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+
+Territory 
+
+The original homeland of the Bastarnae remains uncertain. Babeş and Shchukin argue in favour of an origin in eastern Pomerania on the Baltic coast of today's north-west Poland, on the grounds of correspondences in archaeological material, e.g. a Pomeranian-style fibula found in a Poieneşti site in Moldavia, although Batty considers the evidence insufficient. Babeş identifies the Sidoni, a branch of the Bastarnae which Strabo places north of the Danube delta with the Sidini located by Ptolemy in Pomerania.
+
+Batty argues that Greco-Roman sources of the first century AD locate the Bastarnae homeland on the northern side of the Northern Carpathian mountain range, encompassing south-east Poland and south-west Ukraine (i.e. the region traditionally known as Galicia). In one garbled passage Pliny located the Bastarnae "and other Germans" somehow near what is now northern Hungary and Slovakia. In another he located them and the Peucini above the Dacians. The Peutinger Map (produced ca. 400 AD, but including material from as early as the first century) shows the Bastarnae (mis-spelt Blastarni) north of the Carpathian mountains and appears to name the Galician Carpathians as the Alpes Bastarnicae.
+
+From Galicia, the Bastarnae expanded into the Moldavia and Bessarabia regions, reaching the Danube Delta. Strabo describes the Bastarnae as inhabiting the territory "between the Ister (the Danube) and the Borysthenes (the Dnieper)". He identifies three sub-tribes of the Bastarnae: the Atmoni, Sidoni and Peucini. The latter derived their name from Peuce, a large island in the Danube Delta which they had colonised. The second-century geographer Ptolemy states that the Carpiani or Carpi (believed to have occupied Moldavia) separated the Peucini from the other Bastarnae "above Dacia" (i.e. north of Dacia).
+
+It thus appears that the Bastarnae were settled in a vast arc stretching around the northern and eastern flanks of the Carpathians from south-east Poland to the Danube Delta. The larger group inhabited the northern and eastern slopes of the Carpathians and the region between the Prut and Dnieper rivers (modern-day Moldova/western Ukraine), while a separate group (the Peucini, Sidoni and Atmoni) dwelt in and north of the Danube Delta region.
+
+Ethno-linguistic affiliation 
+Scholars hold divergent theories about the ethnicity of the Bastarnae. One view, following what appears to be the most authoritative view among earliest scholars, is that they spoke a Celtic language. However others hold that they were Scythian/Germanic, or mixed Germanic/Sarmatian. A fringe theory is that they were Proto-Slavic. Shchukin argues that the ethnicity of the Bastarnae was unique and rather than trying to label them as Celtic, Germanic or Sarmatian, it should be accepted that the "Basternae were the Basternae". Batty argues that assigning an "ethnicity" to the Bastarnae is meaningless; as in the context of the Iron Age Pontic-Danubian region, with its multiple overlapping peoples and languages, ethnicity was a very fluid concept, which changed rapidly and frequently, according to socio-political vicissitudes. That was especially true of the Bastarnae, who are attested over a relatively-vast area.
+
+Ancient sources 
+Polybius (200–118 BC) writing about the time of Perseus of Macedon (d. 166 BCE):
+
+"A mission from the Dardanians now arrived, telling of the Bastarnae, their numbers, the huge size and the valour of their warriors, and also pointing out that Perseus and the Galatians were in league with this tribe. They said they were much more afraid of him than of the Bastarnae, and they begged for aid."
+
+According to Livy (64 BC – 17 AD):
+
+"The way to the Hadriatic and to Italy lay through the Scordisci; that was the only practicable route for an army, and the Scordisci were expected to grant a passage to the Bastarnae without any difficulty, for neither in speech nor habits were they dissimilar, and it was hoped that they would unite forces with them when they saw that they were going to secure the plunder of a very wealthy nation."
+
+According to Strabo (64 BC – 24 AD):
+
+"However, it is clear from the "climata" and the parallel distances that if one travels longitudinally towards the east, one encounters the regions that are about the Borysthenes and that are to the north of the Pontus; but what is beyond Germany and what beyond the countries which are next after Germany — whether one should say the Bastarnae, as most writers suspect, or say that others lie in between, either the Iazyges, or the Roxolani, or certain other of the wagon-dwellers — it is not easy to say; nor yet whether they extend as far as the ocean along its entire length, or whether any part is uninhabitable by reason of the cold or other cause, or whether even a different race of people, succeeding the Germans, is situated between the sea and the eastern Germans. And this same ignorance prevails also in regard to the rest of the peoples that come next in order on the north; for I know neither the Bastarnae, nor the Sauromatae, nor, in a word, any of the peoples who dwell above the Pontus, nor how far distant they are from the Atlantic Sea, nor whether their countries border upon it."
+
+According to Plutarch (46–120 AD):
+
+"He also secretly stirred up the Gauls settled along the Danube, who are called Basternae, an equestrian host and warlike; and he invited the Illyrians, through Genthius their king, to take part with him in the war. And a report prevailed that the Barbarians had been hired by him to pass through lower Gaul, along the coast of the Adriatic, and make an incursion into Italy."
+
+According to Tacitus (56–120 AD), describing the peoples of Germania:
+
+"As to the tribes of the Peucini, Veneti, and Fenni I am in doubt whether I should class them with the Germans or the Sarmatæ, although indeed the Peucini called by some Bastarnæ, are like Germans in their language, mode of life, and in the permanence of their settlements. They all live in filth and sloth, and by the intermarriages of the chiefs they are becoming in some degree debased into a resemblance to the Sarmatæ."
+
+According to Cassius Dio (155–235 AD):
+
+"During the same period in which these events occurred Marcus Crassus was sent into Macedonia and Greece and carried on war with the Dacians and Bastarnae. I have already stated who the former were and why they had become hostile; the Bastarnae, on the other hand, who are properly classed as Scythians, had at this time crossed the Ister and subdued the part of Moesia opposite them, and afterwards subdued the Triballi who adjoin this district and the Dardani who inhabit the Triballian country."
+
+According to Zosismus (490s–510 AD):
+
+"He likewise left in Thrace the Bastarnae, a Scythian people, who submitted to him, giving them land to inhabit there; on which account they observed the Roman laws and customs."
+
+Celtic 
+A leading reason to consider the Bastarnae as Celtic is that the regions they are documented to have occupied (the northern and eastern slopes of the Carpathians) overlapped to a great extent with the locations of Celtic tribes attested in the northern Carpathians. (The modern name of this region, Galicia, is generally regarded as having a later origin, in either a Slavic or Turkic language. However, some scholars have instead suggested that the name Galicia may derive from its former Celtic inhabitants the Taurisci, Osi, Cotini and Anartes of Slovakia and northern Romania and the Britogalli of the Danube Delta region.) In addition, archaeological cultures which some scholars have linked to the Bastarnae (Poieneşti-Lukashevka and Zarubintsy) display pronounced Celtic affinities. Finally, the arrival of the Bastarnae in the Pontic-Danubian region, which can be dated to 233–216 BC according to two ancient sources, coincides with the latter phase of Celtic migration into the region (400–200 BC).
+
+The earliest historians give a Celtic or Gallic origin to the Bastarnae. Roman historian Livy, writing in c. 10 AD, attests that the Bastarnae spoke Celtic. Relating the Bastarnic invasion of the Balkans of 179 BC (see Allies of Philip of Macedon below), he describes them then as "they were not very different in either language or manners" to the Celtic tribe of the Scordisci, a tribe of Pannonia. The Scordisci are described as Celtic by Strabo (although he adds that they had mingled with Illyrians and Thracians). The Greek historian Plutarch inform us that the Roman consul Hostilius "secretly stirred up the Gauls settled along the Danube, who are called Basternae".
+
+However, a Celtic identity for the Bastarnae is apparently contradicted by Polybius (writing ca. 150 BC), who was an actual contemporary of the events described, unlike Livy, who was writing some 200 years later. Polybius clearly distinguishes the Bastarnae from the "Galatae" (i.e. Celts): "An embassy from the Dardani arrived [at the Roman Senate], talking of the Bastarnae, their huge numbers, the strength and valour of their warriors, and also reporting that Perseus [king of Macedon] and the Galatae were in league with this tribe." In addition, inscription AE (1905) 14, recording a campaign on the Hungarian Plain by the Augustan-era general Marcus Vinucius (10 BC or 8 BC), also appears to distinguish the Bastarnae from neighbouring Celtic tribes: "Marcus Vinucius... governor of Illyricum, the first [Roman general] to advance across the river Danube, defeated in battle and routed an army of Dacians and Basternae, and subjugated the Cotini, Osi,...[missing tribal name] and Anartii to the power of the emperor Augustus and of the people of Rome."
+
+The three names of Bastarnae leaders found in ancient sources are of Celtic origin: Cotto, Clondicus and Teutagonus.
+
+Germanic 
+Greco-Roman geographers of the first century AD are unanimous in associating the Bastarnae and Peucini with Germanic peoples, and one source, Tacitus, specifies that they spoke a language like the Germanic peoples. The Greek geographer Strabo (writing c. 5–20 AD) says the Bastarnae are "of Germanic stock".
+
+The Roman geographer Pliny the Elder (c. 77 AD), classifies the Bastarnae and Peucini as being one of the five main subdivisions of Germanic peoples, the other subdivisions as the three West Germanic groups, the Inguaeones, Istuaeones and Hermiones, and the East Germanic Vandili.
+
+The Roman historian Tacitus (c. 100 AD) described the Bastarnae as probably being a Germanic people, but with substantial Sarmatian influence:
+{|
+|As to the tribes of the Peucini, Veneti, and Fenni I am in doubt whether I should class them with the Germans or the Sarmatæ, although indeed the Peucini called by some Bastarnæ, are like Germans in their language, mode of life, and in the permanence of their settlements. They all live in filth and sloth, and by the intermarriages of the chiefs they are becoming in some degree debased into a resemblance to the Sarmatæ.
+|Peucinorum Venethorumque et Fennorum nationes Germanis an Sarmatis adscribam dubito. quamquam Peucini, quos quidam Bastarnas vocant, sermone cultu sede ac domiciliis ut Germani agunt. sordes omnium ac torpor procerum: conubiis mixtis nonnihil in Sarmatarum habitum foedantur. 
+|}
+
+Scytho-Sarmatian 
+Strabo includes the Roxolani, generally considered by scholars to have been a Sarmatian tribe, in a list of Bastarnae subgroups. However, this may simply be an error due to the close proximity of the two peoples north of the Danube Delta. In the third century, the Greek historian Dio Cassius states that the "Bastarnae are properly classed as Scythians" and "members of the Scythian race". Likewise, the sixth-century historian Zosimus, reporting events around 280 AD, refers to "the Bastarnae, a Scythian people". However, it appears that these late Greco-Roman chroniclers used the term "Scythian" without regard to language. The earliest Scythians were steppe nomads associated with Iranic languages, as were their successors the Sarmatians, who were also called Scythians, while classical authors such as Zosimus also routinely refers to the Goths, who were undoubtedly Germanic-speakers, as "Scythians".
+
+It is possible that some Bastarnae may have been assimilated by the surrounding (and possibly dominant) Sarmatians, perhaps adopting their tongue (which belonged to the Iranian group of Indo-European languages) and customs. Thus Tacitus' comment that "mixed marriages are giving [the Bastarnae] to some extent the vile appearance of the Sarmatians". On the other hand, the Bastarnae maintained a separate name until ca. 300 AD, probably implying retention of their distinctive ethno-linguistic heritage up to that time. It seems likely, on balance, that the core population of Bastarnae had always been, and continued to be, Germanic in language and culture.
+
+Material culture 
+
+According to Malcolm Todd, traditional archaeology has not been able to construct a typology of Bastarnae material culture, and thus to ascribe particular archaeological sites to the Bastarnae. A complicating factor is that the regions where Bastarnae are attested contained a patchwork of peoples and cultures (Sarmatians, Scythians, Dacians, Thracians, Celts, Germans and others), some sedentary, some nomadic. In any event, post-1960s archaeological theory has questioned the validity of equating material "cultures", as defined by archaeologists, with distinct ethnic groups. In this view, it is impossible to attribute a "culture" to a particular ethnic group: it is likely that the material cultures discerned in the region belonged to several, if not all, of the groups inhabiting it. These cultures probably represent relatively large-scale socio-economic interactions between disparate communities of the broad region, possibly including mutually antagonistic groups.
+
+It is not even certain whether the Bastarnae were sedentary, nomadic or semi-nomadic. Tacitus' statement that they were "German in their way of life and types of dwelling" implies a sedentary bias, but their close relations with the Sarmatians, who were nomadic, may indicate a more nomadic lifestyle for some Bastarnae, as does their attested wide geographical range. If the Bastarnae were nomadic, then the sedentary "cultures" identified by archaeologists in their lebensraum would not represent them. Nomadic peoples generally leave scant traces, due to the impermanent materials and foundations used in the construction of their dwellings.
+
+Scholars have identified two closely related sedentary "cultures" as possible candidates to represent the Bastarnae (among other peoples) as their locations broadly correspond to where ancient sources placed the Basternae: the Zarubintsy culture lying in the forest-steppe zone in northern Ukraine and southern Belarus, and the Poieneşti-Lukashevka culture (Lucăşeuca) in northern Moldavia. These cultures were characterised by agriculture, documented by numerous finds of sickles. Dwellings were either of surface or semi-subterranean types, with posts supporting the walls, a hearth in the middle and large conical pits located nearby. Some sites were defended by ditches and banks, structures thought to have been built to defend against nomadic tribes from the steppe. Inhabitants practiced cremation. Cremated remains were either placed in large, hand-made ceramic urns, or were placed in a large pit and surrounded by food and ornaments such as spiral bracelets and Middle to Late La Tène-type fibulae (attesting the continuing strength of Celtic influence in this region).
+
+A major problem with associating the Poieneşti-Lukashevka and Zarubintsy cultures with the Bastarnae is that both cultures had disappeared by the early first century AD, while the Bastarnae continue to be attested in those regions throughout the Roman Principate. Another issue is that the Poieneşti-Lukashevka culture has also been attributed to the Costoboci, a people considered ethnically Dacian by mainstream scholarship, who inhabited northern Moldavia, according to Ptolemy (ca. 140 AD). Indeed, Mircea Babeş and Silvia Theodor, the two Romanian archaeologists who identified Lukashevka as Bastarnic, nevertheless insisted that the majority of the population in the Lukashevka sphere (in northern Moldavia) was "Geto-Dacian". A further problem is that neither of these cultures were present in the Danube Delta region, where a major concentration of Bastarnae are attested by the ancient sources.
+
+Starting in about 200 AD, the Chernyakhov culture became established in the modern-day western Ukraine and Moldova region inhabited by the Bastarnae. The culture is characterised by a high degree of sophistication in the production of metal and ceramic artefacts, as well as of uniformity over a vast area. Although this culture has conventionally been identified with the migration of the Gothic ethnos into the region from the northwest, Todd argues that its most important origin is Scytho-Sarmatian. Although the Goths certainly contributed to it, so probably did other peoples of the region such as the Dacians, proto-Slavs, Carpi and possibly the Bastarnae.
+
+Relations with Rome
+
+Roman Republican era (to 30 BC)
+
+Allies of Philip of Macedon (179–8 BC) 
+
+The Bastarnae first appear in the historical record in 179 BC, when they crossed the Danube in a massive force. They did so at the invitation of their long-time ally, King Philip V of Macedon, a direct descendant of Antigonus, one of the Diadochi, the generals of Alexander the Great who had shared his empire after his death in 323 BC. The Macedonian king had suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Romans in the Second Macedonian War (200–197 BC), which had reduced him from a powerful Hellenistic monarch to the status of a petty client-king with a much-reduced territory and a tiny army. After nearly 20 years of slavish adherence to the Roman Senate's dictats, Philip had been goaded by the incessant and devastating raiding of the Dardani, a warlike Thraco-Illyrian tribe on his northern border, which his treaty-limited army was too small to counter effectively. Counting on the Bastarnae, with whom he had forged friendly relations, he plotted a strategy to deal with the Dardani and then to regain his lost territories in Greece and his political independence. First, he would unleash the Bastarnae against the Dardani. After the latter had been crushed, Philip planned to settle Bastarnae families in Dardania (southern Kosovo/Skopje region) to ensure that the region was permanently subdued. In a second phase, Philip aimed to launch the Bastarnae on an invasion of Italy via the Adriatic coast. Although he was aware that the Bastarnae were likely to be defeated, Philip hoped that the Romans would be distracted long enough to allow him to reoccupy his former possessions in Greece.
+
+However, Philip, now 60 years of age, died before the Bastarnae could arrive. The Bastarnae host was still en route through Thrace, where it became embroiled in hostilities with the locals, who had not provided them with sufficient food at affordable prices as they marched through. Probably in the vicinity of Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv, Bulgaria), the Bastarnae broke out of their marching columns and pillaged the land far and wide. The terrified local Thracians took refuge with their families and animal herds on the slopes of Mons Donuca (Mount Musala), the highest mountain in Thrace. A large force of Bastarnae chased them up the mountain, but were driven back and scattered by a massive hailstorm. Then the Thracians ambushed them, turning their descent into a panic-stricken rout. Back at their wagon fort in the plain, around half of the demoralised Bastarnae decided to return home, leaving c. 30,000 to press on to Macedonia.
+
+Philip's son and successor Perseus, while protesting his loyalty to Rome, deployed his Bastarnae guests in winter quarters in a valley in Dardania, presumably as a prelude to a campaign against the Dardani the following summer. However, in the depths of winter their camp was attacked by the Dardani. The Bastarnae easily beat off the attackers, chased them back to their chief town and besieged them, but they were surprised in the rear by a second force of Dardani, which had approached their camp stealthily by mountain paths, and proceeded to storm and ransack it. Having lost their entire baggage and supplies, the Bastarnae were obliged to withdraw from Dardania and to return home. Most perished as they crossed the frozen Danube on foot, only for the ice to give way. Despite the failure of Philip's Bastarnae strategy, the suspicion aroused by these events in the Roman Senate, which had been warned by the Dardani of the Bastarnae invasion, ensured the demise of Macedonia as an independent state. Rome declared war on Perseus in 171 BC and after the Macedonian army was crushed at the Battle of Pydna (168 BC), Macedonia was split up into four Roman puppet-cantons (167 BC). Twenty-one years later, these were in turn abolished and annexed to the Roman Republic as the province of Macedonia (146 BC).
+
+Allies of Getan high king Burebista (62 BC) 
+
+The Bastarnae first came into direct conflict with Rome as a result of expansion into the lower Danube region by the proconsuls (governors) of Macedonia in 75–72 BC. Gaius Scribonius Curio (proconsul 75–73 BC) campaigned successfully against the Dardani and the Moesi, becoming the first Roman general to reach the Danube with his army. His successor, Marcus Licinius Lucullus (brother of the famous Lucius Lucullus), campaigned against the Thracian Bessi tribe and the Moesi, ravaging the whole of Moesia, the region between the Haemus (Balkan) mountain range and the Danube. In 72 BC, his troops occupied the Greek coastal cities of Scythia Minor (modern Dobruja region, Romania/Bulgaria), which had sided with Rome's Hellenistic arch-enemy, King Mithridates VI of Pontus, in the Third Mithridatic War (73–63 BC).
+
+The presence of Roman forces in the Danube Delta was seen as a major threat by all the neighbouring transdanubian peoples: the Peucini Bastarnae, the Sarmatians and, most importantly, by Burebista (ruled 82–44 BC), king of the Getae. The Getae occupied the region today called Wallachia as well as Scythia Minor and were either a Dacian- or Thracian- speaking people. Burebista had unified the Getae tribes into a single kingdom, for which the Greek cities were vital trade outlets. In addition, he had established his hegemony over neighbouring Sarmatian and Bastarnae tribes. At its peak, the Getae kingdom reportedly was able to muster 200,000 warriors. Burebista led his transdanubian coalition in a struggle against Roman encroachment, conducting many raids against Roman allies in Moesia and Thrace, penetrating as far as Macedonia and Illyria.
+
+The coalition's main chance came in 62 BC, when the Greek cities rebelled against Roman rule. In 61 BC, the notoriously oppressive and militarily incompetent proconsul of Macedonia, Gaius Antonius, nicknamed Hybrida ("The Monster"), an uncle of the famous Mark Antony, led an army against the Greek cities. As his army approached Histria, Antonius detached his entire mounted force from the marching column and led it away on a lengthy excursion, leaving his infantry without cavalry cover, a tactic he had already used with disastrous results against the Dardani. Dio implies that he did so out of cowardice, in order to avoid the imminent clash with the opposition, but it is more likely that he was pursuing a large enemy cavalry force, probably Sarmatians. A Bastarnae host, which had crossed the Danube to assist the Histrians, promptly attacked, surrounded and massacred the Roman infantry, capturing several of their vexilla (military standards). This battle resulted in the collapse of the Roman position on the lower Danube. Burebista apparently annexed the Greek cities (55–48 BC). At the same time, the subjugated "allied" tribes of Moesia and Thrace evidently repudiated their treaties with Rome, as they had to be reconquered by Augustus in 29–8 BC (see below).
+
+In 44 BC, Roman dictator-for-life Julius Caesar planned to lead a major campaign to crush Burebista and his allies once and for all, but he was assassinated before it could start. However, the campaign was made redundant by Burebista's overthrow and death in the same year, after which his Getae empire fragmented into four, later five, independent petty kingdoms. These were militarily far weaker, as Strabo assessed their combined military potential at just 40,000 armed men, and were often involved in internecine warfare. The Geto-Dacians did not again become a threat to Roman hegemony in the lower Danube until the rise of Decebal 130 years later (86 AD).
+
+Roman Principate (30 BC – 284 AD)
+
+Augustan era (30 BC – 14 AD) 
+
+Once he had established himself as sole ruler of the Roman state in 30 BC, Caesar's grand-nephew and adopted son Augustus inaugurated a strategy of advancing the empire's south-eastern European border to the line of the Danube from the Alps, the Dinaric Alps and Macedonia. The primary objective was to increase strategic depth between the border and Italy and also to provide a major fluvial supply route between the Roman armies in the region.
+
+On the lower Danube, which was given priority over the upper Danube, this required the annexation of Moesia. The Romans' target was thus the tribes which inhabited Moesia, namely (from west to east) the Triballi, Moesi and those Getae who dwelt south of the Danube. The Bastarnae were also a target because they had recently subjugated the Triballi, whose territory lay on the southern bank of the Danube between the tributary rivers Utus (Vit) and Ciabrus (Tsibritsa), with their chief town at Oescus (Gigen, Bulgaria). In addition, Augustus wanted to avenge the defeat of Gaius Antonius at Histria 32 years before and to recover the lost military standards. These were held in a powerful fortress called Genucla (Isaccea, near modern Tulcea, Romania, in the Danube Delta region), controlled by Zyraxes, the local Getan king. The man selected for the task was Marcus Licinius Crassus, grandson of Crassus the triumvir and an experienced general at 33 years of age, who was appointed proconsul of Macedonia in 29 BC.
+
+The Bastarnae provided the casus belli by crossing the Haemus and attacking the Dentheletae, a Thracian tribe who were Roman allies. Crassus marched to the Dentheletae's assistance, but the Bastarnae host hastily withdrew over the Haemus at his approach. Crassus followed them closely into Moesia but they would not be drawn into battle, withdrawing beyond the Tsibritsa. Crassus now turned his attention to the Moesi, his prime target. After a successful campaign which resulted in the submission of a substantial section of the Moesi, Crassus again sought out the Bastarnae. Discovering their location from some peace envoys they had sent to him, he lured them into battle near the Tsibritsa by a stratagem. Hiding his main body of troops in a wood, he stationed as bait a smaller vanguard in open ground before the wood. As expected, the Bastarnae attacked the vanguard in force, only to find themselves entangled in the full-scale pitched battle with the Romans that they had tried to avoid. The Bastarnae tried to retreat into the forest but were hampered by the wagon train carrying their women and children, as these could not move through the trees. Trapped into fighting to save their families, the Bastarnae were routed. Crassus personally killed their king, Deldo, in combat, a feat which qualified him for Rome's highest military honour, spolia opima, but Augustus refused to award it on a technicality. Thousands of fleeing Bastarnae perished, many asphyxiated in nearby woods by encircling fires set by the Romans, others drowned trying to swim across the Danube. Nevertheless, a substantial force dug themselves into a powerful hillfort. Crassus laid siege to fort, but had to enlist the assistance of Rholes, a Getan petty king, to dislodge them, for which service Rholes was granted the title of socius et amicus populi Romani ("ally and friend of the Roman people").
+
+The following year (28 BC), Crassus marched on Genucla. Zyraxes escaped with his treasure and fled over the Danube into Scythia to seek aid from the Bastarnae. Before he was able to bring reinforcements, Genucla fell to a combined land and fluvial assault by the Romans. The strategic result of Crassus' campaigns was the permanent annexation of Moesia by Rome.
+
+About a decade later, in 10 BC, the Bastarnae again clashed with Rome during Augustus' conquest of Pannonia (the bellum Pannonicum 14–9 BC). Inscription AE (1905) 14 records a campaign on the Hungarian Plain by the Augustan-era general Marcus Vinucius: Marcus Vinucius...[patronymic], Consul [in 19 BC]...[various official titles], governor of Illyricum, the first [Roman general] to advance across the river Danube, defeated in battle and routed an army of Dacians and Basternae, and subjugated the Cotini, Osi,...[missing tribal name] and Anartii to the power of the emperor Augustus and of the people of Rome. Most likely, the Bastarnae, in alliance with Dacians, were attempting to assist the hard-pressed Illyrian/Celtic tribes of Pannonia in their resistance to Rome.
+
+First and second centuries 
+
+It appears that in the final years of Augustus' rule, the Bastarnae made their peace with Rome. The Res Gestae Divi Augusti ("Acts of the divine Augustus", 14 AD), an inscription commissioned by Augustus to list his achievements, states that he received an embassy from the Bastarnae seeking a treaty of friendship. It appears that a treaty was concluded and apparently proved remarkably effective, as no hostilities with the Bastarnae are recorded in surviving ancient sources until c. 175, some 160 years after Augustus' inscription was carved. But surviving evidence for the history of this period is so thin that it cannot be excluded that the Bastarnae clashed with Rome during it. The Bastarnae participated in the Dacian Wars of Domitian (86–88) and Trajan (101–102 and 105–106), fighting on both wars on the Dacian side
+
+In the late second century, the Historia Augusta mentions that in the rule of Marcus Aurelius (161–180), an alliance of lower Danube tribes including the Bastarnae, the Sarmatian Roxolani and the Costoboci took advantage of the emperor's difficulties on the upper Danube (the Marcomannic Wars) to invade Roman territory.
+
+Third century 
+During the late second century, the main ethnic change in the northern Black Sea region was the immigration, from the Vistula valley in the North, of the Goths and accompanying Germanic tribes such as the Taifali and the Hasdingi, a branch of the Vandal people. This migration was part of a series of major population movements in the European barbaricum (the Roman term for regions outside their empire). The Goths appear to have established a loose political hegemony over the existing tribes in the region.
+
+Under the leadership of the Goths, a series of major invasions of the Roman empire were launched by a grand coalition of lower Danubian tribes from c. 238 onwards. The participation of the Bastarnae in these is likely but largely unspecified, due to Zosimus' and other chroniclers' tendency to lump all these tribes under the general term "Scythians" – meaning all the inhabitants of Scythia, rather than the specific Iranic-speaking people called the Scythians. Thus, in 250–251, the Bastarnae were probably involved in the Gothic and Sarmatian invasions which culminated in the Roman defeat at the Battle of Abrittus and the slaying of Emperor Decius (251). This disaster was the start of the Third Century Crisis of the Roman Empire, a period of military and economic chaos. At this critical moment, the Roman army was crippled by the outbreak of a second smallpox pandemic, the plague of Cyprian (251–70). The effects are described by Zosimus as even worse than the earlier Antonine plague (166–180), which probably killed 15–30% of the empire's inhabitants.
+
+Taking advantage of Roman military disarray, a vast number of barbarian peoples overran much of the empire. The Sarmato-Gothic alliance of the lower Danube carried out major invasions of the Balkans region in 252, and in the periods 253–258 and 260–268. The Peucini Bastarnae are specifically mentioned in the 267/268 invasion, when the coalition built a fleet in the estuary of the river Tyras (Dniester). The Peucini Bastarnae would have been critical to this venture since, as coastal and delta dwellers, they would have had seafaring experience that the nomadic Sarmatians and Goths lacked. The barbarians sailed along the Black Sea coast to Tomis in Moesia Inferior, which they tried to take by assault without success. They then attacked the provincial capital Marcianopolis (Devnya, Bulgaria), also in vain. Sailing on through the Bosporus, the expedition laid siege to Thessalonica in Macedonia. Driven off by Roman forces, the coalition host moved overland into Thracia, where finally it was crushed by Emperor Claudius II (r. 268–270) at Naissus (269).
+
+Claudius II was the first of a sequence of military emperors (the so-called "Illyrian emperors" from their main ethnic origin) who restored order in the empire in the late third century. These emperors followed a policy of large-scale resettlement within the empire of defeated barbarian tribes, granting them land in return for an obligation of military service much heavier than the usual conscription quota. The policy had the triple benefit, from the Roman point of view, of weakening the hostile tribe, repopulating the plague-ravaged frontier provinces (bringing their abandoned fields back into cultivation) and providing a pool of first-rate recruits for the army. It could also be popular with the barbarian prisoners, who were often delighted by the prospect of a land grant within the empire. In the fourth century, such communities were known as laeti.
+
+The emperor Probus (r. 276–282) is recorded as resettling 100,000 Bastarnae in Moesia, in addition to other peoples, including Goths, Gepids and Vandals. The Bastarnae are reported to have honoured their oath of allegiance to the emperor, while the other resettled peoples mutinied while Probus was distracted by usurpation attempts and ravaged the Danubian provinces far and wide. A further massive transfer of Bastarnae was carried out by Emperor Diocletian (ruled 284–305) after he and his colleague Galerius defeated a coalition of Bastarnae and Carpi in 299.
+
+Later Roman empire (305 onwards) 
+
+The remaining transdanubian Bastarnae disappear into historical obscurity in the late empire. Neither of the main ancient sources for this period, Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus, mention the Bastarnae in their accounts of the fourth century, possibly implying the loss of their separate identity, presumably assimilated by the regional hegemons, the Goths. Such assimilation would have been facilitated if, as is possible, the Bastarnae spoke an East Germanic language closely related to Gothic. If the Bastarnae remained an identifiable group, it is highly likely that they participated in the vast Gothic-led migration, driven by Hunnic pressure, that was admitted into Moesia by Emperor Valens in 376 and eventually defeated and killed Valens at Adrianople in 378. Although Ammianus refers to the migrants collectively as "Goths", he states that, in addition, "Taifali and other tribes" were involved.
+
+However, after a gap of 150 years, there is a final mention of Bastarnae in the mid-5th century. In 451, the Hunnic leader Attila invaded Gaul with a large army which was ultimately routed at the Battle of Châlons by a Roman-led coalition under the general Aetius. Attila's host, according to Jordanes, included contingents from the "innumerable tribes that had been brought under his sway". This included the Bastarnae, according to the Gallic nobleman Sidonius Apollinaris. However, E.A. Thompson argues that Sidonius' mention of Bastarnae at Chalons is probably false: his purpose was to write a panegyric and not a history, and Sidonius added some spurious names to the list of real participants (e.g. Burgundians, Sciri and Franks) for dramatic effect.
+
+See also 
+ Carpathian Tumuli culture
+ Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus
+ List of Germanic tribes
+ List of Celtic tribes
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+
+Ancient 
+ Res Gestae Divi Augusti (c. 14 AD)
+ Ammianus Marcellinus Res Gestae (c. 395 AD)
+ Dio Cassius Roman History (c. 230 AD)
+ Eutropius Historiae Romanae Breviarium (c. 360 AD)
+ Anonymous Historia Augusta (c. 400 AD)
+ Livy Ab urbe condita (c. 20 BC)
+ Jordanes Getica (c. 550 AD)
+ Pliny the Elder Naturalis Historia (c. 70 AD)
+ Ptolemy Geographia (c. 140)
+ Sextus Aurelius Victor De Caesaribus (c. 380 AD)
+ Sidonius Apollinaris Carmina (late fifth century AD)
+ Strabo Geographica (c. 10 AD)
+ Tacitus Annales (c. 100 AD)
+ Tacitus Germania (c. 100 AD)
+ Zosimus Historia Nova (c. 500 AD)
+
+Modern 
+ 
+ Babeş, Mircea: Noi date privind arheologia şi istoria bastarnilor in SCIV 20 (1969) 195–218
+ Barrington (2000): Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
+ Batty, Roger (2008): Rome and the Nomads: the Pontic-Danubian region in Antiquity
+ 
+ Crişan, Ion (1978): Burebista and his Time
+ Faliyeyev, Alexander (2007): Dictionary of Continental Celtic Placenames (online)
+ Goldsworthy, Adrian (2000): Roman Warfare
+
+ Heather, Peter (2009): Empires and Barbarians
+ Jones, A.H.M. (1964): Later Roman Empire
+ Köbler, Gerhard (2000): Indo-Germanisches Wörterbuch (online)
+ Müllenhoff, Karl (1887): Deutsche altertumskunde (vol. II)
+ 
+ Thompson, E.A. (1996): The Huns
+ Todd, Malcolm (2004): The early Germans
+ O. N. Trubačev (1999): INDOARICA в Северном Причерноморье
+
+ Wolfram, Herwig (1988): History of the Goths
+
+ 
+Historical Celtic peoples
+Early Germanic peoples
+Wars involving the Roman Republic
+Wars involving the Roman Empire
+Hellenistic-era tribes in the Balkans
+Ancient tribes in Dacia
+Hellenistic Thrace
+Antigonid Macedonia
+Bavarian is the adjective form of the German state of Bavaria, and refers to people of ancestry from Bavaria.
+
+Bavarian may also refer to:
+ Bavarii, a Germanic tribe
+ Bavarians, a nation and ethnographic group of Germans
+ Bavarian, Iran, a village in Fars Province
+ Bavarian language, a West Germanic language
+
+See also 
+ 
+ Bavaria (disambiguation)
+
+Language and nationality disambiguation pages
+Bohemia ( ;  ; ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohemian kings, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, in which case the smaller region is referred to as Bohemia proper as a means of distinction.
+
+Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg monarchy and the Austrian Empire. After World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, the whole of Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia, defying claims of the German-speaking inhabitants that regions with German-speaking majority should be included in the Republic of German-Austria. Between 1938 and 1945, these border regions were joined to Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland.
+
+The remainder of Czech territory became the Second Czechoslovak Republic, and was subsequently occupied as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia until the end of World War II, after which Bohemia became part of the restored Czechoslovakia. In 1969, the Czech lands (including Bohemia) were given autonomy within Czechoslovakia as the Czech Socialist Republic. In 1990, the name was changed to the Czech Republic, which became a separate state in 1993 with the breakup of Czechoslovakia.
+
+Until 1948, Bohemia was an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia as one of its "lands" (země). Since then, administrative reforms have replaced self-governing lands with a modified system of "regions" (kraje), which do not follow the borders of the historical Czech lands (or the regions from the 1960 and 2000 reforms). However, the three lands are mentioned in the preamble of the Constitution of the Czech Republic: "We, citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia..."
+
+Bohemia had an area of , and today is home to about 6.8 million of the Czech Republic's 10.8 million inhabitants. Bohemia was bordered in the south by Upper and Lower Austria (both in Austria), in the west by Bavaria (in Germany), and in the north by Saxony and Lusatia (in Germany and Poland, respectively), in the northeast by Silesia (in Poland), and in the east by Moravia (also part of the Czech Republic). Bohemia's borders were mostly marked by mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Giant Mountains; the Bohemian-Moravian border roughly follows the Elbe-Danube watershed.
+
+Etymology 
+
+In the second century BCE, the Romans were competing for dominance in northern Italy with various peoples, including the Gauls-Celtic tribe Boii. The Romans defeated the Boii at the Battle of Placentia (194 BCE) and the Battle of Mutina (193 BCE). Afterward, many of the Boii retreated north across the Alps. Much later Roman authors refer to the area they had once occupied (the "desert of the Boii" as Pliny and Strabo called it) as Boiohaemum. The earliest mention was by Tacitus' Germania 28 (written at the end of the first century AD), and later mentions of the same name are in Strabo and Velleius Paterculus. The name appears to consist of the tribal name Boio- plus the Proto-Germanic noun *haimaz "home" (whence Gothic haims, German Heim, Heimat, English home), indicating a Proto-Germanic *Bajahaimaz.
+
+Boiohaemum was apparently isolated to the area where King Marobod's kingdom was centred, within the Hercynian forest. Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII in his 10th-century work  also mentioned the region as Boiki (see White Serbia).
+
+The Czech name "Čechy" is derived from the name of the Slavic ethnic group, the Czechs, who settled in the area during the sixth or seventh century AD.
+
+History
+
+Ancient Bohemia
+
+Bohemia, like neighbouring Bavaria, is named after the Boii, a large Celtic nation known to the Romans for their migrations and settlement in northern Italy and other places. Another part of the nation moved west with the Helvetii into southern France, which was one of the events leading to the interventions of Julius Caesar's Gaulish campaign of 58 BC. The emigration of the Helvetii and Boii left southern Germany and Bohemia a lightly inhabited "desert" into which Suebic peoples arrived, speaking Germanic languages, and became dominant over remaining Celtic groups. To the south, over the Danube, the Romans extended their empire, and to the southeast, in present-day Hungary, were Dacian peoples.
+
+In the area of modern Bohemia, the Marcomanni and other Suebic groups were led by their king, Marobodus, after they had suffered defeat to Roman forces in Germany. He took advantage of the natural defenses provided by its mountains and forests. They were able to maintain a strong alliance with neighbouring tribes, including (at different times) the Lugii, Quadi, Hermunduri, Semnones, and Buri, which was sometimes partly controlled by the Roman Empire and sometimes in conflict with it; for example, in the second century, they fought Marcus Aurelius.
+
+In late classical times and the early Middle Ages, two new Suebic groupings appeared to the west of Bohemia in southern Germany, the Alemanni (in the Helvetian desert), and the Bavarians (Baiuvarii). Many Suebic tribes from the Bohemian region took part in such movements westwards, even settling as far away as Spain and Portugal. With them were also tribes who had pushed from the east, such as the Vandals, and Alans.
+
+Other groups pushed southwards towards Pannonia. The last known mention of the Kingdom of the Marcomanni, concerning a queen named Fritigil, is from the fourth century, and she was thought to have lived in or near Pannonia. The Suebian Langobardi, who moved over many generations from the Baltic Sea, via the Elbe and Pannonia to Italy, recorded in a tribal history a time spent in "Bainaib".
+
+After the Migration Period, Bohemia was partially repopulated around the sixth century, and eventually Slavic tribes arrived from the east, and their language began to replace the older Germanic, Celtic, and Sarmatian ones. These are precursors of today's Czechs, but the exact amount of Slavic immigration is a subject of debate. The Slavic influx was divided into two or three waves. The first wave came from the southeast and east, when the Germanic Lombards left Bohemia (circa 568 AD). Soon after, from the 630s to 660s, the territory was taken by Samo's tribal confederation. His death marked the end of the old "Slavonic" confederation, the second attempt to establish such a Slavonic union after Carantania in Carinthia.
+
+Other sources (Descriptio civitatum et regionum ad septentrionalem plagam Danubii, Bavaria, 800–850) divide the population of Bohemia into the Merehani, Marharaii, Beheimare (Bohemani), and Fraganeo. (The suffix -ani or -ni means "people of-"). Christianity first appeared in the early 9th century, but became dominant only much later, in the 10th or 11th century.
+
+The 9th century was crucial for the future of Bohemia. The manorial system sharply declined, as it did in Bavaria. The influence of the central Fraganeo-Czechs grew, as a result of the important cultic centre in their territory. They were Slavic-speaking, thus contributed to the transformation of diverse neighbouring populations into a new nation named and led by them with a united "slavic" ethnic consciousness.
+
+Přemysl dynasty
+
+Bohemia was made a part of the early Slavic state of Great Moravia, under the rule of Svatopluk I (r. 870–894). After Svatopluk's death Great Moravia was weakened by years of internal conflict and constant warfare, ultimately collapsing and fragmenting because of the continual incursions of the invading nomadic Magyars. Bohemia's initial incorporation into the Moravian Empire resulted in the extensive Christianization of the population. A native monarchy arose to the throne, and Bohemia came under the rule of the Přemyslid dynasty, which would rule the Czech lands for the next several hundred years.
+
+The Přemyslids secured their frontiers after the collapse of the Moravian state by entering into a state of semivassalage to the Frankish rulers. The alliance was facilitated by Bohemia's conversion to Christianity, in the 9th century. Continuing close relations were developed with the East Frankish Kingdom, which devolved from the Carolingian Empire, into East Francia, eventually becoming the Holy Roman Empire.
+
+After a decisive victory of the Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia over invading Magyars in the 955 Battle of Lechfeld, Boleslaus I of Bohemia was granted the Moravia by German emperor Otto the Great. Bohemia would remain a largely autonomous state under the Holy Roman Empire for several decades. The jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire was definitively reasserted when Jaromír of Bohemia was granted fief of the Kingdom of Bohemia by Emperor King Henry II of the Holy Roman Empire, with the promise that he hold it as a vassal once he reoccupied Prague with a German army in 1004, ending the rule of Bolesław I of Poland.
+
+The first to use the title of "King of Bohemia" were the Přemyslid dukes Vratislav II (1085) and Vladislaus II (1158), but their heirs would return to the title of duke. The title of king became hereditary under Ottokar I (1198). His grandson Ottokar II (king from 1253 to 1278) conquered a short-lived empire that contained modern Austria and Slovenia. The mid-13th century had the beginning of substantial German immigration, as the court sought to replace losses from the brief Mongol invasion of Europe in 1241. Germans settled primarily along the northern, western, and southern borders of Bohemia, although many lived in towns throughout the kingdom.
+
+Luxembourg dynasty
+
+The House of Luxembourg accepted the invitation to the Bohemian throne with the marriage to the Premyslid heiress, Elizabeth and the crowning subsequent of John I of Bohemia (in the Czech Republic known as Jan Lucemburský) in 1310. His son, Charles IV, became King of Bohemia in 1346. He founded Charles University in Prague, Central Europe's first university, two years later.
+
+His reign brought Bohemia to its peak both politically and in total area, resulting in his being the first king of Bohemia to also be elected as Holy Roman Emperor. Under his rule, the Bohemian crown controlled such diverse lands as Moravia, Silesia, Upper Lusatia and Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg, an area around Nuremberg called New Bohemia, Luxembourg, and several small towns scattered around Germany.
+
+From the 13th century on, settlements of Germans developed throughout Bohemia, making Bohemia a bilingual country. The German settlers particularly brought mining technology to the mountainous regions of the Sudetes. In the mining town of Sankt Joachimsthal (now Jáchymov), famous coins called Joachimsthalers were coined, which gave their name to the thaler and the dollar.
+
+Meanwhile, Prague German intermediated between Upper German and East Central German, influencing the foundations of modern standard German. At the same time and place, the teachings of Jan Hus, the rector of Charles University and a prominent reformer and religious thinker, influenced the rise of modern Czech.
+
+Hussite Bohemia
+
+During the ecumenical Council of Constance in 1415, Jan Hus was sentenced to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. The verdict was passed despite the fact that Hus was granted formal protection by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg prior to the journey. Hus was invited to attend the council to defend himself and the Czech positions in the religious court, but with the emperor's approval, he was executed on 6 July 1415. The execution of Hus, as well as five consecutive papal crusades against followers of Hus, forced the Bohemians to defend themselves in the Hussite Wars.
+
+The uprising against imperial forces was led by a former mercenary, Jan Žižka of Trocnov. As the leader of the Hussite armies, he used innovative tactics and weapons, such as howitzers, pistols, and fortified wagons, which were revolutionary for the time, and established Žižka as a great general who never lost a battle.
+
+After Žižka's death, Prokop the Great took over the command for the army, and under his lead the Hussites were victorious for another ten years, to the sheer terror of Europe. The Hussite cause gradually splintered into two main factions, the moderate Utraquists and the more fanatic Taborites. The Utraquists began to lay the groundwork for an agreement with the Catholic Church and found the more radical views of the Taborites distasteful. Additionally, with general war-weariness and yearning for order, the Utraquists were able to eventually defeat the Taborites in the Battle of Lipany in 1434. Sigismund said after the battle that "only the Bohemians could defeat the Bohemians."
+
+Despite an apparent victory for the Catholics, the Bohemian Utraquists were still strong enough to negotiate freedom of religion in 1436. That happened in the so-called Compacts of Basel, declaring peace and freedom between Catholics and Utraquists. It lasted for only a short period of time, as Pope Pius II declared the compacts to be invalid in 1462.
+
+In 1458, George of Poděbrady was elected to ascend to the Bohemian throne. He is remembered for his attempt to set up a pan-European "Christian League", which would form all the states of Europe into a community based on religion. In the process of negotiating, he appointed Leo of Rozmital to tour the European courts and to conduct the talks. However, the negotiations were not completed because George's position was substantially damaged over time by his deteriorating relationship with the Pope.
+
+Habsburg Monarchy
+
+After the death of King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria became the new king of Bohemia, and the country became a constituent state of the Habsburg monarchy.
+
+Bohemia enjoyed religious freedom between 1436 and 1620, and became one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world during that period. In 1609, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who made Prague again the capital of the empire at the time, himself a Roman Catholic, was moved by the Bohemian nobility to publish Maiestas Rudolphina, which confirmed the older Confessio Bohemica of 1575.
+
+After Emperor Matthias II and then King of Bohemia Ferdinand II (later Holy Roman Emperor) began oppressing the rights of Protestants in Bohemia, the resulting Bohemian Revolt led to outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1618. Elector Frederick V of the Electorate of the Palatinate, a Calvinist Protestant, was elected by the Bohemian nobility to replace Ferdinand on the Bohemian throne, and was known as the Winter King. Frederick's wife, the popular Elizabeth Stuart and subsequently, Elizabeth of Bohemia, known as the Winter Queen or Queen of Hearts, was the daughter of King James I of England and VI of Scotland.
+
+After Frederick's defeat in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, 27 Bohemian estates leaders together with Jan Jesenius, rector of the Charles University of Prague, were executed on the Prague's Old Town Square on 21 June 1621, and the rest were exiled from the country; their lands were then given to Catholic loyalists (mostly of Bavarian and Saxon origin). That ended the pro-reformation movement in Bohemia and also ended the role of Prague as ruling city of the Holy Roman Empire.
+
+In the so-called "renewed constitution" of 1627, German was established as a second official language in the Czech lands. Czech formally remained the first language in the kingdom, but both German and Latin were widely spoken among the ruling classes, although German became increasingly dominant, and Czech was spoken in much of the countryside.
+
+The formal independence of Bohemia was further jeopardized when the Bohemian Diet approved administrative reform in 1749. It included the indivisibility of the Habsburg Empire and the centralization of rule, which essentially meant the merging of the Royal Bohemian Chancellery with the Austrian Chancellery.
+
+At the end of the 18th century, the Czech National Revival movement, in cooperation with part of the Bohemian aristocracy, started a campaign for restoration of the kingdom's historic rights, whereby Czech was to regain its historical role and replace German as the language of administration. The enlightened absolutism of Joseph II and Leopold II, who introduced minor language concessions, showed promise for the Czech movement, but many of these reforms were later rescinded. During the Revolution of 1848, many Czech nationalists called for autonomy for Bohemia from Habsburg Austria, but the revolutionaries were defeated. At the same time, German-speaking towns elected representatives for the first German Parliament at Frankfurt. Towns between Karlsbad and Reichenberg chose leftist representatives, while Eger, Rumburg, and Troppau elected conservative representatives. The old Bohemian Diet, one of the last remnants of the independence, was dissolved, although Czech experienced a rebirth as romantic nationalism developed among the Czechs.
+
+In 1861, a new elected Bohemian Diet was established. The renewal of the old Bohemian Crown (Kingdom of Bohemia, Margraviate of Moravia, and Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia) became the official political program of both Czech liberal politicians and the majority of Bohemian aristocracy ("state rights program"), while parties representing the German minority and small part of the aristocracy proclaimed their loyalty to the centralist Constitution (so-called "Verfassungstreue").
+
+After the defeat of Austria in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Hungarian politicians achieved the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, ostensibly creating equality between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the empire. An attempt by the Czechs to create a tripartite monarchy (Austria-Hungary-Bohemia) failed in 1871. The "state-rights program" remained the official platform of all Czech political parties (except for social democrats) until 1918.
+
+Under the state-rights program, appealing to the stability of Bohemia's borders over many centuries, the Czech emancipation movement claimed the right to the whole of the Bohemian lands over the Germans' right to the lands, amounting to a third of Bohemia, where they formed the majority.
+
+20th century
+
+After World War I, the German Bohemians demanded that the regions with German-speaking majority be included in a German state. Czech political leaders however claimed the entire Bohemian lands, including majority German-speaking areas, for Czechoslovakia. By the end of October, bilingual towns had been occupied by Czech forces. By end of November, many purely German-speaking towns had been occupied. German or Austrian troops, bound by the cease-fire agreement, did not support Bohemian German self-defense, while the Czechoslovak army, having status of an Entete army, could freely operate. The absorption of the German-speaking areas in Czechoslovakia was hence a fait accompli. 
+
+As a result, the totality of Bohemia (as the largest and most populous land) became the core of the newly formed country of Czechoslovakia, which combined Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia, Upper Hungary (present-day Slovakia) and Carpathian Ruthenia into one state. Under its first president, Tomáš Masaryk, Czechoslovakia became a liberal democratic republic, but serious issues emerged regarding the Czech majority's relationship with the native German and Hungarian minorities. 
+
+Following the Munich Agreement in 1938, the border regions of Bohemia historically inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans (the Sudetenland) were annexed to Nazi Germany. The remnants of Bohemia and Moravia were then annexed by Germany in 1939, while the Slovak lands became the separate Slovak Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany. From 1939 to 1945, Bohemia (without the Sudetenland), together with Moravia, formed the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren).
+
+Any open opposition to German occupation was brutally suppressed by the Nazi authorities, and many Czech patriots were executed as a result. In 1942, Nazi forces murdered the population of a whole village, Lidice. After World War II ended in 1945, after initial plans to cede lands to Germany or to create German-speaking cantons had been abandoned, the vast majority of the Bohemian Germans were expelled by force by the order of the re-established Czechoslovak central government, based on the Potsdam Agreement that acquiesced to large-scale ethnic cleansing. The Bohemian Germans' property was confiscated by the Czech authorities, and according to contemporary estimates, amounted to a third of the Czechoslovak national income. Germans who were valued for their skills were allowed to stay to pass on their knowledge to the Czech migrants. The expulsion severely depopulated the area and from then on, locales were referred to in only their Czech equivalents regardless of their previous demographic makeup. The resettlement of the formerly German-settled areas allowed many poorer people to acquire property, thus "equalizing" Czechoslovak society.
+
+The Communist Party won the most votes in free elections, but not a simple majority. Klement Gottwald, the communist leader, became prime minister of a coalition government.
+
+In February 1948, the non-communist members of the government resigned in protest against arbitrary measures by the communists and their Soviet protectors in many of the state's institutions. Gottwald and the communists responded with a coup d'état and installed a pro-Soviet authoritarian state. In 1949, Bohemia ceased to be an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia, as the country was divided into administrative regions that did not follow the historical borders.
+
+In 1989, Agnes of Bohemia became the first saint from a Central European country to be canonized by Pope John Paul II before the "Velvet Revolution" later that year.
+
+After the Velvet Divorce in 1993, the territory of Bohemia remained in the Czech Republic. The new Constitution of the Czech Republic provided for higher administrative units to be established, providing for the possibility of Bohemia as an administrative unit, but did not specify the form they would take. A constitutional act in 1997 rejected the restoration of self-governing historical Czech lands, and decided for the regional system that has been in use since 2000. Petr Pithart, former Czech prime minister and president of the Senate at the time, remained one of the main advocates of the land system, claiming that the primary reason for its refusal was the fear of possible Moravian separatism.
+
+Bohemia thus remains a historical region, and its administration is divided between Prague and the Central Bohemian, Plzeň, Karlovy Vary, Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, and Hradec Králové regions, as well as most of the Pardubice and South Bohemian region, and parts of the Vysočina and South Moravian regions. In addition to their use in the names of the regions, the historical land names remain in use in names of municipalities, cadastral areas, railway stations or geographical names. The distinction and border between the Czech lands is also preserved in local dialects.
+
+Kladsko
+
+The area around Kłodzko (; ; ) in south-western Poland was culturally and traditionally a part of Bohemia, and was settled by German speakers like neighboring Sudetenland. Kłodzko Land has now been a part of Lower Silesia since its conquest by the Kingdom of Prussia in 1763. Referred to as "Little Prague" (), the Kłodzko Valley region on the Nysa Kłodzka River was the focus of several attempts to reincorporate the area into Czechoslovakia, one of several Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts.
+
+The last attempt occurred in May 1945, when Czechoslovakia tried to annex the area, whose German-speaking majority was being expelled by Polish authorities. The Czechs argued that because of the small Czech minority present in the western part of the Kłodzko Valley, which was called the region's "Czech Corner" by the German majority, the area should go over to Czechoslovakia instead of being assigned to Poland, as no relevant Polish minority lived in the area. Pressure brought on by the Soviet Union led to a ceasing of military operations, with the Czech minority being expelled to Germany and Czechoslovakia. According to canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, the area remained part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Prague until 1972.
+
+Capitalizing on interest regarding the Kladsko area in the Czech national psyche, a special tourist area in the Náchod District has been designated as the Kladsko Borderland Tourist Area (tourism district; ). The area, entirely within the Czech Republic, was formerly known as the Jirásek's Region (), Adršpach rocks ().
+
+Historical administrative divisions
+
+Kraje of Bohemia during the Kingdom of Bohemia:
+ Bechyně ()
+ Boleslav ()
+ Čáslav ()
+ Chrudim
+ Hradec Králové ()
+ Kladsko ()
+ Kouřim at Prague ()
+ Litoměřice ()
+ Loket ()
+ Vltava ()
+ Plzeň ()
+ Podbrdsko at Beroun ()
+ Prácheň at Písek
+ Rakovník ()
+ Slaný ()
+ Žatec ()
+
+See also
+ Bohemianism
+ Lands of the Bohemian Crown
+ Flag of Bohemia
+ Province of German Bohemia
+ History of the Czech lands
+ Kingdom Come: Deliverance
+ Lech, Czech, and Rus'
+ List of Bohemian monarchs
+ Bohemian Rhapsody
+
+References
+
+Further reading
+ Hugh, Agnew (2004). The Czechs and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. Hoover Press, Stanford. .
+ Knox, Brian (1962). Bohemia and Moravia: An Architectural Companion. Faber & Faber.
+ Panek, Jaroslav; Tuma, Oldrich (2nd ed., 2019). A History of the Czech Lands. Karolinum Press. .
+ Sayer, Derek (1998). The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History. Princeton University Press. .
+
+External links
+
+ Province of Bohemia official website of the Czech Catholic Church
+ "Bohemia", a BBC Radio 4 discussion with Norman Davies, Karin Friedrich and Robert Pynsent (In Our Time, 11 April 2002)
+ Travel Destinations and Sights in Bohemia at Amazing Czechia
+
+ 
+Geography of Europe
+Geography of the Czech Republic
+Historical regions in the Czech Republic
+BBC Radio 1 is  a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, hip hop and indie, while its sister station 1Xtra plays black contemporary music, including hip hop and R&B. Radio 1 also runs two online streams, Radio 1 Dance, dedicated to dance music, and Radio 1 Relax, dedicated to chill-out music; both are available to listen only on BBC Sounds.
+
+Radio 1 broadcasts throughout the UK on FM between  and , digital radio, digital TV and BBC Sounds. It was launched in 1967 to meet the demand for music generated by pirate radio stations, when the average age of the UK population was 27. The BBC claims that it targets the 15–29 age group, and the average age of its UK audience since 2009 is 30. BBC Radio 1 started 24-hour broadcasting on 1 May 1991.
+
+According to RAJAR, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 7.7 million with a listening share of 4.8% as of September 2023.
+
+History
+
+First broadcast
+Radio 1 was established in 1967 (along with the more middle-of-the-road BBC Radio 2) as a successor to the BBC Light Programme, which had broadcast popular music and other entertainment since 1945. Radio 1 was conceived as a direct response to the popularity of offshore pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio London, which had been outlawed by Act of Parliament. The new service was initially promoted in the summer of 1967 by trails (voiced by Kenny Everett) which referred to it as "Radio 247", the station's temporary working title.
+
+Radio 1 was launched at 7:00am on Saturday 30 September 1967.
+
+Broadcasts were on  AM (247 metres), using a network of transmitters which had carried the Light Programme. Most were of comparatively low power, at less than 50 kilowatts, leading to patchy coverage of the country.
+
+The first disc jockey to broadcast on the new station was Tony Blackburn, who had previously been on Radio Caroline and Radio London, and presented what became known as the Radio 1 Breakfast Show. The first words on Radio 1 – after a countdown by the Controller of Radios 1 and 2, Robin Scott, and a jingle, recorded at PAMS in Dallas, Texas, beginning "The voice of Radio 1" – were:
+
+This was the first use of US-style jingles on BBC radio, but the style was familiar to listeners who were acquainted with Blackburn and other DJs from their days on pirate radio. The reason jingles from PAMS were used was that the Musicians' Union would not agree to a single fee for the singers and musicians if the jingles were made "in-house" by the BBC; they wanted repeat fees each time one was played.
+
+The first music to be heard on the station was an extract from "Beefeaters" by Johnny Dankworth. "Theme One", specially composed for the launch by George Martin was played for the first time before Radio 1 officially launched at 7 am. The first complete record played on Radio 1 was "Flowers in the Rain" by The Move, the number 2 record in that week's Top 20 (the number 1 record, The Last Waltz by Engelbert Humperdink, would have been inappropriate for the station's sound). The second single was "Massachusetts" by the Bee Gees. The breakfast show remains the most prized slot in the Radio 1 schedule, with every change of breakfast show presenter generating considerable media interest.
+
+The initial rota of staff included John Peel, Pete Myers, and a gaggle of others, some transferred from pirate stations, such as Keith Skues, Ed Stewart, Mike Raven, David Ryder, Jim Fisher, Jimmy Young, Dave Cash, Kenny Everett, Simon Dee, Terry Wogan, Duncan Johnson, Doug Crawford, Tommy Vance, Chris Denning, and Emperor Rosko. Many of the most popular pirate radio voices, such as Simon Dee, had only a one-hour slot per week ("Midday Spin.")
+
+1970s
+
+Initially, the station was unpopular with some of its target audience who, it is claimed, disliked the fact that much of its airtime was shared with Radio 2 and that it was less unequivocally aimed at a young audience than the offshore stations, with some DJs such as Jimmy Young being in their 40s. The very fact that it was part of an "establishment" institution such as the BBC was a turn-off for some, and needle time restrictions prevented it from playing as many records as offshore stations had. It also had limited finances and often, as in January 1975, suffered disproportionately when the BBC had to make financial cutbacks, strengthening an impression that it was regarded as a lower priority by senior BBC executives.
+
+Despite this, it gained massive audiences, becoming the most listened-to station in the world, with audiences of over ten million claimed for some of its shows (up to twenty million for some of the combined Radio 1 and Radio 2 shows). In the early-to-mid-1970s Radio 1 presenters were rarely out of the British tabloids, thanks to the Publicity Department's high-profile work. The touring summer live broadcasts called the Radio 1 Roadshow – usually as part of the BBC 'Radio Weeks' promotions that took Radio 1, 2 and 4 shows on the road – drew some of the largest crowds of the decade. The station undoubtedly played a role in maintaining the high sales of 45 rpm single records, although it benefited from a lack of competition, apart from Radio Luxembourg, and from Manx Radio in the Isle of Man. (Independent Local Radio did not begin until October 1973, took many years to cover virtually all of the UK and was initially a mixture of music and talk). Alan Freeman's "Saturday Rock Show" was voted "Best Radio Show" five years running by readers of a national music publication, and was then axed by controller Derek Chinnery.
+
+News coverage on the station was boosted in 1973 when Newsbeat bulletins aired for the first time, and Richard Skinner joined the station as one of the new programme's presenters.
+
+On air, 1978 was the busiest year of the decade. David Jensen replaced Dave Lee Travis as host of the weekday drivetime programme so that DLT could replace Noel Edmonds as presenter of the Radio 1 Breakfast show. Later in the year the Sunday teatime chart show was extended from a Top 20 countdown to a Top 40 countdown, and Tommy Vance, one of the station's original presenters, rejoined the station to present a new programme, The Friday Rock Show. and on 23 November Radio 1 moved from 247m (1214 kHz) to 275 & 285m (1053 & 1089 kHz) medium wave as part of a plan to improve national AM reception, and to conform with the Geneva Frequency Plan of 1975.
+
+Annie Nightingale, whose first Radio 1 programme aired on 5 October 1969, was Britain's first national female DJ (the earliest record presenter is thought to be Jean Metcalfe of Family Favourites, but given that Metcalfe only presented the programme she is not considered a "true" DJ) and is now the longest-serving presenter, having constantly evolved her musical tastes with the times.
+
+In 1978, Al Matthews became the first black disc jockey to join Radio 1. His Saturday night show Discovatin was broadcast for over two years. During the summer months a Wednesday show was also broadcast featuring live acts.
+
+1980s
+At the start of 1981, Mike Read took over The Radio 1 Breakfast Show from Dave Lee Travis. Towards the end of the year, Steve Wright started the long-running Steve Wright in the Afternoon show. In 1982, the new Radio 1's Weekend Breakfast Show started, initially with Tony Blackburn supported by Maggie Philbin and Keith Chegwin. Adrian John and Pat Sharp also joined for the early weekend shows. Gary Davies and Janice Long also joined, hosting Saturday night late and evening shows respectively.
+
+In 1984, Robbie Vincent joined to host a Sunday evening soul show. Mike Smith left for a while to present BBC1's Breakfast Time; Gary Davies then took over the weekday lunchtime slot. Bruno Brookes joined and replaced Peter Powell as presenter of the teatime show, with Powell replacing Blackburn on a new weekend breakfast show.
+
+In 1985, Radio 1 relocated from its studios in Broadcasting House to Egton House. In March 1985, Ranking Miss P became the first black female DJ on the station, hosting a reggae programme. In July, Andy Kershaw also joined the station.
+
+Simon Mayo joined the station in 1986, while Smith re-joined to replace Read on the breakfast show.
+
+In response to the growth in dance and rap music, Jeff Young joined in October 1987 with the Big Beat show. At the end of the year Nicky Campbell, Mark Goodier and Liz Kershaw all joined, and Janice Long left.
+
+Mayo replaced Smith on the breakfast show in May 1988. In September, Goodier and Kershaw took over weekend breakfasts with Powell departing. Campbell took over weekday evenings as part of a move into night-time broadcasting as 1 October 1988 saw Radio 1 extend broadcast hours until 02:00; previously the station had closed for the night at midnight.
+
+From September 1988, Radio 1 began its FM switch-on, with further major transmitter switch-ons in 1989 and 1990. It was not until the mid-1990s that all existing BBC radio transmitters had Radio 1 added. Previously, Radio 1 had "borrowed" Radio 2's VHF/FM frequencies for around 25 hours each week.
+
+1990s
+On 1 May 1991, Radio 1 began 24-hour broadcasting, although only on FM, as the station's MW transmitters were switched off between midnight and 06:00.
+
+In 1992, Radio 1, for the first and only time, covered a general election. Their coverage was presented by Nicky Campbell.
+
+In his last few months as controller, Johnny Beerling commissioned a handful of new shows that in some ways set the tone for what was to come under Matthew Bannister. One of these "Loud'n'proud" was the UK's first national radio series aimed at a gay audience, which was produced in Manchester and aired from August 1993. Far from being a "parting quirk", the show was a surprise hit and led to the network's first coverage of the large outdoor Gay Pride event in 1994.
+
+The Man Ezeke became Radio 1's first black regular daytime presenter when he began hosting on Sunday lunchtimes in January 1993.
+
+Bannister took the reins fully in October 1993. His aim was to rid the station of its "Smashie and Nicey" image in order to appeal to the under-25s. Although originally launched as a youth station, by the early 1990s, its loyal listeners and DJs had aged with the station over its 25-year history. Many long-standing DJs, such as Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis, Alan Freeman, Bob Harris, Paul Gambaccini, Gary Davies, and later Steve Wright, Bruno Brookes and Johnnie Walker left the station or were dismissed, and in January 1995, older music (typically anything recorded before 1990) was dropped from the daytime playlist.
+
+Many listeners rebelled as the first new DJs to be introduced represented a crossover from other parts of the BBC (notably Bannister and Trevor Dann's former colleagues at the BBC's London station, GLR) with Emma Freud and Danny Baker. Another problem was that, at the time, Radio 2 was sticking resolutely to a format which appealed mainly to those who had been listening since the days of the Light Programme, and commercial radio, which was targeting the "Radio 1 and a half" audience, consequently enjoyed a massive increase in its audience share at Radio 1's expense.
+
+After the departure of Steve Wright, who had been unsuccessfully moved from his long-running afternoon show to the breakfast show in January 1994, Bannister hired Chris Evans to present the breakfast show in April 1995. Evans was a popular presenter but was dismissed in 1997 after he demanded to present the breakfast show for only four days per week. Evans was replaced from 17 February 1997 by Mark and Lard – Mark Radcliffe and his sidekick Marc Riley – who found the slick, mass-audience style required for a breakfast show did not come naturally to them. They were replaced by Zoe Ball and Kevin Greening eight months later in October 1997; Greening soon moved on, leaving Ball as sole presenter. The reinvention of the station happened at a fortuitous time, with the rise of Britpop in the mid-1990s – bands like Oasis, Blur and Pulp were popular and credible at the time, and the station's popularity rose with them. Documentaries like John Peel's Lost in Music, which looked at the influence that the use of drugs have had over popular musicians, received critical acclaim but were slated inside Broadcasting House.
+
+At just before 09:00 on 1 July 1994, Radio 1 broadcast on mediumwave for the final time.
+
+In March 1995, Radio 1 hosted an "Interactive Radio Night" with Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq broadcasting from Cyberia, an internet café and featuring live performances by Orbital via ISDN.
+
+Later in the 1990s the Britpop boom declined, and manufactured chart pop (boy bands and acts aimed at sub-teenagers) came to dominate the charts. New-genre music occupied the evenings (indie on weekdays and dance at weekends), with a mix of specialist shows and playlist fillers through late nights. The rise of rave culture through the late 1980s and early 1990s gave the station the opportunity to move into a controversial and youth-orientated movement by bringing in club DJ Pete Tong amongst others. There had been a dance music programme on Radio 1 since 1987 and Pete Tong was the second DJ to present an all dance music show. This quickly gave birth to the Essential Mix where underground DJs mix electronic and club based music in a two-hour slot. Dance and urban music has been a permanent feature on Radio 1 since with club DJs such as Judge Jules, Danny Rampling, Trevor Nelson, and the Dreem Teem all moving from London's Kiss 100 to the station.
+
+2000s
+
+Listening numbers continued to decline but the station succeeded in targeting a younger, cross-gender age group. Eventually, this change in content was reflected by a rise in audience that is continuing to this day. Notably, the station has received praise for shows such as The Surgery, Bobby Friction and Nihal's show, The Evening Session and its successor Zane Lowe's show. Its website has also been well received.
+
+However, the breakfast show and the UK Top 40 continued to struggle. In 2000, Zoe Ball was replaced in the mornings by close friend and fellow ladette Sara Cox, but, despite heavy promotion, listening figures for the breakfast show continued to fall. In 2004 Cox was replaced by Chris Moyles. The newly rebranded breakfast show was known as The Chris Moyles Show and it increased its audience, ahead of the Today programme on Radio 4 as the second most popular breakfast show (after The Chris Evans Breakfast Show hosted by Chris Evans). Moyles continued to use inappropriate ways to try to tempt listeners from the Wake Up to Wogan show. In 2006, for example, creating a SAY NO TO WOGAN campaign live on-air. This angered the BBC hierarchy, though the row simmered down when it was clear that the 'campaign' had totally failed to alter the listening trends of the time – Wogan still increased figures at a faster rate than Moyles.
+The chart show's ratings fell after the departure of long-time host Mark Goodier, amid falling single sales in the UK. Ratings for the show fell in 2002 whilst Goodier was still presenting the show, meaning that commercial radio's Network Chart overtook it in the ratings for the first time. However, the BBC denied he was being sacked. Before July 2015, when the chart release day was changed to Friday, the BBC show competed with networked commercial radio's The Big Top 40 Show which was broadcast at the same time.
+
+Many DJs either ousted by Bannister or who left during his tenure (such as Johnnie Walker, Bob Harris and Steve Wright) have joined Radio 2 which has now overtaken Radio 1 as the UK's most popular radio station, using a style that Radio 1 had until the early 1990s.
+The success of Moyles' show has come alongside increased success for the station in general. In 2006, DJs Scott Mills and Zane Lowe won gold Sony Radio Awards, while the station itself came away with the best station award.
+
+A new evening schedule was introduced in September 2006, dividing the week by genre. Monday was mainly pop-funkrock-oriented, Tuesday was R&B and hip-hop, Thursdays and Fridays were primarily dance, with specialist R&B and reggae shows.
+
+Following the death of John Peel in October 2004, Annie Nightingale is now the longest-serving presenter, having worked there since 1970.
+
+2010s
+
+The licence-fee funding of Radio 1, alongside Radio 2, is often criticised by the commercial sector. In the first quarter of 2011 Radio 1 was part of an efficiency review conducted by John Myers. His role, according to Andrew Harrison, the chief executive of RadioCentre, was "to identify both areas of best practice and possible savings."
+
+The controller of Radio 1 and sister station 1Xtra changed to Ben Cooper on 28 October 2011, following the departure of Andy Parfitt. Ben Cooper answered to the Director of BBC Audio and Music, Tim Davie.
+
+On 7 December 2011, Ben Cooper's first major changes to the station were announced. Skream & Benga, Toddla T, Charlie Sloth and Friction replaced Judge Jules, Gilles Peterson, Kissy Sell Out and Fabio & Grooverider. A number of shows were shuffled to incorporate the new line-up. On 28 February 2012, further changes were announced. Greg James and Scott Mills swapped shows and Jameela Jamil, Gemma Cairney and Danny Howard joined the station. The new line-up of DJs for In New DJs We Trust was also announced with B.Traits, Mosca, Jordan Suckley and Julio Bashmore hosting shows on a four weekly rotation. This new schedule took effect on Monday, 2 April 2012.
+
+In September 2012, Nick Grimshaw replaced Chris Moyles as host of "Radio 1's Breakfast Show". Grimshaw previously hosted Mon-Thurs 10pm-Midnight, Weekend Breakfast and Sunday evenings alongside Annie Mac. Grimshaw was replaced by Phil Taggart and Alice Levine on the 10pm-Midnight show.
+
+In November 2012, another series of changes were announced. This included the departure of Reggie Yates and Vernon Kay. Jameela Jamil was announced as the new presenter of The Official Chart. Matt Edmondson moved to weekend mornings with Tom Deacon briefly replacing him on Wednesday nights. Dan Howell and Phil Lester, famous YouTubers and video bloggers, joined the station. The changes took effect in January 2013.
+
+Former presenter Sara Cox hosted her last show on Radio 1 in February 2014 before moving back to Radio 2. In March 2014, Gemma Cairney left the weekend breakfast show to host the weekday early breakfast slot, swapping shows with Dev.
+
+In September 2014, Radio 1 operated a series of changes to their output which saw many notable presenters leave the station – including Edith Bowman, Nihal and Rob da Bank. Huw Stephens gained a new show hosting 10pm1am MondayWednesday with Alice Levine presenting weekends 1pm4pm. Radio 1's Residency also expanded with Skream joining the rotational line-up on Thursday nights (10pm1am).
+
+From December 2014 to April 2016, Radio 1 included a weekly late night show presented by a well known Internet personality called The Internet Takeover. Shows have been presented by various YouTubers such as Jim Chapman and Hannah Witton.
+
+In January 2015, Clara Amfo replaced Jameela Jamil as host of The Official Chart on Sundays (4pm7pm) and in March, Zane Lowe left Radio 1 and was replaced by Annie Mac on the new music evening show.
+
+In May 2015, Fearne Cotton left the station after 10 years of broadcasting. Her weekday mid-morning show was taken over by Clara Amfo. Adele Roberts also joined the weekday schedule line-up, hosting the Early Breakfast show.
+
+In July 2015, the Official Chart moved to a Friday from 4pm to 5:45pm, hosted by Greg James. The move took place to take into account the changes to the release dates of music globally. Cel Spellman joined the station to host Sunday evenings.
+
+In September 2017, a new slot namely Radio 1's Greatest Hits was introduced for weekends 10am-1pm. The show started on 2 September 2017. On 30 September 2017, Radio 1 celebrated its 50th birthday. Commemorations included a three-day pop-up station, 'Radio 1 Vintage', celebrating the station's presenters and special on-air programmes on the day itself, including a special breakfast show co-presented by the station's launch DJ Tony Blackburn, which is also broadcast on BBC Radio 2.
+
+In October 2017, another major schedule change was announced. Friction left the station. The change features Charlie Sloth gained a new slot called 'The 8th' which aired Mon-Thu 9-11pm. Other changes include MistaJam took over Danny Howard on the Dance Anthems. Katie Thistleton joined Cel Spellman on Sunday evenings, namely 'Life Hacks' (4-6pm) which features content from the Radio 1 Surgery, and Most Played (6-7pm). Danny Howard would host a new show on Friday 11pm-1am. Huw Stephens's show pushed to 11pm-1am. Kan D Man and DJ Limelight joined the station to host a weekly Asian Beats show on Sundays between 1-3am, Rene LaVice joined the station with the Drum & Bass show on Tuesdays 1-3am. Phil Taggart presented the Hype Chart on Tuesdays 3-4am.
+
+In February 2018, the first major schedule change of the year happened on the weekend. This saw Maya Jama and Jordan North join BBC Radio 1 to present the Radio 1's Greatest Hits, which would be on Saturday and Sunday respectively. Alice Levine moved to the breakfast slot to join Dev. Matt Edmondson would replace Alice Levine's original slot in the afternoon and joined by a different guest co-presenter each week. The changes took into effect on 24 February 2018.
+
+In April 2018, another major schedule change was made due to the incorporation of weekend schedule on Fridays. This means that Nick Grimshaw, Clara Amfo and Greg James would host four days in a week. Scott Mills became the new host for The Official Chart and Dance Anthems, which replaces Greg James, and Maya Jama would present The Radio 1's Greatest Hits on 10am-1pm. Mollie King joined Matt Edmondson officially on the 1-4pm slot, namely 'Matt and Mollie'. The changes took into effect on 15 June 2018.
+
+In May 2018, it was announced that Nick Grimshaw would leave the Breakfast Show after six years, the second longest run hosting the show in history (only second to Chris Moyles). However, Grimshaw did not leave the station, but swapped slots with Greg James, who hosted the home time show from 4-7pm weekdays. This change took place as of 20 August 2018 for the Radio 1 Breakfast Show (which was then renamed to Radio 1 Breakfast). Grimshaw's show started on 3 September 2018.
+
+In June 2018, another series of schedule changes was announced. This sees the BBC Introducing Show with Huw Stephens on Sundays 11pm-1am. Jack Saunders joined the station and presented Radio 1 Indie Show from Monday-Thursday 11pm-1am. Other changes include the shows rearrangement of Sunday evenings. Phil Taggart's chillest show moved to 7-9pm, then followed by The Rock Show with Daniel P Carter at 9-11pm. The changes took into effect in September 2018.
+
+In October 2018, Charlie Sloth announced that he was leaving Radio 1 and 1Xtra after serving the station for nearly 10 years. He was hosting The 8th and The Rap Show at that point. His last show was expected to be on 3 November 2018. However, Charlie had been in the spotlight for storming the stage and delivering a sweary, Kanye West-esque rant at the Audio & Radio Industry Awards (ARIAS) on Thursday 18 October 2018, which points towards Edith Bowman. Charlie was nominated for best specialist music show at the ARIAS – a category he lost out on to Soundtracking with Edith Bowman and prompting him to appear on stage during her acceptance. He apologised on Twitter regarding this issue and Radio 1 had agreed with Charlie that he will not do the 10 remaining shows that were originally planned. This meant that his last show ended on 18 October 2018. From 20 October 2018 onwards, Seani B filled his The Rap Show slot on 9pm-11pm and Dev covered "The 8th" beginning 22 October 2018.
+
+In the same month, B.Traits announced that she was leaving BBC Radio 1 after six years of commitment. She said she feels as though she can no longer devote the necessary time needed to make the show the best it can be, and is moving on to focus on new projects and adventures. Her last show was on 26 October 2018. The Radio 1's Essentials Mix is then shifted earlier to 1am-3am, followed by Radio 1's Wind-Down from 3 am to 6 am. The changes took effect from 2 November 2018 onwards.
+
+At the end of October 2018, Dev's takeover on The 8th resulted in the swapping between Matt Edmondson and Mollie King's show with Dev and Alice Levine's show. This meant that Matt and Mollie became the new Weekend Breakfast hosts, and Dev and Alice became the afternoon show hosts. The changes came into effect on 16 November 2018.
+
+On 15 November 2018, Radio 1 announced that Tiffany Calver, who has previously hosted a dedicated hip-hop show on the new-music station KissFresh, would join the station and host the Rap Show. The change took effect from 5 January 2019.
+
+On 26 November 2018, Radio 1 announced that the new hosts for the evening slot previously hosted by Charlie Sloth would be Rickie Haywood-Williams, Melvin Odoom, and Charlie Hedges. The trio previously presented on Kiss's breakfast show. The change took effect in April 2019.
+
+In July 2019 it was announced that there would be two new shows on the weekend, the weekend early breakfast show and best new pop, both of which started on 6 September 2019.
+
+The weekend early morning breakfast show would be and is currently hosted by Arielle Free. It is broadcast between 04:00–06:00 on Friday and Saturday and Sunday between 05:00–07:00. 
+
+Best new pop would be and is currently hosted by Mollie King and is currently broadcast between 06:00–06:30 on a Friday Morning.
+
+This in turn changed the timing of the Weekend Breakfast Show hosted by Mollie King and Matt Edmondson, which is now broadcast at Friday 06:30–10:00 and between 07:00–10:00 on Saturday & Sunday.
+
+2020s
+
+Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were temporary changes.
+
+In March 2020, Radio 1 Breakfast began later at 7 am to 11 am. Scott Mills would also present his show from 1 pm-3 pm with Nick Grimshaw starting until 6 pm. BBC Radio 1 Dance Anthems now started from 3 pm with 2 hours Classic Anthems and it would end at 7 pm.
+
+In July 2020, Alice Levine and Cel Spellman announced their resignation from BBC Radio 1. In September, Vick Hope was announced to join Katie Thisleton, replacing Spellman.
+
+In September 2020, a new schedule was announced.
+
+This meant that The Radio 1 Breakfast Show was extended by 30 minutes until 10:30 am. Also, Scott Mills' show was shortened by 30 minutes from 4 to 3:30 pm. Toddla T was also announced to be leaving the show after 11 years. Annie Mac's evening show moved from 7 pm to 6 pm with Rickie, Melvin and Charlie from 8 pm. Jack Saunders would host a new show called Radio 1's Future Artists with Jack Saunders from Monday to Wednesday.
+
+Friday Schedule was also announced. Radio 1 Party Anthems moved from 6 pm to 3 pm and it would be hosted by Dev. Also, Annie Mac, Danny Howard, Pete Tong and Essential Mix shows moved 1 hour earlier. Dance Anthems on Saturday have been confirmed starting to its original time slot from 4 pm.
+
+On 26 September 2020, MistaJam left BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra after 15 years. It was announced that Charlie Hedges would take over Dance Anthems from 3 October 2020.
+
+BBC Radio 1 Dance launched on Friday 9 October. The station is broadcast exclusively on BBC Sounds.
+
+In November 2020 it was confirmed that Dev Griffin, Huw Stephens, and Phil Taggart would all be leaving the station at the end of the year. From January 2021, Radio 1 Breakfast was to return to five days per week while Arielle Free would host Early Breakfast (Mon-Thu 0500–0700) and three new presenters were to take turns hosting the early breakfast slot on Fridays. Adele Roberts left Early Breakfast after five years, moving to Weekend Breakfast (Sat-Sun 0700–1030). Matt Edmondson and Mollie King returned to Weekend Afternoons (Fri-Sun 1300–1600). On Sunday evenings, Sian Eleri replaced Phil Taggart as host of the Chillest Show and Gemma Bradley replaced Huw Stephens on BBC Introducing.
+
+On 9 April 2021, BBC Radio 1 and other BBC radio stations were cut at 12:10pm for the national anthem following the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the stations then carried the BBC Radio News special programme until 4pm. Radio 1 then played music without vocals and on 10 and 11 April 2021 played downtempo and chilled music. The Official Chart was not aired, for the second time since Princess Diana's death.
+
+On 20 April 2021, Annie Mac tweeted that she would leave BBC Radio 1 after 17 years. It was also announced that Diplo would be leaving after 10 years. On Weeknights, Clara Amfo replaced Annie on Radio 1's Future Sounds (Mon-Thu 1800–2000). On Fridays, Danny Howard replaced Annie at 6 pm – with Sarah Story, a former Capital FM presenter, hosting from 8 pm. Rickie, Melvin and Charlie were announced as new hosts of the Live Lounge slot, replacing Clara Amfo. Jack Saunders also moved to an earlier time slot (Mon-Thu 2000–2200), replacing Rickie, Melvin and Charlie. Sian Eleri gained 3 new shows per week, hosting Radio 1's Power Down Playlist from 10pm-11pm Mon-Wed. BBC Introducing Dance with Jaguar airs at this time slot on a Thursday evening.
+
+On 21 April 2021, Radio 1 Relax launched on BBC Sounds, playing relaxing music and sounds such as wind and rain.
+
+After 14 years on BBC Radio 1, Nick Grimshaw announced he would be leaving the station, with Vick Hope and Jordan North taking over the time-slot. Grimshaw broadcast his final show on 12 August 2021. Vick and Jordan's new show first aired on 6 September 2021. Vick continued to co-host Life Hacks alongside Katie Thistleton, while Dean McCullough joined BBC Radio 1 to host Friday-Sunday 1030–1300.
+
+In September 2022, DJ Target and René LaVice left the station, making loads of changes, first of all, 'Radio 1's Soundsystem with Jeremiah Asimiah has moved from 2300 on Saturday to 0100 on Sundays to Saturdays from 1900-2100, replacing DJ Target. Radio 1's Drum & Bass Show has been moved to Saturdays 2300 to Sundays 0100, now being presented by Charlie Tee. Radio 1's Indie Show with Jack Saunders has been moved from Thursdays 2000-2200 to Sundays 2100-2300, Future Artists is still being broadcast Mon-Wed 2000-2200. On Mondays, Radio 1's Rock Show with Daniel P Carter will move from Sundays 2100-2300 to Mondays 2300 to Tuesdays 0100, followed by a new 'Future Rock' with Alyx Hylcombe on Tuesdays 0100-0200, and ending off with Future Alternative with Nels Hylton 0200-0300, moving from Thursdays 0300-0400. And a new programme is shown called Future Pop with Mollie King on Thursdays 2000-2200, Mollie will still host Weekends 1300-1600 with co-host Matt Edmondson. On 25 August 2022, Scott Mills and co-host Chris Stark aired their final show. Their radio time slots have been given to Dean McCullough and Vicky Hawksworth while the role of hosting the Official Chart has been given to Jack Saunders.
+
+On 8 September 2022, Radio 1 and the other radio stations were cut at 6:32pm to report the Death of Queen Elizabeth II and carried a BBC Radio News special. Radio 1 resumed broadcasts at 7am on 9 September 2022, playing downtempo music throughout the day and over the weekend. The Official Chart did not air on the Friday, which was the third time in two years since the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. Radio 1 returned to normal programming on 11 September 2022.
+
+Broadcast
+
+Studios
+
+From inception for over 20 years, Radio 1 broadcast from an adjacent pair of continuity suites (originally Con A and Con B) in the main control room of Broadcasting House. These cons were configured to allow DJs to operate the equipment themselves and play their own records and jingle cartridges (called self-op). This was a departure from traditional BBC practice, where a studio manager would play in discs from the studio control cubicle. Due to needle time restrictions, much of the music was played from tapes of BBC session recordings. The DJs were assisted by one or more technical operators (TOs) who would set up tapes and control sound levels during broadcasts.
+
+In 1985, Radio 1 moved across the road from Broadcasting House to Egton House. The station moved to Yalding House in 1996, and Egton House was demolished in 2003 to make way for an extension to Broadcasting House. This extension would eventually be renamed the Egton Wing, and then the Peel Wing.
+
+Until recently, the studios were located in the basement of Yalding House (near to BBC Broadcasting House) on Great Portland Street in central London. They used to broadcast from two main studios in the basement; Y2 and Y3 (there is also a smaller studio, YP1, used mainly for production). These two main studios (Y2 and Y3) are separated by the "Live Lounge", although it is mainly used as an office; live sets are rarely recorded from it, for Maida Vale Studios is used instead for larger set-ups. The studios are linked by webcams and windows through the "Live Lounge", allowing DJs to see each other when changing between shows. Y2 is the studio from where The Chris Moyles Show was broadcast and is also the studio rigged with static cameras for when the station broadcasts on the "Live Cam". The station moved there in 1996 from Egton House.
+
+In December 2012, Radio 1 moved from Yalding House to new studios on the 8th floor of the new BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, just a few metres away from the "Peel Wing", formerly the "Egton Wing", which occupies the land on which Egton House previously stood: it was renamed the "Peel Wing" in 2012 in honour of the long-serving BBC Radio 1 presenter, John Peel, who broadcast on the station from its launch in 1967 until his death in 2004.
+
+Programmes have also regularly been broadcast from other regions, notably The Mark and Lard Show, broadcast every weekday from New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester for over a decade (October 1993–March 2004) – the longest regular broadcast on the network from outside the capital.
+
+In August 2022, the studio 82A (from which Radio 1 broadcasts) was renamed 82Mills, following the departure of the long-running DJ Scott Mills.
+
+UK analogue frequencies
+Radio 1 originally broadcast on  AM (or 247 metres). On 23 November 1978, the station was moved to  and  (275 and 285 m). 
+
+The BBC had been allocated three FM frequency ranges in 1955, for the then Light Programme (now BBC Radio 2), Third Programme (now BBC Radio 3) and Home Service (now BBC Radio 4) stations. Thus, when Radio 1 was launched, there was no FM frequency range allocated for the station. The official reason was that there was no space, even though no commercial stations had yet been launched on FM. To solve this issue, from launch until the end of the 1980s Radio 1 was allocated Radio 2's FM transmitters for a few hours per week. These were Saturday afternoons, Sunday teatime and evening – most notably for the Top 40 Singles Chart on Sunday afternoons and up until midnight; 10pm to midnight on weeknights including Sounds of the Seventies until 1975, and thereafter the John Peel show (Mon–Thurs), The Friday Rock Show with Tommy Vance and most Bank Holiday afternoons when Radio 2 was broadcasting a Bank Holiday edition of Sport on 2.
+
+Full-time FM broadcasting
+Due to the rising competition from commercial FM stations, the BBC began to draw up plans for Radio 1 to broadcast on FM full time. This process began in London on 31 October 1987, at low power on a temporary frequency of . The Home Office in the UK began to free up FM police communication bandwidths, which at the time were operating from 97.9 MHz to 102.0 MHz, in preparation for new FM radio stations planned for the future, which included BBC Radio 1. The BBC acquired 97.9 FM to 99.8 FM specifically for Radio 1. 
+
+The rollout of Radio 1 on FM nationally began on 1 September 1988, starting with Central Scotland (98.6 MHz), the Midlands (98.4 MHz) and the north of England (98.8 MHz). On 24 November 1988, Belfast was added to the network on another temporary frequency on 96.0 MHz. 
+
+Due to the expansion of Radio 1's FM broadcast hours, Radio 1 scaled back its airtime on Radio 2's FM frequencies - ending on weeknights (10pm–midnight), Saturday afternoons from 1pm until 7pm and Sunday evenings (7pm–midnight). The only programme continuing to broadcast on Radio 2's FM frequency was the UK Top 40, which broadcast between 5pm and 7pm on Sunday afternoon and evening; at the finish of the Top 40 show, the FM transmitters were handed back to Radio 2 at 7pm.
+
+By September 1990, with further expansion of Radio 1 FM's frequencies, after 23 years all usage of Radio 2's FM frequencies came to an end, resulting in BBC Radio 2 transmitting on FM full-time. This was due to the then new BBC Radio 5 Live broadcasting on Radio 2's former AM frequencies on 603 & 909 MW.
+
+Radio 1 made great efforts to promote its new FM service, renaming itself on-air initially as 'Radio 1 FM' and later as '1FM' until 1995. After reorganisation and a change of transmitter reallocation of the FM frequencies, especially in London (from 104.8 to 98.8 MHz), the Midlands (98.4 to 97.9 MHz) and Belfast (96.0 to 99.7 MHz), the engineering programme was completed in 1995.
+
+End of medium wave broadcasting -  1053 / 1089 kHz
+The Conservative government decided to increase competition on AM and disallowed the simulcasting of services on both AM and FM, affecting both BBC and Independent Local Radio. Radio 1's medium wave frequencies were reallocated to Independent National Radio. Radio 1's last broadcast on MW was on 1 July 1994, with Stephen Duffy's "Kiss Me" being the last record played on MW just before 9am. For those who continued to listen, just after 9am, Radio 1 jingles were played in reverse chronological order ending with its first jingle from 30 September 1967. In the initial months after this closure, a pre-recorded message by Mark Goodier was played to advise listeners that Radio 1 was now an "FM-only" station and to retune to the FM frequency. Around this time, Radio 1 began broadcasting on spare audio subcarriers on Sky Television's via Astra's SES satellite analogue service; initially in mono (on UK Gold) and later in stereo (on UK Living) transponders. The 1053 / 1089 frequencies were allocated to the then newly-created Talk Radio UK.
+
+Digital distribution
+The BBC launched its national radio stations on DAB digital radio in 1995; however, the technology was expensive at the time and so was not marketed, instead used as a test for future technologies. DAB was "officially" launched in 2002 as sets became cheaper. Today it can also be heard on UK digital TV services Freeview, Virgin Media, Sky and the Internet as well as FM. In July 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio began simulcasting Radio 1 across the United States as channel 11 on its own service and channel 6011 on Dish Network satellite TV. Sirius Canada began simulcasting Radio 1 when it was launched on 1 December 2005 (also on channel 11). The Sirius simulcasts were time shifted five hours to allow US and Canadian listeners in the Eastern Time Zone to hear Radio 1 at the same time of day as UK listeners. On 12 November 2008, Radio 1 made its debut on XM Satellite Radio in both the US and Canada on channel 29, moving to XM 15 and Sirius 15 on 4 May 2011. Until the full station was removed in August 2011, Radio 1 was able to be heard by approximately 20.6 million listeners in North America on satellite radio alone.
+BBC Radio 1 can be heard on cable in the Netherlands at 105.10 FM.
+
+SiriusXM cancellation in North America
+
+At midnight on 9 August 2011, Sirius XM ceased carrying BBC Radio 1 programming with no prior warning. On 10 August 2011 the BBC issued the following statement:
+The BBC’s commercial arm BBC Worldwide has been in partnership with SIRIUS Satellite Radio to broadcast Radio 1 on their main network, since 2005. This agreement has now unfortunately come to an end and BBC Worldwide are in current discussions with the satellite radio station to find ways to continue to bring popular music channel, BBC Radio 1, to the US audience. We will keep you posted.
+
+Thousands of angry Sirius XM customers began a campaign on Facebook and other social media to reinstate BBC Radio 1 on Sirius XM Radio. One week later, Sirius and the BBC agreed on a new carriage agreement that saw Radio 1 broadcast on a time-shifted format on the Sirius XM Internet Radio platform only, on channel 815.
+
+Starting on 15 January 2012, The Official Chart Show began broadcasting on SiriusXM 20on20 channel 3, at 4pm and 9pm Eastern Standard Time.
+
+Regionalisation
+From 1999 until 2012, Radio 1 split the home nations for localised programming in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to allow the broadcast of a showcase programme for regional talent. Most recently, these shows were under the BBC Introducing brand. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had their own shows, which were broadcast on a 3-week rotational basis in England.
+
+From January 2011 until June 2012, Scotland's show was presented by Ally McCrae. Previously it was hosted by Vic Galloway (who also presents for BBC Radio Scotland); who had presented the show solo since 2004, after his original co-host Gill Mills departed.
+
+Wales's show was hosted by Jen Long between January 2011 until May 2012. Previously Bethan Elfyn occupied the slot, who had at one time hosted alongside Huw Stephens, until Stephens left to join the national network, although he still broadcasts a show for Wales – a Welsh-language music show on BBC Radio Cymru on Thursday evenings.
+
+Phil Taggart presented the Northern Ireland programme between November 2011 and May 2012. The show was formerly presented by Rory McConnell. Before joining the national network, Colin Murray was a presenter on The Session in Northern Ireland, along with Donna Legge; after Murray's promotion to the network Legge hosted alone for a time, and on her departure McConnell took her place.
+
+The regional opt-outs originally went out from 8pm to 10pm on Thursdays (the Evening Sessions time slot) and were known as the "Session in the Nations" (the "Session" tag was later dropped due to the demise of the Evening Session); they later moved to run from 7:30pm to 9pm, with the first half-hour of Zane Lowe's programme going out across the whole of the UK. On 18 October 2007 the regional programmes moved to a Wednesday night/Thursday morning slot from midnight to 2am under the BBC Introducing banner, allowing Lowe's Thursday show to be aired across the network; prior to this change Huw Stephens had presented the Wednesday midnight show nationally. In January 2011, BBC Introducing was moved to the new time slot of midnight to 2am on Monday mornings, and the Scottish and Welsh shows were given new presenters in the form of Ally McCrae and Jen Long.
+
+The opt-outs were only available to listeners on the FM frequencies. Because of the way the DAB and digital TV services of Radio 1 are broadcast (a single-frequency network on DAB and a single broadcast feed of Radio 1 on TV platforms), the digital version of the station was not regionalised.
+
+The BBC Trust announced in May 2012 that the regional music programmes on Radio 1 would be replaced with a single programme offering a UK-wide platform for new music as part of a series of cost-cutting measures across the BBC. In June 2012, the regional shows ended and were replaced by a single BBC Introducing show presented by Jen Long and Ally McCrae.
+
+Content
+
+Music 
+Because of its youth-orientated nature, Radio 1 plays a broad mix of current and potential future hits, including independent/alternative, hip hop, rock, dance/electronica and pop. This made the station stand out from other top 40 stations, both in the UK and across the world. Since its progressive view on modern electronic music, the BBC Radio 1 is well-liked and known in the worldwide drum and bass community, frequently hosting producers and DJs like Hybrid Minds or Wilkinson.
+
+Due to restrictions on the amount of commercial music that could be played on radio in the UK until 1988 (the "needle time" limitation) the station has recorded many live performances. Studio sessions (recordings of about four tracks made in a single day), also supplemented the live music content, many of them finding their way to commercially available LPs and CDs. The sessions recorded for John Peel's late night programme are particularly renowned. The station has continued to record live music with its Live Lounge feature and the Piano Sessions, which started in November 2014.
+
+The station also broadcasts documentaries and interviews. Although this type of programming arose from necessity it has given the station diversity. The needletime restrictions meant the station tended to have a higher level of speech by DJs. While the station is often criticised for "waffling" by presenters, an experimental "more music day" in 1988 was declared a failure after only a third of callers favoured it.
+
+News and current affairs
+
+Radio 1 has a public service broadcasting obligation to provide news, which it fulfills through Newsbeat bulletins throughout the day. Shared with 1Xtra and Asian Network, short news summaries are provided roughly hourly on the half-hour between 06:30 and 16:30, with two additional 15-minute bulletins at 12:45 and 17:45 and nine summaries over the weekend and Bank Holiday between 07:30 and 15:30.
+
+Online visualisation and social media
+In recent years Radio 1 has used social media to help reach a younger audience. Its YouTube channel now has over 7.5 million subscribers. The highest viewed videos on the channel are predominately live music performances from the Live Lounge.
+
+The station also has a heavy presence on social media, with audience interaction occurring through Facebook and Twitter as well as text messaging.
+
+It was announced in 2013 that Radio 1 had submitted plans to launch its own dedicated video channel on the BBC iPlayer where videos of live performances as well as some features and shows would be streamed in a central location. Plans were approved by the BBC Trust in November 2014 and the channel launched on 10 November 2014.
+
+Special programming
+
+Bank Holiday programming
+Radio 1 provides alternative programming on some Bank Holidays. Programmes have included 'The 10 Hour Takeover', a request-based special, in which the DJs on air would encourage listeners to select any available track to play, 'One Hit Wonder Day' and 'The Chart of the Decade' where the 150 biggest selling singles in the last 10 years were counted down and played in full.
+
+Anniversary programming
+On Sunday 30 September 2007, Radio 1 celebrated its 40th birthday. To mark this anniversary Radio 1 hosted a week of special features, including a re-creation of Simon Bates' Golden Hour, and 40 different artists performing 40 different covers, one from each year since Radio 1 was established. On Saturday 30 September 2017, Radio 1 celebrated its 50th birthday. Tony Blackburn recreated the first ever Radio 1 broadcast on Radio 2, simulcast on pop-up station Radio 1 Vintage, followed by The Radio 1 Breakfast Show celebration, tricast on Radio 1, Radio 2 and Radio 1 Vintage, presented by Tony Blackburn and Nick Grimshaw, featuring former presenters as guests Simon Mayo, Sara Cox and Mike Read.
+
+Charity
+Radio 1 regularly supports the BBC's in house charities Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children in Need.
+
+On 18 March 2011, BBC's Radio 1 longest-serving breakfast DJ Chris Moyles and sidekick Dave Vitty broadcast for 52 hours as part of a Guinness World Record attempt, in aid of Comic Relief. The pair stayed on air for 52 hours in total setting a new world record for 'Radio DJ Endurance Marathon (Team)’ after already breaking Simon Mayo's 12-year record for Radio 1's Longest Show of 37 hours which he set in 1999, also for Comic Relief.
+
+The presenters started on 16 March 2011 and came off air at 10:30am on 18 March 2011. During this Fearne Cotton made a bet with DJ Chris Moyles that if they raise over £2,000,000 she will appear on the show in a swimsuit. After passing the £2,000,000 mark, Cotton appeared on the studio webcam in a stripy monochrome swimsuit. The appearance of Cotton between 10:10am and 10:30am caused the Radio 1 website to crash due to a high volume of traffic.
+
+In total the event raised £2,622,421 for Comic Relief.
+
+Drama
+In 1981, Radio 1 broadcast a radio adaptation of the space opera film, Star Wars. The 13-episode serial was adapted for radio by the author Brian Daley and directed by John Madden, and was a co-production between the BBC and the American Broadcaster NPR.
+
+In 1994, Radio 1 broadcast a radio adaptation of the Batman comic book storyline Knightfall, as part of the Marc Goodier show, featuring Michael Gough recreating his movie role as Alfred. Later that same year, Radio 1 also broadcast a re-edited version of the Radio 4 Superman radio drama.
+
+Events
+
+Radio 1 Roadshows
+
+The Radio 1 Roadshow, which usually involved Radio 1 DJs and pop stars travelling around popular UK seaside destinations, began in 1973, as a response to the imminent introduction of local commercial radio stations. hosted by Alan Freeman in Newquay, Cornwall, with the final one held at Heaton Park, Manchester in 1999. Although the Roadshow attracted large crowds and the style changed with the style of the station itself—such as the introduction of whistlestop audio postcards of each location in 1994 ("2minuteTour")—they were still rooted in the older style of the station, and therefore fit for retirement.
+
+BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend
+
+In March 2000, Radio 1 decided to change the Roadshow format, renaming it One Big Sunday in the process. Several of these Sundays were held in large city-centre parks. In 2003, the event changed again and was rebranded One Big Weekend, with each event occurring biannually and covering two days. Under this name, it visited Derry in Northern Ireland, as part of the Music Lives campaign, and Perry Park in Birmingham.
+
+The most recent change occurred in 2005 when the event was yet again renamed and the decision taken to hold only one per year, this time as Radio 1's Big Weekend. Venues under this title have included Herrington Country Park, Camperdown Country Park, Moor Park–which was the first Weekend to feature a third stage–Mote Park, Lydiard Park, Bangor and Carlisle Airport.
+
+Tickets for each Big Weekend are given away free of charge, making it the largest free ticketed music festival in Europe.
+
+BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend was replaced by a larger festival in 2012, named 'Radio 1's Hackney Weekend', with a crowd capacity of 100,000. The Hackney Weekend took place over the weekend of 23–24 June 2012 in Hackney Marshes, Hackney, London. The event was to celebrate the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in London and had artists such as Rihanna, Jay-Z and Florence and the Machine.
+
+In 2013, Radio 1's Big Weekend returned to Derry as part of the City of Culture 2013 celebrations. So far, Derry is the only city to have hosted the Big Weekend twice.
+
+In May 2014, Radio 1's Big Weekend was held in Glasgow, Scotland. Acts which played at the event included Rita Ora, The 1975, Katy Perry, Jake Bugg and Pharrell Williams. The event was opened on the Friday with a dance set in George Square, featuring Radio 1 Dance DJs such as Danny Howard and Pete Tong, and other well-known acts such as Martin Garrix and Tiesto.
+
+In 2015, the event was held in Norwich and featured performances from the likes of Taylor Swift, Muse, David Guetta, Years & Years and others.
+
+2016 saw the event make its way to Exeter. It was headlined by Coldplay, who closed the weekend on the Sunday evening.
+
+The event was in Hull in 2017 and saw performances by artists such as Zara Larsson, Shawn Mendes, Stormzy, Katy Perry, Little Mix, Sean Paul, Rita Ora, The Chainsmokers, Clean Bandit and Kings of Leon.
+
+To take advantage of Glastonbury Festival's fallow year in 2018, 4 separate Big Weekends were held simultaneously between 25 and 28 May. Stylized as "BBC Music's Biggest Weekend", events were held in Swansea (with a line-up curated by Radio 1), Coventry and Perth (both curated by Radio 2) and Belfast (curated by Radio 6 Music). Tickets sold out for the Swansea, Perth and Coventry Big Weekends.
+
+In 2020, the Big Weekend at Dundee was cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2020, Radio 1 announced a virtual Big Weekend. It took place from 22 to 24 May and featured performances from artists like Mabel and Anne-Marie.
+
+Ibiza Weekend
+Radio 1 has annually held a dance music weekend broadcast live from Ibiza since the 1990s. The weekend is usually the first weekend in August and has performances from world-famous DJs and Radio 1's own dance music talent such as Pete Tong and Annie Mac.
+
+BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards
+
+In September 2008, Radio 1 launched an annual music event for teenagers aged 14 to 17 years. Originally named BBC Switch Live, the first event was held on 12 October 2008 at the Hammersmith Apollo. In 2009, the event became an annual awards ceremony and the following year was renamed BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards. The awards honoured inspirational teens alongside the best music, movies, TV and sport stars in a variety of categories. In 2011, it was moved to Wembley Arena and later Studio 1 at Television Centre, London. Highlights of the event has been broadcast across BBC Television.
+
+Despite the awards ceremony not taking place since 2019, the main award, "Teen Hero", has continued to be awarded by Radio 1 as Teen Heroes.
+
+Presenters
+The event has been hosted by various Radio 1 DJs and guest co-hosts.
+
+Performances
+
+Edinburgh Festival
+Radio 1 often has a presence at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Past events have included 'The Fun and Filth Cabaret' and 'Scott Mills: The Musical'.
+
+Europe's Biggest Dance Show 
+
+Europe's Biggest Dance Show is a series of dance music oriented radio specials produced by Radio 1.
+
+The first, Europe's Biggest Dance Show 2019, was broadcast on Friday 11 October 2019 where Radio 1 joined with several European radio stations, all members of the European Broadcasting Union, including Swedish SR P3, German 1LIVE and RBB Fritz, Belgian VRT Studio Brussel, Irish RTÉ 2fm, French Radio France Mouv and Dutch NPO 3FM.
+
+A second show, Europe's Biggest Dance Show 2020, was broadcast on Friday 8 May 2020. It had the same contributing stations as 2019; however, it had begun at 7 pm BST, rather than 8 pm as the previous year.
+
+The third installment of Europe's Biggest Dance Show was broadcast on Friday 23 October 2020. French Mouv' dropped out of the broadcast until further notice while Finnish YleX and Norwegian NRK mP3 joined the show.
+
+A fourth show, Europe's Biggest Dance Show 2021, was broadcast on Friday 29 October 2021. It saw the first contribution of Austrian station FM4, while the Dutch NPO 3FM dropped out.
+
+The fifth installment, Europe's Biggest Dance Show 2022, was broadcast on Friday 14 October 2022. It saw the first contribution the Ukrainian Radio Promin of UA:PBC and the return of Dutch NPO 3FM to the show.
+
+Radio 1's summer stunts
+Since 2018, BBC Radio 1 has performed format-breaking listener stunts. In 2018, Greg James and Nick Grimshaw announced to play Hide and Seek on the radio to be found 22 hours later at the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool. In 2019 James and Grimshaw hid at the Grand Pier, Weston-super-Mare for almost 26 hours.
+
+In the summer of 2021 Radio 1 held Radio 1's Summer Breakout, where James was locked inside a camper van and had to escape by entering a password. James escaped the van after 62 hours.  The following year, James was booted off the Radio 1 Breakfast Show and had to complete a giant 20-piece jigsaw puzzle to find the missing pieces scattered across the United Kingdom. After six days, James completed the puzzle and was reinstated as host of the Breakfast show.
+
+In the summer of 2023, all DJs other than Greg James went into hiding, with James and the listeners asked to piece back the schedule and find all 30 DJs. On 20 July, James and the listeners were informed that if any DJs were still missing by noon (UK time) on July 21, the station would go off air. Mollie King was still hidden at this time, so the station went off air for five minutes, between 12:00 and 12:05, before returning to broadcasting at 12:05 pm.
+
+Online-only sister stations 
+
+On 17 September 2020, the BBC announced that it would launch an online-only sister station for BBC Radio 1, called BBC Radio 1 Dance, which would primarily play all kinds of songs from the Dance genre. The station was launched on 9 October 2020 at 6 pm BST. A second online-only sister station, BBC Radio 1 Relax, was launched on 22 April 2021. The station plays a selection of relaxation and well-being focused shows.
+
+Controllers/Head of Station
+
+Former logos
+
+Awards and nominations
+
+International Dance Music Awards
+Radio 1 has won the International Dance Music Awards' Best Radio Station every year from 2002 to 2020 with the exception of 2010.
+
+See also
+ List of BBC radio stations
+ Radio 1 Podcasts
+ BBC Radio
+ Triple J
+
+References
+
+Sources
+
+Further reading
+
+External links
+
+ 
+1
+Contemporary hit radio stations in the United Kingdom
+Radio stations established in 1967
+1967 establishments in the United Kingdom
+Radio stations in the United Kingdom
+BBC Red Button is a brand used for digital interactive television services provided by the BBC, and broadcast in the United Kingdom. The services replaced Ceefax, the BBC's analogue teletext service. BBC Red Button's text services were due to close on 30 January 2020, but the switch off was suspended on 29 January 2020 following protests.
+
+History and branding
+The service was launched on 23 September 1999 as BBC Text. It was relaunched in November 2001 under the BBCi brand and operated under this name until late 2008, when it was rebranded as BBC Red Button. The "red button" name refers to the common interface on remote controls for digital televisions and set-top boxes, a red push-button that launches digital teletext services.
+
+Although initially marketed as a spectacular new form of television, by 2008 this had given way to positioning interactive television as ‘everyday’. This was due in part to the institutional landscape of television in the UK.
+
+In September 2009, the BBC celebrated 10 years of the digital interactive TV service.
+
+BBC Text (1999–2001)
+BBC Text originally launched on digital terrestrial services on 23 September 1999, and was later introduced on satellite and cable platforms. In the first phase, the service was created using content migrated from the existing analogue teletext service, Ceefax. A digital text service had been available since the launch of digital terrestrial television in November 1998, but the BBC Text service was not publicly launched until November 1999, due to a lack of availability of compatible set-top boxes.
+
+BBC Text was considerably more advanced than Ceefax, in that it offered a richer visual interface, with the possibility of photographic images and designed graphics (as opposed to Ceefax graphics which were composed of simple blocks of colour). BBC Text also enabled channel association, the ability for the user to retain their selected television channel visible in one section of the screen whilst viewing the text service, in contrast to Ceefax, which could only be viewed as a full-screen display, or as a semitransparent overlay (i.e. opaque blocks of colour on top of the television channel, with the black background now transparent; not 'translucent blocks of colour with a translucent black background') above the television picture. The original text service had no return path, this being made available in later phases.
+
+BBC Text pioneered an early form of "on-demand" interactive television, called Enhanced TV. During the 1999 Wimbledon Championships, the BBC presented a service that allowed viewers to select a video stream of different matches, and access additional information such as player profiles, scores and interactive quizzes. Although the experimental service was publicly available, there were no digital set-top boxes or receivers available on the market that could decode the signal, and the service was presented to the public only via BBC demonstrations using prototype receivers.
+
+The BBCi brand (2001–2008)
+
+The BBCi brand launched in November 2001 and was conceived as a cohesive multi-platform brand name for all the BBC's digital interactive services, encompassing the corporation's digital teletext, interactive television and website services. According to the BBC, the "i" in BBCi stood for "interactivity" as well as "innovation".
+
+The various services all took on a common interface device, an "i-bar" branded with the BBCi logo, which sought to emphasise the brand across different technologies by providing similar navigation. For example, the BBC website, which had previously been called BBC Online, took on the BBCi brand from 2001, displaying an i-bar across the top of every page, offering a category-based navigation: Categories, TV, Radio, Communicate, Where I Live, A-Z Index, and a search. Similarly, BBC interactive television services all offered a horizontal i-bar along the bottom of television screens, with four colour-coded interactions linked to the four colour buttons on TV remote controls.
+
+After three years of consistent use across different platforms, the BBC began to drop the BBCi brand gradually; on 6 May 2004, the BBC website was renamed bbc.co.uk, after the main URL used to access the site. Interactive TV services continued under the BBCi brand until late 2008.
+
+Today, the broadcaster's online video player, the BBC iPlayer, reflects the branding legacy by retaining an i-prefix in its branding.
+
+BBC Red Button HD 
+In June 2013, a HD version of BBC Red Button was launched for the summertime. It closed on 25 November 2013 after the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. It returned each year along with the other BBC Red Button channels as a temporary channel for the duration of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. On 26 March 2018, CBBC HD began its downtime and the relaunch of BBC Red Button HD took place to cover the 2018 Commonwealth Games. It was added on Sky on channel 981 and Freeview channel 602 on 3 April 2018 and closed on 16 April 2018 after the Games had concluded. Later in 2021, it was originally supposed to be closed on the end of Wimbledon but was kept on air for the 2020 Olympics.
+
+On February 15 2023, as part of the BBC's plan to upgrade all of its channels to high-definition as standard, the high-definition video feed of BBC Red Button was made the default on all television platforms, replacing the long-standing "standard definition" feed which was used outside of significant sporting events.
+
+The BBC Red Button brand (2008)
+From 2008, the BBC gradually began to drop the BBCi name from its digital interactive TV services also, replacing it with the name BBC Red Button. The BBCi logo continued in on-screen presentation for some time.
+
+BBC Connected Red Button (2012)
+BBC Connected Red Button launched in December 2012 on Virgin TiVo and on some Freeview and Freesat 'Smart TVs' in December 2013. The service is a composite IP and broadcast service and may be the future of Red Button on internet connected televisions.
+
+BBC Red Button+ (2015) 
+
+The service was renamed BBC Red Button+ in April 2015. It launched with an updated brand.
+
+Partial closure (2020) 
+After nearly 21 years of service, the BBC announced in 2019 that due to financial cuts, the text services on Red Button on all platforms would be removed from 30 January 2020. The video services, used during events like Wimbledon and the Olympic Games, however, would continue.
+
+On 29 January 2020, the BBC announced their suspension of the switch-off due to protests, one day before the service was due to have started being phased out. This announcement comes following a petition, organised by the National Federation of the Blind of the UK (NFBUK), which was submitted to the BBC and Downing Street. The petition expresses NFBUK's concerns with the switch-off, citing that the service is "vital for visually impaired, deaf, disabled and older people, as well as many other people who want to find out information independently in an easy, convenient and accessible format, who are not online." They're concerned that the withdrawal of the service would leave many already vulnerable people into further isolation and marginalisation from society. NFBUK states they cannot understand how the BBC can meet their obligations set in the Royal Charter following the cut of the Red Button Teletext service.
+
+Availability
+BBC Red Button is available on all digital television platforms in the UK, including digital cable through Virgin Media, digital satellite through Sky and Freesat and digital terrestrial television through Freeview. On Freeview interactivity does not permit users to submit data (such as answering questions in a quiz or requesting video on demand), as the platform does not provide a return path.
+
+On Freeview, users can easily switch between the service and full screen TV. Initially, for over a decade, the only way to access this was by pressing "0" on the remote control, but since the removal of the shortcuts menu in 2016, it can be accessed by pressing "green" as well as "0" - although it only tells users to press "green" instead of "green or 0".
+
+The BBC currently provides one video stream to all platforms, which can be accessed directly from Freeview channel 601, Freesat and Sky on channel 981 (UK only) and Virgin Media UK channel 991. Until mid-February 2023, the feed provided was only in standard definition, with a high-definition version of RB 1 (the primary feed) used for high-profile sporting events, which included the Olympics and Wimbledon. Since February 15 2023, the standard definition feed was replaced across all platforms with a high-definition version, as part of the BBC's plan to upgrade its channel offering into high-definition. One advantage of the feed is the DVR ability as the conventional Red Button interaction restricts DVR record / pause / rewind functions, and is a major caveat for many.
+
+Prior to 2023, the BBC had the ability to increase the amount of streams during major events and had done so on numerous occasions, as follows:
+
+2012 Olympics: For the 2012 Summer Olympics and with it being a home games in London for the BBC, the BBC provided 24 live streams in standard and high-definition for the duration of the games. Additional online streams could also be accessed through the internet-connected BBC Red Button+.
+2016 Olympics: eight red button video streams were broadcast to all platforms during the 2016 Olympics. This was in addition to BBC Four continually broadcasting Olympic coverage and either BBC One or BBC Two broadcasting main coverage during the course of the each day.
+The Championships, Wimbledon: six additional channels were provided for a variety of outer courts. Red Button 1 was duplicated in high definition, with RB 2 to RB 6 only in standard definition. The 2022 edition of the tournament was the last to offer this functionality.
+
+As of 2023, the BBC will no longer be providing additional Red Button streams for any events. Instead, it will be directing viewers to watch additional feeds via the BBC iPlayer. 2023 Wimbledon was the first major tournament not to provide any additional feeds on linear television.
+
+Content
+Generally, BBC Red Button offers text and video based services, as well as enhanced television programmes which offer extra information, video or quizzes.
+
+In September 2005, BBCi launched an update to the interactivity available from the BBC's Radio channels on Freeview. Originally only Radiotext was available. After the update, users could access information about the programme, schedules, news, sport and weather. From 2005, Freeview users could access the CBBC Extra video stream.
+
+The same team behind the BBC's digital text service also launched the early incarnations of the BBC's Interactive Wimbledon and Interactive Open Golf services in 2000, which were awarded an Interactive BAFTA that year.
+
+The News Multiscreen was removed from the digital service in October 2009, to make room for future Freeview HD broadcasts.
+
+As of July 2022, the Question Time page on p155 appears to be outdated since January 2018, as it still states that the show will be returning on January 11 from Islington.
+
+Here is a table of the contents of the BBC Red Button as of March 2023:
+
+Compatibility
+The service was initially compatible with ONdigital and ITV Digital boxes, though loading speeds were slower than newer Freeview boxes.
+
+Page numbers were introduced in 2004 to aid navigation, with 3-digit page numbers matching with those of the analogue Ceefax in 2006. Pages exclusive to digital are given a four digit number. An index navigation screen was also introduced, replacing the previous BBCi Menu.
+
+The Teletext service from the UK commercial broadcasters had stopped supporting the old boxes in 2005. As of 2010, the ONdigital boxes only load pages 100 and 199 and some interactive services that use channel 301, if any other page is loaded it exits the service.
+
+Usage of these boxes dwindled further as technology developed. They used "original" technology and as such were not upgradable. Following each regional changeover to full digital TV broadcasting, the remaining units are no longer of use, as they do not support the "8K-mode" for DVB-T introduced across the UK as part of the digital switchover.
+
+See also
+
+ MHEG-5 Programming Language for Freeview
+ BBC Online
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+1999 establishments in the United Kingdom
+Television channels and stations established in 1999
+
+BBC New Media
+BBC Television
+Digital television
+Interactive television
+A backplane (or "backplane system") is a group of electrical connectors in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors, forming a computer bus. It is used to connect several printed circuit boards together to make up a complete computer system. Backplanes commonly use a printed circuit board, but wire-wrapped backplanes have also been used in minicomputers and high-reliability applications.
+
+A backplane is generally differentiated from a motherboard by the lack of on-board processing and storage elements. A backplane uses plug-in cards for storage and processing.
+
+Usage
+Early microcomputer systems like the Altair 8800 used a backplane for the processor and expansion cards.
+
+Backplanes are normally used in preference to cables because of their greater reliability. In a cabled system, the cables need to be flexed every time that a card is added or removed from the system; this flexing eventually causes mechanical failures. A backplane does not suffer from this problem, so its service life is limited only by the longevity of its connectors. For example, DIN 41612 connectors (used in the VMEbus system) have three durability grades built to withstand (respectively) 50, 400 and 500 insertions and removals, or "mating cycles". To transmit information, Serial Back-Plane technology uses a low-voltage differential signaling transmission method for sending information.
+
+In addition, there are bus expansion cables which will extend a computer bus to an external backplane, usually located in an enclosure, to provide more or different slots than the host computer provides. These cable sets have a transmitter board located in the computer, an expansion board in the remote backplane, and a cable between the two.
+
+Active versus passive backplanes
+
+Backplanes have grown in complexity from the simple Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) (used in the original IBM PC) or S-100 style where all the connectors were connected to a common bus. Due to limitations inherent in the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) specification for driving slots, backplanes are now offered as passive and active.
+
+True passive backplanes offer no active bus driving circuitry. Any desired arbitration logic is placed on the daughter cards. Active backplanes include chips which buffer the various signals to the slots.
+
+The distinction between the two isn't always clear, but may become an important issue if a whole system is expected to not have a single point of failure (SPOF) . Common myth around passive backplane, even if it is single, is not usually considered a SPOF. Active back-planes are even more complicated and thus have a non-zero risk of malfunction. However one situation that can cause disruption both in the case of Active and Passive Back-planes is while performing maintenance activities i.e. while swapping boards there is always a possibility of damaging the Pins/Connectors on the Back-plane, this may cause full outage for the system as all boards mounted on the back-plane should be removed in order to fix the system. Therefore, we are seeing newer architectures where systems use high speed redundant connectivity to interconnect system boards point to point with No Single Point of Failure anywhere in the system.
+
+Backplanes versus motherboards
+When a backplane is used with a plug-in single-board computer (SBC) or system host board (SHB), the combination provides the same functionality as a motherboard, providing processing power, memory, I/O and slots for plug-in cards. While there are a few motherboards that offer more than 8 slots, that is the traditional limit. In addition, as technology progresses, the availability and number of a particular slot type may be limited in terms of what is currently offered by motherboard manufacturers.
+
+However, backplane architecture is somewhat unrelated to the SBC technology plugged into it. There are some limitations to what can be constructed, in that the SBC chip set and processor have to provide the capability of supporting the slot types. In addition, virtually an unlimited number of slots can be provided with 20, including the SBC slot, as a practical though not an absolute limit. Thus, a PICMG backplane can provide any number and any mix of ISA, PCI, PCI-X, and PCI-e slots, limited only by the ability of the SBC to interface to and drive those slots. For example, an SBC with the latest i7 processor could interface with a backplane providing up to 19 ISA slots to drive legacy I/O cards.
+
+Midplane
+Some backplanes are constructed with slots for connecting to devices on both sides, and are referred to as midplanes. This ability to plug cards into either side of a midplane is often useful in larger systems made up primarily of modules attached to the midplane.
+
+Midplanes are often used in computers, mostly in blade servers, where server blades reside on one side and the peripheral (power, networking, and other I/O) and service modules reside on the other. Midplanes are also popular in networking and telecommunications equipment where one side of the chassis accepts system processing cards and the other side of the chassis accepts network interface cards.
+
+Orthogonal midplanes connect vertical cards on one side to horizontal boards on the other side.
+One common orthogonal midplane connects many vertical telephone line cards on one side, each one connected to copper telephone wires, to a horizontal communications card on the other side.
+
+A "virtual midplane" is an imaginary plane between vertical cards on one side that directly connect to horizontal boards on the other side; the card-slot aligners of the card cage and self-aligning connectors on the cards hold the cards in position.
+
+Some people use the term "midplane" to describe a board that sits between and connects a hard drive hot-swap backplane and redundant power supplies.
+
+Backplanes in storage
+Servers commonly have a backplane to attach hot swappable hard disk drives and solid state drives; backplane pins pass directly into hard drive sockets without cables. They may have single connector to connect one disk array controller or multiple connectors that can be connected to one or more controllers in arbitrary way. Backplanes are commonly found in disk enclosures, disk arrays, and servers.
+
+Backplanes for SAS and SATA HDDs most commonly use the SGPIO protocol as means of communication between the host adapter and the backplane. Alternatively SCSI Enclosure Services can be used. With Parallel SCSI subsystems, SAF-TE is used.
+
+Platforms
+
+PICMG
+
+A single-board computer meeting the PICMG 1.3 specification and compatible with a PICMG 1.3 backplane is referred to as a System Host Board.
+
+In the Intel Single-Board Computer world, PICMG provides standards for the backplane interface:
+PICMG 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 provide ISA and PCI support, with 1.2 adding PCIX support.
+PICMG 1.3 provides PCI-Express support.
+
+See also
+Motherboard
+Switched fabric
+Daughterboard
+M-Module
+ SS-50 Bus
+ STD Bus
+ STEbus
+ Eurocard (printed circuit board)
+ VXI
+
+References
+
+Further reading
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+Computer buses
+A baldric (also baldrick, bawdrick, bauldrick as well as other rare or obsolete variations) is a belt worn over one shoulder that is typically used to carry a weapon (usually a sword) or other implement such as a bugle or drum. The word may also refer to any belt in general, but this usage is poetic or archaic. In modern contexts, military drum majors usually wear a baldric.
+
+Usage
+Baldrics have been used since ancient times, usually as part of military dress. The design offers more support for weight than a standard waist belt, without restricting movement of the arms, and while allowing easy access to the object carried.  Alternatively, and especially in modern times, the baldric may fill a ceremonial role rather than a practical one. Most Roman tombstones in the third century had depictions of white baldrics.
+
+Design 
+One end of the baldric was broad and finished in a straight edge, while the other was tapered to a narrow strip. The narrow end was brought through a scabbard runner, it was probably wrapped around the scabbard twice. Circular metal discs called Phalera were attached to the broad end. Four leather baldrics were found in Vimose and Thorsbjerg. One of these measured 118 long and 8 cm wide.
+
+Roman balteus
+During ancient Roman times the balteus  (plural baltei) was a type of baldric commonly used to suspend a sword. It was a belt generally worn over the shoulder, passing obliquely down to the side, typically made of leather, often ornamented with precious stones, metals or both. There was also a similar belt worn by the Romans, particularly by soldiers, called a cintus (pl. cinti) that fastened around the waist. The word accintus meaning a soldier (literally, "girt" as for battle) attests to this differing usage.
+
+Today
+Many non-military or paramilitary organisations include baldrics as part of ceremonial dress.  The Knights of Columbus 4th Degree Colour Corps uses a baldric as part of their uniform; it supports a ceremonial sword.
+
+The University of Illinois Marching Illini wore two baldrics as a part of their uniform until 2009, with one over each shoulder. They crossed in the front and back and were buttoned onto the jacket beneath a cape and epaulets.  Today, the current Marching Illini wear one baldric with two sides, ILLINI on one side and the traditional orange and white baldric from the previous uniform on the other.
+
+A crossed pair of baldrics is often worn as part of the uniform of Morris dancers; different coloured baldrics help to distinguish different sides.
+
+In literature and culture
+Baldrics appear in the classical literary canon, and later in fantasy and science fiction genres. 
+ The decorated baldric of Pallas plays a key part in the Aeneid, leading Aeneas to kill Turnus. (1st century BC)
+ In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Gawain returns from his battle with the Green Knight wearing the green girdle "obliquely, like a baldric, bound at his side,/ below his left shoulder, laced in a knot, in betokening the blame he had borne for his fault." (14th century)
+ The yeoman in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is described as wearing a "baldrick of bright green." (14th century)
+ Benedick, from William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, says "But that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead or hang my bugle in an invisible baldric all women shall pardon me." (15th century)
+ Britomart, in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, clothes herself in a borrowed armour "with brave bauldrick garnished" before embarking on her quest (Book III, canto iii,). (16th century)
+ A baldric features prominently in Chapter 4 of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. (19th century)
+ Walter Scott in Ivanhoe published in 1819 describes a Yeoman "with a baldric and a badge of silver". (19th century)
+ In The Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir is described: "On a baldric he wore a great horn tipped with silver that now was laid upon his knees." (20th century)
+ A baldrick is also mentioned in the epic poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson; The Lady of Shalott; in the tenth stanza: 'And from his blazon'd baldric slung, A mighty silver bugle hung'. (19th century, from 13th century)
+ Some species and factions such as Klingons wear baldrics in Star Trek, such as Kor, Koloth, Kang or Worf although sometimes they are referred to as a sash.  The character Worf does so in almost every one of his appearances through two series and four films.  In The Next Generation episode "Conundrum", Worf, due to amnesia, mistakenly believes that the baldric indicates his rank or authority, so he briefly assumes command of the Enterprise. (20th century)
+ Baldrick is a character played by Tony Robinson in the BBC comedy series Blackadder . (20th century)
+ Pirates of the Caribbean features baldrics worn by many characters including Jack Sparrow, Elizabeth Swann, Will Turner, Hector Barbossa, Davy Jones, Blackbeard, and Angelica. 
+ Doctor Who features Silurian warrior Vastra and human maid Jenny Flint use baldrics to carry katana swords. 
+Joshamee Gibbs,
+
+See also
+
+Baldrick (Blackadder character)
+Bandolier
+Sam Browne belt
+Shoulder belt
+Webbing
+
+References
+
+Ancient Roman legionary equipment
+Military uniforms
+Ancient Roman military clothing
+Belts (clothing)
+
+fr:Baudrier
+lt:Perpetė
+The Battle of Waterloo () was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo (at that time in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium), marking  the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two armies of the Seventh Coalition. One of these was a British-led force with units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of the Duke of Wellington (often referred to as the Anglo-allied army or Wellington's army). The other comprised three corps of the Prussian army under Field Marshal von Blücher (the fourth corps of this army fought at the Battle of Wavre on the same day). The battle was known contemporarily as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean in France or La Belle Alliance ("the Beautiful Alliance") in Prussia.
+
+Upon Napoleon's return to power in March 1815 (beginning the Hundred Days), many states that had previously opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and hurriedly mobilised their armies. Wellington's and Blücher's armies were cantoned close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon planned to attack them separately in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the coalition. On 16 June, Napoleon successfully attacked the bulk of the Prussian army at the Battle of Ligny with his main force, causing the Prussians to withdraw northwards on 17 June, but parallel to Wellington and in good order. Meanwhile, a small portion of the French army contested the Battle of Quatre Bras and prevented the Anglo-allied army from reinforcing the Prussians at Ligny as planned. The Anglo-allied army held their ground at Quatre Bras on 16 June, but the withdrawal of the Prussians from Ligny caused Wellington to withdraw north to Waterloo on 17 June. Napoleon sent a third of his forces to pursue the Prussians, which resulted in the separate Battle of Wavre with the Prussian rear-guard on 18-19 June, and prevented that French force from participating at Waterloo.
+
+Upon learning that the Prussian army was able to support him, Wellington decided to offer battle on the Mont-Saint-Jean escarpment across the Brussels road, near the village of Waterloo. Here he withstood repeated attacks by the French throughout the afternoon of 18 June and almost lost the battle, but was eventually aided by the progressively arriving 50,000 Prussians who attacked the French flank and inflicted heavy casualties. In the evening, Napoleon assaulted the Anglo-allied line with his last reserves, the senior infantry battalions of the Imperial Guard. With the Prussians breaking through on the French right flank, the Anglo-allied army repulsed the Imperial Guard, and the French army was routed.
+
+Waterloo was the decisive engagement of the Waterloo campaign and Napoleon's last. It was also the second bloodiest single day battle of the Napoleonic Wars, after Borodino. According to Wellington, the battle was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life". Napoleon abdicated four days later, and coalition forces entered Paris on 7 July. The defeat at Waterloo marked the end of Napoleon's Hundred Days return from exile. It precipitated Napoleon's second and definitive abdication as Emperor of the French, and ended the First French Empire. It set a historical  milestone between serial European wars and decades of relative peace, often referred to as the Pax Britannica.  In popular culture, the phrase "... Waterloo." is a reference implying someone having met their effort's end.
+
+The battlefield is located in the Belgian municipalities of Braine-l'Alleud and Lasne, about  south of Brussels, and about  from the town of Waterloo. The site of the battlefield today is dominated by the monument of the Lion's Mound, a large artificial hill constructed from earth taken from the battlefield itself; the topography of the battlefield near the mound has not been preserved.
+
+Prelude
+
+On 13 March 1815, six days before Napoleon reached Paris, the powers at the Congress of Vienna declared him an outlaw. Four days later, the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, and Prussia mobilised armies to defeat Napoleon. Critically outnumbered, Napoleon knew that once his attempts at dissuading one or more members of the Seventh Coalition from invading France had failed, his only chance of remaining in power was to attack before the coalition mobilised.
+
+Had Napoleon succeeded in destroying the existing coalition forces south of Brussels before they were reinforced, he might have been able to drive the British back to the sea and knock the Prussians out of the war. Crucially, this would have bought him time to recruit and train more men before turning his armies against the Austrians and Russians.
+
+An additional consideration for Napoleon was that a French victory might cause French-speaking sympathisers in Belgium to launch a friendly revolution. Also, coalition troops in Belgium were largely second-line, as many units were of dubious quality and loyalty, and most of the British veterans of the Peninsular War had been sent to North America to fight in the War of 1812.
+
+The initial dispositions of Wellington, the British commander, were intended to counter the threat of Napoleon enveloping the Coalition armies by moving through Mons to the south-west of Brussels. This would have pushed Wellington closer to the Prussian forces, led by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, but might have cut Wellington's communications with his base at Ostend. In order to delay Wellington's deployment, Napoleon spread false intelligence which suggested that Wellington's supply chain from the channel ports would be cut.
+
+By June, Napoleon had raised a total army strength of about 300,000 men. The force at his disposal at Waterloo was less than one third that size, but the rank and file were mostly loyal and experienced soldiers. Napoleon divided his army into a left wing commanded by Marshal Ney, a right wing commanded by Marshal Grouchy and a reserve under his command (although all three elements remained close enough to support one another). Crossing the frontier near Charleroi before dawn on 15 June, the French rapidly overran Coalition outposts, securing Napoleon's "central position" between Wellington's and Blücher's armies. He hoped this would prevent them from combining, and he would be able to destroy first the Prussians' army, then Wellington's.
+
+Only very late on the night of 15 June was Wellington certain that the Charleroi attack was the main French thrust. In the early hours of 16 June, at the Duchess of Richmond's ball in Brussels, he received a dispatch from the Prince of Orange and was shocked by the speed of Napoleon's advance. He hastily ordered his army to concentrate on Quatre Bras, where the Prince of Orange, with the brigade of Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, was holding a tenuous position against the soldiers of Ney's left wing.
+
+Ney's orders were to secure the crossroads of Quatre Bras, so that he could later swing east and reinforce Napoleon if necessary. Ney found the crossroads of Quatre Bras lightly held by the Prince of Orange, who repelled Ney's initial attacks but was gradually driven back by overwhelming numbers of French troops. First reinforcements, and then Wellington arrived. He took command and drove Ney back, securing the crossroads by early evening, too late to send help to the Prussians, who had already been defeated.
+
+Meanwhile, on 16 June, Napoleon attacked and defeated Blücher's Prussians at the Battle of Ligny using part of the reserve and the right wing of his army. The Prussian centre gave way under heavy French assaults, but the flanks held their ground. The Prussian retreat from Ligny went uninterrupted and seemingly unnoticed by the French. The bulk of their rearguard units held their positions until about midnight, and some elements did not move out until the following morning, ignored by the French.
+
+Crucially, the Prussians did not retreat to the east, along their own lines of communication. Instead, they, too, fell back northwards—parallel to Wellington's line of march, still within supporting distance and in communication with him throughout. The Prussians rallied on Bülow's IV Corps, which had not been engaged at Ligny and was in a strong position south of Wavre.
+
+With the Prussian retreat from Ligny, Wellington's position at Quatre Bras was untenable. The next day he withdrew northwards, to a defensive position that he had reconnoitred the previous year—the low ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean, south of the village of Waterloo and the Sonian Forest.
+
+Napoleon, with the reserves, made a late start on 17 June and joined Ney at Quatre Bras at 13:00 to attack Wellington's army but found the position empty. The French pursued Wellington's retreating army to Waterloo; however, due to bad weather, mud and the head start that Napoleon's tardy advance had allowed Wellington, there was no substantial engagement, apart from a cavalry action at Genappe.
+
+Before leaving Ligny, Napoleon had ordered Grouchy, who commanded the right wing, to follow up the retreating Prussians with 33,000 men. A late start, uncertainty about the direction the Prussians had taken, and the vagueness of the orders given to him, meant that Grouchy was too late to prevent the Prussian army reaching Wavre, from where it could march to support Wellington. More importantly, the heavily outnumbered Prussian rear-guard was able to use the River Dyle to enable a savage and prolonged action to delay Grouchy.
+
+As 17 June drew to a close, Wellington's army had arrived at its position at Waterloo, with the main body of Napoleon's army following. Blücher's army was gathering in and around Wavre, around  to the east of the town. Early on the morning of the 18th, Wellington received an assurance from Blücher that the Prussian army would support him. He decided to hold his ground and give battle.
+
+Armies
+
+Three armies participated in the battle: Napoleon's Armée du Nord, a multinational army under Wellington, and a Prussian army under General Blücher.
+
+The French army of around 69,000 consisted of 48,000 infantry, 14,000 cavalry, and 7,000 artillery with 250 guns. Napoleon had used conscription to fill the ranks of the French army throughout his rule, but he did not conscript men for the 1815 campaign. His troops were mainly veterans with considerable experience and a fierce devotion to their Emperor. The cavalry in particular was both numerous and formidable, and included fourteen regiments of armoured heavy cavalry, and seven of highly versatile lancers who were armed with lances, sabres and firearms.
+
+However, as the army took shape, French officers were allocated to units as they presented themselves for duty, so that many units were commanded by officers the soldiers did not know, and often did not trust. Crucially, some of these officers had little experience in working together as a unified force, so that support for other units was often not given.
+
+The French army was forced to march through rain and black coal-dust mud to reach Waterloo, and then to contend with mud and rain as it slept in the open. Little food was available for the soldiers, but nevertheless the veteran French soldiers were fiercely loyal to Napoleon.
+
+Wellington later said that he had "an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced Staff". His troops consisted of 67,000 men: 50,000 infantry, 11,000 cavalry, and 6,000 artillery with 150 guns. Of these, 24,000 were British, with another 6,000 from the King's German Legion (KGL). All of the British Army troops were regular soldiers and the majority of them had served in the Peninsula. Of the 23 British regiments in action, only 4 (the 14th, 33rd, 69th, and 73rd Foot) had not served in the Peninsula, and a similar level of experience was to be found in the British cavalry and artillery. In addition, there were 17,000 Dutch and Belgian troops, 11,000 from Hanover, 6,000 from Brunswick, and 3,000 from Nassau.
+
+Many of the troops in the Coalition armies were inexperienced. The Dutch army had been re-established in 1815, following the earlier defeat of Napoleon. With the exception of the British and some from Hanover and Brunswick who had fought with the British army in Spain, many of the professional soldiers in the Coalition armies had spent some of their time in the French army or in armies allied to the Napoleonic regime. The historian Alessandro Barbero states that in this heterogeneous army the difference between British and foreign troops did not prove significant under fire.
+
+Wellington was also acutely short of heavy cavalry, having only seven British and three Dutch regiments. The Duke of York imposed many of his staff officers on Wellington, including his second-in-command the Earl of Uxbridge. Uxbridge commanded the cavalry and had carte blanche from Wellington to commit these forces at his discretion. Wellington stationed a further 17,000 troops at Halle,  away to the west. They were mostly composed of Dutch troops under the Prince of Orange's younger brother Prince Frederick of the Netherlands. They were placed as a guard against any possible wide flanking movement by the French forces, and also to act as a rearguard if Wellington was forced to retreat towards Antwerp and the coast.
+
+The Prussian army was in the throes of reorganisation. In 1815, the former Reserve regiments, Legions, and Freikorps volunteer formations from the wars of 1813–1814 were in the process of being absorbed into the line, along with many Landwehr (militia) regiments. The Landwehr were mostly untrained and unequipped when they arrived in Belgium. The Prussian cavalry were in a similar state. Its artillery was also reorganising and did not give its best performance—guns and equipment continued to arrive during and after the battle.
+
+Offsetting these handicaps, the Prussian Army had excellent and professional leadership in its General Staff organisation. These officers came from four schools developed for this purpose and thus worked to a common standard of training. This system was in marked contrast to the conflicting, vague orders issued by the French army. This staff system ensured that before Ligny, three-quarters of the Prussian army concentrated for battle with 24 hours' notice.
+
+After Ligny, the Prussian army, although defeated, was able to realign its supply train, reorganise itself, and intervene decisively on the Waterloo battlefield within 48 hours. Two-and-a-half Prussian army corps, or 48,000 men, were engaged at Waterloo; two brigades under Bülow, commander of IV Corps, attacked Lobau at 16:30, while Zieten's I Corps and parts of Pirch I's II Corps engaged at about 18:00.
+
+Battlefield
+
+The Waterloo position chosen by Wellington was a strong one. It consisted of a long ridge running east–west, perpendicular to, and bisected by, the main road to Brussels. Along the crest of the ridge ran the Ohain road, a deep sunken lane. Near the crossroads with the Brussels road was a large elm tree that was roughly in the centre of Wellington's position and served as his command post for much of the day. Wellington deployed his infantry in a line just behind the crest of the ridge following the Ohain road.
+
+Using the reverse slope, as he had many times previously, Wellington concealed his strength from the French, with the exception of his skirmishers and artillery. The length of front of the battlefield was also relatively short at . This allowed Wellington to draw up his forces in depth, which he did in the centre and on the right, all the way towards the village of Braine-l'Alleud, in the expectation that the Prussians would reinforce his left during the day.
+
+In front of the ridge, there were three positions that could be fortified. On the extreme right were the château, garden, and orchard of Hougoumont. This was a large and well-built country house, initially hidden in trees. The house faced north along a sunken, covered lane (usually described by the British as "the hollow-way") along which it could be supplied. On the extreme left was the hamlet of Papelotte.
+
+Both Hougoumont and Papelotte were fortified and garrisoned, and thus anchored Wellington's flanks securely. Papelotte also commanded the road to Wavre that the Prussians would use to send reinforcements to Wellington's position. On the western side of the main road, and in front of the rest of Wellington's line, was the farmhouse and orchard of La Haye Sainte, which was garrisoned with 400 light infantry of the King's German Legion. On the opposite side of the road was a disused sand quarry, where the 95th Rifles were posted as sharpshooters.
+
+Wellington's forces positioning presented a formidable challenge to any attacking force. Any attempt to turn Wellington's right would entail taking the entrenched Hougoumont position. Any attack on his right centre would mean the attackers would have to march between enfilading fire from Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. On the left, any attack would also be enfiladed by fire from La Haye Sainte and its adjoining sandpit, and any attempt at turning the left flank would entail fighting through the lanes and hedgerows surrounding Papelotte and the other garrisoned buildings on that flank, and some very wet ground in the Smohain defile.
+
+The French army formed on the slopes of another ridge to the south. Napoleon could not see Wellington's positions, so he drew his forces up symmetrically about the Brussels road. On the right was I Corps under d'Erlon with 16,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, plus a cavalry reserve of 4,700. On the left was II Corps under Reille with 13,000 infantry, and 1,300 cavalry, and a cavalry reserve of 4,600. In the centre about the road south of the inn La Belle Alliance were a reserve including Lobau's VI Corps with 6,000 men, the 13,000 infantry of the Imperial Guard, and a cavalry reserve of 2,000.
+
+In the right rear of the French position was the substantial village of Plancenoit, and at the extreme right, the Bois de Paris wood. Napoleon initially commanded the battle from Rossomme farm, where he could see the entire battlefield, but moved to a position near La Belle Alliance early in the afternoon. Command on the battlefield (which was largely hidden from his view) was delegated to Ney.
+
+Battle
+
+Preparation
+
+Wellington rose at around 02:00 or 03:00 on 18 June, and wrote letters until dawn. He had earlier written to Blücher confirming that he would give battle at Mont-Saint-Jean if Blücher could provide him with at least one corps; otherwise he would retreat towards Brussels. At a late-night council, Blücher's chief of staff, August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, had been distrustful of Wellington's strategy, but Blücher persuaded him that they should march to join Wellington's army. In the morning Wellington duly received a reply from Blücher, promising to support him with three corps.
+
+From 06:00 Wellington was in the field supervising the deployment of his forces. At Wavre, the Prussian IV Corps under Bülow was designated to lead the march to Waterloo as it was in the best shape, not having been involved in the Battle of Ligny. Although they had not taken casualties, IV Corps had been marching for two days, covering the retreat of the three other corps of the Prussian army from the battlefield of Ligny. They had been posted farthest away from the battlefield, and progress was very slow.
+
+The roads were in poor condition after the night's heavy rain, and Bülow's men had to pass through the congested streets of Wavre and move 88 artillery pieces. Matters were not helped when a fire broke out in Wavre, blocking several streets along Bülow's intended route. As a result, the last part of the corps left at 10:00, six hours after the leading elements had moved out towards Waterloo. Bülow's men were followed to Waterloo first by I Corps and then by II Corps.
+
+Napoleon breakfasted off silver plate at Le Caillou, the house where he had spent the night. When Soult suggested that Grouchy should be recalled to join the main force, Napoleon said, "Just because you have all been beaten by Wellington, you think he's a good general. I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad troops, and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast".
+
+Napoleon's seemingly dismissive remark may have been strategic, given his maxim "in war, morale is everything". He had acted similarly in the past, and on the morning of the battle of Waterloo may have been responding to the pessimism and objections of his chief of staff and senior generals.
+
+Later on, being told by his brother, Jerome, of some gossip overheard by a waiter between British officers at lunch at the 'King of Spain' inn in Genappe that the Prussians were to march over from Wavre, Napoleon declared that the Prussians would need at least two days to recover and would be dealt with by Grouchy. Surprisingly, Jerome's overheard gossip aside, the French commanders present at the pre-battle conference at Le Caillou had no information about the alarming proximity of the Prussians and did not suspect that Blücher's men would start erupting onto the field of battle in great numbers just five hours later.
+
+Napoleon had delayed the start of the battle owing to the sodden ground, which would have made manoeuvring cavalry and artillery difficult. In addition, many of his forces had bivouacked well to the south of La Belle Alliance. At 10:00, in response to a dispatch he had received from Grouchy six hours earlier, he sent a reply telling Grouchy to "head for Wavre [to Grouchy's north] in order to draw near to us [to the west of Grouchy]" and then "push before him" the Prussians to arrive at Waterloo "as soon as possible".
+
+At 11:00, Napoleon drafted his general order: Reille's Corps on the left and d'Erlon's Corps to the right were to attack the village of Mont-Saint-Jean and keep abreast of one another. This order assumed Wellington's battle-line was in the village, rather than at the more forward position on the ridge. To enable this, Jerome's division would make an initial attack on Hougoumont, which Napoleon expected would draw in Wellington's reserves, since its loss would threaten his communications with the sea. A grande batterie of the reserve artillery of I, II, and VI Corps was to then bombard the centre of Wellington's position from about 13:00. D'Erlon's corps would then attack Wellington's left, break through, and roll up his line from east to west. In his memoirs, Napoleon wrote that his intention was to separate Wellington's army from the Prussians and drive it back towards the sea.
+
+Hougoumont
+
+Historian Andrew Roberts notes that "It is a curious fact about the Battle of Waterloo that no one is absolutely certain when it actually began". Wellington recorded in his dispatches that at "about ten o'clock [Napoleon] commenced a furious attack upon our post at Hougoumont". Other sources state that the attack began around 11:30. The house and its immediate environs were defended by four light companies of Guards, and the wood and park by Hanoverian Jäger and the 1/2nd Nassau.
+
+The initial attack by Bauduin's brigade emptied the wood and park, but was driven back by heavy British artillery fire, and cost Bauduin his life. As the British guns were distracted by a duel with French artillery, a second attack by Soye's brigade and what had been Bauduin's succeeded in reaching the north gate of the house. Sous-Lieutenant Legros, a French officer, broke the gate open with an axe, and some French troops managed to enter the courtyard. The Coldstream Guards and the Scots Guards arrived to support the defence. There was a fierce melee, and the British managed to close the gate on the French troops streaming in. The Frenchmen trapped in the courtyard were all killed. Only a young drummer boy was spared.
+
+Fighting continued around Hougoumont all afternoon. Its surroundings were heavily invested by French light infantry, and coordinated attacks were made against the troops behind Hougoumont. Wellington's army defended the house and the hollow way running north from it. In the afternoon, Napoleon personally ordered the house to be shelled to set it on fire, resulting in the destruction of all but the chapel. Du Plat's brigade of the King's German Legion was brought forward to defend the hollow way, which they had to do without senior officers. Eventually they were relieved by the 71st Highlanders, a British infantry regiment. Adam's brigade was further reinforced by Hugh Halkett's 3rd Hanoverian Brigade, and successfully repulsed further infantry and cavalry attacks sent by Reille. Hougoumont held out until the end of the battle.
+
+The fighting at Hougoumont has often been characterised as a diversionary attack to draw in Wellington's reserves which escalated into an all-day battle and drew in French reserves instead. In fact there is a good case to believe that both Napoleon and Wellington thought that holding Hougoumont was key to winning the battle. Hougoumont was a part of the battlefield that Napoleon could see clearly, and he continued to direct resources towards it and its surroundings all afternoon (33 battalions in all, 14,000 troops). Similarly, though the house never contained a large number of troops, Wellington devoted 21 battalions (12,000 troops) over the course of the afternoon in keeping the hollow way open to allow fresh troops and ammunition to reach the buildings. He moved several artillery batteries from his hard-pressed centre to support Hougoumont, and later stated that "the success of the battle turned upon closing the gates at Hougoumont". Much like the fight for Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg in the US Civil War some fifty years later, the struggle for Hougoumont became the key battle within the battle. Hougoumont proved to be decisive terrain.
+
+The Grand Battery starts its bombardment
+
+The 80 guns of Napoleon's grande batterie drew up in the centre. These opened fire at 11:50, according to Lord Hill (commander of the Anglo-allied II Corps), while other sources put the time between noon and 13:30. The grande batterie was too far back to aim accurately, and the only other troops they could see were skirmishers of the regiments of Kempt and Pack, and Perponcher's 2nd Dutch division (the others were employing Wellington's characteristic "reverse slope defence").
+
+The bombardment caused a large number of casualties. Although some projectiles buried themselves in the soft soil, most found their marks on the reverse slope of the ridge. The bombardment forced the cavalry of the Union Brigade (in third line) to move to its left, to reduce their casualty rate.
+
+Napoleon spots the Prussians
+At about 13:15, Napoleon saw the first columns of Prussians around the village of Lasne-Chapelle-Saint-Lambert,  away from his right flank—about three hours march for an army. Napoleon's reaction was to have Marshal Soult send a message to Grouchy telling him to come towards the battlefield and attack the arriving Prussians. Grouchy, however, had been executing Napoleon's previous orders to follow the Prussians "with your sword against his back" towards Wavre, and was by then too far away to reach Waterloo.
+
+Grouchy was advised by his subordinate, Gérard, to "march to the sound of the guns", but stuck to his orders and engaged the Prussian III Corps rear guard under the command of Lieutenant-General Baron von Thielmann at the Battle of Wavre. Moreover, Soult's letter ordering Grouchy to move quickly to join Napoleon and attack Bülow would not actually reach Grouchy until after 20:00.
+
+First French infantry attack
+A little after 13:00, I Corps' attack began in large columns. Bernard Cornwell writes "[column] suggests an elongated formation with its narrow end aimed like a spear at the enemy line, while in truth it was much more like a brick advancing sideways and d'Erlon's assault was made up of four such bricks, each one a division of French infantry". Each division, with one exception, was drawn up in huge masses, consisting of the eight or nine battalions of which they were formed, deployed, and placed in a column one behind the other, with only five paces interval between the battalions.
+
+The one exception was the 1st Division (Commanded by Quiot, the leader of the 1st Brigade). Its two brigades were formed in a similar manner, but side by side instead of behind one another. This was done because, being on the left of the four divisions, it was ordered to send one (Quiot's brigade) against the south and west of La Haye Sainte, while the other (Bourgeois') was to attack the eastern side of the same post.
+
+The divisions were to advance in echelon from the left at a distance of 400 paces apart—the 2nd Division (Donzelot's) on the right of Bourgeois' brigade, the 3rd Division (Marcognet's) next, and the 4th Division (Durutte's) on the right. They were led by Ney to the assault, each column having a front of about a hundred and sixty to two hundred files.
+
+The leftmost division advanced on the walled farmhouse compound La Haye Sainte. The farmhouse was defended by the King's German Legion. While one French battalion engaged the defenders from the front, the following battalions fanned out to either side and, with the support of several squadrons of cuirassiers, succeeded in isolating the farmhouse. The King's German Legion resolutely defended the farmhouse. Each time the French tried to scale the walls the outnumbered Germans somehow held them off. The Prince of Orange saw that La Haye Sainte had been cut off and tried to reinforce it by sending forward the Hanoverian Lüneburg Battalion in line. Cuirassiers concealed in a fold in the ground caught and destroyed it in minutes and then rode on past La Haye Sainte, almost to the crest of the ridge, where they covered d'Erlon's left flank as his attack developed.
+
+At about 13:30, d'Erlon started to advance his three other divisions, some 14,000 men over a front of about , against Wellington's left wing. At the point they aimed for they faced 6,000 men: the first line consisted of the 1st brigade ("Van Bylandt's brigade") of the 2nd Netherlands division, flanked by the British brigades of Kempt and Pack on either side. The second line consisted of British and Hanoverian troops under Sir Thomas Picton, who were lying down in dead ground behind the ridge. All had suffered badly at Quatre Bras. In addition, the Bylandt brigade had been ordered to deploy its skirmishers in the hollow road and on the forward slope. The rest of the brigade was lying down just behind the road.
+
+At the moment these skirmishers were rejoining their parent battalions, the brigade was ordered to its feet and started to return fire. On the left of the brigade, where the 7th Dutch Militia stood, a "few files were shot down and an opening in the line thus occurred". The battalion had no reserves and was unable to close the gap. D'Erlon's troops pushed through this gap in the line and the remaining battalions in the Bylandt brigade (8th Dutch Militia and Belgian 7th Line Battalion) were forced to retreat to the square of the 5th Dutch Militia, which was in reserve between Picton's troops, about 100 paces to the rear. There they regrouped under the command of Colonel Van Zuylen van Nijevelt. A moment later the Prince of Orange ordered a counterattack, which actually occurred around 10 minutes later. Bylandt was wounded and retired off the field, passing command of the brigade to Lt. Kol. De Jongh.
+
+D'Erlon's men ascended the slope and advanced on the sunken road, Chemin d'Ohain, that ran from behind La Haye Sainte and continued east. It was lined on both sides by thick hedges, with Bylandt's brigade just across the road while the British brigades had been lying down some 100 yards back from the road, Pack's to Bylandt's left and Kempt's to Bylandt's right. Kempt's 1,900 men were engaged by Bourgeois' brigade of 1,900 men of Quiot's division. In the centre, Donzelot's division had pushed back Bylandt's brigade.
+
+On the right of the French advance was Marcognet's division led by Grenier's brigade consisting of the 45e Régiment de Ligne and followed by the 25e Régiment de Ligne, somewhat less than 2,000 men, and behind them, Nogue's brigade of the 21e and 45e regiments. Opposing them on the other side of the road was Pack's 9th Brigade consisting of the 44th Foot and three Scottish regiments: the Royal Scots, the 42nd Black Watch, and the 92nd Gordons, totalling something over 2,000 men. A very even fight between British and French infantry was about to occur.
+
+The French advance drove in the British skirmishers and reached the sunken road. As they did so, Pack's men stood up, formed into a four deep line formation for fear of the French cavalry, advanced, and opened fire. However, a firefight had been anticipated and the French infantry had accordingly advanced in more linear formation. Now, fully deployed into line, they returned fire and successfully pressed the British troops; although the attack faltered at the centre, the line in front of d'Erlon's right started to crumble. Picton was killed shortly after ordering the counter-attack and the British and Hanoverian troops also began to give way under the pressure of numbers.
+
+Pack's regiments, all four ranks deep, advanced to attack the French in the road but faltered and began to fire on the French instead of charging. The 42nd Black Watch halted at the hedge and the resulting fire-fight drove back the British 92nd Foot while the leading French 45e Ligne burst through the hedge cheering. Along the sunken road, the French were forcing the Anglo-allies back, the British line was dispersing, and at two o'clock in the afternoon Napoleon was winning the Battle of Waterloo.
+
+Reports from Baron von Müffling, the Prussian liaison officer attached to Wellington's army, relate that: "After 3 o'clock the Duke's situation became critical, unless the succour of the Prussian army arrived soon".
+
+Charge of the British heavy cavalry
+
+At this crucial juncture, Uxbridge ordered his two brigades of British heavy cavalry—formed unseen behind the ridge—to charge in support of the hard-pressed infantry. The 1st Brigade, known as the Household Brigade, commanded by Major-General Lord Edward Somerset, consisted of guards regiments: the 1st and 2nd Life Guards, the Royal Horse Guards (the Blues), and the 1st (King's) Dragoon Guards. The 2nd Brigade, also known as the Union Brigade, commanded by Major-General Sir William Ponsonby, was so called as it consisted of an English (the 1st or The Royals), a Scottish (2nd Scots Greys), and an Irish (6th or Inniskilling) regiment of heavy dragoons.
+
+More than 20 years of warfare had eroded the numbers of suitable cavalry mounts available on the European continent; this resulted in the British heavy cavalry entering the 1815 campaign with the finest horses of any contemporary cavalry arm. British cavalry troopers also received excellent mounted swordsmanship training. They were, however, inferior to the French in manoeuvring in large formations, were cavalier in attitude, and, unlike the infantry, some units had scant experience of warfare.
+
+The Scots Greys, for example, had not been in action since 1795. According to Wellington, though they were superior individual horsemen, they were inflexible and lacked tactical ability. "I considered one squadron a match for two French, I didn't like to see four British opposed to four French: and as the numbers increased and order, of course, became more necessary I was the more unwilling to risk our men without having a superiority in numbers."
+
+The two brigades had a combined field strength of about 2,000 (2,651 official strength); they charged with the 47-year-old Uxbridge leading them and a very inadequate number of squadrons held in reserve. There is evidence that Uxbridge gave an order, the morning of the battle, to all cavalry brigade commanders to commit their commands on their own initiative, as direct orders from himself might not always be forthcoming, and to "support movements to their front". It appears that Uxbridge expected the brigades of Sir John Ormsby Vandeleur, Hussey Vivian, and the Dutch cavalry to provide support to the British heavies. Uxbridge later regretted leading the charge in person, saying "I committed a great mistake", when he should have been organising an adequate reserve to move forward in support.
+
+The Household Brigade crossed the crest of the Anglo-allied position and charged downhill. The cuirassiers guarding d'Erlon's left flank were still dispersed, and so were swept over the deeply sunken main road and then routed.
+
+Sir Walter Scott, in Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk, described the following scene:Sir John Elley, who led the charge of the heavy brigade, was [...] at one time surrounded by several of the cuirassiers; but, being a tall and uncommonly powerful man, completely master of his sword and horse, he cut his way out, leaving several of his assailants on the ground, marked with wounds, indicating the unusual strength of the arm which inflicted them. Indeed, had not the ghastly evidence remained on the field, many of the blows dealt upon this occasion would have seemed borrowed from the annals of knight-errantry [...]Continuing their attack, the squadrons on the left of the Household Brigade then destroyed Aulard's brigade. Despite attempts to recall them, they continued past La Haye Sainte and found themselves at the bottom of the hill on blown horses facing Schmitz's brigade formed in squares.
