through starvation in an action called the Hunger Plan. Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed, and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists. Together, the Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost would have led to the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union. These partially fulfilled plans resulted in additional deaths, bringing the total number of civilians and prisoners of war who died in the democide to an estimated 19.3 million people.
Hitler's policies resulted in the killing of nearly two million non-Jewish Polish civilians, over three million Soviet prisoners of war, communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. Hitler never spoke publicly about the killings and seems to have never visited the concentration camps. The Nazis embraced the concept of racial hygiene. On 15 September 1935, Hitler presented two laws—known as the Nuremberg Laws—to the Reichstag. The laws banned sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews and were later extended to include "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring". The laws stripped all non-Aryans of their German citizenship and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households. Hitler's early eugenic policies targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities in a programme dubbed Action Brandt, and he later authorised a euthanasia programme for adults with serious mental and physical disabilities, now referred to as Aktion T4.
Leadership style
Hitler ruled the Nazi Party autocratically by asserting the Führerprinzip (leader principle). The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors; thus, he viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the infallible leader—at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections—positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader. Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, to have "the stronger one [do] the job". In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. His cabinet never met after 1938, and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently. Hitler typically did not give written orders; instead, he communicated verbally, or had them conveyed through his close associate Martin Bormann. He entrusted Bormann with his paperwork, appointments, and personal finances; Bormann used his position to control the flow of information and access to Hitler.
Hitler dominated his country's war effort during World War II to a greater extent than any other national leader. He strengthened his control of the armed forces in 1938, and subsequently made all major decisions regarding Germany's military strategy. His decision to mount a risky series of offensives against Norway, France, and the Low Countries in 1940 against the advice of the military proved successful, though the diplomatic and military strategies he employed in attempts to force the United Kingdom out of the war ended in failure. Hitler deepened his involvement in the war effort by appointing himself commander-in-chief of the Army in December 1941; from this point forward, he personally directed the war against the Soviet Union, while his military commanders facing the Western Allies retained a degree of autonomy. Hitler's leadership became increasingly disconnected from reality as the war turned against Germany, with the military's defensive strategies often hindered by his slow decision-making and frequent directives to hold untenable positions. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only his leadership could deliver victory. In the final months of the war, Hitler refused to consider peace negotiations, regarding the destruction of Germany as preferable to surrender. The military did not challenge Hitler's dominance of the war effort, and senior officers generally supported and enacted his decisions.
Personal life
Family
Hitler created a public image as a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation. He met his lover, Eva Braun, in 1929, and married her on 29 April 1945, one day before they both committed suicide. In September 1931, his half-niece, Geli Raubal, took her own life with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. It was rumoured among contemporaries that Geli was in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain. Paula Hitler, the younger sister of Hitler and the last living member of his immediate family, died in June 1960.
Views on religion
Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anti-clerical father; after leaving home, Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments. Albert Speer states that Hitler railed against the church to his political associates, and though he never officially left the church, he had no attachment to it. He adds that Hitler felt that in the absence of organised religion, people would turn to mysticism, which he considered regressive. According to Speer, Hitler believed that Japanese religious beliefs or Islam would have been a more suitable religion for Germans than Christianity, with its "meekness and flabbiness". Historian John S. Conway states that Hitler was fundamentally opposed to the Christian churches. According to Bullock, Hitler did not believe in God, was anticlerical, and held Christian ethics in contempt because they contravened his preferred view of "survival of the fittest". He favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views, and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organisation, liturgy, and phraseology. In a 1932 speech, Hitler stated that he was not a Catholic, and declared himself a German Christian. In a conversation with Albert Speer, Hitler said, "Through me the Evangelical Church could become the established church, as in England."
Hitler viewed the church as an important politically conservative influence on society, and he adopted a strategic relationship with it that "suited his immediate political purposes". In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage and German Christian culture, though professing a belief in an "Aryan Jesus" who fought against the Jews. Any pro-Christian public rhetoric contradicted his private statements, which described Christianity as "absurdity" and nonsense founded on lies.
According to a US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) report, "The Nazi Master Plan", Hitler planned to destroy the influence of Christian churches within the Reich. His eventual goal was the total elimination of Christianity. This goal informed Hitler's movement early on, but he saw it as inexpedient to publicly express this extreme position. According to Bullock, Hitler wanted to wait until after the war before executing this plan. Speer wrote that Hitler had a negative view of Himmler's and Alfred Rosenberg's mystical notions and Himmler's attempt to mythologise the SS. Hitler was more pragmatic, and his ambitions centred on more practical concerns.
Health
Researchers have variously suggested that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, coronary sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, syphilis, giant-cell arteritis, tinnitus, and monorchism. In a report prepared for the OSS in 1943, Walter Charles Langer of Harvard University described Hitler as a "neurotic psychopath". In his 1977 book The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, historian Robert G. L. Waite proposes that Hitler suffered from borderline personality disorder. Historians Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann consider that while he suffered from a number of illnesses including Parkinson's disease, Hitler did not experience pathological delusions and was always fully aware of, and therefore responsible for, his decisions.
Sometime in the 1930s, Hitler adopted a mainly vegetarian diet, avoiding all meat and fish from 1942 onwards. At social events, he sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his guests shun meat. Bormann had a greenhouse constructed near the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Hitler. Hitler stopped drinking alcohol around the time he became vegetarian and thereafter only very occasionally drank beer or wine on social occasions. He was a non-smoker for most of his adult life, but smoked heavily in his youth (25 to 40 cigarettes a day); he eventually quit, calling the habit "a waste of money". He encouraged his close associates to quit by offering a gold watch to anyone able to break the habit. Hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to it in late 1942. Speer linked this use of amphetamine to Hitler's increasingly erratic behaviour and inflexible decision-making (for example, rarely allowing military retreats).
Prescribed 90 medications during the war years by his personal physician, Theodor Morell, Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach problems and other ailments. He regularly consumed amphetamine, barbiturates, opiates, and cocaine, as well as potassium bromide and atropa belladonna (the latter in the form of Doktor Koster's Antigaspills). He suffered ruptured eardrums as a result of the 20 July plot bomb blast in 1944, and 200 wood splinters had to be removed from his legs. Newsreel footage of Hitler shows tremors in his left hand and a shuffling walk, which began before the war and worsened towards the end of his life. Ernst-Günther Schenck and several other doctors who met Hitler in the last weeks of his life also formed a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.
Legacy
According to historian Joachim Fest, Hitler's suicide was likened by numerous contemporaries to a "spell" being broken. Similarly, Speer commented in Inside the Third Reich on his emotions the day after Hitler's suicide: "Only now was the spell broken, the magic extinguished." Public support for Hitler had collapsed by the time of his death, which few Germans mourned; Kershaw argues that most civilians and military personnel were too busy adjusting to the collapse of the country or fleeing from the fighting to take any interest. According to historian John Toland, Nazism "burst like a bubble" without its leader.
Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil". "Never in history has such ruination—physical and moral—been associated with the name of one man", he adds. Hitler's political programme brought about a world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe. Germany suffered wholesale destruction, characterised as Stunde Null (Zero Hour). Hitler's policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale; according to R. J. Rummel, the Nazi regime was responsible for the democidal killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in the history of warfare. Historians, philosophers, and politicians often use the word "evil" to describe the Nazi regime. Many European countries have criminalised both the promotion of Nazism and Holocaust denial.
Historian Friedrich Meinecke described Hitler as "one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life". English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper saw him as "among the 'terrible simplifiers' of history, the most systematic, the most historical, the most philosophical, and yet the coarsest, cruelest, least magnanimous conqueror the world has ever known". For the historian John M. Roberts, Hitler's defeat marked the end of a phase of European history dominated by Germany. In its place emerged the Cold War, a global confrontation between the Western Bloc, dominated by the United States and other NATO nations, and the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union. Historian Sebastian Haffner asserted that without Hitler and the displacement of the Jews, the modern nation state of Israel would not exist. He contends that without Hitler, the de-colonisation of former European spheres of influence would have been postponed. Further, Haffner claimed that other than Alexander the Great, Hitler had a more significant impact than any other comparable historical figure, in that he too caused a wide range of worldwide changes in a relatively short time span.
In propaganda
Hitler exploited documentary films and newsreels to inspire a cult of personality. He was involved and appeared in a series of propaganda films throughout his political career, many made by Leni Riefenstahl, regarded as a pioneer of modern filmmaking. Hitler's propaganda film appearances include:
Der Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith, 1933)
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935)
Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht (Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces, 1935)
Olympia (1938)
See also
Bibliography of Adolf Hitler
Führermuseum
Hitler and Mannerheim recording
Julius Schaub – chief aide
Karl Mayr – Hitler's superior in army intelligence 1919–1920
Karl Wilhelm Krause – personal valet
List of Adolf Hitler's personal staff
List of streets named after Adolf Hitler
Paintings by Adolf Hitler
Toothbrush moustache – also known as a "Hitler moustache", a style of facial hair
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Printed
Online
External links
A psychological analysis of Adolf Hitler at the Internet Archive
Works by Adolf Hitler at Open Library
Works by or about Adolf Hitler at the Internet Archive
Newspaper clippings about Adolf Hitler in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW |
Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States | [
353
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States"
] | Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm related violence. Definitions vary, with no single, broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organization—in which a shooter kills at least four victims.
Using this definition, a 2016 study found that nearly one-third of the world's public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 (90 of 292 incidents) occurred in the United States, In 2017 The New York Times recorded the same total of mass shootings for that span of years. A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4,011 mass shootings in the US, most frequent around the southeastern U.S. and Illinois. This was true for mass shootings that were crime-violence, social-violence, and domestic violence-related. The highest rate was found in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings per one million people), followed by Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings per million) and Illinois.
Perpetrator demographics vary by type of mass shooting, though in almost all cases they are male. Contributing factors include easy access to guns, perpetrator suicidality and early childhood trauma, as well as various sociocultural factors including online media reporting of mass shootings. In one study, 44% of mass shooters had leaked their plans prior to committing the act.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation designated 61 of all events in 2021 as active shooter incidents. The United States has had more mass shootings than any other country. After a shooting, perpetrators generally either commit suicide or are restrained or killed by law enforcement officers. Mass shootings accounted for under 0.2% of gun deaths in the United States between 2000 and 2016, and less than 0.5% of all homicides in the United States from 1976 to 2018.
Definitions
There is no fixed definition of a mass shooting in the United States, and different researchers define "mass shootings" in different ways. Of the 7 following definitions, most use a minimum of 4 victims as a threshold. Among the various definitions are those that are:
Based on injuries:
Gun Violence Archive: More broadly defines "mass shooting" to mean four or more (excluding the perpetrator) shot at roughly the same time and location, regardless of number of fatalities or the motive. Brady: United Against Gun Violence uses a similar definition.
Mass Shooting Tracker: Defines "mass shooting" as "an incident where four or more people are shot in a single shooting spree," including the perpetrator or police shootings of civilians around the perpetrator, and irrespective of the motive of the perpetrator or the location of the murders.
Based on number of deaths:
Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, signed into law in January 2013: Defines a "mass killing" as the killing of at least three victims, excluding the perpetrator, and regardless of the weapon used.
Everytown for Gun Safety, which tracks mass shootings based on press accounts, police records, and court papers, defines mass shooting as "any incident in which four or more people are shot and killed, excluding the shooter."
Based on number of deaths and nature of attack:
Congressional Research Service (CRS) 2015 report titled Mass Murder with Firearms: Did not define "mass shooting" but defined "public mass shooting" for the purposes of its report as "a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms, within one event, and in one or more locations in close proximity." The CRS further states that its report "attempts to refine the relatively broad concept of mass shooting...into a narrower formulation: public mass shootings."
Mother Jones's open-source database of mass shootings: The magazine's database, established after the 2012 Aurora movie theater massacre and updated continuously since that time, defines "mass shootings" as "indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker," excluding "shootings stemming from more conventionally motivated crimes such as armed robbery or gang violence" and shootings in which the perpetrator has not been identified. This definition generally is consistent with the FBI's figures and the data used by criminologists.
2022 National Institute of Justice/The Violence Project dataset: Defines "mass public shooting" as an incident in which at least four victims were killed with firearms in a single event "and the murders are not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance (armed robbery, criminal competition, insurance fraud, argument, or romantic triangle)."
The FBI defines an "active shooter" incident as "one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area", excluding gun-related incidents that were the result of self-defense, gang or drug violence, residential or domestic disputes, crossfire as a byproduct of another ongoing criminal act, controlled barricade or hostage situations, or actions that appeared not to have put other people in peril.
The appropriateness of a broad versus narrow definition of "mass shooting" has been the subject of debate. Some commentators argue in favor of a narrow definition of mass shootings that excludes the victims of street crime. Mark Follman of Mother Jones, which compiles an open-source database of mass shootings, contends that "While all the victims are important, conflating those many other crimes with indiscriminate slaughter in public venues obscures our understanding of this complicated and growing problem." Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox argues against the use of the broad definition of "mass shooting" in the popular press, stating that it misleads readers. Others, by contrast, argue that defining "mass shooting" solely as a shooting in a public place in which the perpetrator fires at random is too narrow. For example, Mark Hay argues that although gang, party, and domestic violence "probably warrant different solutions" than random mass public shootings, a narrow definition fails "to capture and convey the full scope of large-scale gun violence in the United States" and its effect on marginalized communities.
Frequency and locations
As of 2017, studies indicated that the rate at which public mass shootings occur has tripled since 2011. Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting occurred roughly once every 200 days. However, between 2011 and 2014, that rate has accelerated greatly with at least one mass shooting occurring every 64 days in the United States.
Under the definition used by the Gun Violence Archive, by the end of 2019, there were 417 mass shootings; by the end of 2020, there had been 611; and by the end of 2021, 693. By mid-May 2021, there were 10 mass shootings per week on average; by mid-May 2022, there was a total of 198 mass shootings in the first 19 weeks of the year, which represents 11 mass shootings a week. The FBI designated 61 active shooter incidents. There were ten mass shootings in 2019, two in 2020, and six in 2021. Under the substantially narrower 2022 National Institute of Justice/The Violence Project dataset definition, there were 167 mass shootings (4 or more killed with firearms in public, not connected to "underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance") in the U.S. from 1966 to 2019, and 30.8% of the shootings occurred at the workplace.
In 2014, the FBI conducted a review of 160 active shooter incidents in the U.S. from 2000 to 2013 (averaging approximately 11 cases annually) in 40 states and the District of Columbia. The study found that 45.6% took place in a business or commercial setting, 16.9% occurred in schools, 7.5% in institutions of higher education, 9.4% in open spaces, 6.9% in (non-military) government properties, 3.1% in military sites, 4.4% in homes, 3.8% in places of worship, and 2.5% in healthcare settings. FBI data shows that active shooter incidents increased from 2000 to 2019.
A comprehensive report by USA Today tracked all mass killings from 2006 through 2017 in which the perpetrator willfully killed four or more people. For mass killings by firearm for instance, it found 271 incidents with a total of 1,358 victims.
In October 2018, PLOS One published a study analyzing 100 mass shootings from the Mother Jones database from January 1982 to May 2018 to evaluate whether mass shootings became more common in the United States over the preceding three decades. It found that mass shootings had steadily increased. However, some researchers dispute whether the frequency of mass shootings is increasing due to differences in research methods and differences in the criteria used to define events as mass shootings.
In 2018 The Washington Post recorded 163 mass shootings in the United States between 1967 and June 2019. Mother Jones recorded 140 mass shootings between 1982 and February 2023.
Under the Everytown for Gun Safety definition ("any incident in which four or more people are shot and killed, excluding the shooter") there were an average of 19 mass shootings in the U.S. each year from 2009 to 2020, with 947 wounded by gunfire and 1,363 fatally shot. The report found that: "In nearly all mass shootings over this period, the shooter was an adult man who acted alone. Thirty-two percent of mass shooters, or 92 shooters, ended with the perpetrator dying by suicide, and another 24 shooters were killed by responding law enforcement. The remaining 145 mass shooters were taken into custody by law enforcement, while the outcomes and identities of 23 remain unknown." In 2022, the Violence Project of the National Institute of Justice recorded 185 mass shootings from 1966 to December 2022. A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4,011 mass shootings in the US.
Geographical distribution
The 2023 JAMA report showed mass shootings were most frequent around the southeastern U.S. and Illinois. This was true for mass shootings that were crime-, social-, and domestic violence-related. However mass shootings that did not fit any of these categories were geographically distributed more evenly across the U.S. The highest rate was found in the District of Columbia (10.4 shootings per one million people), followed by much lower rates in Louisiana (4.2 mass shootings per million) and Illinois (3.6 mass shootings per million)
Perpetrator demographics
According to The New York Times, there is no common profile of people who carry out mass shootings in the United States, except that they are mostly men. By race, according to a study, the proportion of mass shooters in the United States who are white is about equal to the overall proportion of white people in the general population of the US. The proportion of male mass shooters is considerably larger than the proportion of males in the general population. According to the Associated Press, white men comprise nearly 50% of all mass shooters in the US. According to the National Institute of Justice/The Violence project study, the demographics of shooters were 97.7% male, with an average age of 34.1 years, 52.3% white, 20.9% black, 8.1% Latino, 6.4% Asian, 4.2% middle eastern, and 1.8% native American.
According to the Center for Inquiry, mass shootings of family members (the most common) are usually carried out by white, middle-aged males. Felony-related mass shootings (connected with a previous crime) tend to be committed by young Black or Hispanic males with extensive criminal records, typically against people of the same ethnic group. Public mass shootings of persons unrelated to the shooter, and for a reason not connected with a previous crime (the rarest but most publicized) are committed by men whose racial distribution closely matches that of the nation as a whole. Other than gender, the demographic profiles of public mass shooters are too varied to draw firm conclusions. In its 2014 active shooter incidents review, the FBI found that the perpetrator was female in only 6 of the 160 incidents (4%) and that in only 2 incidents (1%) was there more than one perpetrator. Analogously, in December 2013, the Journal of Forensic Sciences published a sociodemographic network characteristics and antecedent behaviors survey of 119 lone-actor terrorists in the United States and Europe that found that 96.6% were male.
Contributing factors
High gun accessibility
Higher accessibility and ownership of guns has been cited as a reason for the U.S.'s high rate of mass shootings. The U.S. has the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world with 120.5 firearms per 100 people; the second highest is Yemen with 52.8 firearms per 100 people. In a Gallup survey conducted in September and October 2020 of 1,035 randomly selected U.S. adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, 30% reported personally owning a firearm and 44% reported living in a household that owned at least one firearm, while the 2020 United States census enumerated the U.S. adult population to be approximately 258.3 million persons in 126.8 million households and the Gun Violence Archive recorded 610 mass shootings in the United States in the same year.
Researchers have found a reduction in the number of mass shooting related homicides while the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (FAWB) was in place from 1994 to 2004, which had banned certain types of semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s. However, researchers also acknowledged that it was difficult to prove that the ban was the cause of this. Conversely, the RAND Corporation published a review in 2023 of five studies researching the effects of the FAWB and state assault weapons bans on the frequency and lethality of mass shootings and found the evidence to be inconclusive, and the review also evaluated two studies researching the effect of high-capacity magazine bans on reducing the frequency and lethality of mass shootings and found the evidence for an effect to be limited.
Several types of guns have been used in mass shootings in the United States, including semi-automatic handguns, semi-automatic rifles, revolvers, and shotguns. Of the 172 events from 1966 to 2019 classified as mass public shootings (four or more victims killed) in the U.S. by the 2022 National Institute of Justice/The Violence Project dataset, perpetrators used handguns in 77.2% of cases and semi-automatic rifles in 25.1% of cases. An earlier 2016 study by James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel similarly concluded that "rather than assault weapons, semiautomatic handguns are the weapons of choice for most mass shooters." High-capacity magazines were used in more than half of mass shootings over the four decades up to 2018. From 1966 to 2019, approximately 77% of mass shooters in the U.S. legally obtained the firearm used in the attacks. Although semi-automatic rifles are used in only 1% of overall shootings in the U.S., they are used in 25% of mass shootings, and (as of 2018) in six of the ten deadliest mass shooting events.
A study published in PLOS One in 2015 examined mass shootings in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 (and school shootings in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013). The study authors found that the "state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings, and mass shootings." Conversely, the October 2018 PLOS One study assessed the impact of state-level gun ownership rates in predicting state-level mass shooting rates and found that state-level gun ownership rates were not statistically significantly associated with the number of mass shootings in each state. The researchers tested the possibility that the relationship between gun ownership and the mass shooting rate was being confounded by gun law permissiveness and found that gun law permissiveness was only nominally correlated with gun ownership and that gun ownership was not statistically associated with the mass shooting rate with or without gun law permissiveness being adjusted.