+
+To their left, the Union Brigade suddenly swept through the infantry lines, giving rise to the legend that some of the 92nd Gordon Highland Regiment clung onto their stirrups and accompanied them into the charge. From the centre leftwards, the Royal Dragoons destroyed Bourgeois' brigade, capturing the eagle of the 105e Ligne. The Inniskillings routed the other brigade of Quoit's division, and the Scots Greys came upon the lead French regiment, 45e Ligne, as it was still reforming after having crossed the sunken road and broken through the hedge row in pursuit of the British infantry. The Greys captured the eagle of the 45e Ligne and overwhelmed Grenier's brigade. These would be the only two French eagles captured by the British during the battle. On Wellington's extreme left, Durutte's division had time to form squares and fend off groups of Greys.
+
+As with the Household Cavalry, the officers of the Royals and Inniskillings found it very difficult to rein back their troops, who lost all cohesion. Having taken casualties, and still trying to reorder themselves, the Scots Greys and the rest of the Union Brigade found themselves before the main French lines. Their horses were blown, and they were still in disorder without any idea of what their next collective objective was. Some attacked nearby gun batteries of the Grande Battery. Although the Greys had neither the time nor means to disable the cannon or carry them off, they put very many out of action as the gun crews were killed or fled the battlefield. Sergeant Major Dickinson of the Greys stated that his regiment was rallied before going on to attack the French artillery: Hamilton, the regimental commander, rather than holding them back cried out to his men "Charge, charge the guns!"
+
+Napoleon promptly responded by ordering a counter-attack by the cuirassier brigades of Farine and Travers and Jaquinot's two Chevau-léger (lancer) regiments in the I Corps light cavalry division. Disorganized and milling about the bottom of the valley between Hougoumont and La Belle Alliance, the Scots Greys and the rest of the British heavy cavalry were taken by surprise by the countercharge of Milhaud's cuirassiers, joined by lancers from Baron Jaquinot's 1st Cavalry Division.
+
+As Ponsonby tried to rally his men against the French cuirassers, he was attacked by Jaquinot's lancers and captured. A nearby party of Scots Greys saw the capture and attempted to rescue their brigade commander. The French lancer who had captured Ponsonby killed him and then used his lance to kill three of the Scots Greys who had attempted the rescue.
+
+By the time Ponsonby died, the momentum had entirely returned in favour of the French. Milhaud's and Jaquinot's cavalrymen drove the Union Brigade from the valley. The result was very heavy losses for the British cavalry. A countercharge, by British light dragoons under Major-General Vandeleur and Dutch–Belgian light dragoons and hussars under Major-General Ghigny on the left wing, and Dutch–Belgian carabiniers under Major-General Trip in the centre, repelled the French cavalry.
+
+All figures quoted for the losses of the cavalry brigades as a result of this charge are estimates, as casualties were only noted down after the day of the battle and were for the battle as a whole. Some historians, Barbero for example, believe the official rolls tend to overestimate the number of cavalrymen present in their squadrons on the field of battle and that the proportionate losses were, as a result, considerably higher than the numbers on paper might suggest.
+
+The Union Brigade lost heavily in both officers and men killed (including its commander, William Ponsonby, and Colonel Hamilton of the Scots Greys) and wounded. The 2nd Life Guards and the King's Dragoon Guards of the Household Brigade also lost heavily (with Colonel Fuller, commander of the King's DG, killed). However, the 1st Life Guards, on the extreme right of the charge, and the Blues, who formed a reserve, had kept their cohesion and consequently suffered significantly fewer casualties. On the rolls the official, or paper strength, for both Brigades is given as 2,651 while Barbero and others estimate the actual strength at around 2,000 and the official recorded losses for the two heavy cavalry brigades during the battle was 1,205 troopers and 1,303 horses.
+
+Some historians, such as Chandler, Weller, Uffindell, and Corum, assert that the British heavy cavalry were destroyed as a viable force following their first, epic charge. Barbero states that the Scots Greys were practically wiped out and that the other two regiments of the Union Brigade suffered comparable losses. Other historians, such as Clark-Kennedy and Wood, citing British eyewitness accounts, describe the continuing role of the heavy cavalry after their charge. The heavy brigades, far from being ineffective, continued to provide valuable services. They countercharged French cavalry numerous times (both brigades), halted a combined cavalry and infantry attack (Household Brigade only), were used to bolster the morale of those units in their vicinity at times of crisis, and filled gaps in the Anglo-allied line caused by high casualties in infantry formations (both brigades).
+
+This service was rendered at a very high cost, as close combat with French cavalry, carbine fire, infantry musketry, and—more deadly than all of these—artillery fire steadily eroded the number of effectives in the two brigades. At 6 o'clock in the afternoon the whole Union Brigade could field only three squadrons, though these countercharged French cavalry, losing half their number in the process. At the end of the fighting, the two brigades, by this time combined, could muster one squadron.
+
+Fourteen thousand French troops of d'Erlon's I Corps had been committed to this attack. The I Corps had been driven in rout back across the valley, costing Napoleon 3,000 casualties including over 2,000 prisoners taken. Also some valuable time was lost, as the charge had dispersed numerous units and it would take until 16:00 for d'Erlon's shaken corps to reform. And although elements of the Prussians now began to appear on the field to his right, Napoleon had already ordered Lobau's VI corps to move to the right flank to hold them back before d'Erlon's attack began.
+
+The French cavalry attack
+
+A little before 16:00, Ney noted an apparent exodus from Wellington's centre. He mistook the movement of casualties to the rear for the beginnings of a retreat, and sought to exploit it. Following the defeat of d'Erlon's Corps, Ney had few infantry reserves left, as most of the infantry had been committed either to the futile Hougoumont attack or to the defence of the French right. Ney therefore tried to break Wellington's centre with cavalry alone. Initially, Milhaud's reserve cavalry corps of cuirassiers and Lefebvre-Desnoëttes' light cavalry division of the Imperial Guard, some 4,800 sabres, were committed. When these were repulsed, Kellermann's heavy cavalry corps and Guyot's heavy cavalry of the Guard were added to the massed assault, a total of around 9,000 cavalry in 67 squadrons. When Napoleon saw the charge he said it was an hour too soon.
+
+Wellington's infantry responded by forming squares (hollow box-formations four ranks deep). Squares were much smaller than usually depicted in paintings of the battle—a 500-man battalion square would have been no more than  in length on a side. Infantry squares that stood their ground were deadly to cavalry, as cavalry could not engage with soldiers behind a hedge of bayonets, but were themselves vulnerable to fire from the squares. Horses would not charge a square, nor could they be outflanked, but they were vulnerable to artillery or infantry. Wellington ordered his artillery crews to take shelter within the squares as the cavalry approached, and to return to their guns and resume fire as they retreated.
+
+Witnesses in the British infantry recorded as many as 12 assaults, though this probably includes successive waves of the same general attack; the number of general assaults was undoubtedly far fewer. Kellermann, recognising the futility of the attacks, tried to reserve the elite carabinier brigade from joining in, but eventually Ney spotted them and insisted on their involvement.
+
+A British eyewitness of the first French cavalry attack, an officer in the Foot Guards, recorded his impressions very lucidly and somewhat poetically:
+
+In essence this type of massed cavalry attack relied almost entirely on psychological shock for effect. Close artillery support could disrupt infantry squares and allow cavalry to penetrate; at Waterloo, however, co-operation between the French cavalry and artillery was not impressive. The French artillery did not get close enough to the Anglo-allied infantry in sufficient numbers to be decisive. Artillery fire between charges did produce mounting casualties, but most of this fire was at relatively long range and was often indirect, at targets beyond the ridge.
+
+If infantry being attacked held firm in their square defensive formations, and were not panicked, cavalry on their own could do very little damage to them. The French cavalry attacks were repeatedly repelled by the steadfast infantry squares, the harrying fire of British artillery as the French cavalry recoiled down the slopes to regroup, and the decisive countercharges of Wellington's light cavalry regiments, the Dutch heavy cavalry brigade, and the remaining effectives of the Household Cavalry.
+
+At least one artillery officer disobeyed Wellington's order to seek shelter in the adjacent squares during the charges. Captain Mercer, who commanded 'G' Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, thought the Brunswick troops on either side of him so shaky that he kept his battery of six nine-pounders in action against the cavalry throughout, to great effect.
+
+For reasons that remain unclear, no attempt was made to spike other Anglo-allied guns while they were in French possession. In line with Wellington's orders, gunners were able to return to their pieces and fire into the French cavalry as they withdrew after each attack. After numerous costly but fruitless attacks on the Mont-Saint-Jean ridge, the French cavalry was spent.
+
+Their casualties cannot easily be estimated. Senior French cavalry officers, in particular the generals, experienced heavy losses. Four divisional commanders were wounded, nine brigadiers wounded, and one killed—testament to their courage and their habit of leading from the front. Illustratively, Houssaye reports that the Grenadiers à Cheval numbered 796 of all ranks on 15 June, but just 462 on 19 June, while the Empress Dragoons lost 416 of 816 over the same period. Overall, Guyot's Guard heavy cavalry division lost 47% of its strength.
+
+Second French infantry attack
+
+Eventually it became obvious, even to Ney, that cavalry alone were achieving little. Belatedly, he organised a combined-arms attack, using Bachelu's division and Tissot's regiment of Foy's division from Reille's II Corps (about 6,500 infantrymen) plus those French cavalry that remained in a fit state to fight. This assault was directed along much the same route as the previous heavy cavalry attacks (between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte). It was halted by a charge of the Household Brigade cavalry led by Uxbridge. The British cavalry were unable, however, to break the French infantry, and fell back with losses from musketry fire.
+
+Uxbridge recorded that he tried to lead the Dutch Carabiniers, under Major-General Trip, to renew the attack and that they refused to follow him. Other members of the British cavalry staff also commented on this occurrence. However, there is no support for this incident in Dutch or Belgian sources, and Wellington wrote in his Dispatch to Secretary for War Bathurst on 19 June 1815 that General Trip had "conducted himself much to my satisfaction". Uxbridge then ordered a charge by three squadrons of the 3rd Hussars of the King's German Legion. They broke through the French cavalry, but became hemmed in, were cut off and suffered severe losses. Meanwhile, Bachelu's and Tissot's men and their cavalry supports were being hard hit by fire from artillery and from Adam's infantry brigade, and they eventually fell back.
+
+Although the French cavalry caused few direct casualties to Wellington's centre, artillery fire onto his infantry squares caused many. Wellington's cavalry, except for Sir John Vandeleur's and Sir Hussey Vivian's brigades on the far left, had all been committed to the fight, and had taken significant losses. The situation appeared so desperate that the Cumberland Hussars, the only Hanoverian cavalry regiment present, fled the field spreading alarm all the way to Brussels.
+
+French capture of La Haye Sainte
+
+At approximately the same time as Ney's combined-arms assault on the centre-right of Wellington's line, rallied elements of D'Erlon's I Corps, spearheaded by the 13th Légère, renewed the attack on La Haye Sainte and this time were successful, partly because the King's German Legion's ammunition ran out. However, the Germans had held the centre of the battlefield for almost the entire day, and this had stalled the French advance.
+
+With La Haye Sainte captured, Ney then moved skirmishers and horse artillery up towards Wellington's centre. French artillery began to pulverise the infantry squares at short range with canister. The 30th and 73rd Regiments suffered such heavy losses that they had to combine to form a viable square.
+
+The success Napoleon needed to continue his offensive had occurred. Ney was on the verge of breaking the Anglo-allied centre.
+
+Along with this artillery fire a multitude of French tirailleurs occupied the dominant positions behind La Haye Sainte and poured an effective fire into the squares. The situation for the Anglo-allies was now so dire that the 33rd Regiment's colours and all of Halkett's brigade's colours were sent to the rear for safety, described by historian Alessandro Barbero as, "... a measure that was without precedent".
+
+Wellington, noticing the slackening of fire from La Haye Sainte, with his staff rode closer to it. French skirmishers appeared around the building and fired on the British command as it struggled to get away through the hedgerow along the road. The Prince of Orange then ordered a single battalion of the KGL, the Fifth, to recapture the farm despite the obvious presence of enemy cavalry. Their Colonel, Christian Friedrich Wilhelm von Ompteda obeyed and led the battalion down the slope, chasing off some French skirmishers until French cuirassiers fell on his open flank, killed him, destroyed his battalion and took its colour.
+
+A Dutch–Belgian cavalry regiment ordered to charge retreated from the field instead, fired on by their own infantry. Merlen's Light Cavalry Brigade charged the French artillery taking position near La Haye Sainte but were shot to pieces and the brigade fell apart. The Netherlands Cavalry Division, Wellington's last cavalry reserve behind the centre having lost half their strength was now useless and the French cavalry, despite its losses, were masters of the field, compelling the Anglo-allied infantry to remain in square. More and more French artillery was brought forward.
+
+A French battery advanced to within 300 yards of the 1/1st Nassau square causing heavy casualties. When the Nassauers attempted to attack the battery they were ridden down by a squadron of cuirassiers. Yet another battery deployed on the flank of Mercer's battery and shot up its horses and limbers and pushed Mercer back. Mercer later recalled, 
+
+French tirailleurs occupied the dominant positions, especially one on a knoll overlooking the square of the 27th. Unable to break square to drive off the French infantry because of the presence of French cavalry and artillery, the 27th had to remain in that formation and endure the fire of the tirailleurs. That fire nearly annihilated the 27th Foot, the Inniskillings, who lost two thirds of their strength within that three or four hours.
+
+During this time many of Wellington's generals and aides were killed or wounded including FitzRoy Somerset, Canning, de Lancey, Alten and Cooke. The situation was now critical and Wellington, trapped in an infantry square and ignorant of events beyond it, was desperate for the arrival of help from the Prussians. He later wrote,
+
+Arrival of the Prussian IV Corps: Plancenoit
+
+The Prussian IV Corps (Bülow's) was the first to arrive in strength. Bülow's objective was Plancenoit, which the Prussians intended to use as a springboard into the rear of the French positions. Blücher intended to secure his right upon the Châteaux Frichermont using the Bois de Paris road. Blücher and Wellington had been exchanging communications since 10:00 and had agreed to this advance on Frichermont if Wellington's centre was under attack. General Bülow noted that the way to Plancenoit lay open and that the time was 16:30.
+
+At about this time, the Prussian 15th Brigade () was sent to link up with the Nassauers of Wellington's left flank in the Frichermont-La Haie area, with the brigade's horse artillery battery and additional brigade artillery deployed to its left in support. Napoleon sent Lobau's corps to stop the rest of Bülow's IV Corps proceeding to Plancenoit. The 15th Brigade threw Lobau's troops out of Frichermont with a determined bayonet charge, then proceeded up the Frichermont heights, battering French Chasseurs with 12-pounder artillery fire, and pushed on to Plancenoit. This sent Lobau's corps into retreat to the Plancenoit area, driving Lobau past the rear of the Armee Du Nords right flank and directly threatening its only line of retreat. Hiller's 16th Brigade also pushed forward with six battalions against Plancenoit.
+
+Napoleon had dispatched all eight battalions of the Young Guard to reinforce Lobau, who was now seriously pressed. The Young Guard counter-attacked and, after very hard fighting, secured Plancenoit, but were themselves counter-attacked and driven out. Napoleon sent two battalions of the Middle/Old Guard into Plancenoit and after ferocious bayonet fighting—they did not deign to fire their muskets—this force recaptured the village.
+
+Zieten's flank march
+
+Throughout the late afternoon, the Prussian I Corps (Zieten's) had been arriving in greater strength in the area just north of La Haie. General Müffling, the Prussian liaison to Wellington, rode to meet Zieten.
+
+Zieten had by this time brought up the Prussian 1st Brigade (Steinmetz's), but had become concerned at the sight of stragglers and casualties from the Nassau units on Wellington's left and from the Prussian 15th Brigade (Laurens'). These troops appeared to be withdrawing and Zieten, fearing that his own troops would be caught up in a general retreat, was starting to move away from Wellington's flank and towards the Prussian main body near Plancenoit. Zieten had also received a direct order from Blücher to support Bülow, which Zieten obeyed, starting to march to Bülow's aid.
+
+Müffling saw this movement away and persuaded Zieten to support Wellington's left flank. Müffling warned Zieten that "The battle is lost if the corps does not keep on the move and immediately support the English army." Zieten resumed his march to support Wellington directly, and the arrival of his troops allowed Wellington to reinforce his crumbling centre by moving cavalry from his left.
+
+The French were expecting Grouchy to march to their support from Wavre, and when Prussian I Corps (Zieten's) appeared at Waterloo instead of Grouchy, "the shock of disillusionment shattered French morale" and "the sight of Zieten's arrival caused turmoil to rage in Napoleon's army". I Corps proceeded to attack the French troops before Papelotte and by 19:30 the French position was bent into a rough horseshoe shape. The ends of the line were now based on Hougoumont on the left, Plancenoit on the right, and the centre on La Haie.
+
+Durutte had taken the positions of La Haie and Papelotte in a series of attacks, but now retreated behind Smohain without opposing the Prussian 24th Regiment (Laurens') as it retook both. The 24th advanced against the new French position, was repulsed, and returned to the attack supported by Silesian Schützen (riflemen) and the F/1st Landwehr. The French initially fell back before the renewed assault, but now began seriously to contest ground, attempting to regain Smohain and hold on to the ridgeline and the last few houses of Papelotte.
+
+The Prussian 24th Regiment linked up with a Highlander battalion on its far right and along with the 13th Landwehr Regiment and cavalry support threw the French out of these positions. Further attacks by the 13th Landwehr and the 15th Brigade drove the French from Frichermont. Durutte's division, finding itself about to be charged by massed squadrons of Zieten's I Corps cavalry reserve, retreated from the battlefield. The rest of d'Erlon's I Corps also broke and fled in panic, while to the west the French Middle Guard were assaulting Wellington's centre. The Prussian I Corps then advanced towards the Brussels road, the only line of retreat available to the French.
+
+Attack of the Imperial Guard
+
+Meanwhile, with Wellington's centre exposed by the fall of La Haye Sainte and the Plancenoit front temporarily stabilised, Napoleon committed his last reserve, the hitherto-undefeated Imperial Guard infantry. This attack, mounted at around 19:30, was intended to break through Wellington's centre and roll up his line away from the Prussians. Although it is one of the most celebrated passages of arms in military history, it had been unclear which units actually participated. It appears that it was mounted by five battalions of the Middle Guard, and not by the grenadiers or chasseurs of the Old Guard. Three Old Guard battalions did move forward and formed the attack's second line, though they remained in reserve and did not directly assault the Anglo-allied line.
+
+Napoleon himself oversaw the initial deployment of the Middle and Old Guard. The Middle Guard formed in battalion squares, each about 550 men strong, with the 1st/3rd Grenadiers, led by Generals Friant and Poret de Morvan, on the right along the road, to their left and rear was General Harlet leading the square of the 4th Grenadiers, then the 1st/3rd Chasseurs under General Michel, next the 2nd/3rd Chasseurs and finally the large single square of two battalions of 800 soldiers of the 4th Chasseurs led by General Henrion. Two batteries of Imperial Guard Horse Artillery accompanied them with sections of two guns between the squares. Each square was led by a general and Marshal Ney, mounted on his 5th horse of the day, led the advance. Behind them, in reserve, were the three battalions of the Old Guard, right to left 1st/2nd Grenadiers, 2nd/2nd Chasseurs and 1st/2nd Chasseurs. Napoleon left Ney to conduct the assault; however, Ney led the Middle Guard on an oblique towards the Anglo-allied centre right instead of attacking straight up the centre. Napoleon sent Ney's senior ADC Colonel Crabbé to order Ney to adjust, but Crabbé was unable to get there in time.
+
+Other troops rallied to support the advance of the Guard. On the left infantry from Reille's corps that was not engaged with Hougoumont and cavalry advanced. On the right all the now rallied elements of D'Érlon's corps once again ascended the ridge and engaged the Anglo-allied line. French artillery also moved forward in support; Duchand's battery, in particular, inflicting losses on Colin Halkett's brigade. Halkett's front line, consisting of the 30th Foot and 73rd, traded fire with the 1st/3rd and 4th Grenadiers but they were driven back in confusion into the 33rd and 69th regiments, Halket was shot in the face and seriously wounded and the whole brigade having been ordered to pull back, retreated in a mob. Other Anglo-allied troops began to give way as well. A counterattack by the Nassauers and the remains of Kielmansegge's brigade from the Anglo-allied second line, led by the Prince of Orange, was also thrown back and the Prince of Orange was seriously wounded. The survivors of Halkett's brigade were reformed, and engaged the French in a firefight.
+
+The Dutch divisional commander Chassé, on his own initiative, decided at this critical moment to advance with his relatively fresh Dutch division. Chassé first ordered his artillery forward; led by a battery of Dutch horse-artillery commanded by Captain Krahmer de Bichin the battery opened a destructive fire into the 1st/3rd Grenadiers' flank. This still did not stop the Guard's advance, so Chassé, who was affectionately called "Generaal Bajonet" by his soldiers, ordered his first brigade, commanded by Colonel Hendrik Detmers, to charge the outnumbered French with the bayonet. As the Guard wavered Chassé galloped among his men and found Captain De Haan with a few soldiers of the 19th Militia, whom he ordered into a flank attack. According to Chassé:
+
+The French grenadiers then faltered and broke. The 4th Grenadiers, seeing their comrades retreat and having suffered heavy casualties themselves, now wheeled right about and retired.
+
+To the left of the 4th Grenadiers were the two squares of the 1st/ and 2nd/3rd Chasseurs who angled further to the west and had suffered more from artillery fire than the grenadiers. But as their advance mounted the ridge they found it apparently abandoned and covered with dead. Suddenly 1,500 British Foot Guards under Peregrine Maitland, who had been lying down to protect themselves from the French artillery, rose and devastated them with point-blank volleys. The chasseurs deployed to answer the fire, but some 300 fell from the first volley, including Colonel Mallet and General Michel, and both battalion commanders. A bayonet charge by the Foot Guards then broke the leaderless squares, which fell back onto the following column. The 4th Chasseurs battalion, 800 strong, now came up onto the exposed battalions of British Foot Guards, who lost all cohesion and dashed back up the slope as a disorganized crowd with the chasseurs in pursuit. At the crest the chasseurs came upon the battery that had caused severe casualties on the 1st and 2nd/3rd Chasseurs. They opened fire and swept away the gunners. The left flank of their square now came under fire from a heavy formation of British skirmishers, which the chasseurs drove back. But the skirmishers were replaced by the 52nd Light Infantry (2nd Division), led by John Colborne, which wheeled in line onto the chasseurs' flank and poured a devastating fire into them. The chasseurs returned a very sharp fire which killed or wounded some 150 men of the 52nd. The 52nd then charged, and under this onslaught, the chasseurs broke.
+
+The last of the Guard retreated headlong. A ripple of panic passed through the French lines as the astounding news spread: "La Garde recule. Sauve qui peut!" ("The Guard is retreating. Every man for himself!") Wellington now stood up in Copenhagen's stirrups and waved his hat in the air to signal a general advance. His army rushed forward from the lines and threw themselves upon the retreating French.
+
+The surviving Imperial Guard rallied on their three reserve battalions (some sources say four) just south of La Haye Sainte for a last stand. A charge from Adam's Brigade and the Hanoverian Landwehr Osnabrück Battalion, plus Vivian's and Vandeleur's relatively fresh cavalry brigades to their right, threw them into confusion. Those left in semi-cohesive units retreated towards La Belle Alliance. It was during this retreat that some of the Guards were invited to surrender, eliciting the famous, if apocryphal, retort "La Garde meurt, elle ne se rend pas!" ("The Guard dies, it does not surrender!").
+
+Prussian capture of Plancenoit
+
+At about the same time, the Prussian 5th, 14th, and 16th Brigades were starting to push through Plancenoit, in the third assault of the day. The church was by now on fire, while its graveyard—the French centre of resistance—had corpses strewn about "as if by a whirlwind". Five Guard battalions were deployed in support of the Young Guard, virtually all of which was now committed to the defence, along with remnants of Lobau's corps. The key to the Plancenoit position proved to be the Chantelet woods to the south. Pirch's II Corps had arrived with two brigades and reinforced the attack of IV Corps, advancing through the woods.
+
+The 25th Regiment's musketeer battalions threw the 1/2e Grenadiers (Old Guard) out of the Chantelet woods, outflanking Plancenoit and forcing a retreat. The Old Guard retreated in good order until they met the mass of troops retreating in panic, and became part of that rout. The Prussian IV Corps advanced beyond Plancenoit to find masses of French retreating in disorder from British pursuit. The Prussians were unable to fire for fear of hitting Wellington's units. This was the fifth and final time that Plancenoit changed hands.
+
+French forces not retreating with the Guard were surrounded in their positions and eliminated, neither side asking for nor offering quarter. The French Young Guard Division reported 96 per cent casualties, and two-thirds of Lobau's Corps ceased to exist.
+
+French disintegration
+
+The French right, left, and centre had all now failed. The last cohesive French force consisted of two battalions of the Old Guard stationed around La Belle Alliance; they had been so placed to act as a final reserve and to protect Napoleon in the event of a French retreat. He hoped to rally the French army behind them, but as retreat turned into rout, they too were forced to withdraw, one on either side of La Belle Alliance, in square as protection against Coalition cavalry. Until persuaded that the battle was lost and he should leave, Napoleon commanded the square to the left of the inn. Adam's Brigade charged and forced back this square, while the Prussians engaged the other.
+
+As dusk fell, both squares withdrew in relatively good order, but the French artillery and everything else fell into the hands of the Prussian and Anglo-allied armies. The retreating Guards were surrounded by thousands of fleeing, broken French troops. Coalition cavalry harried the fugitives until about 23:00, with Gneisenau pursuing them as far as Genappe before ordering a halt. There, Napoleon's abandoned carriage was captured, still containing an annotated copy of Machiavelli's The Prince, and diamonds left behind in the rush to escape. These diamonds became part of King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia's crown jewels; one Major Keller of the F/15th received the Pour le Mérite with oak leaves for the feat. By this time 78 guns and 2,000 prisoners had also been taken, including more generals.
+
+Other sources agree that the meeting of the commanders took place near La Belle Alliance, with this occurring at around 21:00.
+
+Aftermath
+
+Waterloo cost Wellington around 17,000 dead or wounded, and Blücher some 7,000 (810 of which were suffered by just one unit: the 18th Regiment, which served in Bülow's 15th Brigade, had fought at both Frichermont and Plancenoit, and won 33 Iron Crosses). Napoleon's losses were 24,000 to 26,000 killed or wounded, including 6,000 to 7,000 captured with an additional 15,000 deserting subsequent to the battle and over the following days.
+
+At 10:30 on 19 June, General Grouchy, still following his orders, defeated General Thielemann at Wavre and withdrew in good order—though at the cost of 33,000 French troops that never reached the Waterloo battlefield. Wellington sent his official dispatch describing the battle to England on 19 June 1815; it arrived in London on 21 June 1815 and was published as a London Gazette Extraordinary on 22 June. Wellington, Blücher and other Coalition forces advanced upon Paris.
+
+After his troops fell back, Napoleon fled to Paris following his defeat, arriving at 5:30 am on 21 June. Napoleon wrote to his brother and regent in Paris, Joseph, believing that he could still raise an army to fight back the Anglo-Prussian forces while fleeing from the Waterloo battlefield. Napoleon believed he could rally French supporters to his cause and call upon conscripts to hold off invading forces until General Grouchy's army could reinforce him in Paris. However, following defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon's support from the French public and his own army waned, including by General Ney, who believed that Paris would fall if Napoleon remained in power. Napoleon's brother Lucien and Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout advised him to continue fighting, dissolve the Chamber of Deputies from Louis XVIII's constitutional government, and for Napoleon to rule France as a military dictator, which Napoleon had been under the guise of Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814. To circumvent Napoleon overthrowing the Chamber of Deputies and a possible French Civil War, the Chamber of Deputies voted to become permanent on 21 June after persuasion from Lafayette. On 22 June, Napoleon wished to abdicate in favour of his son, Napoleon II, after realizing that he lacked military, public, and governmental support for his claim to continue to rule France. Napoleon's proposal for the instatement of his son was swiftly rejected by the legislature.
+
+Napoleon announced his second abdication on 24 June 1815. In the final skirmish of the Napoleonic Wars, Marshal Davout, Napoleon's minister of war, was defeated by Blücher at Issy on 3 July 1815. Allegedly, Napoleon tried to escape to North America, but the Royal Navy was blockading French ports to forestall such a move. He finally surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of  on 15 July. There was a campaign against French fortresses that still held out; Longwy capitulated on 13 September 1815, the last to do so. Louis XVIII was restored to the throne of France and Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The Treaty of Paris was signed on 20 November 1815.
+
+Peregrine Maitland's 1st Foot Guards, who had defeated the Chasseurs of the Middle Guard, were mistakenly thought to have defeated the Grenadiers of the Old Guard. They were thus awarded the title of Grenadier Guards in recognition of their feat and adopted bearskins in the style of the Grenadiers. Britain's Household Cavalry likewise adopted the cuirass in 1821 in recognition of their success against their armoured French counterparts. The effectiveness of the lance was noted by all participants and this weapon subsequently became more widespread throughout Europe; the British converted their first light cavalry regiment to lancers in 1816, their uniforms, of Polish origin, were based on those of the Imperial Guard lancers.
+
+Teeth of tens of thousands of dead soldiers were removed by surviving troops, locals or even scavengers who had travelled there from Britain, then used for making denture replacements in Britain and elsewhere. The so-called "Waterloo teeth" were in demand because they came from relatively healthy young men. Despite the efforts of scavengers both human and otherwise, human remains could still be seen at Waterloo a year after the battle.
+
+Analysis
+
+Historical importance
+Waterloo proved a decisive battle in more than one sense. Each generation in Europe up to the outbreak of the First World War looked back at Waterloo as the turning point that dictated the course of subsequent world history, seeing it in retrospect as the event that ushered in the Concert of Europe, an era characterised by relative peace, material prosperity and technological progress. The battle definitively ended the series of wars that had convulsed Europe—and involved other regions of the world—since the French Revolution of the early 1790s. It also ended the First French Empire and the political and military career of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the greatest commanders and statesmen in history.
+
+There followed almost four decades of international peace in Europe. No further major international conflict occurred until the Crimean War of 1853–1856. Changes to the configuration of European states, as refashioned in the aftermath of Waterloo, included the formation of the Holy Alliance of reactionary governments intent on repressing revolutionary and democratic ideas, and the reshaping of the former Holy Roman Empire into a German Confederation increasingly marked by the political dominance of Prussia.
+
+The bicentenary of Waterloo prompted renewed attention to the geopolitical and economic legacy of the battle and to the century of relative transatlantic peace which followed.
+
+Views on the reasons for Napoleon's defeat
+General Antoine-Henri, Baron Jomini, one of the leading military writers on the Napoleonic art of war, had a number of very cogent explanations of the reasons behind Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.
+
+The Prussian soldier, historian, and theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who as a young colonel had served as chief-of-staff to Thielmann's Prussian III Corps during the Waterloo campaign, expressed the following opinion:
+
+Wellington wrote in his dispatch to London:
+
+In his famous study of the Campaign of 1815, the Prussian Clausewitz does not agree with Wellington on this assessment. Indeed, he claims that if Bonaparte had attacked in the morning, the battle would probably have been decided by the time the Prussians arrived, and an attack by Blücher, while not impossible or useless, would have been much less certain of success.
+
+Parkinson (2000) adds: "Neither army beat Napoleon alone. But whatever the part played by Prussian troops in the actual moment when the Imperial Guard was repulsed, it is difficult to see how Wellington could have staved off defeat, when his centre had been almost shattered, his reserves were almost all committed, the French right remained unmolested and the Imperial Guard intact. ... Blücher may not have been totally responsible for victory over Napoleon, but he deserved full credit for preventing a British defeat". Steele (2014) writes: "Blücher's arrival not only diverted vital reinforcements, but also forced Napoleon to accelerate his effort against Wellington. The tide of battle had been turned by the hard-driving Blücher. As his Prussians pushed in Napoleon's flank, Wellington was able to shift to the offensive".
+
+It has also been noted that Wellington's maps of the battlefield were based on a recent reconnaissance and therefore more up to date than those used by Napoleon, who had to rely on Ferraris-Capitaine maps of 1794.
+
+Legacy
+
+The battlefield today
+
+Landmarks 
+Some portions of the terrain on the battlefield have been altered from their 1815 appearance. Tourism began the day after the battle, with Captain Mercer noting that on 19 June "a carriage drove on the ground from Brussels, the inmates of which, alighting, proceeded to examine the field". In 1820, the Netherlands' King William I ordered the construction of a monument. The Lion's Mound, a giant artificial hill, was constructed here using  of earth taken from the ridge at the centre of the British line, effectively removing the southern bank of Wellington's sunken road.
+
+The alleged remark by Wellington about the alteration of the battlefield as described by Hugo was never documented, however.
+
+Other terrain features and notable landmarks on the field have remained virtually unchanged since the battle. These include the rolling farmland to the east of the Brussels–Charleroi Road as well as the buildings at Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, and La Belle Alliance.
+
+Monuments 
+Apart from the Lion's Mound, there are several more conventional but noteworthy monuments throughout the battlefield. A cluster of monuments at the Brussels–Charleroi and Braine L'Alleud–Ohain crossroads marks the mass graves of British, Dutch, Hanoverian and King's German Legion troops. A monument to the French dead, entitled L'Aigle blessé ("The Wounded Eagle"), marks the location where it is believed one of the Imperial Guard units formed a square during the closing moments of the battle.
+
+A monument to the Prussian dead is located in the village of Plancenoit on the site where one of their artillery batteries took position. The Duhesme mausoleum is one among the few graves of the fallen. It is located at the side of Saint Martin's Church in Ways, a hamlet in the municipality of Genappe. Seventeen fallen officers are buried in the crypt of the British Monument in the Brussels Cemetery in Evere.
+
+If the French won the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon planned to commemorate the victory by building a pyramid of white stones, akin to the pyramids he had seen during his invasion of Egypt in 1798.
+
+Remains 
+
+After the battle, the bodies of the tens of thousands who died were hastily buried in mass graves across the battlefielda process that took at least ten days, according to accounts by those who visited the battlefield just after the battle. Remarkably, there is no record of any such mass grave being discovered in the 20th and 21st centuries; only two complete human skeletons have been found. The remains of a soldier thought to be 23-year-old Friederich Brandt were discovered in 2012. He was a slightly hunchbacked infantryman,  tall, and was hit in the chest by a French bullet. His coins, rifle and position on the battlefield identified him as an Hanoverian fighting in the King's German Legion. In 2022 a second skeleton was found in a ditch near a former field hospital by the Waterloo Uncovered charity. In December 2022, the historians Dr. Bernard Wilkin (Belgium) and Robin Schäfer (Germany), assisted by Belgian archaeologist Dominique Bosquet, discovered and recovered the largest assembly of remains of Waterloo battlefield casualties found in recent times. In the aftermath of the historian's research into the fate of the Waterloo battlefield (see below), several local individuals had come forward who were in the possession of human remains recovered on it. Forensic examination has shown that these remains belonged to at least four soldiers, some of whom are likely to be Prussian. Another set of human remains, initially discovered on the central battlefield by illegal metal detecting and consisting of the remains of six British soldiers, was also recovered by the team. Objects found with the casualties on the central battlefield point to the fact that at least one of them served in the First Foot Guards.
+
+So far, a reason given for the absence of human remains in any quantity was that European battlefields of the time were often scoured for bones to make bone meal, which was much in demand as a fertilizer before the discovery of superphosphates in the 1840s. This theory however is questionable, as actual evidence for it is lacking. In 2022 however, historians Dr. Bernard Wilkin and Robin Schäfer, supported by the British archaeologist Professor Tony Pollard, have concluded that in the aftermath of the conflict, local farmers dug up the corpses of horses and men and sold them to the Waterloo sugar factory. There, the ground-down bones were fired in kilns to make bone-char, which was then used to filter sugar syrup as part of the production process.
+
+Coin controversy
+As part of the bicentennial celebration of the battle, in 2015 Belgium minted a two-euro coin depicting the Lion monument over a map of the field of battle. France officially protested against this issue of coins, while the Belgian government noted that the French mint sells souvenir medals at Waterloo. After 180,000 coins were minted but not released, the issue was melted. Instead, Belgium issued an identical commemorative coin in the non-standard value of  euros. Legally valid only within the issuing country (but unlikely to circulate) it was minted in brass, packaged, and sold by the Belgian mint for 6 euros. A ten-euro coin, showing Wellington, Blücher, their troops and the silhouette of Napoleon, was also available in silver for 42 euros.
+
+See also
+
+ Military career of Napoleon Bonaparte
+ Timeline of the Napoleonic era
+ List of Napoleonic battles
+ Waterloo Medal awarded to those soldiers of the British Army who fought at the battle.
+ Battle of Waterloo reenactment
+ Lord Uxbridge's leg was shattered by a grape-shot at the Battle of Waterloo and removed by a surgeon. The artificial leg used by Uxbridge for the rest of his life was donated to a Waterloo Museum after his death. There is also a second leg on display at his house, Plas Newydd, on Anglesey.
+ Waterloo (1970 film) directed by Sergei Bondarchuk
+
+Notes
+
+References
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+ Homann, Arne; Wilkin, Bernard; Schäfer, Robin. "Die Toten von Waterloo: Aus dem Massengrab in die Zuckerfabrik?". Archäologie in Deutschland. 2023 (3 (Juni-Juli)): 44–45.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+  (translated by Benet S.V.)
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+ .
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+Further reading
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+Articles
+ Bijl, Marco, 8th Dutch Militia a history of the 8th Dutch Militia battalion and the Bylandt Brigade, of which it was a part, in the 1815 campaign (using original sources from the Dutch and Belgian national archives)
+
+ de Wit, Pierre. The campaign of 1815: a study. Study of the campaign of 1815, based on sources from all participating armies.
+  based on
+
+Books
+ 
+ Buttery, David. Waterloo Battlefield Guide (Pen and Sword, 2018).
+ 
+ 
+  This on-line text contains Clausewitz's 58-chapter study of the Campaign of 1815 and Wellington's lengthy 1842 essay written in response to Clausewitz, as well as supporting documents and essays by the editors.
+ 
+ 
+ Esdaile, Charles J. Walking Waterloo: A Guide (2019) excerpt
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ ; A study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme online
+  online
+
+Historiography and memory
+ Balen, Malcolm. A Model Victory: Waterloo and the Battle for History (Harper Perennial, 2006).
+ Bridoux, Jeff. "'Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained': the Battle of Waterloo-myth and reality". Intelligence and National Security 36.5 (2021): 754–770.
+ Esdaile. Charles J. "Napoleon at Waterloo: The events of 18 June 1815 analyzed via historical simulation". JAMS: Journal of Advanced Military Studies 12#2 (2021) pp. 11–44
+ Evans, Mark, et al. "Waterloo Uncovered: From discoveries in conflict archaeology to military veteran collaboration and recovery on one of the world's most famous battlefields", in Historic Landscapes and Mental Well-Being (2019): 253–265. online
+ Francois, Pieter. "'The Best Way to See Waterloo is with your Eyes Shut' British 'Histourism,' Authenticity and Commercialism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century". Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 22#1 (2013): 25–41.
+ Heffernan, Julian Jimenez. "Lying Epitaphs: 'Vanity Fair', Waterloo, and the Cult of the Dead". Victorian Literature and Culture 40#1 (2012): 25–45.
+ 
+ Kennaway, James. "Military surgery as national romance: the memory of British heroic fortitude at Waterloo". War & Society 39.2 (2020): 77–92. online
+ Keirstead, Christopher and Marysa Demoor, eds. "Special Issue: Waterloo and Its Afterlife in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical and Newspaper Press". Victorian Periodicals Review 48#4 (2015).
+ Mongin, Philippe. "A game-theoretic analysis of the Waterloo campaign and some comments on the analytic narrative project". Cliometrica 12.3 (2018): 451–480. online
+ Reynolds, Luke Alexander Lewis. "Who Owned Waterloo? Wellington's Veterans and the Battle for Relevance" (PhD. Diss. City University of New York, 2019) online.
+ Rigney, Ann. "Reframing Waterloo: Memory, mediation, experience", in The Varieties of Historical Experience (Routledge, 2019) pp. 121–139.
+ Seaton, A.V. "War and Thanatourism: Waterloo 1815–1914". Annals of Tourism Research 26#1 (1999): 130–158.
+ Scott, Walter. Scott on Waterloo edited by Paul O'Keeffe. (Vintage Books, 2015).
+ Shaw, Philip. Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination (Palgrave, 2002).
+ Turner, Harry. Courage, Blood & Luck: Poems of Waterloo (Pen and Sword Military, 2013).
+
+Maps
+  The map from the 1911 edition is also available online.
+ Battle of Waterloo maps and diagrams
+ Map of the battlefield on modern Google map and satellite photographs showing main locations of the battlefield
+ 1816 Map of the battlefield with initial dispositions by Willem Benjamin Craan
+
+Primary sources
+ Glover, Gareth, ed. Letters from the battle of Waterloo: unpublished correspondence by Allied officers from the Siborne papers (Casemate Publishers, 2018).
+ Earliest report of the battle in a London newspaper from The Morning Post 22 June 1815
+  Casualty returns.
+ 
+ 
+  – "For records of medals awarded for service before 1914, search by name on the Ancestry website. There are separate search pages for the Army (sourced from WO 100)..."
+ Staff, Empire and Sea Power: The Battle of Waterloo Retrieved on 9 June 2006
+ BBC History Waterloo, Retrieved on 9 June 2006
+
+Uniforms
+ French, Prussian and Anglo-allied uniforms during the Battle of Waterloo : Mont-Saint-Jean (FR)
+
+External links
+ Records and images from the UK Parliament Collections
+  Interview with Andrew Roberts on Napoleon & Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo and the Great Commanders Who Fought It
+  Official guides of the Waterloo battlefield.
+  (British site)
+ 
+ George Nafgizer collection Waterloo ORBATs for French, Allied .
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+1815 in the Netherlands
+19th century in the Southern Netherlands
+Battle honours of the Rifle Brigade
+Battles involving France
+Battles involving Hanover
+Battles involving Nassau
+Battles involving Prussia
+Battles involving the Netherlands
+Battles involving the United Kingdom
+Battles of the Napoleonic Wars
+Battle of Waterloo
+Cavalry charges
+Conflicts in 1815
+June 1815 events
+Lasne
+Waterloo campaign
+History of Walloon Brabant
+Waterloo, Belgium
+A boomerang () is a thrown tool typically constructed with aerofoil sections and designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight. A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower, while a non-returning boomerang is designed as a weapon to be thrown straight and is traditionally used by some Aboriginal Australians for hunting.
+
+Historically, boomerangs have been used for hunting, sport, and entertainment and are made in various shapes and sizes to suit different purposes. Although considered an Australian icon, ancient boomerangs have also been discovered elsewhere in Africa, the Americas, and Eurasia.
+
+Description
+
+A boomerang is a throwing stick with aerodynamic properties, traditionally made of wood, but also of bone, horn, tusks and even iron. Modern boomerangs used for sport may be made from plywood or plastics such as ABS, polypropylene, phenolic paper, or carbon fibre-reinforced plastics.
+
+Boomerangs come in many shapes and sizes depending on their geographic or tribal origins and intended function, including the traditional Australian type, the cross-stick, the pinwheel, the tumble-stick, the Boomabird, and other less common types.
+
+Boomerangs return to the thrower, distinguishing them from throwing sticks.
+ Returning boomerangs fly, and are examples of the earliest heavier-than-air human-made flight. A returning boomerang has two or more aerofoil section wings arranged so that when spinning they create unbalanced aerodynamic forces that curve its path into an ellipse, returning to its point of origin when thrown correctly. Their typical L-shape makes them the most recognisable form of boomerang. Although used primarily for leisure or recreation, returning boomerangs are also used to decoy birds of prey, thrown above the long grass to frighten game birds into flight and into waiting nets. Non-traditional, modern, competition boomerangs come in many shapes, sizes and materials.
+ Throwing sticks, valari, or kylies, are primarily used as weapons. They lack the aerofoil sections, are generally heavier and designed to travel as straight and forcefully as possible to the target to bring down game. The Tamil valari variant, of ancient origin and mentioned in the Tamil Sangam literature "Purananuru", was one of these.  The usual form of the Valari is two limbs set at an angle; one thin and tapering, the other rounded as a handle. Valaris come in many shapes and sizes. They are usually made of cast iron cast from moulds. Some may have wooden limbs tipped with iron or with lethally sharpened edges or with special double-edged and razor-sharp daggers known as kattari.
+
+Etymology
+The origin of the term is uncertain. One source asserts that the term entered the language in 1827, adapted from an extinct Aboriginal language of New South Wales, Australia, but mentions a variant, wo-mur-rang, which it dates to 1798. The first recorded encounter with a boomerang by Europeans was at Farm Cove (Port Jackson), in December 1804, when a weapon was witnessed during a tribal skirmish:
+
+David Collins listed "Wo-mur-rāng" as one of eight Aboriginal "Names of clubs" in 1798. but was probably referring to the woomera, which is actually a spear-thrower. An anonymous 1790 manuscript on Aboriginal languages of New South Wales reported "Boo-mer-rit" as "the Scimiter".
+
+In 1822, it was described in detail and recorded as a "bou-mar-rang" in the language of the Turuwal people (a sub-group of the Darug) of the Georges River near Port Jackson. The Turawal used other words for their hunting sticks but used "boomerang" to refer to a returning throw-stick.
+
+History
+
+Boomerangs were, historically, used as hunting weapons, percussive musical instruments, battle clubs, fire-starters, decoys for hunting waterfowl, and as recreational play toys. The smallest boomerang may be less than  from tip to tip, and the largest over  in length. Tribal boomerangs may be inscribed or painted with designs meaningful to their makers. Most boomerangs seen today are of the tourist or competition sort, and are almost invariably of the returning type.
+
+Depictions of boomerangs being thrown at animals, such as kangaroos, appear in some of the oldest rock art in the world, the Indigenous Australian rock art of the Kimberley region, which is potentially up to 50,000 years old. Stencils and paintings of boomerangs also appear in the rock art of West Papua, including on Bird's Head Peninsula and Kaimana, likely dating to the Last Glacial Maximum, when lower sea levels led to cultural continuity between Papua and Arnhem Land in Northern Australia. The oldest surviving Australian Aboriginal boomerangs come from a cache found in a peat bog in the Wyrie Swamp of South Australia and date to 10,000 BC.
+
+Although traditionally thought of as Australian, boomerangs have been found also in ancient Europe, Egypt, and North America. There is evidence of the use of non-returning boomerangs by the Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of South India for killing birds and rabbits. Some boomerangs were not thrown at all, but were used in hand to hand combat by Indigenous Australians. Ancient Egyptian examples, however, have been recovered, and experiments have shown that they functioned as returning boomerangs. Hunting sticks discovered in Europe seem to have formed part of the Stone Age arsenal of weapons. One boomerang that was discovered in Obłazowa Cave in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland was made of mammoth's tusk and is believed, based on AMS dating of objects found with it, to be about 30,000 years old. In the Netherlands, boomerangs have been found in Vlaardingen and Velsen from the first century BC. King Tutankhamun, the famous pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who died over 3,300 years ago, owned a collection of boomerangs of both the straight flying (hunting) and returning variety.
+
+No one knows for sure how the returning boomerang was invented, but some modern boomerang makers speculate that it developed from the flattened throwing stick, still used by Aboriginal Australians and other indigenous peoples around the world, including the Navajo in North America. A hunting boomerang is delicately balanced and much harder to make than a returning one. The curving flight characteristic of returning boomerangs was probably first noticed by early hunters trying to "tune" their throwing sticks to fly straight.
+
+It is thought by some that the shape and elliptical flight path of the returning boomerang makes it useful for hunting birds and small animals, or that noise generated by the movement of the boomerang through the air, or, by a skilled thrower, lightly clipping leaves of a tree whose branches house birds, would help scare the birds towards the thrower. It is further supposed by some that this was used to frighten flocks or groups of birds into nets that were usually strung up between trees or thrown by hidden hunters. In southeastern Australia, it is claimed that boomerangs were made to hover over a flock of ducks; mistaking it for a hawk, the ducks would dive away, toward hunters armed with nets or clubs.
+
+Traditionally, most boomerangs used by Aboriginal groups in Australia were non-returning. These weapons, sometimes called "throwsticks" or "kylies", were used for hunting a variety of prey, from kangaroos to parrots; at a range of about , a  non-returning boomerang could inflict mortal injury to a large animal. A throwstick thrown nearly horizontally may fly in a nearly straight path and could fell a kangaroo on impact to the legs or knees, while the long-necked emu could be killed by a blow to the neck. Hooked non-returning boomerangs, known as "beaked kylies", used in northern Central Australia, have been claimed to kill multiple birds when thrown into a dense flock. Throwsticks are used as multi-purpose tools by today's Aboriginal peoples, and besides throwing could be wielded as clubs, used for digging, used to start friction fires, and are sonorous when two are struck together.
+
+Recent evidence also suggests that boomerangs were used as war weapons.
+
+Modern use
+
+Today, boomerangs are mostly used for recreation. There are different types of throwing contests: accuracy of return; Aussie round; trick catch; maximum time aloft; fast catch; and endurance (see below). The modern sport boomerang (often referred to as a 'boom' or 'rang') is made of Finnish birch plywood, hardwood, plastic or composite materials and comes in many different shapes and colours. Most sport boomerangs typically weigh less than , with MTA boomerangs (boomerangs used for the maximum-time-aloft event) often under .
+
+Boomerangs have also been suggested as an alternative to clay pigeons in shotgun sports, where the flight of the boomerang better mimics the flight of a bird offering a more challenging target.
+
+The modern boomerang is often computer-aided designed with precision airfoils. The number of "wings" is often more than 2 as more lift is provided by 3 or 4 wings than by 2. Among the latest inventions is a round-shaped boomerang, which has a different look but using the same returning principle as traditional boomerangs. This allows for safer catch for players.
+
+In 1992, German astronaut Ulf Merbold performed an experiment aboard Spacelab that established that boomerangs function in zero gravity as they do on Earth. French Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy aboard Mir repeated this in 1997. In 2008, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi again repeated the experiment on board the International Space Station.
+
+Beginning in the later part of the twentieth century, there has been a bloom in the independent creation of unusually designed art boomerangs. These often have little or no resemblance to the traditional historical ones and on first sight some of these objects may not look like boomerangs at all. The use of modern thin plywoods and synthetic plastics have greatly contributed to their success. Designs are very diverse and can range from animal inspired forms, humorous themes, complex calligraphic and symbolic shapes, to the purely abstract. Painted surfaces are similarly richly diverse. Some boomerangs made primarily as art objects do not have the required aerodynamic properties to return.
+
+Aerodynamics
+A returning boomerang is a rotating wing. It consists of two or more arms, or wings, connected at an angle; each wing is shaped as an airfoil section. Although it is not a requirement that a boomerang be in its traditional shape, it is usually flat.
+
+Boomerangs can be made for right- or left-handed throwers. The difference between right and left is subtle, the planform is the same but the leading edges of the aerofoil sections are reversed. A right-handed boomerang makes a counter-clockwise, circular flight to the left while a left-handed boomerang flies clockwise to the right. Most sport boomerangs weigh between , have a  wingspan, and a  range.
+
+A falling boomerang starts spinning, and most then fall in a spiral. When the boomerang is thrown with high spin, a boomerang flies in a curved rather than a straight line. When thrown correctly, a boomerang returns to its starting point. As the wing rotates and the boomerang moves through the air, the airflow over the wings creates lift on both "wings". However, during one-half of each blade's rotation, it sees a higher airspeed, because the rotation tip speed and the forward speed add, and when it is in the other half of the rotation, the tip speed subtracts from the forward speed. Thus if thrown nearly upright, each blade generates more lift at the top than the bottom. While it might be expected that this would cause the boomerang to tilt around the axis of travel, because the boomerang has significant angular momentum, the gyroscopic precession causes the plane of rotation to tilt about an axis that is 90 degrees to the direction of flight, causing it to turn. When thrown in the horizontal plane, as with a Frisbee, instead of in the vertical, the same gyroscopic precession will cause the boomerang to fly violently, straight up into the air and then crash.
+
+Fast Catch boomerangs usually have three or more symmetrical wings (seen from above), whereas a Long Distance boomerang is most often shaped similar to a question mark. Maximum Time Aloft boomerangs mostly have one wing considerably longer than the other. This feature, along with carefully executed bends and twists in the wings help to set up an "auto-rotation" effect to maximise the boomerang's hover time in descending from the highest point in its flight.
+
+Some boomerangs have turbulators — bumps or pits on the top surface that act to increase the lift as boundary layer transition activators (to keep attached turbulent flow instead of laminar separation).
+
+Throwing technique
+Boomerangs are generally thrown in unobstructed, open spaces at least twice as large as the range of the boomerang. The flight direction to the left or right depends upon the design of the boomerang itself, not the thrower. A right-handed or left-handed boomerang can be thrown with either hand, but throwing a boomerang with the non-matching hand requires a throwing motion that many throwers find awkward. The following technique applies to a right-handed boomerang; the directions are mirrored for a left-handed boomerang. Different boomerang designs have different flight characteristics and are suitable for different conditions. The accuracy of the throw depends on understanding the weight and aerodynamics of that particular boomerang, and the strength, consistency and direction of the wind; from this, the thrower chooses the angle of tilt, the angle against the wind, the elevation of the trajectory, the degree of spin and the strength of the throw. A great deal of trial and error is required to perfect the throw over time.
+
+A properly thrown boomerang will travel out parallel to the ground, sometimes climbing gently, perform a graceful, anti-clockwise, circular or tear-drop shaped arc, flatten out and return in a hovering motion, coming in from the left or spiralling in from behind. Ideally, the hover will allow a practiced catcher to clamp their hands shut horizontally on the boomerang from above and below, sandwiching the centre between their hands.
+
+The grip used depends on size and shape; smaller boomerangs are held between finger and thumb at one end, while larger, heavier or wider boomerangs need one or two fingers wrapped over the top edge in order to induce a spin. The aerofoil-shaped section must face the inside of the thrower, and the flatter side outwards. It is usually inclined outwards, from a nearly vertical position to 20° or 30°; the stronger the wind, the closer to vertical.  The elbow of the boomerang can point forwards or backwards, or it can be gripped for throwing; it just needs to start spinning on the required inclination, in the desired direction, with the right force.
+
+The boomerang is aimed to the right of the oncoming wind; the exact angle depends on the strength of the wind and the boomerang itself. Left-handed boomerangs are thrown to the left of the wind and will fly a clockwise flight path. The trajectory is either parallel to the ground or slightly upwards. The boomerang can return without the aid of any wind, but even very slight winds must be taken into account however calm they might seem. Little or no wind is preferable for an accurate throw, light winds up to  are manageable with skill. If the wind is strong enough to fly a kite, then it may be too strong unless a skilled thrower is using a boomerang designed for stability in stronger winds. Gusty days are a great challenge, and the thrower must be keenly aware of the ebb and flow of the wind strength, finding appropriate lulls in the gusts to launch their boomerang.
+
+Competitions and records
+
+A world record achievement was made on 3 June 2007 by Tim Lendrum in Aussie Round. Lendrum scored 96 out of 100, giving him a national record as well as an equal world record throwing an "AYR" made by expert boomerang maker Adam Carroll.
+
+In international competition, a world cup is held every second year. , teams from Germany and the United States dominated international competition. The individual World Champion title was won in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2012, and 2016 by Swiss thrower Manuel Schütz. In 1992, 1998, 2006, and 2008 Fridolin Frost from Germany won the title.
+
+The team competitions of 2012 and 2014 were won by Boomergang (an international team). World champions were Germany in 2012 and Japan in 2014 for the first time. Boomergang was formed by individuals from several countries, including the Colombian Alejandro Palacio. In 2016 USA became team world champion.
+
+Competition disciplines
+Modern boomerang tournaments usually involve some or all of the events listed below In all disciplines the boomerang must travel at least  from the thrower. Throwing takes place individually. The thrower stands at the centre of concentric rings marked on an open field.
+
+Events include:
+
+ Aussie Round: considered by many to be the ultimate test of boomeranging skills. The boomerang should ideally cross the  circle and come right back to the centre. Each thrower has five attempts. Points are awarded for distance, accuracy and the catch.
+ Accuracy: points are awarded according to how close the boomerang lands to the centre of the rings. The thrower must not touch the boomerang after it has been thrown. Each thrower has five attempts. In major competitions there are two accuracy disciplines: Accuracy 100 and Accuracy 50.
+ Endurance: points are awarded for the number of catches achieved in 5 minutes.
+ Fast Catch: the time taken to throw and catch the boomerang five times. The winner has the fastest timed catches.
+ Trick Catch/Doubling: points are awarded for trick catches behind the back, between the feet, and so on. In Doubling, the thrower has to throw two boomerangs at the same time and catch them in sequence in a special way.
+ Consecutive Catch: points are awarded for the number of catches achieved before the boomerang is dropped. The event is not timed.
+ MTA 100 (Maximal Time Aloft, ): points are awarded for the length of time spent by the boomerang in the air. The field is normally a circle measuring 100 m. An alternative to this discipline, without the 100 m restriction is called MTA unlimited.
+ Long Distance: the boomerang is thrown from the middle point of a  baseline. The furthest distance travelled by the boomerang away from the baseline is measured. On returning, the boomerang must cross the baseline again but does not have to be caught. A special section is dedicated to LD below.
+ Juggling: as with Consecutive Catch, only with two boomerangs. At any given time one boomerang must be in the air.
+
+World records
+
+Guinness World Record – Smallest Returning Boomerang
+
+Non-discipline record: Smallest Returning Boomerang: Sadir Kattan of Australia in 1997 with  long and  wide. This tiny boomerang flew the required , before returning to the accuracy circles on 22 March 1997 at the Australian National Championships.
+
+Guinness World Record – Longest Throw of Any Object by a Human
+
+A boomerang was used to set a Guinness World Record with a throw of  by David Schummy on 15 March 2005 at Murarrie Recreation Ground, Australia. This broke the record set by Erin Hemmings who threw an Aerobie  on 14 July 2003 at Fort Funston, San Francisco.
+
+Long-distance versions
+
+Long-distance boomerang throwers aim to have the boomerang go the furthest possible distance while returning close to the throwing point. In competition the boomerang must intersect an imaginary surface defined as an infinite vertical projection of a  line centred on the thrower. Outside of competitions, the definition is not so strict, and throwers may be happy simply not to walk too far to recover the boomerang.
+
+General properties
+Long-distance boomerangs are optimised to have minimal drag while still having enough lift to fly and return. For this reason, they have a very narrow throwing window, which discourages many beginners from continuing with this discipline. For the same reason, the quality of manufactured long-distance boomerangs is often difficult to determine.
+
+Today's long-distance boomerangs have almost all an S or ? – question mark shape and have a beveled edge on both sides (the bevel on the bottom side is sometimes called an undercut). This is to minimise drag and lower the lift. Lift must be low because the boomerang is thrown with an almost total layover (flat). Long-distance boomerangs are most frequently made of composite material, mainly fibre glass epoxy composites.
+
+Flight path
+The projection of the flight path of long-distance boomerang on the ground resembles a water drop. For older types of long-distance boomerangs (all types of so-called big hooks), the first and last third of the flight path are very low, while the middle third is a fast climb followed by a fast descent. Nowadays, boomerangs are made in a way that their whole flight path is almost planar with a constant climb during the first half of the trajectory and then a rather constant descent during the second half.
+
+From theoretical point of view, distance boomerangs are interesting also for the following reason: for achieving a different behaviour during different flight phases, the ratio of the rotation frequency to the forward velocity has a U-shaped function, i.e., its derivative crosses 0. Practically, it means that the boomerang being at the furthest point has a very low forward velocity. The kinetic energy of the forward component is then stored in the potential energy. This is not true for other types of boomerangs, where the loss of kinetic energy is non-reversible (the MTAs also store kinetic energy in potential energy during the first half of the flight, but then the potential energy is lost directly by the drag).
+
+Related terms
+In Noongar language, kylie is a flat curved piece of wood similar in appearance to a boomerang that is thrown when hunting for birds and animals. "Kylie" is one of the Aboriginal words for the hunting stick used in warfare and for hunting animals. Instead of following curved flight paths, kylies fly in straight lines from the throwers. They are typically much larger than boomerangs, and can travel very long distances; due to their size and hook shapes, they can cripple or kill an animal or human opponent. The word is perhaps an English corruption of a word meaning "boomerang" taken from one of the Western Desert languages, for example, the Warlpiri word "karli".
+
+Cultural references
+Trademarks of Australian companies using the boomerang as a symbol, emblem or logo proliferate, usually removed from Aboriginal context and symbolising "returning" or to distinguish an Australian brand. Early examples included Bain's White Ant Exterminator (1896); Webendorfer Bros. explosives (1898); E. A. Adams Foods (1920); and by the (still current) Boomerang Cigarette Papers Pty. Ltd.
+
+"Aboriginalia", including the boomerang, as symbols of Australia dates from the late 1940s and early 1950s and was in widespread use by a largely European arts, crafts and design community. By the 1960s, the Australian tourism industry extended it to the very branding of Australia, particularly to overseas and domestic tourists as souvenirs and gifts and thus Aboriginal culture. At the very time when Aboriginal people and culture were subject to policies that removed them from their traditional lands and sought to assimilate them (physiologically and culturally) into mainstream white Australian culture, causing the Stolen Generations, Aboriginalia found an ironically "nostalgic", entry point into Australian popular culture at important social locations: holiday resorts and in Australian domestic interiors. In the 21st century, souvenir objects depicting Aboriginal peoples, symbolism and motifs including the boomerang, from the 1940s–1970s, regarded as kitsch and sold largely to tourists in the first instance, became highly sought after by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal collectors and has captured the imagination of Aboriginal artists and cultural commentators.
+
+See also
+ List of premodern combat weapons
+ List of martial arts weapons
+ Australian Aboriginal artefacts
+ Batarang
+ Bat'leth
+ Captain Boomerang
+ Chakram
+ CAC Boomerang, a World War II fighter-plane
+ Flying wing, tailess boomerang shaped aircraft
+ Frisbee
+ Googie, boomerang-shaped architecture
+ Shuriken
+ Throwing stick
+ Valari
+ Melee weapon
+
+References
+
+Further reading
+ Boomerang (Encyclopedia.com) 
+ 
+ Nishiyama, Yutaka, Why do boomerangs come back?, Int. J. of Pure and Appl. Math. 78(3), 335–347, 2012. 
+ Valde-Nowak et al. (1987). "Upper Palaeolithic boomerang made of a mammoth tusk in south Poland". Nature 329: 436–438 (1 October 1987); doi:10.1038/329436a0.
+
+External links
+
+ International Federation of Boomerang Associations
+  
+ Boomerang aerodynamics: an online dissertation
+ Explanation of the origin of the word 'Boomerang'  
+ How to Throw a Boomerang
+
+1790s neologisms
+Australian Aboriginal bushcraft
+Individual sports
+Recreational weapons
+Sports equipment
+Throwing clubs
+Australian inventions
+Sports originating in Australia
+Physical activity and dexterity toys
+Australian English
+Hunting equipment
+National symbols of Australia
+Primitive weapons
+Weapons of Australia
+Bodybuilding is the practice of progressive resistance exercise to build, control, and develop one's muscles via hypertrophy. An individual who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder. It is primarily undertaken for aesthetic purposes over functional ones, distinguishing it from similar activities such as powerlifting, which focuses solely on increasing the physical load one can exert.
+
+In professional bodybuilding, competitors appear onstage in line-ups and perform specified poses (and later individual posing routines) for a panel of judges who rank them based on conditioning, muscularity, posing, size, stage presentation, and symmetry. Bodybuilders prepare for competitions by exercising and eliminating non-essential body fat. This is enhanced at the final stage by a combination of carbohydrate loading and dehydration to achieve maximum muscle definition and vascularity. Some bodybuilders also tan and shave their bodies prior to competition.
+
+Bodybuilding requires significant time and effort to reach the desired results. A novice bodybuilder may be able to gain  of muscle per year if they lift weights for seven hours per week, but muscle gains begin to slow down after the first two years to about  per year. After five years, gains can decrease to as little as  per year. Some bodybuilders use anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to build muscles and recover from injuries faster, however using performance enhancing drugs can have serious health risks. Furthermore most competitions prohibit the use of these substances. Despite some calls for drug testing to be implemented, the National Physique Committee (considered the leading amateur bodybuilding federation) does not require testing.
+
+The winner of the annual IFBB Mr. Olympia contest is recognized as the world's top male professional bodybuilder. Since 1950, the NABBA Universe Championships have been considered the top amateur bodybuilding contests, with notable winners including Reg Park, Lee Priest, Steve Reeves, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
+
+History
+
+Early history 
+
+Stone-lifting competitions were practiced in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Tamilakam. Western weightlifting developed in Europe from 1880 to 1953, with strongmen displaying feats of strength for the public and challenging each other. The focus was not on their physique, and they possessed relatively large bellies and fatty limbs compared to bodybuilders of today.
+
+Eugen Sandow 
+
+Bodybuilding developed in the late 19th century, promoted in England by German Eugen Sandow, now considered as the "Father of Modern Bodybuilding". He allowed audiences to enjoy viewing his physique in "muscle display performances". Although audiences were thrilled to see a well-developed physique, the men simply displayed their bodies as part of strength demonstrations or wrestling matches. Sandow had a stage show built around these displays through his manager, Florenz Ziegfeld. The Oscar-winning 1936 musical film The Great Ziegfeld depicts the beginning of modern bodybuilding, when Sandow began to display his body for carnivals.
+
+Sandow was so successful at flexing and posing his physique that he later created several businesses around his fame, and was among the first to market products branded with his name. He was credited with inventing and selling the first exercise equipment for the masses: machined dumbbells, spring pulleys, and tension bands. Even his image was sold by the thousands in "cabinet cards" and other prints.
+
+First large-scale bodybuilding competition
+Sandow organized the first bodybuilding contest on September 14, 1901, called the "Great Competition". It was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Judged by Sandow, Sir Charles Lawes, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the contest was a great success and many bodybuilding enthusiasts were turned away due to the overwhelming number of audience members. The trophy presented to the winner was a gold statue of Sandow sculpted by Frederick Pomeroy. The winner was William L. Murray of Nottingham. The silver Sandow trophy was presented to second-place winner D. Cooper. The bronze Sandow trophy now the most famous of all was presented to third-place winner A.C. Smythe. In 1950, this same bronze trophy was presented to Steve Reeves for winning the inaugural NABBA Mr. Universe contest. It would not resurface again until 1977 when the winner of the IFBB Mr. Olympia contest, Frank Zane, was presented with a replica of the bronze trophy. Since then, Mr. Olympia winners have been consistently awarded a replica of the bronze Sandow.
+
+The first large-scale bodybuilding competition in America took place from December 28, 1903 to January 2, 1904,  at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The competition was promoted by Bernarr Macfadden, the father of physical culture and publisher of original bodybuilding magazines such as Health & Strength. The winner was Al Treloar, who was declared "The Most Perfectly Developed Man in the World". Treloar won a thousand dollar cash prize, a substantial sum at that time. Two weeks later, Thomas Edison made a film of Treloar's posing routine. Edison had also made two films of Sandow a few years before. Those were the first three motion pictures featuring a bodybuilder. In the early 20th century, Macfadden and Charles Atlas continued to promote bodybuilding across the world.
+
+Notable early bodybuilders 
+Many other important bodybuilders in the early history of bodybuilding prior to 1930 include: Earle Liederman (writer of some of bodybuilding's earliest books), Zishe Breitbart, Georg Hackenschmidt, Emy Nkemena, George F. Jowett, Finn Hateral (a pioneer in the art of posing), Frank Saldo, Monte Saldo, William Bankier, Launceston Elliot, Sig Klein, Sgt. Alfred Moss, Joe Nordquist, Lionel Strongfort ("Strongfortism"), Gustav Frištenský, Ralph Parcaut (a champion wrestler who also authored an early book on "physical culture"), and Alan P. Mead (who became a muscle champion despite the fact that he lost a leg in World War I). Actor Francis X. Bushman, who was a disciple of Sandow, started his career as a bodybuilder and sculptor's model before beginning his famous silent movie career.
+
+1950s1960s 
+Bodybuilding became more popular in the 1950s and 1960s with the emergence of strength and gymnastics champions, and the simultaneous popularization of bodybuilding magazines, training principles, nutrition for bulking up and cutting down, the use of protein and other food supplements, and the opportunity to enter physique contests. The number of bodybuilding organizations grew, and most notably the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) was founded in 1946 by Canadian brothers Joe and Ben Weider. Other bodybuilding organizations included the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), National Amateur Bodybuilding Association (NABBA), and the World Bodybuilding Guild (WBBG). Consequently, the contests grew both in number and in size. Besides the many "Mr. XXX" (insert town, city, state, or region) championships, the most prestigious titles were Mr. America, Mr. World, Mr. Universe, Mr. Galaxy, and ultimately Mr. Olympia, which was started in 1965 by the IFBB and is now considered the most important bodybuilding competition in the world.
+
+During the 1950s, the most successful and most famous competing bodybuilders were Bill Pearl, Reg Park, Leroy Colbert, and Clarence Ross. Certain bodybuilders rose to fame thanks to the relatively new medium of television, as well as cinema. The most notable were Jack LaLanne, Steve Reeves, Reg Park, and Mickey Hargitay. While there were well-known gyms throughout the country during the 1950s (such as Vince's Gym in North Hollywood, California and Vic Tanny's chain gyms), there were still segments of the United States that had no "hardcore" bodybuilding gyms until the advent of Gold's Gym in the mid-1960s.  Finally, the famed Muscle Beach in Santa Monica continued its popularity as the place to be for witnessing acrobatic acts, feats of strength, and the like. The movement grew more in the 1960s with increased TV and movie exposure, as bodybuilders were typecast in popular shows and movies.
+
+1970s1990s
+
+New organizations 
+
+In the 1970s, bodybuilding had major publicity thanks to the appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Mentzer and others in the 1977 docudrama Pumping Iron. By this time, the IFBB dominated the competitive bodybuilding landscape and the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) took a back seat. The National Physique Committee (NPC) was formed in 1981 by Jim Manion, who had just stepped down as chairman of the AAU Physique Committee. The NPC has gone on to become the most successful bodybuilding organization in the United States and is the amateur division of the IFBB. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the decline of AAU-sponsored bodybuilding contests. In 1999, the AAU voted to discontinue its bodybuilding events.
+
+Anabolic/androgenic steroid use 
+This period also saw the rise of anabolic steroids in bodybuilding and many other sports. More significant use began with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sergio Oliva, and Lou Ferrigno in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and continuing through the 1980s with Lee Haney, the 1990s with Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, and Markus Rühl, and up to the present day. Bodybuilders such as Greg Kovacs attained mass and size never seen previously but were not successful at the pro level. Others were renowned for their spectacular development of a particular body part, like Tom Platz or Paul Demayo for their leg muscles. At the time of shooting Pumping Iron, Schwarzenegger, while never admitting to steroid use until long after his retirement, said, "You have to do anything you can to get the advantage in competition". He would later say that he did not regret using steroids.
+
+To combat anabolic steroid use and in the hopes of becoming a member of the IOC, the IFBB introduced doping tests for both steroids and other banned substances. Although doping tests occurred, the majority of professional bodybuilders still used anabolic steroids for competition. During the 1970s, the use of anabolic steroids was openly discussed, partly due to the fact they were legal. In the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990, U.S. Congress placed anabolic steroids into Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). In Canada, steroids are listed under Schedule IV of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, enacted by the federal Parliament in 1996.
+
+World Bodybuilding Federation 
+
+In 1990, professional wrestling promoter Vince McMahon attempted to form his own bodybuilding organization known as the World Bodybuilding Federation (WBF). It operated as a sister to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), which provided cross-promotion via its performers and personalities. Tom Platz served as the WBF's director of talent development, and announced the new organization during an ambush of that year's Mr. Olympia (which, unbeknownst to organizers, McMahon and Platz had attended as representatives of an accompanying magazine, Bodybuilding Lifestyles). It touted efforts to bring bigger prize money and more "dramatic" events to the sport of bodybuilding—which resulted in its championships being held as pay-per-view events with WWF-inspired sports entertainment features and showmanship. The organization signed high-valued contracts with a number of IFBB regulars.
+
+The IFBB's inaugural championship in June 1991 (won by Gary Strydom) received mixed reviews. The WBF would be indirectly impacted by a steroid scandal involving the WWF, prompting the organization to impose a drug testing policy prior to the 1992 championship. The drug testing policy hampered the quality of the 1992 championship, while attempts to increase interest by hiring WCW wrestler Lex Luger as a figurehead (hosting a WBF television program on USA Network, and planning to make a guest pose during the 1992 championship before being injured in a motorcycle accident) and attempting to sign Lou Ferrigno (who left the organization shortly after the drug testing policy was announced) did not come to fruition. The second PPV received a minuscule audience, and the WBF dissolved only one month later in July 1992.
+
+2000s
+
+In 2003, Joe Weider sold Weider Publications to American Media, Inc. (AMI). The position of president of the IFBB was filled by Rafael Santonja following the death of Ben Weider in October 2008. In 2004, contest promoter Wayne DeMilia broke ranks with the IFBB and AMI took over the promotion of the Mr. Olympia contest: in 2017 AMI took the contest outright.
+
+In the early 21st century, patterns of consumption and recreation similar to those of the United States became more widespread in Europe and especially in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This resulted in the emergence of whole new populations of bodybuilders from former Eastern Bloc states.
+
+Olympic sport discussion 
+In the early 2000s, the IFBB was attempting to make bodybuilding an Olympic sport. It obtained full IOC membership in 2000 and was attempting to get approved as a demonstration event at the Olympics, which would hopefully lead to it being added as a full contest. This did not happen and Olympic recognition for bodybuilding remains controversial since many argue that bodybuilding is not a sport.
+
+Social media 
+The advent of social media had a profound influence on fitness and bodybuilding. It is common to see platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube flooded with fitness-related content, changing how the average person views and interacts with fitness culture. Gym clothing brands like YoungLA and Rawgear leveraged this platform to create their brands. By recruiting fitness ambassadors—real people who embody their brand values—these companies personalize their marketing strategy and create a more relatable image. These ambassadors, often in the form of fitness influencers or personal trainers, promote the brand by sharing their workout routines, dietary plans, and gym clothing. YouTube in particular has seen a surge in fitness content, ranging from gym vlogs to detailed discussions on workout attire. This not only provides consumers with an abundance of free resources to aid their fitness journey, but also creates a more informed consumer base.
+
+Another growing trend with gym-related social media is the phenomenon of gym-shaming; a video posted by content creator Jessica Fernandez on Twitch that went viral showed her lifting weights in a gym while a man in the background stared at her, sparking a widespread debate about narcissism and an increasingly toxic gym culture in the age of social media. The video led to criticism of an emerging trend in which gyms, once known as places for focused workouts, are now being treated as filming locations for aspiring or established influencers with bystanders being unintentionally placed under the public eye in the process. Bodybuilder Joey Swoll, who voiced his concerns over this culture, addressed the controversy by stating that while harassment in gyms needs to be addressed, the man in Fernandez's video was not guilty of it. Although social media is giving more attention to the world of bodybuilding, there are still some areas that are controversial.
+
+Areas
+
+Professional bodybuilding 
+
+In the modern bodybuilding industry, the term "professional" generally means a bodybuilder who has won qualifying competitions as an amateur and has earned a "pro card" from their respective organization. Professionals earn the right to compete in competitions that include monetary prizes. A pro card also prohibits the athlete from competing in federations other than the one from which they have received the pro card. Depending on the level of success, these bodybuilders may receive monetary compensation from sponsors, much like athletes in other sports.
+
+Natural bodybuilding 
+
+Due to the growing concerns of the high cost, health consequences, and illegal nature of some steroids, many organizations have formed in response and have deemed themselves "natural" bodybuilding competitions. In addition to the concerns noted, many promoters of bodybuilding have sought to shed the "freakish" perception that the general public has of bodybuilding and have successfully introduced a more mainstream audience to the sport of bodybuilding by including competitors whose physiques appear much more attainable and realistic.
+
+In natural contests, the testing protocol ranges among organizations from lie detectors to urinalysis. Penalties also range from organization to organization from suspensions to strict bans from competition. It is also important to note that natural organizations also have their own list of banned substances and it is important to refer to each organization's website for more information about which substances are banned from competition. There are many natural bodybuilding organizations; some of the larger ones include: MuscleMania, Ultimate Fitness Events (UFE), INBF/WNBF, and INBA/PNBA. These organizations either have an American or worldwide presence and are not limited to the country in which they are headquartered.
+
+Men's physique 
+Due to those who found open-bodybuilding to be "too big" or "ugly" and unhealthy, a new category was started in 2013. The first Men's Physique Olympia winner was Mark Wingson, who was followed by Jeremy Buendia for four consecutive years. Like open-bodybuilding, the federations in which bodybuilders can compete are natural divisions as well as normal ones. The main difference between the two is that men's physique competitors pose in board shorts rather than a traditional posing suit and open-bodybuilders are much larger and are more muscular than the men's physique competitors. Open-bodybuilders have an extensive routine for posing while the Physique category is primarily judged by the front and back poses. Many of the men's physique competitors are not above 200 lbs and have a bit of a more attainable and aesthetic physique in comparison to open-bodybuilders. Although this category started off slowly, it has grown tremendously, and currently men's physique seems to be a more popular class than open-bodybuilding.
+
+Classic physique 
+This is the middle ground of both Men's Physique and Bodybuilding. The competitors in this category are not nearly as big as bodybuilders but not as small as men's physique competitors. They pose and perform in men's boxer briefs to show off the legs, unlike Men's Physique which hide the legs in board shorts. Classic physique started in 2016. Danny Hester was the first classic physique Mr. Olympia and as of 2022, Chris Bumstead is the 4x reigning Mr. Olympia.
+
+Female bodybuilding 
+The female movement of the 1960s, combined with Title IX and the all around fitness revolution, gave birth to new alternative perspectives of feminine beauty that included an athletic physique of toned muscle. This athletic physique was found in various popular media outlets such as fashion magazines. Female bodybuilders changed the limits of traditional femininity as their bodies showed that muscles are not only just for men.
+
+The first U.S. Women's National Physique Championship, promoted by Henry McGhee and held in 1978 in Canton, Ohio, is generally regarded as the first true female bodybuilding contest—that is, the first contest where the entrants were judged solely on muscularity. In 1980, the first Ms. Olympia (initially known as the "Miss" Olympia), the most prestigious contest for professionals, was held. The first winner was Rachel McLish, who had also won the NPC's USA Championship earlier in the year. The contest was a major turning point for female bodybuilding. McLish inspired many future competitors to start training and competing.
+
+In 1985, the documentary Pumping Iron II: The Women was released. It documented the preparation of several women for the 1983 Caesars Palace World Cup Championship. Competitors prominently featured in the film were Kris Alexander, Lori Bowen, Lydia Cheng, Carla Dunlap, Bev Francis, and McLish. At the time, Francis was actually a powerlifter, though she soon made a successful transition to bodybuilding, becoming one of the leading competitors of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
+
+The related areas of fitness and figure competition increased in popularity, surpassing that of female bodybuilding, and provided an alternative for women who choose not to develop the level of muscularity necessary for bodybuilding. McLish would closely resemble what is thought of today as a fitness and figure competitor, instead of what is now considered a female bodybuilder. Fitness competitions also adopted gymnastic elements.
+
+E. Wilma Conner competed in the 2011 NPC Armbrust Pro Gym Warrior Classic Championships in Loveland, Colorado, at the age of 75 years and 349 days.
+
+Competition 
+In competitive bodybuilding, bodybuilders aspire to present an "aesthetically pleasing" body on stage. In prejudging, competitors do a series of mandatory poses: the front lat spread, rear lat spread, front double biceps, back double biceps, side chest, side triceps, Most Muscular (men only), abdominals and thighs. Each competitor also performs a personal choreographed routine to display their physique. A posedown is usually held at the end of a posing round, while judges are finishing their scoring. Bodybuilders usually spend a lot of time practising their posing in front of mirrors or under the guidance of their coach.
+
+In contrast to strongman or powerlifting competitions, where physical strength is paramount, or to Olympic weightlifting, where the main point is equally split between strength and technique, bodybuilding competitions typically emphasize condition, size, and symmetry. Different organizations emphasize particular aspects of competition, and sometimes have different categories in which to compete.
+
+Preparations
+
+Bulking and cutting 
+
+The general strategy adopted by most present-day competitive bodybuilders is to make muscle gains for most of the year (known as the "off-season") and, approximately 12–14 weeks from competition, lose a maximum of body fat (referred to as "cutting") while preserving as much muscular mass as possible. The bulking phase entails remaining in a net positive energy balance (calorie surplus). The amount of a surplus in which a person remains is based on the person's goals, as a bigger surplus and longer bulking phase will create more fat tissue. The surplus of calories relative to one's energy balance will ensure that muscles remain in a state of anabolism.
+
+The cutting phase entails remaining in a net negative energy balance (calorie deficit). The main goal of cutting is to oxidize fat while preserving as much muscle as possible. The larger the calorie deficit, the faster one will lose weight. However, a large calorie deficit will also create the risk of losing muscle tissue.
+
+The bulking and cutting strategy is effective because there is a well-established link between muscle hypertrophy and being in a state of positive energy balance. A sustained period of caloric surplus will allow the athlete to gain more fat-free mass than they could otherwise gain under eucaloric conditions. Some gain in fat mass is expected, which athletes seek to oxidize in a cutting period while maintaining as much lean mass as possible.
+
+Clean bulking 
+The attempt to increase muscle mass in one's body without any gain in fat is called clean bulking. Competitive bodybuilders focus their efforts to achieve a peak appearance during a brief "competition season". Clean bulking takes longer and is a more refined approach to achieving the body fat and muscle mass percentage a person is looking for. A common tactic for keeping fat low and muscle mass high is to have higher calorie and lower calorie days to maintain a balance between gain and loss. Many clean bulk diets start off with a moderate amount of carbs, moderate amount of protein, and a low amount of fats. To maintain a clean bulk, it is important to reach calorie goals every day. Macronutrient goals (carbs, fats, and proteins) will be different for each person, but it is ideal to get as close as possible.
+
+Dirty bulking
+"Dirty bulking" is the process of eating at a massive caloric surplus without trying to figure out the exact amount of ingested macronutrients. Weightlifters who attempt to gain mass quickly with no aesthetic concerns often choose to do this.
+
+Muscle growth 
+Bodybuilders use three main strategies to maximize muscle hypertrophy:
+ Strength training through weights or elastic/hydraulic resistance.
+ Specialized nutrition, incorporating extra protein and supplements when necessary.
+ Adequate rest, including sleep and recuperation between workouts.
+
+Weight training 
+
+Intensive weight training causes micro-tears to the muscles being trained; this is generally known as microtrauma. These micro-tears in the muscle contribute to the soreness felt after exercise, called delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). It is the repair of these micro-traumas that results in muscle growth. Normally, this soreness becomes most apparent a day or two after a workout. However, as muscles become adapted to the exercises, soreness tends to decrease.
+
+Weight training aims to build muscle by prompting two different types of hypertrophy: sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy leads to larger muscles and so is favored by bodybuilders more than myofibrillar hypertrophy, which builds athletic strength. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is triggered by increasing repetitions, whereas myofibrillar hypertrophy is triggered by lifting heavier weight. In either case, there is an increase in both size and strength of the muscles (compared to what happens if that same individual does not lift weights at all), although the emphasis is different.
+
+Nutrition 
+The high levels of muscle growth and repair achieved by bodybuilders require a specialized diet. Generally speaking, bodybuilders require more calories than the average person of the same weight to provide the protein and energy requirements needed to support their training and increase muscle mass. In preparation of a contest, a sub-maintenance level of food energy is combined with cardiovascular exercise to lose body fat. Proteins, carbohydrates and fats are the three major macronutrients that the human body needs in order to build muscle. The ratios of calories from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats vary depending on the goals of the bodybuilder.
+
+Carbohydrates 
+Carbohydrates play an important role for bodybuilders. They give the body energy to deal with the rigors of training and recovery. Carbohydrates also promote secretion of insulin, a hormone enabling cells to get the glucose they need. Insulin also carries amino acids into cells and promotes protein synthesis. Insulin has steroid-like effects in terms of muscle gains. It is impossible to promote protein synthesis without the existence of insulin, which means that without ingesting carbohydrates or protein—which also induces the release of insulin—it is impossible to add muscle mass. Bodybuilders seek out low-glycemic polysaccharides and other slowly digesting carbohydrates, which release energy in a more stable fashion than high-glycemic sugars and starches. This is important as high-glycemic carbohydrates cause a sharp insulin response, which places the body in a state where it is likely to store additional food energy as fat. However, bodybuilders frequently do ingest some quickly digesting sugars (often in form of pure dextrose or maltodextrin) just before, during, and/or just after a workout. This may help to replenish glycogen stored within the muscle, and to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.
+
+Protein 
+
+The motor proteins actin and myosin generate the forces exerted by contracting muscles. Cortisol decreases amino acid uptake by muscle and inhibits protein synthesis. Current recommendations suggest that bodybuilders should consume 25–30% of protein per total calorie intake to further their goal of maintaining and improving their body composition. This is a widely debated topic, with many arguing that 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day is ideal, some suggesting that less is sufficient, while others recommending 1.5, 2, or more. It is believed that protein needs to be consumed frequently throughout the day, especially during/after a workout, and before sleep. There is also some debate concerning the best type of protein to take. Chicken, turkey, beef, pork, fish, eggs and dairy foods are high in protein, as are some nuts, seeds, beans, and lentils. Casein or whey are often used to supplement the diet with additional protein. Whey is the type of protein contained in many popular brands of protein supplements and is preferred by many bodybuilders because of its high biological value (BV) and quick absorption rates. Whey protein also has a bigger effect than casein on insulin levels, triggering about double the amount of insulin release. That effect is somewhat overcome by combining casein and whey.
+
+Bodybuilders were previously thought to require protein with a higher BV than that of soy, which was additionally avoided due to its alleged estrogenic (female hormone) properties, though more recent studies have shown that soy actually contains phytoestrogens which compete with estrogens in the male body and can block estrogenic actions. Soy, flax, and other plant-based foods that contain phytoestrogens are also beneficial because they can inhibit some pituitary functions while stimulating the liver's P450 system (which eliminates hormones, drugs, and waste from the body) to more actively process and excrete excess estrogen.
+
+Meals 
+Some bodybuilders often split their food intake into 5 to 7 meals of equal nutritional content and eat at regular intervals (e.g., every 2 to 3 hours). This approach serves two purposes: to limit overindulging in the cutting phase, and to allow for the consumption of large volumes of food during the bulking phase. Eating more frequently does not increase basal metabolic rate when compared to 3 meals a day. While food does have a metabolic cost to digest, absorb, and store, called the thermic effect of food, it depends on the quantity and type of food, not how the food is spread across the meals of the day. Well-controlled studies using whole-body calorimetry and doubly labeled water have demonstrated that there is no metabolic advantage to eating more frequently.
+
+Dietary supplements 
+
+The important role of nutrition in building muscle and losing fat means bodybuilders may consume a wide variety of dietary supplements. Various products are used in an attempt to augment muscle size, increase the rate of fat loss, improve joint health, increase natural testosterone production, enhance training performance and prevent potential nutrient deficiencies.
+
+Performance-enhancing substances 
+Some bodybuilders use drugs such as anabolic steroids and precursor substances such as prohormones to increase muscle hypertrophy. Anabolic steroids cause hypertrophy of both types (I and II) of muscle fibers, likely caused by an increased synthesis of muscle proteins. They also provoke undesired side effects including hepatotoxicity, gynecomastia, acne, the early onset of male pattern baldness and a decline in the body's own testosterone production, which can cause testicular atrophy. Other performance-enhancing substances used by competitive bodybuilders include human growth hormone (HGH). HGH is also used by female bodybuilders to obtain bigger muscles "while maintaining a 'female appearance'".
+
+Muscle growth is more difficult to achieve in older adults than younger adults because of biological aging, which leads to many metabolic changes detrimental to muscle growth; for instance, by diminishing growth hormone and testosterone levels. Some recent clinical studies have shown that low-dose HGH treatment for adults with HGH deficiency changes the body composition by increasing muscle mass, decreasing fat mass, increasing bone density and muscle strength, improves cardiovascular parameters, and affects the quality of life without significant side effects.
+
+In rodents, knockdown of metallothionein gene expression results in activation of the Akt pathway and increases in myotube size, in type IIb fiber hypertrophy, and ultimately in muscle strength.
+
+Injecting oil into muscles  
+
+Some bodybuilders inject oils or other compounds into their muscles (sometimes known as "synthol") in order to enhance their size or appearance. This practice can have serious health consequences.
+
+Rest 
+Although muscle stimulation occurs when lifting weights, muscle growth occurs afterward during rest periods. Some bodybuilders add a massage at the end of each workout to their routine as a method of recovering.
+
+Overtraining 
+
+Overtraining occurs when a bodybuilder has trained to the point where their workload exceeds their recovery capacity. There are many reasons why overtraining occurs, including lack of adequate nutrition, lack of recovery time between workouts, insufficient sleep, and training at a high intensity for too long (a lack of splitting apart workouts). Training at a high intensity too frequently also stimulates the central nervous system (CNS) and can result in a hyperadrenergic state that interferes with sleep patterns. To avoid overtraining, intense frequent training must be met with at least an equal amount of purposeful recovery. Timely provision of carbohydrates, proteins, and various micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, even nutritional supplements are critical. A mental disorder, informally called bigorexia (by analogy with anorexia), may account for overtraining in some individuals. Sufferers feel as if they are never big enough or muscular enough, which forces them to overtrain in order to try to reach their goal physique.
+
+An article by Muscle & Fitness magazine, "Overtrain for Big Gains", claimed that overtraining for a brief period can be beneficial. Overtraining can be used advantageously, as when a bodybuilder is purposely overtrained for a brief period of time to super compensate during a regeneration phase. These are known as "shock micro-cycles" and were a key training technique used by Soviet athletes.
+
+See also
+
+References
+
+External links 
+
+ 
+Body modification
+Athletic sports
+Individual sports
+Weight training
+Body shape
+Articles containing video clips
+Physical exercise
+Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Biological weapons (often termed "bio-weapons", "biological threat agents", or "bio-agents") are living organisms or replicating entities (i.e. viruses, which are not universally considered "alive"). Entomological (insect) warfare is a subtype of biological warfare.
+
+Offensive biological warfare in international armed conflicts is a war crime under the 1925 Geneva Protocol and several international humanitarian law treaties. In particular, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) bans the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. In contrast, defensive biological research for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes is not prohibited by the BWC.
+
+Biological warfare is distinct from warfare involving other types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including nuclear warfare, chemical warfare, and radiological warfare. None of these are considered conventional weapons, which are deployed primarily for their explosive, kinetic, or incendiary potential.
+
+Biological weapons may be employed in various ways to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over the enemy, either by threats or by actual deployments. Like some chemical weapons, biological weapons may also be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual, a group of people, or even an entire population. They may be developed, acquired, stockpiled or deployed by nation states or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism.
+
+Biological warfare and chemical warfare overlap to an extent, as the use of toxins produced by some living organisms is considered under the provisions of both the BWC and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Toxins and psychochemical weapons are often referred to as midspectrum agents. Unlike bioweapons, these midspectrum agents do not reproduce in their host and are typically characterized by shorter incubation periods.
+
+Overview 
+A biological attack could conceivably result in large numbers of civilian casualties and cause severe disruption to economic and societal infrastructure.
+
+A nation or group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualty has the ability to alter the terms under which other nations or groups interact with it. When indexed to weapon mass and cost of development and storage, biological weapons possess destructive potential and loss of life far in excess of nuclear, chemical or conventional weapons. Accordingly, biological agents are potentially useful as strategic deterrents, in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield.
+
+As a tactical weapon for military use, a significant problem with biological warfare is that it would take days to be effective, and therefore might not immediately stop an opposing force. Some biological agents (smallpox, pneumonic plague) have the capability of person-to-person transmission via aerosolized respiratory droplets. This feature can be undesirable, as the agent(s) may be transmitted by this mechanism to unintended populations, including neutral or even friendly forces. Worse still, such a weapon could "escape" the laboratory where it was developed, even if there was no intent to use it – for example by infecting a researcher who then transmits it to the outside world before realizing that they were infected. Several cases are known of researchers becoming infected and dying of Ebola, which they had been working with in the lab (though nobody else was infected in those cases) – while there is no evidence that their work was directed towards biological warfare, it demonstrates the potential for accidental infection even of careful researchers fully aware of the dangers. While containment of biological warfare is less of a concern for certain criminal or terrorist organizations, it remains a significant concern for the military and civilian populations of virtually all nations.
+
+History
+
+Antiquity and Middle Ages
+
+Rudimentary forms of biological warfare have been practiced since antiquity. The earliest documented incident of the intention to use biological weapons is recorded in Hittite texts of 1500–1200 BCE, in which victims of tularemia were driven into enemy lands, causing an epidemic.  The Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with the fungus ergot, though with unknown results. Scythian archers dipped their arrows and Roman soldiers their swords into excrements and cadavers – victims were commonly infected by tetanus as result. In 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa. Specialists disagree about whether this operation was responsible for the spread of the Black Death into Europe, Near East and North Africa, resulting in the deaths of approximately 25 million Europeans.
+
+Biological agents were extensively used in many parts of Africa from the sixteenth century AD, most of the time in the form of poisoned arrows, or powder spread on the war front as well as poisoning of horses and water supply of the enemy forces. In Borgu, there were specific mixtures to kill, hypnotize, make the enemy bold, and to act as an antidote against the poison of the enemy as well. The creation of biologicals was reserved for a specific and professional class of medicine-men.
+
+18th to 19th century
+
+During the French and Indian War, in June 1763 a group of Native Americans laid siege to British-held Fort Pitt. The commander of Fort Pitt, Simeon Ecuyer, ordered his men to take smallpox-infested blankets from the infirmary and give it to a Lenape delegation during the siege. A reported outbreak that began the spring before left as many as one hundred Native Americans dead in Ohio Country from 1763 to 1764. It is not clear whether the smallpox was a result of the Fort Pitt incident or the virus was already present among the Delaware people as outbreaks happened on their own every dozen or so years and the delegates were met again later and seemingly had not contracted smallpox. During the American Revolutionary War, Continental Army officer George Washington mentioned to the Continental Congress that he had heard a rumor from a sailor that his opponent during the Siege of Boston, General William Howe, had deliberately sent civilians out of the city in the hopes of spreading the ongoing smallpox epidemic to American lines; Washington, remaining unconvinced, wrote that he "could hardly give credit to" the claim. Washington had already inoculated his soldiers, diminishing the effect of the epidemic. Some historians have claimed that a detachment of the Corps of Royal Marines stationed in New South Wales, Australia, deliberately used smallpox there in 1789. Dr Seth Carus states: "Ultimately, we have a strong circumstantial case supporting the theory that someone deliberately introduced smallpox in the Aboriginal population."
+
+World War I
+By 1900 the germ theory and advances in bacteriology brought a new level of sophistication to the techniques for possible use of bio-agents in war. Biological sabotage in the form of anthrax and glanders was undertaken on behalf of the Imperial German government during World War I (1914–1918), with indifferent results. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the first use of chemical and biological weapons against enemy nationals in international armed conflicts.
+
+World War II
+With the onset of World War II, the Ministry of Supply in the United Kingdom established a biological warfare program at Porton Down, headed by the microbiologist Paul Fildes. The research was championed by Winston Churchill and soon tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, and botulism toxins had been effectively weaponized. In particular, Gruinard Island in Scotland, was contaminated with anthrax during a series of extensive tests for the next 56 years. Although the UK never offensively used the biological weapons it developed, its program was the first to successfully weaponize a variety of deadly pathogens and bring them into industrial production. Other nations, notably France and Japan, had begun their own biological weapons programs.
+
+When the United States entered the war, Allied resources were pooled at the request of the British. The U.S. then established a large research program and industrial complex at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 1942 under the direction of George W. Merck. The biological and chemical weapons developed during that period were tested at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Soon there were facilities for the mass production of anthrax spores, brucellosis, and botulism toxins, although the war was over before these weapons could be of much operational use.
+
+The most notorious program of the period was run by the secret Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731 during the war, based at Pingfan in Manchuria and commanded by Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii. This biological warfare research unit conducted often fatal human experiments on prisoners, and produced biological weapons for combat use. Although the Japanese effort lacked the technological sophistication of the American or British programs, it far outstripped them in its widespread application and indiscriminate brutality. Biological weapons were used against Chinese soldiers and civilians in several military campaigns. In 1940, the Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with ceramic bombs full of fleas carrying the bubonic plague. Many of these operations were ineffective due to inefficient delivery systems, although up to 400,000 people may have died. During the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign in 1942, around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their own biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces.
+
+During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in San Diego, California, during Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan was set to launch on 22 September 1945, but it was not executed because of Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945.
+
+Cold War
+In Britain, the 1950s saw the weaponization of plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later equine encephalomyelitis and vaccinia viruses, but the programme was unilaterally cancelled in 1956. The United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories weaponized anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, Q-fever and others.
+
+In 1969, US President Richard Nixon decided to unilaterally terminate the offensive biological weapons program of the US, allowing only scientific research for defensive measures. This decision increased the momentum of the negotiations for a ban on biological warfare, which took place from 1969 to 1972 in the United Nation's Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva. These negotiations resulted in the Biological Weapons Convention, which was opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force on 26 March 1975 after its ratification by 22 states.
+
+Despite being a party and depositary to the BWC, the Soviet Union continued and expanded its massive offensive biological weapons program, under the leadership of the allegedly civilian institution Biopreparat. The Soviet Union attracted international suspicion after the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak killed approximately 65 to 100 people.
+
+1948 Arab–Israeli War
+According to historians Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar, Israel conducted a biological warfare operation codenamed "Cast Thy Bread" during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Haganah initially used typhoid bacteria to contaminate water wells in newly-cleared Arab villages to prevent the population including militiamen from returning. Later, the biological warfare campaign expanded to include Jewish settlements that were in imminent danger of being captured by Arab troops and inhabited Arab towns not slated for capture. There was also plans to expand the biological warfare campaign into other Arab states including Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, but they were not carried out.
+
+International law 
+
+International restrictions on biological warfare began with the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use but not the possession or development of biological and chemical weapons in international armed conflicts. Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. Due to these reservations, it was in practice a "no-first-use" agreement only.
+
+The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) supplements the Geneva Protocol by prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Having entered into force on 26 March 1975, the BWC was the first multilateral disarmament treaty to ban the production of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. As of March 2021, 183 states have become party to the treaty. The BWC is considered to have established a strong global norm against biological weapons, which is reflected in the treaty's preamble, stating that the use of biological weapons would be "repugnant to the conscience of mankind". The BWC's effectiveness has been limited due to insufficient institutional support and the absence of any formal verification regime to monitor compliance.
+
+In 1985, the Australia Group was established, a multilateral export control regime of 43 countries aiming to prevent the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons.
+
+In 2004, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1540, which obligates all UN Member States to develop and enforce appropriate legal and regulatory measures against the proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, in particular, to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to non-state actors.
+
+Bioterrorism
+
+Biological weapons are difficult to detect, economical and easy to use, making them appealing to terrorists. The cost of a biological weapon is estimated to be about 0.05 percent the cost of a conventional weapon in order to produce similar numbers of mass casualties per kilometer square. Moreover, their production is very easy as common technology can be used to produce biological warfare agents, like that used in production of vaccines, foods, spray devices, beverages and antibiotics. A major factor in biological warfare that attracts terrorists is that they can easily escape before the government agencies or secret agencies have even started their investigation. This is because the potential organism has an incubation period of 3 to 7 days, after which the results begin to appear, thereby giving terrorists a lead.
+
+A technique called Clustered, Regularly Interspaced, Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR-Cas9) is now so cheap and widely available that scientists fear that amateurs will start experimenting with them. In this technique, a DNA sequence is cut off and replaced with a new sequence, e.g. one that codes for a particular protein, with the intent of modifying an organism's traits. Concerns have emerged regarding do-it-yourself biology research organizations due to their associated risk that a rogue amateur DIY researcher could attempt to develop dangerous bioweapons using genome editing technology.
+
+In 2002, when CNN went through Al-Qaeda's (AQ's) experiments with crude poisons, they found out that AQ had begun planning ricin and cyanide attacks with the help of a loose association of terrorist cells. The associates had infiltrated many countries like Turkey, Italy, Spain, France and others. In 2015, to combat the threat of bioterrorism, a National Blueprint for Biodefense was issued by the Blue-Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense. Also, 233 potential exposures of select biological agents outside of the primary barriers of the biocontainment in the US were described by the annual report of the Federal Select Agent Program.
+
+Though a verification system can reduce bioterrorism, an employee, or a lone terrorist having adequate knowledge of a bio-technology company's facilities, can cause potential danger by utilizing, without proper oversight and supervision, that company's resources. Moreover, it has been found that about 95% of accidents that have occurred due to low security have been done by employees or those who had a security clearance.
+
+Entomology
+
+Entomological warfare (EW) is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to attack the enemy. The concept has existed for centuries and research and development have continued into the modern era. EW has been used in battle by Japan and several other nations have developed and been accused of using an entomological warfare program. EW may employ insects in a direct attack or as vectors to deliver a biological agent, such as plague. Essentially, EW exists in three varieties. One type of EW involves infecting insects with a pathogen and then dispersing the insects over target areas. The insects then act as a vector, infecting any person or animal they might bite. Another type of EW is a direct insect attack against crops; the insect may not be infected with any pathogen but instead represents a threat to agriculture. The final method uses uninfected insects, such as bees or wasps, to directly attack the enemy.
+
+Genetics
+Theoretically, novel approaches in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology could be used in the future to design novel types of biological warfare agents.
+
+ Would demonstrate how to render a vaccine ineffective;
+ Would confer resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics or antiviral agents;
+ Would enhance the virulence of a pathogen or render a nonpathogen virulent;
+ Would increase the transmissibility of a pathogen;
+ Would alter the host range of a pathogen;
+ Would enable the evasion of diagnostic/detection tools;
+ Would enable the weaponization of a biological agent or toxin.
+
+Most of the biosecurity concerns in synthetic biology are focused on the role of DNA synthesis and the risk of producing genetic material of lethal viruses (e.g. 1918 Spanish flu, polio) in the lab. Recently, the CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a promising technique for gene editing. It was hailed by The Washington Post as "the most important innovation in the synthetic biology space in nearly 30 years." While other methods take months or years to edit gene sequences, CRISPR speeds that time up to weeks. Due to its ease of use and accessibility, it has raised a number of ethical concerns, especially surrounding its use in the biohacking space.
+
+By target
+
+Anti-personnel
+
+Ideal characteristics of a biological agent to be used as a weapon against humans are high infectivity, high virulence, non-availability of vaccines and availability of an effective and efficient delivery system. Stability of the weaponized agent (the ability of the agent to retain its infectivity and virulence after a prolonged period of storage) may also be desirable, particularly for military applications, and the ease of creating one is often considered.  Control of the spread of the agent may be another desired characteristic.
+
+The primary difficulty is not the production of the biological agent, as many biological agents used in weapons can be manufactured relatively quickly, cheaply and easily. Rather, it is the weaponization, storage, and delivery in an effective vehicle to a vulnerable target that pose significant problems.
+
+For example, Bacillus anthracis is considered an effective agent for several reasons. First, it forms hardy spores, perfect for dispersal aerosols. Second, this organism is not considered transmissible from person to person, and thus rarely if ever causes secondary infections. A pulmonary anthrax infection starts with ordinary influenza-like symptoms and progresses to a lethal hemorrhagic mediastinitis within 3–7 days, with a fatality rate that is 90% or higher in untreated patients. Finally, friendly personnel and civilians can be protected with suitable antibiotics.
+
+Agents considered for weaponization, or known to be weaponized, include bacteria such as Bacillus anthracis, Brucella spp., Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Chlamydophila psittaci, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, some of the Rickettsiaceae (especially Rickettsia prowazekii and Rickettsia rickettsii), Shigella spp., Vibrio cholerae, and Yersinia pestis. Many viral agents have been studied and/or weaponized, including some of the Bunyaviridae (especially Rift Valley fever virus), Ebolavirus, many of the Flaviviridae (especially Japanese encephalitis virus), Machupo virus, Coronaviruses, Marburg virus, Variola virus, and yellow fever virus. Fungal agents that have been studied include Coccidioides spp.
+
+Toxins that can be used as weapons include ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, botulinum toxin, saxitoxin, and many mycotoxins. These toxins and the organisms that produce them are sometimes referred to as select agents. In the United States, their possession, use, and transfer are regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Select Agent Program.
+
+The former US biological warfare program categorized its weaponized anti-personnel bio-agents as either Lethal Agents (Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, Botulinum toxin) or Incapacitating Agents (Brucella suis, Coxiella burnetii, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Staphylococcal enterotoxin B).
+
+Anti-agriculture
+
+Anti-crop/anti-vegetation/anti-fisheries
+
+The United States developed an anti-crop capability during the Cold War that used plant diseases (bioherbicides, or mycoherbicides) for destroying enemy agriculture. Biological weapons also target fisheries as well as water-based vegetation. It was believed that the destruction of enemy agriculture on a strategic scale could thwart Sino-Soviet aggression in a general war. Diseases such as wheat blast and rice blast were weaponized in aerial spray tanks and cluster bombs for delivery to enemy watersheds in agricultural regions to initiate epiphytotic (epidemics among plants). On the other hand, some sources report that these agents were stockpiled but never weaponized. When the United States renounced its offensive biological warfare program in 1969 and 1970, the vast majority of its biological arsenal was composed of these plant diseases. Enterotoxins and Mycotoxins were not affected by Nixon's order.
+
+Though herbicides are chemicals, they are often grouped with biological warfare and chemical warfare because they may work in a similar manner as biotoxins or bioregulators.  The Army Biological Laboratory tested each agent and the Army's Technical Escort Unit was responsible for the transport of all chemical, biological, radiological (nuclear) materials.
+
+Biological warfare can also specifically target plants to destroy crops or defoliate vegetation. The United States and Britain discovered plant growth regulators (i.e., herbicides) during the Second World War, which were then used by the UK in the counterinsurgency operations of the Malayan Emergency. Inspired by the use in Malaysia, the US military effort in the Vietnam War included a mass dispersal of a variety of herbicides, famously Agent Orange, with the aim of destroying farmland and defoliating forests used as cover by the Viet Cong. Sri Lanka deployed military defoliants in its prosecution of the Eelam War against Tamil insurgents.
+
+Anti-livestock
+
+During World War I, German saboteurs used anthrax and glanders to sicken cavalry horses in U.S. and France, sheep in Romania, and livestock in Argentina intended for the Entente forces. One of these German saboteurs was Anton Dilger. Also, Germany itself became a victim of similar attacks – horses bound for Germany were infected with Burkholderia by French operatives in Switzerland.
+
+During World War II, the U.S. and Canada secretly investigated the use of rinderpest, a highly lethal disease of cattle, as a bioweapon.
+
+In the 1980s Soviet Ministry of Agriculture had successfully developed variants of foot-and-mouth disease, and rinderpest against cows, African swine fever for pigs, and psittacosis to kill the chicken. These agents were prepared to spray them down from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. The secret program was code-named "Ecology".
+
+During the Mau Mau Uprising in 1952, the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used to kill cattle.
+
+Defensive operations
+
+Medical countermeasures
+
+In 2010 at The Meeting of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction in Geneva
+the sanitary epidemiological reconnaissance was suggested as well-tested means for enhancing the monitoring of infections and parasitic agents, for the practical implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005). The aim was to prevent and minimize the consequences of natural outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases as well as the threat of alleged use of biological weapons against BTWC States Parties.
+
+Many countries require their active-duty military personnel to get vaccinated for certain diseases that may potentially be used as a bioweapon such as anthrax.
+
+Public health and disease surveillance
+It is important to note that most classical and modern biological weapons' pathogens can be obtained from a plant or an animal which is naturally infected.
+
+In the largest biological weapons accident known—the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Soviet Union in 1979—sheep became ill with anthrax as far as 200 kilometers from the release point of the organism from a military facility in the southeastern portion of the city and still off-limits to visitors today, (see Sverdlovsk Anthrax leak).
+
+Thus, a robust surveillance system involving human clinicians and veterinarians may identify a bioweapons attack early in the course of an epidemic, permitting the prophylaxis of disease in the vast majority of people (and/or animals) exposed but not yet ill.
+
+For example, in the case of anthrax, it is likely that by 24–36 hours after an attack, some small percentage of individuals (those with the compromised immune system or who had received a large dose of the organism due to proximity to the release point) will become ill with classical symptoms and signs (including a virtually unique chest X-ray finding, often recognized by public health officials if they receive timely reports). The incubation period for humans is estimated to be about 11.8 days to 12.1 days.  This suggested period is the first model that is independently consistent with data from the largest known human outbreak. These projections refine previous estimates of the distribution of early-onset cases after a release and support a recommended 60-day course of prophylactic antibiotic treatment for individuals exposed to low doses of anthrax. By making these data available to local public health officials in real time, most models of anthrax epidemics indicate that more than 80% of an exposed population can receive antibiotic treatment before becoming symptomatic, and thus avoid the moderately high mortality of the disease.
+
+Common epidemiological warnings
+From most specific to least specific:
+
+Single cause of a certain disease caused by an uncommon agent, with lack of an epidemiological explanation.
+Unusual, rare, genetically engineered strain of an agent.
+High morbidity and mortality rates in regards to patients with the same or similar symptoms.
+Unusual presentation of the disease.
+Unusual geographic or seasonal distribution.
+Stable endemic disease, but with an unexplained increase in relevance.
+Rare transmission (aerosols, food, water).
+No illness presented in people who were/are not exposed to "common ventilation systems (have separate closed ventilation systems) when illness is seen in persons in close proximity who have a common ventilation system."
+Different and unexplained diseases coexisting in the same patient without any other explanation.
+Rare illness that affects a large, disparate population (respiratory disease might suggest the pathogen or agent was inhaled).
+Illness is unusual for a certain population or age-group in which it takes presence.
+Unusual trends of death and/or illness in animal populations, previous to or accompanying illness in humans.
+Many affected reaching out for treatment at the same time.
+Similar genetic makeup of agents in affected individuals.
+Simultaneous collections of similar illness in non-contiguous areas, domestic, or foreign.
+An abundance of cases of unexplained diseases and deaths.
+
+Bioweapon identification
+The goal of biodefense is to integrate the sustained efforts of the national and homeland security, medical, public health, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement communities. Health care providers and public health officers are among the first lines of defense. In some countries private, local, and provincial (state) capabilities are being augmented by and coordinated with federal assets, to provide layered defenses against biological weapon attacks. During the first Gulf War the United Nations activated a biological and chemical response team, Task Force Scorpio, to respond to any potential use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians.
+
+The traditional approach toward protecting agriculture, food, and water: focusing on the natural or unintentional introduction of a disease is being strengthened by focused efforts to address current and anticipated future biological weapons threats that may be deliberate, multiple, and repetitive.
+
+The growing threat of biowarfare agents and bioterrorism has led to the development of specific field tools that perform on-the-spot analysis and identification of encountered suspect materials. One such technology, being developed by researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), employs a "sandwich immunoassay", in which fluorescent dye-labeled antibodies aimed at specific pathogens are attached to silver and gold nanowires.
+
+In the Netherlands, the company TNO has designed Bioaerosol Single Particle Recognition eQuipment (BiosparQ). This system would be implemented into the national response plan for bioweapon attacks in the Netherlands.
+
+Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel are developing a different device called the BioPen, essentially a "Lab-in-a-Pen", which can detect known biological agents in under 20 minutes using an adaptation of the ELISA, a similar widely employed immunological technique, that in this case incorporates fiber optics.
+
+List of programs, projects and sites by country
+
+United States
+
+ Fort Detrick, Maryland
+ U.S. Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (1943–69)
+ Building 470
+ One-Million-Liter Test Sphere
+ Operation Sea-Spray
+ Operation Whitecoat (1954–73)
+ U.S. entomological warfare program
+ Operation Big Itch
+ Operation Big Buzz
+ Operation Drop Kick
+ Operation May Day
+ Project Bacchus
+ Project Clear Vision
+ Project SHAD
+ Project 112
+ Horn Island Testing Station
+ Fort Terry
+ Granite Peak Installation
+ Vigo Ordnance Plant
+
+United Kingdom
+
+ Porton Down
+ Gruinard Island
+ Nancekuke
+ Operation Vegetarian (1942–1944)
+Open-air field tests:
+Operation Harness off Antigua, 1948–1950.
+Operation Cauldron off Stornoway, 1952. 
+Operation Hesperus off Stornoway, 1953.
+Operation Ozone off Nassau, 1954.
+Operation Negation off Nassau, 1954–5.
+
+Soviet Union and Russia
+
+ Biopreparat (18 labs and production centers)
+ Stepnogorsk Scientific and Technical Institute for Microbiology, Stepnogorsk, northern Kazakhstan
+ Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, Leningrad, a weaponized plague center
+ Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR), a weaponized smallpox center
+ Institute of Applied Biochemistry, Omutninsk
+ Kirov bioweapons production facility, Kirov, Kirov Oblast
+ Zagorsk smallpox production facility, Zagorsk
+ Berdsk bioweapons production facility, Berdsk
+ Bioweapons research facility, Obolensk
+ Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility (Military Compound 19), Sverdlovsk, a weaponized anthrax center
+ Institute of Virus Preparations
+ Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
+ Vozrozhdeniya
+ Project Bonfire
+ Project Factor
+
+Japan
+
+ Unit 731
+ Zhongma Fortress
+ Kaimingjie germ weapon attack
+ Khabarovsk War Crime Trials
+ Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department
+
+Iraq
+
+ Al Hakum
+ Salman Pak facility
+ Al Manal facility
+
+South Africa
+
+ Project Coast
+ Delta G Scientific Company
+ Roodeplaat Research Laboratories
+ Protechnik
+
+Rhodesia
+
+Canada
+ Grosse Isle, Quebec, site (1939–45) of research into anthrax and other agents
+ DRDC Suffield, Suffield, Alberta
+
+List of associated people
+
+Bioweaponeers:
+Includes scientists and administrators
+
+ Shyh-Ching Lo
+Kanatjan Alibekov, known as Ken Alibek
+Ira Baldwin
+Wouter Basson
+Kurt Blome
+Eugen von Haagen
+Anton Dilger
+Paul Fildes
+Arthur Galston (unwittingly)
+Kurt Gutzeit
+Riley D. Housewright
+Shiro Ishii
+Elvin A. Kabat
+ George W. Merck 
+ Frank Olson
+Vladimir Pasechnik
+William C. Patrick III
+ Sergei Popov
+Theodor Rosebury
+Rihab Rashid Taha
+Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda
+Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash
+Nassir al-Hindawi
+Erich Traub
+Auguste Trillat
+Baron Otto von Rosen
+Yujiro Wakamatsu
+Yazid Sufaat
+
+Writers and activists:
+
+Daniel Barenblatt
+Leonard A. Cole
+Stephen Endicott
+Arthur Galston
+Jeanne Guillemin
+Edward Hagerman
+Sheldon H. Harris
+Nicholas D. Kristof
+Joshua Lederberg
+Matthew Meselson
+Toby Ord
+Richard Preston
+Ed Regis
+Mark Wheelis
+David Willman
+Aaron Henderson
+
+In popular culture
+
+See also 
+
+ Animal-borne bomb attacks
+ Antibiotic resistance
+ Asymmetric warfare
+ Baker Island
+ Bioaerosol
+ Biological contamination
+ Biological pest control
+ Biosecurity
+ Chemical weapon
+ Counterinsurgency
+ Discredited AIDS origins theories
+ Enterotoxin
+ Entomological warfare
+ Ethnic bioweapon
+ Herbicidal warfare
+ Hittite plague
+ Human experimentation in the United States
+ John W. Powell
+ Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System
+ List of CBRN warfare forces
+ McNeill's law
+ Military animal
+ Mycotoxin
+ Plum Island Animal Disease Center
+ Project 112
+ Project AGILE
+ Project SHAD
+ Rhodesia and weapons of mass destruction
+ Trichothecene
+ Yellow rain
+
+References
+
+Further reading 
+
+ 
+  Counterproliferation Paper No. 53, USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, USA.
+
+External links 
+ Biological weapons and international humanitarian law, ICRC
+WHO: Health Aspects of Biological and Chemical Weapons
+ 
+ USAMRIID ()—U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
+
+ 
+Bioethics
+Warfare by type
+The Book of Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible, largely takes the form of a first-person memoir by Nehemiah, a Jew who is a high official at the Persian court,  concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the dedication of the city and its people to God's laws (Torah). 
+
+Since the 16th century, it has generally been treated as a separate book within the Bible. Before then it had been included in the Book of Ezra but, in Latin Christian Bibles from the 13th century onwards, the Vulgate Book of Ezra was divided into two texts, called respectively the First and Second books of Ezra. This separation became canonised with the first printed Bibles in Hebrew and Latin. Mid-16th century Reformed Protestant Bible translations produced in Geneva were the first to introduce the name 'Book of Nehemiah' for the text formerly called the 'Second Book of Ezra'.
+
+Summary 
+The events take place in the second half of the 5th century BC. Listed together with the Book of Ezra as Ezra–Nehemiah, it represents the final chapter in the historical narrative of the Hebrew Bible.
+
+The original core of the book, the first-person memoir, may have been combined with the core of the Book of Ezra around 400 BC. Further editing probably continued into the Hellenistic era.
+
+The book tells how Nehemiah, at the court of the king in Susa, is informed that Jerusalem is without walls, and resolves to restore them. The king appoints him as governor of Judah and he travels to Jerusalem. There he rebuilds the walls, despite the opposition of Israel's enemies, and reforms the community in conformity with the law of Moses. After 12 years in Jerusalem, he returns to Susa but subsequently revisits Jerusalem. He finds that the Israelites have been backsliding and taking non-Jewish wives, and he stays in Jerusalem to enforce the Law.
+ In the 20th year of Artaxerxes I of Persia, Nehemiah, cup-bearer to the King in Susa (the Persian capital), learns that the wall of Jerusalem is destroyed. He prays to God, recalling the sins of Israel and God's promise of restoration to the Land, and asks Artaxerxes for leave to return to Jerusalem and rebuild its walls; the king is receptive and extends his aid to this mission.
+ Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem, carrying letters of authorisation from the king; he inspects the walls.
+ Nehemiah and the Jews (including the 'High Priest' Eliashib), begin rebuilding Jerusalem.
+ The enemies of the Jews – Sanballat of Samaria, Tobiah the Ammonite, Geshem the Arab, and the men of Ashdod – plot to attack Jerusalem which necessitates the Jews working with weapons in their hands.
+ Nehemiah sees that the Jewish nobles are oppressing the poor, and forces the cancellation of all debt and mortgages; while previous governors have been corrupt and oppressive, he has been righteous and just.
+ Sanballat accuses Nehemiah of planning rebellion against Artaxerxes, and he is opposed even by Jewish nobles and prophets, but the wall is completed.
+ Nehemiah appoints officials and sets guards on the wall and gates; he plans to register the Jews, and finds the Census of those who had returned earlier.
+ Nehemiah assembles the people and has Ezra read to them the law-book of Moses; Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites institute the Feast of Booths, in accordance with the Law.
+ The Jews assemble in penance and prayer, recalling their past sins, God's help to them, and his promise of the land.
+ The priests, Levites and the Israelite people enter into a covenant, agreeing to separate themselves from the surrounding peoples and to keep the Law.
+ Jerusalem is repopulated by the Jews living in the towns and villages of Judah and Benjamin.
+ A list of priests and Levites who returned in the days of Cyrus (the first returnees from Babylon) is presented; Nehemiah, aided by Ezra, oversees the dedication of the walls and the rebuilt city.
+ After 12 years Nehemiah returns to Susa; he later comes back to Jerusalem, and finds that there has been backsliding in his absence. He takes measures to enforce his earlier reforms and asks for God's favour.
+
+Historical background 
+The book is set in the 5th century BC. Judah is one of several provinces within a larger satrapy (a large administrative unit) within the Achaemenid Empire. The capital of the empire is at Susa. Nehemiah is a cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes I of Persia – an important official position.
+
+At his own request Nehemiah is sent to Jerusalem as governor of Yehud, the official Persian name for Judah. Jerusalem had been conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC and Nehemiah finds it still in ruins. His task is to rebuild the walls and to re-populate the city. He faces opposition from three powerful neighbours, the Samaritans, the Ammonites, and the Arabs, as well as the city of Ashdod, but manages to rebuild the walls. He then purifies the Jewish community by enforcing its segregation from its neighbours and enforces the laws of Moses.
+
+Textual history 
+
+The single Hebrew book Ezra–Nehemiah, with title "Ezra", was translated into Greek around the middle of the 2nd century BC.  Slightly later a second, and very different Greek translation was made, in the form of 1 Esdras, from which the deeds of Nehemiah are entirely absent, those sections either being omitted or re-attributed to Ezra instead; and initially early Christians reckoned this later translation as their biblical 'Book of Ezra', as had the 1st century Jewish writer Josephus. From the third century the Christian Old Testament in Greek supplemented the text of 1 Esdras with the older translation of Ezra-Nehemiah, naming the two books Esdras A and Esdras B respectively; and this usage is noted by the 3rd century Christian scholar Origen, who remarked that the Hebrew 'book of Ezra' might then be considered a 'double' book. Jerome, writing in the early 5th century, noted that this duplication had since been adopted by Greek and Latin Christians. Jerome himself rejected the duplication in his Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin from the Hebrew; and consequently all early Vulgate manuscripts present Ezra-Nehemiah as a single book, as too does the 8th century commentary of Bede, and the 9th century bibles of Alcuin and Theodulf of Orleans. However, sporadically from the 9th century onwards, Latin bibles are found that separate the Ezra and Nehemiah sections of Ezra-Nehemiah as two distinct books, then called the first and second books of Ezra; and this becomes standard in the Paris Bibles of the 13th century. It was not until 1516/17, in the first printed Rabbinic Bible of Daniel Bomberg that the separation was introduced generally in Hebrew Bibles.
+
+In later medieval Christian commentary, this book is referred to as the 'second book of Ezra', and never as the 'Book of Nehemiah"; equally citations from this book are always introduced as "Ezra says..", and never as 'Nehemiah says..".
+
+Composition and date 
+The combined book Ezra–Nehemiah of the earliest Christian and Jewish period was known as Ezra and was probably attributed to Ezra himself; according to a rabbinic tradition, however, Nehemiah was the real author but was forbidden to claim authorship because of his bad habit of disparaging others.
+
+The Nehemiah Memorial, chapters 1–7 and 11–13, may have circulated as an independent work before being combined with the Ezra material to form Ezra–Nehemiah. Determining the composition of the Memorial depends on the dates of Nehemiah's mission: It is commonly accepted that "Artaxerxes" was Artaxerxes I (there were two later kings of the same name), and that Nehemiah's first period in Jerusalem was therefore 445–433 BC; allowing for his return to Susa and second journey to Jerusalem, the end of the 5th century BC is therefore the earliest possible date for the Memorial. The Nehemiah Memorial is interrupted by chapters 8–10, which concern Ezra. These have sometimes been identified as another, separate work, the Ezra Memorial (EM), but other scholars believe the EM to be fictional and heavily altered by later editors. Both the Nehemiah and Ezra material are combined with numerous lists, Censuses and other material.
+
+The first edition of the combined Ezra–Nehemiah may date from the early 4th century BC; further editing continued well into the following centuries.
+
+See also
+Esdras
+Ezra-Nehemiah
+
+References
+
+External links 
+
+Commentaries
+ Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Ezra-Nehemiah: A Commentary" (Eerdmans, 1988)
+ Coggins, R.J., "The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Cambridge University Press, 1976)
+Ecker, Ronald L., "Ezra and Nehemiah" (Ecker's Biblical Web Pages, 2007)
+ Fensham, F. Charles, "The books of Ezra and Nehemiah" (Eerdmans, 1982)
+ Grabbe, L.L., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (Routledge, 1998)
+ Throntveit, Mark A., "Ezra-Nehemiah" (John Knox Press, 1992)
+
+Other
+ Clements, R.E. (ed), "The World of Ancient Israel" (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
+ Blenkinsopp, Joseph, "Judaism, the first phase" (Eerdmans, 2009)
+ Garbini, G., "Myth and history in the bible" (Sheffield Academic Press, 2003)
+ Grabbe, L.L., "A history of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 1" (T&T Clark, 2004)
+ Graham, M.P, and McKenzie, Steven L., "The Hebrew Bible today: an introduction to critical issues" (Westminster John Knox Press, 1998)
+ Pakkala, Juha, "Ezra the scribe: the development of Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8" (Walter de Gryter, 2004)
+
+Translations
+ Bible Gateway (opens at NIV version)
+ Chabad.org Library
+  Various versions
+
+ 
+5th-century BC books
+Nehemiah
+Nehemiah
+Historical books
+The Book of Jeremiah () is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the second of the Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. The superscription at chapter Jeremiah 1:1–3 identifies the book as "the words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah". Of all the prophets, Jeremiah comes through most clearly as a person, ruminating to his scribe Baruch about his role as a servant of God with little good news for his audience. 
+
+His book is intended as a message to the Jews in exile in Babylon, explaining the disaster of exile as God's response to Israel's pagan worship: the people, says Jeremiah, are like an unfaithful wife and rebellious children, their infidelity and rebelliousness made judgment inevitable, although restoration and a new covenant are foreshadowed. Authentic oracles of Jeremiah are probably to be found in the poetic sections of chapters 1 –25, but the book as a whole has been heavily edited and added to by the prophet's followers (including, perhaps, his companion, the scribe Baruch) and later generations of Deuteronomists. 
+
+It has come down in two distinct though related versions, one in Hebrew, the other known from the Septuagint Greek translation. The dates of the two (Greek and Hebrew) can be suggested by the fact that the Greek shows concerns typical of the early Persian period, while the Masoretic (i.e., Hebrew) shows perspectives which, although known in the Persian period, did not reach their realisation until the 2nd century BCE.
+
+Structure 
+(Taken from Michael D. Coogan's A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament; other sources will give slightly different divisions)
+
+It is difficult to discern any structure in Jeremiah, probably because the book had such a long and complex composition history. It can be divided into roughly six sections:
+Chapters 1–25 (The earliest and main core of Jeremiah's message)
+Chapters 26–29 (Biographic material and interaction with other prophets)
+Chapters 30–33 (God's promise of restoration including Jeremiah's "new covenant" which is interpreted differently in Judaism than it is in Christianity)
+Chapters 34–45 (Mostly interaction with Zedekiah and the fall of Jerusalem)
+Chapters 46–51 (Divine punishment to the nations surrounding Israel)
+Chapter 52 (Appendix that retells 2 Kings)
+
+Summary
+
+Historical background 
+The background to Jeremiah is briefly described in the superscription to the book: Jeremiah began his prophetic mission in the thirteenth year of king Josiah (about 627 BC) and continued after the eleventh year of king Zedekiah (586 BC), "when Jerusalem went into exile in the sixth month". During this period, Josiah instituted religious reforms, Babylon destroyed Assyria, Egypt briefly imposed vassal status on Judah, Babylon defeated Egypt and made Judah a Babylonian vassal (605 BC), Judah revolted but was subjugated again by Babylon (597 BC), and Judah revolted once more.
+
+This revolt was the final one: Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple and exiled its king and many of the leading citizens in 586 BC, ending Judah's existence as an independent or quasi-independent kingdom and inaugurating the Babylonian exile.
+
+Overview 
+The book can be conveniently divided into biographical, prose and poetic strands, each of which can be summarised separately. 
+The biographical material is to be found in chapters 26–29, 32, and 34–44, and focuses on the events leading up to and surrounding the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587 BCE; it provides precise dates for the prophet's activities beginning in 609 BCE. The non-biographical prose passages, such as the Temple sermon in chapter 7 and the covenant passage in , are scattered throughout the book; they show clear affinities with the Deuteronomists, the school of writers and editors who shaped the series of history books from Judges to Kings, and while it is unlikely they come directly from Jeremiah, they may well have their roots in traditions about what he said and did.
+
+The poetic material is found largely in chapters 1–25 and consists of oracles in which the prophet speaks as God's messenger. These passages, dealing with Israel's unfaithfulness to God, the call to repentance, and attacks on the religious and political establishment, are mostly undated and have no clear context, but it is widely accepted that they represent the teachings of Jeremiah and are the earliest stage of the book. Allied to them, and also probably a reflection of the authentic Jeremiah, are further poetic passages of a more personal nature, which have been called Jeremiah's confessions or spiritual diary. In these poems the prophet agonises over the apparent failure of his mission, is consumed by bitterness at those who oppose or ignore him, and accuses God of betraying him.
+
+Composition
+
+Texts and manuscripts 
+Jeremiah exists in two versions: a Greek translation, called the Septuagint, dating from the last few centuries BCE and found in the earliest Christian manuscripts, and the Masoretic Hebrew text of traditional Jewish bibles. The Greek version is shorter than the Hebrew by about one eighth, and arranges the material differently. Equivalents of both versions were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, so it is clear that the differences mark important stages in the transmission of the text. 
+
+Most scholars hold that the Hebrew text underlying the Septuagint version is older than the Masoretic text, and that the Masoretic evolved either from this or from a closely related version. The shorter version ultimately became canonical in Greek Orthodox churches, while the longer was adopted in Judaism and in Western Christian churches.
+
+Composition history
+It is generally agreed that the three types of material interspersed through the book – poetic, narrative, and biographical – come from different sources or circles. Authentic oracles of Jeremiah are probably to be found in the poetic sections of chapters 1–25, but the book as a whole has been heavily edited and added to by followers (including perhaps the prophet's companion, the scribe Baruch) and later generations of Deuteronomists. The date of the final versions of the book (Greek and Hebrew) can be suggested by the fact that the Greek shows concerns typical of the early Persian period, while the Masoretic (i.e., Hebrew) shows perspectives which, although known in the Persian period, did not reach their realisation until the 2nd century BCE.
+
+Literary development 
+The Book of Jeremiah grew over a long period of time. The Greek stage, looking forward to the fall of Babylon and aligning in places with Second Isaiah, had already seen major redaction (editing) in terms of overall structure, the superscriptions (sentences identifying following passages as the words of God or of Jeremiah), the assignment of historical settings, and arrangement of material, and may have been completed by the late Exilic period (last half of the 6th century BCE); the initial stages of the Masoretic Hebrew version may have been written not long afterwards, although chapter 33:14–26 points to a setting in post-exilic times.
+
+Jeremiah 
+According to its opening verses the book records the prophetic utterances of the priest Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, "to whom the word of YHWH came in the days of king Josiah" and after. Jeremiah lived during a turbulent period, the final years of the kingdom of Judah, from the death of king Josiah (609 BCE) and the loss of independence that followed, through the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the exile of much its population (587/586). The book depicts a remarkably introspective prophet, impetuous and often angered by the role into which he has been thrust, alternating efforts to warn the people with pleas to God for mercy, until he is ordered to "pray no more for this people." He does a number of prophetic symbolic acts, walking about in the streets with a yoke about his neck and engaging in other efforts to attract attention. He is taunted and retaliates, is thrown in jail as the result, and at one point is thrown into a pit to die.
+
+Jeremiah and the Deuteronomists 
+The Deuteronomists were a school or movement who edited the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings into a more or less unified history of Israel (the so-called Deuteronomistic History) during the Jewish exile in Babylon (6th century BCE). It is argued that the Deuteronomists played an important role in the production of the book of Jeremiah; for example, there is clear Deuteronomistic language in chapter 25, in which the prophet looks back over twenty-three years of unheeded prophecy. From the Deuteronomistic perspective the prophetic role implied, more than anything else, concern with law and covenant after the manner of Moses. On this reading Jeremiah was the last of a long line of prophets sent to warn Israel of the consequences of infidelity to God; unlike the Deuteronomists, for whom the call for repentance was always central, Jeremiah seems at some point in his career to have decided that further intercession was pointless, and that Israel's fate was sealed.
+
+Jeremiah as a new Moses 
+The book's superscription claims that Jeremiah was active for forty years, from the thirteenth year of Josiah (627 BCE) to the fall of Jerusalem in 587. It is clear from the last chapters of the book, however, that he continued to speak in Egypt after the assassination of Gedaliah, the Babylonian-appointed governor of Judah, in 582. This suggests that the superscription is trying to make a theological point about Jeremiah by comparing him to Moses – whereas Moses spent forty years leading Israel from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, Jeremiah's forty years saw Israel exiled from the land and Jeremiah himself ultimately in exile in Egypt.
+
+Themes
+
+Covenant 
+
+Much of Jeremiah's prophetic preaching is based on the theme of the covenant between God and Israel (God would protect the people in return for their exclusive worship of him); Jeremiah insists that the covenant is conditional, and can be broken by Israel's apostasy (worship of gods other than Yahweh, the God of Israel). The people, says Jeremiah, are like an unfaithful wife and rebellious children: their infidelity and rebelliousness makes judgement inevitable. Interspersed with this are references to repentance and renewal, although it is unclear whether Jeremiah thought that repentance could ward off judgement or whether it would have to follow judgement. The theme of restoration is strongest in chapter 31:32, which looks to a future in which a new covenant, made with Israel and Judah, will not be broken. This is the theme of the "new covenant" passage at chapter 31:31–34, drawing on Israel's past relationship with God through the covenant at Sinai to foresee a new future in which Israel will be obedient to God.
+
+The "Confessions" of Jeremiah 
+Scholars from Heinrich Ewald onwards  have identified several passages in Jeremiah which can be understood as "confessions": they occur in the first section of the book (chapters 1–25) and are generally identified as Jeremiah 11:18–12.6, 15:10–21, 17:14–18, 18:18–23, and 20:7–18. In these five passages, Jeremiah expresses his discontent with the message he is to deliver, but also his steadfast commitment to the divine call despite the fact that he had not sought it out. Additionally, in several of these "confessions", Jeremiah prays that the Lord will take revenge on his persecutors (for example, Jeremiah 12:3).
+
+Jeremiah's "confessions" are a type of individual lament. Such laments are found elsewhere in the psalms and the Book of Job. Like Job, Jeremiah curses the day of his birth (Jeremiah 20:14–18 and Job 3:3–10). Likewise, Jeremiah's exclamation "For I hear the whispering of many: Terror is all around!"  matches Psalm 31:13 exactly. However, Jeremiah's laments are made unique by his insistence that he has been called by Yahweh to deliver his messages. These laments "provide a unique look at the prophet's inner struggle with faith, persecution, and human suffering".
+
+Prophetic gestures 
+Prophetic gestures, also known as sign-acts or symbolic actions, were a form of communication in which a message was delivered by performing symbolic actions. Not unique to the book of Jeremiah, these were often bizarre and violated the cultural norms of the time. They served the purposes of both drawing an audience and causing that audience to ask questions, giving the prophet an opportunity to explain the meaning of the behavior. The recorder of the events in the written text (i.e. the author of the text) had neither the same audience nor, potentially, the same intent that Jeremiah had in performing these prophetic gestures.
+
+The following is a list – not exhaustive – of noteworthy sign-acts found in Jeremiah:
+ Jeremiah 13:1–11: The wearing, burial, and retrieval of a linen waistband.
+ Jeremiah 16:1–9: The shunning of the expected customs of marriage, mourning, and general celebration.
+ Jeremiah 19:1–13: the acquisition of a clay jug and the breaking of the jug in front of the religious leaders of Jerusalem.
+ Jeremiah 27–28: The wearing of an oxen yoke and its subsequent breaking by a false prophet, Hananiah.
+ Jeremiah 32:6–15: The purchase of a field in Anathoth for the price of seventeen silver shekels.
+ Jeremiah 35:1–19: The offering of wine to the Rechabites, a tribe known for living in tents and refusing to drink wine.
+
+Later interpretation and influence
+
+Judaism 
+The influence of Jeremiah during and after the Exile was considerable in some circles, and three additional books, the Book of Baruch, Lamentations, and the Letter of Jeremiah, were attributed to him in Second Temple Judaism (Judaism in the period between the building of the Second Temple in about 515 BCE and its destruction in 70 CE); in the Greek Septuagint they stand between Jeremiah and the Book of Ezekiel, but only Lamentations is included in modern Jewish or Protestant bibles (the Letter of Jeremiah appears in Catholic bibles as the sixth chapter of Baruch). Jeremiah is mentioned by name in Chronicles and the Book of Ezra, both dating from the later Persian period, and his prophecy that the Babylonian exile would last 70 years was taken up and reapplied by the author of the Book of Daniel in the 2nd century BCE.
+
+Christianity 
+The understanding of the early Christians that Jesus represented a "new covenant" is based on Jeremiah 31:31–34, in which a future Israel will repent and give God the obedience he demands. The Gospel's portrayal of Jesus as a persecuted prophet owes a great deal to the account of Jeremiah's sufferings in chapters 37–44, as well as to the "Songs of the Suffering Servant" in Isaiah.
+
+See also 
+ Nebo-Sarsekim Tablet
+ Jeremiad
+
+Citations
+
+Bibliography
+
+External links 
+
+Hebrew text:
+ ירמיהו Yirmiyahu – Jeremiah (Hebrew)
+Translations into English
+Jewish translations:
+Jeremiah at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation)
+Christian translations:
+Online Bible at GospelHall.org
+ Jeremiah at The Great Books (New Revised Standard Version) (via archive.org)
+  Various versions
+Wikisource texts
+ Book of Jeremiah 
+ Septuagint 
+ Vulgate 
+WycliffeKing JamesAmerican StandardWorld English Bible 
+
+ 
+6th-century BC books
+Nevi'im
+Septuagint
+Jeremiah
+Phoenicians in the Hebrew Bible
+Major prophets
+The Book of Isaiah ( ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BCE prophet Isaiah ben Amoz, but there is evidence that much of it was composed during the Babylonian captivity and later. Johann Christoph Döderlein suggested in 1775 that the book contained the works of two prophets separated by more than a century, and Bernhard Duhm originated the view, held as a consensus through most of the 20th century, that the book comprises three separate collections of oracles: Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1–39), containing the words of the 8th-century BCE prophet Isaiah; Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40–55), the work of an anonymous 6th-century BCE author writing during the Exile; and Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56–66), composed after the return from Exile. Isaiah 1–33 promises judgment and restoration for Judah, Jerusalem and the nations, and chapters 34–66 presume that judgment has been pronounced and restoration follows soon. While few scholars today attribute the entire book, or even most of it, to one person, the book's essential unity has become a focus in more recent research.
+
+The book can be read as an extended meditation on the destiny of Jerusalem into and after the Exile.
+The Deutero-Isaian part of the book describes how God will make Jerusalem the centre of his worldwide rule through a royal saviour (a messiah) who will destroy the oppressor (Babylon); this messiah is the Persian king Cyrus the Great, who is merely the agent who brings about Yahweh's kingship. Isaiah speaks out against corrupt leaders and for the disadvantaged, and roots righteousness in God's holiness rather than in Israel's covenant.
+
+Isaiah was one of the most popular works among Jews in the Second Temple period (c. 515 BCE – 70 CE). In Christian circles, it was held in such high regard as to be called "the Fifth Gospel", and its influence extends beyond Christianity to English literature and to Western culture in general, from the libretto of Handel's Messiah to a host of such everyday phrases as "swords into ploughshares" and "voice in the wilderness".
+
+Structure 
+General scholarly consensus through most of the 20th century saw three separate collections of oracles in the book of Isaiah. A typical outline based on this understanding of the book sees its underlying structure in terms of the identification of historical figures who might have been their authors:
+ 1–39: Proto-Isaiah, containing the words of the original Isaiah;
+ 40–55: Deutero-Isaiah, the work of an anonymous Exilic author;
+ 56–66: Trito-Isaiah, an anthology of about twelve passages.
+
+While one part of the general consensus still holds, this perception of Isaiah as made up of three rather distinct sections underwent a radical challenge in the last quarter of the 20th century. The newer approach looks at the book in terms of its literary and formal characteristics, rather than authors, and sees in it a two-part structure divided between chapters 33 and 34:
+ 1–33: Warnings of judgment and promises of subsequent restoration for Jerusalem, Judah and the nations;
+ 34–66: Judgment has already taken place and restoration is at hand.
+
+Summary 
+
+Seeing Isaiah as a two-part book (chapters 1–33 and 34–66) with an overarching theme leads to a summary of its contents like the following:
+ The book opens by setting out the themes of judgment and subsequent restoration for the righteous. God has a plan which will be realised on the "Day of Yahweh", when Jerusalem will become the centre of his worldwide rule. On that day all the nations of the world will come to Zion (Jerusalem) for instruction, but first the city must be punished and cleansed of evil. Israel is invited to join in this plan. Chapters 5–12 explain the significance of the Assyrian judgment against Israel: righteous rule by the Davidic king will follow after the arrogant Assyrian monarch is brought down. Chapters 13–27 announce the preparation of the nations for Yahweh's world rule; chapters 28–33 announce that a royal saviour (the messiah) will emerge in the aftermath of Jerusalem's punishment and the destruction of her oppressor.
+ The oppressor (now identified as Babylon rather than Assyria) is about to fall. Chapters 34–35 tell how Yahweh will return the redeemed exiles to Jerusalem. Chapters 36–39 tell of the faithfulness of king Hezekiah to Yahweh during the Assyrian siege as a model for the restored community. Chapters 40–54 state that the restoration of Zion is taking place because Yahweh, the creator of the universe, has designated the Persian king Cyrus the Great as the promised messiah and temple-builder. Specifically, Chapter 53 predicts a suffering servant who will be the messiah the prophet speaks of in previous verses. Chapters 55–66 are an exhortation to Israel to keep the covenant. God's eternal promise to David is now made to the people of Israel/Judah at large. The book ends by enjoining righteousness as the final stages of God's plan come to pass, including the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion and the realisation of Yahweh's kingship.
+
+The older understanding of this book as three fairly discrete sections attributable to identifiable authors leads to a more atomised picture of its contents, as in this example:
+ Proto-Isaiah/First Isaiah (chapters 1–39):
+ 1–12: Oracles against Judah mostly from Isaiah's early years;
+ 13–23: Oracles against foreign nations from his middle years;
+ 24–27: The "Isaiah Apocalypse", added at a much later date;
+ 28–33: Oracles from Isaiah's later ministry
+ 34–35: A vision of Zion, perhaps a later addition;
+ 36–39: Stories of Isaiah's life, some from the Book of Kings
+ Deutero-Isaiah/Second Isaiah (chapters 40–54), with two major divisions, 40–48 and 49–54, the first emphasising Israel, the second Zion and Jerusalem:
+ An introduction and conclusion stressing the power of God's word over everything;
+ A second introduction and conclusion within these in which a herald announces salvation to Jerusalem;
+ Fragments of hymns dividing various sections;
+ The role of foreign nations, the fall of Babylon, and the rise of Cyrus as God's chosen one;
+ Four "servant songs" personalising the message of the prophet;
+ Several longer poems on topics such as God's power and invitations to Israel to trust in him;
+ Trito-Isaiah/Third Isaiah (chapters 55–66):
+ A collection of oracles by unknown prophets in the years immediately after the return from Babylon.
+
+Composition
+
+Authorship 
+While it is widely accepted that the book of Isaiah is rooted in a historic prophet called Isaiah, who lived in the Kingdom of Judah during the 8th century BCE, it is also widely accepted that this prophet did not write the entire book of Isaiah.
+ Historical situation: Chapters 40–55 presuppose that Jerusalem has already been destroyed (they are not framed as prophecy) and the Babylonian exile is already in effect – they speak from a present in which the Exile is about to end. Chapters 56–66 assume an even later situation, in which the people are already returned to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple is already under way.
+ Anonymity: Isaiah's name suddenly stops being used after chapter 39.
+ Style: There is a sudden change in style and theology after chapter 40; numerous key words and phrases found in one section are not found in the other.
+
+The composition history of Isaiah reflects a major difference in the way authorship was regarded in ancient Israel and in modern societies; the ancients did not regard it as inappropriate to supplement an existing work while remaining anonymous. While the authors are anonymous, it is plausible that all of them were priests, and the book may thus reflect Priestly concerns, in opposition to the increasingly successful reform movement of the Deuteronomists.
+
+Historical context 
+
+The historic Isaiah ben Amoz lived in the Kingdom of Judah during the reigns of four kings from the mid to late 8th-century BCE. During this period, Assyria was expanding westward from its origins in modern-day northern Iraq towards the Mediterranean, destroying first Aram (modern Syria) in 734–732 BCE, then the Kingdom of Israel in 722–721, and finally subjugating Judah in 701. Proto-Isaiah is divided between verse and prose passages, and a currently popular theory is that the verse passages represent the prophecies of the original 8th-century Isaiah, while the prose sections are "sermons" on his texts composed at the court of Josiah a hundred years later, at the end of the 7th century.
+
+The conquest of Jerusalem by Babylon and the exile of its elite in 586 BCE ushered in the next stage in the formation of the book. Deutero-Isaiah addresses himself to the Jews in exile, offering them the hope of return. This was the period of the meteoric rise of Persia under its king Cyrus the Great – in 559 BCE he succeeded his father as ruler of a small vassal kingdom in modern eastern Iran, by 540 he ruled an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to Central Asia, and in 539 he conquered Babylon. Deutero-Isaiah's predictions of the imminent fall of Babylon and his glorification of Cyrus as the deliverer of Israel date his prophecies to 550–539 BCE, and probably towards the end of this period.
+
+The Persians ended the Jewish exile, and by 515 BCE the exiles, or at least some of them, had returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple. The return, however, was not without problems: the returnees found themselves in conflict with those who had remained in the country and who now owned the land, and there were further conflicts over the form of government that should be set up. This background forms the context of Trito-Isaiah.
+
+Themes
+
+Overview 
+Isaiah is focused on the main role of Jerusalem in God's plan for the world, seeing centuries of history as though they were all the single vision of the 8th-century prophet Isaiah. Proto-Isaiah speaks of Israel's desertion of God and what will follow: Israel will be destroyed by foreign enemies, but after the people, the country and Jerusalem are punished and purified, a holy remnant will live in God's place in Zion, governed by God's chosen king (the messiah), under the presence and protection of God; Deutero-Isaiah has as its subject the liberation of Israel from captivity in Babylon in another Exodus, which the God of Israel will arrange using Cyrus, the Persian conqueror, as his agent; Trito-Isaiah concerns Jerusalem, the Temple, the Sabbath, and Israel's salvation. (More explicitly, it concerns questions current among Jews living in Jerusalem and Palestine in the post-Exilic period about who is a God-loving Jew and who is not). Walter Brueggemann has described this overarching narrative as "a continued meditation upon the destiny of Jerusalem".
+
+Holiness, righteousness, and God's plan 
+God's plan for the world is based on his choice of Jerusalem as the place where he will manifest himself, and of the line of David as his earthly representative – a theme that may possibly have been created through Jerusalem's reprieve from Assyrian attack in 701 BCE.  God is "the holy one of Israel"; justice and righteousness are the qualities that mark the essence of God, and Israel has offended God through unrighteousness. Isaiah speaks out for the poor and the oppressed and against corrupt princes and judges, but unlike the prophets Amos and Micah he roots righteousness not in Israel's covenant with God but in God's holiness.
+
+Monotheism 
+Isaiah 44:6 contains the first clear statement of monotheism: "I am the first and I am the last; beside me there is no God". In Isaiah 44:09–20, this is developed into a satire on the making and worship of idols, mocking the foolishness of the carpenter who worships the idol that he himself has carved. While Yahweh had shown his superiority to other gods before, in Second Isaiah, he becomes the sole God of the world. This model of monotheism became the defining characteristic of post-Exilic Judaism and became the basis for Christianity and Islam.
+
+A new Exodus 
+A central theme in Second Isaiah is that of a new Exodus – the return of the exiled people Israel from Babylon to Jerusalem. The author imagines a ritualistic return to Zion (Judah) led by Yahweh. The importance of this theme is indicated by its placement at the beginning and end of Second Isaiah (40:3–5, 55:12–13). This new Exodus is repeatedly linked with Israel's Exodus from Egypt to Canaan under divine guidance, but with new elements. These links include the following:
+ The original Exodus participants left "in great haste" (Ex 12:11, Deut 16:3), whereas the participants in this new Exodus will "not go out in great haste" (Isa 52:12).
+ The land between Egypt and Canaan of the first Exodus was a "great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland" (Deut 8:15), but in this new Exodus, the land between Babylon (Mesopotamia) and the Promised Land will be transformed into a paradise, where the mountains will be lowered and the valleys raised to create level road (Isa 40:4).
+ In the first Exodus, water was provided by God, but scarcely. In the new Exodus, God will "make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water" (Isa 41:18).
+
+Later interpretation and influence
+
+2nd Temple Judaism (515 BCE – 70 CE) 
+
+Isaiah was one of the most popular works in the period between the foundation of the Second Temple c. 515 BCE and its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. Isaiah's "shoot [which] will come up from the stump of Jesse" is alluded to or cited in the Psalms of Solomon and various apocalyptic works including the Similitudes of Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and the third of the Sibylline oracles, all of which understood it to refer to a/the messiah and the messianic age. Isaiah 6, in which Isaiah describes his vision of God enthroned in the Temple, influenced the visions of God in works such as the "Book of the Watchers" section of the Book of Enoch, the Book of Daniel and others, often combined with the similar vision from the Book of Ezekiel. A very influential portion of Isaiah was the four so-called Songs of the Suffering Servant from Isaiah 42, 49, 50 and 52, in which God calls upon his servant to lead the nations (the servant is horribly abused, sacrifices himself in accepting the punishment due others, and is finally rewarded). Some Second Temple texts, including the Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Daniel identified the Servant as a group – "the wise" who "will lead many to righteousness" (Daniel 12:3) – but others, notably the Similitudes of Enoch, understood it in messianic terms.
+
+Christianity 
+
+The earliest Christians, building on the messianic interpretation of Enoch, interpreted Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the fourth of the songs, as a prophecy of the death and exaltation of Jesus, a role which Jesus himself accepted according to Luke 4:17–21. The Book of Isaiah has been immensely influential in the formation of Christianity, from the devotion to the Virgin Mary to anti-Jewish polemic, medieval passion iconography, and modern Christian feminism and liberation theology. The regard in which Isaiah was held was so high that the book was frequently called "the Fifth Gospel": the prophet who spoke more clearly of Christ and the Church than any others. Its influence extends beyond the Church and Christianity to English literature and to Western culture in general, from the libretto of Handel's Messiah to a host of such everyday phrases as "swords into ploughshares" and "voice in the wilderness".
+
+Isaiah provides 27 of the 37 quotations from the prophets in the Pauline epistles, and takes pride of place in the Gospels and in Acts of the Apostles. Isaiah 7:14, where the prophet is assuring king Ahaz that God will save Judah from the invading armies of Israel and Syria, forms the basis for Matthew 1:23's doctrine of the virgin birth, while Isaiah 40:3–5's image of the exiled Israel led by God and proceeding home to Jerusalem on a newly constructed road through the wilderness was taken up by all four Gospels and applied to John the Baptist and Jesus.
+
+Christians point to Chapter 53 and its discussion of a suffering servant as a striking prediction of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the messiah predicted by Isaiah.
+
+Isaiah seems always to have had a prominent place in Hebrew Bible use, and it is probable that Jesus himself was deeply influenced by Isaiah. Thus many of the Isaiah passages that are familiar to Christians gained their popularity not directly from Isaiah but from the use of them by Jesus and the early Christian authors – this is especially true of the Book of Revelation, which depends heavily on Isaiah for its language and imagery.
+
+See also 
+
+ Beulah (land)
+ "Dream Isaiah Saw"
+ "I Have a Dream"
+ Rorate Coeli
+
+References
+
+Citations
+
+Works cited
+
+External links 
+
+Translations
+ Book of Isaiah – Hebrew, side by side with English
+ Book of Isaiah (English translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org)
+ Bible Gateway
+ 
+
+ 
+8th-century BC books
+6th-century BC books
+Isaiah
+Nevi'im
+Major prophets
+In mathematics, a bilinear map is a function combining elements of two vector spaces to yield an element of a third vector space, and is linear in each of its arguments. Matrix multiplication is an example.
+
+Definition
+
+Vector spaces 
+Let  and  be three vector spaces over the same base field . A bilinear map is a function
+
+such that for all , the map 
+
+is a linear map from  to  and for all , the map 
+
+is a linear map from  to  In other words, when we hold the first entry of the bilinear map fixed while letting the second entry vary, the result is a linear operator, and similarly for when we hold the second entry fixed.
+
+Such a map  satisfies the following properties.
+
+ For any , 
+ The map  is additive in both components: if  and  then  and 
+
+If  and we have  for all  then we say that B is symmetric.  If X is the base field F, then the map is called a bilinear form, which are well-studied (for example: scalar product, inner product, and quadratic form).
+
+Modules 
+The definition works without any changes if instead of vector spaces over a field F, we use modules over a commutative ring R. It generalizes to n-ary functions, where the proper term is multilinear.
+
+For non-commutative rings R and S, a left R-module M and a right S-module N, a bilinear map is a map  with T an -bimodule, and for which any n in N,  is an R-module homomorphism, and for any m in M,  is an S-module homomorphism.  This satisfies
+
+B(r ⋅ m, n) = r ⋅ B(m, n)
+B(m, n ⋅ s) = B(m, n) ⋅ s
+
+for all m in M, n in N, r in R and s in S, as well as B being additive in each argument.
+
+Properties
+An immediate consequence of the definition is that  whenever  or . This may be seen by writing the zero vector 0V as  (and similarly for 0W) and moving the scalar 0 "outside", in front of B, by linearity.
+
+The set  of all bilinear maps is a linear subspace of the space (viz. vector space, module) of all maps from  into X.
+
+If V, W, X are finite-dimensional, then so is . For  that is, bilinear forms, the dimension of this space is  (while the space  of linear forms is of dimension ). To see this, choose a basis for V and W; then each bilinear map can be uniquely represented by the matrix , and vice versa. 
+Now, if X is a space of higher dimension, we obviously have .
+
+Examples 
+ Matrix multiplication is a bilinear map .
+ If a vector space V over the real numbers  carries an inner product, then the inner product is a bilinear map   The product vector space has one dimension.
+ In general, for a vector space V over a field F, a bilinear form on V is the same as a bilinear map .
+ If V is a vector space with dual space V∗, then the application operator,  is a bilinear map from  to the base field.
+ Let V and W be vector spaces over the same base field F. If f is a member of V∗ and g a member of W∗, then  defines a bilinear map .
+ The cross product in  is a bilinear map 
+ Let  be a bilinear map, and  be a linear map, then  is a bilinear map on .
+
+Continuity and separate continuity 
+
+Suppose  and  are topological vector spaces and let  be a bilinear map. 
+Then b is said to be  if the following two conditions hold:
+ for all  the map  given by  is continuous; 
+ for all  the map  given by  is continuous.
+
+Many separately continuous bilinear that are not continuous satisfy an additional property: hypocontinuity. 
+All continuous bilinear maps are hypocontinuous.
+
+Sufficient conditions for continuity 
+
+Many bilinear maps that occur in practice are separately continuous but not all are continuous. 
+We list here sufficient conditions for a separately continuous bilinear to be continuous.
+
+ If X is a Baire space and Y is metrizable then every separately continuous bilinear map  is continuous. 
+ If  are the strong duals of Fréchet spaces then every separately continuous bilinear map  is continuous.
+ If a bilinear map is continuous at (0, 0) then it is continuous everywhere.
+
+Composition map 
+
+Let  be locally convex Hausdorff spaces and let  be the composition map defined by  
+In general, the bilinear map  is not continuous (no matter what topologies the spaces of linear maps are given). 
+We do, however, have the following results:
+
+Give all three spaces of linear maps one of the following topologies:
+ give all three the topology of bounded convergence; 
+ give all three the topology of compact convergence; 
+ give all three the topology of pointwise convergence.
+
+ If  is an equicontinuous subset of  then the restriction  is continuous for all three topologies.
+ If  is a barreled space then for every sequence  converging to  in  and every sequence  converging to  in  the sequence  converges to  in
+
+See also
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+
+External links
+ 
+
+Bilinear maps
+Multilinear algebra
+Arthur Blake (1896 – December 1, 1934), known as Blind Blake, was an American blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He is known for recordings he made for Paramount Records between 1926 and 1932.
+
+Early life
+Little is known of Blake's life. Promotional materials from Paramount Records indicate he was born blind and give his birthplace as Jacksonville, Florida, and it seems that he lived there during various periods. He may have had relatives in Patterson, Georgia. Some authors have written that in one recording he slipped into a Geechee (Gullah) dialect, suggesting a connection with the Sea Islands. Blind Willie McTell indicated that Blake's real name was Arthur Phelps, but later research has shown this is unlikely to be correct. In 2011, a group of researchers led by Alex van der Tuuk published various documents regarding Blake's life and death in the journal Blues & Rhythm. One of these documents is his 1934 death certificate, which states he was born in 1896 in Newport News, Virginia, to Winter and Alice Blake (his mother's name is followed by a question mark). Nothing else is known of Blake until the 1920s, when he emerged as a recording musician.
+
+Career
+Blake recorded about 80 tracks for Paramount Records from 1926 to 1932. He was one of the most accomplished guitarists of his genre and played a diverse range of material. He is best known for his distinctive guitar playing, which was comparable in sound and style to ragtime piano. He may have lived in Jacksonville, going to Chicago for his recording sessions. According to van der Tuuk et al., he returned to Florida for the winter. In the 1930s he was reported to be playing in front of a Jacksonville hotel.
+
+Music
+Blake's first recordings were made in 1926, and his records sold well. His first solo record was "Early Morning Blues", with "West Coast Blues" on the B-side. Both are considered excellent examples of his ragtime-based guitar style and were prototypes for the burgeoning Piedmont blues. Blake made his last recordings in 1932; his career ended with Paramount's bankruptcy. Stefan Grossman and Gayle Dean Wardlow have suggested it is possible that only one side of Blake's last record is actually by him; Champagne Charlie Is My Name' does not sound like Blake's playing or singing."
+
+His complex and intricate fingerpicking inspired Reverend Gary Davis, Jorma Kaukonen, Ry Cooder, Arlen Roth, John Fahey, Ralph McTell, David Bromberg, Leon Redbone and many others. Big Bill Broonzy, hearing Blake in person in the early 1920s, said of his guitar playing "He made it sound like every instrument in the band- saxophone, trombone, clarinets, bass fiddles, pianos- everything. I never had seed then and I haven't to this day yet seed no one that could take his natural fingers and pick as much guitar as Blind Blake."
+
+The track "You Gonna Quit Me" from Bob Dylan's 1992 album Good as I Been to You is a cover of Blind Blake's "You Gonna Quit Me Blues."
+
+Personal life
+Blake married Beatrice McGee around 1931. In the following year he made his final recording at the Paramount headquarters, in Grafton, Wisconsin, just before the label went out of business.
+
+Death
+For decades nothing was known of him after this point, and it was rumored that he met with a violent death. Reverend Gary Davis heard he had been hit by a streetcar in 1934 and Big Bill Broonzy thought that he had frozen to death after falling over drunk during a Chicago blizzard and was too overweight to get back up. The research of van der Tuuk et al. suggests that Blake stayed in Wisconsin, living in Milwaukee's Brewer's Hill neighborhood, where Paramount boarded many of its artists. He seems not to have found work as a musician. In April 1933, he was hospitalized with pneumonia and never fully recovered. On December 1, 1934, after three weeks of decline, Beatrice Blake summoned an ambulance. He had a pulmonary hemorrhage and died on the way to the hospital. The cause of death was listed as pulmonary tuberculosis. He was buried in Glen Oaks Cemetery, in Glendale, Wisconsin in a previously unmarked grave.
+
+Compilations
+ The Legendary Blind Blake (Ristic, 1958)
+ Blues in Chicago (Riverside, 1964)
+ Guitar and Vocal (Jazz Collector, 1968)
+ Bootleg Rum Dum Blues 1926–1930 (Biograph, 1968)
+ Search Warrant Blues 1926–32 (Biograph, 1970)
+ No Dough Blues 1926–29 (Biograph, 1971)
+ That Lovin' I Crave (Biograph, 1974)
+ Ragtime Guitar's Foremost Fingerpicker (DLP, 1984)
+ Blind Blake 1926–29 (Matchbox, 1986)
+ The Accompanist (1926-1931) (Wolf, 1989)
+ Complete Recorded Works, vols. 1–4 (Document, 1991)
+ The Master of Ragtime Guitar, The Essential Recordings (Indigo, 1996)
+ Georgie Bound (Catfish, 1999)
+ The Best of Blind Blake (Yazoo, 2000)
+ The Essential Blind Blake (Document, 2002)
+ All the Published Sides (JSP, 2003)
+ Blind Blake (Black Swan, 2004)
+ The Best of Blind Blake (Collectables, 2006)
+ Southern Rag (Snapper, 2008)
+ The Complete Recordings (P-Vine, 2008)
+ The Best of Blind Blake (P-Vine, 2008)
+ No Dough Blues (Pristine, 2009)
+ Back Biting Bee Blues (Monk, 2009)
+ True Revolution (KRG, 2011)
+ The Rough Guide to Blues Legends: Blind Blake (World Music Network, 2013)
+
+In literature
+Blake figures in the plot of Lee Child's first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor (1997), and there are references to him in Child's 2011 prequel, The Affair. Reference to Blake is made again in The Sentinel (2020), written by Lee Child and his brother Andrew Child, when Jack Reacher is on the lookout for venues in Nashville, 'where Blind Blake could have played'.
+
+Blake's original recording of "Diddy Wah Diddy" is referenced on the cover of Robert Crumb's Zap Comix #1.
+
+In television
+"Blind Blake" and his song "Police Dog Blues" appear in Reacher, Season 1, the TV series based on Lee Child's novel, Killing Floor. The main character Jack Reacher (a blues lover) arrives at the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia looking for some trace of Blake.
+
+References
+
+External links
+ Illustrated Blind Blake discography
+ 
+
+1896 births
+1934 deaths
+20th-century African-American male singers
+20th-century American guitarists
+20th-century deaths from tuberculosis
+Piedmont blues musicians
+Country blues musicians
+Chicago blues musicians
+American ragtime musicians
+Songster musicians
+Country blues singers
+American blues guitarists
+American male guitarists
+Tuberculosis deaths in Wisconsin
+Blind musicians
+Paramount Records artists
+Musicians from Jacksonville, Florida
+Guitarists from Florida
+Guitarists from Illinois
+African-American guitarists
+American blind people
+American musicians with disabilities
+Brian Charles Lara,  (born 2 May 1969) is a Trinidadian former international cricketer, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest batsmen of all time. He topped the Test batting rankings on several occasions and holds several cricketing records, including the record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket, with 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston in 1994, which is the only quintuple-hundred in first-class cricket history. As captain, Lara led the West Indies team to win the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy, the first time the team won any major ICC trophy since winning the 1979 Cricket World Cup.
+
+Lara also holds the record for the highest individual score in a Test innings after scoring 400 not out at Antigua during the 4th test against England in 2004. He is the only batsman in the history of international test cricket to have scored 400+ runs in an innings. Lara also held, for 18 years, the record of scoring the highest number of runs in a single over of a Test match when he scored 28 runs off an over by Robin Peterson of South Africa in 2003 (overtaken by Jasprit Bumrah in 2022).
+
+Lara's match-winning performance of 153 not out against Australia in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1999 was rated by Wisden the second-best batting performance in the history of Test cricket, next only to the 270 runs scored by Sir Donald Bradman in The Ashes Test match of 1937. Muttiah Muralitharan has hailed Lara as his toughest opponent among all batsmen in the world. Lara was awarded the Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World awards in 1994 and 1995 and is also one of only three cricketers to receive the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year, the other two being Sir Garfield Sobers and Shane Warne.
+
+Brian Lara was appointed honorary member of the Order of Australia on 27 November 2009. In September 2012 he was inducted to the ICC's Hall of Fame as a 2012–13 season inductee. In 2013, Lara received Honorary Life Membership of the MCC becoming the 31st West Indian to receive the honor.
+
+Brian Lara is popularly nicknamed as "The Prince of Port of Spain" or simply "The Prince". He has the dubious distinction of playing in the second-highest number of test matches (63) in which his team was on the losing side, just behind Shivnarine Chanderpaul (68).
+
+Early life
+Brian is one of eleven siblings. His father Bunty and one of his older sisters Agnes Cyrus enrolled him in the local Harvard Coaching Clinic at the age of six for weekly coaching sessions on Sundays. As a result, Lara had a very early education in correct batting technique. Lara's first school was St. Joseph's Roman Catholic primary. He then went to San Juan Secondary School, which is located on Moreau Road, Lower Santa Cruz. A year later, at fourteen years old, he moved on to Fatima College where he started his development as a promising young player under cricket coach Harry Ramdass. Aged 14, he amassed 745 runs in the schoolboys' league, with an average of 126.16 per innings, which earned him selection for the Trinidad and Tobago national under-16 team. When he was 15 years old, he played in his first West Indian under-19 youth tournament and that same year, Lara represented West Indies in Under-19 cricket.
+
+Cricket career
+
+Early first-class career
+
+1987 was a breakthrough year for Lara, when in the West Indies Youth Championships he scored 498 runs breaking the record of 480 by Carl Hooper set the previous year. He captained the tournament-winning Trinidad and Tobago, who profited from a match-winning 116 from Lara.
+
+In January 1988, Lara made his first-class debut for Trinidad and Tobago in the Red Stripe Cup against Leeward Islands. In his second first-class match he made 92 against a Barbados attack containing Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall, two greats of West Indies teams. Later in the same year, he captained the West Indies team in Australia for the Bicentennial Youth World Cup where the West Indies reached the semi-finals. Later that year, his innings of 182 as captain of the West Indies Under-23s against the touring Indian team further elevated his reputation.
+
+His first selection for the full West Indies team followed in due course, but unfortunately coincided with the death of his father and Lara withdrew from the team. In 1989, he captained a West Indies B Team in Zimbabwe and scored 145.
+
+In 1990, at the age of 20, Lara became Trinidad and Tobago's youngest-ever captain, leading them that season to victory in the one-day Geddes Grant Shield. It was also in 1990 that he made his belated Test debut for West Indies against Pakistan, scoring 44 and 5. He had made his ODI debut a month earlier against Pakistan, scoring 11.
+
+International career
+
+In January 1993, Lara scored 277 versus Australia in Sydney. This, his maiden Test century in his fifth Test, was the turning point of the series as West Indies won the final two Tests to win the series 2–1. Lara went on to name his daughter Sydney after scoring 277 at SCG.
+
+Lara holds several world records for high scoring. He has the highest individual score in both first-class cricket (501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham in 1994) and Test cricket (400 not out for the West Indies against England in 2004). Lara amassed his world record 501 in 474 minutes off only 427 balls. He hit 308 in boundaries (10 sixes and 62 fours). His partners were Roger Twose (115 partnership – 2nd wicket), Trevor Penney (314 – 3rd), Paul Smith (51 – 4th) and Keith Piper (322 unbroken – 5th). Earlier in that season Lara scored six centuries in seven innings while playing for Warwickshire.
+
+He is the only man to have reclaimed the Test record score, having scored 375 against England in 1994, a record that stood until Matthew Hayden's 380 against Zimbabwe in 2003. His 400 not out also made him the second player (after Donald Bradman) to score two Test triple-centuries, and the second (after Bill Ponsford) to score two first-class quadruple-centuries. He has scored nine double-centuries in Test cricket, third after Bradman's twelve and Kumar Sangakkara's eleven. As a captain, he scored five double-centuries, which is the highest by any one who is in charge. In 1995 Lara in the Test match away series against England, scored 3 centuries in three consecutive Matches which earned him the Man of the Series award. The Test Series was eventually drawn 2–2. He also held the record for the highest total number of runs in a Test career, after overtaking Allan Border in an innings of 226 played at Adelaide Oval, Australia in November 2005. This was later broken by Sachin Tendulkar of India on 17 October 2008 whilst playing against Australia at Mohali in the 2nd Test of the Border–Gavaskar Trophy 2008.
+
+Lara captained the West Indies from 1998 to 1999, when West Indies suffered their first whitewash at the hands of South Africa. Following this they played Australia in a four-Test series which was drawn 2–2, with Lara scoring 546 runs including three centuries and one double hundred. In the second Test at Kingston he scored 213 while in the third Test he scored 153* in the second innings as West Indies chased down 311 with one wicket left. He won the Man of the Match award for both matches and was also named Man of the Series.
+
+The Wisden 100 rates Lara's 153 not out against Australia in Bridgetown in 1998–99 as the second-best innings ever after Sir Donald Bradman's 270 against England in Melbourne in 1936–37.
+
+In 2001 Lara was named the Man of the Carlton Series in Australia with an average of 46.50, the highest average by a West Indian in that series, scoring two half centuries and one century, 116 against Australia. That same year Lara amassed 688 runs in the three match away Test series against Sri Lanka making three centuries, and one fifty—including the double-century and a century in the first and second innings of the 3rd Test match at the Sinhalese Sports Ground, equating to 42% of the team's runs in that series. These extraordinary performances led Muttiah Muralitharan to state that Lara was the most dangerous batsman he had ever bowled to.
+
+Lara was reappointed as captain against the touring Australians in 2003, and struck 110 in his first Test match back in charge, showing a return to stellar performance. Later that season, under his captaincy, West Indies won the two match Test series against Sri Lanka 1–0 with Lara making a double-century in the First Test. In September 2004, West Indies won the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy in England under his captaincy. For his performances in 2004, he was named both in the World Test XI and ODI XI by ICC.
+
+In March 2005, Lara declined selection for the West Indies team because of a dispute over his personal Cable & Wireless sponsorship deal, which clashed with the Cricket Board's main sponsor, Digicel. Six other players were involved in this dispute, including stars Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo. Lara said he declined selection in a stand of solidarity, when these players were dropped because of their sponsorship deals. The issue was resolved after the first Test of the series against the touring South African team.
+
+Lara returned to the team for the second Test (and scored a huge first innings score of 196), but in the process lost his captaincy indefinitely to the newly appointed Shivnarine Chanderpaul. In the next Test, against the same opponents, he scored a 176 in the first innings. After a one-day series against South Africa, he scored his first Test century against the visiting Pakistanis in the first Test at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados which the West Indies eventually won.
+
+For his performances in 2005, he was named in the World Test XI by ICC.
+
+On 26 April 2006 Lara was reappointed the captain of the West Indies cricket team for the third time. This followed the resignation of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who had been captain for thirteen months—in which the West Indies won just one of the 14 Test matches they had competed. In May 2006, Lara led the West Indies to successful One-Day series victories against Zimbabwe and India. Lara's team played Australia in the finals of the DLF Cup and the ICC Champions Trophy where they finished runners up in both finals.
+
+On 16 December 2006 he became the first player for the West Indies to pass 10,000 One Day International runs, and, along with Sachin Tendulkar, one of only two players, at the time, to do so in both forms of the game. On 10 April 2007 Lara confirmed his retirement from one-day cricket post the 2007 Cricket World Cup. A few days later he announced that he would in fact be retiring from all international cricket after the tournament.
+
+Lara played his final international game on 21 April 2007 in a dead rubber World Cup game against England. He was run out for 18 after a mix-up with Marlon Samuels; England won the game by 1 wicket. Before the end of this World Cup Glenn McGrath stated that Lara is the greatest batsman that he has ever bowled to.
+
+Retirement
+On 19 April 2007 Lara announced his retirement from all forms of international cricket, indicating that the West Indies vs England match on 21 April 2007 would be his last international appearance. He was run out after a bad mixup with Marlon Samuels for 18, as England went on to win the match by one wicket.
+
+He announced before the 2007 Cricket World Cup that this would be his last appearance in One Day Internationals. After his last match, in the post-game presentation interview, he asked the fans, "Did I entertain?", to which he received a resounding cheer from the crowd, after which he went out and took his 'lap of honour' where he met and shook hands with many of the fans. Lara stated this would be his last appearance in international cricket, he has also indicated his interest in retaining some involvement in the sport.
+
+On 23 July 2007 Lara agreed to sign for the Indian Cricket League. He is the former captain of the Mumbai Champs. He volunteered to play for his home team Trinidad and Tobago during the start of 2008 domestic season, after not playing for them for the previous two years. He made his comeback a memorable one with a match winning hundred over Guyana, followed by a dismissive undefeated half-century in the second innings, scored at over two runs per ball. In the third-round game (Trinidad and Tobago got a bye in the second round).
+
+Lara suffered a fractured arm against the Leeward Islands in St Maarten on 19 January, which kept him out of the ICL season. He nevertheless affirmed his commitment to returning to Twenty20 cricket, and on 27 June 2010 appeared for the Marylebone Cricket Club match against a touring Pakistan team, scoring 37 from 32 balls.
+
+In 2012, Lara became involved with the Bangladesh Premier League team Chittagong Kings as their brand ambassador.
+
+On the occasion of bicentennial anniversary of Lord's ground he played for the team of MCC, under the leadership of Sachin Tendulkar against the Rest of World XI in a 50 over game. He went on to score a half century in an eventual win for the MCC.
+
+2010 return
+
+After negotiations between Surrey and Lara for the 2010 Friends Provident t20 failed to come to anything, Lara declared that he still wanted to sign a contract to play Twenty20 cricket. Late in the year he joined Southern Rocks, a Zimbabwean side, to compete in the 2010–11 Stanbic Bank 20 Series. On his debut for the Rocks, and his first-ever Twenty20 match, he scored a half-century, top-scoring for the Rocks with 65. He added 34 runs in his next two innings, but then left the competition, citing "commitments elsewhere".
+
+After expressing his interest to play in the 2011 fourth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), and despite not having played active cricket for four years, Brian Lara still managed to attract the highest reserve price of $400,000 ahead of the IPL players' auction in early January 2011; however, no franchise bought him.
+
+In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
+
+On 18 November 2016, Brian Lara signed with Newcastle C&S D5's side The Bennett Hotel Centurions.
+
+Coaching
+In December 2021 Brian Lara was appointed as Batting Coach and Strategic Advisor of the Sunrisers Hyderabad team for the 2022 season of the Indian Premier League.
+
+Personal life
+Lara's father died in 1989 of a heart attack. His mother died in 2002 of cancer.
+
+Lara has two daughters whom he fathered with Trinidadian journalist and model Leasel Rovedas.
+Lara has dated former British lingerie model Lynnsey Ward.
+
+Honours
+In 2009, Lara was made an honorary Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to West Indian and Australian cricket.
+
+Lara will be one of four persons to receive the highest award of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in July. Lara received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sheffield on Wednesday 10 January 2007. The ceremony took place at the Trinidad Hilton, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
+
+In September 2009, Lara was inducted as an honorary lifetime member of the Royal St. Kitts Golf Club.
+
+On 29 October 2011 Lara was conferred with an honorary doctorate of laws by the University of the West Indies, St Augustine.
+
+On 14 September 2012 he was inducted to the ICC's Hall of Fame at the awards ceremony held in Colombo, Sri Lanka as a 2012–13 season inductee.
+
+The Brian Lara Stadium, in Trinidad and Tobago, opened in 2017, was named in his honour.
+
+On 4 July 2019 Lara was bestowed with an honorary doctorate by the D Y Patil International University of India.
+
+Philanthropy
+Lara has established the Pearl and Bunty Lara Foundation, which is a charitable organisation in memory of his parents that aims to address health and social care issues. He is an Ambassador for Sport of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and travels on a diplomatic passport to promote his country throughout the world.
+
+On 7 September 2008 he took part in Soccer Aid 2008, and on 6 June 2010 in Soccer Aid 2010, playing for the Rest of the World vs a team of England celebrities and ex-pros. Lara was also a talented football player in his youth and often played with his close friends Dwight Yorke, Shaka Hislop and Russell Latapy while growing up together in Trinidad. Yorke, Hislop and Latapy would go on to play for Trinidad and Tobago at the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
+
+Records
+
+ Lara struck 277 runs against Australia in Sydney, his maiden Test century, the fourth-highest maiden Test century by any batsman, the highest individual score in all Tests between the two teams and the fourth-highest century ever recorded against Australia by any Test batsman.
+ He became the first man to score seven centuries in eight first-class innings, the first being the record 375 against England and the last being the record 501 not out against Durham.
+ After Matthew Hayden had eclipsed his Test record for highest individual score 375 by five runs in 2003, he reclaimed the record scoring 400 not out in 2004 against England. With these innings he became the second player to score two Test triple-centuries, the first & only player to score two 350-plus scores in test history, the second player to score two career quadruple-centuries after Bill Ponsford, the only player to achieve both these milestones, and regained the distinction of being the holder of both the record first-class individual innings and the record Test individual innings. He is the only player to break the world record twice.
+ He also set the record for the highest individual test score as captain (400*)
+ In the same innings, he became the second batsman to score 1,000 Test runs in five different years, four days after Matthew Hayden first set the record.
+ He was the all-time leading run scorer in Test cricket, a record he attained on 26 November 2005 until surpassed by Sachin Tendulkar on 17 October 2008.
+ He was the fastest batsman to score 10,000 (with Sachin Tendulkar) and 11,000 Test runs, in terms of number of innings.
+ He scored 34 Test centuries; joint-sixth along with Sunil Gavaskar, Mahela Jayawardene and Younis Kahn on the all-time list behind Sachin Tendulkar (51), Jacques Kallis (45), Ricky Ponting (41), Kumar Sangakkara (38) and Rahul Dravid (36).
+ He has the most centuries for a West Indian
+ Nine of his centuries are double-centuries (surpassed only by Kumar Sangakkara and Donald Bradman)
+ Two of them are triple-centuries (matched by Australia's Donald Bradman, India's Virender Sehwag, and West Indies' Chris Gayle).
+ He has scored centuries against all Test-playing nations. He achieved this feat in 2005 by scoring his first Test century against Pakistan at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados.
+ He became the sixth batsman to score a century in one session, doing so against Pakistan on 21 November 2006.
+ Lara has scored 20% of his team runs, a feat surpassed only by Bradman (23%) and George Headley (21%). Lara scored 688 runs (42% of team output, a record for a series of three or more Tests, and the second-highest aggregate runs in history for a three-Test series) in the 2001–02 tour of Sri Lanka.
+ He also scored a century and a double-century in the third Test in that same Sri Lanka tour, a feat repeated only five other times in Test cricket history.
+ He has scored the most runs (351) on a losing side in a Test.
+ He scored the largest proportion (53.83 per cent) of his team's runs in a Test (221 out of 390 and 130 out of 262). He eclipsed the long-standing record of 51.88 per cent by the South African J. H. Sinclair (106 out of 177 and 4 out of 35) against England at Cape Town in an 1898–1899 series.
+ Lara holds the world record of scoring most runs in a single over (28 runs against left-arm spinner RJ Peterson of South Africa) in Test cricket. He also scored 26 runs in a single over off the bowling of Danish Kaneria at Multan Cricket Stadium on 21 November 2006.
+ He scored the ninth-fastest Test century, doing so off 77 balls against Pakistan on 21 November 2006.
+ With 164 catches, he is the eighth-highest all-time catch-taker of non-wicketkeepers, behind Rahul Dravid, Mahela Jayawardene, Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting, Mark Waugh, Stephen Fleming and Graeme Smith.
+ In 1994, he was awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award. In 1995, he was chosen as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year.
+ Lara had played some of his best innings in the latter stage of his career. Wisden published a top 100 list in July 2001, a distillation of the best performances from 1,552 Tests, 54,494 innings and 29,730 bowling performances. Three innings by Lara were placed in the top 15 (the most for any batsman in that range). His 153 not out in Bridgetown, Barbados, during West Indies' 2–2 home series draw against Australia in *1998–1999 was deemed the second-greatest Test innings ever played, behind Bradman's 270 against England in the Third Test of the 1936–1937 series at Melbourne.
+ He was voted as second-scariest batsman to face in the "World's Scariest Batsman" poll of international bowlers.
+
+See also
+
+ Brian Lara Cricket series of video games
+Brian Lara Cricket Academy
+
+Notes and references
+
+External links
+
+ 
+ Brian Lara's Test Statistics (by HowSTAT!)
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+
+ 
+
+ 
+1969 births
+Living people
+Cricketers at the 1992 Cricket World Cup
+Cricketers at the 1996 Cricket World Cup
+Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
+Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
+Honorary Members of the Order of Australia
+ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
+Northerns cricketers
+Recipients of the Trinity Cross
+Southern Rocks cricketers
+Trinidad and Tobago cricketers
+Warwickshire cricket captains
+Warwickshire cricketers
+West Indian cricketers of 1970–71 to 1999–2000
+West Indian cricketers of the 21st century
+West Indies One Day International cricketers
+West Indies Test cricketers
+Wisden Cricketers of the Year
+World XI Test cricketers
+Mumbai Champs cricketers
+BBC Sports Personality World Sport Star of the Year winners
+Recipients of the Order of the Caribbean Community
+People educated at Fatima College
+The beagle is a breed of  small scent hound, similar in appearance to the much larger foxhound. The beagle was developed primarily for hunting hare, known as beagling. Possessing a great sense of smell and superior tracking instincts, the beagle is the primary breed used as a detection dog for prohibited agricultural imports and foodstuffs in quarantine around the world. The beagle is a popular pet due to its size, good temper, and a lack of inherited health problems.
+
+The modern breed was developed in Great Britain around the 1830s from several breeds, including the Talbot Hound, the North Country Beagle, the Southern Hound, and possibly the Harrier.
+
+Beagles have been depicted in popular culture since Elizabethan times in literature and paintings and more recently in film, television, and comic books.
+
+History
+
+The origin of the beagle is not known. In the 11th century, William the Conqueror brought the St. Hubert Hound and the Talbot hound to Britain. In Britain, both of these strains were then crossed with Greyhounds to give them speed and stamina for deer hunting. Beagles are similar to the Harrier and the extinct Southern Hound, though they are smaller and slower.
+
+From medieval times, beagle was used as a generic description for the smaller hounds, though these dogs differed considerably from the modern breed. Miniature breeds of beagle-type dogs were known from the times of Edward II and Henry VII, who both had packs of Glove Beagles, so named since they were small enough to fit on a glove, and Queen Elizabeth I kept a breed known as a Pocket Beagle, which stood  at the shoulder. Small enough to fit in a "pocket" or saddlebag, they rode along on the hunt. The larger hounds would run the prey to ground, then the hunters would release the small dogs to continue the chase through underbrush. Elizabeth I referred to the dogs as her singing beagles and often entertained guests at her royal table by letting her Pocket Beagles cavort amid their plates and cups. 19th-century sources refer to these breeds interchangeably and it is possible that the two names refer to the same small variety. In George Jesse's Researches into the History of the British Dog from 1866, the early 17th-century poet and writer Gervase Markham is quoted referring to the beagle as small enough to sit on a man's hand and to the: 
+
+By the 18th century, two breeds had been developed for hunting hare and rabbit: the Southern Hound and the North Country Beagle (or Northern Hound). The Southern Hound, a tall, heavy dog with a square head, and long, soft ears, was common from south of the River Trent and probably closely related to the Talbot Hound. Though slow, it had stamina and an excellent scenting ability. The North Country Beagle, possibly a cross between an offshoot of the Talbot stock and a Greyhound, was bred chiefly in Yorkshire and was common in the northern counties. It was smaller than the Southern Hound, less heavy-set, and with a more pointed muzzle. It was faster than its southern counterpart but its scenting abilities were less well-developed.
+
+Standards for the Pocket Beagle were drawn up as late as 1901; these genetic lines are now extinct, although modern breeders have attempted to recreate the variety.
+
+Development of the modern breed
+Reverend Phillip Honeywood established a beagle pack in Essex in the 1830s and it is believed that this pack formed the basis for the modern breed. Although details of the pack's lineage are not recorded, it is thought that North Country Beagles and Southern Hounds were strongly represented; William Youatt suspected that Harriers formed a good majority of the beagle's bloodline, but the origin of the Harrier is itself obscure. Honeywood's Beagles were small, standing at about  at the shoulder, and pure white according to John Mills (writing in The Sportsman's Library in 1845). Prince Albert and Lord Winterton also had Beagle packs around this time, and royal favor no doubt led to some revival of interest in the breed, but Honeywood's pack was regarded as the finest of the three.
+
+Although credited with the development of the modern breed, Honeywood concentrated on producing dogs for hunting and it was left to Thomas Johnson to refine the breeding to produce dogs that were both attractive and capable hunters. Two strains were developed: the rough-coated and smooth-coated varieties. The rough-coated beagle survived until the beginning of the 20th century, and there were even records of one making an appearance at a dog show as late as 1969, but this variety is now extinct, having probably been absorbed into the standard beagle bloodline.
+
+In the 1840s, a standard beagle type was beginning to develop; the distinction between the North Country Beagle and Southern Hound had been lost, but there was still a large variation in size, character, and reliability among the emerging packs. In 1856, "Stonehenge" (the pseudonym of John Henry Walsh), writing in the Manual of British Rural Sports, was still dividing beagles into four varieties: the medium beagle; the dwarf or lapdog beagle; the fox beagle (a smaller, slower version of the Foxhound); and the rough-coated or terrier beagle, which he classified as a cross between any of the other varieties and one of the Scottish terrier breeds. Stonehenge also gives the start of a standard description:
+
+By 1887 the threat of extinction was on the wane: there were 18 beagle packs in England. The Beagle Club was formed in 1890 and the first standard drawn up at the same time. The following year the Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles was formed. Both organisations aimed to further the best interests of the breed, and both were keen to produce a standard type of beagle. By 1902, the number of packs had risen to 44.
+
+Export
+Beagles were in the United States by the 1840s at the latest, but the first dogs were imported strictly for hunting and were of variable quality. Since Honeywood had only started breeding in the 1830s, it is unlikely these dogs were representative of the modern breed, and the description of them as looking like straight-legged Dachshunds with weak heads has little resemblance to the standard. Serious attempts at establishing a quality bloodline began in the early 1870s when General Richard Rowett from Illinois imported some dogs from England and began breeding. Rowett's Beagles are believed to have formed the models for the first American standard, drawn up by Rowett, L. H. Twadell, and Norman Ellmore in 1887. The beagle was accepted as a breed by the American Kennel Club (AKC) in 1885. In the 20th century the breed has spread worldwide.
+
+Popularity
+
+On its formation, the Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles took over the running of a regular show at Peterborough that had started in 1889, and the Beagle Club in the UK held its first show in 1896. The regular showing of the breed led to the development of a uniform type, and the beagle continued to prove a success up until the outbreak of World War I when all shows were suspended. After the war, the breed was again struggling for survival in the UK: the last of the Pocket Beagles was probably lost during this time, and registrations fell to an all-time low. A few breeders (notably Reynalton Kennels) managed to revive interest in the dog and by World War II, the breed was once again doing well. Registrations dropped again after the end of the war but almost immediately recovered.
+
+As purebred dogs, beagles have always been more popular in the United States and Canada than in their native country England. The National Beagle Club of America was formed in 1888 and by 1901 a beagle had won a Best in Show title. As in the UK, activity during World War I was minimal, but the breed showed a much stronger revival in the U.S. when hostilities ceased. In 1928 it won a number of prizes at the Westminster Kennel Club's show and by 1939 a beagle – Champion Meadowlark Draughtsman – had captured the title of top-winning American-bred dog for the year.  On 12 February 2008, a beagle, K-Run's Park Me In First (Uno), won the Best In Show category at the Westminster Kennel Club show for the first time in the competition's history. In North America they have been consistently in the top-ten most-popular breeds for over 30 years. From 1953 to 1959 the beagle was ranked No. 1 on the list of the American Kennel Club's registered breeds; in 2005 and 2006 it ranked 5th out of the 155 breeds registered. In the UK they are not quite so popular, placing 28th and 30th in the rankings of registrations with the Kennel Club in 2005 and 2006 respectively. In the United States the beagle ranked 4th most popular breed in 2012 and 2013, behind the Labrador Retriever (#1), German Shepherd (#2), and Golden Retriever (#3) breeds.
+
+Name
+According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first mention of the beagle by name in English literature dates from c. 1475 in The Squire of Low Degree. The origin of the word "beagle" is uncertain, although it has been suggested that the word derives from the French begueule which means "gate throat".
+
+It is not known why the black and tan Kerry Beagle, present in Ireland since Celtic times, has the beagle description, since at  it is significantly taller than the modern day beagle, and in earlier times was even larger. Some writers suggest that the beagle's scenting ability may have come from cross-breeding earlier strains with the Kerry Beagle. Originally used for hunting stags, it is today used for hare and drag hunting.
+
+Appearance
+
+The general appearance of the beagle resembles a miniature Foxhound, but the head is broader and the muzzle shorter, the expression completely different and the legs shorter in proportion to the body.  They are generally between  high at the withers and weigh between , with females being slightly smaller than males on average.
+They have a smooth, somewhat domed skull with a medium-length, square-cut muzzle, and a black (or occasionally liver) gumdrop nose. The jaw is strong, and the teeth scissor together with the upper teeth fitting perfectly over the lower teeth. Both sets align square to the jaw. The eyes are large, hazel or brown, with a mild, hound-like pleading look. The large ears are long, soft, and low-set, turning towards the cheeks slightly and rounded at the tips. Beagles have a strong, medium-length neck (which is long enough for them to easily bend to the ground to pick up a scent), with little folding in the skin but some evidence of a dewlap; a broad chest narrowing to a tapered abdomen and waist and a long, slightly curved tail (known as the "stern") tipped with white. The white tip, known as the flag, was bred for selectively, as the tail remains easily seen when the dog's head is down following a scent. The tail does not curl over the back, but is held upright when the dog is active. The beagle has a muscular body and a medium-length, smooth, hard coat. The front legs are straight and carried under the body while the rear legs are muscular and well bent at the stifles.
+
+The tricolored beaglewhite with large black areas and light brown shadingis the most common.  Tricolored beagles occur in a number of shades, from the "Classic Tri" with a jet black saddle (also known as "Blackback"), to the "Dark Tri" (where faint brown markings are intermingled with more prominent black markings), to the "Faded Tri" (where faint black markings are intermingled with more prominent brown markings). Some tricolored dogs have a broken pattern, sometimes referred to as pied. These dogs have mostly white coats with patches of black and brown hair. Tricolor beagles are almost always born black and white. The white areas are typically set by eight weeks, but the black areas may fade to brown as the puppy matures.  (The brown may take between one and two years to fully develop.) Some beagles gradually change colour during their lives, and may lose their black markings entirely.
+
+Two-colour varieties always have a white base colour with areas of the second colour. Tan and white is the most common two-colour variety, but there is a wide range of other colours including lemon, a very light tan; red, a reddish, almost orange, brown; and liver, a darker brown, and black. Liver is not common and is not permitted in some standards; it tends to occur with yellow eyes. Ticked or mottled varieties may be either white or black with different coloured flecks (ticking), such as the blue-mottled or bluetick beagle, which has spots that appear to be a midnight-blue colour, similar to the colouring of the Bluetick Coonhound. Some tricolour beagles also have ticking of various colours in their white areas.
+
+Saddle-patterned Beagles that express ancient domino (eA) are called hare-pied. Domino restricts eumelanin production leading to a smaller and faded saddle. Dark hairs in the area of the saddle have a light-colored hair base. The nose pigment may be lightened down the middle.
+
+Sense of smell
+Alongside the Bloodhound and Basset Hound, the beagle has one of the best developed senses of smell of any dog. In the 1950s, John Paul Scott and John Fuller began a 13-year study of canine behavior. As part of this research, they tested the scenting abilities of various breeds by putting a mouse in a one-acre field and timing how long it took the dogs to find it. The beagles found it in less than a minute while Fox Terriers took 15 minutes and Scottish Terriers failed to find it at all. The long ears and large lips of the beagle probably assist in trapping the scents close to the nose.
+
+Variations
+
+Breed varieties
+The American Kennel Club recognises two separate varieties of beagle: the 13-inch for hounds less than , and the 15-inch for those between . The Canadian Kennel Club recognises a single type, with a height not exceeding .  The Kennel Club (UK) and FCI affiliated clubs recognise a single type, with a height of between .
+
+English and American varieties are sometimes mentioned. However, there is no official recognition from any Kennel Club for this distinction. Beagles fitting the American Kennel Club standard – which disallows animals over  – are smaller on average than those fitting the Kennel Club standard which allows heights up to .
+
+Pocket Beagles are sometimes advertised for sale but while the UK Kennel Club originally specified a standard for the Pocket Beagle in 1901, the variety is now not recognised by any Kennel Club.
+  
+A strain known as Patch Hounds was developed by Willet Randall and his family from 1896 specifically for their rabbit hunting ability. They trace their bloodline back to Field Champion Patch, but do not necessarily have a patchwork marking.
+
+Crossbreeds
+In the 1850s, John Henry Walsh (Stonehenge) recommended a cross between a Beagle and a Scottish Terrier as a retriever. He found the crossbreed to be a good worker, silent and obedient, but it had the drawback that it was small and could barely carry a hare. More recently, the trend has been for "designer dogs" and one of the most popular has been the Beagle/Pug cross known as a Puggle. Some puppies of this cross are less excitable than a Beagle and with a lower exercise requirement, similar to the Pug parent; but many are highly excitable and require vigorous exercise.
+
+Temperament
+
+The beagle has an even temper and gentle disposition. Described in several breed standards as "merry", they are amiable and typically neither aggressive nor timid, although this depends on the individual. They enjoy company, and although they may initially be standoffish with strangers, they are easily won over. They make poor guard dogs for this reason, although their tendency to bark or howl when confronted with the unfamiliar makes them good watch dogs. In a 1985 study conducted by Ben and Lynette Hart, the beagle was given the highest excitability rating, along with the Yorkshire Terrier, Cairn Terrier, Miniature Schnauzer, West Highland White Terrier, and Fox Terrier.
+
+They are ranked 72nd in Stanley Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs, as Coren places them among the group with the lowest degree of working/obedience intelligence. Coren's scale, however, does not assess understanding, independence, or creativity.
+Beagles are excellent with children and this is one of the reasons they have become popular family pets. Beagles are pack animals; they are prone to separation anxiety, a condition which causes them to destroy things when left unattended.  Not all beagles will howl, but most will bark when confronted with strange situations, and some will bay (also referred to as "speaking", "giving tongue", or "opening") when they catch the scent of potential quarry. They also generally get along well with cats and other dogs. They are not too demanding with regard to exercise; their inbred stamina means they do not easily tire when exercised, but they also do not need to be worked to exhaustion before they will rest. Regular exercise helps ward off the weight gain to which the breed is prone.
+
+Health
+The typical longevity of beagles is 12–15 years, which is a common lifespan for dogs of their size.
+
+Beagles may be prone to epilepsy, but this can often be controlled with medication. Hypothyroidism and a number of types of dwarfism occur in beagles. Two conditions in particular are unique to the breed: "Funny Puppy", in which the puppy is slow to develop and eventually develops weak legs, a crooked back and although normally healthy, is prone to a range of illnesses; and Musladin-Lueke syndrome (MLS) in which the eyes are slanted and the outer toes are underdeveloped but otherwise development is as normal. Hip dysplasia, common in Harriers and in some larger breeds, is rarely considered a problem in beagles. Beagles are considered a chondrodystrophic breed, meaning that they are prone to types of disk diseases.
+
+In rare cases, beagles may develop immune mediated polygenic arthritis (where the immune system attacks the joints) even at a young age. The symptoms can sometimes be relieved by steroid treatments. Another rare disease in the breed is neonatal cerebellar cortical degeneration. Affected puppies are slow, have lower co-ordination, fall more often, and do not have a normal gait. It has an estimated carrier rate of 5% and affected rate of 0.1%. A genetic test is available.
+
+Their long floppy ears can mean that the inner ear does not receive a substantial air flow or that moist air becomes trapped, and this can lead to ear infections. Beagles may also be affected by a range of eye problems; two common ophthalmic conditions in beagles are glaucoma and corneal dystrophy. "Cherry eye", a prolapse of the gland of the third eyelid, and distichiasis, a condition in which eyelashes grow into the eye causing irritation, sometimes exist; both these conditions can be corrected with surgery. They can suffer from several types of retinal atrophy. Failure of the nasolacrimal drainage system can cause dry eye or leakage of tears onto the face.
+
+As field dogs they are prone to minor injuries such as cuts and sprains, and, if inactive, obesity is a common problem as they will eat whenever food is available and rely on their owners to regulate their weight. When working or running free they are also likely to pick up parasites such as fleas, ticks, harvest mites, and tapeworms, and irritants such as grass seeds can become trapped in their eyes, soft ears, or paws.
+
+Beagles may exhibit a behavior known as reverse sneezing, in which they sound as if they are choking or gasping for breath, but are actually drawing air in through the mouth and nose. The exact cause of this behavior is not known, but it can be a common occurrence and is not harmful to the dog.
+
+Reproduction
+The average size of a beagle litter is six puppies. When mother beagles give birth to litters of puppies, the little pups weigh just a few ounces each.
+
+Hunting
+
+Beagles were developed primarily for hunting hare, an activity known as beagling. They were seen as ideal hunting companions for the elderly who could follow on horseback without exerting themselves, for young hunters who could keep up with them on ponies, and for the poorer hunters who could not afford to maintain a stable of good hunting horses. Before the advent of the fashion for foxhunting in the 19th century, hunting was an all day event where the enjoyment was derived from the chase rather than the kill. In this setting the tiny beagle was well matched to the hare, as unlike Harriers they would not quickly finish the hunt, but because of their excellent scent-tracking skills and stamina they were almost guaranteed to eventually catch the hare. The beagle packs would run closely together ("so close that they might be covered with a sheet") which was useful in a long hunt, as it prevented stray dogs from obscuring the trail. In thick undergrowth they were also preferred to spaniels when hunting pheasant.
+
+With the fashion for faster hunts, the beagle fell out of favor for chasing hare, but was still employed for rabbit hunting. In Anecdotes of Dogs (1846), Edward Jesse says:
+
+In the United States they appear to have been employed chiefly for hunting rabbits from the earliest imports.
+Hunting hare with beagles became popular again in Britain in the mid-19th century and continued until it was made illegal in Scotland by the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002 and in England and Wales by the Hunting Act 2004. Under this legislation beagles may still pursue rabbits with the landowner's permission. Drag hunting is popular where hunting is no longer permitted or for those owners who do not wish to participate in hunting a live animal, but still wish to exercise their dog's innate skills.
+
+The traditional foot pack consists of up to 40 beagles, marshaled by a Huntsman who directs the pack and who is assisted by a variable number of whippers-in whose job is to return straying hounds to the pack. The Master of the Hunt is in overall day-to-day charge of the pack, and may or may not take on the role of Huntsman on the day of the hunt.
+
+As hunting with beagles was seen as ideal for young people, many of the British public schools traditionally maintained beagle packs. Protests were lodged against Eton's use of beagles for hunting as early as 1902 but the pack is still in existence today. In 2001, the Wye College beagle pack was taken by the Animal Liberation Front. School and university packs are still maintained by Eton, Marlborough, Radley, the Royal Agricultural University, and Christ Church, Oxford.
+
+In addition to organised beagling, beagles have been used for hunting or flushing to guns (often in pairs) a wide range of game including snowshoe hare, cottontail rabbits, game birds, roe deer, red deer, bobcat, coyote, wild boar, and foxes, and have even been recorded as being used to hunt stoat. In most of these cases, the beagle is employed as a gun dog, flushing game for hunter's guns.
+
+Detection
+
+Beagles are used as detection dogs in the Beagle Brigade of the United States Department of Agriculture. These dogs are used to detect food items in luggage being taken into the United States. After trialling several breeds, beagles were chosen because they are relatively small and unintimidating for people who are uncomfortable around dogs, easy to care for, intelligent and work well for rewards. They are also used for this purpose in a number of other countries including by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in New Zealand, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, and in Canada, Japan, and the People's Republic of China. Larger breeds are generally used for detection of explosives as this often involves climbing over luggage and on large conveyor belts, work for which the smaller Beagle is not suited.
+
+Testing
+Beagles are the dog breed most often used in animal testing, due to their size and passive nature. In the United States, as many as 65,000 beagles are used every year for medical, cosmetic, beauty, and other chemical tests. They are purpose bred and live their lives in cages undergoing experiments. The Rescue + Freedom Project (formerly Beagle Freedom Project) has successfully advocated for beagles to be released from labs. This organisation has freed hundreds of animals.
+
+Beagles are used in a range of research procedures: fundamental biological research, applied human medicine, applied veterinary medicine, and protection of man, animals, or the environment. Of the 8,018 dogs used in testing in the UK in 2004, 7,799 were beagles (97.3%). In the UK, the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 gave special status to primates, equids, cats and dogs and in 2005 the Animal Procedures Committee (set up by the act) ruled that testing on mice was preferable, even though a greater number of individual animals were involved. In 2005 beagles were involved in less than 0.3% of the total experiments on animals in the UK, but of the 7670 experiments performed on dogs 7406 involved beagles (96.6%). Most dogs are bred specifically for this purpose, by companies such as Harlan. In the UK companies breeding animals for research must be licensed under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act.
+
+Bans and activism against beagle testing
+
+Testing of cosmetic products on animals is banned in the member states of the European Community, although France protested the ban and has made efforts to have it lifted. It is permitted in the United States but is not mandatory if safety can be ascertained by other methods, and the test species is not specified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). When testing toxicity of food additives, food contaminants, and some drugs and chemicals the FDA uses beagles and miniature pigs as surrogates for direct human testing. Minnesota was the first state to enact a Beagle Freedom adoption law in 2014, mandating that dogs and cats are allowed to be adopted once they have completed research testing.
+
+Anti-vivisection groups have reported on abuse of animals inside testing facilities. In 1997 footage secretly filmed by a freelance journalist inside Huntingdon Life Sciences in the UK showed staff punching and screaming at beagles. Consort Kennels, a UK-based breeder of beagles for testing, closed down in 1997 after pressure from animal rights groups.
+
+There are various examples of activists utilizing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain information about taxpayer funding of animal testing. For example, the White Coat Waste Project, a group of activists that hold that taxpayers should not have to pay $20 billion every year for experiments on animals, highlighted that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provided $400,000 in taxpayer money to fund experiments in which 28 beagles were infected by disease-causing parasites.  The White Coat Project found reports that said dogs taking part in the experiments were "vocalizing in pain" after being injected with foreign substances. Following public outcry, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) made a call to action that all members of the National Institute of Health resign effective immediately and that there is a "need to find a new NIH director to replace the outgoing Francis Collins who will shut down research that violates the dignity of nonhuman animals."
+
+Other roles
+
+Although bred for hunting, Beagles are versatile and are nowadays employed for various other roles in detection, therapy, and as family pets.
+
+Beagles are used as sniffer dogs for termite detection in Australia, and have been mentioned as possible candidates for drug and explosive detection. Because of their gentle nature and unimposing build, they are also frequently used in pet therapy, visiting the sick and elderly in hospital. In June 2006, a trained Beagle assistance dog was credited with saving the life of its owner after using her owner's mobile phone to dial an emergency number.  In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, a Beagle search and rescue dog with a Colombian rescue squad was credited with locating the owner of the Hôtel Montana, who was subsequently rescued after spending 100 hours buried in the rubble. Beagles were hired by New York City to help with bedbug detection, although some have expressed doubts about the role of such dogs in this type of detection.
+
+In popular culture
+
+Anthropomorphic Beagles appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons since the 1950s with the Peanuts character Snoopy, who was billed as "the world's most famous Beagle". The animated series Courage the Cowardly Dog also features an anthropomorphic beagle as its title character.
+Porthos is a beagle that belongs to Jonathan Archer, the captain on the television series Star Trek: Enterprise.
+Former US President Lyndon Baines Johnson had several beagles, and caused an outcry when he picked up one of them by its ears during an official greeting on the White House lawn.
+The ship on which Charles Darwin made the voyage which provided much of the inspiration for On the Origin of Species was named HMS Beagle after the breed, and, in turn, lent its name to the ill-fated British Martian lander Beagle 2.
+An American bred 15 inch male Beagle with the registered name of Ch K-Run's Park Me In First and the pet name of "Uno" won the 2008 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
+A Canadian bred 15 inch female Beagle with the registered name of Gr Ch Tashtins Lookin For Trouble and the pet name of "Miss P" won the 2015 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
+
+Notable Beagles
+
+ Frodo, awarded the PDSA Gold Medal for animal bravery
+ Uno, who in 2008 became the first Beagle to win the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show 
+ Miss P, winner of the 2015 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
+
+References
+Informational notes
+
+a.  In this article "Beagle" (with a capital B) is used to distinguish the modern breed from other beagle-type dogs.
+
+c.  The Harts posed the following question to a panel of 96 experts, half of which were veterinary surgeons and the other half dog obedience trial judges:
+
+d.  The specific references in each of the author's works are as follows:
+Shakespeare: "Sir Toby Belch: She's a beagle, true-bred, and one that adores me: what o' that?" Twelfth Night (c. 1600) Act II Scene III 
+Webster: "Mistress Tenterhook: You are a sweet beagle" Westward Ho (1607) Act III Scene IV:2
+Dryden: "The rest in shape a beagle's whelp throughout, With broader forehead and a sharper snout" The Cock and the Fox, and again: "About her feet were little beagles seen" in Palamon and Arcite both from Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)
+Tickell: "Here let me trace beneath the purpled morn, The deep-mouth'd beagle, and the sprightly horn" To a Lady before Marriage (published posthumously in 1749)
+Fielding: "'What the devil would you have me do?' cries the Squire, turning to Blifil, 'I can no more turn her, than a beagle can turn an old hare.'" The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) Chapter 7.
+Cowper: "For persevering chase and headlong leaps, True beagle as the staunchest hound he keeps" The Progress of Error (1782)
+Pope: "Thus on a roe the well-breath'd beagle flies, And rends his hide fresh-bleeding with the dart" The Iliad of Homer (1715–20) Book XV:697–8CitationsBibliography'
+
+External links
+
+ 
+
+FCI breeds
+Companion dogs
+Scent hounds
+Dog breeds originating in England
+Hunting with hounds
+Boiled leather, often referred to by its French translation, cuir bouilli (), was a historical material common in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period and used for various purposes. It was leather that had been treated so that it became tough and rigid, as well as able to hold moulded decoration. It was the usual material for the robust carrying-cases that were made for important pieces of metalwork, instruments such as astrolabes, personal sets of cutlery, books, pens and the like. It was used for some armour, being both much cheaper and much lighter than plate armour, but could not withstand a direct blow from a blade, nor a gunshot.
+
+Alternative names are "moulded leather" and "hardened leather". In the course of making the material it becomes very soft, and can be impressed into a mould to give it the desired shape and decoration, which most surviving examples have. Pieces such as chests and coffers also usually have a wooden inner core.
+
+Various recipes for making cuir bouilli survive, and do not agree with each other; probably there were a range of recipes, partly reflecting different final uses. Vegetable-tanned leather is generally specified. Scholars have debated the subject at length and attempted to recreate the historical material. Many, but not all, sources agree that the process involved immersion of the leather in water, but not actual boiling.
+
+Military use
+
+Cuir bouilli was used for cheap and light armour, although it was much less effective than plate armour, which was extremely expensive and too heavy for much to be worn by infantry (as opposed to knights fighting on foot). However, cuir bouilli could be reinforced against slashing blows by the addition of metal bands or strips, especially in helmets. Modern experiments on simple cuir bouilli have shown that it can reduce the depth of an arrow wound considerably, especially if coated with a crushed mineral facing mixed with glue, as one medieval Arab author recommended.
+
+In addition, "armour based on hide has the unique advantage that it can, in extremis, provide some nutrition" when actually boiled. Josephus records that the Jewish defenders in the Siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 were reduced to eating their shields and other leather kit, as was the Spanish expedition of Tristan de Luna in 1559. 
+
+Versions of cuir bouilli were used since ancient times, especially for shields, in many parts of the world. Although in general leather does not survive long burial, and excavated archaeological evidence for it is rare, an Irish shield of cuir bouilli with wooden formers, deposited in a peat bog, has survived for some 2,500 years. It was commonly used in the Western world for helmets; the pickelhaube, the standard German helmet, was not replaced by a steel stahlhelm until 1916, in the midst of World War I. As leather does not conduct heat the way metal does, firemen continued to use boiled leather helmets until World War II, and the invention of strong plastics.
+
+The word cuirass for a breastplate indicates that these were originally made of leather. In the Late Middle Ages, the heyday of plate armour, cuir bouilli continued to be used even by the rich for horse armour and often for tournament armour, as well as by ordinary infantry soldiers. Tournaments were increasingly regulated in order to reduce the risk to life, and in 1278 Edward I of England organized one in Windsor Great Park at which cuir bouilli armour was worn, and the king provided swords made of whale bone and parchment.  
+
+  
+The account of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 by Jean de Wavrin, who was present on the French side, describes the crucial force of English longbowmen as having on their heads either cuir bouilli helmets, or wicker with iron strips, or nothing (the last, he says, were also barefoot).
+
+A few pieces of Roman horse armour in cuir bouilli have been excavated. Evidence from documents such as inventories show that it was common in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, and used by the highest ranks, but survivals are very few. In 1547 the Master of Armoury in the Tower of London ordered 46 sets of bards and crinets in preparation for the final invasion of Scotland in the war known as the Rough Wooing. In September that year the English cavalry were crucial in the decisive victory at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. The German Count Palatine of the Rhine had six sets of cuir bouilli horse armour for his and his family's use in the 16th century. Often the shaffron for the horse's head would be in steel, though leather ones are also known.
+
+Cuir bouilli was also very common for scabbards. However surviving specimens of leather armour are rare, more so than the various types of civilian containers. It is believed that many leather pieces are depicted in sculpted tomb monuments, where they are more highly decorated than metal pieces would have been. Cuir bouilli was also often used for elaborate figurative crests on some helmets.
+
+The material is mentioned in Froissart's Chronicles of the Hundred Years' War, and Geoffrey Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, written in the late 1300s, says of the knight Sir Thopas:
+
+(Note: jambeaux are greaves – shin armour).
+
+The large decorative crests that came to top some helmets in the late Middle Ages were often made of cuir bouilli, as is the famous example belonging to the Black Prince and hung with other "achievements" over his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. His wooden shield also has the heraldic animals appliqued in cuir bouilli.
+
+Examples of other uses
+As well as the crests on helmets described above, cuir bouilli was probably used sculpturally in various contexts, over a wood or plaster framework where necessary. When Henry V of England died in France, his effigy in cuir bouilli was placed on top of his coffin for the journey back to England.
+
+A near life-size crucifix in the Vatican Museums is in cuir bouilli over wood. This is of special interest to art historians because it was made in 1540 as a replica of a crucifix in silver presented by Charlemagne some 740 years before; an object of great interest as possibly the first of the long line of monumental crucifixes in Western art. In 1540, the original silver was melted down for church plate to replace that looted in the Sack of Rome in 1527. It seems likely that the leather was moulded directly from the original and it is possible that the wooden core underneath is actually the Carolingian original, with the leather replacing the sheets of silver originally fitted over the wood.
+
+Cuir bouilli has also been employed to bind books, mainly between the 9th and 14th centuries. Other uses include high boots for especially tough use, which were called "postillion's boots" in England. Another use was for large bottles or jugs called "blackjacks", "bombards", or "costerns". There is an English reference to these from 1373.
+
+Notes
+
+References
+Abse, Bathsheba, in Abse, Bathsheba and Calnan, Christopher, "Leather, 2. iii, Moulding", Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press. Web. 13 Oct. 2017, subscription required
+Barker, Juliet R.V., The Tournament in England, 1100–1400, 1986, Boydell Press, , 9780851159423, google books
+Bradbury, Jim, The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare, 2004, Routledge, ISBN 1134598475, 9781134598472, google books
+Cheshire, Edward, "Cuir bouilli armour", in Why Leather?: The Material and Cultural Dimensions of Leather, ed. Harris, Susanna, 2014, Sidestone Press, , google books
+Davies, Laura, "Cuir bouilli", Chapter 10 in Conservation of Leather and Related Materials, Eds. Marion Kite, Roy Thomson, 2006, Routledge, , 9781136415234, google books
+Ffoulkes, Charles John, The Armourer and His Craft, 2008 (reprint), Cosimo, Inc., , 9781605204116, google books
+Lasko, Peter, Ars Sacra, 800–1200, Penguin History of Art (now Yale), 1972 (nb, 1st edn.)  (2nd edition on google books)
+Loades, Mike, The Longbow, 2013, Bloomsbury Publishing, , 9781782000860, google books
+"Phyrr et al.", Stuart W. Pyhrr, Donald J. LaRocca, Dirk H. Breiding, The Armored Horse in Europe, 1480–1620, 2005, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), , 9781588391506, fully available online
+Stone, David, The Kaiser's Army: The German Army in World War One, 2015, Bloomsbury Publishing, , 9781844862917, google books
+Wijnekus, F.J.M., and Wijnekus, E.F.P.H., Dictionary of the Printing and Allied Industries, 2013 (2nd edn.), Elsevier, , 9781483289847, google books
+Williams, Alan R, The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period, 2003, BRILL, , 9789004124981, google books
+Wright, Thomas, The Archaeological Album; Or Museum of National Antiquities, 1845, Chapman & Hall, google books
+
+External links
+
+ Water-hardened leather for armour
+ Boiled leather in wax
+ Cuir Bouilli/Hardened Leather FAQ 
+
+Medieval armour
+Body armor
+Leather crafting
+Leather
+In programming and information security, a buffer overflow or buffer overrun is an anomaly whereby a program writes data to a buffer beyond the buffer's allocated memory, overwriting adjacent memory locations.
+
+Buffers are areas of memory set aside to hold data, often while moving it from one section of a program to another, or between programs. Buffer overflows can often be triggered by malformed inputs; if one assumes all inputs will be smaller than a certain size and the buffer is created to be that size, then an anomalous transaction that produces more data could cause it to write past the end of the buffer. If this overwrites adjacent data or executable code, this may result in erratic program behavior, including memory access errors, incorrect results, and crashes.
+
+Exploiting the behavior of a buffer overflow is a well-known security exploit. On many systems, the memory layout of a program, or the system as a whole, is well defined. By sending in data designed to cause a buffer overflow, it is possible to write into areas known to hold executable code and replace it with malicious code, or to selectively overwrite data pertaining to the program's state, therefore causing behavior that was not intended by the original programmer. Buffers are widespread in operating system (OS) code, so it is possible to make attacks that perform privilege escalation and gain unlimited access to the computer's resources. The famed Morris worm in 1988 used this as one of its attack techniques.
+
+Programming languages commonly associated with buffer overflows include C and C++, which provide no built-in protection against accessing or overwriting data in any part of memory and do not automatically check that data written to an array (the built-in buffer type) is within the boundaries of that array. Bounds checking can prevent buffer overflows, but requires additional code and processing time. Modern operating systems use a variety of techniques to combat malicious buffer overflows, notably by randomizing the layout of memory, or deliberately leaving space between buffers and looking for actions that write into those areas ("canaries").
+
+Technical description
+A buffer overflow occurs when data written to a buffer also corrupts data values in memory addresses adjacent to the destination buffer due to insufficient bounds checking. This can occur when copying data from one buffer to another without first checking that the data fits within the destination buffer.
+
+Example
+
+In the following example expressed in C, a program has two variables which are adjacent in memory: an 8-byte-long string buffer, A, and a two-byte big-endian integer, B.
+
+char           A[8] = "";
+unsigned short B    = 1979;
+
+Initially, A contains nothing but zero bytes, and B contains the number 1979.
+
+Now, the program attempts to store the null-terminated string  with ASCII encoding in the A buffer.
+strcpy(A, "excessive");
+ is 9 characters long and encodes to 10 bytes including the null terminator, but A can take only 8 bytes. By failing to check the length of the string, it also overwrites the value of B:
+
+B's value has now been inadvertently replaced by a number formed from part of the character string. In this example "e" followed by a zero byte would become 25856.
+
+Writing data past the end of allocated memory can sometimes be detected by the operating system to generate a segmentation fault error that terminates the process.
+
+To prevent the buffer overflow from happening in this example, the call to strcpy could be replaced with strlcpy, which takes the maximum capacity of A (including a null-termination character) as an additional parameter and ensures that no more than this amount of data is written to A:
+
+strlcpy(A, "excessive", sizeof(A));
+
+When available, the strlcpy library function is preferred over strncpy which does not null-terminate the destination buffer if the source string's length is greater than or equal to the size of the buffer (the third argument passed to the function). Therefore A may not be null-terminated and cannot be treated as a valid C-style string.
+
+Exploitation
+
+The techniques to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability vary by architecture, operating system, and memory region. For example, exploitation on the heap (used for dynamically allocated memory), differs markedly from exploitation on the call stack. In general, heap exploitation depends on the heap manager used on the target system, while stack exploitation depends on the calling convention used by the architecture and compiler.
+
+Stack-based exploitation
+
+There are several ways in which one can manipulate a program by exploiting stack-based buffer overflows:
+
+ Changing program behavior by overwriting a local variable located near the vulnerable buffer on the stack;
+ By overwriting the return address in a stack frame to point to code selected by the attacker, usually called the shellcode. Once the function returns, execution will resume at the attacker's shellcode;
+ By overwriting a function pointer or exception handler to point to the shellcode, which is subsequently executed;
+ By overwriting a local variable (or pointer) of a different stack frame, which will later be used by the function that owns that frame.
+
+The attacker designs data to cause one of these exploits, then places this data in a buffer supplied to users by the vulnerable code. If the address of the user-supplied data used to affect the stack buffer overflow is unpredictable, exploiting a stack buffer overflow to cause remote code execution becomes much more difficult. One technique that can be used to exploit such a buffer overflow is called "trampolining". Here, an attacker will find a pointer to the vulnerable stack buffer and compute the location of their shellcode relative to that pointer. The attacker will then use the overwrite to jump to an instruction already in memory which will make a second jump, this time relative to the pointer. That second jump will branch execution into the shellcode. Suitable instructions are often present in large code. The Metasploit Project, for example, maintains a database of suitable opcodes, though it lists only those found in the Windows operating system.
+
+Heap-based exploitation
+
+A buffer overflow occurring in the heap data area is referred to as a heap overflow and is exploitable in a manner different from that of stack-based overflows. Memory on the heap is dynamically allocated by the application at run-time and typically contains program data. Exploitation is performed by corrupting this data in specific ways to cause the application to overwrite internal structures such as linked list pointers. The canonical heap overflow technique overwrites dynamic memory allocation linkage (such as malloc meta data) and uses the resulting pointer exchange to overwrite a program function pointer.
+
+Microsoft's GDI+ vulnerability in handling JPEGs is an example of the danger a heap overflow can present.
+
+Barriers to exploitation
+
+Manipulation of the buffer, which occurs before it is read or executed, may lead to the failure of an exploitation attempt. These manipulations can mitigate the threat of exploitation, but may not make it impossible. Manipulations could include conversion to upper or lower case, removal of metacharacters and filtering out of non-alphanumeric strings. However, techniques exist to bypass these filters and manipulations, such as alphanumeric shellcode, polymorphic code, self-modifying code, and return-to-libc attacks. The same methods can be used to avoid detection by intrusion detection systems. In some cases, including where code is converted into Unicode, the threat of the vulnerability has been misrepresented by the disclosers as only Denial of Service when in fact the remote execution of arbitrary code is possible.
+
+Practicalities of exploitation
+
+In real-world exploits there are a variety of challenges which need to be overcome for exploits to operate reliably. These factors include null bytes in addresses, variability in the location of shellcode, differences between environments, and various counter-measures in operation.
+
+NOP sled technique
+
+A NOP-sled is the oldest and most widely known technique for exploiting stack buffer overflows. It solves the problem of finding the exact address of the buffer by effectively increasing the size of the target area. To do this, much larger sections of the stack are corrupted with the no-op machine instruction. At the end of the attacker-supplied data, after the no-op instructions, the attacker places an instruction to perform a relative jump to the top of the buffer where the shellcode is located. This collection of no-ops is referred to as the "NOP-sled" because if the return address is overwritten with any address within the no-op region of the buffer, the execution will "slide" down the no-ops until it is redirected to the actual malicious code by the jump at the end. This technique requires the attacker to guess where on the stack the NOP-sled is instead of the comparatively small shellcode.
+
+Because of the popularity of this technique, many vendors of intrusion prevention systems will search for this pattern of no-op machine instructions in an attempt to detect shellcode in use. It is important to note that a NOP-sled does not necessarily contain only traditional no-op machine instructions. Any instruction that does not corrupt the machine state to a point where the shellcode will not run can be used in place of the hardware assisted no-op. As a result, it has become common practice for exploit writers to compose the no-op sled with randomly chosen instructions which will have no real effect on the shellcode execution.
+
+While this method greatly improves the chances that an attack will be successful, it is not without problems. Exploits using this technique still must rely on some amount of luck that they will guess offsets on the stack that are within the NOP-sled region. An incorrect guess will usually result in the target program crashing and could alert the system administrator to the attacker's activities. Another problem is that the NOP-sled requires a much larger amount of memory in which to hold a NOP-sled large enough to be of any use. This can be a problem when the allocated size of the affected buffer is too small and the current depth of the stack is shallow (i.e., there is not much space from the end of the current stack frame to the start of the stack). Despite its problems, the NOP-sled is often the only method that will work for a given platform, environment, or situation, and as such it is still an important technique.
+
+The jump to address stored in a register technique
+
+The "jump to register" technique allows for reliable exploitation of stack buffer overflows without the need for extra room for a NOP-sled and without having to guess stack offsets. The strategy is to overwrite the return pointer with something that will cause the program to jump to a known pointer stored within a register which points to the controlled buffer and thus the shellcode. For example, if register A contains a pointer to the start of a buffer then any jump or call taking that register as an operand can be used to gain control of the flow of execution. 
+
+In practice a program may not intentionally contain instructions to jump to a particular register. The traditional solution is to find an unintentional instance of a suitable opcode at a fixed location somewhere within the program memory. Figure E on the left contains an example of such an unintentional instance of the i386 jmp esp instruction. The opcode for this instruction is FF E4. This two-byte sequence can be found at a one-byte offset from the start of the instruction call DbgPrint at address 0x7C941EED. If an attacker overwrites the program return address with this address the program will first jump to 0x7C941EED, interpret the opcode FF E4 as the jmp esp instruction, and will then jump to the top of the stack and execute the attacker's code.
+
+When this technique is possible the severity of the vulnerability increases considerably. This is because exploitation will work reliably enough to automate an attack with a virtual guarantee of success when it is run. For this reason, this is the technique most commonly used in Internet worms that exploit stack buffer overflow vulnerabilities.
+
+This method also allows shellcode to be placed after the overwritten return address on the Windows platform. Since executables are mostly based at address 0x00400000 and x86 is a Little Endian architecture, the last byte of the return address must be a null, which terminates the buffer copy and nothing is written beyond that. This limits the size of the shellcode to the size of the buffer, which may be overly restrictive. DLLs are located in high memory (above 0x01000000) and so have addresses containing no null bytes, so this method can remove null bytes (or other disallowed characters) from the overwritten return address. Used in this way, the method is often referred to as "DLL trampolining".
+
+Protective countermeasures
+
+Various techniques have been used to detect or prevent buffer overflows, with various tradeoffs. The following sections describe the choices and implementations available.
+
+Choice of programming language
+
+Assembly, C, and C++ are popular programming languages that are vulnerable to buffer overflow in part because they allow direct access to memory and are not strongly typed. C provides no built-in protection against accessing or overwriting data in any part of memory. More specifically, it does not check that data written to a buffer is within the boundaries of that buffer. The standard C++ libraries provide many ways of safely buffering data, and C++'s Standard Template Library (STL) provides containers that can optionally perform bounds checking if the programmer explicitly calls for checks while accessing data. For example, a vector's member function at() performs a bounds check and throws an out_of_range exception if the bounds check fails. However, C++ behaves just like C if the bounds check is not explicitly called. Techniques to avoid buffer overflows also exist for C.
+
+Languages that are strongly typed and do not allow direct memory access, such as COBOL, Java, Python, and others, prevent buffer overflow in most cases. Many programming languages other than C or C++ provide runtime checking and in some cases even compile-time checking which might send a warning or raise an exception, while C or C++ would overwrite data and continue to execute instructions until erroneous results are obtained, potentially causing the program to crash. Examples of such languages include Ada, Eiffel, Lisp, Modula-2, Smalltalk, OCaml and such C-derivatives as Cyclone, Rust and D. The Java and .NET Framework bytecode environments also require bounds checking on all arrays. Nearly every interpreted language will protect against buffer overflow, signaling a well-defined error condition. Languages that provide enough type information to do bounds checking often provide an option to enable or disable it. Static code analysis can remove many dynamic bound and type checks, but poor implementations and awkward cases can significantly decrease performance. Software engineers should carefully consider the tradeoffs of safety versus performance costs when deciding which language and compiler setting to use.
+
+Use of safe libraries
+
+The problem of buffer overflows is common in the C and C++ languages because they expose low level representational details of buffers as containers for data types. Buffer overflows can be avoided by maintaining a high degree of correctness in code that performs buffer management. It has also long been recommended to avoid standard library functions that are not bounds checked, such as gets, scanf and strcpy. The Morris worm exploited a gets call in fingerd.
+
+Well-written and tested abstract data type libraries that centralize and automatically perform buffer management, including bounds checking, can reduce the occurrence and impact of buffer overflows. The primary data types in languages in which buffer overflows are common are strings and arrays. Thus, libraries preventing buffer overflows in these data types can provide the vast majority of the necessary coverage. However, failure to use these safe libraries correctly can result in buffer overflows and other vulnerabilities, and naturally any bug in the library is also a potential vulnerability. "Safe" library implementations include "The Better String Library", Vstr and Erwin. The OpenBSD operating system's C library provides the strlcpy and strlcat functions, but these are more limited than full safe library implementations.
+
+In September 2007, Technical Report 24731, prepared by the C standards committee, was published. It specifies a set of functions that are based on the standard C library's string and IO functions, with additional buffer-size parameters. However, the efficacy of these functions for reducing buffer overflows is disputable. They require programmer intervention on a per function call basis that is equivalent to intervention that could make the analogous older standard library functions buffer overflow safe.
+
+Buffer overflow protection
+
+Buffer overflow protection is used to detect the most common buffer overflows by checking that the stack has not been altered when a function returns. If it has been altered, the program exits with a segmentation fault. Three such systems are Libsafe, and the StackGuard and ProPolice gcc patches.
+
+Microsoft's implementation of Data Execution Prevention (DEP) mode explicitly protects the pointer to the Structured Exception Handler (SEH) from being overwritten.
+
+Stronger stack protection is possible by splitting the stack in two: one for data and one for function returns. This split is present in the Forth language, though it was not a security-based design decision. Regardless, this is not a complete solution to buffer overflows, as sensitive data other than the return address may still be overwritten.
+
+Pointer protection
+
+Buffer overflows work by manipulating pointers, including stored addresses. PointGuard was proposed as a compiler-extension to prevent attackers from reliably manipulating pointers and addresses. The approach works by having the compiler add code to automatically XOR-encode pointers before and after they are used. Theoretically, because the attacker does not know what value will be used to encode and decode the pointer, one cannot predict what the pointer will point to if it is overwritten with a new value. PointGuard was never released, but Microsoft implemented a similar approach beginning in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1. Rather than implement pointer protection as an automatic feature, Microsoft added an API routine that can be called. This allows for better performance (because it is not used all of the time), but places the burden on the programmer to know when its use is necessary.
+
+Because XOR is linear, an attacker may be able to manipulate an encoded pointer by overwriting only the lower bytes of an address. This can allow an attack to succeed if the attacker can attempt the exploit multiple times or complete an attack by causing a pointer to point to one of several locations (such as any location within a NOP sled). Microsoft added a random rotation to their encoding scheme to address this weakness to partial overwrites.
+
+Executable space protection
+
+Executable space protection is an approach to buffer overflow protection that prevents execution of code on the stack or the heap. An attacker may use buffer overflows to insert arbitrary code into the memory of a program, but with executable space protection, any attempt to execute that code will cause an exception.
+
+Some CPUs support a feature called NX ("No eXecute") or XD ("eXecute Disabled") bit, which in conjunction with software, can be used to mark pages of data (such as those containing the stack and the heap) as readable and writable but not executable.
+
+Some Unix operating systems (e.g. OpenBSD, macOS) ship with executable space protection (e.g. W^X). Some optional packages include:
+
+ PaX
+ Exec Shield
+ Openwall
+
+Newer variants of Microsoft Windows also support executable space protection, called Data Execution Prevention. Proprietary add-ons include:
+
+ BufferShield
+ StackDefender
+
+Executable space protection does not generally protect against return-to-libc attacks, or any other attack that does not rely on the execution of the attackers code. However, on 64-bit systems using ASLR, as described below, executable space protection makes it far more difficult to execute such attacks.
+
+Address space layout randomization
+
+Address space layout randomization (ASLR) is a computer security feature that involves arranging the positions of key data areas, usually including the base of the executable and position of libraries, heap, and stack, randomly in a process' address space.
+
+Randomization of the virtual memory addresses at which functions and variables can be found can make exploitation of a buffer overflow more difficult, but not impossible. It also forces the attacker to tailor the exploitation attempt to the individual system, which foils the attempts of internet worms. A similar but less effective method is to rebase processes and libraries in the virtual address space.
+
+Deep packet inspection
+
+The use of deep packet inspection (DPI) can detect, at the network perimeter, very basic remote attempts to exploit buffer overflows by use of attack signatures and heuristics. This technique can block packets that have the signature of a known attack. It was formerly used in situations in which a long series of No-Operation instructions (known as a NOP-sled) was detected and the location of the exploit's payload was slightly variable.
+
+Packet scanning is not an effective method since it can only prevent known attacks and there are many ways that a NOP-sled can be encoded. Shellcode used by attackers can be made alphanumeric, metamorphic, or self-modifying to evade detection by heuristic packet scanners and intrusion detection systems.
+
+Testing 
+Checking for buffer overflows and patching the bugs that cause them helps prevent buffer overflows. One common automated technique for discovering them is fuzzing. Edge case testing can also uncover buffer overflows, as can static analysis. Once a potential buffer overflow is detected it should be patched. This makes the testing approach useful for software that is in development, but less useful for legacy software that is no longer maintained or supported.
+
+History
+
+Buffer overflows were understood and partially publicly documented as early as 1972, when the Computer Security Technology Planning Study laid out the technique: "The code performing this function does not check the source and destination addresses properly, permitting portions of the monitor to be overlaid by the user. This can be used to inject code into the monitor that will permit the user to seize control of the machine." Today, the monitor would be referred to as the kernel.
+
+The earliest documented hostile exploitation of a buffer overflow was in 1988. It was one of several exploits used by the Morris worm to propagate itself over the Internet. The program exploited was a service on Unix called finger. Later, in 1995, Thomas Lopatic independently rediscovered the buffer overflow and published his findings on the Bugtraq security mailing list. A year later, in 1996, Elias Levy (also known as Aleph One) published in Phrack magazine the paper "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit", a step-by-step introduction to exploiting stack-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities.
+
+Since then, at least two major internet worms have exploited buffer overflows to compromise a large number of systems. In 2001, the Code Red worm exploited a buffer overflow in Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 and in 2003 the SQL Slammer worm compromised machines running Microsoft SQL Server 2000.
+
+In 2003, buffer overflows present in licensed Xbox games have been exploited to allow unlicensed software, including homebrew games, to run on the console without the need for hardware modifications, known as modchips. The PS2 Independence Exploit also used a buffer overflow to achieve the same for the PlayStation 2. The Twilight hack accomplished the same with the Wii, using a buffer overflow in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
+
+See also
+
+ Billion laughs
+ Buffer over-read
+ Coding conventions
+ Computer security
+ End-of-file
+ Heap overflow
+ Ping of death
+ Port scanner
+ Return-to-libc attack
+ Safety-critical system
+ Security-focused operating system
+ Self-modifying code
+ Software quality
+ Shellcode
+ Stack buffer overflow
+ Uncontrolled format string
+
+References
+
+External links
+ "Discovering and exploiting a remote buffer overflow vulnerability in an FTP server" by Raykoid666
+ "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" by Aleph One
+ 
+ CERT Secure Coding Standards
+ CERT Secure Coding Initiative
+ Secure Coding in C and C++
+ SANS: inside the buffer overflow attack
+ "Advances in adjacent memory overflows" by Nomenumbra
+ A Comparison of Buffer Overflow Prevention Implementations and Weaknesses
+ More Security Whitepapers about Buffer Overflows
+ Chapter 12: Writing Exploits III from Sockets, Shellcode, Porting & Coding: Reverse Engineering Exploits and Tool Coding for Security Professionals by James C. Foster (). Detailed explanation of how to use Metasploit to develop a buffer overflow exploit from scratch.
+ Computer Security Technology Planning Study, James P. Anderson, ESD-TR-73-51, ESD/AFSC, Hanscom AFB, Bedford, MA 01731 (October 1972) [NTIS AD-758 206]
+ "Buffer Overflows: Anatomy of an Exploit" by Nevermore
+ Secure Programming with GCC and GLibc  (2008), by Marcel Holtmann
+ "Criação de Exploits com Buffer Overflor – Parte 0 – Um pouco de teoria " (2018), by Helvio Junior (M4v3r1ck)
+
+Software bugs
+Computer memory
+Computer security exploits
+Articles with example C code
+Bug or BUG may refer to:
+
+Common uses 
+ A terrestrial arthropod animal (with at least six legs)
+ Insect, a six-legged arthropod
+Hemiptera, the true bugs
+ Covert listening device, used in surveillance and espionage
+ Bug (engineering), a defect in  an engineered system 
+ Software bug 
+ Hardware bug
+ BUG (tag), a computer programming comment tag
+Pathogen, colloquially
+
+Arts, entertainment and media
+
+Fictional entities
+ Bug (comics), a superhero in Marvel comics
+ Bug (Starship Troopers), an alien race from the novel and film
+ Bug, Michael Lee's younger brother in The Wire
+ Bug, in the TV series WordWorld
+ Bobby "Bug" Guthrie, in the TV series Life Unexpected
+
+Film and television
+ Bug (1975 film), an American horror film
+ Bug (2002 film), an American comedy film
+ Bug (2006 film), a psychological horror film adaptation of the Tracy Letts play
+ Bug, a 2017 film starring Gene Jones
+ "Bug" (Breaking Bad), a 2011 TV episode
+
+Gaming
+ Bug (poker), a limited form of wild card
+ Bug, a Pokémon type
+ Bug!, a 1995 video game
+ Bughouse chess, or bug, a chess variant played on two boards
+
+Music
+
+Albums
+ Bug (Dave Davies album), 2002
+ Bug (Dinosaur Jr. album), 1988
+ Bug (soundtrack), of the 2006 film
+
+Songs
+ "Bug", a song by Feeder from the 2001 album Echo Park
+ "Bug", a song by Lower Than Atlantis from the 2011 album World Record
+ "Bug", a song by Phish from the 2000 album Farmhouse
+ "The Bug", a 1992 song by Dire Straits
+
+Other uses in arts, entertainment and media
+ BUG (magazine), a Croatian magazine
+ Bug (play), by Tracy Letts, 1993
+
+Businesses and organizations
+ Bicycle User Group, a group set up to promote cycling issues
+
+People
+ Bug Hall (born 1985), an American actor
+ Bug Holliday (1867–1910), an American baseball player
+ Bug Howard (born 1994), an American football player
+ Amy Bug, American physicist
+ Enric Bug (born 1957), pseudonym Bug Rogers, a Spanish comic book artist and industrial designer   
+ The Bug (musician), a recording alias for British musician Kevin Martin
+
+Places
+ Bug (river) or Western Bug, a river in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus
+ Southern Bug, Southern Buh or Boh, a river in Ukraine
+ Bug (Rügen), a spit and former village on the island of Rügen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany
+ Bug, Kentucky, a settlement in Clinton County, Kentucky, in the United States
+ Bag, Qasr-e Qand, also called Būg, a village in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Iran
+
+Science and technology
+ Slipper lobster (Scyllaridae), a number of species of which are called "bug"
+ Bug, a digital on-screen graphic of a broadcaster's logo
+ Bug, a Morse key design by Vibroplex
+ Web beacon or web bug, a tracking object embedded in a web page or e-mail
+
+Transportation
+ Bond Bug, a British three-wheeled car
+ Dudly Bug, an early gas-powered cyclecar 
+ Sandlin Bug, an American ultralight glider design
+ Volkswagen Beetle, an automobile nicknamed "Bug"
+ Bug railway station, in Pakistan
+ Bagaha railway station, Bihar, a railway station in India, station code BUG
+ Burgess Hill railway station, a railway station in Sussex, England
+
+Other uses
+ Buginese language, ISO 639 language code bug
+ The Bug (horse) (1943–1963), an Irish-bred Thoroughbred racehorse
+
+See also
+
+ Bugg (disambiguation)
+ Bugged (disambiguation)
+ Bugs (disambiguation)
+ Annoyance, an unpleasant mental state 
+ Pathogen, an organism that causes disease
+ Dudley Bug, an extinct trilobite
+ Debugging, in computer programming and software development
+ Union label or union bug, a label marking a product made by union workers
+Barry Lamar Bonds (born July 24, 1964) is an American former professional baseball left fielder who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). Bonds was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1986 to 1992 and the San Francisco Giants from 1993 to 2007. He is considered to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
+
+Recognized as an all-around player, Bonds received a record seven National League (NL) Most Valuable Player Awards and 12 Silver Slugger Awards, along with 14 All-Star selections. He holds many MLB hitting records, including most career home runs (762), most home runs in a single season (73, set in 2001), and most career walks. Bonds led MLB in on-base plus slugging six times and placed within the top five hitters in 12 of his 17 qualifying seasons. For his defensive play in the outfield, he won eight Gold Glove Awards. He also had 514 stolen bases, becoming the first and only MLB player to date with at least 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases. Bonds is ranked first in career Wins Above Replacement among all major league position players by Baseball-Reference.com and second by FanGraphs, behind only Babe Ruth.
+
+Despite his accolades, Bonds led a controversial career, notably as a central figure in baseball's steroids scandal. He was indicted in 2007 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to a grand jury during the federal government's investigation of BALCO, a manufacturer of an undetectable steroid. After the perjury charges were dropped, Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice in 2011, but the conviction was overturned in 2015. During his 10 years of eligibility, he did not receive the 75% of the vote needed to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Some voters of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) stated they did not vote for Bonds because he used performance-enhancing drugs.
+
+Early life
+Bonds was born in Riverside, California, to Patricia (née Howard) and former major leaguer Bobby Bonds, and grew up in San Carlos and attended Junípero Serra High School in San Mateo, where he excelled in baseball, basketball, and football. He played on the junior varsity team during his freshman year and on the varsity team for the remainder of his high school career. He garnered a .467 batting average his senior year, and was named prep All-American. The Giants drafted Bonds in the second round of the 1982 MLB draft as a high school senior but the Giants and Bonds were unable to agree on contract terms when Tom Haller's maximum offer was $70,000 ($ today) and Bonds's minimum to go pro was $75,000, so Bonds instead decided to attend college.
+
+College career
+Bonds attended Arizona State University, hitting .347 with 45 home runs and 175 runs batted in (RBI). In 1984 he batted .360 and had 30 stolen bases. In 1985, he hit 23 home runs with 66 RBIs and a .368 batting average. He was a Sporting News All-American selection that year. He tied the NCAA record with seven consecutive hits in the College World Series as a sophomore and was named to All-Time College World Series Team in 1996.
+
+Bonds was not well-liked by his Sun Devil teammates, in part because in the words of longtime coach Jim Brock, he was "rude, inconsiderate and self-centered." When he was suspended for breaking curfew, the other players initially voted against his return even though he was easily the best player on the team.
+
+He graduated from Arizona State in 1986 with a degree in criminology. He was named ASU On Deck Circle Most Valuable Player; other winners include Dustin Pedroia, Willie Bloomquist, Paul Lo Duca, and Ike Davis. During college, he played part of one summer in the amateur Alaska Baseball League with the Alaska Goldpanners.
+
+Professional career
+
+Draft and minor leagues
+The Pittsburgh Pirates drafted Bonds as the sixth overall pick of the 1985 Major League Baseball draft. He joined the Prince William Pirates of the Carolina League and was named July 1985 Player of the Month for the league. In 1986, he hit .311 in 44 games for the Hawaii Islanders of the Pacific Coast League.
+
+Pittsburgh Pirates (1986–1992)
+Before Bonds made it to the major leagues in Pittsburgh, Pirate fan attendance was low, with 1984 and 1985 attendance below 10,000 per game for the 81-game home schedule, with attendance woes being a combination of the economic problems of Western Pennsylvania in the early 1980s as well as the Pittsburgh drug trials that directly affected the Pirates going from World Series champions to nearly relocating to Denver in only six years. Bonds made his major league debut on May 30, 1986. In 1986, Bonds led National League (NL) rookies with 16 home runs, 48 RBI, 36 stolen bases, and 65 walks, but he finished 6th in Rookie of the Year voting. He played center field in 1986 but switched to left field with the arrival of centerfielder Andy Van Slyke in 1987.
+
+In his early years, Bonds batted as the leadoff hitter. With Van Slyke also in the outfield, the Pirates had a venerable defensive tandem that worked together to cover a lot of ground on the field although they were not close off the field. The Pirates experienced a surge in fan enthusiasm with Bonds on the team and set the club attendance record of 52,119 in the 1987 home opener. That year, he hit 25 home runs in his second season, along with 32 stolen bases and 59 RBIs.
+
+Bonds improved in 1988, hitting .283 with 24 home runs. The Pirates broke the record set the previous year with 54,089 attending the home opener. Bonds now fit into a highly respected lineup featuring Bobby Bonilla, Van Slyke, and Jay Bell. He finished with 19 homers, 58 RBIs, and 14 outfield assists in 1989, which was second in the NL. Following the season, rumors that he would be traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Jeff Hamilton and John Wetteland, but the team denied the rumors and no such trade occurred.
+
+Bonds won his first MVP Award in 1990, hitting .301 with 33 home runs and 114 RBIs. He also stole 52 bases, which was third in the league, to become a first-time member of the 30–30 club. He won his first Gold Glove Award and Silver Slugger Award. That year, the Pirates won the National League East title for their first postseason berth since winning the 1979 World Series. However, the Cincinnati Reds, whose last post-season berth had also been in 1979 when they lost to the Pirates in that year's NLCS, defeated the Pirates in the NLCS en route to winning the 1990 World Series.
+
+In 1991, Bonds also put up great numbers, hitting 25 homers and driving in 116 runs, and obtained another Gold Glove and Silver Slugger. He finished second to the Atlanta Braves' Terry Pendleton (the NL batting champion) in the MVP voting. 
+
+In March 1992, Pirates general manager Ted Simmons agreed to a deal with Atlanta Braves counterpart John Schuerholz to trade Bonds, in exchange for Alejandro Peña, Keith Mitchell, and a player to be named later. Pirates manager Jim Leyland opposed the trade vehemently, and the proposal was rescinded. Bonds stayed with Pittsburgh and won his second MVP award that season. While hitting .311 with 34 homers and 103 RBIs, he propelled the Pirates to their third straight National League East division title. However, Pittsburgh was defeated by the Braves in a seven-game National League Championship Series. Bonds participated in the final play of Game 7 of the NLCS, whereby he fielded a base hit by Francisco Cabrera and attempted to throw out Sid Bream at home plate. But the throw to Pirates catcher Mike LaValliere was late and Bream scored the winning run. For the third consecutive season, the NL East Champion Pirates were denied a trip to the World Series. Following the loss, Bonds and star teammate Doug Drabek were expected to command salaries too high for Pittsburgh to again sign them.
+
+Bonds was never well-liked by reporters or fans while in Pittsburgh, despite winning two MVP awards. One paper even gave him an "award" as the "MDP" (Most Despised Pirate).
+
+San Francisco Giants (1993–2007)
+
+1993 season
+
+In 1993, Bonds left the Pirates to sign a lucrative free agent contract worth a then-record $43.75 million (equivalent to $ million in ) over six years with the Giants, with whom his father had spent the first seven years of his career, and with whom his godfather Willie Mays played 22 of his 24 Major League seasons. The deal was at that time the largest in baseball history, in terms of both total value and average annual salary.
+
+Once he signed with the Giants, Bonds had intended to wear the number 24, his number during most of his stay with the Pirates and, after receiving Mays's blessing, the Giants were willing to unretire it until the public commotion from fans and media became too much. To honor his father, Bonds switched his jersey number to 25, as it had been Bobby's number in San Francisco.
+
+In an emotional press conference announcing the signing, Bonds described joining the Giants as going "home" and following in the footsteps of his father and godfather as "unbelievable" and "a boyhood dream come true."
+
+Bonds hit .336 in 1993, leading the league with 46 home runs and 123 RBI en route to his second consecutive MVP award, and third overall. As good as the Giants were (winning 103 games), the Atlanta Braves won 104 in what some call the last great pennant race (because the wild card was instituted the year after).
+
+1994 season
+In the strike-shortened season of 1994, Bonds hit .312 with 37 home runs and a league-leading 74 walks, and he finished 4th in MVP voting.
+
+1995 season
+In 1995, Bonds hit 33 homers and drove in 104 runs, hitting .294 but finished only 12th in MVP voting. In 1994, he appeared in a small role as himself in the television film Jane's House, starring James Woods and Anne Archer.
+
+1996 season
+
+In 1996, Bonds became the first National League player and second major league player (of the current list of four) to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season. The other members of the 40–40 club are José Canseco (1988), Alex Rodriguez (1998), and Alfonso Soriano (2006). His father Bobby Bonds was one home run short in 1973 when he hit 39 home runs and stole 43 bases.
+
+Bonds hit his 300th and 301st home runs off the Florida Marlins' John Burkett on April 27. He became the fourth player in history to join the 300–300 club with 300 stolen bases and 300 home runs for a career, joining Willie Mays, Andre Dawson, and his father. Bonds's totals for the season included 129 runs driven in, a .308 average and a then-National League record 151 walks. He finished fifth in the MVP balloting.
+
+1997 season
+In 1997, Bonds hit .291, his lowest average since 1989. He hit 40 home runs for the second straight year and drove in 101 runs, leading the league in walks again with 145. He also stole 37 bases, tying his father for having the most 30–30 seasons (5), and he again placed fifth in the MVP balloting.
+
+1998 season
+With two outs in the 9th inning of a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on May 28, 1998, Bonds became only the fifth player in baseball history to be given an intentional walk with the bases loaded. Nap Lajoie (1901), Del Bissonette (1928) and Bill Nicholson (1944) were three others in the 20th century who received that rare honor. The first to receive one was Abner Dalrymple in 1881.
+
+On August 23, Bonds hit his 400th career home run. By doing so, he became the first player ever to enter the 400–400 club by having career totals of 400 home runs and 400 stolen bases; he is still the only player to have achieved this feat. The milestone home run came off Kirt Ojala, who, like Burkett, was pitching for the Marlins. For the season, he hit .303 with 37 home runs and drove in 122 runs, winning his eighth Gold Glove, He finished 8th in the MVP voting.
+
+1999 season
+
+1999 marked a career-low, up to that point, for Bonds in terms of playing time. Bonds started off the 1999 season hitting well by batting .366 in the month of April with 4 home runs and 12 RBIs in the Giants' first 12 games of the season. But on April 18 he was placed on the 15-day disabled list for only the 2nd time in his career up to that point. Bonds had suffered a torn tendon in his biceps as well as bone spurs in his elbow, both of which required surgery and cost him the rest of April and all of May.
+
+Upon returning to action on June 9, Bonds struggled somewhat at the plate for the remainder of the 1999 season. A series of nagging injuries including elbow pain, knee inflammation and groin issues hampered his play. Only hitting .248 after his return from the disabled list, he still managed to slug 34 home runs, drive in 83 runs as well as hit for a .617 slugging percentage, despite missing nearly two full months with injuries and only playing in 102 games.
+
+Bill James ranked Bonds as the best player of the 1990s. He added that the decade's second-best player, Craig Biggio, had been closer in production to the decade's 10th-best player than to Bonds. In 1999, with statistics through 1997 being considered, Bonds ranked Number 34 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, making him the highest-ranking active player.
+
+When the Sporting News list was redone in 2005, Bonds was ranked 6th behind Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Hank Aaron. Bonds was omitted from 1999's Major League Baseball All-Century Team, to which Ken Griffey Jr. was elected. James wrote of Bonds, "Certainly the most unappreciated superstar of my lifetime. ... Griffey has always been more popular, but Bonds has been a far, far greater player." In 1999, he rated Bonds as the 16th-best player of all time. "When people begin to take in all of his accomplishments", he predicted, "Bonds may well be rated among the five greatest players in the history of the game."
+
+2000 season
+In 2000, the following year, Bonds hit .306 with career bests through that time in both slugging percentage (.688) and home runs (49) in just 143 games. He also drew a league-leading 117 walks.
+
+2001 season
+The next year, Bonds's offensive production reached even higher levels, breaking not only his own personal records but several major league records. In the Giants' first 50 games in 2001, he hit 28 home runs, including 17 in May—a career high. This early stretch included his 500th home run hit on April 17 against Terry Adams of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He also hit 39 home runs by the All-star break (a major league record), drew a major league record 177 walks, and had a .515 on-base average, a feat not seen since Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams over forty years earlier. Bonds' slugging percentage was a major league record .863 (411 total bases in 476 at-bats), and he ended the season with a major league record 73 home runs.
+
+On October 4, by homering off Wilfredo Rodríguez in the 159th game of the season, Bonds tied the previous record of 70 set by Mark McGwire—which McGwire set in the 162nd game in 1998. He then hit numbers 71 and 72 the following night off Chan Ho Park. Bonds added his 73rd off Dennis Springer on October 7. The ball was later sold to toy manufacturer Todd McFarlane for $450,000. He previously bought Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball from 1998. Bonds received the Babe Ruth Home Run Award for leading MLB in home runs that season.
+
+2002 season
+Bonds re-signed with the Giants for a five-year, $90 million contract in January 2002. He hit five home runs in the Giants' first four games of the season, tying Lou Brock's 35-year record for most home runs after four games. He won the NL batting title with a career-high .370 average and struck out only 47 times. He hit 46 home runs in 403 at-bats.
+
+Despite playing in nine fewer games than the previous season, he drew 198 walks, a major-league record; 68 of them were intentional walks, surpassing Willie McCovey's 45 in 1969 for another Major League record. He slugged .799, then the fourth-highest total all time. Bonds broke Ted Williams' major league record for on-base average with .582. Bonds also hit his 600th home run, less than a year and a half after hitting his 500th. The home run came on August 9 at home against Kip Wells of the Pirates.
+
+2002 postseason
+Bonds batted .322 with eight home runs, 16 RBI, and 27 walks in the postseason en route to the 2002 World Series, which the Giants lost 4–3 to the Anaheim Angels.
+
+2003 season
+In 2003, Bonds played in just 130 games. He hit 45 home runs in just 390 at-bats, along with a .341 batting average. He slugged .749, walked 148 times, and had an on-base average well over .500 (.529) for the third straight year. He also became the only member of the career 500 home run/500 stolen base club by stealing second base on June 23 off of pitcher Éric Gagné in the 11th inning of a tied ball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers (against whom Bonds had tallied his 500th home run). Bonds scored the game-winning run later that inning.
+
+2004 season
+In 2004, Bonds had perhaps his best season. He hit .362 en route to his second National League batting title, and broke his own record by walking 232 times (including a MLB record 120 intentional walks). He slugged .812, which was fourth-highest of all time, and broke his on-base percentage record with a .609 average. Bonds passed Mays on the career home run list by hitting his 661st off of Ben Ford on April 13. He then hit his 700th off of Jake Peavy on September 17. Bonds hit 45 home runs in 373 at-bats, and struck out just 41 times, putting himself in elite company, as few major leaguers have ever had more home runs than strikeouts in a season. Bonds would win his fourth consecutive MVP award and his seventh overall. His seven MVP awards are four more than any other player in history. In addition, no other player from either league has been awarded the MVP four times in a row. (The MVP award was first given in 1931). The 40-year-old Bonds also broke Willie Stargell's 25-year record as the oldest player to win a Most Valuable Player Award (Stargell, at 39 years, 8 months, was National League co-MVP with Keith Hernandez in 1979). On July 4, he tied and passed Rickey Henderson's career bases on balls record with his 2190th and 2191st career walks.
+
+As Bonds neared Aaron's record, Aaron was called on for his opinion of Bonds. He clarified that he was a fan and admirer of Bonds and avoided the controversy regarding whether the record should be denoted with an asterisk for Bonds's alleged steroid usage. He felt recognition and respect for the award was something to be determined by the fans. As the steroid controversy received greater media attention during the offseason before the 2005 season, Aaron expressed some reservations about the statements Bonds made on the issue. Aaron expressed that he felt drug and steroid use to boost athletic performance was inappropriate. Aaron was frustrated that the media could not focus on events that occurred in the field of play and wished drugs or gambling allegations such as those associated with Pete Rose could be emphasized less. In 2007, Aaron felt the whole steroid use issue was very controversial and decided that he would not attend any possible record-breaking games. Aaron congratulated Bonds through the media including a video played on the scoreboard when Bonds eventually broke Aaron's record in August 2007.
+
+2005 season
+Bonds's salary for the 2005 season was $22 million, the second-highest salary in Major League Baseball (the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez earned the highest, $25.2 million).
+Bonds endured a knee injury, multiple surgeries, and rehabilitation. He was activated on September 12 and started in left field. In his return against the San Diego Padres, he nearly hit a home run in his first at-bat. Bonds finished the night 1-for-4. Upon his return, Bonds resumed his high-caliber performance at the plate, hitting home runs in four consecutive games from September 18 to 21 and finishing with five homers in only 14 games.
+
+2006 season
+
+In 2006, Bonds earned $20 million (not including bonuses), the fourth-highest salary in baseball. Through the 2006 season he had earned approximately $172 million during his then 21-year career, making him baseball's all-time highest-paid player. Bonds hit under .200 for his first 10 games of the season and did not hit a home run until April 22. This 10-game stretch was his longest home run slump since the 1998 season. On May 7, Bonds drew within one home run of tying Babe Ruth for second place on the all-time list, hitting his 713th career home run into the second level of Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, off pitcher Jon Lieber in a game in which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Phillies. The towering home run—one of the longest in Citizens Bank Park's two-season history, traveling an estimated 450 feet (140 m)—hit off the facade of the third deck in right field.
+
+On May 20, Bonds hit his 714th career home run to deep right field to lead off the top of the 2nd inning, tying Ruth for second all-time. The home run came off left-handed pitcher Brad Halsey of the Oakland A's, in an interleague game played in Oakland, California. Since this was an interleague game at an American League stadium, Bonds was batting as the designated hitter in the lineup for the Giants. Bonds was quoted after the game as being "glad it's over with" and stated that more attention could be focused on Albert Pujols, who was on a very rapid home run pace in early 2006.
+
+On May 28, Bonds passed Ruth, hitting his 715th career home run to center field off Colorado Rockies pitcher Byung-hyun Kim. The ball was hit an estimated 445 feet (140 m) into center field where it went through the hands of several fans but then fell onto an elevated platform in center field. Then it rolled off the platform where Andrew Morbitzer, a 38-year-old San Francisco resident, caught the ball while he was in line at a concession stand. Mysteriously, radio broadcaster Dave Flemming's radio play-by-play of the home run went silent just as the ball was hit, apparently from a microphone failure. But the televised version, called by Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper, was not affected.
+
+On September 22, Bonds tied Henry Aaron's National League career home run record of 733. The home run came in the top of the 6th inning of a high-scoring game against the Milwaukee Brewers, at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The achievement was notable for its occurrence in the very city where Aaron began (with the Milwaukee Braves) and concluded (with the Brewers, then in the American League) his career. With the Giants trailing 10–8, Bonds hit a blast to deep center field on a 2–0 pitch off the Brewers' Chris Spurling with runners on first and second and one out. Though the Giants were at the time clinging to only a slim chance of making the playoffs, Bonds's home run provided the additional drama of giving the Giants an 11–10 lead late in a critical game in the final days of a pennant race. The Brewers eventually won the game, 13–12, though Bonds went 3-for-5, with two doubles, the record-tying home run, and six runs batted in.
+
+On September 23, Bonds surpassed Aaron for the NL career home run record. Hit in Milwaukee like the previous one, this was a solo home run off Chris Capuano of the Brewers. This was the last home run Bonds hit in 2006. In 2006, Bonds recorded his lowest slugging percentage (a statistic that he had historically ranked among league leaders season after season) since 1991 with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
+
+In January 2007, the New York Daily News reported that Bonds had tested positive for amphetamines. Under baseball's amphetamine policy, which had been in effect for one season, players testing positive were to submit to six additional tests and undergo treatment and counseling. The policy also stated that players were not to be identified for a first positive test, but the New York Daily News leaked the test's results. When the Players Association informed Bonds of the test results, he initially attributed it to a substance he had taken from the locker of Giants teammate Mark Sweeney, but would later retract this claim and publicly apologize to Sweeney.
+
+2007 season
+
+On January 29, 2007, the Giants finalized a contract with Bonds for the 2007 season. After the commissioner's office rejected Bonds's one-year, $15.8 million deal because it contained a personal-appearance provision, the team sent revised documents to his agent, Jeff Borris, who stated that "At this time, Barry is not signing the new documents." Bonds signed a revised one-year, $15.8 million contract on February 15 and reported to the Giants' Spring training camp on time.
+
+Bonds resumed his march to the all-time record early in the 2007 season. In the season opener on April 3, all he had was a first-inning single past third base with the infield shifted right, immediately followed by a stolen base and then thrown out at home on a baserunning mistake, followed by a deep fly-out to left field, late in the game. Bonds regrouped the next day with his first at-bat in the second game of the season at the Giants' AT&T Park. Bonds hit a pitch from Chris Young of the San Diego Padres just over the wall to the left of straight-away center field for career home run 735. This home run put Bonds past the midway point between Ruth and Aaron.
+
+Bonds did not homer again until April 13, when he hit two (736 and 737) in a 3 -or-3 night that included 4 RBI against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bonds splashed a pitch by St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ryan Franklin into McCovey Cove on April 18 for home run 738. Home runs number 739 and 740 came in back to back games on April 21 and 22 against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
+
+The hype surrounding Bonds's pursuit of the home run record escalated on May 14. On this day, Sports Auction for Heritage (a Dallas-based auction house) offered US$1 million to the fan who would catch Bonds's record-breaking 756th-career home run. The million-dollar offer was rescinded on June 11 out of concern of fan safety. Home run 748 came on Father's Day, June 17, in the final game of a three-game road series against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, where Bonds had never previously played. With this homer, Fenway Park became the 36th major league ballpark in which Bonds had hit a home run. He hit a Tim Wakefield knuckleball just over the low fence into the Giant's bullpen in right field. It was his first home run off his former Pittsburgh Pirate teammate, who became the 441st different pitcher to surrender a four-bagger to Bonds. The 750th career home run, hit on June 29, also came off a former teammate: Liván Hernández. The blast came in the 8th inning and at that point tied the game at 3–3.
+
+On July 19, after a 21 at-bat hitless streak, Bonds hit two home runs, numbers 752 and 753, against the Chicago Cubs. He went 3-for-3 with two home runs, six RBIs, and a walk on that day. The struggling last-place Giants still lost the game, 9–8. On July 27, Bonds hit home run 754 against Florida Marlins pitcher Rick VandenHurk. Bonds was then walked his next four at-bats in the game, but a two-run shot helped the Giants win the game 12–10. It marked the first time since he had hit #747 that Bonds had homered in a game the Giants won. On August 4, Bonds hit a 382 foot (116 m) home run against Clay Hensley of the San Diego Padres for home run number 755, tying Hank Aaron's all-time record. Bonds greeted his son, Nikolai, with an extended bear hug after crossing home plate. Bonds greeted his teammates and then his wife, Liz Watson, and daughter Aisha Lynn behind the backstop. Hensley was the 445th different pitcher to give up a home run to Bonds. Ironically, given the cloud of suspicion that surrounded Bonds, the tying home run was hit off a pitcher who had been suspended by baseball in 2005 for steroid use. He was walked in his next at-bat and eventually scored on a fielder's choice.
+
+On August 7 at 8:51 PM PDT, at Oracle Park (then known as AT&T Park) in San Francisco, Bonds hit a 435 foot (133 m) home run, his 756th, off a pitch from Mike Bacsik of the Washington Nationals, breaking the all-time career home run record, formerly held by Hank Aaron. Coincidentally, Bacsik's father had faced Aaron (as a pitcher for the Texas Rangers) after Aaron had hit his 755th home run. On August 23, 1976, Michael J. Bacsik held Aaron to a single and a fly out to right field. The younger Bacsik commented later, "If my dad had been gracious enough to let Hank Aaron hit a home run, we both would have given up 756." After hitting the home run, Bonds gave Bacsik an autographed bat.
+
+The pitch, the seventh of the at-bat, was a 3–2 pitch which Bonds hit into the right-center field bleachers. The fan who ended up with the ball, 22-year-old Matt Murphy from Queens, New York City, (and a Mets fan), was promptly protected and escorted away from the mayhem by a group of San Francisco police officers. After Bonds finished his home run trot, a 10-minute delay followed, including a brief video by Aaron congratulating Bonds on breaking the record Aaron had held for 33 years, and expressing the hope that "the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams". Bonds made an impromptu emotional statement on the field, with Willie Mays, his godfather, at his side and thanked his teammates, family and his late father. Bonds sat out the rest of the game.
+
+The commissioner, Bud Selig, was not in attendance in this game but was represented by the Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations, Jimmie Lee Solomon. Selig called Bonds later that night to congratulate him on breaking the record. President George W. Bush also called Bonds the next day to congratulate him. On August 24, San Francisco honored and celebrated Bonds' career accomplishments and breaking the home run record with a large rally in Justin Herman Plaza. The rally included video messages from Lou Brock, Ernie Banks, Ozzie Smith, Joe Montana, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. Speeches were made by Willie Mays, Giants teammates Omar Vizquel and Rich Aurilia, and Giants owner Peter Magowan. Mayor Gavin Newsom presented Bonds the key to the City and County of San Francisco and Giants vice president Larry Baer gave Bonds the home plate he touched after hitting his 756th career home run.
+
+The record-setting ball was consigned to an auction house on August 21. Bidding began on August 28 and closed with a winning bid of US$752,467 on September 15 after a three-phase online auction. The high bidder, fashion designer Marc Ecko, created a website to let fans decide its fate. Subsequently, Ben Padnos, who submitted the $186,750 winning bid on Bonds' record-tying 755th home run ball also set up a website to let fans decide its fate. Ten million voters helped Ecko decide to brand the ball with an asterisk and send it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Of Ecko's plans, Bonds said "He spent $750,000 on the ball and that's what he's doing with it? What he's doing is stupid." Padnos, on the other hand, sold five-year ads on a website, www.endthedebate.com, where people voted by a two-to-one margin to smash the ball.
+
+Bonds concluded the 2007 season with a .276 batting average, 28 home runs, and 66 RBIs in 126 games and 340 at-bats. At the age of 43, he led both leagues in walks with 132.
+
+Post-playing career
+On September 21, 2007, the San Francisco Giants confirmed that they would not re-sign Bonds for the 2008 season. The story was first announced on Bonds' own website earlier that day. Bonds officially filed for free agency on October 29, 2007. His agent Jeff Borris said: "I'm anticipating widespread interest from every Major League team."
+
+There was much speculation before the 2008 season about where Bonds might play. However, no one signed him during the 2008 or 2009 seasons. If he had returned to Major League Baseball, Bonds would have been within close range of several significant hitting milestones, needing just 65 hits to reach 3,000, four runs batted in to reach 2,000, and 38 home runs to reach 800. He would have needed 69 more runs scored to move past Rickey Henderson as the all-time runs champion, and 37 extra base hits to move past Hank Aaron as the all-time extra base hits champion.
+
+As of November 13, 2009, Borris maintained that Bonds was still not retired. On December 9, however, Borris told the San Francisco Chronicle that Bonds had played his last major league game. Bonds announced on April 11, 2010, that he was proud of McGwire for admitting his use of steroids. Bonds said that it was not the time to retire, but he noted that he was not in shape to play immediately if an interested club called him. In May 2015, Bonds filed a grievance against Major League Baseball through the players' union arguing that the league colluded in not signing him after the 2007 season. In August 2015, an arbitrator ruled in favor of MLB and against Bonds in his collusion case.
+
+On December 15, 2011, Bonds was sentenced to 30 days of house arrest, two years of probation and 250 hours of community service, for an obstruction of justice conviction stemming from a grand jury appearance in 2003. However, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston then delayed the sentence pending an appeal. In 2013 his conviction was upheld on appeal by a three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. However, the full court later granted Bonds an en banc rehearing, and on April 22, 2015, an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit voted 10–1 to overturn his conviction.
+
+On March 10, 2014, Bonds began a seven-day stint as a roving spring training instructor for the Giants. On December 4, 2015, he was announced as the new hitting coach for the Miami Marlins, but was relieved of his duties on October 3, 2016, after just one season. He followed up with a public thank-you letter, acknowledging owner Jeffrey Loria, and the opportunity as "one of the most rewarding experiences of my baseball career." In 2017, Bonds officially re-joined the Giants organization as a special advisor to the CEO. On July 8, 2017, Bonds was added to the Giants Wall of Fame.
+
+On February 6, 2018, the San Francisco Giants announced their intentions to retire his number 25 jersey, which happened on August 11, 2018. His number 24 with the Pirates remains in circulation, most prominently worn by Brian Giles from 1999 to 2003 and by Pedro Alvarez from 2011 to 2015.
+
+National Baseball Hall of Fame consideration
+In his ten years of eligibility for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Bonds fell short of the 75% of the votes from the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) needed for induction. His vote percentages from 2013 through 2022 were: 36.2%, 34.7%, 36.8%, 44.3%, 53.8%, 56.4%, 59.1%, 60.7%, 61.8% and 66%. He appeared on 260 of 394 ballots in his last year.
+
+Despite falling off the ballot, Bonds remained eligible through the Hall of Fame's Today's Game Committee, a committee " 16 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, executives, and veteran media members" (hence the nickname of "veterans' committee") who consider retired players who lost ballot eligibility while still having made notable contributions to baseball from 1986 to 2016. The vote was held in December 2022; twelve of the sixteen votes were required for induction, but Bonds received fewer than four.
+
+Public persona
+During his playing career, Bonds was frequently described as a difficult person, surly, standoffish and ungrateful. In a 2016 interview with Terence Moore, he said he regretted the persona he had created. He attributed it to a response to the pressure he felt to perform as a young player with the Pirates. Remarked Bonds,
+
+Bonds reports that for a short time during his playing days with the Giants he changed his demeanor at the behest of a group of teammates, smiling much more frequently and engaging more with others with a pleasant attitude. Shortly thereafter, Bonds says, in the midst of a slump, the same group of teammates pleaded that he revert, having seemingly lost his competitive edge, and causing the team to lose more. In spite of his protest that they would not appreciate the results, his teammates insisted. Bonds says he complied, maintaining that familiar standoffish edge the rest of his playing career.
+
+On May 9, 1996, Bonds shoved USA Today journalist Rod Beaton in the team's clubhouse. As Beaton was waiting to interview Robby Thompson one hour before a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Bonds told Beaton to leave. The reporter replied that Major League Baseball rules allowed him 15 minutes more to talk with players. Bonds waved a finger in Beaton's face and shoved him in the chest, after which members of the team's coaching staff and front office interceded. Bonds and Beaton spoke again after the game. Beaton later said, "He accused me of having an attitude" and "I told him he went over the line by shoving me, but there was no apology". Bonds felt that the incident was overblown and said that, "We don't have a problem. We like each other. It was a big joke. He just got whacked out." Beaton filed no formal complaint about the incident, but USA Today filed a grievance with the team.
+
+Controversies
+
+BALCO scandal
+
+Since 2003, Bonds has been a key figure in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) scandal. BALCO marketed tetrahydrogestrinone ("the Clear"), a performance-enhancing anabolic steroid that was undetectable by doping tests. He was under investigation by a federal grand jury regarding his testimony in the BALCO case, and was indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges on November 15, 2007. The indictment alleges that Bonds lied while under oath about his alleged use of steroids.
+
+In 2003, BALCO's Greg Anderson, Bonds's trainer since 2000, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and charged with supplying anabolic steroids to athletes, including a number of baseball players. This led to speculation that Bonds had used performance-enhancing drugs during a time when there was no mandatory testing in Major League Baseball. Bonds declared his innocence, attributing his changed physique and increased power to a strict regimen of bodybuilding, diet, and legitimate supplements.
+
+During grand jury testimony on December 4, 2003, Bonds said that he used a clear substance and a cream that he received from his personal strength trainer, Greg Anderson, who told him they were the nutritional supplement flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm for arthritis. Later reports on Bonds's leaked grand-jury testimony contend that he admitted to unknowingly using "the cream" and "the clear".
+
+In July 2005, all four defendants in the BALCO steroid scandal trial, including Anderson, struck deals with federal prosecutors that did not require them to reveal names of athletes who might have used banned drugs.
+
+Perjury case
+
+On November 15, 2007, a federal grand jury indicted Bonds on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice as it relates to the government investigation of BALCO. He was tried in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. On February 14, 2008, a typo in court papers filed by Federal prosecutors erroneously alleged that Bonds tested positive for steroids in November 2001, a month after hitting his record 73rd home run. The reference was meant instead to refer to a November 2000 test that had already been disclosed and previously reported. The typo sparked a brief media frenzy. His trial for obstruction of justice was to have begun on March 2, 2009, but jury selection was postponed by emergency appeals by the prosecution. The trial commenced on March 21, 2011, with Judge Susan Illston presiding. He was convicted on April 13, 2011, on the obstruction of justice charge, for giving an evasive answer to a question under oath. On December 15, 2011, Bonds was found guilty for an obstruction of justice conviction stemming from a grand jury appearance in 2003. However, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston then delayed the sentence pending his appeal. He was sentenced to 30 days of house arrest. He also received two years of probation and was ordered to perform 250 hours of community service.
+
+Bonds appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2013, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed his conviction, but in 2015 his appeal was reheard by the full court en banc, which voted 10–1 to overturn his conviction.
+
+Player's union licensing withdrawal 
+
+In 2003, Bonds withdrew from the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) licensing agreement because he felt independent marketing deals would be more lucrative for him. Bonds is the first player in the 30-year history of the licensing program not to sign. Because of this withdrawal, his name and likeness are not usable in any merchandise licensed by the MLBPA. In order to use his name or likeness, a company must deal directly with Bonds. For this reason, he does not appear in some baseball video games, forcing game-makers to create generic athletes as replacements. These generic video games replacements tended to be white and sometimes had different handedness which was done likely to avoid potential player likeness lawsuits from Bonds.
+
+Game of Shadows
+
+In March 2006 the book Game of Shadows, written by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, was released amid a storm of media publicity including the cover of Sports Illustrated. Initially small excerpts of the book were released by the authors in the issue of Sports Illustrated. The book alleges Bonds used stanozolol and a host of other steroids, and is perhaps most responsible for the change in public opinion regarding Bonds's steroid use.
+
+The book contained excerpts of grand jury testimony that is supposed to be sealed and confidential by law. The authors have been steadfast in their refusal to divulge their sources and at one point faced jail time. On February 14, 2007, Troy Ellerman, one of Victor Conte's lawyers, pleaded guilty to leaking grand jury testimony. Through the plea agreement, he will spend two and a half years in jail.
+
+Love Me, Hate Me
+In May 2006, former Sports Illustrated writer Jeff Pearlman released a revealing biography of Bonds entitled Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Anti-Hero. The book also contained many allegations against Bonds. The book, which describes Bonds as a polarizing insufferable braggart with a legendary ego and staggering ability, relied on over five hundred interviews, none with Bonds himself.
+
+Bonds on Bonds
+
+In April 2006 and May 2006, ESPN aired a few episodes of a 10-part reality TV (unscripted, documentary-style) series starring Bonds. The show, titled Bonds on Bonds, focused on Bonds's chase of Babe Ruth's and Hank Aaron's home run records. Some felt the show should be put on hiatus until baseball investigated Bonds's steroid use allegations. The series was canceled in June 2006, ESPN and producer Tollin/Robbins Productions citing "creative control" issues with Bonds and his representatives.
+
+Personal life
+Bonds met Susann ("Sun") Margreth Branco, the mother of his first two children (Nikolai and Shikari), in Montreal, Quebec, in August 1987. They eloped to Las Vegas February 5, 1988. The couple separated in June 1994, divorced in December 1994, and had their marriage annulled in 1997 by the Catholic Church. The divorce was a media affair because Bonds had his Swedish spouse sign a prenuptial agreement in which she "waived her right to a share of his present and future earnings" and which was upheld. Bonds had been providing his wife $20,000/month in child support and $10,000 in spousal support at the time of the ruling. During the hearings to set permanent support levels, allegations of abuse came from both parties. The trial dragged on for months, but Bonds was awarded both houses and reduced support. On August 21, 2000, the Supreme Court of California, in an opinion signed by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, unanimously held that "substantial evidence supports the determination of the trial court that the [prenuptial] agreement in the present case was entered into voluntarily." In reaction to the decision, significant changes in California law relating to the validity and enforceability of premarital agreements soon followed.
+
+In 2010, Bonds's son Nikolai, who served as a Giants batboy during his father's years playing in San Francisco and always sat next to his dad in the dugout during games, was charged with five misdemeanors resulting from a confrontation with his mother, Sun Bonds, who was granted a restraining order against Nikolai.
+
+In 1994, Bonds and Kimberly Bell, a graphic designer, started a relationship that lasted from 1994 through May 2003. Bonds purchased a home in Scottsdale, Arizona, for Kimberly.
+
+On January 10, 1998, Bonds married his second wife, Liz Watson, at the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton Hotel in front of 240 guests. The couple lived in Los Altos Hills, California, with their daughter Aisha during their ten-and-a-half years of marriage before Watson filed for legal separation on June 9, 2009, citing irreconcilable differences. On July 21, 2009, just six weeks later, Watson announced that she was withdrawing her Legal Separation action. The couple were reconciled for seven months before Watson formally filed for divorce in Los Angeles on February 26, 2010. On June 6, 2011, Bonds and Watson filed a legal agreement not to take the divorce to trial and instead settle it in an "uncontested manner", agreeing to end the marriage privately at an unspecified later date without further court involvement.
+
+Several of Bonds's family and extended family members have been involved in athletics as either a career or a notable pastime. Bonds has a younger brother, Bobby Jr., who was also a professional baseball player. His paternal aunt, Rosie Bonds, is a former American record holder in the 80 meter hurdles, and competed in the 1964 Olympics. In addition, he is a distant cousin of Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson.
+
+Among Bonds's many real estate properties is a home he owns in the exclusive gated community of Beverly Park in Beverly Hills, California.
+
+An avid cyclist, Bonds chose the activity to be a primary means of keeping in shape and great passion since his playing career. Because knee surgeries, back surgeries, and hip surgeries made it much more difficult to run, cycling has allowed him to engage in sufficient cardiovascular activity to help keep in shape. As a result of the cycling, he has lost 25 pounds from his final playing weight of 240 pounds.
+
+Bonds is an active practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and was promoted to blue belt in the martial art in 2023.
+
+Legacy
+During late 2007, Chicago rapper Kanye West recorded a song titled "Barry Bonds" named after the slugger for his album Graduation.
+
+Career distinctions
+
+Besides holding Major League career records in home runs (762), walks (2,558), and intentional walks (688), at the time of his retirement, Bonds also led all active players in RBI (1,996), on-base percentage (.444), runs (2,227), games (2,986), extra-base hits (1,440), at-bats per home run (12.92), and total bases (5,976). He is 2nd in doubles (601), slugging percentage (.607), stolen bases (514), at-bats (9,847), and hits (2,935), 6th in triples (77), 8th in sacrifice flies (91), and 9th in strikeouts (1,539), through September 26, 2007.
+
+Bonds is the lone member of the 500–500 club, which means he has hit at least 500 home runs (762) and stolen at least 500 bases (514); no other player has even 400 of both. He is also one of only five baseball players all-time to be in the 40–40 club (1996), which means he hit 40 home runs (42) and stole 40 bases (40) in the same season; the other members are José Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano, and Ronald Acuña Jr.
+
+Records held
+
+ Home runs in a single season (73), 2001
+ Home runs in a career (762)
+ Home runs since turning 40 years old (74)
+ Home runs in the year he turned 43 years old (28)
+ Consecutive seasons with 30 or more home runs (13), 1992–2004
+ Slugging percentage in a single season (.863), 2001
+ Slugging percentage in a World Series (1.294), 2002
+ Consecutive seasons with .600 slugging percentage or higher (8), 1998–2005
+ On-base percentage in a single season (.609), 2004
+ Walks in a single season (232), 2004
+ Intentional walks in a single season (120), 2004
+ Consecutive games with a walk (18)
+ Consecutive games with an intentional walk (6)
+MVP awards (7—closest competitors trail with 3), 1990, 1992–93, 2001–2004
+ Consecutive MVP awards (4), 2001–2004
+ National League Player of the Month selections (13) (2nd place, either league, Frank Thomas, 8; 2nd place, N.L., George Foster, Pete Rose, and Dale Murphy, 6)
+ Oldest player (age 38) to win the National League batting title (.370) for the first time, 2002
+ Putouts as a left fielder (5,226)
+ Career games with at least one home run and one stolen base (102)
+
+Records shared
+ Consecutive plate appearances with a walk (7)
+ Consecutive plate appearances reaching base (15)
+ Tied with his father, Bobby, for most seasons with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases (5); they are the only father-son members of the 30–30 club
+ Home runs in a single postseason (8), 2002
+
+Other accomplishments
+
+Awards and distinctions
+
+ Five-time SF Giants Player of the Year (1998, 2001–2004)
+ Three-time NL Hank Aaron Award winner (2001–02, 2004)
+ Listed at #6 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, the highest-ranked active player, in 2005.
+ Named a finalist to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999, but not elected to the team in the fan balloting.
+ Rating of 340 on Baseball-Reference.com's Hall of Fame monitor (100 is a good HOF candidate); 10th among all hitters, highest among eligible hitters not in HOF yet.
+ Only the second player to twice have a single-season slugging percentage over .800, with his record .863 in 2001 and .812 in 2004. Babe Ruth was the other, with .847 in 1920 and .846 in 1921.
+ Became the first player in history with more times on base (376) than official at-bats (373) in 2004. This was due to the record number of walks, which count as a time on base and as a plate appearance, but not an at-bat. He had 135 hits, 232 walks, and 9 hit-by-pitches for the 376 number.
+Tenth all-time in plate appearances with 12,606. He is the only player in the top ten of this category to not obtain 3,000 hits and just one of two players with as many as 12,000 plate appearances to not do so (the other being Omar Vizquel).
+ With his father Bobby (332, 461), leads all father-son combinations in combined home runs (1,094) and stolen bases (975), respectively through September 26, 2007.
+ Played minor league baseball in both Alaska and Hawaii. In 1983, he played for the Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks in the Alaska Baseball League, and in 1986, he played for the Hawaii Islanders in the Pacific Coast League.
+Featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He has appeared as the main subject on the cover eight times in total; seven with the Giants and once with the Pirates. He has also appeared in an inset on the cover twice. He was the most recent Pirate player to appear on the cover, until Jason Grilli was featured in SIs edition of July 22, 2013.
+
+See also
+
+ List of Major League Baseball career at bat leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career bases on balls leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career doubles leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career extra base hits leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career games played leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career hit by pitch leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career on-base percentage leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career OPS leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career plate appearance leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career records
+ List of Major League Baseball career runs batted in leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career slugging percentage leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career strikeouts by batters leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball career total bases leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball doubles records
+ List of Major League Baseball home run records
+ List of Major League Baseball individual streaks
+ List of Major League Baseball progressive career home runs leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball progressive single-season home run leaders
+ List of Major League Baseball record breakers by season
+ List of Major League Baseball runs batted in records
+ List of Major League Baseball runs records
+ List of Major League Baseball single-season records
+ List of milestone home runs by Barry Bonds
+ List of second-generation Major League Baseball players
+ List of Major League Baseball players named in the Mitchell Report
+ Major League Baseball titles leaders
+
+References
+
+External links
+
+Barry Bonds at Baseball Almanac
+Barry Bonds at Pura Pelota (Venezuelan Professional Baseball League)
+Barry Bonds 
+
+Bonds archive at Los Angeles Times
+
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+
+|-
+
+|-
+
+ 
+1964 births
+Living people
+African-American baseball coaches
+African-American baseball players
+American sportspeople in doping cases
+Arizona State Sun Devils baseball players
+Baseball coaches from California
+Baseball players from Riverside, California
+Doping cases in baseball
+Gold Glove Award winners
+Hawaii Islanders players
+Major League Baseball hitting coaches
+Major League Baseball left fielders
+Major League Baseball players with retired numbers
+Miami Marlins coaches
+National League Most Valuable Player Award winners
+National League All-Stars
+National League batting champions
+National League home run champions
+National League RBI champions
+Navegantes del Magallanes players
+American expatriate baseball players in Venezuela
+People from San Carlos, California
+Baseball players from San Mateo County, California
+People from Los Altos Hills, California
+Baseball players from Santa Clara County, California
+Pittsburgh Pirates players
+Prince William Pirates players
+San Francisco Giants players
+Silver Slugger Award winners
+Junípero Serra High School (San Mateo, California) alumni
+Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks players
+The Book of Numbers (from Greek Ἀριθμοί, Arithmoi, literally "numbers"; , Bəmiḏbar, literally "In the desert [of]") is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final form is possibly due to a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a Yahwistic source made sometime in the early Persian period (5th century BC). The name of the book comes from the two censuses taken of the Israelites.
+
+Numbers is one of the better-preserved books of the Pentateuch. Fragments of the Ketef Hinnom scrolls containing verses from Numbers have been dated as far back as the late seventh or early sixth century BC. These verses are the earliest known artifacts to be found on the Hebrew Bible text.
+
+Numbers begins at Mount Sinai, where the Israelites have received their laws and covenant from God and God has taken up residence among them in the sanctuary. The task before them is to take possession of the Promised Land. The people are counted and preparations are made for resuming their march. The Israelites begin the journey, but they "grumble" at the hardships along the way, and about the authority of Moses and Aaron. They arrive at the borders of Canaan and send spies into the land. Upon hearing the spies' fearful report concerning the conditions in Canaan, the Israelites refuse to take possession of it. God condemns them to death in the wilderness until a new generation can grow up and carry out the task. Furthermore, there were some that rebelled against Moses and for these acts, God destroys approximately 15,000 of them through various means. The book ends with the new generation of Israelites in the "plains of Moab" ready for the crossing of the Jordan River.
+
+Numbers is the culmination of the story of Israel's exodus from oppression in Egypt and their journey to take possession of the land God promised their fathers. As such it draws to a conclusion the themes introduced in Genesis and played out in Exodus and Leviticus: God has promised the Israelites that they shall become a great (i.e. numerous) nation, that they will have a special relationship with Yahweh their god, and that they shall take possession of the land of Canaan. Numbers also demonstrates the importance of holiness, faithfulness and trust: despite God's presence and his priests, Israel lacks in faith and the possession of the land is left to a new generation.
+
+Structure
+Most commentators divide Numbers into three sections based on locale (Mount Sinai, Kadesh-Barnea and the plains of Moab), linked by two travel sections; an alternative is to see it as structured around the two generations of those condemned to die in the wilderness and the new generation who will enter Canaan, making a theological distinction between the disobedience of the first generation and the obedience of the second.
+
+Despite the strong chronological order and the clear distinction of the three geographic locations, the key theme of censuses among the Israelites and the parallels between the old and new generation seem to be a better fit for this book if seen as a theological account rather than a purely historical one.
+
+Summary
+
+God orders Moses, in the wilderness of Sinai, to number those able to bear arms—of all the men twenty years and older and to appoint princes over each tribe. A total of 603,550 Israelites are found to be fit for military service. The tribe of Levi is exempted from military service and therefore not included in the census. Moses consecrates the Levites for the service of the Tabernacle in the place of the first-born sons, who hitherto had performed that service. The Levites are divided into three families, the Gershonites, the Kohathites, and the Merarites, each under a chief. The Kohathites were headed by Eleazar, son of Aaron, while the Gershonites and Merarites were headed by Aaron's other son, Ithamar. Preparations are then made for resuming the march to the Promised Land. Various ordinances and laws are decreed.
+
+The Israelites set out from Sinai. The people murmur against God and are punished by fire; Moses complains of their stubbornness and is ordered to choose seventy elders to assist him in the government of the people. Miriam and Aaron insult Moses at Hazeroth, which angers God; Miriam is punished with leprosy and is shut out of camp for seven days, at the end of which the Israelites proceed to the desert of Paran on the border of Canaan. Twelve spies are sent out into Canaan and come back to report to Moses. Joshua and Caleb, two of the spies, report that the land is abundant and is "flowing with milk and honey", but the other spies say that it is inhabited by giants, and the Israelites refuse to enter the land. Yahweh decrees that the Israelites will be punished for their loss of faith by having to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
+
+God orders Moses to make plates to cover the altar. The children of Israel murmur against Moses and Aaron on account of the destruction of Korah's men and are stricken with the plague, with 14,700 perishing. Aaron and his family are declared by God to be responsible for any iniquity committed in connection with the sanctuary. The Levites are again appointed to help in the keeping of the Tabernacle. The Levites are ordered to surrender to the priests a part of the tithes taken to them.
+
+Miriam dies at Kadesh Barnea and the Israelites set out for Moab, on Canaan's eastern border. The Israelites blame Moses for the lack of water. Moses is ordered by God to speak to a rock but initially disobeys, and is punished by the announcement that he shall not enter Canaan. The king of Edom refuses permission to pass through his land and they go around it. Aaron dies on Mount Hor. The Israelites are bitten by Fiery flying serpents for speaking against God and Moses. A brazen serpent is made to ward off these serpents.
+
+The Israelites arrive on the plains of Moab, across the River Jordan from Jericho. Here, the Israelites find themselves in conflict with the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan, both of whom they defeat. Balak, king of Moab decides to fight the Israelites as well, and summons a local diviner named Balaam to curse the Israelites. However, God tells Balaam not to curse them, and when Balaam attempts to travel to Balak with the Moabite officials God sends an angel to stop his donkey. Realising that he cannot curse the Israelites, Balaam blesses them instead, and foresees a figure whom he identifies as 'the Star of Jacob' who will defeat Israel's enemies. This angers Balak, but Balaam informs Balak that he cannot say anything except what God tells him to say.
+
+The longer the Israelites stay on the plains of Shittim, the more they intermarry with the local Moabites, and the more they participate in the local religion, worshipping a deity known as Baal-Peor. God sends a plague in retaliation, and Moses tells the judges to kill anyone participating in this practice. When one of Aaron's grandsons, Phinehas, finds out a Simeonite prince named Zimri has married a Midianite woman named Cozbi, he enters their tent and runs a spear through them. God rewards him by giving his descendants an everlasting priesthood. God also tells the Israelites to consider the Midianites their enemies.
+
+A new census gives the total number of males from twenty years and upward as 601,730, and the number of the Levites from the age of one month and upward as 23,000. The land shall be divided by lot. The daughters of Zelophehad, who had no sons, are to share in the allotment. Moses is ordered to appoint Joshua as his successor. Prescriptions for the observance of the feasts and the offerings for different occasions are enumerated. Moses orders the Israelites to massacre the people of Midian, in retaliation for the Baal-Peor incident. The Reubenites and the Gadites request Moses to assign them the land east of the Jordan. Moses grants their request after they promise to help in the conquest of the land west of the Jordan. The land east of the Jordan is divided among the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Moses recalls the stations at which the Israelites halted during their forty years' wanderings and instructs the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites and destroy their idols. The boundaries of the land are spelled out; the land is to be divided under the supervision of Eleazar, Joshua, and twelve princes, one of each tribe.
+
+Composition
+
+The majority of modern biblical scholars believe that the Torah—the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—reached its present form in the post-Exilic period (i.e., after c. 520 BC), based on preexisting written and oral traditions, as well as contemporary geographical and political realities. The five books are often described as being drawn from four "sources", generally regarded as the works of schools of writers rather than individuals: the Yahwist and the Elohist (frequently treated as a single source), the Priestly source, and the Deuteronomist. There is an ongoing dispute over the origins of the non-Priestly source(s), but it is generally agreed that the Priestly source is post-exilic. Below is an outline of the hypothesis:
+Genesis is made up of Priestly and non-Priestly material.
+Exodus is an anthology drawn from nearly all periods of Israel's history.
+Leviticus is entirely Priestly and dates from the exilic/post-exilic period.
+Numbers is a Priestly redaction (i.e., editing) of a non-Priestly original.
+Deuteronomy, now the last book of the Torah, began as the set of religious laws that make up the bulk of the book, was extended in the early part of the 6th century BCE to serve as the introduction to the Deuteronomistic history (the books from Joshua to Kings), and later still was detached from that history, extended and edited again, and attached to the Torah. 
+However, the Ketef Hinnom scrolls do point to the plausibility of a preexilic written tradition of the passage from Numbers 6 and Deuteronomy 7. Although this does not decisively prove that there was a canonical written tradition it does point to a possibility of such a tradition.
+
+Themes
+
+David A. Clines, in his influential The Themes of the Pentateuch (1978), identified the overarching theme of the five books as the partial fulfilment of a promise made by God to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The promise has three elements: posterity (i.e., descendants – Abraham is told that his descendants will be as innumerable as the stars), divine-human relationship (Israel is to be God's chosen people), and land (the land of Canaan, cursed by Noah immediately after the Deluge).
+
+The theme of the divine-human relationship is expressed, or managed, through a series of covenants (meaning treaties, legally binding agreements) stretching from Genesis to Deuteronomy and beyond. The first is the covenant between God and Noah immediately after the Deluge in which God agrees never again to destroy the Earth with water. The next is between God and Abraham, and the third between God and all Israel at Mount Sinai. In this third covenant, unlike the first two, God hands down an elaborate set of laws (scattered through Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers), which the Israelites are to observe; they are also to remain faithful to Yahweh, the god of Israel, meaning, among other things, that they must put their trust in his help. However, it is important to note that among the reasons this law was given was to establish the Israelite people as Yahweh's people. The laws and instructions were as much for obedience as they were for identity. Yahweh by providing all the different instructions and laws was affirming that the Israelite people were his and would bear his identity.
+
+The theme of descendants marks the first event in Numbers, the census of Israel's fighting men: the huge number which results (over 600,000) demonstrates the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham of innumerable descendants, as well as serving as God's guarantee of victory in Canaan. As chapters 1–10 progress, the theme of God's presence with Israel comes to the fore: these chapters describe how Israel is to be organized around the Sanctuary, God's dwelling-place in their midst, under the charge of the Levites and priests, in preparation for the conquest of the land.
+
+The Israelites then set out to conquer the land, but almost immediately they refuse to enter it, and Yahweh condemns the whole generation who left Egypt to die in the wilderness. The message is clear: failure was not due to any fault in the preparation, because Yahweh had foreseen everything, but due to Israel's sin of unfaithfulness. In the final section, the Israelites of the new generation follow Yahweh's instructions as given through Moses and are successful in all they attempt. The last five chapters are exclusively concerned with land: instructions for the extermination of the Canaanites, the demarcation of the boundaries of the land, how the land is to be divided, holy cities for the Levites and "cities of refuge", the problem of pollution of the land by blood, and regulations for inheritance when a male heir is lacking.
+
+A large part of the theological theme in Numbers is the righteousness and holiness of God being met with human rebellion. The two censuses not only show the different response of two generations but rather that God had remained faithful despite the rebellion of the Israelites. The theme of the book should seem to be more centrally focused on the faithfulness and holiness of God as this is a common theme that runs through the Pentateuch and also through the book of Numbers.
+
+Census numbers 
+The book of Numbers records in some detail the population of the fighting men in Israel as to be over 600,000. This would translate to a total population of 1.5 to 2.5 million Israelites. However, scholars have proposed multiple alternatives as such a large number of Israelites cannot be accepted. Some scholars see this as non-historical and are fabricated numbers, opting instead to focus on Numbers as a theological book and not a historical one. 
+
+Others say that the literature is not referring to the actual number and the word for 'thousand' is actually referring to noun to signify a group or clan, however this poses a problem of undermining the book of Numbers as there are many inconsistencies that cannot be resolved. Most scholars who hold this view posit a much lower number for the fighting  men of Israel, closer to 20,000. Based on the nature of the book and the many accounts of tax payment and records of animals and persons, it is most likely that Numbers is referring to an actual account of numerical recounting of the Israelite people. A more likely explanation to the large number stated in the book is that the actual numerical metric cannot really be established today. This would require us to take the values given as they are as any other alternatives raises more problems than solutions.
+
+Judaism's weekly Torah portions in the Book of Numbers 
+
+ Bemidbar, on Numbers 1–4: First census, priestly duties
+ Naso, on Numbers 4–7: Priestly duties, the camp, unfaithfulness, and the Nazirite, Tabernacle consecration
+ Behaalotecha, on Numbers 8–12: Levites, journeying by cloud and fire, complaints, questioning of Moses
+ Shlach, on Numbers 13–15: Mixed report of the scouts and Israel's response, libations, bread, idol worship, fringes
+ Korach, on Numbers 16–18: Korah's rebellion, plague, Aaron's staff buds, duties of the Levites
+ Chukat, on Numbers 19–21: Red heifer, water from a rock, Miriam's and Aaron's deaths, victories, serpents
+ Balak, on Numbers 22–25: Balaam's donkey and blessing
+ Pinechas, on Numbers 25–29: Phinehas, second census, inheritance, Moses' successor, offerings and holidays
+ Matot, on Numbers 30–32: Vows, Midian, dividing booty, land for Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh
+ Masei, on Numbers 33–36: Stations of the Israelites' journeys, instructions for conquest, cities for Levites
+
+See also
+ Balaam
+ Book of the Wars of the Lord
+ Inverted nun (only appears twice in the Book of Numbers and seven times in the Book of Psalms)
+ Ketef Hinnom scrolls
+ Ordeal of bitter water
+ Priestly Blessing
+ Torah
+ What hath God wrought (disambiguation)
+ Wilderness of Sin
+
+References
+
+Citations
+
+Sources
+
+ 
+
+  
+
+Plaut, Gunther. The Torah: A Modern Commentary (1981),
+
+Further reading
+
+External links
+
+ במדבר Bamidbar – Numbers (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org)
+
+Translations
+Jewish translations:
+ Numbers at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation)
+ Numbers (The Living Torah)  Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's translation and commentary at Ort.org
+ Bamidbar – Numbers (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
+Christian translations:
+ Numbers
+ Online Bible at GospelHall.org  (King James Version)
+ oremus Bible Browser (New Revised Standard Version)
+ oremus Bible Browser (Anglicized New Revised Standard Version)
+ Numbers at Wikisource (Authorized King James Version)
+ Numbers at drbo.org (Douay-Rheims Version)
+  Various versions
+
+ 
+5th-century BC books
+4
+The Exodus
+The Book of Judges (, ) is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the Books of Samuel, during which biblical judges served as temporary leaders. The stories follow a consistent pattern: the people are unfaithful to Yahweh; he therefore delivers them into the hands of their enemies; the people repent and entreat Yahweh for mercy, which he sends in the form of a leader or champion (a "judge"; see shophet); the judge delivers the Israelites from oppression and they prosper, but soon they fall again into unfaithfulness and the cycle is repeated. Scholars consider many of the stories in Judges to be the oldest in the Deuteronomistic history, with their major redaction dated to the 8th century BCE and with materials such as the Song of Deborah dating from much earlier.
+
+Contents 
+Judges can be divided into three major sections: a double prologue (chapters 1:1–3:6), a main body (3:7–16:31), and a double epilogue (17–21).
+
+Prologue 
+
+The book opens with the Israelites in the land that God has promised to them, but worshiping "foreign gods" instead of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and with the Canaanites still present everywhere. Chapters 1:1–2:5 are thus a confession of failure, while chapters 2:6–3:6 are a major summary and reflection from the Deuteronomists.
+
+The opening thus sets out the pattern which the stories in the main text will follow:
+ Israel "does evil in the eyes of Yahweh",
+ The people are given into the hands of their enemies and cry out to Yahweh,
+ Yahweh raises up a leader,
+ The "spirit of Yahweh" comes upon the leader,
+ The leader manages to defeat the enemy, and
+ Peace is regained.
+
+Once peace is regained, Israel does right and receives Yahweh's blessings for a time, but relapses later into doing evil and repeats the pattern above.
+
+Judges follows the Book of Joshua and opens with a reference to Joshua's death. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges suggests that "the death of Joshua may be regarded as marking the division between the period of conquest and the period of occupation", the latter being the focus of the Book of Judges. The Israelites meet, probably at the sanctuary at Gilgal or at Shechem, and ask the Lord who should be first (in order of time, not of rank) to secure the land they are to occupy.
+
+Main text 
+
+The main text gives accounts of six major judges and their struggles against the oppressive kings of surrounding nations, as well as the story of Abimelech, an Israelite leader (a judge [shofet] in the sense of "chieftain") who oppresses his own people. The cyclical pattern set out in the prologue is readily apparent at the beginning, but as the stories progress it begins to disintegrate, mirroring the disintegration of the world of the Israelites. Although some scholars consider the stories not to be presented in chronological order, the judges in the order in which they appear in the text are:
+ Othniel (3:9–11) vs. Chushan-Rishathaim, King of Aram; Israel has 40 years of peace until the death of Othniel. (The statement that Israel has a certain period of peace after each judge is a recurrent theme.)
+ Ehud (3:11–29) vs. Eglon of Moab
+ Deborah, directing Barak the army captain (4–5), vs. Jabin of Hazor (a city in Canaan) and Sisera, his captain (Battle of Mount Tabor)
+ Gideon (6–8) vs. Midian, Amalek, and the "children of the East" (apparently desert tribes)
+ Jephthah (11–12:7) vs. the Ammonites
+ Samson (13–16) vs. the Philistines
+
+There are also brief glosses on six minor judges: Shamgar (Judges 3:31; after Ehud), Tola and Jair (10:1–5), Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon (12:8–15; after Jephthah). Some scholars have inferred that the minor judges were actual adjudicators, whereas the major judges were leaders and did not actually make legal judgements. The only major judge described as making legal judgments is Deborah (4:4).
+
+Epilogue 
+By the end of Judges, Yahweh's treasures are used to make idolatrous images, the Levites (priests) become corrupt, the tribe of Dan conquers a remote village instead of the Canaanite cities, and the tribes of Israel make war on the tribe of Benjamin, their own kinsmen.  The book concludes with two appendices, stories which do not feature a specific judge:
+ Micah's Idol (Judges 17–18), how the tribe of Dan conquers its territory in the north.
+ Levite's concubine (Judges 19–21): the gang rape of a Levite's concubine leads to war between the Benjamites and the other Israelite tribes, after which hundreds of virgins are taken captive as wives for the decimated Benjamites.
+Despite their appearance at the end of the book, certain characters (like Jonathan, the grandson of Moses) and idioms present in the epilogue show that the events therein "must have taken place… early in the period of the judges."
+
+Chronology 
+Judges contains a chronology of its events, assigning a number of years to each interval of judgment and peace. It is overtly schematic and was likely introduced at a later period.
+
+Manuscript sources
+Four of the Dead Sea Scrolls feature parts of Judges: 1QJudg, found in Qumran Cave 1; 4QJudga and 4QJudgb, found in Qumran Cave 4; and XJudges, a fragment discovered in 2001.
+
+The earliest complete surviving copy of the Book of Judges in Hebrew is in the Aleppo Codex (10th century CE).
+
+The Septuagint (Greek translation) is found in early manuscripts such as the Codex Colberto-Sarravianus (c. AD 400; contains many lacunae) and the Fragment of Leipzig (c. AD 500).
+
+Composition
+
+Sources 
+The basic source for Judges was a collection of loosely connected stories about tribal heroes who saved the people in battle. This original "book of saviours" made up of the stories of Ehud, Jael and parts of Gideon, had already been enlarged and transformed into "wars of Yahweh" before being given the final Deuteronomistic revision. In the 20th century, the first part of the prologue (chapters 1:1–2:5) and the two parts of the epilogue (17–21) were commonly seen as miscellaneous collections of fragments tacked onto the main text, and the second part of the prologue (2:6–3:6) as an introduction composed expressly for the book. More recently, this view has been challenged, and there is an increasing willingness to see Judges as the work of a single individual, working by carefully selecting, reworking and positioning the source material to introduce and conclude his themes. Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein proposed that the author(s) of the "book of saviours" collected these folk tales in the time of King Jeroboam II to argue that the king's Nimshide origins, which appear to originate in the eastern Jezreel Valley, were part of the "core" territory of Israel.
+
+The Deuteronomistic History 
+A statement repeated throughout the epilogue, "In those days there was no king in Israel" implies a date in the monarchic period for the redaction (editing) of Judges. Twice, this statement is accompanied with the statement "every man did that which was right in his own eyes", implying that the redactor is pro-monarchy, and the epilogue, in which the tribe of Judah is assigned a leadership role, implies that this redaction took place in Judah.
+
+Since the second half of the 20th century most scholars have agreed with Martin Noth's thesis that the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings form parts of a single work. Noth maintained that the history was written in the early Exilic period (6th century BCE) in order to demonstrate how Israel's history was worked out in accordance with the theology expressed in the book of Deuteronomy (which thus provides the name "Deuteronomistic"). Noth believed that this history was the work of a single author, living in the mid-6th century BCE, selecting, editing and composing from his sources to produce a coherent work. Frank Moore Cross later proposed that an early version of the history was composed in Jerusalem in Josiah's time (late 7th century BCE); this first version, Dtr1, was then revised and expanded to create a second edition, that identified by Noth, and which Cross labelled Dtr2.
+
+Scholars agree that the Deuteronomists' hand can be seen in Judges through the book's cyclical nature: the Israelites fall into idolatry, God punishes them for their sins with oppression by foreign peoples, the Israelites cry out to God for help, and God sends a judge to deliver them from the foreign oppression. After a period of peace, the cycle recurs. Scholars also suggest that the Deuteronomists also included the humorous and sometimes disparaging commentary found in the book such as the story of the tribe of Ephraim who could not pronounce the word "shibboleth" correctly (12:5–6).
+
+Themes and genre 
+
+The essence of Deuteronomistic theology is that Israel has entered into a covenant (a treaty, a binding agreement) with the God Yahweh, under which they agree to accept Yahweh as their God (hence the phrase "God of Israel") and Yahweh promises them a land where they can live in peace and prosperity. Deuteronomy contains the laws by which Israel is to live in the promised land, Joshua chronicles the conquest of Canaan, the promised land, and its allotment among the tribes, Judges describes the settlement of the land, Samuel the consolidation of the land and people under David, and Kings the destruction of kingship and loss of the land. The final tragedy described in Kings is the result of Israel's failure to uphold its part of the covenant: faithfulness to Yahweh brings success, economic, military and political, but unfaithfulness brings defeat and oppression.
+
+This is the theme played out in Judges: the people are unfaithful to Yahweh and He therefore delivers them into the hands of their enemies; the people then repent and entreat Yahweh for mercy, which He sends in the form of a judge; the judge delivers the Israelites from oppression, but after a while they fall into unfaithfulness again and the cycle is repeated. Israel's apostasy is repeatedly invoked by the author as the cause of threats to Israel. The oppression of the Israelites is due to their turning to Canaanite gods, breaking the covenant and "doing evil in the sight of the lord".
+ 
+Further themes are also present: the "sovereign freedom of Yahweh" (God does not always do what is expected of him); the "satirisation of foreign kings" (who consistently underestimate Israel and Yahweh); the concept of the "flawed agent" (judges who are not adequate to the task before them) and the disunity of the Israelite community (which gathers pace as the stories succeed one another).
+
+The book is as intriguing for the themes it leaves out as for what it includes: the Ark of the Covenant, which is given so much importance in the stories of Moses and Joshua, is almost entirely missing, cooperation between the various tribes is limited, and there is no mention of a central shrine for worship and only limited reference to a High Priest of Israel (the office to which Aaron was appointed at the end of the Exodus story).
+
+Although Judges probably had a monarchist redaction (see above), the book contains passages and themes that represent anti-monarchist views. One of the major themes of the book is Yahweh's sovereignty and the importance of being loyal to Him and His laws above all other gods and sovereigns. Indeed, the authority of the judges comes not through prominent dynasties nor through elections or appointments, but rather through the Spirit of God. Anti-monarchist theology is most apparent toward the end of the Gideon cycle in which the Israelites beg Gideon to create a dynastic monarchy over them and Gideon refuses. The rest of Gideon's lifetime saw peace in the land, but after Gideon's death, his son Abimelech ruled Shechem as a Machiavellian tyrant guilty for much bloodshed (see chapters 8 and 9). However, the last few chapters of Judges (specifically, the stories of Samson, Micah, and Gibeah) highlight the violence and anarchy of decentralized rule.
+
+Judges is remarkable for the number of female characters who "play significant roles, active and passive, in the narratives." Rabbi Joseph Telushkin wrote,
+
+See also 
+ Biblical canon
+ History of ancient Israel and Judah
+ Tanakh
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+
+External links 
+
+Original text
+ שֹּׁפְטִים – Shoftim – Judges (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org)
+Jewish translations
+ Judges at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation)
+ Shoftim – Judges (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
+ Book of Judges (G-dcast interpretations)
+
+Christian translations
+ Judges at Bible Gateway (various versions)
+ Judges at Wikisource (Authorised King James Version)
+  Various versions
+
+Articles
+ Book of Judges article (Jewish Encyclopedia)
+  A detailed description from an Anglican point of view.
+
+Brief introduction
+ Book of Judges
+ 
+
+ 
+8th-century BC books
+7th-century BC books
+6th-century BC books
+ Book of Judges
+Nevi'im
+Phoenicians in the Hebrew Bible
+Historical books
+Deuteronomistic history
+The Book of Samuel (, Sefer Shmuel) is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Samuel) in the Old Testament. The book is part of the Deuteronomistic history, a series of books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) that constitute a theological history of the Israelites and that aim to explain God's law for Israel under the guidance of the prophets.
+
+According to Jewish tradition, the book was written by Samuel, with additions by the prophets Gad and Nathan, who together are three prophets who had appeared within 1 Chronicles during the account of David's reign. Modern scholarly thinking posits that the entire Deuteronomistic history was composed circa 630–540 BCE by combining a number of independent texts of various ages.
+
+The book begins with Samuel's birth and Yahweh's call to him as a boy. The story of the Ark of the Covenant follows. It tells of Israel's oppression by the Philistines, which brought about Samuel's anointing of Saul as Israel's first king. But Saul proved unworthy, and God's choice turned to David, who defeated Israel's enemies, purchased the threshing floor where his son Solomon would build the First Temple, and brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. Yahweh then promised David and his successors an everlasting dynasty.
+
+In the Septuagint, a basis of the Christian biblical canons, the text is divided into two books, now called the First and Second Book of Samuel.
+
+Biblical narrative 
+
+The Jerusalem Bible divides the two Books of Samuel into five sections; further subheadings are also based on subdivisions in that version:
+
+1 Samuel 1:1-7:17. Samuel
+1 Samuel 8:1-15:35. Samuel and Saul
+1 Samuel 16:1-2 Samuel 1:27. Saul and David
+2 Samuel 2:1-20:26. David
+2 Samuel 21:1-24:25. Supplementary Information
+
+1 Samuel
+
+Samuel (1:1-7:17)
+
+The Childhood of Samuel (1:1-4:1a)
+A man named Elkanah, an Ephraimite from the city of Ramathaim-Zophim, has two wives, Peninnah and Hannah, the latter of whom is his favourite wife, and a rivalry between the two develops based on the fact that Peninnah has children and Hannah does not. The childless Hannah vows to Yahweh lord of hosts that, if she has a son, he will be dedicated to God. Eli, the priest of Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant is located, thinks she is drunk, but when he realises she is praying, he blesses her. A child named Samuel is born, and Samuel is dedicated to the Lord as a Nazirite—the only one besides Samson to be identified in the Bible. Hannah sings a song of praise upon the fulfilment of her vow.
+
+Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, sin against God's laws and the people, specifically by demanding raw rather than boiled meat for sacrifice and having sex with the tabernacle's serving women. But the child Samuel grows up "in the presence of the Lord": his family visits him each year, bringing a new coat for him, and Hannah has five more children. Eli tries to persuade his sons to stop their wickedness, but fails. As punishment for this, a holy man arrives, prophesying that Eli's family will be cut off and none of his descendants will see old age.
+
+One night, God calls Samuel and, thinking Eli is calling him three times, he rushes to Eli. Eli informs him that God wishes to speak to him, and God informs Samuel that the earlier prophecy about Eli's family is correct. He is at first afraid to inform Eli of this, but Eli tells him not to be, and that God will do what is good in His sight. Over time, Samuel grows up and is recognised as a prophet.
+
+The Ark in Philistine hands (4:1b-7:17)
+The Philistines, despite their initial worries when hearing the Israelite ritual of the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant, defeat the Israelites at the Battle of Aphek, capturing the Ark and killing Hophni and Phinehas, thus fulfilling the earlier prophecy. When Eli hears of these two events, particularly the capture of the Ark, he falls off his chair and dies. His daughter-in-law, in turn, goes into labour at this, and names her son Ichabod ('without glory') in commemoration of the capture of the Ark.
+
+Meanwhile, the Philistines take the Ark to the temple of their god Dagon, who recognizes the supremacy of Yahweh. The Philistines are afflicted with plagues, are unable to take the Ark into any city on account of the fear of the populations of those cities, and return the ark to the Israelites, but to the territory of the tribe of Benjamin, to the city of Beth Shemesh, rather than to Shiloh, from where it is passed to the city of Kiriath Jearim, where a new priest, Eleazar, son of Abinadab, is appointed to guard the ark for the twenty years it is there. The Philistines attack the Israelites gathered at Mizpah in Benjamin. Samuel appeals to God, the Philistines are decisively beaten, and the Israelites reclaim their lost territory. Samuel sets up the Eben-Ezer (the stone of help) in remembrance of the battle, and takes his place as judge of Israel.
+
+Samuel and Saul (8:1-15:35)
+
+The institution of the monarchy (8:1-12:25)
+In Samuel's old age, he appoints his sons Joel and Abijah as judges but, because of their corruption, the people ask for a king to rule over them. God directs Samuel to grant the people their wish despite his concerns: God gives them Saul from the tribe of Benjamin, whom Samuel anoints during an attempt by Saul to locate his father's lost donkeys. He then invites Saul to a feast, where he gives him the best piece of meat, and they talk through the night on the roof of Samuel's house. Samuel tells Saul to return home, telling him the donkeys have been found and his father is now worrying about him, as well as describing a series of signs Saul will see on the way home. Saul begins to prophesy when he meets some prophets, confusing his neighbours. Eventually, Samuel publicly announces Saul as king, although not without controversy.
+
+Shortly thereafter, Nahash of Ammon lays siege to Jabesh Gilead and demands that everyone in the city have their right eye gouged out as part of the peace treaty. The Jabeshites send out messengers, looking for a saviour. When Saul hears of the situation, he gathers a 330,000-strong army and launches a surprise attack at night, leading Israel to victory and saving Jabesh, thus proving those who doubted him wrong. Saul's kingship is renewed.
+
+Samuel is aware he is the final judge and that the age of kings is about to begin, and speaks to the Israelites, demonstrating his innocence and recapping the history of Israel. He calls on the Lord to send thunder and rain, and rebukes the people for their desire for a king. Nonetheless, he tells them that as long as they refrain from idol worship, they will not perish - but if they do, calamity will befall the kingdom.
+
+The beginning of Saul's reign (13:1-15:35)
+Despite his numerous military victories, Saul disobeys Yahweh's instructions. First of all, after a battle against the Philistines, he does not wait for Samuel to arrive before he offers sacrifices. Meanwhile, it turns out that the Philistines have been killing and capturing blacksmiths in order to ensure the Israelites do not have weapons, and so the Israelites go to war essentially with sharpened farm instruments. Saul's son Jonathan launches a secret attack by climbing a pass into the Philistine camp and kills twenty people in the process. The panic this creates leads to a victory for the Israelites. Jonathan finds some honey and eats it, despite a royal decree not to eat until evening. Jonathan begins to doubt his father, reasoning an even greater victory could have been achieved if the men had eaten. The royal decree has other unintended knock-on effects, namely that the men start killing and eating animals without draining the blood. To counteract this, Saul sets up an altar so the proper laws can be observed. When a priest suggests asking God before launching another attack, God is silent, leading Saul to set up a pseudo-legal procedure to ascertain whose fault it is that God has abandoned them. The lot falls on Jonathan, but the men refuse to let him be executed since he is the reason for their victory.
+
+Over time, Saul fights the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Zobahites, the Philistines and the Amalekites, winning victory over them all; his kingdom is in a constant state of war, and he constantly recruits new heroes to his army. However, he disobeys God's instruction to destroy Amalek: Saul spares Agag, the Amalekite ruler, and the best portion of the Amalekite flocks to present them as sacrifices. Samuel rebukes Saul and tells him that God has now chosen another man to be king of Israel. Samuel then kills Agag himself.
+
+Saul and David (16:1-31:13)
+
+David at court (16:1-19:7)
+Samuel travels to Bethlehem to visit a man named Jesse, with God promising Samuel can anoint one of his sons as king. However, while inspecting Jesse's sons, God tells Samuel that none of them are to be king. God tells Samuel to anoint David, the youngest brother, as king. Saul becomes ill and David comes to play the harp to him. Saul takes a liking to David and David enters Saul's court as his armor-bearer and harpist.
+
+A new war against the Philistines begins, and a Philistine champion named Goliath emerges, challenging any Israelite to one-on-one combat, with the loser's people becoming subject to the winner. David goes to take food to his brothers in the Israelite camp, learns of the situation and the reward Saul is willing to give to the person who kills him (great wealth, his daughter's hand in marriage and exemption from taxes for the killer's family) and tells Saul he will kill Goliath. Saul wants him to wear his armour, but David finds he cannot because he is not used to it. Seeing David's youth, Goliath begins to curse him. David slings a stone into Goliath's forehead, and Goliath dies. David cuts off Goliath's head with Goliath's sword.