A 2019 study published in The BMJ conducted a cross-sectional time series study of U.S. states from 1998 to 2015; the study found that "States with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership had higher rates of mass shootings, and a growing divide appears to be emerging between restrictive and permissive states." The study specifically found that "A 10% increase in state gun ownership was associated with a significant 35.1% (12.7% to 62.7%, P=0.001) higher rate of mass shootings. Partially adjusted regression analyses produced similar results, as did analyses restricted to domestic and non-domestic mass shootings." A 2020 study published in Law and Human Behavior examined the relationship of state guns laws and the incidence and lethality of mass shootings in the U.S. from 1976 to 2018. The study found that "laws requiring permits to purchase a gun are associated with a lower incidence of mass public shootings, and bans on large capacity magazines are associated with fewer fatalities and nonfatal injuries when such events do occur." The study specifically found that large-capacity magazine bans were associated with approximately 38% fewer fatalities and 77% fewer nonfatal injuries when a mass shooting occurred.
Perpetrator suicidality
A panel of mental health and law enforcement experts has estimated that roughly one-third of acts of mass violence—defined as crimes in which four or more people were killed—since the 1990s were committed by people with a "serious mental illness" (SMI). However, the study emphasized that people with an SMI are responsible for less than 4% of all the violent acts committed in the United States. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) states that gun violence is a public health crisis and has repeatedly noted that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and "are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of violence."
In February 2021, Psychological Medicine published a survey reviewing 14,785 publicly reported murders in English language news worldwide between 1900 and 2019 compiled in a database by psychiatrists at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University Irving Medical Center which found that of the 1,315 personal-cause mass murders (i.e. driven by personal motivations and not occurring within the context of war, state-sponsored or group-sponsored terrorism, gang activity, or organized crime) 11% of mass murderers and 8% of mass shooters had an SMI (e.g. schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder), that mass shootings have become more common than other forms of mass murder since 1970 (with 73% occurring in the United States alone), and that mass shooters in the U.S. were more likely to have legal histories, to engage in recreational drug use or alcohol abuse, and to display non-psychotic psychiatric or neurologic symptoms.
In October 2022, the Journal of Forensic Sciences published a subsequent review of 82 mass murders in the Columbia University database that at least partially occurred in academic settings that found that 68% of the mass murder perpetrators and 81% of the mass shooters did not have an SMI and that 46% of the mass shootings surveyed ended with the perpetrator committing suicide, leading the researchers to conclude that "To prevent future mass school shootings, we need to begin to focus on the cultural and social drivers of these types of events... rather than on individual predictors" and that "The findings strongly suggest that focusing on mental illness, particularly psychotic illness, when talking about mass school shooting risks is missing other factors that contribute to the vast majority of cases". Likewise, in a general research review on mass shootings, researchers at the RAND Corporation have noted that due to mass shootings having low base rates, "policies targeting individuals based on risk factors would result in an extremely high rate of false positives" and that the probability of individuals identified by even the most predictive risk factors to commit a mass shooting is "on the order of one in a million."
In 2018, the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit released a survey of 63 active shooter cases between 2000 and 2013. It found that 62% of active shooters showed symptoms of mental health disorders, but those symptoms may have been "transient manifestations of behaviors and moods that would not be sufficient to warrant a formal diagnosis of mental illness" and that only one-fourth of active shooters surveyed had a formal diagnosis of any mental health disorder (and a psychotic disorder in only 3 cases). The survey concludes that given the high lifetime prevalence of the symptoms of mental illness among the U.S. population, "formally diagnosed mental illness is not a very specific predictor of violence of any type, let alone targeted violence." The 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimated that 57.8 million U.S. adults had a mental illness and 14.1 million U.S. adults had an SMI, while the Gun Violence Archive recorded 690 mass shootings in the United States in the same year. Psychiatrist Ronald W. Pies has suggested that psychopathology should be understood as a three-gradation continuum of mental, behavioral and emotional disturbance with most mass shooters falling into a middle category of "persistent emotional disturbance."
In 2022, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law published a study by Jillian Peterson, James Densley, and others, assessing the life history variables of 172 mass shooters from 1966 to 2019. The researchers found that symptoms of psychosis played no role in 69% of mass shootings. In the October 2018 PLOS One study, the researchers studied whether state-level SMI rates predicted state-level mass shooting rates and found that state-level SMI rates did not predict state-level mass shooting rates. In 2004, the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education issued a report analyzing 41 school shootings in the United States that found that 78% of the shooters surveyed had histories of suicidal ideation or attempted suicide. In its 2014 active shooter incidents review, the FBI found that 96 of the 160 incidents (60%) ended before police arrived, and in 64 incidents (40%) the shooter committed suicide.
In December 2021, the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management published a study comparing 171 public mass shooters and 63 active shooters in the United States from 1966 to 2019 (using cases compiled in The Violence Project's database) to the general population, homicide offenders, and people who die by suicide. In comparison to the general population, mass shooters were more likely to have a history of mental health issues, to have lifetime thought disorders, and greater lifetime suicidal ideation, while in comparison to general homicide offenders, mass shooters four times more frequently premeditated their homicides, eight times more frequently killed strangers, and were more likely to experience suicidal ideation and commit suicide directly or by cop. In comparison to people who committed suicide, mass shooters were actually more likely to have histories of suicidal ideation and were slightly more likely to premeditate the act. However, like the APA, the researchers emphasized that having a formal mental health disorder diagnosis is more predictive of being a victim of violence rather than a perpetrator. In 2022, there were 49,449 suicides in the United States (a record high) and the suicide rate in 2022 reached its highest level since 1941 at 14.3 per 100,000 persons, while the Gun Violence Archive recorded 646 mass shootings in the United States in the same year.
In the December 2013 Journal of Forensic Sciences lone-actor terrorists survey, lone-actor attacks were rarely sudden or impulsive and the researchers have subsequently noted that a sizable subset of their subjects took preparations to maximize their chances of death by cop or suicide. Based upon the similarities in premeditation and lifetime suicidal ideation, James Densley has argued, "Many of these mass shootings are angry suicides." A 2021 cross-sectional study published in JAMA Network Open examining 170 perpetrators of mass public shootings from 1996 to 2019, found that 44% of mass shooters had leaked their plans prior to committing the act, and that "Leakage was associated with receiving counseling and suicidality, which suggests it may be best characterized as a cry for help from perpetrators prior to their act." "These findings suggest that leakage is a critical moment for mental health intervention to prevent gun violence."
Sociocultural factors and perpetrator life histories
In 2015, psychiatrists James L. Knoll and George D. Annas noted that considering that mass shootings committed by perpetrators with SMIs amount to less than 1% of all gun-related homicides (and that most gun deaths in the United States are suicides rather than homicides), the tendency of most media attention following mass shootings on mental health leads to sociocultural factors being comparatively overlooked. Instead, Knoll and Annas cite research by social psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell on narcissism and social rejection in the personal histories of mass shooters, as well as cognitive scientist Steven Pinker's suggestion in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) that further reductions in human violence may be dependent upon reducing human narcissism. Conversely, psychologist Peter F. Langman has argued that while mass shooters follow similar patterns, mass shooters do not fit a single psychological profile and the characterization of mass shooters as "friendless loners" is a stereotype. Psychiatrist Paul S. Appelbaum argued that the data from the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Irving Medical Center database of mass shootings show that "legal problems, substance and alcohol use, and difficulty coping with life events seem more useful foci for prevention [of mass shootings] and policy than an emphasis on serious mental illness."
In the December 2021 Journal of Threat Assessment and Management study, mass shooters were more likely to be unemployed and be unmarried in comparison to the general population, while in comparison to general homicide offenders, mass shooters were more likely to not be in an intimate relationship. In the December 2013 Journal of Forensic Sciences lone-actor terrorists survey, a wide range of activities and experiences preceded lone actors attacks, many but not all lone-actors were socially isolated, lone-actors regularly engaged in a detectable and observable range of activities with a wider pressure group, social movement, or terrorist organization, and a subset of 106 subjects for whom relationship data was available found that 68.9% had never married or were divorced or separated from their spouse and only 27.7% were reported to have children. British criminologist Peter Squires argued that mass shooters in Europe and the U.S. "tend to be loners with not much social support who strike out at their communities, schools and families", and noted that countries with high gun-ownership rates but greater social capital (such as Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Israel) have fewer mass killings.
Psychologist Jillian Peterson and James Densley co-founded The Violence Project, a National Institute of Justice-funded project in which researchers studied every mass shooting since 1966, and approximately 150 mass shooters, and coded 50 life history variables for each. Their data suggest that almost all mass shooting perpetrators had four life history variables in common: they had (1) commonly experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence; (2) "reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting," often linked to a specific grievance; (3) researched previous mass shootings, with many being radicalized through the internet; and (4) obtained the means (firearms) to carry out the plan, with perpetrators obtaining weapons from family members in 80% of school shootings, workplace shooters tending to use legally owned handguns, and other public shooters being more likely to acquire firearms illegally. The Violence Project's comprehensive mass shooting database also showed that mass shootings tend to occur in clusters, that mass shooters share a sense of entitlement and seek scapegoats when they fail to achieve goals in life, and that hate-motivated and fame-seeking mass shootings have increased since 2015. A 2021 article in the journal Injury Epidemiology found that from 2014 to 2019, 59.1% of mass shootings in the United States were related to domestic violence (DV), and the shooter either killed a family member or had a DV history in 68.2% of mass shootings.
Mass shooting contagion (the "copycat phenomenon") has been studied. A study published in PLOS One in 2015 examined mass shootings in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 (and school shootings in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013). The study authors found that "significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incentivized by similar events in the immediate past," concluding that: "On average, this temporary increase in probability lasts 13 days, and each incident incites at least 0.30 new incidents (p = 0.0015). We also find significant evidence of contagion in school shootings, for which an incident is contagious for an average of 13 days and incites an average of at least 0.22 new incidents (p = 0.0001)." The October 2018 PLOS One study found that state-level poverty rates and state-level population sizes did not predict state-level mass shooting rates, but did find that greater online media coverage and online search interest levels correlated with shorter intervals between any two consecutive incidents of mass shootings and the researchers concluded that their findings suggest that online media might correlate with an increasing incidence rate of mass shootings. Steven Pinker has also noted that much of the news media in the United States has an editorial policy of "if it bleeds, it leads".
Other posited factors contributing to the prevalence of mass shootings include perpetrators' desire to seek revenge for perceived school or workplace bullying, the widespread chronic gap between people's expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, perpetrators' desire for fame and notoriety, toxic masculinity (mass shootings are perpetrated almost exclusively by men and boys), and a failure of government background checks due to incomplete databases and/or staff shortages. Feminist activist and psychotherapist Harriet Fraad and Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff contend that "American hyper-capitalism" fosters loneliness and social alienation among American men who become mass shooters. A 2019 analysis of mass shootings from 1990 to 2015 published in BMC Public Health found that communities with rising levels of income inequality are at an increased risk of mass shootings.
Effects
Political
A British Journal of Political Science study first published in 2017 (and in print in 2019) found that increase in proximity to mass public shootings in the U.S. was associated with statistically significant and "substantively meaningful" increases in support for stricter gun control laws. The study also found that repeated events, magnitude, and recency of mass shootings play a role with "proximity to repeated events, more horrific events and more recent events" increasing "the salience of gun violence, and thus ... support for gun control." However, the study found that the "most powerful effects" in support or opposition to gun control "are driven by variables related to local culture, with pronounced but expected differences emerging between respondents in rural, conservative, and gun-heavy areas and those residing in urban, liberal areas with few firearm stores." A separate 2019 replication study, extending the earlier panel analysis, found no evidence that mass shootings caused a "significant or substantively meaningful main effect" on attitudes toward gun control. However, the study did find evidence that mass shootings "have polarizing effects conditional on partisanship": "That is, Democrats who live near a mass shooting even tend to become more supportive of gun control restrictions, while Republican attitudes shift in the opposite direction." The study authors concluded, "To the extent that mass shootings may affect public opinion, the result is polarizing rather than consensus building."
A 2020 study published in the American Political Science Review using data on school shootings from 2006 to 2018 concluded the incidents had "little to no effect on electoral outcomes in the United States," whereas a 2021 study in the same journal covering a broader time period (1980–2016) found that the vote share of the Democratic Party increased by an average of almost 5 percentage points in counties that had experienced a "rampage-style" school shooting. Both studies found no increase in voter turnout.
A 2021 study published in PNAS concluded that "mass shootings have a strong impact on the emotions of individuals, but the impact is politicized, limited to individuals living within the town or city where the incident occurs, and fades within a week of the incident." The study authors suggested that this phenomenon could help explain why mass shootings in the U.S. have not led to meaningful policy reform efforts.
Public health
A review article first published online in 2015 and then printed in January 2017 in the journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse concluded that "mass shootings are associated with a variety of adverse psychological outcomes in survivors and members of affected communities". It says that, while "the psychological effects of mass shootings on indirectly exposed populations" is less well-understood, "there is evidence that such events lead to at least short-term increases in fears and declines in perceived safety." Identified risk factors for adverse psychological outcomes have included, among others, demographics, greater proximity to the attack, acquaintance with victims, and less access to psychosocial resources.
With the aftermath of the shooting being psychological, hospitals should acquire programs or help facilities for their patients. The most vulnerable patients are children and young adults due to the fact that their brains aren't fully developed. The likelihood of them developing PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and more, are extraordinarily high. Studies show that 12.4% of mass shooting patients were diagnosed with some form of mental illness, most common being PTSD. Men show lower rates of developing PTSD unlike women who show higher rates. Men and women who fit the criteria for PTSD also showed that they gained depression.
Deadliest mass shootings since 1949
The following mass shootings are the deadliest to have occurred in modern U.S. history. Only incidents with ten or more fatalities by gunshots, excluding those of the perpetrators, are included. This list starts in 1949, the year in which Howard Unruh committed his shooting, which was the first in modern U.S. history to incur ten or more fatalities.
† Was previously the deadliest mass shooting
See also
Explanatory notes
References
Further reading
Oreskes, Naomi, "Furious about Firearms: Outrage, not hope, will move us to prevent gun violence", Scientific American, vol. 329, no. 1 (July/August 2023), p. 96.
External links
Jetter, Michael; Jay K. Walker (October 2018). "The Effect of Media Coverage on Mass Shootings" (PDF). IZA Institute of Labor Economics.
Most Comprehensive Mass Shooter Database—The Violence Project
"Mass Shootings in 2023 | Gun Violence Archive". Gun Violence Archive. |
Columbine_High_School_massacre | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre | [
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] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre"
] | The Columbine High School massacre, often simply referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and a failed bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history, until December 2012. Columbine is still considered one of the most infamous massacres in the U.S. for inspiring many other school shootings and bombings; the word "Columbine" has since become a byword for modern school shootings.
As of 2024, Columbine is still the deadliest school shooting in Colorado and one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States.
Harris and Klebold, who planned for at least a year and hoped to have a large number of victims, intended for the attack to primarily be a bombing and only secondarily a shooting. But when several homemade bombs they planted in the school failed to detonate, the pair launched a shooting attack. Their motive remains inconclusive. The police were slow to enter the school and were heavily criticized for not intervening during the shooting. The incident resulted in the introduction of the immediate action rapid deployment (IARD) tactic, which is used in active-shooter situations, and an increased emphasis on school security with zero-tolerance policies. Debates were sparked over American gun culture and gun control laws, high school cliques, subcultures (e.g. goths), outcasts, and school bullying, as well as teenage use of pharmaceutical antidepressants, the Internet, and violence in video games and movies.
Many makeshift memorials were created after the massacre, including ones employing victims Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck. Fifteen crosses for the victims and the shooters were erected on top of a hill in Clement Park. The crosses for Harris and Klebold were later removed following controversy. Planning for a permanent memorial began in June 1999, and the resulting Columbine Memorial opened to the public in September 2007.
The shooting has inspired dozens of copycat killings, dubbed the Columbine effect, including many deadlier shootings across the world.
Perpetrators
Eric Harris
Eric David Harris (April 9, 1981 – April 20, 1999) was born in Wichita, Kansas. The Harris family relocated often, as Harris's father was a U.S. Air Force transport pilot. His mother was a homemaker. The family moved from Plattsburgh, New York, to Littleton, Colorado, in July 1993, when his father retired from military service.
The Harris family lived in rented accommodations for their first three years in the Littleton area. During this time, Harris attended Ken Caryl Middle School, where he met Klebold. In 1996, the Harris family purchased a house south of CHS. Harris's older brother attended college at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Dylan Klebold
Dylan Bennet Klebold ( KLEE-bohld; September 11, 1981 – April 20, 1999) was born in Lakewood, Colorado. His parents were pacifists and attended a Lutheran church with their children. Both Dylan and his older brother, Byron, attended confirmation classes in accordance with the Lutheran tradition. As had been the case with his older brother, Klebold was named after a renowned poet—in his case, the playwright Dylan Thomas.
Klebold attended Normandy Elementary for first and second grade before transferring to Governor's Ranch Elementary, and became part of the CHIPS ("Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students") program.
Background
Criminal history
In 1996, 15-year-old Eric Harris created a private website on America Online (AOL). It was initially to host levels (also known as WADs) Harris created for use in the first-person shooter video games Doom, Doom II, and Quake. On the site, Harris began a blog, which included details about Harris sneaking out of the house to cause mischief and vandalism, such as lighting fireworks with Klebold and others. These were known as "Rebel Missions", and Harris's blog primarily consisted of "mission logs". Beginning in early 1997, the blog postings began to show the first signs of Harris's anger against society. By the end of the year, the site contained instructions on how to make explosives. Harris's site attracted few visitors and caused no concern until August 1997, after Harris ended a blog post detailing murderous fantasies with "All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can, especially a few people. Like Brooks Brown." Brown was a classmate of his. After Brown's parents viewed the site, they contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office on August 7, 1997. An investigator wrote a draft affidavit to request a search warrant for the Harris household, but it was never submitted to a judge.
On January 30, 1998, Harris and Klebold were arrested for breaking into a white van parked near Littleton and stealing tools and computer equipment. They would subsequently attend a joint court hearing, where they pled guilty to the felony theft. The judge sentenced them to a juvenile diversion program. As a result, both delinquents attended mandatory classes such as anger management and talked with diversion officers. They both were eventually released from diversion several weeks early because of positive actions in the program and put on probation.
Writings
Shortly after the court hearing for the van break-in, Harris reverted his website back to just hosting user-created levels of Doom. He began to write his thoughts down in a journal. Klebold had already been keeping a personal journal since March 1997; as early as November of that year, Klebold had mentioned going on a killing spree. Klebold used his journal to vent about his personal problems as well as what he'd wear and use during the attack. In both their journals, Harris and Klebold would later plot the attack. Soon after beginning his journal, Harris typed out a plan for an attack which included possibly escaping to a foreign country after the massacre, or hijacking an aircraft at Denver International Airport and crashing it into New York City.
Klebold and Harris both made entries in their journals on topics related to sexuality. Klebold expressed shame for his sexual interests, which included bondage and foot fetishism, stating that, “My humanity has a foot fetish, & bondage exteme (sic) liking. I try to thwart it…” Harris described his desire for sex with women, especially his desire of raping and torturing women in his bedroom. Harris also expressed interest in cannibalism, stating that he would like to dismember a woman with whom he could have "animalistic sex" and eat her flesh.
Harris and Klebold's schoolwork also foreshadowed the massacre. They both displayed themes of violence in their creative writing projects. In December 1997, Harris wrote a paper on school shootings titled "Guns in School", and a poem from the perspective of a bullet. Klebold wrote a short story about a man killing students which worried his teacher so much that she alerted his parents.
Both had also actively researched war and murder. For one project, Harris wrote a paper on Nazi Germany and Klebold wrote a paper on Charles Manson. In a psychology class, Harris wrote he dreamed of going on a shooting spree with Klebold. Harris's journals described several experimental bomb detonations.
Nearly a year before the massacre, Klebold wrote a message in Harris's 1998 yearbook: "killing enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops!! My wrath for January's incident will be godlike. Not to mention our revenge in the commons"; "the commons" was slang for the school cafeteria.
Tapes
Basement tapes
Harris and Klebold were both enrolled in video-production classes and kept five video tapes that were recorded with school video equipment. Only two of these, "Hitmen for Hire" and "Rampart Range", and part of a third known as "Radioactive Clothing", have been released. The remaining three tapes detailed their plans and reasons for the massacre, including the ways they hid their weapons and deceived their parents. Most were shot in the Harris family basement, and are thus known as the Basement Tapes. Thirty minutes before the attack, they made a final video saying goodbye and apologizing to their friends and families.
In December 1999, before anyone besides investigators had seen them, Time magazine published an article on these tapes. The victims' family members threatened to sue Jefferson County. As a result, select victim families and journalists were allowed to view them, though the tapes were then withheld from the public and, in 2011, destroyed for fear of inspiring future massacres. Transcripts of some of the dialogue and a short clip recorded surreptitiously by a victim's father still exist. The pair claimed they were going to make copies of the tapes to send to news stations but never did so.