+
+Jonathan befriends David. Saul begins to send David on military missions and quickly promotes him given his successes, but begins to become jealous of David after the Israelites make up a song about how much more successful David is than Saul. One day, Saul decides to kill David with a spear, but David avoids him. Saul realises that God is now with David and no longer with him, making him scared of David. He therefore seeks other ways to pacify David. First, he sends him on military campaigns, but this only makes him more successful. Next, he tries to marry him off to his daughter Merab, but David refuses, and so Merab is married off to the nobleman Adriel. However, David is in love with Michal, another of Saul's daughters. Although David is still unsure about becoming son-in-law to the king, Saul requires only 100 Philistine foreskins as dowry. Although this is a plan to have David captured by the Philistines, David kills 200 Philistines and brings their foreskins back to Saul.
+
+Saul then plots David's death, but Jonathan talks him out of it.
+
+The flight of David (19:8-21:16)
+Once again Saul tries to kill David with his spear, and so David decides to escape, lowered out of a window by Michal, who then takes an idol, covers it in clothes and places goat's hair on its head to cover David's escape. David visits Samuel. When Saul finds this out, he sends men to capture David, but when they see Samuel they begin prophesying, as does Saul when he tries to capture David himself.
+
+David then visits Jonathan, and they argue about whether Saul actually wants to kill David. David proposes a test: he is to dine with the king the following day for the New Moon festival. However, he will hide in a field and Jonathan will tell Saul that David has returned to Bethlehem for a sacrifice. If the king accepts this, he is not trying to kill him, but if he becomes angry, he is. Jonathan devises a code to relay this information to David: he will come to the stone Ezel, shoot three arrows at it and tell a page to find them. If he tells the page the arrows are on his side of the stone, David can come to him, but if he tells them they are beyond the stone, he must run away. When Jonathan puts the plan into action, Saul attempts to kill him with his spear. Jonathan relays this to David using his code and the two weep as they are separated.
+
+David arrives at Nob, where he meets Ahimelech the priest, a great-grandson of Eli. Pretending he is on a mission from the king and is going to meet his men, he asks for supplies. He is given the showbread and Goliath's sword. He then flees to Gath and seeks refuge at the court of King Achish, but feigns insanity since he is afraid of what the Philistines might do to him.
+
+David the Outlaw (22:1-26:25)
+David travels to the cave of Adullam near his home, where his family visit him, until he finds refuge for them at the court of the king of Moab in Mizpah.
+
+However, one of Saul's servants, Doeg the Edomite, saw David at Nob, and informs Saul that he was there. Saul arrives at the town, concludes that the priests are supporting David and has Doeg kill them all. One priest gets away: Abiathar, son of Ahimelech, who goes to join David. David accepts him, since he feels somewhat responsible for the massacre. David liberates the village of Keilah from the Philistines with the help of God and Abiathar. However, when God tells him that Saul is coming and the citizens of Keilah will hand him over to Saul, David and his men escape to the desert of Ziph, where Jonathan comes and recognises him as the next king. However, some Ziphites inform Saul that David is in the desert, but Saul's search is broken off by another Philistine invasion.
+
+After the invasion, Saul learns David is now living in the desert of En Gedi and resumes his search for him. At one point, he enters a cave to relieve himself. David and his men are further back in the cave. They discuss the possibility of killing Saul, but David opts to merely cut a corner off his robe and use this as proof that he does not in fact wish to kill Saul. Saul repents of how he has treated David, recognises him as the next king and makes him promise not to kill off his descendants.
+
+Samuel dies, and, after mourning him, David moves on to the Desert of Paran. Here he meets the shepherds of a Calebite named Nabal, and his men help protect them. At sheep-shearing time, he sends some of his men to ask for food. However, Nabal refuses, preferring to keep his food for his household. However, when his wife, Abigail, hears of this, she takes a large amount of supplies to David herself. This turns out to be at exactly the right moment, since David had just threatened to kill everyone in Nabal's home. Abigail begs for mercy, and David agrees, praising her wisdom. That night Nabal has a feast, so Abigail waits until morning to tell him what she has done. He has a heart attack and dies ten days later. David marries Abigail and a woman from Jezreel named Ahinoam, but in the meantime Saul has married David's first wife, Michal, off to a nobleman named Palti, son of Laish.
+
+Saul decides to return to pursuing David, and the Ziphites alert him as to David's whereabouts. Saul returns to the desert of Ziph and sets up camp. One night, David and two companions, Achimelech the Hittite and Abishai son of Zeruiah (his nephew), go to Saul's camp and find him asleep on the ground. Abishai advocates killing him, but David once again resists, content with taking a spear and water jug lying by Saul's head. The next morning, David advises Abner, Saul's captain, to put the soldiers to death for not protecting Saul, citing the absence of the spear and water jug as evidence. Saul interrupts, and once again repents of his hunt. He blesses David, David returns his spear and Saul returns home.
+
+David among the Philistines (27:1-31:13)
+David joins the Philistines out of fear of Saul, taking his wives with him and brutally destroying his enemies, largely the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites, but makes the Philistines believe he is attacking the Israelites, the Jerahmeelites and the Kenites instead. King Achish is pleased with him, and supposes he will continue to serve him. Eventually, the Philistines go to war with the Israelites, and David goes with them.
+
+Meanwhile, Saul is growing increasingly anxious about the upcoming battle, but cannot get advice from God. He decides to attempt to contact Samuel from beyond the grave. While he has expelled all the witches and spiritists, he learns that one remains at Endor. After Saul assures her she will not be punished, she agrees to summon Samuel. Samuel is not happy to be disturbed, and reveals that the Philistines will win the battle, with Saul and his sons dying in the process. Saul is shocked and, although at first reluctant, eats some food and leaves.
+
+Back in the Philistine camp, several of the rulers are not happy with the idea of fighting alongside David, suspecting he may defect during the battle. Achish therefore reluctantly sends David back instead of bringing him to Jezreel with the Philistine army. When David and his men arrive in Ziklag, they find it sacked by the Amalekites, and David's wives taken captive. After seeking God's advice, David decides to pursue the raiding Amalekites, finding the Egyptian slave of one, abandoned when he became ill, who can show them the band. When they are located and found to be feasting, David fights all day, with only 400 escaping on camels. David recovers everything and returns to the Besor Valley, where 200 men who were too exhausted to come with him have been guarding supplies. David announces all are to share in the treasure, and even sends some to the elders of Judah when he returns to Ziklag.
+
+Meanwhile, the Battle of Mount Gilboa is raging on and, as Samuel said, the Philistines are winning. Saul's three sons have been killed, and he himself has been wounded by arrows. Saul asks his armor-bearer to run his sword through him rather than let him be captured by the Philistines, but does it himself when the armor-bearer refuses. When they see the battle going badly, the Israelites flee their towns, allowing the Philistines to occupy them. The next day, the Philistines find Saul, behead him, and take his armour to the temple of Astarte and his body to Beth Shan. When they hear what has happened, the citizens of Jabesh Gilead take his body and perform funerary rites in their city.
+
+2 Samuel
+
+Saul and David (continued) (1:1-1:27)
+
+David among the Philistines (continued) (1:1-1:27)
+Back in Ziklag, three days after Saul's death, David receives news that Saul and his sons are dead. It transpires that the messenger is an Amalekite who, at Saul's insistence, had killed Saul to speed his death along, and brought his crown to David. David orders his death for having killed God's anointed. At this point, David offers a majestic eulogy, where he praises the bravery and magnificence of both his friend Jonathan and King Saul.
+
+David (2:1-20:26)
+
+David King of Judah (2:1-4:12)
+David returns to Hebron at God's instruction. The elders of Judah anoint David as king, and as his first act he offers a reward to the people of Jabesh Gilead for performing Saul's funerary rites. Meanwhile, in the north, Saul's son Ish-bosheth, supported by Abner, has taken control of the northern tribes. David and Ish-bosheth's armies meet at the Pool of Gibeon, and Abner and Joab, another son of Zeruiah and David's general, agree to have soldiers fight in one-on-one combat. All this achieves is twelve men on each side killing each other, but a battle follows and David wins. During the Benjaminites' retreat, Joab's brother Asahel chases Abner and Abner kills him, shocking everyone. Joab and Abishai continue Asahel's pursuit. A truce is declared when they reach a hill to avoid further bloodshed, and Abner and his men are able to cross the Jordan.
+
+The war continues as David builds a family. Meanwhile, the House of Saul is getting weaker. When Ish-bosheth accuses Abner of sleeping with Saul's concubine Rizpah, Abner offers to join David, which David accepts as long as he brings Michal with him. At the same time, David sends a petition to Ish-bosheth for the return of Michal, which Ish-bosheth agrees to. Patiel follows her crying until he is told to return home. Following the return of Michal, Abner agrees to get the elders of Israel to agree to make David king. However, Joab believes Abner was lying in his purpose of coming to David and, after recalling him to Hebron, kills him in revenge for Asahel. David curses Joab's family to always contain a leper, someone disabled or someone hungry. He then holds a funeral for Abner.
+
+By this point, the only other surviving member of Ish-bosheth's family is Mephibosheth, Jonathan's disabled son, who was dropped by his nurse as she attempted to escape the palace after the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. Ish-bosheth is murdered by Rechab and Baanah, two of his captains who hope for a reward from David, who stab him and cut off his head. They bring his head to David, but David has them killed for killing an innocent man. They are hanged by the pool of Hebron and Ish-bosheth's head is buried in Abner's tomb.
+
+David King of Judah and of Israel (5:1-8:18)
+David is anointed king of all Israel. 
+
+Against all odds, David captures Jerusalem from the Jebusites. He takes over the fortress of Zion and builds up the area around it. Hiram I, king of Tyre sends craftsmen to build David a palace. Meanwhile, David's family continues to grow. The Philistines decide to attack Israel now that David is king, but God allows David to defeat them in two battles, first in Baal Perizim and next in the Valley of Rephaim.
+
+The Ark is currently still in Baalah (another name for Kiriath Jearim), but David wants to bring it to Jerusalem. He puts it on a cart and employs the priests Uzzah and Ahio, both sons of Abinadab and brothers of Eleazar, to accompany it. A grand procession with musical instruments is organised, but comes to a sudden halt when the oxen stumble, causing Uzzah to touch the Ark and die. David is afraid to take it any further and stores it in the house of a man named Obed-Edom. When, after three months, Obed-Edom and his family have received nothing but blessings, David takes the Ark to Jerusalem. As part of the ceremony bringing the Ark into the city, David dances in front of it wearing nothing but an ephod. Michal sees this and is annoyed, but David says it was for the Lord, and thus it was not undignified. Michal never has any children.
+
+David wishes to build a temple, arguing that he should not be living in a palace while God lives in a tent. Nathan, a prophet, agrees. However, that night Nathan has a dream in which God informs him that David should not build him a temple for three reasons. Firstly, God has not commanded it, and has never complained about living in a tent before. Secondly, God is still working to build David and his house up and establish the Israelites in the Promised Land. Thirdly, God will establish one of David's sons as king; he will build the temple, and his house will never be out of power. When Nathan reports this to David, David prays to God, thanking him for these revelations. David defeats the enemies of Israel, slaughtering Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, Syrians, and Arameans. He then appoints a cabinet.
+
+David's family and the intrigues for the succession (9:1-20:26)
+
+Mephibosheth (9:1-9:13)
+David asks if anyone from the House of Saul is still alive so that he can show kindness to them in memory of Jonathan. Ziba, one of Saul's servants, tells him about Mephibosheth. David informs Mephibosheth that he will live in his household and eat at his table, and Mephibosheth moves to Jerusalem.
+
+The Ammonite War and birth of Solomon (10:1-12:31)
+Nahash, king of Ammon dies and his son Hanun succeeds him. David sends condolences, but the Ammonites suspect his ambassadors are spies and humiliate them before sending them back to David. When they realise their mistake, they fear retaliation from David and amass an army from the surrounding tribes. When he hears that they are doing this, he sends Joab to lead his own army to their city gates, where the Ammonites are in battle formation. Joab decides to split the army in two: he will lead an elite force to attack the Aramean faction, while the rest of the army, led by Abisai, will focus on the Ammonites. If either enemy force turns out to be too strong, the other Israelite force will come to help their comrades. As it turns out, the Arameans flee from Joab, causing the Ammonites to also flee from Abishai. The Israelite army returns to Jerusalem. The Arameans regroup and cross the Euphrates, and this time David himself wins a decisive victory at Helam. The Arameans realise they cannot win, make peace with Israel and refuse to help the Ammonites again. The following spring, Joab destroys the Ammonites.
+
+However, while Joab is off at war, David remains in Jerusalem. One morning, he is standing on the roof of his palace when he sees a naked woman performing ablutions after her period. David learns her name is Bathsheba, and they have sex. She becomes pregnant.  Seeking to hide his sin, David recalls her husband, Uriah the Hittite, from battle, David encourages him to go home and see his wife, but Uriah declines in case David might need him, and sleeps in the doorway to the palace that night. David, in spite of inviting Uriah to feasts, continues to be unable to persuade him to go home. David then deliberately sends Uriah on a suicide mission. David loses some of his best warriors in this mission, so Joab tells the messenger reporting back to tell David that Uriah is dead. David instructs Joab to continue the attack of the city. After Bathsheba has finished mourning Uriah, David marries her and she gives birth.
+
+Nathan comes to David and tells him a parable. In a town, there are a rich man and a poor man. The rich man has much livestock, but the poor man has only one lamb whom he loves like a child. One day, the rich man has a guest for dinner, and instead of slaughtering one of his own livestock, took the poor man's lamb and cooked it. David angrily insists the rich man be put to death, but Nathan tells him he is the man, saying he has committed a sin to get something he already had plenty of (wives), and prophesies that his family will be gripped by violence, and someone will have affairs with his wives publicly. David repents, and Nathan tells him that while he is forgiven and will not die, his son with Bathsheba will. The child becomes ill, and David spends his time fasting and praying, but to no avail, because the child dies. David's attendants are scared to tell him the news, worried about what he may do. However, he surprises everyone by ending his fasting, saying that he was fasting and praying was an attempt to persuade God to save his child, whereas fasting now isn't going to bring the child back. After they have mourned, David and Bathsheba have another child, who they name Solomon (also called Jedediah).
+
+Back on the front line, in the city of Rabbah, Joab has gained control of the water supply. Joab invites David to finish capturing the city so that it may be named after himself. David gathers an army and travels up himself. He wins a victory, crowns himself king of the Ammonites, takes a large amount of plunder and puts the Ammonites into forced labour before returning to Jerusalem.
+
+Absalom (13:1-20:26)
+A complicated controversy begins to develop within the palace. Amnon, David's son by Ahinoam, becomes lovesick for Tamar, David's daughter by Maacah, daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur. Amnon's advisor and cousin Jonadab suggests he pretend to be ill and ask Tamar to come and prepare bread for him so he can eat out of her hand. When she comes to his house, Amnon tells her to come to his bedroom. Here, after she refuses to have sex with him, Amnon rapes her. He then forces her to leave the house. She rips the gown which symbolises she is a virgin, puts ashes on her hand and walks around wailing. Tamar's brother, Absalom, and David learn about this and become angry.
+
+Two years later, Absalom is shearing sheep at Baal Hazor and invites David and all his sons to come. David refuses, but blesses him and sends Amnon and the rest of his sons to him. Absalom holds a feast and gets Amnon drunk. He then instructs his servants to kill Amnon in revenge for his rape of Tamar. David's other sons are disgusted and return to Jerusalem. David hears a rumour that Absalom has killed all of David's sons, but Jonadab assures him that only Amnon is dead. Meanwhile, Absalom goes to live with his grandfather in Geshur for three years. After David has finished mourning Amnon, he considers visiting Absalom.
+
+Joab wants to help David, so he tells a wise woman from Tekoa to travel to Jerusalem pretending to be in mourning and speak to the king. The woman tells a story about her two sons, one of whom killed the other and whose death is now being called for. After some cajoling, David agrees to issue a decree ensuring that her son is not killed. The woman turns this back on David, and asks, then, why he has not forgiven his own son. After the woman admits that Joab put her up to this, David agrees to allow Absalom back to Jerusalem, but insists he does not come to the palace. Absalom becomes popular in Jerusalem due to his good looks. His family also grows during this time. Two years pass without Absalom being recalled to court. When Joab refuses to help him, Absalom sets his field on fire. This gets Joab's attention, and finally Absalom manages to convince him to persuade David to allow him back to court.
+
+Absalom purchases a magnificent chariot, and begins campaigning to become a judge, principally by waiting outside the city gate, listening to the concerns of people coming to the king and pretending there is no-one to hear them, as well as embracing anyone who bows to him. Four years pass, and Absalom travels to Hebron, claiming to be fulfilling a vow, but in fact he hatches a plan to get the tribes of Israel to proclaim him king. The 200 guests who follow him do not know of his plan, and while he is at Hebron Absalom summons Ahitophel, David's counselor.
+
+David is told of the increasing support for Absalom and decides to flee Jerusalem. He takes with him his wives and concubines (with the exception of ten), and a number of Cerethites, Pelethites and Gittites, led by a general named Ittai, who comes with David only after insisting on it. Abiathar and another priest named Zadok, together with a number of Levites who are guarding the Ark, also come, but go back when David tells them to return the Ark to Jerusalem. The procession climbs the Mount of Olives, where he meets his confidant Hushai the Arkite, who he sends back to Jerusalem to act as a spy, seeking to disrupt Ahitophel's plans.
+
+On the other side of the mountain, David meets Ziba, who brings donkeys and fruit as supplies. He claims that Mephibosheth is hoping to be restored to the throne of Saul in the chaos, and David grants Ziba Mephibosheth's estates. As the party approaches Bahurim, a Benjaminite named Shimei begins cursing and stoning David for the bloodshed he caused in the House of Saul. Abishai suggests executing him, but David considers that God has told Shibei to curse him and lets him carry on.
+
+Back in Jerusalem, Ahitophel and Hushai arrive at Absalom's court. Absalom is at first suspicious of Hushai's presence, but ultimately accepts him. Ahitophel suggests Absalom sleeps with David's concubines who he left to take care of the palace in order to entrench the division between David and Absalom, so Absalom pitches a tent on the palace roof and does this in the view of all the Israelites. Ahitophel then suggests launching a sneak attack on David with 12,000 men. However, Hushai points out that David and his men are fighters, and that they could defeat the men, reducing morale. He suggests Absalom form a much larger army and lead it into battle himself. God has decided to frustrate Ahitophel's advice so that Absalom can be defeated, so Absalom follows Hushai's advice. Hushai then goes to Zadok and Abiathar and tells them to get word to David to cross the fords. Their sons, Ahimaaz and Jonathan, respectively, are staying at En Rogel, where they receive the message. Unfortunately, one of Absalom's spies sees them so they have to hide in a well in Bahurim. The well's owner's wife hides them and lies to Absalom's men that they have crossed the brook. After Absalom's men are gone, the pair make it to King David and he manages to cross the Jordan in time.
+
+David and Absalom meet at Mahanaim, and David's allies bring his army food, given his army is tired and exhausted after its time in the wilderness. David divides his army into thirds: one led by Joab, one led by Abishai and one led by Ittai. David intends to come out with his men, but his generals veto it. He decides to stay at the city, and instructs his generals to be gentle with Absalom. The battle is fought in the Wood of Ephraim. This proves to be a victory for David, in part because of the treacherous terrain. As Absalom meets David's men, he passes under a tree; his long hair gets caught in the tree and he is hanged. Joab gets word of this, finds him and plunges three javelins into his heart, killing him. Joab declares the battle over and buries Absalom. Absalom's monument is the pillar he built during his lifetime.
+
+Ahimaaz and a Cushite run to tell David the news of his victory and his son's death. Ahimaaz declares the victory, but is not sure yet what the situation with Absalom is. The Cushite bears the same news, but also tells David that Absalom is dead. David begins to mourn, wishing he had died instead of Absalom. This prompts his men to start mourning as well, causing Joab to enter his tent in an attempt to talk sense into him. Joab points out that the battle has saved not only David's life, but the lives of his wives and concubines, and thus it is humiliating for the men to have to mourn for the enemy. David agrees to come out and encourage the men.
+
+Given the sudden change in situation, the elders of Israel begin to argue about what to do next. David convinces the elders of Judah to escort him back to Jerusalem. They are joined by Shimei, who apologises to David. Abishai once again calls for the death penalty, but once again David grants clemency. Mephibosheth also comes to David, and explains the earlier situation: he had wanted to come with David and had told Ziba to saddle his donkeys, but Ziba had betrayed and slandered him. David offers to allow him and Ziba to split the land, but Mephibosheth allows Ziba to take the lot in celebration of David's triumph. David invites his host in Mahanaim, Barzillai, to return to Jerusalem with him, but Barzillai protests on the basis that he is now eighty years old and thus will gain no enjoyment from coming. However, he gives David his servant Kimham in his place, and David promises to look after him. A scuffle breaks out between the Judahites and the other Israelites about why they specifically got to escort the king home. Attempting to resolve the issue, a Benjaminite named Sheba son of Bichri launches a rebellion against David, which all the tribes except Judah back.
+
+Back in Jerusalem, David begins to sort out the issues that were caused by his absence. First, he puts the ten concubines who were left behind into a guarded house and gives them pensions but does not sleep with them, allowing them to live the rest of their lives as widows. He then begins to sort out a defence against Sheba. He tells Amasa, the general whom he wishes to replace Joab, to summon the Judahite troops and have them in Jerusalem within three days, something he fails at. David therefore tells Abishai to start pursuing Sheba to effectively put down his rebellion before it has begun. Amasa meets Abishai and Joab at Gibeon. Amasa goes to meet Joab, but Joab's dagger falls out of his tunic, stabbing Amasa in the stomach, killing him. He is covered with a cloth and placed in a field, and the army continues pursuing Sheba. They meet him at Abel Beth Maakah, a stronghold of Sheba's rebellion, and begin to lay siege to it. A wise woman asks them why they want to destroy the city, and Joab responds they don't want to destroy it, but merely end Sheba's rebellion. The wise woman cuts off Sheba's head and throws it to Joab from the city walls, thus ending the siege.
+
+Supplementary information (21:1-24:25)
+2 Samuel concludes with four chapters (chapters 21 to 24) that lie outside the chronological succession narrative of Saul and David, a narrative that will continue in The Book of Kings. Chapter 21 tells the story of a three-year long famine which takes place at the start of David's reign. God explains this is a punishment for Saul's genocide of the Gibeonites, a people group who are the remnants of the Amorites, whom Israel had promised to spare but Saul has massacred. David calls the Gibeonites and asks what he can do to make amends, hoping this will end the famine. The Gibeonites ask for seven of Saul's descendants to kill, and David agrees. He spares Mephibosheth, but hands over Rizpah's sons Armoni and Mephibosheth and the five sons of Merab and Adriel. They are killed by the Gibeonites and their bodies are exposed at the start of the barley harvest. Rizpah, however, protects the bodies, and David agrees to take the bones of Saul, Jonathan and those killed by the Gibeonites and bury them in the tomb of Kish in Zelah. This pleases God and the famine ends. Another war then occurs with the Philistines. In the first battle, Abishai kills Ishbi-benob, a Philistine who had sworn to kill David, which leads to David's army refusing to let him fight alongside them again for his own protection. The second battle takes place at Gob, and this time Sibbekai the Hushathite kills a Philistine named Saph. A third battle also takes place in Gob, where Elhanan, son of Jair kills Goliath's brother. In the fourth battle, at Gath, Jonathan, son of Shimeah, kills a huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.
+
+Chapter 22 is similar to Psalm 18, and is a song David sang when he was delivered from Saul.
+
+Chapter 23 begins with David's last words, a subdued speech in which David expresses gladness at the goodness of his house. It then tells stories of a group of men identified as 'David's Mighty Warriors'. Josheb-Basshebeth, Eleazar, son of Dodai and Shammah, son of Agee the Hararite all single-handedly win battles against the Philistines. One day, while David and his men are hiding in the cave of Adullam, David becomes homesick and, hearing the Philistines have taken over Bethlehem, cries out desiring water from Bethlehem's well. These three men risk their lives to work their way through Philistine lines and bring water from the well back to David. David refuses to drink it and offers it to God because his warriors risked their lives for it. Abishai, we learn, achieved his high position by single-handedly killing three hundred men. Another warrior, Benaniah, son of Jehoiada, kills Moab's two mightiest warriors, a lion, and a huge Egyptian with his own spear. The chapter finishes by listing David's other mighty warriors, known as the Thirty.
+
+Chapter 24 tells the story of more calamities on Israel. God is angry once again at Israel, so he instructs David to take a census. Joab has his reservations, but ultimately relents. When the results come in, however, David realises what he has done, and begs God for mercy. Gad the prophet offers David three choices of punishment: three years of famine, three months of pursuit by his enemies or three days of plague. David chooses the plague. 70,000 people die. After three days the angel of death reaches Jerusalem, and is on the threshing floor of a man named Araunah the Jebusite, when God tells him to stop. David is horrified, arguing that it should be him and his family who are punished. Gad tells David to build an altar on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Araunah offers to sell the land to David for free but David insists on paying. David pays fifty shekels of silver and builds the altar, stopping the plague.
+
+Composition
+
+Versions 
+1 and 2 Samuel were originally (and, in most Jewish bibles, still are) a single book, but the first Greek translation, called the Septuagint and produced around the second century BC, divided it into two; this was adopted by the Latin translations used in the early Christian church of the West, and finally introduced into Jewish bibles around the early 16th century.
+
+In imitation of the Septuagint what is now commonly known as 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, are called by the Vulgate, 1 Kings and 2 Kings respectively. What are now commonly known as 1 Kings and 2 Kings would be 3 Kings and 4 Kings in Bibles dating from before 1516. It was in 1517 that use of the division we know today, used by Protestant Bibles and adopted by Catholics, began. Traditional Catholic and Orthodox Bibles still preserve the Septuagint name; for example, the Douay–Rheims Bible.
+
+The Hebrew text that is used by Jews today, called the Masoretic Text, differs considerably from the Hebrew text that was the basis of the first Greek translation, and scholars are still working at finding the best solutions to the many problems this presents.
+
+Historical accuracy 
+
+The Books of Samuel are considered to be based on both historical and legendary sources, primarily serving to fill the gap in Israelite history after the events described in Deuteronomy. According to Donald Redford, the Books of Samuel exhibit too many anachronisms to have been compiled in the 11th century BCE.
+
+Authorship and date of composition 
+According to passages 14b and 15a of the Bava Basra tractate of the Talmud, the book was written by Samuel up until 1 Samuel 25, which notes the death of Samuel, and the remainder by the prophets Gad and Nathan. Critical scholars from the 19th century onward have rejected this idea. However, even prior to this, the medieval Jewish commentator Isaac Abarbanel noted that the presence of anachronistic expressions (such as "to this day" and "in the past") indicated that there must have been a later editor such as Jeremiah or Ezra. Martin Noth in 1943 theorized that Samuel was composed by a single author as part of a history of Israel: the Deuteronomistic history (made up of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings). Although Noth's belief that the entire history was composed by a single individual has been largely abandoned, his theory in its broad outline has been adopted by most scholars.
+
+The Deuteronomistic view is that an early version of the history was composed in the time of king Hezekiah (8th century BC); the bulk of the first edition dates from his grandson Josiah at the end of the 7th BC, with further sections added during the Babylonian exile (6th century BC) and the work was substantially complete by about 550 BC. Further editing was apparently done even after then. For example, A. Graeme Auld, Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Edinburgh, contends that the silver quarter-shekel which Saul's servant offers to Samuel in 1 Samuel 9 "almost certainly fixes the date of this story in the Persian or Hellenistic period".
+
+The 6th century BC authors and editors responsible for the bulk of the history drew on many earlier sources, including (but not limited to) an "ark narrative" (1 Samuel 4:1–7:1 and perhaps part of 2 Samuel 6), a "Saul cycle" (parts of 1 Samuel 9–11 and 13–14), the "history of David's rise" (1 Samuel 16:14–2 Samuel 5:10), and the "succession narrative" (2 Samuel 9–20 and 1 Kings 1–2). The oldest of these, the "ark narrative," may even predate the Davidic era.
+
+This view of late compilation for Samuel has faced serious scholarly opposition on the basis that evidence for the Deuteronimistic history is scant, and that Deuteronimistic advocates are not in consensus as to the origin and extent of the History. Secondly, the basic theological concerns identified with the Deuteronimistic school are tenets central to Hebrew theology in texts that are widely regarded as predating Josiah. Thirdly, there are notable differences in style and thematic emphasis between Deuteronomy and Samuel. Finally, there are widely acknowledged structural parallels between the Hittite suzerain treaty of the second millennium BC and the Book of Deuteronomy itself, far before the time of Josiah. The alternative view is that it is difficult to determine when the events of Samuel were recorded: "There are no particularly persuasive reasons to date the sources used by the compiler later than the early tenth century events themselves, and good reason to believe that contemporary records were kept (cf. 2 Sam. 20:24–25)."
+
+Sources 
+The sources used to construct 1 and 2 Samuel are believed to include the following:
+Call of Samuel or Youth of Samuel (1 Samuel 1–7): From Samuel's birth his career as Judge and prophet over Israel. This source includes the Eli narrative and part of the ark narrative.
+Ark narrative (1 Samuel 4:1b–7:1 and 2 Samuel 6:1–20): the ark's capture by the Philistines in the time of Eli and its transfer to Jerusalem by David – opinion is divided over whether this is actually an independent unit.
+Jerusalem source: a fairly brief source discussing David conquering Jerusalem from the Jebusites.
+Republican source: a source with an anti-monarchial bias. This source first describes Samuel as decisively ridding the people of the Philistines, and begrudgingly appointing an individual chosen by God to be king, namely Saul. David is described as someone renowned for his skill at playing the harp, and consequently summoned to Saul's court to calm his moods. Saul's son Jonathan becomes friends with David, which some commentators view as romantic, and later acts as his protector against Saul's more violent intentions. At a later point, having been deserted by God on the eve of battle, Saul consults a medium at Endor, only to be condemned for doing so by Samuel's ghost, and told he and his sons will be killed. David is heartbroken on discovering the death of Jonathan, tearing his clothes as a gesture of grief.
+Monarchial source: a source with a pro-monarchial bias and covering many of the same details as the republican source. This source begins with the divinely appointed birth of Samuel. It then describes Saul as leading a war against the Ammonites, being chosen by the people to be king, and leading them against the Philistines. David is described as a shepherd boy arriving at the battlefield to aid his brothers, and is overheard by Saul, leading to David challenging Goliath and defeating the Philistines. David's warrior credentials lead to women falling in love with him, including Michal, Saul's daughter, who later acts to protect David against Saul. David eventually gains two new wives as a result of threatening to raid a village, and Michal is redistributed to another husband. At a later point, David finds himself seeking sanctuary amongst the Philistine army and facing the Israelites as an enemy. David is incensed that anyone should have killed Saul, even as an act of mercy, since Saul was anointed by Samuel, and has the individual responsible, an Amalekite, killed.
+Court History of David or Succession narrative (2 Samuel 9–20 and 1 Kings 1–2): a "historical novel", in Alberto Soggin's phrase, telling the story of David's reign from his affair with Bathsheba to his death. The theme is of retribution: David's sin against Uriah the Hittite is punished by God through the destruction of his own family, and its purpose is to serve as an apology for the coronation of Bathsheba's son Solomon instead of his older brother Adonijah. Some textual critics have posited that given the intimacy and precision of certain narrative details, the Court Historian may have been an eyewitness to some of the events he describes, or at the very least enjoyed access to the archives and battle reports of the royal house of David.
+Redactions: additions by the redactor to harmonize the sources together; many of the uncertain passages may be part of this editing.
+Various: several short sources, none of which have much connection to each other, and are fairly independent of the rest of the text. Many are poems or pure lists.
+
+Manuscript sources
+Four of the Dead Sea Scrolls feature parts of the books of Samuel: 1QSam, found in Qumran Cave 1, contains parts of 2 Samuel; and 4QSama, 4QSamb and 4QSamc, all found in Qumran Cave 4. Collectively they are known as The Samuel Scroll and date from the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE.
+
+The earliest complete surviving Hebrew copy of the book(s) of Samuel is in the Aleppo Codex (10th century CE). The complete Greek text of Samuel is found in older manuscripts such as the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus.
+
+Themes 
+
+The Book of Samuel is a theological evaluation of kingship in general and of dynastic kingship and David in particular. The main themes of the book are introduced in the opening poem (the "Song of Hannah"): (1) the sovereignty of Yahweh, God of Israel; (2) the reversal of human fortunes; and (3) kingship. These themes are played out in the stories of the three main characters, Samuel, Saul and David.
+
+Samuel 
+
+Samuel answers the description of the "prophet like Moses" predicted in Deuteronomy 18:15–22: like Moses, he has direct contact with Yahweh, acts as a judge, and is a perfect leader who never makes mistakes. Samuel's successful defense of the Israelites against their enemies demonstrates that they have no need for a king (who will, moreover, introduce inequality), yet despite this the people demand a king. But the king they are given is Yahweh's gift, and Samuel explains that kingship can be a blessing rather than a curse if they remain faithful to their God. On the other hand, total destruction of both king and people will result if they turn to wickedness.
+
+Saul 
+
+Saul is the chosen one: tall, handsome and "goodly", a king appointed by Yahweh, and anointed by Samuel, Yahweh's prophet, and yet he is ultimately rejected. Saul has two faults which make him unfit for the office of king: carrying out a sacrifice in place of Samuel, and failing to exterminate the Amalekites, in accordance to God's commands, and trying to compensate by claiming that he reserved the surviving Amalekite livestock for sacrifice.
+
+David 
+
+One of the main units within Samuel is the "History of David's Rise", the purpose of which is to justify David as the legitimate successor to Saul. The narrative stresses that he gained the throne lawfully, always respecting "the Lord's anointed" (i.e. Saul) and never taking any of his numerous chances to seize the throne by violence. As God's chosen king over Israel, David is also the son of God ("I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me..." – 2 Samuel 7:14). God enters into an eternal covenant (treaty) with David and his line, promising divine protection of the dynasty and of Jerusalem through all time.
+
+2 Samuel 23 contains a prophetic statement described as the "last words of David" (verses 1–7) and details of the 37 "mighty men" who were David's chief warriors (verses 8–39). The Jerusalem Bible states that last words were attributed to David in the style of Jacob and Moses. Its editors note that "the text has suffered considerably and reconstructions are conjectural".
+
+1 Kings 2:1-9 contains David's final words to Solomon, his son and successor as king.
+
+See also 
+ Biblical judges
+ Books of the Kingdoms
+ Historicity of the Bible
+ History of ancient Israel and Judah
+ Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)
+ Kingdom of Judah
+ Midrash Shmuel (aggadah)
+
+References
+
+Citations
+
+Sources
+
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+ McCarter Jr., P. Kyle (1984). II Samuel: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary By. Anchor Bible. .
+
+External links 
+
+Masoretic Text
+ שמואל א Shmuel Aleph – Samuel A (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org)
+ שמואל ב Shmuel Bet – Samuel B (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org)
+
+Jewish translations
+ 1 Samuel at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation)
+ 2 Samuel at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation)
+
+Christian translations
+ 
+ 
+
+Related articles
+ Introduction to the book of 1 Samuel from the NIV Study Bible
+ Introduction to the book of 2 Samuel from the NIV Study Bible
+ Introduction to the book of 2 Samuel from Forward Movement
+
+ 
+8th-century BC books
+7th-century BC books
+6th-century BC books
+Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)
+Nevi'im
+Works set in the 11th century BC
+Works set in the 10th century BC
+Phoenicians in the Hebrew Bible
+Historical books
+Deuteronomistic history
+The Book of Revelation, also erroneously called the Book of Revelations, is the final book of the New Testament (and therefore the final book of the Christian Bible). Written in Koine Greek, its title is derived from the first word of the text: , meaning 'unveiling' or 'revelation'. The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon. It occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.
+
+The author names himself as simply "John" in the text, but his precise identity remains a point of academic debate. Second-century Christian writers such as Papias of Hierapolis, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Melito of Sardis, Clement of Alexandria, and the author of the Muratorian fragment identify John the Apostle as the "John" of Revelation. Modern scholarship generally takes a different view, with many considering that nothing can be known about the author except that he was a Christian prophet. Modern theological scholars characterize the Book of Revelation's author as "John of Patmos". The bulk of traditional sources date the book to the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (AD 81–96), which evidence tends to confirm.
+
+The book spans three literary genres: the epistolary, the apocalyptic, and the prophetic. It begins with John, on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, addressing letters to the "Seven Churches of Asia". He then describes a series of prophetic visions, including figures such as the Seven-Headed Dragon, the Serpent, and the Beast, which culminate in the Second Coming of Jesus.
+
+The obscure and extravagant imagery has led to a wide variety of Christian interpretations. Historicist interpretations see Revelation as containing a broad view of history while preterist interpretations treat Revelation as mostly referring to the events of the Apostolic Age (1st century), or, at the latest, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Futurists, meanwhile, believe that Revelation describes future events with the seven churches growing into the body of believers throughout the age, and a reemergence or continuous rule of a Greco-Roman system with modern capabilities described by John in ways familiar to him; and idealist or symbolic interpretations consider that Revelation does not refer to actual people or events but is an allegory of the spiritual path and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.
+
+Composition and setting
+
+Title, authorship, and date 
+
+The name Revelation comes from the first word of the book in Koine Greek:  (), which means 'unveiling' or 'revelation'. The author names himself as "John", but modern scholars consider it unlikely that the author of Revelation also wrote the Gospel of John. He was a Jewish Christian prophet, probably belonging to a group of such prophets, and was accepted by the congregations to whom he addresses his letter.
+
+The book is commonly dated to about AD 95, as suggested by clues in the visions pointing to the reign of the emperor Domitian. The beast with seven heads and the number 666 seem to allude directly to the emperor Nero (reigned AD 54–68), but this does not require that Revelation was written in the 60s, as there was a widespread belief in later decades that Nero would return.
+
+Genre 
+Revelation is an apocalyptic prophecy with an epistolary introduction addressed to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia, in what is now western Turkey. The seven cities where churches were located are close together, and the Island of Patmos is near the western coast of Turkey. The term apocalypse means the revealing of divine mysteries; John is to write down what is revealed (what he sees in his vision) and send it to the seven churches. The entire book constitutes the prophecy—the letters to the seven individual churches are introductions to the rest of the book, which is addressed to all seven. While the dominant genre is apocalyptic, the author sees himself as a Christian prophet: Revelation uses the word in various forms 21 times, more than any other New Testament book.
+
+Sources 
+The predominant view is that Revelation alludes to the Old Testament, although it is difficult among scholars to agree on the exact number of allusions or the allusions themselves. Revelation rarely quotes directly from the Old Testament, yet almost every verse alludes to or echoes ideas of older scriptures. Over half of the references stem from Daniel, Ezekiel, Psalms, and Isaiah, with Daniel providing the largest number in proportion to length and Ezekiel standing out as the most influential. Because these references appear as allusions rather than as quotes, it is difficult to know whether the author used the Hebrew or the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, but he was often influenced by the Greek.
+
+Setting 
+Conventional understanding has been that the Book of Revelation was written to comfort beleaguered Christians as they underwent persecution at the hands of an emperor. This is, however, not the only interpretation; Domitian may not have been a despot imposing an imperial cult, and there may not have been any systematic empire-wide persecution of Christians in his time. Revelation may instead have been composed in the context of a conflict within the Christian community of Asia Minor over whether to engage with, or withdraw from, the far larger non-Christian community: Author Mark B. Stephens posed the Revelation chastised those Christians who wanted to reach an accommodation with the Roman cult of empire. This is not to say that Christians in Roman Asia were not suffering for withdrawal from, and defiance against, the wider Roman society, which imposed very real penalties; Revelation offered a victory over this reality by offering an apocalyptic hope. In the words of professor Adela Collins, "What ought to be was experienced as a present reality." There is also theological interpretation that the book mainly prophesies the end of Old Covenant order, the Jewish temple and religious economy.
+
+Canonical history 
+
+Revelation was among the last books accepted into the Christian biblical canon, and to the present day some churches that derive from the Church of the East reject it. Eastern Christians became skeptical of the book as doubts concerning its authorship and unusual style were reinforced by aversion to its acceptance by Montanists and other groups considered to be heretical. This distrust of the Book of Revelation persisted in the East through the 15th century.
+
+Dionysius (AD 248), bishop of Alexandria and disciple of Origen, wrote that the Book of Revelation could have been written by Cerinthus although he himself did not adopt the view that Cerinthus was the writer. He regarded the Apocalypse as the work of an inspired man but not of an Apostle (Eusebius, Church History VII.25).
+
+Eusebius, in his Church History (), mentioned that the Apocalypse of John was accepted as a canonical book and rejected at the same time:
+
+The Apocalypse of John is counted as both accepted (Kirsopp. Lake translation: "Recognized") and disputed, which has caused some confusion over what exactly Eusebius meant by doing so. The disputation can perhaps be attributed to Origen. Origen seems to have accepted it in his writings.
+
+Cyril of Jerusalem (AD 348) does not name it among the canonical books (Catechesis IV.33–36).
+
+Athanasius (AD 367) in his Letter 39, Augustine of Hippo () in his book On Christian Doctrine (Book II, Chapter 8), Tyrannius Rufinus () in his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed, Pope Innocent I (AD 405) in a letter to the bishop of Toulouse and John of Damascus (about AD 730) in his work An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Book IV:7) listed "the Revelation of John the Evangelist" as a canonical book.
+
+Synods 
+The Council of Laodicea (AD 363) omits it as a canonical book.
+
+The , which is a work written by an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553, contains a list of books of scripture presented as having been reckoned as canonical by the Council of Rome (AD 382). This list mentions it as a part of the New Testament canon.
+
+The Synod of Hippo (in AD 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397), the Council of Carthage (419), the Council of Florence (1442) and the Council of Trent (1546) classified it as a canonical book.
+
+The Apostolic Canons, approved by the Eastern Orthodox Council in Trullo in 692, but rejected by Pope Sergius I, omit it.
+
+Protestant Reformation 
+Doubts resurfaced during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther called Revelation "neither apostolic nor prophetic" in the 1522 preface to his translation of the New Testament (he revised his position with a much more favorable assessment in 1530), Huldrych Zwingli labelled it "not a book of the Bible", and it was the only New Testament book on which John Calvin did not write a commentary.  Revelation remains the only New Testament book not read in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, though Catholic and Protestant liturgies include it.
+
+Texts and manuscripts 
+There are fewer manuscripts of Revelation than of any other part of the New Testament. As of 2020, in total, there are 310 manuscripts of Revelation. This number includes 7 papyri, 12 majuscules, and 291 minuscules. But, in fact, not all of them are available for research. Some of them have burned down, vanished, or been categorized wrongly. While it is not extant in the  (4th century), it is extant in the other great uncial codices: the  (4th century), the  (5th century), and the  (5th century). In addition, there are numerous papyri, especially  and  (both 3rd century); minuscules (8th to 10th century); and fragmentary quotations in the Church fathers of the 2nd to 5th centuries and the 6th-century Greek commentary on Revelation by Andreas.
+
+Structure and content
+
+Literary structure 
+Divisions in the book seem to be marked by the repetition of key phrases, by the arrangement of subject matter into blocks, and associated with its Christological passages, and much use is made of significant numbers, especially the number seven, which represented perfection according to ancient numerology. Nevertheless, there is a "complete lack of consensus" among scholars about the structure of Revelation. The following is therefore an outline of the book's contents rather than of its structure.
+
+Outline 
+
+Outline of the book of Revelation:
+The Revelation of Jesus Christ
+The Revelation of Jesus Christ is communicated to John through prophetic visions. (1:1–9)
+John is instructed by the "one like a son of man" to write all that he hears and sees, from the prophetic visions, to Seven Churches of Asia. (1:10–13)
+The appearance of the "one like a son of man" is given, and he reveals what the seven stars and seven lampstands represent. (1:14–20)
+ Messages for seven churches of Asia
+Ephesus: From this church, he "who overcomes is granted to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." (2:1–7)
+ Praised for not bearing those who are evil, testing those who say they are apostles and are not, and finding them to be liars; hating the deeds of the Nicolaitans; having persevered and possessing patience.
+ Admonished to "do the first works" and to repent for having left their "first love."
+Smyrna: From this church, those who are faithful until death, will be given "the crown of life." He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. (2:8–11)
+ Praised for being "rich" while impoverished and in tribulation.
+ Admonished not to fear the "synagogue of Satan", nor fear a ten-day tribulation of being thrown into prison.
+Pergamum: From this church, he who overcomes will be given the hidden manna to eat and a white stone with a secret name on it." (2:12–17)
+ Praised for holding "fast to My name", not denying "My faith" even in the days of Antipas, "My faithful martyr."
+ Admonished to repent for having held the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel; eating things sacrificed to idols, committing sexual immorality, and holding the "doctrine of the Nicolaitans."
+ Thyatira: From this church, he who overcomes until the end, will be given power over the nations in order to dash them to pieces with a rod of iron; he will also be given the "morning star." (2:18–29)
+ Praised for their works, love, service, faith, and patience.
+ Admonished to repent for allowing a "prophetess" to promote sexual immorality and to eat things sacrificed to idols.
+Sardis: From this church, he who overcomes will be clothed in white garments, and his name will not be blotted out from the Book of Life; his name will also be confessed before the Father and his angels. (3:1–6)
+Admonished to be watchful and to strengthen since their works have not been perfect before God.
+Philadelphia: From this church, he who overcomes will be made a pillar in the temple of God having the name of God, the name of the city of God, "New Jerusalem", and the Son of God's new name. (3:7–13)
+ Praised for having some strength, keeping "My word", and having not denied "My name."
+ Reminded to hold fast what they have, that no one may take their crown.
+Laodicea: From this church, he who overcomes will be granted the opportunity to sit with the Son of God on his throne. (3:14–22)
+ Admonished to be zealous and repent from being "lukewarm"; they are instructed to buy the "gold refined in the fire", that they may be rich; to buy "white garments", that they may be clothed, so that the shame of their nakedness would not be revealed; to anoint their eyes with eye salve, that they may see.
+Before the Throne of God
+ The Throne of God appears, surrounded by twenty four thrones with twenty-four elders seated in them. (4:1–5)
+ The four living creatures are introduced. (4:6–11)
+ A scroll, with seven seals, is presented and it is declared that the Lion of the tribe of Judah, from the "Root of David", is the only one worthy to open this scroll. (5:1–5)
+ When the "Lamb having seven horns and seven eyes" took the scroll, the creatures of heaven fell down before the Lamb to give him praise, joined by myriads of angels and the creatures of the earth. (5:6–14)
+Seven Seals are opened
+First Seal: A white horse appears, whose crowned rider has a bow with which to conquer. (6:1–2)
+Second Seal: A red horse appears, whose rider is granted a "great sword" to take peace from the earth. (6:3–4)
+Third Seal: A black horse appears, whose rider has "a pair of balances in his hand", where a voice then says, "A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and [see] thou hurt not the oil and the wine." (6:5–6)
+Fourth Seal: A pale horse appears, whose rider is Death, and Hades follows him. Death is granted a fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (6:7–8)
+Fifth Seal: "Under the altar", appeared the souls of martyrs for the "word of God", who cry out for vengeance. They are given white robes and told to rest until the martyrdom of their brothers is completed. (6:9–11)
+Sixth Seal: (6:12–17)
+ There occurs a great earthquake where "the sun becomes black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon like blood" (6:12).
+ The stars of heaven fall to the earth and the sky recedes like a scroll being rolled up (6:13–14).
+ Every mountain and island is moved out of place (6:14).
+ The people of earth retreat to caves in the mountains (6:15).
+ The survivors call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall on them, so as to hide them from the "wrath of the Lamb" (6:16).
+Interlude: The 144,000 Hebrews are sealed.
+144,000 from the Twelve Tribes of Israel are sealed as servants of God on their foreheads (7:1–8)
+A great multitude stand before the Throne of God, who come out of the Great Tribulation, clothed with robes made "white in the blood of the Lamb" and having palm branches in their hands. (7:9–17)
+Seventh Seal: Introduces the seven trumpets (8:1–5)
+"Silence in heaven for about half an hour" (8:1).
+Seven angels are each given trumpets (8:2).
+An eighth angel takes a "golden censer", filled with fire from the heavenly altar, and throws it to the earth (8:3–5). What follows are "peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake" (8:5).
+After the eighth angel has devastated the earth, the seven angels introduced in verse 2 prepare to sound their trumpets (8:6).
+Seven trumpets are sounded (Seen in Chapters 8, 9, and 12).
+First Trumpet: Hail and fire, mingled with blood, are thrown to the earth burning up a third of the trees and green grass. (8:6–7)
+Second Trumpet: Something that resembles a great mountain, burning with fire, falls from the sky and lands in the ocean. It kills a third of the sea creatures and destroys a third of the ships at sea. (8:8–9)
+Third Trumpet: A great star, named Wormwood, falls from heaven and poisons a third of the rivers and springs of water. (8:10–11)
+Fourth Trumpet: A third of the sun, the moon, and the stars are darkened creating complete darkness for a third of the day and the night. (8:12–13)
+Fifth Trumpet: The First Woe (9:1–12)
+ A "star" falls from the sky (9:1).
+ This "star" is given "the key to the bottomless pit" (9:1).
+ The "star" then opens the bottomless pit. When this happens, "smoke [rises] from [the Abyss] like smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky [are] darkened by the smoke from the Abyss" (9:2).
+ From out of the smoke, locusts who are "given power like that of scorpions of the earth" (9:3), who are commanded not to harm anyone or anything except for people who were not given the "seal of God" on their foreheads (from chapter 7) (9:4).
+ The "locusts" are described as having a human appearance (faces and hair) but with lion's teeth, and wearing "breastplates of iron"; the sound of their wings resembles "the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle" (9:7–9).
+Sixth Trumpet: The Second Woe (9:13–21)
+The four angels bound to the great river Euphrates are released to prepare two hundred million horsemen.
+ These armies kill a third of mankind by plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone.
+ Interlude: The little scroll. (10:1–11)
+An angel appears, with one foot on the sea and one foot on the land, having an opened little book in his hand.
+Upon the cry of the angel, seven thunders utter mysteries and secrets that are not to be written down by John.
+John is instructed to eat the little scroll that happens to be sweet in his mouth, but bitter in his stomach, and to prophesy.
+John is given a measuring rod to measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there.
+Outside the temple, at the court of the holy city, it is trod by the nations for forty-two months ( years).
+Two witnesses prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. (11:1–14)
+Seventh Trumpet: The Third Woe that leads into the seven bowls (11:15–19)
+The temple of God opens in heaven, where the ark of his covenant can be seen. There are lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.
+The Seven Spiritual Figures. (Events leading into the Third Woe)
+A Woman "clothed with a white robe, with the sun at her back, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" is in pregnancy with a male child. (12:1–2)
+A great Dragon (with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads) drags a third of the stars of Heaven with his tail, and throws them to the Earth. (12:3–4). The Dragon waits for the birth of the child so he can devour it. However, sometime after the child is born, he is caught up to God's throne while the Woman flees into the wilderness into her place prepared of God that they should feed her there for 1,260 days ( years). (12:5–6). War breaks out in heaven between Michael and the Dragon, identified as that old Serpent, the Devil, or Satan (12:9). After a great fight, the Dragon and his angels are cast out of Heaven for good, followed by praises of victory for God's kingdom. (12:7–12). The Dragon engages to persecute the Woman, but she is given aid to evade him. Her evasiveness enrages the Dragon, prompting him to wage war against the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (12:13–17)
+A Beast (with seven heads, ten horns, and ten crowns on his horns and on his heads names of blasphemy) emerges from the Sea, having one mortally wounded head that is then healed. The people of the world wonder and follow the Beast. The Dragon grants him power and authority for forty-two months. (13:1–5)
+The Beast of the Sea blasphemes God's name (along with God's tabernacle and his kingdom and all who dwell in Heaven), wages war against the Saints, and overcomes them. (13:6–10)
+Then, a Beast emerges from the Earth having two horns like a lamb, speaking like a dragon. He directs people to make an image of the Beast of the Sea who was wounded yet lives, breathing life into it, and forcing all people to bear "the mark of the Beast". The number of the beast the Bible says is "666". Events leading into the Third Woe:
+The Lamb stands on Mount Zion with the 144,000 "first fruits" who are redeemed from Earth and victorious over the Beast and his mark and image. (14:1–5)
+The proclamations of three angels. (14:6–13)
+One like the Son of Man reaps the earth. (14:14–16)
+A second angel reaps "the vine of the Earth" and throws it into "the great winepress of the wrath of God... and blood came out of the winepress... up to one thousand six hundred stadia." (14:17–20)
+The temple of the tabernacle, in Heaven, is opened (15:1–5), beginning the "Seven Bowls" revelation.
+Seven angels are given a golden bowl, from the Four Living Creatures, that contains the seven last plagues bearing the wrath of God. (15:6–8)
+Seven bowls are poured onto Earth:
+First Bowl: A "foul and malignant sore" afflicts the followers of the Beast. (16:1–2)
+Second Bowl: The Sea turns to blood and everything within it dies. (16:3)
+Third Bowl: All fresh water turns to blood. (16:4–7)
+Fourth Bowl: The Sun scorches the Earth with intense heat and even burns some people with fire. (16:8–9)
+Fifth Bowl: There is total darkness and great pain in the Beast's kingdom. (16:10–11)
+Sixth Bowl: The Great River Euphrates is dried up and preparations are made for the kings of the East and the final battle at Armageddon between the forces of good and evil. (16:12–16)
+Seventh Bowl: A great earthquake and heavy hailstorm: "every island fled away and the mountains were not found." (16:17–21)
+Aftermath: Vision of John given by "an angel who had the seven bowls"
+The great Harlot who sits on a scarlet Beast (with seven heads and ten horns and names of blasphemy all over its body) and by many waters: Babylon the Great. The angel showing John the vision of the Harlot and the scarlet Beast reveals their identities and fates (17:1–18)
+ New Babylon is destroyed. (18:1–8)
+The people of the Earth (the kings, merchants, sailors, etc.) mourn New Babylon's destruction. (18:9–19)
+The permanence of New Babylon's destruction. (18:20–24)
+The Marriage Supper of the Lamb
+A great multitude praises God. (19:1–6)
+The marriage Supper of the Lamb. (19:7–10)
+The Judgment of the two Beasts, the Dragon, and the Dead (19:11–20:15)
+The Beast and the False Prophet are cast into the Lake of Fire. (19:11–21)
+ The Dragon is imprisoned in the Bottomless Pit for a thousand years. (20:1–3)
+The resurrected martyrs live and reign with Christ for a thousand years. (20:4–6)
+After the Thousand Years
+The Dragon is released and goes out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth—Gog and Magog—and gathers them for battle at the holy city. The Dragon makes war against the people of God, but is defeated. (20:7–9)
+The Dragon is cast into the Lake of Fire with the Beast and the False Prophet. (20:10)
+The Last Judgment: the wicked, along with Death and Hades, are cast into the Lake of Fire, which is the second death. (20:11–15)
+The New Heaven and Earth, and New Jerusalem
+A "new heaven" and "new earth" replace the old heaven and old earth. There is no more suffering or death. (21:1–8)
+God comes to dwell with humanity in the New Jerusalem. (21:2–8)
+Description of the New Jerusalem. (21:9–27)
+The River of Life and the Tree of Life appear for the healing of the nations and peoples. The curse of sin is ended. (22:1–5)
+Conclusion
+Christ's reassurance that his coming is imminent. Final admonitions. (22:6–21)
+
+Interpretations 
+Revelation has a wide variety of interpretations, ranging from the simple historical interpretation, to a prophetic view on what will happen in the future by way of God's will and the Woman's (traditionally believed to be the Virgin Mary) victory over Satan ("symbolic interpretation"), to different end time scenarios ("futurist interpretation"), to the views of critics who deny any spiritual value to Revelation at all, ascribing it to a human-inherited archetype.
+
+Liturgical
+
+Paschal liturgical 
+This interpretation, which has found expression among both Catholic and Protestant theologians, considers the liturgical worship, particularly the Easter rites, of early Christianity as background and context for understanding the Book of Revelation's structure and significance. This perspective is explained in The Paschal Liturgy and the Apocalypse (new edition, 2004) by Massey H. Shepherd, an Episcopal scholar, and in Scott Hahn's The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (1999), in which he states that Revelation in form is structured after creation, fall, judgment and redemption. Those who hold this view say that the Temple's destruction (AD 70) had a profound effect on the Jewish people, not only in Jerusalem but among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Mediterranean.
+
+They believe the Book of Revelation provides insight into the early Eucharist, saying that it is the new Temple worship in the New Heaven and Earth. The idea of the Eucharist as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet is also explored by British Methodist Geoffrey Wainwright in his book Eucharist and Eschatology (Oxford University Press, 1980). According to Pope Benedict XVI some of the images of Revelation should be understood in the context of the dramatic suffering and persecution of the churches of Asia in the 1st century.
+
+Accordingly, they argue, the Book of Revelation should not be read as an enigmatic warning, but as an encouraging vision of Christ's definitive victory over evil.
+
+Oriental Orthodox 
+
+In the Coptic Orthodox Church the whole Book of Revelation is read during Apocalypse Night after Good Friday.  Biblically Ugo Vanni and other biblical scholars have argued that the Book of Revelation was written with the intention to be read entirely in one liturgical setting with dialogue-elements between the reader (singular) and the hearers (plural) based on Rev 1:3 and Rev 1:10. Beniamin Zakhary has recently shown that the structure of the reading the Book of Revelation within the Coptic rite of Apocalypse Night (this is the only biblical reading in the Coptic church with a dialogue in it, where the reader stops many times and the people respond; additionally the entire book is read in a liturgical setting that culminates with the Eucharist) shows great support for this biblical hypothesis, albeit with some notable difference.
+
+Additionally, the Book of Revelation permeates many liturgical prayers and iconography within the Coptic Church.
+
+Eschatological 
+Most Christian interpretations fall into one or more of the following categories:
+ Historicism, which sees in Revelation a broad view of history;
+ Preterism, in which Revelation mostly refers to the events of the apostolic era (1st century) or, at the latest, the fall of Jerusalem or the Roman Empire;
+ Futurism, which believes that Revelation describes future events (modern believers in this interpretation are often called "millennialists"); and
+ Idealism/Allegoricalism, which holds that Revelation does not refer to actual people or events, but is an allegory of the spiritual path and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.
+
+Additionally, there are significant differences in interpretation of the thousand years (the "millennium") mentioned in Revelation 20:2.
+ Premillennialism, which holds a literal interpretation of the "millennium" and generally prefers literal interpretations of the content of the book;
+ Amillennialism, which rejects a literal interpretation of the "millennium" and generally prefers allegorical interpretations of the content of the book; and
+ Postmillennialism, which includes both literal and allegorical interpretations of the "millennium" but views the Second Coming as following the conversion to Christianity of a gradually improving world.
+
+Eastern Orthodox 
+
+Eastern Orthodoxy treats the text as simultaneously describing contemporaneous events (events occurring at the same time) and as prophecy of events to come, for which the contemporaneous events were a form of foreshadow. It rejects attempts to determine, before the fact, if the events of Revelation are occurring by mapping them onto present-day events, taking to heart the Scriptural warning against those who proclaim "He is here!" prematurely. Instead, the book is seen as a warning to be spiritually and morally ready for the end times, whenever they may come ("as a thief in the night"), but they will come at the time of God's choosing, not something that can be precipitated nor trivially deduced by mortals.
+
+Book of Revelation is the only book of the New Testament that is not read during services by the Byzantine Rite Churches, although it is read in the Western Rite Orthodox Parishes, which are under the same bishops as the Byzantine Rite.
+
+Protestant
+
+Seventh-day Adventist 
+
+Similar to the early Protestants, Adventists maintain a historicist interpretation of the Bible's predictions of the apocalypse.
+
+Seventh-day Adventists believe the Book of Revelation is especially relevant to believers in the days preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ. "The universal church is composed of all who truly believe in Christ, but in the last days, a time of widespread apostasy, a remnant has been called out to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." "Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." As participatory agents in the work of salvation for all humankind, "This remnant announces the arrival of the judgment hour, proclaims salvation through Christ, and heralds the approach of His second advent." The three angels of Revelation 14 represent the people who accept the light of God's messages and go forth as his agents to sound the warning throughout the length and breadth of the earth.
+
+Bahá'í Faith 
+By reasoning analogous with Millerite historicism, Bahá'u'lláh's doctrine of progressive revelation, a modified historicist method of interpreting prophecy, is identified in the teachings of the Bahá'í Faith.
+
+ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, the son and chosen successor of Bahá'u'lláh, has given some interpretations about the 11th and 12th chapters of Revelation in Some Answered Questions. The 1,260 days spoken of in the forms: one thousand two hundred and sixty days, forty-two months, refers to the 1,260 years in the Islamic Calendar (AH 1260 or AD 1844). The "two witnesses" spoken of are Muhammad and Ali. The red Dragon spoken of in Revelation 12:3 – "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads" – are interpreted as symbolic of the seven provinces dominated by the Umayyads: Damascus, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Africa, Andalusia, and Transoxania. The ten horns represent the ten names of the leaders of the Umayyad dynasty: Abu Sufyan, Muawiya, Yazid, Marwan, Abd al-Malik, Walid, Sulayman, Umar, Hisham, and Ibrahim. Some names were re-used, as in the case of Yazid II and Yazid III and the like, which were not counted for this interpretation.
+
+The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 
+The Book of Mormon states that John the Apostle is the author of Revelation and that he was foreordained by God to write it.
+
+Doctrine and Covenants, section 77, postulates answers to specific questions regarding the symbolism contained in the Book of Revelation. Topics include: the sea of glass, the four beasts and their appearance, the 24 elders, the book with seven seals, certain angels, the sealing of the 144,000, the little book eaten by John, and the two witnesses in Chapter 11.
+
+Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that the warning contained in Revelation 22:18–19 does not refer to the biblical canon as a whole. Rather, an open and ongoing dialogue between God and the modern-day Prophet and Apostles of the LDS faith constitute an open canon of scripture.
+
+Esoteric 
+Christian Gnostics are unlikely to be attracted to the teaching of Revelation because the doctrine of salvation through the sacrificed Lamb, which is central to Revelation, is repugnant to Gnostics. Christian Gnostics "believed in the Forgiveness of Sins, but in no vicarious sacrifice for sin ... they accepted Christ in the full realisation of the word; his life, not his death, was the keynote of their doctrine and their practice."
+
+James Morgan Pryse was an esoteric gnostic who saw Revelation as a western version of the Hindu theory of the Chakra. He began his work, "The purpose of this book is to show that the Apocalypse is a manual of spiritual development and not, as conventionally interpreted, a cryptic history or prophecy." Such diverse theories have failed to command widespread acceptance. However, Christopher Rowland argues: "there are always going to be loose threads which refuse to be woven into the fabric as a whole. The presence of the threads which stubbornly refuse to be incorporated into the neat tapestry of our world-view does not usually totally undermine that view."
+
+Radical discipleship 
+The radical discipleship interpretation asserts that the Book of Revelation is best understood as a handbook for radical discipleship; i. e., how to remain faithful to the spirit and teachings of Jesus and avoid simply assimilating to surrounding society. In this interpretation the primary agenda of the book is to expose as impostors the worldly powers that seek to oppose the ways of God and God's Kingdom. The chief temptation for Christians in the 1st century, and today, is to fail to hold fast to the non-violent teachings and example of Jesus and instead be lured into unquestioning adoption and assimilation of worldly, national or cultural values – imperialism, nationalism, and civil religion being the most dangerous and insidious.
+
+This perspective (closely related to liberation theology) draws on the approach of Bible scholars such as Ched Myers, William Stringfellow, Richard Horsley, Daniel Berrigan, Wes Howard-Brook, and Joerg Rieger. Various Christian anarchists, such as Jacques Ellul, have identified the State and political power as the Beast and the events described, being their doings and results, the aforementioned 'wrath'.
+
+Aesthetic and literary 
+
+Literary writers and theorists have contributed to a wide range of theories about the origins and purpose of the Book of Revelation. Some of these writers have no connection with established Christian faiths but, nevertheless, found in Revelation a source of inspiration. Revelation has been approached from Hindu philosophy and Jewish Midrash. Others have pointed to aspects of composition which have been ignored such as the similarities of prophetic inspiration to modern poetic inspiration, or the parallels with Greek drama. In recent years, theories have arisen which concentrate upon how readers and texts interact to create meaning and which are less interested in what the original author intended.
+
+Charles Cutler Torrey taught Semitic languages at Yale University. His lasting contribution has been to show how prophets, such as the scribe of Revelation, are much more meaningful when treated as poets first and foremost. He thought this was a point often lost sight of because most English bibles render everything in prose. Poetry was also the reason John never directly quoted the older prophets. Had he done so, he would have had to use their (Hebrew) poetry whereas he wanted to write his own. Torrey insisted Revelation had originally been written in Aramaic.
+
+According to Torrey, "The Fourth Gospel was brought to Ephesus by a Christian fugitive from Palestine soon after the middle of the first century. It was written in Aramaic." Later, the Ephesians claimed this fugitive had actually been the beloved disciple himself. Subsequently, this John was banished by Nero and died on Patmos after writing Revelation. Torrey argued that until AD 80, when Christians were expelled from the synagogues, the Christian message was always first heard in the synagogue and, for cultural reasons, the evangelist would have spoken in Aramaic, else "he would have had no hearing." Torrey showed how the three major songs in Revelation (the new song, the song of Moses and the Lamb and the chorus at 19: 6–8) each fall naturally into four regular metrical lines plus a coda. Other dramatic moments in Revelation, such as 6:16 where the terrified people cry out to be hidden, behave in a similar way. The surviving Greek translation was a literal translation that aimed to comply with the warning at Revelation 22:18 that the text must not be "corrupted" in any way.
+
+Christina Rossetti was a Victorian poet who believed the sensual excitement of the natural world found its meaningful purpose in death and in God. Her The Face of the Deep is a meditation upon the Apocalypse. In her view, what Revelation has to teach is patience. Patience is the closest to perfection the human condition allows. Her book, which is largely written in prose, frequently breaks into poetry or jubilation, much like Revelation itself. The relevance of John's visions belongs to Christians of all times as a continuous present meditation. Such matters are eternal and outside of normal human reckoning. "That winter which will be the death of Time has no promise of termination. Winter that returns not to spring ... – who can bear it?" She dealt deftly with the vengeful aspects of John's message. "A few are charged to do judgment; everyone without exception is charged to show mercy." Her conclusion is that Christians should see John as "representative of all his brethren" so they should "hope as he hoped, love as he loved."
+
+Recently, aesthetic and literary modes of interpretation have developed, which focus on Revelation as a work of art and imagination, viewing the imagery as symbolic depictions of timeless truths and the victory of good over evil. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza wrote Revelation: Vision of a Just World from the viewpoint of rhetoric. Accordingly, Revelation's meaning is partially determined by the way John goes about saying things, partially by the context in which readers receive the message and partially by its appeal to something beyond logic.
+
+Professor Schüssler Fiorenza believes that Revelation has particular relevance today as a liberating message to disadvantaged groups. John's book is a vision of a just world, not a vengeful threat of world-destruction. Her view that Revelation's message is not gender-based has caused dissent. She says humanity is to look behind the symbols rather than make a fetish out of them. In contrast, Tina Pippin states that John writes "horror literature" and "the misogyny which underlies the narrative is extreme."
+
+D. H. Lawrence took an opposing, pessimistic view of Revelation in the final book he wrote, Apocalypse. He saw the language which Revelation used as being bleak and destructive; a 'death-product'. Instead, he wanted to champion a public-spirited individualism (which he identified with the historical Jesus supplemented by an ill-defined cosmic consciousness) against its two natural enemies. One of these he called "the sovereignty of the intellect" which he saw in a technology-based totalitarian society. The other enemy he styled "vulgarity" and that was what he found in Revelation. "It is very nice if you are poor and not humble ... to bring your enemies down to utter destruction, while you yourself rise up to grandeur. And nowhere does this happen so splendiferously than in Revelation." Lawrence did not consider how these two types of Christianity (good and bad in his view) might be related other than as opposites. He noted the difference meant that the John who wrote a gospel could not be the same John who wrote Revelation.
+
+His specific aesthetic objections to Revelation were that its imagery was unnatural and that phrases like "the wrath of the Lamb" were "ridiculous." He saw Revelation as comprising two discordant halves. In the first, there was a scheme of cosmic renewal in "great Chaldean sky-spaces", which he quite liked. After that, Lawrence thought, the book became preoccupied with the birth of the baby messiah and "flamboyant hate and simple lust ... for the end of the world." Lawrence coined the term "Patmossers" to describe those Christians who could only be happy in paradise if they knew their enemies were suffering in hell.
+
+Academic 
+
+Modern biblical scholarship attempts to understand Revelation in its 1st-century historical context within the genre of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature. This approach considers the text as an address to seven historical communities in Asia Minor. Under this interpretation, assertions that "the time is near" are to be taken literally by those communities. Consequently, the work is viewed as a warning to not conform to contemporary Greco-Roman society which John "unveils" as beastly, demonic, and subject to divine judgment.
+
+New Testament narrative criticism also places Revelation in its first century historical context but approaches the book from a literary perspective. For example, narrative critics examine characters and characterization, literary devices, settings, plot, themes, point of view, implied reader, implied author, and other constitutive features of narratives in their analysis of the book.
+
+Although the acceptance of Revelation into the canon has, from the beginning, been controversial, it has been essentially similar to the career of other texts. The eventual exclusion of other contemporary apocalyptic literature from the canon may throw light on the unfolding historical processes of what was officially considered orthodox, what was heterodox, and what was even heretical. Interpretation of meanings and imagery are anchored in what the historical author intended and what his contemporary audience inferred; a message to Christians not to assimilate into the Roman imperial culture was John's central message. Thus, the letter (written in the apocalyptic genre) is pastoral in nature (its purpose is offering hope to the downtrodden), and the symbolism of Revelation is to be understood entirely within its historical, literary, and social context. Critics study the conventions of apocalyptic literature and events of the 1st century to make sense of what the author may have intended.
+
+Scholar Barbara Whitlock pointed out a similarity between the consistent destruction of thirds depicted in the Book of Revelation (a third of mankind by plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone, a third of the trees and green grass, a third of the sea creatures and a third of the ships at sea, etc.) and the Iranian mythology evil character Zahhak or Dahāg, depicted in the Avesta, the earliest religious texts of Zoroastrianism. Dahāg is mentioned as wreaking much evil in the world until at last chained up and imprisoned on the mythical Mt. Damāvand. The Middle Persian sources prophesy that at the end of the world, Dahāg will at last burst his bonds and ravage the world, consuming one in three humans and livestock, until the ancient hero Kirsāsp returns to life to kill Dahāg. Whitlock wrote: "Zoroastrianism, the state religion of the Roman Empire's main rival, was part of the intellectual environment in which Christianity came into being, just as were Judaism, the Greek-Roman religion, and the worship of Isis and Mithras. A Zoroastrian influence is completely plausible".
+
+Old Testament origins 
+Much of Revelation employs ancient sources, primarily but not exclusively from the Old Testament. For example, Howard-Brook and Gwyther regard the Book of Enoch as an equally significant but contextually different source. "Enoch's journey has no close parallel in the Hebrew scriptures."
+
+Academics showed little interest in this topic until recently. An anonymous Scottish commentary of 1871 prefaces Revelation 4 with the Little Apocalypse of Mark 13, places Malachi 4:5 ("Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord") within Revelation 11 and writes Revelation 12:7 side by side with the role of "the Satan" in the Book of Job. The message is that everything in Revelation will happen in its previously appointed time.
+
+Steve Moyise uses the index of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament to show that "Revelation contains more Old Testament allusions than any other New Testament book, but it does not record a single quotation." Perhaps significantly, Revelation chooses different sources than other New Testament books. Revelation concentrates on Isaiah, Psalms, and Ezekiel, while neglecting, comparatively speaking, the books of the Pentateuch that are the dominant sources for other New Testament writers.
+
+Yet, with Revelation, the problems might be judged more fundamental. The author seems to be using his sources in a completely different way to the originals. For example, the author borrows the 'new temple' imagery of Ezekiel 40–48 but uses it to describe a New Jerusalem which, quite pointedly, no longer needs a temple because it is God's dwelling. Ian Boxall writes that Revelation "is no montage of biblical quotations (that is not John's way) but a wealth of allusions and evocations rewoven into something new and creative." In trying to identify this "something new", Boxall argues that Ezekiel provides the 'backbone' for Revelation. He sets out a comparative table listing the chapters of Revelation in sequence and linking most of them to the structurally corresponding chapter in Ezekiel. The interesting point is that the order is not the same. John, on this theory, rearranges Ezekiel to suit his own purposes.
+
+Some commentators argue that it is these purposes – and not the structure – that really matter. G. K. Beale believes that, however much John makes use of Ezekiel, his ultimate purpose is to present Revelation as a fulfillment of Daniel 7. Richard Bauckham has argued that John presents an early view of the Trinity through his descriptions of the visions and his identifying Jesus and the Holy Spirit with YHWH. Brandon Smith has expanded on both of their proposals while proposing a "trinitarian reading" of Revelation, arguing that John uses Old Testament language and allusions from various sources to describe a multiplicity of persons in YHWH without sacrificing monotheism, which would later be codified in the trinitarian doctrine of Nicene Christianity.
+
+Olivet discourse 
+According to James Stuart Russell, the book is an exposition of Olivet Discourse found in the Synoptic Gospels in Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, and Luke 21. Russell suggests there are parallels between the prophecy told by Jesus to the disciples and the prophecy recorded in the Book of Revelation, such as wars, famines, pestilence, earthquakes, false prophets, the darkening of the sun and moon, and stars falling from heaven.
+
+Figures in Revelation 
+In order of appearance:
+
+ The author (see John the Apostle or John of Patmos)
+ One like the Son of man who gives the revelation
+ Antipas, the faithful martyr
+ Nicolaitans
+ Jezebel
+ The One who sits on the throne (God)
+ The four living creatures
+ The twenty four elders
+ The Lamb, with seven horns and seven eyes (Lion of Judah)
+ Saints under the altar
+ Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
+ The souls of them that were slain for the word of God
+ Four angels holding the four winds of the Earth
+ The seal-bearer angel (144,000 of Israel sealed)
+ A great multitude from every nation
+ Seven angelic trumpeters
+ The star called Wormwood
+ Angel of Woe
+ Scorpion-tailed Locusts
+ The angel of the bottomless pit (Hebrew: Abaddon, Greek: Apollyon)
+ Four angels bound to the great river Euphrates
+ Two hundred million man cavalry			
+ The mighty angel with little book open and when he cried of seven thunders uttered their voices
+ The Two Witnesses
+ The Woman and her child
+ The Dragon, fiery red with seven heads and ten horns (Satan)
+ Saint Michael the Archangel
+ The Beast, with seven heads and ten horns (Antichrist/Beast of the Sea)
+ The False Prophet (Beast of the Earth)
+ The three angels
+ The angelic reapers and the grapes of wrath
+ Voice from heaven
+ Seven plague angels (Seven bowls of wrath)
+ Angel of the waters
+ The Whore of Babylon (Mother of harlots)
+ Word of God/Rider on a white horse
+ Angel binding Satan for one thousand years
+ Those of the first resurrection 
+ Gog and Magog (after the one thousand years)
+ Those of the second resurrection
+
+See also 
+
+ Alpha and Omega
+ The Apocalypse – 2000 film
+ Apocalypse of John – dated astronomically
+ Apocalypse of Peter
+ Apocalypse of Zerubbabel
+ Apocalypticism
+ Arethas of Caesarea
+ Biblical cosmology
+ Biblical numerology
+ Book of Ezekiel
+ Christian eschatological differences
+ Day-year principle
+ English Apocalypse manuscripts
+ Horae Apocalypticae
+ Maccabees
+ Masada
+ The New Earth
+ Number of the Beast
+ Patmos
+ Textual variants in the Book of Revelation
+ Vespasian
+ Woman of the Apocalypse
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Bibliography 
+
+ 
+ Barr, David, L. (1998). Tales of the End: A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, . 
+ Bass, Ralph E. Jr. (2004). Back to the Future: A Study in the Book of Revelation, Greenville, South Carolina: Living Hope Press, .
+
+ Beale G.K. (1999). The Book of Revelation, NIGTC, Grand Rapids: Cambridge. 
+
+ Bousset W., Die Offenbarung Johannis, Göttingen 18965, 19066.
+ Boxall, Ian, (2006). The Revelation of Saint John (Black's New Testament Commentary) London: Continuum, and Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson.  U.S. edition: 
+ Boxall, Ian (2002). Revelation: Vision and Insight – An Introduction to the Apocalypse, London: SPCK 
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+ Ford, J. Massyngberde (1975). Revelation, The Anchor Bible, New York: Doubleday .
+ Gentry, Kenneth L. Jr. (1998). Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation, Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, .
+ Gentry, Kenneth L. Jr. (2002). The Beast of Revelation, Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, .
+ Hahn, Scott (1999). The Lamb's Supper: Mass as Heaven on Earth, Darton, Longman, Todd, 
+ 
+ Hernández, Juan (2006). Scribal habits and theological influences in the Apocalypse, Tübingen 
+
+ Hudson, Gary W. (2006). Revelation: Awakening The Christ Within, Vesica Press, 
+ Jennings, Charles A. (2001). The Book of Revelation From An Israelite and Historicist Interpretation, Truth in History Publications. .
+ 
+ Kiddle M. (1941). The Revelation of St. John (The Moffat New Testament Commentary), New York – London
+ Kirsch, Thomas (2006). A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization. New York: HarperOne
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ Lohmeyer, Ernst (1953). Die Offenbarung des Johannes, Tübingen 
+
+ Muggleton, Lodowicke (2010). Works on the Book of Revelation London 
+ Müller, U.B. (1995). Die Offenbarung des Johannes, Güttersloh 
+
+ 
+ Pagels, Elaine (2012). Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Viking Adult, 
+ Prigent P., L'Apocalypse, Paris 1981.
+ 
+
+ 
+
+ Roloff J. (1987). Die Offenbarung des Johannes
+
+ Shepherd, Massey H. (2004). The Paschal Liturgy and the Apocalypse, James Clarke, 
+
+ 
+
+ Sweet, J. P. M. (1979, Updated 1990). Revelation, London: SCM Press, and Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. .
+
+ Vitali, Francesco (2008). Piccolo Dizionario dell'Apocalisse, TAU Editrice, Todi 
+
+ Wikenhauser, A. Offenbarung des Johannes, Regensburg 1947, 1959.
+ Witherington, Ben III (2003). Revelation, The New Cambridge Bible Commentary, New York: Cambridge University Press, .
+ Zahn Th., Die Offenbarung des Johannes, t. 1–2, Leipzig 1924–1926.
+
+External links 
+
+ Early Christian Writings: Apocalypse of John: text, introduction, context
+ "Revelation to John." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
+ Apocalypse, Book of – Article from the Catholic Encyclopedia
+ Understanding the Book of Revelation – Article by L. Michael White from PBS Frontline program "Apocalypse!"
+The Marvelous Address: The Revelation of the Beloved (Disciple) is an 18th-century manuscript about the book of Revelation written in Garshuni (Arabic written in Syriac script).
+ Jewish Encyclopedia
+  Various versions
+ 
+
+ 
+1st-century Christian texts
+Christian apocalyptic writings
+Johannine literature
+Luther's Antilegomena
+New Testament books
+The Book of Kings (, Sēfer Məlāḵīm) is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of Israel also including the books of Joshua, Judges and Samuel.
+
+Biblical commentators believe the Books of Kings were written to provide a theological explanation for the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in c. 586 BCE and to provide a foundation for a return from Babylonian exile. The two books of Kings present a history of ancient Israel and Judah, from the death of King David to the release of Jehoiachin from imprisonment in Babylon—a period of some 400 years (). Scholars tend to treat the books as consisting of a first edition from the late 7th century BCE and of a second and final edition from the mid-6th century BCE.
+
+Contents 
+
+The Jerusalem Bible divides the two Books of Kings into eight sections:
+ 1 Kings 1:1–2:46. The Davidic Succession
+ 1 Kings 3:1–11:43. Solomon in all his glory
+ 1 Kings 12:1–13:34. The political and religious schism
+ 1 Kings 14:1–16:34. The two kingdoms until Elijah
+ 1 Kings 17:1 – 2 Kings 1:18. The Elijah cycle
+ 2 Kings 2:1–13:25. The Elisha cycle
+ 2 Kings 14:1–17:41. The two kingdoms to the fall of Samaria
+ 2 Kings 18:1–25:30. The last years of the kingdom of Judah
+
+1 Kings
+
+The Davidic Succession (1:1–2:46)
+David is by now old, and so his attendants look for a virgin to look after him. They find Abishag, who looks after him but they do not have sexual relations. Adonijah, David's fourth son, born after Absalom, decides to claim the throne. With the support of Joab, David's general, and Abiathar, the priest, he begins a coronation procession. He begins the festivities by offering sacrifices at En Rogel in the presence of his brothers and the royal officials, but does not invite Nathan the prophet; Benanaiah, captain of the king's bodyguard (or indeed the bodyguard itself); or even his own brother Solomon.
+
+Nathan comes to Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, and informs her what is going on. She goes to David and reminds him that he said Solomon would be his successor. As she is speaking to him, Nathan enters and explains the full situation to David. David reaffirms his promise that Solomon will be king after him and arranges for him to be anointed at the Gihon Spring. The anointing is performed by Zadok the priest. Following this, the population of Jerusalem proclaims Solomon king. This is heard by Adonijah and his fellow feasters, but they do not know what is happening until Abiathar's son Jonathan arrives and informs them. With Solomon officially enthroned, Adonijah fears for his life and claims sanctuary; Solomon decides to spare him unless he does something evil.
+
+David advises his son on how to be a good king and to punish David's enemies, and then dies. Adonijah comes to Bathsheba and asks to marry Abishag. Solomon suspects this request is to strengthen Adonijah's claim to the throne and has Benaiah put him to death. He then takes away Abiathar's priesthood as punishment for supporting Adonijah, thus fulfilling the prophecy made to Eli at the start of 1 Samuel. Joab hears what is going on and himself claims sanctuary, but when he refuses to come out of the tabernacle, Solomon instructs Benaiah to kill him there. He then replaces Joab with Benaiah and Abiathar with Zadok. Solomon then instructs Shimei, the Benjaminite who cursed David as he was fleeing from Absalom, to move to Jerusalem and not to leave. One day, two of Shimei's slaves run away to Gath and Shimei pursues them. When he returns to Jerusalem, Solomon has him put to death for leaving Jerusalem.
+
+Solomon in all his glory (3:1–11:43)
+
+Solomon the Sage (3:1–4:34)
+Solomon makes an alliance with Egypt and marries the Pharaoh's daughter. After this, he continues the ancient practice of travelling between the high places and offering sacrifices. When he is at Gibeon, God speaks to him in a dream and offers him anything he asks for. Solomon, being young, asks for "an understanding heart to judge" (שָׁפַט). God is pleased and grants him not only "a wise...heart" (חכם), but also wealth, honor, and longevity, on the condition that Solomon is righteous like his father David. Solomon returns to Jerusalem and holds a feast for his servants in front of the Ark of the Covenant.
+
+After the Judgment of Solomon amazes the Israelites, he appoints a cabinet and reorganizes the governance of Israel at a local level. The nation of Israel prospers and Solomon's provisions increase.
+
+Solomon the Builder (5:1–9:25)
+Over a period of seven years, Solomon works to fulfill David's vow of building a temple to God with wood provided by the king of Tyre, Hiram I, an old friend of David's. He also builds himself a palace, which takes him thirteen years. Once the Temple is finished, Solomon hires a Tyrian half-Naphtalite named Huram to create the furnishings.
+
+When finished, the things which David prepared for the Temple are brought in, and Solomon organizes a ceremony during which the priests carry the Ark of the Covenant into the Temple. A cloud fills the Temple, preventing the priests from continuing the ceremony. Solomon explains that this is the presence of God, and takes the opportunity to make a dedication speech. The dedication is completed with sacrifices, and a celebration is held for fourteen days. God speaks to Solomon and accepts his prayer, re-affirming his vow to David that his House will be kings forever unless they begin worshipping idols.
+
+Solomon gives twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram as thanks for his help, but they are virtually worthless. He begins building and improvement works in various cities in addition to his major projects in Jerusalem and puts the remaining Canaanites into slavery.
+
+Solomon the Trader (9:26–10:29)
+Solomon builds a navy.
+
+The Queen of Sheba hears of Solomon's wisdom and travels to Jerusalem to meet him. Upon arriving, she praises him, saying she did not fully believe the stories about Solomon until she came to see him. The Queen gives Solomon 120 talents and a large amount of spices and precious stones, prompting Hiram to send a large amount of valuable wood and precious stones in response. Solomon also gives the Queen gifts and she returns to her country. Solomon by now has 666 talents of gold, and decides to forge shields and cups. He also maintains trading relations with Hiram, from whose country he receives many exotic goods. Overall, Israel becomes a net exporter of golden goods.
+
+His Decline (11:1–43)
+Solomon amasses 700 wives and 300 concubines, many from foreign countries, including from countries God told the Israelites not to intermarry with. Solomon begins to adopt elements from their religions, and builds shrines in Jerusalem to foreign deities. God informs Solomon that because he has broken his commandments, the entire kingdom except one tribe will be taken away from his son.
+
+At the same time, Solomon begins to amass enemies. A young prince named Hadad who managed to escape Joab’s attempted genocide of the Edomites, hears Joab and David are dead, and returns to Edom to lead his people. Meanwhile, to the north, the Syrian king Rezon, whose Zobahite army was defeated by David, allies himself with Hadad and causes havoc for Israel from his base in Damascus.
+
+On the home front, Jeroboam, who supervised the building of Solomon’s palace terraces and the reconstruction of the city walls, encounters the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite on the road out of Jerusalem. Ahijah tears his cloak into twelve parts and gives ten of them to Jeroboam, saying that Jeroboam will rule over ten tribes of Israel upon Solomon's death as punishment for Solomon's idol worship. In response, Solomon tries to kill Jeroboam, but he flees to Egypt. Solomon dies after having reigned for forty years and is succeeded by his son Rehoboam.
+
+The Political and Religious Schism (12:1–13:34)
+Rehoboam travels to Shechem to be proclaimed king. Upon hearing this, Jeroboam returns from Egypt and joins Rehoboam’s older advisors in asking for the people to be treated better than under Solomon. Instead, Rehoboam turns to his friends for advice, and proclaims that he will treat the people worse. This greatly displeases the Israelites. When he sends a new minister of forced labour named Adoniram, they stone him to death. Rehoboam returns to safety in Jerusalem. The Israelites proclaim Jeroboam king. Judah remains loyal to Rehoboam, and he also controls Benjamin. From these two tribes, Rehoboam amasses an army to attack the north, but the prophet Shemaiah prevents the war.
+
+Back in Shechem, Jeroboam becomes worried about the possible return of his tribes to loyalty to the House of David, and decides the best way to prevent this is to stop them worshipping the  God of Israel, since he considers the point at which they are most likely to defect to be when they travel to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices. To this end, he sets up golden calves at altars at Bethel and Dan and appoints his own priests and festivals. One day, a prophet comes by and announces that some day a Davidic king named Josiah will be born and violently abolish Jeroboam's religion. Seeking to seize him, Jeroboam stretches out his hand, but it becomes withered and, as a sign, the altar splits open and its ashes pour out. Despite all this, Jeroboam does not change his ways.
+
+The two kingdoms until Elijah (14:1–16:34)
+Jeroboam's son Abijah becomes ill, so Jeroboam tells his wife to go in disguise to Ahijah, who has become blind with age. God tells Ahijah of the arrival of Jeroboam's wife. Ahijah prophesies the end of the House of Jeroboam, beginning with the death of Abijah, who will be the only member of the royal house to be buried. He also prophesies that a usurper king will arise who will accomplish this. Jeroboam also dies, and is succeeded by his son Nadab.
+
+Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Judah, the people set up high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles to foreign gods, and even allow male temple prostitution. The pharaoh Shishak sacks Jerusalem and takes all the royal and Temple treasures, including Solomon's gold shields, prompting Rehoboam to make bronze ones to replace them. Rehoboam dies and is succeeded by his son Abijah, a grandson of Absalom. Abijah is as bad as his father, but God continues to protect him and his family because of the promise He made to David. When Abijah dies, he is succeeded by his son Asa.
+
+Asa, in contrast to his father and grandfather, is a good king, on par with David. He abolishes male temple prostitution and destroys idols, and even deposed his grandmother as Queen mother due to idolatry. He moves a collection of gold and silver objects back into the Temple. However, when  he goes to war against Baasha of Israel, he gives the royal and Temple gold and silver to Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, to get him to break a treaty with Israel and attack with him. Ben-Hadad is surprisingly successful, and Baasha must withdraw from Ramah, leading Asa to issue a decree that Ramah's fortifications be taken down and used to build Geba and Mizpah. Asa dies an old man and is succeeded by his son Jehoshaphat.
+
+Back in Israel, Nadab is on the throne. Like his father, he is evil. Baasha, son of an Issacharite named Ahijah, plots to kill him and succeeds in a sneak attack, taking him by surprise during the Siege of Gibbethon, a Philistine city. He then proceeds to kill Jeroboam's whole family, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Ahijah the prophet. However, Baasha commits the same sins as Jeroboam. God therefore informs the prophet Jehu that he will also end the House of Baasha. Baasha dies and is succeeded by his son Elah, who soon falls victim to a plot led by his charioteer Zimri. Zimri becomes king after Elah's killing, and fulfills the prophecy of Jehu; however, Zimri's army now proclaims its commander Omri as king and returns to Tirzah to lay siege to it. Seeing he is losing, Zimri sets fire to the palace.
+
+The start of Omri's reign faces factionalism, with half his subjects supporting Tibni, son of Gibnath as king. He buys the hill of Shemer, upon which he builds the city of Samaria. However, he is the worst king yet. When he dies, he is succeeded by his son Ahab, who himself overtakes Omri in his evilness. Upon his marriage to Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon, he introduces the worship of Baal, building him a temple and setting up an Asherah pole. Meanwhile, a nobleman named Hiel of Bethel activates the curse proclaimed by Joshua by rebuilding Jericho, resulting in the death of his oldest and youngest sons.
+
+The Elijah Cycle (17:1–22:54)
+
+The Great Drought (17:1–18:46)
+A new prophet arises in Israel, named Elijah, who informs Ahab of a years-long drought about to begin. God then tells Elijah to hide in the Kerith Ravine, where he drinks from the stream and is fed by ravens. When the brook dries up, God tells Elijah to travel to Zarephath, where a widow will feed him. She is more than happy to give him water, but when he asks for bread, she informs him that she is just about to make a small loaf - only enough that she and her son may eat it as their last meal. Elijah instructs her to make him some anyway, telling her that she will not run out of food until the famine is over. Soon, the widow's son becomes ill and dies. At the widow's insistence, Elijah raises him from the dead.
+
+Three years later, God tells Elijah to return to Ahab because the drought is coming to an end. On the way, Elijah meets his administrator Obadiah, who was hiding prophets during Jezebel's persecutions, and asks him to tell Ahab of his arrival. Seeking to end the worship of Baal for good, Elijah tells Ahab to invite four hundred priests of Baal and four hundred of Asherah to the top of Mount Carmel. There, he upbraids the people for their duplicity, telling them to choose either worship of the God of Israel or of Baal. He then proposes a challenge: he and the priests will each prepare a sacrifice, and then call upon their respective gods to send fire to burn it. When the priests attempt to call down fire, none comes. On the other hand, despite having the Israelites pour much water over his altar, when Elijah prays for fire God sends it, accepting the sacrifice. Elijah orders the priests of Baal be killed, and informs Ahab of the coming rain. Climbing to the top of the mountain, Elijah sends his servant to look out to sea. After returning seven times, the servant eventually sees a small cloud rising far out at sea. Elijah tells the servant to inform Ahab to return to Jezreel in his chariot, while Elijah manages to run ahead of him.
+
+Elijah at Horeb (19:1–21)
+When she hears what has happened, Jezebel threatens to kill Elijah, causing him to run for his life. In the wilderness near Beersheba, Elijah, fed up, asks God to kill him. Instead, an angel supplies him with food, which gives him the strength to continue a further forty days until he reaches Mount Horeb, where he falls asleep in a cave. When Elijah wakes up, God tells him He is about to pass by. An earthquake occurs and a fire starts, but neither contain God. Instead, God appears in the form of a whisper. After hearing Elijah's concerns about being killed, he instructs him to go to Damascus, where he is to anoint Hazael as king of Aram, Jehu as king of Israel and Elisha as Elijah's own successor. Elijah finds Elisha plowing with oxen. Elisha says goodbye to his parents, kills his oxen and cooks them by burning his plowing equipment. He distributes the meat to his neighbours and sets off to follow Elijah.
+
+The Aramean Wars (20:1–43)
+Ben-Hadad II, the new king of Aram, raises an army and sends messengers demanding all Ahab's gold and silver, and the best of his wives and children. While agreeing to this demand, after consulting his advisors he decides not to accept a follow-up demand requesting anything else of value in his palace or his officials' houses. In response to this situation, Ben-Hadad attacks Samaria. At this point, Ahab receives a prophecy that his junior officers will defeat Ben-Hadad if Ahab starts the battle. Ben-Hadad tells his men to take the advancing troops alive, but each junior officer kills his Aramean equivalent. The Arameans, including Ben-Hadad, begin a retreat, but Ahab's army inflicts heavy losses. The prophet who brought the first prophecy tells Ahab to improve his defences, since the Arameans will attack again. Ben-Hadad's advisors reason that the reason they lost was because God lives in the hills, leading them to attack Aphek, a city on the plains, the following spring. In response to this, God agrees to give the Israelites another victory to demonstrate his omnipresence. After a disastrous first day, Ben-Hadad sends messengers to Ahab, begging him to spare him. Ahab sends for Ben-Hadad, who offers to return the land his father took from Israel. The two kings sign a treaty and Ben-Hadad leaves.
+
+After failing to get another prophet to strike him with his weapon, resulting in that prophet's death by lion, a prophet manages to get someone else to do it and appears before Ahab, telling him a parable about how his failing to guard a man in battle means he now must pay a talent. When he removes his headband, and Ahab sees he is a prophet, he tells Ahab that he will die because he spared Ben-Hadad, who God had told him to kill.
+
+Naboth's Vineyard (21:1–28)
+Some time later, Ahab attempts to buy a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. When Naboth will not sell it to him on account of it being his inheritance, Ahab sulks and refuses to eat. Jezebel proclaims a day of fasting, upon which two false witnesses accuse Naboth of cursing God and the king. He is stoned to death, allowing Ahab to take possession of the vineyard. In response, God tells Elijah to confront Ahab and inform him that he will die in the vineyard and that his descendants and Jezebel will be wiped out. This has marked the peak of Ahab's evilness, and indeed the evilness of any king of Israel. Ahab repents, so God allows the disaster Elijah prophesied to come during the reign of his son instead.
+
+Another War with Aram (22:1–38)
+Three years pass with peace between Aram and Israel. However, Aram still possesses Ramoth-Gilead and, when Jehoshaphat agrees for the Judahite army to accompany him on a campaign during a state visit, Ahab decides to take it back. Four hundred prophets agree this is a good idea, but Jehoshaphat asks to speak with a prophet of God. Ahab reluctantly calls Micaiah, whom he dislikes for never prophesying in his favour. When he arrives, a prophet named Zedekiah is claiming that Ahab will have victory over the Arameans using a strange hat with horns. Michaiah, on the other hand, tells him that if he attacks Ramoth-Gilead he will die and Israel will be leaderless, but that this is part of God's plan. Zedekiah slaps him, leading Michaiah to prophesy impending destruction, and Ahab tells his jailer to put him in prison with no food or water until he returns safely.
+
+Ahab and Jehoshaphat begin their campaign, agreeing that Ahab will be disguised while Jehoshaphat will wear his royal robes. The Arameans, being under instructions to kill no one except Ahab, begin pursuing Jehoshaphat, but cease their pursuit when they see he is not Ahab. However, Ahab is hit between the plates of his armour by a random Aramean arrow. He withdraws from the battle and dies that evening. He is buried, his chariot is washed in a pool where prostitutes bathe and his blood is licked by dogs.
+
+After the Death of Ahab (22:39–54)
+Ahab's son Ahaziah succeeds him.
+
+Jehoshaphat has been a good king his entire reign, following the example of his father Asa. However, he has not destroyed the high places, but he has kept peace with Israel. He has also gotten rid of the remaining male temple prostitutes and there is now a provincial governor rather than a king in Edom. He has built a merchant navy, but it was wrecked at Ezion-Geber. Ahaziah suggests they join forces in this regard, but Jehoshaphat refuses. He dies and is succeeded by his son Jehoram.
+
+Ahaziah does evil and allows the idol worship which flourished under his father to continue.
+
+2 Kings
+
+The Elijah Cycle (continued) (1:1–18)
+
+After the Death of Ahab (continued) (1:1–18)
+Ahaziah falls through a lattice on an upper floor and injures himself. He sends a party to Ekron to consult its god, Baal-Zebub, about whether he will recover. The messengers are met by Elijah, who tells them to inform Ahaziah that he will die where he is for seeking advice from a non-Israelite god. Ahaziah sends two captains and fifty men each to summon Elijah, but both parties are consumed by fire at Elijah's command. When Ahaziah sends a third group, God tells Elijah to go with them and deliver his prophecy directly. Ahaziah dies and, having no sons, his brother Joram succeeds him.
+
+The Elisha Cycle (2:1–13:25)
+
+Its Opening (2:1–25)
+Elijah and Elisha are walking from Gilgal. Elijah asks that Elisha stay where they are, but Elisha insists on coming with him to Bethel. Elijah informs him that he is going to be taken by God; Elisha seems to have some kind of knowledge of this. Once again, Elijah asks Elisha to stay where they are, but Elisha insists on coming with him to Jericho. Eventually, they reach the Jordan, where fifty prophets are. Elijah strikes the water with his cloak, the water divides, and the pair cross over. Elijah asks what Elisha wants when he is gone, and Elisha asks for a double portion of his spirit, which Elijah says will be given to him if he watches him go. Suddenly, a fiery horse-drawn chariot takes Elijah and he ascends to heaven in a whirlwind. After mourning, Elisha picks up Elijah's cloak and himself uses it to part the Jordan. This leads the other prophets to recognise him as Elijah's successor, and offer to look for Elijah, an offer which Elisha refuses. However, they persist but, naturally, are unable to find him. As Elisha's first task, he throws salt into a spring in Jericho, resolving the locals' water problem by purifying the water. When Elisha leaves for Bethel, some boys start jeering him on account of his baldness. Bears come and maul them.
+
+The Moabite War (3:1–27)
+Joram is evil, but gets rid of the sacred stone to Baal. After the death of Ahab, the king of Moab refused to continue paying tribute to Israel, so Joram teams up with Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom to put down the rebellion. They attack through the Desert of Edom, but soon run out of water. They ask Elisha for advice. He first makes it very clear that he is only doing this for Jehoshaphat's sake, and then calls for a harpist. Elisha prophesies a coming flood in the valley, in addition to a complete defeat of Moab. The water comes, but looks like blood to the Moabites, which they conclude can only have come from the three kings having killed each other. However, when they cross Israel wins a great victory and completely plunders the land. When the king of Moab sacrifices his firstborn son on the city walls, the Israelites are overwhelmed by great wrath and withdraw.
+
+Some Miracles of Elisha (4:1–6:7)
+Elisha meets a widow whose creditors are threatening to take her two sons into slavery as payment. When he finds out the only other thing she has is a small jar of olive oil, he tells her to go and ask all her neighbours for jars. He tells her to pour oil into the jars, and it holds out until every jar is filled. Elisha finally tells her to sell the oil, pay the creditors and live off the rest. He then moves on to Shunem, where a woman invites him to eat and soon decides to build a room for use whenever he passes through. His servant Gehazi informs him that she has no son, so Elisha tells her that she will have a child within a year, as payment for her kindness. One day, the child is helping his father's reapers when he complains of a pain in his head. He is returned to his mother and dies. His mother therefore seeks out Elisha, whom she meets at Mount Carmel. He tells Gehazi to quickly make his way to the house and lay his staff on the boy's face. When Elisha gets there with the woman, Gehazi informs him that this has not worked. Elisha prays, paces, and lays himself on the boy, who then awakens. Elisha continues on to Gilgal, where a famine is raging. Seeking to help the local prophets, he tells his servant to cook a stew. One of the prophets inadvertently adds some poisonous berries to the pot, but Elisha adds some flour, negating the poison. A man comes from Baal-Shalish with twenty loaves of bread. Elisha uses them to miraculously feed the hundred people present.
+
+An Aramean general named Naaman has leprosy. He hears of Elisha from a Israelite slave-girl and receives permission from the king to travel in an attempt to have his leprosy cured. He travels first to the king of Israel, but is eventually called by Elisha, who sends a messenger to tell him to wash seven times in the Jordan. He does what Elisha told him to and his leprosy is cured. Naaman offers Elisha a gift of thanks, but Elisha refuses. Naaman contents himself with taking earth back to Damascus in order to build an altar to God and asking God's forgiveness for when he has to participate in Aramean religious rituals when accompanying the king. However, as Naaman is leaving Gehazi catches up with him and lies about prophets arriving so that at least he can get a gift. As punishment for this, Elisha curses him to become leprous.
+
+Several other prophets begin complaining that their meeting place with Elisha is too small, so he agrees to allow them to build a new one on the banks of the Jordan. During the building, someone's borrowed axehead falls in the river but miraculously floats.
+
+The Aramean Wars (6:8–8:29)
+By this point, Aram is back at war with Israel. Elisha warns the king of Israel where the Arameans are camped several times, frustrating the king of Aram, who seeks him out. One morning, Elisha wakes up to find Dothan, the city where he is staying, surrounded by Arameans. His servant is frightened, until Elisha shows him the angels protecting them. He then prays that the Aramean army go blind, and they do. He then leads them to Samaria, where their eyes are opened. The king of Israel asks Elisha whether he should kill them, but Elisha instead tells him to treat them with hospitality. This ends the war, but soon Ben-Hadad is back at war and laying siege to Samaria. The resulting famine gets so severe that soon people resort to cannibalism. The king feels the best way to deal with the situation is to execute Elisha, blaming God for the famine. Elisha prophesies that huge amounts of the finest flour and barley will soon come to Samaria, but that the king's official will not taste any of it.
+
+Four lepers sit at the gate of Samaria and decide to surrender to the Arameans in the hope of not dying in the famine. However, God made the Arameans hear horses and chariots the night before and, thinking the Hittites and Egyptians were helping the Israelites, they fled. The lepers find the abandoned camp and tell the king. The Samaritans then go and plunder the camp, driving down the price of food in the city. In the chaos, the king's official who was with him when he went to see Elisha is trampled to death.
+
+Elisha has warned the Shunammite woman about the famine, so she and her husband have gone to live in Philisitia. Upon return, she goes to the king to appeal for her land back. When she arrives, Gehazi is telling the king about how Elisha raised her son from the dead. This works in her favour, and her house and land are restored to her, as well as all her income. Next, Elisha goes to Damascus, where Ben-Hadad is ill. When he hears of Elisha's arrival, Ben-Hadad sends Hazael to him with a gift to ask whether he will get better. Elisha tells Hazael to tell the king that he will, even though he will in fact die, and Hazael will become king and cause much damage to Israel. The next day, Hazael smothers the king and succeeds him.
+
+Back in Judah, Jehoram is king. Unlike his father and grandfather, he is evil and follows the ways of Israel, even marrying a daughter of Ahab. However, he is not destroyed, again because of God's covenant with David. His reign is plagued with instability, including revolts in Edom, who restores its monarchy, and Libnah. Jehoram dies and is succeeded by his son Ahaziah, who, like his father, follows in Ahab's footsteps. Ahaziah and Joram go to war together against Hazael. Joram is wounded, and after the battle Ahaziah goes to Jezreel to see him.
+
+The History of Jehu (9:1–10:36)
+Elisha tells a prophet to go to Ramoth-Gilead and anoint a commander of the royal guard named Jehu as king. Jehu leads his troops to Jezreel to challenge Joram. Joram sends two messengers, but both join Jehu. Jehu accuses Joram of continuing the idolatry of Jezebel. Joram flees, warning Ahaziah, but is struck in his heart between his shoulders and dies. Jehu tells his charioteer Bidkar to place him in Naboth's field. Jehu wants to kill Ahaziah too, but merely succeeds in wounding him, although he dies from his injuries at Megiddo. His body is taken back to Jerusalem for burial. As Jehu enters Jezreel, Jezebel looks out of a window and compares him to Zimri. Two eunuchs push her out of a window at Jehu's behest and she dies. When two servants later go to prepare her body for burial as a king's daughter, they find nothing but some bones. She has been eaten by dogs, in accordance with Elijah's prophecy.
+
+Jehu writes to Samaria, challenging the palace officials to pick Ahab's strongest son, put him on the throne and have him challenge Jehu. They refuse, and so Jehu instead asks for the heads of Ahab's seventy sons. After he has had them put inside the city gate of Jezreel, Jehu massacres the remaining members of the House of Ahab in order to fulfil Elijah's prophecy. Jehu then sets off for Samaria. On the way, he meets some of Ahaziah's relatives and has them killed too. Further along, he meets Jehonadab, who becomes his ally. Upon finally reaching Samaria, he kills the rest of Ahab's family. Under the guise of preparing a sacrifice for Baal, he next summons all the priests of Baal. After the sacrifice is over, he has guards enter the temple and kill them. He destroys the sacred stone and tears down the temple, replacing it with a toilet, thus ending the worship of Baal. However, he does not destroy the golden calves at Bethel and Dan, which was Jeroboam's original sin. Nonetheless, God is pleased with his destruction of the Baal religion, and promises that his House will reign in Israel for four generations. However, Jehu is not meticulous in his worship of God, so God allows Hazael to conquer large portions of Israel. Jehu dies and is succeeded by his son Jehoahaz.
+
+From the Reign of Athaliah to the Death of Elisha (11:1–13:25)
+Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, seizes the throne after the death of her son and begins killing off members of the royal family. However, Ahaziah's sister, Jehosheba, manages to hide her nephew Joash. Seven years later, Jehosheba's husband, the priest Jehoiada, introduces Joash to the army, and informs all five units that they will now be required to guard the Temple on the Sabbath in order to protect Joash. He also gives them all the spears and shields from David's day that are kept in the Temple. Joash is crowned and anointed, and proclaimed king by the army. Athaliah claims treason, but Jehoiada has her taken back to the palace and killed. Next, the altars of Baal are destroyed, thus ending the religion in Judah as well. Finally, Joash is taken back to the palace and enthroned.
+
+Joash is a good king, but does not remove the high places. When he grows up, his first act is to reform priestly pay, and use whatever is left to repair the Temple. Twenty-three years later, when the Temple is still not repaired, Joash once again reforms priestly pay so that all money from the Temple treasury goes towards repairs. Instead, the priests will earn money from offerings. This succeeds, and the Temple is repaired. Hazael is back at war with Israel, and it looks like he will cross the border and attack Jerusalem, so Joash sends him gifts and he leaves. Joash is assassinated and is succeeded by his son Amaziah.
+
+Jehoahaz is evil, so God allows Hazael to continue oppressing Israel. He repents, so God allows the war to end. However, Jehoahaz does not get rid of Jeroboam's religion, or remove the Asherah pole in Samaria. In addition, the war has almost completely eradicated the Israelite army. Jehoahaz dies and is succeeded by his son Jehoash, who continues the evil of the previous kings of Israel. He goes to war with Amaziah. The key event of Joash's reign, however, is the death of Elisha. When Joash goes to see him, he tells him to shoot an arrow out of the east window, and prophesies that, based on this, the Arameans will be defeated at Aphek. He then tells him to throw arrows at the floor. Joash throws three, which Elisha is angry about, since it means there will only be three victories there. He then dies and is buried. During a Moabite raid, some Israelite men burying a dead body panic and throw the body in Elisha's tomb. As soon as it touches Elisha's bones, the dead body returns to life. Hazael's wars have plagued Israel since the reign of Jehoahaz, but God does not destroy Israel because of the Abrahamic and Israelite covenants. Hazael dies and is succeeded by his son Ben-Hadad III. As prophesied, Jehoash defeats him three times, taking back the towns Hazael conquered.
+
+The Two Kingdoms to the Fall of Samaria (14:1–17:41)
+Amaziah is a good king, but the high places have still not been abolished. Upon assumption of the throne, he executes his father's assassins, but spares their children in accordance with the Mosaic law. Amaziah defeats the Edomites and challenges Israel, but Jehoash advises him to stay at home. The pair meet at Beth Shemesh and Israel thoroughly defeats Judah, scattering Amaziah's troops and allowing Jehoash to sack Jerusalem. Jehoash dies and is succeeded by his son Jeroboam II. Amaziah faces a conspiracy and is killed in Lachish. He is buried in Jerusalem and succeeded by his son Azariah, who recovers and rebuilds Elath.
+
+Jeroboam II is evil. He restores Israelite territory from Lebo-Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with a prophecy by Jonah. This is because God has promised not to destroy Israel and has seen how much the Israelites are suffering. He dies and is succeeded by his son Zechariah.
+
+Azariah is a good king, although the high places still exist. He is, however, a leper, and so is relieved of his responsibilities while his son Jotham acts as regent. Azariah dies and Jotham succeeds him.
+
+Zechariah is evil, and falls victim of a conspiracy by Shallum, who assassinates and succeeds him, thus fulfilling God's promise to Jehu that his family would rule for four generations. Shallum is himself assassinated and succeeded by Menahem, who attacks Tiphsah, sacks it and rips open its pregnant women. During Menahem's reign, Pul of Assyria (also called Tiglath-Pileser) attacks Israel. Menahem raises taxes to pay Pul both to leave and to support him on the throne. Menahem dies and is succeeded by his son Pekahiah, who is assassinated by his official Pekah and fifty mercenaries from Gilead. During Pekah's reign, Pul  comes back and captures many towns in northern Israel, including all of the land belonging to the Tribe of Naphtali, and deports their populations to Assyria. Pekah is assassinated by Hoshea, who succeeds him as king.
+
+Jotham is a good king, but, again, the high places are still being used. He rebuilds the Upper Gate of the Temple. Aram and Israel attack Judah during his reign. He dies and is succeeded by his son Ahaz. Ahaz is a bad king, even going so far as to sacrifice his son. Rezin, king of Aram, retakes Elath and gives it to Edom during the ongoing attacks. In an attempt to resolve the situation, Ahaz writes to Pul for help, which he gives by capturing Damascus, deporting its citizens and killing Rezin. Ahaz travels to Damascus to meet Pul, and while there sends a sketch of a new altar back to Jerusalem, which is built before he returns. He places it in the Temple upon his arrival. To symbolise his deference to the king of Assyria, he then removes much of the decoration in the Temple. He dies and is succeeded by his son Hezekiah.
+
+Hoshea is evil, but not as bad as the preceding kings of Israel. During Hoshea's reign, Shalmaneser of Assyria attacks Israel in response to Israel's maintaining diplomatic relations with Egypt and refusing to pay tribute to Assyria. Shalmaneser conquers Samaria and deports its citizens to Media. All this happens because Israel has broken the commandments, principally by worshipping other gods and ignoring the prophets. This leaves only Judah, and even they are guilty of following the religious practices introduced by Israel. The king of Assyria then sends his subjects to resettle Samaria, led by an Israelite priest, whose job is to teach them the rites God requires. While they take this on board, they nonetheless continue worshipping their own national gods.
+
+The Last Years of the Kingdom of Judah (18:1–25:30)
+
+Hezekiah, the Prophet Isaiah; Assyria (18:1–20:21)
+Hezekiah, the 13th king of Judah, does "what [is] right in the Lord's sight just as his ancestor David had done". He institutes a far-reaching religious reform: centralising sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem, and destroying the images of other gods, including the Nehushtan, the bronze snake Moses erected in the wilderness, which the Israelites have turned into an idol. He breaks his alliance with the Assyrians and defeats the Philistines. Following the capture of Samaria, the Assyrians attack Judah, but withdraw in return for money. The Assyrians soon attack again, and send a threatening and blasphemous message to Hezekiah, supposing that he has sought an alliance with Egypt. The Assyrian commander then attempts to turn the Judahites against Hezekiah, claiming that he is powerless to protect him, but Hezekiah pre-empts and stops this from happening. When Hezekiah hears the message, he sends a delegation to the prophet Isaiah, who tells them that God will save Jerusalem and the kingdom from Assyria. When Sennacherib, king of Assyria, hears of the advance of Tirhakah, king of Cush, he retreats, but warns of a coming invasion. Hezekiah prays, and Isaiah sends another prophecy of Assyria's destruction. God sends an angel to kill the Assyrians, and the remaining Assyrians retreat in horror. Sennacherib is killed by his sons and is succeeded by a third son.
+
+Hezekiah becomes ill, and Isaiah tells him he will die. Hezekiah prays, and God agrees to give him fifteen more years if he goes to the temple in three days. Isaiah prescribes a poultice of figs, and Hezekiah recovers. When Hezekiah goes to the Temple and stands on the steps of Ahaz, his shadow moves back ten steps, thus proving God's words to be true. The king of Babylon sends an embassy to Hezekiah, who shows them everything in the palace. Isaiah prophesies that one day the Babylonians will carry away everything in the palace. However, there is peace for the rest of Hezekiah's reign. Hezekiah builds an aqueduct consisting of a pool and a tunnel before he dies. He is succeeded by his son Manasseh.
+
+Two Wicked Kings (21:1–26)
+Manasseh reverses his father's reforms, murders the innocent, and sets up altars in the Temple. This breaches the Davidic-Solomonic covenant, and so God announces that he will destroy Jerusalem because of this apostasy by the king. He is succeeded by his son Amon. Amon follows in his father's footsteps, and is eventually assassinated by his officials. The assassins are executed, and Amon is succeeded by his son Josiah.
+
+Josiah and the Religious Reform (22:1–23:30)
+Josiah begins his reign with a rebuilding of the Temple. During this effort, Hilkiah, the high priest, finds a copy of the Book of Deuteronomy and has Shaphan, the royal secretary, read it to the king. When Josiah hears the laws which have been broken, he becomes sorrowful and sends a delegation to the prophetess Huldah to ask what to do. Huldah tells the delegation that God will destroy Jerusalem, but not until after Josiah has died.
+
+Josiah plans a ceremony to renew the Mosaic covenant. First, he reads to the people from the scroll and has them all renew the covenant. Then, he has Hilkiah remove all the objects dedicated to other gods from the Temple, burn them in the Kidron Valley and take the ashes to Bethel. Finally, he fires the priests of the other gods, desecrates the high places and gets rid of the male shrine prostitutes and weavers of Asherah in the temple. While he is at Bethel, in the midst of destroying the tombs there, he finds the tomb of the prophet who prophesied his coming and spares it. He then instructs his people to celebrate Passover, since its celebration had fallen out of use for many years. He gets rid of the mediums and spiritists. He is the best king in the history of Israel and Judah. Josiah goes to battle against Necho II of Egypt and the king of Assyria, but is defeated and killed by Necho at Megiddo.
+
+The Destruction of Jerusalem (23:31–25:30)
+Necho takes Josiah's successor, Jehoahaz, captive and imposes huge demands on Judah. He places another of Josiah's sons, Jehoiakim, on the throne, who pays the demands by increasing taxes. Both of Josiah's successors are evil.
+
+Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon invades, and Jehoiakim becomes his vassal for three years until he rebels. In response to this, in order to fulfil what God had said with regards to Manasseh, a large number of raiders from neighbouring kingdoms and empires attack Judah. This time, there is no support from Egypt because it has already been invaded by the Babylonians. Jehoiakim dies and is succeeded by his son Jehoiachin, who is also evil. Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to Jerusalem, and the Judahites surrender. Nebuchadnezzar takes Jehoiachin and his family hostage, and takes away everything from the Temple and the palace, thus fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy to Hezekiah. He then takes away everyone into exile except the very poorest people. He then puts Jehoiachin's uncle, Zedekiah, on the throne. Zedekiah is also evil. Eventually, he rebels against Nebuchadnezzar and Jerusalem is put under siege for two years. Finally, famine overcomes the city and the walls are broken through. Zedekiah's punishment, which he serves at Riblah, is to watch his sons being killed before having his eyes gouged out and being carried as prisoner to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar burns down Jerusalem, including the Temple, the palace and all the important buildings; the walls are broken down, and everyone left is carried off, save some of the poorest people to act as farmers. He also kills the remaining priests at Riblah. He appoints Gedaliah as provincial governor. However, he is eventually killed by the last remaining member of the royal family, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, and a large number of Judahites and Babylonians flee to Egypt. Awel-Murduk becomes king of Babylon on Nebuchadnezzar's death. He releases Jehoiachin, gives him a place at his table and an allowance, and places him higher in honour than all other kings in Babylon other than himself.
+
+Composition
+
+Textual history 
+In the Hebrew Bible (the Bible used by Jews), First and Second Kings are a single book, as are the First and Second Books of Samuel. When this was translated into Greek in the last few centuries BCE, Samuel was joined with Kings in a four-part work called the Book of Kingdoms. Orthodox Christians continue to use the Greek translation (the Septuagint), but when a Latin translation (called the Vulgate) was made for the Western church, Kingdoms was first retitled the Book of Kings, parts One to Four, and eventually both Samuel and Kings were separated into two books each.
+
+Thus, the books now commonly known as 1Samuel and 2Samuel are known in the Vulgate as 1Kings and 2Kings (in imitation of the Septuagint). What are now commonly known as 1Kings and 2Kings would be 3Kings and 4Kings in old Bibles before the year 1516, such as in the Vulgate and the Septuagint. The division known today, used by Protestant Bibles and adopted by Catholics, came into use in 1517. Some Bibles—for example, the Douay Rheims Bible—still preserve the old denomination.
+
+Deuteronomistic history 
+According to Jewish tradition the author of Kings was Jeremiah, who would have been alive during the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The most common view today accepts Martin Noth's thesis that Kings concludes a unified series of books which reflect the language and theology of the Book of Deuteronomy, and which biblical scholars therefore call the Deuteronomistic history.  Noth argued that the History was the work of a single individual living in the 6th century BCE, but scholars today tend to treat it as made up of at least two layers, a first edition from the time of Josiah (late 7th century BCE), promoting Josiah's religious reforms and the need for repentance, and (2) a second and final edition from the mid-6th century BCE. Further levels of editing have also been proposed, including: a late 8th century BCE edition pointing to Hezekiah of Judah as the model for kingship; an earlier 8th-century BCE version with a similar message but identifying Jehu of Israel as the ideal king; and an even earlier version promoting the House of David as the key to national well-being.
+
+Sources 
+The editors/authors of the Deuteronomistic history cite a number of sources, including (for example) a "Book of the Acts of Solomon" and, frequently, the "Annals of the Kings of Judah" and a separate book, "Chronicles of the Kings of Israel". The "Deuteronomic" perspective (that of the book of Deuteronomy) is particularly evident in prayers and speeches spoken by key figures at major transition points: Solomon's speech at the dedication of the Temple is a key example.  The sources have been heavily edited to meet the Deuteronomistic agenda, but in the broadest sense they appear to have been:
+ For the rest of Solomon's reign the text names its source as "the book of the acts of Solomon", but other sources were employed, and much was added by the redactor.
+ Israel and Judah: The two "chronicles" of Israel and Judah provided the chronological framework, but few details, apart from the succession of monarchs and the account of how the Temple of Solomon was progressively stripped as true religion declined. A third source, or set of sources, were cycles of stories about various prophets (Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah, Ahijah and Micaiah), plus a few smaller miscellaneous traditions. The conclusion of the book (2 Kings 25:18–21, 27–30) was probably based on personal knowledge.
+ A few sections were editorial additions not based on sources. These include various predictions of the downfall of the northern kingdom, the equivalent prediction of the downfall of Judah following the reign of Manasseh, the extension of Josiah's reforms in accordance with the laws of Deuteronomy, and the revision of the narrative from Jeremiah concerning Judah's last days.
+
+Manuscript sources
+Three of the Dead Sea Scrolls feature parts of Kings: 5QKgs, found in Qumran Cave 5, contains parts of 1 Kings 1; 6QpapKgs, found in Qumran Cave 6, contains 94 fragments from all over the two books; and 4QKgs, found in Qumran Cave 4, contains parts of 1 Kings 7–8. The earliest complete surviving copy of the book(s) of Kings is in the Aleppo Codex (10th century CE).
+
+Themes and genre 
+
+Kings is "history-like" rather than history in the modern sense, mixing legends, folktales, miracle stories and "fictional constructions" in with the annals, and its primary explanation for all that happens is God's offended sense of what is right; it is therefore more fruitful to read it as theological literature in the form of history. The theological bias is seen in the way it judges each king of Israel on the basis of whether he recognises the authority of the Temple in Jerusalem (none do, and therefore all are "evil"), and each king of Judah on the basis of whether he destroys the "high places" (rivals to the Temple in Jerusalem); it gives only passing mention to important and successful kings like Omri and Jeroboam II and ignores one of the most significant events in ancient Israel's history, the battle of Qarqar.
+
+The major themes of Kings are God's promise, the recurrent apostasy of the kings, and the judgement this brings on Israel:
+ Promise: In return for Israel's promise to worship Yahweh alone, Yahweh makes promises to David and to Israel – to David, the promise that his line will rule Israel forever, to Israel, the promise of the land they will possess.
+ Apostasy: the great tragedy of Israel's history, meaning the destruction of the kingdom and the Temple, is due to the failure of the people, but more especially the kings, to worship Yahweh alone (Yahweh being the God of Israel).
+ Judgement: Apostasy leads to judgement. Judgement is not punishment, but simply the natural (or rather, God-ordained) consequence of Israel's failure to worship Yahweh alone.
+
+Another and related theme is that of prophecy. The main point of the prophetic stories is that God's prophecies are always fulfilled, so that any not yet fulfilled will be so in the future. The implication, the release of Jehoiachin and his restoration to a place of honour in Babylon in the closing scenes of the book, is that the promise of an eternal Davidic dynasty is still in effect, and that the Davidic line will be restored.
+
+Textual features
+
+Chronology 
+
+The standard Hebrew text of Kings presents an impossible chronology. To take just a single example, Omri's accession to the throne of Israel is dated to the 31st year of Asa of Judah meanwhile the ascension of his predecessor, Zimri, who reigned for only a week, is dated to the 27th year of Asa. The Greek text corrects the impossibilities but does not seem to represent an earlier version. A large number of scholars have claimed to solve the difficulties, but the results differ, sometimes widely, and none has achieved consensus status.
+
+Kings and 2 Chronicles 
+The second Book of Chronicles covers much the same time-period as the books of Kings, but it ignores the northern Kingdom of Israel almost completely, David is given a major role in planning the Temple, Hezekiah is given a much more far-reaching program of reform, and Manasseh of Judah is given an opportunity to repent of his sins, apparently to account for his long reign. It is usually assumed that the author of Chronicles used Kings as a source and emphasised different areas as he would have liked it to have been interpreted.
+
+See also 
+ Historicity of the Bible
+ Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)
+ Kings of Israel and Judah
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+
+Commentaries on Kings
+
+General
+
+External links
+
+Original text 
+ מלכים א Melachim Aleph – Kings A (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org)
+ מלכים ב Melachim Bet – Kings B (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org)
+
+Jewish translations 
+ 1 Kings at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society 1917 translation)
+ 2 Kings at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society 1917 translation)
+
+Christian translations 
+ 1 Kings
+ 2 Kings
+
+Other links 
+ "books of Kings." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
+ 
+ Books of Kings article  (Jewish Encyclopedia)
+ 1 & 2 Kings: introduction Forward Movement
+ 
+
+ 
+1st-millennium BC books
+7th-century BC books
+6th-century BC books
+Deuteronomistic history
+Historical books
+Nevi'im
+The Book of Ruth (, Megillath Ruth, "the Scroll of Ruth", one of the Five Megillot) is included in the third division, or the Writings (Ketuvim), of the Hebrew Bible. In most Christian canons it is treated as one of the historical books and placed between Judges and 1 Samuel.
+
+The book, written in Hebrew in the 6th–4th centuries BC, tells of the Moabite woman Ruth, who accepts Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, as her God and accepts the Israelite people as her own. In Ruth 1:16–17, Ruth tells Naomi, her Israelite mother-in-law, "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me."
+
+The book is held in esteem by Jewish converts, as is evidenced by the considerable presence of Boaz in rabbinic literature. It also functions liturgically, as it is read during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot ("Weeks").
+
+Structure
+The book is structured into four chapters.
+
+Act 1: Prologue and Problem: Death and Emptiness (1:1–22)
+Scene 1: Setting the scene (1:1–5)
+Scene 2: Naomi returns home (1:6–18)
+Scene 3: Arrival of Naomi and Ruth in Bethlehem (1:19–22)
+
+Act 2:  Ruth Meets Boaz, Naomi's Relative, on the Harvest Field (2:1–23)
+Scene 1: Ruth in the field of Boaz (2:1–17)
+Scene 2: Ruth reports to Naomi (2:18–23)
+
+Act 3:  Naomi Sends Ruth to Boaz on the Threshing Floor (3:1–18)
+Scene 1: Naomi Reveals Her Plan (3:1–5)
+Scene 2: Ruth at the threshing-floor of Boaz (3:6–15)
+Scene 3: Ruth reports to Naomi (3:16–18)
+
+Act 4:  Resolution and Epilogue:  Life and Fullness (4:1–22)
+Scene 1: Boaz with the men at the gate (4:1–12)
+Scene 2: A son is born to Ruth (4:13–17) 
+
+Genealogical appendix (4:18–22)
+
+Summary
+
+During the time of the judges, an Israelite family from Bethlehem (who are Ephrathites) — Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion —emigrate to the nearby country of Moab. Elimelech dies, and the sons marry two Moabite women: Mahlon weds Ruth and Chilion, Orpah.
+
+After about ten years, the two sons of Naomi also die in Moab (1:4). Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem. She tells her daughters-in-law to return to their own mothers and remarry. Orpah reluctantly leaves. However, Ruth demurs: "Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death parts me from you." (Ruth 1:16–17 NJPS).
+
+Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest and, in order to support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth goes to the fields to glean. As it happens, the field belongs to a man named Boaz, who is kind to her because he has heard of her loyalty to her mother-in-law. Ruth tells Naomi of Boaz's kindness, and Ruth continues to glean in his field through the remainder of barley and wheat harvests.
+
+Boaz, being a close relative of Naomi's husband's family, is therefore obliged by the levirate law to marry Ruth, Mahlon's widow, to carry on his family's inheritance. Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night where Boaz sleeps, directing Ruth to "uncover his feet and lie down" and await his instructions" (3:4). Ruth complies. On awakening, Boaz asks her who she is, and she replies: "I am your handmaid Ruth. Spread your robe over your handmaid, for you are a redeeming kinsman" (3:9 NJPS). Acknowledging he is a close relative, Boaz blesses her and agrees to do all that is required. He notes that "all the elders of my town know what a fine woman you are" (3:11 NJPS). However, Boaz advises her that she has a male relative closer than he. Ruth remains in submission at his feet until she returns to the city in the morning.
+
+Early that morning, Boaz goes to the city gate to meet with the other male relative before the town elders. (The relative is not named; indeed, Boaz addresses him as ploni almoni "so and so".) The relative, unwilling to jeopardize the inheritance of his own estate by marrying Ruth, relinquishes his right of redemption, thus freeing Boaz to marry Ruth. They transfer the property, redeeming it, and ratify the redemption by the nearer kinsman taking off his shoe and handing it over to Boaz. Ruth 4:7 notes for later generations that:
+Now this was formerly done in Israel in cases of redemption or exchange: to validate any transaction, one man would take off his sandal and hand it to the other. Such was the practice in Israel. (NJPS)
+
+Boaz and Ruth are then married and have a son. The women of the city celebrate Naomi's joy in finding a redeemer to preserve her family name. Naomi takes the child and places it on her bosom.
+
+The child is named Obed, whom the reader discovers is "the father of Jesse, the father of David" (Ruth 4:13–17); that is, he the grandfather of King David.
+
+The book concludes with an appendix tracing the Davidic genealogy all the way back from Perez, "whom Tamar bore to Judah", through to Obed, down to David.
+
+Composition
+The book does not name its author. It is traditionally ascribed to the prophet Samuel (11th century BCE), but Ruth's identity as a non-Israelite and the stress on the need for an inclusive attitude towards foreigners suggests an origin in the fifth century BCE, when intermarriage had become controversial (as seen in Ezra 9:1 and Nehemiah 13:1). A substantial number of scholars therefore date it to the Persian period (6th–4th centuries BCE). The genealogy that concludes the book is believed to be a post-exilic Priestly addition, as it adds nothing to the plot; nevertheless, it is carefully crafted and integrates the book into the history of Israel running from Genesis to Kings.
+
+Themes and background
+
+Levirate marriage and the "redeemers"
+The Book of Ruth illustrates the difficulty of trying to use laws given in books such as Deuteronomy as evidence of actual practice. Naomi plans to provide security for herself and Ruth by arranging a levirate marriage with Boaz. She instructs Ruth to uncover Boaz's feet after he had gone to sleep and to lie down. When Boaz wakes up, surprised to see a woman at his feet, Ruth explains that she wants him to redeem (marry) her. The usual interpretation is to see sexual allusions in this part of the story, with 'feet' as a euphemism for genitals.
+
+Since there is no heir to inherit Elimelech's land, custom required a close relative (usually the dead man's brother) to marry the widow of the deceased in order to continue his family line (Deuteronomy 25:5–10). This relative was called the goel, the "kinsman-redeemer". As Boaz was not Elimelech's brother, nor Ruth his widow, scholars refer to the arrangement here as "Levirate-like". A complication arises in the story when it is revealed that another man is a closer relative to Elimelech than Boaz and therefore has first claim on Ruth. This conflict is resolved through the custom that required land to stay in the family: a family could mortgage land to ward off poverty, but the law required a kinsman to purchase it back into the family (Leviticus 25:25ff). When Boaz meets the near kinsman at the city gate (the place where contracts were settled), the kinsman initially agrees to purchase Elimelech's (now Naomi's) land; but upon hearing he must also take Ruth as his wife, he withdraws his offer. Boaz thus becomes "kinsman-redeemer" to Naomi and Ruth.
+
+Mixed marriage
+The book can be read as a political parable relating to issues around the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (the 4th century BCE): unlike the story of Ezra–Nehemiah, where marriages between Jewish men and non-Jewish women were broken up, Ruth teaches that foreigners who convert to Judaism can become good Jews, foreign wives can become exemplary followers of Jewish law, and there is no reason to exclude them or their offspring from the community. Some believe the names of the participants suggest a fictional nature of the story: the husband and father was Elimelech, meaning "My God is King", and his wife was Naomi, "Pleasing", but after the deaths of her sons Mahlon, "Sickness", and Chilion, "Wasting", she asked to be called Mara, "Bitter". The reference to Moab raises questions, since in the rest of the biblical literature it is associated with hostility to Israel, sexual perversity, and idolatry, and  excluded an Ammonite or a Moabite from "the congregation of the ; even to their tenth generation". Despite this, Ruth the Moabite married a Judahite and even after his death still regarded herself a member of his family; she then married another Judahite and bore him a son who became an ancestor of David. Concerning this, the Mishnah says that only male Moabites are banned from the congregation.
+
+Contemporary interpretations
+Scholars have increasingly explored Ruth in ways which allow it to address contemporary issues. Feminists, for example, have recast the story as one of the dignity of labour and female self-sufficiency, and as a model for lesbian relations, while others have seen in it a celebration of the relationship between strong and resourceful women. Others have criticized it for its underlying, and potentially exploitative, acceptance of a system of patriarchy in which a woman's worth can only be measured through marriage and child-bearing. Yet others have seen it as a book that champions outcast and oppressed peoples.
+
+Genealogy: the ancestry of David from Ruth
+
+See also
+ Goel (Judaism)
+ Gleaning
+ Levirate marriage
+ Genealogy of Jesus
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+
+External links 
+
+Jewish translations and study guides
+ Ruth at Mechon Mamre – (Jewish Publication Society of America Version, 1917)
+ Jewish Virtual Library
+ Jewish Encyclopedia
+ Ruth – English translatin [with Rashi commentary]
+
+Christian translations and study guides
+
+ Book of Ruth for listening on Spotify 
+
+ The Kinsman Redeemer
+ Online Bible – GospelHall.org
+ Biblegateway
+ Bible Study on Cross-Cultural Love – InterVarsity website
+ Redeemed
+  Various versions
+
+Non-affiliated translations and study guides
+ The Heavenly Fire: Ruth (PDF) (Creative Commons translation with in-depth introduction and extensive translation notes)
+
+Encyclopedic entries
+ Catholic Encyclopedia
+
+ 
+6th-century BC books
+5th-century BC books
+4th-century BC books
+Ketuvim
+Moab
+Shavuot
+Historical books
+The Book of Esther (), also known in Hebrew as "the Scroll" ("the Megillah"), is a book in the third section (,  "Writings") of the Hebrew Bible. It is one of the five Scrolls () in the Hebrew Bible and later became part of the Christian Old Testament. The book relates the story of a Jewish woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and thwarts a genocide of her people. 
+
+The story takes place during the reign of King Ahasuerus in the Persian Empire. Queen Vashti, the wife of King Ahasuerus, is banished from the court for disobeying the king's orders. To find a new queen, a beauty pageant is held and Esther, a young Jewish woman living in Persia, is chosen as the new queen. Esther's cousin Mordechai, who is a Jewish leader, discovers a plot to kill all of the Jews in the empire by Haman, one of the king's advisors. Mordechai urges Esther to use her position as queen to intervene and save their people. Esther reveals her Jewish identity to the king and begs for mercy for her people. She exposes Haman's plot and convinces the king to spare the Jews. The holiday of Purim is established to celebrate the victory of the Jews of the empire over their enemies, and Esther becomes a hero to the Jewish people.
+
+The books of Esther and Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God. Traditional Judaism views the absence of God's overt intervention in the story as an example of how God can work through seemingly coincidental events and the actions of individuals.
+
+The book is at the center of the Jewish festival of Purim and is read aloud twice from a handwritten scroll, usually in the synagogue, during the holiday: once in the evening and again the following morning. The distribution of charity to the needy and the exchange of gifts of foods are also practices observed on the holiday that are mandated in the book.
+
+Setting and structure
+
+Setting 
+The biblical Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital of Susa (Shushan) in the third year of the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus. The name Ahasuerus is equivalent to Xerxes (both deriving from the Persian Khshayārsha), and Ahasuerus is usually identified in modern sources as Xerxes I, who ruled between 486 and 465 BCE, as it is to this monarch that the events described in Esther are thought to fit the most closely.
+
+Assuming that Ahasuerus is indeed Xerxes I, the events described in Esther began around the years 483–482 BCE, and concluded in March 473 BCE.
+
+Classical sources such as Josephus, the Jewish commentary Esther Rabbah and the Christian theologian Bar-Hebraeus, as well as the Greek Septuagint translation of Esther, instead identify Ahasuerus as either Artaxerxes I (reigned 465 to 424 BCE) or Artaxerxes II (reigned 404 to 358 BCE).
+
+On his accession, however, Artaxerxes II lost Egypt to pharaoh Amyrtaeus, after which it was no longer part of the Persian empire. In his Historia Scholastica Petrus Comestor identified Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1) as Artaxerxes III (358–338 BCE) who reconquered Egypt.
+
+Structure 
+The Book of Esther consists of an introduction (or exposition) in chapters 1 and 2; the main action (complication and resolution) in chapters 3 to 9:19; and a conclusion in 9:20–10:3.
+
+The plot is structured around banquets (Heb. מִשְׁתֶּה, mishteh), a word that occurs twenty times in Esther and only 24 times in the rest of the Hebrew bible. This is appropriate given that Esther describes the origin of a Jewish feast, the feast of Purim, but Purim itself is not the subject and no individual feast in the book is commemorated by Purim. The book's theme, rather, is the reversal of destiny through a sudden and unexpected turn of events: the Jews seem destined to be destroyed, but instead are saved. In literary criticism such a reversal is termed "peripety", and while on one level its use in Esther is simply a literary or aesthetic device, on another it is structural to the author's theme, suggesting that the power of God is at work behind human events.
+
+Summary 
+King Ahasuerus, ruler of the Persian Empire, holds a lavish 180-day banquet for his court and dignitaries from across the 127 provinces of his empire (Esther 1:1–4), and afterwards a seven-day banquet for all inhabitants of the capital city, Shushan (1:5–9). On the seventh day of the latter banquet, Ahasuerus orders the queen, Vashti, to display her beauty before the guests by coming before them wearing her crown (1:10–11). She refuses, infuriating Ahasuerus, who on the advice of his counselors removes her from her position as an example to other women who might be emboldened to disobey their husbands (1:12–19). A decree follows that "every man should bear rule in his own house" (1:20–22).
+
+Ahasuerus then makes arrangements to choose a new queen from a selection of beautiful young women from throughout the empire (2:1–4). Among these women is a Jewish orphan named Esther, who was raised by her cousin or uncle, Mordecai (2:5–7). She finds favour in the King's eyes, and is crowned his new queen, but does not reveal her Jewish heritage (2:8–20). Shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by two courtiers, Bigthan and Teresh, to assassinate Ahasuerus. The conspirators are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecai's service to the King is officially recorded (2:21–23).
+
+Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his viceroy (3:1). Mordecai, who sits at the palace gates, falls into Haman's disfavour, as he refuses to bow down to him (3:2–5). Haman discovers that Mordecai refuses to bow on account of his being a Jew, and in revenge plots to kill not just Mordecai, but all the Jews in the empire (3:6). He obtains Ahasuerus' permission to execute this plan, against payment of ten thousand talents of silver, and casts lots ("purim") to choose the date on which to do this the thirteenth of the month of Adar (3:7–12). A royal decree is issued throughout the kingdom to slay all Jews on that date (3:13–15).
+
+When Mordecai discovers the plan, he goes into mourning and implores Esther to intercede with the King (4:1–5). But she is afraid to present herself to the King unsummoned, an offense punishable by death (4:6–12). Instead, she directs Mordecai to have all Jews fast for three days for her, and vows to fast as well (4:15–16.). On the third day she goes to Ahasuerus, who stretches out his sceptre to her to indicate that she is not to be punished (5:1–2). She invites him to a feast in the company of Haman (5:3–5). During the feast, she asks them to attend a further feast the next evening (5:6–8). Meanwhile, Haman is again offended by Mordecai and, at his wife's suggestion, has a gallows built to hang him (5:9–14).
+
+That night, Ahasuerus cannot sleep, and orders the court records be read to him (6:1). He is reminded that Mordecai interceded in the previous plot against his life, and discovers that Mordecai never received any recognition (6:2–3). Just then, Haman appears to request the King's permission to hang Mordecai, but before he can make this request, Ahasuerus asks Haman what should be done for the man that the King wishes to honour (6:4–6). Assuming that the King is referring to Haman himself, Haman suggests that the man be dressed in the King's royal robes and crown and led around on the King's royal horse, while a herald calls: "See how the King honours a man he wishes to reward!" (6:7–9). To his surprise and horror, the King instructs Haman to do so to Mordecai (6:10–11).
+
+Immediately afterwards, Ahasuerus and Haman attend Esther's second banquet. The King promises to grant her any request, and she reveals that she is Jewish and that Haman is planning to exterminate her people, including herself (7:1–6). Overcome by rage, Ahasuerus leaves the room; meanwhile Haman stays behind and begs Esther for his life, falling upon her in desperation (7:7). The King returns in at this very moment and thinks Haman is assaulting the queen; this makes him angrier and he orders Haman hanged on the very gallows that Haman had prepared for Mordecai (7:8–10).
+
+Unable to annul a formal royal decree, the King instead adds to it, permitting the Jews to join together and destroy any and all of those seeking to kill them (8:1–14). On 13 Adar, Haman's ten sons and 500 other men are killed in Shushan (9:1–12). Upon hearing of this Esther requests it be repeated the next day, whereupon 300 more men are killed (9:13–15). Over 75,000 people are killed by the Jews, who are careful to take no plunder (9:16–17). Mordecai and Esther send letters throughout the provinces instituting an annual commemoration of the Jewish people's redemption, in a holiday called Purim (lots) (9:20–28). Ahasuerus remains very powerful and continues his reign, with Mordecai assuming a prominent position in his court (10:1–3).
+
+Authorship and date 
+
+The Megillat Esther (Book of Esther) became the last of the 24 books of the Tanakh to be canonized by the Sages of the Great Assembly. According to the Talmud, it was a redaction by the Great Assembly of an original text by Mordecai. It is usually dated to the 4th century BCE. 
+
+The Greek book of Esther, included in the Septuagint, is a retelling of the events of the Hebrew Book of Esther rather than a translation and records additional traditions which do not appear in the traditional Hebrew version, in particular the identification of Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes and details of various letters. It is dated around the late 2nd to early 1st century BCE. The Coptic and Ethiopic versions of Esther are translations of the Greek rather than the Hebrew Esther.
+
+A Latin version of Esther was produced by Jerome for the Vulgate. It translates the Hebrew Esther but interpolates translations of the Greek Esther where the latter provides additional material. Predating the Vulgate, however, the Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") was apparently translated from a different Greek version not included in the Septuagint.
+
+Several Aramaic targums of Esther were produced in the Middle Ages, of which three survive – the Targum Rishon ("First Targum" or 1TgEsth) and Targum Sheni ("Second Targum" or 2TgEsth) dated –1000 CE, which include additional legends relating to Purim, and the Targum Shelishi ("Third Targum" or 3TgEsth), which Berliner and Goshen-Gottstein argued was the ur-Targum from which the others had been expanded, but which others consider only a late recension of the same. 3TgEsth is the most manuscript-stable of the three, and by far the most literal.
+
+Historicity 
+
+The apparent historical difficulties, the internal inconsistencies, the pronounced symmetry of themes and events, the plenitude of quoted dialogue, and the gross exaggeration in the reporting of numbers (involving time, money, and people) all point to Esther as a work of fiction, its vivid characters (except for Xerxes) being the product of the author's creative imagination. There is no reference to known historical events in the story; a general consensus, though this consensus has been challenged, has maintained that the narrative of Esther was invented in order to provide an aetiology for Purim, and the name Ahasuerus is usually understood to refer to a fictionalized Xerxes I, who ruled the Achaemenid Empire between 486 and 465 BCE.
+
+The book of Esther has more Akkadian and Aramaic loanwords than any other biblical work and the names of the key protagonists, Mordechai and Esther, for example, have been read as  allusions to the gods Marduk and Ishtar, who, symbolizing respectively Babylonia and Assyria, were twin powers that brought about the fall of Susa, where the narrative of Esther is set and  where the Elamite god  Humban/Humman (compare Haman) exercised divine sovereignty. Purim practices like eating oznei Haman (Haman's ears), ear-shaped loaves of bread or pieces of pastry are similar to those in Near Eastern ritual celebrations of Ishtar's cosmic victory. Likewise other elements in Purim customs such as making a racket with a ratchet,  masquerading and drunkenness have all been adduced to propose that such a kind of pagan festival akin to rites associated with Ishtar of Ninevah, which shares these same features, lay behind the development of this story.
+
+Biblical scholar Michael D. Coogan further argues that the book contains specific details regarding certain subject matter (for example, Persian rule) which are historically inaccurate. For example, Coogan discusses an inaccuracy regarding the age of Esther's cousin (or, according to others, uncle) Mordecai. In Esther 2:5–6, either Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish is identified as having been exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 BCE: "Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, among those taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah". If this refers to Mordecai, he would have had to live over a century to have witnessed the events described in the Book of Esther. However, the verse may be read as referring not to Mordecai's exile to Babylon, but to his great-grandfather Kish's exile.
+
+In her article "The Book of Esther and Ancient Storytelling", biblical scholar Adele Berlin discusses the reasoning behind scholarly concern about the historicity of Esther. Much of this debate relates to the importance of distinguishing history and fiction within biblical texts, as Berlin argues, in order to gain a more accurate understanding of the history of the Israelite people. Berlin quotes a series of scholars who suggest that the author of Esther did not mean for the book to be considered as a historical writing, but intentionally wrote it to be a historical novella. The genre of novellas under which Esther falls was common during both the Persian and Hellenistic periods to which scholars have dated the book of Esther.
+
+However, there are certain elements of the book of Esther that are historically accurate. The story told in the book of Esther takes place during the rule of Ahasuerus, who amongst others has been identified as the 5th-century Persian king Xerxes I (reigned 486–465 BCE). The author also displays an accurate knowledge of Persian customs and palaces. However, according to Coogan, considerable historical inaccuracies remain throughout the text, supporting the view that the book of Esther is to be read as a historical novella which tells a story describing historical events but is not necessarily historical fact.
+
+Historical reading 
+
+Those arguing in favour of a historical reading of Esther most commonly identify Ahasuerus with Xerxes I (ruled 486–465 BCE), although in the past it was often assumed that he was Artaxerxes II (ruled 405–359 BCE). The Hebrew Ahasuerus (ʔaḥašwērōš) is most likely derived from Persian Xšayārša, the origin of the Greek Xerxes. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Xerxes sought his harem after being defeated in the Greco-Persian Wars. He makes no reference to individual members of the harem except for a domineering Queen consort named Amestris, whose father, Otanes, was one of Xerxes's generals. (In contrast, the Greek historian Ctesias refers to a similar father-in-law/general figure named Onaphas.) Amestris has often been identified with Vashti, but this identification is problematic, as Amestris remained a powerful figure well into the reign of her son, Artaxerxes I, whereas Vashti is portrayed as dismissed in the early part of Xerxes's reign. Alternative attempts have been made to identify her with Esther, although Esther is an orphan whose father was a Jew named Abihail.
+
+As for the identity of Mordecai, the similar names Marduka and Marduku have been found as the name of officials in the Persian court in over thirty texts from the period of Xerxes I and his father Darius I, and may refer to up to four individuals, one of whom might be the model for the biblical Mordecai.
+
+The "Old Greek" Septuagint version of Esther translates the name Ahasuerus as Artaxerxes, a Greek name derived from the Persian Artaxšaθra. Josephus too relates that this was the name by which he was known to the Greeks, and the Midrashic text Esther Rabba also makes the identification. Bar-Hebraeus identified Ahasuerus explicitly as Artaxerxes II; however, the names are not necessarily equivalent: Hebrew has a form of the name Artaxerxes distinct from Ahasuerus, and a direct Greek rendering of Ahasuerus is used by both Josephus and the Septuagint for occurrences of the name outside the Book of Esther. Instead, the Hebrew name Ahasuerus accords with an inscription of the time that notes that Artaxerxes II was named also Aršu, understood as a shortening of Aḫšiyaršu the Babylonian rendering of the Persian Xšayārša (Xerxes), through which the Hebrew ʔaḥašwērōš (Ahasuerus) is derived. Ctesias related that Artaxerxes II was also called Arsicas which is understood as a similar shortening with the Persian suffix -ke that is applied to shortened names. Deinon related that Artaxerxes II was also called Oarses which is also understood to be derived from Xšayārša.
+
+Another view attempts to identify him instead with Artaxerxes I (ruled 465–424 BCE), whose Babylonian concubine, Kosmartydene, was the mother of his son Darius II (ruled 424–405 BCE). Jewish tradition relates that Esther was the mother of a King Darius and so some try to identify Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes I and Esther with Kosmartydene.
+
+Based on the view that the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit is identical with that of the Book of Esther, some have also identified him as Nebuchadnezzar's ally Cyaxares (ruled 625–585 BCE). In certain manuscripts of Tobit, the former is called Achiachar, which, like the Greek Cyaxares, is thought to be derived from Persian Huwaxšaθra. Depending on the interpretation of Esther 2:5–6, Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish was carried away from Jerusalem with Jeconiah by Nebuchadnezzar, in 597 BCE. The view that it was Mordecai would be consistent with the identification of Ahasuerus with Cyaxares. Identifications with other Persian monarchs have also been suggested.
+
+Jacob Hoschander has argued that the name of Haman and that of his father Hamedatha are mentioned by Strabo as Omanus and Anadatus, worshipped with Anahita in the city of Zela. Hoschander suggests that Haman may, if the connection is correct, be a priestly title and not a proper name. Strabo's names are unattested in Persian texts as gods; however the Talmud and Josephus interpret the description of courtiers bowing to Haman in Esther 3:2 as worship. (Other scholars assume "Omanus" refers to Vohu Mana.)
+
+In his Historia Scholastica Petrus Comestor identified Ahasuerus (Esther 1:1) as Artaxerxes III who reconquered Egypt.
+
+Interpretation 
+In the Book of Esther, the Tetragrammaton does not appear, but some argue it is present, in hidden form, in four complex acrostics in Hebrew: the initial or last letters of four consecutive words, either forwards or backwards comprise YHWH. These letters were distinguished in at least three ancient Hebrew manuscripts in red.
+
+Christine Hayes contrasts the Book of Esther with apocalyptic writings, the Book of Daniel in particular: both Esther and Daniel depict an existential threat to the Jewish people, but while Daniel commands the Jews to wait faithfully for God to resolve the crisis, in Esther the crisis is resolved entirely through human action and national solidarity. God, in fact, is not mentioned, Esther is portrayed as assimilated to Persian culture, and Jewish identity in the book is an ethnic category rather than a religious one.
+
+This contrasts with traditional Jewish commentaries, such as the commentary of the Vilna Gaon, which states "But in every verse it discusses the great miracle. However, this miracle was in a hidden form, occurring through apparently natural processes, not like the Exodus from Egypt, which openly revealed the might of God." This follows the approach of the Talmud, which states that "(The Book of) Esther is referenced in the Torah in the verse 'And I shall surely hide (in Hebrew, 'haster astir,' related to 'Esther') My Face from them on that day.
+
+Although marriages between Jews and Gentiles are not permitted in orthodox Judaism, even in case of Pikuach nefesh, Esther is not regarded as a sinner, because she remained passive, and risked her life to save that of the entire Jewish people.
+
+The Vanishing Jew: A Wake-Up Call From the Book of Esther by Michael Eisenberg looks at the Megilla from the perspective of economic philosophy and the struggle for money, power and control.
+
+Additions to Esther 
+
+An additional six chapters appear interspersed in Esther in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible. This was noted by Jerome in compiling the Latin Vulgate. Additionally, the Greek text contains many small changes in the meaning of the main text. Jerome recognized the former as additions not present in the Hebrew Text and placed them at the end of his Latin translation. This placement and numbering system is used in Catholic Bible translations based primarily on the Vulgate, such as the Douay–Rheims Bible and the Knox Bible, with chapters numbered up to 16. In contrast, the 1979 revision of the Vulgate, the Nova Vulgata, incorporates the additions to Esther directly into the narrative itself, as do most modern Catholic English translations based on the original Hebrew and Greek (e.g., Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, New American Bible, New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition). The numbering system for the additions therefore differs with each translation. The Nova Vulgata accounts for the additional verses by numbering them as extensions of the verses immediately following or preceding them (e.g., Esther 11:2–12 in the old Vulgate becomes Esther 1:1a–1k in the Nova Vulgata), while the NAB and its successor, the NABRE, assign letters of the alphabet as chapter headings for the additions (e.g., Esther 11:2–12:6 in the Vulgate becomes Esther A:1–17). The RSVCE and the NRSVCE place the additional material into the narrative, but retain the chapter and verse numbering of the old Vulgate.
+
+Contents
+These additions are:
+ an opening prologue that describes a dream had by Mordecai, printed ahead of chapter 1 in RSVCE
+ the contents of the decree against the Jews, included within chapter 3 in RSVCE
+an extension to the dialogue betweeh Hathach and Mordecai, placed after 4:8 in RSVCE
+ prayers for God's intervention offered by Mordecai and by Esther, both in chapter in RSVCE
+ an expansion of the scene in which Esther appears before the king, with a mention of God's intervention, included in chapter 5 in RSVCE
+ a copy of the decree in favor of the Jews, added to chapter 8 in RSVCE
+ a passage in which Mordecai interprets his dream (from the prologue) in terms of the events that followed, added to chapter 10 in RSVCE
+ a colophon appended to the end of chapter 10, also referenced as 11:1, which reads:
+
+It is unclear to which version of Greek Esther this colophon refers, and who exactly are the figures mentioned in it.
+
+By the time the Greek version of Esther was written, the foreign power visible on the horizon as a future threat to Judah was the kingdom of Macedonia under Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persian empire about 150 years after the time of the story of Esther; the Septuagint version noticeably calls Haman a "Bougaion" (), possibly in the Homeric sense of "bully" or "braggart", whereas the Hebrew text describes him as an Agagite.
+
+Canonicity
+The canonicity of these Greek additions has been a subject of scholarly disagreement practically since their first appearance in the Septuagint. Martin Luther, being perhaps the most vocal Reformation-era critic of the work, considered even the original Hebrew version to be of very doubtful value.
+
+The Council of Trent, the summation of the Counter-Reformation, reconfirmed the entire book, both Hebrew text and Greek additions, as canonical. The Book of Esther is used twice in commonly used sections of the Catholic Lectionary. In both cases, the text used is not only taken from a Greek addition. The readings also include the prayer of Mordecai, and nothing of Esther's own words is ever used. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint version of Esther, as it does for all of the Old Testament.
+
+In contrast, the additions are included in the Biblical apocrypha, usually printed in a separate section (if at all) in Protestant bibles. The additions, called "The rest of the Book of Esther", are specifically listed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, Article VI, of the Church of England as non-canonical, though "read for example of life and instruction of manners".
+
+Modern retelling
+
+See also
+Grager
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Citations
+
+Sources 
+
+ 
+ 
+ Beal, Timothy K (Timothy Beal). The Book of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, Annihilation, and Esther. NY: Routledge, 1997. Postmodern theoretical apparatus, e.g. Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas
+ Extract from The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther by Adele Berlin: Liberal Jewish view.
+ Grossman, Jonathan, Esther: The Outer Narrative and the Hidden Reading, Winona Lake, IN.: Eisenbrauns, 2011.
+ 
+ 
+ Sasson, Jack M. "Esther" in Alter and Kermode, pp. 335–341, literary view
+ The Historicity of Megillat Esther: Gil Student's survey of scholarship supporting a historical reading of Esther
+ Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East by Theodor Gaster. 1950.
+ White, Sidnie Ann. "Esther: A Feminine Model for Jewish Diaspora" in Newsom
+ Esther (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
+ Cumming, Rev. J. Elder DD The Book of Esther: Its spiritual teaching London: The Religious Tract Society, 1913
+ Fischer, James A. Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther. Collegeville Bible Commentary. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1986.
+ Hudson, J. Francis Esther: For Such a Time as This. From Character and Charisma series. Kingsway, 2000.
+ 
+ Levenson, Jon D. Esther. Old Testament Library Series. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1997.
+ McConville, John C. L. Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Daily Study Bible Series. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985.
+ Moore, Carey A. Esther. Anchor Bible, vol. 7B. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.
+ Paton, Lewis B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark, 1908.
+ Hazony, Yoram. God and Politics in Esther. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
+ Shurpin, Yehuda, How Could Esther Marry a Non-Jewish King?, Chabad.org.
+
+Further reading
+
+External links 
+
+ Eliezer Melamed, Purim and Reading the Megillah in Peninei Halakha site.
+
+Text and translations 
+ Jewish translations
+ Esther (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
+ Purim insights to Megillat Esther
+ Mechon Mamre Full text, Aleppo Codex: text of Esther in Hebrew
+ Christian translations
+ Introduction to the Book of Esther
+
+Physical relics 
+ Catalogue of Illuminated Esther Scrolls by Dagmara Budzioch, the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art, the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
+Scroll of the Book of Esther, illustrated, Italy, 1747.
+
+ 
+4th-century BC books
+Esther (parts)
+Esther
+Esther, Book of
+Purim
+Historical books
+The railway system in Great Britain is the oldest railway system in history. The first locomotive-hauled public railway opened in 1825, which was followed by an era of rapid expansion. Most of the track is managed by Network Rail, which in 2017 had a network of  of standard-gauge lines, of which  were electrified. These lines range from single to quadruple track or more. In addition, some cities have separate metro, light rail and tram systems (including the extensive and historic London Underground). There are also many private railways (some of them narrow-gauge), which are primarily short lines for tourists. The main rail network is connected with that of continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel and High Speed 1 (originally the Channel Tunnel Rail Link), which fully opened in 1994 and 2007 respectively.
+
+In 2019, there were 1.738 billion journeys on the National Rail network, making the British network the fifth most used in the world (Great Britain ranks 23rd in world population). Unlike a number of other countries, rail travel in the United Kingdom has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, with passenger numbers approaching their highest ever level (see usage figures below). This has coincided with the privatisation of British Rail, but the cause of this increase is unclear. The growth is partly attributed to a shift away from private motoring due to growing road congestion and increasing petrol prices, but also to the overall increase in travel due to affluence. Passenger journeys in Britain grew by 88% over the period 1997–98 to 2014 as compared to 62% in Germany, 41% in France and 16% in Spain.
+
+The United Kingdom is a member of the International Union of Railways (UIC). The UIC country code for United Kingdom is 70. The UK has the 17th largest railway network in the world; despite many lines having closed in the 20th century, due to the Beeching cuts, it remains one of the densest networks. It is one of the busiest railways in Europe, with 20% more train services than France, 60% more than Italy, and more than Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Norway combined, as well as representing more than 20% of all passenger journeys in Europe. The rail industry employs 115,000 people and supports another 250,000 through its supply chain.
+
+After the initial period of rapid expansion following the first public railways in the early 19th century, from about 1900 onwards the network suffered from gradual attrition, and more severe rationalisation in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the network has again been growing since the 1980s. The UK was ranked eighth among national European rail systems in the 2017 European Railway Performance Index for intensity of use, quality of service and safety performance.
+To cope with increasing passenger numbers, there is a large programme of upgrades to the network, including Thameslink, Crossrail, electrification of lines, in-cab signalling, new inter-city trains and new high-speed lines.
+
+Historical overview
+
+According to historians David Brandon and Alan Brooke, the railways brought into being our modern world:
+They stimulated demand for building materials, coal, iron and, later, steel. Excelling in the bulk movement of coal, they provided the fuel for the furnaces of industry and for domestic fireplaces. Millions of people were able to travel who had scarcely ever travelled before. Railways enabled mail, newspapers, periodicals and cheap literature to be distributed easily, quickly and cheaply allowing a much wider and faster dissemination of ideas and information. They had a significant impact on improving diet....[and enabled] a proportionately smaller agricultural industry was able to feed a much larger urban population....They employed huge quantities of labour both directly and indirectly.  They helped Britain to become the ‘Workshop of the World’ by reducing transport costs not only of raw materials but of finished goods, large amounts of which were exported....[T]oday's global corporations originated with the great limited liability railway companies....By the third quarter of the nineteenth century, there was scarcely any person living in Britain whose life had not been altered in some way by the coming of the railways. Railways contributed to the transformation of Britain from a rural to a predominantly urban society.
+
+The railways started with the local isolated wooden wagonways in 1560s using horses. These wagonways then spread, particularly in mining areas. The system was later built as a patchwork of local lines operated by small private railway companies. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, these amalgamated or were bought by competitors until only a handful of larger companies remained (see Railway Mania). The entire network was brought under government control during the First World War and a number of advantages of amalgamation and planning were revealed. However, the government resisted calls for the nationalisation of the network (first proposed by 19th century Prime Minister William Gladstone as early as the 1830s). Instead, from 1 January 1923, almost all the remaining companies were grouped into the "big four": the Great Western Railway, the London and North Eastern Railway, the London Midland and Scottish Railway and the Southern Railway companies (there were also a number of other joint railways such as the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway and the Cheshire Lines Committee as well as special joint railways such as the Forth Bridge Railway, Ryde Pier Railway and at one time the East London Railway). The "Big Four" were joint-stock public companies and they continued to run the railway system until 31 December 1947.
+
+The growth in road transport during the 1920s and 1930s greatly reduced revenue for the rail companies. Rail companies accused the government of favouring road haulage through the subsidised construction of roads. The railways entered a slow decline owing to a lack of investment and changes in transport policy and lifestyles. During World War II, the companies' managements joined together, effectively forming one company. A maintenance backlog developed during the war and the private sector only had two years to deal with this after the war ended. After 1945, for both practical and ideological reasons, the government decided to bring the rail service into the public sector.
+
+Nationalisation
+
+From the start of 1948, the "big four" were nationalised to form British Railways (latterly British Rail) under the control of the British Transport Commission. Although BR was a single entity, it was divided into six (later five) regional authorities in accordance with the existing areas of operation. Though there were few initial changes to the service, usage increased and the network became profitable. Regeneration of track and railway stations was completed by 1954. In the same year, changes to the British Transport Commission, including the privatisation of road haulage, ended the coordination of transport in Great Britain. Rail revenue fell and in 1955 the network again ceased to be profitable. The mid-1950s saw the rapid introduction of diesel and electric rolling stock, but the expected transfer back from road to rail did not occur and losses began to mount.
+
+The desire for profitability led to a major reduction in the network during the mid-1960s, with ICI manager Dr. Richard Beeching commissioned by the government under Ernest Marples with reorganising the railways. Many branch lines (and a number of main lines) were closed because they were deemed uneconomic ("the Beeching Axe" of 1963), removing much feeder traffic from main line passenger services. In the second Beeching report of 1965, only the "major trunk routes" were selected for large-scale investment, leading many to speculate the rest of the network would eventually be closed. This was never implemented by BR.
+
+Passenger services experienced a renaissance with the introduction of the InterCity 125 trains in the 1970s. Passenger levels fluctuated since then, increasing during periods of economic growth and falling during recessions. The 1980s saw severe cuts in government funding and above-inflation increases in fares, In the early 1990s, the five geographical Regions were replaced by a Sectored organisation, in which passenger services were organised into InterCity, Network SouthEast and Regional Railways sectors.
+
+Reorganisation and privatisation
+
+The Railways Act 1993 divided the railways up, with Railtrack taking ownership of British Rail's property portfolio, tracks, signals, bridges and tunnels, Rolling Stock Operating Companies, and train operating companies. 
+
+Passenger transport services were bundled together into franchises to facilitate cross-subsidy within franchises, with many regulations on ticket prices and types, regulated fare increases and "Parliamentary service" obligations.  Companies submit bids to the franchising authority - often the Secretary of State for Transport, Passenger Transport Authority, or devolved government - competing for the lowest subsidy requirement and to invest in the railway over the lifespan of the franchise.  There is also provision for subsidy between franchises, with profitable franchises demanding payments made to the government to cover a share of the losses from others. Examples of franchises include ScotRail, Great Western, and Southern Trains.
+
+Open Access Operators are entirely free to set their own services and fares unaffected by government regulations. Examples of such operators are Lumo and Grand Central, Hull Trains and Heathrow Express. In the case of the InterCity West Coast and InterCity East Coast franchises, applicants submit bids to return the most money to the government from operating the service. This has led to franchisees collapsing when passenger growth targets are not met as promised payments to the government cannot be paid and the franchise is exited early. 
+
+In 2023, Network Rail held over £59.1 billion in debt, and £1.176 billion interest payments. Many of these debts were incurred by Railtrack and transferred to Network Rail when it collapsed.  
+
+British Rail operations were privatised during 1994–1997. Ownership of the track and infrastructure passed to Railtrack, whilst passenger operations were franchised to individual private sector operators (originally there were 25 franchises) and the goods services sold outright (six companies were set up, but five of these were sold to the same buyer). The government said privatisation would see an improvement in passenger services and satisfaction (according to the National Rail Passenger survey) has indeed gone up from 76% in 1999 (when the survey started) to 83% in 2013 and the number of passengers not satisfied with their journey dropped from 10% to 6%. Since privatisation, passenger levels have more than doubled, and have surpassed their level in the late 1940s. Train fares cost 2.7% more than under British Rail in real terms on average. However, while the price of anytime and off-peak tickets has increased, the price of Advance tickets has dramatically decreased in real terms: the average Advance ticket in 1995 cost £9.14 (in 2014 prices) compared to £5.17 in 2014.
+
+Rail subsidies have increased from £bn in 1992–93 to £bn in 2015–16 (in current prices), although subsidy per journey has fallen from £ per journey to £ per journey. However, this masks great regional variation, as in 2014–15 funding varied from "£1.41 per passenger journey in England to £6.51 per journey in Scotland and £8.34 per journey in Wales."
+
+The public image of rail travel was severely damaged by a series of significant accidents after privatisation. These included the Hatfield accident, caused by a rail fragmenting due to the development of microscopic cracks. Following this, the rail infrastructure company Railtrack imposed over 1,200 emergency speed restrictions across its network and instigated an extremely costly nationwide track replacement programme. The consequent severe operational disruption to the national network and the company's spiralling costs set in motion a series of events which resulted in the collapse of the company and its replacement with Network Rail, a state-owned, "not-for-profit" company, with risks underwritten by the taxpayer. According to the European Railway Agency, in 2013 Britain had the safest railways in Europe based on the number of train safety incidents.
+
+At the end of September 2003, the first part of High Speed 1, a high-speed link to the Channel Tunnel and onward to France and Belgium, was completed, significantly adding to the rail infrastructure of the country. The rest of the link, from north Kent to London St Pancras opened in 2007. A major programme of remedial work on the West Coast Main Line started in 1997 and finished in 2008.
+
+In the 2010s, many upgrades are under way, such as Thameslink, Crossrail, the Northern Hub and electrification of the Great Western Main Line. Electrification plans for the Midland Main Line and the Transpennine line between Manchester and Leeds have been scaled back. Construction of High Speed 2 is underway, with a projected completion date of 2026 for Phase 1 (London to Birmingham) and 2033 for Phase 2. A poll of 1,500 adults in Britain in June 2018 showed that 64% support renationalising Britain's railways.
+
+Renationalisation 
+
+Currently six franchises are under public ownership and thus effectively nationalised. Four of them – LNER, Northern Trains, Southeastern, and TransPennine – are operators of last resort owned by the Department for Transport, whereas Transport for Wales Rail is owned by Transport for Wales, a Welsh-Government owned company, with no current plans to re-privatise the latter. On 1 April 2022, ScotRail was put under public ownership by the Scottish Government, under Transport Scotland as ScotRail Trains operating on the same day.
+
+The COVID-19 pandemic caused a huge fall in the number of passengers using the railways, with journeys in 2020 being about 22% of the previous year, before rising again as travel restrictions eased. During 2020, all train operating companies entered into emergency measures agreements with the UK and Scottish governments. Normal franchise mechanisms were amended, transferring almost all revenue and cost risk to the government, effectively 'renationalising' the network temporarily.
+
+In September 2020, the UK Government permanently got rid of the rail franchising system. On 20 May 2021, the Government announced a white paper that would transform the operation of the railways. The rail network will be partly renationalised, with infrastructure and operations brought together under the state-owned public body Great British Railways. Operations will be managed on a concessions model. According to the BBC, this represents the largest shake-up in the UK's railways since privatisation. On 18 November 2021, the government announced the biggest ever public investment in Britain's rail network costing £96 billion and promising quicker and more frequent rail connections in the North and Midlands: the Integrated Rail Plan includes substantially improved connections North-South as well as East-West and includes three new high speed lines.
+
+Passenger services
+
+Passenger services in Great Britain were divided into regional franchises and run by mostly private (that is, non-state owned) train operating companies from 1995 to 2020. These companies bid for seven- to eight-year contracts to run individual franchises. Most contracts in England are awarded by the Department for Transport (DfT), with the exception of Merseyrail, where the franchise is awarded by the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive. In Scotland, contracts for ScotRail, is awarded by Transport Scotland, and in Wales, contracts for Transport for Wales Rail, is awarded by Transport for Wales, although the latter is currently publicly-owned with no plans for franchising in the near future and ScotRail is planned to be publicly owned in 2022. Initially, there were 25 franchises, some franchises have since been combined, others nationalised. There are also a number of local or specialised rail services operated on an open access basis outside the franchise arrangements. Examples include Heathrow Express and Hull Trains. Many franchises were effectively abolished due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a new state-owned public body, Great British Railways, operating a concession contract system on the network from 2023.
+
+In the 2015–16 operating year, franchised services provided 1,718 million journeys totalling (64.7 billion billion passenger km) of travel, an increase over 1994–5 of 117% in journeys (from 761 million) and just over doubling the passenger miles. The passenger-miles figure, after being flat from 1965 to 1995, surpassed the 1947 figure for the first time in 1998 and continues to rise steeply.
+
+The key index used to assess passenger train performance is the Public Performance Measure, which combines figures for punctuality and reliability. From a base of 90% of trains arriving on time in 1998, the measure dipped to 75% in mid-2001 due to stringent safety restrictions put in place after the Hatfield crash in October 2000. However, in June 2015 the PPM stood at 91.2% after a period of steady increases in the annual moving average since 2003 until around 2012 when the improvements levelled off.
+
+Train fares cost 2.7% more than under British Rail in real terms on average. For some years, Britain has been said to have the highest rail fares in Europe, with peak-time and season tickets considerably higher than other countries, partly because rail subsidies in Europe are higher. However, passengers are also able to obtain some of the cheapest fares in Europe if they book in advance or travel at off-peak times or purchase 'day-return' tickets which cost little more than a single ticket.
+
+UK rail operators point out rail fare increases have been at a substantially lower rate than petrol prices for private motoring. The difference in price has also been blamed on the fact Britain has the most restrictive loading gauge (maximum width and height of trains that can fit through tunnels, bridges etc.) in the world which means any trains must be significantly narrower and less tall than those used elsewhere. This means British trains cannot be bought "off-the-shelf" and must be specially built to fit British standards.
+
+Average rolling-stock age fell slightly from the third quarter of 2001–02 to 2017–18, from 20.7 years old to 19.6 years old, and recent large orders from Bombardier and its acquirer Alstom, CAF, Hitachi and Stadler brought down the average age to around 15 years by March 2021.
+
+Although passengers rarely have cause to refer to either document, all travel is subject to the National Rail Conditions of Carriage and all tickets are valid subject to the rules set out in a number of so-called technical manuals, which are centrally produced for the network.
+
+Annual journey numbers
+Below are the estimated total number of journeys using heavy rail transport in Britain for each financial year. (This table does not include Eurostar, Underground or light rail services)
+
+The following table is according to the Office of Rail and Road and includes open access operators such as Grand Central and Hull Trains.
+
+Stations
+
+There are 2,579 passenger railway stations on the Network Rail network. This does not include the London Underground, nor other systems which are not part of the national network, such as heritage railways. Most date from the Victorian era and a number are in or on the edge of town and city centres. Major stations lie for the most part in large cities, with the largest conurbations (e.g. Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester) typically having more than one main station. London is a major hub of the network, with 12 main-line termini forming a "ring" around central London. Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol and Reading are major interchanges for many cross-country journeys that do not involve London. However, some important railway junction stations lie in smaller cities and towns, for example York, Crewe and Ely. Some other places expanded into towns and cities because of the railway network. Swindon, for example, was little more than a village before the Great Western Railway chose to site its locomotive works there. In many instances geography, politics or military considerations originally caused stations to be sited further from the towns they served until, with time, these issues could be overcome (for example, Portsmouth had its original station at Gosport).
+
+Inter-city
+
+High-speed inter-city rail (above ) was first introduced in Great Britain in the 1970s by British Rail. BR had pursued two development projects in parallel, the development of a tilting train technology, the Advanced Passenger Train (APT), and development of a conventional high-speed diesel train, the High Speed Train (HST). The APT project was abandoned, but the HST design entered service as the British Rail Classes 253, 254 and 255 trains. The prototype HST, the Class 252, reached a world speed record for diesel trains of 143.2 mph, while the main fleet entered service limited to a service speed of 125 mph, and were introduced progressively on main lines across the country, with a rebranding of their services as the InterCity 125. With electrification of the East Coast Main Line, high-speed rail in Great Britain was augmented with the introduction of the Class 91, intended for passenger service at up to 140 mph (225 km/h), and thus branded as the InterCity 225. The Class 91 units were designed for a maximum service speed of 140 mph, and running at this speed was trialled with a 'flashing green' signal aspect under the British signalling system. The trains were eventually limited to the same speed as the HST, to 125 mph, with higher speeds deemed to require cab signalling, which as of 2010 was not in place on the normal British railway network (but was used on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link). A final attempt by the nationalised British Rail at High Speed Rail was the cancelled InterCity 250 project in the 1990s for the West Coast Main Line.
+
+Post privatisation, a plan to upgrade the West Coast Main Line to speeds of up to 140 mph with infrastructure improvements were finally abandoned, although the tilting train Class 390 Pendolino fleet designed for this maximum speed of service were still built and entered service in 2002, and operates limited to 125 mph. Other routes in the UK were upgraded with trains capable of top speeds of up to 125 mph running with the introduction between 2000 and 2005 of Class 180 Adelante DMUs and the Bombardier Voyager DEMUs (Classes 220, 221 and 222).
+
+High Speed 1
+
+The first implementation of high-speed rail up to 186 mph in regular passenger service in Great Britain was the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now known as High Speed 1), when its first phase opened in 2003 linking the British end of the Channel Tunnel at Folkestone with Fawkham Junction in Kent. This is used by international only passenger trains for the Eurostar service, using Class 373 and Class 374 trains. The line was later extended all the way into London St Pancras in 2007.
+
+After the building of the first of a new Class 395 train fleet for use partly on High Speed 1 and parts of the rest of the UK rail network, the first domestic high-speed running over 125 mph (to about 140 mph) began in December 2009, including a special Olympic Javelin shuttle for the 2012 Summer Olympics. These services are operated by the South Eastern franchise.
+
+Intercity Express Programme
+
+For replacement of the domestic fleet of InterCity 125 and 225 trains on the existing national network, the Intercity Express Programme was announced. In 2009 it was announced the preferred rolling stock option for this project was the Hitachi Super Express family of multiple units, and they entered service in 2017 on the Great Western Main Line and 2019 on the East Coast Main Line. The trains will be capable of a maximum speed of 140 mph with "minor modifications", with the necessary signalling modifications required of the Network Rail infrastructure in Britain likely to come from the phased rollout of the Europe-wide European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS).
+
+Proposed and partly under construction
+
+High Speed 2
+
+Following several studies and consultations on high-speed rail, in 2009 the UK Government formally announced the High Speed 2 project, establishing a company to produce a feasibility study to examine route options and financing for a new high-speed railway in the UK. This study began on the assumption the route would be a new purpose-built high-speed line connected to High-Speed 1 to the Channel tunnel and from London to the West Midlands, via Heathrow Airport, relieving traffic on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). Conventional high-speed rail technology would be used as opposed to Maglev. The rolling stock would be capable of travelling on the existing Network Rail infrastructure if required, with the route intersecting with the existing WCML and the East Coast Main Line (ECML). A cancelled second phase of the project was planned to reach further north to Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, as well as linking into the Midland Main Line.
+
+Northern Powerhouse Rail
+
+In June 2014, the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, proposed a high-speed rail link Northern Powerhouse Rail (also known as High Speed 3 or High Speed North) between Liverpool and Newcastle/Sheffield/Hull. The line would use the existing route between Liverpool and Newcastle/Hull and a new route from to Sheffield will follow the same route to Manchester Victoria and then a new line from Victoria to Sheffield, with additional tunnels and other infrastructure.
+
+High-speed rolling stock
+As of August 2023 the following rolling stock on the UK network is capable of 125 mph or more:
+
+In 2011 the fastest timetabled start-to-stop run by a UK domestic train service was the Hull Trains 07.30 King's Cross to Hull, which covered the 125.4 km (78 miles) from Stevenage to Grantham in 42 minutes at an average speed of 179.1 km/h (111.4 mph). This was operated by a Class 180 diesel unit running "under the wires" at the time, and is now operated by Class 802 Paragon bi-mode units, operating on electric power on this section. This was matched by several Leeds to London Class 91-operated East Coast trains if their two-minute recovery allowance for this section is excluded from the public timetable.
+
+Local metro and other rail systems
+
+A number of towns and cities have rapid transit networks. Underground technology is used in the Glasgow subway, Merseyrail centred on Liverpool, London Underground centred on London, London Overground and the London Docklands Light Railway centred on London, and the Tyne and Wear Metro centred on Newcastle upon Tyne.
+
+Light rail systems in the form of trams are in Birmingham, Croydon, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Edinburgh. These systems use a combination of street running tramways and, where available, reserved right of way or former conventional rail lines in some suburbs. Blackpool has the one remaining traditional tram system. Monorails, heritage tramways, miniature railways and funiculars also exist in several places. In addition, there are a number of heritage (mainly steam) standard and narrow gauge railways, and a few industrial railways and tramways. Some lines which appear to be heritage operations sometimes claim to be part of the public transport network; the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway in Kent regularly transports schoolchildren.
+
+Most major cities have some form of commuter rail network. These include Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester.
+
+Goods services
+
+There are four main goods operating companies in the UK, the largest of which is DB Cargo UK (formerly DB Schenker, formerly English Welsh & Scottish (EWS)). There are also several smaller independent operators including Mendip Rail. Types of freight carried include intermodal – in essence containerised freight – and coal, metals, oil, and construction materials. The Beeching Cuts, in contrast to passenger services, greatly modernised the goods sector, replacing inefficient wagons with containerised regional hubs. Freight services had been in steady decline since the 1930s, initially because of the reduction in manufacturing and then road haulage's cost advantage in combination with higher wages. Since 1995, however, the amount of freight carried on the railways has increased sharply due to increased reliability and competition, as well as international services. In 2000, the Department for Transport's Transport Ten Year Plan called for an 80% increase in rail freight.
+
+Statistics on freight are specified in terms of the weight of freight lifted, and the net tonne kilometre, being freight weight multiplied by distance carried. 116.6 million tonnes of freight was lifted in the 2013–4 period, against 138 million tonnes in 1986–7, a decrease of 16%. However, a record 22.7 billion net tonne kilometres (14 billion net ton miles) of freight movement were recorded in 2013–4, against 16.6 billion (10.1 billion) in 1986–7, an increase of 38%. Coal made up 36% of the total net tonne kilometre, though its share was declining. Rail freight had increased its market share since privatisation (by net tonne kilometres) from 7.4% in 1998 to 11.1% in 2013. Growth was partly due to more international services including the Channel Tunnel and Port of Felixstowe, which is containerised. Nevertheless, as of 2008, network bottlenecks and insufficient investment in catering for 9' 6" high shipping containers restricted growth.
+
+A symbolic loss to the rail freight industry in Great Britain was the custom of the Royal Mail, which from 2004 discontinued use of its 49-train fleet, and switched to road haulage after a near 170-year-preference for trains. Mail trains had long been part of the tradition of the railways in Great Britain, famously celebrated in the film Night Mail, for which W. H. Auden wrote the poem of the same name. Although Royal Mail suspended mail trains in January 2004, this decision was reversed in December of the same year, and Class 325s are now used on some routes including between London, Warrington and Scotland.
+
+Train leasing services
+
+At the time of privatisation, the rolling stock of British Rail was sold to the new operators, as in the case of the freight companies, or to the three ROSCOs (rolling stock companies) which lease or hire stock to passenger and freight train operators. Leasing is relatively commonplace in transport since it enables operating companies to avoid the complication associated with raising sufficient capital to purchase assets; instead, assets are leased and paid for from ongoing revenue. Since 1994 there has been a growth in smaller spot-hire companies that provide rolling stock on short-term contracts. Many of these have grown thanks to the selling-off of locomotives by the large freight operators, especially EWS.
+
+Unlike other major players in the privatised railway system of Great Britain, the ROSCOs are not subject to close regulation by the economic regulatory authority. They were expected to compete with one another, and they do, although not in all respects.
+
+Competition codes of practice
+Since privatisation in 1995, the ROSCOs have faced criticism from several quarters – including passenger train operating companies such as GNER, Arriva and FirstGroup – on the basis they are acting as an oligopoly to keep lease prices higher than they would be in a competitive market. In 1998, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott asked rail regulator John Swift to investigate the market's operation and make recommendations. Many believed Prescott favoured much closer regulation of the ROSCOs, perhaps bringing them into the net of contract-specific regulation, i.e., requiring every rolling stock lease to be approved by the Rail Regulator before it could be valid. Swift's report did not find major problems with the operation of what was then an infant market, and instead recommended the ROSCOs sign up to voluntary, non-binding codes of practice in relation to their future behaviour. Prescott did not like this, but he did not have the legislative time allocation to do much about it. Swift's successor as Rail Regulator, Tom Winsor, agreed with Swift and the ROSCOs were happy to go along with codes of practice, coupled with the Rail Regulator's new powers to deal with abuse of dominance and anti-competitive behaviour under the Competition Act 1998. In establishing these codes, the Rail Regulator made it clear he expected the ROSCOs to adhere to their letter and spirit. The codes of practice were duly put in place and for the next five years the Rail Regulator received no complaints about ROSCO behaviour.
+
+White paper 2004
+
+In July 2004, the DFT's White Paper on the future of the railways expressed dissatisfaction with the operation of the rolling stock leasing market, and the belief there may have been excessive pricing on the part of the ROSCOs.
+
+In June 2006, Gwyneth Dunwoody, chair of the Transport Select Committee of the House of Commons, called for an investigation into the companies. Transport commentator Christian Wolmar has asserted the high cost of leasing is due to the way the franchises are distributed to the train operating companies. While the TOCs are negotiating for a franchise they have some freedom to propose different rolling stock options. It is only once they have won the franchise, however, they start negotiating with the ROSCOs. The ROSCO will know the TOC's requirements and also knows the TOC has to obtain a fixed mix of rolling stock which puts the train operating company at a disadvantage in its negotiations with the ROSCO.
+
+Competition Commission
+On 29 November 2006, following a June 2006 complaint by the DfT alleging excessive pricing by the ROSCOs, the Office of Rail Regulation (as it was then called) announced it was minded to refer the operation of the market for passenger rolling stock to the Competition Commission, citing, amongst other factors, problems in the DfT's own franchising policy as responsible for what may be regarded as a dysfunctional market. ORR said it will consult the industry and the public on what to do, and will publish its decision in April 2007. If the ORR does refer the market to the Competition Commission, there may well be a hiatus in investment in new rolling stock whilst the ROSCOs and their parent companies wait to hear what return they will be allowed to make on their train fleets. This could have the unintended consequence of intensifying the problem of overcrowding on some routes because TOCs will be unable to lengthen their trains or acquire new ones if they need the ROSCOs to co-operate in their acquisition or financing. Some commentators have suggested that such an outcome would be detrimental to the public interest. This is especially striking since the National Audit Office, in its November 2006 report on the renewal and upgrade of the West Coast Main Line, said that the capacity of the trains and the network will be full in the next few years and advocated train lengthening as an important measure to cope with sharply higher passenger numbers.
+
+The Competition Commission conducted an investigation and published provisional findings on 7 August 2008. The report was published on 7 April 2009. A press release summarised the recommendations as follows:
+
+ introduce longer franchise terms (in the region of 12 to 15 years or longer), which would allow TOCs to realise the benefits and recover the costs of switching to alternative new or used rolling stock over a longer period, which should increase the incentives and ability for TOCs to exercise choice
+ assess the benefits of alternative new or used rolling stock proposals beyond the franchise term and across other franchises when evaluating franchise bids. This will encourage a wider choice of rolling stock to be considered in franchise proposals, irrespective of franchise length
+ ensure franchise invitations to tender (ITTs) are specified in such a way franchise bidders are allowed a choice of rolling stock
+ requiring the ROSCOs to remove non-discrimination requirements from the Codes of Practice, which would provide greater incentives for the TOCs to seek improved terms from the ROSCOs
+ requiring rolling stock lessors to provide TOCs with a set list of information when making a lease rental offer for used rolling stock, which would give TOCs the ability to negotiate more effectively
+
+Leasing companies (ROSCO)
+See also Rolling stock company
+
+Three companies took over British Rail's rolling stock on privatisation:
+ Angel Trains –  has 4,400 vehicles in the UK owned by AMP Capital Investors, PSP Investments and International Public Partnerships.
+ Eversholt Rail Group – owns a fleet of over 4,000 vehicles and is owned by CK Hutchison Holdings and Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings.
+ Porterbrook – leases some 3,500 locomotives, trains and freight wagons; owned by a consortium including Alberta Investment Management Corporation, Allianz, Électricité de France and Vantage Infrastructure.
+
+A number of other companies have since entered the leasing market:
+ Sovereign Trains – a company that forms part of the same group as the open-access operator Grand Central. Sovereign Trains owned the rolling stock operated by Grand Central. Dissolved after the stock was sold to Angel Trains
+ QW Rail Leasing – a joint venture between the National Australia Bank and SMBC Leasing & Finance to provide the EMU rolling stock to London Overground.
+ Macquarie European Rail – in April 2009, Lloyds TSB entered the rolling stock market by funding the purchase of 30 new Class 379s for National Express East Anglia. In November 2012, Lloyds sold the company to Macquarie Group.
+ Beacon Rail, owns Class 68 and Class 88 locomotives, as well as , Class 313 and  DMUs.
+ UK Rail Leasing, owns some Class 56 locomotives
+Rock Rail Limited, owns Class 717 Siemens Desiro EMUs in service on Govia Thameslink Railway's Great Northern routes, Stadler Flirt Class 745 EMUs and Class 755 BMUs entering service on Abellio's Greater Anglia franchise, Bombardier Aventra Class 701 EMUs entering service on FirstGroup and MTR's South Western franchise, Hitachi Intercity BMUs for service on Abellio's East Midlands franchise and Hitachi Intercity EMUs and BMUs for service on First Group and Trenitalia's Avanti West Coast franchise
+
+Spot-hire companies
+Spot-hire companies provide short-term leasing of rolling stock.
+ MiddlePeak Railways, a locomotive hire & lease company with a stock of locomotives similar to Class 08 & NS 0-6-0 600 Class shunting locomotives, other locomotives, rolling stock & parts.
+ GL Railease owned by GATX Capital, and Lombard, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
+ Harry Needle Railroad Company, an industrial and main line locomotive hire and overhaul company. Operates Class 08 shunting locomotives, and Class 20 locomotives.
+Riviera Trains, a spot-hire company with a fleet of Class 47 locomotives. This company works closely with DB Cargo UK.
+West Coast Railways, a spot-hire and railtour-operator with a stock of Class 37 and Class 47 locomotives, as well as the rebuilt Class 57 locomotive.
+ Eastern Rail Services, a rolling stock spot hire company, providing leasing and hire, acquisition, parts supply and overhaul and technical advice.
+
+Statutory framework
+
+Railways in Great Britain are in the private sector, but they are subject to control by central government, and to economic and safety regulation by arms of government.
+
+In 2006, using powers in the Railways Act 2005, the DfT took over most of the functions of the now wound up Strategic Rail Authority. The DfT now itself runs competitions for the award of passenger rail franchises, and, once awarded, monitors and enforces the contracts with the private sector franchisees. Franchises specify the passenger rail services which are to be run and the quality and other conditions (for example, the cleanliness of trains, station facilities and opening hours, the punctuality and reliability of trains) which the operators have to meet. Some franchises receive a subsidy from the DfT for doing so, and some are cash-positive, which means the franchisee pays the DfT for the contract. Some franchises start life as subsidised and, over their life, move to being cash-positive.
+
+The other regulatory authority for the privatised railway is the Office of Rail and Road (previously the Office of Rail Regulation), which, following the Railways Act 2005, is the combined economic and safety regulator. It replaced the Rail Regulator on 5 July 2004. The Rail Safety and Standards Board still exists, however; established in 2003 on the recommendations of a public inquiry, it leads the industry's progress in health and safety matters.
+
+The principal modern railway statutes are:
+
+ Railways Act 1993' Competition Act 1998 (insofar as it confers competition powers on the Office of Rail and Road)
+ Transport Act 2000
+ Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003
+ Railways Act 2005
+
+Industry bodies
+
+Statutory authorities
+Office of Rail and Road 
+Department for Transport 
+UK Notified Bodies
+
+ Devolved authorities 
+Transport Scotland 
+Transport for Wales
+
+Network and signalling operations
+Railtrack (1996–2002)
+Network Rail (2002–) – (A "not for dividend" company limited by guarantee)
+
+Other national entities
+ Institution of Railway Operators
+ Rail Delivery Group 
+ Rail Freight Group 
+ Rail Passengers Council and Committees 
+ Rail Safety and Standards Board
+ Rail Forum Midlands 
+ Railway Industry Association
+ Railway Mission 
+ Railway Study Association
+
+Trade unions
+The railways are one of the most heavily unionised industrial sectors in the UK.
+Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF)
+National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT)
+Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA)
+
+Regional entitiesSee Passenger transport executive Transport for West Midlands 
+ TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) 
+ Merseytravel 
+ Metro (West Yorkshire Metro)
+ Nexus (Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive) 
+ Travel South Yorkshire (South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive)
+ SPT (Strathclyde Partnership for Transport) 
+ TfL (Transport for London)
+
+See List of companies operating trains in the United Kingdom.
+
+Freight companies
+GB Railfreight 
+DB Cargo UK
+Freightliner 
+Direct Rail Services 
+Colas Rail 
+Devon and Cornwall Railways 
+Mendip Rail
+
+Open access and other non-franchised passenger operators
+Eurostar 
+Grand Central 
+Heathrow Express 
+Hull Trains
+Venice-Simplon Orient Express (VSOE)
+
+1820s–1840s: Early companies
+This is only the earliest of the main line openings: for a more comprehensive list of the hundreds of early railways see List of early British railway companies
+Stockton and Darlington Railway (1825) – First steam-hauled passenger railway in the world.
+Canterbury and Whitstable Railway (1830) – First steam-hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets.
+Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830) – First InterCity passenger railway.
+Grand Junction Railway (1833) – The line built by the company was the first trunk railway to be completed in England, and arguably the world's first long-distance railway with steam traction.
+London and Greenwich Railway (1836) – First steam railway in the capital, the first to be built specifically for passengers, and the first elevated railway.
+London and Birmingham Railway (1837) –  First Intercity line to be built into London.
+Midland Counties Railway (1839)
+Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway (BDJR) (1839)
+North Midland Railway (1840)
+Taff Vale Railway (1840)
+
+Heritage and private
+
+Many lines closed by British Railways, including many closed during the Beeching cuts, have been restored and reopened as heritage railways. A few have been relaid as narrow-gauge but the majority are standard-gauge. Most use both steam and diesel locomotives for haulage. Most heritage railways are operated as tourist attractions and do not provide regular year-round train services.
+
+Proposed line re-openings
+Several pressure groups are campaigning for the re-opening of closed railway lines in Great Britain. These include:
+
+ Ashington–Bedlington–Newcastle
+ Marlow Branch (Bourne End–High Wycombe)
+ Cambridge–Oxford, East West Rail This project was approved by the Government in November 2011.
+ Carmarthen-Aberystwyth line
+ Colne–Skipton, Skipton-East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership
+ Great Central Railway Notts–Leicester
+ Lynn and Hunstanton Railway
+ Peak Rail: (Matlock–Bakewell). Under-funded line
+ Portishead Railway from Portishead to Bristol Temple Meads
+ South Staffordshire Line (Stourbridge–Walsall-Lichfield)
+ St Andrews Rail Link (Leuchars–St Andrews)
+ Wealden Line (Uckfield–Lewes)
+ Woodhead Line (Hadfield–Penistone)
+ York to Beverley Line (York–Beverley)
+
+From 1995 until 2009, 27 new lines (totalling 199 track miles) and 68 stations were opened, with 65 further new station sites identified by Network Rail or government for possible construction.
+On 15 June 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) published the report Connecting Communities: Expanding Access to the Rail Network, detailing schemes around England where it believed there was a commercial business case for passenger network expansion. The published proposals involved the re-opening or new construction of 40 stations, serving communities with populations of over 15,000, including 14 schemes involving the re-opening or reconstruction of rail lines for passenger services. These would be short-lead-time local projects, to be completed in timescales ranging from 2 years 9 months to 6 years, once approved by local and regional governments, Network Rail and the Department for Transport, complementing existing long-term national projects.
+
+Most populous towns without rail services
+
+This is a list of towns in England that do not have any sort of rail service. Services taken into account include National Rail, tram and metro services such as the Manchester Metrolink or the Tyne and Wear Metro. The first list is of separate towns.  The second is of towns that form part of larger conurbations.
+
+Built-up areas
+
+Built-up area subdivisions
+
+Links with adjacent countries
+ Great Britain (standard-gauge)
+ France (Eurostar) via the Channel Tunnel formerly by Train ferries. 
+ Belgium (Eurostar) via France using the Channel Tunnel.
+ Netherlands (Eurostar) via France and Belgium using the Channel Tunnel.
+
+Rail-ferry-rail services
+ Netherlands – Dutchflyer rail/sea/rail service
+ Ireland – SailRail service via Holyhead, Stranraer or Fishguard
+
+See also
+
+ References 
+
+ Citations 
+
+ Sources 
+
+Network Rail – Making a Fresh Start – National Audit Office report, 14 May 2004.
+Railway industry topic guides from the Institution of Mechanical EngineersOn The Wrong Line: How Ideology and Incompetence Wrecked Britain's Railways'', Christian Wolmar, Aurum Press Ltd. .
+
+External links
+
+ National Rail Official UK Rail timetable site
+
+ National Rail maps page  UK railway maps
+ BritRail  ATOC site with timetables, maps and cross-network passes for foreign travellers in UK
+ BritRail Passes Canada Canadian source for British Rail Passes And tickets
+ ScotlandRailways Scottish Rail site with timetables, maps and cross-network passes for foreign travellers in Scotland
+ Northumbrian Railways
+ Great Scenic Railways of Devon and Cornwall 
+ Collection of Google Earth locations of National Rail stations  (Requires Google Earth software) from the Google Earth Community forum
+British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British railway companies, and was privatised in stages between 1994 and 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission, it became an independent statutory corporation in January 1963, when it was formally renamed the British Railways Board.
+
+The period of nationalisation saw sweeping changes in the railway. A process of dieselisation and electrification took place. By 1968 steam locomotives had been entirely replaced by diesel and electric traction, except for the Vale of Rheidol Railway (a narrow-gauge tourist line). Passengers replaced freight as the main source of business, and one-third of the network was closed by the Beeching cuts of the 1960s in an effort to reduce rail subsidies.
+
+On privatisation, responsibility for track, signalling and stations was transferred to Railtrack (later brought under public control as Network Rail), with services run by train operating companies. The British Rail Double Arrow logo remains in place and is now employed as a generic symbol on street signs in Great Britain denoting railway stations.
+
+History
+
+Nationalisation in 1948 
+
+The rail transport system in Great Britain developed during the 19th century. After the grouping of 1923 under the Railways Act 1921, there were four large railway companies, each dominating its own geographic area: the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR). During World War I, the railways were under state control, which continued until 1921. Complete nationalisation had been considered, and the Railways Act 1921 is sometimes considered as a precursor to that, but the concept was rejected. Nationalisation was subsequently carried out after World War II, under the Transport Act 1947. This Act made provision for the nationalisation of the network as part of a policy of nationalising public services by Clement Attlee's Labour Government. British Railways came into existence as the business name of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission (BTC) on 1 January 1948 when it took over the assets of the Big Four.
+
+There were also joint railways between the Big Four and a few light railways to consider (see list of constituents of British Railways). Excluded from nationalisation were industrial lines like the Oxfordshire Ironstone Railway. The London Underground – publicly owned since 1933 – was also nationalised, becoming the London Transport Executive of the British Transport Commission. The Bicester Military Railway was already run by the government. The electric Liverpool Overhead Railway was also excluded from nationalisation.
+
+The Railway Executive was conscious that some lines on the (then very dense) network were unprofitable and hard to justify socially, and a programme of closures began almost immediately after nationalisation. However, the general financial position of BR became gradually poorer until an operating loss was recorded in 1955. The Executive itself had been abolished in 1953 by the Conservative government, and control of BR transferred to the parent Commission. Other changes to the British Transport Commission at the same time included the return of road haulage to the private sector; however, BR retained its own (smaller) inhouse road haulage service.
+
+1955 Modernisation Plan 
+
+The report, latterly known as the "Modernisation Plan", was published in January 1955. It was intended to bring the railway system into the 20th century. A government White Paper produced in 1956 stated that modernisation would help eliminate BR's financial deficit by 1962, but the figures in both this and the original plan were produced for political reasons and not based on detailed analysis. The aim was to increase speed, reliability, safety, and line capacity through a series of measures that would make services more attractive to passengers and freight operators, thus recovering traffic lost to the roads. Important areas included:
+ Electrification of principal main lines, in the Eastern Region, Kent, Birmingham to Liverpool/Manchester and Central Scotland
+ Large-scale dieselisation to replace steam locomotives
+ New passenger and freight rolling stock
+ Resignalling and track renewals
+ Modern marshalling yards
+ The closure of an unspecified but relatively small number of lines
+
+The government appeared to endorse the 1955 programme (costing £1.2 billion), but did so largely for political reasons. This included the withdrawal of steam traction and its replacement by diesel (and some electric) locomotives. Not all modernisations would be effective at reducing costs. The dieselisation programme gave contracts primarily to British suppliers, who had limited experience of diesel locomotive manufacture, and rushed commissioning based on an expectation of rapid electrification; this resulted in numbers of locomotives with poor designs and a lack of standardisation. At the same time, containerised freight was being developed. The marshalling yard building programme was a failure, being based on a belief in the continued viability of wagon-load traffic in the face of increasingly effective road competition, and lacking effective forward planning or realistic assessments of future freight. A 2002 documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 blamed the 1950s decisions for the "beleaguered" condition of the railway system at that time.
+
+The Beeching reports 
+
+During the late 1950s, railway finances continued to worsen; whilst passenger numbers grew after restoring many services reduced during the war, and in 1959 the government stepped in, limiting the amount the BTC could spend without ministerial authority. A White Paper proposing reorganisation was published in the following year, and a new structure was brought into effect by the Transport Act 1962. This abolished the commission and replaced it by several separate boards. These included a British Railways Board, which took over on 1 January 1963.
+
+Following semi-secret discussions on railway finances by the government-appointed Stedeford Committee in 1961, one of its members, Dr Richard Beeching, was offered the post of chairing the BTC while it lasted and then became the first Chairman of the British Railways Board.
+
+A major traffic census in April 1961, which lasted one week, was used in the compilation of a report on the future of the network. This report—The Reshaping of British Railways—was published by the BRB in March 1963. The proposals, which became known as the Beeching cuts, were dramatic. A third of all passenger services and more than 4,000 of the 7,000 stations would close. Beeching, who is thought to have been the author of most of the report, set out some dire figures. One third of the network was carrying just 1% of the traffic. Of the 18,000 passenger coaches, 6,000 were said to be used only 18 times a year or less. Although maintaining them cost between £3million and £4million a year, they earned only about £0.5million.
+
+Most of the closures were carried out between 1963 and 1970 (including some which were not listed in the report), while other suggested closures were not carried out. The closures were heavily criticised at the time. A small number of stations and lines closed under the Beeching programme have been reopened, with further reopenings proposed.
+
+A second Beeching report, "The Development of the Major Trunk Routes", followed in 1965. This did not recommend closures as such but outlined a "network for development". The fate of the rest of the network was not discussed in the report.
+
+Post-Beeching 
+The basis for calculating passenger fares changed in 1964. In future, fares on some routes—such as rural, holiday and commuter services—would be set at a higher level than on other routes; previously, fares had been calculated using a simple rate for the distance travelled, which at the time was 3d per mile second class, and 4½d per mile first class (equivalent to £ and £ respectively, in ).
+
+In 1966, a "Whites only" recruitment policy for guards at Euston station agreed between the local union branch and station management was dropped after the case of Asquith Xavier, a migrant from Dominica, who had been refused promotion on those grounds, was raised in Parliament and taken up by the then Secretary of State for Transport, Barbara Castle.
+
+Passenger levels decreased steadily from 1962 to the late 1970s, and reached a low in 1982. Network improvements included completing electrification of the Great Eastern Main Line from London to Norwich between 1976 and 1986 and the East Coast Main Line from London to Edinburgh between 1985 and 1990. A mainline route closure during this period of relative network stability was the -electrified Woodhead line between Manchester and Sheffield: passenger service ceased in 1970 and goods in 1981.
+
+The 1980s and 1990s saw the closure of some railways which had survived the Beeching cuts a generation earlier but which had seen passenger services withdrawn. This included the bulk of the Chester and Connah's Quay Railway in 1992, the Brierley Hill to Walsall section of the South Staffordshire line in 1993, while the Birmingham to Wolverhampton section of the Great Western Railway was closed in three phases between 1972 and 1992.
+
+A further British Rail report from a committee chaired by Sir David Serpell was published in 1983. The Serpell Report made no recommendations as such but did set out various options for the network, including, at their most extreme, a skeletal system of less than 2,000routekm (1,240miles). This report was not welcomed, and the government decided to quietly leave it on the shelf. Meanwhile, BR was gradually reorganised, with the regional structure finally being abolished and replaced with business-led sectors. This process, known as "sectorisation", led to far greater customer focus on the dedicated sectors.
+
+Transport Act 1968 
+
+Following the election of Labour in 1964, on a platform of revising many of the cuts, Tom Fraser instead authorised the closure 1,071 mi of railway lines, following the recommendations from the Beeching Report even lines not considered closing. After he resigned in 1967, his replacement Barbara Castle continued the line and station closures but introduced the first Government rail subsidies for socially necessary but unprofitable railways in the Transport Act 1968. Part of these provisions was the creation of a passenger transport executive or PTE within larger metropolitan areas. Prior to this, public transport was run by individual local authorities and private companies, with little co-ordination. The PTEs took over the responsibility (but not ownership) of managing local rail networks.
+
+The 1968 Act created five new bodies. These were:
+
+ West Midlands PTE on 1 October 1969
+ SELNEC PTE (South East Lancashire & North East Cheshire) on 1 November 1969 (now Greater Manchester)
+ Merseyside PTE on 1 December 1969 (now Liverpool City Region)
+ Tyneside PTE on 1 January 1970 (now Tyne and Wear)
+ Greater Glasgow PTE on 1 June 1973 (now Strathclyde)
+
+This was the first real subdivision of BR since its inception in 1949, and likely saved many lines earmarked for closure, notably the Liverpool, Crosby and Southport Railway, which now forms part of the Merseyrail network.
+
+Sectorisation 
+
+Upon sectorisation in 1982, three passenger sectors were created: InterCity, operating principal express services; London & South East (renamed Network SouthEast in 1986) operating commuter services in the London area; Provincial (renamed Regional Railways in 1989) responsible for all other passenger services. In the metropolitan counties local services were managed by the Passenger Transport Executives. Provincial was the most subsidised (per passenger km) of the three sectors; upon formation, its costs were four times its revenue. During the 1980s British Rail ran the Rail Riders membership club aimed at 5- to 15-year-olds.
+
+Because British Railways was such a large operation, running not just railways but also ferries, steamships and hotels, it has been considered difficult to analyse the effects of nationalisation.
+
+Prices rose quickly in this period, rising 108% in real terms from 1979 to 1994, as prices rose by 262% but RPI only increased by 154% in the same time.
+
+Branding
+
+Pre-1960s 
+Following nationalisation in 1948, British Railways began to adapt the corporate liveries on the rolling stock it had inherited from its predecessor railway companies. Initially, an express blue (followed by GWR-style Brunswick green in 1952) was used on passenger locomotives, and LNWR-style lined black for mixed-traffic locomotives, but later green was more widely adopted.
+
+Development of a corporate identity for the organisation was hampered by the competing ambitions of the British Transport Commission and the Railway Executive. The Executive attempted to introduce a modern Art Deco-style curved logo, which could also serve as the standard for station signage totems. BR eventually adopted the common branding of the BTC as its first corporate logo, a lion astride a spoked wheel, designed for the BTC by Cecil Thomas; on the bar overlaid across the wheel, the BTC's name was replaced with the words "British Railways". This logo, nicknamed the "Cycling Lion", was applied from 1948 to 1956 to the sides of locomotives, while the oval style was adopted for station signs across Great Britain, each coloured according to the appropriate BR region, using the Gill Sans font first adopted by LNER in 1923.
+
+In 1956, the BTC was granted a heraldic achievement by the College of Arms and the Lord Lyon, and then BTC chairman Brian Robertson wanted a grander logo for the railways. BR's second corporate logo (1956–1965), designed in consultation with Charles Franklyn, adapted the original, depicting a rampant lion emerging from a heraldic crown and holding a spoked wheel, all enclosed in a roundel with the "British Railways" name displayed across a bar on either side. This emblem soon acquired the nickname of the "Ferret and Dartboard". A variant of the logo with the name in a circle was also used on locomotives.
+
+1960s 
+
+The zeal for modernisation in the Beeching era drove the next rebranding exercise, and BR management wished to divest the organisation of anachronistic, heraldic motifs and develop a corporate identity to rival that of London Transport. BR's design panel set up a working party led by Milner Gray of the Design Research Unit. They drew up a Corporate Identity Manual which established a coherent brand and design standard for the whole organisation, specifying Rail Blue and pearl grey as the standard colour scheme for all rolling stock; Rail Alphabet as the standard corporate typeface, designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert; and introducing the now-iconic corporate Identity Symbol of the Double Arrow logo. Designed by Gerald Barney (also of the DRU), this arrow device was formed of two interlocked arrows across two parallel lines, symbolising a double-track railway. It was likened to a bolt of lightning or barbed wire, and also acquired a nickname: "the arrow of indecision". A mirror image of the double arrow was used on the port side of BR-owned Sealink ferry funnels. The new BR corporate identity and Double Arrow were rolled out in 1965, and the brand name of the organisation was truncated to "British Rail". It is now employed as a generic symbol on street signs in Great Britain denoting railway stations, and is still printed on railway tickets as part of the Rail Delivery Group's jointly managed National Rail brand.
+
+Post-1960s 
+
+The uniformity of BR branding continued until the process of sectorisation was introduced in the 1980s. Certain BR operations such as Inter-City, Network SouthEast, Regional Railways or Rail Express Systems began to adopt their own identities, introducing logos and colour schemes which were essentially variants of the British Rail brand. Eventually, as sectorisation developed into a prelude to privatisation, the unified British Rail brand disappeared, with the notable exception of the Double Arrow symbol, which has survived to this day and serves as a generic trademark to denote railway services across Great Britain. The BR Corporate Identity Manual is noted as a piece of British design history and there are plans for it to be re-published.
+
+Network
+
+Regions 
+With its creation in 1948, British Railways was divided into regions which were initially based on the areas the former Big Four operated in; later, several lines were transferred between regions. Notably, these included the former Great Central lines from the Eastern Region to the London Midland Region, and the West of England Main Line from the Southern Region to Western Region
+ Southern Region: former Southern Railway lines.
+ Western Region: former Great Western Railway lines.
+ London Midland Region: former London, Midland and Scottish Railway lines in England and Wales.
+ Eastern Region: former London and North Eastern Railway lines south of York.
+ Anglia Region: split from Eastern Region in 1988.
+ North Eastern Region: former London and North Eastern Railway lines in England north of York.
+ Scottish Region: all lines, regardless of the original company, in Scotland.
+
+The North Eastern Region was merged with the Eastern Region in 1967.
+
+Sectorisation 
+
+In 1982, the regions were abolished as the service provider (but retained for administration) and replaced by "business sectors", a process known as sectorisation.
+
+The passenger sectors were (by the early 1990s):
+ InterCity (express services).
+ Caledonian sleeper services (Night train services) (later transferred to ScotRail).
+ Gatwick Express (express service to/from Gatwick Airport)
+ Network SouthEast (London commuter services).
+ Regional Railways (regional services).
+ Alphaline (enhanced regional express passenger services) (Added in 1994)
+ ScotRail (regional and sub-intercity services in Scotland).
+ TransPennine Express (sub-intercity services in the North).
+
+In addition, the non-passenger sectors were: 
+ Trainload Freight took trainload freight. 
+ Railfreight Distribution took non-trainload freight. 
+ Freightliner took intermodal traffic. 
+ Rail Express Systems took parcels traffic.
+
+The maintenance and remaining engineering works were split off into a new company, British Rail Maintenance Limited. The new sectors were further subdivided into divisions.
+
+This ended the BR blue period as new liveries were adopted gradually. Infrastructure remained the responsibility of the regions until the "Organisation for Quality" initiative in 1991 when this too was transferred to the sectors. The Anglia Region was created in late 1987, its first General Manager being John Edmonds, who began his appointment on 19 October 1987. Full separation from the Eastern Region – apart from engineering design needs – occurred on 29 April 1988. It handled the services from  and , its western boundary being ,  and .
+
+The former BR network, with the trunk routes of the West Coast Main Line, East Coast Main Line, Great Western Main Line, Great Eastern Main Line and Midland Main Line, and other lines.
+
+Security 
+
+Policing on (and within) the network was carried out British Transport Police (BTP). In 1947 the Transport Act created the British Transport Commission (BTC), which unified the railway system. On 1 January 1949, the British Transport Commission Police (BTCP) were created, formed from the four old railway police forces, the London Transport Police, canal police and several minor dock forces. In 1957 the Maxwell-Johnson enquiry found that policing requirements for the railway could not be met by civil forces and that it was essential that a specialist police force be retained. On 1 January 1962, the British Transport Commission Police ceased to cover British Waterways property and exactly a year later when the BTC was abolished the name of the force was amended to the British Transport Police. This name and its role within policing on the rail network was continued post-1994.
+
+Finances 
+Despite its nationalisation in 1947 "as one of the 'commanding heights' of the economy", according to some sources British Rail was not profitable for most (if not all) of its history. Newspapers reported that as recently as the 1990s, public rail subsidy was counted as profit; as early as 1961, British Railways were losing £300,000 a day.
+
+Although the company was considered the sole public-transport option in many rural areas, the Beeching cuts made buses the only public transport available in some rural areas. Despite increases in traffic congestion and road fuel prices beginning to rise in the 1990s, British Rail remained unprofitable. Following sectorisation, InterCity became profitable. InterCity became one of Britain's top 150 companies, providing city centre to city centre travel across the nation from Aberdeen and Inverness in the north to Poole and Penzance in the south.
+
+Investment 
+In 1979 the incoming Conservative Government led by Margaret Thatcher was viewed as anti-railway, and did not want to commit public money to the railways. However, British Rail was allowed to spend its own money with government approval. This led to a number of electrification projects being given the go-ahead, including the East Coast Main Line, the spur from Doncaster to Leeds, and the lines in East Anglia out of London Liverpool Street to Norwich and King's Lynn. The list with approximate completion dates includes:
+St Pancras – Bedford 1981–83
+Rock Ferry – Hooton 1985
+Hitchin – Leeds 1985–88
+Colchester – Norwich 1986
+Bishops Stortford – Cambridge 1987
+Watford Junction – St Albans Abbey 1988
+Royston – Cambridge 1988
+Snow Hill Tunnel as part of Thameslink project 1988
+Doncaster – York 1989
+Airdrie – Drumgelloch 1989
+York – Edinburgh Waverley (and the spur to North Berwick) 1991
+Carstairs – Edinburgh Waverley 1991
+Cambridge – King's Lynn 1992
+Hooton – Ellesmere Port and Chester 1993–94
+London Paddington – Heathrow Airport 1993–98
+Leeds and Bradford Forster Square – Skipton and Ilkley 1994
+
+In the Southwest, the South West Main Line from Bournemouth to Weymouth was electrified along with other infill  third rail electrification in the south. In 1988, the line to Aberdare was reopened. A British Rail advertisement ("Britain's Railway", directed by Hugh Hudson) featured some of the best-known railway structures in Britain, including the Forth Rail Bridge, Royal Albert Bridge, Glenfinnan Viaduct and London Paddington station. London Liverpool Street station was rebuilt, opened by Queen Elizabeth II, and a new station was constructed at Stansted Airport in 1991. The following year, the Maesteg line was reopened. In 1988, the Windsor Link Line, Manchester was constructed and has proven to be an important piece of infrastructure.
+
+APTIS ticket 
+
+Before the introduction of APTIS (Accountancy and Passenger Ticket Issuing System), British Rail used the Edmondson railway ticket, first introduced in the 1840s and phased out in the early 1970s. Tickets issued from British Rail's APTIS system had a considerable amount of information presented in a consistent, standard format. The design for all tickets was created by Colin Goodall. This format has formed the basis for all subsequent ticket issuing systems introduced on the railway network – ticket-office-based, self-service and conductor-operated machines alike. APTIS survived in widespread use for twenty years but, in the early 2000s, was largely replaced by more modern PC-based ticketing systems. Some APTIS machines in the Greater London area were modified as APTIS-ANT (with no obvious difference to the ticket issued) to make them Oyster card compatible. The last APTIS machines were removed at the end of 2006 as there was no option to upgrade them to accept Chip and PIN credit card payments. The last APTIS-ANT ticket to be issued in the UK using one of the machines was at Upminster station on 21 March 2007.
+
+Before the rail network was privatised, British Rail introduced several discount cards through the APTIS that were available to certain demographics, issued either by National or Regional schemes:
+
+16–25 Railcard
+The Network Railcard, introduced in 1986 by British Rail upon the creation of their Network SouthEast sector in parts of Southern England
+Disabled Persons Railcard, introduced in 1981 to coincide with the International Year of Disabled Persons.
+Senior Railcard, introduced in 1970.
+
+Privatisation 
+
+In 1989, the narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway was preserved, becoming the first part of British Rail to be privatised.
+Between 1994 and 1997, British Rail was privatised. Ownership of the track and infrastructure passed to Railtrack on 1 April 1994. Passenger operations were later franchised to 25 private-sector operators. Of the six freight companies, five were sold to Wisconsin Central to form EWS while Freightliner was sold in a management buyout.
+
+The Waterloo & City line, part of Network SouthEast, was not included in the privatisation and was transferred to London Underground in April 1994. The remaining obligations of British Rail were transferred to BRB (Residuary) Limited.
+
+The privatisation, proposed by the Conservative government in 1992, was opposed by the Labour Party and the rail unions. Although Labour initially proposed to reverse privatisation, the New Labour manifesto of 1997 instead opposed Conservative plans to privatise the London Underground. Rail unions have historically opposed privatisation, but former Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen general secretary Lew Adams moved to work for Virgin Rail Group, and said on a 2004 radio phone-in programme: "All the time it was in the public sector, all we got were cuts, cuts, cuts. And today, there are more members in the trade union, more train drivers, and more trains running. The reality is that it worked, we’ve protected jobs, and we got more jobs."
+
+The privatisation process began when BR's passenger sectors were divided into 25 shadow franchises – these were publicly owned TOCs operating in the planned franchise areas prior to the actual franchises being put to tender:
+
+The opening of the Channel Tunnel saw operations by Eurostar International begin from Waterloo International railway station to Paris and Brussels.
+
+Accidents and incidents
+
+Preserved lines 
+
+The narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway in Ceredigion, Wales, became part of British Railways at nationalisation. Although built as a working railway, in 1948 the line was principally a tourist attraction. British Rail operated the line using steam locomotives long after the withdrawal of standard-gauge steam. The line's three steam locomotives were the only ones to receive TOPS serial numbers and be painted in BR Rail Blue livery with the double arrow logo. The Vale of Rheidol Railway was privatised in 1989 and continues to operate as a private heritage railway.
+
+Other preserved lines, or heritage railways, have reopened lines previously closed by British Rail. These range from picturesque rural branch lines like the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway to sections of mainline such as the Great Central Railway. Many have links to the National Rail network, both at station interchanges, for example, the Severn Valley Railway between  and Kidderminster Town, and physical rail connections like the Watercress Line at .
+
+Although most are operated solely as leisure amenities, some also provide educational resources, and a few have ambitions to restore commercial services over routes abandoned by the nationalised industry.
+
+Marine services
+
+Ships 
+
+British Railways operated ships from its formation in 1948 on several routes. Many ships were acquired on nationalisation, and others were built for operation by British Railways or its later subsidiary, Sealink. Those ships capable of carrying rail vehicles were classed under TOPS as Class 99.
+
+Sealink 
+
+Sealink was originally the brand name for the ferry services of British Rail in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Services to France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were run by Sealink UK as part of the Sealink consortium, which also used ferries owned by French national railways (SNCF), the Belgian Maritime Transport Authority Regie voor Maritiem Transport/Regie des transports maritimes (RMT/RTM) and the Dutch Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland (Zeeland Steamship Company).
+
+Historically, the shipping services were exclusively an extension of the railways across the English Channel and the Irish Sea in order to provide through, integrated services to mainland Europe and Ireland. As international travel became more popular in the late 1960s and before air travel became generally affordable, the responsibility for shipping services was taken away from the British Rail Regions and, in 1969, centralised in a new division – British Rail Shipping and International Services Division.
+
+With the advent of car ferry services, the old passenger-only ferries were gradually replaced by roll-on/roll-off ships, catering for motorists and rail passengers as well as road freight. However, given that there was now competition in the form of other ferry companies offering crossings to motorists, it became necessary to market the services in a normal business fashion (as opposed to the previous almost monopolistic situation). Thus, with the other partners mentioned above, the brand name Sealink was introduced for the consortium.
+
+In the late 1960s, as demand for international rail travel declined and the shipping business became almost exclusively dependent on passenger and freight vehicle traffic, the ferry business was incorporated as Sealink UK Limited on 1 January 1979, a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Railways Board, but still part of the Sealink consortium. In 1979, Sealink acquired Manx Line, which offered services to the Isle of Man from Heysham.
+
+On 27 July 1984, the UK Government sold Sealink UK to Sea Containers for £66million. The company was renamed Sealink British Ferries. The sale excluded the operations of Hoverspeed, the Isle of Wight services and the share in the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, as well as the Port of Heysham. In 1996, the Sealink name disappeared when the UK services, by then owned by Stena, were re-branded as Stena Line. The agreement with the SNCF on the Dover to Calais route also ended at this time, and the French-run Sealink services were rebranded as SeaFrance.
+
+Hovercraft 
+
+The joint hovercraft services of British Rail in association with the French SNCF. British Rail Hovercraft Limited was established in 1965, under authority given to it by the British Railways Act 1967 and started its first service in 1966. Sea speed started cross-Channel services from Dover to Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer, France using SR-N4 hovercraft in August 1968.
+
+British Rail Engineering Limited 
+
+Incorporated on 31 October 1969, British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) was a wholly owned railway systems engineering subsidiary of the British Railways Board. Created through the Transport Act 1968, to manage BR's thirteen workshops, it replaced the British Rail Workshops Division, which had existed since 1948. The works managed by BREL were Ashford, Crewe, Derby Locomotive Works, Derby Litchurch Lane, Doncaster, Eastleigh, Glasgow, Horwich Foundry, Shildon, Swindon, Temple Mills, Wolverton and York. BREL began trading in January 1970. In 1989 BREL was sold to a consortium of Asea Brown Boveri and Trafalgar House.
+
+Mark 2 carriages 
+
+A family of railway carriages designed and built by British Rail workshops (from 1969 British Rail Engineering Limited) between 1964 and 1975. They were of steel construction.
+
+Advanced Passenger Train 
+
+In the 1970s, British Rail developed tilting train technology in the Advanced Passenger Train; there had been earlier experiments and prototypes in other countries, notably Italy. The objective of the tilt was to minimise the discomfort to passengers caused by taking the curves of the West Coast Main Line at high speed. The APT also had hydrokinetic brakes, which enabled the train to stop from 150 mph within existing signal spacings.
+
+The introduction into service of the Advanced Passenger Train was to be a three-stage project. Phase 1, the development of an experimental APT (APT-E), was completed. This used a gas turbine-electric locomotive, the only multiple unit so powered that was used by British Rail. It was formed of two power cars (numbers PC1 and PC2), initially with nothing between them and later, two trailer cars (TC1 and TC2). The cars were made of aluminium to reduce the weight of the unit and were articulated. The gas turbine was dropped from development due to excessive noise and the high fuel costs of the late 1970s. The APT-E first ran on 25 July 1971. The train drivers' union, ASLEF, black-listed the train due to its use of a single driver. The train was moved to Derby (with the aid of a locomotive inspector). This triggered a one-day strike by ASLEF that cost BR more than the research budget for the entire year.
+
+Phase 2, the introduction of three prototype trains (APT-P) into revenue service on the Glasgow – London Euston route, did occur. Originally, there were to have been eight APT-P sets running, with minimal differences between them and the main fleet. However, financial constraints led to only three being authorised after two years of discussion by the British Railways Board. The cost was split equally between the Board and the Ministry of Transport. After these delays, considerable pressure grew to put the APT-P into revenue-service before they were fully ready. This inevitably led to high-profile failures as a result of technical problems.
+
+These failures led to the trains being withdrawn from service while the problems were ironed out. However, by this time, managerial and political support had evaporated. Consequently, phase 3, the introduction of the Squadron fleet (APT-S), did not occur, and the project ended in 1982.
+
+Although the APT never properly entered service, the experience gained enabled the construction of other high-speed trains. The APT powercar technology was imported without the tilt into the design of the Class 91 locomotives, and the tilting technology was incorporated into Italian State Railway's Pendolino trains, which first entered service in 1987.
+
+InterCity 125 
+
+The InterCity 125, or High-Speed Train, was a diesel-powered passenger train built by British Rail Engineering Limited between 1975 and 1982 that was credited with saving British Rail. Each set is made up of two Class 43 power cars, one at each end and four to nine Mark 3 carriages. The name is derived from its top operational speed of .
+
+The prototype InterCity 125 (power cars 43000 and 43001) set the world speed record for diesel traction at  on 12 June 1973. This was succeeded by a production set reaching  in November 1987.
+
+Sprinters
+
+By the early 1980s British Rail operated a large fleet of first generation DMUs, which had been constructed in prior decades to various designs. While formulating its long-term strategy for this sector of its operations, British Rail planners recognised that there would be considerable costs incurred by undertaking refurbishment programmes necessary for the continued use of these ageing multiple units, particularly due to the necessity of handling and removing hazardous materials such as asbestos. In light of the high costs involved in retention, planners examined the prospects for the development and introduction of a new generation of DMUs to succeed the first generation.
+
+In 1984/1985, two experimental DMU designs were put into service: the British Rail Engineering Limited built Class 150 and Metro-Cammell built Class 151. Both of these used hydraulic transmission and were less bus-like than the Pacers. After trials, Class 150 was selected for production, entering service from 1987. Reliability was much improved by the new units, with depot visits being reduced from two or three times a week to fortnightly.
+
+The late 1980s and early 1990s also saw the development of secondary express services that complemented the mainline Intercity routes. Class 155 and Class 156 Sprinters were developed to replace locomotive-hauled trains on these services, their interiors being designed with longer distance journeys in mind. Key Scottish and Trans-Pennine routes were upgraded with new Class 158 Express Sprinters, while a network of 'Alphaline' services was introduced elsewhere in the country.
+
+By the end of the 1980s, passenger numbers had increased and costs had been reduced to two-and-a-half times revenue.
+
+Successor companies 
+
+Under the process of British Rail's privatisation, operations were split into 125 companies between 1994 and 1997. The ownership and operation of the infrastructure of the railway system was taken over by Railtrack. The telecommunications infrastructure and British Rail Telecommunications was sold to Racal, which in turn was sold to Global Crossing and merged with Thales Group. The rolling stock was transferred to three private rolling stock companies (ROSCOs); Angel Trains, Eversholt Rail Group and Porterbrook. Passenger services were divided into 25 operating companies, which were let on a franchise basis for a set period, whilst freight services were sold off completely. Dozens of smaller engineering and maintenance companies were also created and sold off.
+
+British Rail's passenger services came to an end upon the franchising of ScotRail with the last service being a Caledonian Sleeper service from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London on 31 March 1997. The final service it operated was a Railfreight Distribution freight train from Dollands Moor to Wembley on 20 November 1997. The British Railways Board continued in existence as a corporation until early 2001, when it was replaced by the Strategic Rail Authority as part of the implementation of the Transport Act 2000.
+
+The original passenger franchisees were:
+
+Anglia Railways
+Arriva Trains Merseyside
+Arriva Trains Northern
+Central Trains
+Chiltern Railways
+Connex South Central
+Connex South Eastern
+c2c
+First Great Eastern
+First Great Western
+First North Western
+Gatwick Express
+GNER
+Island Line
+Midland Mainline
+ScotRail
+Silverlink
+South West Trains
+Thames Trains
+Thameslink
+Valley Lines
+Virgin CrossCountry
+Virgin Trains West Coast
+WAGN
+Wales & West
+
+Future 
+
+Since privatisation, many groups have campaigned for the renationalisation of UK Rail services, most notably 'Bring Back British Rail'. Various interested parties also have views on the privatisation of British Rail.
+
+The renationalisation of the railways of Britain continues to have popular support. Polls in 2012 and 2013 showed 70% and 66% support for renationalisation, respectively.
+
+Due to rail franchises sometimes lasting over a decade, full renationalisation would take years unless compensation was paid to terminate contracts early.
+
+When the infrastructure-owning company Railtrack ceased trading in 2002, the Labour government set up the not-for-dividend company Network Rail to take over the duties rather than renationalise this part of the network. However, in September 2014, Network Rail was reclassified as a central government body, adding around £34 billion to public sector net debt. This reclassification had been requested by the Office for Budget Responsibility to comply with pan-European accounting standard ESA10.
+
+The Green party has committed to bringing the railways 'back into public ownership' and has maintained this impetus when other parties argued to maintain the status quo. In 2016, Green MP, Caroline Lucas, put forward a Bill that would have seen the rail network fall back into public ownership step by step, as franchises come up for expiry.
+
+Under Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020), the Labour Party pledged to gradually renationalise British Rail franchises if elected, as and when their private contracts expire, creating a "People's Railway". In a pledge during his successful leadership campaign to succeed Corbyn, Keir Starmer said that renationalising rail would remain as Labour Party policy under his leadership. Following the COVID-19 pandemic decimating franchise revenues and making them unviable, in 2021 the government announced it would take back responsibility for the operations of passenger services through Great British Railways with service provision to be contracted to private operators.
+
+Parodies 
+In 1989, the ITV sketch show Spitting Image parodied Hugh Hudson's 1988 British Rail, Britain's Railway advert on the plans of the then Conservative British Government to privatise the railways featuring many of the show's puppets (including the show's portrayal of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), numerous BR trains and landmarks and even a cardboard cutout of Thomas the Tank Engine.
+
+See also
+
+History
+History of rail transport in Great Britain
+Impact of the privatisation of British Rail
+
+Divisions, brands and liveries
+British Rail brand names
+British Rail corporate liveries
+List of companies operating trains in the United Kingdom
+
+Classification and numbering schemes
+British carriage and wagon numbering and classification
+British Rail locomotive and multiple unit numbering and classification
+List of British Rail classes
+
+Rolling stock
+List of British Railways steam locomotives as of 31 December 1967
+List of LMS locomotives as of 31 December 1947
+List of LNER locomotives as of 31 December 1947
+
+Other
+British Rail flying saucer
+British Rail sandwich
+British Transport Films
+British Transport Police
+Channel Tunnel
+ 
+National Association of Railway Clubs
+Rail transport in Great Britain
+The wrong type of snow
+
+References
+
+Further reading 
+ , on nationalization 1945–50, pp 236–83
+Smith, Lewis Charles. "Marketing modernity: Business and family in British Rail’s “Age of the Train” campaign, 1979–84." The Journal of Transport History 40.3 (2019): 363–394.
+
+External links 
+
+ British Railways Board history
+ BRB (Residuary) Ltd.
+ Catalogue of the BR Technical Research Department archives, held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
+
+ 
+British companies established in 1948
+Defunct railway companies of the United Kingdom
+Former nationalised industries of the United Kingdom
+Railway companies established in 1948
+Railway companies disestablished in 1997
+1948 establishments in the United Kingdom
+1997 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
+The Book of Job (; ), or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Scholars generally agree that it was written between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE. It addresses theodicy (why God permits evil in the world) through the experiences of the eponymous protagonist. Job is a wealthy and God-fearing man with a comfortable life and a large family. God asks Satan () for his opinion of Job's piety. When Satan states that Job would turn away from God if he were rendered penniless, without his family, and materially uncomfortable, God allows him to do so to prove Satan wrong.
+
+Structure
+
+The Book of Job consists of a prose prologue and epilogue narrative framing poetic dialogues and monologues. It is common to view the narrative frame as the original core of the book, enlarged later by the poetic dialogues and discourses, and sections of the book such as the Elihu speeches and the wisdom poem of chapter 28 as late insertions, but recent trends have tended to concentrate on the book's underlying editorial unity.
+
+ : in two scenes, the first on Earth, the second in Heaven
+ : seen by some scholars as a bridge between the prologue and the dialogues and by others as the beginning of the dialogues and three cycles of dialogues between Job and his three friends – the third cycle is not complete, the expected speech of Zophar being replaced by the wisdom poem of chapter 28
+ Three monologues:
+ , with Job's responses
+  – Job's restoration
+
+Contents
+
+Prologue on Earth and in Heaven
+In chapter 1, the prologue on Earth introduces Job as a righteous man, blessed with wealth, sons, and daughters, who lives in the land of Uz. The scene then shifts to Heaven, where God asks Satan () for his opinion of Job's piety. Satan accuses Job of being pious only because God has materially blessed him; if God were to take away everything that Job has, then he would surely curse God.
+
+God gives Satan permission to take Job's wealth and kill his children and servants, but Job nonetheless praises God: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." In chapter 2, God further allows Satan to afflict Job's body with boils. Job sits in ashes, and his wife prompts him to "curse God, and die", but Job answers: "Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?"
+
+Job's opening monologue and dialogues between Job and his three friends 
+In chapter 3, "instead of cursing God", Job laments the night of his conception and the day of his birth; he longs for death, "but it does not come". His three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, visit him, accuse him of committing sin and tell him that his suffering was deserved as a result. Job responds with scorn: his interlocutors are "miserable comforters". Since a just God would not treat him so harshly, patience in suffering is impossible, and the Creator should not take his creatures so lightly, to come against them with such force.
+
+Job's responses represent one of the most radical restatements of Israelite theology in the Hebrew Bible. He moves away from the pious attitude shown in the prologue, and begins to berate God for the disproportionate wrath against him. He sees God as, among others, intrusive and suffocating; unforgiving and obsessed with destroying a human target; angry; fixated on punishment; and hostile and destructive. He then shifts his focus from the injustice that he himself suffers to God's governance of the world. He suggests that the wicked have taken advantage of the needy and the helpless, who remain in significant hardship, but God does nothing to punish them.
+
+Three monologues: Poem to Wisdom, Job's closing monologue, and Elihu's speeches 
+
+The dialogues of Job and his friends are followed by a poem (the "hymn to wisdom") on the inaccessibility of wisdom: "Where is wisdom to be found?" it asks, and concludes that it has been hidden from man (chapter 28). Job contrasts his previous fortune with his present plight, an outcast, mocked and in pain. He protests his innocence, lists the principles he has lived by, and demands that God answer him.
+
+Elihu (a character not previously mentioned) occupies chapters 32 to 37, intervening to state that wisdom comes from God, who reveals it through dreams and visions to those who will then declare their knowledge.
+
+Two speeches by God
+From chapter 38, God speaks from a whirlwind. God's speeches neither explain Job's suffering, nor defend divine justice, nor enter into the courtroom confrontation that Job has demanded, nor respond to his oath of innocence. Instead God contrasts Job's weakness with divine wisdom and omnipotence: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Job makes a brief response, but God's monologue resumes, never addressing Job directly.
+
+In Job 42:1–6, Job makes his final response, confessing God's power and his own lack of knowledge "of things beyond me which I did not know". Previously he has only heard, but now his eyes have seen God, and therefore, he declares, "I retract and repent in dust and ashes".
+
+Epilogue
+God tells Eliphaz that he and the two other friends "have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has done". The three (Elihu, the critic of Job and his friends, is not mentioned here) are told to make a burnt offering with Job as their intercessor, "for only to him will I show favour". Job is restored to health, riches and family, and lives to see his children to the fourth generation.
+
+Composition
+
+Authorship, language, texts
+The character Job appears in the 6th-century BCE Book of Ezekiel as an exemplary righteous man of antiquity, and the author of the Book of Job has apparently chosen this legendary hero for his parable. Scholars generally agree that it was written between the 7th and 3rd centuries BCE, with the 6th century BCE as the most likely period for various reasons. The anonymous author was almost certainly an Israelite, although the story is set outside Israel, in southern Edom or northern Arabia, and makes allusion to places as far apart as Mesopotamia and Egypt.
+
+The language of Job stands out for its conservative spelling and for its exceptionally large number of words and forms not found elsewhere in the Bible. Many later scholars down to the 20th century looked for an Aramaic, Arabic or Edomite original, but a close analysis suggests that the foreign words and foreign-looking forms are literary affectations designed to lend authenticity to the book's distant setting and give it a foreign flavor.
+
+Modern revisions
+
+Job exists in a number of forms: the Hebrew Masoretic Text, which underlies many modern Bible translations; the Greek Septuagint made in Egypt in the last centuries BCE; and Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
+
+In the Latin Vulgate, the New Revised Standard Version and in Protestant Bibles, it is placed after the Book of Esther as the first of the poetic books. In the Hebrew Bible it is located within the Ketuvim. John Hartley notes that in Sephardic manuscripts the texts are ordered as Psalms, Job, Proverbs but in Ashkenazic texts the order is Psalms, Proverbs, and then Job. In the Catholic Jerusalem Bible it is described as the first of the "wisdom books" and follows the two books of the Maccabees.
+
+Job and the wisdom tradition
+Job, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Proverbs belong to the genre of wisdom literature, sharing a perspective that they themselves call the "way of wisdom". Wisdom means both a way of thinking and a body of knowledge gained through such thinking, as well as the ability to apply it to life. In its Biblical application in wisdom literature, it is seen as attainable in part through human effort and in part as a gift from God, but never in its entirety – except by God.
+
+The three books of wisdom literature share attitudes and assumptions but differ in their conclusions: Proverbs makes confident statements about the world and its workings that are flatly contradicted by Job and Ecclesiastes. Wisdom literature from Sumeria and Babylonia can be dated to the third millennium BCE. Several texts from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt offer parallels to Job, and while it is impossible to tell whether the author of Job was influenced by any of them, their existence suggests that the author was the recipient of a long tradition of reflection on the existence of inexplicable suffering.
+
+Themes
+
+The Book of Job is an investigation of the problem of divine justice. This problem, known in theology as the problem of evil or theodicy, can be rephrased as a question: "Why do the righteous suffer?" The conventional answer in ancient Israel was that God rewards virtue and punishes sin (the principle known as "retributive justice"). This assumes a world in which human choices and actions are morally significant, but experience demonstrates that suffering is frequently unmerited.
+
+The biblical concept of righteousness was rooted in the covenant-making God who had ordered creation for communal well-being, and the righteous were those who invested in the community, showing special concern for the poor and needy (see Job's description of his life in chapter 31). Their antithesis were the wicked, who were selfish and greedy. The Satan (or the Adversary) raises the question of whether there is such a thing as disinterested righteousness: if God rewards righteousness with prosperity, will men not act righteously from selfish motives? He asks God to test this by removing the prosperity of Job, the most righteous of all God's servants.
+
+The book begins with the frame narrative, giving the reader an omniscient "God's eye perspective" which introduces Job as a man of exemplary faith and piety, "blameless and upright", who "fears God" and "shuns evil". The contrast between the frame and the poetic dialogues and monologues, in which Job never learns of the opening scenes in heaven or of the reason for his suffering, creates a sense of dramatic irony between the divine view of the Adversary's wager, and the human view of Job's suffering "without any reason" (2:3).
+
+In the poetic dialogues Job's friends see his suffering and assume he must be guilty, since God is just. Job, knowing he is innocent, concludes that God must be unjust. He retains his piety throughout the story (contradicting the Adversary's suspicion that his righteousness is due to the expectation of reward), but makes clear from his first speech that he agrees with his friends that God should and does reward righteousness. Elihu rejects the arguments of both parties: Job is wrong to accuse God of injustice, as God is greater than human beings, and nor are the friends correct; for suffering, far from being a punishment, may "rescue the afflicted from their affliction" and make them more amenable to revelation – literally, "open their ears" (Job 36:15).
+
+Chapter 28, the Poem (or Hymn) to Wisdom, introduces another theme, divine wisdom. The hymn does not place any emphasis on retributive justice, stressing instead the inaccessibility of wisdom. Wisdom cannot be invented or purchased, it says; God alone knows the meaning of the world, and he grants it only to those who live in reverence before him. God possesses wisdom because he grasps the complexities of the world (Job 28:24–26) – a theme which looks forward to God's speech in chapters 38–41 with its repeated refrain "Where were you when...?"
+
+When God finally speaks he neither explains the reason for Job's suffering (revealed to the reader in the prologue in heaven) nor defends his justice. The first speech focuses on his role in maintaining order in the universe: the list of things that God does and Job cannot do demonstrates divine wisdom because order is the heart of wisdom. Job then confesses his lack of wisdom, meaning his lack of understanding of the workings of the cosmos and of the ability to maintain it. The second speech concerns God's role in controlling behemoth and leviathan, sometimes translated as the hippopotamus and crocodile, but more probably representing primeval cosmic creatures, in either case demonstrating God's wisdom and power.
+
+Job's reply to God's final speech is longer than his first and more complicated. The usual view is that he admits to being wrong to challenge God and now repents "in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6), but the Hebrew is difficult, and an alternative understanding is that Job says he was wrong to repent and mourn and does not retract any of his arguments. In the concluding part of the frame narrative God restores and increases his prosperity, indicating that the divine policy on retributive justice remains unchanged.
+
+Influence and interpretation
+
+History of interpretation
+
+In the Second Temple period (500 BCE–70 CE), the character of Job began to be transformed into something more patient and steadfast, with his suffering a test of virtue and a vindication of righteousness for the glory of God. The process of "sanctifying" Job began with the Greek Septuagint translation () and was furthered in the apocryphal Testament of Job (1st century BCE–1st century CE), which makes him the hero of patience. This reading pays little attention to the Job of the dialogue sections of the book, but it was the tradition taken up by the Epistle of James in the New Testament, which presents Job as one whose patience and endurance should be emulated by believers (James 5:7–11).
+
+When Christians began interpreting Job 19:23–29 (verses concerning a "redeemer" who Job hopes can save him from God) as a prophecy of Christ, the predominant Jewish view became "Job the blasphemer", with some rabbis even saying that he was rightly punished by God because he had stood by while Pharaoh massacred the innocent Jewish infants.
+
+Augustine of Hippo recorded that Job had prophesied the coming of Christ, and Pope Gregory I offered him as a model of right living worthy of respect. The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides declared his story a parable, and the medieval Christian Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed commentary declaring it true history. In the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther explained how Job's confession of sinfulness and worthlessness underlay his saintliness, and John Calvin's interpretation of Job demonstrated the doctrine of the resurrection and the ultimate certainty of divine justice.
+
+The contemporary movement known as creation theology, an ecological theology valuing the needs of all creation, interprets God's speeches in Job 38–41 to imply that his interests and actions are not exclusively focused on humankind.
+
+Liturgical use
+Jewish liturgy does not use readings from the Book of Job in the manner of the Pentateuch, Prophets, or Five Megillot, although it is quoted at funerals and times of mourning. However, there are some Jews, particularly the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who do hold public readings of Job on the Tisha B'Av fast (a day of mourning over the destruction of the First and Second Temples and other tragedies). The cantillation signs for the large poetic section in the middle of the Book of Job differ from those of most of the biblical books, using a system shared with it only by Psalms and Proverbs.
+
+The Eastern Orthodox Church reads from Job and Exodus during Holy Week. Exodus prepares for the understanding of Christ's exodus to his Father, of his fulfillment of the whole history of salvation; Job, the sufferer, is the Old Testament icon of Christ.
+
+The Roman Catholic Church reads from Job during Matins in the first two weeks of September and in the Office of the Dead, and in the revised Liturgy of the Hours Job is read during the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty Sixth Week in Ordinary Time.
+
+In the modern Roman Rite, the Book of Job is read during:
+ 5th and 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B
+ Weekday Reading for the 26th Week in Ordinary Time - Year II Cycle
+ Ritual Masses for the Anointing of the Sick and Viaticum - First Reading options
+ Masses for the Dead - First Reading options
+
+In music, art, literature, and film
+
+The Book of Job has been deeply influential in Western culture, to such an extent that no list could be more than representative. Musical settings from Job include Orlande de Lassus's 1565 cycle of motets, the , and George Frideric Handel's use of Job 19:25 ("I know that my redeemer liveth") as an aria in his 1741 oratorio Messiah.
+
+Modern works based on the book include Ralph Vaughan Williams's Job: A Masque for Dancing; French composer Darius Milhaud's Cantata From Job; and Joseph Stein's Broadway interpretation Fiddler on the Roof, based on the Tevye the Dairyman stories by Sholem Aleichem. Neil Simon wrote God's Favorite, which is a modern retelling of the Book of Job. Breughel and Georges de La Tour depicted Job visited by his wife. William Blake produced an entire cycle of illustrations for the book.
+
+Writers Job has inspired or influenced include John Milton (Samson Agonistes); Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov); Alfred Döblin (Berlin Alexanderplatz); Franz Kafka (The Trial); Carl Jung (Answer to Job); Joseph Roth (Job); Bernard Malamud; and Elizabeth Brewster, whose book Footnotes to the Book of Job was a finalist for the 1996 Governor General's Award for poetry in Canada. Archibald MacLeish's drama JB, one of the most prominent uses of the Book of Job in modern literature, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1959. Verses from the Book of Job  figure prominently in the plot of the film Mission: Impossible (1996). Job's influence can also be seen in the Coen brothers' 2009 film, A Serious Man, which was nominated for two Academy Awards.
+
+Terrence Malick's 2011 film The Tree of Life, which won the Palme d'Or, is heavily influenced by the themes of the Book of Job, with the film starting with a quote from the beginning of God's speech to Job. The 2014 Indian Malayalam-language film Iyobinte Pusthakam () by Amal Neerad tells the story of a man who is losing everything in his life. "The Sire of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song)" is the final track on Joni Mitchell's 15th studio album, Turbulent Indigo.
+
+The Russian film Leviathan also draws themes from the Book of Job. In 2015 two Ukrainian composers Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko created the opera-requiem IYOV. The premiere of the opera was held on 21 September 2015 on the main stage of the international multidisciplinary festival Gogolfest.
+
+In the 3rd episode of the 15th season of ER, the lines of Job 3:23 are quoted by doctor Abby Lockhart shortly before she and her husband (Dr. Luka Covac) leave the series forever.
+
+In season two of Good Omens, the tale of Job and his struggles with good and evil are demonstrated and debated as the demon Crowley is sent to plague Job and his family by destroying his property and children, and the angel Aziraphale struggles with the implications of the actions of God.
+
+In Islam and Arab folk tradition
+
+Job () is one of the 25 prophets mentioned by name in the Quran, where he is lauded as a steadfast and upright worshipper (Q.38:44). His story has the same basic outline as in the Bible, although the three friends are replaced by his brothers, and his wife stays by his side.
+
+In Palestinian folklore, Job's place of trial is Al-Jura, a village adjacent to the ruins of Ascalon. It was there that God rewarded him with a Fountain of Youth that removed whatever illnesses he had and restored his youth. Al-Jura was a place of annual festivities (four days in all) when people of many faiths gathered and bathed in a natural spring. In Lebanon the Muwahideen (or Druze) community have a shrine built in the Shouf area that allegedly contains Job's tomb. In Turkey, Job is known as , and he is supposed to have lived in Şanlıurfa. There is also a tomb of Job outside the city of Salalah in Oman.
+
+See also
+ Answer to Job by Carl Jung
+ Book of Job in Byzantine illuminated manuscripts
+ Moralia in Job
+ , the "Babylonian Job"
+ Testament of Job
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Citations
+
+Sources 
+
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ . Docx extract.
+
+Further reading 
+ Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr, and Edward Cook (1996), The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, Harper San Francisco paperback 1999,  (contains the non-biblical portion of the scrolls)
+ Stella Papadaki-Oekland, Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts of the Book of Job,
+
+External links 
+
+ Sephardic Cantillations for the Book of Job by David M. Betesh and the Sephardic Pizmonim Project
+ Translations of The Book of Job at BibleGateway.com
+ Hebrew and English Parallel and Complete Text of the Book of Job English Translation is the 1917 Old JPS
+ 
+ 
+
+ 
+6th-century BC books
+Job (biblical figure)
+Ketuvim
+Poetic Books
+Satan
+Texts attributed to Moses
+Tisha B'Av
+Browse, browser or browsing may refer to:
+
+Programs
+Web browser, a program used to access the World Wide Web
+Code browser, a program for navigating source code
+File browser or file manager, a program used to manage files and related objects
+Hardware browser, a program for displaying networked hardware devices
+Image browser or image viewer, a program that can display stored graphical images
+Browser service, a feature of Microsoft Windows to browse shared network resources
+
+Other
+Browsing, a kind of orienting strategy in animals and human beings
+Browsing (herbivory), a type of feeding behavior in herbivores
+Browse Island, Australia
+Browse LNG, Australian liquefied natural gas plant project
+Browser (cat), a Texan library cat
+The Book of Proverbs (, , "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim) of the Hebrew Bible and a book of the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) it became  (, "Proverbs"); in the Latin Vulgate the title was , from which the English name is derived.
+
+Proverbs is not merely an anthology but a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life which lasted for more than a millennium. It is an example of the biblical wisdom literature, and raises questions of values, moral behaviour, the meaning of human life, and right conduct, and its theological foundation is that "the fear of God (meaning submission to the will of God) is the beginning of wisdom". Wisdom is praised for her role in creation; God acquired her before all else, and through her he gave order to chaos; and since humans have life and prosperity by conforming to the order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of life.
+
+The Book of Proverbs is divided into sections: the initial invitation to wisdom, contrasting the wise and the fool, and moral discourses on various topics. Chapters 25–29 discuss justice, the wicked, and the rich and poor, while Chapter 30 introduces the "sayings of Agur" on creation and divine power.
+
+Structure 
+
+The superscriptions divide the collections as follows:
+ Proverbs 1–9: "Proverbs of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel"
+ Proverbs 10–22:16: "Proverbs of Solomon"
+ Proverbs 22:17–24:22: "The Sayings of the Wise"
+ Proverbs 24:23–34: "These Also are Sayings of the Wise"
+ Proverbs 25–29: "These are Other Proverbs of Solomon that the Officials of King Hezekiah of Judah Copied"
+ Proverbs 30: "The Words of Agur"
+ Proverbs 31:1–9: "The Words of King Lemuel of Massa,{{Efn|Most translate: Lemuel, an oracle (masa) which his mother . . ."}} Which his Mother Taught Him"
+ Proverbs 31:10–31: the ideal wise woman (elsewhere called the "woman of substance").
+
+ Contents 
+
+"Proverb" is a translation of the Hebrew word mashal, but "mashal" has a wider range of meanings than the short, catchy saying implied by the English word. Thus, roughly half the book is made up of "sayings" of this type, while the other half is made up of longer poetic units of various types. These include "instructions" formulated as advice from a teacher or parent addressed to a student or child, dramatic personifications of both Wisdom and Folly, and the "words of the wise" sayings, longer than the Solomonic "sayings" but shorter and more diverse than the "instructions".
+
+The first section (chapters 1–9) comprises an initial invitation to young men to take up the course of wisdom, ten "instructions", and five poems on personified Woman Wisdom. Verses 1:1-7 constitute an introduction to the whole of this section. Proverbs 10:1–22:16, with 375 sayings, consists of two parts, the first part (10–14) contrasting the wise man and the fool (or the righteous and the wicked), the second (15–22:16) addressing wise and foolish speech. Verse 22:17 opens ‘the words of the wise’, until verse 24:22, with short moral discourses on various subjects. An additional section of sayings which "also belong to the wise" follows in verses 24:23-34. Chapters 25–29, attributed to the editorial activity of "the men of Hezekiah", contrast the just and the wicked and broach the topic of rich and poor. Chapter 30:1-4, the "sayings of Agur", introduces creation, divine power, and human ignorance.
+
+Composition
+
+It is impossible to offer precise dates for the sayings in Proverbs, a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life which lasted for more than a millennium. The phrase conventionally used for the title is taken from chapter 1:1, mishley shelomoh, Proverbs of Solomon (the phrase is repeated at 10:1 and 25:1), is likely more concerned with labeling the material than ascribing authorship.
+
+The book is an anthology made up of six discrete units. The Proverbs of Solomon section, chapters 1–9, was probably the last to be composed, in the Persian or Hellenistic periods. This section has parallels to prior cuneiform writings. The second, chapters 10–22:16, carries the superscription "the proverbs of Solomon", which may have encouraged its inclusion in the Hebrew canon. The third unit, 22:17–24:22, is headed "bend your ear and hear the words of the wise". A large part of this section is a recasting of a second-millennium BCE Egyptian work, the Instruction of Amenemope, and may have reached the Hebrew author(s) through an Aramaic translation. Chapter 24:23 begins a new section and source with the declaration, "these too are from the wise". The next section at chapter 25:1 has a superscription to the effect that the following proverbs were transcribed "by the men of Hezekiah", indicating at face value that they were collected in the reign of Hezekiah in the late 8th century BCE.  Chapters 30 and 31 (the "words of Agur," the "words of Lemuel," and the description of the ideal woman) are a set of appendices, quite different in style and emphasis from the previous chapters.
+
+The "wisdom" genre was widespread throughout the ancient Near East, and reading Proverbs alongside the examples recovered from Egypt and Mesopotamia reveals the common ground shared by international wisdom. The wisdom literature of Israel may have been developed in the family, the royal court, and houses of learning and instruction; nevertheless, the overwhelming impression is of instruction within the family in small villages.
+
+ Themes 
+
+Along with the other examples of the biblical wisdom tradition – Job and Ecclesiastes and some other writings – Proverbs raises questions of values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and righteous conduct. The three retain an ongoing relevance for both religious and secular readers, Job and Ecclesiastes through the boldness of their dissent from received tradition, Proverbs in its worldliness and satiric shrewdness. Wisdom is as close as biblical literature comes to Greek philosophy, of which it was a contemporary; it shares with the Greeks an inquiry into values and reflections on the human condition, although there is no discussion of ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, and the other abstract issues raised by the Greeks. 
+
+The rabbinic college almost excluded the Book of Proverbs from the Bible in the late first century.  They did this because of its contradictions (the result of the book's origins as not just an anthology but an anthology of anthologies). The reader is told, for example, both to "not answer a fool according to his folly", according to 26:4, and to "answer a fool according to his folly", as 26:5 advises. More pervasively, the recurring theme of the initial unit (chapters 1–9) is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but the following units are much less theological, presenting wisdom as a transmissible human craft, until with 30:1–14, the "words of Agur", we return once more to the idea that God alone possesses wisdom. 
+
+"The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10 – the phrase implies submission to God's will). Wisdom is praised for her role in creation ("God by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding, he established the heavens" – Proverbs 3:19). God acquired her before all else, and through her, he gave order to chaos ("When [God] established the heavens… when he drew a circle on the face of the Deeps… when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him" – Proverbs 8:27–31). Since humans have life and prosperity by conforming to the order of creation, seeking wisdom is the essence and goal of the religious life. Wisdom, or the wise person, is compared and contrasted with foolishness or the fool, meaning one who is lacking in wisdom and uninterested in instruction, not one who is merely silly or playful (though see the words of Agur for a "fool" who has wisdom and could be seen as playful).
+
+For the most part, Proverbs offers a simplistic view of life with few grey areas: a life lived according to the rules brings reward, and life in violation of them is certain to bring disaster. In contrast, Job and Ecclesiastes appear to be direct contradictions of the simplicities of Proverbs, each in its own way all but dismissing the assumptions of the "wise". Noteworthy also is the fact that the "mighty acts of God" (the Exodus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the Covenant between God and Israel, etc.) which make up Israel's history are completely or almost completely absent from Proverbs and the other Wisdom books: in contrast to the other books of the Hebrew Bible, which appeal to divine revelation for their authority ("Thus says the Lord!"), wisdom appeals to human reason and observation.
+
+Later interpretation and influence
+The pre-Exilic (i.e. pre-586 BCE) Old Testament allowed no equals to YHWH in heaven, despite the continued existence of an assembly of subordinate servant-deities. The post-Exilic writers of the Wisdom tradition developed the idea that Wisdom existed before creation and was used by God to create the universe: "Present from the beginning, Wisdom assumes the role of master builder while God establishes the heavens, restricts the chaotic waters, and shapes the mountains and fields." Borrowing ideas from Greek philosophers who held that reason bound the universe together, the Wisdom tradition taught that God's Wisdom, Word and Spirit were the ground of cosmic unity. Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and applied them to Jesus: the Epistle to the Colossians calls Jesus "...image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation...", while the Gospel of John identifies him with the creative word ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God").
+
+In the 4th century, when Christianity was caught up in heresies and still developing the creeds which would define its beliefs, Proverbs 8:22 was used both to support and refute the claims of the Arians. The Arians, assuming that Christ could be equated with the "Wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), argued that the Son, like Wisdom, was "created", and therefore subordinate to the Creator; their opponents, who argued that the relevant Hebrew word should be translated as "begot", won the debate, and the Nicene Creed declared that the Son was "begotten, not made", meaning that God and Christ were consubstantial.
+
+ See also 
+ "As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly"
+ Proverbs 30
+ Proverbs 31
+
+Notes
+
+References 
+
+ Bibliography 
+
+Works cited
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+Further reading
+ Crenshaw, James L. "Book of Proverbs", The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 1992
+ Dockery, David S. (general ed.), Holman Bible Handbook, Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, 1992
+ Lasor, William Sanford, Hubbard, David Allan, & Bush, Frederic Wm., Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament, 1996
+ Murphy, Roland E., Wisdom Literature: Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. Grand Rapids, 1981
+ Steinmann, Andrew, "Proverbs 1–9 as a Solomonic Composition", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 43, no. 4
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+ External links 
+
+Online translations of Book of Proverbs'':
+ Jewish translations:
+ Mishlei – Proverbs (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
+ Christian translations:
+ Bible Gateway 35 languages/50 versions
+ Unbound Bible 100+ languages/versions at Biola University
+ Introductions:
+ Introduction to the Book of Proverbs a Forward Movement publication
+  – Various versions
+
+ 
+8th-century BC books
+Ketuvim
+Solomon
+Wisdom literature
+Anthologies
+Poetic Books
+The Book of Lamentations (, , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot (or "Five Scrolls") alongside the Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther although there is no set order.  In the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah, as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author. However, according to modern scholarship, while the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586/7 BCE forms the background to the poems, they were most likely not written by Jeremiah. What has been instead proposed is that each of the book's chapters was written by a different anonymous poet, which were then joined to form the book.
+
+Some motifs of a traditional Mesopotamian "city lament" are evident in the book, such as mourning the desertion of the city by God, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the divinity; others "parallel the funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails... and... addresses the [dead]". The tone is bleak: God does not speak, the degree of suffering is presented as overwhelming, and expectations of future redemption are minimal. Nonetheless, the author repeatedly makes clear that the city, and even the author himself, have profusely sinned against God, justifying his wrath. In doing so the author does not blame God but rather presents him as righteous, just, and sometimes even as merciful.
+
+Summary
+The book consists of five separate poems. In the first (chapter 1), the city sits as a desolate weeping widow overcome with miseries. In chapter 2, these miseries are described in connection with national sins and acts of God. Chapter 3 speaks of hope for the people of God: that the chastisement would only be for their good; a better day would dawn for them. Chapter 4 laments the ruin and desolation of the city and temple, but traces it to the people's sins. Chapter 5 is a prayer that Zion's reproach may be taken away in the repentance and recovery of the people.
+
+Themes
+Lamentations combines elements of the , a funeral dirge for the loss of the city, and the "communal lament" pleading for the restoration of its people. It reflects the  view, traceable to Sumerian literature of a thousand years earlier, that the destruction of the holy city was a punishment by God for the communal sin of its people. However, while Lamentations is generically similar to the Sumerian laments of the early 2nd millennium BCE (e.g., "Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur," "Lament for Sumer and Ur," "Nippur Lament"), the Sumerian laments (that we have) were recited on the occasion of the rebuilding of a temple, so their story has a happy ending, whereas the book of Lamentations was written before the return/rebuilding, and thus contains only lamentations and pleas to God with no response or resolution.
+
+Beginning with the reality of disaster, Lamentations concludes with the bitter possibility that God may have finally rejected Israel (chapter 5:22). Sufferers in the face of grief are not urged to a confidence in the goodness of God; in fact, God is accountable for the disaster. The poet acknowledges that this suffering is a just punishment, still God is held to have had choice over whether to act in this way and at this time. Hope arises from a recollection of God's past goodness, but although this justifies a cry to God to act in deliverance, there is no guarantee that he will. Repentance will not persuade God to be gracious, since he is free to give or withhold grace as he chooses. In the end, the possibility is that God has finally rejected his people and may not again deliver them. Nevertheless, it also affirms confidence that the mercies of Yahweh (the God of Israel) never end, but are new every morning (3:22–33).
+
+Structure 
+
+Lamentations consists of five distinct (and non-chronological) poems, corresponding to its five chapters. Two of its defining characteristic features are the alphabetic acrostic and its  meter. However, few English translations capture either of these; even fewer attempt to capture both.
+
+Acrostic
+The first four chapters are written as acrostics. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 each have 22 verses, corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the first lines beginning with the first letter of the alphabet, the second with the second letter, and so on. Chapter 3 has 66 verses, so that each letter begins three lines. Unlike standard alphabetical order, in the middle chapters of Lamentations, the letter  (the 17th letter) comes before  (the 16th). In the first chapter, the Masoretic text uses the standard/modern alphabetical order; however, in the dead sea scroll version of the text (4QLam/4Q111, ), even the first chapter uses the  order found in chapters 2, 3, and 4.
+
+This  order may be based on the pre-exilic Paleo-Hebrew alphabet/script in which  did indeed come before  (as is reflected in pre-exilic abecedaries and other texts). The  before  order (which is found in other ancient western Semitic alphabets as far back as the 13th century BCE) was likely adopted by the Judeans at some point in the exilic or post-exilic period. Given that they largely abandoned the Paleo-Hebrew script for the Aramaic script (which used ), it is not surprising that they also adopted the Aramaic letter order (around the same (exilic) time period). The fact that Lamentations follows the pre-exilic  order is evidence for the position that they are not postexilic compositions but rather written shortly after the events described.
+
+The fifth poem, corresponding to the fifth chapter, is not acrostic but still has 22 lines.
+
+Although some claim that purpose or function of the acrostic form is unknown, it is frequently thought that a complete alphabetical order expresses a principle of completeness, from  (first letter) to  (22nd letter); the English equivalent would be "from A to Z".
+
+English translations that attempt to capture this acrostic nature are few in number. They include those by Ronald Knox and by David R. Slavitt. In both cases their mapping of the 22 Hebrew letters into the Latin alphabet's 26 uses 'A' to 'V' (omitting W, X, Y and Z), thus lacking the "A to Z" sense of completeness.
+
+The book's first four chapters have a well-defined qinah rhythm of three stresses followed by two, although the fifth chapter lacks this. Dobbs-Allsopp describes this meter as "the rhythmic dominance of unbalanced and enjambed lines". Again, few English translations attempt to capture this.  Exceptions include Robert Alter's The Hebrew Bible and the New American Bible Revised Edition.
+
+Composition
+
+Lamentations has traditionally been ascribed to Jeremiah. The ascription of authorship to Jeremiah derives from the impetus to ascribe all biblical books to inspired biblical authors, and Jeremiah being a prophet at the time who prophesied its demise was an obvious choice. Additionally in 2 Chronicles 35:25 Jeremiah is said to have composed a lament on the death of King Josiah, but there is no reference to Josiah in the book of Lamentations and no reason to connect it to Jeremiah. However, the modern consensus amongst scholars is that Jeremiah did not write Lamentations; like most ancient literature, the author remains anonymous. Most likely, each of the book's chapters was written by a different poet, and they then were joined to form the book.
+
+The book's language fits an Exilic date (586–520 BCE), and the poems probably originated from Judeans who remained in the land. The fact that the acrostics follow the  order of the pre-exilic Paleo-Hebrew alphabet/script further supports the position that they are not postexilic compositions. However, the sequence of the chapters is not chronological, and the poems were not necessarily written by eyewitnesses to the events. The book was compiled between 586 BCE and the end of the 6th century BCE, when the Temple was rebuilt. Because Second Isaiah, whose work is dated to 550–538 BCE, seems to have known at least parts of Lamentations, the book was probably in circulation by the mid-6th century, but the exact time, place, and reason for its composition are unknown.
+
+Scholars are divided over whether the book is the work of one or multiple authors. One clue pointing to multiple authors is that the gender and situation of the first-person witness changes – the narration is feminine in the first and second lamentation, and masculine in the third, while the fourth and fifth are eyewitness reports of Jerusalem's destruction; conversely, the similarities of style, vocabulary, and theological outlook, as well as the uniform historical setting, are arguments for one author.
+
+Later interpretation and influence
+Lamentations is recited annually by Jews on the fast day of Tisha B'Av ("Ninth of Av") (July–August), mourning the destruction of both the First Temple (by the Babylonians in 586 BCE) and the Second Temple (by the Romans in 70 CE).
+
+In Christian tradition, readings from Lamentations are part of the Holy Week liturgies.
+
+In Western Christianity, readings (often chanted) and choral settings of extracts from the book are used in the Lenten religious service known as  (Latin for 'darkness'). In the Church of England, readings are used at Morning and Evening Prayer on the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, and at Evening Prayer on Good Friday.
+
+In the Coptic Orthodox Church, the book's third chapter is chanted on the 12th hour of the Good Friday service, which commemorates the burial of Jesus.
+
+References
+
+Citations
+
+Sources
+
+External links
+
+ Jewish translations:
+ Lamentations with multiple translations of the text & Rashi's commentary, as well as numerous other classic Hebrew commentaries at Sefaria.org
+ Book of Lamentations with Hebrew/English and MP3 chanting of the entire book in Hebrew. (Website also contains other books of the bible.)
+ Laments (R. David Seidenberg): a fresh translation with linear Hebrew and English, on neohasid.org
+ A synopsis of Eichah's chapters
+ Christian translations:
+ Lamentations at Sacred Texts KJV, Tan, Sep, Vul
+  Various versions
+ Translations maintaining acrostic structure
+ Knox Translation (22 letters: A to V, omitting W to Z)
+ Translations maintaining metrical rhythm (qinah)
+ New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE)
+ Translations maintaining both acrostics and qinah
+ ServiceMusic translation (22 letters: A to Z, omitting four intermediate letters)
+
+ 
+6th-century BC books
+Jeremiah
+Lamentations, Book of
+Tisha B'Av
+Laments
+Major prophets
+The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and one of the major prophetic books in the Christian Bible, where it follows Isaiah and Jeremiah. According to the book itself, it records six visions of the prophet Ezekiel, exiled in Babylon, during the 22 years from 593 to 571 BCE, although it is the product of a long and complex history and does not necessarily preserve the very words of the prophet.
+
+The visions and the book are structured around three themes: (1) judgment on Israel (chapters 1–24); (2) judgment on the nations (chapters 25–32); and (3) future blessings for Israel (chapters 33–48). Its themes include the concepts of the presence of God, purity, Israel as a divine community, and individual responsibility to God. Its later influence has included the development of mystical and apocalyptic traditions in Second Temple Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, and Christianity.
+
+Structure 
+Ezekiel has the broad threefold structure found in a number of the prophetic books: oracles of woe against the prophet's own people, followed by oracles against Israel's neighbours, ending in prophecies of hope and salvation:
+ Prophecies against Judah and Jerusalem, chapters 1–24
+ Prophecies against the foreign nations, chapters 25–32
+ Prophecies of hope and salvation, chapters 33–48.
+
+Summary 
+
+The book opens with a vision of YHWH (). The book moves on to anticipate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, explains this as God's punishment, and closes with the promise of a new beginning and a new Temple.
+ Inaugural vision Ezekiel 1:1–3:27: God approaches Ezekiel as the divine warrior, riding in His battle chariot.  The chariot is drawn by four living creatures, each having four faces (those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle) and four wings. Beside each "living creature" is a "wheel within a wheel", with "tall and awesome" rims full of eyes all around. God commissions Ezekiel as a prophet and as a "watchman" in Israel: "Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites." (2:3)
+ Judgment on Israel and Judah and on the nations: God warns of the certain destruction of Jerusalem and of the devastation of the nations that have troubled His people: the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites and Philistines, the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon, and Egypt.
+ Building a new city: The Jewish exile will come to an end, a new city and new Temple will be built, and the Israelites will be gathered and blessed as never before.
+
+Some of the highlights include:
+
+ The "throne vision", in which Ezekiel sees God enthroned in the Temple among the Heavenly Host;
+ The first "temple vision", in which Ezekiel sees God leave the Temple because of the abominations practiced there (meaning the worship of idols rather than YHWH, the official God of Judah;
+ Images of Israel, in which Israel is seen as a harlot bride, among other things;
+ The "valley of dry bones", in which the prophet sees the dead of the house of Israel rise again;
+ The destruction of Gog and Magog, in which Ezekiel sees Israel's enemies destroyed and a new age of peace established;
+The final temple vision, in which Ezekiel sees the third temple commonwealth centered around a new temple in Jerusalem, to which God's Shekinah (Divine Presence) has returned.
+
+Composition
+
+Life and times of Ezekiel 
+The Book of Ezekiel describes itself as the words of Ezekiel ben-Buzi, a priest living in exile in the city of Babylon between 593 and 571 BCE. Most scholars today accept the basic authenticity of the book, but see in it significant additions by a school of later followers of the original prophet. According to Jewish tradition, the Men of the Great Assembly wrote the Book of Ezekiel, based on the prophet's words. While the book exhibits considerable unity and probably reflects much of the historic Ezekiel, it is the product of a long and complex history and does not necessarily preserve the very words of the prophet.
+
+According to the book that bears his name, Ezekiel ben-Buzi was born into a priestly family of Jerusalem c.623 BCE, during the reign of the reforming king Josiah. Prior to this time, Judah had been a vassal of the Assyrian empire, but the rapid decline of Assyria after c. 630 led Josiah to assert his independence and institute a religious reform stressing loyalty to Yahweh, the national God of Israel. Josiah was killed in 609 and Judah became a vassal of the new regional power, the Neo-Babylonian empire. In 597, following a rebellion against Babylon, Ezekiel was among the large group of Judeans taken into captivity by the Babylonians. He appears to have spent the rest of his life in Mesopotamia. A further deportation of Jews from Jerusalem to Babylon occurred in 586 when a second unsuccessful rebellion resulted in the destruction of the city and its Temple and the exile of the remaining elements of the royal court, including the last scribes and priests. The various dates given in the book suggest that Ezekiel was 25 when he went into exile, 30 when he received his prophetic call, and 52 at the time of the last vision .
+
+Textual history 
+The Jewish scriptures were translated into Greek in the two centuries prior to the Common Era. The Greek version of these books is called the Septuagint. The Jewish Bible in Hebrew is called the Masoretic Text (meaning passing down after a Hebrew word Masorah; for Jewish scholars and rabbis curated and commented on the text). The Greek (Septuagint) version of Ezekiel differs slightly from the Hebrew (Masoretic) version – it is about 8 verses shorter (out of 1,272) and possibly represents an earlier transmission of the book we have today (according to the Masoretic tradition) – while other ancient manuscript fragments differ from both.
+
+Critical history 
+The first half of the 20th century saw several attempts to deny the authorship and authenticity of the book, with scholars such as C. C. Torrey (1863–1956) and Morton Smith placing it variously in the 3rd century BCE and in the 8th/7th. The pendulum swung back in the post-war period, with an increasing acceptance of the book's essential unity and historical placement in the Exile. The most influential modern scholarly work on Ezekiel, Walther Zimmerli's two-volume commentary, appeared in German in 1969 and in English in 1979 and 1983. Zimmerli traces the process by which Ezekiel's oracles were delivered orally and transformed into a written text by the prophet and his followers through a process of ongoing re-writing and re-interpretation. He isolates the oracles and speeches behind the present text, and traces Ezekiel's interaction with a mass of mythological, legendary and literary material as he developed his insights into Yahweh's purposes during the period of destruction and exile.
+
+Themes 
+
+As a priest, Ezekiel is fundamentally concerned with the Kavod YHWH, a technical phrase meaning the presence (shekhinah) of  YHWH (i.e., one of the Names of God) among the people, in the Tabernacle, and in the Temple, and normally translated as "glory of God". In Ezekiel the phrase describes God mounted on His throne-chariot as he departs from the Temple in chapters 1–11 and returns to what Marvin Sweeney describes as a portrayal of "the establishment of the new temple in Zion as YHWH returns to the temple, which then serves as the center for a new creation with the tribes of Israel arrayed around it" in chapters 40–48. The vision in chapters 1:4–28 reflects common mythological/Biblical themes and the imagery of the Temple: God appears in a cloud from the north – the north being the usual home of God/the gods in ancient mythology and Biblical literature – with four living creatures corresponding to the two cherubim above the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant and the two in the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of the Temple; the burning coals of fire between the creatures perhaps represents the fire on the sacrificial altar, and the famous "wheel within a wheel" may represent the rings by which the Levites carried the Ark, or the wheels of the cart.
+
+Ezekiel depicts the destruction of Jerusalem as a purificatory sacrifice upon the altar, made necessary by the "abominations" in the Temple (the presence of idols and the worship of the god Tammuz) described in chapter 8. The process of purification begins, God prepares to leave, and a priest lights the sacrificial fire to the city. Nevertheless, the prophet announces that a small remnant will remain true to Yahweh in exile, and will return to the purified city. The image of the valley of dry bones returning to life in chapter 37 signifies the restoration of the purified Israel.
+
+Previous prophets had used "Israel" to mean the northern kingdom and its tribes; when Ezekiel speaks of Israel he is addressing the deported remnant of Judah; at the same time, however, he can use this term to mean the glorious future destiny of a truly comprehensive "Israel". In sum, the book describes God's promise that the people of Israel will maintain their covenant with God when they are purified and receive a "new heart" (another of the book's images) which will enable them to observe God's commandments and live in the land in a proper relationship with Yahweh.
+
+The theology of Ezekiel is notable for its contribution to the emerging notion of individual responsibility to God – each man would be held responsible only for his own sins. This is in marked contrast to the Deuteronomistic writers, who held that the sins of the nation would be held against all, without regard for an individual's personal guilt. Nonetheless, Ezekiel shared many ideas in common with the Deuteronomists, notably the notion that God works according to the principle of retributive justice and an ambivalence towards kingship (although the Deuteronomists reserved their scorn for individual kings rather than for the office itself). As a priest, Ezekiel praises the Zadokites over the Levites (lower level temple functionaries), whom he largely blames for the destruction and exile. He is clearly connected with the Holiness Code and its vision of a future dependent on keeping the Laws of God and maintaining ritual purity. Notably, Ezekiel blames the Babylonian exile not on the people's failure to keep the Law, but on their worship of gods other than Yahweh and their injustice: these, says Ezekiel in chapters 8–11, are the reasons God's Shekhinah left his city and his people.
+
+Later interpretation and influence
+
+Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism (c. 515 BCE – 500 CE) 
+
+Ezekiel's imagery provided much of the basis for the Second Temple mystical tradition in which the visionary ascended through the Seven Heavens in order to experience the presence of God and understand His actions and intentions. The book's literary influence can be seen in the later apocalyptic writings of Daniel and Zechariah. He is specifically mentioned by Ben Sirah (a writer of the Hellenistic period who listed the "great sages" of Israel) and 4 Maccabees (1st century CE). In the 1st century CE the historian Josephus said that the prophet wrote two books: he may have had in mind the Apocryphon of Ezekiel, a 1st-century CE text that expands on the doctrine of resurrection. Ezekiel appears only briefly in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but his influence there was profound, most notably in the Temple Scroll with its temple plans, and the defence of the Zadokite priesthood in the Damascus Document. There was apparently some question concerning the inclusion of Ezekiel in the canon of scripture, since it is frequently at odds with the Torah (the five "Books of Moses" which are foundational to Judaism).
+
+Christianity 
+Ezekiel is referenced more in the Book of Revelation than in any other New Testament writing. To take just two well-known passages, the famous Gog and Magog prophecy in Revelation 20:8 refers back to Ezekiel 38–39, and in Revelation 21–22, as in the closing visions of Ezekiel, the prophet is transported to a high mountain where a heavenly messenger measures the symmetrical new Jerusalem, complete with high walls and twelve gates, the dwelling-place of God where His people will enjoy a state of perfect well-being. Apart from Revelation, however, where Ezekiel is a major source, there is very little allusion to the prophet in the New Testament; the reasons for this are  unclear, but it cannot be assumed that every Christian or Hellenistic Jewish community in the 1st century would have had a complete set of (Hebrew) scripture scrolls, and in any case Ezekiel was under suspicion of encouraging dangerous mystical speculation, as well as being sometimes obscure, incoherent, and pornographic.
+
+In popular culture 
+
+The angelic creatures and accompanying wheels seen by Ezekiel in Chapter 1 are referred to by the spiritual song Ezekiel Saw the Wheel.
+In the Command & Conquer video game series, the Nod Stealth Tank is sometimes referred to as the "Ezekiel Wheel", referring to the same passage.
+
+The imagery in Ezekiel 37:1–14 of the Valley of Dry Bones, which Ezekiel prophesies will be resurrected, is referred to in the 1928 spiritual song "Dem Dry Bones", the folk song Dry Bones and the song Black Cowboys by Bruce Springsteen on his 2005 album Devils & Dust.
+
+See also 
+
+Amillennialism
+Biblical numerology
+Jerusalem in Christianity
+Land of Israel
+Millenarianism
+New Jerusalem
+Rape in the Hebrew Bible § Ezekiel 16 and 23
+Temple in Jerusalem
+Third Temple
+
+Citations
+
+Bibliography
+
+External links 
+Online translations
+ English Translation of the Greek Septuagint Bible: Ezekiel
+ Yechezkiel from Chabad.org
+ BibleGateway (various translations)
+   (various versions)
+
+ 
+6th-century BC books
+Nevi'im
+Major prophets
+Big Brother is a Dutch reality competition television franchise created by John de Mol Jr., first broadcast in the Netherlands in 1999 and subsequently syndicated internationally. The show features contestants called "housemates" or "HouseGuests" who live together in a specially constructed house that is isolated from the outside world. The name is inspired by Big Brother from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the housemates are continuously monitored during their stay in the house by live television cameras as well as personal audio microphones. Throughout the course of the competition, they are voted out (usually on a weekly basis) until only one remains and wins the cash prize.
+
+, there have been 508 seasons of Big Brother in over 63 franchise countries and regions. English-language editions of the program are often referred to by its initials "BB". The title of many Spanish-language editions of the program is translated as Gran Hermano (GH).
+
+Premise 
+
+At regular intervals, the housemates privately nominate a number of their fellow housemates whom they wish to be evicted from the house. The housemates with the most nominations are then announced, and viewers are given the opportunity to vote via telephone for the nominee they wish to be evicted or saved from eviction. The last person remaining is declared the winner.
+
+Some more recent editions have since included additional methods of voting, such as voting through social media and smartphone applications. Occasionally, non-standard votes occur, where two houseguests are evicted at once or no one is voted out. In the earlier series of Big Brother, there were 10 contestants with evictions every two weeks. However, the UK version introduced a larger number of contestants with weekly evictions. Most versions of Big Brother follow the weekly eviction format, broadcast over approximately three months for 16 contestants.
+
+The contestants are required to do housework and are assigned tasks by the producers of the show (who communicate with the housemates via the omnipresent authority figure known to them only as "Big Brother"). The tasks are designed to test their teamwork abilities and community spirit. In some countries, the housemates' shopping budget or weekly allowance (to buy food and other essentials) depends on the outcome of assigned tasks.
+
+History
+
+Name 
+The term Big Brother originates from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its theme of continuous oppressive surveillance. The program also relies on other techniques, such as a stripped back-to-basic environment, evictions, weekly tasks and competitions set by Big Brother, and the "Diary Room" (or "Confession Room") where housemates convey their private thoughts to the camera and reveal their nominees for eviction.
+
+Creation 
+The first version of Big Brother was broadcast in 1999 on Veronica in the Netherlands. In the first season of Big Brother, the house was very basic. Although essential amenities such as running water, furniture, and a limited ration of food were provided, luxury items were often forbidden. This added a survivalist element to the show, increasing the potential for social tension. Nearly all later series provide a modern house for the contest with a Jacuzzi, sauna, VIP suite, loft, and other luxuries.
+
+International expansion 
+The format has become an international TV franchise. While each country or region has its own variation, the common theme is that the contestants are confined to the house and have their every action recorded by cameras and microphones and that no contact with the outside world is permitted.
+
+Most international versions of the show remain quite similar to each other: their main format remains true to the original fly on the wall observational style with the emphasis on human relationships, to the extent that contestants usually are forbidden from discussing nominations or voting strategy. In 2001, the American version adopted a different format since the second season, where the contestants are encouraged to strategize to advance in the game; in this format, the contestants themselves vote to evict each other. Big Brother Canada, introduced in 2013, also follows the American format. In 2011, the UK version controversially adopted the discussion of nominations before reversing this rule after a poll by Big Brother broadcaster Channel 5. The Australian series also used an American-styled format when the series was rebooted in 2020.
+
+Reception
+
+Overview 
+From a sociological and demographic perspective, Big Brother allows an analysis of how people react when forced into close confinement with people outside of their comfort zone (having different opinions or ideals, or from a different socioeconomic group). The viewer has the opportunity to see how a person reacts from the outside (through the constant recording of their actions) and the inside (in the Diary or Confession Room). The Diary Room is where contestants can privately express their feelings about the game, strategy and the other contestants. The results range from violent or angry confrontations to genuine and tender connections (often including romantic interludes).
+
+The show is notable for involving the Internet. Although the show typically broadcasts daily updates during the evening (sometimes criticized by viewers and former contestants for heavy editing by producers), viewers can also watch a continuous feed from multiple cameras on the Web in most countries. These websites were successful, even after some national series began charging for access to the video stream. In some countries, Internet broadcasting was supplemented by updates via email, WAP and SMS. The house is shown live on satellite television, although in some countries there is a 10–15 minutes delay to allow libelous or unacceptable content (such as references to people not participating in the program who have not consented to have personal information broadcast) to be removed.
+
+Contestants occasionally develop sexual relationships; the level of sexual explicitness allowed to be shown in broadcast and Internet-feed varies according to the country's broadcasting standards.
+
+Isolation 
+Big Brother contestants are isolated in the house, without access to television, radio, or the Internet. They are not permitted routine communication with the outside world. This was an important issue for most earlier series of the show. In more-recent series, contestants are occasionally allowed to view televised events (usually as a reward for winning at a task). In most versions of the program, books and writing materials are also forbidden, although exceptions are sometimes made for religious materials such as the Bible, Tanakh or the Qur'an. Some versions ban all writing implements, even items that can be used to write (such as lipstick or eyeliner). Despite the housemates' isolation, some contestants are occasionally allowed to leave the house as part of tasks. Contestants are permitted to leave the house in an emergency.
+
+News from the outside world may occasionally be given as a reward. Additionally, news of extraordinary events from the outside world may be given to the Housemates if such information is considered important, such notable past examples include that of national election results, (along with Housemates being able participate in said elections, for countries with compulsory voting) the September 11 attacks, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
+
+Contestants have regularly-scheduled interactions with the show's host on eviction nights. Throughout each day, the program's producer, in the "Big Brother" voice, issues directives and commands to contestants. Some versions of the show allow private counselling sessions with a psychologist. These are allowed at any time and are often conducted by telephone from the Diary Room.
+
+Format changes and twists
+
+Regional versions 
+
+Due to the intelligibility of certain languages across several nations, it has been possible to make regional versions of Big Brother. All of these follow the normal Big Brother rules, except that contestants must come from each of the countries in the region where it airs: Big Brother Albania of Albania and Kosovo, Big Brother Angola e Moçambique of Angola and Mozambique, Big Brother Africa of Africa (includes Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe), Big Brother: الرئيس of the Middle East (includes Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria and Tunisia), Gran Hermano del Pacífico of South America (includes Chile, Ecuador and Peru), Big Brother of Scandinavia (includes Norway and Sweden) and Veliki brat of the Balkans (includes Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia). The British version of the show previously accepted Irish applicants, however the terms and conditions of ITV2's reboot state you must reside in the UK.
+
+On the other hand, some countries have multiple franchises based on language. Bigg Boss of India has the most regional-based versions Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam language versions; Canada has French- and English-language versions; and the United States has English- and Spanish-language versions of the show.
+
+Moreover, Tamasha, a popular Pakistani reality show, has recently made headlines as the newest addition to the esteemed Big Brother franchise. Initially produced by ARY Digital, a renowned Pakistani TV channel, the reality show's first season garnered significant success and audience engagement, with its different twists and tasks being the main concept of the show. Building on its triumph, the show's second season has taken a groundbreaking leap by officially adapting the original format of Big Brother. As of now, it stands as the sole franchise of the Big Brother format in Pakistan, with the show being conducted exclusively in the Urdu language.
+
+Twists involving single franchises
+
+Multiple areas and houses 
+In 2001, Big Brother 3 of the Netherlands introduced the "Rich and Poor" concept, in which the house is separated into a luxurious half and a poor half and two teams of housemates compete for a place in the luxurious half. The Dutch version continued this concept to the end of its fourth season. Other versions later followed and introduced a similar concept, of which some have their own twists: Africa (in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013), Albania (in 2007), Australia (in 2003 and 2013), Balkan States (in VIP 2010 and 2011), Brazil (2009–present), Canada (2013–present), Denmark (in 2003), Finland (in 2009 and 2014), France (in 2009, 2011–2017), Germany (in 2003, 2004–05, 2005–06, 2008, 2008–09 and since Celebrity 2014), Greece (in 2003), India (in 2012 and 2013), Israel (in 2009), Italy (in 2006 and 2007), Norway (in 2003), Philippines (in 2009, Teen 2010 and 2011), Poland (in 2002), Portugal (in VIP 2013 and 2016), Slovakia (in 2005), Slovenia (in 2008, 2015 and 2016), Scandinavia (in 2005), South Africa (in 2014), Spain (in VIP 2004, 2008, 2009–10 and 2010), United Kingdom (in 2002, Celebrity 2007, 2008, Celebrity 2013 and 2016) and United States (2009–present).
+
+In 2011–12, the seventh Argentine series added La Casa de al Lado ("The House Next Door"), a smaller, more luxurious house which served multiple functions. The first week it hosted 4 potential housemates, and the public voted for two of them to enter the main house. The second week, two pairs of twins competed in the same fashion, with only one pair allowed in. Later, the 3rd, 4th and 5th evicted contestants were given the choice of staying on their way out and they competed for the public's vote to reenter the house. Months later, after one of the contestants left the house voluntarily, the House Next Door reopened for four contestants who wanted to reenter and had not been in such a playoff before. The House Next Door was also used in other occasions to accommodate contestants from the main house for limited periods of time, especially to have more privacy (which of course could be seen by the public).
+
+The ninth Brazilian season featured the "Bubble": a glass house in a shopping mall in Rio de Janeiro where four potential housemates lived for a week. Later in the season, a bubble was built inside the Big Brother house, with another two housemates living in it for a week until they were voted in and the glass house dismantled. The Glass House was reused in the eleventh season, featuring five evicted housemates competing for a chance to join the house again, and in the thirteenth season, with six potential housemates competing for two places in the main house. A dividing wall from the ninth season was reused in the fourteenth Brazilian season, when mothers and aunts of the housemates entered for International Women's Day and stayed in the house for 6 days, though they could not be seen by the housemates. Every season brings back the glass house. Some editions also featured an all-white panic room, where contestants were held until one of them decided to quit the show.
+
+In the fourth English-Canadian season, two house guests were evicted and moved into a special suite where they were able to watch the remaining house guests. A week later, the houseguests were required to unanimously decide which of them to bring back into the house.
+
+Evil Big Brother 
+In 2004, the fifth UK series introduced a villainous Big Brother with harsher punishments, such as taking away prize money, more difficult tasks and secret tricks. This concept has also been used in Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, South America, Scandinavia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, Philippines and Mexico.
+
+Twin or triplet housemates 
+In 2004, the fifth US season introduced twins who were tasked with secretly switching back and forth in the house; they were allowed to play the game as individual house guests after succeeding at the deception for four weeks. This twist was reused in the seventeenth US season without the deception element – the pair simply needed to survive five weeks without being evicted. HouseGuests who discovered this twist could use the twins to their strategic advantage.
+
+This twin or triplet twist was used in several countries. Some made modifications to this twist; others have had twins in the house together without this element of secrecy. The following are the countries that have featured twins or triplets: Australia (in 2005), Germany (in 2005–06), Brazil (in 2006 and 2015), Bulgaria (in 2006, 2012 and VIP 2017), United Kingdom (in 2007, Celebrity 2011, Celebrity 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and Celebrity 2017), France (in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016), Spain (in 2007 and 2013), Poland (in 2007 and 2019), India (in 2008), Africa (in 2009), Balkan Region (in 2009 and 2013), Philippines (in 2009, Teen 2012 and 2014), Portugal (in 2010 and 2012), Israel (in 2011), Ukraine (in 2011), Argentina (in 2011 and 2016), Albania (in 2013, 2017, Celebrity 2021-22 and Celebrity 2022-23), Greece (in 2020) and Kosovo (in Celebrity 2022-23).
+
+Pairs competitions 
+Several versions of the program feature variations of the housemates competing in pairs:
+
+ In sixth American season, each HouseGuest had a secret partner with whom had a pre-existing relationship. While each player was nominated and evicted as an individual, each pair had the goal of reaching being the Final 2 HouseGuests remaining. Should a secret pair succeed in this goal, the prize money awarded to the winner and runner-up would jackpot – the winner's prize doubling from $500,000 to $1,000,000 and the runner-up's prize quintupling from $50,000 to $250,000. 
+ During the tenth week of the seventh UK series, the housemates were paired with their "best friend" in the house and had to nominate and face eviction as couples. 
+ The ninth American season added a romantic theme by pairing up the HouseGuests with their "Soulmate" and having them compete as couples. This twist was active for the first 3 weeks of the season. 
+ The 13th American season featured a further twist to the pairs format by introducing the "Dynamic Duos" twist, where contestants formed pairs that would be nominated together but evicted separately. The nominee not evicted would be immune from further nomination until there were 10 HouseGuests remaining, at which point the pairs were dissolved.
+ The second season of the Philippine teen edition also featured the parents or guardians of the teens staying in the house; if a teen housemate was evicted, the coinciding parent or guardian would also be evicted. A similar twist was used on the fourth Greek season was dubbed "Big Mother"; it featured housemates accompanied by their mothers.
+ In the ninth season of Indian Big Brother, "Big Boss: Double Trouble", contestants entered the house tied up in pairs by the waist. They had joint chairs, beds, spoons, and even mugs. The twelfth season of Indian Big Brother "Bigg Boss 12" also featured jodis (pairs) who were Teacher-Student, Policeman-Lawyer, sister-sister, etc.
+ In the ninth Albania season, all the housemates wherever were in couples and for the first time in the history of Big Brother Albania, the winner was a couple (Danjel Dedndreaj and Fotini Derxho).
+
+Secret missions 
+
+Secret missions are a common element of the show since their introduction during the sixth UK series. During these missions, one or more housemates are set a task from Big Brother with the reward of luxuries for the household and/or a personal reward if the task is successful. Some versions of Big Brother have secret tasks presented by another character who lives in plain sight of the housemate. Such characters include Marsha the Moose (from BB Canada) and Surly the Fish (from BB Australia).
+
+The third Belgian season introduced a mole. This housemate was given secret missions by Big Brother.
+
+The eighth US season introduced "America's Player", where a selected house guest must complete various tasks (determined by public vote) in secret for the duration of their stay in the house in exchange for a cash reward. It was repeated in the tenth US season for a week. The eleventh US season featured Pandora's Box, in which the winning head of household was tempted to open a box, with unintended consequences for the house. The twelfth US season featured a saboteur, who entered the house to wreak havoc with tasks suggested by viewers. The sixteenth US season featured "Team America", in which 3 houseguests were selected to work as a team to complete tasks (determined by public voting) for a cash reward; this continued for the entire season despite the eviction of a team member.
+
+The fourth Argentine series added a telephone in the living room. This telephone rang once a week for ten seconds, and the person to pick up the receiver was given an order or news from Big Brother (which typically no other housemate could hear). The order could be beneficial or detrimental, but a refused order resulted in the nomination for eviction. If nobody picked up the call, the whole house would be nominated for eviction.
+
+Opening night twists 
+Since Big Brother 2, the UK series has opened with a twist. This has included having potential Housemates being voted upon by the public for one to enter the house (Big Brother 2 & Big Brother 13); public voting for least-favourite housemates, with the housemates choosing between two nominees to evict (Big Brother 3); first-night nominations (Big Brother 4 & Big Brother 13); suitcase nominations (Big Brother 5); Unlucky Housemate 13 (Big Brother 6); Big Brother Hood (Big Brother 7); an all-female house and a set of twins as contestants (Big Brother 8); a couple entering as housemates, who must hide their relationship (Big Brother 9); housemates having to earn housemate status (Big Brother 10); a mole entering the house with an impossible task (Big Brother 11); Pamela Anderson entering as a guest for 5 days (Big Brother 12); a professional actor posing as a housemate and a mother and daughter as contestants (Big Brother 14); one contestant gets a pass to the final (Big Brother 15); first night eviction (Big Brother 16); two houses with "the other house" featuring enemies from the main house housemates past (Big Brother 17); Jackie Stallone entering a house containing her son's ex-wife Brigitte Nielsen (Celebrity Big Brother 3); a "fake celebrity" (a civilian contestant pretending to be a celebrity) in a celebrity edition (Celebrity Big Brother 4); a visit from Jade Goody's family (Celebrity Big Brother 5) and unlocked bedrooms allowing housemates to immediately claim beds with the last housemate becoming the Head of House (Celebrity Big Brother 6).
+
+A common opening twist is to only introduce a cast of a single-sex on the premiere of the show while having members of the opposite sex introduced over the next few days. The eighth UK series first used this twist with an initial all-female house, adding a male housemate two days later. The same twist was used in the fourth Bulgarian series, and an all-male premiere was used on Big Brother Africa 4. The second Belgian season was used a similar twist in 2001, where eleven male housemates and one female housemate entered the house on launch night and the second female housemate entered the house on the third day.
+
+Fake evictions 
+
+The fifth UK series introduced fake evictions, where Big Brother misleads housemates that eviction has taken place, only for the "evicted" housemate to reenter the house sometime later.
+
+In the eighth UK series, one housemate was evicted, interviewed and sent back into the house.
+
+In the fifth Philippine season, four housemates were fake-evicted and stayed in a place called bodega. In the second batch of the eight Philippine season, four housemates were fake-evicted due to losing their duel challenge and temporarily stayed in a secret room. In the adult edition of the tenth Philippine season, two housemates, and later three more, were fake-evicted after failing in two different Ligtask challenges and temporarily stayed in the task room until the end of their weekly task.
+
+The concept of the fake-eviction was incorporated into the Australian series for the first time in the sixth Australian season, when housemates Camilla Severi and Anna Lind-Hansen were both fake-evicted in Day 8 and were moved into a secret room in the house, the Revenge Room. Severi and Lind-Hansen could see who nominated them for eviction and were given the opportunity to wreak havoc upon the house and those who nominated them by constructing extravagant tasks for the housemates to complete and for making mess in the house when they were not looking. Severi and Lind-Hansen returned to the house in a live special on Day 10. In the tenth Australian season, Benjamin Zabel was fake-evicted for 24 hours before being returned to the house with immunity from eviction for that week. In the eleventh Australian season Travis Lunardi was fake-evicted and received advice from Benjamin Zabel for 24 hours; Travis returned to the house after a 3-day absence with immunity from eviction for that week.
+
+In the thirteenth Brazilian series, Anamara Barreira was fake-evicted. She was removed and put into a small private apartment without the other housemates knowing she was still in the house. After 24 hours, she returned to the house as Head of Household and with immunity from eviction that week. In the sixteenth Brazilian series, Ana Paula Renault was similarly fake-evicted, put into a small private apartment, and returned after 48 hours with immunity from eviction that week. In the eighteen Brazilian series, Gleici Damasceno was similarly fake-evicted, put into a small private apartment, and returned after 72 hours with immunity from eviction and with the power to put someone to eviction.
+
+In the first Turkish series, there is a fake eviction in week 10.
+
+The Indian version Bigg Boss sees frequent fake evictions. In Kannada Bigg Boss season 4, winner Pratham and co-contestant Malavika were kept in secret room after fake eviction for one week and they were both allowed in the Bigg Boss house.
+
+Similarly in Kannada Bigg Boss season 5, firstly Jaya Srinivasan and Sameer Acharya were put into the secret room after fake eviction for one week and then Sameer Acharya was allowed into the house but Jaya Srinivasan was evicted from the secret room itself. In the same season, the runner up Divakar was put into the secret room after fake eviction for one week.
+
+Coaches 
+The fourteenth US season had four house guests from past seasons return to coach twelve new house guests, playing for a separate prize of $100,000. However, in a reset twist, they opted to join the normal game alongside the other house guests.
+
+Red button 
+The seventh Argentine series incorporated a red button into the Confession Room, which would sound an alarm throughout the house. This button was to be used when a contestant wanted to leave the house voluntarily, and the contestant would be given five minutes to leave the house. A red button is also used in Secret Story series, however, in this case whoever presses the button will try to guess someone's secret.
+
+Legacy rewards or penalties 
+In Celebrity Hijack UK, evicted housemates were given the opportunity to choose if a "ninja" delivered good or bad gifts to the house. Later that year, the eighth Australian series introduced the Housemate Hand Grenade, where an evicted housemate decided which remaining housemate received a penalty. A similar punishment used on Big Brother Africa was called the Molotov Cocktail, Dagger or Fuse.
+
+Most valuable player 
+The fifteenth US season allowed viewers to vote for a house guest to be made M.V.P., who then secretly nominates a third houseguest for eviction (in addition to the two selected by the Head of Household).
+
+In a further twist introduced part-way through the MVP twist, the viewers themselves decided who the third nominee would be, with the HouseGuests still thinking one of their own is the MVP. Like many such twists, this was ended halfway into the season as the pool of contestants shrank.
+
+Multiple heads of household 
+The sixteenth and seventeenth US seasons featured two Heads of Household every week and had four houseguests nominated for eviction. There was also a "Battle of the Block" competition where the two sets of nominees competed to save themselves; the winning pair not only saved themselves but dethroned the Head of Household who nominated them, who was then vulnerable as a replacement nominee if a veto was used. It is also used in specific weeks in Brazil since Big Brother Brasil 16 where the HOH's have to choose which HoH will get R$10,000 and who is the one that will win immunity.
+
+America's Favorite HouseGuest 
+In the US version, each season there are three cash prizes: $750,000 for the winner, $75,000 for second, and $50,000 for who was voted by the viewers to be America's Favorite HouseGuest.
+
+Multiple winners 
+In 2011, Big Brother Africa (season 6) was the first season of Big Brother to have two winners, each getting US$200,000.
+
+In 2015, the sixth Philippine season, also had two winners; one from the teens and one from the regular adults. Each of which received PHP1,000,000.
+
+Bigg Boss 8 (India) ended with a twist, where the top five contestants were crowned 'champions'. The season was extended by 35 days (total 135) as a spin-off called Bigg Boss Halla Bol, where ex-contestants from previous seasons entered the house to compete with the five champions.
+
+Reserve housemates 
+The fourth Philippine season introduced the concept of having reserved housemates, those of whom are short-listed auditioners who were given a chance to be a housemate by completing tasks assigned by Big Brother. It was eventually done also in the eighth Philippine season where the reserved housemates were placed in a camp (a separate House but is just adjacent to the Main House) and that reserved housemate must compete amongst other reserved housemates while gaining points by participating in various tasks, including those that required the participation of doing such tasks outside of the Big Brother House premises. As the eviction was done weekly, once an official housemate is evicted from the Main House, the  with the most points earned for that particular week crossovers to the Main House and becomes an official housemate.
+
+This reserved housemates twist was also used in Argentina's seventh season and Brazil's ninth season.
+
+Big Brother Zoom 
+
+In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Big Brother Portugal revival started with a twist, where all the contestants were isolated in different apartments for 14 days, in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations. Cameras were filming them 24 hours a day as usual, and they were able to communicate with each other and host Cláudio Ramos using tablets.
+
+Twists involving multiple franchises
+
+Housemate exchanges 
+In 2002, the Mexican and Spanish editions (BBM1 and GH3) made temporary housemate exchanges. Mexico's Eduardo Orozco swapped with Spain's Andrés Barreiro for 7 days. In 2010, the first 2-housemate exchange was held by Spain and Italy (GH11 and GF10). Gerardo Prager and Saray Pereira from Spain were swapped with Carmela Gualtieri and Massimo Scattarella of Italy for 7 days.
+
+In later years, several housemate exchanges were done around the world: Argentina (GH3) and Spain (GH4), Ecuador (GH1) and Mexico (BBM2), and Africa (BBA1) and United Kingdom (BB4) in 2003; Scandinavia (BB2) and Thailand (BBT2) in 2006; Philippines (PBB2) and Slovenia (BB1), and Argentina (GH5) and Spain (GH9) in 2007; Africa (BBA3) and Finland (BB4) in 2008; Finland (BB5) and Philippines (PBB3) in 2009; Finland (BB6) and Slovenia (BBS1) in 2010; Spain (GH12) and Israel (HH3) in 2010–11; Finland (BB7) and Norway (BB4) in 2011; Argentina (GH7) and Israel (HH4) in 2012; Mexico (BB4) and Spain (GH16) in 2015; and Spain (GHVIP5) and Brazil (BBB17) in 2017.
+
+Evicted housemate exchanges 
+In 2003, Mexico's Isabel Madow (BB VIP2) and Spain's Aída Nízar (GH5) were swapped for 7 days. This twist was also done between Russia (BBR1) and Pacific (GHP1) in 2005, and Argentina (GH4) and Brazil (BBB7) in 2007.
+
+Other exchanges 
+In 2009, as part of the casting process for Italy's GF9, Doroti Polito and Leonia Coccia visited Spain's GH10.
+
+In 2012, four contestants from Denmark's BB4 visited Sweden's BB6 and competed in a Viking-themed challenge. The Danish team won and 'kidnapped' Swedish contestant Annica Englund to the Denmark house for the following week.
+
+In 2012, evicted housemate Laisa Portella of Brazil (from BBB12) was a guest on Spain's Gran Hermano 13 for a week; the following week, non-evicted Noemí Merino of GH13 stayed in the Brazilian Big Brother house for 5 days.
+
+In 2016, Big Brother UK housemate Nikki Grahame and Big Brother Australia housemate Tim Dormer were voted in by Canada to be houseguests on the 4th season of Big Brother Canada. Similarly, Big Brother UK housemate Jade Goody appeared as a housemate on Bigg Boss India.
+
+Big Brother Australia (2015) contestant Priya Malik joined Bigg Boss 9 (India) the same year as a wild card.
+
+In 2017, GHVIP5 contestant Elettra Lamborghini visited Brazil's BBB17.
+
+In 2019, the winner of Italy's GF15, Alberto Mezzetti visited Brazil's BBB19.
+
+In 2022, Bindhu Madhavi, 4th Runner-up of Bigg Boss Tamil 2017 made her entry as a contestant in a Telugu back to win spin-off named Bigg Boss Non-Stop and emerged as the winner of that show respectively.
+
+After winning the debut season of Bigg Boss Marathi (regional version of Big Brother), winner Megha Dhade made her entry in Bigg Boss season 12 as a wild card contestant.
+
+After winning Season 2 of Bigg Boss Marathi (regional version of Big Brother), winner Shiv Thakare made her entry in Bigg Boss 16.
+
+Evicted housemate visits 
+Anouska Golebiewski, an evicted housemate from the United Kingdom (housemate from BB4) visited Australia (BB3) in 2003. In 2005, United Kingdom (Nadia Almada of BB5) visited Australia (BB5) again. In 2006, United Kingdom (Chantelle Houghton of CBB4) visited Germany (BBG6). This twist was used in later years by other countries: Africa (Ricardo Ferreira of BBA3) visited Brazil (BBB9) in 2009; Germany (Annina Ucatis and Sascha Schwan of BBG9) visited the Philippines (PBB3), and Italy (George Leonard and Veronica Ciardi of GF10) visited Albania (BB3) in 2010; Sweden (Martin Granetoft and Peter OrrmyrSara Jonsson of BB5) visited Norway (BB4) in 2011; Brazil (Rafael Cordeiro of BBB12) visited Spain (GH12), and Argentina (Agustín Belforte of GH4) visited Colombia (GH2) in 2012; United States (Dan Gheesling of BB10/BB14) visited Canada (BB1 and the BB2 Jury) in 2013; Canada (Emmett Blois of BB1) visited South Africa (BBM3) in 2014; and Spain (Paula Gonzalez of GH 15) visited Mexico (BBM4) in 2015.
+
+A similar event took place between the United States and Canada in 2014 wherein Rachel Reilly (from BB12/BB13) made a video chat to Canada (BB2). Rachel Reilly also appeared on Big Brother Canadas side show, which airs after the eviction episode.
+
+Housemates competing in another country 
+There were occasions that a former housemate from one franchise participated and competed in a different franchise: Daniela Martins of France (SS3) competed in Portugal (SS1); Daniel Mkongo of France (SS5) competed in Italy (GF12); Brigitte Nielsen of Denmark (BB VIP) competed in the United Kingdom (CBB3); Jade Goody of the United Kingdom (BB3, BB Panto, and CBB5) competed in India (BB2); Sava Radović of Germany (BB4) competed in the Balkan States (VB1); Nikola Nasteski of the Balkan States (VB4) competed in Bulgaria (BB All-Stars 1); Žarko Stojanović of France (SS5) competed in the Balkan States (VB VIP5); Željko Stojanović of France (SS5) competed in the Balkan States (VB VIP5); Kelly Baron of Brazil (BBB13) competed in Portugal (BB VIP); Lucy Diakovska of Bulgaria (VIP B4) competed in Germany (PBB1); Leila Ben Khalifa of Italy (GF6) competed in France (SS8); Priya Malik of Australia (BB11) competed in India (BB9); Tim Dormer of Australia (BB10) and Nikki Grahame of the United Kingdom (BB7, UBB) competed in Canada (BB4) after beating Jase Wirey of the United States (BB5, BB7) and Veronica Graf of Italy (GF13) in a public vote; Leonel Estevao-Luto of Africa (BB4) competed in Angola & Mozambique (BB3); Frankie Grande of the United States (BB16) competed in the United Kingdom (CBB18); Fanny Rodrigues of Portugal (SS2) competed in France (SS10); and Tucha Anita of Angola (BB3); Amor Romeira of Spain (GH9) competed in Portugal (SS6) and Alain Rochette of Spain (GH17) competed in France (SS11); Despite being American, Brandi Glanville competed first in the United Kingdom (CBB20) then later competed in first Celebrity series in the United States (CBB1); Aída Nizar of Spain (GH5 and GHVIP5) competed in Italy (GF15); Ivana Icardi of Argentina (GH9) competed in Italy (GF16); Gianmarco Onestini of Italy (GF16) competed in Spain (GHVIP7).
+
+Multiple-franchise competitions
+
+Eurovision Song Contest
+
+Special editions
+
+Celebrity and VIP Big Brother 
+
+The Big Brother format has been adopted in some countries; the housemates are local celebrities, and the shows are called Celebrity Big Brother or Big Brother VIP. In some countries, the prize money normally awarded to the winning housemate is donated to a charity, and all celebrities are paid to appear in the show as long as they do not voluntarily leave before their eviction or the end of the series. The rest of the rules are nearly the same as those of the original version.
+
+Variations 
+The 2006 Netherlands series was entitled Hotel Big Brother. This variation introduced a group of celebrity hoteliers and a Big Boss, who run a hotel and collect money for charity without nominations, evictions or a winner.
+
+Another variation appeared in the UK in early 2008, entitled Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack. Instead of being housemates the celebrities became Big Brother himself, creating tasks and holding nominations with the help of Big Brother. The housemates were considered by the producers "Britain's most exceptional and extraordinary" 18- to 21-year-olds. The prize for the winner of the series was £50,000.
+
+In 2009, VIP Brother 3 Bulgaria introduced the concept of celebrities competing for charitable causes, which changed each week. Housemates were sometimes allowed to leave the house to raise money for the charity. Ten out of Thirteen seasons of Bigg Boss (the Indian version of Big Brother) have been celebrity-only seasons. The 10th season of Big Boss had celebrities put up against commoners, where a commoner ultimately won.
+
+American format 
+ 
+The US and Canadian versions of Big Brother differ from most global versions of the series. The US series began in 2000 with the original Dutch format—i.e., housemates, or HouseGuests, as they are styled in the US, nominating each other for eviction and the public voting on evictions and the eventual winner. But due to both poor ratings and the concurrent popularity of Survivor, a gameplay-oriented format was introduced in the second season, with HouseGuests allowed to strategize, politic and collude to survive eviction, with the entire nomination and eviction process being determined by the HouseGuest themselves.
+
+Each week the HouseGuests compete in several competitions in order to win power and safety inside the house, before voting off one of the HouseGuests during the eviction. The main elements of the format are as follows:
+Head of Household (HoH): At the start of each week in the house, the HouseGuests compete for the title of Head of Household, often shortened to simply HoH. The Head of Household for each week is given luxuries such as their own personal bedroom and the use of an MP3 player but is responsible for nominating two of their fellow HouseGuests for eviction. The Head of Household would not be able to compete in the following week's Head of Household competition; this excludes the final Head of Household competition of the season.
+Power of Veto (PoV): After the nominees are determined, the Power of Veto competition is played, with the winner receiving the Power of Veto. If a HouseGuest chooses to exercise the Power of Veto, the Head of Household is responsible for naming a replacement nominee. The holder of the Power of Veto is saved from being nominated as the replacement nominee. Only six of the HouseGuests compete for the Power of Veto each week; the Head of Household and both nominations compete, as well as three others selected by a random draw. The PoV was introduced in the third American season
+Eviction: On eviction night, all HouseGuests must vote to evict one of the nominees, with the exception of the nominees and the Head of Household. The eviction vote is by secret ballot, with HouseGuests casting their votes orally in the Diary Room. In the event of a tied vote, the Head of Household will cast a tie-breaking vote publicly. The nominee with the majority of the votes is evicted from the house.
+
+Before the sixteenth US season, HouseGuests competed in a Have/Have-Not challenge similar to the shopping tasks on Big Brother UK and other international editions. The winners become Haves and enjoy a full pantry of food, while Have-Nots, will be left with a staple diet of "slop" (fortified oatmeal), sleep in designated uncomfortable beds and take cold showers. In later seasons, the Haves & Have-Nots are determined either by the HoH themself or by the results of the HoH Competition.
+
+When only two contestants remain, a jury formed of the most recently evicted HouseGuests (generally seven or nine) votes which of the two finalists wins the grand prize. Beginning in the fourth (2003) US season, jury members were sequestered off-site so that they would not be privy to the day-to-day goings-on in the house. (Celebrity Big Brother US does not sequester its jury members—all evicted celebrity HouseGuests vote on the winner.). The final Head of Household competition is split into three parts; the winners of the first two rounds compete in the third and final round. Once only two HouseGuests remain, the members of the jury cast their votes for who should win the series.
+
+In addition, US and Canadian Big Brother do not air a live launch show, as is customary in international editions—by the time the network show and live online feeds begin airing, it is not uncommon for at least one HouseGuest to already have been evicted. Also, the North American editions currently air only three times a week, compared with daily or six days a week for the recently rebooted UK franchise. As a result, the TV episodes focus primarily on the main events regarding the gameplay and house politics versus the day-to-day goings-on in the house; to see the latter, watching the live feeds is necessary.
+
+In 2013, English-speaking Canada introduced its own version of the show on the cable channel Slice; the series moved to Global TV for its third (2015) season. The show followed the US format but with more elaborate twists and greater viewer participation in the game. Secret tasks were introduced, usually presented by the show's mascot, "Marsha the Moose"; also, as in most global franchises, Big Brother was a distinct character who interacted with the HouseGuests. The French Canadian version mostly followed the US/Anglophone Canadian format, but the public could evict a housemate on some occasions and decided the winner.
+
+The 2020 revival of the Big Brother Australia series adopted a slightly altered version of the American format (having previously used the international format) while pre-recording the series months in advance. A "Nomination Challenge" is held to determine who holds the power to nominate for that round, with the winner naming three Nominations for Eviction. During each eviction, all Housemates (excluding the Nominating Housemate) vote to evict. There is no rule prohibiting individuals holding Nomination Power in consecutively between weeks and no Power of Veto is held. Additionally, the Australian public still decided the winner between the final 3.
+
+Big Brother Brasil combines the US/Canada and international formats. Brazil votes on evictions and the winner, but housemates compete for HoH, Power of Immunity, and Power of Veto; there is also a weekly shopping competition. HoH nominates one housemate for eviction, while the rest of the house nominates a second housemate. The winner of the Power of Immunity competition gets to choose someone to be safe from nomination.
+
+The pilot for Big Brother China, which premiered exclusively online in 2015, had housemates voting on evictions but the public voting for the winner. A similar format was used for Big Brother: Over the Top, an online-only spin-off of the US series that ran in 2016.
+
+The nineteenth series of Big Brother UK saw the adaption of the "Game Changer" competition which is very similar to the Power of Veto competition. The winner of this competition has the opportunity to save a nominee from eviction. Like the PoV, there are six people that play in the "Game Changer" competition. The process of how the contestants are chosen is different as the people who have been nominated play in the competition along with the richest housemate. If there are empty left in the competition, then the richest housemate hand picks who will playing in that weeks "Game Changer" competition. The winner of the competition, like the PoV, has the option to save housemate from eviction for the week or not use the power at all. Unlike the PoV however, if the winner does save someone then no replacement nominee was named leaving the remaining nominees up for eviction and facing the public vote.
+
+Other editions 
+The Big Brother format has been otherwise modified in some countries:
+ Big Brother: All-Stars (Belgium, 21 days; Bulgaria: Season 1–5, 27–29 days; United States, 72 days; United Kingdom, 18 days; French Canada, 64 days; Africa, 91 days; Spain, 56 days; Portugal Secret Story: Season 1–4, 22–50 days): Previous housemates from previous seasons compete. Belgium was the first country to have an All-Stars season (2003). Bulgaria was the first country to complete 3 All-Stars seasons (2014). Portugal was the first country to complete 4 All-Stars seasons (2015). Portugal was the first country to complete 5 All-Stars seasons (2017). Portugal was the first country to complete 6 All-Stars seasons (2018).
+ Big Brother: Reality All-Stars (Sweden, 6 days; Denmark, 32 days; Spain, 56 days): Contestants from different reality shows, including Big Brother, compete.
+ Big Brother: You Decide / Big Brother: Back in the House / Big Brother: Try Out (Poland: Season 1–2, 7–13 days; Norway, 9 days; Serbia, 7 days): Housemates, new or old, compete for a spot in the next regular season without nominations or evictions.
+ Teen Big Brother (United Kingdom, 10 days; Philippines: Season 1–4, 42–91 days): Teenagers 13 and older compete.
+ Big Brother: All In (Philippines: Season 11, 13): A mix of teenagers, regular adults, and celebrities compete in one season. A variation, Big Brother: Lucky 7 and Big Brother: Otso, has three to four batches of housemates stay inside until a number for each batch is left and is joined by other members of other batches to form one new batch.
+ Secret Story (France, Lithuania, Portugal, Netherlands, Peru, Albania and Spain): Each housemate has a secret.
+ Big Brother Panto (United Kingdom, 11 days): Housemates from the previous series spent time in the Big Brother House to perform a pantomime at the series' end.
+ Big Brother – The Village (Germany: Season 6, 363 days): The village had a class system of bosses, assistants and servants, living in separate houses, who competed in mixed teams; winning bosses could promote employees, while losing bosses became servants. Cash prizes were awarded weekly in an ongoing contest.
+ Big Brother Family (Bulgaria: 81 days): Whole families entered the house with their spouses, children and relatives. They received a salary for their stay and the winning family received a cash prize, a car and an apartment.
+
+There are also "test runs", with a group of celebrities (or journalists) living in the house for several days to test it. There are occasions where people who have auditioned for the show are also put in the house, most notably in the British edition, where many housemates claim to have met before. These series have been televised in Argentina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Mexico, the Pacific region, the Philippines and Spain. In some cases, it is not broadcast, but in others, such as the US edition, it is used as a promotional tool.
+
+Versions 
+As of , Big Brother has produced 508 winners in over 63 franchises.
+
+: Currently airing (8)
+ An upcoming season (13)
+ Status unknown (16)
+ No longer airing (32)
+
+Big Brother: The Game
+On 5 May 2020, Endemol Shine Group announced that an official Big Brother mobile game named Big Brother: The Game was being developed by Irish gaming company 9th Impact, with a worldwide release expected later that year. The game uses the US format, with competitions determining the Head of Household and Power of Veto holders, with an eviction cycle occurring each day. Players must form alliances with one another to stay in the game and advance to the next tier. Other users may spectate other games, but outside interference is strictly forbidden. Players were able to win up to $1,000,000 in prizes.
+
+A trial season took place in the Republic of Ireland during the summer of 2020. The player Aoife Cheung won a €5000 prize after surviving four evictions. The game was officially launched on 15 October 2020 worldwide for both iOS, Android devices and PC platforms.
+
+The first season concluded on 29 July 2021 and was won by Amy Elizabeth, a 31-year-old special education teacher from Delaware who won a grand prize of $33,270.
+
+On March 7, 2023, a third season of the game was announced to launch later that year on mobile and PC platforms, including Steam. The grand prize was stated to be for up to $1,000,000, with new features being added in response to fan feedback. However, no global third season took place, with a special UK and Ireland-only version launching to coincide with the show returning to ITV2 and ITVX, in an official partnership with the broadcaster. This version featured overhauled graphics, with Banijay announcing that previous games had reached 500K players.
+
+Controversies
+
+Legal 
+In April 2000, Castaway, an independent production company, filed a lawsuit against John de Mol and Endemol for stealing the concepts of their own show called Survive!, a reality television show where contestants are placed on a deserted island and have to take care of themselves alone. These contestants were also filmed by cameras around them. The court later dismissed the lawsuit filed by Castaway against de Mol and Endemol. The Survive! reality television format was later turned into Survivor.