When an economics class had Harris make an ad for a business, he and Klebold made a video called Hitmen for Hire on December 8, 1998, which was released in February 2004. It depicts them as part of the Trench Coat Mafia, a clique in the school who wore black trench coats and opposed jocks, extorting money for protecting preps from bullies. Klebold and Harris themselves were apparently not a part of the Trench Coat Mafia but were friends with some of its members. They wore black trench coats on the day of the massacre, and the Hitmen for Hire video seemed a kind of dress rehearsal, showing them walking the halls of the school, and shooting bullies outside with fake guns.
On October 21, 2003, a video was released showing the pair doing target practice on March 6, 1999, in nearby foothills known as Rampart Range, with the weapons they would use in the massacre.
Nixon tape
Before the massacre, Harris left a micro cassette labeled "Nixon" on the kitchen table. On it Harris said "It is less than nine hours now," placing the recording at some time around 2:30 a.m. He went on to say "People will die because of me," and "It will be a day that will be remembered forever."
Weaponry
Guns
In the months prior to the attacks, Harris and Klebold acquired two 9mm firearms and two 12-gauge shotguns. Harris had a Hi-Point 995 carbine with thirteen 10-round magazines and a Savage-Springfield 67H pump shotgun. Klebold used a 9mm Intratec TEC-DC9 semi-automatic handgun with one 52-, one 32-, and one 28-round magazine and a Stevens 311D double-barreled shotgun. Harris' shotgun was sawed-off to around 26 inches (0.66 m) and Klebold shortened his shotgun's length to 23 inches (0.58 m), a felony under the National Firearms Act.
On November 22, 1998, their friend Robyn Anderson purchased a carbine rifle and the two shotguns for the pair at the Tanner Gun Show, as they were too young to legally purchase the guns themselves. After the attack, she told investigators that she had believed the pair wanted the weapons for target shooting and denied that she had prior knowledge of their plans. Anderson was not charged.
Harris and Klebold both held part-time jobs at a local Blackjack Pizza. Through Philip Duran, one of their coworkers, Klebold bought a TEC-9 handgun from Mark Manes for $500 at another gun show on January 23. Manes, Manes' girlfriend, and Duran are all in the Rampart Range video. After the massacre, Manes and Duran were both prosecuted. Each was charged with supplying a handgun to a minor and possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Manes and Duran were sentenced to a total of six years and four-and-a-half years, respectively, in prison.
Explosives
In addition to the firearms, the complex and highly planned attack involved several improvised explosive devices. Harris and Klebold constructed a total of 99 bombs. These included pipe bombs, carbon-dioxide cartridges filled with gunpowder (called "crickets"), Molotov cocktails, and propane tanks converted to bombs. The propane bombs were used in the cafeteria, the shooters' cars, and in another location intended as a diversion. For ignition, they used storm matches, cannon fuses, and model rocket igniters as well as timing devices built from mechanical alarm clocks for the propane bombs. During the massacre, they carried match strikers taped to their forearms for easy ignition of the pipe bombs and CO2 bombs.
Harris also experimented with napalm, and envisioned a kind of backpack and flamethrower. They both attempted to get another friend and coworker, Chris Morris, who was a part of the Trench Coat Mafia, to keep the napalm at his house, but he refused. Harris also tried to recruit him to be a third shooter but played it off as a joke when rebuked.
Pipe bombs
Harris's website contained instructions on making pipe bombs and Molotovs, and the extensive use of shrapnel. Harris's father once discovered one of his pipe bombs. Harris's journal logged the creation of 25 pipe bombs.
Klebold scared his coworkers by once bringing a pipe bomb into work. They would give various nicknames to their pipe bombs. After the massacre, two pipe bombs had been left in Klebold's bedroom, one named "Vengeance" and another "Atlanta", presumably after the Olympic Park bombing.
Cafeteria bombs
They had in their possession eight propane tanks all converted into bombs. The weekend before the shooting, Harris and Klebold bought two propane tanks and other supplies from a hardware store. They bought six propane tanks on the morning of the attack. Harris was caught on a Texaco gas station security camera at 9:12 a.m. buying a Blue Rhino propane tank. Both cafeteria bombs included a single 20-pound tank, attached pipe bombs, and supporting gasoline canisters alongside.
Car bombs
Both car bombs were made from two 20-pound propane tanks, pipe bombs, and various containers filled with gasoline were spread throughout the vehicles. Eight pipe bombs were placed in Klebold's car, and one in Harris'.
Knives
Harris and Klebold were both equipped with knives, but investigators do not believe they ever utilized them during the massacre. Harris had a boot knife on his belt and a "Khyber-pass" machete bowie knife taped to the back of his ankle. Both had an "R", referencing Harris's alias "REB", etched into the handle, and the machete had a swastika on the sheath. Klebold had a "Cobra" knife mounted to his belt on the left side as well as a switchblade in his right pocket.
The massacre
According to the shooters' respective journals and video tapes, it is believed by investigators that the pair intended to detonate their propane bombs in the cafeteria at the busiest lunch hour, killing hundreds of students. After this, they would shoot and stab survivors, as well as lob bombs. Bombs set in their cars in the parking lot would also eventually detonate, killing more students as well as possibly any police officers, paramedics, firemen, or reporters who had come to the school. However, the bombs in the cafeteria and cars failed to detonate.
Several official sources claim they planned to shoot the fleeing survivors from the parking lot but, when the bombs failed, they moved to the staircase on the hill at the west side. Other sources claim the top of the staircase where the massacre began was their preferred spot to wait for the bombs to go off all along.
A total of 188 rounds of ammunition were fired by the perpetrators during the massacre. Firing nearly twice as much as Klebold, Harris fired his carbine rifle a total of 96 times: 47 shots outside, 36 shots inside, and 13 shots in the library. Harris also discharged his shotgun 25 times: 21 times in the library and four times inside. Klebold fired the TEC-9 handgun 55 times: three shots outside, 31 shots inside, and 21 shots in the library. Klebold also fired 12 rounds from his double-barreled shotgun: twice outside, four times inside, and six times in the library. Law enforcement officers fired 141 rounds during exchanges of gunfire with the shooters.
Planting the bombs
On Tuesday morning, April 20, 1999, Harris and Klebold placed two duffel bags in the cafeteria. Each bag contained propane bombs, set to detonate during the "A" lunch shift, which began at 11:15 a.m.
No witness recalled seeing the duffel bags being added to the 400 or so backpacks that were already in the cafeteria. The security staff at CHS did not observe the bags being placed in the cafeteria; a custodian was replacing the school security videotape at around 11:14 a.m. Shortly after the massacre, police speculated the bombs were placed during this "tape change". They also investigated whether the bombs were placed during the "after-prom" party held the prior weekend. Some Internet sleuths claim the bomb placement can be seen on the surveillance video at around 10:58 a.m. Harris and Klebold are seen in the tapes planting the bombs in casual school clothes separately.
Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy Neil Gardner was assigned to the high school as a full-time school resource officer. Gardner usually ate lunch with students in the cafeteria, but on April 20 he was eating lunch in his patrol car at the northwest corner of the campus, watching students in the Smokers' Pit in Clement Park, a meadow adjacent to the school.
Two backpacks filled with pipe bombs, aerosol canisters, and small propane bombs were also placed in a field about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of CHS, and 2 mi (3.2 km) south of the fire station. The bombs were intended as a diversion to draw firefighters and emergency personnel away from the school. Only the pipe bombs and one of the aerosol canisters detonated, causing a small fire, which was quickly extinguished by the fire department. It went off after first having been moved. Bomb technicians immediately examined the bombs and relayed to police at the school the possibility of devices with motion activators.
Harris and Klebold changed clothes and returned separately to CHS. Harris parked his vehicle in the junior student parking lot, and Klebold parked in the adjoining senior student parking lot. The school cafeteria was their primary bomb target; the cafeteria had a long outside window-wall, ground-level doors, and was just north of the senior parking lot. The library was located above the cafeteria in the second-story of the window-wall. Each car contained bombs.
As Harris pulled into the parking lot, he encountered classmate Brooks Brown, with whom he had recently patched up a longstanding series of disputes. According to Brown, who was smoking a cigarette, he was surprised to see Harris, whom he earlier noted had been absent from a class test. Harris, a good student, was unlikely to miss school days with important academic obligation. Brown berated Harris for missing the test. Harris, acting unconcerned, replied "It doesn't matter anymore." Harris went on: "Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home." Brown, feeling uneasy and already prepared to skip his next class, walked away down South Pierce Street.
Meanwhile, Harris and Klebold armed themselves, using straps and webbing to conceal weapons beneath their trench coats. They lugged bags containing bombs and ammunition. Harris had concealed his shotgun in one of the bags. Beneath the trench coats, Harris wore a military bandolier and a white T-shirt with the inscription "Natural Selection" in black letters, a mantra he had adopted; Klebold wore a black T-shirt with "Wrath" in red letters.
The cafeteria bombs failed to detonate. Had these explosives detonated as intended, they would have killed or severely wounded the 488 students in the cafeteria and damaged the school's structure, collapsing the library into the cafeteria and possibly killing more students and staff.
11:19 a.m.: Shooting begins
At 11:19 a.m., 17-year-old Rachel Scott and her friend Richard Castaldo were having lunch and sitting on the grass next to the west entrance of the school. Klebold threw a pipe bomb towards the parking lot; the bomb only partially detonated, causing it to give off smoke. Castaldo thought it was no more than a crude senior prank. Likewise, several students during the incident first thought that they were watching a prank.
The two allegedly returned to where Rachel Scott and Richard Castaldo lay on the ground injured. Scott was killed instantly when she was hit four times with rounds fired from Harris's carbine; one shot was to the left temple. Castaldo was shot eight times in the chest, arm, and abdomen by both Harris and Klebold; he fell unconscious to the ground and was left paralyzed below the chest.
After firing twice, Klebold's TEC-9 jammed, and he was forced to temporarily cease shooting to fix it, which he did by reloading a new magazine into his pistol. Meanwhile, Harris took off his trenchcoat and aimed his carbine down the west staircase in the direction of three students: Daniel Rohrbough, Sean Graves, and Lance Kirklin. The students presumed they were paintball guns, and were about to walk up the staircase directly below the shooters. Harris fired ten times, killing Rohrbough and injuring Graves and Kirklin. William David Sanders, a teacher and coach at the school, was in the cafeteria when he heard the gunfire and began warning students.
Harris turned west and fired seven shots in the direction of five students sitting on the grassy hillside adjacent to the steps and opposite the west entrance of the school: Michael Johnson was hit in the face, leg, and arm but ran and escaped; Mark Taylor was shot in the chest, arms, and leg and fell to the ground, where he faked death; the other three escaped uninjured.
Klebold walked down the steps toward the cafeteria. He first shot once at the body of Dan Rohrbough with his shotgun, and then came up to Lance Kirklin, who was already wounded and lying on the ground, weakly calling for help. Klebold said, "Sure. I'll help you," then shot Kirklin in the jaw with his shotgun. Although near-fatally injured, Kirklin would survive. Graves—paralyzed beneath the waist—had crawled into the doorway of the cafeteria's west entrance and collapsed. He rubbed his blood on his face and played dead. After shooting Kirklin, Klebold walked towards the cafeteria door. He then stepped over the injured Graves to enter the cafeteria. Graves remembers Klebold saying, "Sorry, dude."
Klebold only briefly entered the cafeteria and did not shoot at the several people still inside. Officials speculated that Klebold went to check on the propane bombs. Harris was still on top of the stairs shooting, and severely wounded and partially paralyzed 17-year-old Anne-Marie Hochhalter as she tried to flee. Klebold came out of the cafeteria and went back up the stairs to join Harris. They each shot once at students standing close to a soccer field but did not hit anyone. They walked toward the west entrance, throwing pipe bombs in several directions, including onto the roof; only a few of these pipe bombs detonated. Witnesses heard one of them say, "This is what we always wanted to do. This is awesome!"
Meanwhile, art teacher Patti Nielson was inside the school; she had noticed the commotion and walked toward the west entrance with student Brian Anderson. Nielson had intended to walk outside to tell the two students, "Knock it off", thinking they were either filming a video or pulling a student prank. As Anderson opened the first set of double doors, the gunmen shot out the windows, injuring him with flying glass; Nielson was hit in the shoulder with shrapnel. Anderson and Nielson ran back down the hall into the library, and Nielson alerted the students inside to the danger, telling them to get under desks and keep silent. She dialed 9-1-1 and hid under the library's administrative counter. Anderson fell to the floor, bleeding from his injuries, then hid inside the magazine room adjacent to the library.
11:22 a.m.: Police response and West Entrance shootouts
At 11:22 a.m., a custodian called Deputy Neil Gardner, the assigned resource officer to Columbine, on the school radio, requesting assistance in the senior parking lot. The only paved route took him around the school to the east and south on Pierce Street, where at 11:23 a.m., he heard on his police radio that a female was down, and assumed she had been struck by a car. While exiting his patrol car in the senior lot at 11:24, he heard another call on the school radio, "Neil, there's a shooter in the school."
Harris, at the west entrance, immediately turned and fired ten shots from his carbine at Gardner, who was 60 yards (55 m) away. As Harris reloaded his carbine, Gardner leaned over the top of his car and fired four rounds at Harris from his service pistol. Harris ducked back behind the building, and Gardner momentarily believed that he had hit him. Harris then reemerged and fired at least four more rounds at Gardner (which missed and struck two parked cars), before retreating into the building. No one was hit during the exchange of gunfire. Gardner reported on his police radio, "Shots in the building. I need someone in the south lot with me." By this point, Harris had shot 47 times, and Klebold 5. The shooters then entered the school through the west entrance, moving along the main north hallway, throwing pipe bombs and shooting at anyone they encountered. Klebold shot Stephanie Munson in the ankle, but she was able to walk out of the school. The pair then shot out the windows to the east entrance of the school. After proceeding through the hall several times and shooting toward—and missing—any students they saw, they went toward the west entrance and turned into the library hallway.
Deputies Paul Smoker and Paul Magor, motorcycle patrolmen for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, were writing a traffic ticket north of the school when the "female down" call came in at 11:23 a.m. Taking the shortest route, they drove their motorcycles over grass between the athletic fields and headed toward the west entrance. When they saw Deputies Scott Taborsky, Rick Searle, and Kevin Walker following them in their patrol car, they abandoned their motorcycles for the safety of the car. The six deputies had begun to rescue two wounded students near the ball fields when another gunfight broke out at 11:26, as Harris returned to the double doors and again began shooting at Deputy Gardner, who returned fire. From the hilltop, Deputy Smoker fired three rounds from his pistol at Harris, who again retreated into the building. As before, no one was hit.
Inside the school cafeteria, Dave Sanders and two custodians, Jon Curtis and Jay Gallatine, initially told students to get under the tables, then successfully evacuated students up the staircase leading to the second floor of the school. The stairs were located around the corner from the library hallway in the main south hallway. Sanders then tried to secure as much of the school as he could. Sanders and another student were at the end of the hallway, where he gestured for students in the library to stay, before encountering Harris and Klebold, who were approaching from the corner of the north hallway. Sanders and the student turned and ran in the opposite direction. Harris and Klebold shot at them both, with Harris hitting Sanders twice in the back and neck, hitting his teeth on exit, but missing the student. The latter ran into a science classroom and warned everyone to hide. Klebold walked over towards Sanders, who had collapsed, and tossed a pipe bomb, then returned to Harris up the library hallway.
Sanders struggled toward the science area, and teacher Rich Long took him into a classroom where 30 students were located. Due to his knowledge of first aid, student Aaron Hancey was brought to the classroom from another by teacher Kent Friesen despite the unfolding commotion. With the assistance of fellow student Kevin Starkey and teacher Theresa Miller, Hancey administered first aid to Sanders for three hours, attempting to stem the blood loss using shirts from students in the room, and showing him pictures from his wallet to keep him talking. Using a phone in the room, Miller and several students maintained contact with police outside the school.
As the shooting unfolded, pipe bombs were tossed in the hallways and down into the cafeteria. Patti Nielson in the library called 9-1-1, telling her story and urging students in the library to take cover beneath desks. According to transcripts, her call was received by a 9–1–1 operator at 11:25:18 a.m.
11:29–11:36 a.m.: Library massacre
At 11:29 a.m., Harris and Klebold entered the library. Fifty-two students, two teachers and two librarians were inside.They shouted "Get up! All athletes stand up!" and "Anybody with a white hat [part of the uniform of the athletes] or a sports emblem on it is dead. Today is your day to die." When no one stood up, Harris said "Fine, then I'll just start shooting."
Harris fired his shotgun twice at a desk. Student Evan Todd had been standing near a pillar when the shooters entered the library and had just taken cover behind a photocopier. Todd was hit by wood splinters in the eye and lower back but was not seriously injured. He then hid behind the administrative counter.
The gunmen walked into the library, towards the two rows of computers. Sitting at the north row was disabled student Kyle Velasquez. Klebold fired his shotgun, fatally hitting him in the head and back. They put down their ammunition-filled duffel bags at the south—or lower—row of computers and reloaded their weapons. They then walked between the computer rows, toward the windows facing the outside staircase.
Throughout the massacre in the library, they ordered everybody to get up, said how long they had been waiting for this, and seemed to be enjoying themselves, shouting things like "Woo!" after shooting. While ordering the jocks to stand up, one of the two said, "Anybody with a white hat or a sports emblem on it is dead." Wearing a white baseball cap at Columbine was a tradition among sports team members. Nobody stood up, and several students tried to hide their white hats.
Windows were shot out in the direction of the recently arrived police. Officers returned fire, and the gunmen retreated from the windows; no one was injured. Klebold removed his trench coat. He then fired his shotgun at a nearby table, injuring three students: Patrick Ireland, Daniel Steepleton, and Makai Hall.
Harris walked toward the lower row of computer desks with his shotgun and fired a single shot under the first desk while down on one knee. He hit 14-year-old Steven Curnow with a mortal wound to the neck. He then moved to the adjacent computer desk, injuring 17-year-old Kacey Ruegsegger with a shot which passed completely through her right shoulder, also grazing her neck and severing a major artery. When she started gasping in pain, Harris said, "Quit your bitching."
Harris then walked to a table south of the lower computer table, with two students underneath: Cassie Bernall and Emily Wyant. Harris slapped the surface of the table twice as he knelt, and said "Peek-a-boo" before shooting Bernall once in the head with the shotgun, killing her. Harris at this point held the gun with one hand, and the weapon hit his face in recoil, injuring his nose. He told Klebold he had done so, and Klebold responded "Why'd you do that?"
After fatally shooting Bernall, Harris turned toward the next table, where Bree Pasquale sat next to the table rather than under it. Harris's nose was bleeding; witnesses later reported that he had blood around his mouth. Harris asked Pasquale if she wanted to die, and she responded with a plea for her life. Harris laughed and responded "Everyone's gonna die." When Klebold said "shoot her," Harris responded "No, we're gonna blow up the school anyway."
Klebold noticed Ireland trying to provide aid to Hall, who had suffered a wound to his knee. As Ireland tried to help Hall, his head rose above the table. Klebold shot him a second time, hitting him twice in the head and once in the foot. Ireland was knocked unconscious but survived. Klebold then walked toward another table, where he discovered 18-year-old Isaiah Shoels, 16-year-old Matthew Kechter, and 16-year-old Craig Scott (Rachel's younger brother), hiding underneath. Klebold called out to Harris that he found a "nigger" and tried to pull Shoels out from under the table.
Harris left Pasquale and joined him. According to witnesses, they taunted Shoels for a few seconds, making derogatory racial comments. The gunmen both fired under the table; Harris shot Shoels once in the chest, killing him, and Klebold shot and killed Kechter. Though Shoels was not shot in the head, Klebold said: "I didn't know black brains could fly that far."
Meanwhile, Scott was uninjured, lying in the blood of his friends, feigning death. Harris then yelled, "Who's ready to die next?!"
He turned and threw a "cricket" at the table where Hall, Steepleton, and Ireland were located. It landed on Steepleton's thigh; Hall quickly noticed it and tossed it behind them, and it exploded in mid-air. Harris walked toward the bookcases between the west and center section of tables in the library. He jumped on one and shook it, apparently attempting to topple it, then shot at the books which had fallen.
Klebold walked to the east area of the library. Harris walked from the bookcase, past the central area to meet Klebold. The latter shot at a display case next to the door, then turned and shot toward the closest table, hitting and injuring 17-year-old Mark Kintgen in the head and shoulder. He then turned toward the table to his left and fired, injuring 18-year-olds Lisa Kreutz, Lauren Townsend, and Valeen Schnurr with the same shotgun blast. Klebold then moved toward the same table and fired several shots with the TEC-9, killing Townsend.
At this point, the seriously injured Valeen Schnurr began screaming, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" In response, Klebold asked Schnurr if she believed in the existence of God; when Schnurr replied she did, Klebold asked "Why?" and commented "God is gay." Klebold reloaded but walked away from the table.
Harris approached another table where two girls were hiding. He bent down to look at them and dismissed them as "pathetic". Harris then moved to another table where he fired twice, injuring 16-year-olds Nicole Nowlen and John Tomlin. Tomlin moved out from under the table. Klebold shot him repeatedly, killing him.