+
+In 2000, the estate of George Orwell sued CBS Television and Endemol for copyright and trademark infringement, claiming that the program infringed on the Orwell novel 1984 and its trademarks. After a series of court rulings adverse to the defendants (CBS and Endemol), the case was settled for an undisclosed amount of money on the evening of the trial.
+
+Sexual assault 
+There have been three documented occurrences of possible rape happening during the show. In Big Brother South Africa, a male housemate was accused of assaulting a fellow housemate while she was asleep. The pair were filmed kissing and cuddling in bed before the cameras moved away and the male housemate reportedly claimed to housemates the next day that he had intercourse with the contestant. However, the female housemate was apparently shocked by the claims and informed female housemates that she had not consented to have sex with him (under South African law, this act would be constituted as rape). This male housemate was expelled immediately after the allegations surfaced and was later arrested pending investigation, while the female housemate was removed from the house for her own protection and counselling. After this incident, the other housemates were warned not to attempt any further obscene actions, or they would be subject to a penalty of 43 years in prison and immediate expulsion from the house.
+
+In Big Brother Brasil, many viewers reported that they watched a male housemate allegedly force himself on a female housemate while she was passed-out drunk after a "boozy party". Soon after, the Polícia Federal entered the house and arrested the offending housemate, who was later banned from ever appearing on the show again.
+
+Additionally, an incident of sexual assault occurred in the Australian Big Brother house in 2006, during the show's sixth season. Contestant Michael "John" Bric held down fellow contestant Camilla Severi in her bed while a second man, Michael "Ashley" Cox, "slapped" her in the face with his penis, an indecent act illegal under Australian law. The incident was shown on the 'Adults-only' late-night segment, Big Brother: Adults Only, leading to the show's cancellation. Both men involved in the incident were removed from the house.
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+
+External links 
+ 
+
+ 
+Banijay franchises
+Reality television series franchises
+Bristol City Football Club is a professional football club based in Bristol, England, which compete in the , the second tier of English football. They have played their home games at Ashton Gate since moving from St John's Lane in 1904. The club's home colours are red and white, and their nickname is The Robins—a robin featured on the club's badge from 1976 to 1994 and from 2019 onwards. Their main rivals are Bristol Rovers, with whom they contest the Bristol derby, and Cardiff City, with whom they contest the cross-border Severnside derby.
+
+Founded in 1894, the club competed in the Southern League and Western League, being crowned Western League champions in 1897–98. They were admitted into the Football League in 1901 and won the Second Division in 1905–06. They finished second in the First Division the following season, three points behind champions Newcastle United, and went on to lose to Manchester United in the 1909 FA Cup final. Relegated in 1911, they dropped to the third tier in 1922, though would claim the Third Division South title in 1922–23 and again in 1926–27. They were returned to the third tier in 1932, remaining there until they won the Third Division South again in 1954–55. Having been relegated in 1960, Bristol City won promotion from the third tier in 1964–65 and then from the second tier in 1975–76. They played four seasons in the top-flight before being relegated in three consecutive seasons by 1982.
+
+Bristol City spent just two seasons in the Fourth Division and went on to win the Associate Members' Cup (Football League Trophy) in 1986. Promoted out of the Third Division in 1989–90, the club were relegated in 1995 and again in 1999 after another promotion in 1997–98. Bristol City won the Football League Trophy again in 2003, and were promoted from League One in 2006–07. Relegated after six seasons in the Championship, they won the Football League Trophy for a third time in 2015 on their way to the 2014–15 League One title, and have remained in the Championship since that time.
+
+History
+
+Early years and early successes (1894–1922)
+The club was founded in 1894 as Bristol South End and changed their name to Bristol City on adopting professionalism three years later when they were admitted into the Southern League. Finishing as runners-up in three of the first four seasons, in 1900 the club amalgamated with local Southern League rivals Bedminster F.C., who had been founded as Southville in 1887. Bristol City joined the Football League in 1901 when they became only the third club south of Birmingham (following in the footsteps of Woolwich Arsenal and Luton Town) to perform in the competition. Their first game in the Football League was on 7 September 1901 at Bloomfield Road, when Blackpool were beaten 2–0.
+
+Winning the Second Division Championship with a record number of points when they became the first club in Football League history to win 30 league games in a season (out of 38 played) as well as equalling Manchester United's achievement of the previous season in winning 14 consecutive games (a record until 2018, also accomplished by Preston North End in 1950–51). Nicknamed the Bristol Babe at this time, they finished as runners-up in their inaugural First Division campaign (1906–07) as the only southern club to finish in the top two prior to World War I.
+
+In 1909 they won through to their only FA Cup Final, though they were somewhat fortunate that a last-gasp spot-kick saved them from defeat in the semi-final versus Derby County at Stamford Bridge. In the final at the Crystal Palace (now the National Sports Centre) Bristol City lost to Manchester United 1–0. After a five-season stay in the top flight, despite winning 1–0 at Newcastle at the start of the 1910–11 campaign, failure to beat Everton in the season's finale brought City's first-ever taste of relegation and it was to be 65 years before top-flight status would be regained.
+
+Bristol City would then go on to stay in Division 2 until three years after the First World War had ended, and in that time they reached the semi-finals of the 1919–20 FA Cup before being beaten 2–1 by Huddersfield Town and finished third in the Second Division in the 1920–21 season. However, in the next season they were relegated to the Third Division South.
+
+The yo-yo era (1922–65)
+
+The 1920s were a rocky time as City bounced between the Second Division and the Southern Section of the Third Division. The season after City were relegated, they achieved promotion back to the Second Division, before being relegated back to the Southern Section of the Third Division again the following season. After successive high finishes in the league, they were promoted again in 1926–27. However, by the 1930s they had slumped into the lower division and stayed that way until over 10 years after the Second World War. During this stay in the Third Division South, they won the Welsh Cup in 1934, beating Tranmere Rovers in the final. However, in the same year they also suffered their biggest ever league defeat, a 9–0 loss to Coventry City The 1937–38 season was the most successful season for City since they were relegated to the Third Division, coming second in the league and reaching the final of the Third Division South Cup, before losing 6–2 to Reading on aggregate. They then came eighth in the Third Division South in the final full season before the war, in which the Grandstand of Ashton Gate was destroyed by a German air raid.
+
+In 1946–47, City recorded a record league win by beating Aldershot 9–0, although despite Don Clark scoring 36 goals in the League, City failed to get promoted that season. Harry Dolman became chairman in 1949, a post he would hold for over 30 years. An engineer who had bought out the firm he worked for, he designed the first set of floodlights installed at Ashton Gate in the early 1950s. The late 1950s were a better time for City, with a five-year stay in the Second Division, a league they returned to for a further spell in 1965.
+
+Back among the elite (1966–80)
+In 1967, Alan Dicks was appointed manager, and things gradually began to improve, with promotion to the First Division in 1976, ending a 65-year exile from the top flight.
+
+Between 1975 and 1981 City were regular participants in the Anglo-Scottish Cup, winning the trophy in 1977–78, beating Hibernian in the semi-finals, and winning 3–2 on aggregate in the final against St Mirren (managed at the time by a relatively new manager, Alex Ferguson). St Mirren had their revenge two seasons later, with an aggregate 5–1 victory over City to become the only Scottish team to win the trophy.
+
+City's second stint in the top flight was less successful than the club's first, with thirteenth position in 1979 being their highest finish during this era. Stars of this era included Peter Cormack, Geoff Merrick, Tom Ritchie, Clive Whitehead, Gerry Gow, Trevor Tainton and Jimmy Mann.
+
+Financial difficulties and revival (1980–2000)
+In 1980, the City team went back to the Second Division in the first of three relegations, their debt mounted and their financial losses increased, with two successive relegations following. Thus, in 1982, they fell into the Fourth Division, and were declared bankrupt. A new club was formed and BCFC (1982) Ltd acquired the club's player contracts. The highly paid senior players Julian Marshall, Chris Garland, Jimmy Mann, Peter Aitken, Geoff Merrick, David Rodgers, Gerry Sweeney and Trevor Tainton, who became known as the 'Ashton Gate Eight', each accepted termination of his contract for half the amount due. The club's previous owners had failed to pay its debts to many local businesses. The resulting ill will towards the club made it difficult for the new owners to obtain credit.
+
+City spent two seasons in the Fourth Division before winning promotion under Terry Cooper in 1984. They consolidated themselves in the Third Division during the latter part of the 1980s, and in 1990 Cooper's successor Joe Jordan achieved promotion as Third Division runners-up to local rivals Bristol Rovers.
+
+There was a tragedy for the club, however, in that promotion campaign. In March 1990, two months before the club sealed promotion, striker Dean Horrix was killed in a car crash barely two weeks after joining the club, and having played three league games for them.
+
+Jordan moved to Heart of Midlothian in September 1990, and his successor Jimmy Lumsden remained in charge for 18 months before making way for Denis Smith. Smith's first signing was the 20-year-old Arsenal striker Andy Cole. He was sold to Newcastle United in February 1993 and later played for Manchester United, where he collected five Premier League titles, two FA Cups and the European Cup.
+
+Meanwhile, City remained in the new Division One (no longer the Second Division after the creation of the Premier League in 1992) and Smith moved to Oxford United in November 1993. His successor was Russell Osman. In January 1994 Osman led City to a shock 1–0 victory over Liverpool at Anfield in a third round replay in the FA Cup, a result that would cause the Liverpool manager at the time, Graeme Souness, to resign. Osman was sacked within a year of taking charge.
+
+Joe Jordan was brought back to Ashton Gate in September 1994, but was unable to prevent relegation to Division Two.
+
+Jordan remained at the helm for two seasons after City's relegation, but left in March 1997 after failing to get them back into Division One. Former Bristol Rovers manager John Ward took over, and achieved promotion in 1998 as Division Two runners-up. But City struggled back in Division One, and Ward stepped down in October 1998 to be succeeded by Benny Lennartsson, their first non-British manager. City were relegated in bottom place and Lennartsson was dismissed in favour of Gillingham's Tony Pulis, who lasted six months before leaving to take over at Portsmouth. During his time at Ashton Gate he was manager of perhaps the worst City side since the one that completed a hat-trick of successive relegations almost 20 years earlier.
+
+Coach Tony Fawthrop took over until the end of the season, when Danny Wilson was appointed. Wilson was arguably the most prominent manager to take charge of a City side since Denis Smith, as he had guided Barnsley to promotion to the Premier League in 1997 and Sheffield Wednesday to a 12th-place finish in 1999.
+
+21st century
+The early 2000s were a frustrating time for Bristol City. They were regular Division Two play-off contenders during Wilson's spell as manager. They just missed out on the play-offs in 2002, finishing 7th. The following year, Wilson almost took them to automatic promotion, finishing 3rd and winning the Football League Trophy in Cardiff in 2003. The taste of the play-offs was bitter though, losing to rivals Cardiff City 1–0 on aggregate in the semi-final. In 2004, they finished in 3rd place again, and this time they reached the play-off final, but lost to Brighton & Hove Albion. He was sacked within days and replaced by veteran player Brian Tinnion.
+
+City just failed to make the play-offs in Tinnion's first season as manager, finishing seventh, and he stepped down in September 2005 after a poor start to the season. Yeovil Town manager Gary Johnson was recruited as his successor in September 2005. Johnson led Bristol City to a 9th place finish.
+
+In the 2006–07 season, Bristol City finally achieved the elusive promotion that had evaded them in their 8 years in the third tier. Promotion to the Championship was confirmed on the final day of the season with a 3–1 win against already relegated Rotherham United, securing the runners-up place in the division and resulting in automatic promotion.
+
+After a good start in the Championship, City established themselves as real contenders, sitting in 3rd place at Christmas. By the start of March, City were top of the Championship, making an improbable second successive promotion a possibility. However, a poor run ended City's chances of an automatic promotion place but qualified for the play-offs with a 4th-place finish, their highest finish since 1980. City overcame Crystal Palace 4–2 on aggregate to progress to the play-off final at Wembley Stadium, where they were beaten 1–0 by Hull City.
+
+After a poor start in the first half of the 2008–09 season, City recovered after Christmas, peaking at 4th place in late February. After a lot of draws, the season eventually petered out and City finished the season in tenth place. The 2009–10 season saw some good results in the autumn, but heavy defeats by local rivals Cardiff City (0–6) and Doncaster Rovers (2–5) in early 2010 led to much dissatisfaction amongst fans, and Johnson left the club on 18 March 2010. Assistant manager Keith Millen took charge as caretaker manager, and led a series of good results, resulting in a second successive tenth-place finish.
+
+Steve Coppell became manager in 2010 but resigned after just two matches. Longtime assistant manager Keith Millen was announced as Coppell's successor and City fell to a 15th-place finish in 2010–11. After a poor start to the 2011–12 season, Millen left the club in October 2011.
+
+Derek McInnes was appointed next, but after a promising start, City fell into the relegation zone, eventually surviving in 20th place, their worst since promotion in 2007. This steady decline would continue and after a poor start to the 2012–13 season, McInnes was sacked in January 2013 with City bottom of the Championship. He was replaced by Sean O'Driscoll, the club's fifth head coach in three years, but City were relegated to League One after six seasons in the Championship. O'Driscoll left with the team 22nd in League One.
+
+Steve Cotterill joined the club when Bristol City were second bottom of League One. Cotterill guided the club to  a 12th place finish. Bristol City were promoted back to the Championship after securing the League One title in 2014–15, their first league title since 1955. In their last home game, against Walsall, they finished the season with an 8–2 win. Bristol City finished the season with 99 points, the most points in a single season in the club's history, and 5 losses. In the same season, they also won the Football League Trophy after a win over Walsall, which finished 2–0 and their third league trophy, a record held by the club for having the most wins in that competition.
+
+Despite huge success in the previous season, the club struggled on their return to the second tier. Steve Cotterill was relieved of his duties in January 2016 after a poor run of form which had seen Bristol City slip to 22nd in the Championship table. Lee Johnson, former player and son of former manager, Gary Johnson, was appointed as Bristol City's new head coach on 6 February 2016. Bristol City eventually finished in 18th place.
+
+In the 2016–17 season, City were only just able to accumulate enough points to ensure survival at the end of the season. Lee Johnson remained at the helm for the following season, again making a positive early start. At the midpoint of the season, after 24 league games, they sat second in the Championship, whilst also knocking out Premier League opposition in Watford, Stoke City, Crystal Palace and Manchester United to reach the semi-finals of the League Cup. However, City would eventually finish in 11th place.
+
+Bristol City ended the 2018–19 season in 8th. The battle for the last play-off spot came down to the final day, before Derby County managed to win their final game and clinch it. From March to June, the 2019–20 season was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite again challenging for the play-offs during the season, Johnson was sacked on 4 July 2020 after a run of just one win in 10 league matches. His long-time assistant, Dean Holden, was appointed as his replacement on 10 August 2020. After suffering six straight defeats in all competitions, Holden was dismissed on 16 February 2021 after just six months in charge. He was replaced by Nigel Pearson.
+
+Club identity
+
+Bristol City have played in red and white since the 1890s, occasionally also including black. The away kit is more variable. It is traditionally white, but has also featured black or yellow. Other colours featured have included green and a purple and lime combination, the latter of which has become a fan favourite.
+
+ The club's current crest is a modernised version of the Robin which has long ties to the fans and the club.
+ The club's previous crest was a simplified version of the coat of arms of the city of Bristol.
+ The club's mascots are Red and Robyn, replacing Scrumpy the robin who had been the club's mascot from 2005 until 2022.
+ The club's official anthem is One for the Bristol City by the Wurzels. First released in 1976, it is the tune the team run out to at home matches. A newly recorded version of the song reached number 66 in the UK charts in September 2007.
+
+About halfway through the 2007–08 season Bristol City manager Gary Johnson said in an interview that he hoped the team could get the whole ground bouncing. City supporters took this rallying cry on board and began to sing "Johnson says bounce around the ground" to the tune of Yellow Submarine, while continually bouncing up and down. The first game at which it was sung was in an away match against Southampton at St Mary's Stadium, and it was also sung at away at Queen's Park Rangers in February. When Bristol City fans travelled to London to play Charlton Athletic on 4 March 2008, the visiting fans, using the rail network to return home, adapted the song to "Bounce Around the Train". Since then, it has become an often used chant at Ashton Gate stadium by the fans. It was also sometimes used by supporters of Gary Johnson's former side Northampton Town, primarily at away matches. When Gary Johnson's son, Lee Johnson returned to his former club in 2016 as their new manager, he stated that he wished to inherit the chant and keep the fans singing it.
+
+Shirt sponsors
+
+Stadium
+Bristol City have played at Ashton Gate Stadium in the south-west of Bristol, just south of the River Avon, since moving from St John's Lane in 1904. The ground currently has an all-seated capacity of 27,000. It was the home of Bedminster until the 1900 merger, and the merged team played some games there the following season, but it did not become the permanent home of Bristol City until 1904.
+
+In the past plans were considered for expansion work to be carried out at Ashton Gate. There were also proposals to build a new 36,000-seat stadium at Hengrove Park. This was turned down in a local referendum in December 2000. In 2002, the local council was looking at possible sites for a new 40,000-seat stadium which would house both City, Rovers and Bristol Rugby, but these plans were scrapped and it is widely accepted that this would not have been welcomed by the majority of supporters from all clubs. Ashton Gate's current capacity is an average size for Championship grounds; however, in November 2007 the club announced plans to relocate to a new 30,000-capacity stadium in Ashton Vale. Plans were also in place to increase capacity to 42,000 had England's 2018 World Cup bid been successful.
+
+The South stand opened for the 2015–16 season, with the existing Williams stand being demolished and replaced by the Lansdown stand in 2016. A new partly-artificial Desso pitch was laid and the current Dolman stand refurbished. There is still no decision on the club's request to provide a "safe standing" area, similar to those used in Germany.
+
+A state-of-the-art training facility became operational in 2020. The Robins High Performance Centre is at Failand a short distance from Ashton Gate Stadium.
+
+Gallery
+
+Rivalries
+
+Bristol City's traditional rivals are Bristol Rovers. The clubs have met 105 times, with the first meeting in 1897. Bristol City have the most wins on 43. However, the clubs have not been in the same league for a number of years; they were last in the same division in the 2000–01 season. Since then, they have only met three times; in the two-legged southern final of the 2006–07 Football League Trophy, which Rovers won 1–0 on aggregate, and in the first round of the 2013–14 Johnstone's Paint Trophy, which City won 2–1 at Ashton Gate.
+
+City's other main rivals are Cardiff City, who play in nearby Cardiff. Despite being a local derby, it crosses the Wales–England border, making it one of the few international club derbies in the United Kingdom. The two clubs have been at similar levels in recent years, being in the same division for 10 of the last 16 seasons. This has meant frequent meetings in the league including in the semi-finals of the 2003 Second Division play-offs.
+
+Other clubs have been seen as 'third rivals' by the fans and media. Swindon Town are seen by many as rivals, nicknamed 'Swindle' by City fans. This rivalry was most recently relevant in the 2014–15 season, when the two clubs were rivals for promotion to the Championship. Plymouth Argyle have also previously been considered rivals despite a distance of over 100 miles. The rivalry was especially relevant in the 2000s when the two clubs were the highest-ranking West Country clubs for a number of years, and meetings were seen as a decider of the 'Best in the West'. Swansea City, Newport County, Cheltenham Town and even Yeovil Town have previously been mentioned as rivals, but very rarely. However, during a fixture between Bristol City and Swansea City on 2 February 2019 at Ashton Gate, fighting took place between Bristol City and Swansea City fans resulting in a rivalry flaring up between the two sets of fans.
+
+Records and statistics
+ Record League victory – 9–0 v. Aldershot (28 December 1946)
+ Record FA Cup victory – 11–0 v. Chichester City (5 November 1960)
+ Record League defeat – 0–9 v. Coventry City (28 April 1934)
+
+ Highest attendance – 43,335 v. Preston North End (16 February 1935)
+ Highest attendance (at any ground) – 86,703 v. Hull City Championship Play-off Final – Wembley Stadium – (24 May 2008)
+ Most League appearances – 597, John Atyeo (1951–66)
+ Most League goals scored – 314, John Atyeo (1951–66)
+ Most goals scored (overall) – 351, John Atyeo (1951–66)
+ Most capped player – Billy Wedlock, 26 caps, England
+ Most goals scored in a season – 36, Don Clark (1946–47)
+ Record transfer fee paid – £8 million to Chelsea for Tomáš Kalas (July 2019)
+ Record transfer fee received – £25 million from Bournemouth for Alex Scott (August 2023) 
+ Record sequence of League wins – 14; 9 September 1905 – 2 December 1905 – This was a joint league record until 2017.
+ Record sequence of League defeats – 8; 10 December 2016 – 21 January 2017
+ Record sequence of unbeaten League matches – 24; 9 September 1905 – 10 February 1906
+ Record sequence without a League win – 21; 16 March 2013 – 22 October 2013
+ Record points total for a Season – 99pts; 2014–15 Football League One
+
+League history
+Note: The numbers in parentheses are the tier of football for that season.
+
+ 1897–1901: Southern League Division One (3)
+ 1901–1906: Football League Second Division (2)
+ 1906–1911: Football League First Division (1)
+ 1911–1922: Football League Second Division (2)
+ 1922–1923: Football League Third Division (3)
+ 1923–1924: Football League Second Division (2)
+ 1924–1927: Football League Third Division (3)
+ 1927–1932: Football League Second Division (2)
+ 1932–1955: Football League Third Division (3)
+ 1955–1960: Football League Second Division (2)
+ 1960–1965: Football League Third Division (3)
+ 1965–1976: Football League Second Division (2)
+ 1976–1980: Football League First Division (1)
+ 1980–1981: Football League Second Division (2)
+ 1981–1982: Football League Third Division (3)
+ 1982–1984: Football League Fourth Division (4)
+ 1984–1990: Football League Third Division (3)
+ 1990–1995: Football League Second Division / Football League First Division (rebranding after the Premier League came into existence) (2)
+ 1995–1998: Football League Second Division (3)
+ 1998–1999: Football League First Division (2)
+ 1999–2007: Football League Second Division / Football League One (rebranded) (3)
+ 2007–2013: Football League Championship (2)
+ 2013–2015: Football League One (3)
+ 2015– : Football League/EFL Championship (2)
+
+Most appearances
+
+Most club appearances including substitute appearances in all competitions (excluding Gloucestershire Cup). Updated 29 December 2013.
+Note: On 29 December 2013, Louis Carey broke Bristol City's appearance record when he came on as a substitute in the 4–1 win over Stevenage. He overtook John Atyeo after 47 years and is now the club's all-time top appearance maker.
+
+Most goals
+
+Correct as of 29 July 2018.
+
+Players
+
+First-team squad
+
+Out on loan
+
+Under 21 squad
+
+List of Bristol City players from 1890s to date
+For a list of all Bristol City players with a Wikipedia article, see :Category:Bristol City F.C. players.
+Bedminster merged with Bristol City in 1900 for a further list of all Bedminster players with articles see :Category:Bedminster F.C. players
+
+Player of the season
+
+Source for 1970s winners:
+
+Top league scorers
+
+Club management
+
+Coaching positions
+
+Managerial history
+
+Bristol City Women's F.C.
+
+The women's team was formed in 1990 supported by the club's community officer, Shaun Parker. Their greatest achievement was reaching the semi-finals of the FA Women's Cup in 1994 and winning promotion to the Premier League under Manager Jack Edgar in 2004. Following the decision by the FA to fund only one centre of excellence in Bristol, the two senior teams were disbanded in June 2008 and the girls' youth side merged with the Bristol Academy W.F.C. The majority of the senior players, with coach Will Roberts, moved to the University of Bath in summer 2008 and now play as AFC TeamBath Ladies in the South West Combination Women's Football League.
+
+Honours
+ FA Women's Premier League Southern Division:
+ Winners: 2003–04
+
+Honours and achievements
+League
+ Second Division (level 2)
+Champions: 1905–06
+2nd place promotion: 1975–76
+
+ Third Division South / Third Division / Second Division / League One (level 3)
+Champions (4): 1922–23, 1926–27, 1954–55, 2014–15
+2nd place promotion: 1964–65, 1989–90, 1997–98, 2006–07
+
+ Fourth Division (level 4)
+4th place promotion: 1983–84
+
+ Western League
+Champions: 1897–98
+
+Cup
+ FA Cup
+Runners-up: 1908–09
+
+ Associate Members' Cup / Football League Trophy
+Winners: 1985–86, 2002–03, 2014–15
+Runners-up: 1986–87, 1999–2000
+
+ Welsh Cup
+Winners: 1933–34
+
+ Anglo-Scottish Cup
+Winners: 1977–78
+
+References
+
+External links
+
+ 
+
+ 
+1894 establishments in England
+Association football clubs established in 1894
+Football clubs in Bristol
+Football clubs in England
+Southern Football League clubs
+English Football League clubs
+EFL Trophy winners
+Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents include bacteria, viruses, insects, fungi, and/or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form, in much the same way as in biological warfare. Further, modern agribusiness is vulnerable to anti-agricultural attacks by terrorists, and such attacks can seriously damage economy as well as consumer confidence. The latter destructive activity is called agrobioterrorism and is a subtype of agro-terrorism.
+
+Definition
+Bioterrorism is the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria, toxins, or other harmful agents to cause illness or death in people, animals, or plants. These agents are typically found in nature, but could be mutated or altered to increase their ability to cause disease, make them resistant to current medicines, or to increase their ability to be spread into the environment. Biological agents can be spread through the air, water, or in food. Biological agents are attractive to terrorists because they are extremely difficult to detect and do not cause illness for several hours to several days. Some bioterrorism agents, like the smallpox virus, can be spread from person to person and some, like anthrax, cannot. Bioterrorism may be favored because biological agents are relatively easy and inexpensive to obtain, can be easily disseminated, and can cause widespread fear and panic beyond the actual physical damage. Military leaders, however, have learned that, as a military asset, bioterrorism has some important limitations; it is difficult to use a bioweapon in a way that only affects the enemy and not friendly forces. A biological weapon is useful to terrorists mainly as a method of creating mass panic and disruption to a state or a country. However, technologists such as Bill Joy have warned of the potential power which genetic engineering might place in the hands of future bio-terrorists.
+
+The use of agents that do not cause harm to humans, but disrupt the economy, have also been discussed. One such pathogen is the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus, which is capable of causing widespread economic damage and public concern (as witnessed in the 2001 and 2007 FMD outbreaks in the UK), while having almost no capacity to infect humans.
+
+History
+
+By the time World War I began, attempts to use anthrax were directed at animal populations. This generally proved to be ineffective.
+
+Shortly after the start of World War I, Germany launched a biological sabotage campaign in the United States, Russia, Romania, and France. At that time, Anton Dilger lived in Germany, but in 1915 he was sent to the United States carrying cultures of glanders, a virulent disease of horses and mules. Dilger set up a laboratory in his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He used stevedores working the docks in Baltimore to infect horses with glanders while they were waiting to be shipped to Britain. Dilger was under suspicion as being a German agent, but was never arrested. Dilger eventually fled to Madrid, Spain, where he died during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. In 1916, the Russians arrested a German agent with similar intentions. Germany and its allies infected French cavalry horses and many of Russia's mules and horses on the Eastern Front. These actions hindered artillery and troop movements, as well as supply convoys.
+ 	
+In 1972, police in Chicago arrested two college students, Allen Schwander and Stephen Pera, who had planned to poison the city's water supply with typhoid and other bacteria. Schwander had founded a terrorist group, "R.I.S.E.", while Pera collected and grew cultures from the hospital where he worked. The two men fled to Cuba after being released on bail. Schwander died of natural causes in 1974, while Pera returned to the U.S. in 1975 and was put on probation.
+
+In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the eradication of smallpox, a highly contagious and incurable disease. Although the disease has been eliminated in the wild, frozen stocks of smallpox virus are still maintained by the governments of the United States and Russia. Disastrous consequences are feared if rogue politicians or terrorists were to get hold of the smallpox strains. Since vaccination programs are now terminated, the world population is more susceptible to smallpox than ever before.
+
+In Oregon in 1984, followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh attempted to control a local election by incapacitating the local population. They infected salad bars in 11 restaurants, produce in grocery stores, doorknobs, and other public domains with Salmonella typhimurium bacteria in the city of The Dalles, Oregon. The attack infected 751 people with severe food poisoning. There were no fatalities. This incident was the first known bioterrorist attack in the United States in the 20th century. It was also the single largest bioterrorism attack on U.S. soil.
+ 	
+In June 1993, the religious group Aum Shinrikyo released anthrax in Tokyo. Eyewitnesses reported a foul odor. The attack was a failure, because it did not infect a single person. The reason for this is due to the fact that the group used the vaccine strain of the bacterium. The spores which were recovered from the site of the attack showed that they were identical to an anthrax vaccine strain that was given to animals at the time. These vaccine strains are missing the genes that cause a symptomatic response.
+
+In September and October 2001, several cases of anthrax broke out in the United States, apparently deliberately caused. Letters laced with infectious anthrax were concurrently delivered to news media offices and the U.S. Congress, alongside an ambiguously related case in Chile. The letters killed five people.
+
+Scenarios
+There are multiple considerable scenarios, how terrorists might employ biological agents. In 2000, tests conducted by various US agencies showed that indoor attacks in densely populated spaces are much more serious than outdoor attacks. Such enclosed spaces are large buildings, trains, indoor arenas, theaters, malls, tunnels and similar. Contra-measures against such scenarios are building architecture and ventilation systems engineering. In 1993, sewage was spilled out into a river, subsequently drawn into the water system and affected 400,000 people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The disease-causing organism was cryptosporidium parvum. This man-made disaster can be a template for a terrorist scenario. Nevertheless, terrorist scenarios are considered more likely near the points of delivery than at the water sources before the water treatment. Release of biological agents is more likely for a single building or a neighborhood. Counter-measures against this scenario include the further limitation of access to the water supply systems, tunnels, and infrastructure. Agricultural crop-duster flights might be misused as delivery devices for biological agents as well. Counter-measures against this scenario are background checks of employees of crop-dusting companies and surveillance procedures.
+
+In the most common hoax scenario, no biological agents are employed. For instance, an envelope with powder in it that says, “You've just been exposed to anthrax.” Such hoaxes have been shown to have a large psychological impact on the population.
+
+Anti-agriculture attacks are considered to require relatively little expertise and technology. Biological agents that attack livestock, fish, vegetation, and crops are mostly not contagious to humans and are therefore easier for attackers to handle. Even a few cases of infection can disrupt a country's agricultural production and exports for months, as evidenced by FMD outbreaks.
+
+Types of agents
+
+Under current United States law, bio-agents which have been declared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have the "potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety" are officially defined as "select agents." The CDC categorizes these agents (A, B or C) and administers the Select Agent Program, which regulates the laboratories which may possess, use, or transfer select agents within the United States. As with US attempts to categorize harmful recreational drugs, designer viruses are not yet categorized and avian H5N1 has been shown to achieve high mortality and human-communication in a laboratory setting.
+
+Category A
+These high-priority agents pose a risk to national security, can be easily transmitted and disseminated, result in high mortality, have potential major public health impact, may cause public panic, or require special action for public health preparedness.
+
+ SARS and COVID-19, though not as lethal as other diseases, was concerning to scientists and policymakers for its social and economic disruption potential. After the global containment of the pandemic, the United States President George W. Bush stated "...A global influenza pandemic that infects millions and lasts from one to three years could be far worse." 
+ Tularemia or "rabbit fever": Tularemia has a very low fatality rate if treated, but can severely incapacitate. The disease is caused by the Francisella tularensis bacterium, and can be contracted through contact with fur, inhalation, ingestion of contaminated water or insect bites. Francisella tularensis is very infectious. A small number of organisms (10–50 or so) can cause disease. If F. tularensis were used as a weapon, the bacteria would likely be made airborne for exposure by inhalation. People who inhale an infectious aerosol would generally experience severe respiratory illness, including life-threatening pneumonia and systemic infection, if they are not treated. The bacteria that cause tularemia occur widely in nature and could be isolated and grown in quantity in a laboratory, although manufacturing an effective aerosol weapon would require considerable sophistication.
+ Anthrax: Anthrax is a non-contagious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The ability of Anthrax to produce within small spores, or bacilli bacterium, makes it readily permeable to porous skin and can cause abrupt symptoms within 24 hours of exposure. The dispersal of this pathogen among densely populated areas is said to carry less than one percent mortality rate, for cutaneous exposure, to a ninety percent or higher mortality for untreated inhalational infections. An anthrax vaccine does exist but requires many injections for stable use. When discovered early, anthrax can be cured by administering antibiotics (such as ciprofloxacin). Its first modern incidence in biological warfare were when Scandinavian "freedom fighters" supplied by the German General Staff used anthrax with unknown results against the Imperial Russian Army in Finland in 1916. In 1993, the Aum Shinrikyo used anthrax in an unsuccessful attempt in Tokyo with zero fatalities. Anthrax was used in a series of attacks by a microbiologist at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infection Disease on the offices of several United States Senators in late 2001. The anthrax was in a powder form and it was delivered by the mail. This bioterrorist attack inevitably prompted seven cases of cutaneous anthrax and eleven cases of inhalation anthrax, with five leading to deaths. Additionally, an estimated 10 to 26 cases had prevented fatality through treatment supplied to over 30,000 individuals. Anthrax is one of the few biological agents that federal employees have been vaccinated for. In the US an anthrax vaccine, Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA) exists and requires five injections for stable use. Other anthrax vaccines also exist. The strain used in the 2001 anthrax attacks was identical to the strain used by the USAMRIID.
+ Smallpox: Smallpox is a highly contagious virus. It is transmitted easily through the atmosphere and has a high mortality rate (20–40%). Smallpox was eradicated in the world in the 1970s, thanks to a worldwide vaccination program. However, some virus samples are still available in Russian and American laboratories. Some believe that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, cultures of smallpox have become available in other countries. Although people born pre-1970 will have been vaccinated for smallpox under the WHO program, the effectiveness of vaccination is limited since the vaccine provides high level of immunity for only 3 to 5 years. Revaccination's protection lasts longer. As a biological weapon smallpox is dangerous because of the highly contagious nature of both the infected and their pox. Also, the infrequency with which vaccines are administered among the general population since the eradication of the disease would leave most people unprotected in the event of an outbreak. Smallpox occurs only in humans, and has no external hosts or vectors.
+ Botulinum toxin: The neurotoxin Botulinum is the deadliest toxin known to man, and is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Botulism causes death by respiratory failure and paralysis. Furthermore, the toxin is readily available worldwide due to its cosmetic applications in injections.
+Bubonic plague: Plague is a disease caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Rodents are the normal host of plague, and the disease is transmitted to humans by flea bites and occasionally by aerosol in the form of pneumonic plague. The disease has a history of use in biological warfare dating back many centuries, and is considered a threat due to its ease of culture and ability to remain in circulation among local rodents for a long period of time. The weaponized threat comes mainly in the form of pneumonic plague (infection by inhalation) It was the disease that caused the Black Death in Medieval Europe.
+ Viral hemorrhagic fevers: This includes hemorrhagic fevers caused by members of the family Filoviridae (Marburg virus and Ebola virus), and by the family Arenaviridae (for example Lassa virus and Machupo virus). Ebola virus disease, in particular, has caused high fatality rates ranging from 25 to 90% with a 50% average. No cure currently exists, although vaccines are in development. The Soviet Union investigated the use of filoviruses for biological warfare, and the Aum Shinrikyo group unsuccessfully attempted to obtain cultures of Ebola virus. Death from Ebola virus disease is commonly due to multiple organ failure and hypovolemic shock. Marburg virus was first discovered in Marburg, Germany. No treatments currently exist aside from supportive care. The arenaviruses have a somewhat reduced case-fatality rate compared to disease caused by filoviruses, but are more widely distributed, chiefly in central Africa and South America.
+
+Category B
+Category B agents are moderately easy to disseminate and have low mortality rates.
+
+ Brucellosis (Brucella species)
+ Epsilon toxin of Clostridium perfringens
+ Food safety threats (for example, Salmonella species, E coli O157:H7, Shigella, Staphylococcus aureus)
+ Glanders (Burkholderia mallei)
+ Melioidosis (Burkholderia pseudomallei)
+ Psittacosis (Chlamydia psittaci)
+ Q fever (Coxiella burnetii)
+ Ricin toxin from Ricinus communis (castor beans)
+ Abrin toxin from Abrus precatorius (Rosary peas)
+ Staphylococcal enterotoxin B
+ Typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii)
+ Viral encephalitis (alphaviruses, for example,: Venezuelan equine encephalitis, eastern equine encephalitis, western equine encephalitis)
+ Water supply threats (for example, Vibrio cholerae, Cryptosporidium parvum)
+
+Category C
+Category C agents are emerging pathogens that might be engineered for mass dissemination because of their availability, ease of production and dissemination, high mortality rate, or ability to cause a major health impact.
+
+ Nipah virus
+ Hantavirus
+
+Planning and response
+
+Planning may involve the development of biological identification systems. Until recently in the United States, most biological defense strategies have been geared to protecting soldiers on the battlefield rather than ordinary people in cities. Financial cutbacks have limited the tracking of disease outbreaks. Some outbreaks, such as food poisoning due to E. coli or Salmonella, could be of either natural or deliberate origin.
+
+Preparedness 
+Export controls on biological agents are not applied uniformly, providing terrorists a route for acquisition. Laboratories are working on advanced detection systems to provide early warning, identify contaminated areas and populations at risk, and to facilitate prompt treatment. Methods for predicting the use of biological agents in urban areas as well as assessing the area for the hazards associated with a biological attack are being established in major cities. In addition, forensic technologies are working on identifying biological agents, their geographical origins and/or their initial source. Efforts include decontamination technologies to restore facilities without causing additional environmental concerns.
+
+Early detection and rapid response to bioterrorism depend on close cooperation between public health authorities and law enforcement; however, such cooperation is lacking. National detection assets and vaccine stockpiles are not useful if local and state officials do not have access to them.
+
+Aspects of protection against bioterrorism in the United States include:
+Detection and resilience strategies in combating bioterrorism. This occurs primarily through the efforts of the Office of Health Affairs (OHA), a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), whose role is to prepare for an emergency situation that impacts the health of the American populace. Detection has two primary technological factors. First there is OHA's BioWatch program in which collection devices are disseminated to thirty high risk areas throughout the country to detect the presence of aerosolized biological agents before symptoms present in patients. This is significant primarily because it allows a more proactive response to a disease outbreak rather than the more passive treatment of the past.
+Implementation of the Generation-3 automated detection system. This advancement is significant simply because it enables action to be taken in four to six hours due to its automatic response system, whereas the previous system required aerosol detectors to be manually transported to laboratories. Resilience is a multifaceted issue as well, as addressed by OHA. One way in which this is ensured is through exercises that establish preparedness; programs like the Anthrax Response Exercise Series exist to ensure that, regardless of the incident, all emergency personnel will be aware of the role they must fill. Moreover, by providing information and education to public leaders, emergency medical services and all employees of the DHS, OHS suggests it can significantly decrease the impact of bioterrorism.
+Enhancing the technological capabilities of first responders is accomplished through numerous strategies. The first of these strategies was developed by the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) of DHS to ensure that the danger of suspicious powders could be effectively assessed, (as many dangerous biological agents such as anthrax exist as a white powder). By testing the accuracy and specificity of commercially available systems used by first responders, the hope is that all biologically harmful powders can be rendered ineffective.
+Enhanced equipment for first responders. One recent advancement is the commercialization of a new form of Tyvex™ armor which protects first responders and patients from chemical and biological contaminants. There has also been a new generation of Self-Contained Breathing Apparatuses (SCBA) which has been recently made more robust against bioterrorism agents. All of these technologies combine to form what seems like a relatively strong deterrent to bioterrorism. However, New York City as an entity has numerous organizations and strategies that effectively serve to deter and respond to bioterrorism as it comes. From here the logical progression is into the realm of New York City's specific strategies to prevent bioterrorism.
+Excelsior Challenge. In the second week of September 2016, the state of New York held a large emergency response training exercise called the Excelsior Challenge, with over 100 emergency responders participating. According to WKTV, "This is the fourth year of the Excelsior Challenge, a training exercise designed for police and first responders to become familiar with techniques and practices should a real incident occur." The event was held over three days and hosted by the State Preparedness Training Center in Oriskany, New York. Participants included bomb squads, canine handlers, tactical team officers and emergency medical services. In an interview with Homeland Preparedness News, Bob Stallman, assistant director at the New York State Preparedness Training Center, said, "We're constantly seeing what’s happening around the world and we tailor our training courses and events for those types of real-world events." For the first time, the 2016 training program implemented New York's new electronic system. The system, called NY Responds, electronically connects every county in New York to aid in disaster response and recovery. As a result, "counties have access to a new technology known as Mutualink, which improves interoperability by integrating telephone, radio, video, and file-sharing into one application to allow local emergency staff to share real-time information with the state and other counties." The State Preparedness Training Center in Oriskany was designed by the State Division of Homeland Security, and Emergency Services (DHSES) in 2006. It cost $42 million to construct on over 1100 acres and is available for training 360 days a year. Students from SUNY Albany's College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, were able to participate in this year's exercise and learn how "DHSES supports law enforcement specialty teams."
+ Project BioShield. The accrual of vaccines and treatments for potential biological threats, also known as medical countermeasures has been an important aspect in preparing for a potential bioterrorist attack; this took the form of a program beginning in 2004, referred to as Project BioShield. The significance of this program should not be overlooked as “there is currently enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate every United States citizen… and a variety of therapeutic drugs to treat the infected.” The Department of Defense also has a variety of laboratories currently working to increase the quantity and efficacy of countermeasures that comprise the national stockpile. Efforts have also been taken to ensure that these medical countermeasures can be disseminated effectively in the event of a bioterrorist attack. The National Association of Chain Drug Stores championed this cause by encouraging the participation of the private sector in improving the distribution of such countermeasures if required.
+
+On a CNN news broadcast in 2011, the CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, weighed in on the American government's recent approach to bioterrorist threats. He explains how, even though the United States would be better fending off bioterrorist attacks now than they would be a decade ago, the amount of money available to fight bioterrorism over the last three years has begun to decrease. Looking at a detailed report that examined the funding decrease for bioterrorism in fifty-one American cities, Dr. Gupta stated that the cities "wouldn’t be able to distribute vaccines as well" and "wouldn't be able to track viruses." He also said that film portrayals of global pandemics, such as Contagion, were actually quite possible and may occur in the United States under the right conditions.
+
+A news broadcast by MSNBC in 2010 also stressed the low levels of bioterrorism preparedness in the United States.  The broadcast stated that a bipartisan report gave the Obama administration a failing grade for its efforts to respond to a bioterrorist attack. The news broadcast invited the former New York City police commissioner, Howard Safir, to explain how the government would fare in combating such an attack. He said how "biological and chemical weapons are probable and relatively easy to disperse." Furthermore, Safir thought that efficiency in bioterrorism preparedness is not necessarily a question of money, but is instead dependent on putting resources in the right places. The broadcast suggested that the nation was not ready for something more serious.
+
+In a September 2016 interview conducted by Homeland Preparedness News, Daniel Gerstein, a senior policy researcher for the RAND Corporation, stresses the importance in preparing for potential bioterrorist attacks on the nation. He implored the U.S. government to take the proper and necessary actions to implement a strategic plan of action to save as many lives as possible and to safeguard against potential chaos and confusion. He believes that because there have been no significant instances of bioterrorism since the anthrax attacks in 2001, the government has allowed itself to become complacent making the country that much more vulnerable to unsuspecting attacks, thereby further endangering the lives of U.S. citizens.
+
+Gerstein formerly served in the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security from 2011 to 2014. He claims there has not been a serious plan of action since 2004 during George W. Bush's presidency, in which he issued a Homeland Security directive delegating responsibilities among various federal agencies. He also stated that the blatant mishandling of the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014 attested to the government's lack of preparation. This past May, legislation that would create a national defense strategy was introduced in the Senate, coinciding with the timing of ISIS-affiliated terrorist groups get closer to weaponizing biological agents. In May 2016, Kenyan officials apprehended two members of an Islamic extremist group in motion to set off a biological bomb containing anthrax. Mohammed Abdi Ali, the believed leader of the group, who was a medical intern, was arrested along with his wife, a medical student. The two were caught just before carrying out their plan. The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, which comprises a group of experts on national security and government officials, in which Gerstein had previously testified to, submitted its National Blueprint for Biodefense to Congress in October 2015 listing their recommendations for devising an effective plan.
+
+Bill Gates said in a February 18, 2017 Business Insider op-ed (published near the time of his Munich Security Conference speech) that it is possible for an airborne pathogen to kill at least 30 million people over the course of a year. In a New York Times report, the Gates Foundation predicted that a modern outbreak similar to the Spanish Influenza pandemic (which killed between 50 million and 100 million people) could end up killing more than 360 million people worldwide, even considering widespread availability of vaccines and other healthcare tools. The report cited increased globalization, rapid international air travel, and urbanization as increased reasons for concern. In a March 9, 2017, interview with CNBC, former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who was co-chair of the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, said a worldwide pandemic could end the lives of more people than a nuclear war. Lieberman also expressed worry that a terrorist group like ISIS could develop a synthetic influenza strain and introduce it to the world to kill civilians. In July 2017, Robert C. Hutchinson, former agent at the Department of Homeland Security, called for a "whole-of-government" response to the next global health threat, which he described as including strict security procedures at our borders and proper execution of government preparedness plans.
+
+Also, novel approaches in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology, could be used in the future to design new types of biological warfare agents. Special attention has to be laid on future experiments (of concern) that:
+ Would demonstrate how to render a vaccine ineffective;
+ Would confer resistance to therapeutically useful antibiotics or antiviral agents;
+ Would enhance the virulence of a pathogen or render a nonpathogen virulent;
+ Would increase transmissibility of a pathogen;
+ Would alter the host range of a pathogen;
+ Would enable the evasion of diagnostic/detection tools;
+ Would enable the weaponization of a biological agent or toxin
+Most of the biosecurity concerns in synthetic biology, however, are focused on the role of DNA synthesis and the risk of producing genetic material of lethal viruses (e.g. 1918 Spanish flu, polio) in the lab. The CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a promising technique for gene editing. It was hailed by The Washington Post as "the most important innovation in the synthetic biology space in nearly 30 years." While other methods take months or years to edit gene sequences, CRISPR speeds that time up to weeks. However, due to its ease of use and accessibility, it has raised a number of ethical concerns, especially surrounding its use in the biohacking space.
+
+Biosurveillance
+
+In 1999, the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biomedical Informatics deployed the first automated bioterrorism detection system, called RODS (Real-Time Outbreak Disease Surveillance). RODS is designed to collect data from many data sources and use them to perform signal detection, that is, to detect a possible bioterrorism event at the earliest possible moment. RODS, and other systems like it, collect data from sources including clinic data, laboratory data, and data from over-the-counter drug sales. In 2000, Michael Wagner, the codirector of the RODS laboratory, and Ron Aryel, a subcontractor, conceived the idea of obtaining live data feeds from "non-traditional" (non-health-care) data sources. The RODS laboratory's first efforts eventually led to the establishment of the National Retail Data Monitor, a system which collects data from 20,000 retail locations nationwide.
+
+On February 5, 2002, George W. Bush visited the RODS laboratory and used it as a model for a $300 million spending proposal to equip all 50 states with biosurveillance systems. In a speech delivered at the nearby Masonic temple, Bush compared the RODS system to a modern "DEW" line (referring to the Cold War ballistic missile early warning system).
+
+The principles and practices of biosurveillance, a new interdisciplinary science, were defined and described in the Handbook of Biosurveillance, edited by Michael Wagner, Andrew Moore and Ron Aryel, and published in 2006. Biosurveillance is the science of real-time disease outbreak detection. Its principles apply to both natural and man-made epidemics (bioterrorism).
+
+Data which potentially could assist in early detection of a bioterrorism event include many categories of information. Health-related data such as that from hospital computer systems, clinical laboratories, electronic health record systems, medical examiner record-keeping systems, 911 call center computers, and veterinary medical record systems could be of help; researchers are also considering the utility of data generated by ranching and feedlot operations, food processors, drinking water systems, school attendance recording, and physiologic monitors, among others.
+
+In Europe, disease surveillance is beginning to be organized on the continent-wide scale needed to track a biological emergency. The system not only monitors infected persons, but attempts to discern the origin of the outbreak.
+
+Researchers have experimented with devices to detect the existence of a threat:
+
+ Tiny electronic chips that would contain living nerve cells to warn of the presence of bacterial toxins (identification of broad range toxins)
+ Fiber-optic tubes lined with antibodies coupled to light-emitting molecules (identification of specific pathogens, such as anthrax, botulinum, ricin)
+
+Some research shows that ultraviolet avalanche photodiodes offer the high gain, reliability and robustness needed to detect anthrax and other bioterrorism agents in the air. The fabrication methods and device characteristics were described at the 50th Electronic Materials Conference in Santa Barbara on June 25, 2008. Details of the photodiodes were also published in the February 14, 2008, issue of the journal Electronics Letters and the November 2007 issue of the journal IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.
+
+The United States Department of Defense conducts global biosurveillance through several programs, including the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System.
+
+Another powerful tool developed within New York City for use in countering bioterrorism is the development of the New York City Syndromic Surveillance System. This system is essentially a way of tracking disease progression throughout New York City, and was developed by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The system works by tracking the symptoms of those taken into the emergency department—based on the location of the hospital to which they are taken and their home address—and assessing any patterns in symptoms. These established trends can then be observed by medical epidemiologists to determine if there are any disease outbreaks in any particular locales; maps of disease prevalence can then be created rather easily. This is an obviously beneficial tool in fighting bioterrorism as it provides a means through which such attacks could be discovered in their nascence; assuming bioterrorist attacks result in similar symptoms across the board, this strategy allows New York City to respond immediately to any bioterrorist threats that they may face with some level of alacrity.
+
+Response to bioterrorism incident or threat
+
+Government agencies which would be called on to respond to a bioterrorism incident would include law enforcement, hazardous materials and decontamination units, and emergency medical units, if available.
+
+The US military has specialized units, which can respond to a bioterrorism event; among them are the United States Marine Corps' Chemical Biological Incident Response Force and the U.S. Army's 20th Support Command (CBRNE), which can detect, identify, and neutralize threats, and decontaminate victims exposed to bioterror agents. US response would include the Centers for Disease Control.
+
+Historically, governments and authorities have relied on quarantines to protect their populations. International bodies such as the World Health Organization already devote some of their resources to monitoring epidemics and have served clearing-house roles in historical epidemics.
+
+Media attention toward the seriousness of biological attacks increased in 2013 to 2014. In July 2013, Forbes published an article with the title "Bioterrorism: A Dirty Little Threat With Huge Potential Consequences." In November 2013, Fox News reported on a new strain of botulism, saying that the Centers for Disease and Control lists botulism as one of two agents that have "the highest risks of mortality and morbidity", noting that there is no antidote for botulism. USA Today reported that the U.S. military in November was trying to develop a vaccine for troops from the bacteria that cause the disease Q fever, an agent the military once used as a biological weapon. In February 2014, the former special assistant and senior director for biodefense policy to President George W. Bush called the bioterrorism risk imminent and uncertain and Congressman Bill Pascrell called for increasing federal measures against bioterrorism as a "matter of life or death." The New York Times wrote a story saying the United States would spend $40 million to help certain low and middle-income countries deal with the threats of bioterrorism and infectious diseases.
+
+Bill Gates has warned that bioterrorism could kill more people than nuclear war.
+
+In February 2018, a CNN employee discovered on an airplane a "sensitive, top-secret document in the seatback pouch explaining how the Department of Homeland Security would respond to a bioterrorism attack at the Super Bowl."
+
+2017 U.S. budget proposal affecting bioterrorism programs 
+President Donald Trump promoted his first budget around keeping America safe. However, one aspect of defense would receive less money: "protecting the nation from deadly pathogens, man-made or natural," according to The New York Times. Agencies tasked with biosecurity get a decrease in funding under the Administration's budget proposal.
+
+For example:
+ The Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response would be cut by $136 million, or 9.7 percent. The office tracks outbreaks of disease.
+ The National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases would be cut by $65 million, or 11 percent. The center is a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fights threats like anthrax and the Ebola virus, and additionally towards research on HIV/AIDS vaccines.
+ Within the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) would lose 18 percent of its budget. NIAID oversees responses to Zika, Ebola and HIV/AIDS vaccine research.
+"The next weapon of mass destruction may not be a bomb," Lawrence O. Gostin, the director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, told The New York Times. "It may be a tiny pathogen that you can't see, smell or taste, and by the time we discover it, it'll be too late."
+
+Lack of international standards on public health experiments 
+Tom Inglesy, the CEO and director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an internationally recognized expert on public health preparedness, pandemic and emerging infectious disease said in 2017 that the lack of an internationally standardized approval process that could be used to guide countries in conducting public health experiments for resurrecting a disease that has already been eradicated increases the risk that the disease could be used in bioterrorism. This was in reference to the lab synthesis of horsepox in 2017 by researchers at the University of Alberta. The researchers recreated horsepox, an extinct cousin of the smallpox virus, in order to research new ways to treat cancer.
+
+In popular culture
+
+Incidents
+
+See also
+Biodefence
+Biological Weapons Convention
+Biorisk
+Biosecurity
+Project Bacchus
+Select agent
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+
+Further reading
+
+ Resolution 1540 "affirms that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The resolution obliges States, inter alia, to refrain from supporting by any means non-State actors from developing, acquiring, manufacturing, possessing, transporting, transferring or using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery".
+ NOVA: Bioterror
+ Carus, W. Seth Working Paper: Bioterrorism and Biocrimes. The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900, Feb 2001 revision. (Final published version: )
+
+United States
+
+ Recommended Policy Guidance for Departmental Development of Review Mechanisms for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight (P3CO). Obama Administration. January 9, 2017.
+
+ 
+Terrorism by method
+Bitter may refer to:
+
+Common uses
+ Resentment, negative emotion or attitude, similar to being jaded, cynical or otherwise negatively affected by experience
+ Bitter (taste), one of the five basic tastes
+
+Books 
+ Bitter (novel), a 2022 novel by Akwaeke Emezi.
+
+Food and drink
+ Bitter (beer), a British term for pale ale
+ Bitters, an herbal preparation now used mostly in cocktails
+
+Music
+
+Albums
+ Bitter (Jupiter Apple album), 2007
+ Bitter (Meshell Ndegeocello album), 1999
+
+Songs
+ "Bitter" (Fletcher song) (2020)
+ "Bitter", by Lit from Tripping the Light Fantastic, 1997
+ "Bitter", by Reks from More Grey Hairs
+ "Bitter", by Remy Zero from The Golden Hum
+ "Bitter", by Freya Ridings from Blood Orange, 2023
+ "Bitter", by Shihad
+ "Bitter", by Jill Sobule from Happy Town, 1997
+ "Bitter", by The Vamps from Cherry Blossom
+
+Other uses
+ Bitter (surname) (including a list of persons with the name)
+ Bitter Cars, a German car company
+
+See also
+ Bitter end (disambiguation)
+ Bitterlich (disambiguation)
+ Bittern (disambiguation)
+ The Bitter End (disambiguation)
+The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low-observable stealth technology designed to penetrate dense anti-aircraft defenses. A subsonic flying wing with a crew of two, the plane was designed by Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) and produced from 1987 to 2000. The bomber can drop conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty  Mk 82 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen  B83 nuclear bombs. The B-2 is the only acknowledged in-service aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.
+
+Development began under the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) project during the Carter administration, which cancelled the Mach 2-capable B-1A bomber in part because the ATB showed such promise. But development difficulties delayed progress and drove up costs. Ultimately, the program produced 21 B-2s at an average cost of $2.13 billion (in 1997 dollars), including development, engineering, testing, production, and procurement. Building each aircraft cost an average of US$737 million, while total procurement costs (including production, spare parts, equipment, retrofitting, and software support) averaged $929 million (~$ in ) per plane.
+
+The project's considerable capital and operating costs made it controversial in the U.S. Congress even before the winding-down of the Cold War dramatically reduced the need for a stealth aircraft designed to strike deep in Soviet territory. Consequently, in the late 1980s and 1990s lawmakers shrank the planned purchase of 132 bombers to 21.
+
+As of 2015, twenty B-2s were in service with the United States Air Force, one having been destroyed in a 2008 crash. The Air Force plans to operate them until 2032, when the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider is to replace them.
+
+The B-2 can perform attack missions at altitudes of up to ; it has an unrefueled range of more than  and can fly more than  with one midair refueling. It entered service in 1997 as the second aircraft designed with advanced stealth technology, after the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft. Primarily designed as a nuclear bomber, the B-2 was first used in combat to drop conventional, non-nuclear ordnance in the Kosovo War in 1999. It was later used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
+
+Development
+
+Origins
+By the mid-1970s, military aircraft designers had learned of a new method to avoid missiles and interceptors, known today as "stealth". The concept was to build an aircraft with an airframe that deflected or absorbed radar signals so that little was reflected back to the radar unit. An aircraft having radar stealth characteristics would be able to fly nearly undetected and could be attacked only by weapons and systems not relying on radar. Although other detection measures existed, such as human observation, infrared scanners, as well as acoustic locators, their relatively short detection range or poorly-developed technology allowed most aircraft to fly undetected, or at least untracked, especially at night.
+
+In 1974, DARPA requested information from U.S. aviation firms about the largest radar cross-section of an aircraft that would remain effectively invisible to radars. Initially, Northrop and McDonnell Douglas were selected for further development. Lockheed had experience in this field with the development of the Lockheed A-12 and SR-71, which included several stealthy features, notably its canted vertical stabilizers, the use of composite materials in key locations, and the overall surface finish in radar-absorbing paint. A key improvement was the introduction of computer models used to predict the radar reflections from flat surfaces where collected data drove the design of a "faceted" aircraft. Development of the first such designs started in 1975 with the Have Blue, a model Lockheed built to test the concept.
+
+Plans were well advanced by the summer of 1975, when DARPA started the Experimental Survivability Testbed project. Northrop and Lockheed were awarded contracts in the first round of testing. Lockheed received the sole award for the second test round in April 1976 leading to the Have Blue program and eventually the F-117 stealth attack aircraft. Northrop also had a classified technology demonstration aircraft, the Tacit Blue in development in 1979 at Area 51. It developed stealth technology, LO (low observables), fly-by-wire, curved surfaces, composite materials, electronic intelligence, and Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft Experimental. The stealth technology developed from the program was later incorporated into other operational aircraft designs, including the B-2 stealth bomber.
+
+ATB program
+By 1976, these programs had progressed to a position in which a long-range strategic stealth bomber appeared viable. President Jimmy Carter became aware of these developments during 1977, and it appears to have been one of the major reasons the B-1 was canceled. Further studies were ordered in early 1978, by which point the Have Blue platform had flown and proven the concepts. During the 1980 presidential election campaign in 1979, Ronald Reagan repeatedly stated that Carter was weak on defense and used the B-1 as a prime example. In response, on 22 August 1980 the Carter administration publicly disclosed that the United States Department of Defense was working to develop stealth aircraft, including a bomber.
+
+The Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) program began in 1979. Full development of the black project followed, funded under the code name "Aurora". After the evaluations of the companies' proposals, the ATB competition was narrowed to the Northrop/Boeing and Lockheed/Rockwell teams with each receiving a study contract for further work. Both teams used flying wing designs. The Northrop proposal was code named "Senior Ice", and the Lockheed proposal code named "Senior Peg". Northrop had prior experience developing the YB-35 and YB-49 flying wing aircraft. The Northrop design was larger while the Lockheed design included a small tail. In 1979, designer Hal Markarian produced a sketch of the aircraft that bore considerable similarities to the final design. The USAF originally planned to procure 165 ATB bombers.
+
+The Northrop team's ATB design was selected over the Lockheed/Rockwell design on 20 October 1981. The Northrop design received the designation B-2 and the name "Spirit". The bomber's design was changed in the mid-1980s when the mission profile was changed from high-altitude to low-altitude, terrain-following. The redesign delayed the B-2's first flight by two years and added about US$1 billion to the program's cost. An estimated US$23 billion was secretly spent for research and development on the B-2 by 1989. MIT engineers and scientists helped assess the mission effectiveness of the aircraft under a five-year classified contract during the 1980s. Northrop was the B-2's prime contractor; major subcontractors included Boeing, Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon), GE, and Vought Aircraft.
+
+Secrecy and espionage
+
+During its design and development, the Northrop B-2 program was a black project; all program personnel needed a secret clearance. Still, it was less closely held than the Lockheed F-117 program; more people in the federal government knew about the B-2, and more information about the project was available. Both during development and in service, considerable effort has been devoted to maintaining the security of the B-2's design and technologies. Staff working on the B-2 in most, if not all, capacities need a level of special-access clearance and undergo extensive background checks carried out by a special branch of the USAF.
+
+A former Ford automobile assembly plant in Pico Rivera, California, was acquired and heavily rebuilt; the plant's employees were sworn to secrecy. To avoid suspicion, components were typically purchased through front companies, military officials would visit out of uniform, and staff members were routinely subjected to polygraph examinations. Nearly all information on the program was kept from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and members of Congress until the mid-1980s.
+
+The B-2 was first publicly displayed on 22 November 1988 at United States Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, where it was assembled. This viewing was heavily restricted, and guests were not allowed to see the rear of the B-2. However, Aviation Week editors found that there were no airspace restrictions above the presentation area and took aerial photographs of the aircraft's secret rear section with suppressed engine exhausts. The B-2's (s/n 82-1066 / AV-1) first public flight was on 17 July 1989 from Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base.
+
+In 1984, Northrop employee Thomas Patrick Cavanagh was arrested for attempting to sell classified information from the Pico Rivera factory to the Soviet Union. Cavanagh was sentenced to life in prison in 1985 but released on parole in 2001. In October 2005, Noshir Gowadia, a design engineer who worked on the B-2's propulsion system, was arrested for selling classified information to China. Gowadia was convicted and sentenced to 32 years in prison.
+
+Program costs and procurement
+A procurement of 132 aircraft was planned in the mid-1980s but was later reduced to 75. By the early 1990s the Soviet Union dissolved, effectively eliminating the Spirit's primary Cold War mission. Under budgetary pressures and Congressional opposition, in his 1992 State of the Union address, President George H. W. Bush announced B-2 production would be limited to 20 aircraft. In 1996, however, the Clinton administration, though originally committed to ending production of the bombers at 20 aircraft, authorized the conversion of a 21st bomber, a prototype test model, to Block 30 fully operational status at a cost of nearly $500 million (~$ in ). In 1995, Northrop made a proposal to the USAF to build 20 additional aircraft with a flyaway cost of $566 million each.
+
+The program was the subject of public controversy for its cost to American taxpayers. In 1996, the GAO disclosed that the USAF's B-2 bombers "will be, by far, the most costly bombers to operate on a per aircraft basis", costing over three times as much as the B-1B (US$9.6 million annually) and over four times as much as the B-52H (US$6.8 million annually). In September 1997, each hour of B-2 flight necessitated 119 hours of maintenance. Comparable maintenance needs for the B-52 and the B-1B are 53 and 60 hours, respectively, for each hour of flight. A key reason for this cost is the provision of air-conditioned hangars large enough for the bomber's  wingspan, which are needed to maintain the aircraft's stealth properties, particularly its "low-observable" stealth skins. Maintenance costs are about $3.4 million per month for each aircraft. An August 1995 GAO report disclosed that the B-2 had trouble operating in heavy rain, as rain could damage the aircraft's stealth coating, causing procurement delays until an adequate protective coating could be found. In addition, the B-2's terrain-following/terrain-avoidance radar had difficulty distinguishing rain from other obstacles, rendering the subsystem inoperable during rain. However a subsequent report in October 1996 noted that the USAF had made some progress in resolving the issues with the radar via software fixes and hoped to have these fixes undergoing tests by the spring of 1997.
+
+The total "military construction" cost related to the program was projected to be US$553.6 million in 1997 dollars. The cost to procure each B-2 was US$737 million in 1997 dollars (equivalent to US$ million in 2021), based only on a fleet cost of US$15.48 billion. The procurement cost per aircraft, as detailed in GAO reports, which include spare parts and software support, was $929 million per aircraft in 1997 dollars.
+
+The total program cost projected through 2004 was US$44.75 billion in 1997 dollars (equivalent to US$ billion in 2021). This includes development, procurement, facilities, construction, and spare parts. The total program cost averaged US$2.13 billion per aircraft. The B-2 may cost up to $135,000 per flight hour to operate in 2010, which is about twice that of the B-52 and B-1.
+
+Opposition
+In its consideration of the fiscal year 1990 defense budget, the House Armed Services Committee trimmed $800 million from the B-2 research and development budget, while at the same time staving off a motion to end the project. Opposition in committee and in Congress was mostly broad and bipartisan, with Congressmen Ron Dellums (D-CA), John Kasich (R-OH), and John G. Rowland (R-CT) authorizing the motion to end the project—as well as others in the Senate, including Jim Exon (D-NE) and John McCain (R-AZ) also opposing the project. Dellums and Kasich, in particular, worked together from 1989 through the early 1990s to limit production to 21 aircraft and were ultimately successful.
+
+The escalating cost of the B-2 program and evidence of flaws in the aircraft's ability to elude detection by radar were among factors that drove opposition to continue the program. At the peak production period specified in 1989, the schedule called for spending US$7 billion to $8 billion per year in 1989 dollars, something Committee Chair Les Aspin (D-WI) said "won't fly financially". In 1990, the Department of Defense accused Northrop of using faulty components in the flight control system; it was also found that redesign work was required to reduce the risk of damage to engine fan blades by bird ingestion.
+
+In time, several prominent members of Congress began to oppose the program's expansion, including Senator John Kerry (D-MA), who cast votes against the B-2 in 1989, 1991, and 1992. By 1992, Bush had called for the cancellation of the B-2 and promised to cut military spending by 30% in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In October 1995, former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General Mike Ryan, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, strongly recommended against Congressional action to fund the purchase of any additional B-2s, arguing that to do so would require unacceptable cuts in existing conventional and nuclear-capable aircraft, and that the military had greater priorities in spending a limited budget.
+
+Some B-2 advocates argued that procuring twenty additional aircraft would save money because B-2s would be able to deeply penetrate anti-aircraft defenses and use low-cost, short-range attack weapons rather than expensive standoff weapons. However, in 1995, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and its Director of National Security Analysis found that additional B-2s would reduce the cost of expended munitions by less than US$2 billion in 1995 dollars during the first two weeks of a conflict, in which the USAF predicted bombers would make their greatest contribution; this was a small fraction of the US$26.8 billion (in 1995 dollars) life cycle cost that the CBO projected for an additional 20 B-2s.
+
+In 1997, as Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee and National Security Committee, Congressman Ron Dellums (D-CA), a long-time opponent of the bomber, cited five independent studies and offered an amendment to that year's defense authorization bill to cap production of the bombers to the existing 21 aircraft; the amendment was narrowly defeated. Nonetheless, Congress did not approve funding for additional B-2s.
+
+Further developments
+Several upgrade packages have been applied to the B-2. In July 2008, the B-2's onboard computing architecture was extensively redesigned; it now incorporates a new integrated processing unit that communicates with systems throughout the aircraft via a newly installed fiber optic network; a new version of the operational flight program software was also developed, with legacy code converted from the JOVIAL programming language to standard C. Updates were also made to the weapon control systems to enable strikes upon moving targets, such as ground vehicles.
+
+On 29 December 2008, USAF officials awarded a US$468 million contract to Northrop Grumman to modernize the B-2 fleet's radars. Changing the radar's frequency was required as the United States Department of Commerce had sold that radio spectrum to another operator. In July 2009, it was reported that the B-2 had successfully passed a major USAF audit. In 2010, it was made public that the Air Force Research Laboratory had developed a new material to be used on the part of the wing trailing edge subject to engine exhaust, replacing existing material that quickly degraded.
+
+In July 2010, political analyst Rebecca Grant speculated that when the B-2 becomes unable to reliably penetrate enemy defenses, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II may take on its strike/interdiction mission, carrying B61 nuclear bombs as a tactical bomber. However, in March 2012, The Pentagon announced that a $2 billion, 10-year-long modernization of the B-2 fleet was to begin. The main area of improvement would be replacement of outdated avionics and equipment. Continued modernization efforts likely have continued in secret, as alluded to by a B-2 commander from Whiteman Air Force Base in April 2021, possibly indicating offensive weapons capability against threatening air defenses and aircraft. He stated: 
+
+It was reported in 2011 that The Pentagon was evaluating an unmanned stealth bomber, characterized as a "mini-B-2", as a potential replacement in the near future. In 2012, USAF Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz stated the B-2's 1980s-era stealth technologies would make it less survivable in future contested airspaces, so the USAF is to proceed with the Next-Generation Bomber despite overall budget cuts. In 2012 projections, it was estimated that the Next-Generation Bomber would have an overall cost of $55 billion.
+
+In 2013, the USAF contracted for the Defensive Management System Modernization program to replace the antenna system and other electronics to increase the B-2's frequency awareness. The Common Very Low Frequency Receiver upgrade allows the B-2s to use the same very low frequency transmissions as the Ohio-class submarines so as to continue in the nuclear mission until the Mobile User Objective System is fielded. In 2014, the USAF outlined a series of upgrades including nuclear warfighting, a new integrated processing unit, the ability to carry cruise missiles, and threat warning improvements.
+
+In 1998, a Congressional panel advised the USAF to refocus resources away from continued B-2 production and instead begin development of a new bomber, either a new build or a variant of the B-2. In its 1999 bomber roadmap the USAF eschewed the panel's recommendations, believing its current bomber fleet could be maintained until the 2030s. The service believed that development could begin in 2013, in time to replace aging B-2s, B-1s and B-52s around 2037.
+
+Although the USAF previously planned to operate the B-2 until 2058, the FY 2019 budget moved up its retirement to "no later than 2032". It also moved the retirement of the B-1 to 2036 while extending the B-52's service life into the 2050s, because the B-52 has lower maintenance costs, versatile conventional payload, and the ability to carry nuclear cruise missiles (which the B-1 is treaty-prohibited from doing). The decision to retire the B-2 early was made because the small fleet of 20 is considered too expensive per plane to retain, with its position as a stealth bomber being taken over with the introduction of the B-21 Raider starting in the mid-2020s.
+
+Design
+
+Overview
+The B-2 Spirit was developed to take over the USAF's vital penetration missions, allowing it to travel deep into enemy territory to deploy ordnance, which could include nuclear weapons. The B-2 is a flying wing aircraft, meaning that it has no fuselage or tail. It has significant advantages over previous bombers due to its blend of low-observable technologies with high aerodynamic efficiency and a large payload. Low observability provides greater freedom of action at high altitudes, thus increasing both range and field of view for onboard sensors. The USAF reports its range as approximately . At cruising altitude, the B-2 refuels every six hours, taking on up to  of fuel at a time.
+
+The development and construction of the B-2 required pioneering use of computer-aided design and manufacturing technologies due to its complex flight characteristics and design requirements to maintain very low visibility to multiple means of detection. The B-2 bears a resemblance to earlier Northrop aircraft; the YB-35 and YB-49 were both flying wing bombers that had been canceled in development in the early 1950s, allegedly for political reasons. The resemblance goes as far as B-2 and YB-49 having the same wingspan. The YB-49 also had a small radar cross-section.
+
+Approximately 80 pilots fly the B-2. Each aircraft has a crew of two, a pilot in the left seat and mission commander in the right, and has provisions for a third crew member if needed. For comparison, the B-1B has a crew of four and the B-52 has a crew of five. The B-2 is highly automated, and one crew member can sleep in a camp bed, use a toilet, or prepare a hot meal while the other monitors the aircraft, unlike most two-seat aircraft. Extensive sleep cycle and fatigue research was conducted to improve crew performance on long sorties. Advanced training is conducted at the USAF Weapons School.
+
+Armaments and equipment
+
+In the envisaged Cold War scenario, the B-2 was to perform deep-penetrating nuclear strike missions, making use of its stealthy capabilities to avoid detection and interception throughout the missions. There are two internal bomb bays in which munitions are stored either on a rotary launcher or two bomb-racks; the carriage of the weapons loadouts internally results in less radar visibility than external mounting of munitions. The B-2 is capable of carrying  of ordnance. Nuclear ordnance includes the B61 and B83 nuclear bombs; the AGM-129 ACM cruise missile was also intended for use on the B-2 platform.
+
+In light of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was decided to equip the B-2 for conventional precision attacks as well as for the strategic role of nuclear-strike. The B-2 features a sophisticated GPS-Aided Targeting System (GATS) that uses the aircraft's APQ-181 synthetic aperture radar to map out targets prior to the deployment of GPS-aided bombs (GAMs), later superseded by the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). In the B-2's original configuration, up to 16 GAMs or JDAMs could be deployed; An upgrade program in 2004 raised the maximum carrier capacity to 80 JDAMs.
+
+The B-2 has various conventional weapons in its arsenal, including Mark 82 and Mark 84 bombs, CBU-87 Combined Effects Munitions, GATOR mines, and the CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon. In July 2009, Northrop Grumman reported the B-2 was compatible with the equipment necessary to deploy the  Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), which is intended to attack reinforced bunkers; up to two MOPs could be equipped in the B-2's bomb bays with one per bay, the B-2 is the only platform compatible with the MOP as of 2012. As of 2011, the AGM-158 JASSM cruise missile is an upcoming standoff munition to be deployed on the B-2 and other platforms. This is to be followed by the Long Range Standoff Weapon, which may give the B-2 standoff nuclear capability for the first time.
+
+Avionics and systems
+To make the B-2 more effective than previous bombers, many advanced and modern avionics systems were integrated into its design; these have been modified and improved following a switch to conventional warfare missions. One system is the low probability of intercept AN/APQ-181 multi-mode radar, a fully digital navigation system that is integrated with terrain-following radar and Global Positioning System (GPS) guidance, NAS-26 astro-inertial navigation system (first such system tested on the Northrop SM-62 Snark cruise missile) and a Defensive Management System (DMS) to inform the flight crew of possible threats. The onboard DMS is capable of automatically assessing the detection capabilities of identified threats and indicated targets. The DMS will be upgraded by 2021 to detect radar emissions from air defenses to allow changes to the auto-router's mission planning information while in-flight so it can receive new data quickly to plan a route that minimizes exposure to dangers.
+
+For safety and fault-detection purposes, an on-board test system is linked with the majority of avionics on the B-2 to continuously monitor the performance and status of thousands of components and consumables; it also provides post-mission servicing instructions for ground crews. In 2008, many of the 136 standalone distributed computers on board the B-2, including the primary flight management computer, were being replaced by a single integrated system. The avionics are controlled by 13 EMP-resistant MIL-STD-1750A computers, which are interconnected through 26 MIL-STD-1553B-busses; other system elements are connected via optical fiber.
+
+In addition to periodic software upgrades and the introduction of new radar-absorbent materials across the fleet, the B-2 has had several major upgrades to its avionics and combat systems. For battlefield communications, both Link-16 and a high frequency satellite link have been installed, compatibility with various new munitions has been undertaken, and the AN/APQ-181 radar's operational frequency was shifted to avoid interference with other operators' equipment. The arrays of the upgraded radar features were entirely replaced to make the AN/APQ-181 into an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. Due to the B-2's composite structure, it is required to stay  away from thunderstorms, to avoid static discharge and lightning strikes.
+
+Flight controls
+
+To address the inherent flight instability of a flying wing aircraft, the B-2 uses a complex quadruplex computer-controlled fly-by-wire flight control system that can automatically manipulate flight surfaces and settings without direct pilot inputs to maintain aircraft stability. The flight computer receives information on external conditions such as the aircraft's current air speed and angle of attack via pitot-static sensing plates, as opposed to traditional pitot tubes which would impair the aircraft's stealth capabilities. The flight actuation system incorporates both hydraulic and electrical servoactuated components, and it was designed with a high level of redundancy and fault-diagnostic capabilities.
+
+Northrop had investigated several means of applying directional control that would infringe on the aircraft's radar profile as little as possible, eventually settling on a combination of split brake-rudders and differential thrust. Engine thrust became a key element of the B-2's aerodynamic design process early on; thrust not only affects drag and lift but pitching and rolling motions as well. Four pairs of control surfaces are located along the wing's trailing edge; while most surfaces are used throughout the aircraft's flight envelope, the inner elevons are normally only in use at slow speeds, such as landing. To avoid potential contact damage during takeoff and to provide a nose-down pitching attitude, all of the elevons remain drooped during takeoff until a high enough airspeed has been attained.
+
+Stealth
+
+The B-2's low-observable, or "stealth", characteristics enable the undetected penetration of sophisticated anti-aircraft defenses and to attack even heavily defended targets. This stealth comes from a combination of reduced acoustic, infrared, visual and radar signatures (multi-spectral camouflage) to evade the various detection systems that could be used to detect and be used to direct attacks against an aircraft. The B-2's stealth enables the reduction of supporting aircraft that are required to provide air cover, Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses and electronic countermeasures, making the bomber a "force multiplier". , there have been no instances of a missile being launched at a B-2.
+
+To reduce optical visibility during daylight flights, the B-2 is painted in an anti-reflective paint. The undersides are dark because it flies at high altitudes (), and at that altitude a dark grey painting blends well into the sky. It is speculated to have an upward-facing light sensor which alerts the pilot to increase or reduce altitude to match the changing illuminance of the sky. The original design had tanks for a contrail-inhibiting chemical, but this was replaced in production aircraft by a contrail sensor that alerts the crew when they should change altitude. The B-2 is vulnerable to visual interception at ranges of  or less. The B-2 is stored in a $5 million specialised air-conditioned hangar to maintain its stealth coating. Every seven years, this coating is carefully washed away with crystallised wheat starch so that the B-2's surfaces can be inspected for any dents or scratches.
+
+Radar
+Reportedly, the B-2 has a radar cross-section (RCS) of about . The bomber does not always fly stealthily; when nearing air defenses pilots "stealth up" the B-2, a maneuver whose details are secret. The aircraft is stealthy, except briefly when the bomb bay opens. The B-2's clean, low-drag flying wing configuration not only provides exceptional range but is also beneficial to reducing its radar profile. The flying wing design most closely resembles a so-called infinite flat plate (as vertical control surfaces dramatically increase RCS), the perfect stealth shape, as it would lack angles to reflect back radar waves (initially, the shape of the Northrop ATB concept was flatter; it gradually increased in volume according to specific military requirements). Without vertical surfaces to reflect radar laterally, side aspect radar cross section is also reduced. Radars operating at a lower frequency band (S or L band) are able to detect and track certain stealth aircraft that have multiple control surfaces, like canards or vertical stabilizers, where the frequency wavelength can exceed a certain threshold and cause a resonant effect.
+
+RCS reduction as a result of shape had already been observed on the Royal Air Force's Avro Vulcan strategic bomber, and the USAF's F-117 Nighthawk. The F-117 used flat surfaces (faceting technique) for controlling radar returns as during its development (see Lockheed Have Blue) in the early 1970s, technology only allowed for the simulation of radar reflections on simple, flat surfaces; computing advances in the 1980s made it possible to simulate radar returns on more complex curved surfaces. The B-2 is composed of many curved and rounded surfaces across its exposed airframe to deflect radar beams. This technique, known as continuous curvature, was made possible by advances in computational fluid dynamics, and first tested on the Northrop Tacit Blue.
+
+Infrared
+
+Some analysts claim infra-red search and track systems (IRSTs) can be deployed against stealth aircraft, because any aircraft surface heats up due to air friction and with a two channel IRST is a  (4.3 µm absorption maxima) detection possible, through difference comparing between the low and high channel.
+
+Burying engines deep inside the fuselage also minimizes the thermal visibility or infrared signature of the exhaust. At the engine intake, cold air from the boundary layer below the main inlet enters the fuselage (boundary layer suction, first tested on the Northrop X-21) and is mixed with hot exhaust air just before the nozzles (similar to the Ryan AQM-91 Firefly). According to the Stefan–Boltzmann law, this results in less energy (thermal radiation in the infrared spectrum) being released and thus a reduced heat signature. The resulting cooler air is conducted over a surface composed of heat resistant carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer and titanium alloy elements, which disperse the air laterally, to accelerate its cooling. The B-2 lacks afterburners as the hot exhaust would increase the infrared signature; breaking the sound barrier would produce an obvious sonic boom as well as aerodynamic heating of the aircraft skin which would also increase the infrared signature.
+
+Materials
+According to the Huygens–Fresnel principle, even a very flat plate would still reflect radar waves, though much less than when a signal is bouncing at a right angle. Additional reduction in its radar signature was achieved by the use of various radar-absorbent materials (RAM) to absorb and neutralize radar beams. The majority of the B-2 is made out of a carbon-graphite composite material that is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, and absorbs a significant amount of radar energy.
+
+The B-2 is assembled with unusually tight engineering tolerances to avoid leaks as they could increase its radar signature. Innovations such as alternate high frequency material (AHFM) and automated material application methods were also incorporated to improve the aircraft's radar-absorbent properties and reduce maintenance requirements. In early 2004, Northrop Grumman began applying a newly developed AHFM to operational B-2s. To protect the operational integrity of its sophisticated radar absorbent material and coatings, each B-2 is kept inside a climate-controlled hangar (Extra Large Deployable Aircraft Hangar System) large enough to accommodate its  wingspan.
+
+Shelter system
+B-2s are supported by portable, environmentally-controlled hangars called B-2 Shelter Systems (B2SS). The hangars are built by American Spaceframe Fabricators Inc. and cost approximately US$5 million apiece. The need for specialized hangars arose in 1998 when it was found that B-2s passing through Andersen Air Force Base did not have the climate-controlled environment maintenance operations required. In 2003, the B2SS program was managed by the Combat Support System Program Office at Eglin Air Force Base. B2SS hangars are known to have been deployed to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford.
+
+Operational history
+
+1990s
+The first operational aircraft, christened Spirit of Missouri, was delivered to Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, where the fleet is based, on 17 December 1993. The B-2 reached initial operational capability (IOC) on 1 January 1997. Depot maintenance for the B-2 is accomplished by USAF contractor support and managed at Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker Air Force Base. Originally designed to deliver nuclear weapons, modern usage has shifted towards a flexible role with conventional and nuclear capability.
+
+The B-2's combat debut was in 1999, during the Kosovo War. It was responsible for destroying 33% of selected Serbian bombing targets in the first eight weeks of U.S. involvement in the War. During this war, six B-2s flew non-stop to Yugoslavia from their home base in Missouri and back, totaling 30 hours. Although the bombers accounted 50 sorties out of a total of 34,000 NATO sorties, they dropped 11 percent of all bombs. The B-2 was the first aircraft to deploy GPS satellite-guided JDAM "smart bombs" in combat use in Kosovo. The use of JDAMs and precision-guided munitions effectively replaced the controversial tactic of carpet-bombing, which had been harshly criticized due to it causing indiscriminate civilian casualties in prior conflicts, such as the 1991 Gulf War. On 7 May 1999, a B-2 dropped five JDAMs on the Chinese Embassy, killing several staff. By then, the B-2 had dropped 500 bombs in Yugoslavia.
+
+2000s
+The B-2 saw service in Afghanistan, striking ground targets in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. With aerial refueling support, the B-2 flew one of its longest missions to date from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Afghanistan and back. B-2s would be stationed in the Middle East as a part of a US military buildup in the region from 2003.
+
+The B-2's combat use preceded a USAF declaration of "full operational capability" in December 2003. The Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation 2003 Annual Report noted that the B-2's serviceability for Fiscal Year 2003 was still inadequate, mainly due to the maintainability of the B-2's low observable coatings. The evaluation also noted that the Defensive Avionics suite had shortcomings with "pop-up threats".
+
+During the Iraq War, B-2s operated from Diego Garcia and an undisclosed "forward operating location". Other sorties in Iraq have launched from Whiteman AFB.  the longest combat mission has been 44.3 hours. "Forward operating locations" have been previously designated as Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom, where new climate controlled hangars have been constructed. B-2s have conducted 27 sorties from Whiteman AFB and 22 sorties from a forward operating location, releasing more than  of munitions, including 583 JDAM "smart bombs" in 2003.
+
+2010s
+
+In response to organizational issues and high-profile mistakes made within the USAF, all of the B-2s, along with the nuclear-capable B-52s and the USAF's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), were transferred to the newly formed Air Force Global Strike Command on 1 February 2010.
+
+In March 2011, B-2s were the first U.S. aircraft into action in Operation Odyssey Dawn, the UN mandated enforcement of the Libyan no-fly zone. Three B-2s dropped 40 bombs on a Libyan airfield in support of the UN no-fly zone. The B-2s flew directly from the U.S. mainland across the Atlantic Ocean to Libya; a B-2 was refueled by allied tanker aircraft four times during each round trip mission.
+
+In August 2011, The New Yorker reported that prior to the May 2011 U.S. Special Operations raid into Abbottabad, Pakistan that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials had considered an airstrike by one or more B-2s as an alternative; the use of a bunker busting bomb was rejected due to potential damage to nearby civilian buildings. There were also concerns an airstrike would make it difficult to positively identify Bin Laden's remains, making it hard to confirm his death.
+
+On 28 March 2013, two B-2s flew a round trip of  from Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri to South Korea, dropping dummy ordnance on the Jik Do target range. The mission, part of the annual South Korean–United States military exercises, was the first time that B-2s overflew the Korean peninsula. Tensions between the Koreas were high; North Korea protested against the B-2's participation and made threats of retaliatory nuclear strikes against South Korea and the United States.
+
+On 18 January 2017, two B-2s attacked an ISIS training camp  southwest of Sirte, Libya, killing around 85 militants. The B-2s together dropped 108  precision-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs. These strikes were followed by an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle firing Hellfire missiles. Each B-2 flew a 33-hour, round-trip mission from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri with four or five (accounts differ) refuelings during the trip.
+
+Operators
+
+United States Air Force (20 aircraft in active inventory)
+Air Force Global Strike Command
+ 509th Bomb Wing – Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri (19 B-2s)
+13th Bomb Squadron 2005–present
+325th Bomb Squadron 1998–2005
+393rd Bomb Squadron 1993–present
+394th Combat Training Squadron 1996–2018
+Air Combat Command
+ 53d Wing – Eglin Air Force Base, Florida
+72nd Test and Evaluation Squadron (Whiteman AFB, Missouri) 1998–present
+ 57th Wing – Nellis AFB, Nevada
+325th Weapons Squadron – Whiteman AFB, Missouri 2005–present
+715th Weapons Squadron 2003–2005
+Air National Guard
+ 131st Bomb Wing (Associate) – Whiteman AFB, Missouri 2009–present
+110th Bomb Squadron
+Air Force Materiel Command
+ 412th Test Wing – Edwards Air Force Base, California (has one B-2)
+419th Flight Test Squadron 1997–present
+420th Flight Test Squadron 1992–1997
+Air Force Systems Command
+ 6510th Test Wing – Edwards AFB, California 1989–1992
+6520th Flight Test Squadron
+
+Accidents and incidents
+
+On 23 February 2008, B-2 "AV-12" Spirit of Kansas crashed on the runway shortly after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. Spirit of Kansas had been operated by the 393rd Bomb Squadron, 509th Bomb Wing, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, and had logged 5,176 flight hours. The two-person crew ejected safely from the aircraft. The aircraft was destroyed, a hull loss valued at US$1.4 billion. After the accident, the USAF took the B-2 fleet off operational status for 53 days, returning on 15 April 2008. The cause of the crash was later determined to be moisture in the aircraft's Port Transducer Units during air data calibration, which distorted the information being sent to the bomber's air data system. As a result, the flight control computers calculated an inaccurate airspeed, and a negative angle of attack, causing the aircraft to pitch upward 30 degrees during takeoff. This was the first crash of a B-2 and the only loss .
+
+In February 2010, a serious incident involving a B-2 occurred at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The aircraft involved was AV-11 Spirit of Washington. The aircraft was severely damaged by fire while on the ground and underwent 18 months of repairs to enable it to fly back to the mainland U.S. for more comprehensive repairs. Spirit of Washington was repaired and returned to service in December 2013. At the time of the accident, the USAF had no training to deal with tailpipe fires on the B-2s.
+
+On the night of 13–14 September 2021, the B-2 Spirit of Georgia made an emergency landing at Whiteman AFB. The aircraft landed and went off the runway into the grass and came to rest on its left side. The cause was later determined to be faulty landing gear springs and "microcracking" in hydraulic connections on the aircraft. The lock link springs in the left landing gear had likely not been replaced in at least a decade, and produced about 11% less tension than specified. The "microcracking" reduced hydraulic support to the landing gear. These problems allowed the landing gear to fold upon landing. The accident resulted in a minimum of $10.1 million in repair damages, but the final repair cost was still being determined in March 2022.
+
+On 10 December 2022, an in-flight malfunction aboard a B-2 forced an emergency landing at Whiteman AFB. No personnel, including the flight crew, sustained injuries during the incident; there was a post-crash fire that was quickly put out. Subsequently, all B-2s were grounded. On 18 May 2023, Air Force officials lifted the grounding without disclosing any details about what caused the incident, or what steps had been taken return the aircraft to operation.
+
+Aircraft on display
+
+No operational B-2s have been retired by the Air Force to be put on display. B-2s have made occasional appearances on ground display at various air shows.
+
+B-2 test article (s/n AT-1000), the second of two built without engines or instruments and used for static testing, was placed on display in 2004 at the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio. The test article passed all structural testing requirements before the airframe failed. The museum's restoration team spent over a year reassembling the fractured airframe. The display airframe is marked to resemble Spirit of Ohio (S/N 82-1070), the B-2 used to test the design's ability to withstand extreme heat and cold. The exhibit features Spirit of Ohios nose wheel door, with its Fire and Ice artwork, which was painted and signed by the technicians who performed the temperature testing. The restored test aircraft is on display in the museum's "Cold War Gallery".
+
+Specifications (B-2A Block 30)
+
+Individual aircraft
+
+Sources: B-2 Spirit (Pace), Fas.org
+
+Notable appearances in media
+
+See also
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Bibliography
+ "Air Force, Options to Retire or Restructure the Force Would Reduce Planned Spending, NSIAD-96-192." US General Accounting Office, September 1996.
+ 
+ 
+ Crickmore, Paul and Alison J. Crickmore, "Nighthawk F-117 Stealth Fighter". North Branch, Minnesota: Zenith Imprint, 2003. .
+ Croddy, Eric and James J. Wirtz. Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History, Volume 2. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2005. .
+ Dawson, T.W.G., G.F. Kitchen and G.B. Glider. Measurements of the Radar Echoing Area of the Vulcan by the Optical Simulation Method. Farnborough, Hants, UK: Royal Aircraft Establishment, September 1957 National Archive Catalogue file, AVIA 6/20895
+ 
+ 
+ Eden, Paul. "Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit". Encyclopedia of Modern Military Aircraft. New York: Amber Books, 2004. .
+ 
+ 
+ Goodall, James C. "The Northrop B-2A Stealth Bomber." America's Stealth Fighters and Bombers: B-2, F-117, YF-22, and YF-23. St. Paul, Minnesota: MBI Publishing Company, 1992. .
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ Pelletier, Alain J. "Towards the Ideal Aircraft: The Life and Times of the Flying Wing, Part Two". Air Enthusiast, No. 65, September–October 1996, pp. 8–19. .
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ Sweetman, Bill. "Inside the stealth bomber". Zenith Imprint, 1999. .
+
+Further reading
+ Richardson, Doug. Northrop B-2 Spirit (Classic Warplanes). New York: Smithmark Publishers Inc., 1991. .
+ Sweetman, Bill. Inside the Stealth Bomber. St. Paul, Minnesota: MBI Publishing, 1999. .
+ Winchester, Jim, ed. "Northrop B-2 Spirit". Modern Military Aircraft (Aviation Factfile). Rochester, Kent, UK: Grange Books plc, 2004. .
+ The World's Great Stealth and Reconnaissance Aircraft. New York: Smithmark, 1991. .
+
+External links
+
+ B-2 Spirit fact sheet and gallery on U.S. Air Force site
+ B-2 Spirit page on Northrop Grumman site 
+ B-2 Stealth Bomber article on How It Works Daily
+ B-2 Spirit News Articles
+
+B-02 Spirit
+B-02 Spirit
+1980s United States bomber aircraft
+Flying wings
+Stealth aircraft
+Quadjets
+Relaxed-stability aircraft
+Aircraft first flown in 1989
+High-altitude and long endurance aircraft
+Strategic bombers
+Beavers (genus Castor) are large, semiaquatic rodents of the Northern Hemisphere. There are two existing species: the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and the Eurasian beaver (C. fiber). Beavers are the second-largest living rodents, after capybaras, weighing up to . They have stout bodies with large heads, long chisel-like incisors, brown or gray fur, hand-like front feet, webbed back feet, and tails that are flat and scaly. The two species differ in skull and tail shape and fur color. Beavers can be found in a number of freshwater habitats, such as rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. They are herbivorous, consuming tree bark, aquatic plants, grasses and sedges.
+
+Beavers build dams and lodges using tree branches, vegetation, rocks and mud; they chew down trees for building material. Dams restrict water flow, and lodges serve as shelters. Their infrastructure creates wetlands used by many other species, and because of their effect on other organisms in the ecosystem, beavers are considered a keystone species. Adult males and females live in monogamous pairs with their offspring. After their first year, the young help their parents repair dams and lodges; older siblings may also help raise newly-born offspring. Beavers hold territories and mark them using scent mounds made of mud, debris, and castoreum—a liquid substance excreted through the beaver's urethra-based castor sacs. Beavers can also recognize their kin by their anal gland secretions and are more likely to tolerate them as neighbors.
+
+Historically, beavers have been hunted for their fur, meat, and castoreum. Castoreum has been used in medicine, perfume, and food flavoring; beaver pelts have been a major driver of the fur trade. Before protections began in the 19th and early 20th centuries, overhunting had nearly exterminated both species. Their populations have since rebounded, and they are listed as species of least concern by the IUCN Red List of mammals. In human culture, the beaver symbolizes industriousness, especially in connection with construction; it is the national animal of Canada.
+
+Etymology
+
+The English word beaver comes from the Old English word  or  and is connected to the German word  and the Dutch word . The ultimate origin of the word is an Indo-European root for . The genus name Castor has its origin in the Greek  and translates as . The name beaver is the source for several names of places in Europe including Beverley, Bièvres, Biberbach, Biebrich, Bibra, Bibern, Bibrka, Bobr, Bjurbäcker, Bjurfors, Bober, Bóbrka and Bjurlund.
+
+Taxonomy
+There are two extant species: the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) and the Eurasian beaver (C. fiber). The Eurasian beaver is slightly longer and has a more lengthened skull, triangular nasal cavities (as opposed to the square ones of the North American species), a lighter fur color, and a narrower tail.
+
+Carl Linnaeus coined the genus Castor in 1758; he also coined the specific (species) epithet fiber. German zoologist Heinrich Kuhl coined C. canadensis in 1820. However, they were not confirmed to be separate species until the 1970s, when chromosomal evidence became available. (The Eurasian has 48 chromosomes, while the North American has 40.) Prior to that, many considered them the same species. The difference in chromosome numbers prevents them from interbreeding. Twenty-five subspecies have been classified for C. canadensis, and nine have been classified for C. fiber.
+
+Evolution
+
+Beavers belong to the rodent suborder Castorimorpha, along with Heteromyidae (kangaroo rats and kangaroo mice), and the gophers. Modern beavers are the only extant members of the family Castoridae. They originated in North America in the late Eocene and colonized Eurasia via the Bering Land Bridge in the early Oligocene, coinciding with the Grande Coupure, a time of significant changes in animal species around 33million years ago (myr).
+
+The more basal castorids had several unique features: more complex occlusion between cheek teeth, parallel rows of upper teeth, premolars that were only slightly smaller than molars, the presence of a third set of premolars (P3), a hole in the stapes of the inner ear, a smooth palatine bone (with the palatine opening closer to the rear end of the bone), and a longer snout. More derived castorids have less complex occlusion, upper tooth rows that create a V-shape towards the back, larger second premolars compared to molars, absence of a third premolar set and stapes hole, a more grooved palatine (with the opening shifted towards the front), and reduced incisive foramen. Members of the subfamily Palaeocastorinae appeared in late-Oligocene North America. This group consisted primarily of smaller animals with relatively large front legs, a flattened skull, and a reduced tail—all features of a fossorial (burrowing) lifestyle.
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+In the early Miocene (about 24 mya), castorids evolved a semiaquatic lifestyle. Members of the subfamily Castoroidinae are considered to be a sister group to modern beavers, and included giants like Castoroides of North America and Trogontherium of Eurasia. Castoroides is estimated to have had a length of  and a weight of . Fossils of one genus in Castoroidinae, Dipoides, have been found near piles of chewed wood, though Dipoides appears to have been an inferior woodcutter compared to Castor. Researchers suggest that modern beavers and Castoroidinae shared a bark-eating common ancestor. Dam and lodge-building likely developed from bark-eating, and allowed beavers to survive in the harsh winters of the subarctic. There is no conclusive evidence for this behavior occurring in non-Castor species.
+
+The genus Castor likely originated in Eurasia. The earliest fossil remains appear to be C. neglectus, found in Germany and dated 12–10 mya. Mitochondrial DNA studies place the common ancestor of the two living species at around 8 mya. The ancestors of the North American beaver would have crossed the Bering Land Bridge around 7.5 mya. Castor may have competed with members of Castoroidinae, which led to niche differentiation. The fossil species C. praefiber was likely an ancestor of the Eurasian beaver. C. californicus from the Early Pleistocene of North America was similar to but larger than the extant North American beaver.
+
+Characteristics
+
+Beavers are the second-largest living rodents, after capybaras. They have a head–body length of , with a  tail, a shoulder height of , and generally weigh , but can be as heavy as . Males and females are almost identical externally. Their bodies are streamlined like marine mammals and their robust build allows them to pull heavy loads. A beaver coat has 12,000–23,000 hairs/cm2 (77,000–148,000 hairs/in2) and functions to keep the animal warm, to help it float in water, and to protect it against predators. Guard hairs are  long and typically reddish brown, but can range from yellowish brown to nearly black. The underfur is  long and dark gray. Beavers molt every summer.
+
+Beavers have large skulls with powerful chewing muscles. They have four chisel-shaped incisors that continue to grow throughout their lives. The incisors are covered in a thick enamel that is colored orange or reddish-brown by iron compounds. The lower incisors have roots that are almost as long as the entire lower jaw. Beavers have one premolar and three molars on all four sides of the jaws, adding up to 20 teeth. The molars have meandering ridges for grinding woody material. The eyes, ears and nostrils are arranged so that they can remain above water while the rest of the body is submerged. The nostrils and ears have valves that close underwater, while nictitating membranes cover the eyes. To protect the larynx and trachea from water flow, the epiglottis is contained within the nasal cavity instead of the throat. In addition, the back of the tongue can rise and create a waterproof seal. A beaver's lips can close behind the incisors, preventing water from entering their mouths as they cut and bite onto things while submerged.
+
+The beaver's front feet are dexterous, allowing them to grasp and manipulate objects and food, as well as dig. The hind feet are larger and have webbing between the toes, and the second innermost toe has a "double nail" used for grooming. Beavers can swim at ; only their webbed hind feet are used to swim, while the front feet fold under the chest. On the surface, the hind limbs thrust one after the other; while underwater, they move at the same time. Beavers are awkward on land but can move quickly when they feel threatened. They can carry objects while walking on their hind legs.
+
+The beaver's distinctive tail has a conical, muscular, hairy base; the remaining two-thirds of the appendage is flat and scaly. The tail has multiple functions: it provides support for the animal when it is upright (such as when chewing down a tree), acts as a rudder when it is swimming, and stores fat for winter. It also has a countercurrent blood vessel system which allows the animal to lose heat in warm temperatures and retain heat in cold temperatures.
+
+The beaver's sex organs are inside the body, and the male's penis has a cartilaginous baculum. They have only one opening, a cloaca, which is used for reproduction, scent-marking, defecation, and urination. The cloaca evolved secondarily, as most mammals have lost this feature, and may reduce the area vulnerable to infection in dirty water. The beaver's intestine is six times longer than its body, and the caecum is double the volume of its stomach. Microorganisms in the caecum allow them to process around 30 percent of the cellulose they eat. A beaver defecates in the water, leaving behind balls of sawdust. Female beavers have four mammary glands; these produce milk with 19 percent fat, a higher fat content than other rodents. Beavers have two pairs of glands: castor sacs, which are part of the urethra, and anal glands. The castor sacs secrete castoreum, a liquid substance used mainly for marking territory. Anal glands produce an oily substance which the beaver uses as a waterproof ointment for its coat. The substance plays a role in individual and family recognition. Anal secretions are darker in females than males among Eurasian beavers, while the reverse is true for the North American species.
+
+Compared to many other rodents, a beaver's brain has a hypothalamus that is much smaller than the cerebrum; this indicates a relatively advanced brain with higher intelligence. The cerebellum is large, allowing the animal to move within a three-dimensional space (such as underwater) similar to tree-climbing squirrels. The neocortex is devoted mainly to touch and hearing. Touch is more advanced in the lips and hands than the whiskers and tail. Vision in the beaver is relatively poor; the beaver eye cannot see as well underwater as an otter. Beavers have a good sense of smell, which they use for detecting land predators and for inspecting scent marks, food, and other individuals.
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+Beavers can hold their breath for as long as 15 minutes but typically remain underwater for no more than five or six minutes. Dives typically last less than 30 seconds and are usually no more than  deep. When diving, their heart rate decreases to 60 beats per minute, half its normal pace, and blood flow is directed more towards the brain. A beaver's body also has a high tolerance for carbon dioxide. When surfacing, the animal can replace 75 percent of the air in its lungs in one breath, compared to 15 percent for a human.
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+Distribution and status
+
+The IUCN Red List of mammals lists both beaver species as least concern. The North American beaver is widespread throughout most of the United States and Canada and can be found in northern Mexico. The species was introduced to Finland in 1937 (and then spread to northwestern Russia) and to Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, in 1946. , the introduced population of North American beavers in Finland has been moving closer to the habitat of the Eurasian beaver. Historically, the North American beaver was trapped and nearly extirpated because its fur was highly sought after. Protections have allowed the beaver population on the continent to rebound to an estimated 6–12million by the late 20th century; still far lower than the originally estimated 60–400million North American beavers before the fur trade. The introduced population in Tierra del Fuego is estimated at 35,000–50,000 individuals .
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+The Eurasian beaver's range historically included much of Eurasia, but was decimated by hunting by the early 20th century. In Europe, beavers were reduced to fragmented populations, with combined population numbers being estimated at 1,200 individuals for the Rhône of France, the Elbe in Germany, southern Norway, the Neman river and Dnieper Basin in Belarus, and the Voronezh river in Russia. The beaver has since recolonized parts of its former range, aided by conservation policies and reintroductions. Beaver populations now range across western, central, and eastern Europe, and western Russia and the Scandinavian Peninsula. Beginning in 2009, beavers have been successfully reintroduced to parts of Great Britain. , the total Eurasian beaver population in Europe was estimated at over one million. Small native populations are also present in Mongolia and northwestern China; their numbers were estimated at 150 and 700, respectively, . Under New Zealand's Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, beavers are classed as a "prohibited new organism" preventing them from being introduced into the country.
+
+Ecology
+
+Beavers live in freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. Water is the most important part of beaver habitat; they swim and dive in it, and it provides them a refuge from land predators, restricts access to their homes and allows them to move building objects more easily. Beavers prefer slower moving streams, typically with a gradient (steepness) of one percent, though they have been recorded using streams with gradients as high as 15 percent. Beavers are found in wider streams more often than in narrower ones. They also prefer areas with no regular flooding and may abandon a location for years after a significant flood.
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+Beavers typically select flat landscapes with diverse vegetation close to the water. North American beavers prefer trees being  or less from the water, but will roam several hundred meters to find more. Beavers have also been recorded in mountainous areas. Dispersing beavers will use certain habitats temporarily before finding their ideal home. These include small streams, temporary swamps, ditches, and backyards. These sites lack important resources, so the animals do not stay there permanently. Beavers have increasingly settled at or near human-made environments, including agricultural areas, suburbs, golf courses, and shopping malls.
+
+Beavers have an herbivorous and a generalist diet. During the spring and summer, they mainly feed on herbaceous plant material such as leaves, roots, herbs, ferns, grasses, sedges, water lilies, water shields, rushes, and cattails. During the fall and winter, they eat more bark and cambium of woody plants; tree and shrub species consumed include aspen, birch, oak, dogwood, willow and alder. There is some disagreement about why beavers select specific woody plants; some research has shown that beavers more frequently select species which are more easily digested, while others suggest beavers principally forage based on stem size. Beavers may cache their food for the winter, piling wood in the deepest part of their pond where it cannot be reached by other browsers. This cache is known as a "raft"; when the top becomes frozen, it creates a "cap". The beaver accesses the raft by swimming under the ice. Many populations of Eurasian beaver do not make rafts, but forage on land during winter.
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+Beavers usually live up to 10 years. Felids, canids, and bears may prey upon them. Beavers are protected from predators when in their lodges, and prefer to stay near water. Parasites of the beaver include the bacteria Francisella tularensis, which causes tularemia; the protozoan Giardia duodenalis, which causes giardiasis (beaver fever); and the beaver beetle and mites of the genus Schizocarpus. They have also been recorded to be infected with the rabies virus.
+
+Infrastructure
+
+Beavers need trees and shrubs to use as building material for dams, which restrict flowing water to create a pond for them to live in, and for lodges, which act as shelters and refuges from predators and the elements. Without such material, beavers dig burrows into a bank to live. Dam construction begins in late summer or early fall, and they repair them whenever needed. Beavers can cut down trees up to  wide in less than 50 minutes. Thicker trees, at  wide or more, may not fall for hours. When chewing down a tree, beavers switch between biting with the left and right side of the mouth. Tree branches are then cut and carried to their destination with the powerful jaw and neck muscles. Other building materials, like mud and rocks, are held by the forelimbs and tucked between the chin and chest.
+
+Beaver start building dams when they hear running water, and the sound of a leak in a dam triggers them to repair it. To build a dam, beavers stack up relatively long and thick logs between banks and in opposite directions. Heavy rocks keep them stable, and grass is packed between them. Beavers continue to pile on more material until the dam slopes in a direction facing upstream. Dams can range in height from  to  and can stretch from  to several hundred meters long. Beaver dams are more effective in trapping and slowly leaking water than man-made concrete dams. Lake-dwelling beavers do not need to build dams.
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+Beavers make two types of lodges: bank lodges and open-water lodges. Bank lodges are burrows dug along the shore and covered in sticks. The more complex freestanding, open-water lodges are built over a platform of piled-up sticks. The lodge is mostly sealed with mud, except for a hole at the top which acts as an air vent. Both types are accessed by underwater entrances. The above-water space inside the lodge is known as the "living chamber", and a "dining area" may exist close to the water entrance. Families routinely clean out old plant material and bring in new material.
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+North American beavers build more open-water lodges than Eurasian beavers. Beaver lodges built by new settlers are typically small and sloppy. More experienced families can build structures with a height of  and an above-water diameter of . A lodge sturdy enough to withstand the coming winter can be finished in just two nights. Both lodge types can be present at a beaver site. During the summer, beavers tend to use bank lodges to keep cool. They use open-water lodges during the winter. The air vent provides ventilation, and newly-added carbon dioxide can be cleared in an hour. The lodge remains consistent in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels from season to season.
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+Beavers in some areas will dig canals connected to their ponds. The canals fill with groundwater and give beavers access and easier transport of resources, as well as allow them to escape predators. These canals can stretch up to  wide,  deep, and over  long. It has been hypothesized that beavers' canals are not only transportation routes but an extension of their "central place" around the lodge and/or food cache. As they drag wood across the land, beavers leave behind trails or "slides", which they reuse when moving new material.
+
+Environmental effects
+
+The beaver works as an ecosystem engineer and keystone species, as its activities can have a great impact on the landscape and biodiversity of an area. Aside from humans, few other extant animals appear to do more to shape their environment. When building dams, beavers alter the paths of streams and rivers, allowing for the creation of extensive wetland habitats. In one study, beavers were associated with large increases in open-water areas. When beavers returned to an area, 160% more open water was available during droughts than in previous years, when they were absent. Beaver dams also lead to higher water tables in mineral soil environments and in wetlands such as peatlands. In peatlands particularly, their dams stabilize the constantly changing water levels, leading to greater carbon storage.
+
+Beaver ponds, and the wetlands that succeed them, remove sediments and pollutants from waterways, and can stop the loss of important soils. These ponds can increase the productivity of freshwater ecosystems by accumulating nitrogen in sediments. Beaver activity can affect the temperature of the water; in northern latitudes, ice thaws earlier in the warmer beaver-dammed waters. Beavers may contribute to climate change. In Arctic areas, the floods they create can cause permafrost to thaw, releasing methane into the atmosphere.
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+As wetlands are formed and riparian habitats are enlarged, aquatic plants colonize the newly-available watery habitat. One study in the Adirondacks found that beaver engineering lead to an increase of more than 33 percent in herbaceous plant diversity along the water's edge. Another study in semiarid eastern Oregon found that the width of riparian vegetation on stream banks increased several-fold as beaver dams watered previously dry terraces adjacent to the stream. Riparian ecosystems in arid areas appear to sustain more plant life when beaver dams are present. Beaver ponds act as a refuge for riverbank plants during wildfires, and provide them with enough moisture to resist such fires. Introduced beavers at Tierra del Fuego have been responsible for destroying the indigenous forest. Unlike trees in North America, many trees in South America cannot grow back after being cut down.
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+Beaver activity impacts communities of aquatic invertebrates. Damming typically leads to an increase of slow or motionless water species, like dragonflies, oligochaetes, snails, and mussels. This is to the detriment of rapid water species like black flies, stoneflies, and net-spinning caddisflies. Beaver floodings create more dead trees, providing more habitat for terrestrial invertebrates like Drosophila flies and bark beetles, which live and breed in dead wood. The presence of beavers can increase wild salmon and trout populations, and the average size of these fishes. These species use beaver habitats for spawning, overwintering, feeding, and as havens from changes in water flow. The positive effects of beaver dams on fish appear to outweigh the negative effects, such as blocking of migration. Beaver ponds have been shown to be beneficial to frog populations by protecting areas for larvae to mature in warm water. The stable waters of beaver ponds also provide ideal habitat for freshwater turtles.
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+Beavers help waterfowl by creating increased areas of water. The widening of the riparian zone associated with beaver dams has been shown to increase the abundance and diversity of birds favoring the water's edge, an impact that may be especially important in semi-arid climates. Fish-eating birds use beaver ponds for foraging, and in some areas, certain species appear more frequently at sites where beavers were active than at sites with no beaver activity. In a study of Wyoming streams and rivers, watercourses with beavers had 75 times as many ducks as those without. As trees are drowned by rising beaver impoundments, they become an ideal habitat for woodpeckers, which carve cavities that may be later used by other bird species. Beaver-caused ice thawing in northern latitudes allows Canada geese to nest earlier.
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+Other semi-aquatic mammals, such as water voles, muskrats, minks, and otters, will shelter in beaver lodges. Beaver modifications to streams in Poland create habitats favorable to bat species that forage at the water surface and "prefer moderate vegetation clutter". Large herbivores, such as some deer species, benefit from beaver activity as they can access vegetation from fallen trees and ponds.
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+Behavior
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+Beavers are mainly nocturnal and crepuscular, and spend the daytime in their shelters. In northern latitudes, beaver activity is decoupled from the 24-hour cycle during the winter, and may last as long as 29 hours. They do not hibernate during winter, and spend much of their time in their lodges.
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+Family life
+The core of beaver social organization is the family, which is composed of an adult male and an adult female in a monogamous pair and their offspring. Beaver families can have as many as ten members; groups about this size require multiple lodges. Mutual grooming and play fighting maintain bonds between family members, and aggression between them is uncommon.
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+Adult beavers mate with their partners, though partner replacement appears to be common. A beaver that loses its partner will wait for another one to come by. Estrus cycles begin in late December and peak in mid-January. Females may have two to four estrus cycles per season, each lasting 12–24 hours. The pair typically mate in the water and to a lesser extent in the lodge, for half a minute to three minutes.
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+Up to four young, or kits, are born in spring and summer, after a three or four-month gestation. Newborn beavers are precocial with a full fur coat, and can open their eyes within days of birth. Their mother is the primary caretaker, while their father maintains the territory. Older siblings from a previous litter also play a role.
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+After they are born, the kits spend their first one to two months in the lodge. Kits suckle for as long as three months, but can eat solid food within their second week and rely on their parents and older siblings to bring it to them. Eventually, beaver kits explore outside the lodge and forage on their own, but may follow an older relative and hold onto their backs. After their first year, young beavers help their families with construction. Beavers sexually mature around 1.5–3 years. They become independent at two years old, but remain with their parents for an extra year or more during times of food shortage, high population density, or drought.
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+Territories and spacing
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+Beavers typically disperse from their parental colonies during the spring or when the winter snow melts. They often travel less than , but long-distance dispersals are not uncommon when previous colonizers have already exploited local resources. Beavers are able to travel greater distances when free-flowing water is available. Individuals may meet their mates during the dispersal stage, and the pair travel together. It may take them weeks or months to reach their final destination; longer distances may require several years. Beavers establish and defend territories along the banks of their ponds, which may be  in length.
+
+Beavers mark their territories by constructing scent mounds made of mud and vegetation, scented with castoreum. Those with many territorial neighbors create more scent mounds. Scent marking increases in spring, during the dispersal of yearlings, to deter interlopers. Beavers are generally intolerant of intruders and fights may result in deep bites to the sides, rump, and tail. They exhibit a behavior known as the "dear enemy effect"; a territory-holder will investigate and become familiar with the scents of its neighbors and react more aggressively to the scents of strangers passing by. Beavers are also more tolerant of individuals that are their kin. They recognize them by using their keen sense of smell to detect differences in the composition of anal gland secretions. Anal gland secretion profiles are more similar among relatives than unrelated individuals.
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+Communication
+Beavers within a family greet each other with whines. Kits will attract the attention of adults with mews, squeaks, and cries. Defensive beavers produce a hissing growl and gnash their teeth. Tail slaps, which involve an animal hitting the water surface with its tail, serve as alarm signals warning other beavers of a potential threat. An adult's tail slap is more successful in alerting others, who will escape into the lodge or deeper water. Juveniles have not yet learned the proper use of a tail slap, and hence are normally ignored. Eurasian beavers have been recorded using a territorial "stick display", which involves individuals holding up a stick and bouncing in shallow water.
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+Interactions with humans
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+Beavers sometimes come into conflict with humans over land use; individual beavers may be labeled as "nuisance beavers". Beavers can damage crops, timber stocks, roads, ditches, gardens, and pastures via gnawing, eating, digging, and flooding. They occasionally attack humans and domestic pets, particularly when infected with rabies, in defense of their territory, or when they feel threatened. Some of these attacks have been fatal, including at least one human death. Beavers can spread giardiasis ('beaver fever') by infecting surface waters, though outbreaks are more commonly caused by human activity.
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+Flow devices, like beaver pipes, are used to manage beaver flooding, while fencing and hardware cloth protect trees and shrubs from beaver damage. If necessary, hand tools, heavy equipment, or explosives are used to remove dams. Hunting, trapping, and relocation may be permitted as forms of population control and for removal of individuals. The governments of Argentina and Chile have authorized the trapping of invasive beavers in hopes of eliminating them. The ecological importance of beavers has led to cities like Seattle designing their parks and green spaces to accommodate the animals. The Martinez beavers became famous in the mid-2000s for their role in improving the ecosystem of Alhambra Creek in Martinez, California.
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+Zoos have displayed beavers since at least the 19th century, though not commonly. In captivity, beavers have been used for entertainment, fur harvesting, and for reintroduction into the wild. Captive beavers require access to water, substrate for digging, and artificial shelters. Archibald Stansfeld "Grey Owl" Belaney pioneered beaver conservation in the early 20th century. Belaney wrote several books, and was first to professionally film beavers in their environment. In 1931, he moved to a log cabin in Prince Albert National Park, where he was the "caretaker of park animals" and raised a beaver pair and their four offspring.
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+Commercial use
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+Beavers have been hunted, trapped, and exploited for their fur, meat, and castoreum. Since the animals typically stayed in one place, trappers could easily find them and could kill entire families in a lodge. Many pre-modern people mistakenly thought that castoreum was produced by the testicles or that the castor sacs of the beaver were its testicles, and females were hermaphrodites. Aesop's Fables describes beavers chewing off their testicles to preserve themselves from hunters, which is impossible because a beaver's testicles are internal. This myth persisted for centuries, and was corrected by French physician Guillaume Rondelet in the 1500s. Beavers have historically been hunted and captured using deadfalls, snares, nets, bows and arrows, spears, clubs, firearms, and leg-hold traps. Castoreum was used to lure the animals.
+
+Castoreum was used for a variety of medical purposes; Pliny the Elder promoted it as a treatment for stomach problems, flatulence, seizures, sciatica, vertigo, and epilepsy. He stated it could stop hiccups when mixed with vinegar, toothaches if mixed with oil (by administering into the ear opening on the same side as the tooth), and could be used as an antivenom. The substance has traditionally been prescribed to treat hysteria in women, which was believed to have been caused by a "toxic" womb. Castoreum's properties have been credited to the accumulation of salicylic acid from willow and aspen trees in the beaver's diet, and has a physiological effect comparable to aspirin. Today, the medical use of castoreum has declined and is limited mainly to homeopathy. The substance is also used as an ingredient in perfumes and tinctures, and as a flavouring in food and drinks.
+
+Various Native American groups have historically hunted beavers for food. Beaver meat was advantageous, being more calorie-rich and fattened than other red meats, and the animals remained plump in winter, when they were most hunted. The bones were used to make tools. In medieval Europe, the Catholic Church considered the beaver to be part mammal and part fish, and allowed followers to eat the scaly, fishlike tail on meatless Fridays during Lent. Beaver tails were thus highly-prized in Europe; they were described by French naturalist Pierre Belon as tasting like a "nicely dressed eel".
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+Beaver pelts were used to make hats; felters would remove the guard hairs. The number of pelts needed depended on the type of hat, with Cavalier and Puritan hats requiring more fur than top hats. In the late 16th century, Europeans began to deal in North American furs due to the lack of taxes or tariffs on the continent and the decline of fur-bearers at home. Beaver pelts caused or contributed to the Beaver Wars, King William's War, and the French and Indian War; the trade made John Jacob Astor and the owners of the North West Company very wealthy. For Europeans in North America, the fur trade was a driver of the exploration and westward exploration on the continent and contact with native peoples, who traded with them. The fur trade peaked between 1860 and 1870, when over 150,000 beaver pelts were purchased annually by the Hudson's Bay Company and fur companies in the United States. The contemporary global fur trade is not as profitable due to conservation, anti-fur and animal rights campaigns.
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+In culture
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+The beaver has been used to represent productivity, trade, tradition, masculinity, and respectability. References to the beaver's skills are reflected in everyday language. The English verb "to beaver" means working with great effort and being "as busy as a beaver"; a "beaver intellect" refers to a way of thinking that is slow and honest. The word "beaver" can also be used as a sexual term for the human vulva.
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+Native American myths emphasize the beaver's skill and industriousness. In the mythology of the Haida, beavers are descended from the Beaver-Woman, who built a dam on a stream next to their cabin while her husband was out hunting and gave birth to the first beavers. In a Cree story, the Great Beaver and its dam caused a world flood. Other tales involve beavers using their tree chewing skills against an enemy. Beavers have been featured as companions in some stories, including a Lakota tale where a young woman flees from her evil husband with the aid of her pet beaver.
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+Europeans have traditionally thought of beavers as fantastical animals due to their amphibious nature. They depicted them with exaggerated tusk-like teeth, dog- or pig-like bodies, fish tails, and visible testicles. French cartographer Nicolas de Fer illustrated beavers building a dam at Niagara Falls, fantastically depicting them like human builders. Beavers have also appeared in literature such as Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and the writings of Athanasius Kircher, who wrote that on Noah's Ark the beavers were housed near a water-filled tub that was also used by mermaids and otters.
+
+The beaver has long been associated with Canada, appearing on the first pictorial postage stamp issued in the Canadian colonies in 1851 as the so-called "Three-Penny Beaver". It was declared the national animal in 1975. The five-cent coin, the coat of arms of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the logos for Parks Canada and Roots Canada use its image. Frank and Gordon are two fictional beavers that appeared in Bell Canada's advertisements between 2005 and 2008. However, the beaver's status as a rodent has made it controversial, and it was not chosen to be on the Arms of Canada in 1921. The beaver has commonly been used to represent Canada in political cartoons, typically to signify it as a friendly but relatively weak nation. In the United States, the beaver is the state animal of New York and Oregon. It is also featured on the coat of arms of the London School of Economics.
+
+See also
+ Beaver drop
+
+References
+
+Sources
+
+Further reading
+
+External links
+
+ Beaver Institute Charity that supports beavers
+ Beaver Tracks: How to identify beaver tracks in the wild
+
+ 
+Holarctic fauna
+Articles containing video clips
+Extant Miocene first appearances
+Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
+Semiaquatic mammals
+Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae (). They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans.  Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, and Eurasia. Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails.
+
+While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda is mostly herbivorous, the remaining six species are omnivorous with varying diets. With the exception of courting individuals and mothers with their young, bears are typically solitary animals. They may be diurnal or nocturnal and have an excellent sense of smell. Despite their heavy build and awkward gait, they are adept runners, climbers, and swimmers.  Bears use shelters, such as caves and logs, as their dens; most species occupy their dens during the winter for a long period of hibernation, up to 100 days.
+
+Bears have been hunted since prehistoric times for their meat and fur; they have also been used for bear-baiting and other forms of entertainment, such as being made to dance. With their powerful physical presence, they play a prominent role in the arts, mythology, and other cultural aspects of various human societies. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats and illegal trade in bear parts, including the Asian bile bear market. The IUCN lists six bear species as vulnerable or endangered, and even least concern species, such as the brown bear, are at risk of extirpation in certain countries. The poaching and international trade of these most threatened populations are prohibited, but still ongoing.
+
+Etymology
+The English word "bear" comes from Old English  and belongs to a family of names for the bear in Germanic languages, such as Swedish , also used as a first name. This form is conventionally said to be related to a Proto-Indo-European word for "brown", so that "bear" would mean "the brown one". However, Ringe notes that while this etymology is semantically plausible, a word meaning "brown" of this form cannot be found in Proto-Indo-European. He suggests instead that "bear" is from the Proto-Indo-European word *ǵʰwḗr- ~ *ǵʰwér "wild animal". This terminology for the animal originated as a taboo avoidance term: proto-Germanic tribes replaced their original word for bear—arkto—with this euphemistic expression out of fear that speaking the animal's true name might cause it to appear. According to author Ralph Keyes, this is the oldest known euphemism.
+
+Bear taxon names such as Arctoidea and Helarctos come from the ancient Greek ἄρκτος (arktos), meaning bear, as do the names "arctic" and "antarctic", via the name of the constellation Ursa Major, the "Great Bear", prominent in the northern sky.
+
+Bear taxon names such as Ursidae and Ursus come from Latin Ursus/Ursa, he-bear/she-bear. The female first name "Ursula", originally derived from a Christian saint's name, means "little she-bear" (diminutive of Latin ursa). In Switzerland, the male first name "Urs" is especially popular, while the name of the canton and city of Bern is derived from Bär, German for bear. The Germanic name Bernard (including Bernhardt and similar forms) means "bear-brave", "bear-hardy", or "bold bear". The Old English name Beowulf is a kenning, "bee-wolf",  for bear, in turn meaning a brave warrior.
+
+Taxonomy
+
+The family Ursidae is one of nine families in the suborder Caniformia, or "doglike" carnivorans, within the order Carnivora. Bears' closest living relatives are the pinnipeds, canids, and musteloids (some scholars formerly argued that bears are directly derived from canids and should not be classified as a separate family). Modern bears comprise eight species in three subfamilies: Ailuropodinae (monotypic with the giant panda), Tremarctinae (monotypic with the spectacled bear), and Ursinae (containing six species divided into one to three genera, depending on the authority). Nuclear chromosome analysis show that the karyotype of the six ursine bears is nearly identical, each having 74 chromosomes (see Ursid hybrid), whereas the giant panda has 42 chromosomes and the spectacled bear 52. These smaller numbers can be explained by the fusing of some chromosomes, and the banding patterns on these match those of the ursine species, but differ from those of procyonids, which supports the inclusion of these two species in Ursidae rather than in Procyonidae, where they had been placed by some earlier authorities.
+
+Evolution
+
+The earliest members of Ursidae belong to the extinct subfamily Amphicynodontinae, including Parictis (late Eocene to early middle Miocene, 38–18 Mya) and the slightly younger Allocyon (early Oligocene, 34–30 Mya), both from North America. These animals looked very different from today's bears, being small and raccoon-like in overall appearance, with diets perhaps more similar to that of a badger. Parictis does not appear in Eurasia and Africa until the Miocene. It is unclear whether late-Eocene ursids were also present in Eurasia, although faunal exchange across the Bering land bridge may have been possible during a major sea level low stand as early as the late Eocene (about 37 Mya) and continuing into the early Oligocene. European genera morphologically very similar to Allocyon, and to the much younger American Kolponomos (about 18 Mya), are known from the Oligocene, including Amphicticeps and Amphicynodon. There has been various morphological evidence linking amphicynodontines with pinnipeds, as both groups were semi-aquatic, otter-like mammals. In addition to the support of the pinniped–amphicynodontine clade, other morphological and some molecular evidence supports bears being the closest living relatives to pinnipeds.
+
+The raccoon-sized, dog-like Cephalogale is the oldest-known member of the subfamily Hemicyoninae, which first appeared during the middle Oligocene in Eurasia about 30 Mya. The subfamily includes the younger genera Phoberocyon (20–15 Mya), and Plithocyon (15–7 Mya). A Cephalogale-like species gave rise to the genus Ursavus during the early Oligocene (30–28 Mya); this genus proliferated into many species in Asia and is ancestral to all living bears. Species of Ursavus subsequently entered North America, together with Amphicynodon and Cephalogale, during the early Miocene (21–18 Mya). Members of the living lineages of bears diverged from Ursavus between 15 and 20 Mya, likely via the species Ursavus elmensis. Based on genetic and morphological data, the Ailuropodinae (pandas) were the first to diverge from other living bears about 19 Mya, although no fossils of this group have been found before about 11 Mya.
+
+The New World short-faced bears (Tremarctinae) differentiated from Ursinae following a dispersal event into North America during the mid-Miocene (about 13 Mya). They invaded South America (≈2.5 or 1.2 Ma) following formation of the Isthmus of Panama. Their earliest fossil representative is Plionarctos in North America (c. 10–2 Ma). This genus is probably the direct ancestor to the North American short-faced bears (genus Arctodus), the South American short-faced bears (Arctotherium), and the spectacled bears, Tremarctos, represented by both an extinct North American species (T. floridanus), and the lone surviving representative of the Tremarctinae, the South American spectacled bear (T. ornatus).
+
+The subfamily Ursinae experienced a dramatic proliferation of taxa about 5.3–4.5 Mya, coincident with major environmental changes; the first members of the genus Ursus appeared around this time. The sloth bear is a modern survivor of one of the earliest lineages to diverge during this radiation event (5.3 Mya); it took on its peculiar morphology, related to its diet of termites and ants, no later than by the early Pleistocene. By 3–4 Mya, the species Ursus minimus appears in the fossil record of Europe; apart from its size, it was nearly identical to today's Asian black bear. It is likely ancestral to all bears within Ursinae, perhaps aside from the sloth bear. Two lineages evolved from U. minimus: the black bears (including the sun bear, the Asian black bear, and the American black bear); and the brown bears (which includes the polar bear). Modern brown bears evolved from U. minimus via Ursus etruscus, which itself is ancestral to the extinct Pleistocene cave bear. Species of Ursinae have migrated repeatedly into North America from Eurasia as early as 4 Mya during the early Pliocene. The polar bear is the most recently evolved species and descended from a population of brown bears that became isolated in northern latitudes by glaciation 400,000 years ago.
+
+Phylogeny
+The relationship of the bear family with other carnivorans is shown in the following phylogenetic tree, which is based on the molecular phylogenetic analysis of six genes in Flynn, 2005.
+
+Note that although they are called "bears" in some languages, red pandas and raccoons and their close relatives are not bears, but rather musteloids.
+
+There are two phylogenetic hypotheses on the relationships among extant and fossil bear species. One is all species of bears are classified in seven subfamilies as adopted here and related articles: Amphicynodontinae, Hemicyoninae, Ursavinae, Agriotheriinae, Ailuropodinae, Tremarctinae, and Ursinae. Below is a cladogram of the subfamilies of bears after McLellan and Reiner (1992) and Qiu et al. (2014):
+
+The second alternative phylogenetic hypothesis was implemented by McKenna et al. (1997) to classify all the bear species into the superfamily Ursoidea, with Hemicyoninae and Agriotheriinae being classified in the family "Hemicyonidae". Amphicynodontinae under this classification were classified as stem-pinnipeds in the superfamily Phocoidea. In the McKenna and Bell classification both bears and pinnipeds are in a parvorder of carnivoran mammals known as Ursida, along with the extinct bear dogs of the family Amphicyonidae. Below is the cladogram based on McKenna and Bell (1997) classification:
+
+The phylogeny of extant bear species is shown in a cladogram based on complete mitochondrial DNA sequences from Yu et al. (2007) The giant panda, followed by the spectacled bear, are clearly the oldest species. The relationships of the other species are not very well resolved, though the polar bear and the brown bear form a close grouping.
+
+Physical characteristics
+
+Size
+
+The bear family includes the most massive extant terrestrial members of the order Carnivora. The polar bear is considered to be the largest extant species, with adult males weighing  and measuring  in total length. The smallest species is the sun bear, which ranges  in weight and  in length. Prehistoric North and South American short-faced bears were the largest species known to have lived. The latter estimated to have weighed  and stood  tall. Body weight varies throughout the year in bears of temperate and arctic climates, as they build up fat reserves in the summer and autumn and lose weight during the winter.
+
+Morphology
+
+Bears are generally bulky and robust animals with short tails. They are sexually dimorphic with regard to size, with males typically being larger. Larger species tend to show increased levels of sexual dimorphism in comparison to smaller species. Relying as they do on strength rather than speed, bears have relatively short limbs with thick bones to support their bulk. The shoulder blades and the pelvis are correspondingly massive. The limbs are much straighter than those of the big cats as there is no need for them to flex in the same way due to the differences in their gait. The strong forelimbs are used to catch prey, excavate dens, dig out burrowing animals, turn over rocks and logs to locate prey, and club large creatures.
+
+Unlike most other land carnivorans, bears are plantigrade. They distribute their weight toward the hind feet, which makes them look lumbering when they walk. They are capable of bursts of speed but soon tire, and as a result mostly rely on ambush rather than the chase. Bears can stand on their hind feet and sit up straight with remarkable balance. Their front paws are flexible enough to grasp fruit and leaves. Bears' non-retractable claws are used for digging, climbing, tearing, and catching prey. The claws on the front feet are larger than those on the back and may be a hindrance when climbing trees; black bears are the most arboreal of the bears, and have the shortest claws. Pandas are unique in having a bony extension on the wrist of the front feet which acts as a thumb, and is used for gripping bamboo shoots as the animals feed.
+
+Most mammals have agouti hair, with each individual hair shaft having bands of color corresponding to two different types of melanin pigment. Bears however have a single type of melanin and the hairs have a single color throughout their length, apart from the tip which is sometimes a different shade. The coat consists of long guard hairs, which form a protective shaggy covering, and short dense hairs which form an insulating layer trapping air close to the skin. The shaggy coat helps maintain body heat during winter hibernation and is shed in the spring leaving a shorter summer coat. Polar bears have hollow, translucent guard hairs which gain heat from the sun and conduct it to the dark-colored skin below. They have a thick layer of blubber for extra insulation, and the soles of their feet have a dense pad of fur. While bears tend to be uniform in color, some species may have markings on the chest or face and the giant panda has a bold black-and-white pelage.
+
+Bears have small rounded ears so as to minimize heat loss, but neither their hearing or sight are particularly acute. Unlike many other carnivorans they have color vision, perhaps to help them distinguish ripe nuts and fruits. They are unique among carnivorans in not having touch-sensitive whiskers on the muzzle; however, they have an excellent sense of smell, better than that of the dog, or possibly any other mammal. They use smell for signalling to each other (either to warn off rivals or detect mates) and for finding food. Smell is the principal sense used by bears to locate most of their food, and they have excellent memories which helps them to relocate places where they have found food before.
+
+The skulls of bears are massive, providing anchorage for the powerful masseter and temporal jaw muscles. The canine teeth are large but mostly used for display, and the molar teeth flat and crushing. Unlike most other members of the Carnivora, bears have relatively undeveloped carnassial teeth, and their teeth are adapted for a diet that includes a significant amount of vegetable matter. Considerable variation occurs in dental formula even within a given species. This may indicate bears are still in the process of evolving from a mainly meat-eating diet to a predominantly herbivorous one. Polar bears appear to have secondarily re-evolved carnassial-like cheek teeth, as their diets have switched back towards carnivory. Sloth bears lack lower central incisors and use their protrusible lips for sucking up the termites on which they feed. The general dental formula for living bears is: . The structure of the larynx of bears appears to be the most basal of the caniforms. They possess air pouches connected to the pharynx which may amplify their vocalizations.
+
+Bears have a fairly simple digestive system typical for carnivorans, with a single stomach, short undifferentiated intestines and no cecum. Even the herbivorous giant panda still has the digestive system of a carnivore, as well as carnivore-specific genes. Its ability to digest cellulose is ascribed to the microbes in its gut. Bears must spend much of their time feeding in order to gain enough nutrition from foliage. The panda, in particular, spends 12–15 hours a day feeding.
+
+Distribution and habitat
+
+Extant bears are found in sixty countries primarily in the Northern Hemisphere and are concentrated in Asia, North America, and Europe. An exception is the spectacled bear; native to South America, it inhabits the Andean region. The sun bear's range extends below the equator in Southeast Asia. The Atlas bear, a subspecies of the brown bear was distributed in North Africa from Morocco to Libya, but it became extinct around the 1870s.
+
+The most widespread species is the brown bear, which occurs from Western Europe eastwards through Asia to the western areas of North America. The American black bear is restricted to North America, and the polar bear is restricted to the Arctic Sea. All the remaining species of bear are Asian. They occur in a range of habitats which include tropical lowland rainforest, both coniferous and broadleaf forests, prairies, steppes, montane grassland, alpine scree slopes, Arctic tundra and in the case of the polar bear, ice floes. Bears may dig their dens in hillsides or use caves, hollow logs and dense vegetation for shelter.
+
+Behavior and ecology
+
+Brown and American black bears are generally diurnal, meaning that they are active for the most part during the day, though they may forage substantially by night. Other species may be nocturnal, active at night, though female sloth bears with cubs may feed more at daytime to avoid competition from conspecifics and nocturnal predators. Bears are overwhelmingly solitary and are considered to be the most asocial of all the Carnivora. The only times bears are encountered in groups are mothers with young or occasional seasonal bounties of rich food (such as salmon runs). Fights between males can occur and older individuals may have extensive scarring, which suggests that maintaining dominance can be intense. With their acute sense of smell, bears can locate carcasses from several kilometres away. They use olfaction to locate other foods, encounter mates, avoid rivals and recognize their cubs.
+
+Feeding
+
+Most bears are opportunistic omnivores and consume more plant than animal matter, and appears to have evolved from an ancestor which was a low-protein macronutrient omnivore. They eat anything from leaves, roots, and berries to insects, carrion, fresh meat, and fish, and have digestive systems and teeth adapted to such a diet. At the extremes are the almost entirely herbivorous giant panda and the mostly carnivorous polar bear. However, all bears feed on any food source that becomes seasonally available. For example, Asiatic black bears in Taiwan consume large numbers of acorns when these are most common, and switch to ungulates at other times of the year.
+
+When foraging for plants, bears choose to eat them at the stage when they are at their most nutritious and digestible, typically avoiding older grasses, sedges and leaves. Hence, in more northern temperate areas, browsing and grazing is more common early in spring and later becomes more restricted. Knowing when plants are ripe for eating is a learned behavior. Berries may be foraged in bushes or at the tops of trees, and bears try to maximize the number of berries consumed versus foliage. In autumn, some bear species forage large amounts of naturally fermented fruits, which affects their behavior. Smaller bears climb trees to obtain mast (edible reproductive parts, such as acorns). Such masts can be very important to the diets of these species, and mast failures may result in long-range movements by bears looking for alternative food sources. Brown bears, with their powerful digging abilities, commonly eat roots. The panda's diet is over 99% bamboo, of 30 different species. Its strong jaws are adapted for crushing the tough stems of these plants, though they prefer to eat the more nutritious leaves. Bromeliads can make up to 50% of the diet of the spectacled bear, which also has strong jaws to bite them open.
+
+The sloth bear is not as specialized as polar bears and the panda, has lost several front teeth usually seen in bears, and developed a long, suctioning tongue to feed on the ants, termites, and other burrowing insects. At certain times of the year, these insects can make up 90% of their diets. Some individuals become addicted to sweets in garbage inside towns where tourism-related waste is generated throughout the year. Some species may raid the nests of wasps and bees for the honey and immature insects, in spite of stinging from the adults. Sun bears use their long tongues to lick up both insects and honey. Fish are an important source of food for some species, and brown bears in particular gather in large numbers at salmon runs. Typically, a bear plunges into the water and seizes a fish with its jaws or front paws. The preferred parts to eat are the brain and eggs. Small burrowing mammals like rodents may be dug out and eaten.
+
+The brown bear and both species of black bears sometimes take large ungulates, such as deer and bovids, mostly the young and weak. These animals may be taken by a short rush and ambush, though hiding young may be sniffed out and pounced on. The polar bear mainly preys on seals, stalking them from the ice or breaking into their dens. They primarily eat the highly digestible blubber. Large mammalian prey is typically killed with raw strength, including bites and paw swipes, and bears do not display the specialized killing methods of felids and canids. Predatory behavior in bears is typically taught to the young by the mother.
+
+Bears are prolific scavengers and kleptoparasites, stealing food caches from rodents, and carcasses from other predators. For hibernating species, weight gain is important as it provides nourishment during winter dormancy. A brown bear can eat  of food and gain  of fat a day prior to entering its den.
+
+Communication
+
+Bears produce a number of vocal and non-vocal sounds. Tongue-clicking, grunting or chuffing many be made in cordial situations, such as between mothers and cubs or courting couples, while moaning, huffing, snorting or blowing air is made when an individual is stressed. Barking is produced during times of alarm, excitement or to give away the animal's position. Warning sounds include jaw-clicking and lip-popping, while teeth-chatters, bellows, growls, roars and pulsing sounds are made in aggressive encounters. Cubs may squeal, bawl, bleat or scream when in distress and make motor-like humming when comfortable or nursing.
+
+Bears sometimes communicate with visual displays such as standing upright, which exaggerates the individual's size. The chest markings of some species may add to this intimidating display. Staring is an aggressive act and the facial markings of spectacled bears and giant pandas may help draw attention to the eyes during agonistic encounters. Individuals may approach each other by stiff-legged walking with the head lowered. Dominance between bears is asserted by making a frontal orientation, showing the canine teeth, muzzle twisting and neck stretching.  A subordinate may respond with a lateral orientation, by turning away and dropping the head and by sitting or lying down.
+
+Bears also communicate with their scent and will rub it against trees and other objects. This is usually accompanied by clawing and biting the object. Bark may be spread around to draw attention to the marking post. Pandas establish territories by marking objects with urine and a waxy substance from their anal glands. Polar bears leave behind their scent in their tracks which allow individuals to keep track of one another in the vast Arctic wilderness.
+
+Reproduction and development
+
+The mating system of bears has variously been described as a form of polygyny, promiscuity and serial monogamy. During the breeding season, males take notice of females in their vicinity and females become more tolerant of males. A male bear may visit a female continuously over a period of several days or weeks, depending on the species, to test her reproductive state. During this time period, males try to prevent rivals from interacting with their mate. Courtship may be brief, although in some Asian species, courting pairs may engage in wrestling, hugging, mock fighting and vocalizing. Ovulation is induced by mating, which can last up to 30 minutes depending on the species.
+
+Gestation typically lasts 6–9 months, including delayed implantation, and litter size numbers up to four cubs. Giant pandas may give birth to twins but they can only suckle one young and the other is left to die. In northern living species, birth takes place during winter dormancy. Cubs are born blind and helpless with at most a thin layer of hair, relying on their mother for warmth. The milk of the female bear is rich in fat and antibodies and cubs may suckle for up to a year after they are born. By 2–3 months, cubs can follow their mother outside the den. They usually follow her on foot, but sloth bear cubs may ride on their mother's back. Male bears play no role in raising young. Infanticide, where an adult male kills the cubs of another, has been recorded in polar bears, brown bears and American black bears but not in other species. Males kill young to bring the female into estrus. Cubs may flee and the mother defends them even at the cost of her life.
+
+In some species, offspring may become independent around the next spring, though some may stay until the female successfully mates again. Bears reach sexual maturity shortly after they disperse; at around 3–6 years depending on the species. Male Alaskan brown bears and polar bears may continue to grow until they are 11 years old. Lifespan may also vary between species. The brown bear can live an average of 25 years.
+
+Hibernation
+
+Bears of northern regions, including the American black bear and the grizzly bear, hibernate in the winter. During hibernation, the bear's metabolism slows down, its body temperature decreases slightly, and its heart rate slows from a normal value of 55 to just 9 beats per minute. Bears normally do not wake during their hibernation, and can go the entire period without eating, drinking, urinating, or defecating. A fecal plug is formed in the colon, and is expelled when the bear wakes in the spring. If they have stored enough body fat, their muscles remain in good condition, and their protein maintenance requirements are met from recycling waste urea. Female bears give birth during the hibernation period, and are roused when doing so.
+
+Mortality
+
+Bears do not have many predators. The most important are humans, and as they started cultivating crops, they increasingly came in conflict with the bears that raided them. Since the invention of firearms, people have been able to kill bears with greater ease. Felids like the tiger may also prey on bears, particularly cubs, which may also be threatened by canids.
+
+Bears are parasitized by eighty species of parasites, including single-celled protozoans and gastro-intestinal worms, and nematodes and flukes in their heart, liver, lungs and bloodstream. Externally they have ticks, fleas and lice. A study of American black bears found seventeen species of endoparasite including the protozoan Sarcocystis, the parasitic worm Diphyllobothrium mansonoides, and the nematodes Dirofilaria immitis, Capillaria aerophila, Physaloptera sp., Strongyloides sp. and others. Of these, D. mansonoides and adult C. aerophila were causing pathological symptoms. By contrast, polar bears have few parasites; many parasitic species need a secondary, usually terrestrial, host, and the polar bear's life style is such that few alternative hosts exist in their environment. The protozoan Toxoplasma gondii has been found in polar bears, and the nematode Trichinella nativa can cause a serious infection and decline in older polar bears. Bears in North America are sometimes infected by a Morbillivirus similar to the canine distemper virus. They are susceptible to infectious canine hepatitis (CAV-1), with free-living black bears dying rapidly of encephalitis and hepatitis.
+
+Relationship with humans
+
+Conservation
+
+In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats and illegal trade in bear parts, including the Asian bile bear market, though hunting is now banned, largely replaced by farming. The IUCN lists six bear species as vulnerable; even the two least concern species, the brown bear and the American black bear, are at risk of extirpation in certain areas. In general these two species inhabit remote areas with little interaction with humans, and the main non-natural causes of mortality are hunting, trapping, road-kill and depredation.
+
+Laws have been passed in many areas of the world to protect bears from habitat destruction. Public perception of bears is often positive, as people identify with bears due to their omnivorous diets, their ability to stand on two legs, and their symbolic importance. Support for bear protection is widespread, at least in more affluent societies. The giant panda has become a worldwide symbol of conservation. The Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, which are home to around 30% of the wild panda population, gained a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation in 2006. Where bears raid crops or attack livestock, they may come into conflict with humans. In poorer rural regions, attitudes may be more shaped by the dangers posed by bears, and the economic costs they cause to farmers and ranchers.
+
+Attacks
+
+Several bear species are dangerous to humans, especially in areas where they have become used to people; elsewhere, they generally avoid humans. Injuries caused by bears are rare, but are widely reported. Bears may attack humans in response to being startled, in defense of young or food, or even for predatory reasons.
+
+Entertainment, hunting, food and folk medicine
+Bears in captivity have for centuries been used for entertainment. They have been trained to dance, and were kept for baiting in Europe from at least the 16th century. There were five bear-baiting gardens in Southwark, London, at that time; archaeological remains of three of these have survived. Across Europe, nomadic Romani bear handlers called Ursari lived by busking with their bears from the 12th century.
+
+Bears have been hunted for sport, food, and folk medicine. Their meat is dark and stringy, like a tough cut of beef. In Cantonese cuisine, bear paws are considered a delicacy. Bear meat should be cooked thoroughly, as it can be infected with the parasite Trichinella spiralis.
+
+The peoples of eastern Asia use bears' body parts and secretions (notably their gallbladders and bile) as part of traditional Chinese medicine. More than 12,000 bears are thought to be kept on farms in China, Vietnam, and South Korea for the production of bile. Trade in bear products is prohibited under CITES, but bear bile has been detected in shampoos, wine and herbal medicines sold in Canada, the United States and Australia.
+
+Cultural depictions
+
+Bears have been popular subjects in art, literature, folklore and mythology. The image of the mother bear was prevalent throughout societies in North America and Eurasia, based on the female's devotion and protection of her cubs. In many Native American cultures, the bear is a symbol of rebirth because of its hibernation and re-emergence. A widespread belief among cultures of North America and northern Asia associated bears with shaman; this may be based on the solitary nature of both. Bears have thus been thought to predict the future and shaman were believed to have been capable of transforming into bears.
+
+There is evidence of prehistoric bear worship, though this is disputed by archaeologists. It is possible that bear worship existed in early Chinese and Ainu cultures. The prehistoric Finns, Siberian peoples and more recently Koreans considered the bear as the spirit of their forefathers. Artio (Dea Artio in the Gallo-Roman religion) was a Celtic bear goddess. Evidence of her worship has notably been found at Bern, itself named for the bear. Her name is derived from the Celtic word for "bear", artos. In ancient Greece, the archaic cult of Artemis in bear form survived into Classical times at Brauron, where young Athenian girls passed an initiation rite as arktoi "she bears".
+
+The constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the great and little bears, are named for their supposed resemblance to bears, from the time of Ptolemy. The nearby star Arcturus means "guardian of the bear", as if it were watching the two constellations. Ursa Major has been associated with a bear for as much as 13,000 years since Paleolithic times, in the widespread Cosmic Hunt myths. These are found on both sides of the Bering land bridge, which was lost to the sea some 11,000 years ago.
+
+Bears are popular in children's stories, including Winnie the Pooh, Paddington Bear, Gentle Ben and "The Brown Bear of Norway". An early version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", was published as "The Three Bears" in 1837 by Robert Southey, many times retold, and illustrated in 1918 by Arthur Rackham. The Hanna-Barbera character Yogi Bear has appeared in numerous comic books, animated television shows and films. The Care Bears began as greeting cards in 1982, and were featured as toys, on clothing and in film. Around the world, many children—and some adults—have teddy bears, stuffed toys in the form of bears, named after the American statesman Theodore Roosevelt when in 1902 he had refused to shoot an American black bear tied to a tree.
+
+Bears, like other animals, may symbolize nations. The Russian Bear has been a common national personification for Russia from the 16th century onward. Smokey Bear has become a part of American culture since his introduction in 1944, with his message "Only you can prevent forest fires".
+
+Organizations
+
+The International Association for Bear Research & Management, also known as the International Bear Association, and the Bear Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission, a part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature focus on the natural history, management, and conservation of bears. Bear Trust International works for wild bears and other wildlife through four core program initiatives, namely Conservation Education, Wild Bear Research, Wild Bear Management, and Habitat Conservation.
+
+Specialty organizations for each of the eight species of bears worldwide include:
+ Vital Ground, for the brown bear
+ Moon Bears, for the Asiatic black bear
+ Black Bear Conservation Coalition, for the North American black bear
+ Polar Bears International, for the polar bear
+ Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, for the sun bear
+ Wildlife SOS, for the sloth bear
+ Andean Bear Conservation Project, for the Andean bear
+ Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, for the giant panda
+
+See also
+
+ List of fictional bears
+ List of individual bears
+
+Notes
+
+References
+
+Citations
+
+General and cited references
+
+Further reading
+
+External links
+
+ The Bears Project – Information, reports and images of European brown bears and other living species
+ The Bear Book and Curriculum Guide – a compilation of stories about all eight species of bears worldwide, including STEM lessons rooted in bear research, ecology, and conservation
+
+Articles containing video clips
+
+Extant Eocene first appearances
+Predators
+Taxa named by Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim
+The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), which occupies the same niche as the bald eagle in the Palearctic. Its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting.
+
+The bald eagle is an opportunistic feeder which subsists mainly on fish, which it swoops down upon and snatches from the water with its talons. It builds the largest nest of any North American bird and the largest tree nests ever recorded for any animal species, up to  deep,  wide, and  in weight. Sexual maturity is attained at the age of four to five years.
+
+Bald eagles are not bald; the name derives from an older meaning of the word, "white headed". The adult is mainly brown with a white head and tail. The sexes are identical in plumage, but females are about 25 percent larger than males. The yellow beak is large and hooked. The plumage of the immature is brown.
+
+The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States of America and appears on its seal. In the late 20th century it was on the brink of extirpation in the contiguous United States. Populations have since recovered, and the species's status was upgraded from "endangered" to "threatened" in 1995, and removed from the list altogether in 2007.
+
+Taxonomy
+The bald eagle is placed in the genus Haliaeetus (sea eagles), and gets both its common and specific scientific names from the distinctive appearance of the adult's head. Bald in the English name is from an older usage meaning "having white on the face or head" rather than "hairless", referring to the white head feathers contrasting with the darker body. The genus name is Neo-Latin: Haliaeetus (from the ), and the specific name, leucocephalus, is Latinized () and ().
+
+The bald eagle was one of the many species originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th-century work Systema Naturae, under the name Falco leucocephalus.
+
+There are two recognized subspecies of bald eagle:
+ H. l. leucocephalus (Linnaeus, 1766) is the nominate subspecies. It is found in the southern United States and Baja California Peninsula.
+ H. l. washingtoniensis (Audubon, 1827), synonym H. l. alascanus Townsend, 1897, the northern subspecies, is larger than southern nominate leucocephalus. It is found in the northern United States, Canada and Alaska.
+
+The bald eagle forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle of Eurasia. This species pair consists of a white-headed and a tan-headed species of roughly equal size; the white-tailed eagle also has overall somewhat paler brown body plumage. The two species fill the same ecological niche in their respective ranges. The pair diverged from other sea eagles at the beginning of the Early Miocene (c. 10 Ma BP) at the latest, but possibly as early as the Early/Middle Oligocene, 28 Ma BP, if the most ancient fossil record is correctly assigned to this genus.
+
+Description
+
+The plumage of an adult bald eagle is evenly dark brown with a white head and tail. The tail is moderately long and slightly wedge-shaped. Males and females are identical in plumage coloration, but sexual dimorphism is evident in the species, in that females are 25% larger than males. The beak, feet and irises are bright yellow. The legs are feather-free, and the toes are short and powerful with large talons. The highly developed talon of the hind toe is used to pierce the vital areas of prey while it is held immobile by the front toes. The beak is large and hooked, with a yellow cere. The adult bald eagle is unmistakable in its native range. The closely related African fish eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer) (from far outside the bald eagle's range) also has a brown body (albeit of somewhat more rufous hue), white head and tail, but differs from the bald eagle in having a white chest and black tip to the bill.
+
+The plumage of the immature is a dark brown overlaid with messy white streaking until the fifth (rarely fourth, very rarely third) year, when it reaches sexual maturity. Immature bald eagles are distinguishable from the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), the only other very large, non-vulturine raptorial bird in North America, in that the former has a larger, more protruding head with a larger beak, straighter edged wings which are held flat (not slightly raised) and with a stiffer wing beat and feathers which do not completely cover the legs. When seen well, the golden eagle is distinctive in plumage with a more solid warm brown color than an immature bald eagle, with a reddish-golden patch to its nape and (in immature birds) a highly contrasting set of white squares on the wing.
+
+The bald eagle has sometimes been considered the largest true raptor (accipitrid) in North America. The only larger species of raptor-like bird is the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), a New World vulture which today is not generally considered a taxonomic ally of true accipitrids. However, the golden eagle, averaging  and  in wing chord length in its American race (Aquila chrysaetos canadensis), is merely  lighter in mean body mass and exceeds the bald eagle in mean wing chord length by around . Additionally, the bald eagle's close cousins, the relatively longer-winged but shorter-tailed white-tailed eagle and the overall larger Steller's sea eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus), may, rarely, wander to coastal Alaska from Asia.
+
+The bald eagle has a body length of . Typical wingspan is between  and mass is normally between . Females are about 25% larger than males, averaging as much as , and against the males' average weight of .
+
+The size of the bird varies by location and generally corresponds with Bergmann's rule: the species increases in size further away from the equator and the tropics. For example, eagles from South Carolina average  in mass and  in wingspan, smaller than their northern counterparts. One field guide in Florida listed similarly small sizes for bald eagles there, at about . Of intermediate size, 117 migrant bald eagles in Glacier National Park were found to average  but this was mostly (possibly post-dispersal) juvenile eagles, with 6 adults here averaging . Wintering eagles in Arizona (winter weights are usually the highest of the year since, like many raptors, they spend the highest percentage of time foraging during winter) were found to average .
+
+The largest eagles are from Alaska, where large females may weigh more than  and span  across the wings. A survey of adult weights in Alaska showed that females there weighed on average , respectively, and males weighed  against immatures which averaged  and  in the two sexes. An Alaskan adult female eagle that was considered outsized weighed some . R.S. Palmer listed a record from 1876 in Wyoming County, New York of an enormous adult bald eagle that was shot and reportedly scaled . Among standard linear measurements, the wing chord is , the tail is  long, and the tarsus is . The culmen reportedly ranges from , while the measurement from the gape to the tip of the bill is .  The bill size is unusually variable: Alaskan eagles can have up to twice the bill length of birds from the southern United States (Georgia, Louisiana, Florida), with means including both sexes of  and  in culmen length, respectively, from these two areas.
+
+The call consists of weak staccato, chirping whistles, kleek kik ik ik ik, somewhat similar in cadence to a gull's call. The calls of young birds tend to be more harsh and shrill than those of adults.
+
+Range
+
+The bald eagle's natural range covers most of North America, including most of Canada, all of the continental United States, and northern Mexico. It is the only sea eagle endemic to North America. Occupying varied habitats from the bayous of Louisiana to the Sonoran Desert and the eastern deciduous forests of Quebec and New England, northern birds are migratory, while southern birds are resident, remaining on their breeding territory all year. At minimum population, in the 1950s, it was largely restricted to Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, northern and eastern Canada, and Florida. From 1966 to 2015 bald eagle numbers increased substantially throughout its winter and breeding ranges, and as of 2018 the species nests in every continental state and province in the United States and Canada.
+
+The majority of bald eagles in Canada are found along the British Columbia coast while large populations are found in the forests of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. Bald eagles also congregate in certain locations in winter. From November until February, one to two thousand birds winter in Squamish, British Columbia, about halfway between Vancouver and Whistler. The birds primarily gather along the Squamish and Cheakamus Rivers, attracted by the salmon spawning in the area. Similar congregations of wintering bald eagles at open lakes and rivers, wherein fish are readily available for hunting or scavenging, are observed in the northern United States.
+
+It has occurred as a vagrant twice in Ireland; a juvenile was shot illegally in Fermanagh on January 11, 1973 (misidentified at first as a white-tailed eagle), and an exhausted juvenile was captured near Castleisland, County Kerry on November 15, 1987. There is also a record of it from Llyn Coron, Anglesey, in the United Kingdom, from October 17, 1978; the provenance of this individual eagle has remained in dispute.
+
+Habitat
+
+The bald eagle occurs during its breeding season in virtually any kind of American wetland habitat such as seacoasts, rivers, large lakes or marshes or other large bodies of open water with an abundance of fish. Studies have shown a preference for bodies of water with a circumference greater than , and lakes with an area greater than  are optimal for breeding bald eagles.
+
+The bald eagle typically requires old-growth and mature stands of coniferous or hardwood trees for perching, roosting, and nesting. Tree species reportedly is less important to the eagle pair than the tree's height, composition and location. Perhaps of paramount importance for this species is an abundance of comparatively large trees surrounding the body of water. Selected trees must have good visibility, be over  tall, an open structure, and proximity to prey. If nesting trees are in standing water such as in a mangrove swamp, the nest can be located fairly low, at as low  above the ground. In a more typical tree standing on dry ground, nests may be located from  in height. In Chesapeake Bay, nesting trees averaged  in diameter and  in total height, while in Florida, the average nesting tree stands  high and is  in diameter. Trees used for nesting in the Greater Yellowstone area average  high. Trees or forest used for nesting should have a canopy cover of no more than 60%, and no less than 20%, and be in close proximity to water. Most nests have been found within  of open water. The greatest distance from open water recorded for a bald eagle nest was over , in Florida.