Harris then walked back over to the other side of the table where Townsend lay dead. Behind the table, a 16-year-old girl named Kelly Fleming had, like Bree Pasquale, sat next to the table rather than beneath it due to a lack of space. Harris shot Fleming with his shotgun, hitting her in the back and killing her. He shot at the table behind Fleming, hitting Townsend, who was already dead; Kreutz again; and wounding 18-year-old Jeanna Park. The shooters moved to the center of the library, where they reloaded their weapons at a table. Harris then pointed his carbine under a table, but the student he was aiming at moved out of the way. Harris turned his gun back on the student and told him to identify himself. It was John Savage, an acquaintance of Klebold's. He asked Klebold what they were doing, to which he shrugged and answered, "Oh, just killing people." Savage asked if they were going to kill him. However, because of the background noise, Klebold said, "What?" Savage asked again whether they were going to kill him. Klebold said no, and told him to run. Savage fled, escaping through the library's main entrance and through the cafeteria.
After Savage left, Harris turned and fired his carbine at the table directly north of where he had been, hitting the ear and hand of 15-year-old Daniel Mauser. Mauser retaliated by either shoving a chair at Harris or grabbing at his leg; Harris fired again and hit Mauser in the center of the face at close range, killing him. Harris then moved south and fired three shots under another table, critically injuring two 17-year-olds, Jennifer Doyle and Austin Eubanks. Klebold then shot once, fatally wounding 17-year-old Corey DePooter, at 11:35. There were no further victims. They had killed 10 people in the library and wounded 12.
Klebold was quoted as saying they might start knifing people, though they never did. They headed towards the library's main counter. Harris threw a Molotov cocktail toward the southwestern end of the library, but it failed to explode. They converged close to where Todd had moved after having been wounded. Klebold pulled the chair out from the desk, then he pointed his TEC-9 at Todd, who was wearing a white hat. Klebold asked if he was a jock, and when Todd said no, Klebold responded "Well, that's good. We don't like jocks." Klebold then demanded to see his face; Todd partly lifted his hat so his face would remain obscured. When Klebold asked Todd to give him one reason why he should not kill him, Todd said: "I don't want trouble." Klebold responded back angrily "Trouble? You don't even know what fucking trouble is!" Todd tried to correct himself: "That's not what I meant! I mean, I don't have a problem with you guys. I never will and I never did." Klebold then told Harris he was going to let Todd live, but that Harris could kill him if he wanted.
Harris appeared to pay no attention and stated that he and Klebold should head to the cafeteria. Klebold fired into an open library staff break room, hitting a small television. While Harris was walking away, Klebold said, "One more thing!", then picked up the chair beside the library counter under which Patti Nielson was hiding, and slammed the chair down on top of the computer terminal and library counter. Klebold joined Harris at the library entrance. The two walked out of the library at 11:36. Cautiously, fearing the shooters' return, 10 injured and 29 uninjured survivors began to evacuate the library through the north emergency exit door, which led to the sidewalk adjacent to the west entrance. Kacey Ruegsegger was evacuated from the library by Craig Scott. Had she not been evacuated at this point, Ruegsegger would likely have bled to death from her injuries. Patrick Ireland, unconscious, and Lisa Kreutz, unable to move, remained in the building. Patti Nielson crawled into the exterior break room, into which Klebold had earlier fired shots, and hid in a cupboard.
12:08 p.m.: Suicides
After leaving the library, Harris and Klebold entered the science area, where they caused a fire in an empty storage closet. It was extinguished by a teacher who had hidden in an adjacent room. The gunmen then proceeded toward the south hallway, where they shot into an empty science room. At 11:44 a.m., they were captured on the school security cameras as they re-entered the cafeteria. The recording shows Harris crouching against the rail on the staircase and firing toward the propane bombs left in the cafeteria, in an unsuccessful attempt to detonate them. As Klebold approached the propane bomb and examined it, Harris took a drink from one of the cups left behind. Klebold lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it at the propane bomb. About a minute later, the gallon of fuel attached to the bomb ignited, causing a fire that was extinguished by the fire sprinklers a few minutes later. They left the cafeteria at 11:46.
After leaving the cafeteria, they returned to the main north and south hallways of the school and fired several shots into walls and ceilings as students and teachers hid in rooms. They walked through the south hallway into the main office before returning to the north hallway. At 11:56, they returned to the cafeteria, and briefly entered the school kitchen. They returned up the staircase and into the south hallway at 12:00 p.m.
They re-entered the library, which was empty of survivors except for the unconscious Ireland and the injured Kreutz. Once inside, at 12:02 p.m., police were shot at again through the library windows and returned fire. Nobody was injured in the exchange. By 12:05, all gunfire from the school had ceased. By 12:08 p.m., both gunmen had killed themselves. Harris sat down with his back to a bookshelf and fired his shotgun through the roof of his mouth; Klebold went down on his knees and shot himself in the left temple with his TEC-9. An article by The Rocky Mountain News stated that Patti Nielson overheard them shout "One! Two! Three!" in unison, just before a loud boom. Nielson later said that she had never spoken with either of the writers of the article.
In 2002, the National Enquirer published two post-mortem photos of Harris and Klebold in the library. Klebold's gun was underneath his body and so unseen in the photo, leading to speculation that Harris shot Klebold before killing himself. However, some of Klebold's blood was on Harris's legs, suggesting that he had fallen onto Harris after Harris had already killed himself. Also, just before shooting himself, Klebold lit a Molotov cocktail on a nearby table, underneath which Patrick Ireland was lying, which caused the tabletop to momentarily catch fire. Underneath the scorched film of material was a piece of Harris's brain matter, suggesting Harris had shot himself by this point.
Crisis ends
SWAT response
By 12:00 p.m., SWAT teams were stationed outside the school, and ambulances started taking the wounded to local hospitals. A call for additional ammunition for police officers in case of a shootout came at 12:20. Authorities reported pipe bombs by 1:00, and two SWAT teams entered the school at 1:09, moving from classroom to classroom, discovering hidden students and faculty. They entered at the end of the school opposite the library, hampered by old maps and unaware a new wing had recently been added. They were also hampered by the sound of the fire alarms.
Leawood Elementary
Meanwhile, families of students and staff were asked to gather at nearby Leawood Elementary School to await information. All students, teachers, and school employees were taken away, questioned, and offered medical care in small holding areas before being bussed to meet with their family members at Leawood Elementary. In his book Walking in Daniel's Shoes, Tom Mauser, father of victim Daniel Mauser, recounts how several families who'd still been waiting on word of the status of their children were informed by law enforcement that another bus from the school was on its way. However, this bus never arrived, and whether the comments from police stemmed from miscommunication or were an attempt to give distraught parents hope is unknown.
The boy in the window
Patrick Ireland had regained and lost consciousness several times after being shot by Klebold. Paralyzed on his right side, he crawled to the library windows where, on live television, at 2:38 p.m., he stretched out the window, intending to fall into the arms of two SWAT team members standing on the roof of an emergency vehicle, but instead falling directly onto the vehicle's roof in a pool of blood. He became known as "the boy in the window." The team members, Donn Kraemer and John Ramoniec, were later criticized for allowing Ireland to drop more than seven feet to the ground while doing nothing to try to ensure he could be lowered to the ground safely or break his fall.
"1 bleeding to death"
At 2:15 p.m., students placed a sign in the window: "1 bleeding to death", in order to alert police and medical personnel of Dave Sanders' location in the science room. Police initially feared it was a ruse by the shooters. A shirt was also tied to the doorknob. At 2:30, this was spotted, and by 2:40, SWAT officers evacuated the room of students and called for a paramedic. Hancey and Starkey were reluctant to leave Sanders behind. By 3:00, the SWAT officers had moved Sanders to a storage room, which was more easily accessible. As they did so, a paramedic arrived and found Sanders had no pulse. He had died of his injuries in the storage room before he could receive medical care. He was the only teacher to die in the shooting.
Suicide mission; estimated 25 dead
Lisa Kreutz, shot in the shoulder, arms, hand, and thigh, remained lying in the library. She had tried to move but became light-headed. Kreutz kept track of time by the sound of the school's bells until police arrived. Kreutz was finally evacuated at 3:22 p.m., along with Patti Nielson, Brian Anderson, and the three library staff who had hidden in the rooms adjacent to the library. Officials found the bodies in the library by 3:30.
By 4:00, Sheriff John P. Stone made an initial estimate of 25 dead students and teachers, fifty wounded, and referred to the massacre as a "suicide mission". President Bill Clinton later issued a statement.
Bomb squad response
Stone said that police officers were searching the bodies of the gunmen. They feared they had used their pipe bombs to booby-trap corpses, including their own. At 4:30 p.m., the school was declared safe. At 5:30, additional officers were called in, as more explosives were found in the parking lot and on the roof. By 6:15, officials had found a bomb in Klebold's car in the parking lot, set to detonate the gas tank. Stone then marked the entire school as a crime scene.
At 10:40 p.m., a member of the bomb squad, who was attempting to dispose of an un-detonated pipe bomb, accidentally lit a striking match attached to the bomb by brushing it against the wall of the ordnance disposal trailer. The bomb detonated inside the trailer but no one was injured.
The bomb squad disarmed the car bomb. Klebold's car was repaired and, in 2006, put up for auction.
Immediate aftermath
On the morning of April 21, bomb squads combed the high school. By 8:30 a.m., the official death toll of 15 was released. The earlier estimate was ten over the true death toll count, but close to the total count of wounded students. The total count of deaths was 12 students (14 including the shooters) and one teacher; 20 students and one teacher were injured as a result of the shootings. Three more victims were injured indirectly as they tried to escape the school.
At 10:00 a.m., the bomb squad declared the building safe for officials to enter. By 11:30 a.m., a spokesman of the sheriff declared the investigation underway. Thirteen of the bodies were still inside the high school as investigators photographed the building.
At 2:30 p.m., a press conference was held by Jefferson County District Attorney David Thomas and Sheriff John Stone, at which they said that they suspected others had helped plan the shooting. Formal identification of the dead had not yet taken place, but families of the children thought to have been killed had been notified.
Throughout the late afternoon and early evening, the bodies were gradually removed from the school and taken to the Jefferson County Coroner's Office to be identified and autopsied. By 5:00 p.m., the names of many of the dead were known. An official statement was released, naming the 15 confirmed deaths and 27 injuries related to the massacre.
On April 22, the cafeteria bombs were discovered.
In the days following the shootings, Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck became memorials, and impromptu memorials were held in Clement Park. On April 30, carpenter Greg Zanis erected fifteen 6-foot-tall wooden crosses to honor those who had died at the school. Daniel Rohrbough's father cut down the two meant for the gunmen. There were also fifteen trees planted, and he cut down two of those as well.
In November 2021, a report was leaked to NPR about that year's National Rifle Association convention in Denver. In a series of audio tapes, Wayne LaPierre and other top officials suggested raising one million dollars for the victims' families, and the cancellation of the convention was considered by some within the organization.
Search warrant press conference
Also on April 30, high-ranking officials of Jefferson County and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office met to decide if they should reveal that Michael Guerra had drafted an affidavit for a search warrant of Harris's residence more than a year before the shootings, based on his previous investigation of Harris's website and activities. Since the affidavit's contents lacked the necessary probable cause, they decided not to disclose this information at a press conference held on April 30, nor did they mention it in any other way.
Over the next two years, Guerra's original draft and investigative file documents were lost. In September 1999, a Jefferson County investigator failed to find the documents during a secret search of the county's computer system. A second attempt in late 2000 found copies of the document within the Jefferson County archives. Their loss was termed "troubling" by a grand jury convened after the file's existence was reported in April 2001. It was concealed by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and not revealed until September 2001, resulting from an investigation by the TV show 60 Minutes. The documents were reconstructed and released to the public, but the original documents are still missing. The final grand jury investigation was released in September 2004.
Christian martyrdom
In the wake of the shooting, victims Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall came to be regarded as Christian martyrs by Evangelical Christians.
The closest living witness to Scott's death, Richard Castaldo, has stated Harris asked Scott if she believed in God, and murdered her after she answered "You know I do", but this has been questioned, and Castaldo later stated he was not sure.
Considerable media attention focused upon Bernall, who had been killed by Harris in the library and who Harris was reported to have asked, "Do you believe in God?" immediately prior to her murder. Bernall was reported to have responded "Yes" to this question before her murder. Emily Wyant, the closest living witness to Bernall's death, denied that Bernall and Harris had such an exchange. Joshua Lapp thought Bernall had been queried about her belief, but he was unable to correctly point out where Bernall was located, and was closer to survivor Valeen Schnurr during the shootings. Likewise, another witness, Craig Scott, claimed the discussion was with Bernall. However, when asked to indicate where the conversation had been coming from, he pointed to where Schnurr was shot. Schnurr herself claims that she was the one questioned as to her belief in God.
We are Columbine
Classes at Columbine were held at nearby Chatfield Senior High for the remaining three weeks of the 1999 school year. In August 1999, students returned to the school, and principal Frank DeAngelis led a rally of students clad in "We are Columbine" shirts.
Secondary casualties
Six months after the shootings, Anne Marie Hochhalter's mother killed herself. Several former students and teachers had PTSD. Greg Barnes, a 17-year-old student who had witnessed Sanders' shooting, died by suicide in May 2000. Survivor Austin Eubanks, who was injured during the shooting, became heavily medicated, developing an opioid addiction. Eventually overcoming and later speaking publicly about the addiction. Eubanks died from an accidental overdose in 2019 at the age of 37.
Conspiracy theories and misinformation
In the immediate aftermath, conspiracy theories and unfounded claims were made by several anti-government movements and extremist religious and political movements, such as the Westboro Baptist Church and televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr.
Westboro's founder and then-leader, Fred Phelps, unfoundedly claimed that both Harris and Klebold were gay, saying: "Two filthy fags slaughtered 13 people at Columbine High." Falwell also claimed that Harris and Klebold were gay, though he retracted afterward.
Conspiracy theories also arose from anti-gun control activists and extremists, claiming that the massacre had either been staged or that both Harris and Klebold had been government agents, aiming at promoting tougher gun control legislation. Other conspiracy theories point to a mysterious third shooter that has never been identified.
Other antisemitic conspiracy theories pointed to the massacre being a Jewish conspiracy, due to Klebold's mother being Jewish.
Political commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones once implied that the U.S. government had "perpetrated" Columbine, and has claimed that "the Columbine school shootings were 100 percent false flag".
Motive
The shooting was planned as a terrorist attack that would cause "the most deaths in U.S. history", but the motive has never been ascertained with any degree of certainty. In a letter provided with the May 15 report on the Columbine attack, Sheriff John Stone and Undersheriff John A. Dunaway wrote they "cannot answer the most fundamental question—why?" In the days following the event, media speculation regarding the killers' motive was rife. Media reports were disseminated suggesting various motives of the killers, although all theories were largely unsubstantiated and turned out to be myths. These reports included blaming bullying, goth culture, video games, Marilyn Manson, and targeting jocks and minorities. Other rumors were spread in the local area but not largely disseminated by the media, such as the false claim spread by some students that the killers were bullied because they were homosexual.
Mental disorder
The FBI's theory
The FBI concluded that the killers had mental illnesses, that Harris was a clinical psychopath, and Klebold had depression. Dwayne Fuselier, the supervisor in charge of the Columbine investigation, would later remark: "I believe Eric went to the school to kill and didn't care if he died, while Dylan wanted to die and didn't care if others died as well."
In April 1998, a year prior to the shooting, as part of his diversion program, Harris wrote a letter of apology to the owner of the van he and Klebold broke into earlier that year. Around the same time, he derided the owner of the van in his journal, stating that he believed he had the right to steal something if he wanted to. By far the most prevalent theme in Klebold's journals is his wish for suicide and private despair at his lack of success with women, which he refers to as an "infinite sadness". Klebold had repeatedly documented his desires to kill himself, and his final remark in the Basement Tapes, shortly before the attack, is a resigned statement made as he glances away from the camera: "Just know I'm going to a better place. I didn't like life too much."
The FBI's theory was used by Dave Cullen for his 2009 book Columbine. Harris was depicted as the mastermind, having a messianic-level superiority complex and hoping to demonstrate his superiority to the world. Klebold was a follower who primarily participated in the massacre as a means to simply end his life.
This theory has been met with criticism. Critics cite the fact that Klebold, not Harris, was the first to mention a killing spree in his journal. They also cite evidence that Harris was depressed as well, such as his prescription for antidepressants mentioned below.
Medication
Opponents of contemporary psychiatry like Peter Breggin claim that the psychiatric medications prescribed to Harris may have exacerbated his aggressiveness.
Harris had complained of depression, anger, and suicidal thoughts, for which he was prescribed antidepressants. Toxicology reports confirmed that Harris had Luvox in his bloodstream at the time of the shootings, whereas Klebold had no medications in his system.
Harris continued his scheduled meetings with his psychologist until a few months before the massacre.
Other theories
There have been other attempts to diagnose Harris and Klebold with mental illness. Peter Langman believes Harris was a psychopath and Klebold was schizotypal. Professor Aubrey Immelman published a personality profile of Harris, based on journal entries and personal communication, and believes the materials suggested behavior patterns consistent with a "malignant narcissism…pathological narcissistic personality disorder with borderline and antisocial features, along with some paranoid traits, and unconstrained aggression."
Media speculation
Bullying
Early stories following the massacre charged that school administrators and teachers at Columbine had long condoned bullying by jocks and this explained the motive. The link between bullying and school violence has attracted increasing attention since.
Accounts from various parents and school staffers reported bullying in the school. Reportedly, Harris and Klebold were regularly called "faggots". Klebold said on the Basement Tapes, "You've been giving us shit for years;" however, they also stated several times on the tapes and in the journals that no one else was to blame, nor could have prevented the attack. Dylan when talking to his father about the jocks had stated, "They sure give Eric hell." but he also said that the jocks tended to leave him [Dylan] alone. Brown also noted Harris was born with mild chest indent. This made him reluctant to take his shirt off in gym class, and other students would laugh at him. Nathan Vanderau, a friend of Klebold, and Alisa Owen, who knew Harris, noted they were picked on. Vanderau recalled that a "cup of fecal matter" was thrown at them.
It has been alleged that Harris and Klebold were once both confronted by a group of students at CHS who sprayed them with ketchup while referring to them as "faggots" and "queers". Klebold told his mother it had been the worst day of his life. According to Brown, "That happened while teachers watched. They couldn't fight back. They wore the ketchup all day and went home covered with it." According to classmate Chad Laughlin, it involved seniors pelting Klebold with "ketchup-covered tampons" in the commons. Laughlin also stated, "A lot of the tension in the school came from the class above us...There were people fearful of walking by a table where you knew you didn't belong, stuff like that. Certain groups certainly got preferential treatment across the board."
A similar theory was expounded by Brooks Brown in his book on the massacre, No Easy Answers; he noted that teachers commonly ignored bullying and that when Harris and Klebold were bullied by the jocks at CHS, they would make statements such as: "Don't worry, man. It happens all the time!"
Cullen, as well as psychologists dispute the theory of "revenge for bullying" as a motivation. While acknowledging the pervasiveness of bullying in high schools including CHS, Cullen claimed they were not victims of bullying. He noted Harris was more often the perpetrator than victim of bullying. In an entry by Eric Harris in his journal, he stated that even if he were complimented and respected more by his peers, the attack would've still, in all likelihood, occurred. In another entry by Eric in his journal he says not to blame the school's administration for the attack as the staff is doing a good job running the school. In a fact check published on April 19, 2019, on the eve of the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the massacre, Gillian Brockell in The Washington Post underscored that, contrary to the popular view, their attack was not revenge for being bullied. Author Jeff Kass who has also published a book on the attack believes that bullying wasn't the cause. Peter Langman also argues against bullying being the cause of the attack. Other researchers have also argued against the bullying hypothesis.
Isolation
Rejection was also highlighted as a cause. Social cliques within high schools such as the Trench Coat Mafia were widely discussed. One perception formed was that Harris and Klebold were both outcasts who had been isolated from their classmates, prompting feelings of helplessness, insecurity, and depression, as well as a strong need for power and attention. Harris's last journal entry reads, "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things", while Klebold wrote "The lonely man strikes with absolute rage." In an interview, Brown described them as the school's worst outcasts, "the losers of the losers".
This concept too has been questioned, as both Harris and Klebold had a close circle of friends and a wider informal social group. Cullen and Brockell both also say they were not in the Trench Coat Mafia and were not isolated outcasts or loners. Other close friends of the pair such as Chad Laughlin and Nathan Dykeman state the duo were not outcasts. Peter Langman also concurs by also arguing against the pair being loners and outcasts.
Political terrorism
Some peers, such as Robyn Anderson, stated that the pair were not interested in Nazism, and they did not worship or admire Hitler in any way. However, in retrospect, Anderson also stated that there were many things the pair did not tell friends. Harris at least did revere the Nazis, often praising them in his journal.
While some sources claim that there is a connection to Hitler's birthday (20th of April 1889), the theory is dismissed by others since the date of the attack had been delayed due to a munitions problem.
Sociologist Ralph Larkin has theorized that the massacre was to trigger a revolution of outcast students and the dispossessed: "[A]s an overtly political act in the name of oppressed students victimized by their peers. [...] The Columbine shootings redefined such acts not merely as revenge but as a means of protest of bullying, intimidation, social isolation, and public rituals of humiliation."
In contrast with the theory that attack was political, one author argues Columbine was only increasingly linked to terrorism after the September 11 attacks.
Marilyn Manson
In the late 1990s, Marilyn Manson and his band established themselves as a household name, and as one of the most controversial rock acts in music history. Their two album releases prior to the massacre were both critical and commercial successes, and by the time of their Rock Is Dead Tour in 1999, the frontman had become a culture war iconoclast and a rallying icon for alienated youth.
Immediately after the massacre, a significant portion of blame was directed at the band and, specifically, at its outspoken frontman. In the weeks following the shootings, media reports about Harris and Klebold portrayed them and the Trench Coat Mafia as part of a gothic cult. Early media reports alleged that the shooters were fans, and were wearing the group's T-shirts during the massacre. Although these claims were later proven to be false, news outlets continued to run sensationalist stories with headlines such as "Killers Worshipped Rock Freak Manson" and "Devil-Worshipping Maniac Told Kids To Kill". Speculation in national media and among the public led many to believe that Manson's music and imagery were the shooter's sole motivation, despite reports that revealed that the two were not big fans.
Despite this, Marilyn Manson were widely criticized by religious, political, and entertainment-industry figures. Under mounting pressure in the days after Columbine, the group postponed their last five North American tour dates out of respect for the victims and their families. Manson published his response to these accusations in an op-ed piece for Rolling Stone, titled "Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?", in which he castigated America's gun culture, the political influence of the National Rifle Association, and the media's irresponsible coverage, which he said facilitated the placing of blame on a scapegoat.
After concluding the European and Japanese legs of their tour on August 8, the band withdrew from public view to work on their next album, 2000's Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) as an artistic rebuttal to the allegations leveled against them.
Video games
Violent video games were also blamed. Parents of some of the victims filed several unsuccessful lawsuits against video game manufacturers. Jerald Block believes their immersion in a virtual world best explains the massacre. While Brooks Brown disagrees that video games caused the massacre, he agrees elements of their plan came from video games.
Harris and Klebold were both fans of shooter video games such as Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and Postal. A file on Harris's computer read the massacre will "be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together." In his last journal entry, Harris wished to "Get a few extra frags on the scoreboard." After the massacre, it was alleged Harris created Doom and Duke Nukem 3D levels resembling CHS, but these were never found.
Doom
They were avid fans of Doom especially. Harris said of the massacre, "It's going to be like...Doom." He also wrote "I must not be sidetracked by my feelings of sympathy...so I will force myself to believe that everyone is just another monster from Doom." In Harris's yearbook, Klebold wrote "I find a similarity between people and Doom zombies." Harris named his shotgun Arlene after a character in the Doom novels. The TEC-9 Klebold used resembled an AB-10, a weapon from the Doom novels that Harris referenced several times.
Harris spent a great deal of time creating a large WAD, named Tier (German for 'animal', and a song by Rammstein), calling it his "life's work". The WAD was uploaded to the Columbine school computer and to AOL shortly before the attack, but appears to have been lost.
Duke Nukem 3D
The other game mentioned specifically by Harris for what the massacre would be like was Duke Nukem 3D. The game has pipe bombs and one of the enemies is the "pig cop". Brooks Brown wrote that pipe bombs were set in the halls of the school with the intention of causing a chain reaction, because that's what happens in Duke Nukem 3D. Brown also wrote they shot wildly because it works in Duke Nukem 3D.
Legacy
Following the Columbine shooting, schools across the United States instituted new security measures such as see-through backpacks, metal detectors, school uniforms, and security guards. Some schools implemented the numbering of school doors in order to improve public safety response. Several schools throughout the country resorted to requiring students to wear computer-generated IDs.
Schools also adopted a zero tolerance approach to possession of weapons and threatening behavior by students.
Despite the effort, several social science experts feel the zero tolerance approach adopted in schools has been implemented too harshly, with unintended consequences creating other problems. Despite the safety measures that were implemented in the wake of the tragedy at Columbine, school shootings continued to take place in the United States, including at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Stoneman Douglas High School, and Robb Elementary School.
Some schools renewed existing anti-bullying policies. Rachel's Challenge was started by Rachel Scott's parents, and lectures schools about bullying and suicide.
In 2000, Sanders was posthumously given the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for his actions.
Police tactics
Police departments reassessed their tactics and now train for Columbine-like situations after criticism over the slow response and progress of the SWAT teams during the shooting.
Police followed a traditional tactic at Columbine: surround the building, set up a perimeter, and contain the damage. That approach has been replaced by a tactic known as the Immediate Action Rapid Deployment tactic. This tactic calls for a four-person team to advance into the site of any ongoing shooting, optimally a diamond-shaped wedge, but even with just a single officer if more are not available. Police officers using this tactic are trained to move toward the sound of gunfire and neutralize the shooter as quickly as possible. Their goal is to stop the shooter at all costs; they are to walk past wounded victims, as the aim is to prevent the shooter from killing or wounding more. Dave Cullen has stated: "The active protocol has proved successful at numerous shootings... At Virginia Tech alone, it probably saved dozens of lives."
Lawsuits
After the massacre, many survivors and relatives of deceased victims filed lawsuits. Under Colorado state law at the time, the maximum a family could receive in a lawsuit against a government agency was $600,000. Most cases against the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and school district were dismissed by the federal court on the grounds of government immunity. The case against the sheriff's office regarding the death of Dave Sanders was not dismissed due to the police preventing paramedics from going to his aid for hours after they knew the gunmen were dead. The case was settled out of court in August 2002 for $1,500,000.
In April 2001, the families of more than 30 victims received a $2,538,000 settlement in their case against the families of Harris, Klebold, Manes, and Duran. Under the terms of the settlement, the Harrises and the Klebolds contributed $1,568,000 through their homeowners' policies, with another $32,000 set aside for future claims; the Manes contributed $720,000, with another $80,000 set aside for future claims; and the Durans contributed $250,000, with an additional $50,000 available for future claims. The family of victim Shoels rejected this settlement, but in June 2003 were ordered by a judge to accept a $366,000 settlement in their $250-million lawsuit against the shooters' families. In August 2003, the families of victims Fleming, Kechter, Rohrbough, Townsend, and Velasquez received undisclosed settlements in a wrongful death suit against the Harrises and Klebolds.
Parents of some of the victims filed several unsuccessful lawsuits against film companies, over films such as The Basketball Diaries, which includes a dream sequence with a student shooting his classmates in a trench coat. In the Basement Tapes, they debate on whether or not Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino are appropriate choices to direct films about the massacre. Their home videos also show inspiration taken from Pulp Fiction. Both were fans of the film Lost Highway. Apocalypse Now was found in Harris's VCR.
Memorials
Many impromptu memorials were created after the massacre, including victims Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck.
In 2000, youth advocate Melissa Helmbrecht organized a remembrance event in Denver featuring two surviving students, called "A Call to Hope". The library where most of the massacre took place was removed and replaced with an atrium. In 2001, a new library, the HOPE memorial library, was built next to the west entrance.
On February 26, 2004, thousands of pieces of evidence from the massacre were put on display at the Jefferson County fairgrounds in Golden.
A permanent memorial "to honor and remember the victims of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School" began planning in June 1999, and was dedicated on September 21, 2007, in Clement Park. The memorial fund raised $1.5 million in donations over eight years of planning. Designing took three and a half years and included feedback from victims' families, survivors, the high school's students and staff, and the community.
Soon after the massacre, music students at CU Boulder raised money to commission a piece of music to honor Columbine. The university band turned to Frank Ticheli, who responded by composing the wind ensemble work An American Elegy. The following year, the Columbine band premiered the piece at CU Boulder's concert hall. As of 2019, Ticheli's sheet music publisher estimates An American Elegy has been performed 10,000 times.
Gun control
The shooting resulted in calls for more gun control measures. The gun show loophole and background checks became a focus of a national debate. It was the deadliest mass shooting during the era of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Victim Daniel Mauser's father Tom Mauser has become a gun control advocate.
In 2000, federal and state legislation was introduced that would require safety locks on firearms as well as ban the importation of high-capacity ammunition magazines. Though laws were passed that made it a crime to buy guns for criminals and minors, there was considerable controversy over legislation pertaining to background checks at gun shows. There was concern in the gun lobby over restrictions on Second Amendment rights in the United States. Frank Lautenberg introduced a proposal to close the gun show loophole in federal law. It was passed in the Senate, but did not pass in the House.
Michael Moore's 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine focused heavily on the American obsession with handguns, its grip on Jefferson County, and its role in the shooting.
In 2019, the MyLastShot Project was launched as a student-led gun violence prevention resource. The campaign was created by students from Columbine High School, and involves students placing stickers on their driver's licenses, student IDs, or phones that states their wishes to have the graphic photos of their bodies publicized if they die in a shooting.
Popular culture
"Columbine" has since become a euphemism for a school shooting, similar to how "going postal" is for workplace violence.
Since the advent of social media, a fandom for shooters Harris and Klebold has had a documented presence on social media sites, especially Tumblr. Fans of Harris and Klebold refer to themselves as "Columbiners". An article published in 2015 in the Journal of Transformative Works, a scholarly journal which focuses on the sociology of fandoms, noted that Columbiners were not fundamentally functionally different from more mainstream fandoms. Columbiners create fan art and fan fiction, even cosplaying the pair, and have a scholarly interest in the shooting.
A number of books, movies and other media have been inspired by this event. Among those are several video games. A video game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was based on the massacre. The Flash game Pico's School was also inspired by it.
Copycats
The Columbine shootings influenced subsequent school shootings, with several such plots mentioning it. Fear of copycats has sometimes led to the closing of entire school districts. Since Columbine, over 74 copycat cases have been reported, 21 of which resulted in attacks, while the rest were thwarted by law enforcement. In many of them, the perpetrators cited Harris and Klebold as heroes or martyrs.
Analysis
Harris and Klebold have become what the Napa Valley Register have called "cultural icons" for troubled youth. According to psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a legacy of the Columbine shootings is its "allure to disaffected youth".
Sociologist Ralph Larkin examined twelve major school shootings in the US in the following eight years and found that in eight of those, "the shooters made explicit reference to Harris and Klebold". Larkin wrote that the Columbine massacre established a "script" for shootings. "Numerous post-Columbine rampage shooters referred directly to Columbine as their inspiration; others attempted to supersede the Columbine shootings in body count."
A 2015 investigation by CNN identified "more than 40 people...charged with Columbine-style plots". A 2014 investigation by ABC News identified "at least 17 attacks and another 36 alleged plots or serious threats against schools since the assault on Columbine High School that can be tied to the 1999 massacre." Ties identified by ABC News included online research by the perpetrators into the Columbine shooting, clipping news coverage and images of Columbine, explicit statements of admiration of Harris and Klebold, such as writings in journals and on social media, in video posts, and in police interviews, timing planned to an anniversary of Columbine, plans to exceed the Columbine victim counts, and other ties.
In 2015, journalist Malcolm Gladwell writing in The New Yorker magazine proposed a threshold model of school shootings in which Harris and Klebold were the triggering actors in "a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant's action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before."
In February 2016, after Klebold's mother, Sue Klebold, surfaced to speak out on mental health and suicide prevention, she was condemned by then Attorney General of Colorado, Cynthia Coffman, who tweeted that Klebold had been "irresponsible and inflammatory" for her interview with Diane Sawyer. She also added on a follow-up tweet that Klebold had been "selfish" and that her interview could have "very negative consequences". Coffman's remarks were condemned by Ted Zocco-Hochhalter, whose daughter Anne-Marie Hochhalter was a Columbine student paralyzed in the attack. He said there was nothing wrong with Klebold coming up as a remorseful mother trying to spark awareness on mental issues. Other mental health organizations echoed Zocco-Hochhalter's remarks.
See also
Aurora Chuck E. Cheese Massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in the state prior to the Columbine Massacre
Gun politics in the United States
Gun violence in the United States
Mass shootings in the United States
List of attacks related to secondary schools
List of school-related attacks
List of school shootings in the United States
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
Cited works
Further reading
Aronson, Elliot (2001). Nobody Left to Hate. Teaching Compassion After Columbine. First Owl Books. ISBN 978-0-8050-7099-6.
Bernall, Misty (1999). She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. Word Pub. ISBN 978-0-8499-1645-8.
Johnson, Kacey Ruegsegger (2019). Over My Shoulder: A Columbine Survivor's Story of Resilience, Hope, and a Life Reclaimed. Oms, LLC. ISBN 978-1-7336516-0-8.
Miller, Crystal Woodman (2006). Marked for Life: Choosing Hope and Discovering Purpose After Earth-Shattering Tragedy. THINK. ISBN 978-1-57683-936-2.
Saltzman, Marilyn; Sanders, Linda Lou (2004). Dave Sanders: Columbine Teacher, Coach, Hero. Xlibris. ISBN 978-1-4134-5222-8.
Scott, Darrell; Nimmo, Beth (2000). Rachel's Tears: The Spiritual Journey of Columbine Martyr Rachel Scott. Thomas Nelson Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7852-6848-2.
Whitus, Grant (2016). Bullet Riddled: The First S.W.A.T. Officer Inside Columbine...and Beyond. Waldorf. ISBN 978-1-943276-02-8.
Are Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris's parents to blame for the Columbine shooting? − Interview by Susan Greene to author Dave Cullen on the responsibility by Harris' and Klebold's parents on the Colorado Independent on February 10, 2016.
Primary sources
Videos
"Haunted by Columbine". The New York Times. September 25, 2015. Archived from the original on October 28, 2021.
External links
Video of the evacuation in progress, Second video of the evacuation (KUSA-TV (9News) news coverage via CNN)
FBI file on the Columbine massacre
Jefferson County CO Library – Columbine massacre archives
Tragedy of Columbine at the Wayback Machine (archived August 15, 2000) – index of articles from the Rocky Mountain News
Colorado School Shooting at the Wayback Machine (archived May 8, 1999) – index of articles from ABC News
The Lullaby for Columbine Project |
Nuclear_weapon | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon | [
354
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon"
] | A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.
The first test of a fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to 20,000 tons of TNT (84 TJ). The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released energy approximately equal to 10 million tons of TNT (42 PJ). Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons TNT (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as 600 pounds (270 kg) can release energy equal to more than 1.2 megatonnes of TNT (5.0 PJ).
A nuclear device no larger than a conventional bomb can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been deployed twice in war, both by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 during World War II.
Testing and deployment
Nuclear weapons have only twice been used in warfare, both times by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) detonated a uranium gun-type fission bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" over the Japanese city of Hiroshima; three days later, on August 9, the USAAF detonated a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. These bombings caused injuries that resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel. The ethics of these bombings and their role in Japan's surrender are to this day, still subjects of debate.
Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated over 2,000 times for testing and demonstration. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them. The only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and acknowledge possessing them—are (chronologically by date of first test) the United States, the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia), the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, though, in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Belarus are nuclear weapons sharing states. South Africa is the only country to have independently developed and then renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aims to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, but there are different views of its effectiveness.
Types
There are two basic types of nuclear weapons: those that derive the majority of their energy from nuclear fission reactions alone, and those that use fission reactions to begin nuclear fusion reactions that produce a large amount of the total energy output.
Fission weapons
All existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as atomic bombs or atom bombs (abbreviated as A-bombs). This has long been noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom, just as it does with fusion weapons.
In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is forced into supercriticality—allowing an exponential growth of nuclear chain reactions—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method) or by compression of a sub-critical sphere or cylinder of fissile material using chemically fueled explosive lenses. The latter approach, the "implosion" method, is more sophisticated and more efficient (smaller, less massive, and requiring less of the expensive fissile fuel) than the former.
A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons (500 kilotons) of TNT (4.2 to 2.1×106 GJ).
All fission reactions generate fission products, the remains of the split atomic nuclei. Many fission products are either highly radioactive (but short-lived) or moderately radioactive (but long-lived), and as such, they are a serious form of radioactive contamination. Fission products are the principal radioactive component of nuclear fallout. Another source of radioactivity is the burst of free neutrons produced by the weapon. When they collide with other nuclei in the surrounding material, the neutrons transmute those nuclei into other isotopes, altering their stability and making them radioactive.
The most commonly used fissile materials for nuclear weapons applications have been uranium-235 and plutonium-239. Less commonly used has been uranium-233. Neptunium-237 and some isotopes of americium may be usable for nuclear explosives as well, but it is not clear that this has ever been implemented, and their plausible use in nuclear weapons is a matter of dispute.
Fusion weapons
The other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large proportion of its energy in nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). All such weapons derive a significant portion of their energy from fission reactions used to "trigger" fusion reactions, and fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions.
Only six countries—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, France, and India—have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. Whether India has detonated a "true" multi-staged thermonuclear weapon is controversial. North Korea claims to have tested a fusion weapon as of January 2016, though this claim is disputed. Thermonuclear weapons are considered much more difficult to successfully design and execute than primitive fission weapons. Almost all of the nuclear weapons deployed today use the thermonuclear design because it results in an explosion hundreds of times stronger than that of a fission bomb of similar weight.
Thermonuclear bombs work by using the energy of a fission bomb to compress and heat fusion fuel. In the Teller-Ulam design, which accounts for all multi-megaton yield hydrogen bombs, this is accomplished by placing a fission bomb and fusion fuel (tritium, deuterium, or lithium deuteride) in proximity within a special, radiation-reflecting container. When the fission bomb is detonated, gamma rays and X-rays emitted first compress the fusion fuel, then heat it to thermonuclear temperatures. The ensuing fusion reaction creates enormous numbers of high-speed neutrons, which can then induce fission in materials not normally prone to it, such as depleted uranium. Each of these components is known as a "stage", with the fission bomb as the "primary" and the fusion capsule as the "secondary". In large, megaton-range hydrogen bombs, about half of the yield comes from the final fissioning of depleted uranium.
Virtually all thermonuclear weapons deployed today use the "two-stage" design described to the right, but it is possible to add additional fusion stages—each stage igniting a larger amount of fusion fuel in the next stage. This technique can be used to construct thermonuclear weapons of arbitrarily large yield. This is in contrast to fission bombs, which are limited in their explosive power due to criticality danger (premature nuclear chain reaction caused by too-large amounts of pre-assembled fissile fuel). The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba of the USSR, which released an energy equivalent of over 50 megatons of TNT (210 PJ), was a three-stage weapon. Most thermonuclear weapons are considerably smaller than this, due to practical constraints from missile warhead space and weight requirements. In the early 1950s the Livermore Laboratory in the United States had plans for the testing of two massive bombs, Gnomon and Sundial, 1 gigaton of TNT and 10 gigatons of TNT respectively.
Fusion reactions do not create fission products, and thus contribute far less to the creation of nuclear fallout than fission reactions, but because all thermonuclear weapons contain at least one fission stage, and many high-yield thermonuclear devices have a final fission stage, thermonuclear weapons can generate at least as much nuclear fallout as fission-only weapons. Furthermore, high yield thermonuclear explosions (most dangerously ground bursts) have the force to lift radioactive debris upwards past the tropopause into the stratosphere, where the calm non-turbulent winds permit the debris to travel great distances from the burst, eventually settling and unpredictably contaminating areas far removed from the target of the explosion.
Other types
There are other types of nuclear weapons as well. For example, a boosted fission weapon is a fission bomb that increases its explosive yield through a small number of fusion reactions, but it is not a fusion bomb. In the boosted bomb, the neutrons produced by the fusion reactions serve primarily to increase the efficiency of the fission bomb. There are two types of boosted fission bomb: internally boosted, in which a deuterium-tritium mixture is injected into the bomb core, and externally boosted, in which concentric shells of lithium-deuteride and depleted uranium are layered on the outside of the fission bomb core. The external method of boosting enabled the USSR to field the first partially thermonuclear weapons, but it is now obsolete because it demands a spherical bomb geometry, which was adequate during the 1950s arms race when bomber aircraft were the only available delivery vehicles.
The detonation of any nuclear weapon is accompanied by a blast of neutron radiation. Surrounding a nuclear weapon with suitable materials (such as cobalt or gold) creates a weapon known as a salted bomb. This device can produce exceptionally large quantities of long-lived radioactive contamination. It has been conjectured that such a device could serve as a "doomsday weapon" because such a large quantity of radioactivities with half-lives of decades, lifted into the stratosphere where winds would distribute it around the globe, would make all life on the planet extinct.
In connection with the Strategic Defense Initiative, research into the nuclear pumped laser was conducted under the DOD program Project Excalibur but this did not result in a working weapon. The concept involves the tapping of the energy of an exploding nuclear bomb to power a single-shot laser that is directed at a distant target.