+
+Bald eagle nests are often very large in order to compensate for size of the birds. The largest recorded nest was found in Florida in 1963, and was measured at nearly 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep.
+
+In Florida, nesting habitats often consist of Mangrove swamps, the shorelines of lakes and rivers, pinelands, seasonally flooded flatwoods, hardwood swamps, and open prairies and pastureland with scattered tall trees. Favored nesting trees in Florida are slash pines (Pinus elliottii), longleaf pines (P. palustris), loblolly pines (P. taeda) and cypress trees, but for the southern coastal areas where mangroves are usually used. In Wyoming, groves of mature cottonwoods or tall pines found along streams and rivers are typical bald eagle nesting habitats. Wyoming eagles may inhabit habitat types ranging from large, old-growth stands of ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa) to narrow strips of riparian trees surrounded by rangeland. In Southeast Alaska, Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) provided 78% of the nesting trees used by eagles, followed by hemlocks (Tsuga) at 20%. Increasingly, eagles nest in human-made reservoirs stocked with fish.
+
+The bald eagle is usually quite sensitive to human activity while nesting, and is found most commonly in areas with minimal human disturbance. It chooses sites more than  from low-density human disturbance and more than  from medium- to high-density human disturbance. However, bald eagles will occasionally nest in large estuaries or secluded groves within major cities, such as Hardtack Island on the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon or John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which are surrounded by a great quantity of human activity. Even more contrary to the usual sensitivity to disturbance, a family of bald eagles moved to the Harlem neighborhood in New York City in 2010.
+
+While wintering, bald eagles tend to be less habitat and disturbance sensitive. They will commonly congregate at spots with plentiful perches and waters with plentiful prey and (in northern climes) partially unfrozen waters. Alternately, non-breeding or wintering bald eagles, particularly in areas with a lack of human disturbance, spend their time in various upland, terrestrial habitats sometimes quite far away from waterways. In the northern half of North America (especially the interior portion), this terrestrial inhabitance by bald eagles tends to be especially prevalent because unfrozen water may not be accessible. Upland wintering habitats often consist of open habitats with concentrations of medium-sized mammals, such as prairies, meadows or tundra, or open forests with regular carrion access.
+
+Behavior
+The bald eagle is a powerful flier, and soars on thermal convection currents. It reaches speeds of  when gliding and flapping, and about  while carrying fish. Its dive speed is between , though it seldom dives vertically. Regarding their flying abilities, despite being morphologically less well adapted to faster flight than golden eagles (especially during dives), the bald eagle is considered surprisingly maneuverable in flight. Bald eagles have also been recorded catching up to and then swooping under geese in flight, turning over and thrusting their talons into the other bird's breast. It is partially migratory, depending on location. If its territory has access to open water, it remains there year-round, but if the body of water freezes during the winter, making it impossible to obtain food, it migrates to the south or to the coast. A number of populations are subject to post-breeding dispersal, mainly in juveniles; Florida eagles, for example, will disperse northwards in the summer. The bald eagle selects migration routes which take advantage of thermals, updrafts, and food resources. During migration, it may ascend in a thermal and then glide down, or may ascend in updrafts created by the wind against a cliff or other terrain. Migration generally takes place during the daytime, usually between the local hours of 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., when thermals are produced by the sun.
+
+Diet and feeding
+The bald eagle is an opportunistic carnivore with the capacity to consume a great variety of prey. Fish often comprise most of the eagle's diet throughout their range. In 20 food habit studies across the species' range, fish comprised 56% of the diet of nesting eagles, birds 28%, mammals 14% and other prey 2%. More than 400 species are known to be included in the bald eagle's prey spectrum, far more than its ecological equivalent in the Old World, the white-tailed eagle, is known to take. Despite its considerably lower population, the bald eagle may come in second amongst all North American accipitrids, slightly behind only the red-tailed hawk, in number of prey species recorded.
+
+Behavior
+
+To hunt fish, the eagle swoops down over the water and snatches the fish out of the water with its talons. They eat by holding the fish in one claw and tearing the flesh with the other. Eagles have structures on their toes called spicules that allow them to grasp fish. Osprey also have this adaptation. Bird prey may occasionally be attacked in flight, with prey up to the size of Canada geese attacked and killed in mid-air. It has been estimated that the gripping power (pounds by square inch) of the bald eagle is ten times greater than that of a human. Bald eagles can fly with fish at least equal to their own weight, but if the fish is too heavy to lift, the eagle may be dragged into the water. Bald eagles are able to swim, in some cases dragging its catch ashore with its talons, but some eagles drown or succumb to hypothermia. Many sources claim that bald eagles, like all large eagles, cannot normally take flight carrying prey more than half of their own weight unless aided by favorable wind conditions. On numerous occasions, when large prey such as large fish including mature salmon or geese are attacked, eagles have been seen to make contact and then drag the prey in a strenuously labored, low flight over the water to a bank, where they then finish off and dismember the prey. When food is abundant, an eagle can gorge itself by storing up to  of food in a pouch in the throat called a crop. Gorging allows the bird to fast for several days if food becomes unavailable. Occasionally, bald eagles may hunt cooperatively when confronting prey, especially relatively large prey such as jackrabbits or herons, with one bird distracting potential prey, while the other comes behind it in order to ambush it. While hunting waterfowl, bald eagles repeatedly fly at a target and cause it to dive repeatedly, hoping to exhaust the victim so it can be caught (white-tailed eagles have been recorded hunting waterfowl in the same way). When hunting concentrated prey, a successful catch often results in the hunting eagle being pursued by other eagles and needing to find an isolated perch for consumption if it is able to carry it away successfully.
+
+They obtain much of their food as carrion or via a practice known as kleptoparasitism, by which they steal prey away from other predators. Due to their dietary habits, bald eagles are frequently viewed in a negative light by humans. Thanks to their superior foraging ability and experience, adults are generally more likely to hunt live prey than immature eagles, which often obtain their food from scavenging. They are not very selective about the condition or origin, whether provided by humans, other animals, auto accidents or natural causes, of a carcass's presence, but will avoid eating carrion where disturbances from humans are a regular occurrence. They will scavenge carcasses up to the size of whales, though carcasses of ungulates and large fish are seemingly preferred. Congregated wintering waterfowl are frequently exploited for carcasses to scavenge by immature eagles in harsh winter weather. Bald eagles also may sometimes feed on material scavenged or stolen from campsites and picnics, as well as garbage dumps (dump usage is habitual mainly in Alaska) and fish-processing plants.
+
+Fish
+
+In Southeast Alaska, fish comprise approximately 66% of the year-round diet of bald eagles and 78% of the prey brought to the nest by the parents. Eagles living in the Columbia River Estuary in Oregon were found to rely on fish for 90% of their dietary intake.  At least 100 species of fish have been recorded in the bald eagle's diet. From observation in the Columbia River, 58% of the fish were caught alive by the eagle, 24% were scavenged as carcasses and 18% were pirated away from other animals.
+
+In the Pacific Northwest, spawning trout and salmon provide most of the bald eagles' diet from late summer throughout fall. Though bald eagles occasionally catch live salmon, they usually scavenge spawned salmon carcass. Southeast Alaskan eagles largely prey on pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), coho salmon (O. kisutch) and, more locally, sockeye salmon (O. nerka), with Chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha). Due to the Chinook salmon's large size ( average adult size) probably being taken only as carrion and a single carcass can attract several eagles. Also important in the estuaries and shallow coastlines of southern Alaska are Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii), Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus) and eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus). In Oregon's Columbia River Estuary, the most significant prey species were largescale suckers (Catostomus macrocheilus) (17.3% of the prey selected there), American shad (Alosa sapidissima; 13%) and common carp (Cyprinus carpio; 10.8%). Eagles living in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland were found to subsist largely on American gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum), threadfin shad (Dorosoma petenense) and white bass (Morone chrysops). Floridian eagles have been reported to prey on catfish, most prevalently the brown bullhead (Ameiurus nebulosus) and any species in the genus Ictalurus as well as mullet, trout, needlefish, and eels. Chain pickerels (Esox niger) and white suckers (Catostomus commersonii) are frequently taken in interior Maine. Wintering eagles on the Platte River in Nebraska preyed mainly on American gizzard shads and common carp. Bald eagles are also known to eat the following fish species: rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), white catfish (Ameiurus catus), rock greenling (Hexagrammos lagocephalus), Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus), Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus monopterygius), largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), northern pike (Esox lucius), striped bass (Morone saxatilis), dogfish shark (Squalidae.sp) and Blue walleye (Sander vitreus).
+
+Fish taken by bald eagles varies in size, but bald eagles take larger fish than other piscivorous birds in North America, typically range from  and prefer  fish. When experimenters offered fish of different sizes in the breeding season around Lake Britton in California, fish measuring  were taken 71.8% of the time by parent eagles while fish measuring  were chosen only 25% of the time. At nests around Lake Superior, the remains of fish (mostly suckers) were found to average  in total length. In the Columbia River estuary, most preyed on by eagles were estimated to measure less than , but larger fish between  or even exceeding  in length also taken especially during the non-breeding seasons. In Neagle Lake, eagles frequently take Northern pike, up to  long. They can take fish up to at least twice their own weight, such as large salmons, carps, or even adult muskellunge (Esox masquinongy), by dragging its catch with talons and pull toward ashore. Much larger marine fish such as Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) and lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) have been recorded among bald eagle prey though probably are only taken as young, as small, newly mature fish, or as carrion.
+
+Benthic fishes such as catfish are usually consumed after they die and float to the surface, though while temporarily swimming in the open may be more vulnerable to predation than most fish since their eyes focus downwards. Bald eagles also regularly exploit water turbines which produce battered, stunned or dead fish easily consumed. Predators who leave behind scraps of dead fish that they kill, such as brown bears (Ursus arctos), gray wolves (Canis lupus) and red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), may be habitually followed in order to scavenge the kills secondarily. Once North Pacific salmon die off after spawning, usually local bald eagles eat salmon carcasses almost exclusively. Eagles in Washington need to consume  of fish each day for survival, with adults generally consuming more than juveniles and thus reducing potential energy deficiency and increasing survival during winter.
+
+Birds
+
+Behind fish, the next most significant prey base for bald eagles are other waterbirds. The contribution of such birds to the eagle's diet is variable, depending on the quantity and availability of fish near the water's surface. Waterbirds can seasonally comprise from 7% to 80% of the prey selection for eagles in certain localities. Overall, birds are the most diverse group in the bald eagle's prey spectrum, with 200 prey species recorded.
+
+Bird species most preferred as prey by eagles tend to be medium-sized, such as western grebes (Aechmophorus occidentalis), mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and American coots (Fulica americana) as such prey is relatively easy for the much larger eagles to catch and fly with. American herring gull (Larus smithsonianus) are the favored avian prey species for eagles living around Lake Superior. Black ducks (Anas rubripes), common eiders (Somateria mollissima), and double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) are also frequently taken in coastal Maine and velvet scoter (Melanitta fusca) was dominant prey in San Miguel Island.
+
+Due to easy accessibility and lack of formidable nest defense against eagles by such species, bald eagles are capable of preying on such seabirds at all ages, from eggs to mature adults, and they can effectively cull large portions of a colony. Along some portions of the North Pacific coastline, bald eagles which had historically preyed mainly kelp-dwelling fish and supplementally sea otter (Enhydra lutris) pups are now preying mainly on seabird colonies since both the fish (possibly due to overfishing) and otters (cause unknown) have had steep population declines, causing concern for seabird conservation. Because of this more extensive predation, some biologist has expressed concern that murres are heading for a "conservation collision" due to heavy eagle predation. Eagles have been confirmed to attack nocturnally active, burrow-nesting seabird species such as storm petrels and shearwaters by digging out their burrows and feeding on all animals they find inside. If a bald eagle flies close by, waterbirds will often fly away en masse, though they may seemingly ignore a perched eagle in other cases. when the birds fly away from a colony, this exposes their unprotected eggs and nestlings to scavengers such as gulls.
+
+While they usually target small to medium-sized seabirds, larger seabirds such as great black-backed gulls (Larus marinus) and northern gannets (Morus bassanus) and brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) of all ages can successfully taken by bald eagles. Similarly, large waterbirds are occasionally prey as well. Geese such as wintering emperor geese (Chen canagica) and snow geese (C. caerulescens), which gather in large groups, sometimes becoming regular prey. Smaller Ross's geese (Anser rossii) are also taken, as well as large-sized Canada geese (Branta canadensis). Predation on the largest subspecies (Branta canadensis maxima) has been reported. Large wading birds can also fall prey to bald eagles. For the great blue herons (Ardea herodias), bald eagles are their only serious enemies of all ages. Slightly larger Sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis) can be taken as well. While adult whooping cranes (Grus americana) are too large and formidable, their chicks can fall prey to bald eagles. They even occasionally prey on adult tundra swans (Cygnus columbianus). Young trumpeter swans (Cygnus buccinator) are also taken, and an unsuccessful attack on an adult swan has been photographed.
+
+Bald eagles have been recorded as killing other raptors on occasion. In some cases, these may be attacks of competition or kleptoparasitism on rival species but end with the consumption of the dead victims. Nine species each of other accipitrids and owls are known to have been preyed upon by bald eagles. Owl prey species have ranged in size from western screech-owls (Megascops kennicotti) to snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus). Larger diurnal raptors known to have fallen victim to bald eagles have included red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis), ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) and black (Coragyps atratus) and turkey vultures (Cathartes aura).
+
+Mammals
+
+Mammalian preys are generally less frequently taken than fish or avian prey. However, in some regions, such as landlocked areas of North America, wintering bald eagles may become habitual predators of medium-sized mammals that occur in colonies or local concentrations, such as prairie dogs (Cynomys sp.) and jackrabbits (Lepus sp.). Bald eagles in Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge often hunt in pair to catch rabbits and prairie dogs. They can attack and prey on rabbits and hares of nearly any size, from marsh rabbits (Sylvilagus palustris) to black and white-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus californicus & L. townsendii), and Arctic hares (Lepus arcticus). In San Luis Valley, white-tailed jackrabbits can be important prey. Additionally, rodents such as montane voles (Microtus montanus), brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus), nutrias (Myocastor coypus), and various squirrels are taken as supplementary prey. Even American porcupines (Erethizon dorsatum) are reportedly attacked and killed.
+
+Where available, seal colonies can provide a lot of food. On Protection Island, Washington, they commonly feed on harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) afterbirths, still-borns and sickly seal pups. Similarly, bald eagles in Alaska readily prey on sea otter (Enhydra lutris) pups. Terrestrial mammalian carnivores can be taken infrequently. Mustelid from size of American martens (Martes pennanti), and American minks (Neogale vison), to adult North American river otters (Lontra canadensis) and male fisher cats (Pekania pennanti) are taken. Foxes are also taken, including Island foxes ( Urocyon littoralis ), Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus), and grey foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). In one instance, two bald Eagles feed upon a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) that had tried to cross a frozen Delaware Lake. Other medium-sized carnivorans such as striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis), American hog-nosed skunks (Conepatus leuconotus), and common raccoons (Procyon lotor) are taken, as well as domestic cats (Felis catus) and dogs (canis familiaris).
+
+Other wild mammalian prey include fawns of deer such as white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and Sitka deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis), which weigh around  can be taken alive by bald eagles. In one instance, a bald eagle was observed carrying  mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) fawn. Additionally, Virginia opossums (Didelphis virginiana) can be preyed upon but most of them are mainly taken as roadkills due to their nocturnal habits.
+
+Together with the golden eagle, bald eagles are occasionally accused of preying on livestock, especially sheep (Ovis aries). There are a handful of proven cases of lamb predation, some specimens weighing up to , by bald eagles. Still, they are much less likely to attack a healthy lamb than a golden eagle. Both species prefer native, wild prey and are unlikely to cause any extensive detriment to human livelihoods. There is one case of a bald eagle killing and feeding on an adult, pregnant ewe (then joined in eating the kill by at least 3 other eagles), which, weighing on average over , is much larger than any other known prey taken by this species.
+
+Reptiles and other prey
+Supplemental prey is readily taken given the opportunity. In some areas, reptiles may become regular prey, especially in warm areas such as Florida where reptile diversity is high. Turtles are perhaps the most regularly hunted type of reptile. In coastal New Jersey, 14 of 20 studied eagle nests included remains of turtles. The main species found were common musk turtles (Sternotherus odoratus), diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) and juvenile common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina). In these New Jersey nests, mainly subadult and small adults were taken, ranging in carapace length from . Similarly, many turtles were recorded in the diet in the Chesapeake Bay. In Texas, softshell turtles are the most frequently taken prey, and a large number of Barbour's map turtles are taken in Torreya State Park. Other reptilian and amphibian prey includes southern alligator lizards (Elgaria multicarinata), snakes such as garter snakes and rattlesnakes, and Greater siren (Siren lacertina).
+
+Invertebrates are occasionally taken. In Alaska, eagles feed on sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus sp.), chitons, mussels, and crabs. Other various mollusks such as land snails, abalones, bivalves, periwinkles, blue mussels, squids, and starfishes are taken as well.
+
+Interspecific predatory relationships 
+
+When competing for food, eagles will usually dominate other fish-eaters and scavengers, aggressively displacing mammals such as coyotes (Canis latrans) and foxes, and birds such as corvids, gulls, vultures and other raptors. Occasionally, coyotes, bobcats (Lynx rufus) and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) can displace eagles from carrion, usually less confident immature birds, as has been recorded in Maine. Bald eagles are less active, bold predators than golden eagles and get relatively more of their food as carrion and from kleptoparasitism (although it is now generally thought that golden eagles eat more carrion than was previously assumed). However, the two species are roughly equal in size, aggressiveness and physical strength and so competitions can go either way. Neither species is known to be dominant, and the outcome depends on the size and disposition of the individual eagles involved. Wintering bald and golden eagles in Utah both sometimes won conflicts, though in one recorded instance a single bald eagle successfully displaced two consecutive golden eagles from a kill.
+
+Though bald eagles face few natural threats, an unusual attacker comes in the form of the common loon (G. immer), which is also taken by eagles as prey. While common loons normally avoid conflict, they are highly territorial and will attack predators and competitors by stabbing at them with their knife-like bill; as the range of the bald eagle has increased following conservation efforts, these interactions have been observed on several occasions, including a fatality of a bald eagle in Maine that is presumed to have come about as a result of it attacking a nest, then having a fatal puncture wound inflicted by one or both loon parents.
+
+The bald eagle is thought to be much more numerous in North America than the golden eagle, with the bald species estimated to number at least 150,000 individuals, about twice as many golden eagles there are estimated to live in North America. Due to this, bald eagles often outnumber golden eagles at attractive food sources. Despite the potential for contention between these animals, in New Jersey during winter, a golden eagle and numerous bald eagles were observed to hunt snow geese alongside each other without conflict. Similarly, both eagle species have been recorded, via video-monitoring, to feed on gut piles and carcasses of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in remote forest clearings in the eastern Appalachian Mountains without apparent conflict. Bald eagles are frequently mobbed by smaller raptors, due to their infrequent but unpredictable tendency to hunt other birds of prey. Many bald eagles are habitual kleptoparasites, especially in winters when fish are harder to come by. They have been recorded stealing fish from other predators such as ospreys, herons and even otters. They have also been recorded opportunistically pirating birds from peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), prairie dogs from ferruginous hawks (Buteo regalis) and even jackrabbits from golden eagles. When they approach scavengers such as dogs, gulls or vultures at carrion sites, they often attack them in an attempt to force them to disgorge their food. Healthy adult bald eagles are not preyed upon in the wild and are thus considered apex predators.
+
+Reproduction
+Bald eagles are sexually mature at four or five years of age. When they are old enough to breed, they often return to the area where they were born. It is thought that bald eagles mate for life. However, if one member of a pair dies or disappears, the survivor will choose a new mate. A pair which has repeatedly failed in breeding attempts may split and look for new mates. Bald eagle courtship involves elaborate, spectacular calls and flight displays by the males. The flight includes swoops, chases, and cartwheels, in which they fly high, lock talons, and free-fall, separating just before hitting the ground. Usually, a territory defended by a mature pair will be  of waterside habitat.
+
+Compared to most other raptors, which mostly nest in April or May, bald eagles are early breeders: nest building or reinforcing is often by mid-February, egg laying is often late February (sometimes during deep snow in the North), and incubation is usually mid-March and early May. Eggs hatch from mid April to early May, and the young fledge late June to early July. The nest is the largest of any bird in North America; it is used repeatedly over many years and with new material added each year may eventually be as large as  deep,  across and weigh . One nest in Florida was found to be  deep,  across, and to weigh . This nest is on record as the largest tree nest ever recorded for any animal. Usually nests are used for under five years, as they either collapse in storms or break the branches supporting them by their sheer weight. However, one nest in the Midwest was occupied continuously for at least 34 years. The nest is built of branches, usually in large trees found near water. When breeding where there are no trees, the bald eagle will nest on the ground, as has been recorded largely in areas largely isolated from terrestrial predators, such as Amchitka Island in Alaska.
+
+In Sonora, Mexico, eagles have been observed nesting on top of hecho catcuses (Pachycereus pectin-aboriginum). Nests located on cliffs and rock pinnacles have been reported historically in California, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, but currently are only verified to occur only in Alaska and Arizona. The eggs average about  long, ranging from , and have a breadth of , ranging from . Eggs in Alaska averaged  in mass, while in Saskatchewan they averaged . As with their ultimate body size, egg size tends to increase with distance from the equator. Eagles produce between one and three eggs per year, two being typical. Rarely, four eggs have been found in nests, but these may be exceptional cases of polygyny. Eagles in captivity have been capable of producing up to seven eggs. It is rare for all three chicks to successfully reach the fledgling stage. The oldest chick often bears the advantage of larger size and louder voice, which tends to draw the parents' attention towards it. Occasionally, as is recorded in many large raptorial birds, the oldest sibling sometimes attacks and kills its younger sibling(s), especially early in the nesting period when their sizes are most different. However, nearly half of known bald eagles produce two fledglings (more rarely three), unlike in some other "eagle" species such as some in the genus Aquila, in which a second fledgling is typically observed in less than 20% of nests, despite two eggs typically being laid. Both the male and female take turns incubating the eggs, but the female does most of the sitting. The parent not incubating will hunt for food or look for nesting material during this stage. For the first two to three weeks of the nestling period, at least one adult is at the nest almost 100% of the time. After five to six weeks, the attendance of parents usually drops off considerably (with the parents often perching in trees nearby).
+
+A young eaglet can gain up to  a day, the fastest growth rate of any North American bird. The young eaglets pick up and manipulate sticks, play tug of war with each other, practice holding things in their talons, and stretch and flap their wings. By eight weeks, the eaglets are strong enough to flap their wings, lift their feet off the nest platform, and rise up in the air. The young fledge at anywhere from 8 to 14 weeks of age, though will remain close to the nest and attended to by their parents for a further 6 weeks. Juvenile eagles first start dispersing away from their parents about 8 weeks after they fledge. Variability in departure date related to effects of sex and hatching order on growth and development. For the next four years, immature eagles wander widely in search of food until they attain adult plumage and are eligible to reproduce.
+
+On rare occasions, bald eagles have been recorded to adopt other raptor fledglings into their nests, as seen in 2017 by a pair of eagles in Shoal Harbor Migratory Bird Sanctuary near Sidney, British Columbia. The pair of eagles in question are believed to have carried a juvenile red-tailed hawk back to their nest, presumably as prey, whereupon the chick was accepted into the family by both the parents and the eagles' three nestlings. The hawk, nicknamed "Spunky" by biologists monitoring the nest, fledged successfully.
+
+Longevity and mortality
+
+The average lifespan of bald eagles in the wild is around 20 years, with the oldest confirmed one having been 38 years of age. In captivity, they often live somewhat longer. In one instance, a captive individual in New York lived for nearly 50 years. As with size, the average lifespan of an eagle population appears to be influenced by its location and access to prey. As they are no longer heavily persecuted, adult mortality is quite low. In one study of Florida eagles, adult bald eagles reportedly had 100% annual survival rate. In Prince William Sound in Alaska, adults had an annual survival rate of 88% even after the Exxon Valdez oil spill adversely affected eagles in the area. Of 1,428 individuals from across the range necropsied by National Wildlife Health Center from 1963 to 1984, 329 (23%) eagles died from trauma, primarily impact with wires and vehicles; 309 (22%) died from gunshot; 158 (11%) died from poisoning; 130 (9%) died from electrocution; 68 (5%) died from trapping; 110 (8%) from emaciation; and 31 (2%) from disease; cause of death was undetermined in 293 (20%) of cases. In this study, 68% of mortality was human-caused. Today, eagle-shooting is believed to be considerably reduced due to the species' protected status. In one case, an adult eagle investigating a peregrine falcon nest for prey items sustained a concussion from a swooping parent peregrine, and ultimately died days later from it. An early natural history video depicting a cougar (Puma concolor) ambushing and killing an immature bald eagle feeding at a rabbit carcass is viewable online, although this film may have been staged.
+
+Most non-human-related mortality involves nestlings or eggs. Around 50% of eagles survive their first year. However, in the Chesapeake Bay area, 100% of 39 radio-tagged nestlings survived to their first year. Nestling or egg fatalities may be due to nest collapses, starvation, sibling aggression or inclement weather. Another significant cause of egg and nestling mortality is predation. Nest predators include large gulls, corvids (including ravens, crows and magpies), wolverines (Gulo gulo), fishers (Pekania pennanti), red-tailed hawks, owls, other eagles, bobcats, American black bears (Ursus americanus) and raccoons. If food access is low, parental attendance at the nest may be lower because both parents may have to forage, thus resulting in less protection. Nestlings are usually exempt from predation by terrestrial carnivores that are poor tree-climbers, but Arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) occasionally snatched nestlings from ground nests on Amchitka Island in Alaska before they were extirpated from the island. The bald eagle will defend its nest fiercely from all comers and has even repelled attacks from bears, having been recorded knocking a black bear out of a tree when the latter tried to climb a tree holding nestlings.
+
+Relationship with humans
+
+Population decline and recovery
+
+Once a common sight in much of the continent, the bald eagle was severely affected in the mid-20th century by a variety of factors, among them the thinning of egg shells attributed to use of the pesticide DDT. Bald eagles, like many birds of prey, were especially affected by DDT due to biomagnification. DDT itself was not lethal to the adult bird, but it interfered with their calcium metabolism, making them either sterile or unable to lay healthy eggs; many of their eggs were too brittle to withstand the weight of a brooding adult, making it nearly impossible for them to hatch. It is estimated that in the early 18th century the bald eagle population was 300,000–500,000, but by the 1950s there were only 412 nesting pairs in the 48 contiguous states of the US.
+Other factors in bald eagle population reductions were a widespread loss of suitable habitat, as well as both legal and illegal shooting. In 1930 a New York City ornithologist wrote that in the territory of Alaska in the previous 12 years approximately 70,000 bald eagles had been shot. Many of the hunters killed the bald eagles under the long-held beliefs that bald eagles grabbed young lambs and even children with their talons, yet the birds were innocent of most of these alleged acts of predation (lamb predation is rare, human predation is thought to be non-existent). Illegal shooting was described as "the leading cause of direct mortality in both adult and immature bald eagles" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1978. Leading causes of death in bald eagles include lead pollution, poisoning, collision with motor vehicles, and power-line electrocution. A study published in 2022 in the journal Science found that more than half of adult eagles across 38 US states suffered from lead poisoning. The primary cause is when eagles scavenge carcasses of animals shot by hunters. These are often tainted with lead shotgun pellets or rifle rounds, ammunition fragments.
+
+The species was first protected in the U.S. and Canada by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty, later extended to all of North America. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, approved by the U.S. Congress in 1940, protected the bald eagle and the golden eagle, prohibiting commercial trapping and killing of the birds. The bald eagle was declared an endangered species in the U.S. in 1967, and amendments to the 1940 act between 1962 and 1972 further restricted commercial uses and increased penalties for violators. Perhaps most significant in the species' recovery, in 1972, DDT was banned from usage in the United States due to the fact that it inhibited the reproduction of many birds. DDT was completely banned in Canada in 1989, though its use had been highly restricted since the late 1970s.
+
+With regulations in place and DDT banned, the eagle population rebounded. The bald eagle can be found in growing concentrations throughout the United States and Canada, particularly near large bodies of water. In the early 1980s, the estimated total population was 100,000 individuals, with 110,000–115,000 by 1992; the U.S. state with the largest resident population is Alaska, with about 40,000–50,000, with the next highest population the Canadian province of British Columbia with 20,000–30,000 in 1992. Obtaining a precise count of the bald eagle population is extremely difficult. The most recent data submitted by individual states was in 2006, when 9789 breeding pairs were reported. For some time, the stronghold breeding population of bald eagles in the lower 48 states was in Florida, where over a thousand pairs have held on while populations in other states were significantly reduced by DDT use. Today, the contiguous state with the largest number of breeding pairs of eagles is Minnesota with an estimated 1,312 pairs, surpassing Florida's most recent count of 1,166 pairs. 23, or nearly half, of the 48 contiguous states now have at least 100 breeding pairs of bald eagles. In Washington State, there were only 105 occupied nests in 1980.  That number increased by about 30 per year, so that by 2005 there were 840 occupied nests. 2005 was the last year that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife counted occupied nests. Further population increases in Washington may be limited by the availability of late winter food, particularly salmon.
+
+The bald eagle was officially removed from the U.S. federal government's list of endangered species on July 12, 1995, by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, when it was reclassified from "endangered" to "threatened". On July 6, 1999, a proposal was initiated "To Remove the Bald Eagle in the Lower 48 States From the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife". It was de-listed on June 28, 2007. It has also been assigned a risk level of least concern category on the IUCN Red List. In the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 an estimated 247 were killed in Prince William Sound, though the local population returned to its pre-spill level by 1995. In some areas, the increase in eagles has led to decreases in other bird populations and the eagles may be considered a pest.
+
+Killing permits
+In December 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed extending the permits issued to wind generation companies to allow them to kill up to 4,200 bald eagles per year without facing a penalty, four times the previous number. The permits would last 30 years, six times the current 5-year term.
+
+In captivity
+
+Permits are required to keep bald eagles in captivity in the United States. Permits are primarily issued to public educational institutions, and the eagles that they show are permanently injured individuals that cannot be released to the wild. The facilities where eagles are kept must be equipped with adequate caging, as well as workers experienced in the handling and care of eagles. The bald eagle can be long-lived in captivity if well cared for, but does not breed well even under the best conditions.
+
+In Canada and in England a license is required to keep bald eagles for falconry. Bald eagles cannot legally be kept for falconry in the United States, but a license may be issued in some jurisdictions to allow use of such eagles in birds-of-prey flight shows.
+
+Cultural significance
+The bald eagle is important in various Native American cultures and, as the national bird of the United States, is prominent in seals and logos, coinage, postage stamps, and other items relating to the U.S. federal government.
+
+Role in Native American culture
+The bald eagle is a sacred bird in some North American cultures, and its feathers, like those of the golden eagle, are central to many religious and spiritual customs among Native Americans. Eagles are considered spiritual messengers between gods and humans by some cultures. Many pow wow dancers use the eagle claw as part of their regalia as well. Eagle feathers are often used in traditional ceremonies, particularly in the construction of regalia worn and as a part of fans, bustles and head dresses. In the Navajo tradition an eagle feather is represented to be a protector, along with the feather Navajo medicine men use the leg and wing bones for ceremonial whistles. The Lakota, for instance, give an eagle feather as a symbol of honor to person who achieves a task. In modern times, it may be given on an event such as a graduation from college. The Pawnee consider eagles as symbols of fertility because their nests are built high off the ground and because they fiercely protect their young. The Choctaw consider the bald eagle, who has direct contact with the upper world of the sun, as a symbol of peace.
+
+During the Sun Dance, which is practiced by many Plains Indian tribes, the eagle is represented in several ways. The eagle nest is represented by the fork of the lodge where the dance is held. A whistle made from the wing bone of an eagle is used during the course of the dance. Also during the dance, a medicine man may direct his fan, which is made of eagle feathers, to people who seek to be healed. The medicine man touches the fan to the center pole and then to the patient, in order to transmit power from the pole to the patient. The fan is then held up toward the sky, so that the eagle may carry the prayers for the sick to the Creator.
+
+Current eagle feather law stipulates that only individuals of certifiable Native American ancestry enrolled in a federally recognized tribe are legally authorized to obtain or possess bald or golden eagle feathers for religious or spiritual use. The constitutionality of these laws has been questioned by Native American groups on the basis that it violates the First Amendment by affecting ability to practice their religion freely.
+
+The National Eagle Repository, a division of the FWS, exists as a means to receive, process, and store bald and golden eagles which are found dead and to distribute the eagles, their parts and feathers to federally recognized Native American tribes for use in religious ceremonies.
+
+National bird of the United States
+
+The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States of America. The founders of the United States were fond of comparing their new republic with the Roman Republic, in which eagle imagery (usually involving the golden eagle) was prominent. On June 20, 1782, the Continental Congress adopted the design for the Great Seal of the United States, depicting a bald eagle grasping 13 arrows and an olive branch with thirteen leaves with its talons.
+
+The bald eagle appears on most official seals of the U.S. government, including the presidential seal, the presidential flag, and in the logos of many U.S. federal agencies. Between 1916 and 1945, the presidential flag (but not the seal) showed an eagle facing to its left (the viewer's right), which gave rise to the urban legend that the flag is changed to have the eagle face towards the olive branch in peace, and towards the arrows in wartime.
+
+Contrary to popular legend, there is no evidence that Benjamin Franklin ever publicly supported the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), rather than the bald eagle, as a symbol of the United States. However, in a letter written to his daughter in 1784 from Paris, criticizing the Society of the Cincinnati, he stated his personal distaste for the bald eagle's behavior. In the letter Franklin states:
+
+Franklin opposed the creation of the Society because he viewed it, with its hereditary membership, as a noble order unwelcome in the newly independent Republic, contrary to the ideals of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, for whom the Society was named.  His reference to the two kinds of birds is interpreted as a satirical comparison between the Society of the Cincinnati and Cincinnatus.
+
+Popular culture
+Largely because of its role as a symbol of the United States, but also because of its being a large predator, the bald eagle has many representations in popular culture. In film and television depictions the call of the red-tailed hawk, which is much louder and more powerful, is often substituted for bald eagles.
+
+See also
+
+ American bison
+ Besnard Lake
+ Eagle lady
+ Coat of arms of the Philippines
+ Old Abe
+ List of national birds
+
+References
+
+Further reading
+
+Identification
+ Grant, Peter J. (1988) "The Co. Kerry Bald Eagle" Twitching 1(12): 379–80 – describes plumage differences between bald eagle and white-tailed eagle in juveniles
+
+External links
+
+ The National Eagle Center
+ American Bald Eagle Foundation
+ American Bald Eagle Information 
+ Bald eagle bird sound – Florida Museum of Natural History
+
+Video links
+ 
+ 
+ Photo field guide on Flickr
+ 100+ Bald Eagles 
+
+bald eagle
+bald eagle
+Apex predators
+Scavengers
+Birds of Canada
+Birds of the United States
+Birds of Mexico
+Birds of Saint Pierre and Miquelon
+Birds of prey of North America
+Native birds of the Rocky Mountains
+National symbols of the United States
+bald eagle
+Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
+Least concern biota of North America
+Least concern biota of the United States
+The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large bear species found across Eurasia and North America. In North America, the populations of brown bears are called grizzly bears, while the subspecies that inhabits the Kodiak Islands of Alaska is known as the Kodiak bear. It is one of the largest living terrestrial members of the order Carnivora, rivaled in size only by its closest relative, the polar bear (Ursus maritimus), which is much less variable in size and slightly bigger on average. The brown bear's range includes parts of Russia, Central Asia, the Himalayas, China, Canada, the United States, Hokkaido, Scandinavia, Finland, the Balkans, the Picos de Europa and the Carpathian region (especially Romania), Iran, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. The brown bear is recognized as a national and state animal in several European countries.
+
+While the brown bear's range has shrunk, and it has faced local extinctions across its wide range, it remains listed as a least concern species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with a total estimated  population in 2017 of 110,000. , this and the American black bear are the only bear species not classified as threatened by the IUCN, though the large sizes of both bears may be a disadvantage due to increased competition with humans. Populations that were hunted to extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries are the Atlas bear of North Africa and the Californian, Ungavan and Mexican populations of the grizzly bear of North America. Many of the populations in the southern parts of Eurasia are highly endangered as well. One of the smaller-bodied forms, the Himalayan brown bear, is critically endangered, occupying only 2% of its former range and threatened by uncontrolled poaching for its body parts. The Marsican brown bear of central Italy is one of several currently isolated populations of the Eurasian brown bear and is believed to have a population of just 50 to 60 bears.
+
+Evolution and taxonomy
+The brown bear is sometimes referred to as the , from Middle English. This name originated in the fable History of Reynard the Fox translated by William Caxton from Middle Dutch  or , meaning brown (the color). In the mid-19th century United States, the brown bear was termed "Old Ephraim" and sometimes as "Moccasin Joe".
+
+The scientific name of the brown bear, Ursus arctos, comes from the Latin , meaning "bear", and the Greek /, also meaning "bear".
+
+Generalized names and evolution
+Brown bears are thought to have evolved from Ursus etruscus in Asia. The brown bear, per Kurten (1976), has been stated as "clearly derived from the Asian population of Ursus savini about 800,000 years ago; spread into Europe, to the New World." A genetic analysis indicated that the brown bear lineage diverged from the cave bear species complex approximately 1.2–1.4 million years ago, but did not clarify if U. savini persisted as a paraspecies for the brown bear before perishing. The oldest fossils positively identified as from this species occur in China from about 0.5 million years ago. Brown bears entered Europe about 250,000 years ago and North Africa shortly after. Brown bear remains from the Pleistocene period are common in the British Isles, where it is thought they might have outcompeted cave bears (Ursus spelaeus). The species entered Alaska 100,000 years ago, though they did not move south until 13,000 years ago. It is speculated that brown bears were unable to migrate south until the extinction of the much larger giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus).
+
+Several paleontologists suggest the possibility of two separate brown bear migrations. First, the inland brown bears, also known as grizzlies, are thought to stem from narrow-skulled bears which migrated from northern Siberia to central Alaska and the rest of the continent. Moreover, the Kodiak bears descend from broad-skulled bears from Kamchatka, which colonized the Alaskan peninsula. Brown bear fossils discovered in Ontario, Ohio, Kentucky and Labrador show that the species occurred farther east than indicated in historic records. In North America, two types of the subspecies Ursus arctos horribilis are generally recognized—the coastal brown bear and the inland grizzly bear; these two types broadly define the range of sizes of all brown bear subspecies.
+
+Scientific taxonomy
+
+There are many methods used by scientists to define bear species and subspecies, as no one method is always effective. Brown bear taxonomy and subspecies classification has been described as "formidable and confusing," with few authorities listing the same specific set of subspecies. Genetic testing is now perhaps the most important way to scientifically define brown bear relationships and names. Generally, genetic testing uses the word clade rather than species because a genetic test alone cannot define a biological species. Most genetic studies report on how closely related the bears are (or their genetic distance). There are hundreds of obsolete brown bear subspecies, each with its own name, so this can become confusing. Hall (1981) lists 86 different types, and even as many as 90 have been proposed. However, recent DNA analysis has identified as few as five main clades which contain all extant brown bears, while a 2017 phylogenetic study revealed nine clades, including one representing polar bears. , 15 extant or recently extinct subspecies were recognized by the general scientific community.
+
+As well as the exact number of overall brown bear subspecies, its precise relationship to the polar bear also remains in debate. The polar bear is a recent offshoot of the brown bear. The point at which the polar bear diverged from the brown bear is unclear, with estimations based on genetics and fossils ranging from 400,000 to 70,000 years ago, but most recent analysis has indicated that the polar bear split somewhere between 275,000 and 150,000 years ago. Under some definitions, the brown bear can be construed as the paraspecies for the polar bear.
+
+DNA analysis shows that, apart from recent human-caused population fragmentation, brown bears in North America are generally part of a single interconnected population system, with the exception of the population (or subspecies) in the Kodiak Archipelago, which has probably been isolated since the end of the last Ice Age. These data demonstrate that U. a. gyas, U. a. horribilis, U. a. sitkensis and U. a. stikeenensis are not distinct or cohesive groups, and would more accurately be described as ecotypes. For example, brown bears in any particular region of the Alaska coast are more closely related to adjacent grizzly bears than to distant populations of brown bears, the morphological distinction seemingly driven by brown bears having access to a rich salmon food source, while grizzly bears live at higher elevation, or further from the coast, where plant material is the base of the diet. The history of the bears of the Alexander Archipelago is unusual in that these island populations carry polar bear DNA, presumably originating from a population of polar bears that was left behind at the end of the Pleistocene, but have since been connected with adjacent mainland populations through movement of males, to the point where their nuclear genomes are now more than 90% of brown bear ancestry.
+
+Brown bears are apparently divided into five different clades, some of which coexist or co-occur in different regions.
+
+Hybrids
+
+A grizzly–polar bear hybrid (known either as a pizzly bear or a grolar bear) is a rare ursid hybrid resulting from a crossbreeding of a brown bear and a polar bear. It has occurred both in captivity and in the wild. In 2006, the occurrence of this hybrid in nature was confirmed by testing the DNA of a strange-looking bear that had been shot in the Canadian Arctic, and seven more hybrids have since been confirmed in the same region, all descended from a single female polar bear. Previously, the hybrid had been produced in zoos and was considered a "cryptid" (a hypothesized animal for which there is no scientific proof of existence in the wild).
+
+Analyses of the genomes of bears have shown that introgression between species was widespread during the evolution of the genus Ursus, including the introgression of polar bear DNA introduced to brown bears during the Pleistocene.
+
+A bear shot in autumn 1986 in Michigan, US, was thought by some to be a grizzly/American black bear hybrid, due to its unusually large size and its proportionately larger braincase and skull. DNA testing was unable to determine whether it was a large American black bear or a grizzly bear.
+
+Description
+
+The brown bear is the most variable in size of modern bears. The typical size depends upon which population it is from, and most accepted subtypes vary widely in size. This is in part due to sexual dimorphism, as male brown bears average at least 30% larger in most subtypes. Individual bears also vary in size seasonally, weighing the least in spring due to lack of foraging during hibernation, and the most in late fall, after a period of hyperphagia to put on additional weight to prepare for hibernation. Therefore, a bear may need to be weighed in both spring and fall to get an idea of its mean annual weight.
+
+Generally brown bears weigh anywhere from , with males outweighing females. The normal range of physical dimensions for a brown bear is a head-and-body length of  and a shoulder height of . The tail is relatively short, as in all bears, ranging from  in length. The smallest brown bears, females during spring among barren-ground populations, can weigh so little as to roughly match the body mass of males of the smallest living bear species, the sun bear (Helarctos malayanus), while the largest coastal populations attain sizes broadly similar to those of the largest living bear species, the polar bear. Interior brown bears are generally smaller than is often perceived, being around the same weight as an average lion, at an estimate average of  in males and  in females, whereas adults of the coastal populations weigh about twice as much. The average weight of adult male bears from 19 populations, from around the world and various subspecies (including both large- and small-bodied subspecies), was found to be  while adult females from 24 populations were found to average .
+
+Color
+
+Brown bears are often not fully brown. They have long, thick fur, with a moderately long mane at the back of the neck which varies somewhat across the types. In India, brown bears can be reddish with silver-tipped hairs, while in China brown bears are bicolored, with a yellowish-brown or whitish collar across the neck, chest and shoulders. Even within well-defined subspecies, individuals may show highly variable hues of brown. North American grizzlies can be dark brown (almost black) to cream (almost white) or yellowish-brown and often have darker-colored legs. The common name "grizzly" stems from their typical coloration, with the hairs on their back usually being brownish-black at the base and whitish-cream at the tips, giving them their distinctive "grizzled" color. Apart from the cinnamon subspecies of the American black bear (U. americanus cinnamonum), the brown bear is the only modern bear species to typically appear truly brown. The winter fur is very thick and long, especially in northern subspecies, and can reach  at the withers. The winter hairs are thin, yet rough to the touch. The summer fur is much shorter and sparser, with its length and density varying geographically.
+
+Cranial morphology and size
+
+Adults have massive, heavily built concave skulls, which are large in proportion to the body. The forehead is high and rises steeply. The projections of the skull are well developed when compared to those of Asian black bears (Ursus thibetanus): the latter have sagittal crests not exceeding more than 19–20% of the total length of the skull, while the former have sagittal crests comprising up to 40–41% of the skull's length. Skull projections are more weakly developed in females than in males. The braincase is relatively small and elongated. There is a great deal of geographical variation in the skull, and presents itself chiefly in dimensions. Grizzlies, for example, tend to have flatter profiles than European and coastal American brown bears. Skull lengths of Russian brown bears tend to be  for males, and  for females. The width of the zygomatic arches in males is , and  in females. Brown bears have very strong teeth: the incisors are relatively big and the canine teeth are large, the lower ones being strongly curved. The first three molars of the upper jaw are underdeveloped and single crowned with one root. The second upper molar is smaller than the others, and is usually absent in adults. It is usually lost at an early age, leaving no trace of the alveolus in the jaw. The first three molars of the lower jaw are very weak, and are often lost at an early age. The teeth of brown bears reflect their dietary plasticity and are broadly similar to other bears, excluding the two most herbivorous living bears, the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), which have blunt, small premolars (ideal for grinding down fibrous plants) compared to the jagged premolars of ursid bears that at least seasonally often rely on flesh as a food source. The teeth are reliably larger than American black bears, but average smaller in molar length than polar bears. Brown bears have the broadest skull of any extant ursine bear; only the aforementioned most herbivorous living bears exceed them in relative breadth of the skull. Another extant ursine bear, the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), has a proportionately longer skull than the brown bear and can match the skull length of even large brown bear subtypes, presumably as an aid for foraging heavily on insect colonies for which a long muzzle is helpful as an evolved feature in several unrelated mammalian groups.
+
+Claws and feet
+
+Brown bears have very large and curved claws, those present on the forelimbs being longer than those on the hind limbs. They may reach  and may measure  along the curve. They are generally dark with a light tip, with some forms having completely light claws. Brown bear claws are longer and straighter than those of American black bears (Ursus americanus). The claws are blunt, while those of a black bear are sharp. Due to their claw structure, in addition to their excessive weight, adult brown bears cannot typically climb trees as well as both species of black bear, although in rare cases adult female brown bears have been seen in trees. The claws of a polar bear are also quite different, being notably shorter but broader with a strong curve and sharper point, presumably both as an aid to traveling over ice (sometimes nearly vertically) and procuring active prey. The paws of the brown bear are quite large. The rear feet of adult bears have been found to typically measure  long, while the forefeet tend to measure about 40% less in length. All four feet in average sized brown bears tend to be about  in width. In large coastal or Kodiak bear males, the hindfoot may measure up to  in length,  in width, while outsized Kodiak bears having had confirmed measurements of up to  along their rear foot. Brown bears are the only extant bears with a hump at the top of their shoulder, which is made entirely of muscle, this feature having developed presumably for imparting more force in digging, which is habitual during foraging for most bears of the species and also used heavily in den construction prior to hibernation. The brown bear's strength has been roughly estimated as 2.5 to 5 times that of a human.
+
+Distribution and habitat
+
+Brown bears were once native to Europe, much of Asia, the Atlas Mountains of Africa, and North America, but are now extirpated in some areas, and their populations have greatly decreased in other areas. There are approximately 200,000 brown bears left in the world. The largest populations are in Russia with 120,000, the United States with 32,500, and Canada with around 25,000. Brown bears live in Alaska, east through the Yukon and Northwest Territories, south through British Columbia and through the western half of Alberta. The Alaskan population is estimated at a healthy 32,000 individuals. In the lower 48 states, they are repopulating slowly, but steadily along the Rockies and the western Great Plains.
+
+In Europe, in 2010, there were 14,000 brown bears in ten fragmented populations, from Spain (estimated at only 20–25 animals in the Pyrenees in 2010, in a range shared between Spain, France and Andorra, and some 210 animals in Asturias, Cantabria, Galicia and León, in the Picos de Europa and adjacent areas in 2013) in the west, to Russia in the east, and from Sweden and Finland in the north to Romania (5000–6000), Bulgaria (900–1200), Slovakia (with about 600–800 animals), Slovenia (500–700 animals) and Greece (with Karamanlidis et al. 2015 estimating >450 animals) in the south.
+
+In Asia, brown bears are found primarily throughout Russia, thence more spottily southwest to parts of the Middle East, including almost all parts of Kurdistan, to as far south as southwestern Iran, and to the southeast in Northeast China. Brown bears are also found in Western China, Kyrgyzstan, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. They can also be found on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, which holds the largest number of non-Russian brown bears in eastern Asia with about 2,000–3,000 animals.
+
+This species inhabits the broadest range of habitats of any living bear species.
+They seem to have no altitudinal preferences and have been recorded from sea level to an elevation of  (the latter in the Himalayas). In most of their range, brown bears generally seem to prefer semiopen country, with a scattering of vegetation that can allow them a resting spot during the day. However, they have been recorded as inhabiting every variety of northern temperate forest known to occur.
+
+Conservation status
+
+While the brown bear's range has shrunk and it has faced local extinctions, it remains listed as a Least concern species by the IUCN, with a total population of approximately 200,000. , this and the American black bear are the only bear species not classified as threatened by the IUCN. However, the California grizzly bear, Ungava brown bear, Atlas bear and Mexican grizzly bear, as well as brown bear populations in the Pacific Northwest, were hunted to extinction in the 19th and early 20th centuries and many of the southern Asian subspecies are highly endangered. The Syrian brown bear (Ursus arctos syriacus) is very rare and it has been extirpated from more than half of its historic range. One of the smallest-bodied subspecies, the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus), is critically endangered, occupying only 2% of its former range and threatened by uncontrolled poaching for its body parts. The Marsican brown bear in central Italy is believed to have a population of just 50–60 bears.
+
+Behavior and life history
+
+The brown bear is often described as nocturnal. However, it frequently seems to peak in activity in the morning and early evening hours. Studies have shown that activity throughout the range can occur at nearly any time of night or day, with bears who dwell in areas with more extensive human contact being more likely to be fully nocturnal. Furthermore, yearling and newly independent bears are more likely to be active diurnally and many adult bears in low-disturbance areas are largely crepuscular. In summer through autumn, a brown bear can double its weight from the spring, gaining up to  of fat, on which it relies to make it through winter, when it becomes very lethargic. Although they are not full hibernators and can be woken easily, both sexes like to den in a protected spot during the winter months. Hibernation dens may consist of any spot that provides cover from the elements and that can accommodate their bodies, such as a cave, crevice, cavernous tree roots, or hollow logs.
+
+Brown bears have one of the largest brains of any extant carnivoran relative to their body size and have been shown to engage in tool use (e.g., using a barnacle-covered rock to scratch its neck), which requires advanced cognitive abilities. This species is mostly solitary, although bears may gather in large numbers at major food sources (e.g.,  open garbage dumps or rivers holding spawning salmon) and form social hierarchies based on age and size. Adult male bears are particularly aggressive and are avoided by adolescent and subadult males, both at concentrated feeding opportunities and chance encounters. Female bears with cubs rival adult males in aggression and are much more intolerant of other bears than single females. Young adolescent males tend to be least aggressive and have been observed in nonantagonistic interactions with each other. Dominance between bears is asserted by making a frontal orientation, showing off canines, muzzle twisting and neck stretching to which a subordinate will respond with a lateral orientation, by turning away and dropping the head and by sitting or lying down. During combat, bears use their paws to strike their opponents in the chest or shoulders and bite the head or neck.
+
+Communication
+
+Several different facial expressions have been documented in brown bears. The "relaxed-face" is made in everyday activities and has the ears pointed to the sides and the mouth closed or slackly open. During social play, bears make "relaxed open-mouth face" in which the mouth is open, with a curled upper lip and hanging lower lip, and the ears alert and shifting. When looking at another animal at a distance, the bear makes an "alert face" as the ears are cocked and alert, the eyes wide open but the mouth is closed or only open slightly. The "tense closed mouth face" is made with the ears laid back and the mouth closed and occurs when the bear feels threatened. When approached by another individual, the animal makes a "puckered-lip face" with a protruding upper lip and ears which go from cocked and alert when at a certain distance to laid back when closer or when retreating. The "jaw gape face" consists of an open mouth with visible lower canines and hanging lips while the "biting face" is similar to the "relaxed open-mouth face" except the ears are flattened and the eyes are wide enough to expose the sclera. Both the "jaw gape face" and the "biting face" are made in aggression and bears switch between them.
+
+Brown bears also produce various vocalizations. Huffing occurs when the animal is tense while woofing is made when alarmed. Both sounds are produced by exhalations though huffing is harsher and is made continuously (two per second). Growls and roars are made in aggression. Growling is harsh and guttural and can range from a simple grrr to a rumble. A rumbling growl can escalate into a roar when the bear is charging. Roaring is described as "thunderous" and can travel . Mothers and cubs wanting physical contact will bawl, which is heard as waugh!, waugh!.
+
+Home ranges
+Brown bears usually occur over vast home ranges; however, they are not highly territorial. Several adult bears often roam freely over the same vicinity without issue, unless rights to a fertile female or food sources are being contested. Males always cover more area than females each year. Despite their lack of traditional territorial behavior, adult males can seem to have a "personal zone" in which other bears are not tolerated if they are seen. Males always wander further than females, due to both increasing access to females and food sources, while females are advantaged by smaller territories in part since it decreases the likelihood of encounters with male bears who may endanger their cubs. In areas where food is abundant and concentrated, such as coastal Alaska, home ranges for females are up to  and for males are up to . Similarly, in British Columbia, bears of the two sexes travel relatively compact home ranges of  and . In Yellowstone National Park, home ranges for females are up to  and up to  for males. In Romania, the largest home range was recorded for adult males (3,143 km2, 1214 sq mi). In the central Arctic of Canada, where food sources are quite sparse, home ranges range up to  in females and  in males.
+
+A study of male-inherited Y chromosome DNA sequence found that brown bears, over the past few 10,000 years, have shown strong male-biased dispersal. That study found surprisingly similar Y chromosomes in brown bear populations as far apart as Norway and coastal Alaska, indicating extensive gene flow across Eurasia and North America. Notably, this contrasts with genetic signals from female-inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), where brown bears of different geographic regions typically show strong differences in their mtDNA, a result of female philopatry.
+
+Reproduction
+
+The mating season is from mid-May to early July, shifting later the further north the bears are found. Being serially monogamous, brown bears remain with the same mate from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. Outside of this narrow time frame, adult male and female brown bears show no sexual interest in each other. Females mature sexually between the age of four and eight years of age, with an average age at sexual maturity of 5.2–5.5 years old, while males first mate about a year later on average, when they are large and strong enough to successfully compete with other males for mating rights. Males will try to mate with as many females as they can; usually a successful one mates with two females in a span of one to three weeks. The adult female brown bear is similarly promiscuous, mating with up to four, rarely even eight, males while in heat and potentially breeding with two males in a single day. Females come into oestrus on average every three to four years, with a full range of 2.4 to 5.7 years. The urine markings of a female in oestrus can attract several males via scent. Paternity DNA tests have shown that littermates do not share the same father in up to 29% of litters. Dominant males may try to sequester a female for her entire oestrus period of approximately two weeks, but usually are unable to retain her for the entire time. Copulation is vigorous and prolonged and can last up to an hour, although the mean time is about 23–24 minutes.
+
+Males take no part in raising their cubs – parenting is left entirely to the females. Through the process of delayed implantation, a female's fertilized egg divides and floats freely in the uterus for six months. During winter dormancy, the fetus attaches to the uterine wall. The cubs are born eight weeks later while the mother sleeps. If the mother does not gain enough weight to survive through the winter while gestating, the embryo does not implant and is reabsorbed into the body. There have been cases of brown bears with as many as six cubs, although the average litter size is one to three, with more than four being considered uncommon. There are records of females sometimes adopting stray cubs or even trading or kidnapping cubs when they emerge from hibernation (a larger female may claim cubs away from a smaller one). Older and larger females within a population tend to give birth to larger litters. The size of a litter also depends on factors such as geographic location and food supply. At birth, the cubs are blind, toothless and hairless and may weigh from , again reportedly based on the age and condition of the mother. They feed on their mother's milk until spring or even early summer, depending on climate conditions. At this time, the cubs weigh  and have developed enough to follow her over long distances and begin to forage for solid food.
+
+The cubs are fully dependent on the mother and a close bond is formed. During the dependency stage, the cubs learn (rather than inherit as instincts from birth) survival techniques, such as which foods have the highest nutritional value and where to obtain them; how to hunt, fish and defend themselves; and where to den. Increased brain size in large carnivores has been positively linked to whether a given species is solitary, as is the brown bear, or raises their offspring communally, thus female brown bears have relatively large, well-developed brains, presumably key in teaching behavior. The cubs learn by following and imitating their mother's actions during the period they are with her. Cubs remain with their mother for an average of 2.5 years in North America, uncommonly being independent as early as 1.5 years of age or as late as 4.5 years of age. The stage at which independence is attained may generally be earlier in some parts of Eurasia, as the latest date which mother and cubs were together was 2.3 years, most families separated in under two years in a study from Hokkaido and in Sweden most cubs on their own were still yearlings. Brown bears practice infanticide, as an adult male bear may kill the cubs of another. When an adult male brown bear kills a cub, it is usually because he is trying to bring the female into oestrus, as she will enter that state within two to four days after the death of her cubs. Cubs flee up a tree, if available, when they see a strange male bear and the mother often successfully defends them, even though the male may be twice as heavy as she, although females have been known to die in these confrontations.
+
+Dietary habits
+
+The brown bear is one of the most omnivorous animals in the world and has been recorded as consuming the greatest variety of foods of any bear. Throughout life, this species is regularly curious about the potential of eating virtually any organism or object that they encounter. Food that is both abundant and easily accessed or caught is preferred. Their jaw structure has evolved to fit their dietary habits. Their diet varies enormously throughout their differing areas based on opportunity.
+
+Despite their reputation, most brown bears are not highly carnivorous, as they derive up to 90% of their dietary food energy from vegetable matter. They often feed on a variety of plant life, including berries, grasses, flowers, acorns and pine cones, as well as fungi such as mushrooms. Among all bears, brown bears are uniquely equipped to dig for tough foods such as roots, bulbs and shoots. They use their long, strong claws to dig out earth to reach the roots and their powerful jaws to bite through them. In spring, winter-provided carrion, grasses, shoots, sedges, moss and forbs are the dietary mainstays for brown bears internationally. Fruits, including berries, become increasingly important during summer and early autumn. Roots and bulbs become critical in autumn for some inland bear populations if fruit crops are poor. They will also commonly consume animal matter, which in summer and autumn may regularly be in the form of insects, larvae and grubs, including beehives. Bears in Yellowstone eat an enormous number of moths during the summer, sometimes as many as 40,000 Army cutworm moths in a single day, and may derive up to half of their annual food energy from these insects. Brown bears living near coastal regions will regularly eat crabs and clams. In Alaska, bears along the beaches of estuaries regularly dig through the sand for clams. This species may eat birds and their eggs, including almost entirely ground- or rock-nesting species. The diet may be supplemented by rodents or similar smallish mammals, including marmots, ground squirrels, mice, rats, lemmings and voles. With particular regularity, bears in Denali National Park will wait at burrows of Arctic ground squirrels hoping to pick off a few of the  rodents.
+
+In the Kamchatka peninsula and several parts of coastal Alaska, brown bears feed mostly on spawning salmon, whose nutrition and abundance explain the enormous size of the bears in these areas. The fishing techniques of bears are well-documented. They often congregate around falls when the salmon are forced to breach the water, at which point the bears will try to catch the fish in mid-air (often with their mouths). They will also wade into shallow waters, hoping to pin a slippery salmon with their claws. While they may eat almost all the parts of the fish, bears at the peak of spawning, when there is usually a glut of fish to feed on, may eat only the most nutrious parts of the salmon (including the eggs and head) and then indifferently leave the rest of the carcass to scavengers, which can include red foxes, bald eagles, common ravens and gulls. Despite their normally solitary habits, brown bears will gather rather closely in numbers at good spawning sites. The largest and most powerful males claim the most fruitful fishing spots and bears (especially males) will sometimes fight over the rights to a prime fishing spot.
+
+Beyond the regular predation of salmon, most brown bears are not particularly active predators. While perhaps a majority of bears of the species will charge at large prey at one point in their lives and most eat carrion, many predation attempts start with the bear clumsily and half-heartedly pursuing the prey and end with the prey escaping alive. On the other hand, some brown bears are quite self-assured predators who habitually pursue and catch large prey items. Such bears are usually taught how to hunt by their mothers from an early age. Large mammals preyed on can include various ungulate species such as elk, moose, caribou, muskoxen and wild boar. When brown bears attack these large animals, they usually target young or infirm ones, as they are easier to catch. Typically when hunting (especially with young prey), the bear pins its prey to the ground and then immediately tears and eats it alive. It will also bite or swipe some prey to stun it enough to knock it over for consumption. To pick out young or infirm individuals, bears will charge at herds so the slower-moving and more vulnerable individuals will be made apparent. Brown bears may also ambush young animals by finding them via scent. When emerging from hibernation, brown bears, whose broad paws allow them to walk over most ice and snow, may pursue large prey such as moose whose hooves cannot support them on encrusted snow. Similarly, predatory attacks on large prey sometimes occur at riverbeds, when it is more difficult for the prey specimen to run away due to muddy or slippery soil. On rare occasions, while confronting fully-grown, dangerous prey, bears kill them by hitting with their powerful forearms, which can break the necks and backs of large creatures such as adult moose and adult bison. They also feed on carrion, and use their size to intimidate other predators, such as wolves, cougars, tigers, and American black bears from their kills. Carrion is especially important in the early spring (when the bears are emerging from hibernation), much of it comprising winter-killed big game. Cannibalism is not unheard of, though predation is not normally believed to be the primary motivation when brown bears attack each other.
+
+When forced to live in close proximity with humans and their domesticated animals, bears may potentially predate any type of domestic animal. Among these, domestic cattle are sometimes exploited as prey. Cattle are bitten on the neck, back or head and then the abdominal cavity is opened for eating. Plants and fruit farmed by humans are readily consumed as well, including corn, wheat, sorghum, melons and any form of berries. They will also feed at domestic bee yards, readily consuming both honey and the brood (grubs and pupae) of the honey bee colony. Human foods and trash are eaten when possible. When an open garbage dump was kept in Yellowstone, brown bears were one of the most voracious and regular scavengers. The dump was closed after both brown and American black bears came to associate humans with food and lost their natural fear of them.
+
+Interspecific predatory relationships
+
+Adult bears are generally immune to predatory attacks except from large Siberian (Amur) tigers and other bears. Following a decrease of ungulate populations from 1944 to 1959, 32 cases of Siberian tigers attacking both Ussuri brown bears (Ursus arctos lasiotus) and Ussuri black bears (U. thibetanus ussuricus) were recorded in the Russian Far East, and hair of bears were found in several tiger scat samples. Tigers attack black bears less often than brown bears, since the black bears live in more open habitats and are not able to climb trees. In the same time period, four cases of brown bears killing female tigers and young cubs were reported, both in disputes over prey and in self-defense. Tigers mainly feed on the bear's fat deposits, such as the back, hams and groin.
+
+When Amur tigers prey on brown bears, they usually target young and sub-adult bears, besides small female adults taken outside their dens, generally when lethargic from hibernation. Predation by tigers on denned brown bears was not detected during a study carried between 1993 and 2002. Ussuri brown bears, along with the smaller black bears constitute 2.1% of the Siberian tiger's annual diet, of which 1.4% are brown bears.
+
+The effect the presence of tigers have on a brown bears behavior seems to vary. In the winters of 1970–1973, Yudakov and Nikolaev recorded two cases of bears showing no fear of tigers and another case of a brown bear changing path upon crossing tiger tracks. Other researchers have observed bears following tiger tracks to scavenge tiger kills and to potentially prey on tigers. Despite the threat of predation, some brown bears actually benefit from the presence of tigers by appropriating tiger kills that the bears may not be able to successfully hunt themselves. Brown bears generally prefer to contest the much smaller female tigers. During telemetry research in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve, 44 direct confrontations between bears and tigers were observed, in which bears (not just brown bears) in general were killed in 22 cases, and tigers in 12 cases. There are reports of brown bears specifically targeting Amur leopards and tigers to abstract their prey. In the Sikhote-Alin reserve, 35% of tiger kills were stolen by bears, with tigers either departing entirely or leaving part of the kill for the bear. Some studies show that bears frequently track down tigers to usurp their kills, with occasional fatal outcomes for the tiger. A report from 1973 describes twelve known cases of brown bears killing tigers, including adult males. In all cases, the tigers were subsequently eaten by the bears.
+
+Brown bears regularly intimidate wolves to drive them away from their kills. In Yellowstone National Park, bears pirate wolf kills so often, Yellowstone's Wolf Project director Doug Smith wrote, "It's not a matter of if the bears will come calling after a kill, but when." Despite the high animosity between the two species, most confrontations at kill sites or large carcasses end without bloodshed on either side. Though conflict over carcasses is common, on rare occasions, the two predators tolerate each other on the same kill. To date, there is a single case of fully-grown wolves being killed by a grizzly bear. Given the opportunity, however, both species will prey on the other's cubs. Conclusively, the individual power of the bear against the collective strength of the wolf pack usually results in a long battle for kills or domination.
+
+In some areas, grizzly bears also regularly displace cougars from their kills. Cougars kill small bear cubs on rare occasions, but there was one report of a bear killing a cougar of unknown age and condition between 1993 and 1996. Smaller carnivorous animals, including coyotes, wolverines, lynxes, and any other sympatric carnivores or raptorial birds, are dominated by grizzly bears and generally avoid direct interactions with them, unless attempting to steal scraps of food. However, wolverines have been persistent enough to fend off a grizzly bear as much as ten times their weight off a kill. There is one record of a golden eagle preying on a brown bear cub.
+
+Brown bears usually dominate other bear species in areas where they coexist. Due to their smaller size, American black bears are at a competitive disadvantage to grizzly bears in open, unforested areas. Although displacement of black bears by grizzly bears has been documented, actual interspecific killing of black bears by grizzlies has only occasionally been reported. Confrontation is mostly avoided due to the black bear's diurnal habits and preference for heavily forested areas, as opposed to the grizzly's largely nocturnal habits and preference for open spaces. Brown bears may also kill Asian black bears, though the latter species probably largely avoids conflicts with the brown bear, due to similar habits and habitat preferences to the American black species. They will eat the fruit dropped by the Asian black bear from trees, as they themselves are too large and cumbersome to climb.  Improbably, in the Himalayas Brown bears are reportedly intimidated by Asian black bears in confrontations.
+
+There has been a recent increase in interactions between brown bears and polar bears, theorized to be caused by climate change. Brown and grizzly bears have been seen moving increasingly northward into territories formerly claimed by polar bears. They tend to dominate polar bears in disputes over carcasses, and dead polar bear cubs have been found in brown bear dens.
+
+Longevity and mortality
+
+The brown bear has a naturally long life. Wild females have been observed reproducing up to 28 years of age, which is the oldest known age for reproduction of any ursid in the wild. The peak reproductive age for females ranges from four to 20 years old. The lifespan of brown bears of both sexes within minimally hunted populations is estimated at an average of 25 years. The oldest wild brown bear on record was nearly 37 years old. The oldest recorded female in captivity was nearly 40 years old, while males in captivity have been verified to live up to 47 years, with one captive male possibly attaining 50 years of age.
+
+While male bears potentially live longer in captivity, female grizzly bears have a greater annual survival rate than males within wild populations per a study done in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Annual mortality for bears of any age is estimated at 10% in most protected areas; however, the average annual mortality rate rises to an estimated 38% in hunted populations. Around 13% to 44% of cubs die within their first year even in well-protected areas. Mortality rates of 75–100% among the cubs of any given year are not uncommon. Beyond predation by large predators including wolves, Siberian tigers and other brown bears, starvation and accidents also claim the lives of cubs. Studies have indicated that the most prevalent source of mortality for first-year cubs is malnutrition. By the second and third years of their lives, the annual mortality rate among cubs in the care of their mothers drops to 10-15%.
+
+Even in populations living in protected areas, humans are still the leading cause of mortality for brown bears. The largest amount of legalized brown bear hunting occurs in Canada, Finland, Russia, Slovakia and Alaska. Hunting is unregulated in many areas within the range of the brown bear. Even where hunting is legally permitted, most biologists feel that the numbers hunted are excessive considering the low reproduction rate and sparse distribution of the species. Brown bears are also killed in collisions with automobiles, which is a significant cause of mortality in the United States and Europe.
+
+Relationship with humans
+
+Conflicts between bears and humans
+
+Brown bears usually avoid areas where extensive development or urbanization has occurred, unlike the smaller, more inoffensive American black bear which can adapt to peri-urban regions. Under many circumstances, extensive human development may cause brown bears to alter their home ranges. High road densities (both paved and gravel roads) are often associated with higher mortality, habitat avoidance and lower bear density. However, brown bears can easily lose their natural cautiousness upon being attracted to human-created food sources, such as garbage dumps, litter bins and dumpsters. Brown bears may even venture into human dwellings or barns in search of food as humans encroach on bear habitats. In other areas, such as Alaska, dumps may continue to be an attractant for brown bears. In different parts of their distribution, brown bears sometimes kill and eat domesticated animals. The saying "A fed bear is a dead bear" has come into use to popularize the idea that allowing a bear to scavenge human garbage, such as trash cans and campers' backpacks, pet food, or other food sources that draw the bear into contact with humans, can result in the bear's death. Results of a 2016 study performed in a southeastern British Columbian valley indicate that areas where attractive bear food and concentrated human settlements overlap, human-bear conflict can create an ecological trap resulting in a lower apparent survival rate for brown bears, as well as attracting additional bears and thereby causing overall population declines.
+
+When brown bears come to associate human activity with a "food reward", they are likely to continue to become emboldened; the likelihood of human-bear encounters increases, as they may return to the same location despite relocation. Relocation of the bear has been used to separate the bear from the human environment, but it does not address the problem of the bear's newly learned association of humans with food or the environmental situations which created the human-habituated bear. "Placing a bear in habitat used by other bears may lead to competition and social conflict, and result in the injury or death of the less dominant bear." Yellowstone National Park, a reserve located in the western United States, contains prime habitat for the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) and due to the enormous number of visitors, human-bear encounters are common. The scenic beauty of the area has led to an influx of people moving into the area. In addition, because there are so many bear relocations to the same remote areas of Yellowstone, and because male bears tend to dominate the center of the relocation zone, female bears tend to be pushed to the boundaries of the region and beyond. As a result, a large proportion of repeat offenders, bears that are killed for public safety, are females. This creates a further depressive effect on an already-endangered subspecies. The grizzly bear is officially described as "Threatened" in the U.S.. Although the problem is most significant with regard to grizzlies, these issues affect the other types of brown bears as well.
+
+In Europe, part of the problem lies with shepherds; over the past two centuries, many sheep and goat herders have gradually abandoned the more traditional practice of using dogs to guard flocks, which have concurrently grown larger. Typically, they allow the herds to graze freely over sizeable tracts of land. As brown bears reclaim parts of their range, they may eat livestock as sheep and goats are relatively easy for a bear to kill. In some cases, the shepherds shoot the bear, thinking their livelihood is under threat. Many are now better informed about the ample compensation available and will make a claim when they lose livestock to a bear. Another issue in several parts of their range in Europe is supplemental feeding stations where various kind of animal carrion is offered, which are set up mainly in Scandinavia and eastern Europe both to support the locally threatened species and so humans can enjoy watching bears that may otherwise prove evasive. Despite that most stations were cautiously set in remote areas far from human habitations, some brown bears in such areas have become conditioned to associate humans with food and become excessively bold "problem bears". Also, supplemental feeding appears to cause no decrease in livestock predation.
+
+Bear encounters and attacks
+
+Brown bears rarely attack humans on sight and usually avoid people. In Russia, it is estimated that 1 in 1,000 on-foot encounters with brown bears results in an attack. They are, however, unpredictable in temperament, and may attack if they are surprised or feel threatened. There are an average of two fatal attacks by bears per year in North America. In Scandinavia, there are only four known cases since 1902 of bear encounters which have resulted in death. The two most common causes for bear attack are surprise and curiosity. Some types of bears, such as polar bears, are more likely to attack humans when searching for food, while American black bears are much less likely to attack. Despite their boldness and potential for predation if the bear is hungry, polar bears rarely attack humans, because they are infrequently encountered in the Arctic sea. Aggressive behavior in brown bears is favored by numerous selection variables. Increased aggressiveness also assists female brown bears in better ensuring the survival of their young to reproductive age. Mothers defending cubs are the most prone to attacking, being responsible for 70% of brown bear-caused human fatalities in North America.
+
+Sows with cubs account for many attacks on humans by brown bears in North America. Habituated or food-conditioned bears can also be dangerous, as their long-term exposure to humans causes them to lose their natural shyness and, in some cases, to associate humans with food. Small parties of one or two people are more often attacked by brown bears than large groups, with only one known case of an attack on a group of six or more. In that instance, it is thought that due to surprise, the grizzly bear may not have recognized the size of the group. In the majority of attacks resulting in injury, brown bears precede the attack with a growl or huffing sound. In contrast to injuries caused by American black bears, which are usually minor, brown bear attacks more often tend to result in serious injury and, in some cases, death. Brown bears seem to confront humans as they would when fighting other bears: they rise up on their hind legs, and attempt to "disarm" their victims by biting and holding on to the lower jaw to avoid being bitten in turn. Due to the bears' enormous physical strength, even a single bite or swipe can be deadly as in tigers, with some human victims having had their heads completely crushed by a bear bite. Most attacks occur in the months of July, August and September, the time when the number of outdoor recreationalists, such as hikers or hunters, is higher. People who assert their presence through noises tend to be less vulnerable, as they alert bears to their presence. In direct confrontations, people who run are statistically more likely to be attacked than those who stand their ground. Violent encounters with brown bears usually last only a few minutes, though they can be prolonged if the victims fight back. In Alberta, two common behaviors by human hunters, imitating the calls of deer to attract them and carrying ungulate carcasses, seem to court aggressive behavior and lead to a higher rate of attack from grizzly bears.
+
+Attacks on humans are considered extremely rare in the former Soviet Union, though exceptions exist in districts where they are not as often pursued by hunters. East Siberian brown bears, for example, tend to be much bolder toward humans than their shyer and more frequently hunted European counterparts. The delineation in Eurasia between areas where aggressiveness of brown bears tends to increase is the Ural Mountains, although the brown bears of eastern Europe are somewhat more aggressive than those of western Europe. In 2008, a platinum mining compound in the Olyutorsky District of northern Kamchatka was besieged by a group of 30 bears, who killed two guards and prevented workers from leaving their homes. 10 people a year on average are killed by brown bears in Russia, more than all the other parts of the brown bear's international range combined, although Russia also holds more brown bears than all other parts of the world combined. In Scandinavia, only three fatal attacks were recorded in the 20th century.
+
+In Japan, a large brown bear nicknamed "Kesagake" (袈裟懸け, "kesa-style slasher") made history for causing the worst brown bear attack in Japanese history at Tomamae, Hokkaidō during numerous encounters during December 1915. It killed seven people and wounded three others (with possibly another three previous fatalities to its credit) before being gunned down after a large-scale beast-hunt. Today, there is still a shrine at Rokusensawa (六線沢), where the event took place in memory of the victims of the incident.
+
+Within Yellowstone National Park, injuries caused by grizzly attacks in developed areas averaged approximately once per year during the 1930s through to the 1950s, though it increased to four per year during the 1960s. They then decreased to one injury every two years during the 1970s. Between 1980 and 2002, there have been only two human injuries caused by grizzly bears in a developed area. Although grizzly attacks were rare in the backcountry before 1970, the number of attacks increased to an average of approximately one per year during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. In Alberta, from 1960 to 1998, the number of attacks by grizzly bears ending in injury were nearly three times more common than attacks ending in injury by American black bears, despite the American black bear being an estimated 38 times more numerous in the province than the grizzly bear.
+
+History of defense from bears
+
+A study by U.S. and Canadian researchers has found bear spray to be more effective at stopping aggressive bear behavior than guns, working in 92% of studied incidents versus 67% for guns. Carrying pepper spray is highly recommended by many authorities when traveling in bear country; however, carrying two means of deterrent, one of which is a large caliber gun, is also advised. Solid shotgun slugs, or three buckshot rounds, or a pistol of .44 caliber or more is suggested if a heavy hunting rifle is not available. Guns remain a viable, last resort option to be used in defense of life from aggressive brown bears. Too often, people do not carry a proper caliber weapon to neutralize the bear. According to the Alaska Science Center, a 12-gauge shotgun with slugs has been the most effective weapon. There have been fewer injuries as a result of only carrying lethal loads in the shotgun, as opposed to deterrent rounds. State of Alaska Defense of Life or Property (DLP) laws require one to report the kill to the authorities and salvage the hide, skull and claws. A page at the State of Alaska Department of Natural Resources website offers information about how to "select a gun that will stop a bear (12-gauge shotgun or .300 mag rifle)".
+
+Campers are often told to wear bright-colored red ribbons and bells and carry whistles to ward off bears. They are told to look for grizzly bear dung in camping areas and be careful to carry the bells and whistles in those areas. Grizzly bear dung is difficult to differentiate from American black bear dung, as diet is in a constant state of flux depending on the availability of seasonal food items. If a bear is killed near camp, the bear's carcass must be adequately disposed of, including entrails and blood, if possible. Failure to move the carcass has often resulted in it attracting other bears and further exacerbating a bad situation. Moving camps immediately is another recommended method.
+
+Culture
+
+Brown bears often figure into the literature of Europe and North America, in particular that which is written for children. "The Brown Bear of Norway" is a Scottish fairy tale telling the adventures of a girl who married a prince magically turned into a bear and who managed to get him back into a human form by the force of her love and after many trials and difficulties. With "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", a story from England, the Three Bears are usually depicted as brown bears. In German-speaking countries, children are often told the fairytale of "Snow White and Rose Red"; the handsome prince in this tale has been transfigured into a brown bear. In the United States, parents often read their preschool age children the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? to teach them their colors and how they are associated with different animals.
+
+The Russian bear is a common national personification for Russia (as well as the former Soviet Union), despite the country having no officially-designated national animal. The brown bear is Finland's national animal.
+
+The grizzly bear is the state animal of Montana. The California golden bear is the state animal of California. Both animals are subspecies of the brown bear and the species was extirpated from the latter state.
+
+The coat of arms of Madrid depicts a bear reaching up into a madroño or strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) to eat some of its fruit, whereas the Swiss city of Bern's coat of arms also depicts a bear and the city's name is popularly thought to derive from the German word for bear. The brown bear is depicted on the reverse of the Croatian 5 kuna coin, minted since 1993.
+
+The Bundesliga club Bayern Munich has a brown bear mascot named Berni. The Chicago National Football League (NFL) franchise is named the Bears, with no differentiation between American black and brown bears specified. The Boston National Hockey League (NHL) franchise is named the Bruins, a name for brown bears. The school mascot for Bob Jones University, Brown University, Cornell University, George Fox University, the University of Alberta, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Riverside, and numerous American high schools is the brown bear.
+
+In the town of Prats de Molló, in Vallespir, French Catalonia, a "bear festival" (festa de l'ós) is celebrated annually at the beginning of spring, in which the locals dress up as bears, cover themselves with soot or coal and oil and "attack" the onlookers, attempting to get everyone dirty. The festival ends with the ball de l'ós (bear dance).
+
+See also
+ List of fatal bear attacks in North America
+ Sankebetsu brown bear incident
+
+References
+
+Notes
+
+Bibliography
+
+External links
+
+ Brown Bear profile from National Geographic
+ Bear Hunting Altered Genetics More Than Ice Age Isolation
+ Ancient Fossil Offers New Clues To Brown Bears Past
+
+ 
+Holarctic fauna
+Extant Middle Pleistocene first appearances
+Arctic land animals
+Mammals of the Arctic
+Bear, Brown
+Mammals of North America
+Mammals of Asia
+Scavengers
+National symbols of Finland
+National symbols of Russia
+Mammals described in 1758
+Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
+Pleistocene bears
+Fur trade
+Ursus (mammal)
+Habitats Directive Species
+In physics, the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) theory (named after John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer) is the first microscopic theory of superconductivity since  Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's 1911 discovery. The theory describes superconductivity as a microscopic effect caused by a condensation of Cooper pairs. The theory is also used in nuclear physics to describe the pairing interaction between nucleons in an atomic nucleus.
+
+It was proposed by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer in 1957; they received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this theory in 1972.
+
+History
+Rapid progress in the understanding of superconductivity gained momentum in the mid-1950s. It began with the 1948 paper, "On the Problem of the Molecular Theory of Superconductivity", where Fritz London proposed that the phenomenological London equations may be consequences of the coherence of a quantum state. In 1953, Brian Pippard, motivated by penetration experiments, proposed that this would modify the London equations via a new scale parameter called the coherence length. John Bardeen then argued in the 1955 paper, "Theory of the Meissner Effect in Superconductors", that such a modification naturally occurs in a theory with an energy gap. The key ingredient was Leon Cooper's calculation of the bound states of electrons subject to an attractive force in his 1956 paper, "Bound Electron Pairs in a Degenerate Fermi Gas".
+
+In 1957 Bardeen and Cooper assembled these ingredients and constructed such a theory, the BCS theory, with Robert Schrieffer. The theory was first published in April 1957 in the letter, "Microscopic theory of superconductivity". The demonstration that the phase transition is second order, that it reproduces the Meissner effect and the calculations of specific heats and penetration depths appeared in the December 1957 article, "Theory of superconductivity". They received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972 for this theory.
+
+In 1986, high-temperature superconductivity was discovered in La-Ba-Cu-O, at temperatures up to 30 K. Following experiments determined more materials with transition temperatures up to about 130 K, considerably above the previous limit of about 30 K. It is believed that BCS theory alone cannot explain this phenomenon and that other effects are in play. These effects are still not yet fully understood; it is possible that they even control superconductivity at low temperatures for some materials.
+
+Overview
+At sufficiently low temperatures, electrons near the Fermi surface become unstable against the formation of Cooper pairs. Cooper showed such binding will occur in the presence of an attractive potential, no matter how weak. In conventional superconductors, an attraction is generally attributed to an electron-lattice interaction. The BCS theory, however, requires only that the potential be attractive, regardless of its origin. In the BCS framework, superconductivity is a macroscopic effect which results from the condensation of Cooper pairs. These have some bosonic properties, and bosons, at sufficiently low temperature, can form a large Bose–Einstein condensate. Superconductivity was simultaneously explained by Nikolay Bogolyubov, by means of the Bogoliubov transformations.
+
+In many superconductors, the attractive interaction between electrons (necessary for pairing) is brought about indirectly by the interaction between the electrons and the vibrating crystal lattice (the phonons). Roughly speaking the picture is the following:
+
+An electron moving through a conductor will attract nearby positive charges in the lattice. This deformation of the lattice causes another electron, with opposite spin, to move into the region of higher positive charge density. The two electrons then become correlated. Because there are a lot of such electron pairs in a superconductor, these pairs overlap very strongly and form a highly collective condensate. In this "condensed" state, the breaking of one pair will change the energy of the entire condensate - not just a single electron, or a single pair. Thus, the energy required to break any single pair is related to the energy required to break all of the pairs (or more than just two electrons). Because the pairing increases this energy barrier, kicks from oscillating atoms in the conductor (which are small at sufficiently low temperatures) are not enough to affect the condensate as a whole, or any individual "member pair" within the condensate. Thus the electrons stay paired together and resist all kicks, and the electron flow as a whole (the current through the superconductor) will not experience resistance. Thus, the collective behavior of the condensate is a crucial ingredient necessary for superconductivity.
+
+Details
+BCS theory starts from the assumption that there is some attraction between electrons, which can overcome the Coulomb repulsion. In most materials (in low temperature superconductors), this attraction is brought about indirectly by the coupling of electrons to the crystal lattice (as explained above). However, the results of BCS theory do not depend on the origin of the attractive interaction. For instance, Cooper pairs have been observed in ultracold gases of fermions where a homogeneous magnetic field has been tuned to their Feshbach resonance. The original results of BCS (discussed below) described an s-wave superconducting state, which is the rule among low-temperature superconductors but is not realized in many unconventional superconductors such as the d-wave high-temperature superconductors.
+
+Extensions of BCS theory exist to describe these other cases, although they are insufficient to completely describe the observed features of high-temperature superconductivity.
+
+BCS is able to give an approximation for the quantum-mechanical many-body state of the system of (attractively interacting) electrons inside the metal. This state is now known as the BCS state. In the normal state of a metal, electrons move independently, whereas in the BCS state, they are bound into Cooper pairs by the attractive interaction. The BCS formalism is based on the reduced potential for the electrons' attraction. Within this potential, a variational ansatz for the wave function is proposed. This ansatz was later shown to be exact in the dense limit of pairs. Note that the continuous crossover between the dilute and dense regimes of attracting pairs of fermions is still an open problem, which now attracts a lot of attention within the field of ultracold gases.
+
+Underlying evidence
+The hyperphysics website pages at Georgia State University summarize some key background to BCS theory as follows:
+
+ Evidence of a band gap at the Fermi level (described as "a key piece in the puzzle")
+ the existence of a critical temperature and critical magnetic field implied a band gap, and suggested a phase transition, but single electrons are forbidden from condensing to the same energy level by the Pauli exclusion principle. The site comments that "a drastic change in conductivity demanded a drastic change in electron behavior". Conceivably, pairs of electrons might perhaps act like bosons instead, which are bound by different condensate rules and do not have the same limitation. 
+Isotope effect on the critical temperature, suggesting lattice interactions
+ The Debye frequency of phonons in a lattice is proportional to the inverse of the square root of the mass of lattice ions. It was shown that the superconducting transition temperature of mercury indeed showed the same dependence, by substituting the most abundant natural mercury isotope, 202Hg, with a different isotope, 198Hg.
+ An exponential rise in heat capacity near the critical temperature for some superconductors
+ An exponential increase in heat capacity near the critical temperature also suggests an energy bandgap for the superconducting material. As superconducting vanadium is warmed toward its critical temperature, its heat capacity increases greatly in a very few degrees; this suggests an energy gap being bridged by thermal energy.
+ The lessening of the measured energy gap towards the critical temperature
+ This suggests a type of situation where some kind of binding energy exists but it is gradually weakened as the temperature increases toward the critical temperature. A binding energy suggests two or more particles or other entities that are bound together in the superconducting state. This helped to support the idea of bound particles – specifically electron pairs – and together with the above helped to paint a general picture of paired electrons and their lattice interactions.
+
+Implications
+BCS derived several important theoretical predictions that are independent of the details of the interaction, since the quantitative predictions mentioned below hold for any sufficiently weak attraction between the electrons and this last condition is fulfilled for many low temperature superconductors - the so-called weak-coupling case. These have been confirmed in numerous experiments:
+ The electrons are bound into Cooper pairs, and these pairs are correlated due to the Pauli exclusion principle for the electrons, from which they are constructed. Therefore, in order to break a pair, one has to change energies of all other pairs. This means there is an energy gap for single-particle excitation, unlike in the normal metal (where the state of an electron can be changed by adding an arbitrarily small amount of energy). This energy gap is highest at low temperatures but vanishes at the transition temperature when superconductivity ceases to exist. The BCS theory gives an expression that shows how the gap grows with the strength of the attractive interaction and the (normal phase) single particle density of states at the Fermi level. Furthermore, it describes how the density of states is changed on entering the superconducting state, where there are no electronic states any more at the Fermi level. The energy gap is most directly observed in tunneling experiments and in reflection of microwaves from superconductors.
+ BCS theory predicts the dependence of the value of the energy gap Δ at temperature T on the critical temperature Tc. The ratio between the value of the energy gap at zero temperature and the value of the superconducting transition temperature (expressed in energy units) takes the universal value  independent of material. Near the critical temperature the relation asymptotes to  which is of the form suggested the previous year by M. J. Buckingham based on the fact that the superconducting phase transition is second order, that the superconducting phase has a mass gap and on Blevins, Gordy and Fairbank's experimental results the previous year on the absorption of millimeter waves by superconducting tin.
+ Due to the energy gap, the specific heat of the superconductor is suppressed strongly (exponentially) at low temperatures, there being no thermal excitations left. However, before reaching the transition temperature, the specific heat of the superconductor becomes even higher than that of the normal conductor (measured immediately above the transition) and the ratio of these two values is found to be universally given by 2.5.
+ BCS theory correctly predicts the Meissner effect, i.e. the expulsion of a magnetic field from the superconductor and the variation of the penetration depth (the extent of the screening currents flowing below the metal's surface) with temperature. 
+ It also describes the variation of the critical magnetic field (above which the superconductor can no longer expel the field but becomes normal conducting) with temperature. BCS theory relates the value of the critical field at zero temperature to the value of the transition temperature and the density of states at the Fermi level.
+ In its simplest form, BCS gives the superconducting transition temperature Tc in terms of the electron-phonon coupling potential V and the Debye cutoff energy ED:  where N(0) is the electronic density of states at the Fermi level. For more details, see Cooper pairs.
+ The BCS theory reproduces the isotope effect, which is the experimental observation that for a given superconducting material, the critical temperature is inversely proportional to the square-root of the mass of the isotope used in the material. The isotope effect was reported by two groups on 24 March 1950, who discovered it independently working with different mercury isotopes, although a few days before publication they learned of each other's results at the ONR conference in Atlanta. The two groups are Emanuel Maxwell,  and C. A. Reynolds, B. Serin, W. H. Wright, and L. B. Nesbitt. The choice of isotope ordinarily has little effect on the electrical properties of a material, but does affect the frequency of lattice vibrations.  This effect suggests that superconductivity is related to vibrations of the lattice. This is incorporated into BCS theory, where lattice vibrations yield the binding energy of electrons in a Cooper pair.
+ Little–Parks experiment - One of the first indications to the importance of the Cooper-pairing principle.
+
+See also
+ Magnesium diboride, considered a BCS superconductor
+ Quasiparticle
+ Little–Parks effect, one of the first indications of the importance of the Cooper pairing principle.
+
+References
+
+Primary sources
+
+Further reading
+ John Robert Schrieffer, Theory of Superconductivity, (1964), 
+ Michael Tinkham, Introduction to Superconductivity, 
+ Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Superconductivity of Metals and Alloys, .
+ 
+ Schmidt, Vadim Vasil'evich. The physics of superconductors: Introduction to fundamentals and applications. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013.
+
+External links
+ Hyperphysics page on BCS 
+ Dance analogy  of BCS theory as explained by Bob Schrieffer (audio recording)
+ Mean-Field Theory: Hartree-Fock and BCS in E. Pavarini, E. Koch, J. van den Brink, and G. Sawatzky: Quantum materials: Experiments and Theory, Jülich 2016, 
+
+Superconductivity
+The biathlon is a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. It is treated as a race, with contestants skiing through a cross-country trail whose distance is divided into shooting rounds. The shooting rounds are not timed per se, but depending on the competition, missed shots result in extra distance or time being added to the contestant's total.
+
+History
+
+According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the biathlon "is rooted in the skiing traditions of Scandinavia, where early inhabitants revered the Norse god Ullr as both the ski god and the hunting god." In modern times, the activity that developed into this sport was an exercise for Norwegians as alternative training for the military. Norwegian skiing regiments organized military skiing contests in the 18th century, divided into four classes: shooting at mark while skiing at top speed, downhill race among trees, downhill race on big hills without falling, and a long race on flat ground while carrying a rifle and military pack. In modern terminology, these military contests included downhill, slalom, biathlon, and cross-country skiing. One of the world's first known ski clubs, Trysil Skytte- og Skiløberforening (the Trysil Rifle and Ski Club), was formed in Norway in 1861 to promote national defense at the local level. 20th century variants include  (the military contest), a 17 km cross-country race with shooting, and the military cross-country race at 30 km including marksmanship. 
+
+The modern biathlon is a civilian variant of the old military combined exercise. In Norway, the biathlon was until 1984 a branch of , an organization set up by the government to promote civilian marksmanship in support of national defence. In Norwegian, the biathlon is called  (literally ski shooting). In Norway, there are still separate contests in , a cross-country race at 12 km with large-caliber rifle shooting at various targets with unknown range.
+
+Called military patrol, the combination of skiing and shooting was contested at the Winter Olympic Games in 1924 and then demonstrated in 1928, 1936, and 1948, during which time Norway and Finland were strong competitors. In 1948, the sport was reorganized under the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne et Biathlon and became re-accepted as an Olympic sport in 1955, with widespread popularity within the Soviet and Swedish winter sport circuits.
+
+The first Biathlon World Championship was held in 1958 in Austria, and in 1960 the sport was finally included in the Olympic Games. At Albertville in 1992, women were first allowed in the Olympic biathlon. The pursuit format was added for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and the IBU added mixed relay as a format for the 2006 Olympics.
+
+The competitions from 1958 to 1965 used high-power centrefire cartridges, such as the .30-06 Springfield and the 7.62×51mm NATO, before the .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge was standardized in 1978. The ammunition was carried in a belt worn around the competitor's waist. The sole event was the men's 20 km individual, encompassing four separate ranges and firing distances of 100 m, 150 m, 200 m, and 250 m. The target distance was reduced to 150 m with the addition of the relay in 1966. The shooting range was further reduced to 50 m in 1978 with the mechanical self-indicating targets making their debut at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. For the 2018–2019 season, fully electronic targets were approved as an alternative to paper or mechanical steel targets for IBU events.
+
+Governing body
+In 1948, the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) was founded to standardize the rules for the modern pentathlon and from 1953 also biathlon. In July 1993, the biathlon branch of the UIPMB created the International Biathlon Union (IBU), which officially separated from the UIPMB in 1998.
+
+Presidents of the UIPMB/IBU:
+ 1947–1949: Tom Wiborn (Sweden)
+ 1949–1960: Gustaf Dyrssen (Sweden)
+ 1960–1988: Sven Thofelt (Sweden)
+ 1988–1992: Igor Novikov (USSR/Russia)
+ 1992–2018: Anders Besseberg (Norway)
+ Since 2018: Olle Dahlin (Sweden)
+
+Championships
+
+The following articles list major international biathlon events and medalists. Unlike the Olympics and World Championships (BWCH), the World Cup (BWC) is an entire winter season of (mostly) weekly races, where the medalists are those with the highest sums of World Cup points at the end of the season.
+ Biathlon at the Winter Olympics
+ Biathlon World Championships
+ Biathlon World Cup
+ Biathlon European Championships
+ IBU Cup
+ Biathlon Junior World Championships
+ Biathlon at the Winter Universiade
+
+Rules and equipment
+ 
+
+The complete rules of the biathlon are given in the official IBU rule books.
+
+Basic concepts
+A biathlon competition consists of a race in which contestants ski through a cross-country trail system whose total distance is divided into either two or four shooting rounds, half in the prone position, the other half standing. Depending on the shooting performance, extra distance or time is added to the contestant's total skiing distance/time. The contestant with the shortest total time wins.
+
+For each shooting round, the biathlete must hit five targets or receive a penalty for each missed target, which varies according to the competition rules as follows:
+
+ Skiing around a  penalty loop—typically taking 20–30 seconds for elite biathletes to complete, depending on weather and snow conditions.
+ Adding one minute to the skier's total time.
+ Use of an extra cartridge (placed at the shooting range) to hit the target; only three such extras are available for each round, and a penalty loop must be done for each target left standing.
+
+In order to keep track of the contestants' progress and relative standing throughout a race, split times (intermediate times) are taken at several points along the skiing track and upon finishing each shooting round. The large display screens commonly set up at biathlon arenas, as well as the information graphics shown as part of the TV picture, will typically list the split time of the fastest contestant at each intermediate point and the times and time differences to the closest runners-up.
+
+Skiing details
+In the Olympics, all cross-country skiing techniques are permitted in the biathlon, allowing the use of skate skiing, which is overwhelmingly the choice of competitors. The minimum ski length is the height of the skier minus 4 cm. The rifle has to be carried by the skier during the race at all times.
+
+Shooting details
+
+The biathlete carries a small-bore rifle, which must weigh at least , excluding ammunition and magazines. The rifles use .22 LR ammunition and are bolt action or Fortner (straight-pull bolt) action. Each rifle holds 4 magazines with 5 rounds each. Additional rounds can be kept on the stock of the rifle for a relay race.
+
+The target range shooting distance is . There are five circular shooting targets to be hit in each shooting round. When shooting in the prone position, the target diameter is ; when shooting in the standing position, the target diameter is . This translates to angular target sizes of 0.9 and 2.3 mrad respectively. On all modern biathlon ranges, the targets are self-indicating, in that they flip from black to white when hit, giving the biathlete, as well as the spectators, instant visual feedback for each shot fired.
+
+Ear protection is not required during biathlon shooting as the ammunition used is usually subsonic. An eyecup (blinder) is an optional feature of biathlon rifles.
+
+Competition format
+
+Individual
+The  individual race [ for women] is the oldest biathlon event; the distance is skied over five laps. The biathlete shoots four times at any shooting lane (lanes 1–15 are in prone, while lanes 16–30 are for standing), in the order of prone, standing, prone, standing, totaling 20 targets. For each missed target, a fixed penalty time, usually one minute, is added to the skiing time of the biathlete. Competitors' starts are staggered, normally by 30 seconds.
+
+A variation of the standard individual race, called short individual, was introduced during the 2018–19 Biathlon IBU Cup. The races are 15 km for men and 12.5 km for women, and for each missed target, 45 seconds will be added to the skiing time.
+
+Sprint
+The sprint is  for men &   for women; the distance is skied over three laps. The biathlete shoots twice at any shooting lane, once prone (usually lanes 1–15) and once standing (lanes 16–30), for a total of 10 shots. For each miss, a penalty loop of 150 m must be skied before continuing the race. As in the individual competition, the biathletes start in intervals.
+
+Super Sprint 
+Introduced at the 2017–18 Biathlon IBU Cup, the Super Sprint is a shorter version of the sprint race. Unlike the traditional sprint race, the Super Sprint is divided into two segments – qualification and final. The qualification is done like the traditional sprint, but on a 1.5 km lap with a total length of 4.5 km. Only the top 30 competitors qualify for the final, in which all competitors start simultaneously and do five laps on the same course (like in mass start) with a total race length of 4 km. During the final, the competitors have three spare rounds should they miss a target (like in relay race). However, if not all targets are cleared during shooting instead of going on the penalty loop, the biathlete is disqualified from the race.
+
+Changes were made for the following season with the course now being 1 km (0.2 km increase) meaning that the qualification race length will become 3 km, while the final race becomes 5 km in length. Also the number of spare rounds was decreased from three to one.
+
+Pursuit
+
+In a pursuit, biathletes' starts are separated by their time differences from a previous race, most commonly a sprint. The contestant crossing the finish line first is the winner. The distance is 12.5 km for men and 10 km for women, skied over five laps; there are four shooting bouts (two prone, two standing, in that order) and each miss means a penalty loop of 150 m. To prevent awkward or dangerous crowding of the skiing loops and overcapacity at the shooting range, World Cup Pursuits are held with only the 60 top-ranking biathletes after the preceding race. The biathletes shoot on a first-come, first-served basis at the lane corresponding to the position they arrived for all shooting bouts. If the pursuit follows an individual biathlon race, the lag behind the winner is halved.
+
+Mass start
+In the mass start, all biathletes start at the same time, and the first across the finish line wins. In this 15 km for men or 12.5 km for women competition, the distance is skied over five laps; there are four bouts of shooting (two prone, two standing, in that order), with the first shooting bout being at the lane corresponding to the competitor's bib number (bib #10 shoots at lane #10 regardless of position in race), with the rest of the shooting bouts being on a first-come, first-served basis (if a competitor arrives at the lane in fifth place, they shoot at lane 5). As in sprint and pursuit, competitors must ski one 150 m penalty loop for each miss. Here again, to avoid unwanted congestion, World Cup Mass starts are held with only the 30 top ranking athletes on the start line (half that of the Pursuit as here all contestants start simultaneously).
+
+Mass start 60
+Starting in the 2018/2019 season, the Mass Start 60 became part of the International Biathlon Union (IBU) competition formats. The Mass Start with 60 starters does not replace the current Mass Start with 30 starters.
+
+Everyone skis the first lap together, but only the first 30 stop to shoot, and the second 30 keep skiing. At the end of the second lap, the second 30 stop to shoot, and the first 30 continue to ski. After the first two shoots are over (everyone's first prone), the race continues like a typical race, and all competitors shoot remaining prone, and two stands together. Or more simply:
+
+Bib 1–30 = lap, shoot1, lap, lap, shoot2, lap, shoot3, lap, shoot4, lap
+
+Bib 31–60 = lap, lap, shoot1, lap, shoot2, lap, shoot3, lap, shoot4, lap
+
+Relay
+The relay teams consist of four biathletes, who each ski 7.5 km (men) or 6 km (women), each leg skied over three laps, with two shooting rounds; one prone, one standing. For every round of five targets, there are eight bullets available. However, the last three can only be single-loaded manually one at a time from spare round holders or bullets deposited by the competitor into trays or onto the mat at the firing line. If there are still standing targets after eight bullets, one 150 m (490 ft) penalty loop must be taken for each missed target remaining. The first-leg participants all start simultaneously, and as in cross-country skiing relays, every athlete of a team must touch the team's next-leg participant to perform a valid changeover. On the first shooting stage of the first leg, the participant must shoot in the lane corresponding to their bib number (bib #10 shoots at lane #10 regardless of their position in the race), then for the remainder of the relay, the relay team shoots on a first-come, first-served basis (arrive at the range in fifth place, shoot at lane 5).
+
+Mixed relay
+The mixed relay is similar to the ordinary relay, but the teams are composed of two women and two men. From its first instance at the world championships in 2005 until the end of the 2017 season, the first two legs were always run by the women, followed by the men on legs 3 and 4. Since the 2018 season however, the race can be started by either the men or women . Additionally, throughout most the event's history, the women's legs have been  and the men's legs  as in ordinary relay competitions. However, since the 2019 season the event has all four legs being either  or .
+This event was added to the Olympics starting in 2014.
+
+Single mixed relay
+In 2015, the single mixed relay was introduced to the Biathlon World Cup by the IBU. The event is run on a  track with a  penalty loop, and each team consists of a female and a male runner. The race is divided into four legs, with the first three being  or 2 laps and the final leg being  or 3 laps, totalling . After each leg, the runners exchange so that each runner completes two legs. Specific to this format, the exchange happens immediately after the last shooting of each leg without skiing an additional lap (as is usually the case). The race can be started by either the female or male member of the relay, with the finishing member performing an extra lap. This event was added to the world championships in 2019.
+
+Team (obsolete)
+A team consists of four biathletes, but unlike the relay competition, all team members start at the same time. Two athletes must shoot in the prone shooting round, the other two in the standing round. In case of a miss, the two non-shooting biathletes must ski a penalty loop of 150 m (490 ft). The skiers must enter the shooting area together and must also finish within 15 seconds of each other; otherwise, a time penalty of one minute is added to the total time. Since 2004, this race format has been obsolete at the World Cup level.
+
+Broadcasting
+Biathlon events are broadcast most regularly where the sport enjoys its greatest popularity, namely Germany (ARD, ZDF), Austria (ORF), Norway (NRK), France (L'Équipe 21), Finland (YLE), Estonia (ETV), Latvia (LTV), Lithuania (LRT), Croatia (HRT), Poland (Polsat), Ukraine (UA:PBC), Sweden (SVT), Russia (Match TV, Channel One), Belarus (TVR), Slovenia (RTV), Bosnia and Herzegovina (BHRT), Bulgaria (BNT), and South Korea (KBS); it is broadcast on European-wide Eurosport, which also broadcasts to the Asia-Pacific region. World Cup races are streamed via the IBU website.
+
+The broadcast distribution being one indicator, the constellation of a sport's main sponsors usually gives a similar, and correlated, indication of popularity: for biathlon, these are the Germany-based companies BMW (cars), Erdinger (beer), Viessmann (boilers and other heating systems) and DKB (banking).
+
+Biathlon records and statistics
+The IBU maintains biathlon records, rules, news, videos, and statistics for many years back, all of which are available at its web site.
+
+See also
+ Biathlon World Cup
+ Biathlon World Championships
+ List of Olympic medalists in biathlon
+ Paralympic biathlon
+ Nordic field biathlon and moose biathlon, Nordic biathlon variants using fullbore rifles
+
+Biathlon's two sports disciplines:
+ Cross-country skiing (sport)
+ Rifle shooting sports
+
+Other multi-discipline sports (otherwise unrelated to biathlon):
+ Duathlon
+ Nordic Combined
+ Triathlon
+ Pentathlon
+ Modern pentathlon
+ Heptathlon
+ Decathlon
+ Chess boxing
+ Omnium (track cycling)
+
+Notes and sources
+
+External links
+
+ Biathlonworld.Com – A cooperation between IBU and EBU; with race results/statistics, TV schedules, live competition results, and so on.
+
+National Associations 
+ Belarusian Biathlon Union 
+ Russian Biathlon Union 
+ Russian Biathlon Union 
+ Biathlon Canada
+ U.S. Biathlon Association
+ Biathlon Russia
+ Biathlon Ukraine 
+ Biathlon Ukraine 
+ BiathlonFrance.com
+
+ 
+Cross-country skiing
+Military sports
+Multisports
+Racing
+Rifle shooting sports
+Sports originating in Norway
+Winter Olympic sports
+Bubble and squeak is a British dish made from cooked potatoes and cabbage, mixed together and fried. The food writer Howard Hillman classes it as one of the "great peasant dishes of the world". The dish has been known since at least the 18th century, and in its early versions it contained cooked beef; by the mid-20th century the two vegetables had become the principal ingredients.
+
+History
+The name of the dish, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), alludes to the sounds made by the ingredients when being fried. The first recorded use of the name listed in the OED dates from 1762; The St James's Chronicle, recording the dishes served at a banquet, included "Bubble and Squeak, garnish'd with Eddowes Cow Bumbo, and Tongue". A correspondent in The Public Advertiser two years later reported making "a very hearty Meal on fryed Beef and Cabbage; though I could not have touched it had my Wife recommended it to me under the fashionable Appellation of Bubble and Squeak". In 1791 another London paper recorded the quarterly meeting of the Bubble and Squeak Society at Smithfield.
+
+The dish as it is made in modern times differs considerably from its first recorded versions, in which cooked beef was the main ingredient and potatoes did not feature. The earliest-known recipe is in Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery, published in 1806. It consists wholly of cabbage and rare roast beef, seasoned and fried. This method is followed by William Kitchiner in his book Apicius Redivivus, or The Cook's Oracle (1817); in later editions he adds a couplet at the top of his recipe:
+     When 'midst the frying Pan in accents savage,
+     The Beef, so surly, quarrels with the Cabbage. 
+Mrs Beeton's recipe in her Book of Household Management (1861) similarly combines cooked beef with cabbage (and, in her recipe, onions) but no potato. An 1848 recipe from the US is similar, but adds chopped carrots. In all of these, the meat and vegetables are served next to each other, and not mixed together.
+
+In 1872 a Lancashire newspaper offered a recipe for "delicious bubble and squeak", consisting of thinly-sliced beef fried with cabbage and carrot, but not potatoes, although by then they had been a major crop in Lancashire for decades. In the 1880s potatoes began to appear in recipes. In 1882 the "Household" column of The Manchester Times suggested:
+
+Potatoes featured in a recipe printed in a Yorkshire paper in 1892 but, as in earlier versions, the main ingredients were beef and cabbage.
+
+Modern versions
+
+Possibly because of the scarcity of beef during food rationing in and after the Second World War, by the latter half of the 20th century the basic ingredients were widely considered to be cooked and mashed (or coarsely crushed) potato and chopped cooked cabbage. Those are the only two ingredients in Delia Smith's 1987 recipe. Clarissa Dickson Wright's 1996 version consists of crushed cooked potatoes, finely chopped raw onion, and cooked cabbage (or brussels sprouts), seasoned with salt and pepper, mixed together and shallow-fried until browned on the exterior. Like Smith, Dickson Wright specifies dripping (or lard) for frying, finding vegetable oil unsuitable for frying bubble and squeak, because the mixture will not brown adequately. Several other cooks find oil or butter satisfactory.
+
+Fiona Beckett (2008), like Smith and Dickson Wright, stipulates no ingredients other than potato and cabbage,
+but there are many published variants of the basic recipe. Gary Rhodes favours sliced brussels sprouts, rather than cabbage, with gently cooked sliced onions and mashed potato, fried in butter. He comments that although the basic ingredients of bubble and squeak and colcannon are similar, the two are very different dishes, the former being traditionally made from left-overs and fried to give a brown crust, and the latter "a completely separate dish of potato, spring onion and cabbage, served almost as creamed potatoes".
+
+Jeff Smith (1987) adds grated courgettes and chopped ham and bacon. Mark Hix (2005) adds cooked and chopped leeks and swede to the mix. Jamie Oliver (2007) adds chestnuts and "whatever veg you like – carrots, Brussels, swedes, turnips, onions, leeks or Savoy cabbage". Nigel Slater, in a 2013 recipe using Christmas leftovers, adds chopped goose, ham and pumpkin to the mixture.
+
+The mixture is then shallow fried, either shaped into round cakes or as a single panful and then sliced. The first method is suggested by Delia Smith, Hix and Slater; Rhodes finds both methods satisfactory; Dickson Wright, Oliver and Jeff Smith favour the whole-pan method.
+
+Outside Britain
+Bubble and squeak is familiar in Australia; a 1969 recipe adds peas and pumpkin to the basic mix. The dish is not common in the US but is not unknown; an American recipe from 1913 resembles Rundell's version, with the addition of a border of mashed potato. In 1983 the  American food writer Howard Hillman included bubble and squeak in his survey Great Peasant Dishes of the World. More recently Forbes magazine ran an article about the dish in 2004. A Canadian newspaper in 1959 reported a minor controversy about the origins of the dish, with readers variously claiming it as Australian, English, Irish and Scottish. In 1995, another Canadian paper called the dish "universally beloved".
+
+Similar dishes 
+
+ Panackelty, from North East England
+ Rumbledethumps, stovies and clapshot from Scotland
+ Colcannon and champ, from Ireland
+ Stoemp from Belgium
+ Calentao, from Colombia
+ Biksemad, from Denmark
+ Bauernfrühstück and Stemmelkort, from Germany
+ Aloo tikki, from India
+ Stamppot, from the Netherlands
+ Trinxat, from the La Cerdanya region of Catalonia, northeast Spain and Andorra
+ Matevž, from Slovenia
+ Pyttipanna, Pyttipanne and Pyttipannu from Sweden, Norway and Finland
+ Hash, from the United States
+
+Other uses of term
+The OED gives a secondary definition of "bubble and squeak": "figurative and in figurative contexts. Something resembling or suggestive of bubble and squeak, especially in consisting of a variety of elements". In 1825 a reviewer in The Morning Post dismissed a new opera at Covent Garden as "a sort of bubble and squeak mixture of English and Italian". The OED gives examples from the 18th to the 21st centuries, including, from Coleridge, "... the restless Bubble and Squeak of his Vanity and Discontent", and from D. H. Lawrence, "I can make the most lovely bubble and squeak of a life for myself". In cockney rhyming slang the phrase was formerly used for "beak" (magistrate) and more recently "Bubble" has been used for "Greek".
+
+The term has been borrowed by authors of children's books as names for a pair of puppies and (by two different authors) pairs of mice.
+
+References and sources
+
+References
+
+Sources
+  
+ 
+  
+  
+  
+  
+  
+  
+  
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+English cuisine
+Potato dishes
+Cabbage dishes
+Brassica oleracea dishes
+Food combinations
+Breakfast dishes
+Dishes based on leftover ingredients
+Peasant food
+Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas, during the Great Depression, and learned to play guitar and sing alongside his siblings. Holly's style was influenced by gospel music, country music, and rhythm and blues acts, which he performed in Lubbock with his friends from high school.
+
+Holly made his first appearance on local television in 1952, and the following year he formed the group "Buddy and Bob" with his friend Bob Montgomery. In 1955, after opening for Elvis Presley, Holly decided to pursue a career in music. He opened for Presley three times that year; his band's style shifted from country and western to entirely rock and roll. In October that year, when Holly opened for Bill Haley & His Comets, he was spotted by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall, who helped him get a contract with Decca Records.
+
+Holly's recording sessions at Decca were produced by Owen Bradley, who had become famous for producing orchestrated country hits for stars like Patsy Cline. Unhappy with Bradley's musical style and control in the studio, Holly went to producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico, and recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", among other songs. Petty became the band's manager and sent the demo to Brunswick Records, which released it as a single credited to The Crickets, which became the name of Holly's band. In September 1957, as the band toured, "That'll Be the Day" topped the US and UK singles charts. Its success was followed in October by another major hit, "Peggy Sue."
+
+The album The "Chirping" Crickets, released in November 1957, reached number five on the UK Albums Chart. Holly made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in January 1958 and soon after toured Australia and then the UK. In early 1959, he assembled a new band, consisting of future country music star Waylon Jennings (bass), famed session musician Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums), and embarked on a tour of the midwestern US. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered an airplane to travel to his next show in Moorhead, Minnesota. Soon after takeoff, the plane crashed, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and pilot Roger Peterson in a tragedy later referred to by Don McLean as "The Day the Music Died" in his song "American Pie."
+
+During his short career, Holly wrote and recorded many songs. He is often regarded as the artist who defined the traditional rock-and-roll lineup of two guitars, bass, and drums. Holly was a major influence on later popular music artists, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Hollies, Elvis Costello, Dave Edmunds, Marshall Crenshaw, and Elton John. Holly was among the first artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1986. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 13 in its list of "100 Greatest Artists" in 2010.
+
+Life and career
+
+Early life and career (1936–1955)
+Holly was born as Charles Hardin Holley (spelled "-ey") in Lubbock, Texas, on September 7, 1936, the youngest of four children of Lawrence Odell "L.O." Holley (1901–85) and Ella Pauline Drake (1902–90). His elder siblings were Larry (1925–2022), Travis (1927–2016), and Patricia Lou (1929–2008). Holly was of mostly English and Welsh descent and had small amounts of Native American ancestry as well. From early childhood, Holly was nicknamed "Buddy." During the Great Depression, the Holleys frequently moved residence within Lubbock; L.O. changed jobs several times. Buddy Holly was baptized a Baptist, and the family were members of the Tabernacle Baptist Church.
+
+The Holleys had an interest in music; all the family members except L.O. were able to play an instrument or sing. The elder Holley brothers performed in local talent shows; on one occasion, Buddy joined them on violin. Since he could not play it, his brother Larry greased the bow so it would not make any sound. The brothers won the contest. During World War II, Larry and Travis were called to military service. Upon his return, Larry brought with him a guitar he had bought from a shipmate while serving in the Pacific. At age 11, Buddy took piano lessons but abandoned them after nine months. He switched to the guitar after he saw a classmate playing and singing on the school bus. Buddy's parents initially bought him a steel guitar, but he insisted that he wanted a guitar like his brother's. His parents bought the guitar from a pawnshop, and Travis taught him to play it.
+
+During his early childhood, Holly was influenced by the music of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow, Bob Wills, and the Carter Family. At Roscoe Wilson Elementary, Holly became friends with Bob Montgomery, and the two played together, practicing with songs by The Louvin Brothers and Johnnie & Jack. They both listened to the radio programs Grand Ole Opry on WSM, Louisiana Hayride on KWKH, and Big D Jamboree. At the same time, Holly played with other musicians he met in high school, including Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison. In 1952 Holly and Jack Neal participated as a duo billed as "Buddy and Jack" in a talent contest on a local television show. After Neal left, he was replaced by Bob Montgomery, and they were billed as "Buddy and Bob." They soon started performing on the Sunday Party show on KDAV in 1953 and performed live gigs in Lubbock. At that time, Holly was influenced by late-night radio stations that played blues and rhythm and blues (R&B). He would sit in his car with Curtis and tune to distant radio stations that could only be received at night, when local transmissions ceased. Holly then modified his music by blending his earlier country and western (C&W) influence with R & B.
+
+By 1955, after graduating from Lubbock High School, Holly decided to pursue a full-time career in music. He was further encouraged after seeing Elvis Presley perform live in Lubbock, whose act was booked by Pappy Dave Stone of KDAV. In February, Holly opened for Presley at the Fair Park Coliseum, in April at the Cotton Club, and again in June at the Coliseum. By that time, Holly had incorporated into his band Larry Welborn on the stand-up bass and Allison on drums, as his style shifted from country and western to rock and roll due to seeing Presley's performances and hearing his music. In October, Stone booked Bill Haley & His Comets and placed Holley as the opening act to be seen by Nashville scout Eddie Crandall. Impressed, Crandall persuaded Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny to seek a recording contract for Holley. Stone sent a demo tape, which Denny forwarded to Paul Cohen, who signed the band to Decca Records in February 1956. In the contract, Decca misspelled Holly's surname as "Holly", and from then on he was known as "Buddy Holly", instead of his real name "Holley."
+
+On January 26, 1956, Holly attended his first formal recording session, which was produced by Owen Bradley. He attended two more sessions in Nashville, but with the producer selecting the session musicians and arrangements, Holly became increasingly frustrated by his lack of creative control. In April 1956, Decca released "Blue Days, Black Nights" as a single, with "Love Me" on the B-side. Denny included Holly on a tour as the opening act for Faron Young. During the tour, they were promoted as "Buddy Holly and the Two Tones", while later Decca called them "Buddy Holly and the Three Tunes." The label later released Holly's second single "Modern Don Juan", backed with "You Are My One Desire." Neither single made an impression. On January 22, 1957, Decca informed Holly his contract would not be renewed, but insisted he could not record the same songs for anyone else for five years.
+
+The Crickets (1956–1957) 
+
+Holly was unhappy with the results of his time with Decca, and inspired by the success of Buddy Knox's "Party Doll" and Jimmy Bowen's "I'm Stickin' with You", he visited Norman Petty, who had produced and promoted both records. Together with Allison, bassist Larry Welborn, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan, he went to Petty's studio in Clovis, New Mexico. The group recorded a demo of "That'll Be the Day", a song they had previously recorded in Nashville. Now playing lead guitar, Holly achieved the sound he desired. Petty became his manager and sent the record to Brunswick Records in New York City. Holly, still under contract with Decca, could not release the record under his name, so a band name was used; Allison proposed the name "Crickets." Brunswick gave Holly a basic agreement to release "That'll Be the Day", leaving him with both artistic control and financial responsibility for future recordings.
+
+Impressed with the demo, the label's executives released it without recording a new version. "I'm Looking for Someone to Love" was the B-side; the single was credited to The Crickets. Petty and Holly later learned that Brunswick was a subsidiary of Decca, which legally cleared future recordings under the name Buddy Holly. Recordings credited to the Crickets would be released on Brunswick, while the recordings under Holly's name were released on another subsidiary label, Coral Records. Holly concurrently held a recording contract with both labels.
+
+"That'll Be the Day" was released on May 27, 1957. Petty booked Holly and the Crickets for a tour with Irvin Feld, who had noticed the band after "That'll Be the Day" appeared on the R&B chart. He booked them for appearances in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and New York City. The band was booked to play at New York's Apollo Theater on August 16–22. During the opening performances, the group did not impress the audience, but they were accepted after they included "Bo Diddley." By the end of their run at the Apollo, "That'll Be the Day" was climbing the charts. Encouraged by the single's success, Petty started to prepare two album releases; a solo album for Holly and another for the Crickets. Holly appeared on American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark on ABC, on August 26. Before leaving New York, the band befriended The Everly Brothers.
+ 
+"That'll Be the Day" topped the US "Best Sellers in Stores" chart on September 23 and was number one on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks in November. Three days prior, Coral released "Peggy Sue", backed with "Everyday", with Holly credited as the performer. By October, "Peggy Sue" had reached number three on Billboards pop chart and number two on the R&B chart; it peaked at number six on the UK Singles chart. As the success of the song grew, it brought more attention to Holly, with the band at the time being billed as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets" (although never on records during Holly's lifetime; the record labels identified the band as "Buddy Holly and the Crickets" beginning in 1962).
+
+In the last week of September, the band members flew to Lubbock to visit their families. Holly's high school girlfriend, Echo McGuire, had left him for a fellow student. Aside from McGuire, Holly had a relationship with Lubbock fan June Clark. After Clark ended their relationship, Holly realized the importance of his relationship with McGuire and considered his relationship with Clark a temporary one. Meanwhile, for their return to recording, Petty arranged a session in Oklahoma City, where he was performing with his own band. While the band drove to the location, the producer set up a makeshift studio. The rest of the songs needed for an album and singles were recorded; Petty later dubbed the material in Clovis. The resulting album, The "Chirping" Crickets, was released on November 27, 1957. It reached number five on the UK Albums Chart. In October, Brunswick released the second single by the Crickets, "Oh, Boy!", with "Not Fade Away" on the B-side. The single reached number 10 on the pop chart and 13 on the R&B chart. Holly and the Crickets performed "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue" on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 1, 1957. Following the appearance, Niki Sullivan left the group because he was tired of the intensive touring, and he wanted to resume his education. On December 29, Holly and the Crickets performed "Peggy Sue" on The Arthur Murray Party.
+
+International tours and split (1958)
+On January 8, 1958, Holly and the Crickets joined America's Greatest Teenage Recording Stars tour. On January 25, Holly recorded "Rave On"; the next day, he made his second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing "Oh, Boy!" Holly departed to perform in Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 27, and then started a week-long tour of Australia billed as the Big Show with Paul Anka, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jodie Sands. In March, the band toured the United Kingdom, playing 50 shows in 25 days. The same month, his debut solo album, Buddy Holly, was released. Upon their return to the United States, Holly and the Crickets joined Alan Freed's Big Beat Show tour for 41 dates. In April, Decca released That'll Be the Day, featuring the songs recorded with Bradley during his early Nashville sessions.
+
+A new recording session in Clovis was arranged in May; Holly hired Tommy Allsup to play lead guitar. The session produced the recordings of "It's So Easy" and "Heartbeat." Holly was impressed by Allsup and invited him to join the Crickets. In June, Holly traveled alone to New York for a solo recording session. Without the Crickets, he chose to be backed by a jazz and R&B band, recording "Now We're One" and Bobby Darin's "Early in the Morning."
+
+During a visit to the offices of Peer-Southern, Holly met María Elena Santiago. He asked her out on their first meeting and proposed marriage to her on their first date. The wedding took place on August 15. Holly's manager Norman Petty disapproved of the marriage and advised Holly to keep it secret to avoid upsetting Holly's female fans. Petty's suggestion created friction with Holly, who had also started to question Petty's bookkeeping. The Crickets were also frustrated with Petty, who controlled all of the proceeds earned by the band.
+
+Holly and Santiago frequented many of New York's music venues, including the Village Gate, Blue Note, Village Vanguard, and Johnny Johnson's. Santiago later said that Holly was keen to learn fingerstyle flamenco guitar and that he would often visit her aunt's home to play the piano there. Holly planned collaborations between soul singers and rock and roll. He wanted to make an album with Ray Charles and Mahalia Jackson. Holly also had ambitions to work in film and registered for acting classes with Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio.
+
+Santiago accompanied Holly on tours. To hide her marriage to Holly, she was presented as the Crickets' secretary. She took care of the laundry and equipment set-up and collected the concert revenues. Santiago kept the money for the band instead of their habitual transfer to Petty in New Mexico. She and her aunt Provi Garcia, an executive in the Latin American music department at Peer-Southern, convinced Holly that Petty was paying the band's royalties from Coral-Brunswick into his own company's account. Holly planned to retrieve his royalties from Petty and to later fire him as manager and producer. At the recommendation of the Everly Brothers, Holly hired lawyer Harold Orenstein to negotiate his royalties. The problems with Petty were triggered after he was unable to pay Holly. At the time, New York promoter Manny Greenfield reclaimed a large part of Holly's earnings; Greenfield had booked Holly for shows during previous tours. The two had a verbal agreement; Greenfield would obtain 5% of the booking earnings. Greenfield later felt he was also acting as Holly's manager and deserved a higher payment, which Holly refused. Greenfield then sued Holly. Under New York law, because Holly's royalties originated in New York and were directed out of the state, the payments were frozen until the dispute was settled. Petty then could not complete the transfers to Holly, who considered him responsible for the missing profit.
+
+In September, Holly returned to Clovis for a new recording session, which yielded "Reminiscing" and "Come Back Baby." During the session, he ventured into producing by recording Lubbock DJ Waylon Jennings. Holly produced the single "Jole Blon" and "When Sin Stops (Love Begins)" for Jennings. Holly became increasingly interested in the New York music, recording, and publishing scene. Holly and Santiago settled in Apartment 4H of the Brevoort Apartments, at 11 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, where he recorded a series of acoustic songs, including "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" and "What to Do." The inspiration to record the songs is sometimes attributed to the ending of his relationship with McGuire.
+
+On October 21, 1958, Holly's final studio session was recorded at the Pythian Temple on West 70th Street (now a luxury condominium). Known by Holly fans as "the string sessions", Holly recorded four songs for Coral in an innovative collaboration with the Dick Jacobs Orchestra, an 18-piece ensemble composed of former members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra including saxophonist Boomie Richman.
+
+The four songs recorded during the -hour session were: 
+"True Love Ways" (written by Buddy Holly), 
+"Moondreams" (written by Norman Petty), 
+"Raining in My Heart" (written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant) and 
+"It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (written by Paul Anka).
+These four songs were the only ones Coral ever mixed in stereo, but only "Raining in My Heart" was released that way (in 1959, on an obscure promotional LP titled Hitsville). All four records otherwise received releases in mono. The original stereo mixes were consulted many years later for compilation albums.
+
+Holly ended his association with Petty in December 1958. His band members kept Petty as their manager and split from Holly. The split was amicable and based on logistics: Holly had decided to settle permanently in New York, where the business and publishing offices were, and the Crickets preferred not to leave their home state. Petty was still holding the money from the royalties, forcing Holly to form a new band and return to touring.
+
+Winter Dance Party tour and death (1959)
+
+Holly vacationed with his wife in Lubbock and visited Jennings's radio station in December 1958. For the start of the Winter Dance Party tour, he assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (electric bass), Tommy Allsup (guitar), and Carl Bunch (drums). Holly and Jennings left for New York City, arriving on January 15, 1959. Jennings stayed at Holly's apartment by Washington Square Park on the days prior to a meeting scheduled at the headquarters of the General Artists Corporation, which organized the tour. They then traveled by train to Chicago to join the rest of the band.
+
+The Winter Dance Party tour began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 23, 1959. The amount of travel involved created logistical problems, as the distance between venues had not been considered when scheduling performances. Adding to the problem, the unheated tour buses twice broke down in freezing weather, with dire consequences. Holly's drummer, Carl Bunch, was hospitalized for frostbite to his toes (sustained while aboard the bus), so Holly decided to seek other transportation. On February 2, before their appearance in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza airplane for Jennings, Allsup, and himself, from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa. Holly's idea was to depart following the show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota, via Fargo, North Dakota, allowing them time to rest and launder their clothes and avoid a rigorous bus journey. Immediately after the Clear Lake show (which ended just before midnight), Allsup agreed to flip a coin for the seat with Ritchie Valens. Valens called heads; when he won, he reportedly said, "That's the first time I've ever won anything in my life." Allsup later opened a restaurant/bar in Fort Worth, Texas, called Heads Up Saloon. Waylon Jennings voluntarily gave up his seat to J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper), who had influenza and complained that the tour bus was too cold and uncomfortable for a man of his size.
+
+The pilot, Roger Peterson, took off in inclement weather, even though he was not certified to fly by instruments only. Buddy's brother Larry Holley said, "I got the full report from the Civil Aeronautics – it took me a year to get it, but I got it – and they had installed a new Sperry gyroscope in the airplane. The Sperry works different than  any other gyro. One of them, the background moves and the plane stays like this [stationary], and in the other one the background stays steady and the plane moves, it works just backwards. He [the pilot] could have been reading this backwards... they were going down, they thought they were still climbing."
+
+Shortly after 1:00 a.m. on February 3, 1959, Holly, Valens, Richardson, and Peterson were killed when the aircraft crashed into a cornfield five miles northwest of Mason City shortly after takeoff. The three musicians, who were ejected from the fuselage upon impact, sustained severe head and chest injuries. Holly was 22 years old.
+
+The report did not mention a gun belonging to Holly that was found by a farmer two months after the crash. Newspaper accounts of the gun discovery fueled rumors among fans that the pilot was somehow shot, causing the crash. Another curious finding at the crash was that Richardson's body was discovered nearly  away from the crash while the others were found in or near the wreckage. However, an autopsy done at the request of Richardson's son in 2007 found no evidence to support the rumors. Dr. Bill Bass, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee, stated that "There was no indication of foul play," and that Richardson "died immediately."
+
+Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock. The service was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who had presided at the Hollys' wedding just months earlier. The pallbearers were Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, and Sonny Curtis. Some sources say that Phil Everly, one half of The Everly Brothers, was also pallbearer, but Everly said that he attended the funeral but was not a pallbearer. Waylon Jennings was unable to attend because of his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party. Holly's body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the eastern part of the city. Holly's headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar.
+
+Santiago watched the first reports of Holly's death on television. The following day, she suffered a miscarriage. Holly's mother, who heard the news on the radio in Lubbock, Texas, screamed and collapsed. Because of Elena's miscarriage, in the months following the accident, news agencies implemented a policy against announcing victims' names until after families are informed. Santiago did not attend the funeral and has never visited the gravesite. She later told the Avalanche-Journal, "In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn't with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane."
+
+Image and style
+Holly's singing style was characterized by his vocal hiccups and his alternation between his regular voice and falsetto. Holly's "stuttering vocals" were complemented by his percussive guitar playing, solos, stops, bent notes, and rhythm and blues chord progressions. He often strummed downstrokes that were accompanied by Allison's "driving" percussion.
+
+Holly bought his first Fender Stratocaster, which became his signature guitar, at Harrod Music in Lubbock for $249.50. Fender Stratocasters were popular with country musicians; Holly chose it for its loud sound. His "innovative" playing style was characterized by its blending of "chunky rhythm" and "high string lead work." Holly played his first Stratocaster, a 1954 model, until it was stolen during a tour stop in Michigan in 1957. To replace it, he purchased a 1957 model before a show in Detroit. Holly owned four or five Stratocasters during his career.
+
+At the beginning of their music careers, Holly and his group wore business suits. When they met the Everly Brothers, Don Everly took the band to Phil's men's shop in New York City and introduced them to Ivy League clothes. The brothers advised Holly to replace his old-fashioned glasses with horn-rimmed glasses, which had been popularized by Steve Allen. Holly bought a pair of glasses made in Mexico from Lubbock optometrist Dr. J. Davis Armistead. Teenagers in the United States started to request this style of glasses, which were later popularly known as "Buddy Holly glasses."
+
+When the plane crashed, the wreckage was strewn across many yards of snow-covered ground. While his other belongings were recovered immediately, there was no record of his signature glasses being found. They were presumed lost until, in March 1980, they were discovered in a Cerro Gordo County courthouse storage area by Sheriff Gerald Allen. They had been found in the spring of 1959, after the snow had melted, and had been given to the sheriff's office. They were placed in an envelope dated April 7, 1959, along with the Big Bopper's watch, a lighter, two pairs of dice and part of another watch, and misplaced when the county moved courthouses. The glasses, missing their lenses, were returned to Santiago a year later, after a legal contest over them with his parents. They are now on display at the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas.
+
+Legacy
+
+Buddy Holly left behind dozens of unfinished recordings — solo transcriptions of his new compositions, informal jam sessions with bandmates, or tapes demonstrating songs intended for other artists. The last known recordings, made in Holly's apartment in late 1958, were his last six original songs. In June 1959, Coral Records overdubbed two of them with backing vocals by the Ray Charles Singers and studio musicians in an attempt to simulate the established Crickets sound. The finished tracks became the first posthumous Holly single, "Peggy Sue Got Married"/"Crying, Waiting, Hoping." The new release was successful enough to warrant an album drawing upon the other Holly demos, using the same studio personnel, in January 1960. All six songs were included in The Buddy Holly Story, Vol. 2 (1960).
+
+The demand for Holly records was so great, and Holly had recorded so prolifically, that his record label was able to release new Holly albums and singles for the next 10 years. Norman Petty produced most of these new editions, drawing upon unreleased studio masters, alternate takes, audition tapes, and even amateur recordings (some dating back to 1954 with low-fidelity vocals). The final "new" Buddy Holly album, Giant, was released in 1969; the single chosen from the album was "Love Is Strange."
+ 
+Encyclopædia Britannica stated that Holly "produced some of the most distinctive and influential work in rock music." AllMusic defined him as "the single most influential creative force in early rock and roll." Rolling Stone ranked him number 13 on its list of "100 Greatest Artists." The Telegraph called him a "pioneer and a revolutionary [...] a multidimensional talent [...] (who) co-wrote and performed (songs that) remain as fresh and potent today." In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Holly at number 174 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
+
+The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included Holly among its first class in 1986. On its entry, the Hall of Fame remarked upon the large quantity of material he produced during his short musical career, and said it "made a major and lasting impact on popular music." It called him an "innovator" for writing his own material, his experimentation with double tracking and the use of orchestration; he is also said to have "pioneered and popularized the now-standard" use of two guitars, bass, and drums by rock bands. The Songwriters Hall of Fame also inducted Holly in 1986, and said his contributions "changed the face of Rock 'n' Roll." Holly developed in collaboration with Petty techniques of overdubbing and reverb, while he used innovative instrumentation later implemented by other artists. Holly became "one of the most influential pioneers of rock and roll" who had a "lasting influence" on genre performers of the 1960s.
+
+In 1980, Grant Speed sculpted a statue of Holly playing his Fender guitar. This statue is the centerpiece of Lubbock's Walk of Fame, which honors notable people who contributed to Lubbock's musical history. Other memorials to Buddy Holly include a street named in his honor and the Buddy Holly Center, which contains a museum of Holly memorabilia and fine arts gallery. The center is located on Crickets Avenue, one street east of Buddy Holly Avenue, in a building that previously housed the Fort Worth and Denver South Plains Railway Depot. In 2010, the statue was taken down for refurbishment, and construction of a new Walk of Fame began.
+
+In 1997, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gave Holly the Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. On May 9, 2011, the City of Lubbock held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza, the new home of the statue and the Walk of Fame. On what would have been his 75th birthday, a star bearing Holly's name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
+
+Groundbreaking was held on April 20, 2017, for the construction of a new performing arts center in Lubbock, the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences, a downtown $153 million project expected to be completed in 2020. Thus far, the private group, the Lubbock Entertainment and Performing Arts Association, has raised or received pledges in the amount of $93 million to underwrite the project.
+
+According to a June 2019 article in The New York Times Magazine, "virtually all" of Holly's masters were lost in the 2008 Universal fire. This is disputed by Chad Kassem of Analogue Productions, who claims to have used the master tapes of Holly's first two albums in Analogue Productions reissues of these albums on LP and SACD in 2017.
+
+Influence
+John Lennon and Paul McCartney saw Holly for the first time when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The two had recently met and begun their musical association. They studied Holly's records, learned his performance style and lyricism, and based their act around his persona. Inspired by Holly's insect-themed Crickets, they chose to name their band "The Beatles." Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as one of their main influences.
+
+Lennon's band the Quarrymen covered "That'll Be the Day" in their first recording session, in 1958. During breaks in the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, 1964, Lennon asked CBS coordinator Vince Calandra about Holly's performances; Calandra said Lennon and McCartney repeatedly expressed their appreciation of Holly. The Beatles recorded a close cover of Holly's version of "Words of Love", which was released on their 1964 album Beatles for Sale (in the US, in June 1965 on Beatles VI). During the January 1969 recording sessions for their album Let It Be, the Beatles played a slow, impromptu version of "Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues" – which Holly popularized but did not write – with Lennon mimicking Holly's vocal style. Lennon recorded a cover version of "Peggy Sue" on his 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll. McCartney owns the publishing rights to Holly's song catalog.
+
+On January 31, 1959, two nights before Holly's death, 17-year-old Bob Dylan attended Holly's performance in Duluth. Dylan referred to this in his acceptance speech when he received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind in 1998: "... when I was sixteen or seventeen years old, I went to see Buddy Holly play at Duluth National Guard Armory and I was three feet away from him ... and he looked at me. And I just have some sort of feeling that he was ... with us all the time we were making this record in some kind of way."
+
+Mick Jagger saw Holly performing live in Woolwich, London, during a tour of England; Jagger particularly remembered Holly's performance of "Not Fade Away" – a song that also inspired Keith Richards, who modeled his early guitar playing on the track. The Rolling Stones had a hit version of the song in 1964. Richards later said, "[Holly] passed it on via the Beatles and via [the Rolling Stones] ... He's in everybody."
+
+Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad "American Pie" was inspired by Holly's death and the day of the plane crash. The song's lyric, which calls the incident "The Day the Music Died", became popularly associated with the crash. McLean's album American Pie is dedicated to Holly. In 2015, McLean wrote, "Buddy Holly would have the same stature musically whether he would have lived or died, because of his accomplishments ... By the time he was 22 years old, he had recorded some 50 tracks, most of which he had written himself ... in my view and the view of many others, a hit ... Buddy Holly and the Crickets were the template for all the rock bands that followed."
+
+Elton John was musically influenced by Holly. At age 13, although he did not require them, John started wearing horn-rimmed glasses to imitate Holly. The Clash were also influenced by Holly, and referenced him in their song "If Music Could Talk" from the Sandinista! album. The Chirping Crickets was the first album Eric Clapton ever bought; he later saw Holly on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. In his autobiography, Clapton recounted the first time he saw Holly and his Fender, saying, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ... it was like seeing an instrument from outer space and I said to myself: 'That's the future – that's what I want.
+
+The launch of Bobby Vee's successful musical career resulted from Holly's death; Vee was selected to replace Holly on the tour that continued after the plane crash. Holly's profound influence on Vee's singing style can be heard in the songs "Rubber Ball" – the B-side of which was a cover of Holly's "Everyday" – and "Run to Him." The name of the British rock band the Hollies is often claimed as a tribute to Holly; according to the band, they admired Holly, but their name was mainly inspired by sprigs of holly in evidence around Christmas 1962. In an August 24, 1978, interview with Rolling Stone, Bruce Springsteen told Dave Marsh, "I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on; that keeps me honest." The Grateful Dead performed the song "Not Fade Away" in concerts.
+
+In 2016, Richard Barone released his album Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, paying tribute to the new wave of singer-songwriters in the Village during that pivotal, post-Holly era. The album opens with Barone's version of "Learning the Game", one of the final songs written and recorded by Holly at his home in Greenwich Village, a week before his death.
+
+Film and musical depictions
+Holly's life story inspired a Hollywood biographical film, The Buddy Holly Story (1978); its lead actor Gary Busey received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Holly. The film was widely criticized by the rock press, and by Holly's friends and family, for its inaccuracies. This led Paul McCartney (whose MPL Communications by then controlled the publishing rights to Buddy Holly's song catalog) to produce and host his own documentary about Holly in 1985, titled The Real Buddy Holly Story. This video includes interviews with Keith Richards, Phil and Don Everly, Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison, Holly's family, and McCartney, among others.
+
+In 1987, musician Marshall Crenshaw portrayed Buddy Holly in the movie La Bamba, which depicts him performing at the Surf Ballroom and boarding the fatal airplane with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Crenshaw's version of "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" is featured on the La Bamba original motion picture soundtrack.
+
+Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story, a jukebox musical depicting Holly's life, opened in 1989.
+
+Holly was depicted in a 1989 episode of the science-fiction television program Quantum Leap titled "How the Tess Was Won"; Holly's identity is only revealed at the end of the episode. Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) influences Buddy Holly to change his lyrics from "piggy, suey" to "Peggy Sue", setting up Holly's future hit song. Holly's follow up to that hit song is featured in the 1986 Francis Ford Coppola film Peggy Sue Got Married, in which a 43-year-old mother and housewife facing divorce played by Kathleen Turner is thrust back in time and given the chance to change the course of her life.
+
+Steve Buscemi appeared as Holly in a brief cameo as a 1950s-themed restaurant employee in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, in which he takes Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega's orders (portrayed respectively by Uma Thurman and John Travolta).
+
+In 1961, Mike Berry recorded "Tribute to Buddy Holly."
+
+In 1985, the German punk band Die Ärzte composed a song centering on Buddy Holly's glasses, titled "Buddy Holly's Brille."
+
+In 1998, the post-apocalyptic film Six-String Samurai depicted Holly as a guitar-playing samurai traveling to Las Vegas to become the new king of Nevada after the death of Elvis Presley.
+
+Weezer's first top 40 single in the US was titled "Buddy Holly."
+
+In 2006, country band the Dixie Chicks mention Buddy Holly in their song "Lubbock or Leave It." Lead singer Natalie Maines and Holly share a hometown of Lubbock, Texas.
+
+In the animated series The Venture Bros., it is implied that the elderly villains Dragoon and Red Mantle are actually Richardson and Buddy Holly, who were recruited into the supervillain organization the Guild of Calamitous Intent on the night of their supposed deaths.
+
+The TV documentary Buddy Holly – Rave On: The Story of Buddy Holly aired on BBC Four in 2017. An upcoming documentary The Day the Music Died/American Pie explores the story behind the Don Mclean song.
+
+Discography
+
+The Crickets
+ The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)
+
+Solo
+ Buddy Holly (1958)
+ That'll Be the Day (1958)
+
+References
+
+Sources
+
+Further reading
+
+ Bustard, Anne (2005). Buddy: The Story of Buddy Holly. Simon & Schuster. .
+ Comentale, Edward P. (2013). Chapter Five. Sweet Air: Modernism, Regionalism, and American Popular Song. University of Illinois Press. .
+ Dawson, Jim; Leigh, Spencer (1996). Memories of Buddy Holly. Big Nickel Publications. .
+ Gerron, Peggy Sue (2008). Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?. Togi Entertainment. .
+ Goldrosen, John; Beecher, John (1996). Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography. New York: Da Capo Press. .
+ Goldrosen, John (1975). Buddy Holly: His Life and Music. Popular Press. 
+ Laing, Dave (1971–2010). Buddy Holly (Icons of Pop Music). Indiana University Press. .
+ Mann, Alan (1996). The A-Z of Buddy Holly. Aurum Press (2nd edition).  or 978–1854104335.
+ McFadden, Hugh (2005). Elegy for Charles Hardin Holley, in Elegies & Epiphanies. Belfast: Lagan Press.
+ Peer, Elizabeth and Ralph II (1972). Buddy Holly: A Biography in Words, Photographs and Music Australia: Peer International. ASIN B000W24DZO.
+ Peters, Richard (1990). The Legend That Is Buddy Holly. Barnes & Noble Books.  or 978–0285630055.
+ Rabin, Stanton (2009). OH BOY! The Life and Music of Rock 'n' Roll Pioneer Buddy Holly. Van Winkle Publishing (Kindle). ASIN B0010QBLLG.
+ Tobler, John (1979). The Buddy Holly Story. Beaufort Books.
+ VH1's Behind the Music "The Day the Music Died" interview with Waylon Jennings
+
+External links
+
+ Buddy Holly news archives at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
+
+ 
+ Buddy Holly – sessions and cover songs
+ Buddy Holly recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings
+
+ 
+1936 births
+1959 deaths
+20th-century American guitarists
+20th-century American male singers
+20th-century American singer-songwriters
+Accidental deaths in Iowa
+American country rock singers
+American country singer-songwriters
+American male guitarists
+American male singer-songwriters
+American people of English descent
+American people who self-identify as being of Native American descent
+American people of Welsh descent
+American rock guitarists
+American rock singers
+American rockabilly guitarists
+American rockabilly musicians
+Baptists from Texas
+Brunswick Records artists
+Burials in Texas
+Coral Records artists
+Decca Records artists
+Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
+Guitarists from Texas
+Lead guitarists
+Lubbock High School alumni
+Musicians from Lubbock, Texas
+Rock and roll musicians
+Singer-songwriters from Texas
+The Crickets members
+Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1959
+Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States
+Musicians killed in aviation accidents or incidents
+Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast.  It may be done in a brewery by a commercial brewer, at home by a homebrewer, or communally. Brewing has taken place since around the 6th millennium BC, and archaeological evidence suggests that emerging civilizations, including ancient Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia, brewed beer. Since the nineteenth century the brewing industry has been part of most western economies.
+
+The basic ingredients of beer are water and a fermentable starch source such as malted barley. Most beer is fermented with a brewer's yeast and flavoured with hops. Less widely used starch sources include millet, sorghum and cassava. Secondary sources (adjuncts), such as maize (corn), rice, or sugar, may also be used, sometimes to reduce cost, or to add a feature, such as adding wheat to aid in retaining the foamy head of the beer. The most common starch source is ground cereal or "grist" - the proportion of the starch or cereal ingredients in a beer recipe may be called grist, grain bill, or simply mash ingredients.
+
+Steps in the brewing process include malting, milling, mashing, lautering, boiling, fermenting, conditioning, filtering, and packaging. There are three main fermentation methods: warm, cool and spontaneous. Fermentation may take place in an open or closed fermenting vessel; a secondary fermentation may also occur in the cask or bottle. There are several additional brewing methods, such as Burtonisation, double dropping, and Yorkshire Square, as well as post-fermentation treatment such as filtering, and barrel-ageing.
+
+History
+
+Brewing has taken place since around the 6th millennium BC, and archaeological evidence suggests emerging civilizations including China, ancient Egypt, and Mesopotamia brewed beer. Descriptions of various beer recipes can be found in cuneiform (the oldest known writing) from ancient Mesopotamia. In Mesopotamia the brewer's craft was the only profession which derived social sanction and divine protection from female deities/goddesses, specifically: Ninkasi, who covered the production of beer, Siris, who was used in a metonymic way to refer to beer, and Siduri, who covered the enjoyment of beer. In pre-industrial times, and in developing countries, women are frequently the main brewers.
+
+As almost any cereal containing certain sugars can undergo spontaneous fermentation due to wild yeasts in the air, it is possible that beer-like beverages were independently developed throughout the world soon after a tribe or culture had domesticated cereal. Chemical tests of ancient pottery jars reveal that beer was produced as far back as about 7,000 years ago in what is today Iran. This discovery reveals one of the earliest known uses of fermentation and is the earliest evidence of brewing to date. In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people drinking a beverage through reed straws from a communal bowl. A 3900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from barley via bread. The invention of bread and beer has been argued to be responsible for humanity's ability to develop technology and build civilization. The earliest chemically confirmed barley beer to date was discovered at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, where fragments of a jug, at least 5,000 years old was found to be coated with beerstone, a by-product of the brewing process. Beer may have been known in Neolithic Europe as far back as 5,000 years ago, and was mainly brewed on a domestic scale.
+
+Ale produced before the Industrial Revolution continued to be made and sold on a domestic scale, although by the 7th century AD beer was also being produced and sold by European monasteries. During the Industrial Revolution, the production of beer moved from artisanal manufacture to industrial manufacture, and domestic manufacture ceased to be significant by the end of the 19th century. The development of hydrometers and thermometers changed brewing by allowing the brewer more control of the process, and greater knowledge of the results. Today, the brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries. More than 133 billion litres (35 billion gallons) are sold per year—producing total global revenues of $294.5 billion (£147.7 billion) in 2006.
+
+Ingredients
+
+The basic ingredients of beer are water; a starch source, such as malted barley, able to be fermented (converted into alcohol); a brewer's yeast to produce the fermentation; and a flavouring, such as hops, to offset the sweetness of the malt. A mixture of starch sources may be used, with a secondary saccharide, such as maize (corn), rice, or sugar, these often being termed adjuncts, especially when used as a lower-cost substitute for malted barley. Less widely used starch sources include millet, sorghum, and cassava root in Africa, potato in Brazil, and agave in Mexico, among others. The most common starch source is ground cereal or "grist" - the proportion of the starch or cereal ingredients in a beer recipe may be called grist, grain bill, or simply mash ingredients.
+
+Water
+Beer is composed mostly of water. Regions have water with different mineral components; as a result, different regions were originally better suited to making certain types of beer, thus giving them a regional character. For example, Dublin has hard water well suited to making stout, such as Guinness; while Pilsen has soft water well suited to making pale lager, such as Pilsner Urquell. The waters of Burton in England contain gypsum, which benefits making pale ale to such a degree that brewers of pale ales will add gypsum to the local water in a process known as Burtonisation.
+
+Starch source
+
+The starch source in a beer provides the fermentable material and is a key determinant of the strength and flavour of the beer. The most common starch source used in beer is malted grain. Grain is malted by soaking it in water, allowing it to begin germination, and then drying the partially germinated grain in a kiln. Malting grain produces enzymes that will allow conversion from starches in the grain into fermentable sugars during the mash process. Different roasting times and temperatures are used to produce different colours of malt from the same grain. Darker malts will produce darker beers.
+
+Nearly all beer includes barley malt as the majority of the starch. This is because of its fibrous husk, which is important not only in the sparging stage of brewing (in which water is washed over the mashed barley grains to form the wort) but also as a rich source of amylase, a digestive enzyme that facilitates conversion of starch into sugars. Other malted and unmalted grains (including wheat, rice, oats, and rye, and, less frequently, maize (corn) and sorghum) may be used. In recent years, a few brewers have produced gluten-free beer made with sorghum with no barley malt for people who cannot digest gluten-containing grains like wheat, barley, and rye.
+
+Hops
+
+Hops are the female flower clusters or seed cones of the hop vine Humulus lupulus, which are used as a flavouring and preservative agent in nearly all beer made today. Hops had been used for medicinal and food flavouring purposes since Roman times; by the 7th century in Carolingian monasteries in what is now Germany, beer was being made with hops, though it isn't until the thirteenth century that widespread cultivation of hops for use in beer is recorded. Before the thirteenth century, beer was flavoured with plants such as yarrow, wild rosemary, and bog myrtle, and other ingredients such as juniper berries, aniseed and ginger, which would be combined into a mixture known as gruit and used as hops are now used; between the thirteenth and the sixteenth century, during which hops took over as the dominant flavouring, beer flavoured with gruit was known as ale, while beer flavoured with hops was known as beer. Some beers today, such as Fraoch by the Scottish Heather Ales company and Cervoise Lancelot by the French Brasserie-Lancelot company, use plants other than hops for flavouring.
+
+Hops contain several characteristics that brewers desire in beer: they contribute a bitterness that balances the sweetness of the malt; they provide floral, citrus, and herbal aromas and flavours; they have an antibiotic effect that favours the activity of brewer's yeast over less desirable microorganisms; and they aid in "head retention", the length of time that the foam on top of the beer (the beer head) will last. The preservative in hops comes from the lupulin glands which contain soft resins with alpha and beta acids. Though much studied, the preservative nature of the soft resins is not yet fully understood, though it has been observed that unless stored at a cool temperature, the preservative nature will decrease. Brewing is the sole major commercial use of hops.
+
+Yeast
+
+Yeast is the microorganism that is responsible for fermentation in beer. Yeast metabolises the sugars extracted from grains, which produces alcohol and carbon dioxide, and thereby turns wort into beer. In addition to fermenting the beer, yeast influences the character and flavour.
+The dominant types of yeast used to make beer are Saccharomyces cerevisiae, known as ale yeast, and Saccharomyces pastorianus, known as lager yeast;  Brettanomyces ferments lambics, and Torulaspora delbrueckii ferments Bavarian weissbier. Before the role of yeast in fermentation was understood, fermentation involved wild or airborne yeasts, and a few styles such as lambics still use this method today. Emil Christian Hansen, a Danish biochemist employed by the Carlsberg Laboratory, developed pure yeast cultures which were introduced into the Carlsberg brewery in 1883, and pure yeast strains are now the main fermenting source used worldwide.
+
+Clarifying agent
+
+Some brewers add one or more clarifying agents to beer, which typically precipitate (collect as a solid) out of the beer along with protein solids and are found only in trace amounts in the finished product. This process makes the beer appear bright and clean, rather than the cloudy appearance of ethnic and older styles of beer such as wheat beers.
+
+Examples of clarifying agents include isinglass, obtained from swim bladders of fish; Irish moss, a seaweed; kappa carrageenan, from the seaweed kappaphycus; polyclar (a commercial brand of clarifier); and gelatin. If a beer is marked "suitable for Vegans", it was generally clarified either with seaweed or with artificial agents, although the "Fast Cask" method invented by Marston's in 2009 may provide another method.
+
+Brewing process
+
+There are several steps in the brewing process, which may include malting, mashing, lautering, boiling, fermenting, conditioning, filtering, and packaging. The brewing equipment needed to make beer has grown more sophisticated over time, and now covers most aspects of the brewing process.
+
+Malting is the process where barley grain is made ready for brewing. Malting is broken down into three steps in order to help to release the starches in the barley. First, during steeping, the grain is added to a vat with water and allowed to soak for approximately 40 hours. During germination, the grain is spread out on the floor of the germination room for around 5 days. The final part of malting is kilning when the malt goes through a very high temperature drying in a kiln; with gradual temperature increase over several hours. When kilning is complete, the grains are now termed malt, and they will be milled or crushed to break apart the kernels and expose the cotyledon, which contains the majority of the carbohydrates and sugars; this makes it easier to extract the sugars during mashing.
+
+Mashing converts the starches released during the malting stage into sugars that can be fermented. The milled grain is mixed with hot water in a large vessel known as a mash tun. In this vessel, the grain and water are mixed together to create a cereal mash. During the mash, naturally occurring enzymes present in the malt convert the starches (long chain carbohydrates) in the grain into smaller molecules or simple sugars (mono-, di-, and tri-saccharides). This "conversion" is called saccharification which occurs between the temperatures . The result of the mashing process is a sugar-rich liquid or "wort", which is then strained through the bottom of the mash tun in a process known as lautering. Prior to lautering, the mash temperature may be raised to about  (known as a mashout) to free up more starch and reduce mash viscosity. Additional water may be sprinkled on the grains to extract additional sugars (a process known as sparging).
+
+The wort is moved into a large tank known as a "copper" or kettle where it is boiled with hops and sometimes other ingredients such as herbs or sugars. This stage is where many chemical reactions take place, and where important decisions about the flavour, colour, and aroma of the beer are made. The boiling process serves to terminate enzymatic processes, precipitate proteins, isomerize hop resins, and concentrate and sterilize the wort. Hops add flavour, aroma and bitterness to the beer. At the end of the boil, the hopped wort settles to clarify in a vessel called a "whirlpool", where the more solid particles in the wort are separated out.
+
+After the whirlpool, the wort is drawn away from the compacted hop trub, and rapidly cooled via a heat exchanger to a temperature where yeast can be added. A variety of heat exchanger designs are used in breweries, with the most common a plate-style. Water or glycol run in channels in the opposite direction of the wort, causing a rapid drop in temperature. It is very important to quickly cool the wort to a level where yeast can be added safely as yeast is unable to grow in very high temperatures, and will start to die in temperatures above . After the wort goes through the heat exchanger, the cooled wort goes into a fermentation tank. A type of yeast is selected and added, or "pitched", to the fermentation tank. When the yeast is added to the wort, the fermenting process begins, where the sugars turn into alcohol, carbon dioxide and other components. When the fermentation is complete the brewer may rack the beer into a new tank, called a conditioning tank. Conditioning of the beer is the process in which the beer ages, the flavour becomes smoother, and flavours that are unwanted dissipate. After conditioning for a week to several months, the beer may be filtered and force carbonated for bottling, or fined in the cask.
+
+Mashing
+
+Mashing is the process of combining a mix of milled grain (typically malted barley with supplementary grains such as corn, sorghum, rye or wheat), known as the "grist" or "grain bill", and water, known as "liquor", and heating this mixture in a vessel called a "mash tun". Mashing is a form of steeping, and defines the act of brewing, such as with making tea, sake, and soy sauce. Technically, wine, cider and mead are not brewed but rather vinified, as there is no steeping process involving solids. Mashing allows the enzymes in the malt to break down the starch in the grain into sugars, typically maltose to create a malty liquid called wort. There are two main methods – infusion mashing, in which the grains are heated in one vessel; and decoction mashing, in which a proportion of the grains are boiled and then returned to the mash, raising the temperature. Mashing involves pauses at certain temperatures (notably ), and takes place in a "mash tun" – an insulated brewing vessel with a false bottom. The end product of mashing is called a "mash".
+
+Mashing usually takes 1 to 2 hours, and during this time the various temperature rests activate different enzymes depending upon the type of malt being used, its modification level, and the intention of the brewer. The activity of these enzymes convert the starches of the grains to dextrins and then to fermentable sugars such as maltose. A mash rest from  activates various proteases, which break down proteins that might otherwise cause the beer to be hazy. This rest is generally used only with undermodified (i.e. undermalted) malts which are decreasingly popular in Germany and the Czech Republic, or non-malted grains such as corn and rice, which are widely used in North American beers. A mash rest at  activates β-glucanase, which breaks down gummy β-glucans in the mash, making the sugars flow out more freely later in the process. In the modern mashing process, commercial fungal based β-glucanase may be added as a supplement. Finally, a mash rest temperature of  is used to convert the starches in the malt to sugar, which is then usable by the yeast later in the brewing process. Doing the latter rest at the lower end of the range favours β-amylase enzymes, producing more low-order sugars like maltotriose, maltose, and glucose which are more fermentable by the yeast. This in turn creates a beer lower in body and higher in alcohol. A rest closer to the higher end of the range favours α-amylase enzymes, creating more higher-order sugars and dextrins which are less fermentable by the yeast, so a fuller-bodied beer with less alcohol is the result. Duration and pH variances also affect the sugar composition of the resulting wort.