During the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test in 1962, an unexpected effect was produced which is called a nuclear electromagnetic pulse. This is an intense flash of electromagnetic energy produced by a rain of high-energy electrons which in turn are produced by a nuclear bomb's gamma rays. This flash of energy can permanently destroy or disrupt electronic equipment if insufficiently shielded. It has been proposed to use this effect to disable an enemy's military and civilian infrastructure as an adjunct to other nuclear or conventional military operations. By itself it could as well be useful to terrorists for crippling a nation's economic electronics-based infrastructure. Because the effect is most effectively produced by high altitude nuclear detonations (by military weapons delivered by air, though ground bursts also produce EMP effects over a localized area), it can produce damage to electronics over a wide, even continental, geographical area.
Research has been done into the possibility of pure fusion bombs: nuclear weapons that consist of fusion reactions without requiring a fission bomb to initiate them. Such a device might provide a simpler path to thermonuclear weapons than one that required the development of fission weapons first, and pure fusion weapons would create significantly less nuclear fallout than other thermonuclear weapons because they would not disperse fission products. In 1998, the United States Department of Energy divulged that the United States had, "...made a substantial investment" in the past to develop pure fusion weapons, but that, "The U.S. does not have and is not developing a pure fusion weapon", and that, "No credible design for a pure fusion weapon resulted from the DOE investment".
Nuclear isomers provide a possible pathway to fissionless fusion bombs. These are naturally occurring isotopes (178m2Hf being a prominent example) which exist in an elevated energy state. Mechanisms to release this energy as bursts of gamma radiation (as in the hafnium controversy) have been proposed as possible triggers for conventional thermonuclear reactions.
Antimatter, which consists of particles resembling ordinary matter particles in most of their properties but having opposite electric charge, has been considered as a trigger mechanism for nuclear weapons. A major obstacle is the difficulty of producing antimatter in large enough quantities, and there is no evidence that it is feasible beyond the military domain. However, the U.S. Air Force funded studies of the physics of antimatter in the Cold War, and began considering its possible use in weapons, not just as a trigger, but as the explosive itself. A fourth generation nuclear weapon design is related to, and relies upon, the same principle as antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion.
Most variation in nuclear weapon design is for the purpose of achieving different yields for different situations, and in manipulating design elements to attempt to minimize weapon size, radiation hardness or requirements for special materials, especially fissile fuel or tritium.
Tactical nuclear weapons
Some nuclear weapons are designed for special purposes; most of these are for non-strategic (decisively war-winning) purposes and are referred to as tactical nuclear weapons.
The neutron bomb purportedly conceived by Sam Cohen is a thermonuclear weapon that yields a relatively small explosion but a relatively large amount of neutron radiation. Such a weapon could, according to tacticians, be used to cause massive biological casualties while leaving inanimate infrastructure mostly intact and creating minimal fallout. Because high energy neutrons are capable of penetrating dense matter, such as tank armor, neutron warheads were procured in the 1980s (though not deployed in Europe) for use as tactical payloads for US Army artillery shells (200 mm W79 and 155 mm W82) and short range missile forces. Soviet authorities announced similar intentions for neutron warhead deployment in Europe; indeed, they claimed to have originally invented the neutron bomb, but their deployment on USSR tactical nuclear forces is unverifiable.
A type of nuclear explosive most suitable for use by ground special forces was the Special Atomic Demolition Munition, or SADM, sometimes popularly known as a suitcase nuke. This is a nuclear bomb that is man-portable, or at least truck-portable, and though of a relatively small yield (one or two kilotons) is sufficient to destroy important tactical targets such as bridges, dams, tunnels, important military or commercial installations, etc. either behind enemy lines or pre-emptively on friendly territory soon to be overtaken by invading enemy forces. These weapons require plutonium fuel and are particularly "dirty". They also demand especially stringent security precautions in their storage and deployment.
Small "tactical" nuclear weapons were deployed for use as antiaircraft weapons. Examples include the USAF AIR-2 Genie, the AIM-26 Falcon and US Army Nike Hercules. Missile interceptors such as the Sprint and the Spartan also used small nuclear warheads (optimized to produce neutron or X-ray flux) but were for use against enemy strategic warheads.
Other small, or tactical, nuclear weapons were deployed by naval forces for use primarily as antisubmarine weapons. These included nuclear depth bombs or nuclear armed torpedoes. Nuclear mines for use on land or at sea are also possibilities.
Weapons delivery
The system used to deliver a nuclear weapon to its target is an important factor affecting both nuclear weapon design and nuclear strategy. The design, development, and maintenance of delivery systems are among the most expensive parts of a nuclear weapons program; they account, for example, for 57% of the financial resources spent by the United States on nuclear weapons projects since 1940.
The simplest method for delivering a nuclear weapon is a gravity bomb dropped from aircraft; this was the method used by the United States against Japan in 1945. This method places few restrictions on the size of the weapon. It does, however, limit attack range, response time to an impending attack, and the number of weapons that a country can field at the same time. With miniaturization, nuclear bombs can be delivered by both strategic bombers and tactical fighter-bombers. This method is the primary means of nuclear weapons delivery; the majority of U.S. nuclear warheads, for example, are free-fall gravity bombs, namely the B61, which is being improved upon to this day.
Preferable from a strategic point of view is a nuclear weapon mounted on a missile, which can use a ballistic trajectory to deliver the warhead over the horizon. Although even short-range missiles allow for a faster and less vulnerable attack, the development of long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) has given some nations the ability to plausibly deliver missiles anywhere on the globe with a high likelihood of success.
More advanced systems, such as multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), can launch multiple warheads at different targets from one missile, reducing the chance of a successful missile defense. Today, missiles are most common among systems designed for delivery of nuclear weapons. Making a warhead small enough to fit onto a missile, though, can be difficult.
Tactical weapons have involved the most variety of delivery types, including not only gravity bombs and missiles but also artillery shells, land mines, and nuclear depth charges and torpedoes for anti-submarine warfare. An atomic mortar has been tested by the United States. Small, two-man portable tactical weapons (somewhat misleadingly referred to as suitcase bombs), such as the Special Atomic Demolition Munition, have been developed, although the difficulty of combining sufficient yield with portability limits their military utility.
Nuclear strategy
Nuclear warfare strategy is a set of policies that deal with preventing or fighting a nuclear war. The policy of trying to prevent an attack by a nuclear weapon from another country by threatening nuclear retaliation is known as the strategy of nuclear deterrence. The goal in deterrence is to always maintain a second strike capability (the ability of a country to respond to a nuclear attack with one of its own) and potentially to strive for first strike status (the ability to destroy an enemy's nuclear forces before they could retaliate). During the Cold War, policy and military theorists considered the sorts of policies that might prevent a nuclear attack, and they developed game theory models that could lead to stable deterrence conditions.
Different forms of nuclear weapons delivery (see above) allow for different types of nuclear strategies. The goals of any strategy are generally to make it difficult for an enemy to launch a pre-emptive strike against the weapon system and difficult to defend against the delivery of the weapon during a potential conflict. This can mean keeping weapon locations hidden, such as deploying them on submarines or land mobile transporter erector launchers whose locations are difficult to track, or it can mean protecting weapons by burying them in hardened missile silo bunkers. Other components of nuclear strategies included using missile defenses to destroy the missiles before they land or implementing civil defense measures using early-warning systems to evacuate citizens to safe areas before an attack.
Weapons designed to threaten large populations or to deter attacks are known as strategic weapons. Nuclear weapons for use on a battlefield in military situations are called tactical weapons.
Critics of nuclear war strategy often suggest that a nuclear war between two nations would result in mutual annihilation. From this point of view, the significance of nuclear weapons is to deter war because any nuclear war would escalate out of mutual distrust and fear, resulting in mutually assured destruction. This threat of national, if not global, destruction has been a strong motivation for anti-nuclear weapons activism.
Critics from the peace movement and within the military establishment have questioned the usefulness of such weapons in the current military climate. According to an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in 1996, the use of (or threat of use of) such weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, but the court did not reach an opinion as to whether or not the threat or use would be lawful in specific extreme circumstances such as if the survival of the state were at stake.
Another deterrence position is that nuclear proliferation can be desirable. In this case, it is argued that, unlike conventional weapons, nuclear weapons deter all-out war between states, and they succeeded in doing this during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gen. Pierre Marie Gallois of France, an adviser to Charles de Gaulle, argued in books like The Balance of Terror: Strategy for the Nuclear Age (1961) that mere possession of a nuclear arsenal was enough to ensure deterrence, and thus concluded that the spread of nuclear weapons could increase international stability. Some prominent neo-realist scholars, such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer, have argued, along the lines of Gallois, that some forms of nuclear proliferation would decrease the likelihood of total war, especially in troubled regions of the world where there exists a single nuclear-weapon state. Aside from the public opinion that opposes proliferation in any form, there are two schools of thought on the matter: those, like Mearsheimer, who favored selective proliferation, and Waltz, who was somewhat more non-interventionist. Interest in proliferation and the stability-instability paradox that it generates continues to this day, with ongoing debate about indigenous Japanese and South Korean nuclear deterrent against North Korea.
The threat of potentially suicidal terrorists possessing nuclear weapons (a form of nuclear terrorism) complicates the decision process. The prospect of mutually assured destruction might not deter an enemy who expects to die in the confrontation. Further, if the initial act is from a stateless terrorist instead of a sovereign nation, there might not be a nation or specific target to retaliate against. It has been argued, especially after the September 11, 2001, attacks, that this complication calls for a new nuclear strategy, one that is distinct from that which gave relative stability during the Cold War. Since 1996, the United States has had a policy of allowing the targeting of its nuclear weapons at terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction.
Robert Gallucci argues that although traditional deterrence is not an effective approach toward terrorist groups bent on causing a nuclear catastrophe, Gallucci believes that "the United States should instead consider a policy of expanded deterrence, which focuses not solely on the would-be nuclear terrorists but on those states that may deliberately transfer or inadvertently leak nuclear weapons and materials to them. By threatening retaliation against those states, the United States may be able to deter that which it cannot physically prevent.".
Graham Allison makes a similar case, arguing that the key to expanded deterrence is coming up with ways of tracing nuclear material to the country that forged the fissile material. "After a nuclear bomb detonates, nuclear forensics cops would collect debris samples and send them to a laboratory for radiological analysis. By identifying unique attributes of the fissile material, including its impurities and contaminants, one could trace the path back to its origin." The process is analogous to identifying a criminal by fingerprints. "The goal would be twofold: first, to deter leaders of nuclear states from selling weapons to terrorists by holding them accountable for any use of their weapons; second, to give leaders every incentive to tightly secure their nuclear weapons and materials."
According to the Pentagon's June 2019 "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs website Publication, "Integration of nuclear weapons employment with conventional and special operations forces is essential to the success of any mission or operation."
Governance, control, and law
Because they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation and possible use of nuclear weapons are important issues in international relations and diplomacy. In most countries, the use of nuclear force can only be authorized by the head of government or head of state. Despite controls and regulations governing nuclear weapons, there is an inherent danger of "accidents, mistakes, false alarms, blackmail, theft, and sabotage".
In the late 1940s, lack of mutual trust prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from making progress on arms control agreements. The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on July 9, 1955, by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. The signatories included eleven pre-eminent intellectuals and scientists, including Albert Einstein, who signed it just days before his death on April 18, 1955. A few days after the release, philanthropist Cyrus S. Eaton offered to sponsor a conference—called for in the manifesto—in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Eaton's birthplace. This conference was to be the first of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, held in July 1957.
By the 1960s, steps were taken to limit both the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries and the environmental effects of nuclear testing. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) restricted all nuclear testing to underground nuclear testing, to prevent contamination from nuclear fallout, whereas the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968) attempted to place restrictions on the types of activities signatories could participate in, with the goal of allowing the transference of non-military nuclear technology to member countries without fear of proliferation.
In 1957, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established under the mandate of the United Nations to encourage development of peaceful applications of nuclear technology, provide international safeguards against its misuse, and facilitate the application of safety measures in its use. In 1996, many nations signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which prohibits all testing of nuclear weapons. A testing ban imposes a significant hindrance to nuclear arms development by any complying country. The Treaty requires the ratification by 44 specific states before it can go into force; as of 2012, the ratification of eight of these states is still required.
Additional treaties and agreements have governed nuclear weapons stockpiles between the countries with the two largest stockpiles, the United States and the Soviet Union, and later between the United States and Russia. These include treaties such as SALT II (never ratified), START I (expired), INF, START II (never in effect), SORT, and New START, as well as non-binding agreements such as SALT I and the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives of 1991. Even when they did not enter into force, these agreements helped limit and later reduce the numbers and types of nuclear weapons between the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia.
Nuclear weapons have also been opposed by agreements between countries. Many nations have been declared Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones, areas where nuclear weapons production and deployment are prohibited, through the use of treaties. The Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967) prohibited any production or deployment of nuclear weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Treaty of Pelindaba (1964) prohibits nuclear weapons in many African countries. As recently as 2006 a Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone was established among the former Soviet republics of Central Asia prohibiting nuclear weapons.
In 1996, the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, issued an Advisory Opinion concerned with the "Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons". The court ruled that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons would violate various articles of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Given the unique, destructive characteristics of nuclear weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross calls on States to ensure that these weapons are never used, irrespective of whether they consider them lawful or not.
Additionally, there have been other, specific actions meant to discourage countries from developing nuclear arms. In the wake of the tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, economic sanctions were (temporarily) levied against both countries, though neither were signatories with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of the stated casus belli for the initiation of the 2003 Iraq War was an accusation by the United States that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear arms (though this was soon discovered not to be the case as the program had been discontinued). In 1981, Israel had bombed a nuclear reactor being constructed in Osirak, Iraq, in what it called an attempt to halt Iraq's previous nuclear arms ambitions; in 2007, Israel bombed another reactor being constructed in Syria.
In 2013, Mark Diesendorf said that governments of France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, UK, and South Africa have used nuclear power or research reactors to assist nuclear weapons development or to contribute to their supplies of nuclear explosives from military reactors. In 2017, 122 countries mainly in the Global South voted in favor of adopting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which eventually entered into force in 2021.
The Doomsday Clock measures the likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe and is published annually by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The two years with the highest likelihood had previously been 1953, when the Clock was set to two minutes until midnight after the U.S. and the Soviet Union began testing hydrogen bombs, and 2018, following the failure of world leaders to address tensions relating to nuclear weapons and climate change issues. In 2023, following the escalation of nuclear threats during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the doomsday clock was set to 90 seconds, the highest likelihood of global catastrophe since the existence of the Doomsday Clock.
As of 2024, Russia has intensified nuclear threats in Ukraine and is reportedly planning to place nuclear weapons in orbit, breaching the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. China is significantly expanding its nuclear arsenal, with projections of over 1,000 warheads by 2030 and up to 1,500 by 2035. North Korea is progressing in intercontinental ballistic missile tests and has a mutual-defense treaty with Russia, exchanging artillery for possible missile technology. Iran is currently viewed as a nuclear "threshold" state.
Disarmament
Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are eliminated.
Beginning with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty and continuing through the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, there have been many treaties to limit or reduce nuclear weapons testing and stockpiles. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has as one of its explicit conditions that all signatories must "pursue negotiations in good faith" towards the long-term goal of "complete disarmament". The nuclear-weapon states have largely treated that aspect of the agreement as "decorative" and without force.
Only one country—South Africa—has ever fully renounced nuclear weapons they had independently developed. The former Soviet republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine returned Soviet nuclear arms stationed in their countries to Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
Proponents of nuclear disarmament say that it would lessen the probability of nuclear war, especially accidentally. Critics of nuclear disarmament say that it would undermine the present nuclear peace and deterrence and would lead to increased global instability. Various American elder statesmen, who were in office during the Cold War period, have been advocating the elimination of nuclear weapons. These officials include Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and William Perry. In January 2010, Lawrence M. Krauss stated that "no issue carries more importance to the long-term health and security of humanity than the effort to reduce, and perhaps one day, rid the world of nuclear weapons".
In January 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly proposed a three-stage program for abolishing the world's nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century. In the years after the end of the Cold War, there have been numerous campaigns to urge the abolition of nuclear weapons, such as that organized by the Global Zero movement, and the goal of a "world without nuclear weapons" was advocated by United States President Barack Obama in an April 2009 speech in Prague. A CNN poll from April 2010 indicated that the American public was nearly evenly split on the issue.
Some analysts have argued that nuclear weapons have made the world relatively safer, with peace through deterrence and through the stability–instability paradox, including in south Asia. Kenneth Waltz has argued that nuclear weapons have helped keep an uneasy peace, and further nuclear weapon proliferation might even help avoid the large scale conventional wars that were so common before their invention at the end of World War II. But former Secretary Henry Kissinger says there is a new danger, which cannot be addressed by deterrence: "The classical notion of deterrence was that there was some consequences before which aggressors and evildoers would recoil. In a world of suicide bombers, that calculation doesn't operate in any comparable way". George Shultz has said, "If you think of the people who are doing suicide attacks, and people like that get a nuclear weapon, they are almost by definition not deterrable".
As of early 2019, more than 90% of world's 13,865 nuclear weapons were owned by Russia and the United States.
United Nations
The UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) is a department of the United Nations Secretariat established in January 1998 as part of the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plan to reform the UN as presented in his report to the General Assembly in July 1997.
Its goal is to promote nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and the strengthening of the disarmament regimes in respect to other weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons. It also promotes disarmament efforts in the area of conventional weapons, especially land mines and small arms, which are often the weapons of choice in contemporary conflicts.
Controversy
Ethics
Even before the first nuclear weapons had been developed, scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were divided over the use of the weapon. The role of the two atomic bombings of the country in Japan's surrender and the U.S.'s ethical justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for decades. The question of whether nations should have nuclear weapons, or test them, has been continually and nearly universally controversial.
Notable nuclear weapons accidents
August 21, 1945: While conducting experiments on a plutonium-gallium core at Los Alamos National Laboratory, physicist Harry Daghlian received a lethal dose of radiation when an error caused it to enter prompt criticality. He died 25 days later, on September 15, 1945, from radiation poisoning.
May 21, 1946: While conducting further experiments on the same core at Los Alamos National Laboratory, physicist Louis Slotin accidentally caused the core to become briefly supercritical. He received a lethal dose of gamma and neutron radiation, and died nine days later on May 30, 1946. After the death of Daghlian and Slotin, the mass became known as the "demon core". It was ultimately used to construct a bomb for use on the Nevada Test Range.
February 13, 1950: a Convair B-36B crashed in northern British Columbia after jettisoning a Mark IV atomic bomb. This was the first such nuclear weapon loss in history. The accident was designated a "Broken Arrow"—an accident involving a nuclear weapon, but which does not present a risk of war. Experts believe that up to 50 nuclear weapons were lost during the Cold War.
May 22, 1957: a 42,000-pound (19,000 kg) Mark-17 hydrogen bomb accidentally fell from a bomber near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The detonation of the device's conventional explosives destroyed it on impact and formed a crater 25 feet (7.6 m) in diameter on land owned by the University of New Mexico. According to a researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council, it was one of the most powerful bombs made to date.
June 7, 1960: the 1960 Fort Dix IM-99 accident destroyed a Boeing CIM-10 Bomarc nuclear missile and shelter and contaminated the BOMARC Missile Accident Site in New Jersey.
January 24, 1961: the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash occurred near Goldsboro, North Carolina. A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress carrying two Mark 39 nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload in the process.
1965 Philippine Sea A-4 crash, where a Skyhawk attack aircraft with a nuclear weapon fell into the sea. The pilot, the aircraft, and the B43 nuclear bomb were never recovered. It was not until 1989 that the Pentagon revealed the loss of the one-megaton bomb.
January 17, 1966: the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash occurred when a B-52G bomber of the USAF collided with a KC-135 tanker during mid-air refuelling off the coast of Spain. The KC-135 was completely destroyed when its fuel load ignited, killing all four crew members. The B-52G broke apart, killing three of the seven crew members aboard. Of the four Mk28 type hydrogen bombs the B-52G carried, three were found on land near Almería, Spain. The non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of a 2-square-kilometer (490-acre) (0.78 square mile) area by radioactive plutonium. The fourth, which fell into the Mediterranean Sea, was recovered intact after a 21⁄2-month-long search.
January 21, 1968: the 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash involved a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber. The aircraft was carrying four hydrogen bombs when a cabin fire forced the crew to abandon the aircraft. Six crew members ejected safely, but one who did not have an ejection seat was killed while trying to bail out. The bomber crashed onto sea ice in Greenland, causing the nuclear payload to rupture and disperse, which resulted in widespread radioactive contamination. One of the bombs remains lost.
September 18–19, 1980: the Damascus Accident occurred in Damascus, Arkansas, where a Titan Missile equipped with a nuclear warhead exploded. The accident was caused by a maintenance man who dropped a socket from a socket wrench down an 80-foot (24 m) shaft, puncturing a fuel tank on the rocket. Leaking fuel resulted in a hypergolic fuel explosion, jettisoning the W-53 warhead beyond the launch site.
Nuclear testing and fallout
Over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests were conducted at various sites around the world from 1945 to 1980. Radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing was first drawn to public attention in 1954 when the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test at the Pacific Proving Grounds contaminated the crew and catch of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon. One of the fishermen died in Japan seven months later, and the fear of contaminated tuna led to a temporary boycotting of the popular staple in Japan. The incident caused widespread concern around the world, especially regarding the effects of nuclear fallout and atmospheric nuclear testing, and "provided a decisive impetus for the emergence of the anti-nuclear weapons movement in many countries".
As public awareness and concern mounted over the possible health hazards associated with exposure to the nuclear fallout, various studies were done to assess the extent of the hazard. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/ National Cancer Institute study claims that fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests would lead to perhaps 11,000 excess deaths among people alive during atmospheric testing in the United States from all forms of cancer, including leukemia, from 1951 to well into the 21st century.
As of March 2009, the U.S. is the only nation that compensates nuclear test victims. Since the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, more than $1.38 billion in compensation has been approved. The money is going to people who took part in the tests, notably at the Nevada Test Site, and to others exposed to the radiation.
In addition, leakage of byproducts of nuclear weapon production into groundwater has been an ongoing issue, particularly at the Hanford site.
Effects of nuclear explosions
Effects of nuclear explosions on human health
Some scientists estimate that a nuclear war with 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear explosions on cities could cost the lives of tens of millions of people from long-term climatic effects alone. The climatology hypothesis is that if each city firestorms, a great deal of soot could be thrown up into the atmosphere which could blanket the earth, cutting out sunlight for years on end, causing the disruption of food chains, in what is termed a nuclear winter.
People near the Hiroshima explosion and who managed to survive the explosion subsequently suffered a variety of horrible medical effects. Some of these effects are still present to this day:
Initial stage—the first 1–9 weeks, in which are the greatest number of deaths, with 90% due to thermal injury or blast effects and 10% due to super-lethal radiation exposure.
Intermediate stage—from 10 to 12 weeks. The deaths in this period are from ionizing radiation in the median lethal range – LD50
Late period—lasting from 13 to 20 weeks. This period has some improvement in survivors' condition.
Delayed period—from 20+ weeks. Characterized by numerous complications, mostly related to healing of thermal and mechanical injuries, and if the individual was exposed to a few hundred to a thousand millisieverts of radiation, it is coupled with infertility, sub-fertility and blood disorders. Furthermore, ionizing radiation above a dose of around 50–100 millisievert exposure has been shown to statistically begin increasing one's chance of dying of cancer sometime in their lifetime over the normal unexposed rate of ~25%, in the long term, a heightened rate of cancer, proportional to the dose received, would begin to be observed after ~5+ years, with lesser problems such as eye cataracts and other more minor effects in other organs and tissue also being observed over the long term.
Fallout exposure—depending on if further afield individuals shelter in place or evacuate perpendicular to the direction of the wind, and therefore avoid contact with the fallout plume, and stay there for the days and weeks after the nuclear explosion, their exposure to fallout, and therefore their total dose, will vary. With those who do shelter in place, and or evacuate, experiencing a total dose that would be negligible in comparison to someone who just went about their life as normal.
Staying indoors until after the most hazardous fallout isotope, I-131 decays away to 0.1% of its initial quantity after ten half-lifes—which is represented by 80 days in I-131s case, would make the difference between likely contracting Thyroid cancer or escaping completely from this substance depending on the actions of the individual.
Effects of nuclear war
Nuclear war could yield unprecedented human death tolls and habitat destruction. Detonating large numbers of nuclear weapons would have an immediate, short term and long-term effects on the climate, potentially causing cold weather known as a "nuclear winter". In 1982, Brian Martin estimated that a US–Soviet nuclear exchange might kill 400–450 million directly, mostly in the United States, Europe and Russia, and maybe several hundred million more through follow-up consequences in those same areas. Many scholars have posited that a global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to the extinction of the human race. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War believe that nuclear war could indirectly contribute to human extinction via secondary effects, including environmental consequences, societal breakdown, and economic collapse. It has been estimated that a relatively small-scale nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan involving 100 Hiroshima yield (15 kilotons) weapons, could cause a nuclear winter and kill more than a billion people.
According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature Food in August 2022, a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would directly kill 360 million people and more than 5 billion people would die from starvation. More than 2 billion people could die from a smaller-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
Public opposition
Peace movements emerged in Japan and in 1954 they converged to form a unified "Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs." Japanese opposition to nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean was widespread, and "an estimated 35 million signatures were collected on petitions calling for bans on nuclear weapons".
In the United Kingdom, the Aldermaston Marches organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) took place at Easter 1958, when, according to the CND, several thousand people marched for four days from Trafalgar Square, London, to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment close to Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, to demonstrate their opposition to nuclear weapons. The Aldermaston marches continued into the late 1960s when tens of thousands of people took part in the four-day marches.
In 1959, a letter in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was the start of a successful campaign to stop the Atomic Energy Commission dumping radioactive waste in the sea 19 kilometres from Boston. In 1962, Linus Pauling won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to stop the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and the "Ban the Bomb" movement spread.
In 1963, many countries ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty prohibiting atmospheric nuclear testing. Radioactive fallout became less of an issue and the anti-nuclear weapons movement went into decline for some years. A resurgence of interest occurred amid European and American fears of nuclear war in the 1980s.
Costs and technology spin-offs
According to an audit by the Brookings Institution, between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. spent $11.3 trillion in present-day terms on nuclear weapons programs. 57% of which was spent on building nuclear weapons delivery systems. 6.3% of the total$, 709 billion in present-day terms, was spent on environmental remediation and nuclear waste management, for example cleaning up the Hanford site, and 7% of the total$, 795 billion was spent on making nuclear weapons themselves.
Non-weapons uses
Peaceful nuclear explosions are nuclear explosions conducted for non-military purposes, such as activities related to economic development including the creation of canals. During the 1960s and 1970s, both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted a number of PNEs. The United States created plans for several uses of PNEs, including Operation Plowshare. Six of the explosions by the Soviet Union are considered to have been of an applied nature, not just tests.
The United States and the Soviet Union later halted their programs. Definitions and limits are covered in the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty of 1976. The stalled Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 would prohibit all nuclear explosions, regardless of whether they are for peaceful purposes or not.
History of development
See also
References
Notes
Explanatory Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
Media related to Nuclear weapons at Wikimedia Commons
Nuclear Weapon Archive from Carey Sublette: reliable source, has links to other sources and an informative FAQ.
The Federation of American Scientists Archived October 18, 1996, at the Wayback Machine provide information on weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons and their effects
Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived March 2, 2001, at the Wayback Machine – contains resources related to nuclear weapons, including a historical and technical overview and searchable bibliography of web and print resources
Video archive of US, Soviet, UK, Chinese and French Nuclear Weapon Testing at sonicbomb.com
The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History (United States) Archived March 27, 2021, at the Wayback Machine – located in New Mexico; a Smithsonian Affiliate Museum
Nuclear Emergency and Radiation Resources Archived May 15, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb at AtomicArchive.com
Los Alamos National Laboratory: History Archived January 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine (U.S. nuclear history)
Race for the Superbomb Archived November 10, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, PBS website on the history of the H-bomb
Recordings of recollections of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Woodrow Wilson Center's Nuclear Proliferation International History Project or NPIHP is a global network of individuals and institutions engaged in the study of international nuclear history through archival documents, oral history interviews and other empirical sources.
NUKEMAP3D Archived August 28, 2015, at the Wayback Machine – a 3D nuclear weapons effects simulator powered by Google Maps. |
Fourth_Wing | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Wing | [
355
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Wing"
] | Fourth Wing is a 2023 new adult, high romance fantasy, or "romantasy", novel by American author Rebecca Yarros. It is the first book in The Empyrean series. Released on May 2, 2023, the novel achieved viral success on TikTok's reader community BookTok, which contributed to its No. 1 The New York Times bestseller list success.
Background
The book is the first installment in the Empyrean series. It is the first book published by Red Tower Books, an imprint of Entangled Publishing. Its sequel, Iron Flame, was released on November 7, 2023.
The novel's protagonist Violet displays many symptoms and parallel experiences to those with Ehlers–Danlos syndromes, including joint pain and hypermobility as well as her hair getting grayer. The condition is not specifically named in the novel, but Yarros has confirmed that Violet canonically has the syndrome. Yarros has the condition herself and uses the book to add more representation.
Plot summary
Conscription Day approaches, Violet Sorrengail, now 20, makes her way to her mother's office. Despite her initial training in the Scribe Quadrant, her mother, General Sorrengail, mandates her entry into the Rider Quadrant, where she will face perilous battles against her fellow cadets for the next three years, preparing to become a dragon rider. Upon entering her mother's office, Violet encounters her sister Mira, a seasoned dragon rider, who expresses her concerns about Violet's diminutive stature and frail constitution, stemming from an illness in her infancy. Despite Mira's pleas, General Sorrengail remains resolute in her decision, unmoved even by the memory of their late brother Brennan, who heroically perished as a dragon rider on the front lines. Mira aids Violet in her preparations, providing her with a dragon-scale reinforced corset for protection and advising her to seek out their childhood friend, Dain Aetos. She also cautions Violet against interacting with those who bear tattoos denoting them as children of rebels, who are forcibly assigned to the Rider Quadrant as a form of institutionalized retribution.
Upon reaching the Basgaith War College, all cadets face the daunting task of crossing the parapet, a narrow wall separating the rider school from the rest of the institution. Here, Violet encounters Xaden Riorson, a third-year cadet and son of the rebellion's leader. Despite an undeniable attraction, they harbor animosity due to Xaden's father's role in Brennan's death, for which Violet's mother retaliated by executing Xaden's father. As Violet attempts to cross the parapet, a fellow cadet named Jack attempts to assassinate her, reflecting the ruthless competition within the college. She escapes Jack's clutches and finds refuge with Dain, who urges her to join the scribes but ultimately accepts both her and Rhiannon into his squad. However, their squad is transferred to the Fourth Wing, placing them under Xaden's command.
Cadet training intensifies, with Dain warning Violet of Xaden's murderous intentions. He possesses a unique ability to glimpse people's memories by touching their temples. Violet excels in her studies due to her intellectual prowess but faces relentless aggression during sparring sessions, targeting her physical weakness and her mother's reputation. To overcome her disadvantages, Violet collaborates with Rhiannon, offering to teach her history in exchange for assistance in combat training. The professors allow cadets to engage in potentially lethal challenges. Violet utilizes her brother's journal to identify her opponents and poisons them before confrontations. One night, while foraging for ingredients, Violet eavesdrops on a clandestine meeting among the children of rebels. Upon its conclusion, Xaden confronts her, demanding her silence in exchange for a future favor.
Cadets are faced with the Gauntlet, a vertical obstacle course simulating the challenges of dragon riding. Violet's strategic rule-bending during her climb frustrates a wingleader. Her squad is granted an audience with the dragons, and several cadets suffer fatal consequences for their disrespectful behavior. Among the dragons is a rare golden feathertail, a breed known for its resistance to bonding with humans.
During the event called Threshing, cadets are released into a valley in the hopes of forming bonds with dragons. Violet evades Jack and his accomplices but realizes their sinister plan to eliminate the golden dragon due to its perceived weaknesses. She defends the dragon, sustaining severe injuries before Xaden and his dragon, Sgaeyl, arrive. Violet successfully fends off her attackers, and a black dragon named Tairn kills the remaining cadet, carrying Violet back to the college. Astonishingly, both Tairn and the golden dragon, Andarna, bond with Violet, making her the first rider in history to command two dragons. Dain professes his affection for her. Violet discovers that Tairn is Sgaeyl's mate, giving Xaden an unexpected stake in her well-being.
Despite her improved physicality, Violet struggles to maintain her balance on Tairn during flying practice. One evening, Tairn awakens her as six unbonded cadets attempt to kill her. Andarna intervenes, freezing time until Xaden can come to her rescue. Violet reveals that a senior cadet admitted the intruders to her room. Xaden confronts the cadet before the entire student body, resulting in her execution.
Xaden and Violet, young rebels, meet with their dragons. They discover that Andarna, Violet's dragon, is not a rare breed, but a child. Her time-stopping power must be kept secret until she matures, as it is vulnerable and could be stolen. The great revelation, new developments arise. Xaden enlists Liam, the son of a fellow rebel, as Violet's bodyguard. A moment of passion between them, spurred by their dragons, leads to a spontaneous kiss. Violet finds herself in a perilous situation against Jack. To defend herself, she exposes him to an allergen.
The annual Squad Battle sees cadets vying to steal coveted items from their foes. Violet's squad seizes General Sorrengail's map of military outposts, earning them the chance to shadow soldiers on the front lines. While in the field, Violet reunites with her sister, but their visit is cut short by an attack from gryphon fliers from Poromeil. During a later capture-the-flag game, Violet saves Liam from Jack's deadly attack. In the process, she manifests her signet, a unique power granted by her bond with her dragon. Her signet is the ability to control lightning, which she uses to vanquish Jack.
That night, Xaden and Violet engage in intimate relations. Violet insists on Xaden confessing his romantic feelings before their next encounter. Reunification Day arrives, a celebration of the defeat of the separatists and the triumph of the rebellion. As it coincides with the anniversary of Brennan's death, Violet seeks Xaden, who is grieving. They confess their mutual attraction and have intercourse, but are interrupted by the announcement of the War Games' final stage.
Xaden leads a group of rebels and Violet to an outpost outside the empire. They encounter gryphon fliers and Xaden admits to arming them in their fight against the venin, evil beings that corrupt magic. Violet is devastated by his deception but agrees to assist in their mission after discovering a letter revealing the venin's imminent attack. They race against time to warn the fliers, unaware that Xaden's betrayal has been orchestrated.
Despite warnings of danger, the group decides to fight alongside the fliers. Liam sacrifices himself in the battle, while Violet is gravely wounded. She secures victory with her lightning abilities. The survivors seek shelter in an abandoned fortress where Violet lies unconscious for three days. Upon awakening, Xaden vows his loyalty and devotion to regaining her trust, but she remains skeptical. As the novel concludes, Brennan enters the scene, revealing that he is alive and welcoming Violet to the revolution. The story ends on a cliffhanger, setting the stage for the continuation in the sequel, Iron Flame.
Characters
Main Characters
Violet Sorrengail: The protagonist and primary point-of-view character. Smaller and physically weaker than the other riders, she only joins the Riders Quadrant at the demand of her mother, General Lilith Sorrengail. She is assigned to Fourth Wing. In an unprecedented turn of events, she bonds to two dragons, Tairneanach, or "Tairn", a black, morningstartail, behemoth of a dragon, and Andarnaurram, or "Andarna", a golden, feathertail dragon.
Xaden Riorson: a marked one, and wing leader of Fourth Wing who, through his bond with his dragon Sgaeyl, has the ability to wield shadows. He is the son of Fen Riorson, a rebellion leader who killed Violet's brother and was later killed by Violet's mother. Because of this, Xaden and Violet are incredibly hostile towards one another. Xaden is described as an extremely attractive person and is a love interest for Violet. Bonded to Sgaeyl, a navy-blue, daggertail dragon.
Dain Aetos: Violet's childhood best friend and son of Colonel Aetos. A second-year Rider, he is a squad leader in the Fourth Wing. Through his bond with his dragon Cath, he can read memories upon touching another person. He is a love interest for Violet. Bonded to Cath, a red swordtail; signet: retrocognition.
Rhiannon Matthias: A first-year member of the Riders Quadrant who is assigned to Fourth Wing. She becomes Violet's best friend. Bonded to Feirge, a green, daggertail; signet: telekinesis.
Sawyer Henrick: A repeated first year, he and Rhiannon agree to help Violet with hand-to-hand combat if Violet tutors them in history. He becomes a good friend of Violet, Rhiannon, and Ridoc. Bonded to Sliseag, a red, swordtail dragon; signet: metallurgist.
Ridoc Gamlyn: A first-year member of the Riders Quadrant who is assigned to Fourth Wing. He is very humorous and becomes a good friend of Violet, Rhiannon, and Sawyer. Bonded to Aotrom, a brown swordtail; signet: ice-wielding.
Liam Mairi: A first-year Rider who grew up with Xaden after their parents were killed for leading the rebellion. Bonded to Deigh, a red daggertail; signet: farsightedness.
Other Basgiath War College Students
Jack Barlowe: A violent first-year Rider who is assigned to First Wing and makes it his mission to kill Violet.
Jesenia Neilwart: a first-year in the Scribe Quadrant and Violet's friend
Notable Navarre Military Officials
Lilith Sorrengail: Violet's mother. Bonded to Aimsir, a brown dragon with unknown tail; signet: storm wielding.
Mira Sorrengail: Violet's older sister and a graduate of Basgiath War College. She strongly opposes her mother's decision to force Violet into the Riders Quadrant. Bonded with Teine, a green, clubtail dragon; signet: ward extension.
Augustine Melgren: General of all of Navarre's armies. His bonded black swordtail dragon, Codagh, gave rebellion relics to all of the rebels' children, or "the marked ones", offering some protection to them from Melgren's signet. Melgren is able to see the outcome of any battle, except when three or more marked ones are gathered.
Colonel Aetos: Dain's father. Dragon and signet are unknown.
The Notable Dead
Brennan Sorrengail: Violet's brother. Signet: mending.
(Unnamed) Sorrengail: Violet's father
Reception
The book had a mostly positive critical reception. Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, praising its worldbuilding, characters, and "sexy dark academia aesthetic". Alana Joli Abbott, in a review for Paste, praised its use of familiar tropes and compared it favorably to fantasy series like Blood Trials by N.E. Davenport and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.
Fourth Wing became a viral phenomenon on BookTok, where the hashtags "#FourthWing" and "#RebeccaYarros" have more than a billion views combined. Its popularity led it to reach No. 1 on Amazon's bestseller list as well as the No. 1 spot on The New York Times Bestseller list, where it stayed for 18 weeks. It has been credited as helping to popularize the "romantasy" genre, which blends elements of romance and fantasy genres.
Kimberly Terasaki of The Mary Sue wrote about a phenomenon within the fandom of portraying Xaden, a primary love interest of the protagonist, as white in fan art despite the fact that he is described as dark-skinned in the book. Yarros also commented on the phenomenon and asserted that the character is not intended to be white.
The sequel, Iron Flame, was released on November 7, 2023. The third book, Onyx Storm, is set to be released on January 21, 2025.
Adaptation
In October 2023, Variety reported that a TV show adaptation of the series was in the works at Amazon MGM Studios. It was also revealed that Amazon and Outlier Society had acquired rights to all books in the series, as well as that Rebecca Yarros and Liz Pelletier would be the executive producers of the series.
References
External links
Fourth Wing title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database |
Iron_Flame | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Flame | [
355
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Flame"
] | Iron Flame is a 2023 new adult fantasy novel by American author Rebecca Yarros. It is the second book in the Empyrean series, a planned five-book series.
Background
The second installment in the Empyrean series was released on November 7, 2023. Yarros took to Instagram to announce the title and release date of the second installment of the Empyrean series two days after Fourth Wing’s release. Three months before Iron Flame hit shelves, TODAY.com posted an exclusive 500-word teaser excerpt.
The storyline continues where the first book ended. Violet has to use the abilities she learned during Threshing at Basgiath War College and achieve her true power, even though the vice commandant is determined to show her how weak she is.
Plot
Violet's world shattered as she learned the shocking truth about Xaden and Brennan's involvement in the secret rebellion. The revelation was like a lightning bolt, illuminating a reality that had been hidden in darkness. The attack by the venin had peeled back the veil, exposing a deadly threat that the kingdom had kept hidden. As she recovered from her injuries, Violet found herself torn between her loyalty to her country and her newfound knowledge of the rebellion's cause. Meanwhile, her relationship with Dain, her trusted mage friend, was strained. Dain's betrayal and subsequent vow of honesty left Violet skeptical and distrustful. She distanced herself from him, determined to protect her heart and mind from further pain. As their dragons underwent their separate rites of passage, Violet and Xaden were forced to live apart, but were granted weekend visits to foster the bond between their mythical companions.
Violet's arduous second year at Basgiath War College, adversity looms. Excluded from a rebel mission, she endures harassment from the new vice commandant, Major Burton Varrish. Disguised as a comrade, Prince Cam joins her squad, while whispers of mysterious deaths among Athebyne survivors haunt her, forcing Violet to isolate herself to safeguard her allies. Secretly investigating the enigmatic First Six, she grapples with an elusive Xaden who maintains his secrecy. Their team's struggles in the Rider Survival Course, exacerbated by a debilitating potion, fan Violet's frustration. As hidden venin attacks escalate, Xaden confronts her about her covert research into wards and the disparity in their trust.