+
+Lautering
+
+Lautering is the separation of the wort (the liquid containing the sugar extracted during mashing) from the grains. This is done either in a mash tun outfitted with a false bottom, in a lauter tun, or in a mash filter. Most separation processes have two stages: first wort run-off, during which the extract is separated in an undiluted state from the spent grains, and sparging, in which extract which remains with the grains is rinsed off with hot water. The lauter tun is a tank with holes in the bottom small enough to hold back the large bits of grist and hulls (the ground or milled cereal). The bed of grist that settles on it is the actual filter. Some lauter tuns have provision for rotating rakes or knives to cut into the bed of grist to maintain good flow. The knives can be turned so they push the grain, a feature used to drive the spent grain out of the vessel. The mash filter is a plate-and-frame filter. The empty frames contain the mash, including the spent grains, and have a capacity of around one hectoliter. The plates contain a support structure for the filter cloth. The plates, frames, and filter cloths are arranged in a carrier frame like so: frame, cloth, plate, cloth, with plates at each end of the structure. Newer mash filters have bladders that can press the liquid out of the grains between spargings. The grain does not act like a filtration medium in a mash filter.
+
+Boiling
+
+After mashing, the beer wort is boiled with hops (and other flavourings if used) in a large tank known as a "copper" or brew kettle – though historically the mash vessel was used and is still in some small breweries. The boiling process is where chemical reactions take place, including sterilization of the wort to remove unwanted bacteria, releasing of hop flavours, bitterness and aroma compounds through isomerization, stopping of enzymatic processes, precipitation of proteins, and concentration of the wort. Finally, the vapours produced during the boil volatilise off-flavours, including dimethyl sulfide precursors. The boil is conducted so that it is even and intense – a continuous "rolling boil". The boil on average lasts between 45 and 90 minutes, depending on its intensity, the hop addition schedule, and volume of water the brewer expects to evaporate. At the end of the boil, solid particles in the hopped wort are separated out, usually in a vessel called a "whirlpool".
+
+Brew kettle or copper
+
+Copper is the traditional material for the boiling vessel for two main reasons: firstly because copper transfers heat quickly and evenly; secondly because the bubbles produced during boiling, which could act as an insulator against the heat, do not cling to the surface of copper, so the wort is heated in a consistent manner. The simplest boil kettles are direct-fired, with a burner underneath. These can produce a vigorous and favourable boil, but are also apt to scorch the wort where the flame touches the kettle, causing caramelisation and making cleanup difficult. Most breweries use a steam-fired kettle, which uses steam jackets in the kettle to boil the wort. Breweries usually have a boiling unit either inside or outside of the kettle, usually a tall, thin cylinder with vertical tubes, called a calandria, through which wort is pumped.
+
+Whirlpool
+
+At the end of the boil, solid particles in the hopped wort are separated out, usually in a vessel called a "whirlpool" or "settling tank". The whirlpool was devised by Henry Ranulph Hudston while working for the Molson Brewery in 1960 to utilise the so-called tea leaf paradox to force the denser solids known as "trub" (coagulated proteins, vegetable matter from hops) into a cone in the centre of the whirlpool tank. Whirlpool systems vary: smaller breweries tend to use the brew kettle, larger breweries use a separate tank, and design will differ, with tank floors either flat, sloped, conical or with a cup in the centre. The principle in all is that by swirling the wort the centripetal force will push the trub into a cone at the centre of the bottom of the tank, where it can be easily removed.
+
+Hopback
+
+A hopback is a traditional additional chamber that acts as a sieve or filter by using whole hops to clear debris (or "trub") from the unfermented (or "green") wort, as the whirlpool does, and also to increase hop aroma in the finished beer. It is a chamber between the brewing kettle and wort chiller. Hops are added to the chamber, the hot wort from the kettle is run through it, and then immediately cooled in the wort chiller before entering the fermentation chamber. Hopbacks utilizing a sealed chamber facilitate maximum retention of volatile hop aroma compounds that would normally be driven off when the hops contact the hot wort. While a hopback has a similar filtering effect as a whirlpool, it operates differently: a whirlpool uses centrifugal forces, a hopback uses a layer of whole hops to act as a filter bed. Furthermore, while a whirlpool is useful only for the removal of pelleted hops (as flowers do not tend to separate as easily), in general hopbacks are used only for the removal of whole flower hops (as the particles left by pellets tend to make it through the hopback). The hopback has mainly been substituted in modern breweries by the whirlpool.
+
+Wort cooling
+
+After the whirlpool, the wort must be brought down to fermentation temperatures  before yeast is added. In modern breweries this is achieved through a plate heat exchanger. A plate heat exchanger has many ridged plates, which form two separate paths. The wort is pumped into the heat exchanger, and goes through every other gap between the plates. The cooling medium, usually water, goes through the other gaps. The ridges in the plates ensure turbulent flow. A good heat exchanger can drop  wort to  while warming the cooling medium from about  to . The last few plates often use a cooling medium which can be cooled to below the freezing point, which allows a finer control over the wort-out temperature, and also enables cooling to around . After cooling, oxygen is often dissolved into the wort to revitalize the yeast and aid its reproduction. Some of the craft brewery, particularly those wanting to create steam beer, utilize coolship instead.
+
+While boiling, it is useful to recover some of the energy used to boil the wort. On its way out of the brewery, the steam created during the boil is passed over a coil through which unheated water flows. By adjusting the rate of flow, the output temperature of the water can be controlled. This is also often done using a plate heat exchanger. The water is then stored for later use in the next mash, in equipment cleaning, or wherever necessary. Another common method of energy recovery takes place during the wort cooling. When cold water is used to cool the wort in a heat exchanger, the water is significantly warmed. In an efficient brewery, cold water is passed through the heat exchanger at a rate set to maximize the water's temperature upon exiting. This now-hot water is then stored in a hot water tank.
+
+Fermenting 
+
+Fermentation takes place in fermentation vessels which come in various forms, from enormous cylindroconical vessels, through open stone vessels, to wooden vats. After the wort is cooled and aerated – usually with sterile air – yeast is added to it, and it begins to ferment. It is during this stage that sugars won from the malt are converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and the product can be called beer for the first time.
+
+Most breweries today use cylindroconical vessels, or CCVs, which have a conical bottom and a cylindrical top. The cone's angle is typically around 60°, an angle that will allow the yeast to flow towards the cone's apex, but is not so steep as to take up too much vertical space. CCVs can handle both fermenting and conditioning in the same tank. At the end of fermentation, the yeast and other solids which have fallen to the cone's apex can be simply flushed out of a port at the apex. Open fermentation vessels are also used, often for show in brewpubs, and in Europe in wheat beer fermentation. These vessels have no tops, which makes harvesting top-fermenting yeasts very easy. The open tops of the vessels make the risk of infection greater, but with proper cleaning procedures and careful protocol about who enters fermentation chambers, the risk can be well controlled. Fermentation tanks are typically made of stainless steel. If they are simple cylindrical tanks with beveled ends, they are arranged vertically, as opposed to conditioning tanks which are usually laid out horizontally. Only a very few breweries still use wooden vats for fermentation as wood is difficult to keep clean and infection-free and must be repitched more or less yearly.
+
+Fermentation methods
+
+There are three main fermentation methods, warm, cool, and wild or spontaneous. Fermentation may take place in open or closed vessels. There may be a secondary fermentation which can take place in the brewery, in the cask or in the bottle.
+
+Brewing yeasts are traditionally classed as "top-cropping" (or "top-fermenting") and "bottom-cropping" (or "bottom-fermenting"); the yeasts classed as top-fermenting are generally used in warm fermentations, where they ferment quickly, and the yeasts classed as bottom-fermenting are used in cooler fermentations where they ferment more slowly. Yeast were termed top or bottom cropping, because the yeast was collected from the top or bottom of the fermenting wort to be reused for the next brew. This terminology is somewhat inappropriate in the modern era; after the widespread application of brewing mycology it was discovered that the two separate collecting methods involved two different yeast species that favoured different temperature regimes, namely Saccharomyces cerevisiae in top-cropping at warmer temperatures and Saccharomyces pastorianus in bottom-cropping at cooler temperatures. As brewing methods changed in the 20th century, cylindro-conical fermenting vessels became the norm and the collection of yeast for both Saccharomyces species is done from the bottom of the fermenter. Thus the method of collection no longer implies a species association. There are a few remaining breweries who collect yeast in the top-cropping method, such as Samuel Smiths brewery in Yorkshire, Marstons in Staffordshire and several German hefeweizen producers.
+
+For both types, yeast is fully distributed through the beer while it is fermenting, and both equally flocculate (clump together and precipitate to the bottom of the vessel) when fermentation is finished. By no means do all top-cropping yeasts demonstrate this behaviour, but it features strongly in many English yeasts that may also exhibit chain forming (the failure of budded cells to break from the mother cell), which is in the technical sense different from true flocculation. The most common top-cropping brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is the same species as the common baking yeast. However, baking and brewing yeasts typically belong to different strains, cultivated to favour different characteristics: baking yeast strains are more aggressive, in order to carbonate dough in the shortest amount of time; brewing yeast strains act slower, but tend to tolerate higher alcohol concentrations (normally 12–15% abv is the maximum, though under special treatment some ethanol-tolerant strains can be coaxed up to around 20%). Modern quantitative genomics has revealed the complexity of Saccharomyces species to the extent that yeasts involved in beer and wine production commonly involve hybrids of so-called pure species. As such, the yeasts involved in what has been typically called top-cropping or top-fermenting ale may be both Saccharomyces cerevisiae and complex hybrids of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces kudriavzevii. Three notable ales, Chimay, Orval and Westmalle, are fermented with these hybrid strains, which are identical to wine yeasts from Switzerland.
+
+Warm fermentation
+
+In general, yeasts such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae are fermented at warm temperatures between , occasionally as high as , while the yeast used by Brasserie Dupont for saison ferments even higher at . They generally form a foam on the surface of the fermenting beer, which is called barm, as during the fermentation process its hydrophobic surface causes the flocs to adhere to CO2 and rise; because of this, they are often referred to as "top-cropping" or "top-fermenting" – though this distinction is less clear in modern brewing with the use of cylindro-conical tanks. Generally, warm-fermented beers, which are usually termed ale, are ready to drink within three weeks after the beginning of fermentation, although some brewers will condition or mature them for several months.
+
+Cool fermentation
+
+When a beer has been brewed using a cool fermentation of around , compared to typical warm fermentation temperatures of , then stored (or lagered) for typically several weeks (or months) at temperatures close to freezing point, it is termed a "lager". During the lagering or storage phase several flavour components developed during fermentation dissipate, resulting in a "cleaner" flavour. Though it is the slow, cool fermentation and cold conditioning (or lagering) that defines the character of lager, the main technical difference is with the yeast generally used, which is Saccharomyces pastorianus. Technical differences include the ability of lager yeast to metabolize melibiose, and the tendency to settle at the bottom of the fermenter (though ales yeasts can also become bottom settling by selection); though these technical differences are not considered by scientists to be influential in the character or flavour of the finished beer, brewers feel otherwise - sometimes cultivating their own yeast strains which may suit their brewing equipment or for a particular purpose, such as brewing beers with a high abv.
+
+Brewers in Bavaria had for centuries been selecting cold-fermenting yeasts by storing ("lagern") their beers in cold alpine caves. The process of natural selection meant that the wild yeasts that were most cold tolerant would be the ones that would remain actively fermenting 
+in the beer that was stored in the caves. A sample of these Bavarian yeasts was sent from the Spaten brewery in Munich to the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen in 1845 who began brewing with it. In 1883 Emile Hansen completed a study on pure yeast culture isolation and the pure strain obtained from Spaten went into industrial production in 1884 as Carlsberg yeast No 1. Another specialized pure yeast production plant was installed at the Heineken Brewery in Rotterdam the following year and together they began the supply of pure cultured yeast to brewers across Europe. This yeast strain was originally classified as Saccharomyces carlsbergensis, a now defunct species name which has been superseded by the currently accepted taxonomic classification Saccharomyces pastorianus.
+
+Spontaneous fermentation
+Lambic beers are historically brewed in Brussels and the nearby Pajottenland region of Belgium without any yeast inoculation. The wort is cooled in open vats (called "coolships"), where the yeasts and microbiota present in the brewery (such as Brettanomyces) are allowed to settle to create a spontaneous fermentation, and are then conditioned or matured in oak barrels for typically one to three years.
+
+Conditioning
+
+After an initial or primary fermentation, beer is conditioned, matured or aged, in one of several ways, which can take from 2 to 4 weeks, several months, or several years, depending on the brewer's intention for the beer. The beer is usually transferred into a second container, so that it is no longer exposed to the dead yeast and other debris (also known as "trub") that have settled to the bottom of the primary fermenter. This prevents the formation of unwanted flavours and harmful compounds such as acetaldehyde.
+
+Kräusening
+Kräusening (pronounced ) is a conditioning method in which fermenting wort is added to the finished beer. The active yeast will restart fermentation in the finished beer, and so introduce fresh carbon dioxide; the conditioning tank will be then sealed so that the carbon dioxide is dissolved into the beer producing a lively "condition" or level of carbonation. The kräusening method may also be used to condition bottled beer.
+
+Lagering
+Lagers are stored at cellar temperature or below for 1–6 months while still on the yeast. The process of storing, or conditioning, or maturing, or aging a beer at a low temperature for a long period is called "lagering", and while it is associated with lagers, the process may also be done with ales, with the same result – that of cleaning up various chemicals, acids and compounds.
+
+Secondary fermentation
+During secondary fermentation, most of the remaining yeast will settle to the bottom of the second fermenter, yielding a less hazy product.
+
+Bottle fermentation
+Some beers undergo an additional fermentation in the bottle giving natural carbonation. This may be a second and/or third fermentation. They are bottled with a viable yeast population in suspension. If there is no residual fermentable sugar left, sugar or wort or both may be added in a process known as priming. The resulting fermentation generates CO2 that is trapped in the bottle, remaining in solution and providing natural carbonation. Bottle-conditioned beers may be either filled unfiltered direct from the fermentation or conditioning tank, or filtered and then reseeded with yeast.
+
+Cask conditioning
+
+Cask ale (or cask-conditioned beer) is unfiltered, unpasteurised beer that is conditioned by a secondary fermentation in a metal, plastic or wooden cask. It is dispensed from the cask by being either poured from a tap by gravity, or pumped up from a cellar via a beer engine (hand pump). Sometimes a cask breather is used to keep the beer fresh by allowing carbon dioxide to replace oxygen as the beer is drawn off the cask. Until 2018, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) defined real ale as beer "served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide", which would disallow the use of a cask breather, a policy which was reversed in April 2018 to allow beer served with the use of cask breathers to meet its definition of real ale.
+
+Barrel-ageing
+
+Barrel-ageing (US: Barrel aging) is the process of ageing beer in wooden barrels to achieve a variety of effects in the final product. Sour beers such as lambics are fully fermented in wood, while other beers are aged in barrels which were previously used for maturing wines or spirits. In 2016 "Craft Beer and Brewing" wrote: "Barrel-aged beers are so trendy that nearly every taphouse and beer store has a section of them.
+
+Filtering
+
+Filtering stabilises the flavour of beer, holding it at a point acceptable to the brewer, and preventing further development from the yeast, which under poor conditions can release negative components and flavours. Filtering also removes haze, clearing the beer, and so giving it a "polished shine and brilliance". Beer with a clear appearance has been commercially desirable for brewers since the development of glass vessels for storing and drinking beer, along with the commercial success of pale lager, which - due to the lagering process in which haze and particles settle to the bottom of the tank and so the beer "drops bright" (clears) - has a natural bright appearance and shine. 
+
+There are several forms of filters; they may be in the form of sheets or "candles", or they may be a fine powder such as diatomaceous earth (also called kieselguhr), which is added to the beer to form a filtration bed which allows liquid to pass, but holds onto suspended particles such as yeast. Filters range from rough filters that remove much of the yeast and any solids (e.g., hops, grain particles) left in the beer, to filters tight enough to strain colour and body from the beer. Filtration ratings are divided into rough, fine, and sterile. Rough filtration leaves some cloudiness in the beer, but it is noticeably clearer than unfiltered beer. Fine filtration removes almost all cloudiness. Sterile filtration removes almost all microorganisms.
+
+Sheet (pad) filters
+These filters use sheets that allow only particles smaller than a given size to pass through. The sheets are placed into a filtering frame, sanitized (with boiling water, for example) and then used to filter the beer. The sheets can be flushed if the filter becomes blocked. The sheets are usually disposable and are replaced between filtration sessions. Often the sheets contain powdered filtration media to aid in filtration.
+
+Pre-made filters have two sides. One with loose holes, and the other with tight holes. Flow goes from the side with loose holes to the side with the tight holes, with the intent that large particles get stuck in the large holes while leaving enough room around the particles and filter medium for smaller particles to go through and get stuck in tighter holes.
+
+Sheets are sold in nominal ratings, and typically 90% of particles larger than the nominal rating are caught by the sheet.
+Kieselguhr filters
+
+Filters that use a powder medium are considerably more complicated to operate, but can filter much more beer before regeneration. Common media include diatomaceous earth and perlite.
+
+By-products
+
+Brewing by-products are "spent grain" and the sediment (or "dregs") from the filtration process which may be dried and resold as "brewers dried yeast" for poultry feed, or made into yeast extract which is used in brands such as Vegemite and Marmite. The process of turning the yeast sediment into edible yeast extract was discovered by German scientist Justus von Liebig.
+
+Brewer's spent grain (also called spent grain, brewer's grain or draff) is the main by-product of the brewing process; it consists of the residue of malt and grain which remains in the lauter tun after the lautering process. It consists primarily of grain husks, pericarp, and fragments of endosperm. As it mainly consists of carbohydrates and proteins, and is readily consumed by animals, spent grain is used in animal feed. Spent grains can also be used as fertilizer, whole grains in bread, as well as in the production of flour and biogas. Spent grain is also an ideal medium for growing mushrooms, such as shiitake, and already some breweries are either growing their own mushrooms or supplying spent grain to mushroom farms. Spent grains can be used in the production of red bricks, to improve the open porosity and reduce thermal conductivity of the ceramic mass.
+
+Brewing industry
+
+The brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of other producers known as microbreweries or regional breweries or craft breweries depending on size, region, and marketing preference. More than  are sold per year—producing total global revenues of $294.5 billion (£147.7 billion) as of 2006. SABMiller became the largest brewing company in the world when it acquired Royal Grolsch, brewer of Dutch premium beer brand Grolsch. InBev was the second-largest beer-producing company in the world and Anheuser-Busch held the third spot, but after the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch by InBev, the new Anheuser-Busch InBev company is currently the largest brewer in the world.
+
+Brewing at home is subject to regulation and prohibition in many countries. Restrictions on homebrewing were lifted in the UK in 1963, Australia followed suit in 1972, and the US in 1978, though individual states were allowed to pass their own laws limiting production.
+
+References
+
+Sources
+ Bamforth, Charles; Food, Fermentation and Micro-organisms, Wiley-Blackwell, 2005, 
+ Bamforth, Charles; Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing, Oxford University Press, 2009
+ Boulton, Christopher; Encyclopaedia of Brewing, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 
+ Briggs, Dennis E., et al.; Malting and Brewing Science, Aspen Publishers, 1982, 
+ Ensminger, Audrey; Foods & Nutrition Encyclopedia, CRC Press, 1994, 
+ Esslinger, Hans Michael; Handbook of Brewing: Processes, Technology, Markets, Wiley-VCH, 2009, 
+ Hornsey, Ian Spencer; Brewing, Royal Society of Chemistry, 1999, 
+ Hui, Yiu H.; Food Biotechnology, Wiley-IEEE, 1994, 
+ Hui, Yiu H., and Smith, J. Scott; Food Processing: Principles and Applications, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, 
+ Andrew G.H. Lea, John Raymond Piggott, John R. Piggott ; Fermented Beverage Production, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003, 
+ McFarland, Ben; World's Best Beers, Sterling Publishing, 2009, 
+ Oliver, Garrett (ed); The Oxford Companion to Beer, Oxford University Press, 2011
+ Priest, Fergus G.; Handbook of Brewing, CRC Press, 2006, 
+ 
+ Stevens, Roger, et al.; Brewing: Science and Practice, Woodhead Publishing, 2004, 
+ Unger, Richard W.; Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004,
+
+External links
+
+ 
+ An overview of the microbiology behind beer brewing from the Science Creative Quarterly
+ A pictorial overview of the brewing process at the Heriot-Watt University Pilot Brewery
+
+ 
+Fermentation in food processing
+Benz, an old Germanic clan name dating to the fifth century (related to "bear", "war banner", "gau", or a "land by a waterway") also used in German () as an alternative for names such as Berthold, Bernhard, or Benedict, may refer to:
+
+People
+
+Surname
+ Amy Benz (born 1962), American golfer
+ Bertha Benz (1849–1944), German marketing entrepreneur who was the first to drive an automobile for a long distance, wife of Carl Benz
+ Carl Benz (1844–1929), German engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur who built the first patented automobile
+ Derek Benz (born 1971), American author of fantasy fiction for children
+ Edward J. Benz, Jr., professor of genetics
+ Joe Benz (1886–1957), American Major League Baseball pitcher
+ Joseph Benz (born 1944), Swiss former bobsledder, Olympic and world champion
+ Julie Benz (born 1972), American actress
+ Kafi Benz (born 1941), American author, artist, and environmental and historic preservationist
+ Larry Benz (born 1941), American former National Football League player
+ Laura Benz (born 1992), Swiss ice hockey player
+ Maria Benz (1906–1946), birth name of Nusch Éluard, German-born model who married Paul Éluard
+ Mathilde Benz (1901–1977), birth name of Lee Parry, German actress
+ Paul Benz (born 1986), Australian Paralympic athlete
+ Richard Benz (1884–1966), German historian and writer
+ Roland Benz (born 1943), German biophysicist
+ Sara Benz (born 1992), Swiss ice hockey player
+ Walter Benz (1931–2017), German mathematician known for his work on geometric planes 
+ Wolfgang Benz (born 1941), German historian
+
+Ring or stage name
+ Nicky Benz (born 1980), ring name of Nick Berk, American wrestler
+ Nikki Benz (born 1981), stage name of Alla Montchak, Canadian pornographic actress and director
+ Spragga Benz (born 1969), stage name of Carlton Grant, Jamaican deejay and musician
+
+Places 
+ Benz (Usedom), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, a municipality
+ Benz, Nordwestmecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, a municipality
+ Benice, West Pomeranian Voivodeship (Benz in German), Poland, a village
+ Benz Pass, Trinity Peninsula, Antarctica
+
+Mathematics and science
+ Benz (unit), a proposed unit of velocity
+ Benz, an abbreviated form of Benzo, a functional group in chemistry
+ Benz plane, in geometry
+
+Other uses
+ Benz & Cie., a manufacturer of steam engines co-founded by Carl Benz in 1883
+ Benz (group), a British band
+ Benz series, a series of paintings and drawings created by Lyonel Feininger
+
+See also
+ Benzz, the "Calabria" sampling West London drill rapper known for "Je M'appelle"
+ Bendz, a surname
+ Bentz, a surname
+Breast reconstruction is the surgical process of rebuilding the shape and look of a breast, most commonly in women who have had surgery to treat breast cancer. It involves using autologous tissue, prosthetic implants, or a combination of both with the goal of reconstructing a natural-looking breast.  This process often also includes the rebuilding of the nipple and areola, known as nipple-areola complex (NAC) reconstruction, as one of the final stages.
+
+Generally, the aesthetic appearance is acceptable to the woman, but the reconstructed area is commonly completely numb afterwards, which results in loss of sexual function as well as the ability to perceive pain caused by burns and other injuries.
+
+Timing 
+Breast reconstruction can be performed either immediately following the mastectomy or as a separate procedure at a later date, known as immediate reconstruction and delayed reconstruction, respectively. The decision of when breast reconstruction will take place is patient-specific and based on many different factors. Breast reconstruction is a large undertaking that usually requires multiple operations.  These subsequent surgeries may be spread out over weeks or months.
+
+Immediate reconstruction 
+Breast reconstruction is termed "immediate" when it takes place during the same procedure as the mastectomy. Within the United States, approximately 35% of women who have undergone a total mastectomy for breast cancer will choose to pursue immediate breast reconstruction.  One of the inherent advantages of immediate reconstruction is the potential for a single-stage procedure. This also means that the cost of immediate reconstruction is often far less to the patient.  It can also reduce hospital costs by having fewer procedures and requiring a shorter length of the stay as an inpatient.  Additionally, immediate reconstruction often has a better cosmetic result because of the preservation of anatomic landmarks and skin. With regards to psychosocial outcomes, opinions on timing have shifted in favor of immediate reconstruction. Originally, delayed reconstruction was believed to provide patients with time to psychologically adjust to the mastectomy and its effects on body image. However, this opinion is no longer widely held. Compared to delayed procedures, immediate reconstruction can have a more positive psychological impact on patients and their self-esteem, most likely due to the post-operative breast more closely resembling the natural breast compared to the defect left by mastectomy alone.
+
+Delayed reconstruction 
+Delayed breast reconstruction is considered more challenging than immediate reconstruction. Frequently not just breast volume, but also skin surface area needs to be restored. Many patients undergoing delayed breast reconstruction have been previously treated with radiation or have had a reconstruction failure with immediate breast reconstruction. In nearly all cases of delayed breast reconstruction tissue must be borrowed from another part of the body to make the new breast. Patients expected to receive radiation therapy as part of their adjuvant treatment are also commonly considered for delayed autologous reconstruction due to significantly higher complication rates with tissue expander-implant techniques in those patients.  While waiting to begin breast reconstruction until several months after radiation therapy may decrease the risk of complications, this risk will always be higher in patients who have received radiation therapy. As with many other surgeries, patients with significant medical comorbidities (e.g., high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes) and smokers are higher-risk candidates.  Surgeons may choose to perform delayed reconstruction to decrease this risk.
+
+Techniques
+There are several techniques for breast reconstruction.  These options are broadly categorized into two different groups:
+
+Implant-based reconstruction 
+This is the most common technique used worldwide.  Implant-based reconstruction is an option for patients who have sufficient skin after mastectomy to cover a prosthetic implant and allow for a natural shape.  For women undergoing bilateral mastectomies, implants provide the greatest opportunity for symmetrical shape and lift.  Additionally, these procedures are generally much faster than flap-based reconstruction since tissue does not have to be taken from another part of the patient's body.
+
+Implant-based reconstruction may be one- or two-staged. In one-stage reconstruction, a permanent implant is inserted at the time of mastectomy. During two-stage reconstruction, the surgeon will insert a tissue expander underneath the pectoralis major muscle of the chest wall at the time of mastectomy.  This temporary silastic implant is used to hold tension on the mastectomy flaps.  In doing so, the tissue expander prevents the breast tissue from contracting and allows for use of a larger implant later on compared to what would be safe at the time of the mastectomy.  Following this initial procedure, the patient must return to the clinic on multiple occasions for saline to be injected into a tube inside the tissue expander.  By doing this slowly over the course of several weeks, the space beneath the pectoralis major muscle is safely expanded to an appropriate size without causing too much stress on the breast tissue.  A second procedure is then necessary to remove the tissue expander and replace it with the final, permanent prosthetic implant.
+
+Although in the past, prosthetic implants were placed directly under the skin, this method has fallen out of favor because of the greater risk of complications, including visible rippling of the implant and capsular contracture.  The sub-pectoral technique described above is now preferred because it provides an additional muscular layer between the skin and the implant, decreasing the risk of visible deformity.  Oftentimes, however, the pectoralis major muscle is not sufficiently large enough to cover the inferior portion of the prosthetic implant.  If this is the case, one option is to use an acellular dermal matrix to cover the exposed portion of the prosthetic implant, improving both functional and aesthetic outcomes. This prepectoral space has recently, however, come back into practice, with comparable rates of post-operative complications and implant loss to submuscular placement. Both delayed and direct-to-implant reconstruction in this plane has been shown to be favourable.
+
+Of note, a Cochrane review published in 2016 concluded that implants for use in breast reconstructive surgery have not been adequately studied in good quality clinical trials. "These days - even after a few million women have had breasts reconstructed – surgeons cannot inform women about the risks and complications of different implant-based breast reconstructive options on the basis of results derived from Randomized Controlled Trials."
+
+Flap-based reconstruction 
+Flap-based reconstruction uses tissue from other parts of the patient's body (i.e., autologous tissue) such as the back, buttocks, thigh or abdomen. In surgery, a "flap" is any type of tissue that is lifted from a donor site and moved to a recipient site using its own blood supply. Usually, the blood supply is a named vessel.  Flap-based reconstruction may be performed either by leaving the donor tissue connected to the original site (also known as a pedicle flap) to retain its blood supply (where the vessels are tunneled beneath the skin surface to the new site) or by cutting the donor tissue's vessels and surgically reconnecting them to a new blood supply at the recipient site (also known as a free flap or free tissue transfer). The latissimus dorsi is a prime example of such a flap since it can remain attached to its primary blood source which preserves the skins functioning, and is associated with better outcomes in comparison to other muscle and skin donor sites.  
+
+One option for breast reconstruction involves using the latissimus dorsi muscle as the donor tissue.  As a back muscle, the latissimus dorsi is large and flat and can be used without significant loss of function.  It can be moved into the breast defect while still attached to its blood supply under the arm pit (axilla). A latissimus flap is often used to recruit soft-tissue coverage over an underlying implant; however, if the latissimus flap can provide enough volume, then occasionally it is used to reconstruct small breasts without the need for an implant.  The latissimus dorsi flap has a number of advantages, but despite the advances in surgical techniques, it has remained vulnerable to skin dehiscence or necrosis at the donor site (on the back). The Mannu flap is a form of latissimus dorsi flap which avoids this complication by preserving a generous subcutaneous fat layer at the donor site and has been shown to be a safe, simple and effective way of avoiding wound dehiscence at the donor site after extended latissimus dorsi flap reconstruction.
+
+Another possible donor site for breast reconstruction is the abdomen.  The TRAM (transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous) flap or its technically distinct variants of microvascular "perforator flaps" like the DIEP/SIEA flaps are all commonly used.  In a TRAM procedure, a portion of the abdominal tissue, which includes skin, subcutaneous fat, minor muscles, and connective tissues, is taken from the patient's abdomen and transplanted to the breast site.  Both TRAM and DIEP/SIEA use the abdominal tissue between the umbilicus (or "belly button") and the pubis. The DIEP flap and free-TRAM flap require advanced microsurgical technique and are less common as a result. Both can provide enough tissue to reconstruct large breasts and are a good option for patients who would prefer to maintain their pre-operative breast volume. These procedures are preferred by some breast cancer patients because removal of the donor site tissue results in an abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) and allow the breast to be reconstructed with one's own tissues instead of a prosthetic implant that uses foreign material.  That said, TRAM flap procedures can potentially weaken the abdominal wall and torso strength, but they are generally well tolerated by most patients.  Perforator techniques such as the DIEP (deep inferior epigastric perforator) flap and SIEA (superficial inferior epigastric artery) flap require precise dissection of small perforating vessels through the rectus muscle and, thus, do not require removal of abdominal muscle.  Because of this, these flaps have the advantage of maintaining the majority of abdominal wall strength.
+
+Other donor sites for autologous breast reconstruction include the buttocks, which provides tissue for the SGAP and IGAP (superior and inferior gluteal artery perforator, respectively) flaps. The purpose of perforator flaps (DIEP, SIEA, SGAP, IGAP) is to provide sufficient skin and fat for an aesthetic reconstruction while minimizing post-operative complications from harvesting the underlying muscles. DIEP reconstruction generally produces the best outcome for most women.  See free flap breast reconstruction for more information.
+
+Mold-assisted reconstruction is a potential adjunctive process to help in flap-based reconstruction.  By using a laser and 3D printer, a patient-specific silicone mold can be used as an aid during surgery, used as a guide for orienting and shaping the flap to improve accuracy and symmetry.
+
+Adjunctive procedures
+To restore the appearance of the pre-operative breast, there are a few options regarding the nipple-areolar complex (NAC):
+ A nipple prosthesis can be used to restore the appearance of the reconstructed breast. Impressions can be made and photographs can be used to accurately replace the nipple lost with some types of mastectomies. This can be instrumental in restoring the psychological well-being of the breast cancer survivor. The same process can be used to replicate the remaining nipple in cases of a single mastectomy. Ideally, a prosthesis is made around the time of the mastectomy and it can be used just weeks after the surgery.
+ Nipple-areolar complex reconstruction can also be performed surgically.  Within the first year following breast reconstruction, flaps can undergo contraction and decrease in size by up to 50%.  Although flaps are made larger initially for this reason, it is hard to accurately predict the final breast volume.  Because of this, NAC reconstruction is considered the very last stage of breast reconstruction, delayed until after breast mound reconstruction is completed (including additional procedures such as fat grafting or excess tissue removal) so that the positioning of the NAC can be planned precisely.  There are several methods of reconstructing the nipple-areolar complex:
+ Nipple Grafting (aka, "Nipple Sharing"): If a patient undergoes a single mastectomy with reconstruction and the opposite breast is preserved, then one option is to remove part of the preserved nipple and transfer it to the reconstructed breast.  This also requires that the patient has sufficient nipple-areolar tissue to be removed as nipple grafting will decrease the native nipple's projection by about 50%.  One of the benefits of this procedure is that the color and texture of the NAC is identical to that of the opposite breast.
+ Local Tissue Flaps: For patients who have undergone bilateral mastectomies (as well as patients receiving a unilateral mastectomy who do not want to pursue nipple grafting), a nipple can be created by raising a small, local flap in the target area and producing a raised mound of skin very similar in shape to a nipple.  To create an areola, a circular incision may be made around the new nipple and sutured back again.  While this option does produce the shape and outline of the NAC, it does not affect the skin color.  To make it appear more natural, the nipple and areolar region may then be tattooed to produce a darker skin color more similar to a natural nipple and areola.
+ Local Tissue Flaps With Use of AlloDerm: As above, a nipple may be created by raising a small flap in the target area and producing a raised mound of skin. AlloDerm (cadaveric dermis) can then be inserted into the core of the new nipple acting like a "strut" which may help maintain the projection of the nipple for a longer period of time. The nipple and areolar region may then be tattooed later. There are, however, some important issues in relation to NAC tattooing that should be considered prior to opting for tattooing, such as the choice of pigments and equipment used for the procedure.
+
+When looking at the entire process of breast reconstruction, patients typically report that NAC reconstruction is the least satisfying step.  Compared to a normal nipple, the reconstructed nipple often has less projection (how far the nipple extends beyond the breast mound) and lacks sensation.  In women who have undergone a single mastectomy with reconstruction, another challenge is aesthetically matching the reconstructed NAC to the native breast.
+
+Outcomes
+The typical outcome of breast reconstruction surgery is a breast mound with a pleasing aesthetic shape, with a texture similar to a natural breast, but which feels completely or mostly numb for the woman herself.  This loss of sensation, called somatosensory loss or the inability to perceive touch, heat, cold, and pain, sometimes results in women burning themselves or injuring themselves without noticing, or not noticing that their clothing has shifted to expose their breasts.  "I can't even feel it when my kids hug me," said one mother, who had nipple-sparing breast reconstruction after a bilateral mastectomy.  The loss of sensation has long-term medical consequences, because it makes the affected women unable to feel itchy rashes, infected sores, cuts, bruises, or situations that risk sunburns or frostbite on the affected areas.
+
+More than half of women treated for breast cancer develop upper quarter dysfunction, including limits on how well they can move, pain in the breast, shoulder or arm, lymphedema, loss of sensation, and impaired strength.  The risk of dysfunction is higher among women who have breast reconstruction surgery. One in three have complications, one in five need further surgery and the procedure fails in 5%.
+
+Some methods have specific side effects.  The transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous (TRAM) flap method results in weakness and loss of flexibility in the abdominal wall.  Reconstruction with implants have a higher risk of long-term pain.
+
+Outcomes-based research on quality of life improvements and psychosocial benefits associated with breast reconstruction  served as the stimulus in the United States for the 1998 Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act, which mandated that health care payer cover breast and nipple reconstruction, contralateral procedures to achieve symmetry, and treatment for the sequelae of mastectomy. This was followed in 2001 by additional legislation imposing penalties on noncompliant insurers. Similar provisions for coverage exist in most countries worldwide through national health care programs.
+
+See also 
+ Flat closure after mastectomy
+ Breast implant
+ Breast lift
+ Breast reduction plasty
+ Free flap breast reconstruction
+ Nipple prosthesis
+
+References
+
+External links 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+
+Breast surgery
+Tattooing and medicine
+Bobby or Bob Diamond may refer to:
+
+Bob Diamond (actor) (1943–2019), American actor and lawyer a/k/a Bobby Diamond and Robert Diamond
+Bob Diamond (banker) (born 1951), Anglo-American business executive
+
+Characters
+Bob Diamond (comics), Marvel Comics character since 1974
+Bob Diamond, played by Rip Torn in 1991 American film Defending Your Life
+
+See also
+Bobby Dimond (1930–2020), Australian rugby league footballer
+The Brooklyn Historic Railway Association (BHRA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a shop, trolley barn and offices located in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York, on the historic Beard Street Piers (c. 1870). BHRA had a fleet of 16 trolleys (15 PCC trolleys and a leased 1897 trolley car from the Oslo Trams, in Oslo, Norway).
+
+History of project 
+The BHRA's origin began with the rediscovery of the Cobble Hill Tunnel by the late Bob Diamond in 1980. BHRA was formed in 1982 to restore the historic tunnel. The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel (constructed in 1844) is the world's oldest subway tunnel. BHRA successfully filed and received designation for the tunnel on the National Register of Historic Places.
+
+The BHRA received funding and permission from the city to construct a light rail route in Red Hook. However, the project was hampered due to the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) withdrawing its support from the project. The DOT identified several potential improvements which did not include a streetcar however, that would improve access and mobility for neighborhood residents. Construction was stopped on a 7-block extension to the line due to the removal and scrapping of rails, ties, and other items of railroad equipment by the DOT, which were stored on land that was slated for the Fairway supermarket project.
+
+On June 30, 2003, BHRA was ordered to remove and fill in all trolley tracks on public streets by the DOT.  The DOT revoked consent for the project to proceed or exist on city streets.  Shortly thereafter, BHRA completely ceased operation. All the PCC trolleys except for No. 3303 were removed from Brooklyn.
+ 
+The BHRA ran organized tours of the Cobble Hill Tunnel from time to time, but all tours are currently suspended.
+
+Bob Diamond died on 21 August 2021, with his death confirmed by articles in the NY Times, NY Dailey News and The Brooklyn Eagle newspapers.
+
+See also
+ Cobble Hill Tunnel
+ Brooklyn–Queens Connector
+
+References
+
+External links
+
+Forgotten New York
+
+Streetcar lines in Brooklyn
+A  beta-lactam (β-lactam) ring is a four-membered lactam. A lactam is a cyclic amide, and beta-lactams are named so because the nitrogen atom is attached to the β-carbon atom relative to the carbonyl. The simplest β-lactam possible is 2-azetidinone.  β-lactams are significant structural units of medicines as manifested in many β-lactam antibiotics Up to 1970, most β-lactam research was concerned with the penicillin and cephalosporin groups, but since then, a wide variety of structures have been described.
+
+Clinical significance
+
+The β-lactam ring is part of the core structure of several antibiotic families, the principal ones being the penicillins, cephalosporins, carbapenems, and monobactams, which are, therefore, also called β-lactam antibiotics. Nearly all of these antibiotics work by inhibiting bacterial cell wall biosynthesis. This has a lethal effect on bacteria, although any given bacteria population will typically contain a subgroup that is resistant to β-lactam antibiotics. Bacterial resistance occurs as a result of the expression of one of many genes for the production of β-lactamases, a class of enzymes that break open the β-lactam ring. More than 1,800 different β-lactamase enzymes have been documented in various species of bacteria. These enzymes vary widely in their chemical structure and catalytic efficiencies. When bacterial populations have these resistant subgroups, treatment with β-lactam can result in the resistant strain becoming more prevalent and therefore more virulent. β-lactam derived antibiotics can be considered one of the most important antibiotic classes but prone to clinical resistance. β-lactam exhibits its antibiotic properties by imitating the naturally occurring d-Ala-d-Ala substrate for the group of enzymes known as penicillin binding proteins (PBP), which have as function to cross-link the peptidoglycan part of the cell wall of the bacteria.
+
+The β-lactam ring is also found in some other drugs such as the cholesterol absorption inhibitor drug Ezetimibe.
+
+Synthesis
+The first synthetic β-lactam was prepared by Hermann Staudinger in 1907 by reaction of the Schiff base of aniline and benzaldehyde with diphenylketene in a [2+2] cycloaddition (Ph indicates a phenyl functional group):
+
+Many methods have been developed for the synthesis of β-lactams.
+
+The Breckpot β-lactam synthesis produces substituted β-lactams by the cyclization of beta amino acid esters by use of a Grignard reagent. Mukaiyama's reagent is also used in modified Breckpot synthesis.
+
+Reactions
+Due to ring strain, β-lactams are more readily hydrolyzed than linear amides or larger lactams. This strain is further increased by fusion to a second ring, as found in most β-lactam antibiotics. This trend is due to the amide character of the β-lactam being reduced by the aplanarity of the system. The nitrogen atom of an ideal amide is sp2-hybridized due to resonance, and sp2-hybridized atoms have trigonal planar bond geometry. As a pyramidal bond geometry is forced upon the nitrogen atom by the ring strain, the resonance of the amide bond is reduced, and the carbonyl becomes more ketone-like. Nobel laureate Robert Burns Woodward described a parameter h as a measure of the height of the trigonal pyramid defined by the nitrogen (as the apex) and its three adjacent atoms. h corresponds to the strength of the β-lactam bond with lower numbers (more planar; more like ideal amides) being stronger and less reactive. Monobactams have h values between 0.05 and 0.10 angstroms (Å). Cephems have h values in of 0.20–0.25 Å. Penams have values in the range 0.40–0.50 Å, while carbapenems and clavams have values of 0.50–0.60 Å, being the most reactive of the β-lactams toward hydrolysis.
+
+See also 
+ Azetidine
+ Lactone
+ Lectka enantioselective beta-lactam synthesis
+
+References
+
+External links 
+ Synthesis of β-lactams
+
+Beta-lactams
+Four-membered rings
+The Prince-Bishopric of Brandenburg () was an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire from the 12th century until it was secularized during the second half of the 16th century. It should not be confused with the larger Diocese of Brandenburg () established by King Otto I of Germany in 948, in the territory of the Marca Geronis (Saxon Eastern March) east of the Elbe river. The diocese, over which the prince-bishop exercised only spiritual authority, was a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Magdeburg, its seat was Brandenburg an der Havel.
+
+The Prince-Bishopric of Brandenburg was an imperial estate of the Holy Roman Empire for some time, probably starting about 1161/1165. However, the Brandenburg bishops never managed to gain control over a significant territory, being overshadowed by the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which was originally seated in the same city. Chapter and cathedral, surrounded by further ecclesiastical institutions, were located on the Dominsel (Cathedral Island), which formed a prince-episcopal cathedral immunity district (Domfreiheit), distinct from the city of Brandenburg. Only in 1929 the - meanwhile former - immunity district was incorporated into the city itself.
+
+History
+ 
+The foundation charter of the Brandenburg diocese is dated 1 October 948, though the actual founding date remained disputed among historians. The medieval chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg mentions the year 938; the bishopric may also have been established in the course of the partition of the vast Marca Geronis and the emergence of the Northern March after Margrave Gero's death in 965. With the foundation, King Otto (Holy Roman Emperor from 962) aimed at the Christianization of the Polabian Slavs (Wends) and the incorporation of their territory into the East Frankish realm.
+
+Brandenburg was originally a suffragan of the Archbishopric of Mainz, but in 968 it came under the jurisdiction of the Magdeburg archbishops. The Great Slav Rising of 983 practically annihilated it, when revolting Lutici tribes conquered Brandenburg and the neighbouring Bishopric of Havelberg. Brandenburg bishops continued to be appointed, but they were merely titular, residing in Magdeburg or acting as auxiliary bishops in the western territories of the Empire. Not until the final subjugation of the Wends in the 12th century by Margrave Albert the Bear, the German eastward settlement (Ostsiedlung) in the diocesan region revived the bishopric.
+
+Bishop Wigers of Brandenburg (acting 1138–60), an adherent of Norbert of Xanten, was the first of a series of bishops of the Premonstratensian Order, which chose the occupants of the episcopal see until 1447; in that year a bull of Pope Nicholas V gave the right of nomination to the Brandenburg elector, with whom the bishops stood in a close feudal relation. Bishop Wigers also established a Premonstratensian convent at Leitzkau (today part of Gommern, Saxony-Anhalt). Probably at the request of the Hevellian prince Pribislav-Henry, he established another convent at the Slavic Parduin settlement in present-day Brandenburg an der Havel, which became the nucleus of the revived Brandenburg cathedral chapter. The incorporation into the Premonstratensian Order was confirmed by Pope Clement III in 1188.
+ 
+As rulers of imperial immediacy, regnant in a, however, dispersed territory partitioned into the four bailiwicks () of Brandenburg/Havel, Ketzin, Teltow and Ziesar. The prince-bishops from the early 14th century onwards resided in their fortress in Ziesar on the road to Magdeburg. The last actual bishop was Matthias von Jagow (d. 1544), who took the side of the Protestant Reformation, married, and in every way furthered the undertakings of the Hohenzollern elector Joachim II.
+
+There were two more nominal bishops, but on the petition of the latter of these, the electoral prince John George of Brandenburg appointed in 1560, the secularisation of the bishopric was undertaken and finally accomplished in 1571, in spite of legal proceedings to reassert the imperial immediacy of the prince-bishopric within the Empire and so to likewise preserve the diocese, which dragged on into the 17th century.
+
+Bishops of Brandenburg
+ 949–968: Dietmar
+ 968–980: Dodilo
+ 980–1004: Volkmar
+ 992–1018: Wigo
+ 1022–1032: Luizo
+ 1032-1048: Rudolf
+ 1048–1051: Dankwart
+ 1068–1080: Dietrich I
+ 1080–1092: Volkmar II
+ 1100–1122: Hartbert
+ 1124–1137: Ludolf
+ 1137–1138: Landbert
+
+Prince-bishops
+ 1138–1160: Wiggar
+ 1160–1173: Wilman
+ 1173–1179: Sigfried I
+ 1179–1190: Baldran
+ 1190–1192: Alexius
+ 1192–1205: Norbert
+ 1205–1216: Baldwin
+ 1216–1220: Siegfried II
+ 1221–1222: Ludolf von Schanebeck, claimant, but not enthroned
+ 1221–1222: Wichmann von Arnstein, counter-claimant, also not enthroned
+ 1222–1241: Gernot
+ 1241–1251: Rutger von Ammendorf
+ 1251–1261: Otto von Mehringen
+ 1261–1278: Heinrich I von Osthenen (or Ostheeren)
+ 1278–1287: Gebhard
+ 1287–1290: Heidenreich
+ 1290–1291: Richard, refused the appointment
+ 1291–1296: Dietrich, not enthroned
+ 1296–1302: Vollrad von Krempa
+ 1303–1316: Friedrich von Plötzkau
+ 1316–1324: Johann I von Tuchen
+ 1324–1327: Heinrich II Count of Barby, not enthroned
+ 1327–1347: Ludwig Schenk von Reindorf (or Neuendorf)
+ 1347–1365: Dietrich II Kothe
+ 1366–1393: Dietrich III von der Schulenburg
+ 1393–1406: Heinrich III von Bodendiek (or Bodendieck)
+ 1406–1414: Henning von Bredow
+ 1414: Friedrich von Grafeneck, Prince-Bishop of Augsburg 1413–1414
+ 1415–1420: Johann von Waldow, Bishop of Lebus 1420–1423
+ 1420: Friedrich von Grafeneck, again
+ 1421–1459: Stephan Bodecker
+ 1459–1472: Dietrich IV von Stechow
+ 1472–1485: Arnold von Burgsdorff
+ 1485–1507: Joachim I von Bredow
+ 1507–1520: Hieronymus Schulz (or Scultetus), Bishop of Havelberg 1521–1522
+ 1520–1526: Dietrich V von Hardenberg
+
+Lutheran bishops
+ 1526–1544: Matthias von Jagow
+ 1544–1546: Sede vacante
+ 1546–1560: Joachim of Münsterberg-Oels
+ 1560–1569/71: John George of Brandenburg, regent (Verweser)
+ 1569/71: Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg
+Secularized and merged into Brandenburg.
+
+See also 
+ List of Former Roman Catholic dioceses of Germany
+
+References
+ 
+
+Brandenburg Diocese
+Brandenburg Bishopric
+Brandenburg
+Brandenburg Diocese
+Brandenburg
+Former states and territories of Brandenburg
+Brandenburg an der Havel
+10th-century establishments in Germany
+BASE jumping () is the recreational sport of jumping from fixed objects, using a parachute to descend safely to the ground. "BASE" is an acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: buildings, antennae (referring to radio masts), spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs). Participants exit from a fixed object such as a cliff, and after an optional freefall delay, deploy a parachute to slow their descent and land. A popular form of BASE jumping is wingsuit BASE jumping.
+
+In contrast to other forms of parachuting, such as skydiving from airplanes, BASE jumps are performed from fixed objects which are generally at much lower altitudes, and BASE jumpers only carry one parachute.
+BASE jumping is significantly more hazardous than other forms of parachuting, and is widely considered to be one of the most dangerous extreme sports.
+
+History
+
+Precursors 
+Fausto Veranzio is widely believed to have been the first person to build and test a parachute, by jumping from St Mark's Campanile in Venice in 1617 when he was over 65 years old. However, these and other sporadic incidents were one-time experiments, not the actual systematic pursuit of a new form of parachuting.
+
+Birth of B.A.S.E. jumping 
+There are precursors to the sport dating back hundreds of years. In 1966, Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert jumped from El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. The acronym "B.A.S.E." (now more commonly "BASE") was later coined by filmmaker Carl Boenish, his wife Jean Boenish, Phil Smith, and Phil Mayfield. Carl Boenish was an important catalyst behind modern BASE jumping, and in 1978 he filmed jumps from El Capitan, made using ram-air parachutes and the freefall tracking technique. While BASE jumps had been made prior to that time, the El Capitan activity was the effective birth of what is now called BASE jumping.
+
+After 1978, the filmed jumps from El Capitan were repeated, not as an actual publicity exercise or as a movie stunt, but as a true recreational activity. It was this that popularized BASE jumping more widely among parachutists. Carl Boenish continued to publish films and informational magazines on BASE jumping until his death in 1984 after a BASE jump off the Troll Wall. By this time, the concept had spread among skydivers worldwide, with hundreds of participants making fixed-object jumps.
+
+During the early eighties, nearly all BASE jumps were made using standard skydiving equipment, including two parachutes (main and reserve), and deployment components. Later on, specialized equipment and techniques were developed specifically for the unique needs of BASE jumping.
+
+BASE numbers 
+BASE numbers are awarded to those who have made at least one jump from each of the four categories (buildings, antennae, spans and earth). When Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield jumped together from a Houston skyscraper on 18 January 1981, they became the first to attain the exclusive BASE numbers (BASE #1 and #2, respectively), having already jumped from an antenna, spans, and earthen objects. Jean and Carl Boenish qualified for BASE numbers 3 and 4 soon after. A separate "award" was soon enacted for Night BASE jumping when Mayfield completed each category at night, becoming Night BASE #1, with Smith qualifying a few weeks later.
+
+Upon completing a jump from all of the four object categories, a jumper may choose to apply for a "BASE number", awarded sequentially. The 1000th application for a BASE number was filed in March 2005 and BASE #1000 was awarded to Matt "Harley" Moilanen of Grand Rapids, Michigan. , over 2,000 BASE numbers have been issued.
+
+Equipment 
+In the early days of BASE jumping, people used modified skydiving gear, such as by removing the deployment bag and slider, stowing the lines in a tail pocket, and fitting a large pilot chute. However, modified skydiving gear is then prone to kinds of malfunction that are rare in normal skydiving (such as "line-overs" and broken lines). Modern purpose-built BASE jumping equipment is considered to be much safer and more reliable.
+
+Parachute 
+The biggest difference in gear is that skydivers jump with both a main and a reserve parachute, while BASE jumpers carry only one parachute. BASE jumping parachutes are larger than skydiving parachutes and are typically flown with a wing loading of around . Vents are one element that make a parachute suitable for BASE jumping. BASE jumpers often use extra large pilot chutes to compensate for lower airspeed parachute deployments. On jumps from lower altitudes, the slider is removed for faster parachute opening.
+
+Harness and container 
+BASE jumpers use a single-parachute harness and container system. Since there is only a single parachute, BASE jumping containers are mechanically much simpler than skydiving containers. This simplicity contributes to the safety and reliability of BASE jumping gear by eliminating many malfunctions that can occur with more complicated skydiving equipment. Since there is no reserve parachute, there is little need to cut-away their parachute, many BASE harnesses do not contain a 3-ring release system. A modern ultralight BASE system including parachute, container, and harness can weigh as little as .
+
+Clothing 
+When jumping from high mountains, BASE jumpers will often use special clothing to improve control and flight characteristics in the air. Wingsuit flying has become a popular form of BASE jumping in recent years, that allows jumpers to glide over long horizontal distances. Tracking suits inflate like wingsuits to give additional lift to jumpers, but maintain separation of arms and legs to allow for greater mobility and safety.
+
+Technique 
+
+BASE jumps can be broadly classified into low jumps and high jumps. The primary distinguishing characteristic of low BASE jumps versus high BASE jumps is the use of a slider reefing device to control the opening speed of the parachute, and whether the jumper falls long enough to reach terminal velocity.
+
+Low BASE jumps 
+Low BASE jumps are those where the jumper does not reach terminal velocity. Sometimes referred to as "slider down" jumps because they are typically performed without a slider reefing device on the parachute. The lack of a slider enables the parachute to open more quickly. Other techniques for low BASE jumps include the use of a static line, direct bag, or PCA (pilot chute assist). These devices form an attachment between the parachute and the jump platform, which stretches out the parachute and suspension lines as the jumper falls, before separating and allowing the parachute to inflate. This enables the very lowest jumps—below  to be made. It is common in the UK to jump from around the  mark, due to the number of low cliffs at this height. Basejumpers have been known to jump from objects as low as , which leaves little to no canopy time and requires an immediate flare to land safely.
+
+High BASE jumps 
+
+Many BASE jumpers are motivated to make jumps from higher objects involving free fall. High BASE jumps are those which are high enough for the jumper to reach terminal velocity. High BASE jumps are often called "slider up" jumps due to the use of a slider reefing device.
+High BASE jumps present different hazards than low BASE jumps. With greater height and airspeed, jumpers can fly away from the cliff during freefall, allowing them to deploy their parachute far away from the cliff they jumped from and significantly reduce the chance of object striking. However, high BASE jumps also present new hazards such as complications resulting from the use of a wingsuit.
+
+Tandem BASE jumps 
+Tandem BASE jumping is when a skilled pilot jumps with a passenger attached to their front. It is similar to skydiving and is offered in the US. Tandem BASE is becoming a more accessible and legal form of BASE jumping.
+
+Records 
+ Lowest
+ Felix Baumgartner jumped from Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and claimed the world record for the lowest BASE jump ever, jumping from .
+
+ Biggest
+ Guinness World Records first listed a BASE jumping record with Carl Boenish's 1984 leap from Trollveggen (Troll Wall) in Norway. It was described as the highest BASE jump. The jump was made two days before Boenish's death at the same site.
+
+ Highest altitude
+ On August 26, 1992, Australians Nic Feteris and Glenn Singleman made a BASE jump from an altitude of  jump off Great Trango Towers Pakistan. It was the world's highest BASE jump off the earth at the time.
+
+On May 23, 2006, Australians Glenn Singleman and Heather Swan made a BASE jump from an altitude of  off Mount Meru in Northern India. They jumped in wingsuits.
+
+On May 5, 2013, Russian Valery Rozov jumped off Changtse (the northern peak of the Mount Everest massif) from a height of . Using a specially-developed Red Bull wingsuit, he glided down to the Rongbuk glacier more than 1,000 meters below, setting a new world record for highest altitude base jump. He had previously jumped off mountains in Asia, Antarctica and South America in 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2012. 
+
+On October 5, 2016, Rozov broke his own record for highest altitude BASE jump when he leapt from a height of  from Cho Oyu, the sixth-highest mountain in the world, landing on a glacier approximately two minutes later at an altitude of around . He later died while attempting another high-altitude BASE jump in Nepal in 2017.
+
+ Other
+ Other records include Captain Daniel G. Schilling setting the Guinness World Record for the most BASE jumps in a twenty-four-hour period. Schilling jumped off the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, a record 201 times on July 8, 2006. In 2018 at Eikesdalen, Norway a world record was set with 69 BASE jumpers jumping from the cliff Katthammaren.
+
+Competitions 
+BASE competitions have been held since the early 1980s, with accurate landings or free-fall aerobatics used as the judging criteria. Recent years have seen a formal competition held at the  high Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, judged on landing accuracy. In 2012 the World Wingsuit League held their first wingsuit BASE jumping competition in China.
+
+Notable jumps
+ February 2, 1912, Frederick R. Law parachuted from the top of the torch of the Statue of Liberty, 305 ft above the ground.
+ February 4, 1912, Franz Reichelt, tailor, jumped from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower testing his invention, the coat parachute, and died when he hit the ground. It was his first-ever attempt with the parachute and both the authorities and the spectators believed he intended to test it using a dummy.
+ In 1913, it is claimed that Štefan Banič successfully jumped from a 15-story building to demonstrate his parachute design.
+ In 1913, Russian student Vladimir Ossovski (Владимир Оссовский), from the Saint-Petersburg Conservatory, jumped from the 53-meter high bridge over the river Seine in Rouen (France), using the parachute RK-1, invented a year before that by Gleb Kotelnikov (1872–1944). Ossovski planned to jump from the Eiffel Tower too, but the Parisian authorities did not allow it.
+ In 1965, Erich Felbermayr from Wels jumped from the Kleine Zinne / Cima piccola di Lavaredo in the Dolomites.
+ In 1966, Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert jumped from El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley.
+ On January 31, 1972, Rick Sylvester skied off Yosemite Valley's El Capitan, making the first ski-BASE jump.
+ On November 9, 1975, the first person to parachute off the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was Bill Eustace, a member of the tower's construction crew. He was fired.
+ On July 22, 1975, Owen J. Quinn parachuted from the North Tower of the World Trade Center to publicize the plight of the poor.
+ In 1976, Rick Sylvester skied off Canada's Mount Asgard for the ski chase sequence of the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, giving the wider world its first look at BASE jumping.
+ In 1979, Santee, California skydiver Roger Worthington completed one of the first "Span" jumps when he successfully parachuted off of the newly constructed 450 foot Pine Valley Creek Bridge (A.K.A. Nello Irwin Greer Memorial Bridge) on Interstate 8 in San Diego County. Upon take off he held a red smoke flare in each hand. When interviewed afterward he claimed to know of no other "bridge jumpers" in the country.
+ On February 22, 1982, Wayne Allwood, an Australian skydiving accuracy champion, parachuted from a helicopter over the Sydney CBD and landed on the small top area of Sydney's Centrepoint Tower, approximately  above the ground. Upon landing, Allwood discarded and secured his parachute, then used a full-sized reserve parachute to BASE jump into Hyde Park below.
+ In 1986, Welshman Eric Jones became the first person to BASE jump from the Eiger.
+ On October 22, 1999, Jan Davis died while attempting a BASE jump from El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. Davis' jump was part of an organized act of civil disobedience protesting the NPS air delivery regulations (36 CFR 2.17(a)), which make BASE jumping illegal in national park areas.
+ In 2000, Hannes Arch and Ueli Gegenschatz were the first to BASE jump from the 1800-metre-high north face of the Eiger.
+ In 2005, Karina Hollekim became the first woman to perform a ski-BASE.
+ In 2009, three women—29-year-old Australian Livia Dickie, 28-year-old Venezuelan Ana Isabel Dao, and 32-year-old Norwegian Anniken Binz—BASE jumped from Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world.
+ On September 11, 2013, the first Suspension BASE jump was made (Power tower in Konakovo)
+ In September 2013, three men parachuted off the then-under-construction One World Trade Center in New York City. Footage of their jump was recorded using head cams and can be seen on YouTube. In March 2014, the three jumpers turned themselves in. They were sentenced to community service and a fine.
+
+Comparison with skydiving
+
+BASE jumps are typically performed from much lower altitudes than in skydiving. Skydivers are required to deploy their main parachute above  altitude. BASE jumps are frequently made from less than . A BASE jump from a  object is only about 5.6 seconds from the ground if the jumper remains in free fall. Standard skydiving parachute systems are not designed for this situation, so BASE jumpers use specially designed harnesses and parachute systems.
+
+Many BASE jumps, particularly in the UK are made from around 150ft due to the number of low cliffs at this height. Jumpers will use a static line method to ensure their canopy is extracted as they jump, as at this height, it is too low to freefall.
+
+BASE jumps generally entail slower airspeeds than typical skydives (due to the limited altitude), a BASE jumper does not always reach terminal velocity. Skydivers use the airflow to stabilize their position. BASE jumpers, falling at lower speeds, have less aerodynamic control. The attitude of the body at the moment of jumping determines the stability of flight in the first few seconds, before sufficient airspeed has built up to enable aerodynamic stability. On low BASE jumps, parachute deployment takes place during this early phase of flight. If the parachute is deployed while the jumper is unstable, there is a high risk of entanglement or malfunction. The jumper may also not be facing the right direction. Such an off-heading opening is not as problematic in skydiving, but an off-heading opening that results in object strike has caused many serious injuries and deaths in BASE jumping.
+
+BASE jumps are more hazardous than skydives primarily due to proximity to the object serving as the jump platform. BASE jumping frequently occurs in mountainous terrain, often having much smaller areas in which to land in comparison to a typical skydiving dropzone. BASE jumping is significantly more dangerous than similar sports such as skydiving from aircraft.
+
+Legality 
+
+BASE jumping is generally not illegal in most places. However, in some cases such as building and antenna jumps, jumping is often done covertly without the permission of owners, which can lead to charges such as trespassing. In some jurisdictions it may be permissible to use land until specifically told not to. The Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, is an example of a man-made structure in the United States where BASE jumping is allowed year-round without a permit.
+
+In U.S. National Parks, BASE jumping is generally prohibited, unless special permission is given. Other U.S. public land, including land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, does not ban air delivery, and there are numerous jumpable objects on BLM land.
+
+The legal position is different at other sites and in other countries. For example, in Norway's Lysefjord (from the mountain Kjerag), BASE jumpers are made welcome. Many sites in the European Alps, near Chamonix and on the Eiger, are also open to jumpers. Some other Norwegian places, like the Troll Wall, are banned because of dangerous rescue missions in the past. In Austria, jumping from mountain cliffs is generally allowed, whereas the use of bridges (such as the Europabruecke near Innsbruck, Tirol) or dams is generally prohibited. Australia has some of the toughest stances on BASE jumping: it specifically bans BASE jumping from certain objects, such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
+
+U.S. National Parks 
+The National Park Service has banned BASE jumping in U.S. National Parks. The authority comes from 36 CFR 2.17(3), which prohibits, "Delivering or retrieving a person or object by parachute, helicopter, or other airborne means, except in emergencies involving public safety or serious property loss, or pursuant to the terms and conditions of a permit." Under that Regulation, BASE is not banned, but is allowable if a permit is issued by the Superintendent. The 2001 National Park Service Management Policies state that BASE "is not an appropriate public use activity within national park areas ..." (2001 Management Policy 8.2.2.7.) However, Policy 8.2.2.7 in the 2006 volume of National Park Service Management Policies, which superseded the 2001 edition, states "Parachuting (or BASE jumping), whether from an aircraft, structure, or natural feature, is generally prohibited by 36 CFR 2.17(a)(3). However, if determined through a park planning process to be an appropriate activity, it may be allowed pursuant to the terms and conditions of a permit."
+
+Once a year, on the third Saturday in October ("Bridge Day"), permission to BASE jump has explicitly been granted at the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayetteville, West Virginia. The New River Gorge Bridge deck is 876 feet (267 m) above the river. This annual event attracts about 450 BASE jumpers and nearly 200,000 spectators. 1,100 jumps may occur during the six hours that it is legal, providing conditions are suitable.
+
+During the early days of BASE jumping, the NPS issued permits that authorized jumps from El Capitan. This program ran for three months in 1980 and then collapsed amid allegations of abuse by unauthorized jumpers. The NPS has since vigorously enforced the ban, charging jumpers with "aerial delivery into a National Park". One jumper drowned in the Merced River while evading arresting park rangers, having declared "No way are they gonna get me. Let them chase me—I'll just laugh in their faces and jump in the river". Despite incidents like this one, illegal jumps continue in Yosemite at a rate estimated at a few hundred per year, often at night or dawn. El Capitan, Half Dome, and Glacier Point have been used as jump sites.
+
+Safety 
+
+A study of BASE jumping fatalities estimated that the overall annual fatality risk in 2002 was one fatality per 60 participants. A study of 20,850 BASE jumps from the Kjerag Massif in Norway reported nine fatalities over the 11-year period from 1995 to 2005, or one in every 2,317 jumps. However, at that site, one in every 254 jumps over that period resulted in a nonfatal accident. BASE jumping is one of the most dangerous recreational activities in the world, with a fatality and injury rate 43 times higher than that of parachuting from a plane.
+
+, the BASE Fatality List records 444 deaths for BASE jumping since April 1981.
+
+References
+
+Further reading
+ The Great Book of BASE. BirdBrain Publishing. July 2010.
+ "The Ground's the Limit". Texas Monthly. December 1981.
+
+External links
+
+ Parachuting from fixed objects: descriptive study of 106 fatal events in BASE jumping 1981–2006
+ Luigi Cani base jumps off a cliff
+ A Sport to Die For ESPN, Michael Abrams
+ First Dog Ever To BaseJump
+ BASE Jumping adventures in the UK & Europe during the late 1980s, 1990s & early 2000s by Doug Blane
+ Resources for Base Jumping 
+
+Air sports
+Articles containing video clips
+Jumping sports
+Outdoor recreation
+Parachuting
+Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes these objects pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, one of the major branches of philosophy. As a positive aesthetic value, it is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. 
+
+One difficulty in understanding beauty is because it has both objective and subjective aspects: it is seen as a property of things but also as depending on the emotional response of observers. Because of its subjective side, beauty is said to be "in the eye of the beholder". It has been argued that the ability on the side of the subject needed to perceive and judge beauty, sometimes referred to as the "sense of taste", can be trained and that the verdicts of experts coincide in the long run. This would suggest that the standards of validity of judgments of beauty are intersubjective, i.e. dependent on a group of judges, rather than fully subjective or fully objective.
+
+Conceptions of beauty aim to capture what is essential to all beautiful things. Classical conceptions define beauty in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. Hedonist conceptions see a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful is for it to cause disinterested pleasure. Other conceptions include defining beautiful objects in terms of their value, of a loving attitude towards them or of their function.
+
+Overview 
+Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, one of the major branches of philosophy. Beauty is usually categorized as an aesthetic property besides other properties, like grace, elegance or the sublime. As a positive aesthetic value, beauty is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Beauty is often listed as one of the three fundamental concepts of human understanding besides truth and goodness.
+
+Objectivists or realists see beauty as an objective or mind-independent feature of beautiful things, which is denied by subjectivists. The source of this debate is that judgments of beauty seem to be based on subjective grounds, namely our feelings, while claiming universal correctness at the same time. This tension is sometimes referred to as the "antinomy of taste". Adherents of both sides have suggested that a certain faculty, commonly called a sense of taste, is necessary for making reliable judgments about beauty. David Hume, for example, suggests that this faculty can be trained and that the verdicts of experts coincide in the long run.
+
+Beauty is mainly discussed in relation to concrete objects accessible to sensory perception. It has been suggested that the beauty of a thing supervenes on the sensory features of this thing. It has also been proposed that abstract objects like stories or mathematical proofs can be beautiful. Beauty plays a central role in works of art and nature. 
+
+An influential distinction among beautiful things, according to Immanuel Kant, is that between dependent and free beauty. A thing has dependent beauty if its beauty depends on the conception or function of this thing, unlike free or absolute beauty. Examples of dependent beauty include an ox which is beautiful as an ox but not beautiful as a horse or a photograph which is beautiful, because it depicts a beautiful building but that lacks beauty generally speaking because of its low quality.
+
+Objectivism and subjectivism 
+
+Judgments of beauty seem to occupy an intermediary position between objective judgments, e.g. concerning the mass and shape of a grapefruit, and subjective likes, e.g. concerning whether the grapefruit tastes good. Judgments of beauty differ from the former because they are based on subjective feelings rather than objective perception. But they also differ from the latter because they lay claim on universal correctness. This tension is also reflected in common language. On the one hand, we talk about beauty as an objective feature of the world that is ascribed, for example, to landscapes, paintings or humans. The subjective side, on the other hand, is expressed in sayings like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
+
+These two positions are often referred to as objectivism (or realism) and subjectivism. Objectivism is the traditional view, while subjectivism developed more recently in western philosophy. Objectivists hold that beauty is a mind-independent feature of things. On this account, the beauty of a landscape is independent of who perceives it or whether it is perceived at all. Disagreements may be explained by an inability to perceive this feature, sometimes referred to as a "lack of taste". Subjectivism, on the other hand, denies the mind-independent existence of beauty. Influential for the development of this position was John Locke's distinction between primary qualities, which the object has independent of the observer, and secondary qualities, which constitute powers in the object to produce certain ideas in the observer. When applied to beauty, there is still a sense in which it depends on the object and its powers. But this account makes the possibility of genuine disagreements about claims of beauty implausible, since the same object may produce very different ideas in distinct observers. The notion of "taste" can still be used to explain why different people disagree about what is beautiful, but there is no objectively right or wrong taste, there are just different tastes.
+
+The problem with both the objectivist and the subjectivist position in their extreme form is that each has to deny some intuitions about beauty. This issue is sometimes discussed under the label "antinomy of taste". It has prompted various philosophers to seek a unified theory that can take all these intuitions into account. One promising route to solve this problem is to move from subjective to intersubjective theories, which hold that the standards of validity of judgments of taste are intersubjective or dependent on a group of judges rather than objective. This approach tries to explain how genuine disagreement about beauty is possible despite the fact that beauty is a mind-dependent property, dependent not on an individual but a group. A closely related theory sees beauty as a secondary or response-dependent property. On one such account, an object is beautiful "if it causes pleasure by virtue of its aesthetic properties". The problem that different people respond differently can be addressed by combining response-dependence theories with so-called ideal-observer theories: it only matters how an ideal observer would respond. There is no general agreement on how "ideal observers" are to be defined, but it is usually assumed that they are experienced judges of beauty with a fully developed sense of taste. This suggests an indirect way of solving the antinomy of taste: instead of looking for necessary and sufficient conditions of beauty itself, one can learn to identify the qualities of good critics and rely on their judgments. This approach only works if unanimity among experts was ensured. But even experienced judges may disagree in their judgments, which threatens to undermine ideal-observer theories.
+
+Conceptions 
+Various conceptions of the essential features of beautiful things have been proposed but there is no consensus as to which is the right one.
+
+Classical 
+The "classical conception" defines beauty in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. On this account, which found its most explicit articulation in the Italian Renaissance, the beauty of a human body, for example, depends, among other things, on the right proportion of the different parts of the body and on the overall symmetry. One problem with this conception is that it is difficult to give a general and detailed description of what is meant by "harmony between parts" and raises the suspicion that defining beauty through harmony results in exchanging one unclear term for another one. Some attempts have been made to dissolve this suspicion by searching for laws of beauty, like the golden ratio.
+
+18th century philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, for example, saw laws of beauty in analogy with laws of nature and believed that they could be discovered through empirical research. As of 2003, these attempts have failed to find a general definition of beauty and several authors take the opposite claim that such laws cannot be formulated, as part of their definition of beauty.
+
+Hedonism 
+
+A very common element in many conceptions of beauty is its relation to pleasure. Hedonism makes this relation part of the definition of beauty by holding that there is a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful is for it to cause pleasure or that the experience of beauty is always accompanied by pleasure. This account is sometimes labeled as "aesthetic hedonism" in order to distinguish it from other forms of hedonism. An influential articulation of this position comes from Thomas Aquinas, who treats beauty as "that which pleases in the very apprehension of it". Immanuel Kant explains this pleasure through a harmonious interplay between the faculties of understanding and imagination. A further question for hedonists is how to explain the relation between beauty and pleasure. This problem is akin to the Euthyphro dilemma: is something beautiful because we enjoy it or do we enjoy it because it is beautiful? Identity theorists solve this problem by denying that there is a difference between beauty and pleasure: they identify beauty, or the appearance of it, with the experience of aesthetic pleasure.
+
+Hedonists usually restrict and specify the notion of pleasure in various ways in order to avoid obvious counterexamples. One important distinction in this context is the difference between pure and mixed pleasure. Pure pleasure excludes any form of pain or unpleasant feeling while the experience of mixed pleasure can include unpleasant elements. But beauty can involve mixed pleasure, for example, in the case of a beautifully tragic story, which is why mixed pleasure is usually allowed in hedonist conceptions of beauty.
+
+Another problem faced by hedonist theories is that we take pleasure from many things that are not beautiful. One way to address this issue is to associate beauty with a special type of pleasure: aesthetic or disinterested pleasure. A pleasure is disinterested if it is indifferent to the existence of the beautiful object or if it did not arise owing to an antecedent desire through means-end reasoning. For example, the joy of looking at a beautiful landscape would still be valuable if it turned out that this experience was an illusion, which would not be true if this joy was due to seeing the landscape as a valuable real estate opportunity. Opponents of hedonism usually concede that many experiences of beauty are pleasurable but deny that this is true for all cases. For example, a cold jaded critic may still be a good judge of beauty because of her years of experience but lack the joy that initially accompanied her work. One way to avoid this objection is to allow responses to beautiful things to lack pleasure while insisting that all beautiful things merit pleasure, that aesthetic pleasure is the only appropriate response to them.
+
+Others 
+G. E. Moore explained beauty in regard to intrinsic value as "that of which the admiring contemplation is good in itself". This definition connects beauty to experience while managing to avoid some of the problems usually associated with subjectivist positions since it allows that things may be beautiful even if they are never experienced. 
+
+Another subjectivist theory of beauty comes from George Santayana, who suggested that we project pleasure onto the things we call "beautiful". So in a process akin to a category mistake, one treats one's subjective pleasure as an objective property of the beautiful thing. Other conceptions include defining beauty in terms of a loving or longing attitude towards the beautiful object or in terms of its usefulness or function. In 1871, functionalist Charles Darwin explained beauty as result of accumulative sexual selection in "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex".
+
+In philosophy
+
+Greco-Roman tradition
+The classical Greek noun that best translates to the English-language words "beauty" or "beautiful" was κάλλος, kallos, and the adjective was καλός, kalos. However, kalos may and is also translated as "good" or "of fine quality" and thus has a broader meaning than mere physical or material beauty. Similarly, kallos was used differently from the English word beauty in that it first and foremost applied to humans and bears an erotic connotation. The Koine Greek word for beautiful was ὡραῖος, hōraios, an adjective etymologically coming from the word ὥρα, hōra, meaning "hour". In Koine Greek, beauty was thus associated with "being of one's hour". Thus, a ripe fruit (of its time) was considered beautiful, whereas a young woman trying to appear older or an older woman trying to appear younger would not be considered beautiful. In Attic Greek, hōraios had many meanings, including "youthful" and "ripe old age". Another classical term in use to describe beauty was pulchrum (Latin).
+
+Beauty for ancient thinkers existed both in form, which is the material world as it is, and as embodied in the spirit, which is the world of mental formations. Greek mythology mentions Helen of Troy as the most beautiful woman. Ancient Greek architecture is based on this view of symmetry and proportion.
+
+Pre-Socratic
+In one fragment of Heraclitus's writings (Fragment 106) he mentions beauty, this reads: "To God all things are beautiful, good, right..." The earliest Western theory of beauty can be found in the works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras, who conceived of beauty as useful for a moral education of the soul. He wrote of how people experience pleasure when aware of a certain type of formal situation present in reality, perceivable by sight or through the ear and discovered the underlying mathematical ratios in the harmonic scales in music. The Pythagoreans conceived of the presence of beauty in universal terms, which is, as existing in a cosmological state, they observed beauty in the heavens. They saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the golden ratio seemed more attractive.
+
+Classical period
+The classical concept of beauty is one that exhibits perfect proportion (Wolfflin). In this context, the concept belonged often within the discipline of mathematics. An idea of spiritual beauty emerged during the classical period, beauty was something embodying divine goodness, while the demonstration of behaviour which might be classified as beautiful, from an inner state of morality which is aligned to the good.
+
+The writing of Xenophon shows a conversation between Socrates and Aristippus. Socrates discerned differences in the conception of the beautiful, for example, in inanimate objects, the effectiveness of execution of design was a deciding factor on the perception of beauty in something. By the account of Xenophon, Socrates found beauty congruent with that to which was defined as the morally good, in short, he thought beauty coincident with the good.
+
+Beauty is a subject of Plato in his work Symposium. In the work, the high priestess Diotima describes how beauty moves out from a core singular appreciation of the body to outer appreciations via loved ones, to the world in its state of culture and society (Wright). In other words, Diotoma gives to Socrates an explanation of how love should begin with erotic attachment, and end with the transcending of the physical to an appreciation of beauty as a thing in itself. The ascent of love begins with one's own body, then secondarily, in appreciating beauty in another's body, thirdly beauty in the soul, which cognates to beauty in the mind in the modern sense, fourthly beauty in institutions, laws and activities, fifthly beauty in knowledge, the sciences, and finally to lastly love beauty itself, which translates to the original Greek language term as auto to kalon. In the final state, auto to kalon and truth are united as one. There is the sense in the text, concerning love and beauty they both co-exist but are still independent or, in other words, mutually exclusive, since love does not have beauty since it seeks beauty. The work toward the end provides a description of beauty in a negative sense.
+
+Plato also discusses beauty in his work Phaedrus, and identifies Alcibiades as beautiful in Parmenides. He considered beauty to be the Idea (Form) above all other Ideas. Platonic thought synthesized beauty with the divine. Scruton (cited: Konstan) states Plato states of the idea of beauty, of it (the idea), being something inviting desirousness (c.f seducing), and, promotes an intellectual renunciation (c.f. denouncing) of desire. For Alexander Nehamas, it is only the locating of desire to which the sense of beauty exists, in the considerations of Plato.
+
+Aristotle defines beauty in Metaphysics as having order, symmetry and definiteness which the mathematical sciences exhibit to a special degree. He saw a relationship between the beautiful (to kalon) and virtue, arguing that "Virtue aims at the beautiful."
+
+Roman
+In De Natura Deorum Cicero wrote: "the splendour and beauty of creation", in respect to this, and all the facets of reality resulting from creation, he postulated these to be a reason to see the existence of a God as creator.
+
+Western Middle Ages
+In the Middle Ages, Catholic philosophers like Thomas Aquinas included beauty among the transcendental attributes of being.  In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas described the three conditions of beauty as: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony and proportion), and claritas (a radiance and clarity that makes the form of a thing apparent to the mind).
+
+In the Gothic Architecture of the High and Late Middle Ages, light was considered the most beautiful revelation of God, which was heralded in design.  Examples are the stained glass of Gothic Cathedrals including Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres Cathedral.
+
+St. Augustine said of beauty "Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked."
+
+Renaissance
+Classical philosophy and sculptures of men and women produced according to the Greek philosophers' tenets of ideal human beauty were rediscovered in Renaissance Europe, leading to a re-adoption of what became known as a "classical ideal". In terms of female human beauty, a woman whose appearance conforms to these tenets is still called a "classical beauty" or said to possess a "classical beauty", whilst the foundations laid by Greek and Roman artists have also supplied the standard for male beauty and female beauty in western civilization as seen, for example, in the Winged Victory of Samothrace. During the Gothic era, the classical aesthetical canon of beauty was rejected as sinful. Later, Renaissance and Humanist thinkers rejected this view, and considered beauty to be the product of rational order and harmonious proportions. Renaissance artists and architects (such as Giorgio Vasari in his "Lives of Artists") criticised the Gothic period as irrational and barbarian. This point of view of Gothic art lasted until Romanticism, in the 19th century. Vasari aligned himself to the classical notion and thought of beauty as defined as arising from proportion and order.
+
+Age of Reason
+
+The Age of Reason saw a rise in an interest in beauty as a philosophical subject. For example, Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson argued that beauty is "unity in variety and variety in unity". He wrote that beauty was neither purely subjective nor purely objective—it could be understood not as "any Quality suppos'd to be in the Object, which should of itself be beautiful, without relation to any Mind which perceives it: For Beauty, like other Names of sensible Ideas, properly denotes the Perception of some mind; ... however we generally imagine that there is something in the Object just like our Perception."
+
+Immanuel Kant believed that there could be no "universal criterion of the beautiful" and that the experience of beauty is subjective, but that an object is judged to be beautiful when it seems to display "purposiveness"; that is, when its form is perceived to have the character of a thing designed according to some principle and fitted for a purpose. He distinguished "free beauty" from "merely dependent beauty", explaining that "the first presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith." By this definition, free beauty is found in seashells and wordless music; dependent beauty in buildings and the human body.
+
+The Romantic poets, too, became highly concerned with the nature of beauty, with John Keats arguing in Ode on a Grecian Urn that:
+
+  Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all
+  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
+
+Western 19th and 20th century 
+In the Romantic period, Edmund Burke postulated a difference between beauty in its classical meaning and the sublime. The concept of the sublime, as explicated by Burke and Kant, suggested viewing Gothic art and architecture, though not in accordance with the classical standard of beauty, as sublime.
+
+The 20th century saw an increasing rejection of beauty by artists and philosophers alike, culminating in postmodernism's anti-aesthetics. This is despite beauty being a central concern of one of postmodernism's main influences, Friedrich Nietzsche, who argued that the Will to Power was the Will to Beauty.
+
+In the aftermath of postmodernism's rejection of beauty, thinkers have returned to beauty as an important value. American analytic philosopher Guy Sircello proposed his New Theory of Beauty as an effort to reaffirm the status of beauty as an important philosophical concept. He rejected the subjectivism of Kant and sought to identify the properties inherent in an object that make it beautiful. He called qualities such as vividness, boldness, and subtlety "properties of qualitative degree" (PQDs) and stated that a PQD makes an object beautiful if it is not—and does not create the appearance of—"a property of deficiency, lack, or defect"; and if the PQD is strongly present in the object.
+
+Elaine Scarry argues that beauty is related to justice.
+
+Beauty is also studied by psychologists and neuroscientists in the field of experimental aesthetics and neuroesthetics respectively. Psychological theories see beauty as a form of pleasure. Correlational findings support the view that more beautiful objects are also more pleasing. Some studies suggest that higher experienced beauty is associated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This approach of localizing the processing of beauty in one brain region has received criticism within the field.
+
+Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco wrote On Beauty: A History of a Western Idea (2004) and On Ugliness (2007). The narrator of his novel The Name of the Rose follows Aquinas in declaring: "three things concur in creating beauty: first of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason, we consider ugly all incomplete things; then proper proportion or consonance; and finally clarity and light", before going on to say "the sight of the beautiful implies peace". Mike Phillips has described Umberto Eco's On Beauty as "incoherent" and criticized him for focusing only on Western European history and devoting none of his book to Eastern European, Asian, or African history. Amy Finnerty described eco's work On Ugliness favorably.
+
+Chinese philosophy
+Chinese philosophy has traditionally not made a separate discipline of the philosophy of beauty. Confucius identified beauty with goodness, and considered a virtuous personality to be the greatest of beauties: In his philosophy, "a neighborhood with a ren man in it is a beautiful neighborhood." Confucius's student Zeng Shen expressed a similar idea: "few men could see the beauty in some one whom they dislike." Mencius considered "complete truthfulness" to be beauty. Zhu Xi said: "When one has strenuously implemented goodness until it is filled to completion and has accumulated truth, then the beauty will reside within it and will not depend on externals."
+
+As an attribute to humans
+
+The word "beauty" is often used as a countable noun to describe a beautiful woman.
+
+The characterization of a person as "beautiful", whether on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often  based on some combination of inner beauty, which includes psychological factors such as personality, intelligence, grace, politeness, charisma, integrity, congruence and elegance, and outer beauty (i.e. physical attractiveness) which includes physical attributes which are valued on an aesthetic basis.
+
+Standards of beauty have changed over time, based on changing cultural values. Historically, paintings show a wide range of different standards for beauty. However, humans who are relatively young, with smooth skin, well-proportioned bodies, and regular features, have traditionally been considered the most beautiful throughout history.
+
+A strong indicator of physical beauty is "averageness". When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive. This was first noticed in 1883, when Francis Galton overlaid photographic composite images of the faces of vegetarians and criminals to see if there was a typical facial appearance for each. When doing this, he noticed that the composite images were more attractive compared to any of the individual images. Researchers have replicated the result under more controlled conditions and found that the computer-generated, mathematical average of a series of faces is rated more favorably than individual faces. It is argued that it is evolutionarily advantageous that sexual creatures are attracted to mates who possess predominantly common or average features, because it suggests the absence of genetic or acquired defects. 
+
+Since the 1970's there has been increasing evidence that a preference for beautiful faces emerges early in infancy, and is probably innate,
+and that the rules by which attractiveness is established are similar across different genders and cultures.
+
+A feature of beautiful women which has been explored by researchers is a waist–hip ratio of approximately 0.70. As of 2004, physiologists had shown that women with hourglass figures were more fertile than other women because of higher levels of certain female hormones, a fact that may subconsciously condition males choosing mates. However, in 2008 other commentators have suggested that this preference may not be universal. For instance, in some non-Western cultures in which women have to do work such as finding food, men tend to have preferences for higher waist-hip ratios.
+
+Exposure to the thin ideal in mass media, such as fashion magazines, directly correlates with body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and the development of eating disorders among female viewers. Further, the widening gap between individual body sizes and societal ideals continues to breed anxiety among young girls as they grow, highlighting the dangerous nature of beauty standards in society.
+
+Western concept
+
+Beauty standards are rooted in cultural norms crafted by societies and media over centuries. As of 2018, it has been argued that the predominance of white women featured in movies and advertising leads to a Eurocentric concept of beauty, which assigns inferiority to women of color. Thus, societies and cultures across the globe struggle to diminish the longstanding internalized racism. 
+
+Eurocentric standards for men include tallness, leanness, and muscularity, which have been idolized through American media, such as in Hollywood films and magazine covers.
+
+In of the United States, African Americans have historically been subjected to beauty ideals that often do not reflect their own appearance, which can lead to issues of low self-esteem. African-American philosopher Cornel West elaborates that, "much of black self-hatred and self-contempt has to do with the refusal of many black Americans to love their own black bodies-especially their black noses, hips, lips, and hair." According to Patton (2006), the stereotype of African-American women's inferiority (relative to other races of women) maintains of a system of oppression based on race and gender that operates to the detriment of women of all races, and also black men.
+
+Much criticism has been directed at models of beauty which depend solely upon Western ideals of beauty as seen for example in the Barbie model franchise. Criticisms of Barbie are often centered around concerns that children consider Barbie a role model of beauty and will attempt to emulate her. One of the most common criticisms of Barbie is that she promotes an unrealistic idea of body image for a young woman, leading to a risk that girls who attempt to emulate her will become anorexic.
+
+As of 1998, these criticisms, the lack of diversity in such franchises as the Barbie model of beauty in Western culture, had led to a dialogue to create non-exclusive models of Western ideals in body type and beauty. Mattel responded to these criticisms. Starting in 1980, it produced Hispanic dolls, and later came models from across the globe. For example, in 2007, it introduced "Cinco de Mayo Barbie" wearing a ruffled red, white, and green dress (echoing the Mexican flag). Hispanic magazine reports that:
+
+Black concept
+
+In the 1960s the black is beautiful cultural movement sought to dispel the notion of a Eurocentric concept of beauty.
+
+Asian concept
+
+In East Asian cultures, familial pressures and cultural norms shape beauty ideals. A 2017 experimental study concluded that Asian cultural idealization of "fragile" girls was impacting Asian American women's lifestyle, eating, and appearance choices. One study found that East Asian women in the United States are closer to the ideal figure promoted in Western media, and that East Asian women conform to both Western and Eastern influences in the United States. East Asian men were found to be more impacted by Western beauty ideals then East Asian women, in the United States. East Asian men felt as though their bodies were not large enough and therefore deviated from the Western norm. East Asian men and white Western women were found to have the lowest levels of body dissatisfaction in the United States.
+
+Effects on society
+Researchers have found that good-looking students get higher grades from their teachers than students with an ordinary appearance. Some studies using mock criminal trials have shown that physically attractive "defendants" are less likely to be convicted—and if convicted are likely to receive lighter sentences—than less attractive ones (although the opposite effect was observed when the alleged crime was swindling, perhaps because jurors perceived the defendant's attractiveness as facilitating the crime). Studies among teens and young adults, such as those of psychiatrist and self-help author Eva Ritvo show that skin conditions have a profound effect on social behavior and opportunity.
+
+How much money a person earns may also be influenced by physical beauty. One study found that people low in physical attractiveness earn 5 to 10 percent less than ordinary-looking people, who in turn earn 3 to 8 percent less than those who are considered good-looking. In the market for loans, the least attractive people are less likely to get approvals, although they are less likely to default. In the marriage market, women's looks are at a premium, but men's looks do not matter much. The impact of physical attractiveness on earnings varies across races, with the largest beauty wage gap among black women and black men.
+
+Conversely, being very unattractive increases the individual's propensity for criminal activity for a number of crimes ranging from burglary to theft to selling illicit drugs.
+
+Discrimination against others based on their appearance is known as lookism.
+
+See also
+ Adornment
+ Aesthetics
+ Beauty pageant
+ Body modification
+ Feminine beauty ideal
+ Glamour (presentation)
+ Masculine beauty ideal
+ Mathematical beauty
+ Processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure
+ Unattractiveness
+ Cosmetics
+
+References
+
+Further reading
+ 
+ Liebelt, C. (2022), Beauty: What Makes Us Dream, What Haunts Us. Feminist Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12076
+
+External links
+
+ 
+ 
+ BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme on Beauty (requires RealAudio)
+ Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Theories of Beauty to the Mid-Nineteenth Century
+ beautycheck.de/english Regensburg University – Characteristics of beautiful faces
+ Eli Siegel's "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?"
+ Art and love in Renaissance Italy , Issued in connection with an exhibition held Nov. 11, 2008-Feb. 16, 2009, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see Belle: Picturing Beautiful Women; pages 246–254).
+ Plato - Symposium in S. Marc Cohen, Patricia Curd, C. D. C. Reeve (ed.)
+
+ 
+Aesthetic beauty
+Concepts in aesthetics
+Fashion
+Physical attractiveness
+Metaphysical properties
+Brownian motion is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium (a liquid or a gas).
+
+This motion pattern typically consists of random fluctuations in a particle's position inside a fluid sub-domain, followed by a relocation to another sub-domain. Each relocation is followed by more fluctuations within the new closed volume. This pattern describes a fluid at thermal equilibrium, defined by a given temperature. Within such a fluid, there exists no preferential direction of flow (as in transport phenomena). More specifically, the fluid's overall linear and angular momenta remain null over time. The kinetic energies of the molecular Brownian motions, together with those of molecular rotations and vibrations, sum up to the caloric component of a fluid's internal energy (the equipartition theorem).
+
+This motion is named after the botanist Robert Brown, who first described the phenomenon in 1827, while looking through a microscope at pollen of the plant Clarkia pulchella immersed in water. In 1900, almost eighty years later, the French mathematician Louis Bachelier modeled the stochastic process now called Brownian motion in his doctoral thesis, The Theory of Speculation (Théorie de la spéculation), prepared under the supervision of Henri Poincaré. Then, in 1905, theoretical physicist Albert Einstein published a paper where he modeled the motion of the pollen particles as being moved by individual water molecules, making one of his first major scientific contributions.
+
+The direction of the force of atomic bombardment is constantly changing, and at different times the particle is hit more on one side than another, leading to the seemingly random nature of the motion. This explanation of Brownian motion served as convincing evidence that atoms and molecules exist and was further verified experimentally by Jean Perrin in 1908. Perrin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter".
+
+The many-body interactions that yield the Brownian pattern cannot be solved by a model accounting for every involved molecule. Consequently, only probabilistic models applied to molecular populations can be employed to describe it. Two such models of the statistical mechanics, due to Einstein and Smoluchowski, are presented below. Another, pure probabilistic class of models is the class of the stochastic process models. There exist sequences of both simpler and more complicated stochastic processes which converge (in the limit) to Brownian motion (see random walk and Donsker's theorem).
+
+History
+
+The Roman philosopher-poet Lucretius' scientific poem "On the Nature of Things" (c. 60 BC) has a remarkable description of the motion of dust particles in verses 113–140 from Book II. He uses this as a proof of the existence of atoms:
+
+Although the mingling, tumbling motion of dust particles is caused largely by air currents, the glittering, jiggling motion of small dust particles is caused chiefly by true Brownian dynamics; Lucretius "perfectly describes and explains the Brownian movement by a wrong example".
+
+While Jan Ingenhousz described the irregular motion of coal dust particles on the surface of alcohol in 1785, the discovery of this phenomenon is often credited to the botanist Robert Brown in 1827. Brown was studying pollen grains of the plant Clarkia pulchella suspended in water under a microscope when he observed minute particles, ejected by the pollen grains, executing a jittery motion. By repeating the experiment with particles of inorganic matter he was able to rule out that the motion was life-related, although its origin was yet to be explained.
+
+The first person to describe the mathematics behind Brownian motion was Thorvald N. Thiele in a paper on the method of least squares published in 1880. This was followed independently by Louis Bachelier in 1900 in his PhD thesis "The theory of speculation", in which he presented a stochastic analysis of the stock and option markets. The Brownian motion model of the stock market is often cited, but Benoit Mandelbrot rejected its applicability to stock price movements in part because these are discontinuous.
+
+Albert Einstein (in one of his 1905 papers) and Marian Smoluchowski (1906) brought the solution of the problem to the attention of physicists, and presented it as a way to indirectly confirm the existence of atoms and molecules. Their equations describing Brownian motion were subsequently verified by the experimental work of Jean Baptiste Perrin in 1908.
+
+Statistical mechanics theories
+
+Einstein's theory 
+There are two parts to Einstein's theory: the first part consists in the formulation of a diffusion equation for Brownian particles, in which the diffusion coefficient is related to the mean squared displacement of a Brownian particle, while the second part consists in relating the diffusion coefficient to measurable physical quantities. In this way Einstein was able to determine the size of atoms, and how many atoms there are in a mole, or the molecular weight in grams, of a gas. In accordance to Avogadro's law, this volume is the same for all ideal gases, which is 22.414 liters at standard temperature and pressure. The number of atoms contained in this volume is referred to as the Avogadro number, and the determination of this number is tantamount to the knowledge of the mass of an atom, since the latter is obtained by dividing the molar mass of the gas by the Avogadro constant.
+
+The first part of Einstein's argument was to determine how far a Brownian particle travels in a given time interval. Classical mechanics is unable to determine this distance because of the enormous number of bombardments a Brownian particle will undergo, roughly of the order of 1014 collisions per second.
+
+He regarded the increment of particle positions in time  in a one-dimensional (x) space (with the coordinates chosen so that the origin lies at the initial position of the particle) as a random variable () with some probability density function  (i.e.,  is the probability density for a jump of magnitude , i.e., the probability density of the particle incrementing its position from  to  in the time interval ). Further, assuming conservation of particle number, he expanded the number density  (number of particles per unit volume around ) at time  in a Taylor series,
+
+where the second equality is by definition of . The integral in the first term is equal to one by the definition of probability, and the second and other even terms (i.e. first and other odd moments) vanish because of space symmetry. What is left gives rise to the following relation:
+
+Where the coefficient after the Laplacian, the second moment of probability of displacement , is interpreted as mass diffusivity D:
+
+Then the density of Brownian particles ρ at point x at time t satisfies the diffusion equation:
+
+Assuming that N particles start from the origin at the initial time t = 0, the diffusion equation has the solution
+
+This expression (which is a normal distribution with the mean  and variance  usually called Brownian motion ) allowed Einstein to calculate the moments directly. The first moment is seen to vanish, meaning that the Brownian particle is equally likely to move to the left as it is to move to the right. The second moment is, however, non-vanishing, being given by
+
+This equation expresses the mean squared displacement in terms of the time elapsed and the diffusivity. From this expression Einstein argued that the displacement of a Brownian particle is not proportional to the elapsed time, but rather to its square root. His argument is based on a conceptual switch from the "ensemble" of Brownian particles to the "single" Brownian particle: we can speak of the relative number of particles at a single instant just as well as of the time it takes a Brownian particle to reach a given point.
+
+The second part of Einstein's theory relates the diffusion constant to physically measurable quantities, such as the mean squared displacement of a particle in a given time interval. This result enables the experimental determination of the Avogadro number and therefore the size of molecules. Einstein analyzed a dynamic equilibrium being established between opposing forces. The beauty of his argument is that the final result does not depend upon which forces are involved in setting up the dynamic equilibrium.
+
+In his original treatment, Einstein considered an osmotic pressure experiment, but the same conclusion can be reached in other ways.
+
+Consider, for instance, particles suspended in a viscous fluid in a gravitational field. Gravity tends to make the particles settle, whereas diffusion acts to homogenize them, driving them into regions of smaller concentration. Under the action of gravity, a particle acquires a downward speed of v = μmg, where m is the mass of the particle, g is the acceleration due to gravity, and μ is the particle's mobility in the fluid. George Stokes had shown that the mobility for a spherical particle with radius r is , where η is the dynamic viscosity of the fluid. In a state of dynamic equilibrium, and under the hypothesis of isothermal fluid, the particles are distributed according to the barometric distribution
+
+where ρ − ρo is the difference in density of particles separated by a height difference, of , kB is the Boltzmann constant (the ratio of the universal gas constant, R, to the Avogadro constant, N), and T is the absolute temperature.
+
+Dynamic equilibrium is established because the more that particles are pulled down by gravity, the greater the tendency for the particles to migrate to regions of lower concentration. The flux is given by Fick's law,
+
+where J = ρv. Introducing the formula for ρ, we find that
+
+In a state of dynamical equilibrium, this speed must also be equal to v = μmg. Both expressions for v are proportional to mg, reflecting that the derivation is independent of the type of forces considered. Similarly, one can derive an equivalent formula for identical charged particles of charge q in a uniform electric field of magnitude E, where mg is replaced with the electrostatic force qE. Equating these two expressions yields the Einstein relation for the diffusivity, independent of mg or qE or other such forces:
+
+Here the first equality follows from the first part of Einstein's theory, the third equality follows from the definition of the Boltzmann constant as kB = R / N, and the fourth equality follows from Stokes's formula for the mobility. By measuring the mean squared displacement over a time interval along with the universal gas constant R, the temperature T, the viscosity η, and the particle radius r, the Avogadro constant N can be determined.
+
+The type of dynamical equilibrium proposed by Einstein was not new. It had been pointed out previously by J. J. Thomson in his series of lectures at Yale University in May 1903 that the dynamic equilibrium between the velocity generated by a concentration gradient given by Fick's law and the velocity due to the variation of the partial pressure caused when ions are set in motion "gives us a method of determining Avogadro's Constant which is independent of any hypothesis as to the shape or size of molecules, or of the way in which they act upon each other".
+
+An identical expression to Einstein's formula for the diffusion coefficient was also found by Walther Nernst in 1888 in which he expressed the diffusion coefficient as the ratio of the osmotic pressure to the ratio of the frictional force and the velocity to which it gives rise. The former was equated to the law of van 't Hoff while the latter was given by Stokes's law. He writes  for the diffusion coefficient k, where  is the osmotic pressure and k is the ratio of the frictional force to the molecular viscosity which he assumes is given by Stokes's formula for the viscosity. Introducing the ideal gas law per unit volume for the osmotic pressure, the formula becomes identical to that of Einstein's. The use of Stokes's law in Nernst's case, as well as in Einstein and Smoluchowski, is not strictly applicable since it does not apply to the case where the radius of the sphere is small in comparison with the mean free path.
+
+At first, the predictions of Einstein's formula were seemingly refuted by a series of experiments by Svedberg in 1906 and 1907, which gave displacements of the particles as 4 to 6 times the predicted value, and by Henri in 1908 who found displacements 3 times greater than Einstein's formula predicted. But Einstein's predictions were finally confirmed in a series of experiments carried out by Chaudesaigues in 1908 and Perrin in 1909. The confirmation of Einstein's theory constituted empirical progress for the kinetic theory of heat. In essence, Einstein showed that the motion can be predicted directly from the kinetic model of thermal equilibrium. The importance of the theory lay in the fact that it confirmed the kinetic theory's account of the second law of thermodynamics as being an essentially statistical law.
+
+Smoluchowski model
+Smoluchowski's theory of Brownian motion starts from the same premise as that of Einstein and derives the same probability distribution ρ(x, t) for the displacement of a Brownian particle along the x in time t. He therefore gets the same expression for the mean squared displacement: . However, when he relates it to a particle of mass m moving at a velocity  which is the result of a frictional force governed by Stokes's law, he finds
+
+where μ is the viscosity coefficient, and  is the radius of the particle. Associating the kinetic energy  with the thermal energy RT/N, the expression for the mean squared displacement is 64/27 times that found by Einstein. The fraction 27/64 was commented on by Arnold Sommerfeld in his necrology on Smoluchowski: "The numerical coefficient of Einstein, which differs from Smoluchowski by 27/64 can only be put in doubt."
+
+Smoluchowski attempts to answer the question of why a Brownian particle should be displaced by bombardments of smaller particles when the probabilities for striking it in the forward and rear directions are equal.
+If the probability of m gains and n − m losses follows a binomial distribution,
+
+with equal a priori probabilities of 1/2, the mean total gain is
+
+If n is large enough so that Stirling's approximation can be used in the form
+
+then the expected total gain will be
+
+showing that it increases as the square root of the total population.
+
+Suppose that a Brownian particle of mass M is surrounded by lighter particles of mass m which are traveling at a speed u. Then, reasons Smoluchowski, in any collision between a surrounding and Brownian particles, the velocity transmitted to the latter will be mu/M. This ratio is of the order of 10−7 cm/s. But we also have to take into consideration that in a gas there will be more than 1016 collisions in a second, and even greater in a liquid where we expect that there will be 1020 collision in one second. Some of these collisions will tend to accelerate the Brownian particle; others will tend to decelerate it. If there is a mean excess of one kind of collision or the other to be of the order of 108 to 1010 collisions in one second, then velocity of the Brownian particle may be anywhere between 10 and 1000 cm/s. Thus, even though there are equal probabilities for forward and backward collisions there will be a net tendency to keep the Brownian particle in motion, just as the ballot theorem predicts.
+
+These orders of magnitude are not exact because they don't take into consideration the velocity of the Brownian particle, U, which depends on the collisions that tend to accelerate and decelerate it. The larger U is, the greater will be the collisions that will retard it so that the velocity of a Brownian particle can never increase without limit. Could such a process occur, it would be tantamount to a perpetual motion of the second type. And since equipartition of energy applies, the kinetic energy of the Brownian particle, , will be equal, on the average, to the kinetic energy of the surrounding fluid particle, .
+
+In 1906 Smoluchowski published a one-dimensional model to describe a particle undergoing Brownian motion. The model assumes collisions with M ≫ m where M is the test particle's mass and m the mass of one of the individual particles composing the fluid. It is assumed that the particle collisions are confined to one dimension and that it is equally probable for the test particle to be hit from the left as from the right. It is also assumed that every collision always imparts the same magnitude of ΔV. If NR is the number of collisions from the right and NL the number of collisions from the left then after N collisions the particle's velocity will have changed by ΔV(2NR − N). The multiplicity is then simply given by:
+
+and the total number of possible states is given by 2N. Therefore, the probability of the particle being hit from the right NR times is:
+
+As a result of its simplicity, Smoluchowski's 1D model can only qualitatively describe Brownian motion. For a realistic particle undergoing Brownian motion in a fluid, many of the assumptions don't apply. For example, the assumption that on average occurs an equal number of collisions from the right as from the left falls apart once the particle is in motion. Also, there would be a distribution of different possible ΔVs instead of always just one in a realistic situation.
+
+Other physics models using partial differential equations
+The diffusion equation yields an approximation of the time evolution of the probability density function associated with the position of the particle going under a Brownian movement under the physical definition. The approximation is valid on short timescales.
+
+The time evolution of the position of the Brownian particle itself is best described using the Langevin equation, an equation that involves a random force field representing the effect of the thermal fluctuations of the solvent on the particle. In Langevin dynamics and Brownian dynamics, the Langevin equation is used to efficiently simulate the dynamics of molecular systems that exhibit a strong Brownian component.
+
+The displacement of a particle undergoing Brownian motion is obtained by solving the diffusion equation under appropriate boundary conditions and finding the rms of the solution. This shows that the displacement varies as the square root of the time (not linearly), which explains why previous experimental results concerning the velocity of Brownian particles gave nonsensical results. A linear time dependence was incorrectly assumed.
+
+At very short time scales, however, the motion of a particle is dominated by its inertia and its displacement will be linearly dependent on time: Δx = vΔt. So the instantaneous velocity of the Brownian motion can be measured as v = Δx/Δt, when Δt << τ, where τ is the momentum relaxation time. In 2010, the instantaneous velocity of a Brownian particle (a glass microsphere trapped in air with optical tweezers) was measured successfully. The velocity data verified the Maxwell–Boltzmann velocity distribution, and the equipartition theorem for a Brownian particle.
+
+Astrophysics: star motion within galaxies
+In stellar dynamics, a massive body (star, black hole, etc.) can experience Brownian motion as it responds to gravitational forces from surrounding stars. The rms velocity V of the massive object, of mass M, is related to the rms velocity  of the background stars by
+
+where  is the mass of the background stars. The gravitational force from the massive object causes nearby stars to move faster than they otherwise would, increasing both  and V. The Brownian velocity of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is predicted from this formula to be less than 1 km s−1.
+
+Mathematics
+
+In mathematics, Brownian motion is described by the Wiener process, a continuous-time stochastic process named in honor of Norbert Wiener. It is one of the best known Lévy processes (càdlàg stochastic processes with stationary independent increments) and occurs frequently in pure and applied mathematics, economics and physics.
+
+The Wiener process Wt is characterized by four facts:
+ W0 = 0
+ Wt is almost surely continuous
+ Wt has independent increments
+  (for ).
+ denotes the normal distribution with expected value μ and variance σ2. The condition that it has independent increments means that if  then  and  are independent random variables. In addition, for some filtration ,   is  measurable for all .
+
+An alternative characterisation of the Wiener process is the so-called Lévy characterisation that says that the Wiener process is an almost surely continuous martingale with W0 = 0 and quadratic variation .
+
+A third characterisation is that the Wiener process has a spectral representation as a sine series whose coefficients are independent  random variables. This representation can be obtained using the Kosambi–Karhunen–Loève theorem.
+
+The Wiener process can be constructed as the scaling limit of a random walk, or other discrete-time stochastic processes with stationary independent increments. This is known as Donsker's theorem. Like the random walk, the Wiener process is recurrent in one or two dimensions (meaning that it returns almost surely to any fixed neighborhood of the origin infinitely often) whereas it is not recurrent in dimensions three and higher. Unlike the random walk, it is scale invariant.
+
+The time evolution of the position of the Brownian particle itself can be described approximately by a Langevin equation, an equation which involves a random force field representing the effect of the thermal fluctuations of the solvent on the Brownian particle. On long timescales, the mathematical Brownian motion is well described by a Langevin equation. On small timescales, inertial effects are prevalent in the Langevin equation. However the mathematical Brownian motion is exempt of such inertial effects. Inertial effects have to be considered in the Langevin equation, otherwise the equation becomes singular. so that simply removing the inertia term from this equation would not yield an exact description, but rather a singular behavior in which the particle doesn't move at all.
+
+Statistics
+The Brownian motion can be modeled by a random walk.
+
+In the general case, Brownian motion is a Markov process and described by stochastic integral equations.
+
+Lévy characterisation
+The French mathematician Paul Lévy proved the following theorem, which gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a continuous Rn-valued stochastic process X to actually be n-dimensional Brownian motion. Hence, Lévy's condition can actually be used as an alternative definition of Brownian motion.
+
+Let X = (X1, ..., Xn) be a continuous stochastic process on a probability space (Ω, Σ, P) taking values in Rn. Then the following are equivalent:
+
+ X is a Brownian motion with respect to P, i.e., the law of X with respect to P is the same as the law of an n-dimensional Brownian motion, i.e., the push-forward measure X∗(P) is classical Wiener measure on C0([0, +∞); Rn).
+ both
+ X is a martingale with respect to P (and its own natural filtration); and
+ for all 1 ≤ i, j ≤ n, Xi(t)Xj(t) −δijt is a martingale with respect to P (and its own natural filtration), where δij denotes the Kronecker delta.
+
+Spectral content
+The spectral content of a stochastic process  can be found from the power spectral density, formally defined as
+
+where  stands for the expected value. The power spectral density of Brownian motion is found to be
+
+where  is the diffusion coefficient of . For naturally occurring signals, the spectral content can be found from the power spectral density of a single realization, with finite available time, i.e.,
+
+which for an individual realization of a Brownian motion trajectory, it is found to have expected value 
+
+and variance 
+
+For sufficiently long realization times, the expected value of the power spectrum of a single trajectory converges to the formally defined power spectral density , but its coefficient of variation  tends to . This implies the distribution of  is broad even in the infinite time limit.
+
+Riemannian manifold
+
+The infinitesimal generator (and hence characteristic operator) of a Brownian motion on Rn is easily calculated to be ½Δ, where Δ denotes the Laplace operator. In image processing and computer vision, the Laplacian operator has been used for various tasks such as blob and edge detection. This observation is useful in defining Brownian motion on an m-dimensional Riemannian manifold (M, g): a Brownian motion on''' M is defined to be a diffusion on M whose characteristic operator  in local coordinates xi, 1 ≤ i ≤ m, is given by ½ΔLB, where ΔLB is the Laplace–Beltrami operator given in local coordinates by
+
+where [gij] = [gij]−1 in the sense of the inverse of a square matrix.
+
+Narrow escape
+The narrow escape problem is a ubiquitous problem in biology, biophysics and cellular biology which has the following formulation: a Brownian particle (ion, molecule, or protein) is confined to a bounded domain (a compartment or a cell) by a reflecting boundary, except for a small window through which it can escape. The narrow escape problem is that of calculating the mean escape time. This time diverges as the window shrinks, thus rendering the calculation a singular perturbation problem.
+
+See also
+
+ Brownian bridge: a Brownian motion that is required to "bridge" specified values at specified times
+ Brownian covariance
+ Brownian dynamics
+ Brownian motion of sol particles
+ Brownian motor
+ Brownian noise (Martin Gardner proposed this name for sound generated with random intervals. It is a pun on Brownian motion and white noise.)
+ Brownian ratchet
+ Brownian surface
+ Brownian tree
+ Brownian web
+ Rotational Brownian motion
+ Clinamen
+ Complex system
+ Continuity equation
+ Diffusion equation
+ Geometric Brownian motion
+ Itô diffusion: a generalisation of Brownian motion
+ Langevin equation
+ Lévy arcsine law
+ Local time (mathematics)
+ Many-body problem
+ Marangoni effect
+ Nanoparticle tracking analysis
+ Narrow escape problem
+ Osmosis
+ Random walk
+ Schramm–Loewner evolution
+ Single particle trajectories
+ Single particle tracking
+ Statistical mechanics
+ Surface diffusion: a type of constrained Brownian motion.
+ Thermal equilibrium
+ Thermodynamic equilibrium
+ Triangulation sensing
+ Tyndall effect: a phenomenon where particles are involved; used to differentiate between the different types of mixtures.
+ Ultramicroscope
+
+References
+
+Further reading
+  Also includes a subsequent defense by Brown of his original observations, Additional remarks on active molecules.
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ 
+ Lucretius, On The Nature of Things, translated by William Ellery Leonard. (on-line version, from Project Gutenberg. See the heading 'Atomic Motions'; this translation differs slightly from the one quoted).
+ Nelson, Edward, (1967). Dynamical Theories of Brownian Motion. (PDF version of this out-of-print book, from the author's webpage.) This is primarily a mathematical work, but the first four chapters discuss the history of the topic, in the era from Brown to Einstein.
+ 
+ 
+ See also Perrin's book "Les Atomes" (1914).
+ 
+ 
+ Theile, T. N.
+ Danish version: "Om Anvendelse af mindste Kvadraters Methode i nogle Tilfælde, hvor en Komplikation af visse Slags uensartede tilfældige Fejlkilder giver Fejlene en 'systematisk' Karakter".
+ French version: "Sur la compensation de quelques erreurs quasi-systématiques par la méthodes de moindre carrés" published simultaneously in Vidensk. Selsk. Skr. 5. Rk., naturvid. og mat. Afd.'', 12:381–408, 1880.
+
+External links
+
+ Einstein on Brownian Motion
+ Discusses history, botany and physics of Brown's original observations, with videos
+ "Einstein's prediction finally witnessed one century later" : a test to observe the velocity of Brownian motion
+ Large-Scale Brownian Motion Demonstration
+
+Statistical mechanics
+Wiener process
+Fractals
+Colloidal chemistry
+Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)
+Albert Einstein
+Articles containing video clips
+Lévy processes
+Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within city limits, its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the province of Barcelona and is home to around 4.8 million people, making it the fifth most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, the Ruhr area, Madrid and Milan. It is one of the largest metropolises on the Mediterranean Sea, located on the coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs, bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola mountain range.
+
+Founded as a Roman city, in the Middle Ages Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. After joining with the Kingdom of Aragon to form the confederation of the Crown of Aragon, Barcelona, which continued to be the capital of the Principality of Catalonia, became the most important city in the Crown of Aragon and the main economic and administrative centre of the Crown, only to be overtaken by Valencia, wrested from Moorish control by the Catalans, shortly before the dynastic union between the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1492. Barcelona became the centre of Catalan separatism, briefly becoming part of France during the 17th century Reapers' War. It was the capital of Revolutionary Catalonia during the Spanish Revolution of 1936, and the seat of government of the Second Spanish Republic later in the Spanish Civil War, until its capture by the fascists in 1939. After the Spanish transition to democracy in the 1970s, Barcelona once again became the capital of an autonomous Catalonia.
+
+Barcelona has a rich cultural heritage and is today an important cultural centre and a major tourist destination. Particularly renowned are the architectural works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner, which have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The city is home to two of the most prestigious universities in Spain: the University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University. The headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean are located in Barcelona. The city is known for hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics as well as world-class conferences and expositions. In addition, many international sport tournaments have been played here.
+
+Barcelona is a major cultural, economic, and financial centre in southwestern Europe, as well as the main biotech hub in Spain. As a leading world city, Barcelona's influence in global socio-economic affairs qualifies it for global city status (Beta +).
+
+Barcelona is a transport hub, with the Port of Barcelona being one of Europe's principal seaports and busiest European passenger port, an international airport, Barcelona–El Prat Airport, which handles over 50 million passengers per year, an extensive motorway network, and a high-speed rail line with a link to France and the rest of Europe.
+
+Names 
+The name Barcelona comes from the ancient Iberian Baŕkeno, attested in an ancient coin inscription found on the right side of the coin in Iberian script as , in ancient Greek sources as , Barkinṓn; and in Latin as Barcino, Barcilonum and Barcenona.
+
+Some older sources suggest that the city may have been named after the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, who was supposed to have founded the city in the 3rd century BC, but there is no evidence that Barcelona was ever a Carthaginian settlement, or that its name in antiquity, Barcino, had any connection with the Barcid family of Hamilcar. During the Middle Ages, the city was variously known as Barchinona, Barçalona, Barchelonaa, and Barchenona.
+
+Internationally, Barcelona's name is abbreviated colloquially to 'Barça' as a result of its status as the hometown of the football club FC Barcelona, whose anthem is the Cant del Barça ("Barça chant"). A common abbreviated form used by locals for the city is Barna.
+
+Another common abbreviation is 'BCN', which is also the IATA airport code of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport.
+
+The city is referred to as the Ciutat Comtal in Catalan and Ciudad Condal in Spanish (i.e., "Comital City" or "City of Counts"), owing to its past as the seat of the Count of Barcelona.
+
+History
+
+Pre-history 
+The origin of the earliest settlement at the site of present-day Barcelona is unclear. The ruins of an early settlement have been found, including different tombs and dwellings dating to earlier than 5000 BC. The founding of Barcelona is the subject of two different legends. The first attributes the founding of the city to the mythological Hercules. The second legend attributes the foundation of the city directly to the historical Carthaginian general, Hamilcar Barca, father of Hannibal, who supposedly named the city Barcino after his family in the 3rd century BC, but there is no historical or linguistic evidence that this is true. Archeological evidence in the form of coins from the 3rd Century BC have been found on the hills at the foot of Montjuïc with the name Bárkeno written in an ancient script in the Iberian language. Thus, we can conclude that the Laietani, an ancient Iberian (Pre-Roman) people of the Iberian peninsula, who inhabited the area occupied by the city of Barcelona around 3 – 2 BC, called the area Bàrkeno, which means "The Place of the Plains" (Barrke = plains/terrace).
+
+Roman Barcelona 
+
+In about 15 BC, the Romans redrew the town as a castrum (Roman military camp) centred on the "Mons Taber", a little hill near the Generalitat (Catalan Government) and city hall buildings. The Roman Forum, at the crossing of the Cardo Maximus and Decumanus Maximus, was approximately placed where current Plaça de Sant Jaume is. Thus, the political center of the city, Catalonia, and its domains has remained in the same place for over 2,000 years.
+
+Under the Romans, it was a colony with the surname of Faventia, or, in full, Colonia Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barcino or Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino. Pomponius Mela mentions it among the small towns of the district, probably as it was eclipsed by its neighbour Tarraco (modern Tarragona), but it may be gathered from later writers that it gradually grew in wealth and consequence, favoured as it was with a beautiful situation and an excellent harbour. It enjoyed immunity from imperial burdens. The city minted its own coins; some from the era of Galba survive.
+
+Important Roman vestiges are displayed in Plaça del Rei underground, as a part of the Barcelona City History Museum (MUHBA); the typically Roman grid plan is still visible today in the layout of the historical centre, the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter). Some remaining fragments of the Roman walls have been incorporated into the cathedral. The cathedral, Catedral Basílica Metropolitana de Barcelona, is also sometimes called La Seu, which simply means cathedral (and see, among other things) in Catalan. It is said to have been founded in 343.
+
+Medieval Barcelona 
+The city was conquered by the Visigoths in the early 5th century, becoming for a few years the capital of all Hispania. After being conquered by the Umayyads in the early 8th century, it was conquered after a siege in 801 by Charlemagne's son Louis, who made Barcelona the seat of the Carolingian "Hispanic March" (Marca Hispanica), a buffer zone ruled by the Count of Barcelona.
+
+The Counts of Barcelona became increasingly independent and expanded their territory to include much of modern Catalonia, although in 985, Barcelona was sacked by the army of Almanzor. The sack was so traumatic that most of Barcelona's population was either killed or enslaved. In 1137, Aragon and the County of Barcelona merged in dynastic union by the marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronilla of Aragon, their titles finally borne by only one person when their son Alfonso II of Aragon ascended to the throne in 1162. His territories were later to be known as the Crown of Aragon, which conquered many overseas possessions and ruled the western Mediterranean Sea with outlying territories in Naples and Sicily and as far as Athens in the 13th century.
+
+Barcelona was the leading slave trade centre of the Crown of Aragon up until the 15th century, when it was eclipsed by Valencia. It initially fed from eastern and Balkan slave stock later drawing from a Maghribian and, ultimately, Subsaharan pool of slaves.
+
+The Bank or Taula de canvi de Barcelona, often viewed as the oldest public bank in Europe, was established by the city magistrates in 1401. It originated from necessities of the state, as did the Bank of Venice (1402) and the Bank of Genoa (1407).
+
+Barcelona under the Spanish monarchy 
+The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 united the two royal lines. Madrid became the centre of political power whilst the colonisation of the Americas reduced the financial importance (at least in relative terms) of Mediterranean trade. Barcelona was a centre of Catalan separatism, including the Catalan Revolt (1640–52) against Philip IV of Spain. The great plague of 1650–1654 halved the city's population.
+
+In the 18th century, a fortress was built at Montjuïc that overlooked the harbour. In 1794, this fortress was used by the French astronomer Pierre François André Méchain for observations relating to a survey stretching to Dunkirk that provided the official basis of the measurement of a metre. The definitive metre bar, manufactured from platinum, was presented to the French legislative assembly on 22 June 1799. Much of Barcelona was negatively affected by the Napoleonic wars, but the start of industrialisation saw the fortunes of the province improve.
+
+The Spanish Civil War and the Franco period 
+
+During the Spanish Civil War, the city, and Catalonia in general, were resolutely Republican. Many enterprises and public services were collectivised by the CNT and UGT unions. As the power of the Republican government and the Generalitat diminished, much of the city was under the effective control of anarchist groups. The anarchists lost control of the city to their own allies, the Communists and official government troops, after the street fighting of the Barcelona May Days. The fall of the city on 26 January 1939, caused a mass exodus of civilians who fled to the French border. The resistance of Barcelona to Franco's coup d'état was to have lasting effects after the defeat of the Republican government. The autonomous institutions of Catalonia were abolished, and the use of the Catalan language in public life was suppressed. Barcelona remained the second largest city in Spain, at the heart of a region which was relatively industrialised and prosperous, despite the devastation of the civil war. The result was a large-scale immigration from poorer regions of Spain (particularly Andalusia, Murcia and Galicia), which in turn led to rapid urbanisation.
+
+Late twentieth century 
+In 1992, Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics. The after-effects of this are credited with driving major changes in what had, up until then, been a largely industrial city. As part of the preparation for the games, industrial buildings along the sea-front were demolished and  of beach were created. New construction increased the road capacity of the city by 17%, the sewage handling capacity by 27% and the amount of new green areas and beaches by 78%. Between 1990 and 2004, the number of hotel rooms in the city doubled. Perhaps more importantly, the outside perception of the city was changed making, by 2012, Barcelona the 12th most popular city destination in the world and the 5th amongst European cities.
+
+Recent history 
+
+The death of Franco in 1975 brought on a period of democratisation throughout Spain. Pressure for change was particularly strong in Barcelona, which considered that it had been punished during nearly forty years of Francoism for its support of the Republican government. Massive, but peaceful, demonstrations on 11 September 1977 assembled over a million people in the streets of Barcelona to call for the restoration of Catalan autonomy. It was granted less than a month later.
+
+The development of Barcelona was promoted by two events in 1986: Spanish accession to the European Community, and particularly Barcelona's designation as host city of the 1992 Summer Olympics. The process of urban regeneration has been rapid, and accompanied by a greatly increased international reputation of the city as a tourist destination. The increased cost of housing has led to a slight decline (−16.6%) in the population over the last two decades of the 20th century as many families move out into the suburbs. This decline has been reversed since 2001, as a new wave of immigration (particularly from Latin America and from Morocco) has gathered pace.
+
+In 1987, an ETA car bombing at Hipercor killed 21 people. On 17 August 2017, a van was driven into pedestrians on La Rambla, killing 14 and injuring at least 100, one of whom later died. Other attacks took place elsewhere in Catalonia. The Prime Minister of Spain, Mariano Rajoy, called the attack in Barcelona a jihadist attack. Amaq News Agency attributed indirect responsibility for the attack to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). During the 2010s, Barcelona became the focus city for the ongoing Catalan independence movement, its consequent standoff between the regional and national government and later protests.
+
+Geography
+
+Location 
+
+Barcelona is located on the northeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Mediterranean Sea, on a plain approximately  wide limited by the mountain range of Collserola, the Llobregat river to the southwest and the Besòs river to the north. This plain covers an area of , of which  are occupied by the city itself. It is  south of the Pyrenees and the Catalan border with France.
+
+Tibidabo,  high, offers striking views over the city and is topped by the  Torre de Collserola, a telecommunications tower that is visible from most of the city. Barcelona is peppered with small hills, most of them urbanised, that gave their name to the neighbourhoods built upon them, such as Carmel (), Putget (es) () and Rovira (). The escarpment of Montjuïc (), situated to the southeast, overlooks the harbour and is topped by Montjuïc Castle, a fortress built in the 17–18th centuries to control the city as a replacement for the Ciutadella. Today, the fortress is a museum and Montjuïc is home to several sporting and cultural venues, as well as Barcelona's biggest park and gardens.
+
+The city borders on the municipalities of Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Sant Adrià de Besòs to the north; the Mediterranean Sea to the east; El Prat de Llobregat and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat to the south; and Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Sant Just Desvern, Esplugues de Llobregat, Sant Cugat del Vallès, and Montcada i Reixac to the west. The municipality includes two small sparsely-inhabited exclaves to the north-west.
+
+Climate 
+
+According to the Köppen climate classification, Barcelona has a hot summer Mediterranean climate (Csa), with mild winters and warm to hot summers, while the rainiest seasons are autumn and spring. The rainfall pattern is characterised by a short (3 months) dry season in summer, as well as less winter rainfall than in a typical Mediterranean climate. However, both June and August are wetter than February, which is unusual for the Mediterranean climate. This subtype, labelled as "Portuguese" by the French geographer George Viers after the climate classification of Emmanuel de Martonne and found in the NW Mediterranean area (e.g. Marseille), can be seen as transitional to the humid subtropical climate (Cfa) found in inland areas.
+
+Barcelona is densely populated, thus heavily influenced by the urban heat island effect. Areas outside of the urbanised districts can have as much as 2 °C of difference in temperatures throughout the year. Its average annual temperature is  during the day and  at night. The average annual temperature of the sea is about . In the coldest month, January, the temperature typically ranges from  during the day,  at night and the average sea temperature is . In the warmest month, August, the typical temperature ranges from  during the day, about  at night and the average sea temperature is . Generally, the summer or "holiday" season lasts about six months, from May to October. Two months – April and November – are transitional; sometimes the temperature exceeds , with an average temperature of  during the day and  at night. December, January and February are the coldest months, with average temperatures around  during the day and  at night. Large fluctuations in temperature are rare, particularly in the summer months. Because of the proximity to the warm sea plus the urban heat island, frosts are very rare in the city of Barcelona. Snow is also very infrequent in the city of Barcelona, but light snowfalls can occur yearly in the nearby Collserola mountains, such as in the Fabra Observatory located in a nearby mountain.
+
+Barcelona averages 78 rainy days per year (≥ 1 mm), and annual average relative humidity is 72%, ranging from 69% in July to 75% in October. Rainfall totals are highest in late summer and autumn (September–November) and lowest in early and mid-summer (June–August), with a secondary winter minimum (February–March). Sunshine duration is 2,524 hours per year, from 138 (average 4.5 hours of sunshine a day) in December to 310 (average 10 hours of sunshine a day) in July.
+
+Demographics 
+
+According to Barcelona's City Council, Barcelona's population  was 1,608,746 people, on a land area of . It is the main component of an administrative area of Greater Barcelona, with a population of 3,218,071 in an area of  (density 5,060 inhabitants/km2). The population of the urban area was 4,840,000. It is the central nucleus of the Barcelona metropolitan area, which relies on a population of 5,474,482.
+
+Spanish is the most spoken language in Barcelona (according to the linguistic census held by the Government of Catalonia in 2013) and it is understood almost universally. Catalan is also very commonly spoken in the city: it is understood by 95% of the population, while 72.3% can speak it, 79% can read it, and 53% can write it. Knowledge of Catalan has increased significantly in recent decades thanks to a language immersion educational system.
+
+After Catalan and Spanish, the most spoken languages in Barcelona are those from North Africa, such as Amazigh and Arabic, followed by Bengali, Urdu, Panjabi, Mandarin Chinese, Romanian, English, Russian and Quechua, according to data collected by the University of Barcelona.
+
+In 1900, Barcelona had a population of 533,000, which grew steadily but slowly until 1950, when it started absorbing a high number of people from other less-industrialised parts of Spain. Barcelona's population peaked in 1979 at 1,906,998, and fell throughout the 1980s and 1990s as more people sought a higher quality of life in outlying cities in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. After bottoming out in 2000 with 1,496,266 residents, the city's population began to rise again as younger people started to return, causing a great increase in housing prices.
+
+Population density 
+Note: This text is entirely based on the municipal statistical database provided by the city council.
+
+Barcelona is one of the most densely populated cities in Europe. For the year 2008 the city council calculated the population to 1,621,090 living in the 102.2 km2 sized municipality, giving the city an average population density of 15,926 inhabitants per square kilometre with Eixample being the most populated district.
+
+In the case of Barcelona though, the land distribution is extremely uneven. Half of the municipality or 50.2 km2, all of it located on the municipal edge is made up of the ten least densely populated neighbourhoods containing less than 10% of the city's population, the uninhabited Zona Franca industrial area and Montjuïc forest park. Leaving the remaining 90% or slightly below 1.5 million inhabitants living on the remaining  at an average density close to 28,500 inhabitants per square kilometre.
+
+Of the 73 neighbourhoods in the city, 45 had a population density above 20,000 inhabitants per square kilometre with a combined population of 1,313,424 inhabitants living on 38.6 km2 at an average density of 33,987 inhabitants per square kilometre. The 30 most densely populated neighbourhoods accounted for 57.5% of the city population occupying only 22.7% of the municipality, or in other words, 936,406 people living at an average density of 40,322 inhabitants per square kilometre. The city's highest density is found at and around the neighbourhood of la Sagrada Família where four of the city's most densely populated neighbourhoods are located side by side, all with a population density above 50,000 inhabitants per square kilometre.
+
+Age structure 
+In 1900, almost a third (28.9 percent) of the population were children (aged younger than 14 years). In 2017, this age group constituted only 12.7% of the population. In 2017, people aged between 15 and 24 years made up 9 percent of the population; those aged between 25 and 44 years made up 30.6 percent of the population; while those aged between 45 and 64 years formed 56.9% of all Barcelonans. In 1900, people aged 65 and older made up just 6.5 percent of the population. In 2017, this age group made up 21.5 percent of the population.
+
+Migration 
+
+In 2016, about 59% of the inhabitants of the city were born in Catalonia and 18.5% coming from the rest of the country. In addition to that, 22.5% of the population was born outside of Spain, a proportion which has more than doubled since 2001 and more than quintupled since 1996 when it was 8.6% respectively 3.9%.
+
+The most important region of origin of migrants is Europe, with many coming from Italy (26,676) or France (13,506). Moreover, many migrants come from Latin American nations such as Bolivia, Ecuador or Colombia. Since the 1990s, and similar to other migrants, many Latin Americans have settled in northern parts of the city.
+
+There exists a relatively large Pakistani community in Barcelona with up to twenty thousand nationals. The community consists of significantly more men than women. Many of the Pakistanis are living in Ciutat Vella. First Pakistani migrants came in the 1970s, with increasing numbers in the 1990s.
+
+Other significant migrant groups come from Asia as from China and the Philippines. There is a Japanese community clustered in Bonanova, Les Tres Torres, Pedralbes, and other northern neighbourhoods, and a Japanese international school serves that community.
+
+Religion 
+
+Most of the inhabitants state they are Roman Catholic (208 churches). In a 2011 survey conducted by InfoCatólica, 49.5% of Barcelona residents of all ages identified themselves as Catholic. This was the first time that more than half of respondents did not identify themselves as Catholic Christians. The numbers reflect a broader trend in Spain whereby the numbers of self-identified Catholics have declined. In 2019, a survey by Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas showed that 53.2% of residents in Barcelona identified themselves as Catholic (9.9% practising Catholics, 43.3% non-practising Catholics).
+
+The province has the largest Muslim community in Spain, 322,698 people in Barcelona province are of Muslim religion. A considerable number of Muslims live in Barcelona due to immigration (169 locations, mostly professed by Moroccans in Spain). In 2014, 322,698 out of 5.5 million people in the province of Barcelona identified themselves as Muslim, which makes 5.6% of the total population.
+
+The city also has the largest Jewish community in Spain, with an estimated 3,500 Jews living in the city. There are also a number of other groups, including Evangelical (71 locations, mostly professed by Roma), Jehovah's Witnesses (21 Kingdom Halls), Buddhists (13 locations), and Eastern Orthodox.
+
+Economy
+
+General information 
+
+The Barcelona metropolitan area comprises over 66% of the people of Catalonia, one of the richer regions in Europe and the fourth richest region per capita in Spain, with a GDP per capita amounting to €28,400 (16% more than the EU average). The greater Barcelona metropolitan area had a GDP amounting to $177 billion (equivalent to $34,821 in per capita terms, 44% more than the EU average), making it the 4th most economically powerful city by gross GDP in the European Union, and 35th in the world in 2009. Barcelona city had a very high GDP of €80,894 per head in 2004, according to Eurostat. Furthermore, Barcelona was Europe's fourth best business city and fastest improving European city, with growth improved by 17% per year .
+
+Barcelona was the 24th most "livable city" in the world in 2015 according to lifestyle magazine Monocle. Similarly, according to Innovation Analysts 2thinknow, Barcelona occupies 13th place in the world on Innovation Cities™ Global Index. At the same time it is according to the Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report 2020 one of the most affordable cities in the world for a luxury lifestyle.
+
+Barcelona has a long-standing mercantile tradition. Less well known is that the city industrialised early, taking off in 1833, when Catalonia's already sophisticated textile industry began to use steam power. It became the first and most important industrial city in the Mediterranean basin. Since then, manufacturing has played a large role in its history.
+
+Borsa de Barcelona (Barcelona Stock Exchange) is the main stock exchange in the northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula.
+
+Barcelona was recognised as the Southern European City of the Future for 2014/15, based on its economic potential, by FDi Magazine in their bi-annual rankings.
+
+Trade fair and exhibitions 
+
+Drawing upon its tradition of creative art and craftsmanship, Barcelona is known for its award-winning industrial design. It also has several congress halls, notably Fira de Barcelona – the second largest trade fair and exhibition centre in Europe, that host a quickly growing number of national and international events each year (at present above 50). The total exhibition floor space of Fira de Barcelona venues is , not counting Gran Via centre on the Plaza de Europa. However, the Eurozone crisis and deep cuts in business travel affected the council's positioning of the city as a convention centre.
+
+An important business centre, the World Trade Center Barcelona, is located in Barcelona's Port Vell harbour.
+
+The city is known for hosting well as world-class conferences and expositions, including the 1888 Exposición Universal de Barcelona, the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition (Expo 1929), the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures and the 2004 World Urban Forum.
+
+Tourism 
+
+Barcelona was the 20th-most-visited city in the world by international visitors and the fifth most visited city in Europe after London, Paris, Istanbul and Rome, with 5.5 million international visitors in 2011. By 2015, both Prague and Milan had more international visitors. With its popular tree-lined pedestrian street, Les Rambles (Las Ramblas), Barcelona is ranked the most popular city to visit in Spain.
+
+Barcelona is an internationally renowned tourist destination, with numerous recreational areas, one of the best beaches in the world, mild and warm climate, historical monuments, including eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 519 hotels  including 35 five-star hotels, and developed tourist infrastructure.
+
+Due to its large influx of tourists each year, Barcelona, like many other tourism capitals, has to deal with pickpockets, with wallets and passports being commonly stolen items. Despite its moderate pickpocket rate, Barcelona is considered one of the safest cities in terms of security and personal safety, mainly because of a sophisticated policing strategy that has dropped crime by 32% in just over three years and has led it to be considered the 15th safest city in the world by Business Insider in 2016.
+
+While tourism produces economic benefits, according to one report, the city is "overrun [by] hordes of tourists". In early 2017, over 150,000 protesters warned that tourism is destabilizing the city. Slogans included "Tourists go home", "Barcelona is not for sale" and "We will not be driven out". By then, the number of visitors had increased from 1.7 million in 1990 to 32 million in a city with a population of 1.62 million, increasing the cost of rental housing for residents and overcrowding the public places. While tourists spent an estimated €30 billion in 2017, they are viewed by some as a threat to Barcelona's identity.
+
+A May 2017 article in the British online daily The Independent included Barcelona among the "Eight Places That Hate Tourists the Most" and included a comment from Mayor Ada Colau, "We don't want the city to become a cheap souvenir shop", citing Venice as an example. To moderate the problem, the city has stopped issuing licenses for new hotels and holiday apartments; it also fined AirBnb €30,000. The mayor has suggested introducing a new tourist tax and setting a limit on the number of visitors. One industry insider, Justin Francis, founder of the Responsible Travel agency, stated that steps must be taken to limit the number of visitors that are causing an "overtourism crisis" in several major European cities. "Ultimately, residents must be prioritised over tourists for housing, infrastructure and access to services because they have a long-term stake in the city's success", he said. "Managing tourism more responsibly can help", Francis later told a journalist, "but some destinations may just have too many tourists, and Barcelona may be a case of that".
+
+Manufacturing sector 
+Industry generates 21% of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the region, with the energy, chemical and metallurgy industries accounting for 47% of industrial production. The Barcelona metropolitan area had 67% of the total number of industrial establishments in Catalonia as of 1997.
+
+Barcelona has long been an important European automobile manufacturing centre. Formerly there were automobile factories of AFA, Abadal, Actividades Industriales, Alvarez, America, Artés de Arcos, Balandrás, Baradat-Esteve, Biscúter, J. Castro, Clúa, David, Delfín, Díaz y Grilló, Ebro trucks, , Elizalde, Automóviles España, Eucort, Fenix, Fábrica Hispano, Auto Academia Garriga, Fábrica Española de Automóviles Hebe, Hispano-Suiza, Huracán Motors, Talleres Hereter, Junior SL, Kapi, La Cuadra, M.A., Automóviles Matas, Motores y Motos, Nacional Custals, National Pescara, Nacional RG, Nacional Rubi, Nacional Sitjes, Automóviles Nike, Orix, Otro Ford, Patria, Pegaso, PTV, Ricart, Ricart-España, Industrias Salvador, Siata Española, Stevenson, Romagosa y Compañía, Garaje Storm, Talleres Hereter, Trimak, Automóviles Victoria, Manufacturas Mecánicas Aleu.
+
+Today, the headquarters and a large factory of SEAT (the largest Spanish automobile manufacturer) are in one of its suburbs. There is also a Nissan factory in the logistics and industrial area of the city. The factory of Derbi, a large manufacturer of motorcycles, scooters and mopeds, also lies near the city.
+
+As in other modern cities, the manufacturing sector has long since been overtaken by the services sector, though it remains very important. The region's leading industries are textiles, chemical, pharmaceutical, motor, electronic, printing, logistics, publishing, in telecommunications industry and culture the notable Mobile World Congress, and information technology services.
+
+Fashion 
+
+The traditional importance of textiles is reflected in Barcelona's drive to become a major fashion centre. There have been many attempts to launch Barcelona as a fashion capital, notably Gaudi Home.
+
+Beginning in the summer of 2000, the city hosted the Bread & Butter urban fashion fair until 2009, when its organisers announced that it would be returning to Berlin. This was a hard blow for the city as the fair brought €100 m to the city in just three days.
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+From 2009, The Brandery, an urban fashion show, was held in Barcelona twice a year until 2012. According to the Global Language Monitor's annual ranking of the world's top fifty fashion capitals Barcelona was named as the seventh most important fashion capital of the world right after Milan and before Berlin in 2015.
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+Government and administrative divisions 
+
+As the capital of the autonomous community of Catalonia, Barcelona is the seat of the Catalan government, known as the Generalitat de Catalunya; of particular note are the executive branch, the parliament, and the High Court of Justice of Catalonia. The city is also the capital of the Province of Barcelona and the Barcelonès comarca (district).
+
+Barcelona is governed by a city council formed by 41 city councillors, elected for a four-year term by universal suffrage. As one of the two biggest cities in Spain, Barcelona is subject to a special law articulated through the Carta Municipal (Municipal Law). A first version of this law was passed in 1960 and amended later, but the current version was approved in March 2006. According to this law, Barcelona's city council is organised in two levels: a political one, with elected city councillors, and one executive, which administers the programs and executes the decisions taken on the political level. This law also gives the local government a special relationship with the central government and it also gives the mayor wider prerogatives by the means of municipal executive commissions. It expands the powers of the city council in areas like telecommunications, city traffic, road safety and public safety. It also gives a special economic regime to the city's treasury and it gives the council a veto in matters that will be decided by the central government, but that will need a favourable report from the council.
+
+The Comissió de Govern (Government Commission) is the executive branch, formed by 24 councillors, led by the Mayor, with 5 lieutenant-mayors and 17 city councillors, each in charge of an area of government, and 5 non-elected councillors. The plenary, formed by the 41 city councillors, has advisory, planning, regulatory, and fiscal executive functions. The six Commissions del Consell Municipal (City council commissions) have executive and controlling functions in the field of their jurisdiction. They are composed by a number of councillors proportional to the number of councillors each political party has in the plenary. The city council has jurisdiction in the fields of city planning, transportation, municipal taxes, public highways security through the Guàrdia Urbana (the municipal police), city maintenance, gardens, parks and environment, facilities (like schools, nurseries, sports centres, libraries, and so on), culture, sports, youth and social welfare. Some of these competencies are not exclusive, but shared with the Generalitat de Catalunya or the central Spanish government. In some fields with shared responsibility (such as public health, education or social services), there is a shared Agency or Consortium between the city and the Generalitat to plan and manage services.
+
+The executive branch is led by a Chief Municipal Executive Officer which answers to the Mayor. It is made up of departments which are legally part of the city council and by separate legal entities of two types: autonomous public departments and public enterprises.
+
+The seat of the city council is on the Plaça de Sant Jaume, opposite the seat of Generalitat de Catalunya. Since the coming of the Spanish democracy, Barcelona had been governed by the PSC, first with an absolute majority and later in coalition with ERC and ICV. After the May 2007 election, the ERC did not renew the coalition agreement and the PSC governed in a minority coalition with ICV as the junior partner.
+
+After 32 years, on 22 May 2011, CiU gained a plurality of seats at the municipal election, gaining 15 seats to the PSC's 11. The PP hold 8 seats, ICV 5 and ERC 2.
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+Districts 
+
+Since 1987, the city has been divided into 10 administrative districts (districtes in Catalan, distritos in Spanish):
+Ciutat Vella
+Eixample
+Sants-Montjuïc
+Les Corts
+Sarrià-Sant Gervasi
+Gràcia
+Horta-Guinardó
+Nou Barris
+Sant Andreu
+Sant Martí
+
+The districts are based mostly on historical divisions, and several are former towns annexed by the city of Barcelona in the 18th and 19th centuries that still maintain their own distinct character. Each district has its own council led by a city councillor. The composition of each district council depends on the number of votes each political party had in that district, so a district can be led by a councillor from a different party than the executive council.
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+Education 
+
+Barcelona has a well-developed higher education system of public universities. Most prominent among these are the University of Barcelona (established in 1450) and the more modern Pompeu Fabra University. Barcelona is also home to the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and in the private sector the EADA Business School (founded in 1957), which became the first Barcelona institution to run manager training programmes for the business community. IESE Business School, as well as the largest private educational institution, the Ramon Llull University, which encompasses schools and institutes such as the ESADE Business School. The Autonomous University of Barcelona, another public university, is located in Bellaterra, a town in the Metropolitan Area. Toulouse Business School and the Open University of Catalonia (a private Internet-centred open university) are also based in Barcelona.
+
+The city has a network of public schools, from nurseries to high schools, under the responsibility of a consortium led by city council (though the curriculum is the responsibility of the Generalitat de Catalunya). There are also many private schools, some of them Roman Catholic. Most such schools receive a public subsidy on a per-student basis, are subject to inspection by the public authorities, and are required to follow the same curricular guidelines as public schools, though they charge tuition. Known as escoles concertades, they are distinct from schools whose funding is entirely private (escoles privades).
+
+The language of instruction at public schools and escoles concertades is Catalan, as stipulated by the 2009 Catalan Education Act. Spanish may be used as a language of instruction by teachers of Spanish literature or language, and foreign languages by teachers of those languages. An experimental partial immersion programme adopted by some schools allows for the teaching of a foreign language (English, generally) across the curriculum, though this is limited to a maximum of 30% of the school day. No public school or escola concertada in Barcelona may offer 50% or full immersion programmes in a foreign language, nor does any public school or escola concertada offer International Baccalaureate programmes.
+
+Culture 
+
+Barcelona's cultural roots go back 2000 years. Since the arrival of democracy, the Catalan language (very much repressed during the dictatorship of Franco) has been promoted, both by recovering works from the past and by stimulating the creation of new works. Barcelona is designated as a world-class city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network. It has also been part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a City of Literature since 2015.
+
+Entertainment and performing arts 
+
+Barcelona has many venues for live music and theatre, including the world-renowned Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house, the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, the Teatre Lliure and the Palau de la Música Catalana concert hall. Barcelona also is home to the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra (Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, usually known as OBC), the largest symphonic orchestra in Catalonia. In 1999, the OBC inaugurated its new venue in the brand-new Auditorium (L'Auditori). It performs around 75 concerts per season and its current director is Eiji Oue. It is home to the Barcelona Guitar Orchestra, directed by Sergi Vicente. The major thoroughfare of La Rambla is home to mime artists and street performers. Yearly, two major pop music festivals take place in the city, the Sónar Festival and the Primavera Sound Festival. The city also has a thriving alternative music scene, with groups such as The Pinker Tones receiving international attention. Barcelona is an international hub of highly active and diverse nightlife with bars, dance bars and nightclubs staying open well past midnight.
+
+Media 
+El Periódico de Catalunya, La Vanguardia and Ara are Barcelona's three major daily newspapers (the first two with Catalan and Spanish editions, Ara only in Catalan) while Sport and El Mundo Deportivo (both in Spanish) are the city's two major sports daily newspapers, published by the same companies. The city is also served by a number of smaller publications such as Ara and El Punt Avui (in Catalan), by nationwide newspapers with special Barcelona editions like El País (in Spanish, with an online version in Catalan) and El Mundo (in Spanish), and by several free newspapers like 20 minutos and Què (all bilingual).
+
+Barcelona's oldest and main online newspaper VilaWeb is also the oldest one in Europe (with Catalan and English editions).
+
+Several major FM stations include Catalunya Ràdio, RAC 1, RAC 105 and Cadena SER. Barcelona also has a local TV station, Betevé, owned by city council. The headquarters of Televisió de Catalunya, Catalonia's public network, are located in Sant Joan Despí, in Barcelona's metropolitan area.
+
+Sports 
+
+Barcelona has a long sporting tradition and hosted the highly successful 1992 Summer Olympics as well as several matches during the 1982 FIFA World Cup (at the two stadiums). It has hosted about 30 sports events of international significance.
+FC Barcelona is a sports club best known worldwide for its football team, one of the largest and the wealthiest in the world. It has 74 national trophies (while finishing 46 times as runners-up) and 17 continental prizes (with being runners-up 11 times), including five UEFA Champions League trophies out of eight finals and three FIFA Club World Cup wins out of four finals. The club won six trophies in a calendar year in 2009, becoming one of only 2 male football teams in the world to win the coveted sextuple, apart from FC Bayern Munich in 2020. FC Barcelona also has professional teams in other sports like FC Barcelona Regal (basketball), FC Barcelona Handbol (handball), FC Barcelona Hoquei (roller hockey), FC Barcelona Ice Hockey (ice hockey), FC Barcelona Futsal (futsal) and FC Barcelona Rugby (rugby union), all at one point winners of the highest national and/or European competitions. The club's museum is the second most visited in Catalonia. The matches against cross-town rivals RCD Espanyol are of particular interest, but there are other Barcelonan football clubs in lower categories, like CE Europa and UE Sant Andreu. FC Barcelona's basketball team has a noted rivalry in the Liga ACB with nearby Joventut Badalona.
+
+Barcelona has three UEFA elite stadiums: FC Barcelona's Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe with a capacity of 99,354; the publicly owned Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, with a capacity of 55,926; used for the 1992 Olympics; and Estadi Cornellà-El Prat, with a capacity of 40,500. Furthermore, the city has several smaller stadiums such as Mini Estadi (also owned by FC Barcelona) with a capacity of 15,000, Camp Municipal Narcís Sala with a capacity of 6,563 and Nou Sardenya with a capacity of 7,000. The city has a further three multifunctional venues for sports and concerts: the Palau Sant Jordi with a capacity of 12,000 to 24,000 (depending on use), the Palau Blaugrana with a capacity of 7,500, and the Palau dels Esports de Barcelona with a capacity of 3,500.
+
+Barcelona was the host city for the 2013 World Aquatics Championships, which were held at the Palau San Jordi.
+
+Several road running competitions are organised year-round in Barcelona: the Barcelona Marathon every March with over 10,000 participants in 2010, the Cursa de Bombers in April, the Cursa de El Corte Inglés in May (with about 60,000 participants each year), the Cursa de la Mercè, the Cursa Jean Bouin, the Milla Sagrada Família and the San Silvestre. There's also the Ultratrail Collserola which passes  through the Collserola forest. The Open Seat Godó, a 50-year-old ATP World Tour 500 Series tennis tournament, is held annually in the facilities of the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona. Each year on Christmas Day, a 200-meter swimming race across the Old Port of Barcelona takes place. Near Barcelona, in Montmeló, the 107,000 capacity Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya racetrack hosts the Formula One Spanish Grand Prix, the Catalan motorcycle Grand Prix, the Spanish GT Championship and races in the GP2 Series. Skateboarding and cycling are also very popular in Barcelona; in and around the city there are dozens of kilometers of bicycle paths.
+
+Squatter Movement 
+Barcelona is also home to numerous social centres and illegal squats that effectively form a shadow society mainly made up of the unemployed, immigrants, dropouts, anarchists, anti-authoritarians and autonomists. Peter Gelderloos estimates that there around 200 squatted buildings and 40 social centres across the city with thousands of inhabitants, making it one of the largest squatter movements in the world. He notes that they pirate electricity, internet and water allowing them to live on less than one euro a day. He argues that these squats embrace an anarcho-communist and anti-work philosophy, often freely fixing up new houses, cleaning, patching roofs, installing windows, toilets, showers, lights and kitchens. In the wake of austerity, the squats have provided a number of social services to the surrounding residents, including bicycle repair workshops, carpentry workshops, self-defense classes, free libraries, community gardens, free meals, computer labs, language classes, theatre groups, free medical care and legal support services. The squats help elderly residents avoid eviction and organise various protests throughout Barcelona. Notable squats include Can Vies and Can Masdeu.
+
+Transport
+
+Airports 
+
+Barcelona is served by Barcelona-El Prat Airport, about  south-west of the centre of Barcelona. It is the second-largest airport in Spain, and the largest on the Mediterranean coast, which handled more than 50.17 million passengers in 2018, showing an annual upward trend. It is a main hub for Vueling Airlines and Ryanair, and also a focus for Iberia and Air Europa. The airport mainly serves domestic and European destinations, although some airlines offer destinations in Latin America, Asia and the United States. The airport is connected to the city by highway, metro (Airport T1 and Airport T2 stations), commuter train (Barcelona Airport railway station) and scheduled bus service. A new terminal (T1) has been built, and entered service on 17 June 2009.
+
+Some low-cost airlines, also use Girona-Costa Brava Airport, about  to the north, Reus Airport,  to the south, or Lleida-Alguaire Airport, about  to the west, of the city. Sabadell Airport is a smaller airport in the nearby town of Sabadell, devoted to pilot training, aerotaxi and private flights.
+
+Seaport 
+
+The Port of Barcelona has a 2000-year-old history and a great contemporary commercial importance. It is Europe's ninth largest container port, with a trade volume of 1.72 million TEU's in 2013. The port is managed by the Port Authority of Barcelona. Its  are divided into three zones: Port Vell (the old port), the commercial port and the logistics port (Barcelona Free Port). The port is undergoing an enlargement that will double its size thanks to diverting the mouth of the Llobregat river  to the south.
+
+The Barcelona harbour is the leading European cruiser port and a very important Mediterranean turnaround base. In 2013, 3.6 million pleasure cruise passengers used the Port of Barcelona.
+
+The Port Vell area also houses the Maremagnum (a commercial mall), a multiplex cinema, the IMAX Port Vell and one of Europe's largest aquariums – Aquarium Barcelona, containing 8,000 fish and 11 sharks contained in 22 basins filled with 4 million litres of sea water. The Maremagnum, being situated within the confines of the port, is the only commercial mall in the city that can open on Sundays and public holidays.
+
+National and international rail 
+
+Barcelona is a major hub for the Spanish rail network. The city's main Inter-city rail station is Barcelona Sants railway station, whilst Estació de França terminus serves a secondary role handling suburban, regional and medium distance services. Freight services operate to local industries and to the Port of Barcelona.
+
+RENFE's AVE high-speed rail system, which is designed for speeds of , was extended from Madrid to Barcelona in 2008 in the form of the Madrid–Barcelona high-speed rail line. A shared RENFE-SNCF high-speed rail connecting Barcelona and France (Paris, Marseilles and Toulouse, through Perpignan–Barcelona high-speed rail line) was launched in 2013. Both these lines serve Barcelona Sants terminal station.
+
+Metro and regional rail 
+
+Barcelona is served by an extensive local public transport network that includes a metro system, a bus network, a regional railway system, trams, funiculars, rack railways, a Gondola lift and aerial cable cars. These networks and lines are run by a number of different operators but they are integrated into a coordinated fare system, administered by the Autoritat del Transport Metropolità (ATM). The system is divided into fare zones (1 to 6) and various Integrated Travel Cards are available.
+
+The Barcelona Metro network comprises twelve lines, identified by an "L" followed by the line number as well as by individual colours. The Metro largely runs underground; eight Metro lines are operated on dedicated track by the Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB), whilst four lines are operated by the  (FGC) and some of them share tracks with RENFE commuter lines.
+
+In addition to the city Metro, several regional rail lines operated by RENFE's Rodalies de Catalunya run across the city, providing connections to outlying towns in the surrounding region.
+
+Tram 
+
+The city's two modern tram systems, Trambaix and Trambesòs, are operated by TRAMMET. A heritage tram line, the Tramvia Blau, also operates between the metro Line 7 and the Funicular del Tibidabo.
+
+Funicular and cable car 
+Barcelona's metro and rail system is supplemented by several aerial cable cars, funiculars and rack railways that provide connections to mountain-top stations. FGC operates the Funicular de Tibidabo up the hill of Tibidabo and the Funicular de Vallvidrera (FGC), while TMB runs the Funicular de Montjuïc up Montjuïc. The city has two aerial cable cars: the Montjuïc Cable Car, which serves Montjuïc castle, and the Port Vell Aerial Tramway that runs via Torre Jaume I and Torre Sant Sebastià over the port.
+
+Bus 
+Buses in Barcelona are a major form of public transport, with extensive local, interurban and night bus networks. Most local services are operated by the TMB, although some other services are operated by a number of private companies, albeit still within the ATM fare structure. A separate private bus line, known as Aerobús, links the airport with the city centre, with its own fare structure.
+
+The Estació del Nord (Northern Station), a former railway station which was renovated for the 1992 Olympic Games, now serves as the terminus for long-distance and regional bus services.
+
+Taxi 
+
+Barcelona has a metered taxi fleet governed by the Institut Metropolità del Taxi (Metropolitan Taxi Institute), composed of more than 10,000 cars. Most of the licences are in the hands of self-employed drivers. With their black and yellow livery, Barcelona's taxis are easily spotted, and can be caught from one of many taxi ranks, hailed on street, called by telephone or via app.
+
+On 22 March 2007, Barcelona's City Council started the Bicing service, a bicycle service understood as a public transport. Once the user has their user card, they can take a bicycle from any of the more than 400 stations spread around the city and use it anywhere the urban area of the city, and then leave it at another station. The service has been a success, with 50,000 subscribed users in three months.
+
+Roads and highways 
+
+Barcelona lies on three international routes, including European route E15 that follows the Mediterranean coast, European route E90 to Madrid and Lisbon, and European route E09 to Paris. It is also served by a comprehensive network of motorways and highways throughout the metropolitan area, including A-2, A-7/AP-7, C-16, C-17, C-31, C-32, C-33, C-60.
+
+The city is circled by three half ring roads or bypasses, Ronda de Dalt (B-20) (on the mountain side), Ronda del Litoral (B-10) (along the coast) and Ronda del Mig (separated into two parts: Travessera de Dalt in the north and the Gran Via de Carles III), two partially covered fast highways with several exits that bypass the city.
+
+The city's main arteries include Diagonal Avenue, which crosses it diagonally, Meridiana Avenue which leads to Glòries and connects with Diagonal Avenue and Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, which crosses the city from east to west, passing through its centre. The famous boulevard of La Rambla, whilst no longer an important vehicular route, remains an important pedestrian route.
+
+Main sights 
+