Keeping secrets from Mira and Rhiannon becomes increasingly difficult, leading Violet to reveal the perilous situation facing Athebyne survivors and Dain's signet to Rhiannon. Aaric, unlike his father, rallies to confront the venin threat. In a twist of fate, Violet and her companions are captured, facing an interrogation challenge. Despite Varrish's ploy with Dain's signet, her resolve remains unbroken. The unexpected appearance of Jack Barlowe, her presumed victim, shocks Violet, only to be followed by the news of Xaden's injury in a gryphon attack. Rushing to his aid, she discovers a fully healed Xaden who trusts her enough to involve her in a mission to deliver smuggled daggers to gryphon fliers, including his estranged ex-girlfriend Cat. As Violet accepts a dagger for self-defense, Varrish's scrutiny catches her in possession of it. Rhiannon's signet power teleports the dagger, inadvertently exposing Violet's secret to the team.
A group of rebels daringly infiltrated the Archives, their mission to seize pivotal journals penned by the legendary First Six. Among them was Violet, a young woman grappling with her untamed lightning powers. However, fate had a cruel twist in store as Violet was apprehended and subjected to relentless torture by Varrish, the ruthless commander of Sorrengail's forces. Yet, in her darkest hour, Violet found solace in ethereal visions of her departed friend, sustaining her indomitable will to survive. Fortune smiled upon Violet when Dain, a skilled rebel, intervened and facilitated her daring escape. Together, they rallied the students of Basgiath, exposing the vile truths behind Sorrengail's tyranny. Their courageous actions inspired a mass exodus, with countless students abandoning their allegiance to join the rebels in their sanctuary at Aretia. This influx of defectors, coupled with the awakening of Andarna and the arrival of Mira, injected newfound vigor into the rebellion.
Violet's destiny intertwined with Assembly member Felix, who guided her in harnessing her formidable powers. She meticulously translated an ancient ritual from a journal, but her initial attempt to activate the wards proved futile. Determined to illuminate the rebel base of Aretia, Violet embarked on a perilous journey to Cordyn, seeking the assistance of Viscount Tecarus. There, she crossed paths with Cat, her former rival and Xaden's estranged betrothed. Through a daring negotiation that involved Violet vanquishing a fearsome creature with her lightning, Tecarus agreed to provide the rebels with a luminary. However, Tecarus's aid came with a condition: the rebels were tasked with training 100 gryphon fliers in Aretia. During these rigorous exercises, tragedy struck when a Varrish dragon attacked, claiming the life of a rider. To their dismay, Andarna heroically sacrificed herself to vanquish the dragon. Despite their past rivalry, Cat and Violet found common ground, uniting against their shared adversary.
Violet shields her team with lightning while Sawyer is injured by a wyvern. Andarna rescues Violet from venin when she delivers Sawyer to healers. Jesinia provides a translation of Lyra's journal, revealing the locations of seven dragon dens crucial for a ritual. Violet discovers Andarna, a dragon with unique camouflage abilities, is from the seventh den, gathering the seven dragons needed for a powerful ritual. Meanwhile, Xaden fights on the battlefield against the venin Sage, who has been plaguing his dreams. In a desperate attempt to save Violet, Xaden channels earth magic and turns venin himself. Violet realizes the ritual will drain her life force, but General Sorrengail sacrifices herself to complete it and save Violet's life. Dragons activate a wardstone, causing the venin to retreat as wyverns die. Violet discovers Xaden has become infected with venin.
Characters
Violet Sorrengail: The protagonist and narrator. Second year in the Riders Quadrant at Basgiath War College who is bonded to two dragons, Tairn and Andarna, defying expectations that she would not survive due to her size and physical strength (a condition that reflects Ehlers-Danlos syndromes). After being betrayed by those she trusted, Violet needs to decide between aiding the rebellion or hiding behind a lie. She also needs to survive another year in the Rider’s Quadrant and all the life-threatening tests it throws at her.
Xaden Riorson: Now lieutenant, he must balance leading a secret rebellion, surviving the venin attacks, and his rocky relationship with Violet. He is bonded to Sgaeyl who is mated to Violet’s dragon, Tairn.
Dain Aetos: On the outs after using his signet of retrocognition on Violet, Dain has to earn back her trust or risk the success of Fourth Wing of which he is now Wingleader.
Rhiannon Matthias: Violet’s best friend. She knows Violet is keeping secrets from her
Mira Sorrengail: Lieutenant dragon rider in the Eastern Wing and older sister to Violet. She is assigned to the same fort as Xaden. Bonded to Teine.
Brennan Sorrengail: Violet’s older brother who was previously known to have died in battle. He is now leading the revolution. Bonded to Marbh. His signet is mending.
Burton Varrish: The new vice commandant at Basgaith War College who takes particular interest in Violet. He is known for his history with brutal interrogation methods due to his signet: reading a person’s weaknesses.
Development
The writing schedule Yarros follows makes it so that she can write 2–3 books a year. The process for Iron Flame was expedited due to consumer momentum from the success of Fourth Wing and the excitement from Entangled Publishing, making it so that Iron Flame could be released only seven months after its predecessor.
Yarros’ parents were lieutenant colonels, and her husband was in the United States Army, both of which inspired the death culture of the Empyrean series: “I can tell you: when you go to war, your friends don’t always come home. And so, it was important to me to... keep that realism [in the Empyrean series].” Her husband also aided in developing “aerial combat” scenes with his experience as an Apache pilot.
Genre
Iron Flame is considered romantasy: “fantasy with...a romance vein.” Yarros is considered a notable writer of the genre due to her work on Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. Romantasy is largely written by women and marketed for women, but Iron Flame has proven to appeal to a male audience because of its inclusion of dragons and dragon culture reminiscent of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, which continues to draw a heavily male audience.
Reception
The book received widespread acclaim upon its release day, selling over half a million copies. Iron Flame generated significant buzz online and offline with 200 Barnes & Noble stores throughout the USA organizing midnight release parties for the book, including a notable event in New York City attended by Yarros. In addition to these official gatherings, independent bookstores hosted their own celebrations, quickly running out of tickets due to the high demand.
After the release, many readers pointed out that their copies of Iron Flame had a variety of misprints. These included spines that read Fourth Wing instead of Iron Flame and covers that had the title and author's name printed upside down. Other readers said there were pages inside of the book printed the wrong way, or out of order. Entangled Publishing agreed to exchange the misprinted books. The deadline to register for a replacement of a misprinted book was January 17, 2024.
In November 2023, Iron Flame was ranked #1 national fiction bestseller by Publishers Weekly. It has garnered over 400,000 5-star reviews on Goodreads.
Controversy
Yarros has been accused of misusing the Scottish Gaelic language in her series after mispronouncing several Scottish Gaelic words from her novel during interviews leading up to Iron Flame’s release. This along with the speed at which Iron Flame was released following Fourth Wing and various misprint issues has led to comparisons between the current state of the publishing industry and fast fashion.
Sequel
The Empyrean series is planned to contain five books. On December 26, 2023, Yarros posted a reel to her Instagram profile showing her “head[ing] back to Basgiath” to begin writing the next book following Iron Flame. On March 28, 2024 it was announced that the third book, Onyx Storm, will be released on January 21, 2025. The time between the publications of Iron Flame and Onyx Storm will be longer than the time between the first two books due to Yarros’ health limitations which were pushed in the expedited release of the first two installments of the series.
Adaptation
A week prior to Iron Flame’s release, Variety announced Amazon MGM Studios acquired the rights to adapt the entire series for streaming. The deal includes Fourth Wing—which was released in May 2023—Iron Flame, and the three remaining books Yarros plans to write to conclude the series. Yarros is set to executive produce the series with Liz Pelletier, the founder of Entangled Publishing, and Liz Raposo, the president of Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society. Yarros is not set to have any writing credits in the series. The series has yet to be green lit.
References
External links
Iron Flame title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database |
Danon_The_Kid | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danon_The_Kid | [
356
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danon_The_Kid"
] | Danon The Kid (Japanese: ダノンザキッド foaled 29 January 2018) is a Japanese Thoroughbred racehorse. He was one of the best two-year-olds in Japan in 2020 when he won all three of his races including the Tokyo Sports Hai Nisai Stakes and the Hopeful Stakes. In 2021 he finished third in the Mile Championship.
Background
Danon The Kid is a bay colt bred in Japan by Northern Farm. As a yearling in 2017 he was consigned to the Select Sale and was bought for ¥108,000,000 by Danox Co Ltd. The colt was sent into training with Takayuki Yasuda.
He was from the third crop of foals sired by Just A Way, who won the Tenno Sho, Dubai Duty Free Stakes and Yasuda Kinen and was rated the best racehorse in the world in 2014. His other progeny have included the Fillies' Revue winner Epos and Velox who was placed in all three legs of the Japanese Triple Crown.
Danon The Kid's dam Epic Love was an Irish-bred mare who showed high-class form in France, winning the Prix Vanteaux and finishing second in the Prix Saint-Alary. Her granddam Alcando was a very successful racemare who won the Firth of Clyde Stakes in Scotland, the Prix de Psyche in France and the Beverly Hills Handicap in California. Alacndo was descended from the Irish broodmare Charwoman (foaled in 1933), making her a distant relative of May Hill.
Racing career
2020: two-year-old season
Danon The Kid made his racecourse debut at Hanshin Racecourse on 28 June when he was ridden by Yuichi Kitamura in a race for newcomers over 1800 metres on good ground. Starting the 3.7/1 second favourite in a fourteen-runner field he raced in third place before taking the lead in the straight and drawing away to win by three lengths from Wonderful Town. After the summer break the colt returned to the track for the Grade 3 Tokyo Sports Hai Nisai Stakes over 1800 metres at Tokyo Racecourse on 23 November and started the 0.7/1 favourite against nine opponents. Ridden by Yuga Kawada he was restrained in third place before making rapid progress to take the lead 300 metres from the finish and won by one and a quarter lengths from Titleholder with Jun Blue Sky in third.
For his third and final run of the year Danon The Kid was stepped up in class and distance to contest the Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes over 2000 metres at Nakayama Racecourse on 26 December. Ridden by Kawada he went off the 1.1/1 favourite in a fifteen-runner field which also included the undefeated colts Land of Liberty, Orthoclase and Yoho Lake. He raced just behind the leaders as Land of Liberty set the pace from Titleholder, Orthoclase and Vanishing Point before the complexion of the race changed abruptly on the final turn as Land of Liberty veered to the left and was pulled up by his jockey. Danon The Kid took the lead on the outside in the straight and rallied after being headed by Orthoclase to regain the advantage in the last 100 metres and win by one and a quarter lengths. Kawada said after the race "The stable staff did a great job in tuning up the colt and he ran much better than he did in his previous start but still, he couldn't find a good rhythm and was not steady in the last two corners today. There is still a lot of room for improvement and we intend to work hard so he can kick off a good three-year-old campaign."
In January 2021 Danon The Kid was voted Best Two-Year-Old Colt at the JRA Awards for 2020, taking 262 of the 283 votes. In the official Japanese rankings Danon The Kid was rated the best two-year-old colt of 2020, one pound ahead of Grenadier Guards.
2021: three-year-old season
On 7 March Danon The Kid began his second campaign in the Grade 2 Yayoi Sho over 2000 metres at Nakayama and started the 0.3/1 favourite against nine opponents. Ridden by Kawada he settled in fourth place before making progress in the straight but was never able to reach the leaders and sustained his first defeat as he finished third behind Titleholder and Schnell Meister. Yasuda later commented "He didn't quite get into the flow of things, and the pace was slow". Despite his defeat the colt started favourite for the Grade 1 Satsuki Sho over the same course and distance on 18 April. He raced just behind the leaders for most of the way but after being switched to the outside in the straight he tired badly and came home fifteenth of the sixteen runners behind Efforia.
Danon The Kid was off the track for more than six months before returning in the Grade 2 Fuji Stakes over 1600 metres at Tokyo on 23 October and finishing fourth behind the filly Songline. Four weeks later the colt was moved back into Grade 1 company for the all-aged Mile Championship over 1600 metres at Tokyo. Starting a 15.1/1 outsider he raced in eighth place before coming on strongly in the straight to take third place behind Gran Alegria and Schnell Meister beaten just over a length by the winner.
Pedigree
== References == |
Hanshin_Racecourse | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanshin_Racecourse | [
356
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanshin_Racecourse"
] | Hanshin Racecourse (阪神競馬場, Hanshin-keibajō) is located in Takarazuka, Hyogo, Japan. It has a capacity of 139,000 and it is used for horse racing. The land was originally owned by Kawanishi Aircraft Company, which manufactured combat planes during World War II. After the World War II, GHQ ordered the company to stop manufacturing combat planes, which ended in closing the factory. In 1949, Keihanshin Keiba K.K. built the Hanshin Racecourse. The racecourse was transferred to Japan Racing Association in 1955. A major reconstruction was completed in 1991, and another in 2006.
Physical attributes
Hanshin Racecourse has two turf courses, a dirt course, and a jump course.
The turf's outer oval (外回り, sotomawari) measures 2089m (11⁄4 miles + 254 feet), and the inner oval (内回り, uchimawari) measures 1689m (1 mile + 261 feet). Two chutes allow races to be run at 1800m/1400m and 2600m/2200m, respectively. Races can be run on the "A Course" rail setting (on the hedge), or the "B Course" setting (rail out 4 meters).
The dirt course measures 1518 meters (7/8 mile + 360 feet), with a 1400m chute.
The 2089m-long outer oval turf course was part of a major construction in 2006, and was a 400m-long extension. This would eventually remove two old chutes previously used, including a 1600m chute used for the currently-used 1689m-long inner oval course. The reconstruction (until the course was completely reconstructed) forced stakes races held in Hanshin during the second reconstruction period to be held in other racecourses, including Chukyo Racecourse and Kyoto Racecourse.
Hanshin Racecourse hosted the Japan Cup Dirt from 2008; races prior to that was held in Tokyo Racecourse. It has since been moved to Chukyo since 2015 and is now known as the Champions Cup.
Notable races
Track records
Source：レコードタイム表 (Record time table) -> 阪神競馬場 (Hanshin Racecourse)
† Reference Time.
Last updated on September 24, 2023.
Turf course (2yo)
Turf course (3yo+)
Dirt course (2yo)
Dirt course (3yo+)
== References == |
Takarazuka,_Hy%C5%8Dgo | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarazuka,_Hy%C5%8Dgo | [
356
] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takarazuka,_Hy%C5%8Dgo"
] | Takarazuka (宝塚市, Takarazuka-shi) is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 February 2024, the city had an estimated population of 221,846 in 96,729 households and a population density of 2,200 persons per km². The total area of the city is 101.80 square kilometres (39.31 sq mi). Known as the "inner parlor" of Kansai, Takarazuka is famous for the Takarazuka Revue, hot springs, and the Takarazuka Tourism Fireworks Display held since 1913. It is also famous as a choice residential area along with Ashiya and Nishinomiya.
Geography
Takarazuka is located in the northern part of the Hanshin area, surrounded by the Rokko Range to the west and the Nagao mountain range to the north, with the Muko River flowing through the center.
Neighboring municipalities
Hyōgo Prefecture
Inagawa
Itami
Kawanishi
Kita-ku, Kobe
Nishinomiya
Sanda
Climate
Takarazuka has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa) characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light snowfall. The average annual temperature in Takarazuka is 14.0 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1578 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in July, at around 25.7 °C, and lowest in January, at around 2.6 °C.
Demographics
Per Japanese census data, the population of Takarazuka has been increasing steadily since the 1950s.
History
The area of Takarazuka was part of ancient Settsu Province and has been inhabited since ancient times, with many kofun burial mounds found within the city limits. The Mefu Jinja dates from the Nara period. From the Heian period, numerous landed estates shōen controlled by the Fujiwara family were developed in the area. Takarazuka onsen is mentioned in Kamakura period records. In the Muromachi period, Kohama town developed as a temple town for Kōshō-ji, and subsequently Kohama Inn was established as a post station on Arima Road. The area was mostly tenryō territory under direct control of the Tokugawa shogunate in the Edo Period.
The village of Kohama (小浜村) was established on April 1, 1889 within Kawabe District, Hyōgo, with the creation of the modern municipalities system. In 1897, Hankaku Railroad (current Fukuchiyama Line) completed. In 1910, the Minoh Arima Electric Railway (current Hankyu Takarazuka Main Line completed). Takarazuka was a center of the culture from the 1910s to 1940s in what has been dubbed the age of Hanshinkan Modernism. This included the opening of the Takarazuka Girls' Opera (current Takarazuka Revue) on April 1, 1914.
Kohama was elevated to town status on March 15, 1951, changing its name to Takarazuka. On April 1 1954 it merged with the village of Yoshimoto (吉本村) in Muko District to become the city of Takarazuka. The city continued to expand by annexing Nagao Village on March 10, 1955, and Nishitani Village on March 14, 1955, but losing some areas in a border adjustment with the city of Itami on April 1, 1955. On January 17, 1995 the Great Hanshin earthquake caused more than 100 casualties. Takarazuka was designated as a Special City on April 1, 2003 with increased autonomy.
At one time, the idea was raised of merging Takarazuka with Itami, Kawanishi, and Inagawa, but it is currently on hold.
Government
Takarazuka has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a unicameral city council of 26 members. Takarazuka contributes three members to the Hyōgo Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the city is divided between the Hyōgo 6th districts of the lower house of the Diet of Japan.
Economy
Takarazuka has a mixed economy of commerce, manufacturing and market gardening. It is increasingly becoming a bedroom community for Osaka and Kobe, with quiet, upscale residential neighborhoods like Nigawa, Obayashi, Sakasegawa, and Hibarigaoka.
Companies headquartered in Takarazuka
HI-LEX Corporation, a manufacturer of remote-controlling cables and accessories for multiple applications is headquartered in the city.
ShinMaywa Industries, a manufacturer of military aircraft (especially seaplanes) and heavy duty trucks is headquartered in the city.
Education
Universities and colleges
Koshien University
Takarazuka University
Takarazuka Music School
Primary and secondary schools
Takazuka has 23 public elementary schools and 12 public middle schools operated by the city government, and five public high schools operated by the Hyōgo Prefectural Board of Education. There are three private elementary schools, two private middle schools and two private high schools. In addition, the prefecture also operates one special education school for the handicapped.
Transportation
Railways
Kawanishi is serviced by the JR Takarazuka Line and the Hankyu Takarazuka Line. Hankyu's Kawanishi-Noseguchi Station is a transfer station to the Nose Railway, which runs primarily within Kawanishi.
JR West - Fukuchiyama Line
Nakayamadera - Takarazuka - Takedao
Hankyu - Takarazuka Main Line
Yamamoto - Nakayama-kannon - Mefu-Jinja - Kiyoshikōjin - Hankyu Takarazuka
Hankyu - Imazu Line
Hankyu Takarazuka - Takarazuka-Minamiguchi - Sakasegawa - Obayashi - Nigawa
Highways
Chūgoku Expressway
Shin-Meishin Expressway
National Route 176
Buses
Hankyu Bus
Hanshin Dentetsu Bus
Hankyu Country Bus
Shinki Bus
Sister cities
Takarazuka is twinned with:
Alsergrund, Austria
Augusta, United States
Local attractions
Specialty products
Ornamental trees and flowers (dahlias, irises, etc.)
Tansan senbei
Places
Flower Road (花のみち, Hana-no Michi)
Hanshin Racecourse (阪神競馬場, Hanshin-keibajō)
Kohama Inn Resource Center (小浜宿資料館, Kohama-juku Shiryō-kan)
Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum (手塚治虫記念館, Tezuka Osamu Kinen-kan)
Shōji Residence (正司邸): Mixed Western- and Japanese-style mansion built in 1918–1919. Designed by Masaharu Furuzuka. National Registry of Tangible Cultural Properties. Filming location for NHK drama Twins (ふたりっ子, Futarikko).
Takarazuka City Historical Archives (former Matsumoto Residence): Western-style mansion built in 1937. (National Registry of Tangible Cultural Properties)
Nomura Koumuten House (Designed by Antonino Cardillo in 2009)
Takarazuka Bow Hall
Takarazuka Grand Theatre (宝塚大劇場, Takarazuka Dai Gekijō)
Takarazuka Hotel
Takarazuka Hot Spring (宝塚温泉, Takarazuka Onsen)
Takedao Hot Spring (武田尾温泉, Takedao Onsen)
Tessai Art Museum (鉄斎美術館, Tessai Bijutsu-kan)
Religious institutions
Temples
Gosho-ji
Heirin-ji
Kiyoshikoujin Seichou-ji
Nakayamadera
Shrines
Mefu Jinja
Sightseeing and festivals
Takarazuka Revue
Flower Road
Takarazuka Tourism Fireworks Display
Takarazuka Memorial (horse race)
Notable people from Takarazuka
Saki Aibu, actress and celebrity
Kyoko Hikami, voice actress
Makoto Imaoka, professional baseball player
Minami Itahashi, Olympic diver
Shinji Okazaki, footballer
Akira Raijin, professional wrestler
Kosaku Shimada, professional golfer
Osamu Tezuka, cartoonist
Seigo Yamamoto, drift driver
Tarō Yamamoto, actor and politician
References
External links
Takarazuka City official website (in Japanese)
Takarazuka City official website
Takarazuka Revue
Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum (in Japanese)
Geographic data related to Takarazuka, Hyōgo at OpenStreetMap |
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